Walt Disney World - Orlando, FL Review

Overall 4.65 of 5 view all 150 reviews

mrkstvns
Austin, TX

We Interrupt This WDW LoveFest for a Brief REALITY CHECK...

love to travel, family traveler, seeker of fun and interesting places, a frequent traveler

Cons

expensive food in parks, long lines, most crowded just when you have off, huge crowds, complex ticketing scheme, admission is not cheap., discounts are rare, Budget hotels not up to par, hard to figure out all the options, hot and humid at certain times of year

NOV

2007

Vacation trips to Walt Disney World have become something of an obligatory rite of passage for American families, and while you might get the impression from all of the reviews posted on this site to date that all is perfect, idyllic, and magical, the reality is that it is just a theme park, and an extremely expensive, extremely crowded, extremely complicated them park experience at that. Kids will still love the place, and parents will easily let themselves forget about all the annoyances they experience, but when you do catch them in a moment of honesty, they'll admit that, yes, everything I tell you is gospel truth.

Let's talk about the COMPLEXITY factor first. A typical Disney venturing Mom or Dad will typically start researching options and strategies, schedules, and budgets months in advance. There's packages and options galore! You'd think you were buying a new car that you'd have to live with for years, but no, you're just buying a ticket to a theme park. The place itself is hugely complex, with several distinct theme parks to choose from, varying lodging options from outrageously overpriced mediocre on-site properties, to somewhat overpriced mediocre off-site properties. Your in-depth research may point you to better quality lodging options, but of course these will be priced higher than a Four Seasons in downtown New York City.

Even the parking lots at Disney can be a COMPLEX experience to endure. Park near the Magic Kingdom, and what happens? You have to wait for a trolley train, then get off at the ferry docks, wait in another line to board the ferry boat across the fake lake, then disboard to enter the park. In the morning, it's not too bad because the crowd enters at a staggered pace, and because the ferry and trolley seem like rides to the kids. In the evening, it can be QUITE another matter. After the fireworks on a busy summer evening, there's a dash for the ferry docks, and the end-to-end time to get back to your car will likely be 30-45 minutes. Compare that to simply walking out of the park and directly to your car at SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, or Universal (or even some of the other Disney parks), and you see how unnecessarily COMPLEX much of the Disney experience really is.

It should go without saying that a Disney vacation is one of the most expensive vacations you're likely to do. It helps to forget totally that the place is fake and that there's no real cultural enrichment happening in any way, shape, or form. Forget real quick about quality issues, and you can dodge the REALITY of Disney in your own mind. Truth is that you just will NOT get what you pay for in Walt Disney World. A single day in the Magic Kingdom will now cost you a solid $80 per person, and that's just to get in. You'll pay more for park hopper options and so on and so forth. Busch Gardens is cheaper. Six Flags is Cheaper. Universal isn't cheaper for one-day, but at least they have quite decent discounts once you hit the 2-day or 3-day level --- Disney's decent discounts don't kick in until somewhere around Day 6 (plus or minus a day, depending on how realistic your definition of "decent" may be). For what you pay for re-heated, bland food in Disney's character dinners, you could easily have scored a gourmet dinner in a four-star Paris bistro.

The CROWDS are often horrendous. Summer is the worst, simply because the oppressive heat and stifling humidity make the constant hour-long waits seem doubly or triply hard to endure. Disney's has a FastPass that is a lifesaver when it comes to dodging a few lines and guaranteeing everybody a fair chance to experience the top attractions at least once in a day, but there are limits on its use, so you're still assured a few unpleasant long line experiences. Back to the complexity factor though: there are strategies that people have come up with to endure the unendurable lines. One of the best tips I picked up was a book that recommended what they called a "Chuck Bubba" strategy: basically one parent entertains the kid in the overpriced gift shop or overpriced ice cream wagon while the other parents sweats it out in line, then, at the last possible moment, you pass the toddler over to the waiting parent so the kid has the shortest time possible to become a whining terror. It's a good strategy, and the complex charts and tables explaining how long the lines would be at which points, and how much time you'd have to entertain the kid before the last possible pass-through opportunity were generally accurate. It's complex, but it's yet another strategy that makes the crowds somewhat possible to forget about after you leave the park and are justifying in your own mind just how "WONDERFUL" the experience was.

