Tips for Staying on Disney Property

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If you are planning to stay at a Disney Resort, I thought I’d provide some additional information that may help you choose where to stay.  Disney has lots of different “on property” options and I may be able to save ya a little money by distinguishing the categories a little more realistically.

I’m not going to consult the Disney site for exact names, there are:

Value
Moderate
Deluxe

..as Resort hotels.

There are also Villa accommodations often associated with Disney’s Timeshare offering.  These are a different breed than the above classification.

I’ve stayed at Value Resorts (Disney All-Star Movies) and Moderate Resorts (Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort).

For our honeymoon, we stayed at Disney’s Wilderness Cabins, which are their own sort of classification.

A few years ago, I stayed at Disney’s Saratoga Springs, a Disney Timeshare property.

I’ve also been to three so-called Deluxe resorts with other travel.

Most people intent on getting their Mouse on, choose a regular Resort Hotel options in the Value, Moderate or Deluxe variety.  If you are a vacation-every-5 years type person, you are likely inclined to choose a Deluxe category hotel.  If you are a vacation-every-year type person, you are likely to pick a value or moderate resort.  

We almost always stay at moderate resorts.  Caribbean, pictured here, being my favorite.  I’ve stayed there easily 4 or 5 times.

When booking your vacation you may feel that choosing the Deluxe category hotels will guarantee you a more “posh” stay.   This is seldom the case.    Consider that Disney All Star Value Resort Rooms, Disney Moderate Resort rooms and Disney Deluxe rooms are almost identical in layout and in amenities while the price difference will change hundreds of dollars per night.

If you were to book a vacation at an All-Star Value hotel, you are probably going to be around $89-$150 per night. The Caribbean Resort, you are probably looking at $180-$275 per night.    The Polynesian, (A Deluxe Resort) will run you from $250-$390 per night.

(on average)

Room sizes will vary but only slightly.  It isn’t like you will get 2/3 larger room for your money.   I like to say, “You pay for the walk.”    Disney All Star Resorts have cheaper – looking surroundings than Moderate Resorts and so on.   I’ll grant you that the beaches, lush walkways and tiki themes of the Polynesian are really pretty fantastic to putting you in the vacation mood.   But, when you close the door to your hotel room, you are still looking at a pretty standard Days Inn style shot-gun layout room.

One difference you will see among the classifications of resorts, is crowdedness.   Go Deluxe if you want more – empty-ish busses or transportation to and from the parks.   Go Moderate and you will see some full busses and some empty.  Go Value and expect to stand on some busses, as some value resorts share bus stops.

Disney Vacation Club Timeshare Amenities are a little different and I won’t get into that because this is already longer than most peoples’ attention spans. I just wanted to provide a little heads up to anyone who may be planning a future Disney trip.   You largely pay for the grounds your hotel is on, rather than the room.  If you want a suite – stay off property or at a DVC Timeshare.  If you are cool with a regular hotel room and would still like some decent surroundings, I tend to recommend the Caribbean Beach Resort.

8 Days in Disney

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 (click through for larger view)

(I’ve taken this shot, almost exactly, everytime I go to Disney.   Always trying to improve it.  What do you think of this one?)

Back in March when we put our house on the market, I scheduled a trip to stay at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort.   At our asking price, I felt confident we’d sell our house and figured we’d be crammed into some temporary housing about now – making the trip a much needed getaway for the kids.

We sold (and subsequently bought) a lot faster than I thought but we made the trip happen, despite the poor timing having just moved into the new house. 

I think the family had a great time.  I had a good time.  

I knew that it had been too soon since my previous Disney trip when I started paying attention to things that “Guests” are not supposed to, as opposed to looking around all, slack-jawed and in awe like the average 1 in 15 years visitor.

The thing that annoyed me the most this trip was what I call the unnecessary exercising of small powers.  This phenomenon, I’ve observed, occurs when you have an individual who is generally frustrated by some situation.  The person will then use their position to exercise frivolous use of their “power.”    It usually occurs frequently in individuals who typically exhibit little or no control in their careers or lives.

