Trip Report Nov '13 - Surprise, 1/2 Marathon, Paraguayan Family, NOT totally a clusterfudge trip of a lifetime

Well, we're back from our most out-of-the-normal trip to WDW ever. For details of what we had initially planned on, feel free to read over my pre-trip report (link here) and see how this trip came about, what it took to plan and set up, and all the other typical pre-trip stuff.

I've been back and forth on starting this TR before I really get a chance to go through and sit down and get my pictures and everything downloaded, sorted, organized, etc, but I figured I'd at least get a start on this while everything is all fresh in my head. My pictures are going to likely not turn out to be great, and I've seen many amazing photographers post trip reports on here with some of the best WDW photos I've ever seen, and honestly, I know I took more photos on my iPhone than I did on the semi-nice camera that I borrowed from my father anyway. I'll likely go in and add some pictures as I fill in all the details and get them. I've got a few hundred Disney Photopass+ photos to go through, two iPhones, a camera, and then any photos that I'll eventually receive from the South American family once they finally make it back to Paraguay and do their own photo processing. So this TR could be a work in progress for quite a while, adding photos, skipping back and forth in time (a little wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey trip report if I do say so myself).

Still, all that being said, I thought it made sense to start things off now, while I'm just off the trip, and remember most of everything that happened, thoughts I had, observations I had, etc.

For a brief synopsis of all the stuff I wrote down in my pre-trip report, here goes.
The trip was my family, DW: Andrea, DD5 Charlotte (Charlie), DD2 Evelyn (Evie)
Joining us for about 1/2 the trip were my parents: Lets just go Grandma and Grandpa for ease of reading
Joining us for about 3/4 of the trip were my wife's family from Paraguay: Her uncle Eugenio (Chacho), her aunt Elisa, her cousins Belen, Ana, Lucia, Laura, Ana's husband Dito, and their children Franco (4) and baby Jofi (<1). Belen's boyfriend Matt showed up at the end, but stayed in the condo the whole time and pretty much was a non-factor in the entire trip.

The basics of the trip. We were surprising our children on Thursday morning, 11/7, and driving down to WDW, surprising them a second time meeting up with Grandma and Grandpa partially through the drive. We were planning on staying at Caribbean Beach for 2 nights, Grandpa and I were running the Wine and Dine 1/2 marathon on 11/9 with my kids running the kids races in the morning, then on 11/10, the Paraguayan family was joining us at Chacho's timeshare in Orlando, where we'd move over and stay with them, while Grandma and Grandpa would stay on at CBR for 2 more nights. We'd stay, do WDW, one day at Uni, take a morning off and then hit MVMCP on 11/14, leaving on 11/17 to start the drive back, meeting back up with Grandma and Grandpa for the return trip. We'd get back to the Chicagoland area in the evening of 11/18.

So, how'd that all pan out? How much did our trip resemble what we thought before we left? What did I, one of the world's most unobservant people, notice on my trip? How'd the race go? Did we all make it through alive? Did our MagicBands make our trip a living hell or were they great? Did Evie get over her fear of dark rides from a year ago and "Conquer Its a Small World"?

I'll start working on those parts of the TR next. Hopefully I can get at least the trip down done very soon, as I don't need Photopass and the other camera to capture that, my iPhone pictures will be good enough.

 

[sshindel]

WOW! I loved your TR!!!
Your girls (all 3 are GORGEOUS! Looks like the ENTIRE Family had a Magical time.
Congratulations on finishing your first 1/2 marathon!!! What a great accomplishment. I did the ToT 10 miler last Sept. with my DH & DS. It was awesome. I sooo want to do the Disney Princess Half with my daughter! One day we will. She is in her junior year of college and it is very difficult for her to miss classes, so we may have to wait till Spring 2016 And then she'll be teaching and probably won't be allowed to take off ... Grrr.
Thank you for such an entertaining TR & Again your family is beautiful

Thank you so much!
I'd say give it a shot and see if your daughter couldn't do a quick weekend trip down for that 1/2. I'd imagine, like you said, once she's teaching it might get harder to do. Of course, there's always vacation days! I know I'll always remember running this one with my dad.
I'm actually really considering the TOT 10 miler this fall. A friend and I are considering trying to sneak away for one. I think the biggest hurdle I have to this is how I'm going to tell my daughters that I'm going away to Disney and they are not... I think that'll be rough, but if it works out the way I think it will, we won't be in the parks a whole lot, since It'd likely be a Friday - Sunday trip. Just enough time to do the race, limp around for a bit after, and sleep really late on Sunday.

