ohiominnie
<font color=teal>It's interesting when you google
- Joined
- May 31, 2000
- Messages
- 14,836
Ok, trip report....this is for both you guys and for the April 2008 thread, so some things may seem obvious to you, but won't to them....hence the explaining. 
Ok, well, Ill tell ya....this trip was FUN!! The last trip we took was 2 weeks and it included taking two different sets of grandparents....one set one week, the other the next. So both weeks were very similar b/c we had to do all of the regular stuff ....twice. The only difference was meals, which were varied. This trip was us, all us, and nothing but us....well, almost.
We headed to Vero Beach on Friday where we met up with Mikes mom and her husband. Spent Friday and Saturday with them. They checked out Sunday morning and headed home. We stayed until Monday. Sunday evening is when the weather started to get nasty from that sub-tropical storm. The beaches were closed. It rained. It was windy. So it was a good thing we were leaving early Monday. We hit the road at the crack of dawn (ok, maybe a bit later) and made it to OKW to check in. Check in done, we went over to the Lodge for a late breakfast at Whispering Canyon. mmmm...
My thoughts on Vero.....its a beautiful place. Im not an ocean/sand/salt water gal, but the kids had fun. It was extremely relaxing since there was basically nothing to do. The kids didnt do any of the activities Vero has. If we were staying more than a couple of days, Im sure theyd get more involved in that. We just had fun swimming, sitting by the pool, sitting at the beach, etc. Campfire program was fun, but I got literally eaten alive by no-see-ums. Biggest complaint about Vero....dining choices are extremely limited. There is fast food/counter service by the pool and one restaurant that had more of a cruise fare menu....I just wanted something simple and easy (especially since the food wasnt included like it is on the cruise.) We did get pizza one night from the counter service place. Ate the left overs the next night. Did room service for breakfast Saturday and Sunday....which was good and remarkably reasonable.
Vero started the someone is sick nearly every day of the vacation routine. For whatever reason, both late afternoons/evenings on Saturday and Sunday I was extremely nauseated. Maybe it was having to deal with Mikes mom (who has taken to misinterpreting everything I say and do, so I was therefore on edge and guarded the entire time) Maybe it was the greasy food I had for lunch. Dunno. Whatever it was, we hung out in the room both evenings. Not much to do at that hour anyway. I think Vero is a nice place to go to relax for a couple of days, but I couldnt see spending a week there. Disney service all around though.
Ok.....on to WDW. We mostly had a fantastic time. The crowds were pretty low, especially the first week. We did more commando style on several days than we have in the past, but other days were very very laid back. Going on the someone is sick nearly every day of the vacation theme, it seemed like we went through an entire box of Sudafed and quite a bit of Motrin......stuffy noses and fevers a plenty.
One day Nick was feeling so-so. Mike and KT went on Mission Space, but Nick wasnt up for it. He just wanted to sit and sip an Icee. While waiting for M and K, Nick got kinda funky and I felt him and he was BURNING up (this was only 3 hours after a Motrin dose for a headache). Walked him over to first aid (which, even though we were at Test Track, and first aid is on the bridge on the path to Mexico, it still felt like MILES.) Got there and Nick was 102.6!! I cant say enough for how great the nurse in first aid was. She got him a PowerAde and Tylenol and really encouraged him to lie down for a bit to cool off. Nick just wanted to go back to the room. I agree. If youre going to be sick, a villa at OKW is better than a cot in first aid. So we met back up with M and K and headed back. The next day he was still stuffy, but no more fever. A few days later, KT wakes up in the middle of the night. Of course, she sees everything as a competition, so her fever registered at 102.7! Motrin for her. The next days early entry at MGM was pretty much a no-go. In fact, I think that day we just hung out, wandered around DTD a bit and took it easy. I think Mike is the only one who avoided any plan altering illnesses.
