ey everyone, it's Jacqueline --and Adam --for Pixie Dust PhD. The day we are filming this
is Friday, July 16, 2021, and it is now time to make our final decision on if we are or are not
going on our planned trip to Walt Disney World this fall. Most of our trip is booked with our
Disney Vacation Club points; in order to avoid any restrictions on those points, any changes,
modifications, or cancellations to our reservation should be made 31 days or more in advance of
arrival. Technically we do have between two and three weeks left before we have to make that
final decision, but we're gonna go ahead and do that today and share with you all, so stay tuned!
Normally when we book any vacation, but especially a Disney trip, we don't end
up waffling about whether or not we are going to go. This year, of course, is very different
though with everything going around in the world, and also all the changes that Disney has made.
Thus far, we've left this very fluid and flexible as to whether or not we would go on this trip
or push it back into 2022. Here are some main factors and where we're at with our trip decision.
First, Disney has more or less dropped their mask mandate. As far as I know, as of today July 16th,
you do have to wear a face mask if you're on the Disney transportation of any type, but otherwise
it's more or less up to you. On the one hand this is nice because we are both fully vaccinated and
I was pretty worried about having to wear a mask in the Florida heat--especially with it fogging up
my sunglasses all the time. So it's nice that this is an option. On the other hand, obviously there
probably are a lot of unvaccinated guests going to Disney World, especially considering kids can't
even get vaccinated yet. --Wait there are kids in Disney World?! -- [sarcastically] No way. --Wow.
--So if we end up going we certainly will bring masks with us; we'll have them on us; we will
wear them when we feel uncomfortable at any point. I think, you know, indoor queues is probably going
to be a big one for me. But it's nice to know that we don't have to wear them 24/7 if we choose.
Next is rides, and more or less delays due to COVID. So there will be no Tron roller coaster
when we're there, the Guardians of the Galaxy coaster won't be open, and officially Remy's
Ratatouille Adventure doesn't open until the 50th anniversary on October 1st, and we would be going
in September. But it might have soft openings? We might get a preview. But it might--we might not,
it might be totally closed. When we were thinking about this trip two plus years ago obviously we
were hoping that we would get on at least one if not multiple of these, and that's not gonna happen
except Remy’s maybe. For me personally I don't think this is a huge deterrent for our trip.
Obviously I am disappointed; there's a lot of stuff that they're holding off for
the 50th like Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, and like those early morning entrances for on-site
guests. And because we would be staying DVC we would also get the nighttime extra time as well.
These all don't start until October 1st, so we are missing out by a few weeks there. –Yeah. At
the same time I don't want to base a decision on whether or not I’m going to Disney World on
the 50th anniversary or not, right. And that just doesn't make sense to me. –Right, and
we've missed rides before. We missed the opening of Rise of the Resistance by a couple of weeks
I think last time we were in Disney World. And we know we'll be back. So of course I’m bummed,
especially to not get to ride Tron this time around, but it'll happen eventually. Next on the
list of changes that may impact our decision is basically no character meet and greets,
certainly not in the standard way. And same with meals--there are some meals that have characters
that will wave [at] you from a distance, but it's not the standard character meal.
--There's a real reduction of character interactions currently going on at Disney,
and, you know, I was hopeful that maybe they'd come back by this time. But it seems like they're just
not doing it all, or plan to for the foreseeable future. Right, Jacqueline? I haven't heard or seen
anything in the rumor mill. –Well, we haven't heard much, but that doesn't mean much these
days because they can kind of change their minds on the drop of a dime. So I am hopeful perhaps
some aspect of character meet and greets and traditional character dining will come back before
we head out to Walt Disney World in September, but there's a very good chance that won't happen. For
me this would be pretty disappointing. Characters are a big part of Disney World to me. We often
spend upwards of maybe a third of our time in Disney World doing character related activities,
so it would certainly be a very different trip and I would have to put myself in a different mindset
about what is going to happen this trip. But that's not… I can do it--it's not the end of the
world. –Yeah, definitely a little disappointing if it doesn't come back in any way shape or form.
–Next, is as of today, again July 16th, there is no Disney dining plan. Now we've never done
the dining plan before. It's not integral to our trips by any means. But we have
thought out a pretty intense plan to use the dining plan because we're doing a split stay,
so we could do it for a small amount of the trip. You can check out a prior video we posted on the
fall 2021 trip planning that goes over all of our considerations for the Disney dining plan. We were
hopeful to sneak in a lot of pretty expensive meals on those dining credits that maybe we
wouldn't pay for out of pocket otherwise. –Yeah. And, you know, a lot of these Disney restaurants
would have been really cool to try. We probably would have only done it with the dining plan.
