Unexpected News! Discovering you’re Expecting while at Disney World-- A June 2014 trip report

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 4 - June 17, 2014
PART TWO - HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

I’ve been to Walt Disney World 11 times. I’ve seen it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And let me tell you: on June 17, 2014, it got ugly.

Let me just back up and set the scene for you: 1) I’m obsessed with Fantasmic. 2) Disney now offers a Fantasmic FP+, providing you a window to enter the amphitheater moments before the show begins, so that you don’t have to sit for hours before it starts in order to get a seat in the middle. 3) If you elect to use one of your 3 allotted daily FP+s on Fantasmic, you’re basically not going to get to use any additional FPs that day, since Fantasmic is way at the end of the day. You get your three, and that’s it. This is what we knew going in.

Anyway, so we entered the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater at 8:25, when our FP+ window to enter the theater began. They were hardly checking for FPs, because guess what? The FP was completely, 100% useless. We were actually shoved in with the standbys. We went from being VIPs, to being latecomers to the 9:00 showing of Fantasmic on a busy day at the park. Oh sure: we were guaranteed a seat. Yeah, over in the corner, which is the only place where there were any available seats left, with only 30 minutes until showtime.

Gloves off.

I’ve never really gotten pissed off at Walt Disney World before. Until that moment. (Okay, there was *one* other time, and it was during Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween party when me and Ashley were almost trampled by about 100 Brazilian children, before the parade, when some brilliant cast member got the idea to throw out a bunch of candy onto the street). This was nothing like it though. This felt like deliberate trickery. This felt like villainy. This felt like something not even Sorcerer Mickey himself could defeat.

So we went and talked to one of the cast members and explained the situation. She pretty much understood our complaint. Hmmm… I guess we weren’t the first people to point out the fault in the Fantasmic Fastpass? She told us to go to Guest Relations and see what they could do, and also to come back to the 10:30 showing and we’d probably get good seats, no problem. Yeah we know that! We aren’t stupid! We know the 10:30 show is usually empty!

So we stormed down to Guest Relations, and the cast member there listened to our story, and gave us the same line that he probably has to give to everybody else, about how the FP+ for Fantasmic doesn’t assure you’ll get a *good* seat, just that you won’t be *standing.* That solved pretty much nothing. By this point, I was so upset; not because we wouldn’t be seeing the 9:00 showing of Fantasmic, but that their system was flawed. I hold Disney to a much higher standard, and to see them so foolishly try and instill a FastPass for the attraction I’m obsessed with and have it go wrong… that’s just EVIL.

As compensation, because we’d wasted a days worth of FastPasses, he gave us a magic Fastpass that we could use immediately, for any attraction. I guess that’s fair, but that didn’t repair the damage. We were still angry.

So we took our magic Fastpass over to Toy Story Midway Mania, of course:

Here we are looking angry in the line to Toy Story: (Mrs. Potato Head packed an extra pair of “angry eyes” for us today, thankfully)...

Ashley beat me at Toy Story Midway Mania, although it was pretty close:

Neither of our minds were on the ride though. We were both still ticked off about the Fantasmic mess.

By the time that was over, we still had a little bit of time to kill before the 10:30 showing of Fantasmic. We did manage to have some Photopass pictures taken of us, trying to look happy, on Hollywood and Sunset Blvds:

Ashley also found her favorite Disney character, multiplied, in the Villains store on Sunset Blvd:

When the late showing of Fantasmic came on, we did manage to get seats in the middle, no problem, because of course hardly anybody was there for the second showing...

Mickey was at the top of the mountain at the end. It all ended up okay. But STILL… Grrr… We didn’t even take any pictures of it… we were just peeved by this point.

Not too happy on our drive home to Art of Animation that night. But we'd have to cheer up quickly because the next day was our 8th wedding anniversary! And what better place to spend a magical day than at Magic Kingdom, right?

To be continued...

 

[BellaBaby]

BOO!! So sorry to hear about the lousy Fantasmic FP+ experience!! Glad you were able to voice your complaint with GR tho and get the magic FP+ if nothing else…

Hope the next day at MK is better!!

