Trip Planning
A Walt Disney World Transportation Primer: Monorails, Buses, and Boats, Oh My
In addition to the dozens of fun and fabulous attraction ride vehicles you’ll encounter during a Walt Disney World vacation (Hunny Pots! Doom Buggies!), you’re also likely to go on some plain and practical rides during your visit. These are the many types of transportation vehicles that do yeoman’s work getting you from point A to point B on the 40 square miles of Disney property. Here’s a primer on the types of transport you’ll find on your trip.
You may use many forms of internal transportation during your visit to Walt Disney World.
Disney’s Magical Express bus service has its own rules, but all of the other forms of transportation listed below can be used by anyone, any time, for free.
Again, except for Magical Express, transportation use has no requirement that you be staying on property or at a particular resort. You don’t have to have any sort of ticket to use these transportation vehicles. The drivers don’t have any mechanism to take payments or tickets or anything like that. Really, it’s free. You may very rarely see some fine print that some transportation is only for resort guests. In 15 years of frequent WDW visits, taking thousands of trips on Disney internal transportation, I have never been asked where I’m staying as a condition of boarding a vehicle. On the three to five most crowded days of the year, you might be asked to show resort ID to get on the monorail to the Magic Kingdom, at some times of the day. This is simply for crowd control purposes at the park and has nothing to do with limiting your access to the transportation itself.
You can get anywhere on Walt Disney World property using only this free Disney-provided transportation, but bear in mind that many types of trips will require a mid-route transfer. For example, to get from the Magic Kingdom to Epcot, you’ll need to change monorail lines at the Transportation and Ticket Center, or to get from the Animal Kingdom Lodge to the Beach Club, you’ll need to change buses at the Animal Kingdom park or switch from a bus to a boat at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
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2013 Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival Review And Tips
The 2013 Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival kicked off on Wednesday, so I decided to take a trip out to see all of the new offerings for this year. More-so than in the past, the event has changed quite a bit from the previous year with the addition of marketplace booths similar to the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival held annually in the fall. That being said, the number of booths at this event is limited to just fourteen, and the menus are slightly lighter when it comes to drink options. To fit the theme of the Flower and Garden Festival, the menus focus on items containing fruits and vegetables. That being said, there are still a few dishes that contain meat, so you should be able to find something for everyone in your party.
My first stop for the Festival is always the Festival Center. Located in the former Wonders of Life Pavilion in Future World between Universe of Energy and Mission: SPACE, this is where you can find Festival passports, merchandise, seminars, and educational displays.
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Habit Heroes at Epcot’s Innoventions Pavilion
Epcot recently reopened a refurbished version of its initially much maligned Habit Heroes attraction at Epcot’s Innoventions East Pavilion. Originally launched about a year ago, Habit Heroes closed almost immediately due to guest and medical professional concerns about inappropriate messages about weight-related appearance.
This new Habit Heroes does not specifically mention weight, instead focusing on a triad of healthy habits: movement, hydration, and good food choices.
Live Online Chat with Canada.com Tomorrow
Join me on Wednesday, March 6, at 2:00 pm EST for an online chat with Canada.com, the online Postmedia Network news site for Canadians. Postmedia is the publisher that brings you The Ottawa Citizen, The Vancouver Sun, The Province, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, and the National Post.
We will be discussing the ins and outs of travelling to Florida for March Break. Join the chat by following the link below:
See you there!
The Land of Oz Pop Up Playground at Epcot
In case you’ve been living under a rock (yellow brick?) and hadn’t heard, the major Disney film release this spring is Oz: The Great and Powerful, which explores the classic Oz story from the point of view of the wizard.
As part of the promotion/celebration of this film, a temporary “pop up” playground has been installed at Epcot, themed to the land of Oz. The playground is located on the Imagination Walkway path, in the Future World section of the park.
Much like the pop up Brave interactive experience last year, the Oz land features visual elements related to the film, themed games of chance, and photo spots, plus there’s a rockin’ awesome playground where kids can burn off some steam.
Official dates for the playground installation have not been announced, but it’s expected that this will remain in place throughout the Epcot Flower & Garden Festival, which ends May 19, 2013.
Below is a photo tour of what you can expect to find at the Oz Playground.
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My Walt Disney World Secret Happy Place: The Affection Section
I’m here to give a little love to one of the least frequented parts of all of Walt Disney World: Affection Section at Rafiki’s Planet Watch in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The Affection Section is my personal oasis of calm in what can sometimes be the chaos of a Disney vacation.
Inter-species bonding at Affection Section
Rafiki’s Planet Watch is accessed only via train from a station located near the exit to the Kilimanjaro Safaris ride. The train ride, itself, is a pleasant five minute journey into the far reaches of the Animal Kingdom. On the way, you pass many of the animal keeping buildings where the four-legged residents of the park spend their evenings. You can often get a glimpse of a rhino or elephant taking a break from being “on stage.”
