Do Disney Fans Really Want Trip Report Podcasts?

Do Disney fans enjoy hearing every detail of someone else’s vacation, or are trip report podcasts only appealing to a small niche? Lauren and Eric examine podcast popularity data, discuss what makes a trip report useful, and share highlights from their own summer visit to Disney’s Vero Beach Resort, Bay Lake Tower, Walt Disney World, and Universal Orlando.

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Do Disney Fans Really Want Trip Report Podcasts? Transcript

Lauren Hersey: Welcome to Dis and Hers, the show about what’s happening in the Disney community from his, hers and your perspective. I’m Lauren.

Eric Hersey: And I’m Eric and on today’s show we dig into some numbers to see if the Disney community actually enjoys Trip Report podcasts. And of course we follow up with a little trip report of our own.

Lauren Hersey: Yes, but before we get started, we wanna remind you that Dis & Hers can be found on all your favorite podcast platforms and also in video format on Spotify and YouTube. We’d love it if you could head over to Apple, give us a quick rating of review, and let us know what you wanna hear us talk about on an upcoming episode.

Eric Hersey: Okay, Lauren. So we just came back from a little trip down to Central Florida and on our ways to and fro. We typically listen to some Disney podcasts, and this is not anything new. I’ve been listening to Disney podcasts probably for the last 10, 15 years since we started kind of getting in. And over that time frame, I’ve sampled maybe a hundred different Disney podcasts, and I kind of gravitated towards a few. At this point in time, I think I might have like 10 in my rotation.

Lauren Hersey: There are a hundred Disney podcasts.

Eric Hersey: There’s more than a hundred. There’s just, there’s so many. I remember in 2013, 2014, when I was originally finding the podcast, you just type in Disney and Apple, and there was just tons, tons and tons. And they’re all shapes and sizes and all types of varieties. I have found myself typically, you know, anybody that knows me, I’m more into the history one, so I enjoy the history podcast. I enjoy some news, you know, if it keeps it relevant and has an interesting take on it. And then there are still some that I have that are like trip planning-esque, like, hey, you know, do this, do this. Over the years, those have kind of fallen off because once you’ve gone so many times, you only need to know so much, you know, like trip planning and so forth. But how long you’ve said we’ve been working with Jim and the Jim Hill Media Network? Four or five years, maybe? Yeah. So during that time, I’ve helped produce. You and I both been really on the back end helping produce maybe hundreds of episodes. And out of those, maybe one or two have turned out to be like trip reports, right?

Lauren Hersey: I mean, yeah, four or five years. My favorite. My favorites.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, yeah. I mean, but the thing is it’s not like Len does trip reports. Jim certainly doesn’t go and tell us about his trips. I don’t think Drew, maybe Dan. I think you and I are probably the most that we have done semi, semi trip report things. So it’s kinda had me wondering because you and I had this discussion in the car this way on the way home because we listened, we sampled a couple. We won’t name names. Some of those weren’t so great. And the other one was like we were chuckling and happy to hear about their trips.

And it just turns out that I am naturally not a huge trip report podcast listener. And I’m like, I can’t be alone. No one likes these things, right? But you and your mom were kind of like evangelizing. So what is your thoughts on general trip report podcasts?

Lauren Hersey: Okay, so I like, I don’t need to know every step that you made and, you know, I’m an optimization person. I like to, you know, spend my time wisely and I like to get some value. So when we talk a little bit about our trip later in the show, that’s what I like to focus on, is things you may have not known or things that could add value to a trip.

Make it easier, save time, save money, more comfortable, those kinds of things. But over on the Epic Universal podcast, you and Jim had Chris Cox as a guest, and he’s the co-host on The Case For with Chris Cox and Jim and Len. And he was talking about his recent trip to Disney, Universal, Epic. And because of his little tip, we were able to stay at the Helia. So if I wasn’t listening to Chris’s Trip Report, which is one of my favorite podcasts that you’ve done, then we wouldn’t have gotten to have that wonderful experience. So yay, Trip Report.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Well, I think what happens is I was actually surprised because when we, obviously the premise of the Epic Universal podcast for the first year until I got to go down there was like, “Hey, can you convince a Disney diehard to become a Universal fan?” And finally I went there and when we came back, I was surprised by how many people were like, “Hey, did you guys do a trip report? Like we want to hear like what you did. Blah blah.” And I’m like, like, I of course I came back and gave my opinions on stuff, but it was not a step by step. But there were a lot of people that request that. And I was just kind of shocked. Now, on the other hand, I do enjoy watching YouTubers. Like I like watching YouTubers go and witness and, you know, see the stuff, but I feel like it’s a little different than, “Hey, here’s my trip and here’s what we did A to Z.” So they are slightly different. So I went out there and I was trying to quantify. My thing is like, all right.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: Or do people actually listen to these? Is it a small niche or is it a larger niche? So there’s not really, of course, you’re not gonna find anybody out there that is asking the same question. That is unique to the Dis and Hers. We’re asking the nerdy, dumb questions of what the community actually did. But I did find one where somebody just says trip report podcast. Basically the title. “I’m looking for podcasts that focuses on and includes a lot of trip reports. I love WDW Prep to Go and have found a few good episodes on Addicted to the Mouse. Any other recommendations?” So, I could have probably left this, it was a year ago. I probably could have left some. Now, Lauren, you don’t listen to Disney podcasts much at all. Like you might.