Eg, “I can’t control my kids.  I hate my current job, my wife/husband is pissing me off and my life is generally not what the postcard advertised.  I know, let me screw with this guy.”

As a table washer in Hollywood Studios, you can make those pesky visitors wait by looking at them in the eye, then turning around and taking a full 5 minutes to wipe the rag of the table they are waiting for.

(Yeah, that happened, it was funny.)

One particular instance that got me was this queue organizer, while waiting in line to see Mickey Mouse, right after the entrance to the Magic Kingdom. 

Let me setup the situation for you.

You’ve been waiting in a line for an hour.  It is hot.  The kids are pissed.   It is crowded.   The wait time-sign out front, said 30 minutes.  People are bumping into each other in tight spaces.  Kids are crying.   Your basic “Happiest Place on Earth” scenario.  

The queue wraps around to an entrance that is ostensibly where the Mouse is hanging out to take pictures with the kiddies.   An employee asks your party size and lets people trickle into the room.

The room, is a waiting area for another room where Mickey and Minnie are doing their “Say Cheese” bit.

A short, forties-to-fifties aged Hispanic lady with a warm smile manages this waiting room with no more than 20 people.   

I am a conscientious line waiter.  I don’t cut lines, I “fill in all available space”, I even try to keep the cubic presence of my family unit to a minimum.  We stay together in an almost-uncomfortable huddle and I (TRY) to keep my kids from being annoying to other people.  So, given all this, we move into the room and fill in all available space.   (A U-Shape around the outer wall)

Miss Queue Manager Lady commences to direct each individual person exactly where they can stand, even by grabbing you on the shoulders and placing you in an invisible square  all around the outer wall-line of this room.  Surely, some Disney Imagineer’d marvel will pop down into the center of the room, proving her exactness was in our protection… Nope.   Surely she’s just making room for more people about to enter behind us?  Nope.    In fact, my family unit was probably LESS compact in our cubic presence of the available surrounding space-time after her human-tetris routine. 

A couple things here.  I don’t like people touching me.  You need to know me to touch me.  Secondly, don’t you think, after waiting for an hour and 15 minutes, the very second a person can enter the next room to get the whole Mickey photo session thing over with, they will move, with post haste, of their own will? 

Ahh yeah.. oh wait, it’s my turn?   I dunno.. lemme see… hanging out in the room with poor Air Conditioning and unhappy kids while the kids behind me bump into me every 2 minutes because they are absolutely wild… or…… enter the next room to get awesome pictures of the kids in awe of the huge Mouse…  Which… will I do…???

At any rate... this one's to you, o' wielders of unncessary small bits of power.   May your anal-retentiveness make hundreds of more customers uncomfortable. ;)

Art, Found in Motion

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MotionArt

The only photography that I've had the opportunity to do, recently has been family photography and a Dance Recital.    My daughter is a member of this dance studio owned by two very good friends of ours.    Being only six, she decided last year that she was going to bail out of dance classes.  

Midway through the season, she decided she'd like to join but that that point, it really was too late.  Kids.

Since I'd been the pet, parent-photographer for the dance studio in years past, I was asked to shoot action shots for the dance recital.  The proceeds of which, go to the benefit of the studio.   I'm always happy to oblige, though this year it was a challenge.    A few days from closing on the sale of my house with several rooms still to pack, behind @ work, behind on emails and behind on voicemails, I unplugged on the appointed Saturday morning on Mother's Day weekend for a full -- very long - day of dance photography.

I set up a perch at an eye-level, opportune location and wandered around.    I'd liked to have rented a better lens or even a D3S but for free-work, hard to justify equipment rental.

