Trip Report: January 14-20, 2006
"On the occasion of..." Well, I suppose my 10,000th message is an "occasion" of sorts...
Seriously, we had a great time, and I thought it would be great to share our experiences with the other members of the board. I'll be sharing photos and also some of the shorter movies I made from the video I took, as soon as Yahoo fixes my domain.
Who were we? My wife and I are very young AARP members, coming up on our tenth year as DVC members. Our guests were my younger brother and his wife, in their mid-30s, and their two children; our nephew is six (and this trip was, ostensibly his birthday present), and our niece is a very large one-and-a-half.
I wrote Part 1 of this report last week, and in writing Part 2 I realized I didn't mention our trip to Brown Derby in Part 1. That addition is indicated as follows: ***Updated***
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We stayed in a wonderful two-bedroom villa at the Villas at Wilderness Lodge. Our villa was one of the few that are to the right as you exit the elevators, and we were on the right-side of the hall. These villas, I believe, have the best view. We were able to see the pool and a great deal of the lake. We had originally booked just Sunday through Thursday night, since we only have 50 points at VWL; with banking and borrowing that gives us 150 points with eleven-month priority. At the seven-month point we were able to add Saturday night on, using some of our BWV points. (From what I've gathered, Friday and Saturday night are generally the last to sell-out, so if you're struggling with the decision about whether to take your chances trying to add-on a Saturday night or trying to add-on a Thursday night at the seven-month point, I suggest what we did would be the better bet.
The villa was in wonderful condition. The only issues we had with how clean the place was was that some of the glassware had some detergent deposits, though that's pretty standard given the very hard water in Florida. There was a light bulb out, and one of the two locks on one of the two sliding glass doors to the balcony wasn't working, but a quick call to housekeeping had them fixed in practically no time.
We met my brother's family at the Magic Kingdom, where they arrived a couple of hours earlier. I had thought that the Toontown Railroad station was a good spot to meet, since it is a relatively small location that you unquestionably knew you were there when you were there. What I didn't realize is how crowded Toontown is, even in the off-season. So getting there from Main Street was rather interesting. If we hadn't been delayed landing in Orlando, we were planning on taking the train around; that would have been a little more relaxing way to start the trip.
Once we met-up we took the kids on a tour of Mickey's and Minnie's houses. Our niece was mesmerized by their collection of snow globes. We had our first character encounter, which was a personal audience with Mickey himself (with practically no queue! They've got Mickey so well hidden back there that you almost end up finding him only by accident.) Then our nephew took a ride on the Barnstormer with his mother, and had a great time.
My brother's family arrived the day before, and stayed off-site, so he checked-in before us, and checked his luggage and groceries (a few dozen bags!), which we had brought up just before dinner. Everything fit, and we benefited greatly, both in terms of money saved and time saved, by having breakfast in the room each day, as well as satisfying the munchies we'd get in the evenings.
Our first dinner was at Whispering Canyon. Unfortunately, we were seated in the second auxiliary dining room. At the far end of the main dining room there is a small room with a fireplace, and beyond that is a completely separated dining area -- a terrace overlooking the entry to the Territory Lounge. This is really not a great place to be seated, if you're looking to enjoy all the fun of Whispering Canyon. The server helped make the best of it for us, playing her part, and helping ensure our kids enjoyed some of the standard antics of Whispering Canyon.
After dinner, we got settled in at the villa. We spent a little longer doing this than I had hoped, so by the time my wife and I took our nephew back to the Magic Kingdom for the evening, Spectromagic was just ending. I suppose that is just one more excuse to bring him back for another visit in a few years.
I love the Magic Kingdom at night. We walked around for a while scouting out a great spot for watching Wishes. We found a spot on a side-path, where our nephew could be up against a railing in the direction of castle. It was great. My video of the show showed the fireworks over the left shoulder of the castle throughout, which really helped keep the perspective of the show. After Wishes, we tried to ride Space Mountain, but the queue was too long, so we rode the People Mover instead, before heading back to the villa.
On Sunday, we started out at Animal Kingdom, my wife's favorite park. From what I could see, it's not the best park, though, for younger children. While we had great fun at Festival of the Lion King (where we started the day) and in Dinoland (where we ended our visit to Animal Kingdom, before heading to Epcot for the evening), the rest of the park was kind-of "lost" on the children, and due to this trip being deliberately focused on the children, even we adults didn't really have an opportunity to appreciate how great this park really is.
During Festival of the Lion King, I realized that what they say about my camcorder should really be taken to heart; that with "Easy" mode enabled, the camcorder can take better video than the average Joe (like me) mucking about with "Easy" mode disabled. (What they actually say is, "considering the great strength of most of the automatic controls on the DCR-HC32, this might be the best thing to do. It's so solid that you could operate the DCR-HC32 in a drunken stupor at a Jimmy Buffet concert, pass out, and awaken to a camcorder whose settings havent changed a bit, thank God. And your video (probably) wont be that bad.") What I found was that with "Easy" mode disabled, it was frighteningly easy to put the camera into "Back Light" mode, which resulted in most of the video of the Festival being of a bunch of monkeys totally bleached white. I realized this midway through the Safari (which we did next, thanks to FastPasses I secured while my brother was getting the stroller and getting the slow moving family to the Festival venue), after which I left the camcorder in "Easy" mode (now dubbed "dummy" mode by my family, in homage to me, of course) for the rest of the trip.
