DisneyDawgette
12-15-2013, 09:44 PM
Hi everyone! Having just got back from a week in the World, I feel the need to write up a report for this trip. We bought AP's back in June, activated them in August, and have been back four times since. However, this trip, was particularly awesome! I have never been for Christmas, so this was a new and wonderful experience, and I apologize for the verbosity of this post. Here is the cast:
Me: Just finished my last semester of Undergrad classes! Happy to have gotten a few days off from work to take vacation before the Christmas rush gets crazy in my retail world!
Samuel: Pretty cool guy that I've been lucky enough to call my boyfriend for 3 years now! Draining PTO that he didn't have at work to go back to the World for Christmas.
Keith: Our best friend, techie, and fellow AP holder. We have all gone to WDW together 4 times in the past year, and have had a blast every time!
Day 1: Chef Mickey's, Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT
Much to their dismay, I booked us a 9:35am breakfast at Chef Mickey's! We stayed at the new Hilton Parc Soleil this trip, and it was amazing. However, the boys do not like to get up very early- especially when we don't go to bed until after 3am. We also did not take into consideration traffic, or Monorail trouble, or all of the other obstacles that resulted in us getting to breakfast 10 minutes after our reservation. However, the hostesses were great, and I was incredibly excited- Samuel and Keith had never been to a character meal before. Granted, Keith was not near as excited as we were at first, but one look at Donald Duck and we were all happy kids again. The food was great, but my only complaint was with the service. I understand that we are a party of three adults at a character meal, but we are easy-going and not difficult to please. Our waitress was terrible- she was unpleasant, condescending, and inattentive. If it weren't for the fact that the food and character interaction was fabulous (outside of Minnie who completely skipped our table), I don't think I would return. She was THAT bad. But we enjoyed our meal otherwise, enjoyed not waiting in line for the characters (because the boys are not fond of doing so- hence a character meal), and went about our day. It was the first day of Disney, so it was going to take a lot more than that to get us down!
We went on to Animal Kingdom for the morning and had a good time. Being a Wednesday, it wasn't super busy. We got FastPasses for Everest, but when our return time came around, the ride was being emptied because it had broken down. As we were walking by, they were actually unloading the people who were stuck on the car going up to the top of the mountain- which was the moment that we were VERY happy it wasn't us. Unfortunately Everest didn't come back on for the rest of our time there, but we came back later in the week to ride it. We rode Dinosaur and Primevil Whirl, as well as FastPassed KS. The rhinos were all in the road, and we got some awesome pictures throughout the whole thing at mid-day because the temperature hovered around 65 degrees all day. We also made it a point to do something new in every park, so we walked the Pangani Trail and one of the other ones! They were awesome, and I particularly enjoyed the bats. If you haven't seen them- make it a point to! We stood in there FOREVER until Keith realized that there was not glass in the windows... At which point he walked very fervently out of the exhibit. ;)
After stopping at PizzaFari (gross :sick:), we tried to get into FotLK, only to be overcome by a very LOUD and LARGE Brazilian tour group. Typically, they do not bother me too badly- but this group was obnoxious. They were laying all over the ground and sleeping, and it took us forever to even walk around the group. That being said, we would return later in the week to do Festival of the Lion King as well.
After heading back to the hotel for an hour-log nap, we took off for EPCOT to eat dinner. EPCOT is my favorite of the parks, and we spend a lot of time there. Also, Norway has always been our favorite pavilion and I was supposed to be getting the autographs of the Frozen princesses for a friend. BUT HOLY COW. In order to be admitted into the 6:30 showing of the princesses, I was told that we would have to have been there at 2pm that day to stand in line. This was the first attempt at these princesses, and our luck never really improved! I was also excited to see the pavilion get some love as it was PACKED ALL WEEK. Unfortunately, that resulted in me not having time to get Skool Bread or ride Malestrom, but we enjoyed it none the less.
Finally, we ended up walking through the pavilions, stopping for Bratwurst, German potato salad, black forest cake, and Grapefruit beer (one of my favorite meals in the World), and stopping to watch IllumiNations in Canada. Now, we stopped in Canada only because it was starting and we were on that side. We were going again later in the week, and though it was my favorite, I was willing to settle to watch the show in Canada. However, we were next to a group of people who felt the need to YELL over the music, which was very frustrating. If you aren't going to watch the show, then don't stand on the gate and talk, play on your phone, and yell through the whole thing. As Stephanie Tanner would say, "How rude!"
