Thanks for a Great 2012!

By Dave Shute

2012 at yourfirstvisit.net

Thanks to all of you for once again making this a great year!

I write to help–and to be able to help, have to be read. And for some reason, you keep coming! In July, the two millionth visitor dropped by, and in October a page was read here for the ten millionth time. Thousands of you asked questions, and through these I made new friends like Troy and Joan and Joanne.

Right now you are coming by at a monthly run-rate of more than 250,000 visits and almost a million pageviews a month. Fourteen months ago, the equivalent monthly numbers were just 70,000 visits and 300,000 pageviews, so thank you so much for telling your friends about the site, posting links to it on your own websites and blogs, pinning it, and liking it on Facebook!

(And thanks especially to Steve, and to the Magical Blogorail gang–particularly Mike.)

This was also a year of big investments in this site, including moving it to a dedicated server in June, and buying and redirecting to here yourfirstvisit.com in October.

A YEAR OF REVIEWS IN REVIEW

Another big investment was completing in 2012 the multi-year task of staying in, and writing reviews of, every single Walt Disney World resort, including all the major resort subdivisions, and all the distinctly different room types.

In 2012, I stayed for multiple nights in and reviewed

• The Yacht Club
• Caribbean Beach Standard Rooms
• Caribbean Beach Pirate Rooms
• The Beach Club Villas
• Art of Animation Family Suites
• All-Star Music Family Suites
• Art of Animation Standard Rooms
• Port Orleans Riverside Alligator Bayou 5 person rooms
• Port Orleans Riverside Royal Rooms, and
• Old Key West (re-written review to come soon)

(You can find links to all these reviews here.)

Some of these visits were to resorts or room types that were new, some I just hadn’t gotten to yet, and some were revisits after major renovations, or to re-test hotel rankings. But as a result I am now one of the few people odd enough to have stayed for multiple nights in and reviewed every single Walt Disney World significant hotel option…

There’s more to do here next year—I need to complete re-visiting the moderates to ensure that the rankings of them are still valid after so many, but not all, now have queen beds (hence the multiple 2012 visits to Caribbean Beach and Port Orleans Riverside).

But at least until the Disney Vacation Club section the Grand Floridian opens, this site’s “Where to Stay” section is now complete!

Also this year lots of new rides and attractions opened, especially in Fantasyland. Some reviews of these are up, the rest will be finished in January—but I can already tell you that Enchanted Tales with Belle and the re-done Test Track are the best of what was new in 2012.

And what else is on the docket for next year? Well, NextGen is coming…which I suspect will have profound implications for many…see for example this and this….and perhaps require some major re-writes to this site’s itineraries and to-do lists.

All in, I plan to have a ball in 2013, and to make this site better, and hope you will all come along for the ride!

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