If you had a negative experience traveling to Disney, can you share why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m just not interested in competing against SAHMs who have time to learn all the hacks and systems. I’m busy, so it sounds like way too much work.

I work full time and know most of the good hacks - it’s really not that hard. It’s just like planning a regular vacation. Most of the actual “work” is time on the phone getting LL’s when you’re actually there.

Not 100% sure why you tried to make this a SAHM vs. working mom issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok I don’t have any feedback for OP but I am now intrigued by the whole DAS controversy. What were the rules and what are they now?

So, Disney has changed their requirements for being issued a DAS. Some people who may have been previously approved for one, may not now be. It seems to be rather unclear exactly who qualifies, and people are getting varied results in applying for it. There are some accomodations that Disney is suggesting for those not approved, such as Return to Queue and rider swap. Genie+ is NOT listed as one by Disney, despite what the ableist poster here keeps braying about.

This same poster also thinks that everyone who had a DAS was clogging up the lightening lanes in the most popular rides, multiple times a day. As someone whose dc has used DAS and know many others who have traveled to Disney who use it, I know that it is more likely to NOT be the case-rather, the DAS makes it possible for them to experience the park at all. I happen to think that the idea that the lightening lanes will now suddenly be sparse, is crazy-most likely Disney is just going to sell more Genie+ to fill them. We shall see I guess.

I'm sure the ableist poster will continue to complain about DAS users, regardless of how the change plays out!

You should just stop going to Disney since they are so ableist. They are the ones changing the rules here that you're so passionate about. In your mind nobody ever misused it and Disney is just doing this for fun to annoy people with disabilities. How can you support them in the future?

[Anonymous]

I have only taken the kids to Disneyland and my kids loved it but we didn't take them until they were 7 and 10. We also went the first week of February, so it was 57 degrees and with lightening lane never waited more than 5 minutes for most rides. I think the longest was Pirates and it was 15?

The food is nothing special, but we always did breakfast at the hotel, lunch at the parks (let's be honest my kids lived off popcorn and ice cream) and then dinner would be from a food truck on the way back to the hotel.

I would see FL being more negative due to temps and crowds. We may go there for a long weekend next February so we will have to compare. But also, it is okay to not be a Disney person!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have only taken the kids to Disneyland and my kids loved it but we didn't take them until they were 7 and 10. We also went the first week of February, so it was 57 degrees and with lightening lane never waited more than 5 minutes for most rides. I think the longest was Pirates and it was 15?

The food is nothing special, but we always did breakfast at the hotel, lunch at the parks (let's be honest my kids lived off popcorn and ice cream) and then dinner would be from a food truck on the way back to the hotel.

I would see FL being more negative due to temps and crowds. We may go there for a long weekend next February so we will have to compare. But also, it is okay to not be a Disney person!

Oh I will add. At Disneyland Genie+ never sold out for us and rides were available pretty much all day with immediate turn around (i.e. we would book the LL and then walk over to the ride and get on). I think its very different in DW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just not interested in competing against SAHMs who have time to learn all the hacks and systems. I’m busy, so it sounds like way too much work.

I work full time and know most of the good hacks - it’s really not that hard. It’s just like planning a regular vacation. Most of the actual “work” is time on the phone getting LL’s when you’re actually there.

Not 100% sure why you tried to make this a SAHM vs. working mom issue.

I don't understand PPs point about working/not working but there are some serious Disney fanatics (of all types) a newbie is up against and it can be very overwhelming for a first time visitor to get up to speed which sucks the fun out of a vacation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have only taken the kids to Disneyland and my kids loved it but we didn't take them until they were 7 and 10. We also went the first week of February, so it was 57 degrees and with lightening lane never waited more than 5 minutes for most rides. I think the longest was Pirates and it was 15?

The food is nothing special, but we always did breakfast at the hotel, lunch at the parks (let's be honest my kids lived off popcorn and ice cream) and then dinner would be from a food truck on the way back to the hotel.

I would see FL being more negative due to temps and crowds. We may go there for a long weekend next February so we will have to compare. But also, it is okay to not be a Disney person!

Oh I will add. At Disneyland Genie+ never sold out for us and rides were available pretty much all day with immediate turn around (i.e. we would book the LL and then walk over to the ride and get on). I think its very different in DW.

This is true. Many more people are using Genie+ at WDW compared to DL. It's not comparable at all. DL is full of locals who just go for a few hours at a time to do one or two things compared to people who are at WDW for several days or more and want to get their moneys worth and do it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just not interested in competing against SAHMs who have time to learn all the hacks and systems. I’m busy, so it sounds like way too much work.

