Just back from Disneyworld ahhh

[Dizneydaz]

I'm a DLR AP holder and have been to WDW 13 times (21 times since 1998)-I love both parks-for different reasons. I grew up with DLR. Matterhorn opened the year I was born. When I was a kid we only went to DLR a few times. (family of 6) Once I got old enough to go without parents (as teenagers) we went a little more often (still had ABCDE tickets then-I remember when we were lucky enough to get Magic Key tix we were so happy! ). Then in the early 80's my DSis had her DD and we started going more often. We got AP (the first ones were 3 Season Passes, good for Jan, May, Sept.-I think). My DNiece basically grew up at DLR. In fact she got her first job at DLR and worked there (with a break while she went to San Diego State) until she left Cal. for grad school at U of U.

Since DNiece was a DLR CM we (my DM, DD, and myself) took her to WDW several times to take advantage of room discounts and park admission. Also my DM, DD, and myself have taken many trips without her (staying at value resorts, mostly).

I will always love DLR-it's the original. But I also love WDW-for different reasons. When we go to DLR it's just for the day, maybe even a few hours (we went yesterday for my DSis's birthday-we were there from 4-8 p.m.). We always return home after being in the parks. Since we go so many times in a year we take our time while we are there. We talk to the CMs (a couple of them have become my "park" friends ). If lines are long, we skip it knowing we will be back later. I let DD9 play at Redwood Creek Challenge Trail-she loves it! During Christmas time at DLR you get to see the snow and fireworks from the week before Christmas to after New Years for no additional price (WDW MVMCP costs extra)

Park Hopping is so easy at DLR. Just a few minutes walk and you're there. We frequently "crossover" several times in a day.

When we go to WDW it's a vacation. I can usually stretch our week into 11 days. (lose 2 days for travel) and we spend about 1/2 of that at the parks. Our favorite park is AK, followed closely by EPCOT (DD9 loves EPCOT). Since we go to DLR so often, we usually spend very little time at MK. DL is better. We also do one, or both of the waterparks. I think they are actually our favorite part of WDW. So. Cal has nothing to compare them to. I only wish they would build one here (I guess the weather's not warm enough, long enough )

When we go to WDW we always stay on property. Lately, POP has become like a second home to us. With the free DDP in Sept. we have stayed at POP the last 3 years (we used to switch resorts).

I love the feel of being at WDW. Everything is clean. The roads are wonderful. Getting around by car is easy. (we always rent a car). When you are there, you are completely immersed in Disney.

The Dining at WDW is awesome. DLR is okay. When we go to WDW (with free DDP) I spend alot of time planning our meals (with flexibilty). We've had some wonderful meals at WDW.

Also when we are in Florida, we travel around to see "the real Florida" We've been to Anna Marie Island, Sanibel Island, Honeymoon Island, Merrit Island Refuge, Crystal River, The Keys, etc.

So, basically I like both-WDW is a real vacation for us, DLR is like playing in our own backyard with friends-more relaxed and laid back.

 

[nunzia]

I love everything Disney. Having lived my whole life in New England our trips to WDW were every other year. We have done that for 12 years. We have also done the Disney Cruise.

DH received a job offer (in May) to good to refuse which brought us allllllll the way across the US to CA. DH came out to interview and first place he went was Disneyland. He called me from DL to say I will absolutely LOVE living just a few miles to Disney!!

AND I DO!!! But to those of you that have only been to Disneyland...the World is totally different...or to me anyway. It is HUGE. 4 HUGE Parks. Tons of resorts and loaded with dining. Many more attractions, parades, fireworks, characters, shows, tours!!

The first time we walked into DL, I was shocked at the size of the castle. BUT I had to quickly remember this was Walt's FIRST Park. There is so much history here. My birthday is in March and I am buying one of the 1955 Disneyland sweatshirts with my DL gift card.

Now I can go anytime I want with my SoCal AP. I actually live 20 minutes to the Land AND best of all, from my top floor condo, every single night I can see the fireworks from the Land. When my parents were here visiting over Xmas, they were so amazed at the nightly fireworks show!!!

DL is my NEW home and we will be driving over on Sunday!!!!!!!!

I'm so jealous!

 

[PinkBudgie]

Love reading this thread! I've always wanted to go to WDW but have never been. Flying out there plus WDW is very expensive and right now we are putting our twin boys through private school, which takes almost every spare cent we have, but we love the school. DH and I are going to celebrate getting them through school with a trip to WDW in about 4 years. I've already decided if we are going to go all the way there, we have to stay for about 2 weeks and have to stay at the Polynesian. Somehow. Or if we went in 5 years we could go for our 25th anniversary!

My absolute dream trip would be tour all the Disneylands of the world!

In the meantime, we take shorter trips to DLR. It is closer, cheaper, and we love it.

 

[Amy&Dan]

Hmmm. Usually I am in the position around here of defending DLR from folks who have WDW set up as the "ideal Disney experience". When they do this, it can sometimes blind them to some of the awesome (and better) things at DLR because they are too absorbed with how DLR falls short of their ideal.

I understand where the OP is coming from, but still want to throw in a reverse defense of WDW. So my post is more for the general readership here on DIS and not for the OP who is clearly aware of these issues.

I too love the proximity of hotels and parks at DLR. However, we need to be careful about setting DLR up as the "ideal Disney vacation" and then WDW's greater expanse becomes a drawback somehow.

What I have learned to do is put on my DLR hat while at DLR, and put on my WDW hat while at WDW. At DLR I know I will have a walking distance hotel, easy parkhopping and high ride concentration. At WDW I know I will have more parks to choose from, lots more cool restaurants to choose from, and lots of cool activities outside the parks (including water parks).

FWIW, I have not noticed any real difference between CMs at WDW and DLR. The vast majority of them are great.

Well as usual, I agree with Hydroguy (must be a Colorado thing )! So often I defend DL for its significance of being Walt's park, its compact size and the often superior rides to wDW counterparts. But in the end, its just hard to compare. WDW is a destination. They don't call it a "World" for nothing! I love all the resorts, the dining and Animal Kingdom and Epcot are above and beyond your typical theme park, even a Disney one. And the waterparks at WDW to me are as good as the theme parks. My oh my, if DL could add something like that, how cool would that be?

I do think you often see a more relaxed clientale at DL. Which goes to reaosn. THey have a much larger percentage of locals. WDW has a fraction of local, AP holders. Most of its daily visitors are tourists, many of them are foreign and its very size and nature makes it near impossible to see it all and that makes it near impossible for many people not to try to do just that!

I also haven't seen much difference in cm's coast to coast.

I always say people tend to love their home park. The one they went to first, the one they know like the back of their hand. For me that's DL but as WDW becomes a place I visit as much or more than DL, it now feels sort of like home too.

 

[HydroGuy]

Well as usual, I agree with Hydroguy (must be a Colorado thing )!

 

[KCmike]

I have to chime in.

WDW really has to be planned to get everything done. I know you could go foot loose and fancy free but you would miss alot and to me I would feel like your not getting your money's worth. When I go to WDW I need at least 7 days for Magic Kingdom for two days, Epcot for two days, MGM for one and AK for one. This leaves me a day for Downtown Disney and resort hopping. I love the resorts and the monorail there. But then I found....

Disneyland. Oh what a joy. No buses, no long treks across miles of pavement just to get to the next attraction. I love the nostalgia (Walt was actually there with his kids!), the proximity, the weather (oh how I love the weather), the beautiful Pacific Ocean, and to me the rides are better at DL. All except Splash Mtn which is better at WDW. My wife and I totally agree that DL is much better than WDW even though it only has 1 and a half parks (DCA only counts as a half). Fireworks, Fantasmic!, and parades are better at DL (except for Spectromagic). So if you've never been to DL do yourself a favor and visit this magical park. Hey they even still have the magic shop that Steve Martin worked at, the penny arcade on main street, the orginal Tiki Room (boy did WDW screw that up), and so many little details. I could go on and on. I wish I lived closer. I hope to stop by this year again. It would be three in a row. Here's to dreaming.

