KrisM
07-23-2014, 10:52 AM
I meant to post a trip report shortly after getting back, and even started it, but I’m not sure where it went! Here it is now. You all helped me plan so much! I'm sure it was a much better trip because of this forum.
It was our first time flying with kids and our first time flying in years. Kids did great. The pizza Lunchables made it past security with no issues. Flight was on time and we were all in 1 row.
We arrived on Saturday, April 5. We thought finding the Magical Express could have been easier, but we did get there and had no wait for a bus. We are glad we went with that. We stayed at POR. Checking in was okay, but took a while. They had hula hoops and a bean bag toss game outside and the kids played that while I checked us in. We went to the room and only my magic band worked. So, I took them all to the desk and had them redone and met everyone for dinner in the casual restaurant. I ordered a pizza and went to pay and my magic band didn’t work. It said we were over the spending limit of $1000. Fortunately, I had a credit card on me and paid that way. Went back to the desk and they told me my balance was nearly $3000. I explained that I had paid in full in February. Finally, they decided their system was down and I’d have to come back later to have it fixed. They did give us a $50 room credit for our multiple trips. Off to Epcot, with no confidence that our magic bands would get us in!
We were pleasantly surprised when we were allowed to enter Epcot with working bands. Yay! I had made Fastpasses for Soarin’ and Illuminations. We did Soarin, Living with the Land, Journey into Imagination, and Spaceship Earth. We went into the Illuminations area and watched part, but the kids were just ready to go, so we left there early.
Sunday we were up early and headed to Hollywood Studios. We managed to be first in line, which was fun. We hit Toy Story first and had no wait. DH, DS1 and DD rode Rock n Roller Coaster and we got a paper fast pass for child swap since DS2 is too short. He and I had a drink and waited. Then, we all got in line for Tower of Terror and waited about 10 min, until it closed. So, we went to use the Toy Story fast pass again and were happy to have one with a posted 60 min wait already. Back to Tower of Terror, which scared the pants off DD and DS2! I think they are glad they went on it, but may never do it again J. We had lunch at Sci Fi, which we all really enjoyed. I have never been in a restaurant that was full of kids that was so very quiet! My kids loved watching the movie clips and since it was dark, everyone was whispering. We enjoyed the food and overall really liked it. We saw the Indiana Jones show and liked that quite a bit. We split up for a while and I took the younger kids to the Disney Junior and DH did the bigger rides with DS1 again. Between child swap and a FP+, DS1 got to ride Rock n Roller coaster and Tower of Terror 4 or 5 times through the fastpass line. DH and DS1 saw the Lights, Motors show and loved it. We enjoyed Star Tours. DD loved the drawing class.
Monday was back to Epcot. We got there early and I was watching, so we managed to be first into the park again. We headed to Test Track and DS2 loved it. His favorite ride. We did Sum of All Thrills, which was very cool. We did Test Track again with a FP+ and Mission Space. Lunch was Akershus, which was very enjoyable. The princesses move fast around though. Kids had a good time. We tried doing the Agent P mission, but found we weren’t seeing much as we were paying attention to the phone. The kids got frustrated, so we didn’t do that. We walked through and into a couple countries and DD met Mulan, who was her number one to meet. The kids all spoke Chinese to the CMs there and enjoyed that. We went back to FW and used a FP+ for Soarin’, and did Spaceship Earth again as well as Nemo, Turtle Talk.. DS2 left his hat on Soarin’. He realized it before we were out of the long hall. They called back and supposedly people checked for it, but it was never found. Talk about a very bummed 5 year old. Apparently, someone walked off with his hat. On the plus side, it was from Meijer a week before, so it has been replaced now. We left early-ish to go back to POR.
Tuesday was the only day it rained and we were in Magic Kingdom. The rain was most of the day, but never very hard. I think it worked to our advantage because we got through a lot of the park with very little wait. We never made it back to the Barnstormer area. Everyone really liked Space Mountain, even DS2 who had never really been on a roller coaster before. We used FP+ to meet Ariel, Enchanted Tales with Belle, and Peter Pan. DS1 was chosen to be The Beast for Belle and it was really fun to see him participate! DS2 was Maurice and DD was a plate. Everyone really had fun with this. I love the pictures of DS1 dancing with Belle!
