My family used to go to WDW all the time when the kids were around 10 years old or younger. As they got older, we started traveling oversees more often and seeing the world on different continents.
Now that my oldest is graduating from college, she wants to go back to Disneyworld with just my wife and I (her brothers are going camping). As the planner in my family, I thought it would be easy to jump back to Disney, because I was so familiar with it....NOPE!!! LOL
Now they've added rides you can only get on via Virtual Que, they've replaced the old FastPass paper skip the line tickets with this complicated Genie+ system with Lightning Lanes. Although not all the top rides have access to Lightning Lanes, as for those rides, to skip the line, you have to pay per person per day to ride.
Want to get food? Good luck waiting hours in Standby counters for food. Now you have to get familiar with Mobile Ordering, to order your food on your phone hours before you eat.
Speaking of Virtual Que, they have two rides, where you can only get them at 7am and 1pm. If you are 1 second too late to hit the button on your phone, you miss the opportunity to go on that ride....Unless you pay around $20 per person to skip the line.
The amount of time it looks like I'll be on my phone, I'll need to bring an extra battery pack to make sure I don't drain my phones battery by the end of the day.
Rant over, spent the past weekend learning all these processes. If any other BBIer is planning to go to WDW and needs help, just post here. I'd be more than happy to help out answering questions.
We’ve got family in FL so the next time we visit we will swing over to Disney for a couple days to get it over with then never speak of it again, haha.
As I said to my wife, "it would be like spending a few thousand dollars just to be miserable and have everyone yelling each other."
No thanks.
We went to Tennessee instead.
We’ve got family in FL so the next time we visit we will swing over to Disney for a couple days to get it over with then never speak of it again, haha.
Good call! Trying to navigate the Disney Parks would be a nightmare with the more people you add to your groups.
I definitely 100% agree with you. Genie+ would be worth the price to avoid those 120-160 minute wait times for certain rides!
Robbie, I love Universal and can't wait till their new park Epic Universe opens next year. Plus with Universal, it's easy. Get their Express Pass and skip all the lines you want.
Disney is just not that straight forward with Genie+
As I said to my wife, "it would be like spending a few thousand dollars just to be miserable and have everyone yelling each other."
No thanks.
We went to Tennessee instead.
Good Call Eric!
I'd happily reserve my park days and wait for park hopping till 2pm, if they got rid of Virtual Ques and Genie+.
I learnt the process and ready for our trip in May but man I wish they still had those old paper fast pass system. So much easier back then and not being on your phone the whole time.
We’ve got family in FL so the next time we visit we will swing over to Disney for a couple days to get it over with then never speak of it again, haha.
Yep. I got in two arguments. One was when I wanted to look at a menu. I walked up to the front where they have the menus. This woman starts yelling at me that I need to wait in line. I said I am just looking at the menu. She says you do that on your phone. I said everything is on your phone. My battery is dying. She said I have to wait in line. I said wait in line for what? If I order on my phone they call your number to pick up. It isn't like it is a line to order. It was beyond ridiculous.
The 2nd one was it was so hot and I saw a Minute Made stand. I wait on line. I ask the woman if they have just slushies or if they have the frozen ices like Italian Ices. She tells me to wait. She takes out a rag and starts cleaning the counter and side of the stand. Two minutes goes by and then she puts the rag away and talks to me like she saw me for the first time. I felt like Ben Stiller in Meet The Parents when he's trying to board the plane. So, I ask the same question again that she could have answered while she was wiping down the booth. She says just the slushies. Fine, I'll take 4 please. She gets me the 4 slushies. I look at her and said do you have straws? She said sorry but we are out. Um, don't you think that is an important thing to state to the customer before they buy the slushies? I had a 3 year old. Now I had to search for either a straw or spoon to drink it.
I'm not even getting into all the issues we had booking rides even though they were closed and couldn't change it on the app. It was just ridiculous.
However, I still think a good time can be had if you're not a super ride enthusiast obsessed with hitting every ride. If you wake up early and take advantage of early admission (if your resort/hotel offers that) and you prioritize where you want to go and when, you can still get on some good rides. Maybe it's different considering my kids are little but we were also able to focus on seeing characters, parades, shows, etc. which the little kids love.
That said, I'll just say that my politics don't align with Disney's, and even as an adult there is something special about going there.
Now if you want to talk about all the nickel and diming and overall value...that's a whole different story.
