We were pretty impressed by the way Disney handled the arrival - we were delivered some bag tags prior to our trip and by attaching them to our checked-in bags we didn't even have to go to bag collection - Disney picked up the bags and took them straight to the resort.
We dragged our carry-on bags onto a tram between terminals and then down a couple of levels in the terminal to the Disney Magical Express area. We signed in and were directed to wait for our bus - it was an exciting five minutes until the bus to the Disney All-Star Resorts was ready.
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| Waiting in the terminal |
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| Disney Express Bus |
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| The kids at Disney All-Star Music Resort |
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| Maestro Mickey's shop in the Resort |
We were ready to go around 3pm and so we decided to head out to Disney Hollywood Studios as it seemed to be the smaller of the parks.
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| The lines for the buses |
Outside the resort were a series of lines for coaches to each of the parks as well as Disney Springs (the shopping strip). The buses came approximately every 20minutes and we never had to wait too long for a bus.
The first thing we noticed was the heat. For the whole week it sat at about 35 degrees C (95F) and about 95% humidity. Even at night the temperature dropped about 10 degrees but the humidity hung around. Overall our only real criticism of the Disney parks was that there was lots of bare concrete that reflected the heat back and we were sweating almost non-stop. Most days we found we needed to return back to the hotel around lunch time for a shower/swim in the pool and a change of clothes.
Our basic itinerary changed a few times as we worked out which parks to do when, but we ended up going with:
Friday (3pm - 9pm) - Disney Hollywood Studios
Saturday (9:30am - 10pm) with a return to the resort for lunch and a swim) - Disney Magic Kingdom
Sunday (9am - 9pm) - Universal Studios
Monday (9am - 5:30pm) - Universal Studios
Tuesday (9am - 3pm) - Disney Animal Kingdom
Tuesday (5pm - 10pm) - Disney Hollywood Studios
Wednesday (9am - 12pm) - Disney Magic Kingdom
Wednesday (12pm - 5pm) - EPCOT
Wednesday (5pm-8pm) - Dinner and shower/swim at the resort
Wednesday (9pm - 1am) - Disney Magic Kindgom
Thursday - Disney Springs
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| Bus Stop for Hollywood Studios |
Sunday and Monday we headed out to Universal Studios. The park was about 15min drive away and while we could book a shuttle we needed to pay per person so it was cheaper to take a taxi. We ended up going with Hawks Orlando Transport. Our driver (Sebastian) was awesome and arranged to meet us outside the park and the end of the day and meet us the next day again. Since the park was further away and with no shuttle we didn't return to base for lunch but the parks didn't feel quite as hot - I'm not sure whether it was cooler in general or whether it was because the parks had less concrete surfaces and a bit more greenery.
From here we chopped and changed a bit. Tuesday morning we headed to Animal Kingdom and finished that park by about 3pm. We had originally planned to go to EPCOT after, but we were told that the firework show (Fantasmic) in Hollywood Studios was awesome and it booked out on Friday night, so we booked into it for Tuesday evening and headed back to Hollywood Studios.
For the Disney parks we were able to make FastPass Selections - essentially we could save 3 rides from a single park on our band and at our designated time we could skip the line and get straight on. With lines being up to 90minutes, it was very handy for getting on the big name rides. We could only pick from a single park and after we used our 3 we could book another single one, and then another etc until the end of the day - of course the FastPass on the big rides booked out early. We were able to make our first picks 3 months in advance.
On Wednesday we wanted to go to EPCOT, but we had used out FastPass to save a spot on the Seven Dwarfs Minecart in Magical Kingdom, a new ride that had had lines of 90-120 minutes on Saturday. Since we figured it would be our only chance to get on the ride, we headed to Magical Kingdom first and used up our fast pass to ride the Minecart as well as a couple of other rides, before heading across to EPCOT.
We finished up at EPCOT by around 5pm so we headed back to the hotel for dinner and then headed out to Magical Kingdom again for the evening. They had "Magical Hours" meaning that resort guests could stay an extra 2 hours after the park closed, so we stayed until 1am on the rides.
Thursday we had a flight out at 8pm, meaning the shuttle for us left the Resort at 3pm. We headed out to explore Disney Spring before heading back for a shower and to take our flight home.
The next few posts will give some more details of our adventures in each park.
Here's a few tips that we found and some details of what we booked in case anyone is interested in doing something similar:
We booked through a company called Small World Vacations (http://www.smallworldvacations.com/) they were awesome and helped us plan out our trip and booked it all in. They gave some handy advice and best of all, there was no charge for us. This took a lot of stress out of the planning and let us have a single place that coordinated all of our trip.
