Category: Travel – WDW 09

Got a panicky call from home this morning. Margie had just realized that we had left Katherine’s passport down at Walt Disney World in the room safe. We’d brought it down there to validate her birthday for all those related activities.

I’ve dealt with leaving things behind at hotels, and it’s often not a pretty process. In this case? No worries.

1. Called the Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge front desk, and was routed to the Lost & Found desk. Left a message, and was called back within five minutes.
2. They already had the passport (and wallet, with a credit card) that were in the safe.
3. No need to send the key back; it had already been re-keyed. No charge.
4. They just needed to overnight it back to us. I confirmed our address, and they’ll be shipping it to us, to be received tomorrow. No charge.

Easy-peasey. And makes a potentially unpleasant and worrisome event nearly painless. Thanks, Disney!

I’ve gotten all the camera-based Walt Disney World photos up in Flickr. 

What’s still missing are pics taken from either of our cell phones, or any of the official Disney photographer PhotoPass pics. Those will come anon.

Feel free to enjoy if you’re interested (or not if you’re not).

 

Well, we’re home. The flight back was uneventful in the extreme. Alas, Margie was coughing and hacking last night, and we ended up swinging by the clinic on the way home after we landed, to discover that, yes, she had acquired a case of strep throat somewhere along the way.

She got her penicillin shot, and will hopefully be well enough soon enough to make her trip out to California with Katherine by Tuesday.

The house is intact. Indy was elated (and very vocal) to see us, largely because it meant he got to go out. Mimi was much more blase about the whole thing.

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I have cleaned up the various entries I did while in WDW (all of which can be viewed here). I’m very pleased by how the combo of Twitter and Flickr worked out, esp. since I didn’t have an opportunity to spend my $10 for a day’s worth of broadband from my laptop, which went unused on the trip except as a backup DVD player on the flight home for Katherine.

I’ve also responded to all of the varied comments. The next section of this post are various day–by-day further thoughts that exceeded Twittering.

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Saturday, 23 April:

• I really am deeply disappointed by the minimalist service now present from United. I mean, 3.5h flight, and all we get for our ticket is a free soda? Snack boxes for $6 I expect from other cut-rate airlines, not United. 
• As noted, the Disney’s Magical Express remains a huge coolness. Essentially it lets you check in your luggage at the airport and not worry about it until it arrives at your room. Similarly, when it’s time to leave, you check in your luggage at the (Disney) resort and don’t worry about it until you get to your home airport. No juggling of luggage at Orlando (MCO). And bus service to/from the airport. Yes, it’s Disney’s cunning way to trap you into being on-property — but if that’s already the plan, no harm, no foul, just convenience.

Sunday, 24 April:

• There are, in fact, rooms at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge that don’t look out over the savanna, but instead overlook parking lot or swimming pool. We, however, did not have one of those. And, IMO, we are now completely spoiled for the (quite decent) mid-range resorts like past stays at Port Orleans Riverside or Coronado Springs. Bigger, nicer room, for one. Much more richly appointed hotel (the decor and detail at DAKL was spiffy). And various free (or at least available) services and amenities. Fine eateries, too. DAKL would have been a destination hotel to stay at even if we’d never gone to any of the parks. I’d go back there again in a heartbeat.
• Our general pattern on the trip was stay up until 10, 11, etc., then sleep for about 12 hours. We only broke the sleeping in part for the last few days of the trip — no alarm set and blackout curtains did the job of keeping us sleeping just fine. While that meant we were getting to the parks at mid-day, it did let us keep a Colorado time zone schedule pretty well.
• Katherine being 8-turned-9 this trip gave it a different dynamic than past visits to WDW. We were less limited by her (in terms of mobility, nap time, sleeping hours) than directed by her (what she wanted to do). As it was her birthday week, she got to steer a lot of the time.
• Disney’s Animal Kingdom — our time there was distinctly limited by the thunderstorms mid-day (probably the longest/heaviest of the week, plus the ones we were least prepared for). It did free up some rides (as folks streamed out of the park), but we never did get back to Expedition Everest, nor did we ever make it onto the Kali River Rapids (despite having FastPasses for same).
• Another note on Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge: excellent food. The Mara (which I kept calling Momo’s) is counter service, but for dinner, at least, had some non-guelo choices which were nice. We sprang for two resort mugs which gave us unlimited fountain drinks and coffee — but our being a several minute walk from the place made it less than a casual drink pick-up.  Boma is a sit-down restaurant, but also a buffet, but at all meals a third to a half of the picks were African-themed, and usually quite tasty. Even for breakfast there was some excellent bits. We never made it to Jiko this visit, but it’s a AAA 4-diamond restaurant, and deservedly so. And (as noted later), the new Sanaa up at the Kidani Village vacation resort (a 10 minute walk from the main DAKL lodge) had great food and wine, as an Indian-influenced African location. Yumminess all around.

Monday, 25 May: 

• Kitten’s birthday. She wore her Birthday Celebration badge, and got many birthday well-wishes from the cast members. We were actually registered for all our meals and other events this week reflecting the birthday, so she usually got a special birthday cupcake for dessert (which she never ate, but only stripped the frosting off of).
• Though we got special Magic Kingdom-wide FastPasses for our Splash Mountain adventur, not expiring until Sunday (tomorrow), we ended up never using them. I tried this morning to find, at the last moment, anyone who was going to MK who would want them, but was unsuccessful. Ah, well.
• Apparently the Haunted Mansion make-over was in 2007 — improved sound system, new room (Escher staircases), new visuals (wedding pictures), general clean-up. Good stuff. But, as noted later in the week, the passage from the starting chamber over to the Doombuggies has some serious crowd chokepoints.
• Enjoyed watching the fireworks. Katherine, bless her, encouraged us to find a better locale to watch it from.