Ok, enough of that.....if youre still reading, youre just dying to know.....the housekeeping story. Well, we had our first full cleaning on day 4 as per DVC policy. Not a bad cleaning, the only complaint is that because we had bathing suits hanging on the towel rack in the bathroom, they failed to give us all of our clean towels. Instead of *at least* 4 towels, we had 3. Usually we end up with 6 or so, but not this time. No big deal though. Otherwise there wasnt any complaint. Four days later, we had our trash and towel service. This is where things got weird. We got home from a long day out and I noticed a sloppy job. There was a new kitchen towel just thrown on the counter (not hung nice and pretty) The coffee packed was setting on top of it. Right next to that was the OBVIOUSLY dirty towel that I used to clean up some strawberry juice off of the counter. In the bathroom, nothing was hung up.....just a pile of towels and washcloths on the counter. The new soap and the shampoo and conditioner bottles were thrown in the corner (only shampoo and conditioner, no lotion or shower gel) They werent even standing up pretty, they were just laying there. The wastebasket in the bathroom, while empty, was sitting in the middle of the room. The trash in the bedroom still had garbage in it. Ok, not being a complainer, I just let it go. Not up to DVC standards, IMHO, but maybe the housekeeper was very rushed to get villas cleaned in time for check in.
Until I went in before bed to brush my teeth (now about 11:00 at night) and I saw KTs brush. For those who dont know, KT has shoulder length light brown hair. No curl, no nothing....poker straight. When she brushes her hair, the hair wraps around the brush and its indiscernible. But the brush I was looking at had a porcupine look to it with kinky black hairs sticking out in all directions. NASTY!!! I pulled out probably 40-50 strands of black kinky hair. I wrapped those in a washcloth and pulled out a similar # of KTs hairs that were still in the brush. I put those in a washcloth for comparison purposes. Called the OKW front desk and asked what time the head supervisor got in....they said 9:00. Ok, there goes our early entry at Epcot. At 9 we were at the front desk. The woman there wanted to help us, and in all politeness I told her I seriously doubted she had the authority to do anything about this, that we needed a supervisor. She asked what it was about and I told her a housekeeping issue.
So she called the housekeeping manager for OKW who wanted to hear my story over the phone. Uh, no, you really need to SEE this. So he told me he was about 15 minutes away and hed come to the check in area of OKW. We waited. He showed up along with another manager type looking person. We explained that we were a bit disappointed in the service, but we werent going to complain. But after we found the brush, we took pictures of everything else just to show the general state of things. When I opened up the washcloth with not KTs hair they both GASPED. They were appalled! They addressed KT (who had scraggly hair b/c she refused to use the brush until it was bleached) and told her how sorry they were and that theyd give us a $10 credit so we could buy a brush in a gift shop. The woman said, tell ya what, Ill make it $20 so you can use the extra to buy yourself something special....or some ice cream. I was a little worried about our next full cleaning 4 days later, but they must have sent another person b/c everything was fine (although we did all hide our toothbrushes just in case!)
Ok.....that story being told....what else? We had a LOVELY time meeting up with armyfam and her clan. They are great people. The kids, after an initial warming up period, seemed to hit it off well. As did the adults! There was lots of sharing and laughing and general fun that night. Hope to get together with them again at some point! Im thinking of speaking with Susan about a planned marriage between KT and either of her boys. Theyd make great in-laws!
We had a table service or buffet planned every day. We ended up cancelling about 1/3 of them b/c there was no point going when kids were sick and wouldnt eat anyway. Stinks that Nick is now an adult and yet, with his medication, he eats less in a meal than I eat in a snack! Ouch.
Some new things this trip.....we took the Behind the Seeds tour at Epcot. It was sort of a last minute decision to try to get in and were glad we did. Nick has always LOVED the Living with the Land ride and we all loved this tour. It was about 90 minutes but it was packed with info and close up looks at the greenhouses. Only complaint was....they have a cherry tomato tree that has produced something like 17,000 tomatoes and it was sagging with ripe fruit. But we couldnt eat any. The tour guide liked to describe all of the yummy stuff in there, but we couldnt sample it. We did all get one slice of cucumber. Id have liked to have seen more samples of the stuff. But great tour anyway.....and lots of ways to get a discount (DVC, Disney Visa, Annual Pass, etc)
Oh, Mike was picked to be in the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular as an extra. First time hes ever stood up and volunteered. If youve seen the show, he was the one with the evil, maniacal laugh. Ive got some great pictures of him on the set.....hope I can get those up.