But, you know, it's really not going to be a major deal breaker for me anyway because there's
always a lot of good food at Disney World. Except maybe Magic Kingdom, depending on who you ask.
–Yeah, so like Adam was saying earlier, I’m pretty disappointed if the dining plan doesn't come back…
that obviously affects our plans for our ideal trip quite heavily. But again, we could always
do it another time. That being said, I have sort of dreamt this up and and really was counting on
doing things via the dining plan. So for example, Cinderella’s Royal Table: if there are no standard
character meal interactions and no dining plan honestly the menu is not that exciting to me,
so I don't think I’d be willing to pony up that kind of money to do Cinderella’s Royal
Table this trip, which I--I have been looking forward to. –Yeah, it's definitely one of those,
you know, bucket list type Disney items, which we've definitely discussed on this channel in the
past. And it would be a real bummer because this was definitely a trip where it would have slotted
in quite nicely. –Yeah. --However, it's probably not going away, and you know hopefully things will
get back normal eventually. And, you know, as DVC owners, right, I mean we're coming back. –Yeah,
so we can do it another time. It's just like Adam said: it's disappointing. And again, I will have
to shift my mindset about the trip a little bit if the Disney dining plan does not return,
and if character meals don't return to what would be a satisfactory level for me personally. In good
news, some nighttime entertainment has returned! So Happily Ever After is happening at the Magic
Kingdom, and EPCOT Forever is happening at EPCOT. That will be replaced by Harmonious for the 50th
anniversary, so we will not be experiencing that this trip. Fantasmic! though, at Hollywood
Studios, is not back. And Rivers of Light at the Animal Kingdom is not back. Personally,
I’m really stoked that Happily Ever After is back. It's my favorite nighttime spectacular;
a Disney trip really isn't complete to me without that. So that's great, and we do have a theme
park view room one night at Bay Lake Tower so we'll be able to watch it from our balcony,
which I’m really excited about. –Yeah, I’m also, you know, very excited that the nighttime shows
are back. You know, if there was no nighttime entertainment I’d probably not want to go on
this trip and postpone it, because that's such an integral part of going to Disney, right. Is that,
you know, the--the castle at night, the fireworks, the music, it's just a really cool
part of the experience that's really integral for me among other things that makes Disney so
enjoyable. So really glad Happily Ever After is back. I know it's one of your favorites.
It is a bummer that some of these other things are not back but, you know, we've done them before,
right. So it's not like we're, you know, have to do something. So, you know, I’m still excited that
at least partly it's back. –Yeah, I am pretty bummed that Fantasmic!’s not back yet, and
honestly that one I don't expect to come back in time for our trip. It seems like Rivers of Light
probably won't either, which is a bummer, but it's not the worst. And on the bright side, without the
nighttime spectacular in those parks we can go back to the hotel a little earlier than we would;
maybe go to bed a little earlier, and then maybe waking up super early the next morning won't be as
painful. We tend to not sleep a ton when we're on these Disney World trips, so getting an extra hour
back to sleep will be beneficial. –Yeah, I think so because this is going to be a very busy trip
that Jacqueline has really worked hard to plan. So maybe a little extra sleep won't be the worst
thing in the world. --And if we really want to stay up we can always go drink around the resorts
or at Disney Springs or, you know, do some fun night time activities. Next, park hopping is still
limited. You still cannot park hop before 2 p.m. The monorail to EPCOT is coming back as of the day
we're filming this two days from now, by the time this is posted the monorail to EPCOT will be back!
So yay! I think that's a very good sign that park hopping may become less restricted, but that's
complete speculation at this point. For now, all we know for sure as of July 16th is if you want to
park hop you have to wait until 2 p.m., and you have to have gone to whatever your first park
with the park reservation was before you can go to a different park. –Yeah, it's definitely… now,
we really haven't park hopped too much in our past Disney trips, but I think this trip we
do have a little more time. It's something that I think we would really like to leverage if we can.
Especially with things like Rise of the Resistance boarding groups where those can get complex and,
you know, maybe we just want to hang out at EPCOT and then take the boat over, right,
and go back and forth. It's not really an option right now, which definitely makes things more
difficult. –Yeah, the 2 p.m. time cutoff is also tough for me because it means your lunch,
if you eat lunch at a normal hour not 2 p.m. or later, is sort of restricted to either
off site--or at least not in a theme park, it could be on Walt Disney World property but not
in the parks or in the park you have your first reservation in. And like Adam said, you know,
Magic Kingdom for example is lacking a little bit in good food. We can obviously go to the
Contemporary or Grand Floridian or the Poly, but it would be nice--because Food and Wine Festival
will be going on--if we wanted to just pop over to EPCOT to grab lunch if we had that option.
