gregf71
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2012
The latter half of 2014 and beginning of 2015 was a tough year for our family. The details are not important, but suffice it to say, we needed to bring the fun back into our lives and go a little nuts! What started out simply as a plan for a return visit to Disney World in December 2015 morphed into what we called the “Year of Fun!”
It all started back in July 2015, when our adventurers, myself Greg (44), my wife Lisa (40) and our daughter Hailey (10), San Diego residents, plunked down our Disney Visa to purchase our Premier Disney annual passes. Ouch, that one sure stung, but it was going to be worth every penny! You see, earlier on, we crunched the numbers and realized that the cost of these super passes, good for both Disneyland and Disney World, including all of the benefits thereof, actually saved us money overall given our want to renew our Disneyland passes coupled with our plans for WDW in December; plus it opened the doors for a lot of fun, including something from my bucket list!
Summer 2015 rolled on…in August, my daughter and I enjoyed a short staycation in San Diego; three awesome days of mini-golf & bumper boats, a special behind the scenes tour at SeaWorld San Diego, and a bowling alley virtually all to ourselves! The capper on all of it?! Three days at Disneyland, including our very first visit to D23…which was AMAZING! While I got to meet some of my favorite Disney podcasters (*cough* *cough* from the DIS!), our daughter met and got a picture with Zendaya and the cast of KC Undercover!
But wait! There’s more! September and October took me to Las Vegas twice; once escorting my mom out for a little vacation and then secondly to honor my beautiful wife’s 40th birthday (image from La Reve at the Wynn below)! Two very different Vegas experiences, let me tell you! Add my birthday (when I scampered up to Disneyland for the Mahaloween Luau at Trader Sam’s!) and our 14th wedding anniversary to the October calendar and we had one heck of an awesome month!
November was basically the chill month…that is, until that fateful day of November 7th when…our first ever MagicBands arrived! Cue the angelic trumpets and singing!!! Had it not been for the Turkey & Stuffing Seasoned Kettle Chips from Trader Joes debuting a week later, these little beauties would have been the #1 highlight! Hmmm….turkey and stuffing kettle chips….hmmm….sorry, lost it there for a second. Anyway…November! A pre-Thanksgiving jaunt up to Julian for apple cider and apple dumplings and a post-Thanksgiving trek up to Solvang perfectly brought us into the Holiday Season.
Finally…December! The Disney World trip that we had been planning for over a year had arrived! We had a wonderful trip and for the first time ever actually wandered off property for DISapalooza and Diagon Alley! Yes, Hailey, there is a world outside of Disney. For details, see our trip report.
Bucket List time! Having Disneyland annual passes for several years, we always had the ones with blackout dates, specifically around New Years. Well not this year!!! I had always wanted to ring in the New Year at Disneyland and this year we had that chance! The crowds were monstrous, the late night weather chilly (and sadly a tad too windy for fireworks), but we survived and sang and hugged one another to 12am on January 1, 2016! Will we ever do it again? HECK NO! That was crazy!
January brought some unexpected business travel to Boston, which I had never visited before. What a magnificent city and people…oh, and the food! I must return someday as a pure tourist. And this segues perfectly to this trip report. I know, I sure took a long time to get here. Oh wait…did I forget to mention the return of the Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival?! Oh, that made April awesome! And let’s not forget our baby girl turning double digits, seeing The Cure live in concert, rescuing a little puppy from the middle of the 15 freeway (he was adopted by a great family by the way), feasting at the SeaWorld San Diego Seven Seas Food Festival, and spending Father’s Day at the San Diego County Fair! Geez, I am getting tired just typing this all up.
Anyway, we now arrive to June 2016. As it turned out, an annual conference that I regularly attend for work just so happened to be in Orlando this year. Back in January, when I was starting to make my travel plans, an email popped into my Inbox from my dad and his wife. “We have timeshare points that we need to use or lose. Anyone interested?” Um yes please! Do you have anything available in Orlando in, oh I don’t know, late June? You do?! Well how convenient! Fate, as it were, suddenly shined upon us…and the dominoes started to fall into place! The timeshare they could book for us just so happened to be one of the conference hotels! And my dad’s wife’s daughter, who I have known since elementary school, an employee of SeaWorld San Diego, could hook us up with free tickets to SeaWorld Orlando…AND serious discounts for Discovery Cove! Hmmm…we have a week in Orlando after the conference…what else could we do? Oh I don’t know…Universal!!! And let’s not forget that we still have our active Premier Disney annual passes! Bonus value! We really had no choice!
