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Guide for Disney ‘First Timers’

Posted by Jackie Hewett on Sat 28th April 2007 at 03:05 AM, Filed in Travel Tips, USA Florida

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There are many guide books available that describe in pretty good detail the attractions in the different parks. This article aims to provide first time visitors with a brief guide to some of the things you won’t necessarily find in the guide books, but may help you make the most of your holiday, not just in the Disney parks.

Car Parking
If you are not staying in one of the resort hotels you will probably be driving to the parks. All of the parks make a charge for parking (in September 2007 it was about $10 per car). The car parks are huge and each area is given a memorable character or symbol to help you remember where your hire car is, however, there are likely to be many many cars of the same make/model as yours. We found it useful to sick something to distinguish our car on the aerial. Also, if you have young kids in buggies – don’t get them straight into the buggy after leaving the car as you are likely to have to board a motorised train (or ‘wally trolley’ as our kids called them) to take you to the park entrance. Kids cannot ride in their buggies on the mini trains. I will post another article soon on common ‘scams’ to be wary of when booking a hire car in advance for Orlando. For a few dollars extra some of the parks offer a valet parking service, or even parking in a preferential area that is closer to the park entrance.

Getting Into the Park & Park Tickets
We bought our tickets from a web site in advance before we left the UK. It’s best to make sure you actually get the tickets sent to you direct, and not vouchers that have to be exchanged when you get to Orlando. Sometimes you can get good ‘2 days for 1’, or a child ticket free when you buy an adult one sort of deals, and it is worth shopping around a little bit. The prices don’t seem to vary that much between the different web sites and the prices weren’t vastly different from those on the door at the parks, but it’s one thing less to do when you arrive and just want to get on with the fun. If you have pre-bought actual tickets you don’t have to go to the ticket office or anything – you can just use them straight away. It is definitely worth getting multi-day, multi-park tickets, but do allow for a day or two away from the parks to go shopping or just ‘chill’.

Bag Searches
When you go into any of the parks you will have to open all your bags up for a brief search, and any storage sections under buggies, so it’s best not to load too much under a buggy until you have got through that bit.

Lost Tickets
Whilst there may be a stated policy on the back of/with your tickets that the parks will not replace a lost ticket we found this wasn’t necessarily the case. The tickets cannot be used by anyone else after you have been into at least one park because all the parks take your finger/thumb-print with the ticket when you first use / activate it. If you keep a note of exactly when you bought your tickets and from whom (supplier) you can generally get a replacement by going to a customer service desk, although you may have to queue for a bit.

Disney Fast Path System Explained
Your Disney tickets will enable you to use their (free) fast-path system, and while mention was made of this in some guide books it wasn’t very well explained. Basically you can put your park entrance ticket into machines that will give you a return time for a particular ride when you can come back and by-pass the queue. You will be given a time slot of about an hour – usually about an hour or so ahead. Meanwhile you can queue / go on another ride. What wasn’t explained was that you can only hold one fast-path ticket at a time per person / park entrance ticket. It takes a little bit of planning to take best advantage, but its well worth doing.

Universal Studio’s answer to ‘Fast-Path’
Universal don’t operate the same (free) fast-path system as Disney parks, they make quite a significant charge for their express-charge tickets. However, these do allow you to by-pass all queues all day long. If you say at one of the ‘on-site’ hotels (Royal Pacific Resort, Hard Rock Hotel or at Islands of Adventure it may be worth paying to by-pass the queues. Of course this also depends on the time of year of your visit.

Disney Parades
The Disney parades all seem to happen at around 3.00pm in the afternoon. They are great for kids, extremely popular and get very busy. Crowds will start to gather some 15-20 minutes before the parade starts all the way along the route so if it’s important that your kids see them – get your spot early. Beware that if you are sitting off the kerb you will be asked to move backwards to get your feet off the parade area. Also, as the parade passes by a ‘moving rope’ will surround the parade characters. Un-be-known to me, my 4 year old decided it would be a good idea to wrap a string puppet around this rope which became very entangled. As the parade was coming to an end it became clear that at the back of the parade some Disney employees were following the procession winding the rope in on a huge spool. All fine until they realised that said puppet was well and truly stuck and would inhibit the rope-winding. Their ensuing panic was quite funny as they grappled with the toy, trying to free it from their rope, otherwise it could have brought the entire parade to a standstill because this seemingly important rope couldn’t ‘move’ / keep-up with the parade!

