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Disney World with Kids – Disney while Pregnant

16 Thursday Mar 2017

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Today is the first of a six part Disney with Kids series.  I realize there are plenty of recommendations out there already.  This is the truly practical stuff.  Not the top rides (which get plenty of press), but the rides that aren’t worth it.  Recommendations on where to get naps in without having to go back to the hotel.  That sort of thing.  Hopefully, you’ll find my take a bit different from the others.

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I wrote an overview of our experiences at Disney, as well as about the Fast Pass System (twice), our hotel, and the Meal Plan before.

The 2017 Disney with Kids series:
Disney while Pregnant
The Magic Kingdom
Epcot
Animal Kingdom
Hollywood Studios
Disney with Strollers

Today will be an overview of the cons of being at Disney World while pregnant.  The next few weeks will cover each of the major parks.  I’ve been pregnant at Disney twice with other kids in tow.  Frankly, I can’t think of any advantages of being pregnant.  And, you need to consider your specific circumstances.  But, assuming you are up for travel and a lot of walking, you don’t have to sit on the sidelines.

Let’s start with walking.  You will walk a lot.  You need comfortable shoes.  Benches are not as frequent as you might like and are often taken.  How comfortable are you on a low wall or grassy surface?  All that being said, you will not be alone.  There are always lots of pregnant women at Disney.

Similarly, Florida is usually hot.  Not always, but often.  Hot and pregnant are not the best combination.  You will need lots of fluids and more breaks than usual.  But, there is shade fairly readily available so that’s a plus.  If you have the meal plan you can use your snack credits on bottled water and other beverages in the parks.  Personally, even having drunk regular municipal water for years in many parts of the US I think the tap water in Florida tastes terrible so I’m going with bottled.  You may read tips on maximizing the snack credits by bringing your own drinks and/or using the refillable cups they give you.  Nothing beats a cold drink, which is what you will get with a snack credit.  Since the regular meals have plenty of food, often some you can hold for later, and you’ll have lots of snack credits consider using them for drinks.

Sticking with meals, if you are at a nauseous stage of your pregnancy you may have a hard time.  Most Disney quick service food is mid-level fast food.  And the volumes are huge.  I recommend a sit down restaurant for lunch if you can schedule one (this is particularly tricky in the Magic Kingdom where choices are limited and they book up fast).  This will offer you a natural break in an air conditioned environment with a bathroom.  All very handy while pregnant.

Now for the parks!

Magic Kingdom

Disney recommends against Big Thunder Mountain, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Barnstormer, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Tomorrowland Speedway.  The first four I totally understand and agree with as they are roller coasters.  Splash Mountain has a bar that may be an issue for pregnant women.  However, I rode Tomorrowland Speedway with no issues.  There is some bumping and gasoline smell.  If either of those would bother you, don’t ride.  It’s also a little tricky to get down into the cars.  But, I found it totally fine.

There are also two rides that Disney lists as fine for pregnant women that deserve comment.  First, I’m not prone to motion sickness, but the Astro Orbiter makes me queasy  even when I’m not pregnant.  I would not recommend this or the Mad Tea Party.  Also, the Swiss Family Tree House is fun.  But, its a lot of stairs, some of which are narrow and crowded so you should keep that in mind.  In contrast, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin is a great ride and doesn’t actually involve much spinning so there’s definitely no need to avoid it.

Epcot

Disney advises against Test Track and Mission Space.  You definitely need to abide by those guidelines.  Both are great rides, but not while pregnant.

Disney says you can visit both O Canada! and Reflections of China while pregnant.  But, they’re both standing movies and the picture motion coupled with standing can be difficult.  Definitely the bottom of the list.  If you’re looking for a movie style option, The American Experience is better.  Soarin’, on the other hand, is a great ride that you might not think you can do while pregnant.  You definitely can!

Hollywood Studios

Disney recommends against Star Tours, Tower of Terror, and the Rock ‘n Roller Coaster.  I have to agree with all three.  Nothing else even needs a warning.  Hollywood Studios is a rather show oriented park so on most things you’ll have seats.  They don’t always have backs, but at least you’ll be sitting down.

Animal Kingdom

Disney recommends against Expedition Everest, Primeval Whirl, Dinosaur, Kali River Rapids, and Kilimanjaro Safari.  I’ve actually not been on the first four because someone always had to stay with the kids who were too small and the pregnant lady seemed an obvious choice.  But, based on what I know I don’t recommend any of them.  Kilimanjaro Safari, on the other had, I’ve been on multiple times while pregnant with no issues.  It is somewhat long (especially if the line is considered) with no bathroom breaks available.  It is also somewhat bumpy, but not worse than some potholed city roads in the springtime.  I think it deserves consideration.

