Category — w. Most Recent Stuff

NEW DISNEY WORLD SUMMER 2013 ROOM RATE DEAL

As expected, Walt Disney World has released a new deal for the summer of 2013.

The new Disney World deal covers most arrival dates from June 13, 2013 through August 14, and needs to be booked by June 14.

The deal follows Disney World’s recent pattern of different discount levels based both on starting price and demand, and also excludes what has typically recently been excluded:

• Save 30%: Animal Kingdom Lodge (standard view), Bay Lake Tower, Beach Club, Beach Club Villas, BoardWalk Inn, BoardWalk Villas, Contemporary, Grand Floridian, Old Key West, Polynesian, Saratoga Springs, and Yacht Club
• Save 20%: The Cabins at Fort Wilderness, Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Port Orleans Resort Riverside, The Villas at Wilderness Lodge and Wilderness Lodge
• Save 15%: All-Star Sports, All-Star Music, Art of Animation Family Suites and Pop Century
• Explicitly excluded: Campsites, 3-Bedroom villas, suites, Art of Animation Little Mermaid
• Possibly available at low (e.g. 5%) discount some dates: All Star Movies, Port Orleans French Quarter, other unlisted resorts

For more details, see Disney’s page on this offer.

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NOW AT AN AWKWARD AGE…

Yesterday this site completed its fifth full year of operation.

(This birthday post would have gone up yesterday, but I had more important news to relay.)

Thanks to all of you, the site is continuing to grow and as a result helping even more people.

The site will have its 3.5 millionth visitor all-time visitor since opening in a couple of weeks, 2 million of you have stopped by for a spell over the last 12 months, and the forecast for the next 12 months is almost 4 million of you coming by!

I’m grateful for and humbled by your readership, your help, and your kind words…thanks!!

WHAT’S COMING IN THE NEXT TWELVE MONTHS

In the time between now and the 6th birthday I expect two major developments:

• Revising the itineraries in response to MyMagic+ and Fastpass+–which, for reasons explained here, I’m not seeing as going into large scale operation much before October 1
• Revising the look and feel of the site, for both technical and reader experience reasons.

This site is built on WordPress, and the “theme” the site runs on—NeoClassical by Chris Pearson—is what shapes its look and feel.

I love the typographical clarity of NeoClassical, but it has not been supported for years.  As a result, every time there’s a WordPress upgrade, there’s a risk the site might break, and I can’t take advantage of the newer features released WordPress since NeoClassical was last updated more than 6 years ago.  So a new theme is on the to-do list!

Developing a new theme will also give me a chance to fix some major reader issues:

• Stuff is hard to find, and
• The overall look and feel of the site is too cluttered

You won’t find everything here—based on the comments I get (about 4,000 questions asked, and 4,000 answers given, in the last 12 months) the site is thin on stuff for kids younger than 8, on itineraries focused on just a park (all my itineraries are fully integrated for multi-park long stays) and on best and worst days.

But even so, there’s still a lot here—almost 1500 individual entries, with more coming out at a rate of 3-5 new posts a week!

I have lotsa stuff on how to find things around here—the best option is the search box at the top right of every page. (Try the search box.  It’s delicious!  Don’t believe me? Search for “Wishes”!)

But I think an “accordion menu” on the left side would be a big help—like the one on the left side of MouseSavers.com.  This would allow the navigation section you now see on the left side of this site to expand to be much more detailed and specific than it is right now if needed, while defaulting to something much shorter and less scary.

If I went that way, it’d also make it easier to kill the entire right sidebar, moving the important parts to the left side, in space freed both by the accordion menu, and also by killing the “More Puffery” section.

I’ll also likely re-do the home page so it has its own, new layout.

The current home page intentionally is like the table of contents to an instruction manual which has had its cover pulled off.  For the intended users of this site—first time visitors who may never return—that’s OK.  But over time the site has developed three different types of readers:

1. The intended audience: first timers
2. Returning visitors who are using the more detailed material on the site to shape certain key decisions like when to go and where to stay…
3. Disney fans who like to see what’s new here, and to just generally browse the site

So I’m thinking I may just make the home page three columns, with one column exactly addressing each of these three types of readers….

In addition I’ll continue all the routines that for better or worse the site has fallen into—I’ll revise the 2014 material (the 2014 crowd calendar, price seasons, and week rankings) in the summer, once final prices and final public school breaks are released; the 2014 version of the week picker will come out shortly after that, and in the fall, I’ll publish the first drafts of the core 2015 material.

Having completed the Great Moderate Re-Visit over the last 12 months, and stayed in and reviewed the brand-new Art of Animation Family Suites and Little Mermaid standard rooms, I’ll finish re-visiting and re-reviewing the other Values in the next 12 months; stay in the newly refurbed rooms that are emerging at the Polynesian; and check out the new DVC offering at the Grand Floridian when it opens.

Then there’s the rest of the Fantasyland Expansion that will emerge over the next 12 months…and likely other fun new stuff to check out that we don’t know about yet!

