pas130
Always missing Florida....
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2010
- Messages
- 9,187
ALOHA! The Polynesian Resort Information Thread: Summer 2011 Edition!
- Thread starter guitarob
- Start date
Holy cow, this time tomorrow I will be on an airplane!
So happy to be returning to my beloved Polynesian.
I can't wait to surprise the kids tomorrow morning. They've been sending me notes like this for a while now:
And this one came skittering in on a robot:
OMG, the robot one is the best. You made me spit out my drink!
DebbyLof428
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2007
- Messages
- 684
Holy cow, this time tomorrow I will be on an airplane!
So happy to be returning to my beloved Polynesian.
I can't wait to surprise the kids tomorrow morning. They've been sending me notes like this for a while now:
And this one came skittering in on a robot:
Yeah! See you there. Safe travels.
Just returned from my first stay at the Poly! I loved it. Thank you for the great tips and info I've found here.
Everything I love about the Poly has already been covered here! I don't think I have it in me to do a detailed trip report, but I can mention a few things I don't remember reading about here before:
Pool parties for kids: This had to be one of the best parts of the stay. Cast members were masterful at occupying children! Each of the activities took a very long time for the kids to accomplish and my husband and I took to measuring the length of activity in beers. (As in: "That one was about 2 beers long" ) My favorite game was a relay between two teams passing buckets of water to fill up a full sized water cooler jugs with tiny, tiny necks. Not hard enough? The buckets each have 3 holes in the bottom so most of the water runs out before you get it to the jug. It took forever and the kids never minded doing such a fruitless task. A parents dream! At one point I looked up and saw one cast member playing with only my kids. I thought they were bothering her, so I gathered them up to go. When I left, I noticed that she and the other cast member were tossing the ball to one another...that was truly their job, they had no other duty but to entertain my kids while I read a book. Genius!
Ferry horns: I was thrilled that we got a lagoon view in Tahiti just as I wanted. The kids being able to watch fireworks from our room was awesome! We loved being close enough for even little legs to walk to the TTC. Loved drinking a large pineapple drink on my balcony and hearing the Halloween music where I could still see the spooky flickering train station clock. I even loved the soothing sounds of the ferry boat horns...at first. But then I realized they would wake me early every morning and keep it up until 12:30AM every night. This wore thin and I think we will not choose that view next time.
Transportation: So convenient, especially if you stay in Tahiti! Sorry to hear some bad stories from people stranded on the monorail recently, but whatever happened must have been fixed because transportation was a dream for us.
Cabanas: A surprisingly good value for the money. I thought we were splurging on a ridiculously luxurious expense, but it was really very nice to have for about $100. Given that they provided us with a giant fruit plate that would feed 10 people for our 4 hours, we never went hungry and we took bananas back for breakfasts later. Our group went through all the soda and water in the mini-fridge. We always had a place where we could see the kids, the staff was super attentive with fresh towels and everything we could want, comfy chairs, TV for the kids to help the kids when they were tired and for adults that wanted to catch up on the baseball game. I would totally do that again if I had a big group of friends like we did! By the way, the Mauna Kea cabana is the one to get if you want to have a straight view of the bottom of the water slide to watch your kids.
The theming is pretty strong and probably over the top for some, but I personally LOVED it!
Everything I love about the Poly has already been covered here! I don't think I have it in me to do a detailed trip report, but I can mention a few things I don't remember reading about here before:
Pool parties for kids: This had to be one of the best parts of the stay. Cast members were masterful at occupying children! Each of the activities took a very long time for the kids to accomplish and my husband and I took to measuring the length of activity in beers. (As in: "That one was about 2 beers long" ) My favorite game was a relay between two teams passing buckets of water to fill up a full sized water cooler jugs with tiny, tiny necks. Not hard enough? The buckets each have 3 holes in the bottom so most of the water runs out before you get it to the jug. It took forever and the kids never minded doing such a fruitless task. A parents dream! At one point I looked up and saw one cast member playing with only my kids. I thought they were bothering her, so I gathered them up to go. When I left, I noticed that she and the other cast member were tossing the ball to one another...that was truly their job, they had no other duty but to entertain my kids while I read a book. Genius!
Ferry horns: I was thrilled that we got a lagoon view in Tahiti just as I wanted. The kids being able to watch fireworks from our room was awesome! We loved being close enough for even little legs to walk to the TTC. Loved drinking a large pineapple drink on my balcony and hearing the Halloween music where I could still see the spooky flickering train station clock. I even loved the soothing sounds of the ferry boat horns...at first. But then I realized they would wake me early every morning and keep it up until 12:30AM every night. This wore thin and I think we will not choose that view next time.
