dkostel
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2002
- Messages
- 1,262
*for those of you who are not versed in baseballese, hitting for the cycle is getting a single, double, triple & homerun in one game
My niece & I have been going to WDW since she was 4. On this trip we celebrated her 16th bday and finally stayed in our final WDW owned hotel, the Grand Floridian. In the past 12 years we have stayed in all 19 Disney owned hotels (no Swolphin or SOG). This is my first trip report (in over 30 trips) so I am just going to hit the highlights (& one lowlight).
First, the Grand Floridian was wonderful. I've often wondered what they could do there to command such a high price. I am satisfied with what I got for what I paid. The room was beautiful and very well maintained. The mousekeeper was very nice and we even got turn down service with Belgian chocolates each night. The grounds, pool, & food all top notch. Since it was my niece's bday trip, they left her a 9" high white chocolate Mickey with a Happy Birthday banner and a dozen assorted cookies. Very nice and very unexpected.
On this trip we ventured to Universal for the first time as my niece is a major Harry Potter fan. We heeded some great advice and stayed there for the night. We got in line @ 7:15 for the anticipated 8:00 early opening and were surprised when they opened the gates @ 7:30. The Harry Potter stuff was wonderful (and I'm not a major fan). The theming was as good as Disney theming, the crowd handling was nowhere near as good. The Fantastic Journey was a wonderful ride, the queue was as good as the actual ride, very well done. The other 2 rides were just regular roller coaster with minimal HP theming. The shops were great and the frozen butter beer is a must have. We waited about 40 mins to go into Olivanders, and we were the first ones in for our group. I went to the far corner to get out of the way and was of course picked to be chosen by a wand. I felt kind of bad because I'm sure every kid in the room wanted to do this, but it happened before I knew what was happening & my niece got a huge kick out of it. We got through with everything HP in about 3 hours and when we left the FJ wait was 80 mins, and the line to get into the land was literally 2 blocks long. Getting the room at the Royal Pacific was worth the overinflated price (only $20 less than my GF room) for the 1.5 hour head start alone.
Back at Disney we did the segway tour of the World Showcase. It was my second time and my niece's first. We both loved it, and loved our tourguides, Elton and Lemont. I cannot recommend this tour enough. Also in Epcot we finally got on Sum of All Thrills which we both enjoyed. It is a lot like Cyber Space Mountain at Disney Quest, although shorter, smoother and with some learning inserted for good measure. We also saw Captain EO for the first time. It was bizarre but highly entertaining. The effects were great considering how old they are and I especially got a kick out of how the whole floor moves at times. Could've done without the reminder of how ridiculous we all looked in the 80s
.
The low light of the vacation, unfortunately, was our lunch with an imagineer. My niece has said she wanted to be an architect since she was very young (no one in our family is an architect
). She is now looking into colleges and is interested in engineering & or architecture with a dream job being imagineer. Well our imagineer did nothing to encourage that. There are different types of imagineers, and he is the boring type. He said that he is the liason between the creative people and those who actually do the building. He described his job as answering 100 emails each day, said that neither he nor his co workers (in his area) are real Disney philes, and never really wanted to work for Disney. This was combined with one of the other guests who didn't really seem to be a Disney fan, but rather an enginer who's kids sent him for his bday. While we had to drag info out of the imagineer, this man wanted to talk the whole time, and more about engineering than Disney. I tried to jump in as often as possible to get the imagineer talking but it was never overly successful. The food, however was wonderful, and the imagineer was a nice guy, he probably just shouldn't be doing the lunches. I would imagine with the right Imagineer and the right guests (like all DISers) this would be great.
On our last full day we went on an Heroic Quest! My niece is a big Guitar Hero fan, and I have to admit I find it to be great fun as well. We decided to play one game on every Guitar Hero in each WDW resort hotel's arcade in one day. We set out @ 9:30AM from the MK to the All Stars and ended the Quest at 11:45PM at the GF. We skipped only OKW as my niece who had recently been there said she didn't think they had the game and the person who answered the phone at the front desk confirmed this. It was a day of resorts, and busses and boats and monorails and great fun
. (Oh and out of 19 games, I won once
)
Now that we've stayed at all the resorts, our next task is to eat at all of the restaurants. I'd say we're 60% there.
My niece & I have been going to WDW since she was 4. On this trip we celebrated her 16th bday and finally stayed in our final WDW owned hotel, the Grand Floridian. In the past 12 years we have stayed in all 19 Disney owned hotels (no Swolphin or SOG). This is my first trip report (in over 30 trips) so I am just going to hit the highlights (& one lowlight).
First, the Grand Floridian was wonderful. I've often wondered what they could do there to command such a high price. I am satisfied with what I got for what I paid. The room was beautiful and very well maintained. The mousekeeper was very nice and we even got turn down service with Belgian chocolates each night. The grounds, pool, & food all top notch. Since it was my niece's bday trip, they left her a 9" high white chocolate Mickey with a Happy Birthday banner and a dozen assorted cookies. Very nice and very unexpected.
On this trip we ventured to Universal for the first time as my niece is a major Harry Potter fan. We heeded some great advice and stayed there for the night. We got in line @ 7:15 for the anticipated 8:00 early opening and were surprised when they opened the gates @ 7:30. The Harry Potter stuff was wonderful (and I'm not a major fan). The theming was as good as Disney theming, the crowd handling was nowhere near as good. The Fantastic Journey was a wonderful ride, the queue was as good as the actual ride, very well done. The other 2 rides were just regular roller coaster with minimal HP theming. The shops were great and the frozen butter beer is a must have. We waited about 40 mins to go into Olivanders, and we were the first ones in for our group. I went to the far corner to get out of the way and was of course picked to be chosen by a wand. I felt kind of bad because I'm sure every kid in the room wanted to do this, but it happened before I knew what was happening & my niece got a huge kick out of it. We got through with everything HP in about 3 hours and when we left the FJ wait was 80 mins, and the line to get into the land was literally 2 blocks long. Getting the room at the Royal Pacific was worth the overinflated price (only $20 less than my GF room) for the 1.5 hour head start alone.
Back at Disney we did the segway tour of the World Showcase. It was my second time and my niece's first. We both loved it, and loved our tourguides, Elton and Lemont. I cannot recommend this tour enough. Also in Epcot we finally got on Sum of All Thrills which we both enjoyed. It is a lot like Cyber Space Mountain at Disney Quest, although shorter, smoother and with some learning inserted for good measure. We also saw Captain EO for the first time. It was bizarre but highly entertaining. The effects were great considering how old they are and I especially got a kick out of how the whole floor moves at times. Could've done without the reminder of how ridiculous we all looked in the 80s
.The low light of the vacation, unfortunately, was our lunch with an imagineer. My niece has said she wanted to be an architect since she was very young (no one in our family is an architect
). She is now looking into colleges and is interested in engineering & or architecture with a dream job being imagineer. Well our imagineer did nothing to encourage that. There are different types of imagineers, and he is the boring type. He said that he is the liason between the creative people and those who actually do the building. He described his job as answering 100 emails each day, said that neither he nor his co workers (in his area) are real Disney philes, and never really wanted to work for Disney. This was combined with one of the other guests who didn't really seem to be a Disney fan, but rather an enginer who's kids sent him for his bday. While we had to drag info out of the imagineer, this man wanted to talk the whole time, and more about engineering than Disney. I tried to jump in as often as possible to get the imagineer talking but it was never overly successful. The food, however was wonderful, and the imagineer was a nice guy, he probably just shouldn't be doing the lunches. I would imagine with the right Imagineer and the right guests (like all DISers) this would be great.On our last full day we went on an Heroic Quest! My niece is a big Guitar Hero fan, and I have to admit I find it to be great fun as well. We decided to play one game on every Guitar Hero in each WDW resort hotel's arcade in one day. We set out @ 9:30AM from the MK to the All Stars and ended the Quest at 11:45PM at the GF. We skipped only OKW as my niece who had recently been there said she didn't think they had the game and the person who answered the phone at the front desk confirmed this. It was a day of resorts, and busses and boats and monorails and great fun
. (Oh and out of 19 games, I won once)Now that we've stayed at all the resorts, our next task is to eat at all of the restaurants. I'd say we're 60% there.
