I have never done a trip report so please bear with me. As my title says this was our first trip, so for those of you who have been many times this may bore you as I am going to try to write about things we did wrong and things we plan to do differently next time in hopes that it may help any future first timers.
First of all I'll tell you some basics. In our immediate party there were my DH, DS (age 8) and myself. Our trip was from Sunday June 17th to Saturday June 22nd. We stayed at All Star Movies. We did the Disney Dining Plan, had park hopper with water parks included. We also had two other families that we had planned and coordinated with who were there at the same time, but none of us traveled together and we all stayed in different places. This was a good thing. I may talk more about that later.
We left our home in NC Saturday the 16th around 6am and drove to Palm Coast, Fl. We arrived around 3pm or so. We have friends there and spent a wonderful afternoon and evening at their pool visiting with them. We left their house around 9:30am Sunday and drove the rest of the way to Disney. By the time we arrived at our resort it was about 11:30am and since we had done the online check in we got checked right in. It was not busy though so we probably would have gotten through the check in process pretty quickly anyway. I had done a lot and I do mean a lot of research prior to our trip and felt pretty comfortable with the dinning plan, photo pass, etc so I felt good about doing the online check in. If you are a newbie and think you will have a ton of questions you may want to do regular check in.
Our room was ready when we got there and I had requested "close to transportation" and to be in one of the Toy Story buildings. Both of our requests were granted and especially the "close to transportation" request was a wise choice. When you get done walking those parks all day you are tired, your feet are tired and the shortest distance you have to walk from the bus stop to your room the better. Trust me on this. The day we went to Epcot my pedometer said I walked 19,459 steps. DH thinks it malfunctioned, but that was a horrible day in my opinion and I believe it. More about that later.
We had taken lots of snacks, stuff for breakfast and 3 cases of bottled water. This was a mistake. 1st we were hardly ever in our room so those snacks came right back home with us. Also, on the DDP you literally feel like you are eating all the time so we weren't hungry for snacks in our room. As for the water, we could have gotten away with one case.
We carried back packs and that first day we loaded up about 6 bottles of water along with all the other stuff we carried in our packs (fans, extra batteries, cool towels, ponchos, autograph books, etc) and all that stuff gets heavy. Day two we each took one bottle of water and refilled it at the park water fountains as needed. So my tip is, don't take a lot of food and water with you. You wont need it...especially if you are doing the dining plan.
Ok, as soon as we got our stuff into the room we headed to DDT for 1pm lunch ressie at T-Rex. We loved it! DS especially loved it! We had heard that portions were huge (what would you expect from a Dinosaur themed restaurant, right?) and since we were not using our DP for this one we ordered two plates and shared. The food was great, the theme was cool (we sat in the ice cave), but it is noisy so be prepared for that if you go there.
After we ate we headed to the Lego store. We made our purchases and had them sent to our room. I loved this service and used it a lot during our trip.
The lego store was our last stop in DDT. We are not big shoppers and we were anxious to get to Magic Kingdom so off we headed. Unfortunately, it took us much longer than we expected as we did not know that you could not go from DDT to a park. You have to go to a resort, get off the bus and wait for another bus to take you to any of the parks. We hopped a bus to Coronado Springs right away. At CS we had to wait about 30 minutes for a bus to MK.
That is another tip....remember that if you have a reservation somewhere and need to get there from your Resort you need to allow at least an hour (we did an hour and a half) because you never know how long you will have to wait for a bus, boat, etc.
We finally got to Mk and what can I say. That first glimpse is....well...MAGICAL!
We headed straight for Splash Mountain cause it was hot. Our wait was about 1 hour for SM and during that wait it started to rain. Sprinkle at first, but gradually increased. People started bringing out their ponchos, but the rain felt good to us because we were so hot and anyway we were getting ready to get on a water ride....where we would get wet. What's the point. But hey, that's just us. I guess the rain cleared the park out a little because from SM we went straight to BTMR and walked right on. Three times.
This was my DS's first experience with a roller coaster and I since I am not a thrill seeker and am scared of Roller coasters I had hoped that he would take after me instead of his father and say no way to anymore coasters. No such luck. I am raising a thrill seeker.
After BTMR we met up with the rest of our friends (there were 10 of us in all) and headed to HM. Again, hardly no wait, only about 15 minutes. This ride is just my speed. I love HM.
