Thursday, May 29, 2014

Traveler Review: Walt Disney World - Wilderness Lodge, Be Our Guest and Fast Pass +

Evan traveled to Walt Disney World with his sister's family and his mother. We worked together to choose the Wilderness Lodge because of its great location. Here's his review: 

"I got back from a 6 day stay at Wilderness Lodge.  I personally think staying on property is the way to go, especially if you have small children. We had a 1 year old and a 4 year old with us. The boat from Wilderness Lodge to Magic Kingdom was perfect, it runs almost constantly and got us to the park within 1 minute of it opening. 

Wilderness Lodge itself was what I would deem good, but not fantastic. The huge plus of course is being on property you get all of the perks. The boat ride is probably 10 minutes to magic kingdom, and it drops you off even closer than the boats do. The rooms and food were pretty mediocre, but they are fine for just sleeping in. With so much to do, we hardly spent any time in the room apart from my mom who watched the baby while she took a nap. Highly recommended. Wilderness Lodge for us was cheaper than Poly and Contemporary, the monorail is nice, but not worth the 2k more it would have costed us. 

We went to Epcot one day, and while the garden topiary's were cool, the HGTV area was a letdown, there was no one there and everything was dead. The butterfly tent however was the highlight of the day. Just great. We ate at Chefs de France which was fine, and we walked by the Frozen princeses and found out about the 4.5 hour wait 

We spent 2 days at Magic Kingdom, and pretty much went on every ride. If you can, do Big Thunder at night, that was neat. Also hadn't been on space mountain for years and years, it was even better than I remember. 

Fastpass+ for all the negativity I was reading online before the trip, was absolutely a game changer for our trip. Since the kids got us up at 6am every day anyway, we were at the park at 8am (early entry hours) and were able to go on anything we wanted until probably 11am when the park started to clog up. We then had lunch and used our passes in the afternoon. Even though the MDE app is terrible, it worked and we had little problems changing our times. Being able to literally bypass the entire line and get onto a ride with virtually no wait was completely fantastic especially with the 4 year old. The last day we couldn't get a FP for jungle cruise and ended up waiting for over an hour, and he almost had a few meltdowns. The JC guide was hilarious and well worth the wait in the end. 

If anyone else is going, be sure to check your emails before your trip. my sister got a reservation code for Be Our Guest for her family, and when we went the next day there were able to add my mom and I to the reservation without an issue and we went right in. I am not sure how they found our table, but our food was brought out and it was pretty good. Best food we had at the park by a mile. I had to be so hyperbolic, but between Belle's House and Be Our Guest, this was Disney at its finest. Great presentation and really special, my nephew couldn't get enough of the decoration and the dark room with the withering rose. "

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