ZZUB
Roll Tide, Mean It
- Joined
- May 9, 2003
- Messages
- 947
My daughter turned two the first of April and so it seemed wise to schedule another trip (making it the second in her young life) to Disney World while her flight was still free. Now keep in mind that I love my daughter very much but I have also developed something of an affinity for keeping some of the money in my own wallet. Im not so much cheap as I am economically disciplined. The difference? Cheap means staying at Motel 6 and packing bologna sandwiches into the park. Economically disciplined means staying at All Stars and bringing bagels to eat in your room. It's a fine distinction.
Best I can figure it, no one is more expert at separating people from their money than Disney. No one. Not even the government. Indeed, if you have a dollar in your wallet, chances are Disney will find a way to separate you from it. Doubt my veracity? How else do you explain the willingness to spend $12 for a refillable mug when you know darn well you wont drink $12 worth of liquid in four days? But, as explained in more painful detail below, the most exquisite example of Disneys ability to help you part with your hard-earned cash is the spectacle of something called the character breakfast. I think of it as kind of a tug of war, a back and forth shoving match between Disney and me over the money in my wallet. Sadly, however, it is a battle I have been losing for many years now. See for example my seemingly endless collection of so-called souvenir mugs and several pictures and video from various character meals. But I digress.
In November of last year we received an email from Disney for a great rate in Jan-Feb. We couldnt go during that period but when I made our reservations for April, they honored the email rate. It wasnt set-your-face-on-fire fantastic but $74 a night was better than the rate my sister got with a Florida resident rate so who was I to complain? Then a family friend offered to get us a cast member discount and we politely refused. Really? No, not really. Of course we accepted the discount. We ended up paying $54 a night. This too was part of Disneys masterful scheme to deplete my bank account. Because we saved so much money on the room, we proceeded to spend additional money on things which will eventually find their way into a yard sale.
With all due respect to NativeTxn, my daughter is Disney born, Disney bred and well you know the rest. Her room is wall to wall Disneyana. Unaware that Disney and Pixar have recently parted company, she is a huge fan of Buzz and Woody. I sent a fax to the ASMovies Resort three days before we arrived to ask for a courtyard room in the Toy Story buildings. I dont know whether my fax was the reason we got the room we did, but we ended up with a great room in Toy Story and my DD could look out our window and see the courtyard.
We arrived at ASMovies on a Thursday at about noonish. The lobby of ASMovies was virtually empty when we arrived and I was hopeful our room would be ready. Sure enough the cast member who checked us in told us our room in Toy Story Building 10 was ready for us. We were so excited. Even though all three of us were hungry we were dying to see where our room was located. My DD was dying to see Buzz and Woody. So off we marched to the Toy Story buildings. Now I dont gamble but I reckon playing the lottery is a lot like checking into a room at a Disney Resort. You dont know what youll get until you get there. We were very excited when we found our room and my DD was very excited to see Buzz and Woody. Were not complete rednecks, by the way, we know that virtually every room at every All Star resort is identical. No one in my family was looking forward to seeing the liquid soap in the shower. But my little girl loves All Stars and we were looking forward to her reaction to the giant Buzz and Woody and finding out whether we had a good room location. And yes, we are rednecky enough to think a courtyard view is pretty cool.
Speaking of being rednecks, we ate that night at the Trails End Buffet in Ft. Wilderness. Fine dining it aint so if youre palate is more accustomed to market inspired cooking or if you like small portions with disproportionately large prices, I dont encourage you to visit this place. However, if youre like me and you enjoy good food and lots of it, and more importantly, if you like something of a bargain, Trails End is excellent. First of all, I think Ft. Wilderness is distinctly Disney. It has great atmosphere and it feels in 2004 like it did in the early 70s or whenever it was that my parents first took me there. The atmosphere in Trails End is, lets call it rustic chic, and although we never ate there when I was a child, something about the place reminded me of childhood visits to Disney World. Maybe it is because it looks an awful lot like Frontierland. Anyhoo, rather than driving to Ft. Wilderness and taking the bus to the restaurant, we took the boat over instead. My DD really loves animals so we took her to the Ft. Wilderness petting zoo. This is one of only two instances from this trip where I won the battle with Disney over keeping the money in my wallet. The petting zoo is free. It was worth every penny.
