Our first TR, full of firsts: 1st Christmas at WDW, 1st deluxe stay! Dec. 2010

[C&B Young]

Introduction

We're Crystal & Bryan, 2 big Disney World fans from Ontario, Canada. We try to get down to Disney World once a year. This was our 4th trip to the World, having previously visited in January 2006, May/June 2008, and October 2009. We've got a Disney-related blog at www.crystalbryanwdw.com. We're also amateur photographers, and taking pictures is a big part of our Disney trips. Be sure to check out our photos at crystalyoungphotography.com. You can also follow us on Twitter for Disney-related things @crystalbryanwdw.

We were at WDW from December 1-9, 2010, with park hoppers and the Disney Dining Plan, staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. This was a trip filled with firsts for us. This was our first trip during Christmastime at WDW. This trip also marked our first ever stay at a deluxe resort. On all of our previous trips we had stayed at Port Orleans French Quarter, and were quite happy there. However, when it came time to book our 2010 trip we wanted to book a free dining package and there were no rooms available at POFQ. So we opted to stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge (the rack rate with free dining at AKL was roughly the same as the room only rate plus paying for the DDP at POFQ). This trip was also unusual for us as we first booked our ADR's at the 180 point, our flights second, and our actual resort in July.

We had done a lot of research as to what time during December would be best to visit WDW. Almost every source reported that the week after the U.S. Thanksgiving featured the best mix of good weather and low crowds. Spoiler alert: this did not turn out to be the case! There were also quite a few meets going on (Reunion 2010, WDWPhotography.com, WDW Radio) that we were looking forward to attending. Another spoiler alert: we weren't as good at being at the right place at the right time for meets as we had hoped!

Day 1 - Disappointed in the Poly

The trip started nicely. We flew out of Pearson International Airport in Toronto. Getting through the airport was a breeze, customs didn't even bat an eye at our backpack full of camera gear or laptop bag full of electronics. The flight in itself was pleasant, although it took a half-hour longer than scheduled because of winds over North Carolina. We got through MCO quickly and arrived at the Magical Express desk just as a bus to the resort was pulling up! After stops at Caribbean Beach and Pop Century we arrived at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, Jambo House. We had visited AKL before, but were excited at the prospect of actually staying there. We had booked a pool view room as we didn't want a view of the parking lot, but couldn't justify the cost of a savanna view room. A free upgrade to savanna view certainly wouldn't have broken our hearts though! We weren't optimistic however, as we knew the resort (and all WDW resort for that matter) were completely booked, at least for the first part of our stay. Still, we opted not to do the online check-in this time around & braved the old-fashioned check-in line at Animal Kingdom Lodge hoping it may pay off with a free upgrade to a savanna room. Alas, the hotel is completely booked and it was not to be. The regular check-in was still quicker than the online check-in though, as there was only 1 agent checking in the online guests vs. 4 at the regular counter. We headed off to the room. We had requested Zebra Trail, and a higher floor. We did get Zebra trail room 3474, which was quite a hike from the lobby. The AKL map does not do the walking distrance to the rooms justice! Try and see if you can find the pool in the “pool view” room we had paid extra for:

Needless to say, we were not impressed. But we figured that we wouldn't be logging a lot of balcony time anyways given the chilly weather forecast. Initial thoughts on the room were that it was nice, but it didn't really scream “deluxe” vs. the rooms were were accustomed to from POFQ. It was plenty of room for the 2 of us, but I would imagine things would be tight if you were to cram a family of 4 in there.

After getting settled in, we headed down to the lobby concierge. We were going to upgrade our Magic Your Way tickets to annual passes, as we're planning another visit in the next 12 months. We had read online that it was best to get your park tickets separated from your room key before doing the upgrade, otherwise your dining plan entitlements might get messed up. But with the upgrade going on to Disney's reservation system Concierge reported that they were unable to do this. This wouldn't be the last time the “systems upgrade” would be cited as a reason for guest inconvenience. Note to Disney – next time plan to have your system upgrade done by the time you know your resorts are going to be at full capacity!! So instead we headed to the Magic Kingdom (our transfer point for our 8:10 ADR at 'Ohana at the Polynesian), where concierge assured us that guest services could do the upgrade. We purchased the AP's and headed towards the hub toi check out the Cinderella Castle dream lights live and in person. They're nothing short of spectacular, all of the pictures and video we had seen did not compare to seeing it in person!

