Has anyone been on a 9:30 "Around the World" Segway tour?

[Luv2Travel]

Logical thinking would tell me that the 8:30 tour would give us more time in the World Showcase since it would finish before the WS opens. But we will be flying in late the night before our tour and I'm afraid it might be hard to make the 8:30. Therefore, I booked the 9:30 tour. The lady that booked it for me assured me that we would have the same amount of time in the WS even though it will open before our tour ends. Anyone have experience with this?

 

[buckylarue]

We did the 8:30 tour and still wound up being in the midst of guests by the time we finished up our trip around World Showcase; I believe it was close to 11:30 when we got done. They didn't rush us out of WS; by that time, they had us trained well enough to stay in a line and keep together so we weren't a hazard to anyone!

 

[Luv2Travel]

Thanks buckylarue for the response - sounds like you got a long tour!

Bumping back up in hopes of more replies.

 

[Skylarr29]

While the tour is basically the same at 9:30 the guests being in the world showcase do restrict you... if they are ther eyou have to stay in a line and can not pass and go at your own speed. We loved having the showcase to ourselves and we got to zoom around as fast as we wanted and do a bunch of obstacles. If you do the 9:30 you will be in the training room until 10:30 only leaving a few mins without guests in the world showcase. Since its only an hour earlier I would change it if you could. But that is just my opinion.

 

[Arielle22]

Dh and I did a 9:30 in Nov. We went at full speed and dh loved it. I found it more challenging being among people.

 

[Luv2Travel]

Thanks for the replies, I am leaning toward changing our ressie to 8:30. That would give us more time at Epcot anyway - this is only a 3 day trip.

 

[wld]

We did the 9:30 tour. The 8:30 tour returned to the room by 10:30 so theirs at least was not extended. We found the people to be a problem only after we got to England. (We started in Mexico) and then we had to get in single line. We had plenty of time to weave in and around things in all the other countries but England and Canada and got our special time by Italy to just let go. We had a couple of people in our tour group that were a little less comfortable on their segway so we did slow down by the time we got to France. Didn't spoil the experience though. We got our full 2 hours in and had lots of fun. We were told that at least in Dec/Jan this tour books full about 1 month in advance.

 

[SeaSpray]

DH and I have done both. We did not experience any real difference between the two. Oh wait, yes we did! LOL On the 9:30 tour, when we got to the area in Epcot where they let you ride around on your own for a bit and stop and take pictures of you with Spaceship Earth in the background, there happened to be a TON of characters playing "red light-green light" right next to us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! World Showcase was still not open at this point, and we were told that on occasion the characters come out and play in order to entertain the 9:30 Segway tour participants. Well I don't know how true that is, but we were thrilled to see so many characters in ONE place at ONE time! They even posed for us!

Ok, I have to share the pictures I took I will BRB and will add the pictures to this thread. Hmm..maybe I should do it in a separate thread because I don't want to hi-jack this one.

 

[Tumbleweed]

We've done the 9:30 tour twice. Toward the end World Showcase is just starting to
open. It was wonderful!

 

[Luv2Travel]

Okay, y'all are not helping my indecisiveness! LOL!

So, I changed my 9:30 tour to an 8:30 tour. Decided Skylarr29 was right (it's only an hour earlier) and it gets us to Soarin' a little earlier. But after reading the last two posts I'm back to questioning the times.

SeaSpray - I saw your pictures in the other thread - they were great! Just the chance of getting characters "alone" like that makes me want to go on the 9:30! But with my luck I doubt they would come out. Oh, decisions, decisions!!!