A Pirate-Shaped Hole in my Heart - Spring Break 2018 Trip Report (Part 1 - Days 1-3)

[Jeremy Nolen]

We just got back to Central Texas after a 7 (and a half) day WDW excursion. Some general thoughts and impressions follow:

This was our first family trip since November of 2016. We also went for a Spring Break week-long trip that year, so it was interesting to compare the experience from 2016 to 2018. Last time, we maximized our time on our favorite attractions; this trip, the plan was to try and experience everything and try new things we have skipped or deprioritized in the past.

We drove (1,175 miles, about 18 hours) and arrived Friday afternoon (3/9) and wandered around Disney Springs a bit. It was nice to see it after all the construction and updates have been completed - the new parking garages are a HUGE improvement and we tried a light dinner at the Edison, which I thought beat the Toothsome Chocolate Factory on theming and design, but actually was underwhelming on food quality and the service was pretty bad. We then stayed off-campus for the first night (we originally were expecting to arrive Saturday, and when we changed our minds we couldn't add another night to our resort reservations.)

Day 1 - Saturday 3/10 - we opened Hollywood Studios after getting up early and checking out of our off-campus resort. Weather was great, crowd levels moderate. DHS feels like 'half a park' with all the closed areas and the remaining attractions were pretty crowded, but between opening the park and judicious use of FP+ we avoided lines, rode everything (some things twice) and saw most of the shows. They have full mockups/dioramas of the new Toy Story Land and it looks pretty good. We ate at Brown Derby and at Prime Time Diner (both experiences were pretty good) and closed out the day watching Fantasmic, which I had somehow avoided in our last few trips. I still found it incomprehensible and underwhelming, oh well (the kids liked it better than I did.)

We checked into All Stars Music that evening (where we stayed for the rest of our trip.) This was our first time staying at ASMusic (we had previously stayed at ASMovies and Port Orleans in other trips) and it was fine - the rooms were small but very quiet, and we had a good location right next to the parking lot for the days we drove to a park instead of using the buses. Having experienced the Universal Cabana Bay resort in the interim, I think AllStars doesn't quite measure up to the theming or design of Cabana Bay, but it is slightly cheaper (and quite a bit older) and I didn't have any resort-related complaints about our stay.

Day 2 was Magic Kingdom open-to-close. Weather was kind of gloomy/drizzly and cool, but I VASTLY prefer that to hot-and-sunny anyway. Crowd levels were low at the beginning of the day (we went straight to Adventureland and were seemingly the only people there for the first hour or so) but ramped up significantly mid-afternoon and onwards. Sadly, POTC was closed for refurbishment our entire stay, which really reduced my enjoyment of the MK. I had not realized how much POTC is the 'emblematic' experience at the park. Still, we had plenty of fun riding other rides and playing the Pirate Adventure game (we split into teams and made it a competition!.) Bus service to-and-from MK was pretty quick and painless, which was a nice surprise as we have had some bad experiences with Disney public trans in the past.

Day 3 was EPCOT open-to-close. Weather was COLD in the AM but warmed up to 'nice' by the afternoon. We enjoyed Future World and World Showcase and I tried most of the 'food experience' booths - overall, I found the food not as impressive as the 2016 Flower & Garden festival, but the topiaries and park decoration was top-notch. Crowd levels progressively ramped up throughout the day; we ended the day with a lakeside seat at Spice Road Table (food and service was mediocre and overpriced) but gave us a good view of Illuminations. We then got to walk out through an empty night-time World Showcase and Future World, which was pretty cool.

 

[Jeremy Nolen]