 

[sshindel]

Ok. Today I want to talk about MY experience with one of the hottest topics for debate on this forum in the past few years. No, not the Tangled Toilets. Of course, I'm talking about MagicBand / Fastpass+ / My Disney Experience.

I want to make it clear here. I'm speaking ONLY for my experience and my thoughts on the topic. How I personally acted/interacted with the system, and what my thoughts were. I don't want to make this a controversial thread in any respects, and I'm happy to have discussions on the topic, but I'm going to call it like I saw it.

Overall, the bottom line is, the new system actually improved my vacation experience. It's something I've not seen often discussed here. I've seen lots of smaller discussions about specific points of the system. And I agree that there were likely other options that could have been implemented to handle some parts of it. But, for what WAS actually implemented and how it interacted with MY family's vacation, it was a positive.

But wait, how is that possible? This was a "no planning" trip! I made no ADRs! I wasn't even staying on property for the majority of the trip!

The thing that probably impacted our trip the most has to be the Fastpass+ / My Disney Experience combination. So, getting this out of the way first. There are quibbles I have with FP+ for sure. I understand the complaint of only being able to get 3 FPs for a day. I get the complaint about not being able to currently go "cross-park". I think the tiered system they were starting to implement at Epcot could lead to lots of discussions on what is and isn't top-tier. I understand the complaint about not wanting to schedule my entire vacation 180 days in advance, down to what rides I'm riding. Remember, we were in non-peak season, so I also can not speak to what it might be like during mid-summer when more and more people are using it.

Here's where I am though, based on our experience. I never once on this trip booked any FP+ before I set foot in the park. And remember, I was getting in later in the days usually. There was only 1 attraction that I would have liked to get a FP for that I was not able to get. Toy Story Midway Mania. And we all know that this is the hottest FP in all of the parks. Every other ride that I wanted to ride and thought I might need a fastpass for? I was able to book them day-of.

The WiFi service in the parks is night-and-day compared to last year at around this time. I had excellent WiFi service throughout my entire trip. It was the easiest thing in the world to take 5 minutes while in a standby line, or while we were stopped trying to decide what to do next, to pop on and set up FP+ for the day. It was pretty easy to go on and try and modify existing FP+ as well. Most of the time, I was able to get a modification to something I wanted. Only occasionally did I get something that said "no attraction is available at this time". Now, if I could, I'd love to be able to book less than 3 FP+s at a time. I didn't like how if I just wanted to book 1 FP+, it forced me into 3. I understand why they did this, it's trying to control crowd-flow. They are more filling up your time-slots than they are your attractions. They want to see if they can push you to be doing a few of their featured attractions at specific times of the day, to affect crowd-flow. That makes sense to me. But, I wish I could just book 1 FP+, come on later and try my luck with a second at that point. It's a minor complaint though, and nothing that even negatively impacted my trip. I just tended to skip ones they forced me into that I didn't want, if I couldn't modify it. This really only came into effect at DAK, when I really wasn't going to hit up any of the shows that it kept trying to get me into.

This is one way that I can see this being a positive impact on my future trips. I will likely never "plan my entire trip 180 days in advance, including ALL rides on all days". That will never happen. BUT, there are specific attractions that I KNOW that I'm going to want a Fastpass for, and who's Fastpasses are tough to come by. I'd treat this EXACTLY as if I really wanted to hit one of the more popular dining locations. I will never want to plan my vacation down to the minute detail that the system will give me the ability to. But I WILL plan very specific events. Just as I might jump on 180 days in advance to try and get into Cinderella's Royal Table, I will likely try and pick a day on my trip for DHS and make sure I have FP+ for Toy Story Midway Mania. I might make sure my kid gets on Soarin' 180 days in advance too. That's it. The rest, I'll make/modify when I get there. This is just like signature restaurants in my eyes. There are a few rides whose standby lines are unbearable, and are enjoyable enough that I would want to ensure we get to enjoy, and I'd happily book those in advance. The rest of them? I'll handle later. This to me is a benefit! My trip can still be very unplanned, but I can be ensured that very specific things will be a part of my trip.

Now, I do understand that this is still in a test phase, and we're traveling in a little less busy time, so once this is fully implemented, and the usage is adjusted, and regular FP goes away, my tune might change a little. BUT, from my experience, that is my current opinion.

The My Disney Experience app was a huge benefit! I used it many times throughout the day. I used it to check standby wait times. I used it to check Fastpass return times. They were typically mostly accurate. Some lines were longer when we showed up. Some were shorter. I think it's just as much the standard ebb and flow in the crowd patterns, not really a bug in the system. I used the app to find when characters were scheduled to appear, one which allowed me to get Charlotte to see her favorite characters just before they were set to leave for the day. Without the app, we'd have missed them, no question.

