A quick month-by-month look at Disney World cost, crowds, weather, and special events

[notfrostyjosh]

There is a more up to date thread here: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2624260

 

[kmk1180]

That's good information
Thanks

 

[Cafeen]

You probably don't really want to hear my opinion , but as a QA Specialist/Web Developer, you're going to hear it anyway! Some of these may be petty, but what can I say, these are the things that I see when I look at web pages (almost 9 years of web-based QA will do that to you). I'll start with my issues first, then the good stuff at the bottom so you don't leave the post thinking I'm a total (fill in whatever expletive you want here).

1. Either break the page into several pages (1 Introduction, then 1 for each quarter would work), or add a table of contents to the top. Big huge long pages like that are difficult to navigate. With WordPress, you can use some basic HTML in the posts to accomplish this. (See my converted trip report for an example, although that TOC is considerably larger than you'll need).
2. Since you're specifying year specific dates and such, it may be a good idea to put the years after the months. This way, your readers will be sure that you're talking about the upcoming March instead of the one that already happened.
3. Don't show the full URLs. Utilize basic HTML to make them English. For example:
   "See http://espnwwos.disney.go.com/events/endurance/wdw-marathon/index?page=registration for more information on the event, including pricing and exact race times."
   Would be better off written as:
   "ESPN's Wide World of Sports has more information on the event, including pricing and exact race times."
4. Be sure to note in your post (at least via HTML comments so you know yourself) any date specific items in there. This will make it much easier to update for 2011.
5. In the intro, you're going to have to change the "2010 was a bizarre year in Orlando weather-wise, including one of the coldest Januarys on record and one of the hottest fall seasons." Fall 2010 hasn't arrived yet . I'd change it to "2009-2010 was a bizarre time for Orlando weather..." and then you can make mention of last year's "May Monsoons" as well.
6. Break up the intro into a few paragraphs. Alternatively, use an "unordered list" format (think bullet points) on each of the different section's comments in there. For example (note, this will be written with BBCode since this board doesn't like HTML )
   

   This is a month by month look at the cost, crowds, weather, and special events at Disney World.
   

   • The cost section relates primarily to booking a room at a Disney-owned resort. The cost of theme park tickets, upgrades, and other add-ons generally does not change throughout the year.
   • The weather section is based on the historical data available. For a look at the last 15 years of Orlando weather on any date, check Weather Underground. This is a handy reference tool, but make sure you look over more than just the past couple of years. 2010 was a bizarre year in Orlando weather-wise, including one of the coldest Januarys on record and one of the hottest fall seasons.
   • The crowds section is based on data from the past several years. Generally speaking, the higher the price of a Disney resort room, the busier the Parks will be. For example, Value season usually has the smallest crowds and Peak and Holiday seasons see the highest crowds.
   • Finally, I've included a brief description of the special events and other nuances throughout the year. This will help you plan around events that may adversely affect your vacation or you might want to tweak your plans to visit during a special event of particular interest. I link straight to the Disney website throughout this calendar so you can read more about the events or purchase tickets.

7. Clean up lots of instances of "double spaces".
8. In the weather section of the intro, add an apostrophe to "Janurarys"

Ok, now... on to the actual Content

1. I don't like the sound of the "Brazilian Tour Groups" quip. It should be reworded for less emphasis on the "Brazilian" part. Perhaps something like "foreign tour groups..." While the part about the holiday in Brazil covers the fact that many are indeed Brazilian, it gets away without inducing the typical stigma of the groups. Alternatively, stating something like "While you may run into large foreign tour groups at any time you visit Walt Disney World, the end of January may take special note for Brazilians, due to (stuff about the vacation/holiday). Again, keeping focus off of "Brazilian" and just as a note that the amount of tour groups may increase and they may happen to be from Brazil.
2. In February, you forgot a holiday. "Cafeen's Birthday" is in the beginning of the month (the 9th to be exact) and may increase crowds by 1 person for the dates surrounding it if his company gave him the fall overtime
3. No mention of the "Summer Nightastic" promotion between June 6 and August 15. This brings a different fireworks display in place of Wishes and the Main Street Electrical Parade in place of Spectro
4. Use unordered lists for more than 1 attraction closure (looking at August now ). Also chronologically by start of closure. So, for this month it should look similar to:
   • Aug 1 - Oct 22: it's a small world is scheduled to be closed for refurbishment
   • Aug 16 - Aug 28: Toy Story Mania is scheduled to be closed for refurbishment
   Perhaps, even make it into it's own sub-section (Scheduled Closures) with a link to Stitch Kingdom that spans the month. Would allow readers to get alternative information if you're slow on updating that piece.
5. Free Dining quip: I dislike the "Click here for..." constructions. It's pretty obvious where users should click. However, that being said, I can't think of anything better for it
6. September weather: Include link to NOAA website for up to the minute tropical/hurricane information. It's the time to watch that stuff and that site has very good information (albeit, not quite as user friendly as the commercial weather sites)
7. Wow, there's a ton of stuff happening in November! (No, this isn't an issue , just an observation)
8. December: "At the Hollywood Studios" should just be "At Hollywood Studios"
9. Another suggestion in general is to bold the event name (the first time it's mentioned) in each of the quips. Example:
   

