A DLR Guide for WDW Vets

[StephaBabe50]

Thank you so much for writing this! We are going to DLR in April for the first time and this guide really hepled me out

Thanks again

 

[Kaycee]

Fantastic thread! I'm a WDW vet (over 20 visits) who is planning her first DL visit after moving to San Diego in December 2006. I'm a huge Walt Disney fan, so I've always wanted to visit Disneyland, but I honestly doubt that I ever would've made it if we hadn't made this move. I've been very nervous about my first DL visit after being so familiar with WDW, but this thread has really made me feel better. We are planning to visit DL and DCA for the first time in March. I will be taking all the information that I've gathered from this thread with me as I plan our trips. I'll let you know how it goes!

 

[Minnie&Nana]

This is better than fabulous! It has been 12 years since I've been able to visit Disneyland ~ my favorite Disney park. My first visit was when DL was open about 2 years and we visited every year until we moved from CA to VA.

Your incredible information not only helps me to plan a long over due visit, but brings back the most wonderful childhood memories, as well as visits with my children as little ones and teens. They understood the magic of this place and preferred it to WDW ~ we visited both every year for many years.

Thanks so much for clear, concise, easy to take in information ~ but it is also a tribute to the Happiest Place on Earth!

 

[Hound 109]

Seems like 5-6 posters have migrated to the DLR board the last couple of days. Since there might be other WDW vets poking around here for the first time, I thought I'd bump this.... so others can read and enjoy.

All veterans of WDW (who are interested in Disneyland), Go to page 1. This is essential reading that saved my family hours of time & provided me with tons of great info on Uncle Walt's first park.

hound

 

[Jennifer48]

Hydroguy,

Thank you so very much for putting this informative thread together! All your work is much appreciated from a WDW vet hoping to visit the original DLR this year!

 

[deletedpenguin]

Well done! Kudos to you!

 

[Hound 109]

Seems like 5-6 posters have migrated to the DLR board the last couple of days. Since there might be other WDW vets poking around here for the first time, I thought I'd bump this.... so others can read and enjoy.

All veterans of WDW (who are interested in Disneyland), Go to page 1. This is essential reading that saved my family hours of time & provided me with tons of great info on Uncle Walt's first park.

hound

HydroGuy,

Several WDW veterans (& DLR newbies) have posted recently. I hope you don't mind me bumping this, but when I found it the first time it was like the Red Sea parted and most of the information that i needed was either in this thread or in the links from this thread.

All WDW vets (& DLR newbies...heck all DLR newbies) go to page one of this thread for ESSENTIAL INFORMATION.

 

[ThinkTink75]

just subscribing!

 

[tidefan]

HydroGuy, great post. We have been to WDW many times, but did manage a day at DL after a Mex Riviera cruise back in 2003 and DW and I did enjoy DL very much, except that DW was 5 months pregnant at the time and could not ride the Matterhorn, Space Mtn, etc. I agree, DL is a great park. We really liked the New Orleans Square area since it was different from what we were used to at WDW. I agree that someone (with vastly more experience than I) should do the same for WDW for DL vets. We loved both, but they are different experiences. We hope to get back out there sometime so that we can go to DCA.

I can take a stab at a few things that I think DL vets may want to know about WDW and how you may want to differ your experiences there. Hopefully some much more knowledgeable folks than I will follow with more and even better advice. Here are a few main things and they are:

1) Immersion
2) Resorts/Staying On Site
3) The Parks (MK, EPCOT, MGM, AK)
4) Disney Dining (including DDP and DDE)
5) Transportation
6) Water Parks
7) The Boardwalk
8) Disney Vacation Club
9) Golf
10) Other leisure activities

I think that the biggest thing that DL vets that have never been to WDW will notice right off of the bat is that WDW is setup completely differently than the Anaheim resort. Part of this was due to Walt's initial strategy to insulate the area he owned from any of the outside world, which may encroach into the resort area that he envisioned for the area, as he was unhappy with many of the buildings which were cropping up on Harbor Blvd. at DL. Also, Disney wanted control over development in the area and wanted to control any land rights/voting rights, etc. To accomplish this, an agreement was worked out and the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) was born. RCID is the outward "governing" agency over the land that is WDW and you will see many references to RCID while at WDW.