We spent a good amount of time with Mikes brother who has moved down there. Hes working at a Michaels craft store now b/c hes unable to get a job at Disney until hes been down there 6 months.....uh....due to a little run in with the law in GA. So hes just biding his time. Although, financially, hes having lots of trouble (Mikes mom just bailed him out....again....but for the last time she says) so now Marc is wondering if he can afford to work at Disney (they dont pay well). Hes not up to reapply until July.....so well see what happens. Right now hes living the life of a single guy (which cant be good for the budget that his mom set up for him after buying him a car and cashing in her 401K to pay off his debts) Hes spending all of his time at Universal, at WDW, and at Pleasure Island with seemingly no regard for what this all costs!
Hmmm.....anything else? We did venture over to Dixie Landings (or was it Dixielandings?) for dinner in the food court one night. Thats where we stayed the first time we took the kids....in 2000! Food court was awesome! And they served Vanilla Coke as one of their fountain drinks. I thought that drink was gone forever. Cant tell you how much Coke I drank that night!
We recreated a picture of the kids on one of the bridges. Ill try to post the 2000 picture and the 2007 picture later. Should be just a bit of a change.
Heres a new thing. The refillable mugs have changed. We noticed the one we got at Vero was the same at the Lodge and at Dixie Landings. The one at OKW was different though. And that one said SPRING 2007 on it. Looks like they may change it seasonally.
Hmmm....what else? Oh, after the fireworks one night at the MK (our last night---a Saturday) I couldnt believe how messy the hub and main street were. Dont these people realize there is a trash can every 12 feet in the Magic Kingdom? Literally, people just threw down entire trays from meals (the cardboard, cup carrying kind) complete with 1/2 eaten food, wrappers from every kind of Disney treat, cups of soda, popcorn boxes. We couldnt walk 2 feet without having to dodge something. Just pigs, I tell you.
Oh, at Animal Kingdom one day I went into a bathroom and gasped. I have NEVER seen a Disney bathroom look like this. In fact, Im not sure Ive seen ANY bathroom look like this.....the garbages were all overflowing onto the floor. There was toilet paper all over the floor in the stalls. 1/2 of the toilets had not flushed properly. In every stall I peeked into to find a clean toilet, the feminine hygiene receptacle was OVERFLOWING with....well, used stuff (not wrapped up either!) BLECH! You could tell the underlying bathroom was clean (i.e. the floors werent black with crud) but the general condition of the bathroom was horrible. I found a CM coming out of the mens bathroom as I left the womans and told him about the condition. He said he was just made aware of it by another CM who had gone in there to fix an overflowing toilet. He said he didnt know where the CM was who was supposed to be taking care of it. Said she hasnt been seen for hours. (shrug) At MGM on another day MIke and Nick experienced an overflowing urinal.
No magical moments happened for us this time. Seems like back in November/December there were tons of people with dream fast passes, special lanyards, the year of a million dreams mickey ears, etc etc. But this time, hardly anything. Maybe they didnt pace themselves early on and they are running out. I know the kids got a few pins last time and free ice cream. Nothing major, but definitely more magic.
Oh....this is a bad thing too.....Our Kilimanjaro safari guide didnt look at the road as she drove. No, she was text messaging her friends on her cell phone the entire time!!! It was quite irritating. At one point she even turned the phone on herself and took a picture of herself driving. Usually the guide is scanning the horizon and pointing out animals that youd most likely miss.....there, over there at the base of that big tree, under the brush, see the cheetah? Not this girl. The only animals she pointed out were the ones that were big and very OBVIOUS. And she goofed up facts like the Okapi can get as large as 100 pounds. Uh....Im looking at the thing and its at least a few hundred pounds, if not more! And her driving was awful b/c she wasnt anticipating things. Shed speed up out of a corner only to find herself on the butt of the truck in front of her. Then when it was the part of the ride where you flush out the poachers, we had to sit for about 3 minutes and wait for the truck in front of us to get through it before we could start. We sat there in silence as she texted her friends. And, btw, through no fault of her own, the voice overs were not working. All in all, a lame experience. Only one other time has it been a sub-standard safari ride, and that was during extra magic hours about a year ago when all of the animals had made their way back to their enclosures b/c it was feeding time and they knew it. No, I did not complain to anyone about this only b/c we were making a bee-line somewhere and there wasnt anyone there to complain to really.