So here was the plan:
· Day 1 – Fly from San Diego to Orlando with dinner in the Magic Kingdom
· Day 2 – Animal Kingdom (with me showing up after my conference duties were completed)
· Day 3 – Epcot (again with me showing up in the late afternoon)
· Day 4 – Magic Kingdom
· Day 5 – Universal Islands of Adventure
· Day 6 – Universal Studios
· Day 7 – Discovery Cove
· Day 8 – SeaWorld
· Day 9 – Epcot
· Day 10 – Fly home
Now, keep in mind, something like this was completely new to us. We have visited Orlando several times in the past, but for the very first time we were not staying at a Disney resort, we expanded our horizons outside of Disney property, and we rented a car and battling the Orlando motorways ourselves! How exciting and scary at the same time!
Everybody ready?! Here we go!
Day 1 – Travel Day & Be Our Guest
Up early for our morning flight, since we would be effectively losing 3 hours with the cross country trip, our ride delivered us to the airport. Checked in and through security fairly quickly (better than we thought it would be actually), we found ourselves sitting in the terminal with a lot of time on our hands…along with a highly energetic co-ed high school rugby team. Methinks we planned the morning arrival to the airport a little too conservatively, but hey, better to be there early than late. Eventually boarding time arrived! Another first for us…our flight was direct between San Diego and Orlando; at roughly 4 hours and 30 minutes of flight time, it significantly reduced the overall travel time that we endured in the past by connecting through another city. Boy, was it awesome! That said, it was the longest flight that our daughter has undergone thus far and she did get a tad squirrely. “You want to go to Disneyland Paris someday, right,” I asked her. “This is nothing compared to that,” I said with a smile. Needless to say, we kept her entertained and truly the time seemed to “fly” by.
We landed in Orlando a few minutes early, around 530pm, exited the plane, hit the bathrooms of course, and then jumped into the monorail to the airport center. As we followed the signs to Baggage Claim, my wife made a sad little noise and pointed towards the Disney Magical Express sign. Another first…no magical Disney bus wide to our resort…sigh. Luggage successfully claimed, we made our way over to the rental car desks. The very nice Enterprise Car Rental (booked through Costco.com) representative quickly took care of us and the next thing we know we are leaving the air-conditioned bliss of the airport and ramming head on into the Orlando heat and humidity of summer…not a first for my wife and I, but it was a bit of a shock for our daughter, who had never experienced weather like this before. Truth is, I called it somewhat mild. Hey kiddo…we get this for 9 more days! She rolled her eyes.
The rental car structure is immediately across the street from the airport terminal. We made our way across, took a quick right and met another Enterprise rep who was ready to help us select a car. Having booked a full size car, she led us down a nearby row and pointed out our options. We picked a Toyota Camry. Bags loaded in the trunk, documents authorized and signed, air-conditioning cranked up to 11 and we were off! Our destination was the Hilton Grand Vacations Sea World. We found the drive to be quite pleasant. Taking about 20 minutes, traffic was minimal (a concern I had for a Friday evening around 6:15pm), we eased through the toll booth (cash ready) and easily found our home for the next week and a half. Checking in was an absolute breeze; in fact, they couldn’t have been nicer. As the first portion of our stay was officially for my work conference, I booked a smaller room with the intention of moving to the larger 2 bedroom timeshare room Sunday evening. First surprise…they upgraded my initial reservation to a 2 bedroom for free! Second surprise…they arranged it so that we didn’t have to change rooms come Sunday and could simply stay in the same room for our entire stay! Awesome!
