"An Orgy of Fun"--A Free Dining Trip Report w/ pics 8/25-9/4

[smartestnumber5]

Vital Trip Info:

Dates: Aug 25-Sept 4
Hotels: POR (1 night) & Pop (9 nights)
Tickets: Annual Pass
Food: Free DDP!


Travel Party:

Me: 25 year old graduate student. This is about my 7th trip to Disney World and my 3rd trip with GF. Of the two of us I’m definitely the planner, while GF is more of a last minute person; I get the suitcases out 2 weeks ahead of time while GF refuses to pack until the night before! I’m also the ancy one. I get bored easily and fidget a lot on planes and in waiting rooms. I think I like vacationing at WDW because you’re always either doing something or collapsed on the bed from exhaustion.

GF: 31 year IT worker/student. This is her 3rd trip to Disney World, though she went to Disneyland numerous times as a kid. She happily lets me do all of the planning. And while she mostly puts up with my need to always be doing something, exhaustion usually overtakes her more quickly than it does me (she has sleep apnea which doesn’t help). She also was recently diagnosed with plantar fasciitis. In medical terms that means she has inflamed tissue stretching from her heel to toes. In layperson terms that means her feet hurt a lot when she walks even short distances.

Most people are surprised to find that we like Disney World so much. We're relatively young and single and have no children and are gay and kind of unconventional. We're not really much into anything cutsy or romantic so no princess movies for us (pirates are okay though ). GF doesn't really like to be around children who are yelling or crying or running around a lot and she doesn't like crowds or people touching her. And we both hate the heat. Not exactly the kind of people you'd expect to want to take a yearly trip to WDW during August, yet we keep doing it!


Non-traveling Party:

Kitty: 3.5 year old Turkish van mix. He sleeps, eats, and yowls for a living—but mostly eats (he’s an Italian kitty like his mommy)!

Emmett: 1.33 year old long haired fluffster. He runs around crazily, entertains himself with toys, and rolls around while being petted for a living. He’s a grazer who seems to be eating constantly but is much less chubby than his big brother (I think he just takes him a long time to eat because he only puts one piece of food in his mouth at a time ).

We always feel so guilty leaving them, but the call of Disney World is pretty strong.

 

[OhMari]

Looking forward to hearing about the Free dining.

 

[Nisa]

Looking forward to your report. Most people are surprised at my & my GF's addiction to Disney too. Especially at work. But I think we all-gay, straight or in between-have to deal with THOSE people.

 

[smartestnumber5]

It was an easy decision to plan a trip for Aug-Sept 2007. We went for free dining last year and had a great time. Then come winter I found some cheap flights/cheap hotels offsite and we thought about doing two trips in a year and getting an AP. We decided to do a quick and very cheap January trip and then an August one (hoping that free dining would be offered again). Well the January trip quickly expanded. First we decided to stay onsite instead of off. Then we went from 4 days to 5 and then to 6. Then we had to make some TS reservations at my insistence. Eventually we somehow managed to eat at least one TS everyday of the trip!

As spring approached I kept an eye out for the free dining offer. We started to worry that if free dining wasn’t offered we’d have to either cut off some days of our August trip or increase our budget significantly to cover the cost of food. (Not going wasn’t an option—not just because we wanted to go so badly, but because we’d invested in AP passes. At 460 bucks each, we’d have wasted about $500 buying APs and only using them for 8 days!

Lucky for us free dining came through. I have a Disney Visa and got to book a few days before the general public. I booked early in the morning the first day of the offer for 8 days with 1 day base tickets. We didn’t need the tickets, of course, given our APs, but $140 was a small price to pay for 8 days of the DDP. Even considering that we could have paid about $30 less a night for the room with an AP discount we were still making out w/ the dining.

A few weeks after that I was thinking about our trip and thought , “Hey, our tickets are paid for and our food is free—why stop at 8 days?” So I went ahead and added a 9th day. I’m teaching a course this fall and my first day was Sept 5th. The 9th day had us arriving on Sept 4th—cutting it a bit close in terms of preparation time, but worth it for another day in Disney! So our plan was to fly out of Detroit the morning of Sun 8/26 and return the afternoon of Tues 9/4.

