Feelin' Hot Hot Hot in Walt Disney World (May 2010) - The Final Decision...Hmm

[Nermel9]

Hello! I'm subscribing, enjoying your trip report so far! I was on my honeymoon from 5/6-5/11 at the Beach Club and yes, it was HOT! And the crowds were kind of crazy too, a lot more than I'm used to! I'm going to be starting my very first trip report hopefully tomorrow so tonight I'm reading some to get inspired!

 

[PolynesianLily]

We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the Polynesian and can't wait to be back there in October.

Oh, and my b-day is in May too (May 11).

Off to read now ......

Happy Belated Birthday!!!!!!!!
Thank you for joining me!
Two thumbs up for the Polynesian

Subbing in. You are doing a fine job on your inaugural trip report and I'm looking forward to the rest! We once went to WDW in June. The term you are looking for is "Hot, Africa Hot"

Thank you! My sunburn got sunburnt, how sad and weird. Haha. I heard that it is hot in June.

Hello! I'm subscribing, enjoying your trip report so far! I was on my honeymoon from 5/6-5/11 at the Beach Club and yes, it was HOT! And the crowds were kind of crazy too, a lot more than I'm used to! I'm going to be starting my very first trip report hopefully tomorrow so tonight I'm reading some to get inspired!

I was listening to some Floridians talk and they said that they went from winter to summer weather in 1 day. The day that we arrived , yes we bring the fire.

 

[Stefy]

Yay you're at Disney I am totally there with you on loving seeing all the Disney signs advertising everything Disney

 

[PolynesianLily]

Where Oh Where in the Polynesian Are We?

Last I left off we had just arrived at the Polynesian Resort. Of course the moment I stepped foot out of the car I became picture happy. I took pictures of signs and the first Disney bus that I saw. It was so exciting to see the balloons on the sides of the Disney transportation. I had seen pictures of the busses and monorails in other people's trip reports and thought that the designs on the side windows with the balloons was really cute.

Some people don't really like the designs on the monorails or the disney busses but I thought they were a good idea. But moving past that, let's move onto the hotel check in part.

Here are some others pictures that I took before I decided that maybe it was time to stop taking pictures.

'H' is for "home" and "happiness"!

My plant/tree/shrub expedition has begun!!​

We began walking towards the sliding front doors of the Great Ceremonial House. I love the outside of the Polynesian resort because I think that it is really well themed. From the flowers and the sidewalks to the fountains and waterfalls everything compliments the theme of the hotel. The one thing that my mom told me she read on the DIS was that some people find the waterfalls in the Great Ceremonial House a little too loud. I can understand why some people might feel that way, but they honestly add to the theme of the hotel. Without those waterfalls i'm sure all you would be able to hear in the lobby would be the hustle and bustle of the hotel guests and tourists. The waterfall sound does a good job eliminating that noise, creating a true Polynesian feel.

As soon as we walked through the front doors of the Great Ceremonial House I immediately felt like I was back home. Everything seemed so familiar to me, and the smell of the lobby certainly added to the 'homey' feeling. I'm sure many others get that feeling of being at home when they walk into a resort or a place that they are familiar and comfortable with. I remember when we would stay at the Wilderness Lodge and we would walk through the front doors and into the lobby to check in I immediately got that feeling of truly being at home again.

Anyways, we got in the little line up to check in, which there was no line so we got helped immediately. The lady who checked us in was very nice and friendly, which is always a plus! I'm sure it wouldn't be pleasant being checked in by someone who is grumpy and less than friendly to you. When we made the reservation in August we had requested to be in the Tahiti longhouse. Did we actually end up with a room located in the Tahiti longhouse? Well...you will just have to read on!

The check in process moved quickly. Both of my parents made their room keys chargeable and mine non-chargeable mainly because I loose everything (seriously I do). On a side note, a few trips back I found a cute little card holder at the Polynesian so I decided to buy it. I never knew that it would last me 4 trips. In this card holder I put my room key, the park passes and our fastpasses because it is water proof (comes in handy on Splash Mountain).

The check in cast member gave me a birthday button with my name on it and a little Mickey Mouse head above where my name was written. It was so cute and I was so excited. Although it did make me a little bit sad because I knew that by the time I got to wear the birthday button we would be leaving to go back to Canada then next day. I know, I know - the vacation had not even started and I was already thinking about leaving.

So I know that you are all wondering where in the Polynesian Resort would our room be located. Well for your information our room was located in . . . *drumroll* TAHITI!!!!!!!! We were in room 2006, which was really cool because that was the first year that we decided to stay at the Polynesian. My mom at first thought that the Tahiti longhouse had no balcony on the second floor but I reminded her that our room was on the 2nd floor in the Tahiti longhouse in December 2008 and we did have a balcony. A real balcony, and not one of those fake ones that some of the longhouses have. The cast member began drawing a route that we could take to get to Tahiti, but of course we already knew our way there since we stayed in that longhouse 3 times before. I didn't mind waiting while she did that because it gave me more time to stand and take in the loveliness that is the Polynesian Resort.