Moreover, I’ll likely need to revise the Harry Potter material for the opening of part two of Harry Potter at Universal Studios—currently rumored for June 2014.

So there’s plenty to look forward to in yourfirstvisit.net’s sixth year!

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THE NEXT DISNEY WORLD DVC VENUE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED

April 1, 2013—In an announcement that caught the fan community off guard—Josh was so shocked that he immediately ran off to take more photos of merchandise—Walt Disney World, RunDisney, and Adventures by Disney today jointly announced that the next Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) venue at Walt Disney World will be high adventure backpacking campsites.

The campsites, to be known as Disney’s Villaderness Campsites, will be located in the stinking mangrove swamps pristine wetlands area northeast of Bay Lake, near where several years ago Disney announced it would build a high-speed rail line.

The idea behind the new DVC resort is fastpacking—the combination of backpacking and trail running.  It will be themed around “pain.”

Guests at Disney’s Villaderness Campsites will check in at the Contemporary Resort, and then “fastpack”: run from there along wilderness trails to the campsites, while carrying personal backpacks filled with all their gear—tents, sleeping bags, stoves, food, clothes, etc.

Transportation to and from the parks will also be via running, but guests will not be required to carry their loaded backpacks for day trips, except to the Animal Kingdom. (“Because we say so,” a Disney spokesperson explained.)

Adventures by Disney guides will accompany, goad and belittle the runners, and shout out the highlights of what is being passed—pythons, sink-holes, and the like.  (DVC guests staying on points will be able to use the Adventures by Disney guides only every fourth day.)

Sell-side analysts are quite excited.  “In the traditional DVC model, Disney convinces future guests to pay Disney to build a hotel for them, and then to pay Disney for its upkeep, but they do get a sticker,” says Bertie Wooster of UBS. “At the Villaderness Campsites,” he continues, “guests will be paying Disney for 50 years for the privilege of running their own gear to unimproved swampland!  Not even a community room or second-rate restaurant! Brilliant!”

THE STORY BEHIND THIS JUST-ANNOUNCED DVC RESORT

Disney’s Villaderness Campsites were inspired, insiders say, by the stunning growth of Disney World’s various running events.

The current RunDisney events, including the full, half, half-full, 3.1415k, sideways, silly walk, and Hoop Dee Doo marathons, were originally inspired by management’s observations of guests in the parks during peak-crowd weeks.

One insider told me “we realized that people would pay good money to stand in hot lines for two or three hours per ride.  So the question we asked ourselves was, ‘how could we take people’s willingness to be just miserable for hours and make even more money off of it?’”

And thus the marathons and other running events at Disney World were born, as there seems an almost insatiable demand to combine the best of Walt Disney World with hours of pain and misery—and pay extra for it.

Disney’s Villaderness Campsites (pronounce it like a movie-Nazi: “Veeeeelderunessss”) are the natural outgrowth of the need of many to pay for pain and Disney’s wish to grow income while limiting capital spend after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the Tangled bathrooms.

(Helping a bit on the capex front is that the plans to add Minnesota as Epcot’s next World Showcase nation were recently quietly canceled, pouring some capital back into the cash till).

Fastpacking to the pain-themed campsites creates the combined misery/Disney experience so deeply craved, while the unimproved sites, and the requirement for guests to bring their own backpacks and gear, makes the capital investment negligible.

Negligible, that is, for Disney.  Guests will still need to pay an arm, a leg—and a couple of feet. The minimum buy-in points and point calendar are still being developed, and may be related to best marathon times.  But the expectation is that pricing will be similar to One-Bedroom Villas at Saratoga Springs, since an un-developed wasteland is comparable to those tiny rooms.

But at least at Saratoga Springs you won’t have to pack in toilet paper and a trowel!

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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: MARCH 30, 2013 TO APRIL 7, 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.

This is one of the busiest weeks of the year.  For some thoughts on dealing with it, see this.

(For more on March 2013, see this, and more on April, see this.)

[Read more →]

DISNEY WORLD VISA DEAL LIKELY TO BE RELEASED TO THE REST OF US ON APRIL 2

Update April 2: This deal is now out!  See this for more.

There’s a new Disney World room rate deal out for Disney Visa cardholders. Multiple sources predict or assert it’ll be available to the general public next week–e.g. on Tuesday April 2, 2013.

It covers most arrival dates from June 13, 2013 through August 14, and needs to be booked by June 14.

The deal follows Disney World’s recent pattern of different discount levels based both on starting price and demand, and also excludes what has typically recently been excluded:

• Save 30%: Animal Kingdom Lodge (standard view), Bay Lake Tower, Beach Club, Beach Club Villas, BoardWalk Inn, BoardWalk Villas, Contemporary, Grand Floridian, Old Key West, Polynesian, Saratoga Springs, and Yacht Club
• Save 20%: The Cabins at Fort Wilderness, Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Port Orleans Resort Riverside, The Villas at Wilderness Lodge and Wilderness Lodge
• Save 15%: All-Star Sports, All-Star Music, Art of Animation Family Suites and Pop Century
• Explicitly excluded: Campsites, 3-Bedroom villas, Art of Animation Little Mermaid
• Possibly available at low (e.g. 5%) discount some dates: All Star Movies, Port Orleans French Quarter, other unlisted resorts

More next week when the general public deal comes out!

