We noticed that too.
Oh, and $17 for the cooling squirt bottle w/fan. Riiiiighhtttt....
what about the gay pride disney weekend
wheres your review of that?
Universal's Islands of Adventure (not the Universal "Studios" Park) is much more fun for older kids and adults. Newer rides, better roller coasters (beer is easy to find) and the City Walk shops, restaurants and theatres just outside the entrance offer a lot to do.
There are areas for little kids - cartoon world, the cat in the hat, but it's not a park solely for the little ones, so if you're going to Orlando for a few days, try a park outside the Mouse's realm as well.
Gotta make those reservations for the character dinners early to see Cinderella. She appears in the lobby of Cinderella's Castle for the "Cinderella's Royal Table - Dream Dining" breakfast, lunch, and (NEW!) dinner and actually bustles among the tables at dinner for the 1900 Park Fare restaurant in the Grand Floridian resort for dinner.
Don't ask me how she manages to simultaneously be in the lobby of her castle and in the resort restaurant at dinnertime -- I'll let you know, since we're taking the wee ones there in October, and we've already long since made the reservations for both the resort and castle dinners. (My daughter, who is pushing all of 3, is a Disney Princess fanatic.) There should also be Arielmania, since The Little Mermaid will just have been released on DVD a couple of weeks before. Ariel is cute, but Belle is HAWT!
Ah yes, Disey World. It has pretty much ruined Orlando IMO. I've been dragged there a few times.
One time we'd just ridden some "ride" and we're going up an escalator when suddenly some 8 year old boy started screaming. Somehow a pin of some sort had come out of the escalator and had stuck deep into his knee. He was with his grandmother, who couldn't pick him up so my wife did as she was very close to him. She began carrying him upstairs as I went ahead to find a Disney employee. The employee I found was some warbley-voiced kid who was clueless as to what to do and I told him to get an ambulance or "some kind of help." We left the boy and granny there and moved on.
I know another lady whose child was kidnapped at Disney. He was around 5 yo as I recall and was actually tethered to the mom with one of those springy child leashes. She looks down and the leash was cut and the kid was gone. She immediately went to security (wherever that is?) and the head cop, who was previously employed in NYC brought her to the exit of the park.
The security guy said for her to look at all children's shoes as they are leaving the park. Sure enough she spots her kid's shoes and the kidnapper had already changed the kid's clothes and DIED his hair! She was one of the lucky ones.
Of course this stuff rarely if ever gets any press because its just bad for business. And since Disney practically owns this town, well, you can connect the dots...
..but you sure highlighted negatives over positives.
We live close enough, our kids grew up with Florida passes for Disney.
The parades are always exceptional, the parks are very clean & well kept, the flowers are bright and beautiful, the cooling jets from the fountains are lovely, especially the splash fountain at EPCOT where the children can run and play.
This year..(kids are grown now) we have seasonal passes to enter the park after 4PM....and enjoy arriving in the cooler part of the day...
..We have twice enjoyed Festival of Foods from Around the World..walking around EPCOT enjoying exotic quisine.
The horticulure shows in the Spring are beautiful....roses of every color, ornamental trees....stunning.
...We've had dinner in Mexico, Canada, England, France, etc......all good.
And our small granddaughter has had her very first 'lunch with the Princesses'....with lots of picture taking.
..The princesses, btw, are adorable and beautiful and sweet and charming.
I could go on and on, but this is a small sample of 'the other side of the story'.
"90% of the people in wheelchairs and scooters were not handicapped but simply too fat to walk. And these folks and their families would scoot to the front of the line. Somtin wrong ‘bout that!
We noticed that too. "
Here's the thing - anyone can rent those stupid things from Disney. There is no medical form, dr. note, nothing. So the key to Disney is have someone rent those scooters and wheelchairs because you can 1) go to the front of the line and 2) mow down everyone in you path (I can't tell you how many times I got run over by those things and the HUGE deluxe child coaches. Too big to be called strollers)
The Rose and Crown is a pub, not a restaurant. That's an important distinction. You have a pint, maybe a black and tan, and if you want to eat the most you get is fish and chips. Those were pretty good last time we had them. For anyone going down, about the reservations, folks staying on grounds used to be able to make reservations a day ahead for the restaurants. Also, at Epcot, if you have a pass that lets you go in and out of the parks, you can exit the park at the back between England and France. You've got some excellent restaurants at the Yacht & Beach Club and at the Boardwalk hotel. If you're at the Magic Kingdom you can take the monorail to one of the hotels there. They've all got restaurants that tend to be relatively empty during the day.