Instead of going back to the car to get our luggage, we wanted to go and scope out the room to make sure that it was ok and clean. We have had a room at the Polynesian before that was less than clean, so of course we just wanted to be sure. As we walked out the side doors of the Great Ceremonial House the heat hit us like a brick wall. Of course it was warm in Canada but . Little did I know that the arrival day would be the coolest day of the entire trip!

Once we got to our room we looked around and found everything to be alright. There were two cute towel animals in the room! I took some pictures of the room before we went and got our luggage from the car.

Up Next: Where Did We Eat? It's All About The Food

 

[VegasVick]

Joining in!! Love the pictures!

 

[PolynesianLily]

Joining in!! Love the pictures!

Thank you!
Welcome aboard!!!!!!

 

[MarieTheCat24]

Girl, I'm joining in! I LOOOOOOOOOVE the Polynesian!!! I am so excited to be staying there again in July.

I'm loving all of the palm tree pics. And how cool that your room number was the year you first stayed at the Poly. The first time we stayed at the Poly, our room number was the address of my mom's childhood home. It's so crazy how that works out!

 

[PolynesianLily]

Girl, I'm joining in! I LOOOOOOOOOVE the Polynesian!!! I am so excited to be staying there again in July.

I'm loving all of the palm tree pics. And how cool that your room number was the year you first stayed at the Poly. The first time we stayed at the Poly, our room number was the address of my mom's childhood home. It's so crazy how that works out!

Thank you for joining my trip report!!

I must have taken a ton of pictures of palm trees because they are all over the picture memory card .
It's always nice to associate your room numbers with something familiar. That way you will never forget what your room number is.

 

[manntra]

Great pictures of the room!! I stopped over at the Poly one day after Epcot....I think I was going to DTD and we stopped there to get off and look around. Such a pretty resort....and I know what you mean about the smell of the lobby...that is how I feel when I step into the AKV....it's home
Now that I am thinking about it.....I remember seeing you in chat maybe a week or so before I left for my trip...I can't remember what night it was but I remember a lot of teacher talk

Tracy

 

[PolynesianLily]

Great pictures of the room!! I stopped over at the Poly one day after Epcot....I think I was going to DTD and we stopped there to get off and look around. Such a pretty resort....and I know what you mean about the smell of the lobby...that is how I feel when I step into the AKV....it's home
Now that I am thinking about it.....I remember seeing you in chat maybe a week or so before I left for my trip...I can't remember what night it was but I remember a lot of teacher talk

Tracy

Oh yes! I remember now!
The Polynesian is a very nice resort I love the smell of home.

 

[MickeyisBeast]

I'm totally with you on how the Poly smells like home! On our last trip, we went to visit the Poly, and I took one step out of the bus door and immediatly could smell the Polynesian/Home-ness smell

I like the waterfalls in the lobby, I think it adds to the overall themeing!

 

[heaven2dc]

I'm having fun reading your TR! Even though you had sort of a shaky start at the airport, your room looks lovely. The Poly is a beautiful resort and we have never stayed there so may have to try it sometime!

 

[PolynesianLily]

I'm totally with you on how the Poly smells like home! On our last trip, we went to visit the Poly, and I took one step out of the bus door and immediatly could smell the Polynesian/Home-ness smell

I like the waterfalls in the lobby, I think it adds to the overall themeing!

It's a lovely feeling to have, and it certainly means that Disney is doing their job correctly when designing the hotels - making people feel like they are at home when they walk into the lobby or even around the hotel property.

I'm having fun reading your TR! Even though you had sort of a shaky start at the airport, your room looks lovely. The Poly is a beautiful resort and we have never stayed there so may have to try it sometime!

I am glad to hear that you are having fun reading my trip report! Thank you for joining me!

 

[PolynesianLily]

The Disney Food Expedition Begins ... With a Turkey and a Pig?

As I mentioned in the last update after we took a look at our room we went and got our luggage. We walked back to the main lobby in order to drive the car from that parking lot over to the smaller parking lot located near the Rapa Nui longhouse. This parking lot is a lot easier for us to access, instead of walking to the main parking lot and trying to remember where we parked the car. It's a very nice parking lot, but it has few shaded spots, which later as we learned would make the car feel like a fire inside.

After we moved the car to the smaller parking lot we got our luggage out of the trunk and walked over to Tahiti. We decided to take the elevator instead of trying to drag our suitcases up the stairs - which now that I think about it would be possible, but silly. Anyways, we tried to use one of the elevators but after standing there waiting for the doors to open we found out that the elevator was broken. Instead we took a larger service elevator up to the second floor with a maid. She was very nice to let us share the elevator with her, when she really didn't have to wait for us. I would like to take the time to point out that up until this point I did not trip or fall on anything . . . yet. If only that was the case for the entire trip.

