Trip Report The One With the Hashbrown Style Potato Barrels - July 2017

Helllllllo humans! I've only been back from the world for about 3 days and the PDD has already severely set in. We had one of the most wonderful, relaxing, adult Disney trips with possibly the best food we have eaten. Ever (aside from one meal, but we'll discuss that later). So without further adieu let's get this TR kicked off because I am over the moon excited to write it!!

Who: Me (Mary, a former CM) and my mom (Mona, a middle school SPED teacher/speech pathologist who specializes in social skills with children with Asperger's. Believe it or not, that will come up later in this report.) We are Disney obsessed, to say the very least.

When: July 17-21, 2017

Where: Port Orleans French Quarter, our home away from home and fave resort (even though the Polynesian is my "home", or was my home for 6 months! If you perused the gift shops ((specifically Moana Mercantile 99% of the time)) between February and June of 2016, you more than likely saw my bright and smiling face and heard me say "Tap mickey to mickey!" or "Yes I can absolutely convert your 25 leftover counter service meals into 75 snacks in the 7 minutes before you have to board the Magical Express!!")

Why? Well, we got an amazing "bounce back" offer in the mail after our trip in January and could NOT turn it down. So we found a time that would work for me being off work that my mom hadn't gone back to school yet and jumped on it. Turns out, it fell perfectly, because I was burnt out on work, my mom's going to have a looooong school year, and my boyfriend had just dumped me. Over text message. Yeesh. But hey, that's nothing a visit to my happy place couldn't heal!

 

[wvdisneyfamily]

I'm following...the part that caught me - your mom and the long school year. I sympathize. I'm a middle school assistant principal and completely understand long year...lol!

 

[meg0039]

I'm following...the part that caught me - your mom and the long school year. I sympathize. I'm a middle school assistant principal and completely understand long year...lol!

She actually just came into my room with a carton of ice cream, said "85... I have 85 kids on my case load next year...", and left as quickly as she came . I believe this Disney trip may be the only thing that kept her from cracking before the year even began!

 

[wvdisneyfamily]

She actually just came into my room with a carton of ice cream, said "85... I have 85 kids on my case load next year...", and left as quickly as she came . I believe this Disney trip may be the only thing that kept her from cracking before the year even began!

Yikes! That sounds like me telling my husband I have 500 sets of test scores to organize and analyze. Right now, 94 days to our Halloween weekend is keeping me sane.

 

[LunaBelle]

Im in! I'm sorry to hear about your breakup but I'm sure a little Disney magic has the potential to heal all

 

[becca_]

Breaking up over a text makes the break up 100x worse. I'll never understand people that do it, my sister's ex just did it to her back in May. Luckily we were headed to WDW a few weeks after that made up for it!! Can't wait to read more!!

 

[Go.Nijntje]

I am happy you started this TR, sorry to hear about your boyfriend but if he dumps you by text you are a better off without him.

 

[meg0039]

Day One - Monday July 17: Travel Day!

According to my notes I was awake at 4:30 this morning (We didn't leave our house until 7:15... I was eager, to say the least). Our drive to Atlanta was easy and uneventful and only took about 2 and a half hours, putting us at the park and ride at about 10:30 Eastern time. We are big fans of using park and ride at the Atlanta airport and I'm sure our bus mates thought that we were a walking Vera Bradley ad.

This ride was... interesting, to say the least.I am very sensitive to hearing other people eating/drinking/etc. and the woman across from us smacked her gum. LOUDLY. THE ENTIRE RIDE TO THE AIRPORT. It was so bad that I made a note about it in my notes for the day. We got in the airport and through checkin, bag check, and security without incident, boarded the plane train, and made our way to gate C.

We stopped at Carabba's for lunch and split chicken bryan. It was PHENOMENAL, however, the meal took about an hour and fifteen minutes. We waited to the point where we were about to cancel our order out of fear of missing our boarding time for our flight, however it came out just in time! This was my first time flying Southwest, having only previously flown AirFrance and Delta, so I was slightly nervous about the boarding process. However, mom ensured that we had good boarding numbers and I have absolutely zero complaints about Southwest's process! Honestly, it ran a bit more smoothly than our last two Delta flights, if I had to be honest. The flight was extremely turbulent, to the point where all attendant's services were suspended throughout the entire flight. I wasn't going to complain, though. They were extremely apologetic, and our last Delta flight we got no drinks or snacks for no reason... the attendants just didn't get to us

Plane slefie!

We got off of the plane and boarded the fonorail quickly and navigated to the Magical Express desk! We scanned our MagicBands and were directed to the French Quarter line... however when we scanned our MagicBands at the bus, it said that our reservations were pulling up at the Polynesian We had originally had our trip booked at the Poly, but decided to change months ago. Some of our reservation never updated... which is odd. Our entire trip, if we wanted to order something off of the app and get it shipped to a resort, it would ship to BouTiki NOT Jackson Square. I'm still trying to figure out how the glitch happened. But, they ended up letting us on the French Quarter bus and away we went! We first stopped at Old Key West, where I saw an old friend (if you were ever a CP, you know EXACTLY what I mean by this)

and then Saratoga before proceeding to French Quarter.
It was pouring when we got there and we were mostly concerned with getting to our room as quickly and as dry as possible, so I didn't grab any lobby pictures. Or room pictures originally, come to think of it but this was our view the next morning! Building 6. Very close to the main lobby, pool, and food court and also quiet. Like, I didn't hear a loud family at ALL.

We got to our room, threw down our bags, and were immediately out the door again. Grabbed an Uber to our destination and had the nicest driver! He drove to help pay to take his family of 14, including grandkids and in-laws (!!!!), to Atlantis in the Bahamas for a week. He made our trip very comfortable! 5 stars! My app is telling me that his name was Garry. He was awesome!

Stay tuned for: Dinner! Monsoons! Leftovers! Lotion! It's a party, people!

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

Sorry to hear about your breakup, but WDW is a good way to remedy that. And I can totally understand your mom wanting some happiness before a long school year. I am a regular ed middle/high school teacher. I had a long year last year and I will have those kids again this year as 8th graders. I forsee some Disney trips in my future.

 

[TrolleyFollower91]

85... I have 85 kids on my case load next year...", a

We have SPED teachers who freak out over 7-8 kids

 

[susan lees]

Following along. My son just finished working cultural program at epcot. He arrived last June!

 

[*Flynnderella*]

Following along

 

[kaitertot5249]

I love mother daughter trip reports Following along!

 

[meg0039]

Day One, Part Two!
Where was our mystery dinner? My home resort! If you read my PTR, we originally had plans to eat at Grand Floridian Cafe for dinner, however, Friday night, an Ohana reservation came available for 5:30 and we HAD to take it. We went downstairs so that I could try a spikey pineapple from Trader Sam's tiki terrace (which my picture of has seemed to gone missing). I have to say... I wasn't impressed. Our bartender was awesome, but the drinks seemed weak for the price, which was the complete opposite of anything that I'd heard! I'm a light social drinker so my tolerance isn't super high and my mom hardly ever drinks and neither of us felt much of anything off of the drinks. And I even paid for an extra coconut rum floater! For the taste, I remember commenting to my mom that I should have just used a snack credit for a dole whip. It would have saved me $15! My intention wasn't to get drunk by any means, but a libation on vacation is always nice, and this one just didn't live up to the hype.
After that, I went and said hi to some of my old work ohana and we checked in early for our reservation. I wasn't expecting to be immediately seated or have a view this good!

I wish that we had a later seating and had been able to watch fireworks from there! Our service was better than I had expected. MUCH better. Maybe it's because we had an earlier seating? I'm not totally sure. I do, however, know that there were still reservations available day of, so maybe they weren't super busy and trying to rush us through. They also brought us a massive amount of food for two people!

We weren't able to finish all of it. My mom asked for a box for the potstickers, knowing that they're my favorite and that they would be thrown out anyway (her soapbox all week was Disney food waste). Our waitress said that technically, they weren't supposed to do that, but I explained to her that it used to be a special thing for one of our managers to run up to Ohana and get pot stickers for us to all share in the stockroom. Not only did she get me a box for the ones we had left, she brought me a whole SECOND box packed to the brim with potstickers!! I nearly cried, y'all. There were nearly tears. While we ate, the bottom dropped out of the sky.

You couldn't even see the castle! As we watched it rain, a beautiful sight got set in front of us.

We ate the entire thing. All of it. Every single last bite. We then decided to monorail to the Grand to browse gift shops, however, neither of us were feeling it, so we walked right back out to the monorail station. This is where the theme of our week full of transportation issues began. We waited 15 minutes for a monorail to the Magic Kingdom, stuck in line behind two women in their 30s discussing buying Instagram followers. We then got off of the monorail at Magic Kingdom just to wait 30 minutes for a bus to French Quarter. Needless to say, we were ready for bed by the time that we got there. This is the only picture that I snapped, just to show that the fabric at the end of the bed was gone, which I thought was odd!

 

[meg0039]

Sorry to hear about your breakup, but WDW is a good way to remedy that. And I can totally understand your mom wanting some happiness before a long school year. I am a regular ed middle/high school teacher. I had a long year last year and I will have those kids again this year as 8th graders. I forsee some Disney trips in my future.

We have SPED teachers who freak out over 7-8 kids

Her room this year is Disney themed to hopefully help keep her calm. We'll see how it goes!

 

[*Flynnderella*]

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I can't actually see your photos Is it just me?!

 

[Go.Nijntje]

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I can't actually see your photos Is it just me?!

I can see the photos. Not sure why you can't.

 

[MotherofaPrincessLover]

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I can't actually see your photos Is it just me?!

I can't see them either.

 

[Tuvalu]

I know if you switch resorts after your initial Disney's Magical Express reservation, you need to submit a new reservation with the change. DME is not informed unless you (or your TA) tell them.

It seems themed bed runners have gone away. This year I have stayed at Pop, All Star Music, POFQ, POR, WL and the Poly and none have had bed runners.

 

[*Flynnderella*]

I think it was the internet browsers at work that wouldn't let me see them! How selfish of them not letting me look while I'm meant to be working following on the trusty IPad and that dessert looked amazingggg!!