I've never posted a trip report before and hope I do this right! I'd love to share my experience with others and hopefully help them along the way. Our travels included the following characters: Grand -my mom (63), Grand-dad- my dad(65), my husband (41), son 9 almost 10 and myself(38). I LOVE DISNEY! I'm the planner, organizer and leader. While every now and again I will get an answer to a question I ask, for the most part it is all up to me. Do you know what type of pressure that is ? The pressure of giving everyone their ideal vacation, to make everyone happy and no one unhappy? Why do I do it ? Because I love them and I love Disney. It's my happy place. Grand and Grand Dad started my love of Disney back in 1988 when I was going into 7th grade. Then I didn't return until my honeymoon in 1998 with a husband that really wanted to go. Then in 2003 we went for our anniversary and unknowingly was expecting our first child. We then went in 2009 for our sons 5th bday and we've been going every 2 or 3 years since. So my love for Disney really is based on the fact that we have special family moments there.
This trip right form the beginning had issues. Originally we were to go for late Jan into Feb for my son's 10th bday and his god fathers 50th. Instead the god parent's opted not to go and then it happened..... a free dining pin for Dec.. My son had always asked to see Disney at the holidays. Would he understand that this is his Christmas and Bday present or would it be a let down when those days arrived? You'll see. We tried to get Dec1-12. Our travel agent was slow and even though on the Disney site I was able to get a room I waited for her and missed out. Finally after many a tries we were able to get royal guests rooms with a pool view at POR for Dec.4-14. So basically what was the sense in free dining I was paying top dollar for the room. Went with it though since we got it. How will we get there? We opted to drive this trip from upstate NY to FLA. We wanted to be there on the 3rd to get the most out of the 4th so we thought to get a room around DTD to save money but be close. We made ADR's for T-REX on 12/3 at 930. So we had lots of time to arrive on the 3rd since we were all free from Thanksgiving on.
We were excited about the idea of POR. My parent's are creatures of habit and enjoy this resort a lot. This was our 3rd time staying here. I kept the fact that we had royal guests rooms to myself which turned into a great surprise for my son and mom when we opened the room doors. However that was 12/4 and we we arriving 12/3 so where should we stay. I appealed to the masses on the disboard and while I intended on finding the perfect DTD hotel for our needs people kept saying we should just stay in a value the first night. I thought about it, hum, it would be nice to mark another resort off our list and the cost didn't seem to be too much higher and we could use transportation to come and go that night so my husband would have to drive and more after a long day. So I did it a value resort we would try. I took my time. I read reviews. I didn't even ask my family I just thought I will do it and surprise them. Finally a few weeks before I had our travel agent book all star movies but they only had preferred no standard available. We needed a handicap room and that's what part of the issue was. So second choice was POP. Yes, they had standard handicap available. Great a little more than I wanted but less than preferred at All Star Movies so I went with it. I went home happy to be trying something new.
Thanksgiving came and went and the bags were packed. We left on Monday Dec.2nd. @5am. After picking my parent's up and going back because my husband forgot pants- yes he forgot to pack pants we finally were on the road. We made it to Rocky Mount NC about 5pm just as the sun was setting. We stayed at a country inn and suites off the highway. It was clean, had a pool and a hot tub. We went to Red lobster that was close by about 5 minutes away. While my mom had an issue with her fridge and her insulin overall it wasn't bad and we would try again with a working fridge.
Next morning we were out the door by 7 and made our way to Disney. The drive got us into Orlando and I-4 at Rush hour. This was very stop and go and I hope someone else will learn from our mistake and make sure to avoid rush hour. We made it to POP just about 7pm. Yes we had made it. I got out of the car and took the smells of Disney in. Yes for me there is a smell, something I want to breather in and exhale and relax knowing I've arrived and my happy place is before me. I grabbed all our our bands and headed to checkin. We walked in and saw the tree all decorated and I could hear the Christmas music in the background calling me in. My mom and I went to get in line to check in while my dad husband and son went to look around and take pictures. Great plan. There was no line and we were at the counter in no time. .......and then time stopped, well no that's not true, time didn't stop it kept ticking away, vacation stopped, the magic stopped, the happy place feeling stopped, but the 2 screaming children not supervised by their parents didn't stop for 45 minutes while she stood on hold with mousekeeping to see if our room was ready. We had VIP cleaning for a health issue and checkin is 3pm on so why at 7pm do they not know if our room is ready. We know rooms are assigned 2 to 3 days ahead so what was the problem. Well the problem was this they didn't have an appropriate handicap room for our party. While you put in requests for rooms that is all they are and we accept this however, health issues are more than a room request. You can't stick a party of three in a room with an occupancy of 2. We were given our rooms and off we went not knowing what I would find. I got to our room and then realized that there were two doors with the same room number. Crazy right? makes you take a double look right? Well I didn't want to barge into someone's room so we went down the hall to where my parent's were and called the front desk and asked what door should we use? They informed me that both were ours. So we wound up with a king handicap room and a standard double. It would have been great space wise if our child would sleep in a room by himself but that's not the case. Option 1 all three in a king or option 2 use the double beds. We did the double beds. A waste of space and we couldn't get calls in the double room only the king side so I couldn't even get a wake up call unless I walked into the king room to pick up the phone. Really then why 2 phones? Enough was enough I just wanted dinner.
