The good, the bad, & the hilarious! stayed at Pop

[justplaingoofy]

Just back from a week at Disney Sept. 14-20th...free dining

The good:

Crowds- (There were none!) most rides were a walk on, with the exception of a :10min wait at soaring. Even splash mountain mid day did not have a line

Transportation- busses were continuous. The most time we waited for a bus was about 3 min.

Restaurants- even though I had already planned an ADR for dinner nightly, we did end up changing some things around a bit and didn't have any problems getting them.

Dining- OMG!! food, food and More FOOD!
We split all table service meals with the exception of the buffets. (can't share there)... even with splitting, we still didn't order dessert..too much food

Disney visa was offering at Epcot Innoventions West a character meet & greet with a free 5x7 photo. This was a ton of fun, and you have the characters all to yourself. They only admit your party into the room with their fast pass photographer and you can take as many pics as you want.

Mgm-Magic of animation, was a film with a photo op with the incredibles at the end. But they also offered an animation quick class. Its about 5-10 min and they teach you how to draw a character on your own drafting table and you take it with you..lots of fun we took it three times and drew Pooh, Goofy, & Mickey. (we had alot of laughs when we walked out the first time and my mother told me in front of a bunch of people that "her pooh was better than mine" we doubled over laughing!

The Hilarious- We went to 50's primetime which for us fell in the "Hilarious" category many thanks to our server "cousin Michael". If anyone is going there I highly recommend requesting him. Lets just say that our crazy dining experience started with my 62 yr old mother asking what the meatloaf looked like, he picked her up by the hand (all huffy ) brought her to different rooms in the restaurant to find....the meatloaf.. When he found it, he left her standing at the table and told the diner "she wanted to see what your meatloaf looked like"..just happened that the diner was a very large biker dude with alot of tattoos..he left my mother there with him!! (it was pretty funny)...alot of crazy funny antics. By mid meal he was fed up with her putting her elbows on the table and dragged her chair (with her in it) into another room and sat her with another family of 10 dining and told them "this is your new cousin, she'll be dining with you"... and by the end of the dinner he had her standing up holding a packet of sugar against the wall with her nose...
He was very entertaining we did tell them when we checked in that we hoped for a lively server...so they wrote.. "wants to play". The table next to us did not finish their spinach so he came out of the kitchen and said I made this especially for you. He had put the spinach on the bottom, icecream on top with whip cream and served it to them. They didn't realize it until they bit into it..our entire room was cackeling for the full hour ....

Another fantastic experience was Cape May character breakfast buffet. We usually do Chef Mickeys, Crystal Palace, and the one at the Poly. This one blew them all away. The character to guest ratio must be very high because we had goofy (my personal favorite), chip, dale & minnie. Goofy asked me what I did for work and I told him I was a travel agent. They all came by and sat at the table with us. For the table cloth they use real paper and put crayons on the table so the characters draw & interact by asking questions... belly aching good time!... we had so much fun we went back 2 days later and goofy came over to give us a big hug and wrote..well..well..its my favorite travel agent I was so excited that he remembered me I told him I was going to the Bahamas next month and he drew a ship with a "D" for a disney cruise with a question mark. I said "No, a couples only resort, why dont I leave my husband home, and you come with me?" (of course just joking) he made some gestures with his fingers like a shame, shame. He said he wanted to do the disney cruise. We had a ton of fun with them. Chip & Dale were funny with their drawings..making hearts with my initials and their initials.."I'm nuts for you", etc. just a great time

Little ones Magic Hours- now this was something else! open at 8am is Fantasy land and they had the characters lined up by the castle. They took the kids by the hands and walked over to their rides with them. We saw Wendy & Peter Pan take some little ones by the hands, and get on the rides with them..what an amazing experience to beable to ride Peter Pan with peter pan!

Lastly the bad- this is only our experience.. I'm sure there are alot of guests that thought it was the absolute best! but this was ours:
We stayed at Pop in the 70's and was very dissapointed with the resort. Although it was pretty close to the bus stop & food court, it was Very Noisy for us!! I am not talking about the food court, pools, but the rooms them selves!! notice the double exclamation points! we both had to go buy ear plugs to sleep. Pop is set up so that you may have someone on each side of you, and behind you. It seems like all we heard was water running, between showers, toilets, and sinks...from 8pm-12am, 5am-8am everyone and their mother must have been using the water ... but... the worst was we were on the ground level the walking paths are set set up to walk across the buildings. So if you are trying to get past one building to another you would be walking by all of the doorways..... Kids yelling and screaming, running past..adults that had too much to drink from pleasure island I assume because it was 2am laughing and screaming as they walk past. Being a travel agent we have stayed at most of Disney's other resorts and I have never experienced anything close to this at any other. For this reason alone, I would not stay there again. But if it doesn't bother you, the plusses are:
the busses are very quick, price, food court, its not a huge resort so to walk from one area to another doesn't take a very long time. Also it took us :45-:50 min to check in. We arrived on Thursday at 11:15a.

