bib-bob-boo
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2007
- Messages
- 8
I am typically a lurker here on the boards, and thought it was time to try and help others plan their trips.
My DH, DD14 and I enjoyed a break from the Midwest Winter to spend some time at Ft Wilderness and WDW. Some days were warm and sunny. Others were chilly and rainy. Wearing layers of clothing is the key.
Fort Wilderness - My family has camped at Fort Wilderness in our RV many times over the last 15 or so years. Weve also stayed in many of the resorts, and usually travel in the summer. This was our first visit in the winter. The campsites seemed as filled now as they are in the summer. Our dog always enjoys the dog park and I enjoy meeting the other dog owners. I'd say the dog park is over an acre large and is fenced in and very nice except for the dirt area near the entrance that turns muddy after a rain. We rode our bikes around the first day which was nice, but we were back to renting the golf cart by the second day. For us, it's just so much more convenient, as well as fun, to travel by golf cart. Its about a mile from Bay Lake and the Hoop-Dee-Doo to the Outpost where you catch the buses to HS, Epcot and AK, so a golf cart makes the travel so much easier. On previous trips we rented from an off-site supplier - Kenny, from Tee Time Golf Cart Rental - who was awesome. This time we rented from Disney and all was great, although it is more expensive.
Tip Take your credit cards and ID with you everywhere you go just in case as not all places are equipped to handle the magic bands for payment. When we rented the golf cart DH had only his magic band. You needed a drivers license to drive and a credit card to pay (they were not connected to magic bands) which, of course, I had with me So I was the designated driver for the week .
Tip - For all of you who visit the Magic Kingdom and are looking for some down time, but dont want to trek back to your hotel head to the Fort! It truly is a hidden gem. The boat ride over from the MK is nice and relaxing. Once at the fort you can head to the playground for the kiddos to use up some of their energy, or spread out a blanket or towel for them to take a nap. If youre wearing closed-toe shoes you can go to the pony area for a pony ride. The adult leads the pony along the trail (really the pony leads the adult along the trail). Behind the pony rides is the Tri-Circle-D Ranch where you can see the magnificent horses that travel along Main Street at the MK. Each trip to WDW, I have to come here to see the horses, and this time I noticed they changed the doors on the stalls (not solid wood anymore), so you can easily see the horses inside the stalls. If you are at the Fort at Christmastime, you need to see the Christmas lights that the campers put up. You can walk through the camping loops or you can take a carriage or wagon ride in the evening. Even in February some campsites had lights up more of the light-up palm tree variety, rather than Christmas related.
Our favorite place to eat in all of WDW is Trails End. Good, simple comfort food that is served by buffet for breakfast and dinner. For our one dinner here, our server was Joy and she has been here for 15 years. For our one breakfast, our server was Ken who has been here for 30 years. Good, friendly folk! We look forward to seeing them each time we come. Ken insists he remembers us, but I have my doubts! There were times when I didnt feel like cooking in the RV and we didnt want to have a big sit-down meal, so I ordered a take-out pizza (a large cheese pizza is $14) or a 10-piece chicken bucket with two sides (think KFC) for under $24. We took them back to the RV to eat, but you can eat at the picnic tables outside on the side porch or stretch out a blanket and have a picnic. Trails End will supply plates and utensils if needed. Of course, a great thing to do your first night at WDW if you dont want to use a park ticket is to go to the Chip n Dale campfire sing-along and movie. You would need to grab an internal bus (Orange, Purple or Yellow bus) and tell the driver you want to go to the campfire and they will let you know when to get off. I believe when we were there, that the singing and campfire started at 7pm and the movie started at 7:40pm check times before you go. At night we enjoy watching the Electric Water Pageant and the Wishes Fireworks (they pipe in the sound) at the beach. You can play tetherball or make a sand castle while youre waiting. Embrace the Fort!
Tips on the Magic Kingdom
Marceline to Magic Kingdom Tour As this trip was to have a little more education thrown in we went on the Marceline to Magic Kingdom Tour. Note that from Fort Wilderness the boat to the MK starts operating one hour before park opening. We took the boat to the Contmeporary at 7:30am and then walked from there to the MK. Im a big fan of Walt Disney and really enjoyed the tour. You get to enter the MK before park opening (the tour met at 8:15am and the park opened at 9am). We entered around 8am at the leftmost turnstyles and enjoyed walking up a fairly empty Main Street to take a picture in front of the castle. A PhotoPass photographer in front of the castle was nice enough to take our picture using our camera. On the tour we learned among other things about the castle and the Haunted Mansion (rode the ride while listening to our guide describe various things over our earsets then got to see my all-time favorite HM scene the dining room dancing scene - from backstage to see how it all worked awesome!). Dont want to give it all away, but we ended at the Carousel of Progress where our tour had our own theatre and the guide again talked about the various scenes. (Carousel of Progress has a special place in my heart as I remember riding this ride with my mom and dad back in the 70s. They have since passed, but Ill always remember traveling to WDW during the Winter of 1978 when school was closed for two weeks straight because of the weather and we had an exchange student from Uruguay sitting in our home and we didnt speak Spanish and she spoke broken English. What to do? We literally slid through Tennessee and made our way to Florida. Disney the universal language! Good memories! Sorry to digress ) My favorite story from the Carousel of Progress is that the animatronic robin in the window of the first scene is the same robin used in the Mary Poppins movie. There were about 10 people on our tour.
Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom My kids enjoy collecting the cards and playing this game. We picked up our pack of cards one for each of us at the firehouse on Main Street. The CM there said we could pick up more packs on our next visit after we had done at least one portal with our key card, which we did. Actually, on our second visit to MK to pick up the cards, my husband did not come. However, I brought his magic band and the CM let us scan it so we could get a pack of cards for him.
Magic Bands and Fast Pass +
The magic bands worked fine and I have no complaints. At Fort Wilderness, we were still given Keys to the World cards to open the comfort stations between midnight and 6am.
Fast Pass + worked well for us, except for one time which I will get to in a minute. They are great if you arrive to a park in the afternoon, or like us, you have a tour in the morning and youre watching everyone else run onto the rides right at park opening! Yikes! Yes, its nice to have three guaranteed rides. After our Marceline tour we went to Be Our Guest using our Fast Pass + reservation which we were able to acquire about three weeks before our trip. We ordered online before we arrived and just had to swipe the band for payment once we got there. We were not given a rose as the CMs could find us with just our Magic Bands. Personally, I would not go to Be Our Guest without a Fast Pass. The line was long all the way across the bridge and then some. After our lunch at Be Our Guest, we went to the Under the Sea attraction and this is where we had trouble with Fast Pass +.
I had read on the disboard that using the bands, you could enter a ride 5 minutes before your window opened and up to 15 minutes after your window closed. We never tried after our window closed, but did try several times during the 5 minute pre-window and it worked fine ..except at Under the Sea. Our window was 12:35 to 1:35pm. We tried around 12:33 and got the dreaded blue Mickey. The CM looked at his screen and said our next fast pass was for 1:35pm at BTMRR. I said yes, I know we had one then, but we had one now for Under the Sea. He politely asked if I had any documentation of such. I pulled out my paper print out of our Fast Pass selections for the day and showed him and he let us in. He had us each scan our band and when Mickey turned blue, he granted us access from his screen that would also grant us access when we scanned at the next checkpoint. My DH was trying to access MDE at this point, but couldnt connect fast enough. People before us and after us were turning Mickey green, but we didnt. After the ride, DH tried again to connect to MDE and saw that we had received an email at 12:31pm stating that the Under the Sea ride was down and giving us a Fast Pass that we could use any time for the rest of the day (starting at 12:35pm) at Under the Sea or one of about 6 other rides. Not sure why we received an email that the ride was down when everyone else seemed to be able to scan through. Plus, not sure why we couldnt get on Under the Sea as the email said we could - perhaps there is no 5 minute cushion on that email window? It was nice though as we used the email fast pass on Peter Pan later that day.
Note to Disney You need to spread some pixie dust on your CMs. You owe them big time for what you are putting them through with this Fast Pass + rollout! Give them the information on their screens that they need! The CM knew we had a fast pass for BTMRR in an hour which was irrelevant, but had no info that we had one for Under the Sea or that we had received an email. The lines were not backed up, so Im not even sure if the ride ever went down!
Tip Print out a copy of your Fast Passes for each day at the parks. You never know when you may need them. Generally, we were able to change Fast Passes until mid to late afternoon or so with no trouble. After that, we had messages that there were no more times available or attractions to change them to.
Fireworks at the Magic Kingdom I like to think I know my way around MK, but I sure messed up the fireworks. We have never watched them up close on Main Street, so I wanted to do that. We were about 20 feet in front of the Partners statue. Loved the reflections on the castle show prior to the fireworks and we could see Tinkerbell fly really well; however, we could not see 90% of the fireworks. I feel so stupid now. In any event, to see the fireworks stand off to the side of the castle or at least halfway down Main Street around Caseys I guess?
Monorail The Magic Kingdom monoral was working on Saturday, Feb 8th. Perhaps they are operating the monorails during the busier times / on weekends. Im assuming they are doing the maintenance work on the weekdays as it was not working then.
