Just returned last night from 10 days in WDW!

[wrldpossibility]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd post a quick brief review here on my "home" board. I'll do a trip report this week, I hope! We had a wonderful 10 days during our first ever trip to the "world"! Just a few of our highlights and a few things that worked for us and didn't work for us:

Highlights

In no particular order:

Riding at the front of the monorail
Pin trading (and collecting the "transportation cards")
DS7 winning a Dream FastPass
Our Gifts of a Lifetime event
The kids making African ornaments in AKL after a great meal at Boma
The kids getting to announce "all aboard" on the MK train
Grandpa being humiliated at Hoop de Doo
CMs everywhere being wonderful!
Oh, I know I'm forgetting some!!

Things that really worked for us

Taking an afternoon rest/swim EVERY day
Eating lunch (if CS) before 11:30 am
Following TGM's best days
Packing ponchos in the backpack...we used them to save spots for parades
Lots of ziplock baggies...took leftovers with us, put wet clothes in them, etc
M&M tubes with quarters and pennies...the kids loved having them handy
FP (why don't more people use them?!)
DDP
Disney transportation--took it everywhere!
Staying onsite at POR! Loved it!
Garden Grocer! Worked great, saved us $$ on breakfasts.
ME... no problems, and SO nice to not lug the luggage around

Things we should have done differently
Photopass! I wanted to utilize this, but my group was not patient enough to seek out photographers and stand still for 10 seconds! I only have 2 pics out of hundreds with all of us in it. Grr!

More character meals! We did two, and the kids loved them. Best place ever to meet the characters...I was so glad to skip the lines for them later. Instead we did a few TS meals that didn't hold the 2 yo's attention well enough.

More parades...DS2 loved the parade he saw (Spectro), but the other afternoon ones were during his nap. Not much I can do about this, but it's still a regret that he didn't get to see more.

Anyway, we had a wonderful stay, and encountered wonderful customer service everywhere (with the one exception of Coral Reef, but that's detailed in my dining review). Great mousekeeping, even free taxi transportation from WL back to POR when we were too tired to ride the bus! (We way overtipped though!)

Feel free to ask any questions...but I don't know anything about CRT or princesses...my sons were terrified of them!

 

[daisyduck123]

I'm glad you had such a great trip. Can I ask, what are "transportation cards?".

 

[1Prince2Princesses]

Glad you had a great time... are you going through withdrawal yet?

 

[nextidiot]

Good info. I never though of using ponchos to hold a spot.

 

[wrldpossibility]

DaisyDuck,

I think the transportation cards are new (although I'm new in the "world" too, so perhaps I'm wrong). When my kids sat in the front of the monorail on our first day, the driver gave them each card that looks like a sports trading card (laminated like that, same size) that had the monorail on one side, and some "stats" about it on the other (how many, when it was built, etc). He told them there are 4 to collect: the monorail, the bus, the boat, and the train, but warned us that it was new and not all drivers had them yet. So throughout the trip, my boys would ask about them when we were on transportation. They ended up collecting them all except the bus. None of the bus drivers seemed to have them yet. But there's pretty cool (and there's actually more than one boat one...they have the WL launch, the ferry, etc). They enjoyed collecting them. Hope that helps!

 

[wrldpossibility]

Glad you had a great time... are you going through withdrawal yet?

Not yet! We had a long, tiring layover in bad weather in Seattle last night, so right now we're all just glad to be home for Christmas and not traveling. And I'm enjoying going through my photos and posting here! Probably after Christmas it will hit me though!

 

[eyeheartgoofy]

Sounds like you had a great trip! I liked your breakdown of the trip - gave me a few things to think about. Then breaks in the middle of the day work great for us too! I need to sign up for TGM ...

 

[wrldpossibility]

Just FYI...the boards being down gave me some time to work on a trip report. I have it up on the trip report board. It's called "Joy in the World". I have to figure out how to link it. Hope it's useful to someone!