Tag: disney world

More Questions Than Answers.

by mkingdon, posted in Walt Disney World

Another week gone and another week of seemingly endless posts on Facebook WDW groups of crowds that look biblical in proportion. Sure, it’s Spring Break, and for balance, there were some posts and blog posts about a really quiet week in the parks last month but overall, I have to say I am very trepidacious about our trip in October.

Nothing ruins a trip like overly busy parks and not being able to get on anything.

Having been out of the loop park-wise for some time, or at least it feels like I have, what is going on?

Is it social media over-egging the issue? Are we still in some kind of post-pandemic bounce back or have we reached a point where the existing parks just cannot accommodate the number of guests attending? Are there actually more guests and Genie+ (or some other factor) is playing a part in creating longer lines from that same number?

A minute’s worth of research suggests that the latter or something like it may be the case.

Thanks to queue-times.com for the graph.

Pre-pandemic attendance at MK was higher and this is replicated at all four parks, with only DHS almost back to pre-Covid attendance. Of course, we don’t yet have 2023 or 2024 data so that may show a sudden spike?

Are there still shortages of CMs? Are there other factors I am not considering (there definitely will be!).

So what is going so wrong in the parks that wait times of over an hour for most rides are the norm? Do Disney care? Is that bad for business or not?

I recognise I am asking lots of questions and not many answers. My opinion is tainted by my hatred of Genie+ I guess. Sure, I really resent the extra money it requires but it just doesn’t look to be working as well as the old system. We’ve had good days using it, with an afternoon/evening stacked with ride after ride despite the park being busy but is that causing a lot of pain in the standby lines? Why aren’t Disney offering virtual queues for all rides and attractions so guests can be free to roam the park spending money?

There has been a clamour for a fifth gate for almost as long as I can remember and with Universal taking the bull by the horns and opening new stuff, are we at a point where Disney need to or will respond?

Will they be reluctant to do so when seemingly at war with the state governor who seems to be intent on biting the hand that feeds him?

If overall attendance is still not back to 2019 levels will they want to create a fifth park or just continue to expand what they have? There has been talk of a significant MK expansion recently.

As well as offering more capacity it would also deliver a draw to get guests to return. Nothing mobilises the Disney faithful like a new thing. There are four-hour queues for a popcorn bucket. Add to that the benefit to guests of spreading themselves out over five parks and not four, and the whole experience may improve and return visits would increase perhaps.

If nothing else, the Disney vlogging community would definitely thank them!

Of course, that new park brings a lot of investment and cost to build and run it but I suspect Disney are not short of a few bob.

As we are now some 30 years since WDW opened a new park it feels like time to do so, and as ever the healthy competition of Universal being in Florida and doing just that may be the catalyst for Disney to finally announce this.

As you know, I have a direct line to Bob Iger, so I will be passing on my thoughts to him via this post. He is always the first to read them as you know.

Ultimately, I am looking to be reassured that we won’t be pissing away thousands of quid in October to stare at the app and not see a wait time under 90 minutes. If Bob could pull his finger out and announce and build that fifth gate by then that would be lovely.

Till the next time….

The Getting Layed In Orlando Tour 2023 – Day Seven Sunday 19th November

by mkingdon, posted in The Getting Layed In Orlando Tour

I’m sure you’ll agree that as nice as it has been thus far to be away and in Orlando, this trip has a feeling of taking a while to get going, certainly as far as actually doing what we came here to do. You can’t control the weather I guess. Similarly, as day seven arrives, I can finally start to make some sense of the title of this trip report for you. That is what is called a teaser. Well, I have to do something to encourage you to read this guff.

We awoke around 9am following our wild late night last night! We made it to breakfast before it closed and were heartened to see the weather looking very good. It was noticeable that breakfast and the hotel in general were much busier on a weekend. It wasn’t unpleasant in any way, just noticeable.

After breakfast, we needed to nip out to Target as I needed a new book to read. Now, nobody just “nips” to Target of course, and it was lunchtime by the time we got back to the pool.

Feast your eyes on this….

You will understand that we did not move from our sun beds, appreciating the weather and reading.

In an attempt to stay out beyond 10pm tonight, the plan was to skip lunch and eat an early dinner so we did not immediately crave bed as soon as the food hit our stomachs. We aren’t animals so I went to the shop and got us some snacks to keep us going.

Louise, as she would now for pretty much the rest of the trip had a packet of Lays for lunch. I know the reveal wasn’t worth the build-up, but when I thought back on this trip when dreaming up a title, I didn’t want to use one that bemoaned the crap weather and the other thing which stuck in my mind was our crisp-based lunches by the pool.