I work full time and know most of the good hacks - it’s really not that hard. It’s just like planning a regular vacation. Most of the actual “work” is time on the phone getting LL’s when you’re actually there.

Not 100% sure why you tried to make this a SAHM vs. working mom issue.

I don't understand PPs point about working/not working but there are some serious Disney fanatics (of all types) a newbie is up against and it can be very overwhelming for a first time visitor to get up to speed which sucks the fun out of a vacation.

Exactly - it’s just not a fun vacation if you have to stress about all of these sign-ups. When I was a child we could show up to Disney and buy a ticket at the gates and then enjoy the day. Yes, there was waiting in line but it wasn’t unreasonable. I realize that things have changed, but now it’s not the kind of way that I want to spend a vacation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just not interested in competing against SAHMs who have time to learn all the hacks and systems. I’m busy, so it sounds like way too much work.

I work full time and know most of the good hacks - it’s really not that hard. It’s just like planning a regular vacation. Most of the actual “work” is time on the phone getting LL’s when you’re actually there.

Not 100% sure why you tried to make this a SAHM vs. working mom issue.

I don't understand PPs point about working/not working but there are some serious Disney fanatics (of all types) a newbie is up against and it can be very overwhelming for a first time visitor to get up to speed which sucks the fun out of a vacation.

I do. Disney is a perfect for vacation with a SAHM with a lot of time on her hands. A woman who is type A and doesn’t have an outlet for it. I see HS classmates who are SAHMs taking Disney vacations and it’s perfect for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[img] hi

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there are more Disney adults than Disney kids.

This. The obsessed adults ruin it for kids. So many of them have the DAS pass, go all the time, skip the lines, and make little kids who are maybe there for the first time have to stand and endure the lines when they already have so little patience. I mean why not go all the time when you barely have to wait in line and can ride as often as you want, that's the entitled attitude. Hopefully the new rules make it a better experience for everyone, especially kids.

I agree with this. I also wish they limited DAS passes to once a year or maybe twice. I have a friend I grew up with that goes weekly or even multiple times a week and she has DAS passes. I’m all about accessibility but surely people realize that if you go nonstop that means others are waiting in lines even longer?

I don’t agree with this. We go just about every year and if you know how to use Genie + and LL’s you won’t have to wait more than 30 min tops for any ride; most much less than that.

What is there to disagree with? Disney realized it was getting abused in this manner and updated the rules. It was being used far more in the past few years than ever before, as people want to avoid paying for Genie+. It's not that there are suddenly 3x as many people with disabilities from a few years ago. It was a loophole that got closed.

I disagree that DAS users were negatively impacting us. They clearly weren’t. Our lines weren’t longer because of them.

It was much harder to get LL slots with regular Genie+ because DAS was taking all of them. That’s why it would be so absurdly hard to book popular rides like 7 Dwarves and Slinky Dog. It also in theory made standby waits longer because so many people had LL priority through DAS. This is why Disney had to get ahold of the situation - because a big ride like Tiana would end up 100% DAS and nobody else could get on except in a 2 hr standby line. I think Genie+ worked really well for us but in part because we didn’t prioritize the super popular rides. At the end of the day it IS a bit absurd that to get a Genie+ slot on Slinky I had to be refreshing the app at 6:59am …

I know nothing about disneyworld and reading this is like another language. I love it.

hahahaha. PP here. Yes I MAY have bought two guidebooks, read the online forums dailg, and be a little fixated … strangely enough I’m actually not a Disney adult. I have no interest in going back alone. I just have weird online hobbies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just not interested in competing against SAHMs who have time to learn all the hacks and systems. I’m busy, so it sounds like way too much work.

I work full time and know most of the good hacks - it’s really not that hard. It’s just like planning a regular vacation. Most of the actual “work” is time on the phone getting LL’s when you’re actually there.

Not 100% sure why you tried to make this a SAHM vs. working mom issue.

I don't understand PPs point about working/not working but there are some serious Disney fanatics (of all types) a newbie is up against and it can be very overwhelming for a first time visitor to get up to speed which sucks the fun out of a vacation.

I do. Disney is a perfect for vacation with a SAHM with a lot of time on her hands. A woman who is type A and doesn’t have an outlet for it. I see HS classmates who are SAHMs taking Disney vacations and it’s perfect for them.

Are we back to the dated sahm/wohm wars? The most intense Disney people I know are working adults. And in any case a lot of people hire planners for Disney these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had a pretty darn awful trip to Disney world. There were just so many issues that it felt like a comedy of errors.

