Two Teens and a DIva do Disney in June...part two

Our Second day in the parks was a totally busy one! We hit Epcot at rope drop.  This was the day before the Frozen ride opened and a few days after the new show started at Soarin.   The two teens headed for Mission Space (oh my!) while the Grand Princess and I headed to Soarin to grab a DAS Fast Pass.  To keep from being gobbled up by the masses heading to Soarin, we stopped to watch a performance by the Jamminators (garbage can drummers).  They were pretty great!  I was going to try and get a video, but once the crowd had passed, they packed up and left!  Boo.

We arrived at Soarin by five minutes after park opening (so we took 20 minutes to get there).  The DAS fast passes were already at an hour and 30 minutes out.  Meaning there was a 90 minute wait in the stand by line. 

We quickly found out that with most people at Soarin the rest of the park was pretty empty!  The four of us headed to Test Track for our first ride of the day as a group.  We went stand by, which was only 10 minutes.  After this we rode again with our Fast Pass. 

Panoramic view across the lagoon.

After an hour at Mouse Gears doing what girls do best…SHOPPING!  By this time the worlds had opened up and the girls wanted to grab an early lunch at the Cantina.  I opted to wait because we had reservations at Beaches and Cream for a Kitchen Sink. 

Teen's haul from Epcot!

After a quick lunch we moseyed over to Soarin for our DAS Fast Pass, where the stand by wait had mellowed to a 45 minute wait.  We were able to see it in the new theater!  They didn’t have the whole theater opened.  Unfortunately we rode on the left side…all the way to the left!  This was a real eye opener!  The previous film did not have a lot of straight up heights…it was more an over all wonderment.  The first thing I noticed was Neuschwanstein Castle seemed to lean a bit more than I remembered.  

Soon, it was all too obvious that Monument Valley, Eiffel Tower, and the Taj Mahal had suffered the same malady.  Not only that, the CGI animals and people seemed…off.  For instance the people wandering around and enjoying Taj Mahal had to be at least 8 feet tall and thin as rails!  Or maybe a basketball team was visiting while they filmed.  I can’t wait to go back and see it from the center.  I’m sure some of the issues I had with it would be corrected by a more center seat.

A brief stop to view some pretty fish in the aquarium!

Afterwards a leisurely walk over to the International Gate and headed to Beaches and Cream.  The Kitchen Sink did not disappoint, but the four of us were not able to eat it all.  I do wish they kept the Kitchen Sink bowls in the freezer.  A nice cold metal bowl would have helped keep the ice cream from melting…but one fresh from the dishwasher had zero chance!  Last year we tried a regular one, this year we opted for the chocolate lovers.  I think I liked the regular one better.  The Chocolate Lovers seemed to have more brownie and cake than ice cream. 

Kitchen Sink Chocolate Lovers Version

By this time, the four of us are barely able to move! We entertained taking the boat back over to the International gate, but we missed it by seconds!  We did wait about four minutes before I decided that waiting wasn’t something I wanted to do so the Grand Princess and I started to walk back toward Epcot.  The teens let us get about ten yards in front of them before they decided they would walk.

We noticed the workers putting up a fence by the beach area.  The area was roped off.  There were Cast Members manning the rope.  NO one was getting onto the beach.  No ONE! A little boy had a beach ball he had collected autographs on.  It went out of his hands and just under the rope.  Nope…the CM would not let him retrieve it!

Back in Epcot, we rode Figment (another one of our Fast Passes).  This ride remains a bad use of a Fast Pass, but with little options in tier two, what could you do?

At this time I have to mention something the teens may not appreciate.  I am walking with a cane.  The Grand Princess is in a Special Needs wheel chair/stroller.  The two teenaged girls are both physically fit and healthy.  By this time in our day they were both complaining about their feet hurting!  Both we warned to bring good walking shoes.  Both were warned we would be walking about 10 miles a day.  This is only our second day in the park. While it was one teen’s first visit, the other one has been over ten times!  No excuses!

The aforementioned sore feet came into play the remainder of the trip!

The remainder of the day we walked around world showcase shopping!  And Shopping.  And Shopping.  Until it was time for dinner at Tutto Italia.

