We got home from our trip last night and have had some time now to digest everything and try to make sense of it all. We stayed at BLT from 12/4-12/10 on our DVC points. The hotel was wonderful and we had a spectacular view with fireworks right outside our balcony every night. Staff was wonderful all around. We did all 4 parks, and this is not our first time staying this time of year. We've been doing this week in December yearly since 2014 though we skipped 2020.
I do not recognize the hot mess WDW has become. I've never felt so lost and disconnected. It made me so incredibly sad. We had been so looking forward to this trip...2 years since our last visit (same week in 2019).
The crowds are mind boggling. I felt like salmon swimming upstream every single day. Main Street was always a log jam of humanity all day every day. I gather there is pent up demand driving people (like me) to the parks, but these crowds were off the chain. People are not paying attention, just stopping dead in their tracks causing a pile up behind them and angry (someone thought I cut them in line at one point and I though fists were going to fly) There are people who are clearly SICK, hacking, coughing, sneezing everywhere. There was literally nowhere to go in the parks to escape the crush.
EPCOT is a shell of itself. Construction-wall land. I felt like a rat in a maze. It's a total joke...an unfunny and mean joke.
Early park entry was a mean joke too. CM's and park literature telling everyone the park opens 30 min prior to official opening and you get there to find out the park actually opened an HOUR before.
The parks were filthy. The bathrooms a nightmare. The streets covered with dirty masks, bits of trash and leaves. I didn't see a single custodial CM all week sweeping or picking up trash or even drawing a Mickey head on the cement.
Genie+ is an absolute shame. SHAME on Disney for foisting this disaster on us. If I may borrow a line from Mushu...DISHONOR! DISHONOR ON YOU...DISHONOR ON YOUR COW! What a bloated, buggy, bait-and-switchy pile of garbage. Having to wake up before 7am every single day of your vacation is ridiculous. Then having to hope you have the fastest fingers right at 7am to even GET a LL (regular or individual) for the popular attractions is ridiculous. The app crashes, it logs you out, it sends error codes, and my favorite, it switches the time you think you're booking right when you click to finalize the transaction EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Every LL I booked, the time changed after I clicked the finalize the choice. Sometimes by 20 min...often by hours. And there was so precious little to choose from. With FP+ I was able to get 8-10 FP a day and reride favorites. I literally grabbed a LL for BARNSTORMER because it was all that was available, one evening. And part of me died inside because of it.
Enchanted broke while we were there. Yep...the nighttime "spectacular" broke. No projections on Main Street. Just a bright white spot light above the confectionary blaring down on us. The show is nowhere near what HEA was.
We did enjoy Harmonious. It was very vibrant and kinetic. And we had wonderful meals (Steakhouse 71 was fabulous).
I actually started to have a panic attack one night at MK when we went to ride Astro-Orbiter during the fireworks and the CM insisted DH and I ride in 1 rocket. He's 6' (and had a total knee replacement so can't bend his one knee very well) and I'm 5'8"....had we tried to cram us both into the one rocket they would have had to cut us out. I finally walked away and let DH ride while the CM's offered to let me ride by myself on the next ride, but at that point I was so disgusted with everything...the crowds, Genie+, LL, I just wanted to go back to our room.
I will adjust our expectations (i.e..lower them) immensely for our upcoming 2022 trips. We used our DVC points so they are already booked and we have AP's, otherwise we'd be considering Universal. But I don't recognize this version of WDW and I don't like it at all.