Back from a great, very hot trip!

[skullsplitter]

Just back from a week at WDW. Checked in on Monday 7/11 and left Saturday 7/16. We loosely used easyWDW crowd calendar for which parks to go to each day and did not use a touring plan at all. We used park hoppers and FP+ and jumped around all week with breaks in the afternoon each day.

Resort – AoA. Really loved the theming. It was very clean too. We stayed in the Cars section and loved the quietness of the Cars area pool vs the chaos at the main pool. It is a large resort though and I think we prefer heading back to POFQ.

Crowds – low! If this was a 7 like the easyWDW had it each day I’ll take it. Lots of open concrete and not a lot of long lines

Tour Groups – They were there, not a ton of them, but present still. We did not have any major issue with them. There were 2 groups chanting at each other inside the TT queue. We noticed a CM talk to one of the leaders and the chanting ended. Is the chanting not allowed in an indoor queue? Overall, no issues with the groups.

CMs – Friendly and helpful all week! We did not have a bad encounter.

Cleanliness – The only time I recall noticing something below what I would call Disney standard is the bathroom at Pecos Bill. Other than that I thought the parks and bathrooms were in good shape

Dining TS (all dinners) – ate at Ragland, Biergarten, Whispering Canyon, BOG, Sci Fi, and Via Napoli. Had very slow service at Ragland. Food was good and the server was polite, he was just super slow. Biergarten may be the funnest dining on property. This was our 2nd time there and is now a must do for us going forward. 1st time at Whispering Canyon and this is a fun one too! Ate way too much food and shakes though. BOG delivered a very good steak, no knife needed to cut it and no need for steak sauce. We left the castle in the middle of Wishes and had a good views of the fireworks over both castles. SciFi was our kids’ pick. We go here almost every trip because they love eating in the cars. Food is on par with O’Charleys. Loved the pizza at Napoli. Walked in without ADR at 1ish PM with a 10 minute wait.

Dining QS (all lunches) – Landscape of Flavors twice. Pecos Bills. Restaurantosaurus. Pinocchio Village Haus. Nothing spectacular nor awful to say about any of these. Pizza at Pinocchio was pretty good. Red velvet cake at Pecos was tasty. Buffalo turkey at Landscape was above average.

Rides – we’ve been many times before, but have never encountered so many ride break downs: Test Track 3 times. RnR. Mexico. Club Cool (how?). BTM. Space Mtn. Splash. There were many others where the ride just stopped for a couple of minutes that are possibly attributed to loading/unloading of handicapped. Just seemed like a lot, especially at Epcot when 3 things were down at once.

Frozen – meh. It was “cute”, but I will not burn another FP for it nor wait more than 20ish minutes for it. It should have been so much more, but that’s Imagineering these days. Pour all of the resources into the queue and meet and greets.

Soarin – really liked the new film! My only issue is with the cheap jump scares for the majority of the transitions.

Overall another great trip and we still see value in spending a week there. Can’t wait for the next trip!

 

[DisneyFive]

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like a good time.

How hot was it and how did you manage the heat? When did the rain hit? (if at all) We'll be there in a couple of weeks. We're used to late September to early October weather, so roughly 88-91 or so on average.

Dan

 

[skullsplitter]

Mid to high 90s all week with heat index 100+. We'd go to the parks a few hours in the morning, then head back to the room when we started feeling the heat too much, then back to the parks in the evening. We didn't get a lot of rain, just twice that I recall. Tuesday evening at Epcot we were moving as fast as we could to get to Biergarten ahead of a storm. Made it in time. The rain did delay Illuminations that evening. Then Friday evening again at Epcot. We stopped for our 4th attempt at Test Track. Rode it and our plan was to use the ferry to HS. Storm hit as we got to the International Gateway so the boats were down. We decided to just walk quickly to Boardwalk and take a bus to HS. We did not know that there was not bus service from there to HS. Lucky for us a bus to MK ended up taking us a several others to HS. There's something about Epcot and rain. We always seem to get rain at Epcot.

 

[NCDisneyMom]

Mid to high 90s all week with heat index 100+. We'd go to the parks a few hours in the morning, then head back to the room when we started feeling the heat too much, then back to the parks in the evening. We didn't get a lot of rain, just twice that I recall. Tuesday evening at Epcot we were moving as fast as we could to get to Biergarten ahead of a storm. Made it in time. The rain did delay Illuminations that evening. Then Friday evening again at Epcot. We stopped for our 4th attempt at Test Track. Rode it and our plan was to use the ferry to HS. Storm hit as we got to the International Gateway so the boats were down. We decided to just walk quickly to Boardwalk and take a bus to HS. We did not know that there was not bus service from there to HS. Lucky for us a bus to MK ended up taking us a several others to HS. There's something about Epcot and rain. We always seem to get rain at Epcot.

I always have to laugh at the rain in WDW. We were there at the same time as you (9th through 16th). On Tuesday night, we were at our resort POFQ, and saw the clouds and heard lots of rumbling, but no actual rain. On Friday evening, we were at MK and again, lots of clouds, some noise, and a few sprinkles, but no actual rain.

Now, the previous Saturday we had a monsoon while dining at WL, which also hit the MK. And on Sunday there was another heavy rain while we were at HS. I always just find it amusing how it can be so bad in one park, but not another.

I agree with many of your assessments of the week. VERY hot, but low crowds (for July). Tour groups were very reasonable with their behavior, and we encountered only one instance of chanting at Typhoon Lagoon. Our only bathroom cleanliness issue was in tomorrowland, where they had run out of hand towels. Other than that, no complaints!