Did I do Disney or did Disney do me? I found myself asking that question a lot during the week that I spent in Orlando visiting various Disneyworld attractions. Even though I knew it would cost a fortune, I was staggered by the ticket prices. A three day pass to three attractions for three adults and one child cost about $900. What’s worse, we got ripped off by the person we bought them from, who should have given us a discount of about $200. And as it turned out, we didn’t even get the right tickets – no water parks included, which we found out when we tried to use the tickets to get into Blizzard Beach.
Once you get into the theme parks, you’re a captive audience, and those running the show take full advantage of it. Ok, so I shouldn’t have forgotten my daughter’s hat. But is that any reason to charge $15 for a $3 cap. I expect to pay a premium, but that was ridiculous. One day we left our sunscreen (my sister and I both thought the other had it) and we had to buy a replacement. Cost at Walmart $4. Cost at the Magic Kingdom $16. And the shop assistant said: ‘You don’t even want to ask about the price of cameras’.
The only worse time to go to Disney than July is August, because it is even hotter and the wait times are even longer. That seemed small consolation as I saw the posted 30 minute wait time turn into an hour several times during the trip. That said, at least having a notional wait time helped us to decide which things were worth waiting for. When the posted time on one attraction was more than 90 minutes, we opted to move on to something else.
Food was a difficulty. One semi vegetarian, one lactose intolerant person and three people who were fast food intolerant didn’t make for happy campers. Even my four year old was rejecting chips by the third day. Most of the food available at the sites we went to was from Macdonalds, however it was badged. Luckily on the third day we found a proper restaurant on the Main Street of the Magic Kingdom. It was nice to have a tasty meal without thinking about our arteries.
After reading this, you might think that I hated Disney, but that’s not true at all. I think that my experience is what you get when you go in the peak season and you don’t know what you’re doing. As one of my friends put it, I am no longer a Disney virgin and I know how to fix the things that I didn’t like this time. I’ll talk about that in another post.
5 responses so far ↓
gracepub // July 25, 2007 at 2:36 pm |
This sounds more like a nightmare. I can’t believe you had to go through all of this. I will be careful before I ever think of going.
Admin // July 25, 2007 at 2:41 pm |
I think the key to it is planning – and not forgetting anything, gracepub. We actually had a good time, but we did feel a bit ripped off at various points.
Lev // August 2, 2007 at 11:50 pm |
Why does your link associated with the excerpt below lead to an Amazon.com book entitled: What You Don’t Know….What You Need to Succeed ~ Was your link hijacked, or did I miss something?
Article excerpt:
“After reading this, you might think that I hated Disney, but that’s not true at all. I think that my experience is what you get when you go in the peak season and you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Admin // August 5, 2007 at 1:17 pm |
I’m testing a new Amazon thing, Lev. It’s a bit odd because sometimes it doesn’t work at all.
C // August 13, 2007 at 2:52 pm |
One of my friends worked as a chef at several Disney theme restaurants a couple of years ago. Where did they all go?
C