Kelly & Johnny D's 12/17-12/28 Christmas Trip!

Cast:
Me - 25
Boyfriend Johnny D - 26

OK I didn't bring a notebook :hammer: and I have to remember these as I go! Hope you enjoy them!

Wednesday, December 17

It’s 5:30 am and we are in cold, wet Boston, MA. No matter what weather Orlando had in store for us, it had to be better than this! We both jump up and get ready as fast as we can and we are out of there and on our way to Providence for our 8:20 am flight. We arrive at the airport at 7:30 thinking we have plenty of time to get our luggage checked and get on board. Well, we decided to do curbside check in and their machine broke right in the middle of checking luggage! The time is now 8:00 am and the machine is still broken and the woman working the machine refused to let me bring our luggage to another machine since our flight was in 20 minutes! Luckily a very nice man working for Southwest curbside check-in ignored her and grabbed our bags and brought them through. Time is now 8:10 am and we are informed that our bags may not make it. Oh well! We run to the line, get through security and we are on our way to Lake Buena Vista!!

We arrive at MCO and lo and behold our bags made it with us! We get our rental car from L&M, with a bit of a hassle since the guy working is obviously having a bad day before we even walk up to him. He makes us get insurance since we don’t have a copy of our insurance policy (we’ve never had to have a copy of our insurance policy in the past) and tells me to fax my insurance to them and they will take it off our bill later. Fine. So we get our little econo car (Daewoo Lanos) and head for the world. We pull up to the new Pop Century at around 1:00 pm and it is amazing!! I thought when I saw the buildings being built last year that I would not like it there because it was tacky. I don’t like the sayings on the top of the buildings but boy is it a cute resort! Everything comes together perfectly! I had no problems at check in and the woman actually changed our room because I did not want to be on the bottom floor. She gave us 3rd floor in 70’s building A. We walked to our room and the view of hourglass lake is absolutely gorgeous! You can see the Classic Years has ceased building as of right now. There is only the food court hall and one building up. When are they going to start building that again? We go into our room and it is brand new and the bedspread, border and picture on the wall were not tacky or bright at all! I loved it. We stayed 11 days and there were 2 of us. It was the perfect size! If anyone has questions about the resort feel free to post or email me. We LOVED it and we’d stay here again. We didn’t hear any of our neighbors the entire time and the resort was full! Next up… Epcot!!

 

[Disneynutcase]

Thanks, Kelly.

Your info is much appreciated. We're still indecisive and don't need to know for sure about when we're going to go to WDW until probably this summer.

An issue that cropped up is the amount of "vacation time" my wife and bro-in-law will be taking from work. If we go at Christmas, they are going to need 4-6 vacation days depending on how long we decide to stay. I think it's do-able because they both get comp days for working overtime.

As far as post-park hours, they don't factor with us. We'll be touring with four kids ages 10, 7, 6, and almost 5. We definately want to eat at Ohanas and we want to see the AKL and Grand Floridian for the giant Gingerbread House, but beyond that, I think we'll be sacking out early to get to parks when they open.

With that in mind...one last question: Were parks open to the general public at normal 9:00 times? I was out of town during the week of Christmas and forgot to check. And I saw that last week (the week between Christmas and New Years) every park seemed to be opened an hour earlier--i.e. instead of 9:00, they were opened at 8:00.

What were the opening times that you guys encountered?

Thanks again!

 

[kellydisney]

I missed that in your first question. Park hours were normal the week before Christmas with most of them being open around 9 I believe. I do think that some days they were open at 8 but I can't remember. I know for sure that if you stay on property, you should use the extra magic hour so you can get in at either 7 or 8. We did that a couple of times. I never felt like the parks weren't open early enough that's for sure! But BB was open at 10am. Not sure if that is standard procedure? Good luck, let me know what your family decides to do! I took 7 vacation days for our trip and it was the best trip we've had to date! I'd definitely recommend saving vaca days.