We were at the parks in mid-October. I’m not going to report our entire experience, as I feel other people have conveyed that already. I just wanted to comment on two things:
1) We are not rope-drop people. Never have managed to make it to the parks before they opened. After reading reports here, we got to the gates of MK ~45 minutes before announced park open. I can’t stress how much it was worth it. I can’t imagine what our day would have looked like without it (we felt that we did everything we wanted to, and we took a 4 hour break mid-day to go back to the Poly and enjoy the pool). Non-rope-drop people: getting there early IS worth it right now!
2) Unpopular opinion around here, but we love Liberty Tree Tavern. We had a lunch reservation there, which we were excited about. When we arrived, we were told that we were being seated next door at the Diamond Horseshoe, but we’d receive the same meal/service as we would have at LTT. We were frustrated, as we enjoy the theming of LTT (I know, I know, unpopular opinion), and I would have appreciated some heads-up in advance since we had a reservation.
I asked if we could wait for a table inside LTT - they said we could, but they didn’t know how long it would take and guessed it may be “up to an hour.” Obviously we didn’t want to wait that long, so we just went with the overflow seating at Diamond Horseshoe. It felt like eating at a quick service. In retrospect, I wish I would have pushed harder.
Also - for the first time ever - I left LTT hungry! It was so strange. The portions that were brought out for the four of us were less than what we normally get when there are just two of us. I hate food waste, so I’d prefer they do things this way and then add more of what you want, but we were never asked if we wanted more of anything (if this were our first time there, I wouldn’t have known I could have more). After our plates and the serving plates had been empty for some time (20+ minutes), our server came by and tried to clear them. I stopped him and asked him for more of certain dishes, which they brought small portions of. Again, in retrospect, I should have said something, but we’d been there for so long at that point we just wanted to go.
Just wanted to share that as I haven’t seen it shared anywhere else, and I would have liked to have known it may be a possibility before we went!
I do have all of our actual wait times vs. posted wait times if anyone’s interested, but like most that are posted, the trend is basically: actual wait times are generally less than posted wait times (unless you’re in line during a cleaning cycle).
. Hope we all get to keep our reservations.
