Why Bad Days at Disney World Are Still Better Than Good Days Anywhere Else

Addicted to the Mouse: Disney Podcast | Disney World, Universal, & Cruise Vacation Planning

This episode explores why even challenging days at Disney World surpass good days elsewhere, highlighting the park's emotional resonance thr

Key takeaways

Disney World's magic lies in transforming ordinary frustrations into memorable experiences through emotional connection.

Main topics

Nostalgia and emotional attachment to Disney
The power of intellectual property (IP) in physical spaces

Notable quotes

"A bad day at Disney is still better than a good day anywhere else."

Conclusion

Despite occasional frustrations, Disney World's unique blend of nostal

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Every so often, you just have to get a little nostalgic about the places that you love, and today is that day. Hello and welcome to Addict to the Mouse. Today is Wednesday, September 16th. You're listening to episode number 833, and today we're talking all about why bad days at Disney World are still better than good days pretty much anywhere else. Speaker 2 (0:31) Hey everybody, Dana Leslie here. Thanks for joining us today. I... love the bad days at Disney just as much as the good days, I think. Speaker 1 (0:41) I don't, I mean, I mean, I guess that's, I mean, I like good days at Disney better than bad days at Disney, but bad days at Disney, I love still better than. Good days. Being at Speaker 2 (0:53) work. Speaker 1 (0:53) Exactly. Or school or doing chores or grocery shopping or any of the myriad tasks that we normally do on a daily basis. Speaker 2 (1:03) You mean all those grown up things we have to do? Yeah, all Speaker 1 (1:06) the grown up things. So when I was thinking about this podcast coming up and I just started thinking about all the times that we would take trips down here to Orlando from Oklahoma and we would spend anywhere from a short weekend to I think 12 days was maybe our longest trip down here. But we would come two to four times per year and usually like one or two of those was a bigger trip and a couple of those were like smaller weekend adults only trips. And I just started thinking about all the memories. I just wanted to talk through like what is it about Disney World that made us keep coming back and fall in love with it so much to the point that we moved down here to be next to Disney World. Our main business is focused around Disney World. Our YouTube channel, the podcast, it's all focused around Disney World. And yeah, we get like frustrated with when Disney does like certain things or maybe Universal does certain things and we don't totally agree with it. And you know, that's just in the day to day. But overall, like the bigger picture, like there's this nostalgic draw that keeps bringing us back. And I just kind of want to dive into that just for a little bit. Speaker 2 (2:04) Yeah. And I mean, this like, this love of this company that just. it feels like it's so ingrained and part of our life and it feels like it's been that way for so long. I know. I know. Speaker 1 (2:16) And if you are new to planning a Disney World vacation, maybe you're new to Disney in general. So Disney is an entertainment company. So they are rooted. And I think that's part of it. And we may get into this part of it too, but just their characters, right? So what we refer to as IP intellectual property, but we're talking about the characters and the movies that they create, which allows them to put those things, those, those, Speaker 1 (2:41) And we get a like an actual physical representation or manifestation of these characters that we can actually physically hug or take pictures with or get to sign autographs. And we've got a million different autograph books and picture frames and all kinds of things that we've had characters autograph. But just all of those things like tying childhood memories and love for these intellectual properties and. And again, manifesting those in a physical place where we can go and visit and we actually live out those, those, those dreams. Speaker 2 (3:10) Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I feel like this is going to be a really fun conversation because I feel like we could just continue to just dive right in, but we do have a little bit of news in our review. So before we get into the good stuff, we have, so the review is from House of Mouse. Now this is from two months ago. Just know that it says need an HHN update ASAP. Hi, Dan. Yeah, absolutely love this podcast and appreciate all the hard work, joy and effort you put into every episode. Now we need an HHN update with