Nice thread,
Moved to Tampa a few years ago, immediately got annual passes for Disney, and also Universal and Legoland for last year. Will drop Legoland, debating Universal, will keep Disney.

Big Star Wars fan, the new area is awesome and the new rides are great. The lightsaber experience is better than the droid building, but twice the price. Cantina is cool but they cram you in there and limit your time to 45 minutes, so can be hit or miss on enjoyment. Great coasters for keepsakes.

Also a DVC member and we usually stay at the Boardwalk which lets us avoid transportation and walk to either EPCOT or Hollywood Studios. Best bar for a good beer in EPCOT is in England, and in Hollywood is the Taproom.

The Gondola is a great way to get from EPCOT to HS and back, takes about 20-25 minutes, which is about the same time it can take you to walk it, while resting your feets.

Enjoy.

Never done a food package, but we usually hit one sit down restaurant a day, with drinks. The best option we found for that was the "Tables of Wonderland" discount card. Costs about $150 I think, but lasts a year and takes 20% of the tab, including alchohol. Adds in an 18% tip, so you're basically just paying the cost of the meal/drinks with no tip each bill. A couple expensive meals and it's paid for.

We bought DVC points through resale, which is cheaper but you do lose some benefits (That weren't important to us). The important thing we learned was that you want to buy DVC where you want to stay. Disney pushes buying points at the places you don't want to stay and then using your points for places you DO want to stay, but due to the different dates that you can book, you can't always get to stay where you want.

You can also rent points from people online that aren't using them, which helps too.

There is always something happening or a special ticket deal, so there is very rarely a down time at all. January used to be a calm month, it's crowded. Prior to Spring Breaks used to be decent, it's crowded.

Wife is frustrated as we're finding less and less times that we can go and enjoy ourselves rather than fight through the crowds.

For DisneyWorld,
They just raised prices (they do a couple times a year) of the Annual passes overnight.
But they have a deal for Florida residents to get tickets as cheap as $49 per day.
Rumors are the Fast Passes will soon cost $$.

So they raise cost for the repeat devoted customers, and then let a flood of cheap non-pass locals in, and have long lines, but can pay to avoid lines. It's crazy, may not renew, but Tron, Mickey Railroad, Rattatoui, and Guardians of the Galaxy coming soon, what to do?!?

Also heard that they're closing two Asia Pacific parks due to the virus for potentially a couple months.

Years ago (Maybe 5 or 6 years?) they had a Paper Fastpass system, where you would go to kiosks on the day of your trip, get a Fastpass for a ride that was within an hour. After that hour was up you could get another Fastpass (or it was right after you rode, can't remember). So as you wandered the park you could pickup FastPasses on the fly.

Or if you were crazy like me, you would run to a ride, get a Fastpass, run back to your wife/kids, tell them where to go, run to another kiosk, get a Fastpass for the next ride, run back to the first ride to meet the family, ride ride, give them the Fastpasses for the next ride, run to a third ride... Burned a lot of calories in those days!

Problem is, if Disney can sell 100 per park, they'll sell 200. And if those sell out, they'll sell 300. They seem to be all about park saturation these days.

My wife and I have an argument about this. I think this is Disney's goal because they like as full a park as they can get. Wife says this is stupid because a filled park with discount tickets and the cheapest annual passes doesn't bring more money because those people don't spend a lot of money once in the parks. They bring their lunches and don't hit restaurants, smuggle in alcohol and don't buy drinks. But I'm seeing lots and lots of lines for food/drinks/shops, so somebody is buying lots of stuff!

Wonder if it would be cheaper for you to convert that to an Annual Pass? Pass gives some additional benefits/discounts that a regular ticket does not. A while back we had 2 annual trips planned for about a week each. During the first trip we were able to convert our tickets to annual passes (Did this IN the park, money already paid went towards the pass) and as long as the next trip was within a year, we saved a little $$.

For the characters that are completely in costume (not the ones with faces exposed like Princes or Princesses) and don't speak, are not necessarily the same gender as the Cast Member. Shorter characters (Chipmunks, Dwarves, Mice, etc.) are usually women. Taller characters (Tigger, Goofy, etc.) are generally men. If they are required to perform/dance can also influence who is in there.

Nice deals! I knew that they targeted different countries as well as Florida residents, but not exclusive deals for UK. Anything they can do to pack the parks!

Disney World closed starting Sunday. Disney Cruises stopped starting Saturday.

Hunker down and play pinball peoples.

If you check the facebook Disney and Passholder forums you'll see that the above is wrong. The parks were packed right up until closing, when it was a given that somebody there must have been sick, and lots of people booking speculation trips betting on it opening June 1st or soon after. Silver passholders with blackout periods will FLOCK to the park when it opens. Virus be damned.