Liz
Make a miracle!
- Joined
- Aug 18, 1999
- Messages
- 4,909
Our Family:
Me - 46, born & raised in Florida but have been gone since 1981. Love WDW, obsessive planner. Really want this trip to be nice because we're bringing a family of 1st timers! Writes trip reports with way too much detail but I just can't do it any other way!
Paul - DH 52 - Loves Disney but not as much as I do. He'd probably be happy to vacation some place else occasionally but as soon as we get home I'm planning our next trip before he has time to process what I'm doing!
Jeff - DS 17 - Raised on WDW and Disneyland and loves it all. Super friendly guy!
Laura - DD 16 - Loves WDW but doesn't handle the heat well. Gets tired easy but she has a good excuse. She had a heart transplant when she was 6 weeks old and had West Nile Virus in 2002. Doing really well though. Our sweetheart.
Our Friends:
MM - 40ish - Going to WDW for the wife & kids. Isn't really a theme park kind of guy. Really nice though.
JM - 40ish - My good friend! Been trying to get her DH to go to WDW for a couple of years now!
Mike - DS 16 - Jeff's best friend since probably Kindergarten.
Heidi - DD 13 - Laura's friend. Despite the age difference they get along great!
I set the alarm for 6:00 AM because sunrise was at 6:20. The smoke smell seemed to have left our room, or else we just got used to it. Everyone was pretty excited and got up easily. No sleepy heads (in our room at least!) Of course we'd had a week to adjust to Florida time and our friends hadn't.
We ate breakfast (cinnamon pull-apart) that I bought at Food Lion. It was really good but messy!
I went down the to the beach early. I couldn't wait to get my feet in the water again! The boys came down and joined me after a little bit. The girls went to the main pool, were joined by the boys and they all switched to the smaller, indoor pool.
I considered doing a load of laundry (even though most everything we had was clean) but we had a few wet items from the ocean the day before. I found the laundry facilities on the 3rd floor and nope, not gonna do laundry here. There was no "laundry room", only a washer and dryer sitting outside by the elevators. They had two washers and each of them had a small bug in them. No thanks! Laundry can wait!
I also found from my exploring the hotel that one floor, the 4th, was the non-smoking floor. Its amazing to think in this day and age that out of seven floors there would only be one that's non-smoking.
JM came down to the beach and we went for a short walk. It was interesting to see the hurricane damage on some hotels, even almost a year later. I'm sure it was horrible for the people it happened to but it was fascinating to see what Mother Nature can do.
The boys were happily meeting girls, writing in the sand and making sand castles. Paul, Laura and Heidi played in the ocean surf awhile till Laura got knocked down and skinned her knee! But she wasn't hurt too bad. The girls came up to the balcony and were blowing bubbles I brought from home. We had to be out of the room by 11:00 so eventually everyone came upstairs and got cleaned up.
About 10:30 Mother Nature must have been sending us a message that it was time to leave because the skies opened up and poured! I don't mean it rained . . . it absolutely poured! It was a little windy too, which made just getting out the hotel room door interesting because the rain was blowing right into our room any time we opened the door! It was quite an adventure getting everything in the cars and ready to go!!!
Finally, we were in the car ready to leave. Rain ponchos already put to use. We stopped at Food Lion to get some ice and we were on our way to Disney World! Yea! Paul, Laura, Heidi and I were all in our car. MM, JM, Mike and Jeff were in theirs. We encountered a long slow down of traffic on I-95 and eventually came to an accident on the opposite side of the road.
I had estimated we'd arrive at Pop Century about 1:00 and we got there at 1:05! Wahoo! I'd seen so many pictures of it online. It was like a dream seeing it for myself in person! It was everything I'd hoped it to be!!!
Check-in was quick and even nicer, our rooms were ready! I had requested 70's section because it seemed closest to Classic Hall and the buses but we were given 50's, bottom floor, facing the pool. I would have preferred a top floor but since the rooms were ready now I didn't want to risk having to wait. Bottom floor has its advantages too. No stairs or elevators to deal with!
