We’ve returned from our first trip back to the World since June 2024. I was looking back at some of my older posts and remembered posting that at the time of our last trip I didn’t feel that pull to go back. That has remained true over the past two years and we have been really fortunate to take some other great family trips in that time - exploring the Southwest a little bit in Arizona and New Mexico, visiting Badlands National Park and the Black Hills, visiting my mom and stepdad in Myrtle Beach, SC (twice). My daughter “graduated” from elementary school this year and we offered for her to choose our summer vacation. Gulf Coast? Pacific Northwest? Another National Park? New York City to see a Broadway Show? Of course she picked somewhere we’ve been 8 times - Disney World!
Travel Party - Me/Mom 46, Dad 48, Daughter 11yo. Daughter doesn’t like the big thrill rides so we’re kind of lucky (I guess?) there. Husband and I can both kind of take them or leave them. I love all the rides (except Star Tours) but I’ve ridden everything at least once and there’s nothing I’m dying to do.
Accommodations: We did a split stay with 2 nights at POFQ in a standard room (our first time) and 5 nights in a Boardwalk Studio on rented DVC points (also our first time staying here). I thought both of these resorts were just okay. POFQ we liked the pool a lot and the smaller footprint of the resort. But overall it felt crowded/busy to me. The dining hall I thought was awful, it was so crowded and busy from seriously like 4pm-9pm both nights. Mobile ordering was at one point over 90 minute wait. We tried the beignets and I’m not sure I’ve had anything else at WDW that I felt was so overhyped and mediocre (more thoughts on the food later). I probably would not stay at POFQ again. Boardwalk was nice of course, the location is obviously incredible. I felt we got a pretty good deal here with the DVC rental and we didn’t honestly spend that much time at the resort. I thought the pool was just okay and I know a lot of people complain about the quick service situation(s) at this resort so I’ll talk a little bit about that. I actually felt like they had quite a few options for QS food once the kiosks and Pizza window are open. For breakfast I can see the frustration for sure, but we are “stuff a granola bar in your mouth while walking to the bus stop” people and don’t eat breakfast at our resort. Like I said, we thought Boardwalk was fine but I also don’t know that I would stay here again. We found EEH at Epcot to be mostly a waste of time. There just aren’t enough rides there to reduce the wait times by a lot with day guests still in the parks after close (I’m not complaining about that, just stating that I think it has a big effect on the wait times in the first ~1.5 hours of EEH at least). GotG didn’t drop below 90 minutes during EEH. Remy only dropped below 45 minutes to 30 at 10:45, after EEH had been going on for 1.75 hours.
Parks and Attractions: The newly opened or re-opened attractions we did were:
Zootopia show, which we really enjoyed (watched it twice actually!). We hated ITTBAB so I thought this was a welcome addition.
Villains show in HS which I thought was entertaining enough but just okay.
Little Mermaid show (reopened, not entirely new) in HS which we enjoyed and thought was an improvement over the previous show!
Test Track (re-imagined or whatever they’re calling it) which we enjoyed. My daughter thought it felt smoother but was kind of disappointed to lose the interactive car-design portion.
Soarin’ Across America - ehhh. Prefer the old version but it wasn’t terrible or anything.
Buzz Lightyear (re-opened with the new blasters) - we loved this and my husband got Galactic Superhero!
Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure - re-done with new graphics or whatever - we enjoyed this as we love this ride and I just think the story is so cute, but I am not sure whether I would say it is an improvement or not. I do like not having to wear the glasses but it did seem like some of the effects were a little…flat.
Some other random thoughts on rides: we had so many issues with rides being down (not due to weather). On our second MK morning, Winnie the Pooh, Tiana’s, BTMRR, HM, POTC, and Magic Carpets, were all down at the same time for several hours. POTC still wasn’t open when we decided to leave the park at 12:15 p.m. We rode FOP twice and I felt like something was off with the projection or the glasses or something. Especially the second time we rode it, I noticed that it was very blurry/doubled.
LLMP & LLSP - I am not a fan and I have to say this is my least favorite iteration of all of the versions of FP or whatever you want to call it. We did spend about $650 on this for our trip and I personally found that to be a very painful expense. It definitely dipped into our food and spending money budget, and we did forgo table service dining this trip to save money elsewhere (we did one TS). We also only did 6 days of park tickets and I wish we had only done 5, before we would have had a ticket every day we were there because we love to go even for just a couple of hours. We did no special events and we also skipped Memory Maker, both of which I would have liked to do but again I was finding areas to trim that budget in order to pay for LL. We found that quite a few of the LL moved very slowly - Soarin’ (all three times we rode it with LL we waited almost 30 minutes), Test Track (both times we rode it with LL), FEA a couple of the times we rode it with LL, a couple of the other times it loaded pretty quickly, IASW oddly enough, Dumbo we waited 20 minutes in the LL when the standby time was allegedly only 20 minutes, Pirates.
More on dining: This was overall my biggest disappointment and frustration with this trip. The QS food is just not good. Even the festival food we tried this trip was underwhelming. All of the QS places were very busy even during off times and some of them seemed pretty overwhelmed with beverage stations being depleted of ice, condiments, napkins, plasticware, etc. And don’t even get me started on the lack of seating - it’s a real problem. I told my husband I am tempted to just bring my own food next time, something we never do. But the prices, the service, and the lackluster food just made the whole QS experience pretty disenchanting. Even some of the things we’ve enjoyed in the past seemed different and just not good - the popcorn, the Night Blossom, the Dole Whip. Like it’s okay and didn’t make us sick or anything, but if I’m paying $8 for a cupcake or $16 for three little silver-dollar-sized tacos I’d prefer them to be decent (and also to have a place to sit down and eat them). We got home Sunday and I told my husband I just wanted to go out somewhere for some good food. For our one Table Service meal we did eat at Tony’s which is a tradition for us and it’s my daughter’s choice/favorite and it was fine.
All that being said…I know I’m a picky b!tc4 and can be hard to please. I am a person who feels like they work hard for their money and like to feel like I’m getting a good value. I don’t mind spending money and paying more for quality things, but again, I am just a person who wants to feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. We did have a great trip, we experienced and accomplished a lot, we got pretty lucky with the weather, the CMs we encountered were fine and we didn’t have any negative experiences with guests or any of the things I’ve seen a lot of complaints about. We had one line cutting encounter in Spaceship Earth. This was by far our most expensive WDW trip we’ve ever taken, and it was not extravagant by any means. A few years ago I decided I didn’t mind paying more for a little bit of an upgraded experience - staying at moderate or deluxe resorts, special events, LL/whatever they’re calling it at the time, Park Hoppers, etc. But I feel like if/when we do go back again, we will be back to a budget-traveler mindset. Value resort, shorter trip…maybe even staying off-site which I swore I would never do… I’m not sure yet, but the $$$$ experience just doesn’t feel worth it to me unless I truly had unlimited funds and could go all out.
Since we skipped Memory Maker and I am really bad about taking photos, we didn’t end up with a ton of all three of us:
