litch
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2018
Just came back from a pretty epic/amazing trip and put some notes together and thought I’d share.
A bit of background - we were going with some very close family friends. They have a daughter about the same age as my daughter (7), and then twin boys a few years younger. We booked the trip about 7 months ago, and they let me take the lead on planning. We’ve been to WDW/DL probably a total of 30-40 days on a bunch of trips in the last 5 years. I just booked everything for us. All the ADR’s, all the fast passes, etc. It also turned out I was just 100% in charge/responsible for keeping us all entertained the whole trip. Look at me! I'm a Plaid!
We did a few different things this trip, and I learned a lot, and so this is kind of a trip report and some lessons learned.
We did the Dining Plan for the first time ever - the one with one table service meal - and so to try to maximize that, I wound up being really diligent and trying to book us at the “best” TS restaurants (to maximize the dining plan). Even though I thought I was booking 180 days out, the size of our party (8) made it so I couldn’t get Ohana, but got most of the “highly recommended” ones (though it was at odd times). I wound up spotting/scoring a Cinderella’s Royal Table (!!!!!) opportunity late at night (8:40) on a VMCP night. So I guess we were going to VMCP too. Maybe not “necessary” (especially for hosting first-timers) but awesome!
We stayed at Boardwalk, which me and my wife love because we love Epcot/World Showcase, and access to the monorail. I was a bit late making Fastpasses for the group (probably 35 days out), and I really didn’t know what to expect hosting a first-time Disney family - especially with the two super-hyper boys. The boys hyperness and general disruptiveness made them the primary constraint the whole trip (can’t do sorcerers of the magic kingdom because the boys can’t pay attention (ROLLER COASTERS!), can’t watch a parade because the boys won’t pay attention (ROLLER COASTERS!), can’t watch the Beauty and the Beast stage show because the boys won’t pay attention (ROLLER COASTERS!), can’t go into any shops as a group because the boys will start rampant destruction of every display they see).
We love the family we were traveling with, and knew it would be different from a “standard” Disney trip. At the last minute, my wife had to bail on the trip (she had a work thing come up), and so it was just me and DD with this other family, for a group of 7.
Day 1 - EPCOT -> MK
Started the day at Epcot and that was lovely. Knocked out the biggies - Soarin’ with only a 20 minute standby, and Spaceship Earth with only like 10 mins standby. We had a FP for Misson: Space (which I had never done), but there was only like a 10 minute standby line there. Oh well.
Had a really nice CM experience. We were walking around world showcase and we’d just gotten a couple servings of the Chicken Tikka from India and my daughter tripped and dropped the plate resulting in a chicken sauce EXPLOSION. A CM was there within about 5 seconds with a brand now plate of the chicken tikka, and some napkins to help her clean up.
We had a 5:20 ADR at Wave, which I’d heard great things about, and thought would be a nice transition from Epcot to MK. I’d hoped to do the Monorail to Contemporary, but it seemed impractical to get the group (read, boys) there in a reasonable amount of time. So we went back into Boardwalk, grabbed a huge taxi van that we could just roll the double stroller into the back of, and took that to Contemporary.
I had put on this schedule to DEFINITELY watch HEA since it was the only night we’d be able to schedule it given our ADR’s and the VMCP. By the time we got to the park from the super underwhelming and unbelievably slow dinner at Wave (somehow we freaking took the monorail and that took us FOREVER), it was time to get “in position” for the fireworks - the space was filling up and at 8:10PM when we got to near the castle we were kind of directed by staff to a great viewing area, but the other family we were with wanted ROLLER COASTERS!
Well, no fast passes, but we’ll see if we can be entertained.
Started with Tea Cups. Me and the other dad went with the boys (the girls wanted to be too cool for school, other mom passed). Me and him could REALLLLY spin a teacup. Like whoa. I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask to slow down, but came close. The boys had a blast.
We then headed to IASW, then came out just as fireworks were starting. Watched them from Fantasyland, which is fun, but the boys were basically playing with all the toys at one of the blinky-lighty-portable concession stands the whole time, which was a bit stressful. The whole “playing defense” against kids touching stuff/wanting to buy stuff, is my least favorite aspect of WDW. I really want to get better about that as a general life skill. “Playing Defense” against buying crap (I am not cheap, but don’t like buying *crap*) makes me less happy, and I’m trying to remove things that make me less happy, so am actively brainstorming ways to deal with that.
We started off toward Dumbo, turned back to make sure the boys were detached from the Blinky cart, and in the process of that lost one of the girls. Oops. So a few minutes of searching, alerting a CM, and the girl was returned to us by a helpful/friendly CM - she had made it almost all the way to Dumbo, then thought we’d “left her behind (she was way ahead)”. The girl’s parents took it well, the girl was pretty panicked, but the CM offered to walk us onto Peter Pan to help calm the girl down. It worked, basically.
Then we headed back to Dumbo, I sent the other family on Barnstormer (ROLLER COASTER!) (DD does not like roller coasters (YET!)), which they were not super jazzed about - the other dude really wanted EVERYONE to do EVERYTHING together. I’m much more in the camp of maximizing overall happiness. If 5 people get lots of joy from doing an activity, and the other two won’t get joy from it but are happy to just be around an amazing environment, sending the 5 on the big attraction is a win overall.
At this point, even with the super short lines, we were ready to go. Got to the busses at about 10:45PM, and back to Boardwalk.
Day 2 - MK with CRT!
We knew this would be a LONG day so wanted to let DD sleep in as late as possible (which wound up being about 8:30 haha). Plus, I had some work to take care of, so did that for a bit as DD slept. Headed to MK for the day - eventually, after a slow breakfast at Boardwalk.
I haven’t mentioned before but I wound up really underwhelmed by the food selection at Boardwalk. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. The little Belle Vue lounge inside is like, an afterthought (and pretty unpleasant). I don’t want to do table-service breakfast…. It was likewise at Yacht Club, but we’d generally just either skip breakfast, or walk into Epcot/France. I really loved when we stayed at a Moderate resort (Port Orleans), that they had quick service dining as a point of focus. I don’t love TS at WDW, mostly because it’s SOOOO SLOW and SOOO expensive and SOOOOO mediocre. I don’t eat that much table service in general, but when I do, it’s FANTASTIC food. The benefit of living in a “foodie city”, I guess.
Watched a couple of street show/performers, then everyone wanted to do Haunted Mansion (ROLLER COASTERS!), so got into an hour-long line and I peeled off to do a bit more work.
We had a FP for Splash Mountain in the early afternoon (and weather was good). We made our way over to SM via Tom Sawyer Island, which I thought the boys would enjoy clambering around on. Hopefully we could burn off some calories there, though by being strollered every second of the in-between times, TSI was just “that weird place where the boys had to walk-and-wrestle, rather than wrestle each other in the stroller”.
ASIDE ABOUT STROLLERS: We very frequently used strollers (probably all but one WDW trip except the very last one) with DD. While she was 4-6 years old. Our general strategy was to take the stroller into the park (with a metal water bottle full of wine usually), park it in the middle of the park, and then use it primarily for late night post-fireworks when she’s conk out hard, and me and the wifey could just wander the parks for an hour or two with a sleeping kiddo. This trip, the stroller was pretty much necessary to cover any stretch of distance longer than 50 feet. So we were constantly looking for the stroller, loading into the stroller, FALLING OUT OF THE STROLLER, TRYING ACTIVELY TO DANGLE HEADS OFF THE FRONT OF THE STROLLER, etc. It was super awesome that the stroller could fit all 4 of the kids piled onto it. Once during the trip I managed to convince them to leave the stroller for a couple minutes while we went to “the next attraction over” and then steadily worked my way away from there. So we had a good 4 hours away from the stroller on one stretch, which I think was super helpful in general.
Splash Mountain was a hit, then we headed over to the Belle show, which was fun for everyone. I wound up being the suit of armor LIKE ALWAYS - I’ve done it probably 10 times, I think 100% hit rate on it. Then we headed over to Pirates to take advantage of a short line, and then did the Tomorrowland Speedway and then it was finally (FINALLY FINALLY!!!!) time for Bibbity Bobbity Boutique.
I think we did another attraction there on the way, but were super excited to get to the castle.
Wow, what a treat that was. It’s definitely real money to do (~$200) but you wind up getting a lot (nice princess dress, accessories), and then ~90 minutes of VERY SPECIAL attention. The CM’s doing all of that were just amazing. And on top of that the memory maker photographers were GREAT. Lots of fun reaction shots of the kids getting their BBB, close-ups of the hair, bows, face jewels, etc. I think it’s the best bang-for-Disney-buck thing I’ve ever done.
The boys got their knights outfits, and the girls were amazing, and then we left BBB to spent about an hour before dinner started. Somehow we got all the way to Adventureland (ROLLER COASTERS!) and did the magic carpet. I spotted Moana, and have only ever seen her in the parks once before (and a MNSSHP) and would have loved to do that MnG, but we did not have time before dinner. So then after magic carpet, we did a bit of shooting in Frontierland, then were kind of hustling to try to get back to the castle for our CRT reservation (fighting a parade route upstream (WE MISSED THE PARADE, THOUGH)).
Got to CRT and I did a “deck change” from my t-shirt into a polo shirt I’d brought just in the waiting area under the canopy (they were doing firework testing so had to walk us to the castle in small groups). Then we went in to see Cinderella! She was a fantastic Cinderella, and the kids all chatted with her a lot. She wound up knighting the two boys, which was adorable, and they loved it, and we got some great pics together.
The hostess had told us that we should try to be done with dinner and out the door by 9:45 to catch the 10pm fireworks. Our seating was nominally at 8:40, but we didn’t get inside at all until 8:50+, and I was skeptical of getting a TS meal done in less than an hour.
We went up to our table and it was a bit (VERY) cramped at our table. We got a bunch of little souvenirs (swords for all the boys, (more) wands for all the girls). I think at some point there was a “Wish on a star” ceremony, but we couldn’t hear the PA system well enough to understand. Our server was pleasant, the food was fine, I overindulged a *little bit* at dinner (but like, 3 glasses of wine at CRT in MK!!!) and then the started as we were about halfway through our main courses. Ha. So much for being out by 9:45.
Watching the show from inside the castle was SUPER COOL. I would only do CRT again if I could do it during fireworks time. I would have loved to have seen the VMCP firework show, but that was not to be.
