September 2024 Trip Report - Intro, Impressions, and Travel Day
We're back with another trip report! This time, I traveled with my mother (the other huge Disney fan in my family) to Walt Disney World, from September 3rd-10th. It was our 10th collective trip together, and we've been going together for 30 years, so that's kind of special. And while we're old pros, as always, there were some new things too.
Here are our trip parameters:
Me (40-something female)
Mother (70-something female)
Caribbean Beach Resort
8 day park hopper tickets
Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Single Pass used 6 out of 8 days
Some Overall Impressions
I'll get into the details of each day in future posts (and I do get detailed), but I always like to start with some overall big impressions.
Air Travel
We used American Airlines as it was the shortest trip duration for the best price. I'm not sure I'd use them again. We had a very disappointing time getting out of our home city when our flight was delayed 3-4 times (I stopped counting). Two of those times, we had to change our connecting flight. In the end, we had one last 15 minute delay, which meant that when we pulled into our gate at our connecting airport, we walked three gates down and boarded the next flight immediately. In other words, it was very tight. We had originally planned to be landing in Orlando at about 1:30 PM so we could have dinner at Sebastians and a little time in EPCOT. Instead, we landed at about 4:30 PM, and were threatened that we might be delayed further to 10 PM, which I'm glad was not the case. One gate agent we had to deal with to change our connection was pleasant. The other was less than pleasant and a bit self-absorbed as she worked to reschedule her own working flight before dealing with any passengers.
Additionally, American Airlines does not have seatback screens, and while they touted free wi-fi, I could not connect to it on any single length of the trip, so I doubt that actually exists. While we paid for Main Cabin Plus, on one length, our seat was so narrow, the armrest, which could not be moved, dug into my hips painfully for the two-hour flight. Yes, I am on the wide side. But that's why I pay for a larger seat. On another length, which we were rescheduled to, we lost our Main Plus seats for the seats in the last row of the aircraft in basic economy, which were actually fine (better than the one that dug into my hip) but I was not happy about going from the front of the aircraft to the back.
Overall, not very happy with American Airlines and I will likely stick with Delta in the future, even at their more expensive price.
Caribbean Beach Resort
Our initial room request wasn't honored, which was a problem since we were given a second floor room and needed a first floor room for accessibility reasons. But we did end up with a pretty nice room. It was a fifth sleeper room, which we hadn't wanted because there are fewer drawers in the fifth sleeper, but the lack of drawer space didn't end up being a problem.
Overall, I loved the resort and would happily stay again. The landscaping is gorgeous and the proximity to the skyliner can't be beat. On a couple occasions, we walked over to the Riviera for breakfast or drinks at Bar Riva, and that was very nice too. But Centertown Market (the quick service at Caribbean Beach) was also fantastic.
Caribbean Beach Resort at night
Lightning Lane Multi Pass
This is a somewhat new system that just began less than two months ago, and because of that, I'll probably be writing an entire post on our experience, but the short version is, I thought it was fine. In terms of being able to skip lines and even get more Lightning Lanes after using one, it worked perfectly. There were a few times that I felt the pre-planning caused us to want to be too regimented, and we ended up changing plans on the fly and letting our lightning lane time expire, but it didn't feel like a huge loss when we did that.
I will say that September was probably the least crowded I've seen Walt Disney World since the 90's, so do take my lightning lane experiences with a grain of salt in that it was a relatively uncrowded time and therefore easier to get lightning lanes (and sometimes not necessary at all).
September as a time to go
Very mixed feelings on September, but I probably would not do it again. The lack of crowds was delightful, but the heat and humidity was almost unbearable at times. It was like walking through a sauna. I would come back to our resort for the midday break we always take just soaked through with sweat, and the moisture never left. Ever. At several times, my phone charging cable even caused a warning to pop up on my phone saying my phone could not charge because there was moisture in the charging point, which is kind of a big problem since everything at Disney is managed on your phone now. There was just no avoiding sogginess.
Speaking of sogginess, it rained every single evening. Some evenings it was a steady rain. Others it was a storm followed by sprinkles for several hours. Other evenings it was torrential for hours. I was so glad of the UV umbrella I brought, which turned out to be more helpful on rainy nights than it was avoiding UV.
The rain that was typical of every evening, from the Caribbean Beach Resort.
Guest and Cast Behavior
Lovely. Absolutely delightful. Really. I don't recall encountering a single outright rude guest. I did encounter several oblivious guests, but that's to be expected. But in case you've read about fights at the tram or monorail station, or fights over line-cutting, this never ever happened in my presence the entire trip. In fact, many guests struck up polite conversation, or offered to help such as the gentleman in Pecos Bill who offered to help me carry items to our table when he noticed I had too few hands, or the woman in line at security who gave me a travel pack of Kleen-Ex when I was bleeding down my leg (more on that later).
Cast Members were also on point. Many were in training, but made up for their lack of experience in enthusiasm. I have never sent so many Cast Member Compliments through my MyDisneyExperience app before.
