stevenmilz
05-17-2011, 07:05 AM
Last week was our second trip to Walt Disney World this year (March was the first, in conjunction with DW’s business trip to Orlando). This was a full-week (Saturday to Saturday) and was solely a “family vacation”. Rather than giving a step-by-step low-down of what attractions we saw/rode in my report, I’ll outline what we did day-by-day and provide some overall comments/observations.
The basic info: travelers included me, DW, DS4 and DD2. Stayed at Poly. We were on DDP. We have FL resident seasonal passes, which of course includes the park hopper option.
GENERAL COMMENT #1: this was the first WDW trip with our brand new City Mini Double stroller. This stroller worked out great for us – for the most part. Very easy to fold, we liked the mesh pockets on the back of the seats, and it was a dream for both kids to be able to lay back and sleep (versus our old tandem double stroller where the kid in front had to sleep sitting up). We were even able to get our travel-size diaper bag into the bottom storage area via the side opening (it was a tight squeeze, but it made it). The only drawback we encountered was that the kids could still “get at” each other pretty easily when sitting up. The seat wells aren’t deep enough to provide a “barrier” between the two seats. Our kids are well into a maddening round of sibling rivalry, so their ability to hit, pinch, kick, and otherwise torment each other proved a challenge for mom and dad. I will be writing Baby Jogger to recommend they develop all-enclosing plastic bubble accessory for the stroller seats!
GENERAL COMMENT #2: for this trip, we told ourselves that we would take it “easier” than on previous trips. The plan was to hit a park in the morning, have lunch, then take mid-day breaks back at Poly before heading back out for dinner and another park. We did pretty well with this plan, which was good since it was HOT, HOT, HOT! Some of our returns to Poly were later than originally planned, but everything still worked out pretty well. The only day we didn’t do this was on our AK day. With a 6:00pm closing and a long bus ride between AK and Poly, we just didn’t have time for a break.
DAY 1: Saturday, May 7th.
Departed home in Northwest Florida at 6:40 CDT, about 40 minutes later that I would have liked. DW was away for business until the previous evening, so being only 40 minutes behind wasn’t too bad considering everything we had to do to get packed. With a couple stops, including lunch, we arrived at WDW around 3:00ish. Checking into Poly, our room was in Fiji versus where we had asked to be (Tahiti) when we made our reservations. We had stayed in Aoteroa in March, so DW asked if we could be on the other side of Poly. They ended up moving us to Rapa Nui, which was GREAT! It’s literally about a 5 minute walk to the TTC. We didn’t use the monorail station at the Great Ceremonial House the entire time we were there. I would definitely want to be on the TTC side of Poly if we stay there again. It just opens up so many transportation opportunities (no connection needed to get to the EPCOT monorail, option of resort or express monorail to MK, ferry to MK).
After check-in and getting our luggage delivered to the room (which seems to take forever at Poly), we headed to EPCOT since it was open the latest (9:00pm; MK closed at 7:00pm for “grad night”). Our first stop was at Guest Services to get a Tables in Wonderland card. Even though we were on DDP, we decided to get TIW during this trip to use for our “extras”, including any “adult beverages”. We didn’t recoup the cost of TIW ($75 for passholders) this trip, but we will during our next two WDW trips. We didn’t bother with Soarin’ since all the FPs were gone. We did hit TT once each with DS4 (via FP and rider swap). We also did the Waste Management garbage truck thing in Innoventions (DS4’s favorite), along with the kid friendly Nemo, Living with the Land, and SE. CS at Sunshine Seasons for dinner. All in all, nothing overly exciting during this short park visit. A relatively early night for us since EPCOT closed at 9:00pm.
DAY 2: Sunday, May 8th
A miracle happened today – we made RD at DHS! I wanted to be at the Poly bus stop at 8:00am, which didn’t quite happen. As we were walking to the bus stop, we saw the DHS bus heading into Poly. It was at this point that I proved the City Mini Double can operate at high velocity as I sprinted to catch the bus. We made it, got on the bus, and were at the DHS gate before they started letting folks thru the turnstiles. We were at the rope about 5 people back, which I never thought would be possible. At RD, I FPV’d to TSM while DW took the kids to Jedi Academy. The former proved fruitful – FPs for 10:05; the latter not so much. We didn’t do a good enough job of talking to DS4 about what Jedi Academy was all about and he chickened out when the CM asked him the couple of questions he had to answer. I was disappointed and frustrated since DW waited in that line, but we had to tell ourselves that he’s only four. He never saw Jedi Academy before and only knows Star Wars from Cartoon Network’s Clone Wars, so I think I wanted him to be part of J.A. more that he did. We did watch the show around noon and he liked it, so maybe we’ll convince him to try it during our September or October trip.
