On the first full day of the cruise, the ship was docked at Nassau, the Bahamas’ capital city.  Our only previous visit to Nassau was during our previous cruise on the Disney Wonder.  On that cruise, we took a shore excursion over to the Atlantis Resort, a popular luxury hotel and casino, which also features an aquarium.  It was fun, but a very touristy spot with little-to-no local color.

This time, we wanted to see a bit more of the city and perhaps get a little more of a taste of the local culture.  When reviewing the offered shore excursions, it was quickly obvious to me that a good choice for us was the one that featured a visit to Ardastra Gardens, which is a local zoo, followed by a bus tour of the city.  This was particularly appealing as the featured attraction at Ardastra Gardens is the "world-famous marching pink flamingos".  Pink flamingos are my wife’s favorite animal, so this sounded like something she would particularly appreciate.

The excursion left the ship at 12:30pm and lasted for about 2 hours, which left us with plenty of time on-board the ship in the morning and the late afternoon and evening.  We wanted to have plenty of time to explore the ship and enjoy its features, so this was about the right length for the excursion.

Breakfast at Cabanas

Cabanas food stations

For breakfast, we decided to try out Cabanas, the buffet restaurant on deck 11.  Cabanas is pretty different from the equivalent restaurants on the Magic and Wonder.  It has a much larger indoor seating area and has also been changed from a traditional cafeteria-style buffet into more of a food court format with stations for different kinds of food.  Another interesting change is that Cabanas is a table-service location during the dinner hour, offering a more casual alternative to the main dining rooms while still serving the same 4-course meals.

At the entrance to the restaurant, greeters were stationed to guide guests to a table and give a brief overview of the available food.  I definitely prefer this approach over being left to find a table on our own. We were taken to a table next to a window and had a really great view during our meal. 

The breakfast offerings were pretty typical for a buffet.  They had scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, Mickey-shaped waffles, pancakes, and a variety of fruit, cereal, and pastries.  Drink stations on either end of the restaurant offered juices, coffee, and soda.  I only like eggs that are very well-done and the eggs they had were way too runny for my taste.  Because of this, I mainly stuck with waffles and fruit. I don’t know if they would have prepared some better-cooked eggs for me if I had asked, but they didn’t have a cooked-to-order egg station.

The seagulls from Finding Nemo were perched on a ledge near our table.

The food was pretty decent for this type of buffet and the decor of the restaurant, which is largely inspired by Finding Nemo, is pretty nice.  We actually ended up having our breakfast at Cabanas three of our four mornings on-board the ship.

DVC Member Reception

After our golf game, we decided we really needed to eat a quick lunch before time for our excursion, although we weren’t overly hungry as it hadn’t been that long since lunch.  We decided that the best choice was to grab something quick at the Flo’s Café set of Cars-themed fast food windows on deck 11.  Like most food service options on the ship, the food there is offered at no additional charge.

We first decided to each get a slice of pizza from Luigi’s Pizza.  The available choices here are cheese, pepperoni, BBQ chicken, or vegetarian pizza.  All three of us selected pepperoni.  The slices are relatively small and generally kind of flavorless.  We though they were pretty typical of the fast food pizza found at most Disney theme parks: edible, but not much more.

One slice of pizza was enough for our son, but my wife and I were still a bit hungry and we each decided to get a bratwurst sandwich from Tow Mater Grill.  It has been long enough since I lived in Milwaukee that I now have pretty reasonable expectations when I order a bratwurst and this one wasn’t too bad.  I suspect that this is one of the better choices of the fast food offerings.  That window also offered burgers, chicken strips, chicken sandwiches, and hot dogs as well as fries to go with them.

The other fast food window in this group is Fillmore’s Favorites, which offers various sandwiches, wraps, and salads.  We didn’t try anything from this window, but it looked like a decent selection.  For the most part, I thought the variety of options at the fast food windows was pretty good.  Don’t expect the food quality to be nearly as good as what you can find in the major dining rooms, but it isn’t a bad option when looking for a quick meal or snack.

Coming up next: Ardastra Gardens and City Tour

Dream Inaugural Voyages Logo

After dinner, we had a little time before the evening’s theater presentation and we decided to explore the shops on deck 3, located near the Walt Disney Theater.  There are actually three shops in that area.  Mickey’s Mainsail is the main source for typical Disney souvenirs, including t-shirts, hats, plush, etc.  The selection includes a lot of merchandise with the Disney Dream logo as well as some more generic Disney Cruise Line items.  At least on our cruise, much of the Disney Dream specific merchandise still was identified as being for the inaugural voyages.  We bought t-shirts and hats here and I was also able to get a model of the Disney Dream to match one that I bought on our earlier cruise on the Magic (the one sold on the Wonder was identical to the one on the Magic). 

Disney Dream Souvenir Model

Across the way from Mickey’s Mainsail is Sea Treasures.  This store features some more upscale clothing as well as some higher-end merchandise like watches and jewelry.  This store also has a fairly large toy section.  Most of the toys are not cruise-specific, although they do have some Disney Cruise Line plush here.  My son found and purchased (with some of his saved up allowance) a plush cruise ship containing plush figures of Mickey and friends dressed in nautical outfits.  It is very cute, although he was a bit disappointed to discover that the characters are sewn in.

Disney Dream Hat

The third store in the area is Whitecaps, which is primarily a duty-free liquor store, although they do also stock a number of sundries, such as common over-the-counter medications, sunscreen and other similar essentials. 

All of the shops on the Dream are only opened while the ship is at sea, which allows them to sell all merchandise duty-free (tax-free).  Guests do have to declare all purchases at the end of the cruise and will be charged taxes if you exceed the $800/person duty-free limit.

"The Golden Mickeys"

Note: I didn’t get any photos in the theater or The District, which is why there aren’t any more pictures in this post.

Disney’s ships employ a full theatrical troupe that perform in elaborate productions in the Walt Disney Theater.  While this is not unique to Disney’s cruise line, the shows benefit quite a bit from Disney’s experience with live productions, including those for Broadway and the theme parks.  The result is a pretty consistently high quality to the shows presented on the Disney ships.  The shows also benefit greatly from Disney’s extensive library of stories, characters and songs, which provides strong source material for the shows to use.

On both of our previous cruises, the first night featured a "Welcome Aboard" variety show instead of a full-blown theatrical production.  On those previous cruises, we skipped that opening night show in favor of more general exploration of the ship’s features.  The schedule was different on the Dream, though.  The first night featured one of the major productions, "The Golden Mickeys", which we didn’t want to miss. 

Of the three shows featured on the Dream, "The Golden Mickeys" was the only one that I had seen on one of our previous cruises (on the Wonder), although the show had some significant revisions compared to that earlier version.  Before seeing the show on the Wonder, I had relatively low expectations as the premise of a mock awards show didn’t sound too promising.  I was very pleasantly surprised, though, by a show that featured elaborate, well-produced production numbers as well as a central storyline that has a surprising amount of heart.  Seeing the revised version of the show on the Dream only reinforced my positive reaction.

The central premise is that we are attending an awards presentation that would honor characters from Disney movies in several broadly-defined categories such as "Best Hero", "Best Romance", etc.  The premise is really just an excuse to re-create on the stage musical numbers from a number of Disney movies (in fact, this is really the case with all the shows presented on the cruise), but those production numbers are elaborately-staged and very entertaining. 

The show features a central character of a "stagehand" at the awards show who is drafted as host after being told that the ship’s captain couldn’t make it.  This adds a little meat to the story, allowing for a couple original songs as well as a touch of sentiment as the character works to overcome stage fright and a lack of self-confidence.  All of the current shows on the Dream (even "Villains Tonight") have a central "believe in yourself" moral.  While this does introduce a little bit of repetition, it is a reasonably effective and easy way to bring some emotional impact to this kind of show and it certainly fits pretty well with most Disney stories.

As I mentioned, there were a few changes to the show since the version that I saw on the Wonder.  One that I had expected was the replacement of an early segment that involved a recorded (but pretended to be live) video featuring Roy Disney, who had died since our previous cruise.  The segment is still included in the show, but it now features Disney CEO Bob Iger instead.  Since there is no longer a member of the Disney family in a prominent position in the company, Iger was probably the most logical choice, although he does seem kind of uncomfortable with this kind of thing.

Other major changes in the show included new segments featuring songs and characters from "The Princess and the Frog" and "Tangled", two Disney musicals that were released fairly recently.  I was actually momentarily surprised that they had managed to already work in material from "Tangled" so soon after the film’s release (recent enough that the movie was showing in the ship’s Buena Vista Theater), until it occurred to me that the ship was actually newer than the movie! 

One bit of advise that I do have is to try and get to the theater reasonably early.  The doors open 30 minutes before the show and the best seats in the center sections fill up pretty quickly.  We took long enough with our shopping that we got there about 20 minutes before the show and ended up a little more off to the side than we would have liked.  "The Golden Mickeys" also has a pre-show featuring one of the actors playing an entertainment reporter interviewing guests as they arrive at the show.  It is kind of silly, but it does provide some  entertainment while waiting for the show to start.  

Drinks in the District

Even though it was pretty late (well past his bedtime) when the show let out, our son really wanted to have a little bit of time to play at the kid’s club.  Other than the brief tour at the open house, he hadn’t yet had a chance to explore it on his own and he really was excited to do so.  My wife and I decided it wasn’t an unreasonable request and, to be honest, we liked the idea of having a little bit of time to visit The District, the ship’s adults-only nightclub area and unwind a bit with some adult beverages. 

Neither of us have ever really been that interested in noisy/crowded nightclubs, so we ended up at Skyline, a quiet and intimate bar.  This bar’s gimmick is the HD video "windows" behind the bar that show the skyline of a major city.  The specific city shown changes every 10 minutes or so.  This really is a cool decor and we actually got a bit of a kick out of identifying the cities.  The only one we weren’t able to recognize ourselves was Hong Kong, but the server was happy to quickly  help us identify it when we asked.

While there, I had a glass of white wine.  I enjoy an occasional glass of wine, but I admit that I’m not much of an expert and honestly don’t remember what type or vintage it was.  I do remember that I enjoyed it, though.  My wife wanted a strawberry margarita and this was an opportunity for us to see the kind of go-out-of-the-way service that is common on a cruise.  Skyline didn’t have the ingredients for her margarita, but the server immediately volunteered to go get her the drink from one of the other bars that did.  The area is fairly compact, so it really didn’t take that long either.

After about 30-45 minutes, we decided it was time to go get our son and then head back to the state-room for the night.  He actually paged us that he was ready to be picked up while we were headed over there, so the timing turned out to be right for all of us.  We were all definitely tired out after a very full day and ready to get rested up for the next one!

Coming up next: Nassau

Kids’ Club Registration and Open House

Oceaneer’s Lab

Registration and an open house was held at the kids’ clubs (Oceaneer’s Club and Oceaneer’s Lab) until 6pm on embarkation day. The time between the sail away and our 6pm dinner seemed like a perfect time for it. Our decision not to wait in the long line for kids’ club registration in the terminal was quickly validated as there was no line at all for registration at this time.

We had already filled out the registration form online, so the actual registration really only involved the issuing of the wrist band. Each registered child is issued a wrist band with his/her name on it and a small electronic chip that is scanned to confirm identity upon arrival or departure from the club. The wristband must be returned before midnight on the last night of the cruise or a charge is issued to the stateroom account to cover the cost of the electronic device.

The wristband is the kind that can only be removed by cutting it off, so the child does have to wear it through the entire cruise. They mentioned that it could easily be replaced if it did become necessary to remove it, such as if the child had trouble sleeping with it on. It is waterproof so it is no problem to keep it on while swimming or showering. We were a little worried that our son would be bothered about having to wear it the whole time, but it wasn’t an issue at all.

Interactive Play Floor

The kids’ clubs are drop-off, allowing kids and parents to have some independence. The entry/exit is strictly controlled and a lot of effort is made to ensure kids only leave with authorized adults. At registration, parents provide a list of authorized adults as well as a password. When picking up a kid, the attendants scan the Key to the World card to confirm identity and also ask for the password.

When their child is in the club, parents are asked to carry a Wave Phone for emergency contact. They will also send a text message if the child asks to be picked up. If the parents will be somewhere like Palo or one of the shows, they can request that the attendants contact only in an emergency.

Although they will allow parents to accompany their children into the club, it is generally discouraged outside of a few designated family play times. The embarkation day open house was one of those times. After registration, my wife and I went in with our son to do some exploration.. It was comforting to have the opportunity to get a feel for the facility before we would later leave our son there while we went off to do other things.

Monsters Inc. themed play area

The kids’ club is split into two different facilities, although both are connected and the kids are able to move freely between them. The Oceaneer’s Club is largely play-based, with several character-themed activity areas. The Oceaneer’s Lab is more activity-based, with a focus on high-interactivity. While both areas are officially targeted at ages 3-10, the Oceaneer’s Club tends to focus more on the younger end of that range while the Oceaneer’s Lab has a bit more to offer for older kids.

Andy’s Room

The Oceaneer’s Club features four primary areas that are themed to Toy Story (“Andy’s Room”), Tinkerbell and other fairies (“Pixie Hollow”), Finding Nemo (“Explorer Pod”), and Monsters, Inc. (“Monsters Academy” which, possibly not coincidentally, is also the title of the prequel film currently in production). These rooms all branch off from a central area that is dominated by a large, interactive digital floor, essentially a large touchscreen used for a variety of games and activities. The central room also features a stage area used for storytelling and other presentations.