We were all getting hungry by this time and it was beginning to sprinkle again (this was going to prove to be the theme of our week...we sang "rain drops keep falling on my head" all week)so we ducked into the Columbia Harbour House restaurant for a quick service. I had grilled salmon and broccoli. It was very good. I had a lot of table service reservations made and had researched each one so I was excited about each of them, but I really didn't know anything about any of the quick service places. I can truthfully say we did not have a bad meal during our entire stay.
I can't remember much more about the rest of that 1st day, but we did watch the electrical parade ( I think that is what it was called) and then DH and I were ready to head back to our room, but DS really wanted to do Space Mountain. I wasn't ready to tackle that one yet (remember I am scared of roller coasters) so I sent them off and I browsed through the shops and watched the fireworks. Right after the fireworks a horrible storm(thunder/lightening and buckets of rain) started and I ducked into the Confectionery to wait for the boys and wait out the storm. We had to stay here for a while until it slacked off enough to make a run for it. The Confectionery became one of my favorite spots and was always I had to browse through it every time on our way out of the park.
Will continue you in a few minutes. Need to go start some laundry and try to gather my thoughts. I know pictures would make this TR more interesting, but unfortunately I don't know how to add pictures here.
Day two: We were up bright and early and headed to Hollywood Studios. I would probably say that with the exception of a few rides this was my least favorite park, but then again this was our first time and we felt overwhelmed and it took a while for us to get find our groove at all the parks. I don't have a lot to say about HS other than we ate at Mama Melrose for a late lunch early dinner and got the Fantasmic tickets with our meal. The meal was wonderful and it is a place I will definitely eat at again. I had the calamari for an appetizer and a seafood dish as my main course. I can't remember the name of it, but all of the food was delish. My only complaint would be that instead of individual desserts they brought out a big platter with several small desserts on it for us all to share. That would have been fine if it were just DH, DS and myself, but we were dining with our friends and while they are good friends I am funny about eating after people. That's just gross in my opinion.
We did Tower of Terror....I loved it, so maybe I have a little thrill seeker in me! Just a little though cause I put my foot down and refused to ride Rock'n Roller Coaster. We also rode the Star Wars Tour, watched the Indiana Jones Stunt show and rode Toy Story Mania. Tip for first timers here: Go straight to TSM to get a fast pass for this ride as soon as you get to the park. We got our FP around 10am and our return time was already 8:30 to 9:30pm. This is a very popular ride and the fast passes will give out.
Another big storm came up and Fantasmic was canceled for the night. We had a FP for TOT so we headed over there to do it one more time before heading back to our resort. I was very excited about riding it again and thought that the storm added to the excitement of the ride. Unfortunately, DS got freaked out and wouldn't ride it again. I guess it was something about getting on a ride about people dying in an elevator that gets struck by lightening while in the middle of a real lightening storm that got to him. I don't get it, but hey he's only 8 and so we ducked out just before they were to put us in the car. I don't know why I didn't let DH take him down and wait in the gift shop while I rode it, but I just didn't think about it at the time.
So we headed to our temporary home. Side note here. I had heard some horror stories about the buses during the summer months, but we didn't find them too bad. I think that there was one night at the beginning of the week that we had to wait a while for a bus to take us back to the resort. After that we found that if we just hung around after the rides, stopped and shopped for a while we could usually get on a bus with little wait time.
Tuesday, Day 3, was Epcot day. As I said earlier, this was my worst day. We made some mistakes here that I will share. We arrived before they opened and as soon as they let us in we made a bee line to Soarin and got our FP. We also decided to ride it then since it was only about a 25 minute wait. After we rode it we went to Living with the land and then it was time for our Soarin FP so we rode that one again. There is a lot of hype about Soarin and it is very popular. This is justified....it is a very cool ride.
DH took off to get FP's for Test Track while we went to Nemo and Friends. When he got there the FP return time was 4:30 to 5:30 and the wait for a single rider was only 30 minutes so he went ahead and rode it in addition to getting our fp for later.
We met him there after Nemo and from there we went into the "ball" and rode the ride there. I can't remember the name of it, but it was a nice little ride and a great way to get out of the heat and rest your feet for a few minutes. DH left to go back to the resort after that and DS and I were on our own. We kicked around a bit and he wanted to ride the monorail so we rode it and came right back to Epcot.
