My wife and I went to Disney this past weekend sans kids to spend our 10 year wedding anniversary together. What usually takes about 2.5 to 3 hours to get to Disney from Fort Myers, Florida (Southwest Florida), took closer to 5 hours on Friday night (3-10-17) as there were traffic woes up and down I-75, US 17 ("Shortcut" from Punta Gorda to Haines City), US 27 just outside of Haines City, and of course at the Disney Exits on I-4 Friday night. We arrived at Kidani Village at the Animal Kingdom Resort at around 5:30pm, pretty much checked in, and threw our bags in the room before we had to do an about face for a 6pm dinner reservation at Boma. After what we thought was a rather edible, but yet disappointing dinner at Boma (1st time here and while some items on the buffet were good, I'm really not a fan of curry and tamarind flavors, so there was very little I could eat for the price we were paying and to pay $$$$$ to eat salad, fruit, and meat - I could've gone to a Golden Corral and done the same thing there for a lot cheaper), we took off to the Magic Kingdom.
We drove out to the TTC at around 7:30pm, parked out in the sticks, and walked up to the monorail platform where we waited. The monorail came, we got on, took off, and about 500 feet after leaving station, we stopped. We were "holding" because Monorail Teal couldn't "dock" properly (according to the announcement). We waited....and waited.....and waited.....and waited.......another announcement stating that Monorail Teal couldn't "dock", but we would be moving shortly. So, we waited and about 15 mins of waiting and "holding", we started moving slowly. We get to the Polynesian, the doors open, some people leave, some people get on, we rolled out of the Poly station, 500 feet later.....we waited....and waited....and waited again.... Monorail "Problem Child" (Teal) was still having issues with "docking" and so another round of waiting happened. The same thing went for the Grand Floridian....and by the time we got the Magic Kingdom, it was about 8:30pm. We walked around, saw fireworks, killed time, people watched, and that was pretty much that. At about 9:45pm, we started heading back, but when we saw the line going up to the monorail was backed up to the MK entrance gates, we walked to the Contemporary, hung out, went up to the Monorail platform, waited for another monorail, got on, and was in another "holding" pattern where we didn't even leave the Contemporary station, but instead waited for about 30 minutes for another monorail that was having issues on the track somewhere (I'm thinking at this point - someone needs to pull "Teal" off the track - but I think we were ON Teal at this point...LOL!!!! Someone at Disney hates me!! LOL!)
The rest of the weekend pretty much played on this monorail "holding" theme. Lots of waiting, holding, and there were quite a few "vocal" people this weekend just venting in general about "How this shouldn't happen" and "This is Disney, they need to figure this out and correct it" and my favorite complaint/vent was "I'm never coming back here again." I am assuming that because of what Disney was hosting this weekend (saw a lot of different schools up there this weekend - marching bands and cheerleaders (saw a few cheerleader squads walking around), things were a tad busy. The other thing I noticed was a lot of Orange County police presence. Saw a few squad cars at Epcot Saturday night by the tram station, there were a few blocking off the road going out to Fort Wilderness Campground (after the MK toll plaza), and a couple of cars in front of the MK entrance. I'm assuming they were up there for crowd control (didn't see anything on the local news about anything big going down at Disney).
Pretty busy weekend. 10 year anniversary well spent. Other than the "holding" issues with the monorail? I'm just glad to be back home......next trip is booked for my wife's birthday in September (sssshhhhh....it's a surprise) and we're back again in January for marathon weekend!
We drove out to the TTC at around 7:30pm, parked out in the sticks, and walked up to the monorail platform where we waited. The monorail came, we got on, took off, and about 500 feet after leaving station, we stopped. We were "holding" because Monorail Teal couldn't "dock" properly (according to the announcement). We waited....and waited.....and waited.....and waited.......another announcement stating that Monorail Teal couldn't "dock", but we would be moving shortly. So, we waited and about 15 mins of waiting and "holding", we started moving slowly. We get to the Polynesian, the doors open, some people leave, some people get on, we rolled out of the Poly station, 500 feet later.....we waited....and waited....and waited again.... Monorail "Problem Child" (Teal) was still having issues with "docking" and so another round of waiting happened. The same thing went for the Grand Floridian....and by the time we got the Magic Kingdom, it was about 8:30pm. We walked around, saw fireworks, killed time, people watched, and that was pretty much that. At about 9:45pm, we started heading back, but when we saw the line going up to the monorail was backed up to the MK entrance gates, we walked to the Contemporary, hung out, went up to the Monorail platform, waited for another monorail, got on, and was in another "holding" pattern where we didn't even leave the Contemporary station, but instead waited for about 30 minutes for another monorail that was having issues on the track somewhere (I'm thinking at this point - someone needs to pull "Teal" off the track - but I think we were ON Teal at this point...LOL!!!! Someone at Disney hates me!! LOL!)
The rest of the weekend pretty much played on this monorail "holding" theme. Lots of waiting, holding, and there were quite a few "vocal" people this weekend just venting in general about "How this shouldn't happen" and "This is Disney, they need to figure this out and correct it" and my favorite complaint/vent was "I'm never coming back here again." I am assuming that because of what Disney was hosting this weekend (saw a lot of different schools up there this weekend - marching bands and cheerleaders (saw a few cheerleader squads walking around), things were a tad busy. The other thing I noticed was a lot of Orange County police presence. Saw a few squad cars at Epcot Saturday night by the tram station, there were a few blocking off the road going out to Fort Wilderness Campground (after the MK toll plaza), and a couple of cars in front of the MK entrance. I'm assuming they were up there for crowd control (didn't see anything on the local news about anything big going down at Disney).
Pretty busy weekend. 10 year anniversary well spent. Other than the "holding" issues with the monorail? I'm just glad to be back home......next trip is booked for my wife's birthday in September (sssshhhhh....it's a surprise) and we're back again in January for marathon weekend!
