OhioStateBuckeye
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2007
I just returned from another great Disney trip. Our dates were 4/15-4/23. We did a split stay, the first couple nights at Port Orleans Riverside and the rest at All Star Sports.
I just wanted to share some things with everyone in case they can help you plan your trip!
Food:
-We tried Yak and Yeti, we'd been there before but not for about 3 years. It was the best meal we had all trip! They've trimmed their menu down to one page and really focused on those items and wow, does it show! I had the dragon roll for 2 as my dinner, and it was really good. My boyfriend got the chicken tikka masala and it was seriously out of this world. I cannot recommend Yak and Yeti enough.
-Some of you may be surprised, but our second best meal was Nine Dragons! I really want to have the General Tso's Chicken Dumplings right now...soooo good. I had the kung pao shrimp and it was excellent and had a very smokey flavor. My boyfriend had the sweet and sour pork which he enjoyed, but he admitted mine was better.
-Flower and Garden food booths: I don't think we had a bad dish here. I remember the DIS Podcasters saying that they thought the food quality was better than at the Food and Wine and I agree with that.
-we also tried the Skipper's Canteen. We thoroughly enjoyed the food, that mac and cheese was so amazing. I can also see how the food wouldn't be for everyone.
Hotels:
We did make one big mistake here. If you are going to switch resorts mid trip, always switch up. We went from Port Orleans Riverside down to All Star Sports which seemed like a sizable downgrade and difference.
We stayed in the Alligator Bayou rooms which must have been renovated pretty recently. I really enjoyed the little bed that folds down from under the TV and the Princess and the Frog artwork was so cute. I liked how rustic the room looked and got a kick out of the wood 'paneling' in the shower.
The resort was quiet and very peaceful and beautiful. We didn't really use the buses here a lot and preferred to drive. I know lots of people like buses at WDW, but we never seem to have good luck with them.
The All Star Sports, on the other hand, was not peaceful or beautiful. Don't get me wrong, I like parts of Sports and usually don't mind staying there. We were there the weekend of a pretty big dance competition. We didn't have any problems with loud people at night, but it is kind of odd to be walking around your resort and have to dodge dance/cheer groups practicing.
We also didn't use the buses here much. We were about as far as you could get from the bus stop even though I'd put 'close to transportation' on my online check in application.
Fastpass +:
It worked out for the most part. Though, my opinion might stem from the fact that we had a much more relaxed trip than usual and focused on things other than rides. Disney had just allowed people to start booking their 4th FP online, which was both helpful and annoying.
Helpful because we park hop a lot and this way we could get a fast pass before even being in our evening park. It was also good because we couldn't constantly check for better fast passes.
It was annoying because I believe there is less fastpass availability with this online booking, since you don't have to be in the park to book I think this meant that any available fastpasses were taken pretty quickly.
RunDisney:
We participated in the 10k Dark Side race. We managed to somehow earn ourselves a spot in Corral B, which was so nice because it wasn't very crowded and we could actually find running room.
The course was ok, we got to run through Future World and a bit of DHS. It ended at WWOS which was kind of boring, but understandable since that doesn't interfere with the operations of any parks.
I was very disappointed in the characters on course. If you don't count the characters before the race, there were an exact total of 3 Disney sponsored characters on the course: Chewbacca (who you can meet in DHS), R2 and Darth Vader. The 501st was there for the event and they saved the day, but it isn't like Disney had to pay them so I still felt let down by the lack of characters on course. RunDisney had also set up a couple backdrops for pictures. There was one with the Emperor's chair and I stopped to ask if the Emperor was on a break and I was told no, it was just his chair.
Crowds:
It is just a fact of life that Disney doesn't have any low crowd times anymore. Sure, you might get lucky and chance upon a random dead week, but it is tough to plan for. I really don't think the crowds were even that bad for this trip, what made it worse was it seemed that Disney was running rides with much less capacity than they should. For example, we were in line to ride Dinosaur and it was taking longer than advertised. We got to the loading area and saw that only one side of vehicles were loading. I have never seen an entire side of that ride shut down, and I've been on Dinosaur half an hour before close when it was a walk on. Many rides just weren't loading all vehicles and it was pretty sad and frustrating.
Random highlights of the trip:
I got to meet Joe Rohde at AK on Earth Day. He had artwork available to purchase and get signed, all proceeds went to the conservation fund. I'm so glad I did this because he was so nice and genuine.
We took the World Showcase tour at Epcot and I have to highly recommend this if you are a fan of the Showcase. We learned so much about all the countries, it was amazing.
DHS really does seem like a shell of itself. I thought people were exaggerating when they said this exact thing, but I have to agree. We managed to do everything we wanted in the park on two separate days, one day we rope dropped it and rode TT twice, RRC, TSMM, GMR, ST and met a bunch of characters and had lunch at Sci Fi and were gone by 12:30. The other day we came over around 4 for characterpalooza and had trouble filling the time until Fantasmic and the SW fireworks (which we did by meeting characters, watching VOTLM, the Frozen show and riding TT and ST some more).
AK on Earth Day was very odd. The park was very packed and we kept hearing people asking about Rivers of Light. We actually ended up leaving midday because it was just too crowded.
I think we hit the jackpot on Orlando weather. I don't think we had more than one day go above mid 80s. There was very little humidity and it actually got a bit chilly at nighttime.
Anyone have any questions feel free to ask
I just wanted to share some things with everyone in case they can help you plan your trip!
Food:
-We tried Yak and Yeti, we'd been there before but not for about 3 years. It was the best meal we had all trip! They've trimmed their menu down to one page and really focused on those items and wow, does it show! I had the dragon roll for 2 as my dinner, and it was really good. My boyfriend got the chicken tikka masala and it was seriously out of this world. I cannot recommend Yak and Yeti enough.
-Some of you may be surprised, but our second best meal was Nine Dragons! I really want to have the General Tso's Chicken Dumplings right now...soooo good. I had the kung pao shrimp and it was excellent and had a very smokey flavor. My boyfriend had the sweet and sour pork which he enjoyed, but he admitted mine was better.
-Flower and Garden food booths: I don't think we had a bad dish here. I remember the DIS Podcasters saying that they thought the food quality was better than at the Food and Wine and I agree with that.
-we also tried the Skipper's Canteen. We thoroughly enjoyed the food, that mac and cheese was so amazing. I can also see how the food wouldn't be for everyone.
Hotels:
We did make one big mistake here. If you are going to switch resorts mid trip, always switch up. We went from Port Orleans Riverside down to All Star Sports which seemed like a sizable downgrade and difference.
We stayed in the Alligator Bayou rooms which must have been renovated pretty recently. I really enjoyed the little bed that folds down from under the TV and the Princess and the Frog artwork was so cute. I liked how rustic the room looked and got a kick out of the wood 'paneling' in the shower.
The resort was quiet and very peaceful and beautiful. We didn't really use the buses here a lot and preferred to drive. I know lots of people like buses at WDW, but we never seem to have good luck with them.
The All Star Sports, on the other hand, was not peaceful or beautiful. Don't get me wrong, I like parts of Sports and usually don't mind staying there. We were there the weekend of a pretty big dance competition. We didn't have any problems with loud people at night, but it is kind of odd to be walking around your resort and have to dodge dance/cheer groups practicing.
We also didn't use the buses here much. We were about as far as you could get from the bus stop even though I'd put 'close to transportation' on my online check in application.
Fastpass +:
It worked out for the most part. Though, my opinion might stem from the fact that we had a much more relaxed trip than usual and focused on things other than rides. Disney had just allowed people to start booking their 4th FP online, which was both helpful and annoying.
Helpful because we park hop a lot and this way we could get a fast pass before even being in our evening park. It was also good because we couldn't constantly check for better fast passes.
It was annoying because I believe there is less fastpass availability with this online booking, since you don't have to be in the park to book I think this meant that any available fastpasses were taken pretty quickly.
RunDisney:
We participated in the 10k Dark Side race. We managed to somehow earn ourselves a spot in Corral B, which was so nice because it wasn't very crowded and we could actually find running room.
The course was ok, we got to run through Future World and a bit of DHS. It ended at WWOS which was kind of boring, but understandable since that doesn't interfere with the operations of any parks.
I was very disappointed in the characters on course. If you don't count the characters before the race, there were an exact total of 3 Disney sponsored characters on the course: Chewbacca (who you can meet in DHS), R2 and Darth Vader. The 501st was there for the event and they saved the day, but it isn't like Disney had to pay them so I still felt let down by the lack of characters on course. RunDisney had also set up a couple backdrops for pictures. There was one with the Emperor's chair and I stopped to ask if the Emperor was on a break and I was told no, it was just his chair.
Crowds:
It is just a fact of life that Disney doesn't have any low crowd times anymore. Sure, you might get lucky and chance upon a random dead week, but it is tough to plan for. I really don't think the crowds were even that bad for this trip, what made it worse was it seemed that Disney was running rides with much less capacity than they should. For example, we were in line to ride Dinosaur and it was taking longer than advertised. We got to the loading area and saw that only one side of vehicles were loading. I have never seen an entire side of that ride shut down, and I've been on Dinosaur half an hour before close when it was a walk on. Many rides just weren't loading all vehicles and it was pretty sad and frustrating.
Random highlights of the trip:
I got to meet Joe Rohde at AK on Earth Day. He had artwork available to purchase and get signed, all proceeds went to the conservation fund. I'm so glad I did this because he was so nice and genuine.
We took the World Showcase tour at Epcot and I have to highly recommend this if you are a fan of the Showcase. We learned so much about all the countries, it was amazing.
DHS really does seem like a shell of itself. I thought people were exaggerating when they said this exact thing, but I have to agree. We managed to do everything we wanted in the park on two separate days, one day we rope dropped it and rode TT twice, RRC, TSMM, GMR, ST and met a bunch of characters and had lunch at Sci Fi and were gone by 12:30. The other day we came over around 4 for characterpalooza and had trouble filling the time until Fantasmic and the SW fireworks (which we did by meeting characters, watching VOTLM, the Frozen show and riding TT and ST some more).
AK on Earth Day was very odd. The park was very packed and we kept hearing people asking about Rivers of Light. We actually ended up leaving midday because it was just too crowded.
I think we hit the jackpot on Orlando weather. I don't think we had more than one day go above mid 80s. There was very little humidity and it actually got a bit chilly at nighttime.
Anyone have any questions feel free to ask
Very excited! Always wanted to try it and you've tipped me into the 'let's do it' category.