We decided to walk to Mexico and had lunch there. Afterwards we explored Mexico, Norway and China a little. Not a lot at all. Why you may ask? Well, because of that dang fast pass for TT. We had barely brushed the surface of those three countries and it was already 4:30 so we headed all the way back for TT. I was not happy. I was really looking forward to working my way around the world, exploring all the countries. To add insult to injury TT broke down while were were on it right before the speed test and we sat inside for about 5 minutes.
When we got off it was about 5:30 or 6pm and I thought maybe we would have time to get a few more countries done and so we started to head to Canada. Big black clouds were looming and we had a dinner ressie at the Garden Grill. For anyone who has not been to Epcot before, Garden Grill would roughly be in the same area as TT but a decent walk to Canada especially in a storm. So we turned around and headed back towards the area we had just left so that we would be near to our dinner reservation if it the sky opened up. Which it did.
We had just made it back to TT when it started dropping big fat raindrops, so we ducked into the building with Sum of all Thrills. It had a 30 minute wait so we had just enough time to do that before our 7:15 dinner reservation. The food at the Garden Grill is excellent. It is a character dining experience and we met Pluto, Mickey, Chip and Dale. By the way, do you know how to tell Chip from Dale? Chip has a black nose, just think "chocolate chip" and Dale has a red one.
Illuminations was just getting ready to start when we came out of the restaurant so we headed to Canada and found a spot. It was absolutely beautiful! I cried. I'm such a sap, I know.
Once it was over and I had dried my eyes we rushed to Japan because I really wanted DS to do the Pick a Pearl. Where we live we often go to Oyster Roasts in the fall and winter and he is always looking for a pearl, so Pick a Pearl was one of the surprises I had planned for him during our trip. As expected he loved it. I picked a pearl too and put it in a lovely charm that looked like Cinderella's Coach. I received several compliments on it during the remainder of our trip.
So here are my tips based on our Epcot day:
Try your very best to stay in the area you have a fast pass for until the time for your return time. There was I think a 60 minute wait for TT when we got out of Nemo and looking back we should have just gone ahead and waited then or better yet we should have gotten into the single rider line. That way we wouldn't have had to leave world showcase to go all the way back to ride it. Honestly, in my opinion it wasn't that great of a ride and was hardly worth the irritation I had in having to go back for it. Of course if I had rode it when I was over there that morning I may have had a different opinion. Live and learn.
Another thing that interfered was our dinner reservations. As much as we enjoyed Garden Grill we should have made dinner reservations some where in World Showcase. We didn't realize how spread out Epcot was so we just didn't know. The next time we go back we will plan more of our table services at breakfast where they will not interfere with the rest of our day. We will also plan the few dinner table services that we do a lot better. We just didn't enjoy having to do stop what we were doing in order to make it to a dinner reservation.
I did not feel like I got to see any of World Showcase which really disappointed me. It has prompted me to plan a girls only trip to WDW during the food and wine festival in 4 years to celebrate my 50th birthday. My girlies and I are starting to save our pennies.
Day 4: Animal Kingdom. We had an 8am dinner reservation for Tusker House and the Donald's Safari Breakfast. As soon as we got to the restaurant I realized I had left my photo pass plus card in the room.
After talking to several photo pass people we found out what we needed to do and I will spare you the details, but let me just say try really hard not to leave your PP behind. It makes life so much easier. We lost one set of pictures from one of the character meet ups, but it looks like we got all the rest of them added to our account.
Ak was hotter(the heat index that day was 108) and more crowded than any of the other parks we had been to. By this time my feet were swollen to the size of elephant feet. They could have put me in their Lion King show based on my feet alone and ironically when we did go see the Lion King show they sat us in the Elephant section so it must have been obvious that was where I belonged. As a result of my discomfort I stomped around and was losing some of my "southern hospitality".
I let my DS and DH ride EE while I stood in front of one of those wonderful fans that blow the mist on you. I was quite frankly shutting down at this point. Which brings me to my next tip. You must, must take breaks from the park. At least WE must. It wears you down trying to do a park from rope drop to closing bell especially in the summer heat. My biggest regret of this day was that I did not ride EE with my guys. I will ride it next time for sure. We didn't do much at AK. We had breakfast, rode the safari, they rode EE twice, I met Pooh, Tiger, Minnie and Mickey and we went to the Lion King Show. There was so much that we missed, but we were tired and headed back to our resort around 3 for a light lunch and some much needed pool time.