But if we wanted to go at 11:30 or 12:30 or 1 we wouldn't be allowed in until 2 p.m. at this point.
–Yeah, so rope drop Magic Kingdom, go grab lunch at EPCOT… you know, we won't be we would be able
to do that in a way that makes sense. –Yeah, or even the beginning part of our trip we're
staying in the Crescent Lake area, and like Adam was saying with Rise of the Resistance boarding
groups we did prioritize Hollywood Studios park reservations to try to have multiple attempts to
get those boarding groups. But if we fail and say it's the second or third day with the Hollywood
Studios reservation and we've done most of the things we want to do at Hollywood Studios anyway,
it would be nice to be able to bail and walk to EPCOT because we'll be right there. Or, you know,
even just drive or take transportation over to one of the other parks. But again if it's before
2 p.m. we're just gonna be locked out for now. --Yeah I’d really like to see this be uncoupled
as a restriction. It'd be nice, but at the same time I mean I think we've done a good job of kind
of planning around up to this point. --I am very hopeful that this restriction will be lifted. I do
think the EPCOT monorail is a good sign. I could be reading way too far into the tea leaves here,
but even if it was just bumped up a little earlier, like even one o'clock,
would be so much better. Because then we could get to EPCOT or whatever that next park is at 12:30,
at 12:45, be ready to go in as soon as we can and eat. So we'll have to stay tuned on that.
This one is kind of a big deal for me though and I think we could work around it, but it's
definitely not my favorite thought. And last, as of today, July 16th, there is still no FastPass+.
We do not know what the park capacity officially is; it is obviously higher than it was back last
summer when the parks first reopened--there was hardly any lines at all. You would wait maybe 25,
maybe 40 tops, minutes for something huge like Flight of Passage. Now, Flight of Passage is back
up to over two hour wait sometimes. So I don't think that the parks are at 100% capacity;
I don't think it's back to what it was say during the holiday season when parks were fully open, but
there's definitely crowds now, and you are going to be waiting in lines, and there's no FastPass+.
There's no getting around it! Unless you buy a VIP tour, which we are not planning on doing.
–Yeah, this is a really big factor, you know, not having a FastPass+ where you can say, “I want to
prioritize these attractions.” Not being able to do that really puts a dent into some of the joy
this vacation could bring me. --We're not local so we don't go all the time. That being said, we
do go basically every other year, so I recognize we go more than a lot of folks. But still, I mean,
once every two years--it's really nice to be able to nail down like we're definitely doing these
three rides today, the next day we'll definitely get on these three rides, regardless of what
the crowds are. I know the arguments against the FastPass+ system; I hear you, I don't necessarily
disagree. I’m just saying from the out-of-towner perspective who doesn't come down multiple times
a year, FastPass+ is really nice. On top of that, from a planning perspective, because there's also
no character meet and greets: if ride lines are consistently over an hour, we're not really
willing to wait for that. There's no characters to go meet… like what the heck are we gonna do?
–Sweat. We're gonna sweat. --I guess we're just gonna sweat in line and like be a little bit
crabby about it. But that doesn't sound very magical. –No. --There's been rumors swirling
around for ages about what FastPass+ may look like when it returns. Maybe there's a paid version,
who knows?! They are all rumors. Nothing has been confirmed. Nothing has been announced.
At this point, in mid-July. Do I think something will be announced and implemented in time for our
September trip? I doubt it. It's--I guess it's technically possible, particularly if they have
all the technology stuff sorted out and, you know, everyone's just waiting for the press
release to launch. But it seems not that likely in my personal opinion. –Yeah. Certainly, I don't
have as much perspective and I don’t follow the Disney news quite as much as as our PhD sitting
next to me, but I--I really think that even if they don't announce something, you know, hopefully
the ride lines will be too bad. It would just be really nice if they could kind of announce “hey,
you know, we hear you, and see you out of town guests that want to do specific rides… here's
something that you can do to make a certain ride a priority.” I always liked that, and really it
would be a shame if nothing like that was brought back. –Yeah. Disneyland Paris recently made a lot
of news for introducing basically an a la carte pay-per-ride FastPass+. I do not think that system
is coming to Walt Disney World for various reasons. But if there was something, maybe
it was certain resort guests get to book one in advance and everyone else has to do it same day…
I think they're gonna tweak the system, but it would just be nice if we could have something.
