drag n' fly
Sassy, salty and sweet....
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2006
- Messages
- 6,574
PSSSST I have a secret to tell you!
The number one misunderstood thing at WDW is fastpass. People still don’t get it! After enduring hundreds and hundreds of dirty evil looks from people while we walked up the fastpass line, I began to ask questions as to why people were enduring 90 minute waits to get on rides like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
On the whole this is what I found out:
1. Most people waiting in the standby line believed you had to be a WDW resort guest to have one.
2. Fastpasses were not free they cost money.
Even after I told people they were free and available to everyone people continued to argue with me and insisted I was wrong……I tried!
The second thing is make those ADR’s! I saw so many disappointed tired people looking at 90 minute waits for walkups and finally walking away.
This is our first trip to WDW! We are from Calgary, Alberta. Our group consisted of my dh, dw(me), ds12,dd10 and ds4. We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside, Alligator Bayou section from February 6-15th. I have no intention of going on and on. Most of my trip report is in point form. My intention is to try and keep it as positive as possible. Were there hiccups…you bet! We dealt with most easily, however I will point out the few things that do need noting so it won’t be all sunshine and roses!
Flight down February 6th.
-a complete disaster.
-until it is resolved with Air Canada, I won’t be discussing it. Important Update! Today 6/03/07 Air Canada has resolved this and we are getting a 500.00 credit in the mail!
Flight back
-great! Tv’s on the back of every seat!
Arrival at MCO Airport
-cold but glad to be here
-um ok so where exactly is magical express? They really need to get a few bored airport kids to colour a few signs showing people where to go. Even the ME ticket package is not clear enough. A real time waster.
ME Bus to hotel
-nice bus
-nice polite driver easy trip
Hotel check in at POR
-Wow great hotel
-check in goes smoothly set up charge account and got cards
-received all room requests. Building 14, corner room, non smoking, got a partial water view. Wanted top floor got bottom. Cm’s are polite and helpful.
-garden grocer delivered our order to bell services and we then requested to have it delivered to our room. Easy and no troubles!
Key to the world card
-convenient
-demagnetizes very easily. We were locked out of our room at 11:30 at night. Did not work at fastpass some times.
-worked well in the turnstiles
-KTTW moment. While I took the kids for something to eat dh ran over to Expedition Everest to get fastpasses. He met us back and halfway through the meal realized he had lost my card…yes with charging privileges! He ran all the way back to Expedition Everest and the cm told him he had found it in the fastpass machine….whew! quick check at customer service to make sure there were no charges and all was well again…grrrrrrr lol
Room 1417, AB section
-efficient and pleasant mousekeeping
-tipped every day
-did lots of really cute things with kids stuffies. Our fav is when they set the animals at the window and opened the blind. They posed their arms like they were all waving at us out the room window welcoming us back to our room!
-on Valentine’s Day she made a nice towel heart and placed some stuffies in it. We left a tip, a small box of chocolates and a keychain with a Canadian coin embedded in it.
-mousekeeping is good, maintenance needs work. The bolts were falling out of our bed. The internet connection was ripped out of the wall and the wires were hanging. Loads and loads of dust behind tv stand. Looked like it had not been cleaned in years. -The picture on the wall was water stained. It was a beautiful picture but looked dollar store, half ruined, hanging crooked on the wall. What is funny was we couldn’t decide at first if the picture was supposed to be like that or not since it was a water picture lol.
-trundle was a lifesaver even my ds 12 slept on it a few nights very comfie!
-room was good enough size for us!
-beds were double but comfie and the pillows were nice and fluffy!
- we had a little trouble adjusting to the humidity. It was either cold and damp or hot and damp. After a few days of adjusting to the time change and humidity we were fine. I always felt sticky though. It is very dry here in Calgary! When we were at an AI we never noticed it as much as we were always in the water.
-lots of fresh towels and facecloths everyday. Got the new toiletries in the blue bottle. I liked them my kids did not. They said it smelled like a cross between peppermint and seaweed lol
-only heard the first set of people upstairs when they flushed their toilet. Our new neighbors however starting the second week sounded like a herd of elephants. That is why I originally requested top floor…but never got it…sigh!
-*see the lows
The Resort
-absolutely beautiful
-ol man island was great. Only drawback water was cool at times and no zero entry. Kiddie pool was cold. Ds4 was not allowed to go down slide with a parent. Had to go alone or not at all. Went once that was it! Really nice big pool. Quiet pools were…..quiet.
-I did laundry one day and sat by the quiet pool and it was so warm and nice….ahhh and quiet! Cost 28 US dollars to do seven loads of laundry. They seemed to work fine no problems.
- I liked building 27 even though we were in 14. Walked everywhere. Loved all the ducks and critters!
-dd10 got a nice hair wrap. It is 1.50 per inch plus beads. Very cute!
-pool bar is expensive but woohoo strong! Few long islands and all was good in my world lol.
-very well stocked gift shop with package pickup(we used that lots)
- great arcade. Checked it out but never used.
-nice lounge, never went into it, never saw Bob.
-nice ts restaurant (Boatwrights). Always busy, never ate there.
-food court rehab
- they were serving breakfast and supper platters first week. Then breakfast, lunch and supper second week. Supper is better than breakfast…but way way way too much food. We don’t even eat this much at Thanksgiving lol. I found everything very heavily salted. I am used to cooking for three kids though. Edible but not memorable.
-bought refillable mugs. Well worth the money. Coffee is horrendous. Lots of nice tea though. Drank lots of tea with lemon and honey in the evenings. No healthy juice or milk at the refill station though. Hot chocolate is good but too sweet. We just watered ours down.
-beware mug violators. They were seriously cracking down on mug violators.
-we found the food to be very rich here. I did manage to wolf down two or three of those cream cheese danish in the ten days we were there after I finally got over the fact they were like eating straight butter lol.
Disney Transportation
-fairly well run. Very few problems. Cm was keeping track of buses coming and going and times at POR.
-no matter where you have to go, a bus going somewhere will always get you there.
-we always allowed an hour to get us wherever we had to go.
-stood lots but at least we were on the bus.
-made sure my older kids always gave up their seat for the elderly, disabled, mother’s with young babies or pregnant moms. Never saw any problems with seat hogging, most people were very polite and willing to give up their seat if necessary.
-some drivers had a fantastic sense of humour and always put a smile on our face at the beginning and end of every day. Found them all to be very polite and professional.
-loved the monorail…doh!
-boat from POR to downtown Disney was fantastic and relaxing. You get to go right past the treehouses that the exchange students live in.
-best transportation moment…..five yes count them five buses showed up in 20 minutes at Epcot to escort POR passengers back to their hotels from Epcot…now that’s service!
-as usual MK choo-choo rocks. Used it lots. We always use it at DL. Even more so here.
CM’s
-we never once encountered an unhappy or rude cm. Always polite, professional and very helpful. We found a few restaurant staff to be somewhat cranky and rushed however.
-on that note. The more you engaged cm’s in conversation the quicker they warmed up. When we got a counter service meal and said thank you, three cm’s at the same time said we were the first people that week(this was Thursday) that said thank you to them. They thanked us for thanking them! These people love to chat about anything and everything and we thoroughly enjoyed the many short and long conversations we had with the cm’s. We found them to be warm, professional and always always helpful. All you have to do is ask!
Disney Dining Plan
-loved loved loved the dining plan
-way way too much food at the ts restaurants
-looking at receipts we saved 40-45% on food.
-will definitely do that again
-scrambled last minute to use up three cs and loads of snack credits. Somehow we were accidentally credited 2 cs meals instead of deducted. Took 15 LOL Earl of Sandwich sandwiches home on the plane. We ate 5 waiting for ME and five on the plane and left five behind because we were too scared to eat them at that point because they had been out too long.
Dining at Disney
I am not going to do a review of every place we ate at..no pics either. Plenty of those on the board already. What I am going to do is in point form highlight the highs….and yes the lows
First the highs:
-Prime time café and Cindy (rella) our “Mom”. Funnest meal of the whole trip. To me this is what Disney dining is all about. The food, the actors the ambience
-House of Blues Gospel brunch. OMG this was outstanding! The food was fantastic and we had the best seat in the house front and centre baby!
-Biergarten. Fantastic! The food was great. The performers were great. The beer was great. The kids had a blast!
-Le Cellier. Yummy! Best Alberta Beef I ever had…and I’m from Alberta! I could cut my steak with a fork it was so tender. Dh and I shared a lovely bottle of Merlot.
-Coral Reef (Valentine’s Day). Our meal took two and a half hours from beginning to end. Didn’t seem that long though. Dh and I shared another lovely bottle of Merlot. They accommodated my food allergies great. Brought me a fantastic fresh fruit creation for dessert (egg allergy). Our server however is what made the meal on the highs list. Our server Riley was engaging, intelligent, humourous and a fantastic waiter. Kudos to him! Mickey Mouse came into the dive tank with a sign that said Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone. Man were people excited! Wooohoo!
