Love Tink
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2011
- Messages
- 2,001
Thanks to everyone here on the DL side of the boards for helping me plan last-week's three-day trip. The size of our group kept growing (ending up at 11 people) and a group that big meant that many of my best-laid plans ended up by the wayside. But I still felt well prepared and I think that helped us get more done than we would have otherwise.
Having browsed the boards all summer, I came to the parks thinking I had to be prepared for 1) Lots of ride breakdowns and closures and 2) Huge crowds.
Well, we got really lucky, I guess, because we experienced almost no closures. Roger Rabbit was down on Tuesday when we went by, but we just stopped by another time. And we didn't have a single one of the dreaded closures that occur when you are already waiting in line. So that was a pleasant surprise.
As for the crowds...well, even coming mentally prepared, they were overwhelming. We have never been to DL or WDW in the summer (or spring break or Christmas) before. We always do the off season. So summer crowds were a bit of a shock. We managed to do pretty much everything we wanted to do, but just making your way around the parks, through the hordes of people, ECVs and strollers, was exhausting. I'd walk from land to land and realize I hadn't seen anything, hadn't looked up at any of the details, because all of my attention was set on just zig zagging my way down the street. It definitely affected my ability to relax and enjoy myself. I think we'll just keep taking the kids out of school in October or May after all.
I grew up about ten minutes from DL and it's my favorite park (my husband, who grew up here on the East Coast, prefers WDW). So I loved getting to revisit my old favorites like Alice, Mr. Toad and Storybook Canal. It's a Small World and Pirates are so much better at DL. In fact, many of the rides seem somewhat better. One ride we really enjoyed that I haven't seen mentioned on here much is the Monsters Inc. ride. So cute, and my kids loved it.
The kids also loved the Animation Studios - the Beauty and the Beast and Ursula's areas. I think we went there four times. And we did the Jedi Training twice - so much easier in CA than in FL. Of course, the kids love Buzz. I love how there is no FP for that at DL anymore, so the line never gets very long, and you can always ride it when you aren't sure what else to do.
Thanks to the advice on here, we enjoyed WOC, Magical, Fantasmic! and the Soundsational parade.
We had no run ins with rude visitors or CMs, and I didn't see any rampant line cutting - just some of the legit "joining my party" variety - which never seems to bother anyone in the real world the way it does on these discussion boards.
Despite the exhausting crowds, it was a great visit, but I do have one complaint....the FP system. I found it SO much less useful than at WDW. We ran around and collected our FP every morning, making sure we got the most popular rides first. At lunch the first day, we already held seven sets between the two parks. But we had the hardest time actually USING the FP. Consistently, we would come to a FP entrance to find that the FP line was literally backed up out of the FP entrance queue and into the path. Then we would stand and stand and stand just to use our FP - I swear a couple of times I think we waited longer than we would have in the stand by line. I'm used to a small delay - 15 minutes or so - at WDW, especially later in the day, or just after a show lets out. But this was consistent, all times of day, on many different rides (Space Mountain, Goofy's Sky School, Splash Mountain, Indy, Star Tours - we gave up and got out of line on that one - even Big Thunder).
I'm not sure whether it was because DLR has so many fewer FP rides than the parks in FL do, or whether they were giving too many passes per day, or whether the CMs weren't doing a good job merging the lines, or if it was simply a matter of volume. But it was really frustrating, and something I hadn't read about here.
Thanks again, and if anyone has any questions about our visit, please ask. I'd love to help one of you the way y'all helped me.
Having browsed the boards all summer, I came to the parks thinking I had to be prepared for 1) Lots of ride breakdowns and closures and 2) Huge crowds.
Well, we got really lucky, I guess, because we experienced almost no closures. Roger Rabbit was down on Tuesday when we went by, but we just stopped by another time. And we didn't have a single one of the dreaded closures that occur when you are already waiting in line. So that was a pleasant surprise.
As for the crowds...well, even coming mentally prepared, they were overwhelming. We have never been to DL or WDW in the summer (or spring break or Christmas) before. We always do the off season. So summer crowds were a bit of a shock. We managed to do pretty much everything we wanted to do, but just making your way around the parks, through the hordes of people, ECVs and strollers, was exhausting. I'd walk from land to land and realize I hadn't seen anything, hadn't looked up at any of the details, because all of my attention was set on just zig zagging my way down the street. It definitely affected my ability to relax and enjoy myself. I think we'll just keep taking the kids out of school in October or May after all.
I grew up about ten minutes from DL and it's my favorite park (my husband, who grew up here on the East Coast, prefers WDW). So I loved getting to revisit my old favorites like Alice, Mr. Toad and Storybook Canal. It's a Small World and Pirates are so much better at DL. In fact, many of the rides seem somewhat better. One ride we really enjoyed that I haven't seen mentioned on here much is the Monsters Inc. ride. So cute, and my kids loved it.
The kids also loved the Animation Studios - the Beauty and the Beast and Ursula's areas. I think we went there four times. And we did the Jedi Training twice - so much easier in CA than in FL. Of course, the kids love Buzz. I love how there is no FP for that at DL anymore, so the line never gets very long, and you can always ride it when you aren't sure what else to do.
Thanks to the advice on here, we enjoyed WOC, Magical, Fantasmic! and the Soundsational parade.
We had no run ins with rude visitors or CMs, and I didn't see any rampant line cutting - just some of the legit "joining my party" variety - which never seems to bother anyone in the real world the way it does on these discussion boards.
Despite the exhausting crowds, it was a great visit, but I do have one complaint....the FP system. I found it SO much less useful than at WDW. We ran around and collected our FP every morning, making sure we got the most popular rides first. At lunch the first day, we already held seven sets between the two parks. But we had the hardest time actually USING the FP. Consistently, we would come to a FP entrance to find that the FP line was literally backed up out of the FP entrance queue and into the path. Then we would stand and stand and stand just to use our FP - I swear a couple of times I think we waited longer than we would have in the stand by line. I'm used to a small delay - 15 minutes or so - at WDW, especially later in the day, or just after a show lets out. But this was consistent, all times of day, on many different rides (Space Mountain, Goofy's Sky School, Splash Mountain, Indy, Star Tours - we gave up and got out of line on that one - even Big Thunder).
I'm not sure whether it was because DLR has so many fewer FP rides than the parks in FL do, or whether they were giving too many passes per day, or whether the CMs weren't doing a good job merging the lines, or if it was simply a matter of volume. But it was really frustrating, and something I hadn't read about here.
Thanks again, and if anyone has any questions about our visit, please ask. I'd love to help one of you the way y'all helped me.