Hollywood Studios and Epcot We are normally rope drop people who get a lot accomplished in the first few hours of park opening and then head back to our resort. This trip we slept in. Nice to have the three fast pass + selections already in hand, but we didnt get to do all we normally would do. We didnt get to do Toy Story Mania this trip as we elected to do RnRC, so thats what I miss .I hope they change the tiering. We had a fast pass for Soarin and waited in line for Test Track about 30 minutes not bad and we enjoyed designing our car.
Animal Kingdom We arrived before park opening again to go on a Tour the Wild by Design tour. After getting off the bus we realized we did not have our Magic Bands on. Yikes! With a Key to the World card, your card is with all your other credit cards and identification that you carry around. With a Magic Band, we had them sitting in their box on the table by the door, but we were in a hurry and walked right out without them. Guest services was very efficient and gave us a card that we could use that day for entrance to the park. We also used that card for our fast passes without issue.
Wild by Design Tour Again I really liked this tour and learned a lot about the design of the park. Some tours have age restrictions and DD14 met the restriction of 14 or older for this tour. Cost was $60 but there was a Disney VISA discount for the tours of 20%, I believe. Lasted 3 hours and included a breakfast break. There were three other people on the tour and it used earsets as well.
Again, this was more of an educational visit to WDW to learn and do things we hadnt done before. Disney can be educational, right?! Although DD didnt need to do this, there is an app for the ipad and iphone called Timed Test that is just like the old-time paper timed tests we used to take except it is all automated now. Kids can get their math fact practice done while waiting in lines. It gets automatically corrected and can even send the scored test via email to your teacher back home. See, the kids are still getting work done!
Back to the Magic Bands ..
I like paying the bill at restaurants using the Magic Bands. You charge your meal to the credit card without having to get the credit card out and have it leave your hands. However, the waiters dont like it as much as they have this bulky device to carry around now that they touch to your magic band to access your information.
Note to Disney You know where guests are at all times in the parks by our magic bands. How about you slap a magic band on each of the Disney buses? Add a bus tab to the MDE app, so we can track the buses to our resort. Is there anything less magical than rounding the corner to the bus depot at your resort only to breathe in the fumes from the Epcot bus as it rumbles off?! If we can see where the buses are on their route, we can time our trips out the door a bit better.
This is all just my 2 cents worth. I hope it helps someone else with their planning.
My DH, DD14 and I enjoyed a break from the Midwest Winter to spend some time at Ft Wilderness and WDW. Some days were warm and sunny. Others were chilly and rainy. Wearing layers of clothing is the key.
Fort Wilderness - My family has camped at Fort Wilderness in our RV many times over the last 15 or so years. Weve also stayed in many of the resorts, and usually travel in the summer. This was our first visit in the winter. The campsites seemed as filled now as they are in the summer. Our dog always enjoys the dog park and I enjoy meeting the other dog owners. I'd say the dog park is over an acre large and is fenced in and very nice except for the dirt area near the entrance that turns muddy after a rain. We rode our bikes around the first day which was nice, but we were back to renting the golf cart by the second day. For us, it's just so much more convenient, as well as fun, to travel by golf cart. Its about a mile from Bay Lake and the Hoop-Dee-Doo to the Outpost where you catch the buses to HS, Epcot and AK, so a golf cart makes the travel so much easier. On previous trips we rented from an off-site supplier - Kenny, from Tee Time Golf Cart Rental - who was awesome. This time we rented from Disney and all was great, although it is more expensive.
Tip Take your credit cards and ID with you everywhere you go just in case as not all places are equipped to handle the magic bands for payment. When we rented the golf cart DH had only his magic band. You needed a drivers license to drive and a credit card to pay (they were not connected to magic bands) which, of course, I had with me So I was the designated driver for the week .
Tip - For all of you who visit the Magic Kingdom and are looking for some down time, but dont want to trek back to your hotel head to the Fort! It truly is a hidden gem. The boat ride over from the MK is nice and relaxing. Once at the fort you can head to the playground for the kiddos to use up some of their energy, or spread out a blanket or towel for them to take a nap. If youre wearing closed-toe shoes you can go to the pony area for a pony ride. The adult leads the pony along the trail (really the pony leads the adult along the trail). Behind the pony rides is the Tri-Circle-D Ranch where you can see the magnificent horses that travel along Main Street at the MK. Each trip to WDW, I have to come here to see the horses, and this time I noticed they changed the doors on the stalls (not solid wood anymore), so you can easily see the horses inside the stalls. If you are at the Fort at Christmastime, you need to see the Christmas lights that the campers put up. You can walk through the camping loops or you can take a carriage or wagon ride in the evening. Even in February some campsites had lights up more of the light-up palm tree variety, rather than Christmas related.
