Disney World Vacation Post Mortem
For the last week, the four of us have been visiting Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. As part of a new practice to improve our vacations, I have decided to follow a similar practice that we use in software engineering – a post mortem.
I hope that this information will also help others planning vacations both to WDW and to other places.
What went well
Spending five solid days at the parks
We only visited Walt Disney World itself and avoided other attractions such as Universal Studios. For just WDW, this time proved to be exactly what we needed. Had the weather been warmer and we were visiting Blizzard Beach, we would have wanted an additional day. Given the size of the parks and how much there is to do, five days was just right.
The Disney Deluxe Dining Plan
Disney food prices are quite expensive. In particular their sit down restaurants are quite pricy. Breakfast each morning for the four of us was $60. Lunch varied from $70 to $110 and dinner varied from $90-$180. These prices do not include tips. Given these prices, the dining plan enabled us to save significantly. It also provided us a good break to get away from the chaos of the parks and experience some very interesting restaurants.
Making dining a big part of the planning
In addition to spending a great deal of time figuring out how much time we needed at the parks and in which order we wanted to see them, I also spent a great deal of time planning which restaurants to visit. A number of the restaurants – particularly Coral Reef, Citricos, and Sci-Fi Diner, have their own characteristics and provided as much enjoyment as the rides. For future vacations, I will also spend time looking for interesting places to eat.
Planning what rides to go on and when
The parks were a lot more crowded than we expected, but by using the strategy of visiting popular rides early in the morning combined with FastPass, we rarely had to wait. We did have access to the tour plans mentioned in the Unofficial Guide to WDW mentioned below – but they were basically worthless. They either did not contain the rides we were interested in, did not factor in eating meals, or assumed we could get our kids up at the crack of dawn to get to the parks before they open.
Filling our days solid with entertainment, combined with resting intervals
In the past, we often felt that we spent too much time at some locations. At other times, things just moved at too frantic of a pace and we became tired too quickly. During this trip, we were quite busy while we went on ride after ride, but we had about an hour each for lunch and dinner that we used to relax. This worked out quite well – allowing us to move at a fast pace but buffer it with relaxation periods.
Taking the new Canon G11 instead of an SLR
For once, I did not want to drag around a larger SLR and lenses. A number of people did this at the parks and while WDW did provide storage for many of the rides, this wasn’t the case for all of them. The G11 worked out quite nice here and fit in my pocket when not in use.
Taking the kids at ages 5 and 6
We saw a lot of babies and younger children at the parks and many of their parents looked quite miserable. While WDW rides are in general tame, there are a number of them that will terrify younger children. Our older son was still scared by many of the rides while the younger one had absolutely no problems. There are also height restrictions on some of the rides that in a few cases did not allow our five year old to ride. From this experience five years old is probably the bare minimum I would want my child to be to take them to the parks. Younger than that and the trip becomes more for the parents than for the kids.
What went OK
Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
We stayed here for the entire trip in a room with a savannah view. The idea was for the kids to see animals from the room when they wake up and this worked well on one occasion. While the hotel definitely caters to kids, we were so busy at the resorts that we made little use of it. In addition, the rooms were quite small and the bed was among the least comfortable we have ever slept on. I had originally planned to stay at the Grand Floridian but decided against it because I was worried the kids would not find it as interesting. We visited the Grand Floridian to eat at Citricos and for the hotel itself this assumption was accurate. Therefore, while I was not very impressed by the Animal Kingdom Jambo House resort, it was probably a decent choice.
The Weather
Of course it is impossible to predict the weather and how was I to know that Seattle would be on average twenty degrees warmer than Orlando while we were there. On the other hand, except for our last day it hardly rained there. We were able to do all of the rides except for the water related ones, so it wasn’t that bad.
Going in the 2nd week of January
The guide book listed below stated that the second week in January – after New Years when all of the kids have gone back to school – is the best time to go. Instead, the parks were quite crowded and we needed to strategize how to see things in order to not spend too much time in the lines. Luckily, we did not spend much time in the lines do to careful planning – though some rides reached wait times as long as 120 minutes.
What didn’t go well
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World
This book should be renamed – “The whiner’s guide to WDW”. Most of this book was completely unhelpful and often completely false. The reviews of restaurants were not accurate and the descriptions of the rides – in particular how appropriate they are for kids – was not correct. I just really had the impression that the authors have never been anywhere outside of Disney World and have no concept of the outside world.
Disney’s vaunted customer service
When I visited the parks fourteen years ago, I marveled at how happy everyone at the resorts was and the degree to which people (called “cast members”) would go through to make sure you had the best trip possible. This is no longer the case and I even found the service to be rude on occasion. In general I would give their customer service an “OK” rating.