Category — p. News and Changes

My friends at Destinations in Florida have put together a Free Dining watch list!  Here’s the scoop and how to sign up!

Have you always dreamed of staying at one of the Disney Deluxe resorts? Has a Disney vacation been out of your family’s budget?

Well this may been just what you are looking for….. the Disney Free Dining Deal. This is Disney World’s most popular discount offer all year. Free Dining puts food in your belly and money back in your wallet!

While Disney hasn’t released any official notice of this discount offer, it has historically been offered to the public in mid to late spring each year for travel dates in fall (including September-December).

You can be among the first to hear about Free Disney Dining!

Sign up today for the yourfirstvisit.net Watch List and be the first to know about Disney’s 2016 Free Dining Discount. PLUS, you will receive a Mickey Mouse Fun Pack FREE, our gift to you.

Click here to sign up today!

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FIFTH DISNEY WORLD GATE TO OPEN IN 2021

April 1, 2016: Today in Orlando Walt Disney World representatives announced that a new, fifth theme park will open in time for the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World, in October 2021.

The new park will be themed to sadness and loss.

“Inside Out taught us once again what we have always known as story-tellers, that sadness is necessary to joy,” a Disney spokesman explained. “Well, actually, we think that’s what we learned from it—in fact, we kept falling asleep during the enthralling second act about filing systems for colored bowling balls, so never really made it to the end.”

The new park, to be called Disney’s Woeful Kingdom, will be built next to the Magic Kingdom, across from Frontierland and Adventureland, and will have its main entrance just to the west of the current Magic Kingdom monorail stop.

“Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows.” – Walt Disney

Conceived as both a new draw in its own right and as a way to relieve the press of crowds in the Magic Kingdom, the lands of the Woeful Kingdom will be opened in stages.

In fact, the first two lands, Abandonland and Deathland, will initially operate as extensions of the Magic Kingdom.

Later, as more of its lands open, Disney’s Woeful Kingdom will function as a distinct and separately ticketed fifth park, but easily accessible from the Magic Kingdom—similarly to how Disney California Adventure works in Anaheim today (although lower taxes compared to California means that Disney will continue to be able to afford the ” ‘s ” in Florida).

• Abandonland will largely feature rides based on Disney’s Toy Story series, which takes its narrative arcs from the eagerness with which children abandon everything that once they loved, and the devastation that such abandonment leaves behind.
• Deathland will have shows and rides from a more diverse set of Disney and Pixar films, including rides recapping the death of Ellie in Up, the death of Bambi’s mother, and the death of Anna and Elsa’s parents in Frozen. (Word is that their parents are being brought back in the Frozen sequel, just so that they can be killed again.)

Later, deaths and other bitter moments will be grouped more thematically into additional lands at Disney’s Woeful Kingdom, one themed to orphans and stepchildren, like Tiana, Aladdin, and Cinderella; another to losses of parents like Mustafa in The Lion King, Tarzan’s parents, Cinderella’s father, and Lilo’s parents; and another to losses of and betrayals by spouses, children, other relatives, friends, and presidential candidates.

Other lands won’t be quite so obviously targeted at younger children, and will have attractions more suited to the special despondencies of older children and their parents. Reportedly, one such land highlighting the sports teams of Cleveland, Ohio was well into design, but development was unusually shut down by the board of the Walt Disney Company because it promised to be just too sad to be borne.

Stories require conflict, challenge and opposition—something is at stake, and someone strives for that stake.

Sadness and loss raise the stakes. Sometimes the sadness and loss is part of the beginning circumstances of the hero, making that hero’s challenge more difficult and the hero themselves more admirable—this is the heart of all the orphaned or otherwise abandoned heroes in the classic Disney films.

Sometimes, as in coming of age stories like Bambi, The Lion King, and Frozen, the losses need to happen to clear the way forward for the hero to grow up.

And sometimes the devastating sorrow is put in the film just for sheer fun and dazzle.

