As I wind down a family vacation in the Orlando, FL area, visiting the major theme parks of the area I've made some observations that I can rant a bit about.
I remember Drag posted a great review and commentary about the costs / benefits of staying at Disney's Polynesian resort. I won't rehash it, but will remind others that they can always dig up those comments on their own.
Meanwhile, in my case, my wife made arrangements for this vacation after receiving an invite from a large hotelier type company with a name that begins with Marr.... The invite was for 5 days/ 4 nites at an ....iot vacation club resort. Basically a time share sales pitch that let those that didn't mind giving up a few hours of time during their stay get a fairly inexpensive stay, including a discount on the park tickets. A friend asked if we got tickets to the amusement parks for free, as he mentioned doing similar type things in the past (listen to spiel, get free tickets to parks, etc.) In our case, the wife bought the amusement park tickets for Disney via the vacation club concierge/sales department. The invitation to the sales pitch included a $100 discount on the park tickets (not bad, not great.... other deals are out there if you want to look and put up with the sales pitch(es) that may be involved). That discount was applied to tickets for the Mouse's parks. Thanks to internet searching, she (the wife) also found a deal on the big Universe's parks (Islands of things called Adventures, and Studios that are Universal).
A cheer should go out to the sales folks from the Marriott family. They were (at least for us) *not high pressure* at all. The sales person was polite, friendly and cheerful, and very patient explaining the product that she was trying to sell to us. My personal opinion is that -- at least for my family -- the vacation club package for the particular property that was offered is not something I could ever see myself do. Florida is nice, but it's not a short drive (it's reasonable, but not terribly short), and though flights can be had fairly cheaply priced, by the time I add transportation (cabs, buses, rental cars, etc.), and then add on the maintenance fees (home owners association type fees) that are also required on top of the payments for the time share component (which is sold at a none-too-friendly high interest rate if you take the offered financing), you really are not getting a fantastic deal. In later years, when you are only paying the maintenance fees (if they don't increase much over the 10 years that would normally encompass the payments for the club), you'd be getting a better deal. If you had plenty of cash and/or liquidity to get better financing (personal loan, home equity loan, etc.) then things could be improved, but still my simple and quick math told me that it didn't make much sense for my family at this time.
There were some advantages that made it tempting, but again, not enough to make a sale. With that said, if you are a homeowner, have a moderate to moderately high (apparently a requirement that someone thought I met {grin}) income level, and want an invite to the sales pitch (which includes the deeply discounted room stay and the discounted amusement tickets), you can let me know your e-mail address somehow and I'll forward your info along. Understand, I'm not trying to sell for anyone, and don't want to pressurize anyone. I'd just be putting interested parties into contact with a sales rep if they wanted to check things for themselves.
On to the jeers regarding some of the parks.
First, if you are not in decent shape, or like my spouse, have a mild handicap and aren't able to walk easily, the Orlando area parks are almost a death sentence. Unless you have money to rent a wheelchair or better yet get an ECV (electronic wheel chair) or have one of your own, you'll be pretty miserable walking around the parks. Universal has their city walk area, and you have to walk through it to get to the amusement parks. By the time you walk through the city walk area, you are already tired. Add on the amusement park areas and the walks to get back to the major attractions that you might want to see or enjoy, you'll be near committing suicide. My wife was worn out and completely frazzled by Universal. It was fun, the amusements were enjoyable, but with summer heat on top of the bad joints and walking problems, by the end of the nite she was pretty much in tears trying to leave the park -- even with many rest stops along the way, much time spent seated at attractions and shows, and other "rest stops."
My wife doesn't have her own scooter / wheel chair, though she is medically certified as handicapped, and can't walk long distances due to the handicap and being overweight (much like myself).
Cheers to both Universal and Disney for trying to accomodate handicapped individuals and make parking more convenient, but jeers to both for the actual execution. For Universal, the parking in Orlando is done in either of two (as best I could tell) huge garages. If you are very lucky, you can get a space in a disabled parking / preferred parking area, but you could still wind up walking a good way just down the row of parked vehicles. Once you get to the end of the row, if you are lucky, you can climb aboard a conveyor belt type moving walkway without going too far out of your way, and without having to walk too far to get to an entry point. The walkways are broken up into sections with entries about halfway up/down the length of the area to walk. If you are unlucky, you'll have to walk a long way to get to entry points.