The princesses coming around were nice and fun. Overall CRT was a great experience, one that I’m happy to do again if my DD REALLY WANTS TO. But really I was the one driving this, and I hope she’ll grow to appreciate what a special thing it was, but it wasn’t like, something she was LONGING to do. That was all me. =)
We then went out to catch a few rides - DD was REALLY excited to try Barnstormer now (YAY OMG ROLLER COASTERS CAN BE A THING NOW!) and we wound up doing that a couple times (THREE actually, one time there had been no more people come in line and they asked us if we wanted to just ride again, and we said sure, and they sent us right through).
Then the other dad REALLY wanted to do Space Mountain with his kids, so they went and all did that. We walked over together, then they started to go in and we’re like “We’ll see you in the gift shop” and he got all like, “well we shouldn’t do it unless everyone is doing it.” And I tried yet again to communicate that I am super happy to see them having a blast and once DD is ready to do the more adventurous stuff, we’ll all enjoy it together.
Walking out we saw a zero-line Pooh ride (like 11:59 PM) and I jumped into the line, and the CM waited for then last of the group to get in after parking stroller, etc, and closed the line behind them. Yay! We closed down MK!
So it was a magical day.
One thing that was a bit regrettable about all of this is that we had bought tickets to VMCP, but consumed nearly ALL of the time at BBB (6pm start there) and CRT (8:40PM seating). So we spent maybe 30 minutes doing “Christmas party” stuff. BUT! We got CRT, which had been a dream of mine for many years. So, worth it.
Overall this was definitely planned to be the highlight of the trip and was. Definitely all time best WDW experiences there (and BY FAR our most expensive day ever in the parks - lol). A great peak experience and hopefully we’ll have many more to come.
Day 3 - DHS (Star Wars!)
We got a late start (after our super-duper late night the night before). I had been a bit uncertain about planning this, because we’d done a lot of the planning before Galaxy’s Edge had opened, and I didn’t know if we were going to make more affordances to get *IN* to GE. I was a bit concerned that we hadn’t “budgeted” enough days for GE (our main constraint around days was ADR’s).
Galaxy’s Edge seemed less “interesting” to me than Harry Potter world (at least the one in California). Smuggler’s run was really a good attraction, but somewhat less impressive than the “BIG” one at HP world. Me and DD checked it out, then walked to the front entrance to meet our friends as they were arriving around 12:30, then walked with them into GE, then it was time to walk back into the main park for our afternoon ADR.
We did the character lunch thing (2PM) at Hollywood & Vine, and that was fun (though a bit weird timing-wise). The meals seemed to keep getting less and less convenient as the trip progressed. We jumped on Star Tours, then did the Frozen Sing-a-Long, which was a lot of fun as always - this time there was a special treat (special to me) of it being a bit different. I’d never heard the holiday version with the songs from Olaf’s winter adventure. So that was a plus.
We went out from there to do Jedi training for all the kids, which was a blast. It was at this point that a photographer explained to us that we should DEFINITELY NOT do the thing where we just punch the code into our Disney app and grab ALL THE PICTURES, but should instead use a preview center to find JUST the ones with our kids and add those to our app. AMAZING. This will probably be life-changing when I figure it out. The huge dumps of group events (Jedi training, Belle show in MK) make the whole photo pass thing pretty cumbersome.
Then we went *BACK* into GE to *actually* experience it, and at night it was amazing. It was pretty cold all day, which added some stress to everything, but we had a nice time. The other family rode the Millennium Falcon ride (DD didn’t want to do it (ROLLER COASTERS!!!)) and came out saying it wasn’t a roller coaster, but more like Star Tours. So the kids did droid building, and then we all went to do Millennium Falcon.
The ADR we’d gotten had special extra VIP tickets to the Fantasmic show, but it was COOOOOOLD and we were very underdressed. I’ve seen Fantasmic a few times, and even once underdressed (while in a heavy wool coat), and know how cold/miserable it can be. So we wound up missing both Fantasmic and the Jingle Bell Jingle Bam firework show, so were now three full days with no fireworks. Boo.
Day 4 - EPCOT
(In which the notes/outline are interspersed with the prose)
This day got off to a very slow start. We were all dragging in general, and it wound up being a kind of low-energy day. IT WAS COLD. The cold was starting to wear on us, I think. The big “highlight” of the day was going to be the Akershus oddly-timed-meal (3pm). One of our party really wanted to do the Test Track thing, but we couldn’t get the timing right with all the other structure. That was kind of a theme of the trip really, so much structure and odd time (60-min) time gaps, which were not enough to go do long-wait attractions, but long “enough”.
Winne the Pooh MnG
Journey into Imagination
Akershus princess dining
Livin with the land
Soarin’
Seas with Nemo
Turtle Talk
Aquarium viewing in general
DANCE PARTY - this is the first time on this trip we spent any time at one, and it was a blast as they always are. I love Disney dance parties.
Mission space x2
Spaceship Earth (again)
México ride
Epcot Forever - we had FP+’d this, which made it so we couldn’t “add” any fast passes (I learned a few FP+ tricks the next day), so we just kind of wandered aimlessly, which was not *great* for the boys.
Couldn’t find any kind of FP+ viewing area, and we were very cold, under-fed (how, I don’t know), and tired. We watched the Epcot Forever show, which was pretty underwhelming on the scale of Disney shows, and went home.
In the scale of Disney Days, this one was pretty forgettable, to be honest. It was cold, and things were kind of starting to blur together, as we were all very tired.
