[brumcg]

I hope it's okay if I come out of lurk :bandit mode to do a trip report. We were in the world from March 20-March 27.

In the past, I've done detailed blow-by-blow trip reports. Well, this wasn't that sort of trip. We were well prepared, but we had a short list of things we wanted to accomplish. We also wanted to do some relaxing. So, instead, I'll break things down into food, resort, the parks, and everything else.

The cast is myself (Bruce - age 39), my wife Sandy (age older than Bruce), my daughter Maggie (age 12), and my daughter Maura (age 4). For fans of my trip reports we typically end up in a Daddy/Maggie pair, while Maura attaches herself to Mommy for the entire trip.

Mmmm, I'm hungry... So let's do the food first.

Bruce

[DisneyTeacher]

It's great to see you Bruce. I love trip reports--lots of details please!!

[brumcg]

For those that know me, our priority seatings are made almost as soon as we can possibly make them. I love to eat, and I hate to dress up... so eating at WDW is perfect.

Oh, my #1 tip for eating at WDW... If you even remotely think the parks might be busy, just suck it up and make priority seatings at some point. Every night, we saw upset people who couldn't get in a sit down restaurant without a long wait - and this was after waiting in long lines in the parks all day long. Even if you call that afternoon, it's better than showing up 'unannounced.'

I'll give my current Mickey rating to each restaurant in ().

Artist Point (5 Mickeys) - I've previously written a 5 Mickey review of Artist Point in ReviewCentral. We ate there twice (on arrival and departure days) during our trip. Simply put, it's our absolute favorite place to eat in the world. No, not WDW. The entire world. On my 2 trips, I had the buffalo and the pork chop; my wife had salmon and scallops; my oldest had kids salmon and the adult scallops; and my youngest had kids meals. Everything above was simply excellent. The service is the best. The wines are wonderful. The atmosphere could be extremely stuffy - but it's never remotely stuffy. Wonderful...

Hoop-dee-doo (5 Mickeys) - I wrote a detailed review in ReviewCentral. We loved it.

Yachtsman's Steakhouse (3 Mickeys) - I wrote a detailed review in ReviewCentral. Mixed reviews from the family; my steak was great.

Crystal Palace (4 Mickeys) - I've previously written a 4 Mickey review of CP in ReviewCentral, and we found it to be the same level as always. It's a very good buffet with lots of variety and great character interaction. Our service - normally excellent - might have been down a notch.

San Angel Inn (2 Mickeys) - I wrote a detailed review in ReviewCentral. In general, we weren't thrilled.

Chef Mickeys (N/A) - I've previously written a 4 Mickey review for the Chef Mickey dinner. I'm finding it hard to rate the breakfast buffets at WDW. They are all very similar (at least to me) with quality offerings. Anyway, my 4 year old loves Chef Mickeys and was not disappointed. It was very crowded though, and the characters could only stay for a bit at each table. Our service was great.

Boma (3 Mickeys) - I've previously written a 4 Mickey review of Boma in ReviewCentral, and we found it to be a full notch lower this year. Our service was quite good, but the buffet just didn't do it for us this year. Their were standout items (hummus!!!), but I found myself sampling things this year and leaving half the sample. The soups and stews just weren't nearly as good as last year, and they were all too sweet (including those that weren't too sweet last year). Somewhat disappointing.

'Ohana (3 Mickeys) - I've previously written a 5 Mickey review of 'Ohana in ReviewCentral, so this went down as one of the big disappointments of our trip. Short story, they were packed full and had a huge line of walk ups. Our service was...well...not very good. Water glasses went unfilled, our plates sat empty waiting for meat, my wife and I weren't offered a second adult beverage (isn't that criminal in the restaurant biz!), and our kids would have ordered dessert... if we had been asked. Our first batch of meat was excellent - I especially enjoyed the shrimp, steak, and turkey. The second batch was all overcooked - every one of the three items. Oh well...

Whispering Canyon (N/A) - I previously gave it 3 Mickeys in ReviewCentral. Again, that breakfast thing. We strayed from the 'skillet' this time with slightly better results, but for some bizarre reason I was told that the Kansas City Hash comes with scrambled eggs. C'mon! Who puts scrambled eggs on hash?!? ;) Actually, anywhere were I can get a Bloody Mary for Breakfast is okay in my book. Always fun...but my kids just aren't joiners in activities which is a bit disappointing for me.

Whew. Now I'm hungry again.

