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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: OCTOBER 1 TO OCTOBER 9, 2016

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

For more on October 2016 at Disney World, see this.

OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 10/1-10/9/2016

The Magic Kingdom will be open from 8a-12MN 10/1, 9a-7p 10/2, 8a-12MN 10/3, 9a-7p 10/4, 8a-11p 10/5, 9a-7p 10/6, 8a-7p 10/7, and 8a-12MN 10/8 and 10/9

Epcot will be open from 9a-10p 10/1, 9a-9p 10/2 through 10/6, 9a-10p 10/7 and 10/8, and 9a-9p 10/9

Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open 9a-8p 10/1, 9a-7.30p 10/2, 9a-8.30p 10/3, 9a-7.30p 10/4, 9a-8p 10/5, 9a-6p 10/6, and 9a-8p 10/7 through 10/9

Disney’s Animal Kingdom will be open 9a-8.30p every day

EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 10/1-10/9/2016

Saturday 10/1 Morning:  Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Sunday 10/2 Morning:  Hollywood Studios  Evening: none

Monday 10/3 Morning: Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Tuesday 10/4 Morning: none Evening:  Epcot

Wednesday 10/5 Morning: none  Evening:  Magic Kingdom

Thursday 10/6 Morning: Epcot Evening: none

Friday 10/7 Morning:  Magic Kingdom Evening: Hollywood Studios

Saturday 10/8 Morning: Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Sunday 10/9  Morning: Hollywood Studios Evening: none

PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 10/1-10/9/2016

The Magic Kingdom:

• Afternoon Festival of Fantasy Parade: 3p every day
• Evening Main Street Electrical Parade: 9 and 11p 10/1, 10/3, 10/5, 10/8 and 10/9

FIREWORKS AND EVENING SHOWS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 10/1-10/9/2016

Wishes at the Magic Kingdom: 10p 10/1, 10/3, 10/5, 10/8 and 10/9

IllumiNations at Epcot: 10p 10/1; 9p 10/2 through 10/6; 10p 10/7 and 10/8; 9p 10/9

Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 8p 10/1 through 10/5 and 10/7 through 10/9

Star Wars Show and Fireworks at Disney’s Hollywood Studios:  7.45p 10/1, 10/3 and 10/5; 7.30p 10/7 and 10/8

SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 10/1-10/9/2016

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

LONG RANGE WEATHER FORECAST FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 10/1-10/9/2016

See this for forecasts.

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As Steve is reporting on the MilitaryDisneyTips.com Facebook page, the 2017 Disney Armed Forces Salute became available today.

Steve has the details on both the 2016 and 2017 Armed Forces Salutes here, but here’s the basics:

• The salute is valid from January 1, 2017 through December 19, 2017, but excludes April 9-23.
• For 2017 it includes not just deeply discounted 4 day tickets, as it has the past few years, but also deeply discounted 5 day tickets. Unless your kids are younger than 5, the 5 day option is the one to choose, as it permits two days in the Magic Kingdom and a day each in the other three parks.
• Also available again as part of the 2017 salute are room discounts—30% off value resorts, 35% off moderates, and 40% off deluxes.
• Note that the two deals are not linked–you can get the ticket deal, the room rate deal, or both

Some of the most popular room types (e.g. Little Mermaid rooms at Art of Animation) are excluded, and availability elsewhere is very limited (more rooms may be added).

S0 those aiming to use the room rate deal for a visit before May (remembering the excluded April dates!) should book right away.

The ticket deal is available only directly from various base sources. But Kelly can book the room rate deal for eligible military families.
Contact her at KellyB@DestinationsInFlorida.com or 980-429-4499.

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Kelly let me know this morning that for those who have Disney Visa cards, two new Walt Disney World deals for late 2016/early 2017 came out today. Similar deals for the general public should be out October 4.

Here’s what she sent me:

It’s a perfect time to book your Winter Disney vacation. Disney just released two discounts (Available to Disney Visa card holders today – with an expected release for the general public next week).

Get a discount on your entire package with Stay, Play and Dine – Check in Dates 1/1 – 3/7 (Minimum 3 nights, must be booked by 12/21/2016 – Offer excludes campsites, 3-bedroom villas, Disney’s Art of Animation Resort –The Little Mermaid Standard Rooms and Bungalows at Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows.)

If you don’t need a complete package the Winter Room Discount may be right for you – Check in 12/15 – 12/23 & 1/1 – 4/8 (Offer excludes campsites, 3-bedroom villas, Disney’s Art of Animation Resort – The Little Mermaid Standard Rooms and Bungalows at Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows.

