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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: APRIL 1 TO APRIL 9, 2017

The material below details next week’s Disney World operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

For more on April 2017 at Disney World, see this.

OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 4/1/-4/9/17

The Magic Kingdom will be open from 9a-11p 4/1, 9a-10p 4/2, 8a-11p 4/3, 9a-11p 4/4 through 4/6, 8a-11p 4/7, and 9a-11p 4/8 and 4/9

Epcot will be open from 9a-9p every day

Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open 9a-9p every day

Disney’s Animal Kingdom will be open 9a-9.30p every day

EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 4/1-4/9/17

Saturday 4/1 Morning:  Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Sunday 4/2  Morning:  Hollywood Studios Evening: none

Monday 4/3 Morning: Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Tuesday 4/4 Morning: none Evening:  Epcot

Wednesday 4/5 Morning: none  Evening:  Magic Kingdom

Thursday 4/6 Morning: Epcot Evening: none

Friday 4/7 Morning:  Magic Kingdom Evening: none

Saturday 4/8 Morning: Animal Kingdom Evening: none

Sunday 4/9  Morning: Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios Evening: none

PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 4/1-4/9/17

The Magic Kingdom: Afternoon Festival of Fantasy Parade: 3p 4/1 through 4/8; noon and 3.30p 4/9

FIREWORKS AND EVENING SHOWS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 4/1-4/9/17

Wishes at the Magic Kingdom: 9p every night

IllumiNations at Epcot: 9p every night

Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 8.30p every night

Star Wars Show and Fireworks at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 9p every night

Rivers of Light at Disney’s Animal Kingdom: 8.45p and 10p 4/1, 4/2, 4/4, 4/6 and 4/8; 8.30 and 9.45p 4/9

SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 4/1-4/9/17

See Steve Soares’ site here. Click the park names at its top for show schedules.

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DISNEY WORLD DEALS FOR SUMMER 2017

This morning, Disney World announced a new room rate deal that covers stays from May 28 through August 31. It needs to be booked by July 14.

Savings range from 10-25% off at the hotels included, and there’s as many as three different discount levels depending on when in the summer you go.

If you book your vacation through partner and friend of this site Kelly B as your travel agent, she will get the best deal for you!! Contact her at Kelly@DestinationsInFlorida.com!

DISNEY VALUE RESORT DEALS

Value resort deals exclude–as usual–Little Mermaid rooms at Art of Animation.

DISNEY MODERATE RESORT DEALS

Port Orleans French Quarter is excluded from the deal among the moderates, and deals at Riverside are slender.

DISNEY DELUXE RESORT DEALS

All of the Disney deluxes are in the deal, and savings range from 15% of to 25%.

DISNEY DVC RESORT DEALS

Bay Lake Tower and the Villas at the Grand Floridian are excluded from the DVC resorts on offer, as is the new (opening in July) Copper Creek Villas at the Wilderness Lodge. At the Polynesian Villas and Bungalows, only Studios are in the deal.

At the rest, saving vary from 15% to 25%.

For detailed reviews of every resort hotel  option, see this or get a copy of my book.

For more on the deal that came out today, see this. Or, if you sign with Kelly B as your travel agent, she will figure out the best deal for you!! Contact her Kelly@DestinationsInFlorida.com!

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A few days ago co-author Josh and I published an updated version of our guidebook, The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2017.

We pride ourselves on writing the best-reviewed, most accurate and most up-to-date Disney World guidebook series ever, and part of keeping it up to date is revising it several times a year.

Our latest revision included more than 60 pages of changes. Key changes are below.

CHAPTER 1: HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Chapter 1 includes three things: guidance on how to use the book, boiling down our recommendations—especially for first timers–by chapter; and “what’s new” for returning visitors.

The key changes are in “what’s new,” and point out

• The loss of the evening parade at Magic Kingdom
• The new show Happily Ever After, which will replace Wishes in May
• The new evening attractions at Animal Kingdom, and the late May opening there of Pandora: World of Avatar
• The projected end of the Wilderness Lodge refurb, and the beginnings of major refurbs at Caribbean Beach and Coronado Springs
• The ticket price increase of February 2017

CHAPTER 2: WHY AGE AND HEIGHT MATTER and CHAPTER 3: HOW LONG TO STAY

These two chapters saw only minor changes.

