we're home :( live updates started page 2, summary on page 7

You know I got every single ADR on my list including CRT at 8.00am :woohoo: but I could not for the life of me get an ADR for Saana.

Would love to know with envy what you think of it;)
 
we had lunch booked at sanaa for 1.15pm, but went in at 12 and asked for an earlier seating and got in no prob. it wasnt that busy, i've heard that theres been problems with the ADR system, so that might say why its booked?

we got up about 9.30, we were up quite late last night with our cruise buddies so wanted a lie in. i went and did some laundry at the AKV laundrette, its located at the start of the zebra trail just off the lobby on floor 5, but you need your room key to get in the door.
we decided to head over to kidani village early and try and get an earlier ADR time, so we walked over there. the walk itself wasnt too bad but why oh why do they make you walk through the (really UGLY) parking garage to get to the lobby? kinda spoiled the nice walk.
now i heard that the lobby at kidani was smaller than jambo, but i wasnt prepared for quite how much smaller. it was TINY. also we both agreed that the hotel seemed kinda disjointed, there was a lot of floor changes to get to where we needed to be, and some of the signs were wrong. its a new resort so i'm hoping its teething troubles?
we got seated at saana just after 12, apparently today was the first day of the new menu, our server said that they had tweaked the previous menu in response to feedback, and it seemed nice to me. gary chose the tandoori chicken with basmati rice, and i went for the tandoori shrimp with 5 grain pilaf rice. we tried a bit of each others. it came out as a naan bread on the bottom, topped with mixed greens, and the meat/shrimp on the top. the rice came in a separate bowl.
the food was soooooo good. a bit too much yoghurt on mine for my liking but i just scraped it off. the view from the big windows was cool, and the restaurant was nice. it did seem small considering it is the only place in kidani to get any food.
gary had the choc cake for dessert and i had the vanilla coconut rice pudding. gary said the choc cake was good, and it came with mango ice cream. my dessert was seriously some of the best rice pudding i've ever tasted.
all in all we were very impressed with the food there, although we were glad we chose jambo instead of kidani.
we headed over to AK afterwards, rode dinosaur, everest, and kali rapids. we then headed to hollywood studios and rode RnRc (again! garys getting obsessed with this ride) and i even managed to finally convince him to ride ToT. i was laughing so hard (in between worrying about if gary was ok) because he was screaming the whole way through. i've never heard him do that so i found it hilarious!! he did like it though and he wants to go back.
we headed over to epcot afterwards as we had a 5.30 divequest booked. we got there a bit early so we had a look in the shops, then headed over to meet our tour. it was good, we did it last year so knew what to expect. we got out about 8.20 and headed back to the hotel. got dinner at mara, then headed back to the room. we got to see the higher of the illuminations fireworks while eating dinner, then got to watch hallowishes. i could get used to watching the fireworks from our window.......

tomorrow is typhoon lagoon day, then its off to the yacht club for our last ADR of the dining plan, at captains grille. at 8pm we're doing another pre cruise meet at jellyrolls (any excuse eh??!!) then off to epcot afterwards with whoever wants to come for EMH.

cruising on thursday!
 


Glad you enjoyed Sanaa, glad to see they have listened to people about the menu and tweaked it, as I said I read more poor reviews than good ones so hopefully this will change now.
TofT if they could get me on at all I used to just grip on and shut my eyes, I hated it. Now my arms go in the air and love it.
Enjoy TL and Captains Grille.:goodvibes
 


hi everyone!
went to typhoon lagoon this morning, we had a surplus of counter service credits so stopped at mara for brekkie on the way to TL. got to TL about 10.30, spent about 3 hours there, had a great time, i much prefer this park to blizzard beach. at one point they ordered everyone out of the wave pool, not sure why but it reopened quite quickly so guessing whatever it was it wasnt serious.
we went to pick up our rental car from dollar at the regal sun resort, when we got the car it was only 3/4 full, we've only got it as a one way rental to port canaveral so i didnt bother going back but if we had the car for longer i'd have got a full tank.
came back to the hotel, have done a load of washing, and starting packing ready for the cruise!! off out to the yacht club for dinner at captains grille, and then meeting our cruise people at jellyrolls.
and we cruise tomorrow!!!! wont be updating on the cruise as the net rates are scary so have a great weekend everyone!!
 
