Hello there and thank you all for joining me on my second trip report here on the dis! While I am already having Disney withdrawals, I am excited to relive the trip over the next few days. In case you missed my pre-trip report, you can find it here Operation Transformation: Turning my Disney-hating husband into a Disney-lover. So here it goes .I will try not to ramble on but you will soon come to realize that I am quite the talker.
Who: Amber (me) and Warren (DH) When: October 13th-19th, 2013 with six-day park hopper tickets and the deluxe dining plan (first time DP users here) Where: Coronado Springs! Why Coronado Springs? My bucket list includes staying at each and every Disney resort prior to me parting this world (which won't be for many many years I hope). Thus far I have stayed at Port Orleans, Caribbean Beach, All Star Movies, Music, and Sports, Pop Century, Wilderness Lodge, and Animal Kingdom Lodge. I really wanted to stay at AoA; however, I think that would be better saved for when we have children some day. I wanted DH to get the experience of staying in a Disney resort without being overwhelmed by all things Disney. The set-up of Coronado Springs actually reminds me of the resort we spent our honeymoon at in Costa Rica so since this trip is kind of a late celebration of our one-year wedding anniversary it seemed to be the perfect fit!
Mode of transportation: My family has always drove the 16-18 hours to the World and I have come to enjoy the ride. It adds to the thrill of vacation! My dad made a good point though, right now there are only two of us and it would cost just as much if not less to fly as compared to the gas money, extra food money, and extra hotels that we would have to pay for to drive down there. And he was right! It only cost about $600 round trip to fly from STL to MCO (I guess I should let you know that we live in Central Illinois). We will then board the Magical Express to Coronado Springs!
So in case you were wondering how this trip came about, DH joined the Army reserves in November of 2012 so he left for basic training in February of this year. I was rather upset by his leaving because we had just gotten married in August 2012 and it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. He reassured me that everything would be okay and that we would have to plan something big for when he returned in late August 2013. A few letters into his time away I expressed my frustrations that he would be absent on our 1-year wedding anniversary. A few days later I finally received a call from him where he said I could plan a vacation to anywhere I wanted for when he returned. Of course, being the Disney fanatic that I am, immediately answered with even Disney?. As I stated in my PTR, my husband hates Disney (or so he thought at the time). You can believe that as soon as I hung up that phone, I was on the dis planning my 14th trip to the world! Why October you ask? I didnt want to leave on vacation immediately after he returned in late August. Plus, I wanted to give the food and wine festival a try. Side note: My husband ended up battling some injuries/illness that ended his days with the Army reserve in April.
Background: Amber:23 year-old Disney-fanatic, super organized when it comes to pretty much anything, Registered Nurse who is all about planning a schedule and sticking to it (there is no fun in chaos). You better believe that I had quite the itinerary lined up for this trip. Will we stick to it? Tune in to see. My favorite resort is Wilderness Lodge. Epcot has finally passed Magic Kingdom in the favorite park category (might that have something to do with my age? Or food and wine festival?). My new favorite Disney restaurant is California Grill. My favorite character is still and will always be Tinkerbell!
Warren: 24-year old Disney-hater (will that be changed?) who has only been to Disney 3 or 4 times as a very young child. He is a bit rebellious and does not like to follow the rules (a.k.a schedules and itineraries) and believes that vacations involve relaxing on a beach. This was his first time staying in a Disney resort so he does not have much to compare to. His favorite park is still Epcot. Now that he has finally eaten at several Disney restaurants his favorite is Le Cellier. His favorite character is still Peter Pan.
Together we have been married for a little over a year and have actually been together for almost 7 years! We had a fantastic vacation and I cant wait to share it with you so please keep all arms and legs inside the ride at all times and fasten your seatbelts
Sounds like you had a wonderful time! Our trips overlapped (we were there from Oct 11th to 18th). We also ate at California Grill and loved it. It is our favorite - was and still is (at least, non-V&A category)
I am so ready to get this trip report started! So let's start with what I consider to be day one of the trip.....Saturday October 12th. DH got up around 6:30am to be prepared to work from 7:30am to 1pm (his normal Saturday schedule). I hopped out of bed with that special little "we're going to Disney" spring in my step not to0 long after. DH's parents had already picked up our dog Friday evening after work so I wouldn't have to worry about getting him ready Saturday morning which ended up being a big help. Of course to get in the mood I got on the dis and messed around for awhile before I finally decided I needed to step it into gear and do all of those last minute vacation type things (packing, cleaning the house, laundry, dishes, making sure all doors and windows were locked, etc.). Before I knew it DH was home from work and we were loading up the car....I did quite the good job packing if I do say so myself!