We decided to get some food since we didn't eat much on the airplane. Unfortunately on the way to Captain Cook's the blister on the side of my foot decided that it was time to become extremely painful. Since it was really sweaty and sticky outside my sandals were sticking and rubbing against my blister. Oh and did I mention that new blisters began to form on the way to Captain Cook's as well. I tell you the Florida heat can do some damage to a person while on vacation if they are not prepared. We made it to Captain Cook's and immediately everything seemed so familiar to me. It was almost like I had never left the Polynesian.

I know that I was supposed to take pictures of the food but I forgot. We were just too hungry that by the time my parents had taken a bite of their food it dawned on me. I didn't think that anyone would want to see half eaten food (yuck).

In order to obtain 'hot' food you need to order from a self-serve kiosk. It is a touch screen kiosk that offers you the choices that are available for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course they only give you for example breakfast options at breakfast and dinner options at dinner. My parents had the Aloha Pork Sandwich. All the sandwiches are served with Asian Vegetable Slaw or Polynesian Chips. My parents chose the Polynesian Chips because that was what they would always order with their meals at Captain Cook's during our other stays at the Polynesian. I decided to have something off of the kids menu, so I had the Turkey and Cheese Sandwich and for the two sides I chose two cookies.

The Aloha Pork Sandwich looks really delicious, but it does not interest me. Practically every time we ate at Captain Cook's this trip my parents ordered the Aloha Pork Sandwich because they said that it was the best pulled pork sandwich in Walt Disney World. The kid's Turkey and Cheese Sandwich was quite delicious if I do say so myself. It was served on a hamburger bun and the cheese was delicious! I'm pretty sure that they changed what they served the turkey and cheese on because I remember it differently from another trip. We also got our refillable mugs and I was excited to finally have some Sprite. We didn't have any dessert because we knew that we were going to be getting many snacks from the Samoa Snack store.

Don't worry, I did remember to take food pictures a few times this trip. But of course sometimes I forgot to take the pictures and by the time I remembered it was too late.

Up Next: Did we end up seeing Wishes or the Electrical Water Pageant?

 

[jenbear123]

Hey there fellow Canuck! I randomly stumbled upon your TR and am hooked! I was just leaving the World on my last trip when you were coming! Crazy! We spent our last two nights at the Poly as a surprise for my mom for Mother's Day. It was our first time there and we loved it! Can't wait to follow along on your adventures.

 

[KSBelle]

I was at the World May 2-6 and interested in seeing how your vacation compared and if our paths might have overlapped.

 

[MousekaMaddi]

 

[PolynesianLily]

Hey there fellow Canuck! I randomly stumbled upon your TR and am hooked! I was just leaving the World on my last trip when you were coming! Crazy! We spent our last two nights at the Poly as a surprise for my mom for Mother's Day. It was our first time there and we loved it! Can't wait to follow along on your adventures.

Thank you for joining me!
I hope that you had a nice vacation!!!!
Enjoying the weather in Canada?

I was at the World May 2-6 and interested in seeing how your vacation compared and if our paths might have overlapped.

Thank you for joining me!
I hope that you had a nice vacation!!
What did you think of the weather - was it too hot?

Thank you for joining me!!!!

 

[PolynesianLily]

The Night of Disney Magic, Oh But Where's the Magic? WE MISSED IT?

Now is the most interesting part of the arrival day. I know that you all must be curious as to what we did on our first official night at Walt Disney World. Did we go to a park? Did we go to Downtown Disney? What on earth did we do/where did we go?

Well, we had a quick dinner yet again at Captain Cook’s – I ate a side of Polynesian Chips and my parents had the Aloha Pork Sandwich again. It had been a little while since we had last eaten something, but still we felt a little bit hungry from our mid day snack that we had at 3:30pm. After the quick dinner at Captain Cook’s we had planned on doing some major walking that night. Before the trip my mother and I tried to come up with possible plans of things for us to do on Sunday night. I suggested that we walk along the path to the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa ad explore the hotel. We could look at the shops, and/or sit in the lobby listening to the lovely piano man and orchestra playing various Disney and non-Disney songs. I then thought that we could ride the monorail to the Magic Kingdom and walk to the Contemporary. At the Contemporary we could again explore the resort and look at the shops. After exploring the Contemporary we could take the monorail to the Transportation and Ticket Center where we would get off and walk to our longhouse.

