Originally Posted By hbquikcomjamesl For the past few days, with my Fall 2015 vacation now completely booked (Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City, with an overnight stay in Altoona and a brief layover to see the railroad museum in Strasburg), I've been starting to look into Fall 2016. I was initially torn between WDW and a Grand Tour of New England. Then, I looked through my records. Found out that next year, it will have been only five years since my last Grand Tour of New England, only three since I last visited Washington, DC or Colonial Williamsburg, but NINE since the last time I visited WDW or KSC. But I don't like single-destination vacations, and I don't like vacations that don't have any rail segments. Combining WDW/KSC with New Orleans is still out, because Gulf Coast rail service is STILL suspended, and combining WDW/KSC with Washington and/or Williamsburg isn't much better, since I was just there in 2013. So the sketch I came up with is to fly to Charlotte, NC, and spend a couple days each there, Raleigh, and Savannah, before spending a week in WDW, with at least two bus excursions to KSC. Except for flying to Charlotte, and flying home from Orlando, and the buses to KSC, everything would be by rail, and I wouldn't need a single overnight rail segment. So what's changed in WDW since 2007? I understand that Fantasyland has been rebuilt? I've looked up this "magic bands" business, and I'm not sure about all I'm reading: one source says that you also have the option of a card, similar to the cards issued at non-Disney on-property hotels. I'm not particularly sanguine about wearing anything on my wrist other than my watch, just as I'm not particularly sanguine about wearing anything but a tie around my neck. About the only thing I am certain of is that DDP is still not for me: every calculation I've ever run tells me that with my eating habits, it would cost me more than paying cash for all my meals, even if I weren't planning on being off-property for at least two days, from just after an early breakfast to just before a late dinner.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros In general, there haven't been a ton of additions (at least noteworthy ones) to the parks since 2007. The Fantasyland project is the biggest, but never really lived up to Disney's high expectations for it. The attractions are nice and the whole area looks great, but the substance doesn't quite measure up to all the pizzaz I'm not sure if was open during your previous trip, but Toy Story Midway Mania opened at the Studios around that time, and is incredibly popular Although it's not open yet, there will be several evening additions at DAK by next year, including the Rivers of Light show and nighttime safari. They've also recently done a great job expanding the Harambe area, including relocating the Lion King show there and adding a new marketplace; it feels like a real village now, rather than a single strip The new international film for Soarin' should be running by the time you visit, and the 3rd theater should be up and running too. The Frozen makeover of Maelstrom in Norway should be open then too, but that schedule isn't especially clear Overall, you'll probably notice notice more things that have been removed than have been added. Epcot and the Studios feel particularly stale, though they still have good stuff As you mentioned, you can opt to have a card instead of a Magic Band; it has all the same features and capabilities, except it won't automatically load your on-ride photos (you'll have to tap it under the screen to load them). The cards work very similar to a lot of transit systems, where you just tap it on the scanner; you can even leave it in your wallet if you like
Originally Posted By hbquikcomjamesl Thanks. Of course, in my neck of the woods, we've had TSMM in DCA for a few years now, too. It seems you got yours only 17 days before we got ours. And pun my word, "Jim in Merced." I've been to Merced a few times. For me, the big attractions in Altoona and Strasburg are the railroad museums. My own favorites at WDW are of course attractions that (at least at present) have no DL or DCA equivalent: CoP, GMR, the surviving CV movies, Ellen, American Adventure, Kilimanjaro, and the BSM and Steam Trains tours. In the past, I've found that official WDW transfers (Mears/DME) are barely willing to service the Orlando train station at all, and don't serve it particularly well. Is that still the case?
