Ride all the Things! A May 2015 TR

[marchingstar]

S.:

Hi everyone! I’ve wanted to work on a trip report for a while now, and I’m so excited to be sharing some of our most recent trip with you all! Some of you might have seen me poking around the dining threads (@marchingstar ), which is where I spend most of my time on the DISboards. Like M., I spend my days as a PhD student and for the past few years I’ve always had a WDW trip to look forward to and plan. I *love* the planning that goes into a WDW trip, especially when it comes to meal planning, and this trip is no exception--as you’ll see, dining was a big part of this trip (as usual)!

So a bit about me: I’ll be going by S. in this report. I’m Canadian, 26, and female. I grew up going on Disneyland trips as a kid, and my first trip to WDW was with M.’s family for Christmas 2011/New Years 2012. M. and I have been dating for 7 years, and we’re pretty close with her family. I was completely bit by the WDW bug! and since that trip we’ve been back a couple times (August 2014, May 2015, and an upcoming trip in November 2015! I’m hooked!).


Some favourites:

Movies: The Rescuers, Toy Story (lots of Pixar, really)

Rides/Attractions: I’m a sucker for shows! Some favourites are Fantasmic!, the Main Street Electrical Parade (side note: I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to return to WDW until one night M. found a video of the MSEP. It made me cry. The next day we had our dates booked!), and Finding Nemo the Musical. I’ve been on a quest to see Captain EO (spoiler alert: it was closed again this May. 3 trips and I have yet to see it! I’m really hoping it works out in November). As far as rides go, I love Splash Mountain and Haunted Mansion.

Restaurants: I’m a sucker for amazing theming. It’s one reason I like BOG dinner much better than lunch (lunch is too chaotic and rushed to enjoy the restaurant in my opinion). Going into this trip some favs included Crystal Palace and Hollywood Brown Derby (and we’ll see how things changed after this visit!). I’m so excited to tell you all about our trip (and probably a bit about our upcoming visit, although I’ll try to keep focused).


M.:

Hi fellow Disers! I’m probably lesser known here on the boards than my counterpart, because I tend to be pretty shy about posting and stick to liking basically all the things (I'm @experiment625 ). But I’ve gained a lot of insight from others’ trip reports, and I’m excited to be giving writing one a shot!


So I’ll be going by M. on this report. I’m a 27 year old woman from Canada. By day I am a PhD student in English, and by night I’m a Disney fanatic! Although I loved Disney World as a kid, I definitely fell in love with it all over again as an adult. S. and I went together for the first time with my family at Christmas in 2011-2012 (staying at the Contemporary); since then, the two of us have gone together twice more, once in August 2014 (staying at Port Orleans Riverside), and in May 2015--the trip that’s the topic of this report! We also have an upcoming trip this November that may be our last one before having kids of our own--here’s hoping the future little ones are Disney and WDW fans!


My favourite Disney movie is definitely Lilo and Stitch, though I’m also a huge fan of Beauty and the Beast, Brave, and Enchanted. WDW-wise, I (like S.) really get into and enjoy planning. Once we’re there, my favourite ride is definitely the Tower of Terror, though I also have huge soft spots for Splash Mountain, the Country Bear Jamboree, and Festival of the Lion King. I also have a bit of an addiction to shopping at Disney, which I’m sure you’ll get a sense of… I am also a HUGE Harry Potter fan, so our trips always involve a split-stay at Universal.


I’m not as much of a master of dining as S., but I do love eating at WDW; like Samantha, I’m a fan of Be Our Guest dinners (especially now, given the amazing and wonderful surprise she pulled that you’ll read all about in this report!) I also love fun theming in restaurants, so several of the table-service options at Hollywood Studios (50s Prime Time and Sci-Fi Diner) are faves of mine.




In May 2015 we spent the 2nd to the 10th at WDW (staying at Coronado Springs Resort in Business Class) and the 11th to the 13th at Universal (staying at the Hard Rock Hotel). I think we’re going to start this report with a bit about planning (because we both so enjoy the planning, we spent a lot of time figuring out dates, hotels, restaurant meals, etc.) and then jump right into our days in the parks! I hope this is useful/funny/informative/enjoyable as a read!

 

[experiment625]

Thanks for joining us again, especially now that our trip report is really beginning! We’re going to dive right in, I think, and make some comments about our planning process throughout rather than trying to separate those things too much.


Alright, so we left for our second Disney trip in two years on May 2. We had the distinct delight this year of taking a direct flight. From our hometown in Western Canada, this is very rare (there’s one airline that has maybe two direct flights per week--totally elusive!), and after being held up nearly five hours in the Houston airport on our last Disney vacation, we were SO EXCITED! (Even writing this now as we look toward our upcoming trip in November, I’m jealous of our past selves; the direct flight is way too expensive this time around, especially with the Canadian Dollar tanking and making the rest of the trip so expensive!). Even flying direct, we were looking at about 7 hours of air travel. We got to the airport early and started in on our dining adventures right away! I think our food choices tell you something important about us: Here’s M., with a sensible breakfast of eggs, toast, and other breakfast things:

(They were delicious, if standard, BTW.) Even at the (very) early hour, S. went for the tastiest menu item:

Why not eat a plate of tasty, salty chicken wings right before a long flight? The flight itself was wonderful, for being direct, but pretty uneventful. The real excitement started when we saw these signs.