We had dinner reservations for Ohana's that night at 8:15. So we didn't have that much time to spend at the pool before we had to shower and get ready since we had to be at our bus stop by 6:45pm. For newbies you have to take a bus to MK and then get on either a boat or the monorail to get to Ohana's. We chose the boat and it was very relaxing. It took every bit of the hour and a half that we allotted for travel time.
Ohana's was fantastic! I know some of the "old timers" are upset that they don't have the Honey Lime Salad dressing anymore, but for this newbie who never tried that one, the Passion Fruit Salad was out of this world. Everything they served was mouth watering! My favorites were the salad, the dumplings, the steak (and I am not even a big steak eater), the noodles and of course the shrimp. The dessert was heavenly too! Ok, I loved it all...I really didn't have any favorites! This restaurant is not a character meal for dinner, but it was entertaining. There were coconut races for the children and a few dances. This is definitely a restaurant we will go back to. As a matter of fact I am already starting to plan our next trip and I plan to make reservations to Ohana's for both the character breakfast and again for dinner.
Thursday was the day we had planned to take it at a little slower pace. We decided to let DS sleep in and sleep in he did! He didn't get up until almost 11am. I guess the late nights had finally caught up to him. I washed some clothes while he was sleeping. After he got up and I finished the clothes we headed to Typhoon Lagoon for a few hours. It was a good time, but I would say that we probably will skip the water parks the next time. No big news about this park.
Thursday night we had reservations for Mickey's backyard BBQ. We all had a great time dancing with Mickey, Minnie, Chip, Dale and Goofy. Goofy, by the way, is my favorite of the classic characters. Stitch is my favorite new character. The food was just so so, but then we had been at Ohana's the night before and that is a tough act to follow. The show is very good though, especially the guy that does the rope tricks. I would recommend it to anyone, but I don't think it is one of those things that we will do over and over again.
There was a pretty good rain storm while we were there and was just finishing up about the same time we were so DS and I decided to go to MK while DH decided to call it a night. We got to MK about half way through the parade and followed it up main street when it finished. We hammed it up like the dorks we are and waved to the crowd that was still lining the streets as we passed by.
I will spare you the details of this night other than to say it was my best night during the vacation! The crowds were down and the ones that were left were all gathered to watch the fireworks so DS and I got a lot of things marked off of our to do list. Since we had reservations for the Tomorrowland Terrance Fireworks Dessert Party for the following night we didn't worry ourselves about watching the fireworks and just ran from ride to ride with no waits. It was great!
Our last day was Friday and it was back to MK. We made it for rope drop and watched the opening ceremony. By this time we finally felt like we were hitting our stride. We knew our way around, we had figured out the fast pass deal, no more hopping from this area to another. We worked one area at a time. We went to Tomorrowland and I rode SM. I rode SM y'all!!!! After it came to a stop I said, "Is that it?" I had built it up so big in my mind to be honest it was a little of a let down. LOL. We eventually rode it another time before the day was over. We also did the Monsters' Inc show and I was sitting right beside "that guy". Let me tell you "that guy" was not amused...he was getting ticked off. While I enjoyed the show I was glad when it was over because he was making me a little nervous. "That guy" was a big, big guy and a little scary looking in my opinion.
We knocked everything off our list of things to do except for Carousal of Progress, Astro Orbitor and Be our Guest. There are other things that of course we didn't do, but of our "Must do's" these were the only 3 things we missed.
The Dessert Party was cool. The desserts were great and the view was good. I'm glad we did it, but again this is one that we will probably not do again. Been there, done that as the saying goes. Of course the fireworks and the castle transformation was beautiful and amazing! I just don't know how they do all that on the castle...there has to be some magic involved!
We learned a lot about how we like to roll at the parks which will help us make better plans for our next trip regarding how we handle dining reservations. We also have a good idea of how the parks are laid out and how far one area of a park is from another which will help a lot. As first timers we were completely unprepared for how spread out everything was.
I think that's it. I bet y'all are saying "Whew, Thank goodness!". I know that's what I'm saying. I left some things out, but I think I hit the high spots and I hope that some of my observations and experiences have helped some future first timers. If anyone has any questions I'll try to answer them. I will also try to add some pictures later, but now I am "late for a very important date".
