WDW Trip Report: Part 1, Mostly Getting There and Rides

Who knows whether this will ever become anything other than a draft, much less whether Parts 2 through N will ever be written.

A while ago, I did a bunch of research on DVC and Walt Disney World. I did not buy guidebooks, because they get updated every year and I didn't know when I would be going. As part of that research, I learned that DVC was going to be building a property on the monorail. The result, Bay Lake Towers at the Contemporary Resort, opened just in time for a rather fantastic financial meltdown. Instead of selling out lickety-split, it _still_ hasn't sold out, and in fact there are BLT resales available on the secondary market. I saw some priced the other day at $99/point, altho there's no telling those won't be picked up by Disney via right of first refusal (altho if they do, that's a pretty cheap way to get out of a big financial commitment by the owners).

I love the idea of staying in a DVC property: they have kitchens and laundry and one or more bedrooms (I don't count the studios). They have jetted tubs. They are Awesome. They are also awesomely expensive, either to rent as hotel rooms, or to buy into via DVC. It is possible to get a hotel room with these amenities within walking distance of Disneyland -- for not a whole lot of money, even. It is not possible to do this in Walt Disney World. But if you're willing to cough up the $$$, you can either take the monorail or walk from BLT to the Magic Kingdom. Mmmmm.

We didn't fly after A. was born, because I could not contemplate traveling with two children in diapers with equanimity. Eventually, however, my desire to spend a holiday just as a family, and not at home, overcame my good sense. The Magic Kingdom, for 5 nights (4 days in the park), flying on Christmas and the 30th = Unbelievably Stupid. I knew this. I did it anyway. R. has to take the time off. T. isn't in school. Okay.

The flights both ways were uneventful. I considered (seriously) the Disney Magical Express option, which is check your bags through to the room and ride their bus with your carry-on luggage to get to the hotel. Unfortunately, Southwest Airlines does not participate. I don't trust the other airlines not to separate us, so no go. Maybe next time; DME continues to tempt. Driving to Manchester (we hate, hate, hate Logan airport, with a passion that knows no bounds) on Christmas Day was, truly, magical. There were other drivers on the road and, on average, they were unusually dippy. But there weren't many of them.

While some idiot decided that exploding undies were a good idea on Christmas Day (R. doesn't see anything weird about that psychology; I do), the impact on security for us was not detectable. On the trip out, we got an obscene amount of liquids on the plane: juice boxes, milk boxes, yogurt -- all to make sure the kids would have something to eat until the grocery stores opened on Boxing Day, which we probably wouldn't get to until that evening, since we intended to get up early to do some rides before the crowds descended. TSA thought it over and said, OK, but one of the adults gets to be a "selectee", which means pat down and detailed re-examination of all my crap. Fair enough.

We had no troubles at Orlando, or getting a rental car. As usual, my anxiety and paranoia about transporting all our crap meant that we didn't even need a cart to get our luggage from the car to check-in, or from baggage pickup to the rental car. Pretty amazing. The little strappy thing hooked A.'s car seat to the carryon rolling bag, and my briefcase rode on the handle of that bag. R. had his camera gear and laptop in his backpack (new Lowepro bag, very heavy); I had diaper gear and lunch in my Jansport, and ID in a very tiny purse with a long strap. We sat R. between the two kids outbound (infant by the window; T. on the aisle -- you can't sit them next to each other, or there will be violence); I got the hot seat on the way back. Amazingly, the Christmas flight was so empty the two seats next to me didn't even have passengers in them (not so on the way back). I forgot Dramamine on the way out. That sucked. We checked T.'s booster seat, 1 rolling back each, and a big duffel mostly empty but containing our cold weather outerwear. This was so we'd have space for all the crap we would bring back with us. I managed a stroller and 1 rolling bag. R. managed the other two rolling bags. T. managed himself (which is pretty cool, for a 4 year old).

R. remembered the navigator, so we made it from the airport to the hotel. At checkin, we were the Contemporary's "Family of the Day". They confronted us with a pre-printed certificate, balloons for each of the kids, and a request for pictures, which they subsequently delivered to our room. We'd stripped A. down to her diaper, since she was dressed for New England and had been slowly cooking on the plane. So. Naked baby, frazzled family. Yay. Perhaps a little bit more love than we were prepared for. We tipped valet and bell services. They delivered all our luggage and we left our car with them until the next day when I took it out to go find groceries. At that point, we'd realized that there was an enormous, mostly empty parking lot just for BLT. Not using that seemed criminal.

