Walt Disney World Trip Reports
Topic: Feb 2008 WDW Observations

#	Author	Message
1	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 1:19p	sorry, I didn't mean to hijack jonvn's terrific thread. I'll repost my stuff in a new one.... Some quick observations: 1. Disney's Magical Express added a lot to the experience. It worked perfectly for us. Same day luggage. 2. MGM or whatever it's called now was our favorite. Sure, MK always has a special place in our hearts but lots of the changes didn't do much for me. Our last visit was 1994 - no more 20K, no more skyway. Tomorrowland has faded further into yesterday. Life today is unfortunately more Flintstones than Jetsons and we'll never go to that special zeitgeist again. Pity. However, ToT, Rockin' Roller Coaster were great. Same with that action stadium stuff. 3. Animal Kingdom was a let-down. The gorilla walk-through was spectacular. The safari ride was unremarkable if you've ever been to a quality zoo before. It seemed like Jungle Cruise with live animals. The story-line wasn't needed. Just let us watch the animals. I'd imagine in the heat of summer I might skip it entirely. 4. We only had 4 days Wedn afternoon through Sunday morning (in early Feb)so we decided to skip Epcot. I'm sorry we did - Soaring and test-track look interesting. Instead, we spent Wedn magic hours and all day Sat at AK. Oh well...never saw it before. 5. The monorail ain't quite the big deal it used to be. Most of the whole WDW isn't even on it. We stayed at the Poly to relive our first trip in 1987. It was still magic, watching the lagoon night show from our patio same as it was 20 years ago. But the magic of loading kids/strollers on the monorail and finding yourself in the MK just wasn't needed anymore. We much more enjoyed taking the boats back and forth. Everywhere else, you pretty much had to catch a bus. 6. The Pirates/Princesses thing ticked me off. It was on a Sat night. We had scheduled ourselves to hit the MK then figuring it would stay open to 11 or 12. It did, but we didn't want to shell out a double admission. 7. It was great to find the brick we bought in 1994. We got it like the first week of the program so it is about 5 paces to the left of the center VIP section. Kudos to the 2 CMs who helped us find it. They are numbered, but not laid out by number. I googled the program to discover that the brick was only good for x many years - then I guess they re-sell the rights. Funny, I thought it would be for as long as the park was there. It is worn some, but still quite legible. I spent the better part of Space Mountain wait time trying to estimate how many millions? of feet have tread on it. Let's see 40k per day ave attendance times 5000 days is 200 million which is 400 million "foots". I'd estimate that at least 1% of the crowd is routed over our brick. So I came up with 4 million tread-upons. 8. The food was much better than it was 15-20 years ago. 9. Pleasure Island still doesn't seem to fit - although we had a blast there mainly at the Adventurer's Club and the 70-80's club. The Comedy Club was kinda weak and it took the whole show to get one silly bag of popcorn. Jeesh. 10. OK, I love everything Disney. Always have, hopefully always will. I noticed - as you remarked about the omnipresent vacation club promos - a bit of cash creep. I mean, we all know we're going to find pirate swords/etc at the end of PoC. But did they really have to dig up 20K Leagues for a Pooh landfill? No tie-in merchandise for 20K, I guess. It just seems that the very existence of the park depends upon the ability of an attraction to make us buy tie-in stuff. You can almost hear the abacus click with every footstep. I don't think that's what Walt had in mind. 11. Still and all, we had the best time of our lives!
2	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 1:21p	A few more (random) observations: *the Fast-pass system is brilliant. *Photo-pass seems a bit pricey. *getting sushi plates at 0200 after coming back from Pleasure Island at the Poly all-night food kiosk was a treat. *Turkey legs @ 1600 hrs are a great way to get food poisoning. *The CMs at Haunted Mansion in Feb didn't seem to care about being in character. Maybe that's because they have been PC scripted. 15-20 years ago they seemed to be part of the attraction - kinda like Tower of Terror is now. *I liked the way PoC was before the re-do. Sparrow just seemed to be added for marketing. *OTOH, the Haunted Mansion refurb made the best ride even better. *the back-lot ride at Studios isn't very good. I used to like the sit-com row of houses. Now you just ride past weathering junk. *somehow I still can't get the urge to go to Tom Sawyer Island, climb on the Swiss Family Treehouse, or go to the Tiki Hut. We did those 20 years ago, but once is enough. *the grill feast at the Poly Ohana is incredible. Good value, great taste and we still have those plastic ice cubes from those funky blue drinks. *we had dinner at Cinderella's Castle. The food was great, my son and I really enjoyed the lamb chops. Much better than our experience 20 years ago. Watching the Cinderella photo's of other families and their little princesses just about brought a tear to my eye - memories so thick you have to brush them away. *Liberty Tavern is a great place for a sit-down lunch. Centrally located, tasty food. I'm a sucker for the turkey plate. *In early Feb we ate wherever we wanted without a reservation and no more than a 5 minute wait - except for Cinderella Castle dinner. *I don't think the meal plan is all that good especially in the off season. It makes you fixate on eating all the time - I'm glad we passed on it. *I missed the Magic Shop and arcade on Main Street that was there 20 years ago. Another case of cash creep. If it ain't turning over tie-in merchandise, it's gone. *the water fountain water is really bad. I remember a 1988 guidebook that stressed how WDW made sure there were cold water drinking fountains. Now they aren't, and the water tastes of sulfur - I guess the drought got the water table down pretty far. *the fireworks are great shows, but believe me (or rather, my son) they are tough to take after a year in combat in Afghanistan. *20 years ago, the sound/music was just amazing. Remember, CDs were wowing us when they replaced cassettes. Now we have gotten so used to it that the wow factor is (usually) gone. *I've never been a big fan of parades - but I miss the Main Street Electric Parade. That was really something. *the fingerprint system seemed to only work 40-60% of the time. That and the pointless security bag check semed silly *Crocs (the shoes) make the vacation much more enjoyable.
