"Our TR - Now with 100 % less POFQ!" - Nov 10th-20th(3/5-Last Day & Final Thoughts!)

[FosterA]

Nice updates!!
First of all, I LOVE coconut and I want some of that school bread!

Also, I completely understand that hitting the wall feeling and just wanting to sit down. I imagine all the snacking really slows you down too.

I love the pic of DD chilling with the sunglasses on

Great photos! I love Epcot

 

[skier_pete]

Nice updates!!
First of all, I LOVE coconut and I want some of that school bread!

Also, I completely understand that hitting the wall feeling and just wanting to sit down. I imagine all the snacking really slows you down too.

I love the pic of DD chilling with the sunglasses on

Great photos! I love Epcot

Oh...if you don't mind the coconut, then you HAVE to try it next time you go...hope you are already making a list for your return.

I think it might have been the drinking rather than the snacking. I wasn't stuffed full or anything, the portions are pretty small.

 

[DisMomAmy]

Thanks for the links Pete! I'm all caught up now.

Your first three days were packed full! I'll have to take another look at the Sanaa menu - the restaurant looks beautiful.

This was our first completely stroller free trip too. We'd been mostly stroller free last spring but had grabbed a stroller for a couple days at the end of the trip. I think it's the heat that bothers DS8 the most. We'll see how he does in April because he's definitely too big for a stroller now. DS11 likes to have a stroller to sit in when we are waiting for parades & fireworks. We didn't do too much of that in November but he didn't have any complaints.

Was Day 3 the last day of F&W? It didn't seem too busy. It was very crowded when we were there.

 

[skier_pete]

Was Day 3 the last day of F&W? It didn't seem too busy. It was very crowded when we were there.

Yes, it was the last day. I was surprised how not crowded it was. We went last year to Epcot on a Sunday for F&W in October, and it was much worse than this day was. I would still in the future try to catch F&W mid-week, but Sunday is not a bad alternative.

 

[skier_pete]

Well, one thing that certainly made it feel like a down day, there was no pressing need to get up in the morning. Now the big thing we wanted to do was to hit DTD during the day. Our only real obligation was at night – we had dinner at the Garden Grill, and then the big “surprise!” (which has been already revealed elsewhere).

There was no real hurry to get up this morning, but since everyone in the family is early risers and with all the people moving around, everyone was awake before 7:30 AM. We didn’t rush to get out of the room or anything, though – but we did want to go to DTD in the morning rather than later in the day. We left the hotel about 9:15 AM and were headed for the bus. The buses to DTD always seem brutal, partly because of the stop at Typhoon Lagoon. It was about 10 AM by the time we got down there.

At this point we more or less split up, with DM and DW going directly to the WoD store, while DD wanted to ride the carousel. (No, she doesn’t want to ride the MK Carousel, just this little one that cost $2 a ride.) We stopped in Once upon a Toy and she also played in the squirty fountains.

After the walk-through, we headed over to WoD where we met with DW. Thanks to our Disney Visa, we can get 10 % off here – so we do most of our shopping here. We also did a bit of shopping for DW and DD (I didn’t really buy anything for myself) including a picture frame and a snow globe. I always by DD a snow globe for every Disney trip we’ve been on…this would be the 7th. We picked out a Alice in Wonderland Tea Cup Spinner Snow globe, which we thought was very cool, the whole globe is on a swivel base, and you can “spin” the globe, instead of shaking it. (I’ll add a picture later.)

We “spent” about an hour in there. (I amused myself with the double-meaning phrase “We SPENT the day at DTD” for much of the afternoon.) DW and DM stayed behind while DD and I went on to the Lego store. She really likes Legos, as do I, and I was really looking forward to the mix-and-match lego bins. First she played outside with the car-racing blocks, then we went inside and picked out some stuff.

Maleficent Dragon / Prince Phillip Lego sculpture:

Seven Dwarves:

DD Lego vehicle:

I had budgeted $100 for Legos. We spent $30 on the bins and got two big jars of Legos, which was really awesome. The engineer in me kicked in with the best way to fill the jars with the most possible legos. The only negative is you couldn’t buy wheels, which is what we really, really wanted. We then picked out a couple of the new “Creator” sets where you can make multiple things out of the same kit. I also let her make three “people” as well, though that was a big rip-off (3 people were like $10 and theres like 15 pieces versus the 100s of pieces we got for $15.)