Magic Kingdom – Spectro-Magic
The Spectro-Magic parade at Disney’s Magic Kingdom is an evening parade quite different to the afternoon ones. It has very elaborately lit floats and is well worth a look. Spectro-magic doesn’t happen every evening, so if you definitely want to catch it make sure you go to the park on the right day. Also, if you intend to, or can stay later into the evening on some evenings (usually Saturdays) Spectro-Magic occurs twice – first is at about 7.00pm and the second parade is at about 10pm. But be warned - there are many ‘street vendors’ selling light-up toys & your children will doubtless pester you for them!!

Heat & Water Sprays
It can get very hot in the parks, but quite a few of them have mist sprays for cooling off in. The best ones we found were in Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland and all-around Animal Kingdom. So if it’s a really hot day that might influence your choice of which park to go to.

Park Food
Food within the parks was a better than I was expecting, even though I felt I had OD’d on chips! The prices weren’t bad considering you are a ‘captive audience’, and at most of the ‘fast-food’ places pretty good salads are available. At the majority of the fast food places you queue to give your order to someone at a desk, once that’s done you shuffle forward a few paces to wait at a collection counter and then go find your seats. We did eat at a few of the more ‘gourmet’ restaurants and had a couple of great meals. The best were the Shark’s Underwater Grill at Sea World, the excellent (prize winning) ‘Mythos in Islands of Adventure and Lombard’s Seafood Grille in Universal Studio’s. More detail of those to follow in individual park blogs.

Collectables
All of the parks are extremely adept at relieving you of your last dimes in a myriad of ways. Most rides exit through a themed shop, but the other common way of parting with cash is by collecting things you never knew you needed or wanted!
Pressed Coins – our kids loved these. You need a couple of quarters and the shiniest nickel you have for each pressed coin. You put the coins in the appropriate slots, select the design you want and crank the handle. All of the parks have many different machines dotted around them and you can buy special collectors books to put them in (advisable before they get lost).
Pins – these metal badges are everywhere. There are many different designs and some special edition ones are quite collectable.
Character Autographs – this is the cheapest thing for kids to collect! You just buy an autograph book and look out for the characters throughout the park. Get ready with your camera – you will have some great photo opportunities. We thought that the autograph books at Universal were better because they had an integral pen holder (but had already bought ours at a Disney Park as we went there first).

Kids Stuff
Hiring Buggies
Although our youngest was 4 when we went and had long since given up using a buggy we took one to Florida and were very glad we did. The days were long and he could rest / sleep in the buggy when he felt the need. It was of course also useful for carrying drinks and purchases we made in the parks. Whilst buggies can be hired in the parks the daily charge racks up the cost and you will come out of rides to a sea of buggies all looking the same. There is no problem taking your own buggy and we found it extremely useful to have our own because it was easier to spot!

Character Meals
We were full of intentions of booking a character meal but didn’t get around to it. However, I don’t think the kids felt they’d missed out by not doing one with everything else going on and the autograph collecting. If you want to do one you need to do your research regarding which characters are on which venues and which days. It’s also a good idea to book well ahead.

Special Holidays
Our visit was over Halloween and we got tickets for the evening kiddy oriented ‘Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween. Basically it involved a extra few hours in the park, lots of trick-or treating (although not too many tricks were in evidence), a special parade and excellent themed fireworks that made Cinderella’s castle look quite menacing. Many of the visitors dressed up and it was a lot of fun. On Halloween Universal Studios also hold an event, but that one is very much for ‘grown-ups’ We would have definitely gone if the kids weren’t so young. The parks also hold special events for other holidays – don’t necessarily avoid going over holiday periods because you could do some additional fun stuff.

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