3	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 1:23p	danyoung wrote: Thanks for your thoughts. A couple of thoughts on your thoughts - >Turkey legs @ 1600 hrs are a great way to get food poisoning.< Did this happen to you, or are you just concerned about it? >the fireworks are great shows, but believe me (or rather, my son) they are tough to take after a year in combat in Afghanistan.< I've actually wondered about this. I guess you could look at it as good reconditioning of a soldier, so when he hears a loud bang he thinks fireworks and not head for the bunkers!
4	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 1:25p	sun-n-fun wrote: Awesome observations!!! We were there over Pres day week and my family also thought HM was fabulous. But thte CM's either didn't speak or talked "normal" The strtching room actually started to move both times we were in it before the door was shut. Guests were still entering. It completely ruined the effect and I felt bad for anyone on that once in a lifetime vacation bacuse they missed it.
5	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 1:26p	dan, my son couldn't resist the turkey legs. Actually he did it to desensitize in a way - you see, while at Camp Phoenix in Kabul he was in charge of a rapid deployment force that had to respond to IED and suicide bombers. You can well imagine the nightmare scenes. Anyway, by 1600 turkey legs have been under the lamp for a while and we figured he got a spoiled one. The fireworks were hard for him to handle. We headed out of the park rather quickly when they started. Fortunately, we got a great view the next night from our patio at Poly of the Princess/Pirates show from across the lagoon but the memory of a dozen or more RPGs and sundry motar rounds still haunted. Like he said, Afghanistan is one heck of an "E" ticket.... We came across quite a few servicemen while standing in line and my son immediately bonded with them. He could almost tell who had served just by looking in their eyes - the rest of us will never understand the experience. Fortunately, everyone in his platoon came back safe and sound - not that the bad guys didn't try to see it otherwise. He has fond memories of his humanitarian trips to the villages and the looks on the kids faces with the gift of a pen or candy or even a warm smile. WDW was great therapy in that way too. Thanks for reading my blurb of thoughts.
6	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 1:52p	Funny story about the fireworks. My wife and I got separated from my son and his wonderful gal. (She is a Disney fanatic - lives very close to DL, adores Tinker Belle and she knew everthing about Fast-pass, etc). She had our room key/tickets from getting the Fast-passes. We took the boat back to Poly but they thought we were going back by monorail so they waited for us there. We left our cellphone back in the room so as not to lose it since it had slipped out on teacups and were fortunate that a by-stander noticed it. Anyway, what to do? Well, we never could get our sliding door to lock in our room in Tuvalu aka Samoa with the awesome lagoon/MK view. So, we came around the side and slipped right in! Found the cellphone and we re-united in no time. Thank goodness house-keeping wasn't overly attentive to details, lol.
7	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 2:10p	sun-n-fun, we had the same experience at HM. It seemed they just wanted to herd everybody in to keep up the cycles per hour. Nobody was "in character". I remember reading DL and MK were different in that with one the floor drops and with the other, the ceiling goes up. Both ways, the portraits are exposed to show the "punch-lines". Now, I've probably gone on MK HM a couple of dozen times (never been to DL). I could have sworn that the floor dropped at MK. It was only after I bought the HM souvenir book that I got the story straight. The illusion is that real. Leaving the door open to ruin that illusion is sinful. The CM should have to dangle from the rafters as well. BTW, the new sound system has the voices whip around. That was amazing. The new face projections were much needed. 15 years ago they used film strips that, when worn looked like a nickelodeon. Now, if they could just get the CMs back in character and let them ad lib and not worry about a PC script it would be perfect.
8	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 3:09p	I wonder if facebook album links works - I'll try http://www.facebook.com/album. php?aid=19349&id=529923643
9	Mickeymouseclub Wed 3/12/2008 3:21p	I love the Polynesian and wish every returning soldier could visit WDW if the fireworks could help with their return to civilization. I am curious why you did not stay at the Shades of Green? Have you ever visited their website? Shadesofgreen.org for military and their families. I mention this because many military personnel are not familiar with this benefit. It is a beautiful resort across from the Poly surrounded by the golf courses.
10	butterbarre Wed 3/12/2008 4:12p	My son looked into it. However, he wanted to go back to his childhood dreams. You see, we first went in 1988 when he was 6 and stayed at the Poly. Our room this time was just 3 rooms over. Back then I packed a travel fishing rod and we caught bluegills from our patio from the lagoon. Catch and release of course. That all made this trip all the more special. Anyway, after a year in combat, he wanted to get away from the military flavor.

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