Where in the World… Are the Disney Princesses?

So, you know where all the Princesses are meeting, right?  Well guess again.

Disney is about to move them around to accommodate the HUGE popularity of the new comers, Princess Anna and Elsa.  Currently, you can find them meeting together in the Fairytale Hall, completed this year just for our Royalty.  You can also find Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty for those who might not know) ((Yes, these people do exist!)) at Fairytale Hall.

However, starting on June 15, 2014, Aurora is going to be moving to the Town Square Courtyard.  She will be taking the place of Snow White.  Snow White will then move to Center Street, Main Street U.S.A.  (To be completely honest, I was not aware of a “Center Street” until now.)  Cinderella and Rapunzel will remain in their current locations.

As for Anna and Elsa, they will also remain at Fairytale Hall.  The change though, comes when you arrive to meet them.  They will no longer be meeting together.  They will be separate just like Cinderella and Rapunzel.

Disney is hoping that this will cut down on the outrageously long wait times to meet the Frozen Royalty, visiting all the way from Arendelle.  Wait times have been exceeding at least 200 minutes each day and by separating them into two meet and greets, hopefully this will be cut down.  Also, Disney being Disney, they are hoping that this will provide the opportunity for more people to actually come meet Anna and Elsa during their visit to Magic Kingdom.

You can meet the Princesses of Fairytale Hall from the time the park opens until 30 minutes before the park closes.

As for some of our other Princess favorites, you can swim under the sea to Ariel’s Grotto in Magic Kingdom to meet the mermaid herself.

Tiana is over in Liberty Square with her Prince Naveen.

Merida can be found in the Fairytale Garden giving friends some tips on her archery skills.

Jasmine meets with Aladdin at the Agrabah Bazaar, but sometimes they’ll fly over to Morocco on a magic carpet.

If Snow White doesn’t seem to be out and about in Magic Kingdom, she’s probably visiting friends in the Germany Pavilion in EPCOT.

As for Aurora, she sometimes likes to wander back into the woods to visit Fauna, Flora, and Merriweather but seems to end up in France.

Belle always has her nose stuck in a book, enjoying the fresh air in France as well.

Mulan is helping the Emperor in China, but she loves meeting new warriors who want to defeat the Huns.

And you can find Pocahontas over in Animal Kingdom with all of her animal friends.

 

So, what are your thoughts on the new changes?  Do you think Disney will save guests time by having Anna and Elsa meet individually?  °o°

DCP Check-in Day!

DCP Check-in Day!

Hey y’all! Sorry this blog has been a bit abandoned our lives are just craziness! Anyways I wanted to update everyone on my new College Program which just started on June 9th! This link will go straight to my strictly DCP blog and I hope everyone enjoys it especially those of you who may want to apply for a CP! Hope everyone has a magical day!

– Woody

Festival of Fantasy Parade

When Buzz came to visit me a couple of weeks ago, we of course had to make a stop at our favorite place on earth! Now it turns out that we planned our trip to the Magic Kingdom and found out that the new Festival of Fantasy parade would start two days after we left. We were upset that we wouldn’t be able to see the parade but glad that we were avoiding the crowds that the parade would bring. So instead of being in the park for Festival of Fantasy we did the next best thing, we watched a live stream!

Unfortunately, Buzz’s vacation ended and she had to head back home. However, I was lucky enough to head back to the Magic Kingdom to see the new parade! I will be the first to admit that I was never the person who would wait on the sidewalk for a parade at Walt Disney World. Why wait when I could experience everything else the park has to offer?! This parade was a different story though. We saved a spot in Frontierland an hour before it started; my family and I were uninterested in waiting 2+ hours on Main Street so Frontierland was the best spot for us. It definitely got crowded and people kept trying to maneuver through the already tight space to see the parade or get out of the area, but once the parade started I was glad we waited for the parade.

The music accompanying the floats was fantastic, and the vibrant colors of each costume and prop gave a feeling of joy and whimsy to the overall production. The characters were expressive and fun; they had great interactions with guests and other characters as well. The order of the floats made sense and gave proper identification to each film that was utilized in the parade. Overall, this is a parade that the imagineers who have been working on it should be proud of for years to come.

