Good morning Liners! Finally back home after a wonderful 8 day trip and as I was downloading my photopass pics, I thought I’d fire off a trip report. to set the scene it was me, my wife, junior, and we brought grandma along for her first ever Disney trip. Here goes
Wednesday Oct 16 Not much going on for travel day. Caught an afternoon flight out of Kansas City and magical expressed it over to Port Orleans Riverside. It was my first time staying anywhere but Pop Century and my word, this resort is BIG. As soon as we got off the bus I got the notification on my phone our room was ready, so we hiked approximately 4.5 miles from the lobby to our room. (j/k, it was maybe a 5 min walk). we dropped off our carry-on bags and headed back to Boatwrights for our first ADR of the trip.
Boatwrights- gotta be honest, wasn’t a really memorable ADR. I love cajun food, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what I ate. It was just sort of OK. Yhis will be a recurring theme, unfortunately. The pimento cheese fritters appetizer is a strong recommend though, they were great. After dinner, we went back to the room and crashed.
Thursday Oct 17-Hollywood Studios
Fist park day, we had anticipated a late morning entry because we wanted to watch Fantasmic, but everyone was up and excited around 7am, so we hit the Riverside Food Mill for some mickey waffles before heading to the park around 830ish.
So… grandma had mentioned she was a huge Twilight Zone fan in the day, and she really wanted to ride Tower of Terror. She said she had watched youtube videos of the ride and it didn’t look too bad. After confirming she was REALLY sure, we traipsed on over because the line was short.
LOL
The whole ride she was yelling “youtube lied to me!” I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in my life. We were off to a good start, although grandma was extremely skeptical of every ride for the remainder of the trip. Next up, junior has been dying to ride Rock N Roller Coaster since he’s now tall enough, so we hit that for our first fastpass. wifey and grandma bowed out of this one.
Despite the look on his face, he says he loved it and wanted to ride again. So we did before wandering around the shops so wifey and grandma could get some souvenir shopping in. Fast forward to lunch, we had an ADR at Hollywood Brown Derby with the reserved Fantasmic seating. Lunch was good, i had the grouper because when i eat seafood as often as I can when I’m not in Kansas. The bread service is what really stood out though, the butter with the sea salt was amazing.
After lunch, we started wandering towards Galaxy’s Edge, which was my most anticipated part of the trip. Junior and I had an appointment with a scrap metal dealer to keep. All I can say is “WOW”
After much internal debate regarding the cost, it was worth every penny.
After Savi’s, we explored Galaxy’s Edge, tried the green milk (spoiler alert: it was gross), took some pics, wandered to Star tours for our fast pass, had a quick service dinner at ABC commissary. During dinner, I asked junior what he wanted to do since we had a couple hours to kill before Fantasmic.
“Millenium Falcon daddy”
I was so proud.
The line wasn’t bad, it was posted at around 70 minutes, but without fast passes, it was constantly moving. The line theming was incredible as you’d expect from Disney. The garage actually smelled like a shop, which impressed me.
I’d wager we waited an hour before we got our job assignments. Engineer… sad trombone Did I mention the entire hour wait we talked about how much we wanted to be pilots? It’s a strange feeling getting on the ride dejected, but I reminded junior we had another HS day forthcoming.
So engineer… Here’s why I don’t like it. To do your “job”, you have to take your eyes off the screen to push your lit up buttons, so you miss some of what is going on. But all in all, it was fun and as a hard core Star Wars fan, I heartily recommend.
Fast forward the rest of the night, ate some churros, watched Fantasmic, took a Lyft back to Riverside and slept. It was a long day.
Friday Oct 18-Epcot
It was busy, oh man was it busy. Epcot day was a trainwreck, even with a plan.
Our first fast pass was for Frozen, which went off without a hitch. Everyone enjoyed it. Our plan after FEA was to explore Future World until lunch, then World Showcase for Food and Wine. So we headed towards wifey’s favorite ride, Soarin’. The line was posted at 40 minutes, not too bad. Except after 20 minutes or so we heard the dreaded announcement that the ride was going down. Shoot… So junior asked if we could go ride Journey into Imagination. Sure. So we headed over and… ride was down. My fault, I should have checked the app, but who checks wait time for Figment? Junior was getting cranky because lots of walking plus broke rides ain’t fun. So we hurried to Spaceship Earth and Nemo and Friends to placate him before lunch at Yorkshire Fish Shop (I live for fish and chips)
So, as excited as we were for Food and Wine, we actually didn’t try anything. The lines were so LONG. We did a lap exploring the countries and got junior a pretzel the size of his head at Germany before our ADR at Biergarten.
One of my biggest Disney regrets was never getting to see Illuminations, so I was really hoping to see Epcot forever, but it was hot, crowded, and everyone was getting cranky from all the walking. So we decided to call it a night early and head back to the resort. Darn it, I really wanted to hit the donut booth…
Saturday Oct 19
Pool day. Junior and I swam while wifey and grandma hit Disney Springs to shop. First, we walked over to French Quarter for a beignet breakfast though. It was excellent.
Our dinner ADR was Ohana. Oh my word it was incredible, our best ADR of the trip by far. I had been trying for an Ohana ADR for several trips unsuccessfully, and it well worth the wait. After dinner, we hit the resort to watch a little college football and go to bed early because Sunday would be a long day.
INTERMISSION-GOING TO EAT LUNCH