Our room was beautiful! Situated on the 5th floor of the Sandy’s building, we were blown away at the amount of space we had! A full size kitchen with all of the amenities, full size dining table and chairs, living area with a couch, chair, coffee table and large flat screen TV! The master bedroom, where my wife and daughter would be residing (because she always sleeps with mom on vacation), included a king size bed, a huge jetted tub and separate shower, another flat screen TV, a safe, lots of storage, and access to an enclosed (screens to keep the little critters out) balcony. My bedroom sat across the main room, where all by my lonesome I was forced to enjoy my own queen size bed, my own flat screen TV, my own bathroom with a tub/shower combo, and access to my own enclosed balcony. I missed my family terribly all the way across, but I thought I’d survive!
Time for dinner! Wanting to make sure that we had enough time, given the potential for airport, flight, and traffic delays we scheduled our first meal at the Be Our Guest Restaurant for 9pm. MagicBands on, we hit the road towards the Magic Kingdom! Again, I must say, the traffic, particularly along the I4 corridor was phenomenal. Being veterans of the Southern California freeway system, we felt the I4 was an absolute pleasure throughout the trip. Even when we did hit a bit of traffic, it always moved well and we never hit any serious delays. Take that Anaheim!
Even though we Google mapped and printed driving directions for everything, we hardly used them once we hit the I4. The signage was sublime, easily visible, and got us exactly where we needed to go. Honestly, I fully expected the arterial roads within Disney property to be packed with cars, but I was so wrong. Reaching the Magic Kingdom gate, we presented one of our Disney Premier passports and we were in! Snaking around to the left and then right, we made our way to someplace we have never been…the deepest reaches of a Disney World theme park parking lot!
Jumping on a nearby parking lot tram, we made our way to the TTC. As the Monorail was temporarily down, a CM directed everyone to the ferry boat dock…another first for us! Entering the ferry, we made our way up to the second deck and grabbed a spot along the front railing. We could see Cinderella’s Castle gleaming in the distance, the resort Monorails whizzing around, and a variety of watercrafts throughout the lake. Finally, the announcement came, the gates were closed, and the ferry began to slowly move away from the dock. Our first official ride of the trip, it was very enjoyable, save for the two couples next to us posing with their extended selfie-sticks. Truth be told, given this initial selfie-stick encounter so early in our trip, I was concerned about it being a frequent issue, but the fact is we never really ran into it much over the duration. Maybe we were lucky. Who knows?
Now for the least enjoyable portion of the ferry ride…disembarking. The Disney Cruise Line this is not! I mean everyone behaved themselves. There was no pushing or shoving or anything like that. It was just so crowded. Apparently A LOT of people got onto the ferry after us and most of them stayed on the first level. As we made our way down the stairs from the second floor, we joined the masses. Shoulder to shoulder, we all made our way towards the narrow dock bridge. Sweat started beading up on my forehead almost immediately, dripping down my face, as the heat radiated like a sweatbox with all of the bodies moving slowly in unified direction. Holding each other’s hands we made our way to the bridge, as it swayed left and right to the march of the ferry passengers. After a few minutes, we were free!
Through security, noticing that our bags were much more thoroughly evaluated versus December, we hit the MagicBand entry checkpoint. While my wife and I made it through without any problems, our daughter had a slight issue. Having procured a new purple MagicBand since our last trip, it seemed that it was not linked to her finger print. The CM had her try several times before calling over a supervisor. After several taps on a tablet, a new photo, and finger scan, she was good to go! So much for simply adding it to our My Disney Experience profile. Anyway, having a little time before our dinner reservation, we took our time walking around (honestly surprised to find it not very crowded for a summertime Friday evening), making our way to Fantasyland for our first FastPass…Peter Pan. It always trips me out how similar yet very different this version of the attraction is in comparison to Disneyland, especially the voice of Captain Hook. Sauntering through Fantasyland with still a bit of time to spare before dinner check-in, we popped into Gaston’s Tavern for a LeFou’s Brew (so good) to share. This will become a family tradition.
