Travel dates: May 16-19
Travel method: Southwest Airlines & ME
Resort: Old Key West
Accommodations: Studio
Ages Represented in Group: 35 (me) & 37 (DH)
Disney Resort Experience Represented in Group: Experienced DVC members
Comments: Couples weekend, us and our good friends Ken & Jen
Cast of characters: Me- Katrina DH- Jimmy
Day One~
Friday May th

Our flight today was scheduled to take off at 9:05 am from Philly and arrive in Orlando at 11 something. Well it poured off and on all night so we ended up taking off around 10:20am. The flight was a bit bumpy but not to bad. We landed and got checked in to ME and on the bus. We sat in the bus waiting for more people to arrive for a while. Once we were on our road he said we would be going to OKW, SSR, and two others I forget. We were the first stop and the only two to get of the bus. So we go in to check in....and it takes for ever! The woman helping us goes through the whole bit, Welcome home, heres your room and off you go. Umm... don't I have to for the DDP? You don;t have it she says. Uh yeah I do. So off she goes to a manager who says it happens so we need to call member services and get it put on. Fine do what needs to be done. She dials and looks up and says my hold time is 9 minutes. Uh don't they have a direct number?! Any who... the MS people say cancel the room and we will rebook the ressie and add the DDP. If it were only that easy! Doesn't the system crash while they are on the phone!? :eek: So they say to put a credit card on the room key (which I wasn't planning on doing) and we should check back later and see if they can fix it then. So if they can't fix it today I should put any food on the room key and they will credit it to the DDP when it gets done.:rolleyes: Hopefully they get it done so we don't have to hassle with that later.
On to the good! The room is nice and not to far from a pool and bus stop. It is supposed to go to 91* today and it is nice and sunny too!

More later. The plan is to go to DtD to walk around before dinner 7:50 ressies at the Concourse Steak House in the Contemporary. With a possible return trip after dinner.

Ah !! Christmas Time @ The World There Truly Is Nothing Like It.

Hmmmmm...sounds like you hit a few snags your first day like I did...boo. I'm going to try and get mine done later. Can you just add onto that one?

Once you start your trip report you can just keep adding to it.
I will try to get more of my report done in the next couple of days.

I hope they got the DDP worked out without too much delay.

Can't wait to read more! :)

Day One continuted...

So after we got checked in we went to the room and put all the stuff we don't want to carry around in the drawers and hang out for a bit.
We are in Turtle Pond room 4315. We have short walk to the pool and the bus stop. We got on the first bus that comes and go back to the check in desk to find out if they fixed the DDP. No go.
Off we go to catch the bus to DtD and start walking around when our friends Ken & Jen call and say they are there (SSR) and done checking in and will meet us in DtD. We walk around a few hours and basically window shop before we need to get to our dinner ressies.

Ken & Jen are eating at the Turf Club @ SSR and we are going to the Contemporary to eat at the Concourse Steak House. Since the busses at DtD have always seemed to be a nightmare for us we hop on the ferry with them and get a bus to MK at SSR. We took the bus over to MK and walked to the Contemporary and since we were a bit early for dinner we looked int eh shops and sat in the lounge waiting for our time. We were seated right around our ressie time and our waiter came over pretty quick. Our waiter Jimmy was very nice. DH had ~14 oz. Chipotle Glazed Rib Eye with onion rings and the Butterfinger Cheesecake for dessert. I had ~10 oz. Prime Rib - with mashed potatoes and the Triple Chocolate Cake. Everything was very good, I darn near licked my plate! I was so full from dinner I only ate half my cake. Jimmy (the waiter not DH) says that the entire staff will move to the new upscale restaurant downstairs when the teak house closes.
Once we were done we hop on a bus for DtD and call Ken and Jen to find out where to meet them.

We meet up with Ken & Jen we did some more window shopping and went with them to buy Jen a new pair of sun glasses @ the sunglass shop down near DQ. Wow I never realized how expensive sunglasses could be!!
So after she got her glasses we head back to the Market Place and try to catch a ferry to OKW (K&J will walk since they are in Congress Park). We missed the last one and had to take a bus.
We sat at the bus stop and watched as three busses came and went to the other hotel that shares our stop. The fourth bus finally went to OKW. The ride was uneventful and we went back to our room, unpacked and passed out!


Day Two~
This is our Magic Kingdom day. I want to get there early since we will be going to the Mouse Planet/Station meet at Casey's.
We get up and moving by 7:30 am and get to the gate about 9:15am.
We head to the Bakery to pick up breakfast and head over to the meet. I had a great time meeting everyone and got to be part of my very first Pod Cast! We talked for awhile, did the pod cast and took a group photo. I am horrible with names so I will not even try to remember them all. It was fun and I wish I could have done the Mousse meet as well but had dinner ressies at Jiko. (DH stayed through most of it even though it's not really his thing, he was very patient!)
By the time we are done with the meet K&J call to say they are over by Buzz Light Year. We go meet them and ride BLY and then head over to BTM & Splash. We FP Splash and get in the stand by line for BTM. The wait was about 30 minutes, not to bad but longer then DH & I are used to.
We head over to Splash and DH holds all the bags while Ken, Jen and I ride Splash, DH hates wet rides.
We had a great ride and did not get to wet and were pretty much dry 10 minutes later.