We spent the next day in Animal Kingdom. Determining the crowd size in a Disney park is something of a subjective exercise. I have read on these boards where people described the feelof the park. I cant tell you if it was crowded, but I can tell you it didnt feel crowded. There were plenty of people there and I think AKs design makes it feel somewhat more congested but the lines were all quite manageable. We arrived at AK around 7:30 because it was an early entry day and because what else do you do on vacation but get up early and run with other resort guests towards Kilimanjaro Safari. Heres a tip: we lost a valuable spot in line at Kilimanjaro Safari because as the crowd was pushing in, we moved to the side to park our stroller. After dislodging my DD, the camcorder, camera bag and diaper bag from the stroller and getting back into line, we were told to keep our stroller with us because there would be a place to park it further down the queue. This required us to get back out of line, reintroduce our DD and our luggage to the stroller, get back into line and move at a snails pace up to load onto the truck. This five minute long delay may well have contributed to our inability to save Big Red from getting shot by the poachers. Frankly, well never know.
We thought the Safari was pretty good, but the pressure to help save Big Red and Little Red was too great. Ultimately we werent able to be of any meaningful assistance and we felt ashamed. However, we really liked the Festival of the Lion King and unlike the Safari, or Mission Space, or Buzz Lightyear, or Rock n Rollercoaster, we werent required to help out. We only had to make a somewhat silly elephant noise which we evidently accomplished with some success because the circle of life remained unbroken. Quite seriously, we found the Festival of the Lion King to be a fantastic show. AK is a great park to walk around in. It is very pretty and there is a lot of visual stimulation. We kept finding little paths that lead no where but offered a bench at the end or a view of some different animals. Curiously, Disney seems determined to convince people AK is not a zoo. Whats wrong with being a zoo? Nahtazu must be Swahili for is a zoo because despite all of their assertions to the contrary, AK felt very zoo-like. Not that theres anything wrong with that.
To further illustrate how economically disciplined I am, my wife and I agreed ahead of time to split meals wherever we could. We decided to eat lunch at Pizzafari and split a pizza combo. I ordered an adult meal deal and one child meal deal. The cast member advised me that the adult and child sizes were the same. Thinking she was not understanding me, I repeated myself, one adult and one child, please. She looked knowingly at me and repeated herself, the adult size pizza and child are exactly the same. Long pause while my sleep deprived brain processes this information. Duh! Thank you I said and corrected my order, two childrens pizza meal deals. She was right, too. The pizzas are the same size but the cost is substantially different. The three of us split the two pizzas and we were all full when we were done. This is the second and final example of my triumphing over Disneys insidious efforts to remove money from my wallet. I think I saved $18 bucks. While I dont recommend the pizza (great price, lousy taste), the meal deal is a good deal. You get your lunch and a coupon for water or pop and ice-cream or popcorn to use later in the day. Frankly, this is a better example of Disneys triumph over me. I probably would not have bought three drinks and three ice-cream bars later that day if I didnt already have coupons for them.
My sister and her family met us the next day and we all went into Magic Kingdom. We had a priority seating for Crystal Palace so we got into the MK earlier than the opening time. I thought getting into MK ahead of the opening time was a nice advantage but I find the whole character breakfast experience very stressful. There is a lot of very good food to be eaten and youre paying a premium for it, but like most of the things in Disney World, its there more for show than your actual enjoyment. These characters parade around the joint like Paris and Nicole Hilton at some Hollywood party. I felt like the paparazzi. I had to keep jumping up to take pictures of my DD with the characters and turning on my camcorder to film. Then theyd leave and Id put my camera under my chair and turn off the camcorder and put the cap back on the lens. Id try to eat my food (breakfast lasagna sounds gross but is very good) but I never got more than a few bites because Pooh and his little friends kept coming to the table and Id have to make with the camera and camcorder. And hey, you know what? were in the MK and who cares about eating anyway?! There are rides to ride.
So Im sitting at my table with Pooh and Paris and Nicole buzzing around my table and Im not eating any of the food on my plate because Im too busy worrying that Ill miss that once-in-a-million opportunity to take a picture of my DD with Pooh and Im looking out the window at the castle and thinking we need to get out there already. You see how smart Disney is? They know ultimately no one will eat $17.99 worth of breakfast food even under the best circumstances. But throw in some characters and put the restaurant in the middle of the MK of all places and how can a guy like me possibly come out ahead?! When Eeyore came back to the table for the seventh time and my wife told me I didnt need to take any more pictures we decided it was time to leave. Five minutes later I was hungry.
The MK felt crowded to me. Not too crowded, not scary crowded. But there were a lot of people there. A lot of the people we saw didnt understand the physics of forward motion and for reasons that still escape me, insisted on walking into the path of my stroller. People would look right at me and then walk into the path of the stroller forcing me to slam on the breaks as it were. Which then prompted me to wonder if I was, in fact, invisible. I tried out my theory of invisibility by walking behind the counter at Cosmic Rays to fix my own Diet Coke but as it turns out, Im not actually invisible and they really dont like for guests to go behind the counter. Perhaps I am only invisible when Im pushing the magic stroller.
A word about the rampant increase of rudeness in Disney World. When I was a kid, it seemed everyone was in a good mood at Disney. Now, not so much. A lot has been written about why people are so mad and why people are so inconsiderate so I wont waste your time with my analysis of why people have grown so rude. However, I do have this recommendation to Disney guests: lighten up people. Its a vacation, not a mission. And one more thing: we all paid a lot of money to be there. Were all tired. We all want to have a great time. If we all treated everyone the way we wanted to be treated (read: we dont walk in from the other side of the Fastpass kiosk at Buzz Lighyear, jump in front of the nice man with the 2 year old in a stroller and then stand there deciding whether we want Fastpasses) then wed all have a great experience and it might not be so stressful after all. End of sermon. Please pass the offering plate to your left.
We had dinner at Chef Mickeys. For the reasons stated above, I find character meals in general to be very stressful, but I think CMs is a great place. We werent quite as rushed as in the morning at Crystal Palace and I think the food is very good. They brought my DD a cupcake for he birthday and Mickey came over and didnt sing to her but stood there and generally approved of our singing to her. She thought that was cool. Mickey that is. Not so much the singing. The character interaction at CMs is much better than at CP. Just my opinion. No need to flame me if you disagree. Im sure theres a whole horde of CP devotees who are all set to respond to this trip report as if I just suggested John Kerry is the devil (or George Bush if you prefer). Its just my humble opinion and its worth about as much as a walk through the petting zoo at Ft. Wilderness.
After dinner we went back into the MK which stayed open until 11:00. By the way, if you run into my DD please dont tell her it didnt stay open later just for her. Also, dont tell her that all those people were not there for her birthday. No reason to spoil her fun, is there?
MK after dinner felt crowded. Scary crowded.
Still we managed to get onto quite a few rides and catch Wishes and the second showing of Spectro. I dont particular care for fireworks and until recently was of the mind set that they were all pretty much the same. Wishes is quite different, however, and although I was not moved to tears as so many others have been, I did think it was very good. However, be warned that everyone it seems now knows Plaza Pavilion and the walkway to Tomorrowland are great places to view the show. If you have a stroller, you, too, will be invisible so allow yourself extra time to find a place to watch the fireworks.
A final word about the All Stars: there has been a lot of talk about the noise level there. Its all true. It can be a loud resort. However, we didnt notice it except for one night. Our first night there at about 11:00 there were a bunch of (oddly enough) supervised kids playing in the courtyard. Despite the late hour, the kids continued to scream and the adult type people continued to watch as if although the sound of the kids screaming was echoing off the oversized Buzz and Woody no one in any of the rooms could hear the noise. In keeping with my general theme of treating people the way I want to be treated, I stepped out and asked them to be quiet. I forgot however that I was invisible. The noise continued unabated for about 15 additional minutes and then, some might say magically, it ceased.
Also we were pleased to see that the oh-so-annoying push button toilets have been replaced with the more standard type commode we are so accustomed to. Nevertheless, the turbo flush feature is still available. I kind of like that strong woosh, dont you?
The weather the week we were there was very pleasant. We had a great trip and my whole family seemed to enjoy themselves. My DD especially had fun at ASMovies. It is a great resort for children. When we were checking out, they were giving out balloons to children who were checking in. Because I am always on the lookout for additional ways to get something free from Disney, I asked for and received a balloon for my DD. I also went ahead and signed over her college fund. I figured it would just be easier that way.
Best I can figure it, no one is more expert at separating people from their money than Disney. No one. Not even the government. Indeed, if you have a dollar in your wallet, chances are Disney will find a way to separate you from it. Doubt my veracity? How else do you explain the willingness to spend $12 for a refillable mug when you know darn well you wont drink $12 worth of liquid in four days? But, as explained in more painful detail below, the most exquisite example of Disneys ability to help you part with your hard-earned cash is the spectacle of something called the character breakfast. I think of it as kind of a tug of war, a back and forth shoving match between Disney and me over the money in my wallet. Sadly, however, it is a battle I have been losing for many years now. See for example my seemingly endless collection of so-called souvenir mugs and several pictures and video from various character meals. But I digress.
In November of last year we received an email from Disney for a great rate in Jan-Feb. We couldnt go during that period but when I made our reservations for April, they honored the email rate. It wasnt set-your-face-on-fire fantastic but $74 a night was better than the rate my sister got with a Florida resident rate so who was I to complain? Then a family friend offered to get us a cast member discount and we politely refused. Really? No, not really. Of course we accepted the discount. We ended up paying $54 a night. This too was part of Disneys masterful scheme to deplete my bank account. Because we saved so much money on the room, we proceeded to spend additional money on things which will eventually find their way into a yard sale.
With all due respect to NativeTxn, my daughter is Disney born, Disney bred and well you know the rest. Her room is wall to wall Disneyana. Unaware that Disney and Pixar have recently parted company, she is a huge fan of Buzz and Woody. I sent a fax to the ASMovies Resort three days before we arrived to ask for a courtyard room in the Toy Story buildings. I dont know whether my fax was the reason we got the room we did, but we ended up with a great room in Toy Story and my DD could look out our window and see the courtyard.
We arrived at ASMovies on a Thursday at about noonish. The lobby of ASMovies was virtually empty when we arrived and I was hopeful our room would be ready. Sure enough the cast member who checked us in told us our room in Toy Story Building 10 was ready for us. We were so excited. Even though all three of us were hungry we were dying to see where our room was located. My DD was dying to see Buzz and Woody. So off we marched to the Toy Story buildings. Now I dont gamble but I reckon playing the lottery is a lot like checking into a room at a Disney Resort. You dont know what youll get until you get there. We were very excited when we found our room and my DD was very excited to see Buzz and Woody. Were not complete rednecks, by the way, we know that virtually every room at every All Star resort is identical. No one in my family was looking forward to seeing the liquid soap in the shower. But my little girl loves All Stars and we were looking forward to her reaction to the giant Buzz and Woody and finding out whether we had a good room location. And yes, we are rednecky enough to think a courtyard view is pretty cool.
Speaking of being rednecks, we ate that night at the Trails End Buffet in Ft. Wilderness. Fine dining it aint so if youre palate is more accustomed to market inspired cooking or if you like small portions with disproportionately large prices, I dont encourage you to visit this place. However, if youre like me and you enjoy good food and lots of it, and more importantly, if you like something of a bargain, Trails End is excellent. First of all, I think Ft. Wilderness is distinctly Disney. It has great atmosphere and it feels in 2004 like it did in the early 70s or whenever it was that my parents first took me there. The atmosphere in Trails End is, lets call it rustic chic, and although we never ate there when I was a child, something about the place reminded me of childhood visits to Disney World. Maybe it is because it looks an awful lot like Frontierland. Anyhoo, rather than driving to Ft. Wilderness and taking the bus to the restaurant, we took the boat over instead. My DD really loves animals so we took her to the Ft. Wilderness petting zoo. This is one of only two instances from this trip where I won the battle with Disney over keeping the money in my wallet. The petting zoo is free. It was worth every penny.
We spent the next day in Animal Kingdom. Determining the crowd size in a Disney park is something of a subjective exercise. I have read on these boards where people described the feelof the park. I cant tell you if it was crowded, but I can tell you it didnt feel crowded. There were plenty of people there and I think AKs design makes it feel somewhat more congested but the lines were all quite manageable. We arrived at AK around 7:30 because it was an early entry day and because what else do you do on vacation but get up early and run with other resort guests towards Kilimanjaro Safari. Heres a tip: we lost a valuable spot in line at Kilimanjaro Safari because as the crowd was pushing in, we moved to the side to park our stroller. After dislodging my DD, the camcorder, camera bag and diaper bag from the stroller and getting back into line, we were told to keep our stroller with us because there would be a place to park it further down the queue. This required us to get back out of line, reintroduce our DD and our luggage to the stroller, get back into line and move at a snails pace up to load onto the truck. This five minute long delay may well have contributed to our inability to save Big Red from getting shot by the poachers. Frankly, well never know.
We thought the Safari was pretty good, but the pressure to help save Big Red and Little Red was too great. Ultimately we werent able to be of any meaningful assistance and we felt ashamed. However, we really liked the Festival of the Lion King and unlike the Safari, or Mission Space, or Buzz Lightyear, or Rock n Rollercoaster, we werent required to help out. We only had to make a somewhat silly elephant noise which we evidently accomplished with some success because the circle of life remained unbroken. Quite seriously, we found the Festival of the Lion King to be a fantastic show. AK is a great park to walk around in. It is very pretty and there is a lot of visual stimulation. We kept finding little paths that lead no where but offered a bench at the end or a view of some different animals. Curiously, Disney seems determined to convince people AK is not a zoo. Whats wrong with being a zoo? Nahtazu must be Swahili for is a zoo because despite all of their assertions to the contrary, AK felt very zoo-like. Not that theres anything wrong with that.
To further illustrate how economically disciplined I am, my wife and I agreed ahead of time to split meals wherever we could. We decided to eat lunch at Pizzafari and split a pizza combo. I ordered an adult meal deal and one child meal deal. The cast member advised me that the adult and child sizes were the same. Thinking she was not understanding me, I repeated myself, one adult and one child, please. She looked knowingly at me and repeated herself, the adult size pizza and child are exactly the same. Long pause while my sleep deprived brain processes this information. Duh! Thank you I said and corrected my order, two childrens pizza meal deals. She was right, too. The pizzas are the same size but the cost is substantially different. The three of us split the two pizzas and we were all full when we were done. This is the second and final example of my triumphing over Disneys insidious efforts to remove money from my wallet. I think I saved $18 bucks. While I dont recommend the pizza (great price, lousy taste), the meal deal is a good deal. You get your lunch and a coupon for water or pop and ice-cream or popcorn to use later in the day. Frankly, this is a better example of Disneys triumph over me. I probably would not have bought three drinks and three ice-cream bars later that day if I didnt already have coupons for them.
My sister and her family met us the next day and we all went into Magic Kingdom. We had a priority seating for Crystal Palace so we got into the MK earlier than the opening time. I thought getting into MK ahead of the opening time was a nice advantage but I find the whole character breakfast experience very stressful. There is a lot of very good food to be eaten and youre paying a premium for it, but like most of the things in Disney World, its there more for show than your actual enjoyment. These characters parade around the joint like Paris and Nicole Hilton at some Hollywood party. I felt like the paparazzi. I had to keep jumping up to take pictures of my DD with the characters and turning on my camcorder to film. Then theyd leave and Id put my camera under my chair and turn off the camcorder and put the cap back on the lens. Id try to eat my food (breakfast lasagna sounds gross but is very good) but I never got more than a few bites because Pooh and his little friends kept coming to the table and Id have to make with the camera and camcorder. And hey, you know what? were in the MK and who cares about eating anyway?! There are rides to ride.
So Im sitting at my table with Pooh and Paris and Nicole buzzing around my table and Im not eating any of the food on my plate because Im too busy worrying that Ill miss that once-in-a-million opportunity to take a picture of my DD with Pooh and Im looking out the window at the castle and thinking we need to get out there already. You see how smart Disney is? They know ultimately no one will eat $17.99 worth of breakfast food even under the best circumstances. But throw in some characters and put the restaurant in the middle of the MK of all places and how can a guy like me possibly come out ahead?! When Eeyore came back to the table for the seventh time and my wife told me I didnt need to take any more pictures we decided it was time to leave. Five minutes later I was hungry.
The MK felt crowded to me. Not too crowded, not scary crowded. But there were a lot of people there. A lot of the people we saw didnt understand the physics of forward motion and for reasons that still escape me, insisted on walking into the path of my stroller. People would look right at me and then walk into the path of the stroller forcing me to slam on the breaks as it were. Which then prompted me to wonder if I was, in fact, invisible. I tried out my theory of invisibility by walking behind the counter at Cosmic Rays to fix my own Diet Coke but as it turns out, Im not actually invisible and they really dont like for guests to go behind the counter. Perhaps I am only invisible when Im pushing the magic stroller.
A word about the rampant increase of rudeness in Disney World. When I was a kid, it seemed everyone was in a good mood at Disney. Now, not so much. A lot has been written about why people are so mad and why people are so inconsiderate so I wont waste your time with my analysis of why people have grown so rude. However, I do have this recommendation to Disney guests: lighten up people. Its a vacation, not a mission. And one more thing: we all paid a lot of money to be there. Were all tired. We all want to have a great time. If we all treated everyone the way we wanted to be treated (read: we dont walk in from the other side of the Fastpass kiosk at Buzz Lighyear, jump in front of the nice man with the 2 year old in a stroller and then stand there deciding whether we want Fastpasses) then wed all have a great experience and it might not be so stressful after all. End of sermon. Please pass the offering plate to your left.
We had dinner at Chef Mickeys. For the reasons stated above, I find character meals in general to be very stressful, but I think CMs is a great place. We werent quite as rushed as in the morning at Crystal Palace and I think the food is very good. They brought my DD a cupcake for he birthday and Mickey came over and didnt sing to her but stood there and generally approved of our singing to her. She thought that was cool. Mickey that is. Not so much the singing. The character interaction at CMs is much better than at CP. Just my opinion. No need to flame me if you disagree. Im sure theres a whole horde of CP devotees who are all set to respond to this trip report as if I just suggested John Kerry is the devil (or George Bush if you prefer). Its just my humble opinion and its worth about as much as a walk through the petting zoo at Ft. Wilderness.
After dinner we went back into the MK which stayed open until 11:00. By the way, if you run into my DD please dont tell her it didnt stay open later just for her. Also, dont tell her that all those people were not there for her birthday. No reason to spoil her fun, is there?
MK after dinner felt crowded. Scary crowded.
Still we managed to get onto quite a few rides and catch Wishes and the second showing of Spectro. I dont particular care for fireworks and until recently was of the mind set that they were all pretty much the same. Wishes is quite different, however, and although I was not moved to tears as so many others have been, I did think it was very good. However, be warned that everyone it seems now knows Plaza Pavilion and the walkway to Tomorrowland are great places to view the show. If you have a stroller, you, too, will be invisible so allow yourself extra time to find a place to watch the fireworks.
A final word about the All Stars: there has been a lot of talk about the noise level there. Its all true. It can be a loud resort. However, we didnt notice it except for one night. Our first night there at about 11:00 there were a bunch of (oddly enough) supervised kids playing in the courtyard. Despite the late hour, the kids continued to scream and the adult type people continued to watch as if although the sound of the kids screaming was echoing off the oversized Buzz and Woody no one in any of the rooms could hear the noise. In keeping with my general theme of treating people the way I want to be treated, I stepped out and asked them to be quiet. I forgot however that I was invisible. The noise continued unabated for about 15 additional minutes and then, some might say magically, it ceased.
Also we were pleased to see that the oh-so-annoying push button toilets have been replaced with the more standard type commode we are so accustomed to. Nevertheless, the turbo flush feature is still available. I kind of like that strong woosh, dont you?
The weather the week we were there was very pleasant. We had a great trip and my whole family seemed to enjoy themselves. My DD especially had fun at ASMovies. It is a great resort for children. When we were checking out, they were giving out balloons to children who were checking in. Because I am always on the lookout for additional ways to get something free from Disney, I asked for and received a balloon for my DD. I also went ahead and signed over her college fund. I figured it would just be easier that way.
Love it!!
Glad yoy had a good time
