The AutoTrain, Disney World, and MORE report! Picture-heavy. **Final Update 1/5**

I had to laugh at the picture of your mother not watching the traffic. We travel through Atlanta to see our daughter and there are six lanes of heavy traffic every time we go through there. I wish I could put my head in a pillow but I am the one doing the driving.:laughing:

Yay for arriving early. I know you were worried about getting there and making sure you didn't miss your train. Speaking of the train, I enjoyed looking at the pictures. I have never traveled by train but it seems like fun.

Yup. Mom HATES traffic. I was very happy to have arrived early. We really enjoyed the train portion of the trip.

Great report so far!

The train sounds like fun but any time I have priced it out I find I can fly cheaper. Some day I will not think of cost and just take the train, lol

Waiting to hear more:thumbsup2

Yeah, travelling on the train is not the cheapest route. However, since I don't think I could get DH or Mom on an airplaine -- it's better than driving! Plus, we have our vehicle available without having to rent a car. We could get by cheaper on the train if we went coach, but we like the privacy and comfort of the roomettes. However, the cost is part of the reason that we only take the train on one leg of the trip -- either down or back. And riding the train is an experience in itself.

You're right near Bully Hill Winery! I <3 their wines :lovestruc

Yup. We're in the middle of Wine Country - the Finger Lakes area. Bully Hill winery is about 20 minutes from my house. My sister lives even closer -- right above Keuka Lake, on the east side (unfortunately, she doesn't have a lake view...)

I am HERE!! I love your reports!!

Yay!! Glad you're here. And you KNOW that I love your reports. The changes keep me on my toes! And your last changes really seemed to be the best for you guys. Woo Hoo!!! Someday -- we are both going to be at the parks at the same time. And we will meet! I mean -- we were both there in October 2008, but didn't seem to meet up. I think we were in different parks on each day for that trip.
 
We all got a pretty good night's sleep. The train does rock quite a bit, but it didn't bother us. We all woke up right around 6:00 am. All of us were pretty excited to start the day. We went up for breakfast at around 6:30.

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Some of the warm yummies they placed on our table.
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This was the set-up of the tables before people were seated.
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Our beds were put back up while we were at breakfast. We enjoyed watching the scenery fly by, and spent time chatting about actually being in Florida and the fact that we'd be at Disney in just a couple of hours.

Of course, DD was texting to her aunt again...
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We pulled into the Sanford station at 8:30. We were allowed to get off the train at 8:58. We went into the station -- which is in the middle of being pretty much completely remodeled -- and found a couple of chairs to wait for our truck.

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We waited just about a half-hour for our truck to come off the train. We left the Sanford station at 9:29am.

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We got on I-4 at 9:38.
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We took exit 67 to Disney at 10:15.
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We arrived at Port Orlean's French Quarter at 10:21!!! Wooo-Hoooo!!
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We'll stop here for right now. Next up -- we check in! Did we have a room ready or not???
 
When we last left off, we had just arrived at Port Orleans French Quarter at about 10:21.

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We parked at the Check-in lot and gathered up a couple of things.

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Mom and DD waited in the lobby while DH and I checked in.

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We went to check in and only had to wait a few minutes for a CM. I believe there was just one person in line before us. We weren't able to do on-line check-in, as our reservation had been changed so often... Didn't really matter. Our wait at check-in was not long at all.

As we were checking in, the CM was looking over available rooms. We had reserved a Water View room, and had requested first floor. We were told that we could have a first floor room in Building 7, but it wasn't ready yet. However, there was a second floor room in Building 1 that was ready now, if we would like that one.

Hmm..... Let me think.... YES! We'll take the one that's ready now! Room 1227. Building 1, second floor, room 27.

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This room was about as far away from the bus stops as you could possibly get. However, this resort is so small that it wasn't really that far away. We never timed it, but I’d say it was a five-minute walk TOPS. Probably less than that. And that’s walking kinda slow…

We drove around to the parking lot for our section. We grabbed a few things and headed up to our room. We had a Mickey waiting for us!

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From the doorway:
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From the bathroom toward the doorway:
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Sink/dressing area:
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We had a BEAUTIFUL view from our room.
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DD called her Grandma (DH’s mom) to let her know that we have arrived safely in Florida (and to get her Grandma fix – she’s used to seeing her every day as she lives next door to us).
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Once we settled in a little bit, DH and I made a couple of trips back and forth to the truck and brought most of the luggage up. We unpacked and relaxed for a few minutes. It was not quite noon yet. What to do for the rest of the day???? That’ll be coming up next!
 


