CAST OF CHARACTERS:
Me (32)- This was my 6th trip to Disney World since about 1997, last trip was late Aug 2003.

DB (31)- His 2nd trip to Disney World, but first real time as he was ill and on Vicodin during the first trip AND because he hadn’t been there with ME. :)


DAY ONE (Wed, 5/16):
Up at 4am after only about 4 hours of sleep. Flew Southwest out of San Antonio, with a one hour layover in Houston. Arrived in Orlando around noon. Took DME to Pop Century. It took awhile to get put on a bus, but otherwise, the service was great. The little movie they show on the bus was cute and added to my excitement. Our resort was the first stop. Check-in was pretty quick, no line. They put us on the 4th floor of the 70s building, corner room near the lake, looking out on the foosball area. I thought it was too far at first, but it wasn’t too bad. The room was small I guess, but fine for two people. The “closet” area was bigger than I expected and suited our needs fine, except you have to be careful what’s hanging near the sink. We were told our bags would be delivered within 3-5 hours, which I should have planned for. I would’ve loved to shower and change, but we freshened up the best we could and headed out. We grabbed some lunch at the food court, bought the resort mug and ate outside because it was too crazy inside. We shared the turkey ciabatta sandwich, which was good, then off to Epcot. I think we waited about 10 minutes for a bus, arriving at the park around 3pm. Epcot was the early EMH park that day and it was fairly crowded. I was immediately impressed by the weather. Very mild, sunny but not especially hot or humid, with a nice breeze blowing most of the time. We rode Test Track for the first time and I loved it! I think we did it twice. We walked through Minnie’s Butterfly Garden and took lots of pictures. We didn’t try to do Soarin or The Seas with Nemo because the lines were too long. We took a little time to smell the roses, enjoying all of the beautiful flowers and Tink’s Garden, then wandered over to World Showcase. We happened to pass thru Canada during a show of Off Kilter and stopped for a few songs. I’ve loved those guys since I first saw them 10 years ago, it felt like coming home seeing the same performers after all this time. We did a little eating around the World for dinner: a Napoleon in France (yum!), Beef Yakiniku Rice Bowl in Japan (yum!)… oh, and McDonald’s french fries.  We rode the new Mexico boat ride and I thought it was really cute. Around 8:40, we found a spot in my favorite Illuminations viewing area: at the entrance to World Showcase from Future World, across from the American pavilion. I had forgotten that just before the show, they drop the rope and let people take spots along the railing if you are willing to remain seated the entire time. We had a great spot and it was nice to be able to sit and not have our view blocked. Illuminations was as wonderful as I remembered. It's beautiful and even DB, who is far less excitable than me, remarked that it was maybe the best fireworks he’d ever seen. After that, we hoofed it to the boats and went to the Boardwalk for a 9:40 ADR at Spoodles. We were going to have a full dinner there, but were very tired and had eaten at Epcot, so we decided to just share the Garlic Shrimp and Greek Salad appetizers and I had a glass of sangria. The appetizers were not that big for sharing, but we also got bread and an interesting dipping oil with olive tampenade, and it was plenty. Our server was very friendly and though he didn’t have to do much for us, he did it well. After dinner, I wanted to spend some time on the Boardwalk, but it had been a looong day so we decided to call it a night (I think he wimped out first, but he insists it was me). We were disappointed to learn that you can’t catch a bus to the resort from the Boardwalk. I can’t remember our plan B, I know we were headed to a park to transfer to another bus, but our driver was very nice and decided to take us (and others) straight to Pop Century. Bless him! In bed around 12am.

Great start! Looking forward to the next days' reports! Thanks!

my sister and i were there for the same exact days! we were in the 50's building, room 2436 (farthest from everything POP, closest to epcot and illuminations!).

