Please help me to not hate Disney!

[Nika]

Thank you everyone for your responses.

Update on my trip. We spend 3K (and that does NOT include hotel or car rental, or our airfare).
Just tickets and food and some miscellaneous items.

I made a lot of mistakes. I kept trying to find good food because I was on vacation and that is part of the enjoyment. But FOOD SUCKED! No matter how expensive, no matter where. It just was not good. Ravenous Pig was just OK for price/quality, average. Everything else was a huge disappointment. Plus I got ill somewhere.

I also did not get a value out of the tickets - I would stall and not go until pretty late - usually 2-3pm, and some parks close early. So bad value for me. It was just hard to force myself to go. It is so hot, and so many people, and those strollers and scooters everywhere. And no ride is worth waiting 40-80 minutes for. So after fast pass, I'm done.

I did enjoy water park. It was on last day, and I got there late and it closed early due to weather. In retrospect, I should have started with water parks and should have spend more time there than in theme parks. Will know for next time.

Child had a nice time though. He was on vacation, with parents, seeing different places and going to sleep insanely late.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Sometimes it's not about the trip but the memories. I feel that urge to say "oh man we should get our money's worth out of our museum tickets or whatever we bought." But instead i check myself and say we're making memories of our time together and we are. So I relax and stop and smell the roses.

[disneysteve]

Update on my trip. We spend 3K (and that does NOT include hotel or car rental, or our airfare).
Just tickets and food and some miscellaneous items.

But FOOD SUCKED! No matter how expensive, no matter where. It just was not good. Ravenous Pig was just OK for price/quality, average. Everything else was a huge disappointment.

I also did not get a value out of the tickets - I would stall and not go until pretty late - usually 2-3pm, and some parks close early. So bad value for me. It was just hard to force myself to go. It is so hot, and so many people

Sorry you didn't enjoy your trip. As you noted, though, there are things you could have done differently to make it more enjoyable and a better value. For the benefit of others who may be planning a trip....

I have no idea what Ravenous Pig is but I'm certain it isn't a Disney restaurant. I'm guessing it is offsite somewhere as it sound vaguely familiar.

You were upset with the parks being hot and crowded but you chose to not go in until 2pm, which is the time when it is the hottest and most crowded of the day. A much better plan is to go in when the park opens at 9am, stay until about 1pm when both the crowds and temperature reach their peak, then head back to your hotel to relax and unwind, and return to the park after dinner when it is again less crowded and cooler.

I'm really curious how you managed to spend $3,000 not counting hotel, car, or airfare. How many people is that for? The 3 of us spend $2,500 or less for everything for a 7-8 day trip including transportation, accommodations, tickets, food, souvenirs, and everything else.

[Singuy]

I have no idea what Ravenous Pig is but I'm certain it isn't a Disney restaurant. I'm guessing it is offsite somewhere as it sound vaguely familiar.

I live in Orlando and this is one of the more popular restaurants in this town(located in Winter Park, so it's pretty far off site). Most people raves about the place but I have never been. If you are from a much bigger city, then Otown will most likely disappoint you in the food department.

I believe there are two really good restaurants on Disney Campus.
California Grill at the Contemporary
Victoria and Alberts at the Grand Floridian

Both are uber expensive, costing around 80-200/person.

[BuckyBadger]

I'm also curious as to how you got to $3k on park tickets and food...

And you do have to admit that you did none of the things that anyone on the board suggested?

Looks like you fulfilled your own prophesy. You thought you were going to have a terrible time and spend a ton of money and it seems like you did exactly that.

[HappySaver]

We spend 3K (and that does NOT include hotel or car rental, or our airfare).
Just tickets and food and some miscellaneous items.

This is the perfect example of why you don't buy something that you weren't already planning to buy just because it's on sale/discounted/you have a coupon/etc. You had hotel and car rental covered, maybe used miles for your airfare, and still spent $3k that you could have spent on a vacation of your choosing.

Not saying this to rub it in, just to point out how easy it is to fall into the "it's a deal" trap. (and count me as another one who doesn't know how you managed to spend $3k on food and tickets...)

[disneysteve]

We spend 3K
Just tickets and food and some miscellaneous items.

I do hope you'll comment on this.

I just checked. 7-day Disney tickets are $350 for adults, $325 for kids. That's $1,025 for 3 of you. Less if you didn't do 7 days, which I'm guessing you didn't.

My family averages $25/person/day for food. Let's double that to $50/person/day or $150/day x 7 days. That's another $1,050 if you spent double what we spend.

That brings us to $2,075. Where did the other $925 go? What were those "miscellaneous" items?

[QuarterMillionMan]

I'll be the devil's advocate and throw out some misc. items that might cause an avalanche of expenses;

1) sourvenirs
2) buying pictures from the park
3) room service (OP mentioned getting ill)


BTW, I still hate Disney too (lol). The crying babies, the long wait times, the long walks, the heat, good Lord.

