Flossbolna
Sea days are just so relaxing!
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2006
A Tale of Two Busses – Part 2
So, I left off with complaining about the van. However, the van finally did what it was supposed to. It delivered us to Saratoga Springs Resort.
There we checked in. They asked us if we wanted a room that fit my requests (I had requested to be in the Congress Park area as that is closest to Downtown Disney) or if we wanted a room that was ready now. We preferred not to wait for something. So we ended up in The Paddock. I had researched Saratoga Springs beforehand and knew that nearly every area has some advantages and some disadvantages. And this room at the great advantages that we could drop our luggage before we headed out to the parks.
I think this was me pushing M into something as I was getting a bot crotchety. It turned out great as I thought our location was fine and convenient for pretty much anything ... except a frigid walk to the Turf Club, but don't want to spoil anything!
We had to wait for a little while until one of the bellmen could drive us over to our room. But that was fine with me. I was on WDW property, no longer in a small van. The lobby area of Saratoga Springs was quite pretty and we did not have a long wait at all. We were loaded onto one of those golf cart thingies (I was so excited as this was my first time ever on one of these) as well as our luggage. And then we were off to The Paddock. Our bellman was very efficient to bring all our stuff up to our room.
I have stayed at SSR in the past and found it nice and relaxing. But it wasn't my first, second, or third choice for a holiday visit originally. The Wilderness and Animal Kingdom Lodges and Grand Flo would have ranked higher. But M showed me a holiday trip report with photos (I believe it was on the DIS)) and that really swayed me.
And then my first duty was of course to document the room:
Bed:
Real (!) table with two comfy chairs:
(I am really not happy with that trend of adding those fold away tables under the TV to studios to make them sleep 5 people…)
TV:
(much larger than at Vero Beach!)
Sofabed:
This is one of those sofabeds that are actually not very comfortable to sit on as one slides off them very easily.
Terribly uncomfortable to the point of being near unusable as a sofa. Decent comfort as a bed.
View back into the room:
kitchenette:
sink:
and bathroom:
All in all I liked the room. The décor is not my favourite amongst the WDW resorts. But I think recent updates and getting rid of the very busy comforters has improved the look quite a bit. We really liked that there is a very large entrance area and that therefore the hallway and its noise was quite far away from where we were sleeping. I still did not like the concept that has not really interior hallways. Somehow to me this gives off a vibe of cheap housing estates, not luxury resort.
The resort has gotten a soft goods replacement since I last stayed there in 2006, but I think very little was done. Flat screen TV was added. Comforter disappeared from the bed with that useless 'themed' swath of cloth at the bottom. Some Disney themed pillows on the sofa (Fox and the Hound, I think, which is a film pretty much no one recalls that was released in 1981).
The characters on the pillows were horses - the theme of the resort is a town that is famous for horse racing.
The room was not in the best shape. There were a few minor issues that we told the front desk on a subsequent visit. Someone came and took care of them halfheartedly. The one major thing was that the socket for the lamp is directly behind the sofabed and it was damaged from people pushing the sofabed all the way into the wall. You really don’t want damaged electrical plugs in a hotel room! We noticed it because the lamp did not work.
Typically half-hearted WDW service. Fix one thing, sorta attempt another and ignore another.
Once we had dumped our bags, I was ready to go. But Michael was not, he needed to have a phone call with his family. I kind of got grumpy about that, but once I realized what my issue was and told him that I was soooo hungry and needed some food (@franandaj was right with her comment on the previous update when she was shocked that we skipped breakfast), he came up with the perfect solution: I should go back to the lobby building and get some food while he talked to his family. Perfect!
We were both grumpy. I was glad I came up with that solution because M and I really don't fight and I felt one coming on. We barely even argue. Really (I don't know why some people find this surprising that we have such a healthy relationship, but they do. I think they've bought into that New Agey BS about getting anger and aggression out being a good thing. I would agree, but not with the people most important to you. I have no issue showing anger to others whatsoever!
So, I went on my own little tour of the resort. I found the walk to the lobby building not too far at all. But I would not want to have to go there in the rain!
I walked along the lake towards this bridge which I then would cross:
I really liked the views here:
I walked through the main pool area:
Unfortunately we never made it there for a swim!
I picked up a very delicious muffin and gave Michael some of it once I was back at the room. He was ready to head out, so we went to the bus stop.
I don't recall what kind it was. Just that it surprised me with how good it was.
Something like apple and bran?
