Me and 3 rookies...

[TeresaMc]

Cast--
Myself(41)-been to Disney lots of times
My sister(35)-hasn't been since about 1976 and never flown
My stepson(15)-never been, never flown
My niece(5)-never been

Our flight is scheduled to leave at 5:35am from Moline airport which means we need to leave the house at 3:15am. I wake up to my alarm blaring at 2:15am (that was a nice almost 4 hour nap) look outside and it is snowy. Our first snow of the season, ugh. I get myself in the shower while everyone else is still sleeping, then wake them while I start the car and clean the snow off of it. They each take their respective turns in the shower and my hubby loads the luggage into the car for our journey to the airport. The roads are slippery and we are only traveling about 40mph on the interstate....are we ever going to get there???? Finally we arrive at the airport and get our boarding passes. Our flights are good, we have a very short layover in Atlanta and then off to Orlando. Deplane in Orlando and head for the Magical Express counter.....line was a bit long but moved quickly and we were in line for our bus in a few minutes. Got in the line for the All Star Sports Resort, finally the vacation we had been planning for a year was about to begin. Our Magical Express bus arrived and we were off to the All Star Sports!!!!! Seemed like in no time we were at the front desk. I give Magical Express and "A"

Just a few people ahead of me to check in. Our plane landed at 10:46am and it is now only a few minutes before noon...great time, going to have lots of time for the park today...or so I thought!!! My turn comes, I have my documents (guaranteed connecting printed on it just in case) I step up to the counter and am told there are no rooms available at Sports for me at all connecting or otherwise. They are moving us to Music. I was not very happy....but ok...we are at Disney, just go with it. The cast member says she can check us into Music from right there, so the process begins. She was on the phone with someone the entire time, I stood there for what seemed like days....30 minutes pass.....45 minutes....I am starting to become a bit less patient. At the next check in spot I over hear the lady ask if there was any way they could have connecting rooms with so-and-so. The cast member says..."Let me see", hits a few keys and says "sure but we will have to move you to the second floor" guest agrees and in about 5 minutes they are off to their rooms!! Now I am not very happy at all!!!! Finally after a long hour of standing at the check in counter I am given my room numbers 6514 & 6515....no resort map to show where they are located because we are at the wrong resort. OK, now how are we going to get from Sports to Music......cast member seemed a bit baffeled....oh, you arrived on Magical Express didn't you. They need to locate a van to take us over there....another 1/2 hour passes, we are on our way to Music. The van driver drops us off at the front door. OK...so now where is our room???? No clue, let's get a resort map from the desk. The lines for both registration and concierge are ridiculously long. So we decide to just wander until we found it. Keep walking, keep walking, keep walking...aaahhhh...there it is in the last Country Fair building facing the wood as far as possible from the bus stops/food court. The time is now 3pm, we dump our stuff and head for the bus to the Magic Kingdom, not off to a good start.

We arrive at Magic Kingdom, do a few attractions, lines were manageable, everyone seemed to be in a little bit better mood, myself included. At about 5:30pm the seemed to be starting to try to chase people out of the park to get ready for the MVMCP. We were dissapointed our stay was so short, after all we got up in the middle of the night so we would have nearly a full day in the park. We had ADR for Chef Mickey's anyway so we needed to get going.

Board the monorail, head over, check in for our dinner. A few minutes later our table is ready and we are seated. Had lots of fun, food was good, the kids had a great time, took photos. Good time.

Back on the monorail, back over to Magic Kingdom were MVMCP is going on (we have tickets for the one on Sunday) so it is on the bus and back to All Star Music, where hopefully our luggage has found it way to our room. Get dropped off at the front door...make that LONG journey across the resort to our room...open the door and sigh of relief our bags are there!! Wasn't long before we were all nested into our beds and fast asleep.

to be continued

 

[pumba]

I am sorry your rooms were messed up........I would of yelled at that other cm and say HEYYYYYYYY you have my connecting rooms......Sorry!! Thanks for the start of your vacation

 

[TeresaMc]

6:15am....I convinced my family that they needed to get up and start moving. We all get up and shower, and out the door to the bus for Animal Kingdom. We are at the gate a few minutes before it opens. They lead us all up the right in front of The Tree of Life and we watch a little holiday welcome by the characters who are on the bus in front of us. The rope drops and we head for Kilajamaro Safari......no waiting, walk right up and on. My sister is snap happy with the camera but not many turn out as the vehicle is moving too quickly. After the safari we head over to Kali River Rapids, no wait because it is a tad chilly and noone wants to get wet. We don our 2/$1 ponchos and on we go. The kids are having a great time and we all stayed dry thanks to the ponchos. As we were removing our ponchos on the way out we offered them to some people just going in and they very willingly accepted. We had 10:30am ADR for Donald's Breakfastosaurus so we head over there from a yummy meal and some fun with the characters. Continued to tour Animal Kingdom until we basically had it all covered.

Early afternoon is here and everyone is still full of energy so we head over to Epcot for a little while before dinner. Get up to the ticket gate....in goes 1 kid, in goes the second kid, my sister inserts her Key to the World...."sorry ma'am you do not have a park hopper" uuummmm, yes she does we are all on the same package, dining plan, etc. Must see guest services....somewhat lengthy line.....stand in line for 1.5 hours. Get up to the counter and the cast member says, no it is not hopper you paid X dollars for it. No I didn't pay X dollars for it, it was a part of a complete package that I purchased through Walt Disney Travel. "We can upgrade it for $35"....uuummm, no I already paid for it! The cast member gets on the phone, for what seems like forever. Finally she hangs up on whoever she was on hold for and gives me a 1 day, 1 park pass and tells me this won't fix it but it will get you into the park right now. Well now a couple of hours have passed and we have very little time before our dinner ADR but we go in anyhow, go through Spaceship Earth and leave for dinner at the Whispering Canyon Cafe.

Arrive at Whispering Canyon Cafe and my family is total unaware of anything that may happen. We are seated just in time for my niece to partake in the pony riding. Our waitress kindly brings our menus and takes our drink orders. As we are looking the menus over there is a bit of commotion going on but nothing that they can figure out yet. Our server returns with our drinks and throws napkins and straws in the air so they land on the table in front of us....the kids start laughing and my sister chuckles. They start to get it and are willing participants in the antics. The food was good and the entertainment fun....everyone enjoyed.

We then board a bus for Downtown Disney....was not there long but did do a bit of shopping. Then back to the hotel and everyone is quickly asleep.

more to come....

 

[pumba]

Great morning at AK.......I love Donalds for breakfast .......they have such a good selection and I love to go there.......

Thanks for your report and I hope you get the ticket figured out

 

[fabumouse]

That is so frustrating spending your Disney time standing in customer service lines! I hope this was the last time during your trip.

Did your driver on Kilamanjaro say "no photography"? Or was that only our hyper-vigilent guide?

 

[TeresaMc]

Day 3--Saturday

Getting everyone up and going was again a challenge...but we did accomplish it. Off to Disney/MGM studios we head. First things first we head over to Rockin' Roller Coaster/Tower of Terror....grab fast passes for the 4 of us for Rockin' Roller Coaster (the 5 year old is not tall enough but we have a plan) then go over to Tower of Terror standby 10 minutes so we all head in. Not sure of how the 5 yr old is going to take this but she wanted to ride....I try to prepare her, telling her it is dark, going to drop really fast, etc....she is all smiles and ready to go. We waited less than 10 minutes and next thing we are all buckled into our elevator. My 5 yr old niece absolutely loved it!!!! Next we have time to catch Beauty and the Beast show before our Rockin' Rollercoaster fastpass time. Then over to Rockin' Rollercoaster, my 15 yr old stepson and my sister go first while I wait with the 5 yr old. They were back in no time, then my stepson and myself ride RNR with the other fastpasses while my sister takes the 5 yr old back on Tower of Terror again.
Off to lunch at the 50's Primetime Cafe.....great food and lots of fun there.
After lunch did most of the other attractions and caught the afternoon parade. Then back to the hotel, had dinner in the food court there before heading off to DisneyQuest.
DisneyQuest was definately more for the 15 yr old, but we all had fun. Drug our weary butts back to the hotel and fast asleep again.

 

[TeresaMc]

Magic Kingdom all day and MVMCP at night....

We journey out early in the morning heading for Magic Kingdom we make our way around the lands catching most of the attrations that we didn't do on our first evening. We were scheduled for lunch at CRT and that all went well, my niece was so happy to meet the princesses. After lunch we arrive in tomorrowland to find there is a big electrical problem and Stitch, Space Mountain, Carosel of Progress and TTA are all down. We head back to our resort for a little R & R. Of course the kids want to swim, it's warm but not that warm but they head for the pool anyways. They didn't last very long but they had fun. After hanging out a bit and deciding noone is going to rest we go back to Magic Kingdom. Everyone gets their wristbands and off into the park we go. We ride some of the kids favorites again and do finally get to ride Space Mountain. Stood in a not so long, not so short line for about 20 minutes to have our picture taken. Watched holiday wishes and the late parade, by then we were all sleepy and headed back to go to bed.

 

[swankybeth]

Enjoying your report so far. Sorry to hear about all of the issues you experienced on this trip-resort problems, ticket problems, hopefully everything else was magical!

 

[Disney owl]

Sorry to hear you had a few problems

hope everything else goes ok