Contact KellyB@DestinationsInFlorida.com or 980-429-4499 today. (Not only will you get a great savings, but when you book a qualifying vacation with Destinations In Florida all of our services are FREE and you’ll get a FREE copy of the latest edition of Dave’s Easy Guide to Walt Disney World).

If you book your Disney World visit with Kelly she’ll work with you to get you into any of these deals you are eligible for! Contact her at KellyB@DestinationsInFlorida.com or 980-429-4499.

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There’s no single topic that Disney World guide books, websites and forums get wrong more often than the Disney World resorts.

There’s several obvious reasons for this—most important among them being that frequent and recent stays among all the room options is critical, but hard to pull off because of how much time and money it takes, so most don’t bother.

Without frequent and recent stays, however, it’s hard to offer accurate, up-to-date descriptions of the resorts and their rooms themselves, or to do sensible current comparisons among them. As a result, writers can mislead people about which rooms they will fit or be comfortable in, or which will best fit their plans, causing them to miss their best options.

Where you stay matters because you’ll spend more than a third of your time in your resort, and, if you are like most people, you will pick just one of the more than 40 different options (including distinct room variants) on offer. Moreover, with reasonable options ranging from around $100 to $1,000 a night, what you spend on your room is the single biggest budget variable in your trip.

No one knows more about the Disney World resorts than my co-author Josh of easyWDW and I do. For example, I’ve stayed in 135 different Disney World-owned rooms, villas, suites, cabins, and campsites, (and also a dozen key non-Disney rooms at the Swan, Dolphin, Four Seasons, and Shade of Green) plus sat around here and there in the resorts and done next to nothing.

Chapter 5 of The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit, Where to Stay, brings together our experience and perspectives into a short, easy to read, but complete and accurate set of material.

• We start with why we think you should stay at a Disney-owned resort—especially if you are a first-timer, or have not visited Disney World since FastPass+ began.
• Next we go over the basic differences among the three main Disney resort price classes, highlighting pros and cons of the options within them as we go.
• Then we do detailed reviews of each Disney-owned resort, so you can make the best fit to your budget, wishes, and preferences.
• Finally we offer thoughts on the principal alternatives, including detailed reviews of the main non-Disney options.

Here’s a bit of an example, a few lines from our review of Port Orleans Riverside:

While we don’t have everything right (I know of at least one floor plan I’ll be fixing as part our next free update), a simple comparison will show you how hard it is to get things even close to right.

I just looked through the 2017 edition of a guidebook that I commonly recommend as an alternative to ours and have a lot of respect for (except for its materials on the Disney World resorts).

Here’s some of the issues I found in its presentation of the Disney Word resorts:

Values

• At Art of Animation, the claim that “The resort’s Family Suites are rarely discounted” is wrong. The Family Suites have been included in discounts for years. It’s the other rooms here, the Little Mermaid standard rooms, that have yet to be included in discounts.

Moderates

• The description of the Port Orleans Riverside floor plan refers to a “trundle bed for child (54” long)” that has been gone for years, replaced by a ~66” murphy bed in 2012.
• The refurb at the Cabins at Fort Wilderness yielded a queen bed in the back bedroom, not the incorrectly shown and described full bed.
• At Coronado Springs, the “overly complicated…stamping tickets…and multiple tickets to pay” at Pepper Market are long gone.

Deluxes

• The floor plan for the Animal Kingdom Lodge has the connecting door and mini-fridge in reversed positions.
• The Beach Club floor plan is slightly outdated after its 2015 refurb.
• The Contemporary boat service goes not only to Fort Wilderness, but also to the Wilderness Lodge.
• The dressing area in Grand Floridian Rooms does not “include a sliding door that separates it from the sleeping area”—the dressing space between the sinks and hall is open, like in other Disney deluxe resorts.
• The Polynesian floor plan shows an outdated sink and toilet layout; the Great Ceremonial House has two stories, not “four,” and the Poly “sofas” are also flip-down beds.
• The Swan room description (“large, round mirror”) is outdated since its 2015 refurb, and both the discussion of it and an included reader comment about it confuse the Dolphin’s bath for the Swan’s bath.