Day 5 - Animal Kingdom -> DHS
One of the party was REALLY looking forward to the Pandora world. We accidentally slept in a bit, and so got on a 9:30AM bus to AK. We went (slowly) - we were all SO TIRED, and it was SO COLD to Pandora and saw them changing the sign on the Flight of Passage from 190 minute wait to 215 (holy moly).
Our first FP was from 12-1 but was Kali river rapids (no thank you, it’s 50 degrees and cloudy), and so we wound up doing the Safari, then Na’Vi, the Gorilla Trail thing, but the party was very unhappy in general. It was kind of a, “Where are all of the rides.” Kind of thing from them, which is understandable and a bit frustrating. AK is much more experiential - “I don’t care about looking at that Gorilla, I want a ROLLER COASTER with NO LINE AT ALL”.
Everyone’s nerves were very much on edge, and there were a lot of questions like, “This is amazing, and I only want to do what everyone wants to do, and really I don’t care what we do because this is all about the group, but wouldn’t we have more fun if we were at Hollywood Studios?”
I really enjoy the Festival of the Lion King, but the boys were not seeming patient/well behaved, and everyone was on edge a bit (did I mention we were cold & tired?), so we ejected and went to DHS for some “familiarity”. Ideally we’d have gone to MK, but there was a Very Merry Christmas Party that night.
So we went back over to DHS for a few hours.
On the way booked a FP to the 3:15 Indiana Jones show, and booked the other family for the Tower of Terror (DD had zero interest). On the way to the show had some much-needed food (hot dogs from that stand in the middle of the park). This wound up taking an extra 20-ish minutes due to general drama around the brothers, dining plan, and all kinds of other confusion, and so we missed the FP window for Indiana Jones, and went in when they were doing “Standing Room Only” last call.
A friendly CM saw our general terrorizing of the back of the theater (the boys were still, 4.5 days in, SO rambunctious - wrestling, fighting, rolling all over everything - which was starting to wear on *my* nerves) came and grabbed us and said she thought she had a spot for us, and so walked us down to an empty row 2 of the reserved section. So just happened to find seating for seven of us - huzzah! That was the biggest like extra special Disney Plus that we got on the trip, and it was much appreciated.
Then we walked the friends over to Tower of Terror and waved goodbye, which elicited a surprise, “Wait, if you’re not going to do it we’re not going to do it - we should all do it together.” Which I was way past out of patience for. So I said I had some shopping to do (I actually REALLY REALLY decided I would get for myself one of the Disney artist sketches of Princess Anna (since she’s my favorite Princess)). I also had an amazing picture of me and DD from 3 years ago at the end of the main entrance street in DHS and I wanted to get an “update” picture. I showed the photographer the picture I had from three years ago and she was like, “Wow, how did they get the colors to pop like that” (I have no idea, it was a different Disney Memory Maker photographer). She took some photos of us in the same spot but they didn’t quite turn out.
So then we puttered around a bit, and then took the kids to do Jedi (re) training, and then went to Toy Story Mania as a last ride. While in Toy Story land, the other girl noticed Slinky Dog Dash (ROLLER COASTER!!!!) and then started pouting some about not being able to do it. But we had our last ADR of the trip to get to, and the timing wouldn’t work out.
So we boogied out of Toy Story Mania to the park entrance, then out to the busses to Contemporary for our last ADR - Chef Mickey’s.
We’d intended this to be kind of a “celebration of a wonderful time” and it was. We were all frozen, exhausted, and nerves pretty much on edge. We’d basically stopped trying to keep the boys from doing anything that was not physically injuring each other (seriously) and so the Contemporary CM’s seemed less than thrilled with us in general, but we made it through. It was definitely a "Long Islands at dinner" kind of night.
Wrapped up the night with massive amounts of desserts (that nobody ate), some good pictures of the kids (at our fourth character dining meal in 5 days), and got scolded on the way out by CM’s for the kids doing laps the wrong ways on the escalators.
Did the actual walk from Contemporary to MK to catch a bus back (stroller/large group considerations) and that was a pleasant walk.
Day 6
And that was about that. On check-out day, we slept WAY in, packed up, hung around boardwalk for a couple hours, went and checked out a DVC preview center for a few minutes went back to Disney Springs, got a great dress, played with legos with DD, and then were off to the airport.
Ratings
DDP: 5/10
BBB: 12/10
CRT: 8/10
Overall Vacation: 9/10
Lessons learned
A bit of background - we were going with some very close family friends. They have a daughter about the same age as my daughter (7), and then twin boys a few years younger. We booked the trip about 7 months ago, and they let me take the lead on planning. We’ve been to WDW/DL probably a total of 30-40 days on a bunch of trips in the last 5 years. I just booked everything for us. All the ADR’s, all the fast passes, etc. It also turned out I was just 100% in charge/responsible for keeping us all entertained the whole trip. Look at me! I'm a Plaid!
We did a few different things this trip, and I learned a lot, and so this is kind of a trip report and some lessons learned.
We did the Dining Plan for the first time ever - the one with one table service meal - and so to try to maximize that, I wound up being really diligent and trying to book us at the “best” TS restaurants (to maximize the dining plan). Even though I thought I was booking 180 days out, the size of our party (8) made it so I couldn’t get Ohana, but got most of the “highly recommended” ones (though it was at odd times). I wound up spotting/scoring a Cinderella’s Royal Table (!!!!!) opportunity late at night (8:40) on a VMCP night. So I guess we were going to VMCP too. Maybe not “necessary” (especially for hosting first-timers) but awesome!
We stayed at Boardwalk, which me and my wife love because we love Epcot/World Showcase, and access to the monorail. I was a bit late making Fastpasses for the group (probably 35 days out), and I really didn’t know what to expect hosting a first-time Disney family - especially with the two super-hyper boys. The boys hyperness and general disruptiveness made them the primary constraint the whole trip (can’t do sorcerers of the magic kingdom because the boys can’t pay attention (ROLLER COASTERS!), can’t watch a parade because the boys won’t pay attention (ROLLER COASTERS!), can’t watch the Beauty and the Beast stage show because the boys won’t pay attention (ROLLER COASTERS!), can’t go into any shops as a group because the boys will start rampant destruction of every display they see).
We love the family we were traveling with, and knew it would be different from a “standard” Disney trip. At the last minute, my wife had to bail on the trip (she had a work thing come up), and so it was just me and DD with this other family, for a group of 7.
Day 1 - EPCOT -> MK
Started the day at Epcot and that was lovely. Knocked out the biggies - Soarin’ with only a 20 minute standby, and Spaceship Earth with only like 10 mins standby. We had a FP for Misson: Space (which I had never done), but there was only like a 10 minute standby line there. Oh well.
Had a really nice CM experience. We were walking around world showcase and we’d just gotten a couple servings of the Chicken Tikka from India and my daughter tripped and dropped the plate resulting in a chicken sauce EXPLOSION. A CM was there within about 5 seconds with a brand now plate of the chicken tikka, and some napkins to help her clean up.
We had a 5:20 ADR at Wave, which I’d heard great things about, and thought would be a nice transition from Epcot to MK. I’d hoped to do the Monorail to Contemporary, but it seemed impractical to get the group (read, boys) there in a reasonable amount of time. So we went back into Boardwalk, grabbed a huge taxi van that we could just roll the double stroller into the back of, and took that to Contemporary.
I had put on this schedule to DEFINITELY watch HEA since it was the only night we’d be able to schedule it given our ADR’s and the VMCP. By the time we got to the park from the super underwhelming and unbelievably slow dinner at Wave (somehow we freaking took the monorail and that took us FOREVER), it was time to get “in position” for the fireworks - the space was filling up and at 8:10PM when we got to near the castle we were kind of directed by staff to a great viewing area, but the other family we were with wanted ROLLER COASTERS!
Well, no fast passes, but we’ll see if we can be entertained.
Started with Tea Cups. Me and the other dad went with the boys (the girls wanted to be too cool for school, other mom passed). Me and him could REALLLLY spin a teacup. Like whoa. I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask to slow down, but came close. The boys had a blast.
We then headed to IASW, then came out just as fireworks were starting. Watched them from Fantasyland, which is fun, but the boys were basically playing with all the toys at one of the blinky-lighty-portable concession stands the whole time, which was a bit stressful. The whole “playing defense” against kids touching stuff/wanting to buy stuff, is my least favorite aspect of WDW. I really want to get better about that as a general life skill. “Playing Defense” against buying crap (I am not cheap, but don’t like buying *crap*) makes me less happy, and I’m trying to remove things that make me less happy, so am actively brainstorming ways to deal with that.
We started off toward Dumbo, turned back to make sure the boys were detached from the Blinky cart, and in the process of that lost one of the girls. Oops. So a few minutes of searching, alerting a CM, and the girl was returned to us by a helpful/friendly CM - she had made it almost all the way to Dumbo, then thought we’d “left her behind (she was way ahead)”. The girl’s parents took it well, the girl was pretty panicked, but the CM offered to walk us onto Peter Pan to help calm the girl down. It worked, basically.
Then we headed back to Dumbo, I sent the other family on Barnstormer (ROLLER COASTER!) (DD does not like roller coasters (YET!)), which they were not super jazzed about - the other dude really wanted EVERYONE to do EVERYTHING together. I’m much more in the camp of maximizing overall happiness. If 5 people get lots of joy from doing an activity, and the other two won’t get joy from it but are happy to just be around an amazing environment, sending the 5 on the big attraction is a win overall.
At this point, even with the super short lines, we were ready to go. Got to the busses at about 10:45PM, and back to Boardwalk.
Day 2 - MK with CRT!
We knew this would be a LONG day so wanted to let DD sleep in as late as possible (which wound up being about 8:30 haha). Plus, I had some work to take care of, so did that for a bit as DD slept. Headed to MK for the day - eventually, after a slow breakfast at Boardwalk.
I haven’t mentioned before but I wound up really underwhelmed by the food selection at Boardwalk. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. The little Belle Vue lounge inside is like, an afterthought (and pretty unpleasant). I don’t want to do table-service breakfast…. It was likewise at Yacht Club, but we’d generally just either skip breakfast, or walk into Epcot/France. I really loved when we stayed at a Moderate resort (Port Orleans), that they had quick service dining as a point of focus. I don’t love TS at WDW, mostly because it’s SOOOO SLOW and SOOO expensive and SOOOOO mediocre. I don’t eat that much table service in general, but when I do, it’s FANTASTIC food. The benefit of living in a “foodie city”, I guess.
Watched a couple of street show/performers, then everyone wanted to do Haunted Mansion (ROLLER COASTERS!), so got into an hour-long line and I peeled off to do a bit more work.
We had a FP for Splash Mountain in the early afternoon (and weather was good). We made our way over to SM via Tom Sawyer Island, which I thought the boys would enjoy clambering around on. Hopefully we could burn off some calories there, though by being strollered every second of the in-between times, TSI was just “that weird place where the boys had to walk-and-wrestle, rather than wrestle each other in the stroller”.
ASIDE ABOUT STROLLERS: We very frequently used strollers (probably all but one WDW trip except the very last one) with DD. While she was 4-6 years old. Our general strategy was to take the stroller into the park (with a metal water bottle full of wine usually), park it in the middle of the park, and then use it primarily for late night post-fireworks when she’s conk out hard, and me and the wifey could just wander the parks for an hour or two with a sleeping kiddo. This trip, the stroller was pretty much necessary to cover any stretch of distance longer than 50 feet. So we were constantly looking for the stroller, loading into the stroller, FALLING OUT OF THE STROLLER, TRYING ACTIVELY TO DANGLE HEADS OFF THE FRONT OF THE STROLLER, etc. It was super awesome that the stroller could fit all 4 of the kids piled onto it. Once during the trip I managed to convince them to leave the stroller for a couple minutes while we went to “the next attraction over” and then steadily worked my way away from there. So we had a good 4 hours away from the stroller on one stretch, which I think was super helpful in general.
Splash Mountain was a hit, then we headed over to the Belle show, which was fun for everyone. I wound up being the suit of armor LIKE ALWAYS - I’ve done it probably 10 times, I think 100% hit rate on it. Then we headed over to Pirates to take advantage of a short line, and then did the Tomorrowland Speedway and then it was finally (FINALLY FINALLY!!!!) time for Bibbity Bobbity Boutique.
I think we did another attraction there on the way, but were super excited to get to the castle.
Wow, what a treat that was. It’s definitely real money to do (~$200) but you wind up getting a lot (nice princess dress, accessories), and then ~90 minutes of VERY SPECIAL attention. The CM’s doing all of that were just amazing. And on top of that the memory maker photographers were GREAT. Lots of fun reaction shots of the kids getting their BBB, close-ups of the hair, bows, face jewels, etc. I think it’s the best bang-for-Disney-buck thing I’ve ever done.
The boys got their knights outfits, and the girls were amazing, and then we left BBB to spent about an hour before dinner started. Somehow we got all the way to Adventureland (ROLLER COASTERS!) and did the magic carpet. I spotted Moana, and have only ever seen her in the parks once before (and a MNSSHP) and would have loved to do that MnG, but we did not have time before dinner. So then after magic carpet, we did a bit of shooting in Frontierland, then were kind of hustling to try to get back to the castle for our CRT reservation (fighting a parade route upstream (WE MISSED THE PARADE, THOUGH)).
Got to CRT and I did a “deck change” from my t-shirt into a polo shirt I’d brought just in the waiting area under the canopy (they were doing firework testing so had to walk us to the castle in small groups). Then we went in to see Cinderella! She was a fantastic Cinderella, and the kids all chatted with her a lot. She wound up knighting the two boys, which was adorable, and they loved it, and we got some great pics together.
The hostess had told us that we should try to be done with dinner and out the door by 9:45 to catch the 10pm fireworks. Our seating was nominally at 8:40, but we didn’t get inside at all until 8:50+, and I was skeptical of getting a TS meal done in less than an hour.
We went up to our table and it was a bit (VERY) cramped at our table. We got a bunch of little souvenirs (swords for all the boys, (more) wands for all the girls). I think at some point there was a “Wish on a star” ceremony, but we couldn’t hear the PA system well enough to understand. Our server was pleasant, the food was fine, I overindulged a *little bit* at dinner (but like, 3 glasses of wine at CRT in MK!!!) and then the started as we were about halfway through our main courses. Ha. So much for being out by 9:45.
Watching the show from inside the castle was SUPER COOL. I would only do CRT again if I could do it during fireworks time. I would have loved to have seen the VMCP firework show, but that was not to be.
The princesses coming around were nice and fun. Overall CRT was a great experience, one that I’m happy to do again if my DD REALLY WANTS TO. But really I was the one driving this, and I hope she’ll grow to appreciate what a special thing it was, but it wasn’t like, something she was LONGING to do. That was all me. =)
We then went out to catch a few rides - DD was REALLY excited to try Barnstormer now (YAY OMG ROLLER COASTERS CAN BE A THING NOW!) and we wound up doing that a couple times (THREE actually, one time there had been no more people come in line and they asked us if we wanted to just ride again, and we said sure, and they sent us right through).
Then the other dad REALLY wanted to do Space Mountain with his kids, so they went and all did that. We walked over together, then they started to go in and we’re like “We’ll see you in the gift shop” and he got all like, “well we shouldn’t do it unless everyone is doing it.” And I tried yet again to communicate that I am super happy to see them having a blast and once DD is ready to do the more adventurous stuff, we’ll all enjoy it together.
Walking out we saw a zero-line Pooh ride (like 11:59 PM) and I jumped into the line, and the CM waited for then last of the group to get in after parking stroller, etc, and closed the line behind them. Yay! We closed down MK!
So it was a magical day.
One thing that was a bit regrettable about all of this is that we had bought tickets to VMCP, but consumed nearly ALL of the time at BBB (6pm start there) and CRT (8:40PM seating). So we spent maybe 30 minutes doing “Christmas party” stuff. BUT! We got CRT, which had been a dream of mine for many years. So, worth it.
