Coasters & Castles Travel- Christopher Steele

17/10/2024

I’m already trying to plan on checking out the new Epic Universe park in Orlando next year. Can I help you plan your next visit as well?

09/10/2024

"Should I cancel or move my trip?"

This is a loaded question that does not have a short answer (which actually makes this a bad social media topic 🤣). Nevertheless, with hurricane Milton getting ready to hit Florida and the Orlando area head on, there are THOUSANDS of people that have had to ask this question this week.

Having grown up up in South Louisiana, I'm no stranger to hurricanes. Here is what my suggestion would be to someone wondering whether Disney World is still the happiest place on earth in the middle of a major weather event:

1. Where is the storm going? The last few weeks have given us a "tale of two storms". Helene technically impacted the Orlando area, but it cause a very minimal disruption to Disney operations. With Milton heading directly towards Orlando, I would anticipate Disney World being closed for a couple days while they assess the full impact. You could very well have ridden out Helene in Orlando, spent a day at the resort during the storm, and been right back out to enjoy the rest of your vacation.

2. How strong is the storm? There is a major difference between a Category 5 and a Category 1. Orlando sits a little ways inland, so the storm won't hit it full force. The buildings and structures at Disney are also built to withstand very strong winds. Disney World will not in all likelihood be blown off of the map by a hurricane, but the sheer size of Milton is going to effect park operations for at least a day and a half. Rain and wind will begin long before the storm "lands", and it will stick around for quite a while after the storm "passes".

3. How long is your trip? If you are only in Disney World for 4 days and the parks are closed for 2 of those days, half of your trip will be impacted by the storm. If your trip is one or two weeks, 2 days may not make you bat an eye and you can simply rearrange your "rest days" to account for a brief interruption. If you had a short trip planned, you would most definitely have wanted to move your trip.

4. How long will local resources be impacted? Disney World may be able to get back up and running quickly, but there are other things to keep in mind that may indirectly affect your ability to get to and from Orlando. Are roads in and out of the city greatly affected? That can disrupt the availability of food and fuel, the second of which is necessary to get out of the Orlando area and beyond (much of the middle of the state will be greatly impacted and there could be a temporary fuel shortage over the course of a few days).

*The bonus answer to number 4 is that you may not necessarily feel the Disney magic when you are sitting in a resort cafeteria eating the most expensive ham sandwich and bottled water on earth. Hurricane experiences at Disney World DEFINITELY vary.

My personal opinion would be this: "When in doubt, move it out". It can be tough to process the idea of rescheduling a trip that you have been looking forward to for months and sometimes years! That doesn't even take into account all of the dining reservations and experiences that you may have already booked that will need to be rescheduled as well. However, don't leave anything to chance. The castle will still be there and the magic will still be waiting at a later date.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those who will be impacted over the next few days by Milton. Be safe and don't take any unnecessary risks!

07/10/2024

Traveling to and from Orlando is going to be increasingly difficult as the week goes along! My prayers are going out to those in the path of the hurricane. Everyone stay safe out there this week!

Operational Update/3 – Hurricane Milton
Together with our partners, a decision has been made to cease commercial operations on Wednesday morning, until circumstances permit safe operations to resume. We will continue to monitor Hurricane Milton to determine the potential impact at MCO. We ask you to please continue to work with your airline directly in regards to your specific flight.
Details: https://bit.ly/3TYjI0Y

02/10/2024

🚨🚨Deal Alert!!!🚨🚨

Disney dropped a couple of great promotions for the beginning of 2025 today! Reach out to me for more information!

01/10/2024

🏰Let’s talk resorts!🏰

I haven’t stayed at every Disney Resort (talk about a bucket list 😂), but I have stayed in every resort type! For my wife and I’s getaway in September I booked All-Star Sports because we just needed somewhere to lay our heads down at night. I had heard all of the complaints about the theming and room quality, but I’ve got something to tell you…..they were all wrong.