Please do more of it soon

DAY TWO (Thurs, 5/17):
Up at 7am (it was hard) and off to Magic Kingdom around 8:15. We hopped the boat to Wilderness Lodge for breakfast. I had done this before and think it’s such a lovely way to start a day. We enjoyed the ducks, ibises and bunnies wandering around, and it was a lovely morning—a little humid, but not as bad as I expected, and there was a nice breeze. We shared an Adult Breakfast Platter and cereal that we had brought with us and sat outside. The tiny food court was a zoo and I was glad to get in and get out. After we ate, I took DB inside so he could see this beautiful resort. Probably around 10am, we got back to the Magic Kingdom and headed in. It was more crowded than I expected. We stopped at the Camera Center and looked at the PhotoPass pictures we had taken the day before and learned that you can download your memory stick to a CD if you run low on memory (which we did because we made the mistake of only buying one memory card). After that, we rode a horse-drawn trolley, which I had seen in pictures but never at the park before. That was fun except for the 15 or so middle-schoolers behind us who were obnoxious. We rode (not necessarily in this order) Stitch (I love Stitch but thought the ride was lame), TTA (it was more fun than I remembered, a nice way to get off your feet for a bit), Carousel of Progress (I have a tendency to nod off in attractions like this where I’m sitting for too long, but I wanted DB to see it), Cinderella’s Carousel, Mickey’s Philharmagic (I loved loved this show!), Haunted Mansion (an old favorite), BTMR and DB did Mission: Space. We had lunch at Pinocchio’s Village Haus, which was a madhouse inside. We ordered a pizza and turkey panini and went outside to eat. I thought the food was a little bland, but ok. I really wanted to ride Peter Pan and Pooh, but the waits were always 30 mins +, so we never got to. Must-do on our next visit.

On previous trips, the heat and walking wore me out by around 1:00 every day and I’d have to head to a pool or to the room for a nap. Because the weather was so unexpectedly mild this trip, I was able to keep going longer—though that’s not to say I was energetic and comfortable the whole time. I was finally ready to stop around 3:30 today and we decided to head to Blizzard Beach, which I had never been to. Unfortunately, it started to drizzle while we were on the bus, and it was overcast and windy when we arrived. The bus ride there seemed to take forever. At some point I didn’t want to go anymore, but I wasn’t ready to mess with the commute back to the resort either. This happened more than once on the trip. I think Disney transportation is fine, I don’t know that I would want to drive, but it can be frustratingly time consuming. Anyway, when we finally got to the park, we were a little overwhelmed by all the rides/options, most of which we never saw. We didn’t know where to go having not really researched this park beforehand, so we wandered a bit and found the main water area. We had a backpack with us, but saw that locker rentals were $10 and didn’t want to pay that for such a short visit, so we kept the bag with us. We found out the next day at Typhoon Lagoon that you get most of the money back when you return the key, or at least you do there. That would have been good to know. It never outright rained, but it was too cool to really enjoy the water. I sat in the shallow area with just a little of me in a tube and enjoyed giving my feet a break, but couldn’t get totally wet. I think we only stayed for an hour, if that. I was bummed. Poor use of a Plus option, but somewhat refreshing.

We went back to the resort to shower and change for the night, then headed back to Magic Kingdom around 5:30. The sun came out again and it warmed up a bit, go figure. We tried to do Monsters, Inc Laugh Factory, but were surrounded by especially rowdy kids and after DB’s foot was stomped on three times, we asked a sympathetic cast member to show us the exit. For dinner, we got Beef and Brocolli and Chicken Fingers at Tomorrowland Noodle Terrace. The food was good, but it took like 20 mins to get. I found a nice table for us at the edge of the overhang and we had a nice relaxing dinner. From there, we rode some rides (I don’t remember which ones) and then found spots for Spectromagic and Wishes. I love to watch the castle before Spectromagic when it’s changing colors, it’s so beautiful. That and Spectromagic were lovely as always, so romantic. Then we sought out a better spot for Wishes and ended up being able to watch from the middle of Main Street, a little down from Casey’s. It was a perfect view, I was so happy. This was my first time seeing Wishes and I LOVED it! Wow, I thought nothing could top Illuminations, but now I’m torn as to which is my favorite. After the show, we fought our way out with the rest of the throng and had an ugly long wait for a bus to the resort. They did a good job sending buses in pretty quick succession, but there were a lot of us to move. Finally got back to the resort, set our wake up call for 7am and passed out by midnight.

