rwdavis2
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2007
- Messages
- 8,083
Just thought I would post some notes and observations.
Arrived Sunday the 11th and did Food and Wine. It was nice to have done once but would not bother again. I would have rather spent that same amount of money at a restaurant. Luckily we live in an area where we have access to almost all these cuisines any time we want. Very crowded that day too.
We stayed at Wilderness Lodge the first 3 days. Still love the resort. The Christmas decorations went up over night on, I believe, Monday. Looked great. Ate at Whispering Canyon Sunday night. The food was pretty good but really over priced. ~$32 per person, all you can eat but we only had one platter.
Did Keys to the Kingdom Monday morning and really enjoyed it. The Guide, Robert, seems to love his job and knew a lot about the history. We got a chance to walk through the new Fantasyland later in the day and walked into a small part of Be Our Guest but did not eat there. If you ever get a chance, go. It looks amazing.
(Just above a bus driver rumor) our waiter at Brown Derby on Thursday said that WDW has only been taking ADRs for the main dining room at Be Our Guest and they should be opening up the 2 others soon. No idea if it's true.
Spent all day at DHS on Tuesday doing Fantasmic! and Osbourne Lights. My wife (and me) was really impressed that Disney actually uses "Merry Christmas" and not any of the other PC nonsense phrases. They even had a nativity scene.
Wednesday was an off day and a move to Animal Kingdom Lodge with an excellent dinner at California Grill. We watched wishes from the observation deck between courses. It's much better than sitting inside and watching.
Thursday had us doing Sunrise Safari. It took about an hour to do the normal Safari route. We got some great photos of the lions. They were all out and sitting on the rocks. Doing this Safari requires a stay booked in the Club level of AKL. Nice but really not worth the extra cost unless you intend to do this Safari. I will say that having a quick breakfast in the lounge was very convenient before heading out for the day. We saw lots of animals around the savannah at the Lodge. The wild pigs follow the 3 o'clock food cart as it drives in to attract the animals closer to the Lodge.
This was our first time to see It's Tough to be a Bug and at the end my wife flew up out her seat. If you've seen it you know what I mean.
Friday was Epcot, MK, and the Christmas Party. The Party was worth the expense and we did nothing but the shows and fireworks from 7-10.
Observations
For us this trip could not have been any more perfect. We did all we wanted and saw some new things. The amount of time was enough. Although, I was wearing down by Friday.
I need better walking shoes. My Sketchers hiking shoes had worn out and have not found a good replacement yet.
The parks were in great shape, no complaints there. Same for the resorts.
Cast Members too, were top notch.
No tour groups. Lines were short to manageable. The usual suspects had long waits but not if you got there at rope drop.
The Touring Plans line app was very, very useful. I would guess wait time accuracy to about 10-20% which is enough. It lags on fast pass return times by about 5-10 minutes. It saved us from heading to attractions that could be done later. I really liked the menu listings for all locations. That saved us some time as well.
ADDED:
The wifi in the rooms at WL was OK. Slow but workable. At AKL it was almost completely useless in the room or in the public spaces. It was slow to connect, you could navigate a page or 2 and then stopped loading anything. It could be used very early, before 7am.
Questions, comments welcome.
Arrived Sunday the 11th and did Food and Wine. It was nice to have done once but would not bother again. I would have rather spent that same amount of money at a restaurant. Luckily we live in an area where we have access to almost all these cuisines any time we want. Very crowded that day too.
We stayed at Wilderness Lodge the first 3 days. Still love the resort. The Christmas decorations went up over night on, I believe, Monday. Looked great. Ate at Whispering Canyon Sunday night. The food was pretty good but really over priced. ~$32 per person, all you can eat but we only had one platter.
Did Keys to the Kingdom Monday morning and really enjoyed it. The Guide, Robert, seems to love his job and knew a lot about the history. We got a chance to walk through the new Fantasyland later in the day and walked into a small part of Be Our Guest but did not eat there. If you ever get a chance, go. It looks amazing.
(Just above a bus driver rumor) our waiter at Brown Derby on Thursday said that WDW has only been taking ADRs for the main dining room at Be Our Guest and they should be opening up the 2 others soon. No idea if it's true.
Spent all day at DHS on Tuesday doing Fantasmic! and Osbourne Lights. My wife (and me) was really impressed that Disney actually uses "Merry Christmas" and not any of the other PC nonsense phrases. They even had a nativity scene.
Wednesday was an off day and a move to Animal Kingdom Lodge with an excellent dinner at California Grill. We watched wishes from the observation deck between courses. It's much better than sitting inside and watching.
Thursday had us doing Sunrise Safari. It took about an hour to do the normal Safari route. We got some great photos of the lions. They were all out and sitting on the rocks. Doing this Safari requires a stay booked in the Club level of AKL. Nice but really not worth the extra cost unless you intend to do this Safari. I will say that having a quick breakfast in the lounge was very convenient before heading out for the day. We saw lots of animals around the savannah at the Lodge. The wild pigs follow the 3 o'clock food cart as it drives in to attract the animals closer to the Lodge.
This was our first time to see It's Tough to be a Bug and at the end my wife flew up out her seat. If you've seen it you know what I mean.
Friday was Epcot, MK, and the Christmas Party. The Party was worth the expense and we did nothing but the shows and fireworks from 7-10.
Observations
For us this trip could not have been any more perfect. We did all we wanted and saw some new things. The amount of time was enough. Although, I was wearing down by Friday.
I need better walking shoes. My Sketchers hiking shoes had worn out and have not found a good replacement yet.
The parks were in great shape, no complaints there. Same for the resorts.
Cast Members too, were top notch.
No tour groups. Lines were short to manageable. The usual suspects had long waits but not if you got there at rope drop.
The Touring Plans line app was very, very useful. I would guess wait time accuracy to about 10-20% which is enough. It lags on fast pass return times by about 5-10 minutes. It saved us from heading to attractions that could be done later. I really liked the menu listings for all locations. That saved us some time as well.
ADDED:
The wifi in the rooms at WL was OK. Slow but workable. At AKL it was almost completely useless in the room or in the public spaces. It was slow to connect, you could navigate a page or 2 and then stopped loading anything. It could be used very early, before 7am.
Questions, comments welcome.
)and also doing Keys to the Kingdom Tour on Monday-for the first time.
