QueenofScott
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2013
- Messages
- 175
Hubby (53), DS (15), DD (13), and I (50) returned from our trip to WDW on Saturday, January 11th. We were in the parks for 6 days and had the most marvelous vacation, despite crowds being much higher than I knew to expect. Our last trip was January 5-11, 2002. Crowds were MUCH lower then than they were this time. We were surprised to encounter so many huge tour groups! I won't go into that to much, knowing it seems to be a big bone of contention on here. Our problem was large crowds clumped together, not so much bad behavior.
We had everything all planned out on MDE well ahead of time. We had Magic Bands and I was prepared to encounter some problems with them, but we never did! They worked perfectly for everything....opening the room door at two different resorts, getting into the parks, charging back to our room, and even Memory Maker. I did use the card for that most of the time, but several times hubby used his band and there was no problem with the pictures showing up.
We had park hoppers, and at first I thought we might have wasted money on the add on, given the already booked Fastpass+ attractions each day. Well, we stayed put only two days out of the six. Other days we hopped to one, or sometimes two other parks. The MDE app worked beautifully (I used my phone service, or WDW wifi - as I side note, wifi in our room at BWI was AWFUL! Good thing we could use our phones as hot spots to get online and check our MM photos each night). I was able to change fastpasses day of without any trouble, other than TSM. Sometimes within the same park, sometimes I switched them to a different park all together. Most of the time our wait in the FP line was minimal when standby lines were long.
I know many of you disapprove of so called "double dipping" and getting legacy fastpasses (which we were some of the last to be able to do at MK), but we did take advantage of that. We were given room keys without asking when we checked in and told we could feel free to use them, as the whole new system was still in testing phase. Given the amount of large tour groups and crowds, we wouldn't have been able to do everything we did without them. My ONLY problems with fastpass+ are the limit to three a day(wish you could get another when the time has expired, like the legacy fastpass) and being limited to only one park.
We did secure a fastpass for BOG lunch because I was dying to see inside that castle, and I'm so glad we did. It is quite beautiful, and a real attraction in itself. We preordered our meals, too. Our time was 12:15-12:45 on Thursday, the 9th. There was quite a long line, and we were able to walk right in promptly at 12:15. We found a table in the West Wing (which DS complained about because it was too gloomy) and got our drinks. Shortly a CM came to check where we were seated (I still find that amazing!), and within 10 minutes or so our food was brought out. It was a great experience and I highly recommend it
Anyway that's my rundown of info that is suited (I think) to this forum. I am really thankful for all the helpful information and tips I got on this board as I planned our trip. It helped us immensely. We would have been kinda lost had I not gleaned such great information. So....thanks to all of you!
We had everything all planned out on MDE well ahead of time. We had Magic Bands and I was prepared to encounter some problems with them, but we never did! They worked perfectly for everything....opening the room door at two different resorts, getting into the parks, charging back to our room, and even Memory Maker. I did use the card for that most of the time, but several times hubby used his band and there was no problem with the pictures showing up.
We had park hoppers, and at first I thought we might have wasted money on the add on, given the already booked Fastpass+ attractions each day. Well, we stayed put only two days out of the six. Other days we hopped to one, or sometimes two other parks. The MDE app worked beautifully (I used my phone service, or WDW wifi - as I side note, wifi in our room at BWI was AWFUL! Good thing we could use our phones as hot spots to get online and check our MM photos each night). I was able to change fastpasses day of without any trouble, other than TSM. Sometimes within the same park, sometimes I switched them to a different park all together. Most of the time our wait in the FP line was minimal when standby lines were long.
I know many of you disapprove of so called "double dipping" and getting legacy fastpasses (which we were some of the last to be able to do at MK), but we did take advantage of that. We were given room keys without asking when we checked in and told we could feel free to use them, as the whole new system was still in testing phase. Given the amount of large tour groups and crowds, we wouldn't have been able to do everything we did without them. My ONLY problems with fastpass+ are the limit to three a day(wish you could get another when the time has expired, like the legacy fastpass) and being limited to only one park.
We did secure a fastpass for BOG lunch because I was dying to see inside that castle, and I'm so glad we did. It is quite beautiful, and a real attraction in itself. We preordered our meals, too. Our time was 12:15-12:45 on Thursday, the 9th. There was quite a long line, and we were able to walk right in promptly at 12:15. We found a table in the West Wing (which DS complained about because it was too gloomy) and got our drinks. Shortly a CM came to check where we were seated (I still find that amazing!), and within 10 minutes or so our food was brought out. It was a great experience and I highly recommend it
Anyway that's my rundown of info that is suited (I think) to this forum. I am really thankful for all the helpful information and tips I got on this board as I planned our trip. It helped us immensely. We would have been kinda lost had I not gleaned such great information. So....thanks to all of you!
