Does Familiarity breed contempt?

[dieboy]

Then throw this out there .. I don't pinch pennies when i travel. It costs what it costs to make me happy. Its really that simple.

My other vacations cost just as much. Keys/etc/etc trip, excursions and fun, thousands of dollars for two.

Vegas coming up in a month, thousands and thousands just for three dang days, again for two!!! but .. we are doing everything we want.

If I can't afford to do the things I want on a trip, its not worth the trip, that is a simple answer also. Sometimes I have to save a few months, sometimes over half a year or more. But dang, i'm not staying in some dump (i'm talking ALL vacations EVERYWHERE), scrutinizing every price, simply for the SAKE of going somewhere.

 

[dieboy]

Disclaimer;
Hour and half commute home tonight, wrought with construction, and a wildly busy day putting out fire after fire (not in the well..fire sense). I can't make sense of my last two posts but I'm not going to delete them, rather leave them as a reminder to not post on forums after fourteen hour days.

 

[jloucks]

Why is there an obsession with comparing Disney with any other vacation destinations?

Yes, if you compare Disney to a vacation to Sydney, then Disney is a steal.
If you compare Disney to a vacation to Hershey Park, then Hershey Park is a steal.

There are so many factors and attributes to consider. It's next to impossible to quantify all of it.

Impossible to quantify 100% of it. But pretty easy to quantify, like, 85% of it. ...which is the bottom line.

The obsession is tied directly to opportunity cost. Even if people don't consciously take it into account, they are subconsciously doing it. They know that to do this, we cannot do this. ..or do more of that. Comparison.

 

[jloucks]

Then throw this out there .. I don't pinch pennies when i travel. It costs what it costs to make me happy. Its really that simple.

My other vacations cost just as much. Keys/etc/etc trip, excursions and fun, thousands of dollars for two.

Vegas coming up in a month, thousands and thousands just for three dang days, again for two!!! but .. we are doing everything we want.

If I can't afford to do the things I want on a trip, its not worth the trip, that is a simple answer also. Sometimes I have to save a few months, sometimes over half a year or more. But dang, i'm not staying in some dump (i'm talking ALL vacations EVERYWHERE), scrutinizing every price, simply for the SAKE of going somewhere.

Same here. That sounds miserable. I would rather save up longer than depart early and have a scrimpy vacation.

 

[World_Showcase_Lover007]

I assess my trips to Disney mostly by the standards Disney themselves set over my 25+ years of visit's. They are slipping and overcrowded..

Yep, WDW is still best overall and still the cleanest...BUT it is not as good of a value and not as clean as it was in the past. It’s difficult to accept something you see as now sub-par, compared to what you perceive it to have previously been.

I still love it, but that doesnt mean I can’t dislike it sometimes.

 

[Dave B]

Universal is often worse... but you also don't stay at universal as long. Same thing as the 'ballpark' or whatever other captive audience situation. Don't like that the hotdog costs $8? Skip it... but when you stay at Disney for 5+ days, you can't skip all meals that long

(like DDP)

But you can skip those expensive meals, very easily, you choose not to. Our first trip to The World, we went to Target and bought food and water and prepped our own meals everyday, much, much cheaper, but not as fun, so we chose to save more and eat ion site on our future trips, but you definitely can, I just enjoy steak and lobster and all the other food options Disney has rather than bagels and cream cheese, salami sandwiches and chips, with water or can of soda

 

[Pinoke76]

For me it did create that issue, we had been on every ride and eaten at all the places we had on our wish list. We also matured as a couple, and the rides and experiences that used to get our adrenaline flowing simply didn't do that anymore.
We had a 14 night stay at OKW and it was only in the last couple of days we realised that we hadn't made it to one particular park.
After that, we went 5 years without a visit. We found new places to visit but eventually we were missing it enough to desperately want to book again.

Thankfully we now travel with our daughter and can see everything with new eyes. That has reinvigorated our trips, giving us so many new experiences to look forward to.

 

[dieboy]

I have a thought. Over time, familiarity changes also. If we really want to dig into it..
I went when i was around eightish, yearly or more, for a long time.
I remember things.. as years passed, i can remember things much clearer in my teens. Heres the deal. I was NOT paying attention to a garbage can that may be near puking. I was NOT paying attention to how quickly or slowly our food arrived. I was simply not paying attention to any of that. At the time my familiarity with disney was a neat place, with cool stuff, and that each time we went, space mountain was still there, in the same place as it was last time.
Now, when I was in my twenties, my familiarity, I felt was different. I was able to get some booze at epcot, but I also started to notice how long the line waits where. But, dang, Space Mountain is still right there. I still had allot of those young in awe memories.
Trip after trip later, mid thirties.. I see the screaming kids. I see the garbage seemingly unattended for a bit. I notice when its a forty minute wait on a burger. However, these things are not too glaring. I however, still have that feeling per say, when i visit. I can think to myself, gosh it used to be so much better, but what .. i'm kidding myself. I wasn't paying attention at all..

We were some of the first to wait on rockin roller coaster. I was in my midish teens .. I very much remember that wait .. omg it was absolutely horrible. heh.

Anyways, back to the semi point. Over the years, my familiarity has changed. Immensely. Also, the park has changed. Immensely. But I am still in the area of familiarity does not breed contempt.

 

[flynnibus]

I wasn't paying attention at all..

But what your conclusion misses is... There is "I didn't notice it" - because it was insignificant (a positive in this discussion) vs "I missed it" (there, but you didn't see it) vs "I was hunting for it"

Kids are sensitive to things like huge waits... or being excluded from things... but are oblivious to many other things.

Generally familiarity allows you to see things in greater detail... because with more cycles you can take in more information.. or see things that vary.

But I'd say if things didn't ring in the past because "I wasn't paying attention" - that generally is a success. It means the topic was insigificant enough it didn't cause an issue for the guest. But seeing it now... and being bothered by it... probably means the topic has changed enough to be an issue for the guest.

Nostalgia covers up some things... but when the visibility of something over a large audience happens.. it's not generally just to someone switching into 'paying attention..'

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I definitely feel that familiarity has created issues for us.

Sure, DH is just bored and doesn't want to go back until there's enough new to make things feel fresh, but it's deeper than that. We took over a 12 1/2 year break from all Disney parks. We used to go at least every year in the 80s and 90s, and then even more frequently during the 6 years where I was a FL resident. I had one trip to WDW about a year after leaving FL and realized we needed to do other things.
After over 12.5 years away from all Disney parks (even skipped out on Disneyland and Disneyland Paris), WDW felt absolutely magical.

In fact, our first two trips after this major Disney hiatus were great. It was the third post-haitus trip where the pixie dust started to fade. It continued to fade with each subsequent trip. Don't get me wrong, there were still things that I loved and things that were absolutely magical, but the issues were standing out more and more each trip. At first, I thought it was a steady decline in quality, but then it occurred to me that the extremely rude concierge at YC in 2012 really wasn't any worse than the snotty concierge at WL in 2010 (minus me having to deal with the witch at YC twice vs. the WL jerk only once). The difference...I was in all out Disney euphoria in 2010 since this was the first trip after our long Disney break. It's really easy to brush over the mildly to moderately bad issues when you're caught up in the magic. On top of that, while my gripes back in the winter of this year were partly food focused, it occurred to me that before our big break...we found most Disney food to be mediocre at best and even started dining more offsite back then (mid 90s) for a better quality to price ratio. Any more recently perceived declines in food quality was probably more about my kids getting older. We used to do a lot of meals for the experience to help entertain them, but food quality and offerings are now more important since they're older and care more about the food. In other words, I was upset about something that's always been kind of meh for us...so it was nice to realize some clarity on that matter.

I certainly don't go into my trips looking for flaws. In fact, I don't think any long-time Disney fan who comes back with disappointments does this. This isn't like a person who doesn't want to go on a Disney vacation who gets dragged along and saw it as negative from the get-go. These are people who love Disney, have had magical trips, and would like subsequent visits to be equally as magical. I know there are people who can go to Disney time after time and not see a flaw who just can't understand this, but its' there. For us, familiarity lead to objectivity (not negativity or contempt) when it came to assessing the quality and value of our Disney trips.

It's all also purely subjective, so if you are happy going on a regular basis and feel like you're getting a consistently magical product that's worth it to you...good. Just because you can't see how I found so much negative and I can't see how you found so much positive, doesn't mean either one is wrong. It just means you're OK going more often and doing certain things, whereas we will have to go less often and cut out certain things if we want to have magical experiences.