Disney let McDonalds build a place at Disney World, its near the low cost hotels. And the prices are normal. I read that this was part of a deal with McD giving out lots of Disney toys.
It’s a four-mile-walk from the McDonalds (at Downtown Disney Marketplace) to the parks. And the prices most certainly are not normal (though not as high as normal Disney fare- they’re about a buck higher per burger).
I also found this great bit of trivia on the first site linked to in the OP:
That’s comedy gold, that there is! 
One of the co-authors of that book is a member of the SDMB (although I just checked his profile page, and he hasn’t posted anything since March).
In 2002 the prices were normal, I guess they changed since then.
I was talking about the McDs near the All Star resorts, they must have added one at downtown Disney too.
BTW does anyone walk between parks at Disney? There is no need to with the free buses.
What are the Disney numbers like recently/ With all the doom-and-gloom talk of recessions, is Disney getting noticably less busy?
Short answer: no.
I’d assume that RNATB was just responding to the fact that while you can walk to a McDonalds from disneyland, according to a previous poster, you cannot do so in Florida as it would be a 4 mile walk. Plus, there aren’t any sidewalks, or even much of a shoulder if any, and cars go down the roads at 50 MPH or more. It seems way too far even when you’re running it in a marathon at 50 degrees when the roads are blocked off, let alone wanting to go to a theme park after your walk in the 90+ degree humidity.
That said, there are resorts nearby all the major parks, and you can certainly walk from those resorts to those theme parks, even if there aren’t official signs. Can’t think of an example off the top of my head, though.
In 2002 after 9/11 a lot of places in FL cut prices and had 2 for 1 deals due to lack of travel. Disney made no changes at all from what I heard then.
I don’t know if it’s less busy but Disney has cut prices this year. An article from February said, “In Florida, the Walt Disney World Resort is offering a seven-night vacation package at one of its 23 on-site hotels for the price of four, including admission to the park itself.”
Does that affect regular one-day ticket prices? In my experience at Disneyland, the price never goes down. I think one adult ticket is up to $67 now
No, but you get in free on your birthday if you register here. Also, the price of annual passes has dropped a bit.
We went last year leaving the start of the long weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving) and came back the following Sunday. So basically the third week in October.
It was really nice the whole week, we basically went to the parks on Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri (Hitting up all four of the parks, Wednesday we drove to Cocoa beach for a change of pace.)
Crowding? Not bad actually. The longest line we stood in was about 30 minutes long, the majority of the time was more like 10-15 and a few times we just walked right on up (which is how we rode Pirates of the Caribbean 4 times…). The absolute busiest time was when we stayed late on Friday to see the fireworks at Magic Kingdom. It was crazy packed that night. Here’s a tip… everyone heads for the monorail to get out faster after the fireworks, it’s much much nicer to ride the boat back to the parking as the windows are open and you get a breeze flowing, the monorail you’re crunched in a closed space and it looked like you’d be longer waiting for the monorail than the ship (or maybe not, but most of the crowd aimed for the monorail).
Magic Kingdom was all prettied up for Halloween, pumpkins everywhere and scarecrows, I skipped the Haunted Mansion because my son tends to get freaked out easily sometimes (he was 4 at the time) but we had a blast.
Park hopper was worth it, we hopped a couple times once splitting up with my Dad and Step-mom and meeting back up at Magic Kingdom (Epcot was fun, but son wasn’t that interested in much of what was there it seems geared to a slightly older crowd for the most part.) Basically set a time and place to meet and split up a few times over the days.
We brought our own water bottles, they have fountains at every bathroom. Didn’t bring our own food in but we ate well before and after and lightly on property.
I’ve heard that there are fewer characters showing up since we went, also that some of the character breakfasts (if you want to do that I understand you should be booking for them… well, now) were closed and/or some of the meet and greets.
Also, if you want to do Downtown Disney avoid it on the weekend. Half of it has clubs/bars and it was a zoo. We went when we first arrived (Sunday) and it was busy but not crowded, we went back on a Saturday iirc thinking to have supper at the Rainforest Cafe and couldn’t find a parking spot anywhere with lots of others circling like sharks in the lot…
Pleasure Island (the part with the clubs/bars) is shut down until 2010 for remodeling. The only things that are still open are Raglan Road (the “Irish” pub) and the cigar shop.
House of Blues is still open though.
Oh yeah, I read that somewhere…
Well it was open when we went. Absolute MADHOUSE on the Saturday.
Hmmmm. I do like Islands of Adventure–it has some great rides. But the attention to detail is lacking compared to Disney. The island’s biggest rides, queues aside, are totally unthemed. Hulk, Dueling Dragons, Dr.Doom…and the ones that are completely themed are sort of half-assed like Dudley Do-Right and Popeye.
Spiderman and Jurassic Park (though this version is inferior to the one in Universal Studios Hollywood) are probably the only two rides that are close to Disney caliber. Though I’m anxious to see how the new Harry Potter island turns out, as it may rectify some of those issues.
You don’t have to register to get the free birthday pass. It does make things easier though.
I think Disneyland also has a 2-parks-for-the-price-of-one deal going on for SoCal residents.
Another good book is Disney On A Dime. Also, check out Mousesavers.com. Whenever we go, we always ship non-perishable food to our hotel a few days before we arrive. Food is and will be the thing that drains your wallet at either location.
BTW, all restaurants off property but Disney-adjacent are way overpriced. You may save a buck or two from Disney’s prices, but they will have no problem charging $10 for a burger.
I’d say that Islands of Adventure would have the edge over any one single Disney park, except that AFAIK they don’t have a Pass The Line style technology implemented (at least when I went, which was a couple years ago.) We had to wait literally 1 1/2 hours for the Hulk ride, which was a good ride but totally not worth the wait (it went too fast to actually see anything, it would have been more thrilling if you’d be suspended overhead slowly rather than fastly but I digress.)
Whereas you can get a FastPass for a long-lined Disney ride a couple hours before you actually go on it, it gives you a specific time you can go on that ride, then you go do other stuff in the meantime and get to go on that Disney ride at the exact time your FastPass is for, with a 10 minute wait at the very maximum.
Yes, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure offer Express Pass where you can bypass the lines. A luxury, but defintely worth it on busy days. We got it free as part of our stay at one of the park’s resort hotels (I honestly can’t remember which one), so I don’t know how much extra it costs.
The Fast Pass program at Disney World is free and available to everyone (though apparently not everyone who goes to the parks knows that). Definitely take advantage of it for the more popular rides. The newest ride, Toy Story Mania at the Studios, builds up very long standby lines really quickly, so try to get there early and send at least one of your party ahead to pick up fast passes before they run out (this was true last year anyway. I doubt things have changed much). It’s very clever and a lot of fun, especially for kids.