Belated trip report- June-July 2006 with pictures! *New- Day 6- Mgm*

[tazz23]

After reading some of the other great trip reports on here and finding a box full of receipts and souvenirs from our trip, I have decided to write a report from our trip which was last June-July 2006 (Sorry for the delay in writing but better late than never right?! )
Hope this helps other disers going in the summer!

Some background info:

The trip was just dbf and I, both in our early 20s. I have been 3 times before and Dbf was a newbie!
Before Disney, we stayed in New York for 4 days, which was amazing- Here is a photo of us from that part of the holiday:

We stayed at Pop Century for 10 days. 7 were on the dining plan and 3 days were out of pocket. We worked it out one evening that we saved about £200 by using the dining plan but wow what a lot of food!

Anyway onto the trip report:

Thursday 22nd June 2006

We had an afternoon flight with Delta from New York. After checking in (and being the lucky ones who got called to a special area and searched!) we had over an hour until boarding so we decided to grab something to eat. There really isn't much choice near the boarding gate so we decided on Burger King. It was actually quite tasty for fast food!

Flight was quick and uneventful (we had seatback tv's with live broadcast of tv channels on, which were novel to me! We watched American Wife swap I think- This is so much better than english wife swap!).
We arrived at Pop and quickly checked in. We weren't aware of this at the time, but we had been upgraded to the 60s building, which is a preferred room. We were in Room 5467 on the top floor facing the hippy dippy pool.

On arriving we saw Mousekeeping had left us some guests for our room!

We loved the location of room and even though we were facing the pool, it was quiet at night (except the last night we were there, when some children were running screaming outside our room at midnight! arghhh!)

We had used the magical express and our suitcases were arriving later so we went straight to Pop Food court for Refillable mugs. This was much bigger than we imagined and even though we were here in June, we never queued for longer than 5 minutes (except one morning where it was scarily crazy busy!).

Dbf also bought a Twinkie, as we don't have these in England but had heard good things about them! I cannot remember whether he thought it was tasty or not but judging from the picture, I think he did enjoy it!

We had originally decided not to go to a Park today, as we were tired from our time in New York and the flight. However, at 7pm we both decided to ignore that and go to the Magic Kingdom! We both agreed that we wouldn't go on any rides and just soak up the atmosphere.

We both decided we were a bit hungry so we decided to share a meal at Pecos Bills. We had the Chicken Wrap and fries, a peanut butter brownie and a bottle of water. We weren't amazed by the food and Dbf did not like the brownie!

I think we actually broke our rule of no rides and did the Haunted Mansion and Its a small world, as neither had a long queue (under 5 minutes).. Classic rides!

We also bought used 2 snack credits on more water and a packet of Lays Crisps (It was a huge bag but we ate it all! Are all bags of crisps this big in America?!).

It was really busy this evening and we left at 9.30pm, just before Wishes was going to start, as we were seeing that later on and didn't want to spoil the surprise!

We arrived back at Pop after 10 and looked round the gift shop, refilled the mugs and watched a bit of tv. We had a look at our plan for tomorrow (We used Tour Guide Mike and I cannot say enough great things about him and his site. We never queued for longer than 15 minutes and this was June- July).

 

[natalielongstaff]

great start thanks for posting

 

[Cyrano]

Great start. Look forward to the next installment

 

[tazz23]

Friday 23rd June 2006

We woke up at 6am (yes thats 6am! Back home, I struggle to wake up early but somehow on holiday and the prospect of a Disney day made me wake up bright and early!).
I was really cold in the night despite the thermostat saying it was 80F and so Dbf had a play with that and we packed the bag with water, spare batteries for camera, ponchos etc.
We left the room and were at Pop Food court at 7.30am. There were about 20 people there and we refilled our mugs and ordered breakfast. Dbf had the Adult Breakfast Platter and I had a chocolate croissant. Both were very tasty and had generous portions. We were surprised at how good the food court was, seeing as I had read mixed reviews about it.

At 8am, all the staff began dancing in the middle of the food court. I can't remember what the song was but it happened every morning we had breakfast!

Today was our AK day and the bus arrived just as we walked out of Pop. The weather was gorgeous- Over 90F. We arrived at AK at 8.30am, and had a look in the giftshop while we waited for the park to open.

