Turtlegirl
<a href="http://www.wdwinfo.com/dis-sponsor/" targ
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2002
- Messages
- 286
Hi Everyone, Here is our Trip Report-Background Me(43) DH (48) DD(6) DM (70) DMIL (69) DD (17). This was our DD6's first trip.
Our previous 2 recent trips were in 1999 (me, DH, DD9 at the time and our mothers) we stayed at CBR for 1 week and 2002 (me, DH and DD12 at the time) we stayed at AKL 6 nights.
Transportation: Our direct flights on Delta BOS-MCO and back were smooth and uneventful (yeah!) We arrived in MCO around 10:30 a.m. and took Tiffany Town Car to the Polynesian with a grocery stop for beer, wine and water. I must confess that we used ME for our luggage only and this worked great for us as we had a lot of luggage (my mother does NOT travel lightly).
On the way back we used resort air-line check in at AKL. This was also great as we did not have to bring our luggage with us and got into the Tiffany van luggage free-such a nice feeling knowing you're arriving at the airport without having to deal with checking luggage.
Accomodations: We checked in to the Poly around noon time and our rooms were ready! Our request for connecting rooms (mothers in one, me, DH, DD6 in the other was granted as was our request for Tokelau- I loved this longhouse as it is centrally located and walking to both pools, Capt. Cooks, the GCH, and the TTC was a breeze. I also loved the room-it was huge and very Hawaiian. As you can probably tell already, I LOVED the Poly-the location and monorail access just can't be beat-I loved being able to see the castle, fireworks, and electric light pageant.
My one complaint was that the volcano pool was set up poorly without much sitting area if you're waiting for your little one to come down the slide. It was also quite cold-the quiet pool was much warmer.
Mousekeeping was fine-we did not request turn-down. I think one or 2 days we got Mickey-shaped towels on the bed.
We moved to the AKL after 4 nights. Six years ago our stay here was quiet and serene-this time it was a zoo! (no pun intended)
Kids were knocking over the roping line at check-in and when a CSM asked him to stop, the father replied, "We've been waiting 4 hours for a room, he can do whatever he wants." Tempers were running high. We did not get our request for connecting rooms and we were on the Kudu trail rather than the Zebra trail on the Arusha savannah (facing in). At first I was upset as there were cranes set up in the savannah for painting and they were making a loud noise, thus there were no animals, but that was the only time during our 4 days they were working when we were at the hotel so it ended up not being bothersome and we saw many animals-giraffes and zebras and ankole cattle, etc. The Uzima savannah was the only savannah when we were there that did not have construction equipment, they even had equipment around the pool area. I heard one couple asking for a different view, but they were not giving upgrades and I heard a CM tell them they had choice of a construction or parking lot view. Truly, they seemed to have over-booked the resort with the amount of renovation/construction going on. Guess you can tell which resort I liked better for this trip, huh? Bus service was excellent, we never had to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus.
Dining: We were on the deluxe dining plan. We thought this would work for us as we used many 2 TS places (CG, HDDR, Narcoosees, HBD lunch and dinner, Jiko) so we never had 3 meals per day. However, it was too much food and too much time spent on food. We decided next time we'd do regular dining and only sit down once per day. We most enjoyed lunch-we really looked forward to sitting down for a meal after a morning in the park and were truly hungry. Dinners were a drag-rushing to get ready, spending too much time at the meal, and not really enjoying it as we were still full from lunch!
Highlights were Princess Bfast at Norway-Belle, Mary Poppins, Aurora, Jasmine, Mulan, & Snow White, also, the food was very good. Coral Reef was great for lunch, as was Yak & Yeti and, much to my surprise, Tony's Town Square-the cappucino cheesecake was my favorite dessert of the trip-and I had a lot of them! It was our first time at the HDDR and we enjoyed it very much, but probably won't go back without the deluxing dining lots of credits.
I found too much repitition in the restaurants- I counted (and ate!) at least 4 versions of lava cake and filet mignon was a choice on almost every menu.
My only real disappointment was with France, the wait was very long and the menu was no more French then any restaurant. I had no idea that flatbread was French...