I can honestly say that DisneyLand/World are nowhere near Walt's vision.
He would have been disgusted to see it now. Extracting money from "guests" and children is its sole mission.
We hiked in the Smokey Mountains, visited Dollywood (I didn't realize it was basically a massive rollercoaster park), and did the usual touristy stuff in Gatlinburg. You want a "thrill ride"? Go on the SkyBridge. Holy hell.
It's an amusement park where people stand in line to ride kids rides.
They've taken that concept and:
(1) made it incredibly complicated.
(2) made it incredibly expensive.
To "enjoy" the park, you now have to have a battle plan on the scale of Barbarossa and pay multiple fees on top of the actual park ticket. You'd have to be crazy to do this at this point.
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Once you get the hang of the strategies for using the app and lightning lanes, it actually makes for a smooth experience (ie not standing in hour + long lines). We did Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom and hit everything we wanted to, in some cases multiple rides (like TRON).
It's an amusement park where people stand in line to ride kids rides.
They've taken that concept and:
(1) made it incredibly complicated.
(2) made it incredibly expensive.
To "enjoy" the park, you now have to have a battle plan on the scale of Barbarossa and pay multiple fees on top of the actual park ticket. You'd have to be crazy to do this at this point.
Love the Barbarossa reference!
We hit up a couple lighting line rides each day and then went around looking for rides under 30 mins wait. Big hoopla about people waiting on line and going to the bathroom in their pants or behind bushes.
Most fun I had was at night. We did Epcot and the Magic Kingdom on the Christmas party release. They closed the park to anyone that didn't have a wristband and we were moving freely from ride to ride.
If you are a foodie, there are a couple good Disney park food accounts on Instagram that updates as new menus/food is released
Get them to stay on the property; have them eat Disney food, pay premium dollars to avoid lines, charge extra for nighttime experiences, eliminate the free airport shuttle, and at the same time reduce services (fewer parades, hotel perks, etc.).
It used to be a special place; now it’s just a money grab … sad.
He said he had 2 tickets for Pontiac night. He did a test drive a few weeks earlier, and they gave him 2 tickets to the park they had rented for the night (5PM to 1 AM).
We went, and the park was empty! There were no people waiting for any of the rides. You could get on one and immediately ride it again. No lines for food either.
I guess that's what Heaven is like, lol.
Having said all that, it has only gotten more complicated and more expensive in the past several years. You can still get done what you want to get done, but you need to study the ins and outs, prepare well in advance, and never deviate from the plan. To me, that is not a vacation. I want to be able to change plans mid day depending on how everyone is feeling.
I would never go back to Disney because I just don't have the level of commitment it takes to enjoy it.
Fast Pass worked great. It easy. It was free. And it worked.
So of course the morons got rid of it.
For example, on your Magic Kingdom day here is your sequence of tasks while sitting on the toilet at 6:55AM.
1. Get on Virtual Que for Tron.
2. Buy lightening lane for Seven Dwarfs.
3. Reserve Genie plus for Big Thunder Mountain.
That’s before arriving at the park, then at the park, reserve second Genie plus ride at 9am. And book another one after riding Big Thunder. Then get on Virtual Que for Tron again in tbe afternoon.
Now if you want to talk about all the nickel and diming and overall value...that's a whole different story.
I was coming to say this. I live an hour and a half from there. Been to all of the parks and Disney Springs multiple times in the last year. It's not nearly as bad as that original post makes it seem.
In general, my kids (who are 11 & 8) loved the rides and the parks. My son, who is the 8 year old, hit his wall after about 7 hours in the park, which took us to dinner. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't book dinner in the park, because the food sucks. I'd do the parks until around 4, then head out and find a place to eat.
The entire family enjoyed Universal more. It was still extremely expensive, but lines were much shorter, less people and less scooters to dodge.
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my wife and I are trying to go to Nashville as my almost 9 year old is getting old enough to appreciate trying different foods, live music, etc. I’ve been several times but they haven’t. Direct flights from CT are cheap, trying to do a long weekend at some point.
We hiked in the Smokey Mountains, visited Dollywood (I didn't realize it was basically a massive rollercoaster park), and did the usual touristy stuff in Gatlinburg. You want a "thrill ride"? Go on the SkyBridge. Holy hell.
