Just returned from a week long extended family trip (2 seniors, 8 adults, 5 elementary children, one pre-schooler). This was a rescheduled trip from a cancelled March 2020 trip. We had a lot of fun times and enjoyed many aspects of our trip, but we were all ready to go home yesterday. My husband and I have been annual passholders for the last 5 years and we will not be renewing next month. I wouldn't be surprised if we never return (not out of anger, it's just not as enjoyable to us as it used to be). Our family agrees that our beach trips are more enjoyable than a week at Disney. And my husband and I want to visit other places. BUT we did enjoy much of our trip.
Things we enjoyed:
1. Contemporary Resort: we had 5 standard view rooms in the Garden Wing. We enjoyed the large, renovated rooms that were close to the pool. We loved being so close to Magic Kingdom and seeing the monorail all the time. It's classic Disney and a wonderful resort.
2. We had several table service meals that were highlight of our trip and we all enjoyed. Short reviews in restaurant forum (CRT, Biergarten, H&V, Storybook Dining, Space220)
3. We lucked out with character hugs and autographs returning the Monday of our trip.
4. Parade and short cavalcades.
5. Kids enjoyed pin-trading
6. Half of our group had a great time at the deluxe after hours between 11 and 1am in Magic Kingdom (but very tired the next day)
7. Mobile dining worked great for us.
8. Afternoon breaks at the resort, especially pool time.
9. Most of the cast members were pleasant and helped make the trip enjoyable. And there were several cast members whose happy personality helped make the day 'magical'.
10. MK Enchantment is wonderful and we all enjoyed. Harmonius was rained out the night we were there.
Things we didn't enjoy:
1. Genie+, especially at 7:00am in the mornings. Terrible way to start a morning at Disney. And this may be the reason we don't want to return. Genie+ only works with groups of 10 or less (we thought it was 12 people or less, which would have worked better for our group of 16 and what we had planned for before the trip). Also the person using Genie+ had to be selected for the ride, so I (since I'm the early riser I'm one of the people who had volunteered to book lightning lanes) had to choose the same attraction as others in my group. We had problems with Genie+ every single day we used (6 days). Most of the CMs working at the blue umbrellas were pleasant and tried to correct or compensate our problems, but someone would need to wait in line to talk to them; and the last day I volunteered to visit the blue umbrella people and they directed me to guest services to correct the problem and that fellow was not nice (telling me I had been here all week and knew how the system worked--I didn't--apparently I was supposed to request the refund for my mistake the day before; I was not rude to the CM since I was exhausted at that point after taking an hour to resolve the issue--in case you're wondering what needed to be corrected: we had mistakenly had 2 people in a group that bought Flight of Passage that didn't ride and a 6 year old who changed her mind about riding it after we got to the ride).
2. Glitches with Genie+ when it would change the lightning lane return time. If it was ILL, the time would always change and you can't cancel/modify (blue umbrella trip or simply show up at a later time and hope they'd let your ride--which they would usually do because rides were breaking down and many guests were returning at a different time). If it was Genie+ ride, we would need to cancel when time changed and try to re-book. Genie+ would also drop members of groups that were selected prior to 7:00 (we never found a reason for this glitch).
3. Rides breaking down. So even when we'd find a way to make the assigned time work for us and change our plans to work with the Genie+ plans, the ride would be down at that time and we'd need to re-arrange again. Our one Star Wars family never did ride ROTR; and were stuck on the ride for 90 MINUTES, when the ride would get stuck at various points and were finally walked out of the ride.
4. Standby lines of any ride that people wanted to ride were long. Parks were crowded.
5. Housekeeping only came once during the week to each of our rooms. For deluxe pricing we shouldn't have to call housekeeping, get a busy signal, call later to get clean towels and have trash emptied. I understand short staffing, but it doesn't take much time to come into a room, empty trash, take away dirty towels, hang up fresh towels, refill the coffee pods (they only give two coffee regular coffee pods).
6. The parks were quite crowded with lots of people and some probably sick, so almost half our group got sick with cold symptoms at the end of our trip. Two people tested positive today. On the bright side, people didn't get sick til the last day or two of trip.
7. We tried rope-dropping early guest entry one day but decided the few extra rides in the morning didn't make up for being tired later.
8. It's expensive. Resort pricing, food pricing, Genie+ additional expense.
Someone here had recommended to Manage Your Expectations. And we did go on the trip knowing there'd be surprises and challenges. It was the week after Easter so we knew it would be crowded (it had been crowded most of spring break and even prior this year). But our original trip, with non-refundable military tickets, had younger children, who could miss school for a week back in 2020; two years later they were two years older and we needed to go when school vacations were scheduled. We knew there would be flight changes and there were but we worked around them. Looking back at our week, I kind of feel that if Genie+ would have worked better, our trip would have been much more enjoyable. And if housekeeping would have visited our room every other day with fresh towels and empty our trash, that would have helped. (Yes, I know we can call housekeeping but they never seemed to answer the phone).