We then proceed to the Polynesian, where we had an 8:10 reservation at 'Ohana. Here's where the day had the Disney magic sucked out of it. Don't get us wrong, the dinner itself was excellent and the staff friendly as always. Everything surrounding the meal, however, was disappointing. The first issue was Disney's ongoing problems in upgrading it's reservation system - this caused a big backlog with reservations (or so they said) and we did not get seated until 8:45. We had skipped lunch because of travel, plus we anticipated a big meal at 'Ohana - we didn't plan on not getting fed until 9pm however. Lesson learned, book on the early side next time. This late seating raised another question - how will we get back to our hotel? The Magic Kingdom (where our return bus would come from) closed at 8 (although the buses do normally run for a couple hours after park closing). "Not to worry" said the hostess at 'Ohaha when checking us in, "you'll have plenty of time to get back and get your bus". When dinner wrapped up at 10:30, however, we were less than optimistic about getting back to the Magic Kingdom and our ride home. Still, we thought we'd hop on the monorail and see. Unfortunately, we were thwarted by a cast member at the monorail ramp who informed us that there was no further service from the Poly this evening. We enquired about how we'd get back to AKL and he had "good news" - there were "buses running to the resorts right downstairs". "Are you sure?" we questioned, "We can catch a bus directly to Animal Kingdom Lodge?". Normally there is NO resort-to-resort bus service, but if a cast member says so at the monorail, presumably in the know with transportation, who are we to argue??? Experienced Disneygoers probably know what happened next - there of course were no such buses, and we ended up taking a cab back to our resort.

 

[C&B Young]

Day 2 – Very Merry Christmas Party

We started day 2 around 10am at Hollywood Studios. We usually try to hit the studios early on in our visit, because it features our favourite ride - the Tower of Terror. When we got to DHS we headed straight to TOT, it only had a 10 minute wait posted so we decided to quickly check the wait at Rock n' Rollercoaster. RnRC only had a 20 minute wait, so we decided to quickly ride it before the wait got longer. Once we finished up RnRC we went to ToT, got a fastpass (return time was a half-hour away), rode ToT standby and then went right back to the Fastpass line. ToT is a ride that we can't ride just once!!

We grabbed a quick lunch and decided to head towards the backlot area. On the way we ran into Director Vladmir Pooey, who was trying to film a Christmas scene with 2 Hollywood starlets! If you haven't taken the time to stop and see some of the streetmosphere performances at DHS we cannot recommended it more, lots of fun!

We then headed to the American Idol Experience, which may not be at the top of some peoples' lists but we'd never seen it before and were determined to cross it off our list this visit. It was entertaining, and the set is very elaborate. We then hopped over to the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular Interestingly enough, one of the audience members that was picked to be an extra looked familiar - it was the lady who was contestant #1 from the American Idol Experience! Coincidence? Rigged?? You be the judge.

We had planned to go back to the hotel for a rest and nap, because we had a 5:15 dinner reservation at Cinderella's Royal Table and then tickets to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party. Unfortunately, by the time we got back to the Animal Kingdom Lodge there was barely enough time to change and get our camera gear loaded up for the evening. This was going to become a recurring theme during our trip, at least on the days we tried to be ambitious and park hop. We headed to the Magic Kingdom and just made it on time for our dinner reservation. The MK was a mess that day with numerous areas & paths closed off for the Christmas parade taping on the weekend. In what was quickly becoming a trend, we weren't seated until a half-hour after our reservation time. Free dining may have lured people to Disney World, but it had caused a giant backlog at the restaurants. And as far as dinner itself was concerned, not very impressive (especially considering that CRT costs 2 credits on the dining plan). It's nice to eat in the castle, and it's nice that Disney has added actual Princesses to the dinner, but all things considered it is not a good value. I doubt we'll be doing it again next trip.

Onto Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party! The party itself was definitely more crowded than the Halloween party were were at last October. Rides themselves were a walk-on for the most part, and while we were escaping the crowd at the first parade we managed to go on Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Haunted Mansion. We were hoping to get to the Reunion 2010 fireworks meet & great, but got stuck at the back of the park and unable to navigate back to the hub in time due to the parade. We then had to stake out a spot for the Holiday Wishes fireworks. We managed to get some decent shots, we set up our tripod on Main Street USA just beside Casey's.

After the fireworks, we were starting to feel the effects of our travel and lack of rest over the last 2 days. We're by no means aggressive tourers – 14 bhour days at the parks are definitely not our forte! We decided to stick close to the castle and check out the stage show at 10 and then the 2nd parade at 10:30. This unfortunately meant missing out of 2 more Reunion meet-ups we had planning on attending, the Dumbo & TTA meets. Sorry, Reunion! By this point in the night we were cold and tired. We stopped in at the Crystal Palace for some free hot chocolate and cookies before heading back to the resort for the night.