The black bag in front is our overnight bag for St. Louis so we each had a carry-on then we shared the one checked bag. For an entire week, that is pretty good (especially for someone like me who is known for over-packing). We left our house around 1:30pm with the idea of taking the scenic route to St. Louis and stopping at DH's cousins bar in Wood River, IL to eat a late lunch/early dinner. When taking the interstate/main highways to St. Louis it is about a 2.5 hour journey but the weather was perfect and we took DH's Mustang convertible so we decided to take all country roads with the top down. After managing to get lost a couple (more like several) times, we finally made it the Pump House in Wood River at 4:15pm. DH had a burger and chips while I had a BLT and fries (sorry, no food pictures. I'm not the biggest fan of them). It wasn't a large meal but it hit the spot.
After chatting with the relatives for awhile, we left Wood River around 5:15. St. Louis itself is only about 30 minutes from Wood River but our lovely GPS took us on a winding path through some not-so-nice neighborhoods in St. Louis. Around 6:30 we finally started seeing signs for the airport. Now, I had booked us to stay in the Hilton Garden Inn which was supposedly 0.3 miles from the airport. As we were driving along we saw a sign that said the airport was 5 miles ahead. Next thing we knew, we were passing a Hilton Garden Inn. I said, there is no way this can be it. It is too far from the airport and there is no exit even close to it. So we kept driving and eventually made it to the airport where, like most airports, there were several hotels nearby. Not a single one of them were a Hilton Garden Inn to which my reply was "why would they have more than one of the same hotel in a five mile radius? The one we saw earlier had to be it". DH was getting a little bit frustrated at this time because, if anyone has been to the STL airport, the road setup is very confusing. He wanted to stop and ask someone how to get back to the one we had saw up the road, but I don't like stopping and talking to strangers and decided that we could figure it out on our own. Finally, a little after 7 we were pulling into the parking lot. While checking in, the staff asked us how our drive down was. Of course, we expressed our frustration about how hard it was to get to their hotel. They immediately started laughing and said "Oh, we have only been here for 2 years so they haven't put us on Google Maps yet, or even identified our address by satellite so you can't find us by GPS". Well wouldn't that have been nice to know! Anyways, we checked in and grabbed a few snacks from the convenience store before heading up to our room.
As you can see in the pictures, the room was really nice and you could tell it was brand new. It had DirecTV and free Wi-Fi so we were set for the night. The only downfall was that there was no free breakfast. They had a buffet that was $11.95/plate. That didn't effect us anyways because it wouldn't be open in time for us to eat there. Overall, it was a great place for a one-night stay and even though we were close to the airport we couldn't hear the planes at all. We went to bed around 9 knowing that we had an early, long day ahead of us....but it would end in Disney so we were kind of like two kids on Christmas eve waiting for Santa
Now that we have all of that pre-Disney nonsense out of the way, let's get started with the real fun! The alarm went off bright (dark) and early Sunday morning. Well, it went off at 3:30am which is the same time I get up for work so I handled it pretty well. DH on the other hand looked at me like I was crazy, rolled over, and went right back to sleep. Meanwhile, I had no problem jumping in the shower and getting ready for the day because WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!! After I was ready I finally convinced DH to get out of bed as it was 4:15 and we needed to be leaving by 4:30. He took a quick shower, threw on his clothes, and we were out the door. Unfortunately being as early as it was, the final bill was not slipped under the door so I had to deal with the front desk a bit before leaving. We drove the 5 minutes to the airport (leaving the hotel was much easier than getting there) while arguing over which lot we were going to park in. DH of course wanted a covered lot to protect his beloved baby and I of course argued that I wanted to bring my Escape for that exact reason so therefore I am not paying twice as much just to park in a garage. I won that argument and before you know it we were parked in lot B and boarding the shuttle to the airport. St. Louis Airport actually doesn't have that bad of parking prices. Lot B was $10/day.
