With all the pixie-dust now burnt up, having just got back and still a little muzzy with jet lag, now is the first chance to write up a bit of a trip report.
Bear in mind this has been the first trip back for three years and our trip also included a lot of non-WDW parks and places. In our holiday plan, we allocated five full WDW days and on top of that, we had a lot of ad-hoc visits with usually a few afternoon or morning hours which depended on what else we were doing that day. This was our eleventh trip in total and in many respects, this was the best visit in quite some time. Absolutely loved what they had done with Fantasy Land in MK, they had started working on it when we were last there and it’s still not finished. But it all looks great.
However, there was some times when we thought our pixie-dust was going to evaporate.
Firstly was a group of Argentine girls who seemed to fill up every available space in MK on our first day. To be honest, we kept track on where they were and made for the opposite side of the park whenever we spotted them, so we kept away from them and they didn’t really cause us too much of a problem (probably the best way to deal with them), but I heard comments from others who had been given problems. I feel there needs to be a little work on how these groups are managed with respect to other paying park users.
As we were staying at Coronado Springs, Pop Warner turned up. I’m not sure whereabouts in CS they actually were, but they were well away from us and that was good enough for us. Although they tended to turn up at that tiny Rix Café whenever we did. Apart from that, they caused us little bother.
Now the serious stuff – Magic Bands!!!! What a wonderful idea that is!!!
Firstly, our Band box turned up without my wife’s name on it. They claimed they didn’t know who she was despite she made our reservation, her name is on the booking forms and everything else. Yes, this was a minor thing, but I had to listen to her moaning that she had a band without any name on it the whole time. I also had to listen to the fact that they were both that horrible grey colour and she would have liked a red or a pink one. (!)
But that was only the beginning. We then had to (for some inexplicable reason) get the park tickets linked to the bands (why wasn’t this done already?). This may be an easy thing to do, but it took a nearly all two weeks of our stay before it finally got it to work (at least for my wife). Nearly every time we went to a park, her Touch-Mickey-to-Mickey would result in a blue light and then we had to wait for a CM with their IPad to confirm her entry – which also came with two dozen questions on how and where we last used the bands, when we brought tickets…etc etc. So we would end up in Guest Relations or back at the hotel with some CM who would then wrestle with their less-than-useless Band program and after twenty minutes, say "That’s it you’re good to go", "I see what’s happened", "It looks like you’re not linked…" and on and on and on it went.
During the later part of the trip, I had some unrelated grief with my credit card company, so for the first time ever, I had to use my Band (used to be my Park card) to link to my Debit Card. Easy? Not a chance. It took about three attempts to get it to work, or more specifically, it took three attempts for the untrained staff to set it up correctly in their bad system before it would start to accept it. Its not funny being told I have no credit on my Band, when I know I have. The final attempt resulted in a forty minute wait in a line, a twenty minute phone call on hold and a further fifteen minute messing around on their PC’s before they finally got it right. At one point, I was starting to lose it. That last time, I was in Animal Kingdom Guest Relations room and the queue was out the door with people arguing about the failure and problems with their MB’s. Glad to know we weren’t alone with problems. One women we spoke to had collected ten Bands before they had one that worked for her daughter. Is this acceptable?
In the end, we lost the equivalent of an entire morning of park time due to these Bands. We had a string of endless CM’s unfamiliar with their own systems trying to get them to work. I also noted that their own systems were unstable and crashy as the program they use to admin these Bands is as about as useless as the Bands themselves.
But the saga continues in the form of Fastpassing. What a pain that was!!
For some reason, various attractions are linked together as one Fastpass attraction. When you go online (or get a CM to do it) you can’t pick one Fastpass, you have to get three, even if you don’t want them. I tried to reserve a Fastpass and was told I had to have three and was given times for things I didn’t want to go on (this was when the server was actually up and working). I tried to Cancel the passes I didn’t want and it crashed my machine. Other times, the site buttons simply didn’t work. But the fun really happened when we went to Hollywood Studios, reserved a FP for Midway Madness and was given unwanted passes to Tower of Terror and Star Tours and when we went to reception to get a printout of our Passes, we had lost our Midway one completely and the times for the others had changed!! (Although I did end up using the Star Tours one), we had to go to Midway Madness FP machine and get a ticket the usual way.
