Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[CampbellzSoup]

…where is all the merch? Christmas stuff is almost nonexistent.

 

[scrappinginontario]

…where is all the merch? Christmas stuff is almost nonexistent.

Nothing to support it but I believe it’s as others have suspected and Disney is having the same supply chain challenges many other places are having. I know retail around here has been facing it for a long time now.

 

[Aimeedyan]

…where is all the merch? Christmas stuff is almost nonexistent.

We walked away without a Christmas ornament last week because there is so limited options. Even the Christmas store at DS was only 1/3 ornaments - the rest was filled with other merchandise. Absolutely no glass ornaments and the only Mickey ornament they had was a Disney cruise and a graduation Mickey!

They are having big supply issues. We decided we'll just buy our two year old's annual ornament once stock is better (he'll never know!).

 

[loves to dive]

Wen. Dec. 16. Not my best day so far this trip, not a bad day but not my best. Was all breakfasted up and at the bus stop for HS at 7 am for 7:30 resort guests opening. My first bad bus, didn't come for 1/2 hour still got there by 7:30 so o.k. Walked over to Rise only to find it down already? My bad for not checking MDE on that one but how can it be down before it started? So off to MMRR which already had a 40 min. wait at 7:40. Stood in line and it was indeed 40 min. I had ridden everything I wanted to the night before and everything was already up to a hour wait so I shopped a little then went to watch Frozen. I'm not a fan of the movie but love that show. It was crowded so I left and went back to the resort. Had lunch and shopped at the resort then off to AK. It rained right when I got there and my umbrella broke but was still sort of useful. I was only there because I wanted to see some shows so I did. Went to Birds in Flight which I enjoyed, walked to the front of the park and saw the last show of the birds at the Tree of Life. Went to Festival of the Lion King - I miss the tumble monkeys. Then off to Kite Tails. I know it gets a lot of flack but I thought it was cute. Then shopped, finally found some Christmas gifts. Watched the Tree of Life awakenings and back to the resort. I did walk up at Three Bridges, which was excellent food and excellent service. For the first time this trip I was in bed by 9:30.

All and all a relaxing sort of day. Only did one ride but I've basically done everything I've wanted to already in all 4 parks.

This morning it's MK to ride CoP and maybe People Mover again, gotta go to the bakery then off to Disney Springs. I haven't been over there since it was DD Disney probably 10 years but I have the time and need a few more Christmas gifts. Tonight I'll end the trip at Epcot.

 

[NeverlandClub23]

We’re here now staying in a cabin at Copper Creek at Wilderness Lodge (resort and cabin are absolutely beautiful). We’ve been coming every year since 1993 and we were just here in July and last December. It is definitely busier than we have seen it in a very long time. Extra magic hours at MK last night were wonderful. We have had lovely interactions with CM’s and several guests (along with just one “bad” interaction where I said “excuse me” to a child rubbing his plastic sword up and down the insides of my legs 3 times and the mother telling me “he’s just a child” and to “grow up”). So it does seem like some people are on edge, but we’ve had a pretty wonderful experience outside of the parks and during extra magic hours. Hope everyone has the same or better!

 

[ThistleMae]

It is very crowded in the parks, with long wait times. I do believe the Genie+ and LL$ rides make the stand-by wait times much longer than they should be. We stood in place for about 15 min. in the 7DMT line at one point. Lines are moving slow as they let those other folks in.

 

[MusicalAstronaut]

It is very crowded in the parks, with long wait times. I do believe the Genie+ and LL$ rides make the stand-by wait times much longer than they should be. We stood in place for about 15 min. in the 7DMT line at one point. Lines are moving slow as they let those other folks in.

Oh, absolutely. If people didn't believe us about this with Fastpass, they've now had over a year of regular standby lines to see just how true this is. My past three trips were in the last weekend of August, November, and December. It was instantly obvious how much slower the standby lines moved in November & December. It's been frustrating to go back to that.

 

[MusicalAstronaut]

I'll be heading down this Saturday-Tuesday, so if I don't forget I'll report back haha. I was also there Dec 3-5 (my usual time for December) and I second what everyone else is saying - crazy crowded compared to previous years. Here's a quick brain dump of that I remember most!

