How the Other Half Lives ~ Updated 10/22: I Forgot Something!

[Dugette]

Another great update!

I loved the picture of the poly outside in the early morning hours with the pink sky.

Thanks! Yeah, the sky was pretty cool at that time!

I'm in, just got caught up! Ugh, I can't believe what a nightmare you had with your flight! Although, I'd much rather wait for a safe plane than one with some kind of problem! Flying freaks me out as it is!

Agreed! I'm not the best flyer, either, so that would make me nervous. I wonder if all the people who had just gotten off the plane with mechanical problems knew that?

The Sky Club looks really nice! At least you had somewhere comfortable to be while you were waiting!

Wow can't believe how empty MCO was when you arrived!

The Poly is SO beautiful! I really have to stay there someday, and I don't mean for 2 or 3 days, I mean on like, a 10 day trip, if I"m staying in the Poly, I want to enjoy it!

Yes, we were so lucky to be able to pass the time in the Sky Club.

MCO is normally pretty quiet, since we always arrive late, but this was a new level of empty!

Definitely stay at the Poly someday! I know what you mean about wanting the time to enjoy it...we kept trying to rearrange our schedule to make sure we had time to enjoy the Poly.

Great Update! The Polynesian looks so pretty with all the decorations up!
(I'll be staying there next year for Christmas!)
& The picture of you two by the tree is adorable!

That's awesome that you'll be there next year for Christmas! It's so pretty there! Very magical! And thank you on the picture!

Even thought the BC is my all time favorite hotel, the poly is a dream resort of mine, can't wait to read/see more of it!!

There will be plenty more Poly pics to come! Enjoy! I hope you get to stay there someday!

Mmmmm.. Bailey's.. The Sky Club looks neat. I'm so glad you were able to relax in there during all of this waiting. What a crazy experience. I love that you grabbed some drinks for the fridge later, too.

Yay for getting to the Poly..finally! Your room looks wonderful. Can't wait to hear about that door though...

I bet we were the only people to stock up on canned drinks from the Sky Club! I suppose they expect it of us "free pass" people, though!

The rooms at the Poly are quite nice! The door story is coming up shortly!

I see pictures like this and I start to second guess my choice of POR over POFQ. I thought we would have more quiet and solitude in AB, that is, if we get assigned to AB. Keep you fingers crossed for me.

I will! I think you'll like POR. We were actually in the mansions when we stayed there a year ago and it was pretty quiet (Parterre Place building). But I think AB is even better for that (and you'll have the trundle bed). Just be clear what you want on the room request. We were going to stay at POFQ back in June, but ended up switching to AKL. We still would like to stay at POFQ someday, though. I hear building 7 has been fully refurbed now with queen beds...looks nice. Good luck with your room...your trip is coming up so soon!

Lord love a duck.

Is that a Canadian expression? I have no idea what that means!

That the way to keep all us troublesome Dis'ers from protesting our room assignments. Give all the bad ones out in the middle of the night. Or more correctly, morning in your case.

You know, we just figured that there are really no BAD rooms at the Poly, so we'd take whatever we could get at that point. And the room and overall location were great...Tokelau is actually a highly recommended building and we'd requested it on our previous stay. However, this room just lacked privacy if we had wanted to use the patio. I suppose it would have been convenient if we wanted to spend a lot of time in the quiet pool, though. But, don't worry, it works out okay!

Seriously? You're a better woman than me. I would have never attempted that. But then again, it is WDW, so maybe I would have given it my best shot at least.

Keep in mind that I am a pretty skilled sleeper and got a semi-reasonable amount of sleep on the plane and in the ME bus. (Dug not so much...) And, you're right, it is WDW, so you don't want to miss out on your chance at no-line early morning MK!

Maybe this is how club level comes into play??????

You might be onto something there...

 

[Dugette]

So, we left off with us going to bed around 6:30am! As you might imagine, we were out like a light. Neither of us remembers our arrangements exactly, but we think we went to sleep with the thought that we would see how we were feeling after a short “nap” and decide what to do from there. Not sure if we set an alarm, but it turned out that it didn’t matter anyway…

I awoke a bit after 8am because Dug was up. He said that the neighboring family through the connecting door was being very loud and woke him up. With as little sleep as he’d had, this did not make for a happy Dug. I hadn’t heard anything, but I’m a pretty good sleeper. Once I unwrapped my head from the comforter, though, I heard what he was talking about. Seemed that the whole family, kids and parents, were screaming and yelling (not necessarily in an angry way, more in a running around crazy way, I think).

