Our Adventures by Disney Experience
We recently had the chance to try out the San Francisco Long Weekend itinerary offered by Adventures by Disney. In this post, we’ll offer some thoughts on the experience. Additionally, we’ll focus on the pros and cons of Adventures by Disney based on our experience, and some itineraries we’d rather do.
Adventures by Disney has been on our Disney bucket list for several years. My interest was first piqued by Erin Foster’s strong endorsement for Adventures by Disney on the TouringPlans Blog (and subsequent posts–she seems to be about the only one regularly writing about AbD.) I had written it off prior to then, but she’s a credible voice, so her praising it made me re-evaluate my position. Still, I was skeptical.
At that point, I hoped they’d bring back the Egypt tour, which was “temporary” cancelled due to political unrest. (The reason I wanted a tour rather than doing it myself in the first place!) Now, there are a number of itineraries that look appealing, including some in Europe, Africa, and Cambodia, among other places. For this trip, we were invited guests of Disney and participated in a condensed version of the San Francisco Long Weekend…
The San Francisco Long Weekend experience was enjoyable; we’ll come back to some thoughts on this specific itinerary towards the end, along with which other Adventures by Disney itineraries we’d recommend.
Even though we visited during San Francisco during a rainy weekend (as such, most of the photos in this post are ‘stock’ photos I’ve shot on previous trips to San Francisco), we still had a good time.
We dined at some new-to-us restaurants, enjoyed a few experiences we had not had, and went on an exceptional private guided tour of the Walt Disney Family Museum. The experience hit a lot of the city’s highlights, and was relatively efficient in doing so.
My only substantive knock on the San Francisco Long Weekend was that the visit to LucasFilm was totally pointless; you only go in the lobby, meaning it’s solely “I was here” photos.
My issue with this Adventures by Disney itinerary primarily was that nothing about the experience felt exclusive or was arranged in a way we could not have done ourselves. In fact, I feel we could have done a comparable itinerary better ourselves, but that’s at least in part because we’ve been to San Francisco numerous times, and have a pretty good feel for the city.
In fairness, we are childless 30-somethings who travel regularly within and outside the United States, and do so without kids. In other words, we’re probably not Adventures by Disney’s primary demographic.
Presumably, most people doing this Adventures by Disney trip won’t be familiar with San Francisco. Still, it’s a walkable city that is very tourist-friendly. Between your feet and Uber, it’s really easy to accomplish almost everything in the itinerary over the course of a weekend at your own pace. The Muir Woods and the vineyard are exceptions to this, but doing a 1-day car rental would be easy enough.
This is the problem I have with many of the Adventures by Disney itineraries in the United States: you’re paying a significant premium for the guides and convenience in a situation where neither are really all that necessary. Even if you’re not a seasoned traveler, many of these U.S. locations are approachable for casual tourists.
The one notable exception to this is the Disneyland and Southern California Tour. In large part, this is because of the VIP Jim Henson Company Studio Tour, Walt Disney Studio Tour, Walt Disney Imagineering Tour, and Behind the Scenes Disneyland Tour (including Walt Disney’s Apartment).
None of these experiences are available to the general public, and everyone I know who has done this Adventures by Disney itinerary has loved it. (It’d still be tough for us to justify as locals, but it does seem like a noteworthy exception for fans of the Disney parks.)
Additionally, and this is probably at least in part a personal thing, but I’d prefer to be setting my own schedule. I’m a control freak, and often meticulously plan some dimensions of our trip. Part of this is for photography purposes (for example, we scheduled our visit around Mont Saint Michel in France to coincide with ideal photography conditions), so it’s not entirely applicable to others.
However, I also find myself spending more or less time in certain places than a group would. I also want to customize my itinerary to the things I think will most interest me. I doubt this is unique to me. Many group trips are more efficient than an individual’s experience would be, so relinquishing a bit of control for the sake of convenience would be a fair tradeoff, but this is not true in San Francisco.
Then there’s the issue of price. The San Francisco Long Weekend is one of the least expensive Adventures by Disney itineraries, and it’s still over double the price we’d pay for a comparable experience. Realistically, we’d do it for far less money than that since we’d go for a cheaper hotel and dine at San Francisco’s many, exceptional low-budget restaurants.
For us, price is the biggest stumbling block with Adventures by Disney. We are frugal travelers who leverage hacks and other strategies to cut costs. Adventures by Disney is a premium product aimed at a luxury experience. It’s clearly not aimed at travelers like us.
When you price out the value of each component of an Adventures by Disney trip, there’s arguably not much of a surcharge for the “Disney” name over what other tour providers might charge, but it’s still considerably more expensive than what we’d pay on a ‘do it ourselves’ trip. That may not be an apples to apples comparison, but we feel it’s important to comparison-shop based on what you’d spend out of pocket, not the line-item cost of the itinerary. This is a big deal for us, and I suspect the same is true for many others.
These were all general concerns I had before we tried out the Adventures by Disney San Francisco Long Weekend, and I can’t say the experience really did anything to address any of them. The good news is that I can now see significant upsides to Adventures by Disney that I had previously overlooked. We’ll cover the ‘pros’ of our Adventures by Disney experience on page 2.