A quick comment on FastPass+. Since we were staying off property and annual passholders, our FastPass reservation window opened 30 days out. It also meant that we could only make our reservations one day at a time. This was drastically different from our December trip and we were worried about what would be available so close to our dates. Boy, were we surprised! We went into it expecting limited selections, but each day proved just the opposite! We got everything we wanted, including the soon to be opening Frozen attraction in Epcot! Now, just prior to our window opening up, I learned that Disney was changing their policy about the time that one could get online to make the reservations. Previously, it was 12am eastern (9pm for us on the west coast) and now it was 7am eastern, meaning 4am for us! Upon hearing about this, I scoured the website for confirmation, but found nothing confirming this. Eventually, I set up a chat session with a CM and she affirmed it. Well, ok, I am not getting up before 4am for FastPasses; not going to happen! We agreed that we would see what was available at 6am the next morning. But wait! While lounging on the couch the night before, at around oh 9pm San Diego time, I decided to log into the My Disney Experience app and guess what?! The window had opened!!! Shocked, bewildered, and tearing slightly, I made the FastPass reservations for Day 1. But surely this was a mistake, a glitch in the app, right?! Well, that glitch occurred every night at 9pm for the next 10 days as I made the remainder of our reservations. Is the app still allowing it?
OK, back to Day 1. We checked in at Be Our Guest a couple minutes early and were told that they were running about 10 minutes behind. They took my cell number and said that they would text us when our table was ready. Didn’t we get a Lumiere-like candelabra as a buzzer in December? Those were awesome! “10 minutes behind” proved to be a bit inaccurate; try double that, but it could have been worse. Finally texted, greeted, and escorted in, we were seated in the Grand Ballroom. Last time, we loved dining in the West Wing. It was beautiful in there, though we did grow weary of all of the other guests coming in to check out the scenery and take pictures, several times coming a tad too close to us and our table for comfort. The Ballroom was massive and open and not a single person encroached into our space this evening. It was wonderful!
Keep in mind that the last thing we ate, excluding a bag or two of cheese crackers and peanuts on the flight, was at roughly 730am PST that morning. We were HUNGRY! Blessed by the man who brought us the bread! Yeah, it was gone almost instantaneously. Alright…to the meal! My wife ordered the Grilled Strip Steak, which I adored back in December, while I decided on the Grilled Pork Chop. Our daughter? Well, you see, she is now 10 years old, so per Disney logic, she is now considered an Adult. I have never quite understood this classification, but Hailey was absolutely enamored with the idea of ordering from the adult menu! Ultimately, she chose the Pan-seared Chicken Breast, served with wild rice, blistered heirloom tomatoes, roasted wild mushrooms, and a citrus beurre blanc. Our meals came and they were delicious…absolutely delicious. I devoured the pork chop; it was amazingly flavorful, as was the corn mélange accompaniment. My wife ate most of her steak and I helped a little bit too, heh heh. Now the chicken…it was wonderful. Perfectly prepared, moist, full of flavor…delicious! But, it seems that our dear daughter’s palate may not yet be ready for “adult” dishes. I mean she liked the chicken very much and enjoyed the heirloom tomatoes, but the rice and the mushrooms were not a hit, though my wife said that they were both tasty.
Choosing to grab dessert on the way out of the park, we said adieu to Be Our Guest and made our way over to Tomorrowland for a ride on that classic of classics, that gem of gems, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority Peoplemover. Man, do I miss it in Disneyland. It was no nice that we rode it twice! Time for our second and final FastPass for the evening, we hit Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. In December we rode this attraction twice, both during daylight. If I am honest, we all found it fun, but were completely perplexed at the massive wait times. We agreed at that time that it was not worth more than a 30 minute wait. However, this time we rode it at night and wow, what a difference that made. Something about the exterior portions of the track in the dark was so much better! Not being able to clearly see the path of the track made it much more exhilarating. We all concurred…going forward, Mine Train is a night time attraction for us.
Getting late, we meandered back through the castle and down Main Street. A quick stop in the candy shop for some goodies and we were back in the ferry headed towards the TTC. Once again situating ourselves on the second level, we enjoyed a nice cool-ish cruise, this time taking our sweet time to exit sans the masses. Jumping on a tram, we made our way back into the depths of the parking lot, where our chariot awaited. In the car, AC pumping, we drive our tired bodies back to the Hilton and passed out.
