TRAVEL DAY, LEAVE DAY, FUN OVER DAY...
Call it what you will day, but sad to be leaving day for sure!
We had a reasonable flight time of 11 am so finished packing up and Seth and I took the stroller back to bell services to leave it for pick up.
Little tidbit for those of you needing to rent a local stroller or scooter etc. I believe that Scooter Bug that we used is the only company allowed to bring and leave items with bell services and you don't have to meet the company rep.
When we rented a scooter from another company a few trips ago we had to meet them, which is ok but you have to time things more carefully.
We took it over and I took pictures of it, I always do this with anything I rent, as proof of condition upon return.
I forgot that this cool little Mickey is on the floor of the entrance to the resort. I have a Disney pin that is a copy of this.
I think it was appropriate that this was our view the morning we were leaving, even the sky was grumpy!
We gathered up our gear and headed down to the front of the Tower to meet our driver. Via txt he apologized multiple times for running late (was literally only 10 minutes) due to the construction on the road out front.
We parted company with Seth as he was going home and he sent me these pictures. Apparently due to the construction his GPS directed him to a backstage area where he caught these photos of the train!
We made it to the airport without incident and had time to grab a little breakfast before we had to do the walk of sadness.
Party's over!
And
@Swissmiss, we finally got those cuddles!!!
Elsa wanted nothing to do with us!
She's that flying companion who yanks their ear pods out in annoyance when you ask them a question!
We got home with no more drama and I'm already trying to think of a way to go back! Actually, I have been thinking about a short hop to Disneyland to see if I want to start getting my fix there.
Thank you all for following along, I appreciate it and hope you enjoyed it!
I had said I would summate our experience with the Premier Pass for anyone interested, just ignore this if not. Here are a few (actually a lot) of thoughts.
1-It is ridiculously, unfairly, obnoxiously? expensive.
The frustration (in addition to paying for this) is in my opinion, Disney has created a problem that they are benefitting from the solution. We all know there needs to be more attractions, people eaters etc. and then there would be less need or desire for any of these upcharges, PP, any of the lightning lane options, special parties etc. So Disney isn't using money to build new attractions AND getting money from people trying to circumvent the long wait times they have created.
2-It is absolutely unnessary to purchase and no one twisted my arm to do it. The decision making came as I stated earlier in the TR because of wanting to decrease the "friction" of long lines and make this as enjoyable as I could for the entire family. The parks were incredibly crowded during our week and that helped push the decision.
3-We did not use it as effectively as we could have. We started too late in the morning, and not everyone wanted to or could do all of the attractions.
And it's an odd dilemma. I think it would be so much better with fewer people as you can move quicker and take advantage of it. The opposite of that is that it was helpful because as a large group moves more slowly it eliminates the added time of standby queues.
We didn't all use it on all of the rides due to naps, meltdowns and just general end of day fatigue.
And due to the cost you do feel the need/pressure to squeeze as much out of it as you can.
As I was typing this I did a mental count in my head and realized that we missed HM, Pooh, Small World, Space (because no one wanted to go on it) and the Tea Cups.
We did go on a lot of rides we normally would not have, the kids rides mostly.
In MK, the only park we kept track of stand by times out of curiousity, it cut down on wait times by over 8 hours which is huge for one day. We did not have to wait more than 5 or so minutes in any LL.
4-PP does not work for character meets and greets as they no longer have a LL. I'm not sure I understand why the LL were removed because I do remember using that feature back in the day.
5-On our AK day we used a combination of LLMP and LLSP. It was obviously much cheaper and had the added benefit of being able to change parks which we did, you can't do that with the premier pass. We started out at AK getting pretty much everything we wanted and then as soon as that was done I booked at MK for later in the evening, catching a number of the rides we missed the first day.
6-Being the chief organizer it very much helped to keep me off of my phone. We made a decision on what we wanted to ride and walked on. By contrast while we got to do a lot with LLMP, I was on the phone a good bit looking for times, etc.
7-Premier does include all of your photopass photos for 30 days so if you were considering photopass it's of some "value."
I'm actually unsure of cost because on line it says just PhotoPass photos and rides, but we also have an AP with the photo feature and got all of the character photos too.
8-One last point. With how expensive this was I looked at what a VIP tour would cost. The day we were there the VIP tour was, no lie, $900/hour for a 7 hour minimum, and fun fact, they were sold out!!! I told the family that every time you saw a plaid person coming by those people had paid a minimum of $6300 for their single day!
The difference and advantage to a VIP tour, is they will take you out of the park via the back door to wherever else you want to go during your paid time frame.
Anyway, sorry for the long winded Premier Pass information. I hope it was helpful to anyone who is considering it or interesting to others who are not.
)makes it that much more fun!!
