Magical express was cool… mostly because it was free. But I do like being able to have the choice to go somewhere on my own. I really wanted to play mini-golf over vacation… but we weren’t able to on the day we had time because it had stormed in the afternoon and Disney shut down Blizzard Beach early… along with all the buses that traveled to it… and the mini-golf course that I wanted to play at was next to Blizzard Beach. If I had a car… we could have all just driven there… but as it turned out… we couldn’t get over there. Magical Express is less stressful… a rental car is more flexible.
I decided on this trip, for the first time, to completely avoid any park that was going to have extra magic hours. Having tried it this way… I will never go back to Extra Magic Hours. The lines were not bad and we were never left wishing we had an extra hour to finish everything. The crowds are better when all those extra guests are not flooding into the park.
Fastpass was another issue that evolved for me. I found out from a Disney podcast that while the cast members won’t let anyone enter the fastpass line early… they will late arrivers through. So if my FP window is for 10AM to 11AM and I show up at 5PM… they’ll still let me in. This knowledge lead to a decision to get as many FP’s as possible early in the day. So, for every park… I’d have everyone else go to a non fast pass ride first thing… while I would go and get a FastPass for a headliner ride first thing. When you get FastPasses first thing… the window to get another fast pass opens up sooner.
For instance, at MGM studios… I got FP’s for Rock ‘N Roller Coaster first thing… and next time I could get a FP was 10:00AM. So while everyone else watched a show… Aaron and I ran back to Tower of Terror at 10:00AM to get another set of FP’s there. The next time I could pick up a FP now was around 12:00PM. So around noon, I picked up some FP’s for Star Tours. There were nights were I would have sets of FP’s to four different rides. So we’d use them up after dinner. These little babies are lifesavers… especially when I found out that I could use them anytime after my arrival window starts.
Overall, it was a fantastic trip! We are not sure of when our next trip will be. I would say next September during free dining… but there’s a rumor going around the Disney fan sites that Disney is going to start making guests pay tips to the waiter and waitresses on top of the cost of Disney’s Dining Plan. It makes less sense for us to go during this time frame if this turns out to be the case. So, we are waiting to see what happens… but would love to go back in September of 2008, November of 2008 or January of 2009. Melissa and I might even stay a night this summer when we are there for General Conference. We’ll just have to see!
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