It's My Birthday, We're Going to Disney, Deal With It! The Room and Rude Neighbors

[SafetyPinndSally]

The Who:

Me: Brandie, the birthday girl who just turned 21 on Feburary 5th. I completely planned this trip by myself and drove my DH just about insane with all of the details. I love Disney(obviously) and went many times as a child. My favorite character(s) are Chip and Dale.

DH: Scott, the 25 year old unenthusiastic grumpy love of my life who drives me crazy 85% of the time. He wasn't really into Disney so much before we left, but I think now he kinda sees why I'm so crazy about it. He doesn't really have any favorite character(s).

The When:

We left February 4th at about 2am in the morning, drove straight to FL(13.5 hour drive), but we stopped and dropped my mom off in Daytona so she could hang with my grandparents. We spent a magical week and got back early this morning(February 10th was our checkout day) and are now working on getting everything unpacked, washed, arranged and we're also trying not to kill one another.


The Why:

My 21st birthday of course! Most of my friends think I'm weird for wanted to spend my 21st birthday with a Mouse and his pals, but obviously they just aren't hip to the new trend. Also we went because I missed Disney and wanted to just take a nice vacation and get away from work for a week.

The Where:

We stayed at the wonderful Pop Century Resort, our first time staying there or at any Value and we absolutely had a blast. We were lucky enough to have gotten not only a perferred room, but also with a King bed and a mini fridge which was not expected.

The Deal:

So here's the thing, I'm not really the type of person who does trip reports because I know it will never get finished. So I'm going to make a little deal with you guys: I'm going to review every aspect of the trip including our resort, the crowds we encountered(horror stories included), the food, each park, some of the rides and of course there's going to be about 250 pictures included somewhere in this report.

 

[lynn71092]

Sounds great!!
We are total Disney Geeks and go as much as Southwest Airlines allows us to.
I won't be able to see your pictures because our work blocks out Photopass but I still want to read about the trip.
BTW, Pop is our favorite resort to stay!!

 

[MaumeeMom]

Can't wait to read your report.

Happy belated birthday!

 

[SafetyPinndSally]

The Resort:

So I'm going to start off this little review with the most important part: where we stayed. Now, I have been to Disney many times as a child and I was lucky enough to be able to stay in a Delux each time so this was my first time staying at a Value and only having the buses to rely on getting me around. We were lucky enough to not only get a perfered room, but also one with a king sized bed. We were staying in building one, room 1303 and we absolutely loved the location. Here is a photo of our view:

Literally all we had to do was turn the corner, ride down the elevator, walk down the path a little bit and we were right at Classic Hall with the lovely Petals Pool Bar also right there(I just turned 21 remember).

Some more views of where we were located:

Now we had a lovely Mouse-Keeper Rosa who was so sweet and really tried to make the room special even though it was only two adults staying in the room. We even got one of these babies:

And it spent the rest of the trip in our window and then it had a nice car ride back up here to VA.

Now while the room was great, our neighbors left much to be desired. It seems we were placed inbetween a huge group of a Brazilian Tour Group and they got really annoying really quickly. Our first night we decided to just chill and hangout(we also went to Downtown Disney, but on that later) and we were in bed by 10pm. Well around 1am I start hearing this banging noise, kinda quiet at first and so I just fell back to sleep. Well the next thing I know this huge bang is coming from our door, it scared me so much I jumped from my side of the bed and landed on top of DH. So I sat there, thinking maybe someone just dropped something, but then it happens again. So I get up and I realize that it's someone banging/kicking at our door. So I stand right by the door and when it happens again I pull the door open, only to see five or six young girls running away and around a corner. They were pretty much playing a very lound game of Ding-Dong Ditch. Well that night we let it be, but then the next night they decided that they were going to play with the telephones. Around 1am the phone started ringing and those phones are really loud so it woke us up. They would call and then when I picked up no one would say anything.

The first time this happened I thought it was a wrong number because we were right in the middle of about four rooms full of these girls, but then it kept happening and at about 3am it finally stopped. I was so upset because I really wanted this trip to be special because we had saved for so long and here these girls were ruining it. The next morning we called the front desk and they admitted that yes, we had been placed in the middle of a large group of these girls and yes they were getting complaints from other people. That night was pretty uneventful, except they were just being plain loud, not even in their rooms which I can understand, but they were standing right outside our room and being loud. Finally I had had enough and went out to speak to them. Of course they claimed that they spoke no English and didn't know what I was saying, which could have been true, but they must have known that they were being really inappropriate.

Now, before anyone thinks less of me let me say this: I have nothing against other cultures. The thing is, they weren't just having loud fun in their rooms, they were deliberately disturbing others and that was fun to them. That does not fly with me, period. Have your fun, but don't do it at my expense and understand that not everyone around you likes being up until 3 in the morning because some of us get up at 7 to head out. But I guess finally the front desk had gotten enough calls from people about this group because by our fourth night they were very quiet and only called us once.

Of course none of this was the hotels vault but still it did make my experience there less than appealing and it will affect our choice of staying there again.

Rating System:

5-Excellant
4-Good
3-Average
2-Needs Improvement
1-Dredful

Hotel:4 (the themeing was great and not over powering, the staff were nice and interesting to talk to)
Everything Pop:3 (the food was typical theme park food, but I fell in love with the Pina CoLAVAs that they serve at the bar so really those get a 5.)
Overall Experience: 3 (being in the middle of a group of rowdy girls was not fun and apparently a lot of people had to complain before anything was said to them.)

Total: 3.5

Would We Stay Here Again: Sure, it was a nice hotel and a decent price and we loved being in that location so close to the buses, but hopefully we won't be surrounded by annoying girls who have no respect for anyone else around them.

 

[lynn71092]

Great update

 

[Jillisa]

You are a lot nicer than I would have been. I really think they should have offered to move you or something. I don't care what country you are from, in no country is that type of behavior acceptable. We stayed at Hard Rock in Universal and I was woken up in the middle of the night but some loud crazy people shouting in front of my door. It went on for about 20 minutes. The next morning I told the rep about it and they gave me half off my stay for that everning (about $100)! I didn't ask but she offered.
I hope the rest of your trip was great and glad you liked the hotel aside from that. We might try a value for a quick get away one of these days.

 

[acejka]

Oh boy! A new report to read!
I'm sorry you had to deal with bad tour groups, I just don't get why people think its ok to go around yelling and carrying on so late at night. For one thing, you are at disney world, more than likely there are going to be small kids in those rooms you are yelling outside of, and you might wake them.

I was expecting the worst from the tour groups on our January trip, but the good luck gods must have been smiling down on me during the trip because they weren't obnoxious at all. I was prepared for no manners, line cutting and lots of loud yelling.

I can't wait to hear about the rest of the trip!

 

[NJPluto]

I'm so sorry you had such a bad experience with that group of girls. It sounds like you handled it very well. I'm not sure I would have.


Great trip report so far! Can't wait to read more!

 

[mom2mek]

Great report! We were there for some of the same time and saw many of those same groups! Those and the cheerleader groups! Were able to dodge and weave our way around them, but having them at your resort must have been a challenge! I'm glad they eventually stopped, but sorry you had to put up with the noise for so long! Pop looks like fun!

Can't wait to read more!

Sara