190 minute wait for sdmt!

[Guest]

I think Americans' willingness to queue is linked to the fact that they are (on average) much less likely to visit WDW multiple times; much less likely to have more than one day ticket per park; much less likely to have park hopper etc.

Our tickets are incredibly cheap compared to those the Americans can buy, and we tend to get/take much longer holidays.

Also bear in mind that even in this digital era, many people won't have the benefit of accessing sites like this before setting sail on their "once in a lifetime" dream vacation. Lilttle Johnny and Janey want to do SDMT (or whatever). So you queue 'cos you think how long it is right now is how long it always is.

If it weren't so, all the various "touring plans" out there would fail because everyone would be zigging or zagging in the same way at the same time, creating the queue you are trying to avoid.

[ratmanscoop]

Honestly, MK was probably the weakest part of our trip. We visited two days (the only park we did so for), and I have to say I regret it. Due to my niece being severely ill for a day (we are suspecting a Denny's Cake batter shake as the culprit!) we switched our second MK day and our HS day around to ensure, having already been once to MK, that she didn't miss out on HS. With the complaints I've heard about HS being devoid of stuff to do and overcrowded, the day there couldn't have gone better, a few people even picked it as their highlight of the trip. By contrast, MK was universally panned by our group, for quite a few reasons:
- our first day was an 'on a whim' swap as we'd shuffled our water park days for the sanitary benefit of a female group member, so we had no FP+ reservations, we just aimed to do all the rides we didn't have FP+ booked for, then do those on the second day. Due to the swap on the second day, we lost said FP+ reservations. DHS was absolutely fine to rebook exactly what we wanted like before (albeit at different times), but at MK there was nothing, not even Little Mermaid at 9pm, so all we ended up doing was queuing for the same rides we did the first day, as they were the only ones we could bear the queue length for - 70 minutes for Pirates of the Caribbean (actual, not just posted), 57 minutes for Haunted Mansion, as you can see the second day was pretty tedious. On top of all this:

- First day the monorail was down which meant a very busy ferryboat which took a full hour to get from the start of the queue at the TTC to actually being in the park.
- First day due to the crowds it took 80 minutes to get from our Wishes viewing spot on the Main St - Fantasyland bridge, to our car, at the end of the day. That's over 3 hours out of our day just trying to get in and out of the place, never mind the driving time to get there!
- The crowds. Just, in general, you can hardly breathe in the place. Nowhere else we visited, including all the other Disney parks and both Universals, were anything like this bad. Walking from any ride to any other was a constant battle of having your toes stepped on, saying 'excuse me', theme parks just aren't fun when they're like that.
- Correspondingly, the queues. 150 mins for SDMT almost all day both days, with no FP+, ain't worth it.
- Splash Mountain closed the entirety of our second day, and numerous other rides were also closed - Philharmagic almost all day, Space Mountain until early evening, Peoplemover was up and down both days, several other rides were also sporadically closed. Again, no other park we went to was anything like this bad for rides being unavailable, and this all happened on a clear day with no wind!
Therefore with no Splash, BTMR was 100 minutes, so we didn't do that either. I only managed to do Space Mountain after pleading with the family to stay behind after Wishes and do it late, with someone coming back to pick me up. Joining the queue at 22:00, I queued 74 minutes. It was worth it, but only just.
The other perk of me staying late the second day was getting to see Once Upon a Time for the first time (we bailed before it on the first day, 9:15 for a 3 & 7 year old was late enough) - but guess what? that broke too. I got to see most of it before one of the projectors crashed and rendered a stuck image of Gaston halfway up the castle for 30 seconds before they pulled it.

I had some fun at MK, Laugh Floor is as good as I remember, and the hastily booked FP+ reservations we got on our altered first day for IASW, THM and Buzz Lightyear were helpful, but really, both days sucked, certainly when compared to everything else we did. If I asked almost anyone in our group if they'd go back to MK should we go again, they'd unanimously vote no. Not even the kids enjoyed themselves there, really. The Disney 'magic' just doesn't shine through overcrowding that severe, with that many ride closures. All the other Disney parks (perhaps excluding BB) were a great day out we'd be happy to repeat.

</rant>

The tl;dr version:

- MK was ridiculously overcrowded compared to anywhere else
- Loads of rides were closed on our second day and even Once upon a Time got called off
- That and huge queues meant despite 2 full days I didn't get to do any of SDMT, Splash Mountain or BTMR
- As a result, It wasn't fun, even for the kids. Would have preferred to do a third Universal day instead