I noticed, during Festival of the Lion King, that perhaps they've either modified the show, or we got to see the "'B' Team". Specifically, I noticed that the female "bird" didn't "fly" as had been the case in previous performances I've seen. My brother's family, who've never seen the show before, didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, though, and had a great time.
With the Safari, however, it was very clear that was got to see the "'A' Team". The animals were out in force, even though we were closing in on midday.
Lunch was at Tusker House. This is still one of the better counter-service restaurants in all WDW, but I noticed during this trip that many of the counter-service restaurants are coming up to the same level. (There were some notable exceptions: We had to eat at Pinocchio Village Haus in Fantasyland twice, since the Tomorrowland Terrace wasn't open, and the pizza there, while edible, marginally, caused me horrible heartburn for hours afterwards.)
After lunch, everyone else headed into It's Tough to be a Bug, while I headed over to Dinoland for FastPasses to Dinosaur. I didn't mind missing the show, since I've seen it so many times, but would have loved to see the reactions of the children. From what I understand, though, it wasn't the highlight of the trip for either. Also, missing the show, I did get to spend a small amount of time in one of my favorite parts of the park, the Oasis, and the related wildlife viewing areas around the Tree of Life. I especially enjoyed the otters.
Our FastPasses for Dinosaur didn't really help us much. Despite the posted twenty minute wait for the Stand By queue, it looked more like a walk-on to me, and I don't think the FastPasses saved us more than one or two minutes there. Our nephew enjoyed this ride quite a bit, but like many other attractions, I think he would have enjoyed it more if it was not quite so dark. While he loved Space Mountain, he was concerned during most of the other very dark attractions.
Primeval Whirl is, of course, in full daylight, and he liked it so much he dragged my wife and his mother on for a second ride, after my wife and I rode with him for his first ride. What they learned was that the two sides of the attraction don't always provide the same experience. The right side, which we rode first, seemed to be much tamer, with the rotations seemingly controlled. The left side, by comparison, apparently was much wilder, with the rotations completely unrestricted.
Our little niece also got some ride-time in Dinoland, with a ride on the Triceratops Spin. I think she especially like the idea of being so high above folks down below, watching her. Our nephew enjoyed climbing around the Bone Yard.
I would have liked to visit Asia, but it was much too cold for Kali River Rapids, and the Maharajah Jungle Trek would be too much walking for the stroller-weary. We also didn't make it to the Conservation Station, mostly as a matter of time. We had dinner reservations at Epcot, and didn't want to stress ourselves out getting there in time.
So we hopped over to Epcot, and rode Spaceship Earth before heading to dinner at Garden Grill.
This inundation by characters, in the parks (to a much greater extent than when we brought my older brother's children in 1997 and 2002) along with our two character meals (we visited Liberty Tree Tavern later in the week) was actually *not* "too much". The kids never tired of meeting the characters (though our niece evidently doesn't like dogs ).
With regard to the food, I could have eaten a few pounds of the flank steak here, if my burgeoning waistline wasn't of-concern (though not much else stood out in my mind). I also noticed that, while there is clearly a need to place a high value on the character interaction in order to see real value from character meals, they pay-one-price nature of them seemed to keep the price-tag under control. I think, between the two character meals and the set-price for the skillet meals at Whispering Canyon, we ended up paying a lot less than we would have had we eaten at some other full-service restaurant.
By the time dinner was over we barely had time to find a decent spot to watch Illuminations. We ended up with another decent find. This one was between Germany and Italy, just passed the Friendship boat dock. (My brother was mystified that we actually had to walk half-way around the lagoon, a half-hour before the show, to find a spot from which the children could see. We actually could have found a spot closer, by heading towards Morocco, but the wind was heading in that direction, and so we'd be smoked out.) It was actually a pretty neat spot to watch the show, because at that angle, and given the timing of Wishes (also starting at 9:00 PM), we got to see both shows at the same time, with Wishes appearing (obviously, smaller) just to the left of the bulk of Illuminations.
Monday was our day at Disney-MGM Studios. We started the day with the new stunt show, Light, Motors, Action. This is a great show, and while I wish we could have seen both it and the Indy show, I was glad that if we had to see just one of the two, that we saw this one (and not just because I've seen the other one so many times before, and this one never before ). We did a lot of the attractions at this park, but totally missed Mickey Avenue (again, just not enough time). Our nephew had to get his fill of thrills, riding Tower of Terror (which I'm not sure he'll ride again, or at least his mother won't) and Star Tours.
It was during Star Tours that my brother and his wife tried to leave our little niece with my wife and I, while they rode the attraction with their son. Well, our niece was not happy about that arrangement, and let everyone around know it. We did our best to keep her calm until her parents returned, and had wonderful help from a passing cast member (one of several who will be getting thank-you letters sent to them, care of WDW Guest Communications). From there we took in Muppetvision 3D, which everyone loved (though some didn't appreciate being spritzed with water in the dark).
***Updated*** We had lunch at the Brown Derby. I think this is the place I was most shocked by poor service. We were on-time, perhaps even a little early, for our reservation. The restaurant was not busy. Yet we were kept waiting out in the lobby for a very long time. I can understand this if it were just my wife and I, but with two children in tow, get off your tail and get us seated! Not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of everyone in the restaurant. We asked to order food for the children as soon as we were seated, and there was still a significant wait before the food was provided. Making an infant and a young child wait like that doesn't do anything to make anyone's job easier, or make any patron's dining experience better, whether they're part of that family or not. Brown Derby use to be one of our favorites, but this experience has surely tarnished is image, in our minds, at least with regard to service.