Woody with DD:

And with Buzz:

DD liked the dogs:

We got out of there spending $117. Overall, I spent $367 at DTD in a few hours. Definitely “Spent” that day! It was around 1 PM and we wanted to have some time to swim before we got back. We ended up walking over to the Pleasure Island bus stop, since we were more or less in the middle, and I figured walking back would lead to only a longer bus ride. It was good timing, as we didn’t wait 5 minutes for the bus. (Turns out the only bad bus karma of the trip was from my mom, who left earlier than we did, but waited almost 45 minutes for a bus, and therefore only got back to the resort just before we did.)

Next up, a little time at our resort.

 

[Moodyzblu]

I believe you are talking about the same snow globe that I bought a while back for my dd. She's a huge Alice fan.
We LOVE the Lego store ! We spend the most souvenir money there. We really liked the re-model .. those little tv boxes that show the product on the screen were really cool.

 

[skier_pete]

We came back and got some lunch. DD got a hot dog, while I got the Caribbean burger. This had crispy onions, mango pineapple salsa, a plantains on it, and it was absolutely delicious. (Sorry, no pictures – how did I miss that.)

After we ate, we had enough time to head for the pool for a little while – maybe 2 hours – so we did. I brought the camera. The pool area is great, and they have games and stuff for the kids to do for most of the afternoon. I’m not sure if this is something they are newly instituting or not (I notice POFQ had it now as well) but DD sure liked it. She also liked the two pool slides. Here are some pictures:

The stairs up to the big (dark) slide.

The view from the parapet:

Coming out of the slide:

The bigger slide exit:

The smaller slide:

There was also a “splash” area designated for little kids. DD never actually tried to go there, but later in the trip we noticed you had to be under 48”, which she wasn’t anymore, and there wouldn’t have been able to go.

Now is as good a time as any to talk about this resort. As anyone following my TR knew, I was a bit skeptical about staying here. Realistically I was concerned about three things versus our preferred location at POFQ – the multiple bus stops, the size of the bed (full instead of queen), and size of the resort. The first two were not even remotely an issue, there was one time that the multiple bus-stops seemed to really slow us down, but otherwise it was not a problem at all. The size of the resort was completely canceled out by the fact that we were upgraded to “preferred” location. We were so close to the center of the resort it was ridiculous. Here are two shots I took standing in one spot, the first I faced one way and took a picture of our room. The second I faced the other way and took a picture of Port Royale.

It was probably about 60 seconds from our room to the food court, and maybe 2 minutes to the main pool. We were probably closer to the main pool than the quiet pool. However, after staying preferred, I would have to say this might be a case where I would pay for the same privilege in the future. We walked around the resort a bit on our last day, and there are quite a few room locations that would be very, very far from the main hotel, and even quite a few that would far from a bus stop.

To the positives, we really liked the Old Port Royale set-up. The food court was very good for lunch/dinner with quite a bit of selection. Breakfast at usual was wholly mediocre (our one main criticism). The pool was very nice, and the activities they staged at the pool were great and went on for a good portion of the day (from 1 PM into the evening with movies on the big screen). There was also some other activities such as boat/bike rentals that we didn’t take advantage of. The staff was absolutely wonderful, and we never had any problems at all.

We’ve now stayed at 4 Disney Resorts (AKL, POFQ, Pop Century and now CBR). I would in fact recommend all four to anyone, as we had great experiences at all of them. To rank them would even be difficult. Pop Century is obviously for a more modest budget, and while we had great stays there, I would certainly prefer the mods, but would not object to going back. AKL is of course an amazing experience, but there were a few negatives there and would only recommend that stay as an extravagance. Of the two mods, I still would say I prefer POFQ personally, but if I were coming again with young children (a likely prospect) I would probably pick CBR for having a better pool and more activities surrounding it.

A few last shots from that day:

Christmas decorations went up when we were there. They were somewhat sparse, but I thought appropriate…it’s not a resort that screams “Christmas!”

