Our previous tradition of alternating big annual family vacations, usually during the summers, between Hawaii and Disney World took another switch this summer. Despite going to Hawaii this Spring, Hawaii last summer, and Disney World last Spring, we again went to Disney World (and Universal Orlando) last week. We departed early Sunday morning, the day after we returned from Boy Scout Camp. In addition, I was so busy doing some home things like paying bills, and some work things like submitting an AGU abstract, and packing for the trip, that I didn’t actually go to sleep Saturday night. The drive in the dark to LAX was more than a little frightening, given how tired I was, and we arrived at LAX too late to check in our luggage on our American Airlines flight. In the end, we missed our flight while standing in line, and we wound up flying standby on the next flight to DFW while arranging standby for a later flight to MCO than what we were originally going to take. However, when we got to Dallas, we managed to get on our original DFW-MCO flight, trusting that our luggage would get on Disney’s Magical Express to our room, despite going on a different flight.
This year, we booked a Concierge level room at the Boardwalk Inn, on Crescent Lake right across from the Yacht Club Resort and the Beach Club Resort where we had stayed during our last two Disney vacations. All three resorts are Deluxe resorts within walking or boating distance from both Epcot and Hollywood Studios, and this resort area has become a favorite of mine and Hsuan’s for its proximity to Epcot (and its world-class cuisine). W and J like the Yacht Club and the Beach Club for their shared swimming pool complex, which really is nicer than the Boardwalk’s, but we couldn’t get the rooms we wanted there during our scheduled vacation time.
The room we got at the Boardwalk Inn was far more spacious than any room we had had at Disney World before, with a regular bedroom area and an additional sitting area with a pullout sofa bed and an additional television, along with a balcony that faced the Boardwalk and Crescent Lake. This was a significant step up from our previous rooms which usually had “garden views”. We found out later that we had been upgraded, without the resort telling us. This was a big bonus for W, who is old enough to want more privacy. (If only we could afford a suite…)
Better than our last vacation, I had planned out lunch and dinner reservations and FastPass+ reservations for the entire week, Monday through Friday. We had Park Hopper tickets, but that option was just for flexibility, just in case our plans changed. Monday would be at the Animal Kingdom, Tuesday at Epcot, Wednesday at the Magic Kingdom, Thursday at Hollywood Studios, and Friday back at Epcot. I was unable to get FastPasses to the new Soarin over the World, but I tried to get some previously unavailable dining reservations as well as attend at least one attraction that we’d not seen before — the Jungle Book show at Animal Kingdom. I had dining reservations at Teppan Edo, La Hacienda de San Angel, breakfast at Be Our Guest, lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine-in Theater restaurant, and dinner — of course! — at Monsieur Paul, our favorite, as our final dinner at Epcot on Friday. The Sci-Fi Dine-in reservation was special because we had missed lunch or dinner there for several vacations. Since I was uncertain of our morning on Friday, I canceled a lunch at Be Our Guest and also another lunch reservation, made later, at Tutto Italia in Epcot. We had dinner upon arrival at Trattoria al Forno on the Boardwalk, making canceling Tutto Italia easier. (We also got to see a couple of “street” performers on the Boardwalk, and J got to participate in the juggler’s show, before dinner.)
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Monday was our day at the Animal Kingdom. One of my goals in planning the vacation was to ween J off of staying away from rides that frighten him but didn’t frighten W at the same age. I’m getting tired of splitting up the family during theme park visits because the boys want to ride different rides.
So, at the Animal Kingdom, we got J on Expedition Everest, the park’s only roller coaster. In fact, since we got there early, we rode once without our FastPass and another time with it.
We also rode Kali River Rapids and saw both the Finding Nemo Musical (which gets me choked up with every performance that I see) and the Festival of the Lion King (twice), and we saw the Jungle Book show, which combined singing and dancing based on the new, live-action movie, but also projections of the movie onto water screens in the lagoon. I really enjoyed the songs, especially the remakes of the classics from the animated movie.
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Tuesday was our first day at Epcot, with lunch at Teppan Edo and dinner at La Hacienda de San Angel. Upon entering the park, we made a beeline for the Soarin ride, to see the new Soarin over the World version. We didn’t have FastPasses, but we got there early enough to ride it twice, while playing the geography trivia game presented to the people in line.
Throughout the day, we did the usual rides and attractions — Spaceship Earth (which I slept through, almost entirely), Mission: Space, Test Track (without FastPasses, we used the single rider line and rode separately), and Illuminations, my favorite Disney fireworks show. However, in keeping with my intent to try new things on this vacation, we also did a few new things, particularly in the Italy pavilion: We saw an Italian flag tossing performance, something I had never seen before and which I found impressive and very entertaining. We also stopped by the Tutto Gusto Wine Cellar for a pre-lunch snack of desserts and a Grand Tour wine flight. I was pretty buzzed by the time we went to lunch at Teppan Edo...
We covered a number of other things throughout the rest of the day, including the Seas Pavilion, the Journey into Imagination, the Pixar Shorts Festival. We had FastPasses for Illuminations, so we got a good view of the fireworks and the water show.