I think our little niece had the best time at the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground. I think we could have spent an hour or so there. There's a section there I don't remember seeing before, with a massive net encased climbing area, similar to one at the Bone Yard at Animal Kingdom.
Towards late afternoon we visited the Great Movie Ride. I'm not sure I like the casting they've been doing here, and not just this time, but for the last three or four times I've taken in this attraction. I think it would be possible to have a female character be the gangster or bank robber, but given that this is a period piece, so if they're going to go "against gender" like that, I really think they need to have more believable cast members in those roles. I think it is great that they're trying to spread the good parts around to both genders, but I've seen women playing those roles three times in a row, now, and not one of them were right for the specific part. (To be fair, the previous few times before, with men playing that role, there was at least one who wasn't right for the specific part, either.)
We ended the day at my favorite nighttime attraction, Fantasmic.
Just a quick note about eating at the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater: The eatery in the venue is not a counter-service restaurant. The selection is very limited. It's simply not a good option for dinner. Given how long we need to sit and wait for the show, it makes sense that many folks would be having dinner while waiting. And we can definitely can bring stuff in with us from Sunset Boulevard -- and I highly recommend that -- but gosh that's such a chore when you've got two children in tow and you're messing with transferring out of a stroller, etc. I was surely forewarned, but that didn't translate into action, so we suffered with hot dogs for dinner. Well, we didn't actually suffer until an hour later.
So? Do you want to hear about the rest of the trip? Do you want to see our photos and some of our videos? Me too.
I'll work on Part 2 of my Trip Report over the next few days, and battle with Yahoo in the meantime to try to get the photos and videos (which are already uploaded) visible to the rest of the 'net.
That's all for now, though!
Part 2
Tuesday was our first full day at the Magic Kingdom. It never ceases to amaze me how different a trip with children is from a trip with adults. With adults, we'd probably spend half our time at Epcot, while with children, it seemed like we spent more than half our time at the Magic Kingdom.
We took the boat out to the Magic Kingdom, which is a wonderful experience to do, but just once or twice. The busses are far more reliable and speedy. We went directly to Space Mountain, because that was at the top of my nephew's priority list. There was a queue, so we got FastPasses. My nephew quickly learned the value of these puppies, and towards the end of the week was asking why we weren't able to get FastPasses for everything!
While we waited for our FastPass time, my nephew and his father rode the Speedway. This is where I had my biggest disappointment as a videographer. Evidently, the camcorder has a hair-trigger, and I must have hit it while running from the Speedway Grandstand to a great observation point at the tail-end of the first curve of the track. So there is some very exciting video of the pavement, and then you can see me whipping the camera up into position, framing the perfect shot of them coming around the curve, and then you see the front of their car coming around the curve, and then cut -- right to a shot of the back of their car just disappearing around the next curve.
There is another good spot to take video further on, on the path between Space Mountain and Toontown Station, but the car is further away, and going in the opposite direction, so instead of getting a good shot of my nephew I got a good shot of his father. (I believe there is another good video spot, on the last curve, but I was in sandals and didn't think it was safe to run fast enough to get there in time. So I learned two lessons there, about being a good videographer: Mind the hair-trigger, and wear proper footwear.)
We did the Baby Swap on Space Mountain. I've mentioned elsewhere how, while sitting with my infant niece, waiting for the rest of the family to get done with their ride, I observed some significant abuse of this service -- the kind of thing that makes me worry about its future. I won't go into detail about what I observed, so as to not provide incentive for making the practice more widespread, but it is enough to say that folks were abusing the service so as to basically get an "instant FastPass". I think Disney is going to have to look into either reducing the benefit (perhaps it is not necessary to allow three people to ride the second time) or add some structure that otherwise prevents the abuse.
One thing we did notice, at Space Mountain, is that a queue time of less than 25 minutes really means "Don't use FastPass." I believe this is the case at several attractions, where the FastPass queue merges with the Stand By queue before the boarding area. If the typical wait time for the merged part of the queue is longer than 75% of the Stand By queue time, then you won't do much better using FastPass.
We found several characters here. The queues for character greetings were pretty short all week, and we took great advantage of that. I think this is the time we got Stitch and "Mrs. Incredible" (I don't know why she doesn't go by her own hero-name, "Elastigirl").
We drifted into Fantasyland from here. I tried to do a little advance work, to secure FastPasses, but few of the rides had FastPass operating. We did get FastPasses for the attraction with the longest queue: Peter Pan's Flight. We also took in Mickey's Philharmagic and Pooh. We had ridden Small World back on Saturday (I forgot to mention that) and rode Snow White and Dumbo later in the week. The kids had a wonderful time, and I had lots of fun taking video of them having a wonderful time. We also rode Haunted Mansion, all of us, including the kids, though our infant niece was mildly scared a few times.
Midway through this, we stopped for lunch. Our intention was to eat at the Tomorrowland Terrace, and actually backtracked a bit to get there, only to find, as I mentioned earlier, that it was closed. We walked all the way back to Pinocchio Village Haus for more pizza (ugh!). This is one of those days I wish there was something like Seasons at the Magic Kingdom.