Our favorite place to eat in all of WDW is Trails End. Good, simple comfort food that is served by buffet for breakfast and dinner. For our one dinner here, our server was Joy and she has been here for 15 years. For our one breakfast, our server was Ken who has been here for 30 years. Good, friendly folk! We look forward to seeing them each time we come. Ken insists he remembers us, but I have my doubts! There were times when I didnt feel like cooking in the RV and we didnt want to have a big sit-down meal, so I ordered a take-out pizza (a large cheese pizza is $14) or a 10-piece chicken bucket with two sides (think KFC) for under $24. We took them back to the RV to eat, but you can eat at the picnic tables outside on the side porch or stretch out a blanket and have a picnic. Trails End will supply plates and utensils if needed. Of course, a great thing to do your first night at WDW if you dont want to use a park ticket is to go to the Chip n Dale campfire sing-along and movie. You would need to grab an internal bus (Orange, Purple or Yellow bus) and tell the driver you want to go to the campfire and they will let you know when to get off. I believe when we were there, that the singing and campfire started at 7pm and the movie started at 7:40pm check times before you go. At night we enjoy watching the Electric Water Pageant and the Wishes Fireworks (they pipe in the sound) at the beach. You can play tetherball or make a sand castle while youre waiting. Embrace the Fort!
Tips on the Magic Kingdom
Marceline to Magic Kingdom Tour As this trip was to have a little more education thrown in we went on the Marceline to Magic Kingdom Tour. Note that from Fort Wilderness the boat to the MK starts operating one hour before park opening. We took the boat to the Contmeporary at 7:30am and then walked from there to the MK. Im a big fan of Walt Disney and really enjoyed the tour. You get to enter the MK before park opening (the tour met at 8:15am and the park opened at 9am). We entered around 8am at the leftmost turnstyles and enjoyed walking up a fairly empty Main Street to take a picture in front of the castle. A PhotoPass photographer in front of the castle was nice enough to take our picture using our camera. On the tour we learned among other things about the castle and the Haunted Mansion (rode the ride while listening to our guide describe various things over our earsets then got to see my all-time favorite HM scene the dining room dancing scene - from backstage to see how it all worked awesome!). Dont want to give it all away, but we ended at the Carousel of Progress where our tour had our own theatre and the guide again talked about the various scenes. (Carousel of Progress has a special place in my heart as I remember riding this ride with my mom and dad back in the 70s. They have since passed, but Ill always remember traveling to WDW during the Winter of 1978 when school was closed for two weeks straight because of the weather and we had an exchange student from Uruguay sitting in our home and we didnt speak Spanish and she spoke broken English. What to do? We literally slid through Tennessee and made our way to Florida. Disney the universal language! Good memories! Sorry to digress ) My favorite story from the Carousel of Progress is that the animatronic robin in the window of the first scene is the same robin used in the Mary Poppins movie. There were about 10 people on our tour.
Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom My kids enjoy collecting the cards and playing this game. We picked up our pack of cards one for each of us at the firehouse on Main Street. The CM there said we could pick up more packs on our next visit after we had done at least one portal with our key card, which we did. Actually, on our second visit to MK to pick up the cards, my husband did not come. However, I brought his magic band and the CM let us scan it so we could get a pack of cards for him.
Magic Bands and Fast Pass +
The magic bands worked fine and I have no complaints. At Fort Wilderness, we were still given Keys to the World cards to open the comfort stations between midnight and 6am.
Fast Pass + worked well for us, except for one time which I will get to in a minute. They are great if you arrive to a park in the afternoon, or like us, you have a tour in the morning and youre watching everyone else run onto the rides right at park opening! Yikes! Yes, its nice to have three guaranteed rides. After our Marceline tour we went to Be Our Guest using our Fast Pass + reservation which we were able to acquire about three weeks before our trip. We ordered online before we arrived and just had to swipe the band for payment once we got there. We were not given a rose as the CMs could find us with just our Magic Bands. Personally, I would not go to Be Our Guest without a Fast Pass. The line was long all the way across the bridge and then some. After our lunch at Be Our Guest, we went to the Under the Sea attraction and this is where we had trouble with Fast Pass +.
