Oh, how the good times have come… and gone?
Disney World
One would think that as time goes on that the services offered or amenities at an establishment would steadily increase in value. To that end, we’ve seen new attractions ideas pop up and plenty of new merchandise being offered at Disney World. But what about the resorts? How have their benefits been over the years? Let’s find out together. The answer may have you asking why anyone would stay at a Disney Resort.
So let’s do a little retrospective and think about this for a minute. Let’s start with the Extra Magic Hours.
Extra Magic Hours
These were when select Disney Parks would stay open late OR open early exclusively for people staying at Disney World-owned resort hotels and several good neighbor hotels nearby.
Extra Magic Hours
The perk was usually offered at one or two parks per day and it was a great opportunity for people to experience rides with significantly shorter wait times due to the parks being less crowded! It also was a nice way to enjoy the parks in lower temperatures than during the normal day, because the hours were either early in the morning or late at night. Now let’s see what we have in 2023.
Early Theme Park Entry and Extended Evening Hours
Early Theme Park Entry is available for guests of all Disney World hotels and offers people an extra 30 minutes in all four parks each day.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Extended Evening Hours are offered on select days of the week — but ONLY for those staying at Disney Deluxe Resorts and Villas. Depending on the night, resort guests can spend a few extra hours experiencing the parks and riding attractions with little to no wait.
Do you see the difference? It’s subtle, but those evening hours are not available for all guests at a Disney Resort.
Now, the next three have all gone the way of the dinosaur. Let’s just have a quick reminder about what they were:
Disney’s Magical Express
The Magical Express was a shuttle service that provided transportation between Orlando International Airport and Disney World. Guests staying at a Walt Disney World resort were able to reserve seats on the free transportation to get them from the Orlando International Airport directly to their Disney World Resort. Guests were even provided with special luggage tags, which meant that they didn’t need to collect their luggage at the airport either; these tags enabled Disney to collect guests’ luggage and deliver it to their resort later in the day.
Inside Magical Express Bus
However, as of January 1, 2022, Disney World discontinued the Magical Express airport transportation service.
There have been a couple of replacement services that are available. Mears Connect and Sunshine Flyer both emerged with paid services that provide a similar charter bus experience from the airport to your Disney resort — but now with the added benefit of not exclusively serving Disney World resorts. These shuttles can also provide service for other select hotel guests. And it was just announced that these services are merging!
Sunshine Flyer
There’s also the option of a car service, a rideshare, or even taxi. These will provide more direct experiences without multiple stops along the route, but may be more expensive or even not an option if you’re traveling with small children who require car seats or large groups that exceed the passenger limit.
Advance FastPass+ Reservations
FastPass+ was a free service included with your Disney World theme park admission which allowed guests to reserve a specific window of time to ride an attraction without having to wait in the full line. Guests booked a FastPass+ for a certain window of time and headed to the ride sometime during that window. A designated FastPass+ line allowed these guests to bypass the regular standby line, and have a very short wait before boarding the attraction.
FastPass+ Lane
The direct replacement for this is in the Genie+ and Individual Lightning Lane Attraction Selections. The Disney Genie Plus base-price option allows guests to select the next available time to arrive at an attraction (similar to the previous FastPass+ time windows) and enter that attraction’s Lightning Lane. Individual Attraction Lightning Lane Selection is a pay-per-ride service. Guests pay a fee to utilize the Lightning Lane for an individual, in-demand attraction.
Complimentary MagicBands
Back in the day, Disney World Hotel guests would receive a complimentary solid-colored MagicBand. However, Disney discontinued FREE MagicBands in January 2021.
MagicBands
Now, all of the same basic functionality can be found within the My Disney Experience app on your smart devices like allowing guests to unlock their rooms using their smartphones. So, MagicBands are no longer offered for free, but you may be able to get a discount on a new one if you have an annual pass or another discount.
Now the only thing that cannot be directly compared is that currently, resort guests can make 7 AM Genie+ reservations. We’ll leave it up to you to decide if that makes up for the other things missing from the benefits list as you make your Disney trip plans. Until then, keep it right here for all the latest Disney news!
Click here for more on the hotel perks that will extend through 2024
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You hit the nail on the head, DFB! We always stayed onsite and now we do NOT. Not nearly enough perks to offset the higher cost of staying on property. We have found we can save at least $100 a day and get a nice free breakfast by staying off property. That gives us $50 a day to spend on Genie Plus, ILL, or a nicer meal and we put the other $50 in our pocket. They almost lured me back with return of free parking, but still not enough!
I’ve said this before……I must be the only person who believes that Disney’s Magical Express was not free, rather their cost was buried in the daily resort rates.
Go back even further, and Dining Reservations were available ONLY for those staying in a Disney resort (or Swan/Dolphin). You could usually get reservations for any restaurant you wanted the day before!
Life was good when Michael Eisner ran the show. Perks were everywhere and had real value. With Bob Iger in charge, all we have to show for him is a few dark, spin and puke rides and higher prices. WDW is not the WDW that Walt envisioned no doubt, but it was still guest focused. Now it is focused on the buck.
Another missed perk: resort package delivery.
We e changed out vacation loyalty to Universal Orlando. We still love all things Disney, but we’re not fools. We’ve had enough of them picking our pockets and removing the perks that made Disney special and a joy to visit. Now, it’s just a big expensive headache, one that makes it necessary to rise early on vacation and then head to the parks, where you will be chained to your phone, as the battery quickly drains. We’ve already had one Universal vacation and are currently planning the next. Universal felt more like a restful vacation than Disney has in the past few years. And it was much less expensive.
Agree with Dottyanna. So many things that were good about Disney have left. I’m a DVC member so I’m in it for awhile but it’s disappointing.