Moreover, we had examples were we had a FP for Beauty and the Beast, which seemed totally pointless, as FP’ers were in the same area as everyone else and what was the idea of having it for attractions like that?
Bottom line conclusion is I would accept that these Bands are a way to go. I can see they can bring about a host of stuff and convenience to the average park-goer. Unfortunately, our experience of them has shown they are unstable and unreliable. It was as if WDW have pushed these onto the public too quickly without full testing, without proper admin software/control and onto staff who are untrained and unfamiliar with the system. I would also find the MB Fastpass system questionable and I can see a time where an attraction could be theoretically full with no one actually on it. If people want Fastpasses, they should get them at the attraction’s FP machine, which gives everyone a chance to have one. A touch-Mickey-to-Mickey machine to load the FP onto the Band and a printed ticket with the details would be great.
Not everyone has or wants to go online during their time at WDW. Reserved online FP’s should be kept for large shows such as Illuminations, Wishes etc
Our conclusion was the MB system was enough to make us hold off any future visits to the world until I have reassurances that we will not have to go through the same grief we did as last time. Not being able to have any Fastpasses in future because they are going to allow anyone and everyone to make them will be another factor in this. Will we have to reserve all our rides three months in advance in future?? This will fall in-between "ridiculous" and "pathetic".
Personally, I would scrap MB’s and go back to plastic "Keys to the Kingdom". Whatever their limitations, at least they worked and we never, ever had any problems with them. Technology is only good when it works.
Not really a complaint, but a comment I have to make about Epcot.
What – exactly – is the theme behind Epcot? Or at least, what is the theme now? To me, it’s just another WDW theme park and far removed from anything which could be called "The Future". Those Innovations areas came across more-or-less as rooms for miscellaneous junk (as they always have done) and little to do with the future. The nearest ‘future’ I saw was Test Track 2, which looks good and someone somewhere had the good sense to keep away from the Tron films (which I thought it was going to be), but the car design stuff came across as a pointless exercise and I would rather have had the previous preshow. My only question about TT2 was "Does this seem faster than last time?".
A change in social habits.
Since last time, we noticed a significant change in park behaviours, due to a change in technology. I’m talking about smartphones and their use during shows. If people are sad enough to write about every aspect of their life on Facebook, then please do it outside an attraction and NO T during a show in a darkened theatre. It is a major cheese-off (being polite here) to try and watch and enjoy something when everyone is lighting the place up with these stupid phones. That's before I go on about buzzing, chirping, ringing which goes on when a FB update or text arrives. If you don’t want to see the attraction, then get out and make room for someone who does. Any trip to WDW comes with a need to tolerate a degree of antisocial behaviours from the thoughtless and inconsiderate, now there is something else we have to put up with. Grrrr!!!
Some other comments I have was on the times we had restaurant bookings
San Angel in Epcot’s Mexico was utterly awesome, as was our first venture into Fulton’s Crabhouse. House of Blues was a total bust – mediocre food and completely lacking in anything "Blues". Crystal Palace was good (as always), Hollywood and Vine was a mix of reasonable food in a bad surrounding (Only went there as booking was limited and to get Fantasmic tickets) .
Our wishlist
So having been to the ‘World for the eleventh time, we have a wishlist of stuff we would like to see changed (I realise this is would never happen)
There needs to be a level of discipline over the use of Smartphones during shows. Very few places tell you to turn them off and when they do, nothing is done when they are. Showing a grain of consideration to others when waving a great big Ipad in people’s faces would also be a plus.
Sort out Magic Bands. You can’t mess with people and their assets (Entry to theme parks). They need to work and work every time. Even a small percent error is unacceptable. At the moment and based on what we have seen, they are unreliable, faulty and unacceptably bad. This simply isn’t good enough. Before they are expanded to include other features, they need to be fixed first.
Sort out the Fastpass system. It needs to be fair to everyone and give people the chance to give them what they want. Forcing people to accept passes for things they don’t want denies other people the chance of going to that attraction. Fastpass+ really needs to be reserved for large shows. The system also needs to be "easy" and "simple" to use, even to those who are not used to technology.
