Trip Report #tonyfromspain: A Prophet Surf ‘N Turf story

Whelp, now that the Freestyle/Greco season is over, I’ve completed my course setup for my summer class, and I’ve finished my laundry I can kick this beast off!

!!!DISCLAIMER!!!​

For those overly sensitive to satirical sass, poor spelling, and overall weak grammar then please feel free to excuse yourself now because all bets are off from here on forward… As @Zipitidoda would say, there are plenty of prophetisms to come.



Still here? Swell!



Most of the backstory can be found here How to celebrate a proper 20/40 in just 18 months.... For those suffering from krikosophobia (I’ll let you stew on that one), the long and short of it is that we’ve been planning this trip for over 18 months and we are celebrating our 20th anniversary and our 40th birthdays since they both occur this year! I have mentioned that one of us has yet to hit that milestone and the other is indeed a full 40? I can tell you who still 39 but that would just lack class…it’s me…I’m still 39 and she’s older me! ;):D Anywho, there will be some park visiting, WDWMagic member meetup, and a 7-night cruise in this TR.



Anyway, this journey starts out with a late flight out of the busiest airport in America. We worked to late afternoon and drove down the northern most Marta station. We took Marta down to ATL thinking this would not only save us money on parking, which it did, but also time since Hotlanta has some of the worst traffic, ever. Sadly, we didn’t win the “saving time” game as about half way down a train on the same track broke down causing some delays that put us at the airport less than 2 hours before our flight. We quickly checked our bags and waded through security. We had planned on having a nice sit down meal at the airport but settled for Jersey Mikes since we were now time strapped.
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Unfortunately, 24 hours prior to our flight we forgot to log into Southwest and complete precheckin and we ended up with a real late boarding group. I was legitimately concerned we would not be sitting together on this trip but thankfully we found a pair of seats together near the rear of the plane. I’ll let the DW speak to how this affected her trip. IMO this was one of the BEST flight experiences we’ve had! The head attendant seemed like he was classically trained in the Jungle Cruise Skipper arts and was VERY entertaining. There were no issues with our flight at all! We even got to see the HEA fireworks as we approached MCO! As we made our descent we were notified that it was one of the attendants birthday and a request was made for all of us to turn our flight attendant lights. We all followed the request and they then turned off the cabin lights as we all sang happy birthday to the birthday boy. He then “blew out his candles” as we all turned off the lights as he blew, a very cool experience! As we disembarked I, of course, had to get a photo with the birthday boy and his crown!
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We took the MCO monorail to the main hub and collected our bags. We were flying later than normal and I didn’t want to leave bag pickup and delivery to the Disney folks because I didn’t want to be woken up at 1am when our bags got delivered to our room. Our luggage was on the carousel quickly but I got us turned around and took a small detour before we finally made it to the DME queue:

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Thankfully they opened another line up and we were quickly waiting in our bus queue. There must have been a slew of cheer and or teen events going on this week because the DME lines were chalk full of rowdy teens and inappropriately dressed 7 year olds. Soon we were on our bus with about 12 other people but then just sat there for at least 15 minutes. We waited and waited and then, all of a sudden, a mass of teen conventioneers with a few parent chaperones walked on and filled up the remaining seats. Finally we pulled away with the notice that we would be hitting POR first before making our way to the POLY. It wasn’t long before were in the bubble! We unloaded our teen patrons and made for what should have been a short trip to the POLY but the Mouse’s road construction turned it into an almost 30 minute drive! We finally arrived at the Polynesian sometime between 11:30 and midnight!



Still to come: Our room!
 

LeighM

Well-Known Member
Better late than never! No, it's not in reference to a Disney movie. We have background on this name in a trip report (@lostpro9het may remember which one), but basically we were at the guard shack at a resort at Disney and the guard didn't even look up our information. When driving away, we said something like we could have been the McGuillicutty's for all he knew.

Every time I see or hear that name, I automatically think of I Love Lucy, since that was her characters maiden name on the show :)
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
your room looks lovely I really like the Lilo & Stitch bed head I may be showing that to the OH this evening :D
Love the room pics! Poly is my dream resort!
I'm also loving your room! Love the decorations!
I'll say this, the Poly room is definitely top two for themeing for me. My blinding love for AKL makes it difficult to take the top spot, though. The two bathrooms are nice, too, especially when 50% of your party monopolizes 95% of the bathroom sink/mirror.