The Oceaneer’s Lab is more activity-driven than theme-driven, with areas for playing video games, watching movies on a big-screen TV, using computers and participating in various arts and crafts projects. The main lobby area of the Lab includes another stage for storytelling as well as a big-screen monitor (103-inches, according to the Disney Cruise website) that can be used for showing movies or, periodically, for interactive sessions similar to the “Turtle Talk” attraction at the parks or the show in the Animator’s Palate restaurant.

This first visit was pretty time limited due to our upcoming dinner, but we did get a good look at the area and it definitely whetted our son’s appetite for more extended time there. In fact, he was pretty much pushing us to promise that we would let him go back there for a little while later that evening.

Dinner at Enchanted Garden

Enchanted Garden

Traditionally, dinner on a cruise ship is a pretty big deal. Meals are typically multiple-course extravaganzas, presented with personalized service and a fair helping of panache. The evening meal also typically takes about 2 hours or so, meaning that a certain amount of patience is also needed. Disney added an additional element of variety by including three main dining rooms on each of their ships and having the guests rotate through them.

The first night’s dinner on a cruise ship has a bit of a getting-acquainted element to it. Every night, guests are seated with the same tablemates and served by the same primary and assistant servers. Most of the tables in the dining rooms seat six or more people, so smaller groups will typically be seated with other guests. On this trip, we were seated at a table for eight along with an extended family of five.

Enchanted Garden

The dinner menu is divided into four courses: starters, soups/saladx, entrees, and desserts. They are very flexible about what you can order. If you want to skip a course or have two starters instead of a soup or salad, it isn’t a problem. Typically, they will even accommodate if you want two entrees. One of the best parts of a cruise is that they really do try hard to meet individual tastes and preferences.  My wife is not an overly adventurous eater (and doesn’t like any kind of seafood) and often asked for customizations or even choices not on the menu.  This never really proved to be a major problem.

I started with lobster ravioli, which was very tasty and contained a very generous amount of lobster meat.  I didn’t get a soup or salad that evening, a smart choice as the ravioli was pretty substantial.  My wife had a tossed salad and my son had soup.  He is a big soup eater, something that had even become a bit of a running joke on our previous cruise.  I can’t recall what the soup was that evening, but I remember that he did seem to enjoy it.

Kid’s Macaroni and Cheese

For my entree, I selected a roasted pork tenderloin, which was very good.  I really enjoy a good pork steak and it something that I don’t get very often, which made it a fairly easy choice.  My wife selected the grilled NY strip steak while my son had macaroni and cheese.  The kids’ meal macaroni and cheese had a particularly nice presentation, with the pasta served inside of a tortilla shell with a side-order of french fries.  The assistant waiter added ketchup to the plate in the familiar Mickey-head pattern.  My son’s only slight complaint was that the portion was a bit small, but they had no problem bringing him a second helping upon request.

My choice for dessert was a bananas foster sundae, which featured vanilla ice cream with rum-glazed bananas and caramel sauce.  It was really good and most certainly not on my diet!  The children’s menu offered the Mickey Mouse shaped ice cream bars like you find in the theme park and they had no objection to adults ordering them as well.  Both my wife and son went with those and we were pleased that the presentation was pretty nice.  Instead of just serving them in the wrapper, they were placed on plates and some additional chocolate sauce was drizzled over the top of them.

One problem that we encountered at dinner was that the drinking glasses had somewhat rounded bottoms while the tablecloth was fairly plush.  My son’s water wasn’t served in a more kid-friendly cup (although they had them) and he ended up spilling all over the table at one point.  This actually is really more than just a problem with not being kid-friendly as I actually spilled my iced tea at lunch a couple days later.  They should probably either re-think the type of glasses they use or at least provide coasters of some sort.

Another complaint we had was that Enchanted Garden is simply a bit too large for the theming to fully be experienced by all guests.  The show element of the restaurant is that the decor is supposed to change from daytime to night over the course of the meal.  This is mainly done through projections and lighting in faux windows located in the center back of the restaurant.  Our table was close to the front and on the far side, so I can’t say we really noticed that transition much.  Our table was also right next to a port hole, which caused real outside lighting to overwhelm the themed lighting.

To be clear, the meal, the restaurant and the overall experience were still very positive.  These minor problems just made it a bit less impressive than what we had experienced on previous cruises, something that pretty much remained true throughout the rest of the dinners on this cruise.

Coming Up Next: Shopping, “The Golden Mickeys” and The District

Night-time view of the AquaDuck.  Somehow, I never took any daylight photos.

One useful tip that I picked up while researching for the trip was to pack swim clothes in a carry-on as the pools tend to be pretty uncrowded during embarkation afternoon. Checked luggage can arrive any time up to around 6pm (our bags arrived one at a time over several hours), so having swimming items in carry-ons is a necessity to take advantage of those relatively sparse crowds.

The Dream has three swimming pools: the Mickey pool for smaller children, the Donald pool for families and the adults-only Quiet Cove Pool. None of the pools are particularly deep, with the Mickey pool maxing out at 2 feet, the Donald pool at 4 feet and the Quiet Cove pool at 4 feet. Unusual for a cruise ship, the pools on the Dream (like the pools on the other Disney ships) use chlorinated fresh water instead of sea water.

One of the most talked about new features of the Dream is the AquaDuck, a 765-foot tube-style water slide that starts on deck 12 and twists and turns around the upper decks of the ship, including a section that extends over the side of the ship. Guests ride on oversized inflatable rafts which each hold one or two people. It is billed by Disney as a “water coaster” and does have a roller-coaster like feel.

Night-time close up of one of the tubes. The ride was closed when these were taken.

I was excited to ride the AquaDuck, but my son, who is not yet a strong swimmer, wasn’t feeling ready for it. My wife also wanted me to try it first so I could describe it to her in order to help her guess whether or not it would aggravate her back condition. Therefore, I left them in the Mickey pool and headed over to queue for the ride.

The wait time was posted as about 30 minutes, which was pretty much the shortest posted wait that I saw during our cruise. I found that estimate to be pretty much exactly right. A large part of the queue is outdoors and mostly un-shaded, so make sure to wear sunscreen. I’d also strongly recommend getting some water shoes of some sort. I didn’t think to do that and found that the surface was uncomfortably hot on my bare feet during parts of the queue.

The last 10 minutes or so of the wait is an indoor area leading up to the loading platform. This indoor area has some cute cartoons on the wall featuring Donald Duck, Hewey, Dewey & Louie, and Uncle Scrooge. These provide a lightweight story that gives the ride a bit of theming. The layout of the cartoons was a bit strange, though, in that I found myself essentially following the story backwards.

The rafts are brought up from the ride exit to the loading area using a mechanical conveyer system. A ride operator transfers the rafts from that conveyer to the slide entry way and then helps the passengers get on board. The entry way to the slide also uses a conveyer belt, activated manually by the ride operator, to launch the raft into the slide itself.

When I first saw the oversized rafts and the seating, I actually wondered if the rider even would get very wet on the slide. Very shortly into the ride, I got my answer when I went down the first drop and a wave of water gushed over me. This is repeated several times over the course of the ride. The ride is a lot of fun, although it doesn’t give quite as much of a sense of speed as I had been expecting on a slide of that length. The view from the ride is pretty spectacular at times, although you are going too fast to appreciate it for long. The ride is quite smooth. My wife didn’t opt to ride it that afternoon, but did ride later in the week and she said it was no problem for her.

After my ride, I re-joined my family at the Mickey pool for a while. One nice thing about the design of the pools and the overall environment of the cruise ship, was that we were able to give my son a bit more freedom than we have in the past. While I was on the ride, my wife had even felt comfortable with briefly leaving my son at the pool while she went to the restroom. On another visit to the pools later in the trip, we all found ourselves scattering to different parts of the pool areas, with only occasional check-ins to make sure we always knew where our son was.

Safety Drill

After we finished at the pools, we got back to the stateroom with enough time for each of us to shower and change clothes before it was time for the mandatory safety drill. Every cruise ship is legally required to have a drill shortly before departure to make sure that all the passengers are aware of the emergency procedures and the location of their designated gathering location.

The emergency gathering location is assigned based on the location of the stateroom and ours was inside of the Buena Vista Theater, the ship’s movie theater located on deck 5. This was kind of a nice location for it as it is indoors and we could sit in comfortable theater seats during the drill. I joked to my wife that they should have set the mood appropriately by showing Titanic or The Poseidon Adventure in the theater during the drill.

In the past, guests were required to don life vests before leaving the stateroom for the drill, but this is no longer required. As guests arrived at the theater, crew members did their best to check off each stateroom number. Guests were arriving too quickly for the crew members to keep up very well, though, so eventually they took to the stage and called out the stateroom numbers that had not yet been checked off.

The crew members also gave a short talk on how the emergency procedures worked and also demonstrated how to properly don and use a life vest. All of this took about 20 minutes or so at the most, after which an announcement was made that the drill was over and everyone was free to resume the fun.

Sail Away Party and Departure

Sail Away Party

After the safety drill, we headed to the upper deck for the sail away party and to watch the ship’s departure. The sail away party is basically a dance party where they play fairly current, family-friendly pop music while Disney characters dance around on a stage. We watched for a few minutes and actually found that wasn’t of much interest to us, so we instead got some drinks from the soft drink station and then found a table with an ocean view and sat down to watch the departure.

We could still hear the sail away party just fine from where we were, including a short welcome speech by the ship’s captain that was then followed by a countdown to the ship’s departure time. When the countdown reached zero, the ship’s horn played “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”. The horn on the Disney Dream plays a number of different Disney tunes, although this one and “It’s a Small World” were the only two that we heard on our trip.

Obviously, the ship was supposed to pull away from the port at the end of the countdown, but it didn’t actually happen.  We could see that a Carnival Cruise Line ship was making its way out of the port at that same time and my guess is that ship was delayed for some reason and we couldn’t pull out until after it had cleared the area. We didn’t actually start moving until about 15 minutes or so after the scheduled departure time (and the end of the countdown).

It actually took a minute or two for us to realize the ship was moving as we really couldn’t feel the motion at all. On both of our previous cruises, the rocking of the ship was very noticeable pretty much whenever it was in motion. Fortunately, none of us are prone to seasickness, but it did take a bit of time to find our sea legs on those trips. On the Dream, I never really felt the motion at all. I don’t know if this was a result of the larger ship or if it was due to the time of year, but the entire cruise was exceptionally smooth.

Coming Up Next: Kids’ Clubs and Dinner

Lunch at Enchanted Garden

A number of crew members were stationed in the lobby with the task of intercepting and guiding embarking passengers. Our helpful crew member made sure we knew that our stateroom would be ready at 1:30 and that lunch was available at either Enchanted Garden on deck 2 or Cabanas on deck 10. She recommended Enchanted Garden since it only required walking down 1 flight of stairs and there were long lines for the elevators. We debated briefly as we were also scheduled for dinner at Enchanted Garden that night, but we ended up taking her advice.

The decor of Enchanted Garden is pretty much as the name implies. It is a brightly lit, elegant dining room with lots of greenery. During the dinner hour, there is a show element where the decor shifts from day to night during the meal, but this isn’t done at lunch. Like all of the restaurants on the Dream, the tables are positioned pretty close together, making for kind of a crowded look. Fortunately, the combination of bright lighting and color schemes as well as reasonably high ceilings keep the restaurant from feeling claustrophobic.

Upon entering the very uncrowded restaurant, we were immediately greeted by one of several crew members waiting by the entrance who escorted us to a table close to the buffet. A waiter took our drink orders and then we headed to the buffet to get our food. Since we had all of our carry-on bags with us (including laptop computers), we were glad to have a table very close to the buffet as this allowed us all to go get our food without requiring that someone stay behind to watch the bags.

The buffet included a carving station with roast beef as well as some of the typical side dishes to go with it. They also had salads & fruit, cold cuts and cheeses, a number of different varieties of bread, peel & eat shrimp, and some pasta and fish dishes. A well-stocked dessert area offered lots of different selections of various baked goods (cakes, cookies, etc.) and a freezer with quite a few different flavors of premium-quality ice cream.

The food all seemed very fresh and we enjoyed everything we had. The servers were very attentive and quick with drink refills. From what I’ve heard, the food selection is pretty much the same at Cabanas, but with a self-service drink station. I felt having servers take care of drinks was preferable, particularly for the first meal of the cruise. One of the servers even took a couple minutes to fold a napkin into a hat, which greatly amused my son.

Making Palo Brunch Reservations

One of the highlights of our previous cruises was the brunch offered on days at sea at Palo, the adults-only restaurant. A limited number of reservations are available on-line, but they were already full (probably due to earlier booking dates for concierge and high-level Castaway Club guests) by the time we were able to book. Through research, I had learned that a large percentage of reservations are held back for guests booking on board. They started offering these reservations at the podium outside of the restaurant, starting at 1pm on embarkation day. It was shortly after 1pm when I finished eating lunch, so we decided that I would head up to Palo to try and make a reservation and then meet my wife and son back at the stateroom at 1:30, the time the staterooms were scheduled to be available.

