Disney with a side of Bridge, Jan 3-11, 2009

[tsukata]

Hello all! My dear husband has been a Disney podcast fan for over a year, but we're new to the boards. He finally got to use his acquired knowledge for a trip we took in January, and I figured I'd share our experience with y'all.

We planned this trip intentionally to coincide with the Orlando Bridge Regional, and we're really glad we did. The regional was very well attended, and we had a great time at it. Also, for the one night that we couldn't stay at Disney (due to Marathoners having booked it all up), we got a great rate on the Bridge hotel. Bridge provided a great way to take a break from the parks.

Right now, we're debating as to whether we want our next trip to be during MouseFest or Bridge/Marathon! But, enough about us...time for the trip!

Dates: January 3-11, 2009
Where we stayed: Animal Kingdom Lodge (Jan 3-4), Port Orleans Riverside (Jan 4-10), Buena Vista Palace (Jan 10-11)
About us: DINKs in our mid-thirties. My parents also joined us. There's 3 of them, and they're in their 50's.
What we did, in a nutshell:
January 3 - Animal Kingdom Lodge, Victoria & Albert's
January 4 - Animal Kingdom, Osborne Family Lights
January 5 - EPCOT Future World, Fantasmic (DHS)
January 6 - Bridge
January 7 - Bridge (and we got robbed but not on Disney property...off-site)
January 8 - Bridge/Port Orleans exploration
January 9 - Magic Kingdom
January 10 - EPCOT World Showcase
January 11 - came home

The long (VERY long) trip report can be found on my website/blog, which the evil posting restrictions won't let me link to directly yet, but this should get you there in the interim:
www dot tsukata dot org / tag / disney09 (or, there should be a link in my sig)
Make sure to click the title of each post to see the full post! Each post is well over a page long.

And you can see pictures on my website's gallery:
www dot tsukata dot org / org_gallery / Orlando-2009-01 (or, there are links in each of the posts of the travelogue)

 

[tsukata]

Here's a re-post of a Port Orleans Riverside review that I wrote for portorleans dot org:

Rooms: 8009, 8010 in Acadian House (Magnolia Bend)

The bad:

* Check-in took forever. At 6:45am on Sunday January 4th, there was a line of 14 people, and one person was at the desk to check them in. We didn't get to the front of the line until nearly 8am. This was the first day of the Buy-4-Get-3 promotion, so a ton of people were checking out and checking back in again under the promotion to get their park tickets for the week. My parents (who were also staying at POR) ran into the same experience later in the day. This may have been an artifact of the B4G3 promotion (and a lack of preparedness for it), but it was still a negative way to start our stay.
* Check-in wasn't breezy. None of our special requests got honored in our initial room placement. My husband spent a fair amount of time at the desk (as had everyone before us) trying to get us into something that would be at least partially what we wanted. We had requested any of 4 different buildings in Alligator Bayou (ones closest to bus stops), adjoining (not connecting, although ok if they did connect) room to my parents, and (and we noted this as being the top priority) a first floor room for my parents as they aren't too steady on stairs. We were assigned to the 2nd floor, both rooms on 2nd floor and in different buildings, and in buildings that were in really out-of-the-way locations (as much as any building is in AB). We said we were willing to wait to get assigned until later in the day, but the check-in host said they weren't expecting anything in our requested buildings to open up. She found us a room in a slightly better building, with us in the same building, but still on 2nd floor, so that wouldn't work. What made matters worse is that every time we asked "what about this option? or what if we do this instead?", she had to get on the phone to someone else to ask about it. In this day and age, you kind of expect the person checking you in to be able to access that information on a computer in front of them instead of calling to someone else to ask. After much negotiation and phone calls, we switched to Magnolia Bend, and we ended up in a fountain view 1st floor room, connected to my parents' room, in the Acadian building. So, in the end, we got the most important parts of what we asked for, with the exception of being in Alligator Bayou...but it took a large amount of (polite) back-and-forth at the front desk to get there.
* There was no cellphone reception in our rooms for T-Mobile. (This isn't Disney's fault, IMO...more of a general FYI.) Verizon worked hit-and-miss. But generally, all of us had to go out into the courtyard to make or receive calls and texts. That made coordinating our groups a pain.
* There's only one hot tub, and it filled up FAST in the evenings. I really wish they had a second one somewhere for all our aching feet, but if they do, it's well-hidden!