Have you seen the Festival of Fantasy Parade? What did you think of it? Is there anything you wish was or wasn’t in the parade?

-Woody

And of course I can’t leave y’all without any photos!

Be Our Guest Restaurant: Lunch Review

This review may be late to the show, but I thought it be best to see how Be Our Guest is doing now that all the dust has settled and they have their groove going. I have been lucky enough to dine at Be Our Guest for both Dinner and Lunch multiple times, and was excited to be able to eat here for lunch again.

Be Our Guest is difficult to get into for Dinner if you don’t make reservations ahead of time. However, for lunch the restaurant operates as a Quick Service restaurant! Which means that anyone can eat there, the only catch is you’ll have to wait in line. My experience with waiting in line for the restaurant is it actually moves much quicker than I expect it to. When dining for Dinner you check-in with the Host or Hostess before you walk the bridge to the Beasts castle. Once you enter you will be led to your table in the Ballroom. Lunch works a bit differently. When you wait in line you slowly cross the bridge until you reach a Cast Member near the front doors to the castle. Once you reach that Cast Member they will ask how many are in your party—quick word of warning, make sure your entire party is with you or you will have to wait to the side until they are. Anyways, when your whole party is together you will be led into one of two lines by another Cast Member. These lines go through a hallway of knights with the menu displayed on screens between the two lines. Once through this hallway you reach a Cast Member who will ask how many are in your party, how you plan to pay (dining plan, cash, card), and do you have a Magicband? After these questions you’ll touch your Magicband to an RFID reader (it’s a circle with a Mickey on it), or the CM will touch a rose to it for you. You will then be told to order at a specific station.

I personally love the stations. They are electronic, with pictures of the meals they provide; while I appreciate the self-order station it seems that Disney sometimes have some issues with them. The couple in front of us were trying to order but they had some difficulties using the self-order and accidentally put that they wanted 46 quiches! Not quite what the two of them were wanting, the system wouldn’t let them delete it so a CM restarted the computer for the station and led them through the process.

Once it was our turn to order the computer asked how we were paying (Dining Plan or credit card) we had the Quick Service Dining Plan, so all four of us ordered a drink, entree, and dessert. Once we decided what we wanted we touched the Magicband to the reader and received our receipt. We were then led to dine in one of the three dining rooms. The West Wing, Rose Room, or Ballroom.

The West Wing is an extremely unique environment complete with a portrait of Prince Adam turning into the Beast and the Enchanted Rose slowly losing petals throughout your meal. This dining room is great for the environment; but is dark, loud and there are lighting effects. I prefer to walk through and take pictures instead of actually eating in there. The Rose Room is bright and relaxing with several portraits hanging around of the many characters from Beauty and The Beast. In the middle of the room is a gorgeous music box of Belle and Beast dancing in their iconic costumes. The Ballroom is the largest of the three dining rooms and probably my favorite. Exactly replicating the film with snow falling outside the windows and intricate paintings on the ceilings, accompanied by three show stopping chandeliers.

Now onto the food! Our meals were delivered to us by a CM and a fun cart displaying our dishes. They know where you sit through your Magicband or rose, so no need to worry if they’ll find where you are or not. Our four meals included the Braised Pork, Carved Turkey Sandwich, Prime Roast Beef Sandwich, and a Vegetable Quiche. My favorite meal at Be Our Guest for lunch was a Steak Sandwich they used to have, unfortunately for me they have changed the menu so I’ve been trying different menu items. I enjoyed the vegetable quiche, which was accompanied by a simple side salad of baby greens and a champagne vinaigrette on the side. The quiche was pretty plain with different vegetables throughout, it wasn’t my favorite meal but I did enjoy it. My Dad’s favorite meal here is the Braised Pork, and he was not disappointed; meanwhile my brother raves about the Carved Turkey Sandwich. He looks forward to it every trip and eats the whole thing. My mom said she liked the Prime Roast Beef Sandwich and it looked good from my viewpoint!  If you are eating here though you need to try one of the desserts! Whether it’s a cupcake or cream puff—my favorite is the Lemon-Raspberry Cream Puff—Be Our Guest definitely knows what they are doing with their desserts.