 

[cindianne320]

I am so sorry about the FP+ viewing area not working. I hope Disney fixes this.

We DO almost have the same anniversary- we were married on 6-17-06

I hope you had a great day at Magic Kingdom!

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

BOO!! So sorry to hear about the lousy Fantasmic FP+ experience!! Glad you were able to voice your complaint with GR tho and get the magic FP+ if nothing else…
Hope the next day at MK is better!!

We should have known better. That's what you get for being obsessed with something!

I am so sorry about the FP+ viewing area not working. I hope Disney fixes this.

We DO almost have the same anniversary- we were married on 6-17-06

I hope you had a great day at Magic Kingdom!

We would have been married on 6-17-06 if the venue we'd wanted had been available. As a result we were married on a Sunday, which happened to be Father's Day that year.

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 5 - June 18, 2014
PART ONE - MAGIC KINGDOM

We tried to forget about the Fantasmic FastPass nightmare from the day before, but we were a little hesitant because we’d gone and booked all three of our FP+s for the Magic Kingdom that day on entertainment: 1) seating for the brand new 3 o’clock parade inside the hub, 2) seating for the second Electrical Parade inside the hub, and 3) seating for Wishes fireworks inside the Rose Garden. Again, we were limited to just those 3 FPs, since two of them were late in the evening. We’d be going into Magic Kingdom only able to ride the rides on standby that day.

Today was our eighth wedding anniversary, and what better place to spend it than the Magic Kingdom? That’s right--no place is better than the Magic Kingdom, PERIOD, even if we do have to ride everything on standby. No big deal!

We ended up getting a late start, but weren’t worried, because as I mentioned, our first FP wasn’t until the 3:00 parade. Festival of Fantasy was pretty new still, and Ashley was particularly excited because it was supposed to have a dedicated Frozen section to it.

We managed to just sneak into the food court as breakfast was wrapping up, before driving to Magic Kingdom:

Tram selfie:

Through the Contemporary on the Monorail:

Showing up at Magic Kingdom around noon--not so smart. Not only was it insanely hot already, but it was majorly crowded all over the place. We stopped by City Hall to get our free Anniversary buttons, and since we were having to ride standby for all rides that day, we tried to plan out what to do.

First we had some nice pics in front of the castle:

Our old “standby” standby, Pirates, had an hour wait. The line literally went into Frontierland... I’ve never seen it that bad, even at Christmas!

What do we do? I KNOW! What’s another lame attraction that NEVER has a line?

This wonderful attraction:

YES!

THERE WAS……… BLOOD ON THE SADDLE!

I never really understood the appeal of this attraction until I moved to Kentucky about 10 years ago. It makes a lot of sense to me now. It's one of Ashley's favorites.

Okay… hmmm… still some time to kill before the 3:00 parade.

HALL OF PRESIDENTS (no pics, sorry!)

(No shame!)

After the Hall of Presidents ended, it had cooled down and gotten a little cloudy. It turns out that wasn’t going to last, though. Ashley had to text her sister about something, so we sat down behind Sleepy Hollow for a while so she could be on her phone. Again it was a fun time to just mellow out and do some people-watching. The castle show was happening in the background: the one where Donald is generally grumpy and the others spend a good 30 minutes trying to cheer his grumpy butt up (I love Donald), and this lady walks by with a seeing-eye dog and a cane, being dragged by her son, and the son is going “Look mom there’s Goofy!” and the mom says, “Honey, you know I can’t see him, but I know he’s there!” I just about cried…

Finally, once the others got Donald all cheered up, we made our across the bridge to the hub on Main Street:

They had the FP area roped off. We’d done the FP for the Electrical Parade before, so we knew this would be okay. The problem was: the Hub, in June, at 3:00, might as well be NEXT TO HELL in terms of how hot it is.

Well, poor Ashley had been a trooper up until this point. Getting over a respiratory infection. Traveling nonstop for over a week since we’d booked back-to-back vacations first to Canada and then to Florida, and finding out she’s freaking PREGNANT a few days earlier. But my poor dear wife of 8 years was starting to melt away! Literally fading right in front of me! What does a man do!?

