My DH and I were in Aruba this past August and I agree with you about the rooms. They could use a refurb and better lighting. But we loved the location. It was easy to take the path across to the main pool and close to the Riviera skyliner. Loving the trip report so far!
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You’re right, there’s not much they can do about the window situation but better lighting would really help. Also some kind of bedside lamp! Is that a deluxe-only thing? It made me nuts that when the kids went to bed we basically had to hang out in the pitch dark because the over head lights were the only option.
I know, right? That was so strange. And while I liked that the sink was separate from the toilet and shower, I practically felt like I was in the tub while using the toilet, the space was so small! Lol… But the location was great and it was fun to stay someplace the new.
We were at Disney in Feb and actually witnessed a guy pull his mask down, sneeze, and put the mask back on. 
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EW! We were on with a woman who took it off every time she had to talk. What is wrong with people???
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Day two – Magic Kingdom
Obviously I was awake at 5:30. I tried to go back to sleep for a bit and then started to worry about what would happen if Genie Plus sold out, something I know does not happen, so I bought that. Then I started to run over logistics – the park opens at 8:30 for early entry, we want to rope drop Mine Train, we should probably be at the bus stop at 7:15, how long does it take to get there? We should have timed it the day before! I had also ordered a delivery from a furloughed cast member, SammiCakes, so we had to get over to bell services to pick that up. So at 6 I got up and had a shower, and then poked my husband awake so he could shower and run over to get the breakfast box. Once we were both up and ready I started turning on more lights, making more noise, trying to casually wake up the kids, who for some reason are in my bed at 6:15am every day at home but here at the world’s most exciting place are still out cold at 6:30. Their wake-up was hastened by Jay coming in with the breakfast box, which contained some Mickey waffles, various croissants/pastries/little muffins/cinnamon buns/lemon bread, as well as two giant Mickey cookies with their names on them. That really got them up and moving. Then my 6:58 “time to do the Genie stuff!” alarm went off, and my heart started pounding. I had done a bit of practicing, specifically on Slinky, refreshing at 6:59:59 to see what time I’d get and then watching how quickly they went, and I knew obviously that Peter Pan was not going to disappear like that, but I didn’t know how it would be. So I watched the second hand, I refreshed, I hit Peter Pan, I hit confirm, and that was it, we had our first LL for 9:05. Actually I was surprised, I had kind of thought there might be an additional step, so it was easier than I expected. Grabbed the final stuff, threw some of the hundreds of snacks I’d brought with us into the backpack, and by 7:10 we were heading to the Riviera, arriving to find the next (first?) bus scheduled for 7:30.
This is the point at which I discovered something that would become a theme for this trip – all this “hurry up and wait” stuff is hard for kids who are very excited and very hopped up on sugar. They didn’t deal very well with the rushing them to get out the door only to discovered they were going to have to sit around and wait 20 minutes for a bus/to get into the park/to get onto a ride. Which, honestly, fair enough – they’re excited! They want to get going! They had not emotionally planned to be hustled out the door at 7:15 for 90 minutes of standing around in various lines. Anyway, they got a little grumpy. It didn’t help when the bus arrival time clicked over to 7:40. I also discovered that nobody was interested in any of the snacks I’d packed. Like, at all. But eventually the bus arrived, we donned our masks and hopped on, and were Magic Kingdom-bound. Navigated the security line, where I learned the valuable “take your sunglasses case out of your purse and hold it out in front of you going through the scanners” lesson, tapped into the scanners, and we were in the park and walking up Main Street! I felt really emotional being back with so much having happened between our last visit and this moment, it felt so nice to be walking up the street in the sunshine, the blue sky, the castle shining up ahead. There wasn’t a lot of time to take it in, though, because we quickly got directed to the right for the early entry line, and then we were in a solid crowd on the bridge.