Overall, Be Our Guest is a dining experience that you do not want to miss out on. Whether you dine there for dinner or lunch you’ll have a memorable experience that you could never receive anywhere else.

 

MyMagic+ Review: A Game Changer?

Buzz and I were finally able to reunite for Spring Break; after months of not seeing each other we were able to return to WDW our home away from home. And I’m sure that all of you would love to hear about all the details about our spring break, this article is actually regarding all things MyMagic+. When Buzz and I left after finishing our College Programs Disney was just beginning to test MyMagic+. And now almost a year later Disney has rolled out MagicBands, Fastpass+, and the My Disney Experience app. So Buzz and I decided that we were going to take on Magic Kingdom as full-on tourists.

See! We’re Disneybounding tourists!

We booked a 2 night stay at Pop Century Resort, had a 1 day ticket to the Magic Kingdom, and customized our MagicBands ahead of time! About 2 weeks before our arrival date, Buzz received our MagicBands. However, because of her school and a little bit of miscommunication in the mailroom, the MagicBands were lost. I called Disney regarding the MagicBands, and they immediately sent out new ones and cancelled out our old ones. Funny enough the mail room found the first MagicBands an hour after we called to order our new ones.

Our MagicBands! They finally arrived 🙂

A few days before our trip we decided to switch resorts from Caribbean Beach to Pop Century. Once again, Disney made this transition extremely easy and we were able to keep our MagicBands. We had done online check-in before we had arrived, which made check-in super quick and easy. Disney resorts no longer encode Key to the World cards, so everything is now on MagicBands when you are staying at a Disney resort. This includes charging privileges, room key, park tickets, photopass, and FP+. After we checked in we went to our room and dropped off our stuff— good news our MagicBands worked!

Once we left our room we headed over to Art of Animation to grab a quick bite and explore the resort. In terms of decoration, Art is definitely my favorite themed value resort; it’s a great place to walk around and you feel exactly how Disney wants you to, like you are in the movie with your favorite Disney Characters! And if y’all haven’t seen Art of Animation yet, I would definitely recommend heading over and just walking around the resort. After our stroll we decided to head to Downtown Disney. With all the new construction for the parking garage and the upcoming revival of DD into Disney Springs, it was difficult to find parking. However, once we did find a spot we checked out our favorite shopping district. Team Mickey had already been closed and was under refurbishment to become the new Marketplace Co-Op (click here about the new shops coming to Disney Springs). But all of our favorites were still there, yes Basin White, Earl of Sandwich, and Trend-D, I am talking to you!

Once we had sufficiently wiped ourselves out we headed back to the resort and decided to buy some refillable mugs. For those of you who don’t know, all the mugs on property and just regular cups as well, have RFID tags in the bottom. Meaning, the mugs and cups had chips at the bottom that the drink machines can read, allowing you to refill your mug/cup for a certain amount of time. We did have a few issues when we tried to buy the mugs. Apparently, buying a mug is a very technical process now. Once I reached the register I told the Cast Member I wanted to buy a 3-day usage for my mug, just an FYI it was about 10 at night. The Cast Member was a little distressed about this only because she wasn’t sure if by buying this option so late at night if the cup would work on our last day, so she made sure that I knew to keep my receipt in case anything happened.  I used my MagicBand to buy my mug and then went to fill it. Once I reached the drink station the machine kept telling me my mug was expired, which I knew wasn’t right seeing as how I just bought a few days for it. So I went back to the Cast Member where Buzz was waiting and the CM said that she forgot to code the mug. So she placed it on a sensor and coded it. Once I went back the mug was able to be refilled for another 14 days. I don’t know how that happened, and there isn’t an option to have the mug be refillable for 14 days so I just went with it. Funny enough the same thing happened to Buzz, but when she tried to pay for her mug it wouldn’t work. The CM forgot to set up a PIN for Buzz when we added her credit card on the transaction, and since I already had one set up mine worked, but she never had a PIN under her name before. So I bought the mug for her since we didn’t have our wallets with us because our MagicBands were our wallets at that moment.