I actually REALLY liked the room, and we stayed here with all of the perks of staying on Disney property for less than the local off-site hotels because of a special that was being run.

Don’t get me wrong, I really love the luxury, theming and convenience of the Deluxe resorts; but if you are planning a shorter getaway, I would highly recommend choosing the All-Star Resorts. The only time you should absolutely avoid them is during the sports and cheer events in the Spring. Otherwise, this is a great option that want the in-site perks at a great price!

27/09/2024

Magic Kingdom fireworks as seen from the Polynesian Resort

26/09/2024

I wrote earlier this week about my favorite Epcot Food and Wine Festival food (Stone-baked bread in Morocco), so now it’s time to talk about the worst thing I tried.

Behold: The Warm Raclette Swiss Cheese from the Alps booth.

I waited in line excitedly because they were melting the cheese right off of a giant wheel of Swiss, but it was by far the least impressive plate. It was basically a scoop off Swiss Cheese, cold cut ham, a couple of baby potatoes, and a couple of baby pickles. The bread was cut like it was supposed to be a sandwich, but who knows how you are actually supposed to eat it.🤷🏻‍♂️

And let’s be honest, once you’ve eaten the fresh bread baked at the France pavilion, a piece of white bread slapped onto the plate just can’t live up to it.

The cheese was tasty, I ate the pickles, but everything else was put directly into the garbage can.

2/10. 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻

25/09/2024

I’ve been trying to share more tips and experiences from my latest Disney adventures, but Disney Parks released their foodie guide for Jollywood Nights at Hollywood Studios, and it’s got me feeling the spirit of Christmas early!🎅🏻🎄

This picture of the Holiday Mickey Hot Cocoa (which is a new addition to the party) has me adding tickets to the Christmas parties at Disney World to my Christmas list.

If you’d like to plan a holiday visit to Walt Disney World, send me a message to get started!

25/09/2024

I know, I know…the last thing we needed on the internet was another troll 😂

22/09/2024

Last weekend I tried a TON of food from the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. Of EVERYTHING that I tried, this is the best! This was the Stone-baked Bread from the Morocco pavilion, and it was absolutely amazing. They pulled the bread fresh from the wood fired oven and put it on our plate, and each of the dips were super flavorful.

18/09/2024

Welp, my wife and I took a short trip to go to the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival this past weekend, and here is my very best tip…..

DON’T GO ON A SATURDAY! 😂

I literally stood in line at the french fry booth longer than we waited in any line for a ride! The throng of crowds were so large that it gave me flashbacks of Pre-Covid era shopping on Black Friday. I could have gotten through the new standby line at TRON in a lesser amount of time than trying to order a Flauta at the Mexico pavilion. I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but the number of people utilizing World Showcase as a bar crawl over-inflated the booth lines making it next to impossible to try something in every country (which was our original goal).

As much as that may sound like a complaint, we had an amazing time and still got to try some awesome food that I’ll post about soon!

EPCOT’s festivals keep getting better and better, so if you want to check one of them out in 2025, let me know and I’d be happy to help plan your trip and festival visit (on a non-Saturday 😂).

14/09/2024

My absolute favorite character in the parks!

14/09/2024

Doing some important “research” today. Happy Birthday to me! 😂

13/09/2024

A little teaser of my birthday plans for the weekend….😎 🌎

11/09/2024

☔️As I sit in Louisiana waiting on hurricane Francine to officially make landfall, it’s got me thinking a LOT about rain.☔️

Anyone who has ever taken a trip to Disney World in the warm months (which is pretty much March through October) knows that you can almost always bank on there being a random rain shower in the afternoon! No matter what the forecast is in the weather app for your trip, make sure you always go to Disney ready for rain.

The bare minimum of preparation should be ponchos for everyone and a change of socks in your backpack. If you want to go up another level, make Crocs your shoe of choice so that you can simply take your socks off, let your feet get wet, and then throw a fresh pair of socks on once the rain stops. If you have a little one in a stroller, a stroller cover can also come in handy.