I had never done an actual rope drop before – on all our previous trips we’d had PPO reservations at Be Our Guest, so I had no idea what to expect, how many of these people were going to Mine Train, how long it would take, etc. And then W announced that he had to go to the bathroom, and I also had no idea where that was and if it was accessible from where we were (spoiler alert – over the bridge, on the left, yes you can get there before they drop the rope) so we told him he’d have to wait and made a plan – the rope would drop, W and I would hustle to the bathroom, Jay and B would get in line, we’d meet them. And then there was a big cheer from the crowd and we were moving! So after a quick pit-stop in the bathrooms we headed over to Mine Train to be confronted by a line. A long line. We finally found the rest of our family all the way back across from Dumbo, and at this point I was having real concerns with this plan, as MDE was saying a 60 minute wait and it was 8:36 so I was assuming the internal queue was already filled up. But as I was dithering, trying to decide what to do, we started moving, and we moved fairly consistently, although it was 9:08 before we were getting on. It was neat to see the queue, the only times we’d actually been through it before was during the pre-park opening rush to ride, and those times were basically racing through it to see if we could get a second (or one day a third!) ride before the crowds descended.
Once we were off Mine Train we walked across to do Winnie the Pooh, with another great line that we’d never been through – I think the kids might have enjoyed the line more than the actual ride. At that point nothing looked especially short and I was getting anxious to book another LL so we tapped into Peter Pan, and booked Buzz Lightyear for 11:45ish. Then we walked across the lane to It’s a Small World, and while in line I mobile-ordered a chocolate fruit waffle from Sleepy Hollow, so after a glorious tour through the world in the form of dancing toddlers, we headed that way.
The mobile order situation at Sleepy Hollow is a mess! There were like 20 people waiting in the mobile order pickup, and when I asked the people in front of me if their order was ready they just shrugged and said “Somebody told us to wait here”. So I think that they had everybody doing mobile orders and then just hopping in that line, assuming that by the time they got to the front their order would be ready. It took quite a while, but eventually we had our Nutella and fresh fruit waffle and Doom Berry beverage, which honestly I was lured into by the Haunted Mansion themed straw. I didn’t fully think through the implications of buying a drink that was a) carbonated (my kids hate carbonation, they claim it’s spicy) and b) actually spicy because it was ginger beer. B, however, drank a surprising amount of it, the hilarious faces he made throughout notwithstanding.
Haunted Mansion was posting a fairly short wait time so we headed over there, but the line stretched all the way out along the railing and the kids flatly refused, even though I assured them it probably wouldn’t be as long as it looked. They were, I think, already a little hesitant – they’d been on it once before, three years previously, during which time W covered his eyes and cried the whole time and B just kept saying “This is TOO SCARY for us why did you bring us on this???” B had wanted to do it again on our previous trip but it had gone down so that was their last memory.
At that point for some reason it seemed like a good idea to also get Dole Whip – possibly because one waffle wasn’t enough food for four people who hadn’t eaten breakfast? Not sure of my thinking. But we then made our way over to Aloha Isle for a pineapple dole whip float and a coconut dole whip cup. The tasters were pretty torn – B and I were unable to determine which was more delicious, Jay and W were firmly on team pineapple.
We headed over to use our Buzz LL but on the way passed the Treehouse. The boys were interested, we’d never done it, so we took a wander through – it was really neat! Cool to be so high up and look out into all the trees. Also really nice to pass something and be able to just do it without having to check the app, figure out wait times, and promise them that we’d come back to it.
We tapped into Buzz, and I booked an LL for Space, one I was excited about because we’d never done it but my kids really love the fast rides, so I thought they’d be into it. Buzz Lightyear was notable because I beat my husband for the first time ever, so that’s something I’m never going to stop talking about. This is the point at which all our carefully laid plans about shopping went south – we had decided we’d give the kids a certain amount of money per park but that they couldn’t buy anything until the last day at that park, because W, in particular, has a tendency to just walk through every store asking to buy everything he puts his hands on. So we’d briefed them! We were clear! And then B found a small soccer ball in the Buzz shop, and B is soccer-mad, and it seemed like a good idea to have a ball that he could kick around. So we bought the ball, and we talked W down from his devastation that his brother was buying something and he wasn’t (“there’s nothing here you want” is not an argument that holds water for that kid), and we hopped onto the Peoplemover, my Magic Kingdom true love. The escalator wasn’t running, which was kind of a letdown because that’s B’s favourite part, but there was still that thrill when it goes from inching to zooming, and zipping around in the sunshine, looking at the castle – SIGH. We then stopped by Space to confirm that W really was 44” tall, because at home he’d been right on the line, and they said he wasn’t – I think he was slouching to get under the bar but didn’t want to risk it, so cancelled the LL and booked one for Big Thunder again, which basically filled the same purpose – a rollercoaster that the kids had never been on.
