Trip Report So we went to Disney again... - an August/17 trip report

Intro

Hello again everyone, and welcome to the 2017 (part 1) Burnett family trip report. Hopefully you'll enjoy following us through another fun/crazy/childish humor filled trip report

If you want to see the pre-trip report :http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/...riginal-title-so-you-get-this-instead.927386/

Or, if you don’t want to go to the PTR, a quick recap:


Who
Same group as all the other trips we've done in the past

There's Tammy and I
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and Steph and Liam
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Actually, this picture may capture them better...
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When

We were down at WDW from August 19th to the 28th


Where

Back when we were planning this trip, we asked Steph and Liam where they wanted to stay. Steph wanted Boardwalk, and Liam wanted Poly (we’re DVC btw). We decided to give them both what they wanted, and did a split stay. We spent the first 5 days at a garden/pool view room at the Boardwalk, and the last 4 days at a lake view room at the Poly.


Well…let’s get started


Countdown – everything up to August 18th

Where to start… We were pretty busy right up until we were on the plane to head to Florida. We did most of the packing for the trip in the few days before the 19th, and were really looking forward to getting away.

We took our cat Zoey over to my parent’s house on the 17th (my Dad loves cats and loves it when the cats get to stay over),
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and our dog Cooper was picked up on the morning of the 18th to go to his daycare/overnight place.
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We’ll miss the animals.


We’re almost ready to go…


However, as I mentioned in the PTR, my Mom was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer back in May and I had been going with my Mom and Dad to all of her appointments (I was there to take notes and ask questions, as my parents are both 80 and tend to get things mixed up). The reason this plays into the trip report is because we found out during the first week of August that she was going to have surgery on August 18th.

So, after weeks and weeks of appointments, the 18th finally arrived. As you can imagine, it was a bit of a different day than what you normally expect on the day before a Disney trip. Yes, we were excited about the upcoming trip, but also anxious about Mom’s surgery (and also very well aware that if there were complications then the trip would be postponed).

Here's my Mom and I at the hospital waiting to get checked in
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The good news is that everything went very well. Mom’s surgery was at 9am, and lasted about 2 hours. After a few hours in recovery we were able to see her. She was kind of groggy, but was doing well.

I brought my Dad back to our home after we saw her, so that he could take a nap (he didn’t sleep well the night before the surgery). He slept for about an hour and then headed back to the hospital.

At around 4ish we finished packing up the car, and then I drove Tammy and the kids down to the hospital to see my Mom. I was surprised at how well Mom was doing. She was wide awake and was already asking the Dr if she could just go home that day (I already though it was crazy that you only stay in less than 24 hours after a mastectomy). She is one tough lady. Everyone was happy to see her doing so well, and she kept telling us we should get going, so we did.

We jumped in the car and headed across the border to Buffalo. We made a few stops (Sam’s Club (picked up some more gift cards and some breakfast stuff), the hotel (the Sleep Inn by the airport), the airport (to weigh our bags so there would be no panicked repacking at the airport the next morning), and the Cracker Barrel (for dinner)). We were back in our room by around 9:30 and settled in for a few hours of sleep before our super early (3:15am) wake-up call.

see you tomorrow
 
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gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 2 continued - Hollywood Studios

We got back to our room around 2ish, showered and then headed back out to Hollywood Studios for the evening. It’s nice being able to walk to the park instead of having to rely on a bus or boat.

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We got to the front of the park, did bag check, and I was “randomly” selected for additional screening (I say “randomly” because that would imply it would happen occasionally, not EVERY SINGLE TIME I went into a park. I should look up how much radiation a person is exposed to when they walk through a metal detector…).
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We decided to head down Hollywood Blvd first, as the kids wanted to ride Rock ‘N Roller Coaster. We didn’t have a FP for it, but we use the single rider line so the wait is usually short. Tammy came through the line with us, although she had no plans on riding.
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We had fun


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OK, two things about this picture
1) the kid sitting next to Steph told her that the rest of the family was doing a "serious" pose, so she was trying to play along. I guess someone forgot to tell the parents in the front
2) Look how wide that guy in the front's tongue is.:p