Next time-
Lunch and the rest of our day at MK plus dinner at Jiko!!!
Opps! I forgot to tell you about the DP! I will put that in the next part!

Katrina!

You are keeping me in suspense with that darn dp! :mad:

;)

:)

Sorry about the start of your trip. :crying: Hopefully things turned around. Cannot wait to read more. :)

Day 2 Part 2-

I was going to tell you about the DDP but thought I'd drag it out abit longer.



Just kidding Mrs Grumpy! ;)

Back to the very beginning of the day. I woke up first got showered and then called the front desk and the plan has gone through. We need a new set of keys and they send a runner to the room with them (she was therein in like two minutes!). We still have to stop back at the front desk to get the meal from last night credited to the plan but Will do that later. It all worked out in the end and we were fine with it.

Alrighty back to the middle of Day 2:

We head for Pirates after Splash and ride it twice. It was weird being in the pirate shop with no one begging us to buy everything! (so we begged each other :)). After that it was time for lunch. We went to Peco Bills and used our CS points for our lunches. Jen and I had the Taco salad, a drink and pudding, DH had the Bacon cheeseburger, a drink and pudding, Ken had Chili cheese fries and a drink. The taco salads were OK, nothing to write home about. DH & Ken both enjoyed their lunches.

After that we decide to hit Main Street. We go through most of the shops on the right side on the way to the front then jumped over to the candy shop and the Chapeau. While we were in the Chapeau I took a bunch of 'build your own ears' pictures for a friend who is thinking about using on to propose.

While K&J were in the candy store they bought fudge and other snacks that we ate while waiting for the Train, which we some how never got on...

Once we leave the MK we headed over to the Poly to hang out a bit and look around. DH & I have never been and thought it was about time we start looking around past the gates to the Parks.
So we went in and looked in the gift shops and through the lobby. We ended up sitting in a lounge near the bar upstairs listening to Hawaiian music while Jen & I sipped a a Margaritas and the guys had Roy Roger's (aka coke with cherry syrup). Once we rested a bit it was time to go to AKL for our ressies at Jiko.

We decided to take a cab from the Poly to AKL instead of having to go back to the TTC to get a bus. The ride was not bad I think it was about $20 total.

Once at the AKL we had time to kill so we hit the gift shop where I bought a few things and then sat in the lobby for awhile. There is so much to look at in the lobby you could sit for hours checking it all out. Off to dinner. We had a great time and the food and wine was fabulous!! While Jen and I are big wine fans we don't know much about the different types and what goes best with what so we had the Manager/Sommelier help us once we picked our dinner courses.
We had:
Asparagus Soup - with curry sour cream, cilantro, and ground pistachios
Some kind of fried ostrich dish that I can't find on the menu sites
Berbere Braised Lamb Shank- with toasted couscous, baby spinach, and berbere sauce
Oak-Grilled Filet Mignon - with macaroni and cheese and red wine sauce
Wood-grilled Pork Tenderloin - with sweet potato rosti, sauteed spinach and spiced pork reduction
Jen had a fish dish that is not listed on the menu site either.
For dessert we had a cake that Ken ordered for their anniversary and Jen's birthday. It was all very very good. I would go back in a heart beat, be for warned though that it is 2 points on the DDP now. We ended up using cash instead of credits for this meal. I wont even try to tell you what wine we had because I can't remember but they were awesome!!

I can't remember what we did after dinner. We most likely went to DtD for a while then back to the room. DH & I went swimming and in the hot tub for a little while once we got back. That was nice, we never used to even go near the pool on vacation. (Oh, on the way back we stopped at the Front Desk and had them charge our CC for the dining plane.)
End of Day 2.

