April 26-May2 Report from POFQ and 4 Main Parks

[cinderkelli]

Ok, so I want to set expectations about my report. I love reading all of yours who are so entertaining and funny, but mine will be more 'just the facts maam' because as much as I wish I were, I am not a novelist and not terribly funny. Ok, so now that is out of the way...let the report begin!

I will post by day and the first two and last two days will be together because the first and last days were travel days.

Day 1
My friends and I left from Dallas/Ft Worth airport around 5 on Wednesday the 26th. My friends are KC, Tamra and Brooke, of which KC and Tamra had NEVER been to Disney World before so I was SO excited to get to be the one to show them around. We got to Orlando around 8:30 and luckily the weather was ok because it was supposed to be raining. We were using Magical Express so we hurried to the bus and we were on our way!

We arrived at the Port Orleans French Quarter Hotel and I IMMEDIATELY loved it. I love New Orleans and it really had that atmosphere, only with that Disney flare. Our room was a decent size, even for four girls, and so we just kind of settled in until our baggage got there. It took a couple of hours to get there, which was kind of a bummer because we were tired, but other than that Magical Express gets a thumbs up from me!

Day 2
So I was in charge of making all the agendas and planning the whole trip, which was a dream for me because I am sort of an organizational freak when it comes to planning vacations, and I LOVE Disney. I was a little nervous about making everyone get up early every morning, but I like being to the park early! You just get more done. But everyone was great. They liked being there early too and we got to the bus stop right as our bus for MGM arrived. The buses took MUCH less time to get to the park than I had imagined. (My guide book said to expect 30-40 minutes). For us it was more like 10-20. Perfect.

So we get to MGM and go straight to Tower of Terror. Now I had read the entire 'Best Kept Secret' thread on the Attractions board and so I had heard about the letters at the bottom of the message board and had also heard they were no longer there. I looked and whoever said that was right...they are gone, but the ride still ROCKS. It ended up being Tamra's favorite out of all of Disney. Next we rode Rockin' Roller Coaster. I had never rode it before and it was SO great. We ended up riding it two more times through out the day.

Now I won't go through every ride, I promise, but some of these are new to me so I wanted to talk about them. =)

I had heard about the 'experience' at the 50's Prime Time Cafe, but wasn't sure if my crew was really looking to eat cheap or not so I hadn't asked if they wanted to do that since we had already made ADRs at a couple of other pricier restaurants. I figured the rest of the time we would do counter service as cheaply as possible. However, I mentioned it to them that day and they really wanted to go. Now, being the organized person I am, I had the Disney dining number memorized so I called to see if there was a chance they had a reservation that afternoon. They totally did and we totally got to go while they were telling everyone without ADRs that it would be a 3 hour wait! Score one for us. =) We had pot roast and milkshakes and it was actually pretty good, but the only down side is that I think being four twenty something girls we didn't get the full experience. I think they bring out the big guns for the kids, and we were told to watch our elbows and do our homework, but some of the other tables were like getting yelled at by 'mom' and stuff. We were totally willing to play along, but didn't really get the chance.

I had never been to the Who Wants to be a Millionaire game show and that was really fun and then we got picked out of the crowd to be the 'actors' in the 'Pearl Harbor' type movie at the Backlot Studios so we got SOAKed doing that, but it was fun.

That night we had decided to do the Fantasmic Dinner Package at Hollywood and Vine. We totally stuffed our faces on the buffet and it was pretty good. We were really glad we went ahead and did the package so we had extra time to ride Rock N Roller Coaster one more time!

Fantasmic! is AWESOME. I had never seen it and it was SO cool. I won't ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but some of the special effects are just things I had never seen before and thought they were very creative. So I highly recommend not skipping that if you were thinking about it.

After this day we were tired and went back to the hotel and to sleep to rest up for Day 2....

 

[cinderkelli]

Just one more thing that made our first official day at Disney SO fun! When we got back to our room that night after MGM, we had a towel person waiting for us! I know so many people talk about getting them or not getting them so I was SO hoping for one, but trying not to get my hopes up. But we totally did!

 

[heaven2dc]

Sounds like a great trip so far - how neat to share the Magic with others who haven't been!! (I can't wait to take my youngest 2 - it will be their first trip also) Waiting patiently for more....

