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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: SEPTEMBER 17 TO SEPTEMBER 25, 2016

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

Note that typos happen, and schedules change! If something seems odd, or if you want to double check, use the calendar links near the bottom to get the latest official Disney World scoop.

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

OPERATING HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 9/17-9/25/2016

The Magic Kingdom will be open from 8a-11p 9/17, 9a-7p 9/18, 9a-11p 9/19, 9a-7p 9/20, 9a-9p 9/21 and 9/22, 9a-7p 9/23, 8a-12MN 9/24, and 9a-7p 9/25

Epcot will be open from 9a-10p 9/17, 9a-9p 9/18 through 9/22, 9a-10p 9/23 and 9/24, and 9a-9p 9/25

Disney’s Hollywood Studios will be open 9a-8.30p 9/17 through 9/24 and 9a-8p 9/25

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

EXTRA MAGIC HOURS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 9/17-9/25/2016

Saturday 9/17 Morning:  Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Sunday 9/18 Morning:  Hollywood Studios  Evening: none

Monday 9/19 Morning: Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Tuesday 9/20 Morning: none Evening:  Epcot

Wednesday 9/21 Morning: none  Evening:  Magic Kingdom

Thursday 9/22 Morning: Epcot Evening: none

Friday 9/23 Morning:  Magic Kingdom Evening: Hollywood Studios

Saturday 9/24 Morning: Animal Kingdom  Evening: none

Sunday 9/25  Morning: Hollywood Studios Evening: none

PARADES AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 9/17-9/25/2016

The Magic Kingdom:

• Afternoon Festival of Fantasy Parade: 3p every day
• Evening Main Street Electrical Parade: 9 and 11p 9/17 and 9/19; 8p 9/21 and 9/22; 8 and 10p 9/24

FIREWORKS AND EVENING SHOWS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD 9/17-9/25/2016

Wishes at the Magic Kingdom: 8p 9/17, 9/19, 9/21 and 9/22; 9p 9/24

IllumiNations at Epcot: 10p 9/17; 9p 9/18 through 9/22; 10p 9/23 and 9/24; 9p 9/25

Fantasmic at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 8p every night

Star Wars Show and Fireworks at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: 8.15p 9/17 through 9/24; 7.45p 9/25

SHOW SCHEDULES FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 9/17-9/25/2016

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

LONG RANGE WEATHER FORECAST FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD 9/17-9/25/2016

See this for forecasts.

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During my Disney World visit earlier this month I dropped by the Wilderness Lodge to do a status check on the current refurbishment.

There’s been a lot of progress since my July stop by, but not enough to make me believe that this will be done in 2016, as some have indicated it will.

Half of the upper walkways surrounding the lobby continue to be walled off–this is the principal aesthetic issue with the refurb.

Along the shores, the eastern set of “bungalows” and buildings is well under way.

The replacement pool is also a little clearer, and the larger new building in the back left is also walled in. Many expect this to be restaurant, but I’m not seeing the venting that I’d associate with a restaurant. Maybe the venting comes in later, or maybe this will be a community room for DVC folks.

Another view of the pool area (peer through the trees to spot the pool formers)…

…and another view of the larger new building, from the water.

The western set of bungalows is still largely piles of dirt. (Click any of these photos to enlarge them.)

As you can also see in this shot of the western end, a lot of trees are gone.  This is yielding some nice Wishes views from many of the rooms on this side of this half of the Lodge. There’s a link here in the comments in co-author Josh’s Wilderness Lodge update to a great (zoomed) view of Wishes.

The other half of the Lodge remains closed during conversion into Disney Vacation Club spaces. (This has resulted in low crowds in the lobby, restaurants, pool, bus stops, etc.)

I find it interesting that the entire interior of this wing has been gutted.

In the image, note how you can see through the window all the way to the window on the far side of the floor–the corridor walls and interior walls are gone.

It’s unclear what Disney is building in this wing of the Lodge. The footprints of the old rooms were pretty small, but Disney put studios and one bedroom villas in equivalently small spots at the Animal Kingdom, in its “value” studios and villas there.

Micah, great contributor to the easyWDW forums and author of MousePerks, just stayed in an Animal Kingdom value and regular studio on consecutive nights, and emailed me these observations:

– The bed and couch are in opposite locations (bed closer to the balcony).
– The small table with a lamp on it is missing from the Value room.
– The small padded bench is missing from the Value room (location where the connecting door can be in some rooms). The wardrobe/closet is immediately after the kitchenette (with only 6″ or so for the thermostat).

Otherwise it really does feel the same, and everything else matches exactly, but they just removed those two pieces of furniture to make it work in the smaller space.

The Studio as Disney has traditionally laid it out is the space that’s hardest to fit into the footprint of the old Wilderness Lodge rooms, so if those can work, one and two bedroom villas can work too–and the spaces at the corridor ends that used to contain two deluxe rooms and two regular rooms would make for an interesting location for Grand Villas.

But why gut everything? Could something more interesting be being planned here?

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Earlier this summer the food court at Port Orleans French Quarter closed for refurb.