As long as we are on the topic of non-Disney-like. Service at Ohana was not up to standards. We were served appetizers and side dishes first. Then, 10 minutes later, we got the warm towels. Then we were offered two kinds of meat. I didnt think about it until the end of the meal, but we were never offered turkey or sausage (thats ok, pork is my favorite) but still. Mike never got a refill on his drink. And then they snapped at us b/c we suggested taking our dessert to go (we didnt get seated until late, the service was slow, and we had somewhere to be) Instead we scarfed down dessert quickly. Then I gave them the room charge and he took the two from the tables around us. He returned theirs, came to our table and said can I get you anything else? I said Yeah, the check please. He said didnt I leave it for you already? I said yes, and you took it and never brought it back for me to sign. He looked.....he hadnt even run ours through. (sigh) It just surprises me they are making Marc wait 6 months to get a job at Disney yet they are giving all of these goofballs jobs.
No big problems with busses or monorails or any sort of thing like that. Great service in all the rest of the restaurants. No complaints on the quality of the food (unless you consider its too much for me to eat--Mike and I split a lot---or the kids and I split) I am LOVING the kids meal options. I usually get apple slices instead of fries b/c Im not a big french fry person. It was a nice refreshing treat. Boo to the fish and chip place by Great Britain who insisted I take fries with my fish and wouldnt even let me substitute potato chips.
Boo to the mom in the garden near Great Britain who smoked and talked on the cell phone while her 5 yr old dd nearly took down a small tree by shaking and kicking it. Finally the mom noticed and yelled at her. Mom was too busy saying things like anywhere I can find a frickin beer, I drink one. Lovely. Boo to the grandma who cut in the very long OKW bus line at the end of the MK day and proceeded to save seats for her family who just barely made it on the bus. Uh...yeah, they are more tired than us. Good thing you saved them seats. KT was about ready to take her out.
Kudos to the kid in the back of the same bus who used glow bracelets to explain the game of football to his friend (a girl) including all of the positions and their roles. I told him that the next football season Im going to look like a genius when we watch a game and Ill owe it all to him and his glow bracelets. And here I thought at tight end was just how football players butts looked in their uniform!
Kudos to some teen boys on a different bus who got up to offer seats to those who needed it more.
Oh, another new thing (can you say flight of ideas?) We went to the All Star Cafe for the first time. It was during one of the Devil Ray vs. Ranger games that was played at Wide World of Sports. I figured itd be packed but we got right in. Kinda interesting to be watching the game on the TV that was happening right across the path from where we were sitting. Great food. Mike and I split. The kids split.
Thats it for now. Any questions?
Ok, well, Ill tell ya....this trip was FUN!! The last trip we took was 2 weeks and it included taking two different sets of grandparents....one set one week, the other the next. So both weeks were very similar b/c we had to do all of the regular stuff ....twice. The only difference was meals, which were varied. This trip was us, all us, and nothing but us....well, almost.
We headed to Vero Beach on Friday where we met up with Mikes mom and her husband. Spent Friday and Saturday with them. They checked out Sunday morning and headed home. We stayed until Monday. Sunday evening is when the weather started to get nasty from that sub-tropical storm. The beaches were closed. It rained. It was windy. So it was a good thing we were leaving early Monday. We hit the road at the crack of dawn (ok, maybe a bit later) and made it to OKW to check in. Check in done, we went over to the Lodge for a late breakfast at Whispering Canyon.
mmmm...My thoughts on Vero.....its a beautiful place. Im not an ocean/sand/salt water gal, but the kids had fun. It was extremely relaxing since there was basically nothing to do. The kids didnt do any of the activities Vero has. If we were staying more than a couple of days, Im sure theyd get more involved in that. We just had fun swimming, sitting by the pool, sitting at the beach, etc. Campfire program was fun, but I got literally eaten alive by no-see-ums. Biggest complaint about Vero....dining choices are extremely limited. There is fast food/counter service by the pool and one restaurant that had more of a cruise fare menu....I just wanted something simple and easy (especially since the food wasnt included like it is on the cruise.) We did get pizza one night from the counter service place. Ate the left overs the next night. Did room service for breakfast Saturday and Sunday....which was good and remarkably reasonable.
Vero started the someone is sick nearly every day of the vacation routine. For whatever reason, both late afternoons/evenings on Saturday and Sunday I was extremely nauseated. Maybe it was having to deal with Mikes mom (who has taken to misinterpreting everything I say and do, so I was therefore on edge and guarded the entire time) Maybe it was the greasy food I had for lunch. Dunno. Whatever it was, we hung out in the room both evenings. Not much to do at that hour anyway. I think Vero is a nice place to go to relax for a couple of days, but I couldnt see spending a week there. Disney service all around though.