At 8.50am we were allowed in the park up to the Tree of Life.. it was sooo busy! The was an opening ceremony with mickey and friends but I couldn't really see over the crowds (I am only about 5ft 1!). I had already drilled it into Dbf to walk fast to Everest when the rope was dropped (I am too much of a wuss to go on Everest! I said I would get fastpasses for Safari and meet him outside)
Anyway the rope was dropped and it seemed that 100s of people were running to Everest- I was so worried that Dbf would be stuck in a queue and I wouldn't see him til lunchtime!

I went with a small crowd to the Safari and got fastpasses and made my way to Everest. Dbf was waiting for me already and it was only 9.20am! He said that even though it looked like 100s of people were going on the ride, there was only a 5 min queue and also the ride was amazing!

That morning we also did Kali River Rapids, most of Dinoland (Dinosaur is my new favourite AK ride- It really wasn't as bad as people make out it is), the jungle trail and its tough to be a bug.

Dbf also broke his sunglasses, but I cannot remember how! He bought a new pair at one of the shops for about $20.

By 11.30am, we were starving and we ate at Pizzafari. The pizzas were so yummy!- would definately recommend eating here!
I had a cheese pizza and Dbf had a Pepperoni one. We had 2 waters and chocolate cake and frozen lemonade for dessert.

We ate the frozen lemonade in the queue for the lion king.. again a great show, we were singing the songs for the rest of the day.

We took it easy in the afternoon, just strolling into shops and doing the trails, safari and we saw the parade.

When we were in New York, we visited the Disney Store and we got talking to a staff member who got my Dbf interested in Pin trading. He was on a mission to swap his pins and was on a look out for a Darkwing Duck pin (we later found out this does not exist!). You can see some of the pins on out t-shirts in the pictures!

We left at 4pm to go to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for a look round the hotel and also we had ADRs for Boma!

 

[disneyaddicted]

I am glad you decided to write a TR, I am enjoying it so far and am looking forward to reading more.

 

[tazz23]

Continued.. Day 2...

The bus journey to AK lodge took 5-10 minutes and we arrived at the lodge after 4.30pm. We walked around the lodge.. though we couldnt see any animals?! Maybe we were looking in the wrong area! The swimming pool area is really nice here, although I enjoyed the theming at Pop.

We checked into Boma at 5pm and given one of those flashing pagers. We had no idea what it did and were worried that we wouldn't hear it go off (lol! For those of you who have not used these.. don't worry you can definately hear and see these when they go off!)

We were both really looking forward to eating here after the rave reviews from other Disers! We were not disappointed, the food is wonderful!
This was one of my favourite meals of the holiday. We went up 4 times! We were so full at the end of the meal, we rolled out of the restaurant!

The Zebra Domes were particularly tasty.. mmmm I wish they had these in the UK!

We were in Boma for over 2 hours (we took our time eating and talking about the day!) and after that we took the bus back to AK to change buses to Pop. Despite the transfer, the entire journey only took 20 minutes!

We went back to our room, via a refill for our mugs, at about 9ish.

I had planned a surprise for Dbf and it was waiting on the table in our room:

The photo doesn't do it justice, it looked better than I imagined. I ordered through Peggy (not sure if she still does gift baskets but really recommend her if she is!) and she also got us 2006 graduation mickey ears with our names printed on, as we had graduated from university that summer. We wore them to our ceremony- they looked too cute (though we did feel a bit silly!). I ordered lots of chocolate and sweets for the basket.. too much infact and we ended coming back to England with leftover mickey bars and Hershey bars from that basket !

Mousekeeping had also left us another small surprise:

I think we watched Law and Order and talked until we went to sleep. We had long day planned for tomorrow!

Coming up... Day 3 where Dbf completes his reason for existence, we make friends with a lot of ducks, Magic Kingdom, Mgm and the Fantasmic Dinner Package!

 

[Chilly]

great report so far.

 

[ariel75]

looking forward to reading more

 

[natalielongstaff]

Mmmmm i love zebra domes and the pop breakfast platter

 

[jns]

Great start
please tell us about NY too

 

[mickeydumplings]

Hi

Have really enjoyed read these, makes my all excited for when we go to Pop in July. My son graduation is exactly 2 weeks before we go.

Looking forward to reading more.

Debb ie

 

[momof2boyz12]

tazz23, I just started reading your trip report and am finding it helpful as we are planning a trip in July of this year. Great report so far.

 

[FutureCinderella88]

Loving your report! I was in Disney last july too! Gotta love that hot Florida weather!!!

 

[veryblessed]

loving your trip report!! The gift basket is so cute!!!