Thanks for bearing with me and reading my trip report.
First of all I'll tell you some basics. In our immediate party there were my DH, DS (age 8) and myself. Our trip was from Sunday June 17th to Saturday June 22nd. We stayed at All Star Movies. We did the Disney Dining Plan, had park hopper with water parks included. We also had two other families that we had planned and coordinated with who were there at the same time, but none of us traveled together and we all stayed in different places. This was a good thing. I may talk more about that later.
We left our home in NC Saturday the 16th around 6am and drove to Palm Coast, Fl. We arrived around 3pm or so. We have friends there and spent a wonderful afternoon and evening at their pool visiting with them. We left their house around 9:30am Sunday and drove the rest of the way to Disney. By the time we arrived at our resort it was about 11:30am and since we had done the online check in we got checked right in. It was not busy though so we probably would have gotten through the check in process pretty quickly anyway. I had done a lot and I do mean a lot of research prior to our trip and felt pretty comfortable with the dinning plan, photo pass, etc so I felt good about doing the online check in. If you are a newbie and think you will have a ton of questions you may want to do regular check in.
Our room was ready when we got there and I had requested "close to transportation" and to be in one of the Toy Story buildings. Both of our requests were granted and especially the "close to transportation" request was a wise choice. When you get done walking those parks all day you are tired, your feet are tired and the shortest distance you have to walk from the bus stop to your room the better. Trust me on this. The day we went to Epcot my pedometer said I walked 19,459 steps. DH thinks it malfunctioned, but that was a horrible day in my opinion and I believe it. More about that later.
We had taken lots of snacks, stuff for breakfast and 3 cases of bottled water. This was a mistake. 1st we were hardly ever in our room so those snacks came right back home with us. Also, on the DDP you literally feel like you are eating all the time so we weren't hungry for snacks in our room. As for the water, we could have gotten away with one case.
We carried back packs and that first day we loaded up about 6 bottles of water along with all the other stuff we carried in our packs (fans, extra batteries, cool towels, ponchos, autograph books, etc) and all that stuff gets heavy. Day two we each took one bottle of water and refilled it at the park water fountains as needed. So my tip is, don't take a lot of food and water with you. You wont need it...especially if you are doing the dining plan.
Ok, as soon as we got our stuff into the room we headed to DDT for 1pm lunch ressie at T-Rex. We loved it! DS especially loved it! We had heard that portions were huge (what would you expect from a Dinosaur themed restaurant, right?) and since we were not using our DP for this one we ordered two plates and shared. The food was great, the theme was cool (we sat in the ice cave), but it is noisy so be prepared for that if you go there.
After we ate we headed to the Lego store. We made our purchases and had them sent to our room. I loved this service and used it a lot during our trip.
The lego store was our last stop in DDT. We are not big shoppers and we were anxious to get to Magic Kingdom so off we headed. Unfortunately, it took us much longer than we expected as we did not know that you could not go from DDT to a park. You have to go to a resort, get off the bus and wait for another bus to take you to any of the parks. We hopped a bus to Coronado Springs right away. At CS we had to wait about 30 minutes for a bus to MK.
That is another tip....remember that if you have a reservation somewhere and need to get there from your Resort you need to allow at least an hour (we did an hour and a half) because you never know how long you will have to wait for a bus, boat, etc.
We finally got to Mk and what can I say. That first glimpse is....well...MAGICAL!
We headed straight for Splash Mountain cause it was hot. Our wait was about 1 hour for SM and during that wait it started to rain. Sprinkle at first, but gradually increased. People started bringing out their ponchos, but the rain felt good to us because we were so hot and anyway we were getting ready to get on a water ride....where we would get wet. What's the point. But hey, that's just us. I guess the rain cleared the park out a little because from SM we went straight to BTMR and walked right on. Three times.
This was my DS's first experience with a roller coaster and I since I am not a thrill seeker and am scared of Roller coasters I had hoped that he would take after me instead of his father and say no way to anymore coasters. No such luck. I am raising a thrill seeker.
After BTMR we met up with the rest of our friends (there were 10 of us in all) and headed to HM. Again, hardly no wait, only about 15 minutes. This ride is just my speed. I love HM.