Also Tuesday, we went to the Poly for the Spirit of Aloha. We really enjoyed this. My kids liked getting up to hula on stage. They all had the kids meals and DS1 thought it was great he could have 2 of them J. DS2 lost his first tooth during the show. Kind of fun! After, we went back to MK for Wishes and the Dessert Party. I had thought the party would be a good place to watch and be relaxed, but it was just too much for the day and too late. I wish we had just skipped it. It was a long day.
But, because we got in so much at MK, we decided to not go back there on Wednesday and instead stayed at the resort. We rented a surrey bike and did a few laps of POR. The kids swam and did some of the pool games. They did some pin trading and penny pressing and DD had her hair wrapped. In hindsight, this was one of our best decisions because instead of being a 5 crowd at MK, it was a 9!
Thursday was Animal Kingdom. We arrived after rope drop, maybe 9:20 or so. We did some of the rides, like Triceratop Spin and Primeval Whirl before heading to Tusker House for breakfast. It was nice to have another slower morning. Breakfast was fun and even DS1 enjoyed the characters here. DD didn’t find much to eat. We did the Jungle Trek and thought that was just okay. Expedition Everest quickly became the favorite ride for DS1 and DD. DS2 rode it once, but didn’t like it. So, we again were able to capitalize on the child swap and FP+ ! We went to Dinosaur and were nearly on the ride when they shut down. They gave us all a FP for any ride at the park. We did get back on Dinosaur later in the day. I really liked it, but the others were just okay with it. We did the Safari and I felt bad for DD as most of the animals were on the opposite side from where she was. She was the most interested of the kids, too. By the end of the day, we were doing Everest and nearly walking on. But, in the middle of the day, it was really, really crowded. They had CMs holding ropes to make aisles so people had to all walk in the same direction. It was shoulder to shoulder people.
Friday we did go back to Magic Kingdom. Big Thunder Mountain was closed the first day, so we headed there first. It was still closed, but opening later, so we did Splash Mountain. We enjoyed that, but it kept stopping along the way and we ended up with quite the pile up of logs. Once we stopped and I was under the waterfall. They did turn that off after a couple minutes, but I was fairly wet on one side. BTM was open after and we rode on that. Cute ride, we thought. We split up again and DS1 and I went to Hall of Presidents. We enjoyed that. Then DD, DS2 and I went to meet Tinker Bell and Rapunzel. We all met up to do Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear. We liked the Monsters Inc laugh floor a lot. We rode the People mover and Space happened to be down at the time, so we saw that with lights on. Kind of a neat thing to see.
We did the Hoop de Doo Revue that night and took the boat to FW. Everyone enjoyed the show quite a bit and all my kids tried and liked cornbread. DS2 absolutely loved the chicken. DD got autographs from everyone, she enjoyed it so much. I’m very glad we did that show as well. After, DS1 and I walked into MK to pick up the silhouettes we had done earlier. We ended up watching parts of the electric parade on our way out. That was the only parade we saw. No one was very interested in those.
Saturday we went back to Epcot. We did some repeats and had lunch in Germany. We watched the trains outside for a good 20 minutes. We looked at a lot of the flower festival tree sculptures. We did some shopping and everyone found a souvenir. Soarin’ didn’t interest anyone, but we did Test Track, Mission Space, Spaceship Earth, Sum of All Thrills, and Journey into Imagination again. We also did some of the character meets. We were back fairly early. Kids and DH went swimming while I packed.
We checked into the flight at the hotel and they printed out boarding passes and took our luggage. Except, they only printed 4 boarding passes. I didn’t think to check, so I didn’t realize it until we got to security that DS2 didn’t have one for either flight. Fortunately, it was a quick fix at the Southwest counter.
All-in-all, it was a good vacation. If we were to go again, I would not get the Memory Maker. While having pictures of all of us is nice, I don’t think it’s needed again. We’d probably get the pictures taken and then maybe buy a couple. Ride photos are fun to have, but again, we don’t need all. Plus, many of them cut off the top of the castle, or the feet of one kid, etc. Not the greatest pictures overall J
I’m glad we didn’t do the dining plan. We would have had a tough time. I did keep track and we spent about $150 less. But, we would have used only half of our counter service and we used 14 extra snacks. I think eating what we wanted worked much better. We had the pizza at POR a few times and a large would have been 2 adult counter service, but it fed all 5 of us just fine. And in AK, we had dinner at Pizzafari and ordered 2 pizzas with salads. DH and kids split the pizzas, I ate the salads, and we shared 2 drinks.