[brumcg]

Every family is different. Mine is dialed straight to 'Wilderness Lodge'. So much so, in fact, that we're DVC owners at the Villas. We could use our points for any other DVC property...but we just can't do it. We'd miss the Lodge too much.

We did a Studio this time, and it should be the last time that we do that. It's cramped, so you have to be a pretty tight family...and you don't have a full kitchen (microwave, small fridge, toaster, coffee pot). But, all I can say is that 1502 is awesome! In all of the Villas, you couldn't get closer to the Lodge...which means closer to the bus stop, dock, pool, shop, mug refill area, etc... Hilarious thing is that this was the first year that I didn't send a fax requesting a room EXACTLY like this, and the first year that we got it. Only downside is that it was also closest to foot traffic, but we heard none the entire trip.

Due to the weather and other things to do, I only had the kids in the pool once, but we had a blast. The Lodge pool doesn't have the bells and whistles of some of the other pools, but the setting is nice and relaxing. The slide is perfect for my timid 4 year old.

One afternoon, for the first time ever, my wife and I got to stroll the resort by ourselves for a wonderful 90 minutes while my 4 year old napped and the 12 year old stood by with a FRS radio in hand in case of...anything. It's amazing that the resort can be so family friendly and romantic at the same time.

The cast members are great, the restaurants are great... The fauna (that's animals, right?) is great - interesting birds around the water (other than gulls!) and rabbits all over the property at night and in the morning.

Short story... I (and my wife agrees) could go to the Lodge for a week and not leave.

Ack, I've gushed enough, and that's not my style (I'm the 'Pet Peeves' guy after all). Worst part? The wonky transportation system with the random sharing with Fort Wilderness or Grand Floridian. I know it probably makes sense to do it this way, but it just seems like each resort is 'worthy' of having their own transporation. Still, as crowded as it was, we only had to stand on 1 bus the entire stay, and we rarely had to wait more than 5 minutes for a bus or boat.

[brumcg]

We were at WDW the same week (last full week of March) in 2003. We estimate the crowds were about 33% greater in 2004. That was the bad news. The good news is that in 2003, WDW was not ready for the crowd; in 2004, they were. It's all in the forecasting.

With crowded parks, you simply need to have a good plan, a list of high priority attractions, and the instinct to chuck all of that in the garbage at the right time. Piece o' cake! :whistle:

Magic Kingdom - We ended up here the most, no big surprise. It was not uncommon for most popular attractions to have 40-70 minute waits. Fastpass, please! Really, the only attraction on our priority list that we didn't get a chance to see was the Hall of Presidents...and that was really mostly because the kids were deathly afraid they might learn something. Philharmagic was really good, but felt a bit short. Also, I wear glasses and often have trouble in 3-D attractions seeing the effects as intended; Philharmagic was the worst for that. Our filler ride is TTA. We all enjoy it - but especially my 4 year old and wife. If there's an awkward pause between fast passes or whenever, TTA is perfect. We saw both parades and Wishes. We thought Wishes was quite good, but we couldn't hear the narration from our spot at the end of Tomorrowland. OH... Maura did her first 'thrill' rides, Splash Mountain and BTMRR. She wouldn't ride them again during the trip! Oh, how sisters can be different... :dazed

MGM - We've been to the parks 4 straight years, and I think MGM has sufferred the most. Really, for my wife and 4 year old they could hit Playhouse Disney, Muppetvision 3-D, and perhaps the Little Mermaid and they're done. Maggie and I have to hit Tower and R&R, of course. Other than that, it's a bunch of stuff I simply don't need to do every year...even though I like it in general. Oh, we missed Fantasmic again! Darn, it's my fave nighttime show...

Epcot - Okay, Maggie and I rode Mission:Space 3 times - early entry sprint stand-by, fastpass 1, and fastpass 2 using Sandy and Maura's tickets. Ride 1 was incredible! Ride 2 was unsettling! Ride 3 was a little more unsettling! Whew! Cool ride, but once (on an empty stomach, evidently) is fine by me. The rest of Epcot is a bit of a blur. No real high or low notes for me...but a nice day; it's a beautiful park and the weather was awesome (high in the mid 70's). Oh, missed Illuminations again. It's been a long time...

Animal Kingdom - The Safaris are a great favorite, and we had 2 great guides; especially, IIRC, Steve who is just a big cheeseball. We did both walking paths this time which are well worth the time. Our kids didn't want to get wet (!), so no Kali River for Sandy and me. It's just not fun riding alone. Tough to be a Bug still causes Maura stress...sigh...

