moderate vs deluxe 1

so i wanted to talk real quick about something that the moderate resorts at wdw have over the deluxe resorts, and that is quick service food court.

as far as i know none of the deluxe resorts have a food court.  all of them sit down restaurants, which maybe they assume because people are paying a premium to stay there a food court would look trashy.  but i think the deluxe resorts are the perfect place for food courts because of there locations so close to the parks.  i have been able to stay at the yacht club several times as well as the boardwalk, and would have loved to get a quick small meal before running into the back door (aka international gateway) of epcot.

my last trip to the world i decided to switch it up and stayed at port orleans riverside.  i was very impressed and for a guy on the run it was perfect.  i had my car with me which made getting everywhere very easy, as a resort guest you don't have to pay for parking at the parks and you don't have to wait around for the right bus to show up.  but what i really loved was the food court.  the ability to jump grab food and get out was great.  my wife was with me and the food court served as what on previous trips was room service. i would run over to the main hall grab some chow and zip back to the room allowing my wife to avoid the crowds she hates. i also bought the refillable mugs that they sell for the soda and coffee and let me tell you did i get my moneys worth there.

so if you are a person on the go and have a car the food courts at the moderates can make a great argument for giving them a try.

oh so temporary hidden mickey

i took my dad to disney world last year for star wars week ends. it was his first trip and we had an awesome short weekend trip but i'll tell you about that later. during our stay at the boardwalk resort i awoke one morning to find a very good hidden mickey which had been walked into the dew in the grass in courtyard. it's odd the way the foot prints wander until the do the mickey and then seem to stop.  well thanks to whomever did it, it was a great little bonus to our trip.

getting to the magic kingdom early

one thing i love to do when visiting wdw is to wander the resorts on the magic kingdom resort loop prior to opening of the park.  this is a time when having a car with you at wdw comes in handy. i am usually one of the first cars in the parking lot on that day and get to park like i'm a vip.

so what i do is park at the ticket and transportation center, the ttc as it is often called, and then head left to the Polynesian resort.  early morning right after sunrise is a  great time to snap pictures.

you can wander through the Polynesian and then follow the trail on the far side which leads to the wedding pavilion and then onto the grand Floridian resort.

once you've wandered around the grounds here you can go upstairs in the lobby and catch the monorail over to the contemporary resort.

during recent renovations they added a great little place to grab a quick pick-up bite to eat next to chef mickeys. now as time grows near to park opening and you've snapped your shot of the five legged goat you can take the short walk over to the magic kingdom.  now you could get back on the monorail to get to the park but usually by this time families have gotten ready and are also headed that way, so i like my quiet time in the morning and try to avoid the crowds for as long as possible and its not a very long walk at all.

The world is not complete

I don't know if you would call this a myth, a rumor or a lie, but the world of Disney store does NOT have all of the same merchandise that you find in the parks.

I have heard it many times; person passes up buying special item in the park because they don't want to have to carry it around all day or they saved all their shopping until the last day of their trip to know how much money they have left. They know exactly what they want, a t-shirt from the tower of terror, and somewhere they heard that the world of Disney store at downtown Disney had all the same merchandise you find in the parks. Person goes home crying their eyes out in an almost suicidal depression. Little  Becky disowns her parents and moves out of the house at the age of 5.  Okay not that bad.  Maybe just mild disappointment, but that can stick around for years folks and it adds up.

Don't fall into the trap. If you see an item you know you like and have to have then buy it then. Don't expect that you will see the same product in another park or the world of Disney.  While over the past few years there has been a great homogenization (if that is a word) of merchandise around the resort there are still a few unique items to be found and its hard to tell which ones they are. So if you don't want to carry it, use package pick-up; where they will send any item you buy to the front gate to picked up on your way out. If your not sure if you have enough money, take another mortgage on the house. I mean if Sally really wants that doll make it her choice; it's either this tinker bell doll or a car when you're 16? It's her choice.

am i wierd for taking pictures of myself

okay so i've said that my wife is not a fan of the disney parks, and i don't mind touring around them by myself.  each day i go to the parks without her i end up taking a quick picture of myself in a bathroom mirror either at the parks or a resort.  is that wierd?  okay yeah it is.  so much so that on recent trips i asked my wife if she wanted anything from the park?  she quickly said "no bathroom pictures!"  instead requesting that i take a picture of myself in as many of the hats as i could at the stores in the park.  this could become a tradition.  it definitly has brought out the point to me that i should never worry about what other people at the parks think of me.  really, who cares? what are the chances that somenone who sees you in the parks and thinks your odd for havinng a good time will ever see you again in the  real world.  and if they do see you agian, they don't really know you so who cares what they think right?  always, and i mean always have fun at the parks no matter whose looking, or what you look like doing it.

