Trip Reports

May 24 - May 27, 1998

Hi all! thought I would try to return the multitude of favors for information, opinions and assistance from all you RADP’ers and post a trip report.

My 4 year old and I went to WDW May 24-27th. We stayed at the Poly—room was in Hawaii, first floor, as per my request. The room was ok. Nothing fantastic. It did have a bit of a musty smell, but that went away fairly rapidly, after getting the fan started. I saw one bug in the bathroom while we were there (don’t know what it was), but all in all, the room was livable. Mostly what you pay for (at least in my opinion) is the monorail and the atmosphere. (Although I must say last time we stayed at ASM and my son kept asking if we could go to the "rainbow hotel." I guess he remembered all the colors on the Calypso building.)

We left at 5am and arrive (on time) at about 10am. Took Florida Town Car to the hotel. The driver was waiting and took us directly there—no stopping at 8 different hotels to drop others off was nice, but he didn’t play Disney music on the radio.

Checked in at the Poly and the room was ready (wow! Never expected that).

So we stopped at the room, got the luggage delivered and changed into shorts. We headed over to the MK. Boy I LOVE the monorail for transportation to the MK—more on transportation later. We got our AP at the MK guest services (btw, we had AP rates at the Poly and I told them that I still had to go and get the passes but they never asked to see them). It was HOT outside and we stood in line a guest services for a long while, but finally got the passes. )

We went into MK and walked up Mainstreet. By the time we got to the end of Mainstreet I was so hot, we went into Cosmic Rays to get something to drink -- ended up eating lunch. The Chicken Caesar salad was huge, but really good! The air conditioning was WONDERFUL. After being fully stuffed, we headed out. I can’t recall exactly which ride we did first, but we did all the Fantasyland stuff—all in all we rode them all about 4 times each.

Disappointment of the day: I dropped my son’s 25th anniversary baseball in line at Snow White, while trying to fix his camera. By the time I turned around to pick it up (about 10 feet later) -- someone had swiped it. (

We had dinner priority seating at Liberty Tree at 7, and I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, so we walked through to locate it, once located we headed for Splash Mountain. My son had been talking about riding it, so I thought we’d take a look. On the way we stopped so we headed back to the hotel. We took a quick swim. My son has been learning to swim and we brought one of those swim noodles with us (airport security gave me a few funny looks). Anyway, it worked out great because he could swim all by himself. He was even tall enough to touch the bottom too!!! The Poly pool is great with that waterfall.

After swimming for a bit, we went back to try and take a nap. No luck, he just wouldn’t fall asleep. Well, we had priority seating for dinner and headed back to the MK—once again the monorail made life easy. We went back to the MK, took the train to Frontierland and headed for the Liberty Tree Tavern. My son was really hungry and he saw the characters and got really excited. We got seated pretty quick. They served us some fresh hot rolls with honey butter (to DIE for), My son ate two of them and then, I guess he had enough food in him and (remember he’d been up since 5am) he just crashed. Right there at the table—didn’t even get to see any characters. He fell asleep so fast, he hit his head on the table before I could catch him and he didn’t even wake up. I felt so bad. So, I held him on my lap and tried to get a few bites of food in - not to much avail. A couple characters came by and kissed him -- very sweet, but I felt really stupid and a terrible parent, so I asked for the check and left. (The waitress was extremely nice and took the charge for my son off the bill).

Well, I knew I couldn’t carry my 40 pound kid to the monorail, so, I thought we could sit in the Hall of Presidents and he could sleep for a while in the air conditioning. Wouldn’t you know it, he woke up and was raring to go. To my complete surprise he really liked the Hall of Presidents! I thought he would be bored to death, but he kept asking all these questions. I told him they weren’t real people, but sort of like robots. He said, they couldn’t be robots, because robots couldn’t talk like that (it was cute).

