Mantis Miscellany--Walt Disney World Part 1: Disneylanders in Florida

Originally Published May 8, 2013

I’ve always been fascinated with Disneyland: the rides, the theming, and especially what went on behind the scenes to create this singular destination. For a few years (including the 50^th Anniversary Celebration), my family held premium annual passes to the resort. I could write a lot more about my views on the “Happiest Place on Earth,” but for now, I will say that I am very familiar with it.

This past February, I finally had the privilege of going to Disney World with three others. I will respect their privacy, but I will say that they also love Disneyland and have been there many times. For the next five or so posts, I hope to impart a sense of my experience there, from the savory and spectacular to the dull and disappointing. As I am a frequent Disneylander going to Disney World for the first time, there will be a focus on comparison between the two resorts. For those of you who can’t bear the suspense or don’t want to read through blocks of text: I very much enjoyed Disney World and can’t wait to go there again, but Disneyland is still the best overall park.

Also, this will not be a strictly chronological trip report; though we spent four full days there and visited all four parks and saw a vast majority of what we wanted to see, it was not a “one park a day” trip. After this introduction, I intend to devote one post to each park in the basic order we visited them (we visited Epcot three out of the four days—and yes, it was the park I enjoyed the most).

That’s enough disclaimers. On to the interesting stuff…

Arrival

From Orlando International Airport, we took Disney’s free Magical Express bus service to the resort (run by Mears, as the large company logo emblazoned on the drivers’ shirts informed us). The lower level of the terminal featured a frighteningly large waiting/queue area, but luckily for us, it was almost empty, and we couldn’t have waited more than fifteen minutes for the bus to arrive. (Theme park aficionados know that there’s nothing better than seeing huge queuing area with no people in it). Our bus’s destinations were Caribbean Beach Resort, the All-Star Resorts, and our hotel, the posh Pop Century Resort.

The superb Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World (which I may refer to periodically) makes clear just how huge, spread-out, and complicated Disney World is. I suspect the vast majority of Disney World visitors haven’t been to Disneyland, so they probably don’t have anything to compare it to. But in California, we’re used to being able to walk the equivalent of one city block from one park to the other, making transportation between parks exceedingly simple. It’s like Universal Orlando in that regard (also a great place; the subject of a future post maybe?) In addition, both Disneyland and California Adventure are within spitting distance of the Downtown Disney shopping district and the three hotels.

By contrast, Disney World covers an area about the size of San Francisco, with four theme parks, two water parks, five golf courses, a wilderness preserve, a sports complex, a race track, a three-part Downtown Disney area, and more than two dozen hotels (called resorts). And the Disney planners, being the twisted geniuses they are, have placed each destination so that almost nothing is close together. Again, Disney Worlders may take this with a grain of salt, but to a Disneylander, it’s a little disconcerting when you have to take a 15-30 minute bus ride from place to place.

Anyway, the bus from the airport to the entrance of Walt Disney World took maybe half an hour. They play a neat little video extolling the many wonders of Disney’s Floridian empire (and when introducing the thrill rides, the narrator says in an over-dramatic voice “Are you ready?” after which Goofy says, “You bet I am!”—or something to that effect. I wasn’t taking notes.) The bus driver kindly slowed down once we got to the entrance for a photo op, and then another ten or so minutes before we arrived at the first stop: Caribbean Beach. I got a glimpse of its size, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it and man of the other resorts took up more area than all of the Disneyland Resort.

I did find the roads to be nicely landscaped—plenty of grass, trees, bodies of water, and other greenery that contrasts sharply with the urban nature of Disneyland’s surroundings. The cloverleaf intersections featured very large loops, maybe to accommodate the ubiquitous buses, Disney and otherwise. Or maybe they’re so big because Disney World has so much room and they can afford to make those huge cloverleaf intersections. I frankly wouldn’t put it past them.

The Ultra-Luxurious Pop Century Resort

Disney calls all of its hotels “resorts,” but I must say that Pop Century truly fits that title. It makes the Grand Californian look like a Motel 6, and I’d bet that Bob Iger and John Lasseter stay there when they visit.

All kidding aside, I did find Pop Century to be a perfectly adequate place to sleep—that’s pretty much the only thing we were going to do in the hotel room, so why pay more? Giant, somewhat gaudy pop culture icons from the latter half of the twentieth century decorate the buildings. There are five complexes of two or three four-story buildings, each surrounding a courtyard and themed to a specific decade. We got a room in the 1970s complex with a decent view of the lake. The room was pretty small, though.

