Wow! I’m excited to have some readers already. I hope I don’t disappoint!
After a really really awful night’s sleep, we were up around 8. It was probably one of the most horrible night sleeps I have had in a long while. The bed was terrible, there was noise outside, the room was either too hot or too cold… ugh! I was definitely ready to make that place a distant memory and get on with our “real” vacation! None of us slept well which I’m sure was in part due to the impending excitement of the next day. It sure was nice though waking up and knowing that all the driving was behind us. We have made that drive 6 times now, but I will tell you that both my husband and I said that it seemed longer this time. Which is funny, because we were traveling with teenagers who can entertain themselves. No carseats, diapers, etc to deal with… I guess we are just getting old and it wears on you more. Regardless, I will be looking into flights the next time, although I’m guessing that when push comes to shove we will drive again.
I received a text at 8:22am that our room was not quite ready, but when it became available we would get another message. We had done online check in, but hadn’t yet left a credit card for charging. Our plan was to head to the custom house and get our welcome package, explore the resort, etc before heading to the parks. The last time we traveled we were one of the families that were testing the bands when they first we being rolled out and were able to take advantage of both the bands and paper fastpasses. I was eager to see how everything had come along since we had been there last. I had packed our bands in our overnight bag and everyone slipped them on this morning. So exciting!!!! We got dressed, grabbed what little we brought in with us and were on our way!
Traffic in Orlando was MUCH better this morning than what we had experienced the night before. At 8:53 am we were passing through this!!!!
I am actually pretty proud of my photo. It usually comes out blurry! I don’t know about you, but when we pass through that sign, it all becomes real! I managed to convince my husband to turn off his google maps and just read the signage to get to CBR. For whatever reason he wants to use it, but I swear every time it leads us in the wrong direction! I always tell people that once they are on Disney property, to just turn off their GPS and look for the signs. I was especially excited to see the signs, because I want to say the last time we came we were navigated through the Disney Springs entryway… which isn’t near as exciting.
According to the time on my picture, at 8:57 we were pulling in here:Our home for the next 7 nights! Woo Hoo! We quickly found our way to the custom house, parked and we all went in. Usually I would just run and do it, but I think everyone was eager to get things rolling, so everyone came in with me! It was bustling in there, but nothing too crazy. When we stayed at the All Stars it was far worse. I didn’t have to wait in line, but for maybe a minute or two before a CM called me over. I had requested Jamaica, near transportation. I honestly was not holding out for much, because it was such a busy travel time. I am happy to report that I got both! What a great way to start our trip! Our room wasn’t ready, but we were told we would be in Jamaica building 46 on the second floor. We left a credit card for charging and reset the pin. Mainly because I thought I had remembered it… but I wasn’t exactly positive. Lol. So I decided to reset it just to be safe.
At that point we headed out to find Jamaica and see our home for the next week! This is probably my favorite part of any vacation. You all know what I am talking about. That time when you just barely check in, when you have just arrived, and you know that you have your whole trip ahead of you. I should mention here that it was already 80 degrees and humid! My worry about the weather being warm enough to swim, etc was definitely unnecessary. We parked in the Jamaica lot and went to explore. I had heard mixed reviews about CBR in the weeks leading up to this trip. Everything from the transportation being awful to the food court not being good, etc. Being a family of 5 our choices of places to stay are pretty lean, especially when on a budget. We had stayed at POR once before, and Fort Wilderness at our last trip. After reading some not so positive reviews about CBR I almost switched at the last minute back to POR, but ended up settling upon CBR mainly because of price and also because I just wanted to try a different resort. I am SO glad that I didn’t change my mind. I LOVED the resort so much. It was unanimous amongst our family that this was our new favorite. In fact, upon just wandering for a few minutes, DS11 said, “Can we just live here??” It truly is a beautiful resort. It felt to me a little like a vacation within a vacation. Somewhere that you could come back to relax after a day at the parks. Even with it being the busiest time of the year, I can tell you that it NEVER felt busy. In fact, I swear I never even saw someone in Jamaica the whole time were were there except for the bus stops! It was a very quiet, peaceful resort… and let me tell you… quiet and peaceful is not something you see a lot of at Disney the week after Christmas. We enjoyed the resort so much that we ended up spending a lot of time there. Probably more than we have at any other resort we have stayed. We took a lot of breaks from the crowds midday and the pool and hot tubs never seemed too crowded. Here are some pics of our first impressions of CBR.
