Free dining - I thought this was fabulous and although you pay full price for your room, if your family are foodies and love to eat at nice restaurants, this is a very good value.
ADR's - These are obviously a must do. We had everything planned out but as we went along and we wanted to change a few plans, it was almost impossible to get an ADR anywhere (free dining made the restaurants busy). The other thing we discovered was that either a sit down breakfast or a sit down lunch was better for our family than a dinner. The dinner ADR's were the ones we ended up cancelling or changing the most because the kids were too tired by then etc. We will definitely be more aware of that for next time.
Disney transport - I was worried about how the bus system would work, whether we would spend all of our time waiting waiting waiting for a bus etc. You learn quickly to get to the parks early if you can, between 9-10am is busy on the buses, as is at park closing when 25000 of your closest friends are all trying to get on a bus
. Overall, we didn't have to wait long for the buses at all (except for Blizzard Beach which I mentioned a few pages back). It was easy to find which bus stop to go to, most people were courteous and made room for older people, our children were wonderful about giving up their seats for others and they made us really proud. Some people stunned me filling up seats will little kids when the bus was full when they could've easily popped them on their knee to let an older person have a seat. The buses were clean, the drivers were friendly and I think the system works really well.
WDW - Please don't flame me but I think it would be hard to go back to
Disneyland now after visiting WDW. I loved DL so much but I feel for our family that WDW has alot more to offer. Better dining by far, more diverse activities, esp Epcot which was my DH and my favourite park. My son loved AK the best, he loved the animals so much. I felt like WDW was an overall holiday experience, where DL is more a place to visit for a few days. I guess they are different experiences for me now. As I said, I loved both so much and would never turn down a visit to DL, it is the original park and just so special
, but WDW will be my preference for the future.
US toilets - What the hell? Why is that water so damn close to your butt? Our whole family found it unnerving
. And the self flushing is great, unless you are actually sitting on the toilet when it decides to do that, then you get a little shock
. We love the automatic taps and I laughed at DD yesterday at Sydney airport when she had her hands under the tap and was wondering why nothing was coming out, haha, she was so used to not having to turn the tap on.
Planning - well I just think you would be mad to go to WDW and not have done some planning about which park which day, ride lines, where to eat etc. It just makes the whole experience more relaxed and you get more out of each day. As I mentioned earlier, we saw nearly 3 hour lines for TSM and people were actually jumping into those lines. That is an incredible waste of precious time and could be easily avoided with a little information which luckily all of us crazy DISers have
.
Accom - I think each of the resorts have alot to offer and it was wonderful to see all of the theming. I cannot imagine even considering not staying onsite as you would spend alot of time travelling too and from the parks I think. We loved Wilderness Lodge, the theming had me enthralled, it was so detailed. We also enjoyed POP, much cheaper and the rooms were newly refurbed, clean, the resort was lots of fun for the kids with all of the POP culture statues and the pool was good. I definitely think you can't go wrong with the WDW resorts, with something for every budget. We loved doing the split stay and think we would do that each time. We enjoyed checking out the two resorts.
Live shows - we loved all of the live stage shows. The quality was excellent and I would recommend everyone finding time to check out at least a few. Beauty and the Beast, Festival of the Lion King and Nemo were our favourites.
Amount of time - we found 11 days to be just right for us. People here in Canberra thought we were mad going for so long and I am really grateful to my DH for trusting me on this timeframe. I mean, it's alot to ask of a guy who isn't crazy about Disney like me to spend 11 whole days at WDW. But he agreed on the way home that it was just the right amount of time. We got to see everything we wanted, didn't have to rush and still had time to relax when we wanted.
Food and Wine Festival - love love loved it. As much as I would love to visit WDW at Christmastime, I would find it hard to choose to go at anytime other than F&W time. We loved checking out the different foods and beers (we skipped wine) and our favourite part was the Eat to the Beat Concerts. Taylor Dayne was the best, followed by Sugar Ray and third was Kool & the Gang. We really loved the live concerts alot, as did our kids who love music just as much as us.
Okay well I think that is all I have to say on the whole trip. At times we were rushing, at times we weren't, we swam, we ATE, we laughed, we cried, we ATE, we rode, we watched, we shopped, we had a really great trip.
Back to reality!!!!!!!!