Newbie Dooby Doo -- March 19-26 POR - UPDATED 4/6 About This Page:

[disneydani]

Welcome back....hope it was magical!

danielle

[Jookiba]

I wish I would have seen this PTR a while ago!! I certainly hope you had a great time and were able to brain wash (ahem-I mean CONVERT) your friends to become Disney addicts like the rest of us here!!

Can't wait to hear all about your adventures.....and yes it's unfortunate that the time drags like a snail until Disney, then the time-space continuum really gets screwed up (aka flies by) and before you know it, you're back in Orlando (or in your car) headed back home thinking where'd my vacation go?!?!

[Phelpsie]

Just found your trip report and had to sign up. Can't wait to hear all about your trip!

[DyanKJ130]

back!! Can't wait to hear all about it!

[bfth]

Still waiting!

[njlaura]

I'm almost done with Day One. Just have to finish up photos, etc. I'll post it this weekend. I had a lot of catching up to do in the real world.

[carters_mom]

I'm so excited to read your report
I'll be on the lookout for your update!

[scrapbookmomma3]

I hope you had a great time. Can't wait to hear about it.

[njlaura]

Day One

Thank goodness we decided to splurge on a car service to the airport this year. We had no idea that Route 95 had a closure between us and Philadelphia airport and we would certainly have missed our flight if we had driven ourselves.

Robert picked us up right on time at 4 am. Thankfully, Craig was done with all of his security measures like light timers, drape closings, and lock examinations. I'm a morning person so getting up at 2 is no big deal. I come from a long line of people getting up at ungodly hours for vacation. Usually we were enticed by a box of Dunkin' Donuts (a rare treat!) and you had to get up extra early to snag one of the apple filled.

I won't bore you with all the airport details. It was pretty uneventful...ok security line, overpriced airport food, on time flight, blah, blah, blah. Well I did squeeze Craig's arm really hard during take off. I don't like flying except that it gets you places really quickly. Anyone who's driven down 95 to Florida would probably put up with a fear of take off (South of the Border does not live up to the hype and you drivers know what I mean.) Anyway, we all lived to tell the tale.

Here's Perry at the airport.



We arrived in Orlando at 9:15 and made our way to the DME line. Even the DME cast members are friendly and happy! High fours all around! (Do they give them extra caffeine?) We waited about 20 minutes for our bus to POR. I was happy that we were the last stop so we could check out some of the other resorts. Old Key West looks especially nice.

I like the theme at POR and it's a very pretty resort with the river running through it. We had previously stayed at CSR and I thought this resort was more whimsical. It definitely has an old south feeling but if you don't like walking you might not be happy with it. While it's very spread out, it's a pleasant, scenic walk. And really, aren't you doing a lot of walking anyway?

Here's a picture of the waterwheel.




Here's a picture of all of us in front of the main building.




Check-in went smoothly, and YAY!, we got our request for rooms in building 14 in Alligator Bayou. (Forget all that walking talk. We're happy to get a close building!)

Here's our corner room on the second floor.



And here's the view.



See the ducks? The kids had a lot of fun feeding them. They used a whole box of cheerios for this purpose the last day we were there.

[njlaura]

The rooms weren't ready yet so we headed over for lunch (and caffeine for Sally) in the food court.

What a madhouse this food court is. Maybe it's because we were there at such a busy time of the year but man there were a LOT of people in there! I was starting to wonder if we'd made a mistake picking this resort. CSR never felt this crowded. I really enjoyed the salad station here though. Dried cranberries, blue cheese, mandarin orange vinaigrette...yummm. I'm going to make this salad for work tomorrow.

This was the hottest day of our stay at about 86 degrees. I love leaving cold weather in the morning and arriving to summer weather. We decided to spend some time at the pool until our rooms were ready. This pool looked great in the pictures but we found it a little disappointing because A) there weren't enough chaise lounges for the crowd and B) with all the trees around there was debris everywhere. Sally noticed that you could tell how long somebody's been away from their "saved" chair by the amount of leaves on their towel. I think some people save their place first thing in the morning before they leave for the parks.

