May 27th Wonder - off to WDW

[TammiMcMan]

Jim & Tammi - The Parents
Meagan - just finished her first year at college
Colin - extremely busy 14 year old
Casey - aka "Lola" or the "Diva"

We awoke to find ourselves already docked in Port Canaveral. Reality set in and the cruise portion of our trip was over. We once again enjoyed a delicious continental breakfast out on the verandah and I made the final sweep of our stateroom. Casey donated her beach toys to the kids club and we knew they’d make good use of them. We had been informed that there would be an announcement at about 7:40 for the all ashore, so we headed down to the atrium at 7:30. They were already letting people off the boat, so with a final goodbye we disembarked. A nice young porter was waiting at the bottom of the stairs and he had us through customs and to our car in about 8 minutes. We did just barely avoid a major problem though as the porter behind us had over stacked the cart and a number of hard plastic suitcases tumbled off right behind us. One of them just nicked Casey on the back of the leg, but it was only a slight scrape and she said she was fine.

We did a lot on board, but we also missed a lot. We never once visited the nightclub area or the adult pool. Other than breakfast, we never ordered from room service. There just always seemed to be enough food available. Things might have been different if the weather wasn’t so cooperative. It was hard to spend any time indoors when the days and nights were so glorious. No regrets though, we saved plenty to do on our next trip.

And the vacation still wasn’t over. We headed east on the beeline and within an hour, we were pulling into the Grand Floridian. This is where we started to lose some of the magic. We normally stay in concierge, but because we were only staying one night and would probably be spending most of our time in the park, I decided to book a standard room this time around. My only request was for early check-in because we were transferring from the Disney cruise. I know it isn’t a guarantee, but I did think that because we were coming from Disney, it might make a difference. Well, it didn’t. They only had a smoking optional room available. I told the cm that we would wait and I was already prepared to go right into the parks if a room wasn’t ready. Seeing Casey, he asked if I’d like a kingdom view. I said that would be perfect and he called the room assignor. A few minutes later, he asked me again if I’d like a kingdom view. Yes and I explained again that we were going into the park, so it wasn’t a problem for us to wait. After what seemed like an eternity fiddling with the computer keys, he asked me again about the kingdom view. This guy was really starting to bring me down from my cruise high and I wasn’t appreciating that. He was pretty bad and had zero personality to match. As calmly as I could, I once again explained that we were going right into Epcot and didn’t plan on returning until the afternoon. So yes, we didn’t mind waiting for a kingdom view room to open up. It’s kind of sad that I received better customer service from the agent at the Hawthorn Suites than from Disney’s flagship resort. I walked away shaking my head, but figuring that after three times, he finally understood our plans. Funny thing though, while I was attempting to check us in, Jim was wandering the GF lobby and he bumped into one of our soccer players and her family. (He and I coach an under 8 girls team) You never know who you might bump into.

Jim decided to hang around at the resort and continue his relaxing at the spa. In all honesty, I think he just saw the look in my eyes and figured it was safer to be miles away from me. That’s what 20 years of marriage teaches you, smart man. I was trying to let it all roll off my shoulders and the kids and I went upstairs to catch the monorail. If anyone has been there recently, was it just me, or did you detect an odor that smelled like cat pee? I thought maybe a child had an accident on the car we were riding in, but I noticed it on all the monorails that we rode. We practice our Spanish as we make our way over to Epcot, por favor…. you know the rest. What a sight awaits us as we exit the monorail ramp. It is a sea of humanity trying to get into the park. No problem I think, these are the poor souls who needed to carry a bag, we only had our trusty passporter lanyards and only had to find the “no bag” line. It didn’t exist and people were not happy. There had to have been about 20 lines with nearly 100 people in each line. We were all being merged into 8 checkpoint area’s with one security guard at each entrance. We waited nearly 20 minutes just to enter the park. We’re finally in and we power walk our way to Test Track. Standby is already at 40 minutes, but the single rider line is showing 10 minutes. We all agree that we can ride separately to save ourselves a half hour. We lucked out. Colin rode behind Meagan in the first car and I rode behind Casey in the second car. We were back outside in 8 minutes. Over to Mission Space we walk, feeling pretty proud of our first accomplishment. Well, the standby line here is 60 minutes and the single rider line is 55. It’s nearly 11 and the fast pass return time is 1pm. We opted to get the fast pass, visit the Living Seas and have some lunch. That would still give us plenty of time to shop in Japan and park hop to MGM. As we make our way across the park, Casey starts complaining that her feet are sore. Well, technically she didn’t make that statement until after she asked me if the Grand Floridian had a pool. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was shredding todays itinerary. I send Jim a text message letting him know that “Lola” is fading and we’d probably be back early. No reply, but I assume he’ll see the message as soon as he’s finished at the spa. He’s already been there for an hour and a half. We all visit the Living Seas and the kids really enjoy the Nemo exhibit. It’s close to noon by the time we leave and we’re getting hungry. I give Casey the option of eating in Epcot or heading back to Gasparilla’s at the GF. She chooses to go back, so I fire off another text message to Jim letting him know that we’re on our way. Still no reply. Back to the monorail we go and after some technical difficulties, we’re finally on our way. Casey and I got to sit up front and were basically ignored by the monorail driver. She was from our home state, but all I got out of her was one word answers, so I gave up on another cm. Aren’t you supposed to get a sticker or something from riding up front? Well, Casey got nothing and the woman didn’t even look at us when we got off. This day was just not looking good for us. We did have a nice mommy and daughter lunch at Gasparilla’s. The last time we were here with the kids, Casey had just turned six. I was surprised that she barely remembered the hotel or the parks. Three and half hours have passed since I left Jim going to the spa and I still can’t get in touch with him. I’m getting worked up now because he’s had a wonderfully relaxing morning while mine has basically stunk. Totally irrational, especially since I’m the one who wanted to add on the extra days at the park, but at this point, if I have to storm into the men’s locker room and yank him out, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Lucky for him, we met up on the path and he gladly volunteered to go and check on the status of our room while I retrieved Casey’s bathing suit from our stored luggage. When we hooked up again, he had the key to our room and had called for the bags to be delivered. At last, I can finally relax on the balcony and enjoy the view. And the fates strike me down again. We enter our room, throw open the balcony door and what is that? I have a garden view, with a huge tree right in front of us. Who took the castle? I can’t believe it, not only do I get stuck with a tree, but it’s so infested with dragon fly’s that I can’t even sit out on the balcony. I think I was in the bathroom crying when the bellman arrived. I just needed a few minutes to pull myself together and my poor husband had no idea why I was so upset. We had just come from this amazing cruise, where everyone was so incredible and now I’m in the Twilight Zone. Other than the bellman, I haven’t found one nice person here. We did have a ray of sunshine when we got to the pool. A family was just vacating their cabana and we stepped right into it. I got us all set up and Jim even snuck off to the front desk to see if he could surprise me with an upgrade to concierge. She said that they only had one room available and if he wanted it, he had to pay rack rate and handed him the GF rate listing sheet. I hugged him when he came back and told me what he had tried to do. He also admitted that the cm he spoke with was not the least bit helpful either. I do love him for trying. Meagan and Colin joined us at the pool. They were able to do Mission Space, but decided against using our fast passes for a second ride. They both agreed it was awesome. They both seemed to be happy and Casey was having a ball in the pool, so I tried hard to get my Disney spirit back. I did make one last effort to stop by the guest services desk and pick up a comment card though. Even though it was still bothering me a little, I didn’t want to put up a fuss, but I did want management to know my feelings on their lack of customer service. We were getting comment cards after every meal, so I thought that the hotel operations would have them also. Nope. The woman at guest services looked at me like I had two heads when I asked for one. She replied that they didn’t have anything like that and if I felt a need to, I should write something on a piece of paper and leave it with her. I did that, but who knows where it ended up.

I was so happy to find out that the GF Café had reopened for dinner, so we made plans to eat there this evening before going into the Magic Kingdom to see Spectro and Wishes. As usual, we requested Izzy as our server. He’s a great guy and we always have fun with him. We boarded the monorail again, luckily only a faint odor of cat pee in this car and we made the short trip to the MK. Look kids, they have a “no bags” line here. We hadn’t planned on doing any rides this evening. I figured it would be packed and by the time we got into the park it was nearly 7:30. We wandered around, making our way to Fantasyland. There was huge crowd waiting to see Mickey’s Philharmagic, so we pushed on to the tea cups. The wait was under 10 minutes, so the kids hopped into line. Just for laughs, we checked out Buzz Lightyear and saw they still had fast passes available and they would be good within the hour. We grabbed four of them and checked out the 45 minute wait for Space Mountain. We’ll just have to put that on our list for tomorrow morning. Haunted Mansion stated a 35 minute wait, but when we asked a cm, she said it was more like 10 minutes. We stepped into that line and crossed another ride off our list. By now, Spectromagic was just starting up and we thought maybe we could chance Philharmagic again. We walked right on. What a difference a half hour can make. By now it was time for our Buzz fastpasses. Meagan kicked our butts as usual, but I’m convinced that my laser blaster was broken. I’m not that bad of a shot. We crossed over the Tomorrowland bridge and found a spot to watch Wishes. We got a little too close to the castle though and some of the fireworks were blocked from view. The show was fantastic though and I love what they do to the castle. After the fireworks, there was the usual mass exodus out of the park. We took off towards Frontierland to get a bite to eat and wait for the final Spectromagic. That was a bad idea though, they were closing up all the shops and snack stands even though the park was scheduled to be open for another 45 minutes. We couldn’t find anyplace to even get a drink from. A cm told us that only the stores along Main Street were open beyond 10pm. Another Disney cut back I guess, but still very disappointing. The kids were able to ride on Big Thunder Mountain with no wait and we probably could have squeezed in Splash Mountain, but I didn’t want to miss Spectro. It was worth staying up late for. As we rode the monorail back to the resort, the kids were debating on whether they wanted to go into the pool or not. We decided on snacks from Gasparilla’s and when we sat down, our remaining energy just vanished. I don’t know how we kept from falling asleep right at the table.

Tomorrow, the plan is to get up early and hit the Magic Kingdom

Good things to know:
· If you’re driving back to Disney World from the Port, have plenty of change available. It cost us $1.25 to get there and about $6.00 to get back.
· Have a plan, but don’t be too disappointed if things don’t go right. I learned that lesson the hard way.
· Don’t stand too close to the castle for Wishes. You should probably be no closer than the Walt statue.

For our photos: http://community.webshots.com/user/tammimcman

Trip Report Part 1: http://www.disboards.com/showthread...threadid=582493

Trip Report Part 2: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=582595

Trip Report Part 3: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=582780

Trip Report Part 4: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=582976

Trip Report Part 5: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=583196

Trip Report Final: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=583825

 

[Cameo]

I loved all your trip report installments! I am hoping/planning a 4-day cruise for next May (if all goes according to plan) and I learned a lot from your report. I'm glad you had a great cruise.

This lesson:
· Have a plan, but don’t be too disappointed if things don’t go right. I learned that lesson the hard way.

I have learned this myself many times at WDW!