[disneysteve]

I'll be the devil's advocate and throw out some misc. items that might cause an avalanche of expenses;

1) sourvenirs
2) buying pictures from the park
3) room service (OP mentioned getting ill)

Okay, but those are 3 totally optional and avoidable costs. To say that Disney is too expensive because of those items really isn't a fair comment. Nobody is forcing you to buy those things. Obviously you want to get your kid a souvenir or two but no need to spend hundreds of dollars in the process.

[Nika]

DH got tickets and went with us 2 days. Misc expenses were small. A car in Ft. Lauterdale and one one day in Orlando for which rental car was not covered, and a can of sunblock every 2 days. (this total included 3 days in Ft. Lauterdale, where we did not pay for the hotel).

Most of the expense was food. A bunch of $150 meals. I kept trying to find good food, and willing to go upscale, but failed miserably in finding it. When something is reviewed as "the best sushi place in Orlando" it ends up being a sub-par Cantonese run Japanese restaurant, sushi quality was not even as good as no-name, regular Brooklyn Cantonese-run Japanese restaurants, I'm not even comparing it to Japanese-run Manhattan places.

And I am NOT a food snob. I eat in small village joints, hole-in-the-wall places and street carts in third world countries and thoroughly enjoy it. Good food is good food. I just could not find it in Orlando. I'm sure it exists somewhere, and I kept trying and trying, but never found a place I would love to go back to.

[disneysteve]

Most of the expense was food.

So the $3,000 wasn't just a trip to Disney World but also several days in Ft. Lauderdale and it sounds like a bunch of high-end restaurants. Still, that's a lot of money. As I said, we spend $2,500 for a week including everything from the time we leave our house until the time we return. Of course, we aren't doing $150 meals. We're eating on Disney property and in the surrounding area (Kissimmee, Lake Buena Vista).

[HappySaver]

Sushi in Florida, outside of Miami, sucks. We go to Florida each winter and we've tried a bunch of the best reviewed sushi places in Southwest Florida over the years before finally giving up. When in Rome... you're better off just finding straightforward seafood restaurants and sticking to local fish like grouper. Which is excellent. Or the Key West shrimp, which is also excellent. High-end, especially in a touristy area, doesn't correlate with good. You might be able to find perfectly great mid-range meals with some more realistic (for the area) expectations.

[naaxt420]

If you don't like it, don't really go.
If you need to go, go!
Plan your entire trip, go to a hotel, plan each of your meal.
Explore with google maps the surroundings, get more info and then, when you're happy go!
Everyone will be harpy.

[bennkar]

I'm resurrecting this thread as I went to Orlando / Disney this past November . I wanted to point out this was our (GF & I) best visit by far to Disney (It was out third time) even though the weather was by far the worst (hot & humid) and wanted to point out how it was improved. This time we found out about their new Fastpass+ ride reservation system, where you can reserve times to get onto rides and bypass lines. And it comes with the price of admission (no extra cost). I estimate we went on the same amount of rides, or maybe a few more, but this time we would take our time between rides to go to stores or other rides that had no lines, and then when time came we would go to our next scheduled ride. We constantly were passing people waiting in line , it was great. Our max wait was probably 5 minutes over 3 days. No, I don't understand why more people don't take advantage of this system.

There is still tons of marketing at the end of each ride, but what can you do (other than buy nada, which we did).

We also made a point to have lunch at a restaurant each day at the parks, and otherwise bring in food to snack on. This worked great as well. Lunch prices are less, and doing it mid day helped with getting our strength back at the hottest part of the day. At little more expense for our visits, but oh well.

Oh, finally, the worst item we had was getting "the grey stuff" at the castle of Beauty & the Beast. Small cupcake for $5 - seriously a waste , but oh well, at least that was the worst part of our three days there. BTW, second worst part is the $20 for parking each day. Give me a break.

Oh, and if you go to Hollywood Studios there, go on the Star Tours ride multiple times. We did (probably 5 times during the last hour it was open! ) and it was great.

Normally when we go this year we would go to Universal, but we're considering going back to Disney this year, even with the extra cost.

[disneysteve]

I'm resurrecting this thread as I went to Orlando / Disney this past November .

Glad to hear you had a good trip. We were also there in November and we are actually at Disney right now as I type this message (and we'll be back again in July).

November was unseasonably hot, as you discovered. We're enjoying very comfortable temps this week, downright chilly in the morning. It was about 40 degrees a couple of days ago.

Fastpass has been around for many years and FP+ has been around for a few but still, most people haven't got a clue, which is just fine with me.

For anyone wondering why you say to ride Star Tours multiple times, it's because the ride is different each time. There is a series of possible scenes and you only get a few of them each time so you need to ride multiple times if you want to see all of the available options.