mrsmarilyn
Disneymom2twins
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2007
- Messages
- 260
It's our last night here in WDW. The kids and hubby are asleep, the last load of laundry is spinning in the dryer, and I am trying to stay awake until it's done. so i thought it would be a good time to type the trip report!
We spent a week in a 1 bedroom at SSR. For us, it was a great resort! Hubby isn't a diehard disney guy, so the low-key theme worked really well for him--gave him a break from the incessant themed stuff. Having the one bedroom w/ full kitchen and laundry was a Godsend. First, doing breakfast in was SO much easier than dragging hungry twin 5 year olds out to eat, and second we had a bit of intestional flu make the rounds, so the laundry turned out to be a double blessing!
Our trip down was rough, due to weather (first snow of the ENTIRE winter and it had to hit the morning we were flying out) and the fact i woke up that day with a double eye infection and (i later found out) double ear infection (yes, I now know how to get to the Celebration ER and where to find a 24 hr pharmacy in Orlando). We got up at 4am, were at the airport by 6am for an 8am flight that didn't leave until nearly 10am. We got to Orlando at 12:30, then had a hassle with the rental car. Good news--Thrifty rents minivans WAY cheaper than anyone else AND they have 2008 models with built in booster seats! Bad news--they were a bit disorganized so it took longer to get the car than we planned. Still we were in our room and unpacked by 4pm and at the Magic Kingdom by 5. We weren't going to waste our first day ticket but the kids were chomping at the bit. Believe it or not, they lasted until almost midnight. We all crashed HARD into bed!
We did the DDP and it also turned out GREAT for us. We did a ton of character meals and found that doing them at lunch made a wonderful break in our day. We are apparently incapable of getting to a park before 11am no matter how hard we tried, so lunch was perfect. Dinner was too much pressure to be somewhere at that time, and breakfast, well, let's just say we never did make it to Ohana. Most of the character meals were ok/mediocre. Two were exceptionally good. The hands-down over all winner for GREAT food was lunch at Hollywood & Vine (Play and Dine with Playhouse Disney). Tip--get the first lunch ressie and you get to choose from the breakfast buffet AND the lunch buffet. Kids loved that one and the food was truly top-notch. The second best food was at the Crystal Palace in the MK (Lunch with Character with Pooh & Friends). Liberty Tavern was rather mediocre, as was Akerhaus (which was disappointing, as I'd had good food at Akerhaus in the past). We also had dinner at Boma (good but kids were in meltdown mode so not the evening we hoped for), Turf Club at SSR, Artist Palette at SSR and some other places. DDP really saved us money. Today alone our actual cost on receipts totaled something like $160, whereas the DDP charge for the day for 4 was $100 or so. Since we suspected we'd be eating at the parks 99% this trip, it turned out to be a good choice.
Weather was good earlier in the week, sucked the last 2 days (cold and rainy). Our DisneyMGM day was mostly a disaster between rain and DS tummy bug. We still had fun but not a fab day. We only went swimming once (monday) and the SSR has lovely pools. We now own the complete set of Mickey Mouse poncho's
We honestly didn't mind the cool cloudy days, it was very pleasant, but the rainy ones got a bit chilling. Luckily the warmest day of our stay was the day we went to AK, so getting soaked on Kali River Rapids wasn't a problem.
We attended the first ever Princess and Pirate party on 1/22. It was quite fun. We did get rained on (again!) but the kids still had a blast. Disney does need to work on the treasure hunt distribution--the lines were loooooong and (IMHO) not worth standing it for dime store trinkets. Luckily my kids could care less about that part, so we mostly skipped it. They loved the rides after dark, we saw the parade twice (DD was esp enchanted with the parade) and the fireworks were hands down the BEST we saw all week. It was tons of fun. And all the little (and some not so little!) kids dressed up were so cute!
Things we missed we wished we'd seen...Fantasmic (weather issues), new Nemo musical (we went to AK on a "green light" day and it was PACKED to the gills and the line for Nemo was insane), Splash Mountain (closed for refurb). Funny, that day at AK was the only day we hit ridiculous crowds. The rest of the time, at all the parks, crowds were very reasonable and waits were very short, if there was one at all. But AK was nuts that day.
