StaciaRae
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2015
We just returned home from an amazing first Disney vacation and I thought I’d share a brief report with DIS. Our trip consisted of DH (42), myself (40), dd5 and ds3. We were there from 1/5-1/12, which happened to be marathon weekend (we didn’t participate).
We rented points to stay at WL but accepted a move to AKL Kidani Savannah view because of construction. After accepting the switch, I regretted it for months – until we arrived at AKL. We LOVE that resort. It is beautiful, the cast members are so friendly, pools are awesome. We had no problems at all with the busses. We never waited more than 10 minutes for a bus to come (most of the time it was less than that). We didn’t find the 20 minute ride to MK to be bad at all. We would stay here again in a heartbeat!
Park Day 1 - MK:
We had an 8:25am CRT breakfast reservation. We casually ate, met the princesses, and were out in the park by 9:15. We loved this breakfast, it was a great way to start our trip! We walked on several rides between 9-11. My kids LOVED Barnstormer, I think we did it 3 times in a row, but they were absolutely terrified on SDMT. My dd did BBB at 1pm, she really liked it, but at almost $70, I don’t think I would book it again on a return trip because she didn’t love it. We had dinner at Crystal Palace at 5pm. This was one of our favorite meals and we loved the character interaction. Interesting note, I spent weeks debating whether to do CRT for breakfast or dinner, and CP for the other. I asked our facebook group and everyone suggested CP for breakfast and CRT for dinner. I decided to go again their advice and am so glad I did. CRT was just such a fun way to start our day and the breakfast was delicious! The crowds this day were good, the lowest of our whole trip, it didn’t seem too busy and we got to do almost everything we wanted to. Maybe we were on a first day Disney high, but this was the favorite day of our whole trip – and one of my favorite days ever!!
Day 2 – EPCOT:
While we liked Epcot, we won’t do EPCOT again for several years. My kids liked the aquarium, but other than the character meet, turtle talk, nemo, and the aquarium, they were bored. We had BOMA for dinner this night. This was actually our second time eating dinner at BOMA. We also ate here on our arrival night. The first night at BOMA, while it was delicious, dh had a hard getting past the $150 price tag for 2 adults and a 3 and 5 yr old. But, he suggested it on this night also so he must’ve thought it was worth it. I checked MDE and there was a dinner reservation open for this evening so I took it and we walked over. The food here is so good – and those zebra domes – oh lord are they delish!
Day 3 – AK and HDDR
It poured this day! We had an early FP for the safari, which we loved. Then, we went to Festival of the Lion King which we also really enjoyed. After that we had lunch at Tusker House. This was another one of our favorite meals. The food options were really good and the character interactions were great! We left AK by 1pm. Even if it hadn’t been raining so hard, it was too crowded to really look around. We then went back to our room for a few hours before heading out to the 6:30pm show of HDDR. I had booked this at 7am on our 180 day and we were seated front and center. DH and I agreed that we were a little too close, a row or two back would’ve been better. Our necks started to hurt by the end of the show from looking up. I am a vegetarian and forgot to tell them before ordering. I had potatoes, corn, and cornbread for dinner – and of course some of the desert. It was good, but I wish I would’ve remembered to tell them that I was a vegetarian so maybe I would’ve had some more meal choices – my fault. My dd5 loved HDDR and literally laughed so hard she fell out of her chair.
Day 4 – 1900 Park Fare
We started our day with breakfast at BOMA – third time eating here (first time for breakfast) and it was awesome! This was our rest day so we hung around our room and did go to the pool for a few hours. This was the warmest day we had and the only day warm enough to swim. At about 3:30 we left to head to the Grand Floridian for our dinner reservation at 1900 Park Fare. I know that we are in the minority, but we were not impressed with Grand Floridian. Actually, it’s not that we weren’t impressed, it’s more that we were intimidated by it. While we think it beautiful, we have no interest in ever staying there, it’s not our style. Our dinner at 1900 Park Fare was good, the food choices were great, character interaction was good, but this was a one and done experience for us. Prince Charming skipped over our table, now, in his defense, we had just arrived but he never did make it back around while we were there. My 5 yr old was star struck by the step sisters and tongue-tied and in my opinion I thought the step-sister was rude to her (I know it’s the part, but the mom in me was a bit upset by it, my daughter never picked up on it though). The step mother was funny, but she told my daughter to get up early in the morning because she was expected to do all of the Cinderella’s chores – my daughter believed her completely and nearly started crying. DH and I still chuckle about that. Overall, it was a fun evening, but probably won’t be back to this restaurant.
Day 5 – HS
Because of Marathon traffic delays we didn’t get to HS as early as I had hoped. When we did get there we were shocked at how packed this park was. This was mostly because of the marathon but it was wall to wall people. We had lunch at Hollywood and Vine. We all really liked this lunch and would eat here again. We saw the Beauty and the Beast show, met Darth Vador and Chewbacca, rode toy story, walked the streets of America. We had dinner at Sci Fi, this was the second worst meal we had. we will definitely not be back here. It was so dark we couldn’t see our food. They sat another couple with us in our ‘car’ and we couldn’t hear each other over their conversation. Food took so long to come that we missed our fast pass for the Frozen Sing-a-long. We did watch Fantasmic (I cried a little, so moving) and then the Star Wars fireworks – best fireworks we’ve ever seen. If I had it to do over again, knowing my family, we would’ve skipped EPCOT and did 2 HS days instead.
Day 6 – MK last park day
We started our day with ‘Ohana breakfast. This was our favorite meal of the whole trip. DH especially liked that they brought us our food and that it wasn’t a buffet. The food was really good. I thought the characters were good but DH thought that Mickey was ‘pushy’. My dd got to hold Lilos hand leading the parade around. We loved the Poly and would love to stay there some time. Next we went to MK. I was so excited for this day because Touring Plans predicted that it would be a 3. Because it had been so busy at all the parks so far, we were looking forward to a slower day so we could get in a lot of rides on our last day. Nope. It was jammed packed. We did Barnstormer, met Rapunzel, Tinkerbell, Ariels Grotto, Little mermaid ride and dd got a Pirate League Mermaid makeover. My son started to get sick this day. I guess it’s true what they say, it’s not Disney unless someone gets sick! We decided to end our Disney trip with dinner at Chef Mickey’s. We were so disappointed. This was our least favorite meal of the trip and we will not eat there again. I don’t know if it was because my son was sick and slept through the whole thing, or if we were just getting tired by that point, but we didn’t like anything about Chef Mickey’s. There was very few food choices. We were seated in a corner where we couldn’t see any of the characters coming or interacting with other families. Our server was not friendly at all. We did get them to take my sons meal off the bill (he literally slept through the entire thing), but we still paid almost $150 for two adults and one child. We got only two signatures before we left and headed out to pack up our room.
A few other thoughts:
The weather was cold and rainy. We came from Northern New York where they were getting hit with severe snow storms the whole time we were gone so we were ok with the weather. I had packed everyone shorts and we never wore them. I also only packed two hoodies each and we wore a hoodie every day. I am thankful that we had one good day to swim in the pool.
Brazilian Tour Groups – I had been worried about these leading up to our trip. We didn’t see any until Park Day 5 at HS and then they were everywhere. We didn’t have any issues with them though. They didn’t seem rude, there were just a lot of them. At one point, we were standing in line and had balloons tied to our stroller in the stroller parking section. I could see a group of 8 or 9 of the Brazilian girls playing with our balloons and taking each others pictures with them. But, after a few minutes they wandered off so not a big deal.
Garden Grocer worked great – but I ordered too much. We had two big bags of unopened water and snacks. I was able to find someone from our facebook group who was there and I gave it all to her. Next time I will only order water and cliff bars.
Before we left, so many people told us that our kids were too little for Disney. My 5 yr old daughter is the perfect age! She believed whole-heartedly that we were meeting the real princesses.
Memory Maker – awesome!! We came home with almost 400 pictures, most of which were group shots! So worth the money!
We rented a stroller from Kingdom Strollers. It was waiting for us at our resort. It was great. I especially liked it for when it got really crowded, I didn’t need to worry about losing our kids in the crowd. DH wasn’t too thrilled about putting it on and off the bus and monorail, but it really was worth it.
Our vacation was 8 days, 2 of which were travel days. That was a perfect length for us. By the last day were ready to go home, but not before then.
We just got home yesterday, and now three of the four of us are sick. Despite our near OD’ing on Airborne, constant use of hand sanitizer, and diligent hand washing, we managed to get sick. At least the worse of it hit us on the trip home and not while we were there.
We all had a great time and can’t wait to go back. I would love to go back again next year while my dd is still young and believes. But, this vacation cost us a little over $6k (airfare was $1500) so I’m not sure we can swing that again next year, we may need to skip a year. This was supposed to be our once in a looonnngggg time vacation – but I already can’t wait to go back!
We rented points to stay at WL but accepted a move to AKL Kidani Savannah view because of construction. After accepting the switch, I regretted it for months – until we arrived at AKL. We LOVE that resort. It is beautiful, the cast members are so friendly, pools are awesome. We had no problems at all with the busses. We never waited more than 10 minutes for a bus to come (most of the time it was less than that). We didn’t find the 20 minute ride to MK to be bad at all. We would stay here again in a heartbeat!
Park Day 1 - MK:
We had an 8:25am CRT breakfast reservation. We casually ate, met the princesses, and were out in the park by 9:15. We loved this breakfast, it was a great way to start our trip! We walked on several rides between 9-11. My kids LOVED Barnstormer, I think we did it 3 times in a row, but they were absolutely terrified on SDMT. My dd did BBB at 1pm, she really liked it, but at almost $70, I don’t think I would book it again on a return trip because she didn’t love it. We had dinner at Crystal Palace at 5pm. This was one of our favorite meals and we loved the character interaction. Interesting note, I spent weeks debating whether to do CRT for breakfast or dinner, and CP for the other. I asked our facebook group and everyone suggested CP for breakfast and CRT for dinner. I decided to go again their advice and am so glad I did. CRT was just such a fun way to start our day and the breakfast was delicious! The crowds this day were good, the lowest of our whole trip, it didn’t seem too busy and we got to do almost everything we wanted to. Maybe we were on a first day Disney high, but this was the favorite day of our whole trip – and one of my favorite days ever!!
Day 2 – EPCOT:
While we liked Epcot, we won’t do EPCOT again for several years. My kids liked the aquarium, but other than the character meet, turtle talk, nemo, and the aquarium, they were bored. We had BOMA for dinner this night. This was actually our second time eating dinner at BOMA. We also ate here on our arrival night. The first night at BOMA, while it was delicious, dh had a hard getting past the $150 price tag for 2 adults and a 3 and 5 yr old. But, he suggested it on this night also so he must’ve thought it was worth it. I checked MDE and there was a dinner reservation open for this evening so I took it and we walked over. The food here is so good – and those zebra domes – oh lord are they delish!
Day 3 – AK and HDDR
It poured this day! We had an early FP for the safari, which we loved. Then, we went to Festival of the Lion King which we also really enjoyed. After that we had lunch at Tusker House. This was another one of our favorite meals. The food options were really good and the character interactions were great! We left AK by 1pm. Even if it hadn’t been raining so hard, it was too crowded to really look around. We then went back to our room for a few hours before heading out to the 6:30pm show of HDDR. I had booked this at 7am on our 180 day and we were seated front and center. DH and I agreed that we were a little too close, a row or two back would’ve been better. Our necks started to hurt by the end of the show from looking up. I am a vegetarian and forgot to tell them before ordering. I had potatoes, corn, and cornbread for dinner – and of course some of the desert. It was good, but I wish I would’ve remembered to tell them that I was a vegetarian so maybe I would’ve had some more meal choices – my fault. My dd5 loved HDDR and literally laughed so hard she fell out of her chair.
Day 4 – 1900 Park Fare
We started our day with breakfast at BOMA – third time eating here (first time for breakfast) and it was awesome! This was our rest day so we hung around our room and did go to the pool for a few hours. This was the warmest day we had and the only day warm enough to swim. At about 3:30 we left to head to the Grand Floridian for our dinner reservation at 1900 Park Fare. I know that we are in the minority, but we were not impressed with Grand Floridian. Actually, it’s not that we weren’t impressed, it’s more that we were intimidated by it. While we think it beautiful, we have no interest in ever staying there, it’s not our style. Our dinner at 1900 Park Fare was good, the food choices were great, character interaction was good, but this was a one and done experience for us. Prince Charming skipped over our table, now, in his defense, we had just arrived but he never did make it back around while we were there. My 5 yr old was star struck by the step sisters and tongue-tied and in my opinion I thought the step-sister was rude to her (I know it’s the part, but the mom in me was a bit upset by it, my daughter never picked up on it though). The step mother was funny, but she told my daughter to get up early in the morning because she was expected to do all of the Cinderella’s chores – my daughter believed her completely and nearly started crying. DH and I still chuckle about that. Overall, it was a fun evening, but probably won’t be back to this restaurant.
Day 5 – HS
Because of Marathon traffic delays we didn’t get to HS as early as I had hoped. When we did get there we were shocked at how packed this park was. This was mostly because of the marathon but it was wall to wall people. We had lunch at Hollywood and Vine. We all really liked this lunch and would eat here again. We saw the Beauty and the Beast show, met Darth Vador and Chewbacca, rode toy story, walked the streets of America. We had dinner at Sci Fi, this was the second worst meal we had. we will definitely not be back here. It was so dark we couldn’t see our food. They sat another couple with us in our ‘car’ and we couldn’t hear each other over their conversation. Food took so long to come that we missed our fast pass for the Frozen Sing-a-long. We did watch Fantasmic (I cried a little, so moving) and then the Star Wars fireworks – best fireworks we’ve ever seen. If I had it to do over again, knowing my family, we would’ve skipped EPCOT and did 2 HS days instead.
Day 6 – MK last park day
We started our day with ‘Ohana breakfast. This was our favorite meal of the whole trip. DH especially liked that they brought us our food and that it wasn’t a buffet. The food was really good. I thought the characters were good but DH thought that Mickey was ‘pushy’. My dd got to hold Lilos hand leading the parade around. We loved the Poly and would love to stay there some time. Next we went to MK. I was so excited for this day because Touring Plans predicted that it would be a 3. Because it had been so busy at all the parks so far, we were looking forward to a slower day so we could get in a lot of rides on our last day. Nope. It was jammed packed. We did Barnstormer, met Rapunzel, Tinkerbell, Ariels Grotto, Little mermaid ride and dd got a Pirate League Mermaid makeover. My son started to get sick this day. I guess it’s true what they say, it’s not Disney unless someone gets sick! We decided to end our Disney trip with dinner at Chef Mickey’s. We were so disappointed. This was our least favorite meal of the trip and we will not eat there again. I don’t know if it was because my son was sick and slept through the whole thing, or if we were just getting tired by that point, but we didn’t like anything about Chef Mickey’s. There was very few food choices. We were seated in a corner where we couldn’t see any of the characters coming or interacting with other families. Our server was not friendly at all. We did get them to take my sons meal off the bill (he literally slept through the entire thing), but we still paid almost $150 for two adults and one child. We got only two signatures before we left and headed out to pack up our room.
A few other thoughts:
The weather was cold and rainy. We came from Northern New York where they were getting hit with severe snow storms the whole time we were gone so we were ok with the weather. I had packed everyone shorts and we never wore them. I also only packed two hoodies each and we wore a hoodie every day. I am thankful that we had one good day to swim in the pool.
Brazilian Tour Groups – I had been worried about these leading up to our trip. We didn’t see any until Park Day 5 at HS and then they were everywhere. We didn’t have any issues with them though. They didn’t seem rude, there were just a lot of them. At one point, we were standing in line and had balloons tied to our stroller in the stroller parking section. I could see a group of 8 or 9 of the Brazilian girls playing with our balloons and taking each others pictures with them. But, after a few minutes they wandered off so not a big deal.
Garden Grocer worked great – but I ordered too much. We had two big bags of unopened water and snacks. I was able to find someone from our facebook group who was there and I gave it all to her. Next time I will only order water and cliff bars.
Before we left, so many people told us that our kids were too little for Disney. My 5 yr old daughter is the perfect age! She believed whole-heartedly that we were meeting the real princesses.
Memory Maker – awesome!! We came home with almost 400 pictures, most of which were group shots! So worth the money!
We rented a stroller from Kingdom Strollers. It was waiting for us at our resort. It was great. I especially liked it for when it got really crowded, I didn’t need to worry about losing our kids in the crowd. DH wasn’t too thrilled about putting it on and off the bus and monorail, but it really was worth it.
Our vacation was 8 days, 2 of which were travel days. That was a perfect length for us. By the last day were ready to go home, but not before then.
We just got home yesterday, and now three of the four of us are sick. Despite our near OD’ing on Airborne, constant use of hand sanitizer, and diligent hand washing, we managed to get sick. At least the worse of it hit us on the trip home and not while we were there.
We all had a great time and can’t wait to go back. I would love to go back again next year while my dd is still young and believes. But, this vacation cost us a little over $6k (airfare was $1500) so I’m not sure we can swing that again next year, we may need to skip a year. This was supposed to be our once in a looonnngggg time vacation – but I already can’t wait to go back!
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