Just back Observations January 20-27

Remy is Up

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May 10, 2018
This was our 12th Trip in the past two years as AP holders. We generally go down for F&G, F&W, the Christmas celebrations, and the arts festival with a couple of smaller trips in between. Some observations in general:
Refresh is the best way to approach parks at this point for people who do not want to stay on property to gain access to EMH or plan out their day hour by hour. We were able to pull FPs daily for every major ride in every park and then work the times backwards to fit what we were doing. And that was starting each day with zero FPs and not showing up at the parks until around 10AM. One morning we pulled slinky, ToT, RNRC, and then TSM at Studios, bounced to Epcot after a resort break and pulled a test track, then after dinner at Jiko had pulled one for FoP. Not once on this trip was there a ride or attraction we could not get a FP for sometime during the day. It worked even easier on Christmas day this past year so whether its busy or not, it works. And Im not walking around with my nose stuck in a phone. I can generally do it in line waiting for a ride and it takes at most 10 minutes to find a specific ride and then adjust the time to what you want.

For those who dont like the refresh method and like to plan, then plan and use EMH, get out of bed and do rope drops. In the first two hours at most parks you can do a ton without an issue.

After Hours;;;Wasnt impressed with the one at AK because its very limited but it was fun to ride Everest 7 or 8 times and FoP 4 times. Plus that park is beautiful at night. However, MK is an excellent value for the after hours, particularly at the AP rate. You can do so much in such little time, its well worth it.

All in all, I have seen slight improvements in the parks and it is obvious they are working to make things better. MDE was a disaster on this trip and I ended up using Chrome to get to my account to refresh, but, they certainly need to fix the MDE App as has been discussed here ad nauseum.

Bus service...They really have to fix some things with the inter property transportation. It is miserable sometimes but I dont have any sort of suggestions to make so I wont complain too much.

Ill do a resort review of all the resorts we stayed at the past two years plus the restaurants we ate at on the proper boards tomorrow or the day after as I have time. We had some fabulous meals on this most recent trip and while I was not impressed with our resort, it wasnt awful. Just felt like it couldve been better for what we paid even with the AP discount.
 
MDE was a disaster on this trip and I ended up using Chrome to get to my account to refresh, but, they certainly need to fix the MDE App as has been discussed here ad nauseum.
Can I ask what kind of phone you have? I have read that there a lot of issues with older phones, particularly older iphones. I have a new one, so I am curious to see if this is still the case or if it's happening on all phones.
 
Thank you for your trip report. We're going next month and staying offsite, I was unable to get FoP or SDD so you give me some hope for our visit.
 


The busses were consistently behind schedule at parks and the resort we waited 30 minutes or so on several occasions. Luckily we weren't in a hurry at any time.

Galaxy s8 phone
 
I'm sorry, what is "refresh"? I had a terrible time getting same day FP this trip during this time period, would love to learn something that would help in this situation. MDE also basically didn't work at all for me, incredibly frustrating. Ending up using my regular browser.
 
No joke about the MDE app and website this past weekend. We went an entire day without the ability to search ADRs so we just kept piecing together QS in hopes it would work eventually. Just kept coming back as an error. FPs took forever to fall off after use. Many of them showed as 1 or 2 guests even though they were booked for 3. Reservations I canceled weeks ago would intermittently show up. Wild stuff.
 


We were there 28 December through 8 January... Using an iPhone Xs I had very few problems with MDE the entire time. My girls with their iPhone 7s had many more problems. I think the speed of my processor may have made the difference. I am not an IT guy, only making a guess. And refreshing worked well for us, although no FOP but were able to get SDD.

We stayed at WL and bus service was quite good. Never more than 15 minutes. Had one long wait at Boardwalk after meeting a friend for breakfast. Dining was a bit of a crapshoot... best meal and service was at Spice Road table, least impressive meal was Garden Grill dinner and Ohana breakfast.
 
I will say this re: MDE, I do think the age of the phone matters. The app seems to work fine at all times on my Galaxy S9, but my gf's iPhone 6 is barely works at all. My guess is Disney optimizes the app for newer phones (that is common in app making in general) and some older phones may not even get bug fixes and other updates for the app.

Interesting to hear about the bus service. I plan on using the service quite a bit on an upcoming one day trip so keeping my fingers crossed.
 
I last update the MDE app on my iPhone 7 like a month ago. Any thoughts on whether it is best to stay with the old app or to update it? I would hate for a newer app version to start giving me trouble where I have never had trouble before.
 
So, to be clear, former New Yorker who is a fan of mass transit. Overall, I want to give Disney high marks on its various transportation options.