Loooooooooooong lines thanks to G+/LL. People ripping masks off the second they get on a ride, so I literally came home with ONE photopass pic. Thanks, jerks. Long lines at the Festival of the Holidays booths, which I think was because of the cookie stroll. I've never seen people get so upset with CM's over a plastic cup & mediocre cookie. Folks, be kind, and if that plastic souvenir cup means that much to you, make sure to get the stamps at the food booths. Myself & one other woman were pulled out a huge line by a CM at the "cookie redemption booth" because we were just there to buy something. Another woman got in front of us and spend FOREVER arguing with 4 different CM's to get cups/cookies for everyone in her party (I guess some of them didn't get their passports stamped? I didn't care). Just.....seriously, be nice to the CMs. That being said, I tried to avoid the cookie stroll booths but sadly those were also the booths with the beer flights. Best beer flight was in America, best cookie I had was the Spaceship Earth one. I RD'd ROTR and waited just over 20 minutes. I love that ride so much! Living with the Land holiday overlay is still awesome. I lovelovelove Illuminations and I went into Harmonious ready to hate it out of principle. I loved it, haha, and it seemed like you could have a great view of it from anywhere in WS. It was great to see the Candlelight Processional again. At Gideon's in DS I got the special "one day only" mint cake - GET THIS IF YOU CAN. Apparently they're doing it once a week this month, a different day each time. Follow them on IG but I think they're also doing it Thursday (today? Their post said "Thursday only this week") but you might get lucky and snag a leftover one tomorrow morning. Like I said, parks were crazy, so I did stuff I sometimes skip like tiki room, teacups, and carousel of progress. Always fun! Cookies & milk (coquito) at Jock Lindsay's was a fun choice, do this with a friend. That's about all for now....I too was disappointed at the lack of Christmas ornaments in the parks. Speaking of supply chain issues, Brown Derby has changed their bloody mary mix & it's god awful. Just a heads up lol.

 

[CampbellzSoup]

Also I’ll write up a whole trip report when I come home as I had an awesome time at Universal today their Christmas parade was legit amazing and the grinch show and it was all included in the basic ticket..,

Enchantment was meh…NO emotional pull what so ever and I didn’t want to hop on the negative train when everyone was, but man was it awful. Also what was with featuring Coco, Princess and the Frog, and Moana so heavily? Why toss classic disney out. Happily ever after hit I think a nice balance of everything. I legit went into it with an open mind and felt so disappointed.

Harmonious…I’m not sure what that was but it was pretty. The soundtrack was just so all over the place…no “heart warming feeling” either. I guess I’m just getting older in my mid thirties and place too much on those emotional moments these shows gave me in the past. I know I’m not just looking on nostalgia as Epcot Forever was entertaining and cohesive.

 

[MakiraMarlena]

had a blast last week, but was resigned to doing few if any rides. Did a few at MK extra evening, Remy twice on VQ, must ride Living with the Land with holiday lights. got rid of one park reservation and did a Springs day with dinner at Ohana. No issues with food or Epcot booth lines. Space 220 was not able to take Patina gift card even though it was on the list of participating restaurants.

Merchandise stocks are impacted by supply chain issues. Not enough 50th anniversary merchandise to go around. Favorite holiday nosh was the cookies and milk at Jock's.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

It was very clear when we were there in early Dec that Disney is having supply issues. There is no way they would let a 50th Anniversary and a Christmas season that followed a greatly reduced Covid 2020 Christmas season, go by without shelves full of anniversary merchandise and Christmas decorations. They are losing a lot of money, and we know that's not in any business plan for any business. Seems like the only people making out well right now are those 'personal shoppers' who somehow are in the know when products are hitting the shelves at WDW, get to the parks early to buy them, and then sell them for a nice markup online. Of course, that adds to the situation where day-to-day guests don't see items on the shelves.

 

[Day-al]

To the supply chain issues: I’m wondering if/when a bunch of random merch is going to show up in the parks after being unloaded from a container ship months too late? Will things dated “2021” be sent immediately to the outlets? Will undated Christmas merch just be held in a warehouse until next year? Will more 50th merch arrive sporadically? It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

 

[disneyseniors]

Also I’ll write up a whole trip report when I come home as I had an awesome time at Universal today their Christmas parade was legit amazing and the grinch show and it was all included in the basic ticket..,

Enchantment was meh…NO emotional pull what so ever and I didn’t want to hop on the negative train when everyone was, but man was it awful. Also what was with featuring Coco, Princess and the Frog, and Moana so heavily? Why toss classic disney out. Happily ever after hit I think a nice balance of everything. I legit went into it with an open mind and felt so disappointed.