Disney Vacation Club

• Animal Kingdom Lodge’s Kidani Village has 493 “rooms,”*, not “ 324.”
• Bay Lake Tower One Bedroom villas do not include “the studio bedroom.” The Studio bedroom is the second bedroom of lock-off Two Bedroom villas, and has no role in One Bedrooms. Also, Bay Lake Tower has 428 “rooms,”* not “295.”
• The Beach Club Studios floor plan is outdated, as it does not show the drop-down bed installed in the 2016 refurb, and its guest occupancy limit “4” is also wrong—it is now 5.
• The BoardWalk Villas Studios floor plan is also outdated, as it does not show the drop-down bed installed in its 2015 refurb, and its guest occupancy limit “4” is also wrong—it is now 5.
• The Old Key West One Bedroom description should include the fold out chair, rather than omitting it.
• The Polynesian Studios probably should be labeled “Polynesian Village Studios,” not “Polynesian Village Villas.”
• Saratoga Springs has 18 buildings, not “12.” Its floor plan is mis-labeled as “Sarasota Springs.”
• The Villas at the Grand Floridian has 147 “rooms,”* not “200.”
• The Villas at the Wilderness Lodge has 181 “rooms,”*, not “136.”

I have a lot of sympathy for those who try to write such material without recent frequent stays. It’s hard to keep up with refurbs and other changes, and it’s even harder to judge and write about them if you don’t actually stay in the rooms, and as I’ve learned since I got into the guide book game, it’s harder than you might think to assure that your new insights actually make their way into your book.

But, if you try, you can avoid errors like these, as we mostly do.

My most recent stays, by resort:

The asterisks indicate a stay booked for later 2016; the color code is to remind me where to go next, although some of these resorts are in refurbs or expected refurbs soon, so the priority will be to visit them when they are done—these include Kidani Village, Bay Lake Tower, the Dolphin, Coronado Springs, Pop Century, etc.

Ok, that’s it for now. More to come on other features of the 2017 easy Guide later! Meanwhile, buy the book, OK?

And when you do, don;t forget to sign up for the free updates:

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*There’s no one best way to measure DVC spaces. The only repeatable way is “keys,” which is the number of separately rentable spaces. This is the industry standard, and what I have used above. Using this industry standard, a dedicated Two Bedroom Villa would count as one key, and a lock off Two Bedroom as two keys–one for the Studio, and one for the One Bedroom.

But since the proportion of lock-off vs dedicated spaces varies so much across the DVC resorts, for comparisons of relative scope it would also make sense to talk about bays, or about two bedroom equivalents (that is, bays divided by three), although the peculiar inventory at the Polynesian makes either of these a little less sensible than they used to be.

This particular guidebook sometimes uses keys, and sometimes seems to use something else, like two bedroom equivalents. For consistency, it should use one or the other, and I’d recommend keys.

You won’t find two people more qualified to advise you on when to go to Disney World than me and my co-author Josh of easyWDW. (The photo below is of neither of us.)

We worked together to make Chapter 4 of The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2017 the best and most succinct guide to when to go to Disney World that you can find.

The chapter has sections covering crowds, prices and weather, and then, most valuably, goes through 2017 month by month.  Here’s an example:

This chapter is the only part of The easy Guide that’s solely about 2017. All the other key material in the book–hotel reviews, park touring plans, dining reviews–works right now, this instant, so the book is also a great guide for those making visits later in 2016.

There will be changes–we’ve already seen a couple since we published in early August.

But ours is the only guidebook that can help you with those changes, because as noted here we will prove free updates to purchasers when we update the book!

Here’s the scoop from the book itself:

Ok, that’s it for now. More to come on other changes in the 2017 easy Guide later! Meanwhile, buy the book, OK?

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As predicted, Disney extended the operating hours at the Animal Kingdom in October to 8.30p closes, going deeper into the evening by an hour early in the month and by an hour and a half later in month.

Closes now range from an hour after civil twilight early in the month to an hour and a half after civil twilight later in the month. (For why the end of civil twilight matters to Rivers of Light and other evening shows, and other definitions, see this.)

This gives plenty of scope for two shows of Rivers of Light—apparently nearing dress rehearsal—the first at 7.30 or 7p and second at 9 or 8.30p (an evening show after park close has been common practice at Disney World for years, at the Studios).

See the image.

• The top dotted red line is the updated 2016 Animal Kingdom close (average October 2015 close is the bottom dotted green line).
• The sloped lines are, from the bottom up, sunset (gold), end of civil twilight (red) and the ends of nautical (grey) and astronomical (black) twilight.

As you can see from the distance between the sloping red line and the dotted red line, open hours after civil twilight range from about an hour earlier in the month to an hour and a half later in the month.

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