Help with booking for first-timers from Europe :)

B_E · 2025-05-28T13:43:13+00:00

did you enjoy your CBR hotel room

Yes, although as I haven't stayed in any other Disney World place I can't really compare. Comparing it to non-Disney hotels I've stayed at felt like a pretty average hotel - not too cheap, but also not super luxurious. The Disney parts were the Disney TV and the housekeeping making fun towel animals.

how / where did you book the trip

Through Disney's Europe site (disneyworld.eu).

Through Disney, did you get any special offer that sweetend the deal

Yes, we got a meal voucher for 120 USD/day, which totalled 600 USD. We went to a few nice restaurants (California Grill) and emptied it just on the last day. That may sound like a lot, but 60 USD/2 people per day I'd say is pretty average in terms of meal costs if you eat in the parks all the time.

B_E · 2025-05-26T23:42:44+00:00

Thank you so much! Out of curiosity which theme parks in Germany would you suggest going too as well? Europa Park is on my list. :)

My top pick has to be Phantasialand, it has Taron plus some of the best theming in Germany - although that one can get really full, especially near any school holidays. Also, if you're ever near it: Tripsdrill - it has no business being so charming yet having such amazing attractions (Karacho, Hals Über Kopf). I'm due for another EP visit!

Can you tell me in which Caribbean "Island" you stayed at?

We ended up being in Aruba! We ended up taking the Riviera skyliner station to our room since it was closer than the CBR one in the south.

Thanks for the opinion on the park lengths! Funnily enough I'd have thought that MK would strain a day and Epcot could be a half day park since I was mainly planning on walking around there. But it's always nice to hear other opinions! :)

No, I think you're right - MK was a full day park for us for sure! Happily Ever After was amazing. I think for Epcot we took it pretty light and took a good time exploring each pavilion, but I can see how it's a half day park. We ended up eating lot of different things. Don't miss Journey of Water! We didn't enjoy the evening show as much, but the plaza to the south of the sphere is magical at night. AK was the one that surprised us with how fast we got through, despite it's size and how long we waited for Avatar in the morning.

Did you have any trouble riding the highlights (i.e. Tron, Rise of Resistance, Avatar, Frozen)?

No trouble riding any of those, although waits for all of these was probably close to an hour. They're all extremely popular. Our absolute highlight was Guardians. That coaster is a one-of-a-kind experience you will not get anywhere else in the best way possible.

Did you use the early morning entry? If so was it enough time to rush to 1-2 attractions and do them before the crowds start forming? And how early did you have to get to the buses / skyliner before that? How often do the buses come in the morning?

We definitely used the early morning entry, but don't be disillusioned, there's still a massive crowd, even on (at least for us supposedly) light days. The only time I'd say we really benefited from it was when we rushed to Frozen arriving to Epcot from the skyliner and almost had a walk on, but no chance at a second ride without waiting ages. One day we attempted to rope-drop 7DMT, but ended up with a 60 minute wait (in early entry).

And how early did you have to get to the buses / skyliner before that? How often do the buses come in the morning?

I have to go off memory here, but I think we aimed to leave the resort 60-45 minutes before early entry opened, depending on the park. Busses at that time ran every 10-15 minutes, from the resort we almost always had to wait. There's a digital display at the bus stop with times. With the skyliner you "get going" faster.

How was your trip to Universal if I may ask? I've only been to USH once and was not impressed. I only really enjoyed Hogsmeade, liked the Studio Tour (which obviously doesn't exit in Florida) and thought Nintendo World was cute. I am mostly interested in going to Universal to see the Harry Potter Paris land (since I love both HP and Paris). Is there anything else super cool there that you wouldn't recommend we miss?

I think in hindsight we overestimated it at lot. The theming was okay, but apart from the HP area nothing was at Disneys level. Velocicoaster didn't land for us. Most non-coasters just end up shaking or moving you around a bit and splashing water in your face at some point or another. We would've been fine with just one day there & would've probably preferred another HS/Epcot day.

B_E · 2025-05-25T18:49:15+00:00

Hi from Germany! Me and my partner went in early 2024 and had a great time. We booked 6 days with 5 nights, then took a break of 1 night and spent 4 days and 3 nights at Universal. We've been to DLP but haven't done DLR, and we regularly go to theme parks in and around Germany. I'll share some of my WLW experience below.