We were all getting hungry by this time and it was beginning to sprinkle again (this was going to prove to be the theme of our week...we sang "rain drops keep falling on my head" all week)so we ducked into the Columbia Harbour House restaurant for a quick service. I had grilled salmon and broccoli. It was very good. I had a lot of table service reservations made and had researched each one so I was excited about each of them, but I really didn't know anything about any of the quick service places. I can truthfully say we did not have a bad meal during our entire stay.
I can't remember much more about the rest of that 1st day, but we did watch the electrical parade ( I think that is what it was called) and then DH and I were ready to head back to our room, but DS really wanted to do Space Mountain. I wasn't ready to tackle that one yet (remember I am scared of roller coasters) so I sent them off and I browsed through the shops and watched the fireworks. Right after the fireworks a horrible storm(thunder/lightening and buckets of rain) started and I ducked into the Confectionery to wait for the boys and wait out the storm. We had to stay here for a while until it slacked off enough to make a run for it. The Confectionery became one of my favorite spots and was always I had to browse through it every time on our way out of the park.
Will continue you in a few minutes. Need to go start some laundry and try to gather my thoughts. I know pictures would make this TR more interesting, but unfortunately I don't know how to add pictures here.
Day two: We were up bright and early and headed to Hollywood Studios. I would probably say that with the exception of a few rides this was my least favorite park, but then again this was our first time and we felt overwhelmed and it took a while for us to get find our groove at all the parks. I don't have a lot to say about HS other than we ate at Mama Melrose for a late lunch early dinner and got the Fantasmic tickets with our meal. The meal was wonderful and it is a place I will definitely eat at again. I had the calamari for an appetizer and a seafood dish as my main course. I can't remember the name of it, but all of the food was delish. My only complaint would be that instead of individual desserts they brought out a big platter with several small desserts on it for us all to share. That would have been fine if it were just DH, DS and myself, but we were dining with our friends and while they are good friends I am funny about eating after people. That's just gross in my opinion.
We did Tower of Terror....I loved it, so maybe I have a little thrill seeker in me! Just a little though cause I put my foot down and refused to ride Rock'n Roller Coaster. We also rode the Star Wars Tour, watched the Indiana Jones Stunt show and rode Toy Story Mania. Tip for first timers here: Go straight to TSM to get a fast pass for this ride as soon as you get to the park. We got our FP around 10am and our return time was already 8:30 to 9:30pm. This is a very popular ride and the fast passes will give out.
Another big storm came up and Fantasmic was canceled for the night. We had a FP for TOT so we headed over there to do it one more time before heading back to our resort. I was very excited about riding it again and thought that the storm added to the excitement of the ride. Unfortunately, DS got freaked out and wouldn't ride it again. I guess it was something about getting on a ride about people dying in an elevator that gets struck by lightening while in the middle of a real lightening storm that got to him. I don't get it, but hey he's only 8 and so we ducked out just before they were to put us in the car. I don't know why I didn't let DH take him down and wait in the gift shop while I rode it, but I just didn't think about it at the time.
So we headed to our temporary home. Side note here. I had heard some horror stories about the buses during the summer months, but we didn't find them too bad. I think that there was one night at the beginning of the week that we had to wait a while for a bus to take us back to the resort. After that we found that if we just hung around after the rides, stopped and shopped for a while we could usually get on a bus with little wait time.
Tuesday, Day 3, was Epcot day. As I said earlier, this was my worst day. We made some mistakes here that I will share. We arrived before they opened and as soon as they let us in we made a bee line to Soarin and got our FP. We also decided to ride it then since it was only about a 25 minute wait. After we rode it we went to Living with the land and then it was time for our Soarin FP so we rode that one again. There is a lot of hype about Soarin and it is very popular. This is justified....it is a very cool ride.
DH took off to get FP's for Test Track while we went to Nemo and Friends. When he got there the FP return time was 4:30 to 5:30 and the wait for a single rider was only 30 minutes so he went ahead and rode it in addition to getting our fp for later.
We met him there after Nemo and from there we went into the "ball" and rode the ride there. I can't remember the name of it, but it was a nice little ride and a great way to get out of the heat and rest your feet for a few minutes. DH left to go back to the resort after that and DS and I were on our own. We kicked around a bit and he wanted to ride the monorail so we rode it and came right back to Epcot.
We decided to walk to Mexico and had lunch there. Afterwards we explored Mexico, Norway and China a little. Not a lot at all. Why you may ask? Well, because of that dang fast pass for TT. We had barely brushed the surface of those three countries and it was already 4:30 so we headed all the way back for TT. I was not happy. I was really looking forward to working my way around the world, exploring all the countries. To add insult to injury TT broke down while were were on it right before the speed test and we sat inside for about 5 minutes.
When we got off it was about 5:30 or 6pm and I thought maybe we would have time to get a few more countries done and so we started to head to Canada. Big black clouds were looming and we had a dinner ressie at the Garden Grill. For anyone who has not been to Epcot before, Garden Grill would roughly be in the same area as TT but a decent walk to Canada especially in a storm. So we turned around and headed back towards the area we had just left so that we would be near to our dinner reservation if it the sky opened up. Which it did.
We had just made it back to TT when it started dropping big fat raindrops, so we ducked into the building with Sum of all Thrills. It had a 30 minute wait so we had just enough time to do that before our 7:15 dinner reservation. The food at the Garden Grill is excellent. It is a character dining experience and we met Pluto, Mickey, Chip and Dale. By the way, do you know how to tell Chip from Dale? Chip has a black nose, just think "chocolate chip" and Dale has a red one.
Illuminations was just getting ready to start when we came out of the restaurant so we headed to Canada and found a spot. It was absolutely beautiful! I cried. I'm such a sap, I know.
Once it was over and I had dried my eyes we rushed to Japan because I really wanted DS to do the Pick a Pearl. Where we live we often go to Oyster Roasts in the fall and winter and he is always looking for a pearl, so Pick a Pearl was one of the surprises I had planned for him during our trip. As expected he loved it. I picked a pearl too and put it in a lovely charm that looked like Cinderella's Coach. I received several compliments on it during the remainder of our trip.
So here are my tips based on our Epcot day:
Try your very best to stay in the area you have a fast pass for until the time for your return time. There was I think a 60 minute wait for TT when we got out of Nemo and looking back we should have just gone ahead and waited then or better yet we should have gotten into the single rider line. That way we wouldn't have had to leave world showcase to go all the way back to ride it. Honestly, in my opinion it wasn't that great of a ride and was hardly worth the irritation I had in having to go back for it. Of course if I had rode it when I was over there that morning I may have had a different opinion. Live and learn.
Another thing that interfered was our dinner reservations. As much as we enjoyed Garden Grill we should have made dinner reservations some where in World Showcase. We didn't realize how spread out Epcot was so we just didn't know. The next time we go back we will plan more of our table services at breakfast where they will not interfere with the rest of our day. We will also plan the few dinner table services that we do a lot better. We just didn't enjoy having to do stop what we were doing in order to make it to a dinner reservation.
I did not feel like I got to see any of World Showcase which really disappointed me. It has prompted me to plan a girls only trip to WDW during the food and wine festival in 4 years to celebrate my 50th birthday. My girlies and I are starting to save our pennies.
Day 4: Animal Kingdom. We had an 8am dinner reservation for Tusker House and the Donald's Safari Breakfast. As soon as we got to the restaurant I realized I had left my photo pass plus card in the room.
After talking to several photo pass people we found out what we needed to do and I will spare you the details, but let me just say try really hard not to leave your PP behind. It makes life so much easier. We lost one set of pictures from one of the character meet ups, but it looks like we got all the rest of them added to our account.
Ak was hotter(the heat index that day was 108) and more crowded than any of the other parks we had been to. By this time my feet were swollen to the size of elephant feet. They could have put me in their Lion King show based on my feet alone and ironically when we did go see the Lion King show they sat us in the Elephant section so it must have been obvious that was where I belonged. As a result of my discomfort I stomped around and was losing some of my "southern hospitality".
I let my DS and DH ride EE while I stood in front of one of those wonderful fans that blow the mist on you. I was quite frankly shutting down at this point. Which brings me to my next tip. You must, must take breaks from the park. At least WE must. It wears you down trying to do a park from rope drop to closing bell especially in the summer heat. My biggest regret of this day was that I did not ride EE with my guys. I will ride it next time for sure. We didn't do much at AK. We had breakfast, rode the safari, they rode EE twice, I met Pooh, Tiger, Minnie and Mickey and we went to the Lion King Show. There was so much that we missed, but we were tired and headed back to our resort around 3 for a light lunch and some much needed pool time.
