Just Back from a Wonderful Trip - A Few Thoughts (Long)

[MinnieFan]

We just returned late last night from our first holiday trip to WDW. To say we had a great time would be an understatement! Just a few observations on what we did and saw:

1. We got "pixie dusted" at the Wilderness Lodge. Our check in day was our wedding anniversary, but I did not put this information on our reservation - I wasn't looking for anything special. While we were waiting on the check in line for the CM to call us up to the desk, my DH wished me a happy anniversary and gave me a kiss. (He doesn't read these boards, so he doesn't even know about pixie dust!) When we returned to our room that night, there were balloons and an anniversary card with a signed picture of Mickey and Minnie. Very sweet!

2. Epcot is really beautiful at the holidays. The Lights of Winter are fantastic, the tree is beautiful, and don't miss the Storytellers in the individual countries. We didn't get to see all of them (we saw China, Germany, Italy and the UK), but we really enjoyed the ones we did see. We went to the Candlelight Processional on 12/26 - it was freezing that night, but it was great! This is something that I would definitely do again. We were at Epcot on 12/26, 12/29 and the morning of 1/1/06. The crowds had subsided a great deal by 1/1, although there was still a 70 minute wait for Soarin' (awesome ride, incidentally!). Wonders of Life was open on 12/26 and 12/29, but was closed on 1/1.

3. Magic Kingdom was unbelievably beautiful and unbelievably crowded. We were there on 12/28 and 12/31. We were told by a CM on 12/28 that the park was closed by 9 a.m. However, we expected the crowds and went with the attitude that we would enjoy the holiday atmosphere and ride whatever we could, but we wouldn't stress about it. By using Fastpass and getting to the parks early, we managed to ride all of the headline attractions in all of the parks, plus quite a few others. We were pleasantly surprised by how much we were able to do. We had planned to stay at MK until midnight on NYE, but for us it was just impossible. DD7 was exhausted, and the crowd was immense. (Even Small World had a 1 hour wait.) We watched Wishes at 8:30, took another ride on Peter Pan with our Fastpasses, and headed back to the hotel. It took nearly an hour to walk from Peter Pan to the park exit.

4. It is very obvious that many people go to WDW without doing any research in advance. Guidebooks and places like this forum are really important in preparing for a trip, especially at such a busy time of year. We have never seen more grumpy, pushy and downright rude guests than we did on this trip. For example, we were on the Fastpass line for Big Thunder Mountain on NYE. The standby wait time was 100 minutes, the Fastpass return wait time was less than 10 minutes. When we reached the point in the line where the CM collects the Fastpasses (very shortly before boarding the ride), a mom, dad and son about age 10 pushed back from near the front of the Fastpass line and began accosting the poor CM. The mom said, "We have Fastpasses, why do we have to wait to get on this ride?" The CM very politely said that the wait was very short, they were getting on the ride ahead of all of the other people who were waiting over 1-1/2 hours. The mom then said, "Our son has been crying for an hour, can't you just let us on right away?" (The boy looked fine, BTW.) When the CM said she couldn't do that, both the mom and the dad became quite abusive, calling her stupid and other names, demanding her name so they could complain about her, etc. The CM was very calm and polite throughout, and asked them to either proceed into the ride or get off the line. After some more complaining, they decided to ride and got on in about 2 more minutes. We saw incidents like this all over the parks. Starting about mid-day, people got frustrated and annoyed and started taking it out on the staff and their fellow guests. In my opinion, the CMs last week did an admirable job of moving, feeding and entertaining massive numbers of people, and they don't deserve to be abused for it. My advice - if you lighten up a little, you can have a great time even when it is very crowded.

We had a wonderful trip, and would not hesitate to visit WDW at the holidays again.

 

[Eeyore2003]

My DH and I think that the "frustration/rudeness" level at Disney World in is direct proportion to the crowd level. Our vacation in November started the last few days of Jersey week, and then that week-end was the last days of the Food and Wine Festival, Soap Week- End, and Festival of the Masters Art Show, plus I overheard a CM saying there were allot of conferences that week-end. I'm not going to go into details, but things got ALLOT more "friendlier" and "happy" after Sunday and the crowds died down. We've been there in July and August allot and the crowds then didn't seem as bad as this week-end.

I agree that the CM's do a wonderful job also. I commented to my husband that I know it's their job and philosophy of Disney to be nice, but I certainly would have a hard time keeping my cool. When people complain about a grumpy CM, I know why!!!

I'm glad you had a great time and just flowed with it.

 

[Pete W.]

Magic Kingdom was unbelievably beautiful and unbelievably crowded. We were there on 12/28 and 12/31. We were told by a CM on 12/28 that the park was closed by 9 a.m. However, we expected the crowds and went with the attitude that we would enjoy the holiday atmosphere and ride whatever we could, but we wouldn't stress about it. By using Fastpass and getting to the parks early, we managed to ride all of the headline attractions in all of the parks, plus quite a few others. We were pleasantly surprised by how much we were able to do.

