This is the last day of our trip. I am sitting at the resort (off site) and smiling as my 5 and 7 year olds frolic in the pool. We are at Orange Lake and we visited the 5 of 5 pools.
We enjoyed I trip. I enjoyed seeing the girls so happy. The baby likes characters and the 7 year old likes rollercoasters. We got a FL resident annual pass and went last year and this year.
Yesterday we went to AK and it was the last day of our pass. For me the vacation is exhausting and so not a real vacation.
Several days we were running late and I felt like I had to move heaven and earth to get them to our fastpass. We used the 15 minute grace period which allowed us to ride SLinky (7 year old), (Toy story mania( me and 5 year old) and Tower of Terror (7 year old). I can verify that you can be at least 15 minutes late and still ride.
My most relaxing day was at MK. To take a shortcut. I parked at Epcot then planned to take monorail to MK. But it was down so we had to take a bus, bag check, then a boat. What made it a good day though was that I explained this to guest services. We had missed our tinker bell fastpass but not 7DMine train. I didn’t want to backtrack so she just gave me 2 anytime fastpass. That just made the day so relaxing. We saw tinker bell, did our Peter pan fastpass, then were able to get more. We didn’t do a single non fastpass ride.
I booked an onsite resevation, made fastpass, then used change party to transfer them over. Then canceled the onsite reservation. All of our fast passes remained intact. My mom only went 2 of 5 days. So I also used change party while in the park to transfer her passes to us as necessary.
I did the Memory maker share and it was totally worth it.
I also realized that no one in my family realizes the planning and strategy that goes into a trip. They have no idea what it is like to wait in line. The rides we did without a fastpass had less than 15 min wait. Ironically the longest wait was at FOP with a fastpass. It took my daughter who rode alone 40 minutes WITH a fastpass. She tapped in at 6:06 and entered the exit gift shop at 6:46. Still better ofcourse than the posted 2 hour wait.
Service isn’t what it used to be. There were several queues that smelled like urine. A caste member yelled at my mom about returning her ECV. We got separated and she was waiting there for me. After fireworks is mad so that was the plan to meet there if we got separated. Rides were clearly not running at full capacity, sometimes long waits for food too. But vacation is what you make of it and we were determined to enjoy our time.
This will be out last trip to Disney for 3 to 5 years. For our next vacation, I want something where we can just show up and enjoy.
Big thanks to this forum and back side of Magic. The podcaste, the Facebook group, and all of the liners helped me plan a good trip. Thanks all!