Also to note, agreed with HydroGuy 100% in that 90 percent of the visitors will not be locals. WDW is more of a destination for out of town visitors. (Not to say that DL isn't, but WDW is specifically set up for this).

Most visitors will arrive at WDW through one of two means, either by A) using Disney's Magical Express (a free service I will get to in the RESORTS section) or B) by driving a vehicle to WDW. If so, usually, you would pass an uber tourist area on I-4 on the way SE from Orlando called the International Drive area. It is here that Universal and Sea World are located. It is also an area of thousands of chain hotels and fast food restaurants and as such it has the dreaded "touristy" moniker. That being said, there are often good hotel deals to be found here, but that is off the point. Going past this, you will next come to several interstate exits for WDW:
- the Lake Buena Vista area off of the Apopka/Vineland Road that serves a conduit into the Downtown Disney area (DTD)
- Osceola Blvd, which leads into the EPCOT area, and
- HWY 192, which runs on the south edge of WDW

Whichever of these exits you take, you will pass through some buffer landscaping and then run into a "Gate" announcing your arrival into Walt Disney World. Many WDW vets, and I mean many WDW vets, will now have considered themselves as having arrived and will not leave out of those gates until they are headed home for their trip, sometimes as many as two weeks later.

WDW has evolved into a complete travel destination where everything you need to do, you can do it right there at WDW. Now, some of this is by design and some of this is by necessity. In a previous post related the story of walking out of DL to grab some Wendy's and then coming back later in the day. This will very rarely occur at WDW for two reasons. First, there are so many more diverse and better dining options at WDW that many people usually just eat there, and second, the sheer size of the resort dictates against it. WDW is huge. The property is some 47 square miles. To put that in context, it is about the size of San Francisco. Would you drive across San Francisco to get some Wendy's?

Included in this 47 square miles are 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, 20 resort hotels, a huge sports complex (spring training home of the ATL Braves), a campground, a speedway, and an entertainment district... and this doesn't even use half of the land. WDW is very spread out. As HydroGuy noted, at DLR, everything is "right there" and you don't have to go very far for anything. WDW has taken the opposite approach where many things are designed to be almost isolated from one another. A good example here is when you park for the MK, you arrive at an area called the Transporation and Ticket Center, or TTC for short. You think you've about made it, but you are still in actuality across a fairly large lake from the Magic Kingdom. They were not going to let anything be built next to it.

But anyway, back to the 10 original points, hopefully, these will help our DL vets understand the WDW experience at least a little bit as much as HydroGuy's post has helped the WDW vets at DLR.

Immersion

HydroGuy alluded to this in his post and when I thought about it, he was 100% on target. The number one difference in DLR and WDW was the "immersion" of the guest into all things Disney. For instance, HydroGuy points out that at DLR, it is not necesarily advantagous to stay at a Disney hotel. At WDW, IMHO, the experience is not the same unless you stay on-site at a Disney resort. The same could be said for the Dining experience as well (though this tends to be more hit-or-miss). Many WDW vets, including myself, enjoy entering another world, where we can put aside the real one, at least for awhile. The spirit of the parks follows you to the resort and to other activities you may do while at WDW. Now some do prefer to escape for awhile and prefer the offsites, but I think that a majority enjoys the Disney touch on the entire vacation. Whether it's a Mickey head shaped sand bunker on the golf course or the wonderfully themed entertainment on the Boardwalk, you never really escape the mouse. In fact, some people vacation at WDW and NEVER set foot in a theme park. That would not happen at DLR.

