hockeydad21
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2022
- Messages
- 488
So this was my family's first split stay - not by choice, but by necessity. We own at PVB, and we were lucky enough to snag 3 nights at the Poly Island Tower in a 2bdr. I would have liked a week, but no luck with the limited availability on the first day of booking. Oh well, we made the best of it and tacked on 4 nights at VGF in a 2bdr for 7 total nights!
Long notes on the trip:
Long notes on the trip:
- Overview: We went down for 7 nights, split stay with 3 at the new Poly tower and 4 at VGF. It was me, my wife, 3 kids aged 4, 2, and 8 months, and then my parents who are in their early 70s.
- Poly Tower - WOW! We were stunned with the beauty of the 2 bedroom lock-off villa. I will say I had my doubts heading in because of the color scheme, but the colors really do pop when you're in there. And the layout is near perfect with that 3rd bathroom! My parents stayed in the master bedroom, then me, my wife, and oldest 2 kids were in the lock-off portion with the 2 year old in a Disney provided crib. The 8 month old went in the 3rd bathroom in a pack and play. Great setup where everyone had space and we still had the kitchen and couch for relaxing at the end of the day with the kids sleeping. We can't wait to come back. I also have to mention Wheels who works in the lobby of the Polynesian is absolutely the best. He was so helpful in assisting my family when we had an issue, and I couldn't be more thankful for his dedication to being an exceptional cast member.
- Grand Floridian - Absolutely beautiful. Not my first time staying here, but it's been awhile. The 2brd villa is gorgeous and the attention to higher end details/finishes does not go unmissed. Our sleeping arrangement for this changed with my parent's taking the 2 queen beds, then me, wife, and oldest 2 taking the master bedroom, and my 8 month old taking the bathtub room in a pack and play. Worked out really well. but if you had to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night then you had to walk through the main living room/kitchen area to get to the toilet. Loved the resort and would come back in a heartbeat.
- Poly restaurants - overall it was pretty good, but not great. Our first night we did Wailulu bar and grille for dinner. This was a big hit as everyone really enjoyed their meals. Then we did Ohana for breakfast, which was pretty solid and everyone always loves meeting mickey and stitch! Kona cafe was pretty good in my opinion - I had the fish with quinoa which was delicious. Captain Cooks was hit and miss for us - the food was generally good, but the service was pretty poor if I'm being 100% honest. It's just chaos in there, and they got our orders wrong twice (we weren't the only ones having issues). They really need to look into another option to either expand Capt Cooks or relocate it to a bigger area.
- Grand Flo restaurants - Overall very good. We did the pool bars a few times for lunch, Gasparilla's where we loved the breakfast croissants, Narcoossee's once (our favorite restaurant on Disney world property hands down), 1900 park fare which was awesome for the kids to meet the characters and the food was exceptional for a buffet, and then we ate at Citricos which was our first time dining here and it honestly left us overall pretty disappointed. Maybe it was the hype of people comparing it to the level of Narcoossee's, but overall we just thought it was average for the price. No hotel can beat the dining at the Grand.
- Epcot - We rope dropped Soarin with early entry, then did living with the land, then checked into our first lightning lane for Nemo at 8:45, tried to immediately book Remy's but it wasn't showing availability and the ride ended up being down for a few hours at opening which killed our chances of getting it later. So we did Moana's water experience, headed over to guardian's while we took turns with our lightning lanes so kids could play on the playground. Great ride. Then it was lunch where we did San Angel Inn. It was good, but a giant time suck. From there we did Frozen in Norway and then the kids proceeded to fall asleep once back in the strollers. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking our time around the world showcase, and then the kids woke up in Canada and requested to do Nemo and Moana again, so we did. Then we left around 5. Overall I'd probably skip Epcot next time and would instead bring them to Animal Kingdom. I loved Epcot as an adult (cheers), but really found the stuff to do for young kids to be lacking.
- Magic Kingdom - first let me say I really do hate the lightning lane multipass system. It bothers me how you can end up backtracking and zigzagging all over the park rather than it acting as a smart, efficient way to move you throughout the park. Disney IT could easily do this by starting a small percentage of multipass users at each ride throughout the park, and then moving them from ride to ride and land to land as they check each ride off the list, but this would almost kill the need for the VIP tours and lighting lane premier pass, so I doubt we'll ever see them do it. So Instead you have to take a PhD course in lightning lane optimization and then be on your phone all day - yay! With that being said, I have my multipass PhD thanks to all the helpful tips and guides you can find online, so we were able to get 17 rides/experiences in in one magic kingdom day with 3 young kids. The 4 year old and 2 year old just kept asking to do more and more rides, so we did! We started off by early entry rope dropped Pooh, then did some combo of dumbo, Little Mermaid, teacups, 7 dwarves (ILL), before hoping over to Haunter Mansion for our first multipass LL. From there we just kept adding on new rides we hadn't done, and before you knew it we had done about 10 rides by 1pm. Everything else from then on was just gravy.
- Happily Ever After continues to be an absolute masterpiece. Both nights we stayed for the fireworks, and the kids loved them and the castle projections so much.
- One final thought - so my dad actually has never liked Disney even when he took me and my sisters when we were growing up, but he's now in his 70s so he wanted to come experience it with his grand kids because he's not sure he'll get that opportunity in the future. In the end, my dad ended up having such a good time that he actually told me he wanted to come back in another year or 2 if he's still healthy enough to do it. It was the icing on the cake to an already awesome vacation with family!
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