Day 3 - EPCOT & a farewell to Le Cellier

We began day 3 with some much needed sleeping in and relaxing at the hotel. We had a more sensible plan of attack for this day, only attempting 1 park in EPCOT. In the afternoon we headed to EPCOT, as we had a 4:45 dinner reservation at Le Cellier. As you may know, Le Cellier is soon becoming a "Signature Restaurant" meaning it'll take 2 Disney Dining Plan credits to eat there. Is it a good restaurant? Absolutely. Is it so good that it's worth losing another sit-down dinner? Not in our opinion. The steaks were good, we met a nice mother & daughter from Michigan, and our server was from London, Ontario. We also FINALLY made it to a Reunion event, the Touring Plans Fish & Chips meet at the UK pavilion. Nice to put a face to some people we know from the Disney internet & podcast community. We were still full from Le Cellier though and passed on the actual fish & chips. You still owe us a meal, Len Testa, you're not getting off that easy!

We planned on staying the whole evening at EPCOT because it was Extra magic Hours until 12:30am, the only EMH night at EPCOT during our stay. Extra Magic Hours are a different type of animal at EPCOT - the park itself is technically open but there are very few attractions that remain open. The result is that the park clears out after the Illuminations fireworks show at 9:30. We're not normally big Illuminations fans, but for the holidays they add the "Peace on Earth" tag to the end. This addition totally pluses the show and makes it a MUST see!

With little else to do after Illuminations, we wandered the now nearly deserted park and took pictures. EPCOT at night may be boring, but it is beautiful!

 

[C&B Young]

Day 4 - Animal Kingdom, Inadequate Buses, and Hitting the Wall

We had ambitious touring plans for day 4 at Walt Disney World - Animal Kingdom during the day, a brief rest back at the hotel, dinner at Chef Mickey's, then extra magic hours at the Magic Kingdom. As it turned out, these plans were a bit too ambitious!

We arrived at the Animal Kingdom a little later than planned around 11 am. Partly our fault for sleeping late, partly due to Disney's transportation system. At this point we must address the bus situation at Animal Kingdom Lodge. In a word, it stinks. In case you don't know, the Animal Kingdom Lodge resort is comprised of 2 large hotels - Kidani Village and Jambo House. Kidani is all Disney Vacation Club rooms, and of course they get picked up & dropped off first (Disney has to protect their cash cows, of course!). At peak times, there is not enough capacity on the buses to handle these 2 resorts. And because Jambo House (where us lowly non-DVC types stay) gets picked up second we're lucky to get a standing room spot on a bus. I know that AKL is one of the "lower priced" deluxe resorts, but it's still a deluxe. Get the buses fixed, Disney! You knew all of your rooms were filled this week.

OK, bus rant over. Once at Animal Kingdom we picked up some fast passes for Expedition Everest, rode Dinosaur, then made our way to the exploration trails and Kilimanjaro Safari. For us, Animal Kingdom is more about seeing the animals (and of course taking pictures) than the rides. For Animal Kingdom we lugged around our newly acquired Canon 70-200 2.8 IS lens. Paired up with our Canon 50D body it's a pretty heavy combination, and certainly not something we'd want to lug around the parks every day! But we got some nice pictures of the animals. Photographer tip – ask to sit in the back row on the Kilimanjaro Safari. They've always accommodated us, and let just the 2 of us sit back there so we've had lots of room to shoot. The plus side of the cooler weather was that the animals were out mid-day!

We also wanted to see the Jingle Jungle parade, which lots of people online raved about. It was worth seeing once but I don't think we'll go out of our way to see it again. It was similar to the regular AK parade in that it just seemed to go by. It didn't have the feel that a Magic Kingdom parade does. The Animal Kingdom park is also so small that a parade essentially shuts the park down. We planned ahead this visit and were able to get down to Expedition Everest when the parade wrapped up. After riding Everest we made our way out of the park and back to the hotel. This was poor clock management on our part AGAIN - our plan was to retire to the resort for a rest and maybe a nap before heading off to Chef Mickey's for dinner. Unfortunately, we didn't get back to the hotel until 5:30. This gave us just enough time to change and ditch some of the camera gear and head right back out.

We took a bus from AKL to the Magic Kingdom (a 20-25 minute bus ride depending on your driver & traffic) and transferred to the Contemporary via monorail. In hindsight we were lucky this whole trip that we never experienced the monorails being out of service during normal hours. We got to Chef Mickey's just in time for our 6:35 reservation to find a sea of people in the waiting area. We thought for sure that it'd be 30 or 45 minutes before we'd be seated - we were pleasantly surprised that we got a table only 10 minutes after our arrival! I guess Chef Mickey's can handle the crowds where Cinderella's Royal Table and 'Ohana can't. Or maybe they're just better equipped to seat tables of 2.

After dinner, we wanted to check out the big gingerbread house over at the Grand Floridian before heading to the MK for EMH. We hopped on the monorail and rode over to the GF. By this time, however, it was becoming apparent that we couldn't handle any further touring for the day and that our Magic Kingdom EMH plans would have to be scrapped. So after seeing the gingerbread house and buying a gingerbread shingle we rode the monorail back to the Magic Kingdom. From there we caught a bus back to the hotel. Which we managed to get the last 2 seats on, lucky us...

Day 5 - When Disney Photographers Meet

Day 5 at Disney World was scheduled to be a fairly light one park-wise. We wanted to spend some time at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and soak in our surroundings. We started the day (if you count starting the day at 10 am) by doing laundry. We learned last visit that packing a half-trip's worth of clothes and doing laundry mid-trip frees up valuable luggage space for souvenirs on the trip home. And now getting the Annual Passholder discount on merchandise had only made the souvenir shopping worse! While waiting for our clothes to wash & dry we did some photographing around the resort. We fell in love with a sweet giraffe named Eve!

After laundry, we planned on doing some lunch and shopping at Downtown Disney for the aforementioned souvenirs. Then we wanted to head over to the Beach Club resort, where Lou Mongello's WDW Radio was having a 200th episode meet. Once at DTD Bryan really wanted to try the holiday sandwich at the Earl of Sandwich, but passed after seeing the lineup out the door and around the corner. Downtown Disney Marketplace clearly needs some additional dining options - Disney, stop focusing on trying to revitalize the West Side! Instead we opted for a healthy lunch of Ghiardelli sundaes. Unfortunately, shopping ran overtime and we missed out on the WDW Radio meet. If you're keeping score at home, you know we're not doing well at all in attending meets this week. On paper, it would seem like getting to all of these places at the designated time would be a piece of cake, right? It's easy to forget about the sheer size and scope of WDW, and hard to budget your time approriately.

We then headed over to Hollywood Studios because there was another meet that we were determined NOT to miss. Who would've thought when we were first booking ADR's 6 months ago that there'd be so many meets happening at WDW during our visit? A group of Disney World photography enthusiasts also happened to be meeting up this week at the World. Sunday night was unfortunately the only night our plans coincided with the photography meet's. We spent a few hours shooting the Osborne Lights and other sights at the Studios with our fellow Disney photogs. It was lots of fun, and a pleasure to meet some of the people behind the pictures we know from the internet community.

Be sure to check out www.wdwphotography.com and the WDW Photography Flickr group for lots of awesome Disney World photos!

 

[C&B Young]

Day 6 - Chilly times at the Magic Kingdom

Day 6 was another light day schedule-wise. We had only planned to visit the Magic Kingdom to catch up on Fantasyland & Tomorrowland, for dinner at the Crystal Palace, and to see Wishes and the Main Street Electrical Parade. The day started out very chilly, and only got colder from there. We hit the Magic Kingdom early afternoon. Bryan had his heart set on trying a Philly Cheese Steak Hot Dog from the Lunching Pad. And here it is, in all it's glory:

It tasted as good as it looks! We'd also planned on trying our first Dole Whips during this vacation, however 10 degree Celsius put a damper on any ice cream-related treats. So it will remain on the to-do list for next time. We used our time at the MK to check out Toontown one last time before the Fantasyland expansion bulldozes Mickey & Minnie's house. We also checked out the new queue at Winnie the Pooh which is very nice. A word of advice - the posted wait time at Pooh IS accurate. You can't do the typical Disney wait time math here and subtract 5 or 10 minutes - if it says a half-hour it means a half-hour. We also grabbed Fastpasses for Peter Pan, which was featuring it's typical 60 minute wait time. With a return time of 6:45 we doubted we'd get back to it though, and we didn't (what a waste!). We also hit the Mad Hatter's Tea Party (for the first time), Snow White's Scary Adventures, Buzz Lightyear (Crystal got our first ever 999,999 score!) and the TTA before heading to dinner.

Dinner was good, if for no other reason that it got us out of the cold for an hour. This was the 2nd time the Crystal Palace provided refuge from the cold this trip! Unlike previous visits to the Crystal Palace the characters we sat on the right-hand side of the restaurant, and the characters were all by for a visit fairly early on. We then went to stake out a viewing spot for Wishes. We had intended to not bother with the camera and just enjoy Wishes as regular spectators... so of course with 5 minutes to go there we were, setting up the tripod and getting ready to shoot it. You know you're photographers when! It was a windy night and our location wasn't the best, but we got a few decent shots off:

After Wishes, we ventured down to the hub to get some night pictures before the Main Street Electrical Parade started. While shivering and waiting for the parade, a small child next to us found a way to briefly warm up by wetting his pants. And in a fine act of parenting the Mom blamed his little brother for it. We wish we had a video camera so we could've captured this precious moment and submitted it to Disney for their current "Memories" ad campaign.

The Main Street Electrical Parade was good, but we prefer Spectromagic. It would've been a great night at the MK because the crowds were very sparse, but it was also very cold. After the parade we headed back to the warmth of our hotel. In typical fashion, we had a nice comfy standing spot on the 20 minute bus ride home. Did we mention yet that the Disney bus service at Animal Kingdom Lodge at peak times sucks? Deluxe Resort, eh Disney??

Day 7 - Starting to get Disney Worlded out!

Day 7 was another light day, as we only had a visit to EPCOT planned. We were still thawing from our previous chilly night at the Magic Kingdom, and the weather forecast wasn't calling for anything warmer on this day. We took the morning to sleep in and rest our ever weakening legs, and headed out to EPCOT midday.

Once at EPCOT we watched Captain EO, which Crystal had never seen & which Bryan saw on his first trip to Disney World back in 1988. The last 22 years has not been kind to it, but it was fun for nostalgia's sake (and ANYTHING is still better than Honey I Shrunk the Audience). Crystal wanted to see the Santas from around the world, so we then proceeded to the World Showcase. Of course Disney doesn't schedule the Santas in any logical pattern, so we managed to see Canada, England, and Italy. By this point we were already losing what little heat the sun was providing. We then had to putter around the backside of World Showcase until our dinner reservation. Tonight we would be dining for the first time at Teppan Edo in Japan. In our wanderings we took some photos and also discovered a great new place to blow through the dining plan snack credits - Karamell Kuche at the German pavillion.

Eventually 5:15 rolled around and we headed over to Teppan Edo in Japan. We'd never eaten there before, and it was wonderful. Our chef Shu was great, and we sat with a nice family from Chicago. It'll definitely be on our ADR list next visit.

After dinner, we opted against waiting around in the now frigid air for another 2 hours for Illuminations and instead began to make our way back to the hotel. Of course, we just missed the last boat from World Showcase to Future World and had to walk all the way to the front of the park. On our way out, we did some souvenir shopping “damage” at Mouse Gears and felt that actual seats on the bus would be in order for the ride back, so we wouldn't have to juggle our purchases. We DID manage to get seats on the bus back to Animal Kingdom Lodge - but only by passing on the standing-room only bus that was already at the stop and waiting for the next one.

 

[C&B Young]

Day 8 - And That's a Wrap!

It had finally arrived, the last day of our Disney World vacation. In hindsight, 7 days at WDW would have sufficed for this trip. By day 8 we were cold, tired, and missed our cats back home very much. We had no plans for this day apart from sleeping in (yes, again!) and a dinner reservation at the resort at Boma. We decided to finish up with a visit to the Magic Kingdom. The MK is definitely our favourite park, and it's extra nice all decked out for Christmas. On the plus side the weather was a little milder this day, and crowds were very light.

We got some lunch at Casey's (ballpark nachos for the win!) and watched the castle stage show while eating. After lunch we decided to hit Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion one more time. Pirates was a bit of a downer (and uncomfortable) because the aggressive ride attendants actually loaded 2 other adults into our row on the boat! There was only a 10 minute wait so we're not sure why they were shoehorning so many people on each boat. Before our trip we had picked up a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens to shoot the dark rides with, and we got some decent results considering it was our first time shooting the rides with it.

Bryan was too full after his Casey's nachos to finally try a Dole Whip, so it remains on the to-do list for next time. Also on the list is the Hall of Presidents - as usual the showtimes did not coincide with our arrival at Liberty Square. We paid the happy haunts at the Mansion one last visit, and made our way to Main Street USA. We stopped along the way to take some last photos, and made our way back to the resort. You'll be happy to know that there were 8 people in line for the bus ahead of us - it might've taken all week but we finally, legitimately got a bus seat on the way home!