almost all the houses announced in some scare zones. I will be needing another deep dive into the event this year. You guys are the absolute best. Keep up the amazing work. Well, Speaker 1 (3:51) thank you so much. Apologies that we were just now getting to this two months later, but thank you for the review. Hopefully our coverage of HHN just over the last, well, I guess a couple of weeks ago was adequate and you got your fix or your fill. And hopefully if you're planning to come down here for HHN, we set you up for success doing that. But yeah, we do have, we did a pre-HHN podcast. We did an HHN on the go podcast about our media night experience, which was really fun. And then we did a a pretty long YouTube video where we took you inside all the houses and got to show you Aiden as Steve in Stranger Things. Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:26) Aiden's Steve Harrington. Speaker 1 (4:28) I love it. I love everything about it. In fact, we're going to HHN tonight, so we're recording this a little bit early on Wednesday, and we're going to go to HHN tonight and hopefully be able to buy Aiden a rigatoni pizza from Louie's. So last year, Louie's did a specialty HHN pizza, which was spaghetti and meatballs on top of a pizza, which was... Fun and good. I liked it better than Speaker 2 (4:47) I Speaker 1 (4:47) thought it would. Speaker 2 (4:47) Whenever they first announced it, I thought this is the weirdest thing ever. And now I'm like, why did we not start putting pasta on pizza years ago? This is amazing. I Speaker 1 (4:55) totally agree with you. But the one downside, like it was great. The flavors were good. Actually, two downsides. So the skinny little pasta noodles of the spaghetti, when they baked the cooked spaghetti on top of the pizza, sometimes they'd get a little crispy. And then the meatballs were too big for the structural integrity of the pizza. So like you pick up the slice and it wouldn't hold the meat. So you kind of had to like fold it up. and like help it with two hands. This year. And then Speaker 2 (5:17) like the longness of the noodles was kind of just hard to like take bites of a pizza. True. Speaker 1 (5:22) But this year they have taken that idea and ramped it up to a thousand. Speaker 2 (5:27) Yeah. It's so good. So I was actually going to say, so we'll give you a little additional HHN or Halloween Horror Nights update for those that don't know what HHN is. So this is over at Universal. And my update for tonight is my favorite food items. So I will say top three things that every time we go now, I'm like, okay, which of these three things do I want is the rigatoni pizza that we were just talking about. That's at Louie's. Wait, wait, wait. Speaker 1 (5:53) But before we like totally finish on the rigatoni pizza, they've solved the meat problem. Because now it's like smaller little sausage pieces instead of big giant meatballs. And they solved the pasta problem because instead of long skinny noodles, there are big rigatoni pieces. So they do not, at least a couple of pieces that we've had, they have not gotten crispy. So anyway, it's very good. If you go to, if you want pizza with pasta on it, go to Louie's and get yourself a rigatoni pizza. Speaker 2 (6:17) Yes, yes. And then the, my, I don't know, this is very, very equal in. to the Regattoni pizza is the Smashburger Tacos. They're like cheeseburger smashburger, like on like a, almost like a flat. tortilla. So I kind of fold it up. It's delightful. Um, it is at one of the booths in New York area. I don't know exactly the name of it, but it's in one of those booths in the New York area. And then my other favorite is the birria fries. Oh Speaker 1 (6:50) yeah. And that's over across from DreamWorks where you can buy pizza fries. You can buy pizza fries, you can buy birria fries and they're both fantastic. I highly recommend both. So Speaker 2 (6:59) good. Anyway. All right. HHN is a hit this year. If you have listened to our coverage, um, and if you are going going, be excited because it's Speaker 1 (7:06) a Speaker 2 (7:06) really fantastic year. They've done a great job. So, Speaker 1 (7:08) okay. Enough monopolizing the news with HHN. What else we got? All Speaker 2 (7:11) right. Uh, so a couple of refurbishment things. I'll just stick with universal first. Um, so apparently the Kong, um, ride animatronic, like the big giant King Kong that you see at the end of the ride, uh, had some malfunctions. And so the ride is, um, closed until further notice to fix those. So it was having, we Speaker 1 (7:32) wrote it at the end of June. It was having problems. So it's been going on for a minute. Speaker 2 (7:35) Yep. So