Once we arrived at the airport we went to check-in at the United counter. Nowadays they don't even have people working the counter anymore. There are just computers. We typed in our confirmation number, printed the tickets, then weighed our checked bag. This is where our first dose of pixie dust came in.....the checked bag weighed in at **drumroll please*** 50.0 pounds (right on the upper limit). This means we only had to pay the normal $25 checked baggage fee instead of $125.00. Talk about extreme packing skills! After paying the fee and tagging the bag we took it to the drop-off point and made our way to security. The line for security was absolutely insane. At this point it is shortly after 5am and I am getting concerned for our 6:20am flight. DH makes it through the wonderful full-body scanner with no problems. I, however, end up having to be pat down because they "saw something on my back". Of course, there was nothing there and we were shortly on our way. We then begin the hike back to our gate, stopping by a little convenience store to get DH some OJ and a Starbucks for my frap.
When we finally hit our gate, I look at our boarding passes to check our flight boarding time and group. Then I notice none of that is listed and it just says "see attendant". When the attendant finally shows up, I went to ask her what that means. Her very rude response was "obviously it means you need to see me to get your seats assigned to you and I'm too busy to mess with it now". So I kindly apologized and went back to my seat. After seeing several more people from our flight go up and speak with her I went up again to see if she had time to assign us our seats. Again another rude response, "I'm helping other customers right now and I am trying to find room for you on this plane so you can sit down and I will be with you after I board all of these other people". At this point I am slightly frustrated but I again apologize and return to my seat. Then she starts boarding the other passengers and announces a final boarding call. DH and I go up and ask why we have not been helped yet. She replies "because I had to kick other people off of this plane to have seats for you so you should be grateful". I have finally had enough! I ask what the issue was because I booked these flights back in February which I can guarantee that most other people on this flight had not booked that early. Miss ever-so-friendly then informs us that the government states they can over-book planes and that we were just randomly chosen to be overbooked. So are we getting on the plane or not? Yes, you can but you aren't sitting together. Funny because when I booked this flight I booked us in seats right next to each other. So, being the organized person that I am, I had all of our flight confirmation papers from Orbitz with me. I pulled them out and she says, look see here your original flight was from St. Louis to Dallas not St. Louis to Chicago. Yes, lady but we didn't change the flight, your airline did, so why is that our problem? We didn't want to go to Chicago anyways (we HATE O'Hare and Chicago is just as close of a drive to us as St. Louis is).
So finally she just says hand me your tickets and get on the plane, you are delaying the flight. Oh and by the way, there is no more room for carry-on's on the plane since it is an express jet so you need to check your bags. Fine whatever lady, we just want to leave already! We finally get on the plane and actually take off a little early (about 6:10) which put us on the ground in Chicago about 6:45am. Our flight to Orlando was at 9:33am. But we had no clue which gate we needed to be at, so let's look at our tickets. Hmmm...my ticket doesn't say what gate but it does have a flight number. Me to DH "does your ticket say anything?". DH "what ticket"? Oh no, remember Miss Rude-y pants? She printed off my second ticked and didn't give DH him. Off to guest services we go. We explained the whole situation to the lady there and she kindly printed off DH's ticked, apologized on behalf of the airlines, and took down the lady's name promising to do something about it.
Next stop breakfast! DH wanted McDonald's for breakfast (ick) so I ran off and found a bagel shop where I had a delicious bagel and OJ. Boarding went okay with the second flight (we had seats and they were even next to each other). We push off from the gate a little early and the captain announces the plane should land early. The plane taxis out onto the runway and joins the long line for take-off. Once we finally get to be second in line the plane shuts off. "This is your captain speaking. One of the main valves needed for takeoff is not functioning so we are going to pull aside and troubleshoot it". Okay fine, easy fix , right? Ohhhh noooo, "we can't seem to get if fixed. We are going to have to return to the gate and have the mechanic come and take a look at it. It should only take about 15-20 minutes then we will be on our way". Sounds good right? Better safe than sorry! TWO HOURS LATER we are still sitting at the gate with a plane full of very UNHAPPY people. All in all, the plane finally gets fixed, we take off, and we land in Orlando round 3pm (original arrival time was supposed to be 1pm).
I'm sorry you had such a rough go of it with flights. Gate agents can be so rude! I can't think of any other customer service jobs where you can do that and not be fired immediately, go figure!
Oh gosh, what an ordeal! Never understand rude people - especially in customer service positions. Not saying you have to be overly friendly but at least be courteous. Who knows, maybe something awful happened to her that morning and normally she is lovely.