-1900 Park Faire. Food was very fresh and good! Cinderella, Prince Charming, Snow White etc. were there. Characters came to the tables quickly and posed and signed and even lingered with the kids a bit which was nice. They even came around twice. Note: Our waitress was very cranky but efficient. The senior restaurant staff hovering over tables made mealtime uncomfortable. lol
-Chef Mickey’s. We were 15 minutes late for this ADR. As a result we had to wait 25 minutes to get the next available table. Our fault..I know. It was worth the wait. All the Disney characters came to our table quickly and signed books and posed for pics! This was very fun and upbeat with lots of napkin twirling! Good food too! Dessert station rocks.
Next the Lows
-hard to find a decent cs meal here. We did like Sunshine Seasons? (the one by Soarin) at Epcot and Tusker house in AK. Our surprise CS meal. Toy Story Pizza Planet! It was fantastic! The food was very fresh and the pizza was yummy! Other than that we could take it or leave it.
-Ohana’s breakfast with Lilo and Stitch. Atmosphere is great. Fun for the kids. We all got sick after this meal …all of us. Our last morning there and we all felt we had mild food poisoning. Our waiter seemed annoyed at our requests and seemed very rushed.
-Crystal Palace. We made the huge mistake of booking this ADR on a Pirate and Princess evening. We literally had to sprint to get the food on our plates because they started putting food away 30 minutes before park closing. The looking at the watches and hovering over our plates by senior restaurant staff to get us out of there was ridiculous. The characters seemed disorganized and rushed also. We refused to leave until every character had come to the table though. My dh refused to budge and stayed for extended dessert…good for him and I took the kids outside to see Wishes!
-Boma. We were looking so forward to this meal. In one word…too much nutmeg in everything! The chef and the restaurant really accommodated my food allergies. The constant pounding on the drums gave us all a headache. It is a very noisy restaurant. The kids liked the zebra domes though. I couldn’t eat one due to my egg allergy…sigh!
-They hose the streets down at MGM really well. Our first day at MGM right after rope drop and dd11 decides to sprint and sure enough she totally waxed out on main street and completely tore off the hide on her arm. Blood everywhere! Several witnesses including staff and not one person stepped forward to assist.
-Bed bugs. Yes we brought bed bugs home from Florida. They got in our house. What a nightmare! Next time we will open our suitcases and unpack in the garage and let the cold Canadian air take care of them!
Snacks
-we used most credits on tropical blend fruit smoothies and some pretzels. We had lots of snack credits left over at the end. We redeemed 2 credits for entmanns donuts but couldn’t finish them as they were too rich for us.
Cheerleaders and Conventioneers
-lots and lots of both
-cheerleaders were very well behaved and properly chaperoned
-conventioneers were not even an issue. My only complaint was the charter buses took up the all the room at the south depot at POR each morning. Hundreds of them. We complained to a bus driver about it and he instantly got on the horn to someone to straighten those charter buses out.. The bus stops are for people traveling to the parks not charters. All they had to do was move up further.
My Pet Peeves
-everyone in my family knows what my number one pet peeve is. I want you all to know it took every ounce of strength in me to control myself. My biggest pet peeve is seeing people wearing a hat in a sit down restaurant. I don’t care if it is sit down at Pecos Bills or Victoria and Albert’s. I was raised that it shows disrespect to your fellow diners and the chef. You don’t know how many times in ten days I wanted to flick that cap off the top of someone’s head lol. Ok I said it I am fine now…whew!
-smoking. I am an ex smoker (5 years now). I believe everyone should have the right to smoke if they wish and I also believe everyone who does not should not be exposed to it. My only pet peeve about this was smoking and drinking in the Ol man island hot tub. Nasty gross nasty. My kids said what is this .. a bar? I inquired at front desk and they said there was nothing they could do about it because it was considered an open area….nice real nice. Also please stay in the designated smoking areas…please!
DIS People
-In the entire ten days I only saw one LGMPH. It was the morning of February 7th and we were at the bus stop at POR waiting to go to MK and I spotted a couple mid to late forties with the LGMPH. She had white gloves on and he had reddish hair with a beard. I smiled and was going to chat but your bus came and we never got the chance.
EMH
-not too crowded. Great onsite perk. Much better use of your time going to the morning one.….nuff said.
Lost and found
-yes my dh set our brand new video camera down at MGM and walked away. Fortunately it was turned in and waiting for us at the lost and found ticket and transportation centre….whew!
Last but not Least
Our Ten Days of Magical Moments
We had so many magical moments in our ten days there. I wanted to end this trip report with a good vibe. As everyone knows it is the Year of a Million dreams. Did we win? YES!...... Not once, not twice but three times and almost four. I will get to that in a minute!
-day one first day at the parks going into MK. My dd had bought a lanyard to begin pin collecting and trading. Since it was our first day and we were newbies we had no pins. The security guard at MK asked us why we had no pins. My dd explained she was just starting and the security guard said “well let me get you started” and she handed my dd the twin YOAMD tinkerbell pin set. You keep one for yourself and give one away. OMG we were thrilled! We spent all ay looking for the right little girl to give it to. At the end of the day we had not found the right person. So what did my dd do? She gave the second pin to her older brother so he could start a collection too! Awww!
-second magical moment. Again first day at the parks at MK. We were all coming off Peter Pan’s flight and the YOAMD rep was there and we all got the Collectors ears! I am beside myself by this point. Pins and now hats….OMG!
-Wishes at MK. I finally got to see Tinkerbell fly out of the castle. Always missed it at DL. OMG! My dd and I had tears in our eyes!
-MGM. The Star Troopers from Star Wars were having a meet and greet in the plaza. DD and I had to go potty so we started heading towards the potty walking right past the star Troopers. On my way by I came up from behind as I was walking past and went”tickle tickle” on his plastic suit. Well as most people know Star Troopers are not there to make friends. Well wouldn’t you know it….he chased us all the way down the plaza towards the ladies washroom. I managed to duck in but my dd didn’t and he cornered her in front of a souvenier cart. By this time we were shrieking with laughter and EVERYONE was watching. He held his gun up and gave my daughter the “Im watching you focker sign with his fingers” and left. Well we were in absolute gales of laughter by this point. It was so fun!
-Fantasmic. Loved it. We got to the 8:30 showing and literally walked right in.
-Walt One Man’s Dream. I honestly believe every person who steps foot in the park should see this. It really put our whole trip into perspective…..really it all started with a mouse…actually a bunny …check it out yourself!
-Spectromagic. A must see absolutely beautiful!
Mission Space: We were coming off Mission Space to do parent swap and I noticed there was an indoor playground. While my dh went for his turn we came back though the store and into the exit where the playground was while we waited so ds4 could play a bit. We no sooner came and and sure enough out of no where there appeared a YOAMD Rep. He asked my two kids to play a game where the screens are. So they did and they both won a YOAMD lanyard with two collector pins on it. They went back and played again and won another one for their little brother who was at the playground with me. My dh comes off the ride and his eyes almost fell right out of his head.
-there were tornado warnings that day and we were feeling nervous and it was raining. The sun broke through and we were sitting on a bench eating a pretzel. Out of no where comes a YOAMD rep right up to us asking the kids where they had gotten all there hidden Mickey pins etc He could not believe our YOAMD luck. He asked us if we were following them lol. Well the conversation went on and on and on with lots of questions for an hour! We thought OMG THIS IS BIG! He asked us questions about the castle etc! After an hour he took our names and where we lived and left. We believe we were probably in the running for Cinderella’s castle suite maybe even within the same running as the Saskatchewan family that was picked! HOORAY for them! That was so nerve-wracking.
-Ds4 reaction to Soarin. OMG there was nothing more thrilling than seeing pure joy on a small boys face!
-the lobby at Grand Floridian. Oh man I could stay there all day. The orchestra, the ambience. Dh and I tangoed to the live orchestra…it was pure bliss. If we ever come back the GF it is (dh’s words not mine lol)
Alls well ends well. Hope you enjoyed our first trip to WDW! Drag n’ fly!
-Update: I forgot to add that on Valentine's Day a couple appeared to have won a dream wedding (sponsored by a bridal magazine) on the steps of Cinderella Castle. They were having their wedding after rope drop so everyone was gathered watching. Us... we sprinted and walked on the rides lol
-For you football fans. The head coach for the Colts, Tony Dungy made an appearance at MK with one of their players and a small child (his)?. Being from Canada, we didn't have a clue who they were so we asked what all the fuss was about and a cm informed us of who it was.
-I also forgot to add all three kids got to participate in a pirate parade at the Contemporary
(my personal favourite hotel) resort while we were there for dinner. After marching all over the concourse singing Yo Ho Ho a Pirate's Life for Me and banging instuments, dd got to hold the flag and ds got an eye patch they received a special pirate certificate and a special pirate silver coin!
If I think of anything else cool I will add it as I remember.
