Monday, 7 December 2015

Touring Disney World Part 1

I'm getting to the end of my posts about Disney World and will soon move on to Universal. As with Disneyland, I will have a couple of posts on my thoughts on strategies for touring Disney World. This post will cover buying tickets, using Disney transportation, rope drop procedures and Extra Magic Hours.

Tickets

I bought 10 day tickets to Disney World because that is the longest ticket you can buy. I wish that longer tickets were offered - in order to fit everything into 10 days I pretty much had to go the parks all day for each of those 10 days. If I had more days on my ticket I could have visited a park for a couple of hours on my arrival and departure days and spread things out a little more.

Since my tickets came as part of a package that included free dining, I had to get either a park hopper or a Water Park Fun & More ticket, but I ended up getting both. Getting a park hopper meant that I didn't need to spend a whole number of days in each park, plus I was able to take advantage of almost all of the Extra Magic Hours that were offered during my trip. I knew that I wanted to visit a water park, and the additional cost to add the Water Park Fun & More ticket was less than a separate ticket.

The Water Park Fun & More ticket can be used for both the water parks (Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon) as well as Disney Quest and mini golf. However, if you get a package, you also get vouchers for Disney Quest and mini golf anyway. If you are also getting a park-hopper, then you only need to make one water park visit to make the Water Park add-on worthwhile; if you are not getting a park-hopper then you need to visit water parks on two different days for it to be worth it.

Buying my ticket as part of a package meant that it was added to my Magic Band so I never got a physical ticket. I did however get a physical ticket for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party which I bought in person at my hotel (if I had bought it online I could have just linked it to my Magic Band).

Disney Transportation

Disney provides buses between the hotels and parks, as well as between parks (although not between Downtown Disney/Disney Springs and the parks). Although they are mainly aimed at people staying onsite, anyone can use them. Disney advertises that the buses come every 20 minutes but in most cases they seemed to come about every 5-10 minutes at both Pop Century and Art of Animation, especially at peak times.

Disney's official line is that buses start running an hour before park opening but they actually start running much earlier than that. On a day with no morning EMH (i.e., all parks opened at 9), the first Magic Kingdom bus arrived at Pop Century at about 6:15, with buses about every 20 minutes after that. The first buses for Epcot and Hollywood Studios came at about 6:45. Unfortunately I was trying to get to Animal Kingdom for the Backstage Tales tour, and that bus still hadn't come at 7:05 so I ended up having to catch a taxi (which took about 10 minutes and cost $15 plus tip).

Sometimes the lines for the bus back to the hotel looked horrendous but lots of buses came and the wait was only 15-20 minutes. A couple of times, though, I waited about 45 minutes to get on a bus just after park closing.

The main drawback of the buses is that is very difficult to predict how long the wait will be, so I often ended up getting to the parks 10-15 minutes earlier than I really needed to (but I didn't want to risk getting there later than I wanted).

The monorail is also a transportation option between Magic Kingdom and Epcot, and between Magic Kingdom and the nearby hotels (we took it to the Grand Floridian to have high tea). The monorails are generally more efficient than the buses, but since we stayed at value resorts we didn't have a lot of opportunities to use them.

I walked from Hollywood Studios to the International Gateway at Epcot. The walk took about half an hour and it wasn't very well signposted (I think it would have been shorter if I had known where I was going). It was a very pleasant walk along the water though. It was also easy to walk between Pop Century and Art of Animation.

Driving between locations is obviously an option as well, but I don't think it is necessary if you are just staying on Disney World property. A car would be useful if you were making a side trip to Cape Canaveral, for example. And if you did have a car with you then there are some cases where it would be quicker to drive than to take the Disney bus. But I don't think it would be worth the cost of a rental car just to drive to and from the parks.

Rope Drop

Park opening is officially at 9am at all four theme parks (on very busy days like Easter and Christmas some parks may open at 8). But generally guests are allowed through the tapstiles before 9am, so it's important to get there well before the official opening. At Magic Kingdom the ropes are dropped immediately after the welcome show (so about 10 minutes before posted opening) on both EMH and regular opening days. At Hollywood Studios the tapstiles opened at about 8:30 and we were held behind a rope on Hollywood Boulevard until 8:45. I went to Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, where the line was held until about 8:55. I was only at Epcot and Animal Kingdom for rope drop on EMH days, and in both cases rope drop was at exactly 8 (I'm not sure what the situation would be on a non-EMH day at those parks).

Extra Magic Hours

Extra Magic Hours are a perk that is available only for people staying at a Disney hotel, and allows you to either get into the park before other guests (morning EMH) or stay in the park after other guests (evening EMH). Most of the time, each park has EMH twice a week (Animal Kingdom has two morning EMHs, the other parks have one morning and one evening EMH). During busy times there may be more EMH times offered. Every day there is at least one EMH available (either morning or evening). Morning EMH lasts for an hour and evening EMH lasts for two hours.

I found morning EMH at Magic Kingdom to be the most useful and I was able to go on several rides with short waits. Evening EMH at Magic Kingdom was a little more crowded, but most waits then were also reasonable. Waits during EMH at Epcot and Animal Kingdom were low, but since only a few rides develop long lines anyway, it was just as easy to avoid waits by using FastPass and regular rope drop. The same applied at Hollywood Studios, except that during evening EMH the waits didn't seem any shorter during the day.

To be honest, I think next time I would use less Extra Magic Hours and get some extra sleep instead.

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