The bakery at France is world class and the pastries sold on carts at Canada are also quite good. And don't forget the Churros at the Mexico pavilion. My favorite restaurants at Epcot are the 9 Dragons at China and the seafood place at The Living Seas, The Coral Reef (you watch the fish through huge plate qlass windows right next to you). And the restaurant in the German pavilion was a fun experience. The rotating restaurant at The Land pavilion was also reliable. At Magic Kingdom Tony's Town Square at the front of Main Street served reliable American Italian food and Cinderella's Royal Table inside the castle was a lot of fun. At MGM Mama Melrose's and 50's Prime Time Cafe were reliable and, for a "secret" retreat, there was the Catwalk bar. An out of the way bar that you could unwind in without a lot of "those nasty tourists" all over you.
Here's a web page with menus for all of the restaurants at the WDW parks and hotels.
The exhibits in the international portion of Epcot were set up like Worlds Fair national presentations. The 360 films at China and Canada are beautiful. And I dearly love the animatronic show in the American pavilion. They had PCed it the last time we were there, about 6 years ago, but some of the really good stuff was still in it. Today, more people know who Will Rogers was from that show than from almost any other source. That's worth a lot.
Magic Kingdom Parade and Fireworks – Wow! Make sure you are in front of the castle to see the show.
Staking out a good spot for the parade and the fireworks is a real trick. If you find one it's well worth the time you have to spend waiting. We had a ritual when we'd go down. We'd go to the big "department store" at the front of Main Street. In the back of that, closest to the castle, is a working barber shop done up as it would have been in the 1890s. My sons and I would each get our haircuts there. It turned out that the barber shop quartet who works Main Street would hang out there between gigs. We got to be friends with 8 or 9 of the guys who were in the rotation for the Dapper Dan's. Most were retired guys, but one was younger. Turns out his aunt and uncle lived in our town back in Tennessee. One day I was working in my yard and this car stopped out front. This guy got out who I knew I recognized but for the life of me I couldn't place the face. When he started to sing, however...... It's one thing to see someone you've come to know in the Disney cast down there. It's quite another when they come visit YOU!!!! Those guys would help us get a good spot down near their area on a regular basis, which was fun.
Rides – Some of the rides are dated but overall, all of them were enjoyable.
The rides that mattered to us were:
Magic Kingdom - Pirates of the Carribean (PCed the last time we were there, probably updated for Johnny Depp's version), Haunted Mansion, Country Bears Jamboree, Peter Pan Adventure, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (I think that's gone), Small World (reserved for hot days - it's the coolest place in the parks), Carousel of Progress (only open on really busy days), Jungle Cruise (nostalgia... plus I met Joe Montana and his family on that ride... want to see the video... there's my kid, there's the snake, there's Joe Montanna, there's the elephant...)
Epcot - Energy, Geosphere, Living Seas, The Land, Imagination, CommuniCore, Mexico (coolest place at Epcot on a hot day), American Pavilion. If you have the time see if you can arrange for the back stage walking tour at the land (if they still do it). It's free and you get to see all of the real stuff going on in those green houses and hydroponics gardens. Beautiful. Also find out what other group tours they have. They used to be free.
MGM - back stage tour (walking) / back lot tour (riding) (they used to be one thing, we were on the 6th tram on opening day), Animation (probably closed now), Star Tours, Muppet 4D (you have to wait, after the show is over, to watch the "arrows" disappear back in the wall)
Animal Kingdom - Safari, Bugs Life, Dinosaurs (whatever the name is) - we were also at this park opening day and spent the least time there of all of the "main gates." Most of what is there now wasn't there before we stopped going, such as the brand new Himalaya roller coaster ("Yeti Adventure," or some such).
You also didn't mention our favorite part of WDW: Pleasure Island. To be more precise, The Adventurer's Club at Pleasure Island. My kids practically grew up there (yes, at a bar at DisneyWorld). We became quite good friends with several of the regular cast members. We spent 7 consecutive Christmas Eve's with those folks. They were part of the family... a very funny part of the family, but a part, none the less.
Can you guess that we had annual passes for almost 10 years? And, no, we have never lived in Florida. We could make the drive from Memphis to Orlando in one straight shot, if we put our minds to it.
Towards the end of our "Disney Era" we actually spent more time over at SeaWorld, where we also made some good friends, primarily the trainers at the Killer Whale and Dolphin areas. We also ended up treating all of the parks as parks. We'd go, let the kids roam free and do what they want, and we'd sit and read or talk. It was lovely. My favorite thing to do on vacation was to sit in the Shamu Stadium between shows, reading my current "vacation book" and watching the trainers work with the whales. We actually developed relationships with the whales during this time. When we'd come down each time the first time the whales saw us they'd react. The trainers told us that was how they reacted to trainers and other park workers who had been a part of their lives. That was special. They recognized us.