Next time Day Three... Epcot, Coral Reef, Ken and Jen go home...or do they?
I will try to get all my pictures together and post them all at once. :)

:)
Looking forward to the pictures!!! :cool:

Looking forward to hearing what you thought about Coral Reef...and if Ken and Jen go home....dun dun dun:)

Day Three- Epcot
We get up this morning and headed to HS/MGM to see if we could get into the new Toy Story ride. So we head off to HS and our first stop is the Commissary for breakfast. Once we finish our breakfast we head over to Pixar Place to check out the ride. We thought it was pretty neat walking down the new street. We get there and the sign says 10 minute wait. So we go in and I take a bunch of pictures of the Queue and we finally make it up to the Spud himself and the announcement comes over, 'Lady's and Gentlemen we are sorry to say we are shutting down the ride'. :eek: Son of a monkey! We were thisclose!:crying: Oh well, I got a few more shots on the way out.
Since that is the only reason we were there we head out. We hoped on the ferry to Epcot and had a very nice ride.
We went to Guest Services on the way in to get an ADR for whatever was available and ended up with Germany at 1pm.
After that we head straight for Test Track then Soarin to get fast passes. Test track was a ridiculous time later so we did not get them and only got Soarin FP 's, although we never did ride that either.
So we then walked around the shops in the front of Epcot for a bit. Once we are finished with the shops we took a friend ship boat to Germany. We walked over to the Biergarten for lunch and are seated with in 5 minutes. Lunch was very good as usual. I like the way you sit at a table with other people and get to talk to people from all over. This is DH’s least favorite part of the meal. The Ompa band is very entertaining.
We stopped at the stores in Japan since we have never really done them before. We looked at all the stores they had, we had no idea there was so much back there! The kids were really into the Pick an Oyster and get a Pearl station last time we were there so we decided to do it for them and see what we get.
DH & I each picked one and when it was our turn the girl gives us as much enthusiasm as she does the kids which was neat. She opens mine, 'are you ready? 1...2...3!' She digs for a second and comes out with a beautiful 7mm BLUE pearl! 'Oh! Very rare' she says and plays a bit on the drum. :cool: DH had his opened next and came up with a very pretty 7mm Pinkish white pearl. The kids were very pleased when we showed them their pearls.
We did some more wandering around the countries and got to look around the shops with out a bunch of 'are we done yet’s'.
I stopped in the wine shop in Italy got a glass of Banfi’s Rosa Regal (a unique red sparkling wine. Aromatic with a hint of rose petals and raspberries, Rosa Regale is delightfully vivacious and festive). Yummy! While we are in France I look at my phone and realize I missed three calls from Jen. I check the messages and find out they have decided they will be staying another night, if they can't find a room they will stay with us (I offered). So I call her back to find out that they are not staying. They had moved the flight home to the next day and started looking into getting a room, then called her parents who had two of the kids. They said they could not watch the kids that night and take them to school the next day. So they changed the flight back and ended up leaving at their scheduled time.
We start to wander toward the Coral Reef for dinner. We arrive few minutes early, checked in and asked to be seated near the tank. We were seated about 15 minutes later and got a table right up at the tank. The first thing I notice is how tight the tables are. We were seated at a table for two and the two top next to us was so close the servers had to go through side ways! I had been worried about sitting so close to the tank since I sometimes have trouble looking through Aquarium glass and looking at things side ways tends to give me eye strain. Once we were seated I quickly realized it would not be a problem. It was neat seeing all the fish, sharks and rays going by. We even saw the turtle go by a few times. The restaurant gives you a booklet that has the fish in it with their names so you can try to identify them, pretty neat! We were using the DDP for this meal as well but I still added a cup of soup and a glass of wine to my order.
DH had-
Alaskan King Crab Legs - served with corn and asparagus relish
Key Lime Tart - served with a mango sauce
I had-
Creamy Lobster Soup - withchervil, brandy
Grilled Mahi Mahi served over Israeli Couscous and arugula with honey-soy glaze
The Chocolate Wave - with brandied cherries

The meal was OK. Dh really liked his crab legs, which came out split in half for easier eating. My soup and the Wave were really good and I would defiantly would get them again. The Mahi Mahi was a little tough and very salty I should have sent it back for something else but didn’t. After dinner we walked to the front and caught a bus back to the hotel.
Once back at the hotel I started to get our things together as it was our last night.


Day Four- Going Home/DtD

Our flight is not until 8:25pm so we are not in too big a rush this morning.
We got up and dressed then finished packing up. We called bell services to pick up the luggage and hitched a ride to the front. We got our selves checked out and went to Olivia’s for breakfast.
We had a very nice breakfast and it was nice taking our time and not having to rush the last day.
DH had-
Coffee, Chocolate milk & Poached Eggs and Hash - served over Sweet Potato and Ham Hash topped with Key West Hollandaise with Buttermilk Biscuit.
I had-
Tea, OJ and the Mickey Waffle with bacon (not actually on the menu for some reason).
After breakfast we head to the boat dock to get a ride to Downtown Disney. One small problem…the boats don’t run for another half hour :rolleyes: so we decide to take a bus.
Once in DtD we walk from the market Place down to the House of Blues. Starting there we hit a bunch of the stores we usually don’t do with the kids like HOB & the Memorabilia store. We went to the Lego store to get DS some birthday presents and ended up with a couple of Star Wars key chains and an Indiana Jones Lego set.
We spent a lot of time in the World of Disney. (DS will be upset to see the Stitch that spits water over the door to the Pirate/Boys room is gone.) We got a few presents for the kids and a few other people. Plus a couple things for me.:)
We also went to the Mickey Sport store and got Dh a swim shirt he has been looking at all weekend.
We had lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express. This is the first time we have eaten here but it certainly wont be the last! The Ice Tea here was very good and the pizzas were incredible.
DH had-
Four Cheese Pesto - creamy goat cheese, mozzarella, fontina and Parmesan with Roma tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic-basil pesto sauce and sun dried tomatoes
I had-
Pepperoni and Mushroom - mozzarella and Grana Padano Paremesan with tomato-basil garlic sauce
We both saved our desserts for the plane later, I got a brownie and DH got a Chocolate Chip cookie.
The weather forecast had called for a 30-40% chance of rain all weekend and it actually looked like it might rain a few times but never did. It finally rained for about an hour while we ate lunch and shopped at the Kitchen Store.