I've never considered myself a very high-brow entertainment-type person.   I like slapstick, national lampoon's-style comedy, dark craft beer and mexican food.  So, a dance connoisseur I am not.   Still, as I watched these young people dance, number after number, costume change after costume change, it struck me that I was fatigued just from walking around between my tripod perch and side-stage locations, snapping photos.  How must they feel?

it also occurred to me that… with the level of skill, grace, dexterity and stamina that these kids showed, they are still not necessarily considered "professionals." 

Clearly, being marked a professional-is overrated.   I believe people would happily pay to see these athletes perform their art.   Aside from the stress of life -- I had a good time.  

That was, until it came time to short the some 6,000 photos taken from three of us whose camera-clocks were out of sync. (sigh).

Back to the point though, this particular Ballet representation of sleeping beauty, I found to be very well done and well deserving of the standing ovation they received.    As were all the dancers that evening.

Windows

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Windows
As someone with an unapologetic history of being a Microsoft Fanboy.  I have to say, I enjoy Windows Less and Less, these days.   

Maybe it was the perfect, Apple Trojan Horse scenario.

First, I got an iPhone.  I liked it.   Decided to develop apps for it and bought a Mac notebook.
Within a year, I was fulltime on that Mac notebook for email, web browsing, document creation.  The only time I used Windows was for development of apps. (C#, etc)

Now I have a couple macs.  Even my PC is a mac.

After dedicating a good amount of thought as to what Microsoft's problem is, in this area.   I've come to the conclusion that Microsoft's problem is that they are run by "smart" people, not "pretty" people.
Apple, with its design focus, is a far friendlier experience - which appeals to the dumb-masses - myself included.

Windows, on the other hand, Is like a hospital with a pretty paint job.   
Sure, it looks nice and the colors are great but people still go there to die.

Not, that Apple people are "dumber" by any means.  I know Apple's attracted some of the greatest engineering talent available and that plenty of bright people use Apple hardware.  For me, it's about build quality.
Microsoft... takes design principles like "ribbon" -- which saves screen real estate and declutters the UI but makes the apps more cumbersome to use.   

Microsoft, you need more dumb people in charge.  These smart folks, with their crazy puzzle-solving skills, uncanny knowledge of the number of manhole covers in Manhattan and strong engineering-logic focus, are killing you in the consumer market full of, mostly-braindead dancing-with-the-stars fans and average joe - the plumber- types.

More pretty, more ease of use, less engineering is the key to consumer adoption.

As an engineer.. well.. I need a beer.

MayDay

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MayDay

 ... On this May 1st, I thought it would be good to research the origins of the distress call, Mayday. 

Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It derives from the French venez m'aider, meaning "come help me". 

Inside the Lightbulb

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InsideTheLightbulb

This is inside the Pensacola Lighthouse. Handheld HDR, 5 exposures -2 to +2, stepped at 1ev. 
Double tonemapped and then contrastified...

For anyone out there with more money than sense, I heard today that the "L" bulb is now available for sale. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/philips-twenty-20-year-led-lightbulb-prize-department-of-energy_n_1445780.html

Only $50 per bulb. It is the perfect holiday gift idea for the loved one in your life that already has everything. I would write more about it but I need to go clean up the mercury from one of those old school CFLs that my son just broke. (/grin/)

The All-American Photo Souvenir

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AllAmericanPhotoSouvenir

We all do it.   "Hey, honey, let's stand in front of Cinderella's Castle and have these nice strangers take our picture.  Here's my phone, sir, push right here to take the shot!"

When I talk to people, it seems like almost everyone have really positive things to say about the cameras on their phone.    My iPad takes pretty good pictures, though slightly less good as compared to the iPhone 4GS.   Certainly, the upcoming iPhone 5 will have an epic camera upgrade.

(My Galaxy Nexus is a fantastic productivity device and phone.   A miserable camera.  My old iPhone was a great web surfer, bad phone and pretty decent video camera)

The move towards camera phones for capturing family moments, sort of makes me sad.   So many apps out there are geared to turning your phone camera into a real photography tool.   So many real artists are using it for just that and coming up with some great results.   Some of the [photography - meets - social] leaders seem to embrace and promote this idea of using the camera phone as an artistic tool.  Many sell apps to this point.