Having enjoyed an afternoon of cloudless skies and temperatures in the mid-70s, we retired to our room at around 4.30pm to get ready for our early dinner. We still didn’t leave the room till 6 after the usual sixty minutes of hair dryer use by Louise.

Tonight’s dining choice was Romano’s Macaroni Grill. A stalwart of our trips over the years and often one not known about by many. This proved to be tragically true as we drove up to it. All the lights and signage were off and it looked as if it had shut down for good. We were genuinely gutted.

We assessed the nearby options and opted for Bahama Breeze, not least because it was five minutes away.

We were seated immediately with it being 6.20pm and started with a Spinach and Artichoke Dip, a Bud Light, and a red wine.

I don’t drink much/often so tonight’s beer had to be recorded. There would be a good many more to follow as our plans for later involved Jellyrolls if we could stay awake.

Louise, as ever had the Jerk Chicken Pasta…

and I, after much consideration, opted for the ribs, despite the fact that the calorific value was pretty much the highest of any item on the menu.

Both were tremendous.

We declined dessert, paid the $100 bill, including the tip, and drove back to the hotel. A Lyft was summoned and I nipped up to the room to get some actual cash for the requesting of songs at Jellyrolls.

We were soon dropped off at the Boardwalk and got into Jellyrolls around 8.30pm.

At that time there were still a few empty tables, so we claimed one, ordered some drinks, and received our bottomless popcorn.

We had four excellent performers and felt lucky to have been able to watch them. Our fave was Michael, and here he is performing a classic….

We had a few requests played, trying to not request the stuff everyone else does like Billy Joel, Elton John and the like. We went for One Week by Bare Naked Ladies and That Thing You Do.

We sent a few videos to Emily who was up at 4am UK time due to a snoring boyfriend and dog and she was enjoying it all with us, despite being 4,000 miles away.

We stayed for a long time and drank too much. The place really filled up as it got later (those two videos were taken within half an hour of us arriving) and much of the crowd tonight seemed to be young cast members. Many Disney songs were requested and played and when Circle Of Life was playing it became obvious that many of the CMs were from the Lion King show at Animal Kingdom as we got a performance of the dance routine!

With things now being very crowded and rowdy as drunk youngsters were constantly dancing about three centimetres from our table, we left at around 1am.

I don’t know how much we had to drink if I am honest, but it could have funded another holiday. But, we had a really good night and we would return.

We made our way back to the Boardwalk and waited about ten minutes for our Lyft to arrive. Our driver was called Gaston, from Chile. He was an engineer by trade, working for Lyft at night to raise the funds to get his family over.

I don’t remember everything he said but Chile sounds like a scary place to live and no place for his two young kids.

We tipped him well and fell into bed just before 2am like the wild crazy kids we are.

Till the next time…..

The Adults Only Tour 2015 – Day Seven

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Walt Disney World

Day Seven – 2nd September

Not only was I awake again at 6.30am, full of snot and loathing for my own body, I was tackling some work emails too. My inability to switch off from work was probably the reason that I had been cursed with illness on my holidays. I only had myself to blame. Nobody likes a kiss ass.

It was only another two hours and ten minutes until everyone was ready to leave. We left the villa for Hollywood Studios at 8.40, yes, it goes without saying, about twenty minutes later than I might have liked to.

It took us that same twenty minutes to get there and park up in Stage 46. We boarded a waiting tram and headed for a day of fun.

I really have no idea why I felt the need to take that last photo.

Today we had two early Fastpasses booked quite close together, so with us running a little behind (my) schedule I was a little stressed and concerned that our first one, Toy Story Mania, would take too long to do and we’d miss our second.

With that in mind I pushed the pace as we made our way into the park.

Still, I had the time and skills to take superb theme park photography on the way.

I know you are impressed with those masterpieces and you are welcome to use them but please, make sure you credit me!

We got to Toy Story at 9.40 and my fears were unfounded. Unlike previous years the FastPass line was, well, Fast and we didn’t have any wait at all. Naturally, I won, easily with a fairly respectable score of 146,000. Everyone else’s score was so far short of that sort of awesomeness that I did not even bother to record it in my notes.

Having triumphed with my fast-moving wrist action, I felt the need to replenish my energy levels and we stopped at a coffee caravan (honestly, it was) for drinks and some of us had a Danish. I’ll leave you to guess whether I had one or not.

We sat outside One Man’s Dream whilst taking calories on board before going in for a quick look around.

