April 2015 - Our First Spring at Disney

[kaetra]

Hello! Welcome to my trip report!

We spent April 18th through 24th at the Happiest Place on Earth! I've always wanted to go to Disney World on my birthday and this year my wish came true!!

My nucleus family of three -


Our resort -


For this trip, I kept quick track of our comings and goings with a Live Trip Report. It was a great way to take notes, and was pretty easy to do with my phone. I had been planning this trip since January.

Ok, let's get this party started!

 

[kaetra]

Day 1 - Arrival with room pics
Day 2 - Good morning POP
Day 2 - Epcot Arrival and Test Track
Day 2 - Epcot Sums, Snacks and Lunches
Day 2 - Epcot Spaceship and Chefs
Day 2 - Epcot World Showcase
Day 3 - Animal Kingdom Safari and Wilderness Explorers
Day 3 - Animal Kingdom Everest and Dinosaur
Day 3 - Animal Kingdom Yeti, Rain and Festival of the Lion King

 

[kaetra]

Day 1 - Will we even make it to Disney World Today? No.

Despite having a 6:50am direct flight from Milwaukee to Orlando, we did not arrive at our room at Pop until after midnight. We got to the airport 1 1/2 hours before our flight, but it was not enough time to get shuttled from the parking lot, get our luggage checked, get through TSA and get to our gate. We arrived at our gate at 6:44am and Southwest would not allow us to board the plane. After a few hours on stand by, someone at Southwest took pity on us and gave us boarding passes for their last direct flight of the day that wound up leaving at 6:50PM. OK! Lesson learned. The details of the drama are in the Live Trip Report. It's too painful to remember so - Moving on!

 

[ariane37]

I don't think I've ever been the first to join a TR, I'm so excited!! Except that really stinks about not being able to board your flight. Can't wait to hear about the wonderful parts of the trip

 

[kaetra]

Day 1 - We're here! FINALLY
After a brutal day, once we actually got on the plane our spirits improved considerably and even more so when we landed at MCO. When we arrived we had to go to luggage services to find out our luggage was still in limbo somewhere! Southwest luggage services said "we don't have it but maybe Disney picked it up already?". (Um, MAYBE? How reassuring!) So, we left them and went to pick up our rental car, a lovely Ford Explorer. This went very quickly using National's Emerald Isle. From the car I called Pop directly and they said they did have our luggage. Huge relief!

Our regular GPS took a crap on us just before the trip, so we relied on husband's iPhone for GPS services. This didn't work out very well the first few days. It took some time to get the iPhone to figure out where things actually were on Disney property. We were really tired too, so despite trying to follow the signs to find Pop we wound up at the Magic Kingdom parking lot instead! Eventually we did make it to Pop. Check in was fast and easy. Luggage services was closed, so we could not pick up our suitcases. We walked to our room.



We had room 4239 in the 60's section. When we got to our room our Magic Bands didn't open the door. It took about 20 minutes on the phone with the front desk to get it sorted out, meanwhile we stood there exhausted, in front of our door.



This day was a total bust and Murphy's Law had done his absolute best! Once we got in I snapped some quick pics of the room.







We hit the hay hard that night! At 3am our room phone rang!!! Whaaaa!!?? It was luggage services. They have our suitcases, would we like them to bring them up? Yes please and thank you thank you thank you!! They brought up our two suitcases within about 5 minutes.

We did not use Magical Express, but before we left our house I had changed our regular luggage tags to - "My name, POP Century, Disney World, My mobile number" instead of my normal home address info. I figured if they got lost they should be able to figure out where to find me, and it worked!

We would have clothes and toiletries in the morning! Hurray!

Up next - RESET BUTTON ENGAGED! We go to Epcot!

 

[kaetra]

Day 2 - Today is My Actual, for real Birthday
Good morning Mickey! I am so glad to be here with you on my actual real live birthday! I wake up first, of course, at 6:45 am. I get ready and let the fam sleep in a bit. I'm pretty excited to get the day started! We have an ADR for dinner at Les Chefs de France and afternoon FastPasses. I would like to get to Epcot as early as possible so we can do Test Track a couple times before the queues get too long. Crowd calendars put today at a moderate day, UT puts it at yellow, EasyWDW lists it as a recommended (green) park.

Now that it's daylight I can see that our room is on the back side of the 60's, with a lovely lake view.





Eventually the sleepyheads wake up and get ready. Boy are we happy to have our suitcases! Around 8:30am we head down to Everything Pop for some super quick eats. It's already 78 degrees out, and a humid morning - 87% humidity. Today is going to be a hot one!

Our next door neighbor had this cute Easter basket in their window we got to walk by and see every day -


Walking through the pool area to Everything Pop




Everything Pop is pretty busy.


The longest line is the Pancakes line. The kid wants pancakes, of course. I am sad there are no more Mickey Waffles here. They have stupid Pop waffles instead. (Seriously? No Mickey Waffles???) We get just the kid's pancakes meal with chocolate milk and ice water. We get through the line pretty quickly, especially the payment line. I drink the milk for breakfast, husband eats Belvita cookies he brought with him and the kid really enjoys the pancakes. I try a bite, they are very good! Hubby and I didn't want to fill up too early because we love Epcot foods, and were looking forward to tasting Flower & Garden treats.