And sucks about the plane. In some ways lucky you got to stay on the plane - normally if on plane for 2 hours they make you Dr-board, and then the fun can really begin
I left you guys with us FINALLY touching the ground at MCO. After we de-planed, we rode the fake-o-rail back to the main building and started the escapade to DME. It really wasn't that hard to get to but it just seemed so far from our arrival gate. Next thing we knew we were standing next to this beauty:
Since our flight arrived 2 hours later than originally planned we had just missed a bus. Another couple from our flight had the same problem. The cast members there said it would be another hour before a bus would leave to CSR but due to our flight problems they were attempting to get permission from their supervisor to re-route one of the other buses. Next thing we knew, the supervisor came over and said that there were a few seats left on the Animal Kingdom Lodge/Pop Century bus and not only were they going to make a pit stop at CSR but they were going to go there first so we were allowed to board first. Talk about major Pixie Dust! So we boarded the bus and we were finally on our way to Disney property. I found a hidden Mickey on the bus....see if you can spot it:
It wasn't too long before we were rolling through the wonderful gate ....
Then we were greeted with this magnificent sign sign and those glorious words "Welcome Home"
I had already completed online check-in and I'm really glad that I did because the registration area was jam packed but there was no line for the online check-in counter. My folder was already sitting on the counter and all the CM had to do was make a few clicks on the computer, explain the info in the packet, and hand us our KTTW and buttons. It took less than 5 minutes and we were on our way to our room!
I had requested a King room in the Cabanas section on the ground floor with no preference on view. We ended up with a King Room in Cabanas 9A with a view of the garden area and lagoon. It was perfect! We were about a five minute walk from the main building and bus stop one but we were also about a five minute walk from bus stop four. So when we wanted to go back to our room we would get off at bus stop four because it came first but it was no stretch to get off at bus stop one if we needed to stop by Café Rix for drinks/snacks/whatever as it was the same distance away. The Cabanas quiet pool was only steps away (it literally took less than 30 seconds to get there). I never went to the main pool but DH said it took about 7 minutes to get there. So all-in-all I felt like it was one of the best locations in the resort! I have tons of pictures of CSR and our room so I am going to do an entire post of them right after this one.
We arrived in our room right around 4:15pm and, according to my super thought-out itinerary we needed to be leaving by 4:45pm. Originally I had left plenty of time to explore the resort but with the whole plane debacle, we only had time to take quick showers and change out of our travel clothes. We walked over to bus stop 4 because according to the map it looked like the closest and as we were walking up, the Downtown Disney bus pulled in. We hopped on and were at DTD in about 15 minutes. That left a little time to browse through a couple stores but not really enough time to buy anything because the check-out lines were so long. We had a dinner ADR at Raglan Road at 6:20pm. I have gone to RR to listen to the band, watch the dancers, and have drinks before but never to eat so I was pleasantly surprised by how great the food was!
We were seated immediately even though we checked in about 10 minutes before our ressie. They immediately started us off with drinks and the wonderful bread. I don't remember exactly what each of us had to drink but we both enjoyed it. At this time we remembered that we entirely forgot to eat lunch and we were thankful we had the deluxe dining plan because we were starving. For appetizers I got the Heaven on Earth (Guinness glazed ribs) and they were fantastic! DH got the Kiss Before Shrimp which he had down in like 2 minutes. He said they definitely made the top 3 in the best shrimp he has ever had. For an entrée I got the Serious Steak (sirloin with whiskey marmalade glaze, mashed potatoes, and grilled onions). I don't usually get steaks when we go out because I am very very picky on how it is cooked but this steak was so delicious and I would definitely get it again. DH got the Heavenly Ham which he also enjoyed but he wasn't over the moon about it. For dessert, I had the Strawberry and Apple Crumble. At this point I was completely stuffed but it was so good that I made sure to squeeze in every last bite. DH got the Dundon's Delight (raspberry pavlova with ice cream) which he was very satisfied with. Of course, throughout our meal we got to watch the River Dancers and the band. The band for the night was Creel (we saw them on our last trip and they are very good). Tiggersally even has their CD!
