We Definitely Need a Vacation! - TR - 5/6-5/16 - UPDATED 7/21 - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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I feel the same way; I need to get to the beach because it's Florida! I spent my childhood spring breaks touring all over the Sunshine State and spending time at the beach - but never once making it to Disney. Now my girls do WDW but have no idea what the natural wonders of FL are all about. We'll have to follow your example.
Sorry for the long wait at check-in, funny thing is I think our longest time at check-in has been when we have arrived late in the evening...no crowds yet logn waits...I think I have checked in faster in the morning with larger crowds.
I am one to have a need to unpack in order to feel settled Great day at the beach, glad you were able to finish off with Epcot for a bit.
Congrats on the start of a great TR! Thanks for the info on the beach and aquarium, like you we've never ventured out of the "Disney Bubble". Hope you like Pop Century as much as we have in the past.
I love aquariums! Will have to give it a go! So glad that yall made it to the beach and had a great time, and made some time for Disney! Yall did get alot done! Dont leave us hangin to long!
__________________
Me and Cole in the Sears Tower Skydeck, 103 floors up, in a glass box hanging off the side!
Day 3 is in the works right now, but we wanted to reply to a couple of posts really quick in the mean time:
Quote:
Originally Posted by tibe
Looks like you had great weather. Can't wait to hear more....
Would you believe during our entire 11 day visit it only rained one day?!?!?! It's crazy I tell you! We did have some other weather issues to contend with....but those are coming later
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Love the pictures!
Thank you! Ryan & I are both very visual people, so I LOVE including pictures...in fact we came home with almost 1400 on our camera from this trip, so chances are very good there will be more pictures to come
Quote:
Originally Posted by mcc0313
Sorry for the long wait at check-in, funny thing is I think our longest time at check-in has been when we have arrived late in the evening...no crowds yet logn waits...I think I have checked in faster in the morning with larger crowds.
We've come across this too, but I thought maybe it was just a fluke. We've checked in at night a couple of times, but the only time we had great service that late was the night our flight was delayed and we didn't get to our resort until 2:00 am ...the staff looked bored to tears, so they were happy to help us to have something to do!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
What a lovely beach!
It was AMAZING!!! This was the first time for both of us to see the Gulf Coast side of Florida and it was breathtaking! The atmosphere there was so fun too...a much different feel than the Atlantic side, but more to come on that in a future update
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grammy Grumpy
Thanks for the info on the beach and aquarium, like you we've never ventured out of the "Disney Bubble".
We usually like to stay fully cocooned in Disney, but this was so great, I highly recommend it!
Quote:
Originally Posted by OCEANGRLLG
I love aquariums! Will have to give it a go! So glad that yall made it to the beach and had a great time, and made some time for Disney! Yall did get alot done! Dont leave us hangin to long!
The aquarium is WELL worth it! They have a penguin promenade in the afternoons that we didn't end up staying for but looked so super cool. I promise Day 3 is on it's way soon and it's a full day of Disney goodness! See ya real soon!
__________________
*Shena & Ryan*
Check out our PTR for our upcoming Christmas trip to see Mickey!
That was a packed first day! We would usually take one day out of our trip to do the beach, but we haven't done that in about 3 years. We may have to fit that in to our trip.
Can't wait for more.
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Wonderful start! It sounds silly but I always forget that WDW is by the beach. I live by the beach and so my mind focuses on Disney only the second I cross into FL. However the pictures were very pretty. Can't wait for more.
You guys are turning me into a junkie! As soon as I get home from work I have to race to the computer to see if we have any replies!!! Thank you for all of the kind words, they mean so much!!! As promised, here is day 3:
Day 3 – Sunday, 5/8/11
Our first ALL Disney day! We were SUPER excited, so we got a decently early start and grabbed a quick breakfast at Everything POP (I’m not sure what they do to the breakfast potatoes, but they are AWESOME!) and headed off to start our day at Hollywood Studios. We got to Studios and walked through the gates about 5 minutes after rope drop and Ryan was off to get Fast Passes for TSMM—he’s a little over 6 ft tall and I’m right at 5 ft tall, so my short legs didn’t want to even attempt to keep up with him in his hurry to get back there and I walked at a normal human pace. I made it back there just as he was getting up to the Fast Pass machine, so I had pretty good timing. Since the line to actually ride was already crazy long, we headed off to do other things. We watched Muppet Vision 3-D and rode the Great Movie Ride and Tower of Terror. We also walked around the Streets of America trying to re-familiarize ourselves with everything there in anticipation of the upcoming Scavenger Hunt we would be participating in at the end of the week. After this, it was time to use our Fast Passes for Toy Story. In case you’re wondering, Ryan beat me 189,400 to 169,000 (I did have better accuracy though & I think that counts for something .) After this we went over to the Magic of Disney Animation and took part in the drawing class—our Goofys that we drew actually look pretty good. I absolutely LOVE doing this!!! It’s such a cool souvenir to bring home from our trip. By this time we’d worked up a pretty good appetite and decided to find some lunch. We wanted to try one of the counter service locations we hadn’t tried before and ended up at Fairfax Fare. We split the half chicken meal and it was really good! It’s no Flame Tree BBQ, but it’s not a bad substitute. Since the day was heating up at this point, we decided to go back to the room and cool off for a little bit. This was one of the days we actually had a table service reservation for dinner, so we didn’t want to walk in all hot and sweaty .
