Favorite Quick Serve Restaurants in Disney World

 

As I've said before, food is a major part of your Walt Disney World vacation.  Food tastes run the gamut, and Disney has something for everyone.  We spend a lot of time thinking about the table service restaurants on our trip - in general, we do one table service and one quick service meal a day (the third meal usually being something from the groceries we order into our resort or something quick and easy to eat on the go for breakfast - gotta hit the parks early!)

The quick service restaurants on property aren't as interesting thematically or often as adventurous as the table service ones.  But there are more of them, and they serve an important function - getting some food into you before you continue your tiring day of walking and riding attractions.  So I thought I'd show some love today to five of my favorite quick serve restaurants on property.  I can't say these are the "best", as I haven't dined everywhere.  But in my opinion, there's something about each of these that's worthwhile.

Easter Week Crowds - the Worst of the Season?

 

We're back with another look at recent Easter week crowds at Disney World.  As promised last week, we said that once the data was in, we would take a look back at just how bad it was (or wasn't? Stay tuned).  We're going to see if this was truly the peak of Spring Break season, and compare that to how crowded the parks were for Easter week last year.  We'll also take a look at whether a certain recent trend continues in terms of crowd distribution for a given week.

If you were traveling to Disney World for Easter week, you probably knew what you were getting into, as this is a week that schools often have for vacation.  Interestingly, in recent years in New York (where I live), the school break has been the week AFTER Easter.  While still crowded, that week generally sees lower crowds across the board.  

Busiest Spring Break Week? Genie+ Sells Out, Tron Opens, Return of a Favorite

 

We recently wrote a report about the real start of Spring Break season at Disney World, typically one of the busiest stretches of the year.  The week in question in that report was expected to be the busiest of the season, with many colleges as well as local K-12 schools in Florida having that week off.  Based on early reports from this current week, however, we might have a new contender for busiest week yet.

The week leading up to Easter is always one of the busiest of the season, but doesn't always reach the heights of the local, earlier break.  It's too early to draw any conclusions in full yet, but I plan to circle back to this next week when all the data is available.  But a few things have happened recently that lead me to believe this is the peak of the peak season.  We'll discuss a few of these here.

Spring Break Crowd Report

After a few weeks of (relative) calm at Walt Disney World recently, Spring Break season has arrived.  Last month, we took a look at crowds over President's Week, one of the busiest weeks of the year.  There were some interesting trends observed in that post, so I wanted to see if the trend we saw there carried over to another of the busiest times of year for the parks.

Spring Break is a harder time to pin down, due to schools having all different break schedules.  This generally leads to elevated crowd levels from mid-March all the way through mid-April and sometimes beyond.  Depending on where Easter and Passover fall, a lot of schools work their breaks around one or both of these holidays.  But this past week was really the start of Spring Break season, as many colleges (and local K-12 schools) were off from 3/13-3/17.

Tron Lightcycle Run Soft Open And More

A couple of months ago, Disney announced that Tron Lightcycle Run, their shiny new coaster in Magic Kingdom, would open on April 4.  In the last few weeks, there have been various previews for Tron - cast member, annual passholder, etc.  Since the previews began so early, the question for many people was whether there would be a "soft open" to the general public before April 4, and as Disney announced today, the answer is yes - a soft open will take place between March 20th and April 2nd.

A soft open is a good way to test out a new attraction before the official opening date.  Expectations are lower, and if there are any issues, people usually chalk those up to working out the bugs and are more forgiving than they would be once the actual opening day comes along.  Is that the case here?  I'm not so sure, honestly.  The question is more about why the opening was so late, rather than why the previews are so long.

Disney News: New Meet and Greets, Epcot Nighttime Update, Disney100

Picture courtesy of Disney Parks Blog

Disney dropped a bunch of news tidbits today about what's coming soon to Walt Disney World.  In the post I wrote just yesterday, I talked about how there would be a lag between announcing a major project and actually seeing it come to fruition.  In the meantime, though, a bunch of other, smaller changes can happen which will breathe new life into the parks and that's what's happening here.  As I said in that post, with the 50th anniversary celebration coming to an end, it made sense to entice guests with new offerings rather than risk a lull.

To that end, let's talk about what was mentioned today.  First are some new meet and greets.  Disney has slowly worked these back into the parks as things returned to normal post-Covid.  Even if you aren't interested in meet and greets, they give the parks an alive feel, and (more cynically) soak up some crowds who are waiting in line to meet characters.  That's a win for everyone, in my opinion.  Most recently, Enchanted Tales with Belle returned to Magic Kingdom, and while it's not a meet and greet in the traditional sense, I'm happy that it's back to use its dedicated space and show off some cool technology.

There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow: Beyond The Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration

 

Walt Disney World's 50th Anniversary Celebration (aka "The Most Magical Celebration on Earth") is ending on March 31.  If it seems like the celebration has been happening for a long time, it's because it is.  As I've said before, no one loves a celebration like Disney, and they managed to take an event that happened on October 1, 2021 stretch out for the next eighteen months.  Not that I blame them - this gave everyone a chance to join in, as they were able, over that extended timeframe.

Since we're finally nearing that end date, I thought it would be nice to take a quick look back and (more importantly) a longer look forward to what's beyond this celebration.  Since Disney World is a year round operation, there is no such thing as "down time" or "the off season" (as crowd levels will generally attest), so "what's next" is always a question the company is examining.