So I'm going to pause there and will return with TRex info and the check out issues we then had at POR.
I hope you find what I have written interesting and helpful so far.
This trip right form the beginning had issues. Originally we were to go for late Jan into Feb for my son's 10th bday and his god fathers 50th. Instead the god parent's opted not to go and then it happened..... a free dining pin for Dec.. My son had always asked to see Disney at the holidays. Would he understand that this is his Christmas and Bday present or would it be a let down when those days arrived? You'll see. We tried to get Dec1-12. Our travel agent was slow and even though on the Disney site I was able to get a room I waited for her and missed out. Finally after many a tries we were able to get royal guests rooms with a pool view at POR for Dec.4-14. So basically what was the sense in free dining I was paying top dollar for the room. Went with it though since we got it. How will we get there? We opted to drive this trip from upstate NY to FLA. We wanted to be there on the 3rd to get the most out of the 4th so we thought to get a room around DTD to save money but be close. We made ADR's for T-REX on 12/3 at 930. So we had lots of time to arrive on the 3rd since we were all free from Thanksgiving on.
We were excited about the idea of POR. My parent's are creatures of habit and enjoy this resort a lot. This was our 3rd time staying here. I kept the fact that we had royal guests rooms to myself which turned into a great surprise for my son and mom when we opened the room doors. However that was 12/4 and we we arriving 12/3 so where should we stay. I appealed to the masses on the disboard and while I intended on finding the perfect DTD hotel for our needs people kept saying we should just stay in a value the first night. I thought about it, hum, it would be nice to mark another resort off our list and the cost didn't seem to be too much higher and we could use transportation to come and go that night so my husband would have to drive and more after a long day. So I did it a value resort we would try. I took my time. I read reviews. I didn't even ask my family I just thought I will do it and surprise them. Finally a few weeks before I had our travel agent book all star movies but they only had preferred no standard available. We needed a handicap room and that's what part of the issue was. So second choice was POP. Yes, they had standard handicap available. Great a little more than I wanted but less than preferred at All Star Movies so I went with it. I went home happy to be trying something new.
Thanksgiving came and went and the bags were packed. We left on Monday Dec.2nd. @5am. After picking my parent's up and going back because my husband forgot pants- yes he forgot to pack pants we finally were on the road. We made it to Rocky Mount NC about 5pm just as the sun was setting. We stayed at a country inn and suites off the highway. It was clean, had a pool and a hot tub. We went to Red lobster that was close by about 5 minutes away. While my mom had an issue with her fridge and her insulin overall it wasn't bad and we would try again with a working fridge.
Next morning we were out the door by 7 and made our way to Disney. The drive got us into Orlando and I-4 at Rush hour. This was very stop and go and I hope someone else will learn from our mistake and make sure to avoid rush hour. We made it to POP just about 7pm. Yes we had made it. I got out of the car and took the smells of Disney in. Yes for me there is a smell, something I want to breather in and exhale and relax knowing I've arrived and my happy place is before me. I grabbed all our our bands and headed to checkin. We walked in and saw the tree all decorated and I could hear the Christmas music in the background calling me in. My mom and I went to get in line to check in while my dad husband and son went to look around and take pictures. Great plan. There was no line and we were at the counter in no time. .......and then time stopped, well no that's not true, time didn't stop it kept ticking away, vacation stopped, the magic stopped, the happy place feeling stopped, but the 2 screaming children not supervised by their parents didn't stop for 45 minutes while she stood on hold with mousekeeping to see if our room was ready. We had VIP cleaning for a health issue and checkin is 3pm on so why at 7pm do they not know if our room is ready. We know rooms are assigned 2 to 3 days ahead so what was the problem. Well the problem was this they didn't have an appropriate handicap room for our party. While you put in requests for rooms that is all they are and we accept this however, health issues are more than a room request. You can't stick a party of three in a room with an occupancy of 2. We were given our rooms and off we went not knowing what I would find. I got to our room and then realized that there were two doors with the same room number. Crazy right? makes you take a double look right? Well I didn't want to barge into someone's room so we went down the hall to where my parent's were and called the front desk and asked what door should we use? They informed me that both were ours. So we wound up with a king handicap room and a standard double. It would have been great space wise if our child would sleep in a room by himself but that's not the case. Option 1 all three in a king or option 2 use the double beds. We did the double beds. A waste of space and we couldn't get calls in the double room only the king side so I couldn't even get a wake up call unless I walked into the king room to pick up the phone. Really then why 2 phones? Enough was enough I just wanted dinner.
So I'm going to pause there and will return with TRex info and the check out issues we then had at POR.
I hope you find what I have written interesting and helpful so far.