Just returned from a quick weekend trip. Had a great time as always, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on a few new experiences.
Trip started kinda poorly, when we tried to check in to Art of Animation at about midnite on Friday night. We had booked the hotel through Orbitz and the front desk seemed to have some problems finding the reservation. They eventually got it, but took about 20 min of doing searching by different fields. We had a Little Mermaid room and got upgraded to a king bed/lake view room. It was our first time staying there, we had visited for lunch last year. Rooms were nicely themed, but still very clearly a value room.
We stayed at AoA for two night and then moved over to Caribbean Beach. Though we booked this one through Orbitz too, they didn’t have the same problems finding the reservation. They did however have a problem attaching the room to our bands, and it seemed because they had to deactivate the old ones first. Once again we got upgraded to a king room in Jamaica so we got one of the newly refurbished ones. It was nice, rather plain. I can’t remember the old rooms, it’d had been over 15 years. The beds are SOOOOO much better at the moderates though.
Our MyMagic Plus experience in the parks had a few hiccups too. I decide I wanted the limited edition Haunted Mansion band. The Emporium was able to move my ticket and FP+ over to the new band when I purchased it, but they did not move over anything attached to my resort reservation so I didn’t work for charging. Guest Relations was able to fix it quickly. We were able to move our FP around easily, since lines were mostly short we moved them around a lot. Getting 4th or 5th was easy enough but not much was left.
As far as attractions go, this was where the hello good bye part came in. It was my first time on 7DWT. It was fun, definitely not an E Ticket but still fun. The lap bar needs a bit of a redesign, it is really tight around the legs. Festival of Fantasy is definitely the best day parade I have ever seen. Definitely the most elaborate floats and costumes I can think of. Epcot was a bit more of the good byes. Had to stop and see Off Kilter one last time. After 17 years it’s probably time to go and bring in a new act, but they will be missed. Also, I will assume it will be my last ride on Maelstrom, and looks like a lot of people thought that, since the theater at the end was actually pretty full.
We ate a few new places this trip as well. Artist Point was amazing. The much lauded Smoked Portabello Soup and buffalo were both excellent. I was hesitant to get the Surf and Turf to get the buffalo, living in Boston I’m always suspicious of other places’ lobster but it was quite good. Spice Road Table was on the other end of the spectrum. Everything about it was poor, service and food were memorable just for being so bad.
Those were just a few quick general impressions.