I called I. from the plane upon landing and she drove two hours (each way!) to come see us Christmas evening. We used an outrageous fraction of our Disney Dining Plan to order room service all around, because I did not feel up to figuring out where the counter service restaurant was at the Contemporary. It was a very pleasant evening, and the 1 bedroom suite was very comfortable.

I set an alarm on my crackberry for 6:15 the next morning, a compromise between when we really should have gotten up (closer to 5 a.m.) and when we wanted to get up (closer to 8 a.m.). We got room service breakfast, which got rung up wrong using up way too much Dining Plan, but we got that fixed later. We ordered the night before for a 20 minute delivery window and that more or less worked. We were surprised to see that last night's room service tray was still sitting outside our door. It was still sitting there over 24 hours later, when I finally called and requested them to pick it up before local wildlife decided to do something about it.

We got into the park around 7:45. Magic Kingdom opened to the public at 8 a.m. that day, but there was an hour of time for resort guests in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. We rode Dumbo 3 times. The first time it was a struggle to get and keep T. lined up, even for the very small number of minutes (maybe 4) we had to wait. After that, it got progressively easier. When Dumbo got a little boring, and the wait had doubled, we went on Peter Pan a couple times, then Winnie the Pooh a couple times. It was still really empty in the park, which stumped me for a minute, because Toon Town wasn't going to open until 9 a.m. IIRC, we went on Pirates a couple of times. It's possible we did something else, but I don't remember. We left the park not too long after 10 a.m. I felt a little bad leaving so early, but we'd done a lot in a very short period of time and we were tired.

Succeeding days were similar. We started one day in Tomorrowland, doing Astro Orbiter and Buzz Lightyear. I took A. on the PeopleMover, which still exists there. We split up starting the second day, and did separate things, so I took A. on the carousel, which she was quite suspicious of, and Small World, which she found interesting. I did some character greets: Buzz Lightyear, and Goofy and Donald all duded up in western wear. R. took T. on Barnstormer. I took T. on Barnstormer. I bought an outrageous amount of Mr. Potatohead crap. R. took T. on Big Thunder. We rode the train. I took T. to Tom Sawyer island. We all rode the Magic Carpets. We did the Jungle Cruise and Tiki House. R. took T. up the Swiss Family Treehouse. I took A. to the playground in ToonTown. We rode the train at some point. R. took T. to Haunted House. I took A. to Haunted House. R. took T. on the teacups several times and spun him like crazy. R. took a risk and put him on Snow White the last day and he had no problem with it -- just seemed a little confused.

Big Thunder was closed the last day, which was sad, because T. was a big fan by that point. R. took him on Splash Mountain, which he liked -- except the spray of water in the face.

R. saw fireworks from the hotel elevator lobby. I slept. R. took T. down to the BLT pool almost every day. One day it was warm enough for me to take A. down, too. I. hung out with us for the last few days. T. and I rode the monorail to lunch and/or dinner at other resorts, by ourselves once, and with I. and me later on. We took the monorail to the park every day, and walked back from Magic Kingdom the first day, but the monorail thereafter. I walked back from MK once with T. when the monorail was stalled waiting for another train. I twisted my ankle pretty bad stepping off a curb. I was really, really tired. Fortunately, it wasn't such a bad sprain it stopped me from walking.

We had dining reservations, but canceled the morning reservations at Chef Mickey's and the Plaza, because we wanted the time to do ride early in the morning. We kept the two evening reservations at Chef Mickey's. We were very sad we couldn't modify them to include I. and appreciate her understanding. Chef Mickey's is a buffet, more or less the same as Goofy's Kitchen at Disneyland. We had a great time at Goofy's Kitchen, because the chef toured the buffet with me and made a dairy free waffle (breakfast). Same deal, but for dinner: got the chef's tour and an everything-free brownie with some chocolate tofutti for dessert. Matt from Elkhart is _very_ cute and very sweet and remembered me when we were back a few days later. The buffet changes enough from night to night that I needed the second tour. The salad dressing selection was really salty italian, but that was okay. The red beans the first night we were there were wonderful, as was the curried chicken and also the salmon with dill aioli the second time. The bartender the first night made me a couple of truly excellent perfect manhattans.

T. was, generally, really well behaved. There was some messing around on the floor in the restaurants, but he walked everywhere and was mostly cooperative.

WDW Trip Report: Part 2, Mostly Food

Here are a few short reviews of restaurants some number of us ate at:

Private Dining (aka Room Service) at Bay Lake Towers at the Contemporary Resort

Dinner Christmas Eve, we got simple stuff like a Club Sandwich, a hamburger, chicken nuggets, fries. Private Dining on the Disney Dining Plan takes two Table Service, so not a cheap option at all. I don't know that I would do it again. I hadn't done enough planning nor had I any previous experience at these hotels. In the exact same situation, I would have deputized myself or someone else to go down to the counter service location and bring back take out.