We decided to wait a bit to purchase flights. We had gotten flights on Northwest for just about $125 each for our last August trip, but all the Northwest flights I could find were in the $200 or more range—so we waited. I eventually found flights closer to that price for the 26th, but they had us arriving after midnight. We’d done that for one trip and by the time we got to our room it was after 2 am. Then we spent most of the next morning recovering from traveling and being up so late. We didn’t want to do that again. Plus it would have messed up our dining reservations if we hadn’t been there to eat dinner on 8/26. In playing around with flight quotes I noticed that flights were cheaper and at better times the day before we were planning to leave. This gave me a brilliant idea . Why not leave a day early and stay at a different hotel (maybe a nicer one than Pop!) for just that night.

And so the plan was hatched. I booked us an AP rate room at POR for Sat 8/25 and then got us the cheaper flights that had us arrive on the 25th around 2pm. Perfect. We’d have a day to spend just lying around the hotel and swimming and resting before the beginning of the grueling days at the parks and the food fests everynight. At that point, since we had purchased our flights our plans were pretty much set in stone. GF did mention something about how it was silly that she was done with work at 5pm on Friday, but we weren’t leaving til 11am on Saturday. I sushed her before I got anymore money-spending ideas!

 

[smartestnumber5]

Everything was set for our trip and GF and I spend the summer doing our usual things. She worked full time. I did my grad student thing—a little work , a lot of procrastination , play with the cat , a lot of guilt , a whining episode about how I’ll never be able to write a dissertation , GF calms me down , more work , chores , meeting to keep up dissertation productivity , go swimming , take Kitty to vet because he is drooling buckets around the house , etc. Same old, same old.

Around mid-August I got an upsetting email from my mom saying that my grandfather was not doing well. My grandfather, who was in his early 80s, had suffered from heart disease for the past almost thirty years. In the last few years he had very little heart function and had developed Parkinson’s disease. In June he had fallen and broken his hip and had to have surgery. To the doctors’ surprise he survived the surgery even though his heart has to be stopped and restarted due to his defibrillator. Unfortunately, however, he was never the same mentally after the surgery, but was suffering from dementia. The doctors said that it could take weeks or months for such an elderly person to fully recover mentally from the anesthesia or that the Parkinson’s could be to blame. Things just continued to get worse and more and more medical intervention was required to keep him alive and his pain became less manageable. On Saturday, August 11th my mom emailed saying things were getting worse, and by the next day she told me that my she, my grandmother, and my aunt had decided to stop the medical interventions and let him die at home.

GF and I tried to decide what we should do—should we leave to drive to my parents’ right then to be there when he died and then stay for the funeral? If we did that and he lingered it could mean GF would miss a week and a half of work—only two weeks before she’d be taking off a week for our trip. We thought that might be a problem for her employer, plus we really couldn’t afford to lose two weeks of her pay. I thought about just going alone and taking a flight, but I really didn’t want to be without GF at such a sad time. Last minute flights are also horrendously expensive. I tried to look into bereavement flights and found that generally if you get any discount at all, it’s only off the full ticket price, so the flight is still horrendously expensive; the only benefit I could find was more flexibility with the return flight. I called one airline about this, but they didn’t seem to have any flexibility at all. I still had to tell the which day I’d be returning (which of course I didn’t know), and when I picked a random day they didn’t have any available bereavement fares on that day—only two days earlier or later. At that point I gave up on the bereavement flight idea.

We ended up deciding to just wait until we knew when the funeral would be (though I still feel like I should have gone earlier). My grandfather died on Thursday the 16th and we left the next morning for the drive to Pennsylvania. The viewing/funeral actually had to be delayed both because of the weekend and because of a problem with construction in the church. So the viewing was Tuesday night and the funeral was Wednesday the 22nd. It was actually the first funeral I’d ever been to and the second viewing and it was horribly sad. Because of the delay we had to leave right after the funeral so that GF could get back to work before taking off again for our trip. I think the stretching out of the time until the funeral until almost a week was very unfortunate for my family—it just stretched out the time before they got a little bit of closure.

I started to feel guilty about going to Disney World just a few days after my grandfather’s funeral. After GF went behind my back and told my mom I was feeling guilty, my mom encouraged me not to feel guilty and to just have a good time. She reminded me that another family member had a graduation party planned for the next week and that was still going to be held—after all, life has to go on. That did make me feel better. It was also kind of helpful in getting through the the viewing and funeral and all that knowing that something very fun was coming up in the near future. But at the same time I just didn’t have the normal excited feeling in the few days we were home before our trip—it was more like going through the motions.