Transportation: So convenient, especially if you stay in Tahiti! Sorry to hear some bad stories from people stranded on the monorail recently, but whatever happened must have been fixed because transportation was a dream for us.
Cabanas: A surprisingly good value for the money. I thought we were splurging on a ridiculously luxurious expense, but it was really very nice to have for about $100. Given that they provided us with a giant fruit plate that would feed 10 people for our 4 hours, we never went hungry and we took bananas back for breakfasts later. Our group went through all the soda and water in the mini-fridge. We always had a place where we could see the kids, the staff was super attentive with fresh towels and everything we could want, comfy chairs, TV for the kids to help the kids when they were tired and for adults that wanted to catch up on the baseball game. I would totally do that again if I had a big group of friends like we did! By the way, the Mauna Kea cabana is the one to get if you want to have a straight view of the bottom of the water slide to watch your kids.
The theming is pretty strong and probably over the top for some, but I personally LOVED it!
logpey
Disney or bust!
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2006
- Messages
- 1,407
Holy cow, this time tomorrow I will be on an airplane!
So happy to be returning to my beloved Polynesian.
I can't wait to surprise the kids tomorrow morning. They've been sending me notes like this for a while now:
The most adorable thing, keep the notes forever!
Congrats on one more day, enjoys this time... Have fun!
You're soon yourself! Lucky duck!!!!Yay!!!
I almost spit out my drink, reading you almost spit out yours, lol!
pas130
Always missing Florida....
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2010
- Messages
- 9,187
The themeing is what makes the Poly the most attractive to us! Glad you had a great trip. Sorry the horns kept you awake though...Love that your DH told time by beers. AWESOME!
It will be the LONGEST 3 days EVERYou're soon yourself! Lucky duck!!!!
DebbyLof428
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2007
- Messages
- 684
Nice surprise from Fed Ex today!!! A $25 Disney Visa gift card. I participated in an offer from Disney to call about DVC about a month ago. Just for listening to the no-pressure sales person for about 5 minutes, I got the card. Totally forgot about it!! I see a few more pins in my collection.
/
woodkins
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2009
- Messages
- 2,680
Well we are also back from our stay at the Poly (10/23-28) and finally caught up at home, so I will throw my $.02 in on our recent stay. This is our 6th stay at the Poly and our 2nd CL. We were booked into a GV CL room and arrived at about 11 am on Sat the 23rd.
I will start out with my negatives to get them out of the way LOL. We arrived via rental car and received our parking pass and gold paper at the guard booth and were told to drive to the bell desk at the front to be met by someone. No one was there and a bellman took our luggage and said that no one was there to greet us so we should head into the GCH to check in there (rather than the Hawaii CL building). I walked in and saw the check in line was at least 20 people deep and immediately walked back out. I told him I would walk over to the Hawaii bldg myself and he could meet us there. Instead, unbeknownst to me he took it upon himself to place our luggage in the holding area
We walked over and found both consierge CM's sitting at their desks doing nothing We finally got our check in underway and ended up meeting BreezysMom while checking in! When booking the room we knew we would only have a GV, but had requested a 1st or 3rd fl room knowing we would not have a balcony if placed on the 2nd floor.....we were assigned to room 2531, a 2nd floor room with a view of the maintenance building. I mentioned that we requested 1st or 3rd floor, and was told that they cannot meet all requests so that room was ours. I was disappointed but realized I got what I had paid for so did not complain or pursue a move any further.
I now know that many people were upgraded that week and were not only bumped from standard to CL, but were also given LV and TP views which completely frustrated me as I was not even given the floor that I requested. As I said before I received the room I paid for and was not looking for an upgrade or "freebie" but it was frustrating to know that others were given better views and levels by complaining or requesting and I couldn't even be given a change in floors.
Food Offerings: I felt the offerings were delicious, and the lounge staff was so kind and accommodating. I personally think the afternoon "snack" offerings could be a bit more varied and we found that by 3-3:30 many times they were wiped out an not replenished. Appetizers and desserts were very nice and seemed to be replenished very quickly, especially when some people were filling trays with food.
Room: The room was lovely and Housekeeping did a wonderful job. We had many amazing towel creations greating us each day. The room did have an issue with the bathroom exhaust fan staying on all the time. It was very loud and annoying. We told the staff and whether they attempted to fix it while we were out I don't know, but it was still on into the 2nd day so dh ended up unscrewing the vent cover and disconnecting the fan completely so that we could sleep in peace.
Staff: I have always loved the staff at the Poly and enjoy the constant Aloha! that we are always greeted with, but I will say our experience this time was slightly less than magical. My main complaint was with the consierge desk attendants. The were very nice, just seemed like they didn't want to be bothered with much. Here is one example.
