Vexorg
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2006
- Messages
- 620
Thanks to a number of things that just happened to fall into place all at the same time, I have been fortunate enough to be able to spend the past week at Disney World attending Splunk .conf2016 held at the Dolphin and Swan at the same time as my wife and I happen to have WDW Annual Passes (we have done DLR APs for several years now, but decided to try doing WDW APs instead this year, long before we had any idea that a conference directly relevant to my job would be happening there.) We're still in town but leaving tomorrow, and I have to say that this might be the best Disney trip I've had the privilege of going on, for a number of reasons. A few thoughts on this trip:
The good:
- The conference was really cool. I am still learning the product (Splunk), but seeing all of its capabilities and how it could solve a lot of the problems I encounter on a day-to-day basis at work gave me a lot of ideas. The Swan and Dolphin staff did a great job with this too; in general the food provided for conference attendees was very good.
- Overall, i'd say this trip may have had some of the shortest lines I've encountered at the parks, either DLR or WDW. Yesterday at Animal Kingdom both Kilimanjaro Safari and Expedition Everest were walk-ons in the afternoon, and even Magic Kingdom generally had fairly short lines for everything that wasn't 7DMT.
- The conference I attended had been held in Las Vegas for several years prior to this one, and it seemed that most people there much preferred WDW to Vegas. The fact that the conference included an after-hours party in Hollywood Studios with virtually nonexistent lines on all the rides and all sorts of free food really was a pretty cool experience, and I'm glad I was able to bring my wife along even if it was a bit pricey to do so. One of the vendors at the conference also arranged a private party at Epcot that included a private viewing area for Illuminations. I think it's the first time I've been able to see the show without four rows of people in front of me...
- I finally managed to make it through a week at a Disney park without being completely worn out by the third day. Maybe it's all the walking I've been doing at home (chasing Pokemon mostly) but I feel like I have had plenty of energy in spite of the weather, and handled this trip a lot better than I've handled most of the other Disney trips I've done. I don't even have sore feet, which was has been the biggest problem for me on most of my trips. It's not like I've walked much less on this trip than usual (my fitness tracking app on my phone/watch has me over 100,000 steps in the past five days) but I've handled it much better.
- I got to eat at Shula's with someone else paying for it.
- I took my wife to 50s Prime Time (we generally like to do one splurge meal per trip when we go) and was rather impressed with it. They did mess up her order so she ended up with two dinners, and also got a good lecture or two from the servers. I'd still like to try Sci-Fi Dine-in one of these days, but it seems tough to get a reservation for the place.
The bad:
- The weather has been a pain to deal with much of the time. Between the heat and humidity and the occasional torrential downpour, it seemed like we were either fighting the weather or trying to get out of it a fair bit of the time. I don't think I've sweated that much in a while.
- Attending a conference at the Dolphin and Swan is a bit of a pain if you aren't staying on property. We stayed at the B Hotel in the Disney Springs area during the conference and while it was a nice enough place there wasn't a good way to get to the other hotels without taking Ubers for pretty much every trip or paying $20+ a day to park. I suppose with my AP I could have taken the approach of parking at DHS and taking a boat over, but that would have been dependent on the boats actually running (a bit of an iffy proposition with all the lightning around.) If I did the conference again I would have tried to stay at one of the Epcot area resorts (in fact, for the one more trip we're planning before our APs expire in late January we're most likely going to try to do a DVC points rental.)
- My co-worker who also attended the conference got stuck in Orlando an extra night after the airline delayed her flight and caused her to miss her connecting flight, and then couldn't get her on anything else. We were already staying a couple extra nights after the conference so it didn't affect us, but she did have to scramble to find a place to stay (fortunately the corporate travel agency was able to arrange something for her.)
- The MyDisneyExperience app has improved quite a bit since our last trip in April, but in a lot of ways it's still a serious pain to use. It annoys me to no end that the filters on the wait times and other section lists don't persist, and that you can't refresh the list without backing out and going back in. Then again, the Fastpass+ experience has improved quite a bit.
Overall, I have really enjoyed this trip, and I'll definitely be trying to attend this conference again next year if it's held at WDW again.
The good:
- The conference was really cool. I am still learning the product (Splunk), but seeing all of its capabilities and how it could solve a lot of the problems I encounter on a day-to-day basis at work gave me a lot of ideas. The Swan and Dolphin staff did a great job with this too; in general the food provided for conference attendees was very good.
- Overall, i'd say this trip may have had some of the shortest lines I've encountered at the parks, either DLR or WDW. Yesterday at Animal Kingdom both Kilimanjaro Safari and Expedition Everest were walk-ons in the afternoon, and even Magic Kingdom generally had fairly short lines for everything that wasn't 7DMT.
- The conference I attended had been held in Las Vegas for several years prior to this one, and it seemed that most people there much preferred WDW to Vegas. The fact that the conference included an after-hours party in Hollywood Studios with virtually nonexistent lines on all the rides and all sorts of free food really was a pretty cool experience, and I'm glad I was able to bring my wife along even if it was a bit pricey to do so. One of the vendors at the conference also arranged a private party at Epcot that included a private viewing area for Illuminations. I think it's the first time I've been able to see the show without four rows of people in front of me...
- I finally managed to make it through a week at a Disney park without being completely worn out by the third day. Maybe it's all the walking I've been doing at home (chasing Pokemon mostly) but I feel like I have had plenty of energy in spite of the weather, and handled this trip a lot better than I've handled most of the other Disney trips I've done. I don't even have sore feet, which was has been the biggest problem for me on most of my trips. It's not like I've walked much less on this trip than usual (my fitness tracking app on my phone/watch has me over 100,000 steps in the past five days) but I've handled it much better.
- I got to eat at Shula's with someone else paying for it.
- I took my wife to 50s Prime Time (we generally like to do one splurge meal per trip when we go) and was rather impressed with it. They did mess up her order so she ended up with two dinners, and also got a good lecture or two from the servers. I'd still like to try Sci-Fi Dine-in one of these days, but it seems tough to get a reservation for the place.
The bad:
- The weather has been a pain to deal with much of the time. Between the heat and humidity and the occasional torrential downpour, it seemed like we were either fighting the weather or trying to get out of it a fair bit of the time. I don't think I've sweated that much in a while.
- Attending a conference at the Dolphin and Swan is a bit of a pain if you aren't staying on property. We stayed at the B Hotel in the Disney Springs area during the conference and while it was a nice enough place there wasn't a good way to get to the other hotels without taking Ubers for pretty much every trip or paying $20+ a day to park. I suppose with my AP I could have taken the approach of parking at DHS and taking a boat over, but that would have been dependent on the boats actually running (a bit of an iffy proposition with all the lightning around.) If I did the conference again I would have tried to stay at one of the Epcot area resorts (in fact, for the one more trip we're planning before our APs expire in late January we're most likely going to try to do a DVC points rental.)
- My co-worker who also attended the conference got stuck in Orlando an extra night after the airline delayed her flight and caused her to miss her connecting flight, and then couldn't get her on anything else. We were already staying a couple extra nights after the conference so it didn't affect us, but she did have to scramble to find a place to stay (fortunately the corporate travel agency was able to arrange something for her.)
- The MyDisneyExperience app has improved quite a bit since our last trip in April, but in a lot of ways it's still a serious pain to use. It annoys me to no end that the filters on the wait times and other section lists don't persist, and that you can't refresh the list without backing out and going back in. Then again, the Fastpass+ experience has improved quite a bit.
Overall, I have really enjoyed this trip, and I'll definitely be trying to attend this conference again next year if it's held at WDW again.