For example, the other day I saw the Magic Kingdom Fantasyland ride Under the Sea: Journey the Little
Mermaid was up to I think a 40 or 45 minute wait. Which perhaps it was a very busy day,
maybe the ride had just gone down, I don't know, but that's a long time to wait for that ride!
So maybe we end up skipping headliners… like I’m not waiting two hours to ride Flight of Passage,
period. Hopefully, other sort of headliner type rides aren't as bad, but Tower of Terror has
routinely been at least 45 minutes if not 60 to 75, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coasters’ in that same
vein… so I am pretty concerned about the fact that the lines are long, capacity is increased,
and there's really no way to get around that. –Yeah. I mean worst case scenario be they
continue to increase capacity and a lot more people in the park and still have no system.
Yeah. I mean lines are a fact of Disney: hurry up and wait, right. But, you know, at a certain
point it does become untenable and takes away from the experience. --Those were the main factors we
have been thinking about and discussing on and off somewhat constantly for the past several months.
Unfortunately, there hasn't been a ton of movement. We're definitely seeing some
improvements in terms of like the EPCOT monorail coming back and some of the nighttime spectaculars
coming back. Dining is also becoming a little bit less restricted. Though, again as of today,
July 16th, things like Yachtsmen Steakhouse are still closed, Akershus is still closed.
And it seems like the dining capacity is still limited because it's been surprisingly hard to
get reservations. –Yeah, so we hit our 60-day window about a week ago. And waking up at 6
a.m. to click--sorry before 6 a.m. so that we can click at 6 a.m. that we want our reservation at a
certain time in a certain restaurant, it was hard. --Even like Beaches and Cream has… I still haven't
been able to get a reservation there. And I’m--I’m pretty surprised. I know that place is popular,
and also there's not a ton of seating to begin with, but... --Come on! It's Beaches and Cream. --Yeah,
or like Homecomin’ at Disney Springs I haven't been able to get a reservation at, which I’m very
surprised. Again, I know it's good and popular but it's at Disney Springs! It's not even like
a headliner in one of the parks. So it seems like dining capacity is still
limited. So taking all those factors into account, somewhere around last week I think I felt like I
was about 85 percent sure I wanted to go on the trip. There are a lot of aspects that I
am bummed about, I am disappointed, and I will have to change the way I’m thinking about this
trip. If we don't want to stand in ride lines that are super long, if they continue to just increase,
like this--it may be more of a low-key trip. We normally push ourselves and go pretty fast
and do a lot every day. But maybe this is more of a sit on a bench take in the ambiance, take
a lot of pictures kind of trip. –Yeah, I think having the right mindset's going to be important.
Are we disappointed? Sure. Do I still want to go? Yeah, I think so. But I do think that, you know,
having these types of discussions to kind of help put--helps put yourself in the right mindset,
so you go in with the right attitude to ultimately have a great vacation and great experience.
–Yeah, so the two big factors have been the public health situation, which we’re both
fully vaccinated now and all the data we've seen so far suggests that we should be fine,
even with the current variant going around. Then the second big factor is is going on this Disney
trip, is paying for this Disney trip with the limited offerings, worth it? I think we have
both settled on yeah it is. Neither of us have been on a real vacation in about two years, and
it's just… I know we're paying the same amount or more for less, but I really want to do it.
We put a lot of time into planning it. I’m really excited about all the DVC locations we're getting
to stay at. That's--that worked out basically perfectly; I couldn't ask for anything better.
–Yeah, it's definitely a culmination of, you know, 24 months of planning, and
our expectations are sadly a little bit--have been lowered, right, given everything we've just talked
about. But um I’m still very excited. I want to go. It's gonna be nice to have a vacation and travel
and go to Disney, right. And I think that even with all these other things detracting from it,
I think it's totally worth it. --Let us know in the comments down below if you're planning
a Disney trip or if you've gone recently, since it's reopened really, how have you
adjusted your expectations? Did you still have a fun time? Were there certain things that you
really missed and were kind of upset about in retrospect? We would love to hear your opinions.
And if you want to chat outside of YouTube you can find me over on Twitter and Instagram
@PixieDustPhD. At this point we're pretty much 99% sure we are going to go on that planned fall
2021 trip to Walt Disney World. I’m trying to get in the right mindset so I can be just excited and
not anxious and not disappointed. We can't wait to do trip recaps for you after we return!
I hope the rest of your day is super magical, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD. –Bye!