Ofcourse things didn't go as planned from my earlier post but we did manage to get alot done.
http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/showthread.php?t=42993
This is how it went.
Day 1 (Monday June 6th)- NWA to MCO. DME to the Pop Century resort. Got in late (2am) so we had to wheel our own suitcases ALL the way to our room in the 90's section. To say the least we were in shock when we finally got to our room. It smelled like mildew and the central air was loud. I treked back to the main office to demand another room but they said everything was booked, then I asked to speak to a manager and she found us a room in the 50's section. This room was just as small as the first but atleast it didn't smell bad, so we rearranged the furniture to make space for an airmatess (Thank god I brought this with, it was needed) and the refrigerator I planned to buy at Superwalmart the following day. (Its much cheaper to do it this way than rent one from Disney for 9 days).
Day 2- Early magic hour at MGM. I couldn't beleive the crowds. There was a line a mile long behind us on a Tuesday morning by 7:45 am. We ran to the Tower ride first and only had a 10 minute wait, then went to the Rock n' Rollercoaster right away for a 45 minute wait. Got out of the park right after that becuase we figured it would be impossible to do much more as the people kept on pouring in. Went to the Dolphin to pick up our car rental and went up town to eat, we were scared to go back to WDW to fight the crowds and deal with the heat and humidity.
Took a bus to MK from the Pop century resort to catch a Wishes boat cruise . We were there a little early so we decided to see if MK was as busy as MGM. We walked through the front gates to discover that it was even busier, we turned around and went to the Contempory to catch our boat.
The boat cruise was a big hit with the whole family! It was worth the money just to do something that wasn't overly crowded. I got a great video of Wishes from the water. Again, I have to thank you guys for suggesting this since everyone was begging to go back home on the first day already.
Day 3- We went to a character breakfast at the Polynesian and after that my 9 year old wanted to go to Epcot to go on a ride called test track. We seen someones video of the ride from this forum and it looked like it was worth a wait. Got to test track to find that the wait time was 90 minutes but we still decided to do it anyway. We waited just over 2 hours before we actually got on the ride. We had to buy the picture for $15 since we figured this might be one of the last rides we would have time for on our trip.
After spending most of an afternoon for one single ride at Epcot, we were all tired and crabby so we left the park.
Day4- My wife and 16 year old daughter decided it was not worth getting up early to go to another park. By this time I was so far behind on my schedule I had planned, I figured I'd let them sleep in and I'd go by myself, to my surprise my 9 year old decided to go with me. We went to Animal Kingdom fairly early in the morning, it was raining a little bit so I figured the crowds would be tamed down. We went into the front gates of AK and it was packed like a can of sardines. To my surprise the wait times on most of the rides were not that long. We were able to get in 3 rides before 1pm and then went back to the motel to see if the rest of the family was up yet. I had MK planned for the rest of the day but noone wanted to do that except me, so we drove over to Disney Quest and had a good time in downtown Disney.
Day 5- This was Universal studios day. At this point I decided to pay the extra $35 per ticket to get the express pass option. This was the best thing I did so far the whole trip! We were able to pratically walk onto rides with these tickets! It was such a great time we stayed there the entire day. We even gave up the Boggy creek plans just to buy a few more last minutes at Universal. I went to bed happy that something finally went right.
Day 6- This was to be our Daytona beach day but the rest of the family could not get up early enough to do it. I decided not to push the issue much since it looked like the weather was not all that great anyway and since we missed the airboat ride the night before, I decided to go rent airboats up town, then around noon or so we went to AK and had dinner at a walk up barbeque stand, even though the food was bad it was fun to feed it to the ducks that we had swarming around our table. It was so relaxing since we were back there all by ourselves. I think we stayed right there for about an hour until other people started coming and their kids scared the ducks away
That night we went to Skull Kingdom. Skull Kingdom was a BIG hit! We got to walk though the horror house all by ourselves (It was scary!). Later they had a magic show hosted by a guy named Rick. Even though I was picked to help do one of the tricks earlier in the show, the rest of my family & myself were picked to do the last 2 tricks in the show. Rick read our minds and later my duaghter made my son levitate in the air. He is still talking about that to this day. Skull Kingdom is something we will never forget.