I found figuring out the entertainment schedule on the app a bit clunky, for some reason it was easier to get an entertainment guide and refer to that than it was the app to figure our parade/show times. It was a bit counter-intuitive.

The app made remembering when we were supposed to be at a Fastpass or dining reservation a snap. While I'm probably not ready to give up the handmade spreadsheet I usually carry (just as a security blanket), but this trip with it's mostly unplanned nature, I didn't even print one off this time, and everything I needed was right in the app.

So, all told, the My Disney Experience and Fastpass+ were a positive on my vacation experience, and especially the app was something that I felt was sorely lacking once we went over to IoA. Using it each day at WDW had literally changed the way I toured the parks enough to the point that I felt out of touch in IoA, a park I knew so much less about that I could have really used something this informative.

As to the MagicBands themselves, again, our experience was excellent. We had only two minor problems. Out of 6 magicbands our family had, 1 of them did not work as a key to the room on the first night. A 5 minute trip to the guest relations fixed this. But, it was there. The second problem was on the 2nd day that we decided to extend our stay, the front desk person said she "couldn't" make our MagicBands work as keys. I knew that this was not the case, as the day before, they did it without a single issue, and that this was strictly a training failure and not one of the system, but I didn't push the issue, as it was going to be our last night there anyway, and we had a sick child on our hands. As long as I had A key that would work, I didn't care.

We were able to link in multiple tickets to our bands without problem, though I never linked more than one ticket to each band at a time (I'd use one up fully, then link the next). I was able to pay to upgrade my tickets to add an extra day, and it all worked seamlessly (at least on my end, not sure if the CM had issues or not, he did have to go into the back office to get me squared away). I never had a single issue with lost FP+, our bands worked every single time for park entry, every single time for tap-to-pay. Overall, I'm a poster child for the people they WANT writing reviews of this.

I mentioned tap-to-pay, so I want to briefly talk about that. I've seen people question why this is attractive. "How hard is it to reach into your wallet". Well, it's not HARD to reach into my wallet, but it sure is easier to just pop my wrist up. Especially since I'm paranoid and always button my wallet into my back pocket, so it doesn't slip out on a ride. Especially if I'm carrying my 2 year old who just refuses to be put down so daddy can get his card out and pay. Especially when heading down to the pool where I might not want to carry my wallet. It's not hard to get my wallet out, but its miles easier to use the band.

As to the band's comfort, it was ok. I'll admit. This was the thing I worried about the least going in. I tend to wear a watch on one wrist, and a hard-metal bracelet on the other wrist every single day. So, I was not thinking it'd be uncomfortable to me to wear. I was actually surprised that it WAS kinda uncomfortable the first few days. For some reason, it just wasn't something I was used to, and that made it awkward. Once I switched it over to the wrist my watch normally was on, it got better, but for some reason, I did find the band more uncomfortable than I thought. I did not die of overheating. I did not fail to some sort of wrist-enduced heat stroke. But, it took some getting used to. My kids had no issues, and my 2 year old was able to keep hers on all week without it ever falling off. We taught her early that if she wanted to take it off, she MUST give it directly to one of us, which she did, but as the week went along, everyone nearly forgot they were on. I'd find mine still on my arm hours after we were done for the day by the end of the week.

Lets see, what other little things might I have not covered.

• Using them to get into the resort parking lot once the gate checks were set up for the night was a happy unexpected bonus.
• Having the CM at Belle's Enchanted Tales greet my daughters as Princess Charlotte and Princess Evelyn put a huge smile on their faces. It's a little thing, but it's something to mention.
• Both kids LOVED wearing and using them. The thrill of the "green Mickey" did not diminish at all by the end of the week.
• It felt like an awesome secret when I got home and used it to unlock a new Toy on the ToyBox in Disney Infinity!

So, that about wraps it up. This was my experience with the new system. This does not cover the many oft-discussed topics like "Could they have spent $X they spent on this project to build rides ABC", or any of the data mining topics that I know are hot topics. By the way, I work in the data industry, so I'm highly pro-data mining, I don't know if that matters to anyone, but full disclosure I guess.

Again to summarize. To me, based on one experience, the Magic Band was a positive for our vacation. I felt it added benefit, it made my vacation better. We'll see if that continues on our next trip, and the one after that, and after that... I just know what I experienced for my trip, and I thought that might be helpful to share.

 

[sshindel]

I would have freaked out too if I turned around and that Spiderman was beckoning me over. And then I would have told him that I would be his Mary Jane...

She's always had a thing for Mr. Peter Parker. She spent her entire trip to NYC looking up in the skys to see him swinging between buildings. This Spider-man was quite good, witty banter and all.