Something to keep in mind though is that they will not let you wear a poncho inside on the rides. For this reason, I would suggest keeping one of your backpacks relatively empty so you can quickly roll up everyone’s ponchos, ride, and then be able to quickly hand them back out before getting back into the rain.

Something else you can do is use the rain time to shop in one of the large park stores, watch one of the longer shows, or find a play place for the kids for the duration of the rain.

What Emma and I did in July was go into the closest restaurant and try something new to eat. The tough thing about that though is that everyone finds shelter in the closest indoor area. This makes finding seating for eating next to impossible (and don’t expect non-eaters to feel pity and give you a table).

To sum it all up in fewer words: don’t let the rain stop your day. Have a plan for when it happens and make the best of it!

05/09/2024

🏍Let's Talk About Tron!🏍

I had a whole post planned to share with you guys how I strategized to use the Virtual Queue and Lightning Lane purchase to ride Tron back to back at night.....and then Disney snuck this bit of information onto their website for the ride! 🤣

Beginning on September 9th, the virtual queue option will end and a standby line will be available. There are a lot of unhappy people online that like being able to snag a virtual queue at 7am and then not having to worry about it later. I, however, think that this is overall great for the park. Here's why:

1. For resort guests that "rope drop" at 8:30am at Magic Kingdom, there are only two lands that open until 9:00am: Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. The conventional strategy for "rope drop" was to either go Peter Pan or Seven Dwarves first. That led to these two rides having heavily inflated wait times right off the bat as the vast majority of people raced there first. With Tron entering standby and being in Tomorrowland, this opens up a third E Ticket ride that will help even out the crowds a bit more first thing in the morning.

2. Seven Dwarves is a good ride, but Tron is hands down way better. Seven Dwarves up to this point over the last handful of years has maintained a longer queue time throughout the day than any other ride in the park. For the most part it averages an hour or more. While I like the ride, I will never suggest standing in line for it for an hour. With Tron opening up and it being the newer, better ride; I'm hoping that it lessens the average wait time for Seven Dwarves to somewhere around 45 minutes. (Those that know my park strategies know that I don't enter a line any higher than 45 minutes unless it is the last ride of the day.)

3. The future outlook of wait times should vastly improve once Tiana's moves to standby as well. Disney had already previously announced that Tiana's wasn't going to remain a virtual queue option for long. Once it moves to standby, you will have four major time-eating attractions in the standby pool: Tiana's, Peter Pan, Seven Dwarves, Tron. With each of these attractions drawing it's fair share of guests into standby lines, traffic flow will improve tremendously (especially first thing in the morning at "rope drops").

What do you think of the changes coming to Tron?

22/08/2024

🍗Let' Talk Disney Food!🍗

Disney Parks carry with them the perception that everything is absolutely expensive. Everyone knows Disney has GREAT dining options, but everyone assumes that dining prices are going to be outrageous.

I am here to try and break that misconception!

What if I told you that me and my daughter ate at Disney World for every meal and averaged a total cost of $26 per meal (That is combined!). We can't grab lunch together at Chili's or Applebee's for less than $26 together.

Of course, if you fill your schedule with buffet dining, character dining, and deluxe dining reservations you will see your bank account empty faster than you can say Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious; but if you eat mainly quick service meals and know which ones to go to, then you can eat some amazing food options for no more than you can go to your local Chick-fil-a.

Want to know what my top favorite quick service spots in the parks are? Well, that's another post for another day. So don't plan on packing your own PB&J for lunch the next time you are in the Magic Kingdom. Plan ahead, know what you want to eat, and set a budget and have an amazing time checking out the best foods Disney has to offer.

18/08/2024

📣Let's Talk About the new Disney Multi-Pass!📣

When I went with my daughter Emma to Disney World in July, we had the opportunity to try out the new system right out of the gate. Here are my biggest PERSONAL takeaways:

1. You don't need it for every park. You can easily accomplish doing everything you want in Epcot or Animal Kingdom without the Multi Pass. The last week of July, the longest wait times in Epcot were Frozen at 45 minutes (we waited only 30), and Remy at 50 minutes (we waited the full 50 if not longer).