A few months ago, after hearing about recent updates at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (including yet another restoration of the original 11' production model of the Starship Enterprise) I came up with another sketch. This one begins with a few days in New Orleans, before I catch the Crescent to Atlanta. After 24 hours there, I'd get back on the Crescent to Washington, DC, where I'd have just enough time to walk over to the Smithsonian NASM, and spend an hour there, before catching a Regional to Williamsburg. I'd spend a long weekend there, before catching a Regional to Richmond, and the Silver Meteor to Orlando, for a few days in WDW, and a side trip by bus to KSC. "FerretAfros": You mentioned that I can indeed opt for a card instead of a "MagicBand." Do you (or does anybody else) have any details on how to specify that in the booking (as usual, I'll be staying at the All Star Music). (And as to official ride photos, well, I have precisely as much interest in them as I have in official duck tour photos, photos by official cruise ship photographers, California Science Center entrance photos, &c., namely, none whatsoever. And I'm pretty sure my avatar is my most recent unassisted "selfie," [As I recall, I set the camera on a table, and used the self-timer; the organ is the Flentrop at St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle])
Oops. They don't take pictures of you at the entrance to the California Science Center (free, but donations encouraged, in Exposition Park); they take them at the entrance to the California Academy of Sciences (expensive, in Golden Gate Park)! At any rate, everything is now etched in stone: A long weekend in New Orleans (with a dinner reservation at Dickie Brennan's), a day in Atlanta, a few hours in Washington (just long enough to walk over to the Air & Space, see what's new, and walk back to the train station), a long weekend in Colonial Williamsburg (with dinner reservations at Shields and the King's Arms), and not quite a week in WDW, with two side trips (a Launch Control Tour and a Cape Tour) to Kennedy Space Center, dinner reservations at Hollywood & Vine, Biergarten, Garden Grill, and the Liberty Tree. (The evenings of my KSC side-trips will be counter service for dinner, including Cosmic Ray's). My FP+ reservations are also booked. And I've made notes of closing times of my favorite attractions (given the rumors, I'm hoping to get to Ellen more than once, and to GMR more than just the two FPs I've booked).
I think that everybody is given a MagicBand by default through the online reservation; I don't know if there's a way to change that. But just ask for a card when you're checking in, or stop by the concierge desk if you do online check in. Of all the various processes they do for the MM+ system, adding a card to your account is one of the easiest; if you have an old WDW RFID card from while MM+ was being phased in, you can link it to your online account yourself and just reuse it The last time I was there, it had been a while since anything new opened, but I know they just reopened the main atrium this summer for the museum's 40th anniversary. I'm not positive, but I think one of the exhibit galleries may have also been remodeled recently. I go right past the museum on my regular running route several times a week, but it's probably been about a year since I've actually been inside
Yes, and part of the 40th Anniversary renovation, I'm told, is the most ambitious restoration to date of the 11-foot USS Enterprise filming model. According to the Smithsonian's web site, it is in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall (a bit more dignified than a display case down in the gift shop, no?), just inside the Main Entrance, on the National Mall side of the building.
Well, I'm back. Only three hiccups in the trip, one at the beginning, during my long weekend in New Orleans, and one during my WDW stay. 1. It seems that when I was noting down the hours for the Audubon Zoo and the Audubon Aquarium, they were still on summer hours. I didn't find out that they would be closed Monday until I'd cut my time short at the WWII Museum, and expended a not insignificant amount of time, NORTA fare, and shoeleather, to get there. Oops. 2. While I was on the train to Orlando (which, thankfully, started running again a mere two days before I was scheduled to be on it!), I got a message from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex: it seems that all extra-cost tours were being suspended because of the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. And without the extra-cost tours, there was little sense in spending over an hour on Gray Line (each way) to get there on two separate days. Fortunately, I was able to back out both of my tours, and my multi-day admission, with a full refund, and just get a single-day general admission, and when I called Gray Line, they were able to do the same (waiving a 72-hour cancellation clause) for my second day's transportation. This gave me time to see and do things I might not have had time for (even with two days there), had I done the extra-cost tours, and gave me another day of theme park time. 3. I lost an hour of that additional theme park day because I walked away from a washer in the Calypso laundry building without verifying that it actually had started, with the result that my laundry took an hour longer to finish that morning. In New Orleans, the WWII Museum has expanded considerably since I first saw it, and they're working on more. I managed to get into Preservation Hall for all three nights of my stay. In Atlanta, I actually managed to get to all three of the museums I'd planned to visit, dependent entirely on transit and shoeleather. My train arrived on time in Washington, DC, giving me plenty of time to walk over to the Air & Space, see the renovations to the Entrance Gallery, have lunch, get a quick look at a couple of other galleries, and walk back. The renovations included the most ambitious renovations to the original 11-foot filming model of the USS Enterprise since the Smithsonian had acquired it, including fully