Those who never miss a theme park about sadness and loss will rush to Disney’s Woeful Kingdom.

The new park will share but expand on the hotel, parking and transportation infrastructure already existing for the Magic Kingdom.

Five thousand more parking spaces will be added to the former location of the Richard Petty Driving experience in the Transportation and Ticket Center.

Also, a small looped route expansion of the two monorail lines currently serving the Magic Kingdom is being added, both to allow for more monorail capacity, especially on the already congested Resort monorail line, and also to open the far west side of the new theme park to a monorail station that will support hotel and cemetery development.

Guests at the Magic Kingdom and also at the Polynesian, Grand Floridian, and Shades of Green will be able to walk to the Woeful Kingdom, as well as to the graves, tombs and funeral services in the new cemetery and memorial area to be located on the southwest side of the new park, facing—yet never quite touching–the sunset.

Well known and, frankly, surprisingly good-looking Disney World blogger Dave Shute (author of the masterful yourfirstvisit.net, and co-author of the magisterial The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit, the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook series in the history of Amazon) noted that “this new park has been hiding in plain sight.”

He continued, in a shy yet graceful and sexy voice: “Disney had been able to explain all the Imagineer activity around the Toy Story components of Abandonland by hiding it as an expansion to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but the tear-down of the Richard Petty area south of the current parking lots has been unexplained. Also unexplained has been all the monorail closures of the past few years, which most assumed Disney was doing simply to show that it could. Now it’s clear what all this activity is in service of—sadness and loss.”

There’s little detail yet available on parades and other entertainment at Disney’s Woeful Kingdom. It is, however, widely expected that the evening show will include guests chanting, in order, the nine billion names of God. On some future date, as the final, nine-billionth name is chanted, overhead one by one the stars will quietly go out, as all sorrow ends.

The first two announced lands are expected to be complete by the Magic Kingdom’s 50th anniversary in October 2021. However, it is also possible that construction will stop during the next recession and just sit there, abandoned for decades, rather like much of Epcot. After all, as Judy’s dad tells her in Zootopia, “It’s great to have dreams, so long as you don’t believe in them too much.”

If so, this will be yet another black eye for Disney World, joining recent difficulties such as last year’s conversion of the Polynesian Bungalows to a viewing area for the Electrical Water Pageant, the brief cancellation of FastPass+ a couple of years ago, the abandonment of a pain-themed DVC resort, dropping the addition of a Minnesota Pavilion to Epcot, and still no word on the groundbreaking for the high-speed option for leaving Rafiki’s Planet Watch.

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Josh and I published an updated version of The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit last week, and as promised, here I’m both going into a little more detail on the update and also introducing the material in the book overall to those who aren’t familiar with it.

This post focuses on Chapter Six: How to Spend Your Time.

First, on the book itself—my co-author Josh of easyWDW is the world’s leading authority on the Disney World parks and how to maximize the value of your time within them.  I have the same world-beating insight into the Disney World resorts–after my April visit, I’ll have stayed in more than 125 different Disney World-owned rooms, villas, studios, suites, cabins and campsites.

We each know a whole lot about a lot of other stuff too, and as a result, the Disney World guidebook series we have written has received more than 95% five star reviews. You simply won’t find a better reviewed Disney World guidebook.

You go to Disney World for the parks. That makes Chapter Six the most essential chapter of The easy Guide. Using it is what gives you the best visit possible no matter when you got to Disney World or how crowded it is.

Chapter Six, How to Spend Your Time, first covers the basics of FastPass+, Disney’s new program that allows—and honestly, requires–you to book low-wait windows at (to start) three rides in a park per day starting 30 to 60 days ahead of your visit. FastPass+ is an essential tool for a lower-wait visit and ours is the first guidebook written form scratch to take advantage of it.

Most of the key points about FastPass+ are in Chapter Six, but we do come back to the mechanics of booking them in Chapter Nine.

