We were just there in August. We used to spend 10 days at WDW. This time, we did two nights at Poly Club Level and then did 8 days at Universal.
We bought one day tickets to MK and spent one day at the pool. Our day at MK happened to be late night at MK. The place was jam-packed. I was appalled (yes, appalled) at the condition of the People Mover. Everything was filthy. I looked down and thought, "Gee, I might as well be on the NYC subway. This is totally dirty and unappealing." I recall my childhood when we would visit
Disneyland. Every year, without fail, my parents would comment on how immaculate it was, remarking you could eat food that had fallen on the ground because the park was so clean. It's sure not like that anymore. MK was dirty and unkempt everywhere I looked.
We have had a miserable time with Magic Bands two years in a row. Mine only worked 1/3 of the time for our fast passes. As late night wore on, we were able to get on a few rides. The last 1/2 hour, between 1:30 am and 2:00 am was actually pleasant. We were unable to get fast passes for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train so stood in line for 50 minutes during evening magic hours. What a disappointment!!! The ride was over so quickly I didn't even recall anything about it. We went over and rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which seems to be the same type of ride and it was three times as long. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was just another disappointment among many.
After two days at Disney, we cabbed over to Universal. We bought our very reasonably priced annual passes, checked into Portofino Bay Hotel Club Level and began the rest of our vacation. We explored Daigon Alley and commented that nothing that creative has been done at Disney in many years. We totally enjoyed our Universal stay. We felt we received good value for our money. The dining is excellent there -- even at the theme park restaurants. We love the name brand restaurants like Emeril's, Tchoup Chop and Bice.
We can afford Disney, but it no longer offers enough pleasure and value for the price. So, we're not going to bother buying annual passes, multi-day hoppers, etc. (and this from someone who held a WDW annual pass yearly for over a decade.)
As we did this year, we may stop by and do one park for a day, but that's it. Disney hasn't invested enough to deserve our vacation dollars. The redo of Fantasyland was more hype than anything else. We've done Be Our Guest once and that was enough. The pleasures of lunch at the Castle were destroyed several years ago when they turned it into another theme park ride -- line 'em up, seat 'em, throw some food at 'em, run the princesses around the room, empty the room and repeat.
We used to love the Food & Wine Festival, but they are now reduced to doing special tickets events like the Burger Street Party. Good grief. Really? We enjoyed the Reserve Dinners from years ago where wonderful wines were brought by renown vintners. The events were really special then.
Yes, it appears WDW does not have to do anything in order to fill its parks and hotels. A whole new surge of wealth has occurred in numerous countries in the last few years (China, Russia, South Korea, India) and it seems that more and more guests are foreign. That's fine. They don't remember what Disney used to be like, so they seem happy to pay sky high prices for ever declining quality. Let 'em.
To sum it up, we were pretty much done before these price increases. We'll enjoy Universal and travel other places. We recently traveled to Milan and had a ball.