I'm so surprised you had a long wait for the bus. When we were there in late June, we never had to wait more that 15 minutes to get back to resort. Not that the lines were'nt long sometimes; it's just that they seemed to always know when the lines were long and sent more buses.

Perhaps after a certain date they put more buses into rotation or something. Hope it got better as the trip wore on.

During your day at MK, you mentioned that your DB went on Mission:Space. Do you mean Space Mtn? M:S is at Epcot--Not that it matters, of course, I was wondering if you stayed at MK or jumped over to Epcot for a bit.

Loving the trip report! Keep em comin!

During your day at MK, you mentioned that your DB went on Mission:Space. Do you mean Space Mtn? M:S is at Epcot--Not that it matters, of course, I was wondering if you stayed at MK or jumped over to Epcot for a bit.

You're right! I don't know where I came up with that. I don't take detailed notes during the trip, I'm just remembering back. Thanks for pointing that out!

DAY THREE (Fri, 5/18):
Up at 7:30, I believe—we slept in. :eek: On a bus to Animal Kingdom by 8:30 or 9am. DB and I had to sit apart and I struck up a conversation with Bill, a solo traveller from Baltimore that I had seen around the resort, and a father who was standing in front of me. They were the only people I “met” on the whole trip, which is different than I remember and something that I missed. I don’t know if it’s a societal shift, or a shift in the kinds of people that go to DisneyWorld, or if maybe I was less outgoing this time, but I felt less of a sense of community on this visit than I remember feeling in the past. ANYway, we had planned to hop over to Animal Kingdom Lodge for breakfast, but decided not to and I don’t think we ate breakfast after all that day. My main priority was Dinosaur, my favorite ride, but we didn’t rush straight thru. I wanted DB to enjoy his introduction to the park. I think we started on the right side and checked out the animals along the way. We rode Dinosaur 2 or 3 times in a row, it was even better than I remembered. We pretty much walked right on all three times, only waited maybe 5 minutes on the last ride. Of course, the preshow gets boring after awhile, so I would find a spot in a corner and take the opportunity to sit and rest my feet. After 3 rides, I agreed to move on to something else for awhile. We went to Everest and DB rode it. We had gotten him a FastPass also, but he didn’t want to ride it again, he said it’s no fun going by yourself. I WISH I could do those rides with him, but am petrified of drops. I was surprised when he said he didn’t remember the Yeti, which I had heard was so impressive. Since we’ve been back, I saw a Disney World special on the Travel Channel and they showed the Yeti. Wowzers! How he could have missed THAT, I don’t know! We’ll have to get him on the ride again next visit. Since we hadn’t had anything for breakfast, I was starting to run down a little, so we grabbed a salted pretzel--which had enough salt on it for 5 pretzels--and a Coke. While we ate, we enjoyed the monkeys in the large monkey habitat in Asia. They were really high up and so loud, I didn’t believe the noise was really coming from them at first. They were fun to watch. When we finished our pretzel, we did the Maharajah Jungle Trek since we were right there. I think I was very tired and my feet were hurting by then, so when we finished, we went to eat at Pizzafari. It was very crowded and the lines were long, but the food was worth the wait. We got a pepperoni pizza and Italian sub and split them. Yum! I love the theming of this restaurant, it’s really impressive. Feeling temporarily rejuvenated, we hit “It’s Tough To Be A Bug”, which DB really enjoyed, and then headed to the Safari. I was worried we wouldn’t see any animals since it was maybe 1ish by now, but we saw plenty. Our guide wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, seemed to be on auto-pilot, but it was ok. I didn’t remember the rickety bridge from previous visits. That actually make me a little anxious, which was fun. After that, we did the Pangani Forest Trail, where you see gorillas and hippos. We got a great view of two gorillas, but I was most amazed by the hippo. There was one completely underwater with his side to the window, his head was resting on a rock ledge, and he was covered in little fish. I stood and watched him for awhile, I was so fascinated. I really wanted to see the Nemo and Lion King shows and Flights of Wonder, but the timing just never worked out. The rest of the time at the park is a little fuzzy to me now, but I think we rode Dinosaur a few more times and we bought character “ears”—he got Stitch ears and I got a headband with the pink glittered Mickey heads on antennas. :D It was fun to be kids again! We took pictures with Lilo and Stitch (my favorite character) and Stitch pointed out that DB’s ears were like his. At one point, we wandered past the Tree of Life again and stopped to have pictures taken. As we were waiting in line for the PhotoPass photographer, an awesome costumed performer wandered by. It was a woman covered in leaves and green paint and she was standing on stilts and had stilts on her hands, so she kind of walked like a giraffe. She was beautiful, I wish we had gotten a better picture of her.