Breakfast Boxing Day, I got 2 egg breakfast, R. ate the meat and had a bowl of oatmeal; T. got a couple mini-Mickey waffles. This got us all fed and out the door early, and so worth it from that perspective. This I would probably do again, given that we couldn't get groceries on Christmas Day.

Contempo Cafe: counter service at the Contemporary. I kept ordering the Mahi Sandwich, first with cold green bean salad, later with french fries. It was good, both ways. The usual set of kid options, cold and hot sandwiches and flat bread pizzas.

Captain Cook's: counter service at the Polynesian. I went with T. I think he had nuggets and fries which he didn't eat and I took back for A. and R. to finish. I had a bowl of noodles with chicken and vegetables. It was tasty, but I was hungry a couple hours later.

Gasparilla Grill and Games: counter service at the Grand Floridian (do you sense a theme?). I went with T. and I. I had the tabbouleh wrap with cucumber salad as a side; she had the Italian meat sandwich. Both were good, altho we had trouble finding the place, it was a long wait because the people serving were adamant about checking the wrap and the hummus for milk product after I asked about the cole slaw (which did). I didn't figure the wrap or the hummus were a risk (they didn't have), but they wouldn't serve it until they checked and they had to track down the chef. Exasperating. Whatever. They mean well. I would order the same thing again quite happily.

Kona Cafe: table service at the Polynesian for lunch with I. She got the fish tacos, which had mayo and the "taco" was bent fried bread -- a little odd, and not quite what she was expecting, but otherwise okay. I got the vegetable noodles with tofu instead of chicken. It was excellent. I really wanted to go for dinner to have sushi but couldn't get reservations. Maybe next time.

Cosmic Ray's in Tomorrowland for early lunch: R. and I split a half chicken and ribs plate. He had all the mashed potatos since he forgot to sub fries for them. There were probably green beans on the side, but I had trouble getting any of the food since it was in front of him. The chicken and ribs were tasty.

Our remaining breakfasts were all in the room. We got groceries from the Publix on Apopka-Vineland. I don't know I would have gone that far if I realized how far it was, since other grocery stores were much closer. OTOH, the Publix had familiar brands and was generally quite good; the Winn-Dixie might not have done so. We got some Van's Frozen Waffles for T.; he was willing to eat them.

R. and T. had lunch in the park one day when I went back early with A.

Assuming we do this again, in addition to at least one dinner reservation at the Kona Cafe for sushi, I would definitely do more dinners at Chef Mickey's. Given the difficulty we had making a 4 person reservation a 5 person reservation, I think I would probably pad reservations for extra people (say, make it a 6-8 person reservation) to be sure there would be space for anyone who wound up joining us later on -- particularly if we get to make the reservation 6 months ahead of time, instead of the 3 months that we did this time. I think I would also risk the dinner show thing at the Polynesian. A. would love it, and T. probably wouldn't be much wackier than he ever is anyway. Also, it's _really_ easy to bail out to the hotel room from any resort on the monorail, so the party can split up if necessary.

We did the Dining Plan: 1 table service, 1 counter service, a bunch of snacks. I don't think we'll do it again, assuming we're staying at a DVC property. I think at this point, R. won't make any noise about cost, which was my main concern. I did not want us skipping or delaying meals because it would be cheaper elsewhere, and the dining plan accomplished that. However, given the limited number of hours we spent in the park, we could easily do two or even three meals in our room.

WDW Trip Report: Part 3, Accomodations and Strategy

The constraints on the planning this time were unusually weird, and the planning reflected that. First, I made the reservation at BLT in June, as early as they could be made without buying into DVC. I did that mostly to find out if it was even possible to book a 1 bedroom or 2 bedroom at BLT during peak season at Christmas -- it was a recession assessment check. Everything I'd read had indicated that Disney was adjusting pricing and incentives to maintain business. They hadn't raised admission prices. They'd juiced the dining plan. Etc. But there it was: a 1 bedroom I could book at Christmas. So I did.

Our dining reservations could not be made at 6 months out. At the time, they could only be made three months out. So shortly after A.'s birthday party, I made some. I hadn't done any calculations based on park opening times and breakfast, and was thinking breakfast at Chef Mickey's, like breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen, would be good. I couldn't get breakfast every day, thank goddess; in the event, I canceled the breakfasts. I also couldn't get reservations every day at Chef Mickey's, no matter what time I took -- the dinners I got were earlier than I wanted, also a good thing. So the fifth table service I got a reservation for was at the Plaza in the park, since I figured we'd still be in the park at elevenish. Silly. We left around then almost every day.

