Overview:
I like Disney for two reasons and two reasons only. One they make a good movie here and there and two, they employ a ton of people. My family went to Disney a few years back and had an okay time but my wife wanted to do it again since the kids are a bit older plus she wanted to "go all out". By that I mean "go all in", as in give all your money to Disney by staying on site and purchasing a meal plan. With such a large price tag my expectations were fairly high. What follows is the results of this trip and how an ROI was certainly not obtained.
Arrival:
Wait, let me back up a second. As we are about to leave for the airport my wife tells me that they will take our luggage from the airport and have it in our room when we arrive. Having traveled extensively in my career, I listened to this supposed feature of the package we purchased with much trepidation. Once we were on the plane I was informed that the caveat to this featured service was that the bags could arrive within 3 hours of your flight landing. Wow! Three hours!! It would have made more sense to me to just wait the 20 minutes it would have taken at the baggage claim carousel. But hey, I didn't have to lug them around and it was included in the package so good deal. Our plan was to get to the hotel and have the kids go swimming (the wife advised everyone that wanted to, to pack a swim suite in their carry-on. I would later learn that they should have packed a 10 day ration kit) and return after some fun in the sun to our bags, get settled in and crash. Well, 4 1/2 hours and one call to the service desk of the hotel later and we had our bags. Fail number one.
The Magic Kingdom (part 1):
So now that we had some clothes we set out to the Magic Kingdom for an early breakfast with the princesses. This I was told would have an added advantage of being let in the park before it opened and we could use this head start to go to the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (which really is just another mediocre roller-coaster with different scenery dropped in around it) since it was one that we could not get a Fast Pass for (more on Fast Passes later).
Our breakfast consisted of the usual fare and was decent at best...but hey, I wasn't there for the best omelette of my life, I was there so my kids could eat in the palace and see the princesses. This whole situation was marred by the fact that swimming rather quickly and with nary a smile on their faces among the various guests seated at their tables were several fifty-something male waiters performing their tasks. Our waiter in particular reminded me more of the guy that sells my lumber then someone waiting tables in the magical world of a Disney palace. Luckily, this was fairly transparent to the kids but not to me and my wife. And wouldn't you know it, this was one of the few places where the tip was already factored in to the meal...figured that was not a coincidence for this crew.
After we left that hastily-served, just-on-the-better-side-of-continental and way north of $100 US breakfast, we headed out to the park to take it all in while the rest of the folks had to wait outside. We made it about 20 yards past the palace and ran into about 13 staff - oh sorry, "cast" members holding up their hands and reinforced by a white chain rope. No problem my wife informed me, we can still make a B-line to the new train ride. This was not to be as well for we were, once the opening commenced, brusquely escorted (read diverted) to go around the giant carousel...I wondered why this was necessary but obliged in a leisurely pace. Once we got in sight of the entrance to the new ride - which was about 75 yards distant at this point we saw the wave. This wave consisted of maybe 100 to 150 people literally sprinting to the entrance gate for the new ride. Where did these people come from we asked? How did they even know to go to this secret(?) line? So our thoughts of being "first" in the park to get to this ride were dashed by a line we had no clue existed and by a clever diversion by the folks at what we thought was the only opening to the park. Our seemingly innocuous jaunt around the carousel was for a good reason after all. Fail number two.
The next exposure to the Disney "all-in" experience was having our first Quick Service meal. If you are not familiar with how the plan works, you get various combinations of food, depending on which package you buy, and they consist of three categories. Snack, quick service and table service. For now I'll just say that the quick service was akin to fast food in the not-so-magical world we live in, maybe even cafeteria style for some of them. Okay, all that said, here was my first experience with this. We go into an extremely crowded overly-wooded interior of this restaurant and get in line. This takes about 20 minutes for us to order. Once we order we are sent to another line (a theme that repeated itself over and over at the parks) to wait for the order to be handed to us. So I need to draw up some logistics here so you can picture this better. The front door opened up to a wide space whereby several cash registers are situated about 20 feet away. The next thing one encounters is the food counter which is located about 6 feet away from the registers. Now, there are about 50 people there and more flowing in constantly as we make our way to the pick up line. As we wait, a cast member begins to loudly inform us to move forward please...why you ask? Because they continued to take orders. So our 7 feet is getting smaller and smaller every second and we keep being told to move ahead so they can what? take more orders. Now it was time to find a table...to end this portion I will simply say, it was another 5 minutes before we could sit down. So our "quick" meal took us about, without factoring in the actual eating time, 30 minutes - which of course was scoffed down by ravenous children in about 3. I won't register another Fail here because this was mainly just a crowd issue...still stunk though.
The Magic Kingdom (part 2):
So now comes the part where I meet up with the table service. At least table service was what I thought I would be getting. The next morning we had reservations to Chef Mickeys at the Contemporary resort. A quick word on the concept of reservation. Disney does not have a clue as to what this means...more on that later.
This was scheduled to be our half day since we didn't technically have passes for this day but yet an invitation (like we didn't have to pay for that too, they just "invited" us to a party...a party with an enormous cover I guess) to the Halloween Party. For this event I had to wear a pirate costume...insult to injury for sure but hey, I told my wife I would try to have a good time and I didn't want to make her or the kids sad that I wasn't participating. So, with dew rag in place and pirate rags adorned we set out. The only thing worth telling here is that it rained on us for hours. Finally, water-logged son and I threw in the soaked towel and headed back.
More to come...
