Category — zzz. Stuff No One Cares About but Me

Still need some presents–for someone else, or perhaps yourself?

Then I have just the things for you–and the best part is that these are all created by friends of mine in the Disney community!

FROM STEVE BELL – “WALT DISNEY WORLD FOR MILITARY FAMILIES”

Steve’s Military Disney Tips has always been the go-to site for military families looking to make the most out of their Disney World vacations.

But like every other website (especially mine), finding exactly what you need to know, in the right order, sometimes isn’t as easy as you’d like it to be.

So the great news is that Steve has published a Disney World guidebook for military families.

With entire chapters devoted to the 2016 salute, to Shades of Green, and to other deals and perks available to military families, I can’t recommend it enough!!

It’s available as a PDF–probably the most convenient format–here, and on Amazon.com here.

FROM THE WDW MAGAZINE TEAM AND CARL TRENT – “THE BEST OF WDW – VOLUME 1”

Carl writes Dad’s Guide to WDW and leads the team behind WDW Magazine, which I am proud to be a part of.

Carl works with some of the best Disney World photographers around, and the result is a stunning picture book, The Best of WDW.

I love my copy–and you will love yours, too! It’s available here.

KAT LOGAN WOLFE’S “GET DOWN TO DISNESS” PLANNING CALENDAR

Kat leads the Wednesday night Disney World Q&A sessions that happen several times a month on her site Get Down to Disness. I join in as many of these I can.

Kat also offers a fun 14 day planning calendar that you use can pull together all your park, dining and other Disney World plans into one simple spot, the Get Down to Disness® Daily Agenda Book.

Learn more about it here.

FROM THE WDW MAGAZINE TEAM AND CARL TRENT – DISNEY WORLD WALL CALENDAR

The same team behind The Best of WDW also offers a Disney World Wall Calendar.

Loaded with great photos, it also offers planning tips, tidbits of history, and even little stickers you can use to highlight your own plans.

The calendar is available here.

JOSH HUMPHREY’S “THE EASY GUIDE TO YOUR FIRST WALT DISNEY WORLD VISIT”

Josh runs easyWDW, far and away the best Disney World park planning site out there, with in particular the best advice on future crowds and which parks to avoid which days, and lots of other great and hilarious stuff.

He also co-authors (with some schlub) the best-reviewed Disney World guidebook series ever offered, The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit.

Great for your first or fourteenth visit, The easy Guide is simultaneously the most up-to-date, thoughtful, judicious, easy to use, and shortest guide to Disney World you can find!

Josh’s book is available as a paperback or Kindle book here, and as a PDF here.

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My co-author of The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit, Josh of easyWDW.com, and I will be doing meet-ups and book signings, and perhaps giveaways too, next week, on Tuesday December 15.

We are gonna be almost everywhere. Here’s our schedule:

• We’ll be meeting and signing at the Animal Kingdom, near Restaurantosaurus, Tuesday 12/15 from 3.30 to 4.30p
• We’ll be meeting and signing at the Magic Kingdom, at the Tomorrowland Terrace, Tuesday 12/15 from 5.30 to 6.30p
• Then we’ll be heading over to Epcot, mostly for a private IllumiNations party hosted by the folks at WDW Magazine (especially Carl Trent, also of Dad’s Guide and The Best of WDW), but we will also do a meet and greet in the UK area around 7.45 to 8.15 or 8.30p

On Tuesday itself, check Twitter to stay in tune.  I’m @yourfirstvisit,  and Josh is @easywdw.

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Josh and I have set up a mechanism whereby all the people who so kindly share news about The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit can actually get a little pixie dust if anyone buys the paperback, Kindle edition, or PDF edition via specialized links that this page tells you how to set up.

THE KINDLE OR PAPERBACK EDITIONS

If you don’t already have an Amazon Associates account, set one up and use it to create links to the paperback and Kindle editions of The easy Guide.  It’s free, and requires only that you have an Amazon account.

The fee that Amazon pays you per sale will vary, but something like a dollar for each paperback or seventy cents for each Kindle edition is typical.

More on Amazon Associates accounts begins here.

