“Minimal planning?” “Look at your normal touring route and plan accordingly?” “Easy to adjust fastpasses?” Huh?
When I began planning my family’s vacation, I quickly realized that going to Disney World is nothing like it used to be. You can’t just show up at a park. It’s going to take some planning. Fair enough. I spent countless hours on research. Then I spent hours making ride and dining reservations. And then I spent days, then weeks, and then months adjusting those reservations. A Disney World vacation does not entail minimal planning. It does not entail a lot of planning. It entails a HUGE, INORDINATE amount of planning. I spent less time planning a 10 day trip to London, Paris, and Rome than I did a 5 day trip to Disney World. Much less. That the number of questions about fastpasses, magic bands, my magic, my Disney experience, etc. on this site alone is well over ONE THOUSAND confirms that none of this is simple. It’s exceedingly complicated. Ridiculously complicated. And I think it reaches the realm of the ABSURD when we are expected to reserve space on a sidewalk to watch a parade. Really? That’s what it takes now at Walt Reservation World?
A friend of mine who is a WDW pro and goes several times a year recommended that I check ride and dining reservations daily in the months leading up to our visit to try to get the itinerary I wanted. He also advised me to check ride and restaurant availability while I was there because things open up a the last minute. Call me crazy, but the last thing I want to do while I am at Disney World on vacation is spend time on a computer planning my Disney World vacation. For him it’s all part of the experience. He likes to spend months counting down his next Disney vacation and fine-tuning his plan of attack. He views it as a challenge and considers it a victory when he nabs reservations at the newest restaurants and attractions. He’s on the website every day and loves it. I suspect many of the people who write on these forums are like him: hardcore fans who love to plan Disney vacations. The more time planning, the greater the sense of accomplishment and reward. And for those who go frequently, it’s no big deal if they miss a major attraction. They've done it before and will do it again, if not this visit, then three months from now or six months from now.
The point I am trying to make is that for a lot of us, all this advanced planning is not fun. It’s a lot of work and it’s tedious. And the constraint of being tied to an itinerary made three months ago really sours the experience. But if you want table service and don’t want to wait in ridiculous lines for rides, you are obliged to tackle Disney like the pros and spend months on advanced planning (and to continue planning even while you’re there), and to keep your eye on the time, constantly think ahead to the next appointment, and stick to the schedule, all day, every day. Oh and keep track of how many meals have been deducted from your dining plan because you can’t trust Disney to always do it accurately. For a lot of people this makes the experience much less enjoyable or downright stressful, especially if you have kids who might want to ride the Peoplemover again.
Most frustrating is that even with all this planning, our desired (or even just a logical) itinerary doesn’t always work out. It’s simply not always possible to choose ride reservations in a logical sequence according the places you think will be at a given time. We are at the mercy of an unwieldy website and can select only from a limited number of options and times and then try to cobble together an itinerary around those options that make as much sense as possible. If that necessitates running from Space Mountain to Splash Mountain on the other side of the park to avoid standing in hour long lines at both attractions, then that’s what we’re reduced to doing. It’s not a choice and it’s not poor planning. But it’s the way Disney makes us do it now. Fitting dining times and locations into this intricate puzzle is even more maddening.
And changing plans while there is not relatively easy. They already have an army of employees stationed to guard the fastpass entrances to all the attractions. They would not have needed to add to this corps an elite birgade of specialists armed with iPads to help frustrated guests manage, change, or simply use the fastpass system if it were easy. What I thought was going to be a simple change to a fastpass reservation took me, and a cast member, over 15 minutes. Many people around me were spending as much time doing similar changes. And heaven help you if you want to move your dinner time even by as little as 15 minutes because you can’t. Sorry kids, no time to ride the Peoplemover again.
Don't get me wrong. Our family had a great time and we will go again. But these problems can (and should) be taken care of not by more planning and work on the part of WDW visitors, but by the executives running the place. Maybe it wouldn’t be so imperative to get fastpass reservations if standby waits weren’t so long. (Maybe the wait for Toy Story wouldn’t be so long if there were more than six attractions in Hollywood Studios. Maybe the lines for Test Track and Soarin’ wouldn’t be so long if the other attractions in Epcot weren’t so lackluster. Maybe four year old girls with their hearts set on a picture with Anna and Elsa wouldn't have to spend two hours of their day waiting in line if there were a few more Annas and Elsas around.) It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to accommodate more people at table-service restaurants or how to lengthen a parade route to accommodate crowds. Rather than solve these problems and make the actual experience in the parks more enjoyable, Disney has chosen to try to convince us that we're somehow getting better service because we’ve been allowed (I’d say forced) to meticulously plan everything down to the last minute, just like the pros, and lock in reservations that show up on a nifty app. I don’t buy it. It’s smoke and mirrors attempting to hide years of neglect, mismanagement, and skewed priorities. But that’s a topic for another post.