It would be nice to be given a Band already loaded with Park Tickets, Room Entry and any other options we asked for. All we have to do is sign for them, maybe validate them on first use and forget about them. Giving people the run-around because of bad inadequate systems is really not a good idea.
It would be nice to see some future technology in Epcot, which is what it was supposed to be about. I like Epcot, but at the moment, it’s just a theme park without a theme with a big ball in the middle.
I heard a rumour about doing away with the Osbourn Lights at HS. If that were to happen, then someone needs their bumps felt. I would take that as a major reason not to visit WDW and would be a massive shame and loss to WDW.
Bring back those lights at Epcot (forget what they were called) at the entrance to World Showcase. Something else missing from the Epcot which could be used to demonstrate ‘the future’.
Remove that Backlot tour at HS. Its been slowly diminishing over the years and now is not worth it. It needs either replacing or redeveloping into something else. I also noticed they don’t ask people to participate in their water scene anymore at the start.
Please – if you are going to have those impromptu roadside side-shows at HS, please make them funny and entertaining and not unfunny and boring. Whilst on the subject, who was that band on the now-permanent soundstage in front of the big hat? Whoever that singer was needs some lessons or take up another career. Ugh!
Now Starbucks has infested MK and Epcot, can we have the seating back? I would prefer them both to be restored as bakeries, or at least have a good selection of cakes/pastries and somewhere to sit to eat them. At least Starbucks is miles better than that disgusting Joffery coffee which has appeared. We ended up buying our own and drinking that back in our room.
And finally, will someone please update the Hollywood Movie Ride? It's a place old brain cells go to die.
Of our sixteen days in Florida, we did a different park each day (more or less). If I had to give an award to which park we had the best day in…that would have go to Seaworld and their Christmas Celebration day. (sorry WDW!). We just had a spectacular awesome day there and stands out as the best day we had. Perhaps there is a warning there for WDW and maybe they risk slipping as other parks catch up and overtake.
As things stand, we currently, we have no plans to return to WDW. This is a work/time/money thing (as always), but before we regenerate the pixie-dust, we have be convinced that these Bands are worth the trouble. We will not return unless we know they are.
Bear in mind this has been the first trip back for three years and our trip also included a lot of non-WDW parks and places. In our holiday plan, we allocated five full WDW days and on top of that, we had a lot of ad-hoc visits with usually a few afternoon or morning hours which depended on what else we were doing that day. This was our eleventh trip in total and in many respects, this was the best visit in quite some time. Absolutely loved what they had done with Fantasy Land in MK, they had started working on it when we were last there and it’s still not finished. But it all looks great.
However, there was some times when we thought our pixie-dust was going to evaporate.
Firstly was a group of Argentine girls who seemed to fill up every available space in MK on our first day. To be honest, we kept track on where they were and made for the opposite side of the park whenever we spotted them, so we kept away from them and they didn’t really cause us too much of a problem (probably the best way to deal with them), but I heard comments from others who had been given problems. I feel there needs to be a little work on how these groups are managed with respect to other paying park users.
As we were staying at Coronado Springs, Pop Warner turned up. I’m not sure whereabouts in CS they actually were, but they were well away from us and that was good enough for us. Although they tended to turn up at that tiny Rix Café whenever we did. Apart from that, they caused us little bother.
Now the serious stuff – Magic Bands!!!! What a wonderful idea that is!!!
Firstly, our Band box turned up without my wife’s name on it. They claimed they didn’t know who she was despite she made our reservation, her name is on the booking forms and everything else. Yes, this was a minor thing, but I had to listen to her moaning that she had a band without any name on it the whole time. I also had to listen to the fact that they were both that horrible grey colour and she would have liked a red or a pink one. (!)
But that was only the beginning. We then had to (for some inexplicable reason) get the park tickets linked to the bands (why wasn’t this done already?). This may be an easy thing to do, but it took a nearly all two weeks of our stay before it finally got it to work (at least for my wife). Nearly every time we went to a park, her Touch-Mickey-to-Mickey would result in a blue light and then we had to wait for a CM with their IPad to confirm her entry – which also came with two dozen questions on how and where we last used the bands, when we brought tickets…etc etc. So we would end up in Guest Relations or back at the hotel with some CM who would then wrestle with their less-than-useless Band program and after twenty minutes, say "That’s it you’re good to go", "I see what’s happened", "It looks like you’re not linked…" and on and on and on it went.
