SunDevilDaddy
Front of the Pack
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2007
- Messages
- 172
Just returned from our S.C. trip and spent 3 days at DLR. Just a little background info here... I used a combination of ridemax and hydroguys tips to try and maximize our DLR experience. I did not utilize ridemax in a traditional way but used it to create spreadsheets showing the average wait times at each hour throughout the day for each ride and then designed an itinerary which kept us from walking back and forth across the park but allowed us to ride as many rides as possible in the time we had. Here is the full report.
We stayed at the Ramada limited suites on Harbor. I hate to say this but I was very disappointed in this hotel. The hotel was described as being 2 blocks from DLR. In actuality it was over a mile and was not walkable with 2 kids under 6. We decided to use ART to get to and from the park. The hotel was also under some sort of renovation and so guest laundry was not available, the front lobby was torn apart during check in, and 2 of 3 ice machines were not functioning. In addition the pool was neither indoors or out but located in what appears to have once been a covered parking area and the pool was not heated!!!! The jacuzzi was heated but the jets did not work and it was essentially useless as well. We only swam once during our stay because of such. Our room was supposed to be a 3 room suite consisting of 2 bedrooms (one a king and one 2 queens) and a living room with fold out couch, coffee table, fridge, and desk. In reality our room was 2 rooms. One had the 2 queens and the fridge in it. The other was what I can only believe to once have been the living room and the hotel decided to shove another queen bed into the corner. Space was cramped and the decor was outdated. Overall I rate this hotel a 2 out of 5 only because the prices were good and they did provide a continental breakfast which consisted of danishes, cereal, oatmeal, fresh fruit, milk, juices, and coffee. I would not recommend this hotel to other DISers.
Thursday June 28th:
We Arrived!
We used our early entry day right away on thursday and woke up at 5:30am to get ready and get to the park. (Devildad's do not get up at 5:30am and tend to be grumpy...) We had to catch the very first ART bus in order to get to the park early for a good spot near the front of the line. First bus was slated to arrive at 6:20am. It arrived about 6:35am. We reached the park at 6:40 and found ourselves behind a large group of groggy EE'ers. By the time the park opened for EE the line had doubled so we were actually in the middle. We made it through the gates at about 7:15 and headed for Fantasyland. There were CMs lined up on mainstreet and in the hub directing Nemo traffic and a lot of stampeding towards nemo even at 7am. Between 7:15 and 8:00 we were able to ride in this order.
Peter Pan
Dumbo
Alice
Matterhorn
Teacups
Exiting the teacups it was actually 8:05 and the lines around us were starting to build. We decided to Storybook Canal Boats next and had about a 15 minute wait. From there we rode every ride in Fantasyland except for the EE ones we missed which we rode later in the day before 9am and we headed off to toontown.
We arrived in Toontown about 10min after 9am and I grabbed RR fastpasses while the family made their way to Mickey and Minnies houses. Ridemax stated that Minnies house already has 45 minute wait times by 10am and to do it first... However, we had 0 wait at Minnies (she was not at her house during this time though). We did have about a 15 minute wait to see Mickey and visit his house. While we were waiting in line Minnie and Goofy scampered past us towards Gadgets Go Coaster and Mrs Devil took the little devils over to get autographs while I waited in line.
Once they returned we were just about to the front of the line.
My advice is to do Mickeys 1st and hold off on Minnies until afterwards. After Mickeys we headed to the gadget go coaster but it was down. So we visited the other toontown attractions such as chip n dales, and goofys and headed back for Roger Rabbit.
Mrs Devil chose not to ride because she was feeling sick to her stomach and preferred not to spin around... we had zero wait with our fastpasses at 9:45am. Coming off RR my wife had located Pluto next door and we hurried over for autographs.
At 10am we made our way to the Princess Fantasy Faire. We got in a line that was neither short nor long and proceeded to wait, and wait, and wait... The line moved extremely slow and after about 30 minutes of waiting without moving I flagged down a castmember and asked her what the wait time was for this event. She said "from this point, I'd say over two hours". WHOA! We decided to ditch the PFF for another day (we never did get back). The castmembers suggestion was to get in line first thing in the morning even though it does not open until 10.
Thanks to poor planning by DevilDaddy we had lost 40 minutes of our day on nothing so we decided to hit up the Jedi Training Academy. The kids desperately wanted to ride another ride at this point so we took the train over to tomorrowland from toontown. Neither child of mine could be coaxed into becoming Jedi's so we just watched. It was a great show and the master Jedi was entertaining and funny. However, they did select about 50 kids total - which IMO was way too many and the show seemed to lag during the fight sequences because of the amount of young jedis. But I'm sure that had my kids been participating I would have had a different outlook. All in all it was a great time.