“GET ME SOMETHING TO DRINK!” (I don’t know why I typed that all in caps. She practically whispered it, she was so close to dying...) So I run to Casey’s Corner, and remember, the 3:00 parade is about to start, so Main Street is PACKED. I go in and order two large drinks, snack credits on the Quick Service dining plan, and then they pretty much FORGOT about me for about five minutes. Five minutes is not a long time. I’m a patient man! But my wife is DYING IN THE TRENCHES!

*Sigh*. Finally got Ashley her drink, and she perked up a bit for the parade. Now I love sitting in the front row for the parades. But this one? The floats were HUGE! You could hardly see anything! Here’s what we managed to get of the Frozen float, which apparently had Anna and Elsa on board (somewhere):

If you look closely, you can actually see Anna’s hand sticking out from behind those roses. Yay!...

At least my Flynn Ryder-obsessed fan-girl wife got to see her man for a few seconds, though. Yeah… ON OUR ANNIVERSARY no less. I managed to snap this picture of him, pointing down at us (her):

Here are some of the other highlights from the parade:

One thing that we did get, was sunburnt. Thanks Elsa… could have used you again, there, dear. That cloud-deal you did for Olaf at the end of the movie so he’d never melt? That could work okay on the people who sit in 100 degree weather to watch your parade...

One of the reasons Ashley was fading, aside from that laundry list of reasons I already gave you, was because we didn’t bother eating lunch. Put up your hand if you sometimes forget to eat a meal at Disney World because you’re too obsessed doing other things??

Yeah… pretty much everybody at some point.

Off to Cosmic Rays, the closest major Quick Service restaurant at our disposal. At Cosmic Rays, it was crowded and loud as always. Not my favorite place to eat, but they have lots of different food choices at least. We sat close to one of the phone chargers they’d installed at Cosmic Ray’s, and Ashley and I watched people trying to figure out how those things worked. Leave your phone behind at your own peril, I guess!

Then, to top off what had so far been a pretty stressful day, I spilled gelato all over myself…

That was the final straw. Back to the hotel.

It was getting stormy at the Ticket & Transportation Center:

Time for a break..

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

[SweetSerenity]

I'm jumping in! Belated congratulations on the little one! Thanks for sharing the pictures of The Little Mermaid rooms. That's the first Disney movie I remember seeing in theaters; it's one of my favorites. Looking forward to reading the rest.

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

I'm jumping in! Belated congratulations on the little one! Thanks for sharing the pictures of The Little Mermaid rooms. That's the first Disney movie I remember seeing in theaters; it's one of my favorites. Looking forward to reading the rest.

Thanks! We loved Art of Animation! Glad to have you aboard.

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 5 - June 18, 2014
PART TWO - MAGIC KINGDOM


So we made it back to the hotel after a really hot afternoon at Magic Kingdom. Ashley literally crashed on the bed:

Quiet time was definitely needed. I read for a few hours and just relaxed. We had to be back at Magic Kingdom by 8:30 for our dinner reservation, so we had lots of time.

So far if you’re following, things had been going a little sideways for us ever since the Fantasmic Nightmare from the day before. Both of us were just tired, hot, and a little annoyed with how things had been going. The 3:00 parade was totally our own fault: we both knew that it would be insane to try and watch that thing, especially on the hub where there’s no shade, but it was a new parade and we were willing to risk it. But with things being the way they were, it didn’t help matters at all.

Eventually we got ready to make our way back to MK for the evening. On our way back to the Magic Kingdom, it was almost sundown:

We pretty much could park wherever we could find an available spot; which ended up being in Zurg on the Villains side. If you’re familiar with the layout, Zurg is pretty close to the Transportation and Ticket Center. We could have walked. But they were still running trams. One of the trams stopped the other way (dropping people off and going towards the rest of the villains parking lots), and the tram attendant wouldn’t let us get on. She told us that it would be quicker for us to walk. She should have taken a closer look at my wife. We weren’t going to walk; we wanted on that tram! Eventually we did get on the tram, on its way back, and the attendant tried to explain it to us a second time, that we really could have walked. I’m sorry, but if you’re still running trams back and forth from the parking lot to the T&TC, then you should be courteous, not insulting our intelligence. Of course we knew we could have walked! It’s Disney World. You can literally walk everywhere! That doesn’t mean you have to!

The sun was starting to set at Magic Kingdom:

Our dinner reservation was for 8:30 at the Crystal Palace.

Ashley had never eaten there before and so she was a little worried that she wouldn’t like it. I had tried to get us a reservation at Cinderella’s Royal Table, but wasn’t able to get one for that day. We’ve eaten at the castle before, so this would be new, and I figured it’d be okay. We both ended up liking the Crystal Palace a lot, actually. The food was pretty good, and it was a buffet so there were lots of choices. Plus meeting the Pooh characters was something we hadn’t done too often before.

Tigger was a lot of fun. He actually visited us twice; once at the beginning, and once before we left. Our server gave us a picture of the four Pooh characters for our anniversary, and Tigger was able to sign it before we left.

Here are some pics from our meal:

One of the servers made Piglet cry. He was walking by and the server made a grunting noise, basically suggesting that Piglet was going to be on the menu if he was not careful. I gave Piglet a big hug to calm him down. It was a very nice, memorable meal.

The first showing of the Electrical Parade was on in the background. Main Street was a crowded, insane mess like it always is during the first parade. We took our time with dinner, and then headed down Main Street to the Rose Garden for the fireworks.

We’d done the FP+ in the Rose Garden during our last trip, and I would recommend doing this if you get the opportunity. The view of the fireworks isn’t the greatest, but to relax in the grass is a very nice thing.

My favorite part is when Tinker Bell literally flies right above you. You can’t beat that.

Following Wishes, we went back to the Hub for the second Electrical Parade, and also to watch the Memories and Magic show on the castle. Frozen has been added to the show:

It wasn’t too busy and we might not have needed a FP+ for this, but we were satisfied. We’d already seen the parade a few nights ago but we really enjoy it in front of the castle: the most magical place on Earth (as long as it’s not 3:00 in the afternoon during the summer…). It’s always nice to get pictures of the parade with the castle in the background:

Following the parade, we just decided to chill out and have a frozen lemonade at the Cheshire Cafe. We’d wanted to go on the Jungle Cruise and Pirates earlier in the day when it was insane, and we knew there’d be no wait for either one of them now that the second parade was over.

I’m not a big fan of the Jungle Cruise. We hadn’t been on it in several trips, so it was time to see if we still don’t like it. It’s kind of neat to ride it at night, but harder to see any of the animals.

After going on Pirates, we headed back towards Main Street and had a few Photopass pictures taken:

We made our way back to the hotel and got home around 2:00. We ended up having a pretty nice anniversary evening, with dinner at the Crystal Palace, the fireworks, and the parade. Things were starting to look up for the rest of our vacation.

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 6 - June 19, 2014
PART ONE - ANIMAL KINGDOM

This was another “Epcot Hot” kind of day: Animal Kingdom + Epcot = a ton of walking. All of our FP+s for the day were earlier than we were used to having them. We weren’t planning on spending the entire day at Animal Kingdom, so we had to get up a little earlier than we would have liked to so we could get everything done that we wanted to do at Animal Kingdom. It also meant we had to skip breakfast.

More tram drama: if yesterday’s drama about the tram not wanting to pick us up at the Zurg parking lot was annoying, this was even worse: no trams were even running! We had to walk into Animal Kingdom from the parking lot. I know that no matter what, there is a lot of walking to be done at AK, but come on… Especially when we had an FP+ that was soon going to expire in like ten minutes…

First we had to get a pic in front of the sign though:

Also, we had to stop because Divine was in ‘da house!:

Anyway, we *just* made it to Dinosaur in time for our FP+. I’m not sure if they’re still offering a 15 minute grace period or not, but luckily we didn’t have to find out. We got there at exactly 11:40, the minute our FPs expired.

I kind of like Dinosaur. It’s a dark, bouncing mess; but it’s kind of fun nonetheless.

Here’s our picture from the ride, where I’m exaggerating my fear of the carnotaurus. Or am I??

For lunch, we bravely tried our chances at Restorauntosaurus. We normally don’t eat lunch here right at 12:00 when it’s a crowded mess. We try to eat here later in the day. But we’d skipped breakfast, so we needed lunch pronto, bronto!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood in line to order food at Restorauntosaurus and there are drunks in the line behind me. I wish AK didn’t serve alcohol at the Quick Service locations. I understand it in the other two parks (Epcot, where you literally can drink around the world, and DHS, which is a ‘grown up’s’ park; but AK still seems like it should be more of a family friendly park like MK. Just my opinion.)

Once we finally found a table it calmed down a bit, and finally having food in our bellies, we were set for the rest of the day.

Next up was our FP+ for Expedition Everest:

Usually we would try to ride Everest several times in a row, which is fairly easy to do if you get to the park early enough. With FP+ it ended up being a one-ride trip. But Ashley figured once was probably enough, due to her pregnancy; although it is her favorite ride at Walt Disney World.

Afterwards we made our way to Finding Nemo: The Musical. We had our third FP+ for this. It wasn’t really necessary to have one, but Ashley loves Finding Nemo: The Musical almost as much as I love Fantasmic, so she wanted to feel secure about getting a good seat. We ended up sitting down at the bottom right next to the part of the stage that extends.

We’ve always loved Finding Nemo: The Musical. Most people probably don’t realize that the music for it was written by Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who of course went on to later do the amazing, unforgettable, award-winning music for Frozen. Some real catchy songs in Finding Nemo: “In the Big Blue World,” “Just Keep Swimming,” “Go with the FLOOOW.”

We were pretty much done with AK at this point. No need to walk all the way over to Africa. I kind of wanted to do Festival of the Lion King, but not badly enough. Instead we bought some pins at Island Mercantile on the way out. They had a really neat Lion King set of puzzle pins that we started collecting:

Here are some photopass pics we got in front of the Tree:

Tram selfie on the way back to the parking lot:

Then we pretty much got in our car and hopped over to Epcot for the evening. Man, is it Day 6 of our vacation and we are just *now* using our Park Hopper? Wow… Thanks FP+ for keeping people in the same parks all day long!

To be continued…

 

[irene_dsc]

Congrats! Sorry to hear about the Fantasmic issues. I hate when I plan something like that, and it endsup working against you. Glad you finally got back on track, however.

 

[vacantsea]

This year we decided not to add a park hopper option right away. Instead, we got 5 day base tickets and before we head out on our last day we're going to upgrade to park hopper. We did this the first year we went to WDW and I liked that better than last year where we had park hopper from the start.

 

[squeegee]

This year we decided not to add a park hopper option right away. Instead, we got 5 day base tickets and before we head out on our last day we're going to upgrade to park hopper. We did this the first year we went to WDW and I liked that better than last year where we had park hopper from the start.

Is the price to upgrade less if you do it later on? What's the benefit to not doing it from the beginning?

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Congrats! Sorry to hear about the Fantasmic issues. I hate when I plan something like that, and it endsup working against you. Glad you finally got back on track, however.

Thanks for the congrats! Our little one is almost four months old now. I'll be posting more information about it at the end of the TR.

This year we decided not to add a park hopper option right away. Instead, we got 5 day base tickets and before we head out on our last day we're going to upgrade to park hopper. We did this the first year we went to WDW and I liked that better than last year where we had park hopper from the start.

The FastPass+ really messed with our Hopper, for sure. At the time you could only book your three FPs for one park to start out, so that really limited where we could go since we aren't "rope drop" people. Aside from our Animal Kingdom/Epcot day, we only hopped one other day. I think your plan makes good sense if you're only going to hop once or twice, just add that at the end of the trip!

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 6 - June 19, 2014
PART TWO - EPCOT

After spending the afternoon at Animal Kingdom, we made our way to Epcot for the evening!

With no FPs in our arsenal, and no chance to add anything 'good' like Soarin' or Test Track so late in the day, we figured we’d just wander around and enjoy Epcot for being Epcot. Sometimes I just love to walk around Epcot just because it’s such an amazing place.