I dutifully update my Live Trip report during the quick downtimes

 

[kaetra]

Day 2 - Epcot! We love Test Track!

The car is still parked in the Check In lot, so it's a quick walk and we are on our way. I'm pretty sure we can find Epcot by just using the signs, but Hubby wants to use his iPhone GPS too. I love making fun of his phone and he loves making fun of mine. (I have a Windows phone.) So I get to have some teasing fun with him whenever his precious iPhone screws up the directions. Ha! (To be fair my Windows phone is pretty sucky at everything except work stuff lol).



Despite a mis-step or two we arrive at the Epcot parking lot within about 5 minutes!


Here's the bag check line and gate at about 9:20 am



And here's our traditional "Victory" pose of the kid's arrival at Disney!


And Kythe took this picture of us


We hustle to Test Track. It's closed down! Uh-oh. There goes my master plan! I find the FP+ kiosk to add same day FastPasses to the 2 bands we had from our 2013 trip. I messed up and did only one band at a time, so we wind up with single FPs for weird and different times. The only usable one is a single FP for Soarin' at 7:50pm.

We wander over to The Land and see the queue for Soarin' is already soaring through the roof, so we get some flower pics and head over to Nemo. I love Nemo, Kythe and Brad not so much but they indulge me.








Brad sees on the app that Test Track is open now with a 40 minute queue, so we hurry over to jump in line. The total wait time until we got into the car design area turned out to be about 70 minutes. (This was the longest line we waited in during the entire trip.)




We saw a lot of this throughout the trip, and we were doing it too - Everyone staring at their phone. This is our brave new world! hehe


Kythe enjoyed the interactive part of the queue -


Kythe designed a "Capabilities" heavy car and named it "Black Death". That's pretty dark! She scored a 216 at the end, which was one of the best cars designed by us this trip. She was pretty happy with her score!

Here's a video of the creation process -

 

[Rosebud123]

Following along! What an awful first day. I would have cried at the gate when they didn't let me on. Your room looks nice, as does the view.

 

[cluno]

We were at EPCOT the same day as you! Test Track being down threw us for a loop, too. It didn't help that the mission space FP that my dh and dd didn't use didn't clear after their window. We ended up with 3FP + for test track at 7:45ish, and my oldest daughter and DH did single rider.

Looking forward to reading more!

 

[kaetra]

Following along! What an awful first day. I would have cried at the gate when they didn't let me on. Your room looks nice, as does the view.

Yes, I totally wept. Hardcore, fat tear bawled. MKE has some construction going on which is messing everything up and causing passenger processing delays. I wasn't aware of this or I would have gotten there much, much earlier.

We loved where our room was. Seeing the lake each morning and evening was a nice treat. It was very, very quiet on that side too.

 

[wiscbugs]

I'm following along on this one too

 

[maryandtyson]

What an arrival day! Happy birthday!

 

[ariane37]

After I commented earlier I went and read about half way through your live TR, so I got more details of your unfortunate departure day I totally cannot understand why they wouldn't let you on the plane, and when I told DH he said the same thing! Crazy And luckily in the past!

Loving the pictures of POP, we've never been there. We stayed in a LM room last year and actually faced some of the POP buildings which was cool. I kept meaning to cross the bridge and go look around but never made it.......

 

[kaetra]

Day 2 - Epcot Continued

After Test Track we went over to Spaceship Earth to use our first FastPass that was for 11am. Unfortunately Spaceship Earth was down, but the CM said they would honor our FastPass for any time that day. We started walking toward World Showcase since it was open now, but on our way we passed by one of Kythe's favorite attractions -


The posted wait was about 30 minutes, so they hopped in the queue and I sat down on the comfortable benches for a foot rest. Sum is a 2-man ride and husband really enjoys it as well, so I gladly waited for them to do it together. They designed a crazy coaster, they were flipping upside down and everything! I knew when it was their turn because I could hear Kythe's excited hollers loud and clear! Here's a few seconds of video of their ride:

When they finished we moved on to World Showcase. I stopped for counter service Fish and Chips at UK's Rose & Crown. It was $8.99 and a much better value than eating inside. I got 2 medium pieces of fish and a good size portion of chips. It came on a handy disposable tray that made it very easy to carry around and eat with all the condiments.


I carried my fish while we walked over to France's Les Halles Boulangerie & Pâtisserie for Brad and Kythe's lunch. She got a ham and cheese croissant for lunch and he got a chocolate croissant as a snack as he still wanted to check out the Flower & Garden samplings. (I don't have pics of those, sorry). We walked around a bit, checking out F&G foods, but he never did find anything he wanted to try.

It's about 1pm now, and the temp was up to 92 degrees! It was also pretty humid, but there was a nice breeze. It was getting close to our Test Track FP time, so we boarded the Ferry to have a relaxing ride back.

Once we were back to the other side, we HAD to stop and get the F&G Violet Lemonades to sip on while walking to TT. These are AMAZING and the flowers are edible!