 

[smartestnumber5]

Time to leave for Disney World. We left the house around 9:15 and got to the airport before 10 am. There was no line at security—there never is at the Detroit Airport. GF has a bi-pap machine for her sleep apnea and this always gets pulled aside when going through security for extra testing.

Once in awhile they do extra testing on one of my bags, but not usually. This time one of the TSA agents pulled my bag aside and asked me, “do you have a can of coffee in this bag?” I was puzzled. GF had just had one of those Starbucks “double shots” in a can on our way to the airport, and when I heard “can of coffee” I immediately thought of the Starbucks cans. I thought, “Why would we have one of those with us? You’re not even allowed to bring liquids through security.” So I just looked at the TSA agent like he was crazy and confidently said, “No, there’s no coffee in there.”

He unzips the bag and out comes---A CAN OF GROUND COFFEE! I feel like I want to shrink in embarrassment and involuntarily utter, “Oh—that can of coffee.” Then I realize that he’s probably thinking I’m trying to hide something—GREAT! I had packed most of the bags, but GF had done her last minute packing (including coffee and coffeemate) herself. I just assumed that the obvious place for coffee and coffeemate would be the checked luggage so I’m now thinking to myself, “Why in the heck would GF pack coffee in a carry on? Is she planning on brewing some on the plane?” GF says she doesn’t know why she packed it in the carry on—she just stuck in the bag that seemed to have the most room without thinking about it. Luckily the agent just did a test on the can and then put it back in the bag and let me go on my way.

At the gate we asked if there were any exit row seats available. Usually these seats offer either extra room, or have only 2 seats to a row instead of 3, or both. GF and I don’t like sharing a row with a stranger, so we like the 2 seaters—and who doesn’t like extra room? The flight was unremarkable. I was ancy like I always am and GF made fun of me every chance she had like usual.

We headed right to the Disney Welcome Center and a Magical Express bus showed up within a few minutes of our getting in line. The bus went to Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, Port Orleans French Quarter, and Port Orleans Riverside in that order. That meant that our hotel was last, but we didn’t mind since we got to see some of the other resorts. GF remarked that Old Key West reminded of her of the theming and scenery of the Golden Girls (one of my most favorite shows ever! )—that was enough to make me want to stay there again.

 

[smartestnumber5]

It was about 4pm by the time we arrived at POR. There was no line at check in and we had a very nice CM help us. We had requested a room in the Aligator Baoyou area in one of the four buildings that were closest to the main building. We had heard how far away some of the rooms are from the main area of the resort and didn’t want to end up in that boat. When the CM showed us what building we were in it was a few buildings away from the ones we’d requested. We figured “Eh—that’s good enough. How far can it be?” The CM then wrote down our room # on the map and began to trace some directions for us. He paused at tone point and said, “Wait, let me check and make sure I didn’t give you someone else’s room.” He checked the computer and then confirmed that the number he’d given us was correct.

We headed outside and GF remarked for the second time that day that it really wasn’t that hot out. I was skeptical given that we’d only been out doors for less than 15 seconds at a time and hadn’t yet stood directly in the sunlight. I told her I bet she’d think it was pretty hot by the time we got to the room. Indeed, just a few minutes later GF was whining that she might be getting heat stroke.

We followed the directions the CM had given us and eventually came to a dead end. In front of us seemed to be a bathroom that was off the path of one of the pools. It seemed according to the path the CM had drawn on the map we were supposed to walk straight ahead through the wall of the bathroom and continuing on the path on the other side. But alas, we couldn’t walk through the walls of the bathroom. And when we tried to walk around it we found that the only other path connected to the bathroom led in the opposite direction as where we wanted to go. Apparently the CM had told u to walk a path that was non-existent. So we turned back and decided to follow the signs to our building number. It seemed like the paths were constructed to purposely be winding in ways they didn’t need to be. The CM really had drawn the most direct route to our building—unfortunately, there was no path for such a direct route.

