Arrival Day (Yay!)
Our flight arrived around 4, after a flight time of about 4 and a half hours. We elected not to use DME’s luggage transport, because just a few days prior to our trip I read a horror story about someone who waited 36 HOURS to get their bags delivered at Pop. Extreme example for sure, but I wasn’t taking that chance. So, after landing our first step was to collect our bags. As we soon found out, this was quite inconvenient. Southwest’s baggage claim is in terminal A, whereas DME picks up in terminal B. Translation: lots of walking and lots of backtracking. But it was worth it to know that my bags were with me and not floating out in the great unknown for hours!
We finally reached check in for DME and scanned our magic bands. We were right at the front of the queue.
A couple minutes later, and we were on the bus! Woo!
After a leisurely ride, we arrived at Pop Century! I got the text about our room being ready while we were on the train in the airport- we were in the 90’s section, on the 4th floor in building 8. I remember requesting a higher floor through online check in, so it looks like my request was granted. Once we grabbed our bags we set out to our room.
Now, my biggest mistake here was not looking at a map of the resort before we got there…. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I really didn't pay attention to the actual layout or anything. Instead of taking the very quick and easy shortcut through the parking lot, we walked the lonnggg way to the 90’s section. Through the 60’s, through the 70’s, then the signs stopped changing and I thought we’d never get to the 90’s…. But we did. Definitely not a fun walk while lugging suitcases. But, we learned the errors of our ways when we glanced to the left and saw the main building and the bus we’d just gotten off sitting just across the parking lot. But, from that point on, we used the shortcut, which came in handy after long days of parkhopping.
Sweaty and tired, we lugged out suitcases the last few feet into the elevator before navigating to our room and home for the week: Good ol’ 8441.
My first thought was that the rooms looked just like the pictures I saw online, but they felt much less sterile and more welcoming in person. I really appreciated the hard floors as opposed to carpet. I HATE carpet. It's hard enough to keep clean in a home, I don't have any faith in hotels keeping it clean. Also, the murphy bed adds so much space to the room, although we ended up leaving it down for most of the time.
Which, side note, when lowering the bed for the first time we had a spit second moment of "oh wait, does the table actually just... Collapse? Is this how it works?" Lol, I guess neither of us had ever experienced a murphy bed before, so we were nervous about breaking something when we put it down.
One thing I was bummed about was that the light up headboard on the murphy bed was burnt out. L It was a real downer for my sister: from “Ooh, it lights up!” to “oh, never mind, it’s broken” in a matter of seconds. It still looked cute though!
I'll save a full resort review for later in the report, but overall we were very happy with Pop and would absolutely stay there again. And, the beds were SO COMFORTABLE! On our last trip, we stayed in a royal room at POR: Riverside, which i loved, but the beds felt hard like dorm mattresses! After years of enjoying cozy beds at Paradise Pier Hotel and The Grand Californian at
Disneyland, I was left with the impression that beds at WDW just didn't measure up- but the beds at Pop put that to rest for sure.
Anyway, like I said, I'll save more thoughts about the resort for later
Back to the report:
We had some time to kill before our Beaches and Cream ADR- 3 hours to be exact. I made it super late to account for any travel delays- it seems excessive, but you just never know! So, we got settled and freshened up for the evening with a soundtrack to set the Disney mood, with the help of the resort TV channel. My “rule” for a Disney trip is always to only watch Disney or Disney-adjacent shows on TV. It just feels right. So we spent a lot of time either listening to the resort TV soundtrack, or watching Disney cartoons.
As you can see above, we wasted no time making ourselves at home and cluttering up the dresser. Our collection of minnie ears took up most of the space- we always get at least one or two new pairs per trip, hence why I referenced them in the title of this report!
While we decompressed, I took a quick “I’m at Disney, yay!” selfie, with a fun photobomb from the mouse himself:
After a little while, we decided to head over to Disney Springs for a bit before heading to Beach Club. So, we set out for our first introduction to the Pop Century bus system- and it wasn’t exactly the smoothest one!
We got in line for the Disney Springs bus right after one left… It was at this point that I remembered that I could check bus times in the app. That wasn’t a feature on our last trip! If we’d left the room a few minutes earlier, we would’ve made it. But, instead, we were towards the front of the line for the next one, in front of a large softball team that took up most of the queue.