Sally, Drew and Miles were able to get in their room at 3:00 but our luggage still hadn't made it to ours. They brought our luggage up at 4:00 and put it in our second floor corner room. Yay! Thanks room assigner!

We spent some time in the gift shop buying mouse ears,autograph books and pins for the kids. You can see them all disnified while waiting for the bus.



I had made reservations for dinner at Chef Mickey's thinking it would be a fun start for our vacation. We were seated fairly quickly at a table near the kitchen. Luckily, Sally isn't afraid to ask for a better table. We were given another buzzer and got a table in the main room about ten minutes later. Thanks Sally!

Here's Perry in front of the restaurant.



The characters were a lot of fun but I wish I could have remembered all the things to say to them to get them to react in funny ways. I remembered to ask Minnie where's the ring and her reaction was very cute. I like how Donald covered up the kids' mouse ears for the pictures. I wish we had gotten a shot of it. Here are some pictures of the "kids" with the characters.







I wasn't crazy about the atmosphere here. It was a bit sterile and the tables were packed a bit too closely. The food was meh but I wasn't expecting a gourmet dining experience. It was really for the kids that we came here. Drew thought the prime rib was excellent. The Mickey dessert things looked better than they tasted. I found the mousse a bit gummy.

I was impressed when the bills came and they had separated them out for us without us asking. Yikes! That little glass of chardonnay is 11 bucks! Boy, Disney really makes you pay for your alcohol.

[njlaura]

Here are some more pictures from Chef Mickey's.

[njlaura]

We headed over to the Magic Kingdom after dinner to catch the parade and fireworks. I think everyone else had the same idea because it was wall-to-wall people (hope it doesn't scare off Sally and Drew). The cast members routed us through Tomorrowland and then back over the bridge to Liberty Square.

Finally we got an ok spot where the kids could see if they were on their father's shoulders.

[njlaura]

We moved in front of the castle for Wishes (our favorite spot) and enjoyed the show.










So it's now about 10:30 and everybody's been up since 3. Do we call it a night? Nooooo! We have the Haunted Mansion to visit. This is number 1 on Miles' list.

The haunted mansion is a little bit spooky at night. Perry has been on this a couple times before and I could see she was nervous. OH NO! I'm going to ruin Miles' vacation on the first night! I hope he doesn't get too freaked out. Perry' s looking a little nervous and she's usually fearless.

NOTE: FOR ALL YOU GRAMMAR STICKLERS, I REALIZE I'M GOING IN AND OUT OF PRESENT AND PAST TENSE BUT PLEASE FORGIVE ME. I'M AN ARTIST, NOT A WRITER.)

The kids looked a little spooked but not overly so. After that, Sally, Drew and Miles said they wanted to head back. We thought we would see if there were any rides we could walk on.

We didn't have much luck with rides. We just got on Snow White which to me feels like a glorified carnival ride. We headed to the exit but got caught in another parade. This time we had a really nice view since there weren't many people in the park. I had never seen the people in Spectro so close up before so it was interesting.

We made our way to the bus line and who did we see?? Sally, Drew and Miles! It seems they had some trouble navigating their way out of the park. Didn't they head back an hour before? Turns out they got lost trying to find their way out and then they tried to cross in front of the parade route (the float was still far away), and out of nowhere cast members leapt out of bushes like a swat team to stop them. I am so sorry I missed that.

So we ended our first day together on the bus back to the resort. It was very long day having started at 2 or 3 am and ending after 12 am but how cool is it to accomplish so
much on your first day?

[carters_mom]

Wow--what a long fun day! I'm so happy that you were assigned to AB building #14. That's our favorite spot I'm always hoping for a corner room, but haven't gotten one yet.
Great update, can't wait for day two!

[Colexis Mom]

What a great first (and long) day!! Love the pics!! More please