Tuesday, 26 May: 

• Concierge staff seriously not happy about the new reservation system, which unifies a couple of previous systems. I suspect that once the kinks are worked out, all will be well — but it sounds like that might be a while.
• We took more time at Disney Hollywood Studios (formerly Disney-MGM Studios) than in the past. That let us go to a few things (Great Movie Ride, Muppets 3-D, Fantasmic, Rock-n-Roller Coaster) that we’d never done before. Though, to be fair, this is the first visit when Kitten was tall enough for the RRC. We did not, alas, due to the weather, get to see the “Lights, Motors, Action” stunt show. And the wait times were such that we never made it to the highly-touted Toy Story Mania.
• Still sad that Flik’s statue was AWOL. It was a “benchmark” picture for Kitten’s growth.
• I was highly skeptical of the “Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster® Starring Aerosmith” — but both the “show” around it and the roller coaster itself were worth the wait (which we minimized). Recommended.
• One of the downsides of the Eisner era still haunting the WDW theme parks is the homogeneity of the stores. The fact is, 95% of the stock in most of the stores is the same — the few exceptions of the RRC store and the Star Tours store prove the rule. Fact is, you could skip all the stores and just go to Mouse Works at Epcot, the big Disney Store at Downtown Disney, or the stores along Main Street at Magic Kingdom, and you’d find most of what there is to see. Which is a shame, because there used to be a lot more variety (and a lot more non-Disney stuff) available, which, ironically, made me more likely to go into the Disney shops.

Wednesday, 27 May:

• For whatever reason, I feel like we saw less of Epcot than usual. Not sure why. I still want to do a comprehensive tour of the Innoventions pavilions. I missed shopping in each of the World Showcase nations. On the other hand, the Kim Possible mission stuff rocked — fun for both the adults and the kid in the family.
• Princess Lunch is less of an early awakening than the Princess Breakfast, but I don’t like the menu as well, and it seemed more chaotic up front. (Akershus in Norway still puts on a good spread, regardless.) Belle was set up for posed photos, and Cinderella, Snow White, Ariel, and Aurora were the folks working the dining room. 

Thursday, 28 May:

• First serious irk over the rain, as our trip to Typhoon Lagoon is aborted into Downtown Disney. We did the shopping circuit, but, honestly, our heart wasn’t in it, and we didn’t buy much.
• Ironically, we were familiar with the bus route from DAKL to Downtown Disney because of that … and aware that was the route that was supposed to first swing past Kidani Village (the DAKL vacation club resort, where we had reservations at Sanaa). Imagine our surprise when the bus turned left instead of right. Kudos to Margie, as usual, for grabbing the cell phone and reading the riot act to the DAKL front desk, which transferred us to the Transportation Dept., which (as noted) sent a van to Downtown Disney to transport us back Kidani Village. Not only did the manager driving the van apologize, he repeated multiple times how embarrassing the situation was, and the steps he’d be taking to make sure it didn’t happen again. Including parking at Kidani Village and noting all the busses that came through.
• Ironically, the concierge at DAKL had messed up and set us up at Sanaa at Friday (which we hadn’t noticed on the printed reservation), but the folks there got us seated very quickly, and dinner was wonderful.
• We walked back. (We’d only bussed over because it was starting to rain.)
• Katherine enjoyed hanging at the Simba kidcare center very much. Not despondent at our return, but definitely not eager to return to our embraces. Not cheap baby sitting, but worth it.

Friday, 29 May:

• Okay, very much enjoyed the time at Blizzard Beach (which is much more convenient to DAKL than Typhoon Lagoon). We rode nearly everything, got some sunburn, but enjoyed ourselves immensely. I would have stayed there another hour or so, but the incipient thunder (plus recommendations to bail from the park before it is formally closed by lightning) got us out of there in a timely fashion. As much as I was skeptical about the whole water park thing, I’d definitely go back there again. Though I’d be more diligent about sunscreen, and would find a way to carry around a hat.
• Dinner at Ohana (since we wanted a pre-Hawaii vacation experience plus we couldn’t get the big character luau dinner). Not sure I’d go back there again, and, though it had a more cool swimming pool (the one thing that DAKL doesn’t excel in), the overall lodge experience at the Polynesian did not impress.
• Magic Kingdom was on late closure — extended hours for Disney Resort members. In the past, they did stuff with wrist bands. This time, they were just asking for folks to show their resort room keys. 
• Crowds were still not good. That, plus Kitten doing the direction, gave us some odd last-night riding, including the Speedway, Small World, Pirates, Stitch, and the Teacups.

Saturday, 30 May:

• Overall, we walked 52.17 miles while at WDW. Not too shabby. And that makes up for a lot of big dinners and ice cream sandwiches.

Good trip. We’ll be back. Though maybe not for another couple of years.

Tomorrow we go home. Tonight we party!

Yes, we can see animals wandering around outside our window at Animal Kingdom Lodge. Yes, it is cool.