We just returned late last night...trip 10/12-10/17. I'm going to try to do a bit of a trip report. I'm going to share pros and cons so if you're not a fan of hearing about the cons; pls skip. Personally I find it helpful, but I know others don't like to hear it.
Flew SW - awesome as usual; loved empty middle seats and it's going to be rough when my crew has to go back to regular traveling lol. We landed at MCO a little early - yay... went and retrieved our luggage - def. miss not having to worry about that.
Got to ME line, not a bad line to checkin but longer than we've had in the past - they only had 1person working the checkin area. We were directed to AKL line and waited about 10 mins to board. Once we boarded we waited about 10 mins and left. We were 4th stop which I wasn't a fan of, but it was fine. We arrived, but room wasn't ready so we dropped our luggage off - very friendly bell services. We had a reservation at Beaches n cream so we quickly caught a bus to dhs and used skyliner to get to lunch. It was all smooth and lunch was great with great service. We then walked around a quiet boardwalk a bit and then headed back to resort because room was ready and we were going to meet my sister and her kids. Bell services quickly brought our luggage and was very polite....room was awesome - it was a 2 bedroom and very much like the 2 bedrooms we've stayed at at blt. Location was awesome as well.
AKL - Kidani village - Background we had originally booked ASSp, was moved/upgraded to AoA family suite and then eventually moved to AKL 2 bedroom. I really didn't have much interest in staying at AKL, but certainly wasn't going to pass up a 2 bedroom. It was an awesome upgrade and we were very grateful for it, however I'm going to be honest about our feelings of the resort. I also knew that we probably wouldn't ever pay to stay there because if we're paying delux prices we'd be choosing YC or CR, Poly etc. It was definitely nice to try something new, the animals were awesome and loved the room. Having said that we hated how far the resort was to everything other than AK and the no cs option was a real bummer- like honestly I'm not sure why they would open a resort without opening some kind of counter service place. I also felt the resort was just not big enough for the anount of ppl staying there. It was hard to find seats at the pool, there was often a line for the gift shop and place to fill your mug...the ppl. working the drink station/gift shop were not the nicest. It seemed impossible to get to the parks within the first 20 mins of parks opening, which basically meant you didn't make the real rope drop and you weren't getting on rides with a short wait. We finally gave in on Fri and ubered to CR to walk to MK. This worked out better, although it would have been better if we would have done it earlier - my fault as it was a last min decision.
Parks: By far the longest waits we've experienced since I was a kid and used to go during spring break. We've gone many many times in the last 15 years, but usually in late Aug./early Sept. We've also been a handful of times in May, June, July and late Sept. We have never waited in the kind of lines we waited in this past week. For ppl. who go often and only ride/see a handful of attractions and just take in the parks; this probably isn't such a big deal or for those who have only done Disney during really busy times and only a few times, again this probably won't be as much of a shock to the system, but for those who feel they use a good touring plan, utilized fastpasses, expect to hit every ride etc., this is a very different time. As much as I've tried to tour in a more slow going, relaxed mode, at heart I'm still a commando so this was an odd trip for sure. I'll be honest part of the reason we go back to Disney so often is because we know how to do it to our liking and enjoyment...it's a big part of what makes Disney enjoyable while other theme parks feels more like a chore to me to do for my kids. We are not used to waiting much more than 20 mins for anything and often have a 5-10 min. wait for rides, and that was just not possible this past week. Everything was at least 25-35 mins and many an hr+... in the hot blazing sun. There were just many periods of time that just weren't enjoyable. I will say for the most part, Disney seemed to be trying, running both sides of attractions etc., but it is what it is and I'm not sure what they could do to fix it at this point, other than open the rest of the shows/ppl mover etc...but I have no idea how they're going to increase capacity even with those things being open. On Fri. they completely blocked off the normal route to splash - you had to use yhe little river bypass area as they had blocked off the entire section in front of splash for the line...I had never seen that before.
I will say on our first mk day splash and mins train were both down at opening and Test track was down for quite a while on our epcot day as well and these things certainly didn't help. There were a handful of rides we never got to this trip which has never happened in the past. We actually went into the shops in the afternoon a couple times which we usually never do.
Bus service was really not bad, except for the fact that you had to be out at the bus stop no later than 1.5 hrs prior to park open to make it on the first bus. And buses from AKL can't get to the parks (other than AK) for the real park opening time if yhey don't start running them until 50-60 mins. before listed park opening,. I do feel this was more of an AKL issue though as we didn't seem to have that problem in Sept when we stayed at Polynesian.
Return magical express never showed up. We had a 430 pickup and were out there st 405...no bus. We watched this same thing happen on our arrival day to another party. They ended up calling them a shuttle. We talked to a me driver who was dropping off guests and he was awesome (Alvin) and actually called in our stuff and he ended up taking us to the airport. As I was boarding the me bus; I could hear the dispatcher telling him he's glad he called znd asked if he could also stop by boardwalk as there were a number of ppl waiting there as well for a never arriving me bus. Over the trip to the airport we often heard the dispatcher asking if anyone was near this resort or that resort because ppl needed picked up so I'm not sure what the issue is righr now with that.
Walmart delivery...wow what a nightmare. We won't use them again. We got a text at 405 saying our order was out and they'd b there by 416. We went out to the outside lobby area and waited, and waited and waited. Finally I start calling/chatting with them at 5 and all they could tell me was the driver got lost and returned the order. Driver never called,even though we asked them to when they were on their way...after lots of back and forth we confirmed the address for the 3rd tome- all was correct and they sent a new driver. At 6, we got a text from a driver saying they arrived and asking what apartment we were at....WTH???? Apparently doordash gps's the addresses and somehow it waa coming up at an apartment complex...at least this person called, but it was 630 before we got our order which messed up our plans this night.
Overall we're glad we went, but decided after the 2nd park day that our next trip would be resort only, which we've never done. We also decided to cancel an upcoming trip, just because we don't feel the cost is worth it right now. Definitely not saying we won't be back soon...we will most likely be back in March and plan to do parks again next Sept., but it just really wasn't that enjoyable this time all things considered. Still glad we went because we're crazy Disney ppl and had some nice times, but the lines and the heat were a lot.
We had pretty good success with food, but we knew to strategically order ahead of time and hit the I'm here button when you were getting ready to head there, not when you're there. I won't stay at a Disney resort with an open counter service place again though either.
Any specific questions I'm happy to answer.
, so the theory of 90 min did not hold true for us this week.