Ok.....on to WDW. We mostly had a fantastic time. The crowds were pretty low, especially the first week. We did more commando style on several days than we have in the past, but other days were very very laid back. Going on the someone is sick nearly every day of the vacation theme, it seemed like we went through an entire box of Sudafed and quite a bit of Motrin......stuffy noses and fevers a plenty.
One day Nick was feeling so-so. Mike and KT went on Mission Space, but Nick wasnt up for it. He just wanted to sit and sip an Icee. While waiting for M and K, Nick got kinda funky and I felt him and he was BURNING up (this was only 3 hours after a Motrin dose for a headache). Walked him over to first aid (which, even though we were at Test Track, and first aid is on the bridge on the path to Mexico, it still felt like MILES.) Got there and Nick was 102.6!! I cant say enough for how great the nurse in first aid was. She got him a PowerAde and Tylenol and really encouraged him to lie down for a bit to cool off. Nick just wanted to go back to the room. I agree. If youre going to be sick, a villa at OKW is better than a cot in first aid. So we met back up with M and K and headed back. The next day he was still stuffy, but no more fever. A few days later, KT wakes up in the middle of the night. Of course, she sees everything as a competition, so her fever registered at 102.7! Motrin for her. The next days early entry at MGM was pretty much a no-go. In fact, I think that day we just hung out, wandered around DTD a bit and took it easy. I think Mike is the only one who avoided any plan altering illnesses. Ok, enough of that.....if youre still reading, youre just dying to know.....the housekeeping story. Well, we had our first full cleaning on day 4 as per DVC policy. Not a bad cleaning, the only complaint is that because we had bathing suits hanging on the towel rack in the bathroom, they failed to give us all of our clean towels. Instead of *at least* 4 towels, we had 3. Usually we end up with 6 or so, but not this time. No big deal though. Otherwise there wasnt any complaint. Four days later, we had our trash and towel service. This is where things got weird. We got home from a long day out and I noticed a sloppy job. There was a new kitchen towel just thrown on the counter (not hung nice and pretty) The coffee packed was setting on top of it. Right next to that was the OBVIOUSLY dirty towel that I used to clean up some strawberry juice off of the counter. In the bathroom, nothing was hung up.....just a pile of towels and washcloths on the counter. The new soap and the shampoo and conditioner bottles were thrown in the corner (only shampoo and conditioner, no lotion or shower gel) They werent even standing up pretty, they were just laying there. The wastebasket in the bathroom, while empty, was sitting in the middle of the room. The trash in the bedroom still had garbage in it. Ok, not being a complainer, I just let it go. Not up to DVC standards, IMHO, but maybe the housekeeper was very rushed to get villas cleaned in time for check in.
Until I went in before bed to brush my teeth (now about 11:00 at night) and I saw KTs brush. For those who dont know, KT has shoulder length light brown hair. No curl, no nothing....poker straight. When she brushes her hair, the hair wraps around the brush and its indiscernible. But the brush I was looking at had a porcupine look to it with kinky black hairs sticking out in all directions. NASTY!!! I pulled out probably 40-50 strands of black kinky hair. I wrapped those in a washcloth and pulled out a similar # of KTs hairs that were still in the brush. I put those in a washcloth for comparison purposes. Called the OKW front desk and asked what time the head supervisor got in....they said 9:00. Ok, there goes our early entry at Epcot. At 9 we were at the front desk. The woman there wanted to help us, and in all politeness I told her I seriously doubted she had the authority to do anything about this, that we needed a supervisor. She asked what it was about and I told her a housekeeping issue.
So she called the housekeeping manager for OKW who wanted to hear my story over the phone. Uh, no, you really need to SEE this. So he told me he was about 15 minutes away and hed come to the check in area of OKW. We waited. He showed up along with another manager type looking person. We explained that we were a bit disappointed in the service, but we werent going to complain. But after we found the brush, we took pictures of everything else just to show the general state of things. When I opened up the washcloth with not KTs hair they both GASPED. They were appalled! They addressed KT (who had scraggly hair b/c she refused to use the brush until it was bleached) and told her how sorry they were and that theyd give us a $10 credit so we could buy a brush in a gift shop. The woman said, tell ya what, Ill make it $20 so you can use the extra to buy yourself something special....or some ice cream. I was a little worried about our next full cleaning 4 days later, but they must have sent another person b/c everything was fine (although we did all hide our toothbrushes just in case!)