There is no benefit to staying onsite,I certainly wouldn’t pay deluxe prices just for a few extra hours at night ,it’s absolutely rubbish right now
Totally agree. When we started going to WDW regularly in 2005 the perks were something that set Disney resorts apart from other hotels. We only used the evening Extra Magic hours and almost always stay at a Moderate resort. We aren’t morning people and planned our trip around being in the parks for the evening EMH. Now they have taken that perk away from the Moderate and Value resorts even though the price has significantly increased. Magical Express is another one that set Disney resorts apart. The ease of checking your bags at your home airport and not seeing them again until they showed up in your resort was so nice. Also the airport check in at the resort let you enjoy your last day without dealing with your bags. Also now in addition to increases in prices for tickets, APs, resorts, food, etc….now we have to pay for things that used to be free – transportation to and from the airport and Genie+. At some point I’m afraid we’ll be priced out of our favorite vacation spot.
We have Been DVC members since 2001. One of the reasons was all of the above., plus free valet parking.
The biggest disappointment is paying for Genie plus and waiting till the day of to try and plan your day. Just want I want to do instead of having an enjoyable breakfast with the family
Our first two trips were offsite but once we found out how nice it was to be in the “bubble” we never looked back. Art of Animation, 2 trips to Caribbean Beach Resort, and Beach Club. However with the lack of perks and the ever increasing costs we decided to stay offsite once more this year.
Ended up going to Disney for 3 days and Universal for 5. Couldn’t beat the buy 2 days get 3 free offer that Universal had.
Disney better step up their game because I never thought I would go to Universal and now we are thinking of an exclusively Universal trip for next summer!
Spot on, but for us one of the biggest perks ‘was ship to resort’. Resort guests who take the bus are now expected to carry gift shopping round all day in the parks, it’s not easy to pop back to the resort on the bus to offload them.
Guests who have a car always have the option to head back to the car park if required.
I don’t like the changes.
30 minutes for early entry is not even worth it.
Fastpass+ was great …put everyone on the same level and you could efficiently plan your days with rides and dining ahead of time and not be on your phone all day.
Magical Express really started the trip off in such a special way and was so convenient…one thing not to worry about.
Loved the free Magic Bands..again a great bonus!
It seems the changes have been at the expense of the guests.
Oh so true and you didnt catch them all.
Luggage delivery
Package delivery
Luggage drp off
It used to be amazing……….
Michael Kosciusko, I would gladly pay for Magical Express out of pocket if they’d bring it back. It would be worth every penny to be able to check our luggage in at the airport and forget about the hassle of picking it up, lugging it to transportation (that we also have to pay for) and dragging it to the check in desk, as well as to our room. Whether you’re just two people or a family of four, to me Magical Express was the epitome of luxury.
To the person who said Magical Express wasn’t free but was buried in the resort rate….if that’s the case why have the resort prices gone up instead of down?
Someone name one good thing that has happen at Disney in the last 4 years. Tell me how the customer is better today than in the past. Ditch Disney and enjoy the beach or Universal.
You also need to add the awful service offered in the hotels. I just returned from a 9 days stay at All Star Movies Resort and the experience had been horrible (this is my 9 time at Disney’s resort and the worst).
Universal’s hotels are much better.
I probably stay at Universal’s hotel or at a none Disney one next time.
I miss the old days when you had to be in the park to pick up the fast passes. It was free and fair. Now that we have to pay for lightening lanes, especially the ILL, I expect the line to be lightening fast. Guess what? They aren’t. Paying for this service raised my expectations, which once again Disney fell short on.
DVC Member since 1992. Used to be a “dream” vacation. Many of the former perks have been mentioned above, but I have witnessed many other changes that have chipped away and significantly erroded the so called Disney experience. For instance, some have mentioned the package delivery to your resort. In the early years, package delivery was direct to your resort room. I, too, like many others am completely disillusioned with Disneyworld. Where’s the magic, where’s the magic?
On a slightly different note, from time to time I read about “rude” cast members. Since my first visit until now, I have not had any interaction with those folk. On the contrary, I have found all cast members to be very friendly and helpful. All due respect but perhaps it isn’t the cast members attitudes?
DVC members from the U.K. we have not been back since 2019. We are visiting this September. Not looking forward to it as I used to. No magical express is a headache for us, after over nine hours on a flight it’s late in he day for us and we have luggage for 14 nights. We are having to hire a car for the six of us. Will not be buying genie thing. The only reason Disney has been able to do this is because people comply and buy it, if no one bought it, that would have been the end of that idea. Again as others said, no delivery to resorts, extra magical hours at night were ideal for us as not morning people. We will now just get two nights per week and not sure it’s for as long as used to be. Park reservation thing making it difficult for us as well. We will have to enter the park booked before hopping to another after 2pm instead of skipping the park booked if we don’t want to go anywhere in the morning when we wake up. The previous fast pass was perfect, we had our three booked in advance and then we were able to do what ever we fancied after that based on crowd levels, weather etc. I will not be tethered to my phone, I don’t even use it much at home, certainly not when I am away.
Exactly 💯. Now do DVC… Ownership is not what it used to be either. We are not considered in the perk list. Availability is at a minimum even in home resort and points charts keep being adjusted to make you use more. The respect level in reward for doling out thousands for ownership is not what it once was.
Package delivery is one i really miss. I do think Disney is missing out on lots of merch sales because of this. I can say that there have been several times I was going to purchase something but didn’t want to carry it around, said I’d get it on my way out and then forgot while in the crowd trying to exit a park. Another thing I miss was the baggage delivery with airport check in at the resort. I know they no longer have magical express but they could bring back airline check in and baggage delivery to the airport. That would be a huge help.