The animal viewing trails are shady and generally uncrowded.  They can take a lot of time and add many extra miles of walking.  But, they would be a good option if you’re up to it.  There are a number of shows also, many of which (The Lion King aside) have seats with backs.  Even if you can’t go on many of the rides, I wouldn’t skip Animal Kingdom just because one is pregnant.

Summary

Disney can be fun while you’re pregnant; it doesn’t need to be avoided.  But, consider how you feel and any guidance from your doctor.  Set reasonable goals and expectations for yourself.  Schedule time for meals and drinks.  Since many of the rides you won’t be going on have FastPass+, you’ll have more flexibility than the average guest to change things up if you need to.  Finally, enjoy the vacation before baby!

Disney Review 2015 – the Meal Plan

13 Friday Nov 2015

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For the first time, we tried the Disney Dining Plan.  We had the standard option which gave us 1 snack, 1 table service, and 1 quick service meal per person per day.  Because our oldest was 10 and youngest 2 on this trip, by Disney’s definition we had 3 adults, 3 kids, and 1 infant.  In theory the kids have to order off the kids menu (Disney usually, but doesn’t always, differentiate), adults from the adult menu, and anything ordered for the infant is extra.

First, some obvious points.  This is only beneficial if you actually plan to use table service meals.  They will take longer and often require reservations so if you want to maximize your time in the park and/or plan less, you may want the stepped down dining option that is quick service meals only.  There’s also a few levels of stepped up options that offer three meals, all table service meals, etc.  Overall, though, we felt the standard option was a pretty good compromise.

Second, the way Disney counts “days” maximizes the number of meals you get so you may need to go to a two point table service meal, for example, to actually use all of them.  Specifically, we arrived for dinner and left before breakfast – I think this would be pretty typical for a group traveling by air.  We also brought/bought breakfast for our room so we only ate two Disney meals per day.  This gave us a couple of extra meals.  We actually had planned to eat at a number of two point table service restaurants so those were fine.  But, we were going to have extra quick service meals.  Some of those were used up purchasing a 7th quick service meal for the “infant”.  Note:  as far as I can tell Disney does not track adult vs kid quick service meals.  They do for table service.  The others worked out as we ended up with a lunch reservation at Be Our Guest.  It turns out to be quick service at lunch, though two table service points at dinner, which worked out great for us.  I believe in the end we had to purchase one round of table service and a few quick service meals additionally, which is certainly better than paying for more than you use.

What about those snacks?  I knew going in that we’d have extra snacks so we weren’t too careful about using them.  We did bring our own water to the parks each day vs use a snack credit for a bottle of water.  We used the snack credits for the occasional extra (popcorn, pretzel, etc) or cold beverage (soda, Dole whip, slushies, etc).  All that being said, we still had over 30 snacks with two days to go.  Thankfully, we had a day at Epcot planned and the Food & Wine Festival was underway.  So, we snacked our way through lunch and the rest of our snack credits.  However, if this option had not been available I’m not sure how we would have used them up besides buying snack items that could be brought home (entirely unnecessary so I’m glad we could avoid that).

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My one issue with the Disney Dining Plan is that every adult meal, and table service kids meals, include dessert.  This is entirely unnecessary.  Since we had more people than adults we shared to mitigate the problem, but I could have done without desserts all together.  I did discover that at Flame Tree BBQ I could get fries or onion rings instead of dessert, and used that option.  But, I didn’t come across any other quick service places that offered alternatives.

In summary, I did feel the meal plan was worth it (count your planned meals first to see which plan works for you).  For us, breakfast in the hotel room works best.  However, its similarly better for us to eat dinner in the parks before leaving (plus we like the table service dinners) vs trying to cook in a condo or eat at a non-Disney restaurant; the kids are just too tired by that point.  Yes, I would use this option again.

Disney FastPass – Post Mortem

06 Friday Nov 2015

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For those of you who read my post about booking FastPasses, you’ll remember I was less than thrilled with the process.  Well, having now used them I can’t say I feel any better about it.

The only positive about FastPasses is that you do have a few rides per day where you don’t have to wait in line.  And, these are usually the more popular rides with longer lines.  And, as I said in my previous post, if everyone is doing the same things every day the system works fine.  BUT, I suspect most families/groups at Disney do not want everyone to do the same thing all the time, but much of the time.