One thing I really liked about the Pop Century (besides its low price) was the bus service. Guests with no rental car pretty much have to rely on the Disney buses to take them from place to place. The Pop Century had separate waiting lines and stops for each destination: the four major parks, Downtown Disney, and the sports complex. By contrast, the Polynesian Resort, a truly luxurious hotel, has one small bus stop with no organized waiting line. On one day, we waited twenty minutes for a Downtown Disney bus, and during that time, NO bus, to ANY destination, stopped by. We gave up and ended up taking the monorail to the Magic Kingdom so we could catch a bus back to the Pop Century (because buses don’t go from hotel to hotel). Sound complicated? That’s only the end of a frustrating chain that started at Disney’s Hollywood Studios park. We wanted to go to Downtown Disney, but surprise—apparently there are no buses direct from the parks to Downtown Disney. Okay, so we took a bus to the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC)—more on that in the Magic Kingdom post. No buses to Downtown Disney from there either, so we walked to the Polynesian (two places within walking distance? No way!) to wait for the bus that never came. At Pop Century, we encountered no such troubles.

Pop Century also had a decent food court, though we only ended up going there on the last day of our trip to pick up food for the flight home. I suppose now’s a good time as any to discuss the meal plan. Basically, for a set price per person, the full plan gets you one snack, one “quick-service” (counter/fast food) meal, and one full-service (waiter) meal per person per day, not including tip for the full service. In addition, you get a mug that you can refill at the hotel’s food court as much as you want. There’s also a quick-service plan with two quick-service meals and one snack per day.

The wrinkle with the full plan is that many of the full-service restaurants either had long waiting times or required advance reservations. And even then, it often took almost two hours to eat at the full-service restaurants. I myself would have preferred to see more of the parks, especially since we only had four full days, and the full-service meals ended up blowing a lot of time. I would have been happy with the cheaper quick-service plan—frankly, when I go to a theme park, I’m not going there to eat, especially if I’m visiting for the first time.

The only other hotel we visited during the trip was the Polynesian, which has a neat lobby featuring a lush fountain. On the third day, we ate at Kona Café, which ended up being the best meal we had; I chose to have the pork chop. It did take some time to get there and eat, though it helped that the hotel was connected by monorail to Epcot (though you do have to make one transfer).

Downtown Disney

Although our flight left California early in the morning, the time change meant that it was mid-afternoon when we landed. By the time we were settled in the hotel room, it was time for dinner. And what better place to eat dinner than at Downtown Disney?

Now, I’m not saying that was a mistake, but despite Downtown Disney’s immense size (especially compared to the one in Anaheim), the restaurant selection seemed relatively limited. That meant there were unholy wait times for all the full-service restaurants (we wanted to save our allocation of quick-service restaurants—don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense; the meal plan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either).

I’m getting ahead of myself. The Unofficial Guide listed transit time to Downtown Disney from our hotel as about half an hour. The time to all the other parks was listed as twenty minutes or less, and they weren’t closer, so why the difference? It turns out that there are a bunch of traffic lights on the road in front of Downtown Disney, which lengthens commute time.

Anaheim’s Downtown Disney has different areas according to press material, but in reality, it all smushes together. In Disney World, there are three distinct districts, though one of them is currently 90% a ghost town—Pleasure Island, a former nightclub district. To its left (from the parking lot) is West Side, a more upscale area with a Cirque du Soleil stadium, an indoor, interactive theme park called DisneyQuest, a 24-screen AMC, a tethered hot air balloon, a House of Blues, a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, a Planet Hollywood, and a billiards/bowling/ gaming/eatery called Splitsville. To the right is the Marketplace, which was more similar to the Anaheim counterpart. There’s a World of Disney, Lego store, Rainforest Café, even an Earl of Sandwich and littlemissmatched. There’s also T-Rex, which is basically Rainforest Café with dinosaurs from what I’ve read. The whole area faces a lake.

The bus stop is brilliantly located at the currently-dead Pleasure Island, so after crossing a busy roadway, we were basically faced with a wall with arrows pointing left to West Side and right to the Marketplace. Luckily, there were cast members there to guide the throng of slightly lost guests. We opted for the Marketplace and our great search for a restaurant began.

Pretty much every full-service restaurant had a long wait, and I was worried that the parks would be crowded too. They were actually quite reasonable, though far from empty. The Princess Half-Marathon probably added to the crowd, though less than I thought it would. If the restaurants were so booked on the days that we went, I shudder to think what they must be like during summer and the holidays. Just why are the restaurants so crowded, especially when we never had to wait long for any rides? Is capacity really that low? Do people really go to Disney World just to eat?

We ended up eating at Captain Jack’s restaurant because it had the least abhorrent waiting time of about an hour. The limited range of the beeper meant that we couldn’t explore 90% of the shops, and we ended up not coming back. The restaurant itself was okay. Afterward, we took a boat to the other side of Downtown Disney and walked through West Side to the bus stop.

Next: The Magic Kingdom