Disney Trip!
Apr. 18th, 2011 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
csberryOur family spent April 9-14 down in Orlando with the great bulk of the time spent on Walt Disney World. The flight down was the first flight for Nigel and Harper. They both took the time in the planes in stride and had no issues. My brother, Mike, flew in to Orlando just 30 minutes after we arrived, but he had to leave on Tuesday morning.
Disney's Wilderness Lodge
We spent the week at Disney's Wilderness Lodge. JD, I, and two of the kids stayed in our room, while a third child rotated nights in my parents' room. Mike had a room all to himself (the lucky bastard).
The hotel is a gorgeous melding of Northwestern motif and mission-style decor. The lobby is open the full seven stories and features several HUGE totem pole-like support columns. Basically, the hotel is U-shaped with a "creek" that starts from a fountain/spring in the lobby and flows out to the pool area filling the inside of the "U."
The hotel sits on Bay Lake and has boats that ferry folks from the Wilderness Lodge to the Fort Wilderness campgrounds, the Contemporary hotel, and the Magic Kingdom. There were movies each night on the beach, a water electric parade after that, and you could see much of the Magic Kingdom fireworks show after that from our 6th floor balcony.
One of the restaurants in the hotel has the ironic name of Whispering Canyon Cafe. This place is not quiet at all. It is an extremely family-friendly sit-down eatery that features waiters with fun attitudes, stick-pony races for the kids, and other interesting traditions/quirks. If you ask for ketchup, your waiter yells "KETCHUP" and all of the ketchup in the restaurant is gathered up and placed on your table. Ask for a fork and a 3 foot long wooden fork is brought to you. The staff is likely to have you scoot over in your seat so they can sit next to you or play fun little pranks. One waitress near us chided an adult for not eating the veggies on his plate. She yelled for everyone to make airplane sounds, she stabbed a veggie, and flew the airplane-fork into the open mouth of the parent. There was even a moment during our meal that all of the staff suddenly demanded that we all play a quick round of "The Hokey Pokey" (one leg, one arm, and whole body).
When we checked in Saturday afternoon, everyone decided to unwind by spending some quality time at the pool. That all went well until we were leaving the pool area and I noticed that Harper wasn't with my dad. I don't know how long we actually spent looking for her, but we had at least three staffers helping and I had covered every outdoor location on the backside of the hotel. Thankfully, a housekeeper walking the hallway just inside from the pool came upon a crying Harper and word got to our searchers. Not in Orlando for 4 hours and I already had a nice panic attack.
Epcot
Epcot didn't go all that great for us as the first park we visited on Sunday morning. After a quick visit to Innoventions, the boys wanted to do the Kim Possible mission. We went to the World Showcase, got our communicator, and did our best at being successful spies. Nigel and Dad had to go to the pavilion for the UK and struggled to figure out their clues. Calvin and I went to France and, after some problems with the first clue, we were able to finish the mission. After the 45 minutes it took for us to do the Kim Possible missions, Nigel was exhausted and just wanted to go back to the hotel to play in the pool. Calvin was nearly as worn out but he was too excited about doing Soarin' to give up yet.
I comforted myself with some chicken shawarma from the Morocco pavilion. After lunch, we got to do Soarin' and then did Turtle Talk with Crush. As we were leaving, JD and my dad had to go to Guest Services to take care of an issue. The rest of us were going to return Harper's stroller and then we'd all take a bus back to the hotel (maybe the same bus, maybe not). Well, Calvin first decided not to go with JD. But after we dropped off the stroller and the boys decided they needed to go to the bathroom, Calvin became fixated on waiting for JD. He turned into a total mule, refusing to budge from where he was because he wanted to wait for JD. I tried coaxing him and telling him that we were all planning on getting back to the hotel ASAP and that he needed to come along. The boy absolutely dug in his heels. What made all of this worse is that at the same time that he's refusing to leave Epcot because he's waiting for JD, she and my dad had left the park while we were in the bathroom. They were ahead of us and not behind us as Calvin was convinced they were.
Magic Kingdom
Sunday night, we made our first visit to the Magic Kingdom. The only thing we really did was show up during the Electric Parade, so we could get to the Tomorrowland Terrace for a dessert buffet before the firework show. The deserts were sooooooo good. The terrace was a very nice location to watch the fireworks show as well as the projection/light show done on the castle beforehand.
