So I'm finally getting around to writing this trip report after having been home for almost a month. I think the main reason I've been putting it off for so long is because we've been having some nice weather up here in the New York area and writing about our trip to Disney will make me wish for nicer weather and that we were still down there. Maybe another reason for putting it off is that we know we're probably not going down there for another year or two since we've got a lot going on this year (I'm becoming an uncle in a couple weeks and my brother and his wife live in California, so a good amount of the vacation budget is being allocated to those visits. Hey, I'll take my first niece over a trip to Disney, plus in a few years I'll be able to go out that way and take her to Disneyland).
Anyway, enough of that stuff no one cares about, if you hadn't read the trip report Alex (Lexi, my girlfriend) wrote before we went down there then here it is. If you don't want to read it that's fine, here's a quick rundown. We were in WDW for the Food and Wine Festival in early October 2010. We discussed going around the same time as soon as we got back from that trip (which there is a short TR for floating around this site somewhere) but Alex said she wanted to go down for Christmas, "Christmas time, yeah that's fine" I would agree, but no. She wanted Christmas day, New Year's and her birthday (January 2), so we booked that the day after Thanksgiving 2010. Waiting thirteen months just to leave for your trip is a nightmare that I'm sure some of you have experienced. The only reason I say it's a nightmare is because WHO WANTS TO WAIT THIRTEEN MONTHS TO GO TO DISNEY AFTER YOU'VE BOOKED THE TRIP! Anyway, multiple ADR changes and one hotel switch later it was finally Christmas Eve.
Day One - Packing, Flying, Checking In and Magic Kingdom
Alex and I couldn't be more different when it comes to packing, so after we each finished our respective families' Christmas Eve gatherings and we exchanged our gifts to one another (I got her a Nook Tablet which I ended up using more on the trip than her, I love crossword puzzles sue me) I sat patiently on the bed with my bags (having been packed for four days) while Alex figured out what she needed to pack and then finally stuff things into her suitcase and carry-ons (yeah carry-ons because the airline industry hasn't figured out that most women are smart enough to use their 'personal' bag as another carry-on, usually one that's larger than their actual carry-on mini-suitcase). Needless to say she was successful and both of our bags were surprisingly under weight (we thought they'd be closer to 50lbs, they were nearer 30), who'd have thunk it?
Did I mention that she finished packing at about 1.30am Christmas morning? Our flight was at 6am. We had to be at the airport by 4:30 (honestly if you think you need to be there two hours prior for a domestic flight something in your head is off, and don't tell me that it's because of how crazy the airport gets because our flight was leaving out of JFK). That's all well and good, I can operate on very low levels of sleep and when Alex gets excited for something I'm surprised she sleeps at all, she makes up for it big time the next few mornings, and this was Disney World, our trip that was thirteen months in the making. Our Christmas, New Year's and her birthday that we'd been looking forward to since each of those events the previous year, we could have stayed up all night and still had the energy for our first day in the parks. We didn't though, we got about three hours each and Alex slept the entire plane ride down, me not so much. I can't sleep on planes because I have a fear of flying, despite how much I do it (or am willing to do it).
We don't have any pictures of us waiting to board the plane or sitting on the plane or even of the plane. Our very first picture of our vacation is this somewhat blurry beaut:
We were staying at the Caribbean Beach Resort so we were on our way to the Magical Express Bus. I think the best part about flying in on Christmas day is that absolutely no one was on any of the lines of the ME and our bus had only six other people on it (in total, not groups). We had a great bus driver as well, we told us some fun stories, pointed out all the alligators he could see and even slowed down so we could get this picture:
Curious that the picture we got while we were in a moving vehicle is less blurry than the picture we took while standing still. This may be a trend for the trip.
Once we arrived at the hotel we thanked our driver very much AND TIPPED HIM (I know there seems to be some debate over whether or not to do this but you should, especially if he handles any of your bags, tells you stories or does anything nice, like drive you from the airport to your resort). Upon entering the Custom House we were in awe of the place, it was much bigger than the pictures we'd seen made it out to be, and the Christmas decorations were the icing on the cake. We were thrilled to find out that our room was ready considering it was 9:30am by the time all was said and done.