 

[schmoopypoo]

Enjoying so far. Can't wait to read more!

 

[MA pigletfan]

so glad you decided to do a trip report..great start..love the pics

 

[sunlver]

Great trip report so far Looking forward to reading more.
We are going this June with the 3 kids, cant wait

 

[tazz23]

Thank you for reading and all your kind comments- I really appreciate them!


I wrote Day 3 yesterday and then discovered the Dis was unavailable for most of the night! Will quickly post it now incase it goes down again!

 

[tazz23]

Day 3

Saturday 24th June 2006

We both work up very early this morning, before our Alarm went off! I was very excited because this morning we were visiting the Magic Kingdom!

When I first discussed this holiday with Dbf about 2 years ago now (It took us over a year to save the money needed for this holiday- Doesn't it feel great though when you finally book the flights and hotel!) he thought Disney was the Magic Kingdom!

I asked him what he knew about it and all he knew about the park was that there was a castle and a Dumbo ride!
A bit strange I thought.. but a few days later, a commercial came on the television for Disneyworld and it showed the children running with Mickey and Minnie, the castle and the Dumbo ride!! So I can see where he got this idea that Dumbo was an important part of Disneyworld.

Anyway, It became a running joke between us that we were going to Disney for a ride on Dumbo! We also learnt that Dumbo was one of the most slowest moving rides and it can have 2 hours wait in the summer Now the thought of queueing for a 2 minute ride for 2 hours is not appealing.. so our plan was to do this ride as soon as the park opened.

As an aside- Dbf was quickly educated that Disney was not the Magic Kingdom and I am very proud to say he got quite involved with the planning and is a semi-expert now!

So back to the 24th June...we got ready and went for breakfast at the Pop Food court at about 7.45am. Again, there were only about 20 people in the entire food court. We ordered 2 Adult Breakfast Platters and refilled our mugs and enjoyed a quiet breakfast.

We were at the bus stop at around 8.15am (Not sure why breakfast took so long!) and we waited for what felt like a long time for a bus (probably only 10 minutes, but seems longer when buses are leaving for the other parks!).
Anyway I was very worried that we would miss park opening- I think the Pop Century Bus Stop is the furthest Bus stop from the MK and was a good 5-10 min walk. So we sprinted to the entrance!
We made park opening and I could see it this time, as they do a little show on the balcony of the Railroad! It was very cute.

We had a countdown and it was go go go to Fantasyland and Dumbo! Like Animal Kingdom it seemed like a lot of people waiting to go into the park but a lot of people headed to Tomorrowland and Adventureland (although this had a delayed opening of 9.30am so not sure why people were going there at 9am?!)
We paused for a look at the Castle and then headed for the Dumbo ride! We didn't make the first ride of the day (about 15 people had beaten us there!) but we were on the second ride and after 2 minutes, Dbf completed his reason for going to Disney!

That morning we did all the Fantasyland rides, Frontierland and Adventureland rides (minus Pirates as that was in Rehab!) We also saw Mickey in the Judges Tent, as we had not met Mickey this holiday yet. We also queued for the Character tent with Chip and Dale and Goofy.

We used fastpasses for Big Thunder and Splash and were very glad that we did as the queues were crazy for these rides. It was only 11am ish and there were an hour queue. However with our fastpasses we had only a 5 min wait (and that was taken up with the long and winding queueing system they have on these rides).

We were very lucky and had front row seats for both rides.. Gosh Splash mountain is scary when you are sitting in the front!

By 11.30am we felt satisfied that we had seen a lot of the park and were starving! We got another fastpass for Splash Mountain (I love the theming on this ride and it is not too frightening apart from the end drop) and went to Cosmic Rays for lunch. We ordered 2 chicken strip meals with fries, 2 bottles of water and chocolate cake and brownie for dessert. This was a lot of food! You can definately share this meal between two people. We watched Sunny Eclipse and his band and also watched some adorable children dancing to him!

It was after Midday when we finished and we just had the Splash Mountain fastpasses to use. The Sky looked very grey and a lot of clouds had gathered while we were eating. However, we had ponchos in our bag and were not worried.

We went back to Splash and got lucky and were in the front of the log again! We were seated with a dad and his 2 sons in our log.
We were enjoying the ride until we got to the bit where you come outside and have a view of the castle and the park, before the first small drop and you can probably guess what happened... It began to rain! and not a little bit, I am talking about a heavy downpour! There was nothing we could do as we were in the middle of the ride! The rain was so strong it hurt my head and back! So much for carrying our ponchos.. they were useless sitting in the bag tucked in the log!