Up Next - Days 2 & 3 -- Animal Kingdom and Epcot
It all started back in July 2015, when our adventurers, myself Greg (44), my wife Lisa (40) and our daughter Hailey (10), San Diego residents, plunked down our Disney Visa to purchase our Premier Disney annual passes. Ouch, that one sure stung, but it was going to be worth every penny! You see, earlier on, we crunched the numbers and realized that the cost of these super passes, good for both Disneyland and Disney World, including all of the benefits thereof, actually saved us money overall given our want to renew our Disneyland passes coupled with our plans for WDW in December; plus it opened the doors for a lot of fun, including something from my bucket list!
Summer 2015 rolled on…in August, my daughter and I enjoyed a short staycation in San Diego; three awesome days of mini-golf & bumper boats, a special behind the scenes tour at SeaWorld San Diego, and a bowling alley virtually all to ourselves! The capper on all of it?! Three days at Disneyland, including our very first visit to D23…which was AMAZING! While I got to meet some of my favorite Disney podcasters (*cough* *cough* from the DIS!), our daughter met and got a picture with Zendaya and the cast of KC Undercover!
But wait! There’s more! September and October took me to Las Vegas twice; once escorting my mom out for a little vacation and then secondly to honor my beautiful wife’s 40th birthday (image from La Reve at the Wynn below)! Two very different Vegas experiences, let me tell you! Add my birthday (when I scampered up to Disneyland for the Mahaloween Luau at Trader Sam’s!) and our 14th wedding anniversary to the October calendar and we had one heck of an awesome month!
November was basically the chill month…that is, until that fateful day of November 7th when…our first ever MagicBands arrived! Cue the angelic trumpets and singing!!! Had it not been for the Turkey & Stuffing Seasoned Kettle Chips from Trader Joes debuting a week later, these little beauties would have been the #1 highlight! Hmmm….turkey and stuffing kettle chips….hmmm….sorry, lost it there for a second. Anyway…November! A pre-Thanksgiving jaunt up to Julian for apple cider and apple dumplings and a post-Thanksgiving trek up to Solvang perfectly brought us into the Holiday Season.
Finally…December! The Disney World trip that we had been planning for over a year had arrived! We had a wonderful trip and for the first time ever actually wandered off property for DISapalooza and Diagon Alley! Yes, Hailey, there is a world outside of Disney. For details, see our trip report.
Bucket List time! Having Disneyland annual passes for several years, we always had the ones with blackout dates, specifically around New Years. Well not this year!!! I had always wanted to ring in the New Year at Disneyland and this year we had that chance! The crowds were monstrous, the late night weather chilly (and sadly a tad too windy for fireworks), but we survived and sang and hugged one another to 12am on January 1, 2016! Will we ever do it again? HECK NO! That was crazy!
January brought some unexpected business travel to Boston, which I had never visited before. What a magnificent city and people…oh, and the food! I must return someday as a pure tourist. And this segues perfectly to this trip report. I know, I sure took a long time to get here. Oh wait…did I forget to mention the return of the Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival?! Oh, that made April awesome! And let’s not forget our baby girl turning double digits, seeing The Cure live in concert, rescuing a little puppy from the middle of the 15 freeway (he was adopted by a great family by the way), feasting at the SeaWorld San Diego Seven Seas Food Festival, and spending Father’s Day at the San Diego County Fair! Geez, I am getting tired just typing this all up.
Anyway, we now arrive to June 2016. As it turned out, an annual conference that I regularly attend for work just so happened to be in Orlando this year. Back in January, when I was starting to make my travel plans, an email popped into my Inbox from my dad and his wife. “We have timeshare points that we need to use or lose. Anyone interested?” Um yes please! Do you have anything available in Orlando in, oh I don’t know, late June? You do?! Well how convenient! Fate, as it were, suddenly shined upon us…and the dominoes started to fall into place! The timeshare they could book for us just so happened to be one of the conference hotels! And my dad’s wife’s daughter, who I have known since elementary school, an employee of SeaWorld San Diego, could hook us up with free tickets to SeaWorld Orlando…AND serious discounts for Discovery Cove! Hmmm…we have a week in Orlando after the conference…what else could we do? Oh I don’t know…Universal!!! And let’s not forget that we still have our active Premier Disney annual passes! Bonus value! We really had no choice!
