Vacation at Old Key West Resort from 12/17/06-12/21/06
Crowds:
Magic Kingdom: Heavy
Epcot: Moderate
MGM: Moderate
Animal Kingdom: Very Heavy
I've seperated the highligts and low-lights in 3 seperate categories: The good, The bad, and the Ugly.
THE GOOD:
1. Les Chefs De France and Coral Reef were both very good places to eat at Epcot. Service and food were both good. Coral Reef has mostly seafood but if you or any member of your party are not into that, the New York Strip Steak is excellent.
2. Disney Dining Plan. I can easily see how this may be too much food for some people. Believe me, you won't starve. This plan is an anorexic's worst nightmare. But the plan is a good idea and worked out quite well except for a few little parts of it which I'll explain later.
3. Cast Members at the Haunted Mansion. It was 5 or 6pm and the haunted mansion was one of the last things on our list to do. When we got there, the wait was 45 minutes. After getting in line and then deciding it was just too long to wait we exited out when a cast member dressed as a butler and playing the part with a deep, shallow voice told us to follow him. He lead us through a creepy hallway and within minutes we were in the "expanding room!" Cool!
4. Spectromagic Parade and Illuminations. Both of these night shows were very, very good. They added an extra finale at Illuminations for x-mas and new years.
THE BAD:
1. Stich's Great Escape. This is by far the worst attraction at Walt Disney World. Unless you are a Stitch fan, I wouldn't even bother with this thing. It's terrible and Disney needs to seriously re-think this one.
2. Spaceship Earth. This is a great ride, when its working. I've been on this ride several times over the years and I don't think I have ever been on it without it at least stopping once. This time I rode it and it stopped 4 times! And by the end of the ride, half the lights were not working and you can smell smoke. Disney needs to just take this out of service for awhile and fix it!
3. Quick Service needs to be renamed "Slow service" because there is nothing quick about it. At each quick service stop, there were huge lines, chaos where the food was being made, and it took longer to get food at quick service than at table service places. I think these places have gotten a lot more business because of the Dining Plan. But they need to figure out how to deal with the high volume of people. It's a mess.
THE UGLY: (AND BOY IS IT UGLY!)
1. Old Key West Resort. We had 2 rooms and had a request for them to be NEAR each other. We knew having them next to each other probably wont happen, but at least in the same area we can live with. Well they were in complete opposite sides of the resort. After going to the Front Desk asking for anything closer, the girl (who could barely speak english) was going to do it before some supervisor (who had a snobby attitude) came over and told her not to. She said the rooms were all pre-blocked for the day and they can't be moved around. Whatever... we lived with it. It gets worse. We checked in at 8am and headed out to the parks while we waited for the room to be ready. The room wasn't ready until after 5pm. And yes, it gets worse. When we got to our room, we found that our little kitchen area was invaded by ants! During the stay of 4 nights, we notified the hotel and the management a total of 6 times. This problem was never given any attention or taken care of at all. Another thing, outside our balcony you can see several rat traps with dead rats in them. So obviously this building had a serious pest control problem and they didn't know how to fix it, obviously. And yes, one more final issue, on the morning of our checkout, housekeeping comes banging on the door at 9am wanting to know if we left. We told her not till 11am. She said OK and left. While packing our car, between trips, housekeeping must have gone in there between trips because we went back and 3 housekeepers were in there cleaning the room. And yes, this was at 9:45am.
I work in hospitality and I can spot bad management very easily and let me say that the management at OKW is very sub-par. None of our issues were ever taken care of. Housekeeping was very rude. The front desk was no help at all. And the place just doesn't seem to live up to anywhere near Disney standards. Needless to say, we will not be staying at OKW again. I plan on writing Disney about the experience. Since I am a DVC member, it didn't cost that many points to stay there. So I dont care. But if I was a cash paying guest, I would be demanding a refund or something.
Otherwise the trip was good. Transportation was fast and we never had to wait more than a few minutes (except a few high volume times). And it was tough to navigate around Animal Kingdom because it was so packed with people.
SOME TIPS:
-Be careful if you go to OKW. I am sure they have some nice rooms, but some are HORRIBLE!
-If you do charactor dining, it is best to have the kids sit in a spot where the charactors can get to them easily. That's the best strategy especially for photo ops. Also when seated, ask the host or hostess which direction the charactors are moving in so you judge and make sure your whole party is at the table when the charactor gets around to yours.
-Fast passes are only a good strategy if you are at the park early (before 11am) or plan to stay all day. So make sure you understand that in your planning. We planned out a very good strategy and we were able to hit all of Future World at Epcot and ate lunch by 1pm. But had we done everything in a different order, it would take over a day to do it all. You have to plan and develop strategy.