Until next year, Walt & Mickey...

Wrap Up:

Our trip home was pleasantly uneventful. Despite all of the airport security hype we were neither nude scanned nor groped. In fact, we've had nothing but pleasant dealings with security/TSA at MCO. We're by no means frequent flyers, but Orlando's airport always treats us very well.

It was very cold when we arrived back in Toronto. Getting through the airport was quick, although they had problems unloading the luggage which delayed getting out of the airport by about a half-hour. Fortunately we had parked in the new reduced-rate garage at Pearson International which ensured that our car was at least not frozen shut.

Post Trip Thoughts:

The first thing we learned on this trip was that Animal Kingdom Lodge is really only a deluxe resort in name (and pricing) only. By day 4 of our trip we still had not had our soap/shampoo/etc. replenished by housekeeping, and we had to leave a note requesting more. Compare this to POFQ where we were always given more soap than we could ever use in 4 vacations! The lobby and savannas at the lodge are beautiful, but that doesn't extend to the rest of the hotel unfortunately. Our hallway had numerous scuffs & tears in the wallpaper from the luggage & housekeeping carts. The Mara is also quite limited in selection and size for being the only quick-service restaurant on site for the entire resort. And, as we previously mentioned ad nauseum, the bus service was woefully inadequate for the amount of people staying at the resort. We have never stood on so many buses as we did this trip. We're not trying to sound like snobs, but for deluxe resort money we expect to have a seat on a bus more often than not. Overall, especially given the recent refurb, we'll be staying at POFQ in the future. We'd love to stay at the Poly someday, but even with a 40% PIN or AP discount the room price is simply too high. Maybe we'll attempt a split stay in the future!

Another thing we learned was that you can never account for weather or crowds. The weather aspect was nothing new to us, as last year we had visited during October during a record-setting heat wave. But in previous visits the crowd levels were at least what Touring Plans and other resources had estimated. The various discounts and free dining, combined with the Pop Warner tournament, had certainly delivered people into the resorts and parks. Despite reading horror stories online, Pop Warner had a minimal impact on us. We saw groups and teams in the parks, but then again we didn't stay at any of the affected resorts.

We also learned that long days and park hopping are no longer a viable option for us, at least not all week long. The most enjoyable days of our trip were the ones where we had just 1 park to visit. Being fairly regular (yearly) visitors it's not crucial for us to do as many things as possible when at the parks. In fact, we like taking our time to enjoy the parks, and saving things to do for future visits. We were disappointed that we missed out on many of the meets we had wanted to go to. Unfortunately our ADR choices had to be made 180 days before the trip, and they dictated a lot of our touring plans for the week. It would have been nice to have had more flexibility as to what locations to be at on given days, and not be a slave to the ADR's. But ADR's are a necessary evil if you want to do the DDP (especially during free dining).

Our next trip should be October 2011, for our 10th wedding anniversary! It looks like POFQ will be our resort of choice. Guess we'll be online come April booking potential ADR's! Thanks for reading, and remember to visit our Disney blog at www.crystalbryanwdw.com, check out all of our photos at crystalyoungphotography.com, and follow us on Twitter @crystalbryanwdw.

 

[Ted in Halifax]

Excellent TR! Thanks

 

[boundfordisney]

great shots what kind of camera are you using?

 

[mom2rtk]

Great report! I enjoyed reading along. We also hit the record heat last year followed by record cold this year. I guess that means next year will be just right, right?????

Lovely shots!

 

[C&B Young]

Great report! I enjoyed reading along. We also hit the record heat last year followed by record cold this year. I guess that means next year will be just right, right?????

Lovely shots!

Thank you! It had better be expected weather and crowd levels next year, we're overdue! I will say that unseasonable cold is still MUCH better than record highs. Shivering > sweating!

 

[mom2rtk]

Thank you! It had better be expected weather and crowd levels next year, we're overdue! I will say that unseasonable cold is still MUCH better than record highs. Shivering > sweating!

I absolutely agree. I'll take the cold over the heat any day. And now I guess I have the experience to prove it!

 

[Docarino]

Nice TR! I've always wanted to stay at AKL but your report has convinced me to stay with value for now- my bank account thanks you! And I completely understand the plan to sit back, enjoy and not take any pictures and then all of a sudden, finding yourself setting up to take pictures!