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I saw this cool pic design on the way out
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Next up we had a FP for Toy Story, so we headed over to Pixar Place. The FP line was pretty empty and we were soon in possession of our glasses and headed up the stairs to the load area. This is one of those situation where I had to take 3 pictures to get the 1 I wanted. I was trying to get a picture of Tammy and Steph. Here is picture 1:
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“Liam, get out the way”

OK, picture 2:

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“Oh, come on”


Picture 3:
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Finally

Still to come - more Hollywood Studios
 

gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 2 continued

After Toy Story we had about an hour before our FP for the Music of Pixar. On the way back towards the theatre we passed the “One Man’s Dream” building, and they were “advertising” a Guardians of the Galaxy Meet and Greet with a 20 minute wait. We decided to give it a shot, so we headed in.
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I’m not going to say “big mistake”, but I’d go with “waste of time”. The whole thing was just weird and disorganized. First you’re put into a room with a bunch of lines on the ground and told to line up on the line. Then you wait…and wait….and wait….and the weird thing is there are no CMs in this room, so you start wondering if you’ve been forgotten. We kept checking our watch to make sure we don’t miss the FP for the Music of Pixar. After 10 minutes the kids decide this is dumb, and head out (they ended up riding RnR again). Tammy and I waited about 30 minutes. Finally a CM shows up and starts taking people in to another room a few at a time. Finally we are called in with a few other people and line up again. In the next room is someone who is supposed to be Star Lord and an animatronic baby Groot. The guy playing Star Lord didn’t really look anything even close to the one from the movies. The Groot was kind of neat though. Regardless, this was taking way too long as there were a few families in front of us with young kids who were quite thrilled with the whole experience (and I’m happy about that. I figured young kids would think this was cool). Tammy and I decided to bail out as we were about 10 minutes from our FP time and really didn’t want to miss it.

I messaged the kids and told them to meet us in front of the theatre.
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We found each other just as they started letting people in. We made our way into the theatre and found an empty row about a 1/3 of the way down the theatre. A few minutes after we were seated some Army Men come out and do a little pre-show thing with some of the kids in the audience.
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At around 8:00 the show started. It was pretty enjoyable.
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I really love music, so this was right up my ally. If you haven’t seen it, what they do is have a live orchestra play music from various Pixar movies, while they show clips of the movie on a big screen. '
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It was pretty enjoyable.

Near the end of the show, Liam leans over and asks “Once this is done can we go eat?” Oh yeah, we haven’t eaten since around 12 this afternoon and it’s now 8:30ish. I thought that was a great idea. One problem…all the restaurants in the park closed around 8:30 (the park closed at 9). Hmmmm…. I managed to get out of this short term predicament by reminding the kids that they had a FP for ToT (actually they had 2 FPs each since Tammy doesn’t want to ride and I decided I’d rather stay with her than ride without her, so we gave them our Magic Bands). They were quite happy with that, and it bought me a few minutes to figure out what to do for dinner.

While the kids rode ToT Tammy and I went into the gift shop and made our way to the back where the ride lets out (by the desk where you can buy pictures). We noticed they had a ToT Jenga game there, so we set it up and started playing.
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It was actually quite fun and helped pass the time (and we did pretty well I think).
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While we were playing, the CM behind the desk came over and talked to us for a while. He was telling us how awesome Pandora is, and how Flight of Passage is the best ride he’s ever been on. He said he waited 3 hours to ride it the first day, got off the ride, then went back in line and waited 3 hours to ride it again. I’m glad we have FPs for it tomorrow since I can’t see us waiting 3 hours for anything.

Eventually the kids made their way out, and were now full-on “hangry” (although the did have fun riding)
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“Let’s head back to Boardwalk and we’ll figure it out”. We headed back to the front of the park, just avoiding the rush as the Star Wars fireworks were ending as we passed through the gates. The walk back seemed to take forever, probably because of the combination of being hungry, tired and having sore feet.

still to come - We need food
 
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gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 2 continued - An unplanned meal

When we got back to the Boardwalk we stopped and considered our options. We were right by the ESPN Club, so I thought “why not”.
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I took a look inside and the place was almost empty (not overly surprising for 9:15pm). We were quickly seated and soon had menus in hand. For dinner Tammy got fish and chips,
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Steph got a stir fry with tofu,
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Liam got a chicken burger
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, and I got chicken and waffles.
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My honest opinion? This place was great. I was not expecting much, but everyone really enjoyed their meal. Our server was very attentive too (he even noticed Tammy was looking kind of cold and offered to go get her a blanket). I was pleasantly surprised by our dining experience and would fully recommend eating here.