Lauren Hersey: No, I love the Disney Dish. I like some news. I like the trip report stuff, but I’m more of like a video person, I would say, to get my information, yeah.

Eric Hersey: Yeah. I’m the podcaster. So the Princess of Wales said Be Our Guest Podcast does a trip report every Monday. And that was one of my early regulars. Mike Rahlmann and Ricky, and I think her name was Pam. They did three a week and we met them at Disney Indie Meet, lovely people, and they did a Monday podcast. So mentioned earlier WDW Prep School. Those were, she was on my list.

Lauren Hersey: Yes, I remember that.

Eric Hersey: But over time you kind of like hear the same things when it’s a, you know, a Q&A and a trip report and stuff like that. I’m like, I got this kind of down. I just want to hear nerdy stuff. So I kind of let them kind of lapse in a bit, but I did give them a recent try because I’m like, all right, let’s go back and see how things have tried. I noticed that before WDW Prep School used to be like, “Here’s five things you need to do,” kind of. They’re now literally all trip reports. The last one I tried to listen to was three hours long. And it was some, like, so, and I’m like—

Lauren Hersey: Who has three hours? I’m just wondering, to like listen to a trip report. I need bullet points, Cliff Notes.

Eric Hersey: Well, that was funny to me and I’m like, man, and it’s all trip report stuff now, but it is a. So I’m like, can, to her listener up, down, where are we at with stuff? There were a couple other people that threw out there that Double Your WDW, the Disney World Planning Podcast, has a lot of good trip reports. And then someone also said Hello Magic is the best. She is honest about advice, taking kids, families.

Lauren Hersey: Okay.

Eric Hersey: She also interviews other Disney creators. So I’m like, okay, so we have, we have a list here. We have some that are there. Now I wanted to find out if there was a way to actually quantify and see if these podcasts are popular. Lauren, you know how difficult podcast tracking is, right?

Lauren Hersey: Oh my gosh, it’s the hardest, ’cause you can have like a hundred thousands or hundreds of thousands of downloads per episode and nobody even knows that it exists because it’s not like social media where you can see likes and comments and engagements and that kind of thing. So it’s very difficult.

Eric Hersey: So I went online and there was one we talked about on a previous episode. I think it was Rentronic, is a tool that kind of gives you estimated data, but no one tells you anything. There’s no data coming from Apple or Spotify, kind of. YouTube’s your best indicator, but if like that’s not your platform, like if you went to our YouTube and just looked at it and said, “Well, they’re, you know, they’re not getting many listens.” Well, that’s not what the back end real data says. So it’s not a hundred percent accurate. So I did find one that was called Listen Notes. Have you ever heard of this one before? Listen Notes. Yeah. So Listen Notes is a tool that I found kind of interesting because it kind of creates a score for your actual podcast. So there’s a Listen Score and then it also gives you the global ranking of where you rank in the percentage. So of course I go on there.

Lauren Hersey: No. Mm.

Eric Hersey: And I start searching for some of our stuff. And to know what Listen Score is, Listen Score is a metric that shows the estimated popularity of the podcast compared to other podcasts that are out on an RSS feed. So it’s a zero to 100 scale. The more popular, the higher the number. Okay. And then there’s a global rank. Now, this is fun because the global rank has 3,790,000 podcasts that it’s ranking. So it gives you your global rank. So I wanted to figure out how they calculate this. So it is similar.

Lauren Hersey: Oh my gosh.

Eric Hersey: They said, this is from their website, according to Listen Notes, they calculate it by using a mathematical model based on a mix of first-party signals. So things they observe themselves, searches on Listen Notes, clicks, saves, playlist activity, and other engagement on the platform, which is nice. But third-party signals is probably very important. That’s media mentions, reviews, and other publicly available indicators of popularity. So very familiar to you as Nielsen TV ratings.