Day 4 (Tuesday) was EPCOT morning, with a walk to the Boardwalk for the Bon Voyage Breakfast @ Trattoria al Forno and then walking on to Hollywood Studios to finish up a few things that we hadn't done on Day 1. EPCOT crowds continued to get worse day to day and the headliner rides were slammed by rope-drop +30 min. We rope dropped Test Track (I'm kinda meh on the ride, but my kids really got into designing their own cars this trip) and then headed to the Land Pavilion to do 'Behind the Seeds' tour of the greenhouses. It was very educational and the CM running the tour was great. My wife pointed out that this experience felt like something WED would have approved of as part of the original EPCOT concept. The only downside is that the tour took 75 minutes which was quite a bit longer than we expected, so we VERY QUICKLY walked over to the Boardwalk for our Bon Voyage reservations (we made it in 12 minutes, which I was pretty proud of. I didn't even knock anyone over...) Bon Voyage was a very nice character dining experience; the food was excellent and the character interactions were top-notch - completely different than our last, very disappointing experience at Asherkus. We then headed on via the walking path (which I had never taken before) to DHS to do a couple of things we had missed the last time and came across a hilarious street performance by the Citizens of Hollywood (it was a comedy contest, I guess?) which had me and my kids coming up with bad jokes of our own for the rest of the trip. I wonder if the Citizens will survive the transition to 'Franchise Land' that DHS is going through? Around park closing time we tried to catch a bus back to ASM, but Disney transportation blues caught up to us and it took about an hour, maybe longer to get back to the resort.

Day 5 (Wednesday) was all-day EPCOT, and we split our group up to work on picking up remaining attractions and character meets, and I finished sampling the different foods around the Showcase. We had originally planned on spending the afternoon at Blizzard Beach but the waterpark was closed Tues-Thurs due to the chilly temperatures (we did make it over there for a couple of hours on Friday, at least.) Unfortunately, something between a cold and severe allergies had caught up to me so we headed back to the resort around sundown to get some rest.

Day 6 (Thursday) we were back at MK. We rope-dropped Tomorrowland and were off Space Mountain by about 8:15, but the stand by line was already up to 45min so we spent the next couple of hours picking up the other attractions on that side of the park. My daughter really enjoyed the Laugh Floor (which I hadn't done in years) and we did the Carousel of Progress for the first time ever. We then headed to Tom Sawyer's Island but it was surprisingly crowded, and the 'Fort' end of the island was closed for refurbishment, so we caught the raft back and then spent the next few hours enjoying walking around MK picking up opportunistic FP+ options and checking off other attractions like Enchanted Tales with Belle which we had never done before. We also tried the online ordering experience at Be Our Guest, which was pretty painless. It seemed to me that the food quality here has fallen off a cliff in the last 2 years, though - sad, as it was a pretty good dining experience when it first opened. I probably won't bother eating there again. The park was absolutely mobbed by mid-afternoon; lines for random snack carts were obstructing traffic and there were just masses of tired people staggering about (and it wasn't even hot outside!) We left about 6PM and walked over to the Contemporary to try the Pirates & Pals Cruise, which was actually a lot of fun and was definitely a nice way to watch the new fireworks show. I was never a big fan of 'Wishes' but I REALLY liked the new one, which had a great music selection. We then walked back to MK to catch a bus back to our resort, which took about 75min. Frustrating - I don't know why WDW can't figure out how to route the buses more efficiently than they do; tons of empty buses waiting for people, while giant queues form for buses that never come.

 

[Jeremy Nolen]

Day 7 (Friday) we rope-dropped AK and headed straight to Everest (as we had FP+ for Flights of Passage) but the ride wasn't running, so we headed over to DinoLand and knocked out all the rides over there in about 30 min. We then did Tough to Be a Bug; Everest was running when we came out so we headed to that but the line wait time was way off - we headed in when it said '15 min' and it took nearly an hour. We then did the Safaris (the CM heading our tour was AWESOME and we saw literally every animal on the list in our trip) then split up to do the 2 shows (I prefer Nemo, my wife prefers Festival of the LK) before heading to Pandora. This was my first time experiencing it and it has impressive theming and details, although I still think it's odd and out of place in 'Animal Kingdom.' Flights of Passage was very good (sort of an improved Soarin' on steroids) but I was perhaps not as blown away by it, having ridden several similar technology rides at Universal last year. Pandora is doing it's job though - AK crowd levels were insane, although most of them seemed to be in the FoP queue as the wait time was around 180 minutes all day. We realized at 2PM we had done every attraction in the park so we headed to Blizzard Beach to cool off, and work up an appetite for our 'Ohana reservations that evening. Happy to report that Ohana was fantastic - great service and food. We headed back into MK to do a couple more attractions via FP+, which was fine, but then the buses were back to normal (terrible) levels and it took over an hour to get back to ASM, again. Sigh.