Hi Karen, cruised 7 times from Port Canaveral and never knew you could drop a Dollar car off at the port, I guess its the Thrifty office you goto? We used Budget last month, nothing wrong with the shuttles but the car we got after the cruise was filthy and no water in washer bottle, warning light was on so obviously they had not cleaned or checked oil & water levels. Won't be cruising for a while but will look at other options to Budget next time.
Don't bother with the internet onboard, 75cents a minute, Karen just checked her emails twice last month and it was about $5. Posting on here would cost you a fortune, although we would appreciate a cruise update:goodvibes
Now I am jealous you are going on the cruise, have fun:thumbsup2
 
i think we need to drop the car off at the thrifty office, from what i've heard on here they share offices. the car isnt as nice as the one we had at the start of the holiday (they're both PT cruisers), but its ok for one day.
i'm back at saratoga springs for the night after the cruise, so will probably do another update when we're back on dry land :) i started a trip report after last years holiday, but never got round to finishing it, so i'm kinda treating this thread as this years trip report!!

we went to captains grille at the yacht club earlier, i had the ribeye, which was nice, but it had some wierd tasting herby butter on it which gave it a bit of an aftertaste. gary had the crab legs, which he loved. he had key lime pie for dessert (he loved it, i hated it), and i had the double chocolate cheesecake, yummy!!
went for a walk round the boardwalk afterwards, we were due to meet some of our cruise mates at jellyrolls at 8. one of the couples texted me saying she wasnt feeling well so went back to their hotel, one couldnt make it as she was picking her husband up from the airport, the rest of the people were an open invitation, to be honest we didnt know who was supposed to be turning up.
turned out it was just me and gary, and lainey and greg. we met outside and waited til 8.15 for anyone else to turn up. no one did so we decided to walk back to epcot instead of going in.
we had a walk round WS, then decided to come back to the hotel to finish packing and get an early night. we stopped at the gift shop on the way back to use up the rest of our snack credits.
we're going to mara tomorrow morning for brekkie to use the last of our credits, then off to the port. :)
 
well i hate to admit it but we're back home :( well technically we got back 7am tuesday morning, but have had jetlag from hell so this is the first time i've had the energy to type this!

