any name you wish
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- May 2, 2016
- Messages
- 19
Our party - 9 people consisting of 4 adults (age 39-40) in moderate/ok shape, one 7.5 months pregnant, 5 kids (9, 8, 6, 6, 3)
Housing - off site in a rental house very close to the World
Last visit - about 3.5 years ago
Tickets - 9 day hopper
I am a planner and generally like to know the approach our group is going to take to ensure we get the most out of our days without burning people out. We don't have a lot of ADR meals but we did a couple. Most of the time we had mobile order quick service or we packed lunch in.
Our last trip (about 3 years ago) we made great use of the "rope drop" approach to hit 1 headliner out of the gate and then strategically stay ahead of the crowds with minimal waiting following guidance from Touring Plans. By late morning we would start the fast pass cycle and around about 2pm we had wrapped up attractions and could switch to browse and relax mode. Most days we left the parks between 2pm and 4pm. Some days we returned in the early evening and other days we just enjoyed the pool or relaxed at our place. We tend to put kids to bed around 8:30pm and get up fairly early each day.
This trip was radically different and in our experience a lot more frustrating. Without going too negative out of the gate, I will say that we made great use of Genie+ at Magic Kingdom but it did stretch our days there out a lot longer than we would have liked. It appears that the grace window "loophole" is no longer possible, but we did use that a couple of times to get an acceleration on the afternoon LL rides. With our party in mind especially (toddler and pregnancy) we could have done with a lot less walking back and forth (pinball mode) to get our Genie+ options in. MK was the only park where we really felt it was a good value to purchase Genie+. We ended up staying a lot later in the day though because we had to take the times that were offered. This ended up with us purchasing more evening meals at the park than we had hoped for.
We arrived shortly after international travel opened up and there was a noticeable surge of international guests. In a normally slower time of year, we saw increased crowd levels on almost all of our days.
Early Theme Park Entry was also shortly announced before our trip and really limited the value of rope drop for us. We had the best luck heading straight to 2nd tier attractions and getting 1-2 of those in before the lines were long. It didn't feel very good watching the masses go in ahead of us every morning.
Hollywood Studios was the best of parks, it was the worst of parks. Genie+ was really annoying at this park and it looks like (from other reports) to be getting worse. If you had super speed fingers at 7:00:01am you could get an early morning SDD but then you couldn't get MFSR at all. If you were lucky you could get Toy Story Mania early afternoon and then possibly RnR Coaster late afternoon. Tower of Terror wasn't high our our group's list so we actually didn't end up over there but the couple of times I could have made it work was very late, especially for us. Most days it felt like a "win" to get two LL options at HS and even that didn't feel like a good value. The alternative was waiting in very long lines so either way it felt bad. We had desired to purchase ILL for Rise but those slots were all gone by park open and even checking later in the morning and throughout the day we never had the option. It was worth the wait (2.5 hours) the time we went but we didn't have the patience to ride a second time. We loved the Star Wars theme and Docking Bay 7 had some amazing food. The mobile order execution at Woodys Lunchbox was pretty bad as a cast member was writing down order numbers and calling back to the kitchen for prep/delivery. There was no physical space to line up at the pickup window and tables were very hard to come by even at 2pm when we ate there. HS is also the only park where we waited multiple times (20-30 minute waits) in different lines for popcorn refills. It seems like they could have opened up 2 or 3 times as many refreshment stands and still have lines at them all. There are also blue "Guest Experience" tents all over HS to help folks out - they actually helped us re-book a missed LL due to a ride closure that wasn't related to that LL.
EPCOT was a lot of fun even with the construction. We had a lot of bouncing around there but that is kind of normal for that park anyways. Remy was pretty fun and we all enjoyed it. We had problems each morning with the virtual queue (it kept telling us there was an issue with creating the party so we couldn't go in the queue) but it worked fine at the 1pm time slot so I am not sure what was really wrong (us or Disney) so again we ended up with late times.
Animal Kingdom we hit on a low crowd day so no need for Genie+ and we actually got most of that park done in 2/3 of a day.
The joke by the end of the trip was: "When do we want to do X? ..... Disney will tell us."
My big take away items were:
Cheers!