functional lighting (that, near as I can tell, comes to life for several minutes, every hour on the hour). Colonial Williamsburg didn't have a whole lot going on, but I did manage to catch some presentations by costumed interpreters, see Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot twice, and interact with various craftsfolk. I was on the train to Williamsburg when I got word that Amtrak was restoring Southeast Coast service; even so, I carefully monitored it from the Woodlands business center, and on my tablet. Once I arrived in WDW, I checked into the Music, and (upon explaining that there had been no point in shipping a MagicBand to me at home (it arrived after I'd already left), I was offered my choice of either a gray one (the default), or a card (which is what I'd wanted in the first place, and which saved me the trouble of having to go to Guest Relations in the first park I got to (as I'd originally been told by a member of the "eCommerce Sales and Service Team) in order to swap it out. I then hopped a bus over to Studios, where I had FPs for GMR and the Indy show, as well as a dinner reservation at H&V, arriving only a few minutes after my GMR FP became ripe. This was the first of three times through GMR (two "Gangster" scenarios and a "Western" scenario) over the course of my stay. H&V was probably my most expensive WDW dinner, and unfortunately, I didn't realize it was all-you-can-eat. The next morning, I was up early for Backstage Magic (currently featuring the perennial visit to the bowels of American Adventure, this time with the Animatronics being tested, as well as Creative Costuming [which has moved], Central Shops, the Event Services warehouse, and the largest of the Textile Services laundry plants [surprisingly interesting, much more so than a visit to the florist], with lunch now served at the Wilderness Lodge.) Following the tour, I had a FP for Space Ship Earth, and just enough time to catch Ellen (also the first of three times through the attraction, this trip) before dinner at Biergarten, and American Adventure (first of two visits this trip). Over the course of less than a week, I managed to get to Kilimanjaro, Everest, M:S, CoP (twice), the Bears (only once), Hall of Presidents (twice), Philharmagic (alas, only once), Reflections of China, O Canada, and Impressions de France, as well as dining at Garden Grill and The Liberty Tree (as well as the aforementioned H&V and Biergarten), and Cosmic Ray's (yes, counter service, but I like Sonny Eclipse). And I also managed to completely lose count of the number of times I was mistaken for a CM (not so bad at DL and DCA, where I can generally give intelligent answers, but it starts to get old when I don't know the parks well enough to help). In fact, I think I may have been mistaken for a CM by an actual CM. Laughed out loud twice, once riding the Peoplemover through the Space Mountain show building (and hearing Mr. Tom Morrow being paged to contact a Mr. Johnson, an allusion to Flight to the Moon and Mission to Mars), and once at a sign over a DVC booth, identifying it as "H. Goff Cartography." Nothing quite like being in-the-know on an in-joke.
Oh, and Saturday morning, I did the Steam Trains Tour again, and did three park-hops in one day. Now that I think about it, there was one other hiccup: it seems that I bought a Preservation Hall hat in New Orleans, and then, the evening I dined at the Garden Grill, I walked away from it. I realized what I'd done the next morning, and so when I got to Epcot, I went back to the restaurant after it. They sent me downstairs to the Soarin' entrance, which sent me to Guest Relations, which sent me to TTC Lost and Found, where the CM on duty found it in under 2 minutes. While I was there, a Monorail CM mentioned that he'd just loaded a horse. It was a miniature, no larger than a large dog, but it was a horse. I suggested it was probably an emotional support animal of some sort.
Sounds like you had a great trip! Even with the hurricane-related issues, it sounds like you were able to get a lot accomplished The Backstage Magic tour sounds really neat. I've never done any of the tours, but that one (along with the scuba diving at the Living Seas) has always sounded intriguing to me It's probably a good thing you got multiple rides on both The Great Movie Ride and Universe of Energy. If rumors are to be believed, both may not be around for much longer, though the replacement concepts sound a little crazy even by Disney's current standards I actually just saw some posts on FB about people who saw a miniature horse; I wonder if it was the same one
Believe it or not the miniature horse is covered under the ADA as a service animal. Some vision impaired people are using the horses instead of dogs because they live longer.
Knowing that Sunday, I'd be extremely lucky if I managed to get to church (St. Richard's, Winter Park), get lunch, and catch my DME bus to the Airport, I did NOT include a theme park admission for Sunday. To get to church without a cab, I took an early MK bus, then caught the Resort Loop Monorail to TTC, then the Lynx #50 into downtown Orlando, then the #13 to Lakemont & Aloma, with the last mile or so by shoeleather, arriving in plenty of time for the late service. A parishioner gave me a lift back to Lakemont & Aloma, which worked out very well: the inbound #13 came along a few minutes later, and if I'd missed it, I'd have been a full hour later getting back to WDW. With the Disney Springs bus running by then, I got off there, instead of going all the way back to MK, and walked around for about an hour, hoping to finally try The Earl of Sandwich for lunch. Then I saw how long the line was. I took a second look at Wolfgang Puck, looked at my watch, gave up, and caught the first bus back to the hotel, where I grabbed a plate of penne Alfredo with chicken, retrieved my bags, and waited for the bus. It looks like SunRail may be serving the Airport by the time I return, in which case it may actually be possible for Amtrak passengers to take DME instead of taking their chances with whatever taxi and van services are available.