We went with a food plan that let us have 2 meals and 1 snack per day as well as a refillable drink cup for use in any resort (but not parks). This cost us US$46 per adult per day (Alana counted as an adult) and $20 per day per child (Cam and Tom). This may seem like a lot, but each meal was coming to about $130 for the five of us and snacks could include cold drinks at the parks or things like popcorn, hot dogs etc. We worked out that since we weren't going to be eating at the resort on the days we went to Universal, we could do 3 meals on some days. One day we used our snack option by a giant pretzel in the park for breakfast. Each meal consisted of a drink, a dessert/snacks and a main meal. Since we had free drinks in the resort, every time we ate in the resort we could instead choose 2 desserts/snacks. We could take fruit packs for snacks and then save these for breakfast the next day. Overall it took a lot of stress out of finding food as we could eat almost anywhere in the area and the food was really filling. They also catered for the boys dairy allergy and had alternatives for them:
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| Meal option from Animal Kingdom - 2 slabs of ribs, a cake and a drink - I couldn't finish it all |
The heat was oppressive. June was definitely not the best time to go. We really struggled with the heat and humidity and a lot of the photos show us as red and sweaty. I think we could have got a lot more done had the weather been nicer. Waiting in lines got nasty - especially in some of the outside lines in Universal Studios and sometimes we were jumping on rides or in shops just to get into air conditioning. We ended up also buy sweat-wicking socks and underwear in order to try to prevent sweat chafing as we were pouring with sweat.
There were plenty of water fountains in the Disney parks, but the water tasted terrible - it had a real sulfur flavour - fortunately the Small World consultant we worked we warned us about this, so we bought some filtering water bottles that fixed the problem.
We purchased a Disney Photo Pass which meant that we could get downloads of all of our ride photos and any photos taken by Disney staff throughout the park - which included character shots and many of the photo locations set up by major attractions. We ended up with about 500 photos and videos of rides that we could download and it meant that we got some great photos without having to worry about making sure we took the shots. Since most ride photos can cost over $10 each this worked out really well for us. We did the same at Universal Studios and found that in all the parks we were keeping an eye out for the professional photographers so we could get our shots taken.
The parks all had their positives, here's my take on them:
Disney
Hollywood Studios - While this was one of the smaller parks, it had some of my favourite attractions - the Rock'n'Roller Coaster was the best of the Disney thrill Rides and the Tower of Terror was pretty cool. There were also Star Wars themed areas and rides that the kids loved. The Fantasmic firework and light show was well worth a visit. So while the park was able to be knocked off in a half day, we found ourselves coming back to catch our favourite rides again.
EPCOT - EPCOT was an interesting park - it had two interesting thrill rides and many educational rides. It's the home of the giant geodesic globe that is symbolic of Disney World (the kids called it the Golf Ball). There was also a World Showcase with food and architecture from different countries. We pushed through EPCOT fairly quickly as the kids weren't really interested in the World Showcase, but we did skip a few of the longer educational rides. I feel we could have spent more time here, but we were keen to get back to Magic Kingdom.
Animal Kingdom - This was Kristine's favourite park as she is not a huge fan of thrill rides. It was more shaded than the other parks, making it cooler and the Expedition Everest ride was one of the favourties of all of us. The park had many animal exhibits, walks and safaris (with real animals, not animamatronics as Kris was worried they would have). I felt that the park was a little on the small side - we cleared most of the things in just over half a day but it made a real break from the other parks. The Tree of Life was awesome.
Magic Kingdom - This is the main Disney park and we were easily able to spend more than a day here. It was a huge park (we walked over 25km) and there were a mix of rides for a variety of ages. When we were there, the big thrill rides were often very busy, but there were lots of other things to do - parades, smaller rides and areas to explore. I felt this was the strongest of the Disney Parks (but Hollywood had the best rides)
Universal
Universal Studios - The kids loved the Harry Potter theme section, including the spell casting and rides. I felt that a park hopper was really needed here to allow you to jump between the two parks as it allowed the riding of the Hogwarts express train between parks and jumping between rides. This park had one of the best thrill rides - the Rockit and some other interesting simulator rides.
Universal Islands of Adventure
This was the second Universal parks and had a stack of themed islands and rides - a majority were moving card rides with 3D scenes that interacted with the cart - such as pushing it or throwing it off buildings etc. The 3D movies worked well and it did feel as though Spiderman was swing the cart on his web and the Gringotts guards were smashing the cart with their clubs.
Well enough of the descriptions - on to the parks!
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