Tony Desiere shares his insights from a surprise family trip to Walt Disney World during the busy holiday season, highlighting ten key observations about the Magic Kingdom. One of the main takeaways is how surprisingly efficient the ride lines were, even on one of the busiest days of the year. He discusses the ongoing evolution of the park's attractions and services, reflecting on the changes since his childhood visits.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Universal Studios
• Walt Disney World
• Magic Kingdom
• Hollywood Studios
• Casey's Corner
• Pinocchio Village Haus
• Haunted Mansion
• Rivers of America

Foreign it is Wands and Wishes, your podcast on Universal Studios and the Walt Disney World Resort.

I'm Tony Desiri of all the Magic Travel.

So be on the lookout for that.

Please subscribe and like the podcast and you know, share it with friends if you enjoy what we're doing and giving you all the information and our experiences with going down to the theme park World in Orlando I had a chance to go to Walt Disney World on December 27, two days after the Christmas holiday.

It was a surprise trip for my wife and my two college age children.

Chance for us to get a little nostalgic as we walked around the Magic Kingdom like we did when they were little.

And I came up with a couple of observations that I want to share in the podcast.

Now.

Whenever somebody does an observation podcast, some of the observations are pretty obvious, but they may not be obvious to either everybody or the person that is delivering them.

And that's certainly going to be the case with my list.

Some of these you're going to roll your eyes and say, yeah, we've known that for a long time.

And some of them you might say, oh, I didn't see that way.

So I just wanted to give you my thoughts on 10 Things I Noticed about Walt Disney World, particularly Magic Kingdom while I was there for one day, full day, while two days after the Christmas holiday.

And it was a cool surprise.

It was really neat.

We want, we're thinking, we were thinking about doing it, but kind of wanted to see what the lay of the land was like and next thing you know, boom.

We were surprised with a day trip to go down to Disney World.

So I've been to Disney World many, many times as Lauren and I have talked about it's it's one of our favorite vacation spots for my wife and I.

We took the kids many, many times.

I grew up going to Disney World.

My parents lived down there.

They're senior citizens.

They've got retired down in Ocala.

They have season passes, they enjoy the theme park.

So it's been a part of my life since I was about 8 or 9 years old.

But I've been there during busy times and I knew What I was expecting going to Walt Disney World on December 27th of all dates.

We all knew as we were driving in what the day was going to be like in terms of crowd wise.

So Here are the 10 observations that I have and again, roll your eyes at some, but I hope some of them are a little bit more eye opening.

And the first one is, I knew the crowds were long, but I was surprised how quick the, the lines moved for some of the attractions, not all the attractions, but for a lot of the attractions.

And here's why I was surprised by that.

When I was young and I went to Disney World, one of the things about going to amusement parks as a kid was you knew when you were in a line for a major roller coaster, the line wasn't designed to really move very fast.

They'd load, they'd unload, you would move ahead, you'd kind of wait for the ride to be done and then you'd load and unload and then the ride come back and you'd load and unload, etc.

Etc.

Until you finally got on the ride.

They were unloading passengers before the loading area.

There was a continuous ride loop.

You know, they, they the sort of the, the mover system of on conveyor belts to get on rides.

So they did a good job of moving lines.

Well, that had always worked for Disney.

And then other theme parks started copying that.

But when Fast Pass became available, it bogged down the system a little bit.

Not tremendously, but it bogged it down enough.

You'd be in line in the standby line, there'd be a bunch of people coming in for fast passes.

But what happened with the Genie plus was something that drove everybody crazy because if you had a fast pass for a ride, that line was long.

And if you were in standby, forget it.

You're hardly ever getting on now.

They've tweaked it up now with you've got the lightning lane, you could buy the lightning lane.

But I was surprised how quickly the lines were moving, even with long wait times.

I was at Pirates and the line was outside.

I've never seen the line outside.

Deep, deep, deep.

In Pirates of the Caravan they've got a very long queue inside the building.

I've never seen it wrap around the building.

And so we decided, you know, why not let's get in this line, we're going to we want to ride one of the classics.

Let's all get in it.

We never stopped moving.

Never stopped moving.

The moment we were in the line, we just kept inching forward all the time.

And I think for a lot of people, when you go on a ride and you are waiting in line, if you can get that line moving all the time, it takes a lot of the anxiety of being in a long line, of feeling like most of your day is being spent standing in line, if you can get the line to just feel like you're making progress all the time.

