Resort Thread Disney's Club Level (CL) Thread

[mystery222184]

They had to do something to limit evening EMH and imo this is as good a solution as any. They were so crowded it negated the value in it.

That‘s true. It got to a point where we avoided the park with EMH. If this brings things back closer to how they used to be, it will be a major win.

 

[jods]

That‘s true. It got to a point where we avoided the park with EMH. If this brings things back closer to how they used to be, it will be a major win.

I remember super late EMH at MK and the park was pretty empty. I want to way open until 12/1. It was awesome. I miss those days. I'll take late EMH over early morning any day.

 

[NicoleLarson]

Since you guys are my go to, any restaurants anyone loves at Universal?

Also, what do you guys do on party/after hours days. Deciding if I want to go easy or do a morning park and rest prior. I'm so confused! I have some contingency restaurants booked but with park passes I want to nail it down. I was going to have the boo bash day be my husband's golf day but he said too long of a day and he'll be too tired. He wants to golf the following day. Our event ends at 1230 and my kids are night owls.

In general, we really like the sit down restaurants at UO, we do not like the counter service places. Our kids love the HP places so we will do those once per trip but will do sit down any other time.

Definitely grab Mythos, its in IOA. Cowfish is another favorite of ours, it books very quickly. Antojitos is good if you like Mexican, they do have a band that plays and it can get very loud. If you are staying at Royal Pacific Jake's is good, if you aren't staying there, not sure its worth the trip.
Toothsome books very quickly, I liked it, no one else did so we haven't been back except to get dessert, great place for a sweet tooth. Our meal at Margaritaville was very good for what is was....sandwiches/salads and our kids loved the atmosphere, this is another one that can get very loud.

We haven't tried big fire grill yet but I've heard really good things, its a bit more upscale.

A couple that we didn't care for are Finnegans (I had heard good things but we all disliked our food) and the NBC grill, terrible service and my food was inedible.

Oh and to give you some perspective about how easy is it to get to CityWalk, from the parks. Its closer than walking from the MK to

 

[Eastern]

Can’t say I’m personally a fan of that kind of benefit being tied to resort level, but it does mostly benefit me I guess (I like CSR sometimes though!). Devil will be in the details I guess in terms of how big a benefit it really is.

Isn't it really just tied to spend though? We are spending hundreds more per night for deluxe. If you made EMH cost hundreds more for any room for EMH it is the same thing. Just book deluxe.

Can't say I am any more against it than I would be if they charged more for (anyone to attend) EMH. If I had to pay extra money for EMH I wouldn't, but I am anyway since I booked deluxe at what I think is an outrageous price. Honestly, not sure I will do that again, EMH or not! I do have my limits and that is stupid money. They have to come up with things that justify the deluxe prices. They are unbelievably high at this point.

 

[rick1zoo2]

We would always avoid the park having EMH for the entire day as it seemed to up the crowd quite a bit. The only extra park thing we liked was the Early Morning Magic - Fantasyland (and also Toy Story Land) which was nice as it was limited capacity, included breakfast, so you could do everything in Fantasyland multiple times with no waits before the park opened, then sit down to breakfast.


On another topic, I have been checking often to see when events come back like the Wild Africa Trek, Up Close With Rhinos, etc. We have done events like Keys to the Kingdom Tour, Marceline to Magic Kingdom Tour, Taste Of Magic Kingdom Park Tour and enjoyed them a lot.

 

[Eastern]

Funny how no one complains about the 'parties' being elitist as you often have to pay ~$100pp for those. But limit it to deluxe guests and it inflames people. Look at the comment sections on some of the other websites that have announced it and it gets a lot of criticism. Money is money no matter how they want to label it. Disney wants more money. end of.

 

[Eastern]

They should add ME and 3 free FP to the offerings for deluxe guests. Actually 3 free FP would probably start a revolt worse than noodlegate, can you imagine?

But really, EMH alone is not enough at these lofty prices. It would be nice if they made deluxe resorts stays actually deluxe. Even CL could be improved. But Disney doesn't want to do it that way.

 

[mystery222184]

Funny how no one complains about the 'parties' being elitist as you often have to pay ~$100pp for those. But limit it to deluxe guests and it inflames people. Look at the comment sections on some of the other websites that have announced it and it gets a lot of criticism. Money is money no matter how they want to label it. Disney wants more money. end of.