We couldn’t stay for the film, which was a shame, as I always enjoy it. We had to leave to get to our next FastPass appointment, this time with Ariel. It was a little odd that upon arriving at our FastPass time of 10.30, we found the next show didn’t start for twenty minutes. As the park didn’t look busy, rather than stand in the pre-show area for that length of time we decided to have a wander around the gift shop instead. Thankfully after just a few minutes we heard music coming from around the corner which turned out to be what I have cleverly captured in my notes as “The Frozen Thing”. We walked over and took up a spot to watch that.

Ah, that’s what it was called….

I tried to Periscope this but the WiFi connection was bobbins and it kept bombing out.

With perfect timing, as this ended we wandered into Ariel and took our seats just as the next show was starting. We were sat on the far right which meant the sound wasn’t the best for this show, but it was as great as ever.

In an unusual twist, the ending seemed to have changed to one where Eric was mauled to death by an Old English Sheepdog.

We left the police to clear up the mess and made our way up to the Great Movie Ride. Louise had a weird leaky eye thing going on so she missed the ride to sort that which allowed me to take photos of a nicely trimmed bush.

We ended up waiting almost twenty-five minutes but it did give us a chance to see the new sequence of film clips. Seeing new things like this always brings mixed emotions. Of course, seeing rides updated and refurbished is great but then you automatically pine for the old stuff and feel sad that it will never be the same again. Or is that just me?

The ride itself isn’t that different once it gets going but Richard Attenborough seems to have returned from the dead to appear in one scene.

It was now time for our third FastPass at the Tower of Terror so we walked over there. Nana wasn’t feeling great today so she declined to ride, instead browsing the shops and carrying everyone’s bags. It is always upsetting to see a small standby queue when you have a FastPass as it restricts one’s ability to gloat. We made the most of sweeping majestically past the ten minute queue.

This is one of my favourite rides. The theming is probably the best on Disney property and the ride itself, now it has the random drop sequences, is just great fun.

The obvious destination after this was Rock n Rollercoaster, where we saw a twenty-minute standby time posted. We were even more delighted to see that this was nonsense and we walked on, straight into the studio pre-show.

This is another superb ride, so good that everyone except Grandad rode again straight away.

It’s the law that this photo must be taken.

We then made the long trek across to Star Tours. The trek was so long that by the time we got there we wanted feeding again so we popped into the Backlot Xpress counter service place next door. We had –

Rebecca, Sarah and Louise – Hot Dog

Me – Chicken Salad

Nana – Burger

Grandad – Chicken Nuggets

We rode Star Tours with full bellies and we got the Darth Vader story. I say that assuming that what I have heard is true and there are a number of options to experience.

After a brief look around the Star Wars gift shop we turned left towards the Muppets.

This too had a small change in the pre-show with the “Evil Kermit” from the most recent film making an appearance. Having not seen that film, it just made it a bit weird. After seeing this show more times than I can remember it was lovely to see and hear Sarah laughing out loud as a first timer.

In what was turning into an excellent theme park day, in terms of the amount of stuff we were getting done, next we trekked all the way back across the park to catch the 3pm Beauty and The Beast show.

It was incredibly hot by now and I lost about a stone in sweat as the show progressed.

It was now time to go and pick Emily up after her work meetings this morning. It was no bad thing as the heat was making the whole theme park thing hard work now.

We drove to The Commons, only to find once connected to their WiFi that Emily was stuck in meetings still, so we decided to drive back to our villa and come back for her once we were all showered and changed.

That turned out to be around 6.30, and with another stop at The Commons to collect a daughter, we then drove on to Kidani Village for our reservation at Sanaa. We self-parked (of course) and made the quite long stroll into reception.

Not surprisingly it is a mini version of Animal Kingdom Lodge. We watched some of the animals from a balcony for a little while, enjoying the place very much.

We checked in at Sanaa and had a ten minute wait for our table. We viewed the extensive menus but the appetiser had been a done deal for months….

One of the main reasons we had booked this restaurant was for the Naan bread appetiser…

I know it looks good on those photos, but there is no camera on the planet that can capture it’s awesomeness. It was incredible.

We then continued with –

Me – Tandoori Chicken

Grandad, Emily, Rebecca and Sarah – Butter Chicken

Nana – Butter Chicken with Steak

Louise – Butter Chicken with Lamb

I took a few photos, but alas, I can’t remember which is which….

Safe to say that everyone was very happy with their choices. Fuller than we had any right to be, we went for it and ordered dessert too.

 

With plenty of wine, beer and soft drinks the bill was $365.

Frankly, unable to make it all the way to the car in one go, we sat in a lounge off reception for a little while giving our body’s time to adjust to their new weights. Once able we walked, slowly, back to the car, dropped Emily off and headed for home. Having learned nothing from previous visits we stopped at Publix to be reminded that it closes at 10pm. We were in bed twenty minutes later.

Till the next time…..