I really like going on vacation with my wife and daughters, and it is a super easy vacation with kids if you know what you’re doing. Before I had kids (and up until my youngest was 2 and we discovered Disney), we cruised all the time, but Disney is superior. I also find it a kind of fun challenge to plan in realtime and avoid crowds / avoid ever waiting in line for anything, etc. We vacation elsewhere as well, but do Disney at least a few times a year. Annual passes, resale timeshares and driving cause the price point per trip to go down the more trips we take in a given year.
1 Like
All that said, Disney would definitely be miserable if you don’t know how to hack it. I don’t understand how people can stand waiting in hours-long lines for rides, attractions, and food. If I’m in a line for more than 15 minutes for an attraction and more than 5 minutes for food than something has gone terribly wrong.
Were you within 1-2 miles of the ocean at any point? You gotta be a complete Scrooge not to like OBX, SC/GA barrier islands, Keys, etc.
My summary of DW (note, this wasn’t actually meant to rip on jman, just a convenient foil for my rant to follow)
Hotels - wildly overpriced for mediocre rooms for the right to stay close to this magical capitalistic hellhole
Food and drinks - wildly overpriced for bland food meant to appeal to lowest common denominator tastes
Rides - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw0OMOxLvnI
oh Cartman I’ve never understood you so much. This was even with someone who knew how to hack it. We actually made it through most things pretty quickly, but even still I guess I’m just not a ride person because the payoff is never even worth the 15 minutes of waiting in line for the super hyped ride. Plus paying crazy prices to get in the park, but then more for their version of fast pass and the special extra ones for the super hyped rides. (Ok the Avatar ride was actually pretty cool though)
Entertainment - you know in Vegas when you see someone has a daily 11 am show at Harrah’s, and you kinda feel bad for them. Yeah they put all of these acts to shame.
Like I get how taking your five year old there solely for their enjoyment would be something a parent would do, but like I’d view it as them making a sacrifice for their kid. Adults who love Disney, I don’t get. Everything is just designed to extract as much money from parents or other relatives (me) of young children who get suckered into coming to the house of the mouse. And yet ungodly numbers of people swarm here everyday feeding the beast.
1 Like
Yes, the southeast uses the ocean and nice weather (which honestly isn’t always that great, have fun with 100 and humid in the summer or hurricane season) as a crutch to do the heavy lifting to cover for its overt racism and terrible infrastructure among other things.
They do have Waffle House though, which is an American institution.
Cosign on all of it. We’re not jman level, but got to be pretty adept at hacking things. Still, I can’t wait for my kids to age out of Disney. We might need to go twice more and we’re done.
One huge upside of COVID is that it probably saved us 1-2 visits.
That’s the whole disconnect, the reason parents love Disney is because their kids love Disney. If your kids are having a great time, you’re having a great time so it’s not some sort of sacrifice.
I generally agree with you about adults being obsessed with Disney outside the context of kids though
2 Likes
In the spirit of today, we need more grievances to be aired by more than just me!
Also as parent I also get some sense of awe just seeing how optimized everything is at Disney. Like you go to some local kids oriented event with a couple hundred people and it’s a logistical nightmare because it takes 2hrs to get the kids a hotdog or whatever but you go to Disney and they just funneling stunning crowds of people around with almost no chaos.
What the fuck is it with headlights these days? I hate driving at night now because of blinding ass headlights.
3 Likes
Also fuck putting sporting events exclusively on streaming services
Oh well, time to sail the seven seas.
2 Likes
Don’t you get stabbed at Waffle House?
You can get stabbed anywhere, at least at Waffle House it comes with waffles.
1 Like
The earth is too damn tilted, this amount of darkness is unacceptable
2 Likes
Yeah, if you’re staying in hotels at cash rates you are absolutely doing it wrong and the prices are outrageous. In 15 trips I have never, not once, paid rack rate or anything close to it.
Your friend took you to the wrong restaurants. I mean, yeah, if you’re eating burgers and pizza at Magic Kingdom quick serve restaurants, that’s theme park trash. World Showcase restaurants at Epcot though? Some of the Disney Springs Restaurants? Some of the resort restaurants? That’s quality. Some of those restaurants are Michelin-starred.
Going to have to hard disagree here. If you just want to do thrill rides, then yes, WDW isn’t for you. But Guardians of the Galaxy is probably one of the top Roller Coasters in the world, and Rise of the Resistance (when it’s working properly) is a technological masterpiece. And yes, Avatar is incredible. Of course, the classics are great too. Pirates? Haunted Mansion? Those are incredible rides.
Did you walk along the Boardwalk at night? Check out Fantasmic? Happily Ever After? Festival of the Lion King? Indiana Jones?
Well… yeah. I wouldn’t go to Disney without kids. And yeah, it’s gone downhill. Fast pass used to be included with admission. The upcharges are a race to the bottom. The parks side of the business is currently keeping the company alive as it produces flop after flop on the entertainment side so I guess they’re doing what they have to.
Days are getting longer now.
An extra 3 seconds or whatever not going to cut it
In SF at least, sunset gets about a minute later per day even while the days aren’t getting that much longer yet. I noticed earlier this week that it felt nice to leave work at about 5pm and not have it dark outside already!