Day 8 (Sat 3/17) we got up early, checked out, and drove over to the Grand Floridian to do 1900 Park Fare breakfast @ 8:05. This was my first time doing this, and it was a lot of fun. The kids dressed up as Alice and the Hatter which made for good photos and lots of great CM and guest reactions all day. We then headed over to MK to do the 2 last things on our attractions checklist (Tomorrowland Racers and Peter Pan's Flight) via FP+. We then monorailed back to GF, drove to the Boardwalk, headed to England for a couple of quick photos and the handful of EPCOT attractions we had missed (Turtle Talk and Imagination Pavilion, to be specific) then drove to AK to do Rafiki's Planet Watch, which we had missed the prior day. We realized after doing that, that we only had about 9 Wilderness Explorer badges left to collect, so we went on a wild tear through the park collecting badges, and photo-finished our WDW vacation getting sworn in as Senior Wilderness Explorers before climbing into the car and starting the drive back to Texas (we left Orlando at 6PM ET and arrived back in Austin at 11:30AM CST today! back to work/school tomorrow!)

 

[Jeremy Nolen]

Closing Thoughts!

Crowd levels seemed worse than this time in 2016. But, we were able to see every attraction (and in most cases, ride them multiple times) without hardly ever waiting more than 10-15 minutes, through the use of a) rope-dropping the parks and b) FP+. Our only two significant (i.e. >20 min) waits were for Everest on Day 7 (because it wasn't running at park open) and Enchanted Tales with Belle, which we went into knowing it would take 40-60 min. So if you know what you're doing you can still WDW your heart out without waiting in lines all day.
It was nice to not be hot and sweaty at WDW. The cool weather was a real treat (even if it was a bit TOO chilly in the early morning hours) and was worth some amount of extra crowd levels.
Prices for everything continue to ratchet up and up and up. This was our most expensive trip yet, although a lot of the extra costs were our decision to do character dining, extra tours, etc. But it does strike me as odd that the crowds continue to build as the prices climb. I have to imagine even a simple 3-4 day trip is already unattainable for a huge number of families. A small anecdote - we stopped at a Waffle House on the drive back and breakfast for the entire family cost less than 1 person's charge for breakfast at 1900 Park Fare.
Cast member interactions were very good across the board (the worst restaurant service we received was just 'mediocre' and most were excellent) and the character interactions at Bon Voyage and Park Fare were very, very good.
Our experiences at the 'extra' activities - character dining, Pirates cruise, tours, etc. were all very good, although I personally would only recommend the tour as being 'worth it' as character interactions aren't important to me. But they are a big part of the Disney magic for my wife and kids.
Other guests seemed exhausted, surly and miserable at a much higher % than previous visits, and this during nice, cool weather. We didn't have any particularly bad interactions (apart from a road-rage encounter our first evening that actually worried me quite a bit) and we did have a number of pleasant ones with folks in line nearby or on a bus with us, but even my kids would occasionally point out particularly grouchy or miserable groups. I will give one shout out to a young athletic teenager who gave up his seat on the bus for my falling-asleep-on-his-feet son the evening of Day 7, but for the most part I did not see able-bodied adults EVER give up their seats for older or younger guests. Surprisingly rude (and pathetic - get in shape, people!)
We walked a LOT - average daily steps was 26.5K, and that doesn't even count running around Blizzard Beach on Day 7 since I took my Fitbit off in the water. Thanks to the cool weather, I never had any issues with cramping/soreness/chafing, although my wife's feet were pretty sore by the last couple of days.
Pirates being closed made me surprisingly sad. Hopefully the new refurbishments make it better than ever!
Despite the title, this was a very good WDW vacation. We seem to get better at 'doing Disney' each time, and having specific goals (like riding every ride) helped prevent the 'now what' problem from coming up. I am thinking our next trip will be Universal again for a 3-4 day weekend in the winter, but I am now excited (or at least curious) to see the changes at DHS once they are completed. So we WILL be back, but maybe not until 2020.

 

[Momof2Singers]

Really enjoyed your report. Just made me extremely tired knowing I need to find some energy before I leave.....we are going in December, I have a 10 hour drive, doing it without my husband should be interesting. He always sleeps in the next day, and meets us in the afternoon. I will not have that luxury.