Trip Report Quickie

[MCeee]

November 6-12, 2010...

Arrived in Orlando 11/6, stayed that night at Holiday Inn Sunspree. Obvious renovations taking place, but very nice inside... a good experience. Went to MK... extremely crowded... SM down almost all day, never got to ride. Dinner at Kona, good food, bad service.

11/7...
Checked in at Saratoga Springs Resort. Studio not ready, headed to Epcot. Large crowds, but ride waits not too bad... fast pass'ed everything we really wanted to ride. Enjoyed a great wine seminar late after noon. Fantastic dinner at Via Napoli. Best pizza I've ever had. Closed down Epcot that night... Illuminations was great as always.

11/8...
DHS. Great time all day, very little waits. TOT and RnRC, and of course TSM were th only waits. Time at TSM said 80 min. actual: 35... woohoo. One problem in queue... asked person behind kindly us to please have their child (8 or 9 yrs. old) to please back off a bit (stepping all over us, practically falling on us as if going through us would make wait shorter). Parent became irrate "you are adult... this is a child..." That told us all we needed to know. We simply asked the CM near the stairway to help us, and she handled it beautifully... stopped them after letting us through, then let a WHOLE BUNCH of fast passers through. Never saw her again... cool. Dinner at Prime time... thanks to our waitress for making it such a good time... a blast and good food too.

11/9
AK... We had the park to ourselves, all day. Rode EE and Safari numerous times. Animals very active. Went back to SSR early for swim, rest. Dinner at Boma... need I say more.

11/10...
MK... not so crowded as past Saturday. Rode everything. Even had a bit of a bus problem that morning and CM gave us a group fast pass. I found a paintbrush on Tom Sawyer Island!! Got us another group fast pass for Splash. It was shut down for a while, but opened back up during the parade and we hit it. Left for swim... rest, returned later to Wave at CR for dinner. Fabulous food... sadly again, crummy service. I actually told the manager about it and he sent out a dessert for everyone in our party.

11/11...
Epcot, did ALL the countries. Enjoyed using wristed gift cards for F&W. Has another seminar, this time cooking lamb. Great!! Dinner at Tangierine Cafe'. Excellent.

11/12
DHS... park to ourselves, although RnRC was shut down ALL afternoon... bummer. Rode ToT over and over (13 min. wait almost all day ;)) Went to DD for a while, then got in vehicle and started the long journey home.

I know I left out a lot, but back to work... :(very little time. Happy to answer any questions though!

[KylesMom]

Bummer about the crummy service you received at your TS restaurants over the whole of your trip. However, this intrigued me:
Fantastic dinner at Via Napoli. Best pizza I've ever had. That good? WOW!

Glad that the crowds settled down and you were able to enjoy the parks after all - except for the downed RnRC.

Thanks for sharing your whirlwind trip! :mickey:

[MCeee]

Actually "KM", there was soo much I could have included in this report, just haven't had (and probably won't have) much time to prepare a more comprehensive one.
BTW... at Via Napoli, we had a table right beside the kitchen (normally not a good thing, but here it was awesome). Very attentive service. I gotta say, for me its all about the pizza dough. This was the best. OH to have one right about now. mmmmm

[KylesMom]

there was soo much I could have included in this report, just haven't had (and probably won't have) much time to prepare a more comprehensive one. I hear ya, once you return it's difficult to play "catch-up" with the rest of life - especially with the holidays coming up. Sounds like you had a wonderful time, though. Guess I need to put Via Napoli on our "new" dining this year - it was just opening when we were there in August. I agree, it's all about the crust! :mickey:

[faline]

Thanks for the report! Sorry to hear you had some instances of bad service. That's disappointing. I've been fortunate to have really excellent service at Disney dining establishments! They have some of the hardest working servers around!

[MCeee]

Yeah... that's good. In the past we have too.
This time there were two things...
1. At Kona, we kept asking and asking for a few lemon wedges to go with the water we had ordered to drink. The waiter seemed to be intent on doing everything EXCEPT bringing the lemon. Basically we (party of 6 and we all agreed) got the idea that he was gonna get his 18% either way, and since were were not ordering drinks to bring that percentage up, our service was terrible. It was really sad.
2. At the Wave (Contemporary). Great restaurant I must say, and quite reasonably priced. Our server was cute, funny, personable, etc... but was not a very good server. We all ordered, and I ordered a wine pairing to go with my meal. Most of the rest of us were drinking water (in fact had already had something to drink from the bar while we waited a few minutes for our table). Well the food arrived... delivered b y kitchen staff... no wine. By the time our server had come back and realized she had not brought my wine, 5 of us were about finished eating, and there I sat waiting for my glass of wine. I had actually gone ahead and eaten some of my meal thinking the wine would arrive soon. FINALLY she came and poured it... she could see that I was upset, and said that it would be on the house. I told her that I didnt want it and not to pour it because I wanted the wine WITH my food, not as an after dinner drink. She just gave excuses as to getting stuck at the bar, etc,... Finally I asked her to have the manager come over and we spoke about it. He insisted that we accept something, so we got a few desserts. After all that, I would definitely return to the Wave.

Those were the only downers as regards our meals... all in all, a great week of eating. hah

[faline]

Glad to hear they tried to make it up to you!

[vizsla]

Thanks for the report.

[RedSoxFan]

Sounds like you had a great time and low crowds.:mickey:

[MississippiDisneyFreak]

Thanks for the report

[Suz36]

Thanks for sharing the highlights of your trip with us!

[Disney4us2]

Glad you had a good trip in spite of a few bad TS servers.

[disneykid@hrt]

People standing too close in lines is one of my PEEVES! Seriously. I am always aware of how my daughter is with respect to other people... and at a certain age it is time they know about strangers' territorial bubbles. Just sayin'.:blush:

[MCeee]

Yeah... It would be no major thing to happen once or twice, but constantly for 40 minutes... not acceptable. The child was old enough to know better, but the sad thing is, the parent defended the child. Trust me when I tell you I know about raising kids... been there, done it. One of the problems in this world can be encapsulated in how that parent handled the situation. She even became threatening in her manner towards us for even mentioning what was happening. Most reasonable parents would have noticed it and stopped long before it went that far. After we mentioned it, she began wagging her finger in our faces.. "he is a child, you are an adult.":mad:

[pdrlkr]

Thanks for the Report! :smickey: