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OVERVIEW: JANUARY 2014 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews January 2014 Walt Disney World crowds, prices, deals and discounts, weather, and operating hours; adds a few other notes; and ends with week by week summaries.

Early January 2014 will be dominated by holiday crowds and prices, but after the 4th, most days will see low crowds and low prices–with upticks around the Marathon (weekend of the 11th) and the Martin Luther King Day three day holiday weekend.

Late January has some of the lowest crowds and prices of the year at Walt Disney World.

Even so, January is not recommended for first-time visitors who may never return, because of ride closures.

New Year’s week–ending in 2014 around January 4–has among the highest crowds and prices of the year. Park closings to additional guests are common in this period, as are 8a openings and daily morning Extra Magic Hours.

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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: JUNE 15, 2013 TO JUNE 23, 2013

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

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

(For more on June 2013 at Walt Disney World, see this.)

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TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURES ON WDW TODAY!

So Len Testa (of The Unofficial Guide and TouringPlans.com) invited me onto the WDW Today podcast that he, Matt Hochberg, Mike Newell, and Mike Scopa do.

We recorded the podcast last night, and it was released (minus my best joke!) this morning.

You can find the episode here.

I was nervous as hell and kinda had to pee during the whole recording—but they were really nice, and, for my first ever site-related interview, overall it went as well as it could have.  Some of my sentences were grammatical, and I only rarely mixed up March and May…

Give it a listen if you have 20 minutes to kill.  They said if they had enough positive feedback they might invite me back.

So put any positive feedback on the same link (look for the little comments button in the gray box lower on the page—you have to be registered to comment).

Negative feedback, and/or suggestions that the whole episode should be deleted, and the hard drive it was on destroyed with an axe, probably should go here—as we’ll all then find out about them eventually…

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INNOVENTIONS AT EPCOT

Innoventions East and Innoventions West are areas of Disney World’s Epcot where “you are invited to imagine, invent, inquire and inspire as you explore amazing innovations that are making our lives better.” (Slow-loading source.)

Each of the two Innoventions pavilions holds a changing roster of 5-8 experiences, each with an external sponsor—ranging from Coca-Cola to Cornell University.

Innoventions is the perfect example of the Epcot itinerary quandary.

These are low capacity experiences of varying, but usually low, interest to typical theme-park visitors—and especially of low interest to most kids. (The Sum of All Thrills is a bit of an exception.)

So skip Innoventions, right? After all, it’s ranked as “Most Can Skip” here, and as “Avoid” for little kids, and “Skippable for everybody else, here.

Well, maybe.

The issue is that Epcot is willing to make you think, if you wish to, and you just never know when your kids (or you!) will have their imagination or intellect sparked.

REVIEW: VISION HOUSE AT INNOVENTIONS EAST [Read more →]

EPCOT ITINERARY REVISIONS COMING SOON

Danny challenged me earlier this year to re-think my Epcot itineraries, and I’m in the middle of doing so.

Here’s some of my current thoughts—I’d love to hear everyone’s reactions!

This site is meant to help easily create the best Walt Disney World visit for first time visitors who may never return, and at multiple places encourages seeing almost everything.

But fitting all this into the site’s standard eight night itineraries—and still leaving some time for goofing off and recovering from the parks—is not always easy.

So I do in fact leave some things out—usually minor street events or character greetings (covered by character meals instead).

But at Epcot I’ve explicitly listed all kinds of stuff as

• To be sampled and only explored further based on reactions to the sample (e.g. World Showcase)
• As basically optional for families with kids (e.g. Agent P, Innoventions)
• As “skippable”

And some stuff (like Club Cool) I’ve just plain ignored.

This is actually a change from the early years of the itineraries, when wide swaths of Epcot—for example Innoventions and Agent P’s precursor, Kim Possible—weren’t even mentioned.

Slowly over the years I’ve added stuff to the Epcot itineraries, usually framed as optional or to be sampled–but if you do all these, and spend a lot of time in them, you won’t come even close to being able to meeting the suggested timetables of the site (which was one of Danny’s key points).

Moreover, with the re-do of Test Track, the best thing to do early on has changed.

There’s two problems with the new Test Track:

1. It is now even more popular than it was before the re-do, so it builds longer waits even earlier than it used to
2. Its Fastpass and single-rider lines give a profoundly different family experience than the standard “stand-by” line does.

Now personally, I don’t think that the “profoundly different experience” actually matters much—but that’s a personal call, and not one I’m willing to do on behalf of everyone else.

So the issue is adapting the day to doing the right things first thing, and incorporating somehow all the sorta-optional attractions.

Adapting the morning is fairly straightforward:

1. Be at the turnstiles by 8.30a—earlier in more crowded weeks
2. Go to Soarin and Fastpass it
3. Walk the ten minutes to Test Track and ride it
4. Go into Innoventions East, check out Sum of All Thrills, and if it looks like fun, ride it.
5. Head back to the Soarin side and do at least two of the three attractions in The Seas with Nemo and Friends Pavilion:  See The Seas with Nemo and Friends and Turtle Talk with Crush, and check out the Seas Main Tank and Exhibits.  Spend a much time with the exhibits as works for your family.
6. Go to the Land Pavilion, and catch your Soarin Fastpass; do Living with the Land if you have an interest in history, farming, vegetable gardening, or technology; and if you are a huge Lion King fan, or an ironist, see The Circle of Life…

Ok, see the problem? We aren’t at lunch yet, and there’s already four attractions that are basically optional.

The cool thing about Epcot is that it’s willing to go beyond pure play and try to capture the imagination and intellect of your family.  The problem with Epcot is that mostly as a result of this willingness, different families—and different members within a family—will love some stuff that others find just dull as dirt. And it’s hard to say ahead of time which will light a spark in your kids…

There’s four different types of attractions at Epcot

1. Ones most people will find lame—the Gran Fiesta Tour, Journey into the Imagination with Figment, Captain EO, the Norway Film, Circle of Life, much of Innoventions (VISION House, anyone?), etc.
2. Minor attractions—nothing wrong, but not worth a lot either—Maelstrom, The Seas with Nemo and Friends, Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure, etc.
3. Bi-modal attractions—some love them  and some find them unspeakably dull: the rest of Innoventions, Living with the Land, Ellen’s Energy Adventure, the Seas Main Tank and Exhibits, the American Adventure, the rest of the films in World Showcase, etc.
4. Attractions worth seeing for pretty much everyone 8 or older: Spaceship Earth, Soarin, Test Track, Turtle Talk with Crush, Mission Space, and Illuminations

So to get the best out of Epcot without spending two full days there, the trick is to have a sense of what might be your family’s “don’t-miss” attractions in addition to these last six, and see them either when they are right there at hand (like the ones in the Seas and Land pavilions) or later in the day—in times my itineraries right now mark as free time back at your resort.

WHAT’S COMING NEXT FOR THE EPCOT ITINERARIES

So I’ll be doing a couple of things to support this approach to Epcot.

• First, revising the early mornings so that they better respond to Test Track
• Second, publishing many more reviews of the rides at Epcot—with the focus being on the first three categories above, to help families with choices among them
• Third, grouping many of the rides from the first three categories above into new “optional” times that (optionally) re-capture time currently indicated as at the resorts, with as little back-tracking as possible

These changes and reviews will all be coming out over the course of the summer!

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DISNEY WORLD DEAL ABOUT TO EXPIRE

There’s a Walt Disney World deal out right now that offers room rate discounts of 15% to 30% off certain Walt Disney World resort hotels.

This deal covers arrival dates from June 13, 2013 through August 14, 2013–but it needs to be booked by June 14, 2013. 

For more on this deal, see this.  For other current deals, see this.

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