hodad
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2015
My 5yo daughter, my 67yo mother, and I had a wonderful three day trip to WDW, including a day in MK. But on May 2 we went to Disney Springs in the hopes of getting souvenirs and thank you presents for the teenage girls who housesat while we were away.
To put it bluntly, we had a terrible time, and I'm half venting and half asking for advice on how to make our next trip less unpleasant. Warning: here be abundant complaints, which you are more than welcome to ignore, but I nevertheless need to get off my chest.
The walk from the orange lot to World of Disney was ridiculously long and hot. There seemed to be no places for the kid and grandma to sit and cool down or get out of the shade. People have told me that there are drinking fountains every 40 feet but we didn't see any.
We went to the Indiana Jones bar because the 5yo was running out of steam fast. I have to complement the bartender, whose name I have forgotten, for his patience and kindness with her as she slowly perused the kid's menu, then just asked for a cup of ice water.
That gave her enough energy to make it to the Lego store, where she built mini-figs for about 20 minutes in the air-conditioning. Thank heavens for the Lego store, but why are there so few kid-friendly places throughout the rest of Disney Springs?
When we finally got to World of Disney, it was disappointing. I was expecting something like the Anaheim store, but this was bigger, less organized, and despite its size seemed to have a smaller variety of items. Grandma wanted to buy a sun hat for the kid and had a really hard time finding any. Cast members apologized for being helpless. All they could do was ask if it was for a boy or a girl, then direct grandma to the Minnie-themed room or the Princess-themed room, neither of which had hats that protect someone from the sun.
While I waited in line to buy some towels and the Ariel-themed mouse ears that the kid picked out and received several complements for, she and grandma went out looking for a refreshing drink. When I met up with them, they were grumpy and still thirsty. All they could find, searching as much as any reasonable person would expect them to search, was a place with chocolate drinks, a place with margaritas, and a place with smoothies--none of which sounded anywhere near satisfying to either of them.
Tired, hot, and still thirsty, we were dreading the walk back to the Orange parking structure. Halfway back grandma went to a little shop selling sugary treats and asked for a drink. The owner mentioned that he had bottled water for sale even though it wasn't on the menu, and grandma told him she felt like Disney Springs wanted visitors to be thirsty and uncomfortable, and he said he agreed, that it made people want to buy things.
I get that Disney is fundamentally a business, beholden only to its shareholders. But as a mall, Disney Springs was really really terrible, and as a Disney experience, it was more Mr. Dawes Sr. than Fairy Godmother.
I hope things get better as construction finishes, and that the place becomes more user-friendly for a broader range of visitors. But it was by far the low point of our otherwise magical, unforgettable trip (We had breakfast with Winnie the Pooh! We swam in the pool at Coronado Springs! We rode Splash Mountain during the fireworks! The churro vendor gave us an extra churro in Frontierland!).
To put it bluntly, we had a terrible time, and I'm half venting and half asking for advice on how to make our next trip less unpleasant. Warning: here be abundant complaints, which you are more than welcome to ignore, but I nevertheless need to get off my chest.
The walk from the orange lot to World of Disney was ridiculously long and hot. There seemed to be no places for the kid and grandma to sit and cool down or get out of the shade. People have told me that there are drinking fountains every 40 feet but we didn't see any.
We went to the Indiana Jones bar because the 5yo was running out of steam fast. I have to complement the bartender, whose name I have forgotten, for his patience and kindness with her as she slowly perused the kid's menu, then just asked for a cup of ice water.
That gave her enough energy to make it to the Lego store, where she built mini-figs for about 20 minutes in the air-conditioning. Thank heavens for the Lego store, but why are there so few kid-friendly places throughout the rest of Disney Springs?
When we finally got to World of Disney, it was disappointing. I was expecting something like the Anaheim store, but this was bigger, less organized, and despite its size seemed to have a smaller variety of items. Grandma wanted to buy a sun hat for the kid and had a really hard time finding any. Cast members apologized for being helpless. All they could do was ask if it was for a boy or a girl, then direct grandma to the Minnie-themed room or the Princess-themed room, neither of which had hats that protect someone from the sun.
While I waited in line to buy some towels and the Ariel-themed mouse ears that the kid picked out and received several complements for, she and grandma went out looking for a refreshing drink. When I met up with them, they were grumpy and still thirsty. All they could find, searching as much as any reasonable person would expect them to search, was a place with chocolate drinks, a place with margaritas, and a place with smoothies--none of which sounded anywhere near satisfying to either of them.
Tired, hot, and still thirsty, we were dreading the walk back to the Orange parking structure. Halfway back grandma went to a little shop selling sugary treats and asked for a drink. The owner mentioned that he had bottled water for sale even though it wasn't on the menu, and grandma told him she felt like Disney Springs wanted visitors to be thirsty and uncomfortable, and he said he agreed, that it made people want to buy things.
I get that Disney is fundamentally a business, beholden only to its shareholders. But as a mall, Disney Springs was really really terrible, and as a Disney experience, it was more Mr. Dawes Sr. than Fairy Godmother.
I hope things get better as construction finishes, and that the place becomes more user-friendly for a broader range of visitors. But it was by far the low point of our otherwise magical, unforgettable trip (We had breakfast with Winnie the Pooh! We swam in the pool at Coronado Springs! We rode Splash Mountain during the fireworks! The churro vendor gave us an extra churro in Frontierland!).