Now it was about 11:30 and the park was filling up. We decided to head back to the hotel for lunch soon and figured we'd try and find one last ride and grab splash mtn fastpasses before leaving the park. We lucked out and pretty much walked on to Star Tours which became DD5's favorite ride (she loved the "silver captain".) I grabbed fastpasses for SPlash with a return time of 4pm and we met back at the bus stop.
We intended on returning to the park at 3pm for the early showing of the parade but we overslept from our nap. We returned at 5ish and went straight to Splash.
Devilwife stepped off the curb on mainstreet wrong and rolled her ankle bad. She pulled a ligament and we thought might have broken a bone. This will manifest itself later.
DD5 quickly started having second thoughts about Splash but with a little coaxing she agreed to ride it. We made a deal that dad wouldn't make her ride anything that would be too scary and if she didn't like a ride she wouldn't have to ride it a second time no matter what... that seemed to help. We waited about 15 minutes in the fastpass line but the normal line was 55 minutes at this point so once again FP saved the day. We got our own log... with DS5 sitting in the front, 250lb gpa sitting second chair (to get us all wet..his evil plan), gma sitting 3rd, DW sitting 4th, a skipped chair, and DD and I sitting in the tandem seat in the rear of the log. I did not know that they had changed the seating since I was last at DL and had promised DD she could sit between my legs while waiting... when she found out she had to sit in her own seat she freaked and I nearly had to skip out on the ride with her... but the tandem seat saved us. Personally I liked the old splash seating better.
After splash it was 5:30 and we had to check in at Blue Bayou at 6:15 so we had about 45 minutes to kill. We rode winnie the pooh with a 5min wait. then walked down to the jungle cruise and rode that.
At the BB we checked in on time at 6:15. I asked if we could request a waterside table and they responded by saying it would be an additional hour wait. We declined and figured oh well... its a new experience and any table will be good. We were seated at our PS time of 6:30 and our table was waterside. My wife ordered the crab legs and I had the prime rib. Neither of us felt our food was 4 star by any means. The service was good but not great and we did have to wait for refills for quite some time. But the ambience was amazing and although I don't think I would do it again I would recommend dining here at least once.
We exited BB around 7:30 just as early comers were staking out spots for the first Fantasmic showing. By this time DW's ankle was hurting pretty bad and she couldn't put much pressure on it so she decided to stake our claim to a 8ft patch of concrete right down front near the railing. I decided to set off to find some asprin and an icepack if at all possible. DS and gpa stayed with DW as DD and gma left with me. We boarded the train once again and rode it around the park until we reached main street. At main street we fought our way through crowds already staking out fireworks spots until we reached the first aide office. Unfortunately they can't give me medication to give to her and she had to be present... They told me where I could buy asprin but I couldn't locate the shop and DW started calling by this time demanding that we return soon because the crowds were building and moving in on our territory. So we hit the train and choo choo'd our way back to New Orleans.
Fanstamic was incredible. Both kids sat with their eyes wide and jaws dropped the whole time. DD can be heard on film screaming "I love you mickey... I love you peter pan... I love you Cinderella...etc etc" the whole time. After Fantasmic we stayed sitting waiting for the crowds to move out before attempting to mobilize our injured mom.. but we ended up sitting through the fireworks as well. We saw the majority of the actual fireworks from N.O. but the characters we obviously blocked from view. We did get the sound through the speaker system that was in place for Fantasmic.
After Fantasmic we hit the Haunted Mansion and PotC. We were going to stop at Indy and see if our kids could ride but Indy was down (which it seems it always is) and so we walked right up to the measuring stick. DD was just tall enough according to one cast member and just too small according to another. She stood under the marker with her little head just scraping the bottom of the 46" stick. The cast member that thought she was too small was pulling her hair back tight and sliding a piece of paper between her head and the post to show us why she said DD was a no go. Then they spoke for a minute and decided that she could get on to Indy the next day (just wear thick socks). But then we had DS attempt to make the height requirements and there was a good inch or more... they are a package deal, so no Indy.
We grabbed a churro and some popcorn in N.O. square and boarded the railroad back to the main gates. I had to trick Mrs Devil into going to the medical office by telling her we were getting a souvenier I thought she would like. The nurse looked at her and said she sees a lot of twisted ankles and my wifes looked pretty bad. She wouldn't say whether it might be broken or not but did confirm the ligament damage and gave us an icepack and some painkillers and a free wheelchair for tomorrow. She warned my wife to ice it every 20 minutes for the next 24 hours and to stay off it as much as possible. From there we hobbled our way to the gate. We exited the park around 10:30.
Day 1 we rode almost all of Fantasyland, all of Toontown, Critter Country, and New Orleans Square. We also hit Jungle Cruise, Star Tours, and used the railroad quite a bit. We saw Fantasmic and ate at BB as well.
We stayed at the Ramada limited suites on Harbor. I hate to say this but I was very disappointed in this hotel. The hotel was described as being 2 blocks from DLR. In actuality it was over a mile and was not walkable with 2 kids under 6. We decided to use ART to get to and from the park. The hotel was also under some sort of renovation and so guest laundry was not available, the front lobby was torn apart during check in, and 2 of 3 ice machines were not functioning. In addition the pool was neither indoors or out but located in what appears to have once been a covered parking area and the pool was not heated!!!! The jacuzzi was heated but the jets did not work and it was essentially useless as well. We only swam once during our stay because of such. Our room was supposed to be a 3 room suite consisting of 2 bedrooms (one a king and one 2 queens) and a living room with fold out couch, coffee table, fridge, and desk. In reality our room was 2 rooms. One had the 2 queens and the fridge in it. The other was what I can only believe to once have been the living room and the hotel decided to shove another queen bed into the corner. Space was cramped and the decor was outdated. Overall I rate this hotel a 2 out of 5 only because the prices were good and they did provide a continental breakfast which consisted of danishes, cereal, oatmeal, fresh fruit, milk, juices, and coffee. I would not recommend this hotel to other DISers.
Thursday June 28th:
We Arrived!
We used our early entry day right away on thursday and woke up at 5:30am to get ready and get to the park. (Devildad's do not get up at 5:30am and tend to be grumpy...) We had to catch the very first ART bus in order to get to the park early for a good spot near the front of the line. First bus was slated to arrive at 6:20am. It arrived about 6:35am. We reached the park at 6:40 and found ourselves behind a large group of groggy EE'ers. By the time the park opened for EE the line had doubled so we were actually in the middle. We made it through the gates at about 7:15 and headed for Fantasyland. There were CMs lined up on mainstreet and in the hub directing Nemo traffic and a lot of stampeding towards nemo even at 7am. Between 7:15 and 8:00 we were able to ride in this order.
Peter Pan
Dumbo
Alice
Matterhorn
Teacups
Exiting the teacups it was actually 8:05 and the lines around us were starting to build. We decided to Storybook Canal Boats next and had about a 15 minute wait. From there we rode every ride in Fantasyland except for the EE ones we missed which we rode later in the day before 9am and we headed off to toontown.
We arrived in Toontown about 10min after 9am and I grabbed RR fastpasses while the family made their way to Mickey and Minnies houses. Ridemax stated that Minnies house already has 45 minute wait times by 10am and to do it first... However, we had 0 wait at Minnies (she was not at her house during this time though). We did have about a 15 minute wait to see Mickey and visit his house. While we were waiting in line Minnie and Goofy scampered past us towards Gadgets Go Coaster and Mrs Devil took the little devils over to get autographs while I waited in line.
Once they returned we were just about to the front of the line.
My advice is to do Mickeys 1st and hold off on Minnies until afterwards. After Mickeys we headed to the gadget go coaster but it was down. So we visited the other toontown attractions such as chip n dales, and goofys and headed back for Roger Rabbit.
Mrs Devil chose not to ride because she was feeling sick to her stomach and preferred not to spin around... we had zero wait with our fastpasses at 9:45am. Coming off RR my wife had located Pluto next door and we hurried over for autographs.
At 10am we made our way to the Princess Fantasy Faire. We got in a line that was neither short nor long and proceeded to wait, and wait, and wait... The line moved extremely slow and after about 30 minutes of waiting without moving I flagged down a castmember and asked her what the wait time was for this event. She said "from this point, I'd say over two hours". WHOA! We decided to ditch the PFF for another day (we never did get back). The castmembers suggestion was to get in line first thing in the morning even though it does not open until 10.
Thanks to poor planning by DevilDaddy we had lost 40 minutes of our day on nothing so we decided to hit up the Jedi Training Academy. The kids desperately wanted to ride another ride at this point so we took the train over to tomorrowland from toontown. Neither child of mine could be coaxed into becoming Jedi's so we just watched. It was a great show and the master Jedi was entertaining and funny. However, they did select about 50 kids total - which IMO was way too many and the show seemed to lag during the fight sequences because of the amount of young jedis. But I'm sure that had my kids been participating I would have had a different outlook. All in all it was a great time.
Now it was about 11:30 and the park was filling up. We decided to head back to the hotel for lunch soon and figured we'd try and find one last ride and grab splash mtn fastpasses before leaving the park. We lucked out and pretty much walked on to Star Tours which became DD5's favorite ride (she loved the "silver captain".) I grabbed fastpasses for SPlash with a return time of 4pm and we met back at the bus stop.
We intended on returning to the park at 3pm for the early showing of the parade but we overslept from our nap. We returned at 5ish and went straight to Splash.
Devilwife stepped off the curb on mainstreet wrong and rolled her ankle bad. She pulled a ligament and we thought might have broken a bone. This will manifest itself later.
DD5 quickly started having second thoughts about Splash but with a little coaxing she agreed to ride it. We made a deal that dad wouldn't make her ride anything that would be too scary and if she didn't like a ride she wouldn't have to ride it a second time no matter what... that seemed to help. We waited about 15 minutes in the fastpass line but the normal line was 55 minutes at this point so once again FP saved the day. We got our own log... with DS5 sitting in the front, 250lb gpa sitting second chair (to get us all wet..his evil plan), gma sitting 3rd, DW sitting 4th, a skipped chair, and DD and I sitting in the tandem seat in the rear of the log. I did not know that they had changed the seating since I was last at DL and had promised DD she could sit between my legs while waiting... when she found out she had to sit in her own seat she freaked and I nearly had to skip out on the ride with her... but the tandem seat saved us. Personally I liked the old splash seating better.
After splash it was 5:30 and we had to check in at Blue Bayou at 6:15 so we had about 45 minutes to kill. We rode winnie the pooh with a 5min wait. then walked down to the jungle cruise and rode that.
At the BB we checked in on time at 6:15. I asked if we could request a waterside table and they responded by saying it would be an additional hour wait. We declined and figured oh well... its a new experience and any table will be good. We were seated at our PS time of 6:30 and our table was waterside. My wife ordered the crab legs and I had the prime rib. Neither of us felt our food was 4 star by any means. The service was good but not great and we did have to wait for refills for quite some time. But the ambience was amazing and although I don't think I would do it again I would recommend dining here at least once.
We exited BB around 7:30 just as early comers were staking out spots for the first Fantasmic showing. By this time DW's ankle was hurting pretty bad and she couldn't put much pressure on it so she decided to stake our claim to a 8ft patch of concrete right down front near the railing. I decided to set off to find some asprin and an icepack if at all possible. DS and gpa stayed with DW as DD and gma left with me. We boarded the train once again and rode it around the park until we reached main street. At main street we fought our way through crowds already staking out fireworks spots until we reached the first aide office. Unfortunately they can't give me medication to give to her and she had to be present... They told me where I could buy asprin but I couldn't locate the shop and DW started calling by this time demanding that we return soon because the crowds were building and moving in on our territory. So we hit the train and choo choo'd our way back to New Orleans.
Fanstamic was incredible. Both kids sat with their eyes wide and jaws dropped the whole time. DD can be heard on film screaming "I love you mickey... I love you peter pan... I love you Cinderella...etc etc" the whole time. After Fantasmic we stayed sitting waiting for the crowds to move out before attempting to mobilize our injured mom.. but we ended up sitting through the fireworks as well. We saw the majority of the actual fireworks from N.O. but the characters we obviously blocked from view. We did get the sound through the speaker system that was in place for Fantasmic.
After Fantasmic we hit the Haunted Mansion and PotC. We were going to stop at Indy and see if our kids could ride but Indy was down (which it seems it always is) and so we walked right up to the measuring stick. DD was just tall enough according to one cast member and just too small according to another. She stood under the marker with her little head just scraping the bottom of the 46" stick. The cast member that thought she was too small was pulling her hair back tight and sliding a piece of paper between her head and the post to show us why she said DD was a no go. Then they spoke for a minute and decided that she could get on to Indy the next day (just wear thick socks). But then we had DS attempt to make the height requirements and there was a good inch or more... they are a package deal, so no Indy.
We grabbed a churro and some popcorn in N.O. square and boarded the railroad back to the main gates. I had to trick Mrs Devil into going to the medical office by telling her we were getting a souvenier I thought she would like. The nurse looked at her and said she sees a lot of twisted ankles and my wifes looked pretty bad. She wouldn't say whether it might be broken or not but did confirm the ligament damage and gave us an icepack and some painkillers and a free wheelchair for tomorrow. She warned my wife to ice it every 20 minutes for the next 24 hours and to stay off it as much as possible. From there we hobbled our way to the gate. We exited the park around 10:30.
Day 1 we rode almost all of Fantasyland, all of Toontown, Critter Country, and New Orleans Square. We also hit Jungle Cruise, Star Tours, and used the railroad quite a bit. We saw Fantasmic and ate at BB as well.
Man, can i relate. 
types (like me) tend to like them. 