Other not so great experience for us was the Whispering Canyon. I had requested a "lively server" and we had the "raging bull". I told him we were on the dining plan and asked if we could split. He said yes, and i told him not to worry that we would be sure to take good care of him gratuity wise. (as we had by doubling the gratuity with all the others by adding in extra on top of the dining plan). When we asked him what he recommended for an entree he said "hands down, the steak" so thats what we had. It was so tough and grissly we each only had a couple of bites. When he came by to ask how everything was we told him how horrible the steak was and he said "yeah, they usually don't have great cuts here"..we were flabergasted that, that was what he recommended to us! Our meal was also very rushed.. we were barely able to have a couple of bites of our appy before our meal came. It literally took us longer to get our check (waited about 15min for it) then it did for our appy and entree to come out.

Back to the good to end on a happy note The parades & shows were incredible! ... and the fireworks at MK ..wow! We had a great trip, and were able to see just about every attraction that was open in all 4 parks thanks to the low crowds. We also did the keys to the kingdom tour (I had done it back in 1998) it was very different from them. Its nice as a reminder to see all the backstage work that goes into making everyones vacation magical

Hope you all have a magical trip!

 

[tink38]

Sounds like you had a great time!

You had me shaking and lauging in my chair at the Prime Time Cafe' stories. We, too, had Michael. At the time my sister was needing an adult beverage and was a bit on the cranky side. He served her wine last. She was fuming by the point he gave it to her. He wouldn't let her drink any until she did "I'm a little teapot" in front of the whole room.

Thanks for bringing back that memory for me!

 

[OhMari]

Love the heading-I've learned not to listen to waitresses tell what is good at a resturant. I swear they have a meeting before they start work, and are told what menu item to move.

I've heard good and bad about Pop Century-usually it is the beds people complain about.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[DeterminedOne]

Sounds like a great trip. Thanks for sharing!

 

[disneytraveler]

I am glad you had a great trip. Thanks for sharing it with us!

 

[justplaingoofy]

I've heard good and bad about Pop Century-usually it is the beds people complain about.

Thanks for sharing.

I could've complained about the beds too.... but didn't want to be such a downer But, it was a real bummer having to sleep with ear plugs worrying that we wouldn't hear the alarm & wake up call. When I book clients in there I will be sure to tell them that they may want to consider booking a room on floors 2-4.

Gotta end on a happy note... I thought of something else that chip & dale did at their character meal. Chip wrote the differences between them. And colored in the noses and drew the teeth to correspond to who was who. Then he wrote, but I'm better looking! So of course, when Dale came over I pointed out what Chip said. Dale responded with "& then he woke up"... that was alot of fun!

I told goofy that I learned to draw him at the animation attraction and he handed me a crayon and struck a pose. (for me to draw him) It was pretty funny. when I couldn't do it he took my crayon and drew something (while covering it with his other hand so I couldn't see, like you'd do in school when you didn't want someone to see your answers) yes, I was usually the one in school looking, not covering up when he showed it to me he drew me with my curly hair...it was really funny
I kept them all and I think I may frame them!

 

[Eeyore's Tiara]

Oh, I would be mortified if I wasn't prepared for a server to joke around with me like that! So thank you for preparing me for that to happen there!

I also love Chip and Dale and their interaction! We offered Chip some cake and he shook his head and patted his thighs! I told him if it had been pecan pie I bet he would have tried some and he shook his finger at me!

I loved all the information in such a short format!

 

[OhMari]

I could've complained about the beds too.... but didn't want to be such a downer But, it was a real bummer having to sleep with ear plugs worrying that we wouldn't hear the alarm & wake up call. When I book clients in there I will be sure to tell them that they may want to consider booking a room on floors 2-4.

Gotta end on a happy note... I thought of something else that chip & dale did at their character meal. Chip wrote the differences between them. And colored in the noses and drew the teeth to correspond to who was who. Then he wrote, but I'm better looking! So of course, when Dale came over I pointed out what Chip said. Dale responded with "& then he woke up"... that was alot of fun!

I told goofy that I learned to draw him at the animation attraction and he handed me a crayon and struck a pose. (for me to draw him) It was pretty funny. when I couldn't do it he took my crayon and drew something (while covering it with his other hand so I couldn't see, like you'd do in school when you didn't want someone to see your answers) yes, I was usually the one in school looking, not covering up when he showed it to me he drew me with my curly hair...it was really funny
I kept them all and I think I may frame them!

Sorry, I didn't mean to add to the POP woes, sorry, I usually only hear about the hard beds there and nothing else.