Housing - off site in a rental house very close to the World
Last visit - about 3.5 years ago
Tickets - 9 day hopper
I am a planner and generally like to know the approach our group is going to take to ensure we get the most out of our days without burning people out. We don't have a lot of ADR meals but we did a couple. Most of the time we had mobile order quick service or we packed lunch in.
Our last trip (about 3 years ago) we made great use of the "rope drop" approach to hit 1 headliner out of the gate and then strategically stay ahead of the crowds with minimal waiting following guidance from Touring Plans. By late morning we would start the fast pass cycle and around about 2pm we had wrapped up attractions and could switch to browse and relax mode. Most days we left the parks between 2pm and 4pm. Some days we returned in the early evening and other days we just enjoyed the pool or relaxed at our place. We tend to put kids to bed around 8:30pm and get up fairly early each day.
This trip was radically different and in our experience a lot more frustrating. Without going too negative out of the gate, I will say that we made great use of Genie+ at Magic Kingdom but it did stretch our days there out a lot longer than we would have liked. It appears that the grace window "loophole" is no longer possible, but we did use that a couple of times to get an acceleration on the afternoon LL rides. With our party in mind especially (toddler and pregnancy) we could have done with a lot less walking back and forth (pinball mode) to get our Genie+ options in. MK was the only park where we really felt it was a good value to purchase Genie+. We ended up staying a lot later in the day though because we had to take the times that were offered. This ended up with us purchasing more evening meals at the park than we had hoped for.
We arrived shortly after international travel opened up and there was a noticeable surge of international guests. In a normally slower time of year, we saw increased crowd levels on almost all of our days.
Early Theme Park Entry was also shortly announced before our trip and really limited the value of rope drop for us. We had the best luck heading straight to 2nd tier attractions and getting 1-2 of those in before the lines were long. It didn't feel very good watching the masses go in ahead of us every morning.
Hollywood Studios was the best of parks, it was the worst of parks. Genie+ was really annoying at this park and it looks like (from other reports) to be getting worse. If you had super speed fingers at 7:00:01am you could get an early morning SDD but then you couldn't get MFSR at all. If you were lucky you could get Toy Story Mania early afternoon and then possibly RnR Coaster late afternoon. Tower of Terror wasn't high our our group's list so we actually didn't end up over there but the couple of times I could have made it work was very late, especially for us. Most days it felt like a "win" to get two LL options at HS and even that didn't feel like a good value. The alternative was waiting in very long lines so either way it felt bad. We had desired to purchase ILL for Rise but those slots were all gone by park open and even checking later in the morning and throughout the day we never had the option. It was worth the wait (2.5 hours) the time we went but we didn't have the patience to ride a second time. We loved the Star Wars theme and Docking Bay 7 had some amazing food. The mobile order execution at Woodys Lunchbox was pretty bad as a cast member was writing down order numbers and calling back to the kitchen for prep/delivery. There was no physical space to line up at the pickup window and tables were very hard to come by even at 2pm when we ate there. HS is also the only park where we waited multiple times (20-30 minute waits) in different lines for popcorn refills. It seems like they could have opened up 2 or 3 times as many refreshment stands and still have lines at them all. There are also blue "Guest Experience" tents all over HS to help folks out - they actually helped us re-book a missed LL due to a ride closure that wasn't related to that LL.
EPCOT was a lot of fun even with the construction. We had a lot of bouncing around there but that is kind of normal for that park anyways. Remy was pretty fun and we all enjoyed it. We had problems each morning with the virtual queue (it kept telling us there was an issue with creating the party so we couldn't go in the queue) but it worked fine at the 1pm time slot so I am not sure what was really wrong (us or Disney) so again we ended up with late times.
Animal Kingdom we hit on a low crowd day so no need for Genie+ and we actually got most of that park done in 2/3 of a day.
The joke by the end of the trip was: "When do we want to do X? ..... Disney will tell us."
My big take away items were:
- Rope drop for off site guests isn't as great of a value for time like it used to be.
- Genie+ really only hits the mark at MK but only if you REALLY know what you are doing.
- HS is a hot mess - just plan to wait in line and go over two days if you can.
- Plan to stay later in the parks if you get Genie+ as the ride windows are out of your control.
- It was very stressful to "see what Disney allowed us to do" each morning.
- We probably aren't going back for a while - not never, just for a while.
Cheers!
