Articles & Essays by Alan S. Dalinka

What Are You Doing at Walt Disney World on New Year’s Eve?

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:40:55 -0600

At some point in December folks inevitably ask, “So, what are you doing New Year’s Eve?”

Since 2002, my answer has been, “I’m going to Walt Disney World.”

I am then often asked, “Isn’t it so crowded that you have to wait in lines forever?”

Certainly my answer to this question has become more refined over the course of the nine years that I have become a veteran of the New Year’s Solo Trip to Walt Disney World. Contained within my answer is advice (or, at least, lessons learned) that can help just about any visitor to Walt Disney World.

Background

I have been a Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) member since February 2000. Thanks, at least in part, to DVC member discounts, I have been a Walt Disney World Annual Park-Hopper Passholder for many of the years since then, including at the time of writing (though, ironically, not at the time of posting due to Disney making my last renewal 15-months).

I have a sufficient number of DVC ownership “Points” at both Disney’s BoardWalk and Disney’s Beach Club such that, eleven months in advance, I can make a reservation to stay in each resort every other year for more than a week in a one-bedroom villa starting just before each New Year and ending in January.

Both resorts are just short walk away from Epcot’s International Gateway entrance (also known as Epcot’s “backdoor”). You can also take a longer walk from these resorts to (what is now called) Disney’s Hollywood Studios (the “Studios”). Disney also operates boats called Friendships that travel from the International Gateway to BoardWalk, then the lighthouse serving Disney’s Yacht & Beach Clubs, then Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin, and then Studios. Boats also operate that same course in the opposite direction. All told, it takes about 30 minutes to ride the boat from the International Gateway to the Studios. For most folks, including fairly slow-walking folks like me, walking between destinations is faster. Of course, pacing yourself at Walt Disney World is critical and taking the boats can give you that needed break.

Isn’t it so crowded that you have to wait in lines forever?

If you like waiting in lines, you certainly can on New Year’s Eve, but you don’t have to do that. Indeed, if there are certain rides that you MUST ride on New Year’s Eve, you will probably have no choice but to spend a sizable part of your day in line. Based on three- and four-hour Stand-by posted wait times I have seen, I have to assume there are people that do this. I don’t.
At 3:30 p.m. on December 31, 2010, there was a 3-hour Stand-by wait & No FastPasses left.
Since you are reading an article at a “fan site” about Disney Parks, you probably are already familiar with Disney’s FastPass Service where you get that little slip of paper just outside some of the most popular rides that “virtually” waits in line for you. On New Year’s Eve, unless you are a rather early riser, FastPass is not the solution. For the early risers, the question is do you have the stamina to last the whole day for those midnight fireworks? Or even to wait for your FastPass ride time? On what seemed like non-crowded days in April, I have picked up a FastPass ticket for Soarin’ at 11 a.m. and received an 8 p.m. return time! In any event, when Disney Parks are crowded – on New Year’s Eve, they sometimes set records – the FastPass tickets will run out, perhaps well-before noon on days where the park is open past Midnight.

Park choice is also an issue when answering this question. I do not even consider visiting Disney’s Animal Kingdom on New Year’s Eve, as the park closes before midnight and, of course, has no animal-scaring fireworks. I suppose you could visit for a few hours, but no matter what resort you stay at, that requires a bus ride or a drive – and I do not want to be dependent on traffic and busses to get to a resort to see fireworks at midnight.Thousands head for the exits at Epcot after the fireworks end just past midnight.

I have never dared to venture into The Magic Kingdom on December 31 either. Even with that park’s capacity rumored to be around 100,000, I have yet to join the revelers there. I hear regular reports of the park being “closed” to additional admissions on New Year’s Eve. The key point of dissuasion for trying to visit this park when it is at capacity: transportation. Remember, unless you are staying at Disney’s Contemporary (or the new DVC Bay Lake Tower) that allows you to walk, the only ways to get to and from the park are boat, bus or monorail. When I think of 100,000 folks heading to the exit at about the same time, it makes me glad to be within easy walk of Epcot’s backdoor.
Even an iPhone can take a great picture of Fantasy in the Sky.
Further assisting me in deciding to skip The Magic Kingdom on New Year’s Eve is that on December 30, for many years now, they show the same 360º “Fantasy in the Sky” fireworks show (including the countdown to midnight) as they do the next night. They also regularly have the three “Extra Magic Hours” for Disney Resort guests scheduled for December 30, allowing you to stay in the park until 3 or 4 a.m. (depending on the day of the week), as I have done many times over the years. In the last hour or two before the final park close those nights, there is usually little to no wait for popular rides, even Space Mountain!