So here was the plan:
· Day 1 – Fly from San Diego to Orlando with dinner in the Magic Kingdom
· Day 2 – Animal Kingdom (with me showing up after my conference duties were completed)
· Day 3 – Epcot (again with me showing up in the late afternoon)
· Day 4 – Magic Kingdom
· Day 5 – Universal Islands of Adventure
· Day 6 – Universal Studios
· Day 7 – Discovery Cove
· Day 8 – SeaWorld
· Day 9 – Epcot
· Day 10 – Fly home
Now, keep in mind, something like this was completely new to us. We have visited Orlando several times in the past, but for the very first time we were not staying at a Disney resort, we expanded our horizons outside of Disney property, and we rented a car and battling the Orlando motorways ourselves! How exciting and scary at the same time!
Everybody ready?! Here we go!
Day 1 – Travel Day & Be Our Guest
Up early for our morning flight, since we would be effectively losing 3 hours with the cross country trip, our ride delivered us to the airport. Checked in and through security fairly quickly (better than we thought it would be actually), we found ourselves sitting in the terminal with a lot of time on our hands…along with a highly energetic co-ed high school rugby team. Methinks we planned the morning arrival to the airport a little too conservatively, but hey, better to be there early than late. Eventually boarding time arrived! Another first for us…our flight was direct between San Diego and Orlando; at roughly 4 hours and 30 minutes of flight time, it significantly reduced the overall travel time that we endured in the past by connecting through another city. Boy, was it awesome! That said, it was the longest flight that our daughter has undergone thus far and she did get a tad squirrely. “You want to go to Disneyland Paris someday, right,” I asked her. “This is nothing compared to that,” I said with a smile. Needless to say, we kept her entertained and truly the time seemed to “fly” by.
We landed in Orlando a few minutes early, around 530pm, exited the plane, hit the bathrooms of course, and then jumped into the monorail to the airport center. As we followed the signs to Baggage Claim, my wife made a sad little noise and pointed towards the Disney Magical Express sign. Another first…no magical Disney bus wide to our resort…sigh. Luggage successfully claimed, we made our way over to the rental car desks. The very nice Enterprise Car Rental (booked through Costco.com) representative quickly took care of us and the next thing we know we are leaving the air-conditioned bliss of the airport and ramming head on into the Orlando heat and humidity of summer…not a first for my wife and I, but it was a bit of a shock for our daughter, who had never experienced weather like this before. Truth is, I called it somewhat mild. Hey kiddo…we get this for 9 more days! She rolled her eyes.
The rental car structure is immediately across the street from the airport terminal. We made our way across, took a quick right and met another Enterprise rep who was ready to help us select a car. Having booked a full size car, she led us down a nearby row and pointed out our options. We picked a Toyota Camry. Bags loaded in the trunk, documents authorized and signed, air-conditioning cranked up to 11 and we were off! Our destination was the Hilton Grand Vacations Sea World. We found the drive to be quite pleasant. Taking about 20 minutes, traffic was minimal (a concern I had for a Friday evening around 6:15pm), we eased through the toll booth (cash ready) and easily found our home for the next week and a half. Checking in was an absolute breeze; in fact, they couldn’t have been nicer. As the first portion of our stay was officially for my work conference, I booked a smaller room with the intention of moving to the larger 2 bedroom timeshare room Sunday evening. First surprise…they upgraded my initial reservation to a 2 bedroom for free! Second surprise…they arranged it so that we didn’t have to change rooms come Sunday and could simply stay in the same room for our entire stay! Awesome!