At this point we hopped a bus back to the resort to discover the pool, which was crowded and noisy and great fun. I mobile ordered some food and hung out on a chair waiting for it, and the kids headed off to do the waterslide 100 times in a row, while Jay hung out near the bottom to keep an eye on them – they can both swim and they’re both reasonably competent in the water but W has a method of swimming that looks remarkably like he’s drowning, plus neither of them had swum since December, so we wanted to keep a bit of an eye on them. When the food came it was tough to get them out of the water, and most of their food ultimately went to waste, but Jay and I really enjoyed the fish tacos and especially the jerk chicken bowl – the chicken was well seasoned and plentiful, and the beans and rice were so good I ate them all before everybody else got out of the pool.
Also while at the pool my alarm went off for my next LL time. We wanted Haunted Mansion but the times were showing 7:55pm. A few minutes of refreshing, though, and a 4:10 popped up, which I jumped on. Around 3 we got out of the pool and headed back to MK. During our leisurely ride on the Peoplemover the boys had been VERY into the idea of the Speedway, and on the bus our next LL time had come up and shockingly, the Speedway was VERY available! So we went over there for a spin around the track – what is up with those cars? Are they impossible to steer? B was driving and I was working the pedals but it felt like no matter how hard he spun the wheel we were just banging from one side of the rail to the other.
From there we went to Haunted Mansion which honestly, I had serious reservations about because W is either supersensitive to anything remotely scary or he likes to pretend to be so that I’ll snuggle him at bedtime and go with him every time he goes into the basement, but either way I was not looking forward to six weeks of “I can’t fall asleep because you made me go on Haunted Mansion and now I think there are ghosts in my room” but he really wanted to do it, and actually it went ok – we skipped the stretching room and I did a lot of “Ha ha look at that silly ghost he’s so funny!” that would have probably been intolerable if there was anybody else in our GhostMobile, but it went fine and while he’s occasionally mentioned our “HostGhost” since then he didn’t seem to have been affected.
And then over to Big Thunder which – wow. Why is there so much love for Seven Dwarfs when this is so much more fun as a rollercoaster? I couldn’t believe how long it was! And how fun! And how it just kept going! We all loved this one. Also on our way over there we ran across a Cavalcade, which was also a lot of fun – a random parade that just pops up in the streets, lasts a few minutes, and then is done? Yes please!
From Big Thunder it was over to our 6:20 Skipper Canteen reservation. We’d never eaten here but I was really looking forward to it. W, who is a carnivore, was delighted to find steak on the menu. B, who was grumpy, didn’t want any of the options but agreed to macaroni and cheese (I did take a chance and ask the waitress if she could do a grilled cheese but they didn’t have any sandwich bread, which – fair enough). Jay had the Char Siu Pork, and I had the Thai Noodles, and everything was excellent, especially my noodles – lots of flavour, the perfect amount of spice. Also we had the Brazilian cheese bread which was so good we took the ones we couldn’t eat home in our pockets and ate them for breakfast.
When we got finished it was about 7:45, and we didn’t think we could make it back around for the fireworks plus Big Thunder was showing a short wait, so we headed back over there. We were slightly too late to actually get to ride while the fireworks were going, and watched them out various windows as we moved through the line, but it was still really cool to ride in the dark!
Also at some point today, and I honestly have no idea when, B bought a lightsaber. I wasn’t there, I really questioned the need for it as we already own seven at home, but this one was cool in some way that the others weren’t, and we had a thing scheduled later in the trip that would require lightsabers anyway so there you go.
Big Thunder completed, we made our way back to the front of the park and hopped on a bus back to the Riviera, and went to bed nightmare free, possibly only because W fell asleep in the stroller somewhere in the five minute walk from the Riviera to our room.
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What a great day! Your writing style is hilarious. Agreed on Big Thunder over Seven Dwarves! Also appreciated the meal details at Skipper. We look forward to it the next trip. Looking forward to more.
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Really enjoyed following along!
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Enjoying this report. The detail you have it, notwithstanding it not being a ‘live’ report, is awesome. Sometimes you can get to the end of a vacation and it’s all been a blur 
. Looking forward to reading more.
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How do you do this?
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Just ask the cast member before you go in - they take you out a side door, down a hall, and then you just rejoin the line on the other side. They asked us if there were other members of our party in the stretching room and when we said no we went right ahead and got in that line right before you get into the Doom Buggies.