And we all kind of know how credit scores work. And I’m a nerd, so I know domain authority when it comes to websites. So it’s more similar to that. So I figured we’d pull up a couple that we know very well. And then we’ll also pull up the ones that came out that were listed as your trip reports and we’ll see how they compare. So for those not aware, Jim Hill Media Podcast Network is the feed out there that has all of the Jim Hill Media Podcasts. It is the feed that shows the Dis and Hers, it has Epic, it has the Disney Dish, so forth.

Listen Score of a 57 out of 100. That’s pretty darn good in all comparison, right? And it is in the top 0.5% globally. Pretty darn good, wouldn’t you say?

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: Wait, does that mean they’re in the top, like as far as listens go, they’re in the top, like, 1% of all?

Eric Hersey: 0.5, even better, right? It’s top 0.5%. Yeah, so yeah. So, well, the Disney Dish is a separate one because if you think about it, that you can just, if you’re only a Disney Dish fan, so like Lauren for instance, who’s not even listening to her own husband’s podcast, she’s listened to Jim and Len, which is the flagship. We know that. They have their own feed and that is a 55 listener score and it’s also in the top 0.5%. So we’re, so both—

Lauren Hersey: That is insane. Good on you, Jim Hill Media Network and the Disney Dish.

Lauren Hersey: Sorry.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: Just the Jim Hill and Len fans versus the people that love all the podcasts, both are doing well. So we, of course, brand new to the gate, we have Dis and Hers. Our Listen Score’s a 24. So we’re working on it. And we’re in the top 10% of global rank. So—

Lauren Hersey: Holy mackerel, we’re in the top 10% of podcasts.

Eric Hersey: There, there we are. So that is, now granted, we have 3,700,000 podcasts. So this is a fun little tool that I was playing with. So let’s see how the other ones fare, better or worse. All right. So WDW Prep to Go, and mind you, the Disney World Planning Podcast has been around forever, has a listener score of a 59. So right now, top dog, top 0.1%. So this podcast is super popular and has continued to be super popular.

Lauren Hersey: Okay.

Lauren Hersey: Okay.

Eric Hersey: Even with the three-hour trip reports. So I think people listen to trip reports. Be Our Guest Podcast, also an old one. Listen Score even higher than, you know, in many aspects, 58 with a 0.5%. So once again, longevity and these are their scores, proprietary scores for Listen Notes. It doesn’t talk about downloads, it talks about what they view as a popular and a reputable source here. So Double Your WDW, which I’ve never heard of. It is a Listen Score of 44.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: I have not tried this one. I might try it. It looks like the host’s name is Julie. And she’s in the top 1%. So people are listening to that. And then Well Hello Magic has a Listen Score of 34 in the top 3%. So we don’t have download data, but it sure looks like that people actually do enjoy those trip report podcasts.

Lauren Hersey: Good for her. Go, Julie.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I always say I’m America. Like if you want to know how the collective is feeling, like I feel like I can speak for the people. And I think they’re with me on this one. Team Trip Report. No, I do not. I do not.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, you just have, you have similar trends as the mass majority. Let’s just put it that way. You’re not, you don’t represent all America. You don’t say you’re America. You just, you just tend to like the things that most of the Americans like. And I am more of a niche guy. So of course I’m gonna be like liking a lot of these other podcasts. So this is interesting. I just wanna let everybody out there. You’re listening to a podcast, you like podcasts, obviously. If you’re interested in nerdy stuff, go to Listen Notes and you can do so many of these for free. I think you can get a paid version, this, that, so forth. But—

Lauren Hersey: Yes. Yes.

Eric Hersey: Also you head over to Dis and Hers. I think there’s reviews, there’s lists and stuff. And if they’re gauging by clicks, you can make us jump up real quick. So, but let us know. You know, the question I really have, truth be told, is we kind of have our hands in the back end of Jim Hill Media. We can talk to Jim and do you guys want to hear a trip? Like, would you be interested in like an actual weekly or monthly trip report podcast on the network? Like we could interview lots of people and talk about trips. Is that something that you’d be interested in?

Lauren Hersey: Ha ha ha.

Eric Hersey: This is something you have to let us know. So this is a, if you want something like this, head over and message us. Let us know.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. You know, Eric at EricHersey.com. I’m at Lauren at LaurenHersey.com. For reals, let us know.

