Disney World The 'In-Betweeners' Way

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Know Before You Go: Prepare the Smart Way!

Good News! Things are moving here at In-Betweeners...and by things I mean me, Jen.

I just made a move from my home in CT down the east coast to Jeremy's home in NJ which is awesome as it means we'll have lots more time to work on the book.

Before the move, however, I got to sit down with a couple other in-betweeners and talk to them about their last trip to Disney. My friends, Sara and Alex, will be joining us in Disney on our next trip. They'll be serving as Guinea pigs, of a sort, for our travel tips and expertise, so I decided to ask them what their biggest problems were when traveling to Disney. Their answers didn't surprise me, and their problems (and likely yours, as well,) are all easily solved with smart preparation.

Knowing your CAN'T MISS List

Disney Itinerary

This one is probably the most important part of planning the trip, aside from booking it. If you don’t know what you want to see, you could very well end up missing it.

Hollywood Studios' Tower of Terror

Tower of Terror:

Hey, we have been working on some other portions of the book recently which have more to do with trip design than any sort of ride description. This is one of our more complete overviews of any of the attractions we've done. If you have thoughts or comments let us know. We want to hear em.

-Jer

Thrill rating: Full thrill. Not only is this a thrill ride in and of itself, the “ride pattern” changes with each cycle, so you don’t know what to expect. There are “better” patterns.

Crowd rating: At peak times, the line can get up to an hour (or more) long. Average wait time, though, is around 30 minutes, and the queue is interesting enough that the time goes by very quickly.

History/trivia: There is a Disney Channel movie based on the ride. The story is supposed to reflect an episode of The Twilight Zone, and Rod Serling’s classic introduction was digitally recreated for the ride’s prologue. The tower’s library has tons of props that pay homage to the original series. Also Rod Serling was a beast.

Tower of Terror is one of the very very few places where the attendants are not allowed to smile.

Introduction (with PICTURES!!)

We were going to launch right into posting the articles that we've started writing, but I (Jen) realized that we haven't really explained the formula we're using, or what we've deemed important etc. We came up witha few different formulas before we started writing, and now that we've written about a few different attractions, I think we've got the shape of things pretty well solidified.

Here are the major W's behind our project:

Who:
That's us, in Disney, on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. We're gigantic DIsney nerds, and we're guessing you are, too*.

Our audience is what sets our perspective apart! This all started about three years ago when Jeremy and I planned our first Disney trip together. We love the parks, but we realized there wasn't really anything written specifically for Disney lovers our age. At that time, we were both just graduating from undergraduate school and had never really been to Disney without either being a kid, or traveling with a much younger sibling/friend. I always inherently research things I love, and I started noticing that every guide seemed aimed at either people with kids, or people who are kids. Publishers tend to assume that if you're traveling to Disney without children, then you're retired/retiring. There was nothing for the in-between ages--the awkward time after being a kid and before having kids of your own. So here we are, writing what we've been looking for all this time.