Just Back 10/10 - 10/13

firefly_ris

DIS Veteran
Joined
Nov 25, 2015
Just returned from our short anniversary trip. DH and I stayed at POFQ. Our flight landed a few minutes early, so we touched down in MCO around 3pm on 10/10. No longer than 3 minutes after we walked off the plane, Disney called and asked if we would decline housekeeping for a $20 gift card... my husband accepted. We waited about 25 minutes for the Magical Express. We had 1 checked bag they were taking care of for us. We arrived at POFQ at about 4:30pm, maybe slightly before.... there were a few stops before us at Saratoga Springs and Old Key West, so it was kind of neat to take a look at those.

Our room was ready and I had done online check in so we went right to the room. I had faxed a request about 5 days ahead asking if it was possible to get a corner room not facing a stairwell, and it was granted. I booked standard view so it was facing the parking lot, but there were a lot of trees and it was really quiet so that didn't bother me at all. The room # was 3141. We decided to catch the boat over to Disney Springs for the evening. The luggage showed up about 45 minutes after we got there, so we had it before we headed out the door.

Right before we left, I checked the MDE app to see what might be available for dinner, and grabbed a Raglan Road reservation for 8:30pm. The boat ride to Springs was nice, except our driver was a little heavy handed with the horn and that got kind of annoying, lol. It was a pretty ride and I saw what I think must have been the Treehouse Villas along the river.

We moseyed around, got my son a birthday gift at the Lego store, got a drink at the rooftop bar at the Coke store, and just wandered a bit. We got to Raglan at about 8:10 and sat at the bar for a while. Our buzzer went off I guess about 5 minutes after our reservation time, so not bad, and we were occupied watching the band and the dancers. Dinner was good. DH got the fried goat cheese salad which was really good, and I got fish and chips which was ok but I've had better. I enjoyed the atmosphere here.

Next morning, we got up, had coffee and granola bars in the room and headed to Hollywood Studios. All my scheduled FP were for MK later that day, but I just wanted to rope drop at HS and get our favorites in quickly. It was a 9am opening and we arrived at about 8:20 via the bus, which was timely. They let us go into the park at 8:40. We were heading for Toy Story first, and so we proceeded that direction until they stopped us next to Echo Lake until opening, then a cast member walked us to Toy Story. We waited about 10 minutes from queue to ride entry.

After that we headed over to RnR and I think the posted wait was 35 minutes at that time, and we waited probably 20 not including the pre-show thing. Then right over to Tower of Terror, which had a posted wait of 20 minutes but once we were in line went up to 40.... we waited probably 30 minutes for that. After that I wanted to grab a Starbucks but it was already insane in there so I said forget it. We headed back to POFQ to freshen up, and had lunch at Sassagoula, which was better than I was expecting. I got the shrimp po boy. Then we had a little nap.

Then off to MK.... it was a non-party night with a 2AM closing, so I was expecting it to be total chaos and I was not disappointed there! I have been to WDW 6 times and I have never seen it like that in my life. I wanted to be in MK at night so this was the price we paid, lol. I had a 2:55 FP for 7DMT and we arrived right at that time. Right in front of us was a big family trying to get in the FP line without a FP; the cast member asked if they made "ride reservations" and she said she didn't speak english, so he busted out his spanish and asked again... they claimed they had a pass then but clearly didn't. I didn't get the feeling they were trying to "break in" but I think they were just really confused. After that, I wanted to do something else while we waited for our next FP time but it was so crowded it was hard to find anything where we weren't afraid of being stuck in a line and miss our time. Even Small World was at 50 minutes. We ended up taking the railroad around back to Main Street and then grabbing an ice cream at Plaza. We waited about 45 minutes for the railroad but it was mostly shaded. Then after ice cream we headed to Tomorrowland and went into Carousel of Progress. Then off for a Space Mountain FP. The standby time was at 160 minutes, and the FP+ line started underneath the 2nd furthest PeopleMover overpass. I think we waited about 35 minutes with our FP. We saw one VIP group come in while we were waiting, definitely a good day to do that if you were of the means.

After that we went over to Pirates because it had an almost reasonable wait... get over there to find out it's broken down (explains that...). So we went to Pecos Bills and had some dinner. I was bummed they don't have the rice bowls anymore. DH got a southwestern chicken salad and I got beef nachos. Both good, the beef was really low grade but I expected that so it was fine. About this time it was getting dark, and off to Big Thunder for our 3rd FP. I really enjoyed Big Thunder at night! I wish we could have done it again that night but the standby was over an hour and no FPs to be found. This was probably my highlight for the night though.

Then right after that I started searching for more FPs... snagged one for Pirates, and my app wasn't showing it was down, so we went over... well, it was still down and they didn't seem confident that it would be back up for the rest of the night. I am not sure if it ever came back up or not. I got a FP for Small World so we went over there and had a nice relaxing boat ride. Right after that was fireworks and we headed over to Haunted Mansion while that was going on and got on that with basically no wait at all. Then we went back over to Tomorrowland because Buzz was only showing a 30 minute wait.... but by the time we got over there we waited a good 45 for it. We wanted to finish the evening with the PeopleMover, but when we got out of Buzz that was down too. By this time it was about 10:30 and I was pretty spent, so we ditched the whole "let's stay until 2am!!!" idea and headed back to the hotel for sleep.