I'm greatly enjoying this report....DH and I will be driving down from NJ, and taking the AutoTrain home in November - great pictures!:goodvibes
 
Great report so far!!! Had to join on once I saw Autotrain, I have always wondered about it. Love the pics and info so far.

And your view is beautiful from your room. I really like that there is a little curtain to separate the room from the changing area, good idea!

Looking forward to more updates!!
 
Hooray for getting to checked in quickly and for getting a room with a great view. We live right next door to my mother and my son has to call her every day when we are on vacation.
 


I'm greatly enjoying this report....DH and I will be driving down from NJ, and taking the AutoTrain home in November - great pictures!:goodvibes

We loved the trip on the AutoTrain. So very relaxing.

Great report so far!!! Had to join on once I saw Autotrain, I have always wondered about it. Love the pics and info so far.

And your view is beautiful from your room. I really like that there is a little curtain to separate the room from the changing area, good idea!

Looking forward to more updates!!

Thank you! We seriously love the AutoTrain. It's kind of expensive, but then again so is Disney - and we still love that too!

Hooray for getting to checked in quickly and for getting a room with a great view. We live right next door to my mother and my son has to call her every day when we are on vacation.

We loved how quick check-in was. We weren't able to do on-line check-in. Our trip had changed several times -- we changed from a November 2009 trip to a May 2010 trip, and changed which package, discount code, etc., several times. It got to the point where I could not pull up my reservation online anymore, but the CM's could see it if I called.

DD is very attached to her Grandma. We've lived next door her whole life. She had to make sure to talk to her every day while on vacation.
 
When we last left off, it was just about noon and we had just gotten unpacked and settled into our room. We had a little group discussion about what to do for the rest of the day. Should we go to the food court for some lunch? Should we hit the pool for a while? Should we go to a park first? Oh, the decisions…

Well, the overwhelming concensus was to HIT THE POOL!!!! We absolutely loved this pool! As promised in my Pre-Trip report – I have video evidence of my 60 year old mother going down the waterslide! In this video clip, DD comes down the slide first, then Mom. She loved it. She actually ended up going down the slide several times. I’m not even gonna try to count the number of times DD went down it!

Hmm... I can't seem to get a video to work here. But I do have a link to it on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/ddstratton/4749053320/

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No… I don’t think DD was happy to be here at all…
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We spent a little over an hour in the pool, then headed back to the room. We were going to need some lunch soon, and we were really feeling the need to get to a park.

What we ate and where we went, coming up in the next update!
 
Isn't is so very hard to make decisions on what to do first at Disney? Have fun? Eat? Have fun? Eat? :laughing: I loved the video!
 
Sounds like fun so far:thumbsup2

Love the view from your room. I hope on this trip that we can check out a few resorts that we may consider for a future trip. I like the looks of this resort:love:
 
Enjoying your trip report, the pics are great. We are going to POFQ in 39 days so I love to read TR's that when people have stayed there, especially with pictures! Thanks for sharing, looking forward to the rest....

Jenn
 
Great trip report.Looking foward to reading more and I love all the pictures.
 
Isn't is so very hard to make decisions on what to do first at Disney? Have fun? Eat? Have fun? Eat? :laughing: I loved the video!

I love having to make that kind of decision!

Sounds like fun so far:thumbsup2

Love the view from your room. I hope on this trip that we can check out a few resorts that we may consider for a future trip. I like the looks of this resort:love:

This resort was really very pretty. We would definitely stay here again.

Enjoying your trip report, the pics are great. We are going to POFQ in 39 days so I love to read TR's that when people have stayed there, especially with pictures! Thanks for sharing, looking forward to the rest....

Jenn

Thanks for reading! We really did love the resort. I do believe there will be more pictures coming!

Great trip report.Looking foward to reading more and I love all the pictures.

Thanks! Overall, we ended up taking over 3,000 pictures!!! That's between all of us, for the 2 weeks we were gone.

Update coming shortly!
 
When we last left off, we had just left the pool. We got dried off and dressed, then headed to the bus stop!

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Port Orleans French Quarter is a nice SMALL resort. Like I said earlier, our room was about as far from the bus stop as you could get but our walk was only a couple of minutes. Not long at all.

After arriving at the bus stop, we waited maybe five minutes and hopped on one of these to the Magic Kingdom!
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It was now right around 2:00 pm and we were HUNGRY! The first item on our Magic Kingdom agenda was some lunch. We stopped in at Casey’s Corner. They were busy, but not horribly so.

DD and Mom each got a hot dog kids' meal with apple slices. DH got the hot dog meal with fries. I got the corndog nuggets (YUM!!). DD had a milk, Mom had a bottle water, and DH and I each had a large Coke. Total here was $33.10.

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After we were fed, we were ready to hit some rides. The first ride just had to be Splash Mountain. DD and Mom have talked about going on this ride again for AGES. The posted wait time was 20 minutes. I’m pretty sure the wait ended up being a bit longer than that. However our next ride made up for it. We went over to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The posted time was 10 minutes. Nope. We walked right on with no wait at all.

DH took over camera duty for part of this trip. Here’s me, DD and Mom coming off Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
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DH did not ride with us on these two rides. He had fun sitting on the fence and watching people go by.

After these, we headed over to the Haunted Mansion, which was another walk-on. Again, DH waited for us and was on camera duty.

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After the Haunted Mansion, we were ready for a little treat. We stopped at Sleepy Hollow and got three cups of chocolate soft-serve. Total here was $9.24. We only got three, as DH said he didn’t want one. But he knew better. He ended up finishing mine. I never finish an ice cream…

From here, we headed over to Tomorrowland.
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We waited about five minutes for the Carousel of Progress. It was way hot – well, for us anyway. It was in the mid-80’s. Twenty minutes of air-conditioned sitting sounded very good to us. And we enjoy the show.

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By now, it was almost 6:00 pm. We were hot and a little tired. We decided to head back to the resort. On the way out, we saw a little bit of the Celebrate A Dream Come True parade.

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After the parade, we headed to the bus stops. We waited about ten minutes or so, then got on a bus heading back to the resort.

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We stopped at the food court and picked up a refillable mug for each of us. Total cost was $57.47 after tax. Mom took a couple pictures of the wildlife on the walk back to our room.

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Gotta stop here -- too many pictures for one post. Continued immediately.
 
We just relaxed for a little bit in the room for a while. When we decided we were ready for supper, we headed off-site. We were going to Joe’s Crab Shack! This is something we don’t have around home. Never been to one, but it looked like fun. And it was! But before we went to Joe’s we hit Wal-mart. DD “forgot” her Crocs, and only had one pair of sneakers with her. Not good. We ended up finding her a pair of water shoes at Wally World – total cost $6.42.

Now, on to Joe’s.
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We were seated pretty much immediately, at a picnic table inside. DH ordered the chipotle Cheeseburger (which I don’t have a picture of). DD ordered the Shrimp Alfredo Pasta.
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Mom had the Coconut Shrimp.
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I had the Fish and Shrimp.
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They had a board on the wall (which you can see behind DH and DD here) with a phrase to unscramble. Between me and Mom, we figured it out! We got $5 off at the gift shop for doing it. Which came in handy, as Mom wanted a T-shirt for my brother’s friend, whose name is Joe.
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I thought this was funny, too. The lady at the table behind us ordered a drink. Nothing funny about that. However – her drink was FROWNING AT HER!!
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Our total here came to $62.86 plus tip. Everything was very good, and the atmosphere was fun. I’d go there again.

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By the time we finished with supper, it was after 9:00 pm. We stopped at the Walgreens next door. Yikes! $5.18 for one loaf of bread and one gallon of milk. Ouchie. After that, we headed back to the resort and just vegged for a while and hit the beds.

Up next – we start our first FULL day at Disney World.
 
Hi! Thank you so much for your wonderful trip report! I'm enjoying it so much! You're doing an awesome job! My family and I took the autotrain to WDW in September 2009, and it's bringing back so many wonderful memories of our trip. We loved the train ride--just not the 4-hour in terrible traffic drive to get there! (We live near Allentown, PA.) I look forward to the rest of your report and hope you're having a great day! Jennifer
 
I knew I liked you! Corn dog nuggets are my favorite :lovestruc Plus, I think POFQ is my favorite resort! :laughing:

Did you go to Joes because we always see the ad for them but there's none around??
 

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