Ian
12-18-2007, 02:04 PM
Hi all,
I'm a little short on time so I won't be writing full trip reports on this trip, but I did want to write up a short summary of the highs and lows of our holiday trip down to the World ...
Who: Yours truly, Ian, DW, DD5, and DS1
Where: A 1 bedroom villa at Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort
When: December 8th to the 15th
We ended up deciding to drive down for this trip. With the baby it's just too much of a hassle packing and lugging all that stuff around on airlines, not to mention getting through security, keeping him occupied on a plane for 2 1/2 hours, etc.
So I picked up my new Tahoe on Wednesday, and Friday afternoon around 12:30PM we headed off down the road to Disney. Fortunately, our drive was pretty uneventful and we arrived ahead of schedule at around noon on Saturday (we stopped overnight in Savannah).
We didn't have ressies at Saratoga until Sunday, so we Pricelined the Holiday Inn Maingate for Saturday night. We checked in there when we arrived and were pleased to find our room ready. The place was pretty nice ... we really enjoyed our stay there. Saturday we pretty much just relaxed and then did Osborne Lights at night.
Honestly, I swear Disney has completely gone bonkers with their crowd control lately. They routed us into the Streets of America in the most ridiculous way ... I can't even tell you! We basically had to fight our way upstream against all the guests pouring out from having seen the show already. It was really annoying, what with having two strollers and all. The lights were spectacular as always, though!
Sunday we checked into our room at Saratoga, which was really beautiful and then we headed to MK for awhile and rode some rides. Crowds were manageable and the day was fun. At some point (don't really remember when) we met up with Em. We had ADR's at Teppan Edo that night and met up with my Mom and her boyfriend Joe for dinner. Em joined us, too, and we all really enjoyed our meal. We finished the night off with holiday Illuminations (which is just AMAZING!) and crashed out.
Other highs/lows of the trip:
HIGH: Did MVMCP on Thursday the 13th and had a great time. We ate dinner at Tony's and got a terrific spot right out on the veranda. It was really nice sitting there, soaking up the Christmas atmosphere, and having a great meal. The food was really good and we left STUFFED!
HIGH: Seeing the Castle lighting ceremony. Yes ... it's as good as it looks on YouTube!
HIGH: Taking DD to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. I'm telling you ... it costs a small fortune but it's well worth it just to see your daughter turned into a princess before your eyes. My "Christmas Belle" was in her glory and it was worth every penny I spent just to see that look on her face.
HIGH: The crowds and weather were just fantastic for us. We literally had not one single, solitary drop of rain the entire trip. It was sunny and 85º the whole week. And the crowds were very manageable, too. We rarely waited in line for anything more than maybe 10 minutes tops.
HIGH: We finally won Dream Fastpasses. It's been sort of frustrating to me to come so close to getting them so many times, so it was nice to finally score a set. Please with hold all, "Yeah, but you won the Castle Suite!!!" comments. ;)
HIGH: DD's reaction to the trip. Even at only a year old, he really seemed to enjoy himself. He loved meeting the characters (especially Mickey) and really seemed to get a kick out of the rides, too. He was always smiling and pointing at stuff. He also LOVED the Osborne Lights! I thought he was going to stroke out he was so excited!!
HIGH: The food! I swear, we had some of the best meals we've ever had in WDW on this trip. Le Cellier got especially high marks from everyone in our crew. We also really enjoyed the two meals we had a Chefs De France. My Mom and Joe also gave Germany high marks, as well.
HIGH: Candlelight Processional! We had Chita Rivera as our reader and she was really good. Sadly, DS was sick that night and he and DW had to miss the show, but DD and I went and had a blast! This show is so beautiful ...
HIGH: Getting to hang out with my girl Jeanne for a bit at Epcot! We didn't get to see her nearly as much as we'd have liked to, but it's always fun to spend even a little while in her company. Thanks, Jeanne! :thumbsup:
HIGH: Meeting Sig Hansen (from Deadliest Catch) in Epcot's Norway. Very cool!!
HIGH/LOW: Seeing Mel (harlowandthemermaid) and her awesome Mom and beautiful DD! Why is that a low, you ask? Because we didn't get to see them as much as we would have liked. Our schedules didn't end up meshing very well.
LOW: Spaceship Earth. I was so looking forward to seeing the new ride and was just brutally disappointed. IMO, it's really terrible. They butchered the second half of the ride to the point that it's almost sad.
LOW: The Cast. I don't know if it's just anticipation of the huge holiday crowds coming or what, but we have rarely encountered so many surly and foul-tempered CM's in any of our prior trips. We did have one or two good ones that stood out (like the woman in Epcot who ran all over to find milk for DS!), but we overwhelmingly saw more disinterested or outright grumpy CM's than we did happy ones.
LOW: Maintenance. Yikes ... the last time I was down I thought some things looked a little better than they had in the past, but this time I thought some of the attractions looked downright shabby. In Pooh, the smoke ring blower was broken our entire trip. Buzz just looks awful. The paint is chipped and peeling on all the ride vehicles, the decals on the wall in the queue area are torn in places and falling off the wall in others, and the seats were dirty to the point of being near disgusting. At one point, we got stuck in the second room for like 20 minutes while the ride just kept stopping and starting! I thought they were going to make us get off at one point, because the lights came on and these gates came up out of the floor, but they eventually got it going again. Also, Space Mountain was broken down multiple times on our trip and there were just lots of other areas of the parks that looked shabby and run down. :nono:
LOW: The other guests. I was so shocked at some of the just downright rude behavior I saw, especially at Candlelight Processional, if you can believe that. No sooner had we sat down than some white trash lady started giving this poor CM a really hard time for nothing. She hadn't paid for the Dinner Package, but she wanted to sit in the Dinner Package area. The CM (who was a really sweet senior citizen) politely explained to her that she couldn't sit there and this woman and her clan just flat out ignored her. When the CM tapped the woman's daughter on the shoulder to get her attention she made a big fuss and the Mom went off the deep end that the CM had "put her hands on her daughter." These people were a real mess ... obviously intoxicated, with a slew of empties trailing in their wake. They ended up sitting in the Dinner Package seats anyway and had multiple family members make repeat trips up the steps to complain to a manager about this poor CM. About 12 of us rose up in the CM's defense and basically cleared things up for her, but man it burned me up that some low-life would behave that way at a Christmas show for heaven's sake. Nice Christmas spirt! And then there was the moron in front of me who literally sat there on his stupid Blackberry throughout the ENTIRE SHOW! Forget how rude that is to begin with, but him banging away on that thing, flicking the thumbwheel up and down, screen blazing in my face was so distracting I had a tough time enjoying the show. It was everything I could do not to grab the thing out of his hand and crush it under my heel! Then there was the guy in Fantasyland puffing away on a cigarette. I politely told him it was a no smoking area and he looked at me and with the biggest redneck accent you can imagine said, "I kin if I wanna." Honestly, I kinda lost it with him a little bit and asked him if he was trying to be some kind of a tough guy. His humiliated wife forced him to put out his cigarette and dragged him away apologizing for his behavior. There were so many other instances of bad behavior I can't even go into them all. I swear people are just clueless anymore as to how to behave in public! :mad:A few other notes and random thoughts ... we took advantage of that $99 a night rate at Gaylord Palms on Friday the 14th. Pretty good deal for a hotel of this caliber.
Because the idea of making that 17 hour drive home seemed intolerable, we ended up taking the Auto Train home with my Mom and Joe. That was fun! I love traveling by train and it was so much more relaxing than either driving or flying. Plus, the hospitality was pretty darn good, too!
All in all, it was a great trip, though. I love WDW at Christmastime and we plan on making this early December trip an annual event. Thank goodness our DVC use year starts 12/1!
