Disney World...good and bad

[berettafan]

Spent 8 nights last week at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and hit all four parks (no water parks on this trip). 5yr old enjoyed it, 3 mo old could care less, wife enjoyed it and didn't want to leave and for the first time ever i was ready to come home by the end of the trip.

My family has always been big on Disney and I can remember the floating light show on the lagoon when we stayed at Ft. Wilderness nearly 30yrs ago. I remember Epcot being new. I remember the people mover being pretty darned high tech. Always enjoyed myself immensly and always hated to leave.

But this last trip, while certainly fun, showed me some cracks in the 'magic'. Mickey wants $60 or so to stay in the Magic Kingdom a few extra hours for a 'Christmas Party' with 'complimentary Christmas treats'. Mickey wants $10 for an unscheduled towel replenishment at the hotel. Mickey wants extra money for me to visit more than one park in a day. Mickey wants me to buy the meal plan which includes snacks but NOW Mickey has decided to not allow me to buy the standard sized candy as a snack....he calls it 'family size' now to differentiate it and thus exclude it from the meal plan. Mickey wants to sell me a Matchbox airplane for $8 that is $2 in any other store on the planet (but it says 'Disney' on the sticker!).

Mickey is just a greedy SOB any more. Maybe he always was and i just didn't see it.

Mickey also has trouble keeping the monorail running well (crapped out twice during our stay. once for 3 hours!) and various rides too.

Other small issues like an awful evening fireworks/laser show at Epcot (used to be fantastic), an initially interesting but ultimately boring 'fantasmic' show at Hollywood Studios and nearly impossible to understand workers on various rides along with all the aforementioned items left me with a general feeling that Mickey is losing his touch.

I coulda put a mid rise lift in my garage and taken my family on a 4 day cruise to Barbados for what i spent. Instead i came home with a head full of advertisements for various Disney movies and the vacation club.

I know what matters is that my family had fun. And the hotel was fantastic, service (other than rides) was equally good, etc. etc. but Disney used to up it's game time after time....it no longer does this IMO.

Next trip will be shorter and a lot less dough will be left in Fla. The people running the show there now have simply run out of ideas or just do not have the talent of those that were before them.

[berettafan]

Oh and if you know any DVC members it is waaaay worth it to 'rent points' from them and stay at the nicer resorts. Paid roughly $140/night average for savanah view studio at animal kingdom lodge (the new building) which is very nice and has a super cool pool. mid grade resorts like Port Orleans have very nice grounds but the rooms are deplorable.

[bell]

No.....I think you just went during peak season where everyone is simply taxed to the hilt dealing with the capacity crowds......next time try to go a couple weeks after new years up til spring break, or a few weeks before halloween up til the week after turkey day.....those are the best times to plan a trip as it'll be at half capacity.....
We are local so spend a fair amount of time there, when it's at capacity it isn't fun......period.....
However when they're not packed everything/everyone is more pleasant.....
The meal plan does help if you plan ahead to get the most of it instead of paying cash......
After the monorail crash they've been taking no chances and regularly shut it down if there's a suspected problem.....only a pain when the park is at capacity....

[berettafan]

actually i don't have any real complaints about lines. the only time we missed out was the toy story ride (absolutely amazing and a total blast) had 80 minute waits one day and fast passes were gone before lunch time iirc.

i really wouldn't enjoy the parks with noone there i think.

maybe i'm just getting old and cranky. a lot of things just didn't seem like much effort was put into them...from shows to rides. Dinosaur for example was just a corny ride. Not amazing or interesting at all. Kinda just taking up space. The imaginarium or whatever it's called near the front of Epcot was pretty uninspired as well. (Saw a much cooler noise making machine at the Philly airport actually!). Some of the parade floats wouldn't win a contest in backwoods west virginia and the music in general (both parades and shows) was pretty lousy.

I'm thinking in part it has to do with the fact that when i was a very young child Disney was it for cartoons and kid friendly movies. state of the art and always on the edge. now they are the pop music of kids entertainment and don't even register with most kids. or me. Toy Story was great and Madagascar was pretty funny but a lot of what they put out is just rehashing of old concepts looking for more merchandising $$. It's not quality entertainment (movies like Pirates excepted of course...though Haunted Mansion was awful).