We liked POR and it worked fine for the 5 of us. I packed each of the kids in a super large Ziploc bag and hung it in the closet. In the morning, we’d get their outfit out for the day and hang the bag up again. Dirty went into a suitcase. It kept the room decent.
Kids enjoyed pin trading and penny pressing a lot. DD and DS2 enjoyed the autographs.
I’m glad we went in with tickets less one day. We ended up taking a day off, so didn’t lose anything.
FP+ worked fine for us. But, I happened to catch a glitch day back in mid-February were the tiers at DHS and Epcot were gone for a few hours. So, at Hollywood, we had FP for Toy Story, Tower of Terror and Rock n Roller coaster. Having only one would have been a bummer. Having only one and not having a child too short or too scared would be worse. I tried to change a FP about 2pm at AK. The only thing I could manage to get was overlapping times for Dinosaur. We were not able to get 5 for the same time, but did get them to overlap and work out. I know it’s changed since we were there. Hopefully it’s improving!
We happened to be there while they were printing 20% off coupons on the bottom of receipts, so all the souvenirs were 20% off. Made it much nicer!
We had gone back and forth about renting a car and ultimately decided against it. I think it was a good decision. There were times though when multiple busses for 1 park came by before a bus that we wanted (at POR). It was frustrating waiting for 20-30 minutes to go to Epcot when we could have gone to AK 5 times! But other days they were very fast and timely.
We had also considered ordering groceries, but ended up not. I wasn’t sure what we’d really be in the room to eat. I bought some stuff from the store at POR and that worked fine. I didn’t bring a water bottle to carry around. We used the water fountains and shared drinks that we purchased throughout the day.
I think we all had a really fun vacation. I am very glad we were able to go. DD and DS2 would like to go back again in a few years. DS1 could probably be convinced to go again after we hit some things he wants to do (DC is his top choice and we hope to go next April). Ironically, DS1 and I will likely be in Orlando for a competition next year. We might go to a park for a day or maybe Universal.
It was our first time flying with kids and our first time flying in years. Kids did great. The pizza Lunchables made it past security with no issues. Flight was on time and we were all in 1 row.
We arrived on Saturday, April 5. We thought finding the Magical Express could have been easier, but we did get there and had no wait for a bus. We are glad we went with that. We stayed at POR. Checking in was okay, but took a while. They had hula hoops and a bean bag toss game outside and the kids played that while I checked us in. We went to the room and only my magic band worked. So, I took them all to the desk and had them redone and met everyone for dinner in the casual restaurant. I ordered a pizza and went to pay and my magic band didn’t work. It said we were over the spending limit of $1000. Fortunately, I had a credit card on me and paid that way. Went back to the desk and they told me my balance was nearly $3000. I explained that I had paid in full in February. Finally, they decided their system was down and I’d have to come back later to have it fixed. They did give us a $50 room credit for our multiple trips. Off to Epcot, with no confidence that our magic bands would get us in!
We were pleasantly surprised when we were allowed to enter Epcot with working bands. Yay! I had made Fastpasses for Soarin’ and Illuminations. We did Soarin, Living with the Land, Journey into Imagination, and Spaceship Earth. We went into the Illuminations area and watched part, but the kids were just ready to go, so we left there early.
Sunday we were up early and headed to Hollywood Studios. We managed to be first in line, which was fun. We hit Toy Story first and had no wait. DH, DS1 and DD rode Rock n Roller Coaster and we got a paper fast pass for child swap since DS2 is too short. He and I had a drink and waited. Then, we all got in line for Tower of Terror and waited about 10 min, until it closed. So, we went to use the Toy Story fast pass again and were happy to have one with a posted 60 min wait already. Back to Tower of Terror, which scared the pants off DD and DS2! I think they are glad they went on it, but may never do it again J. We had lunch at Sci Fi, which we all really enjoyed. I have never been in a restaurant that was full of kids that was so very quiet! My kids loved watching the movie clips and since it was dark, everyone was whispering. We enjoyed the food and overall really liked it. We saw the Indiana Jones show and liked that quite a bit. We split up for a while and I took the younger kids to the Disney Junior and DH did the bigger rides with DS1 again. Between child swap and a FP+, DS1 got to ride Rock n Roller coaster and Tower of Terror 4 or 5 times through the fastpass line. DH and DS1 saw the Lights, Motors show and loved it. We enjoyed Star Tours. DD loved the drawing class.