We did not wait long until a bus for Epcot pulled up. With us there was only one other family waiting with a little girl who has a birthday button. When the bus came, it was totally empty. The busdriver, Jimmy from Brooklyn, New York, stopped and got out and made a huge deal about it being the little girl’s birthday. At some point Michael announced that I was celebrating my birthday on that trip as well. So, Jimmy proceeded to make a birthday button for me as well. And then we were allowed to board the bus! We had to make some additional stops where we collected more people and everyone boarding was being told that this was a special bus celebrating birthdays. There was also a couple celebrating their anniversary. And on our way to Epcot we ended up singing Happy Birthday for the little girl, Happy Anniversary to the couple and the rest of the bus also sang Happy Birthday to me. The whole thing really slowed down the bus journey. But it was so much fun and in such a nice spirit! No one was rushing from point A to point B, CM Jimmy was full of happiness and loved spreading it on his bus.
The couple was celebrating their 50th Anniversary, Ironically, my parents had just done likewise a month earlier. Originally, my brother and I had planned -- and put money aside -- to send them to Rome on First Class tickets, put them up in a nice suite for 3-4 nights and then send them back to the USA on a TA cruise -- no, no DCL here. But then my Dad was diagnosed with a serious illness and the trip couldn't happen. We wound up placing them on the MSC Divina cruise that M mentioned a few chapters back. They had a great time just before everything went to hell. But it was not the anniversary trip we had planned or they deserved.
So, one bad non-bus and one happy bus make the Tale of the Two Busses. They were like night and day!
We finally arrived at Epcot a little after 12:30.
Our first FP+ of the day (Mission Space) had already expired by then. But we were not too concerned. However, we were in the right place to make use of our Spaceship Earth FP+. Once we had travelled through the future we decided to try to stop at Guest Services.
I sorta made fun of M. I am very mixed on Mission Space. I love the feeling of the ride, but hate that ultimately it is just a simulator and with the same experience every time. I probably ride it once every 3-4 visits now as it just isn't a big deal for me. But I was still feeling under the weather and, oh, did I mention that the ground at EPCOT had suddenly become as stable as a Kardashian and felt like it was moving and swaying. I didn't feel it would be a good time to ride, not knowing how bad my 'sea legs' were. We never did ride on that trip. And I didn't ride it on my visit sans M last month either.
Oh yes, we were definitely feeling like we were still on a ship in heavy seas!!
And what is one to get for FP+ at Epcot? You get a FP+ for Soarin and then you have a bundle of attractions for which you never had to get a FP in the past and just pick something. Mission Space sounded good enough to me. But I can see how having a cold is not when you want to go on it.
When I had picked up the muffin, I was not able to pay with my Magic Band as it did not recognize my PIN code. So we needed that to reset (the rest of the Magic Band things worked without problem for the whole trip though). But the lines at guest services were crazy, so we gave up on that for the moment. But looking at a park map we saw that there was a My Magic Plus center in Innoventions, so we thought we try it there. Luckily there was no line there and some really friendly CMs helped us. They said that they should have had us set a PIN at check in at the hotel. Unfortunately they had some trouble with their system and had to go through different channels until they found one that worked. But then we were set!
This might be a good point to admit that I was prepared to hate the Magic Band, but ended up liking it quite a bit. I was expecting it to be uncomfortable. And at first it was. But then I was courageous enough to try to take off the grey outer part and make it child size. At first I was afraid that it would be too small, but since I had two Magic Bands (One for my expired AP that I never used as they sent it to me after my last trip with that AP and one for this trip), I thought I take the risk. With that it fit my wrists so much better! And it was surprisingly comfortable and easy to use. The only place where I did not like it was at the door of the room. One had to hold the arm at a very strange angle to line up the Mickey heads. It was also inconvenient for the self service gate to drive into the resort. Michael was never able to make his band to work there, so I always took mine off so that he could hold it out.
I have no issues with the bands beyond the fact that Disney invested close to two billion dollars on the whole MM+/Next Gen program and I feel the funds should have gone to building new attractions and improving the parks. Disney touts MM+ as a game-changer in the theme park business when they're simply using tech that has been around for years.
Once we had taken care of the Magic Band issues, our next FP+ was open: Soarin. After Soarin I needed a restroom stop and we went to the nice hidden ones behind Journey into Imagination. Those always seem to be very empty and therefore very clean. I was intrigued that this appears to be a bathroom for three legged women:
I used it regardless.
At some point in that time in Futureworld we also visited the Starbucks in what used to the Fountainview Cafe. I thought it was very nice. It was also totally empty and we had our coffees very quickly. We sat at an outside table with a view of the fountain and talked about our plans for the week. And suddenly Michael was starting to talk about how much he was in a Christmas mood and that he felt that we needed to soak up as much Christmas as possible while there. I guess all the Christmas stuff helped him to think less about how sick his father was. And then he started to bring up the Christmas Party at the MK and how nice the Christmas events on the cruise had been... It did not take much to convince me that our previous decision to not go to the party was stupid. And it actually worked out quite well. The ticket I had was a 5 day park hopper, but we wanted to go to the parks for 6 days. So, I would have needed to upgrade the ticket anyway. Instead of getting an additional day, I just got the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party ticket that allowed me to enter the MK after 4pm on the day of the party. So, once that was decided, I of course new which days were party days and that the one on Tuesday was the last party of the season that offered a discount for DVC members. So, I got out my phone and used the My Disney Experience App to buy tow tickets for us. Very convenient!
We then slowly started making our way to our late lunch reservation in the World Showcase:
It was a beautiful day, sunny, not hot and we just enjoyed wandering about and admired the decorations.
It turned out to be the warmest and pretty much nicest weather day of the trip, especially if you're from Germany. The high temp that day was over 80.
I really liked it that different buildings in the countries had different decorations. You can see it with the Cantina and La Hacienda in Mexico as well as here with the two different houses in Norway.
On the lawn next to Germany they had a tiny Christmas market where they were selling very cute hand made glass Christmas ornaments:
There was also the stage for the Germany storyteller, Helga. All the countries have storytellers for the Christmas season who talk about different traditions in their respective countries.
Helga seemed liked a woman who likes to drink. No surprise there.
Germany was also our destination for lunch.
I was amused by the food offerings in the shops there:
All pretty authentic in my opinion. I was intrigued by the “German Pretzel Mix” as it is from a company known for cake mixes, but I have never seen a pretzel mix here in Germany.
I also had to take a picture of the Playmobil display as this is a local company:
These prints were quite lovely:
It seems to be a series with all the different pavilions in Epcot. We saw similar ones in other countries as well.
Up Next: Continuing the Cruise Pattern: Dinner and Show
So, I left off with complaining about the van. However, the van finally did what it was supposed to. It delivered us to Saratoga Springs Resort.
There we checked in. They asked us if we wanted a room that fit my requests (I had requested to be in the Congress Park area as that is closest to Downtown Disney) or if we wanted a room that was ready now. We preferred not to wait for something. So we ended up in The Paddock. I had researched Saratoga Springs beforehand and knew that nearly every area has some advantages and some disadvantages. And this room at the great advantages that we could drop our luggage before we headed out to the parks.
I think this was me pushing M into something as I was getting a bot crotchety. It turned out great as I thought our location was fine and convenient for pretty much anything ... except a frigid walk to the Turf Club, but don't want to spoil anything!
We had to wait for a little while until one of the bellmen could drive us over to our room. But that was fine with me. I was on WDW property, no longer in a small van. The lobby area of Saratoga Springs was quite pretty and we did not have a long wait at all. We were loaded onto one of those golf cart thingies (I was so excited as this was my first time ever on one of these) as well as our luggage. And then we were off to The Paddock. Our bellman was very efficient to bring all our stuff up to our room.
I have stayed at SSR in the past and found it nice and relaxing. But it wasn't my first, second, or third choice for a holiday visit originally. The Wilderness and Animal Kingdom Lodges and Grand Flo would have ranked higher. But M showed me a holiday trip report with photos (I believe it was on the DIS)) and that really swayed me.
And then my first duty was of course to document the room:
Bed:
Real (!) table with two comfy chairs:
(I am really not happy with that trend of adding those fold away tables under the TV to studios to make them sleep 5 people…)
TV:
(much larger than at Vero Beach!)
Sofabed:
This is one of those sofabeds that are actually not very comfortable to sit on as one slides off them very easily.
Terribly uncomfortable to the point of being near unusable as a sofa. Decent comfort as a bed.
View back into the room:
kitchenette:
sink:
and bathroom:
All in all I liked the room. The décor is not my favourite amongst the WDW resorts. But I think recent updates and getting rid of the very busy comforters has improved the look quite a bit. We really liked that there is a very large entrance area and that therefore the hallway and its noise was quite far away from where we were sleeping. I still did not like the concept that has not really interior hallways. Somehow to me this gives off a vibe of cheap housing estates, not luxury resort.
The resort has gotten a soft goods replacement since I last stayed there in 2006, but I think very little was done. Flat screen TV was added. Comforter disappeared from the bed with that useless 'themed' swath of cloth at the bottom. Some Disney themed pillows on the sofa (Fox and the Hound, I think, which is a film pretty much no one recalls that was released in 1981).
The characters on the pillows were horses - the theme of the resort is a town that is famous for horse racing.
The room was not in the best shape. There were a few minor issues that we told the front desk on a subsequent visit. Someone came and took care of them halfheartedly. The one major thing was that the socket for the lamp is directly behind the sofabed and it was damaged from people pushing the sofabed all the way into the wall. You really don’t want damaged electrical plugs in a hotel room! We noticed it because the lamp did not work.
Typically half-hearted WDW service. Fix one thing, sorta attempt another and ignore another.
Once we had dumped our bags, I was ready to go. But Michael was not, he needed to have a phone call with his family. I kind of got grumpy about that, but once I realized what my issue was and told him that I was soooo hungry and needed some food (@franandaj was right with her comment on the previous update when she was shocked that we skipped breakfast), he came up with the perfect solution: I should go back to the lobby building and get some food while he talked to his family. Perfect!
We were both grumpy. I was glad I came up with that solution because M and I really don't fight and I felt one coming on. We barely even argue. Really (I don't know why some people find this surprising that we have such a healthy relationship, but they do. I think they've bought into that New Agey BS about getting anger and aggression out being a good thing. I would agree, but not with the people most important to you. I have no issue showing anger to others whatsoever!
So, I went on my own little tour of the resort. I found the walk to the lobby building not too far at all. But I would not want to have to go there in the rain!
I walked along the lake towards this bridge which I then would cross:
I really liked the views here:
I walked through the main pool area:
Unfortunately we never made it there for a swim!
I picked up a very delicious muffin and gave Michael some of it once I was back at the room. He was ready to head out, so we went to the bus stop.
I don't recall what kind it was. Just that it surprised me with how good it was.
Something like apple and bran?
We did not wait long until a bus for Epcot pulled up. With us there was only one other family waiting with a little girl who has a birthday button. When the bus came, it was totally empty. The busdriver, Jimmy from Brooklyn, New York, stopped and got out and made a huge deal about it being the little girl’s birthday. At some point Michael announced that I was celebrating my birthday on that trip as well. So, Jimmy proceeded to make a birthday button for me as well. And then we were allowed to board the bus! We had to make some additional stops where we collected more people and everyone boarding was being told that this was a special bus celebrating birthdays. There was also a couple celebrating their anniversary. And on our way to Epcot we ended up singing Happy Birthday for the little girl, Happy Anniversary to the couple and the rest of the bus also sang Happy Birthday to me. The whole thing really slowed down the bus journey. But it was so much fun and in such a nice spirit! No one was rushing from point A to point B, CM Jimmy was full of happiness and loved spreading it on his bus.
The couple was celebrating their 50th Anniversary, Ironically, my parents had just done likewise a month earlier. Originally, my brother and I had planned -- and put money aside -- to send them to Rome on First Class tickets, put them up in a nice suite for 3-4 nights and then send them back to the USA on a TA cruise -- no, no DCL here. But then my Dad was diagnosed with a serious illness and the trip couldn't happen. We wound up placing them on the MSC Divina cruise that M mentioned a few chapters back. They had a great time just before everything went to hell. But it was not the anniversary trip we had planned or they deserved.
So, one bad non-bus and one happy bus make the Tale of the Two Busses. They were like night and day!
We finally arrived at Epcot a little after 12:30.
Our first FP+ of the day (Mission Space) had already expired by then. But we were not too concerned. However, we were in the right place to make use of our Spaceship Earth FP+. Once we had travelled through the future we decided to try to stop at Guest Services.
I sorta made fun of M. I am very mixed on Mission Space. I love the feeling of the ride, but hate that ultimately it is just a simulator and with the same experience every time. I probably ride it once every 3-4 visits now as it just isn't a big deal for me. But I was still feeling under the weather and, oh, did I mention that the ground at EPCOT had suddenly become as stable as a Kardashian and felt like it was moving and swaying. I didn't feel it would be a good time to ride, not knowing how bad my 'sea legs' were. We never did ride on that trip. And I didn't ride it on my visit sans M last month either.
Oh yes, we were definitely feeling like we were still on a ship in heavy seas!!
And what is one to get for FP+ at Epcot? You get a FP+ for Soarin and then you have a bundle of attractions for which you never had to get a FP in the past and just pick something. Mission Space sounded good enough to me. But I can see how having a cold is not when you want to go on it.
When I had picked up the muffin, I was not able to pay with my Magic Band as it did not recognize my PIN code. So we needed that to reset (the rest of the Magic Band things worked without problem for the whole trip though). But the lines at guest services were crazy, so we gave up on that for the moment. But looking at a park map we saw that there was a My Magic Plus center in Innoventions, so we thought we try it there. Luckily there was no line there and some really friendly CMs helped us. They said that they should have had us set a PIN at check in at the hotel. Unfortunately they had some trouble with their system and had to go through different channels until they found one that worked. But then we were set!
This might be a good point to admit that I was prepared to hate the Magic Band, but ended up liking it quite a bit. I was expecting it to be uncomfortable. And at first it was. But then I was courageous enough to try to take off the grey outer part and make it child size. At first I was afraid that it would be too small, but since I had two Magic Bands (One for my expired AP that I never used as they sent it to me after my last trip with that AP and one for this trip), I thought I take the risk. With that it fit my wrists so much better! And it was surprisingly comfortable and easy to use. The only place where I did not like it was at the door of the room. One had to hold the arm at a very strange angle to line up the Mickey heads. It was also inconvenient for the self service gate to drive into the resort. Michael was never able to make his band to work there, so I always took mine off so that he could hold it out.
I have no issues with the bands beyond the fact that Disney invested close to two billion dollars on the whole MM+/Next Gen program and I feel the funds should have gone to building new attractions and improving the parks. Disney touts MM+ as a game-changer in the theme park business when they're simply using tech that has been around for years.
Once we had taken care of the Magic Band issues, our next FP+ was open: Soarin. After Soarin I needed a restroom stop and we went to the nice hidden ones behind Journey into Imagination. Those always seem to be very empty and therefore very clean. I was intrigued that this appears to be a bathroom for three legged women:
I used it regardless.
At some point in that time in Futureworld we also visited the Starbucks in what used to the Fountainview Cafe. I thought it was very nice. It was also totally empty and we had our coffees very quickly. We sat at an outside table with a view of the fountain and talked about our plans for the week. And suddenly Michael was starting to talk about how much he was in a Christmas mood and that he felt that we needed to soak up as much Christmas as possible while there. I guess all the Christmas stuff helped him to think less about how sick his father was. And then he started to bring up the Christmas Party at the MK and how nice the Christmas events on the cruise had been... It did not take much to convince me that our previous decision to not go to the party was stupid. And it actually worked out quite well. The ticket I had was a 5 day park hopper, but we wanted to go to the parks for 6 days. So, I would have needed to upgrade the ticket anyway. Instead of getting an additional day, I just got the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party ticket that allowed me to enter the MK after 4pm on the day of the party. So, once that was decided, I of course new which days were party days and that the one on Tuesday was the last party of the season that offered a discount for DVC members. So, I got out my phone and used the My Disney Experience App to buy tow tickets for us. Very convenient!
We then slowly started making our way to our late lunch reservation in the World Showcase:
It was a beautiful day, sunny, not hot and we just enjoyed wandering about and admired the decorations.
It turned out to be the warmest and pretty much nicest weather day of the trip, especially if you're from Germany. The high temp that day was over 80.
I really liked it that different buildings in the countries had different decorations. You can see it with the Cantina and La Hacienda in Mexico as well as here with the two different houses in Norway.
On the lawn next to Germany they had a tiny Christmas market where they were selling very cute hand made glass Christmas ornaments:
There was also the stage for the Germany storyteller, Helga. All the countries have storytellers for the Christmas season who talk about different traditions in their respective countries.
Helga seemed liked a woman who likes to drink. No surprise there.
Germany was also our destination for lunch.
I was amused by the food offerings in the shops there:
All pretty authentic in my opinion. I was intrigued by the “German Pretzel Mix” as it is from a company known for cake mixes, but I have never seen a pretzel mix here in Germany.
I also had to take a picture of the Playmobil display as this is a local company:
These prints were quite lovely:
It seems to be a series with all the different pavilions in Epcot. We saw similar ones in other countries as well.
Up Next: Continuing the Cruise Pattern: Dinner and Show
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