 

[DWFan4Life]

Seriously I wanted to pack up AK into a little bitty box and bring it home with me I loved it!!

I can say I wish we had something like these two parks that I could just visit all the time and hang out and just eat and see the details in them all the time. I think they are sometimes underappreciated.

Same here. I want to visit it always or even weekends but impossible to happen.

 

[biolabetty]

I absolutely love Epcot and wish we had a version here in California. I find I spend most of my time there, with one day for AK, a half day for DHS, and 1 day for MK. This time we did it in a much more relaxed way since it was just my husband and myself. We came with our friends last year who wanted to enjoy every single second of the day, which made my husband extremely exhausted and grumpy. It was so nice this time to wait for our ADR at Boma while sitting out next to a savannah while rocking in the rocking chairs and watching the animals. We found a lot of time to just enjoy the experience of being there. I always do that at Disneyland, so it made sense to finally do it at WDW.

 

[nunzia]

I won't have enough time at WDW!! (freaking out already) But..with DH work and our lack of OKW points a Sunday afternoon to Saturday afternoon will just have to do..if we decide we don't hate it afterall we can always go back
I am literally going to make a list of what things in each park must be done, skipping those that are at DLR or I don't care about. I also plan to take the Backstage Magic tour since I've heard it's great, so that sucks up 7 hours...My DH may want to spend more time in AK than the average bear since he's a vet tech. I will need all 11 months to properly plan!

 

[biolabetty]

I wouldn't totally leave out rides that are at DL and WDW, since some of them are quite different in both places. Pooh is better at WDW, in my opinion, and Snow White is very different, she's actually in it.

 

[imjen]

I love reading this thread. I absolutely love DL and can't wait to take the kids to DW hopefully sometime in the next couple of years. For those that have been, what age would you say the youngest child should be to hopefully have the stamina to do DW and to go on the slides at the water park? I'm guessing it's not so easy to take breaks in the middle of the day at DW like it is at DL. Do you usually stay all day?

 

[momrek06]

I wouldn't totally leave out rides that are at DL and WDW, since some of them are quite different in both places. Pooh is better at WDW, in my opinion, and Snow White is very different, she's actually in it.

And PIRATES is 1000 times better at DL than DW!!! Also HM is very special at DL than the DW as you can actually see the entire Mansion....and it is beautiful!!!

 

[momrek06]

I love reading this thread. I absolutely love DL and can't wait to take the kids to DW hopefully sometime in the next couple of years. For those that have been, what age would you say the youngest child should be to hopefully have the stamina to do DW and to go on the slides at the water park? I'm guessing it's not so easy to take breaks in the middle of the day at DW like it is at DL. Do you usually stay all day?

DH & I honeymoon at WDW back in 1980. Only ONE park. We loved it so much we knew one day we would go back with our children. Then we had our 2 DS. They are 3.5 years apart. When DS#1 was 8.5 and DS#2 was 5 we went for the first time since our honeymoon. I was so glad I waited until they were that age. They had more stamina at those ages.

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

I love reading this thread. I absolutely love DL and can't wait to take the kids to DW hopefully sometime in the next couple of years. For those that have been, what age would you say the youngest child should be to hopefully have the stamina to do DW and to go on the slides at the water park? I'm guessing it's not so easy to take breaks in the middle of the day at DW like it is at DL. Do you usually stay all day?

I waited until mine were 11 & 10. I wanted to be sure they were old enough to go on all of the attractions, and for us, this was a great time to go.

 

[HydroGuy]

I love reading this thread. I absolutely love DL and can't wait to take the kids to DW hopefully sometime in the next couple of years. For those that have been, what age would you say the youngest child should be to hopefully have the stamina to do DW and to go on the slides at the water park? I'm guessing it's not so easy to take breaks in the middle of the day at DW like it is at DL. Do you usually stay all day?

On our first trip our youngest was 10. But like DLR any age is fine.