Next morning was originally planned to be Epcot, but DH wanted to do AK. I had afternoon passes for AK, so I figured we'd just make a full day of it and take a mid-day nap at the hotel and return again. My original 3 FP were for Dinosaur, Everest and FoP, 4:25, 5:35 and 6:55.... I figured I had no chance of editing that FoP, but I managed to change all 3 of them... we were done with Everest and Dinosaur before lunch and then during coffee I kept refreshing the app a jillion times and a 1:10 popped up for FoP so I modified. So we left there after that and then headed over to Epcot. There, we did standby for Spaceship Earth, while waiting for that I got FP for Soarin', did standby for Living with the Land, then did a quick walk over to World Showcase... it was pretty jammin' for F&W (which I expected), but the food lines didn't really seem all that bad, but we had dinner reservations for later so we didn't get anything. DH grabbed an Innis & Gunn at Rose & Crown, then off for a Test Track FP I got. After that, we headed back to POFQ to freshen up, then walked over to POR for an 8:45 reservation at Boatwright's. I got fried green tomatoes for an app which were really good, and the Lake Charles Risotto for entree, it was a little watery but had good flavor.

Our final morning was 10/13... originally this was also going to be an Epcot day but I found a Navi River FP so I cancelled all of those original plans and got FP for Navi, Everest and Festival of the Lion King instead. We checked out of the hotel and they took our bags for us. We had to be back there by 5:30 to catch the bus to the airport.

The bus to AK took nearly 45 minutes to arrive. Finally they sent 2 buses since by that time, there was no way all those people who had been waiting were going to fit on one bus. We got there and did our FPs, wandered around a bit, saw the macaws at the tree of life, did standby for Tough to be a Bug and some other stuff.... during that entire time I kept refreshing the app constantly until finally a FoP came up, but it was for 6pm... I took it anyway and then kept trying to modify. I was finally able to get it up to 3:35, which was do-able. So we did FoP again, then booked it back to the bus stop. We got back to the hotel around 4:45, grabbed something quick to eat at the food court and hitched the bus to MCO.

Overall we did everything we wanted to do (and in the case of FoP and Everest, more than once), and I owe that to all the "techniques" I've learned here over the past few years, because crowd levels were definitely quite high. Multiple times I thought to myself if this was my very first visit ever and I had dragged all my kids with me and that was my first impression, I'm not sure I'd be itching to come back! But really the app was quite the handy thing and I changed so many things on the fly.... I think the only FPs and dining reservation that remained unchanged from my original plan was the MK ones and the Boatwright's reservation. Everything else just kind of happened.

My favorite parks to be in for this particular kind of trip were definitely Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Some of my earliest Disney memories were at MGM so I definitely have a very nostalgic attachment to the Old Hollywood theme and it never disappoints, and RnR was the very first rollercoaster I ever summoned up the courage to ride and I was with my then-boyfriend-now-DH at that trip, so just overall I have an attachment to the place. Echo Lake was drained and there were construction walls up, but it didn't bother me. If we had an extra day I would have gone back there and done those rides again and threw in Indy and Muppets, but this was a short trip and I knew we just wouldn't be able to hit everything.

POFQ was nice, I really liked the small size of the resort, the boat to Springs, and the food court. The room was just fine, but it feels like it could use a refurb (which I think it's getting soon) and there was a lot of dusty surfaces in the room. But the beds were clean, and they still came and changed the towels and put out new coffee stuff and fresh glasses on the 2nd day even though we had declined housekeeping. With kids we are a family of 5 so I probably won't be back there again (or probably on-site at all... with all 5 we are pretty much priced out of that) but it was nice. The buses were generally reliable but it was a busy time so we frequently needed to stand so that older folks and kids could sit. I'd enjoy the buses more at a slower time.

I thought this would be more brief than it turned out to be, so I'm sorry if this thread needs to be moved elsewhere...!!
 
Glad to hear your trip went well. We just got back from a 7 night trip that overlapped the time you were there. I don’t think we were at any of the same parks you were at the same time but crowds and experiences were similar for us at the parks we visited. Also, it was HOT!!!!


We stayed over at POR. We’ve been over to POFQ several times before on other trips but didn’t find the time this trip. Major props on scoring the extra FoP FP’s. We managed one ride on FoP on the last day of our trip. I checked and rechecked multiple times for more FP’s for FoP but with a family of 4 it probably made it a bit more difficult to pick up that many at once. Oh well, we loved it. It will probably be a very long time before it ever sees consistent standby wait times under 2 hours.
 
I don’t think we were at any of the same parks you were at the same time but crowds and experiences were similar for us at the parks we visited. Also, it was HOT!!!!

Yes, it was hot! I figured it would still be pretty warm but the one day it was close to 90... And I think there's just something about crowded paired with the heat makes it seem worse.


Major props on scoring the extra FoP FP’s. We managed one ride on FoP on the last day of our trip. I checked and rechecked multiple times for more FP’s for FoP but with a family of 4 it probably made it a bit more difficult to pick up that many at once. Oh well, we loved it. It will probably be a very long time before it ever sees consistent standby wait times under 2 hours.

One of the mornings it temporarily jumped up to a 540 minute wait.... I'm assumimh that was either an error or it was having a technical difficulty, the rest of the trip it seemed to be fairly consistent at 120 to 160 minutes.

I was also amazed that I managed to do it twice in 3 days... I wasn't even going to bother trying, and then on the last morning DH said he wanted to do it again... I don't think he really comprehended how difficult this could be (he said "I'd like to do FoP again and if not that then 7DMT." Yeah ok, good luck with that), but he did agree to have me drag him to Disney for our 10th anniversary so I really wanted to make it happen, especially since there was no way he would wait 2 hours in line for anything. But yes I agree it probably would have been even more difficult if the rest of our family was with us. It was a nice bonus to wrap the trip!
 



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