Buffalo2Disney
Should we be HYSTERICAL?
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 519
My wife and I just returned late Friday night from our 10 day Disney World honeymoon and it was definitely the best trip to Disney we ever had. Everything didn't go perfect but after planning it for 2 years it lived up to all the hype and expectations.
MyMagic+
We stayed all 10 days at AKL. We both received our Magic Bands in the mail before leaving and both were customized. The Magic Bands worked fantastic and made everything a breeze. They worked wonderfully when arriving at the magical express at MCO. They worked wonderfully as our room keys to unlock our door. Entering the park with them was quick and easy. We made our Fastpass+ selections for each day before arriving and never had any problems at the attractions when using them as our Fastpasses. We both loved using the Magic Bands, it was much more efficient then digging for your room keys each time.
There was a couple issues we had with the new system though, not with the actual Magic Bands themselves, but with MDE. On our 3rd day there we arrived at Animal Kingdom at 8am to take advantage of AM EMH. However, when we went to scan our Magic Bands at the gate the mickey head turned blue instead of green. The CM working the gate immediately called over a "MyMagic+ supervisor" of sorts that was carrying an iPad and she scanned our bands with her iPad. After scanning our bands she looks at me and says "See, you need to purchase tickets in order to enter a park and it seems like you used them all up." It was then I replied, "Well, we booked a 10 day package with 9-day park hoppers. I've been here for only 2 days, where are my tickets?" She had no clue so she sent us to Guest Services. After guest services was on the phone with the front desk at Animal Kingdom Lodge for about an hour, they couldn't figure out the problem. We were given Comp Passes for the day for AK and were told to go to the front desk at AKL when we return that evening to see if they could fix the problem. We had missed the AM EMH completely because of this and spent the whole day at the park wondering if we were going to have park tickets for the rest of our trip. Frustrating to say the least, but we didn't let it ruin our day or trip. When we got back to AKL we went to the front desk and they pulled up our reservation and the 9 day PH tickets were back on our reservation. For some reason MDE cancelled our 9 day tickets and replaced them with 2 day tickets for no reason what so ever and no explanation as to why. Oh well, no worries, everything worked fine from there on out. Just remember, there will be some bugs, it's still in testing phase, don't let it get you down, we didn't.
Deluxe Dining Plan
We upgraded our regular free dining plan before our trip to the Deluxe Plan. It was our honeymoon, we wanted to go all out and we love eating at all the restaurants at Disney. I kept reading a bunch of reviews about it's just so much food and I didn't want to believe it but it's all ..... true. It was SO MUCH FOOD. 3 meal credits and 2 Snack credits per person per day. Everyday we would eat an early 1 credit lunch and most days we would eat at a signature restaurant for Dinner using the other 2 credits. By day 3 we were hurting. We had both been on some pretty hardcore diets and workout plans before arriving and we both lost a bunch of weight. Our bodies just weren't ready to each eat an appetizer, entree, and dessert with each meal. Towards the end of the trip our bodies adjusted more to all that food but it was hard in the beginning. We both agreed that we would never do the Deluxe Plan again, it just wasn't for us. I will say though that it did cost us $800 to upgrade to the deluxe plan and that was pretty much all paid off after about 4 days of meals so we felt we got our money's worth. However, and I don't know how I let this one slip past me, I completely forgot about gratuity cost. Eating dinner at mostly all the signature restaurants was nice and our $200 bill at each was nice already being paid for, but remember your gratuity reflects that $200 bill and we never tipped under $25 for all those dinners. Add them up after 9 days of dining and a lot of money was spent on just tipping.
All of our meals we ate were awesome and the food was delicious. The signature restaurants we ate at were Narcoossee's, Yachtsman Steakhouse, Fulton's Crab House, Hollywood Brown Derby, Artist Point, JiKo, and Le Cellier. My wife's favorite was and still is Brown Derby. My favorite was JiKo. All of them were awesome though.
Animal Kingdom Lodge
This was our first time staying at AKL and our first time at any deluxe resort and it was the highlight of our trip. We had a savannah view room on the 4th floor on Ostrich Trail overlooking the Sunset Savannah and it was incredible. We had plenty of animals outside our room and loved sitting on the balcony everyday. A couple of times the giraffes came by to eat and they were so close to our balcony it was amazing and one night 3 of them were all laying down sleeping right outside our room. We loved everything at the Lodge. The restaurants, the pool, the Mara were all amazing. The saddest part about this trip being over was leaving AKL. It cost us a lot of money to stay there for 10 days and was probably a once in a lifetime thing. We may be able to swing a day or 2 stay tacked on to other trips we take but staying there for 10 whole days will never be topped. We will always come back and visit each trip, either for dinner or to just walk around. And for anyone concerned about the buses, don't be. We hardly ever waited more than 5-10 minutes for a bus and the distances to the parks were no issue.
Final Thoughts
10 full days at Walt Disney World was awesome. It was the trip of a lifetime and we are glad we went all out for our honeymoon. We never felt rushed to get everything we wanted done and had plenty of time to relax. This was our first time visiting in September. We kept reading how September is perfect for low crowds and hot weather. I'm assuming it was probably because of free dining, but we felt the crowds to be pretty heavy for what we had read about. There parks always felt crowded to us. Some days wait times wouldn't reflect the crowds and be low most of the day. Other days the wait times were longer than expected. The weather too was very unpredictable. Tuesday and Wednesday, I believe, of last week called for 80% chance of HEAVY thunderstorms all day pretty much. It barley rained either of those days. Wednesday called for a 20% of scattered storms. It rained the heaviest on this day for an extended period of time. Just unpredictable for us, but that's just Florida Summer weather. We both agreed that we prefer October and November more to September.
We both are suffering from the Disney blues after this trip much more than trips previous. Before we left we already told ourselves we plan on coming back hopefully next year in either October or November. We still love everything about WDW and can't wait to return.
If anyone has any questions, fire away.
MyMagic+
We stayed all 10 days at AKL. We both received our Magic Bands in the mail before leaving and both were customized. The Magic Bands worked fantastic and made everything a breeze. They worked wonderfully when arriving at the magical express at MCO. They worked wonderfully as our room keys to unlock our door. Entering the park with them was quick and easy. We made our Fastpass+ selections for each day before arriving and never had any problems at the attractions when using them as our Fastpasses. We both loved using the Magic Bands, it was much more efficient then digging for your room keys each time.
There was a couple issues we had with the new system though, not with the actual Magic Bands themselves, but with MDE. On our 3rd day there we arrived at Animal Kingdom at 8am to take advantage of AM EMH. However, when we went to scan our Magic Bands at the gate the mickey head turned blue instead of green. The CM working the gate immediately called over a "MyMagic+ supervisor" of sorts that was carrying an iPad and she scanned our bands with her iPad. After scanning our bands she looks at me and says "See, you need to purchase tickets in order to enter a park and it seems like you used them all up." It was then I replied, "Well, we booked a 10 day package with 9-day park hoppers. I've been here for only 2 days, where are my tickets?" She had no clue so she sent us to Guest Services. After guest services was on the phone with the front desk at Animal Kingdom Lodge for about an hour, they couldn't figure out the problem. We were given Comp Passes for the day for AK and were told to go to the front desk at AKL when we return that evening to see if they could fix the problem. We had missed the AM EMH completely because of this and spent the whole day at the park wondering if we were going to have park tickets for the rest of our trip. Frustrating to say the least, but we didn't let it ruin our day or trip. When we got back to AKL we went to the front desk and they pulled up our reservation and the 9 day PH tickets were back on our reservation. For some reason MDE cancelled our 9 day tickets and replaced them with 2 day tickets for no reason what so ever and no explanation as to why. Oh well, no worries, everything worked fine from there on out. Just remember, there will be some bugs, it's still in testing phase, don't let it get you down, we didn't.
Deluxe Dining Plan
We upgraded our regular free dining plan before our trip to the Deluxe Plan. It was our honeymoon, we wanted to go all out and we love eating at all the restaurants at Disney. I kept reading a bunch of reviews about it's just so much food and I didn't want to believe it but it's all ..... true. It was SO MUCH FOOD. 3 meal credits and 2 Snack credits per person per day. Everyday we would eat an early 1 credit lunch and most days we would eat at a signature restaurant for Dinner using the other 2 credits. By day 3 we were hurting. We had both been on some pretty hardcore diets and workout plans before arriving and we both lost a bunch of weight. Our bodies just weren't ready to each eat an appetizer, entree, and dessert with each meal. Towards the end of the trip our bodies adjusted more to all that food but it was hard in the beginning. We both agreed that we would never do the Deluxe Plan again, it just wasn't for us. I will say though that it did cost us $800 to upgrade to the deluxe plan and that was pretty much all paid off after about 4 days of meals so we felt we got our money's worth. However, and I don't know how I let this one slip past me, I completely forgot about gratuity cost. Eating dinner at mostly all the signature restaurants was nice and our $200 bill at each was nice already being paid for, but remember your gratuity reflects that $200 bill and we never tipped under $25 for all those dinners. Add them up after 9 days of dining and a lot of money was spent on just tipping.
All of our meals we ate were awesome and the food was delicious. The signature restaurants we ate at were Narcoossee's, Yachtsman Steakhouse, Fulton's Crab House, Hollywood Brown Derby, Artist Point, JiKo, and Le Cellier. My wife's favorite was and still is Brown Derby. My favorite was JiKo. All of them were awesome though.
Animal Kingdom Lodge
This was our first time staying at AKL and our first time at any deluxe resort and it was the highlight of our trip. We had a savannah view room on the 4th floor on Ostrich Trail overlooking the Sunset Savannah and it was incredible. We had plenty of animals outside our room and loved sitting on the balcony everyday. A couple of times the giraffes came by to eat and they were so close to our balcony it was amazing and one night 3 of them were all laying down sleeping right outside our room. We loved everything at the Lodge. The restaurants, the pool, the Mara were all amazing. The saddest part about this trip being over was leaving AKL. It cost us a lot of money to stay there for 10 days and was probably a once in a lifetime thing. We may be able to swing a day or 2 stay tacked on to other trips we take but staying there for 10 whole days will never be topped. We will always come back and visit each trip, either for dinner or to just walk around. And for anyone concerned about the buses, don't be. We hardly ever waited more than 5-10 minutes for a bus and the distances to the parks were no issue.
Final Thoughts
10 full days at Walt Disney World was awesome. It was the trip of a lifetime and we are glad we went all out for our honeymoon. We never felt rushed to get everything we wanted done and had plenty of time to relax. This was our first time visiting in September. We kept reading how September is perfect for low crowds and hot weather. I'm assuming it was probably because of free dining, but we felt the crowds to be pretty heavy for what we had read about. There parks always felt crowded to us. Some days wait times wouldn't reflect the crowds and be low most of the day. Other days the wait times were longer than expected. The weather too was very unpredictable. Tuesday and Wednesday, I believe, of last week called for 80% chance of HEAVY thunderstorms all day pretty much. It barley rained either of those days. Wednesday called for a 20% of scattered storms. It rained the heaviest on this day for an extended period of time. Just unpredictable for us, but that's just Florida Summer weather. We both agreed that we prefer October and November more to September.
We both are suffering from the Disney blues after this trip much more than trips previous. Before we left we already told ourselves we plan on coming back hopefully next year in either October or November. We still love everything about WDW and can't wait to return.
If anyone has any questions, fire away.
Sounds like you had an amazing time! Congrats on your marriage. 