I'll post some pics soon ...
I'm a little short on time so I won't be writing full trip reports on this trip, but I did want to write up a short summary of the highs and lows of our holiday trip down to the World ...
Who: Yours truly, Ian, DW, DD5, and DS1
Where: A 1 bedroom villa at Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort
When: December 8th to the 15th
We ended up deciding to drive down for this trip. With the baby it's just too much of a hassle packing and lugging all that stuff around on airlines, not to mention getting through security, keeping him occupied on a plane for 2 1/2 hours, etc.
So I picked up my new Tahoe on Wednesday, and Friday afternoon around 12:30PM we headed off down the road to Disney. Fortunately, our drive was pretty uneventful and we arrived ahead of schedule at around noon on Saturday (we stopped overnight in Savannah).
We didn't have ressies at Saratoga until Sunday, so we Pricelined the Holiday Inn Maingate for Saturday night. We checked in there when we arrived and were pleased to find our room ready. The place was pretty nice ... we really enjoyed our stay there. Saturday we pretty much just relaxed and then did Osborne Lights at night.
Honestly, I swear Disney has completely gone bonkers with their crowd control lately. They routed us into the Streets of America in the most ridiculous way ... I can't even tell you! We basically had to fight our way upstream against all the guests pouring out from having seen the show already. It was really annoying, what with having two strollers and all. The lights were spectacular as always, though!
Sunday we checked into our room at Saratoga, which was really beautiful and then we headed to MK for awhile and rode some rides. Crowds were manageable and the day was fun. At some point (don't really remember when) we met up with Em. We had ADR's at Teppan Edo that night and met up with my Mom and her boyfriend Joe for dinner. Em joined us, too, and we all really enjoyed our meal. We finished the night off with holiday Illuminations (which is just AMAZING!) and crashed out.
Other highs/lows of the trip:
HIGH: Did MVMCP on Thursday the 13th and had a great time. We ate dinner at Tony's and got a terrific spot right out on the veranda. It was really nice sitting there, soaking up the Christmas atmosphere, and having a great meal. The food was really good and we left STUFFED!
HIGH: Seeing the Castle lighting ceremony. Yes ... it's as good as it looks on YouTube!
HIGH: Taking DD to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. I'm telling you ... it costs a small fortune but it's well worth it just to see your daughter turned into a princess before your eyes. My "Christmas Belle" was in her glory and it was worth every penny I spent just to see that look on her face.
HIGH: The crowds and weather were just fantastic for us. We literally had not one single, solitary drop of rain the entire trip. It was sunny and 85º the whole week. And the crowds were very manageable, too. We rarely waited in line for anything more than maybe 10 minutes tops.
HIGH: We finally won Dream Fastpasses. It's been sort of frustrating to me to come so close to getting them so many times, so it was nice to finally score a set. Please with hold all, "Yeah, but you won the Castle Suite!!!" comments. ;)
HIGH: DD's reaction to the trip. Even at only a year old, he really seemed to enjoy himself. He loved meeting the characters (especially Mickey) and really seemed to get a kick out of the rides, too. He was always smiling and pointing at stuff. He also LOVED the Osborne Lights! I thought he was going to stroke out he was so excited!!
HIGH: The food! I swear, we had some of the best meals we've ever had in WDW on this trip. Le Cellier got especially high marks from everyone in our crew. We also really enjoyed the two meals we had a Chefs De France. My Mom and Joe also gave Germany high marks, as well.
HIGH: Candlelight Processional! We had Chita Rivera as our reader and she was really good. Sadly, DS was sick that night and he and DW had to miss the show, but DD and I went and had a blast! This show is so beautiful ...
HIGH: Getting to hang out with my girl Jeanne for a bit at Epcot! We didn't get to see her nearly as much as we'd have liked to, but it's always fun to spend even a little while in her company. Thanks, Jeanne! :thumbsup:
HIGH: Meeting Sig Hansen (from Deadliest Catch) in Epcot's Norway. Very cool!!