• In Chapter 2, we added the new rides to open at Pandora: World of Avatar to our summary table about the appropriateness of rides for folk of different ages, and to the ride height restrictions chart table
• In Chapter 3, we updated some ticket price material

CHAPTER 4: WHEN TO GO

In Chapter 4 we sharpened up material for which dates are now firm—or more firm–including

• The opening of Pandora May 27
• The kick-off of the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival in August and its last day of November 13
• The possibility that Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party will begin August 25

CHAPTER 5: WHERE TO STAY

Most of the changes in Chapter 5 were from or about resort refurbs

• The opening of the Copper Creek Villas at the Wilderness Lodge in mid-July, and other refurb-related WL items
• The already-started demolition, construction, and room refurbs at Coronado Springs
• The beginning-in-May replacement of the food, shopping, and bar at Caribbean Beach with temporary facilities while new constructions launches
• The refurb at Pop Century that kicked off earlier this month
• Minor updates on refurbs at the Dolphin and the Yacht Club

CHAPTER 6: HOW TO SPEND YOUR TIME

Chapter 6 is the heart of the book, and saw 22 pages of changes from us—well, actually, almost entirely from Josh.

Just a few highlights of the updates here include:

• Substantial revisions to the Animal Kingdom guide and cheat sheet, especially the touring plans, principally based on the effects of Rivers of Light on priorities and touring. (Our update for Pandora will come out once it is stable, likely in late June; see both of our sites for FastPass+ and touring plan advice well before then.) The new Animal Kingdom material of course includes an all-new review of Rivers of Light
• Updates on the changes to the park opening procedures and minor changes to the Epcot touring plans—mostly cleaning up typos
• In the Hollywood Studios section, updates on the changes to the park opening procedures and more detailed reviews of the two daytime Star Wars shows, and a revised approach to seeing Fantasmic and the Star Wars fireworks. No significant touring plan changes, other than even more emphasis than we already had to keep refreshing for new FastPass+ opportunities.
• Updates on the changes to the park opening procedures and evening offerings at Magic Kingdom, and minor changes to the Character-Centric Touring Plan, Morning Day 2

CHAPTER 7: WHERE TO EAT

Like Chapter 6, Chapter 7 saw dozens of changes

New or completely redone reviews include

• Paddlefish
• Planet Hollywood Observatory
• Las Ventanas

Other changes included

• New character breakfast with Rapunzel, Flynn, Ariel and Eric
• Shift of the characters at Hollywood & Vine at lunch
• New Dining Plan prices

CHAPTER 8: WHICH TICKETS TO BUY AND HOW MUCH TO BUDGET

Disney raised ticket prices in February 2017, so all our pricing material has been revised. One ticket form is gone, a new one has been added, there’s now a penalty for not buying in advance, and a new expiration policy is in place—we cover all of these.

CHAPTER 9: HOW TO SET EVERYTHING UP AND GET EVERYTHING DONE

In Chapter 9, we made no substantive changes, but rather only cleaned up some awkward wording (the 90,000 other instances of awkward wording in Chapters 1-8 remain).

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The easy Guide is the only Disney World guidebook to offer free updates to the current year edition.
We sent out emails last week to those already on the update list.

To join our list—you’ll get the latest update, plus we’ll do at least one more update to this edition, after Pandora opens (after then, we’ll turn to the 2018 edition)– just follow the instructions below!

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OVERVIEW: OCTOBER 2017 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews October 2017 Walt Disney World crowds, prices, deals and discounts, weather, and operating hours; adds a few other notes; and ends with week by week summaries.

Later October has some of the best times of the year to visit Disney World, with nice weather, low crowds, low prices, and fun special events.

The first half of the month is not so good, as

• The first week is still in the peak of the hurricane season
• Both the first and second week see extra crowds from fall breaks, and
• The second week sees higher prices from Columbus Day.

