Our Free Dining- Food & Wine Fest - Soarin' Challenge TR - COMPLETED 11/18!! - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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We’ve been home a couple weeks and I’ve been working diligently on getting my notes into a Word document. And today the Photopass CD came, so I think it’s time to begin posting my TR!
Who - Just DH (Jeff) and myself (Donna) When – September 28 – October 6th Where – Port Orleans French Quarter What – 8 nights standard room, 9 day basic passes, free dining plan
This was our 6th trip to WDW. We did two trips in the early 90s when our kids were younger, a trip by ourselves in 2004 for our 25th anniversary, a trip in 2008 with our now adult kids, and a trip last year, again by ourselves, for our 30th anniversary. Then we decided we didn’t want to wait for another “big” anniversary to come along, we wanted to go again this year, so we did!
We started planning back in January. We got a great price on plane fares for Jet Blue when they first came out with our dates, and booked our room-only reservations at POFQ shortly after that. When free dining was announced we changed our reservations to a package. We planned our days and made our ADRs. Of course in the process we changed them several times, but that’s part of the fun!
So…after months of planning and waiting and reworking plans and asking questions of my wonderful PP pals, our trip was finally here!
We were excited about getting free dining again and had ADRs at some great places we hadn't tried before. We were also looking forward to tasting around the world at the F&WF - our second time for this. And, like the title says, we had a Soarin' Challenge. We'd ridden Soarin' 5 times on our last trip. Could we beat that and make it 6 or 7 this time? We were sure going to try!
The forecasts from weather channel and accuweather did not look good. Also there is a “weather guy” on another forum I frequent and his prediction was not good either. Tropical storms were headed that way and it looked like a windy rainy week was ahead of us. Two different weather systems, one at the beginning of our stay and one at the end were both predicted to go through Central Florida. We packed umbrellas and ponchos and were determined to make the best of whatever weather we got.
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WDW - August 1997 Off Property
WDW - January 2005 AKL
WDW - May 2006 Pop Century
WDW- november-dec 2007 pop century
WDW- dec/jan 2009/2010 pop century
WDW- oct/nov 2012 art of animation
WDW- sept 2013 port Orleans riverside
WDW- july 2015 beach club
We got up a bit before 6AM, showered and had a small bowl of cereal. Our suitcases were all packed. Dad picked us up at 7:10. We arrived at Buffalo Airport at 7:30, unloaded our bags and said our good-byes to Dad. As we were walking up to the Jet Blue counter to check our bags, the attendant says “Hello Donna!” I did a double take and realized it was an acquaintance from church. I didn’t realize she worked at Jet Blue. So she checked our bags for us, and gave us a complimentary upgrade to the “comfy seats.” Yay – more leg room! Thanks Ellen!
Security was interesting. BUF now has the body scan machines. We had to put everything in bins and then stand in front of the scanner for 7 seconds holding our hands on our heads “like Mickey Mouse ears.” Then, as if that wasn’t enough, we got a pat down. After that we took a few moments to get our shoes, purse, backpack, wallet, belt, etc. all back on and made our way to the gate. I had just enough time to complete the morning crossword puzzle and then they announced they would begin boarding in a few minutes – and the priority (extra leg room) seats got to board first!
We took off on time and during the flight I did another crossword, read the paper, watched an episode of West Wing on direct TV and then started a book I’d brought along. We also ate some bagels that I’d packed that morning. We landed at 11:25 and after a bathroom break, and a quick stop to take some migraine meds, we made our way to the Magical Express check in. We never really stopped to wait in a line for the bus; just walked right on outside and onto the waiting bus which pulled out at 11:50. After a stop at SSR and OKW we arrived at POFQ, went to the online check-in window and were in our room by 12:45. Our room was in a great location in building 5. Close to the main building and the bus stop and a view that looked out toward the Jacuzzi. We were on the 3rd floor, but steps don’t bother us, so we thought the location was superb!
Always a welcome sight!
It was time for lunch so we decided to walk along the river to POR and eat at their food court. I think this is such a lovely walk.
