How Many ADRs Can We Fit in One Week?: April 2015 TR- Finished 7/3!

[TheMaxRebo]

well it was from getting lost or taking the long way that is great you wound up finding Dug and Russell. That was very cute how Dug pressured you into rubbing his head

Can never have too many rides on EE! We did get to ride EE once when the Yeti was working and it was pretty darn cool how he would swipe his arm out over the train (and thus you, the rider) - so compared to that the disco Yeti is a bit of a let-down ... but the ride is still amazing

KRR has become one of my favorite rides - but mostly because my daughter loves it so much ... she gets so excited at each moment when there is the possibility of someone getting wet and responding after to whomever gets wet.

California Grill is probably my favorite restaurant at Disney World (at least non-Victoria and Albert division). We've had so many good meals there and also always good service. There can be some cases of out of control kids - though I haven't seen anything quite as bad as you have seen ... as a parent with kids, I know my kids aren't going to be angels all the time and they do need some freedom, but you also need to be aware of when they are negatively impacting other people and at least try to do something. I can definitely see that waiter getting annoyed (though while I can understand why he wanted to, might not be the best idea to physically pick the kid up - maybe better to have just gotten his manager)

We've had some really romantic meals there too. For one, it was close to our anniversary and were out on the observation deck to watch Wishes and our waitress came out to find us with two glasses of champagne for us.

 

[kastoney]

Wow, what a great afternoon in AK between EE, that great dinosaur picture, FOTLK, dole whips, yak n yeti, and UP. BTW you look like you are in complete and utter bliss with Russell and Doug ; ) And I'm in total agreement with you on Avatar, as I think most people seem to be. One I didn't care for the movie (think scifi dances with wolves), but it definitely doesn't fit into the park. With all the great disney animal characters and movies they've yet to do anything with I'm really surprised.

Your California Grill meal looks great. Especially that sushi, yum!!!! Can't believe what happened with that kid, some parents just never cease to amaze me.

 

[Hisgirl]

SO enjoying this story! I love all your food choices. Next time, def. get the obey gooey thing at Liberty tree. I'm envious at your skinny self ingesting a gazillion calories and still being so thin! Enjoy it while you are pre-menopause, ha!

We are HUGE AKL fans and have stayed there multiple times recently. It's just MAGIC in the lobby of Jambo. However, this past time, we stayed club level at Grand Floridian and we have been sucked down the rabbit hole and I don't think we'll ever look back! Being able to jump on the monorail to walk hand in hand just for a quick ice cream is priceless!

 

[Sailormoon2]

get the obey gooey thing at Liberty tree.

THIS! So sad it is closed for refurb when we will be there this coming August.

 

[DisneyMandC]

Hello all!! Sorry that I am the WORST and totally abandoned this trip report! I keep thinking about it and feeling guilty that I haven't updated. I promise I'm going to soon! To be fair, it has been a CRAZY last 6 weeks for DH and I. During that time I have changed jobs and we're buying our first home! We close at the end of this month, so all of my online time recently has been occupied by shopping for furniture and looking at decorating styles! My new job has longer hours as well, so I haven't had as much free time at home. I am determined to finish this so I have a good written out memory of our trip! Hopefully later this week or this weekend I can post something! Thank you all for bearing with me!

 

[Ombo]

Waiting for your update!!!

 

[DisneyKates]

I hope the closing on your house went well! Don't stress your write up, just know we will be here! I am excited to hear about the rest of your trip whenever you post it!

 

[westcoastfldisneygirl]

Just read your whole report! We both post over on Budget so I thought I would read along. I love your report so far and I hope you finish it! If you don't, that's okay! I also LOVE your wedding dress, it's stunning.

 

[Raeven]

Just catching up now!

From one of your earlier posts when you mentioned your husband wanted a giraffe to stick its head in the room that's almost the exact thing my boyfriend said, he kept telling me he wanted a giraffe to stick its head in the room and wake us up instead of an alarm

Those cream cheese fried wontons look amazing, I'm totally ordering them in September

 

[DisneyMandC]

Day 5: Resort Hopping

Plans for the Day:

ADRs: Grand Floridian Café, 11:00 AM; Flying Fish Café, 6:05 PM
FP+: ??