I did character dining solely because we'd been introduced to the idea at Disneyland when T. was a year and a half. Some people we were traveling with loved character dining. I'd never heard of it, and when I did hear about it, I thought it was a little loony. But this time around, I was sure A. would love it, and I was hoping the characters would provide some entertainment to keep T. around while R. and I ate.

When we do this again, we'll get more early dinners at Chef Mickey's, and I'll seriously think about some other character dining as well, probably at the Polynesian, possibly at the Chrystal Palace in the park, or Liberty Tavern for an early lunch.

I really wanted a place with a kitchen. The price differential between on property and off property is phenomenal. However, everyone online said the commute time to get into the park staying off property was over an hour, and even on property, an hour if it involved anything other than a monorail. The Contemporary thus seemed like a huge win in a couple ways: it got me a kitchen, it got me a fast transit to the park, and it was an even faster walk to the park. I also figured that if we limited our dining/visits to other resort hotels to monorail hotels, we would never have to get in a car and deal with strapping kids into car seats. These turned out to be hugely wonderful ideas and I would solidly encourage other people to think about them. Of course, there is a cost problem.

Because we had a kitchen, we needed a way to get groceries. The Contemporary's market is very limited (no yogurt, among other things). I figured that driving to a DVC market (say the one at Old Key West) wouldn't get me much more (this is probably not actually true) and would take as long as going to a regular grocery store. This is _definitely_ not true. Disney and the other parks in the area create massive congestion, turning a drive of a few miles into a 45 minute outing each way. It was nightmarish, and we lack the local knowledge to know how to avoid the bottlenecks (if, indeed, they were avoidable). The grocery run was done on Boxing Day evening after the kids were asleep; I spent the time stuck in traffic on the phone to my cousins, which was very nice. But the Thai Thani run that included a side trip to a drugstore for more diapers for T. turned into a nightmare for poor R.

Despite absolutely loving BLT, I still don't know that I want to buy into DVC. We did decide a couple things we are going to change. First, late December in Florida is kind of on the cool side for swimming; we'd like to go a monthish earlier or later so we got more days at 70 degrees and fewer in the low 60s for peak temperature. Second, Christmas week is nuts, altho at least this Christmas was a lot less nuts than I had been anticipating. The extra hour in the morning, while painfully early, was basically quiet and largely line-free for doing rides. Third, R. would like a two bedroom suite, and if we got during January or other extremely off season weeks of other months, the cost of the two bedroom is about the same as a one bedroom during high peak season. Finally, we don't need four days in the Magic Kingdom, three would be enough.

One of the reasons for not being sure about DVC is I don't know I really would want to stay at BLT indefinitely. I had been figuring we'd be doing MK only for years to come. However, T. does love the bigger rides; the limit is his height, and he will grow. I could easily see him wanting to do rides in bigger parks (and at Universal Studios) in a small number of years. It's hard to commit to DVC at BLT with that coming up so fast.

WDW Trip Report: Part 4, a Few Comments about the Unofficial Guide

My issues with the Unofficial Guide

Wow. I had no idea I'd wind up so unimpressed with this thing.

I had read an earlier edition (probably 2009, but possibly 2008) and previously paid for a 12 month subscription to the Touring Plans website to look at the crowd calendar in more detail. That had expired before I finally got around to looking at it for this particular trip, so I re-upped for another 12 months. Obviously, the crowd calendar said 10 for all of the days of our MK touring -- no surprises there. I reviewed their touring plans both in the book and on the site and with a particular trip and particular children in mind, it was already obvious that the touring plans had no relevance in detail for us. Duh, obviously: you're going to go on Dumbo first, then you'll do the other rides you care about in Fantasyland (in this case, equally obviously, Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh). No way in hell was I risking a 3D music animated show with my two kids, so that was out. None of the kid-oriented touring plans was all that helpful for figuring out what to do after that. They tended to send people haring all over the park to collect FastPasses, included shows that made no sense at all for my group and attempted to do everything in one day or two. Sure, they included a nap break, but they went way later at night than I had any chance of surviving with my kids. They also proposed that people taking advantage of the early hours (which they are way down on for a variety of reasons) should get up and to the park and lined up well in advance of park open.