I had read on the disboard that using the bands, you could enter a ride 5 minutes before your window opened and up to 15 minutes after your window closed. We never tried after our window closed, but did try several times during the 5 minute pre-window and it worked fine ..except at Under the Sea. Our window was 12:35 to 1:35pm. We tried around 12:33 and got the dreaded blue Mickey. The CM looked at his screen and said our next fast pass was for 1:35pm at BTMRR. I said yes, I know we had one then, but we had one now for Under the Sea. He politely asked if I had any documentation of such. I pulled out my paper print out of our Fast Pass selections for the day and showed him and he let us in. He had us each scan our band and when Mickey turned blue, he granted us access from his screen that would also grant us access when we scanned at the next checkpoint. My DH was trying to access MDE at this point, but couldnt connect fast enough. People before us and after us were turning Mickey green, but we didnt. After the ride, DH tried again to connect to MDE and saw that we had received an email at 12:31pm stating that the Under the Sea ride was down and giving us a Fast Pass that we could use any time for the rest of the day (starting at 12:35pm) at Under the Sea or one of about 6 other rides. Not sure why we received an email that the ride was down when everyone else seemed to be able to scan through. Plus, not sure why we couldnt get on Under the Sea as the email said we could - perhaps there is no 5 minute cushion on that email window? It was nice though as we used the email fast pass on Peter Pan later that day.
Note to Disney You need to spread some pixie dust on your CMs. You owe them big time for what you are putting them through with this Fast Pass + rollout! Give them the information on their screens that they need! The CM knew we had a fast pass for BTMRR in an hour which was irrelevant, but had no info that we had one for Under the Sea or that we had received an email. The lines were not backed up, so Im not even sure if the ride ever went down!
Tip Print out a copy of your Fast Passes for each day at the parks. You never know when you may need them. Generally, we were able to change Fast Passes until mid to late afternoon or so with no trouble. After that, we had messages that there were no more times available or attractions to change them to.
Fireworks at the Magic Kingdom I like to think I know my way around MK, but I sure messed up the fireworks. We have never watched them up close on Main Street, so I wanted to do that. We were about 20 feet in front of the Partners statue. Loved the reflections on the castle show prior to the fireworks and we could see Tinkerbell fly really well; however, we could not see 90% of the fireworks. I feel so stupid now. In any event, to see the fireworks stand off to the side of the castle or at least halfway down Main Street around Caseys I guess?
Monorail The Magic Kingdom monoral was working on Saturday, Feb 8th. Perhaps they are operating the monorails during the busier times / on weekends. Im assuming they are doing the maintenance work on the weekdays as it was not working then.
Hollywood Studios and Epcot We are normally rope drop people who get a lot accomplished in the first few hours of park opening and then head back to our resort. This trip we slept in. Nice to have the three fast pass + selections already in hand, but we didnt get to do all we normally would do. We didnt get to do Toy Story Mania this trip as we elected to do RnRC, so thats what I miss .I hope they change the tiering. We had a fast pass for Soarin and waited in line for Test Track about 30 minutes not bad and we enjoyed designing our car.
Animal Kingdom We arrived before park opening again to go on a Tour the Wild by Design tour. After getting off the bus we realized we did not have our Magic Bands on. Yikes! With a Key to the World card, your card is with all your other credit cards and identification that you carry around. With a Magic Band, we had them sitting in their box on the table by the door, but we were in a hurry and walked right out without them. Guest services was very efficient and gave us a card that we could use that day for entrance to the park. We also used that card for our fast passes without issue.
Wild by Design Tour Again I really liked this tour and learned a lot about the design of the park. Some tours have age restrictions and DD14 met the restriction of 14 or older for this tour. Cost was $60 but there was a Disney VISA discount for the tours of 20%, I believe. Lasted 3 hours and included a breakfast break. There were three other people on the tour and it used earsets as well.
Again, this was more of an educational visit to WDW to learn and do things we hadnt done before. Disney can be educational, right?! Although DD didnt need to do this, there is an app for the ipad and iphone called Timed Test that is just like the old-time paper timed tests we used to take except it is all automated now. Kids can get their math fact practice done while waiting in lines. It gets automatically corrected and can even send the scored test via email to your teacher back home. See, the kids are still getting work done!
Back to the Magic Bands ..
I like paying the bill at restaurants using the Magic Bands. You charge your meal to the credit card without having to get the credit card out and have it leave your hands. However, the waiters dont like it as much as they have this bulky device to carry around now that they touch to your magic band to access your information.
Note to Disney You know where guests are at all times in the parks by our magic bands. How about you slap a magic band on each of the Disney buses? Add a bus tab to the MDE app, so we can track the buses to our resort. Is there anything less magical than rounding the corner to the bus depot at your resort only to breathe in the fumes from the Epcot bus as it rumbles off?! If we can see where the buses are on their route, we can time our trips out the door a bit better.
This is all just my 2 cents worth. I hope it helps someone else with their planning.
. Great idea about the buses too.