   “Jersey Week” is November 1st through 7th in 2010, with all New Jersey schools closing Thursday and Friday November 4th and 5th. While everyone from New Jersey does not visit Disney World, some do and it does noticeably increase crowds. Crowds are still low overall, but you will see a disproportionate amount of people visiting from the great state of New Jersey. We can just hope Snooki stays home

   Changes to:
   

   “Jersey Week” is November 1st through 7th in 2010, with all New Jersey schools closing Thursday and Friday November 4th and 5th. While everyone from New Jersey does not visit Disney World, some do and it does noticeably increase crowds. Crowds are still low overall, but you will see a disproportionate amount of people visiting from the great state of New Jersey. We can just hope Snooki stays home

   A slight change, but will greatly improve readability overall. Also, you forgot a period at the end of the last sentence

Ok, so you got through that and are now wondering how in the world I enjoy myself if I'm that negative! Trust me, I'm not . It's just my forte and we're trained to be thorough. Overall, I think it's great. Very informative and presented quite well.

I very much like the detailed explanations of each special event as well as the date specifics on the holidays and potential issues with crowds.

ETA (yeah, it's my 3rd or 4th edit, I never get it right the first two tries )
If you need the HTML help with any of my suggestions, just let me know. You may have already guessed that I'm fairly knowledgeable about that sort of thing. If you haven't, well I just told you in the previous sentence!

 

[quinnc19]

Thanks for posting this!!

 

[fsmith2845]

Cool. .thanks for the info.. was wondering when some of these events were and if we had picked a good time.. seems as though we have.. (with exception of our first full day in the World, we should expect light crowds and weather we're not used to at Disney (cool) (as a note we have only been in summertime).. We're going the week after Thanksgiving


Thanks again for the wealth of information

 

[pwdebbie]

Cafeen, you misspelled "January's" --
"In the weather section of the intro, add an apostrophe to "Janurarys""

Once a proofreader, always a proofreader.


ETA -- Just glanced through everything, didn't read it all. There are probably some others that I missed, but I just had to razz you about that one.

 

[Cafeen]

Cafeen, you misspelled "January's" --
"In the weather section of the intro, add an apostrophe to "Janurarys""

Once a proofreader, always a proofreader.


ETA -- Just glanced through everything, didn't read it all. There are probably some others that I missed, but I just had to razz you about that one.

HAHA, doh. I always do that I figured the red squiggly line was for the no apostrophe, whoops! So um, yeah, do what she said not what I said .

 

[MerissaAndMomLoveDis]

Great job and great info. I am going to forward a link to this thread to my sister-in-law, who was asking me questions today that your posting covers.

 

[plutotek]

Notfrostyjosh,

Thank you for a very well done and obviously well thought out list of information. Hopefully, the 'glass-half-empty' views won't take away from the self-satisfaction you should feel for a VOLUNTARY job well done.

 

[Lilmattie13]

Thank you for doing this post. I think it was very nice of you to put all this info together. You took the time to do it and I dont think it should be critiqued. It may not be up to publishing standards but was very informative.
Thanks again.

 

[es45]

I've just scanned the post but it looks like it would answer so many questions, particularly those who are new to the boards. It should become a sticky.

 

[Big Kid]

Thanks for the concise, useful information, Notfrostyjosh. It would have been wonderful to have when I was planning our first trips, and will come in handy if we ever have to break our annual trip routine.

I've also been reading the other articles on your site and find myself nodding in agreement on the topics with which I am familiar.

 

[BenA81]

bookmark'd! thanks!

 

[ireland_nicole]

This is great, thanks!

 

[Cafeen]

Thank you for doing this post. I think it was very nice of you to put all this info together. You took the time to do it and I dont think it should be critiqued. It may not be up to publishing standards but was very informative.
Thanks again.