Ha, so last week my kids were on their spring break and my college roommate's kids were as well. We went to FL to see my parents and did 3 days at Disney/Universal. My college buddy drove his Family from CT to Gatlinburg and did a week in the Smokey Mountains. We were texting each other pictures and stories from our trips. Pretty funny.
The second thing is you have to learn where rides are situated in the parks. The Genie+ app makes rides across the park available, and it often leads to you waking across the park. Find rides that are situated in the same area and knock them out around the same time. It will save you time and save you energy.
It's clean. I'll give it that. It's definitely organized. You can fucking have it. Women and kids want to believe in magic. It's just late stage capitalism. I swear they would charge money to take a shit if they could.
Enzo, it's called Epic Universe and it will be massive. It'll have lands themed after Super Nintendo World (Super Mario and Donkey Kong), Wizarding World Fantastic Beasts (Harry Potter), How to Train Your Dragon and what I'm looking forward to is Dark Universe (Dracula, Mummy, Wolfman, Frankenstein and all the other Universal monsters from their movie franchises.
That will give Universal 3 Theme Parks and 1 Water Park and it will be interesting to see how that influences people from switching from Disney based Orlando vacations to Universal based Orlando vacations.
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the old (original?) fast pass system was working just fine. The last time we went was with genie+ or whatever and it was needlessly more complicated. As others have said, now that my kids are older they prefer Universal. Which apparently is building another whole park?
Fast Pass worked great. It easy. It was free. And it worked.
So of course the morons got rid of it.
I loved the old Fast Pass system. I used to arrive very early at rope drop and run around the whole park getting all those free paper Fast Passes. Then looked at their return times and have a whole itinerary ready to skip the lines at with all the attractions that had Fast Pass.
Plus if you knew of the "hack" with those old Fast Pass Dispensers\Machines, then you could get a ton of Fast Passes for the ride you wanted to do. There used to be a button at the back of the Fast Pass machine, where if you held it down for 3 seconds, it would keep on giving you passes =)
My wife and I took the kids 2 years ago..it was the first time I ever went in my life. Loved it so much we went back again last year. We did not go this year...and to be honest, I missed it a bit!
There's a Youtube video of a guy who did that. His family had a Magic Kingdom ticket book from 1978 that had never been used. There was no expiration date on that 1978 ticket book that cost just $8. The guy flew to Orlando and was surprised that he was able to redeem it for a park ticket worth $150+
You have to work for that Beaches and Cream reservation at 7pm man.
As for Universal, have to stay at one of the 3 Deluxe hotels to get that free fast pass. Worth every penny when each fast pass can go for 300$ plus.
There's a Youtube video of a guy who did that. His family had a Magic Kingdom ticket book from 1978 that had never been used. There was no expiration date on that 1978 ticket book that cost just $8. The guy flew to Orlando and was surprised that he was able to redeem it for a park ticket worth $150+
Yup. Though you’re limited to what existed at the time you bought the ticket. In this case it can only be used for the Magic Kingdom since the other 3 parks had not been built.
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Once you get the hang of the strategies for using the app and lightning lanes, it actually makes for a smooth experience (ie not standing in hour + long lines). We did Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom and hit everything we wanted to, in some cases multiple rides (like TRON).
It's an amusement park where people stand in line to ride kids rides.
They've taken that concept and:
(1) made it incredibly complicated.
(2) made it incredibly expensive.
To "enjoy" the park, you now have to have a battle plan on the scale of Barbarossa and pay multiple fees on top of the actual park ticket. You'd have to be crazy to do this at this point.
The complexity wasn’t that bad, and there are great resources online about how to maximize the use of the app. My son Is a huge Star Wars fan so really wanted to show him that area of Hollywood studios and it did not disappoint (and was able to ride rise of resistance and millenium falcon with no wait times)
Now, based on what I've seen with Fast Pass gone, you have to pay to have the right to stand in line for rides you already paid for (when you bought the park ticket). And you have to know when and now to sign up for that. Now imagine someone who has never been to the park and doesn't know any of this in advance (it sounds so crazy on the surface that a newbie wouldn't even believe it).
They basically are only catering to the upper middle class/rich now.
Disney basically operates on nostalgia right now. Because the experience certainly isn't worth it. Put yourself in the shoes of the kids too. "No Johnny, we can't ride the ride you want. It's not part of our battle plan."
It's nuts how expensive that place is. I'm far from rich but our household income is in the top third nationally so comfortably middle class, and going there for a week is way beyond our means.