May17-23 Trip Report

Here goes:
Trip for myself and my 20 year old son who will be 21 soon. A little father son time. We arrived in Orlando at 9:15 am from our early flight. Promptly boarded our Magical Express bus and were off to our resort, Saratoga Springs. Our first time staying at this resort. We arrived at around 10:30 am. About 15 minutes before our arrival I received a text message that our room was ready which was awesome. We had a bellman give us a ride in a golf cart to our room and dropped off our back packs and off to The Magic Kingdom.
Our room was a studio which was very nice, clean and near Disney Springs, and near a quiet pool. Saratoga Springs is massive. 5 stops. The buses were ok but sometimes we had to wait 15-20 min for them. We did use Uber a few times from this resort and we had no issues with them picking us up from the Carriage House.
I had an annual pass, my son had a park hopper so we had fast passes set up and dinner and lunch reservations for certain days. So we went between the parks quite a bit.

I will say I was very surprised at how crowded the parks were. I have been at this time of the year before and they were never this crowded. All parks not just Magic Kingdom.
Friday we did the Future World Tour at Epcot, my second time, my son's first time, and it was great. I recommend it. We got in everything we wanted to do except Soarin, we just could not coordinate a Fast Pass with other things we were doing. We did not do Animal Kingdom either.
The parks were very clean, the bathrooms were very clean with the exception of the bathroom by Space Mountain was a disaster on Sunday but that was it. All the Cast members we had contact with were very nice and friendly. We only had 2 bad experiences with meals, one was breakfast at the Wave at The Contemporary, our waiter seemed put off that we did not want the buffet and wanted to order off the menu, and then we had breakfast the next day at the Kona Cafe at The Polynesian and the service was terrible. The server did not check on us until I had about 3 bites left of my Tonga toast, then I proceeded to tell her they never brought my eggs I ordered so please take them off the bill, she said you don't want them and I said no. She brings the check and I want to charge it to my Magic Band she says you have to take it off I do not have my device, I take it off she comes back with the receipt and no Magic Band, she is walking away I'm yelling for her she looks at me and I ask where is my Magic Band she says didn't I put it in there and I said no, she has to go back and get it.
Also in regards to Kona Cafe we did not make a reservation the day before, we tried but nothing available, I know we should have done that but sometimes it's had to plan that far out, my point is that most of the restaurants you can walk up and they will try to seat you but you will have to wait, we busted out butts to get over there by 9:30 which I thought would beat the rush and they tell me they are a reservation only. This should be noted somewhere on the app or Disney Dining that they do not take walk ups.

The new Star Wars fireworks are great, and the new Magic Kingdom fireworks are out of this world fantastic.

This was a great 6 days, cannot wait to go back in a few months with my wife, hopefully at a slower time.

It's wonderful you got to enjoy a father and son trip!! Though you had a few bumps, it sounds like it was mostly a good trip!! Thanks for reporting!!

Glad you had a good trip, despite a few bumps.

I agree about crowds - we were there in early May and it was much busier than I expected, and much busier than we had seen in previous May visits.

So wonderful to spend time with adult children! Sounds like it was a good trip.

I was there last week too (21-26) and I agree about the crowds. Everywhere we went was busy all week. Much busier than I expected. Sounds like a great trip.