Eric Hersey: Okay. But when we get back, we’re gonna take a break and we’re gonna give you a little trip report of our own. We promise it won’t be too long. But we did come, we did do a nice little vacation to Vero Beach. We stayed at the Contemporary Bay Lake for the first time. We were in Walt Disney World and Universal in the midst of summer, and we have our thoughts. So we’ll be right back after this.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, you wanna bring it back?

Eric Hersey: Yep. And we are back. We were just talking about it. People listen to trip reports. So we hope all of you made it through this break to listen to our trip report. But I’m gonna let Lauren, she’s the trip reporter. Lauren, give us a breakdown of what the heck we did and we’ll, we don’t necessarily go chronologically and you don’t need to know exactly where we ate every single morning for breakfast, but there’s some highs and lows.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, so I wanted to bring up Vero Beach ’cause that’s where we started our trip. And a lot of people don’t know that Disney does have two beach resorts on the East Coast. So Vero Beach is about 90 minutes south of Orlando. I guess like south, what would that be? East, I guess.

Eric Hersey: Southeast, right, yeah.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah. And then if you’re heading, I guess, north from Orlando, about five hours, you’re gonna get to the Hilton Head Resort. And we’ve stayed at both of those Disney properties. Hilton Head is extremely tough to get into, but Vero seems to be a little bit easier, and it’s really nice to go to Vero, you know, if it would make sense, mid-trip, because your body is just beat up from 20,000 steps a day.

But the timing just didn’t work out that we could do it that way. So we went there first. And you hate the beach, right?

Eric Hersey: I despise the beach. I am a very fair individual who burns at looking at the sun. I often say I’m allergic to the sun. I’ll look at it, I will sneeze, people laugh at me. Like I can handle it now because we’ve done so many Florida vacations that I don’t need to literally lube up every single moment of the day. But yeah, I’m not a beach guy. I don’t, you know, obviously terrified of the movie Jaws as a kid. So I don’t like going in and not being able to see my feet or what’s about. So I’m not a beach guy at all. Yet.

I absolutely love Vero Beach. Like absolutely. I mean, dare I say it’s one of my favorite places to go.

Lauren Hersey: Which is so bizarre to me because I love the beach. And at one point in our marriage years ago, Eric was like, “If you love the beach, like you just need to go with a friend,” which I do. But so to hear him say that Vero is one of his favorite places to be, it’s a little mind-blowing, but like, why do you love it?

Eric Hersey: Well, number one, beaches are gross in many aspects. I don’t like anything about other beaches. There are people that walk by, they’re smoking, they’re playing their loud music. It’s just you don’t have any privacy, like it’s always just everywhere. It’s very inconsistent. Normally you gotta walk like a mile to get to a place. And with Vero, on the other hand, it is officially the Disney bubble. You are in the Disney bubble. You have cast members, that’s pretty much everywhere.

Lauren Hersey: Ha ha.

Eric Hersey: That is essentially helping you feel like it’s like Disney. It’s just the same atmosphere. It seems like it has the same theming and the smells. But from this perspective, the beach and the pool are very close to each other. Right. You walk out and there is the pool environment that looks like a Disney pool. And that is where I would like to hang out. But you just walk a little bit and want a, like a little bridge and down and there’s the beach and there is none of that. So—

For someone like you guys who want to go hang out at the beach, and I’m like, “I’ll meet you at the pool.” I don’t have to trek forever. I don’t have to go anywhere. So I find that super convenient for someone like myself who would hang out under an umbrella at the pool and just listen to podcasts, listen to music, do whatever the heck I want to do and enjoy some of the sun and relaxation, but also not be super far because I’d come and check on and just make sure everybody’s cool and everything like that. So it’s easy to jump back and forth and it’s still within a Disney bubble, per se.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, yeah. And I mean the rooms are very similar to what would you get at like Beach Club. But it’s just charming. And we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about, you know, the things that Disney has taken away that we’re still bitter about. But a couple little magical extras here that I really love is, you know, Miles, our youngest, is nine and he’s still, and our oldest too, likes to make sand castles and stuff, but you don’t wanna have to schlep that stuff down.

Eric Hersey: Sure.

Lauren Hersey: To the beach every time or buy it just for that occasion. So they have all the beach toys and stuff that you can use for free. We were renting some boogie boards, like 10 bucks. So very, very affordable. And I love their cast members. I mean, I just love cast members and have so much respect for these people, creating magic day in and day out. But they do these really amazing campfires and, you know, the songs around the campfires. Like you feel like you’re at summer camp and they have all kinds of games and DJs and stuff at the pools, so to really keep you busy and entertained. As far as like any downsides of Vero, like Eric said about Muriel, we love some Muriels at Wind and Waves. That is their sit-down dining. Okay, I’ll have to tell you about the—

Eric Hersey: Give the clue. Tell them what’s up. There were three of them. There are three employees named Muriel that are all like servers at that place. And it’s just super fun. I’ve never met a Muriel in my life. And then we met like two.