But Day 1 was phenomenal, we had a blast, and the vacation just got better as it went on. More to come! Up next: Magic Kingdom and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party! :mickey:
Me: Just finished my last semester of Undergrad classes! Happy to have gotten a few days off from work to take vacation before the Christmas rush gets crazy in my retail world!
Samuel: Pretty cool guy that I've been lucky enough to call my boyfriend for 3 years now! Draining PTO that he didn't have at work to go back to the World for Christmas.
Keith: Our best friend, techie, and fellow AP holder. We have all gone to WDW together 4 times in the past year, and have had a blast every time!
Day 1: Chef Mickey's, Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT
Much to their dismay, I booked us a 9:35am breakfast at Chef Mickey's! We stayed at the new Hilton Parc Soleil this trip, and it was amazing. However, the boys do not like to get up very early- especially when we don't go to bed until after 3am. We also did not take into consideration traffic, or Monorail trouble, or all of the other obstacles that resulted in us getting to breakfast 10 minutes after our reservation. However, the hostesses were great, and I was incredibly excited- Samuel and Keith had never been to a character meal before. Granted, Keith was not near as excited as we were at first, but one look at Donald Duck and we were all happy kids again. The food was great, but my only complaint was with the service. I understand that we are a party of three adults at a character meal, but we are easy-going and not difficult to please. Our waitress was terrible- she was unpleasant, condescending, and inattentive. If it weren't for the fact that the food and character interaction was fabulous (outside of Minnie who completely skipped our table), I don't think I would return. She was THAT bad. But we enjoyed our meal otherwise, enjoyed not waiting in line for the characters (because the boys are not fond of doing so- hence a character meal), and went about our day. It was the first day of Disney, so it was going to take a lot more than that to get us down!
We went on to Animal Kingdom for the morning and had a good time. Being a Wednesday, it wasn't super busy. We got FastPasses for Everest, but when our return time came around, the ride was being emptied because it had broken down. As we were walking by, they were actually unloading the people who were stuck on the car going up to the top of the mountain- which was the moment that we were VERY happy it wasn't us. Unfortunately Everest didn't come back on for the rest of our time there, but we came back later in the week to ride it. We rode Dinosaur and Primevil Whirl, as well as FastPassed KS. The rhinos were all in the road, and we got some awesome pictures throughout the whole thing at mid-day because the temperature hovered around 65 degrees all day. We also made it a point to do something new in every park, so we walked the Pangani Trail and one of the other ones! They were awesome, and I particularly enjoyed the bats. If you haven't seen them- make it a point to! We stood in there FOREVER until Keith realized that there was not glass in the windows... At which point he walked very fervently out of the exhibit. ;)
After stopping at PizzaFari (gross :sick:), we tried to get into FotLK, only to be overcome by a very LOUD and LARGE Brazilian tour group. Typically, they do not bother me too badly- but this group was obnoxious. They were laying all over the ground and sleeping, and it took us forever to even walk around the group. That being said, we would return later in the week to do Festival of the Lion King as well.
After heading back to the hotel for an hour-log nap, we took off for EPCOT to eat dinner. EPCOT is my favorite of the parks, and we spend a lot of time there. Also, Norway has always been our favorite pavilion and I was supposed to be getting the autographs of the Frozen princesses for a friend. BUT HOLY COW. In order to be admitted into the 6:30 showing of the princesses, I was told that we would have to have been there at 2pm that day to stand in line. This was the first attempt at these princesses, and our luck never really improved! I was also excited to see the pavilion get some love as it was PACKED ALL WEEK. Unfortunately, that resulted in me not having time to get Skool Bread or ride Malestrom, but we enjoyed it none the less.
Finally, we ended up walking through the pavilions, stopping for Bratwurst, German potato salad, black forest cake, and Grapefruit beer (one of my favorite meals in the World), and stopping to watch IllumiNations in Canada. Now, we stopped in Canada only because it was starting and we were on that side. We were going again later in the week, and though it was my favorite, I was willing to settle to watch the show in Canada. However, we were next to a group of people who felt the need to YELL over the music, which was very frustrating. If you aren't going to watch the show, then don't stand on the gate and talk, play on your phone, and yell through the whole thing. As Stephanie Tanner would say, "How rude!"
But Day 1 was phenomenal, we had a blast, and the vacation just got better as it went on. More to come! Up next: Magic Kingdom and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party! :mickey: