mster425
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2009
- Messages
- 665
Characters: Me, 28. Impulsive dreamer, I get carried away now and then.
DH- Bubba, 29: Grounded. Humble. Fiscally responsible. Nicest man on the earth. Adamantly refuses to walk around the park wearing the groom ears
That's us!
It was the middle of March and we still didn’t know where we were going for our honeymoon in April! I wanted some exotic location and Bubba just wanted to go to a water park. So there was that. We thought about Atlantis in the Bahamas, but it was just WAY too expensive for what you got.
THEN I thought of “the plan.” “Hey, Disney’s a little bit cheaper, and you get a water park AND all the other awesomeness that is Disney.”
Well, Bubba heard “cheaper” and lit right up. He also had been to Typhoon Lagoon (I had not) and always told me that it spoiled all other wave pools for him forever. I hadn’t been to the parks in YEARS and was totally amped.
So we’d land in Orlando, stay in Disney for 5 days, then fly to Belize and crawl through caves and hang out on the beach for the rest of our honeymoon. More importantly, we both felt like we got our way!
I found DIS while researching hotel info. I am a tad obsessive about choosing hotels. Then after finding these boards I realized all the things beyond the resort choice I had to worry about! I quickly called AAA and asked for a price comparison for April 27th-May 1st for the Poly and POFQ. The agent said they didn’t have the Poly available but quoted some insane price for the GF, with dining and water parks and more, at around $3000. POFQ with same add ons was around $1200. Well we know which one Bubba is going to want!
I told the agent I’d discuss it with Bubba and did some more research. I saw that AKL and WL were cheaper than the other deluxes, so I called back and asked about them. It was our honeymoon, after all. $1800, you say? Perfect! WL it is! We chose Wilderness Lodge over AKL because the pool was a little better, of course.
I knew I had to get my butt in gear and make some plans and ADR’s. The upside of planning so late is that touring plans were posted already for our dates and I knew what I wanted to do when:
Monday 4/27: Arrive MCO 1 pm, catch ME, check into WL.
Explore the resort, unpack a little, shower, and head to the Polynesian for a
5:00 ADR at Kona
Then DHS for EMH: ToT, Rockin’ Roller Coaster
Tuesday 4/28: Typhoon Lagoon
Head to Epcot, grab a bite at Sunshine Seasons, see if there are still Soarin’ FP available
7 pm ADR at Chefs Le France
Illuminations
Wednesday 4/29:
Breakfast at Kona for Tonga Toast!
Magic Kingdom day
7 pm ADR at Narcoosee’s
Thursday 4/30:
Animal Kingdom: Everest, River Rapids
Flame Tree BBQ
PM: meeting cousin at DTD
Friday 5/1: Depart
With loose plans like that, what could go wrong? Our wedding was April 25th, beautiful and magical and perfect.
Enter the headlines April 26th, one day before Disney departure “New flu kills 1,000s in Mexico, detected in NY and CA.” Now, I don’t want to say I’m overly reactionary, but we didn’t know at that time that swine flu wasn’t as deadly here as it was there. Also, Belize is right next to Mexico (I know, I know, it’s a big country). Also, if there’s anywhere to spread a pandemic it’s a big freakin’ amusement park. Also, there are like 100 doctors in the whole country of Belize, so if I catch something in Disney but don’t get sick until Belize, I’m SOL.
I started to think I made the biggest mistake of my life!
I'm adding a mini TR for closure
Monday 4/27/09 arrival day: flu masks at the airport, could not find the check in desk for ME despite the large, large signs. We get to Wilderness Lodge and the lobby seems empty. We stand at the online checkin area and are generally ignored for 5 minutes or so until after some subtle coughing and throat clearing we are waved over to the general checkin area. The CM is nice enough while he describes the convoluted way to get to our room, which involves "you can't use this elevator right here, you have to turn this way, then THAT way, then use that elevator and go down 1 floor" I started to get a little upset and imagined us in a sub-basment. I HAD only booked a standard room.
We get to the room and realize we have ground floor, courtyard view with King bed!
I am thrilled. We hang out in the room for a bit and head to our early ADR at Kona
We loved it! The bread was AWESOME, the service was good, the wings were amazing and the steaks were solid too. DH loved it here so much it was his only request for this trip.
After dinner we headed to DHS for EMH. We found the umbrella
I didn't realize so many attractions would be closed (duh). We got fast passes for RnR and rode ToT, and then realized it wasn't so smart to ride it within an hour after eating. One of the biggest lessons of the trip is that our stomaches are not as strong as they once were. A sad, sad lesson.
We headed to RnR, stood in the FP line, and just as it was our turn they announced the ride was broken and everyone had to leave the line. SO sad. We never got to ride RnR this trip. I think Bubba was secretly happy as he was about 2 spins away from throwing up anyway.
Tuesday, 4/28: Typhoon Lagoon was great! The wave pool WAS awesome! Bubba left me to go to the bathroom, I thought, and came back an hour later after riding 4 slides while I sat there waiting for him. I was like, what you didn't think I liked fun?? I let him live and we headed to Epcot. We took the Yacht Club bus right from TL and it took FOR-EVER to stop at BW, S/D and BC first. We walked to the IG and somehow found Soarin' AND somehow there were still FP's left at 12:30 so we snagged them and went in search of lunch.
Sunshine Seasons was PACKED so we decided to grab something in one of the countries. We were starving and not picky so we arbitrarily picked Germany bc I'd heard good things about the pretzels and we are brat fans. Or so I thought. Man that was awful!! Have you people HAD pretzels before?
Shortly after the brat from Germany I got to tour Epcot in a new way- I got to see every single bathroom in the world showcase
!! Ugh, bratwurst. To add insult to injury, while in Morocco the toilet next to me overflowed and water started pouring under my stall. I was convinced everyone would think it was me and hightailed it to the bathroom in England. And so on. Good day.
Soarin'- we got on the front row and you know what? Just ok. Was that a scratch I saw in the screen? Meh.
Headed back to France for dinner. I was looking forward to this ADR as I'd heard great things about Les Chefs. I got the duck and he got the steak. The duck was good, but can I ask something? Why is all the food in WDW COVERED in sauce of some kind? The meat especially? It was ok but I didn't need it to be drowning, pretty sure Donald was dead before they cooked him. It also didnt help that I'd been sick all day I'm sure.
We finished just as Illuminations was about to start. We LOVED it. Back to WL and bed!
Wednesday, 4/29: Kona breakfast ADR.
Tonga toast! Bubba got the Big Kahuna, I got the toast of course and we split them. Everything was good. The toast was too sweet for me so I was glad to get some help eating it. You've all seen it, but here it is in mini form:
We made it to the Magic Kingdom at rope drop and headed straight for Splash. I have been waiting to go on this ride since it opened, I love flume rides!
Got FP's and went on BTMRR. Annnnd our stomaches are doing flip flops again. Settle down, big kahuna!!
We went to Splash and bc we had Honeymoon pins on we sat in the first row! It was awesome!!
We hit POTC, HM, Splash again, Pooh, Snow White, Mickey's Philharmagic (Free FP popped out, so we said why not, and we liked it!), walked through Toontown, rode Barnstormer just for the heck of it, got Dole Whips, and declared ourselves done by 2pm. It was a very full day! We hit the hotel quiet pool (feature pool was a ZOO) and got dressed for our 7pm ADR at Narcoossee's.
We got a window seat (which we asked for), personalized menus (that we didn't ask for), and confetti on the table. I ordered the steak and lobster, DH just got the steak. Everything was really good, but again WHY smother my steak with so much rich heavy sauce? We waited a REALLY long time for our food here.
I got Mickey sorbet for dessert
. Everyone stands in front of the windows for Wishes anyway so we got up and watched it from the deck. Beautiful!
Thursday, 4/30: AKL day
We didn't eat before we went, made it right around park open and headed straight for Everest. We got Fast Passes and headed to DinoLand and saw that Dinosaur was only a 20 minute wait! It was more like a 2 minute wait. We almost made it on the next car, but the CM saw our pins and we got to go in our very own car! It was great! We went on Everest next and we LOVED it, but were still dizzy even though we hadn't eaten anything! We're so old! We walked though the trails to lok at the animals, hit the River Rapids--- um bad day to wear khaki shorts and colored underwear, it was horrible!! i loved loved this park, the theme is totally Disney in that it's carried out in every detail- you can pretend you really are backpacking in Asia!
Flame Tree food was good but I am pretty sure that what one duck was doing to his friend is illegal. Seriously, some of those things are viscious.
We sat around the WL that afternoon just soaking in the atmosphere.
A few general observations: Main Street in MK used to have a bigger variety of stores right? Like the really awesome magic store that looked creepy and old-timey? Miss that stuff. We did not encounter any rude CM's. Some went out of their way to be great, some didn't. The WL was beautiful but we aren't in a rush to stay there again, too many other places to try! The room was clean, some of the outlets didn't work but we would never complain about stuff like that. We had a great time, did not catch swine (although anytime anyone coughed in a WDW bus my DH told me I glared at them) and we know to bring Dramamine next time!
DH- Bubba, 29: Grounded. Humble. Fiscally responsible. Nicest man on the earth. Adamantly refuses to walk around the park wearing the groom ears
That's us!
It was the middle of March and we still didn’t know where we were going for our honeymoon in April! I wanted some exotic location and Bubba just wanted to go to a water park. So there was that. We thought about Atlantis in the Bahamas, but it was just WAY too expensive for what you got.
THEN I thought of “the plan.” “Hey, Disney’s a little bit cheaper, and you get a water park AND all the other awesomeness that is Disney.”
Well, Bubba heard “cheaper” and lit right up. He also had been to Typhoon Lagoon (I had not) and always told me that it spoiled all other wave pools for him forever. I hadn’t been to the parks in YEARS and was totally amped.
So we’d land in Orlando, stay in Disney for 5 days, then fly to Belize and crawl through caves and hang out on the beach for the rest of our honeymoon. More importantly, we both felt like we got our way!
I found DIS while researching hotel info. I am a tad obsessive about choosing hotels. Then after finding these boards I realized all the things beyond the resort choice I had to worry about! I quickly called AAA and asked for a price comparison for April 27th-May 1st for the Poly and POFQ. The agent said they didn’t have the Poly available but quoted some insane price for the GF, with dining and water parks and more, at around $3000. POFQ with same add ons was around $1200. Well we know which one Bubba is going to want!
I told the agent I’d discuss it with Bubba and did some more research. I saw that AKL and WL were cheaper than the other deluxes, so I called back and asked about them. It was our honeymoon, after all. $1800, you say? Perfect! WL it is! We chose Wilderness Lodge over AKL because the pool was a little better, of course.
I knew I had to get my butt in gear and make some plans and ADR’s. The upside of planning so late is that touring plans were posted already for our dates and I knew what I wanted to do when:
Monday 4/27: Arrive MCO 1 pm, catch ME, check into WL.
Explore the resort, unpack a little, shower, and head to the Polynesian for a
5:00 ADR at Kona
Then DHS for EMH: ToT, Rockin’ Roller Coaster
Tuesday 4/28: Typhoon Lagoon
Head to Epcot, grab a bite at Sunshine Seasons, see if there are still Soarin’ FP available
7 pm ADR at Chefs Le France
Illuminations
Wednesday 4/29:
Breakfast at Kona for Tonga Toast!
Magic Kingdom day
7 pm ADR at Narcoosee’s
Thursday 4/30:
Animal Kingdom: Everest, River Rapids
Flame Tree BBQ
PM: meeting cousin at DTD
Friday 5/1: Depart
With loose plans like that, what could go wrong? Our wedding was April 25th, beautiful and magical and perfect.
Enter the headlines April 26th, one day before Disney departure “New flu kills 1,000s in Mexico, detected in NY and CA.” Now, I don’t want to say I’m overly reactionary, but we didn’t know at that time that swine flu wasn’t as deadly here as it was there. Also, Belize is right next to Mexico (I know, I know, it’s a big country). Also, if there’s anywhere to spread a pandemic it’s a big freakin’ amusement park. Also, there are like 100 doctors in the whole country of Belize, so if I catch something in Disney but don’t get sick until Belize, I’m SOL.
I started to think I made the biggest mistake of my life!
I'm adding a mini TR for closure
Monday 4/27/09 arrival day: flu masks at the airport, could not find the check in desk for ME despite the large, large signs. We get to Wilderness Lodge and the lobby seems empty. We stand at the online checkin area and are generally ignored for 5 minutes or so until after some subtle coughing and throat clearing we are waved over to the general checkin area. The CM is nice enough while he describes the convoluted way to get to our room, which involves "you can't use this elevator right here, you have to turn this way, then THAT way, then use that elevator and go down 1 floor" I started to get a little upset and imagined us in a sub-basment. I HAD only booked a standard room.
We get to the room and realize we have ground floor, courtyard view with King bed!
I am thrilled. We hang out in the room for a bit and head to our early ADR at Kona
We loved it! The bread was AWESOME, the service was good, the wings were amazing and the steaks were solid too. DH loved it here so much it was his only request for this trip.
After dinner we headed to DHS for EMH. We found the umbrella
I didn't realize so many attractions would be closed (duh). We got fast passes for RnR and rode ToT, and then realized it wasn't so smart to ride it within an hour after eating. One of the biggest lessons of the trip is that our stomaches are not as strong as they once were. A sad, sad lesson.
We headed to RnR, stood in the FP line, and just as it was our turn they announced the ride was broken and everyone had to leave the line. SO sad. We never got to ride RnR this trip. I think Bubba was secretly happy as he was about 2 spins away from throwing up anyway.
Tuesday, 4/28: Typhoon Lagoon was great! The wave pool WAS awesome! Bubba left me to go to the bathroom, I thought, and came back an hour later after riding 4 slides while I sat there waiting for him. I was like, what you didn't think I liked fun?? I let him live and we headed to Epcot. We took the Yacht Club bus right from TL and it took FOR-EVER to stop at BW, S/D and BC first. We walked to the IG and somehow found Soarin' AND somehow there were still FP's left at 12:30 so we snagged them and went in search of lunch.
Sunshine Seasons was PACKED so we decided to grab something in one of the countries. We were starving and not picky so we arbitrarily picked Germany bc I'd heard good things about the pretzels and we are brat fans. Or so I thought. Man that was awful!! Have you people HAD pretzels before?
Shortly after the brat from Germany I got to tour Epcot in a new way- I got to see every single bathroom in the world showcase
!! Ugh, bratwurst. To add insult to injury, while in Morocco the toilet next to me overflowed and water started pouring under my stall. I was convinced everyone would think it was me and hightailed it to the bathroom in England. And so on. Good day.Soarin'- we got on the front row and you know what? Just ok. Was that a scratch I saw in the screen? Meh.
Headed back to France for dinner. I was looking forward to this ADR as I'd heard great things about Les Chefs. I got the duck and he got the steak. The duck was good, but can I ask something? Why is all the food in WDW COVERED in sauce of some kind? The meat especially? It was ok but I didn't need it to be drowning, pretty sure Donald was dead before they cooked him. It also didnt help that I'd been sick all day I'm sure.
We finished just as Illuminations was about to start. We LOVED it. Back to WL and bed!
Wednesday, 4/29: Kona breakfast ADR.
Tonga toast! Bubba got the Big Kahuna, I got the toast of course and we split them. Everything was good. The toast was too sweet for me so I was glad to get some help eating it. You've all seen it, but here it is in mini form:
We made it to the Magic Kingdom at rope drop and headed straight for Splash. I have been waiting to go on this ride since it opened, I love flume rides!
Got FP's and went on BTMRR. Annnnd our stomaches are doing flip flops again. Settle down, big kahuna!!
We went to Splash and bc we had Honeymoon pins on we sat in the first row! It was awesome!!
We hit POTC, HM, Splash again, Pooh, Snow White, Mickey's Philharmagic (Free FP popped out, so we said why not, and we liked it!), walked through Toontown, rode Barnstormer just for the heck of it, got Dole Whips, and declared ourselves done by 2pm. It was a very full day! We hit the hotel quiet pool (feature pool was a ZOO) and got dressed for our 7pm ADR at Narcoossee's.
We got a window seat (which we asked for), personalized menus (that we didn't ask for), and confetti on the table. I ordered the steak and lobster, DH just got the steak. Everything was really good, but again WHY smother my steak with so much rich heavy sauce? We waited a REALLY long time for our food here.
I got Mickey sorbet for dessert
Thursday, 4/30: AKL day
We didn't eat before we went, made it right around park open and headed straight for Everest. We got Fast Passes and headed to DinoLand and saw that Dinosaur was only a 20 minute wait! It was more like a 2 minute wait. We almost made it on the next car, but the CM saw our pins and we got to go in our very own car! It was great! We went on Everest next and we LOVED it, but were still dizzy even though we hadn't eaten anything! We're so old! We walked though the trails to lok at the animals, hit the River Rapids--- um bad day to wear khaki shorts and colored underwear, it was horrible!! i loved loved this park, the theme is totally Disney in that it's carried out in every detail- you can pretend you really are backpacking in Asia!
Flame Tree food was good but I am pretty sure that what one duck was doing to his friend is illegal. Seriously, some of those things are viscious.
We sat around the WL that afternoon just soaking in the atmosphere.
A few general observations: Main Street in MK used to have a bigger variety of stores right? Like the really awesome magic store that looked creepy and old-timey? Miss that stuff. We did not encounter any rude CM's. Some went out of their way to be great, some didn't. The WL was beautiful but we aren't in a rush to stay there again, too many other places to try! The room was clean, some of the outlets didn't work but we would never complain about stuff like that. We had a great time, did not catch swine (although anytime anyone coughed in a WDW bus my DH told me I glared at them) and we know to bring Dramamine next time!