We did our usual kid-friendly DHS attractions in the morning – TSM, VOTLM, Disney Junior Live on Stage, Beauty and the Beast (DD2 loves Belle) plus we met Sorcerer Mickey in the Art of Animation place and a couple other characters near the hat. CS lunch at Starring Rolls, a first for us, which included yummy red velvet and chocolate/peanut butter cupcakes. After lunch, back to Poly for a break.
After naps, it was apparent that the kids were getting sick. Chest cough and slight fever. Oh no, this is not good on day #2 of 8. At this point there’s not much we can do, but the kids aren’t miserable so we’re heading back to DHS. Dinner at Hollywood and Vine, which was OK (kids didn’t eat hardly anything and were starting to get miserable). TSM two more times that night via FPs, plus the dance party at Disney Junior during EMH. I was supposed to try to meet up with fellow easyWDW’er Jill (jhalpin76) at the dance party, but we never connected. Afterwards we did determine via the forum that our kids probably battled each other with balloon swords.
All in all, it was a decent day at DHS. We rode TSM three times (four times for DW, which I’ll explain in a bit), we did some character meet-and-greets that we haven’t done in the past, and we did the things we typically like to do, although we never made it to Great Movie Ride (not a big deal), Muppets, or Backlot Tour. As for DW’s fourth TSM ride, during her second ride one of the games actually went “blue screen of death” on her! Apparently TSM is powered by Microsoft Windows – she saw the game reboot and the MS Windows logo appear. She told a CM about the problem when she got off and they quickly got her and DD2 back on the ride for another go around. Lucky devil. She still can’t beat my score though…
DAY 3: Monday, May 9th
When the kids woke up, it sounded like they were coughing up a lung, so we had to do something. We left a message at our pediatrician’s office to have him call us. A quick call to the Poly front desk yielded the name and number of a local pharmacy (Turner Drug) that delivers to WDW resorts. Our pediatrician called us back pretty quickly and called in a prescription cough medicine for the kids. I was able to pick it up at the front desk when we returned that evening. This worked out really well for us.
Today was a split EPCOT/MK day. We headed to EP later than planned due to our medical issues. Since we never would have got a Soarin’ FP for before lunch, we skipped it again. We really didn’t have a ton of time at EPCOT, but we did repeat visits to Living with the Land (DS4 really likes this ride) and Nemo, hit Figment and TT via FP and rider swap. We headed to WS for CS lunch at Yakitori House, which was pretty good. DS4 threw the mother-of-all-temper-tantrums when he didn’t want what was for lunch, which resulted in me removing him from the premises. Fortunately we were heading back to Poly for rest, but stopped by Innoventions to check out the special Disney Visa member character meet-and-greet. It was Mickey, Minnie and Goofy at the time which was perfect for the kids.
After our mid-day break we were off to MK since it had EMH that night. We had dinner at Crystal Palace, which was another first for us. The kids did a bit better at dinner this night and they liked meeting the Winnie the Pooh characters. We typically don’t wait in line to meet these characters in the park. Our observation was that dinner at CP was better than Hollywood and Vine from the previous night, especially since it included characters. However, we could have used an “adult beverage” which of course is not an option at MK. We did quite a bit at MK after dinner – POTC, JC, Aladdin’s Magic Carpets, TBMRR via FP and rider swap, Splash Mountain (a first for us) via FP and rider swap, all of the Fantasyland rides (including PP via FP – they re-opened FPs during EMH) but not Dumbo (kids can care less about that – thank heavens!), Tomorrowland Speedway and Buzz a couple of times. In the middle of all this, we caught the second half of MSEP after a BTMRR ride and also watches Wishes from the area by BTMRR’s exit. For some reason the PeopleMover wasn’t running, at least during EMH. That was a bummer because the kids like it. One interesting event – we were on the carousel and a CM comes up to us and says “hey there, how are you guys”? It’s a young kid named Hannibal who we’ve seen on previous WDW trips working rides in Fantasyland, particularly the carousel. Late at night he would often let us stay on the carousel for three, four, five rides without getting off. What does it say about you if a Disney CM actually remembers you months later? Anyway, that night was his last night before his current “stint” at Disney was finished. He was heading back home but said he would be returning. Hopefully we’ll see him back during our fall trips – he’s a really nice kid.
DAY 4: Tuesday, May 10th
Today was all day at AK. This is by far our least favorite park. This was the day we really started to feel the heat – literally. It seems that AK is just a hot park and there aren’t a lot of places to easily avoid the heat. After DW got some fancy iced coffee drink, we got FPs for KS and boarded the train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. While it was nice to be out of the heat in the AC, there wasn’t a lot capturing the kids attention so we were only there about twenty minutes. After the train ride back, we went on the Safari using the FP. The kids seem to like this ride, despite all the bumps and jolts. Our driver actually whacked something with the back of the truck shortly after starting the trip, which gave us a pretty good jolt. Lunch was CS as Pizzafari which was pretty good (we thought about Flame Tree, but with the heat BBQ wasn’t sounding overly appealing). After lunch we hit Flights of Wonder, Triceratops Spin twice and ended with the last Festival of the Lion King show. We couldn’t convince DS4 to try Dinosaur or to try ITTBAB again and based on our Jedi Academy experience from Sunday, we weren’t going to press the issue. The kids fell asleep for a little while which allowed DW and I to ride EE for the first time. We went single rider one time each with no wait whatsoever and then after they closed the single rider line we went standby, again with no wait (OK, maybe like two minutes). It always seems that we spend the entire day at AK without a lot to show for it, except for a ton of walking in the heat.
After leaving AK we bussed it to EPCOT. The bus line to get to EPCOT was really long, but we all managed to get onto the next bus – how that was possible is beyond me. All we were heading to EPCOT for was dinner at Biergarten. Originally our itinerary had us doing AK on Wednesday with Ohana for dinner, but we switched AK to Tuesday because of Josh’s park recommendations (which were correct if you base it on our EE success). We couldn’t switch dinner plans, so off to EPCOT we went. I personally loved Biergarten (including the 1-litre mug of Weiss bier), DW liked it but wasn’t thrilled. We had a 7:50pm reservation which means we only saw the band play one set, which was disappointing for the kids – they really enjoyed band and the dancing. Next time we’ll get an earlier ADR. After dinner we let the kids watch the model trains at Germany, then took a leisurely stroll back to the monorail. Another fairly early evening for us…
The basic info: travelers included me, DW, DS4 and DD2. Stayed at Poly. We were on DDP. We have FL resident seasonal passes, which of course includes the park hopper option.
GENERAL COMMENT #1: this was the first WDW trip with our brand new City Mini Double stroller. This stroller worked out great for us – for the most part. Very easy to fold, we liked the mesh pockets on the back of the seats, and it was a dream for both kids to be able to lay back and sleep (versus our old tandem double stroller where the kid in front had to sleep sitting up). We were even able to get our travel-size diaper bag into the bottom storage area via the side opening (it was a tight squeeze, but it made it). The only drawback we encountered was that the kids could still “get at” each other pretty easily when sitting up. The seat wells aren’t deep enough to provide a “barrier” between the two seats. Our kids are well into a maddening round of sibling rivalry, so their ability to hit, pinch, kick, and otherwise torment each other proved a challenge for mom and dad. I will be writing Baby Jogger to recommend they develop all-enclosing plastic bubble accessory for the stroller seats!
GENERAL COMMENT #2: for this trip, we told ourselves that we would take it “easier” than on previous trips. The plan was to hit a park in the morning, have lunch, then take mid-day breaks back at Poly before heading back out for dinner and another park. We did pretty well with this plan, which was good since it was HOT, HOT, HOT! Some of our returns to Poly were later than originally planned, but everything still worked out pretty well. The only day we didn’t do this was on our AK day. With a 6:00pm closing and a long bus ride between AK and Poly, we just didn’t have time for a break.
DAY 1: Saturday, May 7th.
Departed home in Northwest Florida at 6:40 CDT, about 40 minutes later that I would have liked. DW was away for business until the previous evening, so being only 40 minutes behind wasn’t too bad considering everything we had to do to get packed. With a couple stops, including lunch, we arrived at WDW around 3:00ish. Checking into Poly, our room was in Fiji versus where we had asked to be (Tahiti) when we made our reservations. We had stayed in Aoteroa in March, so DW asked if we could be on the other side of Poly. They ended up moving us to Rapa Nui, which was GREAT! It’s literally about a 5 minute walk to the TTC. We didn’t use the monorail station at the Great Ceremonial House the entire time we were there. I would definitely want to be on the TTC side of Poly if we stay there again. It just opens up so many transportation opportunities (no connection needed to get to the EPCOT monorail, option of resort or express monorail to MK, ferry to MK).
