WDW getting too complicated???

[Uncleromulus]

I know times change.

But I recall the early days--when there weren't 18 different Park Pass options.

When you didn't need to get a reservation for dinner 6 months ahead of time just so you could eat at a restaurant at the time you wanted.

When you didn't have to get a FastPass for a 2 minute long ride months in advance..or risk a 2 hour long wait in line if you wanted to get on that attraction.

Our first visit we just called Papeete Bay directly THAT SAME DAY to get dinner reservations--and got on each and every attraction at the MK w/o hardly a wait in line for any of them.

Ah--the good old days!!!

 

[Jennasis]

Progress!

 

[GaryDis]

When you didn't have to get a FastPass for a 2 minute long ride months in advance..or risk a 2 hour long wait in line if you wanted to get on that attraction.

Our first visit we just called Papeete Bay directly THAT SAME DAY to get dinner reservations--and got on each and every attraction at the MK w/o hardly a wait in line for any of them.

There was never a year that didn't have long waits. You still needed to know which times of the year were not crowded and which times of day were not crowded.

 

[mom2rtk]

Progress!

Is that what they're calling it now?

 

[Uncleromulus]

There was never a year that didn't have long waits. You still needed to know which times of the year were not crowded and which times of day were not crowded.

Actually there was--1975!! OF course the only Park was the MK and the other parks and most of the hotels did not exist.

But I'm sort of on a nostalgia trip--just got the newest 2017 Birnbaum Guide and after reading through it I began to realize just how complicated planning a WDW vacation has become.

When we went the first time we just sort of "showed up"--and had a great time!!

 

[DrunkJam]

It really is complicated.
I mean, I get that, if I put the work in in advance, my vacation will be better, so, I do the book rooms more than a year out, book restaurants 6 months out, and I will book Fps too. And I hope this will mean we have the best vacation we could have.
But, really, it's a ludicrously expensive holiday, and to have to do SO much extra work is, well it's not what a holiday is, is it?

 

[GaryDis]

Actually there was--1975!! OF course the only Park was the MK and the other parks and most of the hotels did not exist.

Space Mountain opened in 1975, so my money is on there being 2 hour lines. Unfortunately, Universal got rid of the Back to the Future ride, so I can't go back in time to prove it.

But I do agree with OP that it's gotten to be more work.

 

[Kwdsue]

I agree that a Disney vacation is a lot more complicated than it used to be. It was much easier 21 years ago when we started bringing our family. I'm a planner and love to put the time in that it takes to do the research, and I'm guessing many on this site are like me. However, this time I felt like I put much more time into the planning, and it was frustrating at times. At 120 days out, some of the restaurants I wanted were booked at the times I needed (had a pretty wide window of time that I looked at.) I will always book at 180 days now - learned that lesson! I know a lot of people book multiple times and days at the same place, and then cancel what doesn't work in their plan as they get closer, but I kind of feel guilty about taking up more ADRs than I'm going to need. Not judgment on those who do. Disney kind of forces you into it!

Another frustrating aspect was WDW extended the hours of park operation on a few of our days and that messed up some of our FPs and touring plans. Our trip was 9/9 - 9/18. I can't remember exactly how many days out it was - maybe 30 days? I was able to move some of the FPs around, so it worked fine, but it just took additional time to rearrange things.

I'm the type of person who doesn't want to wait in a line more than 20 minutes, so we do rope drop, FP our favorites and then do anything that has a shorter wait. I spend a lot of time thinking about where we'll be in a park at a certain time so we don't have to criss-cross more than we have to. It's my decision to put more time and effort into the planning because I know we enjoy getting in as many attractions as possible without long waits. We had a fantastic trip this time, and I'm so glad I put in all the extra time. But, yes, it's more complicated and more work!

 

[DrunkJam]

I agree that a Disney vacation is a lot more complicated than it used to be. It was much easier 21 years ago when we started bringing our family. I'm a planner and love to put the time in that it takes to do the research, and I'm guessing many on this site are like me. However, this time I felt like I put much more time into the planning, and it was frustrating at times. At 120 days out, some of the restaurants I wanted were booked at the times I needed (had a pretty wide window of time that I looked at.) I will always book at 180 days now - learned that lesson! I know a lot of people book multiple times and days at the same place, and then cancel what doesn't work in their plan as they get closer, but I kind of feel guilty about taking up more ADRs than I'm going to need. Not judgment on those who do. Disney kind of forces you into it!

