Category — zzz. Stuff No One Cares About but Me

Starting tonight, I’ll be visiting Walt Disney World for six nights, and over that time have five different rooms booked for a total of ten nights…

As Lucy said to Ricky, I have some explaining to do…and I’m not exactly recommending this!

Long-time readers will know that I’m one of the few people crazy enough to have recently stayed for multiple nights at every single Walt Disney World resort hotel, and for those with significantly different room types, in almost every single major distinct room type as well.

Reviews resulting from all these stays can be found beginning here.

In the early years of this site, four to six times a year I’d just book a Disney World resort hotel room for three or four nights, go down, stay at and experience the resort, work on the real job, work on this site, play in the parks, and head home and write everything up.

It never crossed my mind to stay at two hotels on the same visit until I realized that it was a lot more efficient use of airfare and travel time to visit for longer and check out more hotels on each visit.  Because I can do much of my real job remotely, longer trips are generally fine, so I’m still going to Disney World 4-6 times a year, just staying longer and seeing more—both in the parks and the hotels–while I’m there.

I think a full review of a hotel can’t be done without a three or four night stay.  But if I’m revisiting just to check out a different room type that’s not much different from rooms I’ve already been in recently, not so many nights are needed.

So both are what’s going on in this visit.  I’m spending multiple nights at each of All-Star Sports and All-Star Movies, to re-experience these in full, and out of that create all-new reviews. That’s the core purpose (on the hotel side) of this visit.

But there’s also three other room variants that I’ll be seeing on this trip, so that I can post for you about their specific features.

Two are at Art of Animation.  I stayed in the family suites in the Finding Nemo section the week Art of Animation opened, and in the standard rooms in Little Mermaid the week that those opened.

But I haven’t stayed yet at either the Lion King or Cars sections at Art of Animation, so I’ll be doing that on this trip, and publishing photo-tours of each suite.

With that done, I’ll have visited (if new) or re-visited (if old) all of the values and their major room variants between June 2012 and August 2013, and all the value resort reviews will thus be updated and fresh. (I did the same set of re-visits and rewrites for the moderates between March 2012 and March 2013.)

The third extra night is at the Polynesian.  I stayed there on a re-visit in May 2013, and totally re-did the Polynesian review coming out of that.  But I stayed in one of the Poly’s smaller (but still huge) rooms on that visit, so on this visit I’ve requested Tokelau, so that if I get the room request, I’ll be able to re-do the floor plan for these larger rooms and post a photo-tour of the larger Poly rooms.

And the last resort hop?  Well the day I switch from Sports to Movies, I’m double booked. That way I’m not homeless between the 11a check-out time and the 3p check in time!

Like I said, for normal people, I don’t particularly recommend resort-hopping.  But for me, it’s a great help in creating and updating the material for this site!

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NEW LOGO; UPDATED 2014 STUFF; NEW PRICES; FREE DINING RUMORS

The top-secret “Lipstick on a Pig” team has been busy the past week or so developing the new logo at the top of the page.  Hope you like it!  The good bits came from a crack designer I’ve been working with and the weak parts from me.

Also over the weekend the final data set for 2014 school calendars at 180 US public school districts came in from my crack research staff—the older Test Niecelet (on the left). I’ve converted these into databases, and will be analyzing and reporting on the forecasted crowd results over the next week or so.  Based on this analysis, I’ll make any needed adjustments to the 2014 Disney World Crowd calendar.

Meanwhile, it’s widely expected that 2014 prices will come out mid-week from the crack Disney World revenue management team.  Based on these I’ll revise and finalize the 2014 Disney World price seasons, and will use both the revised price seasons and revised crowd calendars to finalize the 2014 Disney World week rankings.

Finally a number of crack observers have been predicting that Disney World will release free dining for October through December this week.  I still quite doubt it, but it is of course possible.  Major macro-economic indicators (especially bond markets, developing country currency markets, and the Lone Ranger) do suggest slight headwinds against overseas visits to the US and a slight increase in Disney’s need to more strongly drive later 2013 earnings…

And let me know what you think about the logo!!!!

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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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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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Sometime yesterday, one of you saw the fifteen millionth page viewed on this site since it opened a little more than five years ago.

The ten millionth pageview happened in October, so thanks to all of your links, likes, emails, and conversations, more and more people are getting the site’s help faster!  Thank you all so much!

Pageviews have been basically doubling every year for the last three years–which, for a site with no cat videos, is not a horrible trend.

I did a little digging into what you like to see.  There’s 23 pages that have had more than 100,000 views each, with the leader–at more than half a million pageviews–being the home page.

After that, every page in the top ten is related to “When to Go,” and if I group together the stats for the various years of “Week Rankings,” “Crowd Calendars,” and “Week Pickers” (grouping because new versions of these come out annually), each of these page types has had more than a million views.

Well, that’s just not good enough, is it?

Based on these weak results, I’m working on a new video series: “When Cats Say You Should Go to Walt Disney World!” 

I’ll be taking our cats Mudge and Marvin (that’s Mudge in the photo) though two-a-day training sessions starting soon, and the videos will be coming out shortly thereafter–right after I clean up the Epcot itineraries…

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Just got back from a week-long visit to Walt Disney World, and coming out of that here’s what’ll be showing up soon on the site:

• Revised reviews of the Polynesian, Pop Century, and All-Star Music resorts
• All-new reviews of Victoria and Albert’s, Jiko, the Lilo and Stitch Best Friends character breakfast at ‘Ohana, and the Biergarten
• Revised Epcot itineraries–the days and dining will remain the same, but what attractions to do when, and what’s optional, will change. As part of the “optional” issue, I’ll be publishing many more reviews of Epcot rides to help families decide for themselves what to see and what to skip
• And the post I know you are all looking forward to: some whining about how hard it is to build itineraries for Epcot unless they are for two full days!

So look out for all this to come out in later May and June!

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