Orlando Epilogue

We thought we were a little off season – after US Thanksgiving and before Christmas – but the parks were fairly full. Not packed shoulder to shoulder, but pretty full. There were strollers everywhere, but it is quite understandable as young children are just not up to covering all that ground. Darren wore a step counter and counted between 20,000 and 25,000 steps per day most days. Also ubiquitous were scooters. They were way more common than we are used to in the general population.

We could not have coordinated our activities without the use of WhatsApp on smart phones and WiFi in the parks. We were often all together, yet everyone was able to go their own way and do their own thing.

The kids all stood up really well. The boys, being a little older, never missed a beat. The twins wore out a few times, but rarely broke down. As noted earlier, Louisa held up really well under the circumstances. The boys seemed to enjoy almost everything. The Twins especially liked meeting characters and pin trading. They found a lot of the rides intimidating and a bit scary, but there were a few that they enjoyed repeatedly.

It would have been nice to see more of Darren’s crew, but our intention from the beginning was to be facilitators for everyone else to have fun. The boys were quite independent and able to do anything they wanted to do, so the Victoria Four rarely needed us. On the other hand, the Matlocks, with more and younger kids, one of them still napping, and one or both of the others occasionally intimidated, needed backup for them to do any adult rides and even some kids rides.

I purchased the Memory Maker package. This permits unlimited downloads of photos taken by Disney photographers throughout the parks and photos taken on some of the rides. We had several photos taken on our first day in Hollywood Studios, but neglected to use it much after that. It is a good feature, but we should have taken more advantage of it.

Disney and Universal have money printing machines. They create stories and characters from fairy tales and other media and sell movie tickets. Then they build attractions based on the movies so people will visit the parks. They can charge pretty much whatever they want and people will still come. They build hotels to house the visitors and sell innumerable souvenir items. What a business model!