the cruise was awesome as usual, i think next time we'll try a longer cruise, 3 days just isnt enough.
we left animal kingdom lodge on the thursday at about 8.30ish, as we wanted to get an early boarding group in the terminal. the original plan was to drive to the car hire place first, drop the car back at cape canaveral. get their shuttle back to the port, then check in to the terminal at 10am. well we ended up having a bit more of a lie in than planned so we didnt get to the port area til 9.55. as we were so close to the time it opens, we dumped the luggage with the porters first, then drove back to the dollar office on north atlantic avenue. given that this is still a relatively touristy area, it looked quite run down, but we came across the dollar shuttle bus on the way there so decided to follow it back to the office instead of going it alone (i'd printed off exact directions to the port, but i'd lost them along the way so was guessing at the route the whole way to the port. luckily my sense of direction held up and we didnt get lost).
so we dropped the car back then got on the shuttle. there was one other family that were going on the carnival ship, but they were going for a wedding and running late so we ended up dropping them off first then it dropped us off.
when we got to the terminal i was a bit worried, even though i know that DCL allow you to bring alcohol onboard, there was a huge sign in the security bit saying no alcohol. i had visions of garys 12ish bottles of beer getting confiscated.
we got in ok though, and we got boarding group 3, not bad for getting there "late". i was checking in, gary was watching cartoons, and the people at the next desk were donna and bob, part of our cruise meet thread. i finished checking in, found gary, found mary and tim (also from our cruise meet thread), then donna and bob came to join us. we sat around chatting til it was time to board, then we headed towards the ship.
we headed to parrot cay for lunch, had a lovely lunch, i had LOADS of shrimp and loads of dessert!! we sat with mary and tim, then parted ways after lunch. had a quick wander round, then found a couple of loungers on deck 9, the lion king was on ariel vision, so gary sat and watched that while i went and did a bit of a photo tour of the ship.
at 1.30 i headed down to check out our cat 11 room, it was great and not having a window didnt bother me at all, i was a bit worried that it'd be wierd but i didnt care at all. out luggage turned up at 1.40ish, so i took that in and did a bit of unpacking, put our FE up, put our door magnets on, and was pleasantly surprised that all 3 cases fit in the wardrobe so i didnt have to trip over them all of the cruise.
i headed back up on deck, met up with gary and lainey and greg (also from our cruise meet), and sat and chilled for a bit. more cruise meet people jenny and joe got stuck waiting in the terminal after a security scare caused DCL to suspend boarding for over an hour. apparently they had to call in more sniffer dogs and it caused havoc. the lifeboat drill ended up being postponed.
we had a meet organised for deck 10 but it was too hot so we ended up sitting on deck 9 and i kept heading upstairs every 10 mins or so to make sure there was no one waiting up there for us.
after the boring and way too long lifeboat drill in the searing heat we headed up for the sailaway party. we saw the golden mickeys at 6.15, then had a look in the gift shop. i'd decided i was going to buy myself another big fig this trip, but couldnt find a good one i liked, so was really pleased when i found they did a cruise one. i bought it there and then as they only had 1 left, and they said they'd deliver it to the room on saturday night. then we went for a drink, had a walk round the ship, then headed to animators palate for our 8.15 meal.
 
Friday was Nassau day, so we started off with breakfast at beach blanket buffet, then watched as the ship pulled into, and subsequently reversed into port, it never ceases to amaze me how they can manoeuvre those ships so precisely!
We had the Nassau segway tour booked, and our meeting time was 10am in the promenade lounge. We got there a bit early so we sat and played snakes and ladders to pass the time! There were only 3 of us from the Wonder on that excursion, and the other guy was a lifeguard on castaway cay. A taxi met us down at the port, and took us on a short 10-15 minute drive to earth village. Not sure why this is caused earth village, it’s a strange bit of wilderness inland from the main port, there’s not much there apart from a riding stable and a load of canals carved into the ground.
They fitted us with helmets, knee and elbow pads then got us on our X2 all terrain segways. They take a little while to get used to, at first you think you’re going to fall off all the time but you get into the swing of things quickly and they’re good fun. We drove out into earth village and round for about 45 mins, our guide showed us how to ride them with no hands which is fun, and if you’ve ever fancied trying a segway, I’d definitely recommend this tour. Its $75 each but very good fun.
We got picked up by our taxi driver then took a scary ride back, the drivers in Nassau are mental. Last year we got off the ship for an hour or so then ended up getting back on. This trip confirmed it for us, that we’d much rather stay on the ship unless we had another excursion booked.
We went back to the ship via the indoor market place thing (mum wanted another rum cake), then headed back on the ship and up to the pool.
The US travel agent we’ve used for the last 2 cruises (I’m not allowed to mention his name on here )was travelling on our cruise with a group from the Jacksonville Chamber of commerce. He called our room in the afternoon and asked us if we wanted to meet up for a drink and a chat. We met him in cove cafe and sat chatting for an hour or so.
Neither of us are big toy story fans so we skipped the show that night, and just sat up on deck watching the world go by (and watching robin hood on arielvision! :))
We were in parrot cay for dinner, the Jacksonville lot were sat next to us and I think they’d been drinking for most of the afternoon because they were all really loud and pretty drunk, but hey they’re on holiday too, so we didn’t mind too much.
We headed up to the pirate party after dinner, and watched the fireworks. Mickey didn’t fly that night, not sure if the weather conditions weren’t right or what, but the show was still great.
I got a couple of slices of cake from the dessert buffet then we headed back to the room as Gary was really tired (think he was suffering from a bit of heatstroke)
 