Streets of America: NY Street Corner
Streets of America: Travel Agency Window
Streets of America: San Francisco
After a little down time, we decided to walk around Magic Kingdom for a bit since it was close to our ADR. We watched Hall of Presidents and the Castle Stage Show and then it was time to grab the monorail to the Polynesian.
We had never eaten at Kona Café for dinner before, but were pretty excited to give it a try. Things started off rocky…they couldn’t find our reservation!!! Luckily it was still early and they weren’t overly busy yet so they fit us in, but I was having a minor panic attack. Once we were seated, it took awhile before anyone came over to greet us and take our drink order, so much so that we were also ready to order our food by this time too and it was all new to us! Our dinner also took FOREVER to arrive. Ryan had the pan asian noodles with chicken and I had the coconut almond chicken salad (FYI, the menu doesn’t say it’s a salad, but it definitely is. Kinda wish my server had mentioned this to me when I ordered it It was good, but I was starving and would’ve liked something a little more filling.) Overall the food was very good (we’d give it a 7/10) but our service was not great (4/10) . After waiting another 15 minutes to get our check and pay…not exaggerating here people!...we finally got out of there and headed back to Magic Kingdom. We rode Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and Snow White and we saw Mickey’s Philharmagic, too. We were able to go through the new interactive queue for Haunted Mansion and it was SOOOO cool! (sorry we don’t have any pictures, the lighting level was weird and no matter what we tried they just wouldn’t come out). Ryan loved the interactive piano and I thought the bookshelves were fun. They did such a wonderful job with this new queue!!! After these couple of things we decided we were dragging to much to keep going and headed back to our resort to get some rest. We made sure to stop off at the food court and get some Tie-Dyed Cheesecake for dessert first—and then we headed to our room for some shut eye.
__________________
*Shena & Ryan*
Check out our PTR for our upcoming Christmas trip to see Mickey!
Great day! Sorry about the slow service at Kona. Other TRs recently have mentioned service being on the poor side at several of the restaurants on property. Wonder what's up with that?
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Great day at the beach, glad you were able to finish off with Epcot for a bit.
PassPorter Guide Author
...the staff looked bored to tears, so they were happy to help us to have something to do! 
but looked so super cool. I promise Day 3 is on it's way soon and it's a full day of Disney goodness! See ya real soon!
Jyl
.) After this we went over to the Magic of Disney Animation and took part in the drawing class—our Goofys that we drew actually look pretty good. I absolutely LOVE doing this!!! It’s such a cool souvenir to bring home from our trip. By this time we’d worked up a pretty good appetite and decided to find some lunch. We wanted to try one of the counter service locations we hadn’t tried before and ended up at Fairfax Fare. We split the half chicken meal and it was really good! It’s no Flame Tree BBQ, but it’s not a bad substitute. Since the day was heating up at this point, we decided to go back to the room and cool off for a little bit. This was one of the days we actually had a table service reservation for dinner, so we didn’t want to walk in all hot and sweaty 
It was good, but I was starving and would’ve liked something a little more filling.) Overall the food was very good (we’d give it a 7/10) 
but our service was not great (4/10) 
. After waiting another 15 minutes to get our check and pay…not exaggerating here people!...we finally got out of there and headed back to Magic Kingdom. We rode Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and Snow White and we saw Mickey’s Philharmagic, too. We were able to go through the new interactive queue for Haunted Mansion and it was SOOOO cool! (sorry we don’t have any pictures, the lighting level was weird and no matter what we tried they just wouldn’t come out). Ryan loved the interactive piano and I thought the bookshelves were fun. They did such a wonderful job with this new queue!!! After these couple of things we decided we were dragging to much to keep going and headed back to our resort to get some rest. We made sure to stop off at the food court and get some Tie-Dyed Cheesecake for dessert first—and then we headed to our room for some shut eye.
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