Next we talk about itinerary design—how to spend your time in the parks. How many days to visit, and how to divide those days among the parks, is covered in Chapter Three. Chapter Six is about the details. We give sample itineraries, include detailed overviews of each of the parks and all of their rides, and end with versions of Josh’s famous “Cheat Sheets,” all grouped at the end of the chapter so that you can cut them out and carry them with you in the parks.

The material on each park has common sections. First we give a quick overview of the park. Next we identify the most important FastPass+–in order—for that park. Then we talk about arrival tips and tricks, and then cover the lands of each park. The sections on the lands include dining, shopping, and up to date reviews of each attraction.

The Cheat Sheets at the end of the chapter repeat a bit of this material (because they are meant to be torn out and carried into the parks) and add some additional valuable stuff: coded park maps, overviews of the best ways to tour each park, multiple detailed step-by-step touring plans, and finally for data hounds, expected waits by hour by crowd level.

Openings, closures, changes and such means that Chapter Six changes with every revision we publish. The key changes for the March update include the following:

• Major revisions because of the refurb of Soarin, with new versions of every Epcot touring plan we offer. We also added new and revised attractions (Baymax, Disney and Pixar Shorts) and give advice on how to revise everything once Soarin and the new Frozen attractions open later this year
• Changes to the priority list of FastPass+ at every park, based on the latest trends in how much wait time a particular FastPass+ will save you.
• Updates to the Animal Kingdom sections based on the opening of Tiffins and of Rivers of Light and other evening shows later this spring
• Multiple minor updates across the Magic Kingdom sections, especially revised touring plans
• Major changes to the material on Disney’s Hollywood Studios, incorporating recent and early-April ride closures there, and the additions of Star Wars events, shows and fireworks

All these changes make The easy Guide to Your First Walt DInsey World Visit your best friend for an upcoming trip!

Want a copy of your own? It’s available in paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon here!

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Josh and I published an updated version of The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit last week, and as promised, here I’m both going into a little more detail on the update and also introducing the material in the book overall to those who aren’t familiar with it.

This post focuses on Chapter Five: Where to Stay.

First, on the book itself—my co-author Josh of easyWDW is the world’s leading authority on the Disney World parks and how to maximize the value of your time within them.  I have the same world-beating insight into the Disney World resorts–after my April visit, I’ll have stayed in more than 125 different Disney World-owned rooms, villas, studios, suites, cabins and campsites.

We each know a whole lot about a lot of other stuff too, and as a result, the Disney World guidebook series we have written has received more than 95% five star reviews. You simply won’t find a better reviewed Disney World guidebook.

Probably the biggest budget variable you have on your Disney World trip is where you stay, as rooms are available from less than $100 to ten times that much.

In the book we are pretty firm that most first-timers, and almost all first-timers who may never return, should stay in a Disney-owned resort, and give a number of reasons why.

We explain the Disney World resort price classes, and recommend particular hotels within each price class. This lets first-timers make quick decisions.

For returning visitors, or first-timers who want do understand better their options, we then offer detailed reviews including overall appeal, theming, standard rooms, dining and prices for every Disney-owned option, and also for the key on-site but not Disney-owned hotels.

Finally, the chapter includes a few suggestions for those staying offsite–but if you really need to know a lot about the off-site options, you should get The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2016, which has more detail.

The update has several components.

Almost every floor plan has been updated. Most show simple cosmetic changes from recent minor changes to fits and finishes. Incidentally, all are now in color–fun if you are viewing the kindle version on your Fire, laptop, or phone.

However, we also now have updated floor plans reflecting recently completed refurbs in the rooms at the Beach Club and a current refurb at the Cabins at Fort Wilderness. We’ve added the final update on the Caribbean Beach refurb, and also note that the studios in the BoardWalk Villas now sleep five after their recent refurb.

Also on the refurb topic, we’e noted that the refurb at the Wilderness Lodge is more extensive than we had thought, and that it’s hard for us to recommend it right now–at least until the construction walls in its lobby come down.

The material on the hotels is the weakest part of many Disney World guidebooks.