Crowds:
Magic Kingdom: Heavy
Epcot: Moderate
MGM: Moderate
Animal Kingdom: Very Heavy
I've seperated the highligts and low-lights in 3 seperate categories: The good, The bad, and the Ugly.
THE GOOD:
1. Les Chefs De France and Coral Reef were both very good places to eat at Epcot. Service and food were both good. Coral Reef has mostly seafood but if you or any member of your party are not into that, the New York Strip Steak is excellent.
2. Disney Dining Plan. I can easily see how this may be too much food for some people. Believe me, you won't starve. This plan is an anorexic's worst nightmare. But the plan is a good idea and worked out quite well except for a few little parts of it which I'll explain later.
3. Cast Members at the Haunted Mansion. It was 5 or 6pm and the haunted mansion was one of the last things on our list to do. When we got there, the wait was 45 minutes. After getting in line and then deciding it was just too long to wait we exited out when a cast member dressed as a butler and playing the part with a deep, shallow voice told us to follow him. He lead us through a creepy hallway and within minutes we were in the "expanding room!" Cool!
4. Spectromagic Parade and Illuminations. Both of these night shows were very, very good. They added an extra finale at Illuminations for x-mas and new years.
THE BAD:
1. Stich's Great Escape. This is by far the worst attraction at Walt Disney World. Unless you are a Stitch fan, I wouldn't even bother with this thing. It's terrible and Disney needs to seriously re-think this one.
2. Spaceship Earth. This is a great ride, when its working. I've been on this ride several times over the years and I don't think I have ever been on it without it at least stopping once. This time I rode it and it stopped 4 times! And by the end of the ride, half the lights were not working and you can smell smoke. Disney needs to just take this out of service for awhile and fix it!
3. Quick Service needs to be renamed "Slow service" because there is nothing quick about it. At each quick service stop, there were huge lines, chaos where the food was being made, and it took longer to get food at quick service than at table service places. I think these places have gotten a lot more business because of the Dining Plan. But they need to figure out how to deal with the high volume of people. It's a mess.
THE UGLY: (AND BOY IS IT UGLY!)
1. Old Key West Resort. We had 2 rooms and had a request for them to be NEAR each other. We knew having them next to each other probably wont happen, but at least in the same area we can live with. Well they were in complete opposite sides of the resort. After going to the Front Desk asking for anything closer, the girl (who could barely speak english) was going to do it before some supervisor (who had a snobby attitude) came over and told her not to. She said the rooms were all pre-blocked for the day and they can't be moved around. Whatever... we lived with it. It gets worse. We checked in at 8am and headed out to the parks while we waited for the room to be ready. The room wasn't ready until after 5pm. And yes, it gets worse. When we got to our room, we found that our little kitchen area was invaded by ants! During the stay of 4 nights, we notified the hotel and the management a total of 6 times. This problem was never given any attention or taken care of at all. Another thing, outside our balcony you can see several rat traps with dead rats in them. So obviously this building had a serious pest control problem and they didn't know how to fix it, obviously. And yes, one more final issue, on the morning of our checkout, housekeeping comes banging on the door at 9am wanting to know if we left. We told her not till 11am. She said OK and left. While packing our car, between trips, housekeeping must have gone in there between trips because we went back and 3 housekeepers were in there cleaning the room. And yes, this was at 9:45am.
I work in hospitality and I can spot bad management very easily and let me say that the management at OKW is very sub-par. None of our issues were ever taken care of. Housekeeping was very rude. The front desk was no help at all. And the place just doesn't seem to live up to anywhere near Disney standards. Needless to say, we will not be staying at OKW again. I plan on writing Disney about the experience. Since I am a DVC member, it didn't cost that many points to stay there. So I dont care. But if I was a cash paying guest, I would be demanding a refund or something.
Otherwise the trip was good. Transportation was fast and we never had to wait more than a few minutes (except a few high volume times). And it was tough to navigate around Animal Kingdom because it was so packed with people.
SOME TIPS:
-Be careful if you go to OKW. I am sure they have some nice rooms, but some are HORRIBLE!
-If you do charactor dining, it is best to have the kids sit in a spot where the charactors can get to them easily. That's the best strategy especially for photo ops. Also when seated, ask the host or hostess which direction the charactors are moving in so you judge and make sure your whole party is at the table when the charactor gets around to yours.
-Fast passes are only a good strategy if you are at the park early (before 11am) or plan to stay all day. So make sure you understand that in your planning. We planned out a very good strategy and we were able to hit all of Future World at Epcot and ate lunch by 1pm. But had we done everything in a different order, it would take over a day to do it all. You have to plan and develop strategy.
