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Going to chime in as a grizzled Disney World vet here (Been there about 6 times now since I was about 6 years old. 5 of which fall in the last five years). My last visit was Thanksgiving weekend of 2012. Here's some general tips. - Walking shoes. Dear God. Walking shoes. My girlfriend attempted to go out in wedges the first night we were there, and I wound up having to carry her around world showcase on my back by the end of the night. In terms of small children, if they're uncomfortable covering 4+ miles in a day, they go in the stroller. - I will tell you right now that you should consider basing where you stay on the age of the group you're with. If you have younger kids, I'd stay closer to the Magic Kingdom for obvious reasons. We were at the Floridian when I went at age 6, and it was pretty much perfect thanks to the monorail. Older groups should really consider staying on the Boardwalk by Epcot because it's frankly very fun to be able to go around there at night as a teen/adult. Also, being able to comfortably walk to World Showcase is pretty fantastic. - We have gone with dining plan and without. It really just depends on your eating habits. If you eat one large meal per day, it's generally a good investment. If you graze, it's a bit of a wash. I will post some restaurant reviews at the end of this. - Abuse extra magic hours when possible. If a park is open three hours late one night, go back and take a midday nap so you can take advantage of it. All of the locals and families with small children will be gone. All of the wait times will be cake. My dad and I regularly do this with Hollywood Studios so that we can hit Midway Mania and Rock 'n Roller Coaster ad nauseum. The morning hours are eh. - The Magic Kingdom seems to always have the biggest crowd (for obvious reasons), but it's very easy for rides to suddenly have low wait times out of the blue. Also, don't be intimidated by some of the lines on rides here. Jungle Cruise rarely lives up to the full wait time, same with Big Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain. This is not true of Splash Mountain though. Two days go by very quickly here. - Epcot is probably the most adult-oriented of the parks. My dad and I regularly geek out in Epcot because it's all about either A. The future or B. the non-US world. You can easily kill two days here thanks to World Showcase. - Animal Kingdom is a beautiful but horribly designed park. You need to hustle to hit all the headliners in one day here, and you also really need to keep an eye on your kids because there are some particularly narrow pathways. That said, you can easily accomplish this park in one day. - Hollywood Studios has picked up in recent years. It's a lot more polarized than other parks, with rides either being very thrilling (Rock 'n Roller. Tower of Terror) or generally calm (Great Movie Ride). There's also a TON of live shows to watch here. This is a nice park to sort of break up the days between the other parks - ALWAYS RESERVE TABLE SERVICE DINING. It will make your life a hell of a lot easier to plan. Now then. TheGreyGhost's preferred restaurants: Chefs De France: It's declined in recent years, but it's still excellent. I usually get the beef tenderloin off the dinner menu, and it's pretty much always excellent. Make sure you get a reservation. Le Cellier Steakhouse: Lunch is one coupon. Dinner is two now. Generally the best steak you can get inside one of the parks. The Filet is well seasoned, although I distinctly remember enjoying my dad's porterhouse as well. A good lunch option. Rose and Crown English Pub: Used to be mediocre, is now above average. It's typical British fair if that appeals to you in any way. The rum butter sauce in one of the desserts is excellent. Coral Reef: Has declined over the years. Used to be excellent. It's more of a novelty to me now. You can get just as good of food elsewhere, and the aquarium view is highly overrated. The Hollywood Brown Derby: Good, but not worth two credits. The signature Cobb salad is lacking. Flying Fish Cafe: Easily my favorite restaurant on site. It's got an absolutely incredible seafood and steak menu. By far the best meal I've had at Disney. Is a signature restaurant now. Yachtsman Steakhouse: The most overrated of the signature dining restaurants. Prime NY Strip is under par. Ribeye was incredibly tough. Really lousy appetizer menu as well. Grand Floridian Cafe: Good entrees, everything else was very eh. It's a nice choice if you're at MK for the day. Sci-fi Dine-in: Very average food, but it's one of my favorite gimmicks of any Disney restaurant. Beaches and Cream: I saved my favorite for last. This is the one restaurant I have been to every single time at Disney. It's basically a better Johnny Rocket's, but it's a very nice spot to just be with your family as well. Do the Kitchen Sink challenge. Get Ice Cream at the counter one night. I wish there were more restaurants like this around Disney. In terms of hotels: Grand Floridian: Typically seen as the flagship of the Disney hotels, and rightfully so. It's elegant, but you do know you're in Florida the entire stay. Not as much entertainment on site for kids as some other hotels however. Contemporary: According to my father, "The room was nice, but the place is drat loud and ugly as sin." Yacht Club: I've stayed here twice now, and it's a very nice place, but it's in a weird place compared to the rest of boardwalk. You have to walk farther for pretty much anything on Boardwalk than you would anywhere else. Beach Club: My preferred hotel at this point. It's right between the Yacht Club and Epcot. It's close enough that you can eat in Epcot whenever you want on a park hopper. It's got the best pool in all of Disney. It has the marketplace for morning food if you need it. I'm always thoroughly happy with it. Stay on the club level if you can; it's a lot quieter. The snacks and free drinks save you a lot of trouble, and you can smuggle them into the parks and save money.
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May 18, 2013 02:58
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:56 |
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TheBigBudgetSequel posted:I could be wrong, but if you stay at a resort with boat service, they don't send a bus (for Epcot, at the very least)(The boats are like big comfy buses on water) No, you can get buses to Epcot and Hollywood at the Yacht/Beach for sure. That said, if you're actually dumb enough to take a bus to Epcot from there I don't know what to tell you. Hollywood can be a bit of a hike with small kids, but I still usually walk it down there when we go down.
