JerseyJanice
A Disboards original...
- Joined
- Aug 20, 1999
- Messages
- 10,764
Well, after months of anticipation, the day was finally here! It was the first day of February, the day after the SuperBowl. The Denver Broncos had won, and I was hoping that we would somehow get to see John Elway during our trip. (I think he's so cute.)
Our alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. The limo was coming at 6:30 a.m. to drive myself, my husband and baby to the airport. My in-laws live in a different area so they got their own car service to the airport. Craig (my husband) and I both showered and dressed. We were debating on whether to take our son in his pajamas asleep to the airport or to wake and dress him at home. We opted for the latter, and fortunately, he didn't get up too grumpy. I guess he could sense our excitement. The limo had trouble finding our house number, so we got into the car kind of late. To our surprise, there was a lot of traffic getting to the terminal, so we cut it pretty close.
The flight was just fine, except for Louis driving us crazy with the phone in the seat in front of us. No matter what we did with it, he kept playing with that stupid phone. I felt bad for the person sitting in that seat. Planes should have phone-free seats the way supermarkets have candy-free check-out lines.
We landed in Orlando at around 11:30 a.m. The trip my in-laws had booked included round trip transfers via Mears shuttle. Everything went smoothly enough with Mears, and we were at the resort by 1:00 p.m.
Since our rooms were not yet ready, we all went to lunch at the Pepper Market food court. Neither my husband nor myself cared much for this place. I had the chicken caesar salad overpriced at $8.95. Usually when I order this at home, a chicken breast is grilled and placed on top of the salad so you have the contrast of hot and cold. However, the chicken was already cut up and was ice cold, and I'm not sure it was all white meat. Hopefully, it wasn't because there were a lot of dark colored pieces which, if they were white meat, would mean they were seriously undercooked.
My husband had a cheeseburger and fries for about the same price. The burger was unremarkable, and the fries looked and tasted like they had been cooked hours before and briefly reheated in the deep fryer when Craig placed his order. After the 10% surcharge they tack onto your bill, this lunch cost us $20 and was nothing to get excited about. To justify the surcharge, a woman comes around every now and then to ask if you'd like refills of your drinks. If I liked the food here, I could definitely do without this service and the surcharge. But since we didn't care for anything anyway, we just didn't come back.
Actually, it was probably just as well we didn't like the food court, since our room turned out to be quite a hike from it. We wound up in the Cabanas section 8A, very close to Bus Stop #3 and near to the Dig Site. This turned out to be a very convenient location for us since we took my son swimming each afternoon. I think he enjoyed this as much as the parks. [Note: While we were there, they were constructing a bridge over the lake that looked like it would be a pretty good shortcut to the main lobby area.]
Anyway, each family had their own room. Ours was next to my mother's and father's-in-law, and Craig's sister's family was three rooms down from ours. The rooms are lovely. From the pictures I had seen on the Internet, I was expecting the decor to be quite gaudy. Although it is colorful, the room is still restful and homey and not at all loud. Also, they seem to have soundproofed this hotel well. I didn't hear any noise outside our room during the entire week. The room was kept very clean, and I had no qualms about giving my son a bath in the tub here.
Our plans for the day were to get into our rooms if they were ready or have our luggage stored, then head out to explore Epcot. We were then going to treat my parents in-law to dinner at the Coral Reef to thank them for this wonderful gift. Well, after lunch, I could tell my son was getting terribly tired which meant he'd be a bear, so my husband and I decided to stroll him around the resort to get him to take a nap. Everyone else headed out to Epcot and we told them we'd meet them there for our 6:00 PS.
It took awhile for that little sleep fighter to go down. We were able to get into our room at around 3:00, but my son didn't fall asleep until 4:00. When we tried to wake him at 5:15, he cried so pitifully that we decided to skip the family dinner. We called the podium at the Coral Reef using the internal phone system at Disney and asked them to have my mother-in-law call us when they got there. My in-laws understood how knocked out the little guy was. After all, he was up at 6:00 a.m., had taken no earlier nap, and thought the plane ride was the biggest thrill of his life.
Anyway, he woke up around 7:30 p.m. so we decided to head over to the Boardwalk rather than wasting a park pass for an hour's visit to Epcot. Thank you, Internet posters, as I would not have known about doing this were it not for reading other people's reports.
What a wonderful place the Boardwalk is, especially considering there is no admission to go there. We walked around, checked out the dining options, watched the Buskers perform, then decided to get a pepperoni pizza from the Spoodles window. We ate outside and were able to see the fireworks from Illuminations. The pizza was delicious, too. After eating, we strolled some more and went into the Boardwalk bakery for a snack to bring back to the room. We got two brownies, one cheesecake, the other plain. Both were to die for.
We caught a bus back to the Coronado I guess at around 11:00 p.m. Actually, the bus system at Coronado Springs was excellent the whole trip, and I think it's fantastic that there is a bus that runs between the Coronado, the Boardwalk, and Downtown Disney. Neither the Boardwalk nor Downtown Disney charge entrance admission, and both places are a pleasure to visit.