During the later part of the trip, I had some unrelated grief with my credit card company, so for the first time ever, I had to use my Band (used to be my Park card) to link to my Debit Card. Easy? Not a chance. It took about three attempts to get it to work, or more specifically, it took three attempts for the untrained staff to set it up correctly in their bad system before it would start to accept it. Its not funny being told I have no credit on my Band, when I know I have. The final attempt resulted in a forty minute wait in a line, a twenty minute phone call on hold and a further fifteen minute messing around on their PC’s before they finally got it right. At one point, I was starting to lose it. That last time, I was in Animal Kingdom Guest Relations room and the queue was out the door with people arguing about the failure and problems with their MB’s. Glad to know we weren’t alone with problems. One women we spoke to had collected ten Bands before they had one that worked for her daughter. Is this acceptable?
In the end, we lost the equivalent of an entire morning of park time due to these Bands. We had a string of endless CM’s unfamiliar with their own systems trying to get them to work. I also noted that their own systems were unstable and crashy as the program they use to admin these Bands is as about as useless as the Bands themselves.
But the saga continues in the form of Fastpassing. What a pain that was!!
For some reason, various attractions are linked together as one Fastpass attraction. When you go online (or get a CM to do it) you can’t pick one Fastpass, you have to get three, even if you don’t want them. I tried to reserve a Fastpass and was told I had to have three and was given times for things I didn’t want to go on (this was when the server was actually up and working). I tried to Cancel the passes I didn’t want and it crashed my machine. Other times, the site buttons simply didn’t work. But the fun really happened when we went to Hollywood Studios, reserved a FP for Midway Madness and was given unwanted passes to Tower of Terror and Star Tours and when we went to reception to get a printout of our Passes, we had lost our Midway one completely and the times for the others had changed!! (Although I did end up using the Star Tours one), we had to go to Midway Madness FP machine and get a ticket the usual way.
Moreover, we had examples were we had a FP for Beauty and the Beast, which seemed totally pointless, as FP’ers were in the same area as everyone else and what was the idea of having it for attractions like that?
Bottom line conclusion is I would accept that these Bands are a way to go. I can see they can bring about a host of stuff and convenience to the average park-goer. Unfortunately, our experience of them has shown they are unstable and unreliable. It was as if WDW have pushed these onto the public too quickly without full testing, without proper admin software/control and onto staff who are untrained and unfamiliar with the system. I would also find the MB Fastpass system questionable and I can see a time where an attraction could be theoretically full with no one actually on it. If people want Fastpasses, they should get them at the attraction’s FP machine, which gives everyone a chance to have one. A touch-Mickey-to-Mickey machine to load the FP onto the Band and a printed ticket with the details would be great.
Not everyone has or wants to go online during their time at WDW. Reserved online FP’s should be kept for large shows such as Illuminations, Wishes etc
Our conclusion was the MB system was enough to make us hold off any future visits to the world until I have reassurances that we will not have to go through the same grief we did as last time. Not being able to have any Fastpasses in future because they are going to allow anyone and everyone to make them will be another factor in this. Will we have to reserve all our rides three months in advance in future?? This will fall in-between "ridiculous" and "pathetic".
Personally, I would scrap MB’s and go back to plastic "Keys to the Kingdom". Whatever their limitations, at least they worked and we never, ever had any problems with them. Technology is only good when it works.
Not really a complaint, but a comment I have to make about Epcot.
What – exactly – is the theme behind Epcot? Or at least, what is the theme now? To me, it’s just another WDW theme park and far removed from anything which could be called "The Future". Those Innovations areas came across more-or-less as rooms for miscellaneous junk (as they always have done) and little to do with the future. The nearest ‘future’ I saw was Test Track 2, which looks good and someone somewhere had the good sense to keep away from the Tron films (which I thought it was going to be), but the car design stuff came across as a pointless exercise and I would rather have had the previous preshow. My only question about TT2 was "Does this seem faster than last time?".