Final thoughts:
Probably the best surf n' turf trip we have ever taken, though the bungalow upgrade trip feels equally special. I work best with Pro/Con lists.

Cons:
The Poly Twilight Feast, WDW greed and messing with the stitch juice probably made it a "last time" experience for us.
It would be awesome if Nomad Lounge could change up their beer list at least every two years.

Not really a Pro or a Con:
While I really enjoy the cruising I think 7 nights might be too long for me. This has nothing to do with the great experiences but everything to do with my inability to say no to a plated meal! There was so much great food on the trip that its just hard to pass up on the experiences. That said, by the end of the cruise I was a bit burnt out on eating, #pettyfirstworldproblems. We will tinker with the days this October with a 4-nighter and next October with a 5-nighter. I'm thinking a 5-night might be perfect, we will see.

Pros:
Meeting some cool forum members, both on and off the boat! While the @sheriffwoody was planned fun, how cool was it bumping into Team Buffalo who just so happened to share our same dining rotation and table!!!
Beer exchanges! This was a great way to meet new folks and try new beer. I've even started up the beer exchange for our October cruise and am excited that we already have 9 folks confirmed!
DCL Excursions, wow we only did two but they were awesome and provided us with a ton of memories.
Aft staterooms, tough to beat the sizes of those verandas!
Southwest airlines, their flight staff were top notch and ridiculously personable.
The Poly, it was nice trying different rooms in different longhouses. Both were excellent.

That's about it, folks! Like I said, we've got another surf n' turf trip booked for October, and a 5-nighter next October out of NYC. We will be checking out the Grand Californian over the week of Thanksgiving and our moody teen is actually excited about visiting the OG. I think the amount of planning that goes into that trip will rival our laminated note card carrying park commando newb selves of Pop Century past. Finally, we are throwing our hat in the BCV 1-bedroom ring again with a week after NYE with the moody teen who is surprisingly looking forward to that trip as well. With that...
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cfry06

Well-Known Member
Great report, thanks for sharing!

Thoughts on 1st floor Poly? Haven’t done that yet. Two weeks ago we were at PagoPago - love the quick access to the TTC! Hard for me to pick a fave. None are far from TTC though.

Can’t wait to hear about your future trips as well. ESP your trip to Cali!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Great report, thanks for sharing!

Thoughts on 1st floor Poly? Haven’t done that yet. Two weeks ago we were at PagoPago - love the quick access to the TTC! Hard for me to pick a fave. None are far from TTC though.
Thanks for following!
From inside the room you couldn’t tell which floor you were on, i.e no noise from above! The patio felt less private, obviously, and it was like we were on display while others walked by. It would be nice if they put MB readers on the sliding doors. That would make it more appealing to quickly enter/exit the room from that side as well. That said, third floor Tokelau is still our favorite, especially if you get a partial theme park view. And, yeah, that convenient walk from TTC is very nice. Fingers crossed the Rockford Peaches make the 2019 NYC boat.

Excellent reporting as always! We've never cruised, but I can definitely see the appeal of it!
I highly recommend dipping your toe in the DCL waters! A 3-4 day boat ride sandwiched between some WDW days is very nice!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Great report (as always) and thanks for sharing! Vids were great!
Thank you, sir! Keep your eyes peeled in October, you may see two happy folks walking around getting their pre-cruise on in the bubble for a couple days ;).

Thank you for the great Trip report.. you made me rethink my dislike of cruises. Don't know if I will ever get hubby back on one.. but maybe if it's Disney...
Thank you, ma'am! I'll admit, I'm a true convert when it comes to cruising, I HATED the idea of them. I mean, after all its just a floating hotel, right? I could not have been more wrong. To be fair, though, I've never set foot on another cruise line and don't know that I ever would. The standard has been set way to high for me with DCL. If Star Wars Land flops like Jim Cameron's black light nightmare I might adopt @EOD K9 philosophy of renting our DVC points to fund our DCL addiction :p.
 

Rista1313

Well-Known Member
Thank you, sir! Keep your eyes peeled in October, you may see two happy folks walking around getting their pre-cruise on in the bubble for a couple days ;).


