Disney

Well we survived our week at Disney. I'm not sure what I expected, but I left feeling not so magical. I will start with this...the kids had a great time. They got to meet lots of characters, ate dessert at every meal and seemed to just take the whole experience in. As an adult however, it was a very different story. The first 2 parks we went to on Sunday and Monday were very crowded and it took an hour to do anything. We also realized quickly that going back and forth to the resort was completely out of the question. It also took about an hour to travel from resort to park because of all the stopping to pick people up thing....very frustrating. It was one of the main reasons we paid a premium price to stay at the resorts in Disney to have the flexibility to go back and forth. Thank goodness we scheduled Tuesday as an off day to just hang out at the pool and relax. Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party was also kind of a flop. It was really crowded and the kids were tired. We did however get to go on some rides in the hour transition between regular park hours and the Halloween Party hours which was cool. The kids did get to trick or treat and came home with 4 bags of candy....yes, 4 bags....I have no idea what we are going to do with all of it. The last 3 days were pretty enjoyable. The parks were way less crowded and we were able to do some rides and get around pretty quickly. Another big frustration was Disney's fast pass. We got these wrist bands to try out for Disney...lots of people had them. Essentially, Disney trying to go paperless. These bands have a chip in them and you link all of you park tickets, dinner reservations and fast passes to the band. You wave the band in front of a little reader and poof your info comes up. Really cool if it worked like it is supposed to. Now I realize it is still in the trail phase, but we had LOTS of problems scheduling fast passes on these things. Anyone who has been to Disney knows the cool rides can have up to a 2 hour wait to get on. With a fast pass you go into the ride through a special line and generally either get right on or wait maybe 5-10 minutes. It's essential to secure fast passes if you expect to be able to get through the entire park in a day, otherwise you'd be standing in line all day and see nothing. So, I think had I known how frustrating the whole bus system was from the resorts I would have just saved the money and stayed off site. It is also possible that we are not spend a week at a theme park kind of people. Or maybe it would be different traveling with older kids that have more stamina. I don't know. I'm glad we did it. We got some great photos using the Disney Photo Pass. I think the kids will remember parts of it as they get older. I will add a few photos to the blog, but they are not the best as we had Disney people take most of the good ones and I am still going through and getting my order together. I will have to post some of the good ones once I get the disc.