And that happened to us on Seven Doors Mine Train.

It happened to us on Space Mountain.

It happened to us on Pirates.

It happened to us on Haunted Mansion.

There were a number of lines where we went, that's a long line.

Let's get in it.

But it just constantly kept moving.

Now, there was one example that where that didn't happen, and that was Buzz Lightyear.

I'm going to get to that later in this podcast.

But for the most part, every line moved at a good clip.

Now, I don't know how the Lightning Lanes look like they were sold out for the day.

I don't know if they were managing them a little bit better.

Right.

Making sure that those who get them could use them effectively and those who didn't get them weren't really deterred and had a bad experience because they couldn't get them.

Yeah, we thought as a family about buying it, but by the time we were surprised with it, most of the rides were sold out.

Most of the Lightning Lane and the tiers, we're.

We're.

We're gone.

So we just went without it.

And the purpose of our day wasn't really to see as many rides as possible.

We'd all been on many of the rides there.

We'd all experienced Disney World.

We were just there to have a family fun.

But I was really impressed with, again, of the movement of the lines and how in the busiest day, one of the busiest weeks Disney World has it did not feel like I was overwhelmed by how long I was waiting to ride some of the attractions.

All right, my second observation, and I know this is going to be controversial, some of you are going to agree with me, and some of you are really going to disagree with me with this.

And that is the Liberty Belle Riverboat.

That can go now.

That can go.

I have never been on the Liberty Bell Riverboat.

Never.

I don't know why I haven't.

I've been to Disney World so many times, I can't count it was never an attraction that I wanted to go on.

It was never something that appealed to me.

I do remember a number of years ago, I said to my wife, we were with the kids, and I said, you know what?

I want to get back to Magic Kingdom.

We were at, I think, Hollywood Studios.

We had the Hopper Pass.

And I said, you know what?

We should go to Magic Kingdom later tonight.

I want to ride the riverboat.

I never ridden it.

I think it's the only thing I have never done.

I want to get.

We never.

We didn't do it.

Something got.

We got lost.

I said, I forget it.

We're not going to do it.

Never went on it.

When we got to the park, my wife wanted to watch the parade, which was scheduled at noon.

She wanted to get an early spot.

We got there kind of a little later in the.

In the morning, and my son and I just decided to walk around the park, see what was around, see how busy it was.

We just passed the riverboat.

It was wide open.

No one was in line for it.

I went up to the cast member, I said, how?

What?

When is it launching?

He said, a couple minutes.

It's 20 minutes around.

I said, great, let's just jump on it.

My son and I chatted about his college, some life things, and when it was done, I went, all right, I did it.

I know people want to keep this.

I know there's some symmetry to this attraction.

Rivers of America that sort of comes together in the Frontierland experience.

And they're afraid that with cars and that not being part of a western sort of atmosphere, that something is going to be lost.

I'm okay with it.

I am.

I'm okay with it.

I know some of you aren't, but I am.

I was initially like, this is gonna be weird to not have the riverboat.

Now I'm on the riverboat.

I'm good with it.

I will say this.

It does give you an awesome view of the Haunted Mansion in a different angle than I've ever had.

So I took a number of pictures of the Haunted man, my favorite attraction.

I got to see it, see it in a different way because of the riverboat, but the Liberty Bell, I'm not gonna miss it.

I.

I'm just not gonna miss it.

Number three, if you go to Disney World after Christmas for a period of time, you can watch the magical Christmas parade that they have there.

That is.

That accompanies the Mickey's Merry Christmas Party.

And you can see the actual Christmas parade, the Once Upon a Christmas Time Parade.

And I've seen all the videos and many of you have seen all the videos of Tally the Elf.

He is a real celebrity.

I was getting kind of tired of the tie of the Tally the Elf tick tocks and, you know, over and over and over and over again.

But I get it, I get it.

When he was coming down, this is when everybody was kind of going a little.

There was a buzz about Tally the Elf.

Everyone had their cameras out anyway, taking pictures of all the characters.

But when Tally came down, everyone was screaming.

And I remember going, all right, this is real.

This, this social media phenomenon had, had just caught lightning in a bottle and Tally the Elf was eating it up.

He stayed in character, but he made sure to kind of go around, smile at people, do the thing with the list, et cetera.

Even though it was after Christmas, he, he really plays that part well.

That cast member plays that role really well.

And I, I got to experience it firsthand.

It was kind of neat.

I was a little starstruck.