In the event, our group was really only good for about 2 hours in the park anyway, and we had four days to do what we wanted to do. Our strategy was simple: do Dumbo, or Dumbo equivalent first, then other stuff nearby, then go to ToonTown (well, have T. go to ToonTown) to ride BarnStormer, hit Pirates (or maybe Haunted Mansion) and when you get bored or the hordes arrive, leave. We got everyone on basically every ride they really wanted to do, at least once -- usually we rode anything we liked two or three times in a row, or until the line got boringly long. The biggest screwup was the day I headed to Adventureland planning on doing Magic Carpets (Dumbo equivalent) first thing, forgetting that only Fantasyland and Tomorrowland are opened for the early hour. Ooops.

The Unofficial Guide isn't a bad book. But it has some limitations in terms of assumptions. They say they get requests for detailed adaptations of touring plans for every conceivable situation and I believe them. But there's no need to ask them for one. You don't need a Touring Plan, unless you are seriously interested in doing everything in 1-2 days, and are prepared to criss-cross the park repeatedly in order to collect FastPasses. You really don't want to mess with Touring Plans with very small children, especially if you can't put them in a stroller.

The Unofficial Guide _does_ have a lot of information in it other than Touring Plans, some of which is probably useful to a wider group of people than the Touring Plans. In particular, there are some amazing maps in here, like of Downtown Disney, which I. and I visited with T. to check out Legos and buy Still More Disney crap at the Disney Store. The line in the legos store was shockingly long, so I didn't buy anything there, but T. was sure interested in the place. I wish I'd brought the map with me; it would have helped me park on the right end of Downtown Disney. As it was, we had to walk through everything twice, which I suppose was interesting but mostly just made my feet hurt still more.

visiting, travel and vacations

I had a couple conversations with I. and R. over the course of the WDW trip that got me to thinking. My family took us to Disneyland from Seattle several times -- three times when I was quite young, twice by car and once on Amtrak. We didn't just to Disneyland, in fact at least on the first couple visits, we only spent a day at Disneyland, and spent the rest of our trip doing things like Universal Studios, NBC studios. Boy was that worse than a dead loss -- it was a real working studio, and my kid sister got whacked on the head hard by someone passing with something or other. She cried, of course, who wouldn't and honestly, these days there'd probably be consequences from doing that to an elementary school kid. Given the seizure disorder that later showed up, we probably should have sued. Anyway, despite having long hair in two french braids, some jackass thought she was a boy and told her to toughen up. Different world back then; for all the overprotection and helicoptering, it is worth remembering how cavalier everyone used to be about children. We also went to Knott's Berry Farm and presumably other things; one trip we stopped in San Francisco on the way down and went to Coit Tower, Fisherman's Wharf, went on a little ride, dunno what else. I went with not-my-entire-family when I got older. Trips to Disney, and summer trips to Whidbey and later Orcas Islands were among our happier vacations when I was a kid.

I., if I understood correctly, didn't get anything like that growing up. Her dad took her along on trips when he went to chess tournaments. We used to pick on my dad for not treating vacations with adequate respect but that's much, much worse. She had a fair amount of travel to visit relatives, but I tend to think of those kinds of things as separate from vacations per se.

R. lived near Six Flags New England, and they took summer trips to a couple different places on the coast.

But despite what apparently was more effort to engage in consumer vacation wonderland on the part of my family compared to R.'s and I.'s families, we still thought we were vacation deprived, largely because in the schools we were attending, a lot of families were doing a summer vacation to Hawaii and a winter vacation to Sun Valley. This seems _really weird_ now that I'm on the east coast, but if you want seasonal activities and you live in the Pacific Northwest, a summer trip to warm and a winter trip to cold is the only way you're going to get it done. We didn't ever go to either place and, as I noted, we drove to California. Clearly, ability to afford air fare for the whole family was a big distinguishing factor between the kids I went to elementary school with (many of whom lived in The Highlands, or in Innis Arden) and my family.

R. pointed out, however, that there was another difference. My compatriots were taking family vacations, parents with all the kids. He says that wasn't the case when he was growing up and says Massachusetts adopted that earlier than other areas. According to him, adults vacationed separately from children, an idea that doesn't just shock me-now, but I can't relate it to anyone I grew up with. I don't think it was at all common in the Pacific Northwest, in fact, a lot of the kids who had rich(er) fathers got taken along on business trips if they were to places that had fun things to do. R. found this freakish and bizarre to think about in the context he grew up in. I'm thinking again, this is a who-can-afford-airfare-when thing. There may be some regional weirdness -- Seattle is the Jet City, in part because it is so far to drive to anything else worth doing on vacation, for suitable definitions of vacation.

I also, however, am up against small sample size problems. Time to do a little research. :-) Any suggestions on a good Social History of Travel/Tourism/Vacation in the US?