Where I'm coming from

Let me step back from my first two posts and give you a better idea where i'm coming from disney wise.

growing up my family never had the means to take that disney world vacation so my early disney development came from the movies my family rented in the early 80's.  friday night my dad would take us up to the video store to rent a vcr (thats right people use to rent vcrs) and a few movies, which were almost always disney films. so during those early years i watched and fell in love with many of disney's live action films.  i remember one particular tape we rented that was a video tour of wdw. that video and show like "disney world inside out" kept the fascination with disney world in my heart for years. 

in the summer of 1994 i went on a trip with a buddy down to key west where we were going to camp and just chill for a week or so. in the office of the campground we were staying at they had several brochures for wdw. i knew this was my chance to get to wdw and so at the age of 20  i dragged my buddy up to wdw for my first trip.

since that time i've made  another dozen or so trips at different times down to the world. i love the parks.  people watching and picture taking are my park past times.  i could spend hours just walking the parks passing the time not going on a single ride. 

i am a believer in the disney magic.  there is something about disney that a lot of people just can't feel and don't understand.  a certain feel of comfort and familiarity that is great in this ever changing world.

so i know that my first couple posts may have had a anti-disney feel but i definitely am not.  i just believe that if disney isn't doing something to the standards they have set for themselves that they need to be called on it. 

hey disney! where are the movies at?

so this is a long time problem i have had with visiting disney resorts; where are the disney movies?

i can hear many of you now along with the cast members calling out that almost every shop on disney property sells movies.  while true i am not talking about the latest disney channel made for tv movie now available on dvd or the one movie currently released from the disney vault.  where can i find a selection of the vast disney movie library?

i can go to my local electronics super store or mega-bookstore and find a thousand times more disney films then i can actually at disney. why is that?  the one place on property i was able to find a good selection of disney movies was the virgin mega store which sadly has gone away and wasn't really a disney store.

i recently went to disneyland and the upcoming release of tron: legacy was everywhere; t-shirts, hats, toys, even a street party, but where in the hundred shops selling tron products can i find the movie tron? no where! that's where.

the first time i went to downtown disney in california i was very excited to see a store called the disney vault.  all right a the place where disney tells us all the disney classic films are kept only to be released once a decade for limited times and now here it is the repository of disney movies.  ARRRGGH! the disney vault while a cool disney store holds not a single disney film. why not?

in the disney vault concept the disney company has the perfect retail outlet for their fiilms.  imagine the extra incentive of traveling to a disney resort of getting to visit the disney vault an chosig any film from the disney past even the ones that are "in the vault" as the commercials we all see on tv say.  imagine this, disney imagineers have recently discovered walt's plans for the repository of his vast film archive and now that vault is open to the world.

please disney let me buy your movies from you.  let me come home from my trip to the beach club with a copy of condorman and the last flight of noah's ark.

where walt walked

so i just returned from blizzcon 2010 in anaheim, where i was able to spend a day at disneyland's magic kingdom and another at disney's california adventure.  now i am a big disney world fan and this was not my first time visiting disneyland, but i was sort of disappointed in my experience.  and although i stil feel every wdw fan should visit disneyland at least once, let me tell you why i had reservations during this trip.

last year i visited disneyland for the first time with quite a bit of excitement.   i was looking forward to walking where walt had walked.  visiting the park that walt had had a direct hand in.  as a first time visitor i had some expectations that there would be similarities to wdw and some differences, but that wdw would be the better place in the end.  the difference and similarities i will talk about in another post but i left thinking that disneyland had its own charm and few things that were actually better than wdw.

so i went back to disneyland this year with some high expectations of another good visit. i went to the magic kingdom on a thursday and dca on sunday.  i ended up leaving the park early each day.

we all have heard the story that walt wanted in florida what he didn't have in california, "space".  as the day gets later and the magic kingdom fills up you can really tell a differnce.  the streets at the park are much narrower and the lands all squished together without much in the way of transitions.  it can start to feel very cramped very fast.  there seems to be little space to get away from the whinning children and adults.  lines overflow into the streets making it hard to walk straight through areas.  when night fell there are some areas that have very low light, such as the path leading from frontierland to fantasyland. 

i visited during the halloween celebrations which i thought give me a fresh reason to visit the park, but what it did was point out one thing that i had never thought about in all my trips to wdw, disney doesn't change.  let me explain, as i now many of you will jump  and say disney is always updating and adding.  well step back and ask yourself how much does disney rest on its tradition of a great vacation spot.  disney does customer service better than anyone else and the landscaping and grounds of all their resorts is best, but when was the last time the peter pan ride got an update (no offense lou).  what i'm talking about is the lack of any sort of technological updates to parts of the park.  sure people like to share the same rides they went on with their kids, but at what point wil disney get left behind.

the halloween overlay on the haunted mansion and space mountain just pushed forward that the orginal ride is not fresh.  sure space mountain just got a redo, but truthfully did it take a great leap forward compared to the technology available in rides today?  i think no. feel free to disagree but if you are not a disney fan would how many of the disney rides would people come back to do over and over? 

i am a disney parks fan and go at least a couple times a year,  but what do you think the once every five year visitor thinks?