Thus, and, perhaps, obviously, my parks of choice for New Year’s Eve are Epcot and the Studios, as they are both within walking distance of my DVC Home Resorts of BoardWalk and Beach Club. While I have heard of the Studios reaching capacity at various times, I have never been turned away from Epcot’s International Gateway after returning to my room for a dinner break.
I watch the 7:30 Illuminations from BoardWalk on New Year's Eve.
Just as importantly, both parks are also ideal for the number of attractions they have that are what I call “People Eaters.” Traditionally, folks that write about theme and amusement parks talk about People Eaters in terms of riders per hour – Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean being the oft-cited kings. But since those rides still board just a few folks at a time, I like to think of People Eaters as how many can experience this attraction at the same time? The attractions below each host hundreds at a time (the items marked with * host more than 1000 at a time).

EPCOT: FUTURE WORLD

• Universe of Energy – Ellen’s Energy Adventure*
• Circle of Life: An Environmental Fable – the movie at Land Pavilion
• Captain EO – 3D Michael Jackson music video at Imagination Pavilion

EPCOT: WORLD SHOWCASE

• Circlevision 360º films at Canada and China
• Multi-screen film at France
• American Adventure*
Several thousand guests can see Lights! Motors! Action! at a time!

DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

• Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular*
• Lights! Motors! Action! Extreme Stunt Show*
• Beauty & The Beast Live on Stage
• American Idol Experience
• Voyage of the Little Mermaid
• Drew Carey Sounds Dangerous

Of course, if one were to find oneself in The Magic Kingdom on a busy day, the People Eaters of similar capacity include:

• Carousel of Progress
• Hall of Presidents

And over at Animal Kingdom, People Eaters include (though, on some days, I have seen all of these shows completely full):

• Festival of the Lion King
• Flights of Wonder
• Finding Nemo: The Musical

A final consideration of note is that Epcot has the most real estate that is open to pedestrian traffic. Sure, Animal Kingdom is the largest theme park Disney has built to date, but its pathways are narrow and highly-themed to nature. Magic Kingdom’s pathways are bigger than Disneyland’s, but there are still numerous choke-points. The Studios is the smallest park and while it has a few wide “streets,” it can get very crowded.

Epcot’s pathways are all broad (except for a single choke-point in front of the Mexico Pavilion). There are numerous places to breathe in Future World and along the entire World Showcase promenade. You can even be fairly isolated from the hubbub of the New Year’s Eve crowd for a few moments if you are looking for that sort of thing. On New Year’s Eve, they even open backstage paths to help with crowd flow from the World Showcase toward the main exit. If you’ve never been backstage, it’s an interesting unthemed look at Epcot.

In any event, you do not have to spend New Year’s Eve waiting in lines and can still get a full day’s entertainment in Epcot and the Studios. Indeed, at both parks, it is even possible to select a prime New Year’s Eve fireworks viewing location only an hour or so before midnight, especially for the solo traveler.

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 20:15:16 -0600

At some point in December folks inevitably ask, “So, what are you doing New Year's Eve?”

Since 2002, my answer has been, “I'm going to Walt Disney World.”

Over the past nine “new” years, I have become a veteran of the New Year's Solo Trip to Walt Disney World. Some of the details of what led up to my first New Year's Eve solo trip will provide you with a few insights into Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) membership.
The original Disney Vacation Club location
and one of my DVC “Home Resorts”.
My DVC Membership

I first became DVC Member at the end of a weeklong solo trip to Walt Disney World in February 2000. I had been thinking about buying into DVC since I attended an “Open House” during a solo trip to the original version of The Disney Institute in November 1996. To get to the Open House, I had to make an appointment for a DVC van to pick me up at The Disney Institute (located where Disney's Saratoga Springs is now located) and drive me over to Disney's Old Key West. Unlike 2011, there were not DVC kiosks seemingly everywhere throughout the resort to get the process going: you actually had to take that first step by calling DVC.

The Open House started in a heavily themed room with a “magical” ceiling that turned into a Peter Pan-like star-field as the lights dimmed and the welcome video began. The Open House then included a rather low-key meeting with a representative talking through the various advantages of DVC and answering questions – especially my questions about how much DVC would cost both in terms of purchase as well as annual charges. That meeting ended with the overall message that there is no hurry to make up your mind. DVC was more than happy to provide all of the relevant (legally required) time-share disclosure documents too. Unlike another company's time-share pitch I had attended in a Chicago suburb, there was absolutely no pressure to BUY NOW! I am sure there was a tour of a model unit, but I have no specific memory of that. I do remember that the Open House concluded with a complimentary ice cream sundae!

