Disney trip full report, or how Disney screwed up our trip
Seeing as I lost our whole trip report I’ll just do a quick summary of the high and low lights. It’s taken me a while to write this as I was so upset after our trip that I couldn’t sit down to finish it. Disney really screwed up our trip for us.
One thing that made the whole trip suck was the fact that the national cheerleading and Pop Warner championship was in town the same week. I know Disney had nothing to do with this one but it might have been nice to be told on the phone at reservation time that there’d be hordes of screaming girls running wild. Oh dear Lord, do I have a new found great hatred of cheerleaders. There were about 11,000 girls or so in town ranging in age from 10-16ish. Everywhere you went you were subjected to their screaming and shrill voices. The worst part was their parents/chaperones encouraged it. There were also supposedly 25,000 boys in town for the Pop Warner finals and we never had a problem with them. My wife and son were riding a bus home from one of the parks and got stuck with two cheer teams who decided that the bus was the place to hold an impromptu competition. They were yelling cheers back and forth. The bus driver asked them to be quiet and they didn’t stop. The parents were even yelling along. If I’d have been there there would have been problems.
On another bus there were a bunch of girls in the back and they decided that it was a good time to sing bad Christmas carols. Another girl on the bus that seemed to know them asked them to be quiet and I yelled in agreement. They quieted down and my friend and I started talking to other passengers about how annoying they were. We also started bad-mouthing the cheerleaders, recalling days when they had to look good and have talent. Unlike today where if your parents have the money for cheer camp, you’re on the team. We also noticed that there seem to be a lot more ‘chunky’ cheerleaders than we remembered back in the day. Unbeknownst to us we were standing next to a ‘Cheer Mom’. She got a bit indignant and went off, ‘it’s a big honor. They work hard. Blah blah blah’. We turned our backs and ignored her.
On the second day we visited MGM at night to see the Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights. It’s about 8 million lights on the New York backlot section. It’s absolutely amazing. It was even ‘snowing’ on the street. Ok, it was tiny, tiny bubbles but the effect was actually pretty decent. It was also the most crowded of anything we did. Everyone wanted to see the lights. I do recommend checking them out if you’re ever in Orlando near Christmas.
My birthday was Tuesday and I had a few things I wanted to do. I wanted to go to the Boatwright restaurant at the Riverside resort and have their amazing Sweet Potato Pancakes. If we hadn’t made reservations we wouldn’t have gotten in. This would be a recurring theme to our entire stay.
After breakfast we headed for the Magic Kingdom to ride all my favorite rides. Our first stop was Guest Relations to pick up a ‘It’s my birthday’ button. That button made my entire day so much better. If a cast member sees you wearing it they say Happy Birthday. By the end of the day I’d had literally hundreds of people say Happy Birthday to me. Even complete strangers standing in line would say it. If you ever get a chance to go to a Disney park on your birthday I recommend it. We rode all my favorites, Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Carribbean, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain and more. The great thing about going in the off season, even with all the cheerleaders, is that lines are short so you get to do so much more in the same time. The longest we waited was about 5 minutes for Thunder Mountain. It lets you get a day’s worth of riding done in about 4-5 hours.
After Magic Kingdom my wife and I rode the Monorail over to Epcot to see about dinner. We got to ride in the front of the train with the driver. A little known thing is, all you have to do is ask to ride up front and as long as it’s not already occupied you can ride there. Some other family was going to but when they saw my birthday button they let us ride up front instead. Normally I wouldn’t have accepted but they said they’d already ridden up there this trip.
At Epcot we went to my favorite restaurant in all Disney, Akershus in Norway in the World Showcase. It was completely booked for the entire week. Even worse, Disney converted it to a ‘Character Dining’ restaurant. You know, meet a princess BS. No more quiet dinners there. Outside were dozens and dozens of strollers. When I go to dinner I don’t want to be surrounded by screaming, out of control toddlers. It used to be you could walk up without reservations and get seated right away, no matter what time of day or night it was. Now you have to book weeks in advance. They ruined one of the best things in Epcot. I had been looking forward to eating there on my birthday all year. 🙁 Instead we ate over in Japan. We had some decent sushi and a couple of bottles of sake. I love sushi so it wasn’t a total loss on my birthday, just not what I was looking forward to.
For my birthday I received The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
The next day we went to MGM and rode Tower of Terror and watched the new stunt show. That is a must see if you’re at MGM. The driving is amazing. Here’s a 12MB video of some of the driving. And that’s the tame stuff. That evening we decided to head over to Pleasure Island to go hang out at the Adventurers Club. This is where our whole trip went to hell. We swiped our cards through the reader at the door and were denied entrance. WTF? We were supposed to have Park Hopper Plus tickets that let us into all the properties. I even called 6 weeks before our trip to confirm that very fact and was told that’s what we had. We went back to the hotel and I talked to the front desk. They said that, no, we do not have Park Hopper Plus tickets and to get them we’d have to pay $300 extra. Even for just the last 2 days of our stay. Needless to say I wasn’t happy but seeing as it was late there was nothing else the front desk could do. I’d have to call in the morning.
I called Reservations first thing in the morning and spent well over an hour on the phone with them trying to figure out where they screwed up. Our tickets said Park Hopper on them when we got them and that’s why I called 6 weeks ago. When I called I was told I had Park Hopper Plus tickets so I thought nothing more of it. While talking to MaryBeth on the phone she kept telling me that I knew what was on the ticket and I shold have said something. I kept telling her that I did say something when I called and what more should I have done. We went back and forth for nearly an hour and the best she could do was upgrade our tickets for $300 more. As we were leaving in two days I told her that was outrageous. She finally got frustrated enough and said she’d comp a few tickets to Disneyquest for us and that they’d be waiting at the window. Not really what I wanted but I was sick of dealing with it and my breakfast was getting cold.
That night we went to the Adventurer’s Club and instead of being $10 to get in as MaryBeth had said on the phone it was $21. Way to go Disney. That night cost us over $100 once you include child care. And we didn’t even eat or drink anything. I wasn’t happy.
The next day we went to a couple parks and we went to Downtown Disney that evening. I decided to check on those comp tix at Disneyquest while we were there. Surprise surprise, they had no record of me or any tickets. I was so upset that I had to walk off before I made a scene. I decided to cut my losses and enjoy my last day there. We caught the fireworks at Epcot which are amazing with the holiday finale.
We had a good last day there and said goodbye to our friends who were flying home the next day. Disney apparently screwed up their return shuttle and they barely made their flight.
This was our 4th trip to WDW in 5 years. It’s my friends’ 17th trip to a Disney property in 18 years. Both of us had never seen such incompetence on Disney’s part. Over all I’d give Disney a 4 out of 10 for their service on this trip. Our days in the parks were great other than the cheerleaders and not being able to get into our favorite restaurant.
Disney did a great job of souring us and our friends on WDW this trip. It’ll be a long, long time before I subject myself to that kind of abuse again.