Just Back, POR and MYW Dining

[shortwaver]

HI all, just back from a week long trip from June 9th through the 16th. First thing, the crowds were heavy and it was hot and humid. It also rained the first part of the week so my planning of the crowds was out of wack because people were holding off from the parks until it cleared up. When it finally did on the 14th, MK was REALLY crowded. A day that Tour Guide Mike said should have been decent. BTW, I think TGM would have been spot on if the weather would have been nice.
We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside and found it to be very nice and clean. The only problem I had was that we were in the 37 building of the Alligator Bayou section and it was WAY to far a walk to the main building (restaurant and main pool). There was a "quiet pool" and a bus stop nearby so it wasn't that bad. We had purchased refillable mugs and found that it wasn't worth the walk to fill them up unless we were going by the main building. Something that rarely happened. Note:It would be nice if Disney had soda stations in more than one location at the hotels.
We utilized the Dining option of the Magic Your Way Plan and found it to be, like many others have said, GREAT. It is true that there is too much food. Another note:some of the soda and ice cream carts WILL NOT apply snacks to the dining plan and will just charge them too your room-if your room key is set for charging to a credit card. Conceirge at the hotel said this is because some cart vendors are not Disney and are 3rd party vendors. Can you imagine that the Dining Plan paperwork does not specify this?! I explained my displeasure with that and Concierge adjusted all the charges so that they would be on the plan. All in all, Concierge at POR was awsome and helped me with every issue I had.
One other thing I wonder if anyone else noted that week. Magic Kingdom had an incredible amount of ride problems on the days we were there, the 10th and the 14th. I've been to WDW 12 times so I know rides break down. This was different. The following rides were down due to technical difficulties over and over again. TMR, SM, Pirates and TTA. We were evacutated off of TMR and TTA and found them not working during other times. My planning ahead and running around getting FP's made it an awful time when the rides kept on being down. My kids had a good time but it did affect our fun quite a bit.
All in all, we had a good time. I will not be going back during the Summer or when the kids are out of school again, though. Yowza! Hot and crowded!

Shortwaver

 

[Thinktinknpixiedust]

Hey Thanks for the update! our family will be going in just a few short days and we are using the meal plan as well. We are on a pretty strict budget so knowing that some of the vendors aren't appying in is useful... we will be asking each time. I hope the ride situation is fixed by the time July rolls around... sorry to hear that you had so many difficulties... but you still had fun, ahhh the magic of Disney...

 

[Catrin]

We were at POR with you... From the 9th - 13th... (yes, we left when the rain left!).
We were at MK on the 10th too... and yes, SM was down in the morning, making our morning plan a little out of whack. It was fixed later in the morning though, and we were able to use our fast pass with very little wait.

We were at Oak Manor, although I had requested an AB room. We did not use our mugs that much either - the first time I must say that we did not get our money's worth in the mugs.

Glad you had a great time,
Catrin

 

[PA DISNEYLOVER]

We were there the same time as you and said the same thing. NEVER EVER AGAIN in the summer. We had 5 day tickets and on the 5th day my 10 and 14 year begged us not to go into the park. We ended up at the Pool and Downtown Disney. We had problem with Space Mountain the whole week. Everytime we got a fastpass it broke down.

 

[bianca66]

I was also at MK on the 14th because touringplans.com said it was the "best day" to go. We'd been previously on Sunday and Tues, 6/14, was way more packed! That was the day there was a 25 min. wait for Small World, I couldn't believe it! Fantasyland was a sea of strollers one had to wade through.
OTOH, Crowd levels on the other days I went, Sunday and Thursday, didn't seem bad at all to me, and I wonder how much of this is because I live in a big metro area? I can see if you're from a small town or someplace like St. Louis, where the crowd might seem huge... because there was a lot of people, but I seemed to have plenty of room to walk those days, and FP return times were reasonabale, etc.