Ravenne
Queen is never late everyone else is simply early
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2011
Hi all!
We just go back from our 10 day DCL & WDW "big (pre) summer blowout." It truly was the best vacation ever. We had the time of our lives, and we can't stop talking and dreaming about everything, but we're also utterly exhausted! So, I'll do the trip report in bits and pieces here and there as I have energy to and go through our photos. I'm going to be brutally honest, but I'm also going to try to focus as much on the positives as possible, largely because nothing is perfect, and I really do not want imperfections to cloud others' judgement when planning their trips. I truly appreciated the reviews and advice of other DISers while planning our trip and things couldn't have gone as smooth as they did without DISers' help (so a huge shout out and thank you to you guys! Woowoo! ) but it was very easy to stress over the bad stuff and worry about it so my hope is to not do that.
We started planning the trip 15 months ago, in March of 2013 when we booked a 4 night Bahamian cruise on the Disney Dream. We started out booked in an 11A room but soon realized we wanted a tad more space, and upgraded to a 10A. I actually wanted to go with at least a real port hole but was out voted by DH and kids as they wanted the magical port hole, which they ended up loving. The lack of real light wasn't an issue at all since it was a short cruise and we were hardly in our room.
Our embarkation date on the Dream was May 25, 2014 so we flew into MCO the day before and stayed at AOA in a Little Mermaid room. We just needed a place to crash for the night so we're not rushing around the morning of embarkation but we wanted to check out AOA so the LM rooms seemed perfect for us. I evaluated my options when booking the room, first calling WDW reservations to get a quote, and was told I should also check with DCL as they can sometimes get cheaper rates. The rates through DCL wasn't any different but since I already had them on the phone, I went ahead and booked it with them. Big mistake. It turned out to be a pain in my patooty. While DCL is capable of booking land/sea vacations, what they don't tell you is, they act as a travel agent for the land part so once you book that with them, you can only go through DCL to access the land portion of the reservation. The problem with that is, DCL doesn't have access to WDW's computer systems so they can't actually do anything regarding the land part. So any requests you may want, you can't make them with either WDW or DCL because WDW sees it as being booked through a TA and they won't talk to you about it and DCL doesn't have access. We wanted a bed rail. Couldn't ever get the request through as neither could help us. I tried for months prior to our trip to get a request through to no avail. We ended up just doing without figuring it's just one night. I had to make several calls to both DCL and WDW just to figure out how to link the one night stay to MDE so I can do online check-in and pick MB colors. I eventually was successful at linking the reservation and was able to make some very basic and minor requests during online check-in such as being close to transportation, and 2nd floor. Both requests were honored so I was thankful for that.
When we checked in to AOA the whole process went very smoothly. Our room was ready, and our welcome packet was also ready. The resort isn't as big as I thought. The walk to building 9 in the Little Mermaid wing wasn't nearly as long as I'd read on here (much to my relief) but long enough that I'm not sure I'd want to do it for a week after exhausting days at the parks. Even just for one night, we made that trek from the LM rooms to the Animation Hall many times and it wasn't too bad. I'd say about 5 minutes or so, with kids in tow walking on their own, and even with our luggage. I do think it gives the illusion that it's a long walk as you have to walk by the Lion King suites to get to LM. It kind of makes you feel like, "omg there are rooms right here, are we at ours yet? Ugh!" but it's really not too bad. We actually walked around the whole resort several times to sight see and it wasn't bad...and I'd just thrown my back out a few days before our trip so I was hobbling around.
We stopped by the food court at AOA for dinner to find that 1/3 of it is walled off for construction, as well as part of the gift shop. That made things a bit more challenging to navigate through. I thought that having the food court behind the gift shop was a silly idea. I get that Disney wants you to buy buy buy, but that design wasn't very conducive to the flow of traffic. I know you can access the food court directly from the outside, but on the inside, it was congested especially with construction walls all over. I enjoyed the food court food better than All Star Movies where we last stayed. It's crowded and busy, and a bit pricey, as is to be expected with Disney Resort food courts. We ordered 2 adult burgers and 2 kids' burgers with 2 paper cup drinks and the bill came to about $58. We went back for dessert a couple of hours later and it was still packed...another $15 in desserts then. I couldn't help but notice that someone had kicked a hole in the wall of the burger section of the food court, and several street lights were burned out...just basic maintenance stuff that they just haven't gotten around to. No biggie, but I felt bad if not a bit sad that a brand new resort like that and people have already knocked holes in walls and Disney already have construction walls up. Aside from that, the resort is beautiful, very fun, and mostly clean. Our room was very clean so I was impressed with that. I would love to stay at AOA for a longer trip but like I said, without a car, I'm not sure I'd want to do the LM Room after long days at the parks and the suites are hard to justify when they're the price of a deluxe. It would make sense for larger families but not for my family of 4...not just yet anyway as my kids are still elementary school age and small.
To be continued...
We just go back from our 10 day DCL & WDW "big (pre) summer blowout." It truly was the best vacation ever. We had the time of our lives, and we can't stop talking and dreaming about everything, but we're also utterly exhausted! So, I'll do the trip report in bits and pieces here and there as I have energy to and go through our photos. I'm going to be brutally honest, but I'm also going to try to focus as much on the positives as possible, largely because nothing is perfect, and I really do not want imperfections to cloud others' judgement when planning their trips. I truly appreciated the reviews and advice of other DISers while planning our trip and things couldn't have gone as smooth as they did without DISers' help (so a huge shout out and thank you to you guys! Woowoo! ) but it was very easy to stress over the bad stuff and worry about it so my hope is to not do that.
We started planning the trip 15 months ago, in March of 2013 when we booked a 4 night Bahamian cruise on the Disney Dream. We started out booked in an 11A room but soon realized we wanted a tad more space, and upgraded to a 10A. I actually wanted to go with at least a real port hole but was out voted by DH and kids as they wanted the magical port hole, which they ended up loving. The lack of real light wasn't an issue at all since it was a short cruise and we were hardly in our room.
Our embarkation date on the Dream was May 25, 2014 so we flew into MCO the day before and stayed at AOA in a Little Mermaid room. We just needed a place to crash for the night so we're not rushing around the morning of embarkation but we wanted to check out AOA so the LM rooms seemed perfect for us. I evaluated my options when booking the room, first calling WDW reservations to get a quote, and was told I should also check with DCL as they can sometimes get cheaper rates. The rates through DCL wasn't any different but since I already had them on the phone, I went ahead and booked it with them. Big mistake. It turned out to be a pain in my patooty. While DCL is capable of booking land/sea vacations, what they don't tell you is, they act as a travel agent for the land part so once you book that with them, you can only go through DCL to access the land portion of the reservation. The problem with that is, DCL doesn't have access to WDW's computer systems so they can't actually do anything regarding the land part. So any requests you may want, you can't make them with either WDW or DCL because WDW sees it as being booked through a TA and they won't talk to you about it and DCL doesn't have access. We wanted a bed rail. Couldn't ever get the request through as neither could help us. I tried for months prior to our trip to get a request through to no avail. We ended up just doing without figuring it's just one night. I had to make several calls to both DCL and WDW just to figure out how to link the one night stay to MDE so I can do online check-in and pick MB colors. I eventually was successful at linking the reservation and was able to make some very basic and minor requests during online check-in such as being close to transportation, and 2nd floor. Both requests were honored so I was thankful for that.
When we checked in to AOA the whole process went very smoothly. Our room was ready, and our welcome packet was also ready. The resort isn't as big as I thought. The walk to building 9 in the Little Mermaid wing wasn't nearly as long as I'd read on here (much to my relief) but long enough that I'm not sure I'd want to do it for a week after exhausting days at the parks. Even just for one night, we made that trek from the LM rooms to the Animation Hall many times and it wasn't too bad. I'd say about 5 minutes or so, with kids in tow walking on their own, and even with our luggage. I do think it gives the illusion that it's a long walk as you have to walk by the Lion King suites to get to LM. It kind of makes you feel like, "omg there are rooms right here, are we at ours yet? Ugh!" but it's really not too bad. We actually walked around the whole resort several times to sight see and it wasn't bad...and I'd just thrown my back out a few days before our trip so I was hobbling around.
We stopped by the food court at AOA for dinner to find that 1/3 of it is walled off for construction, as well as part of the gift shop. That made things a bit more challenging to navigate through. I thought that having the food court behind the gift shop was a silly idea. I get that Disney wants you to buy buy buy, but that design wasn't very conducive to the flow of traffic. I know you can access the food court directly from the outside, but on the inside, it was congested especially with construction walls all over. I enjoyed the food court food better than All Star Movies where we last stayed. It's crowded and busy, and a bit pricey, as is to be expected with Disney Resort food courts. We ordered 2 adult burgers and 2 kids' burgers with 2 paper cup drinks and the bill came to about $58. We went back for dessert a couple of hours later and it was still packed...another $15 in desserts then. I couldn't help but notice that someone had kicked a hole in the wall of the burger section of the food court, and several street lights were burned out...just basic maintenance stuff that they just haven't gotten around to. No biggie, but I felt bad if not a bit sad that a brand new resort like that and people have already knocked holes in walls and Disney already have construction walls up. Aside from that, the resort is beautiful, very fun, and mostly clean. Our room was very clean so I was impressed with that. I would love to stay at AOA for a longer trip but like I said, without a car, I'm not sure I'd want to do the LM Room after long days at the parks and the suites are hard to justify when they're the price of a deluxe. It would make sense for larger families but not for my family of 4...not just yet anyway as my kids are still elementary school age and small.
To be continued...