Frankly, too many of their authors just don’t put the time into staying up to date (and staying in the rooms) that it takes to be accurate.

Our hotel material was the most accurate available even before this update–now it is even better!

Want a copy of your own? It’s available in paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon here!

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Josh and I published an updated version of The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit last week, and as promised, here I’m both going into a little more detail on the update and also introducing the book overall to those who aren’t familiar with it.

This post focuses on Chapter Four: When to Go.

First, on the book itself—my co-author Josh of easyWDW is the world’s leading authority on the Disney World parks and how to maximize the value of your time within them, and I have the same world-beating insight into the Disney World resorts.

We each know a whole lot about a lot of other stuff too—like when to go in particular—and as a result, the Disney World guidebook series we have written has received more than 95% five star reviews. You simply won’t find a better reviewed Disney World guidebook.

The two most critical factors in having a great Disney World visit are having good plans for the parks themselves (covered in Chapter Six) and picking a good time to go. Chapter Four focuses on When to Go.

You can pick when to go based on crowds, prices, weather, special events, ride closures, or–most usually–some combination of these. Chapter Four covers each of these topics, then ends with month-by-month overviews.

The updated version of Chapter Four mostly sharpens the material we already published with updates based on new details that have come out since our late September publication date.

For example, we’ve now taken the Star Wars weekends out, and have the correct dates for the Flower and Garden and Food and Wine Festivals.

We mention the new variable prices for single day tickets, but don’t make a big deal out of this for picking your visit dates because in 2016 multi-day tickets still have the same price all year.  We would not be surprised to see variable pricing on multi-day tickets in 2017.

We put the update to bed too early to include the recently-released dates for the Halloween and Christmas parties, but you can see the dates at the links.

We also missed the recently announced special evening events and the expected morning events at the Magic Kingdom.  At current prices, I doubt these will make their way into the book (we more or less ignore in the book many high-priced opportunities of little general interest, to keep it short and focused on the many), but we’ll see.

I’ll be writing more about these shortly, and will be doing one of the evening events in April so that I can advise on for whom it might be worth the high cost.

Want one of your own? It’s available in paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon here!

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Josh and I published an updated version of The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit last week, and as promised, here I’m both going into a little more detail on the update and also introducing the book overall to those who aren’t familiar with it. This post focuses on the first three chapters of the book.

First, on the book itself—my co-author Josh of easyWDW is the world’s leading authority on the Disney World parks and how to maximize the value of your time within them, and I have the same world-beating insight into the Disney World resorts.

We each know a whole lot about a lot of other stuff too—like when to go and where to eat in particular—and as a result, the Disney World guidebook series we have written has received more than 95% five star reviews. You simply won’t find a better reviewed Disney World guidebook.

Chapter 1 both introduces and summarizes the rest of the book. It is inspired by the home page of this site, and like it, it lets you—if you are willing to be guided—make all the key decisions in planning a Walt Disney Word trip quickly.

The rest of the book gives you much more detail on all the topics covered in Chapter 1, so that first timers can make their own decisions if they wish to, and returning visitors can make nuanced choices based on the “when to go” material, and the resort, ride, and dining reviews in the rest of the book.

The only major change in Chapter 1 was that we have pulled the Wilderness Lodge from our list of recommended resorts, based on the more extensive refurb happening there than we had thought when we originally published.

Chapter 2 covers a topic that surprises some first timers with it importance—how old and tall your kids should be. This is an important issue if you can afford to go only once. If first-timers can return, it matters less. And returning visitors will already have internalized the issues about maturity and height. Changes here were quite minor.

Chapter 3 covers a topic related to that of Chapter 2—how long to stay. Our recommendations in this chapter vary by whether or not you can return, and how old you kids are.

Changes here were also minor—we stopped using Soarin as an example while it is down for refurb, and we updated some observations about the value of longer trips after Disney World’s latest ticket price increase—where the price to add ticket days five to seven went up from around $11/person/day to $16/person/day.

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