O'MalleytheAlleyCat
05-13-2007, 09:38 PM
Cast: just me and my DH
Noticeably absent: DS15 and DD11 who stayed with their Aunt and Uncle and went to school.
This is a trip that was born out of “hey look, we’ve got 4 days off together at the end of May, why don’t we go somewhere”. So, my DH and I decided to make a quick trip south, just the two of us. :thumbsup: Due to late arrival and relatively early departure, we were only able to spend 2 days in the parks, but we tried to cover the things we wanted at our own pace. A couple of things to mention: this is our first trip ever anywhere without kids, our first time during the Flower and Garden Festival and our first trip to Disney utilizing only the Disney transportation. :mickey:
We arrived at the Orlando airport on Wednesday night, May 9th at 8:05 PM. We hadn’t checked any bags, so quickly made our way to the lower level and found Magical Express. At that time of night, there was only one family in line ahead of us and soon we were on our way outside to board our bus to the Pop Century. I will mention here that on our way out the door at home earlier, I realized I didn’t have our ME coupons and after diligently searching, gave up and went without them. The lady at the ME desk where we checked in had no trouble pulling up our reservation and issuing new coupons to us however…whew!! :whew: Once the bus got going (maybe about 15 minutes after we checked in) it was to make 3 stops: Pop, Coronado and AKL. We were the first stop, and in what seemed like no time we were there. Again, there was only one family ahead of us at check in and soon we were on our way to the room. Our family has stayed at the Pop twice before and will stay again in July and we really like staying in the 50’s. Now, I figured that since we had made no specific requests, we would probably get “stuck” way far away in the 90’s or something like that. Much to our delight we were in room 3412 (building 3 of the 50’s), a corner room on the 4th floor facing the bowling pin swimming pool. We were thrilled! :woohoo: I will say it is definitely more noisy in a room facing the pool, but we don’t mind that a bit. After dumping our suitcases in the room we left right away to catch a bus to DTD for some food. We thought maybe we’d be too tired to do this, but found ourselves invigorated just to be at Disney, so decided to go for it. A bus to DTD was just pulling away as we got to the bus stop. One big wave of my arm and the driver stopped to let us get on. About one minute after getting on the bus (this was at about 9:30 at night and there were only 2 other people on the bus with us) it started to pour down rain. Did we have jackets….did we have ponchos?? No, of course not. Oh well! By the time we got to the Marketplace, the rain had mostly stopped, but the poor folks that got on the bus were sure wet! We rode around to the Pleasure Island stop and got off in search of food. We decided on Bongo’s Cuban Café and were pleasantly surprised. The food and service were very good…the food not as spicy as I thought it would be though. By the time we finished eating, we were getting a bit tired and knew we had a big day ahead of us tomorrow at EPCOT and the Flower and Garden Festival so we headed back to Pop and hit the hay.
Noticeably absent: DS15 and DD11 who stayed with their Aunt and Uncle and went to school.
This is a trip that was born out of “hey look, we’ve got 4 days off together at the end of May, why don’t we go somewhere”. So, my DH and I decided to make a quick trip south, just the two of us. :thumbsup: Due to late arrival and relatively early departure, we were only able to spend 2 days in the parks, but we tried to cover the things we wanted at our own pace. A couple of things to mention: this is our first trip ever anywhere without kids, our first time during the Flower and Garden Festival and our first trip to Disney utilizing only the Disney transportation. :mickey:
We arrived at the Orlando airport on Wednesday night, May 9th at 8:05 PM. We hadn’t checked any bags, so quickly made our way to the lower level and found Magical Express. At that time of night, there was only one family in line ahead of us and soon we were on our way outside to board our bus to the Pop Century. I will mention here that on our way out the door at home earlier, I realized I didn’t have our ME coupons and after diligently searching, gave up and went without them. The lady at the ME desk where we checked in had no trouble pulling up our reservation and issuing new coupons to us however…whew!! :whew: Once the bus got going (maybe about 15 minutes after we checked in) it was to make 3 stops: Pop, Coronado and AKL. We were the first stop, and in what seemed like no time we were there. Again, there was only one family ahead of us at check in and soon we were on our way to the room. Our family has stayed at the Pop twice before and will stay again in July and we really like staying in the 50’s. Now, I figured that since we had made no specific requests, we would probably get “stuck” way far away in the 90’s or something like that. Much to our delight we were in room 3412 (building 3 of the 50’s), a corner room on the 4th floor facing the bowling pin swimming pool. We were thrilled! :woohoo: I will say it is definitely more noisy in a room facing the pool, but we don’t mind that a bit. After dumping our suitcases in the room we left right away to catch a bus to DTD for some food. We thought maybe we’d be too tired to do this, but found ourselves invigorated just to be at Disney, so decided to go for it. A bus to DTD was just pulling away as we got to the bus stop. One big wave of my arm and the driver stopped to let us get on. About one minute after getting on the bus (this was at about 9:30 at night and there were only 2 other people on the bus with us) it started to pour down rain. Did we have jackets….did we have ponchos?? No, of course not. Oh well! By the time we got to the Marketplace, the rain had mostly stopped, but the poor folks that got on the bus were sure wet! We rode around to the Pleasure Island stop and got off in search of food. We decided on Bongo’s Cuban Café and were pleasantly surprised. The food and service were very good…the food not as spicy as I thought it would be though. By the time we finished eating, we were getting a bit tired and knew we had a big day ahead of us tomorrow at EPCOT and the Flower and Garden Festival so we headed back to Pop and hit the hay.