I’ve been reading these boards and enjoying so many of the trip reports on here since I booked my trip back in August, so I thought I’d join in and share how it went! This is my first trip to WDW in 17 years and my first trip as an adult. So much has changed (and not changed) in the time I’ve been gone and it's been such a different experience getting to plan it myself, but i’ll get into that later!
Here’s the details:
Dates: 18th - 28th April 2016
Resort: Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter
Travellers:
Peter (me, on the right), 3rd time visitor:
Ben (on the left): 1st timer!
Itinerary:
Day 1: Fly in from London Gatwick / O'hana Dinner
Day 2: Animal Kingdom / Tusker House Breakfast / Boma Dinner / Magic Kingdom
Day 3: Universal Studios
Day 4: Magic Kingdom / Be Our Guest Breakfast / Liberty Tree Tavern Dinner
Day 5: Epcot / San Angel Inn Dinner
Day 6: Day Trip to Miami
Day 7: Islands of Adventure
Day 8: Blizzard Beach / Epcot / Biergarten Dinner
Day 9: Disney's Hollywood Studios / Mama Melrose Lunch / Sci Fi Dine In Dinner
Day 10: Typhoon Lagoon / California Grill Dinner / Magic Kingdom Extra Magic Hours
Day 11: Epcot / Fly Home
I’m not sure why it has taken me 11 years of adult life to finally get around to going back to Orlando. It’s always been somewhere I’ve been desperate to back to but things just never lined up. Happily, last year my friend Ben expressed an interest and I started looking into packages. A couple months later after far too many glasses of red wine we were looking at a booking confirmation and doing a little happy dance in my living room.
We got a great package direct with Disney staying at French Quarter including flight, park tickets, dining plan, memory maker, gift card etc for what I would have paid just for hotel, flight and tickets separately. I was pretty excited about the free dining because when i was a kid my family had always stayed and mostly dined off property. I remember looking at a guidebook when I was 11 and desperately wanting to eat at Sci-fi Dine in.
Pre-trip I went into slightly obsessive planning mode and read so many reviews, touring plans, crowd calendars. Ben is more laid back than me so he was happy for me to do the research legwork, which I was happy to do. I definitely overplanned each day and the dining plan probably complicated things a bit with all the reservations but I was determined to make sure we didn’t waste a single minute. Let’s see how it worked out!
Day 1: Travel/Check in/O’hana
We arrived in Orlando at around half 5 from Gatwick. The flight was uneventful but made slightly less enjoyable by the cheerleading team sat all around us. They weren’t too rowdy but there’s something about a big group altogether that really changes the atmosphere on a plane.
Customs didn’t take too long and we went and found the Magical Express to take us to our hotel. The bus was waiting for us and we only had to wait for 20 minutes maybe before we were on our way. We were the 3rd stop and arrived at the hotel at around half 7. Check-in were lovely and very quickly we had our magicbands with just enough time to shower and change before our first ADR: O’hana!
After hopping on a bus then monorail from the Magic Kingdom we were a few minutes early for our 21:30 reservation so we checked in and grabbed a couple of Lapu Lapus from the Tambu Lounge to get into proper holiday mood.
We were seated and quickly given pineapple coconut bread. Delicious, but i’m not here to fill up on bread. The salad was fairly standard but the dressing really elevated it.
Noodles, dumplings and wings arrived. Really fresh and tasty. I don’t have a huge appetite so at this point I was starting to feel pleasantly full, which is where i’d usually stop. (I would have taken pictures but we basically inhaled the food as soon as it arrived - a recurring theme on this trip).
Then the steak/pork/shrimp started coming round.
I had a few pieces of each, really delicious, definitely full at this point, Ben has a bigger appetite than me and he was completely stuffed at this point too. We decided to ask them not to bring dessert.
“You all done here?” our waiter asked
“So done”
“Well here comes the main course” he said, before slapping down the biggest portion of bread pudding i’d ever seen in front of us, then covering it in bananas foster sauce.
“....”
I think we managed to force down a couple of bites down before we were defeated. I really hate to waste food. It was pretty good though.
At some point during the meal they piped in the music for Wishes and but we were quite far from the window so we decided not to give it that much attention and enjoy it fully on our Magic Kingdom day.
After dinner we were dead. The combination of long flight, big meal and coming from a different timezone meant we were shattered. We thought about getting an uber but decided to do the monorail/bus combo again instead. Mistake - in our tired state it felt like it took so much longer to get back to the hotel than it had before. As soon as we got back to our room we went to bed and I was out light a light. The next morning would be an early one as we had an 8.05 reservation at Tusker House!
