We were in Orlando for 9 days (7 WDW and 2 US) with our 8 and 10 year old daughters and it was our 5th trip as a family.
FP+ was a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing when you actually wrangle a FP+ for a headliner like 7DMT. We rode 3 times during the week with an average wait of 5 minutes. Average standby was well over an hour when we road and this was on average crowd days. It's a curse for what used to be less popular, walk-on rides. I could not believe the wait times for things like POTC and Small World and had never waited more than 10 minutes for either on our previous trips.
The new fantasyland was a little bit of a letdown to us. We all loved 7DMT and think it's an instant classic, even if not particularly innovative with respect to ride technology. We thought it was one of the smoothest roller coasters we've ever ridden. Under the Sea was nice, but I'm surprised Disney spent that much time and money on a ride that seems like it could have been done 20 or 30 years ago. Overall, the contrast between the major renovations at MK and US (Diagon Alley) was pretty stark.
We skipped the speedway for the first time this trip. I think others have wondered why Disney continues to devote such a huge amount of real estate to a loud, smelly, and (sorry) fairly lame ride. It seems like that area is ripe for a makeover.
We mixed an onsite (Contemporary) and offsite (Hard Rock and Waldorf) stays this trip. We still have a soft spot for the Contemporary and other Disney deluxe hotels, but the pricing/service/amenities continuum seems to have gone completely off the tracks. One example that stuck out to me was when we requested that our room be cleaned prior to 2 p.m. It was the first time I've stayed in a $500/night hotel and been told that they'd try to honor the request, "but no guarantees." That being said, the ability to walk to and from MK from the Contemporary is still a huge selling point.
Breakdowns. Ugh. We visited the MK 3 different days and had our first ride of the day break down all 3 times, including a full-on "evacuation" on Winnie the Pooh that took about 20 minutes. (Which at least gave us time to wad up our touring plan and throw it away since it was fairly useless by the time we got out.) In all I think we saw close to 10 rides break down while we were in the park. At Epcot we got stuck on Spaceship Earth for 10-15 minutes, then twice more for a short time during a single ride. I finally went to guest relations to complain and, while the FP+ they gave us was a nice gesture, I was taken aback by the response that "we were due" for a lot of breakdowns since I said we had never seen so many on previous trips.
More breakdowns. Perhaps this was the most puzzling of all. We had an 8 a.m. at Akershus on our Epcot day, were admitted to the park at 7:45 and were the first in line and the second on the list of reservations for breakfast. We stood there until 8:15 with everybody else because "the computers were down." I didn't even know a restaurant could break!
Crowds. They were manageable throughout, but I agree with others that October should probably not be considered a low crowd month anymore. Not bad, but not like a few years ago.
F&W. One of our best days was at Epcot when we knocked out our favorite rides by 11 and then spent a few hours roaming World Showcase and sampling the food stands. Consistently good stuff.
Water Parks. First time we've ever done them and loved them both. I'm guessing October is a good time for crowds since they are both still open, but overall crowds are smaller than summer. I don't think we waited more than 10 minutes for anything. That meant that the parkhopper + waterparks and more option was a good deal for us.
Magic Bands. They worked flawlessly for every FP+, our hotel room, and charging privileges. One word of warning in case anyone else doesn't know: your charging privileges are gone as soon as you check out of your hotel even though you may still have several days worth of tickets left on your bands. We found this out the hard way, as we brought no cash or cc to Animal Kingdom one day late in the trip. Even worse, we didn't figure it out until our 8 year old was already taking down a frozen lemonade that I was trying to pay for. (The CM was extremely nice about it, fwiw.) So whoever says there's nothing free at Disney is wrong!
Weather. We really lucked out. We had been watching forecasts and reading this board in the weeks leading up to the trip and saw how badly the rain was affecting people's trips. We arrived on the 4th and flew home yesterday and experienced a total of 5 minutes of light rain for the entire visit. That must be a record for Central Florida.
Restaurants. We had some good meals and some not so good ones in the World. Best were Chefs de France and Jiko. Worst was probably Crystal Palace dinner buffet (though I realize the point is the characters and not the food). We also had a good FP+ lunch experience at BoG. Biggest downside was the lack of availability in general due to overlapping free dining, but overall we did OK.
Downtown Disney. Wow. Just ... wow. The DD area looks like someone bombed it. Construction everywhere and really bad traffic. It took 7 light cycles for us to make a left turn into DD the one time we went. We used valet, and the only other option is to park across the 6 lane road where they have CM parking. I'm sure it will be great when it's done, but I would recommend just avoiding the entire area until then.