THE PDF EDITION

To get credit for sales from you of our brand-new PDF edition (because we don’t share with Amazon, you get $4.99 per PDF sold via your links) you have to do a couple of things:

1. Set up a Gumroad account, if you don’t already have one (most don’t), and confirm it by clicking the link Gumroad will send you
2. After you’ve confirmed your email, then email me the email address that you used for your Gumroad account at davidhobartyfv@gmail.com
3. I will then use that email address to add you as an affiliate, and then Gumroad will email you the link to use to get credit for your sales

Once you are in, Gumroad is very easy to use, but the first minute or too is a little odd, so I’m gonna take you through the steps with some screenshots below.

Step 1: Go to Gumroad.com. You’ll note in the first couple of steps that all the copy implies that you are the seller/creator, not an affiliate.  No worries–it’s just that there’s only one account type. Click “Start Selling” in the top menu bar to get started.

Step 2: A window will open inviting you to sign up.  Fill in the right side stuff and click “Create Account.”

Step 3: A Welcome page opens, and asks for more info–if you’ve done anything like this before, your country, and, at the bottom, “What are you working on”–another feature aimed more at authors/creators than affiliates.

Answer the first two queries, and for the third, click the star at the far right “Nothing yet.”

Step 4: The “Get Started” page will open.  Ignore it, and instead click on, at the top right “My Account,” and from the drop-down menu, click “Settings.”

Step 5:  The Settings page will open. On its menu click “Payout” (circled in red)

Step 6: A page asking for details about how to pay you will open. Fill it in!

Step 7: Gumroad will send you an email asking you to confirm your email address. Click the link in the email to confirm it

Step 8:  Send me the email address you used to open your Gumroad account, to davidhobartyfv@gmail.com

Step 9: I will add you as an affiliate, and then Gumroad will send you your own link to use.  The email will look like the above–be sure to use the first link!!! Sales that occur from this link will earn you $4.99 per copy!

RECAP OF THE AFFILIATE OPPORTUNITIES

So to recap:

1. Set up an Amazon Associates account if you don’t already have one, and get from it a link for The easy Guide in Kindle and paperback
2. Set up a Gumroad account, confirm it by clicking the link Gumroad will send you, then email me at davidhobartyfv@gmail.com the email address you used for the account
3. Gumroad will send you a link after I enter you in; use that link for your PDF edition link.

WANT SOME PICTURES?

None of these links will do anything for you if you don’t post them somewhere–on your blog, your website, your Facebook page, twitter, a Disney World forum, Trip Advisor, etc.  If you want to add a photo to your material, I’ve got some you can right-click and save below!

QUESTIONS??

If you have a question, probably others will be wondering about the same thing. Just use the comment form below!!

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I’ll post more about this later (you bet I will!) but I wanted to let everybody know that the 2016 edition of the best-reviewed Disney World guide book series, EVER, The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit, is now available on Amazon!

Click the link to learn more!

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Just some news from my visit to Disney World that ended this morning. I’ll be posting more about all (well, most) of this later, but wanted to get some key points out while the thoughts are fresh.

COACH CLASS ON THE AUTO TRAIN

I did a full report from my January/February trip on taking the Auto Train to Disney World here, but that trip was in two different types of spaces in the sleeping cars.

As this trip included tent camping at Fort Wilderness, I needed to take my car stuffed to the gills with camping gear. See the picture (experienced tent campers will recognize that it’s from the trip back, from all the sand…)

So I loaded the car and to complete the Auto Train experience drove to Virginia, boarded, and took coach in Auto Train down. (Actually I drove halfway to Lorton, did the Jeopardy online test from a hotel in Breezewood that evening, then continued the next day. The online test? I don’t think I did well enough…)

The short version: yes, you can sleep in coach. Not as well as in a sleeper (or a hotel room), but you can.

TWO SECRETS TO TENT CAMPING AT FORT WILDERNESS

I’ll have much more to say about the keys to success in tent camping at Fort Wilderness when I re-do my review of it based on this trip (the current review, from before this trip, is here).

But leading up to that, here’s two key secrets that even the most experienced tent campers may not know:

First, the tent sites are all sand, and given the wind and storms you can face any season in Florida, you need sand stakes—real sand stakes, the kind you have to drive in with a tire iron or an 18 inch screwdriver as an aid to torque.

Your tent and fly may both be self-supporting, but without stakes, that just means they are self-ballooning—they will blow away in a wind. (I’ve seen un-staked self-supporting tents blow away with kids inside.) Bring sand stakes to anchor them.

Second, every campsite at Fort Wilderness—even the ones optimized for tent camping–has electric power. Bring extension cords and electric fans—more than one of each. You won’t regret your fans.

THE REFURBS AT CARIBBEAN BEACH

It’s been true for a month or so now that the main refurb at Caribbean Beach is done, so all buildings except those in Trinidad South now have refurbed rooms with either a king, two queens, or two queens and a short murphy bed.

But I wanted to see this for myself, so I drove over one morning and confirmed it.

I asked at the Customs House what the scoop was with the Pirate rooms, and was told this time that “they will only have their soft goods replaced—e.g. the mattresses—and will stay full bed rooms.”

Time will tell if this is true, but it’s what I was told…

THE SWAN

It stormed and stormed and stormed at Fort Wilderness, and when it didn’t, it was 93 degrees with 80% humidity—very unseasonable weather. So I ducked over to the Swan for a night for walls and a roof, air conditioning, and a tub.

I liked the room—and I really liked the pool complex. The bedroom area of a two queen Swan room is comparable to a Disney moderate. More expensive than a moderate, but less expensive than a Disney deluxe Epcot resort—and almost as well-located.

I’ll be staying at the Dolphin for three nights in May on a business trip, so after that I’ll do a full review of both the Swan and Dolphin.

THE MEET-UP

Part of the point of this trip was to do a meet-up and book signing with Josh from easyWDW, my co-author (pictured above with a family who met us), and Jim Korkis, who contributes to our book The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit.

It was great fun—and thanks so much to those who came, and to Allison from Destinations in Florida who came with stuff to give away—but the weather at Epcot was as bad as I’ve seen: umbrellas were snapping, small kids floating away. So attendance was not quite what we’d hoped for…

THE STUDIOS AT THE POLYNESIAN

The new Studios at the Polynesian are both gorgeous and whimsical. They are way short on storage space, though. More to come in a complete re-write of my Poly material soon.

THE NANEA VOLCANO POOL AND KIDS PLAY AREA AT THE POLYNESIAN VILLAGE RESORT

The re-furbed Nanea Volcano pool and the new kid’s play area—which opened the day I checked in—are just great.

There’s much more deck chair space than there used to be, the new hot tub is a hit, and the Poly now has the best kid’s water play area of any Disney resort. More on all this in the re-done review to come

CONSTRUCTION AT THE POLY

Construction however, is not over. Lotsa walkways are being worked on the east side of the resort, Tokelau is still in refurb (though it looks like it’ll be done soon), and as a result there’s lots of construction walls on this side of the resort.

Moreover, it’s still expected that the smaller East Pool on this side will begin refurb soon.

With the Great Ceremonial House and main pool refurbs now done, there’s no reason not to stay at the Poly—but stay on the west side…

OK, that’s all for now. Back to Ohio, and I promise I’ll catch up on the comments soon! After that, the re-review of the Poly.

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As of yesterday I’ve fully published my re-review of Disney’s Art of Animation Resort.

The first page of the re-review is here, and the full set of pages in the review is this:

• Overview of Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
• The Little Mermaid Area and Rooms
• Photo Tour of a Little Mermaid Room
• Overview of the Family Suites Areas
• Accommodations in the Family Suites
• Photo Tour of a Finding Nemo Family Suite (plus bed dimensions, storage, etc.)
• Photo Tour of a Lion King Family Suite
• Photo Tour of a Cars Family Suite
• Amenities at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
• The Pools at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort

Normally I don’t put up an “announcement” post like this, since the new material will show up in my “Most Recent Stuff” box on the right sidebar. But this time, instead of posting all-new pages, I (mostly) re-did pages that already exist…and thereby hangs a tale.

(Note that most of you won’t care, and should go straight to the new review.)

MY LIFE AT ART OF ANIMATION

The old material on Art of Animation was literally scattered over 11 pages from five different visits, and it was figuring out what to do with the material from my sixth visit that led me to rewrite rather than post new pages.