Overall this was definitely planned to be the highlight of the trip and was. Definitely all time best WDW experiences there (and BY FAR our most expensive day ever in the parks - lol). A great peak experience and hopefully we’ll have many more to come.
Day 3 - DHS (Star Wars!)
We got a late start (after our super-duper late night the night before). I had been a bit uncertain about planning this, because we’d done a lot of the planning before Galaxy’s Edge had opened, and I didn’t know if we were going to make more affordances to get *IN* to GE. I was a bit concerned that we hadn’t “budgeted” enough days for GE (our main constraint around days was ADR’s).
Galaxy’s Edge seemed less “interesting” to me than Harry Potter world (at least the one in California). Smuggler’s run was really a good attraction, but somewhat less impressive than the “BIG” one at HP world. Me and DD checked it out, then walked to the front entrance to meet our friends as they were arriving around 12:30, then walked with them into GE, then it was time to walk back into the main park for our afternoon ADR.
We did the character lunch thing (2PM) at Hollywood & Vine, and that was fun (though a bit weird timing-wise). The meals seemed to keep getting less and less convenient as the trip progressed. We jumped on Star Tours, then did the Frozen Sing-a-Long, which was a lot of fun as always - this time there was a special treat (special to me) of it being a bit different. I’d never heard the holiday version with the songs from Olaf’s winter adventure. So that was a plus.
We went out from there to do Jedi training for all the kids, which was a blast. It was at this point that a photographer explained to us that we should DEFINITELY NOT do the thing where we just punch the code into our Disney app and grab ALL THE PICTURES, but should instead use a preview center to find JUST the ones with our kids and add those to our app. AMAZING. This will probably be life-changing when I figure it out. The huge dumps of group events (Jedi training, Belle show in MK) make the whole photo pass thing pretty cumbersome.
Then we went *BACK* into GE to *actually* experience it, and at night it was amazing. It was pretty cold all day, which added some stress to everything, but we had a nice time. The other family rode the Millennium Falcon ride (DD didn’t want to do it (ROLLER COASTERS!!!)) and came out saying it wasn’t a roller coaster, but more like Star Tours. So the kids did droid building, and then we all went to do Millennium Falcon.
The ADR we’d gotten had special extra VIP tickets to the Fantasmic show, but it was COOOOOOLD and we were very underdressed. I’ve seen Fantasmic a few times, and even once underdressed (while in a heavy wool coat), and know how cold/miserable it can be. So we wound up missing both Fantasmic and the Jingle Bell Jingle Bam firework show, so were now three full days with no fireworks. Boo.
Day 4 - EPCOT
(In which the notes/outline are interspersed with the prose)
This day got off to a very slow start. We were all dragging in general, and it wound up being a kind of low-energy day. IT WAS COLD. The cold was starting to wear on us, I think. The big “highlight” of the day was going to be the Akershus oddly-timed-meal (3pm). One of our party really wanted to do the Test Track thing, but we couldn’t get the timing right with all the other structure. That was kind of a theme of the trip really, so much structure and odd time (60-min) time gaps, which were not enough to go do long-wait attractions, but long “enough”.
Winne the Pooh MnG
Journey into Imagination
Akershus princess dining
Livin with the land
Soarin’
Seas with Nemo
Turtle Talk
Aquarium viewing in general
DANCE PARTY - this is the first time on this trip we spent any time at one, and it was a blast as they always are. I love Disney dance parties.
Mission space x2
Spaceship Earth (again)
México ride
Epcot Forever - we had FP+’d this, which made it so we couldn’t “add” any fast passes (I learned a few FP+ tricks the next day), so we just kind of wandered aimlessly, which was not *great* for the boys.
Couldn’t find any kind of FP+ viewing area, and we were very cold, under-fed (how, I don’t know), and tired. We watched the Epcot Forever show, which was pretty underwhelming on the scale of Disney shows, and went home.
In the scale of Disney Days, this one was pretty forgettable, to be honest. It was cold, and things were kind of starting to blur together, as we were all very tired.
Day 5 - Animal Kingdom -> DHS
One of the party was REALLY looking forward to the Pandora world. We accidentally slept in a bit, and so got on a 9:30AM bus to AK. We went (slowly) - we were all SO TIRED, and it was SO COLD to Pandora and saw them changing the sign on the Flight of Passage from 190 minute wait to 215 (holy moly).
Our first FP was from 12-1 but was Kali river rapids (no thank you, it’s 50 degrees and cloudy), and so we wound up doing the Safari, then Na’Vi, the Gorilla Trail thing, but the party was very unhappy in general. It was kind of a, “Where are all of the rides.” Kind of thing from them, which is understandable and a bit frustrating. AK is much more experiential - “I don’t care about looking at that Gorilla, I want a ROLLER COASTER with NO LINE AT ALL”.
Everyone’s nerves were very much on edge, and there were a lot of questions like, “This is amazing, and I only want to do what everyone wants to do, and really I don’t care what we do because this is all about the group, but wouldn’t we have more fun if we were at Hollywood Studios?”
I really enjoy the Festival of the Lion King, but the boys were not seeming patient/well behaved, and everyone was on edge a bit (did I mention we were cold & tired?), so we ejected and went to DHS for some “familiarity”. Ideally we’d have gone to MK, but there was a Very Merry Christmas Party that night.
So we went back over to DHS for a few hours.
