Trip Report First Time Staying On Property - Bazillions of Photos!

We got back over a month ago, and I'm just now getting around to digging through the 1000+ photos I took!

In lieu of having done a proper pre-trip report I'll summarize briefly how we planned. We brought our boys (DS 7, DS 9) to the World for the first time last year (March 2013) and stayed offsite at Orange Lake resorts. Prior to that, my wife & I had been as kids but neither of us had ever stayed on-property.

Less than a year after the boys' first trip, we were all itching to find a way to get back. I overheard my aunt & uncle discussing with my cousin & her two kids (DD 10, DS 6) that they would be going February 2014, so we all agreed it would be super fun to head down at the same time. My aunt hadn't researched nearly as much as I've been since she hadn't been since the mid-80's. I offered to help since I've been reading and listening to podcasts pretty steadily since the first trip.

We agreed to head down the week of 2/1-2/8 2014, which was great timing to not only escape our dreadful Midwest winter, but also to capitalize on some very low crowd levels (mostly 1's - 4's of 10 on TP Crowd Calendar). So our next decision was where to stay. I shared the option to rent an AllStar Vacation home and have our own pool etc, but my aunt didn't want to deal with any driving. Onsite it was!

I discussed her budget and we agreed to shoot for something in the $150-200/night range. While we could have hit Art of Animation or a value, I figured we were in the range to explore some of the moderates. I even asked the guys over at WDW Today what the differences were between moderates and they dedicated an entire episode to help me out! Huge thanks to Matt Hochberg, Len Testa, Mike Newell and Mike Scopa for taking the time to focus on my dilemma!!

MODERATE RESORT WDW TODAY PODCAST BREAKDOWN:
http://www.wdwtoday.com/article.php?story=201309012020195&query=moderate

Was super great to hear such experienced dudes weigh all the pro's and cons. I settled on Port Orleans French Quarter since it hit our budget and required the least walking. I knew my aunt & uncle liked the vibe of New Orleans as they'd visited before. Excited, I called up my aunt to share the recommendation.

Little did I know, she'd already went and booked a theme park view room for the 5 of them in the Contemporary, just 10 min walk from MK! Clearly the budget had expanded "just a bit" but we were excited to try it out as I still have memories of wanting to someday stay at "that resort the monorail goes through" dating back to my first trip in 1983. We booked a Bay Lake view room of our own and began counting the days until we could make our ADR's.

Rather than retype the whole story, I'm going to cheat and post a link to a podcast interview trip report I recorded shortly after getting back. I'll be focusing mostly on posting pics up here to round out some of the details and hit bits & pieces that the podcast glosses over.

MY TRIP REPORT DISDAD INTERVIEW PODCAST:
http://disdads.com/archives/4691

Pics To come soon!

 

[mweier]

Day 1 - We hit Ft Myers area to visit my sister, and got in some black light mini golf! Mostly it rained

 

[mweier]

Day 3 we finally got enough sun to hit the beach. I'm sure the natives thought we were nuts since it was only in the 70's, but compared to -45ºF wind chills in Minnesota, this was heaven. Boys first exposure to salt water & the Gulf!

 

[mweier]

Day 4 we took the rental van up to Orlando. It was a super quick drive via Tampa, and we got more and more excited the closer we got.

Obligatory sign photo

After we arrived, we had lunch in the Contempo cafe and waited for my aunt & uncle and cousin joined us, along with my cousin's 2 kids.

I had linked all our accounts (via phone support) months before we arrived, so I had managed to set ADR's for both our groups, as well as create some touring plans at touring plans.com for each day. I also went ahead & booked our FP+ reservations in advance via the website. I enjoy the preplanning so this was fun for me, but definitely time consuming. I hope they improve the MM+ site and app considerably before we head back next time. Very laggy and prone to crashing, with only intermittent service on the app even with good internet connectivity. Still, better than no ADR's or having to wait until day of in-park for offsite access to FP+.

Our Magic Bands worked flawlessly all week for all advertised services (room key, meals, park, FP+, purchases, ride queue interactives like TT)

We took the monorail from our resort to MK for the afternoon of our first day. Unfortunately the monorail was down in the middle of the day most of the rest of the week.



First stop: FP+ for haunted mansion.

My youngest and my cousin's youngest thought they were ready to do it, but freaked out in the stretching room, causing my wife to take them out the chicken door. So sad to see Ian so glum. Thankfully he had a great time the rest of the afternoon!

Had a snack in Liberty square and checked out the local wildlife a bit

Also got to see the World's most famous bathroom

 

[mweier]

From Liberty Square, we made our way to Adventureland via Frontierland. Unfortunately Splash was down for refurb the whole time, just like it was last winter when we came. The boys have still never ridden it!

Tom Sawyer island looks cool when it's foggy

Figured we'd hit Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse since it was no line.

it occurs to me about now that I take a lot of pictures with random scenery lanterns in them. Deal with it

We also hit Flying Carpets quick before supper too...

Sweet view of Tiki room from Aladdin ride:

 

[mweier]

We made a quick jaunt to FP+ on Barnstormer since it would be refurbed the rest of the days we were in MK this week. Cute pic of my aunt & uncle riding it.

From there we headed past the castle to our first ADR: Plaza Restaurant over in Main St. USA.

I had a rueben, the kids ate burgers (as they did nearly EVERY other meal, I swear!)
We had a great view of the castle out the window from our table. Magictastic!

Of course, the view of the castle is even better outside!

 

[mweier]

We wanted to wrap evening early to try to get the kids some good sleep. But we managed to squeeze a few more things in after supper...

Figured we'd let the boys blow some of their saved up allowance on some spinny lights first.

From there, we headed out to Adventureland to hit Jungle Cruise by night.

My first time riding it at night. It's so much cooler than during the day!!

and our last FP+ for BTMR first though!

 

[mweier]

We had the joy of of trying to wander past the Main St Electrical Parade on our way out. None of us are really character/parade people, so this was just enough of a taste of it for us.

 

[mweier]

We'd received a SMS text message earlier in the afternoon indicating that our room was ready for us so by the time we got back from the park, we were able to head in to the room for the first time and they brought us all our luggage up on the cart that we'd stashed it in storage with.

The rooms at the Contemporary are pretty decent sized and very comfortable. Definitely smaller than the room we had at Orange Lake resort the year before since that had a small kitchenette which was pretty great for breakfast in the room. Instead, we had to go down to the contempo cafe each morning to get plastic spoons and bowls for our cereal.

Here's the sweet view out our Bay Lake view room. Great view of the pool and you could even see Spaceship Earth in the distance on a clear day (not pictured below!)

FWIW, the in-room coffee is horrible there. We relied heavily on the double espresso's that were downstairs in the Contemporary Grounds coffee shop instead.

 

[mweier]

Random surprise: Every night, just as you're almost to sleep, if you have a Bay lake view room, you'll be woken up by blaring Electrical Water Pageant music as it lights up just off into the lake. The novelty wears off pretty quick with this one. There's only so many synth versions of It's a Grand Old Flag that I need to hear.

 

[mweier]

That's all for tonight! The next day was our last day with the rental van, so in the next installment, I'll cover some of our jaunt to Universal IoA, followed by a California Grill date night!

 

[FlaggNL]

Great start! Wonderfull pictures, and following along

 

[joshsprincess921]

Loving so far! Following along!

That blacklight mini golf was pretty dang cool! I've never seen anything like it.

 

[disneyfirstLJ]

Great report, following along!

 

[mweier]

@joshsprincess921 - They also had a laser maze. Think mission impossible style room with button at the end and lots of lasers to avoid. if you interrupted them they added to your timer. I'd never seen anything like that before either. Here's more on that:
Here's where it is: http://www.opryglowgolf.com/lo_Estero.htm

 

[bow0303]

Great start. Looking forward to reading more.

 

[mweier]

Finally - some free time to sit down and post Day 2! Sorry for the lag but life gets in the way of daydreaming about Disneyworld some times

Day 2 we had planned to use the rental van to hit Universal Islands of Adventure to take in the Harry Potter stuff. We hadn't been to either Universal park before this trip so I was interested where it fell between Disney World attractions and Six Flags Great America (which I grew up going to most summers as a kid). The thrill aspect of Universal attractions definitely seemed higher than Disney but the theming was far more immersive than Six Flags.

The day began with our first daylight view out of the 10th Bay Lake view floor room at Contemporary. It was quite foggy.

Not surprisingly, the fog was also visible from ground level.

 

[mweier]

By the time we drove the van to Islands of Adventure, the sun was already baking the fog off pretty well.

 

[mweier]

First up was to hit Marvel before it got too crowded. Touring plans seemed to indicate that Harry Potter would be busy all day so we started here. Fateful mistake? hard to really say.

Spiderman was definitely the highlight of the Marvel area, and the boys rode it 3x. Hulk was a pretty sweet and very intense coaster, but the theming and effects in Spiderman were like no other ride we went on, as it does a great job of blending practical sets with 3D projection effects.

Hulk was the first ride I'd been on with mandatory lockers prior to queueing. There were several like this at IoA.

Dr. Doom's fear fall was a great queue but the ride itself felt anything but terrorizing. Dr. Doom himself was pretty cool to see in person.

My eldest also got to pose with his cousin and Green Goblin

 

[mweier]

After this, we opted to b-line through Seuss land to try to hit Poseidon's fury just after it opened. We finally got our first glimpse of Hogwarts!

Seuss landing looked pretty cool but the kids just weren't interested in trying any of these rides, since they felt (true or not) that they'd be for littler kids. Amazing just how few right angles there were in this area.