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Jan 12, 2014 23:46
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Roar posted:Don't give up La Cellier. It's widely regarded as one of the better restaurants at EPCOT and one of the best steakhouses on property. If you're going to be in EPCOT, it's maybe the third best steakhouse in the resort area now though. Since it got bumped up to signature, it's really not worth the price bump. Shula's at the Swan is better if you're paying cash. The Yachtsman at the Beach Club is better if you're paying with DDP. Best steak I've ever had at Disney other than Shula's though is easily at the Flying Fish on the Boardwalk. Sensational. Le Cellier is good, but I don't think the food improved enough to justify it over one of those others now.
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Apr 13, 2014 22:07
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Paul Allen posted:So Memory Maker...thoughts? Both for and against are welcome. The best thing in a long time in all honesty. We didn't even bother taking the nice camera for our family shots when we were just down there, and we have so many options from Memory Maker that it isn't even funny. Really great if you're the type of family that likes a good family picture and to see all the goofy faces on things like space mountain
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Apr 17, 2014 19:52
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Silly Burrito posted:Can you elaborate on the reasons? Just curious if you can. I actually have a decent number of friends who ended up working for the parks, and my family's been going every year or two since I was 6 (read: 1999-2 days from this post!). What I've heard and witnessed for the most part is the same obnoxious push for metrics and volume management that you see out of a lot of call centers. When I was a kid, every picture I have with a character came at a point where we ran into them in the park at a random point and got to take an actual candid picture. My mom's most treasured picture of me as a child was from running into Tigger on the bridge between World Showcase and Futureworld in Epcot with Spaceship Earth in the background when it had the "Year 2000" decoration on it. From like 2003-on, they scaled back that time and opportunity to interact naturally with the characters in favor of things like the meet & greet spaces which can be used to artificially lower wait times since character encounters are no longer based on chance but on willingness to wait in line for characters over rides and see a 20-something suffering through heat stroke in costume. If 100 people are waiting on Tigger, that's 100 people not in line for Test Track and is an easy cheat for when your park attendance is soaring but you don't want to outright expand. Similarly, you can see it in the way dining is handled now. Reservations were somewhat of a thing when I was young, but now you literally need to be on the phone with Disney 3 months in advance to the day if you want in to your favorite haunts, since they can't really expand the capacity of the table service restaurants. As a result, you have things like the meal plans that heavily push you towards quick service and snack restaurants with how they're doled out, which isn't ideal if your family is like mine and would prefer to just have one big meal a day out of the sun and keep things very light otherwise. It's fairly simple to build things like cheap hotels that can go in separately from the existing park infrastructure and just need a bus line to them, but other than that they just haven't scaled the parks up in terms of dining options, rides, or activities because it would involve such an intense capital commitment and heavy infrastructure changes that may not pay off easily for them if tourism were to suddenly fall off. 9/11 may have turbo-hosed US politics, but it also destroyed companies like Disney Parks that had just invested huge amounts in their parks and suddenly didn't have the gate receipts to hit the payoff they expected which has made them overly conservative and skeptical of any large-scale infrastructure spending. As a result, expanded hiring, infrastructure improvements, staff perks, and things that used to make it the absolute best service and environment in the world but don't always put butts in line at the parks went by the wayside because they're constantly worrying about the next time that things go lean. If I'm putting on my MBA brain, it makes sense, but that doesn't make it necessarily good or bad, just logical. That said, it's still the absolute most magical place in the world, and I'll be going consistently until I'm plant fertilizer. The difference in service between old Disney and new is there, but you're still usually talking about world-class service that you won't see beaten at any other park. The resorts are closer to what it used to be, largely because they're dealing with a smaller amount of people and have better control over their respective tasks. There's nothing better than the reactions a 6-7 year old can have to being at Disney, and I can't wait to take my own kids someday.
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Dec 13, 2016 22:30
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah I'm all for it, just wonder what the current heads of Disney would do if it got pushed here in FL. Probably just lobby against it at the state level or push for a loop hole for unincorporated areas. Remember, Disney literally controls the government that all their land/parks are on under the Reedy Creek unincorporated area. It would take the state putting a level of pressure on them that isn't going to happen with Rick Scott in office for them to bend. But if it actually did happen, they absolutely would just pay up. Labor isn't as much as they'd lead you to believe in terms of expense, and they can't cut staffing anymore without risking an outright mutiny since they've decided they're just going to operate at minimum feasible staffing whenever possible.
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Dec 14, 2016 22:52
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Renegret posted:Her favorite spot is "everywhere with a sight line to the castle" but yeah it's most likely going to be right smack in front of it. I did it in front of the castle on the walkway to go under and had literally 75 people observing it. We're both wallflowers, but it's insanely fun to have a bunch of people randomly clap and start freaking out going "OMG can i take your picture for you". Also, a massive massive word of advice, stash the ring in a jacket pocket that you wear to the park but take off for security screening, because if you leave it in a bag, boxes and bags in that bag get searched, so there's always a change they open the box. I literally had to mouth "DON'T OPEN THAT RING BOX" to Disney security while my fiancee had her head turned while going through a line and just kept it in my ran. I'm eternally thankful that the guard realized really quickly that I didn't want to propose in front of a loving turnstile.
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Dec 14, 2017 21:49
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:56 |
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So, wife and I just signed up for the half-marathon in February, and her dad is tagging along now too. This'll be trip 9 or 10 for me and probably 5-6 for her, but it's the first time we'll have gone with a parent who doesn't actively despise eating at some more exotic or interesting places at the resort and the first time we'll be staying out of monorail/walking distance of a park so we're looking forward to a fairly different trip than what we've always had (Staying at Port Orleans Riverside). We're already looking at Jiko for one night, but now it's a matter of picking a restaurant for the night before the race and trying to pick brunch for Sunday/Monday. Any recommendations on the brunch side?
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Oct 24, 2018 15:28
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