I Said "Remember This Moment" in the Back of My Mind - Long Live Our March 2025 Trip Report! *FINAL UPDATE - 06/06*

[ExpeditionEmily]

By any chance....is your Cracker Barrel the Rocky Mount, NC exit? Right off 95 and not tooo far into NC? There's a Cracker Barrel there that we ALWAYS stop at when driving down to the Outer Banks or Myrtle Beach and it's always a 10/10 experience!

 

[HappyGal]

So far, so great! Glad your dad got himself a sweet, sweet ride - he deserves it!

 

[Joy70]

How did I miss you had started another trip report! I was down this same week visiting my DD who is in the DCP. It was just beautiful weather that week! Excited to hear all about your trip!

 

[buteraa]

So happy to join you for this trip report! I have a love/hate with driving, so we end up flying most of the time.

 

[Sarahh1027]

There’s always something exciting about a good travel day when the destination is Disney! Not a boring update at all. Can’t wait to read more

 

[mi*vida*loca]

Travel day posts may be my most favorite on trip reports. I enjoy reading how everyone preps and prepares and manages the day. And the building anticipation of knowing a full week ahead!

 

[DLo]

Joining in. Looking forward to reading more

 

[buzzrelly]

Joining in! Sounds like a fun trip!

We drive from CT but do it the opposite of you, we start at like 3am and drive until 8-9pm and finish the next day. I cannot imagine driving all through the night!

Gotta love Buc-cees!! I always say it's the best part of the drive!

 

[Stasieki]

Joining in for the fun! As a T. Swift fan, can't wait to pick out all the references too. Ha

 

[GGOOFY1]

My grandson is obsessed with Buc-cees!

 

[piglet1979]

nd the most glorious, glorious restrooms of any "Gas station" on earth

I am so excited to hear about this trip. About 2 years (maybe 3 now) my kids went to Disney with the marching band. They took buses and Jeff and I flew down (I was not going to let my kids go to Disney without me ). The kids stopped at a Buc-cees and they talked about this place non stop. We didn't understand it. That summer we went to my dad's in Kentucky before heading to Gatlinburg and came across one. I sent pictures of the bathrooms back to my mom. This place is awesome!!!

 

[Newsies]

The Final Update Era​

I’m back! Unfortunately, I'm back to put this TR out of her misery

Since we last spoke, it's been a crazy past few months for me health-wise. I saw some dramatic weight-loss progress when I came home from Disney, which triggered gallstones and a gallbladder attack in early May. It was a pretty scary visit to the ER, but thankfully, they were able to subdue the pain while I was there and nothing was infected, so I was able to follow up with a surgeon later, who recommended gallbladder removal surgery. It’s scheduled for a week from today.

There’s been ups and downs. My 28th birthday didn’t go how I hoped it would go, and I had to skip my birthday dinner and Grace’s grad school commencement with a nasty cold. I also had tickets to a Broadway show in NYC planned for the next day, and thankfully, that theatre was super understanding and helped me switch my ticket to the following week. But then I had a really great week afterwards! I got to see the Jonas Brothers on Kelly Clarkson and met one of them at Rough Trade (Joe was doing a meet and greet to promote his new album).

Overall, I’m doing really well and looking forward to bouncing back from this surgery before we embark on our cruise in August. I've been thinking about this TR so much in the past few weeks, so I just want to plug some final thoughts / a quick summary on our March trip here.

The Hotel - I have nothing to sugarcoat here – we were all very disappointed in CBR this time around. Ironically, I think the only other TR I’ve abandoned before was my 2022 TR where we stayed at CBR, and our experiences were like night and day. In 2022, we had the most perfect ground-level room in Aruba, literally as close as we could possibly be to the Riviera Skyliner Station, and we could not have been happier with it. We enjoyed the pool areas and the dining and overall found the hotel very clean and well-kept. I think it blew all of our expectations away a little bit and we promised to return next time we did a cash stay.

So that’s what we did, and we requested to be close to the Skyliner again. When we checked in, we were told that we could choose between a ground-level room in Jamaica or a second-floor room in Aruba. We loved Aruba and the Riviera skyliner station, so we chose Aruba. Big mistake. We were tucked in the very back of Aruba by the parking long and there was no clear “path” to the Skyliner from where we were – unless we wanted to walk all over branches and shrubs, we would have to wind all the way around multiple buildings OR go through the quiet pool area to get anywhere else we wanted to go.

If that was the only problem we encountered, I would have overlooked it, but it sadly wasn’t. Our building in particular was in an extreme state of neglect at all times – you had a parking lot assistance wheelchair sitting at the bottom of the staircase for three days, you had bags of towels from housekeeping abandoned for hours, you had cleaning brushes and bottles falling off of housekeeping carts and being left there in the dirt for the entirety of our week. I wasn’t even sure where these housekeeping CMs were, since we didn’t receive housekeeping service until I called and begged on the second to last day of our trip. It was extremely odd and honestly I had never encountered anything like it at WDW.

As far as the other amenities of CBR go, it’s hard to speak to how they measured up this trip versus 2022. It felt like we ate at the hotel a lot more three years ago, I can’t remember having a single meal at CBR this trip. It looked like the menu had been scaled back a lot at Centertown Market but again, the only thing I ever got from there was our refillable mugs and some coffee. I did remember liking the coffee bar quite a bit, even if it was just standard Joffrey’s offerings. The gift shop quality was exactly the same, so I have nothing to say there. It was waaaaay too cold to be in the pool this week but we spent 10 minutes at the hot tub one day and children were quite literally crawling over us, they definitely need another hot tub at one of the quiet pools. I don’t have any stand-out CM stories (good or bad) this time around, but last time we were here, I remember a retail manager going out of his way to help me replace a magicband that had gotten lost in Epcot on our first morning. I do wish the CM who was checking us into the resort would have given us more insight on our Aruba room versus the proposed room in Jamaica, but can’t fault her for that.

Towards the end of the trip, mom turned to me and said, “so what is actually the value of going to a Moderate resort versus a Value resort?” and honestly, I have a hard time finding an answer to that. My understanding is that you can no longer book a guaranteed 5th sleeper category room at CBR or any of the Moderate resorts, which I think is the dealbreaker for my family. I get that most rooms have the 5th sleeper, and that maybe the rooms are a little bit larger than they are at value resorts, and that maybe the pools are a little bit better, and there are table service restaurants. But I would also argue that none of these things made our vacation personally any better (at least not this time), and in fact, the size / layout of CBR proved to be the worst part of our vacation. We will save our money next time and stay at Pop Century or AoA where the grounds are smaller and the food court has more options.

The Food – We had some pretty good food this week! I remember being blown away by Cake Bake Shop, so let’s start there. I absolutely adored it. I started with the Chicken Velvet Soup and it was my favorite thing I ate that week – just creamy and salty and perfect for a colder week at WDW. And I can’t lie: the cake at CBS was really, really good. Like, better-than-gideons good. Fresh ingredients, rich flavor profiles, didn’t taste like straight sugar in your mouth – I have been dreaming of the Millionaire Cake since March. And of course, the aesthetics of the restaurant are simply gorgeous. I also really fell in love with Brulee, the dragon mascot who sprinkles all of the edible glitter over the food, and the story of how he lights everybody’s birthday candles. I even loved the Cake Bake Shop Bakery! I went there for a coconut iced latte before I rope dropped Epcot and it was my favorite coffee of the tirp. This is just my new favorite restaurant, bar none, and I can’t wait to be back.

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We also tried Narcoossee’s for the first time on this trip. As an experience, it was one of my favorite memories of the trip (I’ll talk about it in a second). The food was pretty good, too. I wouldn’t necessarily run back, but the lobster tail I had was incredible and the almond cheesecake was very good, too. And yes, I had the famous mascarpone espresso martini. And yes, it lives up to the hype.

We got to try Wailulu at the new Poly tower on a whim during our last MK day. The chicken wings were incredible, nice and crispy with a sweet and savory glaze, but the moco loco was just alright. I also appreciated the ability to order a zero proof pina colada (which was quite delicious). Being that the Poly is our home, I’m sure we’ll get to try it again for more meals soon.

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Those were the two TS highlights, but we also went to Ale & Compass, Crystal Palace, Garden Grill, and Raglan Road. Raglan Road is my current favorite at Springs, I think they have the best espresso martini in all of WDW. I also loved the churro waffles and fried chicken at Crystal Palace! Garden Grill and Ale & Compass were both just okay – I don’t think we’ll be back. I will say though, we loved our watier at Ale & Compass. Some cool, chill dude from Lithuania who’s about to spend a year in Switzerland learning how to make watches.

As far as QS and snacks go, I don’t remember doing anything super special this time around. We did try Blue Ribbon Corn Dogs and I thought it was very good, despite the controversial price tag. I found that the Ronto Wraps were not as good as they used to be at Hollywood Studios, and even the Cheeseburger Egg Rolls just didn’t do it for me this time around.

The Parks – There were highs and lows this trip. Magic Kingdom on our arrival day was a dream come true, I love going to MK on a Sunday. The crowds were mild, the weather was pleasant. I would even argue that our second day at Magic Kingdom was a dream come true, too. It has been a hot second since I was able to spend Rope Drop to Park Close at Magic Kingdom without a break. I would argue that DHS was the low this trip. I rope dropped in 42 degree weather where I could see my breath and every single High School in the nation was at this park. I also noticed that the crowds were really bad at DAK when we went. DAK was non-negotiable for me this trip, I had to see baby Bakso, but other than that – we just kind of went on Rafiki’s Planet Watch and used an ILL on FoP. Well, I also did Single Rider for Expedition Everest (as always), but other than that, I got tired of DAK pretty quickly while we were here. Epcot I think was just meh. We went there early enough in the week where we were all able to tolerate long waits, so we waited an hour for Frozen. Dad got sick and had to go to first aid after lunch (he was fine, just a little dehydrated, and was actually very excited to see that first aid had red Powerade, since he had just been complaining that the parks only had blue Powerade). I used an ILL for Guardians as always and enjoyed “Disco Inferno” this time around.

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All in all, we didn’t go crazy with ILL or LLMP this trip. Mom really wanted one for FoP, I really wanted one for Guardians, and we agreed to do LLMP for Magic Kingdom so that we could all do Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. I found it pretty easy to get my value’s worth out of LLMP during our MK day, actually. I think we booked almost every single attraction in the park and I even got to do TBA twice because it went down during our original window and turned into a multi-experience pass, which we used a little while later, and then a few hours later the family went back to the resort and I somehow snagged another single TBA LLMP for myself.

Everyone in the party loved the new Country Bear Music Jamboree and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure! The only other truly “new” thing we did this time was Tomorrowland Speedway. We had some laughs… particularly when Grace and Dad’s car broke down and the person behind them had to push them to the finish line.

We ended up going home with some nice souvenirs, too. I loved the Tinker Bell collection, naturally, so I came home with a sweater that I had personalized at Curtain Call Collectibles. It wasn’t the only Tinker Bell thing I came home with – I also brought home the ears and t-shirt from that collection, a fuzzy sweater that I saw ONE of at Star Traders and never again, and– shamelessly– the baby Kate Spade bag I really wanted. I also collected all four of the park-exclusive Little Words Projects bracelets, which was a lot of fun to look for every day. I was jealous of mom and dad’s crystal steins from Crystal Arts before the trip, so I also picked up two for myself. They ended up being some of my most practical souvenirs ever, actually, I use them almost every day when I make my iced coffee at home. They just make my WFH mornings all that more magical! I chose Tinker Bell (naturally) and Sorcerer Mickey. Sorcerer Mickey has been VERY chic lately with the anniversary of Fantasmic last year – I ended up getting the last pair of the Sorcerer Mickey ears in DHS on our arrival day and didn’t see them again later.

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And finally,

The Memories – We made so many of them on this trip. I’ll pass just a few of my favorites below.
-Seeing baby Bakso at DAK. I rope dropped Maharajah Jungle Trek to see him and it was so worth it. The way he came sprinting out and jumping up and down over momma… it was too cute!
-Buying my first Lily Pulitzer dress ever. I went to Springs early on Friday morning and popped in to see if there was anything I thought I might fit into now that I’ve lost weight. I found one that fit like a glove and she went home with me. One of my favorite Non-Scale Victories of all time.
-Spending all day at Magic Kingdom for the first time in years. Again, this was a Non-Scale Victory for me, to not be tired or have my legs hurt so bad that I have to go back to the hotel for a break halfway through the day. I rope dropped with my family, we got all the way to early dinner at the Poly, and when everyone else wanted to go back to the hotel, I said I was heading back to MK. I got a few more LLMPs in and even found a cozy spot on the Crystal Palace porch to watch the fireworks.
-I rope dropped Epcot alone on Monday morning and decided to do single rider for Remy. I ended up sitting next to Simon, a coordinator for the ride, as he looked for a pair of guest’s sunglasses. I was so excited to be sitting next to a CM! It was the most fun experience ever. He was so pleasant to talk to and showed me where the ride had hidden leprechauns for St. Patrick’s day.
-Lastly: my favorite memory of the trip, and maybe one of my favorite Disney memories ever, was sitting at Narcoossee’s with the family for fireworks. I’m getting a little emotional just thinking about it. This was the moment where I said, “remember this moment” in the back of my mind. I’ll keep the tiny details close to my heart, but they say a picture’s worth a thousand words:

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Chills.

All in all, it was another fabulous trip despite some snafus with CBR and the less-than-ideal weather.

So, what’s next?

We are all ready for our Cruise in August. We have a couple of activities booked – Rainforest Room passes, Palo dinner, and the snorkeling/inner tube rental package at Castaway Cay. We also have a bounceback offer room booked at the Boardwalk for the day we disembark so we don’t have to drive straight home and can enjoy the Disney “bubble” for an evening.

Spoiler

(Okay, and if you can keep a secret from dad & Grace for a few days– we also have tickets to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween party that night. We’ll break the news to them on Father’s Day. They’re both going to be so excited, especially dad!)

Hopefully, this is one vacation I will have the time to write a full length TR on! I’m really excited for the different change of pace and to tell everyone all about our first Disney cruise.

Looking forward a bit into the future, we have our next WDW trip booked at our home resort, the Poly, for April 2026 and we’re hoping to switch to the Riviera at the 7 month window.

And that’s all she wrote. I’m sorry I couldn’t have given this TR the love she deserved! Hope you’re all doing well and have gotten to enjoy your own Disney magic these past few months. As always, if you have any questions about our trip/if I didn't get to cover off on something you wanted to hear about, I'm all ears, but I just figured I'd wrap things up considering we're now 3 months out from where we started and I only made it to our travel day. See ya real soon!

 

[piglet1979]

I am glad your Gallbladder wasn't an emergency. I haven't had gallbladder surgery but I have had laparoscopic surgery twice and will have my third in September (which I hope will solve all my issues and I won't have to have another one), and they all have been pretty easy to recover from. The first couple of day are the worse and I think the worst pain is from the gas they pump into you. Just take it easy and remember to get a little bit of walking in (as in just walk a bit around the house at first, then maybe the driveway, then around the block). This will help move the gas out faster as well keep you from getting clots.

Sounds like you had a good trip despite some lows. I am so proud of how well you have done with losing weight. Those small yet big victories are the best. I have stepped back in what I was doing (Jazzercise) as I was in more pain and felt I needed to start losing weight and build stamina before going back. So DH and I have been walking every day. Each month I set a goal for how many minutes I want to walk. I started in April with the average of 15 minutes a day for the month. I hit that goal and went to 20 minutes a day in May and then this month is 25 minutes. My goal is to lose 10 pounds before surgery in September. After surgery I will have to build my time back up again. DD has already told me she can see a difference but I haven't noticed it yet.

I can't wait to hear about your cruise!

 

[ExpeditionEmily]

I had my gallbladder out 2 years ago and it was INSTANT relief, so hoping you have a similar experience!!

You're gonna love the cruise and I can't wait to read about it and see your fun on other socials - we snorkeled on Castaway for our honeymoon and Tyler still talks about how much he loved it!

 

[rdkeim]

Thanks for coming back to finish your TR! Sorry you've had some medical issues but sounds like you'll be good soon. I can tell you've lost a significant amount of weight - that's great!

Well, your trip had a few bumps in the road but you made memories and that's the important part! Love the fireworks pictures. That's what it's all about. Now you have the cruise to look forward to Sending good thoughts for a successful surgery! Hope you'll post an update.

 

[Disney102015]

Since we last spoke, it's been a crazy past few months for me health-wise.

Oh no!! So sorry to hear this. Glad to hear things are settling down a bit and hope your surgery goes smoothly with a quick recovery. Happy belated birthday as well!

I have nothing to sugarcoat here – we were all very disappointed in CBR this time around.

Ugh, what a bummer. I have such mixed feelings about CBR! It holds majorly nostalgic memories from childhood trips but on our last 2 trips there, our room was in a terrible location and it really changes the whole experience SO much. Really disappointing to hear about the housekeeping issues too...hopefully they step it back up, because I used to adore this resort!

My understanding is that you can no longer book a guaranteed 5th sleeper category room at CBR or any of the Moderate resorts, which I think is the dealbreaker for my family.

Don't quote me on this but I am prettyyyy sure you still can book a guaranteed 5th sleeper. I only know this because I was pricing out a trip for extended family the other day and looking for this specific room category only, and I did see this option for both CBR and one of the Port Orleans resorts (Riverside, I think).

I remember being blown away by Cake Bake Shop

So glad you had such a great experience there!! It is on my list to try next time we are looking for a bit of a bougie meal!

We also tried Narcoossee’s for the first time on this trip.

Ahh Narcoosee's is our favorite. It's a family tradition every trip!

Lastly: my favorite memory of the trip, and maybe one of my favorite Disney memories ever, was sitting at Narcoossee’s with the family for fireworks. I’m getting a little emotional just thinking about it. This was the moment where I said, “remember this moment” in the back of my mind.

Awww very sweet. I have similar memories from my very first time at Narcoosee's with my (now) husband, heading outside to watch the fireworks with a glass of champagne. So glad you got that lovely experience with the family!

How exciting that you've got a cruise lined up! We did our first DCL cruise last year and are absolutely hooked. Have a blast and hope to read all about it!