We returned to the Magic Kingdom on Tuesday morning. Immediately upon entering the park, we hopped on the train for Frontierland. We snagged Fastpass tickets for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and then Calvin and I went one direction while JD and Nigel went another. Calvin and I hit a few rides in Adventureland before returning to Big Thunder Mtn RR. We saw JD and Nigel get onto the roller coaster train before ours. Upon exiting, the boys bonded over their love of that roller coaster and we all quickly got back on for a second ride, swapping boys. When Nigel saw me put my arms in the air, he immediately followed suit.
During all of this, my parents were toting Harper around the Magic Kingdom. They rode the railroad for laps upon laps, they watched the mid-day show in front of the castle, and enjoyed the wandering music bands and parades. Harper enjoyed all of this and didn't miss those pesky indoor rides at all.
We went back to Magic Kingdom on Wednesday after doing Animal Kingdom. Since the boys had stayed pretty much in the Frontierland & Adventureland sections of the park, we focused on Tomorrowland on Wednesday. The Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin (basically an old carnival shooting gallery where the guns are mounted to the vehicle you ride on a conveyor belt) was a particular favorite of the boys. We did Space Mountain and Nigel was chomping at the bit to do it again, so we split off from Calvin and JD.
After doing that again, we walked to the Mad Tea Party and took a spin on the teacups, drove a lap around the Tomorrowland Speedway, and did the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor before high-tailing it to the other end of the park to ride Big Thunder Mtn RR again before the park closed. Yup, it was midnight and we had to do the roller coaster again.
Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure
The bulk of Monday was spent at Universal. JD and Calvin split off immediately to dedicate their time to the Harry Potter area. The rest of us started off in the Dr. Seuss area. Things were going great with Nigel and Harper. They loved the play area, the Caro-Seuss-el, and the little tram. Emotions took a turn for the worse, though, when we took Harper with us on the Cat in the Hat ride.
Harper had balked at all of the indoor rides the day before at Epcot. I thought this would be a good indoor ride for her. Little did I know that there was a very dark section of the ride when things got really chaotic in the story. Harper burst into tears and took quite a while to recover. We never got to do another indoor ride the rest of the week.
Everyone really enjoyed the Sinbad stunt show. The group made a quick trip through Harry Potter Land on the way to Jurassic Park. We all spent an hour or so at Camp Jurassic. This area of the park was a maze of paths and elevated rope bridges. It was like a 5 storey jungle gym. Thankfully, I was able to negotiate Mike and I slipping away from everyone else as we all headed for the gate from Jurassic Park. We ran ahead and did a turn on the 3D Spiderman ride and two laps on the Hulk ride (I believe I counted, at least, 7 places where riders go inverted on this green monster).
Disney's Hollywood Studios
Tuesday night we had dinner reservations at the Sci-fi Drive-In restaurant. We got there a little early and wandered around a bit to kill the 20 minutes. The restaurant is set up like a drive-in theater with car-like tables facing a large screen showing a loop of sci-fi movie trailers, music videos with sci-fi movie clips, and commercials for the concession stand. I do wish the loop was longer since I saw more than a full cycle. It was funny how many of the movies shown have received the MST3K treatment.
After dinner, we went to the new Toy Story Midway Mania. It was basically a revamping of the Buzz Lightyear shooting gallery game in Tomorrowland, but this ride featured 3D!
Animal Kingdom
Wednesday morning, we headed for Animal Kingdom. We had two goals while we were there: go on the safari trip and ride the Everest roller coaster. The wait for the safari ride wasn't too bad and definitely worth the wait we did have. We saw a full assortment of animals and only the lions proved to be too elusive and barely viewable. There was a fun bird show that had Calvin completely captivated and he eagerly ran to the stage after the show for an opportunity to see the birds close up and ask questions.
After getting the kids set up with lunch, JD and I sprinted to the Expedition Everest ride. It is a nice combination of Big Thunder Mtn RR, Space Mountain, and contains a section where you go backwards. The part where we were going backwards through the darkness of inside the mountain was definitely the scariest.
Misc. Info and Advice
* Getting a meal plan is TOTALLY WORTH IT! We chose the quick service plan that gave each person 2 meals and 2 snacks per day (although the meals were technically amassed per room and carried over each day). We found out at the second half of our stay that we had been really conservative with our usage of snacks and was able to grab snacks/drinks at will when spending Wednesday at the Magic Kingdom.
* Rent strollers for any kids under 8 years old. Keeping the kids going makes the trip for everyone else a lot easier. Animal Kingdom is the only Disney park with hills, so pushing Nigel around in a stroller was very easy.
* The staff at Disney Resorts and Parks are some of the best when it comes to "above and beyond"-style of customer service. They may charge quite a bit for food and services, but that doesn't make them miserly about slipping you a complimentary item or two if you have to wait or have some other issue. Spilled or unliked food is effortlessly replaced. When I was waiting to buy the picture of Nigel and I on Space Mountain, a cast member saw Nigel wandering the arcade area and plugged a video game with quarters so he could play a game while waitd for me.
* Wait Times - I used two different apps on my phone for monitoring wait times for rides. While the apps were helpful, they didn't always match up with what displayed at the line for rides. As for the wait times posted at the park, I would say that only once or twice do I think I waited as long as the sign said I would.
* Fastpass is your friend. Many rides offer a Fastpass option: instead of waiting the 40-70 minutes in line, just grab a ticket for a window-of-opportunity later. Most of the time, when we did Fastpass, the window was about 90-120 minutes later. Once you returned later and hopped in the Fastpass line, it was typically a 3-7 minute wait.
* Before we left, we made a list of the rides/attractions that each of the kids wanted to do. It gave us great focus on where to go and kept us from wandering around looking for what to do next. We allowed ourselves to get distracted, but didn't kill time just wandering around. In the Magic Kingdom especially, there are 1001 things to do and you can easily spend a whole day and only cover 1/3 (or less) of the park.
* If you are going to split up, make certain each group has someone with a phone that can do texts. That was really the only effective way to communicate because of the chance someone would be on a ride, couldn't hear the phone ring, or was someplace where it was too loud to carry on a phone conversation.
* While I think having a hotel with a pool was great, the actual accommodations of the hotel room had little practical effect on our stay. We were in our room to change in/out of swim suits and to sleep. Four of us in the small room wasn't a problem. However, I'm so glad to be home and no longer dealing with sulfur-smelling water and the motion-activated fan in the bathroom that makes it impossible to hear what people are trying to tell you on the other side of the closed bathroom door.
Disney's Wilderness Lodge
We spent the week at Disney's Wilderness Lodge. JD, I, and two of the kids stayed in our room, while a third child rotated nights in my parents' room. Mike had a room all to himself (the lucky bastard).
The hotel is a gorgeous melding of Northwestern motif and mission-style decor. The lobby is open the full seven stories and features several HUGE totem pole-like support columns. Basically, the hotel is U-shaped with a "creek" that starts from a fountain/spring in the lobby and flows out to the pool area filling the inside of the "U."
The hotel sits on Bay Lake and has boats that ferry folks from the Wilderness Lodge to the Fort Wilderness campgrounds, the Contemporary hotel, and the Magic Kingdom. There were movies each night on the beach, a water electric parade after that, and you could see much of the Magic Kingdom fireworks show after that from our 6th floor balcony.
One of the restaurants in the hotel has the ironic name of Whispering Canyon Cafe. This place is not quiet at all. It is an extremely family-friendly sit-down eatery that features waiters with fun attitudes, stick-pony races for the kids, and other interesting traditions/quirks. If you ask for ketchup, your waiter yells "KETCHUP" and all of the ketchup in the restaurant is gathered up and placed on your table. Ask for a fork and a 3 foot long wooden fork is brought to you. The staff is likely to have you scoot over in your seat so they can sit next to you or play fun little pranks. One waitress near us chided an adult for not eating the veggies on his plate. She yelled for everyone to make airplane sounds, she stabbed a veggie, and flew the airplane-fork into the open mouth of the parent. There was even a moment during our meal that all of the staff suddenly demanded that we all play a quick round of "The Hokey Pokey" (one leg, one arm, and whole body).
When we checked in Saturday afternoon, everyone decided to unwind by spending some quality time at the pool. That all went well until we were leaving the pool area and I noticed that Harper wasn't with my dad. I don't know how long we actually spent looking for her, but we had at least three staffers helping and I had covered every outdoor location on the backside of the hotel. Thankfully, a housekeeper walking the hallway just inside from the pool came upon a crying Harper and word got to our searchers. Not in Orlando for 4 hours and I already had a nice panic attack.