I woke up and couldn’t believe we were already on Thursday of our honeymoon. I’m still at Disney and I need more Disney in my life!

Thursday is where our plans went off the rails from what we had originally planned. In the very early stages of our honeymoon planning, we were going to take a day to go to Universal since I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. However, after seeing the price of tickets for one day to both parks at Universal, plus adding in transportation costs and food- YIKES. It was an extra $20 to spend another day at Disney for both of us for tickets, so that made it a no-brainer. We decided to make Thursday sort of a free-for-all day, but made some tentative plans anyways. I scheduled some FPs at Epcot with a lunch at San Angel Inn and dinner at Flying Fish. On about Tuesday of our trip though, we decided we didn’t really want to come back to Epcot for a full day and instead wanted to resort hop a little bit. Chris made a lunch reservation at Grand Floridian Café so we could go check out the hotel there. In all my years of Disney, I had never been in the hotel before! I remember always wanting to stay there when I was little because of how pretty it was.

When we went to bed Wednesday night, we planned on waking up Thursday morning and checking out the hotel pool for the first time. However, when we woke up on Thursday it was fairly overcast. Instead we just took our time getting ready and marking off some of the Hidden Mickeys we had found in our book. Since we would be bouncing around today, we decided we’d do some serious Hidden Mickey hunts at the hotels.

We took the bus from AKL to MK and hopped on the boat to Grand Floridian. I’m not a fan of boats AT ALL (which is why I’ll never do a Disney cruise) but it’s Disney World so I kept my mouth shut as we got on it. After an uneventful boat ride with only one other person on the boat, we arrived at GF.

So beautiful

We wandered around outside for a bit checking out the pool and just admiring the views. This resort really is spectacularly landscaped and just amazing. I would absolutely love to stay here one day. Maybe when the student loans are paid off this will be my treat to myself! So look for that trip report in about 25 years!

We headed inside to scout out some hidden mickeys and check out the lobby. It was really just absolutely beautiful.

And the flower arrangements- GORGEOUS. One of the florists was walking around replacing some flowers while we were there. I wish I had the talent to arrange something like this.

We still had some time before our reservation so we started looking for mickeys. They were all fairly obvious in here, but we still enjoyed the hunt. I loved all the fancy stores they had in here too. And the beautiful elevator. Basically I just liked the whole hotel and it was all of my little girl Disney dreams come true.

After wandering around, it was time for our lunch at Grand Floridian Café. I thought this restaurant was really cute. Not really any Disney-theming if you prefer that feel. Our service was a little slow, but the food was excellent. I didn’t get any pictures of anything other than dessert, but I had the seasonal salad for appetizer and Chris had the chilled shrimp and avocado. For my meal, I had the Surf and Turf Burger which had lobster on it and was excellent. I can’t remember what exactly Chris got, but I think it might have been their catch of the day.

We were both pretty stuffed by dessert, but of course there’s always room for more- especially where chocolate is involved! We split the dessert sampler and I particularly enjoyed our chocolate carved Mickey.

Our waiter, who was super nice, also brought us this cupcake to celebrate our honeymoon. We were both so stuffed that we got a to-go box for it though!

We killed a lot of time at lunch, and when we were done decided to head over to the Polynesian to see it. We passed the Wedding Pavilion on the way there, which they were in the process of bringing items into for an upcoming wedding. We decided we had would renew our vows here on our 25th wedding anniversary...

UNTIL I SAW A SNAKE SLITHERING OUT OF A TREE. I know what you’re all thinking- It’s Florida, of course there’s a snake. But I HATE snakes. I’m fine with spiders, mice: whatever. Snakes are a no go.

We enjoyed the nice walk over to Polynesian along the beach trail. There was nobody out there, but of course it was sort of prime time hours in the parks at this point as well. We came up to Polynesian sort of from a side entrance I suppose. They were doing A LOT of construction. The pool was closed down, and there was a significant amount of scaffolding on the outside of the building. I know a lot of people are diehards for Polynesian, but it’s definitely not somewhere I’d want to stay with all the construction going on.