Day 7- The rain from a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico was producing heavy rains. I had Dinner reservations for the Fantasmic dinner package at Hollywood & Vine. We decided to go to MGM around noon that day after eating uptown. To our surprise MGM studios was not nearly as packed full of people as it was the first day, maybe I was just getting use to the crowds. We took advatage of the fastpass. I think we should have been doing this alot more on the first few days. Everything is so far apart that newbies are at a huge disadvantage with this method having to know your way around to the fastpass machines and the rides entrances, but by this time we were starting to learn how to take advantage of this, mostly becuase the day at Universal studios and the express pass ticket adavantage we had.
After having a good time at Tarzan Rocks in AK the previous day we decided to go to another show called the Extreme Stunt show. We again were picked for front row seats, I think becuase we all had Disney T-shirts on and my wife was carring a big bag with Disney stuff in it. Anyway our luck had change for the better.
Later that night we went to Fantasmic, I did not need the Fantasmic package since the seats didn't ever completly fill up but it did help get us in ahead of half the crowd so we were able to leave the reserve seat section on the right to go over to the middle of the stadium and get good seats. The show was amazing! I have never seen anything like it before. This really bought out the Disney spirt in me. MGM studios was a hit that day in my opinion.
Day 8- We were off to a somewhat late start but the weather was nice so we decided to go to Daytona beach. It was only an hour and 15 minute drive to my surprise. In back of all the buildings on the coast there is this huge beach that streches for miles, it looked like a blast! We went parasailing. Al at Blue sky parasail gave us a great buy on the highest flights. Right after that we decided to rent a dune buggy for an hour which gave my kids a great chance to collect sea shells. We have a funny picture of me falling off the dune buggy while my 9 year old was driving it. Later we went out in the water up to our necks to relax while the soothing ocean waves hit us. This got my wife a little concernd becuase she thought the kids were venturing out too far so she made us all go back to Orlando but not without the 3 of us stating our opinions to stay at the beach. What a great time!
That night we made it back just on time to see Illuminations at Epcot. I think you should see Illuminations before you see Fantasmic in my opinion and save the best for last.
Day 9- Since we never made it past the front gates at Magic Kingdom the whole trip, we decided this must be the day to do MK. The kids wanted to go to Universal again or back to the beach but my wife said this is our last day here and we must go to Disneys biggest and best park. Again we walked through the gates being shoulder to shoulder in people. We used the fastpast for everything we did knowing we did not have the time left to blow a whole afternoon on one ride like we did at Epcot. My wife wanted to go on (Its a small world) really badly and they did not have fastpast for it. Luckily the wait time was only 15 minutes even though it took 40 minutes to acually get on the ride. The kids said it was a very boring ride but obviously they missed the point of the ride. I really liked Pirates of the Carabien but thought Space mountain was pretty tame compared to the Hulk coaster at Universal. One of my favorite things at MK was Mickeys Philar magic, even though I seen some of the best 3-D short movies around at Universal and one at Epcot called Honey I shrunk the audience, I still get pictures in my mind of the Donald Duck being stuck in the back wall. Its another Disney thing that was a big hit for me.
Later that night we went on a carrage ride at Fort Wilderness campgrounds and then over to Hoop-de-Do musical reveiw for the late show. We didn't get back to our room until 2 am since MK was just closing by the time we were done and had to wait an hour and half for the 5th out Popcentury bus back to the motel. We sure missed our car rental the last half of the day, it would have been a complete nightmare to wait in those bus lines at Pop century the whole trip.
Had to get on DME by 8am to catch our flight at 11am, I'm glad we went down earlier than 8am or we would have missed the bus and then had to wait for another and would have been very rushed for getting all our stuff together at the airport. The DME bus driver was one of the crabbiest persons I have ever seen, but after seeing her load and unload everyones luggage on a full bus I can see why she was crabby. I sure wouldn't want that job.
All in all it was a good trip. We really got alot done the last few days compared to the first few and the fun factor just kept on climbing right up until the very end. We are already planning next years vacation but this time not to Disneyworld, it will be to California and Disneyland & Universal will be included, although I'm going to plan more stuff outside of the theme parks this time around.
Originally Posted by teri
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, but I can picture how it would ruin the show. 
) Sorry to hear your first room at the POP stunk! We arrived at the Pop at 11 am and had NO one on line at check in and we still had to lug all of our luggage to the 80's building with NO luggage cart (wasn't fun) but I try to block the downs of our trip and think positive. The crowds are what scare me the most, we usually let the kids miss a week of school so we can go during off season times, I know BAD parents!!! 
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