We drove around to the 50's parking section and got convenient spaces. We found our rooms without much trouble, rooms 1168 and 1169! The difference between our rooms at Pop and our rooms in Ormond Beach were startling! First of all no smoke smell (nice) and everything seemed so new! I know Pop has germs like anywhere else but we didn't feel the need here to wear our shoes constantly in the room, etc. I couldn't have been happier!
As we walked out of our room we faced the middle of the bowling pin pool. About halfway down the building to our left was a big icon of Lady from Lady and the Tramp. To our right about halfway down again was a larger than life jukebox! Across from Lady was her boyfriend, Tramp!
After getting everything loaded into our rooms we ate some snacks and headed to the bus stop. We bypassed Classic Hall and went a little too far, turning left by Goofy's pop-jets. We realized a better way to reach the buses was just going into the Classic Hall entrance by the gift shop.
Our destination was Animal Kingdom and we didn't have to wait very long for the Animal Kingdom bus to arrive! Our first stop was Blizzard Beach and then wahoo, we're here!!! First there was a little business to take care of. I had to trade in my annual pass voucher for the real deal. I guess since it was mid-afternoon they didn't expect a lot of people to be buying tickets that time of day so there was only one window open. I was glad I was in front of the people behind me in line because I think their transaction was going to take some time. They were quite clueless on ticket options and just about everything in general regarding Disney World! They thought they could drive their own car on the safari in Animal Kingdom!!!
A little info on our AP . . . our two families split the extra cost of one AP. Then we used it to get two rooms at Pop with the AP discount. We also split the cost of the DDE card and shared its benefits! It worked very well and made the "break even point" half of what it would have been!
We started off with a bit of confusion when I told Paul to take everyone else into the park and I'd meet them at the Tree of Life when I got all the "business" taken care of. I guess Paul came back to wait with me but we passed each other. I ended up at the Tree of Life with everyone else and now Paul was missing. It took a few minutes to get everyone back together. Okay, no stress allowed! This is supposed to be fun!!!
We'd never been to AK for just an afternoon before but after this trip when we toured AK on two afternoons, I'll never go in the morning again. It seems like most people, including us, usually arrive at opening, spending three-fourths of the day there and leave. The last few hours the park is open is incredibly uncrowded! Awesome!
The boys went one direction (to Dinosaur I believe) and rode the train to the Conservation Station (something we have never done on previous trips because I had heard it was nothing more than a petting zoo). The boys really enjoyed it. We had some walkie-talkie phones so we were able to stay in contact.
The rest of us made a quick trip aboard the Kilamanjaro Safari. Its so impressive walking through AK and seeing how authentic everything is. If we were really in Africa I doubt we'd see lush gardens and flowers like we find in Magic Kingdom or Epcot. This part of AK isn't "pretty" like some other parks but it does seem very appropriate for where we are.
After the safari we went to "Its Tough to Be A Bug" and met up with the boys there For the first time I felt the wasp sting! It wasn't that I was brave, I just wasn't expecting it when it happened for some reason! But it wasn't bad. This is not a favorite attraction for Laura but she braved it and I think even she had a good time. There's nothing like being sprayed by bug spray, perfumed by a stink bug, and stung by a wasp to make you smile!!
When we exited "Bug" the parade was passing by and we were stuck. That gave us time to reflect on what to do next. Seems everyone was pretty hungry and after reviewing our options we decided on Tusker House for dinner. We were able to use our DDE card for 20% off here! We like that! The food was really good too!
After eating we split up again. The boys went on the safari while the rest of us went to "Festival of the Lion King". They didn't think they'd like it. We were in the fierce lion section! Roar!!! It was an incredible show and we'd like to see it again!
After Lion King we hurried over to Dinoland and all rode Dinosaur! The picture afterwards was so funny with JM covering her ears and me sitting right behind her screaming!
We met the boys again and had planned to end the day with all of us riding Kali River Rapids together. That way if we got soaked we could just go back to the room and change. We were in the line and pretty close to getting on when it stopped. Darn it, we had to leave the line. No river rapid riding for us today.
We made a last minute decision to see if we could get on one final ride for the day. It took some quick walking but we made it to Primeval Whirl just at 7:00 and they let us on! I had skipped this ride previously and chosen the tamer (and more fun) Triceratops Spin! We went on this so quickly that I didn't have time to really think it through. I'm glad I went on it but oh my heck did it spin and drop and was much more scary than I ever anticipated!!!
We took the bus back to Pop and found a surprise in our room! I had ordered an anonymous gift to be delivered to the room for the kids from DISer Feralpeg. She does such cute work! Each of the kids got a name badge and a small beanie. Jeff got ToT Goofy, Mike got RnR Mickey, and each of the girls got a Princess Minnie. So cute! Although Jeff and Paul suspected I was behind it, I did an Academy Award acting job and think I convinced everyone they had been touched by a bit of Disney magic!!!
I spent some time getting our room organized. I thought the rooms at Pop were plenty big enough for the four of us. There were three large drawers, three small ones and three shelves. I also really liked the shelf above the sink and the hidden Mickeys in the wallpaper in the bathroom!
I did that load of wet laundry I'd considered doing at Coral Beach. I was quickly becoming glad for our 50's location instead of the 70's because the laundry room couldn't have been more convenient. It was expensive at $2 a load to wash and $2 to dry but it was better than taking home mountains of dirty clothes or trying to keep wet ones from getting smelly. The dryers were marked that they went for 30 minutes but I found them to go more like 40. I never had anything, even denim, not be totally dry either. The laundry rooms were also spotlessly clean.
The kids all went swimming in the bowling pin pool and we bought refillable mugs. I'd read on the DIS that at Pop the DDE discount was good, even on the purchase of the mugs, but that was not the case (for us at least). The cashier at the food court said even CM's don't get a discount on the purchase of mugs. Its a little daunting to pluck down $51.08 for four mugs but they make great souvenirs of our resort!
All in all it was a great day!
Part 4 - MGM
Me - 46, born & raised in Florida but have been gone since 1981. Love WDW, obsessive planner. Really want this trip to be nice because we're bringing a family of 1st timers! Writes trip reports with way too much detail but I just can't do it any other way!
Paul - DH 52 - Loves Disney but not as much as I do. He'd probably be happy to vacation some place else occasionally but as soon as we get home I'm planning our next trip before he has time to process what I'm doing!
Jeff - DS 17 - Raised on WDW and Disneyland and loves it all. Super friendly guy!
Laura - DD 16 - Loves WDW but doesn't handle the heat well. Gets tired easy but she has a good excuse. She had a heart transplant when she was 6 weeks old and had West Nile Virus in 2002. Doing really well though. Our sweetheart.
Our Friends:
MM - 40ish - Going to WDW for the wife & kids. Isn't really a theme park kind of guy. Really nice though.
JM - 40ish - My good friend! Been trying to get her DH to go to WDW for a couple of years now!
Mike - DS 16 - Jeff's best friend since probably Kindergarten.
Heidi - DD 13 - Laura's friend. Despite the age difference they get along great!
I set the alarm for 6:00 AM because sunrise was at 6:20. The smoke smell seemed to have left our room, or else we just got used to it. Everyone was pretty excited and got up easily. No sleepy heads (in our room at least!) Of course we'd had a week to adjust to Florida time and our friends hadn't.
We ate breakfast (cinnamon pull-apart) that I bought at Food Lion. It was really good but messy!
I went down the to the beach early. I couldn't wait to get my feet in the water again! The boys came down and joined me after a little bit. The girls went to the main pool, were joined by the boys and they all switched to the smaller, indoor pool.
I considered doing a load of laundry (even though most everything we had was clean) but we had a few wet items from the ocean the day before. I found the laundry facilities on the 3rd floor and nope, not gonna do laundry here. There was no "laundry room", only a washer and dryer sitting outside by the elevators. They had two washers and each of them had a small bug in them. No thanks! Laundry can wait!