People have different strategies for how they tour WDW and it is much more varied than DLR. Here is how we did it last time:

o No parkhopping and no EMHs

o All breakfasts were on-the-go. Bagels and/or fruit we had in our hotel room and took with us to eat on the bus. This allowed later sleep ins until 7:30 or 8AM even on park days as parks opened at 9AM and we tried to be out the door by 8:20AM.

o One sit down meal a day (either lunch or dinner) to save time and $$$.
A couple days we did lunch and dinner sit down but usually we did something fast or ate sandwiches at the room or from our pack for one of the meals.

o Try to hit rope drop as many times as possible - we did 7 days out of 10

o Build in off days or half days - we took one day completely off from theme parks and slept in, then went to DisneyQuest at Noon and a water park after. On other days we did half days at parks and either returned to the hotel or went to water parks

o We did not do too many afternoon breaks as it is so time consuming. I think we did it twice in 10 days. We just tended to get to parks early and leave parks early and try to get to bed earlier that night.

o Avoid early mornings after late nights - if we wanted a late night then we tried to do it on days where the next day was a late morning start. We did do early morning after late night once, and it was not that bad - kids still got 8 hours sleep as opposed to 9-10 on other nights

o We did water parks late. They were open until 7PM when we were there and we got there at around 5PM. The lines were pretty short by that time and in two hours we could get on 10-15 water rides. We did water parks four days out of ten - two at BB and two at TL.

 

[Dizneydaz]

Great strategies HyrdoGuy!

 

[bluedoll]

Hi all..... so I know this is the thread for Disneyland but wanted to let you guys know how much i appreciate Disneyland.
We have always gone to the Land, this past Jan we took a plunge and decided to go to the World. I spent months on the DW boards. I don't mean to offend anyone but is it just that west coasters are more mellow or are east coasters Disney snobs???
Anyhow don't get me wrong my family had a GREAT time at DW. It was 40 degress when we got there and our day at MK didn't get above 40 with a nightly low of 27!!!! It was great to see all the CM's reactions to the cold weather. By the time we leaft it was in the low 80's. We made it though all 4 parks in 5 days and went to disney quest(very cool ).
After all was said and done the question came DW or DL???? All 4 of our kids (ages 11-20) said DISNEYLAND!!!!! Reasons...... less crowed, more compact, not as much time on buses ect #1 reason...............drum roll please............. The people are more nice !!! This is from teenagers! Maybe it's because it's more expensive at DW so people are pressured to get it all in?? Who knows we meet alot of great people at DW some from the west some from the east some from other countries but none compare to the laid back relaxing times and nice people we have had at DL.
Anyhow just wanted to say Thanks! and I am glad to be back to planning my next DL trip so much less stress!!!! By the way would we go back to the World??? Oh yeah in a couple of years with atleast 10- 14 days!!!!!!!

One thing I actually like better at WDW are the people. I like the touristy atmosphere a lot more than the locals atmosphere at Disneyland.

 

[bluedoll]

I love reading this thread. I absolutely love DL and can't wait to take the kids to DW hopefully sometime in the next couple of years. For those that have been, what age would you say the youngest child should be to hopefully have the stamina to do DW and to go on the slides at the water park? I'm guessing it's not so easy to take breaks in the middle of the day at DW like it is at DL. Do you usually stay all day?

I did WDW and Epcot for 4 or 5 days when I was 6. (those were the only disney parks at the time.) And I managed fine. My cousin was 4 and she did fine too. No strollers. And it was summer weather.

 

[PinkBudgie]

What is DisneyQuest? Is it different from the parks?

 

[LavenderPeach]

What is DisneyQuest? Is it different from the parks?

As you know, it's been 8 years since we were there but I'm assuming it's basically the same. It's a big building with several stories that has video games, virtual reality games, little computer activities and other electronic/computery stuff to play around with. You pay one price to get in to play on everything. We had park-hopper tickets (not sure if they call them that over there) so we got in for "free". We actually went over there several times in the evening. As you can imagine, DH absolutely loved it. He especially liked the old arcade games (pacman, space invaders, etc). It has a similar feel to it as innoventions only a lot better, IMO. I've never liked innoventions that much but I had a good time at DisneyQuest.