I hope that helps somebody out there and I'm happy to answer any questions if I can.
FP+ was a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing when you actually wrangle a FP+ for a headliner like 7DMT. We rode 3 times during the week with an average wait of 5 minutes. Average standby was well over an hour when we road and this was on average crowd days. It's a curse for what used to be less popular, walk-on rides. I could not believe the wait times for things like POTC and Small World and had never waited more than 10 minutes for either on our previous trips.
The new fantasyland was a little bit of a letdown to us. We all loved 7DMT and think it's an instant classic, even if not particularly innovative with respect to ride technology. We thought it was one of the smoothest roller coasters we've ever ridden. Under the Sea was nice, but I'm surprised Disney spent that much time and money on a ride that seems like it could have been done 20 or 30 years ago. Overall, the contrast between the major renovations at MK and US (Diagon Alley) was pretty stark.
We skipped the speedway for the first time this trip. I think others have wondered why Disney continues to devote such a huge amount of real estate to a loud, smelly, and (sorry) fairly lame ride. It seems like that area is ripe for a makeover.
We mixed an onsite (Contemporary) and offsite (Hard Rock and Waldorf) stays this trip. We still have a soft spot for the Contemporary and other Disney deluxe hotels, but the pricing/service/amenities continuum seems to have gone completely off the tracks. One example that stuck out to me was when we requested that our room be cleaned prior to 2 p.m. It was the first time I've stayed in a $500/night hotel and been told that they'd try to honor the request, "but no guarantees." That being said, the ability to walk to and from MK from the Contemporary is still a huge selling point.
Breakdowns. Ugh. We visited the MK 3 different days and had our first ride of the day break down all 3 times, including a full-on "evacuation" on Winnie the Pooh that took about 20 minutes. (Which at least gave us time to wad up our touring plan and throw it away since it was fairly useless by the time we got out.) In all I think we saw close to 10 rides break down while we were in the park. At Epcot we got stuck on Spaceship Earth for 10-15 minutes, then twice more for a short time during a single ride. I finally went to guest relations to complain and, while the FP+ they gave us was a nice gesture, I was taken aback by the response that "we were due" for a lot of breakdowns since I said we had never seen so many on previous trips.
More breakdowns. Perhaps this was the most puzzling of all. We had an 8 a.m. at Akershus on our Epcot day, were admitted to the park at 7:45 and were the first in line and the second on the list of reservations for breakfast. We stood there until 8:15 with everybody else because "the computers were down." I didn't even know a restaurant could break!
Crowds. They were manageable throughout, but I agree with others that October should probably not be considered a low crowd month anymore. Not bad, but not like a few years ago.
F&W. One of our best days was at Epcot when we knocked out our favorite rides by 11 and then spent a few hours roaming World Showcase and sampling the food stands. Consistently good stuff.
Water Parks. First time we've ever done them and loved them both. I'm guessing October is a good time for crowds since they are both still open, but overall crowds are smaller than summer. I don't think we waited more than 10 minutes for anything. That meant that the parkhopper + waterparks and more option was a good deal for us.
Magic Bands. They worked flawlessly for every FP+, our hotel room, and charging privileges. One word of warning in case anyone else doesn't know: your charging privileges are gone as soon as you check out of your hotel even though you may still have several days worth of tickets left on your bands. We found this out the hard way, as we brought no cash or cc to Animal Kingdom one day late in the trip. Even worse, we didn't figure it out until our 8 year old was already taking down a frozen lemonade that I was trying to pay for. (The CM was extremely nice about it, fwiw.) So whoever says there's nothing free at Disney is wrong!
Weather. We really lucked out. We had been watching forecasts and reading this board in the weeks leading up to the trip and saw how badly the rain was affecting people's trips. We arrived on the 4th and flew home yesterday and experienced a total of 5 minutes of light rain for the entire visit. That must be a record for Central Florida.
Restaurants. We had some good meals and some not so good ones in the World. Best were Chefs de France and Jiko. Worst was probably Crystal Palace dinner buffet (though I realize the point is the characters and not the food). We also had a good FP+ lunch experience at BoG. Biggest downside was the lack of availability in general due to overlapping free dining, but overall we did OK.
Downtown Disney. Wow. Just ... wow. The DD area looks like someone bombed it. Construction everywhere and really bad traffic. It took 7 light cycles for us to make a left turn into DD the one time we went. We used valet, and the only other option is to park across the 6 lane road where they have CM parking. I'm sure it will be great when it's done, but I would recommend just avoiding the entire area until then.
I hope that helps somebody out there and I'm happy to answer any questions if I can.