The number one misunderstood thing at WDW is fastpass. People still don’t get it! After enduring hundreds and hundreds of dirty evil looks from people while we walked up the fastpass line, I began to ask questions as to why people were enduring 90 minute waits to get on rides like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
On the whole this is what I found out:
1. Most people waiting in the standby line believed you had to be a WDW resort guest to have one.
2. Fastpasses were not free they cost money.
Even after I told people they were free and available to everyone people continued to argue with me and insisted I was wrong……I tried!
The second thing is make those ADR’s! I saw so many disappointed tired people looking at 90 minute waits for walkups and finally walking away.
This is our first trip to WDW! We are from Calgary, Alberta. Our group consisted of my dh, dw(me), ds12,dd10 and ds4. We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside, Alligator Bayou section from February 6-15th. I have no intention of going on and on. Most of my trip report is in point form. My intention is to try and keep it as positive as possible. Were there hiccups…you bet! We dealt with most easily, however I will point out the few things that do need noting so it won’t be all sunshine and roses!
Flight down February 6th.
-a complete disaster.
-until it is resolved with Air Canada, I won’t be discussing it. Important Update! Today 6/03/07 Air Canada has resolved this and we are getting a 500.00 credit in the mail!
Flight back
-great! Tv’s on the back of every seat!
Arrival at MCO Airport
-cold but glad to be here
-um ok so where exactly is magical express? They really need to get a few bored airport kids to colour a few signs showing people where to go. Even the ME ticket package is not clear enough. A real time waster.
ME Bus to hotel
-nice bus
-nice polite driver easy trip
Hotel check in at POR
-Wow great hotel
-check in goes smoothly set up charge account and got cards
-received all room requests. Building 14, corner room, non smoking, got a partial water view. Wanted top floor got bottom. Cm’s are polite and helpful.
-garden grocer delivered our order to bell services and we then requested to have it delivered to our room. Easy and no troubles!
Key to the world card
-convenient
-demagnetizes very easily. We were locked out of our room at 11:30 at night. Did not work at fastpass some times.
-worked well in the turnstiles
-KTTW moment. While I took the kids for something to eat dh ran over to Expedition Everest to get fastpasses. He met us back and halfway through the meal realized he had lost my card…yes with charging privileges! He ran all the way back to Expedition Everest and the cm told him he had found it in the fastpass machine….whew! quick check at customer service to make sure there were no charges and all was well again…grrrrrrr lol
Room 1417, AB section
-efficient and pleasant mousekeeping
-tipped every day
-did lots of really cute things with kids stuffies. Our fav is when they set the animals at the window and opened the blind. They posed their arms like they were all waving at us out the room window welcoming us back to our room!
-on Valentine’s Day she made a nice towel heart and placed some stuffies in it. We left a tip, a small box of chocolates and a keychain with a Canadian coin embedded in it.
-mousekeeping is good, maintenance needs work. The bolts were falling out of our bed. The internet connection was ripped out of the wall and the wires were hanging. Loads and loads of dust behind tv stand. Looked like it had not been cleaned in years. -The picture on the wall was water stained. It was a beautiful picture but looked dollar store, half ruined, hanging crooked on the wall. What is funny was we couldn’t decide at first if the picture was supposed to be like that or not since it was a water picture lol.
-trundle was a lifesaver even my ds 12 slept on it a few nights very comfie!
-room was good enough size for us!
-beds were double but comfie and the pillows were nice and fluffy!
- we had a little trouble adjusting to the humidity. It was either cold and damp or hot and damp. After a few days of adjusting to the time change and humidity we were fine. I always felt sticky though. It is very dry here in Calgary! When we were at an AI we never noticed it as much as we were always in the water.
-lots of fresh towels and facecloths everyday. Got the new toiletries in the blue bottle. I liked them my kids did not. They said it smelled like a cross between peppermint and seaweed lol
-only heard the first set of people upstairs when they flushed their toilet. Our new neighbors however starting the second week sounded like a herd of elephants. That is why I originally requested top floor…but never got it…sigh!
-*see the lows
The Resort
-absolutely beautiful
-ol man island was great. Only drawback water was cool at times and no zero entry. Kiddie pool was cold. Ds4 was not allowed to go down slide with a parent. Had to go alone or not at all. Went once that was it! Really nice big pool. Quiet pools were…..quiet.
-I did laundry one day and sat by the quiet pool and it was so warm and nice….ahhh and quiet! Cost 28 US dollars to do seven loads of laundry. They seemed to work fine no problems.