Ok.....that story being told....what else? We had a LOVELY time meeting up with armyfam and her clan. They are great people. The kids, after an initial warming up period, seemed to hit it off well. As did the adults!
There was lots of sharing and laughing and general fun that night. Hope to get together with them again at some point! Im thinking of speaking with Susan about a planned marriage between KT and either of her boys. Theyd make great in-laws! We had a table service or buffet planned every day. We ended up cancelling about 1/3 of them b/c there was no point going when kids were sick and wouldnt eat anyway. Stinks that Nick is now an adult and yet, with his medication, he eats less in a meal than I eat in a snack! Ouch.
Some new things this trip.....we took the Behind the Seeds tour at Epcot. It was sort of a last minute decision to try to get in and were glad we did. Nick has always LOVED the Living with the Land ride and we all loved this tour. It was about 90 minutes but it was packed with info and close up looks at the greenhouses. Only complaint was....they have a cherry tomato tree that has produced something like 17,000 tomatoes and it was sagging with ripe fruit. But we couldnt eat any.
The tour guide liked to describe all of the yummy stuff in there, but we couldnt sample it. We did all get one slice of cucumber. Id have liked to have seen more samples of the stuff. But great tour anyway.....and lots of ways to get a discount (DVC, Disney Visa, Annual Pass, etc)Oh, Mike was picked to be in the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular as an extra. First time hes ever stood up and volunteered. If youve seen the show, he was the one with the evil, maniacal laugh. Ive got some great pictures of him on the set.....hope I can get those up.
We spent a good amount of time with Mikes brother who has moved down there. Hes working at a Michaels craft store now b/c hes unable to get a job at Disney until hes been down there 6 months.....uh....due to a little run in with the law in GA. So hes just biding his time. Although, financially, hes having lots of trouble (Mikes mom just bailed him out....again....but for the last time she says) so now Marc is wondering if he can afford to work at Disney (they dont pay well). Hes not up to reapply until July.....so well see what happens. Right now hes living the life of a single guy (which cant be good for the budget that his mom set up for him after buying him a car and cashing in her 401K to pay off his debts) Hes spending all of his time at Universal, at WDW, and at Pleasure Island with seemingly no regard for what this all costs!
Hmmm.....anything else? We did venture over to Dixie Landings (or was it Dixielandings?) for dinner in the food court one night. Thats where we stayed the first time we took the kids....in 2000! Food court was awesome! And they served Vanilla Coke as one of their fountain drinks. I thought that drink was gone forever. Cant tell you how much Coke I drank that night!
We recreated a picture of the kids on one of the bridges. Ill try to post the 2000 picture and the 2007 picture later. Should be just a bit of a change. Heres a new thing. The refillable mugs have changed. We noticed the one we got at Vero was the same at the Lodge and at Dixie Landings. The one at OKW was different though. And that one said SPRING 2007 on it. Looks like they may change it seasonally.
Hmmm....what else? Oh, after the fireworks one night at the MK (our last night---a Saturday) I couldnt believe how messy the hub and main street were. Dont these people realize there is a trash can every 12 feet in the Magic Kingdom? Literally, people just threw down entire trays from meals (the cardboard, cup carrying kind) complete with 1/2 eaten food, wrappers from every kind of Disney treat, cups of soda, popcorn boxes. We couldnt walk 2 feet without having to dodge something. Just pigs, I tell you.
Oh, at Animal Kingdom one day I went into a bathroom and gasped. I have NEVER seen a Disney bathroom look like this. In fact, Im not sure Ive seen ANY bathroom look like this.....the garbages were all overflowing onto the floor. There was toilet paper all over the floor in the stalls. 1/2 of the toilets had not flushed properly. In every stall I peeked into to find a clean toilet, the feminine hygiene receptacle was OVERFLOWING with....well, used stuff (not wrapped up either!) BLECH! You could tell the underlying bathroom was clean (i.e. the floors werent black with crud) but the general condition of the bathroom was horrible. I found a CM coming out of the mens bathroom as I left the womans and told him about the condition. He said he was just made aware of it by another CM who had gone in there to fix an overflowing toilet. He said he didnt know where the CM was who was supposed to be taking care of it. Said she hasnt been seen for hours. (shrug) At MGM on another day MIke and Nick experienced an overflowing urinal.