We had dinner reservations for Ohana's that night at 8:15. So we didn't have that much time to spend at the pool before we had to shower and get ready since we had to be at our bus stop by 6:45pm. For newbies you have to take a bus to MK and then get on either a boat or the monorail to get to Ohana's. We chose the boat and it was very relaxing. It took every bit of the hour and a half that we allotted for travel time.
Ohana's was fantastic! I know some of the "old timers" are upset that they don't have the Honey Lime Salad dressing anymore, but for this newbie who never tried that one, the Passion Fruit Salad was out of this world. Everything they served was mouth watering! My favorites were the salad, the dumplings, the steak (and I am not even a big steak eater), the noodles and of course the shrimp. The dessert was heavenly too! Ok, I loved it all...I really didn't have any favorites! This restaurant is not a character meal for dinner, but it was entertaining. There were coconut races for the children and a few dances. This is definitely a restaurant we will go back to. As a matter of fact I am already starting to plan our next trip and I plan to make reservations to Ohana's for both the character breakfast and again for dinner.
Thursday was the day we had planned to take it at a little slower pace. We decided to let DS sleep in and sleep in he did! He didn't get up until almost 11am. I guess the late nights had finally caught up to him. I washed some clothes while he was sleeping. After he got up and I finished the clothes we headed to Typhoon Lagoon for a few hours. It was a good time, but I would say that we probably will skip the water parks the next time. No big news about this park.
Thursday night we had reservations for Mickey's backyard BBQ. We all had a great time dancing with Mickey, Minnie, Chip, Dale and Goofy. Goofy, by the way, is my favorite of the classic characters. Stitch is my favorite new character. The food was just so so, but then we had been at Ohana's the night before and that is a tough act to follow. The show is very good though, especially the guy that does the rope tricks. I would recommend it to anyone, but I don't think it is one of those things that we will do over and over again.
There was a pretty good rain storm while we were there and was just finishing up about the same time we were so DS and I decided to go to MK while DH decided to call it a night. We got to MK about half way through the parade and followed it up main street when it finished. We hammed it up like the dorks we are and waved to the crowd that was still lining the streets as we passed by.
I will spare you the details of this night other than to say it was my best night during the vacation! The crowds were down and the ones that were left were all gathered to watch the fireworks so DS and I got a lot of things marked off of our to do list. Since we had reservations for the Tomorrowland Terrance Fireworks Dessert Party for the following night we didn't worry ourselves about watching the fireworks and just ran from ride to ride with no waits. It was great!
Our last day was Friday and it was back to MK. We made it for rope drop and watched the opening ceremony. By this time we finally felt like we were hitting our stride. We knew our way around, we had figured out the fast pass deal, no more hopping from this area to another. We worked one area at a time. We went to Tomorrowland and I rode SM. I rode SM y'all!!!! After it came to a stop I said, "Is that it?" I had built it up so big in my mind to be honest it was a little of a let down. LOL. We eventually rode it another time before the day was over. We also did the Monsters' Inc show and I was sitting right beside "that guy". Let me tell you "that guy" was not amused...he was getting ticked off. While I enjoyed the show I was glad when it was over because he was making me a little nervous. "That guy" was a big, big guy and a little scary looking in my opinion.
We knocked everything off our list of things to do except for Carousal of Progress, Astro Orbitor and Be our Guest. There are other things that of course we didn't do, but of our "Must do's" these were the only 3 things we missed.
The Dessert Party was cool. The desserts were great and the view was good. I'm glad we did it, but again this is one that we will probably not do again. Been there, done that as the saying goes. Of course the fireworks and the castle transformation was beautiful and amazing! I just don't know how they do all that on the castle...there has to be some magic involved!
We learned a lot about how we like to roll at the parks which will help us make better plans for our next trip regarding how we handle dining reservations. We also have a good idea of how the parks are laid out and how far one area of a park is from another which will help a lot. As first timers we were completely unprepared for how spread out everything was.
I think that's it. I bet y'all are saying "Whew, Thank goodness!". I know that's what I'm saying. I left some things out, but I think I hit the high spots and I hope that some of my observations and experiences have helped some future first timers. If anyone has any questions I'll try to answer them. I will also try to add some pictures later, but now I am "late for a very important date".
Thanks for bearing with me and reading my trip report.