- I liked building 27 even though we were in 14. Walked everywhere. Loved all the ducks and critters!
-dd10 got a nice hair wrap. It is 1.50 per inch plus beads. Very cute!
-pool bar is expensive but woohoo strong! Few long islands and all was good in my world lol.
-very well stocked gift shop with package pickup(we used that lots)
- great arcade. Checked it out but never used.
-nice lounge, never went into it, never saw Bob.
-nice ts restaurant (Boatwrights). Always busy, never ate there.
-food court rehab
- they were serving breakfast and supper platters first week. Then breakfast, lunch and supper second week. Supper is better than breakfast…but way way way too much food. We don’t even eat this much at Thanksgiving lol. I found everything very heavily salted. I am used to cooking for three kids though. Edible but not memorable.
-bought refillable mugs. Well worth the money. Coffee is horrendous. Lots of nice tea though. Drank lots of tea with lemon and honey in the evenings. No healthy juice or milk at the refill station though. Hot chocolate is good but too sweet. We just watered ours down.
-beware mug violators. They were seriously cracking down on mug violators.
-we found the food to be very rich here. I did manage to wolf down two or three of those cream cheese danish in the ten days we were there after I finally got over the fact they were like eating straight butter lol.
Disney Transportation
-fairly well run. Very few problems. Cm was keeping track of buses coming and going and times at POR.
-no matter where you have to go, a bus going somewhere will always get you there.
-we always allowed an hour to get us wherever we had to go.
-stood lots but at least we were on the bus.
-made sure my older kids always gave up their seat for the elderly, disabled, mother’s with young babies or pregnant moms. Never saw any problems with seat hogging, most people were very polite and willing to give up their seat if necessary.
-some drivers had a fantastic sense of humour and always put a smile on our face at the beginning and end of every day. Found them all to be very polite and professional.
-loved the monorail…doh!
-boat from POR to downtown Disney was fantastic and relaxing. You get to go right past the treehouses that the exchange students live in.
-best transportation moment…..five yes count them five buses showed up in 20 minutes at Epcot to escort POR passengers back to their hotels from Epcot…now that’s service!
-as usual MK choo-choo rocks. Used it lots. We always use it at DL. Even more so here.
CM’s
-we never once encountered an unhappy or rude cm. Always polite, professional and very helpful. We found a few restaurant staff to be somewhat cranky and rushed however.
-on that note. The more you engaged cm’s in conversation the quicker they warmed up. When we got a counter service meal and said thank you, three cm’s at the same time said we were the first people that week(this was Thursday) that said thank you to them. They thanked us for thanking them! These people love to chat about anything and everything and we thoroughly enjoyed the many short and long conversations we had with the cm’s. We found them to be warm, professional and always always helpful. All you have to do is ask!
Disney Dining Plan
-loved loved loved the dining plan
-way way too much food at the ts restaurants
-looking at receipts we saved 40-45% on food.
-will definitely do that again
-scrambled last minute to use up three cs and loads of snack credits. Somehow we were accidentally credited 2 cs meals instead of deducted. Took 15 LOL Earl of Sandwich sandwiches home on the plane. We ate 5 waiting for ME and five on the plane and left five behind because we were too scared to eat them at that point because they had been out too long.
Dining at Disney
I am not going to do a review of every place we ate at..no pics either. Plenty of those on the board already. What I am going to do is in point form highlight the highs….and yes the lows
First the highs:
-Prime time café and Cindy (rella) our “Mom”. Funnest meal of the whole trip. To me this is what Disney dining is all about. The food, the actors the ambience
-House of Blues Gospel brunch. OMG this was outstanding! The food was fantastic and we had the best seat in the house front and centre baby!
-Biergarten. Fantastic! The food was great. The performers were great. The beer was great. The kids had a blast!
-Le Cellier. Yummy! Best Alberta Beef I ever had…and I’m from Alberta! I could cut my steak with a fork it was so tender. Dh and I shared a lovely bottle of Merlot.
-Coral Reef (Valentine’s Day). Our meal took two and a half hours from beginning to end. Didn’t seem that long though. Dh and I shared another lovely bottle of Merlot. They accommodated my food allergies great. Brought me a fantastic fresh fruit creation for dessert (egg allergy). Our server however is what made the meal on the highs list. Our server Riley was engaging, intelligent, humourous and a fantastic waiter. Kudos to him! Mickey Mouse came into the dive tank with a sign that said Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone. Man were people excited! Wooohoo!
-1900 Park Faire. Food was very fresh and good! Cinderella, Prince Charming, Snow White etc. were there. Characters came to the tables quickly and posed and signed and even lingered with the kids a bit which was nice. They even came around twice. Note: Our waitress was very cranky but efficient. The senior restaurant staff hovering over tables made mealtime uncomfortable. lol
-Chef Mickey’s. We were 15 minutes late for this ADR. As a result we had to wait 25 minutes to get the next available table. Our fault..I know. It was worth the wait. All the Disney characters came to our table quickly and signed books and posed for pics! This was very fun and upbeat with lots of napkin twirling! Good food too! Dessert station rocks.
Next the Lows
-hard to find a decent cs meal here. We did like Sunshine Seasons? (the one by Soarin) at Epcot and Tusker house in AK. Our surprise CS meal. Toy Story Pizza Planet! It was fantastic! The food was very fresh and the pizza was yummy! Other than that we could take it or leave it.
-Ohana’s breakfast with Lilo and Stitch. Atmosphere is great. Fun for the kids. We all got sick after this meal …all of us. Our last morning there and we all felt we had mild food poisoning. Our waiter seemed annoyed at our requests and seemed very rushed.
-Crystal Palace. We made the huge mistake of booking this ADR on a Pirate and Princess evening. We literally had to sprint to get the food on our plates because they started putting food away 30 minutes before park closing. The looking at the watches and hovering over our plates by senior restaurant staff to get us out of there was ridiculous. The characters seemed disorganized and rushed also. We refused to leave until every character had come to the table though. My dh refused to budge and stayed for extended dessert…good for him and I took the kids outside to see Wishes!
-Boma. We were looking so forward to this meal. In one word…too much nutmeg in everything! The chef and the restaurant really accommodated my food allergies. The constant pounding on the drums gave us all a headache. It is a very noisy restaurant. The kids liked the zebra domes though. I couldn’t eat one due to my egg allergy…sigh!
-They hose the streets down at MGM really well. Our first day at MGM right after rope drop and dd11 decides to sprint and sure enough she totally waxed out on main street and completely tore off the hide on her arm. Blood everywhere! Several witnesses including staff and not one person stepped forward to assist.
-Bed bugs. Yes we brought bed bugs home from Florida. They got in our house. What a nightmare! Next time we will open our suitcases and unpack in the garage and let the cold Canadian air take care of them!
Snacks
-we used most credits on tropical blend fruit smoothies and some pretzels. We had lots of snack credits left over at the end. We redeemed 2 credits for entmanns donuts but couldn’t finish them as they were too rich for us.
Cheerleaders and Conventioneers
-lots and lots of both
-cheerleaders were very well behaved and properly chaperoned
-conventioneers were not even an issue. My only complaint was the charter buses took up the all the room at the south depot at POR each morning. Hundreds of them. We complained to a bus driver about it and he instantly got on the horn to someone to straighten those charter buses out.. The bus stops are for people traveling to the parks not charters. All they had to do was move up further.
My Pet Peeves
-everyone in my family knows what my number one pet peeve is. I want you all to know it took every ounce of strength in me to control myself. My biggest pet peeve is seeing people wearing a hat in a sit down restaurant. I don’t care if it is sit down at Pecos Bills or Victoria and Albert’s. I was raised that it shows disrespect to your fellow diners and the chef. You don’t know how many times in ten days I wanted to flick that cap off the top of someone’s head lol. Ok I said it I am fine now…whew!
-smoking. I am an ex smoker (5 years now). I believe everyone should have the right to smoke if they wish and I also believe everyone who does not should not be exposed to it. My only pet peeve about this was smoking and drinking in the Ol man island hot tub. Nasty gross nasty. My kids said what is this .. a bar? I inquired at front desk and they said there was nothing they could do about it because it was considered an open area….nice real nice. Also please stay in the designated smoking areas…please!
DIS People
-In the entire ten days I only saw one LGMPH. It was the morning of February 7th and we were at the bus stop at POR waiting to go to MK and I spotted a couple mid to late forties with the LGMPH. She had white gloves on and he had reddish hair with a beard. I smiled and was going to chat but your bus came and we never got the chance.
EMH
-not too crowded. Great onsite perk. Much better use of your time going to the morning one.….nuff said.
Lost and found
-yes my dh set our brand new video camera down at MGM and walked away. Fortunately it was turned in and waiting for us at the lost and found ticket and transportation centre….whew!
Last but not Least
Our Ten Days of Magical Moments
We had so many magical moments in our ten days there. I wanted to end this trip report with a good vibe. As everyone knows it is the Year of a Million dreams. Did we win? YES!...... Not once, not twice but three times and almost four. I will get to that in a minute!
