Trip Reports

Time of Year: Summer
Travel Method:
Resort: DL
Accommodations: Standard Room
Ages Represented in Group: Adult
WDW Experience Represented in Group: Veteran
Comments: Kevin and his girlfriend visited in early June. Staying at , they had a great time...and share a lot of tips from their experiences in this short report.

This is my first trip report or you could say trip highlight report, so here goes.

Myself 24 YOA male accompanied by my 22 YOA girlfriend driving twelve hours from Ky. This was my fourth visit and her second. We went together last June for a four day stay at All Star Sports and CBR, that was my first time staying on property and almost immediately I developed a condition that will forever prevent me from vacationing anywhere else. This year's trip as well as last's was booked through the Disney Travel Co. for June 1-6, it was booked in Jan. and at the time this was all that was available for June at our choice of Dixie Landings.

Sat. 05-31-97

Travel day-Had reservations at Holiday Inn Maingate East so we could be at WDW first thing in the morning for our "true" vacation to begin. Had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe around 6:45 and only had a 45 min. wait. Went over to Dixie Landings and were let in to just walk around and check the place out.

Sun. 06-01-97

Checked in at Dixie Landings around 6:30 a.m. and headed for the MK. Took the ferry boat to WL for lunch at the Whispering Canyon Cafe. The all-you-can-eat lunch buffet was not exactly what I expected (very small portions and not too appealing), other people's sandwiches looked like a much better choice. WL seemed to be a good choice for lunch, though, because there was no wait and it had a very relaxing atmosphere. After returning to DxL later in the day to actually check into our room we returned to the MK to watch SpectroMagic and Fantasy in the sky. By the way our room at DxL was in Magnolia Bend in Magnolia Terrace. I had requested this and was pleased with its close proximity to a bus stop and a short stroll over one of the bridges to the food court area.

Mon. 06-02-97

Visited the MK for EE then headed to Epcot to have lunch at the San Angel Inn. We had the chicken with mole sauce dish that everyone talks about and it was quite good. After lunch we toured the World Showcase and took our break. For the evening we returned to Epcot and walked over to the Boardwalk (A good hike) to tour it and returned to watch IllumiNations.

Tues. 06-03-97

Visited Epcot for EE and toured Future World *No Test Track. We had lunch at Restaurant Akershus which I still haven't decided if I really liked. You do have to enjoy fish and cold items here, but there was still plenty of hot items I think. After our break went visited MGM and walked onto virtually every attraction. The evening is definately the time to visit MGM. We then went over to Pleasure Island and had a late dinner at Planet Hollywood. Planet Hollywood was one of the only places we knew of as being open around midnight except for the PI restaurants and I'm not sure if they still were.

Wed. 06-04-97

Visited MGM for EE. It was super crowded so we left for a quick lunch at the Contemporary's Fast Food Center. It was actually very quiet and had the best chicken strips of any counter service place we tried. They appeared to prepare all food upon order and actually gave us a pager to let us know when it was ready. We visited the MK again and after our break went to PI. The past two nights we visited the the Adventurer's Club and saw two different happenings in of all places the library. Man those Kungalooshes are something else. By the way the Missing Link Sausage Co. on PI makes a very good Philly Cheese Steak.

Thurs. 06-05-97

We visited Typhoon Lagoon which we completely enjoyed. Typhoon Tilly's had the best counter service cheeseburgers of any on WDW property IMHO.

After our break we had our Mickey & You Photo done at Studio M. If its part of your flex-feature go ahead and do it. If not, the photo is a little grainy especially the 8x10 and the experience was nothing special. We were in and out before Mickey knew what hit him.

For our last evening staying on property we had decided to tour the Grand Floridian and have dinner at the California Grill. We had priority seating at 9:00 to coincide with the 10:00 fireworks. For safety's sake we arrived around 8:10 and requested a window seat. We were seated around 8:55 with a great view of the MK and a wonderful dinner ahead of us. We each had the goat cheese ravioli for the first course and I had the BBQ beef filet for my main course and she had the grilled pork tenderloin. For dessert we shared a chocolate Trio Wave or Wave Trio? I can't remember. Everything was prepared perfectly and the service was great. Our server recommended that we share the dessert because it was so rich and he was very right. Dinner and fireworks at the California Grill is a definite thing to plan to show your better half a wonderful evening.

However, we left so late that the monorail wouldn't stop at the MK because the buses had stopped running. We ended up having to get off at the TTC and catching a bus to PI then catch another bus to DxL. This was a true transportation nightmare and I am a big fan of the bus system. If you're going to make it a late night you may want to consider driving to the Contemporary for dinner just to be safe.

Fri. 06-06-97

Our last day. Visited the MK again. Then went to MGM to ride ToT one last time. We left WDW to check into the Travelodge Maingate East. We returned and had dinner at Chef Mickey's Buffet. This made the entire week even better. I thought the food was extremely good compared to many WDW restaurants and the character experience was great. After dinner we returned to the MK to watch SpectroMagic and the fireworks one last time before leaving.

Summary

If you haven't gathered them by now here are my WDW trip recommendations:

If you have a trip package and can afford to, stay off property your night before and after package dates, that is if you don't have a plane to catch. Next year our before and after days will be at All Star Sports.
Start your Disney week off big and end it big. This doesn't mean big money just do something special. Watch the fireworks from the beach at the Polynesian or have a character dinner.
If you want, give the California Grill a try. I thought it was quite special.
If you want, give Chef Mickey's Buffet a try too. I thought it was quite special as well.
Give up everything and do nothing but read this newsgroup and visit the wonderful websites of all the people who make this newsgroup a great place to go when you don't live a few miles from World Drive. (Well, I guess you can't give up everything because you kinda have to pay a lot of money to be in all that magic. )
I've been reading this newsgroup since April and have received a tremendous amount of help to plan my trip and just a lot of good information that made me unable to wait to get home from work and read all the posts. If I can help anybody just post or let me know.

Kevin

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