Universal apparently also offers some sort of Valet parking, and if you have a ton of disposable income, you might even stay at one of the on-site properties (Hard Rock Cafe Hotel as an example). Not cheap, but I suppose it might help make the walking easier....
Disney tries to make the parking convenient but fails miserably in ways. Apparently in a move for safety purposes, they don't run their trams down through the disability parking areas. They do make available (when they have enough personnel to push them back to the designated slots on the parking lots) courtesy wheelchairs, but they are near one corner/end only, and that means that someone in the party must go grab a wheelchair if one is available and desired (assuming you don't own your own), wheel it through the length of the parking lot, and then push the party member with the disability through the lenght of the parking lot. Then the walk goes from the edge of the parking row across some distance down to the transportation center (for Magic Kingdom) or down to the park gates (at MGM or Epcot). Again, it's about like walking through Universal's City walk area, though without the commercialism there.
We tried to do the regular parking and just park closer to the Tram pickup/drop off point, and were harrassed by a Disney parking gestapo riding along on a Segway. Instead of accomodating the simple request to let us park at the end of the row that would have been near the tram stop, we were instead directed down to the disability parking area. Great, even though we have a handicap permit, we were taking up a spot that some other park guest could have used, and my wife was again forced to walk along through that much more distance again. If Disney would wise up a bit, they put some handicap spaces for non-wheelchair needs at the ends of their parking rows nearest their tram stops. It would save walking distances, allow those people to use the trams, and keep the wheelchair users spaces open.
It would also help if some of the parking assistants/enforcers would be better in their handling of customers that are trying to work within the existing system {frown}
Enough on the parking issues.... on to a few other jeers...
Jeers to both Disney and Universal for their fast pass and Express pass systems in their current configuration. In theory, nice features, but in execution, very bad. I understand the need to keep customers from abusing the systems, and the desire to spread out the passes and keep the crowds controlled at the various attractions, but the existing system is badly broken. Example: get a fast pass at Disney for any attraction, and then you'll be prevented from getting another fast pass for approximately (couldn't confirm the exact time, but I think I'm correct here) 3 hours, if not more. Universal is similar, but.... they have a cheer and jeer combined coming for their fix to the system. I wouldn't fault the 3 hours between fast pass hand-outs *if* the system would allow you to get another fast pass for a different attraction if the first pass you got can't be used during that initial 3 hour "waiting for the next available pass" window. In other words, if you get a fast pass for Space Moutain, and the pass can't be used for 5 hours, you should be able to get another pass for something else that could be used within the 3 hour waiting time. Without some sort of fix to the system, fast passes are basically useless. You get a fast pass for a very popular attraction that can't be used for 6 hours, then can't get another fast pass for another 3 hours, and by then normally all of the passes have been given out for the popular attraction... thus, you are stuck waiting in the "standby" lines (normal lines) at the regular line times (i.e., 60 minutes or more each), and by the end of the day you realize you only got through 4 attractions by the time you walk from one popular attraction to the next and by the time you deal with the lines. In a place where you are offered say 40 - 60 different possible attractions/shows to try to enjoy, only seeing and/or getting to do 4 is pretty ridiculous.
I realize that Disney wants you to come back over multiple days, but adding the cost for additional nites in hotels on top of the additional days of park visits, rolled on top of using up valuable vacation time makes things pretty uneconomical. Of course you can add expensive options like "Park Hopper" for Disney (so you can go between the various parks in the same day at will), but then you hit the same wait times for popular attractions, and adding in transportation times between the parks leaves things at the same point. Again, the fast pass system seems to need work, at least to a point of letting an average park visitor be guaranteed a way to get quicker admission to say 3 or 4 attractions at a minimum on an average day (average being 8 hours or so in the park).