With our bellies stuffed we debated on what to do for the rest of the evening. We were exhausted from traveling but here we were on Disney property and we haven't stepped foot in a park yet. I absolutely refused to go to bed without at least seeing one park. So, we hopped on a bus to the Contemporary and walked on over to MK because MK was having EMH until 1am. We got there right as Wishes was starting which was excellent timing because we were able to weave through the crowd and walk right onto Space Mountain. By the time we were done with that, Wishes was over and the crowd had dispersed. Unfortunately, the line for Buzz was over an hour so we decided to push it off until another day. We ran across the park quickly before the electrical parade could start and we walked right onto POTC. Sadly it broke down right in the spot where they are auctioning off the women so we listened to that on repeat for about 20 minutes until the CM's kindly decided to shut down the sound for the ride. It took about another 10 minutes to get us going again. At this point it was about 10:30 and we were just so exhausted so we decided to get on the bus and head on back to CSR. Our bus was waiting for us at the bus station like it knew we were coming or something . By the time we made it back to our room it was 11:30. I did some quick unpacking and we hit the pillows! After the whole traveling mess, it really was a good first glimpse at Disney!
Through these sliding doors the bathroom is on the right and the closet area is on the left....too bad those sliding doors never shut all the way so when I was getting ready in the morning the lights were shining in DH's eyes
Sink area...
Bathroom (it was a little small for our liking)
Overall impression of CSR:
Positives
1. DH enjoyed the ceiling fan since he always sleeps with a fan at home
2. Cabanas 9A was the perfect location
3. The room size was nice, especially for a moderate
4. The multitude of bars with different types of drinks was nice
5. Multiple mirrors in the room (3) made it easier for me to get ready in the morning
6. No problems with buses!
7. Plenty of outlets around the room for charging our various devices
8. Decent amount of storage space for clothing, luggage, etc.
9. Operational mini fridge
Negatives
1. Too large of a property
2. The food choices were lacking and what was available was not very good
3. Due to DH having the fan on at night, I would have preferred an actual comforter or bedspread instead of the light blanket that was available
4. We used room service one night for pizza and a frozen pizza would have tasted better (I'm pretty sure we ate cardboard)
5. The order of the bus stops was random and never in the same order
6. Mousekeeping didn't typically come until 5pm and one day they never came at all (it has always been earlier)
All-in-all it was okay, but I don't know that we will stay there again. Wilderness Lodge is still my favorite with AKL and POFQ cutting it close with each other for second. DH wasn't impressed with CSR at all
I left you off with us finally making it to bed on our first official night in Disney. Now it's Monday October 14th. My alarm went off at 6:15 and I jumped right out of bed. I let DH sleep a little while I took a shower and got ready. Around 6:45 I made him get up and get ready because I had a goal of leaving the room at 7 (I think we actually left a few minutes after). We went to El Centro so we could grab breakfast at Pepper Market. Boy was that a different experience...
You are seated by a hostess. A waiter/waitress gets your drinks for you and then they hand each person in your party a card. You then take that card to the station in which you want to get food and they stamp it. In the end the waiter/waitress then takes this card to the computer to sum up your bill. It is actually kind of creative, the only downfall is they give you a couple of examples of what qualifies for the meal plan but there truly is no way of knowing. DH got a breakfast casserole and sausage. He said it was okay but he would rather have had something else. I had biscuits/gravy, potatoes O'Brien, and bacon. It was good but nothing special. Our overall impression of Pepper Market is that the staff is kind of slow and most of them were rude. There are a lot of choices; however, it is very confusing if you have a dining plan.
We finished our breakfast in like 20 minutes so we decided to stop by Café Rix and pick up our refillable mugs since we hadn't found time to do that yet. I can't complain too much because they were included in our DP but boy has the size of the mugs decreased over the years. Not only have they gotten smaller, but the prices have increased. On our last trip they were $14.00 and the trip before that they were $12.00. Now, if you want to use them for the entire LOS they are $17.99. Crazy! And, I don't know if it was just CSR, but there are no longer many choices for drinks either. The new RFID thing is annoying to. If you don't set the cup down on the machine just right, it won't read and therefore you can't dispense any drinks. We didn't end up using ours very much because we were so disappointed in them.
After filling up our mugs we took them back to the room and put them in the fridge for later. We then walked on over to bus stop 4 with the goal of hopping on a bus for DHS and making the 9:00 rope drop. Sure enough, as we were walking up, a DHS bus pulled up. When we got to HS we were happily surprised to see that we were the third party in line behind the rope. Here we are waiting for rope drop!