At WDW, you really don't need to go to the parks to feel like you are on vacation. Anything on the property will convey the feeling, even if you just go shop at the Downtown Disney area, where a huge LEGO dragon comes up out of the lake to greet you and where you can go to Goofy's Candy Co. Everything at WDW is themed, just as the parks are, whether it is shopping or a hotel, or a golf course, or a restaurant, so you do feel as though you are completely "Disneyfied" (of course, which also means that at the end, your wallet is much lighter...)

Resorts/Staying On-site

Another huge difference in WDW vs. DLR is the vast advantage of staying in an on-site resort. First, all of the resorts are played out with heavy themes, similar to the Grand Californian at DLR. One thing that I found great about HydroGuy's initial post was that at DLR, it was OK to stay offsite. I don't think that staying offsite would even cross my mind if I was going for a vacation. That's how used to staying at Disney resorts many have become. In fact, many times when I read WDW vets visits to DLR, they always include how the DLH, or PP, or GCH was, and I think that it is because we have become SO accustomed to staying onsite. Well, before I get too off subject, let me tell you why so many choose to stay onsite at WDW.

It used to be, back in the early 70's, that there were two hotels at WDW, the Polynesian and the Contemporary resorts. Now, they were usually so pricey that most families could not afford them. Thus began the development of the International Drive area. This was on land that while still a few miles from WDW, was only a 5-minute drive down the interstate and also allowed families to visit the new SeaWorld park. Now, since at that time, WDW mainly consisted of the MK and the two hotels, most people would spend a day or two at the MK and then a day at SeaWorld and maybe a day or two doing something else. This is what my family used to do when we would drive down from Jacksonville and Tallahassee (where we lived at the time).

This all changed in 1982. In October of that year, Disney opened a modified version of Walt Disney's Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT, for short, as WDW's second theme park. EPCOT was twice the size of the MK, so you needed a MINIMUM of two days to get through it all. Well, now, your WDW vacation was lasting 4 to 5 days and the attendance to the Orlando parks really started booming. Disney soon realized a couple of things:

1) People were now coming to the Orlando area/Disney for up to a week or longer, and

2) These people were going to need somewhere to stay.

Well, Disney figured out real quick that they'd just as soon make all of that money off of the hotel rooms as let Hilton or Marriott do it, so throughout the late 80's and 1990's hotels started going up. Fast forward to today and the product of all of this is that there are now 20 hotels comprising some 20,000 hotel rooms just at WDW resorts. To entice visitors to spend their accommodation dollar with the Mouse, Disney built all levels of resorts and gave each a distinct theme, similar to what a "land" in DL or MK would have. For instance:

- the Yacht Club feels very much like one has stepped into a New England boating resort, right down to all of those cool model ships they have in the lobby.
- the Wilderness lodge is a grand scale imagination of what a Grand Western National Park lodge would be like, complete with it's own geyser.
- Port Orleans French Quarter very much evokes the feel of New Orleans (if it were ever to be clean...)
- even the budget All-Star Movies resort gets the treatment. Yes, the rooms are like a Motel 6, but it's a Motel 6 with 30 foot replicas of Pongo and Perdita.
- The Animal Kingdom Lodge is set up so that guest can wake up in the morning, go out on the balcony and view their own private game reserve
- The Boardwalk has even upped the theming on these (well, maybe not the AKL), but I give it time by itself later.

Resorts are broken down into 3 main categories, Value, Moderate, and Deluxe, as well as the category of Disney Vacation Club resorts (covered later).

The Value Resorts are the All-Star Resorts (Movies, Music, and Sports) and the Pop Century resort. These resorts are often bashed as being "Motel 6" like, but they are clean, well themed, have access to Disney transportation, access to Extra Magic Hours (EMH), have shopping, food courts, game rooms, and nice pools. These rooms can often be found for under $100 a night and as such are usually extremely crowded. These resorts are also EXTREMELY large. Each All-Star resort has 2,000 rooms, and when complete, the entire Pop Century complex will be about 6,000 rooms. So, let's suffice it to say that these resorts can be extremely busy.

The Moderate resorts are the Coronado Springs Resort, the Caribbean Beach Resort, and the sister Port Orleans properties of French Quarter and Riverside. (Actually, these last two are really separate resorts and used to be named Port Orleans and Dixie Landings. Of course, Disney had to be PC, so it dropped the Dixie name and now you have the new ones). Moderates have slightly larger rooms than the value resorts and tend to be less hectic and somewhat more themed. All will have a main "themed" pool with slide and hot tubs and a number of smaller "quiet" pools. There is also a table service restaurant in addition to an upgraded food court at each resort.

Coronado Springs has a Mexican/Southwest feel to it including a five story mayan pyramid at the pool area. It is also a convention hotel. Caribbean Beach has a tropical theme to it and the pool there has a "spanish fort" theme to it. Port Orleans French Quarter takes you to an imaginary French Quarter (i.e. what it would be like if it were actually clean) complete with a Bayou themed pool. Port Orleans Riverside recalls genteel mansions of the Deep South and fishin' holes and River life. All are very fun.

The Deluxe resorts are the highest level of hotel accomodation at WDW. These are hotels that you will see on the "Great Hotels" series on the Travel Channel. They include the Contemporary Resort, the Polynesian Resort, the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, the Wilderness Lodge, the Animal Kingdom Lodge, the Yacht and Beach club resorts, and the BoardWalk resort. The great thing about these resorts is that they are almost as well themed as the parks.

The Contemporary Resort has the monorail go right through the building and the monorail station is inside the huge concouse. Also, it is pretty much right next to the MK. The California Grill atop the resort is considered one of the best restaurants in WDW and has a fantastic view of the nightly MK fireworks show.

The Polynesian resort is built in the style of South Pacific longhouses and is situated across the lagoon from the Contemporary, complete with it's own palm trees, beach, and luau. This resort also has a monorail stop.

The Grand Floridian is the most upscale hotel built to evoke a turn of the century victorian resort. Among it's restaurants it has the only 5 diamond AAA restaurant in the state of Florida. There is also a monorail stop at the Grand Floridian.

The Wilderness lodge feels like you are in a national park lodge and has a unique restaurant that, well, I am sure someone better than I will post later to describe the Whispering Canyon Cafe. There is also a "geyser" that goes off regularly. This hotel will remind you somewhat of the Grand Californian.

The Yacht and Beach clubs are themed as New England coastal resorts around the turn of the century. Both are upscale and almost, if not as nice as the Grand Floridian. A big advantage to these hotels is that instead of a pool, they share their own mini water park called Stormalong Bay, complete with sand bottomed pools, lazy rivers, and shipwrecks. Also, on a personal note, one of my favorite places to eat in all of WDW is at the Beach club. Beaches and Cream is an old fashioned soda shop with good burgers and fantastic desserts. You need to eat there once while at WDW.

The Animal Kingdom Lodge is extremely unique in that it replicates an African game lodge. The big draw here though is that most rooms have balconies overlooking a Savannah (NOT shared with the Animal Kingdom park, mind you) complete with native wildlife, such as Giraffe or Zebra freely roaming about. Two very popular WDW restaurants, Boma and Jiko are located here as well.

Lastly, the BoardWalk. Well, I'll save most of the discussion of this resort for later as it really has become the second entertainment district of WDW behind DTD. For now, though, let it suffice to say that the BoardWalk is built in the style of turn of the century Atlantic City and there is a Boardwalk that fronts the entire property along the lake directly across from the Yacht and Beach clubs. There is also a pool here themed on Luna Park, where the waterslide looks like an old wooden roller coaster and ends up coming out of a clown's mouth.

