Iām am I the only one who thinks the Magic is gone at WDW? Rude people, massive amount of strollers and mobility vehicles, horrible food across all parks and insane wait times for tired old rides.
Our last trip was so disappointing. If you donāt purchase genie plus and ILL you wait forever. The wait times were always longer than posted. The food was bad at every restaurant we ate at. Weāve been going to Disney for over thirty years. Been annual passholders (out of state so paying premium price) multiple years. Weāre done. Weāve cancelled our two upcoming trips. Leaving almost a year of our pass on the table.
Each trip over the past year has gotten progressively worse. Iām sad and frustrated. If we had the three fastpasses every day like in years past it might be tolerable. But why pay thousands a dollars a trip to not have fun. Iāve written to Disney and they didnāt even bother to respond. They only care about the money.
May I suggest Universal? I, too, got fed up with everything you said and more. I have been a WDW fan for close to 35 years. I checked out Universal two years ago & havenāt looked back! (I did go to MNSSHP & MVMCP last year)
However, Iāve now been to Universal almost 10 times since 2022. I live in TN, so itās not like Iām a local.
I can get an Annual Pass for both theme parks AND the water park for $575 with tax included. The value hotels have all been built in the last 5 - 7 years. They have modern amenities and you can get rooms as low as $75 per night. I can get a moderate for $125
The rides are awesome. The shows are fun and exciting. Thereās something for all ages. UOR has a reputation as a thrill park, but it has plenty for kids. Thereās street entertainment and characters everywhere that you donāt have to wait in a awful queue or reserve.
Heckā¦thereās no reservations of ANY type needed - except TS. Even those can be available a couple weeks before your tripā¦
No G+ / ILL nonsense either!
Whenever I do have an issue I can get it resolved in person or online. I have UOR Guest Services bookmarked. They respond within an hour or so & have always gone BEYOND to resolve my problems.
If you havenāt ever burst out of the WDW Bubble, maybe now is the time!
I promise I donāt work for Universal. I just had the same issues you do now & I hate it for you. We spend so much money & time planning these WDW trips. The last couple of years itās felt like, to me, they are actively making hard to give them moneyā¦
I donāt think you are alone in this common. Itās becoming a more common view.
I get where you are coming from and agree to some extent, but I donāt agree with all of this.
Itās been about 25 trips to WDW over the past 45 years for me. I think there have always been a massive amount of strollers so I donāt see much change there. I agree that the food has gotten signficantly worse and more expensive over the past 10 years. The stand-by wait times are very long so I agree on the one. Yes, some rides are old, but there are some new one too (not enough, but TSL, SW:GE, GotG and Tron are all great additions) ā¦ not enough new ones, but I wouldnāt say WDW is the same tired old rides.
I do feel like the Magic has significantly decreased. I went on many adult only trips in the past, but due to the decrease in the Magic, I have no desire to do any more adult only trips. That said, I love going to WDW with my kids. To my kids, there is still Magic (they donāt know the old days to have the comparison) and I love seeing their faces at WDW along with the generational memories created.
People have gotten ruder since Covid. Itās not a Disney thing. I donāt agree with the rest - we had a great time last year, granted we maxed at G+ and didnāt wait more than 10 minutes for anything. Food was good. Every time I go a local theme park I get annoyed because itās not as nice as Disney and o definitely end up waiting longer.
I agree with you that Universal is great. Lots of advantages.
Butā¦I donāt think Universal has ever come close to the āmagic of Disneyā that Disney has had in the past. So, while we love Universal, if you are looking for the āmagicā, I donāt think you will get it at Universal either. Universal is quickly following many of the changes Disney has done, and much of the year, Universal is as expensive or MORESO than Disney.
Nowā¦back to Disneyā¦there is a lot to complain about in terms of recent changes. I complain a lot about G+, and rising costs and longer waits, etc. Butā¦we have shifted our way of doing Disney and definitely find the magic is thereā¦you just have to work a bit more to find it.
When we go (and we are going MORE often nowadays rather than less often) we find the magic. We bring the magic with us. So I wouldnāt say it is gone. Lessened, yes. But not gone. There is still more magic there than any other park (including Universal).
We are increasingly less about doing the rides and more about ambiance and exploration now.
The cost is definitely a factor. You are to pay so much more now for similar experiences. but thatās true everywhere. The Universal seasonal pass has increased about 30% in just the past couple of years, for example. The per-day ticket price at Universal is pretty much on par with Disney now, but with less to do.
I think crowds were getting particularly bad at Disney during COVID revenge travel. You have to find the lower times and be willing to go then. It isnāt Disneyās fault that more people are going to the parksā¦but they got flack for making changes to try to mitigate the increases in crowds.
The magic is still there. it just looks different.
I joined Touring Plans in 2015 for a family trip that didnāt go so well (not Disneyās fault). I have distinct memeories of what Disney was like for some people on chat at that time - and how magical some of things Disney did for its fans were (things like 24 hour park days). The people who were happiest with Disney during that time are the ones I hear saying very similar things to you about the magic being gone.
The majority of my trips have happened since COVID, so I am in a different camp. But my daughter is 13 and Disney is something we share, so the timing is good for me to find the magic right now.
