Our 1st time to WDW

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Hello all and thank you for reading our trip report. This trip was planned and executed on very short notice, a spur of the moment, irrational decision. My daughter and I are very happy that it went off without a hitch. The trip was planned and paid for on January 19th, our travel dates: 2/20 through 2/28. With that small window, we were able to pull together Flights, hotel room, meal plan, park tickets and ADR's (even Cindy's Royal Table). Out the door package price with airfare: around 2900 bucks for my daughter Hannah and I. We had never been to WDW, but had enjoyed Disneyland trips every year. Here is the tale of the tape:

I am prone to wild, spur of the moment,travel plans. Income tax refund,and considerable free time proved to be the perfect storm. It is wise to have your Visa and open spaces on your calender ready if you want to hang out with me. My daughter's 6th birthday was around the corner, and we had talked about what she wanted to do to celebrate. She wanted to go to Disneyland again, but we had already visited in December, so I floated the Idea of WDW. what 5 year old would say no to that, right? So inquiries were made online, and in the space of about 90 minutes I had an 8 night stay at the ASMu resort, 2 non stop round trip tickets on Delta, the QSDP, La Nouba tickets, and ADR's for Planet Hollywood, Rose and Crown, Cindy's, Shula's, Kona Cafe, Sci-fi diner, Tony's town square, Marrakesh, and breakfast at 1900 parkfare.

I was a little surprised at how easy it was to get the ADR's I wanted for the days and times I had in mind with such a small window of time to get these done. It is recommended to plan these out 90 to 180 days in advance. I am sure that alot of my luck came from the fact that it wasn't going to be very busy when we visited. More info on our experiences with ADR's to come.

After the rooms and dining reservations were made I went out and purchased the 2010 unofficial guide to review and make adjustments to my reservations to line up with my park visits. It was complicated lining up park visits with dining reservations, and making sure the crowd levels were low enough to make each visit go as smoothly as possible, but it was very rewarding work. Yes, folks I jump in to things blindly, then once commited, start planning on the fly. What can I say, it works for me

 

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10 days before arrival, I check in online in order to speed up the process upon arrival. We had made going to Downtown Disney for dinner at Planet Hollywood and then the 9 PM showing of La Nouba for our 1st day's activities and I was worried that we may be cutting this close. I requested a room on the 1st floor and a fridge. During this time I was also doing research on the disboards and came across a thread for a fridge swap at the ASMU resort, I asked about joining in and to my luck, there was a spot available for my dates!! Disney rents there fridge for around ten bucks a day. This move saved my 90 bucks. I was loving it!!!

More research on the Disboards, and I found I could order bottled water from Costco and have it delivered to my room! I also found that I could purchase a stroller from amazon, and have it shipped to the room for 20 dollars less then it would have cost me to rent a stroller from Disney!! It pays to search the boards, people!! I am very grateful to all who have posted their advise and experiences for others to learn from, it really helped this trip to go smoothly.

 

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The 10 days before our departure went by so slowly and there was very little sleep as I would be up until 3 or 4 in the morning reading the boards, other trip reports and surfing the web for any tidbit of information to apply to our trip. Then, suddenly, our travel day was here and we found ourselves at the Airport!!

 

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4 hours from SLC to MCO, luckily, our Delta flight had personal video screens at every seat and it really made the time go by quickly. In no time at all we were at the Orlando airport taking pictures with Goofy outside the Disney store.

 

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We took this time to look around for an autograph book in case we ran into any characters between the TSA screening area and the Magical Express waiting area. With our DME vouchers in hand, we made our way to the processing area, there was maybe 40 other guests therer with us. They seperated us by resort and we filed into the individual lines marked 1 through 8. We were in line 7 for our resort (ASMu). There was one other family in front of us, and after a very short wait (maybe 2 minutes) we were allowed to board our bus. We were told that the bus would stop at Coronado Springs 1st then All Star Sports, then Music. We were pretty happy to leave the airport and the whole process from gate to resort was just over an hour.

We rode in a standard yellow Mears shuttle bus. which did not matter to us so long as it got us to the hotel. our bus driver was pretty nice, he cracked jokes on the way to the resort.

 

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Once at the resort, we went directly to desk reserved for those who checked in online, we could have gone to the regular line, as there was nt very many people checking in with us, and it turned out to be a recurring theme throughout our stay!!! No lines!! Ever! the entire stay. it was like we had the whole place to ourselves. While we were at the front desk, I mention that I was declining the earlier arrangement to rent a fridge, and he showed me where baggage services was located, so that I could pick up our shared fridge. When they wheeled it out, My daughter and I looked at each other and laughed out loud!! It was a small dorm fridge like we expected, but the front door was decorated in red and black Micky stickers!!! My daughter really got a kick out of it!! Bell services said they would deliver it to my room in a few minutes so we made our way to our room, 9403 in the Jazz building. Our building was located between both pools so we had the convenience of selecting either pool to enjoy, plus we did not have to put up with the racket of having the crowds of kids yelling and screaming outside our door. It turns out we never used the pools as it was just too cold that week. Oh well.