After the train ride, you disembark at a walking path which takes you past several small primate exhibits. Oooh and ahhh at the tamarins for a while, then continue walking to the main Conservation Station building. Inside you’ll find character greetings, instructional displays, and sometimes animal medical care taking place. Much of this is fascinating, but I find myself being drawn out the back door to where the really good stuff is: Affection Section.
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Disney Fine Art Portrait Sessions
As most of us do in this digital age, I have many photographs of my family. These were mostly taken by me, my friends, or the occasional PhotoPass photographer. They’re all fine, good even, but they’re not knock-your-socks-off fabulous. For many years I had wanted something more substantial, and more fabulous: my own dedicated photo shoot with a professional photographer (something I hadn’t had since my wedding 20 years ago). Unfortunately the rest of the family thought my idea was silly and shot me down every time I raised the issue. “That sounds boring.” “We have enough pictures, why do we need more?”
But when my oldest daughter started to look at colleges (sniff), I could tell that the zeitgeist was changing. So this year I asked for only one thing for Christmas, everyone’s willing participation in a professional photo shoot. They readily acquiesced.
My daughters in their formal attire.
Several of my friends on the Walt Disney Parks Moms Panel have had positive experiences with the Disney Event Photography Group. And after seeing some of their portraits, I was hooked.
The Event Photography group, also known as Disney Fine Art Photography & Video, offers two standard levels of portraiture: a “mini” session and an “enhanced” session. Before I get into the difference, you should know that either of these products are available to anyone. The portrait sessions are primarily done for families, but they can work with individuals (a teen’s senior portrait, for example) on up to medium sized groups (a sorority sister reunion for 25 people, for example).
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Spring Break and Crowd Levels
Spring crowd levels at the Disney parks vary from year to year. This variation is largely driven by school schedules. Crowd levels are inversely related to the percent of children in school: when most schools are on a break, high wait times are found in the parks. We track the school schedules for the 100 largest school districts, and these schedules goes into our Crowd Calendar predictions.
Different school districts use different rules when scheduling their spring breaks. Some school districts have a fixed week each year, and others adjust spring break based on Easter. In addition, some school districts have the Friday before and/or the Monday after Easter off. In 2013, Easter is early (March 31), so the spring break season is going to be early. In fact, only 30% of schools will be in session the week before Easter Sunday. This suggests to us that the parks are going to be more crowded that week than in prior years.
School Schedule 2011-2013
The above chart shows the estimated percentage of students in school. The dates for Easter are notated. We use a smoothing algorithm to adjust for weekends. Looking at the chart, it’s interesting to notice the effect a late Easter has on mid-March spring breaks. This year, with an earlier Easter the spring break season is early and condensed. Looking forward to 2014, Easter is April 20, so we expect the school schedule patterns will look like 2011.
Dolphins in Depth: Tour Report
I hugged a dolphin at Epcot. And you can too!
My family of frequent Walt Disney World visitors is always looking for new Disney activities. We were excited when my twin daughters recently turned 13 and thus became old enough for the entire family to experience the Dolphins in Depth tour at Epcot together. During the tour we got to go backstage, enter the giant Living Seas aquarium, and get some quality bonding time in with a real live dolphin.
Our first stop was the meeting area outside the gates of Epcot. We were greeted by two cast members who gave us a little welcome speech and had us sign boilerplate waivers. We introduced ourselves and met the other guests on the tour. There is a limit of eight guests per Dolphins in Depth experience. Our group included my family of five plus a mother and her two adult schoolteacher daughters. This made for a very manageable experience.
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Character Meals: Vol 10 – Cinderella’s Happily Ever After Dinner at 1900 Park Fare
1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian Resort is an interesting restaurant. It hosts character dining all day long, yet boasts three very different character meals. The Supercalifragilistic Breakfast sees Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Alice, and the Mad Hatter, while the afternoon brings the Wonderland Tea Party. The meal I am focusing on here, though, is dinner, where 1900 Park Fare hosts Cinderella’s Happily Ever After Dinner.
Atmosphere
My biggest problem with 1900 Park Fare is an extension of my opinion of the Grand Floridian Resort, in general. I find it very classy and clean, but ultimately boring and uninteresting (although I have been called boring and uninteresting myself, so maybe I am not the best judge). The restaurant is lightly carousel themed, with a few antique looking carousel horses and a band organ as the primary decorations. These items are incredibly nice, but they are few and go unnoticed far too easily. Other than that handful of items, the rest of the room is filled with beige. Nothing really draws the eye, and there is nothing special to even discuss here.
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