After dinner we headed back out to the Boardwalk, but we didn’t get too far…curse you Ample Hills and your delicious ooey gooey butter cake sundaes.
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We first experienced Ample Hills during our last trip and ended up going there a few times that year. We figured it would be dangerous to stay at Boardwalk due to the proximity to this place.

We ended up getting two sundaes to share, and then found a table with a few chairs to sit and enjoy.
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So good. Not a bad view either
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After that, we called it a night. It was a great first full day, but we’re all pretty tired now. See you tomorrow.

End of day 2 - coming up: Blizzard Beach and Epcot.
 
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gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Loving the report! We stayed at Boardwalk from Aug 22-26, maybe we passed you along the way somewhere.
Which side of the resort were you on (the hotel or the villas)? There's a very good chance we passed each other and didn't even know it. How did you enjoy staying at the Boardwalk?
 

krisri18

Well-Known Member
Which side of the resort were you on (the hotel or the villas)? There's a very good chance we passed each other and didn't even know it. How did you enjoy staying at the Boardwalk?
We stayed villas side, 5th floor. Pretty much the first room off the elevator lobby. Had a lovely view of the front of the hotel and all of its construction, might made for some early mornings when the construction crew started up at 8am. I think we appreciated the proximity of staying so close to Epcot, but themewise, not our favorite. Reminded us too much of every New England beach house around here. lol
 

SweetEvangeline

Well-Known Member
Great report. So glad your Moms surgery went well. I am bummed, however, that your trick for price bridging on the annual passes did not work. We are planning to do the same thing in November. We will see if it's any different for us as we bought our original tickets through Undercover Tourist.
 

amjt660

Premium Member
Intro
We jumped in the car and headed across the border to Buffalo. We made a few stops (Sam’s Club (picked up some more gift cards and some breakfast stuff), the hotel (the Sleep Inn by the airport), the airport (to weigh our bags so there would be no panicked repacking at the airport the next morning), and the Cracker Barrel (for dinner)). We were back in our room by around 9:30 and settled in for a few hours of sleep before our super early (3:15am) wake-up call.

see you tomorrow

Hi Neighbour
I am just starting to get back into TRs and I am happy to follow along
Good to hear that your Moms surgery went well.

Interesting idea of going to the airport the night before to weigh the bags - had never thought about it
Assume you have to explain to the people that you are not flying tonight - any strange looks from them??

Will take awhile to catch up but I am sure it will be worth it

Max
 

gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We stayed villas side, 5th floor. Pretty much the first room off the elevator lobby. Had a lovely view of the front of the hotel and all of its construction, might made for some early mornings when the construction crew started up at 8am. I think we appreciated the proximity of staying so close to Epcot, but themewise, not our favorite. Reminded us too much of every New England beach house around here. lol
We were in the villa side on the 3rd floor. It was pretty quiet down our end.
 

amjt660

Premium Member
Day 1 continued - Hitting the MK and upgrading our tickets

We made it to the MK and went through their new bag check area (which I like a lot more than the old set-up).

However, before we could get into the parks we had to go to guest services to pick up our tickets.

Back in early 2017, the US dollar was flying high against the Canadian dollar (I believe at one point a Canadian dollar was worth around $.66 US). Disney came out with a ticket offer for Canadians that offered a 25% discount on anything over a 4 day ticket. We had ordered 9 day tickets with park hopper and waterparks. However, to activate them we had to go to guest services with our passports to prove we are Canadian. The line at guest services was a bit long (actually, the line wasn’t long, but it was taking a long time for everyone to get their issues dealt with). Finally we get up to the window and activate our tickets. At the same time I asked about upgrading to the premium platinum annual passes. DVC came out with an AP deal that made the premium platinum AP the same price as the gold which, if I did my math right, was only going to cost us about $200 more for the four of us to upgrade (which would be the price we were going to pay for Memory Maker anyways). However, I also was aware that they may not take the value of the ticket against the AP, but rather take the price we paid for the tickets (with the 25% discount) and apply that. That would make the upgrade cost $200/person. Want to guess which one it was…It was the latter.