We ended up in Liberty Square about 2PM. I ended up sitting with the baby for a while, in the quiet garden out back (up-wind of the smoking section). It turned out to be a good spot, for another reason. As the rest of the family was returning, the crowds were gathering for the parade, and so we watched it from a vantage point in that garden, up against the railing that keeps folks from falling into the canal. So we saw each float passing over the bridge from Liberty Square into the Castle Forecourt area. In some ways, it was better than a front-row seat, since in the front-row, the floats are almost too close. Here, the only obstructions were the sides of the bridge.
After the parade, we rode Big Thunder Mountain. This was where we perhaps experienced our best FastPass advantage of the week. I love this ride, far better than Space Mountain, and am amazed that everyone else doesn't agree. Since we did the Baby Swap here, as well, my nephew got to ride it twice in rapid succession, so afterwards it seemed like a great time to head back to the hotel.
Dinner that night was our big dining experience of the week: Artist Point. As always, the food, service and the entire experience was superlative. This is still, truly the best restaurant at WDW, by far, and if anything, pulling further into the lead. The contrast with our experience at the Brown Derby on Monday is almost laughable.
Each night, we got a little show (the Electrical Water Pageant) outside our window just after 9:30 PM. The children were already sleeping, so we didn't wake them, but it would be a nice treat when they're older, if we're lucky enough to get this room again, then.
Wednesday was our day at Epcot. The highlight of the day, of course, was Soarin'. It was everyone's favorite (though I think if Test Track was open, our nephew would have preferred that). My wife, though, being a bit afraid of heights, kept her eyes firmly shut during the attraction. That's how we learned that there are smell-effects other than the orange grove; the one my wife said was most noticeable was the salty spray of the ocean. For anyone who is a bit afraid of heights, my wife confirms that closing your eyes really does make the feeling go away on this attraction. There is only very gentle motion, after you're in position in front of the screen.
Living with the Land is another attraction that seems to get a very long queue, for which FastPass is a great advantage. We also did the Circle of Life movie and the Crush attraction at the Living Seas, which I'm still wondering how they manage to pull off. After that we walked through the countries and then caught both Honey I Shrunk the Audience and the Figment attraction. Thinking about this, though, with Test Track down for rehab, there was absolutely nothing that drew us to the east side of Future World.
Our walk through the countries was relatively rapid, at least as compared to what we would do with the children when they're older. We did manage to catch a wonderful performance in Japan (the video for it is on my web site). We also caught a performance of the Voices of Liberty and saw The American Adventure.
We had lunch at Chefs de France, which convinced me that, while I like Artist Point a little better, Chefs is a very close second, even based just on the lunch we had there this time. I had the best ham and cheese sandwich I ever had. Utterly excellent. The service was characteristically, I suppose, cold and distant, and that variability in demeanor is probably the only real barrier to Chefs giving Artist Point a stronger run-for-the-money.
One of the most notable differences between Epcot-of-today and Epcot-of-the-past is the presence of characters. We've got photographs of the Character Caravan from several years ago, and that was a big change when it was introduced, but even though it's gone, the opportunities to have character greetings hasn't been curtailed in the slightest, as far as I can see. We even had an encounter with Mickey Mouse that was almost a walk-up.
On our way back to the hotel from Epcot we had a wonderful view of Wishes, all the way up World Drive. It's a shame I had to keep my eyes on the road. Well, mostly.
Our last day, Thursday, was predictably a Magic Kingdom day. We climbed the Treehouse, first. I think I had forgotten how beautiful the views where from the top of the tree. Unfortunately, you've got to keep moving or you hold things up, so we didn't have much time to appreciate them.
We had a wonderful skipper on Jungle Cruise. Unfortunately, we were the only occupants of the boat that weren't part of a Brazilian tour group, so it basically fell on us to laugh at all the jokes. The kids loved the attraction -- both of them -- though again the dark sections were a little spooky. We also rode Pirates of the Caribbean, and got wet! Some of those cannonball strikes are closer to the boat than I remember!
We finished our visit to Adventureland by visiting the Tiki Room and riding the Magic Carpets, giving my niece another chance to wave to here followers from up-high. (Was it a surprise to anyone else that the Magic Carpets fly over water?) We had lunch at Pecos Bill's, which apparently wasn't anyone's favorite, but we had great fun teaching my nephew how to throw french fries in the air and catch them in his mouth.
We did a few more attractions in Fantasyland in the early afternoon, as well as taking another ride on the Haunted Mansion. During the parade we rode Splash Mountain. My wife wore my North Face rain breaker, and came out relatively dry. Maybe North Face could weave that advantage into their advertising?
It had been a long day, at the end of a nice long trip, so they road Big Thunder Mountain one more time before dinner. Dinner was our second character meal of the week, this time at Liberty Tree Tavern. After the mediocre food we suffered through at character meals in years past, Liberty Tree Tavern was a surprise. The food is actually very good, and I might try to convince my wife to do lunch here on some future trip.
We left the park as they were setting up for Spectromagic. It was quite nice, though, for all the other guests to line the streets of the Magic Kingdom to watch us leave. Seriously, I would have liked for the kids to have seen Spectromagic, but it just wasn't to be this time. Their flight home had them leaving the hotel about 5AM, so an early night was called for.
We all had a great time, and hopefully it was a trip that my six-year-old nephew will remember to some extent.
"On the occasion of..." Well, I suppose my 10,000th message is an "occasion" of sorts...
Seriously, we had a great time, and I thought it would be great to share our experiences with the other members of the board. I'll be sharing photos and also some of the shorter movies I made from the video I took, as soon as Yahoo fixes my domain.
Who were we? My wife and I are very young AARP members, coming up on our tenth year as DVC members. Our guests were my younger brother and his wife, in their mid-30s, and their two children; our nephew is six (and this trip was, ostensibly his birthday present), and our niece is a very large one-and-a-half.
I wrote Part 1 of this report last week, and in writing Part 2 I realized I didn't mention our trip to Brown Derby in Part 1. That addition is indicated as follows: ***Updated***
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We stayed in a wonderful two-bedroom villa at the Villas at Wilderness Lodge. Our villa was one of the few that are to the right as you exit the elevators, and we were on the right-side of the hall. These villas, I believe, have the best view. We were able to see the pool and a great deal of the lake. We had originally booked just Sunday through Thursday night, since we only have 50 points at VWL; with banking and borrowing that gives us 150 points with eleven-month priority. At the seven-month point we were able to add Saturday night on, using some of our BWV points. (From what I've gathered, Friday and Saturday night are generally the last to sell-out, so if you're struggling with the decision about whether to take your chances trying to add-on a Saturday night or trying to add-on a Thursday night at the seven-month point, I suggest what we did would be the better bet.
The villa was in wonderful condition. The only issues we had with how clean the place was was that some of the glassware had some detergent deposits, though that's pretty standard given the very hard water in Florida. There was a light bulb out, and one of the two locks on one of the two sliding glass doors to the balcony wasn't working, but a quick call to housekeeping had them fixed in practically no time.
We met my brother's family at the Magic Kingdom, where they arrived a couple of hours earlier. I had thought that the Toontown Railroad station was a good spot to meet, since it is a relatively small location that you unquestionably knew you were there when you were there. What I didn't realize is how crowded Toontown is, even in the off-season. So getting there from Main Street was rather interesting. If we hadn't been delayed landing in Orlando, we were planning on taking the train around; that would have been a little more relaxing way to start the trip.
Once we met-up we took the kids on a tour of Mickey's and Minnie's houses. Our niece was mesmerized by their collection of snow globes. We had our first character encounter, which was a personal audience with Mickey himself (with practically no queue! They've got Mickey so well hidden back there that you almost end up finding him only by accident.) Then our nephew took a ride on the Barnstormer with his mother, and had a great time.
My brother's family arrived the day before, and stayed off-site, so he checked-in before us, and checked his luggage and groceries (a few dozen bags!), which we had brought up just before dinner. Everything fit, and we benefited greatly, both in terms of money saved and time saved, by having breakfast in the room each day, as well as satisfying the munchies we'd get in the evenings.
Our first dinner was at Whispering Canyon. Unfortunately, we were seated in the second auxiliary dining room. At the far end of the main dining room there is a small room with a fireplace, and beyond that is a completely separated dining area -- a terrace overlooking the entry to the Territory Lounge. This is really not a great place to be seated, if you're looking to enjoy all the fun of Whispering Canyon. The server helped make the best of it for us, playing her part, and helping ensure our kids enjoyed some of the standard antics of Whispering Canyon.
After dinner, we got settled in at the villa. We spent a little longer doing this than I had hoped, so by the time my wife and I took our nephew back to the Magic Kingdom for the evening, Spectromagic was just ending. I suppose that is just one more excuse to bring him back for another visit in a few years.
I love the Magic Kingdom at night. We walked around for a while scouting out a great spot for watching Wishes. We found a spot on a side-path, where our nephew could be up against a railing in the direction of castle. It was great. My video of the show showed the fireworks over the left shoulder of the castle throughout, which really helped keep the perspective of the show. After Wishes, we tried to ride Space Mountain, but the queue was too long, so we rode the People Mover instead, before heading back to the villa.
On Sunday, we started out at Animal Kingdom, my wife's favorite park. From what I could see, it's not the best park, though, for younger children. While we had great fun at Festival of the Lion King (where we started the day) and in Dinoland (where we ended our visit to Animal Kingdom, before heading to Epcot for the evening), the rest of the park was kind-of "lost" on the children, and due to this trip being deliberately focused on the children, even we adults didn't really have an opportunity to appreciate how great this park really is.
During Festival of the Lion King, I realized that what they say about my camcorder should really be taken to heart; that with "Easy" mode enabled, the camcorder can take better video than the average Joe (like me) mucking about with "Easy" mode disabled. (What they actually say is, "considering the great strength of most of the automatic controls on the DCR-HC32, this might be the best thing to do. It's so solid that you could operate the DCR-HC32 in a drunken stupor at a Jimmy Buffet concert, pass out, and awaken to a camcorder whose settings havent changed a bit, thank God. And your video (probably) wont be that bad.") What I found was that with "Easy" mode disabled, it was frighteningly easy to put the camera into "Back Light" mode, which resulted in most of the video of the Festival being of a bunch of monkeys totally bleached white. I realized this midway through the Safari (which we did next, thanks to FastPasses I secured while my brother was getting the stroller and getting the slow moving family to the Festival venue), after which I left the camcorder in "Easy" mode (now dubbed "dummy" mode by my family, in homage to me, of course) for the rest of the trip.
I noticed, during Festival of the Lion King, that perhaps they've either modified the show, or we got to see the "'B' Team". Specifically, I noticed that the female "bird" didn't "fly" as had been the case in previous performances I've seen. My brother's family, who've never seen the show before, didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, though, and had a great time.
