*My First Trip to see the Mouse! TR*

[stacy87]

Cast

Me: Stacy, 23, student Nurse. Living with my parents, little brother and dog just outside Edinburgh. This will be my first trip to WDW (and to the USA!).

My friend: Charlotte, 30, student Nurse. Lives with her hubby and cat in Edinburgh. This is also her first trip to WDW, but she has been to the USA before.


Travelling (Thursday 1st July)

We left at 8.45am to catch our 9.55am train to Manchester. We had some time to grab a few snacks and magazines for our journey. I’m glad to say that the train was on time, and we arrived at Manchester a little earlier than we thought – approximately 2pm. We weren’t flying until tomorrow, so we had a late lunch and dinner in the hotel (Premier Inn), and got an early-ish night.

Day 1

We got up at approximately 4am (so tired at this point!), and got showered and dressed. We grabbed a shuttle bus from the hotel (£5 per open return ticket). We got to the airport at about 6.10am, and headed to the check-in desks. As we had upgraded to fly Premium Class, we had a separate desk from everyone else, so we were checked in within about 5 minutes of getting to the airport! We headed straight to security, and again got through there within no time! We didn’t use the new body scanners at the airport, but a few people before us in the line did. There was no big deal about them, you just stood with your arms out and that was it. We had so much time left at the airport, so had a wander around some of the shops, before grabbing some breakfast in one of the bars. Took a picture of some planes outside the terminal – this isn’t our plane, but just one I took at the time!

It was a long wait, but eventually we were called to go to the departure gate. Again, as we were flying Premium Class, we had priority boarding, so we got on the plane first! I didn’t get a picture of our seats, but we were in row 5 – 2 seats right at the window. We were offered a drink before take off (choice of orange juice or sparkling wine). The seats were very comfortable, and with the extra width and legroom, I was having a ball! I never enjoy taking off, but once we were up in the air I managed to settle down and start to enjoy the flight. We had very little turbulence which I was happy about! There wasn’t a great choice of movies on our outbound flight – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the one that I watched! I don’t remember the others on the outbound flight. Our in-flight meal was lovely! Chicken with Italian vegetables, with a small slice of chocolate cake and cheesecake for dessert, and a couple of chocolates. The flight was only 8 ½ hours, so we landed earlier than we thought – at about 1pm (local time in Florida). Once again, we got through security and customs nice and quick, with no problems at all! We managed to find our way around ok, and found our transfer coach. The journey from the airport only took about 45minutes, as the traffic was pretty light. We were the only 2 people to get off the coach at the Caribbean Beach Resort! Check-in at the resort was very quiet, and it only took a few minutes to do that! We purchased our Disney tickets at this point too, and had them put on our KTTW card. We paid $233 for a 3-day base ticket. Bell Services took us to our room with our bags, where we decided to just dump our bags and head to OPR to get our refillable mugs! Took a few pictures of the room before we left though! We were quite lucky with where we were placed – we were in Martinique, building 21. It was only a couple of minutes walk to OPR and to the bus stop.

At the food court, we got our refillable mugs (just over $13), and filled them up straight away. We had a wander around the gift shop in OPR for a while before heading back to the room and unpacking a little bit. We decided to order a pizza for dinner, and watched some TV while we ate. The service was pretty quick – it took about 30 minutes to get to us. Shortly after dinner, we decided to go for a swim at the Martinique pool. It was extremely hot (a shock to my body!), so it was nice to cool off in the pool!

We got back to the room at around 8pm, and had the TV on in the background whilst we planned our day tomorrow. Our plan was to attend the welcome meeting with our rep @ 8.45am, have a swim and wander around the resort and then head to Seaworld later in the day. We stayed up until about 9.30pm before we decided we were far too tired and went to bed!

Up next, change of plans for tomorrow!

 

[jockey]

Great start

 

[Mrs Doubtfire]

Subscribing to your TR

Sounds like you made really good time with the flight & getting to your hotel - looking forward to reading some more.

 

[PJB71]

Great start, looking forward to hearing about your change of plan

 

[disney_princess_85]

Wow Stacy, you were quick to start your report!

Great first day. I like the look of CBR.

 

[stacy87]

Thanks everyone!!

Wow Stacy, you were quick to start your report!

Great first day. I like the look of CBR.

lol I only have another week off before I'm back at Uni and placement, so figured I should get my TR started sooner rather than later! lol CBR was lovely! We would definitely go back again

 

[Tinkerbell1989]

Just thought I'd pop by and say how I can't wait for the rest of you TR!

I love reading TRs, gets me all worked up and excited about my holiday!!

xxx

 

[suzycute]

Great start to your trip report! Hope you manage to get some more done before your placement starts again!
We stayed at CBR twice before we bought in to DVC and loved it!

 

[Pegasus928]

A nice, relaxing and uneventful start to your holiday.

Looking forward to the next installment

 

[Tinks1984]

Great start Stacy! Looking forward to reading more about your adventures!

 

[Disneytinker]

Great start looking forward to reading more

 

[stacy87]

Day 2

We slept until about 7.30am, and decided to try the food court for breakfast this morning. I had the Mickey waffles with fruit, whilst Charlotte had steak, egg & cheese quesadillas (not sure if I spelt that right!). The waffles were ok – a bit sickly for me though! I couldn’t finish the whole lot. Charlotte thought her breakfast was lovely! After breakfast was over, we headed back to our room to pick up our bags before heading to Customs House for the welcome meeting. We got there at about 8.35am, and waited until almost 9am, but no one showed up! I was a bit disappointed by this, as there was a few things we wanted to ask about travelling (more for confirmation than anything else!).

We decided to take a trip to Downtown Disney to grab some lunch and do some shopping. The bus stop was just a couple of minutes walk from our room, and we only waited 10-15minutes for the bus. We started off at the West Side of DTD, and had a good walk round most of the shops there. I bought my first vinylmation Mickey today! I love the idea of these! There are so many designs, and you don’t know which design you will get – it’s all a mystery! But if you buy one at the Art of Disney store at DTD, you can trade it in for another one if you want to.

I snapped a few pics of the West Side – wanted to let everyone see how quiet it was!

We decided to try the T-Rex cafe for lunch. I took one look at the queue of people outside the place, and was ready to try somewhere else. Charlotte convinced me to see if we could try and get a table, so we headed up to the desk and surprise surprise – we got seated straight away!!! I was very surprised! I’m guessing that there were maybe a few groups waiting to be seated which is why there looked like there was such a big queue. I had the cod & waffle fries (really not any different to what I would eat at home! lol), which was lovely! Charlotte had rotisserie chicken with waffle fries and vegetables. She wasn’t too keen on the waffle fries, but I liked them. The food and service was very good. The bill was about $33 each (including tip). I’d definitely recommend this place! Here are a few pictures of the restaurant, along with food porn for those who like it! lol

After lunch, we headed out and had a good wander round most of the shops in the West Side. By this point, it was getting much busier! I bought myself a couple of pins, as I only came with 4! Thought I should start working on my collection. We eventually got the bus back from DTD at about 3.50pm. The DTD bus heads to Typhoon Lagoon after we were picked up. This was the worst part of the day! When we pulled into Typhoon Lagoon, we wondered what was going on with all the traffic! It seemed to be at a standstill. We ended up getting stuck in all the traffic for over an hour! Some people were saying they had shut the park early due to there being thunder & lightening. I don’t know if this was true or not, but it did seem like everyone was trying to exit the park at the same time! By the time we eventually got back to the resort, we were absolutely knackered, and decided to give Seaworld a miss tonight. We had another day that we could move it to, so we decided to do that.

We decided to have a swim when we got back to the resort, before grabbing dinner in the food court. We both had an individual pizza (only approximately $5 each). The pizza was lovely!! And cheap too, so we were both happy with that!! This was when I noticed that there were so many ducks at the resort! They were so cute! So I snapped a few pics of them.

After we headed out of the food court, it started to absolutely pour of rain! So we decided to stay in our room for the rest of the night, and get a nice early night for tomorrow! Our plan for tomorrow was the Animal Kingdom park! I think I was looking forward to this more than Charlotte – she wasn’t too keen on any the Disney parks to be honest!

Up next – did the Disney magic get the better of Charlotte, and our first park!

 

[Disneytinker]

Enjoying the trip report have subscribed

 

[stacy87]

Day 3

We started off today with breakfast at the food court. This time I went for the simple option – cereal! It was cheap and enough to fill me up for the day! lol We left for the bus stop at about 8.20am. Today, we only waited approximately 5minutes for the bus, which was excellent! It took roughly 20 minutes to get to Animal Kingdom from our resort, and at the park we walked straight in! There was hardly anyone around by the time we got there! We both loved the fact that we were called Princesses by the guy who was doing the bag search that day.

We headed to Expedition Everest first, grabbing a Fastpass for Kali River Rapids on our way.

When we got to EE, they told us it was temporarily closed for maintenance! So instead, we headed to Dinoland to waste time before we could use our Fastpass. We rode Primeval Whirl twice which was good fun! We then rode Dinosaur. There was only a 5 minute wait, which was perfect! The ride was good, we both enjoyed it, but I realised that I don’t really like dark rides! lol Snapped a pic outside the ride – I love how the Dino actually looks like he’s looking at the guy standing there!

We decided not to spend a lot of time in this section of the park, as we felt it was more focused on kids. It was nearly time to use our Fastpasses, so we started to head back to Kali River Rapids. On our way there, we noticed that EE was up and running again! The wait time was only 10 minutes, but it didn’t seem that long when we were actually waiting. It went in very fast! I was nervous at this point, because I don’t really like rollercoasters! lol But I braved it anyway. We both really enjoyed it! We bought the ride photo for this one, but it’s awful!! (what ride photo isn’t?) The worst part is that everyone else in the photo is laughing, and we look terrified! lol

Once that was over we headed straight for KRR. I changed into my flipflops outside the ride, and we got our ponchos on – nothing like being prepared! There was no wait time for this ride, so we got straight on. I was quite pleased to say that I didn’t get too wet on this ride! The only thing we would have changed, is that it could be a longer ride – it only lasted a couple of minutes. But we still enjoyed it. The water was nice and cool! Perfect for another hot day.

We were getting pretty hungry by this point, so we headed over to Africa, as we were hoping to do the Safari later! We decided to go to Tusker House for lunch. It was a buffet lunch ($25.99 per person, including drinks). They weren’t opening for another 15 minutes, so we sat under cover whilst we waited to be called. As we were sitting there were some performers playing music, and a couple of them started grabbing women and kids out of the audience who got up and were dancing with them. It was so sweet seeing them all! Almost as soon as they had finished, it started to pour of rain! Luckily we were under cover so we didn’t get wet at that point. We only waited another few minutes before they started seating us. The options at the buffet were chicken, beef, pork, salads and curry. I didn’t want to eat too much, so I had some chicken with potatoes and salad. Once you were done with your main course, they had a lovely selection of little desserts, so I chose some little chocolate desserts that were so tasty!!
It was still raining when we left TH, but we got our ponchos on and headed for the Safari. We waited approximately 10 minutes for this ride. The safari was really good! I have a video of the safari which I will be uploading to YouTube as soon as I can, so will update with a link to that when it’s done. We were very lucky on our safari, as we got to see the lion! Apparently he doesn’t come out very often, but we got a really good view of him, so we were pretty happy with that!

After the safari, we were starting to feel a bit tired and I think we were both getting a bit grumpy (this was something that I noticed throughout the entire holiday – it was our sign that we needed a break!) We decided to walk through the trails and take a walk around Discovery Island. Got some pictures of the Tree of Life and some of the animals whilst we were there.

We grabbed a couple of bottles of water, and I bought a couple more pins, including an Animal Kingdom pin. The cast member was lovely, and I did my first pin trade with her! I had doubles from when I first got my lanyard set, so I traded one of these for a Japan pin. We eventually started to head out of the park at about 2pm, and our bus was there and waiting at our stop! Perfect timing! When we were on the bus, Charlotte told me how impressed she was by the park. She wasn’t really looking forward to Animal Kingdom, but she ended up loving it!

When we got back to the resort, I called the Pirate Dinner Show that we were due to go to tomorrow, and confirmed our reservations, and got the time. We went for a swim before dinner to refresh – it was lovely! Nice and cool in the pool which was just what we needed. We had dinner at the food court that night – the food court turned out to be a good cheap option for dinner, so we decided that if we were in the resort at dinner time, we would probably just have dinner here before heading to parks later on. After dinner, I bought another Vinylmation Mickey:

I absolutely loved these!! Does anyone know if you can buy them online too?

We grabbed another swim after dinner, before heading back to our room to get changed. As it was the 4th July, instead of heading to the parks (we were told they would be seriously busy that night!) we wandered to OPR and grabbed a seat where we could see the fireworks at Epcot, and then the fireworks at Hollywood Studios. It was a lovely sight – and very loud!!

We got back to the room and planned out our day for tomorrow. We planned to go to Islands of Adventure tomorrow. I had a map that I had printed from the internet with me, so we went through that and scored off any rides we definitely didn’t want to do – there weren’t many! And we had the Pirate Dinner Adventure tomorrow night – I wasn’t looking forward to this that much, as I thought we would both be far too tired for it! But I was really looking forward to tomorrow, and our visit to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

Up next, Islands of Adventure – a very busy IOA!

 

[Tinks1984]

Another great report Stacy! I'd love to see a photo of your Vinylmation collection I didn't understand them much when we were there in May, but it'd be nice to see what you've ended up collecting!

 

[stacy87]

Another great report Stacy! I'd love to see a photo of your Vinylmation collection I didn't understand them much when we were there in May, but it'd be nice to see what you've ended up collecting!

Thanks tinks!! I've only got 3 of them so far, but if I can get them online, I will definitely be buying more I just think they're cute! lol

 

[stacy87]

Day 4

Apologies for the delay in getting this day up – it’s been a pretty busy week so far! Anyways, on we go!

We started off today with breakfast at the food court again. We had booked the shared shuttle service from Mears for today, so we were picked up at 9.35am along with another family from the resort. The shuttle took about 25minutes to get us to Universal/IOA, and cost $18 per person for the round trip.

With this being our first time at Universal/IOA, I actually found it quite confusing actually getting to the parks! I don’t know if this was a typical thing for anyone who was new to these parks? We had to wait in the queues to collect our tickets (we had a pre-paid Orlando Flexticket to collect). The queues were huge! But it took us about half an hour to get to the ticket window, which probably wasn’t too bad – I thought it would have been much longer.

Tickets in hand, we headed into the park. We spotted the Hulk coaster when we started into the park and when I took a look I was not looking forward to it!! lol The way they come shooting out the tunnel was just like to me! Got my photo taken in front of the coaster:

We started through Dr Zeuss first – we didn’t really spend much time here at all, just really amazed by the buildings here. Everything was so bright and colourful, it was lovely! But neither myself or Charlotte are into Dr Zeuss, so we didn’t do any rides here. We then headed to the Lost Continent, which was just stunning!

We wanted to go on Poseidon’s Fury, but there wasn’t a show until later on, so we decided to come back to it later in the day and continue heading through the park. We had our first frozen drink here before heading off. I had an orange frozen drink which was lovely!! And was just what we needed to cool us off! I definitely recommend frozen drinks whenever you can get them!

It took no time for us to get to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! This was the part we were both looking forward to the most, and I have to say it did not disappoint! When we got to the entrance of this section, the crowds started to build even more, and it was packed! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people.

We started off our Harry Potter journey in Zonko’s!

The minute you walked in here, it was just back to back people! lol You literally had to push through people to get anywhere. But we did manage to get round the whole shop, and it was joined onto HoneyDukes, so we had a wander around there too. We didn’t buy anything in the shops, as it was so busy! But they were awesome!

After we passed the shops, we ended up at the Hog’s Head! We were kinda hungry by this point, so we decided to try it for lunch. It looked busier than it was here, and once again we didn’t wait long to be served (approximately 10 minutes). I ordered fish & chips and lemonade, which cost roughly $15. (You can tell I am a fussy eater can’t you! lol) Anyway, the meal was lovely! Very tasty. Charlotte tried a butter beer but she thought it was awful! lol Not like proper beer – it seemed to have a vanilla taste which she didn’t like at all.

We left Hog’s Head feeling energised and refreshed, ready for what else was to come! We headed round to Hogwart’s Castle, which is simply amazing!!

The wait time was 2 hours for the ride inside the castle, but we had to do it! We noticed there was the tester seat outside, so Charlotte jumped in first. She was absolutely gutted when it didn’t fit : ( I wasn’t going to on by myself, so we had to leave that ride. Instead, we went for Flight of the Hippogriffin:

This is such a tame ride compared to others, but we both really enjoyed it! The wait time was 45minutes, but you have all the lovely scenery to look at whilst you wait, which is nice – including Haggrid’s hut:

Once we had finished on this ride, we decided we should head onto the next “Island”, so we started on to Jurassic Park. I love Jurassic Park, so was really looking forward to this part too!

We went on the Jurassic Park River Adventure first. The wait was 30minutes, which we were happy with. Whilst we were waiting I changed into my flipflops and we put our ponchos on. We got sat in the front row with 3 kids, which I hate! I don’t know why, but I hate being in the front row! lol The drop on this ride seemed huge!!! It just seemed to keep on going! But it was another great ride. We didn’t get too wet on this one, just mainly our legs and feet, so we couldn’t complain! We then headed round to the Discovery Centre, which had a Burger King style grab & go upstairs, and some fun stuff downstairs. We headed down, and did the Dino DNA. I don’t know if anyone has done this before, but you select what type of Dinosaur you want to be, they take a “DNA sample” and do a “brain scan” before they show you the result of your new Dinosaur with your brain and DNA! lol

This was mine:

And this was Charlotte’s:

For some reason, we found the pictures absolutely hilarious and we were laughing for ages! People actually started giving us funny looks as they were passing us! lol We did another couple of things downstairs before heading into the next section of the park. We passed over the bridge with Rip Saw Falls underneath, and watched the ride a few times. We chose not to go on this ride at this point, as we would have been completely soaked!!! It looked great, but we didn’t want to walk round the rest of the park wet!

Next up was the Super Hero island. We headed for the Hulk coaster (really wasn’t looking forward to it, but didn’t say anything!). The wait time was only 30 minutes, which I thought was good considering it was such a popular ride! There was another tester seat outside which Charlotte tried, and once again it was bad news (not bad news for me – I was actually quite relieved!). But I think she was gutted at this point! Anyway, we decided to wait for the Spider Man ride. I wasn’t really so keen on this ride, but since Charlotte wanted to go on it, I went for it. The wait time was an hour, and by the time we got on the ride my feet and back were killing me - not good! I am pleased to say that the ride was awesome! We had a great time on it – I’ve never really seen the appeal of 3D rides or movies, but this proved me wrong. I would definitely do this again, and would recommend it to anyone – even if you don’t really like Spider Man.

I didn’t realise that was us at the other end of the park until Charlotte told me we were going the wrong way! lol We still wanted to do Poseidon’s Fury, so we headed back to the Lost Continent. We only had 10 minutes to wait for the next show, so we sat outside for a few minutes before heading in. The scenery as you enter this ride is really lovely. Charlotte wasn’t so keen on this ride once we finished, but I loved it! It was a guided “tour” through Poseidon’s temple with our tour guide Taylor. We end up waking a demon and being trapped in the temple, before watching a fantastic finale between the demon and Poseidon. Great for kids and families (big kids too!), and I would say it’s a must do for me.

Time was pressing on, so we had booked our shuttle to pick us up at about 4.45pm (I think?). We headed back down to the pick-up point. At this point, it was lovely to have a seat while we were waiting for the shuttle! The shuttle was running a bit late, and eventually picked us up at 5.15pm. I was starting to panic a bit that we would be running late for our dinner show that we had booked, as we were to be there between 7-7.30pm. We still had time to get showered and changed when we got back to the resort, and booked a taxi for the show, which picked us up at 6.40pm. The show was on Carrier Drive, so it took us about 30 minutes to get there and costs $26 for the taxi. On arrival, we checked in at the desk outside, got our tickets and upgraded our main course to chicken breast (an extra $3.99). When we got inside, it was like a bar with a huge dancefloor! We both decided to go for a cocktail tonight (I can’t even remember what mine was called, but it was blue and was very tasty! lol). We got to keep the souvenir goblet that the cocktail came in, which I love! I’ve used it so many times already since I got home There were some pre-show appetisers including chicken pasta and some other chicken and salad options. I went for a small portion of the chicken pasta which was lovely! Then we had the pre-show entertainment which was basically the cast performing, getting us introduced to them all, and starting off the plot – a princess and gypsy girl are taken hostage on a pirate ship by some bad pirates! lol Sounds very cheesy, I know! The place where we actually ate dinner was stunning and huge!!! Each section of the room had a colour-coded pirate, and every time you heard their name or seen them on the ship, your section had to make as much noise as possible! I had read a mixture of good and bad reviews of this show before we went, but I really, really enjoyed it! It was great fun for everybody – the kids get involved too – they actually get certain roles in the show. The food was soooo tasty! Salad or soup to start, with our chicken breast main which was served with rice, roast potatoes and a little bit of pork, and then ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert. You also got a choice of beer or cola with your meal – we stuck with cola. After the main show, everyone headed back through to the bar area where some of the cast members started off the Buccaneer Disco! By the time we got out to the bar, all the kids were up dancing in the middle of the floor with all the parents video-taping – it was so sweet! I’d definitely recommend this show to families and big kids like me. It’s called the Pirate Dinner Adventure, and I think it cost us £29 per person when we booked our holiday with First Choice. I think it was worth the money!

Unfortunately my camera had ran out of battery tonight, so I didn’t get any pictures of the show

I think we eventually got home at about 10pm, and just got changed into our PJ’s and got our bags ready for the morning.

Tomorrow, we plan to go to Epcot – this is the park I am looking forward to the most! I am looking forward to doing the Pick a Pearl in Japan.

Up next, a long day at Epcot and a nice surprise in Japan for me!

 

[BethEJo]

Great TR so far - sounds like you are having a great first trip!!

Glad to see you had a great time in IOA too. Can't wait for the rest

 

[Mrs Doubtfire]

Enjoying your TR. It looks so busy at WWOHP - I don't think I could stand been in a shop that crowded!

 

[stacy87]

Enjoying your TR. It looks so busy at WWOHP - I don't think I could stand been in a shop that crowded!

It was so bad! It wasn't so bad walking through the streets, but in the shops it was far too crowded for my liking!