Mother Nature was my BFF last week, the sun was glorious and warm up until the last part of Wednesday when the rain began. None of us minded the rain it made it a lot easier to leave, we already really tired and now wet.
We did early entrance every day, DD12 was determined to be first to the gate at least once, as we seem to be just shy of it every day. On our fifth day we nailed it I have a great picture of her and her brother standing alone at the locked gates to California, not a soul to be seen. Crowds were manageable, Tomorrowland did get hairy but beyond that nothing we could not manage. We took President's day off and it sounds like that was a good one to do so.
I know you all warned me , but wow I was stunned at the number of parents that I could hear telling their kids to run at rope drop, and then followed them running too. We used early morning to their fullest @ CA we always start with Toy Story, 3-4 times, then maybe 2 times on Screamin, then Radio Springs and TT. with one of us lining up before the park opened for RSR fast passes and or WOC. IN DLA we rope dropped the fist time to twice through on Hyperspace followed by Star Tours and Matterhorn. Our second DLR rope drop we did Fantasyland, Peter Pan being first. In line for Hyperspace fast passes about 10-15 minutes before the park opened. They were long days that started early every day , but we had made the decision to stay on site so that we could be early in every day and we were all really satisfied with how much we got done that first hour every day.Seeing the park in the early morning fog on several days was really cool too.
We all agreed we enjoyed WOC but not to the same degree that we did the old one. I would totally do it again, but likely not more than once per trip. Once again we lost our photopass card ;I cannot stress enough take a picture of your bar code, they had my pics instantly!
We hit all our favourite food haunts. Two rounds of dole Whips in The Tiki Room. Corn dog Castle had links, dogs and cheese among us. YUMM
Reservations at
Carnation Café x2- potato soup, pickles, malts, meatloaf and sourdough melt veggie burger got a thumbs up too
Café Orleans- we all found the pommes frites different, low on garlic this time?
Tortilla Jo's -guacamole was great, margaritas' top shelf were the nectar of the gods
Ralph Brennan's - the grits were awesome, the beignets yumm
Blue Bayou - had the strip loin with chimichurri, I come from steak country and was pleasantly surprised it was really good. My DDs both ordered the adult sized mac and chees and the pasta portions were ridiculously huge. My youngest commented that the kid's portions was more than adequate . It is a bit frustrating to be forced into massive portions and price based on age.
The Taquerria had huge Burrritos, we were allowed to use the Magical Saving card there (10%), and on a subsequent visit we had only to show our Room key to get the discount again
A new fav snack is the fresh mango and chili pepper, it was nice to have a healthy snack.
The vegetarian gumbo at the Royal street Veranda got a thumbs up from our picky vegetarian. It is a lot frustrating that they don't offer a vegetarian version at Café Orleans and Blue Bayou. this would be nice as so many of the restaurants its veggie burger or pasta.
DD has severe food allergies and I had made notes of this on my reservations , so I was really pleased to see the new allergy menus come to our tables. They are limited but she could use both menus in tandem to know what she could and could not have. A few locations , CC, for sure had the chef also come out and talk to her.
We stayed at PP 11th floor city view, the higher floor was nice as you could see a fair distance. Room was meh. No real complaints, rooms are getting a bit tired, any where else that room would have been at least $100 less a night. It definitely does not have the magic feel that the DLH has but the weak Canadian dollar forced us into it as we still wanted early entry every day.
Truth be told we don't spend a tonne of time in our rooms anyway. The hot tub I heard another guest refer to as the warm kiddie tub was in no way hot. The only complaint I had was the shower, your set the temperature and it would fluctuate dramatically, it was really frustrating on the night I was truing to warm up, I would get warmed up and the temperature would fall. Fridge is small, but we squeezed a lot in. Ordering my yogurts in individual sizes helped a lot in the fridge. we always order from VONS and eat breakfast as we get ready so as not to eat up valuable park time eating.
A few times we grabbed food from the walk up lounge/restaurant in the hotel and it was REALLY slow every time we ordered something that was not grab and go. There is a self serve microwave there which we did use a few times for left overs.
We brought home Tigger Tails and a Mickey Sourdough, tails are sadly gone and there is a small little nub of bread left so with that Disney 2016 has come to a close, all for the VISA bill. Kind of nice to know that our hotel and tickets were prepaid!
We did early entrance every day, DD12 was determined to be first to the gate at least once, as we seem to be just shy of it every day. On our fifth day we nailed it I have a great picture of her and her brother standing alone at the locked gates to California, not a soul to be seen. Crowds were manageable, Tomorrowland did get hairy but beyond that nothing we could not manage. We took President's day off and it sounds like that was a good one to do so.
I know you all warned me , but wow I was stunned at the number of parents that I could hear telling their kids to run at rope drop, and then followed them running too. We used early morning to their fullest @ CA we always start with Toy Story, 3-4 times, then maybe 2 times on Screamin, then Radio Springs and TT. with one of us lining up before the park opened for RSR fast passes and or WOC. IN DLA we rope dropped the fist time to twice through on Hyperspace followed by Star Tours and Matterhorn. Our second DLR rope drop we did Fantasyland, Peter Pan being first. In line for Hyperspace fast passes about 10-15 minutes before the park opened. They were long days that started early every day , but we had made the decision to stay on site so that we could be early in every day and we were all really satisfied with how much we got done that first hour every day.Seeing the park in the early morning fog on several days was really cool too.
We all agreed we enjoyed WOC but not to the same degree that we did the old one. I would totally do it again, but likely not more than once per trip. Once again we lost our photopass card ;I cannot stress enough take a picture of your bar code, they had my pics instantly!
We hit all our favourite food haunts. Two rounds of dole Whips in The Tiki Room. Corn dog Castle had links, dogs and cheese among us. YUMM
Reservations at
Carnation Café x2- potato soup, pickles, malts, meatloaf and sourdough melt veggie burger got a thumbs up too
Café Orleans- we all found the pommes frites different, low on garlic this time?
Tortilla Jo's -guacamole was great, margaritas' top shelf were the nectar of the gods
Ralph Brennan's - the grits were awesome, the beignets yumm
Blue Bayou - had the strip loin with chimichurri, I come from steak country and was pleasantly surprised it was really good. My DDs both ordered the adult sized mac and chees and the pasta portions were ridiculously huge. My youngest commented that the kid's portions was more than adequate . It is a bit frustrating to be forced into massive portions and price based on age.
The Taquerria had huge Burrritos, we were allowed to use the Magical Saving card there (10%), and on a subsequent visit we had only to show our Room key to get the discount again
A new fav snack is the fresh mango and chili pepper, it was nice to have a healthy snack.
The vegetarian gumbo at the Royal street Veranda got a thumbs up from our picky vegetarian. It is a lot frustrating that they don't offer a vegetarian version at Café Orleans and Blue Bayou. this would be nice as so many of the restaurants its veggie burger or pasta.
DD has severe food allergies and I had made notes of this on my reservations , so I was really pleased to see the new allergy menus come to our tables. They are limited but she could use both menus in tandem to know what she could and could not have. A few locations , CC, for sure had the chef also come out and talk to her.
We stayed at PP 11th floor city view, the higher floor was nice as you could see a fair distance. Room was meh. No real complaints, rooms are getting a bit tired, any where else that room would have been at least $100 less a night. It definitely does not have the magic feel that the DLH has but the weak Canadian dollar forced us into it as we still wanted early entry every day.
Truth be told we don't spend a tonne of time in our rooms anyway. The hot tub I heard another guest refer to as the warm kiddie tub was in no way hot. The only complaint I had was the shower, your set the temperature and it would fluctuate dramatically, it was really frustrating on the night I was truing to warm up, I would get warmed up and the temperature would fall. Fridge is small, but we squeezed a lot in. Ordering my yogurts in individual sizes helped a lot in the fridge. we always order from VONS and eat breakfast as we get ready so as not to eat up valuable park time eating.
A few times we grabbed food from the walk up lounge/restaurant in the hotel and it was REALLY slow every time we ordered something that was not grab and go. There is a self serve microwave there which we did use a few times for left overs.
We brought home Tigger Tails and a Mickey Sourdough, tails are sadly gone and there is a small little nub of bread left so with that Disney 2016 has come to a close, all for the VISA bill. Kind of nice to know that our hotel and tickets were prepaid!
