July 23-28 Great stay at VWL! (added ME experience)

[KarenB]

Hi!
I just wanted to post a "quick" review about our trip this past Saturday-Thursday. I'll be happy to answer any questions and give more details. It was me, DS 15, and my 60 something mom. While we did a little planning, we did a lot of spur of the moment stuff too.

Resort-We stayed in a studio at VWL. Excellent location, corner room on 4th floor with extra window and a view of Wishes that went over the main Lodge. We could also watch the boat parade on the lake. Very quiet and a quick walk to the quiet pool. Very crowded at the main pool with many used towels and some litter from people. Transportation both bus and boat was fine. Longest wait may have been 15 minutes. All CM's we encountered were great.

Parks-Did all four parks. We went on tons of rides but to do that we were at the parks at opening and skipped all EMH. For example, we went to MK at 9am on Sunday and went on-Splash Mountain twice, Tom Sawyer's Island on the first boat to look for paint brushes, Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Small World, Pirates, Mickey's Philharmic all by noon. We would go back to VWL, swim, change, snack, and head to another park. We were at Typhoon Lagoon at 9am and walked on the new Crusher Gusher slides three times. We also had the lazy river to ourselves. We left at 3 and it was crowded then. We watched wishes on the lower Splash Mountain bridge. Great place!


Extra Surprises-We found a paint brush on Tom Sawyer's Island and received a front of the line pass for SM or BTM. We watched the space shuttle launch from the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon. We called for a spur of the moment PS for Mama Melrose (called same afternoon and got a 7:50 PS that night). Had a great meal and wonderful service. We sat in the front of the monorail. We also wen to the Member's Block Party.

This trip was really a "not planned" trip and I had a mind set that it was going to be hot and crowded and if we didn't do much, it was okay-we would still just enjoy ourselves. Well, I was wrong-we did a ton of stuff!!

What a wonderful trip!
Karen

 

[jiggerj]

Hi Karen- Your trip does sound like it was wonderful! Hoping to have the same kind of trip in the next few weeks. Do the parks early and head back to VWL for the afternoon. Your room sounds like it was a fantastic location! I hope we get that lucky! Thanks for the trip report!

 

[dsneygirl]

Sounds like a great trip. Seeing the shuttle launch from TL must have been really cool.

 

[KarenB]

Yes, the launch was really cool. There was massive cheering from Typhoon Lagoon!

 

[tinkgrl]

Hi,

Thanks for the report!! Glad you had a good trip!

 

[lllovell]

What a great attitude about your trip. I am so glad to hear it turned out that you were able to do SOOOO much!

I finally convinced hubby of the "get to the parks at opening and skip the extra hours" thing on our trip this past spring break and he is actually WANTING to go to WDW again because we got so much done!

Thanks for sharing!

 

[Shawn]

Hi!
We watched the space shuttle launch from the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon.
Karen

That may have been the last Space Shuttle launch ever. Speculation, I know, but they could retire the fleet now, and move on to another type vehicle.

Something to tell your grandkids someday if it turns out to really be the last one and you saw it.

-Shawn

 

[KarenB]

While I believe there is some different "magic" being at MK at night, I did notice that it is much cleaner and more organized early in the day. DS and I went to use our Space Mountain fast passes after watching Wishes from the Splash Mountain bridge and we both commented on how dirty everything seemed then. Of course, it must be near impossible to quickly clean after masses of people passed through. It was sad to think that so many people simply dropped their trash where they were standing only to let CMs pick up after them.

 

[KarenB]

Hi Shawn,

I was just mentioning that to my DS 15 that was with me and saw it also. Something he can tell his grandchildren someday also!

Karen

 

[rocketriter]

It's not just more people dropping trash. It's fewer CMs hired to pick up trash--a casualty of the attendance downturn after 9/11.

 

[KarenB]

Forgot to mention......we used Magical Express. We did NOT recieve any luggage tags, but Disney had all of our reservations and it worked out fine. The only trouble (if you want to call it that) was finding where to go at the airport. I was looking for the white Mickey hands (there were none)instead of a CM holding a small sign. All it took was asking a quick question and getting directions.

Check in line at the airport looked long but was very quick. The longest wait was sitting on the bus at the airport waiting for others to load. We were the first stop. I would guess that the entire process (stepping off the plane to stepping into WL) took about 1 1/2 hours. Our luggage was in our room (remember no tags) when we returned from mini golf that evening.


The day before checkout, we received instructions hanging on our door and the bus pulled up to WL right on time. We stopped at Poly and Grand Floridian, then went to the airport. Our flight left at 1 and we were on the bus at 10:15.

We will certainly use this again at Thanksgiving!
Karen