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Thanks! It’s funny how writing it all out is making things come back to my memory.
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I had no idea! This is great info to have!
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I was too nervous to ask to skip it in January 2022 but it would have helped. My kids were OK with HM in May 2021, but now that I think back, they just had us walk through the stretching room because they weren’t allowing crowding. It’s not so much the stretching but the voice and the hanging thing that is really creepy and my kids needed much more encouragement this last time around after the preshow. Will definitely ask to skip next time!
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Day Three – Epcot
When we planned this trip Epcot opened at 10, so this was supposed to be morning where we got to sleep in a little after our first big day in the park. By the time we went on the trip Epcot opened at 8:30, so 8am for early entry. Not exactly the leisurely morning I had planned! On the other hand we were on the skyliner which seemed like it was going to be a lot easier and more pleasant than waiting for a bus.
I also woke up worried about rides – B had been talking up Test Track a LOT to W, who was too short to ride it on our last trip. And also he was tall enough for Soarin’ this year. And we had a 10:45 Topolino reservation so we couldn’t do too much in the morning. So even though I hadn’t planned to buy Genie Plus, I bought Genie Plus (damn you Disney!) and booked Test Track for 9:30-10:30 (I hadn’t set up my Genie Day that day so it made me pick my park, pick my party, etc and that slowed me down). By 7:10 we were on our way to the CBR skyliner station, because even though it was further away I knew it was the hub and was worried that if we went to the Riviera all the cars would be full by the time they got there. When we got there there was a pretty substantial line, but when we got closer we saw that it was for Hollywood Studios, and we hopped onto an Epcot – car? Gondola? – with minimal delay.
I love the skyliner, by the way. What a way to travel! I wish I could skyliner everywhere all the time.
We got to the International Gateway and were held just outside the tapstiles for a bit, but before long (around 7:45, I’d say) they had let us in and we walked straight to the line for Remy, where we were further held for a few minutes – we passed the time playing with the Genie Plus filters, which were so cute! We walked right on and by 8:05 were hopping into our mouse (rat?).
Remy was adorable! I really loved it. W said it was scary and refused to go on it again for the rest of the trip because of one moment, but for the rest of the family it was a big hit. From there Frozen was showing a short wait so we speed-walked through the World Showcase and walked onto that, and then Soarin’ was showing a 10 minute wait so we headed over there, feeling pretty good about our Epcot morning thus far (but pretty bad about our decision to throw $60 into the mouth of the Disney Beast!) and stopping to snap a few photos in front of the gold statues of some of our favourite characters. We also picked up the Spike the Bee scavenger hunt, because B loves any kind of challenge/competition and we knew he’d be super into it. On Soarin’ we even got put into put in B1, which was pretty exciting.
We had promised W we’d do Living with the Land (he loves searching for hidden Mickeys) after Soarin’ but it would have been cutting it too close to then do Test Track and get back to the Skyliner so we had to swear we’d come back. We did a quick walk through the butterfly house, where B was unable to coax any butterflies to land on him despite his best efforts, and over to Test Track. We let the kids design the cars – one kid went wacky, one went for aerodynamics – and then tested them out (aerodynamics won).
From there we went back to the skyliner – we were really making a full tour of Epcot this morning – and headed to the Riviera. We got checked in and seated fairly quickly, at which point I started my fairly unsuccessful campaign to get the kids to pose for photos with the characters. Me: “Guys, this is really important to me. You don’t have to hug them – you’re not even allowed to hug them! – but I would like you to stand in front of them and smile please.” W: “Yeah…I’m not going to do that.” I basically told them they had to and then, while we waited, reconsidered – did I really care? I ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and told them they didn’t have to, at which point we compromised – W would do Mickey only, B would do Mickey and Donald but didn’t want to do the girls. Fine. By the time Donald came around W had decided that he would in fact do Donald (Donald is my favourite), leading to this photo that we are for sure going to use on this year’s Christmas card.
The food at Topolino was wonderful! The kids got the Mickey and Minnie waffle dippers, Jay got the steak and, at the recommendation of the waiter, added an egg to it to make it feel more breakfasty, and I got the hash. It was all so so good. And the croissants at the beginning with the strawberry jam! I wanted more croissants and honestly am still kind of sad that I didn’t ask for some.