As usual, Tutto Italia did not disappoint!  For the second time that day we had to waddle out of a restaurant!  I have heard some people compare it to a high priced Olive Garden.  I have to disagree!  I would give that designation to Mama Melrose and Tony’s, well it is more like a Fazzoli’s with real plates.  But Tutto Italia?  We LOVE it!

Remember those sore feet I mentioned earlier?  The girls decided to leave before fireworks.  By the time fireworks had started we were back in our room with the girls ready for bed.  My girls are real party animals!

For entertainment, we did go by the food court and grab a hot chocolate before bed!  

Arrival Day June 2016

We left Saturday morning at 6 am. The trip was basically uneventful.  Ran into a tiny bit of rain after we got into Florida, but other than a bit more traffic than I was expecting, it was a pretty boring drive.

We're Home!

Arriving at Port Orleans French Quarter, our room wasn’t quite ready, but within 5 minutes it was.  We had requested a ground floor room close to the transportation.  Our room was perfectly situated, close to transportation and less than two minutes (at a slow pace) to both the pool and the Main Lobby.  We couldn’t have asked for a better location if we had specified which room we wanted!

After unpacking and freshening up we headed to the Polynesian for dinner at ‘Ohanas.  And the rain started.  And I remembered I had forgotten my wallet (including picture ID) so we had to go back to the room!  During this time it was raining so hard I could not see where I was going.  Somehow we made it back to the room and grabbed my wallet and headed back to Polynesian.  Good thing we were heading out early!

Last time we went to dinner at Polynesian there was plenty of parking.  Not so this time!  The time we saved by driving (instead of using the bus system) was wasted in looking for a place to park.  There is some construction going on with the parking lot (never did find out what that was) making less parking spaces available.

We finally make it inside (after another brief shower as we are walking from the farthest spot in the lot!) and we are a few minutes early.  We are allowed to check in and we spend some time looking at the pool and lake from the lobby. 

I would like to insert here a personal observation.  I have zero idea why anyone would want to stay in the over water bungalows.  The water is yucky.  Looking out from the second floor lobby, the only blue spot you saw was the pool! 

Our dinner was fabulous!  Everyone ate way too much food.  Our server was more than attentive, and the entertainment (which I did not remember from before) was great!

Arriving back at the room, we all decided to go grab some hot chocolate at the Quick Service.  Another of the nice features of having such a small resort!  

Disney Trip June 2016

Wow, it has been a while!

It is hard to believe it has been 2 weeks since our Disney trip, but somehow the time has really gotten away with me.  I’ll start with just a brief overview of our trip and then will fill in more details with later posts. 

The trip was to celebrate my daughter’s 16^th birthday.  I traveled with two teenaged girls and an 8 year old.  Next time I will definitely go back to Art of Animation Suites.  One bathroom was not enough!

We had fantastic weather, and the only one who was sunburned was of course, me. 

I have decided that Port Orleans French Quarter has the absolute BEST transportation of any resort!  Having only one stop, a small resort, and not sharing a bus meant we always had a seat.  Even dealing with a super large Special Needs stroller didn’t make too much of a difference.  The only thing that would have made a difference is if the rented stroller had a locking mechanism to keep it folded while on the bus.  Each bus driver kept telling us that we could keep it open and they could strap it in, but that seemed silly to us to strap it in and she not be able to ride!

Some of the joys of a smaller resort were the little things.   Like when teenaged girls thought they needed a nap mid day and the grand daughter and I thought we should go to the pool or shop instead.  Only took two minutes to walk from our room to either the pool or the snack bar or the gift shop.  And the bus stop was only steps away…which was great on those nights when we were dragging ourselves back to the room!

This trip was only one week after the horrible gator incident, and we definitely noticed the heightened awareness of this.  All beaches were closed and roped off, and the signage was much more noticeable.   We saw CMs manning the beaches to make sure no one accidentally ventured in to the roped off area, not even to retrieve a beach ball that had rolled under the ropes!

We tried new things and gave a not so favorite place a second chance (regrettably it did not change our opinion).  Over all it was a great trip.  I’m armed with all sorts of information to help my clients make good choices.

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Be sure to check back for the first installment of our trip report