skullsplitter
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2008
Just back from 6 days at the parks and 3 days on the Dream. It’s not a full trip report, but here are some thoughts.
DTD – we arrive Friday 5/22 the day before our check in. Stayed at the Hilton across from DTD this night. DTD was busy, but not unmanageable. The various live acts were fun to watch and listen to. Ate at Splitsville. Good pizza there. Can’t believe people pay $20 to bowl!
Hotel – stayed at Coronado Springs for the first time. We read a lot of reports about how spread out the resort is, but we had zero issue with this. While it’s not as compact as French Quarter we never felt like we were wasting time with a lot of walking. We’d stay here again.
Parking – so our plan was to go directly to AK Saturday 5/23 since we had our bands and did the online check in. But then we wondered about parking at AK since we didn’t have a parking pass. Called Coronado to ask about this. Was told that that parking was not tied to the bands yet and could not promise me a refund after the fact. So we ended up going to the resort first for check in to get our parking pass. This defeats the purpose of having our bands ahead of time with the pre check in.
Parks – Parks were crowded 5/23-5/28, but not overwhelming. MK was a pain point at times (stuck on Pirates for at least 15 minutes, stuck on small world for a few minutes, People Mover shut down while in line). Cleanliness was good to great at all parks. CMs were great too. We didn’t come across a CM the whole time that did not seem to be enjoying their work.
Dining TS – First off, the Jedi Mickey Hollywood and Vine meal is a huge rip off at 2 credits. The character interaction sucked. The characters do not sign for some odd reason which was not advertised (guest services resolved this for us). The food was good, but outside of the themed deserts it was nothing special, certainly not 2 credit special. O’hana breakfast was great as usual. Be Our Guest dinner was great. No complaints on the food from any of our group. We also had the lunch buffet at Biergarten for the first time. This was a pleasant surprise. My picky wife even enjoyed the food. And the band was great! ESPN Club at the BW was good, but not the best use of credits. We really enjoyed the Rebel Hanger Lounge at HS. This blew the Jedi Mickey meal away and it only serves appetizer type food.
Dining QS – Pecos Bill’s at MK and Restaurantosaurus at AK…same review, long lines and total confusion behind the counter. Food was OK at both. Pepper Market at Coronado was great. Very good selection of food. Pizza Planet at HS had lines similar to Pecos Bill’s but was much more efficient. The planet salad was very good and very filling. Casey’s at MK seemed better than past visits. Did they change to a better hot dog?
Transportation – We had issues at our resort with the bus to MK three times: once we waited 45 minutes for a MK while all other busses stopped multiple times. Once we got a trainee driver. Perhaps the most exciting ride of all attractions with the sudden stops and quick turns (he even missed the turn out of the resort and had to turn around in one of the lots). Understandable though as he was learning. And we had one other long wait for a MK bus. Other than this the busses, monorail, and boats were fine.
MagicBands – zero issues with using these other than I don’t like wearing things on my wrists. Hopefully they will do more with these in the future.
FP+ - I’m not a fan, but it’s what we have now. MK is the best park for this in my opinion. If we had 45 minutes between windows at MK there are plenty of ways to fill that time. Not so much at EP and HS
Pin trading – ugh! We love to trade, but it seemed the CMs all had the same selection of pins. Not much can be done, but it takes some of the fun out of it.
Pixie Dust – nothing "special" happened to us. As I tell my kids, our pixie dust is being able to afford to go to WDW.
All in all it was great time at the parks as usual. It took us a couple of days to adjust from our normal flow to the FP+ system. We also had to adjust to the fact that this was our first trip with our youngest son not being in a stroller. We wore the poor boy out the first two days before it dawned on us to slow down for him. Oops.
DTD – we arrive Friday 5/22 the day before our check in. Stayed at the Hilton across from DTD this night. DTD was busy, but not unmanageable. The various live acts were fun to watch and listen to. Ate at Splitsville. Good pizza there. Can’t believe people pay $20 to bowl!
Hotel – stayed at Coronado Springs for the first time. We read a lot of reports about how spread out the resort is, but we had zero issue with this. While it’s not as compact as French Quarter we never felt like we were wasting time with a lot of walking. We’d stay here again.
Parking – so our plan was to go directly to AK Saturday 5/23 since we had our bands and did the online check in. But then we wondered about parking at AK since we didn’t have a parking pass. Called Coronado to ask about this. Was told that that parking was not tied to the bands yet and could not promise me a refund after the fact. So we ended up going to the resort first for check in to get our parking pass. This defeats the purpose of having our bands ahead of time with the pre check in.
Parks – Parks were crowded 5/23-5/28, but not overwhelming. MK was a pain point at times (stuck on Pirates for at least 15 minutes, stuck on small world for a few minutes, People Mover shut down while in line). Cleanliness was good to great at all parks. CMs were great too. We didn’t come across a CM the whole time that did not seem to be enjoying their work.
Dining TS – First off, the Jedi Mickey Hollywood and Vine meal is a huge rip off at 2 credits. The character interaction sucked. The characters do not sign for some odd reason which was not advertised (guest services resolved this for us). The food was good, but outside of the themed deserts it was nothing special, certainly not 2 credit special. O’hana breakfast was great as usual. Be Our Guest dinner was great. No complaints on the food from any of our group. We also had the lunch buffet at Biergarten for the first time. This was a pleasant surprise. My picky wife even enjoyed the food. And the band was great! ESPN Club at the BW was good, but not the best use of credits. We really enjoyed the Rebel Hanger Lounge at HS. This blew the Jedi Mickey meal away and it only serves appetizer type food.
Dining QS – Pecos Bill’s at MK and Restaurantosaurus at AK…same review, long lines and total confusion behind the counter. Food was OK at both. Pepper Market at Coronado was great. Very good selection of food. Pizza Planet at HS had lines similar to Pecos Bill’s but was much more efficient. The planet salad was very good and very filling. Casey’s at MK seemed better than past visits. Did they change to a better hot dog?
Transportation – We had issues at our resort with the bus to MK three times: once we waited 45 minutes for a MK while all other busses stopped multiple times. Once we got a trainee driver. Perhaps the most exciting ride of all attractions with the sudden stops and quick turns (he even missed the turn out of the resort and had to turn around in one of the lots). Understandable though as he was learning. And we had one other long wait for a MK bus. Other than this the busses, monorail, and boats were fine.
MagicBands – zero issues with using these other than I don’t like wearing things on my wrists. Hopefully they will do more with these in the future.
FP+ - I’m not a fan, but it’s what we have now. MK is the best park for this in my opinion. If we had 45 minutes between windows at MK there are plenty of ways to fill that time. Not so much at EP and HS
Pin trading – ugh! We love to trade, but it seemed the CMs all had the same selection of pins. Not much can be done, but it takes some of the fun out of it.
Pixie Dust – nothing "special" happened to us. As I tell my kids, our pixie dust is being able to afford to go to WDW.
All in all it was great time at the parks as usual. It took us a couple of days to adjust from our normal flow to the FP+ system. We also had to adjust to the fact that this was our first trip with our youngest son not being in a stroller. We wore the poor boy out the first two days before it dawned on us to slow down for him. Oops.
Thanks for sharing.