Finally we found our building and then walked almost the entire way around to find our room. I walked up and stuck in the card, anticipating flopping on the bed in the ice cold air conditioned room. Much to my horror I got a red flash instead of a green one. I tried again—still red. We tried GF’s card—red, red, red. I wanted to scream! GF slumped down on the ground and announced that she was too hot and tired to walk all the way back to the front desk. I said I would go alone but was dreading the idea. Suddenly I stopped and had a brilliant idea—why walk all the way there…why not call first? We did have a cell phone with us after all. So we called and they let us know the rom number again. Apparently the first CM had written a 0 instead of a 1 as one of the numerals on our map. Thank goodness—we only had to walk 10 more rooms to arrive at our actual room.

Here are some pictures of what we found when we got there:

We really liked the room. GF joked that this is what she wants her house to look like. Apparently there really is a big difference between the moderates and values in terms of the rooms. The furniture was much nicer—the headboards were made to look like carved wood (though we thought they were probably fake and made of plastic, they still looked good.) This room was definitely bigger than the ones at Pop that we are used to. There was a lot more room by the table, more room between the beds, more room where the fridge and little sitting/storage bench are, and more room in the sink area outside of the bathroom. Everything was very well themed. Best of all were the appliances—a coffee pot for GF and a fridge to keep cold water on hand at all times.

 

[Pryncesa]

Hi! Just wanted to let you know I'm reading along and looking forward to the updates to come. Also, my condolences on the loss of your grandfather.

 

[KatieMae's Mom]

The pictures are great.

 

[memomuffin]

Great report so far!! Keep it coming!

 

[smartestnumber5]

After a little bit of a rest we decided to hit the pool. We’d brought our bathing suits in our carry-on planning to spend some time relaxing at the pool. We headed over to the pol area—it’s called “Ole Man Island.” It was a little overcast at this point in the day and a it seemed like a storm was on its way.

The pool area was not quite as nice as we had expected. I think maybe if there had been some sunshine it would have been a little more inviting (for me at least—GF hates the sun!). It was a little bit crowded which kind of bothered GF—she really doesn’t like being around a lot of people. You’re probably wondering why a person who doesn’t like being around a lot of people would ever choose to go to Disney World! Well she hates the crowds, but she manages because she likes the other aspects of Disney—and, of course, because I like it so much . Because it was crowded there seemed to be no pool chairs without towels on them. We weren’t looking so much for somewhere to sit, but just somewhere to store our stuff. Usually its much easier to find an open chair at the pools at Pop. We ended up finding a table near Muddy Rivers (the pool bar).

GF went to jump on into the pool and I spotted the pool towels and grabbed a few to put at our table. I walked back over to the pool and saw GF climbing out with an unhappy look on her face. As I got closer she began to put her hand in her pocket and said, “I have the cell phone in my pocket” (she was wearing board shorts). She pulled it out and we could see water moving around behind the screen—it looked just lie an aquarium. Ahh! We put it back at our table to dry out, but figured that it was probably dead.

We jumped back into the pool (but this time we checked our pockets!) and hung around in there for a bit. GF felt really bad about the phone and kept apologizing. I tried to reassure her that it was okay and that really we wouldn’t need the cell phone on the trip. Our ADRs were set and we could make any changes on the room phone if needed. And we could always email the people watching our cats for us to check on them.

We didn’t stay in the pool all that long. It was kind of crowded and we weren’t really in a relaxing kind of mood right then. We got out and R took apart the phone to let it dry out while I pondered getting a drink at the pool bar. I like getting fancy fru-fru drinks, but I have stomach acid issues and alcohol is not a good thing for me to have. So I almost never have any . I considered a virgin drink but decided to pass. We decided to walk over to one of the less quieter pools by our room. As we walked over, though, it started to drizzle and as we entered the pool area we heard some thunder. I guess that was all for swimming for that night because a storm rolled on in.

Back at the room we decided to rest for a bit and then get dinner. I commented on the walk back that hopefully our luggage would arrive before we went to eat. We took off our bathing suits when we got back, but of course the only other clothes were the ones we had worn all day. They were kind of sweaty so we were hoping for our luggage soon. In the mean time we figured we just lay about in our birthday suits for a few minutes and dry off while watching TV.

Just a few minutes later we heard a knock on the door and I realized it was probably our luggage. GF jumped up and ran to the bathroom to hide and I yelled “Just a minute” and began to throw my old clothes (which were in a pile just behind the door) back on. About five seconds later the door began to swung open (we hadn’t put the safety lock on)—but I was still less than half dressed ! I yelled, “hold on” and then pushed the door back with my hand. A few seconds later I was decent and I opened the door. The CM apologized and said he hadn’t heard any response to the first knock. He had two of our checked bags with him, but we were missing the 3rd. He assured us that sometimes they get separated, but that they almost always show up within a half hour or so on the next shipment of bags.