Oh I should mention that the walk from Jamaica to Old Port Royale was not bad at all. I was expecting from what I had read that this resort was a lot bigger. I was big… but I didn’t find it an inconvenience at all. We made the walk across the bridge several times a day either to the pool or to refill our mugs, etc. It wasn’t bad. In fact I found it to be very peaceful. Maybe we just had a great location, but if you are considering a stay at CBR, give it a try. Our family loved it!
It was about 9:30 at this time and we were itching to get into a park. At this point we were going to split up. Part of my husband’s agreement to the whole Disney thing is that he gets to play a round of golf while we are there. Usually I plan it for somewhere in the middle of our trip, but since he’s not a huge fan of crowds, I figured I would plan it for our first day. That way he could be golfing, while we are battling it out with the hoards of people! I got him a tee time for 1:00 at the Palm which is one of the only courses at Disney he hadn’t played before. It had just reopened after being refurbished, so he was very excited to try it. We had the water parks and more option on our theme tickets which also allows you to play the little Oak Trail walking course (9 holes) as well. So… We went our separate ways. He took the car to play at Oak Trail before his tee time at the Palm, and we hopped on our first Disney bus to the Magic Kingdom. Literally… hopped on. I couldn’t believe our bus luck. We walked to our stop and a MK bus was waiting on us.
Stay tuned: What are the wait times? What is our first ride of the trip? What happens within 5 minutes of setting foot in the Magic Kingdom?
When I left off we had just had amazing bus luck and were able to hop right on a MK bus! It was already pretty full, but I managed to find a seat. The boys stood, which was usually always the case, as I have trained them to give their seats up for women, elderly, etc! Meanwhile DH was leaving to go golf with the means to meet up in time for dinner later!
With an already full bus, I believe we made one more stop to pick up some other passengers and then were on our way!
If you have stayed at CBR before you know that the busses make a loop around the entire resort to all of the different villages, as well as to Old Port Royale which is where the pool, food court is, etc. Sometimes a bus would pick us up and we would go straight to the park without any stops. Other times we would make a stop or two and then go to the parks. Only once did we make every single stop and then go to a park. I’m not sure what the rhyme or reason there was behind it. Honestly sometimes there would be an almost empty bus and we would go straight to a park. Other times the bus would be full and we would continue to make stops. Nonetheless, I found the busses to be extremely efficient the entire time. I’m not sure if we just had good luck or what, but no complaints here as far as the busses go. They also had the monitors up, but they never worked when we were there. I have heard that they started working as soon as we left.
A short bus ride later, we were pulling up to our first park of the trip, the MAGIC KINGDOM!!!! Meanwhile DH was golfing. We had been looking up the wait times on the app while we were on the bus and saw them drastically increase just in the short time we had been on the bus. This was to be expected, as we didn’t get there until about 10:30 am. I should mention here that I had made our fast passes well in advance for later in the day when my husband would be back with us.
So we pulled up and saw the masses going into the Magic Kingdom… but you know what???? It didn’t bother us A BIT! Because….. we had prepared for it, and we were just SO excited to be there!!!! A little bit of Disney Magic was present already when we are walking up and see the toy soldiers out in front of the gates and bag check, etc. marching and playing their instruments. It was AWESOME! That is definitely something we would never have seen if we had traveled any other time of year.
At this point we split up so I could go through bag check and the boys could go ahead and go through the other line. At this point I knew there were metal detectors, but I did not get selected. In fact I never even noticed them. I brought my Kavu shoulder bag with me and loved it. I only brought the bare minimum in with me so it wasn’t too heavy. I made sure all my compartments were open and ready to check. That is something that gets on my nerves so much!!! Bag check was quick and painless! Believe it or not…. I made it through bag check and the turnstiles before my boys did?! I don’t even know how that happened!! Again, everything was smooth. No trouble with the Magic bands.
We set foot onto main street and saw the giant Christmas tree first thing, to which DS11 said, “That is the biggest Christmas tree I have ever seen!” I had to agree! We had decided ahead of time that we would head towards Pirates for our first ride of the trip. We knew we would be waiting for something and we figured that was something loaded relatively fast. Plus it was our very first ride of our first ever trip 10 years ago, so it holds a little bit of memories for us!