Yeah I expected some of the comments to get intense. But as you said - Disney is all about money, they have been that way for awhile. Deluxe resorts have been priced incredibly high with diminishing value. They have to do something - both to keep people in Deluxe resorts and to make EMH somewhat attractive. You can’t just turn every deluxe building into a DVC (which those complaining can use to skirt this by renting points cheaper). I still think they may do something similar with fastpass next.

 

[Maxie86]

They had to do something to limit evening EMH and imo this is as good a solution as any. They were so crowded it negated the value in it.

They could take away the off site emh benefits and only include Swan and Dolphin as they have always been given those benefits. They added thousands of rooms to the emh pool with the inclusion of DS and other select hotels. While we always stay deluxe, and this will benefit us, I am not in favor of limiting emh to only deluxe resorts. It did say limited nights so maybe it will be ok though...we'll have to wait for more information. If it is something that stays it will encourage people who do not normally book deluxe to book it...limiting the discounts and making it hard to get one. Probably what Disney has in mind by doing this.

 

[Maxie86]

They should add ME and 3 free FP to the offerings for deluxe guests. Actually 3 free FP would probably start a revolt worse than noodlegate, can you imagine?

But really, EMH alone is not enough at these lofty prices. It would be nice if they made deluxe resorts stays actually deluxe. Even CL could be improved. But Disney doesn't want to do it that way.

This was the intention when FP+ first came out. There was a pool of FPs available to book at the resort and deluxes had more than mods and values. Same with CL, when it was first introduced CL CMs spent most of their time making FPs and whenever you walked by they would ask if you wanted some fps. It didn't matter how many you already had they could and did add more until their pool of fps was used up.

 

[kylenne]

That‘s true. It got to a point where we avoided the park with EMH. If this brings things back closer to how they used to be, it will be a major win.

I only ever did pm EMH at Epcot to walk around WS and even then rarely. AM to rope drop and immediately hop to another park

Maybe I’m just selfish, idk. But I look at what our rack rate rooms are costing in October and think it’s about time they did something like this lol

 

[Eastern]

I do not want to start an off-topic discussion again but just a reminder for people going 50th weekend, my United flights changed again, times and flight numbers, and I had to ok the new schedule. Be sure to check your flights periodically. Also update your ME.

 

[mystery222184]

This is good - we got a little bit of spark back into this thread now

 

[twinklebug]

They had to do something to limit evening EMH and imo this is as good a solution as any. They were so crowded it negated the value in it.

I wouldn't mind if they had a night for Deluxe, followed by a night for value and then one for moderate, or which ever way it would breakdown the numbers best. But that would require more EMH nights than Disney had backed off to last time we saw them.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

No real right or wrong here, just discussion.

I personally have no issue with everyone - even the included good neighbor resorts - being a part of EMH (or whatever benefit they want to do) so long as the quantity/quality of such benefit matches the potential audience size. I’m a fan of resort type and price options more than I am of certain benefits for certain resort levels. But I’m also comfortable with the value I am currently receiving at the Deluxe rates, a highly personal opinion for everyone. Someday I may not feel the same, but I’d rather have that flexibility and it not impact my park plans.

If you ask me, the real PM EMH “problem” was created years ago. Roughly 2012 they went from 3 hours to 2 hours. DHS hasn’t had regular PM EMH since 2017, DAK since 2011. Two hours at Epcot and MK typically two nights in any given week was a relatively light amenity given the way things evolved over the years.

Although I’ll be honest, I can count on one hand the number of times we actually attended PM EMHs - due to “avoid the park with EMH” strategy and having littles so bedtime was often more of a priority. So I always hesitate to have some strong opinion about PM EMHs, since I don’t “really” know with any great depth of experience!

 

[twinklebug]

One of those magic touches I was missing in recent years was finding out from the front desk or the cast member at the bus stop that the park we were headed off to had their operating hours extended to midnight (non EMH). I'm sure it stunk for some cast members who found it hard to work that late, while others loved bringing in the extra time. As a guest, there was nothing quite like the freedom it gave us to calm down our touring plan and take in time dining, shopping or just heading back to the room for a swim and a nap without that worry of an early close.

Unrelated/related: I hate the park pass system. While I understand it keeps Disney on top of controlling numbers and is probably much needed for big days such as the 50th or opening of a new attraction, it forces families who are planning out their trips to buy passes earlier than they'd otherwise do if only to set up the ability to get into parks.