After narrowly escaping being seen in all my glory by the bag guy, we quickly got dressed to go get some food. We walked over to Riverside Mill and checked out our options.

They didn’t have many vegetarian options, but we were pretty happy with our meal—I especially thought the make-your-own-pasta was a nice option. W had a leisurely meal and then took a few pictures on the way back to the room.

It started storming again once we got back and we decided to just relax and watch some tv.

 

[smartestnumber5]

I woke up around 6 am (to me that’s ungodly early) and saw that GF was also awake. She said she’d woken up shortly before. Maybe there was a noise or something that woke both of us up? GF has sleep apnea so it’s normal for her to have trouble sleeping, but I am generally a very regular sleeper. We both managed to get back to sleep, but by 7:30 am I had woken again and found my back felt pretty uncomfortable. At that point I gave up on sleep and watched some tv. A little later I took a shower and went to pick up some breakfast.

On the walk it occurred to me that there is just too much walking that’s necessary at POR. I don’t think we’ll stay there again even though besides the long walks we liked almost everything about it. It's just too spread out.

I got some hot chocolate in our refillable mug and chose a yogurt parfait for breakfast. While I was in the main building I saw the longest line ever for check in. the line stretched all the way from the registration area through the lobby and down the hall to the entrance to Boatwright’s ! I guess it was all the free dining folks since it was the first day of free dining. Wow was I glad I wasn’t in that line, but I took it as a bad sign for how crazy things would be at Pop when we got there. Our plan was to go right from POR to Pop so we could get our dining credits, and then to go to Epcot (since we didn’t think they’d have our room ready when we got there). I mentally prepared myself for a very long wait at check in.

When I got back to the room GF was in the shower. I made her some coffee and started packing things up. We had never unpacked any of the bags, so this shouldn’t have been a very tough job. But it turned out that since the bags weren’t unpacked it was very hard to find what we needed for our morning routine. I was having a total crisis because I couldn’t find any hair ties (though I knew I had definitely packed them), and with it being in the high 90s I really needed to get my hair off my neck. I had checked Fulton’s General Store to see if they sold any hair ties and all I could find were little girl’s Disney ones—they were pastel colors, glittery, and had big plastic mickey heads attached to them . Finally after looking through each bag twice I found the hair ties and got some neck relief. It was a little bit of a p-i-t-a to get all of our stuff together and switch hotels. We’d been thinking about a future trip on which we switch hotels numerous times so we get to experience more of them, but this had us rethinking that plan.

We called for someone to pick up our luggage and they said they’d have it sent over Pop and that the transfers are made between 3 and 5pm. Meanwhile we took a bus to MGM and transferred to a Pop bus. Much to my surprise after seeing the registration line at POR, the check in at Pop was amazingly short and painless. By the time we arrived GF was starving (she hadn’t eaten breakfast) and decided to get a snack OOP while I waited in line. But the line was so short that I was almost done checking in before she got back from buying the snack.

The CM that checked me in told me that our room was ready and got out a map and circled one of the buildings in the 70s. I had made two room requests—king size bed and 50s area. On the bus ride over GF suggested that it might also be nice to have a ground floor room, so I said I would ask. I had been assuming that our room wouldn’t be ready (that is, that we wouldn’t have an assigned room) and so I could just repeat all of those requests before we left. Turned out, though, that we did have a room, but not in the area we wanted. I tried to quickly weigh our priorities—what was more important being in the 50s, having a king size bed (not sure that was even possible) or ground floor? I decided the area was the most important, so I asked if the 50s was full because that was what we really wanted. The CM didn’t answer me at first but just started typing away at the computer and a few seconds later grabbed the map and threw it in the trash. After a few minutes of computer stuff he got out another map and circled a room in the 50s and drew directions.

Just then GF came over. The first words out of her mouth were, “Did you ask for a ground floor room?” The CM had a look that said, “Why don’t you just shoot me!” and I quickly shushed GF and told her that our room was ready and the CM was currently moving us from the 70s to the 50s. The CM looked at me questioningly and I said, “Don’t worry about it. You can only do so much.” He replied, “Well I’ve gotten you a clean room, that’s ready now, in the 50s area, with a pool view—is that okay?” By then GF realized he’d already made one change for us and quickly thanked him. The check in was quicker than I remember from past recent trips and within a few minutes we head over to the room.