One night we cancelled our Teppan Edo ressie when we were staying at AKL as no one wanted to trek to Epcot again for a meal and ate at Boma, which we had never tried. Food was great and it was nice to eat in the hotel before going out to the park...which leads me to my final report category...
The Parks!: Packed! We had previously gone in December and November and October was waaaay more crowded. That said, we took advantage of EMH and got the big attractions done in the first hour. Fast passes were invaluable. Typically, upon entering a park, my fam would head to a big ride and I'd bring our tix to get fastpasses for another big ride and meet them there-this worked very well for us.
During our stay at the Poly, we went only to MK and Epcot, taking advantage of the monorail. The Dreams Come True parade was awesome and Mickey's Philharmagic was fabulous! Loved Soarin' at Epcot.
We went to AK on our one slightly rainy day-fam headed to the safari and I headed to Everest to get fast passes. The safari was fab in the cooler rain-animals were very active and we saw a cheetah for the first time there. Everest was awesome as was the Nemo show. The tigers were really active on the Jungle Trek.
DSH was PACKED the day we went. We made a fatal error and went on EMH morning but arrived at 9 a.m. instead of our usual early as we had stayed out late the night before watching Spectromagic at the MK. I ran to get fastpasses for TSM at 9:15 a.m.-return time was for 5 p.m., but we weren't going to be there at 5 pm! This also prohibited us from getting fastpasses from another ride (I forgot to look at the return time b4 putting the tix in) I ended up sharing a bit of magic with another family of 6, who arrived a little later than us and couldn't even get fastpasses. That day we did TOT, my teenager and DH did single rider on RRC, we saw B & t B show and lunched at the HBD. The wait for TSM was over 90 minutes so we never got on that. We did return to DHS for an evening EMH but all the fastpasses were given for the day and the wait was again 90 mins.
We had a fabulous trip and would only change 2 things: chasing the food and attending EMH evenings. We would not do this again as it made us tired in the mornings and the wait at night for rides is very long and, in most cases, fastpasses are all distributed for the day. On a positive note...because we didn't get on TSM, we'll be going back in May 2010...already planning
Thanks to everyone-your information and advice was invaluable when planning our trip.
Our previous 2 recent trips were in 1999 (me, DH, DD9 at the time and our mothers) we stayed at CBR for 1 week and 2002 (me, DH and DD12 at the time) we stayed at AKL 6 nights.
Transportation: Our direct flights on Delta BOS-MCO and back were smooth and uneventful (yeah!) We arrived in MCO around 10:30 a.m. and took Tiffany Town Car to the Polynesian with a grocery stop for beer, wine and water. I must confess that we used ME for our luggage only and this worked great for us as we had a lot of luggage (my mother does NOT travel lightly).
On the way back we used resort air-line check in at AKL. This was also great as we did not have to bring our luggage with us and got into the Tiffany van luggage free-such a nice feeling knowing you're arriving at the airport without having to deal with checking luggage.
Accomodations: We checked in to the Poly around noon time and our rooms were ready! Our request for connecting rooms (mothers in one, me, DH, DD6 in the other was granted as was our request for Tokelau- I loved this longhouse as it is centrally located and walking to both pools, Capt. Cooks, the GCH, and the TTC was a breeze. I also loved the room-it was huge and very Hawaiian. As you can probably tell already, I LOVED the Poly-the location and monorail access just can't be beat-I loved being able to see the castle, fireworks, and electric light pageant.
My one complaint was that the volcano pool was set up poorly without much sitting area if you're waiting for your little one to come down the slide. It was also quite cold-the quiet pool was much warmer.
Mousekeeping was fine-we did not request turn-down. I think one or 2 days we got Mickey-shaped towels on the bed.
