WOL Fan's trip report, 9/27-10/3

With the help of a great 40% pin code, my brother and I took the plunge & booked a trip at the Poly, my first stay in a deluxe resort since a 3 night stay at the Contemporary when I was 13 (in 1980!)

DME was terrific as always, we had our booklet so didn't even have to go to the desk, we were sent straight into line where we waited all of 5 minutes (a trend which would continue for much of the trip). Even though the bus was planning to drop off at all 3 monorail resorts and the Wilderness Lodge, the Poly was first so we were lucky.

After a great Aloha from the desk staff were were able to head right to our room in Rapa Nui - a bit far from the Great Ceremonial House, but a very short walk from the TTC so no problem there. The grounds are terrific and Captain Cooks is a great table service location. Tonga toast - yum!

Trends for the trip
Outstanding cast members - so helpful, polite, friendly and funny
Parks not so empty, but lines not so long - confusing, but better than the other way around, our longest wait was 40 minutes for Toy Story Mania but after that, 20 minutes for Peter Pan and under 15 for everything else - we also made good use of Fast Pass.
Somewhat clueless guests - lots of incredibly unprepared guests. Seriously people, if you're going to spend that much money at least know which park "the car ride" is in

And so we were able to get to the Magic Kingdom before noon on our first day and spent parts of 4 of our trip days there. I made it to point to ride some rides I hadn't been on in years (Snow White, Peter Pan, etc.). We had several walk ons (Pooh, Small Word and even the Jungle Cruise(!))

On my last trip in 2007, the Mansion was undergoing a refurb and WOW did they do a great job. I don't know whether the new bride or the room of stairs is my new favorite part.

We were able to ride the TTA with the new lights and I really like them. We also caught the new narration on our next to last day and it's great to hear the ride called the Peoplemover again, have the model called Progress City and hear the Carousel get it's due.

This was also my first Halloween trip and I like the decorations - I was worried that they'd go too far, but for me they were just right. Mickey's Not So Scary was a lot of fun & helped us get in a lot of 2nd rides on attractions with minimal wait. The Boo to You parade was just OK but Hallowishes was very cool.

We spent the least time at Animal Kingdom but we did have some terrific luck on the Safari, having a giraffe right next to our vehicle, almost having to stop for it. And Yak & Yeti has turned into one of my favorite restaurants.

We spent parts of two days at the Studios & I was able to get in my first two rides on Toy Story & it really is a lot of fun. I also saw Fantasmic for the first time (yes, the first time) and even though the dragon effect didn't work it was a good show. I especially appreciate it because Pocahontas is my favorite Disney movie and it's one of the few places left in the parks that even acknowledges that it exists. We were pleasantly surprised by how much fun the American Idol Experience was. Neither my brother nor I had high hopes, but the cast involved made it very fun and the guests were actually pretty good.

Finally, we spent parts of 4 days at Epcot. I loved riding Soarin 3 times before 1pm (opening, fast pass & fast pass). There was a lot of very yummy food at the Food & Wine booths, especially at Morocco, Vienna & New Zealand. I also got to see Spaceship Earth for the first time since it's refurbishment and I have to say I like it. I agree that the descent needs some work but not much, just while you're waiting for your "future", you need something else to watch besides your monitor. Otherwise, the AA's were very fluid & the new scenes very nice.

I picked up some nice souvenirs - the new retro Epcot pin set is very nice and I am going to be spending a lot of time pouring over the pictures in The Art of Walt Disney World. A surprising new book was the small but informative "Windows on Main Street" which shows each window at both DL & WDW & explains the story behind the name on the window. There's even a map to both Main Streets showing you where to find each window.

Finally, the highlights of our stay - we did both the "Undiscovered Future World" and "Keys to the Kingdom" tours. They were both amazing. Undiscovered Future World took us much farther backstage than I imagined we would go. Yes, you still go upstairs in Imagination but the tunnel is walled off now. We spotted some blueprints up there which were quickly flipped over by our tour guide (Charlie, btw, who was very good). We got a neat pin but the best present of all was access to a VIP area to watch Illuminations - I've never seen it closer or clearer than our little roped off area in Italy.
Keys to the Kingdom was also very good (Meghan is an outstanding guide) and our group had a lot of fun on our special "J Cruise" ride and a really nice lunch at Columbia Harbor House. We will definitely be going there again for lunch.

So we got to ride a lot of monorails, ride a lot of rides & have a lot of fun.

Hope you liked my trip report - questions anyone?

Sounds like you had a great trip! Thanks for sharing!

Great report, glad you had such a fantastic trip!

that sounds great. did you happen to go in the Wonders of Life for the food and wine festival?

Yes, it was very sad going into the WOL pavilion for the first time without being able to go to Body Wars & Cranium Command, two of my favorite attractions ever.

It is funny how they still call it "Wonders Theater" and the bar set up was "Wonders Bar"

They really need to do something else with this space. Every other time an attraction has gone down, it has been replaced - it's time to give us something in place of this once great pavilion.

i never went into wonders of life. mainly because when it was open during my trip in 2003 i wasn't too much of a disney freak back then and i never even saw it. because it's at one of the worst locations ever.