I won’t reiterate what I wrote earlier, just update based on my experiences in the park.

First, nothing that happened at the parks improved my opinion of the FastPass system.  It is definitely my least favorite part of the Disney experience.  First, it locks you into certain parks/rides at certain days/times which reduces flexibility (with the advantage of shorter lines).  But, more importantly its implemented horribly.

We used what we wanted of the FastPasses we had booked.  Then, similar to what I experienced when I originally set them up, I had basic issues that just shouldn’t have been when trying to sign up for the 4th FastPass at a kiosk.  Specifically, because it is such a pain to break into groups (and we weren’t sure what big kid rides the 4y would want to go on) I often had a few FastPasses go unused.  As would be expected, there were never any top rides available by the time we booked the 4th FastPass.  But, there was no way at the kiosks to regroup everyone to go on the group friendly rides that were available.  Even though the time slots had passed it wanted me to rebook FastPasses for the random leftovers that hadn’t been used and the 4th for others separately.  So, I had to stand there and cancel the unused FastPasses on my phone which then allowed me to book a ride for all of us together.  First, the kiosk should let you do this (and, in one case the attendant insisted it just wasn’t possible, was shocked that I could do it using the phone, and insisted he’d never seen anyone trade Test Track for Spaceship Earth).  Second, once the time slot has passed, the system shouldn’t have you locked in anymore.

Also, I saw/heard a bunch of folks swapping bands in the parks.  I don’t think anyone had issues, but it made us wonder why the Fast Passes aren’t for the group, vs the individual, like the meals.  I suspect Disney would express concern that the thrill rides would book up first.  But, at least in the Magic Kingdom Peter Pan, princesses, and other kid rides have some of the longest wait times.  And, I’d far prefer to wait 60 minutes with my 10y than my 2y.

Finally, in between these two posts I tried using the phone number to book a few FastPasses for our group (we had four join us for a few days making a total group of 11).  Apart from their being more familiar with the system than the average user, there is really no benefit to this.  They can’t do anything you can’t do on the regular system.  So, if there aren’t any more FastPasses available at whatever timeslot you booked first, they still can’t add the new folks.  Frankly, the only advantage of the “Add” capability is that it does try to put them in the exact same timeslot vs being off by 15 minutes, but this is a weak benefit when compared to all one would assume it can do, but can’t.  And, if you do add them, they’re in your group meaning you now have even more people to group/regroup depending on attraction.  I do not recommend adding friends and family to you fast pass.  Similarly, there’s no point in calling the phone number unless you’re actually having trouble with the system.  Its advertised as a help for large groups, but since their capabilities are similarly limited there isn’t much benefit to trying to get in touch with them.

I’ve copied my recommendations from before below (1-5), and added new ones based on the in-park experience.

The Way I’d Like to See the Fast Passes Work

  1. Keep the current system, because if everyone wants the same thing it is great.
  2. But, allow people to book one Fast Pass at a time.  That way, you could book everyone in your group into The Mine Train without having to grab the same number of Anna/Elsa tickets (for example).  Then let people add Fast Passes, up to three total per person.
  3. This option would also let folks grab the critical (to them) Fast Passes and then think about how to flesh out their schedule later.
  4. Similarly, if you copy a Fast Pass over to another member of your group, you should be able to copy only one ride vs the entire set.  And, you should be able to choose which one of their Fast Passes is being replaced, rather than losing the whole set.  As it stands, if subgroup 1 books critical attraction A and subgroup 2 books attraction B, there is no way to regroup them and switch one of their Fast Passes to a shared attraction without attempting to get overlapping Fast Pass time slots (or losing the critical attractions already reserved).
  5. If you find later that you need to split the group, you should be able to switch attractions before switching time slots.  Ie, your tall preschooler refuses to ride The Mine Train at the last minute – the app should let you quickly see what other Fast Passes you can get for the current timeslot, or slightly later.  Families often want to spend time together so being able to ride in parallel is highly beneficial.
  6. Once a FastPass timeslot passes without use, it should automatically be marked as used in the system and freed to be booked again.
  7. If you can do it on the phone ap, you should be able to do it at a kiosk.  Deleting remaining FastPasses to enable regrouping is the obvious one here, but I bet there are some other features that don’t exist in both places.
  8. Finally, make the FastPasses good for the group, not the individual.  This would make life a lot simpler for everyone involved.

Disney Review 2015 – the Resort

31 Saturday Oct 2015

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This is the second post about our trip to Disney World.