Lauren Hersey: Yes. Yes. So I have never met a Muriel and there were three Muriels. There were four and one I think retired. But our server came over and introduced herself as Muriel. And she’s like, “Actually, I’m not going to be your server. I’ll get your drinks, but your server’s gonna be Muriel.” And so the lady comes over and I’m like, “Is your name really Muriel?” Like, and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, yes, I swear my name is Muriel.” And so then she says she’s been there for 20 years.

And she came from like New Jersey or something and ran into somebody when she moved down there who was the manager there. And her name was Muriel. And she recruited this Muriel. And so then the funniest part about it was years later, she’s working there, and there’s the three Muriels. And they said, “We’re gonna be getting a new employee.” And this lady, I kid you not, her name was Muriel, and she was from the exact same town in New Jersey as our server.

Lauren Hersey: Yes.

Eric Hersey: And I think everything was fun and reasonable. They have your pin trading, they have video games. I believe they had like nine Nintendo Switches in the one room. There’s a puzzle room, there’s cornhole. I think you could do yoga.

Lauren Hersey: Oh yeah. A spa.

Eric Hersey: Well, they had, if you want to wake up early enough, they even had somebody from the Animal Kingdom come at like 7 a.m. in the morning and talk about the turtles. So there was all types of stuff. So we highly, like, endorse Vero.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, to talk about the sea turtles.

Eric Hersey: And we’ve also been to Hilton Head, which is the other one on the East Coast, and I endorse that as well. But it’s so difficult to get into, but has a lot of the similarities and so forth. But I dare say we’re gonna break a little rules here and we’re gonna take another ad break real quick. When we get back, we’re gonna talk about the Contemporary and we’re gonna talk about summer at Walt Disney World and Universal and if the crowds were high or low. But after this break, we’ll talk about that.

Lauren Hersey: Yes.

Eric Hersey: So we will finish.

Lauren Hersey: And we’re back. So now moving on to a resort that almost everybody knows about, and that is the Contemporary. We got to stay at the Contemporary Bay Lake Tower, first time ever. And we’ve, if you’ve listened to us talk on other podcasts, we’ve stayed at almost every single Disney resort.

And to be totally honest, the reason we have not stayed at the Contemporary is I like a spacious room. And the Contemporary rooms at Bay Lake are the smallest in the DVC family. And they are really made for four people. We’re a family of five. On this trip, we had Go-Go, my mother, and so she and Hunter, my oldest, stayed at the All-Stars, and we were at the Contemporary, and I was pleasantly surprised. I really loved everything about it, Eric, and I know that you had similar feelings. Do you want to talk about a couple of the things that you loved besides the convenience of being able to walk to the park?

Eric Hersey: Yeah, I mean everybody knows it’s all about location there, but, you know, you’re really like a 10-minute walk to the Magic Kingdom and that’s the main reason a lot of people like this. Now, granted, I’m a Contemporary guy. I would tend to say I like the aesthetics, I like 1971 Disney and go figure that this Bay Lake Tower is kind of themed like that. The portraits on the wall and just general convenience was super, super nice.

I think that I enjoyed the, I dare say I think I enjoyed this more so than the Poly, which has been my favorite, just from a, I think, aesthetics standpoint. Like I love Steakhouse 71 because it’s like it, it’s paying tribute to the history of like the building of the Magic Kingdom and the building of Walt Disney World. And this had similar vibes. I think the room layout was, I was pleasantly surprised that it seemed bigger than it looked on paper, right? So—

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: Explain that, Lauren, because I mean when you look at square footage, you’re like, square footage, but you got there and it was like this isn’t super tiny. I figured we’d be like one room cramped together, all the luggage on top of each other.

Lauren Hersey: No, and I think these rooms were recently renovated. But the way that it, you walk in the door into like the, where the way our room was facing, to the right would have been the bathroom. And then normally in that same space you have like a kitchenette. Well, in this layout, you walked a little bit further down the hall and off to like the right-hand side, they actually had the kitchen built in.

So it would have been like there’d been a wall between the bathroom and the kitchen. And I think that that probably helped with the layout of the room. It was, you know, open and spacious. It was like the Poly where the beds are raised where you could put your luggage underneath. There were benches and things that, like, you didn’t feel like the room was cramped. And I personally like the beds that come out of the wall. And so then you have that big open space.