We managed to see Wishes twice, Illuminations, Spectromagic, and a bunch of parades. The kids thought those were awesome. Glad I have night owls They also rode in the front of the monorail twice.
Favorite new things we tried: Philharmagic (LOVED it), Tom Sawyers Island (well, new to us and kids had a blast), Nemo ride at Epcot, Buzz Lightyear at MK
My son is on the PDD spectrum, so we were kind of worried about his reaction to crowds/noise/stimuli. He mostly did ok. The noise was a bit much. He was funny about rides--he wouldn't go near Peter Pan but he LOVED Space Mountain and Test Track (road TT 4x!) DD would ride anything, she was a trouper. The GAC really helped with DS. The cast members were great with him.
We flew AirTran down (and will fly it home tomorrow). Other than weather, it was fine. Good cheap airfare, my favorite thing
My only complaints...
1. Food quality needs work at some of the restaurants big time. I don't expect 5 star but I do expect edible, and since some of them do their menus really well, why can't all of them? I actually called upon the mgr at Hollywood and Vine to heap praise on them because it was such an Oasis of great food after several days of mediocrity. I know you don't go to Disney for the food but honestly, great food makes it even better! ;-) Today we picked up burgers and fries and drinks that came to close to $50 (if paid cash) and it was mediocre/cold. We were starved or I'd have gone elsewhere. But Disney has been doing this long enough that they should be able to get the food service thing down. The good news is, most kids meals have choices of things like carrots, grapes and applesauce. Much easier to get decent healthy choices for kids now than in the old days.
2. Off-season hours. It's bad enough that the parks close earlier off-season--but they closed MK even earlier because of some press event, which really cut in to our last day there. (and it isn't like they are discounting the tickets for shorter hours ;-) EMH helps but still, it was a hassle today.
3. You can't get late checkout at DVC. Ick. that was a nasty surprise today. Given i have one kid sick, it will make for a very stressful packing AM tomorrow.
DH was very disappointed that we never were given a wish. We literally were standing next to family after family that got wishes granted but it was never us. He started grumbling everytime he saw the cloud MM ears on people Me, I was just happy we got to go!
For those looking for Crocs, I saw them in all sizes, adult and kid, all over DowntownDisney and other stores.
OK, i have to go to bed. Off to my last night of Disney Dreams...
Marilyn
We spent a week in a 1 bedroom at SSR. For us, it was a great resort! Hubby isn't a diehard disney guy, so the low-key theme worked really well for him--gave him a break from the incessant themed stuff. Having the one bedroom w/ full kitchen and laundry was a Godsend. First, doing breakfast in was SO much easier than dragging hungry twin 5 year olds out to eat, and second we had a bit of intestional flu make the rounds, so the laundry turned out to be a double blessing!
Our trip down was rough, due to weather (first snow of the ENTIRE winter and it had to hit the morning we were flying out) and the fact i woke up that day with a double eye infection and (i later found out) double ear infection (yes, I now know how to get to the Celebration ER and where to find a 24 hr pharmacy in Orlando). We got up at 4am, were at the airport by 6am for an 8am flight that didn't leave until nearly 10am. We got to Orlando at 12:30, then had a hassle with the rental car. Good news--Thrifty rents minivans WAY cheaper than anyone else AND they have 2008 models with built in booster seats! Bad news--they were a bit disorganized so it took longer to get the car than we planned. Still we were in our room and unpacked by 4pm and at the Magic Kingdom by 5. We weren't going to waste our first day ticket but the kids were chomping at the bit. Believe it or not, they lasted until almost midnight. We all crashed HARD into bed!
We did the DDP and it also turned out GREAT for us. We did a ton of character meals and found that doing them at lunch made a wonderful break in our day. We are apparently incapable of getting to a park before 11am no matter how hard we tried, so lunch was perfect. Dinner was too much pressure to be somewhere at that time, and breakfast, well, let's just say we never did make it to Ohana. Most of the character meals were ok/mediocre. Two were exceptionally good. The hands-down over all winner for GREAT food was lunch at Hollywood & Vine (Play and Dine with Playhouse Disney). Tip--get the first lunch ressie and you get to choose from the breakfast buffet AND the lunch buffet. Kids loved that one and the food was truly top-notch. The second best food was at the Crystal Palace in the MK (Lunch with Character with Pooh & Friends). Liberty Tavern was rather mediocre, as was Akerhaus (which was disappointing, as I'd had good food at Akerhaus in the past). We also had dinner at Boma (good but kids were in meltdown mode so not the evening we hoped for), Turf Club at SSR, Artist Palette at SSR and some other places. DDP really saved us money. Today alone our actual cost on receipts totaled something like $160, whereas the DDP charge for the day for 4 was $100 or so. Since we suspected we'd be eating at the parks 99% this trip, it turned out to be a good choice.
