This was definitely not a family friendly experience and the only magic is how they are able to extract money from your pocket. Our experience started in the parking garage, where the staff directs you to your parking space. We arrived around 2pm in the afternoon. Although the parking level had five empty rows, the staff forces you to park single-file along one row, leaving four rows empty. We were forced to park at the furthest end of the garage and walk past HUNDREDS of empty parking spaces to get to the tram stop. Seriously, if you alternated cars to each of the rows, everyone would be able to park closer to the tram stop and have some time to get out of their car before the next space is filled. These empty spaces were not the premium spaces, either.
During the busiest part of the season, they charge you "PEAK" pricing, which means they charge you the highest possible price when the lines are the longest, the crowds are the largest, and you will be able to ride the fewest attractions. Disney also does not offer any discounted or half day tickets. To offset the long lines, Disney offers the MAX pass to "speed you through the lines" The MAX pass is a complete and total waste of money and the information provided on the Disney website is vague and misleading. Although the MAX pass allows you to obtain a Fast Pass via your SmartPhone, without going to the attraction, and you can request another Fast Pass for the same attraction, you can only obtain one Fast Pass at a time and must wait an hour or more before obtaining another one. We visited the park later in the day, so most of the Fast Passes that were available were over 2 hours later and many of the popular attractions did not have any Fast Passes remaining. Subsequently we had to wait in lines of 60 minutes or more for the popular attractions, even with our MAX pass.
Towards the end of the night, we decided to watch the fireworks from Main street. However, everything was roped off and the park staff kept waving flashlights at us and yelled, "keep moving", however, they couldn't explain how to access the roped off areas. We eventually ended up along Main street, shoulder to shoulder with very pushy people and a view of the castle obstructed by a tree.
If Disney wants to improve the "magic", they need to lower their prices, limit the number of guests per day and get rid of the herd mentality when it comes to managing crowds. A half day ticket for people arriving after a certain time would be nice as well.