Day 9: Depart and Conclude

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Sunday, January 26, 2014

On our way home! Some of our thoughts...

Buying the package vacation from WDW: This was definitely an easy way to go. Disney offered a lot of perks by acting as our travel agent, including Magical Express. I really liked not having to deal with my luggage at all during travel. There were other freebies as well, but the general piece of mind as a Disney customer was really great.

Magic Bands: We were part of a new ticketing system. The Magic Bands were linked to our tickets, room keys, dining plan, photopass, and fastpass. We wore the bracelets all day, every day, and just had to touch the Mickey icon on our band to the icon on the register, ride station, or hotel door and we had access. It was very seamless and worked out great. No clue how this will be rolled out for general use (single day tickets?) but we really enjoyed the function of the bands.

Hotel: We stayed at the All Star Movies Resort. This was a great value resort, and offered so much more than any other $100/nigh hotel I've been to. For example, housekeeping will leave a bag of towels and fresh toiletries at your door if you have the "do not disturb" sign posted. Aside from the fridge being set to ice box mode and freezing our beverages, there can be no complaints about the hotel at all.

MyDisney App and Fastpass Plus: The MyDisney App was a great tool for managing our day. It listed our fastpass times, meal reservations, ride wait times, and other useful information for making the most of our time. The fastpass plus option got mixed reviews. We liked that we could pre-plan which rides we wanted and what time of day to use them. We also liked that most of the time we could change the schedule or ride during the day. But we did not like the limitations of quantity and selection. On the old system, we could fastpass one ride 5 times if we were organized. This new system restricts you to choosing only one of 3-5 big rides, and two of the 5-8 medium rides. I'm still not sure if this drawback outweighs the benefits of pre-selection and scheduling preferences.

Quick Service meal plan: We found that this was not a good option for us. While a good idea in theory, with the pre-paid meals, we found it was entirely too much food and therefore wasteful. Breakfast included one drink and one entree; lunch and dinner included drink, entree, and side or dessert. Just too much. We would have been happy splitting an entree and ordering an extra side for our meals. We brought our own filtering water bottles, so no need to pick up an additional drink.

Park Hopper ticket options: A totally unnecessary expense. We did not once go from park to park in a single day. This was in part because we scheduled our three fastpasses for a single park each day, but also because the length of travel between locations made it undesirable. You could easily spend an hour traveling between parks, and we didn't feel that was a worth it.

Buying tickets + travel for Universal: The travel agency we used offered Universal tickets and bus transportation through Mears. All the instructions provided were easy to follow and we did not have any issue getting to the park, collecting our tickets, or getting home. One day at Universal was enough to see the highlights. Two days would alow you to see everything.

Length of vacation: We concluded that 9 days (7 vacation days and 2 travel days) was more than necessary. Ideally, we should have planned a full rest day in the middle rather than trying to fill each day with activity. Alternately, we discussed the vacation could have been one day shorter (2 days Magic Kingdom, 1 day each Universal, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Holywood). In any case, the only complaint we had was that we were tired - but we did everything on our "must have" list. And on that note, we were completely satisfied with how the vacation turned out.

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