 

[spaceoddity]

Nice trip report so far.

 

[cinderkelli]

Sorry for the delay! On to....

Day 3
So day 3 is Magic Kingdom. Now we are all adults and I KNOW MK is more for children, but are ya'll with me in thinking it is just the most MAGICAL place on Earth? I mean I just feel so happy being there.

Well, of course, first thing we hurry to Space Mountain and ride that and then did Buzz Lightyear, which I had never done before. I tried to shoot backwards at the Orange robot like all the people on the message boards say to do, but I still only got like 8000 points! All my friends were in the tens of thousands. Oh well. We made our way to Fantasyland and rode Peter Pan, Snow White, Small World and Pooh. I had never ridden Pooh before, and being a Mr. Toad fan I was sort of huffy about the whole thing, but I actually liked it! I saw the picture where Owl hands the deed to Pooh, so that gave me warm fuzzies.

We then made our way to the Haunted Mansion, which I love and I pointed out all the tombstones and saw Leota and even found the ring at the end of the ride in the pavement! I had made a list of all the 'secrets' and it was so much fun to find them and point them out to my friends. They got really in to it, too, so that made it much more fun.

For lunch we ate at Pecos Bill's and it was very tasty because we were SO hungry. We had done a lot that morning! Next we rode Splash Mountain, which was the only ride we even really waited for very long, and got tickled at the people behind us who didn't understand the Fastpass system and kept getting SO mad when people "cut" past us in the FP line.

How excited was I that Pirates of the Carribean was open? I was so disappointed when I heard it would be closed during our trip since my friends would miss 'quintessential' Disney. But we indeed got to ride it and I didn't notice any changes as yet. Afterwards I had my first Dole Whip. I had heard about them from everyone on the boards so we all got one. It was TASTY!

The rest of the afternoon we hit all the shows, took a nap in the Hall of Presidents , and actually got everything done just in time to ride Space Mountain a few more times.

That night we went out to Downtown Disney to eat and shop a little. We ate at Wolfgang Pucks Express and I would NOT recommend it. It was so bland and gross I couldn't even finish it. Not everyone agreed, so maybe some other stuff was good, but my pasta tasted like cardboard. (I know, I know...how do I know what cardboard tastes like?) After that we went and got hot chocolate at Ghirardelli and that I would HIGHLY recommend.

After that it was back to our room and to bed because we were SO tired. The next day was Epcot...

 

[cinderkelli]

Day 4

I always like Epcot. I know it is more 'educational', but I feel like they do such a good job about making it fun too. I was worried that my friends wouldn't like it as much as me, but they really enjoyed it.

Just a side note/tip. Almost every day at the park, one of our tickets had been demagnitized so we had to wait in line for a new one. When you get to the park 45 minutes early, this sort of defeats the purpose. So make sure if you have paper tickets, that you keep them away from credit cards and cell phones!! It was a real pain every day.

Ok, so first thing one of us went to get FP for Soarin' while the rest of us went to Test Track. We all rode TT and got a little pixie dust sprinkled on us when after we got off the Cast Member quietly asked if we would like to ride again. There was a pretty long line and we just walked right back on! It was fun. Then we rode Mission: Space. I was a little apprehensive, first of all for obvious reasons, second of all because I get motion sick very easily and when I saw the barf bags in the ride, I knew that was a bad sign! But, I don't like to miss out on stuff so I figured I would ride it at least once. I did get a little motion sick, but it wore off after only a few minutes and I was glad I rode it. It is a really cool experience, especially if you don't get motion sick i am sure.

Next was Soarin' and that was SO cool. We rode it many more times through out the day. We rode a few more things..Turtle Talk with Crush was SO cute and we kept saying 'dude' all day afterwards...and then we had lunch ADRs in Japan at Teppanyaki.

At Teppanyaki we got a salad and had the beef and chicken combo and a Kirin Ichiban to top the experience off. It was SO good. I highly recommend it. The chef was fun and he did the whole onion volcano thing that is always neat to watch. We ate a ton and had a great time.