We had not planned on park hopping this trip as our schedule didn't allow it, but dd wanted to fit in a dinner at Epcot one evening and the only day I could get an ADR for was our AK day, so I didn't want to spend over $150+ dollars to add hopping in order to eat one dinner. I booked the dinner in advance and hoped I would be able to change it as the dates were closer and they may have cancellations. I went down to the desk and explained exactly what I wrote here. The CM told me that there would be no availability this close but I asked her to check anyway (knowing that many people cancel within 24-48hrs). After what seemed like 2 seconds (I honestly wonder if she really even checked it was that fast) she said, nope nothing available...why don't you just add park hopping to your tickets? Ummm....did you not just listen to my explaination as to why I was trying to change this dinner? I nicely thanked her and explained that we were not willing to pay park hopping x3 people in order to eat dinner and she said that we should cancel our dinner then as that was the only way. We ended up cancelling which was fine, but I felt as if my request to check the dining availability was a bother to her, as were a few other questions I asked over the weeks stay.
The pool was lovely and dd had a great time playing with the many kids using the pool. We didn't have too hard a time finding a seat at the pool and were wristbanded twice during the trip.
Overall a nice trip to the Poly, but not as magical as past trips have been. Dh is rooting for a Caribbean vaca next year instead of WDW, which we may try, but if we do return to WDW we most likely will be branching out to try another resort..possibly the beach club.
I will start out with my negatives to get them out of the way LOL. We arrived via rental car and received our parking pass and gold paper at the guard booth and were told to drive to the bell desk at the front to be met by someone. No one was there and a bellman took our luggage and said that no one was there to greet us so we should head into the GCH to check in there (rather than the Hawaii CL building). I walked in and saw the check in line was at least 20 people deep and immediately walked back out. I told him I would walk over to the Hawaii bldg myself and he could meet us there. Instead, unbeknownst to me he took it upon himself to place our luggage in the holding area
We walked over and found both consierge CM's sitting at their desks doing nothing
We finally got our check in underway and ended up meeting BreezysMom while checking in! When booking the room we knew we would only have a GV, but had requested a 1st or 3rd fl room knowing we would not have a balcony if placed on the 2nd floor.....we were assigned to room 2531, a 2nd floor room with a view of the maintenance building. I mentioned that we requested 1st or 3rd floor, and was told that they cannot meet all requests so that room was ours. I was disappointed but realized I got what I had paid for so did not complain or pursue a move any further. I now know that many people were upgraded that week and were not only bumped from standard to CL, but were also given LV and TP views which completely frustrated me as I was not even given the floor that I requested. As I said before I received the room I paid for and was not looking for an upgrade or "freebie" but it was frustrating to know that others were given better views and levels by complaining or requesting and I couldn't even be given a change in floors.
Food Offerings: I felt the offerings were delicious, and the lounge staff was so kind and accommodating. I personally think the afternoon "snack" offerings could be a bit more varied and we found that by 3-3:30 many times they were wiped out an not replenished. Appetizers and desserts were very nice and seemed to be replenished very quickly, especially when some people were filling trays with food.
Room: The room was lovely and Housekeeping did a wonderful job. We had many amazing towel creations greating us each day. The room did have an issue with the bathroom exhaust fan staying on all the time. It was very loud and annoying. We told the staff and whether they attempted to fix it while we were out I don't know, but it was still on into the 2nd day so dh ended up unscrewing the vent cover and disconnecting the fan completely so that we could sleep in peace.
Staff: I have always loved the staff at the Poly and enjoy the constant Aloha! that we are always greeted with, but I will say our experience this time was slightly less than magical. My main complaint was with the consierge desk attendants. The were very nice, just seemed like they didn't want to be bothered with much. Here is one example.
We had not planned on park hopping this trip as our schedule didn't allow it, but dd wanted to fit in a dinner at Epcot one evening and the only day I could get an ADR for was our AK day, so I didn't want to spend over $150+ dollars to add hopping in order to eat one dinner. I booked the dinner in advance and hoped I would be able to change it as the dates were closer and they may have cancellations. I went down to the desk and explained exactly what I wrote here. The CM told me that there would be no availability this close but I asked her to check anyway (knowing that many people cancel within 24-48hrs). After what seemed like 2 seconds (I honestly wonder if she really even checked it was that fast) she said, nope nothing available...why don't you just add park hopping to your tickets?
Ummm....did you not just listen to my explaination as to why I was trying to change this dinner? I nicely thanked her and explained that we were not willing to pay park hopping x3 people in order to eat dinner and she said that we should cancel our dinner then as that was the only way. We ended up cancelling which was fine, but I felt as if my request to check the dining availability was a bother to her, as were a few other questions I asked over the weeks stay.The pool was lovely and dd had a great time playing with the many kids using the pool. We didn't have too hard a time finding a seat at the pool and were wristbanded twice during the trip.