I suppose I'm a little more bullish on the idea.   While, i respect the works of those photographers who have turned their phones into real photography tools, I can't help to think how many of us have 1,000's of crappy throw away, low resolution, high noise and poorly metered shots from our camera phones.

There is a good side to all these camera-phone-instagram junkies filling the inter-tubes with their collective camera rolls.   The populace is getting acclimated to noisy, semi-blurry pictures from crappy camera phones. If someone comes along with a decent shot from decent little camera with good optics and a fair sensor - people will go batty thinking it's a masterpiece! :)   I for one, will not be trusting my cameraphone anytime soon for capturing irreplaceable memories of my little ones.  

The Nikon J1 performed admirably on this trip..

Ain't for Sale

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AintForSale

 Upstairs inside the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida -- there is a section made up in a very Disney-fake-but-cool fashion, to be like 1950's America.    Outside an old shoppe, across from a model of the 1950's home, an older couple hang out and discuss with visitors what things were like in the 1950s.


I stopped and talked to the couple for awhile.  The typical conversation where a more "seasoned" participant pontificates on America's current state as a superpower, the price of Oil, the location in which our clothes are manufactured and the polarization of the economy.   

I didn't have the heart to tell the fella, I was just looking for somewhere to buy a fountain drink for a nickel. :)
So, this Harley is all original, except for the leather seat.  Still runs.   Sorry, American Pickers, it is not for sale.  

I'm not sure the year.   '54?

The Many Faces of Value

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DSC_3504

How do you determine the value of something?

We recently sold our house.   The buyer, I think got a good deal and we see value in the freedom to move elsewhere. 

That process of determining value in a sell or buy transaction has been the topic of many cycles of idle thought for me in the last few months.

I suppose your friendly neighborhood free-market-economist accountant would say that the value of something is the relative amount it would fetch in an open transaction.  "Something is only worth what someone will pay for it."

I suppose a philosopher would argue with that stance and say that in order for that assertion to be true no thing would hold value until the time it is sold.   What of human life?  Has no human life held value since slavery?

Does value have to be measured in terms of currency?  What of emotion?

Certainly many of the universe-denting products we all enjoy, like the iPod, enjoy some blend of emotion and value.   Apple fans LOVE their Mac.   Honda fans LOVE their Accord.   (Country music singers call them both yuppies.)

We aren't in any particular hurry to get under another mortgage but we did find a home we LIKED that week.   What a dangerous concept: allowing emotion in a transaction like a house.

I've always found a way to look at the things that I don't love about a negotiably priced item versus those things I do.  If you come to the bargaining table willing to not buy the item at all, it seems to be a much stronger stance than being all googly-eyed and desperate.  But, you have to be willing to walk away.

Take, this house.   Six months ago someone offered $60k more than we did.  

Yet, they aren't in it - now, are they?

Still, as a seller, it would be easier to sit back and say "well, it was worth this amount to one person, I FEEL someone else will come along." 

But as a buyer, I had to remind myself today that a property is only worth what it is worth TO ME - as it sits.. We see homes with tremendous potential, plenty of them.  But, you shouldn't pay for potential and when trading money for any item, it is probably a valuable lesson to keep that things are only worth the sum of their parts in the state they are in.  Irregardless of their cost or your own emotion regarding it. "I FEEL this is worth ..."

I write all this because I found a tremendous amount of liberation in the idea of offering for something what I'm willing to pay for it and not feeling the pressures of comparables and what is deemed fair.  I'm sure I come across on the other side of this like a complete butt or a flake.  The people will likely turn down the offer we sent them. I can live with that.    In the off chance they accept it, I can live with that, too.

Either way, I just gave you the secret to stress-free home-or-car shopping.  That's gotta be worth something, right?

:)