While we were in the Kitchen store we hear a voice that says ‘if we are all here, who’s watching XXX Road’?. We turn around to see our neighbor from across the street! This is incredibly funny since I could stand in the center of town and not see any one I know, but take me out of state and I run into people from home. Go figure!
We finish wandering around and head back to the hotel on the ferry. Our pick up is at 5:20pm so we kill time wandering around in the gift shop. We bought a few things we had been eying all weekend and bought the kids a big cookie to use up the last snack credit. We went to sit in the lounge and rearrange the gifts we bought to fit in the carry ons.
Twenty mInutes before the bus is due we head out to the Bell Service stand to pick up the luggage we had stored. We sit to wait for the bus which comes pretty much on time. The bus still has more stops to make and is already half full. We head to the next few stops and the bus driver makes an announcement that some one forgot a piece of medical equipment at their hotel so we have back track to pick it up. At least that’s what I think he said, his English was not very good. We still made it to the airport in plenty off time to check in for our flight and hang out a bit (& shop a bit) . We watched part of a movie in the handy seats that have outlets while we waited for our flight. Our flight got switched to a different gate which caused a bit of confusion but it was only at the next gate over so it was not too bad. The flight itself was uneventful. One reason I like Southwest is the flight attendants are a ball of fun. During the pre flight bit the one flight attendant says he wants every one to turn around and welcome a very special guest who has joined us for our flight. He is a pretty well known person that has been on TV and in Movies…Please welcome- Leonard Nemoy! Most of the plane turns around and looks, which is when the FA says Gotcha! It gets to be a running joke through out the flight. On our way out I told the FA to tell Leonard I said bye! Lots of fun. We ended up landing about 25 minutes early. I call Ken and have him pick us up. We had taken a cab to the airport but since the fare was $55 for a 20 minute ride we skipped that option for the way home.:eek:
The bad- this trip is over. The good- only 5ish months till our family trip for Christmas with the Inlaws!

Pictures in my next post! :cool:

Thank you for your wonderful trip report. I can't wait to see your pictures.

Thanks again,
Ellen

Loved your report! Hurry up with the pics, please with mouse ears on top:D

Looky here! Pictures!! (http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZsW7Fo2aMWLDOg&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5) :cool:

Wow, you posted some wonderful pictures! This was the first year in a while that I have missed The Flower and Garden Festival, so thank you for posting all those great pictures!

Jennifer :p

That was definatly a bonus to the trip. I was very excited to be able to see all the topiaries in person, they are all so neat. I am glad you enjoyed the pictures!
:)

We spent a lot of time in the World of Disney. (DS will be upset to see the Stitch that spits water over the door to the Pirate/Boys room is gone.) We got a few presents for the kids and a few other people. Plus a couple things for me.

We just got back on Sunday night, and when we were at DTD last Thursday, Stitch was back to his antics of spitting water at the onlookers. I even have a picture of it that I will be posting on our trip report. Tell DS not to worry.

Good to hear! He gets such a a kick out of it!
:)

I finally got a chance to read your report! Sounds like you had a great time. I can't wait for Coral Reef - my DS will have a blast. We made our ADR's for an early dinner so we can hopefully see the divers - he'll freek! He's obsessed with divers and sea-life. I'll remember to request a window, if possible. The creamy lobster soup sounds lovely! MMMMM . . . .

Great photos too - thanks!

Can't wait for Christmas at WDW!! See you in about six months. :)

Thanks! I am sure your son will get a big kick out of Coral Reef. It was so cool being able to sit and watch the fish with out feeling rushed or like you are blocking some one else's view.
It seems longer when you say 6 months, lets stick to days! ;)

So true. Ok, about 160 days then. Better? ;)

Much! :p

I just found this and am starting the read. :D

Great, thanks for reading. :)
I see you have a new WDW countdown, very exciting! :cool: