A totally self centered report on what we did

[Hootch]

The roster:

Me
Wife
Son 15 - seventh time at WDW with one day at Disneyland/Cali Adventure
Daughter 11 - sixth time at WDW with one day at Disneyland/Cali Adventure

The plan:

First and last night at grandparents house in Atlanta.
Six nights at POFQ
Two nights at Royal Pacific Universal
Two nights in a condo on Longboat Key

Sunday May 24th:

We started off driving from ATL to WDW. About an hour before our identified check in I got a text informing me that we were assigned to room 1315 at POFQ. The only request I had made when I reserved was for a room in Building 4. I thought with roughly 14% of rooms falling within my request, I had a good chance of getting it. It appears I was wrong. I called Disney and a very nice CM told me she would look into availability in Bldg 4. Ten minutes later I get a second text with our new room assignment in Bldg 4. I know this will not always work out for us, but this cements me on online check-in.

Everything works as it should so we unloaded the car, unpacked a little and headed to the MK. This is the perfect situation for FP+. We're arriving at the park at 5:00 and already have three FPs in place. The FPs were later in the day in case we had travel issues. First thing is dinner since we had lunch several hours before. We used to have a number of sit down ADRs. As we have cut down the number of WDW days we have opted to reduce on sit down meals. Cosmic Ray's was the choice today. Cosmic Ray's is a pretty standard place. I'll say, for a counter service they serve a pretty decent roasted chicken. Sonny Eclipse seemed tired. He was tilted over and not playing the whole time we were there.

Our FP+s were scheduled later so we hit Buzz first. The wait was a bit longer than posted which wasn't bad. The bad part was my son had a higher score. On to the Tea Cups. I was amazed at seeing FP+ at the cups and a standby of 25 minutes. I had read about the longer waits for non headline attractions, but it still shocked me seeing it for the first time. Our first FP+ was Space Mountain. My kids have grown to really like this ride and it didn't disappoint. There was minimal wait after walking through the FP queue. The next attraction was Seven Dwarves. The FP+ line was fairly long. We drove through some rain driving to storms coming in and I surmised that the ride was down a little earlier. It moved quickly. Overall I was impressed with the ride. It had a bit more thrill than I expected and some of the show elements were very entertaining. We fit in Little Mermaid and Dumbo before hitting the last ride of the day was BTMRR. I prefer riding at night and seeing the residents of Tumbleweed dancing and shooting up the place. Off to POFQ.

Monday May 25th: Happy Memorial Day

We park hop almost every day we are Disney. This morning was DAK followed by and afternoon/evening at World Showcase. I have had a couple of experiences of the gates not being open when driving to DAK so we took the bus. Usually we get to the park early, have some granola bars and apply the sunscreen. We arrived at DAK about 8:15 and they were already letting people into the park. I wasn't aware that was the rope drop process there. We headed over to the safari. We have skipped the safari the last couple of trips. My kids spend at least 20 days a year at our local zoo. It is still a great attraction even though we see almost all of the animals (except the black rhino) in natural habitats locally. we had a little time to kill before our Everest FPs so we headed to Primeval Whirl. Our daughter loves this ride and the only time she rides outside Disney is at a local fair. The waits approach an hour there. This was my second introduction to the lines. Two years ago we rode this four times in a row without having to exit the ride vehicle. This time we had to get off after the first ride, The line was short so we did it again. On to Everest. My wife doesn't like roller coasters or simulators so she didn't ride. This was my daughter's first time on Everest. She yelled "I hate this" several times as we were riding but want to get right back on after she was done. On to Kali. I like the locker option they have added. It was the same short, wet ride. We had never done Flights of Wonder so we headed right over. I thought it was very entertaining. My wife told me that they had recently seen 75% of the show at the local zoo. I guess the script has been approved by the US Ornithological Society. Lunch time. Bummer, I though Flame Tree was supposed to reopen in April. Back to POFQ for lunch.

The afternoon/evening was set aside for World Showcase. My wife and split time with doing Phineas and Ferb adventures at a few of the pavilions. In my free time I explored the pavilions and watched some of the acts. I think the entertainment at Canada and Morocco is not as good as in the past. I am a fan of Donald and had watched The Three Caballeros recently so I rode the Gran Fiesta Tour. It really is not much of an attraction. For dinner my wife and I got fish and chips from the UK, my son had sushi from Japan (apparently the Japan pavilion has Magic Band scanners but doesn't seem to use them) and my daughter ate a hot dog at America. This was probably the hottest and most humid day of the whole trip. The air conditioning in the Liberty Inn was nice. To cap off the night, we had our first really good view of Illuminations. Usually we are running around until right before the show. It's interesting. My wife and I prefer Wishes. Our son prefers Illuminations. And our daughter prefers Fantasmic. Off to POFQ to complaing because their ice dispensers are almost always empty.

 

[Hootch]

Part deux

Tuesday May 26th

This is our only morning at the MK. It was time to fill in some of the smaller attractions. It was easy to tell those without Anna and Elsa or Seven Dwarves FPs. They are all stuck against the entry on one side or the other. The rest of us were reminded every couple of minutes to move forward. No thank you. I'm enjoying the shade from the tree. The people behind us from Illinois are appalled that the father of the Family of the Day, also from Illinois, is wearing a Jayhawk shirt. I expected a rumble to break out any minute.

It amazes me how empty the park feels the first hour. It takes longer to walk through the Peter Pan queue than it does to do the ride. We have to wait a couple of minutes for Pooh. On to Barnstormer. We seem to be doing the MK roller coasters in reverse saving Barnstormer for last. We'll have to fix that. Our daughter wants to do Tomorrowland Speedway. Our son wants to prove he can handle the cars now since he is learning to drive. I told him not to be too hard on himself when he is banging around the mid rail. Not the most responsive cars. Another spin on Buzz. This time with a happier ending. On to Pirates and the Magic Carpets. Initially Pirates was supposed to be closed during our trip so it was nice to see it open. I noticed they took the peg leg off the ramp at the ending. Lunch today was at Pinocchio House. For some reason my wife likes this place. I opted for a salad but some of the flat breads looked better than the pizzas they served before. On to Philharmagic. The heat may have explained having to wait through two showings. This easily my favorite 3D film at WDW. It's Tough to Be a Bug is next followed by the Muppets. Philharmagic took longer than expected so we have to postpone IASW until later. We have afternoon FPs for DHS.

DHS is a difficult park in the afternoon and evening. There are already too few attractions. It's practically impossible to get another FP for a headliner. The headliner standby lines are 60+ minutes. And many of the shows have their last showing between 4 and 5 PM. Fortunately we have FPs for this afternoon/evening for TSMM, Star Tours and Tower of Terror. I made a valiant comeback but my son beat me at TSMM. I'll have another chance Friday. Rockin' Roller Coaster has too long of a line. I'll have to ride it first thing Friday. (Bad choice.) Star Tours is still fun. My first ride has Kashyyyk which is probably the lamest of the episodes. Still lines are short enough to warrant another ride. I get better episodes but still not Vader as the opening. We pop into Muppets. I knew they updated the film for Muppets most wanted but was shocked that the net full of jello was gone. The key under the map is still there though. While all of us have FPs for TOT it turns out that I am the only one riding. Three rides in a row is enough for me.

Our daughter wanted to eat at 50s Prime Time. She specifically wanted the server to get on her brother for his manners. We were seated 30 minutes after our ADR time. The server was nice and attentive. He wasn't really into correcting people. About all did was chide our daughter for not eating all of her veggies before getting dessert. A server near us was getting on her table for having their walkie talkies out. She might have been more entertaining. We had planned to hop over to the MK after dinner but everyone was too tired.

Wednesday May 27th

This morning was Future World day. Working the tiered system we headed to Soarin' as soon as they dropped the rope. I was surprised that we were in the first group that morning. I know the Soarin' film is getting a bit tired but is still a relaxing and cool ride. They should have the new theater and maybe a new film next time around. Even with being in the first group it is almost time for our TT FP. TT is still fun but Radiator Springs Racing is significantly better. Our son really likes Living With the Land. My daughter has no interest in it. For this trip my wife and son have booked the Behind the Seeds tour. They really enjoyed it though my noted that she had forgotten most of the biology she learned in college. My daughter and I left TT and headed to Sum of all Thrills. The last time we did this she was to short to ride. She designed my ride making it as hard as she could. This time we rode together with her again designing the ride. This time the ride didn't have as many inversions. I'm not sure why. We had a little time before our FP for Mission Space became available so we did the green side. Then we hit the Orange side with a FP. This was probably the worst FP line I saw on this trip. It took us 20-25 minutes to get to the second FP scanner. You could easily scan green at the entrance and scan blue at the second checkpoint. It got worse after that. We were buckled into our seats with our assignments spelled out. The centrifuge apparently shut down. We were given FPs with alternatives but the options weren't really good so we got back in line. Now the wait was even longer, but we did get to ride the Orange version. The last ride before leaving was Spaceship Earth. DAK has Avatarland coming. There seems to be work planned for DHS. I'm not sure what they are going to do for Epcot. It needs something more.

The evening was spent at the MK. This was our first experience with getting additional FPs. We weren't efficient this first time. We were much better at it two nights later when we returned to the MK. There were a number of people trying to get additional passes when they had not used up their first three. The pickings were pretty thin. We first got a Jungle Cruise FP for an hour in the future. The standby line showed 60 minutes. I'd rather do something else instead of standing in line. My son and daughter and I headed to BTMRR while we waited. We did the Magic Carpets and Splash later that night.