I thought maybe you were gonna be disappointed with the view because it wasn’t facing the castle. It was facing the backside of the Contemporary and the pool and the lake. And you were jazzed about the view, right?

Eric Hersey: No.

Eric Hersey: And the pool. You got a pool and the Contemporary.

Eric Hersey: I was. Listen, because I am a, like, I get a park view. I’ve seen Magic Kingdom. It would have been cool to kind of see the castle and stuff like that. But I love the Contemporary just as much, man. Like just to be like waking up and seeing the Contemporary to me is like amazing. Like I just love that. I like that vibe. So it was super pleasant. We were lucky. Now this did play that if you want to fill up your refillable mugs and stuff like that, there is no like kitchen or station at the actual Bay Lake. You have to make it across over to the Contemporary. So they’re on the fifth floor, there is a walking path, like tunnel, like bridge that you go. We were right next to the elevators and we’re on the fourth floor. So we went up one, like one elevator and walked across, and it was very easy access to all the shops and everything. Dare I say, might have been easier than if you were in the Contemporary and had to use their elevator system. So I imagine if you’re on far ends of different things, it could have been different, but.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: Little tip also, I buy a refillable mug every time we go to a park. I bought one in Vero and I asked them, “Will it work?” And it surely did. So that $22 refillable mug we filled about 25 times. So I mean that is a pretty good value. And we filled it at Vero and we also filled it here at the Bay Lake or the Contemporary many, many, many times.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, and a couple other things that we really enjoyed, the little extras, watching the fireworks at the top of Bay Lake. That is a separate viewing area. And we also one night we got back from the parks and the electric, what is it called? Is it called the Electrical Light Pageant?

Eric Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, no, Water Pageant. Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: Water Pageant. I’m sorry. Yeah. But that was going off and like we could watch it right from our room, which was pretty, I thought, incredible. Like you were nerding out about that. So big, big fans of the Contemporary. And now moving on to being at the park in the summer, we knew that this was gonna be a laid-back trip. We don’t do, we don’t tour like probably typical folks, especially in the summer.

Because we’re like, you know, we’ll go and maybe do a couple of rides. We rope drop and then when we get hot or it gets, you know, uncomfortable, then we’ll swim and go back in the evening and eat. But what did you think about the crowds or the heat last week?

Eric Hersey: I thought the crowds were pretty reasonable considering that it’s summertime and you normally say, “Well, everybody’s out.” So I do think the crowd levels were to the point where if you got to the park super early, you got a bunch of stuff done. Midday still became, you know, miserable like always, because it’s super hot and everybody’s in the park and so forth. Nighttime seemed to be fine. I think I did not have to use cooling towels or fans. I am very—

I think once you’ve been there enough, you know exactly how to plan your day to get in and out of buildings to keep yourself nice and cool. I felt myself starting to get a heat rash one day, and I’m like, well, we’re gonna be in and out. Like I found every shaded area you could. And if I was walking down a street, it was gonna be walking through a shop as opposed. So I think Disney just does a great job there. It wasn’t dead, so it wasn’t a matter of, you know, yeah, the heat made everybody go away. But I was not, I was not super concerned. But that does affect how we tour the parks in general. A couple things for me, just in saying, hey, Walt Disney World, a few things that I thought were great. I think Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster is a huge upgrade. I enjoyed that. I think the Animation Courtyard was a slight letdown. So those are, those are my key takeaways. Like I expected it to be, I don’t know, more maybe my hopes and dreams that there were more Easter eggs and stuff there. But when I saw it, I’m like, okay. It is just a courtyard with a couple statues. So those were a couple elements, but I think Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster was a huge upgrade and really enjoyed that. But everything else about the same.

Lauren Hersey: And, you know, yeah, and we also did a show maybe a month, a couple months ago about the most underrated attractions and everybody was talking about the American Adventure and, you know, America’s 250. We did go and do that. And normally I don’t, I’m sorry if this offends anybody, but I take a little nappy because it is very cold in there and you’ve been walking and, you know, you’re walking on the surface of the sun going through the World Showcase.

Eric Hersey: Okay.

Eric Hersey: Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: But it was a wonderful, wonderful show. I could really appreciate it. And so good on you, the fan community, for making that recommendation. A couple of things that I also really loved. We went during VIP Passholder Days and we were able to get some really awesome discounts on food. So it was a 40% off discount, and we ate at the Biergarten.

Eric Hersey: Mm.

