Trip Report The "we took a trip to Disney World just so we could write a trip report" trip report

Hello fellow Disney-folk! Early this year me (Scott) and my CDP (co-Disney-Phile) Lyn started hatching a spring trip to WDW. We've never done a real trip report before so we thought it would be fun. Lots of pictures too. Enjoy!

Our "incredible" vacation (er...long weekend, anyway) ended up during St Patrick's Day weekend. Planned in advance with reservations at Pop Century, snagging pretty decent rates too. Magic Bands customized, ordered, and received! Not really into planning things out very much but since FP+ was available, we used it (more on that later).

One day I got two(!) boxes in my mailbox from Davenport Florida. Magic Bands!

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Are we Disney-nerds? Yup. Hadn't done this before though: Mousekeeping tipping envelopes (available from WDW Prep School). This was kind of an experiment. Tipping at hotels has been a contentious point recently. Even though I travel quite a bit I'd never heard of leaving tips at hotels before reading about tipping "mousekeeping". I won't start a debate about the practice, but this was something we wanted to try in our (my?) own odd way.

More exciting news about that later on. Stay tuned!

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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day One

First step: Get up early and start traveling. CDP catches a flight from Storybrooke to Orlando at o-dark-thirty, then we hitch a ride on the DME. No, not that one, silly! 'da Miata Express. Wicked ride! If it doesn't fit in the trunk then you really don't need it! Honest! :)

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Arriving in the DME. YAY! If you look really carefully you'll see tourists ignoring the "no stopping" signs. Silly tourists :)



The Fun Begins!
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First day was an afternoon arrival to WDW. Rather than rush to check in, rush to a park, rush to dinner, rush back, and be tired, we spent a leisurely time at Winter Summerland minigolf next to Blizzard Beach. We hadn't played here before and it was a lot of fun. Really well themed and the course is just fun.

Winter Summerland has two courses, a "snow" and a "sand" course. I'm told that Storybrooke has had an overabundance of snow this winter and we've had just about enough of that, thank you very much (sounds like a fairy tale to me but, whatever). So, with a long wait for the "snow" we opted for sand.

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Notice a theme here yet? Winter? Yeah but...It's all Christmassy! Elfstream trailer! Jinglebells! Member of the Elf's club! Practice Random Acts of Toymaking! Awesome stuff. :)

This hole's "green" was blue with floaty things...wonder where all the "water" came from! Oh well. Play on. This is probably a good time to mention that I got a couple holes-in-one on this course. Yay me!

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Nice relaxing walk through elfland...er, summerland. More water under that bridge. Still no clue where it's coming from. The bridge has a special surprise too by the way. I found out the hard way. My CDP figured it out and lingered, and grinned, and laughed a lot. She's a wacky nunu.

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Abandoned surfboard hole.

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Snowman?
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Whoa! That's where the water is coming from. There's a melting snowman on the course! Glad we figured it out. HOLE IN ONE (I think)! To be fair my CDP had a couple of holes-in-one too...after I accidentally knocked her ball in the hole. We don't know if that really counts but that's the way we played it.

Poor snowman. I know how you feel pal, it's already hit near-90 here this year.

It clam upon a midnight clear. Hit the ball into the clam, if you can. Does anyone else think these clams look like they're from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?

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The amazing sand castle. Really neat two holes. You can see the castle from the road on the way to/from the "All Star" resorts.

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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
A Goofy putter!
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I was totally intrigued by this one, the "south hole". The red track rotates in the column, so if you hit the ball into it the ball gets carried all the way to the top of the pole. We couldn't resist doing it. The rest is kind of a game of chance - there being a chance the ball will drop out of the top and into the hole.

More likely than not it just bounces around.

Boing.

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Nearing the end of our amazing miniature-golf outing and we're getting really Christmasy. The guy in front of us had to try like eight times to loop-the-loop. We were better. ho ho ho!

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Another cool hole: the idea is to knock your ball up under the tree where it gets moved around by the train. Or in my case, not.

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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
On to the hotel...
Afternoon festivities over and time to go to the hotel - Disney's Pop Century Resort. Neither of us have ever stayed here but decided to give it a go. Lots of comments on the forum led us to believe it was a decent place...and it was. The price was really right for this trip. We only used the bus service once (I'll comment on that in a bit), and we lucked-out with parking not too far from our room in the "50s" block.

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Check-in time. During our last visit (at an All Star resort) we noticed the "online check-in" lines were empty, so this time we tried it. Neither of us knew anything about it (and I didn't bother reading about it) so it was an experiment. Our friendly WDW desk person asked if we were "...ready to go back to the 50s!" Um, sure. Where's the DeLorean, lady?

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Online Check-in

When you check-in ahead of time on-line you enter a special line and someone with an iPad-like device double checks that you're checked-in, then tells someone at the desk who you are. That person pulls your information and walks you down to a smiling Disney hotel person. Our paperwork was all set up and all we had to do was handle swiping a credit card, add it to the account (Magic Bands) if we wanted, then we were on our way. They did want to know if we had our Magic Bands with us (presumably to verify they were set up correctly) but we'd left them in the car. Didn't matter though, the bands worked great.

On previous visits I'd always thought WDW resort check-in was a little slow and tedious. For work (and play) trips I try staying at Hampton Inns where it usually takes me a couple of minutes to check in, even with multiple rooms - this online check-in routine seems to be WDW's attempt to be quick and efficient like a regular hotel. It was. They were. It worked fine. We'll do it next time too.


Entrance to Pop Century's shops and food court area where they really do have most things you need.
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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Room time!