After spending some time at the pool, we had to get ready for our dinner.

Next up, an evening at Epcot.

 

[Chicago Mo]

. Of the two mods, I still would say I prefer POFQ personally, but if I were coming again with young children (a likely prospect)
Next up, an evening at Epcot.

Congratulations?!?!?!?

 

[skier_pete]

I believe you are talking about the same snow globe that I bought a while back for my dd. She's a huge Alice fan.
We LOVE the Lego store ! We spend the most souvenir money there. We really liked the re-model .. those little tv boxes that show the product on the screen were really cool.

Could well be, I will snap a pic from home eventually. I don't really remember the old store that well, we didn't really go inside it much. There were lots of neat stuff in the store. Again, the only negative was I couldn't buy some wheels!

Congratulations?!?!?!?

No,no, no new kids. I guess I still consider our DD to be "young" as in 12 and under. And there is no trip back in the works either - a vague plan for 2013 is all. This is really the first time in 6 years without a WDW trip to plan, I thought I would go through withdrawal, but so far not so much. I guess its all you nice folks listening to my stories.

 

[Chicago Mo]

yes we are dueling TR comments!!!

We won't be returning until about 2013 FOR the new Fantasyland! i am thinking about the new animation building too... But i REALLY LIKE THE POLY.. Insert best whinny voice..

 

[Chicago Mo]

No,no, no new kids. I guess I still consider our DD to be "young" as in 12 and under. And there is no trip back in the works either - a vague plan for 2013 is all. This is really the first time in 6 years without a WDW trip to plan, I thought I would go through withdrawal, but so far not so much. I guess its all you nice folks listening to my stories.

OK read too much into that....

 

[FosterA]

That's so funny that your DD only will do the carousel that costs money. What's up with that?
The DTD bus situation I do remember being so long. ugh. The day we did DTD was my worst sick day and I swear that bus took forever and I hated having to go through Typhoon Lagoon. Glad I'm not the only one that thinks it's a bit brutal.

You got some great photos of the resort. I love all the pastel colors

 

[skier_pete]

That's so funny that your DD only will do the carousel that costs money. What's up with that?
The DTD bus situation I do remember being so long. ugh. The day we did DTD was my worst sick day and I swear that bus took forever and I hated having to go through Typhoon Lagoon. Glad I'm not the only one that thinks it's a bit brutal.

You got some great photos of the resort. I love all the pastel colors

I totally understand why they share a bus - the volume for the water parks doesn't really justify their own bus, and DTD is right across the street, but it makes the bus travel really long, especially since the route through DTD is really slow too.

In general, I HATE going to DTD Disney and spending money. I prefer to completey avoid it as my own personal protest to the (incompetant) shuttering of Pleasure Island. I only did it this year because of the 10 % discount @ WoD and the Lego store.

As far as resort photos, my DM didn't take a ton of photos on the trip, but she did take a bunch of resort photos when she stuck around while we went to TL. So, they'll be more coming up eventually.

 

[skier_pete]

That's so funny that your DD only will do the carousel that costs money. What's up with that?
The DTD bus situation I do remember being so long. ugh. The day we did DTD was my worst sick day and I swear that bus took forever and I hated having to go through Typhoon Lagoon. Glad I'm not the only one that thinks it's a bit brutal.

You got some great photos of the resort. I love all the pastel colors

I totally understand why they share a bus - the volume for the water parks doesn't really justify their own bus, and DTD is right across the street, but it makes the bus travel really long, especially since the route through DTD is really slow too.

In general, I HATE going to DTD Disney and spending money. I prefer to completey avoid it as my own personal protest to the (incompetant) shuttering of Pleasure Island. I only did it this year because of the 10 % discount @ WoD and the Lego store.

As far as resort photos, my DM didn't take a ton of photos on the trip, but she did take a bunch of resort photos when she stuck around while we went to TL. So, they'll be more coming up eventually.

 

[skier_pete]

Merry Christmas everyone! (Or whatever other holiday you celebrate!) I thought for Christmas I would share a picture of our Christmas tree. It's small, but it reminds us of what Christmas is all about.

Thank you to everyone who takes time out of your life to read my ravings and TR. May you and yours have a wonderful holiday season. And don't forget to spend some time on Christmas watching the Disney parade!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Hey! I missed a couple of updates. How did that happen??






Oh wait!




MERRY CHRISTMAS!







(Is it over yet? I need to go back to spending time on the DIS)

 

[Moodyzblu]

Merry Christmas everyone! (Or whatever other holiday you celebrate!) I thought for Christmas I would share a picture of our Christmas tree. It's small, but it reminds us of what Christmas is all about.

I think it's perfect !!

Thank YOU for sharing your trip with US !

 

[skier_pete]

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. We went to cousin's for Christmas eve for a while, so we were out until 9:30 PM and DD fell right to sleep, which was nice. She had a small fit Christmas day when she opened one of her gifts and it was clothes. but otherwise the day went well. The stress is starting to slide away! It's been unseasonably warm and dry here...yesterday we went for an afternoon walk around the block to visit some neighbors. In the 40s and still zero snow on the ground. So far enjoying the lack of snow, but it'll soon be cramping our winter ski plans!

Gotta work two days this week, hopefully it will be slow. We are then heading out of town to my Dad's in Massachusetts for 5 days. Hope to get a little more TR in between. I was able to cut and paste in more of my report below. Enjoy!

So, we headed out for Epcot somewhere a little after four. We had a 5:45 PM ADR for the Garden Grill, and I was hoping to squeeze in “Living with the Land” and “Circle of Life” before dinner so we didn’t have to come back to The Land pavilion on our other Epcot day. Well, the bus came quickly and we were in Epcot before 5 PM. We headed for LwtL and of course there was very little wait.

DD really likes this ride for some reason. I always enjoy making Jungle Cruise jokes during the opening section:
“Did you know those butterflies can grow anywhere from 12” up to whopping 1 foot?”
“There’s Smiley, he’s always looking for a handout.”
My family of course hates me for this! Can’t say I blame them. It’s definitely worth a ride each trip, but once is enough. DM and DW also enjoyed the ride.

After that, DD insisted we should see the “Circle of Life” and of course our timing was such we had to wait about 10 minutes for the movie. Again, this is a movie I don’t really need to see ever again. (For the record, I am pro-recycle big time.) It’s a nice environmental sledge hammer message and while I guess it’s good to give the kids, I feel the fact that DISNEY of all places is telling us to conserve energy and be one with the environment gets me all irritated. I mean, perhaps they DO try to conserve here and there – but how about providing examples of this? It’s like GE preaching to me to buy new light bulbs to reduce energy usage or something.

Anyways, the movie was running later than our ADR, and I sort of thought there would be a wait, so I ducked out of the movie with a few minutes left and put our names in. There was a few people around, and we had to wait a few more minutes. We were seated by about 6 PM. I was concerned about getting out by 7:15 PM, as we needed to be at the Beach Club for the Illuminations cruise. Because of the late timing, I didn’t request a lower tier table, but we were fortunate to get one anyway.

Dinner at the Garden Grill is a tad different from most Disney Character meals. It’s a revolving restaurant so there really isn’t anyplace to set up a buffet, so the meal is served family style. I neglected to take pictures yet again (What’s wrong with me?) so I’m going to cheat and show last year’s pictures. Right when we sat down the Big Cheese himself came by:

They brought out the salad and bread course first. This was followed by the main meal, which is made up of Turkey and mashed Potatoes, beef with stuffing, and fish over succotash (the pictures show veggies, but that had changed):

The kids get chicken legs (DD ate 3 of these) mac and cheese, sweet potato fries and broccoli:

We actually got seconds on the beef, turkey and also the broccoli (a rare vegetable at Disney!). The food is quite good, not really great, but for the family style it is a decent meal – not for the price of course!

Now, we started in the back of the restaurant, ate our salad and our meal, we were now rotated to the front of the restaurant, had been there almost an hour, and still no other characters. This was a bit strange from my perspective, as this restaurant is not very big, and last time we saw every character twice…so FINALLY Chip came along:

And IMMEDIATELY behind him was Dale. This was actually kind of neat, because they were interacting with each other. Now, I like that this dinner you can see Chip and Dale, but really these are two characters that should be together, and to see them here together was fun:

We got our desserts, which for DD was an ice cream with oreos (this picture actually taken tonight!):

For us, it was apple cobbler, and I admit I like my apples mushy in my apple cobbler, and these are crunchy, so not so great. (Again, last year’s picture.)

