Our really Hot and Sweaty spring break week trip report April 14th-19th, 2013 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Our really Hot and Sweaty spring break week trip report April 14th-19th, 2013
Our little Spring trip trip report
Who went: Me (Peggy) and DH (Jeremy) No kids this time.
Details: Staying off site at the Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista in a one bedroom suite. Plan on doing 3 Disney parks and 2 Universal parks, Blue Man Group and Cirque Du Soleil. Car rental reservation through Priceline for a mid size car with Advantage car rentals.
Dining reservations at Rose and Crown, 50's Prime Time, House of Blues and the Tomorrowland Terrace Dessert party. Also on the dining agenda, Bubba Gump's at City Walk.
DAY 1- Sunday, April 14th, 2013
For some reason Southwest has made the only non-stop flight of the day between my airport and MCO a late evening flight (which sucks). Our flight was scheduled to leave at 5:55 pm. We were anxiously awaiting our flight all day. It is torture to sit and WAIT when you are so excited to go and get your vacation started. I dont' know why we can't be like some major airports and have early morning flights. That gives you a whole extra day because you get into town so early. But that is not in the cards for us. ANYWAY.
I checked my email about 4 pm and had gotten an email from Southwest saying our flight was going to be delayed and not actually leave until 6:25 pm. Delaying it by 30 minutes. So I told DH we can leave 30 minutes later than we planned because our flight is delayed. Then for some unknown reason after we had already delayed our departure by 30 minutes we got ANOTHER email from Southwest saying OOPS OK the plane is actually leaving at 6 pm. Which is only 5 minutes delayed from it's original time.
Fortunately I always get to the airport about 90 minutes before my flight so we had enough time to get checked in and get to the gate with about 30 minutes to spare. Southwest boards 30 minutes prior to departure.
Since this was a kind of last minute trip we had only bought our plane tickets about 3 and a half weeks prior to leaving. So I knew even though we bought early bird check in that we might not have really great boarding numbers. But we actually got A33 and A34. Not too bad considering how little notice we bought the tickets on. We were still able to sit very close to the front of the plane. Row 4. And DH sat at the window and I sat in the aisle seat and we were lucky that nobody tried to sit between us. I always dread that. We have that happen sometimes. People who don't want to pay for EBCI board the plane last then want to sit right up front with the people who paid extra money to ensure the good seats. Kind of a pet peeve of mine.
The flight was really turbulent. We flew into some bad weather getting into Orlando but for some reason the whole flight was bumpy. We arrived into MCO about 15 minutes late and headed downstairs to the baggage claim to pick up our luggage. Now I know flying into a big airport like MCO where you land at one terminal but have to pick up your bags at another terminal that it takes a few minutes for them to get the bags unloaded and transferred over to the other terminal. But we kept standing there 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. I was getting really ticked off. I had never had bags take this long ever in my life. I guess someone went into the baggage office and complained and they finally made an announcement over the speakers saying “ those of you from flight 351 there has been a delay with your bags and we will have them out to you momentarily.” IT TOOK THEM ONE HOUR before they ever said there was a problem. Another 15 minutes passed, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. At this point we had been waiting for an hour and 45 minutes and we saw ppl going into the baggage office really complaining loudly and furiously. They finally admitted to us that the cargo door on the plane had gotten stuck and they couldn't get it open and our bags would be up in just a few minutes. At the 2 hour mark when the only people left sitting and standing around the baggage claim was people from flight 351, the baggage carousel finally started moving and bags started coming out. I was hot and sweaty and pissed off. It was very hot and humid in the lower level of the airport for some reason and I was very irritated being so delayed. It was 11pm before we finally got our bags.
While we were waiting for our bags DH went downstairs to the car rental counters to check in for our car and sign the contract and get the keys, etc to save us some time when our bags finally came. He came back up irritated and said that Advantage rental cars, who we booked a car through Priceline with, was no longer IN TERMINAL at MCO. They always have been every time we used them. Nobody notified us that they were now off property and you had to be shuttled to their location from the airport. I was at my wit's end. I got on my phone, went to Priceline and booked a last minute car through Alamo, who was in terminal. And had to pay full price. You don't get any discount by booking the day you need the car. So instead of $15 a day we paid $35 a day. GREAT!!
After we got the car DH and I were both starving. It had been about 8 hours since we had last eaten and we had not even gotten to the hotel yet. So we stopped by McDonald's on the corner by the hotel and DH got some nuggets and I ordered a Caesar salad. I had never tried a McD's salad before and I wasn't missing anything. We got checked into the room and got our bags upstairs and I tried the salad. It was disgusting. It was suppose to be a Caesar salad but it had shaved Carrots and Cherry Tomatoes on it. They used Iceberg lettuce. WHO USES ICEBERG LETTUCE ANYMORE?!? But that is just an FYI for those of you who have never had a salad from McD's before. You aren't missing anything. We finally got to bed at around 12:30 am.
Up tomorrow our first park day at Epcot.