Harmonious…I’m not sure what that was but it was pretty. The soundtrack was just so all over the place…no “heart warming feeling” either. I guess I’m just getting older in my mid thirties and place too much on those emotional moments these shows gave me in the past. I know I’m not just looking on nostalgia as Epcot Forever was entertaining and cohesive.

Hi: Universal is fantastic. Can you tell us more about your day at USO? It is so nice to have so much included in your admission price. IMO, that's the way it should be at a theme park

 

[Dakota731]

I laugh as I read this thread observing how people can be at WDW the same time and have opposite experiences. We spent the last seven days at AKL
Our highlights:
1) Crowds and lines didn’t seem any worse than any other of our trips. We didn’t do lightening or genie and still rode every single ride in each park!
2) Cast members were all great and helpful. I can’t remember a rude encounter at all.
3) Park guests were super nice and friendly as well. People were sweet to my little guys and constantly apologized when running into any of us. I do think people have better dispositions in the cooler weather than in the summer.
4) Buses were prompt and frequent. The longest we waited was ten minutes.
5) Food was great and as much as I dreaded mobile ordering, I loved it. It was a big time saver.
Lowlights
1) MASKS
2) Waited till six for our room to be ready though it ended up being a highlight since a cast member asked us to make feeders for the animals, so the kids enjoyed that. We never usually take the time to do resort activities.
I must say that all the negativity on these boards had me worried, but all of us (three generations) had an amazing trip!!

 

[meghanmione]

I laugh as I read this thread observing how people can be at WDW the same time and have opposite experiences. We spent the last seven days at AKL
Our highlights:
1) Crowds and lines didn’t seem any worse than any other of our trips. We didn’t do lightening or genie and still rode every single ride in each park!
2) Cast members were all great and helpful. I can’t remember a rude encounter at all.
3) Park guests were super nice and friendly as well. People were sweet to my little guys and constantly apologized when running into any of us. I do think people have better dispositions in the cooler weather than in the summer.
4) Buses were prompt and frequent. The longest we waited was ten minutes.
5) Food was great and as much as I dreaded mobile ordering, I loved it. It was a big time saver.
Lowlights
1) MASKS
2) Waited till six for our room to be ready though it ended up being a highlight since a cast member asked us to make feeders for the animals, so the kids enjoyed that. We never usually take the time to do resort activities.
I must say that all the negativity on these boards had me worried, but all of us (three generations) had an amazing trip!!

So happy you had a wonderful time! Makes me super excited for my trip in Feb I admit a lot of the negatives have made me apprehensive also, but posts like yours help a lot and I'm glad it was a great time.

 

[CampbellzSoup]

Hi: Universal is fantastic. Can you tell us more about your day at USO? It is so nice to have so much included in your admission price. IMO, that's the way it should be at a theme park

much more detail when I come home but between the grinch meet the fabulous parade the Hogwarts castle light show and the grinchmas we had an AMAZING time at universal! I truly mean it. More when I get home but trust me for Christmas you will not regret it. It even snowed and had confetti during the parade here! We did the very merriest after party and it was fun but the parade was definitely watered down from before. The fireworks from that show were a true highlight though disney does fireworks right!

one of my favorite memories

 

[Pens Fan]

We were there from the 3rd - 12th and had a wonderful trip. I think for us we kind of went into this trip with lower expectations. We'd been there in Oct (pre Genie) and while that trip was fun the crowds, heat and understaffing definitely got to us as the week went on. It was the first time in my life I was happy to leave WDW and go home. With that in mind, we tried to keep our expectations in check for the Dec trip and we ended up having a fantastic time. Was it the magic of Christmas at Disney? Possibly, but it was more than that. There were good points and low points:

- While there are still obvious staffing issues / shortages (where aren't they though?) it felt as if things were improving quite a bit vs even October. Transportation while not perfect, was better, CM's seemed less stressed and we especially noticed the difference at TS restaurants that seemed almost back to the great Disney service we'd come to expect in the past.

- Yeah, it's crowded, but we felt it was manageable.

- CM's were great - if you're missing the magic just interact with a CM. They still get it.

- We loved the after hours Christmas party. We were at the one on the 7th and had a fantastic time. I'd do that again for sure.