 

[NeverEnufWDW]

You pay cheap, you get cheap......

 

[R.S.Winters]

wat? disney dnt come cheap at all - even the all star resorts! 'cheap' all depends on how much money u've got to spend and ur budget... most regular folk just have to scrape by wiv wat they can. maybe u have a lot of money to splash on the best resorts then? good for u, but not us poor folk.

 

[wideeyes]

wat? disney dnt come cheap at all - even the all star resorts! 'cheap' all depends on how much money u've got to spend and ur budget... most regular folk just have to scrape by wiv wat they can. maybe u have a lot of money to splash on the best resorts then? good for u, but not us poor folk.

Do you have some letters missing of your keyboard?

 

[R.S.Winters]

Do you have some letters missing of your keyboard?

im assuming ur being petty cos i made a comment about the money thing. jus my opinion, no need to go get all tetchy about it.
and for ur information, no i dnt have letters missing. its jus a posting site... geez...

 

[Densgirl]

You pay cheap, you get cheap......

OMG, that was helpful. I have to write that down, where's my trip planner?

 

[wideeyes]

im assuming ur being petty cos i made a comment about the money thing. jus my opinion, no need to go get all tetchy about it.
and for ur information, no i dnt have letters missing. its jus a posting site... geez...

No, I agree with your comment, obviously cheap is relative to what people can afford.

 

[R.S.Winters]

No, I agree with your comment, obviously cheap is relative to what people can afford.

thanks, i didnt mean to sound rude, it just annoyed me thats all... to think that people just assume we can all afford the best.

 

[kidsister]

I was just at the Pop two weeks ago. I'd heard about the 'no coffee pot, hard beds and NOISE' from friends who were there two days before us and I'm spoiled by DVC....so I wasn't looking forward to this trip.

BUT....I had been staying offsite for a week and decided to go over to Pop and 'case the joint' to find the best room site. And when I did...darn if those front desk CMs didn't put us in the perfect (for us) location!!!!

We had a lake view, top floor...and it was so quiet and lovely. I actually put my table and chairs out on the walkway (we were at the end of the wing so we had the walkway to ourselves) to watch Fantasmic, then Illuminations, then Wishes ...a perfect view! We had neighbors (at least on one side) and I might have heard water running or toilet flushing (boy, ya gotta hold onto your nether side when you flush that thing)once or twice...but it was wonderfully quiet. (There was another 'wing' of lake view in our building but I noticed that the maid carts circled there...NOISY).

I was ready to ask them to send up egg crates for our mattresses, but we both decided that ours were fine. And I brought my own coffee pot. We called our trip 'slummin' at the Pop' , but our experience was much different than yours in that we felt our location was as nice as most moderates.

Just wanted to add this, not to contradict you, but to say that there are some rooms that don't have the problems you mentioned...ya just gotta check them out in advance and hope you get your request. We're going back this Friday and I've made the same request. Hoping, hoping, hoping that we get the same location!!!! (If you decide to try Pop again, PM me and I'll give you the secret handshake info)

I never ate at Mama's because I wasn't into the food selection, but it would be so much fun to have Michael as a server...might have to give that a try someday! Thanks!

Glad you had a good trip and it was a great trip report.

 

[Houston_Disney_Fan]

Glad you had a good trip. We were there Sept 8-16, and also had a wonderful time, no crowds to speak of.

I have to agree with you about POP. We stayed the first night there, before moving to the Beach Club, and the walls were so thin we could hear conversations on both sides of our room. Also, toilets and showers were noisy, especially morning and evening. It was an interesting experience, and fun theming, but I think it was our first and last stay at a value.

 

[Dizneydaz]

We were at POP from 9-9 to 9-19 and I agree with you about the noise. We were in the 70's, building 10, ground floor, room 0116. On a previous trip we stayed in the 50's and I didn't notice the noise as much. It's probably just me. The main difference on this trip was that last time we were located right next to a major cart path and they ran those carts by all the time. This time we didn't have that to contend with.

The first night, we got in or room about 2 a.m. (11 p.m. PST) It was very hard to get to sleep that first night. I couldn't find the small fan I always travel with and the room was too quiet to sleep in well (I sleep with a fan on 365 days a year). Also, is it just my imagination or are the a/c (fans) quieter? I could barely hear it. We did hear alot of noise that next morning. However, the next night (and all the rest) once I unpacked my fan and put it on the nightstand, the fan noise covered up most of the other noises in the building (except for the occasional yelling kid) I find the "white noise" from the fan very helpful.

We always request ground floor but I think next time we'll ask for top floor if I can convince my mom that being on the top is better (she doesn't like to have to use the stairs or elevator).

Kidsister, what building where you in and how far was it to the parking lot? TIA!