News Round Up 2019

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New in-room celebrations at Walt Disney World

https://t.co/zmlEMvDh6d?amp=1

One of my 'magic moments' involves these in-room celebration items: picture husband and husband coming back from a very long day at the parks to our room at Saratoga Springs and suddenly we open the door to our room to find balloons and treats and a big Mickey bag and card on the bed. We open the card, surprised, and find the items aren't for us.

Worried that someone's going to miss out on their treat, we ring the front desk and they say they'll sort before ringing back shortly to say we can keep all the items and they'll send another package to the real 'birthday girl'!
 
What I find ridiculous is that local APs who obviously are not going to book a stay have no shot at the newest rides (without constant refreshing). I wish Disney would give APs a limited number of FPs that they can book 70 days in advance. Maybe 3-5 per year.

And we're not all local - we live 8 hours away, so I can't just keep trying for a Mine Train FP and hop over after work some random afternoon. We haven't ridden Mine Train since September and have done two trips since. I've learned some tricks to get some hard-to-gets, but I agree that APs should get like 1 FP for each of the hard-to-gets with the purchase of their AP. Pandora, Toy Story Land, and 7DMT. You might only get to ride it once in the year, but at least you'd get to ride it. My 5 year old reminds me daily that we haven't gotten to do 7DMT in a long time. Granted, the kid rode Everest 7 times in one day - five of those back-to-back, but we haven't ridden Mine Train in "FOREVER!"

And don't get me started about how all the parties are against APs! "You want to come to the Christmas Party? Pay us $400 on top your thousand+ for 5 extra hours in the park with more tickets sold than ever before!"
 
And don't get me started about how all the parties are against APs! "You want to come to the Christmas Party? Pay us $400 on top your thousand+ for 5 extra hours in the park with more tickets sold than ever before!"

wait, how are the parties against APs? people with day tickets have to pay extra as well - and for some parties there are AP discounts.

Maybe they could have a super AP that includes access to all the parties, but what you looking for - to be able to go to all of the hard ticket events for no extra charge b/c you have an AP?

(and I say this as someone who has an AP)
 
Well, they had a lot of the fairy tale based movies for Fantasyland but not as much for other lands - though they did leverage what they had like Man on the Moon for Tomorrowland and the True Life Adventures for Adventureland, Davey Crocket for Frontierland, etc.

The most explicit case though is that they changed the name of the castle to be Sleeping Beauty Castle to promote the upcoming movie (believe it was originally going to be Cinderella Castle)

But anyone who things IP in the park is new is mistaken ... just now it seems that everything new is IP based

From what I have read/heard from various imagineers and insiders is that theoretically you can still get something non-IP in the parks if you propose it but it is just that much harder to get management to approve it as they need to see how cross-marketing and merchandising, etc. will work. Much easier if you have an existing IP as part of it to support that.

This is very true, but much harder than before.

Even looking back to the Matterhorn, the first steel roller coaster in the world - built because Walt made a movie called "Third Man on the Mountain". IP based, but not really sold as such at the time.

But you hit the nail right on the head. "How do we sell an attraction?" They build a "Space Battle fully immersive attraction" that's exactly the same as the Rise of the Resistance without Star Wars - does it sell like Star Wars? Unlikely.

It's really a matter of feeding the beast - I think what we have to root for is good quality rides regardless of the IP. I always detest when people would say "I don't like Avatar" or "I don't like Star Wars". A good ride, a successful ride, survives without the IP. Flights of Passage is a wonderful ride experience - whether you know a damn thing about Avatar or not. I always go back to Splash Mountain - it got built because of the Song of the South IP, but today there's two generations now that have never seen Song of the South. Still immensely popular ride and great fun and not going anywhere.
 
I was just told as recently as last week by a CM from the AP line as well as a CM from George Kalogridis' office that the limit applies to non continuous onsite stays. Yes, I know in practice they could be wrong but it’s still stressful


This must be new, because the past three years I've been able to book fastpasses for my October stay and our stay over Thanksgiving.
 
This must be new, because the past three years I've been able to book fastpasses for my October stay and our stay over Thanksgiving.
That’s why I say in practice this rule may not apply because others on the boards have said the same. The CM say it’s always been the case and have been telling me this even unsolicited. We won’t know what actually happens in practice for us until our next two FP windows open. Until then I guess I’ll just worry and get angry every time I call Disney. I don’t even bring it up anymore but on my last phone call to the AP line for something unrelated last week when the CM said “Oh you have a lot of trips booked...you know about the AP FP limit...” I was just like don’t even get me started...
 
This must be new, because the past three years I've been able to book fastpasses for my October stay and our stay over Thanksgiving.

That’s why I say in practice this rule may not apply because others on the boards have said the same. The CM say it’s always been the case and have been telling me this even unsolicited. We won’t know what actually happens in practice for us until our next two FP windows open. Until then I guess I’ll just worry and get angry every time I call Disney.

Yes it is new. It started back in February when they started cancelling FP for people that cancelled resort stays. Something they did with the software made it impossible to book more than 7 days even if you had a resort reservation for each trip.

I've hated the original rule since the beginning because we're out of state AP holders and when we come we stay about 2 weeks and not always on property. It's a bummer for sure.
 
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