There are also other on-site accomodations, namely the Swan and Dolphin hotels, which are really a Sheraton and a Westin in WDW clothing. There is also the Disney Vacation Club (DVC) properties that have larger (up to 3-bedroom villas) accomodations. I'll cover these later...

On top of the feeling of being transported somewhere else, Disney-style, at these resorts, there are practical benefits as well. Staying at a Disney resort gives you use of the Disney Transportation system which means you never need a car while you are at WDW. Disney Transportation can get you wherever you need to go via bus, boat, or Monorail (DISCLAIMER: Now there are some advantages to having your own car, but I'll leave that discussion to other threads). When you combine this with the fact that guests at Disney Resorts also have access to Disney's Magical Express (which is a bus service where guests receive coded tags to put on their luggage so that when they show up at the Orlando airport (MCO), they don't even need to go to baggage claim, just straight onto a bus and to their resort. Disney delivers the bags to your room, all included in your resort charges), you really don't even need to bother with a car at all.

Also a big advantage to staying in the resort is access to Extra Magic Hours or EMH. EMH basically opens up a specific park for only Disney resort guest to attend. Usually it is either 1 hour before opening to the general public or (even better) staying open 2-3 hours later after closing to the general public. The ride wait times are way better during EMH and there are also special character appearances just during the EMH. During our visit in April, we were at EPCOT on a Friday night during EMH and we went to the character pavilion with Mickey, Goofy, Pluto, and Stitch and for about 15 minutes, we were the only people in there. It was great to have that interaction with all of the characters so easily. Also, at MGM during EMH, there is usually an extra showing of Fantasmic so you can ride while the main park crowd goes to the first show. EMH is probably the #1 park benefit to staying at a resort and it also allows you to take breaks to your resort during the midday when waits (and temperatures) are at their peak to go back to your resort and enjoy the amenities.

It's late, so that's all for tonight. I'll try to do the parks tomorrow...

 

[erikthewise]

Just a few comments about unexpected experiences at DL for WDW vets:

(1) The effect of DL park itself is somewhat surreal. It is very much like WDW's Magic Kingdom in many ways, but variations are everywhere. The variations are small in Main Street, but the farther you venture into the park, the larger the variations get. It all leads to an "alternate reality" effect that can feel almost dreamlike at times.

(2) Fastpass machines work differently. They do not pull your ticket in like the ones at WDW, and at least in some cases they expect you to insert the ticket with the magnetic stripe facing up. If you aren't aware of these differences, it seems like the machines don't work at all! I had to ask twice for assistance with them.

(3) Entering the parks is sensible and fast: they just scan the barcode on your ticket! As a result the lines at opening time move much faster than at WDW.

(4) Interpark transportation: it's a 100 meter walk from one to the other.

(5) I just about lost it trying to find the entrance to Pirates of the Caribbean. I expected it to be buried in the back of New Orleans Square like it is at the back of Adventureland in WDW; it wasn't. No matter how many times I looked at the map I couldn't figure out where it was supposed to be, and finally after several trips around New Orleans Square I had to ask for directions. Save yourself some time and just ask right away. (The entrance is actually close to the River, and not really in New Orleans Square at all).

 

[thmar]

Tidefan...thanks for info on WDW.

 

[HydroGuy]

HydroGuy, great post. We have been to WDW many times, but did manage a day at DL after a Mex Riviera cruise back in 2003 and DW and I did enjoy DL very much, except that DW was 5 months pregnant at the time and could not ride the Matterhorn, Space Mtn, etc. I agree, DL is a great park. We really liked the New Orleans Square area since it was different from what we were used to at WDW. I agree that someone (with vastly more experience than I) should do the same for WDW for DL vets. We loved both, but they are different experiences. We hope to get back out there sometime so that we can go to DCA.

I can take a stab at a few things that I think DL vets may want to know about WDW and how you may want to differ your experiences there. Hopefully some much more knowledgeable folks than I will follow with more and even better advice. Here are a few main things and they are:

FWIW, I took a shot at this back in January. Here is a link:

An Introduction To WDW For DLR Vets
www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=16541636

But someone else like you with more WDW experience could do a more thorough job than I. So by all means continue your input.