I dropped in at the beginning of this month to see in person the alternatives.

The first option is a small dining set-up in the old table service here, Bonfamille’s Cafe, that closed for cost-savings about a decade ago.

Here’s the menu (click it to enlarge it)…

…and the setting.

More photos and menu images are on Andre’s site here.

I did not eat here–I was in the middle of important bus work–so can’t comment on how well it is working.

The second option is to take an internal bus to Port Orleans Riverside and use its dining options.

Here’s the word from Disney on the renovation:

The renovation is noted as being through “Fall 2016.” Fall in 2016 ends on December 20…

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A guidebook that I generally quite respect (except for some of its material on the resorts) recently warned visitors off Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort based on its reader survey results that highlighted “transportation, food court, and distant lobby” as distinct issues.

The problem with such survey results, of course, is that they are often used to help choose among alternatives, when those responding to the survey aren’t actually comparing the alternatives, but rather reporting on a singular experience.

Your best bet for help in choosing among alternatives is to pay attention to survey results or reviews from people who have recently stayed in all the relevant choices—but of course, other than the reviews in the book I co-author and on this site, you simply can’t find those.

I’ve stayed at the traditional moderates 27 different times, so here’s my take:

• It is certainly true that the check-in building at Caribbean Beach is awkwardly distant, especially for those without a car, but it hasn’t moved recently…so there’s no real need for a new warning based on its location.
• The food court at Caribbean Beach isn’t materially worse than those at the other traditional moderates—and other than the simplification of both the check-out process and the menu at the food court at Coronado Springs (a change this particular guidebook missed, it seems, leaving in a reader comment about the now-disappeared “ticket stamping”), the food courts at the traditional moderates have not changed much recently either. (Port Orleans French Quarter’s food court is currently under refurb—we’ll see if anything interesting comes out of that.)
• And it is true that the sheer number of bus stops (seven) at Caribbean Beach is an annoyance. In terms of time wasted getting around a resort and stopping at all the stops, Caribbean Beach is the worst of the traditional moderates, with Port Orleans Riverside next worst, then Coronado Springs, and Port Orleans French Quarter best. But something that people sometimes miss in the discussion of the number of bus stops is that more bus stops can mean shorter walks within the resort. At Port Orleans Riverside, the longest walk from a room to a bus stop is more than a quarter mile; at Caribbean Beach the longest walk is less than half of that.

Moreover, it’s always possible that better management, or something, results in one resort of the same price class getting materially better bus service than another.

Demonstrating this requires comparative data, not survey opinions.

To make an illuminative stab at this because I am such an utter geek to help my readers make good choices, I spent four mornings in late August and early September sitting at bus stops in Port Orleans Riverside and Caribbean Beach timing the arrivals of 139 buses. (Sunday the 28th of August through Tuesday the 30th, and again on September 1; each resort was observed one morning from 8-9.30a and another morning from 8.30-10a.)

I then tossed everything but buses to the four theme parks and then calculated the time between arrivals for buses to the same theme parks. I analyzed the resulting data both in traditional ways (mean and standard deviation) and graphically.

The results of this limited sample show that waits for the next bus were largely similar at the two resorts for most guests, but in every way that they were not similar, Port Orleans Riverside had better service. When you add to this that there are fewer stops at Riverside, transportation on the days I sampled was clearly better at Riverside than at Caribbean Beach.

The mean wait between buses to the same theme park at Caribbean Beach was 13 minutes, with a standard deviation of 8.2 minutes. At Riverside, the mean wait was 12 minutes and the standard deviation was 6.6 minutes. As we will see in a minute, the longer mean wait and much larger standard deviation at Caribbean Beach were driven by several excessive waits.

Here’s the graphical depiction of waits at Riverside:

And at Caribbean Beach:

In each graphic the dotted line is the average interval between arrival times for buses to the same park, the red line the 50th percentile wait, and the gold line what percent of buses come in at 20 minutes or fewer.

You’ll note that the biggest difference was in the longer waits–at Riverside, almost 90% of arrivals were 20 minutes or fewer, and the longest interval was 25 minutes. Caribbean Beach saw almost twice as many buses with >20 minute waits, and its longest wait was a stinky 34 minutes.

Something I did not adjust for in my analysis was the effect of buses to the same park that came one right after another.

For example, during one period at Port Orleans Riverside, Magic Kingdom buses came by at 9.18, 9.22, 9.23, 9.44 and 9.45a, for intervals of 4 minutes, 1 minute, 21 minutes, and 1 minute. The average wait time among these four intervals was 6.75 minutes.

But practically speaking a bus that comes one minute after another bus to the same park is of next to no value, as the arrival rate of people at the bus stops means that no or next to no incremental guests will be served by the bus arriving a minute later. Treating the two one minute waits as though they did not help any incremental people, we get 12.5 minutes as the average wait—almost twice as long.

Note in the graphics how many buses came by with a five minute wait or less (20% of them at Caribbean Beach, and 25% at Riverside). Guests would be better served if these buses were re-routed before their first stop to whatever park was fourth on the list of most recent buses…

To illuminate the impact of this, I redid the waits showing the exact same arrival times, but a steady progression of buses to the four parks so that none was repeated before all four had been served.

