I'm just back from Disney... How was it? First word that comes to mind is exhausting... and I didn't even have a pre-schooler. I really don't think I could have survived going with kids under 6. I saw a lot of exhausted parents at the end of the week.
Disney is a well-oiled machine, very well-oiled... Everything is thought very carefully to make your experience easier. (well, there might be some glitches here and there, but mostly, it is a seamless experience). The first thing you realize is the surroundings. There isn't just a fence anywhere, it is always part of a decor, being bamboo sticks or rocks or trees that sometimes hide it. The hotels are incredibly well themed, so you don't realize that you are in a bad hotel you paid too much for. We were in one of the cheapest option (Little Mermaid room in Art of Animation). The rooms were very tiny but was really clean and looks amazing.
I was there with my sister and her three
monsters sons (twins are 9, and the older is 11), this made me realize that the experience is very different with a girly Princess than with boys... and having 3 kids is nothing like having just one. Princess lives mostly in an adult environment and is accustumed to following us everywhere. My husband is a task-oriented individual... when we move from one place to another, we move... we're not to be distracted by shops or environment... That was a little difficult with the boys... we were always missing one, who was enjoying something distractful. Not that one way or the other is best, but the two together were not the best mix... And if you go, be prepared to walk*
One thing I really enjoyed is how they managed the waiting. I had studied some of their tricks in a management class some years ago (while working on my MBA), and I have to say it works very well. When you enter a line, you always have a pretty good idea of the time it would take you to get to the ride. And it is not a "rule of thumb", they really check frequently asking guest who enters the line to take a card that they register, and when the guest get at the other end of the line (when he got to the ride), they know how long it took to get there and they update. I would say that anything under 30 minutes is worth it, because they usually have animation along the line, so you really don't see the time pass. Some time, I thought that I was missing part of the experience with the FastPass because you usually skip that part of the ride, and some of them are really worth it (example would be the Haunted House in Magic Kingdom, where I think the decor around waiting is scarier than the ride itself... but I couldn't really judge because it scared Princess and she didn't want to go to the ride after...). We were told to get our FastPass as close as possible to one another, so we could get more in the day. I wouldn't do it again. First, we were just running between rides in the morning and then, didn't have anything to do in the afternoon, because forget getting FastPass on really popular rides after because it is already booked. We were very lucky to be able to book Cinderella signing the day of... at 21:30 when we looked for it at 11:45. But otherwise, we were just not able to get anything worth it after our initial ones (with we booked almost three months in advance, and even then, we weren't able to get some very popular rides!)
It was impressing to see how kids react. Parts we thought they would not really enjoyed they did, and some we thought they would, they found boring. When we booked our dining, it was three weeks after we could do it (so about 6 months before), and we had much difficulties with some nights (ok, part of it being a party of 8, not always easy). We wanted a character dinner, and the only thing we found was with Winnie the Pooh and his friends. We thought: "what a boring night this is going to be", because clearly, our kids were over Winnie a long time ago. Interestingly enough, they were really in the "Disney Magic" because they really enjoyed it (and we did too :-) ). They wanted to do the Mad tea party and Dumbo the flying elephant (both attractions being mostly for pre-schooler) after being gone to the craziest roller-coaster and they had a blast just the same... I'm telling you, "Disney-Magic"!
But, after a week, we had more than enough of restaurants and sleeping in tiny beds (double while I have a King-size at home, let me tell you, it is hard!), we were very happy to heading back and prepare for starting school on Monday!
*My walking shoes:
Yes, they are kids Sketcher shoes... That is the perk of wearing size 6.5, you can fit in kids size 5. Princess has the same in black. She wanted the gray, but they didn't had her size in that color. I wanted black but they didn't had it in that size. Anyway, they are the most confy shoes ever AND because they are kids, they are cheaper, which is great when you are on a student budget :-) I survived the 10 km walks everyday because of these shoes (even though I thought I would develop stress fracture after three days!)