They let us into the park about 8:45am and we stuck to my plan of avoiding the mass chaos that would be sprinting to TSM and just calmly walk to RNR. We were the first in line there and even scored FPs. After that we headed over to ToT where we also walked right on. DH hadn't been on Star Wars since they made the updates several years back so we went there next and also walked right on. Then we went just to check on TSM. We had made a deal that if the line was 60min or less we would get in line. Well, no such luck, it was 95 minutes and there were no FP's left. Maybe next time! It was then time for our RNR FPs so we headed back over there. After making it to the concert on time in our super stretch limo, DH wanted to do Backlot Tours. When I was young I used to hate that ride because I didn't like the part with the semi catching on fire so I haven't been on it for several years. I faced my fears and we walked right into that one as well. Here is an image from the scene I don't like....
After learning about the making of movies, DH started begging me to do the Muppets which I found odd because I didn't think he would want to do any shows so I had planned on bypassing them all. Oh well, I haven't been to the Muppets since I was very young so off we went. After the Muppets we decided that we were pretty well done with DHS. It was getting crowded and we had hit everything we wanted to hit. We stopped by one of the snack stands and used our first snack credits of the trip to get something to drink.
The next item on our agenda was the Food and Wine festival and what better way to get there than by boat. Next thing we knew we were seeing these colorful banners:
It was about 11:30 at that time and given breakfast didn't woo us, we were ready for some lunch. I had planned on using snack credits at several of the booths but given that it was a holiday (Columbus day), the lines were crazy. DH and I both really like Mexican food so we decided on La Cantina de San Angel. DH had tacos and churros which he rated an A++ and I had nachos and churros which were both very good as well. Since we were in Mexico I had to introduce DH to La Cava de Tequila. He got a blood orange margarita and I got a pineapple margarita!
After that we walked around the WS stopping in Germany to pick up some fresh made caramel corn so we could have something to snack on in the room. After that, it was hot and crowded so we decided to head back to the CSR so we could explore the resort some. We stopped by the Panchitos to browse around and then we hit up the Laguna Bar for a couple of drinks before roaming around the resort. After seeing the Dig Site pool, DH wanted to go swimming so while he did that, I took a nice little nap. After swimming/nap time, we showered and changed before getting on the bus back to Epcot at 4:45pm. We had a 6:00pm ADR at Chefs de France.
DH had French onion soup for an app which he said was mostly melted cheese. I had the cheese sampler which was good except for the bleu cheese (ick)
For main dishes, I had the macaroni and it was fantastic! DH had the seared scallops and shrimp and he was not impressed at all. For dessert, I had the fresh strawberry cream cake and it was wonderful. DH had puff choux which he didn't like at all. Then this little guy came to visit
Overall, DH was not the least bit impressed with Chefs de France but I thought it was okay. Will we go again? Probably not. The restaurant was bit too crowded and the service was a bit too slow (it took us 2.5 hours to complete our meal). The French bread was good but I will agree with DH in that the food was bland. We did like the special little touch they added to our dessert
After dinner, we had originally planned on hitting EMH at DHS which was from 7:30pm-9:30pm; however, being that dinner took so long and DH wasn't feeling too hot, we decided to skip on that. DH went back to CSR for some time in the hot tub and to get to bed early. I went on to DTD to get my shopping out of the way (several family members requested gifts from Disney for Christmas). I made it back to the room around 11 and crashed after that!
Next Up: Magic Kingdom day and some more new experiences!
I'm here! I stayed at Coronado for my last trip and we too had issues with Mousekeeping. We usually left for the parks for rope drop every morning and then came back to the hotel around 2-3 in the afternoon to nap or spend some time at the pool and get ready for dinner. There was not a single day our room had been made up prior to 2 or 3 other than on the day we checked in. It was very frustrating because as soon as I would fall asleep, Mousekeeping would be at our door.
I have done the deluxe dining plan every time I have gone and I LOVE it. Although I'm not sure its as good as of a value as it once was with the price increases, I have never regretted it!
I'm glad we aren't the only ones who had problems with mousekeeping. We too would come back around 2-3 in the afternoon and leave again around 4:30-5. Either we would be taking a nap or trying to shower and get out the door for a dinner ADR every time they would come. It was quite frustrating! We enjoyed the deluxe dining but we were definitely stuffed by the end of the week.
Hello everyone, hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I left off with us crawling in to bed after an eventful day at DHS, Food and Wine Festival, and DTD. So that brings us to Day 4, Tuesday October 15th.....My alarm went off at 6:15am....again! I got up, took a shower/got ready, and woke DH up at 6:45am. Sound familiar? I am kind of one that develops a routine and sticks to it. Even though we were unsatisfied with Pepper Market the day prior, we decided to give it another chance and went there for breakfast at 7. DH had a breakfast burrito (he said he would have preferred a frozen one from Walmart) and I had French toast (it was actually pretty good but nothing special). We still stand our ground with the slow/unfriendly staff and still felt like we were constantly asking "is this a choice on the deluxe dining plan?". After we finished our not-so-magical breakfast we stopped by Café Rix to fill up our mugs. Then we went back to the room to throw our mugs in the fridge and continue on to bus stop number 4. Our luck with buses continued, as soon as we walked up a MK bus appeared.
We made it to rope drop at MK but, unfortunately we were unable to actually watch the rope drop ceremony. Why, may you ask? We were first in line We arrived to the park around 8:15 and rope drop was scheduled for 9. The rope drop ceremony actually started around 8:50 and we were let into the park around 8:55. I didn't mind the wait though because we got to look at some of the awesome fall decorations that MK had up:
Once we got in we headed straight over to Splash only to find that there was no water in the ride at all . CM's were standing in front of the queue and told us that Splash was broken and they were unsure if it would be fixed anytime soon. With our hopes and dreams of riding Splash first crushed, we headed on over to the next best thing, BTMRR. Of course, we walked right on and actually got front row seats. When we got off, Splash was still not working and there were a lot of confused people running around Frontierland. You could tell that a lot of people had planned on doing Splash first thing in the morning. We continued on to the Haunted Mansion. DH had never rode it before and he really liked it. I actually wish there would have been a line so that we could play around in the interactive queue. It looked so cool! At this time it was getting close 10:00 and I wanted to start heading in the direction of Fantasyland since I had a certain goal in mind for lunch. We walked straight on Small World and then we experienced the new Little Mermaid ride.
Since we made it through those rides so quickly we decided that we had time to run over to Tomorrowland. The wait for Space Mountain was 65 minutes so we decided to skip it for the time being (remember, we had already been on it Sunday evening during EMH). We headed on over to Buzz because we were ready for a little competition. Sadly I lost, big time but there is no time to be sad when you are in Disney. We decided it was time to head back to Fantasyland but not without stopping and making ourselves so dizzy we could barely walk on the teacups. It was 10:45 at this time and I knew if I had any chance at eating where I wanted to for lunch, we had to hop in line ASAP. Can anyone guess where I so badly wanted to eat? Be Our Guest of course! When I was unable to secure a dinner ADR there, I made it my sole mission of the trip to eat lunch there. When we got in line it was over the bridge and had curved around and was halfway over the main bridge. From our position in line:
The CM managing the line said it would be about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes which was far less than I had planned so we stood our ground. They opened the restaurant at 11 and we were in the door by 11:10! First we received our rose and ordered on the fancy little computers.
Then we went and found a table, picked up our drinks, and grabbed silverware. I left the table to take a few quick pictures and when I came back, our food was there. DH had the Carved Prime Chuck Roast Beef Sandwich with fries while I had the Carved Turkey Sandwich also with fries. We were both very impressed. Not only were the sandwiches delicious, the portion sizes were generous. For dessert we both had the Strawberry Cream
Cheese cupcake which was out of this world. Overall, of course the theming was over the top, the food was delicious, and the staff was wonderful. We will definitely be returning. Here are some pictures of the restaurant, food, etc.
Next Up: The rest of our day at MK and a very impressive dinner experience
Welcome back! I left off with us finishing up a delicious lunch at Be Our Guest. We decided to see if luck was shining in our favor and head back to Frontierland to check on Splash. Guess what? There was water running again and the CMs said it was due to open in 5 minutes so we could start forming a line (could our timing have been any better?). We ended up being about 15 people back but got on pretty quickly. Since we were soaked, I didnt want to head straight for the freezing buses although we were nearing our 1:30pm leaving deadline. We decided that since POTC was ruined for us earlier in the week because the ride got stuck and they shut the sound off, we needed to give it another try. This time we had no problems! Still not completely dry I decided that maybe we should do some shopping on Main Street. Once we reached Main Street the parade was winding through so we stopped and watched it for a while. I think all we ended up buying was some candy and a few kitchen items for home. We left the park and immediately saw a CSR bus pull up so, yes, we were those idiots that took off at a full sprint for the bus even though we know another one will be there in 20 minutes. We were running late enough as it was being that it was now 2pm. We got back to our room and found this cute little gift from my parents! The bottom part is even insulated so you could use it to keep items cold. There was also cookies, popcorn, and a wine glass inside! It actually came in handy because it was padded on the inside so we put a lot of our breakable purchases in it and I made DH carry it as his man-purse in addition to his carry-on for the flights home (as you may guess, he was super thrilled about that one ).