A Christmas decoration:
We headed to our room, which luckily was about a ten minute walk from the Custom House to put our carry-on luggage down. We hadn't checked the weather before we left New York so we were pretty surprised by the humidity that morning, as it had rained earlier, and the fact that it was about 85 degrees. We took it in stride though seeing as how we were staying on
in room number
We were lucky enough to have a corner room (I think "lucky enough" is the proper term even though our blinds were closed shut the entire trip, we hate when people walk by and look in the room, it's creepy and we don't handle creepiness well) that was only about a five minute walk to the nearest bus stop. We lucked out with the buses, we felt, since our stop was the last before exiting the resort for MK and AK, and there were only four more stops after us before exiting for Epcot and MGM (I'm calling it MGM this entire trip report so if you're going to complain stop reading now, we spend a lot of time there), if I'm remembering correctly any way. Also, our room was close enough to the next bus stop that after all the long days/nights in the parks we could get off at the first stop in the resort (Martinique, I believe) and walk back, depending where we were coming from. If Martinique wasn't the first stop than Barbados was the third. Granted, yes, we're young (enough, mid-20's) but after spending countless hours walking around the parks there's no way we want to walk or be on a bus any longer than we have to be. I digress.
After sitting around the room and enjoying the AC for a little while and debating whether or not to wait for our checked luggage (it got there very quickly when we stayed at AS Movies last time) we decided enough was enough because we didn't want to risk waiting in the room for two hours (or more, as I've read in some TRs), plus it's not like we could go for a dip in the quiet or main pool since our bathing suits (henceforth to be referred to as 'trunks') were in our luggage. So we got off our butts
(me being fancy on my butt) and headed to the bus stop for our ride over to the Magic Kingdom. A moment we had waited for for a long time (I could say thirteen months hundreds of times in this TR but it's annoying even me thinking about it).
We finally arrived at the Magic Kingdom after a quick fifteen minutes bus ride that felt like an hour since we hadn't been there in so long. After walking from the drop off point to the entrance we realized maybe we made a huge mistake. Once we got past bag check though (where I almost picked up a stroller and threw that a woman kept pushing into our ankles, if I'm not moving up and you're behind me, you're not moving up) we just had to find the right line to get in to get into the park and so Disney could have our biometric signatures. We got on the shortest line that had only one big group (about ten people) in front of us. Well this was absolutely the worst line we could've picked, not one of the people in the group spoke english and they all had something with their ticket where every other person had to go to the ticket counter which left every person after that arguing with the other. This took about twenty minutes but once past that we were in! We did it!
Here's our first view from inside any of the parks:
Not quite the Castle but we loved the ornaments on the tree, we would later get more photos of those as our time progressed but for now we were just excited to be in the park. Even more excited when we saw this:
There's really no comparison for seeing the Castle for the first time on your trip. As we walked down Main Street and it got closer and closer (we were actually towards the end, front depending on how you like it when we took that picture because the wreaths hanging from the buildings on Main St would've been in the way otherwise) the excitement grew and grew. It was either excitement or hunger since we hadn't really eaten anything except maybe half a bag of chips on the plane and those weren't very yummy any way. So we headed over to Pecos Bill's for our first meal of the trip, we loved this place so much the last time we went that we couldn't wait to get back there and here's what we ordered:
Two deluxe cheeseburgers (I had been debating this for a long time, I should've gone with the taco bowl since I love tacos). That one in the back with the superfluous amount of onions is mine, I love onions. As much as I wanted to love this burger I just couldn't, just as last year the bun seemed stale and unfortunately the one major thing I noticed this time around was that the burger patty tasted overwhelmingly like it was a frozen patty (obviously it is, but it's a huge bummer when you can tell it's been frozen). At least the fries and cheese sauce were outstanding as they usually are. I can't fault Pecos Bill's too much though given the fact that it was around 12:30pm on Christmas Day and the place was absolutely mobbed, I guess I was just upset that that was my first foray into dining at Disney World this trip. I felt horrible for the staff working their though as it seemed no one knew where to walk, where to order or where to eat. The worst of it was that no one knew of any order to getting the fixins from the fixins bar. It's simple, start at the where the toppings are and work your way towards the middle where the napkins are. Easy, both sides of the fixins bar are the same. No rocket science there.
After Pecos Bills we decided that since we were close to Pirates we may as well take a spin. I never thought that this would be our first ride of the trip, we're more inclined to head towards Tomorrowland, but it's how things worked out this time around:
Look at those clouds, nice. Beautiful weather once we got over the humidity on this day. We still love this ride, although for me ever since they geared it towards the film it's just not the same. I think it's because Johnny Depp bothers me, the unpatriotic bum. Anyway, I've filled my picture quota for the post, there is much more to come. I hope you like the pictures posted here because Alex bought herself a new camera before we took this trip and we took well over 1,500 photos (I won't post nearly that many). There will be more plenty more trip report to come, although the NHL All-Star game has priority today.