After check-in and getting our luggage delivered to the room (which seems to take forever at Poly), we headed to EPCOT since it was open the latest (9:00pm; MK closed at 7:00pm for “grad night”). Our first stop was at Guest Services to get a Tables in Wonderland card. Even though we were on DDP, we decided to get TIW during this trip to use for our “extras”, including any “adult beverages”. We didn’t recoup the cost of TIW ($75 for passholders) this trip, but we will during our next two WDW trips. We didn’t bother with Soarin’ since all the FPs were gone. We did hit TT once each with DS4 (via FP and rider swap). We also did the Waste Management garbage truck thing in Innoventions (DS4’s favorite), along with the kid friendly Nemo, Living with the Land, and SE. CS at Sunshine Seasons for dinner. All in all, nothing overly exciting during this short park visit. A relatively early night for us since EPCOT closed at 9:00pm.
DAY 2: Sunday, May 8th
A miracle happened today – we made RD at DHS! I wanted to be at the Poly bus stop at 8:00am, which didn’t quite happen. As we were walking to the bus stop, we saw the DHS bus heading into Poly. It was at this point that I proved the City Mini Double can operate at high velocity as I sprinted to catch the bus. We made it, got on the bus, and were at the DHS gate before they started letting folks thru the turnstiles. We were at the rope about 5 people back, which I never thought would be possible. At RD, I FPV’d to TSM while DW took the kids to Jedi Academy. The former proved fruitful – FPs for 10:05; the latter not so much. We didn’t do a good enough job of talking to DS4 about what Jedi Academy was all about and he chickened out when the CM asked him the couple of questions he had to answer. I was disappointed and frustrated since DW waited in that line, but we had to tell ourselves that he’s only four. He never saw Jedi Academy before and only knows Star Wars from Cartoon Network’s Clone Wars, so I think I wanted him to be part of J.A. more that he did. We did watch the show around noon and he liked it, so maybe we’ll convince him to try it during our September or October trip.
We did our usual kid-friendly DHS attractions in the morning – TSM, VOTLM, Disney Junior Live on Stage, Beauty and the Beast (DD2 loves Belle) plus we met Sorcerer Mickey in the Art of Animation place and a couple other characters near the hat. CS lunch at Starring Rolls, a first for us, which included yummy red velvet and chocolate/peanut butter cupcakes. After lunch, back to Poly for a break.
After naps, it was apparent that the kids were getting sick. Chest cough and slight fever. Oh no, this is not good on day #2 of 8. At this point there’s not much we can do, but the kids aren’t miserable so we’re heading back to DHS. Dinner at Hollywood and Vine, which was OK (kids didn’t eat hardly anything and were starting to get miserable). TSM two more times that night via FPs, plus the dance party at Disney Junior during EMH. I was supposed to try to meet up with fellow easyWDW’er Jill (jhalpin76) at the dance party, but we never connected. Afterwards we did determine via the forum that our kids probably battled each other with balloon swords.
All in all, it was a decent day at DHS. We rode TSM three times (four times for DW, which I’ll explain in a bit), we did some character meet-and-greets that we haven’t done in the past, and we did the things we typically like to do, although we never made it to Great Movie Ride (not a big deal), Muppets, or Backlot Tour. As for DW’s fourth TSM ride, during her second ride one of the games actually went “blue screen of death” on her! Apparently TSM is powered by Microsoft Windows – she saw the game reboot and the MS Windows logo appear. She told a CM about the problem when she got off and they quickly got her and DD2 back on the ride for another go around. Lucky devil. She still can’t beat my score though…
DAY 3: Monday, May 9th
When the kids woke up, it sounded like they were coughing up a lung, so we had to do something. We left a message at our pediatrician’s office to have him call us. A quick call to the Poly front desk yielded the name and number of a local pharmacy (Turner Drug) that delivers to WDW resorts. Our pediatrician called us back pretty quickly and called in a prescription cough medicine for the kids. I was able to pick it up at the front desk when we returned that evening. This worked out really well for us.