We were staying in a cabin at Fort Wilderness (loved it!!) and although we had planned thursday 12/29 as our MK day we decided to visit the park after dinner on 12/28 just to see the decorations at night. I was totally expecting it to be a madhouse but it really wasn't that bad. We entered the park at 6pm and I was shocked that there was still plenty of space along the Main Street curb for the 8pm parade. We rode TTA then I decided to stake a spot on Main Steet near Town Square for the parade. By 6:45 the curb was full and certainly by 8pm people were packed in to see the parade. As soon as it ended we headed for the exit and caught the first boat back to Fort Wilderness and arrived at our cabin by 9pm.

We're DVC members (BWV) and we just visited in June/July so this was a 'bonus' trip for us and we reused our annual passes and drove to minimize the expense. I had braced myself for terrible crowds but I can say that we had very good experiences. Of course as the OP said, most people at WDW during Christmas week obviously don't do a lot of planning and I'm still shocked at how many people don't 'get' the Fast Pass system which we used religiously with great results. Who wants to wait for 140 minutes for Test Track anyway (the posted stand-by time late afternoon on 12/29!)

 

[UrsulasShadow]

This could have been my post, except I didn't really encounter too much rudeness (had my magic blinders on, evidently!) I was at CP the same night as you, and MAN, was it cold! Then, I had to go catch my Illuminations Cruise (thank goodness for blankets onboard). Got to ride every ride I wanted to. Usually didn't go into the parks after 2pm, unless I had a show or dinner reservation. I think that made all the difference.

 

[BoPeep]

My DH and I think that the "frustration/rudeness" level at Disney World in is direct proportion to the crowd level.

This is sooo true. We were there the first two weeks of December. The first week was very crowded and we encountered MANY rude people (including CMs!). The second week was not crowded at all and we didn't see hardly any grumpy people.

 

[MNmom2]

4. It is very obvious that many people go to WDW without doing any research in advance. Guidebooks and places like this forum are really important in preparing for a trip, especially at such a busy time of year. We have never seen more grumpy, pushy and downright rude guests than we did on this trip. For example, we were on the Fastpass line for Big Thunder Mountain on NYE. The standby wait time was 100 minutes, the Fastpass return wait time was less than 10 minutes. When we reached the point in the line where the CM collects the Fastpasses (very shortly before boarding the ride), a mom, dad and son about age 10 pushed back from near the front of the Fastpass line and began accosting the poor CM. The mom said, "We have Fastpasses, why do we have to wait to get on this ride?" The CM very politely said that the wait was very short, they were getting on the ride ahead of all of the other people who were waiting over 1-1/2 hours. The mom then said, "Our son has been crying for an hour, can't you just let us on right away?" (The boy looked fine, BTW.) When the CM said she couldn't do that, both the mom and the dad became quite abusive, calling her stupid and other names, demanding her name so they could complain about her, etc. The CM was very calm and polite throughout, and asked them to either proceed into the ride or get off the line. After some more complaining, they decided to ride and got on in about 2 more minutes. We saw incidents like this all over the parks. Starting about mid-day, people got frustrated and annoyed and started taking it out on the staff and their fellow guests. In my opinion, the CMs last week did an admirable job of moving, feeding and entertaining massive numbers of people, and they don't deserve to be abused for it. My advice - if you lighten up a little, you can have a great time even when it is very crowded.

Your last line was PERFECT!! I think the key is attitude. I cannot imagine being rude to a CM or watching someone else act like that. It's WDW - expect it to be busy and expect to wait, not a difficult concept, but apparently to some it is. Sorry you saw so many rude people....just another reason for the rest of us to show our appreciation and respect to the CMs and others in general.

 

[Cruise04]

We also noticed the rudeness level and it was with certain levels of people (I am in no way trying to say that all people are like this within certain levels so please don't think that I'm trying to say that). But it appeared that it came with the immense amount of cultures that don't know what our culture expects - and, yes, it is an expectation of our culture to be kind and courteous to others. My breaking point came after sitting since 2:45pm in MK in a good spot to see the fireworks show. At about 11:45pm people starting shoving toward Main Street and there was no place to go. On the side near my dad there were people with strollers parked that couldn't go anywhere and people were stepping on our feet trying to get through the line. I finally had to get up on the bench because I was tired of being stepped on by people that couldn't go anywhere. At one point I made the comment that this sucked and a foreign individual who had stepped on my feet looked at me when I said that so I looked right back at him and said "Yes, this does suck. We have been sitting here for 9 hours and you people come through and think you have the right to step on our feet and shove us out of your way and now we can't hardly sit in our spot and you don't even say excuse me." and he knew every word I said because we then heard him speak english.

I will say that 4 years ago the crowds were not this heavy and not this rude. And you are so right - the CMs did an AWESOME job this past week! I even heard people thanking them for working on Christmas Day.