After that we headed for Adventureland, did pirates (first of many many times) and the jungle cruise in the dark. Eventually we made it back to the front of the castle, just in time for the fireworks. Major highlight of the trip: I SAW TINKERBELL!!!! First time I’d ever seen her. I was SO geeked. The fireworks were great!

Afterwards we hung around for a while, rode a few more rides in Fantasyland and eventually found ourselves back by the castle. We went a got a great spot for the late parade by Liberty Square. We were inches away from the parade and only had to wait a few minutes. (Last time I got that close we had to get in place about an hour beforehand.)

After the parade, we slowly made our way back to the monorail. It had been a long day and I was not looking forward to a big long line, but expected one. To my happy surprise, there was virtually no line for the resort monorail (even though there was a rather lengthy one for the TTC monorail.) We got back to the hotel. My son, laid down and fell asleep in about two seconds.

Monday (Labor Day) I was afraid the lines at the park would be long. So, initially I had thought we would just hang around. That morning I decided to go to Downtown Disney—we hadn’t seen the lego store and I wanted to. So we started the long trek to get there (oh yeah, first I stopped at the desk and picked up tickets for e-ticket night on Tuesday.) We took the monorail to the TTC (I know we could have walked but we like the monorail). Then waited (for a VERY long time) for the bus to Downtown Disney. The ride to Downtown Disney was very long as well—I think they take all the back roads on purpose, because I know its not THAT far.

It was really hot again. We headed right for the lego display. VERY COOL! We played on the play structure and played with the legos. The store itself is pretty small. They should have put some of the play stuff inside. Even though it was close to lunch, we stopped and had an ice cream at Giradelli’s (sp?) It was good, but huge. Between the two of us, we couldn’t finish one (only ate about ½ ). We checked out World of Disney and a few other places. Then decided that lunch at Rainforest would work—it was only a 10 minute wait. Atmosphere was great. Food was expensive and portions huge. Service was mediocre (slow and they kept forgetting things).

We headed back to the hotel. Waited for the bus for about 20 minutes, by which time the amount of people waiting for the TTC bus was ridiculous, so we hopped another bus to Typhoon Lagoon and then picked up one to the TTC. It probably took a little longer, but was much less crowded. Back at the hotel we went swimming and took a nap. We had 8pm priority seating for Chef Mickey's. We left a little early and did the monorail route looking for pressed pennies. It was a nice relaxed way to have fun and see the Grand Floridian. (Nice, but I would feel uncomfortable with the kid running around the lobby.) I liked the Contemporary. It seemed to have more class than the Poly, but not as stuffy as the Grand Floridian. The Poly is very nice, but more casual than the Contemporary.

We sat down at the bar and I had some funky drink while my son had a juice box. Chef Mickey's was crowded and WONDERFUL. I highly recommend it for anyone with little ones. The food was good (not as good as the Liberty Tree Tavern). My son was so excited about the characters and we did the whole photo and autograph thing. It was great. We took the monorail back ( can’t say enough about the convenience) and turned in for the night.

I had a wake-up call for 6am as we were headed for Animal Kingdom. We got to AK shortly after 7 and the park was already crowded—they were saying an 80 minute wait for the safari. So, we headed for the characters. No one was in Camp Minnie Mickey as the shows didn’t start for about 3 hours, so we got to see all the characters and had them pretty much to ourselves. On the way out of the Camp we had breakfast at Pizzafari. Egg pizzas. Ok, but I’d probably get the muffins and fruit if I did it again.

Afterwards, I thought we’d head for the safari and wait out the line, but we got sidetracked. A CM outside the Tree of Life said the wait was only 10 minutes for It’s Tough to Be a Bug. Understand that I HATE bugs, but thought, what the heck. I asked the CM if it was too bad and he said "Oh no, it’s really fun!" Well, it was about a half hour just to get to the front of the line and I detested the show. My son was crying and wanted out but all in all probably liked it better than me. A few other kids were crying and ran for the doors right after the first "effect." My recommendation is not to take any kid under 10 in here. It is loud and dark and scary (in all fairness they do warn you of this, but in my own defense, they also have similar warnings outside Snow White). In short, we will not be doing this one again.