A short 10 hours after we left our house, Mickey was ready to get us on our way to Coronado Springs! Hector was our driver on the Magical Express, and we greatly enjoyed his wonderful company and the relaxing trip to our home resort, Coronado Springs. We haven’t explained the process (let me tell you briefly, in thecourse of planning this trip we moved from POP to ASSp, then we considered a split stay between ASSp and CBR, then ASSp and Poly, then a cancelled trip. Then we rebooked at ASSp, then we changed to CSR. Whew!) I realize that list makes us sound super high maintenance! And I’m sure the folks at Disney got sick of hearing from us, but what we wanted out of this trip really kind of evolved as time went on, and with it, so did what we wanted and valued most in the resort we chose.


Finally, at the last minute, S got a promotion at work, and we upgraded our resort to a business class room at CSR. And it was totally worth it, for the luxurious king sized bed and afternoon drinks! Here’s what we found waiting for us after a long travel day.

We got to our room and enjoyed looking around--but why spend a night in a hotel room when there’s a park open still!? We took a photo or two and then found the bus stop right away (for those considering business class at CBR, the bus stops are really convenient! I think some people would find them worth the extra cost alone). Next stop, Magic Kingdom! We arrived to find one of S.’s favourite nighttime events!:

For our first ride, we went with a mutual fave, Haunted Mansion. Other than a brief break-down, it was a wonderful “welcome home” to WDW (and it’s becoming a nice traditional first ride for us)! By then, though, we were realizing that our mutual enthusiasm at arriving early enough to visit a park on our first day had led to our neglecting to eat, so we decided to scope out some meal options. This was when we learned an important lesson that, despite being two reasonably well-informed WDW vets, neither of us were aware of: restaurants in the park close from back to front. So our first choice, Columbia Harbour House, was already closed. We ended up having a nice meal at Pinocchio’s while watching happy folks on it’s a small world. (we split chicken nuggets and fries and a caprese flatbread--both were pretty tasty! Nothing like the first bites at Disney!)

After this, we had a fastpass for Wishes, and we had been looking forward to seeing if reports that the FP+ areas were being overcrowded were proving correct. However, checking in with each other at this point turned out to be a great decision. It turned out that despite the fact that Wishes ranks among M’s favourite shows, neither of us particularly felt like sitting/standing still after spending so long on a plane. So we decided to use the opportunity to head to Splash Mountain, another shared favourite. Usually I think it’s a great idea to sneak in on popular rides during parades and fireworks--only problem was on this particular night, Splash broke down. Like, major breakdown. We sat for nearly 20 minutes in our log, and here you can catch just a glimpse of the backlog (hah!) of ride vehicles. The really unfortunate part was once the ride got going, the lights, sound, and water cannons weren’t working properly. You know the dark parts? Let me tell you, they’re much less interesting in the light.
One part I remember very clearly: there’s a turtle ‘floating’ on a small water jet--imagine that at full pressure. It left us drenched. This was also, though we didn’t know it then, a kind of foreshadowing of our luck with Splash on this trip. But more on that later!

After sitting on Splash for a good while, we headed over to SDMT to use up a fastpass. We rode this ride last summer, and found it a bit underwhelming, but M. heard it’s more fun at nighttime, and since we could snag FP+s, we gave it a try. We both really liked it at night! The swinging motion felt much more noticeable, and the transition from inside to outside (and then back in) felt a bit nicer.At this point we were both feeling a bit theme-parked out, so we decided to hit the shops before heading back to the bus. This trip was partly to celebrate M.’s birthday (she turned a ripe 27 the week before our trip ((HEY!))) and S. knew a WDW Pandora bracelet and a charm would be a perfect present. The Pandora section of the Main Street Emporium was busy, and we waited a while to talk to a CM, but the store was well stocked, and we didn’t note any park-exclusive charms out of stock. M. went with the exclusive bracelet and the sorcerer’s hat charm (partly in memory of the HS hat--RIP hat!). Although the CM helping us did note that the hat isn’t supposed to be the HS hat, but sorcerer Mickey’s hat more generally. So the disappearance of the HS Hat didn’t necessarily mean the charm would disappear (and as far as I know, it hasn’t yet?). After our shopping, we caught a bus back to our lovely home for the next 10 days. Those of you who were in the world right at the beginning of May might remember that was prime cheerleader time, and we did find the buses busier with larger crowds of cheerleaders. But they were actually really considerate and polite (contrary to some opinions we saw in advance on the DIS). We still made it on the first bus back to CSR and headed to a good nights’ sleep (which we needed for an early morning the next day!)

So that's all for our first day. Day 2, our first full day at MK, is up next. Highlights include pre rope-drop CP, 2 meals at BOG, the only day where Splash was fully functional, and hundreds of birthday Wishes! Stay tuned!

 

[marchingstar]

hi friends! I just wanted to stop in and say we're having a great time writing this report. I hope it's even half as fun to read! if you have comments/thoughts, please let us know. reading others trip reports has always helped with planning our trips (and when I've been longing for Disney too!), and I hope our report can be helpful/interesting/entertaining for you too

 

[luckylady]

Wow after a early morning you did a lot when you got too the park. Ten days nice trip can't wait for more.