No magical moments happened for us this time. Seems like back in November/December there were tons of people with dream fast passes, special lanyards, the year of a million dreams mickey ears, etc etc. But this time, hardly anything. Maybe they didnt pace themselves early on and they are running out. I know the kids got a few pins last time and free ice cream. Nothing major, but definitely more magic.
Oh....this is a bad thing too.....Our Kilimanjaro safari guide didnt look at the road as she drove. No, she was text messaging her friends on her cell phone the entire time!!! It was quite irritating. At one point she even turned the phone on herself and took a picture of herself driving. Usually the guide is scanning the horizon and pointing out animals that youd most likely miss.....there, over there at the base of that big tree, under the brush, see the cheetah? Not this girl. The only animals she pointed out were the ones that were big and very OBVIOUS. And she goofed up facts like the Okapi can get as large as 100 pounds. Uh....Im looking at the thing and its at least a few hundred pounds, if not more! And her driving was awful b/c she wasnt anticipating things. Shed speed up out of a corner only to find herself on the butt of the truck in front of her. Then when it was the part of the ride where you flush out the poachers, we had to sit for about 3 minutes and wait for the truck in front of us to get through it before we could start. We sat there in silence as she texted her friends. And, btw, through no fault of her own, the voice overs were not working. All in all, a lame experience. Only one other time has it been a sub-standard safari ride, and that was during extra magic hours about a year ago when all of the animals had made their way back to their enclosures b/c it was feeding time and they knew it. No, I did not complain to anyone about this only b/c we were making a bee-line somewhere and there wasnt anyone there to complain to really.
As long as we are on the topic of non-Disney-like. Service at Ohana was not up to standards. We were served appetizers and side dishes first. Then, 10 minutes later, we got the warm towels. Then we were offered two kinds of meat. I didnt think about it until the end of the meal, but we were never offered turkey or sausage (thats ok, pork is my favorite) but still. Mike never got a refill on his drink. And then they snapped at us b/c we suggested taking our dessert to go (we didnt get seated until late, the service was slow, and we had somewhere to be) Instead we scarfed down dessert quickly. Then I gave them the room charge and he took the two from the tables around us. He returned theirs, came to our table and said can I get you anything else? I said Yeah, the check please. He said didnt I leave it for you already? I said yes, and you took it and never brought it back for me to sign. He looked.....he hadnt even run ours through. (sigh) It just surprises me they are making Marc wait 6 months to get a job at Disney yet they are giving all of these goofballs jobs.
No big problems with busses or monorails or any sort of thing like that. Great service in all the rest of the restaurants. No complaints on the quality of the food (unless you consider its too much for me to eat--Mike and I split a lot---or the kids and I split) I am LOVING the kids meal options. I usually get apple slices instead of fries b/c Im not a big french fry person. It was a nice refreshing treat. Boo to the fish and chip place by Great Britain who insisted I take fries with my fish and wouldnt even let me substitute potato chips.
Boo to the mom in the garden near Great Britain who smoked and talked on the cell phone while her 5 yr old dd nearly took down a small tree by shaking and kicking it. Finally the mom noticed and yelled at her. Mom was too busy saying things like anywhere I can find a frickin beer, I drink one. Lovely. Boo to the grandma who cut in the very long OKW bus line at the end of the MK day and proceeded to save seats for her family who just barely made it on the bus. Uh...yeah, they are more tired than us. Good thing you saved them seats. KT was about ready to take her out.
Kudos to the kid in the back of the same bus who used glow bracelets to explain the game of football to his friend (a girl) including all of the positions and their roles. I told him that the next football season Im going to look like a genius when we watch a game and Ill owe it all to him and his glow bracelets.
And here I thought at tight end was just how football players butts looked in their uniform!Kudos to some teen boys on a different bus who got up to offer seats to those who needed it more.
Oh, another new thing (can you say flight of ideas?) We went to the All Star Cafe for the first time. It was during one of the Devil Ray vs. Ranger games that was played at Wide World of Sports. I figured itd be packed but we got right in. Kinda interesting to be watching the game on the TV that was happening right across the path from where we were sitting. Great food. Mike and I split. The kids split.
Thats it for now. Any questions?
). Yours does take the cake!