On the way booked a FP to the 3:15 Indiana Jones show, and booked the other family for the Tower of Terror (DD had zero interest). On the way to the show had some much-needed food (hot dogs from that stand in the middle of the park). This wound up taking an extra 20-ish minutes due to general drama around the brothers, dining plan, and all kinds of other confusion, and so we missed the FP window for Indiana Jones, and went in when they were doing “Standing Room Only” last call.
A friendly CM saw our general terrorizing of the back of the theater (the boys were still, 4.5 days in, SO rambunctious - wrestling, fighting, rolling all over everything - which was starting to wear on *my* nerves) came and grabbed us and said she thought she had a spot for us, and so walked us down to an empty row 2 of the reserved section. So just happened to find seating for seven of us - huzzah! That was the biggest like extra special Disney Plus that we got on the trip, and it was much appreciated.
Then we walked the friends over to Tower of Terror and waved goodbye, which elicited a surprise, “Wait, if you’re not going to do it we’re not going to do it - we should all do it together.” Which I was way past out of patience for. So I said I had some shopping to do (I actually REALLY REALLY decided I would get for myself one of the Disney artist sketches of Princess Anna (since she’s my favorite Princess)). I also had an amazing picture of me and DD from 3 years ago at the end of the main entrance street in DHS and I wanted to get an “update” picture. I showed the photographer the picture I had from three years ago and she was like, “Wow, how did they get the colors to pop like that” (I have no idea, it was a different Disney Memory Maker photographer). She took some photos of us in the same spot but they didn’t quite turn out.
So then we puttered around a bit, and then took the kids to do Jedi (re) training, and then went to Toy Story Mania as a last ride. While in Toy Story land, the other girl noticed Slinky Dog Dash (ROLLER COASTER!!!!) and then started pouting some about not being able to do it. But we had our last ADR of the trip to get to, and the timing wouldn’t work out.
So we boogied out of Toy Story Mania to the park entrance, then out to the busses to Contemporary for our last ADR - Chef Mickey’s.
We’d intended this to be kind of a “celebration of a wonderful time” and it was. We were all frozen, exhausted, and nerves pretty much on edge. We’d basically stopped trying to keep the boys from doing anything that was not physically injuring each other (seriously) and so the Contemporary CM’s seemed less than thrilled with us in general, but we made it through. It was definitely a "Long Islands at dinner" kind of night.
Wrapped up the night with massive amounts of desserts (that nobody ate), some good pictures of the kids (at our fourth character dining meal in 5 days), and got scolded on the way out by CM’s for the kids doing laps the wrong ways on the escalators.
Did the actual walk from Contemporary to MK to catch a bus back (stroller/large group considerations) and that was a pleasant walk.
Day 6
And that was about that. On check-out day, we slept WAY in, packed up, hung around boardwalk for a couple hours, went and checked out a DVC preview center for a few minutes went back to Disney Springs, got a great dress, played with legos with DD, and then were off to the airport.
Ratings
DDP: 5/10
BBB: 12/10
CRT: 8/10
Overall Vacation: 9/10
Lessons learned
- Take a rest day - I was VERY concerned that trying to do DHS/GE on a Saturday would be extra-super-crowded/impassable, but it turned out to be totally accessible all the time (is Galaxy’s Edge underperforming?). In retrospect I’d have preferred to have a no-park day after the CRT night, and then hit days 4 & 5 hard.
- Annual pass is a GREAT buy for one party member if doing a multi-day trip since you can basically “apply” the cost of the memory maker to that. $300 upgrade instead of $500
- Remember to plan on rates of transport - 7 people around the parks is SLOW, maybe group fast passes more geographically? I had had some ideas we could do rope drop -> noon at park, relax for a couple hours, then return to the parks in the late afternoon, but at the speed of the group, inertia was everything
- Would not do both Akershus and CRT in the same trip - in fact, I’d probably only do 1 character dining per trip
- Will probably not do the Table Service DDP again (or probably any DDP)
- If we had a decent water pitcher, a few bottles of wine, soda water, some yogurt delivered to the room, we’d save WAY more on dining than we did with the plan, ESPECIALLY given the auto-grat charges on Disney TS meals
- Know your audience - I really enjoy the shows and such. I could just stand on Main Street and watch the performers and the stage shows at the castle, and the move it dance party, festival of fantasy, etc, HEA! But the boys had to be kept *MOVING* constantly or else things would blow up.
- Wait times (standby) were SUPER reasonable. There was a 1-hour wait for Haunted Mansion, and then about that for the Safari, but I think everything else was sub-30 minutes for us. Not bad at all. Granted, we did not do seven dwarves or flights of passage, but by being opportunistic, stayed very entertained the whole time.
- Also a lot of very experienced Disney folks (like us) tend to value a lot of the little things. I love to see the holiday decorations, the different CM uniforms, the different shows around everywhere, special parades, special firework shows, etc etc etc. First timers, without a frame of reference (obviously) can’t understand/appreciate that, and definitely experience the parks in a different way. It’s hard to overstate the degree to which that may need to temper expectations/make plans.
- The Boardwalk -> Epcot -> Monorail -> MK transportation strategy, magical as it is, only works if you’re hyper mobile. The buses to/from Boardwalk were really great.
). We haven't traveled with young children yet but will be next April with my 2 granddaughters (6 & 9). It sounds like overall you had a good trip with your daughter and that counts most.