After brunch we went out onto the terrace to check out the view and if I’d had a book I would have happily spent the rest of the day out there, it was hot and sunny and the skies were clear clear blue and you could see all the way to the Tree of Life. Before we had kids we used to go to Vegas pretty regularly and that’s the vibe the Riviera gave me, I’d love to stay here sometime.
We were so close to our room that we opted to go back and do some more swimming at this point, and then did some soccer playing on the lawn before heading back to Epcot. This time we figured that it was 3pm and the skyliner wouldn’t be too busy so we went to the Riviera station – mistake, it took us about 10 minutes before an empty car came along. I don’t understand how this works in the morning – do they leave occasional cars empty just so people do eventually get on? Or do you just stand there for half an hour hoping that somebody decides to get off?
Once back at Epcot we wandered through the world showcase and found a few Spikes before making our way around to check in for our Space 220 lounge reservation, as well as making a stop for W to buy something - anything! It was killing him that his brother had souvenirs and he had nothing, so he got a baby Yoda figurine from the big gift shop whose name I can’t remember. I’d been waiting for Space 220 to open since before our 2020 trip, so this was one I was really excited for, and once the menu came out I was even more excited that we could book the lounge and experience it without having to pay $40 for my kids to not eat anything. It took about 10 minutes after they let us into the lobby to actually let us up, not sure what was going on there because once we got up and shown to a table the room was half empty. The kids thought it was really cool, though, and asked a lot of questions that I didn’t know how to answer like “Are we really in space?” (don’t want to lie to them, DO want them to believe in the magic, what do I do???) I’ve seen complaints about there not being much happening on the screens but I felt like there was always something to look at – ships showing up, astronauts doing stuff. It did seem strange that the screens didn’t connect, though, an astronaut would disappear off one of the screens and not appear on the next one. Also our waitress told us occasionally two astronauts had a lightsaber battle and my kids were pretty disappointed to not get to see that! But regardless, it was really neat. We had just planned to have a snack so ordered the Short Rib sliders, which happily came with fries that the kids could devour. Jay had the Jupiter Fizz, which was delicious, and I had the Atmospritz, which was way too sweet – I don’t know what I thought when it said it had a “cotton candy cloud” but I wasn’t expecting it to just be alcohol poured over cotton candy. The kids got the one that came in the specialty cup which neither of them really liked (although I did), but they did really enjoy their first experience of pop rocks!
We spent about an hour in space and then headed back down and over to The Land to do the LLs I had stacked up for Soarin’ (again) and Living with the Land, and also got to see Spaceship Earth all lit up, which was so beautiful. The plan after that was just to wander around the World Showcase – we were saving fireworks for Monday’s Deluxe late hours - but when we got over there it was jam packed with festival crowds so we did a quick wander through Mitsukoshi and then caught the skyliner back, at which point we realized that we hadn’t actually eaten dinner, so I stopped at Primo Piatto to pick up some food that we ate back in the room (and it also gave me an opportunity to buy a stuffed sculptor Donald, which I’d talked myself out of earlier but then decided I needed as a souvenir).
Sidenote: generally we did a terrible job of feeding our kids on this trip. I’d brought a lot of snacks but they didn’t want any of them, and there were a number of days where we got up, got moving, got to the parks and then were in a hurry to take advantage of early morning crowds, and then at like 11am when the kids were cranky realized it was because we hadn’t actually fed them. In retrospect I should have done some kind of grocery order to get them something familiar (cheerios, yogurt) that they could have eaten before we left the room. Lesson learned.
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Omg that picture is epic. It’s going to haunt him for
birthdays, graduations, wedding… I love it!
I’m really impressed with all you were able to do with 2 littles and at Epcot of all places. Don’t fret about the food. It’s so easy to get into go-go-go mode and forget to eat. It happens a lot.
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Firstly, I am LOVING your trip report. Thank you for sharing your time with us!
Secondly… BRIBES. I use them sparingly but will use them for pictures and for a few things that aren’t really “required” of children (like behaving, hygiene, schooling, things like that, those are requirements, lol). I don’t think it make me a bad parent but a smart parent. Look at it this way, my work bribes me each and every day to preform to their requests 
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Those boys are pretty darn cute. But you look nothing like your profile picture! 
Love the report and I’m still on day one.
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I’m 100% on board with bribes! But W is tragically unmoved by them. I offered candy for pictures and he was not having it, and I realized I didn’t care enough to up the ante.
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It’s a visual representation of my internal monologue. 
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