Main Street was busy, but manageable. It wasn’t hard to walk down or anything like that. I actually expected far worse. As we are making our way down Main Street, we had been in the park maybe 5 minutes, when we are stopped my a citizen of main street! This lady was AWESOME! DS11 was wearing a Superman T-shirt. She went crazy over it… Thanking him for putting the star on top of the Christmas tree… asking him how he got it up there…. LOL. The interaction was just so great. She spent quite a bit of time with him, and he of course, just ate up the attention! Thankfully I managed to get pictures!
What a GREAT and memorable way to start off our first day.
Pirates had a wait time posted of 50 minutes. It was a little after 10:30 at this point. We hopped in line. I love the Pirates queue, because on a hot day (it was 87 this day!) if you’re going to wait in line, at least it’s cool. Surprisingly, and we timed it to be sure, we were on a boat within 25 minutes! This led me to believe that they inflated the wait times, and that maybe all the rides would be like that! Ha. Ha. Ha. More on that theory later. I had told the boys about people getting soaked on the ride. They were excited! We were in the middle of the boat. 4 of us in one row. Sad to say, but we didn’t even get a drop… So… needless to say… the whole “getting soaked on Pirates” was not the case for us. I did however think the ride looked great. Our last trip the waterfall effect with Davy Jones and Blackbeard wasn’t working, so it was nice to see that working again. I also, and I’m not sure if I am alone in this, but I just love the musty smell of the Pirates ride!
It was a little after 11 when we got off of Pirates and we decided to try and beat the masses for lunch and use our first CS credits of the trip. Since we were in Adventureland, usually we would have headed to Frontierland and hit up Pecos Bill, but when I mentioned the menu change to the boys, they weren’t interested in it, and honestly I wasn’t too keen on it either. They are the burgers and fries kind of boys. LOL. So… we headed towards tomorrowland to Cosmic Ray’s.
We crossed through the hub and into Tomorrowland and this is when I really noticed the crowd difference between when we have gone before. I had never been when they literally had CM’s directing traffic. We heard “stay to the right” so many times this trip. It definitely kept things orderly, but it was a little weird to get used to. Some CM’s were nicer than others. Some just felt like they were screaming at you.
At one point DS16 told me that he would rather just stand and wait in line than try to fight his way through masses of people just walking to a different land. It was true. It seems once you were in the land it wasn’t as bad, but making your way into the different lands, etc. it was always mobbed. Definitely Tomorrowland and Fantasyland were the worst, but more on that later.
We made our way to Cosmic Ray’s and wow this was a simple order. We all got the same thing. 4 bacon cheeseburgers, fries, Cokes, and chocolate cake. We managed to find a small table inside and sat down to eat. There were even CM’s in there that were directing traffic around the fixing bar, into and out of the restaurant, etc. It was quite different than what we were used to, but again, it was necessary for crowd control. At lunch we looked at the wait times again and saw that Buzz was at 45 minutes. We finished our lunch which was good, but nothing to write home about and headed over to Buzz and got in line. I looked at how many loops we were going to do in the blazing hot sun and thought that it sure seemed as though it was going to take a lot longer than 45 minutes. Unlike Pirates where we seemed to constantly be moving, at one point the line would just stop for several minutes….. Then we would finally move again. What was supposed to be 45 minutes ended up being over 90. Not fun… and there is no shade in the queue at all. BUT we knew what we were getting into, so we suffered in silence and took this selfie!My worries of January being too cold sure was a waste of time!
We finally were walking onto the platform and into our space ranger… Cars? What are they? Anyways… I don’t get this ride at all. I am so bad at it! However it is one of my boys favorites and they would ride it over and over if they could. DH got 999,999 last trip and shared his secrets with the boys. They didn’t match that, but they came close, so they were happy. They couldn’t wait to ride again later in the trip.
We watched for our ride photos at the end and I made sure with a CM that they would automatically show up in Photopass since I had pre purchased Memory Maker. I thought they would, but wanted to make sure since this was our first experience with MM. They showed up quickly on the app and I absolutely loved having Memory Maker! It really added a lot of fun to our trip with the ride photos!
After Buzz my feet were killing me from standing. It seems I can walk all day long and it not bother me, but standing does me in! The boys had never done CoP and I had only done it with my parents on my first trip waaaaayyyy back in ’96. I figured there would be now wait and a place for us to kind of chill out in some air conditioning for a bit. I was right! We walked right in and sat down. It was great. I had to explain to the boys what it was about and I didn’t figure they would like it, but to my surprise, they really did, enough to want to see it again with their Dad later in the trip.