To those of you on this forum who love Disney World no matter what, I am honestly happy for you. To all those who are planning a future once in a lifetime (or even a trip that only happens every couple years) Disney trip, enjoy your trip and hopefully this report will help with your planning. As for my husband and I, we had a good run with Disney trips, but this will probably be our last. Our annual passes will not be renewed.
Things we enjoyed:
1. Contemporary Resort: we had 5 standard view rooms in the Garden Wing. We enjoyed the large, renovated rooms that were close to the pool. We loved being so close to Magic Kingdom and seeing the monorail all the time. It's classic Disney and a wonderful resort.
2. We had several table service meals that were highlight of our trip and we all enjoyed. Short reviews in restaurant forum (CRT, Biergarten, H&V, Storybook Dining, Space220)
3. We lucked out with character hugs and autographs returning the Monday of our trip.
4. Parade and short cavalcades.
5. Kids enjoyed pin-trading
6. Half of our group had a great time at the deluxe after hours between 11 and 1am in Magic Kingdom (but very tired the next day)
7. Mobile dining worked great for us.
8. Afternoon breaks at the resort, especially pool time.
9. Most of the cast members were pleasant and helped make the trip enjoyable. And there were several cast members whose happy personality helped make the day 'magical'.
10. MK Enchantment is wonderful and we all enjoyed. Harmonius was rained out the night we were there.
Things we didn't enjoy:
1. Genie+, especially at 7:00am in the mornings. Terrible way to start a morning at Disney. And this may be the reason we don't want to return. Genie+ only works with groups of 10 or less (we thought it was 12 people or less, which would have worked better for our group of 16 and what we had planned for before the trip). Also the person using Genie+ had to be selected for the ride, so I (since I'm the early riser I'm one of the people who had volunteered to book lightning lanes) had to choose the same attraction as others in my group. We had problems with Genie+ every single day we used (6 days). Most of the CMs working at the blue umbrellas were pleasant and tried to correct or compensate our problems, but someone would need to wait in line to talk to them; and the last day I volunteered to visit the blue umbrella people and they directed me to guest services to correct the problem and that fellow was not nice (telling me I had been here all week and knew how the system worked--I didn't--apparently I was supposed to request the refund for my mistake the day before; I was not rude to the CM since I was exhausted at that point after taking an hour to resolve the issue--in case you're wondering what needed to be corrected: we had mistakenly had 2 people in a group that bought Flight of Passage that didn't ride and a 6 year old who changed her mind about riding it after we got to the ride).
2. Glitches with Genie+ when it would change the lightning lane return time. If it was ILL, the time would always change and you can't cancel/modify (blue umbrella trip or simply show up at a later time and hope they'd let your ride--which they would usually do because rides were breaking down and many guests were returning at a different time). If it was Genie+ ride, we would need to cancel when time changed and try to re-book. Genie+ would also drop members of groups that were selected prior to 7:00 (we never found a reason for this glitch).
3. Rides breaking down. So even when we'd find a way to make the assigned time work for us and change our plans to work with the Genie+ plans, the ride would be down at that time and we'd need to re-arrange again. Our one Star Wars family never did ride ROTR; and were stuck on the ride for 90 MINUTES, when the ride would get stuck at various points and were finally walked out of the ride.
4. Standby lines of any ride that people wanted to ride were long. Parks were crowded.
5. Housekeeping only came once during the week to each of our rooms. For deluxe pricing we shouldn't have to call housekeeping, get a busy signal, call later to get clean towels and have trash emptied. I understand short staffing, but it doesn't take much time to come into a room, empty trash, take away dirty towels, hang up fresh towels, refill the coffee pods (they only give two coffee regular coffee pods).
6. The parks were quite crowded with lots of people and some probably sick, so almost half our group got sick with cold symptoms at the end of our trip. Two people tested positive today. On the bright side, people didn't get sick til the last day or two of trip.
7. We tried rope-dropping early guest entry one day but decided the few extra rides in the morning didn't make up for being tired later.
8. It's expensive. Resort pricing, food pricing, Genie+ additional expense.
Someone here had recommended to Manage Your Expectations. And we did go on the trip knowing there'd be surprises and challenges. It was the week after Easter so we knew it would be crowded (it had been crowded most of spring break and even prior this year). But our original trip, with non-refundable military tickets, had younger children, who could miss school for a week back in 2020; two years later they were two years older and we needed to go when school vacations were scheduled. We knew there would be flight changes and there were but we worked around them. Looking back at our week, I kind of feel that if Genie+ would have worked better, our trip would have been much more enjoyable. And if housekeeping would have visited our room every other day with fresh towels and empty our trash, that would have helped. (Yes, I know we can call housekeeping but they never seemed to answer the phone).
To those of you on this forum who love Disney World no matter what, I am honestly happy for you. To all those who are planning a future once in a lifetime (or even a trip that only happens every couple years) Disney trip, enjoy your trip and hopefully this report will help with your planning. As for my husband and I, we had a good run with Disney trips, but this will probably be our last. Our annual passes will not be renewed.
We've been going to Disney since the late 80's. We won't be going back any time soon.