As a side note incase some of you do not know this, the Tahiti longhouse is quite close to the Transportation and Ticket Center. It is a 10 minute walk approximately and is very accessible because all you have to do is just follow a small path that leads to the entrance of the Transportation and Ticket Center. There you can catch the ferry boat or the express monorail to the Magic Kingdom, the monorail to Epcot or the Resort monorail which services the Polynesian, Grand Floridian, Magic Kingdom and the Contemporary. This is the reason why we like staying at the Polynesian because it makes commuting to the parks a lot easier, especially Epcot.

My dad had a bad headache so instead of making him go for a walk we decided that maybe we should let him take a nap while my mom and I go for a walk. After we came back from our walk we would wake up my dad and go get some snacks from Samoa Snacks located on the second floor of the Great Ceremonial House. Instead of going with the walking plan that we had discussed earlier, my mom and I decided to walk to the Grand Floridian. Although due to my blister, we had some troubles getting there. Before we left for the walk I put on two blister band-aids that were specially designed to fit blisters. Knowing that they never actually worked I still decided to put them on. My mom and I headed out the door and were on our way to the Grand Floridian. Little did I know that my blister would be causing some trouble along the way. We didn’t get very far before the band-aids decided to come off. I put on two larger band-aids, but they also had troubles sticking. I believe that it was because my feet were so sticky from the heat that nothing wanted to stick to them. I mean I never had problems at home with the sandals, it was just in the heat. Anyways, I decided to skip using band-aids and just let my blister do whatever it had to do.

We finally made it to the Grand Floridian where we looked in one of the clothing shops located on the first floor of the main lobby. This shop was called Summer Lace and it specializes in ladies clothing as well as jewelry, perfumes, nail polishes and H20 Products that can be found in the resorts around Walt Disney World. The one thing that I found quite interesting at this shop was the Alice in Wonderland nail polishes by OPI. There was one that was called the Mad Hatter and it was silver based and sparkly. I thought about buying it, but then I gave it a second thought thinking that it might be a pain to try and remove with the nail polish remover.

After we finished looking around at the Grand Floridian I took some pictures of the new tile designs around the resort. I found the designs to be really cute because there were characters engraved into the tile flooring. Of course I took more floor pictures later on in the trip, so keep an eye out for those!

I spy LEGS in that picture...tsk tsk.

Having taken many pictures of the floor we decided it was time to head back to the resort and wake up my dad. My mom and I had come up with the idea of possibly going to the Earl of Sandwich at Downtown Disney to get my parents a coffee. As soon as we got my dad up we asked him if he would like to go to Downtown Disney, but he said no because he thought that it might be a little bit too crowded. Instead we went to Samoa Snacks and got some lovely treats. Here is a list of what we bought:

- Goofy’s Taffy
- Chip and Dale’s Mickey Shaped Pretzels
- White Chocolate Pretzels
- Milk Chocolate Caramel Squares
- Doritos’s Cool Ranch
- Goofy’s Peanut Brittle

I know that is a lot of treats but they lasted a while, minus the taffy. It seems as though every time we go to Walt Disney World they change the flavors of taffy that they place in each bag. This trip they had watermelon flavored taffy along with neapolitan and orange-vanilla flavored taffies. They are so delicious and chewy (yum yum yum). Oh and yes I did get accused of eating many of the taffies, which I did, but that was because nobody else was eating them. Being deprived of Disney taffy for 1.5 years is quite dangerous, especially for this young lady. Anyways, we also brought along our refillable mugs to get a drink to have with the snacks. After completing all of this we walked back to our hotel room, watched the Amazing Race and had some snacks.

Well, we had previously decided to watch the Electrical Water Pageant on Sunday night so we headed outside. Unfortunately, little did we realize that the clock in our room was incorrect and we were LATE for the Electrical Water Pageant. By the time we got outside it had already finished, or at least come close to being finished. So sadly enough we did not see the Electrical Pageant that night, but we did see Wishes. Seeing Wishes on our first night made me really excited for our trip to the Magic Kingdom the following day.

Up Next: The Magical Kingdom!!!!

 

[HeyIt'sMe]

Lovin' your trip report and all the Poly pictures. I like that you took different perspectives - like the parking lot with the palm trees in the distance.

Oh, we LOVE the smell of the Poly. It's tradition for me, my DH and our DD that everytime we walk into the GCH we take it a big deep whiff and go "ahhhhhhh".

I love the landscaping at the Poly - - I always tell DH that I wish we could landscape like that at home but I don't think the plants would like Indiana winters!

The check in process moved quickly. Both of my parents made their room keys chargeable and mine non-chargeable mainly because I loose everything (seriously I do). On a side note, a few trips back I found a cute little card holder at the Polynesian so I decided to buy it. I never knew that it would last me 4 trips. In this card holder I put my room key, the park passes and our fastpasses because it is water proof (comes in handy on Splash Mountain).

Is this the card holder you are talking about? We bought this a few years ago and love it - we've gotten alot of use out of it....even on beach vacations.