Another frustrating aspect was WDW extended the hours of park operation on a few of our days and that messed up some of our FPs and touring plans. Our trip was 9/9 - 9/18. I can't remember exactly how many days out it was - maybe 30 days? I was able to move some of the FPs around, so it worked fine, but it just took additional time to rearrange things.

I'm the type of person who doesn't want to wait in a line more than 20 minutes, so we do rope drop, FP our favorites and then do anything that has a shorter wait. I spend a lot of time thinking about where we'll be in a park at a certain time so we don't have to criss-cross more than we have to. It's my decision to put more time and effort into the planning because I know we enjoy getting in as many attractions as possible without long waits. We had a fantastic trip this time, and I'm so glad I put in all the extra time. But, yes, it's more complicated and more work!

I really do find that holding multiple ADRs thing to be really unfair. Everyone wants the best vacation they can have, but to prevent someone else booking their dream ADR just so you can decide properly later, that's kind of wrong. IMHO.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

Yes, too complicated. When you have to plan your every step in order to avoid 2 hour lines (particularly in EP), it's too complicated. Can you still "go with the flow"? Sure! But then don't count on any of the hard-to-get restaurants, things like BBB or riding FEA without exceptionally long lines. In order to maximize your time, yes, it takes a lot of planning. I remember going many years when we would just show up (the paper fastpass days!) and wouldn't even strategize. It was definitely more relaxing. We go a lot, so we pick and choose our must-see's each trip. But I sympathize with the one-and-done crowd, particularly with small children who want that full WDW experience. If you don't line things up just-so 180 days out and then 60 days out (and then you have WDW changing park hours after that), I think it can be very stressful. Not much of a vacation IMHO!

 

[quandrea]

It can be more complicated but it doesn't have to be if you are planning adverse. We head home today from a last minute trip. We made all our dining reservations no earlier than the night before. Had some delicious meals. We didn't eat at Ohana but we have no interest. My best meal was at Olivia's.

We rode test track with a five minute wait. Had two sets of Fast Passes for Soarin (made night before), fast passes for Frozen (made two weeks out). We did MK fast passes late the night before. Rode all we wanted except Mine Train. Two rides on Toy Story--stand by and Fast Pass made two days prior.

We've been dozens of times and don't like planning ahead much any more. A great trip can still be had on the fly.

 

[Uncleromulus]

Space Mountain opened in 1975, so my money is on there being 2 hour lines. Unfortunately, Universal got rid of the Back to the Future ride, so I can't go back in time to prove it.

But I do agree with OP that it's gotten to be more work.

My recollection is that our longest wait--and it wasn't much of one--was Carousel of Progress!!

Now they practically beg you to get on!!

 

[yulilin3]

So, for the sake of what's being discussed, let's say the internet didn't exist. We wouldn't have these planning boards to figure things out 180 days in advance, 60 days in advance, 30 days in advance.
What would the planning entail? what would you do?
Maybe book hotel and dinning reservations through the phone? Just show up at the park and do whatever you can do?
I think the big change in all of this planning has been the internet. Without instant information what would planning look like?

 

[Geoff_M]

I think the operative term is that it "can" be more complicated "if" you want it to be. To me, the complication comes into play when you want to take advantages of planning features that WDW offers to help with the trip. But there are still PLENTY of families at WDW each day that do the park just like people did it circa 1995... they just show up, buy tickets, ride attractions and eat at counter service restaurants. Except for perhaps the period post-9/11 crowds, lines have always been a standard at WDW outside of low-season months. You don't have to use FP+... but it's a perk to do so. You don't have to make ADR's months out (unless it's a "hot" restaurant), if you don't want to. That's been true for years, even when WDW just took ADRs via phone. We went in June of this year with only about a month's notice, and when I tried there were still plenty of good table service options open to us.

 

[Klayfish]

I completely disagree. I'm sure my perspective is somewhat different, because we don't eat in the parks. If we did, we would rarely do table service, we'd much rather do quick service, eat and go back to touring. We've only done a table service restaurant 3 or 4 times in the past 10 visits. And when we do, we pick a place that doesn't need reservations, such as the Seven Dragons in Epcot.

