If you plan on doing only one day or only partial days (and not first thing in the morning), then staying at home might be fine. Extra tiring, but fine. BUT... if you plan on doing all three days, all day from open to close, then get a hotel room as close by as you can afford. For us, just being able to pop back to the room whenever we needed some rest or a break (after the first day, this really mattered more than you'd think), was super helpful. And should you start to not feel well, then having a hotel room where you can take a nap or a shower can give you the recharge you need to get back in the game. Having to go back home might make you want to stay home for the rest of the day or night. The savings in convenience, energy expenditure, and sanity will more than make up for any money spent on a hotel room!Hi all! I bought tickets for my first time visit to the expo, yay! My dilemma is this... I live super close to the parks (6 miles) but reading though all of these messages it seems that I might want to stay closer to the convention center (early mornings/line ups/parking/naps/convenience/sanity). Getting in to the park from my house can take up to an hour with traffic and parking so I am debating getting a room. Any thoughts from those who have visited before? Anyone live in the general vicinity and have additional insight?
Thanks so much
Along these lines, I only did this once and it was as the 2017 Expo. We needed to check out of BWWPI where we were doing DLR from, and move to the Hilton at like 4AM, with all our luggage. It was no problem getting an Uber. I think that was the morning I bumped into @ashley0139!
I haven’t attended but from watching and hearing friends expierence soccer the year that not exactly how it goes. they let people over night in the inside holding room for the big hall on Friday and Saturday for the key morning panels. For Friday’s panel people usually arrive around 4am(legends). For Saturday if it’s live action you want to see plan to spend the night there getting in line before midnight. Sunday they don’t do overnight and start letting people wait around 5/6am.
The queue management at the 2017 was the worst I had ever seen. Enough to make me question whether I wanted to come back in 2019. Disney hires short term people to help as contract workers who know next to nothing about queue control. They are usually the ones handling queues. The few and far between direct Disney staff usually seem to know about queue control. The way you avoid this issue as much as possible is to come incredibly early and be more near the front (like 3AM early). Those who come "regular early" (like 5 or 6AM) are the ones impacted by poor management getting into the building in the morning. I would say come before 4AM or just wait until 9 or 10AM to arrive each day. And get to your favorite sessions as early as possible for the same reason. Last Expo I saw how horribly they handled the Animated Movies session. People walking in at the last minute got in, while people who had waited for 3-4 hours were blocked out. It was literally a disaster. I came extra early and I made it in. But folks who came early but later than me were impacted.
Agree. The queue management people must have been in league with the security-pseudo TSA people. Some (a few) of the security people were nice and friendly, but others were just plain mean. And there were D23 people standing right there watching the whole show. When we pointed out what was going on at the bag check tables (e.g barking rude orders, grabbing items away from guests and throwing them away -- factory sealed bottles of water? When the D23 site said that was okay?), the D23 people agreed that the sealed bottles should have been allowed, but they said they couldn't stop any of the offensive behavior because "those employees aren't D23." Which is the same excuse for most of the line employees...
I disagree. After the disaster last time with the Animation movies queue, on Day 1, Disney staff got called on to make sure every other big event went smoothly. The Expo event people were clearly taking directions from Disney staff.
They may not choose them, but they do oversee them once the Expo starts. The CC employees can be so stupid as to defy reason -- telling people that there are no restrooms inside the CC?? What is the point in that and how could they even think that was plausible? Splitting up married couples into different lines? (I had to get a D23 manager to override the CC employee so that I could find, then join my husband after we got split up.) True, not all CC employees are so clueless and some are quite helpful. But the others just boggle the mind...