After oohing and ahhing over our gift and sending out the appropriate thank you texts we took turns showering and getting ready because we had a luau to attend. I had booked the 5:15pm show and it said to be there around 45 minutes early. We left CSR at 3:15 and took a bus to MK. My original plan was to take the monorail over to Poly; however, the resort loop monorail was closed from 11am-6pm all week during our stay. So, we went with plan B and took a nice, slow, relaxing boat ride over to the Poly. We stopped at the GF first and got to see the DVC unit up close! Outside construction is done and it looks like it was built right along with the rest of the resort. We made it to Poly at around 4pm which still gave us about a half an hour to spare. So what do two young adults do when they have time to pass? We hit up the nearest resort bar which in this case was the Tambu Lounge. DH got some form of a specialty Long Island Iced Tea while I of course had to get the Lapu Lapu just so I could get this:
After we finished our tasty drinks we followed the trail back to Luau Cove where we received our leis and got our picture taken. With the dxDP we were able to reserve category 2 or 3 seating. I picked 2 of course and we ended up on the far side of the stage but in the very front which was very nice. I will post SOME of the photos at the end of this post (I took a ton and I don't want to ruin the show for anyone who may be planning to do it in the future). We started off with wine which was included in the DP then the pineapple coconut bread which was FANTASTIC. DH refused to eat it because of the coconut (Oh well, more for me, right?). The salad was fantastic and we both enjoyed the pulled pork and ribs. I especially liked the rice but DH no longer eats rice after his Army days. Overall, we thought the luau was entertaining (not cheesy like some people say). We had excellent seats. The food was very delicious and the staff was over-the-top friendly. We had an absolute blast and it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.
The show ended around 7:30 at which point we hopped on the monorail back to MK. We were stuffed and exhausted so we just got on a bus back to CSR. Even though he stated he was stuffed, DH just had to stop by Café Rix and get some gelato. I, however, could not fit another ounce of food in. After that we went back to the room and crashed. Another wonderful Disney day in the books!
Photos of the Luau!
The view from our table
The conch shell dance (I forget which island we were representing here)
A beautiful dance....
The fire dancer was amazing....
Next Up: Day 5....where would we go? What would we do?
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Oh, and I want to hear about the food! 
) and early Sunday morning. Well, it went off at 3:30am which is the same time I get up for work so I handled it pretty well. DH on the other hand looked at me like I was crazy, rolled over, and went right back to sleep. Meanwhile, I had no problem jumping in the shower and getting ready for the day because WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!! After I was ready I finally convinced DH to get out of bed as it was 4:15 and we needed to be leaving by 4:30. He took a quick shower, threw on his clothes, and we were out the door. Unfortunately being as early as it was, the final bill was not slipped under the door so I had to deal with the front desk a bit before leaving. We drove the 5 minutes to the airport (leaving the hotel was much easier than getting there) while arguing over which lot we were going to park in. DH of course wanted a covered lot to protect his beloved baby and I of course argued that I wanted to bring my Escape for that exact reason so therefore I am not paying twice as much just to park in a garage. I won that argument 
and before you know it we were parked in lot B and boarding the shuttle to the airport. St. Louis Airport actually doesn't have that bad of parking prices. Lot B was $10/day. 
we are still sitting at the gate with a plane full of very UNHAPPY people. All in all, the plane finally gets fixed, we take off, and we land in Orlando round 3pm (original arrival time was supposed to be 1pm). 
....
. By the time we made it back to our room it was 11:30. I did some quick unpacking and we hit the pillows! After the whole traveling mess, it really was a good first glimpse at Disney!
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. Here we are waiting for rope drop!
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Waiting on the Boma and Cali grill reviews...