A change in social habits.
Since last time, we noticed a significant change in park behaviours, due to a change in technology. I’m talking about smartphones and their use during shows. If people are sad enough to write about every aspect of their life on Facebook, then please do it outside an attraction and NO T during a show in a darkened theatre. It is a major cheese-off (being polite here) to try and watch and enjoy something when everyone is lighting the place up with these stupid phones. That's before I go on about buzzing, chirping, ringing which goes on when a FB update or text arrives. If you don’t want to see the attraction, then get out and make room for someone who does. Any trip to WDW comes with a need to tolerate a degree of antisocial behaviours from the thoughtless and inconsiderate, now there is something else we have to put up with. Grrrr!!!
Some other comments I have was on the times we had restaurant bookings
San Angel in Epcot’s Mexico was utterly awesome, as was our first venture into Fulton’s Crabhouse. House of Blues was a total bust – mediocre food and completely lacking in anything "Blues". Crystal Palace was good (as always), Hollywood and Vine was a mix of reasonable food in a bad surrounding (Only went there as booking was limited and to get Fantasmic tickets) .
Our wishlist
So having been to the ‘World for the eleventh time, we have a wishlist of stuff we would like to see changed (I realise this is would never happen)
There needs to be a level of discipline over the use of Smartphones during shows. Very few places tell you to turn them off and when they do, nothing is done when they are. Showing a grain of consideration to others when waving a great big Ipad in people’s faces would also be a plus.
Sort out Magic Bands. You can’t mess with people and their assets (Entry to theme parks). They need to work and work every time. Even a small percent error is unacceptable. At the moment and based on what we have seen, they are unreliable, faulty and unacceptably bad. This simply isn’t good enough. Before they are expanded to include other features, they need to be fixed first.
Sort out the Fastpass system. It needs to be fair to everyone and give people the chance to give them what they want. Forcing people to accept passes for things they don’t want denies other people the chance of going to that attraction. Fastpass+ really needs to be reserved for large shows. The system also needs to be "easy" and "simple" to use, even to those who are not used to technology.
It would be nice to be given a Band already loaded with Park Tickets, Room Entry and any other options we asked for. All we have to do is sign for them, maybe validate them on first use and forget about them. Giving people the run-around because of bad inadequate systems is really not a good idea.
It would be nice to see some future technology in Epcot, which is what it was supposed to be about. I like Epcot, but at the moment, it’s just a theme park without a theme with a big ball in the middle.
I heard a rumour about doing away with the Osbourn Lights at HS. If that were to happen, then someone needs their bumps felt. I would take that as a major reason not to visit WDW and would be a massive shame and loss to WDW.
Bring back those lights at Epcot (forget what they were called) at the entrance to World Showcase. Something else missing from the Epcot which could be used to demonstrate ‘the future’.
Remove that Backlot tour at HS. Its been slowly diminishing over the years and now is not worth it. It needs either replacing or redeveloping into something else. I also noticed they don’t ask people to participate in their water scene anymore at the start.
Please – if you are going to have those impromptu roadside side-shows at HS, please make them funny and entertaining and not unfunny and boring. Whilst on the subject, who was that band on the now-permanent soundstage in front of the big hat? Whoever that singer was needs some lessons or take up another career. Ugh!
Now Starbucks has infested MK and Epcot, can we have the seating back? I would prefer them both to be restored as bakeries, or at least have a good selection of cakes/pastries and somewhere to sit to eat them. At least Starbucks is miles better than that disgusting Joffery coffee which has appeared. We ended up buying our own and drinking that back in our room.
And finally, will someone please update the Hollywood Movie Ride? It's a place old brain cells go to die.
Of our sixteen days in Florida, we did a different park each day (more or less). If I had to give an award to which park we had the best day in…that would have go to Seaworld and their Christmas Celebration day. (sorry WDW!). We just had a spectacular awesome day there and stands out as the best day we had. Perhaps there is a warning there for WDW and maybe they risk slipping as other parks catch up and overtake.
As things stand, we currently, we have no plans to return to WDW. This is a work/time/money thing (as always), but before we regenerate the pixie-dust, we have be convinced that these Bands are worth the trouble. We will not return unless we know they are.
