Trip Reports

Time of Year: Fall
Travel Method: Plane
Resort: BCR
Accommodations: 2 Standard Rooms, connecting
Ages Represented in Group: Pre-School, Elementary, Adult, Senior
WDW Experience Represented in Group: Infrequent, Rookie
Comments: This is a nicely written summary-style report, with many fun observations to read. Rodney's family took his in-laws to visit WDW, so this trip included some juggling between varied interests.

9/30/98 - 10/6/98

My family just returned from a wonderful week of vacation at WDW so here's my trip report. I didn't really keep track of everything we did, so I'll just present a summary of my thoughts in various areas.

The participants: me (33, last visit 1995), wife Carla (38, last visit 1992), son Stephen (8, last visit 1992), daughter Abby (just turned 3, first time), wife's parents (60-ish, last visit April).

We arrived by plane at Orlando airport on 9/30 and just found an available cab to hold us all. The cost ended up being just under $40 each way + tip. The trip to the Disney Beach Club was about 30 minutes. This was comparable to Tiffany Town Car and we were pleased with the service. We stayed 6 nights at the Disney Beach Club and have 5 day hopper passes.

General Observations:

Crowds were much larger than I expected. In previous trips, we have been in the end of October and never experienced lines longer than 10 minutes. This trip we saw lines almost everywhere we went and the crowds were thick. It was sometimes hard to get around. We waited for Splash mountain for 1 hour. For Dumbo, we waited 25 minutes one time and 40 minutes another. The crowds leaving Epcot after Illuminations were huge all 3 nights that I was there.

Also, the weather was pretty miserable too. Visiting in late October we typically saw temperatures around 80, but this trip we had 90 degrees, and maybe a little more, every day. I don't enjoy heat to begin with, and this made the day much more tiring, especially for the kids. We found that we could not stay in the parks for more than about 4 hours in the morning/mid-day.

Accommodations:

We all loved the Beach Club. We had requested 2 connecting rooms with a refrigerator in each one, and got our requests. The rooms were great, and cleaned nicely for the entire week, except for not having the coffee pot emptied and supplies re-stocked in one of the rooms. We enjoyed Stormalong Bay many times throughout the trip. One thing that amazed me was that there were 10 lifeguards on duty with 3 more rotating through breaks for the entire time it was open. The quiet pool was also a nice change from the activity of Stormalong Bay, as well as being open longer.

For my contribution to the on-site vs. off-site debate: I really liked being on-site and enjoyed the convenience of hopping on a bus or boat or just walking. I liked not having to drive and not having to park. I liked being at the main gate when I got off the bus. We will probably do on-site again, although it will likely be in a cheaper resort like the All-Stars. This time was a special treat by my in-laws for the hotel. I would probably rather stay cheaper and stay longer.

Dining:

At the Beach Club, we used Beaches and Cream several mornings for breakfast (they have some great doughnuts) and for the ice cream other times. We ate at Cape May for the character breakfast and really enjoyed it. The kids really loved having the characters come by. We saw Goofy, Chip and Dale every morning and one other character which varied (we saw Pluto and Tigger). We also ate at Cape May for the clambake at dinner. The seafood consists of clams, mussels, and oysters as well as baked fish. They also had some really good BBQ ribs and mashed potatoes. One person added the snow crab legs and said they were really good. We used room service one night and got both excellent food and excellent service. Hurricane Hanna's had a great chicken strip kid's meal. These chicken strips were some of the best I've had.

We bought the refillable mugs and filled them many, many times. We would never have known about this at the Beach Club without the information on this newsgroup and Deb Wills' site. There was absolutely no advertisement of this option. Refills were free at Beaches and Cream and Hurricane Hanna's, and we saw couple of places in the Studios that would refill the same mug for $0.79.

We also ate at Rainforest in Downtown Disney Marketplace. The food was very good, but the atmosphere was a little much for our 3 year old. She had to be held during the thunderstorms and whenever the elephants and gorillas started their act. The wife and I ate at Fulton's crab House alone while the kids were with their grandparents. We had the crab experience for 2 (3 pounds total of 3 different kinds of crab). Everything we had at Fulton's was outstanding, from service to bread, to the crab and the creamed spinach. Note that Rainforest, Fultons' and Portabello Yacht Club do not accept priority seating.

One other place we enjoyed was the ESPN Club at the Boardwalk. The food was really good. However, we went on Saturday afternoon and the place was really crowded with people watching college football. So there was a fairly long wait and a lot of noise. Not necessarily bad, depends on your situation. We had hungry, restless kids, so I would have preferred to go when it wasn't so crowded.