Our room was beautiful! Situated on the 5th floor of the Sandy’s building, we were blown away at the amount of space we had! A full size kitchen with all of the amenities, full size dining table and chairs, living area with a couch, chair, coffee table and large flat screen TV! The master bedroom, where my wife and daughter would be residing (because she always sleeps with mom on vacation), included a king size bed, a huge jetted tub and separate shower, another flat screen TV, a safe, lots of storage, and access to an enclosed (screens to keep the little critters out) balcony. My bedroom sat across the main room, where all by my lonesome I was forced to enjoy my own queen size bed, my own flat screen TV, my own bathroom with a tub/shower combo, and access to my own enclosed balcony. I missed my family terribly all the way across, but I thought I’d survive!
Time for dinner! Wanting to make sure that we had enough time, given the potential for airport, flight, and traffic delays we scheduled our first meal at the Be Our Guest Restaurant for 9pm. MagicBands on, we hit the road towards the Magic Kingdom! Again, I must say, the traffic, particularly along the I4 corridor was phenomenal. Being veterans of the Southern California freeway system, we felt the I4 was an absolute pleasure throughout the trip. Even when we did hit a bit of traffic, it always moved well and we never hit any serious delays. Take that Anaheim!
Even though we Google mapped and printed driving directions for everything, we hardly used them once we hit the I4. The signage was sublime, easily visible, and got us exactly where we needed to go. Honestly, I fully expected the arterial roads within Disney property to be packed with cars, but I was so wrong. Reaching the Magic Kingdom gate, we presented one of our Disney Premier passports and we were in! Snaking around to the left and then right, we made our way to someplace we have never been…the deepest reaches of a Disney World theme park parking lot!
Jumping on a nearby parking lot tram, we made our way to the TTC. As the Monorail was temporarily down, a CM directed everyone to the ferry boat dock…another first for us! Entering the ferry, we made our way up to the second deck and grabbed a spot along the front railing. We could see Cinderella’s Castle gleaming in the distance, the resort Monorails whizzing around, and a variety of watercrafts throughout the lake. Finally, the announcement came, the gates were closed, and the ferry began to slowly move away from the dock. Our first official ride of the trip, it was very enjoyable, save for the two couples next to us posing with their extended selfie-sticks. Truth be told, given this initial selfie-stick encounter so early in our trip, I was concerned about it being a frequent issue, but the fact is we never really ran into it much over the duration. Maybe we were lucky. Who knows?
Now for the least enjoyable portion of the ferry ride…disembarking. The Disney Cruise Line this is not! I mean everyone behaved themselves. There was no pushing or shoving or anything like that. It was just so crowded. Apparently A LOT of people got onto the ferry after us and most of them stayed on the first level. As we made our way down the stairs from the second floor, we joined the masses. Shoulder to shoulder, we all made our way towards the narrow dock bridge. Sweat started beading up on my forehead almost immediately, dripping down my face, as the heat radiated like a sweatbox with all of the bodies moving slowly in unified direction. Holding each other’s hands we made our way to the bridge, as it swayed left and right to the march of the ferry passengers. After a few minutes, we were free!
Through security, noticing that our bags were much more thoroughly evaluated versus December, we hit the MagicBand entry checkpoint. While my wife and I made it through without any problems, our daughter had a slight issue. Having procured a new purple MagicBand since our last trip, it seemed that it was not linked to her finger print. The CM had her try several times before calling over a supervisor. After several taps on a tablet, a new photo, and finger scan, she was good to go! So much for simply adding it to our My Disney Experience profile. Anyway, having a little time before our dinner reservation, we took our time walking around (honestly surprised to find it not very crowded for a summertime Friday evening), making our way to Fantasyland for our first FastPass…Peter Pan. It always trips me out how similar yet very different this version of the attraction is in comparison to Disneyland, especially the voice of Captain Hook. Sauntering through Fantasyland with still a bit of time to spare before dinner check-in, we popped into Gaston’s Tavern for a LeFou’s Brew (so good) to share. This will become a family tradition.