Monday was back to Epcot. We got there early and I was watching, so we managed to be first into the park again. We headed to Test Track and DS2 loved it. His favorite ride. We did Sum of All Thrills, which was very cool. We did Test Track again with a FP+ and Mission Space. Lunch was Akershus, which was very enjoyable. The princesses move fast around though. Kids had a good time. We tried doing the Agent P mission, but found we weren’t seeing much as we were paying attention to the phone. The kids got frustrated, so we didn’t do that. We walked through and into a couple countries and DD met Mulan, who was her number one to meet. The kids all spoke Chinese to the CMs there and enjoyed that. We went back to FW and used a FP+ for Soarin’, and did Spaceship Earth again as well as Nemo, Turtle Talk.. DS2 left his hat on Soarin’. He realized it before we were out of the long hall. They called back and supposedly people checked for it, but it was never found. Talk about a very bummed 5 year old. Apparently, someone walked off with his hat. On the plus side, it was from Meijer a week before, so it has been replaced now. We left early-ish to go back to POR.
Tuesday was the only day it rained and we were in Magic Kingdom. The rain was most of the day, but never very hard. I think it worked to our advantage because we got through a lot of the park with very little wait. We never made it back to the Barnstormer area. Everyone really liked Space Mountain, even DS2 who had never really been on a roller coaster before. We used FP+ to meet Ariel, Enchanted Tales with Belle, and Peter Pan. DS1 was chosen to be The Beast for Belle and it was really fun to see him participate! DS2 was Maurice and DD was a plate. Everyone really had fun with this. I love the pictures of DS1 dancing with Belle!
Also Tuesday, we went to the Poly for the Spirit of Aloha. We really enjoyed this. My kids liked getting up to hula on stage. They all had the kids meals and DS1 thought it was great he could have 2 of them J. DS2 lost his first tooth during the show. Kind of fun! After, we went back to MK for Wishes and the Dessert Party. I had thought the party would be a good place to watch and be relaxed, but it was just too much for the day and too late. I wish we had just skipped it. It was a long day.
But, because we got in so much at MK, we decided to not go back there on Wednesday and instead stayed at the resort. We rented a surrey bike and did a few laps of POR. The kids swam and did some of the pool games. They did some pin trading and penny pressing and DD had her hair wrapped. In hindsight, this was one of our best decisions because instead of being a 5 crowd at MK, it was a 9!
Thursday was Animal Kingdom. We arrived after rope drop, maybe 9:20 or so. We did some of the rides, like Triceratop Spin and Primeval Whirl before heading to Tusker House for breakfast. It was nice to have another slower morning. Breakfast was fun and even DS1 enjoyed the characters here. DD didn’t find much to eat. We did the Jungle Trek and thought that was just okay. Expedition Everest quickly became the favorite ride for DS1 and DD. DS2 rode it once, but didn’t like it. So, we again were able to capitalize on the child swap and FP+ ! We went to Dinosaur and were nearly on the ride when they shut down. They gave us all a FP for any ride at the park. We did get back on Dinosaur later in the day. I really liked it, but the others were just okay with it. We did the Safari and I felt bad for DD as most of the animals were on the opposite side from where she was. She was the most interested of the kids, too. By the end of the day, we were doing Everest and nearly walking on. But, in the middle of the day, it was really, really crowded. They had CMs holding ropes to make aisles so people had to all walk in the same direction. It was shoulder to shoulder people.
Friday we did go back to Magic Kingdom. Big Thunder Mountain was closed the first day, so we headed there first. It was still closed, but opening later, so we did Splash Mountain. We enjoyed that, but it kept stopping along the way and we ended up with quite the pile up of logs. Once we stopped and I was under the waterfall. They did turn that off after a couple minutes, but I was fairly wet on one side. BTM was open after and we rode on that. Cute ride, we thought. We split up again and DS1 and I went to Hall of Presidents. We enjoyed that. Then DD, DS2 and I went to meet Tinker Bell and Rapunzel. We all met up to do Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear. We liked the Monsters Inc laugh floor a lot. We rode the People mover and Space happened to be down at the time, so we saw that with lights on. Kind of a neat thing to see.