A few quick comments on your section 1:

1. I agree that staying onsite at WDW is the recommended approach. We will always stay onsite there in the future.

2. A car does have some advantages, especially if you want to get places at WDW where there is no direct bus, boat or monorail ride. If you primarily want to do direct bus/boat/monorail rides, then IMO a car is not worthwhile if you are staying onsite.

3. As Tide noted, some of the resorts are huge at WDW, which can mean, for example, a 15 minute walk to your room at Coronado Springs. There are more than a dozen hotels at DLR where you can get from your hotel room to the DLR gates in 15 minutes. CSR can take longer than that just to get from the lobby to your room.

4. EMH - controversial on whether actually using it is a good thing. Some people love it, others avoid it entirely because of how it influences crowds at the parks.

 

[tidefan]

FWIW, I took a shot at this back in January. Here is a link:

An Introduction To WDW For DLR Vets
www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=16541636

But someone else like you with more WDW experience could do a more thorough job than I. So by all means continue your input.

A few quick comments on your section 1:

1. I agree that staying onsite at WDW is the recommended approach. We will always stay onsite there in the future.

2. A car does have some advantages, especially if you want to get places at WDW where there is no direct bus, boat or monorail ride. If you primarily want to do direct bus/boat/monorail rides, then IMO a car is not worthwhile if you are staying onsite.

3. As Tide noted, some of the resorts are huge at WDW, which can mean, for example, a 15 minute walk to your room at Coronado Springs. There are more than a dozen hotels at DLR where you can get from your hotel room to the DLR gates in 15 minutes. CSR can take longer than that just to get from the lobby to your room.

4. EMH - controversial on whether actually using it is a good thing. Some people love it, others avoid it entirely because of how it influences crowds at the parks.

HydroGuy, Sorry about that, I hadn't seen your other post. I may continue on a few points, but I think that you did a pretty good job of summing things up. That said, I can post a couple things here that are some differences.

1) Transportation - I think that the more you visit, the more comfortable one becomes with the WDW transportation and you learn how to work the system. For instance, you need to know that if you were going to EPCOT for a dinner reservation one night at France or UK, you will do better taking a bus to the Beach Club or Boardwalk and then walking through the International Gateway entrance instead of taking the Monorail directly from the TTC. This is because the monorail lets off at the front of EPCOT and you would have to walk the entirety of the park to get to the back of World Showcase. Also, at Coronado Springs, there are 4 bus stops, so you can use WDW transportation as an intra-resort transportation system if you don't feel like walking.

Little tricks like this help. Also, bus times to various parks from the resorts should be fairly good, though they can be a bit sketchy from the Values and especially from Fort Wilderness.

2) EMH - I am a big fan of Extra Magic Hours and Parkhopping, though as you say, there are varying opinions on this. Everyone seems to have a different strategy, but here is ours. We typically eat dinner in EPCOT (on our April trip, we ate dinner at EPCOT 4 of the 7 nights) and then head out to whatever park has the EMH. We found most of the parks, including the MK, to be virtually deserted during the EMH and that we could walk on most any ride that we wanted. They also bring characters out during nighttime EMH's, so you can see a lot of those with minimal wait. During our April EPCOT EMH night, we had about 15 minutes of Mickey, Pluto, Goofy, and Stitch all alone to us. DD felt like they were there just for her. Also, on a side note, EMH tends to be the only time that you can ride Expedition Everest (EE) at night, which makes the ride even better.

We never used the morning EMH's so I can't really comment about those, but I can make one note. If you are going to either Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon (which is my favorite thing in WDW), there is a 1 hour EMH every single day. This SHOULD be taken advantage of because during regular and peak seasons, the water parks fill up very quickly and they will close admission off to the parks. Therefore, if you are a resort guest, you should always be able to get in.