We really liked the Mickey towels left on our bed on arrival, I was also very pleased to find that the stroller and bottled water i ordered were already in our room. A quick shower to freshen up and it was off to Downtown Disney for Dinner and La Nouba. we arrived late for our Ressie at PH and Hannah just wanted to go to Mcdonald's!! I mean you travel 2000 miles so that we can go to Mcdonald's? It's your b-day, kid. Whatever...

 

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Here is a photo of me and Hannah in front of Fulton's:

From here it was a short walk to the Cirque theater where we picked up our tickets from will call.

Sorry about the blurry photo. The green building on the left is the DisneyQuest interactive theme park. on the right behind the palm trees, just out of sight is the House of Blues.

 

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We had never seen a Cirque show, La nouba was our first and it was simply awesome!! Since we had purchased tickets last minute in the least expensive catagory, we thought the seats were going to be bad. Those fears were put to bed when we walked into the theater itself, we were sitting two rows behind and just to the right of the sound engineer booth, dead center in front of the stage!! The usher also handed me a booster for Hannah to sit on to get a good unobstructed view. No spoilers for those who have not seen the show yet, just take my advise: Get your tickets!!! Do not leave WDW without seeing this show, especially if you have never seen a Cirque Du Soleil show before. This is a "must see" show!!

 

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So, our first day has us missing our Planet Hollywood reservation for Mcdonalds, but on the positive we get to see "La Nouba". And now its time to get back to the bus stop located in the Marketplace section. For those who don't know, the Cirque theater is located on the "westside" of Downtown Disney, which in itself is broken into 3 areas: Westside, Pleasure Island, and Marketplace. So our walk to the otherside of the facility begins with crowds everywhere (it was a Sat night) We took some grainy photos of the Lego displays:

Under the yellow canopy in the backgound has several tables setup for children to play with various Lego bricks. There is also a small down hill ramp for builders to race their Lego cars, and a small playground to the right. Mcdonalds is located in the background and to the right of the Lego store from this vantage point.

 

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So after a nice little walk through DTD, we get to the bus stop, wait for our bus and get on board with five other people. Then the bus begins to go and after a while gets to the 2nd stop at DTD: right in front of the Westside!!! We totally walked the length of DTD, just to end up where we started!! Next visit, we'll have a map. The 2nd stop is where everyone else was waiting, as we filled the bus to capacity here. We make it back to the ASMu resort around 11:30 PM a quick bath for Hannah and it's lights out for her, with no prompting, she was asleep before her head hit the pillow. For me, it was time to put the stroller I purchased together, so after a while of snapping wheels on and attaching velcro tabs from tab A to Slot B, I was ready for bed, As I was sitting at the edge of my bed, I look over and see that we had a message. It was 2 messages actually, 1st was Mickey welcoming us to WDW, but baby was asleep and didn't hear it. The 2nd was the front desk, apologizing for not giving us our 300 dollar gift card that was part of our vacation package. I was too tired to go to the lobby, i would swing by on the way to the park, in the morning and grab it then. As tired as I was, sleep did not come easy, so I surfed the TV for a bit. Watched the infomercial on channel 19 on the "Disney Must-dos" after th 4th or 5th viewing, I was out.

 

[Dugette]

Welcome back! You're making quick progress on this TR! Your daughter is a cutie! Looking forward to hearing more!

 

[honeydiane1953]

I am really enjoying your report and can't believe it is over for now. Great start.

 

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Welcome back! You're making quick progress on this TR! Your daughter is a cutie! Looking forward to hearing more!

Thanks, she is my world. This came about simply because I enjoy reading your TR so much!! I changed ADR's based on your recommendations!! Thanks for the inspiration!

 

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I am really enjoying your report and can't believe it is over for now. Great start.

Thanks. I am sitting here putting this all together and it's been a week since we returned, but I still can hear the sounds of the crowds and smell the popcorn and I want to go back, right now, catch the next flight and just go!! We were there for a total of 9 days, and it was not enough! I think a full 2 weeks would be needed to get the full "dose of Disney"

 

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6:30AM wake up. (yes folks we were going full commando on the parks) we dressed for the day. It was expected to be in the low 70's during the day, dropping into the upper 50 in the evening. We were dressed in jeans and shirts, but had hoodies with us in case it got too chilly. We had the QSDP which entitled us to 2 CS meals and 2 snacks per person for the duration of our stay. That was 32 meals and snacks to use up!! I sensed a challenge...
Our breakfast consisted of Mickey waffles with fruit toppings and a bottle of oj for me and Hannah had the nestle quik. While paying for our meals, I was reminded by the cashier that I was entitled to 2 more drinks. I grabbed 2 more bottles of oj for the road. Baby tore into her waffles, but the bag of grapes went into the backpack for use later

We also redeemed our vouchers for the refillable mugs at this time. I liked the idea of the mugs, but in reality, only used them twice the whole time we were there. Just did not want to lug them around in my backpack or take them back to the room after using them, and since our dining plan included drinks, and I had 48 half liter bottles of water in the room, you can see how the value the mugs offered got diminished. Plus, it was total overkill with the bottled water, btw, no way hannah and I were going to down 24 liters of water in 9 days!!!

 

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Epcot was our first park, and we waited outside the resort lobby for our bus to arrive. It was around 7:45 in the morning and the park was scheduled to open at 9am. In a few moments, our bus arrived and we got on with 3 or 4 other families, there was maybe 12 to 14 people total on the bus, and I expected us to go to the next resort to pick up other guests, but instead we were on way to Epcot with no other stops! after a few moments, Figment's imagination theme song was playing, and the big golf ball was in sight!! We got off our bus and I took some snapshots of Hannah, and Spaceship Earth:

 

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around 8:45 they open the gates and everyone goes to the fountain so that they can go to Test track and Mission Space to the left, or to the land pavillion for Soarin, on the right. Goofy and Minnie were working crowd control that morning.

We were following the unofficial touring plan for each of our park visits, which had us scoring fastpasses for Soarin then riding TT, then MS as soon asthe 9 o'clock rope drop. We made our way through the land pavillion and got a kick how all the castmembers lined up on either side of us as we made our way through, to give us all a high 5!! Small details like that sell the idea that we were really welcome here and that it was a special time not to be overlooked.

We picked the shortest line in the fastpass area, and waited our turn. As luck would have it, the guy in front of us was a tourguide or something as he had a handful of tickets and was methodicaly running each one through. with at least 14 fastpasses in hand, he completes his transaction and makes way for others.

Now its off to test track. Stand by line was 5 minutes, we walked all the way through to the orientation video. Hannah is a very brave and did not need much coaxing to get on any of the rides, it also helped that I had got her foam earplugs to use as I had noticed on an earlier visit to Disneyland, that it wasn't the ride motions that would freak her out, it was the noise and the rushing wind that got her worked up. the earplugs went a long way in calming her down and removing her fear. We experienced TT and MS (orange) with another 5 min. stand by line using this technique with very good results!

The look on her face says: You are lucky I have my earplugs on, or I wouldn't ride this thing, but don't push it!!

Let's do that again! Have you seen my plugs?

 

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After MS, the guide book had us double back to the land pavilion to ride "living with the Land" boat ride, which we both enjoyed especially the agriculture exhibit. I failed to take any pictures of the huge lemon, which was the size of a toddler. The guidebook was working like a charm as we were continuing to walk on to all the rides, often with a whole ride car/boat/omnimover to ourselves. The light crowds helped out as well. This strategy worked for us as we toured The Sea w/Nemo and Friends, and Turtle talk.

Then it was off for a walk on journey into our imaginations with figment and Honey I shrank the audience. Here is where I noticed a difference between Disneyland crowds and WDW crowds. The crowds at DL consist mostly of locals and they are very jaded and i noticed it was hard to get them to react to the shows with applause or even just a smile. In WDW, the crowds were mostly out of state or foreign tourists and they found every little detail so amusing, and was very contagious. I found myself laughing along with the same jokes and visual gags I had seen on all our DL trips as if for the 1st time. A rebirth, Disney style?

 

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After HISTA, we circled back again to The Land Pavillion to see the Circle of Life movie, I thought it was a little preachy, but that's just me. The exit to the theater puts us in the dining area of the Sunshine food court sights and smells start to attract our attention. So after a 2nd pair of fastpasses for Soarin' are collected, it's a stop for lunch. I had the grilled pork chop with mashed potatoes and carrots, Hannah had the rotisserie chicken with mashed, and we split the strawberry shortcake

After lunch it was back to back rides on Soarin! 1st time for Hannah, and we lucked out in being in the front row of group b, which meant w were in the front row in the center group. we were even in the middle of our row, perfect viewing for the ride!! 2nd ride on Soarin' the view wasn't as great as the 1st time, but so what? Baby's first ride was the one she was going to remember!!

 

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It's just around 1 PM and we head off to ride spaceship earth. Again, straight walk onto the loading ramp and off we go!! Great ride and exhibits and then the last ride on our list for future world: Ellen's energy ride. We really liked this one it was entertaining, and it was 45 minutes long. I needed a welcomed rest after pushing a stroller back and forth in the park all morning long. I noticed the dinosaur animitronics were replicas of the ones used in DLRR's Primeval world and have to wonder if they were intended for a similar version of the Diorama for the MKRR that never materialized?