Then Ashley got an idea. We could try getting as many pictures with characters as we possibly could, just for fun, and also since we had Memory Maker. So that’s what we did. First up, we found two photopass photographers set up in front of the ball who competed for our business. So we ended up letting them both take our picture:

Next, we decided to head to Innoventions for another Chase Disney Visa photo opp. Last time we’d met Minnie and Pluto, so we were curious who’d be there today. First though, we noticed no line for Spaceship Earth, so we went on that real quick, so we could “thank the Phoenicians” for inventing the alphabet, among other things:

Ball selfie:

Aren’t we cool?

After a quick stop at the pin hut, we went to Innoventions. The wait for the Disney Visa photo opp wasn’t nearly as long as it had been the first time. Inside, to our surprise, we found Mickey and Goofy! Pretty cool.

We’d already met Mickey twice on the trip: once on our first day at the Town Square Theater when he tried to kidnap my wife, and the second time as Farmer Mickey, during dinner at the Garden Grill. This was the third time. He only tried to kidnap my wife that first time, for the record.

Innoventions has air conditioning! *Smiles*

We decided to stick around! The regular Character Spot inside Innoventions only had a 10 minute wait, so we figured why not. Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy were there that day. Make that the fourth time we’d met Mickey, and the second time in less than ten minutes! He gets around, doesn’t he?! He's a popular guy!

On our way towards World Showcase, we stopped at Club Cool for a free drink:

They had some new flavors this time. I liked the pineapple fanta, and Ashley thought the melon fanta was good. The other flavors were kind of weird. But… free drinks. Can’t complain on a hot day!

The World Cup was going on while we were on our vacation. Germany eventually won the World Cup, but by this stage, most of the big teams were still in it; except Spain which had been knocked out the day before. Some of the stuff that was going on at World Showcase for the World Cup included a topiary on the walkway between World Showcase and Future World, which included a soccer pitch involving Goofy and Donald. We had our pictures taken there:

We also got these done, where we held up some wooden frames with the ball in the background:

At the entrance to World Showcase, we decided to meet Duffy, since we’d never met him before. He’s Mickey’s bear, and he’s kind of… how do you put this nicely?… he kind of makes Winnie the Pooh seem like Einstein… But he's cute though!

Across from where you meet Duffy, you could see the Odyssey pavilion decked out for the World Cup, where they had TVs set up where you could watch the games. We didn’t head over there just yet, but eventually we did go and check it out:

But the main guy we absolutely *needed* to meet, since we were meeting characters at Epcot, was my main man, Donald Duck.

*Sigh*

Two funny things: 1) When we went up to meet Donald, he basically ignored Ashley completely. That’s probably because I was trying to have a “broment” with him, and she ended up being in the background. Now she knew how I felt when Mickey shoved me aside, for her, back when we met Mickey at Town Square Theater! 2) The problem with my attempt to have a “broment” with Donald, however, was that I was wearing one of my Chip ‘n’ Dale shirts that day. I brought three Donald shirts on our trip, including a Three Caballeros shirt that I *should* have been wearing that day, and here I show up to meet Donald wearing Chip ‘n’ Dale! He *hates* Chip ‘n’ Dale! I hope he can forgive me…

Here I am hamming it up with Donald:

Ashley’s just kind of standing there…

He’s got his arm around me, not her…

And then we went inside Mexico to ride the Fiesta.

Yes I’m obsessed with him:

After that, we went over to Norway for the Maelstrom.

Sadly, this would end up being one of the last times we would ever get to ride Maelstrom, since it’s being converted into a Frozen-themed ride. “You are not the first to pass this way; nor shall you be the last...” Ummm… yeah, apparently some people *are* the last. Not us though. The ride closed a few months later.

I wonder what they’ll do with this awesome mural. I want it in my living room!

After Norway, we started looking for a spot for Illuminations. *Sigh* This is one thing that stresses me out every trip. Most of the good spots are now pretty much reserved for special seating. I don’t even really like Illuminations that much in the first place… it’s a little slow.

We found a spot in front of the Japanese Torii.

Not a great view, but Ashley really likes getting a chocolate crepe from France, as well as a frozen lemonade from the Fife & Drum at the American Adventure, and Japan is kind of in between those two places. So she saved our spots while I ran to American Adventure to get our drinks, and then to France to get our crepes.