A quick comment on FastPass+. Since we were staying off property and annual passholders, our FastPass reservation window opened 30 days out. It also meant that we could only make our reservations one day at a time. This was drastically different from our December trip and we were worried about what would be available so close to our dates. Boy, were we surprised! We went into it expecting limited selections, but each day proved just the opposite! We got everything we wanted, including the soon to be opening Frozen attraction in Epcot! Now, just prior to our window opening up, I learned that Disney was changing their policy about the time that one could get online to make the reservations. Previously, it was 12am eastern (9pm for us on the west coast) and now it was 7am eastern, meaning 4am for us! Upon hearing about this, I scoured the website for confirmation, but found nothing confirming this. Eventually, I set up a chat session with a CM and she affirmed it. Well, ok, I am not getting up before 4am for FastPasses; not going to happen! We agreed that we would see what was available at 6am the next morning. But wait! While lounging on the couch the night before, at around oh 9pm San Diego time, I decided to log into the My Disney Experience app and guess what?! The window had opened!!! Shocked, bewildered, and tearing slightly, I made the FastPass reservations for Day 1. But surely this was a mistake, a glitch in the app, right?! Well, that glitch occurred every night at 9pm for the next 10 days as I made the remainder of our reservations. Is the app still allowing it?
OK, back to Day 1. We checked in at Be Our Guest a couple minutes early and were told that they were running about 10 minutes behind. They took my cell number and said that they would text us when our table was ready. Didn’t we get a Lumiere-like candelabra as a buzzer in December? Those were awesome! “10 minutes behind” proved to be a bit inaccurate; try double that, but it could have been worse. Finally texted, greeted, and escorted in, we were seated in the Grand Ballroom. Last time, we loved dining in the West Wing. It was beautiful in there, though we did grow weary of all of the other guests coming in to check out the scenery and take pictures, several times coming a tad too close to us and our table for comfort. The Ballroom was massive and open and not a single person encroached into our space this evening. It was wonderful!
Keep in mind that the last thing we ate, excluding a bag or two of cheese crackers and peanuts on the flight, was at roughly 730am PST that morning. We were HUNGRY! Blessed by the man who brought us the bread! Yeah, it was gone almost instantaneously. Alright…to the meal! My wife ordered the Grilled Strip Steak, which I adored back in December, while I decided on the Grilled Pork Chop. Our daughter? Well, you see, she is now 10 years old, so per Disney logic, she is now considered an Adult. I have never quite understood this classification, but Hailey was absolutely enamored with the idea of ordering from the adult menu! Ultimately, she chose the Pan-seared Chicken Breast, served with wild rice, blistered heirloom tomatoes, roasted wild mushrooms, and a citrus beurre blanc. Our meals came and they were delicious…absolutely delicious. I devoured the pork chop; it was amazingly flavorful, as was the corn mélange accompaniment. My wife ate most of her steak and I helped a little bit too, heh heh. Now the chicken…it was wonderful. Perfectly prepared, moist, full of flavor…delicious! But, it seems that our dear daughter’s palate may not yet be ready for “adult” dishes. I mean she liked the chicken very much and enjoyed the heirloom tomatoes, but the rice and the mushrooms were not a hit, though my wife said that they were both tasty.
Choosing to grab dessert on the way out of the park, we said adieu to Be Our Guest and made our way over to Tomorrowland for a ride on that classic of classics, that gem of gems, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority Peoplemover. Man, do I miss it in Disneyland. It was no nice that we rode it twice! Time for our second and final FastPass for the evening, we hit Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. In December we rode this attraction twice, both during daylight. If I am honest, we all found it fun, but were completely perplexed at the massive wait times. We agreed at that time that it was not worth more than a 30 minute wait. However, this time we rode it at night and wow, what a difference that made. Something about the exterior portions of the track in the dark was so much better! Not being able to clearly see the path of the track made it much more exhilarating. We all concurred…going forward, Mine Train is a night time attraction for us.
Getting late, we meandered back through the castle and down Main Street. A quick stop in the candy shop for some goodies and we were back in the ferry headed towards the TTC. Once again situating ourselves on the second level, we enjoyed a nice cool-ish cruise, this time taking our sweet time to exit sans the masses. Jumping on a tram, we made our way back into the depths of the parking lot, where our chariot awaited. In the car, AC pumping, we drive our tired bodies back to the Hilton and passed out.
Up Next - Days 2 & 3 -- Animal Kingdom and Epcot