Epcot
Epcot didn't go all that great for us as the first park we visited on Sunday morning. After a quick visit to Innoventions, the boys wanted to do the Kim Possible mission. We went to the World Showcase, got our communicator, and did our best at being successful spies. Nigel and Dad had to go to the pavilion for the UK and struggled to figure out their clues. Calvin and I went to France and, after some problems with the first clue, we were able to finish the mission. After the 45 minutes it took for us to do the Kim Possible missions, Nigel was exhausted and just wanted to go back to the hotel to play in the pool. Calvin was nearly as worn out but he was too excited about doing Soarin' to give up yet.
I comforted myself with some chicken shawarma from the Morocco pavilion. After lunch, we got to do Soarin' and then did Turtle Talk with Crush. As we were leaving, JD and my dad had to go to Guest Services to take care of an issue. The rest of us were going to return Harper's stroller and then we'd all take a bus back to the hotel (maybe the same bus, maybe not). Well, Calvin first decided not to go with JD. But after we dropped off the stroller and the boys decided they needed to go to the bathroom, Calvin became fixated on waiting for JD. He turned into a total mule, refusing to budge from where he was because he wanted to wait for JD. I tried coaxing him and telling him that we were all planning on getting back to the hotel ASAP and that he needed to come along. The boy absolutely dug in his heels. What made all of this worse is that at the same time that he's refusing to leave Epcot because he's waiting for JD, she and my dad had left the park while we were in the bathroom. They were ahead of us and not behind us as Calvin was convinced they were.
Magic Kingdom
Sunday night, we made our first visit to the Magic Kingdom. The only thing we really did was show up during the Electric Parade, so we could get to the Tomorrowland Terrace for a dessert buffet before the firework show. The deserts were sooooooo good. The terrace was a very nice location to watch the fireworks show as well as the projection/light show done on the castle beforehand.
We returned to the Magic Kingdom on Tuesday morning. Immediately upon entering the park, we hopped on the train for Frontierland. We snagged Fastpass tickets for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and then Calvin and I went one direction while JD and Nigel went another. Calvin and I hit a few rides in Adventureland before returning to Big Thunder Mtn RR. We saw JD and Nigel get onto the roller coaster train before ours. Upon exiting, the boys bonded over their love of that roller coaster and we all quickly got back on for a second ride, swapping boys. When Nigel saw me put my arms in the air, he immediately followed suit.
During all of this, my parents were toting Harper around the Magic Kingdom. They rode the railroad for laps upon laps, they watched the mid-day show in front of the castle, and enjoyed the wandering music bands and parades. Harper enjoyed all of this and didn't miss those pesky indoor rides at all.
We went back to Magic Kingdom on Wednesday after doing Animal Kingdom. Since the boys had stayed pretty much in the Frontierland & Adventureland sections of the park, we focused on Tomorrowland on Wednesday. The Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin (basically an old carnival shooting gallery where the guns are mounted to the vehicle you ride on a conveyor belt) was a particular favorite of the boys. We did Space Mountain and Nigel was chomping at the bit to do it again, so we split off from Calvin and JD.
After doing that again, we walked to the Mad Tea Party and took a spin on the teacups, drove a lap around the Tomorrowland Speedway, and did the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor before high-tailing it to the other end of the park to ride Big Thunder Mtn RR again before the park closed. Yup, it was midnight and we had to do the roller coaster again.
Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure
The bulk of Monday was spent at Universal. JD and Calvin split off immediately to dedicate their time to the Harry Potter area. The rest of us started off in the Dr. Seuss area. Things were going great with Nigel and Harper. They loved the play area, the Caro-Seuss-el, and the little tram. Emotions took a turn for the worse, though, when we took Harper with us on the Cat in the Hat ride.
Harper had balked at all of the indoor rides the day before at Epcot. I thought this would be a good indoor ride for her. Little did I know that there was a very dark section of the ride when things got really chaotic in the story. Harper burst into tears and took quite a while to recover. We never got to do another indoor ride the rest of the week.
