Disney1stTimer
Disney EchoEar Mouseter
Group: Members
Posts: 78
Joined: May 2003 |
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Posted: Oct. 25, 2003 9:50 am/pm |
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As my name indicates this is the first time that I have been to Disney. This will be my first attempt at a trip report. I hope I’m not too verbose. I struggled whether I should post this in the WDW trip report section or here in the Poly area. I decided here since I’ll probably have some type of “Poly info” in each day. Rich if this is a problem feel free to move it. Hope I'm doing this right.
Here we go…
Cast members:
Me: 38
DW: (30 something) 
DD1: 6
DD2: 4
Day 1:
I am happy to report that our first family trip to Disney was a resounding success. We arrived on Friday Oct. 17th. I was pleased to find out the Hawaii had just reopened and that we’d be staying there for the full 7 days. When the sliding glass doors opened for Hawaii the first thing you could smell was that of “new carpet”. I commented to the CM who was carrying our luggage that the hotel had that “new car” smell. Once inside Hawaii there was a lot of “hustle and bustle” going on. Lots of Poly employee’s frantically moving stuff out of Tahiti and into Hawaii. Lots of carts out full of supplies. I had requested a 3rd floor GV room, and that is what I received. We were in 3526. (Tikiman I did take a jpeg from the balcony with the view in case you’d like it). A nice surprise in the room when we arrived was a “chocolate Poly postcard”. The girl’s eyes lit up when they saw chocolate in the room. The room itself looked like it was freshly painted. The exhaust fan and air vent in the bathroom looked brand new. The rug in the room itself appeared new-ish, I couldn’t tell if it was brand new, it appeared to have some wear on it.
The only downside was in the bathtub itself there was a sign indicating that there was fresh grout on the wall and not to use the bath tub. The sign appeared to be posted by whoever had down the work. I went down stairs and asked the concierge desk if they could look into it for me (this was around 3:30pm). They promised to look into it and call me back and let me know either way. Unfortunately that phone call never came. As I was coming back into the hotel later that night (around 9:30pm) I checked back in to see if they had any updates. They said they left a message with maintenance and they never got a call back. They said they’d call again and leave me a message either way. Again, no message was ever left. So I wound up using the shower the following morning, I figured I’d done my part and if they really didn’t want me to use the shower than it was up to them to tell me.
Back to day 1. Around 3:30pm, they whole family headed for the monorail and the Magic Kingdom. We had 5:00pm PS for Liberty Tree Tavern character dinner. We arrived at the park and started to scope out the park. We hit a quick ride on Cinderella’s Golden Carousel. All the other rides were around a 45 min. wait and Fastpass would have fallen in or around our dinner PS, so we passed on rides at this point and mainly just walked around the park trying to get our bearings. 5:00 came so we headed over to Liberty Tree Tavern. A real nice spread of food, and quite tasty as well. Once we were there eating, the “Chip” arrived to greet our table. My wife and I suddenly looked at each other and realized in our rush and scoping out the park we had forgotten to buy autograph books. We did a quick scramble and dug up a notepad for DD2, and DD1 had a “coloring book page” she was coloring while we were waiting for a table. So these 2 items quickly became our autograph books for the night. The girls didn’t seem to mind as they were in awe of the characters. One by one they came, Chip, Dale, Pluto, and finally the “piece de-resistance” of the characters “Minnie”. My girls were in heaven and it was great to see them wide eyed and in awe.
After dinner we immediately went out and bought autograph books and “big pens”. We did some more “park scoping” and headed back to the front of the park to check out the Spectro Magic parade. The parade was great and really got us in the “Disney Mood”. DD2 doesn’t like the “loud noise” of fireworks, so after the parade we headed back to the Poly. Once back at the Poly we hit the concierge lounge, which quickly became a staple of how we would finish up a day at the park. We kicked back and grabbed a cookie or two and a nice cold drink. We waited for the fireworks to begin. Once the fireworks began we noticed that the lounge hadn’t yet piped in any of the music for the fireworks, so we quickly headed down to the beach to the watch the fireworks. Which actually turned out to be much nicer. After the fireworks we headed back to our room. The girls were thrilled by the turn down service which featured once again more chocolate!! They of course this thought this was the greatest.
Day 2:
We had an 8:05 PS for Cindy breakfast, so it was an early start for us. A nice wake up call courtesy of Mickey and we were up in no time. Since the concierge desk never called me back about the bathtub, we went ahead and used it anyways. Everything went well. Cindy’s breakfast was awesome. The food was better than I thought it would be. The ambience of the room was great. We got a table with a view of Dumbo’s ride which the girls thought was great. Within 5 minutes, we were inundated with princesses. They came rapid fire, as one left our table another was there after her. I can’t remember the exact order but we wound up seeing Snow White, Belle, Princess Aurora, Mary Poppins, and Cinderella. The girls were thrilled and in awe. Unfortunately this meant they really didn’t eat any of their breakfast. But no biggie, everyone was happy. After breakfast we made it down just as they dropped the rope for the rides at 9:00. We were able to bang out Dumbo, Peter Pan, Small World, Cindy’s carousel, all with no wait. Winnie the Pooh was very short as well (maybe 5 min.). Then we hit what turned out to be my favorite attraction. Mickey’s Phil-Harmonic. Wow, I loved it !! After all was said and done I think we hit this around 4 times or so during our trip. I could easily see it more. It was wonderful. Around 10:30-11:00 it started filling up. The girls were getting warm and were getting antsy to try out the Volcano pool at the Poly.
So a quick ride on the monorail and we were back at the Poly and doing the Volcano pool in no time. It was great. DD1 soon fell in love with the water slide. We swam till around 1:30 and then headed back to the Magic Kingdom. We had a 2:00pm PS at Tony’s town sq, restaurant. Tony’s had great food. The girls ate a lot seeing as they barely had anything for breakfast. The rest of the afternoon was spent hitting various rides around the Magic Kingdom. We headed back to the hotel and back out the Volcano pool. At Rich’s suggestion I had a “Lava Flow”. Mmmmmm! Nice way to cool off after a warm day at the park. After the pool, we hit the lounge for cookies, and then back out to the beach for fireworks. After fireworks it was back to our room. In our bathroom we found a “towel animal” of sorts. Well not really an animal, but it was a cool origami “toothbrush/toothpaste” holder. Quite nice as we had never really found a good way to store our toiletries.
That’s it for tonight, coming soon, Day 3 & 4 MGM, MNSSHP ...
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Greg / Disney1stTimer
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