Lauren Hersey: Which is in Germany, if you’re not familiar. I think we’ve talked about it before. It is one of our favorites. And I feel like for the price, even without the discount, the amazing entertainment that is provided is worth the cost.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, with Biergarten. I mean, I think there was a moment during my trip, if I had to say my favorite moment. I was eating whatever dessert that had some type of apple and like apple filling, and we got the guys playing the Ricola horns and were playing the bells, and I’m just eating this dessert. It was, it’s a pricey meal, don’t get me wrong, because it is like a character meal.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: But that 40% was making it so much easier to get the credit card out and pay. There were a couple that we did. I think we also did Coral Reef, which actually turned out to be really good, but most people aren’t gonna be able to do that ’cause that’s closing, I think, in September.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, and on the Disney Dish podcast, we were listening to it on the way home. They had said that they’re thinking that it’s just gonna open seasonally. And so it’s not, thinking that they’re gonna do like a big refurb or change the menu, that it’s just gonna pop up occasionally when they need the capacity, because I think Len said that dining is down 21%. Because you’re, you know, you’re choosing between dining and Lightning Lanes. If you’re not listened to that, that was really interesting take.

Eric Hersey: Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: So I was happy to get it in. The food was really good. We had eaten there several times before, and I’m like, “This is terrible.” It was terrible service. It was terrible food. I’m like, “I’m never coming back here.” And so, spur of the moment, we decided to do it. And I’m really, really glad that we did. And we also had Olivia’s. The food, not so hot this time, I don’t think, but we also ate Biergarten for lunch, and so we weren’t—

Eric Hersey: Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: Like super hungry. But anyways, it was an enjoyable trip. I am a fan person, so I recommend taking your fan if you’re gonna go in the summer. But as long as you know how to do the parks, it was still a really enjoyable experience at Disney. And then we did the back half of our trip and we headed over to Universal Studios. We gotta do it. Eric has a podcast. It’s part of the gig, right?

Eric Hersey: Yeah, no. Listen, that’s part of the deal. You can call yourself a Disney podcast, but deep down inside you are still, you know, somewhat a Universal podcast because they kind of force each other to do things. So we stayed over at the Terra Luna and it was our second time staying there. We stayed there for a couple of days. And I mean, earlier thoughts, like I don’t think it’s that much of a downgrade compared to Grand Helios. In that case, I feel like the rooms are very similar. The vibes are very similar. One thing that I will note, I think I said on a previous podcast.

I thought it didn’t take that long to get to CityWalk from Terra Luna via the bus. This time around, a little different because they, I don’t, you start at the Terra Luna and then you have to go to the Stella Nova to pick people up. So it’s kind of like that old All-Star bus sharing situation. And it just seemed like it was a lot longer to get to CityWalk this time around.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: It was not the, but I wonder if it’s a capacity issue. Like so if they don’t have enough people to justify both buses running. We got this room for $115 a night, which is bananas. And something I noticed because we are passholders for Universal too, that you would get like a 15% off at Epic, but over the summer months they were offering 40% off of—

Eric Hersey: Yeah, yeah.

Lauren Hersey: Epic. Like so you got your 15 plus the additional discount. So I’m wondering if that’s why they were only running one bus.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, I don’t know. Either way, it was fine by me. We did this on a, we got there on a Thursday night and head over to, I did E.T. I remember doing that because that’s like what we do. Go see Botanicus and we help E.T. save the freaking Green Planet. Then we did it on a Friday and a Saturday. So I guess it’s hard to gauge the crowds of a Universal park. I was hoping Universal would be like dead.

In many aspects just because of the summer crowds and the discounts that they’re trying to bring people in and stuff like that. It still seemed pretty busy. I mean, we were there on a Saturday and on Islands of Adventure and it was one of those things where like, all right, wait times are gonna go down. Wait times are gonna go down. And it didn’t go down. And you guys ended up sitting in like the Comic Strip Cafe for like two hours while we kind of did some rides here and there.

Lauren Hersey: It was miserable.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, I mean we did the, I like the Doctor, Cat in the Hat and the trolley, and that was the extent of what we did. But like again, I’m not like a huge coaster person, but we get, went, yeah, yeah. But we did do a lot of shopping, got a lot of, a lot of, a lot of Universal merch.

Eric Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: You’re not a rider.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, God.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, lots of Universal merch. They have better deals than anywhere else. I will tell you that. You went to the Brown Derby, which is an annual passholder and like everything’s 70% off. So you did a haul and actually showcased the entire bus, your haul on the way home. Everybody’s watching us. So I’m sure you’ll, anybody wants to hear more, I’m sure there’ll be something on I Want That Too, where you’ll talk about some of your great finds. But overall, Universal is fine. We did not do Epic, so, you know, it is a different story. If they would have opened it up to annual passholders, sure we would have done Epic. But right now it was, we did—

Lauren Hersey: Yes.