[Chocaholic]

Hell on Earth. Pure torture by any standards. All fake, man-made garbage designed to do one thing and one thing only....separate you from your money. As many of you as possible. We went one time and I live a happier life knowing that I'll never set foot anywhere near that godforsaken greedy cheeseball hellhole again.

Life is good!

[Schrup]

I took the family to Disney World a few years ago, I think it was in April. It was horrible. Super crowded, every line was a 45 minute wait, tons of hillbillies cursing at their kids, hot & humid, there was nothing good to remember.

This last summer, we went to Disneyland. It was great! The class of people attending was 3 tiers up the evolutionary chain, the lines were closer to 10-20 minutes, the food was ok, the weather was nice, it really didn't get overly crowded until the evening finale, but we had a fantastic time. The highlight of the day was the Jedi Knight Training. Our six year old son was picked out of the crowd to participate, it is something we all will never forget.

[t951]

Originally Posted by chocaholic

hell on earth. Pure torture by any standards. All fake, man-made garbage designed to do one thing and one thing only....separate you from your money. As many of you as possible. We went one time and i live a happier life knowing that i'll never set foot anywhere near that godforsaken greedy cheeseball hellhole again.

Life is good!

+1000000000000

[gsmith660]

Just went this summer, lines not a problem the extra charges to do anything yes 27 bucks for what I thought was hot dog and fries for 3 turned out she didn't my order in there so that was for 2 those were some expensive hotdogs, this was our first ime there and so we stayed in the prolitariate resort and noticed one thing they say the disney transportation system runs about every 20 mins and that was the case for most of the other resorts but for port orleans it was about twice that all the time. The other thing that bothered me was the attitude at the concierge desk when I went to upgrade our package to do something we wanted to do the lady behind the counter said "maybe next time you won't get a bottom of the barrel vaction" WTF. The other thing I noticed was there were not many hillbillies but I would say 75% of the people there were from overseas and 50% of those were from southwest asia and 25% were from south of the border their economies must be much better than ours cause they were throwing money around hand over fist. One thing I will relate was more funny than anything else is we were waiting for a parade to start and this Indian guy stands up in front of his wife and it so happened that my wife, daughter, sis in law, and nephew were in the line of fire also, and grabs his penis and starts waving it around like a bat, the looks on my wife and sis in law were priceless my daughter got her face covered and my nephew was howling he was laughing so loud.

[Schrup]

Originally Posted by gsmith660

One thing I will relate was more funny than anything else is we were waiting for a parade to start and this Indian guy stands up in front of his wife and it so happened that my wife, daughter, sis in law, and nephew were in the line of fire also, and grabs his penis and starts waving it around like a bat, the looks on my wife and sis in law were priceless my daughter got her face covered and my nephew was howling he was laughing so loud.

Strange sense of humor, I would have kicked the deviant in the nuts.

[gsmith660]

He had me by almost a foot and 100 pounds and besides the beating he took from his wife when she looked around and saw the looks on the 50 or 60 other people there. You had to be there.

[911Rob]

We did this a couple years back, same hotel too.
We just loved it, a trip of a lifetime

We did the park for one week, the Disney cruise for 4 days and the park for another week.
My wife and I in one room and my 3 kids and mother in another.
We all just loved it.

[Chocaholic]

Apparently not on the "economy" plan. . .

[Christien]

Sounds like we were there at the same time. We were there Dec. 8-15. I too noticed crowds were huge, considering it's considered to be low-season. I've since read that it's quickly becoming high season, because so many people have discovered that taking xmas holidays a few weeks early means few people at the parks.

I do agree about the Mickey xmas party - $50 to stay in the MK a few hours longer, and lines for some rides were still very long - longer than they were when we were there the preceding Thursday night (though Splash Mountain was walk-on, and they were allowing people to stay on and keep riding as long as they wanted). However, I believe you can get into the park for the full day with the xmas party ticket and not use your regular park admission. I picked our tickets up around 4pm and used my xmas party ticket to enter then - I never swiped my park/room/meal card at all that day.