Bus Transportation:

For me, this was mostly a win all around. I spend about an 1.5 hours average on the road every day, so I was happy to not have to drive. We never had more than 15 minutes wait for a bus from the Beach Club. We only had 2 bad experiences with the busses. One was when we left Magic Kingdom after the Saturday night SpectroMagic parade was canceled (the only rain all trip). Everybody was heading back to the hotels and the busses were all swamped. This is understandable. The second was traveling from Epcot to Downtown Disney. The transportation guide said we should ride the monorail to the TTC and catch a bus from there. Since we wanted to ride the monorail anyway, we did this. It turned out to be a bad idea. First, we were in a packed bus and had to stand. Second, it was a LONG trip from TTC to Downtown Disney. In hindsight, we should have walked from Epcot to the Beach Club, then caught a bus from there. Overall, I was very satisfied.

Also, from the Beach Club, it was a short walk to Epcot and we could ride a boat to the Studios.

Animal Kingdom:

This was the first visit to Animal Kingdom for all but the grandparents. I really enjoyed the park, and wish we could have spent more time there. We went on the Kilimanjaro Safari (45 minutes wait) and saw the Jungle Book show. The kids also played in the playground for a while. We only stayed here about 3 hours. The crowds were bad, the weather was hot and humid, and the kids were cranky and we couldn't take it any longer.

Some of the walkways here seem too narrow. I would hate to see this place when it is really crowded. Also I don't like the layout of the park - you have to go back to the center to move from one part to another. You can't just start in one place and make a big circle. Lots of walking.

Epcot:

I was a little disappointed with the current IllumiNations. The last time I saw it was in 1992. It seems to me that the music is not as good now. I still enjoyed the fireworks, but I felt the music was not as stirring.

Innoventions was not quite what I was expecting. From what I have read here, I was afraid most of it would be pay-to-play, but there really wasn't much of that. My 8 year old enjoyed the free Sega games and I saw a couple of exhibits, but most everything looked like advertising. I was particularly disappointed with the future internet exhibit by IBM. Other than the 3-D effects, it really wasn't very futuristic.

I really like the new show in Universe of Energy. Ellen was funny (even though I don't generally think so) and the show was generally much (MUCH) better than the previous version.

I didn't like Jeremy Irons as the narrator in Spaceship Earth. There were a lot of times that I couldn't hear or understand him. Part of this was him, and part was the fact that the music in the surrounding scenes was way too loud at times. I did like the new ending. I vote that we bring back Walter Cronkite.

We rode Journey into Imagination before it closed (and got stuck on it - I guess I know why it is being rehabbed now) as well as Horizons. I still really like this ride.

Disney Studios (or whatever it's called now): ============== At the Studios, I rode the Tower of Terror for the first time and really liked it. It was a walk-on (one of the few I experienced this trip), and I would have liked to ride more but 4 of our group had no interest in this attraction (I was informed by a bus driver, that the bus is the only ride in WDW; everything else is an attraction). We sat and waited for the Mulan parade (and waited; it was delayed for some reason). This parade was pretty short, but my 3 year old loved it - she loves Mulan. One gem of this park is the street performers. We saw some really funny stuff in the street while waiting for the parade.

We also enjoyed the Great Movie Ride (gangster side). This ride was more scary than I remembered. The 3 year old covered her eyes a lot of the time. The Little Mermaid show was a highlight for her.

Magic Kingdom:

I agree with others here that Space Mountain is a lot brighter now. You can see the track around you more now, but it is still a great ride. We waited in line (a long time) to visit with some of the characters. Goofy's Barnstormer was a good ride. Even the 3 year old enjoyed it.

I was disappointed with the afternoon parade. It was short and there just wasn't much there. I was expecting stilt walkers and lots of floats like we saw in the 1992 parade. With only a few floats and little else, I felt this wasn't worth the wait. I also didn't like the music. YMMV.

We missed out on seeing SpectroMagic because of rain. It poured for a solid hour the only night that Magic Kingdom was open late enough for the parade. There was also lots of lightning and thunder. This was a big disappointment, because we really love SpectroMagic.

Misc:

My son and I rented a water mouse one afternoon and had a blast. Even though he couldn't sit in the driver's seat, he was allow to drive from the passenger seat. He said this was his favorite part of the trip. 1/2 hour cost just over $19 and in that time we could ride from the Yacht club to the Studios and back and around the lake to the Boardwalk. I'll have to admit this was pretty fun.

Closing:

In looking back, it seems we didn't DO a whole lot in the parks. We had to be pretty choosy though. The 2 kids didn't like the same things and the heat drove us back to the hotel earlier than we expected. As far as park attractions go, we didn't do a lot.

But it was a great vacation. We slept late in the mornings instead of rushing to the parks. We relaxed at the pool in the afternoon and evenings. We just walked around and looked. We shopped a lot - even the kids liked that, especially with the grandparents buying a bunch of neat stuff. We just kind of wandered with no real plan, and checked out what interested us as we went. For us, the goal wasn't to do everything - as much as anything we just needed to get away FROM everything, and we definitely did that, along with a great place to get away TO.

Perhaps if we had gone later in October or in November the crowds would have been smaller and the weather cooler and we could have done more in the parks. But then again, maybe not. I'm already looking forward to the next trip, but that will have to wait a while.

Rodney Green

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