Category — p. News and Changes

I just completed and published my updated review of Disney’s Yacht Club Resort. The updated Yacht Club review begins here, and has six pages in total:

• Overview and Summary of Disney’s Yacht Club Resort
• Accommodations and Theming at the Yacht Club
• A photo tour of a Yacht Club room
• Dining at the Yacht Club
• Amenities at the Yacht Club
• Stormalong Bay, the Yacht Club’s main pool

The update includes a bunch of all-new photos from my March 2017 say in a not-yet-refurbed room and my November 2017 stay in a refurbed room.

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I just completed and published my updated review of Disney’s Pop Century Resort. The updated Pop Century review begins here, and has five pages in total:

• Overview and Summary of Disney’s Pop Century Resort
• Theming and accommodations at Disney’s Pop Century Resort
• A photo tour of a refurbed room at Disney’s Pop Century Resort
• Amenities and dining at Disney’s Pop Century Resort
• The pools at Disney’s Pop Century Resort

The update includes a bunch of all-new photos from my July 2017 stay in a refurbed room–my ninth and tenth stays at Pop Century, respectively.

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My friends at the Official Ticket Center are offering a great deal for those on shorter trips.

Through February 4th, if you buy your two or three day tickets through them, you get a park hopper for each ticket for free! That’s a savings of about $65/person, or more than $250 for a family of four!

Park hoppers allow you to visit more than one park in a day. On shorter tickets they can be quite valuable, permitting you, for example, to see the evening shows and/or have dinner at a different park than the one you spent the day at!

To get the deal–and arrange delivery–call The Official Ticket Center at 1-877-406-4836 (or local at 407-396-9020). And tell them that Dave from yourfirstvisit.net sent you!

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As noted yesterday, Josh and I just published an update to our The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2018, the best-reviewed Disney World guide book in the known universe.

Those already on our update list will get instructions on how to get their 2018 update shortly. If you purchased the 2018 edition but are not yet on our 2018 update list, here’s how to get on it:

This was, by our standards, a minor update, as not a lot has changed since our August 2017 publication date. Here’s what’s different or updated:

• We’ve added the new dog-friendly pilot to the four resorts it affects.
• Although we don’t usually do rumors, the potential impact of the rumored expansion of access to 60 day FastPass+ is so strong that we noted it at several points
• We’ve added the dates for the Festival of the Arts and the Flower and Garden Festival, and changed the name of the old Holidays Around the World to The Festival of the Holidays
• We updated the construction and/or refurb status of the moderate resorts and of Pop Century and the Yacht Club, and added the new Yacht Club floor plan.
• Thanks to reader feedback, we fixed a few errors or omissions that had crept in—the height minimum in Rock ‘n” Roller, a place where we had left out tiering at the Animal Kingdom, and a point about crowd calendars.
• We made a change in the FastPass+ priority order at Epcot
• At the Studios, we’ve updated the names of one attraction (Walt Disney Presents) and of one of the lands (Grand Avenue), added BaseLine Tap House, updated the FastPass+ priority order, and added Jingle Bell Jingle BAM!
• At Magic Kingdom, we revised the time of the Afternoon Parade and update the touring plans to reflect it.

We pride ourselves on having the most accurate and up-to-date guidebook available, and updates like this are what make that come to life!

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Amazon has released the updated version of my and Josh’s The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2018, the latest edition the best-review Disney World guidebook in history.

We first published this 2018 edition in late August, and our latest update adds things that have changed since then, and corrects a couple of errors that our readers let us know about!

I’ll write more soon about what’s in this update (I’m traveling for Thanksgiving now).

If you bought the 2018 edition you get this update (as a PDF) for free! If you’ve already sent in your email, we’ll start sending instructions on how to get the updated PDF this weekend.

If you bought the 2018 edition but have not yet forwarded your Amazon confirmation, then quit fooling around and get it to us! Here’s the instructions:

And if you haven’t bought it yet, what are you waiting for?

We’ve had almost 300 reviews of this Disney World guidebook series on Amazon, and more than 90% are five stars. You won’t find more informed, more thoughtful, more experienced, more judicious or more silly companions to the Disney World parks, resorts, or dining venues than me and co-author Josh. Ours is the most accurate and most up-to-date Disney World guidebook you can find.

Away from the cranberry sauce and buy it now!

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For 2017 Disney World has added to the returning Jingle Bell, Jingle BAM! show three new holiday elements to Disney’s Hollywood Studios:

• Olaf, new songs from “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure,” and a tree lighting to the end of the Frozen Sing-Along
• Holiday projections on the Hollywood Tower Hotel (site of the Tower of Terror)
• A Christmas Tree and substantial decorations in the Echo Lake area.

The net effect–especially of the last two changes–is really a transformed feel to the park, which now feels more Christmassy than any other Disney World park except the Magic Kingdom.  This is a big change, and one to delight in.

OLAF AT THE FROZEN SING-ALONG

The Frozen Sing-Along (officially “For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration” but no one calls it that except its mom) is a show that is surprisingly good even for those not obsessed with Frozen.

Here’s the review from The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2018–a guidebook so good that you probably want to be sitting down while reading it:

The Olaf additions to this show happen at the end, and your pleasure at them will be in direct proportion to how much of an Olaf fan you are.

Olaf arrives…

…is treated like a visiting rock star…

…new songs from Olaf’s Frozen Adventure are sung…

…and the bit ends with a Christmas tree lighting.

There’s not much to the stage business, not much narrative or sense of ending to the new action, and the new songs are quite weak compared to the high melodic and lyrical standards set by the classic Frozen songs. As a result, Olaf fans will probably love this add, and everybody else will be waiting for the show to return to its original staging.

HOLIDAY PROJECTIONS ON THE HOLLYWOOD TOWER HOTEL

The Hollywood Tower Hotel, best known until now for screaming elevator riders, has had four holiday projections added to its facade.  While there is not much to them, when combined with other holiday decorations on Sunset Boulevard, they really amp up the holiday feel of this section of the park. The entire effort is called Sunset Seasons Greetings.

Framed around Frozen…

…Mickey’s Christmas Carol…

…the Muppets…

…and Toy Story.

There’s not much to these–nothing like the action and subtlety of Tree of Life Awakenings at the Animal Kingdom, for example–but together with the other holiday decorations on Sunset Boulevard (and snow!–see the image at the very top of this page), the overall impact is to turn this into a much more festive area of the park.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE AND DECORATIONS IN THE ECHO LAKE AREA

Hollywood Boulevard has always been delightfully decorated, but now so is the Echo Lake area.

The most notable addition is the Christmas Tree, which used to be outside the park…

…but Gertie now has a bit of holiday decor as well–snow and a Santa hat.

A closer view of the tree…

…and the tree after dark.

Echo Lake after dark. There’s a tree lighting ceremony–at 6p the night I saw it–but it’s not much and definitely not worth scheduling around.

On the Gertie side of Echo Lake you’ll find these decorations…

…and further counter-clockwise around Echo Lake, near Hollywood and Vine, these.

The same later in the evening.

Until now, Echo Lake has been a bit of a pass-through-without noticing area for me, kinda like (but not so extreme as) Commissary Lane.  Gertie has historical importance, and the lake itself is cute and some find it to part of an enormous hidden Mickey.  But really, yawn.

The holiday directions add a focal point and a coherent atmosphere that’s been missing here until now. You will still largely pass by the lake on your way to something else, but now it’s a delightful walk.

The Echo Lake and Sunset Boulevard decorations profoundly strengthen how well Disney’s Hollywood Studios celebrate the holidays.  Don’t miss them!

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