On Day 1 we arrived at Magic Kingdom midday and there apparently had been a massive storm and lightning strike. We were wading through water that was mid-shin and not draining. It was gross. The lightening strike had apparently damaged the electrical grid and taken out almost every ride at Magic Kingdom. Only teacups, magic carpets and Philharmagic came back on line before 8:30 PM when we left. The entire rest of the park was shut down for the entire afternoon and evening leaving thousands of people and no rides or parades, ongoing storms and no information being shared with guests. The park was a massive mess. We had a 5:30 PM reservation at the castle for dinner so we stayed, but people apparently weren't getting up from their tables because they had no where to go with no rides and it was raining hard so they sat. We didn't get seated until nearly 2 hours after our reservation with a 3 and 5 yo. They were melting from starvation, waiting and disappointment. Then service was awful, food was gross, and princesses were skipping our table. It was such a a miserable night despite us trying to stay upbeat.

(I note that lightening is a major issue in that part of Florida: https://www.disneydining.com/walt-disney-world-area-lightning-capital-of-the-u-s-bb1/)

I'd wish I could say that things got better, but apparently the lightening strike had damaged the park pretty severely. All of the "mountains" at MK (space, splash, thunder) and mine train were down for most of the week, with lots of closures of other rides for repairs This pushed guests into other lines, making every ride have massive lines.

The cherry on top was that we had lunch the next day at the Sci Fi Drive in at HS and right after we ordered there was a kitchen fire and the restaurant was evacuated. We ended up being held for 2.5 hours while the fire department came. All of our stuff was stuck in the restaurant so we had to wait in the million degree sun with two hungry kids and no food or information. It was such a a mess. (They did give us several paper ride passes for this delay, but we needed to go back for naps by the end of the ordeal and we're just over it all.)

Then on top of all this we kept having issues with our LL and rider swaps, with them only appearing on one phone and disappearing and reappearing, and not scanning. We were told our account had been corrupted so it wasn't working right but that they couldn't fix it without cancelling our hotel, deleting our accounts, making new ones and rebooking us from scratch, which was going to cost us hundreds. The Disney workers told us there was no way to override this and we'd need to pack up our room and move to a new room. So we tried to make it work and ended up at guest services 5-7 times a day getting our accounts fixed.

It really was a dreadful trip. People talk a lot about how Disney will make stuff right for guests, but I think they were so overwhelmed that week with the scope of the issues they just gave up and shrugged. They couldn't make it right for everyone so they just pretended everything was fine and didn't try to even compensate.

wow that DOES sound like a disaster. I actually would have agitated for at least ticket refunds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a pretty darn awful trip to Disney world. There were just so many issues that it felt like a comedy of errors.

On Day 1 we arrived at Magic Kingdom midday and there apparently had been a massive storm and lightning strike. We were wading through water that was mid-shin and not draining. It was gross. The lightening strike had apparently damaged the electrical grid and taken out almost every ride at Magic Kingdom. Only teacups, magic carpets and Philharmagic came back on line before 8:30 PM when we left. The entire rest of the park was shut down for the entire afternoon and evening leaving thousands of people and no rides or parades, ongoing storms and no information being shared with guests. The park was a massive mess. We had a 5:30 PM reservation at the castle for dinner so we stayed, but people apparently weren't getting up from their tables because they had no where to go with no rides and it was raining hard so they sat. We didn't get seated until nearly 2 hours after our reservation with a 3 and 5 yo. They were melting from starvation, waiting and disappointment. Then service was awful, food was gross, and princesses were skipping our table. It was such a a miserable night despite us trying to stay upbeat.

(I note that lightening is a major issue in that part of Florida: https://www.disneydining.com/walt-disney-world-area-lightning-capital-of-the-u-s-bb1/)

I'd wish I could say that things got better, but apparently the lightening strike had damaged the park pretty severely. All of the "mountains" at MK (space, splash, thunder) and mine train were down for most of the week, with lots of closures of other rides for repairs This pushed guests into other lines, making every ride have massive lines.

The cherry on top was that we had lunch the next day at the Sci Fi Drive in at HS and right after we ordered there was a kitchen fire and the restaurant was evacuated. We ended up being held for 2.5 hours while the fire department came. All of our stuff was stuck in the restaurant so we had to wait in the million degree sun with two hungry kids and no food or information. It was such a a mess. (They did give us several paper ride passes for this delay, but we needed to go back for naps by the end of the ordeal and we're just over it all.)

Then on top of all this we kept having issues with our LL and rider swaps, with them only appearing on one phone and disappearing and reappearing, and not scanning. We were told our account had been corrupted so it wasn't working right but that they couldn't fix it without cancelling our hotel, deleting our accounts, making new ones and rebooking us from scratch, which was going to cost us hundreds. The Disney workers told us there was no way to override this and we'd need to pack up our room and move to a new room. So we tried to make it work and ended up at guest services 5-7 times a day getting our accounts fixed.