My journey to the restaurant was my first experience with how large the ship is and how difficult it sometimes was to get from one place to another. Enchanted Garden is located midship on deck 2 while Palo is located far aft on deck 12. I first headed to the midship elevators, which I discovered only go as high as deck 11. I later learned that 4 of the 6 elevators did go all the way up to deck 12, but I got into one of the two that doesn’t. I’m not sure if there were signs up clarifying this, but I didn’t notice any. Once I got up to deck 11, I had some difficulty finding the aft elevators and stairs. It turns out that they are, rather confusingly, actually inside of Cabanas. I had to ask a crew member for directions before I finally figured that out. After I found the stairs, I walked up one deck and easily found Palo right there.

I was momentarily unsure if I was in the right place as there was no line at the podium, even though it was around 1:15 or so by this time. There was a crew member there, though, and she quickly confirmed that she was able to make reservations. With a quick search in the computer, she found that they did still have availability for the brunch and that I pretty much had my choice of times. I booked a reservation for 10am on Wednesday (scheduled to be our day at sea) and quickly texted my wife with the news of my success. Due to an itinerary change that I’ll explain in more detail in a later installment of the trip report, we didn’t actually get to use the reservation. Still, for those that may be frustrated by inability to book the brunch on-line, it is useful to know that booking it on-board can be very easy.

Stateroom

After our Palo reservation was in place, I headed down to deck 7, where our stateroom was located. It was around 1:25 when I got there and they still had the stateroom corridors blocked off and quite a few guests had gathered in the elevator/stairwell area waiting for the staterooms to be opened up. Very shortly after 1:30, the stateroom host opened up access and the guests were able to proceed to the rooms. I was a bit surprised to find my wife and son already in the room when I got there. My wife has a minor disability and uses a cane. When the stateroom host saw her, he asked for the room number and let her go ahead to the room early, since he knew it was ready. I thought that was a nice bit of good customer service.

Our stateroom was number 7088, classified as a "Deluxe Family Oceanview Stateroom with Veranda". The room is located mid-ship, a relatively short distance from the elevators. Family staterooms are a bit larger than regular staterooms: 299 square feet including the veranda versus 246 square feet for a standard veranda room. The room features a pull-out sofa-bed and a wall and or ceiling pull out bed, in addition to the standard queen sized bed. A thick curtain separates the regular queen bed from the living room area, where the sofa and pull-down beds are located. The room has a split bathroom, with a toilet and sink in a separate room from the shower and (very tiny) bathtub.

Queen-sized bed

From what I’ve seen, the additional space is really the only major difference between a family stateroom and a standard ocean view room. Because staterooms on a cruise ship tend to be small, it was nice having the bit of extra space, although I’m not sure I would be likely to pay the extra for the family stateroom on future cruises. The extra space wasn’t really all that important, considering that we are only a family of 3 and I was under the mistaken impression that some of the other amenities, such as the privacy curtain, were exclusive to this type of room. The value of the extra space is also reduced on the Dream due to very good use of space, including the bed being raised enough to allow storage of luggage underneath.

Living-room area and verandah

The staterooms on the Dream include a few high tech elements that are somewhat upgraded from what was previously offered on the Magic and Wonder. The way you open the door is the first upgrade that a guest is likely to encounter. Unlike the usual key slot found on the other ships (and most hotels), the door has a flat pad above the door knob and all you have to do is hold the Key to the World card (stateroom key) in front of it to unlock. This is particularly nice for young kids as there is no need to orient the card in a specific direction.

A somewhat controversial new feature of the staterooms is their energy saver power system. When you first enter the room, you place your Key to the World card into a slot next to the door, which then activates all the room’s power systems. This includes the lights, the air conditioning, and all of the electric outlets. The slot actually will accept any card with a magnetic stripe, so we sometimes would use other cards (such as grocery store reward cards) in order to reduce the likelihood of accidentally forgetting a Key to the World card when leaving the room. The stateroom hosts are trained to remove any cards left in the slot when the guests aren’t in the room, though. I think this system makes some sense, but I do think they should have at least one outlet remain always powered for guests that want to recharge cameras or other electronic devices while away from the room. I also worry that the rooms might get awfully warm during the summer months with the air conditioning off while the guests are away.

Desk area and TV

A really nice improvement on the Dream that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention is the substantial upgrade to the television system. The TVs are modern, 22-inch flat screen HDTVs and they are now connected with a video-on-demand system in addition to the somewhat limited selection of mostly Disney-owned live channels. The video-on-demand system provides access to a pretty wide variety of Disney movies, both animated and live action. They even offered a small selection of very recent non-Disney movies. I specifically noticed that the most recent "Harry Potter" film was one of the choices. Informational material such as the shore excursion and port shopping presentations and the disembarkation lecture are also available for viewing on-demand.

It is not a pay-per-view system as all of the video-on-demand content is available at no extra charge. Once you start watching a program, you can resume playback at any time for a period of 48 hours after you start it. The 48 hour limit did seem a bit weird since this is not a pay-per-view system, but it probably is either a result of licensing restrictions or Disney simply adapted standard hotel pay-per-view software and didn’t have an easy way to remove that restriction. We found this system to be a great way to keep our son entertained while my wife and I were showering or getting dressed or during a few brief occasions where we had some down time in the room before heading off to scheduled events.

A cool piece of artwork in the stateroom

Another relatively new feature (also recently added to the other ships) is the inclusion of a couple cell phones for the guests’ use throughout the cruise. These Wave Phones (as Disney calls them) provide basic voice and text messaging. They can call any other Wave Phone or the stateroom phones and can text with each other. They are a nice convenience to have on the cruise, although we didn’t really use them much. Each stateroom has two Wave Phones, but only one charger, which means you have to do a bit of scheduling to keep them charged. The power saving system also means you can’t charge the phones when you aren’t in the room.

Coming Up Next: Swimming/AquaDuck, Safety Drill, & Sail-away

Observation deck at the Disney Cruise Line Terminal

I was a bit nervous about the logistics surrounding embarkation on the Disney Dream.   The Disney Cruise Line had traditionally been known for a very smooth embarkation process at Port Canaveral, but the terminal was designed for the substantially smaller Disney Magic and Disney Wonder and there had been quite a few reports of problems handling the larger crowds arriving for the Dream.

For our previous cruises, we had arrived at the terminal via Walt Disney World transportation, which got us there late enough that we immediately went on board after checking in.  This time, we had rented a car and planned to arrive at the terminal as early as possible, so I wasn’t really sure how it would work.  Fortunately, we found that the embarkation process went very smoothly and with a minimum of hassle.

On Sunday morning, we managed to wake up fairly early and it didn’t take too long to get showers and pack everything up.  We had a light breakfast at the hotel’s breakfast buffet.  Holiday Inn Express has pretty much standardized their included breakfasts from location to location, meaning that the quality and selection is predictable and fairly decent.  I particularly like their cinnamon rolls, which are served warm and fresh.  My only real complaint about breakfast was that they didn’t have enough seating in the breakfast area, something else that is unfortunately fairly standard to the chain.  We had to squeeze all three of us around a table for two, but we were able to manage.

Rental Car Return

I was very unsure about was whether it would be better to drop my family and our luggage off at the port and then go to return the rental car by myself or for us all to just take the shuttle.  We finally decided that the logistics would simply be easier if we all took the shuttle, so we headed straight to the rental car return.

We found Budget’s return process at the Port Canaveral office to be chaotic and a bit confusing.  We initially expected someone to come out to meet us to check in the car, as is typical at airport returns, so we wasted a few minutes waiting for that.  Once we realized that wasn’t the process there, I noted that the paperwork had instructions for doing an express check-out by filling out a form and dropping it in a drop box.

When I went inside, there was no drop box in sight.  This left no choice but to get into the line, which was very long due to the large number of people returning from cruise ships that had arrived in port that morning.   Fortunately, we didn’t wait too long before an employee walked the line offering to collect express check-out forms.  While the process wasn’t exceptionally difficult, they definitely should put in a drop box and also place some signs outside giving instructions for returns.

The wait for a shuttle bus was, fortunately, short and we were soon on our way to the Disney Cruise Line terminal!

Arrival and Check-In

Disney Dream from the rental car shuttle

We arrived shortly before 10:30am, which was the time that the terminal opened.  The shuttle pulled up at a drop-off spot outside the terminal and a cruise line porter quickly collected our checked luggage.  We then joined the line of people waiting to go in, which ended pretty much right where we had been dropped off.

It took us about 20 minutes to make it up to a security gate, where they checked our cruise documents and IDs before directing us into the terminal.  Inside the terminal, we then passed through airport-style metal detectors and sent our carry-on bags through an x-ray machine.  This process was very quick and efficient and we were soon headed up the escalators to the main terminal area.  We then were asked to quickly sign a form stating that nobody in our family had been sick in the last 24-hours and then we were directed to the check-in line.

Disney Cruise Line Terminal

Guests arriving at the terminal are given cards assigning them to numbered boarding groups and one of our bigger uncertainties was what number we were likely to get.  I knew that in the past these were always assigned in order of arrival, but a few months ago Disney had added the selection of a terminal arrival time to the online check-in process.  This change was made after I had already completed our on-line check-in and I wasn’t aware of the change until a few days after it was added.  When I found out and went to update our check-in, the earliest arrival time available was noon.

At least for our cruise, they didn’t appear to be paying any attention to the selected arrival time.  Instead, they simply were handing out the boarding group cards on a first come, first served basis.  As we entered the check-in line, we were given a card that gave us group 8.  I already knew that the group numbers typically went into the upper 20s or higher, so this was clearly a good number!

In addition to the boarding number, we were also given a sheet with basic information such as where lunch would be available on the ship and general scheduling information about the first part of the day.  This was essentially a preliminary version of the Personal Navigator that is left in the stateroom, providing a detailed listing of each day’s activities.

One thing that Disney Cruise Line is well known for is the speed and efficiency of their check-in process.  One perk of being a return cruiser is the use of a separate check-in line, which typically moves faster due to the guests all being experienced.  The use of their on-line check-in system (which can be filled out starting 90 days before the cruise) really minimizes the amount you have to do at the terminal.  Basically, I just had to hand them the printed out signature form from the on-line check-in as well as all of our passports.  After checking these, the clerk quickly handed us our Key to the World cards (which are the stateroom key and on-board charge card) and sent us on our way.

Waiting to Board

It was about 30-45 minutes from our arrival on the shuttle bus until we had completed our check-in.  At that point, we had about an hour or so until the expected start of boarding around noon.  We had arrived fairly late for our previous cruises, allowing us to board immediately after checking in.  Thus, this was the first time we spent an extended time in the terminal.

Entry Portal to the ship’s gangway

Disney’s terminal is very nicely designed, with quite a few Disney touches.  The entry way to the ship is through a large Mickey-shaped arch that dominates the back left part of the terminal.  The center of the terminal features a large, cut out (so the interior is visible) model of the Disney Magic, which my son really enjoyed examining.  In the back of the terminal there is an outdoor observation deck where you can get a good close up look at the ship.

Close-up view of the ship from the terminal observation deck

The main waiting area is on the right side, including a partitioned area reserved for concierge guests and members of the highest level of the Castaway Club return cruiser loyalty club.  The waiting area is unfortunately kind of small, with way too few benches, a problem exasperated by the much larger capacity of the Dream compared to the Magic and Wonder.  We were fortunately able to grab some bench space, but at least one of us always had to stay put to hang on to it.  As it got closer to boarding time, there were people taking up pretty much every open bit of floor space.  The one set of restrooms in the terminal are also a bit small for the size of the crowd.

Another big crowd in the terminal is the line for the children’s activity registration desk, which is located in the back right.  By the time we had finished checking in, the line for that already snaked pretty much all the way across the terminal.  I had done enough research ahead of time to know that it actually made no sense to stand in that line as you could do the same registration later in the day on-board the ship with little to no wait.  We found that to be completely accurate.

They do provide a bit of entertainment for those waiting.  Several video screens in the waiting area show Disney movies.  While we were waiting, they were showing one of the direct-to-video Tinkerbell movies, which didn’t seem like the best choice.  They probably really should try to stick with movies that have a broader appeal.

Photo with Mickey in the terminal

In front of the model of the Magic, they had Mickey or Minnie, in their cruise line outfits, alternating for photo sessions with guests.  The line  wasn’t very long (and it wasn’t like we had anything better to do!) so it was pretty nice being able to get a picture with Mickey right at the beginning of the cruise.  It certainly wasn’t the only opportunity we had to see Mickey, but it was a great way to help get us (particularly my son) really into the Disney mood.

Boarding

About 10 minutes before noon, they had a short ceremony where a chosen family (the first in line that morning?) officially opened the gates to the ship. They then started calling the group numbers, roughly 5-10 minutes apart. Our group was finally called around 12:20 or so and we were finally headed on-board!

On cruises, it is very typical that there are opportunities to get formal or informal photos taken all over the place. One tradition is to have a fairly formal embarkation photo taken right before you get on board. At least on the Disney cruises, this isn’t a very interesting photo as they take it in front of a pretty non-distinctive, uninteresting backdrop. On our previous cruises, I remember that we got pretty irritated having to wait for this photo that we didn’t really want before we could go on board. This time, we were very glad to see that they had set up a clearly marked “no photo” line that let us quickly head right onto the ship.