I also found from my exploring the hotel that one floor, the 4th, was the non-smoking floor. Its amazing to think in this day and age that out of seven floors there would only be one that's non-smoking.
JM came down to the beach and we went for a short walk. It was interesting to see the hurricane damage on some hotels, even almost a year later. I'm sure it was horrible for the people it happened to but it was fascinating to see what Mother Nature can do.
The boys were happily meeting girls, writing in the sand and making sand castles. Paul, Laura and Heidi played in the ocean surf awhile till Laura got knocked down and skinned her knee! But she wasn't hurt too bad. The girls came up to the balcony and were blowing bubbles I brought from home. We had to be out of the room by 11:00 so eventually everyone came upstairs and got cleaned up.
About 10:30 Mother Nature must have been sending us a message that it was time to leave because the skies opened up and poured! I don't mean it rained . . . it absolutely poured! It was a little windy too, which made just getting out the hotel room door interesting because the rain was blowing right into our room any time we opened the door! It was quite an adventure getting everything in the cars and ready to go!!!
Finally, we were in the car ready to leave. Rain ponchos already put to use. We stopped at Food Lion to get some ice and we were on our way to Disney World! Yea! Paul, Laura, Heidi and I were all in our car. MM, JM, Mike and Jeff were in theirs. We encountered a long slow down of traffic on I-95 and eventually came to an accident on the opposite side of the road.
I had estimated we'd arrive at Pop Century about 1:00 and we got there at 1:05! Wahoo! I'd seen so many pictures of it online. It was like a dream seeing it for myself in person! It was everything I'd hoped it to be!!!
Check-in was quick and even nicer, our rooms were ready! I had requested 70's section because it seemed closest to Classic Hall and the buses but we were given 50's, bottom floor, facing the pool. I would have preferred a top floor but since the rooms were ready now I didn't want to risk having to wait. Bottom floor has its advantages too. No stairs or elevators to deal with!
We drove around to the 50's parking section and got convenient spaces. We found our rooms without much trouble, rooms 1168 and 1169! The difference between our rooms at Pop and our rooms in Ormond Beach were startling! First of all no smoke smell (nice) and everything seemed so new! I know Pop has germs like anywhere else but we didn't feel the need here to wear our shoes constantly in the room, etc. I couldn't have been happier!
As we walked out of our room we faced the middle of the bowling pin pool. About halfway down the building to our left was a big icon of Lady from Lady and the Tramp. To our right about halfway down again was a larger than life jukebox! Across from Lady was her boyfriend, Tramp!
After getting everything loaded into our rooms we ate some snacks and headed to the bus stop. We bypassed Classic Hall and went a little too far, turning left by Goofy's pop-jets. We realized a better way to reach the buses was just going into the Classic Hall entrance by the gift shop.
Our destination was Animal Kingdom and we didn't have to wait very long for the Animal Kingdom bus to arrive! Our first stop was Blizzard Beach and then wahoo, we're here!!! First there was a little business to take care of. I had to trade in my annual pass voucher for the real deal. I guess since it was mid-afternoon they didn't expect a lot of people to be buying tickets that time of day so there was only one window open. I was glad I was in front of the people behind me in line because I think their transaction was going to take some time. They were quite clueless on ticket options and just about everything in general regarding Disney World! They thought they could drive their own car on the safari in Animal Kingdom!!!
A little info on our AP . . . our two families split the extra cost of one AP. Then we used it to get two rooms at Pop with the AP discount. We also split the cost of the DDE card and shared its benefits! It worked very well and made the "break even point" half of what it would have been!
We started off with a bit of confusion when I told Paul to take everyone else into the park and I'd meet them at the Tree of Life when I got all the "business" taken care of. I guess Paul came back to wait with me but we passed each other. I ended up at the Tree of Life with everyone else and now Paul was missing. It took a few minutes to get everyone back together. Okay, no stress allowed! This is supposed to be fun!!!