With the Safari, however, it was very clear that was got to see the "'A' Team". The animals were out in force, even though we were closing in on midday.
Lunch was at Tusker House. This is still one of the better counter-service restaurants in all WDW, but I noticed during this trip that many of the counter-service restaurants are coming up to the same level. (There were some notable exceptions: We had to eat at Pinocchio Village Haus in Fantasyland twice, since the Tomorrowland Terrace wasn't open, and the pizza there, while edible, marginally, caused me horrible heartburn for hours afterwards.)
After lunch, everyone else headed into It's Tough to be a Bug, while I headed over to Dinoland for FastPasses to Dinosaur. I didn't mind missing the show, since I've seen it so many times, but would have loved to see the reactions of the children. From what I understand, though, it wasn't the highlight of the trip for either. Also, missing the show, I did get to spend a small amount of time in one of my favorite parts of the park, the Oasis, and the related wildlife viewing areas around the Tree of Life. I especially enjoyed the otters.
Our FastPasses for Dinosaur didn't really help us much. Despite the posted twenty minute wait for the Stand By queue, it looked more like a walk-on to me, and I don't think the FastPasses saved us more than one or two minutes there. Our nephew enjoyed this ride quite a bit, but like many other attractions, I think he would have enjoyed it more if it was not quite so dark. While he loved Space Mountain, he was concerned during most of the other very dark attractions.
Primeval Whirl is, of course, in full daylight, and he liked it so much he dragged my wife and his mother on for a second ride, after my wife and I rode with him for his first ride. What they learned was that the two sides of the attraction don't always provide the same experience. The right side, which we rode first, seemed to be much tamer, with the rotations seemingly controlled. The left side, by comparison, apparently was much wilder, with the rotations completely unrestricted.
Our little niece also got some ride-time in Dinoland, with a ride on the Triceratops Spin. I think she especially like the idea of being so high above folks down below, watching her. Our nephew enjoyed climbing around the Bone Yard.
I would have liked to visit Asia, but it was much too cold for Kali River Rapids, and the Maharajah Jungle Trek would be too much walking for the stroller-weary. We also didn't make it to the Conservation Station, mostly as a matter of time. We had dinner reservations at Epcot, and didn't want to stress ourselves out getting there in time.
So we hopped over to Epcot, and rode Spaceship Earth before heading to dinner at Garden Grill.
This inundation by characters, in the parks (to a much greater extent than when we brought my older brother's children in 1997 and 2002) along with our two character meals (we visited Liberty Tree Tavern later in the week) was actually *not* "too much". The kids never tired of meeting the characters (though our niece evidently doesn't like dogs
). With regard to the food, I could have eaten a few pounds of the flank steak here, if my burgeoning waistline wasn't of-concern (though not much else stood out in my mind). I also noticed that, while there is clearly a need to place a high value on the character interaction in order to see real value from character meals, they pay-one-price nature of them seemed to keep the price-tag under control. I think, between the two character meals and the set-price for the skillet meals at Whispering Canyon, we ended up paying a lot less than we would have had we eaten at some other full-service restaurant.
By the time dinner was over we barely had time to find a decent spot to watch Illuminations. We ended up with another decent find. This one was between Germany and Italy, just passed the Friendship boat dock. (My brother was mystified that we actually had to walk half-way around the lagoon, a half-hour before the show, to find a spot from which the children could see. We actually could have found a spot closer, by heading towards Morocco, but the wind was heading in that direction, and so we'd be smoked out.) It was actually a pretty neat spot to watch the show, because at that angle, and given the timing of Wishes (also starting at 9:00 PM), we got to see both shows at the same time, with Wishes appearing (obviously, smaller) just to the left of the bulk of Illuminations.
Monday was our day at Disney-MGM Studios. We started the day with the new stunt show, Light, Motors, Action. This is a great show, and while I wish we could have seen both it and the Indy show, I was glad that if we had to see just one of the two, that we saw this one (and not just because I've seen the other one so many times before, and this one never before
). We did a lot of the attractions at this park, but totally missed Mickey Avenue (again, just not enough time). Our nephew had to get his fill of thrills, riding Tower of Terror (which I'm not sure he'll ride again, or at least his mother won't) and Star Tours. It was during Star Tours that my brother and his wife tried to leave our little niece with my wife and I, while they rode the attraction with their son. Well, our niece was not happy about that arrangement, and let everyone around know it. We did our best to keep her calm until her parents returned, and had wonderful help from a passing cast member (one of several who will be getting thank-you letters sent to them, care of WDW Guest Communications). From there we took in Muppetvision 3D, which everyone loved (though some didn't appreciate being spritzed with water in the dark).
***Updated*** We had lunch at the Brown Derby. I think this is the place I was most shocked by poor service. We were on-time, perhaps even a little early, for our reservation. The restaurant was not busy. Yet we were kept waiting out in the lobby for a very long time. I can understand this if it were just my wife and I, but with two children in tow, get off your tail and get us seated! Not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of everyone in the restaurant. We asked to order food for the children as soon as we were seated, and there was still a significant wait before the food was provided. Making an infant and a young child wait like that doesn't do anything to make anyone's job easier, or make any patron's dining experience better, whether they're part of that family or not. Brown Derby use to be one of our favorites, but this experience has surely tarnished is image, in our minds, at least with regard to service.