Disney Dream Lobby

The entry ramp from the Terminal goes directly into the ship’s very ornate, art deco main lobby on deck 3. They make boarding a bit of a fun show by having a crew member announce your family’s name over a loudspeaker as all the other crew members in the area applaud wildly. The lobby area is absolutely gorgeous, with its grand spiral staircase and a huge ornate chandelier overhead. I’d seen many pictures of it, but they honestly don’t do it justice.

Coming Up Next: Lunch, Making Palo Reservations, and Stateroom

For our honeymoon in 2000, my wife and I went on a 7-night Caribbean cruise on the Disney Magic cruise ship.  In 2007, my extended family (including my wife, son, and my parents and sister) took a 4-night Bahamas cruise on the Disney Wonder.   Both trips were great fun and made us into big fans of the Disney Cruise Line.

When Disney announced that the Disney Dream, the first of  two new, larger and more advanced ships, would debut in 2011, we booked another 4-night cruise as soon as they became available.  While the maiden voyage was in late January, my son’s school schedule meant that the April 17th sail date, during his spring break, was our first opportunity.  I was able to book a family stateroom with verandah on deck 7, using points from our Disney Vacation Club timeshare to cover the cost.  The itinerary was the same as our 2007 cruise, with stops at Nassau and Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island, plus one day at sea.  The extended family was unfortunately unable to join us this time, so it was just my wife, 7-year-old son and me.

Flight

Due to the travel time (plus the 3-hour time change) from our home in Southern California to Port Canaveral in Florida, it was necessary for us to fly in the day before the cruise.  Since we have family in the Orlando area, we generally do annual trips out there.  For the last several years, we have been traveling on Delta, which has conveniently scheduled direct flights from LAX to Orlando International.  This year, we also had enough frequent flier points to get one of the tickets for free, reducing the cost by quite a bit.

Our experience with Delta wasn’t really the best this time and I expect that I’ll be looking closely at alternatives for the next trip.  The biggest issue was that they lost all of our luggage on the flight home and then took nearly 24-hours to get it to us.  I’m just thankful that this happened on the return flight.  It could have been a massive problem had they lost it on the flight to Florida instead.

Delta has also been slow to upgrade their planes to the latest conveniences.  Neither the flight to Florida or the flight home offered seat-back entertainment systems or, for that matter, any in-flight entertainment at all.  There wasn’t even a movie.  While the planes did have wi-fi Internet connectivity available, the seats are so closely spaced that we didn’t even bother to try using our laptops in.  They also don’t offer any power at the seats for charging batteries.  These types of improvements are pretty much standard on newer airlines like Virgin America and Jet Blue.

Finally, Delta just isn’t all that competitive in price anymore.  In the past, I have often found them to be the cheapest choice or only marginally more expensive than non-direct flights on other airlines.  Delta’s prices have gotten higher, plus they now charge extra for all checked luggage and any food items more substantial than peanuts or pretzels.  When I did price comparisons for this trip, I found that even with the one frequent flier reward ticket, the airfare for the three of us was only slightly cheaper than some of the more bargain priced airlines, particularly Southwest.

The night before our 2007 cruise, we stayed at a Walt Disney World resort (Saratoga Springs) and then took Disney transportation to the port.  We found that to be a somewhat frustrating experience, as the bus didn’t get us to the port until around 2:30 in the afternoon.  My parents and sister had driven themselves to the port, which resulted in us getting phone messages that they were having a leisurely lunch on the ship while we were still sitting in front of the hotel waiting for the bus.  We hated losing out on those first couple hours when we could have been onboard the ship.

Rental Car

Because of that experience, this time we decided book a hotel room near the port, specifically at the Holiday Inn Express in Cocoa Beach.  For transportation from the airport, we booked a rental car from Budget.  Florida law does not allow rental car companies to charge extra to return the car at a different location, so it was no problem to book the car for just one night and return it at the location near the port.  Budget also offered a free shuttle from the return location to the ships.

A nice feature of the Orlando International Airport is that most of the major rental car companies, Budget included, have their cars in a garage adjacent to the terminal instead of requiring shuttles to a remote lot.  This made the process of getting the car relatively quick and easy.  It also helped that they just weren’t that busy at the time, so we didn’t have to wait at all.

We did have some brief confusion because I had forgotten that I had used their “Fastbreak” service that allows pre-payment online.  With that service, you don’t go to the counter in the terminal, but instead the paperwork is waiting at the booth out by the cars.  Fortunately, there was no line at the counter, so it only took an extra moment or two for them to direct us to the right place.  I couldn’t really blame them for this as they did have a sign up telling “Fastbreak” customers to go to the garage.  I had just forgotten that I had used that service.

One strange thing was that the agent tried to talk me out of our reserved GPS rental, arguing that the cruise port was easy to find.  I still wanted it since we would be making a couple other stops and I didn’t mind the extra $10 for the 1-day rental.  Another problem with the GPS was that there is apparently some variation in the models they provide. Online, they offer a downloadable program that lets you write destination addresses to an SD card, which can then be used in the rental unit. I had done this, but found that the GPS we got at the rental place didn’t have an SD card slot.  It wasn’t a huge hassle looking up the addresses and manually entering them, but it was a bit frustrating.

The biggest problem was the car itself.  My experience has been that most rental car agencies direct you to where the cars of the type you booked are located and then let you pick one out.  Budget actually assigned us a specific car, so we didn’t really have any choice.  The specific type of car, a mid-sized Nissan, wasn’t really a problem for us, though.  The problem was that the car had a transmission problem of some sort, which didn’t become evident until after we had left the parking garage and started accelerating up to normal street speeds.

When accelerating, the engine was extremely noisy and there was substantial, noticeable hesitation as it would switch gears.  We really should have taken the car back and asked for a different one, but I didn’t really recognize that there was a problem until we were already on the way out of the airport and I wasn’t entirely sure how to find our way back.  Since it was only an overnight rental, we ended up putting up with the problem, praying that the car wasn’t going to just give out and strand us somewhere.  Luckily, we made it to Port Canaveral with the problem only really amounting to an irritation.

Dinner at Steak ‘n Shake

Our flight arrived in Florida around 6pm Eastern Time.  For $5 each, Delta offers some pretty decent snack boxes containing some cheese, crackers, salami, dried fruit, and cookies.  I knew from our last couple trips that these would serve as a reasonably decent lunch, so we wouldn’t be overwhelmingly starved when the flight got in.  For this reason, I did an online search of restaurants in the area around the hotel in order to come up with dinner options.

In that search, I discovered that there is a Steak ‘n Shake restaurant only a couple miles away from the hotel.  This is a chain that doesn’t have any locations in California, but which we really enjoy visiting when in areas where it is available.  The chain has some sentimental meaning to my family as well.  It originated in my birth town of Normal, Illinois and was the site of my parents’ first date.

The restaurant is basically a diner-style, burgers and fries place, although with full table-service.  They bill their burgers as “steakburgers” and they do use a higher quality of beef than you would typically find at lower-end fast food restaurants.  As the name suggests they also have extremely good, hand-dipped milkshakes, offered in a pretty wide variety of flavors.  I had a mint Oreo shake which was delicious.

Mint Oreo Shake from Steak ‘n Shake

A few weeks before the trip, my wife and I both started diets with Weight Watchers.  We had originally thought we would start the diets after the vacation, but instead decided to go ahead and get a few weeks’ head start and then basically suspend them for the trip.  The dinner at Shake ‘n Shake was probably the official start of that suspension.  When I looked up the nutritional information for the milkshake on their website, I found that it was worth an extravagant 27 Weight Watchers points!

After seeing that, I didn’t even bother tracking for the rest of the week.  I still felt it was wise to have started the diet before the trip, though, as I did at least give some thought to my food choices and continued a few good habits I had established, such as ordering iced tea with meals instead of soda.  Even at Steak ‘n Shake, I ordered a salad with my burger instead of fries.  Between those habits and the very large amount of walking that I did on the trip, I essentially broke even where the diet was concerned, essentially picking up where I left off after I got home.

Hotel

When we finished with dinner, we headed over to the Holiday Inn Express to check in.  We have generally found Holiday Inn Express motels to be a fairly safe choice, with reasonably high consistency from location to location.  They frequently offer 2-room suites at a reasonably affordable price, which works really well for us since we all three sleep better when our son has a separate room.  Also, the motels always have an included breakfast buffet, which tends to be pretty good.

The Holiday Inn Express in Cocoa Beach is a reasonably new and up to date hotel.  We found it to be clean and well-maintained.  The room was a bit smaller than the 2-room suites we have stayed in at other Holiday Inn Express locations, but it was large enough for our needs and generally comfortable.  I honestly don’t really have much to say about the motel, other than to say it met our expectations and our needs well.  I don’t recall any problems during our visit.

My experience on trips to Florida has always been that the generally lengthy and tiring travel, plus the fact that I never sleep well the night before a trip, pretty much eliminates any significant adjustment time to the time zone change.  We were all able to get to sleep by around 10pm or so, despite the fact that was only 7pm at home.

Coming up in the next installment, I will start sharing our experiences on the cruise itself!

In this post, I’m going to start with a brief discussion of the Disney Dining plan and then provide a day-by-day overview.  I apologize that photos are a bit sparse in this report.  I’ve never really gotten into the habit of taking a lot of photos at restaurants, other than family photos at character meals or other themed locations.  In fact, even the pretty general photos (without my family) of the Sci-Fi Dine-In below are ones that I actually took several years ago.  If I had thought ahead of time of focusing my main trip report on the meals, I probably would have made more of an effort to get at least exterior photos of more of the restaurants.  I’ll try to think of this on my next trip.

Disney Dining Plan

During the last few trips, we have taken part in the Disney Dining Plan, which allows us to pre-pay a fixed per-day amount to cover the majority of our meals.  The plan provides credits for 1 counter service meal, 1 table service meal, and 1 snack item per person for each day of the trip.  The credits are pooled over the length of the trip (expiring at 11:59pm on the departure day), which does provide some flexibility for how they are used.

The dining plan has been somewhat controversial among Disney fans for some reasons that I do think have merit, particularly related to the increased difficulties getting into table service restaurants (at many locations, it is now pretty much mandatory to make reservations 6 months in advance) and it does also seem that some of the menus have been simplified somewhat since the dining plan began.  Overall, the program does work very well for our family and it does save us a considerable amount of money as we tend to order meals that would cost quite a bit more if we were paying directly.

While we still find the plan to be worthwhile, it is unfortunate that some changes were made that reduced the value a bit since it first began.  Originally, the table service meals included appetizer, entree, dessert, non-alcoholic beverage, and gratuity.  A couple years ago, the appetizer and gratuity were removed.  Including both the appetizer and dessert did make for a bit more food than we probably really wanted at some meals.  I do think it would be much better, though, if they would change the plan to offer a choice between the appetizer or a dessert instead of only providing the dessert.  There were a number of occasions where an appetizer (particularly soup or a salad) would definitely have been my preference over getting a dessert.

I’m definitely more torn on the elimination of the gratuity.  On the one hand, I admit that I did notice that service was sometimes a bit lackluster back when the tip was included and, thus, guaranteed.  On this trip, we didn’t really have any experiences where the service was less than good.  On the other hand, though, having to pay the gratuity separately for each table-service meal definitely takes away from the “pay it and forget it” aspect of the dining plan.  Since you calculate the tip based on the original menu prices, it does re-introduce a little bit of a tendency to want to look at the cost of each item ordered and a brings back a little bit of motivation for ordering the less expensive items.

I was also less than thrilled that an 18% gratuity was automatically added to our check at every location.  I’m not sure if that was because of the dining plan or because we had 6 people in our party, but it isn’t a policy that I like very much in either case.  At a few locations, the server did ask me first if I wanted to charge the gratuity to my room charge, but in most cases he/she just brought the charge slip without asking first or commenting.

My main reason for not really liking the automatic gratuity is that I prefer to be able to increase or decrease it a bit based on how the service was.  I also tend to think that 18% is a bit high for buffet meals, but the amount was not lowered at those locations.  I will note that, since the gratuity was charged automatically, I never added anything to it and I’m pretty sure I would have tipped a bit higher at a few locations had it been left up to me.

Day 1: New Year’s Day

We flew in to Orlando fairly late in the evening on New Year’s Eve and had dinner at my parents’ house that night.  Our first full day in the Orlando area was New Year’s Day and we opted to stay near my parent’s place in Clermont, heading over to Disney World on the second day.

During those first two nights, we stayed at the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Clermont, which includes a complimentary breakfast with the room.  The breakfast was served buffet-style in a lounge area next to the hotel’s lobby.  It was ok, but nothing particularly fancy.  It mainly included a selection of pastries, hot and cold cereal, bread for toast, a few kinds of fruit, and other typical continental breakfast choices.  They did have some microwavable, pre-wrapped breakfast sandwiches as well, but I didn’t try them.  I didn’t think the quality was up to what you find at a Holiday Inn Express, which typically have the best breakfasts of this kind, but it was certainly adequate.

Steak ‘n Shake

Lunch was at my parents’ house, but we decided to go out to a Steak ‘n Shake restaurant for dinner.  This is a great chain of diner-style burger restaurants that hasn’t yet made it out here to the western states.  These restaurants have always had a bit of a special meaning to my family.  The original one was located in Normal, Illinois, which is where I was born, and it is an often told story within our family that my parents’ first date was at a Steak ‘n Shake.  Since I’ve been old enough to remember, I’ve never actually lived in a town with a Steak ‘n Shake, so visits there are a kind of special treat when the opportunity arises.