__________________
10/27-11/6/11 All Star Music Family Suite (QSDP) --Family trip
1/26-2/1/12 Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista --Adults Only trip
4/16-4/21/12 Rosen Inn --Adults Only Trip
10/27-11/4/12 All Star Music Family Suite (DDP) --Family Trip
4/14-4/19/13 Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista- Adults Only Trip
11/10-11/17/13 Wyndham Bonnet Creek- Adults Only Trip
11/2015 Wyndham Bonnet Creek- Family trip
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
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Oh wow! I'm a new member and this is the first trip report I've read. I hope for your sake (and mine too frankly) that your trip winds up better than Day 1.
Day 2- Monday, April 15th, 2013 (Officially day 1)
DAY 2- Officially Day 1- April 15th, 2013 Monday
We woke up at 6:15 and went down to the hotel breakfast area to have breakfast. They had Eggs and Sausage, make your own Waffles, Toast and danishes, muffins and cereal. Just regular breakfast items. Jeremy had Eggs and Sausage and I had a Waffle. Then we went back up to the room to kill some time and wait until time to leave for Epcot.
We got to Epcot at 8:30 and was let in about 8:45. We went to the Land building and got a fastpass for Soarin' first thing then walked over to ride the new Test Track stand by. The stand by line said the wait was 20 minutes. It actually ended up being about 25 minutes. That is the longest we have ever waited for a ride.
The new Test Track queue was not quite as busy and interesting as the old queue was. When you finally got into the car design room two of the machines we tried to use were froze up then when we finally got one that worked it didn't work right so we just abandoned the design your own car part and waited for them to open the doors to get in the final part of the queue.
I have read on the boards a lot of people complaining that they think the new Test Track sucked or they hated it and felt like Disney ruined a good thing by redoing TT. DH and I kind of liked the new test track. For one you didn't have to stand through that boring pre-ride video. I hated that. And now instead of going through the different tests at the beginning of the ride it kind of whizzes you through turning corners real fast and just seems a little more fun that bumping over bumps and going through a hot and cold room. The track part obviously stayed the same. Nothing had changed about that part. But DH said he thinks the track part of it was faster than what it use to be because we got up to 65 miles an hour this time. He said he never remembers it getting over the high 50's on the old ride. SO we liked it.
After TT we rode Nemo then went back to use our fastpasses for Soarin'. By this time it was already pretty hot outside and I was getting a little sweaty. The humidity was bad. It only got up to 85 degrees every day but the humidity made it feel like 90 degrees or more. I don't tolerate heat very well and even though Jeremy can usually tolerate heat very well back here at home, even he was uncomfortable during our trip this time. We went during the same week last year and I don't remember it being near as hot or humid as this year. I guess that is the unpredictable weather of Florida.
After we rode Soarin' we went over to the Electric Umbrella to eat. I know everybody is in love with Sunshine Seasons but we prefer Electric Umbrella.
DH had Chicken Nuggets and I had a Caesar salad. ($21)
After eating we went on back to World Showcase.
We rode the boats in Mexico and Norway and stopped at the France bakery to have a snack. DH had the Strawberry Parfait and I had a Napoleon. The Napoleons are not the same and are not as good now that they opened the new bakery. (You can still have a great Napoleon at Starring Rolls in Hollywood Studios. They have the good original Napoleon). We watched the movie in China and didn't really stop any where else. The only things I would have done if it were not too hot to stay was to watch the movies in France and Canada. (I have seen them before though) Mostly World Showcase is a lot of restaurants and a few bakeries. We didn't go into any shops.
By 1 pm we were just too hot so we left and went back to the room for a rest and to cool off.
We had Chili's for dinner. ($36 + tip) And we stopped by the store to get drinks and snacks for the room.
Up next tomorrow Island of Adventure.
__________________
10/27-11/6/11 All Star Music Family Suite (QSDP) --Family trip
1/26-2/1/12 Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista --Adults Only trip
4/16-4/21/12 Rosen Inn --Adults Only Trip
10/27-11/4/12 All Star Music Family Suite (DDP) --Family Trip
4/14-4/19/13 Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista- Adults Only Trip
11/10-11/17/13 Wyndham Bonnet Creek- Adults Only Trip
11/2015 Wyndham Bonnet Creek- Family trip
Sounds like you had a good morning at Epcot. Heading back to the resort midday is a good plan, especially in the Florida heat.
Did you drive to the parks or take a hotel shuttle?
Sounds like you had a good morning at Epcot. Heading back to the resort midday is a good plan, especially in the Florida heat.
Did you drive to the parks or take a hotel shuttle?
We drove. We always rent a car because I can't even stand the thought of being dependent on buses to get me around. I am not very patient about waiting or being crowded or being in a small confined space with a bunch of other sweaty ppl. lol
__________________
10/27-11/6/11 All Star Music Family Suite (QSDP) --Family trip
1/26-2/1/12 Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista --Adults Only trip
4/16-4/21/12 Rosen Inn --Adults Only Trip
10/27-11/4/12 All Star Music Family Suite (DDP) --Family Trip
4/14-4/19/13 Quality Suites Lake Buena Vista- Adults Only Trip
11/10-11/17/13 Wyndham Bonnet Creek- Adults Only Trip
11/2015 Wyndham Bonnet Creek- Family trip
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
Linear Mode