Afterwards we went back to Future World to finish up there and it took a lot longer to ride everything else than I had planned for! We didn't get to the World Showcase to tour it until like 5:30 and we had ADRs at Le Cellier at 6:20. So we only got to see Canada and the UK before going to dinner.

I had heard so many great things about Le Cellier so I was very excited to eat there. We were seated promptly - I had heard even with ADRs you may have to wait a while - and our meal was great. I started with the Cheddar soup that everyone raves about and they were RIGHT. It was the best cheese soup I had ever had! SO tasty and delicious. I think we all had steak - mine was cooked perfectly - and mine came with cream cheese mashed potatos! I will definitely start adding cream cheese to MY mashed potatos from now on. Delicious! No dessert since we were stuffed, but we did have some very good Canadian wine, although I don't remember the name of it.

We got done with dinner earlier than I had anticipated so we ran over to Norway to try to squeeze in Maelstrom. The line was kind of long, but as soon as we got in it, a bunch of people started leaving saying the ride was broken. Well the same thing had happened at Pooh at MK but it was fixed within minutes so we thought we would stick it out. Glad we did because it was fixed two minutes later and the line was significantly shorter so we waited almost no time! More pixie dust for us! We then made our way back over to the bridge by France and grabbed a glass of Champagne there to enjoy while watching Illuminations.

Illuminations was great. I LOVE fireworks and Disney knows how to do fireworks. It was so beautiful and we had a great view. Sadly, it ended, so we headed back to the hotel. When we got back we were really tired, physically, since we had walked so much the last few days. We decided to soak in the hot tub since we knew we got to sleep in the next day. (I had reserved one day for a whatever we want to do/catch up on anything we missed day). So we get out there around 11 or so and there are a ton of small children in there. Now, I know we are at Disney World and I know that most of the people at DW are children. But don't they have a bedtime? We decided we didn't care and just squeezed in there with them. It was well worth it for our aching feet and I guess they did have a bedtime because they left shortly after...or maybe they just didn't want to share their hot tub with big kids.

After that we went to bed and slept in the next morning! It was great.

 

[honeybee213]

Great trip report. I like reading TRs about "big kids", since I'm one myself, and I'm going to Disney without any little kids.

 

[tinawv]

Sounds like you had a great time. We are planning to go to WDW in 2007. Part of me wishes it was here already, but have the fun is the anticipation of going to WDW. I would go every year is my family would agree.

 

[cinderkelli]

Day 5
So today was our sort of whatever day. I figured we wouldn't get done with everything at every park in one day each so this day was open to go back and catch up or sleep or hang by the pool. Brooke decided to hang at the hotel by the pool. KC and I went first to Epcot to finish the WS and Tamra slept in, to meet us later.

So we go to WS and start at Mexico. We work our way around to Germany and ate at the little bratwurst stand. We had brats and saurkraut and beer. Tasty! Then we finished walking around and shopped some. Then we rode Soarin' again.

Tamra met us then and we headed over to MK to do a little shopping since we hadn't earlier. We ended up staying there just for a short time and then went over to Downtown Disney. I spent way too much money in Mickey's Pantry. I love kitchen stuff and I love Disney, so this was a lethal combination!! We made another trip to Ghirardelli and then headed back to the hotel.

That night we had ADRs at Narcoossee's at Grand Floridian. We were all set to be there early so we could hopefully get a seat by the window, when the monorail broke down or something. We never really got an answer to what happened, but it stopped right before GF and we sat there for over 30 minutes!! I had to call Narcoossee's to let them know we were still coming, but would be late. They were very nice about it, but we didn't get to sit by the window. Oh well! We had to wait a little bit for a table, but we just got a drink at the bar and hung out. When we sat down it was close to time for Wishes to start at MK so we went ahead and ordered and then headed out side to watch it. I honestly think this may be the way to go. They piped in the music so you could hear everything that Jiminy Cricket was saying and sometimes at the park it is loud or whatever and we could see the fireworks perfectly! It was great.

Ok, so back to the food. I had a salad and steak with au gratin potatos. All of my food was perfect, but I think KCs steak was way over done and she wouldn't send it back because she is too nice. =) The au gratin potatos were to DIE for. SO good. The only bad thing we had was the dessert. We got some chocolate cake thing with like fudge syrup in it. It wasn't BAD, but the cake was sort of dry and I guess I am just a little bit more of a critic when I am paying so much for the food. But other than the dessert, which honestly I don't care about as much anyway, the food was great and I would highly recommend it.