I think our little niece had the best time at the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground. I think we could have spent an hour or so there. There's a section there I don't remember seeing before, with a massive net encased climbing area, similar to one at the Bone Yard at Animal Kingdom.
Towards late afternoon we visited the Great Movie Ride. I'm not sure I like the casting they've been doing here, and not just this time, but for the last three or four times I've taken in this attraction. I think it would be possible to have a female character be the gangster or bank robber, but given that this is a period piece, so if they're going to go "against gender" like that, I really think they need to have more believable cast members in those roles. I think it is great that they're trying to spread the good parts around to both genders, but I've seen women playing those roles three times in a row, now, and not one of them were right for the specific part. (To be fair, the previous few times before, with men playing that role, there was at least one who wasn't right for the specific part, either.)
We ended the day at my favorite nighttime attraction, Fantasmic.
Just a quick note about eating at the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater: The eatery in the venue is not a counter-service restaurant. The selection is very limited. It's simply not a good option for dinner. Given how long we need to sit and wait for the show, it makes sense that many folks would be having dinner while waiting. And we can definitely can bring stuff in with us from Sunset Boulevard -- and I highly recommend that -- but gosh that's such a chore when you've got two children in tow and you're messing with transferring out of a stroller, etc. I was surely forewarned, but that didn't translate into action, so we suffered with hot dogs for dinner. Well, we didn't actually suffer until an hour later.
So? Do you want to hear about the rest of the trip? Do you want to see our photos and some of our videos? Me too.
I'll work on Part 2 of my Trip Report over the next few days, and battle with Yahoo in the meantime to try to get the photos and videos (which are already uploaded) visible to the rest of the 'net.
That's all for now, though!
Part 2
Tuesday was our first full day at the Magic Kingdom. It never ceases to amaze me how different a trip with children is from a trip with adults. With adults, we'd probably spend half our time at Epcot, while with children, it seemed like we spent more than half our time at the Magic Kingdom.
We took the boat out to the Magic Kingdom, which is a wonderful experience to do, but just once or twice. The busses are far more reliable and speedy. We went directly to Space Mountain, because that was at the top of my nephew's priority list. There was a queue, so we got FastPasses. My nephew quickly learned the value of these puppies, and towards the end of the week was asking why we weren't able to get FastPasses for everything!
While we waited for our FastPass time, my nephew and his father rode the Speedway. This is where I had my biggest disappointment as a videographer. Evidently, the camcorder has a hair-trigger, and I must have hit it while running from the Speedway Grandstand to a great observation point at the tail-end of the first curve of the track. So there is some very exciting video of the pavement, and then you can see me whipping the camera up into position, framing the perfect shot of them coming around the curve, and then you see the front of their car coming around the curve, and then cut -- right to a shot of the back of their car just disappearing around the next curve.
There is another good spot to take video further on, on the path between Space Mountain and Toontown Station, but the car is further away, and going in the opposite direction, so instead of getting a good shot of my nephew I got a good shot of his father. (I believe there is another good video spot, on the last curve, but I was in sandals and didn't think it was safe to run fast enough to get there in time. So I learned two lessons there, about being a good videographer: Mind the hair-trigger, and wear proper footwear.)
We did the Baby Swap on Space Mountain. I've mentioned elsewhere how, while sitting with my infant niece, waiting for the rest of the family to get done with their ride, I observed some significant abuse of this service -- the kind of thing that makes me worry about its future. I won't go into detail about what I observed, so as to not provide incentive for making the practice more widespread, but it is enough to say that folks were abusing the service so as to basically get an "instant FastPass". I think Disney is going to have to look into either reducing the benefit (perhaps it is not necessary to allow three people to ride the second time) or add some structure that otherwise prevents the abuse.
One thing we did notice, at Space Mountain, is that a queue time of less than 25 minutes really means "Don't use FastPass." I believe this is the case at several attractions, where the FastPass queue merges with the Stand By queue before the boarding area. If the typical wait time for the merged part of the queue is longer than 75% of the Stand By queue time, then you won't do much better using FastPass.
We found several characters here. The queues for character greetings were pretty short all week, and we took great advantage of that. I think this is the time we got Stitch and "Mrs. Incredible" (I don't know why she doesn't go by her own hero-name, "Elastigirl").
We drifted into Fantasyland from here. I tried to do a little advance work, to secure FastPasses, but few of the rides had FastPass operating. We did get FastPasses for the attraction with the longest queue: Peter Pan's Flight. We also took in Mickey's Philharmagic and Pooh. We had ridden Small World back on Saturday (I forgot to mention that) and rode Snow White and Dumbo later in the week. The kids had a wonderful time, and I had lots of fun taking video of them having a wonderful time. We also rode Haunted Mansion, all of us, including the kids, though our infant niece was mildly scared a few times.
Midway through this, we stopped for lunch. Our intention was to eat at the Tomorrowland Terrace, and actually backtracked a bit to get there, only to find, as I mentioned earlier, that it was closed. We walked all the way back to Pinocchio Village Haus for more pizza (ugh!). This is one of those days I wish there was something like Seasons at the Magic Kingdom.