I had gone to the Polynesian once in 2005 for the luau, which was excellent, but hadn’t really paid too much attention to the inside of the hotel. I do remember the impressive waterfall. I have to say, I wasn’t too impressed with the new interior. I mean, it’s nice. It’s brighter and it is pretty. But compared to that nice formation they originally had, it’s not very impressive. I can definitely see why old-school Polynesian fans have been upset.

We did some hidden mickey searching while there and spotted a few. However, with all of the construction, quite a few that were listed in the book were no longer there. We did find a new one though!

While checking out the gift shops upstairs, Chris decided to change up our ADR plans again. We had a lunch ADR scheduled at Mama Melrose for Saturday, but Chris liked the look of the breakfast at Kona Café and decided he’d rather eat there. I didn’t mind since Chris was the one who liked Italian food to begin with, so it didn’t bother me not going to Mama Melrose.

Up next- we hit up MK and Epcot and do some more resort hopping!

 

[westcoastfldisneygirl]

What a fun update! I love resort hopping. And that dessert sampler looks amazing!!

 

[DisneyMandC]

I feel so bad that I never finished this trip report! I'm going to dive back in and get it done! I have my next entry written, need to upload a couple more pictures and then I'll post that. Hold me accountable, everyone!

 

[DisneyMandC]

Day 5: Where We Go Everywhere

Plans for the Day:

ADRs: Grand Floridian Café, 11:00 AM; Flying Fish Café, 6:05 PM
FP+: ??

Once we were done wandering around Polynesian, we hopped on the monorail to head to Magic Kingdom for some afternoon shopping. I will say the convenience of the monorail at your resort is awesome. While we had no issues with buses at AKL at all during our stay, it does get a little tiresome to have to catch a bus everywhere.

I got a couple shots on the way over.

Water parade floats!

When we walked in to MK, the first thing we noticed was that scaffolding had been put up outside of one of the Main Street stores. I don’t have a picture of it from that day, but I’ll post one later. While I recognize that there are some repairs Disney has to make regardless of the timing, this seemed pretty out of place. You’d think Disney wouldn’t want something to mar that perfect view of the castle, but I guess they figured with all the construction around the hub, what’s a little more in the way?

We ran into Starbucks to refuel, and as we were getting our drinks the Festival of Fantasy parade started! What a gorgeous parade. I really don’t think I’ve seen floats and costumes as intricately done as these. We were very impressed, especially by the dragon float.

Once the parade was done, we checked out the candy shop and the shops on Main Street. I’m always amazed by the crystal castle.

Plus the ever important: snacks.

We also watched one of the glass figurine workers in action, which was pretty cool. He was putting together Donalds, which was interesting to watch. We pondered buying a personalized frame in there, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to pull the trigger on that just yet. We walked through a couple of the stores on Main Street and did a little shopping, but didn’t pick up too much.

By this time, it was getting close to 4:00 in the afternoon, so we decided to start making our way towards Epcot for our dinner at Flying Fish Café. We decided to ride the monorail over and walk through the park back to the International Gateway to get to the restaurant. It was nice to just leisurely stroll through. We still had a little time before our reservation by the time we made it back there, so we decided to check out the Boardwalk while we were back there. I thought I took pictures but apparently not!

As we headed to our reservation, it started to rain some. Fortunately it waited until we got inside before it really started up.

Our dinner at Flying Fish was nice, but we were not super impressed. Again, we had very slow service at this meal. It took a really, really long time for our entire meal. Our waitress was nice, but it just seemed like we were in there forever. We had some calamari and fried shrimp for our appetizer, but I apparently didn’t get pictures of our main course. Our dessert was great and topped with some cute chocolate pieces!

