I just got back from a week at WDW on Sunday. It took me a while to write this up, but I hope someone still finds it interesting. We stayed at an off-site hotel, Bryan's Spanish Cove, from 6/6 – 6/13 and had a wonderful time. It was a park-packed week, with 2 days at MK, 2.5 at Epcot, 1.5 at HS, 1 at AK, and 1 a Blizzard Beach/Winter Summerland Mini-golf. The weather was great; after some intermittent showers on the 6th, we had not a drop of rain the entire rest of the trip. Crowd levels were lower than I was expecting, though AK was unusually crowded compared to the other 3 parks.
We're annual passholders, so we did the insane thing and left the house at 3:00 am to drive from Ft. Lauderdale up to Orlando for the World of Disney passholder sale on the 6th. We managed to arrive at 6:28 and well, the sale was a lot more popular than I was expecting. They were only using one entrance for the sale, the one that enters into the misc Disney items and hats area, and by the time we got there the line was wrapped all the way around the building and back up to where the lego water dragon lives. It actually took us half an hour to get in the building. The sale itself was ok. There weren't many things that we wanted on sale, but we did manage to be one of the first 1000 and got a free Disney Cruise Line beach towel out of it.
Magic Kingdom - 6/6 and 6/10
Other than the refurb walls, the park looked very nice. I did miss Space Mountain and the TTA, and compensated with extra rides on Big Thunder and Splash. We got a nice surprise when fastpassing Pooh: surprise fast passes for PhilharMagic! Not that we really needed them, but it made me smile. Another nice but odd surprise was on the afternoon of the 6th: a CM on the bridge near Big Thunder handed us rider switch passes for the ride. I have no idea why, but the wait was 80 minutes and these let us go through the fastpass line, so I wasn't going to question it.
As has been noted, refurb walls are everywhere. A number of Main Street shops are having work done, there are walls behind the former Tomorrowland Skyway building (to hide the SM machinery?), they're doing something to the small world front, Hall of Presidents, and the Diamond Horseshoe is being worked on as well.
The Stitch show: it's already been confirmed that this is leaving, so my comments here are probably not needed, but I'll say a few things. First, I think the biggest reason for low attendance is the fact that it's not on the park maps anywhere. The only clue the average visitor has that the show exists at all is the small times listing. We caught the show once to check it out, and while the initial crowd was small, once the show got going and people actually realized that there was something going on, a pretty respectable crowd gathered. Point two: One of the early shows on the 6th got rained out, so instead Stitch just interacted with the audience for about 10 minutes. I actually liked this a lot, more than the actual show. I think a great idea would be to put screens like this in other places in the park, such as a "magic mirror" in Fantasyland, and have character interactions randomly throughout the day.
I got my highest ever score on Buzz: 793,400!
There were 2 new Mr. Toad shirts for sale in the Emporium.
Effects Watch:
Splash Mountain – Everything was working fine the times we went through, even the bouncing Brer Rabbit. Mr. Bluebird at the end of the ride is working again, and he does look very nice.
Pirates – I don't know why people say the Davy Jones effect goes down a lot. It was working fine every time we were on the ride this trip, and I've never seen it not working.
Jungle Cruise – It does look better and spruced up. It was missing the fog at night, but other things have been plussed. The head hunters move now and have music, the tiger in the temple moves and blinks, and the guns on the ship, wait for this, actually fire!
Epcot - 6/7, 6/11, 6/13
My favorite park. We spent most of our 2.5 days in Innovations and in WS, so we didn't do too many of the rides in Future World.
Sometime after the 7th Epcot got some refurb walls of its own. A large wall blocked off half the space between the Character Spot and Innoventions West, there were walls near the entrance to Le Cellier in Canada, and the gift shops at the front of WS got some new faux-wood flooring that looks nice.
I picked up the new black Epcot shirt, and got one of the last discontinued ones for $5.99.
Apparently Epcot has birdhouses in between Test Track and Mouse Gears. Who knew?
Spaceship Earth – I dislike the narration more and more each time I go through it. It's sad, the ride used to be much more inspiring. I did see a lot of the fabled blue triangles during the descent, but I have no idea how they could use them other than some backlighting.
Test Track is showing its age. This ride really needs to go down for a few weeks or so for some much needed TLC. A good number of the car screens don't work or are dying, some of the effects in the ride didn't work, and the thermal cam at the end has been broken for over a month now.