[Read more →]

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians and author of Jim’s Gems in The easy Guide, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

DISNEY’S DINOSAURS

By Jim Korkis

Disney has been bringing audio-animatronics dinosaurs to startling, realistic life since the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair and the primeval world there that Imagineers like Claude Coats created for the Ford Motor Skyway pavilion.

Those prehistoric re-creations were so impressive that they were brought back to Disneyland and installed in 1966 as the finale of the Grand Canyon Diorama tunnel on the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad.

However, with new advances in technology, Imagineers wanted to experiment with pushing the boundaries.

While the Animal Kingdom attraction Countdown to Extinction (later renamed DINOSAUR) was loosely inspired by the in-development at the time Walt Disney Feature Animation computer animated feature Dinosaur (2000), the Imagineers had great leeway in developing the time traveling experience and the twenty-one dinosaurs that guests would encounter on the ride.

“We cast it the way, we would cast a movie,” said WDI show producer Anne Malmlund. “You need a hero and you need a villain.”

The villain was the same villain from the movie, a terrifying Carnotaurus which was thirty-three feet long when finally built. A complete skeleton of the prehistoric monster had recently been uncovered in Argentina giving show designer Paul Torrigino a good reference model. However, he was faced with the challenges of what the skin texture might be like or even the color of that skin.

He chose a dusty red, the color of clay, in order to make the animal seem more menacing as well as to contrast it with the lush green Cretaceous forest. A partial skin impression found with the fossil bones showed that the skin seemed to be a rough hide covered with bumps and knobs.

So Torrigino made them bumpier and knobbier because he needed exaggerated features since the vehicles would be moving by so quickly that guests wouldn’t be able to discern any texture at all unless it was highly prominent.

“We wanted to use science and art and drama to create a world our guests could believe in,” Torrigino said.

Imagineers consulted paleontologists, studied countless books and more to make sure the shapes, sizes, movement, skin texture and coloration were as authentic, and dramatic, as possible. Even Imagineer Joe Rohde would drop by to offer his suggestions.

Tujunga’s Plastic shop in California developed a new combination of silicone and spandex that enhanced the lifelike look and movement of the dinosaurs for the attraction.

The new system of skin-on-plates, modeled on human ribs, made the dinosaur movement more fluid and believable. The industrial strength snaps on the skin hook onto bands of metal that are the foundational structure of the animal which included a new underlying armature. The heavy skin could weigh up to 500 pounds.

The Imagineers first mocked up the movement on computers. A small model raptor was then built to test these ideas and it contained powerful new chips to control a range of subtle movements.

These figures included some of the largest audio-animatronics figures ever produced. The heads of the Iguanodon and Saltasaurus were so huge that they scraped the tops of the ceiling of the cavernous warehouse in Tujunga, California where they were built.

It took eight to ten hours of programming for every second of animation per dinosaur. Each dinosaur represented about 14,000 hours of effort by WDI or roughly seven years.

At the first formal review and with appropriate dramatic lighting, CEO Michael Eisner who worried about the investment of time and money was visibly moved. “It’s the first time I’ve been sorry they are extinct,” he said.

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Thanks, Jim! And come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, and The Vault of Walt: Volume 4, and his contributions to The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit, all published by Theme Park Press.

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Those staying in a Disney-owned resort or the Swan and Dolphin can begin booking FastPass+ for Pandora: World of Avatar, which opens May 27, on March 24, 2017. (Other guests should be able to book 30 days later.)

Avatar has two new rides, Na’vi River Journey and Flight of Passage. Only one can be booked each day.  I’ve posted revised Animal Kingdom itineraries for those using my High Crowd Itinerary here.

It’s unclear–today–if other rides will go into the same “only book one per day” of the two Avatar rides.

But my new itineraries have you seeing at the two rope drops several of the likely candidates for such tiering (Kilimanjaro, Everest, DINOSAUR)…and if some other rides for which I indicate FastPass+ (Rivers of Light, Kali River Rapids) go into the “one per day” box, then I’ll revise the revisions!!

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