3) The BIG difference between DL and WDW - in my opinion is EPCOT. There is just nothing at DL like it and as such, I don't think that DL vets coming to WDW are adequately prepared to tour it. Most comparisons that I see of DL to WDW are always of DL vs. the Magic Kingdom. While this is a completely valid comparison as the two are very similar, it is important to note that the MK is only one part of WDW. The Studios (not my favorite park, but some of my favorite rides), seems similar in ways to DCA. The Animal Kingdom is it's own thing, but it is not a major attraction to WDW, though it is getting there with the addition of rides like EE.

The big difference is EPCOT. It is the largest Disney park and as such requires multiple days of visitation. Also, at least to me, EPCOT is a park that is best taken in a leisurely manner in small to medium doses at a time, which is contradictory to most DL and WDW visitors. EPCOT is somewhat like a large, permanent world's fair with one section set up for new technology and innovations (i.e. - I got to ride a Segway there for the first time at the Innoventions pavillion, very cool) and another section (World Showcase - WS) set up with pavillions dedicated to the look and feel of various countries around the world. Most of these pavillions have at least one counter service and table service restaurant and some (France) have two table service restaurants.

EPCOT is not so much a thrill ride theme park (though there are certainly some very good rides there) as it is an educational and cultural odyssey. All of the WS pavillions are staffed by natives of their respective countries and offer various goods that generally cannot be found here in the US very easily. Also, most of the WS pavillions serve alcohol, which adds another dimension to the whole experience, and it is not altogether a bad one. Quite honestly, a German restaurant named "Biergarten" wouldn't be very authentic without litre steins flowing about and the British pub wouldn't have quite the same feel without the Bass and Guiness flowing.

Anyway, we find EPCOT to be downright relaxing compared to the other parks and it invites you to experience it on your own time. However, you DO NEED to plan, at least in terms of dining. Though EPCOT may not have the most rides per capita of some of the Disney parks, but it definitely has the highest concentration of restaurants and they are all very popular. It is necessary to make Advanced Dining Reservations (ADR's) at least a month or two in advance to make the most of your WDW experience, especially where EPCOT is concerned.

Anyway, I will continue with parts of my original idea over the next few nights, but I will probably leave it to a few things such as Water Parks and DVC that HydroGuy did not get to in his earlier post.

Hydro, perhaps you could also put out a few pointers on DCA as that, at least to me, would be the most foreign thing about DL to a WDW vet.

 

[tidefan]

HydroGuy - FYI, I see that you are heading to DLP. Enjoy it. DW and I went back in 2001 and loved it. Things may be different now since the dollar is weaker, but we found DLP prices to be a veritable bargain.

Space Mountain (or whatever they call it) is very good there, but beware the Indiana Jones coaster. It left us with a headache...

 

[codimouse]

Thank you so much for the post on DLR. We are DLR newbies. We always go to WDW and just went again in March.

Well, we got a huge bonus from work and wanted to spend it!!

We decided to try DLR this time. Plus a few other destinations there. But Disney first.

This guide is appreciated. Now to find a suitable hotel nearby so I do not have to drive!!!

Thanks again.

 

[jlmarr]

Bump...

 

[jfritz]

Thanks for bumping this as I have never seen it bofore. We are doing DLR for the first time in Late Jan/early Feb 2008 and staying at the bwppi. We have all been to WDW at least 12-15 times and since we are cruising out of Long Beach we decided we must see DL. This post has really helped immensely. THANKS!!!

 

[Yzerbear19]

Thank you for posting this. My sister and I are seriously thinking about going to DLR at the end of April for my birthday and there is a lot of valuable information here. So thank you!

 

[HydroGuy]

Bumping this to let everyone know I have updated the entire guide and added photos to liven things up for first time readers. Enjoy.

 

[Hound 109]

Great pics, Trey.