It was kind of cool to see somebody who's been getting so much attention on social media.

It's a real Disney celebrity.

I don't know what happens to Tally the Elf going forward with the Christmas time being done and what he might be a part of next year's parade.

I don't know if there'll be something else people will be into.

It'll be something else they may emphasize.

All right, my fourth observation, this is the one I was talking about earlier, right?

So many of you are going to hear this and you're gonna go, yeah, duh.

Right.

But I, I'm going to preface this by saying I'm really reluctant sometimes to dive in to mobile technology.

All right?

There's something about it that I don't know if it's because of my age.

I'm a, you know, I'm older than the generation that will always have this and will always use this.

But mobile ordering your food is absolutely the way to go.

Now, here's the thing.

I, I get, I get it.

I'm in.

I'm in the technology business.

I'm in.

I'm in broadcasting.

I'm in.

I mean, the advancements that we've had in radio and television have been fantastic.

I've embraced all of that.

There's something about when I go to, to a theme park that I don't necessarily want to be so shackled to my phone.

And I've been very reluctant to absorb that.

Technology into my theme park experience.

I don't mind going on checking wait times, but I just don't want to be managing my entire day on an app.

Right.

So even something as simple as mobile checkout for merchandise, it just.

I'd rather just go to the line and wait for the young lady to tell me register four is open and just buy it.

That way I understand how great it is and convenient it is, but I think I have a generation that just doesn't embrace that stuff as well as a younger generation.

But mobile app ordering, my wife said, no, this is how we're doing this.

After our parade experience, everyone wanted a hot dog.

At Casey's Corner, we found a table, which is impossible to do, but somehow we did.

Luckily, there was a couple that was like, you guys want this?

And we were like, yes.

Just went on the app, ordered the food, waited for it to come up.

It came up.

My son and my wife went to go get it.

My daughter and I stuck around, saved the table.

Boom, done.

And we did it again at Pinocchio Village House later when we got our flatbread pizzas.

Way to go.

All right.

I know some of you are rolling your eyes at that because you use it and it's awesome and you've been using it forever.

I'm in.

I'm in.

I'm on T.

Mobile ordering number five.

Disney should have a line monitor if they're going to be very long.

This is what I was talking about earlier.

So there was one exception to the line not moving as quickly as we had experienced that day, and that was at Buzz Lightyear.

So we were.

We came off the people mover.

We went over to Buzz lightyear.

It said 45 minute wait.

We were like, yeah, we always have a good time on that ride.

We have fun competitions.

Let's go.

Let's wait.

We're good.

But that line didn't move.

That line wasn't like the other lines that we felt like, man, we're always progressing, always moving forward.

That line was pretty slow.

And we.

I kept saying, guys, you want to stay in this line?

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

I was like, yeah, I'm kind of committed now.

We've been in it for half an hour.

Like, I kept doing that thing where you.

You sort of justify, like, how much time you've given to something and not getting a payoff.

But, man, we were crawling.

Absolutely crawling.

I said, well, once we get into the building, it'll be fine.

Well, we got into the building and it wasn't fine.

And I looked and I saw the Lightning Lane line.

That was as long as the line I was in.

And then we found out that the ride kept breaking down and the ride just kept stopping.

They had to wait.

Yeah, they fix and they get going again.

Then it would stop and keep going again.

That was what we had heard.

And in this way I think Disney owes it to the people that are that they can see waiting in very long lines that they know is an hour.

There's a guy standing with a, you know, a sign like he's in another place within the park that's not that close to the right.

But he's like, this is where the line begins or ends.

I should say this is the end line.

Get in this line.

There's got to be a way to communicate to the people, hey, so ride's having some technical difficulties.

It's no longer the 45 minutes we told you it, it, it's having if you to make a better decision rather than just keeping people guessing as to what's going on.

Now I get it.

Some people are going to figure it out.

Some really experienced people are going to say yeah, no, no, no.

I, I, if I went from point A to point B in X amount of time that's way too long for a ride like this.

I know it's ride capacity, I know it's load and unload mechanism.

Something's not quite right.

But not everybody is like that.

So again, not everyone.

But every now and then send somebody into a deep line and say, hey, this is what's happening right now.

Maybe that's grumpy old me doing that, I don't know.

But I, I just would like to see that happen.

It did was not necess on Space Mountain, on Pirates 7 dwarves, mine train on rides again that had long extensions beyond its border but yet moved quickly.