The Great Piggy Bank Adventure in Innoventions is a lot of fun. I'm not sure exactly how it teaches people to be money smart, but I liked it. You pick which goal you want to work towards, vacation, retirement, college education, or starting a family, and are then given a piggy bank to carry to 3 saving stations. One has you using touch screens to hide coins around a room to represent diversification, another has you navigating up and down air currents that represent the stock market, and the third one I can't remember right now, something about investing, but they gave us stickers after!
We caught the flamenca dancers while they were there. It was a nice show, but not really my thing. I suppose it would have helped if I spoke Spanish and could understand what they were singing.
While we had an overall great time at Epcot, we also had the lowest point of our trip here. The globe for Illuminations did not work on the 7th, and it ruined the entire show. They had no back-up plan, and the show was just bad without the globe. There were long stretches of time were we should have been watching the globe, but instead were left watching a dark and boring lagoon. Disney really needs to come up with a B plan for nights like these; I feel bad for all the people who there for the first time and had to miss what is normally a spectacular show. On the 11th I asked a CM if the globe was fixed yet, and was told that they "couldn't release that information". ? We didn't bother to stay late enough to find out ourselves.
On the upside, I have now seen every show/attraction in WS, and have done every attraction in Innoventions! The only thing left now is a few more Kim Possibles.
Hollywood Studios - 6/9 and 6/12
Not too much to say about this park; it was the same as it's been for a while, really.
Star Wars Weekends was a lot of fun, but the events get very crowed early. Get to them at least 30 minutes beforehand if you want a good spot. Darth Vader dancing to "You Can't Touch This" was priceless!
I don't like the new pre-recorded spiel on the Backlot Tour. It just sounds off to me, and entrance to Catastrophe Canyon has gone from accidentally wandering onto a live set to "Hi there, let me demonstrate this effect for you!"
The Muppet show is still awesome. All they need to do is clean up the print and maybe spruce up the theater and they could keep running it as long as they wanted.
I finally got to see the cowboy scene on TGMR! I always go to the left out of habit, but this time I remembered to stay in the right line.
Animal Kingdom - 6/9
Another park where not much is going on. We had a lot of fun, but the only real thing to report is that the Yeti was in B mode all the times we went on Everest.
Other areas
Blizzard Beach rocks! It was our first time there, and we loved all the slides. The best two, imo, are Slush Gusher and Runoff Rapids.
We had dinner at DTD one night and I checked out Paradiso 37. While we didn't end up eating there, the menu looked interesting, and I would try it next time if possible. I have a copy of what I was told was the final menu, so if that's still needed I'd be willing to type it up.
And that was my trip! I see about getting flickr account and maybe post some pics later.
We're annual passholders, so we did the insane thing and left the house at 3:00 am to drive from Ft. Lauderdale up to Orlando for the World of Disney passholder sale on the 6th. We managed to arrive at 6:28 and well, the sale was a lot more popular than I was expecting. They were only using one entrance for the sale, the one that enters into the misc Disney items and hats area, and by the time we got there the line was wrapped all the way around the building and back up to where the lego water dragon lives. It actually took us half an hour to get in the building. The sale itself was ok. There weren't many things that we wanted on sale, but we did manage to be one of the first 1000 and got a free Disney Cruise Line beach towel out of it.
Magic Kingdom - 6/6 and 6/10
Other than the refurb walls, the park looked very nice. I did miss Space Mountain and the TTA, and compensated with extra rides on Big Thunder and Splash. We got a nice surprise when fastpassing Pooh: surprise fast passes for PhilharMagic! Not that we really needed them, but it made me smile. Another nice but odd surprise was on the afternoon of the 6th: a CM on the bridge near Big Thunder handed us rider switch passes for the ride. I have no idea why, but the wait was 80 minutes and these let us go through the fastpass line, so I wasn't going to question it.
As has been noted, refurb walls are everywhere. A number of Main Street shops are having work done, there are walls behind the former Tomorrowland Skyway building (to hide the SM machinery?), they're doing something to the small world front, Hall of Presidents, and the Diamond Horseshoe is being worked on as well.
The Stitch show: it's already been confirmed that this is leaving, so my comments here are probably not needed, but I'll say a few things. First, I think the biggest reason for low attendance is the fact that it's not on the park maps anywhere. The only clue the average visitor has that the show exists at all is the small times listing. We caught the show once to check it out, and while the initial crowd was small, once the show got going and people actually realized that there was something going on, a pretty respectable crowd gathered. Point two: One of the early shows on the 6th got rained out, so instead Stitch just interacted with the audience for about 10 minutes. I actually liked this a lot, more than the actual show. I think a great idea would be to put screens like this in other places in the park, such as a "magic mirror" in Fantasyland, and have character interactions randomly throughout the day.