Well we went for the safari. The line was still long, about an hour. But we got some water and hung out. Actually, the wait wasn’t too bad and the line moved fairly rapidly. On a side note, this woman in front of us was wearing these spandex shorts (despite the fact that she really didn’t have the figure). THEN, she took off her shirt. I nearly fainted when at first it appeared that she didn’t have anything on underneath. She was wearing a strapless bikini top. It was amusing to say the least.

The safari was pretty good. We saw elephants, Giraffes, gazelles, zebras, the sausage trees, a monkey with a very colorful rear end and a few others. No lions though. After the safari we headed back to Camp Minnie Mickey and saw Festival of the Lion King. This show was absolutely WONDERFUL. I highly recommend it—even if the wait is ridiculous. (Although, you probably should't wait too long. If they are just starting the line for a show, wait a while, go do something else and come back, you’ll probably get in.)

After this, we headed back to the hotel for swimming, a nap and dinner at O’Hana. My son was pretty crabby because he’s just woken up from his nap before we got there. Also, they sat us in the back corner, so we really couldn’t see anything. Food was good—the salad was great and especially the pineapple wedges with caramel dipping sauce for dessert—mmmmm.

Then we headed off to MK for E-ticket night. We had to wait a while in line to get our wristbands. We saw Lion King and rode a few fantasyland rides before the park closed at 9. When they closed we headed for frontierland.

My son wanted to ride Splash Mountain, but I was worried, so I figured we’d try Thunder Mountain first - the ups and downs were less severe than the big drop on Splash Mountain. So, he did it. I was proud. He was pretty scared while we were on it. I kept asking him if he was ok. He didn’t say a word. I was holding on to him pretty tight too. I told him to shake his head if he was ok and he did. When we got off, he said it was fun. I asked him if wanted to do it again, though and he said no. So we put Splash Mountain off for another trip. He says when he’s six or seven. I think he might do it in September when we go.

Then, I had told him we would be able to ride Pirates 10 times if he wanted -- mistake. He wanted to. However, being the diplomat, I talked him into three times and a pirate hat. We did it and then headed home. It was only 11pm by the time we got to the monorail. E night was a pretty good time.

Wednesday - last day. I had set check out for 1pm and we had express check out. We had breakfast at the castle. Good deal—he got to see some of his favorite characters and we got some great photos. We got out of breakfast about 5 minutes to 9. Everyone was waiting at the rope, so we waited too. Then, someone inside the castle unlocked the door and people from the restaurant started going into fantasyland before the rope drop. The people behind the rope got all ancy and climbed under the rope and eventually took it down themselves. The CM at the desk was in shock. I thought she was going to go ballistic. Well it was only a few minutes before the speakers did the "It’s a wonderful day" thing. We rode Dumbo, did Toad again and Snow White again. It was sprinkling, but didn’t really rain too hard. We saw Ariel and then headed back to the hotel to pack up and drop off the bags. Then back to MK.

We took the train to Mickey’s Toontown Fair. We rode the Barnstormer. My son was a little nervous at first, but thought it was great. We did Minnie’s house and Mickey’s. We have a bunch of funny pictures of Minnie’s house—walls and people’s knees. The kid went nuts with the camera. We did a few more rides at Fantasyland and then headed out.

Florida Town Car met us at 5pm for the trip back to the airport and the plane deposited us safely back home. (Thank you God for answering that prayer—I hate flying.)

So we go again in September. A much more relaxed trip -- 8 days with some time to do more and maybe a day to just do nothing. Also, we’re going to check out the Wilderness Lodge and Coronado Springs. I’ll let you know how it turns out. You know, one of these times, I’m actually going to make it out of WDW while I’m in Orlando. )

Traci Mitchell

Traci.Mitchell@ey.com

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