Saturday was Castaway Cay day.
We headed to Triton’s for breakfast as Gary didn’t want the standard buffet fare and liked the sound of the eggs Benedict.
We got off the ship early and found 2 chairs at the start of the family beach. We tried the snorkelling lagoon but must have picked the wrong area so didn’t really see much. We’d booked the getaway package so made use of our floats too.
We’d booked the jetski tour, this was great fun, I’ve never been on one before and you can really get some speed up on those things! It was cool seeing the back of the island too.
We got the tram to serenity bay and ate lunch there, then chilled out on the adult only beach for a while. I went snorkelling as I’d heard there was some good stuff out there if you went far enough out. I eventually found a reef and found loads of fishes, it was really cool.
We chilled out on the beach for a while, had a chat with Chuck (the travel agent) for a while, then headed back to the family beach to go hire our bikes. We had a cycle round the island, then headed back to the ship. It must have been really hot, because I got a little tiny bit of sunburn – well more sun grilled than burnt – and I NEVER burn. Ever.
We saw the Disney Dreams show (awesome as always), then headed to Tritons for dinner. We did notice that most of the Jacksonville group were missing, but after Friday night and seeing them drinking all afternoon on Serenity Bay, it didn’t really surprise us!
 
Sunday was the day we dread, time to get off the ship :(
We’d put our luggage out the night before so we packed up what little stuff was left in our room, and headed to Tritons for brekkie (via deck 9 for one last walk around the ship). Jenny and joe decided to head to the buffet for breakfast so we had a smaller table than the night before.
We had breakfast, said our goodbyes, then headed down to catch our DCL transfer back to Saratoga Springs.
We got back to SSR, checked in, but our room wasn’t ready so we were given a number to call later in the day to get our room number.
We headed down to the bus stop, narrowly missed the Hollywood Studios bus, so we waited about 20-25 mins for the next one. This turned out to be the longest we ever waited for a bus this entire trip.
We headed to Rock n Roller Coaster, then rode Tower of Terror (Gary didn’t scream as much as last time), then headed back out to go to Epcot.
We went to see Turtle Talk one last time then headed to World Showcase for the Food and Wine Festival. When we were in Japan, the torrential rain started (only the 2nd time it properly rained the entire holida), but it only lasted for 5 mins or so.
Food and Wine was great, although a lot of the food offerings were the same as last year.
We went back to SSR, hopped off at the Grandstand stop to get our room assignment. We were in Congress Park in room 1105. It was a great first floor room with an amazing view of DTD. We walked round to DTD, did a bit of shopping, Gary got one last rum runner, then we headed back to the room to dump the shopping, and attempt to repack the suitcases.
We got the bus to the MK, and stayed there for extra magic hours til about 10pm.

Monday morning, we got up, had some pop tarts for the breakfast in the room, then had bell services pick us up about 10.15 for our ME bus back to the airport :(
 
So to sum it all up:

WDW buses -
This was the first time we hadn’t hired a car and we thought the buses were awesome. I’d heard some bad things on here, but the longest we waited for a bus was 20-25 mins, and that was on the last day. We could have run for the bus we wanted but couldn’t be bothered. Most times we waited a max of 5-10 mins. I didn’t notice it taking longer to get to the parks, given that when you drive you have to park then take the tram to the park. All in all I think it took about the same amount of time.

Magical Express and Cruise Line Buses –
Efficient, clean, the videos are a nice touch. I think the cruise transfers may be a bit overpriced, especially for a larger family, but we didnt want the hassle of a hire car on the way back.