I got my highest ever score on Buzz: 793,400!
There were 2 new Mr. Toad shirts for sale in the Emporium.
Effects Watch:
Splash Mountain – Everything was working fine the times we went through, even the bouncing Brer Rabbit. Mr. Bluebird at the end of the ride is working again, and he does look very nice.
Pirates – I don't know why people say the Davy Jones effect goes down a lot. It was working fine every time we were on the ride this trip, and I've never seen it not working.
Jungle Cruise – It does look better and spruced up. It was missing the fog at night, but other things have been plussed. The head hunters move now and have music, the tiger in the temple moves and blinks, and the guns on the ship, wait for this, actually fire!
Epcot - 6/7, 6/11, 6/13
My favorite park. We spent most of our 2.5 days in Innovations and in WS, so we didn't do too many of the rides in Future World.
Sometime after the 7th Epcot got some refurb walls of its own. A large wall blocked off half the space between the Character Spot and Innoventions West, there were walls near the entrance to Le Cellier in Canada, and the gift shops at the front of WS got some new faux-wood flooring that looks nice.
I picked up the new black Epcot shirt, and got one of the last discontinued ones for $5.99.
Apparently Epcot has birdhouses in between Test Track and Mouse Gears. Who knew?
Spaceship Earth – I dislike the narration more and more each time I go through it. It's sad, the ride used to be much more inspiring. I did see a lot of the fabled blue triangles during the descent, but I have no idea how they could use them other than some backlighting.
Test Track is showing its age. This ride really needs to go down for a few weeks or so for some much needed TLC. A good number of the car screens don't work or are dying, some of the effects in the ride didn't work, and the thermal cam at the end has been broken for over a month now.
The Great Piggy Bank Adventure in Innoventions is a lot of fun. I'm not sure exactly how it teaches people to be money smart, but I liked it. You pick which goal you want to work towards, vacation, retirement, college education, or starting a family, and are then given a piggy bank to carry to 3 saving stations. One has you using touch screens to hide coins around a room to represent diversification, another has you navigating up and down air currents that represent the stock market, and the third one I can't remember right now, something about investing, but they gave us stickers after!
We caught the flamenca dancers while they were there. It was a nice show, but not really my thing. I suppose it would have helped if I spoke Spanish and could understand what they were singing.
While we had an overall great time at Epcot, we also had the lowest point of our trip here. The globe for Illuminations did not work on the 7th, and it ruined the entire show. They had no back-up plan, and the show was just bad without the globe. There were long stretches of time were we should have been watching the globe, but instead were left watching a dark and boring lagoon. Disney really needs to come up with a B plan for nights like these; I feel bad for all the people who there for the first time and had to miss what is normally a spectacular show. On the 11th I asked a CM if the globe was fixed yet, and was told that they "couldn't release that information". ? We didn't bother to stay late enough to find out ourselves.
On the upside, I have now seen every show/attraction in WS, and have done every attraction in Innoventions! The only thing left now is a few more Kim Possibles.
Hollywood Studios - 6/9 and 6/12
Not too much to say about this park; it was the same as it's been for a while, really.
Star Wars Weekends was a lot of fun, but the events get very crowed early. Get to them at least 30 minutes beforehand if you want a good spot. Darth Vader dancing to "You Can't Touch This" was priceless!
I don't like the new pre-recorded spiel on the Backlot Tour. It just sounds off to me, and entrance to Catastrophe Canyon has gone from accidentally wandering onto a live set to "Hi there, let me demonstrate this effect for you!"
The Muppet show is still awesome. All they need to do is clean up the print and maybe spruce up the theater and they could keep running it as long as they wanted.
I finally got to see the cowboy scene on TGMR! I always go to the left out of habit, but this time I remembered to stay in the right line.
Animal Kingdom - 6/9
Another park where not much is going on. We had a lot of fun, but the only real thing to report is that the Yeti was in B mode all the times we went on Everest.
Other areas
Blizzard Beach rocks! It was our first time there, and we loved all the slides. The best two, imo, are Slush Gusher and Runoff Rapids.
We had dinner at DTD one night and I checked out Paradiso 37. While we didn't end up eating there, the menu looked interesting, and I would try it next time if possible. I have a copy of what I was told was the final menu, so if that's still needed I'd be willing to type it up.
And that was my trip! I see about getting flickr account and maybe post some pics later.