By this time, it was around 3:30 and I was beat, so we decided to go to Typhoon Lagoon. I can’t remember if we couldn’t get a bus to the water park from Animal Kingdom or if I just wanted to take the opportunity to see Animal Kingdom Lodge while we were so close, but we hopped a bus to the Lodge first. We walked in, admired the lobby for about 5 mins, and then headed right back out to catch a bus to Typhoon. As with Blizzard Beach, it became overcast and windy on our way there, very frustrating. We joked the rest of the trip that if we wanted cooler weather, all we had to do was say out loud that we wanted to hit a body of water. We changed, rented a locker to stow the backpack and headed to the wave pool. I had frolicked in the waves on a previous visit, but am not that adventurous when it comes to water and didn’t want to go in too far this time, so DB went in for a bit and I waited near “shore”. It was too cool to enjoy it that much, so we took a few Photopass pics, braved a few waves and then decided to leave. On our way out, I saw a stand selling freshly made donuts and HAD to have some. They did not disappoint, yum! It took 15-20 mins to get a bus back to our resort.

We cleaned up, changed and headed to MGM. Our original plan had been to visit that earlier in the day, but there ended up being too much we wanted to do at AK. On previous visits, Animal Kingdom was a half-day park for me, but I will plan a full day for it in the future. I enjoyed it more than I remembered. Anyway, we got to MGM and went to go DB a FastPass for Tower. We stopped and took a few Photopass pics and checked out a few shops on the way. We had some time to kill, so we decided to try the Great Movie Ride, which I hadn’t done in years. It had been threatening to rain (and did as soon as we got inside), so the wait was pretty long. I thought the live action parts of it were really cheesy (and not many things are too cheesy for me), but the sets were really impressive. It was still raining when the ride let out, so we dashed into the shop area under the Sorcerer’s hat. About 500 other people were already there with the same idea, so we dashed to the next nearest store and purchased a poncho for me. About that time, it stopped raining, but I was freezing and needed the poncho anyway for some warmth. It was time for DB to ride Tower, but we were both miserable at that point and decided to get out of MGM. We took a boat and got off at the Swan or Dolphin, I forget which one, to catch a bus to Downtown Disney. I had never seen those resorts up close and was very impressed by them. They’re both beautifully themed and very nice, wouldn’t mind staying there someday—but then I said that about almost every resort, as DB pointed out. The bus stop where we waited was mostly deserted and we were stranded there for 25-30 mins. I had never really been rained on at Disney World before, and never when the weather was somewhat cool like this, so it was pretty unpleasant. Vowed to always carry ponchos going forward. We finally got a bus and got to Downtown Disney around 9:15. We shopped a little, though didn’t buy anything, and then chose Earl of Sandwich for dinner. I was impressed with the selections. We got the Scudetto and Cannonball subs and shared. They were both quite decent, but not fabulous by my standards. DB loved the Scudetto. I would go there again regardless, I thought it was a nice place and appreciated the variety of offerings. The dining room was rather loud and seating somewhat cramped and haphazard, but it was great to sit down and try to warm up a bit. After we ate, we explored World of Disney, barely avoiding getting spit on by the giant pirate Stitch on the roof on our way in. We didn’t find anything we just had to have and I had hit a wall by the time we walked out, so we used our remaining energy to get back to the bus stop and headed to the resort. I took my nightly hot bath to try to relax my aching feet and legs, got a rejuvenating foot massage from DB, and we were asleep by midnight.

Terrific! Another great day! That lady covered in the leaves is Devine. She is simply awesome to sit and watch. I love watching others see her for the first time. Isn't it amazing that she doesn't fall down??

Great trip report, can't wait to read some more.:D