After CoP I mentioned doing Laugh Floor, a favorite of ours. It only had a posted 20 minute wait. However, they didn’t want to do that without their Dad, since it is a favorite of his. He was picked for the camera once. Not “That guy” but something else. Anyways, they wanted to wait for him to do that one.
We ended up going to the Lunching Pad for some Frozen Lemonades. We used our snack credits and got 2 frozen lemonades and 2 frozen blue raspberry slushes. They really hit the spot on a hot day! Probably our best use of a snack credit!
We carried those with us through Fantasyland, it was a ZOO, and noticed the Mine Train wait time was up to 130 minutes. Crazy! Thank goodness we had a FP for later! We just kept on walking and ended up getting in line for Haunted Mansion. The posted wait time was 75 minutes, but luckily most of the queue was shaded. It ended up taking about 45 which wasn’t too bad.
I will stop here and say that I was amazed at how well little kids did with the waiting. Mine are old enough to tolerate it, and I would expect them too… but wow I was surprised at the little ones with as hot as it was doing so well with these long waits!
My husband’s brother is Jacob, so we always have to take a pic with uncle Jacob. Lol.
We finally made it into the stretching room. When we boarded our doom buggies, I believe DS11 and I rode together and the other two rode with each other. Sometimes it is hard with 5. One of us always has to ride by ourselves. Today at least we didn’t have that issue, although I was really glad that today was the only day we would be without DH. We missed him!
That ride is a favorite of ours and especially a favorite of DS16. I find it funny and wonderful all at the same time that he doesn’t need a thrill ride to keep him happy (though he loves those too!) I worried that our boys would have somehow outgrown Disney by this trip, but I’m happy to report that they had as great a time as ever.
The hitchhiking ghosts were in working order this time. They weren’t on our last trip, so that was definitely nice!
It was almost time for the 3:00 parade which my boys had no interest in watching, so we high tailed it over to Frontierland for a ride on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but first we needed to make a pit stop.
We went into the bathrooms near Splash Mountain. Now let me just tell you….. during Christmas week. There is no such thing as running in and running out. At least for women. The boys ended up waiting for me for about 10 minutes. Everything has a line at Disney… even the restrooms! After lots of “Mom, what took you so long?” We were in line and got our first one of these for the trip! This picture was taken at 3:18.
The posted wait time was 60 minutes, but it moved really fast and I took this picture at 3:41,so we only ended up waiting about 23 minutes! Woo Hoo!!!! I really think we just happened to hit it at a great time in the middle of the parade. We love love love that ride and this time was no different. We had a FP for later in the evening, so we were glad we would be riding it again at night. Totally different experience!
After our great luck with BTMRR we thought we would get in line for Splash which had a posted wait time of 60 minutes. We thought maybe that one would be shorter as well. Not so…. This pic was taken at 5:16 pm…So we actually ended up waiting a little over an hour.
Still… We had been there a little bit less than 7 hours and had ridden Pirates, Buzz, CoP, HM, BTMRR, Splash, eaten lunch, and had a frozen lemondae. I would say that is pretty successful using no fasptasses and it being the day before New Years Eve!
At this point we were ready for a break, and thinking we should be hearing from DH soon after his golf game. We ran into Pecos, went straight to the counter and asked politely for some ice water. They had some already ready and were really nice about it! Take advantage of the free ice water at CS places!!! Don’t waste a snack credit! We found a quiet place outside the entrance to relax and rehydrate while DS16 called DH to see where he was and if he was done. Our first FP window was about to open up at 6:15.
Up next: Does DH make it in time for the first FP? What is our first FP for? How do we like our dinner at LTT? and Do we make it for the midnight fireworks? The ending to our first night in Disney.
Dining plan update: We spent 60.04 per person per night for the dining plan. That’s a total of 300.20 per day. Today so far:
Cosmic Ray’s- $76.55
Lunching Pad- 17.00
Total- 93.55
Savings on the Dining plan: -206.65
What we didn't like about CBR actually was how small it was. Yes, POR is VERY big and there is a lot of walking. As long as you make your requests reasonable, you should be able to get something close to the main buildings. In 2003 we stayed in Oak Manor (now the royal rooms) and it was about a 5 minute walk to the main building. Stayed in the mansions last year, too, and it wasn't too long of a walk. The wait times for the buses can sometimes be daunting. Generally MK and HS were the hard to catch buses. There was always one for AK and Epcot. It's only bad during park opening and park closing, though. Any other time, we never had a long wait for a bus.
. I think my girls will too..hope so!!
