I'm a lifelong Disneyland fan who finally visited Disney World for the first time — here's why it was a letdown
The INSIDER Summary:
- I'm 27 years old and grew up going to Disneyland in Anaheim, California.
- This year, I finally visited Disney World in Orlando, Florida, for the first time.
- Everyone told me it was bigger, and therefore better, than Disneyland.
- But the overwhelming size actually made it harder to take in.
- Plus Florida was super hot, Disney World's Space Mountain was bad, and I was missing the nostalgia factor.
- Disney World did seem less crowded than Disneyland, though.
My whole life I've been told the same thing by diehard Disney World fans — that it's far superior to the original Disneyland park in California. When I met fellow Disney-lovers and told them I was a lifelong Disneylander, my enthusiasm was often met with derision: "Well, if you've never been to Disney World, then you don't even know what you're missing."
I was always staunchly defensive of Disneyland. After all, it's the original theme park designed by Walt Disney, and I had more fond memories of my family vacations there than anywhere else in the world.
So I finally planned a six-day trip to Florida to see what all the fuss was about. At the end of my Disney World vacation, I wasn't converted. If anything, the Orlando resort had been really over-hyped.
First impressions and biggest differences
The main argument Disney World lovers make is that it's bigger, and therefore contains more rides, attractions, and restaurants than Disneyland. Obviously this is a fact, but whether or not you view this is a pro or a con to the parks is subjective.
Kim Renfro/INSIDER
Personally, I found the scale and size of Disney World to be very overwhelming, which led to more stress and exhaustion during my stay there.
The Disneyland resort area is technically made of two parks — Disneyland and California Adventure. There are three official Disney hotels you can stay in and each one is within walking distance of the two parks. If you purchase a park-hopper pass (meaning you can enter multiple parks in the same day), it's relatively easy to get from the farthest corner of Disneyland over into California Adventure —no buses required.
But Disney World is a whole other beast. I paid extra for park-hopper tickets and only used it once in five days. In order to get from my Disney World hotel — the All Star Movies Resort — to the four different parks, I had to wait for a shuttle that took a total of anywhere from 20-to-40 minutes.
Kim Renfro/INSIDER
The shuttle felt not unlike taking public transportation in a city. Depending on when I arrived at the bus stop, I would wait for anywhere between 5-to-20 minutes. Then the ride itself would take between 10-to-20 minutes, depending on which park I wanted to attend.
That alone was strange. The transportation element pulled me out of the immersive "magical" experience I've come to associate with Disney. Instead of walking around the property, contained in my bubble of happy, there was an added drudgery that came with standing in the hot sun, waiting for a bus, and driving through a blank Florida landscape.
Quantity over quality
Disney World undeniably has more attractions and restaurants within its four theme parks — Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, and Epcot. But it's impossible to do everything, which leaves first time park-goers more likely to stick with the bigger and well-known rides.
The thing is, I didn't experience many rides at Disney World that don't also exist at Disneyland and are equally enjoyable there. An exception to this was Animal Kingdom's new "Avatar" land, Pandora.
Pandora features two new rides, and one of them — "Avatar: Flight of Passage" — was the best Disney attraction I have ever been on. That 3D ride truly blew me away. And there were other bright spots, like the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in Magic Kingdom and Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom, neither of which are in Disneyland.
Kim Renfro/INSIDER
Overall, I understood that there was more to do, which might be invigorating to some. But I didn't find myself experiencing more rides that were just as good as Disneyland. If anything it was a mix of the same rides plus ones I would never ride again (I'm looking at you, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster).
Oh, and can we talk about Space Mountain for a second?
Space Mountain is one of my favorite Disneyland attractions. I ride it twice a day whenever I visit the park, and my family used to play the soundtrack music from the roller coaster as we drove down to Anaheim — which meant we memorized every beat of music and twist and turn along the way.
Space Mountain in Disney World doesn't even have music on it, and the ride set-up is more akin to the Matterhorn Mountain Bobsleds — meaning the ride is basically designed to give you whiplash and a tweaked back. I rode the Disney World version twice to make sure I wasn't crazy, but it's a markedly worse ride experience than the California version.
At the end of every long day (my step-counter peaked at 23,647 in one day) I found myself wistfully thinking of rides in Disneyland and the shorter walk back to my hotel.
The difficulty of doing Disney World on a budget
I'm also convinced that my Disney World experience would have been much different had I stayed in one of the more luxurious resorts and extended my trip by a couple of days. I booked four nights at the All Star Movies resort, one of the most affordable Disney hotels in the area. This meant we were farther from three of the four parks, and didn't have as many amenities as the other hotels.
Kim Renfro/INSIDER
My second money-saving effort was choosing to buy a 5-day park hopper pass and go to the parks back-to-back, instead of stretching out the trip into a full week and planning in some rest days. But more days would have meant more money on the hotel and food, so I powered through. The exhaustion was really setting in by day four of waking up as early as 5:30 a.m. to get the "extra magic hour" in the parks and coming back to the hotel at 10 or 11 p.m.
Why nostalgia clearly matters so much
The obvious reason for my lack of enthusiasm about Disney World stems from the lack of emotional attachment I have to the parks. Part of the reason I still love going to Disneyland hinges on the nostalgia and memories of my childhood that live inside that special place.
My family still visits the parks whenever we can, and we always give each other knowing glances as we get closer to the entrance of the park.
"Did you just feel the magic?" we ask.
Kim Renfro/INSIDER
Whether it's a swoop in my stomach or a warm-fuzzy glow, when I walk onto the Disneyland resort property, I feel like a kid again. A kid without a care in the world, a kid with roller coasters and fried food on my brain, a kid who knows she's in the happiest place on Earth.
Clearly, this meant it would have been impossible for Disney World to live up to my expectations. The combination of a larger, unknown park terrain with the missing nostalgia factor and extreme weather conditions in Florida (100-degree heat and thunderstorms = yikes) made for a worse vacation experience.
On a better note, Disney World wasn't nearly as crowded as I was expecting – likely because it's so enormous.
Kim Renfro/INSIDER
The biggest upside to being at the larger park was that I never felt claustrophobic or overwhelmed with too many people. Since Disneyland is smaller (but very popular) that means the crowd sizes are often extreme. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in Disney World on Memorial Day weekend and among a reasonable amount of people. It was easy to get around at my own pace, for the most part.
Plus, even an overheated and stressful Disney World trip is still filled with plenty of magic. The new Pandora land was really impressive, and the classic rides like Big Thunder Mountain, the Haunted Mansion, and Splash Mountain were super fun. But at the end of the day, the next time I want my Disney fix I'll be returning to California — not Florida.
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