Eric Hersey: The proper and we did Islands of Adventure and it was a fine little trip. It was hot and—

Lauren Hersey: But I have to say though, like as we’re wrapping up here, the reason we moved, because we were supposed to do the whole trip at Disney, was that Terra Luna and Stella Nova have really amazing pools. They have amazing pools with, they had a DJ, they have a large hot tub if you’re sore from walking around the theme parks, but zero entry in multiple places. They have like the pool, like all of the things. And so we knew that we were probably gonna have some midday breaks. And so I just have to mention if a pool matters to you, I think that only, there are only a handful of resorts on Universal property that have hot tubs.

Eric Hersey: There you go. So she’s a hot tubber. I was, on the other hand, on a computer working in the lobby, trying to get podcasts uploaded because that’s what we do. But overall, my lasting trip report, like I was looking at this to see if the summer heat would cause the crowds to be down or if it’s smart to go. ‘Cause over the last couple of years we’ve gone in the summertime in July. And I would say that I don’t, I do feel like the crowds are lower.

It wasn’t like when we were at Disney during Easter break or whatever, when like that was just like you couldn’t do anything. There are obviously still gonna be times that, you know, things are gonna be busy. I would say yes, consider. But here’s my rationale, is you can’t travel and you can’t really do the parks in the heat like you would if you weren’t. You’re just physically not capable of going as hard, going as long. You need to take more breaks. So although it’s a little less busy and maybe the ride—

Lauren Hersey: That was awful.

Eric Hersey: Will be down. You need to break, like have breaks built in. So you still will probably get about the same amount of stuff done. So like, if not, you’ll be exhausted. You won’t be able to move the next day. So I don’t think it’s a great hack to go in the summer because yeah, you might not wait in line for an extra 15, 20 minutes, but you’re gonna have to go sit down for 15, 20 minutes or travel back to the hotel and so forth. So maybe there’s a little bit more sitting as opposed to waiting in line, but I don’t know if it’s a giant hack. You’ll still get to do about the same stuff.

As I witnessed, we pretty much did about the same stuff if it was like a fall trip.

Lauren Hersey: Yeah, but I think that, you know, something that doesn’t get considered, especially if you don’t go to the parks all the time, is there are wonderful shows. Wonderful shows. Like the villains show at Hollywood Studios is one of my favorites. Like I said, we did the American Adventure. There’s, you know, the Nemo show or Lion King at Animal Kingdom. Like so there’s just a lot of indoor options that I think if you took advantage of that, then to like regulate your body temperature a little bit and then you can get back out and, you know, hit the parks. The first time we went, I think it was like two or three years ago and I was like, “We will never be back in the summer.” It was an August trip. And it was just especially brutal.

Eric Hersey: Yeah. Sure.

Lauren Hersey: And then the next year, last year we went in July and this year in July. And, you know, these last two have been fine, but we also know how to do them. And I will say at Universal, the first day that we were there, we did do Universal the entire day. Like we didn’t take a midday break. It looked like it was gonna rain. It got real gray, real dark, and it ended up being like 70-something, you know, not 70 degrees, but it was cool.

Eric Hersey: Yeah.

Lauren Hersey: Actually, like I could have worn a spirit jersey and been comfortable. So that was the exception, certainly not the rule, but I think any time, any time you go besides the week of Easter or Christmas or those wild times is, you know, you can make it work.

Eric Hersey: Yeah, no, we made it work. I thought it was an enjoyable trip, enjoyed from the moment we stepped into Vero to the moment we left Islands of Adventure, all types of fun stuff. So I think it all comes down to like we just gave you a little trip report. It was pretty much a show and a half here. We went over our 30-minute allotted time to give you a trip report. But that’s what we want to know from you really, is do you enjoy trip reports? Is this something that we should continue to do or do you want us to push it out?

Lauren Hersey: Yeah.

Eric Hersey: Even further on the Jim Hill Media Network. We’re not gonna send out those Disney or Universal surveys, but you can tell us in the comments and/or you can email us directly what’s your thoughts. And if there’s enough of you that feel that this is something relevant, we will push it forward.

Lauren Hersey: All right, well that does it for this week’s episode and a half of Dis and Hers. For more, head over to DisandHers.com. There you’ll find articles, episodes, and updates. And if Disney is your vibe, make sure to subscribe.

Eric Hersey: And remember, watch what you post. You might end up in next week’s episode. Hey, thanks for listening.