And there, we waited. And waited. The next bus arrival time on the screen moved forward, then back, then disappeared altogether. 7:21, 7:25, 7:30, 7:27…. We passed the time by talking to the couple behind us, who were from Ohio I think…. Or somewhere else cold. They expressed that they’d dealt with several long bus waits during their time at Pop. Not exactly the glowing endorsement I was hoping for.
We ended up waiting almost 45 minutes… A serious dent into our Disney Springs time. Several times throughout the wait I thought about just throwing in the towel and calling an Uber, but I was really trying to rely on the buses as much as possible during this trip, because I’m cheap. Once the bus disembarked, we said goodbye to our might-be-from-Ohio friends. The husband pointed out where the return bus would pick us up, “all the way over there”. I made note of that and we went our separate ways.
I had recently heard that Disney released a new line of dog accessories- and as someone who loves dressing up my dog, I knew exactly what my first souvenir was going to be!
Obligatory dog picture: This is Lucy!
For some reason, I had it in my head that the dog accessories were sold at World of Disney. Despite the fact that I carry a super computer in my pocket, I didn’t stop to use the wealth of information at my fingertips to verify this. We headed to World of Disney and wandered aimlessly, looking for merchandise that wasn’t there. I hate asking for help, but ultimately gave in and asked a cast member, who told us the dog stuff was “in the center of the store”. So, to the center we went, to no avail. Then, a second cast member pointed us to the Co-Op, where we should’ve been the whole time.
But, at this point, we were veering dangerously close to “you’ll miss your ADR if you don’t leave RIGHT NOW” territory, so we had to book it back to the buses. And, of course, we arrived at the Beach Club bus RIGHT as one was leaving. Again I was faced with “pay for an Uber or sit here and stress”. And I chose to sit there and stress…. Even going so far as to Google every possible variation of “late for ADR what to do”. But, the bus finally arrived, and I sat there attempting to will the bus to go faster.
We arrived at Beach Club and my lack of foresight struck yet again, as I realized I had no idea where Beaches and Cream was. Without thinking to ask a cast member, we wandered out of the lobby and onto the boardwalk, which got us nowhere. We wandered some more until we finally asked someone, and they pointed us in the right direction. I must say, the location is very nondescript and easy to miss. But, we arrived, 11 minutes after our ADR time. I was so sure they were going to cancel it, and I had a whole spiel ready for the hostess when I went to give her our name. But, thankfully, we were seated no problem. A crisis narrowly averted.
This was our first time at Beaches and Cream, and I loved the atmosphere! It was so cute and fun. We both had cheeseburgers and enjoyed watching a table nearby take on the Kitchen Sink. I think they were vloggers, or aspiring vloggers, because the dad filmed the whole thing with a go pro looking thing. Then the time came for dessert!
We got the snickers sundae to split, and I got the cherry ice cream soda. Which…. Wasn’t great! It tasted very flat and not at all as I expected. I didn’t feel like saying anything though, in case it was a problem with their machine and not something they could fix. But the sundae was very good!
After finishing up, we set out to get the bus back to Disney Springs, in order to transfer to Pop. At the bus stop, we found that someone left their Disney parks bag with a new T-shirt inside. As our good deed of the day, we went back to the lobby and handed the bag to the concierge. The person’s name was on the receipt, so hopefully they were reunited with their stuff.
Once we got back to the hotel, we got to bed pretty quickly. We were tired from the long day of traveling and had to be up bright and early for our first park day. After our not-so-fun night of busing, I was adamant that we would be early, early, EARLY for our bus to the Magic Kingdom Early Morning Magic. So, we aimed to be down waiting for the bus at no later than 6:30. Were we successful? Well, that’s a story for another day!
Stay tuned for Part 2 in which we take on a whirlwind "sun up to sun down" first day at Magic Kingdom!
and grew up going to Disneyland. But after our last trip to WDW, we were both bit by the east coast Disney bug and couldn't wait to go back! Which brings me to....
and thank you for the kind words- MS is so different person to person, it's always nice to hear about people doing well. i think I'm very lucky, all things considered, in that I was diagnosed young and was able to start on a powerful medication right away. I hope your aunt continues to do well! 
