Just got back a couple of hours ago from a week at WDW. It was very amazing, better than I ever expected! So I thought I would post a trip report and hopefully help out a few people with my week. We never had to wait more than 30 minutes for Standby on any of the rides, which I credit to a good plan and a lot of luck! This was our 3rd trip to WDW, 2nd in the "FP+" era. Our last trip was 2 years ago and our boys were too small to ride most of the "best" rides, so we had not experienced a lot before.
Our plane arrived at Orlando Int'l Airport around 6:30PM on 3/17. By the time we got on the Magical Express and were bussed in, we arrived at around 8PM. We stayed at Pop Century. We were in building 5 of the 60's, preferred pool view. They just opened this building after the refurbs sometime in the week or so before we arrived. It appeared upon first look that we may have been the first people to stay in our room after the refurb. The rooms are fantastic. It does seem a little tight when you have the murphy bed down but not any tighter than it was before the refurb with double beds. No issues with the room at all, other than it seemed that one of the USB plugins may not have been working right, as it would only partially charge my iPad. Since we were late getting in, we just had a meal at the hotel and let the kiddos play in the arcade. We were a party of 6, our rooms were not connecting but very close together.
FYI, we went with the normal Dining plan. If you are on a tight budget, definitely not the cheapest option. But it was nice to have 2 snacks, 1 quick service for lunch, and a table service for dinner. It gives us a nice structure to our day without having to worry about the sticker shock that comes with some of the table service restaurants! I highly recommend it unless you are on a tight budget, even though it may cost a few dollars extra in the end. The peace of mind is worth every penny for us.
We started out Sunday morning, 3/18, at Hollywood Studios. It was an EMH morning there so we were on the bus at 7 to be at the park at 7:30. The kids wanted to do Jedi training. I am not much of a "big" roller coaster person, so we split up at rope drop, with some going and doing Rock N' Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror at Rope Drop, while I took the kids over to sign up for Jedi Training. We were about 6th in line for Jedi Training, had the pick of all the times. There was a large line that developed behind us but Jedi Training did not become completely filled. We also had time to ride Star Tours twice before the rest of our party caught up to us. Then it was time to ride Star Tours a third time with our first FP shortly after the park fully opened at 9. We then had our second FP after that for Toy Story Mania. We got a quick snack before TSM and then the boys wanted their picture with Cruz Ramirez as they are big Cars fans. TSM was a lot of fun but I can't imagine doing standby until they get all 3 tracks back open. After a quick snack, we went to Frozen Sing-Along for our last FP at HS. It was then time for Jedi Training, which my boys loved. We did lunch at Backlot Express, then headed over to the Launch Bay to meet Kylo Ren and BB-8. Chewie had a 30 minute wait so we skipped him for the time being. We skipped Voyage of the Little Mermaid and Indy altogether this trip.
From there, we had reservations over at Tusker House so we headed towards Animal Kingdom. I got a Tough to Be a Bug Fastpass(wasn't needed but hey, might as well grab it and use it!) so we did that quickly before the Tusker meal. Brazilian Tour Groups were pretty thick early in the week and for some reason they were all determined to run us over trying to get in to the show. That was our only real issue with them though, other than that they were not bad, just noticeable. Tusker was a good meal, not quite exactly what I expected, but I mostly chose there for the character dining for the kids and the food was good.
From there, we headed over to DinoLand as Pandora was a madhouse, which was fine as we had our FoP fastpass later in the week. With our youngest being 4, they like to do the Triceratops Spin, though we opted to skip Primeval Whirl. I was able to get another FP for Dinosaur, so we rode that as I had never been on it before. It was more intense than I expected! I would have liked it more had there not been 4 screaming kids in our vehicle...luckily only 2 of them were mine! We ended the evening with Rivers of Light. My oldest son LOVED it. I thought it was pretty good, though probably my least favorite of the nighttime offerings at the 4 parks. Still, I'd definitely watch it again.
Monday was our Epcot day. We rope dropped Soarin, which was a walk-on. Quite a good ride but I prefer to have my feet on some kind of flooring, so i was not as big of a fan as the rest of our group. We then did Living With The Land, The Seas with Finding Nemo, and Journey Into Imagination with Figment. Figment was my boys' favorite ride for the entire trip. They have wild imaginations so that ride appealed to them more than anything. Then it was time for our Frozen FP. The wait at that point was only 30 minutes standby but by the time we were done with our FP it had ballooned up to 50 minutes. The rest of World Showcase was not open quite yet so we made a quick trip over to meet Joy and Sadness, as well as Baymax. We didn't do the Character Spot because we had so many character dining and other meets that it didn't seem necessary. So it was back over to World Showcase. we had lunch at the little quick service Mexican Restaurant, the name I cannot remember. The chicken tacos were very delicious, reminded me of Street Tacos that are popular around here. Then we went to the Gran Fiesta Tour with the Three Caballeros, and then walked around the rest of the World Showcase. No "Drinking around the world" here, though I did sample a couple of drinks and snacks. We allowed our Mission:Space FP to lapse. I had wanted to ride it but nobody else in my party had any interest. We also did not try for Test Track. We did it in it's previous form, and while we had fun, we had no real desire to go back to it. We did use our Spaceship Earth FP. My parents, who are not quite retirement age, wanted to ride the monorail, so we took a break from Epcot to do that. Then we went back in to Epcot. At this point we had tackled everything we wanted and had an hour to waste before dinner at Akershus, so we did the Pixar Short Film festival, the Disney Visa meet and greet(Goofy there was the Goofiest!), and were able to meet Anna & Elsa, all in that hour time frame. The weather threatened to rain all day but it all went just to the north of Epcot. It kept the crowds down a bit so we were able to tackle pretty much everything. Turtle Talk with Crush was down for some reason a majority of the day but that was not a big deal for any of us.