Today was a split EPCOT/MK day. We headed to EP later than planned due to our medical issues. Since we never would have got a Soarin’ FP for before lunch, we skipped it again. We really didn’t have a ton of time at EPCOT, but we did repeat visits to Living with the Land (DS4 really likes this ride) and Nemo, hit Figment and TT via FP and rider swap. We headed to WS for CS lunch at Yakitori House, which was pretty good. DS4 threw the mother-of-all-temper-tantrums when he didn’t want what was for lunch, which resulted in me removing him from the premises. Fortunately we were heading back to Poly for rest, but stopped by Innoventions to check out the special Disney Visa member character meet-and-greet. It was Mickey, Minnie and Goofy at the time which was perfect for the kids.
After our mid-day break we were off to MK since it had EMH that night. We had dinner at Crystal Palace, which was another first for us. The kids did a bit better at dinner this night and they liked meeting the Winnie the Pooh characters. We typically don’t wait in line to meet these characters in the park. Our observation was that dinner at CP was better than Hollywood and Vine from the previous night, especially since it included characters. However, we could have used an “adult beverage” which of course is not an option at MK. We did quite a bit at MK after dinner – POTC, JC, Aladdin’s Magic Carpets, TBMRR via FP and rider swap, Splash Mountain (a first for us) via FP and rider swap, all of the Fantasyland rides (including PP via FP – they re-opened FPs during EMH) but not Dumbo (kids can care less about that – thank heavens!), Tomorrowland Speedway and Buzz a couple of times. In the middle of all this, we caught the second half of MSEP after a BTMRR ride and also watches Wishes from the area by BTMRR’s exit. For some reason the PeopleMover wasn’t running, at least during EMH. That was a bummer because the kids like it. One interesting event – we were on the carousel and a CM comes up to us and says “hey there, how are you guys”? It’s a young kid named Hannibal who we’ve seen on previous WDW trips working rides in Fantasyland, particularly the carousel. Late at night he would often let us stay on the carousel for three, four, five rides without getting off. What does it say about you if a Disney CM actually remembers you months later? Anyway, that night was his last night before his current “stint” at Disney was finished. He was heading back home but said he would be returning. Hopefully we’ll see him back during our fall trips – he’s a really nice kid.
DAY 4: Tuesday, May 10th
Today was all day at AK. This is by far our least favorite park. This was the day we really started to feel the heat – literally. It seems that AK is just a hot park and there aren’t a lot of places to easily avoid the heat. After DW got some fancy iced coffee drink, we got FPs for KS and boarded the train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. While it was nice to be out of the heat in the AC, there wasn’t a lot capturing the kids attention so we were only there about twenty minutes. After the train ride back, we went on the Safari using the FP. The kids seem to like this ride, despite all the bumps and jolts. Our driver actually whacked something with the back of the truck shortly after starting the trip, which gave us a pretty good jolt. Lunch was CS as Pizzafari which was pretty good (we thought about Flame Tree, but with the heat BBQ wasn’t sounding overly appealing). After lunch we hit Flights of Wonder, Triceratops Spin twice and ended with the last Festival of the Lion King show. We couldn’t convince DS4 to try Dinosaur or to try ITTBAB again and based on our Jedi Academy experience from Sunday, we weren’t going to press the issue. The kids fell asleep for a little while which allowed DW and I to ride EE for the first time. We went single rider one time each with no wait whatsoever and then after they closed the single rider line we went standby, again with no wait (OK, maybe like two minutes). It always seems that we spend the entire day at AK without a lot to show for it, except for a ton of walking in the heat.
After leaving AK we bussed it to EPCOT. The bus line to get to EPCOT was really long, but we all managed to get onto the next bus – how that was possible is beyond me. All we were heading to EPCOT for was dinner at Biergarten. Originally our itinerary had us doing AK on Wednesday with Ohana for dinner, but we switched AK to Tuesday because of Josh’s park recommendations (which were correct if you base it on our EE success). We couldn’t switch dinner plans, so off to EPCOT we went. I personally loved Biergarten (including the 1-litre mug of Weiss bier), DW liked it but wasn’t thrilled. We had a 7:50pm reservation which means we only saw the band play one set, which was disappointing for the kids – they really enjoyed band and the dancing. Next time we’ll get an earlier ADR. After dinner we let the kids watch the model trains at Germany, then took a leisurely stroll back to the monorail. Another fairly early evening for us…