To be fair, he was literally asking for it:

I would appreciate any corrections or additional information that should be added.

Maybe not exactly what he had in mind (I'm guessing it was more content-based corrections over coding-based corrections), but that's where my mind goes when asked to peruse a draft of a page/site. After 9 years in Web Development and QA, I look at things differently than others.

Now, I know tone is very tough to read over text, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but none of the suggestions/issues that I found were meant to deride the content or the author in any way, shape, or form. (Part of the reason I attempted to put little jokes in there to keep it light, most notably, the "Cafeen's Birthday" holiday in Feb ). He has a very strong content-base in the page, adding a few usability and readability tweaks could make the entire page even better. I'd assume that he'd want the page (and, by extension, his site) to be the best that he can make it and these things are included in that. I'm sorry if I offended by suggesting that things could be made better, but that's the way it is. It doesn't mean what he has is bad at all, it just means that things can always be better. "Good enough" doesn't work with me on these things. Strong content is only as strong as the end-user's ability to read and digest the information and the vast majority of my suggestions were to aid in that manner directly.

If he wants to use the suggestions, he's free to. If he wants to ignore them, that's his prerogative. But to say that it's perfect as-is is doing him a disservice as he's actively looking for opportunities for improvement. Especially when I am able to see things differently than most and offer up suggestions that he (or someone else) wouldn't have thought of in the first place. Critiquing is all about making the object of the criticism better. That was my goal, and that was how I interpreted what he was looking for.

 

[Dolce27]

notfrostyjosh - thanks for all of the hard work you put into that.

The one thing that caught my eye was the January information. I was at WDW last January to run the marathon and I will be back in 2011 to run it again. Road closures and transportation will be issues those two days. My experience on Saturday morning, Jan 9, 2010, while the 1/2 marathon course was open, was that I wanted to go from POFQ to EPCOT in time for rope drop. Roads were still closed when I wanted to leave my hotel but eventually a MK bus got through so I hopped it. The MK busses could not go to the MK that morning because of the race - they had to drop everyone off at the TTC. This was fine with me since I wanted to go to EPCOT and not MK. When I reached EPCOT the half marathon course was still open for about the first hour or two of park opening. The runners ran into Future World from off-stage, down to the World Showcase, back up through Future World and back off-stage to the Finish Line in EPCOT's parking lot. Ropes are up and CM's set-up cross points and allowed park guests to cross during lulls. Park guests must yield to the runners.

I can't tell you how bad transportation was the next day, Sunday, for the full marathon since I ran the race and wasn't trying to get into parks as a guest that day. (although bus drivers the morning of the half-marathon said it's really bad on the day of the full-marathon) What caught my eye was this info you put:

"This doesn’t usually affect crowds too much and the race begins around 5:40am, so it is over by the time the Parks open in the morning."

For the full-marathon, the course will be open for seven hours after the last person crosses the Start Line. Wave 3 will start at 6:00 am so expect road closures, EPCOT, AK and DHS to be effected by marathon runners until around 1:00 pm that day. They make certain that all runners are out of the MK before park opening but that is the only park that will be cleared before opening. Again, ropes will be set-up in parks as well as cross points. Guests must yield to runners. So, that's just FYI. I've seen too many posts of people not knowing what to expect on those days and I've seen/heard about too many people at the parks becoming irritated with CM's when being forced to go to cross points to move around the park so they can get to where they want to go.

But, great job on pulling that info together. Very useful information for people new to Disney.

 

[joe1946]

one of the coldest Januarys on record

In the weather section of the intro, add an apostrophe to "Janurarys"

I don't think you need to add an apostrophe to "Januarys" or "Janurarys" -- it should be the plural form of "January", not the possessive. Hmm...I wonder if it should be "Januaries"

 

[notfrostyjosh]

notfrostyjosh - thanks for all of the hard work you put into that.

The one thing that caught my eye was the January information. I was at WDW last January to run the marathon and I will be back in 2011 to run it again...

Thanks a lot for this. I will go into more detail for that marathon weekend.

As far as the plural form of January is concerned, Januarys looks the best to me.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/januarys

He's definitely right about fall 2010 not happening yet though.

 

[lilandvisma]

good info!!! thanks!

 

[pdxJolene]

Wow, thanks! This is great info, dbf and I were just talking about Jan/Feb vs spring and this answered all my questions! Sounds like may is a winner for us!