I did the backstage magic AbD and the China, both were beyond amazing. The fellow travelers and guides make it so. Yes, they are pricy, but in these 2 cases fully justified. You cannot copy these itineraries. 5 flights within China in 11 days… while I agree that other itineraries can be easily done yourself. I just did Egypt on my own. I plan on doing more trips with AbD in the future.
The SoCal trip is most definitely on my win the lottery/bucket list, purely for the exclusive tours/access, but as with you, I agree that the vast majority of the other trips don’t include anything that you can’t organise for yourself at a fraction of the cost. I’d love the meeting other like-minded Disney fans aspect, but even that can’t come close to justifying the expense.
My biggest complaint on the ABD we did was the other guest who didn’t show up where they were supposed to when they were supposed to. I would be where I was supposed to be 15 minutes early so that no one had to wait for me. Some guests would be 30 minutes late, making my wait 45 minutes. The guides were awesome. –but I felt awkward about knowing how much to tip them. Does anyone have any insight on that?
When I first looked at ABD, I thought, “that sounds great, but WAY too expensive to consider.” I’m pretty comfortable traveling Europe on my own and I certainly don’t need help in America.
However, after having read reviews of the kid-friendly experiences, I have kind of changed my mind. At some point, when I have a little bit older kids (like 8 or 9) I think I probably will book an ABD, probably to Europe or Asia. Not because I couldn’t book it on my own, but because it sounds like the castmembers and Disney have really thought of good ways to help kids engage with different cultural experiences. There’s a difference between me dragging my kid to a museum with traditional folk dance costumes and music, and them being taught traditional folk dance by locals. Disney is great at storytelling and immersive experience. So, maybe if I had kids who were old enough to go, but not quite teenagers, ABD might be a good choice.
Recently, I was browsing the possible rewards for Disney Movie Rewards and noticed the highest levels of rewards are Silver, Gold, and Platinum tours of the Walt Disney Studios. So if you have a ton of DMR points that is another option for touring the studios besides ABD.
I truly don’t understand where the market is for ABD. The prices are high enough that it is not likely to capture the segment of the US population who is truly uncomfortable with travel (on the basis that as a rule, those with higher incomes are more used to it, and/or live in major cities).
I assume the principle is to appeal to the goodwill of the (growing?) sector of well-off guests who enjoy the parks and DCL but want to see more. But I think there has to be something substantively more than just a “first rate tour”, even if it is. It’s clear what that is in relation to Disney Parks as compared with other parks; similarly, it’s obvious in the case of DCL. It’s not clear to me what the USP is for ABD. I suspect the truth is that it’s a relatively low cost operation in terms of capital expenditure, and certainly cheaper and less risky than setting up DVC outposts in “non guaranteed” locations.
When you consider the annual capacity of all Adventure by Disney tours combined, it really cannot be that high. Maybe comparable to filling up the Disney Magic once? (That’s a total guess, by the way.)
Assuming that’s true, or close to it, you only need to capture maybe 5% of Disney Cruise Line customers, with DCL capturing maybe 5% of all Walt Disney World customers (or less in both cases). I guess my point is that it’s potentially a natural progression for some Disney customers who are both affluent and fond of the Disney brand.
Like many above, I did one ABD and have since used their itineraries to create my own cheaper copy. I did the Southern California in 2013 because of the truly exclusive tours. I’ll also note that when you look at the price increases over the past few years it has kept pace with WDW ticket raises, above inflation itself. I like that they have adult only tours as I feel the group dynamic would be different, and it’s nice that they are often discounted (though it used to be more so).
I recently came back from a trip to Scotland where I copied many activities from the ABD itinerary. It’s fairly easy to set up for most tours. I recognize that ABD is a player in the luxury tour industry, but I wouldn’t otherwise do such high end hotels and meals. My personal preference is to put more money into the activities or extending a trip.
I did my ABD with my mom, and her favorite two elements were the comradery aspect and having the mucky travel details taken care of for you. After decades of planning vacations for the whole family she really appreciated having the little things like transport between hotels, snacks, bathroom breaks, extra water, et al monitored by someone else. She thought it would feel stifled and like she lost control, but instead she loved releasing and putting herself in someone’s hands. We also aren’t “team” people, so our biggest surprise was bonding with the group. That everyone has at least on shared interest, Disney, really helps. We still felt independent as we had planned out extra excursions for all of our free time.
I would do it again, but only in a place where I get truly exclusive experiences like backstage at a theme park (or if they ever add Pixar studio tour).
When we went to California a couple of years ago I really wanted to do the Adventures by Disney for all the exclusive stuff that you mentioned but it was just way too much money. Although I think some trips do look great and having Disney be your guide must be fun it’s just way to expensive to even consider any of the other itineraries when like you said you can do them for much much cheaper. I enjoyed reading your report though so thank you!