Weather was good earlier in the week, sucked the last 2 days (cold and rainy). Our DisneyMGM day was mostly a disaster between rain and DS tummy bug. We still had fun but not a fab day. We only went swimming once (monday) and the SSR has lovely pools. We now own the complete set of Mickey Mouse poncho's
We honestly didn't mind the cool cloudy days, it was very pleasant, but the rainy ones got a bit chilling. Luckily the warmest day of our stay was the day we went to AK, so getting soaked on Kali River Rapids wasn't a problem.We attended the first ever Princess and Pirate party on 1/22. It was quite fun. We did get rained on (again!) but the kids still had a blast. Disney does need to work on the treasure hunt distribution--the lines were loooooong and (IMHO) not worth standing it for dime store trinkets. Luckily my kids could care less about that part, so we mostly skipped it. They loved the rides after dark, we saw the parade twice (DD was esp enchanted with the parade) and the fireworks were hands down the BEST we saw all week. It was tons of fun. And all the little (and some not so little!) kids dressed up were so cute!
Things we missed we wished we'd seen...Fantasmic (weather issues), new Nemo musical (we went to AK on a "green light" day and it was PACKED to the gills and the line for Nemo was insane), Splash Mountain (closed for refurb). Funny, that day at AK was the only day we hit ridiculous crowds. The rest of the time, at all the parks, crowds were very reasonable and waits were very short, if there was one at all. But AK was nuts that day.
We managed to see Wishes twice, Illuminations, Spectromagic, and a bunch of parades. The kids thought those were awesome. Glad I have night owls
They also rode in the front of the monorail twice. Favorite new things we tried: Philharmagic (LOVED it), Tom Sawyers Island (well, new to us and kids had a blast), Nemo ride at Epcot, Buzz Lightyear at MK
My son is on the PDD spectrum, so we were kind of worried about his reaction to crowds/noise/stimuli. He mostly did ok. The noise was a bit much. He was funny about rides--he wouldn't go near Peter Pan but he LOVED Space Mountain and Test Track (road TT 4x!) DD would ride anything, she was a trouper. The GAC really helped with DS. The cast members were great with him.
We flew AirTran down (and will fly it home tomorrow). Other than weather, it was fine. Good cheap airfare, my favorite thing
My only complaints...
1. Food quality needs work at some of the restaurants big time. I don't expect 5 star but I do expect edible, and since some of them do their menus really well, why can't all of them? I actually called upon the mgr at Hollywood and Vine to heap praise on them because it was such an Oasis of great food after several days of mediocrity. I know you don't go to Disney for the food but honestly, great food makes it even better! ;-) Today we picked up burgers and fries and drinks that came to close to $50 (if paid cash) and it was mediocre/cold. We were starved or I'd have gone elsewhere. But Disney has been doing this long enough that they should be able to get the food service thing down. The good news is, most kids meals have choices of things like carrots, grapes and applesauce. Much easier to get decent healthy choices for kids now than in the old days.
2. Off-season hours. It's bad enough that the parks close earlier off-season--but they closed MK even earlier because of some press event, which really cut in to our last day there. (and it isn't like they are discounting the tickets for shorter hours ;-) EMH helps but still, it was a hassle today.
3. You can't get late checkout at DVC. Ick. that was a nasty surprise today. Given i have one kid sick, it will make for a very stressful packing AM tomorrow.
DH was very disappointed that we never were given a wish. We literally were standing next to family after family that got wishes granted but it was never us. He started grumbling everytime he saw the cloud MM ears on people
Me, I was just happy we got to go!For those looking for Crocs, I saw them in all sizes, adult and kid, all over DowntownDisney and other stores.
OK, i have to go to bed. Off to my last night of Disney Dreams...
Marilyn
