Quickie Trip Report (Oct 11-24) About This Page:

[Ransom]

DW and I were at WDW from October 11 through 24, 2009. As usual, we stayed at our home resort -- VWL.

We had a great trip, overall. We were surprised at how easy it was to deal with the record heat at the start of our trip. 93 degrees with high humidity isn't quite as bad when there are so many places to go to cool off! There are not only the obvious air conditioned attractions and stores, but also surprising places like the Tomorrowland Terrace Noodle Station. Even though the restaurant wasn't open during our trip, the seating area was kept air conditioned. What a great thing! (But I don't want to even think about the energy needed to keep that open seating area cooled!)

VWL was great as always. Our room was 4560, and had a partial view of the service area and the laundry "dumpsters" or whatever. But, unlike our last room, it had a balcony and a coat closet, so we were pretty darned happy! Besides, looking straight out from within the room, the view was of trees, so it's not like the view was any sort of real problem. Not to mention how little time we spend in our room! We'd much rather roam the resort or the parks.

This trip had some firsts for us. We'd never been to either Disney water park (and DW had never been to a water park at all!), but we went to both this time. And we'd never been in October, so experienced MNSSHP for the first (and second) time. And it was also our first time being at WDW with American Idol Experience open for business.

We visited Blizzard Beach on Wed. the 14th. It was nice to be confused about where to go and what to do at WDW again! But once we figured the park out, we had a great time. We rode all the slides and bobbed in the pool. We particularly liked the toboggan slides. Summit Plummet was nice as well, but that's a lot of stairs to climb for such a short ride! (The chair lift wasn't working when we were there.) It's worth doing once or twice a visit, but it's not really something I'd want to do many times in a given day.

We visited Typhoon Lagoon on Wed. the 21st. We rode Crush 'n' Gusher four times right away (something we couldn't reasonably do with Summit Plummet's huge hike), then toured the park more generally. Our opinion of the park is that Crush 'n' Gusher and the wave pool are keepers, but the rest of the park could be bulldozed without us shedding a tear. The slides are pokey, and there are too few of them that use mats instead of inner tubes. Oh, we did like the sandy beach theme. It's nice to feel sand between your toes!

As for The American Idol Experience, it was just OK. A nice way to get out of the heat, but too noisy for sleeping.

We also tried out The Sum of All Thrills. Since we'd been disappointed with Cyberspace Mountain in the past, we didn't have great hopes for this one. But, in fact, it was quite a fun little ride! I can't imagine what the lines are going to be like for this one once word gets out, but for now, it was well worth the short wait. My only complaint is that you don't get much time to configure your ride. I understand why that's the case, but it's still a bit disappointing. But the ride itself is fun and well worth doing if you're in the area.

We didn't visit any new restaurants this time, since it was during the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. We made our way around the Canada side of the World Showcase the first Monday evening, and then did the Mexico side the next Monday. The food was pretty much hit-or-miss for us. We're not big wine and dessert people, so it was pretty much entrees only for us. And many of them included ingredients we know we don't like, so that limited it even more. But that said, we did find easily a dozen good items on each side of the World Showcase. On the Mexico side, in particular, we found some really fantastic stuff...so much that we practically had to be rolled the rest of the way around the Showcase.

For the record, the table service restaurants we visited and used the Tables in Wonderland card for this trip were: Crystal Palace (breakfast), Plaza (lunch), Liberty Tree Tavern (dinner), Tony's Town Square (lunch), Tusker House (lunch twice), 50s Prime Time (lunch), Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater (lunch), Chef Mickey's (breakfast), and Narcoossee's (dinner). We also visited a variety of counter service locations, but most frequently Roaring Fork, where I got breakfast to bring back to the room most mornings. Generally speaking, the food everywhere was what we would expect: great at Narcoossee's, good at most of the rest, and mediocre at Chef Mickey's.

The only real stand-out was the strawberry shortcake at Sunshine Seasons (fresh, ripe strawberries with whipped cream and a tiny bit of cake, all not overly sweet and highly flavorful). Oh, and the chicken wrap at Lottawatta Lodge was a pleasant surprise to DW. And the fresh mini-donuts at both water parks were quite good. It's great that you can order them without sugar sprinkled on them!

I should also mention that we tried La Cava del Tequila. The food was good, and the tequila was darned good. It's all pretty horribly overpriced, but at least it's good stuff!

Finally, there was Space Mountain. What a bummer not to be able to ride it this whole trip! But from the looks of it (and I'm sure you've all seen the pictures), they're doing a great job re-imagining the surrounding plaza and cleaning up the facades in the area. I think that when they reopen it, Space Mountain will need that long queue for more than just the Christmas to New Years week!

The only hint of the future that we got was when we went through Space Mountain on the TTA on our last day. As we traveled under the launch port of the space station, we noticed that the control panels in the control rooms were lighted up. Then the overhead lights in Space Mountain went out! Slowly the stars began appearing...and the space field effects on the TTA route were starting up as well. It seemed like they needed to warm up or something, because the star field moved pretty slowly. Or maybe that's the new normal? Anyway, it was pretty neat to see it, and to have our train come upon it with such perfect timing!

Once we rounded the corner where you can usually see the loading platform, the sky effects of Space Mountain proper came on. Again, they were moving slowly and there were no asteroids or anything -- just stars. So I don't know what mode they were running in. But it looked great! Clear and nice, even up close from the TTA.

[debrabrown]

Sounds fun. Glad you survived the heat. The shortcake sounds yummy! Will keep that in mind for our upcoming trip!

[KMB733]

Sounds like you had a wonderful trip. Thanks for your sharing your thoughts with us.

[lazanya]

Glad you had a good time!

[chezp]

Sounds like a great time.

[tootogether]

Sounds like you had a wonderful time. Thanks for the updates

[Colexis Mom]

Glad you had a great time!

[Ransom]

Thanks for reading, guys!