2. You don't reeaaallllyyy need Multi Pass for Magic Kingdom. I only wanted to get it for a second guaranteed ride on Tiana's, but we were off property so it was already sold out at the three day mark until our trip. This made it a moot point. If you want to know how to tackle Magic Kingdom successfully without paying extra for the Fast Pass, let me know! I'd be happy to share my secrets.

3. Hollywood Studios is the one park I would recommend budgeting and making sure you have the Multi Pass. I have watched wait times like a hawk all summer and it is consistently the one park where there are multiple popular attractions at 50 plus minute wait times each day. I am SO glad they announced new additions to this park, because as it stands it is the one park that needed to find ways of dispersing people and lowering wait times altogether.

4. Disney's DAS changes have EMPTIED the Lightning Lane lines. the people scanning into Frozen (a typically sold out ride) at 2pm while we were in Epcot were walking all the way up to where the line merges before you get on the boats. This signals to me that it is WORTH budgeting for in your trip. If you have small children that don't do great in lines or if you are looking to squeeze every last minute of your day out in the parks, you will find it worth every penny you spent on it.

5. I know it's more money to add in to your budget, but use Single Pass. You will need it to save valuable time in Hollywood Studios with Rise of the Resistance, and Tron and Guardians are hands down the two best coasters in Walt Disney World. I get that you can get up and get a Virtual Queue for free for those two, but you won't regret guaranteeing that you will get two rides on those coasters.

6. To make sure that you get the best chance at booking the most popular rides with your Multi Pass, work backwards! If you start with day 1 of your trip, you are beginning on someone else's day 5 who has already had a 4 day head start on booking their Multi Pass selection. Start on your last day and work forward to have a way higher chance of getting what you want.

There is SO much more to say about how to best use your time and strategize with the new Multi Pass system, so feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need someone with the knowledge and experience to help book your next Walt Disney World Vacation! Also take the time to follow the page so you don't miss a single tip!

12/08/2024

🦖Let's be honest!🦖

Dinoland at the Animal Kingdom had been obviously ignored by Disney for quite some time. It was definitely time to re-imagine the space and give us a reason to spend more than half a day at Animal Kingdom! With both an Indiana Jones and Encanto ride in the works (and what I imagine will be more exhibits of animals from South America), the question will wind up becoming: Does Animal Kingdom stay open long enough for you to be able to experience everything it will have to offer?

11/08/2024

🏰Let’s Speculate!🏰

Disney announced yesterday at their D23 event that they were going to create a Monsters Inc. Land for Hollywood Studios (including the first ever Suspended Coaster at a Disney park)!

I saw a lot of discussion about where it would go with many people speculating it’s going to take the place of Animation Courtyard and the Star Wars Launching Bay. I don’t think this is likely. My main reasoning is they are already spending a ton of money reimagining “The Voyage of the Little Mermaid” that takes up prime real estate in the courtyard.

I think the place that makes the most sense is the empty space BEHIND the courtyard. In my theory, not only do they expand the actual size of the park, but they also fix my biggest complaint about the park: the unnatural flow of people movement.

As the park stands right now, if I go down Sunset Boulevard to ride Tower of Terror or watch Beauty and the Beast, I have to go all the way back up to Hollywood Boulevard and towards the Chinese Theater before I can get to any other area. By placing Monsters Inc. behind Animation Courtyard, they could keep the Chinese Theater as the hub of the park, but I could also potentially walk from Sunset Boulevard, to Monsters Inc., to Toy Story, to Star Wars land without ever having to backtrack somewhere else.

So how would you get through Animation Courtyard to the new Monsters Inc. land? In my imagining of the land, Star Wars Launching Bay becomes the Monsters Inc. Energy Expo showcasing the latest in laughter technology. As you walk through the expo, the company also sets the stage for why they are going to invite human children into the monster world. All of this culminates in you walking through a newly developed giant door ushering you into Monsters Inc. Land.

Of course, I’m just a Disney daydreamer and wannabe Imagineer. What do you think about the new land and how do you think they’ll pull it off?

05/08/2024

Let’s talk about virtual queues! I have never lost a single virtual queue attempt other than the very first time I attempted it, and it’s because I made the mistake of having my wife try at the same time and it tripped the system out.

The secret behind getting a virtual queue group isn’t actually all that difficult.

I have seen some extensive (and over the top) posts about “take one phone and open world clock, take your other phone and open MDE. Turn off WiFi. Go out into the courtyard of your resort. Avoid other wireless cellular signals. Don’t stand next to large buildings, and click join now right as your second phone on world clock says 7:00.”

It’s not that serious.

Here is my super duper top secret method that has never failed:

1. Set alarm for 6:55
2. Open the MDE App
3. Click on Virtual Queue and select your attraction.
4. Confirm your party and make note of the refresh button at the bottom of the screen.
5. It is now probably 6:57 so you have 2 minutes to lay there half asleep and question why you have to wake up this early on vacation.
6. When your phone says 6:59, start pressing the refresh button and keep pressing once the button is blue again. The refresh button is the same button as the “join now” button, so keep pressing it until it tells you congratulations and gives you a group number.
7. Close your eyes for a few more minutes before getting up and getting ready to hit the parks.

And that’s it. You can almost literally do it while sleeping. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t stress about it. Just refresh starting at 6:59 until it confirms you are in a group. Follow me for more life saving tips and hacks 😂 🏰

03/08/2024

Let's talk about Roller Coasters! Here is my rankings for the roller coasters you can ride at Disney World:

1. Guardians of the Galaxy (Epcot)
2. Tron (Magic Kingdom)
3. Everest (Animal Kingdom)
4. Rock n' Roller Coaster (Hollywood Studios)
5. Seven Dwarves Mine Train (Magic Kingdom)
6. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
7. Slinky Dog (Hollywood Studios)
8. Barnstormer (Magic Kingdom)

If you are looking for beginner coasters to introduce your little ones to, I would suggest Barnstormer and Seven Dwarves Mine Train which can be found in roughly the same area in the back of Magic Kingdom.

For intermediate thrills you are best off with riding Slinky Dog and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

For top of the line thrills, you need to ride the top 4 of my list: Guardians, Tron, Everest, and Rock n' Roller Coaster.

My pick for the most underrated roller coaster at Disney World is Everest in Animal Kingdom. It rarely has longer than a 25 minute wait, and many times you can basically ride it back to back as many times as you want (especially if you use the single rider line).

03/08/2024

Let's talk Tiana's! My daughter and I are from Louisiana. Here are things we did NOT think of when riding it:

1. What is the bayou doing in Frontierland?
2. What is a mountain doing in Louisiana?
3. Why is there a New Orleans party inside of this rock?

The complaints people have about a ride based on fictional characters who are turned into animals that can talk are wildly overblown.

Here are the things we actually thought:

1. Wow, Splash Mountain is absolutely beautiful!
2. Disney did an amazing job of representing the culture of Louisiana, especially New Orleans.
3. The characters in the ride are absolutely awesome.
4. The drop at the end is still just as exciting as ever.

Splash Mountain was the first Disney Mountain I ever rode. This was my daughter's first time taking the plunge! We loved every second of it and wished we had a way of getting right back on for another ride.

My BIGGEST complaint is that they spent all that time re-imagining the ride but apparently did nothing to the bones of it. The ride can NOT stay open all day to save it's life. We were in group 34 and figured we would be on it within the first few hours of park opening. The ride did not open for the first 3 hours of the day, and we didn't get on the ride until 2 p.m.

All that being said, this ride is now a core memory that me and my daughter will share forever; and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

31/07/2024

Back to back Tron rides last night. Back to Back Guardians today!

31/07/2024

Exploring the water cycle with Moana!