What Disney is doing great
Disney remains one of the most accessible places to go. My poor mother started off using an ECV, and then had exacerbated problems because of falling (twice) while on vacation, to the point where she eventually couldn't walk more than a few steps at a time. Despite that, we still managed to go to the parks and ride rides. It was fine.
Lots of characters were out and about. I don't know if I've seen that many out in a long time, but we saw Buzz, Daisy and Donald, Goofy and his nephew, storm troopers and Rey, Alice, Snow White, Aurora, and probably more that I'm forgetting.
The EPCOT World Celebration completion is beautiful. I absolutely love how they greened up this area of EPCOT, and bringing the Walt statue there was a piece of genius. And the MUSIC. Really, this area could become one of my favorite places in the parks.
The food was also outstanding, as I typically expect from Disney World. But it's worth mentioning how good it really is, even at Quick Service locations, if you know what to order. I only ate one thing I was not impressed with the entire trip.
What Disney could improve
Disney does need more shade in some areas. Entrance plazas are a main area where shade would be appreciated, especially at Disney Hollywood Studios. But also the paths at Caribbean Beach Resort need a bit more shade was well. The best way to do this would be to plant trees, which I understand would take time. How about install some misters while waiting for those trees to grow?
While speaking of entry plazas, I became quite familiar with them because it consistently took my mother in an ECV much longer to go through security than it took me. Even if we did everything right, like taking insulated water bottles and umbrellas out and holding them in front of us, it always seemed to take her a very long time. Part of this was because there'd be only two lanes for strollers and ECVs combined and each one takes extra time going through. For one ECV, there'd be like 3-5 strollers. So my request of Disney is to please separate these two things. Accessibility is different than stroller use, and I saw so many people bringing what appeared to be the entire contents of their house into the park in double-wide strollers, so of course they take time.
Additionally, when it comes to ECVs and accessibility, while Disney is very accessible, in some cases, being in an ECV results in a sub-standard experience. Another place we had to wait an extremely long time was to get on the skyliner at EPCOT park closing. It took us an hour to move from the bottom of the accessible line to boarding while we watched the non-accessible line move continuously and board continuously. Now, at the EPCOT station, I believe the skyliner can actually pull aside and load 3 accessible cars at a time, but they were only pulling aside and loading one at a time, which was part of the problem. In short, and in general, it seemed that having a party member in an ECV resulted in wait times that were MUCH longer on average at security and boarding transportation, which is pretty essential to visiting the Disney parks since neither is a choice. Disney needs to improve this.
One of my favorite pictures... the gardens of the UK pavilion at EPCOT at night
Travel Day
Now that I've given the overall impressions, let's talk travel day. We were supposed to have an early flight out of our home airport, so I woke at about 4 AM and was ready for our 7:15 AM flight well ahead of time. As I wrote above, it got delayed several times. The first delay was a two-hour delay to 9:15 because there was something wrong with the tire, and they didn't have tires at our airport and had to get them from an airport in the neighboring state. Then they delayed another 35 minutes because they'd still not installed the tire. Then delays started being a half hour at a time. We left the gate just over 3 hours late, and as I said above, upon arriving at our connecting airport, we immediately boarded again. The next flight had no real issues, but was turbulent because we were landing at about 4:30 PM in Orlando. We could see the rain in the distance already.
After getting our baggage, we took a Lyft to Caribbean Beach Resort. Again, there was an initial mix-up where we were given a second floor room which would not work for us since my mother uses an ECV (and had requested a first floor room), but a phone call to Disney resolved it and we were assigned an appropriate room before our arrival, so the Lyft was able to take us directly to our section of the resort.
After a little settling in and unpacking, we headed over to Old Port Royale and Centertown Market to grab a bite to eat (I was starving having not had a meal since waking up more than 12 hours ago) and I had the Arroz Mamposteao which was pork carnitas with spanish-style rice and beans, pickled onions, and plantains. So good. We also shared a key lime tart which was delicious.
We then walked to the Riviera and caught the skyliner to EPCOT. It started to rain buckets while on the skyliner, so out came our umbrellas and after a moment of indecision about whether to carry on, we did carry on a little bit. I'm glad we did not let the rain turn us away since this would be our experience very single night of our vacation. With umbrella in hand, I went to the Milled & Mulled stand where the Cast Members seemed genuinely surprised to see someone, and ordered the Boursin Fig and Balsamic Cheesecake to share. It was great. We ate it on a soggy picnic table nearby, but oh well.
Soarin' was a walk on, so after this, we rode Soarin'. And then, we wanted to get out to beat the crowds that would be coming from LuminoUS so we headed back to the Riviera. While we were waiting for the skyliner, LuminoUS did start, so we caught glimpses from the skyliner and heard it going on as we walked back to our room.
Next week: Pixie dusted on Tron, first ride of Tiana's Bayou Adventure, and lunch at Geyser Point.
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