Here’s the results:

The effect was to add wait time to the left sides of the curves and remove it from the right sides–essentially moving time from artificial short waits from the left side (artificial because few or none would benefit from them) to reducing waits on the right side where they actually created value for people. (t statistic = “Mister.”)

How about it, Disney?

The traditional moderates are the hardest to distinguish among for recommendations. Each is at the top of some important criteria and at the bottom of others.

This means that either you should not sweat the difference among them, or that you should deeply research them to find which is exactly the best fit for your family.

But one thing that has always been true is that the total Disney transportation experience is worst at Caribbean Beach. If that’s your single concern, then that guidebook is right, and you should avoid Caribbean Beach.

You’ll find a more nuanced discussion of the moderates in my guidebook, and if you want to deeply research them, my reviews of each begin at the following links:

• Caribbean Beach
• Coronado Springs
• Port Orleans Riverside
• Port Orleans French Quarter

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A couple of updates from a drop-in at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground at the end of August.

LOOP 2100

The Cabins were removed from Loop 2100 earlier this year, and after what for Disney was an incredibly quick re-do, a new set of camping sites has now opened there.

The new sites typically have a 12 foot wide driveway…

…an offset sand pad with the picnic table and grill…

…and a six foot sand pad at the back.

These typical sites are a little curious.  The asphalt is not wide enough or (mostly) long enough to serve as premium sites, or even fit some slide-outs.*

But the six foot sand pad at the back is too small for all but the smallest of tents, making these not typical of “full hook up” sites.

Then in the middle of them oddly is this site…

…with a 20 foot tent pad at the back. This was the only site like this I saw at Loop 2100.

Perhaps this is an “overflow site,” aimed at all different kinds of gear, but mostly at those without tents.

Note that there’s more photos of and discussions about this loop on the FortFiends.net forum–e.g. here.

*The photo is not from 2100, but I could not resist it…

WATER FENCES AT FORT WILDERNESS

The beach area at Fort Wilderness, like those in the rest of the Disney-owned resorts, is now fenced at the water:

Another view:

I found myself getting used to these fences quite quickly (on this trip I photographed them at every resort), and not finding them wildly obtrusive.

But I did wonder if the internal waterways at the Fort would get fencing as well.

The short answer is mostly not.

The only other fencing I found was near the group campsites at Creekside Meadows–probably a wise move if the groups camping here are like my scout troop.

Otherwise, all I saw were warning signs:

I was glad to see that these waterways are not fenced…

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REFILLABLE MUGS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD RESORT HOTELS

The To-Do Lists on this site have picking up refillable mugs, either as part of your Disney Dining Plan, or for cash (currently $17.99 + tax), as one of their early steps.

A refillable mug entitles you to free refills of the drinks available at your resort’s beverage island—and sometimes from its pools as well, if beverage stations are available there—for the length of your stay.

You can also use them during your visit at other Disney-owned hotels, a dubious benefit except for those staying in multiple resorts on a single trip.

In the summer of 2016 Disney shifted from the old handled mugs to mugs with no handle.  So I guess they aren’t mugs anymore, but cups?

In November 2016 Disney went back to the old “handled” mugs, pulling the handle-less cups it had began selling in the summer of 2016.

Drinks typically available are soft drinks; other drinks usually found in soda fountains—lemonade, PowerAde, iced tea, etc; coffee, hot water and tea bags, and hot chocolate.  Other drinks may be available as well.

Drinks almost never available are milk and juices—you need to buy these anew each time you want some.

Even with milk and juices out, given the prices of buying the beverage island/pool soft drinks and coffee over a trip greater than 3 days, the refillable mugs are a good deal for almost all families. They are included free in the dining plans and if bought for cash, cost around $18, so you’ll break even after half a dozen or so refills.

You CANNOT use the mugs for free refills at any of the theme parks, water parks, or Downtown Disney. (The water parks have their own refillable mugs, which can only be used at the water parks.)

Some resorts let you also get free refills at their pools, and others don’t.  If this is important to you, ask before you buy them.

You can share mugs among your family—you do not need to buy one for each member.

Most families do buy one for each member–at least on their first visit. There’s a thingy that prevents you from refilling from soda fountains quickly–e.g. you can’t fill one with Powerade, dump it in a bucket, and immediately get more. You can, however, get coffee refills quickly–the thingy (an RFID tag, actually, read by a little shelf on the soda fountain) is not installed at the coffee pots.

While it has varied from year to year, currently if you buy the Disney Dining Plan you get a refillable mug free for each person on the plan.

This site is for first time visitors—which allows me to avoid the “but they told me I could re-use my mugs on future visits” issue, and the “I miss the different mugs for different resorts” theme.

USES OF THE DISNEY WORLD REFILLABLE MUGS BACK AT HOME

I always bring my mugs back if there’s room in our bags.

Beyond the obvious home and car uses, they also make great horse toys!

(That’s my wife’s Mr. Darcy playing with a refillable mug!)

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