Category — p. News and Changes

ACT FAST FOR THE BEST DEAL…

One of the current Walt Disney World offers has a discount off of room rates.

It is, however, a moving target–you get five percentage points more of discount if you book by 12/31 than if you book after.

So if you want the full value of this discount, book it soon!

For details of this Disney deal, see this.

POPPING THE QUESTION AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

Dee recently asked (via a comment on this page):

“I am thinking about taking my girlfriend to Disney World and proposing to her there.  Any suggestions where?”

OK, I know that this is both off the topic of this site, and outside my expertise.

But I do wander off topic every now and then.

And I know that some frequent readers of this site will have great suggestions!

If you can help, share your ideas by using the comment form below! [Read more →]

John Frost of The Disney Blog has posted an interesting update on Walt Disney World’s Fantasyland expansion plans. 

You can find John’s post here.

RENOVATIONS AT DISNEY’S OLD KEY WEST RESORT

As noted multiple places—see this for the entry in the Disney Parks blog—Disney’s Old Key West Resort has been undergoing room renovations since the spring of 2010.

This follows an exterior rehab that was completed just the year before.

I had a chance to stay in one of the newly-renovated one-bedrooms in mid-November, and what follows are my thoughts.

In short, the changes are welcome and wonderful, especially for returning visitors, but don’t change its ranking for first-time visitors. [Read more →]

CROWD CALENDAR UPDATED BASED ON JUNE 2011 DATA

My Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar is based largely on analysis of Disney World-provided data.

I have incorporated Disney’s recent release of June operating hours into the Walt Disney World crowd calendar.  You can find it here.

TOURINGPLANS.COM NOW PROVIDING HISTORICAL CROWD DATA

I’ve always suggested checking other crowd forecasts besides mine, and have always recommended touringplans.com as the first to check.

TouringPlans.com has gone through a renaissance of features and services over the past year or so, and one of their great new adds is a historical version of their crowd calendar, here.

A great use of the historical forecasts is to check something that seems odd to you.

For example, if the upcoming Columbus Day forecasts seem off to you, you can see how it was forecast in past years, as an additional data point.

Another advantage of the historical crowd calendar is that past days are rated according to touringplans.com’s current approach to labeling crowds.

This lets you relate touringplans.com’s new rating system with your own experiences of the parks by looking up their ratings of dates you were there.  (See this for more on the new system.)

For example, if you are not sure what a “3” rating means, but discover from the historical crowd rating that you were at the parks on “2” and “4” days last year…you can figure out what a “3” means!

NEW DISNEY WORLD SUMMER ITINERARY

The other day I released a new Summer Itinerary for Walt Disney World (click the image for a summary).

The new itinerary was forced by the recently released Walt Disney World June calendar.

This calendar showed a different pattern of Extra Magic Hours than in years past.

The required re-write also gave me the opportunity to reconsider a couple of things that were not as good as they could be.

The overall impact is a new summer itinerary that’s a little simpler, a little less demanding, and a little less expensive. [Read more →]