Universal is a bit better, as they at least offer a chance to see the pass effective time on the screen before actually spitting out the pass. Disney shows that info, but doesn't offer a verification before giving out the pass. Once Disney spits out the pass, you're stuck. Universal shows the effective time, then verifies that you want to accept the pass. But again, the waiting time between getting passes and the popularity of the various attractions means many people can't get passes at all for many attractions, and by the time you mix in the usual tropical weather (afternoon rain/t-storms) for the Orlando area, many passes are handed out and never used. Poor execution indeed.
With that said about Universal, they get the cheer/jeer combo for making available a "value added" service: Express Plus. Park visitors can buy an Express Plus upgrade (separate ticket actually) once in the park. You can get a combo park Express Plus which is usuable at both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios, or just get a single park version. The single park version is $35 per day. The combo version is $50 per day. That's a per person charge. So.... on top of the charge for the park tickets, you add on another $35 or $50 to get Express Plus entry passes.
Except for the cost, Express Plus is a pretty nice service. Pay the fee and you are able to use the Express lines at all attractions. No hassles with getting Express tickets (like Fast passes) for any attractions. Show the Express Plus card at the attractions, and bingo, enter the Express line, typically expected to be 15 minutes or less to the actual attraction. Pretty nice actually, but one restriction remains: you can only use the Express Plus service at any one attraction once per day. The Express Plus card is supposed to be scanned or marked at each attraction, so you can't use the card again twice at any attraction. That's actually a good thing in most cases, as it prevents someone from just repeatedly getting quick entry to the same popular attraction again and again (meaning others would not be able to get into the attraction). But, it can be a bad thing if the attraction experiences any problems once the card is scanned. You can either be stuck waiting in line between the scan point and the actual attraction, or you can abandon your point in the line and go harrass someone to get them to give you some sort of rain check type pass to get back in the Express line. Assuming that someone cares to actually help. This actually happened to my family, as we got stuck in that twilight zone and wound up shutout of one ride. As it turns out, we got great customer service from one of the park Ambassadors that took us to the front of the line for another attraction to make up for the lost time spent waiting out a very long delay on a broken ride. It did help to make up for what was quickly becoming a waste of money to buy the Express Plus option at all.
For the most part, Express Plus is a nice deal, but the costs seem a bit high, and worse yet, the Express Plus service is sold only one day at a time. You can't add the option to multiple days worth of tickets. That can be good and bad. Really, if you use the option in the best manner and aren't stuck at any broken attractions, you can actually propably cover most (if not all) of the major attractions at Universal and Islands of Adventure by using the Express Plus service. That can save you the costs of additional days of park entries, so it may balance out in the end.
Disney at Orlando deserves jeers for implementing some sort of stupid ticket entry system that "measures" park visitor's finger lengths. They don't keep enough people operating the entry turnstyles, and the system they use is confusing and finnicky enough to slow down park guests and make for delays in entering the parks.
I don't remember problems getting through the gates at Universal except for the number of actually open turnstyles being insufficient. I guess unemployment is low enough in the Orlando area to keep the number of personnel willing to or available to work those jobs at insufficient levels.
Both organizations do a decent enough job once in the various parks, though I would say Epcot was understaffed on maintenance/clean up personnnel. I saw one foreign language speaking young female visitor slip and fall on rain soaked bathroom entry area floors that were not marked as "slippery when wet," and saw another park visitor slipping and near tripping over a water bottle plastic cap that was discarded carelessly onto the ground by a park visitor. Disney's Magic Kingdom seemed to have far more people cleaning up refuse on the ground, including sweeping up popcorn that was tossed to birds that were being fed by park visitors.
I think that covers the things I'd cheer and jeer at the various parks.
Oh, one last thing I guess... a comment or two on a few Disney attractions. Disney's Hall of Presidents seems to have taken on a tone of political correctness. They heavily mention (or seemed so to me) slavery and civil rights much more than I recall from my visit to Disney back in my youth. A similar attraction at Epcot reminded me of the same thing. I don't recall so much preachiness during my youtful visits. It's almost like Disney has called in the NAACP to write the speeches, or at least wrote them in response to past criticisms of the "Disneyfied versions of history." (I remember many complaints when Disney was exploring the possibility of opening Disney America in the D.C. area, a park that never came to be).
Sorry if the long article came out boring. Hopefully the info is useful to someone else down the way.