 

[smartestnumber5]

Here are some pictures we took of the room:

Here are some of the view from outside our room:

And here's the door and window.

Yes, that's a towel animal in the window that was waiting for us!

We had a quick snack in the room and GF iced her feet for a foot minutes and then we left for Epcot. Unfortunately GF's favorite ride--Spaceship Earth--was closed for refurbishment We were very hungry when we arrived and decided to get some food first thing. It was around 1 pm and we figured we could get fastpasses at Soarin and then eat at Sunshine Seasons and maybe do one ride while waiting for our fastpass time. We were disappointed to read on one of the big boards that the Soarin fastpass time was up to around 5 pm. We weren't planning to stay at the park that long so we figured we wouldn't be getting on Soarin that night (actually we didn't end up getting on for the whole trip ). We started worrying that maybe maybe the parks were going to be more crowded than we were used to --maybe free dining had drawn a really large crowd. I tried to ease our minds by declaring, "It doesn't matter. We're just here for the free food."

So we had our first free meal at Sunshine Seasons--yum! After eating we went on The Land boat ride. Some pics:

Tilapia I think.

The Mickey Ear Pumpkins

Next we stopped into Innoventions and went to the Disney Visa character greeting where Disney Visa cardholders get a free 5x7 photo with the characters. This was probably one of the longest lines we waited in for the whole trip. It was probably about 30 minutes or so. The characters were Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy. We had been hoping for Alice in Wonderland, but not surprised to not find her there. We were quick--just a few photos and we were out of there. It just feels kind of awkward posing with people in mouse costumes when you don't have a child with you.

Next we decided to hit up Ellen's Energy Adventure for the nice 40 minutes of sitting down in air conditioning. Some pics on the way:

Usually at Disney we can only spend a few hours in the parks because GF's feet are hurting her too badly after walking around for a few hours. This trip, though, her feet weren't the problem. We were both just wiped out by the heat.

We went back to Pop to take a rest before dinner at Ohana a few hours later. GF took a nap and I watched some TV. Since we had moved from POR to Pop we only had the bag we took to the park with us and had left our other bags to be transferred. So we didn't have any clothes to change into when weetook our sweaty ones off. GF called luggage services and they said the bags had arrived and they'd be dropping them off shortly.

Quite awhile passed, though, without the luggage arriving. As it got closer to when we had to leave for dinner with no word about our luggage, I started to get worried that we wouldn't have any clothes to wear for dinner. I called luggage services again and they explained that since it was storming (thunder and lightening) they could not take the metal carts out. They said they would have it to us as soon as the storm cleared up (which seemed to be happening any minute) and that we could come and pick it up. Since we really needed some clothing I decided to just go and get it. By the time I got there the storm had passed and they let me take a cart with me.

A bit later we were off for the first of many delicious dinners!

 

[smartestnumber5]

We had an 8 am wake up call from Stitch who yelled, “Wake up—No Schleeping!” We were out of the room by 9am. It was only the 2nd full day of our vacation so we were still raring to go. And boy it was nice to have a coffee pot right in the room with us.

We were going to get breakfast in the Pop food court, but it was just crazy there, so we decided to hit up Main Street Bakery instead. We headed outside to the buses and saw a very long line for the Magic Kingdom bus which was just beginning to load. We decided to just sit on a bench and wait for the next bus. I think there must have been someone using a wheelchair/ECV entering or exiting the bus because it was there for awhile and the line wasn’t moving. In that time we saw a lot more people enter the line—so many that when that bus left there was still a huge line. So we waited for another bus to come and still the line wasn’t cleared; at that point we figured we’d better just get in line o we’d never get on a bus. I don’t think we actually waited all that long, but man it felt like a long time standing there in 90some degree weather with the sun beating down on us. While we were waiting I wondered about why they didn’t construct the coverings that are over the benches to extend out to where the bus lines are. All of the deluxe and moderate resorts seem to have coverings over their bus lines—why not the values too? I speculated that maybe they did it on purpose figuring that it would be an incentive to move up in the hotel ranks—it sure made me want to spring for a moderate or deluxe!

When the next bus came there was standing room only, but we figured we had no choice but to get on—we couldn’t deal with standing in the hot sun for another 15 minutes, and we couldn’t get out of line to sit on a bench or we’d never get on a bus! I don’t much enjoy standing—I always feel like I’m the most clumsy person on the bus and that I’m holding on with all my might, straining my wrists to stop from swaying back and forth, while everyone else is barely holding on at all. How do they do that? *confused* But things are worse for GF. I think I said earlier that she has plantar faciitis—a muscle/bone spur problem in her feet. She suffers every time we go to Disney—actually every time we walk more than a third of a mile or so . But at that point in the trip her feet had been doing pretty well (she’d just gotten some special shoes that seemed to be helping). Standing on the bus, though, is especially bad for her feet because the trying to balance put so much weight on the front of her feet and her heels which probably aggravated the muscle/bone spur problem. So we got off the bus at Magic Kingdom and GF announced right away that her feet were in severe pain and we had to find the nearest bench ASAP.

We walked over to the benches near the ferry launch and sat for awhile. Unfortunately GF and I have opposite needs when it comes to the parks. I need to avoid the direct sun as much as possible and get in air conditioning as much as possible. She needs this too, of course, but more than that she needs to sit when her feet hurt and if that means sitting outside in direct sunlight so be it. I can keep walking when I’m feeling like I’m going to die, so long as I know there is a shaded area or air conditioning coming soon, and I would rather walk forever than sit in the direct sunlight when it’s a 102 degree heat index! So we sat for awhile and suffered together until GF’s feet felt a tiny bit better.

We headed to Main Street Bakery first thing and GF grabbed a table while I got in line. Luckily the line was kind of slow, so she got a nice long rest for her feet which she really needed after the bus ride. After eating, we headed to the big board that lists wait times for the rides. It said there were only 10 minute waits on most of the big rides. We hadn’t been on the jungle cruise during our last few trips, so we hit that first and then Pirates of the Caribbean and both had just a 5 minute wait. After that we headed over to Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Both of those lines had grown to 30 minutes. We decided to go for a fastpass for Splash Mountain rather than standing in line since by then we were really feeling the affects of the heat. GF grabbed a seat while I went to get the fastpasses and then went to get water. We had actually brought a bottle of water with us, but it was totally warm by this point in the day (like 11:30 in the morning and we’d left the hotel room at 9!). I went to a popcorn cart to and got in line for water and that was when I started hitting the “oh my god, it’s so hot I might keel over” moment. When I finally got the water I had to pour some over my body in addition to drinking it. I got one for GF as well and we decided to pass some time until our fastpass time taking the railroad around the park once. In just 20-30 minutes after we’d bought the water it had warmed up and was no longer very effective when we poured it on ourselves .

Luckily after once around the park it was just about time for our splash mountain fastpass—there’d definitely be cool water there!

We tried to figure out if anything was changed during the refurbishment. This time there was water that was shot at us just at the beginning of the ride when we saw another boat going down the big drop. I had read about that on the DIS, but couldn’t remember if it was new. But I’m almost sure that didn’t happen last August when we rode. We also noticed that in the section where you’re taken into the area with the bee hives, you go down a bit and then back up a little hill—we didn’t remember that either and overheard someone in front of us saying, “that must be new.” Finally during the drop at the end of the right I felt like I got water shot right into my face about one-third of the way down the drop. Very strange

At that point we'd hit our limits. We got some lunch at Columbia Harbor House and then left the park. On the way out we had to hit another bench for a bit for GF's feet and I took some pics:

 

[MzDiz]

I was just reading your dining report and skipped over here. We were in a lot of the same places at the same time. We were even in the 50's section at Pop on the other side of the pool. It's like reading about my own vacation.

 

[m11dolphin]

great discription, love the report so far.

 

[coolbeans]

I'm in!! Great pics!

 

[pezheadmeg]

Awesome pics!

 

[smartestnumber5]

I was just reading your dining report and skipped over here. We were in a lot of the same places at the same time. We were even in the 50's section at Pop on the other side of the pool. It's like reading about my own vacation.

That's so funny. I saw a couple lime green mickeys on windows around the 50s section and kept thinking about how many DISers were there.

 

[smartestnumber5]

I'm in!! Great pics!

great discription, love the report so far.

Awesome pics!

Yay, more readers!

Welcome!