When we arrived at Test Track with our FP we walked right on with zero wait. Here's a Test Track Queue Family Selfie -

To be continued...

 

[Gracefulskinny]

Yay following along again!

 

[kaetra]

Day 2 - Epcot continued

After some playtime in the TT post ride area, I send Kythe and Brad to Mission Space Orange to use up a FastPass. They never really needed an FP for this at all as Orange side's queue was never above 15 minutes that I saw our entire trip.

While they do Orange, I rest and cool off in Innoventions' benches near the microscope area. There is one bench that doesn't have a speaker directly above it, and it's the most peaceful one. It's 3:21 pm, 91 degrees and still pretty humid. The sun is very bright, and there's not a cloud in the sky. I am starting to tire, but I'm hoping for a second wind after dinner at Chefs so we can explore WS some more in the evening!

After their Mission Space we all go to Spaceship Earth to see if we can use our FastPass. We can! Yay! I love this attraction. I love making funny faces for the personal photo and I love spending time with Dame Judi Dench while she narrates. I still get chills whenever she says "poised to shape the future of this... our Spaceship Earth". Kythe and Brad tolerate it for me, but will only do it once a trip. They do really like playing in the game area at the end of the ride though!



Afterwards, we move back over to World Showcase again and clouds and thunder start moving in. We stop to take some photos along the way to WS. Here's Kythe holding her precious purple Lucky Cat



Our reservation at Chefs is at 5:30pm, but we check in a bit early for my official Birthday dinner! They let us in right away and we get a table near the front of the restaurant. I have a lovely view of the fountain, and I love the paintings on the ceiling.


Brad enjoys speaking French with our server (I don't speak French). We order from the Prix Fixe menu. We both get French Onion soup. He orders the Shortrib and I get the Chicken. Kythe gets pasta and chicken strips. Brad got the Creme Brulee for dessert, and Kythe and I both order the strawberry cream cake. The soup is truly fabulous, a huge portion and I would be plenty satisfied with just the soup and dessert. Brad and Kythe enjoyed their entrees, but my chicken was so dry I couldn't eat it. I was pretty full anyway though from the soup and bread. All the desserts were AMAZING.





Before dessert Brad told the server (in French so I couldn't understand) that it was my birthday. So they all came out and sang to me and I got a candle on my dessert to make a wish. I teared up a little bit, the servers and my family were being very sweet.



While we were eating a rain shower moved through the area, but it was 100% gone when we finished eating and the sun was back out again. Perfect timing The rain cooled the temperature a bit too, and I did get my second wind!

 

[kaetra]

Day 2 - Epcot continued

After dinner we took a leisurely stroll through Canada's beautiful garden area and then went to UK to start an Agent Perry mission. Kythe absolutely loves these missions, she really gets into the role playing aspect of it. I love walking around snapping photos.

There was this duck standing on top of the single stone in the pond, playing King of the Castle




UK








Then we headed over to Mexico to start the next Agent P mission and to ride Three Caballeros







After Mexico we move back over to Future World. We split up, Brad and Kythe go do Mission Space Orange again while I go try to use my single FastPass to Soarin'. It's my first try with a SDFP from extra bands, so I'm a bit nervous to see if it will work or not.

It works! I'm Soarin'!! YAAAYYY!!

At 8:22pm it's 78 degrees, very humid and we're heading back to the resort. We missed Illuminations, but we're beat and it's time to relax. It was a great day and a FANTASTIC birthday!

Ride totals for today were TT 2x, one with 70 min stand-by and one with FP. Sum of All Thrills 1x with 30 min stand by. Spaceship Earth 1x with FP. Mission Space orange 2x one with FP and one with 15 min standby. Three Caballeros 1x walk on stand by. Soarin 1x (me only) with SDFP.

Goodnight Epcot!


Next up ... Very Stormy day in Animal Kingdom

 

[BellaBaby]

Following along! Great report so far. Sorry for the horrible travel mojo!!

How do the Perry missions work? Do you do it on your phone?

 

[kaetra]

Following along! Great report so far. Sorry for the horrible travel mojo!!

How do the Perry missions work? Do you do it on your phone?

Thanks! For Perry missions you go to special carts "Recruitment Centers" located around the World Showcase and receive the missions from a Perry Cast Member. They give you a special phone to use that has animations on it with instructions of what you are to look for and approximate locations. The Cast Member tells you which country to go to and they ask that you start the mission within 30 minutes of receiving the phone. There is a mission for each country except Morocco. You can do just one mission if you want, or more. Once you get to the destined country the phone beeps you and the screen shows a little animation with your clues. OMG it's so fun! You have to find a couple different items in each country and many of them perform an action for you, like talk, emit smoke or light up, etc. When you finish one mission the phone will ask you if you want to do another one. You can continue doing missions or you can turn the phone in to a designated drop box. Even the drop boxes are themed. The whole thing is super cool, and worth trying once, even if you're a grownup!

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/attractions/epcot/agent-p-world-showcase-adventure/

 

[BellaBaby]

That does look really cute! I think the kids will love it. (us too) Thanks for the link. I saw on another trip report awhile ago where in one country, Perry actually floated out in a boat. I can't remember which country though! Did you guys do that one?