I had heard that there may be a way to “trick” the system by using the ticket once to enter a park, which supposedly makes the system “forget” what you paid for the ticket, so we decided we’d give that a shot (not to mention Liam was getting a bit antsy as it was now 3:15 and our Space Mountain FP window was closed). We rushed through the “turnstiles” and booked it down Main St to SM. We tapped our bands at the FP check-in…Green Mickey head…yaaaa (we later found out that you have a 15 minutes after the end of the window to use the FP). We had a great ride through Space.
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After Space we headed over to Fantasyland for our 7DMT FP. It was fun (Tammy really enjoys this one).

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With our trip with midget miners out of the way, we headed back to City Hall (that’s where the inside-the-park guest services is located) to upgrade our tickets to AP.

On the way there Liam asks “What will we do if the price is still $200/person”

“I’m going to ask to speak to the mayor” I replied.

That line in and of itself isn’t that funny, but it became a running joke the rest of the trip (although we changed the authority figure depending on the park – Hollywood Studios was “the director”, Animal Kingdom was “the chief”, etc).

The line at City Hall wasn’t too bad, and before long we were at the desk. It turns out our idea to “trick” the system was just an urban legend. The price was still going to be $200/person. We decided to bite the bullet and do the upgrade. There were a few reasons why

1) We are still planning on coming back in November for the World Karate Championships, and the price of the upgrade would be less than the price we’d pay for any park tickets we’d buy at that time
2) We hadn’t bought Memory Maker yet since it was included in the AP, and if we didn’t upgrade we’d end up paying $200 for it
3) The dining discounts were pretty good with the AP (20% at a lot of restaurants)
4) There’s a chance Tammy and I will be doing an adults-only trip before next August since it’s out 20th anniversary in 2018.

A few minutes later, and we were proud AP holders (with fancy-shmancy sliders no less).
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After finishing with the upgrade we decided we should eat (the breakfast sandwiches were but a memory from 8 hours ago by now, and the small bags of peanuts/pretzels on Southwest don’t really fill you). We decided Pecos bills would be a good place to go (and, bonus, it was one of the restaurants offering a 20% AP discount). We made it to Fronteirland and entered Pecos Bills. The place wasn’t too busy (probably because it’s a bit of an off time for dinner (around 4ish). We ended up getting 2 burrito platters, 1 taco platter, and one Southwest burger (not sure what happened to the picture of the burger, but Liam tells me it was good). All were good.

This tasted better than it looked:
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After eating we had one last FP for the day on BTM. We hadn’t been on it since the refurb last year and I was really looking forward to seeing how it looked. We boarded our run-away train and headed through the wild west in short order. Everything looked much more vibrant than the last time we rode, I just wish they had pulled the trigger on the lift-hill effects that were planned. Still a good ride though.
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With our "wildest ride in the wilderness" now over, we decided to call it a day for the MK, and started heading back to the front. On the way through Liberty Square Steph reminded me that we need to take our annual picture of them in the stocks.
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I know I do this in every trip report, but it's crazy to compare this to how they looked during our first trip back in 2008
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It's tough seeing them get older, knowing that the time is coming when they either won't want to come with us any more, or won't be able to becuase of work/school commitments.

Still to come...back to the hotel and to sleep or not to sleep...
My 22 and 20 ur old still want to go to Disney as a family
Me footing the entire bill probably helps

Max
 

gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Hi Neighbour
I am just starting to get back into TRs and I am happy to follow along
Good to hear that your Moms surgery went well.

Interesting idea of going to the airport the night before to weigh the bags - had never thought about it
Assume you have to explain to the people that you are not flying tonight - any strange looks from them??

Will take awhile to catch up but I am sure it will be worth it

Max
Hi Max

Normally we just go to a scale where no agent is (normally it's later in the day when there aren't many agents on) and weigh our bags. I guess we could just invest in a travel scale;)
 

gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Great report. So glad your Moms surgery went well. I am bummed, however, that your trick for price bridging on the annual passes did not work. We are planning to do the same thing in November. We will see if it's any different for us as we bought our original tickets through Undercover Tourist.

We were hoping it would work, but I think because we bought direct from Disney they could always track it back. Let me know if it works for you with UT tickets.
 
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MeeskaMooska0714

Well-Known Member
This is the first trip report of yours that I have read. Enjoying it so far! Glad your mom is doing well. Looking forward to the rest of your report.
 

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