If you want to visit Cambodia, it’s actually fairly easy to do it yourself (and, obviously, much cheaper). The ABD hotel is the Sofitel, which is absolutely gorgeous. However the ABD itinerary only gives you two days in Siem Reap (for Angkor), with only half a day’s touring. This is far too short in my opinion. I stayed 5 nights in Siem Reap, which was sufficient time to see an awful lot (but not everything). The Angor complex (which is a lot more than just Angkor Wat, by the way) is the size of the city (because it was a city) and requires several days to see the highlights. You can hire private guides and cars or tuk tuks daily for a few dollars, which means you can avoid the coach groups. I also recommend visiting the floating villages of Tonle Sap lake and the landmine museum. Having looked at the ABD itinerary I would recommend doing it independently and doing the destination justice.
Thanks for the feedback on this, that’s all really helpful! Cambodia probably isn’t on our radar for the immediate future, but it’s a destination we both want to hit someday.
I’d love to hear more about your experience with Adventures by Disney at the Disney Family Museum. For example, would that make it more worthwhile doing? We would do the museum anyway (it’s on my to do list) but does the tour make the whole weekend more worthwhile?
No. The private guided tour was excellent, but the museum itself is excellent, and I don’t think it’s even remotely necessary to have a guide to make the experience at WDFM exceptional.
The downside of doing WDFM with a group, which I didn’t cover, is that you’re constrained to the amount of time the group spends there. This is one place I could’ve easily spent double the amount of time we did with the group.
There’s really no set of circumstances under which I can recommend the San Francisco Long Weekend.
Longtime lurker/reader here! Really enjoy your blog. Your post made me daydream about Cuba as a potential future DCL port of call. My parents say that’s the only way they’re ever going back. (We’re all from there, but we’re all big fans of the imperial Mouse…)
I really want to get to Cuba–and in the next couple of years while the old world charm still exists and before the country is heavily developed for modern tourism. I’d love to do a DCL itinerary there, but I fear that Disney will wait a few years.
Tom,
I went to Cuba before the ban was lifted on American travelers and in my opinion Cuba had already lost its charm then. Havana was annoying OVERLY touristy so I can’t even imagine it now or in even another year. And since you mentioned Cambodia I will throw out that I think you would love Vietnam it is still so “raw” and a photographers paradise (if you haven’t already been) oh and the FOOD! 🙂
Other than Africa and China, the world is relatively doable and, in my view, more fun to arrange on your own using ABD as a guide. I have done this with great success in both Europe and South America with kids. ABD is so expensive that you can go first class with everything for less overall money. For example, I arranged an Italy trip staying in a nice hotel on the plaza with the Parthenon, a two day private, tour of Rome tailored to our specific interests, a private Vatican tour before it opened to the public (we were alone in the Sistine chapel), a private tour of Pompeii and Herculaneum, a trip to Vesuvius, a beautiful hotel in Sorrento, a day in Capri, and two private tours in Venice before a Disney cruise all for far less than what the ABD trip would have cost for my family of four. It took a lot of trip advisor research and emails with private tour guides, but to me that kind of planning is a lot of fun and creates anticipation for the trip. I did similar ABD copies for France, England and Germany. Between my husband and me, we speak French, German.and Spanish, so that does help somewhat, but I do not think it is necessary.
A bit off topic, but did you stay at the Fairmont? If so, did you go to the Tonga Room?
I have done the Backstage Magic ABD trip (Southern California). I’m a SoCal resident (live within 10 miles of Disneyland) and an Signature AP holder. Like you mention, ABD is not for everyone. It is very pricey. That said, I felt it was well worth it (if you can afford it). I experienced many bucket list items on this short trip (Walt’s apartment, Dream Suite, Jim Henson Studios, Disney Imagineering – I wish I could tell you what we did there and ran into John Williams and Dave Smith, backstage at both Disneyland and California Adventure). I had two exceptional guides (Summer-Rose and Michael Rodriguez). Michael was a Disneyland Ambassador finalist and it really showed. As soon as we can save up enough money, we’re going to try the Italy tour or possibly Germany. We’ve run into ABD guides when we visit Disneyland (they notice our ABD backpacks) and always have a great time talking with them about our experiences. I can’t enough good things about the guides. They’re what makes ABD special.
My wife and I went on the Lights, Camera, Magic tour back in 2012, which departed from DCA and visited several locations in Hollywood. Our primary reason for taking the tour was because it included a stop at Walt Disney Studios, and we don’t have the connections that would allow us to see it otherwise. While I would have liked to have spent more time at the Studios, it was a great tour overall. Our two guides were both very knowledgeable and friendly, so we even enjoyed the stops at places we had already visited on our own. Generally speaking, I don’t like doing tour groups, but I would definitely put Adventures By Disney at the top of my list if I ever do another one.
We have often considered an ABD trip but have found that, for a family of 5, they are just too expensive.
What we have done is use their itineraries as a guide. I then book the individual components on my own. I have done this for Costa Rica and Peru. We have saved thousands of $ this way. It also allows us to operate on our own schedule and we are usually able to add a few days more than the ABD trips offer.
However, like you, we would only do Egypt, and possibly Africa, if we went with Disney. So they are still on our list.
Thanks for the post. Always love your photos! 🙂