It really was a dreadful trip. People talk a lot about how Disney will make stuff right for guests, but I think they were so overwhelmed that week with the scope of the issues they just gave up and shrugged. They couldn't make it right for everyone so they just pretended everything was fine and didn't try to even compensate.

wow that DOES sound like a disaster. I actually would have agitated for at least ticket refunds.

I’d be disputing that through my credit card.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a pretty darn awful trip to Disney world. There were just so many issues that it felt like a comedy of errors.

On Day 1 we arrived at Magic Kingdom midday and there apparently had been a massive storm and lightning strike. We were wading through water that was mid-shin and not draining. It was gross. The lightening strike had apparently damaged the electrical grid and taken out almost every ride at Magic Kingdom. Only teacups, magic carpets and Philharmagic came back on line before 8:30 PM when we left. The entire rest of the park was shut down for the entire afternoon and evening leaving thousands of people and no rides or parades, ongoing storms and no information being shared with guests. The park was a massive mess. We had a 5:30 PM reservation at the castle for dinner so we stayed, but people apparently weren't getting up from their tables because they had no where to go with no rides and it was raining hard so they sat. We didn't get seated until nearly 2 hours after our reservation with a 3 and 5 yo. They were melting from starvation, waiting and disappointment. Then service was awful, food was gross, and princesses were skipping our table. It was such a a miserable night despite us trying to stay upbeat.

(I note that lightening is a major issue in that part of Florida: https://www.disneydining.com/walt-disney-world-area-lightning-capital-of-the-u-s-bb1/)

I'd wish I could say that things got better, but apparently the lightening strike had damaged the park pretty severely. All of the "mountains" at MK (space, splash, thunder) and mine train were down for most of the week, with lots of closures of other rides for repairs This pushed guests into other lines, making every ride have massive lines.

The cherry on top was that we had lunch the next day at the Sci Fi Drive in at HS and right after we ordered there was a kitchen fire and the restaurant was evacuated. We ended up being held for 2.5 hours while the fire department came. All of our stuff was stuck in the restaurant so we had to wait in the million degree sun with two hungry kids and no food or information. It was such a a mess. (They did give us several paper ride passes for this delay, but we needed to go back for naps by the end of the ordeal and we're just over it all.)

Then on top of all this we kept having issues with our LL and rider swaps, with them only appearing on one phone and disappearing and reappearing, and not scanning. We were told our account had been corrupted so it wasn't working right but that they couldn't fix it without cancelling our hotel, deleting our accounts, making new ones and rebooking us from scratch, which was going to cost us hundreds. The Disney workers told us there was no way to override this and we'd need to pack up our room and move to a new room. So we tried to make it work and ended up at guest services 5-7 times a day getting our accounts fixed.

It really was a dreadful trip. People talk a lot about how Disney will make stuff right for guests, but I think they were so overwhelmed that week with the scope of the issues they just gave up and shrugged. They couldn't make it right for everyone so they just pretended everything was fine and didn't try to even compensate.

wow that DOES sound like a disaster. I actually would have agitated for at least ticket refunds.

How long ago was this? I definitely would have pushed for some sort of refund.

We had a similarly disastrous time at Dollywood (not involving lightning strikes but it was pretty bad) and I got a full refund.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m just not interested in competing against SAHMs who have time to learn all the hacks and systems. I’m busy, so it sounds like way too much work.

I work full time and know most of the good hacks - it’s really not that hard. It’s just like planning a regular vacation. Most of the actual “work” is time on the phone getting LL’s when you’re actually there.

Not 100% sure why you tried to make this a SAHM vs. working mom issue.

I don't understand PPs point about working/not working but there are some serious Disney fanatics (of all types) a newbie is up against and it can be very overwhelming for a first time visitor to get up to speed which sucks the fun out of a vacation.

I do. Disney is a perfect for vacation with a SAHM with a lot of time on her hands. A woman who is type A and doesn’t have an outlet for it. I see HS classmates who are SAHMs taking Disney vacations and it’s perfect for them.

Are we back to the dated sahm/wohm wars? The most intense Disney people I know are working adults. And in any case a lot of people hire planners for Disney these days.

Of course we’re back to that. Some of these pathetic women hang their hats on whether or not they’re working. It’s so frickin’ old.

[Anonymous]

Disney has come out to say that DAS is now only for kids with Autism. Which I totally don't get because there are so many more serious illnesses that could cause issues standing in line.

Regardless, I agree with others that Disney World is a total nightmare if you don't know when to make reservations and so on and so forth.