Three years later, in February 2000, I decided that I was ready to buy into DVC. The Old Key West sales center had closed, as that development was nearly sold out, and sales had begun at Disney's BoardWalk where the new sales center was located. Since I had been to a previous Open House, I was not treated to any of the preliminary “magic” they may have been offering at the time. Instead, I was treated very professionally, and we went through the steps necessary for me to buy my first DVC interest and receive the incentives they were offering at the time (a cash credit against the purchase price in exchange for not using the membership in my first use year).

As a DVC member, the resort in which you buy an interest (which, legally speaking is a condominium leasehold, that DVC converts to “points” for ease of use) is called your “Home Resort”. A DVC member can make a reservation in their Home Resort eleven months in advance of their stay. A DVC member can make a reservation for any other DVC resort no more than seven months in advance of their stay. These are particularly important deadlines when it comes to booking a trip for such a busy time as the weeks including Christmas and New Year. (It is also important to pay attention to DVC's reservation rules, as DVC changed measuring the number of months from date of check-out to date of check-in just a few of years ago.)
A balcony at my first DVC “Home Resort”
at Disney’s BoardWalk Villas.
(The sign points to the sales center.)
My Home Resort as a result of my original DVC membership is BoardWalk – a short boat ride or walk away from Epcot's International Gateway entrance and a slightly longer boat ride or walk away from what is now called Disney's Hollywood Studios. I subsequently purchased DVC Home Resort add-ons at Old Key West and, (more importantly for New Year's,) Disney's Beach Club.

DVC membership also provides benefits that can and do change from time-to-time. For example, the earliest buyers of DVC membership received length-of-stay theme park tickets for a limited number of years with their purchases. By the time I joined DVC, that offer had ended. Since that time, DVC has offered discounts on the various park admission media. As a result of those discounts, I have been Annual Pass Park-Hopper Passholder for quite a few years. DVC offers members other discount opportunities as well – like tours, dining, merchandise – but time and space do not allow the opportunity to explore the value of each here and, of course, they too change from time-to-time.

Of note to me over many years, however, DVC provided free valet parking to DVC members at DVC resorts. Unfortunately, that benefit ended when Disney outsourced Valet and Bell Services a few years ago. On the positive side, for the past few years (including at the time of writing this article), DVC now provides free in-room High Speed Internet Access to members rather than require members to pay the $9.95/day charge.

My First Solo New Year's Eve Trip

The first time I visited Walt Disney World solo for New Year's Eve was in December 2002. It was not, however, the first New Year's Eve I had spent at Walt Disney World. That distinction goes to December 1989, when, as a college graduate not yet enrolled in law school, I visited Orlando with my parents for New Year's week because my brother and several friends were performing as members of the Marching Illini at the Citrus Bowl on January 1, 1990. I spent New Year's Eve at EPCOT Center (as it was then called) with my parents. While it was a “turn-of-a-decade” New Year, keep in mind that it was before the Millennium: in my view, New Year's Eve has become a much bigger “event” since the turn of Y2K (and, for the record, that night when we ushered in Y2K, I was extremely ill with the flu on my couch at home watching the Peter Jennings round-the-clock marathon on ABC). The fireworks ushering in 1990 were impressive, but they were not the spectacle they have become since the Millennium.
Flags atop Disneyland's
Main Street Railroad Station fly at
half staff on September 13, 2001.
As 2002 began, travel, including Walt Disney World attendance and resort occupancy, was severely depressed because of the horrific events of September 11. Because of my law practice, however, my business travel continued pretty much unabated. Indeed, on September 11, 2001, I was in Orange County, California, for court-ordered mediation, and I was stuck there until the airlines started flying again on September 14, 2001. I actually spent September 12 at the then seven-month-old Disney's California Adventure and September 13 at Disneyland. (That is another story.)

So, as the year started and I started thinking about how to best use my DVC points for 2002, I decided to visit Walt Disney World for the New Year. I figured that the combination of my Home Resort priority and the over-all decreased travel would make it a good trip – and a good deal warmer than hometown Chicago. It turned out that I was right on both counts and thus my annual tradition began.

The finale of the final 2010
Illuminations: Reflections of Earth
before the countdown to 2011 began.

A Brief History of Epcot

Mon, 18 Feb 2002 23:00:23 -0600

When it opened in October, 1982, the second theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort was called EPCOT Center. The letters in its name were capitalized to emphasize that the word was really an acronym coined by Walt Disney in the 1960s during the development of the “Florida Project” (which eventually became the Walt Disney Resort).