 

[Eastern]

I'm sure that some people are probably ok paying deluxe prices and just getting the resort, but most probably aren't, which is why Disney has to come up with perks to justify the price. If they were getting solid bookings at the new price levels we would not be seeing them giving anything away. Disney does not give things away

Also when they charge the extra for parties, they must assume that all of those people will attend. When you offer EMH to deluxe, it's a nice 'perk' that probably many of the guests won't even use. So they can offer it as a perk without having to have the same staffing levels of the paid parties. Most recently, we were going to the late EMH and still waiting 1/2 hour for rides because the staffing levels were so low. In the early days of EMH you could go and reliably walk onto everything that was open.

 

[mystery222184]

No real right or wrong here, just discussion.

I personally have no issue with everyone - even the included good neighbor resorts - being a part of EMH (or whatever benefit they want to do) so long as the quantity/quality of such benefit matches the potential audience size. I’m a fan of resort type and price options more than I am of certain benefits for certain resort levels. But I’m also comfortable with the value I am currently receiving at the Deluxe rates, a highly personal opinion for everyone. Someday I may not feel the same, but I’d rather have that flexibility and it not impact my park plans.

If you ask me, the real PM EMH “problem” was created years ago. Roughly 2012 they went from 3 hours to 2 hours. DHS hasn’t had regular PM EMH since 2017, DAK since 2011. Two hours at Epcot and MK typically two nights in any given week was a relatively light amenity given the way things evolved over the years.

Although I’ll be honest, I can count on one hand the number of times we actually attended PM EMHs - due to “avoid the park with EMH” strategy and having littles so bedtime was often more of a priority. So I always hesitate to have some strong opinion about PM EMHs, since I don’t “really” know with any great depth of experience!

I agree the reduction in EMH was a big issue. I would say that, in addition to expanding the population and the intense advertising of EMH days- are why we are here today.

To me, the Deluxe prices are getting harder to justify. All Disney resorts go up the their annual ~5%, but being at a much higher base than values (for example), the difference is significant. The proximity to the parks has always been the biggest value lever - but that’s something else Disney has let slowly deteriorate- or hasn’t enforced keeping the resort monorail to resort guests (Or a dining reservation). It’s now just a method for everyone to pack on and unload at the transportation center. The monorail went from reliable and fast to old/slow/less reliable.

Even their ”flagship” resort (which I’m a fan of), is often mocked in comparison to true luxury resorts. They have so much trouble filling these rooms they just offload to DVC.

They didn’t have to change EMH rules, but I’m glad they are doing something for Deluxe guests - Even if they are only keeping what we already had and taking away from other categories to make it a “perk”. This is the cheapest way for them to create value - which is par for the course.

 

[NicoleLarson]

The EMH hour for deluxe at WDW is no different then "free" express passes for deluxe UO hotels. Its just a benefit of certain hotels. Its like if you book a 1st class airline ticket, you get certain perks. I think where WDW went wrong with this announcement was, calling it EMH. If they would have come up with a different name entirely and made it sound really different, it would have been received better. But now just giving something to deluxe that used to be for everyone is where people are getting upset and I get their point too. It doesn't really affect me, I think we've done evening EMH maybe twice in what is now probably over 100 trips.

 

[Sarahslay]

They could take away the off site emh benefits and only include Swan and Dolphin as they have always been given those benefits. They added thousands of rooms to the emh pool with the inclusion of DS and other select hotels. While we always stay deluxe, and this will benefit us, I am not in favor of limiting emh to only deluxe resorts. It did say limited nights so maybe it will be ok though...we'll have to wait for more information. If it is something that stays it will encourage people who do not normally book deluxe to book it...limiting the discounts and making it hard to get one. Probably what Disney has in mind by doing this.

But there are still so many people who just honestly can't afford it. You'll have some families who will scrap everything they have together just to afford the values at this point, and during some points of the year several nights/a week of a value is the same as one or two at a deluxe, so it's not like everyone who normally stays value or even moderate will suddenly rush the deluxe resorts. I think with the prices they've already tapped out their market. They're really trying to gear it towards a certain clientel, that's not lost on me in the slightest with this. They know they're pricing people out, and it's probably about to start getting ugly.