Today is the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World, which opened on October 1, 1971. When I was seven years old, my family visited Disney World during its first year, which consisted of two hotels and the Magic Kingdom. Since then, my family and I have visited every few years, most recently in 2017 and again in Fall 2018, and watched it expand to four amazing theme parks, two water parks, hundreds of restaurants, a wonderful shopping district, more than two dozen hotels and more. We were all booked to go with Ben in June of 2020 as his college graduation present, but that was cancelled due to the pandemic.
I am very aware that it is a privilege to go to WDW and we are very lucky in that regard. It's expensive as hell and way too many people will just never be able to afford to do it, which sucks. There are ways you can go to WDW without spending thousands of dollars, but to experience everything it has to offer is beyond the means of most people. To some degree this is entirely understandable, because high demand means higher prices, but that reality is unfortunate. I'm also aware that Disney underpays its employees and really needs to do better.
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| The entrance to Be Our Guest restaurant. |
While we've usually gone with our kids (now adults), Carol and I also went by ourselves in 2018. Lots of people say they don't understand why adults would go to Disney World without children. For me, it's because Disney is my happy place. It's immersive, fun, exciting, and just plain awesome. I have never had a bad time there.
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| Space Mountain loading zone. |
The sheer volume of experiences available at WDW is staggering. The parks have dark rides, roller coasters, more traditional carnival-type rides, simulators, walk-throughs, and cutting edge attractions no one else has. The parks, hotels and restaurants are wonderfully, meticulously themed, whether to existing Disney IP or not, and excellently staffed to maximize guest immersion in the fantasy, whether it be Africa, Hollywood of the 1940s, the Old West, colonial America, the future, or countries around the world. I've been to other amusement parks and most are haphazardly themed. The closest another park comes to the Disney standard are the two Harry Potter areas of Universal Studios, which are excellent. But the rest of Universal Studios park doesn't even come close. Disney is just the best.
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| Sanaa Restaurant at Animal Kingdom Lodge, at Kidani Village. |
In the lead-up to the 50th anniversary, Disney announced plans for major ride refurbishments, and the creation of new rides, restaurants and hotels. While some of those plans have been finished, and some are under construction, some were abandoned due to the pandemic. It's not entirely clear why Disney changed their minds.
Unfortunately, Disney has taken the opportunity of the pandemic to make some less than welcome changes. For example, their Fastpass system allowed anyone with a park ticket to pre-reserve a place in line for three rides at a time, allowing you to skip long lines. Disney has announced that the free Fastpass is no more, replaced by a paid system. If you want to skip lines, now it will cost you. They've also made changes to beloved perks you'd get from staying at Disney hotels like free Magic Bands and Extra Magic Hours, which allowed you to stay in the parks after hours. Going forward, the extra hours are restricted only to those staying in the most expensive Disney hotels on property.
We've seen this behavior before, during the 1990s. Pulling back guest perks and terminating announced plans is a sign that Disney's penny-pinchers have taken control. Keep in mind, this is a company that makes $1 billion every time they release a Marvel movie. Now that they seem to be entering "cheap mode", things might be dicey for a while. (And, yes, I'm aware that they have invested a ton on the parks over the past five years.) But cheaping out was a big mistake in the 90s, and it's a mistake now, especially on the 50th Anniversary.
Still, there's lots we haven't seen yet, including Star Wars Galaxy's Edge, and we can't wait to go back.
2 comments:
So if a family of 4 went to Disney world for 2 weeks at peak time (July-August) and stayed in the most expensive hotel for the entire fortnight and indulged in literally everything that WDW had to offer for say 14 hours-a-day every day approximately how much would it cost ?.
The most expensive hotels are between $600-1000 a night. Tickets for four over 14 days would actually be the most reasonable item, as they get cheaper the longer you stay. But still, at least a couple thousand dollars. Assuming you didn't try for any discounts, you could spend over $20,000. And that doesn't include the new Star Wars hotel which is going to be two nights for approximately $5,000.
All that being said, it is possible to stay at cheaper hotels, or even off-site, and save a considerable amount of money. But it's still an expensive vacation.
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