The menu is a pretty straightforward burgers and fries selection, but the food quality tends to be extremely high.  The “steak” in the name of the restaurant refers to the generally high-grade of ground beef that they use to make their burgers and I do think that is reflected in how they taste.  As the name suggests, they also offer a good selection of flavors of real ice cream milkshakes as well.  I was a little disappointed when they had run out of the peppermint milkshakes that they were advertising on the placemats, but I was able to get a mint chocolate chip one that was a pretty darned good substitute.

While the food was great, we were disappointed by the service.  While the waitress was friendly enough, our orders were all exceptionally slow in coming.  We were particularly surprised at how long it took for the shakes to arrive, with them coming after the food.  My sister had a bit of a sore throat from a cold and had asked the waitress to expedite her shake, so she was more than a bit irritated when her shake not only took a while, but actually came about 5 minutes or so after the rest of our shakes were brought!  My parents mentioned that, unfortunately, this slow service is a bit typical of the Clermont location.

Day 2:  First day at WDW!

Chef Mickey’s

We headed over to Walt Disney World fairly early on the 2nd to check into Bay Lake Tower for the rest of our visit.  We have generally found that a character meal or some highly-themed restaurant usually is a great way for us to get into the right mood at the start of our visit, so I had made a reservation for noon at Chef Mickey’s in the Contemporary.

When I made the reservation, I actually thought I was scheduling lunch.  I later learned that Chef Mickey actually doesn’t serve lunch at all and that they simply were scheduling breakfast reservations up until 1pm that day.   We typically like breakfast buffets anyway and have never been all that picky about what time we eat that kind of food.  In fact, we probably have traditional breakfast food (such as pancakes or bacon & eggs) for dinner more often than we do in the morning.

By the time we got to the hotel and finished getting checked in, it was still only a little before 11.  I decided to try asking at the podium to see if they could seat us earlier than our reservation and learned that they actually weren’t that busy and could take us right away.  This would work out well and let us get to the park a bit earlier.  We were also hungry, so we didn’t really want to wait longer anyway.

Before we were seated, we were all guided over to a photography station for a family photo.  This has become a standard part of all the character meals at Disney World (and at Disneyland as well) now.  The photo isn’t on their Photopass system, though.  Instead, someone comes around to your table during your meal trying to sell you a package of printed photos for $30.  One thing we found strange at Chef Mickey’s was that the photo was with a plywood cut-out of Mickey Mouse rather than with the costumed character.

We didn’t purchase any of the photo packages on the trip, even though a couple of the photos were kind of cute.  The price just seemed overly high for what you got, particularly since it didn’t include any digital copy of the photo.  The last couple times we did character meals at Disneyland, I remember that the attendants made a point to specifically offer to also take pictures using our own cameras during these photo sessions.  No such offer was made at any of the Disney World meals and I really didn’t get a vibe that such a request would be welcome.

The meal at Chef Mickey’s was a pretty typical breakfast buffet with the usual selection of eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, pancakes, waffles, French toast, fruit, pastries, etc.  The food was generally good, although nothing overly special.  One odd thing we noticed at this meal as well as the other breakfasts we attended on this trip was that their bacon seemed to be oddly kind of lacking in flavor.  I think my favorite item on this buffet was a potato dish that was mixed with cheese and bacon. The pancakes and French toast were prepared fresh at a grill station, which was nice.  Unlike at Disneyland, the breakfast buffets in Florida usually don’t have omelet stations (I think the ones at the Grand Floridian and the Beach Club are the exceptions), so I’m typically not fond of the eggs available since most people seem to like them more runny than I do.

The primary reason that we go to a restaurant like Chef Mickey’s is the character interaction and that was generally good.  Over the course of the meal, we had visits from Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto.  Besides that the restaurant was located in the resort where we were staying, the fact that it features the core group of Disney characters made it a very appealing first activity.  The characters visits were spaced pretty reasonably and we overall had a really good time.

Liberty Inn

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at Epcot.  For dinner, we decided to eat at Liberty Inn, the counter service location located in the American Adventure building in World Showcase.  It is mostly a burger and fries type fast food restaurant, although we were pleased to find that they did have a couple of slightly more upscale offerings including a roast beef & cheddar sandwich and a barbecue pork sandwich.  In fact, I ended up having the roast beef and my wife had the pork. The food was generally good, something that isn’t always true at Disney’s counter service restaurants.

My only real complaint was that the service was very slow, particularly if you had any kind of special order.  The roast beef and cheddar sandwich normally featured a couple toppings that I don’t generally like, so I asked for it plain.  That wasn’t a problem, but it ended up taking them 10 minutes or so to get it ready.  They held our entire order until that was ready and we had to stand at the counter waiting for it while other customers maneuvered around us to pick up their own orders.  I definitely would have preferred for them to at least give us the rest of the order right away (particularly our son’s), even if they didn’t have the staff available to bring the special order out to us.  We also weren’t warned that the special order would take so long.  I might have opted with something that didn’t need customization, if I had known about that.

Day 3: Disney’s Hollywood Studios

ABC Commissary

On Sunday, we had plans to meet up with some friends who live in the Orlando area and spend the day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  Having stayed out late the night before, we ended up sleeping in a bit and arriving at the park right around noon.  Our friends were already having lunch at ABC Commissary, a large counter-service fast food restaurant themed to Disney’s TV network.  The main decor of the restaurant primarily features posters from current ABC series and video monitors showing promos and behind-the-scenes clips.

Even though Disney’s burgers generally don’t tend to be very good, we all ended up deciding that cheeseburgers sounded the best to us of the restaurant’s menu choices.  To my surprise, the burger was actually pretty decent.  It wasn’t nearly as dry and overcooked as I’ve generally found Disney’s burgers to be in the past, even at that same restaurant.  I don’t know if they have improved the quality or if we just were there on a good day, but it wasn’t a bad lunch at all.

Sci-Fi Dine-In

For dinner, we had reservations at Sci-Fi Dine-In.  This table-service restaurant is themed like an old drive-in movie theater.  The tables are shaped like cars and a large screen in the front of restaurant shows clips of cheesy old science fiction and monster movies, interspersed with the occasional theater refreshment stand promos.

This is probably the best themed restaurant at Disney World and we re-visit it pretty often for that reason, but my experience has always been that the food is kind of mediocre, unfortunately.  On this visit, I ordered the St. Louis-style BBQ ribs.  They were generally pretty tasty and the sauce was pretty good, but I found them to be much more fatty than I would have liked.  My wife had the ribs as well and also noted the same thing.  A couple other members of our party had the Reuben sandwich (something I don’t really like) and seemed happier with the quality.  The hot fudge sundae that I had for dessert was large and really good.

Day 4: Steak, cheese soup, and cake!

Le Cellier

A few years ago, during our first visit to Walt Disney World with our son, we scheduled a date night where we left him with my parents while we went out to a nice dinner.  Having heard very good things about it, the restaurant we chose for that dinner was Le Cellier, the steakhouse located in the Canada pavilion at Epcot.  We enjoyed the restaurant so much that it has now become a tradition to plan a meal there during every visit.

For this trip, we decided to get a lunch reservation for early Monday afternoon.  In recent years, Le Cellier has become one of the most difficult reservations to get at Walt Disney World, particularly since it is among the highest-end restaurants that still only requires a single table-service credit on the dining plan.  We thought it would  be a bit easier to get our choice of day and time if we went with lunch and I did, in fact, have no problem with it, although I did call the reservation line soon after it opened on the first day we could make reservations.

My wife and I definitely tend to be fairly traditional meat & potatoes fans and we both really enjoy a good steak.  The steaks at Le Cellier have been very good and they do offer a pretty decent selection of cuts.  There are plenty of other good places to get steak at Disney World, though, and we generally do end up having it at least a couple times during our visits.  Our experience with the steaks has actually been a little bit hit and miss, in fact.  I recall one previous visit where I had to send it back because it wasn’t cooked right and on this visit I found that the meat was a bit cold, although it wasn’t so much so that I felt the need to get it corrected.

The bigger appeal at Le Cellier that keeps us coming back really are a few of the non-entree selections. In particular, I am a huge fan of their Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup while my wife absolutely adores the Chocolate on Chocolate Whiskey Cake that they offer for dessert.  These actually are individual preferences on our part, though, as my wife doesn’t really like the soup at all while I find the chocolate cake to be a bit too rich after such a big meal.

Another major favorite of ours is the bread.  At the start of the meal, they bring out a basket with several varieties of warm, soft breadsticks including sourdough, multi-grain, and pretzel bread.  The server recommends sampling all three and offers to bring out more of any type.  We now know that the pretzel bread is our absolute favorite and always immediately ask the server to bring us more of it.

I find the decor at Le Cellier to be generally appealing as well.  The layout is organized into sections themed to the Canadian provinces.  Right after you are seated at your table, the greeter gives a short overview of the province for that section.  The overall look has a generally casual elegance to it that I find to be very pleasant.  The only slight negative is that the tables are pretty tightly packed into the restaurant, so it can feel a bit cramped and can occasionally be a bit noisy.  For the most part, this has never been a big problem for us, though.  Our experiences at the restaurant have also always been enhanced by consistently very good and friendly service.

Contempo Cafe

The meal at Le Cellier tends to be quite filling, so we weren’t really hungry again until later than usual.  After lunch, we went over to the Magic Kingdom for the afternoon and stayed for the 8pm fireworks show.  After the fireworks, we walked back over to the Contemporary and had dinner at Contempo Cafe, the hotel’s quick service location.  We had done the same on our previous trip and had found that it worked really well.  Since we were actually staying at the Contemporary Resort this time, it worked even better for us.  It was only about 25 minutes from the time that the fireworks ended until we were seated at the restaurant.

The Contempo Cafe is one of a few newer quick service locations at Disney World that has gone to a touch-screen ordering system.  When you arrive at the restaurant, you go to one of the kiosks to order any entrees/meals.  It then prints out a receipt that you take to a cashier along with any grab-and-go items that you are adding to the order.  The system works okay, although it does feel a bit impersonal and I couldn’t help but wonder if it really saves all that much time and labor cost over simply having the cashier take your order, particularly since they still need to keep an employee near the kiosks to answer any questions or help out customers who aren’t really comfortable with that kind of system.

For dinner, my wife and I both ordered the pepperoni flatbread.  We got a kick out of the fact that the receipt actually said “pepperoni pizza” instead, since that is obviously what it really was.  We were happy that the pizza had a really thin crust, since that is the way we both tend to like it best.  As was typical of Disney’s pizza (and theme park pizza in general), the crust and sauce was pretty bland, but it overall wasn’t too bad a meal.  The portion sizes were generous and made for a pretty filling dinner.

Day 5: A Cold Day at Universal

Mythos

We ventured away from Disney property on Tuesday for a visit to Universal Studios Orlando.  Thanks to a relative that works there, we had complimentary tickets that allowed us to visit both theme parks on that same day.  We also had purchased tickets to see the Blue Man Group show at Universal Citywalk that evening.

During our entire visit to Florida, they were having an unusually extreme cold spell, with temperatures frequently in the 30s or 40s.  The day we were at Universal was especially cold, with a very frigid wind blowing.  Because of this, we decided that a fairly leisurely, table-service lunch at an indoor restaurant sounded good.  We opted to eat at Mythos in Islands of Adventure, which has pretty often been rated towards the top of the quality ratings for theme park restaurants.

While I’m sure that a lot of people were looking for indoor dining choices that day, Universal has a lot of options and the parks were not overly crowded.  Probably because of that, we only had to wait about 15 minutes or so for a table.  Our table was fairly far inside the restaurant, fairly close to large windows that provided a pretty nice view across the park’s central waterway over towards the Super Hero Island section.  The overall decor of the restaurant is bright and cheerful.  There are fountains providing a pretty continuous sound of running water, so it is probably a good thing there are restrooms inside.

After several hours out in the cold, soup sounded particularly good.  I tend to really like tomato soup and saw that was listed on the menu.  When I ordered it, the waiter warned that it contained Italian sausage, which prompted my reply of “good!”  It is definitely wise that they warn about that, though, as people might expect that to be a vegetarian option.  The soup was very good, with a flavor that kind of resembled a rich spaghetti sauce.  A couple thick, oversized croutons were included to help add a little additional bulk to it.  The hot soup was a big help in getting warmed up and one of the highlights of the meal.

While the menu included several entrees that sounded pretty good, I really didn’t have too much trouble choosing once I saw that one of the choices was Blueberry and Pistachio Crusted Pork served in port wine sauce.  Grilled pork is something I particularly like, but don’t get very often and I also really love port wine sauce.  The sauce also had crumbled blue cheese, which is another favorite of mine and a flavor that I think goes especially well with the port wine sauce.  The pork was as good as it sounded.  The blueberry and pistachio crust provided a particularly good mixture of slightly tangy sweet and nutty flavor that really complimented the sharper flavor of the port wine sauce.

Instead of serving the pork with something fairly traditional like mashed potatoes, the included side dish was macaroni and cheese.  The cheese sauce was made with smoky cheddar, a type that I particularly like and which provided quite a bit more flavor than a more typical macaroni and cheese.  While this was a somewhat unusual side dish, I thought it was really good and this was a fairly rare case where I completed finished the side dish with an entree.