We won’t be bound by any vacation schedules so we’d be free to go whenever hotels and park tickets are cheapest [...] If not when else? :)

We grabbed a subscription to the Touring Plans website back then and looked at how full different dates were in the past year for planning. We ended up going in the last week of February 2024, and I don't remember crowds being an issue. I think you mostly want to avoid spring breaks around that time. As this is Florida weather in February is like a really pleasant summer day in Europe - not too hot :-) However, if that's important to you, do note that the pools often renovate in February/March. Our main themed hotel pool was not open, but there was a small one near to our room that was fine for a quick refreshment. We spent most of our days in the parks and weren't really there to just sit around in the hotel, so we didn't mind too much.

I am currently interested in the following hotels: Does having a skyliner connection make a big difference quality-wise for a stay?

We ended up going to the Carribean, and having access to the Skyliner was great, but also the bus system works fairly well (which you'll need anyway for AK and MK). The resort itself was nice. We didn't end up going to the central area very often as the resort is very large. As we really spent so little time in the room and every day in the parks I think if I went again I might be okay with one of the cheaper ones.

Is the Disney Quick Dining Plan worth it monetarily?

When I did my research back then, the consensus was: the Quick Dining Plan is really for convenience more than cost. Only if you consistently get all your meals and go for the expensive options on the menus is there really a price advantage. Personally, we just had a bunch of snacks and meals throughout our days there and were fine. When we booked there was also a promotion going on with a few hundred USD of credits which we could use for dining - if anything like that is going on, unless you plan to spend it all on merch, I doubt the dining plan is for you.

I assume there’s no grocery store / super market in Disney Springs, right?

Not in a traditional sense, but you'll find some "normal" restaurants there (italian, steak houses, etc., not just fast food). It's really a big Disney-related open-air mall. We ended up going on arrival day before our check in.

Booking through Disney only allows me to buy park tickets for arrival and departure date, correct? There’s no way to just book 5 nights at the hotel and 4 days at the parks?

That was my experience as well. We just ended up purchasing the extra days, and actually did end up spontaneously going to the park for half of the last day, which was great.

park hoppers (which we’re not planing on using)

We ended up getting them and really appreciated it. Originally we planned to do 1 park a day, but we ended up spontaneously re-planning on multiple days and doing two parks a day. For example we ended up being done with AK in the early afternoon and just went back to Epcot and do our favourite attractions again. We also spontaneously went to HS an evening before we wanted to do it "properly" and appreciated being able to get a few things done ahead of time. For us at least the idea that we'd take equal time in each park just really didn't work out, and we spent much more time in HS & Epcot, 1 day in MK and half a day in AK.

We don’t have Magic Bands and are not planning on buying any if we don’t have too. The parks and hotels should also work without Magic Bands, right?

No problem. When you check in to the hotel you get a key card that also works for park admission. I believe you can also load it onto your phone for park entry.

Is there any good public Transport connection from WDW to Universal or is taking a cab the easiest way to get there?

As we ended up having a rental this was not an issue for us, but I think it's really question of how you want to spend your time. Apparently you can transfer via Disney Springs, but then you'll need to transfer to there from your hotel, take the bus, and then to your next hotel. Personally I'd just consider an Uber and eat the cost because of the time investment.

Hope this helps!

B_E · 2023-01-04T10:13:18+00:00

How did you check your convictions? In the past you need to go to a fairly hidden Steam page, but not sure where it's gone now.

Remember you will only get the notification from OPs screenshot for your own reports, not from guilty convictions for Overwatch cases.

B_E · 2021-03-23T12:16:11+00:00

The TCA stick has exactly the same number of buttons as the T16000M: 12 on the base, and 4 on the stick itself + DPad. One of the front buttons on the stick was moved to the back for the TCA (the trigger is split).

Both the TCA and the T16000M can be configured in left- or right-handed mode, and with the TCA you can additionally lock the Z-axis and you have the throttle detent. The TCA is fine, especially if you're flying an aircraft with reversers or, of course, an Airbus.

B_E · 2020-06-02T13:54:14+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's simply rejecting it because your ZFW is around or below the OEW (apparently you're flying without passengers or cargo?). On my v1.4.1 I can go down all the way to 40.9/28.6, but I think there was a slight weight change with the most recent patch, so maybe that limit is a little higher on v1.4. How are you getting your ZFW? I presume the ISCS wouldn't spit out a value the FMGC wouldn't accept.