I'll Start a reply to this thread with the next couple of days...
Our plane arrived at Orlando Int'l Airport around 6:30PM on 3/17. By the time we got on the Magical Express and were bussed in, we arrived at around 8PM. We stayed at Pop Century. We were in building 5 of the 60's, preferred pool view. They just opened this building after the refurbs sometime in the week or so before we arrived. It appeared upon first look that we may have been the first people to stay in our room after the refurb. The rooms are fantastic. It does seem a little tight when you have the murphy bed down but not any tighter than it was before the refurb with double beds. No issues with the room at all, other than it seemed that one of the USB plugins may not have been working right, as it would only partially charge my iPad. Since we were late getting in, we just had a meal at the hotel and let the kiddos play in the arcade. We were a party of 6, our rooms were not connecting but very close together.
FYI, we went with the normal Dining plan. If you are on a tight budget, definitely not the cheapest option. But it was nice to have 2 snacks, 1 quick service for lunch, and a table service for dinner. It gives us a nice structure to our day without having to worry about the sticker shock that comes with some of the table service restaurants! I highly recommend it unless you are on a tight budget, even though it may cost a few dollars extra in the end. The peace of mind is worth every penny for us.
We started out Sunday morning, 3/18, at Hollywood Studios. It was an EMH morning there so we were on the bus at 7 to be at the park at 7:30. The kids wanted to do Jedi training. I am not much of a "big" roller coaster person, so we split up at rope drop, with some going and doing Rock N' Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror at Rope Drop, while I took the kids over to sign up for Jedi Training. We were about 6th in line for Jedi Training, had the pick of all the times. There was a large line that developed behind us but Jedi Training did not become completely filled. We also had time to ride Star Tours twice before the rest of our party caught up to us. Then it was time to ride Star Tours a third time with our first FP shortly after the park fully opened at 9. We then had our second FP after that for Toy Story Mania. We got a quick snack before TSM and then the boys wanted their picture with Cruz Ramirez as they are big Cars fans. TSM was a lot of fun but I can't imagine doing standby until they get all 3 tracks back open. After a quick snack, we went to Frozen Sing-Along for our last FP at HS. It was then time for Jedi Training, which my boys loved. We did lunch at Backlot Express, then headed over to the Launch Bay to meet Kylo Ren and BB-8. Chewie had a 30 minute wait so we skipped him for the time being. We skipped Voyage of the Little Mermaid and Indy altogether this trip.
From there, we had reservations over at Tusker House so we headed towards Animal Kingdom. I got a Tough to Be a Bug Fastpass(wasn't needed but hey, might as well grab it and use it!) so we did that quickly before the Tusker meal. Brazilian Tour Groups were pretty thick early in the week and for some reason they were all determined to run us over trying to get in to the show. That was our only real issue with them though, other than that they were not bad, just noticeable. Tusker was a good meal, not quite exactly what I expected, but I mostly chose there for the character dining for the kids and the food was good.
From there, we headed over to DinoLand as Pandora was a madhouse, which was fine as we had our FoP fastpass later in the week. With our youngest being 4, they like to do the Triceratops Spin, though we opted to skip Primeval Whirl. I was able to get another FP for Dinosaur, so we rode that as I had never been on it before. It was more intense than I expected! I would have liked it more had there not been 4 screaming kids in our vehicle...luckily only 2 of them were mine! We ended the evening with Rivers of Light. My oldest son LOVED it. I thought it was pretty good, though probably my least favorite of the nighttime offerings at the 4 parks. Still, I'd definitely watch it again.
Monday was our Epcot day. We rope dropped Soarin, which was a walk-on. Quite a good ride but I prefer to have my feet on some kind of flooring, so i was not as big of a fan as the rest of our group. We then did Living With The Land, The Seas with Finding Nemo, and Journey Into Imagination with Figment. Figment was my boys' favorite ride for the entire trip. They have wild imaginations so that ride appealed to them more than anything. Then it was time for our Frozen FP. The wait at that point was only 30 minutes standby but by the time we were done with our FP it had ballooned up to 50 minutes. The rest of World Showcase was not open quite yet so we made a quick trip over to meet Joy and Sadness, as well as Baymax. We didn't do the Character Spot because we had so many character dining and other meets that it didn't seem necessary. So it was back over to World Showcase. we had lunch at the little quick service Mexican Restaurant, the name I cannot remember. The chicken tacos were very delicious, reminded me of Street Tacos that are popular around here. Then we went to the Gran Fiesta Tour with the Three Caballeros, and then walked around the rest of the World Showcase. No "Drinking around the world" here, though I did sample a couple of drinks and snacks. We allowed our Mission:Space FP to lapse. I had wanted to ride it but nobody else in my party had any interest. We also did not try for Test Track. We did it in it's previous form, and while we had fun, we had no real desire to go back to it. We did use our Spaceship Earth FP. My parents, who are not quite retirement age, wanted to ride the monorail, so we took a break from Epcot to do that. Then we went back in to Epcot. At this point we had tackled everything we wanted and had an hour to waste before dinner at Akershus, so we did the Pixar Short Film festival, the Disney Visa meet and greet(Goofy there was the Goofiest!), and were able to meet Anna & Elsa, all in that hour time frame. The weather threatened to rain all day but it all went just to the north of Epcot. It kept the crowds down a bit so we were able to tackle pretty much everything. Turtle Talk with Crush was down for some reason a majority of the day but that was not a big deal for any of us.
I'll Start a reply to this thread with the next couple of days...