We did the Hoop de Doo Revue that night and took the boat to FW. Everyone enjoyed the show quite a bit and all my kids tried and liked cornbread. DS2 absolutely loved the chicken. DD got autographs from everyone, she enjoyed it so much. I’m very glad we did that show as well. After, DS1 and I walked into MK to pick up the silhouettes we had done earlier. We ended up watching parts of the electric parade on our way out. That was the only parade we saw. No one was very interested in those.
Saturday we went back to Epcot. We did some repeats and had lunch in Germany. We watched the trains outside for a good 20 minutes. We looked at a lot of the flower festival tree sculptures. We did some shopping and everyone found a souvenir. Soarin’ didn’t interest anyone, but we did Test Track, Mission Space, Spaceship Earth, Sum of All Thrills, and Journey into Imagination again. We also did some of the character meets. We were back fairly early. Kids and DH went swimming while I packed.
We checked into the flight at the hotel and they printed out boarding passes and took our luggage. Except, they only printed 4 boarding passes. I didn’t think to check, so I didn’t realize it until we got to security that DS2 didn’t have one for either flight. Fortunately, it was a quick fix at the Southwest counter.
All-in-all, it was a good vacation. If we were to go again, I would not get the Memory Maker. While having pictures of all of us is nice, I don’t think it’s needed again. We’d probably get the pictures taken and then maybe buy a couple. Ride photos are fun to have, but again, we don’t need all. Plus, many of them cut off the top of the castle, or the feet of one kid, etc. Not the greatest pictures overall J
I’m glad we didn’t do the dining plan. We would have had a tough time. I did keep track and we spent about $150 less. But, we would have used only half of our counter service and we used 14 extra snacks. I think eating what we wanted worked much better. We had the pizza at POR a few times and a large would have been 2 adult counter service, but it fed all 5 of us just fine. And in AK, we had dinner at Pizzafari and ordered 2 pizzas with salads. DH and kids split the pizzas, I ate the salads, and we shared 2 drinks.
We liked POR and it worked fine for the 5 of us. I packed each of the kids in a super large Ziploc bag and hung it in the closet. In the morning, we’d get their outfit out for the day and hang the bag up again. Dirty went into a suitcase. It kept the room decent.
Kids enjoyed pin trading and penny pressing a lot. DD and DS2 enjoyed the autographs.
I’m glad we went in with tickets less one day. We ended up taking a day off, so didn’t lose anything.
FP+ worked fine for us. But, I happened to catch a glitch day back in mid-February were the tiers at DHS and Epcot were gone for a few hours. So, at Hollywood, we had FP for Toy Story, Tower of Terror and Rock n Roller coaster. Having only one would have been a bummer. Having only one and not having a child too short or too scared would be worse. I tried to change a FP about 2pm at AK. The only thing I could manage to get was overlapping times for Dinosaur. We were not able to get 5 for the same time, but did get them to overlap and work out. I know it’s changed since we were there. Hopefully it’s improving!
We happened to be there while they were printing 20% off coupons on the bottom of receipts, so all the souvenirs were 20% off. Made it much nicer!
We had gone back and forth about renting a car and ultimately decided against it. I think it was a good decision. There were times though when multiple busses for 1 park came by before a bus that we wanted (at POR). It was frustrating waiting for 20-30 minutes to go to Epcot when we could have gone to AK 5 times! But other days they were very fast and timely.
We had also considered ordering groceries, but ended up not. I wasn’t sure what we’d really be in the room to eat. I bought some stuff from the store at POR and that worked fine. I didn’t bring a water bottle to carry around. We used the water fountains and shared drinks that we purchased throughout the day.
I think we all had a really fun vacation. I am very glad we were able to go. DD and DS2 would like to go back again in a few years. DS1 could probably be convinced to go again after we hit some things he wants to do (DC is his top choice and we hope to go next April). Ironically, DS1 and I will likely be in Orlando for a competition next year. We might go to a park for a day or maybe Universal.