Category — w. Most Recent Stuff

DISNEY WORLD’S 2014 INTERNATIONAL FOOD AND WINE FESTIVAL AT EPCOT

Every year from late September through mid-November, Walt Disney World presents the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival.

For 2014, the dates will be September 19 through November 10–starting a week earlier than past years..

There are two components to the festival, one available to all Epcot visitors, and another made up of a bunch of events which have limited capacity and require reservations.

Neither has an extra ticket admission cost–you get to participate by virtue of your theme park ticket–but there are cash costs for the food, wine, and for entry to some special shows and events. [Read more →]

DISNEY WORLD’S SPECIAL HALLOWEEN PARTY

While Halloween itself is October 31st of course, Walt Disney World provides a special Halloween celebration at the Magic Kingdom many evenings in September, October, and perhaps even August 2014.

This celebration is called “Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party,” or “MNSSHP” for short.

At the party, many of the Magic Kingdom’s rides are open, and trick or treating, special events, and different parades and fireworks are offered.

The official Disney World page for this event can be found here.

Click the image below for the 2014 map and offerings.

And you can find a review of the 2013 MNSSHP party here.

MORE ON MICKEY’S NOT-SO-SCARY HALLOWEEN PARTY in 2014

[Read more →]

I’ve been roped in volunteered to help with The Palooza 2014, a celebration at Disney World being inflicted on us organized by Carl Trent of Dad’s Guide to WDW and WDW Magazine.

The Palooza will go from December 14 through December 20, but the key event will be a fireworks party at Epcot on December 15.  See more on the Palooza and this party on Dad’s blog here.

I’m not entirely sure what my role will be–although I think we can rule out swimsuit model.

Moreover, it is with some relief that I note that the event is not on Main Street at the Magic Kingdom, nor at the Tri-Circle D Ranch at Fort Wilderness, which means none of the manure-handling tasks that I imagine Carl would like to send my way will actually transpire. Yay Epcot!

Anyway, as the Palooza unfolds I’ll keep you posted–but for now, save the date!

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NEW DISNEY WORLD DEAL INCLUDES LATER AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 2014

Disney World has announced a combined room rate and photo deal for stays 4/27/14 – 6/15/14 and 8/15/14 – 9/30/14.

This is the earliest in the year it’s announced a late August/September deal for a while.

This deal needs to be booked by April 20, 2014.

It requires at least a three night hotel stay, and at least two days of tickets.

Those getting the deal will get room rate discounts:

• Value Resorts: up to 10% off (excluded: Art of Animation Little Mermaid rooms)
• Moderate Resorts: up to 15% off (excluded: Port Orleans French Quarter)
• Deluxe and DVC Resorts: up to 25% off (excluded: the Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian)

In addition, you’ll get Disney’s Memory Maker Photo Package for free. The Photo Package is a way of pre-paying for photos taken by Disney photographers.

Disney’s web page on this deal is here, or check with my friends at Destinations in Florida Travel–877-918-8941 or online here.  Remember to mention yourfirstvisit.net when you call! And then they’ll sprinkle a little pixie dust on me if you book with them…

SOME ODDITIES WITH THIS DEAL, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT FREE DINING

The room rate discounts are slim compared to recent deals for this time period—about ten percentage points lower than last year. (Last year’s deal.)

It’s also unusual for Disney to announce a room rate deal for this period before it announces free dining—which has been available during at least part of the August-September timeframe for more than a decade.

This deal also follows a deal that’s also unusual—the current room rate deal that overlaps with the first part of this deal, but includes an extra ticket day free. We haven’t seen free ticket days for a while.

So what’s going on? Well, as usual I don’t know, and as usual I’m willing to guess.

• First, there’s an ongoing battle in Florida about the county hotel tax treatment of certain room discount transactions. By shifting what would normally be “room rate” deals into—with the addition of both required ticket buys and ticket or photo deals—“package deals,” these deals are, I think, protected from any negative fallout from that battle. So that may be part of it.
• Or it could be as simple as perhaps the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train opening later than hoped—I saw today rumors of the summer, though until today I’d been hoping for early spring—and Disney needing something to carry it marketing message until then.

Or it could be both, or neither.

Many have asked if they should take this deal or wait for a better offer—especially for free dining.

I have mixed feeling on this. First, whenever a new deal comes out–like free dining–you can always compete with everyone else to get it, and, if you are successful, cancel your old deal, keeping your new one.

On the other hand, if lots of people book up what are normally slow September days with this room rate/photo deal, then the odds that Disney will provide other deals in September are slimmer.

So here’s my advice:

• If you are going to go during the August/September eligible period regardless of free dining, then book this deal. At least you’ll have a deal…and can always try for a better deal later if one comes out…
• If you’d only go during the eligible period with free dining or a better room rate deal, skip this and wait for the hoped-for appearance of those deals…which I’d expect to see come out no earlier than late April…

What about you?  Gonna take this deal, or wait–and why?

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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: FEBRUARY 8 TO FEBRUARY 16, 2014

The material below details operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

The same stuff is in the image, but organized by park, not by topic.

For more on February 2014 at Walt Disney World, see this.

[Read more →]

Disney’s quarterly earnings release and analyst call (today at 5p) showed strong results in the parks and resorts in the last three months of 2013, and strong bookings for the first three months of 2014.

This suggests no changes in Disney’s core short term strategies for Walt Disney World.

That is, based on the solid economics from the last three months of 2013, and good 2014 trends so far, Disney will continue cutting back on discounts, and rolling out FastPass+ and the overall MyMagic+ program, pretty much along the lines we’ve seen so far.

The last three months of 2013 showed a 6% increase in revenues and 16% in operating income at the parks and resorts, largely from the domestic parks. There were no particular calendar comparability issues in the two years, although at the park level 2013 had a full three months of New Fantasyland, while 2012 had less than a month.

Walt Disney World set a new attendance record for the quarter, but, I infer, not by much, because while the record was referenced in the call, increased attendance was not mentioned in the quarterly earnings release as a driver of results.

Profitability at the parks and resorts was up strongly. Excluding implementation costs and some pension increases, it was up almost 360 basis points—that is, an additional 3.6% of revenues. This was largely driven by higher spending per day per visitor and higher realized hotel prices per night.

And bookings for the current quarter are strong, with hotel bookings so far for the current quarter up 7% compared to the same quarter last year. Since a week of the Easter crowds were in this quarter last year, but not this year, that’s pretty remarkable.

Disney is pleased with MyMagic+ and FastPass+. Improvements–other than a much higher per-capita use of FastPass+ than legacy Fastpass ever saw–remain still largely anecdotal, but the anecdotes make sense.

A couple of other comments I noted, and perhaps read too much into:

• In one of Iger’s responses to an analyst’s question, he implied that it would continue to be true that only Disney World resort guests would be able to book beginning 60+ days ahead of time, and not off site guests. That’s the status now, and widely expected to be what will continue in the future, but nothing has been officially announced. This comment supports the thought of the continuing major differences between FastPass+ for on and off-site guests.
• Jay Rasulo mentioned that Seven Dwarfs Mine Train would be opening in “a few” months. There’s no legal definition of “a few,” but this continues to make me hope it will be open for the Easter crowds in late April, and even better for the Spring Break crowds beginning in early March!

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