- OK - Genie + /LL. When this was announced I was pretty disappointed in Disney. If I'm being totally honest, my anger at that decision probably clouded my enjoyment of our October trip. I still don't particularly like it, but for us it's a necessary evil I guess. I hate the fact that we have to pay for it on top of the already ridiculous ticket prices, but what bugs me the most is you can't book them ahead of time. Whoever thought tourists want to get up before 7 AM on their vacation and fight the crappy MDE app should be fired. That part sucks. However, we aren't rope droppers and we have no desire to stand in an hour or more line for anything. So we basically just sucked it up and said if we are going to go to Disney we need to figure this out. Bottom line: we had 6 day tickets and bought Genie + for 3 days. We bought "fancy rides" for RotR, MMRR, Remy and KS. We managed to get all the popular rides we were interested in during that time and just winged it the other days. One day we only went to the Christmas party and took advantage of that for SDMT and some other MK heavy hitters. It worked for us and gave us a more enjoyable time vs our Oct trip where our choice was to wait 45 to an hour for many rides or just skip them. So all in all, while I hate a lot about the new system, we felt it did give us a better experience vs everything being standby. Not a popular opinion, I know, but it's how we felt. I'd still rather have FP+ back, but that ship has sailed.

- As a side note about Genie +, you really need to pay attention when you confirm your selection. As many others have mentioned, the time you click on often changes before you can confirm it. This happened to us - a lot! One time it even moved backward by several hours to a time when we already had something else booked. Frustrating!

- While the Christmas decorations were somewhat limited compared to pre Covid times, the parks and resorts were still beautiful - especially at night. The Candlelight Processional was as special as before and we were so glad to have it back. Christmas at Disney is still just wonderful.

- One day we were waiting for the HS bus at WL and after about 5 minutes a DVC van pulled up, asked where we were going and said hop in! He ended up taking us and another family directly to HS. Pixie Dust!!

- On a negative note, the ADR system is a joke right now. It's hard enough to make your reservations at 60 days out with everything not running at full capacity, but we had quite a few things where they simply hadn't loaded the system out far enough for people to book at 60 days. If you called or tried a chat, they just told you it was already booked even though it was pretty obvious that wasn't true. Then days or weeks later, they would randomly open up the reservations, but if you weren't using a reservation finder service or just happened to be online at the right time you were out of luck. There are so few on site hotel perks left, it's pretty sad that one of the few remaining can often be worthless if the ADR you're looking for hasn't even been made available in time to book it at 60 days. I've never worked so hard to plan a Disney trip as I did for this one. This needs to be fixed, but I doubt it will be because I really don't think they care.

All in all, while I'm pretty unhappy about the current Disney management team, and hate all the hassles of booking things on a basically broken app, when we were actually there it was still Disney and still magical - at least for us. We had a wonderful trip and are already planning on coming back next December.

 

[katyjeka]

Our two week trip has come to an end. We had a lot of ups and very few downs!!! We have visited over the time frame many times and I admit I was a little surprised at the amount of people in the parks. Crowds have never bothered us and this remained true on this trip. We purchased Floridian pixie passes although we live in Pa. most of the year. We activated our passes at Disney Springs, had a bank statement and home insurance to use as proof. The cast member did not take a second to look at them. I'm not sure if we got someone who didn't care but the papers never left the envelopes!! We did not purchase Genie and never felt we needed it. We did however have 12 days in the park which allowed us to ride favorites several times. I do believe early on made all the difference with us. Club Bonnet Creek was as awesome as ever and for the 1350.00 we paid for the entire stay it remains the biggest bargain in the area. I used my employee rate for Hilton Signia for early entry but never slept in the room. Our lodging total was under 2000.00! We did not encounter a single rude cast member actually they were some of the nicest we remember. The men at the skyliner were so sweet and had us laughing so hard. We missed the passports at Epcot but understood the reason they didn't have them. We enjoyed the nightly shows and thought Kite Tails was comical. A one time and done show. I won't comment on food because we've never been big supporters of Disney food. Most snacks looked better than they tasted..The eggnog cupcake was excellent. I consider our trip a success and am thankful we had the opportunity to go. This will be our last trip for awhile as our family has outgrown the parks. We discovered national parks and have decided that's it time to expand our horizons. For anyone planning a trip please do not panic when you read a bad review. I was second guessing our trip after reading so many negatives and we ended up having a great trip.

 

[shh]

I've never seen people get so upset with CM's over a plastic cup & mediocre cookie. Folks, be kind, and if that plastic souvenir cup means that much to you, make sure to get the stamps at the food booths.

omg. what is WRONG with people? To make a fuss over something so small. Has everyone totally lost all perspective in life? Are there any mature adults left? #sickofpeople.

 

[shh]

Universal today their Christmas parade was legit amazing and the grinch show and it was all included in the basic ticket..,

Right? We returned from a recent trip and just loved their holiday experience.