WDW POR Trip Review - Land Based Saga 10/20/2009

[sounddesigner]

This is a review of my trip that I just got back from. We did WDW from 10/20/2009 then hopped on the Magic for a seven day Eastern Cruise on Saturday, 10/24. Background information is that the trip was my family of three. My wife and I are in our early 40's and our daughter is 5.8 years old. We live in Santa Clarita, CA which is the home of Magic Mountain. Anyhow, I'll jump into this part of our vacation.

Since this was our first trip to WDW, I did a lot of research and this site (and podcasts) were quite helpful. I'm a geek and I research things pretty thoroughly for most any kind of trip we take and this was no different. I had everything booked in March of 2009 and had quite a bit of time to ready myself for a pretty swell vacation. It doesn't hurt that my crunch time for work is the entire summer so having that non-stop work really helped to make the time pass quickly and I was sure ready for a vacation after 7 day, 80+ hour work weeks. Whenever I travel, I try and book most things myself and for personal hotel stays, I always use Priceline. I always book 4-star rooms and have never been steered wrong. For business travel, I stay in comparable hotels as well so my expectations are that. I tell you this so you can get a point of reference as to my experiences on this trip. When setting out to plan the trip, I looked all over and was overwhelmed and thought that it would be best to enlist the services of a pro, so for this trip, I used Small World Vacations for both my Resort Stay and our Cruise. Minnie was our agent and things couldn't have gone smoother.

Since I was spending a lot (of money) on the cruise portion of the trip (Catagory 6 Veranda) I figured I didn't need to go Deluxe for the 4 nights/3 days we would have at the World. Because I've worked on Disney projects in the past and have grown up going to Disneyland, I figured a Moderate Resort would be a good resort for us and would be expressive of typical Disney hospitality. We decided on the Port Orleans Riverside resort and requested a "Mansion-Style" room. Once inside my 10 day window, I faxed in the request and got what I asked for. We ended up in Building 90 Oak Manor...room 9087. The location was great as one wall of the room is on a corner of the building and is only partially shared with a closet for the Mousekeepers. The other wall is shared with a guest room next door. A big pool and the laundry room are pretty close as well. Noise was really good for this room location with the only exception being our first night and that was "neighbor" caused. It was around 12:30a and our neighbor "came home." She decided to have a loud goodbye conversation with her friend who walked her back to her room. It was long enough for me to get woken up, get my bearings, decide I should see what was going on, and stick my head out the door. I guess sticking my ugly mug out the door was enough of a reminder to her that we're all in this together as there was never a peep again.

We left CA at around 9:00a and arrived at MCO at 6:25p. We used the Magical Express and had called ahead of time to get extra luggage tags (we had 4 total checked bags) and the trip couldn't have gone smoother. We checked our bags at Long Beach airport and the next time we saw them was at the POR in our room. Simply flawless. I was really impressed with how it all worked! I'd checked in on-line and that made things incredibly easy as well. I think we were in our room by 7:45p. First impression of the room...not really impressed. Honestly, it felt like a Comfort Inn room that I should be paying $60 a night for. It was kinda funny, our daughter opened the room and within 10 seconds, my wife and I looked at each other with the same look. The mantra I kept telling myself was "Hey, going to the cruise after this room is going to feel that much better!" I'm very optimistic and this was the way to think as the Cruise rocked! That's in the cruise review tho...

Back to the POR. We had made ADR's at Boatwright's Dining Hall for 8:45p but we walked over there after dropping our carry-ons off in the room and they seated us immediately, right around 8:00p or so. There was no wait and I would guess that the restaurant was about 50% full. We were on the DDP and since we were newbies, the waitress explained it all to us. Using the DDP was pretty darn easy and resulted in an almost flawless experience. The only tiny hiccup was the last day. I wanted to use up our extra snack credits so I used them on bottled water at the POR gift store to take with us on the ship. I asked the clerk to use my snack credits and he said great but ended up charging my room for them. I caught it when I was leaving the store and in a few minutes, everything was fixed. I just want to included everything of note in this review as I was looking for this kind of review when planning for my trip. On we go...

The food was good (my scale would be poor/good/excellent) at the Boatwright's Hall. I had the Prime Rib and my wife the Pork chop. I'm a pretty serious foodie and home cook and IMO, the food everywhere was good and acceptable. Nothing (except for a couple of the soups on the cruise) was remarkable....just good. Quantity-wise, you should never be hungry as portions are big and totally great. I'm going to use one example from the trip that summed up the food for both the Resort & the Cruise. On the ship, there was a taco bar setup in one of the dining rooms for lunch one day. The lady in front of me said: "Are the tacos spicy?" The chef replied, "No, this is Disney. They are very Disney." That phrase nearly sums up my entire food review for the trip.

Ok, back to why I thought the room was a little underwhelming. I think my 4 nights ended up costing around $1,700. This included my Base Your Way Tix for 3 days and trip insurance. You're definately not paying for the room. What you're paying for are some beautiful Resort Grounds. The common areas of the resort are fantastic and great looking. I only wished the quality of the rooms were of the same quality. The best words I can come up with to describe the room are: Worn, Dusky, Boring, Old, Cheap. There were hidden mickeys in the comforter, tile work, shower curtain, etc. but the room simply didn't have character. As stated above, working with Disney means working towards creating the most perfect product you can build and this level of dedication to creating a "Mansion/Period" style room was not there. One thing to note...the mirrors were unusually clean. I know this sounds odd but I would love to know what cleaning product they use on the mirrors as they were always looking great!

As far as the rest of the land based trip report goes, here it is. On Wednesday we went to Epcot. We took advantage of extra hours each day at the park where they were offered. This meant MK on Thursday and AK on Friday. I am so glad that I didn't upgrade to the Park Hopper option as there was plenty to do by staying in one park per day. Because we were mid-week, the lines were great! The longest we stood in any line was for character signing/photos and that may have been 15 minutes. Use Fastpass, it rules. Since my daughter is almost 6, she's over the 40" barrier and can ride just about everything. Her favorite ride (in any of the parks) was Test Track. She kept wanting to ride it and I think we got 3 or 4 in that day. We did the Behind the Seeds tour and that was really great if you're into that kind of thing. Lunch was at the Sunshine Seasons food court. Dessert again? Lunch & Dinner??? We went through all the countries (my only regret was not taking part in the Food & Wine but heck, I was constantly full) as my daughter was getting each country's stamp on the mask thing we carried around. That was good as it made us go to every country for a little bit. We still missed the Innovation sections except for a quick pitstop for our Visa Rewards free 5x7 character photo. I can easily see spending 2 days in Epcot to experience everything. We were lucky that it was open until 11p that night (magic hours). We had 7:15p ADR's at Teppan Edo. That was fun and my Daughter's first experience at a place like that. The bonus was finishing dinner then stepping out of the restaurant to watch the Epcot fireworks. That was a swell location to view from. After more rides, we left the park around 11p. btw...we used the park transportation the entire time and here are my experiences.

The bus system was very efficient for us. In the morning, we'd always catch it at the Main station in front of the lobby. The longest we waited for a bus to show up was five minutes. Of the six rides we took to the various parks, I think we stood on two of the trips and got seats on the rest. Although the East stop at POR was closest to our room, we always used the main stop (except once) and I'd always use the main stop in the future as the buses do fill up pretty good and you might be facing a full bus if waiting at the other stops.

Before I forget, more POR stuff. We used the food court at the POR for all our morning meals. They had a great selection of things. One morning I tried to be nice and take breakfast back to the room for the girls but that was kinda precarious so the rest of the morning meals took place in the food court dining area. We bought the re-fillable drink cups and that was a great deal at $12 per cup. I try not to take in a lot of caffeine and was very happy with the Diet Caf-Free Coke and the Decaf Coffee options. I'm a bit of a coffee snob as well and I have to say that I really liked their Decaf coffee. Go figure. Wondering te crowd situation mid-week versus the weekend? I was and got a taste of it Friday Night/Saturday morning. On Friday night, Boatwrights was slammed busy and on Saturday, the Food Court was totally slammed with people. If you can go mid-week, do it as the crowds will be similar at the parks I'm sure.

A side note...it's certainly a small world that we live in. After breakfast one day, I'm waiting for the girls to use the restroom near the piano bar and this guy walks down the hall in past me. What the?! I cautiously say "Steve?" and the guy turns around and comes back. Yup, it's an ex co-worker from a couple of years ago, at a work conference in WDW. How bizarre. Neat surprise though. He's also based on the West Coast down in San Diego.

The rest of the trip was MK and AK. MK was great. I was constantly comparing it to Disneyland. Dang, MK is huge! The castle is Ginormous! I'm glad I went there though (initially I was debating on going to the Hollywood Studios or MK), neat to compare the two. I was surprised that the Haunted Mansion was "original" as ours is in the Nightmare Before Christmas theme this time of the year. ADR's for dinner was at the Liberty Tree Tavern.

Again, no waits and a great experience. Park closed at 7:00p that night. We did not attend the Mickey Not So Scary Thing since we knew there were Halloween festivities on the ship to come.

Last land-based day was at AK. Non-stop fun was starting to wear on our daughter. We rented a stroller. They make these things big for a reason as I saw a lot of parents pushing their bigger kids around. Also great for the backpack and other stuff so well worth it. No Visa Rewards discount here tho like we have at Disneyland. We got a fast pass for Everest. When the time to ride came, girls were more interested in Dino area so I took the fast passes for 3 quick rides in a row. After my 2nd consecutive, I decided enuf-was-enuf and gave my last fastpass away. That was a little dizzy'ing but fun. We had ADR's at Yak & Yeti TS that evening. We decided that we wanted to eat early as lil' girly was fading a bit so we checked into the restaurant early. Super nice staff and they said, we'll seat you by one of the great window tables for the parade. They weren't kidding. It was so fun to eat dinner and have the parade pass right in front of you. The only thing missing was sound as it was near silent through the restaurant windows.

As far as taking advantage of the ameneties on-site at the POR. We had hoped to rent bikes, ride the boat to Downtown Disney, and fish but only got to fish (on the saturday morning of cruise day) as the days were so full and action packed. We're also fortunate to live in sunny CA and have our own pool at home so we didn't feel a need to use the POR pool areas.

The DCL had a cruise counter at POR and I checked in one day. We had purchased Disney Transportation from the Resort to the Cruise terminal and we verified everything at the DCL counter. Luggage was to be tagged and picked up from our room on Saturday at 8:00a. Again, everything went buttery smooth and the next time we saw our luggage was outside of our stateroom door on the Magic. We were told that pickup for transport to the cruise would be about 12:00p and to assemble at the piano bar between 11:30a and 11:45a. There were only 6 of us boarding from POR and we ended up getting on a bit earlier since we were all ready and the bus was arriving soon. There were only 10 others on the cruise bus and we went straight to Port Canaveral from the POR with no more stops. I'll continue the Cruise portion of my review in the cruise section in the next day or so. I'll have the word "Saga" in the title so it's easy to find.

SoundDesigner

[SheenaXena21]

Thanks for posting.

[vicki_c]

Thanks for your nice report. I'm about to cruise for the first time in January, so I'll have to go find that part of your report.

I wasn't impressed with POR when we've stayed there either, but we normally stay in deluxes at Disney (well now mostly DVC). If you consider a moderate for a future trip though, we liked POFQ a lot better than POR. Every place has its fans and its detractors.

[BurleyGirl]

Thank you for posting such an honest, well-thought-out, and thorough review! I'm sure your cruise trip report would be a good read, but we've not done a Disney cruise and if I read it, it will just make me want to go on one, and getting to WDW is hard enough (Kinda like what you don't know, won't tempt you!)