The only-okay:

* Bus service - When leaving the parks or DD, for every bus that went to Port Orleans, there would be 3 going to Key West, from anywhere that we went. The buses were never crowded for us, but we were there at off-season, too, and we mostly drove to the parks during the day. We only used the buses a few times.


The good:

* For all of our request issues, we loved our rooms. We had honestly thought about doing Magnolia Bend instead of AB (in part because then, even on an upper floor, there's an elevator), but this site and others talked us out of it. (AB seemed to have such interesting in-room theming, among other reasons.) Our room was quiet and peaceful. We had no noise issues. Parking was close-by, and the bus stop was very convenient. The whole Riverside resort is lusciously themed and landscaped, but Magnolia Bend is particularly picturesque, IMO. Honestly, the farthest part of Riverside isn't anywhere near as bad of a walk as some of the mid-distance buildings of All-Star. Even if the distance is long, it's like you don't mind it as much because of the landscaping and river view. From Acadian House, we were a very short walk to a quiet pool and not that much farther to Ol' Man Island, which then gave us access to the Mill. We weren't planning to use the food court very much anyways, so being far from the Mill wasn't a problem for us. (Oh and we found a super-secret, probably supposed to be employees-only but isn't marked as such, entrance and exit to the resort just outside Acadian House which made it ultra-convenient for when we went off-campus to dine or drove to another resort for dinner.)
* Renting bikes and touring the Port Orleans resorts was one of the best things my husband and I did. I highly recommend it if you have a chance.
* Beignets at French Quarter were delicious and served to us straight from the fryer. I went to college in New Orleans, so this was a pleasant nostalgia.
* The waterslide at Ol' Man Island beats Animal Kingdom's and French Quarter's easily. My husband had lots of fun on it.


The PURE AWESOME:

* Yehaa Bob at the River Roost - I admit that I was skeptical, but all of us, my parents included, really enjoyed the show. We were singing, dancing, clapping...it was a blast.
* The ferry to Downtown Disney - this feels like an overlooked gem...you get dropped off in a great place, and along the way, our ferry captain gave us information about what we were passing. We saw the treehouses that are being built as part of Disney's next DVC resort, and we got a little history about the other resorts...nothing we didn't already know, but it was still fun. It was a great (free) way to see the other resorts from the Sassagoula.
* Breakfast at Boatwright's: It completely lived up to the hype. I preferred the Boatwright's style French Toast. My Dad really liked their "traditional" French Toast. My husband loved the banana-stuffed French Toast. All in all, we were all happy and well-fed at a very reasonable (for Disney) price.


Other items of note:

* You can't take kayaks all the way to DD. Per the rental desk, kayaks can't go further than Port Orleans FQ. Powered boats can go all the way to the DD lake, but they can't dock there (even though you can rent boats there that go up the river) or be returned there. The kayaks are sit-on-top kayaks which, while easier to get in and out of than traditional sit-in style, are a bit more cumbersome to maneuver for some folk. One nice thing is that the kayaks load on a ramp and are scooted into the water...which really begs the question as to why they limit it to sit-on-tops. A water entry to a sit-in kayak is challenging, but land-entry is easy, especially with an assistant. The reason for sit-on-tops is to make water entry easier. ::shrug::
* While Surrey bikes are limited to the big trail at POR, the regular bikes can go down to French Quarter, and, if you're adventurous and willing to follow the letter of the rules rather than the clearly intended spirit, can go to Key West. (Honestly, I'd love to see Disney offer and promote a bike rental program park-wide, so you could ride bikes to the parks on bike paths, turn them in, and rent bikes in the evenings to get home and turn them in at your resort. But, I'm probably in the minority on that, being without kids and a lover of biking. )

Overall, we're really glad we chose POR, and we'll definitely stay there again.