• We stayed in a Finding Nemo Family Suite in June 2012, the week that Art of Animation opened, and I published a three page review shortly after.
• We stayed in a Little Mermaid standard room in September 2012, shortly after these rooms opened, and I published a three page review of these rooms shortly after.
• A few weeks later, I realized that to be parallel to the other reviews on this site I needed an overview of the whole resort, so I did three pages on that—with a lot of overlap with the first two sets of reviews.
• In August 2013, three things happened: I got a new camera, stayed in a Lion King suite, and stayed in a Cars suite. I updated many (but not all) of the exterior photos in the nine pages I’d already published with stuff from the new camera, and published new pages with photo tours of each of the Lion King and Cars suites.
• In February 2014 I revisited a Little Mermaid room with the new camera, and updated the room and area photos from that visit.
• In December 2014 we re-visited a Finding Nemo suite, and I got updated Nemo and resort images on that trip.

Now, my initial thought had been simply to rewrite everything from scratch, killing a lot of redundancies and providing a flow from topic to topic that better matched the rest of the reviews on this site.

Almost all my reviews have gone through two or even three revisions (as I revisit hotels either after refurbs or to get better pix) and this is what I’ve always done in the past. Technically, what I do is once the new material is out, I use a 301 redirect to send all the old pages to the first page of the new review. This way I keep most old links (internal or external) still useful.

For Art of Animation, though, this didn’t quite work, as the room types are so different and my original posts so distinct in their topics that many links appropriately go just to the Family Suites, just to the Little Mermaid rooms, or (for example) just to the Cars suites and not to the Nemo or Lion King ones.

So what I did instead was keep mostly to the same topics of the old pages, but updated the material and photos on them, killed most of the redundancy (since people don’t always begin on page 1, there’s always gonna be some redundancy), and posted only two new pages (on amenities and pools) to fit the structure of most of my other recent reviews.

This kept the integrity of the old links while giving me complete freedom (so long as I stayed on the topic of the old page!!) for re-writes and new images. As it turned out, of the old 11 pages, 8 could keep their same topics, and only 3 needed redirects.

This also had the virtue of preserving the comments (450+), pins (1500+), Facebook likes (130+, must do better) etc., still to the topics where these were initially created.

New posts with redirects would have lost every one of these. Since Art of Animation is still a new and hot topic, this is good—especially when you note that on this site 450 comments typically means 225 questions from you and 225 answers from me…

A NEW TREND…

I have similar problems/opportunities with my All-Star Music and Port Orleans Riverside reviews.

On Music I have separate reviews of the standard rooms and the family suites, and a bucket of (much better) updated photos of the exteriors and of a standard room from my January visit.

On Riverside I have one main review, but also separate reviews of the 5 person Alligator Bayou and 4 person Royal Rooms—plus much better photos of a standard room from my February visit.

So for each I’ll be re-crafting THEM into single integrated reviews, but like I just did for Art of Animation, I’ll be putting the new material on top of the old pages so that the specific links and shares and pins—e.g. to a Royal Room, or a Family Suite comparison—still work.

In other words, yes I am behind on my reviews again…and tomorrow I depart to Disney World to stay in 3 more resorts!—for an updated review of the Fort Wilderness’s campsites, a stay in one of the new Poly Studios (and review of the refurbed pool, Trader Sams, etc.), and a stay at the Swan! Oh, well…

SOMETHING ELSE, WHAT DO YOU THINK??

Another new thing I did in the Art of Animation update was to revise how the flow of links across the review worked.

Traditionally you’d find something like these numeric links (from my Grand Floridian review):

This time, instead on each page I did text links that show the topic of each page:

• Overview of Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
• The Little Mermaid Area and Rooms
• Photo Tour of a Little Mermaid Room
• Overview of the Family Suites Areas
• Accommodations in the Family Suites
• Photo Tour of a Finding Nemo Family Suite (plus bed dimensions, storage, etc.)
• Photo Tour of a Lion King Family Suite
• Photo Tour of a Cars Family Suite
• Amenities at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
• The Pools at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort

I think the new version is uglier, but much more helpful.

Since I am the former, and my goal is the latter, I’m OK with that!

But those of you who have paged through my other reviews using the old numeric link structure—what do YOU think??

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