While Mythos is a high-end, fairly expensive restaurant, their menu isn’t overly exotic and worked well even for the fairly picky eaters in our group.  My wife had a bacon cheeseburger, which she said was very good and was clearly made with very high quality ingredients.  Several other members of our party had the grilled chicken club sandwich, which they were very happy with as well.

Our excessive drinking straw collection 

One strange part of the meal was that we ended up with an unusually large accumulation of drinking straws.  I had ordered Mr. Pibb to drink and a couple other people in our party ordered Diet Coke.  I guess in order to help the servers identify the drinks, they put 3 straws in the Mr. Pibb and 2 in the Diet Coke.  This was not only the case with the first ones, but with each subsequent refill.  The refills were always brought in new glasses and they didn’t very frequently take away the old one.  Over time, we ended up with a huge quantity of straws and generally amused ourselves by putting them all into one glass.  While it was pretty funny, it also strikes me as being rather wasteful and I think the restaurant really needs to come up with a better system for keeping track of the drink types.

Our only real complaint about Mythos was that the service was a bit slow.  The waiter was certainly friendly enough and they were pretty good about keeping up with drink refills, but it took quite a while before he took our orders and then the time between courses and the time to get the check delivered and processed all seemed longer than they should have been.  While we weren’t in an extremely big hurry, it definitely did seem like the pace should have been faster, particularly in a theme park setting.

Burger King Whopper Bar

After having had a pretty large and elegant lunch, we went to kind of the opposite extreme and just got fast food from the food court at CityWalk.  The food court area is pretty small, with only four restaurants and fairly limited indoor seating.  With a little persistence, we were able to eventually grab a table, so we did at least avoid having to eat outdoors in the cold.  My wife, son, and I all got food from the Burger King “Whopper Bar” while my parents and sister split a large order of nachos from Moe’s Southwest Grill.

The “Whopper Bar” concept emphasized the choices of toppings on the burgers, but really seemed more like an excuse for a Burger King with a drastically reduced menu.  While the name kind of seems to suggest a do-it-yourself topping bar, it really is just a stand where a large menu board lists the choices of toppings and you specify what you want when ordering.  The only available entrees choices were the Whoppers or chicken strips, with none of the other Burger King entrees available.  They didn’t even have kids’ meals available, so our the only burger available for our son was a Whopper, which is a bit big for him.  My wife and I both got chicken strips, since she had a cheeseburger for lunch and I don’t really like Burger King’s burgers very much.  The food was typical Burger King food, although more expensive than usual.

Day 6: Magic Kingdom plus Loud and Raucous Barbecue

Columbia Harbour House

Wednesday was another fairly late start day after the very full day at Universal.  We had made plans to meet up with some friends at the Magic Kingdom shortly after noon and arrived there pretty much exactly the scheduled time.  For lunch, we all decided to go to Columbia Harbour House, a seafood fast-food location in the Liberty Square section of the park.

This is often one of the busiest locations in the park, but it wasn’t an especially busy day which means there were very short lines at the cash registers and we didn’t have any major difficulty finding a table.  I had the fried shrimp for lunch, which was fine for basically fast food shrimp, but nothing to get too excited about.  My wife doesn’t like seafood at all, so she had chicken nuggets.

Whispering Canyon

For dinner that evening, we had reservations at another of our favorite Disney World restaurants, Whispering Canyon at the Wilderness Lodge.  This was a restaurant that I first discovered during a one night stay at the hotel, just a year or so after it had first opened.  At the time, the restaurant was fairly unknown and we got lunch there without any real idea what to expect.  It now one of the best known restaurants at Disney World, but it still remains one of our favorites.

Even the time while waiting for a table at this restaurant is more kid friendly than most.  In the lobby area, they have a big table with a large collection of Lincoln Logs for kids (and grown-up kids) to play with while waiting.  This is something our son finds particularly fun, since he has lots of Lincoln Logs at home as well and plays with them pretty regularly.  He especially enjoyed getting some help from his Aunt, who seemed to have fun playing with them too.

Whispering Canyon is essentially an old western show at a restaurant.  The servers and other staff all stay in western character and  maintain a very fun, extremely rowdy (and sometimes rather loud) atmosphere.  The menu is mainly barbecue with the featured meal the all-you-can-eat Canyon Skillet, which includes BBQ ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket, BBQ chicken, and traditional side dishes including mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, beans, corn bread, and salad.  This is all served family style and you can request more of anything.  While they do have various ala-carte selections on the menu as well, we all ordered the skillet as we usually do.

While there are a couple items included that I’m not entirely crazy about, there is so much food offered that it doesn’t matter much.  In particular, I don’t really like the way they spice the chicken very much and I’m also not that fond of the apple vinaigrette dressing used on the salad (I generally don’t like sweet dressings), but there are other items that provide more than enough to fill me up.  I especially really like the pulled pork and the beef brisket.

Another favorite feature at Whispering Canyon is that it is, I think, the only restaurant that I have ever been to that offers free refills on milkshakes.  They use fairly small glasses for them, so the refills are needed, but it is nice being able to basically pick how much you want.  They also have a pretty good selection of flavors and you can switch to different ones on the refills, if you wish.  I particularly like the orange shakes, which I find especially refreshing and go rather well with the barbecue.

One of the regular activities at the restaurant is broomstick horse races around the restaurant for the kids.  This year was the first time our son was really into it, although last year he did kind of half-heartedly participate.  This year, he was pretty much looking forward to it the whole time and took part with a huge amount of enthusiasm.  Of course, one of the funnier parts of the whole thing is all the parents (or grandparents) chasing the kids around the restaurant with cameras.

Day 7: Breakfast with Donald and Date Night at Downtown Disney

Donald’s Safari Breakfast at Tusker House

Our second character meal of the trip was on Thursday morning at Tusker House in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. This restaurant was converted from a counter service location to a buffet a couple years ago.  We had the lunch buffet (which isn’t a character meal) last year, but this was our first time there for breakfast.  We had also done the previous incarnation of the character meal when it used to be held in the Dinoland USA section of the park in previous years.

This breakfast actually turned out being the one mistake we had made in scheduling out our dining reservations.  Planning an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet the morning after a heavy all-you-can-eat barbecue dinner simply wasn’t a very good idea.  I ended up not eating all that much at this meal and overall can only give a very limited perspective on the food.

Our reservation was right at park opening, which meant that we were actually allowed into the park a bit early.  One of the entry turnstiles was labeled with a sign inviting those with Tusker House reservations and they had a castmember there to check names off the reservation list before letting guests into the park.  More castmembers were stationed along the path to the restaurant to help guide guests to the restaurant.  It was really kind of cool walking through the nearly empty park before it opened.

As with our breakfast at Chef Mickey, they guided us over to do a family photo before taking us to our table.  The featured character at the Tusker House breakfast is Donald Duck and this time the photo was actually with the costumed character instead of with a plywood cutout like it was at the other restaurant.  As before, I didn’t really feel all that comfortable with asking them to take a photo with my own camera as well, but I really wish I had in retrospect.  I didn’t realize that this pre-meal photo was the only opportunity to visit with Donald at the breakfast named for him.

During the meal, we had visits from Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck, and Goofy (all dressed in safari outfits), but Donald did not circulate through the restaurant.  The character interaction was generally fine, but nothing particularly memorable.  I did kind of wish that I had given a bit more thought to which characters appeared at which character meals as the ones we ended up scheduling generally featured the same ones.

As I mentioned, I didn’t eat very much at this meal, but the choices seemed to be pretty standard breakfast buffet options, very similar to what was offered at Chef Mickey.  One highlight of the meal was the “jungle juice” that is served with the meal.  This is a mixture of lemonade and orange, pineapple, and mango juice and was extremely tasty.  I had several glasses of it and my son absolutely loved it as well.

I did have one big complaint about the food.  One egg dish that they offered was labeled simply as a “ham & cheese scramble” and definitely looked like something to my taste.  I took a good sized helping and didn’t discover that it also contained onions until after I had taken a big bite of it.  I have a pretty high sensitivity to onions where even a fairly small quantity can give me some pretty severe indigestion.  I realize that this probably isn’t an extremely common food allergy/sensitivity, but I also don’t see why it would hurt for them to add the words “with onions” to the sign that they had in front of the dish.

Pizzafari

For lunch, we wanted something very light, particularly since we had a pretty big dinner planned for that evening.  We ended up going to Pizzafari, where we realized that we could get away with using our dining credits to get enough food for all of us to share, including my parents and sister who weren’t on the plan.  We ordered two pepperoni pizza meals, which was enough for each of us to have 1-2 slices.  The meals also came with a couple salads and desserts, giving us a bit more food.  We did still get a full child’s meal for my son.  This proved to be plenty of food for all of us.   The pizza was typically bland Disney theme park pizza, but edible.

Fulton’s Crab House

Ever since we started doing trips with our son, my wife and I have always tried to schedule one date night dinner together while my parents babysit.  With Animal Kingdom typically closing fairly early (5pm in the off season), I realized that night would be a good time to schedule this.  With the trip taking place just a week after Christmas, I clandestinely made the babysitting arrangements with my parents (their response when I asked was “We thought you’d never ask!”) and the dining reservation.  I printed out a copy of reservation confirmation, put  it in a box, and then wrapped it and placed it under the tree for her to open on Christmas morning.

After doing some research and exploring a number of options, I ended up making a reservation at Fulton’s Crab House in Downtown Disney.  At first, it might seem like a bit of an odd choice since my wife won’t eat any kind of seafood, but she actually has something of a fondness for seafood restaurants as they pretty much always offer really good steaks, which she absolutely loves.  The restaurant had the added advantages that it was somewhere we hadn’t been before and it is also one of the few Disney World restaurants left that do not take the dining plan making it a fairly easy reservation to get.  I already knew we weren’t going to use a dining credit for this meal, as this gave us one more table service reservation than we had credits.

One challenge to this choice of restaurant was the fact that Animal Kingdom and Downtown Disney are at opposite ends of the Walt Disney World property, meaning that it can take a while to get from one to the other.  This is compounded by the fact that Disney does not run any direct buses between the theme parks and Downtown Disney (probably to discourage people from abusing the free parking at Downtown), meaning that you have to first take a bus to one of the resort hotels and then transfer.

We underestimated the time a bit and ended up about 20 minutes late for our reservation.  Fortunately, I suspect they were pretty used to that, as they didn’t indicate it was a problem at all and we were still seated immediately.  Part of our mistake was choosing Saratoga Springs as the transfer resort.  We picked it because there was a bus already loading when we walked up to the bus stop and because it seemed to make sense, knowing it was the closest resort to Downtown Disney.  What we hadn’t thought about (but should have since we stayed there last time), was that there are quite a few bus stops within Saratoga Springs, which adds a fair amount to the travel time.  It also didn’t help that we needed a restroom stop when we got to Saratoga Springs and it took a little longer to find one than we had expected.  In retrospect, we definitely should have transferred at one of the single bus stop resorts instead.

Fulton’s is located in the riverboat-shaped building in Downtown Disney.  This was originally known as The Empress Lilly  (names for Walt Disney’s wife) and contained a couple restaurants operated by Disney until the mid-90s.  The building was then leased to another restaurant company (Levy Restaurants) that refurbished the structure and re-opened it as Fulton’s.  It definitely makes for one of the most appealingly unusual decors at Downtown Disney.  Our table was on the second level and had a great view across the lake.

As I mentioned, my wife doesn’t like seafood at all and, thus, was very happy to order the New York Steak.  She was very happy with that selection, saying it was one of the best steaks she’d had in a while.  She gave me a little taste of it and it definitely was very good and tender with lots of flavor.

While I don’t like most kinds of regular fish, I really like shellfish a lot.  At a restaurant that had the words “Crab House” in its name, it wasn’t hard at all to decide to order the Alaska King Crab Legs for dinner.  The crab legs were absolutely terrific, with a good flavor that wasn’t too strong.  Other than one time several years ago at a high-end wharf-side restaurant in Seattle, the crab legs that I had at Fulton’s were the best I remember having.

The only minor complaint that I had was that the melted butter came in a container so shallow that it had all spilled by the time the plate was served to me.  The server was quick to replace it while indicating that this happened pretty often.  It wasn’t a big deal to me since I like to use butter with crab legs, but I know some people who don’t and probably wouldn’t have been happy to have it spilled all over the plate.  They should replace the containers with ones that don’t spill as easily.

At the beginning of the meal, they bring out a plate of crackers with a crab and creamed cheese based spread.  This spread was absolutely wonderful.  When they brought it out, they also gave us a card with the recipe on it, so I would imagine that they had received lots and lots of requests for that in the past.  Since it contained crab, my wife wasn’t interested in it at all, but I had no problem finishing it all myself.  They also brought out some fresh bread with butter, so my wife was very happy with that.

Ghirardelli Soda Fountain

While Fulton’s did offer a few desserts that sounded pretty good, we decided to instead go across the way to the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain to get ice cream sundaes.  This turned out to be a great choice.  We were both able to get really good (and fairly large) sundaes customized to our taste and the price was actually a bit less than we probably would have paid to split a dessert at Fulton’s.  The only small down side was that we were only able to find a table outdoors, but fortunately this was the one day of our trip where the weather had warmed up a little bit, making that tolerable.

