Just checked out of the resort of a 6-night stay (7/3-7/9) and is on our way home. This is my family’s fourth trip but our first time during the 7/4 weekend. We usually visit WDW during last week of July/first week of August. Our last visit was back in 2018. This trip in comparison is the most stressful trip. It is probably because of COVID, limited services at Disney, lack of FP+ and the timing.…..
CROWD LEVEL: high
4th of July crowd is no kidding. I booked that weekend based on the impression that Disney would still be operating with limited capacity. I have always heard of all the wonderful things that would happen at Disney for the 4th of July. I did not experience any of that but crowds during the past week. As mentioned above, we can only visit during the summer and we used to come in late July/early August. The crowds never bothered us until this trip. I will stick with late July/early August weeks in the future.
WEATHER
We anticipated to endure heat and humidity during our trip. But because of the Elsa hurricane/storm, the weather was actually not as hot as what we have experienced in the past during late July/early August. The effect of Elsa on WDW wasn’t much. We brought neck fans and rain jacks (not Disney ponchos) and those are definitely necessities for a WDW trip in the summer.
THE MASKS
Because DS (9) is not yet vaccinated, we wore masks most of the time. There was about 1% of guests wearing masks. There were more mask-wearing CMs then guests. No one bothered us because we were wearing masks. Masks are required on the buses, monorail and sky liners. Compliance was good except for once when we were on the monorail and a group of 10 people didn’t wear masks and that was the only time when we took the monorail.
THE LINES & THE ATTRACTIONS: moving but looooong
we don’t do rope drop. DH and I usually get up at 5am for our jobs so we don’t like to get up early when we are on vacation. During pre-covid time, I would schedule a slew of FP+ throughout the day and we would just jump from one ride to another. The wait was never longer than 10 minutes each. During this trip, we just stood in line and waited and waited and waited, in the rain or under the sun. The standby lines were indeed constantlymoving. Most of the posted wait times are spot on. The only time when we experienced much shorter wait time than the posted time was at the Slingky Dog Dash when it was posted 80 but we only waited 35. Lines were much shorter during the last hour before park closes.That’s when we rode the MFSR when the wait was only 30 minutes. The first time when we rode MFSR we had the whole cockpit by ourselves and it was a lot of fun! The second time we shared it with two other guests who were the pilots And they crashed it a lot!
ROTR was a great ride. I got 2 out of 2 attemps on getting BG at 7am. Once was BG 24 and once was 13. During the second visit, the ride was closed and we were told to return at anytime before the park closes. During the ride, I had to take DS out of the line to use the bathroom to answer a nature’s call. We were in the big room with all the stormtroopers. The CM led us to the bathroom there and let us join the line when he was done with the business. It was interesting how the CM had to break her character and whispered to me “we have bathroom here in the back if you need to use it.”. As soon as we went back to the big room she suddenly went back to her serious tone. It was just so funny.
Fireworks at Epcot was fun. Finding a spot was very effortless.Probably it’s because the show was a filler with less interest. I didn’t bother to go to MK due to the crowd level. Last time my family saw MK’s Happily Ever After was back in 2018 when Disney offered the $50 CL FP+ that included private viewing locations for evening extravaganzas. That was an awesome service and deal!
THE RESORT and TRANSPORTATIONS
We stayed at YC for the very first time and I really like this resort. CMs are friendly. Some of them really went out of their ways to assist my family. YC is a lot calmer and less busier than BC. The ferry service to HS and Epcot is very convenient. The longest that I have waited for ferry was 5 minutes. Buses were okay when we used it. Wait time was around 5-10 minutes. The bus schedule shown on
MDE was a
Couple minutes later than the actual arrival time. We took some Lyft rides too when the buses were too full or too late. The SAB pool was very nice. The shower room by the main pool was awesome! Since YC allows dogs, I did see people walking with dogs in and outside of the resort. None of them bothered me. The dogs were all so cute!
FOOD and MOBILE ORDERS
We had dined at several locations (Biergarten, Yak & Yeti, Cape May Cafe, Crystal Palace, Morimoto Asia, Ale & Compass, the Captain Cook, Ronto
Roasters, Docking Bay 7, Marketplace of Ale and Compass) and used mobile orders when we could. I will post our restaurant reviews in the restaurant forum. The mobile order service is really convenient and I hope Disney will keep offering it in the future. I highly recommend placing mobile orders for Ronto Roaster and Docking Bay 7 early in the morning before you leave for the park. Seatings at Ronto Roaster is very limited. So I asked a CM to help me grab a table and he did.
SICKNESS and THE URGENT CARE: BUENA VISTA U/C
On the 4th day of the trip, DS started having fever and other cold-like symptoms. Due to the concern of covid, we took a detour to a local urgent care. the visit went well despite of the hour long wait. Rapid test was negative. DS bounced back to his feet the next day. Last day of our stay, DD went down with the same symptoms and she is a lot better the next say. My kids were remote for the entire 2020-2021 school year. I guess their bodies are just not used to all the physical stimuli that are involved in a Disney trip. I am glad that it was not our first trip to Disney and we have hit all the new rides and more before they went down.
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In conclusion, I am grateful that my family had the opportunity to visit Disney this summer as there are bigger Disney fans who cannot visit at the current time. But value wise, I don’t believe this trip was worthwhile for what it cost us. I won’t recommend Disney to anyone right now. My family probably won’t visit Disney until 2-3 years later. If on-site benefit is still limited, we would consider staying offsite for less cost and bigger spaces. My DH sz we should have gone to Universal Studios this time instead. For once, I agree with him.
thank you for reading my review