I think the bus experience is all over the place for some people. For every example of the time when we walked up "Just as the bus was arriving", I think I have two examples of "We were heading to AK, and in the time we waited for the bus, three MK buses came and went". I get it, there are alot of things that impact the schedule, traffic being one, and handicapped loading/unloading being another.

I have two suggestions for Disney:

1) At some more popular places, they should have a transportation supervisor on hand with the capability to reroute a bus if need be. The example being you are waiting at Epcot, as a bus headed towards the Contemporary leaves, another rolls up to the now empty slot. In the mean time, there are two bus loads of people waiting to go to the All Stars. A supervisor telling the driver to divert for a run to the All Stars, then revert back to the Contemporary run would be a good thing.

2) I believe Disney has cut back on some of the duplicate options. Last summer, we were headed to a restaurant at the Boardwalk. Having gotten stuck in Spaceship Earth for a few minutes, my plan was to take a bus to the Boardwalk. Was not happy to walk all the way to the bus loading area to find that we had to walk back thru the entrance (bagcheck, etc), thru the park and out the International Gateway. Don't get me wrong, my fault, I assumed that there would be a bus. You know how excited my kids were to walk an extra mile or so. Point being, perhaps some of those duplicate options should re-evaluated. Perhaps offering bus service from the Floridian to Epcot is not a bad idea. You can walk to TTC from the Possession, and it is just one stop from the Contemporary. but from the Floridian it is a bit of a trip via the Monorail.

Like everyone else, i have had some great experiences, and we have had some bad ones. I think some of it is setting your expectations, while other parts are the luck of the draw.
 
Can you tell us a little more about showing up at the park with no FPs booked. We have had a more "go with the flow" / relaxed / not plan every hour approach the past few trips , but I have not been brave enough to show up with no FPs booked...LOL!
 
Can you tell us a little more about showing up at the park with no FPs booked. We have had a more "go with the flow" / relaxed / not plan every hour approach the past few trips , but I have not been brave enough to show up with no FPs booked...LOL!

This would not make any sense to me. You have paid for the fastpasses. Can't you still have a "go with the flow" approach but schedule your fastpasses? We schedule first 3 fastpasses back to back which means in less than 60 minutes we can ride all three, then "go with the flow" the remaining 10+ hours.
 
Can you tell us a little more about showing up at the park with no FPs booked. We have had a more "go with the flow" / relaxed / not plan every hour approach the past few trips , but I have not been brave enough to show up with no FPs booked...LOL!
I really don't understand the reasoning to not book FPs. If you want to "go with the flow" you can always skip if they don't end up working out for your plans...but at least you have them if you end up wanting them :confused3
 
In the FWIW category - To add a few notes and agree on what you said, we just returned from a quick two day park visit 1/22 and 1/23. We were a group of six and stayed OP so we had limited FP. It was also mostly first time visitors and I did not want to overwhelm them. However, I decided that I just had to try to ride Flights in AK and did the rope drop strategy by myself and with great tips from people in line, found it to be successful and worth every bit of stress. We also did not have a FP for Frozen Ever After and decided to give the standby a chance at 60 minutes and found it was only 40 minutes, so worth that wait. I had not used the MDE during prior visits and although I do have an Iphone X, it still gave all of us a hard time while in the parks and I saw other people suffering with it. However, we were definitely able to refresh a few times and get a some extra rides out of it.
 
I hope that everyone that is having issues with MDE is letting it be known to Disney. I have an iPhone 6. This past year has been worse and worse with it. I know I don’t have the “newest” phone, but seriously, it’s not THAT old. If they are going to make you have to use MDE and your phone to get anything done, then it should have better capabilities. I can’t believe I would have to get a new phone just to use this. So if I go get a 7 or 8, how long until those don’t work with the app?? I have gone back and forth with Disney customer service about this a lot. The last person admitted that they knew it was an issue with iPhone 6. I was given 3 FPs to use on anything I wanted (except the new rides) for my next 3 visits. But I really wish I could just utilize the app like I used to do...making FPs on the fly, downloading photos, mobile ordering food. :(
 
We were there January 11-19. We all had issues with the ap..I have a iPhone X+, one son has iPhone XR. One had a Samsung..all had issues...very frustrating. We had to go to guest services a few times and spent lots of time on the phone as there were 10 of us and not all linked at times
 
I was just there 1/26 - 2/2. I have a IPhone X Max and I found that 4-5 times a day the MDE app would freeze and I would restart my phone then it work again
 
I was just there 1/27 - 2/2 and have an IPhone SE. Previously I had issues with my android phone, this time didn't have as many issues with freezing, but did have to exit out of the program several times as sign back in. Was frustrating typing in my email and password.
 

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