anyway, don't know when that's going to reopen, but just wanted to give everybody a heads up. Also out at Disneyland, the Pixar Place Hotel is going through a couple of refurbishments and this is actually almost over. So I'm not sure. I mean, like literally got this announcement. like in the middle of these dates but from september 8th to the 19th uh the pixel pool and spa will be closed for refurbishment and then september 8th through the 25th of september crushes surf and slide and splash pad will be closed i feel like somebody forgot to send this out a Speaker 1 (8:09) week earlier and some some people complained and that's why we're getting it now Speaker 2 (8:13) Probably. So, and then this is kind of fun. So if you, I, we actually have not seen Toy Story 5 yet. But there's, I do know that there is a cute little new character called Lily Pad in the movie. And apparently Lily Pad is going to be coming out to Toy Story land at Hollywood Studios. Speaker 2 (8:36) starting Friday, September 25th, adding new magic to alien swirling saucers. And so what Speaker 1 (8:43) is Lily pad? Speaker 2 (8:44) Lily pad. So if I, if I understand correctly, sorry, I have not seen the movie, but I think toy story five is based around how kids kind of focus more on electronic toys instead of like imaginative. Oh, it's like an iPad, like one of Speaker 1 (8:58) the Speaker 2 (8:58) kid. Yeah. It's like Speaker 1 (8:59) a Speaker 2 (8:59) cute little kid iPad. So, so. DJ Lilypad is going to be bringing brand new songs to Alien Swirling Saucers over at Hollywood Studios. So it's kind of fun. Speaker 1 (9:14) Another good example of how Disney injects their IP from their most recent movies to the parks so that you have that ability to see your favorite characters. So that's awesome. Speaker 2 (9:24) For those of us that haven't seen Toy Story 5, it's going to be streaming on Disney Plus on September 23rd so we can watch Speaker 1 (9:29) it. This is why we pay a fortune for Disney Plus. This is why we don't go watch Disney movies in the theater because they're coming out on Disney Plus a couple months later. Are we talking about the new opening of the animation building? Speaker 2 (9:43) We can. Is Speaker 1 (9:44) that? It just happened. So I didn't know. So a couple of things have happened. And I think I mentioned this on our on the go for food and wine, but I can't remember for sure. But the new Floridian Way is now open. So now the road that goes from it's basically the north side of Magic Kingdom to the west side of Magic Kingdom, like coming around Grand Floridian and the Polynesian Island Tower and all of that stuff. So there's a brand new road over there now. So they've shut down the old road that went right in front of Grand Floridian. And now the new road goes around. a huge swath of land where they're going to be expanding Villain's Land on the backside of Magic Kingdom. And then also I'm thinking redoing some of the Grand Floridian parking lot because that was a nightmare. So hopefully they do expand and reconfigure that parking lot too. It Speaker 2 (10:25) looks so good. The road Speaker 1 (10:26) is amazing. They also, instead of traffic lights, there are traffic circles, which just, it cuts down on the stop and go. So I really appreciate that Disney is constantly upping and improving their... physical infrastructure, like just trying to get people in and out of the parks faster is, is amazing. It's Speaker 2 (10:45) still not very pretty over there. I Speaker 1 (10:47) mean, still like an active construction zone, but it is open. But it Speaker 2 (10:51) is open. And, uh, I do like the progress that's happening. And then you can kind of see like the, the construction that they're still working on. Cause they're making, it looks as though they're making like another traffic circle for this other area and kind of widening and widening the road a little bit. So, um, I think whenever it's all said and done, it's, it's. really going to help out. For those of any of you that have driven over there, you know what we're talking about because it was kind of a mess. This is Speaker 1 (11:17) also the project that first shut down the walking path from Shades of Green over to the Polynesians. So that shut down. Gosh, it's been, what, a couple years now? It's Speaker 2 (11:26) been Speaker 1 (11:26) a while. It's been a while now. So when that shut down, it was because of this massive expansion. So they're basically, they're adding in these traffic circles, they're rerouting the entire road, and they're widening the entire road. So it's still ongoing, but at least the new rerouting is done. So that's nice. Speaker 2 (11:39) Yep.