Disney Part I

So, I have had many people who are planning their Disney trip ask for tips so here is as much as I can get done in a short amount of time:


We stayed on Resort property at Port Olean's River Side.  There is no bad place to stay.  Come on, it is Disney.  This is an upper midgrade hotel.  We chose this one, because there are 5 of us and we needed the extra bed.  The room was your typical hotel room, but with Disney flair.  This particular resort steams for the Princess and the Frog movie, particularly the frog part.  I can only assume Port Orleans's French Quarter steams from the rest of the movie.   It was well cleaned every day and the attention to detail with decorating was so cool, but again, you will get that anywhere.  So, there were 2 queen beds and a fold out twin.  We had to request blankets for the fold out bed which I thought was weird considering we had to register all of our guests. The room had a fridge, no microwave, although there is one in the main building.   There was a laundry facility close by and a small pool near our building.  The lobby building had a bigger pool with a slide and hot tub  all the pools had child size life vests!  Loved that even though we had packed blow up pool noodles, this was a big plus.  At the main building there was also an arcade store and restaurant. 

The bus system was great we never had to wait more the 15 minutes and usually much less. Except one night at Downtown Disney. I would skip Downtown, esp Planet Hollywood, we had terrible service there. The ferry from Port Orleans to Downtown was fun as something different, but it took half an hour and we had to wait 15+ minutes for the ferry to get there. We were hoping to go see Frozen, but we didn't get down there in time, the ferry wasn't the only issue, but do allow more time if taking the ferry than taking the bus. If you do go to Downtown Disney, there are great street performers at night.  The Lego store has Lego car races outside.  There is a movie theatre that serves dinner.  We ate at Cookes of Dublin and that was good, but I would go to the table service side as opposed to the counter service side.  I had the fish and chips sandwich which was quite good with their special mustard sauce.  Busses run slow here so do ferries.  Good luck getting back to your room.


 Wrist bands and Fast Pass.  Fast Pass it up. It really helps. You can even change times from your smart phone if you need to.  You only get 3 fast pass plus at a time, but when we were there, you could also get paper passes still so we used both.  You use your band and finger print to get into the parks everyday so, remember what finger you use that first day.  The kids love the bands.  They love using them to get into the park or for Fast Passes.  We were also able to put "money" on them.  They were each able to take their money out of savings to take to Florida and spend as they chose.  We were able to put so much money on each band.  We didn't pay to put money on the band, but the band had a limit of how much they could charge and then anything we bought on a band (ours or the kids) were all charged to our room.  I told Scott not to show me the room bill.  When the kids found something they wanted to spend their money on the cashier (excuse me, cast member) would ask if they were allowed to use their band, we would say yes and the kids would complete their transaction by scanning their band and entering our pin.  You can even set up different pins for everyone.  We just used one for the whole family. 


 If you don't have time for all 4 parks I would recommend them in this order, Magic Kingdom (duh), Hollywood Studios (Star Tours is awesome), Epcot (Best Fireworks Show), Animal Kingdom (Everest and the Lion King Show were great).  I will continue with park specific details next time.