Thoughts on our Disney Trip

Finally getting the time to write down my thoughts from our Florida Disney trip at the end of August. I still have to go through the pictures and will post those somewhere soon.

1. Florida is hot at the end of August. Duh. What did we expect? Toward the end of the week it was manageable, but Sun-Wed the average temperature was 92 degrees and humid. We would bring about 6 frozen bottles of water with us and go through all of it by the end of the day.
2. Driving, for us, was definitely the way to go. It gave us a chance to visit Maryann and Thompson in Charlotte, which is an excellent thing to do. Also, it made getting around Disney that much easier for us. We didn’t need to rely on their excellent bus service and since it was an ‘off’ week, getting from our hotel on the park to each individual park and back was at the most a 10 minute drive. The roads were not crowded, there is signage everywhere and they are wide and clean. In addition, parking at the parks was easy. We only had to use their parking-lot Tram system twice. All the other times (including Magic Kingdom and Epcot) we were able to walk from our car to the entrance. As for the drive itself….yes, it was long, but with timely stops for gas, snacks or meals every 3-4 hours it was manageable. Thank goodness for XM radio for Theresa and I and a portable DVD player for the boys.
3. Disney Hospitality – The people that work there are obviously brainwashed to treat all of their guests like royalty. Each night when we got back to our hotel, the guard (it was gated) would say “Welcome Home” with a huge smile. Anytime we asked anyone a question, there was no grumbling of an answer and the worker made sure we were ok with the information we received.
4. Patience – You have to have a lot of it at Disney. Even with the Fast Pass system we had to wait on some lines. Thank goodness it was an ‘off’ week and the lines were not horrible when we did have to wait. And, if you are patient some things really work out, like us getting a table at an Italian Restaurant at the Magic Kingdom (can’t remember the name), with the hostess telling us they only can seat us outside (thank goodness it cooled down) which gave us an unobstructed front-row seat to the Disney Parade (which we had no intention of seeing but were happily enchanted by it).
5. British Invasion – I thought we were in London. I cannot tell you how many families we met at each park from London and Ireland. They were so friendly also!
6. Fantasmic! - is the night-time fireworks and visual hydrotechnic show at Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM). Wow. I have never seen anything like this. Who would have thought you could project images onto misty water screens. Brilliant. One of the highlights of the trip.
7. Typhoon Lagoon – Wish it was closer. The water slides were ok. The key here is the 6 foot high 50 yard wide wall of water that comes out every 90 seconds. Simply incredible. The Shark tank (which we snorkeled in) was excellent as well. I could go there every day.
8. Restaurant Walk-Ins – Not sure if this happens on peak weeks, but there were a lot of restaurants in the parks that we could not get a reservation for in advance, but we were able to do a walk-in on and get a table. We never thought we would be able to get into Wolfgang Puck’s in Downtown Disney, but one night we just gave it a try and had an excellent meal. We were able to do this at the Shark Reef Grill at Sea World as well.
9. Virginia is LONG! - Seemed like we were driving in Virginia (on I81) a very, very long time.
10. Runaway Lanes – At one point on I77 we were coming out of the mountains down this incredibly long, steep and sweeping set of downgrades. There were runaway lanes for the trucks set up at strategic intervals in case a truck lost its brakes. If that happened they would be able to take a ‘runaway lane’ that would lead them off of the road, and up a slight hill into some deep sand.
11. Loved Epcot (too many high points to list). Loved Typhoon Lagoon. Magic Kingdom was good….very large, lots of stuff for little kids. Thought the Haunted Mansion was hokey, but the boys loved Space and Splash Mountains. Animal Kingdom was ok (Theresa and Adam went on Expedition Everest and we enjoyed the Lion King show, plus it was inside and cool) and we all did a few other rides. Hollywood Studios was good, but we made a mistake and only went there at night and many of the attractions there (ie Indiana Jones) were closed for the day. Thank goodness we saw Fantastmic! Seaworld did not impress us. A good day, but it didn’t make us go wow. Downtown Disney is a lot of fun for shopping and eating at night, the Virgin Record Store is cheap, and the Lego Store was cool, along with a lot of other stores that were there. Disney Boardwalk is just ok.
12. Our strategy each day worked for us. Some people like to go early. We decided to let the boys sleep and went each day around 11:30 and stayed until 9 or so each night. We didn’t have to worry about the kids getting tired or needing a nap. The heat was a killer, but timely breaks inside for rides and events, plus meals, helped. The mist stations were a nice touch. A couple of nights we would go to the hotel pool at 9 or 10 when we got back. That was fun, but I can’t figure out why there were no flying insects at the pool that should have been attracted by the lights. Lots of people did the same as us with the pool at night.
13. Disney World is CLEAN! You rarely saw an overflowing garbage can and never saw litter on the ground. They had lots of people walking around with claw-like gripping devices to pick up things on the ground.
14. If we ever go back we would probably hit Epcot again, Hollywood Studios (during the day), spend a day at Universal. Spend a day at Typhoon Lagoon.

That’s about it. All in all an excellent trip and big kudos to Theresa for putting it all together. It’s good to have a plan when you go, but you have to be able to modify it on the fly, which we did very often.