By the time we were settled with our snacks, a family of about nine people were pretty much sitting on her lap. This is another reason why I don’t like Illuminations. People think they can just sit in front of you, five minutes before it starts.

Anyway, it ended up being okay.

On our way out, again we had to pick up our free photo from the camera store. Then we had our picture taken in front of the magnificent Spaceship Earth:

Since we’d skipped supper, we managed to eat a late meal back at the hotel food court, which was almost closed for the night:

Giant Ariel photobomb:

Another long day of walking in the heat… but a fun day nonetheless at the most magical place on earth!

Tomorrow... MORE HOLLYWOOD!
To be continued...

 

[vacantsea]

Is the price to upgrade less if you do it later on? What's the benefit to not doing it from the beginning?

The benefit would be that we only end up with a Park Hopper pass when we know we are actually going to use it! Also, we always book straight from the WDW website, and there just isn't an option to add Park Hopper onto one day of a multiple day ticket. It wants to add it to your whole package. No bueno!

 

[squeegee]

The benefit would be that we only end up with a Park Hopper pass when we know we are actually going to use it! Also, we always book straight from the WDW website, and there just isn't an option to add Park Hopper onto one day of a multiple day ticket. It wants to add it to your whole package. No bueno!

So, is it cheaper to add it only to the last day or two? Or is the cost the same no matter how many days it's on?
If it's cheaper to add to fewer days at the end, I could see where that's a benefit, sure, but if the cost is the same, I think I'm missing something?

 

[vacantsea]

So, is it cheaper to add it only to the last day or two? Or is the cost the same no matter how many days it's on?
If it's cheaper to add to fewer days at the end, I could see where that's a benefit, sure, but if the cost is the same, I think I'm missing something?

The cost is per ticket, so yeah, it's cheaper to add it on later.

Oh, maybe it's not per ticket? Looking at the WDW site now it looks like it's just Park Hopper for 2 people and doesn't care how many days it is. So, it might not be cheaper, but it is cheaper ultimately if we buy Park Hopper in advance and don't ever use it. I like the flexibility of adding it if we feel like hopping!

 

[squeegee]

The cost is per ticket, so yeah, it's cheaper to add it on later.

Oh, maybe it's not per ticket? Looking at the WDW site now it looks like it's just Park Hopper for 2 people and doesn't care how many days it is. So, it might not be cheaper, but it is cheaper ultimately if we buy Park Hopper in advance and don't ever use it. I like the flexibility of adding it if we feel like hopping!

Yeah, I thought it was a flat-fee add-on per ticket, whether it was a one day ticket or a ten-day ticket.

I remember the flexibility was great, but we didn't use it much at all, so I've structured my plans for our next trip to not need it at all - but if the cost was on a per-day basis, that would have been an incentive to maybe change a day or two.

If you're not sure you're going to use it, then it does absolutely make sense to hold off adding it until you're sure you want it. But if you are fairly certain you're going to use it, then it might be nice to have the flexibility the entire trip.

 

[vacantsea]

Yeah, I thought it was a flat-fee add-on per ticket, whether it was a one day ticket or a ten-day ticket.

I remember the flexibility was great, but we didn't use it much at all, so I've structured my plans for our next trip to not need it at all - but if the cost was on a per-day basis, that would have been an incentive to maybe change a day or two.

If you're not sure you're going to use it, then it does absolutely make sense to hold off adding it until you're sure you want it. But if you are fairly certain you're going to use it, then it might be nice to have the flexibility the entire trip.

It's nice to have it, particularly for shopping purposes for us. I have high hopes that I will not forget anything this year and have to go back for it later! (YEAH RIGHT! )

 

[irene_dsc]

I thought it was an all-or-nothing deal to add hoppers, but I don't remember if it was a better deal for shorter/longer stays. The main benefits to adding hoppers later is a) not actually adding it unless you really feel you need it, and b) not having to pay the full price up front. But I thought you couldn't separate it out for only certain days.

We got hoppers for our first trip, and never ended up using them. So, I didn't bother for our second trip, and we really didn't miss them.