Well, I bought our tickets with G+ today for our trip this fall. Chalk me up to another person who thinks this is a sign of BAD things to come (price increase; frustrations with system crashes buying daily G+; sell-outs). My solution was to cut a day from our ticket (from 6 to 5) to offset the price increase from G+. We'll enjoy a resort day instead. As much as I dislike the concept and execution of G+, I think we are better off having a few short waits each day with G+ than an extra park day with nothing but long lines all day.
I started off the year in the camp of "I'm fed up with Disney and going to take a year off and do other things." Well, we booked our summer vacation as a cruise to Alaska and I'm already regretting my decision. We are locked into the cruise because of extremely steep cancellation penalties that kick in 3 months ahead. Couldn't get a room that sleeps 5 either on the cruise or the hotel that wasn't a suite, so paying for two connecting rooms when we only ever have to book one at Disney. It costs hundreds of dollars for each activity you do in the ports the cruise stops in. Flights were the absolute worst--we are just a 2 hour flight from MCO and there are lots of Southwest flights, so I am used to airfare between $300-$500 pp round trip, whereas flying to Seattle for the cruise was around $1200 pp! The worst part is none of the kids are even looking forward to Alaska--they worry it will be too cold and boring. And for 10-year olds and 6-year old, I'm kind of worried maybe they are right and they really won't have much fun. Total price is coming out to about four times what we typically pay for Disney.
I recently decided to go back to Disney for Thanksgiving. It's our "home" (we have DVC, which is how we can afford to add an extra vaycay), and life is too short to be unhappy. I still hate the idea of booking G+ at 7am each day and every 2 hours after, when I used to be able to plan a perfect schedule with FPs outside of meal times and midday breaks, and with no criss-crossing the parks. But we'll be at Disney, we'll see the castle, we'll ride at least some of our favorites, see the fireworks from our hotel, and all will be well.
These threads always seem to pivot to Universal. It isn't for everyone. I switched to Universal last year for spring break,
ticket prices were MORE than Disney, and did not have a good time outside of Harry Potter world. We did have express pass from our "premier" hotel (where they stick a family of 5 in a tiny room for 4 and add a rollaway for $50 a night on top of the $700 a night room price). But what's the point of skip the line pass if you don't want to ride 90% of the rides after trying them once? After our first day of trying everything, we ended up just riding Gringotts over and over and playing the interactive wands because everything else was a disappointment (except Hagrid's and you can't use express pass for that). I can see how it would work for some families, but it SO different it baffles me why anyone would bother comparing it to disney.
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