After dinner it was late and we didn't think that the MK buses were running anymore so we headed to the GF bus stop to get a bus to DTD to then get a bus to POFQ, where we were staying. It was late and we were tired and we knew this was going to take forever, but we had no choice. Silly us, we forgot that pixie dust often found us and our bus driver just decided to take us straight to our hotel instead of making us go to DTD to get a bus!! It was SO nice of him. So we hit the hay as soon as we got in because tomorrow was EMH in the morning at Animal Kingdom...

 

[littleladykaty]

just subscribing!!! Great report!!!

 

[MamaLema]

I'm loving your reports

Can't wait for the rest

 

[fizz13]

Great report
Claire xx

 

[cinderkelli]

Day 6

So I have never been to Animal Kingdom. I was excited to save this for last because it would be new to all of us. I had been reading about EE and couldn't wait for that, but had been careful not to read anything that would spoil it.

So we get there early to see the opening. I had been told it was Rafiki who opened the park, but they had a little thing with Minnie, Mickey, Pluto and Goofy. Still cute, just not what I had expected. So my friends headed over to Kilamanjaro Safaris and I walked very quickly over to EE to get fastpasses. I then hurried to KS and we rode that first. I had heard the best time was early because all of the animals were out. SO true. We saw every animal you can think of. They were all up eating I guess. =) It was great. Then we went back over to EE. Now, I won't go and ruin it for any of you who haven't ridden it, but I very strongly recommend not knowing what happens before you do. It made it so much better. We rode it several times, but the first time was the best. =)

We then went to Primeval Whirl, which looked nauseating because it spins but I decided to try it because I have to try everything once! It was so fun! Our car barely spun at all so we got right back in line to ride it again. Ok, so this time our car spun like crazy and I wanted to puke. That was our last time to ride it. After that was Dinosaur. A friend of mine had told me it was a kiddy ride. They must have been thinking about one of the other rides because I screamed when that Dinosaur jumped out at me (don't worry that doesn't give anything away). It was fun and was quickly one of our favorite rides.

We watched Flights of Wonder which was GREAT and saw a bunch of the exhibits before lunch at Pizzafari. I was pleasantly surprised with the pizza. It was pretty tasty and my friends agreed. By this time it was getting hot so we rode Kali River Rapids. We got wet, but not soaked so that was good. We went to see Pocahantas, which was just as lame as everyone had said it would be, but it was a nice breather. Then we went in search of Mickey. We hadn't taken the time to get a photo with him yet and this was our last day so we HAD to! We found him close by and the line was not very long so we waited. It was so funny because I guess they were switching out the "Mickey's" and they announced that Mickey had to take a cheese break. It was cute.

So we got our pics with Mickey and then headed back to the hotel early. I loved Animal Kingdom. I agree with all you people who say it is hotter. IT IS! But it didn't bother us too much. It is just so beautiful. I live in a big city with lots of concrete so it was nice to feel miles away. I also felt like ALL of the rides were fun. I mean Snow White and It's a Small World are always a must ride and very cute, but I didn't feel like AK catered to kids as much as some of the other parks.

That night we ate at POFQ food court. Had some pasta that was pretty good and then went back to pack up because we had to leave the next day. We went to bed early because we had to get up early to catch our flight.

Day 7
So we found out that if you fly on certain airlines you can check in at the hotel and they take care of your luggage. So when you get to the airport via Magical Express, you just have to go to security. So we checked in and went to wait for our bus. We rode to the airport and had to say goodbye to WDW. Don't you always feel sad when you have planned for something for so long and then it is over? I hate that, but we had SO much fun and got back safely so that is good.

I hope everyone has enjoyed my trip report. It was fun for me to relive it. =) I hope you have a Magical Day!!

 

[Amy&Dan]

I really loved your report, it was fun reading it since my family was there the same time (in fact I think you might have responded on my trip report). I love POFQ too, what a great resort! And I am sooo jealous that you had champagne during Illuminations, I had wanted to do that but it just didn't happen! I guess there's always next time! Great report!!