Our luggage had been against the connecting door while we slept. Dug said that he thought the kids had tried to open the connecting door, but the luggage was in the way. Now, I don’t know a lot about connecting doors at Disney, but I’d imagine that each room has a door that can only be opened from their side? (Feel free to chime in if you know how they work.) So, I’m not sure they could have actually opened our door, but I think they were at least trying--like opening their door and pushing and banging on ours. At any rate, it was somewhat alarming, since it was right across from the foot of the bed.

Dug put a towel in front of/under the door, trying to block out the noise, but it didn’t really work. I took some video, trying to capture how noisy they were, but of course they quieted down while I was taping, so I gave up. I suggested that, since I was reasonably awake and he couldn’t sleep anyway, that we just go to the Magic Kingdom for rope drop. With that, I got up and brushed my teeth.

Dug had talked about calling down to the front desk to see if we could change to a non-connecting room. I didn’t think we should, as we already were staying for free that night and I didn’t want to push our luck anymore. But Dug was on the phone anyway…

When I finished brushing my teeth, Dug came over and said, “Do you love your husband?” I said, “Yes…why?...” He said something to the effect of, “Because I got us a new room…in Hawaii!” To which I responded, “What?! Really?! Huh?! For real?! Explain…”

So, when Dug was on the phone asking about a non-connecting room, they were very accommodating. However, there are apparently not very many non-connecting rooms at the Poly. The first available room that the CM suggested was in the Fiji building. Dug took a look at the map of the Poly grounds and saw that Fiji was way on the other side of the resort. We had hoped to be closer to the TTC. So, Dug said, “It looks like Fiji is way on the other side of the resort, do you have anything else?” The CM responded, “Well, we also have Aotearoa.” Dug saw that Aotearoa was right next to Fiji and said something like, “Oh, okay…” At that point, the CM said, “Hang on a minute…” When he returned, he said something along the lines of, “We do have a room on the third floor of the Hawaii Building.” Dug knew immediately what this meant – jackpot! – Club Level only building – but chose to play it cool. So, he said something like, “That sounds fine.” He thinks they said something about this being Club Level (but no extra charge) and Dug responded with something casual like, “Oh, okay.” I think the CM may have mentioned that the room wasn’t ready yet, though.

Dug told the CM that, since we couldn’t sleep, we were going to go over to the Magic Kingdom for awhile. The CM said that bell services would come pick up our luggage while we were out and they would transfer it to our new room. He said okay and that was the end of the call.

At that point, we were giddy, but also trying not to get our hopes up. Maybe this was just a mistake. Too good to be true. We figured that we would believe it when we saw it. Because, really, who would let us into the Hawaii building?! (for 40% off the cheapest Garden View rate).

So, we finished getting ready, packed up our luggage, and headed out to the MK at 8:47am.

Later that morning, we also received an update on our dog Bailey’s morning at “Wilderness Adventure Puppy Camp” back in Minnesota. My step-mom sent this email:

Did you get through yesterday OK?

Did you get to Florida like planned?

We (Bailey and I) went for a walk at 6:00 am. We had about 6" of snow and it was very pretty.

Now its almost noon and we have a lot more snow, plus wind. There are drifts all over, the big ones are about 2', too deep to drive through. The deck has a 3' drift by the grill.

Hope your weather is good and you're having a good time.

Bailey is eating and playing ball and squirrel watching. Its a lot for one puppy to do especially with 4 patio doors to watch.

Later...

Up next: Our morning at the Magic Kingdom! And we made another trailer! We’re going to try to make one for each day of the trip. So, here’s Day One:

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

how did I miss this starting???? going back to read!

 

[Dugette]

how did I miss this starting???? going back to read!

Oh, how funny! I just found and was commenting on your PTR!!! (I saw your new link in your siggie on Dizneydawn's TR). Glad you're here!

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

Oh, how funny! I just found and was commenting on your PTR!!! (I saw your new link in your siggie on Dizneydawn's TR). Glad you're here!

That's where I saw your link too! Love the videos!!! Aisling did too. She thinks you guys are famous "movie makers" now. The towels under the door scared me a bit. Can't believe that you didn't arrive until after 5am. I think I would have cried.

 

[Dugette]

That's where I saw your link too! Love the videos!!! Aisling did too. She thinks you guys are famous "movie makers" now. The towels under the door scared me a bit. Can't believe that you didn't arrive until after 5am. I think I would have cried.

Thanks, Aisling! I can't believe we arrived when we did either! I think we were too tired to cry!

 

[Dugette]

Totally random, but I just had to say: Our Annual Passes expire TODAY!!!

Luckily, there is the thought of a small visit to Disneyland sometime later this year. Not real sure yet, but Dug's brother is temporarily living in Southern CA and wants us to visit...

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

Totally random, but I just had to say: Our Annual Passes expire TODAY!!!

Luckily, there is the thought of a small visit to Disneyland sometime later this year. Not real sure yet, but Dug's brother is temporarily living in Southern CA and wants us to visit...

Renew Renew Renew

 

[hill6]

What a way to start your trip. Great upgrade to Hawaii.

 

[jc040404]

Nice neighbors.. I can't believe they were trying to get into your room though. Well, maybe I can. Kids are curious, but their parents should have had a little control over them..

On the other hand, I'm glad you had to deal with them.. This upgrade is amazing!! I love how Dug played it off as being no big deal on the phone. I'd be going crazy with excitement!!

Totally random, but I just had to say: Our Annual Passes expire TODAY!!!

Luckily, there is the thought of a small visit to Disneyland sometime later this year. Not real sure yet, but Dug's brother is temporarily living in Southern CA and wants us to visit...

Hope you make it to DL though!

 

[TheDreamsComeTrue]

Sorry to hear about the neighbors but it's great that you got upgraded!
Your dog Bailey is really cute! Can't wait to hear more

 

[Missyrose]

I'm hooked! Can't wait to hear about your fabulous upgrade. Gotta love that Disney service

 

[Dugette]

Renew Renew Renew

Ha ha! I wish...

What a way to start your trip. Great upgrade to Hawaii.

and thank you! It was quite an awesome upgrade!

Nice neighbors.. I can't believe they were trying to get into your room though. Well, maybe I can. Kids are curious, but their parents should have had a little control over them..

On the other hand, I'm glad you had to deal with them.. This upgrade is amazing!! I love how Dug played it off as being no big deal on the phone. I'd be going crazy with excitement!!

Yeah, I understand the kids being curious thing, but trying to bust down the neighbors' door probably needs some parental involvement! In all honesty, it didn't really bother me much since I slept through the worst of it and I'd had some sleep on the plane and bus. Poor Dug, however, who hadn't gotten very much sleep, it was just the last straw.

He tried to play it cool on the upgrade because he didn't want to get all super-excited and sound like that's what he was looking for when he called. All he really wanted was a quiet place to sleep. But Hawaii was awesome...we were plenty excited after he got off the phone!

Hope you make it to DL though!

Me too, now I'll have to live through your TR! I hope we make it to DL too. Dug just bought the Unofficial Guide to Disneyland the other day, so I'll have to check that out!

Sorry to hear about the neighbors but it's great that you got upgraded!
Your dog Bailey is really cute! Can't wait to hear more

Yes, I love those neighbors! They have no idea what they did for us! Thanks from Bailey...she says she knows she's cute and she's not afraid to use it!

I'm hooked! Can't wait to hear about your fabulous upgrade. Gotta love that Disney service

The upgrade and the service at the Poly in general was amazing!!

 

[Dugette]

Weather for this day: High 66 degrees and Low 50 degrees. Sunny/cloudy. No rain. Overall, pretty nice, if a tad on the cool side compared to the norms for this day.

Here’s one of the awesome things about staying at the Poly: We left the room at 8:47am and were walking into the Magic Kingdom before 9am! One cool thing from the monorail ride: as we passed the wedding pavilion, we saw the horse-drawn Cinderella carriage parked in front of it! Must have been a wedding that morning…very cool to see!

As we came down the monorail ramp, we saw a guy standing around that was sorta dressed like Santa (as seen in the video). Kinda funny!

On our past trips, we always toted around a pretty well-stocked backpack. However, it would hurt Dug’s back and we rarely used anything from it anyway, so we went bag-free on this trip (for the most part). So nice to both just stroll right through the gates with no bag check! The Twelve Days of Christmas was playing as we entered.

Shortly after arriving at the MK, we realized that I must have missed updating this day’s opening time when our schedule changed. There had been a number of last-minute extensions of park hours for our trip and I thought I’d taken them all into account. With our last-minute change in dates, though, I must have missed the fact that the park was opening at 8am instead of 9am this day. Oops. We were a little worried about how this would affect the crowd level, but decided to carry on with our original plans for the morning.

I took off down Main Street to get us Peter Pan Fast Passes, while Dug made his way over to Space Mountain (since he walks slower than me, we were going to just meet there). I exchanged a “Good Morning!” with the driver of one of the Main Street vehicles. A moment later, the horse-drawn trolley went by (though I wondered why the people riding it were already heading towards the exit?)

I obtained the Peter Pan Fast Passes for 9:40am. Not bad. Headed over to Space Mountain. We were lucky, even though the MK had been open for an hour, apparently nobody knew about it. Not really much of a line at Space, so we rode twice…once on each side. Dug’s tweet from that:

“Nothing like the fear of imminent decapitation to start your day right!”

As we were leaving Space, on the moving walkway (with nobody around!), I had to get pictures of my favorite “restaurant.” I’ve said in other TRs that I think it would be awesome if you could eat here with the robot waiter and all, so here’s what I’m talking about:

I’d pay to have a meal catered in here!

Up next, we had to help me achieve the top score on Buzz. If you’ve followed our other TRs, you know that we were terrible at Buzz. So, we went online and found an excellent video of “cheats” (like where the 100k targets are). Even with that knowledge, we still couldn’t max out at 999,999, though our scores did improve. Finally, on our previous trip, the ride broke down for a bit and Dug was able to utilize that opportunity to get the coveted 999,999. Although I did well, I didn’t max out. So, our goal this morning was to get me there too. Dug would work on aiming me at the targets, since he’d already “won”, and I would make my best attempt at maxing out.

Well, I got 528,900. Not bad, but not my best either. So, since the line wasn’t too bad (not quite a walk-on, but very fast-moving), we went once more. The result this time:

Bummer! Oh, well, we’ll come back later. We had other things to do!

We wanted to get Fast Passes for Winnie the Pooh, so we headed off that way. Only to discover that the FP machines for Pooh are over next to Mickey’s Philharmagic. And they also give you “bonus” Philharmagic Fast Passes. Our Pooh FP were for 10:40am.

Since this was our last trip of the Year of Disney, we wanted to make sure to hit some of the rides we hadn’t done for awhile. One of those was Snow White. Very short line and we were on! Nice to do that one again, since we tend to skip it.

It was past 9:40am now, so we decided to use our Peter Pan Fast Passes. We both love that ride! Never get tired of it!

We had a little time to kill before we could use our Pooh FP, so we decided to hop on It’s a Small World. And boy will we find out how true that is later on in the trip…

Now it was past 10:40am and time for Pooh. We knew that, using Fast Passes, we would be bypassing the new interactive queue, but we at least thought we wouldn’t be waiting in much of a line. However, we actually did have to wait in line a bit for Pooh. We saw Pooh and Tigger walk by, though. And we got to observe kids playing with all the new stuff in the queue. The cutest thing was a woman holding a baby next to one of the honey walls. The woman had no clue, but her little baby was reaching out and touching the honey wall. It was super cute!

Soon enough, we were bouncing with Tigger! I especially enjoyed this ride on Pooh since I’d gotten the Four Parks One World CD on our last trip and I really like the soundtrack to Pooh. Nice to hear it where it belongs!

Now was the long-anticipated event of the morning! You may recall, from our other TRs, several unsuccessful attempts to get a cream cheese pretzel from the Lunching Pad while it was open. It was now after 11am…they should finally be open!

We made our way over to Tomorrowland and snagged some 11:50am Fast Passes for Space Mountain to tuck away for later that night. Then we headed to the Lunching Pad and, sure enough, it was open! And had a huge, crazy line! Oh, well, we need to eat! We got in line and waited…and waited…and waited. Not a very efficient queue—it was the longest line we’d waited in all morning. I made a joke that this place needed Fast Passes and the woman in front of us in line agreed. Then we found out that this woman was concerned because she just wanted a plain salted pretzel and was only seeing these cream cheese ones. We had actually been concerned the opposite way, since the menu did not even show pretzels at all and we couldn’t tell if the ones in the window were regular or cream cheese.

At any rate, she got up there and found out they didn’t have regular pretzels. I think we told her that this place was known for its cream cheese pretzels and that they were supposed to be really good, but she just wasn’t interested in that. I wish I could remember this better now, but I think she threw a bit of a fit. She may have taken off without getting anything, after waiting in the long line. But I just can’t remember now…I only remember thinking, “I’ll have to put that in the trip report!” So, there, I guess I have!

We ordered a cream cheese pretzel and a taco hot dog. Found a seat outside. Here’s the food:

We actually took that pretzel picture while we were still at the window, because I was dying to bite into it. I think half of it was gone before we took a seat! Yummy!

Apparently the hot dog came with chips and we ordered a couple of ice waters. The taco hot dog was tasty, but very messy. Really hard to eat. But fun!

At one point, Dug went to use the restrooms and I stayed at the table. I noticed a couple of girls sit down at the table next to us and do a very Dis-er like thing: Both of them set their food down and, without discussing it, waited to eat until one of them pulled out the camera and took a picture of each food item. Then, she put the camera away and they both dug in. Maybe I should have said something, but I was really thinking they must be on the Dis! Who else would be so routine about it? Funny!

After that “breakfast”, we decided to head out of the MK. It was around noon by then. On our way out:

We noticed that there were droves of people entering the MK now. We were glad we’d already done a bunch of stuff that morning without lines and crowds!

We called the Poly and they said our room was not ready yet, so we decided to take a boat over to the Grand Floridian and check out the Gingerbread House. Some pictures from our lovely boat ride:

Up next: A life-sized gingerbread house!

 

[TheDreamsComeTrue]

Great Update! Glad you got to do all those things before it got busy, and you got way more points than I ever did on buzz.
Can't wait to see the gingerbread house!

 

[IheartDDuck]

Okay, I'm on board!

How terrible that your flight was delayed that badly. I agree though, I would have been more comfortable with a new plane too. Also, it was very accommodating of Disney to cancel the first night of your reservation. It always pays to call and ask.

And an upgrade to Club Level?! At least with all of the issues with your flight, there was some major pixie dust for you!

 

[mickeystoontown]

Just wanted to say that I'm still here and am all caught up now. I am anxious to see how your "new" room at the Poly turns out.

 

[Dugette]

Great Update! Glad you got to do all those things before it got busy, and you got way more points than I ever did on buzz.
Can't wait to see the gingerbread house!

I only got the points I did on Buzz because I knew how to get a couple high-value targets!

Okay, I'm on board!

How terrible that your flight was delayed that badly. I agree though, I would have been more comfortable with a new plane too. Also, it was very accommodating of Disney to cancel the first night of your reservation. It always pays to call and ask.

And an upgrade to Club Level?! At least with all of the issues with your flight, there was some major pixie dust for you!

Hey, glad you're here! Disney was great with accommodating our delay!

Just wanted to say that I'm still here and am all caught up now. I am anxious to see how your "new" room at the Poly turns out.

Thanks for reading! We'll be getting to the new Poly room fairly soon!

 

[RunningGirl]

Very fun TR! We got to stay at Poly once and got upgraded to a castle view - it was spectacular! I'm going to have to look for those Buzz videos before we go again!

 

[jc040404]

Nice that you decided to skip the bag. Can I be nosy? What did you bring along in the parks in it before? I can't wait until I can stop carrying one. If not for the kids, I don't think I'd bring anything I couldn't stuff in my pockets.

Great job on Buzz! I can't wait to see if you do max it out before this Disney year is up..

So glad you finally got your pretzel! It looks really yummy. I had actually started thinking of you every morning we passed by there and it's closed. Too funny about your dining neighbors, too. Maybe they'll pop up in a TR soon? I've never noticed anyone taking food pics before. Definitely a DIS thing!

Awesome morning! You've done so much already. Can't wait to see this giant gingerbread house!