We ended up in Liberty Square about 2PM. I ended up sitting with the baby for a while, in the quiet garden out back (up-wind of the smoking section). It turned out to be a good spot, for another reason. As the rest of the family was returning, the crowds were gathering for the parade, and so we watched it from a vantage point in that garden, up against the railing that keeps folks from falling into the canal. So we saw each float passing over the bridge from Liberty Square into the Castle Forecourt area. In some ways, it was better than a front-row seat, since in the front-row, the floats are almost too close. Here, the only obstructions were the sides of the bridge.
After the parade, we rode Big Thunder Mountain. This was where we perhaps experienced our best FastPass advantage of the week. I love this ride, far better than Space Mountain, and am amazed that everyone else doesn't agree.
Since we did the Baby Swap here, as well, my nephew got to ride it twice in rapid succession, so afterwards it seemed like a great time to head back to the hotel.Dinner that night was our big dining experience of the week: Artist Point. As always, the food, service and the entire experience was superlative. This is still, truly the best restaurant at WDW, by far, and if anything, pulling further into the lead. The contrast with our experience at the Brown Derby on Monday is almost laughable.
Each night, we got a little show (the Electrical Water Pageant) outside our window just after 9:30 PM. The children were already sleeping, so we didn't wake them, but it would be a nice treat when they're older, if we're lucky enough to get this room again, then.
Wednesday was our day at Epcot. The highlight of the day, of course, was Soarin'. It was everyone's favorite (though I think if Test Track was open, our nephew would have preferred that). My wife, though, being a bit afraid of heights, kept her eyes firmly shut during the attraction. That's how we learned that there are smell-effects other than the orange grove; the one my wife said was most noticeable was the salty spray of the ocean. For anyone who is a bit afraid of heights, my wife confirms that closing your eyes really does make the feeling go away on this attraction. There is only very gentle motion, after you're in position in front of the screen.
Living with the Land is another attraction that seems to get a very long queue, for which FastPass is a great advantage. We also did the Circle of Life movie and the Crush attraction at the Living Seas, which I'm still wondering how they manage to pull off. After that we walked through the countries and then caught both Honey I Shrunk the Audience and the Figment attraction. Thinking about this, though, with Test Track down for rehab, there was absolutely nothing that drew us to the east side of Future World.
Our walk through the countries was relatively rapid, at least as compared to what we would do with the children when they're older. We did manage to catch a wonderful performance in Japan (the video for it is on my web site). We also caught a performance of the Voices of Liberty and saw The American Adventure.
We had lunch at Chefs de France, which convinced me that, while I like Artist Point a little better, Chefs is a very close second, even based just on the lunch we had there this time. I had the best ham and cheese sandwich I ever had. Utterly excellent. The service was characteristically, I suppose, cold and distant, and that variability in demeanor is probably the only real barrier to Chefs giving Artist Point a stronger run-for-the-money.
One of the most notable differences between Epcot-of-today and Epcot-of-the-past is the presence of characters. We've got photographs of the Character Caravan from several years ago, and that was a big change when it was introduced, but even though it's gone, the opportunities to have character greetings hasn't been curtailed in the slightest, as far as I can see. We even had an encounter with Mickey Mouse that was almost a walk-up.
On our way back to the hotel from Epcot we had a wonderful view of Wishes, all the way up World Drive. It's a shame I had to keep my eyes on the road. Well, mostly.
Our last day, Thursday, was predictably a Magic Kingdom day. We climbed the Treehouse, first. I think I had forgotten how beautiful the views where from the top of the tree. Unfortunately, you've got to keep moving or you hold things up, so we didn't have much time to appreciate them.
We had a wonderful skipper on Jungle Cruise. Unfortunately, we were the only occupants of the boat that weren't part of a Brazilian tour group, so it basically fell on us to laugh at all the jokes. The kids loved the attraction -- both of them -- though again the dark sections were a little spooky. We also rode Pirates of the Caribbean, and got wet! Some of those cannonball strikes are closer to the boat than I remember!
We finished our visit to Adventureland by visiting the Tiki Room and riding the Magic Carpets, giving my niece another chance to wave to here followers from up-high. (Was it a surprise to anyone else that the Magic Carpets fly over water?) We had lunch at Pecos Bill's, which apparently wasn't anyone's favorite, but we had great fun teaching my nephew how to throw french fries in the air and catch them in his mouth.
We did a few more attractions in Fantasyland in the early afternoon, as well as taking another ride on the Haunted Mansion. During the parade we rode Splash Mountain. My wife wore my North Face rain breaker, and came out relatively dry. Maybe North Face could weave that advantage into their advertising?
It had been a long day, at the end of a nice long trip, so they road Big Thunder Mountain one more time before dinner. Dinner was our second character meal of the week, this time at Liberty Tree Tavern. After the mediocre food we suffered through at character meals in years past, Liberty Tree Tavern was a surprise. The food is actually very good, and I might try to convince my wife to do lunch here on some future trip.
We left the park as they were setting up for Spectromagic. It was quite nice, though, for all the other guests to line the streets of the Magic Kingdom to watch us leave.
Seriously, I would have liked for the kids to have seen Spectromagic, but it just wasn't to be this time. Their flight home had them leaving the hotel about 5AM, so an early night was called for.We all had a great time, and hopefully it was a trip that my six-year-old nephew will remember to some extent.
i know i just wanna go back now and we were just there in Dec
Just wanted to say that I think the reason that the bird wasn't flying at the Lion King show is because they have had issues with the flying mechanism (Tarzan had a nasty fall not so long ago) so they wanted to get it right before they used it again. Keep up the great writing,