-day one first day at the parks going into MK. My dd had bought a lanyard to begin pin collecting and trading. Since it was our first day and we were newbies we had no pins. The security guard at MK asked us why we had no pins. My dd explained she was just starting and the security guard said “well let me get you started” and she handed my dd the twin YOAMD tinkerbell pin set. You keep one for yourself and give one away. OMG we were thrilled! We spent all ay looking for the right little girl to give it to. At the end of the day we had not found the right person. So what did my dd do? She gave the second pin to her older brother so he could start a collection too! Awww!
-second magical moment. Again first day at the parks at MK. We were all coming off Peter Pan’s flight and the YOAMD rep was there and we all got the Collectors ears! I am beside myself by this point. Pins and now hats….OMG!
-Wishes at MK. I finally got to see Tinkerbell fly out of the castle. Always missed it at DL. OMG! My dd and I had tears in our eyes!
-MGM. The Star Troopers from Star Wars were having a meet and greet in the plaza. DD and I had to go potty so we started heading towards the potty walking right past the star Troopers. On my way by I came up from behind as I was walking past and went”tickle tickle” on his plastic suit. Well as most people know Star Troopers are not there to make friends. Well wouldn’t you know it….he chased us all the way down the plaza towards the ladies washroom. I managed to duck in but my dd didn’t and he cornered her in front of a souvenier cart. By this time we were shrieking with laughter and EVERYONE was watching. He held his gun up and gave my daughter the “Im watching you focker sign with his fingers” and left. Well we were in absolute gales of laughter by this point. It was so fun!
-Fantasmic. Loved it. We got to the 8:30 showing and literally walked right in.
-Walt One Man’s Dream. I honestly believe every person who steps foot in the park should see this. It really put our whole trip into perspective…..really it all started with a mouse…actually a bunny …check it out yourself!
-Spectromagic. A must see absolutely beautiful!
Mission Space: We were coming off Mission Space to do parent swap and I noticed there was an indoor playground. While my dh went for his turn we came back though the store and into the exit where the playground was while we waited so ds4 could play a bit. We no sooner came and and sure enough out of no where there appeared a YOAMD Rep. He asked my two kids to play a game where the screens are. So they did and they both won a YOAMD lanyard with two collector pins on it. They went back and played again and won another one for their little brother who was at the playground with me. My dh comes off the ride and his eyes almost fell right out of his head.
-there were tornado warnings that day and we were feeling nervous and it was raining. The sun broke through and we were sitting on a bench eating a pretzel. Out of no where comes a YOAMD rep right up to us asking the kids where they had gotten all there hidden Mickey pins etc He could not believe our YOAMD luck. He asked us if we were following them lol. Well the conversation went on and on and on with lots of questions for an hour! We thought OMG THIS IS BIG! He asked us questions about the castle etc! After an hour he took our names and where we lived and left. We believe we were probably in the running for Cinderella’s castle suite maybe even within the same running as the Saskatchewan family that was picked! HOORAY for them! That was so nerve-wracking.
-Ds4 reaction to Soarin. OMG there was nothing more thrilling than seeing pure joy on a small boys face!
-the lobby at Grand Floridian. Oh man I could stay there all day. The orchestra, the ambience. Dh and I tangoed to the live orchestra…it was pure bliss. If we ever come back the GF it is (dh’s words not mine lol)
Alls well ends well. Hope you enjoyed our first trip to WDW! Drag n’ fly!
-Update: I forgot to add that on Valentine's Day a couple appeared to have won a dream wedding (sponsored by a bridal magazine) on the steps of Cinderella Castle. They were having their wedding after rope drop so everyone was gathered watching. Us... we sprinted and walked on the rides lol
-For you football fans. The head coach for the Colts, Tony Dungy made an appearance at MK with one of their players and a small child (his)?. Being from Canada, we didn't have a clue who they were so we asked what all the fuss was about and a cm informed us of who it was.
-I also forgot to add all three kids got to participate in a pirate parade at the Contemporary
(my personal favourite hotel) resort while we were there for dinner. After marching all over the concourse singing Yo Ho Ho a Pirate's Life for Me and banging instuments, dd got to hold the flag and ds got an eye patch they received a special pirate certificate and a special pirate silver coin!
If I think of anything else cool I will add it as I remember.
I also loved the point form you used and the information you shared with us is fantastic!
Sounds like you all had a real magical holiday!
Sounds like you had a great vacation. Thanks for sharing it with us.
