SunnySeattle
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2013
- Messages
- 2
My 12-year-old son and I took a mother-son spring break trip to WDW April 13-18. We live on the West coast and have been to Disneyland and CA Adventure before, but wanted to try the "other disney".
My plan was that we'd be in the parks from open to close so the resort didn't matter, so we chose POP Century to keep costs down and to take advantage of the on-site transportation (which was great!). I thought POP was fine, especially for the price which was around $100 per night. We did online check-in and requested a ground floor room close to transportation. We got an 80's room in building 9 which was probably the closest room to the busses in the entire resort. I didn't care about being close to the cafeteria. The midday activities around the pool were fun, and I really enjoyed the music they played around the resort. The concierge and staff were all super friendly. My only complaint was the chaos of the cafeteria. It was super packed but 1/2 of the drink stations were closed off. It also appeared that the confusion around the dining plan caused backups in the checkout lines. We didn't do the dining plan. I thought it was strange that dessert and soda was included with every meal. Anyway, all in all I thought POP Century was a great value.
We bought 4-day park hopper tickets with the water parks and fun add-on. My plan going in was to have a primary park for each of the 4 days which we'd visit in the morning until after lunch, then take a midday break and hop to another park for the evening. We stuck to that plan on Day 1, going to Hollywood Studios in the AM, swimming at Pop until 4ish, then going to Magic Kingdom from 5-9ish. As it turns out, my son's favorite part of that day was swimming at Pop. This was to be the theme of the whole week. I was in park commando mode, wanting to maximize fast passes and fit as much in as we could, but he was perfectly content swimming at the hotel or playing unlimited foozeball and ping pong by the pool. He also really enjoyed the fact that he had charging privileges on his card key and could "pay" for snacks or souvenirs himself. The small things, right?
We did make it to all 4 parks, although we only spent a couple of hours in Animal Kingdom and not much more than that in Hollywood Studios. We conquered Epcot and Magic Kingdom, but overall we spent much more time outside of the parks than I had expected.
Hollywood Studios: We got there at park open and went on Tower of Terror first, and it was great! Fun ride to start our vacation with. Next was Rockin Rollercoaster, which was just OK. Star Tours and Toy Story Mania (fast pass) were great fun! We walked on to Great Movie Ride (fun) and had an early lunch at Sci-Fi Dine-In. By the time we got out of lunch (noon) the park was crowded and my son wanted to go swimming, so we did. When we left I fully intended to be back one evening to see shows and Fantasmic, but we never made it back there.
Magic Kingdom: Nothing like first entering the park and walking down main street with all the sights and sounds and smells with the castle up ahead. Since we had recently been to Disneyland, many of the rides here were repeats and we enjoyed comparing which was better - DL or WDW (an even split, I'd say). We had a great time, but left as the crowds were forming for the evening parade and wishes - just too crowded to be enjoyable, plus we knew we'd be back later in the week.
Epcot: Our best day was at Epcot, where my son had a blast with all the hands-on educational stuff. I was surprised that he really enjoyed what I considered to be kind of lame rides but thought the roller coasters were just meh. His favorite ride in Epcot was Spaceship Earth and his least favorite was Test Track. Weird, huh? Oh, and he really liked the 20-year-old Ellen and Bill Nye film/ride about energy. He could have spent all day inside Innoventions. Walking around the World showcase was fun but felt crowded and dodging all the scooters was more effort than it was worth. (more on that later)
Animal Kingdom: We got there at park open and LOVED the safari ride, Everest, Dinosaur and the Lion King show. I enjoyed the theming and would have liked to explore more but this is where my son hit the wall with the crowds and the heat. We found a shaded bench and sat for 15 minutes and watched family after family walk/roll past us *****ing at each other and kids crying and parents looking frazzled that we decided to call it a day and went back to the hotel for a swim. I was frustrated to have burned a day of park tickets for 2 hours at AK, but decided not to push it. The point of the vacation was to enjoy ourselves and we weren't enjoying ourselves at AK. After a midday break, we did use one of our ticket add-ons to go to Disney Quest, which my son LOVED. Unlimited video games. This park extra was better than the reviews had lead me to believe. I liked it. The build your own roller coaster was fantastic, and I had fun showing my kiddo the old-school video games I used to play like Qbert and Missile Command. Day salvaged.
Blizzard Beach: We got there at park open and without even dipping our toes in the water, went straight to the Summit Plummet which was insanely tall and scary. My son loved it and I am proud I didn't chicken out but never again! The rest of the water slides there are super fun, as is the lazy river. Great time there. We then hopped back to Disney Quest for more unlimited video games and to get out of the sun.
We spent our final day (Thursday) back at Magic Kingdom and the difference in crowd level between a Sunday and Thursday was notable. We got there at 9 (park opened for EMH at 8am) and walked on to Space Mt and the longest wait we had all day was 15 minutes for Splash Mt. We were in the front row for Splash Mt and got soaked but laughed the whole ride. We had such a fun day all around.
Observations:
1. Wait times for rides were very low the week we were there, especially if you used fast passes. However, the parks felt crowded. It was almost impossible to stroll and enjoy the theming and scenery because you had to focus on avoiding scooters, strollers and just the mass of bodies walking all different directions. And this was on days when the crowd levels were only 5 and 6.
2. The number of obese people is just astounding. I don't know if this is unique to WDW or if this is just how America is now, but it was quite eye-opening. What was particularly notable was that the culture there seemed to celebrate being unhealthy by serving huge portions, including dessert at every meal in the dining plan and providing scooters for people who were too large to walk. I get that it's vacation and I'm glad people can enjoy themselves but some of the things I saw, like a 7-year-old boy who probably weighed 180 lb. doubling fisting a turkey leg and an ice cream cone, made me uncomfortable.
3. The "cast members" were just delightful. I felt like we got great service everywhere we went and the workers were so patient and seemed genuinely happy. I was surprised by how much more enjoyable this made our vacation.
4. I loved being able to charge everything with my "key to the world" and use resort transportation, not to mention having any purchases delivered to our resort. I was unencumbered with a bag and just carried what I needed in my pockets - iPhone, lip balm, key to the world.
5. On balance, I saw more unhappy kids than happy ones. I loved seeing the joyful reactions when little kids saw their favorite characters, but those were largely outnumbered by parents yelling at them to have fun and the kids crying that they wanted to go home. It's easy to build up a disney vacation and drop a ton of cash and want to get the most out of it - that was my instinct too - but I didn't see a lot of families actually having fun together. I saw a lot of people stressing out about getting the right fast passes and trying to use every last dining plan credit and rushing from thing to thing, but not a lot of just enjoying the moment.
If I had it to do over again - first, I WOULD still take this Disney World trip with my son. But I would downgrade to 3-day park hoppers and allow for more non-park time. We loved downtown Disney and riding the monorail to check out other resorts. Although I loved POP Century and thought it was a great value, I'd probably upgrade to a resort that had a better pool and better restaurant and a coffee maker in the room because we did end up spending more downtime there than I expected. Transportation was a great benefit that I wouldn't want to lose by staying off-site. I would also come this same week - spring break crowds had dropped off but the weather was good.
It was a great bonding trip with my son and I am thankful for the one on one time I got to spend with him. I love that when we got home he pulled out the old Finding Nemo DVD, which he hadn't looked at in years. He's old enough that he'll remember this trip years from now when he brings his own kids.
My plan was that we'd be in the parks from open to close so the resort didn't matter, so we chose POP Century to keep costs down and to take advantage of the on-site transportation (which was great!). I thought POP was fine, especially for the price which was around $100 per night. We did online check-in and requested a ground floor room close to transportation. We got an 80's room in building 9 which was probably the closest room to the busses in the entire resort. I didn't care about being close to the cafeteria. The midday activities around the pool were fun, and I really enjoyed the music they played around the resort. The concierge and staff were all super friendly. My only complaint was the chaos of the cafeteria. It was super packed but 1/2 of the drink stations were closed off. It also appeared that the confusion around the dining plan caused backups in the checkout lines. We didn't do the dining plan. I thought it was strange that dessert and soda was included with every meal. Anyway, all in all I thought POP Century was a great value.
We bought 4-day park hopper tickets with the water parks and fun add-on. My plan going in was to have a primary park for each of the 4 days which we'd visit in the morning until after lunch, then take a midday break and hop to another park for the evening. We stuck to that plan on Day 1, going to Hollywood Studios in the AM, swimming at Pop until 4ish, then going to Magic Kingdom from 5-9ish. As it turns out, my son's favorite part of that day was swimming at Pop. This was to be the theme of the whole week. I was in park commando mode, wanting to maximize fast passes and fit as much in as we could, but he was perfectly content swimming at the hotel or playing unlimited foozeball and ping pong by the pool. He also really enjoyed the fact that he had charging privileges on his card key and could "pay" for snacks or souvenirs himself. The small things, right?
We did make it to all 4 parks, although we only spent a couple of hours in Animal Kingdom and not much more than that in Hollywood Studios. We conquered Epcot and Magic Kingdom, but overall we spent much more time outside of the parks than I had expected.
Hollywood Studios: We got there at park open and went on Tower of Terror first, and it was great! Fun ride to start our vacation with. Next was Rockin Rollercoaster, which was just OK. Star Tours and Toy Story Mania (fast pass) were great fun! We walked on to Great Movie Ride (fun) and had an early lunch at Sci-Fi Dine-In. By the time we got out of lunch (noon) the park was crowded and my son wanted to go swimming, so we did. When we left I fully intended to be back one evening to see shows and Fantasmic, but we never made it back there.
Magic Kingdom: Nothing like first entering the park and walking down main street with all the sights and sounds and smells with the castle up ahead. Since we had recently been to Disneyland, many of the rides here were repeats and we enjoyed comparing which was better - DL or WDW (an even split, I'd say). We had a great time, but left as the crowds were forming for the evening parade and wishes - just too crowded to be enjoyable, plus we knew we'd be back later in the week.
Epcot: Our best day was at Epcot, where my son had a blast with all the hands-on educational stuff. I was surprised that he really enjoyed what I considered to be kind of lame rides but thought the roller coasters were just meh. His favorite ride in Epcot was Spaceship Earth and his least favorite was Test Track. Weird, huh? Oh, and he really liked the 20-year-old Ellen and Bill Nye film/ride about energy. He could have spent all day inside Innoventions. Walking around the World showcase was fun but felt crowded and dodging all the scooters was more effort than it was worth. (more on that later)
Animal Kingdom: We got there at park open and LOVED the safari ride, Everest, Dinosaur and the Lion King show. I enjoyed the theming and would have liked to explore more but this is where my son hit the wall with the crowds and the heat. We found a shaded bench and sat for 15 minutes and watched family after family walk/roll past us *****ing at each other and kids crying and parents looking frazzled that we decided to call it a day and went back to the hotel for a swim. I was frustrated to have burned a day of park tickets for 2 hours at AK, but decided not to push it. The point of the vacation was to enjoy ourselves and we weren't enjoying ourselves at AK. After a midday break, we did use one of our ticket add-ons to go to Disney Quest, which my son LOVED. Unlimited video games. This park extra was better than the reviews had lead me to believe. I liked it. The build your own roller coaster was fantastic, and I had fun showing my kiddo the old-school video games I used to play like Qbert and Missile Command. Day salvaged.
Blizzard Beach: We got there at park open and without even dipping our toes in the water, went straight to the Summit Plummet which was insanely tall and scary. My son loved it and I am proud I didn't chicken out but never again! The rest of the water slides there are super fun, as is the lazy river. Great time there. We then hopped back to Disney Quest for more unlimited video games and to get out of the sun.
We spent our final day (Thursday) back at Magic Kingdom and the difference in crowd level between a Sunday and Thursday was notable. We got there at 9 (park opened for EMH at 8am) and walked on to Space Mt and the longest wait we had all day was 15 minutes for Splash Mt. We were in the front row for Splash Mt and got soaked but laughed the whole ride. We had such a fun day all around.
Observations:
1. Wait times for rides were very low the week we were there, especially if you used fast passes. However, the parks felt crowded. It was almost impossible to stroll and enjoy the theming and scenery because you had to focus on avoiding scooters, strollers and just the mass of bodies walking all different directions. And this was on days when the crowd levels were only 5 and 6.
2. The number of obese people is just astounding. I don't know if this is unique to WDW or if this is just how America is now, but it was quite eye-opening. What was particularly notable was that the culture there seemed to celebrate being unhealthy by serving huge portions, including dessert at every meal in the dining plan and providing scooters for people who were too large to walk. I get that it's vacation and I'm glad people can enjoy themselves but some of the things I saw, like a 7-year-old boy who probably weighed 180 lb. doubling fisting a turkey leg and an ice cream cone, made me uncomfortable.
3. The "cast members" were just delightful. I felt like we got great service everywhere we went and the workers were so patient and seemed genuinely happy. I was surprised by how much more enjoyable this made our vacation.
4. I loved being able to charge everything with my "key to the world" and use resort transportation, not to mention having any purchases delivered to our resort. I was unencumbered with a bag and just carried what I needed in my pockets - iPhone, lip balm, key to the world.
5. On balance, I saw more unhappy kids than happy ones. I loved seeing the joyful reactions when little kids saw their favorite characters, but those were largely outnumbered by parents yelling at them to have fun and the kids crying that they wanted to go home. It's easy to build up a disney vacation and drop a ton of cash and want to get the most out of it - that was my instinct too - but I didn't see a lot of families actually having fun together. I saw a lot of people stressing out about getting the right fast passes and trying to use every last dining plan credit and rushing from thing to thing, but not a lot of just enjoying the moment.
If I had it to do over again - first, I WOULD still take this Disney World trip with my son. But I would downgrade to 3-day park hoppers and allow for more non-park time. We loved downtown Disney and riding the monorail to check out other resorts. Although I loved POP Century and thought it was a great value, I'd probably upgrade to a resort that had a better pool and better restaurant and a coffee maker in the room because we did end up spending more downtime there than I expected. Transportation was a great benefit that I wouldn't want to lose by staying off-site. I would also come this same week - spring break crowds had dropped off but the weather was good.
It was a great bonding trip with my son and I am thankful for the one on one time I got to spend with him. I love that when we got home he pulled out the old Finding Nemo DVD, which he hadn't looked at in years. He's old enough that he'll remember this trip years from now when he brings his own kids.