Walt Disney’s concept for an “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” (EPCOT), was at the center of his plans for developing the extensive property he had acquired in central Florida. The plans included transportation systems, water and waste systems, commercial districts and, of course, residential neighborhoods. In fact, for this reason (among others) Walt and his brother Roy were able to successfully lobby the Florida legislature to grant Disney governmental control over their Florida property. So, while geographically contained within the Florida counties of Orange and Osceola, the governmental authority responsible for Disney’s Florida property is the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) – which is completely controlled to this day by Disney. In fact, when The Walt Disney Company finally developed a permanent residential community on the property – Celebration – it ceded governmental control of the community to the county of Osceola, so the only voters living on its property are those it selects to maintain its exclusive control over RCID.

Walt Disney died in 1966, however. Walt had been involved in scouting the site and acquiring the land for the “Florida Project,” but he did not live to see it built. His older brother, Roy Disney, spearheaded the company’s efforts to complete the first of the Florida Theme Parks – The Magic Kingdom – which opened in October, 1971 along with the Contemporary Resort and The Polynesian Resort. Roy Disney is said to have insisted that the Florida project be named after his brother rather than just “Disney World.” Roy died shortly after the opening of the Walt Disney World Resort.

By the late 1970s, the company decided to add a second Theme Park to the Florida resort. Several different concepts had been considered, but ultimately chosen was a part of Walt Disney’s EPCOT concept, a permanent world’s fair combining technological pavilions with international pavilions. The location selected for the second Theme Park was the “center” of Walt’s EPCOT – thus giving the park its name EPCOT Center. Gone, of course, were the residential neighborhoods, the commercial district and the rest of what might be considered a “community.” In its place, in what was described as the most expensive privately-funded construction project of its time (reported to be in excess of $1 billion), the Company built a new Theme Park more than twice as large as The Magic Kingdom.

When it opened in 1982, EPCOT Center featured two themed areas: Future World and The World Showcase. To get to the new Park, the main mode of transportation was the Monorail’s new separate line from the Ticket and Transportation Center (“TTC”) to the gate of EPCOT Center. At the end of the approximately two-mile journey on the Monorail and before reaching the Monorail station, you received a grand circle tour through Future World in the new park.

As the Monorail neared the Park, you could not miss its main icon (or “weenie” in Disney terminology), Spaceship Earth (presented by the Bell System). The Monorail traveled over the turnstiles and passed to the left of Spaceship Earth for a clockwise trip through Future World. On your left, you saw the Universe of Energy (presented by Exxon) and the solar panels spread out over its roof. On your right, you saw the entry plaza and fountain in front of Spaceship Earth and, as you passed Spaceship Earth you saw Communicore East and a collection of satellite dishes. As the Monorail continued on its trip, on your left you saw the site reserved for Horizons (presented by GE) which had not yet been built, followed by the World of Motion (presented by GM). As the Monorail reached the mid-point of its circle-tour, you were presented with a clear view of the World Showcase Lagoon.

In 1982, the member countries were (looking clockwise from the Monorail): Mexico, China, Germany, Italy, U.S.A., Japan, France, United Kingdom and Canada. As the Monorail completed its tour, on your right you saw Communicore West and on your left, Imagination (presented by Kodak), The Land (presented by Kraft) and the site reserved for The Living Sea. The Monorail then crossed the exit turnstiles and stopped at the station to let you off and begin its return trip to the TTC.

My Story: In the Aftermath of September 11, 2001

Sat, 15 Sep 2001 23:00:56 -0500

Like many Americans, I was far from home at the time of the attack on America.

I flew from Chicago to LAX late in the evening on Monday, September 10, 2001, for a business meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning. I drove to Costa Mesa, California in Orange County where I stayed in a hotel. I woke up Tuesday morning to see on TV the World Trade Center on fire and watched the collapse live on TV.

Much to my surprise, my business meeting proceeded on Tuesday (it was, after all, a court-ordered settlement conference) and we gathered around a 2 inch TV during breaks to see the news. At the end of the day Tuesday, I was left -- like thousands of others -- devastated and more than 1700 miles from home.
Increased Security at Disneyland
September 12, 2001.
I heard on the news Wednesday morning that Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure had re-opened. Having no way to return home, no real way of getting back to work, and no strength to watch the replays on TV over and over again, I headed off to the parks on Wednesday and Thursday. I almost always travel with my camera, whether it's a trip for business or personal, so I have photos and video from the parks from these two days. I've posted some of the photos and video. (The photos posted on the left are from September 12, 2011.)

Disney's California Adventure's
presentation of Disney's Electrical Parade
September 12, 2001.
To the folks at the hotel, the rental car company and the airline, thanks for taking care of me during this week. I flew back to Chicago safely on one of those few flights departing LAX on Friday, September 14, 2001, and returned home just before midnight.

To the people directly touched by Tuesday's tragic events, the families and friends of those who were the victims of this brutal attack, my thoughts and prayers.

America shall continue to thrive.