I'm not sure I agree about soaking the guests that badly, though. I can't believe how cheap our trip was. Flights, meal plan, 7-day park admission, cabin at Ft. Wilderness, all taxes was $3600 CDN for 2 adults and 1 child (baby was free of course). We spent maybe $350 cash, including groceries delivered to our cabin for breakfast every morning, plus a 1/2 case of beer, 2 bottles of wine and a bottle of scotch. So all in under $4K for everything for the week. I think that's a pretty awesome deal.

I did notice the rides stopping way more than ever this time - well over 50% of the rides we did stopped for at least a few seconds. We were actually evacuated from Pirates - kind of neat going "backstage", though we did have to sit for 30 minutes. They said it was some kind of medical emergency a few boats up. We all wondered why they didn't just keep the ride going - we all would've been out in 2 or 3 minutes. Thank god we didn't get stuck in small world for that long.... {cold shiver}

edit: but overall we had a fantastically awesome time. I went every year as a kid, and I'm hoping to keep that tradition alive with my kids. 2 years running so far.

[Christien]

Originally Posted by berettafan

I can remember the floating light show on the lagoon when we stayed at Ft. Wilderness nearly 30yrs ago.

They still do this - we caught it by accident our last night there. The music is complete cheese - it sounds like someone let Wendy Carlos loose in the Disney archives, and they're still making it that way, because it's got music from newer movies (eg. little mermaid). But it's still kind of neat to watch for a few minutes while you're waiting for the boat.

[lukeh]

Some of you seem surprised by the fact Disney is in the business to make money.

My family (wife/6 year old son) went back in May. We had a great time and lines were short as we went after the April spring break crowds. We usually go in October as the weather is great, prices low and no crowds as it is their off season. We had 8 days and 7 nights of parks, swimming, golfing, and downtown Disney. It was very relaxed, enjoyable and quite affordable.

Disney had a special most of the year where you bought a 4 day plan and got 3 days free (tickets/hotel). We ate oatmeal and fruit in the room for breakfast. We then brought our own snack bars for at the parks and then paid for one big Disney meal late afternoon just before they started charging dinner prices. That meal held us the rest of the day but we'd still usually stop and split a big sundae.

Yes, Disney can be very expensive but if you do some homework and plan ahead you can make it quite affordable. For starters look for specials, go during the off season and bring some of your own food. If that is not your thing and want to go over spring break and eat out 3 meals a day then yes, you will go broke.

[Monza_dh]

I just went over the T-day break for the second time in five years and will NEVER return. I stayed at the Swan on points and it was a good break from the Disney wallet sucking machine but the crowds and trailer park trash were too much. My kids loved it and we went to every park and used fast passes to ride all the rides, blah, blah, blah, but will never do it again.

Even my 10 year old got sick of the crappy food and though it was a big rip off by the end. My kids also couldnt beleive all the fat people riding scooters around the park. Did they ever think they are fat from just eating and NOT walking? Why not burn some calories between meals you fat bastrds!!!

I found this after my return and am thinking about making t-shirts to sell side the park entrance!

[legion]

Hit the four big Orlando parks this year. Last December, we did Epcot and Animal Kingdom. In September we did Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Given that's it just the wife and I, we move fast and skip the little kid stuff. The lines we way shorter this year than we've EVER seen, and we were there in November '01 (when people were still afraid to travel). We literally did everything in every park. We started doing stuff twice because my wife wanted to stay for the fireworks. Hollywood studios is a half-day trip at best. Not a lot there--still--I went in '92 when it was still Disney MGM and it small then.

Oh, and the first time we stayed with my Mom on Merritt Island and the second time we stayed at the Hyatt Cypress Gardens--but work paid for that trip.

[berettafan]

ya know i actually commented to my wife that while i feel badly for people with medical conditions that require scooters i had pretty much enough of people who just can't say no to little debbie riding the things everywhere. kinda thought it was a sad commentary on the general health of our population.

[nostatic]

Theme parks:

[Rot 911]

Originally Posted by nostatic

Theme parks:

Agreed: