soccerdad72
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2012
- Messages
- 7,775
This will likely be pretty short (-ish), but I’m laying in bed, recovering from the 70,000 steps or so my wife and I did over the last three days. We have a relaxing day today before we start the rest of our trip (more on that in a second). I’ll try to hit the highlights of our 3 day whirlwind.
Background: This trip was just me (Steve) and my wife (Nicole). Both of us are 52 and Nicole is retiring this Dec, partially the reason for the trip. Her firm is having a partner retirement gala on Thursday at their training center in Lake Nona, so they paid for our flights to/from MCO. And we had some expiring Vistana points, thus the first time we’ve ever stayed offsite (Vistana Resort Villas).
We flew in early Saturday, Nov 1st. Got the rental car quickly, grabbed a quick breakfast and a few things for the week and checked into the resort. We knew the room wouldn’t be ready, but we had packed a bag with bathing suits and t shirts, so changed quickly and went to the pool for the rest of the day.
Room was actually ready pretty early (1pm), so we got the bags up to the room, went back to the pool for a little longer, then got changed for dinner. Went to Disney Springs, did a little shopping, and had a nice meal at Wine Bar George
. It was nice to be able to order a couple different small plates to share and not feel like you overate too much. Of course, that was blown when we hit Ghirardelli later for a sundae. 
. Again, we shared, so it was only half guilty 
. We walked around the outlet mall for a while afterwards and heading home for the night.
Nov. 3 - Rope dropped at MK that morning. Getting to TTC was a nightmare with tons of detours thanks to the half marathon that morning, but we gave ourselves a lot of time and still made it into the park well before 9. Beelined to Tron, which by the time we got there said 60 minute wait. 30 minutes in, just before we entered the main building, it went down.
. We stuck around another 30 minutes or so, chatting with some other couples in line, then gave up at 10am. We went over to Space Mountain, which was only about a 20 minute wait, and when we got off, I saw that Tron was just back up. We ended up waiting a little over 30 minutes the second time. Great ride, but not worth over an hour wait.
I forget what we rode after that, but we got an early lunch at Columbia Harbor House (split a lobster roll - you may be sensing a theme on our dining
) and headed to Epcot for our 1:30 VQ on Guardians. Loved Guardians - I knew we’d be trying for another VQ later in the trip. We spent most of the afternoon at Epcot, perusing the Food and Wine offerings, spending a really long, somewhat annoying, wait for Remy, along with knocking out most of the rest of the attractions in Future World. Headed back to MK to finish the night with Big Thunder and Dumbo, before heading out just as fireworks started (beating the rush to the monorail to TTC). A light day, only 22,000 steps
Nov 4 - This was our LLMP day. Started early at AK, rope drop again. A really quick day here, as we just tapped into Tough to be a Bug, exited the line, and went over to ride Everest a couple times on standby line (walk on) while working on HS LLs. Got out of AK and back to the car by 8:30 or so and was in HS in time to pretty much rope drop there too. Not something I’d recommend to everyone, but we were feeling energized that morning. Pretty early that morning, I was able to snag a LL for SDD, which was the ultimate goal for the day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 8:05pm. We did pretty much everything in the park that day, attraction wise(highly recommend single rider line for Rise, BTW) and late afternoon, decided to take the Skyliner over to Epcot for a few hours as well. Walked back over to HS (got caught in a classic Florida 5 minute downpour on the bridge by Swan/Dolphin
), but got back just in time for the last Beauty and the Beast show of the day. By the time we got to our LL time for SDD, we were pretty beat. Loved the ride, though - it was our first time doing it. We were always turned off by the long queues for it in past trips. So the LL was well worth it. A 28,000 step day.
Nov 5 - Final day in the parks. You guessed it, rope drop time at AK. This time it was Flights of Passage we were aiming for. Small wrinkle, however, I ended up getting BG 14 for Guardians, so with an expected callback time of right around 9am, we weren’t going to be able to linger around AK like we had hoped. At that point, we decided to do a 4 park day, just for the heck of it. Pandora only ended up being around a 30 minute wait, so we were back in the car a little after 9 and into Epcot close to 9:30, making it to our VQ time with a few minutes to spare. After Guardians, we decided to do the walk over to HS again to hit Rise one more time (again, single rider line rocked), then make our way back to Epcot for lunch. After that, it was time to head to MK to complete our 4 park voyage. Did a couple rides in MK, checked out some of the Christmas decorations that were starting to get put up, and went back to Epcot to finish up the day. Nicole wanted one last sweet potato mousse (her favorite from F&W), I wanted a Maui IPA, and we ended our day early (6-ish) and came back to the resort to rest our legs and start laundry and packing for the rest of our week. Another 28,000 steps 
Ok, so this wasn’t that short of a TR. Hope you enjoyed it.
Background: This trip was just me (Steve) and my wife (Nicole). Both of us are 52 and Nicole is retiring this Dec, partially the reason for the trip. Her firm is having a partner retirement gala on Thursday at their training center in Lake Nona, so they paid for our flights to/from MCO. And we had some expiring Vistana points, thus the first time we’ve ever stayed offsite (Vistana Resort Villas).
We flew in early Saturday, Nov 1st. Got the rental car quickly, grabbed a quick breakfast and a few things for the week and checked into the resort. We knew the room wouldn’t be ready, but we had packed a bag with bathing suits and t shirts, so changed quickly and went to the pool for the rest of the day.
Room was actually ready pretty early (1pm), so we got the bags up to the room, went back to the pool for a little longer, then got changed for dinner. Went to Disney Springs, did a little shopping, and had a nice meal at Wine Bar George
. It was nice to be able to order a couple different small plates to share and not feel like you overate too much. Of course, that was blown when we hit Ghirardelli later for a sundae. . Again, we shared, so it was only half guilty . We walked around the outlet mall for a while afterwards and heading home for the night. Nov. 3 - Rope dropped at MK that morning. Getting to TTC was a nightmare with tons of detours thanks to the half marathon that morning, but we gave ourselves a lot of time and still made it into the park well before 9. Beelined to Tron, which by the time we got there said 60 minute wait. 30 minutes in, just before we entered the main building, it went down.
. We stuck around another 30 minutes or so, chatting with some other couples in line, then gave up at 10am. We went over to Space Mountain, which was only about a 20 minute wait, and when we got off, I saw that Tron was just back up. We ended up waiting a little over 30 minutes the second time. Great ride, but not worth over an hour wait.I forget what we rode after that, but we got an early lunch at Columbia Harbor House (split a lobster roll - you may be sensing a theme on our dining
) and headed to Epcot for our 1:30 VQ on Guardians. Loved Guardians - I knew we’d be trying for another VQ later in the trip. We spent most of the afternoon at Epcot, perusing the Food and Wine offerings, spending a really long, somewhat annoying, wait for Remy, along with knocking out most of the rest of the attractions in Future World. Headed back to MK to finish the night with Big Thunder and Dumbo, before heading out just as fireworks started (beating the rush to the monorail to TTC). A light day, only 22,000 steps Nov 4 - This was our LLMP day. Started early at AK, rope drop again. A really quick day here, as we just tapped into Tough to be a Bug, exited the line, and went over to ride Everest a couple times on standby line (walk on) while working on HS LLs. Got out of AK and back to the car by 8:30 or so and was in HS in time to pretty much rope drop there too. Not something I’d recommend to everyone, but we were feeling energized that morning. Pretty early that morning, I was able to snag a LL for SDD, which was the ultimate goal for the day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 8:05pm. We did pretty much everything in the park that day, attraction wise(highly recommend single rider line for Rise, BTW) and late afternoon, decided to take the Skyliner over to Epcot for a few hours as well. Walked back over to HS (got caught in a classic Florida 5 minute downpour on the bridge by Swan/Dolphin
), but got back just in time for the last Beauty and the Beast show of the day. By the time we got to our LL time for SDD, we were pretty beat. Loved the ride, though - it was our first time doing it. We were always turned off by the long queues for it in past trips. So the LL was well worth it. A 28,000 step day. Nov 5 - Final day in the parks. You guessed it, rope drop time at AK. This time it was Flights of Passage we were aiming for. Small wrinkle, however, I ended up getting BG 14 for Guardians, so with an expected callback time of right around 9am, we weren’t going to be able to linger around AK like we had hoped. At that point, we decided to do a 4 park day, just for the heck of it. Pandora only ended up being around a 30 minute wait, so we were back in the car a little after 9 and into Epcot close to 9:30, making it to our VQ time with a few minutes to spare. After Guardians, we decided to do the walk over to HS again to hit Rise one more time (again, single rider line rocked
), then make our way back to Epcot for lunch. After that, it was time to head to MK to complete our 4 park voyage. Did a couple rides in MK, checked out some of the Christmas decorations that were starting to get put up, and went back to Epcot to finish up the day. Nicole wanted one last sweet potato mousse (her favorite from F&W), I wanted a Maui IPA, and we ended our day early (6-ish) and came back to the resort to rest our legs and start laundry and packing for the rest of our week. Another 28,000 steps Ok, so this wasn’t that short of a TR
. Hope you enjoyed it.