Everyone really enjoyed the Sinbad stunt show. The group made a quick trip through Harry Potter Land on the way to Jurassic Park. We all spent an hour or so at Camp Jurassic. This area of the park was a maze of paths and elevated rope bridges. It was like a 5 storey jungle gym. Thankfully, I was able to negotiate Mike and I slipping away from everyone else as we all headed for the gate from Jurassic Park. We ran ahead and did a turn on the 3D Spiderman ride and two laps on the Hulk ride (I believe I counted, at least, 7 places where riders go inverted on this green monster).
Disney's Hollywood Studios
Tuesday night we had dinner reservations at the Sci-fi Drive-In restaurant. We got there a little early and wandered around a bit to kill the 20 minutes. The restaurant is set up like a drive-in theater with car-like tables facing a large screen showing a loop of sci-fi movie trailers, music videos with sci-fi movie clips, and commercials for the concession stand. I do wish the loop was longer since I saw more than a full cycle. It was funny how many of the movies shown have received the MST3K treatment.
After dinner, we went to the new Toy Story Midway Mania. It was basically a revamping of the Buzz Lightyear shooting gallery game in Tomorrowland, but this ride featured 3D!
Animal Kingdom
Wednesday morning, we headed for Animal Kingdom. We had two goals while we were there: go on the safari trip and ride the Everest roller coaster. The wait for the safari ride wasn't too bad and definitely worth the wait we did have. We saw a full assortment of animals and only the lions proved to be too elusive and barely viewable. There was a fun bird show that had Calvin completely captivated and he eagerly ran to the stage after the show for an opportunity to see the birds close up and ask questions.
After getting the kids set up with lunch, JD and I sprinted to the Expedition Everest ride. It is a nice combination of Big Thunder Mtn RR, Space Mountain, and contains a section where you go backwards. The part where we were going backwards through the darkness of inside the mountain was definitely the scariest.
Misc. Info and Advice
* Getting a meal plan is TOTALLY WORTH IT! We chose the quick service plan that gave each person 2 meals and 2 snacks per day (although the meals were technically amassed per room and carried over each day). We found out at the second half of our stay that we had been really conservative with our usage of snacks and was able to grab snacks/drinks at will when spending Wednesday at the Magic Kingdom.
* Rent strollers for any kids under 8 years old. Keeping the kids going makes the trip for everyone else a lot easier. Animal Kingdom is the only Disney park with hills, so pushing Nigel around in a stroller was very easy.
* The staff at Disney Resorts and Parks are some of the best when it comes to "above and beyond"-style of customer service. They may charge quite a bit for food and services, but that doesn't make them miserly about slipping you a complimentary item or two if you have to wait or have some other issue. Spilled or unliked food is effortlessly replaced. When I was waiting to buy the picture of Nigel and I on Space Mountain, a cast member saw Nigel wandering the arcade area and plugged a video game with quarters so he could play a game while waitd for me.
* Wait Times - I used two different apps on my phone for monitoring wait times for rides. While the apps were helpful, they didn't always match up with what displayed at the line for rides. As for the wait times posted at the park, I would say that only once or twice do I think I waited as long as the sign said I would.
* Fastpass is your friend. Many rides offer a Fastpass option: instead of waiting the 40-70 minutes in line, just grab a ticket for a window-of-opportunity later. Most of the time, when we did Fastpass, the window was about 90-120 minutes later. Once you returned later and hopped in the Fastpass line, it was typically a 3-7 minute wait.
* Before we left, we made a list of the rides/attractions that each of the kids wanted to do. It gave us great focus on where to go and kept us from wandering around looking for what to do next. We allowed ourselves to get distracted, but didn't kill time just wandering around. In the Magic Kingdom especially, there are 1001 things to do and you can easily spend a whole day and only cover 1/3 (or less) of the park.
* If you are going to split up, make certain each group has someone with a phone that can do texts. That was really the only effective way to communicate because of the chance someone would be on a ride, couldn't hear the phone ring, or was someplace where it was too loud to carry on a phone conversation.
* While I think having a hotel with a pool was great, the actual accommodations of the hotel room had little practical effect on our stay. We were in our room to change in/out of swim suits and to sleep. Four of us in the small room wasn't a problem. However, I'm so glad to be home and no longer dealing with sulfur-smelling water and the motion-activated fan in the bathroom that makes it impossible to hear what people are trying to tell you on the other side of the closed bathroom door.