Dining Plan –
This was awesome, again it was a first for us. I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but i booked my ADRs at 90 days out, got exactly what i wanted, and had a great time trying out new places, and not having to worry about ordering the expensive things.
I totalled up what we spent, the dining plan cost us $959.76 for 12 days, not including the 24 snack credits (forgot to keep track of how much they cost) but between the counter services and table services we used $1108.63 of food.

Saratoga Springs –
Loved this resort. It was so nice and peaceful, really glad I changed from All Star Music. For the first 8 nights we were in the Carousel section. It was a (pleasant) 8 min walk to the main building, and the buses were awesome. I think during the whole 8 nights, we saw other people in our building 3 times. It was that quiet.
The room we had in Congress Park on our last night was awesome too, room 1105 has a great view of DTD.

Animal Kingdom Villas –
Have stayed in AKL before, but having the little kitchen area helps out a lot, its nice having a little place you can “cook”. We were right at the end of zebra trail in room 5545 (about 5 rooms from the far end of the lodge). Is response to the people who say the rooms down there are too far from the lobby, it took me 2 minutes and 18 seconds to walk to the lobby. If that is long to some people, how do they cope walking round WDW all day? We could hear the AK parade from our room, and could see Wishes and Illuminations. We also saw a LOT more animals than we did last year from our club level arusha savannah room.

MNSSHP –
First time doing this, we did MVMCP last year and i honestly prefer MNSSHP. The shows are great and the parade is amazing. The trick or treating makes it great fun too!

Seaworld 7 hour VIP tour –
We booked this as we thought the park would be busy being a Sunday, even though it was quiet, this was still a great tour. We were going to do Dine with Shamu and feeding the animals anyway, so this tour turned out to be $35 more. Turned out we were the only people on the tour, we had the guide all to ourselves, got front of the queue on rides, got reserved seating at the shows.
Because it was just the 2 of us, we got round everything so much quicker, that we ended up doing stuff thats not normally in the tour, like seeing the backstage areas.
We learnt a lot of cool stuff too (like the Shamu trainers have to be working with the animals for 5 years before they’re even allowed in the water with them, as Amanda put it, thats basically 5 years of cleaning fish).

Cruise –
As great as it was last year, the segway tour and jetskiing were awesome.

weather -
great. have never been in september before, we had what i call proper rain twice in 16 days, no storms or anything, really hot and sunny all the time. the humidity was stupidly hight some days though which really takes it out of you.


all in all we had an amazing time :)

if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask!
 
A great conclusion to your trip report Karen and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Thank you for all your thoughts and for taking the time to do this during your holiday.
I for one would love to see some pics if you find yourself with a few minutes spare :thumbsup2
 
I've enjoyed reading the updates as you did them and loved just now reading all about the cruise.

What a fab holiday you had:cool1:
 
will try and post some photos, but i took 3320 photos so it'll take a while to go through them all!
 
have enjoyed reading all you thoughts, we are doing ssr for the 1st time next year, so glad to hear you loved it.
thanks for taking the time to share, glad you ve got over the jetlag, tiime to start planning for next year:lmao:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page


GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!


New DISboards Threads

StartedByAMouse
DisneyBand+ Delivery Times
Replies
0
Views
3
StartedByAMouse
StartedByAMouse
W
The Guess Who is Who?
Replies
0
Views
25
WEDWDW
W
jsternad
Ordering off the Kids
Replies
0
Views
18
jsternad
jsternad
Lisann
BLT 2 bdrm sleeper or pulldown?
Replies
2
Views
32
Lisann
Lisann
Elizakapeka
finding late night food and drink
Replies
2
Views
43
Elizakapeka
Elizakapeka
WxKristin
Should I stay or Should I go?
Replies
0
Views
28
WxKristin
WxKristin
NEWS & UPDATES



Latest posts







facebook twitter
Top