We'd never been to AK for just an afternoon before but after this trip when we toured AK on two afternoons, I'll never go in the morning again. It seems like most people, including us, usually arrive at opening, spending three-fourths of the day there and leave. The last few hours the park is open is incredibly uncrowded! Awesome!
The boys went one direction (to Dinosaur I believe) and rode the train to the Conservation Station (something we have never done on previous trips because I had heard it was nothing more than a petting zoo). The boys really enjoyed it. We had some walkie-talkie phones so we were able to stay in contact.
The rest of us made a quick trip aboard the Kilamanjaro Safari. Its so impressive walking through AK and seeing how authentic everything is. If we were really in Africa I doubt we'd see lush gardens and flowers like we find in Magic Kingdom or Epcot. This part of AK isn't "pretty" like some other parks but it does seem very appropriate for where we are.
After the safari we went to "Its Tough to Be A Bug" and met up with the boys there For the first time I felt the wasp sting! It wasn't that I was brave, I just wasn't expecting it when it happened for some reason! But it wasn't bad. This is not a favorite attraction for Laura but she braved it and I think even she had a good time. There's nothing like being sprayed by bug spray, perfumed by a stink bug, and stung by a wasp to make you smile!!
When we exited "Bug" the parade was passing by and we were stuck. That gave us time to reflect on what to do next. Seems everyone was pretty hungry and after reviewing our options we decided on Tusker House for dinner. We were able to use our DDE card for 20% off here! We like that! The food was really good too!
After eating we split up again. The boys went on the safari while the rest of us went to "Festival of the Lion King". They didn't think they'd like it. We were in the fierce lion section! Roar!!! It was an incredible show and we'd like to see it again!
After Lion King we hurried over to Dinoland and all rode Dinosaur! The picture afterwards was so funny with JM covering her ears and me sitting right behind her screaming!
We met the boys again and had planned to end the day with all of us riding Kali River Rapids together. That way if we got soaked we could just go back to the room and change. We were in the line and pretty close to getting on when it stopped. Darn it, we had to leave the line. No river rapid riding for us today.
We made a last minute decision to see if we could get on one final ride for the day. It took some quick walking but we made it to Primeval Whirl just at 7:00 and they let us on! I had skipped this ride previously and chosen the tamer (and more fun) Triceratops Spin! We went on this so quickly that I didn't have time to really think it through. I'm glad I went on it but oh my heck did it spin and drop and was much more scary than I ever anticipated!!!
We took the bus back to Pop and found a surprise in our room! I had ordered an anonymous gift to be delivered to the room for the kids from DISer Feralpeg. She does such cute work! Each of the kids got a name badge and a small beanie. Jeff got ToT Goofy, Mike got RnR Mickey, and each of the girls got a Princess Minnie. So cute! Although Jeff and Paul suspected I was behind it, I did an Academy Award acting job and think I convinced everyone they had been touched by a bit of Disney magic!!!
I spent some time getting our room organized. I thought the rooms at Pop were plenty big enough for the four of us. There were three large drawers, three small ones and three shelves. I also really liked the shelf above the sink and the hidden Mickeys in the wallpaper in the bathroom!
I did that load of wet laundry I'd considered doing at Coral Beach. I was quickly becoming glad for our 50's location instead of the 70's because the laundry room couldn't have been more convenient. It was expensive at $2 a load to wash and $2 to dry but it was better than taking home mountains of dirty clothes or trying to keep wet ones from getting smelly. The dryers were marked that they went for 30 minutes but I found them to go more like 40. I never had anything, even denim, not be totally dry either. The laundry rooms were also spotlessly clean.
The kids all went swimming in the bowling pin pool and we bought refillable mugs. I'd read on the DIS that at Pop the DDE discount was good, even on the purchase of the mugs, but that was not the case (for us at least). The cashier at the food court said even CM's don't get a discount on the purchase of mugs. Its a little daunting to pluck down $51.08 for four mugs but they make great souvenirs of our resort!
All in all it was a great day!
Part 4 - MGM