G+ seems to be a major breaking point for a lot of people. As in, ones feelings on G+ almost directly predict your current feelings on WDW! (@ryan1 excepted)
I find MK to be the most crowded, with the rudest people. I had some days there that were way less than magical. My good memeories at MK are entirely made up of the first 3 hours of the day and the last 3 hours of the day when it has a different feel. (Except there is onr adorable calvacade that runs in the middle of the day). But I really love the other 3 parks.
I have found places that I really enjoy eating and feel like some of the QS food has improved. At the same time they also changed dishes or restaurants thay I loved. I miss BATB quick service - it was magical and affordable. They changes my favorite dish on property at Geyser Point to something that is not good. But I canāt wait to go back to Shiki-Sai. So food is a toss up for me.
Iām sorry the magic is gone for you. Are you hoping to get it back? Or moving on?
This is something at least my family is struggling with now. Especially the rude people. I really do think the happiest place on earth brings out the nasty in a lot of people.
I have been taking my boys since 1999- and they have already started to give up their APs. Mostly for things neither me or Disney can fix.
IMO itās the FOMO that Disney very much encourages bad manners and attitudes. Combine that with entitled attitudes and itās a fluster cluck. That and what Disney has done to ā reduce planningā has made it a nightmare for us. I may be alone in this but the 60 day window is the worst.
Like others have said UO has filled that gap for at least my youngest and the my oldest just got home from exploring Italy.
I had gotten a phenomenal deal on a room for July - and this is probably the make or break for my AP.
On another thread the topic of Eisner vs Igner started-
Eisnerās Disney is the one we loved.
I have went 14 times since 2019. Itās all about what you make of it. I went in March this year, I was like this is going to suck - Spring Break crowds. ā¦we had a great time. I went to a restaurant and they had changed things up and didnāt have my favourite item - ordered one of the new items, loved it more.
I donāt complain about the prices, because everything across the board has gone up since 2020. ā¦and if you want to see worse, just go to a sports game. At least where I live, the costs of food and parking are crazy ā¦also WDW compared to Disneyland is cheaper I leaned this year.
Iām also a G+ user, rope dropper and take breaks in the afternoon when things get crazy.
I think my biggest complaint is G+ and the food.
A lot of the qs items have now turned into generic food options across the board, and the menus have been cut down so much-and some a lot of the food is just mediocre now- definitely the quality of some of the food has gone downhill while the prices have gone up. We try to work around this-
As far as G+ - not all of us have $100 or so a day extra to spend on this. Iāve learned that I can get what I want done strategically without G+ but still will use it one or two days.
The magic of the cast members is still there.
If I didnāt have DVC and credit card rewards/airline points etc, I would definitely consider traveling there less, mostly due to cost:value ratio.
I think this is so true. And yetā¦Iām surprised/shocked by how many people still decide to pay for it. It is like people have just resigned themselves to the fact that G+ is the only way to go, and just fork over the money for it.
(Iām still trying to figure out a way to ābillā Disney for every time they allow someone to jump ahead of me in line with G+! I didnāt agree to that, yet Disney is profiting by stealing MY time!!!)
One thing that Iāve noticed, watching several vloggers, plus some anecdotal reporting, is something that I predicted Disney might do back when they first announced G+ā¦but thought it was potentially something they could be sued for. That is, they seem to be, a great deal of the time, mis-reporting the standby wait times as higher than actualsā¦something significantly so! This, of course, wasnāt a problem pre-G+, because who didnāt like to wait less than they were told? But with G+, they are selling a product based on what people are observing the standby wait times are. By them reporting the times as higher than they actually are, it convinces more people to fork over to G+ā¦which, ironically then drives up the ACTUAL standby times.
There is a theory that the wait times are inflated to stretch out the return time for DAS. There is a lot of reasons why this theory makes sense (as does yours).
Technically you did by choosing the stand by line. Think of it like flying stand by. The LL line is the ārealā queue and you are choosing the stand by option, so if there is room for you then you get to ride.
If you have to pay EXTRA for it, that isnāt the ārealā queue. But I am choosing to wait in standby for the price of the ticket. The fact that Disney charges people to let THEM jump ahead of ME without my consent means they are stealing from ME, but THEY are profiting from it.
The example of flying standby is entirely different. You arenāt paying for anything you are even guaranteed. You are just HOPING to get on. (ANd this is a way for airlines to ensure no seat flies empty.)
Not just QS- we have found the menus at TS to have been drastically reduced and itās the same stuff over and over again- seriously reports that Oliviaās is now serving bagged chips vs house made and conche fritters never returned.
We were just went food shopping and our local warehouse club had a decent deal on short ribs- I said no we are going to WDW itās going to me on the menu 8 days straight
Yeah, technically when Disney started charging for the jump-the-line queue, the price of admission should have dropped.
When the system started in 1999 it was free, and everyone was pretty much on the same playing field. (FP kiosks)
Now itās a class system. In general, people with more money to spend get a big advantage. And those that cannot, (or choose not too) do not get an admission discount for waiting longer and therefore experiencing less attractions in a day compared to the past.
Our DLR VIP Tour Guide told us this about DAS: He said there are days when 50% of the park is using it and it drives u StandBy wait times. Thatās why they are making the changes recently announced.
ā¦also WDW compared to Disneyland is cheaper I leaned this year.
I didnāt agree to that, yet Disney is profiting by stealing MY time!!!)