As a reminder, we’ve never stayed on property so we weren’t entirely sure what to expect.  We chose Port Orleans, French Quarter.  At Port Orleans we could get adjoining rooms without costing ourselves a small fortune.  The French Quarter side is smaller so things like the restaurant, bus, pool, etc are all closer, which was important to us.  By chance we ended up with a ground floor unit.  While I normally would not prefer this, the layout was such that we had very few people walk by our windows and no noise.  And, it was much easier to get the boys and stroller out every morning.

Our reaction was overwhelmingly positive.  (And, I’d request a ground floor again for ease of egress.)  True to description we were close to all the places we needed.  The rooms were plenty spacious, quiet (even to the adjacent neighbors), and reasonably well laid out.  There was no true closet, but there was plenty of high shelving to keep items from the two year old, which was wonderful.

We used the pool a few times, and the laundry once.  Neither was far.  Both were clean and modern.  My one issue with the pool is that the sight lines are terrible.  So, it was basically impossible to see more than one child at a time.  This seems to be a Disney thing as the same problem presents itself in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Dinosaur play areas.  But maybe they’ve figured this out because the sight lines at the newer Dumbo play area are much better.  But, the pool has lots of lifeguards who seemed to be very attentive.

We were particularly happy with the on-site restaurant.  It’s a food court which is a bit difficult with seven people, but by the second visit we had figured out how to handle this.  Also, being our first time on the meal plan we didn’t make “proper” selections the first time.  This was handled well also.  But, the food (specifically the ribs and fried chicken) were very good and a welcome break from the usual Disney burgers one finds in the park quick service restaurants.  We only ate dinner there so I can’t speak to breakfast or lunch.  We were so happy with it we ended up there two additional times when we decided to leave the parks early and swim after dinner.

Finally, the front desk handled all of our requests/questions well.  And, the store was both well stocked and reasonably priced.  We did not buy and souvenirs, but did purchase a few food items.  This got us through breakfast the first morning (before our order was delivered) and provided sandwiches and snacks for the plane ride home for much less than we would have had to pay in the airport.

Overall, I would try a Disney hotel, and specifically this one, again.

Disney Overview – 2015

23 Friday Oct 2015

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This is the first of what will be many Disney review posts.  I’ll try to break things down by topic over the next few weeks.

For perspective, this was our third trip to Disney World.  That being said, it was the first time we’d stayed on property or used the meal plan.  We also were there for nine days, which is a very long time.  Because we’d gotten the stomach bug on both previous trips our original intention was to take a few days off (TBD based on illness) over the course of the week.  But, (YEAH!) this time nobody got sick so we had nine days in the parks.  We used all this extra time to not drive ourselves to exhaustion.  Every day (except one) the boys ate dinner and were in bed on time, the adults were in bed early, and we woke reasonably easily in the mornings.  I think staying on schedule was crucial in keeping everyone sane.

Today, I’ll do a quick review of Disney Transportation.  I’ll talk about the resort, meals, Fast Passes, and parks in later weeks.

Our first experience with Disney Transportation was the Magical Express, which takes you from the airport to your hotel.  We used the yellow stickers to send our bags all the way through without our having to grab them at the airport.  Since we’d been warned that this would mean that we might not get our bags until 3-4 hours later, we put the boys’ pjs in our carry on bags.  As it worked out, we landed about 5 pm and the bags were in our room when we got back from dinner.

The Magical Express was clean, comfortable, and pretty efficient.  The bus was ready to go when we arrived in the depot area and we were the third or fourth stop on Disney property.

The trip back to the airport was a bit trickier.  First, we had a 9:30 am flight so we had to board the Magical Express about 6:30, which is early for us.  But, we made it.  This time we did not have them handle our luggage since we’d been told it needed to be dropped at 5:30 (before we got up).  But, as it turned out the distance from the bus depot to baggage check was very long.  Since we were able to print our boarding passes at the resort, it would have been easier to check the luggage also.

Our experience with the internal Disney buses was similarly positive.  We had no trouble getting to the parks by 8:30/9:00, even in the few cases where we had to wait for a second one.  About half the time we were able to get seats.  And, when the bus was quite full it didn’t make extra stops on the way to the parks.

The one exception was when we had dinner at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and needed to get back to our resort.  Disney has no internal mechanism of getting from one resort to another (unless they’re both on the monorail).  Because we had to take two buses and transfer at an intermediate destination (Downtown Disney in our case), it took over an hour to get from the Lodge back to our resort.  I think as Disney puts more of the branded restaurants in the hotels they should consider an internal taxi service.  Especially since one is making dinner reservations anyway, it would have been no problem for us to identify way in advance that we would need to move x people from A to B hotel following a x:xx dinner reservation.  I’d even pay a few extra bucks for that, especially if it was as good or better than the Magical Express, meaning 2-3 stops max on your journey.

In advance of our trip I’d read a lot about what a pain Disney Transportation was and how we should rent a car even for internal trips.  We did not find that to be the case at all.  Maybe it was the season, but we would use the buses again.

Disney FastPass – large family edition

14 Friday Aug 2015

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First, let me say that I’ve never booked a Disney FastPass.  So, it is certainly possible that the current method is an improvement over whatever existed before.  And, I admit that the process got smoother as I understood it better.  But, for a group that is not doing exactly the same thing each day, it is highly unintuitive.

First, the good.  If you have a group (regardless of size) where everyone is doing the same thing each day, FastPass booking is great – smooth & quick.  Similarly, if your group is split into subgroups where each is doing their own thing with no overlap, it works well.

The real challenge lies when the group wants at least one activity together and at least one activity in subgroups.  And, to make matters worse, this is not explained (only the plain vanilla easy option is).  Really, Disney would do well to set up a tutorial with a mock family of two adults and two kids with a handful of rides to choose from so one could practice / figure it out before the booking window opens.  Because, midnight is not a good time for high frustration.

I’ll lay out the problems.  Then, I’ll present the solution (as best I determined).  Finally, I’ll lay out how it should be done.

  • Fast passes are booked three at a time.  This is highly counter-intuitive especially when the family wants to do one ride together and two separately.
  • It also means that you inevitably end up with extra Fast Passes for the preferred rides, which you may modify or not (if there’s nothing else to switch too), taking space away from properly sized/aged people who would actually use the ride.
  • Similarly, if you only want to book two Fast Passes, the system will stick you on something else anyway.  Why, when there are loads of other people trying to book these things?
  • Then, when you want to modify the Fast Pass so different subgroups can do different rides, you have to change the ride time first.  So, to put the entire family on Toy Story, but not sign your preschooler up for Space Mountain, the first step is to pick a different time to go on Space Mountain with your preschooler.  Then you change rides, and maybe have to change times again.  NO!  The only step should be to pick a different ride in the same Fast Pass timeslot, which you could then modify later if needed.

The Solution (keep in mind that this is my best recommendation given the constraints, it is by no means a perfect solution)

  1. Figure out what attractions everyone wants to go on each day.
  2. Book everyone on the same three attractions – either the ones most people want to go to OR the most popular ones.  Since you can adjust the times later, don’t sweat the assigned Options too much.
  3. Use the modify feature to change the time on the Fast Pass(es) for only those group members who will not use the pass(es) in question.  Note that it doesn’t matter what new time you choose as once you’ve selected a new attraction you’ll have to choose a new time anyway.
  4. Then change the attraction and choose a new time, preferably as close to the original time as possible.
  5. One you have all the attractions and people sorted out its fairly easy to adjust the times to fit your daily schedule as you can see everything on one screen.  It is getting everyone into the correct attractions that presents the challenge.
  6. Note that as far as I can tell it will identify conflicts with Fast Passes, but not conflicts with meal reservations.

The Way I’d Like to See the Fast Passes Work

  1. Keep the current system, because if everyone wants the same thing it is great.
  2. But, allow people to book one Fast Pass at a time.  That way, you could book everyone in your group into The Mine Train without having to grab the same number of Anna/Elsa tickets (for example).  Then let people add Fast Passes, up to three total per person.
  3. This option would also let folks grab the critical (to them) Fast Passes and then think about how to flesh out their schedule later.
  4. Similarly, if you copy a Fast Pass over to another member of your group, you should be able to copy only one ride vs the entire set.  And, you should be able to choose which one of their Fast Passes is being replaced, rather than losing the whole set.  As it stands, if subgroup 1 books critical attraction A and subgroup 2 books attraction B, there is no way to regroup them and switch one of their Fast Passes to a shared attraction without attempting to get overlapping Fast Pass time slots (or losing the critical attractions already reserved).
  5. If you find later that you need to split the group, you should be able to switch attractions before switching time slots.  Ie, your tall preschooler refuses to ride The Mine Train at the last minute – the app should let you quickly see what other Fast Passes you can get for the current timeslot, or slightly later.  Families often want to spend time together so being able to ride in parallel is highly beneficial.