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ARGUING WITH MYSELF ABOUT THE DISNEY WORLD MODERATE RESORTS

For years now I’ve been advising first time visitors who may never return to avoid the moderates because, compared to alternatives like the Wilderness Lodge or Art of Animation, they are short on kid appeal.  They also have some real convenience issues…

This advice necessary follows the underlying logic of this site.  The site is meant to make the key Walt Disney World planning decisions fast and easy for first time visitors who may never return:

• By bringing all the key points to just one page
• By giving very specific instructions where multiple options are possible, and
• For families who can’t or won’t follow those instructions, to show the next best choices, ranked in order

So to provide the specific instructions and the rankings, I had to develop ranking criteria.  It took me a couple of years before I went live with this site almost five years ago to establish for all the topics on the home page the ranking criteria, and then to get the data to use in the populating the rankings.

For where to stay, the ranking criteria came out as first kid appeal, and then, within kid appeal groups, breaking ties with convenience.  I also did rankings by price class, as I can’t think of any helpful way to set a priori the price tradeoffs among the price classes.

Kid appeal, as I define it, is principally visual, and it means whether the look of a resort has public space features that speak to kids of whimsy, playfulness, and/or adventure, signaling that that this resort was designed for them! (And not necessarily for their parents…)

I don’t mean that your kids won’t have a great time at the lower-kid appeal resorts.  The ranking is comparative, not absolute, and your kids can—and will!—have a ball at any of the Disney hotels. But there’s three deluxes and five value resorts with really distinctive kid appeal…

…yet there are no moderates with really distinctive kid appeal at that same high level.

So that’s the fundamental reason I don’t recommend moderates for first time family visitors who may never return.  My core criterion is kid appeal, and none of them really rises to the high level you can find in the other price classes that I can recommend it on the basis of kid appeal.

The moderates also have major transportation convenience problems, and all but Port Orleans French Quarter have a sprawling and sometimes painful layout.

But I do rank the moderates in order anyway for those who ignore my advice, or are not “first time family visitors who may never return.”  And here I do rank them by visual kid appeal—finding a slight edge to Caribbean Beach on this measure, because of its beaches, color and theming, a bit of an edge to Coronado Springs for similar reasons, and the Cabins at Fort Wilderness bringing up the rear on this criterion.

The complete ranking based on these criteria is as follows

1. Caribbean Beach
2. Coronado Springs
3. Port Orleans Riverside
4. Port Orleans French Quarter
5. The Cabins at Fort Wilderness

NOW HERE’S WHERE I DISAGREE WITH MYSELF

But here’s the problem…if my sister called me and said “Dave, I’m gonna stay in a moderate—don’t try to talk me out of it—which one would you recommend to me, your sister?”  my answer would not be Caribbean Beach—it’d be Port Orleans French Quarter.

And not because of POFQ’s kid appeal, which is slim, and not because of transportation convenience, which, while better than the other moderates, is still weak.

Rather I’d recommend POFQ because of something not even in my criteria—it would be the compactness of POFQ compared to the other moderates, how much easier it is to get around there than at any other moderate, that would lead me to recommend it.

And for exactly the same reason I’d keep The Cabins last, but move Caribbean Beach to next to last—both these resorts are profoundly painful to get around.

I’m not quite sure where to slot Coronado Springs and Riverside on this “pain to get around” criterion.  Coronado Springs has a few more really awkward rooms (in the Ranchos section) than Riverside, but the very worst rooms in the Alligator Bayou section of Riverside are a fair hike away as well. So I’d put Riverside ahead of Coronado Springs, but not by much.

(Other points come into play with Coronado Springs.  It has many more amenities, and better and more varied dining and bars than any other moderate, but less fun room décor, and it sometimes can be overwhelmed by conventioneers.  So its extra positives get balanced out by its extra negatives.)

The main negative of French Quarter is the absence of a table service restaurant.  Frankly, the other moderate table service restaurants aren’t worth much anyway…I’d certainly never put dining at one on any of my itineraries…but this may be an issue to some.

THE MODERATES REMIXED

Another way to think about this: the moderates are almost tied on kid appeal, and almost tied on transportation convenience.

So my basic criteria don’t much distinguish them. What if you throw those criteria out, and look at all other factors that contribute to a pleasant stay?  What’s the ranking then?  Well, based on the above, it’s

1. Port Orleans French Quarter
2. Port Orleans Riverside
3. Coronado Springs
4. Caribbean Beach
5. The Cabins at Fort Wilderness

–with #1 a clear leader, 2 and 3 very close to one another, and 4 and 5 pretty distant from the top three.

So if I was gonna remix the moderates ranking, that’s what it would be.  Compare it to my basic list earlier on the page, where only one resort–the Cabins–has the same ranking, and #1 and #4 have flipped… and tell me what you think!

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