Once we filled our mugs we went back to the front desk and set-up a PIN for Buzz. The Cast Member was extremely helpful and ensured us that there wouldn’t be any issues with our MagicBands and their PINs. I don’t blame the Cast Member’s at all because this is still an extremely new program and there are a lot of steps to take to ensure that every part of the MyMagic+ experience is seamless for guests.

The next day was our one and only day in the parks, and that day would be spent at the Magic Kingdom! We woke up mighty early and grabbed breakfast at the Pop Food Court, and went to the bus stop an hour before park open. When we arrived at the Magic Kingdom our bus stopped at the new MK bus stop. I just have to say it doesn’t look new at all, which I love it is themes exactly like the other stop, and there aren’t buses everywhere trying to get around each other which is fantastic. Anyways, I made sure we had our plastic tickets with us in case our MagicBands did not work. Luckily, we didn’t have any issues with entering the park with our bands and were able to get into the park far more easily than we would have with the old paper and plastic ticket machines.

We arrived so early to watch the Opening show, which in my opinion is totally worth getting to the park before opening.

Mary Poppins and Stitch? What an odd combination…

We were figuring out our game plan for the day because we had three FP+ set up for the day: Space Mountain, Peter Pan’s Flight, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. So we decided to hit Adventureland and ride Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise, after that we just wandered the park and rode all the rides we wanted! It was busy so we did have to wait in line for most of them, but the lines were not too bad. Then the moment of truth came and it was time for our first FP at Space Mountain. We headed over and there was a small line of people getting ready to scan their MagicBands for their FP’s as well. The system actually worked far better than I expected, and almost all of the guests knew exactly what to do, which surprised me. After touching our bands to the Mickey poles we got the green light to go and started walking down the queue. We definitely noticed the difference between the old FP line and the new one. There were hardly any people in the FP queue when just a year ago you would have to wait in line for a couple of minutes for Space Mountain, even if you had a paper fastpass. Once you reach the end of the queue you touch your band to another pole, and it reads that you used your fast pass. I will admit that it was weird not holding anything in my hand, I kept thinking I was forgetting something, but fear not everything you need is on your wrist.

Following our first FP+ adventure we headed to other rides and then utilized our other two fast passes throughout the day. Overall, they were efficient and easy. You don’t have to go searching for your fast pass in your wallet or pocket because it’s on your wrist at all times. And if you ever do want to change your times or rides for your FP’s, you can do so on the My Disney Experience app (which is advertised everywhere) or by waiting in line at a select location so a Fastpass+ Cast Member can help you make selections.

We finished our day at the Magic Kingdom when the park closed and checked out the day after. Your MagicBand expires when you checkout, and since we did express checkout I believe our bands expired at 11 a.m. So make sure you have everything out of your room and bought everything you want with your band or else it will no longer work for you.

My overall impression as a full-on guest staying on-site for vacation and utilizing the MagicBands is that Disney definitely has something going for them. We used our bands for everything you could use them for, except for Photopass. There are definitely some kinks, that I believe they will need to work out; ie. PINs, multiple bands per person (I already have 4 bands altogether), and FP+. They worked wonderfully for us, and I did notice a difference in line wait times. The fast pass lines are no longer extremely long and the stand-by queues short, giving a false impression of a short wait time to guests. It will be more difficult for guests to abuse the system, which if I’m completely honest is likely a major reason why fastpass+ works how it does (this is my opinion). I do believe that more options need to be available to guests in terms of the amount of FP’s you receive and what rides you can choose. At Magic Kingdom you can choose 2 high level attractions, and 1 lower level (think Mad Tea Party or Mickey’s Philharmagic). Yet, at Epcot and, I believe, DHS and DAK you can only choose 1 high level and 2 low level attractions. I personally find it frustrating that you are limited to only 3 FP in one day and CANNOT park hop. However, I am hoping that once MyMagic+ has gotten more stable and the technology for it has been tested and tested until the folks at Disney start pulling out their hair, then maybe they will add FP’s per day and allow park hopping with them. But until that day comes, Disney has created a game changer once again, and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

-Woody

Have you tested or used any of MyMagic+? Did you have a great or lousy experience with it? Let us know in the comments, on Facebook, Twitter, or in an email!