Cast:
Me: Older sister, planner, organizer and default southern Californian resident due to graduate school. WDW fan!
Sister: Younger sis, just graduated (undergrad), leaving in a few months to work in England, also WDW fan!
The Plan:
Being the WDW fans that we are. We decided not to let the fact that I am currently living in southern California (about 30 minutes away from DLR) go to waste. So for my Spring Break we made a plan. She would fly in and we would spend 3 days in the DLR area. We spent the rest of the time around my little town and visiting to save money! After all we have a 10-15 day dream WDW trip we need to save money for.
Logistics:
We were staying 2 nights at the Anabella Hotel (a lot of the closer hotels were booked and we had a car so no troubles).
We used 2 day California resident park hoppers. It was great to be able to get these and save some money!
We purchased Ridemax and had a blast coming up with our touring plan. We knew it was going to be busy and we wanted to make the most of our limited time. (more on ridemax later)
WEDNESDAY
We left my house in the early afternoon. Wednesday was not a park day but a Downtown Disney/Check into hotel day. We made it to our hotel in about 30 minutes (love that middle of the day low traffic) and checked in.
Now I had purchased my hotel room on Hotels.com saving me considerable money over the Anabella's website rate. I chose my room and everything. When I checked in though, they informed me my room had a plumbing problem and that they would be putting us in a smaller room with one bed. Well sister and I don't do "one bed" neither of us would sleep. So I eventually had to speak to a manager and get the room changed and my parking paid for. I was still a little miffed but what could I do?
When we left the hotel lobby someone had parked us in! The hotel was PACKED and there were no spaces, we had to drive all around looking for one! But finally we found the guy who parked us in and offered him our space if he would move. We went to our room and found a space nearby were the car would stay for the next 3 days.
The room was set up almost identical to a WDW budget hotel room with fridge, it was clean and nice enough. We put our stuff down and headed out of the room to go to Downtown Disney and buy our tickets for the next day.
All in all we liked the hotel. It was clean, quiet and the despite the room problem the staff was friendly. If I was going back I would stay there again but only if someplace equally nice that was closer was full! I did not like the fact that the shop did not take credit for under 10 dollars, the ATM charged more of a fee than the ones in the park and there were little to know walking paths through the hotel grounds. Families were walking through the street?
We walked to downtown disney. It took about 10-15 minutes, not bad for us, but we are both big walkers.
Once at DD we walked down the row shopping as we went. We did not buy anything but we usually get our stuff at the end! We ended at the parks and bought our tickets for the next day. After that we went to the movies and saw Horton Hears a Who. It was good, but we were beat, we headed back to the hotel to get the car with the plan of going to cheesecake factory. But we were so tired we orded some pizza in the room and turned in early. After all we had a big day planned for the next day we were hoping to get to DL for opening...which we have never done! We like our sleep!
Me: Older sister, planner, organizer and default southern Californian resident due to graduate school. WDW fan!
Sister: Younger sis, just graduated (undergrad), leaving in a few months to work in England, also WDW fan!
The Plan:
Being the WDW fans that we are. We decided not to let the fact that I am currently living in southern California (about 30 minutes away from DLR) go to waste. So for my Spring Break we made a plan. She would fly in and we would spend 3 days in the DLR area. We spent the rest of the time around my little town and visiting to save money! After all we have a 10-15 day dream WDW trip we need to save money for.
Logistics:
We were staying 2 nights at the Anabella Hotel (a lot of the closer hotels were booked and we had a car so no troubles).
We used 2 day California resident park hoppers. It was great to be able to get these and save some money!
We purchased Ridemax and had a blast coming up with our touring plan. We knew it was going to be busy and we wanted to make the most of our limited time. (more on ridemax later)
WEDNESDAY
We left my house in the early afternoon. Wednesday was not a park day but a Downtown Disney/Check into hotel day. We made it to our hotel in about 30 minutes (love that middle of the day low traffic) and checked in.
Now I had purchased my hotel room on Hotels.com saving me considerable money over the Anabella's website rate. I chose my room and everything. When I checked in though, they informed me my room had a plumbing problem and that they would be putting us in a smaller room with one bed. Well sister and I don't do "one bed" neither of us would sleep. So I eventually had to speak to a manager and get the room changed and my parking paid for. I was still a little miffed but what could I do?
When we left the hotel lobby someone had parked us in! The hotel was PACKED and there were no spaces, we had to drive all around looking for one! But finally we found the guy who parked us in and offered him our space if he would move. We went to our room and found a space nearby were the car would stay for the next 3 days.
The room was set up almost identical to a WDW budget hotel room with fridge, it was clean and nice enough. We put our stuff down and headed out of the room to go to Downtown Disney and buy our tickets for the next day.
All in all we liked the hotel. It was clean, quiet and the despite the room problem the staff was friendly. If I was going back I would stay there again but only if someplace equally nice that was closer was full! I did not like the fact that the shop did not take credit for under 10 dollars, the ATM charged more of a fee than the ones in the park and there were little to know walking paths through the hotel grounds. Families were walking through the street?
We walked to downtown disney. It took about 10-15 minutes, not bad for us, but we are both big walkers.
Once at DD we walked down the row shopping as we went. We did not buy anything but we usually get our stuff at the end! We ended at the parks and bought our tickets for the next day. After that we went to the movies and saw Horton Hears a Who. It was good, but we were beat, we headed back to the hotel to get the car with the plan of going to cheesecake factory. But we were so tired we orded some pizza in the room and turned in early. After all we had a big day planned for the next day we were hoping to get to DL for opening...which we have never done! We like our sleep!