CROWDS and COMPLEXITY together mean that you really want to formulate a ride strategy before you enter any of the Disney parks. Figure out the lay of the land, prioritize the rides, figure out a FastPass utilization strategy, and then get there early and stay late. A good strategy might mean you're able to spend 30-45 minutes out of a 15-hour day actually sitting on rides while the tourist with poorer tactical skills will max out at 15 minutes. Yes, it's complex, but it's the REALITY of a Walt Disney World trip.

Generally, you'll spend a maximum of about 20 minutes of a typical 12-hour Disney day actually riding the rides. The rest of the day will be spent walking around, sitting through an occasional 5-minute show, and countless hours of standing in long lines for the next attraction. This is the REALITY part of a Disney trip, folks, not the magical Disney love fest. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing anybody else's right to air their own viewpoint --- after all, that's what this site is all about --- I'm just saying that a review that has no cons to it is probably one you should take with a SERIOUS grain of salt.

There's a lot of excellent rides throughout Walt Disney World, and I give high kudos to Disney for generally excellent ride management: they do a great job of keeping the lines moving as well as they can, loading the rides efficiently and completely, and making the lines as tolerable as they can. I give Disney high praise for the immense variety of rides and themes throughout all of its parks, and for providing a very good transportation system that makes it possible to get around the parks with somewhat less pain than it might otherwise entail.

Walt Disney World is an immense place, but that immensity comes COMPLEXITY. It's hard to figure out the options, it's hard to get a fair deal, and it's a tough job to come up with a good plan to just have fun and to insulate the kids from as much of the pain as you can. A Disney vacation is an expensive, complex experience, that's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to convince anybody not to do it --- your kids would lynch me --- I'm just saying KNOW BEFORE YOU GO. Have fun!

Walt Disney World - Orlando, FL is recommended by mrkstvns

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Comments about mrkstvns’s Review

I hope I never find myself at a party with this lady! :)
What a Debbie Downer.

After 10 trips to WDW We love it. It is not an amusement park. Booking a Disney trip is easy at wdw.com. My wife and I are in our 60's

It is always fantastic to get both the pro and cons when thinking about going on a vacation. The question I have for you is that we are an older couple going to visit a daughter with no kids. Do they have any attractions (we no longer do the thrill rides) for older folks in the 60's? Thank you

Oh and thanks for the positives as well and the many negatives.

I think that if you wanted a high quality family vacation to the level and degree you're griping about you should have gone to Paris and got that gormet dinner. You pain to go to a theme park, for crying out loud. An AMUSEMENT park, not the Smithsonian or the Museum of Natural History. If you loathed it to that degree, do not go back. Personally I have been 5 or 6 times, myself, LOVED IT and plan to return next summer with my husband and children. I think a vitrolic diatribe about the evils of Disney was a bit much.

Wow, I really feel sorry for you if that's how you feel. If I felt that way, I would have to drive my car into a bridge abutment, because I wouldn't be able to deal with the "reality" of life. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, there are crowds. But, as Clark Griswold would say, "It's all part of the experience." I agree with the previous responder that millions of people from around the world can't be wrong. Personally, I've been there 10+ times (I've lost count), and I never get tired of it. By the way, if you spent 12 hours at Disney and only spent about 20 minutes on rides, you were either knocked unconscious for 9 of those hours, you're really horrible at budgeting your time, or you spent most of your time doing things other than rides. Just Spaceship Earth at EPCOT Center lasts, I would say, about 10-15 minutes.

Well if there are lots of crowds at Disney then they must be doing something right to have all those people there! And you can't blame Disney for the weather in FL. They have no control over that. And as far as the complexity of the parks, they have these things called MAPS. They help a lot. I'm sorry but I have visited Disney World all my life and have never had a bad experience.

I very much appreciate this reality check. We visited Disney last year and I think you nailed it!!!!!!!!!!!

I grew up in Florida and so naturally Disney World was a frequent vacation spot. I agree that most of it is just too expensive, too annoying, too crowded! Disney doesn't add to it's amusement inventory much, either--I'd say go once to "have done it" but then take your kids elsewhere! (One nice thing is, for me, is that the roller coasters are kind of wimpy ;-) ). Thanks for the review!