I had a create-your-own salad and bottled water and Jeff had a Beef and Bleu Sandwich, pasta salad, apple juice and carrot cake. I wanted ice cream for dessert so the CM marked my receipt and I went back for that after I finished my salad. I opted for fat free ice cream, but with the amount she put in the bowl and the hot fudge and whipped cream on top, I guess it didn’t make much difference! Oh well, I try!
We walked back to the room but our luggage hadn’t been delivered yet, so we decided we’d head out to MK in what we were wearing. But by the time we used the bathroom again and were ready to leave, there was a knock at the door…our bags had arrived. So we took a few minutes to put our things away and then about 2:15 we headed out to MK. It was threatening rain so we were glad we had our two umbrellas and dollar store ponchos that were packed in the luggage. We walked to the bus stop and waited about 10 minutes for a bus to the MK. After getting through the security check and the turnstiles we took advantage of our first Photopass opportunity.
Then on to Main Street – all decked out for Halloween! The parade was just about to start but we continued on down Main Street and were one of the only people actually walking in the street. Everyone was waiting on the sidewalks for the parade to start.
After taking advantage of another Photopass op, we decided to head to Adventureland and rode Jungle Cruise and Pirates with no wait. When we got out of Pirates it was looking like rain. The skies were very dark and it was very windy, so we decided to do an inside attraction and chose Hall of Presidents. By the time we got out it was pouring! Jeff said, “ponchos or umbrellas?” I chose umbrellas and we were on our way to the Haunted Mansion. Everyone else was waiting it out under shelter, just standing there, wondering what to do, but this was our first afternoon in the world and we weren’t going to waste one minute of it! We got to HM and it was another walk-on – literally right into the stretching room! Earlier I had told Jeff to look for the guy hanging when the lightning flashes, but he misunderstood and thought the guy was somewhere on the ride, so after we got in the doom buggy he said “where’s the guy?” I said, “He was back in the stretching room!” Oh well, not a problem, we’ll just do it again tomorrow. We exited HM and it was still raining. Again, people were just standing around under cover. We were just about the only ones walking in the puddled streets! We decided to do another inside attraction and headed for Country Bear Jamboree. It’s been years since we’ve seen this and probably would not have seen it this time had it not been for the rain. It’s not really on our list of must-dos but we got a couple chuckles out of it and more importantly, we were dry. When we exited, it had stopped pouring, but was still sprinkling. We decided to head out since we had ADRs that evening and needed time to shower and change. On our way to the exit we stopped at the Main Street Fire House, which we had never seen before. We browsed for a bit and took some pictures of the Main Street area from inside where it was dry.
Then we made our way to the buses. We waited about 10 minutes for a bus back to POFQ. (By the way, MK has two separate bus stops for POR and POFQ, so at least from here there are no additional stops at Riverside.)
On the way back to the room we went to the gift shop to pick up some milk for breakfast tomorrow morning. They only had 2% and we usually drink skim. Oh well, we’ll live with it. We checked the food court and they had 1% in ˝ pint cartons, but that’s way too expensive compared to the quart size in the gift shop.
Now it was time for a little rest and relaxation. Jeff took a nap. I wrote in my journal and tried to dry out our shoes and then we both got a shower and got dressed for dinner
I can't wait to hear how the rest of your trip turned out! Good for you for braving the rain.
It was really pouring, but since we each had an umbrella, the only thing that got soaked was our shoes. And we dried them out by turning the heat/fan on inthe room. Then we moved a chair over close to the heater and we propped the shoes up against it so they were right where the air was flowing from the heater.
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And today the Photopass CD came, so I think it’s time to begin posting my TR! 
Also there is a “weather guy” on another forum I frequent and his prediction was not good either. Tropical storms were headed that way and it looked like a windy rainy week was ahead of us. Two different weather systems, one at the beginning of our stay and one at the end were both predicted to go through Central Florida. We packed umbrellas and ponchos and were determined to make the best of whatever weather we got. 
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