Thank you, ma'am! I'll admit, I'm a true convert when it comes to cruising, I HATED the idea of them. I mean, after all its just a floating hotel, right? I could not have been more wrong. To be fair, though, I've never set foot on another cruise line and don't know that I ever would. The standard has been set way to high for me with DCL. If Star Wars Land flops like Jim Cameron's black light nightmare I might adopt @EOD K9 philosophy of renting our DVC points to fund our DCL addiction :p.

We've only been on 1 cruise, as we are usually All inclusive resort people. To be honest, we were bored. But it was on another cruise line. And we felt we were being nickeled and dimed to death... But to be fair.. we were on a very small budget that year.
 

imahistorygeek

Well-Known Member
I will echo Sean's cons about the trip. The Twilight Feast is a fun way to get Ohana without actually having to go to Ohana, but for the love Pete, Disney why did you go and mess with the best drink??

Personally, I loved the 7 day cruise. Sure, I ate a lot of food and going to sit-downs gets tiring, but all of the other activities more than made up for it. If anything, I wouldn't mind just eating room service or going to Cabanas on some evenings. I would really like to do a transatlantic or Panama Canal cruise.

I love WDWmagic meet-ups because when you talk about Disney 24/7 with someone on the forums, you seem less crazy.

Team Buffalo - We had the amazing luck to be seated with y'all at dinner. Maybe we will see y'all again on DCL one day or in the parks.

DCL Excursions - Man did a rack my brain on these trying to find something we'd both enjoy. We like to be active and I thought the ones I chose fit the bill. They were so much fun!

Aft staterooms - Honestly, there is no where else I have found on the ships that compare, especially with the view. Sure, there's a vibration issue, but guys...that view and the oversized verandas!

Southwest Airlines - I've had another chance to fly Southwest (this time it was solo to Austin)* and the customer service was just as great as before. I know a lot of people just don't like SW's boarding process, but I find it comforting because I know exactly where I'm supposed to be in line and when to line up. It really helps with the anxiety.

What's next? Well, our October cruise and WDW trip is fully planned. DL in November is almost fully planned. I'm working on our touring plans and will have all of that planned out. We're waiting on a one-night waitlist at the Grand Californian or a DVC room discount. The only thing left after that is transportation to and from the airport. We have a third trip planned for after the New Year.

I've been trying to plan a long weekend in early September, but I'm not sure that's going to work out this year. :( #firstworldproblems

*My Austin trip is the first flight I have taken by myself in years. Made it to the airport no problem. Got turned around in the airport, but that's not unusual for me to get lost. It took me many trips to figure out the layout of MK. I flew into Austin and it's such a tiny airport - from my seat on the plane to the baggage area was less than 5 minutes. If you've every had experience with ATL, you know 5 minutes is pretty much a pipe dream. My flight home was a bit more scary. For those of you following my fear of flying issues, this was...an experience. The weather was bad in ATL. I didn't know how bad until the pilot comes on and says we've been flying in circles for about 30 minutes waiting for clearance in ATL. He said we were going to have to make a decision in the next 10 minutes because our fuel reserves were low. That's NOT what I wanted to hear. He comes back on and says we're being diverted to Birmingham. We've had turbulence almost the entire flight, so I'm a little on edge. We get to Birmingham and sit for a bit. We refuel and wait for our moment of opportunity and we're off! The pilot says we will have medium turbulence, but there was hardly any at all. So, for all you fearful flyers out there, the book SOAR help me so much in dealing with this. If flying is preventing you from going to WDW, DL, or anywhere overseas, get this book and read it. I would have never been able to book flights to DL without it.
 

MomofPrincessGrace

Well-Known Member
We've only been on 1 cruise, as we are usually All inclusive resort people. To be honest, we were bored. But it was on another cruise line. And we felt we were being nickeled and dimed to death... But to be fair.. we were on a very small budget that year.
When we did our 3 nighter in April, we didnt spend any money other than on like maybe 3 alcoholic drinks and souvenirs. We didnt spend money on treats or ice cream in the candy shop because all the free soft serve. I will say that a 3 night was perfect for us, because I am the type that gets bored easily as well. I do think Disney was worth the money that we paid (but for what we paid we could have done 5 days at Disney). I think its worth trying at least once. The stage shows were FANTASTIC and the food was awesome.
 

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