After dinner, we headed back into Epcot so we could finally catch Illuminations! We were walking around looking for a good spot to watch when all of a sudden the skies opened up. It started really pouring right around the time Illuminations started! Fortunately there was a Disney Vacation Club booth with a slight overhang near where we were standing, so we ran back and stood under that. We didn’t have a great view, but we at least stayed mildly dry. An added bonus was that as we stood there, a popcorn vendor nearby was packing up and walked by and gave us a free bag of popcorn! We were pretty full from dinner, but not too full for free popcorn!

We managed to get a couple decent fireworks shots, despite the weather.

As soon as it was over, we threw on some ponchos and hightailed it to the front of the park in the pouring rain. Day 5 was over and it was on to Day 6!

 

[Grumpy's Wife]

I've just read your trip report all the way through. Congratulations on getting married. I'm enjoying reading about all the food and restaurants you're trying. I know it's almost the end of your trip but I'm looking forward to reading the next installment.

 

[DisneyMandC]

I've just read your trip report all the way through. Congratulations on getting married. I'm enjoying reading about all the food and restaurants you're trying. I know it's almost the end of your trip but I'm looking forward to reading the next installment.

Thank you! Hoping to get the next installment up this weekend. My computer can be quite temperamental with Photobucket and that's the only way I've had good luck with getting my photos to work. If anyone else has suggestions on photos I'd be happy to take them!

 

[westcoastfldisneygirl]

Love the update! I've never eaten at the Flying Fish. Thank you for the review. Excited for more updates!

 

[DisneyMandC]

Love the update! I've never eaten at the Flying Fish. Thank you for the review. Excited for more updates!

Thanks! Yeah, our food certainly wasn't bad or anything, but it just wasn't the best meal we'd had that trip. I might have liked it a lot more had we eaten there earlier in the trip, but I'd been so impressed with our meals at BOG and Le Cellier, among others, that this one paled in comparison.

They did have seating at a bar area looking into the kitchen though that I thought looked really neat. Perhaps the service would have been a bit quicker there.

 

[DisneyMandC]

Day 6: Keys to the Kingdom!

Plans for the Day:

ADRs: Artist Point, 7:45 P.M.
FP+: Buzz Lightyear, 1:35; Space Mountain, 3:05; Big Thunder Mountain, 4:30

No photos on this report, sorry

We’re on to Friday of our trip! I was very excited about this day because it was time for our Keys to the Kingdom tour! I have taken this tour once before back in 2005. I was really excited for Chris to experience it though since I knew the behind the scenes workings of Disney World is something he’s very interested. He works in human resources/customer service and is always reading books on how and why certain companies are successful with their customer service (see: Chick Fil A). So I knew he would like hearing more about Disney’s training for their cast members and how they operate efficiently.

We had the 8:30 KTTK tour, so we made sure we were leaving AKL at about 7:30 to get there with plenty of time. I can’t for the life of me think what we did for breakfast that morning. We must have gotten something from Mara though, because I can’t remember stopping in MK for anything or having time to run to Starbucks. I think we were probably the last ones to check into the tour, even though I feel like we still got there in a decent amount of time. No pictures ahead since cameras aren’t allowed on the tour! And if you don’t want any of the magic spoiled, don’t read ahead

Once we arrived, we got our name tags and our headsets all adjusted and set off! I believe our tour guide’s name was Megan. She told us a little about herself, including that she had been in the DCP and had worked in the Splash Mountain control room for a long time. She had more recently begun working in Hollywood Studios Guest Services as well as doing the KTTK tours.

Our first stop on the tours was in the side street of Main Street, where we were taught about some of the store fronts and lettering of the stores here. Megan did a great job discussing the layout of the street, and how there is that slight incline towards the castle, as well as the strategic placing of food on the right for when you’re walking in, and stores on the left so you’ll buy things on your way out! Ole Walt really knew what he was doing… Megan also discussed some of the principles they teach Disney employees about working with the public. She had a fancy little acronym for whatever it was. I can’t remember it now, but I remember “Show,” “Efficiency,” and “Courtesy” were involved. I’m sure Chris still knows it! He found it fascinating and continued to tell me about this until the end of our trip.

Once we made it down Main Street we took a left into Adventureland. Megan said we were going to go into The Tiki Room, but when we arrived the last show had just started. Instead, she decided we would go Pirates of the Caribbean. Unfortunately when we arrived there, it was broken down! In order to spend some actual time discussing Adventureland, Megan had us sit at the tables at Tortuga Tavern for a few. I can’t remember the subject of that conversation, but I remember that after a few someone pointed out that PotC was running again, so we got in line for that. While in line, I asked Megan why PotC always seemed to be broken. We had noticed this earlier in the week and I’d read a lot of reports about it being down. Megan informed that when they refurbished the ride, they brought in the boats from DL’s PotC. It turns out they are slightly bigger than the boats at WDW’s PotC, so there were often problems with the boats becoming somewhat stuck or issues with the water levels. Seems like something they would fix considering how often it’s down!

After our ride, we headed toward Frontierland. Megan took us “behind the scenes” to see the parade float warehouse, as well as the backside of Splash Mountain. I really enjoyed seeing all of the parade floats and hearing more about how they operated, particularly Festival of Fantasy. I was sad to hear that Spectromagic floats had been destroyed, since I LOVED that parade.

We also discussed Splash Mountain since Megan had worked there. It was really interested to hear about, and I remember she told us about the safety precautions on the ride and how sensitive the rides are to people getting up and interfering. She told us how there was once a situation where in a particular zone they got an alert that something was touching the ride outside of the boat. So they stopped the ride, someone went up to check, and there was nothing there. They informed the riders of the importance of keeping their hands inside the vehicle and off they went. In the next zone, the exact same thing happened. Again, no one appeared to be doing anything. Once they reached the third zone and another alert went off, they finally realized that a little boy had a bubble gun and was shooting bubbles out. When the bubbles landed outside the boat, it was setting off the alarm!! Talk about sensitive.

I believe after this we went to lunch at Columbia Harbor House. I’ve only ever eaten here on the KTTK tour. I always see a lot of people giving it good reviews, but they serve us up pretty standard fried food on the tour. It wasn’t bad though. One day I’ll check it out for real.

After lunch we went on Haunted Mansion. I don’t remember anything particularly notable about this ride, other than the discussion that it’s one of the few rides in MK that doesn’t drop you out in a gift store! I thought this was funny, especially since there is such a huge cult following around HM. Of course, they do have the Memento Mori store now, which we enjoyed checking out earlier in the week.

I believe at this point we headed back towards Main Street to go into the Utilidors. It’s hard to remember so far back when you don’t get to take any pictures! I distinctly remember going into the Utilidors on my last tour, but I don’t remember getting such an extensive tour. We walked around for a while, and Chris and I really enjoyed seeing the humongous Disney pin boards, as well as where you could go to trade your pins for “fresh” ones if you’re a cast member! I remember asking Megan if any of the other parks had tunnels and she said that Epcot has a very small set but it’s not used too much. Hollywood Studios does not, and she explained that this was in large part because Hollywood Studios was designed to feel like a movie studio (duh) where you might have a variety of differently dressed characters roaming around. Whereas MK was all about keeping each land different. I thought that was very cool, and definitely made me pay attention more as I looked around the parks in our last couple days.

I believe after a little more discussion outside of the Utilidors, we concluded our tour. I thought it was very well done! I remember at the time thinking it was a totally different experience than my first tour. Our first tour guide was also a face character in addition to doing tours, so he was able to give us a lot of really cool information on both face and costume characters (turns out most Mickeys are played by girls!). This tour seemed to give us a lot more info on rides and inner workings of MK this time. Both tours were great though. I really can’t recommend KTTK enough, I enjoyed it immensely both times.

Up next, we spend a little time in MK!

 

[DisneyMandC]

Day 6: A Semi-Sprint Through Animal Kingdom and a Peeing Kid

Plans for the Day:

ADRs: Artist Point, 7:45 P.M.
FP+: Buzz Lightyear, 1:35; Space Mountain, 3:05; Big Thunder Mountain, 4:30

After our great tour, we had a couple FPs booked in MK. We finished up towards the tail end of our Buzz Lightyear FP, so we headed into Tomorrowland quickly to hop on that. This is one those rides we really just love trying to beat each other on, we definitely rode it multiple times over the week!

We had a little bit of time after Buzz before our Space Mountain FP so we shopped around some before hitting that up. After we finished Space Mountain, I believe we went under the sea with Ariel before we headed to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

After finishing our FPs, we started shopping more on Main Street. We were looking for a coffee mug for Chris’ dad, who is a big coffee drinker. We really liked the individual park themed mugs like these:

We really wanted to find the Tree of Life mug, but they didn’t have it in the Emporium anywhere that we could find. We hadn’t seen it in the gift shop at AKL either, strangely enough. It was getting close to 5:00 at this point when I told Chris that we should just hop on a bus and go over to Animal Kingdom and buy one. We’d be cutting it pretty close to Animal Kingdom’s closing time of 6:00, but I figured it was worth it to just run in there quickly.


We got on a bus and headed over to AK, planning to make a mad dash into the park. When we got out, a Photopass photographer stopped us to ask if she could take our picture. Realizing we hadn’t yet gotten a picture in front of AK, we stopped to do that. Then she spotted our buttons and asked if we were on our honeymoon. We told her yes and she asked if we would mind stepping to the side for a moment while she took another family’s picture. I thought about saying we had to go, but decided to just wait a second.

When she approached us again, she told us she would like to take some pictures of us since it was our honeymoon and get a few special shots! She was so nice, she took us over near a small waterfall by Rainforest Café and had us pose together. I won’t share all the pictures here, but she did get some great shots, like this one with our wedding rings and one of our buttons.

She was SO nice and I am so thankful for her stopping us for those pictures! Just another moment of Disney Magic!

Once inside the park, we headed to the nearest store where we quickly located the mug we were looking for:

After buying the mug and getting it sent back to our room, we realized we had juuuuust enough time to go hop on Expedition Everest for one last ride before the park closed! We had a great trip through the Himalayas before heading back to the bus stops.

Since our ADR was for 7:30 at Artist Point, we decided to hop on a bus to Wilderness Lodge. My family stayed at Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness Campground when I was growing up, so I always love stopping in at this resort.

Once we reached the bus stop at Wilderness Lodge, a young boy, maybe 8 or 9, was complaining loudly to his dad that he had to “go” RIGHT NOW. I don’t know where they were going, perhaps Fort Wilderness, but they were not getting off the bus at Wilderness Lodge. So the dad tells the little boy to jump and run behind the bus stop and “go!” And sure enough, that’s what he did! I guess when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go!

Once we got past the peeing boy and in the hotel, we checked out the gift shop for a few before deciding to spend some time looking for Hidden Mickeys around the resort. I was already very familiar with the one in the fire great, but we had a good time searching all over for them, including in front of the resort. There was one very tough one to find in the overhang section where cars would pull up, and we had a very helpful CM point it out to us. We also really liked the bison topiary!

After searching for Hidden Mickeys and checking out the pool and Old Faithful, we headed towards our dinner reservation. Artist Point didn’t appear to be very crowded that evening, and I kind of wish I’d asked for a better table near the windows, but that’s ok. I took this picture of our home state on the map in the restaurant before our meal.

I can’t remember what exactly we both got as our meal, but I had another (number 3) delicious charcuterie/cheese plate for my appetizer. I could've picked up that blue cheese on the right and just eaten that whole. At this point we were cracking up at the number of cheese plates I’d eaten this week, but who cares- it’s our honeymoon! I know that I had bison as my meal, but I can’t remember what it was specifically. It was good though! I had berry sorbet for dessert.

Overall, our meal was pretty good, but it wasn’t our favorite of the week. I probably would’ve liked it a lot more, but after eating at Le Cellier and California Grill, I just didn’t think it was as good as those. We both thought it was good, but not worth two credits. We left fairly happy and full though, and headed back to AKL to go to sleep!

 

[Vintage princess]

I have really enjoyed reading your trip report!