Aw look, a Mickey on the bed! Just...like...last...time...still, it's a Mickey on the bed!

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Without trying to get into detailed measuring, the bathrooms at POP felt like they were a little larger than at the All Star resort we stayed at last year. Probably just my imagination though. Having never stayed here we didn't know if the green tile motif was supposed to look "50s" or not. It kind of looked 50s-ish but the massively over-powered nuclear toilet certainly wasn't. Seriously - don't get too close to the toilet and flush it. I'm fairly certain you run the risk of getting sucked into another dimension by these things. They're called pressure-assist toilets and use about .5 gallon less water than the standard 1.6 gallon jobs most people have now. They also kind of sound like an F16 getting ready to take off - so there's that too. WHOSH!

Update: Here's how they work. You can even get your own!

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Sink area. No surprises here. On the wall next to the curtain is a wall-safe large enough for a laptop.

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The rest of the accommodations. Some people are really bemoaning the lack of bedspreads now, but this style has been the norm in a lot of places for awhile. My favorite (Hampton Inn) has been using duvets with a decorative band for years. This, if anything, seems to brighten up the room quite a bit.

The rooms at POP didn't seem a lot different than what I experienced at the All Stars. Presumably they're slightly larger but seriously, ignoring a foot here and there, none of these are spacious luxury rooms. They're not meant to be. The rooms were quite comfortable and relatively quiet.

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It was St Patrick's day weekend. Somehow I wasn't expecting anyone to decorate for it, so this type of thing was a surprise. Several rooms here-and-there had signs and decorations like this. I acknowledged it by driving a green car and wearing a green shirt. I'm clever that way.

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Back on our not-so-grand tour of the hotel grounds...lots of appropriate decor to go along with decade each block of rooms represents - plus some other things and characters here and there.

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Such amazing clear skies and wonderful not-too-warm weather. Spring is springing. Flowers are blooming. Trees are...doing whatever it is they do. What a great time. Or is it? We'll ponder on that for a couple of days :)

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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Dinner

Our adventure continues with a stroll toward dinner at the Art of Animation Resort (I think @blackthidot mentioned that idea in a report so we ran with it).

Here we cross the Generation Gap Bridge over Hourglass Lake, looking back at Pop Century. Buh-Bye Pop Century, see ya real soon!

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Disney's Art of Animation Resort... honestly, the "theming" here is outstanding. Really well thought out, quality figures/characters/etc, and tons of color. We didn't manage a complete tour but what we saw was really neat!

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Radiator springs, amazing. Even the plants fit the theming.

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View of the pool from over the fence. The pool area is gated, entry by guests at the resort only.

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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Disney's Art of Animation's lobby and check-in area. Amazing.

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Poking around the gift-shop for gift-stuff.

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Finally to hunt down some food. Nice theming here. We ate early and missed the after-park crowds.

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Look! It's like...like a Landscape of Flavors!

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My apologizes to anyone who has, but I don't recall reading anyone talk about the grab-and-go type food options at the resorts. There are lots of options here. Great if you just want half a sandwich (half now, half as a midnight snack) or something to take back to the room. Both resorts had a good selections.

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Donuts, cupcakes, and other things. Yum.

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Standing in line for hot food. I tried to get a candid picture through the glass. These two caught me though. Hi there food CMs!

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...and finally, the first dinner on our vacation. CDP had a Meatball Sandwich with Side Caesar Salad. I'm told it was yummy. It looked yummy.

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Me? I just wanted a simple sandwich. Nothing complicated. Something plain. A club sandwich I said. They said they had an "open faced club sandwich". Having no idea what that was, I ordered. This is what I got. The "Open Faced Club Sandwich" made with Turkey, Ham, Bacon, Tomato, Boursin Cheese, and Fried Onion Strings (with Caesar Salad). It was very cheesy (almost too rich for what I wanted but it was good). No complaints here at all.

Something needs to be pointed out that didn't become obvious until later: look at the pictures. Closer. The food is on real plates and we have real silverware. Pop Century (back in the 50s for us) had paper plates and plastic silverware - not that it made a difference to me at all, I just thought it was interesting. If you're the type that is bothered by paper and plastic and you're at POP, just walk over to Art of Animation.

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After a post-dinner stroll back around Pop Century we called it a night and got some much needed rest.

Will more thrills and Disney adventures follow on our next day? What amazing surprises are in store for our daring duo?

Maybe we'll add more to our story :)

Stay tuned!
 
Marc Gil

Marc Gil

Well-Known Member
You took some great pictures! I visited WDW that same weekend and it was gorgeous! The weather was gorgeous, and the crowds weren't too bad...

Great Trip Report so far!
 
photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Half the time I say what model it is and people look at me with blank stares and say "um... is that a Pentax or something?". Anyway, it's a D800. The Mini-Golf ones are with a Samsung Galaxy S3.
 
photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Disney Shib said:
I'm following! Awesome pics so far.
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So far so good, thanks :)

Marc Gil said:
You took some great pictures! I visited WDW that same weekend and it was gorgeous! The weather was gorgeous, and the crowds weren't too bad...

Great Trip Report so far!
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Thanks - we lucked out. Sort of. :)

joshsprincess921 said:
Love your pictures, can't wait to read and see more!
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Figmentation said:
Great!!!
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FlaggNL said:
Great great start of your TR, marvelous pics! Can't wait for the rest!!
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akayw0718 said:
Great report so far. Love your commentary!
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Thanks all... I'll have to get more to post. I'm sure there are more pictures and catchy comments somewhere around here.
 

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