So putting the meal planning aside, I do not see it getting too complicated whatsoever. The "good ol' days" are when Disney was much smaller than it is today. For most of us here, in our childhood HS and AK didn't exist...Epcot may not have existed, or was just built. The water parks didn't exist, Disney Springs didn't exist, or wasn't what it is today. So there are now so many more choices than ever before, which draws more crowds. I suppose you could view that as "complicated" because there are so many things to chose from, but I don't see it that way. I see it as a wonderful thing that I've got all these options. I don't see it an issue trying to "avoid 2 hour lines". Very few rides get that kind of a line on standby (holidays excluded), and the ones that do aren't really that hard to work around those concerns. The FP+ system is great, and can be used with little difficulty to make your day easy. I think it's exaggerating a bit to say that if you don't plan things months in advance that you'll be waiting in 2 hours lines. We spent 17 days there this June/July. Due to WDW rules, we could only book 7 days of FP+ in a 30 day window. That meant that we could book FP+ for days 1-7 of our trip 30 days out, but then couldn't book day 8 until we had finished day 1. So for the last 10 days of our trip, we could only book FP+ 7 days out. Guess how many 2 hour lines we waited in? Right...zero. One hour lines? Right again...zero. Yet, we still rode FEA, Soarin (4 or 5 times), TT, Peter Pan, Splash, etc...with no troubles. Longest line we waited standby was 40 minutes...and that was for a character m&g that had no FP+ (Joy and Sadness). For a "ride", we never once waited longer than 30 minutes.

I just don't see it getting more complicated. Nostalgia has a funny way of tinting our views.

 

[AngiTN]

The FP are hard to get around for some select rides. I'll give you that one.
Otherwise, I disagree that planning is required. It's there for those that want it but not at all required to have a good trip.
I used to think that till my last 2 trips, one in July when it was still quite busy.
On both of those trips we changed plans every day from what was originally booked.
With the exception of the day we went to Epcot to ride FEA, I made our FP that morning while waiting on the bus.
I didn't make a single ADR in advance. Most of the time I did them on the bus or when we got hungry. I just looked to see what was available where we'd be and book something that appealed to us.

I even had a friend go down in April, during the week that it was quite busy with a High School band festival and Star Wars Marathon. They decided about 3 days prior to the trip to go along with their son in school. They didn't plan anything further in advance than that and had a great time. We were there too, it was quite crowded and we would meet up in the afternoons and book some FP together. It was very easy to do too.

We've built up all this that is required to prepare for a trip but if you just let it go, it's actually not required at all.

 

[yulilin3]

I remember my first trip to WDW. It was December 1982, we went to MK. I vividly remember making an hour long line for Dumbo, then an hour plus line for 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, I remember my mom and dad being grouchy. I think my mom has a picture of our family. We had packed food and drinks, my baby sister was 6 months old so we had all of her stuff, my dad was carrying a video camera and the battery for that weighed a bunch. The picture is of me and my middle sister waiting for the parade. She was holding a Mickey balloon looking miserable I had the biggest smile on my face
I was 8 at the time and we talk about that trip now and all that my parents can say is how horrible it was, everything had long lines, and it was crowded. I remember how fun and magical it was
BTW we only went on those 2 rides and the carousel. Watched the parade and my parents called it quits

 

[Jennasis]

MDE alone is complicated. You should have seen me trying to explain it to my parents.

 

[Lothlórien]

I think for some that is definitely true. I know several families, who went yearly, who will not go anymore because of the constant changes and they feel it is too much work to plan something that should be fun.
My in-laws used to go twice a year, but they have now decided to go on cruises and to Cabo (so thankful they take us with them ) instead.

 

[Karin1984]

Isn't it the same for many things? Plane tickets, try to compare air fare or baggage rules with 10-20 years ago. Or the many different credit cards, loyalty programs and coupons you have for different stores, where you get product A at store 1, but product B at another store because there is an offer and product C at a third store as you earn Rewards points with a loyalty card. In the olden days there was one shop.

But also the customer changed. In the olden days, you waited in line because you didn't complain about these things. You followed the group and did what the company offered. Now the customer is much more vocal and at some point said: I don't want to to wait an hour. I want more for my money. It isn't just Disney who wants to make more money and predictable customer behavior better so they can steer them, we are partially the cause of the developments.

The world gets as complicated as you make it yourself. If you don't care about how you spend your time or money, you can still live as in the 90s.