I didn't need that.

But Buzz Lightyear, I could tell something was not quite right.

Number six, Space Mountain and Jungle Cruise.

And the Christmas overlays are fantastic.

If you hadn't had a chance to at least experience that, I really urge you to do so.

I, I get Christmas time is a very stressful time to go to the parks.

Even if you're going December 10th, even if you're going December 15th, if you have kids and they're in school, I get it.

But if somehow you can make it to that park to experience some of the extra Christmy things that can occur with these attractions, I highly recommend it.

Space Mountain with the red and the green lighting and the rock and roll Christmas music was fantastic.

Jungle Cruise, which we didn't ride, but I have ridden in the past with its Christmas overlay.

It's always fun to do.

So I highly recommend those.

That's a very quick observation, but I did want to bring that out because I know some of you have not been able to go down to Disney World at Christmas time.

They do a lot more than the Christmas parade and a tree and some, some nice decorations.

There's really some cool different experiences that you can have with a Christmassy theme.

Seven is another obvious observation, but I want to, want to stress especially when you're planning to go to Disney and I don't care when you go.

This is, this advice fits perfectly because we had a perfect example of this when we were at a capacity filled park and that was do rides during the parade time.

Nail the parade times.

All right.

If you got a parade at noon and 3:00, know when 3:00 is coming.

If you've seen the parade, the first iteration and know when 3:00 is coming, head over to your favorite attractions.

The lines are exponentially shorter when people are gearing up for those parades.

You can start at like 2:00 for a 3:00 parade.

People want their space.

They're willing to stay an hour for it.

It's one of the main reasons they're there.

And so really manage your time, especially if you're doing it like us, which was off the cuff, no tied into, no fast passes or anything like that.

Get on those lines that you want to do as soon as those parades start or getting close to starting dramatically.

Ch.

We did Haunted Mansion and that was a ride that just flew.

Hardly anyone was in line while everyone was waiting for the parade number eight.

Again, some of you do this, but some of you can't.

So I want to preface this observation.

Look, if I had a choice, if I wasn't going, rope drop to close, if I knew my family just wasn't going to do a 6am Wake up, drive to the park, stand in line, get on the monorail.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Rope drop, Boom.

Stay till it closes.

If I knew we were going to have to, you know, chill out a little bit in the morning, have a little breakfast, get there a little bit later as the park's rolling along, I would, I would always, always choose to stay late, rather than get there early.

If I only could do a portion of the day.

Let's say the park is open for 15 hours and I was only going to do 10 of those hours.

I would backload that day rather than front load that day.

Now, some of you are rope droppers.

I get it.

I hear from you all the time rope dropping is the way I've done it before.

But if I'm gonna not do open to close, I'm back ending it.

I think Disney World at night is magical.

I think it's fantastic.

We'll talk about that in another podcast.

I think the night, the nighttime at Disney World is wonderful.

The late night at 1 at Walt Disney World is even better.

Parents, young kids, they're all fleeing that park as soon as those fireworks are done.

That's Walt's kiss good night.

You can see him pouring out of the park.

And there's still three hours on the clock or two hours on the clock.

So again, we were there pretty late.

My wife had slipped and fell at the aerial ride.

And so our day was cut short a little bit, but we still stayed enough to sort of really, we kind of hung around late.

And then it's an easy get on the boat or the monorail.

Get to the parking lot.

You're not fighting a huge line to get on the monorail.

Not finding a huge crowd of, of just cramped people on the boat.

Stay late.

Especially if you're going in a holiday time where the park is really, really crowded.

You can get, you can get rides, you can get merchandise at a little bit more.

Less stressful wait time or crowd experience.

If you stay on the back end of the park.

Number nine, get the magic Band plus.

Treat yourself.

Trust me, it's fine.

Even if you're an adult and you don't have time for the silliness, it's cool.

I'll tell you a quick story.

My wife and I went down in September and I have a magic Band plus.

I got it, My kids got it, kind of got it for me.

And it's cool.

Magic band.

My wife had a normal one, the regular one, the Winnie the Pooh, that's her character.

So she had a normal one.

Well, I didn't do a lot of research into Magic Band plus and I was walking around the park and all of a sudden it's going off all the Time.

It's buzzing all the time.

And as I explained earlier, I'm not really a big technology person.

I just use it to get in and out of the parks, if it's attached to my credit card, if I'm staying there, and, you know, all the things you normally use it for.

So I.

