Is WDW worth it now? Not for us, not any longer…
Back in January 2020 (when Covid was just an outbreak of flu in China) DW and I booked a 3-week break for late November 2021, staying offsite in a villa and of course hiring a car. We don’t do this lightly - we’re in the UK so we have to take flight costs into account - but we planned to get the UK-special ‘14 days for the price of 7’ tickets for WDW, spend 6 or 7 days at WDW, a couple of days at Universal (last visit there 1999), visit Seaworld (last visit 2001), visit Kennedy Space Centre (we always do this). Then Covid… We were able to postpone our trip for 12 months and we’re now travelling to Florida next month.
But we won’t be buying WDW tickets in advance and have no real plans to visit the parks at all. We’ll book a breakfast at Boma if we can (our favourite breakfast option) and if the mood takes us we might see if we can get 1-day tickets for Epcot (we both love World Showcase) but that will be it. The need for park reservations as well as tickets, the constant nickel-and-dimeing for things that used to be included, the soaring base prices, the idiocy of
Genie+ and having to be on a cellphone all day for maximum benefit. And after reading on the forums about the poor cleanliness, the decline in attitude from cast members, the declining standard of the food offerings and the need to do in-park dining by cellphone… thanks but no thanks.
We’ll still visit Universal (Jurassic Park and Minions, OK?) and Seaworld and KSC, but there’s also plenty else to do in central Florida outside the WDW bubble. DW has been watching Secrets of the Zoo on
National Geographic and has a yen to drive over to Tampa and visit ZooTampa at Lowry Park, and Orlando has some museums which I would like to take in… and that’s aside from a few days just chilling at the villa and enjoying the warmth and the pool.
So we’re still very much looking forward to our trip, but WDW won’t play much of a part in it.