Here’s the details:
Dates: 18th - 28th April 2016
Resort: Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter
Travellers:
Peter (me, on the right), 3rd time visitor:
Ben (on the left): 1st timer!
Itinerary:
Day 1: Fly in from London Gatwick / O'hana Dinner
Day 2: Animal Kingdom / Tusker House Breakfast / Boma Dinner / Magic Kingdom
Day 3: Universal Studios
Day 4: Magic Kingdom / Be Our Guest Breakfast / Liberty Tree Tavern Dinner
Day 5: Epcot / San Angel Inn Dinner
Day 6: Day Trip to Miami
Day 7: Islands of Adventure
Day 8: Blizzard Beach / Epcot / Biergarten Dinner
Day 9: Disney's Hollywood Studios / Mama Melrose Lunch / Sci Fi Dine In Dinner
Day 10: Typhoon Lagoon / California Grill Dinner / Magic Kingdom Extra Magic Hours
Day 11: Epcot / Fly Home
I’m not sure why it has taken me 11 years of adult life to finally get around to going back to Orlando. It’s always been somewhere I’ve been desperate to back to but things just never lined up. Happily, last year my friend Ben expressed an interest and I started looking into packages. A couple months later after far too many glasses of red wine we were looking at a booking confirmation and doing a little happy dance in my living room.
We got a great package direct with Disney staying at French Quarter including flight, park tickets, dining plan, memory maker, gift card etc for what I would have paid just for hotel, flight and tickets separately. I was pretty excited about the free dining because when i was a kid my family had always stayed and mostly dined off property. I remember looking at a guidebook when I was 11 and desperately wanting to eat at Sci-fi Dine in.
Pre-trip I went into slightly obsessive planning mode and read so many reviews, touring plans, crowd calendars. Ben is more laid back than me so he was happy for me to do the research legwork, which I was happy to do. I definitely overplanned each day and the dining plan probably complicated things a bit with all the reservations but I was determined to make sure we didn’t waste a single minute. Let’s see how it worked out!
Day 1: Travel/Check in/O’hana
We arrived in Orlando at around half 5 from Gatwick. The flight was uneventful but made slightly less enjoyable by the cheerleading team sat all around us. They weren’t too rowdy but there’s something about a big group altogether that really changes the atmosphere on a plane.
Customs didn’t take too long and we went and found the Magical Express to take us to our hotel. The bus was waiting for us and we only had to wait for 20 minutes maybe before we were on our way. We were the 3rd stop and arrived at the hotel at around half 7. Check-in were lovely and very quickly we had our magicbands with just enough time to shower and change before our first ADR: O’hana!
After hopping on a bus then monorail from the Magic Kingdom we were a few minutes early for our 21:30 reservation so we checked in and grabbed a couple of Lapu Lapus from the Tambu Lounge to get into proper holiday mood.
We were seated and quickly given pineapple coconut bread. Delicious, but i’m not here to fill up on bread. The salad was fairly standard but the dressing really elevated it.
Noodles, dumplings and wings arrived. Really fresh and tasty. I don’t have a huge appetite so at this point I was starting to feel pleasantly full, which is where i’d usually stop. (I would have taken pictures but we basically inhaled the food as soon as it arrived - a recurring theme on this trip).
Then the steak/pork/shrimp started coming round.
I had a few pieces of each, really delicious, definitely full at this point, Ben has a bigger appetite than me and he was completely stuffed at this point too. We decided to ask them not to bring dessert.
“You all done here?” our waiter asked
“So done”
“Well here comes the main course” he said, before slapping down the biggest portion of bread pudding i’d ever seen in front of us, then covering it in bananas foster sauce.
“....”
I think we managed to force down a couple of bites down before we were defeated. I really hate to waste food. It was pretty good though.
At some point during the meal they piped in the music for Wishes and but we were quite far from the window so we decided not to give it that much attention and enjoy it fully on our Magic Kingdom day.
After dinner we were dead. The combination of long flight, big meal and coming from a different timezone meant we were shattered. We thought about getting an uber but decided to do the monorail/bus combo again instead. Mistake - in our tired state it felt like it took so much longer to get back to the hotel than it had before. As soon as we got back to our room we went to bed and I was out light a light. The next morning would be an early one as we had an 8.05 reservation at Tusker House!
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