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TXDirt
6/5/2018 10:58am
6/5/2018 10:58am
Edited Date/Time
6/8/2019 6:06am
Just got back from 7 days at Disney World. Was our second time going. Opened and closed down the park each day. Longest day was a 7am-1am day at Magic Kingdom. After riding boat back to our hotel didn't get into bed until close to 2:30am.
I went with my wife and our four kids. Ages 8,7,3 and 20 months. We also brought a 15 year old girl with us to partner up with the kids and help out a bit. So in total there were 7 of us.
Spent full days at Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom and then several days at Magic Kingdom. We had the park hopper so we did go back to Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom for additional half days.
The new area at Animal Kingdom is called Pandora. Absolutely amazing. It's been open about a year now. The floating rocks were just like in the Avatar movie. It was very impressive from an engineering and artistic viewpoint.
Some of the places we ate at: Tony's, Coral Reef, Princess Dining at the castle, Be our Guest at the Beasts castle. Chef Mickey for breakfast, Artist Point at Wilderness Lodge. The food was all top notch.
Will post up some pics when I get home.
Another thing I like, the parks are amazingly clean. When you enter in the morning there isn't so much as a piece of gum on the ground. They work very hard to keep the parks as clean as possible.
We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge. Great resort and just a spectacular structure.
I went with my wife and our four kids. Ages 8,7,3 and 20 months. We also brought a 15 year old girl with us to partner up with the kids and help out a bit. So in total there were 7 of us.
Spent full days at Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom and then several days at Magic Kingdom. We had the park hopper so we did go back to Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom for additional half days.
The new area at Animal Kingdom is called Pandora. Absolutely amazing. It's been open about a year now. The floating rocks were just like in the Avatar movie. It was very impressive from an engineering and artistic viewpoint.
Some of the places we ate at: Tony's, Coral Reef, Princess Dining at the castle, Be our Guest at the Beasts castle. Chef Mickey for breakfast, Artist Point at Wilderness Lodge. The food was all top notch.
Will post up some pics when I get home.
Another thing I like, the parks are amazingly clean. When you enter in the morning there isn't so much as a piece of gum on the ground. They work very hard to keep the parks as clean as possible.
We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge. Great resort and just a spectacular structure.
I rank the parks in this order.
1. Magic Kingdom
2. Animal Kingdom
3. Hollywood Studios
4. Epcot
They are all fun and different.
The new Pandora area at Animal Kingdom is awesome. They have two rides there. The Navi river which was cool and then the big attraction is the Flight of Passage. Which is one of the coolest rides I have ever been on. The lines are long. I highly recommend Fast Passes for both rides. Or get to the park an hour early and be one of the first in and make your way to that area. If you have a Fast Pass the wait is 20-30 minutes. If you are in the general line then the wait can be 2+ hours.
If I had one day to go to one park it would be Magic Kingdom. That's where most of the rides are. You have the iconic castle, main street etc. Space Mtn, Thunder Mtn, Splash Mtn, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Peter Pans Flight, It's a Small World, Swiss Family Treehouse, Tom Sawyer Island, etc etc.
The Shop
The rides are pretty cool inside the park, the Aerosmith one and the one that drops the shit out of you (can't recall the name).
Yes, you do pay a lot for food depending on where you eat. It's more of a case of pay as much or as little as you want.
If you want to go cheap, then go with the quick serve places.
The expensive places will be either the fine dinning, or the character dining places. For example, at Chef Mickey all of the characters come around to your table. Micky, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, etc. You can get pictures with all the kids and the characters. At Chef Mickey is was buffet style breakfast but it was easily the best buffet breakfast I've ever had. But you are really paying for those character interactions, not the food. Breakfast cost me around $250 for our group of seven. So around $40 a person. Really not that bad.
You can meet the characters in the parks, but be prepared for long lines and waiting in the heat to get a photo. So paying the extra money at the character dining to get several characters at once, and enjoy some good food at the same time isn't a bad deal.
We also did character dining at the princess castle. And all of the princesses come to your table one by one and you get pictures, kisses, etc. And the food was absolutely awesome! It wasn't buffet style. You had a menu. Again, for our group of seven it was around $300. But it was totally worth it to see the kids enjoyment from meeting all of the princesses.
We also did character dinning at Be our Guest which is at the Beasts castle. Probably the hardest place to get a reservation. The food was absolutely amazing and you got your picture with the Beast. It's a great experience and worth the money if you have kids.
I 100% agree, if you are only going to one park it has to be the Magic Kingdom.
If I had to do my personal ranking it would be:
1. Animal Kingdom. I love going there at gate-drop and being the first to get back to Expedition Everest. You can usually ride it 3 or 4 times with no wait when you get there early.
2. Hollywood Studios. Love me some Rock'n Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror. It sucks now because half of the park is in limbo waiting or Toy Story World and Star Wars World to be completed.
3. Epcot. The older I get, the more I appreciate the World Showcase. I came close to going "Around the World" once, but stopped 2 beers short. That failure still haunts me to this day.
4. Magic Kingdom. See above.
We've been going with three families since 2004. Our kids were 3-to-12 years old back then, now we've got a couple of college boys and some high school seniors. We stopped going for a couple of years because the kids thought they were too cool for Disney. The high school girls asked us if we could reboot the trip for spring break this year. We were elated. We had a blast, but I feel like this could be the last year that most of us will go together (two more graduate next year).
I'm sure the parents will keep going, but it won't be the same.
This trip we skipped the dinning plan. I would say I probably came out about even. I think I could save money next time by splitting more meals. Some of the portions are big. Obviously we did a lot of character dinning and those are mostly paid by the head regardless of what you order. The fine dinning meals were all in line with prices I would expect at any restaurant. Nothing seemed overly priced.
Because of my small kids I wish I had made more reservations. We wanted to have breakfast one morning at our hotel and could not get a table. We did a lot of eating and snacking on the go and that can get hard on the kids after awhile.
Reservations can help remove some of the anxiety and decision making on where and what time you are going to eat. Last thing I felt like doing was searching for a place to eat after walking around all day and kids screaming for food. I just want to know where and what time and I'll be there.
I like Epcot. The reason I ranked it last is because it sucks with small kids right now. If it were just me and my wife it would be great. We still go around the world and have a few drinks and eat at the different places. But when it's 100 degrees out and not a lot of shade makes for a miserable experience with the kiddos. We still managed to open and close the park somehow. lol
I like Magic Kingdom because it has more rides then the other parks. I would say for me MK is 1a and AK is 1b. I like them both for different reasons. But that could change over time with those swapping places.
They kids meals at some of the quick serve restaurants are big enough for most adults.
The only restaurant that I am going to miss this year is 'Ohana. That place is amazingly good!
I like Animal Kingdom, but it is still a half day park for us. Get in and hit the Safari, Everest and Flight of Passage and head to Hollywood or Epcot.
AK needs to kill Dinoland in my opinion, that is a big area that they could do something really cool with.
Everest is awesome. My boys love that ride. I do as well. We rode it at least 5 times.
Also Tree of Life is really awesome. And It's tough to be a Bug is pretty cool.
Our kids like the rides at Epcot. You have Test Track, Turtle Talk with Crush, Soarin, Mission Space. You can get those knocked out pretty early. Then we go walk around the world. It's always hot as hell lol
Pit Row
Great place for 5 year olds up to like 18. I had fun every year. Went super nerd last year at universal in the Harry Potter exhibit. My wife made fun of me the whole time but it was awesome.
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