Our alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. The limo was coming at 6:30 a.m. to drive myself, my husband and baby to the airport. My in-laws live in a different area so they got their own car service to the airport. Craig (my husband) and I both showered and dressed. We were debating on whether to take our son in his pajamas asleep to the airport or to wake and dress him at home. We opted for the latter, and fortunately, he didn't get up too grumpy. I guess he could sense our excitement. The limo had trouble finding our house number, so we got into the car kind of late. To our surprise, there was a lot of traffic getting to the terminal, so we cut it pretty close.
The flight was just fine, except for Louis driving us crazy with the phone in the seat in front of us. No matter what we did with it, he kept playing with that stupid phone. I felt bad for the person sitting in that seat. Planes should have phone-free seats the way supermarkets have candy-free check-out lines.
We landed in Orlando at around 11:30 a.m. The trip my in-laws had booked included round trip transfers via Mears shuttle. Everything went smoothly enough with Mears, and we were at the resort by 1:00 p.m.
Since our rooms were not yet ready, we all went to lunch at the Pepper Market food court. Neither my husband nor myself cared much for this place. I had the chicken caesar salad overpriced at $8.95. Usually when I order this at home, a chicken breast is grilled and placed on top of the salad so you have the contrast of hot and cold. However, the chicken was already cut up and was ice cold, and I'm not sure it was all white meat. Hopefully, it wasn't because there were a lot of dark colored pieces which, if they were white meat, would mean they were seriously undercooked.
My husband had a cheeseburger and fries for about the same price. The burger was unremarkable, and the fries looked and tasted like they had been cooked hours before and briefly reheated in the deep fryer when Craig placed his order. After the 10% surcharge they tack onto your bill, this lunch cost us $20 and was nothing to get excited about. To justify the surcharge, a woman comes around every now and then to ask if you'd like refills of your drinks. If I liked the food here, I could definitely do without this service and the surcharge. But since we didn't care for anything anyway, we just didn't come back.
Actually, it was probably just as well we didn't like the food court, since our room turned out to be quite a hike from it. We wound up in the Cabanas section 8A, very close to Bus Stop #3 and near to the Dig Site. This turned out to be a very convenient location for us since we took my son swimming each afternoon. I think he enjoyed this as much as the parks. [Note: While we were there, they were constructing a bridge over the lake that looked like it would be a pretty good shortcut to the main lobby area.]
Anyway, each family had their own room. Ours was next to my mother's and father's-in-law, and Craig's sister's family was three rooms down from ours. The rooms are lovely. From the pictures I had seen on the Internet, I was expecting the decor to be quite gaudy. Although it is colorful, the room is still restful and homey and not at all loud. Also, they seem to have soundproofed this hotel well. I didn't hear any noise outside our room during the entire week. The room was kept very clean, and I had no qualms about giving my son a bath in the tub here.
Our plans for the day were to get into our rooms if they were ready or have our luggage stored, then head out to explore Epcot. We were then going to treat my parents in-law to dinner at the Coral Reef to thank them for this wonderful gift. Well, after lunch, I could tell my son was getting terribly tired which meant he'd be a bear, so my husband and I decided to stroll him around the resort to get him to take a nap. Everyone else headed out to Epcot and we told them we'd meet them there for our 6:00 PS.
It took awhile for that little sleep fighter to go down. We were able to get into our room at around 3:00, but my son didn't fall asleep until 4:00. When we tried to wake him at 5:15, he cried so pitifully that we decided to skip the family dinner. We called the podium at the Coral Reef using the internal phone system at Disney and asked them to have my mother-in-law call us when they got there. My in-laws understood how knocked out the little guy was. After all, he was up at 6:00 a.m., had taken no earlier nap, and thought the plane ride was the biggest thrill of his life.
Anyway, he woke up around 7:30 p.m. so we decided to head over to the Boardwalk rather than wasting a park pass for an hour's visit to Epcot. Thank you, Internet posters, as I would not have known about doing this were it not for reading other people's reports.
What a wonderful place the Boardwalk is, especially considering there is no admission to go there. We walked around, checked out the dining options, watched the Buskers perform, then decided to get a pepperoni pizza from the Spoodles window. We ate outside and were able to see the fireworks from Illuminations. The pizza was delicious, too. After eating, we strolled some more and went into the Boardwalk bakery for a snack to bring back to the room. We got two brownies, one cheesecake, the other plain. Both were to die for.
We caught a bus back to the Coronado I guess at around 11:00 p.m. Actually, the bus system at Coronado Springs was excellent the whole trip, and I think it's fantastic that there is a bus that runs between the Coronado, the Boardwalk, and Downtown Disney. Neither the Boardwalk nor Downtown Disney charge entrance admission, and both places are a pleasure to visit.
