Princesses, Slushes, LEGOs, and a maxed CC - Sept 2009 1st Timer TR

[jenny105]

Buzz Lightyear is so random. My first time around I didn't break 100k and then I magically got 700k. And Joe got 999,999 before we even got out of the first room on one ride through it. I'm convinced something was wrong with his gun because he never came close again!

 

[SoonerGirl]

Now let me say something real quick. All-in-all, I handle weather good and I handle any type of ride well. But, this tea cup ride was probably the closest I’ve come to needing to puke during/after a ride. This was one of the warmer days of our trip and we had been outside a lot…..Plus, I was getting pretty hungry by this time and probably had not kept myself hydrated enough. So, add those elements with going spinning on the tea cups and things got a little bit wobbly inside for a couple minutes. Luckily, we got to just sit for a couple minutes while we waited for our CM friend and I felt all better.

I'm afraid this is how I would feel EVERY time I rode the teacups. I did them once - never again! I'm glad you sudden illness didn't last long!

I'm thinking that the maxed out credit card has something to do with that innocent little DVC tour.........

 

[chicagoshannon]

UGH you're not going to share your Buzz secret. pout.

What was your final DVC decision?

 

[mommyof2Pirates]

It sounds like you guys had a wonderful last full day there. Such a great idea to have a kids choice day. The two of you are such amazing parents and I can tell that just from reading your story. I cant wait to hear if you joined DVC or not. We are hoping sometime in our lifetime we can join but I know its not anywhere near in the future. (maybe by the time we have grandkids) I am anxious to hear about your departure.

 

[Charlefours]

Oh my goodness--the picture of the kids in the photobooth--how precious! It is so cute Samantha remembered the picture. You cover a lot of ground!!

DVC: its in the back of my mind that if we have such a great time we are thinking we are going to have than it might be wise to look in investing into DVC in a few years. It will have to wait until I am done with my PhD though.

 

[crocko]

Buzz Lightyear is so random. My first time around I didn't break 100k and then I magically got 700k. And Joe got 999,999 before we even got out of the first room on one ride through it. I'm convinced something was wrong with his gun because he never came close again!

Yeah, it definitely has a more random feel to it....TSM is such an awesome upgrade.

I'm afraid this is how I would feel EVERY time I rode the teacups. I did them once - never again! I'm glad you sudden illness didn't last long!

I'm thinking that the maxed out credit card has something to do with that innocent little DVC tour.........

UGH you're not going to share your Buzz secret. pout.

What was your final DVC decision?

Okay, I'll tell you my Buzz secret....(it really helps if the ride stops for a couple minutes a couple times....find a good target and just keep shooting....even if you think your hand will fall off)

Oh...and stay tuned.

It sounds like you guys had a wonderful last full day there. Such a great idea to have a kids choice day. The two of you are such amazing parents and I can tell that just from reading your story. I cant wait to hear if you joined DVC or not. We are hoping sometime in our lifetime we can join but I know its not anywhere near in the future. (maybe by the time we have grandkids) I am anxious to hear about your departure.

Thanks so much for the kinds words!! And departure day is coming up! By the way....departure day is the shortest day in the world, I think.

Oh my goodness--the picture of the kids in the photobooth--how precious! It is so cute Samantha remembered the picture. You cover a lot of ground!!

DVC: its in the back of my mind that if we have such a great time we are thinking we are going to have than it might be wise to look in investing into DVC in a few years. It will have to wait until I am done with my PhD though.

PhD....yuck! j/k I've considered PhD....I really like NOT being in school, though.

 

[crocko]

Day 10 (Departure Day)
Chapter 1 -- The Final Chapter




Day 10 – the final day of our trip. None of our flights were until 6pm, so we still had a good half-day left to enjoy Disney World. Originally, my plan was to try and get some more “theme-parking” in, but instead we decided to get around more casually and scheduled a late breakfast at ‘Ohana.

So, after waking up, we got everything tightly packed and our bags checked at bell services.
Then, off to wait for an MK bus. From there, monorail to the Polynesian.

Got seated pretty well on time for breakfast. Here, instead of buffet-style, you are served breakfast family-style. They bring Mickey waffles around as needed…..the rest comes out on a big hot skillet (bacon, eggs, sausage, etc…) They also start you off with some yummy “Hawaiian bread”. The food here was very good. I prefer buffet-style because it gives you more options, but quality wise, ‘Ohana breakfast was definitely yummy.

Before any characters made it our way, a parade went through

After the parade….time to finish eating and wait for our Disney friends….

First up! Mickey the Mouse!

Then, Stitch…who decided to have some fun with my dad (Nice Cubs cap there, Stitch!)

Then, Miss Lilo came by….followed by our last friend of the trip…Pluto!

Once Pluto was gone, time to go ahead and head on out of the restaurant. This is the point in which things started to get stressful.

Bridgette and I split ways with the kids and my family for a little bit. They went on out to the monorail so they could get over to MK and catch an AKL bus.

Meanwhile, Bridgette and I stuck around at Poly for a few minutes and found a special kiosk…..a DVC kiosk to be exact. Why?
Well, to check in as ready for a DVC van to come pick us up and take us over to Saratoga Springs.

We waited a few minutes and our DVC driver pulled up and took us over to SSR. While there, we were ushered into the big DVC portion of SSR and sat in a waiting room for a few minutes.

Here we were….about to buy into the Disney Vacation Club. A long-time dream! A lot of money, too! I was getting pretty sick to my stomach at this point from all the fretting, pondering, and calculating…..

We finally got settled into a room and the paperwork was started. Once the process actually started, I actually calmed down and the butterflies started to fly away. The stress didn’t go away completely, though, because we were on a tight schedule. We needed to be back to AKL by 2:15 and we didn’t get paperwork started until after 1pm. Ach!! It felt like we spent forever waiting in that little room for everything…..Finally, a nice young lady popped in with all of our final papers, homework, and goodies. Once all the lines had been signed, we were whisked out to get in another van waiting at the door for us….to take us back to AKL (our new home!!)

So, yep! We are now DVC members – with Animal Kingdom Lodge as our home resort!!!!
(This is the reason for the maxed CC line of this Trip Report). We used our Disney Visa on the trip for two main items – the Dining Plan bill and souvenirs…the money was sitting in our bank, but we didn’t want to bring that much cash with us. I knew we’d have enough CC room for those items. Well, the downpayment on DVC is another nice little chunk that we had to use the CC for…..and man oh man, did that expense bring us almost right up to our card limit. I had to make a quick payment as soon as we got home to give us some leeway before the statement actually came due. Whew!


Now, our ME bus was not scheduled to come until 3pm, but we wanted to get back early, because we had to stop at Boma to do some final spending. Spending of what? Dining credits!! We had about 7 snack credits left and 3 QS credits (I believe). They let us go 3-for-1 on the QS credits for snacks. We also had 3 child TS credits left….and the nice woman at the Mara also let us go 3-for-1 on the TS credits….So, we walked out of Boma with a good 25 or so snacks in our new big, DVC bag. Haha! (Good thing we became DVC members!!)

Back to Kidani…..made in time and the stress was finally receding. Got on to a more-than-packed ME bus and got back to the Orlando airport. While waiting for our plane everyone in the terminal got to listen in on some woman’s telephone conversation with her boyfriend about how she caught him cheating on her….how she called and some tramp woman answered the phone. The conversation went on and on in which she used inappropriate language at times and the content of the conversation was definitely inappropriate for an airport terminal. It finally got bad enough that I said something to her. She got huffy at me, but hung up soon after (luckily, she was not seated right next to me on the plane)

Finally…time to head home

Landed in Houston….where we had a pretty long layover, so we casually made our way to the other side of the airport to sit and wait….

Got on a pretty small plane to head to OKC and a little after 10:30pm, made it home. All 4 of us slept at some point on the homeward flight. Got our luggage and then stood outside to wait for Bridgette’s sister to pick us up.

Last picture of the trip? A picture that will reminds us that even though THIS trip is over, there are PLENTY of more trips to come…

And that’s it!! Vacation over!
Tomorrow, I’ll try to make a post in which I summarize the trip and some of my thoughts about things going on at Disney right now.

 

[SoonerGirl]

Ha! I knew it! Congrats on becoming DVC members, that's awesome!!

Thanks so much for sharing your trip, I had a great time reading along with you. Are you going to write a TR for your adults only trip coming up?

 

[kate_wdw]

I'm sorry to see your trip report come to an end.

Congratulations on becoming DVC members!

 

[stacikristine]

Ah, what a great ending to "Kids' Choice Day"! I can't believe Joshua rode Splash 4 times! And that's so exciting that yall are thinking about buying DVC. It's really a great thing (so I hear ) I'm anxious to hear if you decided to buy or not. Oh--and WOO-HOO on your Buzz score!

 

[longing2Batdisney]

Congrats! on becoming a DVC member!!! how exciting!!AKL!!!!

 

[jenny105]

Congrats on becoming a DVC member! That's great! I hope to be one someday...

I'm sad reading about this trip is over but I can't wait to hear about the next one. And so soon!

 

[chicagoshannon]

Aw a DVC owner. So when's your next trip?

Can't wait for your final thoughts.

 

[Charlefours]

Congrats on the DVC membership!!

I am looking forward to hearing your final thoughts. You are soon off again!!

 

[crocko]

Ha! I knew it! Congrats on becoming DVC members, that's awesome!!

Thanks so much for sharing your trip, I had a great time reading along with you. Are you going to write a TR for your adults only trip coming up?

Thanks!

And yes...I'm planning on putting together a TR for this weekend's trip. I'll just let the end of this TR be the "PTR" for it. Then, when I get back I'll start a new thread and provide the link here.

I'm sorry to see your trip report come to an end.

Congratulations on becoming DVC members!

Gracias!

Ah, what a great ending to "Kids' Choice Day"! I can't believe Joshua rode Splash 4 times! And that's so exciting that yall are thinking about buying DVC. It's really a great thing (so I hear ) I'm anxious to hear if you decided to buy or not. Oh--and WOO-HOO on your Buzz score!

We did! And it is exciting to KNOW that we'll be headed back to WDW often. Guess we just have to go back now...shucks!

Congrats! on becoming a DVC member!!! how exciting!!AKL!!!!

AKL was nice....very nice environment over at Kidani.

Congrats on becoming a DVC member! That's great! I hope to be one someday...

I'm sad reading about this trip is over but I can't wait to hear about the next one. And so soon!

Yep, it was a great trip....I like though this idea of going on a trip, putting together a report and then once you're done, go on another trip.

Aw a DVC owner. So when's your next trip?

Can't wait for your final thoughts.

Next trip announcement will be made tomorrow!

Congrats on the DVC membership!!

I am looking forward to hearing your final thoughts. You are soon off again!!

Less than 39 hours!!!

 

[SoonerGirl]

And yes...I'm planning on putting together a TR for this weekend's trip. I'll just let the end of this TR be the "PTR" for it. Then, when I get back I'll start a new thread and provide the link here.

Looking forward to it! I need some more TRs to get me through the days until our trip - 37 days and counting!!!

 

[crocko]

Okay, let's see if I can remember all the summary points I wanted to make about this trip.

Disney Dining Plan
Doing the DDP ended up being almost a last-minute decision. We had enough TS meals already booked that it finally made sense to me. QS wouldn't work because we like doing a few TS each time (especially character breakfasts) and the Deluxe is just too much food...plus it cost twice as much!

We really enjoyed the DDP, though. We were able to eat whatever we wanted at TS meals without feeling guilty about cost, plus it allowed us to be a little more adventurous in what we might choose to eat. Also, the snack credits worked out nice. Water bottles were the only thing we paid out of pocket for. Otherwise, if getting a snack or slushy we used credits. For a 9-night trip, we only ended with 7 snacks leftover and it was fun to be able to bring some items back home with us....let the magic live on a little longer. Most likely, we will continue to use the DDP going forward (as long as prices don't get out-of-hand).


Cast Members and Cleanliness
Before the trip, I had read some posts discussing how cleanliness at the parks had gone way down and that CM attitudes had diminished. Well, this was not our experience. In general, most CM's seemed very pleasant and there were plenty of instances of CM's going out of the way to do something special (i.e. a World of Disney CM who played with a sleepy Joshua for several minutes...hid a toy in the boys' section that he had to go find...once he found it, she gave him a cool certificate; very nice waitresses at Norway breakfast and at Crystal Palace breakfast). The only instance that we were unpleased with service was at our Mexico lunch (previously mentioned).

And cleanliness, the park seemed very clean to me...very normal Disney cleanliness in which for the most part, you never really noticed anything unclean. There were even some cool ground-washers (correct term?) out at the parks a couple times who had used their mops to "draw" characters on the ground with water.


Photopass
Another area I was concerned about based on posts I had been reading. I had seen comments about there not being enough PP spots around the parks...photographers aren't very good...not enough pictures.
After the first 2 days, we were concerned. But from day 3 on, things picked up. On a 10-day trip like we were on, Photopass ended up being a GREAT deal. We ended up with over 300 PP pictures that I ended up turning into over 1,100 pictures after going enchancement crazy. Some of the pictures turned out amazing as well. As for poor quality of picture...I disagree. If there is too much ceiling or floor in your picutre, then CROP it! Turns out great if you do so. Plus, on a few pictures I cropped by zooming in really tight. I was worried that the quality might be fuzzy, but once we got the CD's, those ultra-cropped pictures still looked really good.

We probably won't do Photopass on this 3-night trip, but for a good sized trip, I think it is a great buy, especially if you are doing a lot of character greets.

Plus, we had the really cool Photopass guy who was not busy and just decided to follow Samantha and Joshua around while they played at the Epcot splash area...that was awesome!


Animal Kingdom Lodge
I'll start with the cons...

Cons:
Distance to....well, anything
Any time you took a bus somewhere you could expect a 10-minute trip. Anywhere from 20-30 minutes when going to the Magic Kingdom. Not a huge deal, but time is FUN! when you're at Disney World.

Room location (possibly) As I mentioned earlier, if you are staying at Kidani, you could possibly get a room with a very long walk. If that's something you can't stand, then be aware when making a reservation (might be able to request a room closer to the lobby)

Food court location -- If you are at Kidani, just be aware that you have to walk/bus over to Jambo House to get to the AKL's food court.

New Pembe savannah -- Also be aware when at Kidani, that there is the main savannah in the middle of the resort and the new Pembe savannah on the outskirts. You could possibly pay for a savannah room and get Pembe. If so, from your balcony, realize that you will probably not see giraffes or zebras. You will still see lots of cool animals, but not the ones you may have been planning on. All those animals, though, can of course be seen while walking through the halls or hanging out near the lobby.

Pros:
Atmosphere -- Especially at Kidani. I found that Jambo House could be a pretty loud environment, but Kidani Village is so peaceful. Never had any noise problems...and the lobby area is so tranquil. Doesn't seem like it would be a big deal, but after spending your day with two rugrats and hanging out at packed parks...it is so refreshing to come back to Kidani and things be much more quiet and peaceful.

Play -- So much fun stuff to do here. The pool/splash pad/playground area is a lot of fun. Plus, they have games and camps that seem to be going on all the time. The Community Hall also had tons of great activities. Craft activities, TV/DVD, board games, pool, foosball, computers, Wii...

Animals -- Come on...it's cool to be so close to beautiful African animals...from okapi's to deer to zebras to giraffes. So close and so fun to watch.

Restaurants -- You are very close to several restaurants. First off, the Mara (the QS restaurant) is very good as far as QS goes. Normal fare, plus some slightly more African fare as well. On top of that, 3 TS restaurants on location. Sanaa (at Kidani), Jiko, and Boma (which Bridgette raved about!)

Rooms/decorations -- The rooms were very nice (and yes...a 2 bedroom or 1 bedroom can spoil you!). Great decorations in the rooms and plenty of great decorations throughout Kidani and Jambo.


Meals
Overrated:
Pinocchio's. I miss the hot dogs here. The pizza was just not quite right and the dessert options are minimal...including a horrible chocolate cake.

Play'n'Dine. Characters are fun, but the food was the most boring of all the breakfast buffets.

San Angel Inn. The food wasn't bad, but the darkness was a bit much while trying to eat food and the service was unexceptional.

Great Grabs:
Akershus! Best breakfast ever!! Not only do you get to see 4 or 5 princesses during your meal, but the food was outstanding. The price is also a bargain considering the fact that your picture is included.

Boma. According to Bridgette, this dinner buffet was outstanding...I think she occasionally dreams of that food.

Pizza Planet. Now here's where you get yummy pizza plus, you can get Mickey-shaped Rice Krispy treats as your dessert.

Wolfgang Puck Express. Wow, what a deal for a QS credit. Easily spend $15-$20 here on one credit. The food is VERY good, plus you can get a creme brulee as your dessert. (WPE...we have a date with you this Sunday)






I'll leave my summary at that for now...if I remember something later, I'll try to add some more thoughts tomorrow. Plus...I'm still planning on getting some of our Photopass pictures added to this TR as well (just may have to happen after this next trip)


Thanks for following along everybody!!

 

[chicagoshannon]

I've really enjoyed reading about your trip. I hope you add your weekend away to this TR too!

 

[mommyof2Pirates]

I loved reading your trip report. You did such a great job telling us all about your trip. Congrats on becoming DVC members and have a wonderful time on your upcoming trip with your wife.

 

[jenny105]

So sad the TR is over. I really looked forward to reading about your trip. Can't wait to hear all about the next one! Have fun!