Day 8: Dinner with the Fishes

Contempo Cafe

For our last full day at Walt Disney World, our main plans were to generally take it easy, but try and catch up with a few attractions that we hadn’t managed to see previously.  We were up and ready to go by mid-morning, so we decided to go over to the Contempo Cafe to get breakfast before heading out to the parks.

Just like at dinner time, the order for the main entree was placed using the touch-screen kiosks and then drinks or other items are gathered and taken to the cash register to pay.  My wife and I both ordered the French Toast while our son got the kid’s meal with Mickey Mouse shaped waffles.  The food was ready pretty quickly and tasted fine, although we found that the bacon was relatively flavor-less, just like at the previous breakfasts we had attended.

One kind of strange thing with breakfast purchased using dining plan counter service credits is that it comes with two drinks instead of a drink and dessert like you get at other meals.  I guess that does make sense for some, since many people might want both juice and coffee with breakfast.  Since none of us are coffee drinkers, though, it would have been much nicer if there had been an option of getting a pastry or something like that instead of the second drink.  What we ended up doing was each getting a bottle of water as our extra drink and then saving them for use later.

Sunshine Seasons (at The Land)

Since we had a somewhat late and larger than usual breakfast and had reasonably early (6pm) dinner reservations, we decided to use up some of our snack credits for a very light lunch.  After a short visit to Disney Hollywood Studios to see the “Lights, Motors, Action!” stunt show, we had arrived at Epcot around 2pm.  We then headed over to The Land pavilion, since we knew the Sunshine Seasons food court there had a pretty broad selection and we could likely come up with good choices for snacks.

My wife and I both ended up getting pastries from the bakery while our son had a pre-packaged fruit plate.  My wife and I also got soft drinks while our son had a bottled Poweraid.  We were able to get all of these items using snack credits and it worked out to a pretty reasonable light meal.  It was probably the best single use of snack credits that we had on the trip.

Coral Reef

Dinner on Friday was at Coral Reef, the restaurant adjacent to the Living Seas pavilion at Epcot.  This was one of our son’s two special requests for restaurants and, unfortunately, the only one we were actually able to do since Crystal Palace (his other choice) was closed for refurbishment.  He had especially enjoyed watching the fish and other sea creatures at Coral Reef during a previous visit there, so he was excited to go again.

Of all the dinners that we had with the entire family on this trip, I think this was the best overall experience.  The atmosphere was as much fun as we remembered and the food and service were both excellent.  While we had enjoyed our previous visit, this one really made a pretty strong impression and I suspect this will move much higher on our list for repeat visits.

While still nominally a seafood restaurant, Coral Reef has shifted its menu in recent years to have a little more broad variety.  I’d guess that only about half the entrees are now seafood and I seem to recall that those were all items like tuna or salmon, without any shellfish options.  All of the adults in our party ended up opting for the New York Strip Steak.  Even my wife, who had ordered steak at Fulton’s the night before, decided that she didn’t want to watch everyone else eating steak without having one herself.  She decided it was hardly a hardship to have steak two nights in a row.

The steak was very tender and flavorful and was cooked exactly to my liking.  The side dishes with the steak were roasted potatoes and a watercress salad, both of which I found very enjoyable and actually finished completely.  The salad was served with a light vinaigrette dressing that gave it some extra flavor without overwhelming it.

Since it is no longer included with the dining plan, I decided to skip an appetizer at this meal, both to save some room for dessert at well as to save the extra cost.  During my previous visit, I had the lobster bisque, which I enjoyed and a couple members of our party ordered it this time as well.  One of those that ordered it was our 6-year-old (appetizer was included on the kid’s menu), who I don’t think has ever found a soup that he doesn’t like.  While lobster bisque is not an item that most would think of as kid-friendly, he pretty much gobbled it right down and seemed to enjoy it immensely.

The Chocolate Wave 

For dessert, I opted for The Chocolate Wave, which is one of the restaurant’s signature desserts.  It is a dark chocolate cake served warm with a Grand Marnier based filling.  It was absolutely wonderful and a great ending to an excellent meal.  Others in our party had ice cream sundaes or the Cremé Brulée and everyone seemed quite happy with their selection.

Of course, the setting is one of the big attractions of this restaurant and we were fortunate to be seated at a table on the first level of the restaurant, fairly close to the aquarium glass.  We were in the second row of tables rather than directly up against the glass, but still had an excellent view of the marine life.  Our only minor complaint was that the large curved booth was a bit cramped for our party of six, but it was definitely tolerable.

The service was very good, with a server that was both attentive and courteous.  We did have a minor issue where the soft drinks didn’t taste right when they first came out.  It tasted like the carbonation had run out or the mixture was off.  The server told us that she would get us replacements from “upstairs” and those were fine.  There was one other occasion where she indicated that something else needed to be retrieved from “upstairs” and it became a bit of a running joke in our meal.  I don’t think we ever did figure out exactly what “upstairs” meant in this context.

Day 9: Hawaiian Breakfast and Returning Home

Lilo & Stitch Best Friends Character Breakfast at ‘Ohana

On our trips, it has become a tradition to schedule one last table-service or buffet breakfast for the morning of the day that we travel home.  We have always scheduled flights for late in the day (departing in the 5-7pm range), which has made this possible.

Since we stayed at the Contemporary this time, we decided to go to the character breakfast at ‘Ohana, a short monorail ride over at the Polynesian Resort.  This is an all-you-can-eat breakfast, where the food is served family-style.  The meal includes standard breakfast items like scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, fried potatoes, waffles, and various fruits and breads.  During the meal, you can ask for more of any items as needed.  They also served what they called “aloha juice”, which I think was pretty much the same thing as the “jungle juice” that had been served at Tusker House.

One advantage of this type of meal over a typical buffet is that there is a little more room for special requests.  Specifically, I and a couple other members of our party prefer eggs to be cooked very well done (not runny at all).  They were very willing to accommodate that request and actually brought out some that were less well-done as well, for the one member of our party that preferred them that way.

Fitting with the Hawaiian theme of the hotel and restaurant, the featured characters at the meal were Lilo and Stitch.  Both visited our table, as did Mickey Mouse and Pluto.  Once during the meal, the characters invited the kids to join in a conga line while “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” (from the movie Lilo and Stitch) played on the sound system.  I think our son was pretty worn out by this point in the trip, though, and he declined to take part in that. 

As with the other character meals, they did have us take a family photo before we were shown to our table.  Strangely, the photo at this restaurant was taken against a fairly generic tropical backdrop and did not involve any characters at all, either costumed or a cut-out.  Because of the generic nature of the pictures, the package was even less tempting than at the other locations.

Captain Cook’s Snack Company

Usually we make one last visit to a theme park (typically The Magic Kingdom) after our breakfast on the last day of the trip.  We had originally planned to do that on this trip as well, but I think we had simply had enough of the cold weather.  The temperature had taken another nosedive on that last day and there had even been some hail and sleet in the early morning.  We finally decided to just stay indoors wandering around the monorail resorts until time to leave for the airport.

We didn’t need to catch the bus to the airport until around 4pm and we still had one counter service credit each left to use for our lunch.  Our first thought was to have one more meal at the Contempo Cafe, but we decided against that due to the temperature.  The 4th floor of the Contemporary (where the restaurant is located) is pretty much open to the elements due to the monorail track and it was rather cold there.  We finally decided to take the monorail back over to the Polynesian and have lunch at Captain Cook’s Snack Company, the quick service restaurant there.  We picked The Polynesian mainly because we knew you had to go outside to get from the monorail station to the quick service restaurant at the Grand Floridian.

Captain Cook’s has a similar set up to the Contempo Cafe, including the use of the touch screen ordering system.  The restaurant is a lot smaller and more cramped, though, and finding a table was a bit of a challenge.  The menu included burgers and pizzas (again referred to as flatbread) as well as some stir-fry choices.  My wife and I both ended up going with the pizzas again and they were basically identical to what we had at the Contempo Cafe earlier in the week.  The restaurant has a bakery case as well and we both had cupcakes for dessert, which were pretty good.

The meal at Captain Cook’s was adequate for our purposes, even if it wasn’t the most exciting final meal for our visit to Disney World.  I did get a sense that this was a restaurant in need of some remodeling, as it definitely seemed pretty outdated and cramped compared to Contempo Cafe or even Roaring Fork, the quick service restaurant at the Wilderness Lodge, where we have eaten a number of times on previous trips.

The Return Home and Conclusions

When reviewing the dining plan status printed on our lunch receipt, I found that we still had six snack credits remaining.  During the last hour before our bus to the airport arrived, I went back up to the Contempo Cafe and used those snack credits to buy three brownies and three Mickey Mouse shaped Rice Crispy Treats.  Actually, the latter were labeled as “crisped rice treats”, so I suppose Disney hadn’t licensed the Kellogg’s trademark.  The brownies ended up working as a snack during the flight home and we ended up eating the Rice Crispy Treats a couple days later.

For the last few years we have flown Delta Airlines to and from Florida, mainly because they have a pretty convenient schedule for direct flights.  Like all the airlines, they have cut way back on the complimentary food services on most of their flights.  On at least one previous trip, this had been pretty rough as we had really not had anything more than small bags of peanuts or pretzels during our flights and we had been really starving once we arrived.  Fortunately, they now offer pretty decent $5 snack boxes that include some cheese, crackers, salami, and cookies.  These aren’t anything too fancy, but they at least helped to make it through the flight. I suppose our last meal of the vacation was a fairly late night dinner purchased at a Wendy’s drive-thru on the way home from the airport. 

Overall, I think we ate really well on this vacation and enjoyed a good mix of re-visits to old favorites as well as a couple new choices.  The dining plan continued to work for us, once again helping to facilitate a trip full of nice meals.  As our son gets older and starts enjoying a broader range of attractions, I suppose that dining could become less of a focal point of our vacation.  For now, this kind of trip report seems to provide the best way to provide a good overview of our trip.

During our visit to Walt Disney World the first week of January, we stayed at the newest hotel on property, Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort.  Bay Lake Tower is the recently-opened 15-story Disney Vacation Club tower located adjacent to the Contemporary on the site where the north garden wing used to be located.  The Contemporary, of course, was one of the two original Disney World hotels (along with The Polynesian) and is the closest to the Magic Kingdom.

We have been Disney’s Vacation Club members for a few years, having previously purchased points with Disney’s Saratoga Springs as our home resort.  We had always been a bit reticent about that resort due to its size and location and didn’t actually stay there for any length of time until 2008.  For most of that trip, all of the alternative DVC resorts had sold out by the time the home resort exclusivity window was over.  We really weren’t very happy with it, since it was so far away from all the parks while also being so large and spread out that we found it difficult to navigate around or to use many of the resort’s amenities.  After that experience, we sold off our interest in the early part of 2009 and then re-purchased with Bay Lake Tower as our home resort.

While we were taking a little bit of a risk by re-purchasing at a brand new DVC resort, we felt it was a very small risk.  We had actually stayed at the Contemporary once before during our last trip before we bought into DVC.  On that trip, we had stayed in a room in the old north garden wing, which was since demolished to make way for Bay Lake Tower.  We knew from that experience that we liked both the location and the overall amenities of the Contemporary and that the specific location of the new DVC tower worked really well for us as well.

Bay Lake Tower is considered to be a part of the Contemporary Resort and generally shares amenities.  Check-in and other guests services are done at the main desks in the Contemporary lobby.  Access to the tower is available via a couple ground floor entrances or by way of a skybridge that connects the 4th floor of the Contemporary with the 5th floor of Bay Lake Tower.  The bridge is not fully enclosed and, therefore, exposed to the elements.  If the weather indicates, it is definitely important to remember to grab coats or rain gear when crossing between the two buildings.

View from the skybridge

They do maintain a certain amount of exclusivity by always requiring the use of a room key to access any of the Bay Lake Tower entrances.  This isn’t strictly enforced as it is extremely easy to simply follow other guests into the building, but I do think this is a generally good policy to discourage non guests from wandering the building.  There are some pretty impressive views from the elevator lobbies and hall windows in the tower and I could easily see crowding and noise levels becoming a problem without the more restrictive access.

The 4th floor of the Contemporary (where the skybridge is located) is the hotel’s famous “Grand Canyon Concourse” which includes the monorail station as well as various gift shops, restaurants, and a video arcade.  The gift shops include two general Disney merchandise stores, Bayview Gifts which was mostly clothing and the Fantasia Shop, which featured a lot of Disney-branded toys, trinkets, and a pin shop.  Near the skybridge is an additional shop called Concourse Sundries and Spirits, which has some grocery items.  This store had a small selection of DVC-branded clothing and other items, including one Bay Lake Tower t-shirt, but I didn’t much like the design on it.  We were disappointed that none of the shops had anything else in the way of merchandise specific to the Contemporary or Bay Lake Tower.

The two restaurants on the 4th floor included Chef Mickey’s, which is a character buffet, and the quick service Contempo Cafe.  We had a nice breakfast at Chef Mickey’s on our day of arrival and had a couple quick service meals at Contempo Cafe at various times during our trip.  Both were nice locations and we particularly appreciated having the quick service location that was so conveniently located.  The Contempo Cafe is fairly new (it is in the former location of the old Concourse Steakhouse) and has a very modern feel to it, including a touchscreen ordering system.  The Contemporary has two more restaurants that we didn’t visit, which are The Wave down on the first floor (in the location of the old fast food location) and the high-end California Grill on the top floor.

The top floor of Bay Lake Tower features a lounge that is exclusively available to DVC members staying at the resort on points.  In order to access it, you have to present your key card at a check-in desk on the first floor and an attendant then escorts you to the elevator and unlocks access to that floor.  The lounge includes a good-sized observation deck with an excellent view of the Magic Kingdom (obviously an excellent location for fireworks viewing) and an indoor area with a full bar, several tables, and a television.  My wife and I visited up there to get a couple drinks after a dinner out together while my parents babysat our son.  We didn’t get up there in time to see the fireworks, but did enjoy taking a few minutes to stand on the patio and look at the Magic Kingdom.  I unfortunately didn’t get pictures of the lounge (other than the photos of us with our drinks) since we had planned to make a later return visit, but never got around to it, mainly because we hadn’t realized that it didn’t open until 5pm.

Bay Lake Tower Pool Viewed from 10th Floor

The Contemporary has a couple swimming pools and a variety of outdoor recreation activities, including various boat rentals.  There is also a pretty nice looking swimming pool (with a waterslide) that is specifically for the Bay Lake Tower guests.  Unfortunately, we never made use of any of them because our trip was during a record-setting cold spell for that part of Florida.  During pretty much the entire length of our stay, the temperatures were generally in the 30s or 40s, meaning that these features are saved for a future visit.

The location of the Contemporary Resort is definitely one of its strongest features, with especially easy access to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot.  The Magic Kingdom is so close that it is a pretty quick walk to get there.  On evening, we watched the fireworks show from the bridge between Main Street and Tomorrowland and were able to walk back to the hotel and get seated at a table in the Contempo Cafe within about 20 minutes after the show ended!  While you can also take the monorail to and from the Magic Kingdom, that will generally take longer than walking and probably isn’t worth the trouble in most cases.

Epcot is a pretty easy monorail ride from the Contemporary.  You first take the resort monorail one stop up to the Transportation & Ticket Center and then transfer to the Epcot monorail.  The whole trip typically takes about 1/2 hour or so, but it is a very pleasant and generally easy one.  Bus transportation is provided to the other two parks and to Downtown Disney and the trips can be a bit time consuming.  In most cases those buses also stop at either the Polynesian, The Grand Floridian, or both on the way to the parks, although the Contemporary always seems to be the first stop coming back.  Finally, boat transportation is available to the Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness.

As a family of 3, we book 1-bedroom villas at a DVC resort.  This gives us plenty of room and allows my wife and I to sleep in a separate room from our 6-year-old son, an arrangement which generally results in all of us sleeping better than we do at hotels where we all share a single room.  The 1-bedroom villas all have a pull-out sofabed, which gives our son a comfortable place to sleep.  We noticed that the living room chair also converted into a bed, which would probably be very nice for families with more than one child.

Our room was on the 10th floor of the building and featured a Bay Lake view.  Lake view rooms are a bit less expensive than those with a Magic Kingdom view, but we came to the conclusion that we probably had the better view.  The tower is positioned in such a way that rooms that look over the Magic Kingdom will generally have a whole bunch of parking lot in the foreground.  At least from our room, though, the lake view was a beautiful, pretty much unspoiled scenic view.

View from our room

We could, of course, see the lake and the various watercraft from the room.  We also had good views of the main Contemporary tower and the south garden wing and the main pool and marina areas.  A little further off, we had good views of both the Grand Floridian Resort and the Wilderness Lodge.  Finally, off in the distance, we could see the tallest landmarks at Epcot (Spaceship Earth), Disney’s Hollywood Studios (Tower of Terror), and Disney’s Animal Kingdom (Expedition Everest and the Tree of Life).  We thought it was interesting that we didn’t have a Magic Kingdom view, but could actually see all three of the other parks.

More of the view

One obvious advantage of the Magic Kingdom view rooms would be that you could likely watch their fireworks show from your room.  While this wasn’t available to us from our room, we did discover early on that we had a couple opportunities to watch the Electric Water Pageant (a long-running water show that was a precursor to the Main Street Electrical Parade) from our room every night.  I didn’t see it first hand, but my parents mentioned watching Epcot’s Illuminations from the room on an evening when they were babysitting our son while my wife and I had a dinner out on our own.

The room had the typical amenities that we have come to expect at a DVC resort.  We especially appreciate the in-room washer and dryer, which allows us to do laundry every couple days and, thus, pack lighter than we typically would.  We can easily do one or two loads of laundry after we get back from the parks in an evening, letting the dryer run overnight.  This prevents laundry from taking any time away from our vacation activities like it typically would if we needed to use coin-operated machines.

The DVC rooms also have full-sized kitchens, which is nice, although we honestly don’t use it all that much since we tend to prefer to eat most of our meals out during our vacations.  We do usually pick up some breakfast foods, though, so it is nice having readily available dishes and silverware for that.  The full-sized refrigerator is also very nice to have.  I don’t think we have ever actually used the oven or stove during one of our DVC stays, though.

The 1-bedroom villas at the older DVC resorts always had enormous bathrooms, split into multiple rooms for the whirlpool bathtub, sink and shower, and toilet.  The bathrooms at Bay Lake Tower are a more normal size, but for an extremely good reason.  Unlike the older DVC resorts, the 1-bedroom villas have two full bathrooms instead of just one.  The smaller bathroom is accessed from the main living room area (in our room, the door was right next to the main entrance) and has a toilet, sink, and a shower/tub combination.  The larger bathroom is accessed from the bedroom and includes a whirlpool tub and sink in an outer room and the toilet and good-sized walk-in shower in a secondary room.  The extra bathroom was extremely nice to have and could be a major factor for us in choosing between Bay Lake Tower and other resorts on future visits.  As usual, the whirlpool tub was once again one of our favorite features of the DVC rooms.  It can be extremely relaxing after a long day of walking through the theme parks.

One mixed aspect to our experience at Bay Lake Tower was with the housekeeping staff.  When we first checked in at around 10am, we were pretty surprised when the desk clerk told us that the room was available immediately.  We headed up there (rather excitedly, I will admit) but were quickly disappointed when we entered the room and found it to look like something of a disaster area.  The room clearly hadn’t been cleaned at all and the previous guests had left it in pretty poor condition.

I called the housekeeping department and was told that they were going to put a “rush” order in for the room to be cleaned.  I mentioned that we had breakfast reservations at Chef Mickey’s and the person on the phone told me to check back after we finished eating and the room should be clean.  When we returned, we found the room to be unchanged from before.  I called again and told the story and was told that a manager would either call or come up.  We then waited about 20 minutes before we heard from someone who simply reminded us that the check-in time was 4pm and that the room would be cleaned by then.  We didn’t get back again until around 10pm and the room was clean at that point.

To be clear, I knew from the beginning that the check-in time was 4pm and we arrived with the expectation that we would need to store our luggage with Bell Services and retrieve it after we got back from the parks in the evening.  I also recognize that mistakes happen and wouldn’t have been bothered if my first phone call to housekeeping had resulted in a simple apology and promise that the room would be clean by 4.  What I objected to was being promised a “rush” cleaning before we got back from breakfast (something I hadn’t even asked for) and then having them fail to follow through on it.  We lost at least 1/2 hour of park time that afternoon because of our extra return visit to the room and the extended wait for a manager, which I felt was necessary since I needed some authoritative assurance that the room wouldn’t still be a mess when we got back fairly late in the evening.

Our experience with the housekeeping continued to be a bit mixed even after that.  While the room was definitely cleaned, we did find it to be a bit less thorough than it should have been.  In particular, I found the dining table and some of the other kitchen surfaces to still be a bit sticky feeling and ended up running a wet sponge over them a bit more myself.  Another oddity was that we actually found the room to have been cleaned a few times when it wasn’t supposed to be.  When DVC members are staying on points, the policy is that the room is cleaned on arrival and then every 8th day after that.  We were only staying for 7 nights, so there shouldn’t have been any cleanings during our visit.  Instead, we came back and found that the room had clearly been cleaned (beds were made, towels replaced, etc.) several times during the trip.  We weren’t charged for the extra cleanings and I guess I can’t complain too much about getting more than we were entitled, but it still seemed to suggest some lack of organization and communication within the housekeeping department.

My opinion about the overall decor of the room was a bit mixed. The room was nice, but I found the fairly modernistic design to be a bit cold.  Our favorite Walt Disney World resort (and DVC villas) has long been the Wilderness Lodge and I can definitely say that the more rustic decor there is much more to my liking.  While I do think the Bay Lake Tower has some pretty large advantages when it comes to location and amenities, I also suspect we will still continue to book occasional stays at Wilderness Lodge for its decor.  We made one visit over there for dinner at Whispering Canyon and my wife and I both commented as we walked into the lobby that it kind of felt like we were going home.

Since Andy started Kindergarten this year, we had to arrange our travel plans around his school schedule.  While we don’t really know whether or not his school and teacher would have been open to us taking him out of school for a vacation, we felt that we really preferred to try to find a time when he wouldn’t miss any.  Looking at the schedule, we discovered that his winter break extended for the full week after New Years, which seemed like a good opportunity.  We are hopeful that we will avoid the worst of the Christmas season crowds with this plan as well as take advantage of some good travel bargains.

We came up with the idea of traveling on New Years Eve with the hope that it might not be as busy a travel day as some of the surrounding dates.  We figured today to be a day that a lot of people would be more apt to want to stay at home or go out celebrating somewhere.  While our flight did end up being relatively full, the airport turned out to be pretty easy to deal with today.

For tonight and tomorrow, we are going to be staying at a Fairfield Inn near my parents’ house in Clermont.  We didn’t really want to deal with the Disney World crowds on the first two New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.  This should give us a chance to rest a bit tomorrow after the travel day as well as to give us some pretty good quality time visiting casually with my parents at their house tomorrow.

On Saturday, we will be transferring to Bay Lake Tower, the new Disney’s Vacation Club resort that opened next to the Contemporary Resort earlier in 2009.  Early in the year, we sold off our DVC points at the Saratoga Springs Resort (which we didn’t like very much) and re-purchased at Bay Lake Tower.  We are definitely looking forward to our stay at what is now the highest-end DVC resort.  We then plan to spend lots of time at the theme parks starting Saturday and through the rest of next week, flying home on a week from Saturday.

With the recent reports of heightened security after the attempted terrorist attack last week along with our uncertainty about how crowded the airport was going to be, we decided that we needed to get a really early start this morning.  The fact that today is a Thursday and not necessarily a work holiday for many people also introduced the potential risk of some major traffic on the 405 freeway heading down to LAX.  Because of all this, we got up at 4:30am this morning and left home pretty much right at 6;30am.  I guess we are kind of having to adjust to Eastern time a day early, although we still went to sleep on Pacific Time last night, making us really tired today.

None of the concerns really ended up being a problem, although I’m still glad we maintained some peace of mind by allowing all the extra time.  Traffic on the 405 turned out to be pretty much full-speed all the way, allowing us to get to the airport parking facility (we use WallyPark) in about 20 minutes or so.   At the parking facility, we were able to very quickly get parked, unload our luggage, and get onto a shuttle bus, which we had all to ourselves. 

At the Delta Airlines terminal, there was no line at all for curbside check-in, which let us take care of our checked bags very quickly and without any major hassle.  It was really very nice being able to avoid the need for a luggage cart or having to drag our bags through the airport to the regular check-in desks.  I suppose I could have saved the tip by checking the bags inside, but I felt the small cost was well worth it.

Security was probably our biggest worry.  Over the last week, I’d been hearing all kinds of horror stories about the wait, with reports of wait times anywhere from an hour or so all the way up to 7 hours.  Of course, these were all hearsay and the airport, airlines, and TSA were really saying nothing officially, leaving us with little idea what to expect.  At least this morning, though, the wait really wasn’t much at all.  We made it through in about 20 minutes, which included a little extra time for them to do a hand-search of my backpack, mainly because I forgot to take the camcorder out. 

We ended up getting to the gate nearly 3 hours before the flight.  That gave us plenty of time to get an over-priced breakfast at the airport McDonalds and otherwise catch our breath a bit before getting on the plane.  We found seats at the gate that were right in front of a window and Andy had quite a bit of fun watching the airplanes.

Security does seem somewhat increased from what we have seen in the past.  The security checkpoint felt a bit more formal and by the book than usual, although I honestly don’t know how much of that was perception.  As I mentioned, I did get a secondary search on my bag, which seemed pretty quick.  At the gate, they had a pretty substantial TSA presence during boarding, including multiple officers both at the entrance to the jetway and at the plane’s hatch.  They announced at the start of boarding that the TSA would be doing some random searches and pat-downs during boarding, although I didn’t see them actually pull anyone out of the line for it.  Before they started boarding, they also made a point of announcing that we were waiting for the TSA to search and clear the plane as well.

I’m going to conclude this first post of the trip by mentioning that this plane offers in-flight wi-fi and I have written all of this on-board and will post this momentarily from the air!  As of right now, we are flying over Texas with another hour and a half or so to go before arrival.  So far, the flight has had a bit of turbulence, but otherwise has been pretty uneventful.