Anyway eventually the ride got to a covered bit and we were all joking in the log about how wet we were! When we got off the ride, it had stopped raining too!
We took some photos to show how wet we were.. You can see I was not happy at all, as my shoes were also wet and felt horrible to walk in! We actually packed a small towel in our bag, but it was useless- It only dried about one arm and it was soaking wet!

I hoped this was the only rain of the holiday but as you'll read later it was the start of many more heavy showers!

We left the park then for an afternoon break at the Hotel and for a change of clothes and walked back to the bus stop. The bus took ages to arrive. I mean like over 30 minutes ages! We watched the entire Disney planning video and a bit, while we waited (For those of you, who aren't familiar with the bus stops, they have tv screens to keep visitors amused and they show the best things to see and do in Disneyworld). We also had many visitors with us the queue enjoying the puddles that the rain had made!

We got back to Pop, just in time as it rained again for about an hour. We both had showers and I think we did some laundry.. very rock and roll! The laundrette is fairly cheap about $2 for a large washing machine and $2 for the tumble dryer too.

I was concerned that Fantasmic would be cancelled, as we had the Fantasmic Dinner Package booked for tonight, but we decided to go to MGM anyway and see what happened!

 

[tazz23]

Day 3 continued

We had ADR's at the Hollywood and Vine at 5.30pm and so we left Pop at 5pm.

We arrived just as the parade was finishing. We went to the restaurant and checked in about 10 minutes early and was told we had 20 plus minutes to wait!
We were told that a lot of people were taking their time eating and so all ADR's were delayed. We were handed our buzzer and we looked around a nearby gift shop while we waited for it to go off.

After 25 minutes, we still had not been called and so we went back to the restaurant (we were worried our buzzer was faulty). We were told that there was still a long wait and we were 7th or 8th down the list. She predicted it would be another 15-20 min wait!
Fantasmic was at 9pm so we're worried about being late for it but it was annoying that we had to wait so long to eat!
We wandered around the area (we couldn't sit down as the ground was wet from the rain) and saw that the Star Wars ride had a 0 minute wait and as she said another 20 minutes, we decided to go on it! This was really fun, but did make me feel a little sick (probably because my tummy was empty!).

As soon as we got off the ride, the buzzer went off and we walked quickly back to the restaurant. This was our least favourite restaurant of the holiday. Don't get me wrong, it is ok! But more of a family restaurant. It was very noisy and busy and the tables were close to one another. Our server was very efficient however and it was great having a buffet, so we could eat immediately! The food was very normalish- Nothing wow, but it was all warm and plentiful. The pink lemonade was great change to water!

The bill came to $59.74 including tip, but we were on the dining package so used 2 table credits. We were handed our tickets for the reserved seating for fantasmic (which was going ahead tonight-yay!) I think next time we would try Mama Melrose or the Brown Derby instead.

We left the restaurant near to 8pm and we headed straight for Fantasmic. We went through the back entrance, as Fantasmic Package people do and had a great seat about half way down. Somebody started a mexican wave across the arena and we all took part! We have it on film and it makes me smile every time i see it! Fantasmic started and was great as usual. This is one of my favourite shows, but Dbf was more of an Illuminations guy as you will find out later!

yay its Mickey!

my camera doesn't work very well at night so unfortunately those are the best pictures I have got.. Next time we go, I will buy a better camera and make sure it has night vision!

After Fantasmic, we followed the masses out of the arena and decided to look in the shops. Dbf wanted to pin trade and we went to the shop by the hat. We knew that there would be a huge queue at the bus stop for Pop Century so we took our time, getting some popcorn to eat and talking.

We left the park at about 10.30pm and only waited 5 minutes for a bus and we got seats. We talked to a family in the queue who said they had been queuing for over 20 minutes so we felt secretly pleased that we had not gone straight to the bus stop, when Fantasmic had ended.

The journey to Pop took under 10 minutes and the driver turned the lights off. It then suddenly hit both of us how tired we were. We had not had a proper rest in over a week (as we had an early flight from England and 4 busy days in New York before disney).
We were planned to go to MGM again tomorrow at Park opening, but we decided that we needed to sleep in and have a non-park day and recharge.

Coming up in Day 4... Not sleeping in, Downtown Disney, A tour round Pop Century and Pop Arcade, tummy upsets and more rain!