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This seems like as good a thread as any to post this in... I passed my PhD today!

I don't think I could bring myself to visit with all that nonsense going on. Fortunately it'll be a few years until my daughter is old enough to be making a visit likely, hopefully by then this system will be on the scrapheap, but it feels like a one way situation at the moment. Once reliant on the queue jumping cash it's hard to come away from.

Yes, yes please, yes, yep, absolutely and yes again. Please. Thank you.

I felt inclined to write this, particularly as the world opens up and restrictions and barriers come further down. A big part of my Florida trip was Disney World. During the pandemic, my fiancé and myself decided on buying into Disney Vacation Club and essentially having a home resort at Animal Kingdom Lodge. We use points to pay for rooms and as a 35 year investment, we in the long run will save money. Disney World was the busiest I have ever seen it. This was my sixth visit to the area and baring in mind my last trip was in the middle of a Hurricane, the parks were in very different places. Covid-19 has meant the parks have fundamentally changed. There is now no FastPass, magic hours have completely changed. Parades are still not running, lots of shows are either closed or seriously cut back and you must reserve a place to visit the park. I'll do a run down of each park and the impact of the new Disney Genie system which has dramatically changed the parks in what I personally think is a hugely damaging and derogative way. This new system works at $15 a day per person and like fastpass prefer, you can reserve a place for your party to skip the stand by lines and get on rides faster. We tried this on three days of our visit. We also purchased the higher tier Lightening Lane twice on Rise of the Resistance to guarantee rides. Animal Kingdom Perhaps the Park that has seen the smallest changes since 2019, Animal Kingdom remains my favourite park at WDW and reminds me of Disneyland Paris in that there's a peace and a tranquility to the place which is missing at the other three parks. Despite Everest being closed in its further long term refurbishment, AK was wonderful. We got on each ride in the park on both days we visited and this was by far my favourite days. Genie isn't required at AK. It's rides get far less affected by downtime and with the exception of Flight of Passage, the rides here take a lot longer to get long waits. With all the trails, animal areas and rides like Kali River Rapids which never got a queue, this park is a dream. Hollywood Studios Now that HS is a park with 7 E-ticket attractions and one filler ride, its very much a park full of busy busy rides and very little stuff to do in-between. Rise, Smugglers, Slinky, Tower, Runaway Railroad, R'N'R are packed out attractions with 60 minutes. Luckily, the rides are top quality but HS lisn't an easy park anymore. We did get Genie on this day and our first pass was Slinky. Because of the way the system works and the eagerness of Disney guests, the first time available was 4pm. This locked us out of the system for two hours. At 11am we booked our second pass for Rock and Roller at 4:40. Our next one we were able to book was at 1pm and stupidly was Tower of Terror at 5pm. So our Genie was never going to be properly useful to us until 7 hours after the park opened. You can have overlapping times but it's incredibly hard to get earlier times without pure luck playing its part. Extra Magical hours are no more. Instead early opens are the name of the game with each park opening earlier to Disney World resort guests. Jury is out on this move but on this day we chose to ride Micky and Minnies Runaway Railroad. This trackless dark ride has a really disjointed narrative and to be honest I enjoyed the pre-show more then the ride itself. We got two rides overall on it and its okay. Doesn't deserve a 90 minute wait. Magic Kingdom MK is fundamentally broken. It's too busy, its worn down, its over-stretched, there's not enough to entertain 80,000 guests on a park that gets busier and busier. Increasing prices is not putting people off Magic Kingdom and Tron is going to compound the issue in devastating ways. When I first visited Magic Kingdom was lovely. Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise and Pirates to name a few had reasonable waits and you could definitely get your monies worth. No more. Jungle Cruise 90 minutes, Pirates and Haunted Mansion, 60 minutes everyday. Small World at 40 minute waits? People-Mover at 35 minute. Ridiculous. We did use Genie on both days because I think it is now the only way to enjoy this park but sadly it has huge damaging effects on non-Genie guests. IMO, Genie is too powerful at MK. The system is too cheap, the amount of good high quality rides is too high so having it means substantial gains. Reliability was also in a terrible place here. At one point Space, Thunder and Splash were down and across the parks so was many other rides. Epcot Finally, Epcot was fine. It has the most boring selection of rides compared to the other parks and whilst I like Ratatouille, I can wait 30 minutes in Paris, I will not be waiting 90 in America for the same ride with no real changes whatsoever. We had a lot of food in Epcot as it was the arts festival and there was some fantastic stuff on offer. Genie isn't very effective here as rides like Spaceship Earth, Living with the Land, Figment, Three Caballeros and Mission Space don't get anywhere near as busy as the big rides and with good planning we got on Testrack, Frozen and Soarin' relatively easily. So a mixed bag and I think Genie needs significant price increases. At the moment 50% of guests use it so the main guests get absolutely screwed over and Genie feels like a waste of money when it feels difficult to get reasonable times. The magic at WDW is still there but its strained, less care free and a little bit harder to find. A real concern as the chase for financial gain ramps up under Bob Chapek.

So I'll be doing the UK Merlin quartet and Paultons Park again this year. I'd like to do a bit more UK stuff too (Pleasurewood Hill maybe), but we'll see. As for international stuff, after a break of not going abroad (due to Covid rules and finishing a PhD), this is what I have planned concretely: April Heide Park and Hansa Park June Six Flags Great Adventure Hersheypark Kings Dominion Busch Gardens Williamsburg +a selection (or all) of Six Flags America, Knoebels and Dorney Also planning to return to Phantasialand and finally ride Fly, as well as go back to Plopsaland and Walibi Belgium for their new rides. I'd also like to do the Gardaland/Movieland Italy duo and a couple of parks in Denmark, butttttt those plans are a bit more up in the air at the moment.

Must’ve done this the same time they concreted the lake. Helium in rides? Now that’s a scheme that could take off.