We moved to the AKL after 4 nights. Six years ago our stay here was quiet and serene-this time it was a zoo! (no pun intended)
Kids were knocking over the roping line at check-in and when a CSM asked him to stop, the father replied, "We've been waiting 4 hours for a room, he can do whatever he wants." Tempers were running high. We did not get our request for connecting rooms and we were on the Kudu trail rather than the Zebra trail on the Arusha savannah (facing in). At first I was upset as there were cranes set up in the savannah for painting and they were making a loud noise, thus there were no animals, but that was the only time during our 4 days they were working when we were at the hotel so it ended up not being bothersome and we saw many animals-giraffes and zebras and ankole cattle, etc. The Uzima savannah was the only savannah when we were there that did not have construction equipment, they even had equipment around the pool area. I heard one couple asking for a different view, but they were not giving upgrades and I heard a CM tell them they had choice of a construction or parking lot view. Truly, they seemed to have over-booked the resort with the amount of renovation/construction going on. Guess you can tell which resort I liked better for this trip, huh? Bus service was excellent, we never had to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus.Dining: We were on the deluxe dining plan. We thought this would work for us as we used many 2 TS places (CG, HDDR, Narcoosees, HBD lunch and dinner, Jiko) so we never had 3 meals per day. However, it was too much food and too much time spent on food. We decided next time we'd do regular dining and only sit down once per day. We most enjoyed lunch-we really looked forward to sitting down for a meal after a morning in the park and were truly hungry. Dinners were a drag-rushing to get ready, spending too much time at the meal, and not really enjoying it as we were still full from lunch!
Highlights were Princess Bfast at Norway-Belle, Mary Poppins, Aurora, Jasmine, Mulan, & Snow White, also, the food was very good. Coral Reef was great for lunch, as was Yak & Yeti and, much to my surprise, Tony's Town Square-the cappucino cheesecake was my favorite dessert of the trip-and I had a lot of them! It was our first time at the HDDR and we enjoyed it very much, but probably won't go back without the deluxing dining lots of credits.
I found too much repitition in the restaurants- I counted (and ate!) at least 4 versions of lava cake and filet mignon was a choice on almost every menu.
My only real disappointment was with France, the wait was very long and the menu was no more French then any restaurant. I had no idea that flatbread was French...
One night we cancelled our Teppan Edo ressie when we were staying at AKL as no one wanted to trek to Epcot again for a meal and ate at Boma, which we had never tried. Food was great and it was nice to eat in the hotel before going out to the park...which leads me to my final report category...
The Parks!: Packed! We had previously gone in December and November and October was waaaay more crowded. That said, we took advantage of EMH and got the big attractions done in the first hour. Fast passes were invaluable. Typically, upon entering a park, my fam would head to a big ride and I'd bring our tix to get fastpasses for another big ride and meet them there-this worked very well for us.
During our stay at the Poly, we went only to MK and Epcot, taking advantage of the monorail. The Dreams Come True parade was awesome and Mickey's Philharmagic was fabulous! Loved Soarin' at Epcot.
We went to AK on our one slightly rainy day-fam headed to the safari and I headed to Everest to get fast passes. The safari was fab in the cooler rain-animals were very active and we saw a cheetah for the first time there. Everest was awesome as was the Nemo show. The tigers were really active on the Jungle Trek.
DSH was PACKED the day we went. We made a fatal error and went on EMH morning but arrived at 9 a.m. instead of our usual early as we had stayed out late the night before watching Spectromagic at the MK. I ran to get fastpasses for TSM at 9:15 a.m.-return time was for 5 p.m., but we weren't going to be there at 5 pm! This also prohibited us from getting fastpasses from another ride (I forgot to look at the return time b4 putting the tix in) I ended up sharing a bit of magic with another family of 6, who arrived a little later than us and couldn't even get fastpasses. That day we did TOT, my teenager and DH did single rider on RRC, we saw B & t B show and lunched at the HBD. The wait for TSM was over 90 minutes so we never got on that. We did return to DHS for an evening EMH but all the fastpasses were given for the day and the wait was again 90 mins.
We had a fabulous trip and would only change 2 things: chasing the food and attending EMH evenings. We would not do this again as it made us tired in the mornings and the wait at night for rides is very long and, in most cases, fastpasses are all distributed for the day. On a positive note...because we didn't get on TSM, we'll be going back in May 2010...already planning
Thanks to everyone-your information and advice was invaluable when planning our trip.