Anyway, enough of that stuff no one cares about, if you hadn't read the trip report Alex (Lexi, my girlfriend) wrote before we went down there then here it is. If you don't want to read it that's fine, here's a quick rundown. We were in WDW for the Food and Wine Festival in early October 2010. We discussed going around the same time as soon as we got back from that trip (which there is a short TR for floating around this site somewhere) but Alex said she wanted to go down for Christmas, "Christmas time, yeah that's fine" I would agree, but no. She wanted Christmas day, New Year's and her birthday (January 2), so we booked that the day after Thanksgiving 2010. Waiting thirteen months just to leave for your trip is a nightmare that I'm sure some of you have experienced. The only reason I say it's a nightmare is because WHO WANTS TO WAIT THIRTEEN MONTHS TO GO TO DISNEY AFTER YOU'VE BOOKED THE TRIP! Anyway, multiple ADR changes and one hotel switch later it was finally Christmas Eve.
Day One - Packing, Flying, Checking In and Magic Kingdom
Alex and I couldn't be more different when it comes to packing, so after we each finished our respective families' Christmas Eve gatherings and we exchanged our gifts to one another (I got her a Nook Tablet which I ended up using more on the trip than her, I love crossword puzzles sue me) I sat patiently on the bed with my bags (having been packed for four days) while Alex figured out what she needed to pack and then finally stuff things into her suitcase and carry-ons (yeah carry-ons because the airline industry hasn't figured out that most women are smart enough to use their 'personal' bag as another carry-on, usually one that's larger than their actual carry-on mini-suitcase). Needless to say she was successful and both of our bags were surprisingly under weight (we thought they'd be closer to 50lbs, they were nearer 30), who'd have thunk it?
Did I mention that she finished packing at about 1.30am Christmas morning? Our flight was at 6am. We had to be at the airport by 4:30 (honestly if you think you need to be there two hours prior for a domestic flight something in your head is off, and don't tell me that it's because of how crazy the airport gets because our flight was leaving out of JFK). That's all well and good, I can operate on very low levels of sleep and when Alex gets excited for something I'm surprised she sleeps at all, she makes up for it big time the next few mornings, and this was Disney World, our trip that was thirteen months in the making. Our Christmas, New Year's and her birthday that we'd been looking forward to since each of those events the previous year, we could have stayed up all night and still had the energy for our first day in the parks. We didn't though, we got about three hours each and Alex slept the entire plane ride down, me not so much. I can't sleep on planes because I have a fear of flying, despite how much I do it (or am willing to do it).
We don't have any pictures of us waiting to board the plane or sitting on the plane or even of the plane. Our very first picture of our vacation is this somewhat blurry beaut:
We were staying at the Caribbean Beach Resort so we were on our way to the Magical Express Bus. I think the best part about flying in on Christmas day is that absolutely no one was on any of the lines of the ME and our bus had only six other people on it (in total, not groups). We had a great bus driver as well, we told us some fun stories, pointed out all the alligators he could see and even slowed down so we could get this picture:
Curious that the picture we got while we were in a moving vehicle is less blurry than the picture we took while standing still. This may be a trend for the trip.
Once we arrived at the hotel we thanked our driver very much AND TIPPED HIM (I know there seems to be some debate over whether or not to do this but you should, especially if he handles any of your bags, tells you stories or does anything nice, like drive you from the airport to your resort). Upon entering the Custom House we were in awe of the place, it was much bigger than the pictures we'd seen made it out to be, and the Christmas decorations were the icing on the cake. We were thrilled to find out that our room was ready considering it was 9:30am by the time all was said and done.
A Christmas decoration:
We headed to our room, which luckily was about a ten minute walk from the Custom House to put our carry-on luggage down. We hadn't checked the weather before we left New York so we were pretty surprised by the humidity that morning, as it had rained earlier, and the fact that it was about 85 degrees. We took it in stride though seeing as how we were staying on
in room number
We were lucky enough to have a corner room (I think "lucky enough" is the proper term even though our blinds were closed shut the entire trip, we hate when people walk by and look in the room, it's creepy and we don't handle creepiness well) that was only about a five minute walk to the nearest bus stop. We lucked out with the buses, we felt, since our stop was the last before exiting the resort for MK and AK, and there were only four more stops after us before exiting for Epcot and MGM (I'm calling it MGM this entire trip report so if you're going to complain stop reading now, we spend a lot of time there), if I'm remembering correctly any way. Also, our room was close enough to the next bus stop that after all the long days/nights in the parks we could get off at the first stop in the resort (Martinique, I believe) and walk back, depending where we were coming from. If Martinique wasn't the first stop than Barbados was the third. Granted, yes, we're young (enough, mid-20's) but after spending countless hours walking around the parks there's no way we want to walk or be on a bus any longer than we have to be. I digress.
After sitting around the room and enjoying the AC for a little while and debating whether or not to wait for our checked luggage (it got there very quickly when we stayed at AS Movies last time) we decided enough was enough because we didn't want to risk waiting in the room for two hours (or more, as I've read in some TRs), plus it's not like we could go for a dip in the quiet or main pool since our bathing suits (henceforth to be referred to as 'trunks') were in our luggage. So we got off our butts
(me being fancy on my butt) and headed to the bus stop for our ride over to the Magic Kingdom. A moment we had waited for for a long time (I could say thirteen months hundreds of times in this TR but it's annoying even me thinking about it).
We finally arrived at the Magic Kingdom after a quick fifteen minutes bus ride that felt like an hour since we hadn't been there in so long. After walking from the drop off point to the entrance we realized maybe we made a huge mistake. Once we got past bag check though (where I almost picked up a stroller and threw that a woman kept pushing into our ankles, if I'm not moving up and you're behind me, you're not moving up) we just had to find the right line to get in to get into the park and so Disney could have our biometric signatures. We got on the shortest line that had only one big group (about ten people) in front of us. Well this was absolutely the worst line we could've picked, not one of the people in the group spoke english and they all had something with their ticket where every other person had to go to the ticket counter which left every person after that arguing with the other. This took about twenty minutes but once past that we were in! We did it!
Here's our first view from inside any of the parks:
Not quite the Castle but we loved the ornaments on the tree, we would later get more photos of those as our time progressed but for now we were just excited to be in the park. Even more excited when we saw this:
There's really no comparison for seeing the Castle for the first time on your trip. As we walked down Main Street and it got closer and closer (we were actually towards the end, front depending on how you like it when we took that picture because the wreaths hanging from the buildings on Main St would've been in the way otherwise) the excitement grew and grew. It was either excitement or hunger since we hadn't really eaten anything except maybe half a bag of chips on the plane and those weren't very yummy any way. So we headed over to Pecos Bill's for our first meal of the trip, we loved this place so much the last time we went that we couldn't wait to get back there and here's what we ordered:
Two deluxe cheeseburgers (I had been debating this for a long time, I should've gone with the taco bowl since I love tacos). That one in the back with the superfluous amount of onions is mine, I love onions. As much as I wanted to love this burger I just couldn't, just as last year the bun seemed stale and unfortunately the one major thing I noticed this time around was that the burger patty tasted overwhelmingly like it was a frozen patty (obviously it is, but it's a huge bummer when you can tell it's been frozen). At least the fries and cheese sauce were outstanding as they usually are. I can't fault Pecos Bill's too much though given the fact that it was around 12:30pm on Christmas Day and the place was absolutely mobbed, I guess I was just upset that that was my first foray into dining at Disney World this trip. I felt horrible for the staff working their though as it seemed no one knew where to walk, where to order or where to eat. The worst of it was that no one knew of any order to getting the fixins from the fixins bar. It's simple, start at the where the toppings are and work your way towards the middle where the napkins are. Easy, both sides of the fixins bar are the same. No rocket science there.
After Pecos Bills we decided that since we were close to Pirates we may as well take a spin. I never thought that this would be our first ride of the trip, we're more inclined to head towards Tomorrowland, but it's how things worked out this time around:
Look at those clouds, nice. Beautiful weather once we got over the humidity on this day. We still love this ride, although for me ever since they geared it towards the film it's just not the same. I think it's because Johnny Depp bothers me, the unpatriotic bum. Anyway, I've filled my picture quota for the post, there is much more to come. I hope you like the pictures posted here because Alex bought herself a new camera before we took this trip and we took well over 1,500 photos (I won't post nearly that many). There will be more plenty more trip report to come, although the NHL All-Star game has priority today.