Park Favorites:

Bruce: Tower of Terror, Mission: Space (once)
Maggie: Cinderella's Surprise Celebration, Mission: Space, Splash Mountain
Maura: TTA, Small World, Buzz, Safaris
Sandy: TTA, Safaris, Spaceship Earth

[brumcg]

Every year, it gets worse...but it emerged as our Pet Peeve of the trip. 'Keep your party together.' That means you enter the line together, stay in line together, and enter the attraction together. I understand the 'baby toss' tactic in Fantasyland where mom stands in line for Dumbo and dad hands off Jr. at the last minute (by herself, Mom would be in one Dumbo; with Jr. she's still in one Dumbo). But if Mom and Jr. got in line for Splash Mountain 5 minutes before Dad and sis got in line, it's not right for Dad and sis to force their way through 5 minutes of line to 'group up.' Our worst experience was in line for Cinderella in Mickey's Toontown Fair...always a slow line for face characters like Cindy. We thought we were very close to entering when several adults radio'd the rest of their party to join them - which meant forcing their way through the queue. IMO, that's wrong.

WDW gets ripped for not being as clean as it once was. Heck, I think guests should also be ripped for not being as clean as they once were. There are 8 gazillion trash cans in WDW including every queue...why are people throwing trash on the ground?

According to one friendly bus driver, WDW is short 141 bus drivers due to the low starting pay; he's getting lots of OT. They are also short a large number of buses (50-ish, IIRC).

A large number of non-cast members that we talked to immediately brought up Eisner. Never heard the name from a cast member... Smart cast members...

I overheard a guest from the Grand Floridian on a bus from the AK to the resort wonder if the monorail went to their resort. I'm still boggling.

I made a planning error. I thought that all resorts had a stop at TTC and tried to get to our Boma PS by taking the first bus (which happened to be TTC) and transferring to the AKL bus. Whoops. Wrong. So after getting things straight with the bus driver, we hopped the Animal Kingdom bus. We were the only people on the bus, and he drove us straight to the AKL. I was floored and reminded that some cast members are still willing to go the extra mile.

I'm not the most eloquent speaker... I often mumble, mix up words in sentences ('How open are you late tonight?'), and sometimes switch letters around in phrases ('brue clayon' instead of 'blue crayon'). At check in, I asked about being a 'Flag Family'...but I didn't get it quite right. :o At least, I'm sure I gave some cast members some laughs.

I'm thinking this covers it. Thanks for letting me write... :)

[dznygrl]

Love the report Bruce! Thanks so much for sharing!!

Haha, I've been there...mixing up words...I once asked the lady at McDonald's for a "Slausage MaMufflin..." I don't know. :o

[BuzzLightyear]

Good to hear from you again!!
Thanks for sharing your trip report.

[Dana]

It's good to see you Bruce!!! Excellent and very detailed food...uh I mean trip report. Your report made me HUNGRY!:laugh Thanks for sharing it.

[tiggerlover1971]

Great report Bruce I am glad you came out of Lurk mode to post :D :)

[Willbegone]

Good to see you again! Thanks for reporting. I've started just checking to see if there are any new trip reports most of the time. I love them!

[disneyguy]

I loved the format of the report. I also got a HUGE laugh out of the "does the monorail come to our resort???" questions. :laugh Someone needs some education....

[brumcg]

Thanks for the kind words folks!

My wife reminded me last night about an eating experience that I left out. On our MGM afternoon between 2:00-2:30, we decided that we needed a bite to eat. We were around the Sunset Blvd. area, but there were nothing but long lines coming from every fast food counter. I decided to hit the counter service area around the Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area, but I was stunned to find it closed.

We both had the same idea - Mama Melrose's. At that time, we were able to walk in, sit down, order some appetizers and drinks, and were out in 35-45 minutes. All of the appetizers were very good: Mama's Favorite Bruschetta, Crispy Calamari, Brick Oven Baked Caprino Cheese, and Fresh Mozzarella and Tomatoes. All in all, it really wasn't more expensive than counter service (appetizers were all $6.00). Perfect.

Bruce

[tinkerbell]

wonderful trip report.. sorry you missed Fantasmic .. this past March was our first time seeing it and we don't want it to be our last!!! in fact I am bouncing off the walls again because we are going back in June!!!

I am so glad there are other families that can ride TTA over and over like we do and never get tired of it :)