lincolnryan
Member
So we just got back from a WDW trip that lasted 4.5 days. If we went during the summer months, we could've had more time but preferred to have emptier parks during late Jan/early Feb. My kids are 6, 4, and 3 so this might not apply but here are some things that I noticed that surprised me and mistakes I made.
1) FP+ -While I liked the idea of FP+ and liked using it at times, I thought it made the trip a bit more stressful. Sure, you can change the times on the fly on the app but it's subject to availability i.e. you can't just push any ride back 1 hour. I found I was constantly stressing about making it to places on time. I don't know how this would work in the real world, but I do wonder if there would be any impact at all if they just gave you 2 hours to do the rides.
2) Morning Table Service-Now that I've seen how important it is to get to parks early, I would never recommend people do breakfast TS. Personally, I would use the breakfast time for touring and then schedule the sit-downs for lunch or dinner.
3) Size of Parks: This is something I had heard and even seen when I last went to WDW, but had to experience it as the "planner". One of the things i didn't understand about sites like Touringplans was why it would tell me to go to certain rides first thing when they didn't seem overly popular. I just assumed that it's better to do the more popular rides first and didn't take into consideration the distance between the rides. You may as well count walking time as time in lines because it's wasted either way. I spent way too much time criss-crossing on the first day instead of just doing what was near. This plays into the whole idea of how to best utilize FP+. I think next time I won't get too caught up in the BEST rides to use FP on, but instead figure out a rough TP and then figure out where in the plan to use the FP.
4) Rider Switch: Rider switch is an absolute goldmine in terms of maximizing the rides that you can go on (assuming you have young kids). Being able to bring my oldest on the ride, get the rider switch pass, and then have my wife, 6 year old, and 4 year old go on the ride meant you were getting 5 FP+ for the "price" of 2. The best thing about the rider switches is that they can be used at any point during the month!
5) Transportation: I stayed at Contemporary due to the proximity to MK and i was happy with the choice. Honestly though, I have no idea how people deal with bus service to/from the parks everyday when they are staying outside of MK. I dealt with it one day when we were going to AK and hated it. The next day when we went to HS, I took a cab instead. It cost around $20 and was well worth the extra cost. I would actually consider staying in a less expensive hotel and then just using cabs to get everywhere, or at least get to TO the parks.
6) Crowd Calendars/Wait times-I think with more and more people using these crowd calendars to plan vacations (and Disney offering specials), it's pretty much let the cat out of the bag on the lowest crowd days. I have no idea where TP gets its adjusted wait times from, but I assumed (going in) that it was from user submitted wait times. Looking at how few wait times are actually submitted, I'm now really scratching my head at where these numbers are coming from. Disney estimates are probably way better since they are handing out lanyards to people waiting in line on a fairly frequent basis and I don't see how TP could ever beat what they are providing. Even when they have no user submitted times, they are still posting "posted" vs. "actual' wait times. I saw first hand that when they adjusted the wait times on POTC to "5 minutes" that crowds SURGED to the ride. So when you see wait times drop, it's almost too late to "get in on" that wait time.
7) More Wait times: On that subject of wait times, it's almost hard to even look at the line and estimate it due to FP+. I went on Peter Pan early in the AM when the line was reaching outdoors. All in all, it took about 25 minutes to go all the way through. Later, I saw the line was way shorter and we hopped on it again and walked all the way into the new queue. If it was similar at all to our last ride, we would've saved about 15 minutes on the wait time but this must've been the time of day that FP+ really started kicking in because we waited as long (or longer). So yeah, there were less standby riders but there were way more FP+ riders.
8) Disney's Treatment of FP--It is very, very clear that, to Disney, FP+ riders are "The line" and standby people just get worked into the main line. This is probably obvious, but didn't really strike me until I saw it in action. There were certain rides (star tours) where they were probably taking 1 standby rider to every 50 FP+ rider and that is no exaggeration. Another reason why it's hard to estimate how long you'll be sitting there.
9) Disney with small kids-For someone who plans on going to Disney maybe 2 times during my kids childhood, I probably would've waited maybe another year until I went with them. It's way way easier when everyone wants to go on the same rides so you don't have to split up.
I had a great time and my kids had a blast, but something in the back of my head made me feel like something wasn't right. I didn't have any meltdowns and we gave the kids long breaks/naps during the day, but I felt like it was probably too much stressing/worrying about being places on time. I think I'll think twice about going to a place like Disney vs. a relaxing vacation on the beach where you just spend quality time together.
1) FP+ -While I liked the idea of FP+ and liked using it at times, I thought it made the trip a bit more stressful. Sure, you can change the times on the fly on the app but it's subject to availability i.e. you can't just push any ride back 1 hour. I found I was constantly stressing about making it to places on time. I don't know how this would work in the real world, but I do wonder if there would be any impact at all if they just gave you 2 hours to do the rides.
2) Morning Table Service-Now that I've seen how important it is to get to parks early, I would never recommend people do breakfast TS. Personally, I would use the breakfast time for touring and then schedule the sit-downs for lunch or dinner.
3) Size of Parks: This is something I had heard and even seen when I last went to WDW, but had to experience it as the "planner". One of the things i didn't understand about sites like Touringplans was why it would tell me to go to certain rides first thing when they didn't seem overly popular. I just assumed that it's better to do the more popular rides first and didn't take into consideration the distance between the rides. You may as well count walking time as time in lines because it's wasted either way. I spent way too much time criss-crossing on the first day instead of just doing what was near. This plays into the whole idea of how to best utilize FP+. I think next time I won't get too caught up in the BEST rides to use FP on, but instead figure out a rough TP and then figure out where in the plan to use the FP.
4) Rider Switch: Rider switch is an absolute goldmine in terms of maximizing the rides that you can go on (assuming you have young kids). Being able to bring my oldest on the ride, get the rider switch pass, and then have my wife, 6 year old, and 4 year old go on the ride meant you were getting 5 FP+ for the "price" of 2. The best thing about the rider switches is that they can be used at any point during the month!
5) Transportation: I stayed at Contemporary due to the proximity to MK and i was happy with the choice. Honestly though, I have no idea how people deal with bus service to/from the parks everyday when they are staying outside of MK. I dealt with it one day when we were going to AK and hated it. The next day when we went to HS, I took a cab instead. It cost around $20 and was well worth the extra cost. I would actually consider staying in a less expensive hotel and then just using cabs to get everywhere, or at least get to TO the parks.
6) Crowd Calendars/Wait times-I think with more and more people using these crowd calendars to plan vacations (and Disney offering specials), it's pretty much let the cat out of the bag on the lowest crowd days. I have no idea where TP gets its adjusted wait times from, but I assumed (going in) that it was from user submitted wait times. Looking at how few wait times are actually submitted, I'm now really scratching my head at where these numbers are coming from. Disney estimates are probably way better since they are handing out lanyards to people waiting in line on a fairly frequent basis and I don't see how TP could ever beat what they are providing. Even when they have no user submitted times, they are still posting "posted" vs. "actual' wait times. I saw first hand that when they adjusted the wait times on POTC to "5 minutes" that crowds SURGED to the ride. So when you see wait times drop, it's almost too late to "get in on" that wait time.
7) More Wait times: On that subject of wait times, it's almost hard to even look at the line and estimate it due to FP+. I went on Peter Pan early in the AM when the line was reaching outdoors. All in all, it took about 25 minutes to go all the way through. Later, I saw the line was way shorter and we hopped on it again and walked all the way into the new queue. If it was similar at all to our last ride, we would've saved about 15 minutes on the wait time but this must've been the time of day that FP+ really started kicking in because we waited as long (or longer). So yeah, there were less standby riders but there were way more FP+ riders.
8) Disney's Treatment of FP--It is very, very clear that, to Disney, FP+ riders are "The line" and standby people just get worked into the main line. This is probably obvious, but didn't really strike me until I saw it in action. There were certain rides (star tours) where they were probably taking 1 standby rider to every 50 FP+ rider and that is no exaggeration. Another reason why it's hard to estimate how long you'll be sitting there.
9) Disney with small kids-For someone who plans on going to Disney maybe 2 times during my kids childhood, I probably would've waited maybe another year until I went with them. It's way way easier when everyone wants to go on the same rides so you don't have to split up.
I had a great time and my kids had a blast, but something in the back of my head made me feel like something wasn't right. I didn't have any meltdowns and we gave the kids long breaks/naps during the day, but I felt like it was probably too much stressing/worrying about being places on time. I think I'll think twice about going to a place like Disney vs. a relaxing vacation on the beach where you just spend quality time together.
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