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On Wednesday, despite having an afternoon FastPass+ to the Seven Dwarfs mine train, we arrived early enough (right after rope drop) to ride the Seven Dwarfs first thing in the morning and get in line for a second try, until the line was stopped because of “technical difficulties” with the ride. After waiting a brief time, we went to Be Our Guest for our breakfast reservation, only to return to the ride right after breakfast just as it re-opened. Bonus!
Our day at the Magic Kingdom wasn’t notable for doing anything new. We rode Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, and Seven Dwarfs (for a third time) on FastPasses. Our Splash Mountain FastPass was scheduled right before lunch, but it, too, had technical difficulties, and the system rescheduled the FastPass to any time later in the day, and allowable on several different rides.
We also rode Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. An interesting thing happened on Haunted Mansion: The end-of-ride ghosts who appeared in the mirrors held up signs saying “California, here we come!” as we rode by. Clearly, there was some RFID technology in the doom buggies that read our Magic Bands and identified us as from California.
At Gaston’s Tavern, we stopped by for a light lunch/snack of Lafou’s Brew and some ham and cheese stuffed pretzels. After I paid, the cast members found out that they were out of the ham and cheese stuffed pretzels, so I agreed to wait at a table for the food. They called me in 10 minutes for the food, and as we sat eating, another cast member came out and gave us a huge cinnamon roll, “from Mickey”, in thanks for our patience.
Soon after we left, rain came down hard (as it did several times during our stay in Orlando), and we got soaked, so after buying new ponchos, we went back to the hotel to dry up and rest. I used the hair dryer to dry out our shoes and the iron and ironing board to dry off my wool socks (a lucky clothing choice on my part that morning).
After we returned to the park, we decided to ride Splash Mountain. Hsuan and the boys have noticed how I usually look “cool” (rather than screaming and hysterical) on our ride photos, and J and W have taken to trying to look cool, too. So, this time, I decided to up the coolness factor and strike a pose during the big fall at the end of the ride. See above. Serendipitously, and entirely unintentionally, I blocked W’s face as he tried looking cool and relaxed.
I made reservations earlier in the day for dinner at the Jungle Navigation Company restaurant, which is themed after the nearby Jungle Cruise. The food was Asian/African/American fusion, or some such thing. In any case, I had Char Sui Pork. Our waitress was dressed like a Jungle Cruise skipper, complete with chipper behavior and jokes.
We watched the Wishes fireworks show, although our viewing location wasn’t the best we could have wanted. We spent our last couple of hours in the park at Tomorrowland, riding everything except Astro Orbiter. We also passed by Philharmagic, though I slept through much of it.
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Thursday was our day at Hollywood Studios, and I wanted to do some very specific things: Enjoy all the Star Wars offerings, which have greatly expanded, eat at Sci-Fi Dine-in theater for lunch, and get J on the Tower of Terror ride, again so we wouldn’t split up the family.
In the photo from Tower of Terror, we’re sitting on the left side (facing the riders), middle row. W has his hands up, Hsuan and J look scared, and I have a goofy grin like the other two middle-aged guys behind me. J is holding Hsuan’s and my arms.
We also did the usual things — Star Tours twice, the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular (which was cut short due to rain), and the Beauty and the Beast Musical. I also had FastPasses to Fantasmic, for which I wanted to avoid having to get a dining package in order to get good seats.
There were plenty of Star Wars offerings, including frequent stage appearances by Star Wars costumed cast members from the old trilogies and the new movie, and there was the Star Wars Launch Bay, with more characters and character meet-and-greets, as well as props and starship models.
J got a t-shirt with a stormtrooper on it, shooting and saying “PEW PEW!”
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We spent Friday morning at the pool, enjoying a slightly delayed checkout, before we had our luggage stored so we could return to Epcot. We had lunch at Restaurant Marrakesh and enjoyed the belly dancer.
We used FastPasses to ride SpaceShip Earth (for which I managed to stay awake, almost entirely), Mission Space, and Test Track, so we finally got to ride all together instead of using the single rider line. We revisited Soarin once.
Finally, we closed out our Disney World vacation with dinner at 6:15 PM at Monsieur Paul, in the France pavilion. It’s my favorite restaurant at Disney. W and I both had the Prix Fixe menu, though we chose different items. I also had the Clarendelle Merlot to complement my steak.
Amuse — beef and mushrooms on a red wine sauce
Lobster tail and lobster soup
New York strip sirloin
Dessert — chocolate sphere around chocolate ice cream
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At the conclusion of all this (and after our stay at Universal Orlando, which I’ll write about next), as I was importing my photos into Photos for Mac OS X after returning home, from my Nikon Coolpix, my iPhone 6S Plus, and from Disney’s Photopass, I discovered that all three handle dates, times, and timezones differently, causing sufficient confusion to Photos that I had to go through and manually fix a lot of time and date stamps. With over 200 photos, I had to go from memory as to what event went on when, and even now, I’m not entirely sure the timestamps are correct for every photo.