We were waiting for Pluto. The ladies went to the bathroom while I waited with DD…it was getting late and I was about to say we have to go…I did ask the waitress at this point, who was very good…if there was anyway we could see him, but she didn’t seem to do anything to hustle him up. We saw him coming and asked the Table behind us if we could skip ahead just to get a quick picture:

Now, I had still not told the family the “surprise”…however, when I told them that they needed to use the bathroom before we went, DW guessed what we were doing. But anyways, on our way from The Land to World Showcase, I told everyone what the surprise was…an Illuminations cruise!

 

[skier_pete]

So, now I can tell the whole tale. I didn’t book this myself, but I knew there was a thread of cruise shares here on the DIS. We had a few nights we could’ve done one so I decided to watch for one that might open up on those nights, but I wasn’t going to re-arrange my plans. Well, early in the summer I spotted ClaireH from the UK looking for people to share a cruise this night (November 14th). I wrote to her and told her I was interested. Well, twice it looked like things were going to be changed – once Disney messed up the booking, and a second time which I won’t get into here – but both times it came back around.

So, in the end I was able to keep the cruise. We basically had to pay for 1/10th of the boat each, which came to about $35 a person. So, we went out the back entrance of Epcot (International Gateway) and took the Friendship boats over to Yacht/Beach Club, with two more bathroom stops in between. We got to the cruise and met our fellow travelers. There was a friend of Claire’s (local DISer) another couple from the UK on their anniversary, and another couple that had just gotten engaged a few days before.

The skipper was a WDW veteran, and we boarded about 8:20 PM, they took us out for a ride down towards DHS and back.

I didn’t get many quality pictures. One of the other guys had a good camera, and was going to share the shots, but I haven’t gotten them yet. (I didn’t really want to post the other families anyways.) We rode back towards the International Gateway and moored underneath the bridge between England and France. I mostly videotaped, so again not many pictures, but here’s the view from where we were docked:

Seeing Illuminations from this vantage point seemed VERY luxurious. I am not a huge, huge fan of Illuminations but do enjoy the show, but always dislike the whole “staking a spot/standing for an hour” that you have to do with these types of things. (I mind it less for Wishes for some reason.) Being able to sit on the boat while seeing people standing above/around you was a lot of fun. The Skipper also gave us an overview of the story of Illuminations, which I hadn’t really known, and that made the show more interesting as well. After that, we rode back towards the Yacht/Beach Club and got off. It was a lot of fun.

So, would I recommend an Illuminations cruise? Well, that depends. At $35-40 a person, I would wholeheartedly recommend it. We had a very good time, met some very nice people, and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I would not pay $350 myself for the event. The boat next to us had only 1 family (2 parents, 2 kids) on it, and I kept thinking “Wow, that’s an expensive evening out!” If you can get in on a share, then I would say give it a try. Even DD liked it, though we gave her ear plugs which I think helped a lot. She was pretty tired by the end though.

At the end of the night we went in through the Yacht Club (which I’ve never been in) and got a taxi. We had to wait about 10-15 minutes for the taxi, which sort of surprised me. There were several other families in front of us, and I assumed that this would be fairly common and they’d have taxis at the ready. In the end, it was the easiest mode of transport back to the room. We were still back at our hotel around 10 PM and it was right to bed for everyone, for the next day, the most important rope drop of all…the Toy Story Drop…er I mean Hollywood Studios Drop.

 

[Moodyzblu]

I've always wondered how those cruises worked as far as cost and such .. and you're right .. unless you can share it, that's a LOT of money to pay for one family. I feel the same about the character meals .. as much fun as it all seems, I can't justify paying so much for a meal. We sort of just nibble our way around the parks.

Hope you have a nice visit to MA ! I, personally, am LOVING no snow ! We practically live at the bottom of Wachusett Mountain ski area but really only go there a couple of times a year so the boys can snowboard. This is usually a huge week for them .. lucky for them they have snow makers.