HIGH/LOW: Seeing Mel (harlowandthemermaid) and her awesome Mom and beautiful DD! Why is that a low, you ask? Because we didn't get to see them as much as we would have liked. Our schedules didn't end up meshing very well.
LOW: Spaceship Earth. I was so looking forward to seeing the new ride and was just brutally disappointed. IMO, it's really terrible. They butchered the second half of the ride to the point that it's almost sad.
LOW: The Cast. I don't know if it's just anticipation of the huge holiday crowds coming or what, but we have rarely encountered so many surly and foul-tempered CM's in any of our prior trips. We did have one or two good ones that stood out (like the woman in Epcot who ran all over to find milk for DS!), but we overwhelmingly saw more disinterested or outright grumpy CM's than we did happy ones.
LOW: Maintenance. Yikes ... the last time I was down I thought some things looked a little better than they had in the past, but this time I thought some of the attractions looked downright shabby. In Pooh, the smoke ring blower was broken our entire trip. Buzz just looks awful. The paint is chipped and peeling on all the ride vehicles, the decals on the wall in the queue area are torn in places and falling off the wall in others, and the seats were dirty to the point of being near disgusting. At one point, we got stuck in the second room for like 20 minutes while the ride just kept stopping and starting! I thought they were going to make us get off at one point, because the lights came on and these gates came up out of the floor, but they eventually got it going again. Also, Space Mountain was broken down multiple times on our trip and there were just lots of other areas of the parks that looked shabby and run down. :nono:
LOW: The other guests. I was so shocked at some of the just downright rude behavior I saw, especially at Candlelight Processional, if you can believe that. No sooner had we sat down than some white trash lady started giving this poor CM a really hard time for nothing. She hadn't paid for the Dinner Package, but she wanted to sit in the Dinner Package area. The CM (who was a really sweet senior citizen) politely explained to her that she couldn't sit there and this woman and her clan just flat out ignored her. When the CM tapped the woman's daughter on the shoulder to get her attention she made a big fuss and the Mom went off the deep end that the CM had "put her hands on her daughter." These people were a real mess ... obviously intoxicated, with a slew of empties trailing in their wake. They ended up sitting in the Dinner Package seats anyway and had multiple family members make repeat trips up the steps to complain to a manager about this poor CM. About 12 of us rose up in the CM's defense and basically cleared things up for her, but man it burned me up that some low-life would behave that way at a Christmas show for heaven's sake. Nice Christmas spirt! And then there was the moron in front of me who literally sat there on his stupid Blackberry throughout the ENTIRE SHOW! Forget how rude that is to begin with, but him banging away on that thing, flicking the thumbwheel up and down, screen blazing in my face was so distracting I had a tough time enjoying the show. It was everything I could do not to grab the thing out of his hand and crush it under my heel! Then there was the guy in Fantasyland puffing away on a cigarette. I politely told him it was a no smoking area and he looked at me and with the biggest redneck accent you can imagine said, "I kin if I wanna." Honestly, I kinda lost it with him a little bit and asked him if he was trying to be some kind of a tough guy. His humiliated wife forced him to put out his cigarette and dragged him away apologizing for his behavior. There were so many other instances of bad behavior I can't even go into them all. I swear people are just clueless anymore as to how to behave in public! :mad:A few other notes and random thoughts ... we took advantage of that $99 a night rate at Gaylord Palms on Friday the 14th. Pretty good deal for a hotel of this caliber.
Because the idea of making that 17 hour drive home seemed intolerable, we ended up taking the Auto Train home with my Mom and Joe. That was fun! I love traveling by train and it was so much more relaxing than either driving or flying. Plus, the hospitality was pretty darn good, too!
All in all, it was a great trip, though. I love WDW at Christmastime and we plan on making this early December trip an annual event. Thank goodness our DVC use year starts 12/1!
I'll post some pics soon ...