Overall a nice trip to the Poly, but not as magical as past trips have been. Dh is rooting for a Caribbean vaca next year instead of WDW, which we may try, but if we do return to WDW we most likely will be branching out to try another resort..possibly the beach club.
designermv
Also cute and fluffy!
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2007
- Messages
- 1,293
3 days, 17 hours.... 
......and I haven't packed a single thing.
......and I haven't packed a single thing.
DebbyLof428
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2007
- Messages
- 684
3 days, 17 hours....
......and I haven't packed a single thing.
You sound like my husband - he'll wait until the night before
ajcolorado
<font color=deeppink>lots of pokey crumbs in my cl
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2000
- Messages
- 1,137
FYI -Here's the November movie schedule:
Disney's Polynesian Resort Movie Schedule ~ 7:00PM
Sunday - Tangled
Monday - The Lion King
Tuesday - Lilo & Stitch
Wednesday - Gnomeo & Juliet
Thursday - The Princess & The Frog
Friday - Winnie the Pooh (2011)
Saturday - Cars 2
We post the schedule on the first of each month at http://www.buildabettermousetrip.com/activity-outdoormovie.php#polynesian
Disney's Polynesian Resort Movie Schedule ~ 7:00PM
Sunday - Tangled
Monday - The Lion King
Tuesday - Lilo & Stitch
Wednesday - Gnomeo & Juliet
Thursday - The Princess & The Frog
Friday - Winnie the Pooh (2011)
Saturday - Cars 2
We post the schedule on the first of each month at http://www.buildabettermousetrip.com/activity-outdoormovie.php#polynesian
For what it's worth, we asked for an CL upgrade this weekend and there were none available. The lagoon view was important to me on this trip, so I paid for it up front. They said that they were very booked because of the Halloween party on Halloween weekend and I tend to believe it! Sorry your experience was Not So Magical.
BreezysMom
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2007
- Messages
- 1,725
Aloha Poly lovers!
I changed the Facebook page to Live from the Polynesian so anyone can post while they are there
Since it is so much easier to posts pictures from smart phones and iPhones you can share your vacations with all of us Poly lovers
So come on and join if you are on FB and going to the Poly
I changed the Facebook page to Live from the Polynesian so anyone can post while they are there
Since it is so much easier to posts pictures from smart phones and iPhones you can share your vacations with all of us Poly lovers
So come on and join if you are on FB and going to the Poly
Cdn Friends of Pooh
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2006
- Messages
- 6,324
Aloha Poly lovers!
I changed the Facebook page to Live from the Polynesian so anyone can post while they are there
Since it is so much easier to posts pictures from smart phones and iPhones you can share your vacations with all of us Poly lovers
So come on and join if you are on FB and going to the Poly
awesome ... would love to join the gang - even though we just returned and aren't planning on going back until May!
auprincess
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2011
- Messages
- 1,125
Hello!! I love hearing all about the Poly ~ we will be staying there for the first time in April!!
Having a patio or balcony is really important to my DH and I since we have 3 DDs and will use it as an extra "room" while trying to get them to go to bed. I have requested Tokelau; don't all the rooms in this building have patios or balconies? Also, just in case we don't get our request...what are the other buildings that all have a patio/balcony and any suggestions on a good one? Thank you!!!
Having a patio or balcony is really important to my DH and I since we have 3 DDs and will use it as an extra "room" while trying to get them to go to bed. I have requested Tokelau; don't all the rooms in this building have patios or balconies? Also, just in case we don't get our request...what are the other buildings that all have a patio/balcony and any suggestions on a good one? Thank you!!!
princssdisnygina
Disney Princess
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2003
- Messages
- 3,369
If you just request a 1st or 3rd floor room you should be good! As always its never guaranteed but most of the time wishes are granted.
auprincess
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2011
- Messages
- 1,125
If you just request a 1st or 3rd floor room you should be good! As always its never guaranteed but most of the time wishes are granted.
Great, thanks!!
dislover78
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- May 11, 2007
- Messages
- 32
Just upgraded to CL for nov 6th-12th, looking for menu for the week we're there, can someone point me towards it? Thanks! Been searching for an hour already....
Cdn Friends of Pooh
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2006
- Messages
- 6,324
This link was on the first page of this thread under club level ... not sure if it's still current though - I'm sure if it's not, someone will correct me.
You will love CL!!
logpey
Disney or bust!
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2006
- Messages
- 1,407
Well thx for review, sorry it didn't go as planned. I would have been upset with 2nd floor also, being that people were getting a free upgrade to CL. They should replace someone at the CL desk in breezeway when someone has break or steps away, it seems like the small perks they have left for CL, are slowly slipping away! Take care.
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