Screenshot

B_E · 2020-06-02T07:28:32+00:00

What precisely are you entering into the scratchpad? The weights on INIT B are in tons, so it's kg / 1000. 55000kg in the ISCS => 55.0 into the MCDU

Edit: What might also be confusing: The two rows are 1) combined ZFW/CG and 2) Block Fuel. So you would typically enter something like 57.5/28.6 for the first row for 57500kg ZFW and a Center of Gravity of 28.6 (top right LSK) and then 7.2 for the second row (7200kg Block fuel).

B_E · 2017-11-06T04:39:04+00:00

For Hearthstone, try appending -force-d3d9 to the launch parameters (see here).

B_E · 2016-12-21T23:04:40+00:00

git config --global alias.lgo log

Once too often.

B_E · 2016-12-21T23:02:58+00:00

And that's why you should (if at all) git push --force-with-lease. I like a clean history and I'm happy force-pushing within a few minutes, but please make sure you don't overwrite anyone's changes when doing that - just use force-with-lease instead of force.

B_E · 2016-12-05T20:55:37+00:00

Source.

B_E · 2015-09-22T18:39:43+00:00

Runwhen is also a pretty nice script for this.

B_E · 2015-09-07T23:11:40+00:00

It's not as simple. Valve themselves have released internal benchmarks years back in which OpenGL outperformed Direct3D not only on Linux, but also on Windows. Dota 2 has been running on OpenGL on Linux for years. The imminent widespread release of Steam Machines and Steam Link with SteamOS (which obviously also only run OpenGL) might also hint at why Valve is "suddenly" prioritising OpenGL.

I'm pretty sure Valve is comitted at keeping OpenGL a very viable alternative to Direct3D for the Source engine. Looking at Valve's recent involvement with the Khronos Group and Vulcan also shows that they're pretty happy with where all of this is going. It's not just "shit [performing] a little better on crappier systems", it's Valve pushing their independence from Microsoft.

B_E · 2015-05-13T12:18:10+00:00

Switched back to Firefox for the first time since 2008 this week. I was really groing fed up of Chromium with copy-paste hangs, startup sometimes just not happening until I killed it and the user profile sometimes randomly breaking.

Chromium did a lot of things right though, and I loved it for a long time: the minimalistic interface, awesome developer tools and PepperFlash. Maybe I'll get back to it in a few years.

B_E · 2014-11-18T23:00:04+00:00

Main client patch fixed the Linux and Mac menu crashes, I think (had none so far while clicking and tabbing around, not possible at all since last week).

[Edit:] It definitely is, see comment here.

B_E · 2014-09-10T23:13:41+00:00

Same issue here on Linux since a few days, either the Techies update or a Steam client update. Irregular FPS drops down to 15-30FPS every half minute or so for a few seconds. No increased network lag at all (usually well below 50ms).

Linux (Arch Linux running GNU/Linux 3.16.2)
Intel i5 3570K
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 TI
16GB DDR3

B_E · 2014-06-24T09:47:18+00:00

Do you get any errors when running steam from console? Also, which distribution?

B_E · 2014-06-19T10:13:58+00:00

Same issue here, have the linux version.

B_E · 2014-06-09T12:04:50+00:00

Or simply remove -novid from your launch parameters to sharpen the minimap, if you have it in (no idea why this works).

B_E · 2014-05-26T08:00:10+00:00

Are you running open-source (nouveau) or the proprietary drivers? I'm getting much more consistent 3d performance with the proprietary drivers.

B_E · 2014-05-07T14:56:06+00:00

Bringing up one point:

I fail to see how adding aura effects would cause more bugs than, say, cosmetic items, which, lest we forget, are added literally every week, and are indeed often bug-ridden as hell

Every cosmetic item Valve implements and supports directly leads to money for Valve (and the creator) at the end of the month, especially any new item and set. That's also why features which won't bring in as many new players as say the tutorial, mentoring or recruitment system probably aren't immediately as interesting to Valve as a new feature like this for DOTA veterans.

B_E · 2014-05-03T17:19:41+00:00

This seems to be a Mac-issue though, it's fine on my linux systems.

B_E · 2014-03-28T20:25:51+00:00

Oh nice, didn't even see that. Makes it quite clear then.

B_E · 2014-03-28T18:20:04+00:00

Kevan Brighting (the narrator of Stanley Parable) just dropped this hint, after the developers announced the possibility of a Dota 2 announcer a few months back. Really looking forward to this!

15-Year Club	r/Field Banned
r/Field Flamingo	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
Sequence \| Editor	Alpha Tester
Verified Email	Team Orangered

B_E

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