I went up to a cast member.

They said, what exactly is this buzzing for?

And they explained to me what it was.

Oh, if you go off by a statue, you can wave it.

It'll talk.

There's all these other things you can do with it.

It's.

There's a little bit more.

The fireworks go off.

It lights up in the colors of the fireworks.

There's so many.

So cool.

So I was using it, and my wife didn't get to experience it because she had a regular magic band.

I said to her, do you want a magic band Plush?

She goes, no, I'm fine.

I said, okay.

We were at the fireworks at Epcot, and mine's going off like crazy.

I mean, it's lighting up.

It's got all the different colors.

It's really cool.

And my wife goes, that's neat.

You know what?

I'm jealous.

And I'm waving it.

I went to the Winnie the Pooh statue at Magic Kingdom.

I'm waving it.

It's talking.

She's kind of like, oh, now I gotta get one.

So I got her one.

It was my little extra Christmas present to her.

And we had so much fun using it.

Like, we're just adults.

We're Disney adults waving it.

Statues are talking to us.

Like, someone told us about a game you can play on the app where you visit all the statues.

We.

We just loved it.

Fireworks went off later that night.

It's going off.

My wife is just enjoying it.

Get the MagicBand.

Plus, I know it's.

I know it's costly.

It's close to, like, 50 bucks, but I.

It's.

It's really cool.

It's a really cool addition.

App at number 10.

This is my final observation on this podcast of my experience at the one day I had during the Christmas holidays is know what you're getting into when you decide to do this.

Okay?

Now, again, we were surprised with the trip.

So it's kind of cool.

Great.

But we're Disney experts.

We've been there many, many times.

We knew what the day was.

That's why we didn't get to the park early.

We didn't fight the crowds.

We didn't fight the traffic getting in.

Everyone got to sleep in a little Bit we're a family where again, as I mentioned earlier, we weren't there to see everything.

We had seen it many, many, many times.

We were just gonna have fun, do what we could, but mostly have fun as a family.

We're at a point in our family.

We're all kind of going our separate ways a little bit.

My wife and I are empty nesters.

My kids are starting to build their life in college out of college.

We're just having a good time together.

If you are planning a trip and it's your first time down there, or maybe you haven't been in 10 years, know what you're getting into.

It's packed.

It's packed.

So when you get that, you get all the frustrations of a crowd.

There's a billion strollers, there's a billion scooters, there's lines that go again beyond the boundary of the ride and you don't know what it is until you see the person holding the sign.

The parades, if you don't get a good spot, you're not going to see it.

People start lining up an hour before.

Now if you go in September, it's a little easier.

If you go during again the non peak hours, it's a little easier.

But know what you're going to get into.

It's magical.

I can use all of the descriptive language that they would, they, they would advertise, it's all of those things.

But we knew exactly when we were there, what we were expecting and because of those expectations, there were hardly any frustrations at all.

Right.

Everyone in the car on the way through the arch, down the road to the parking lot to the monorail.

Everyone in my family that went that day knew exactly what was going to happen when we walked into the park.

And because of that again, you're not stressed to ride everything, you're not stressed to see everything.

I would recommend if you're not, if you do not go a a lot, try to get down there during non peak hours so you can experience everything.

But I'm not pressured to ride Tron.

I'm not pressured to ride Tianis.

Those were two rides.

We didn't do those standbys on Tron with close to two hours.

We didn't even because again of, of, of a last minute sort of surprise trip.

We didn't get a in the queue to get Tiana's.

We weren't, we didn't get it up, get up that early to put it together.

Didn't matter.

We, we've all kind of been there done that.

But if you're a family that hasn't been there done that, I would go during the non peak hours, see it all if you can then do it at a, at a time where you can have a little bit more of your expectations.

Sort of managed.

I highly recommend it.

So again, those are my observations again on my surprise one day Disney World excursion while we were down visiting my folks for the holiday season.

It was again, for somebody that is watching his kids grow and, and sort of, you know, formulating their own life, it was really cool to have a family Disney moment together again.

They that's, that's the way we sort of remember a lot of our vacations and it was kind of neat to do it again.

So that's going to do it for this edition of Wands and wishes.

Again, my 10 observations from our one day Disney Christmas Day at the Magic Kingdom.

Please like and subscribe the podcast if you like what we're doing.

Lauren Mallard will be back next week.

There are two ways to reach us.

Thanks for listening.

It's the Wands and Wishes podcast.