Don't Knock The "Standard View" Rooms

Let me start off this post by saying... 48 days to Disney! Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to say, "49 days... we battled that beast". That's a very sloppy paraphrase of a very funny song:

Now that that's out of my system, I wanted to briefly address some of the room types I'm familiar with at Disney. Granted, we've only stayed at Pop Century, All Star Movies, and Port Orleans Riverside so, I don't pretend to be an expert but I wanted to defend the "standard room view" (or whatever it's called). These "standard" rooms are in contrast to the slightly more expensive "preferred" or "pool room view" rooms.

Our rooms this year are "standard pool view" rooms. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm not exactly sure where our rooms are but, I'm really not worried about it. We have yet to stay in a room that was in a bad area.

The best example of this is our 2009 trip to Walt Disney World when we stayed at the All Star Movies Resort. That year our room was undoubtedly a standard view. I say "undoubtedly" because from our balcony area, you could look to the right and see the main lobby area of the hotel. We had an especially good view of the Disney's Magical Express buses unloading and loading people.

At first, you might think, "Yuck. Who wants to see that?!" But Joy and I really thought it was cool seeing so many people coming in, starting their vacations; kids skipping along, completely consumed with the excitement of starting a vacation in Walt Disney World.

Here's what our view looked like:

See? That's a pretty cool view, I think. Parking lot and all. We really didn't care.

Plus, looking directly down to the little tree/mulch area below our door, we were greeted with the following:

And then, on another day, it was changed to this:

I really thought this was pretty cool. Maybe some guest did this, maybe a cast member--I don't know. But you know what? It put a smile on our faces. As usual, it's the little touches like this that make a "standard room" become "preferred".

Keep up the good work Disney. We'll see you soon...

What Emotions Does This Image Conjure?

The picture above was taken in the bus queuing area at the Magic Kingdom. Obviously, this was taken during the day and, unbelievably, there's almost no one in this shot! 

But back to the title of this post: what kinds of emotions does this image trigger in you? If you've never been to Walt Disney World then the answer is probably nothing. If you have been to "the World", you're either thinking, "Aww! I can't wait! Remember when... [insert special memory here]". But, you may see this waiting area and think, "Ugh. My feet and legs hurt just looking at this." 

For me, I see potential. Potential of a new day at The Magic Kingdom with my family, having awesome new experiences and making memories that will last a lifetime. But, I also see the potential of standing in that line at 11:30pm behind hundreds of other people that just want to get on the bus, get back to Pop Century, and fall onto their bed immediately after trudging back to their room. I also see the promise of a quick bus ride back to the resort, only to be dismayed by a family of 20+ people accompanying their family member that happens to be on a "jazzy". (No offense to those that need to use jazzies. My wife and I had a couple experiences of disappointment at the hands of large families mostly filling the bus before anyone else can get on. Is this complaining? I hope not. I don't mean to be complaining.)

But, no matter what the reality ends up being, waiting in line at Disney is still better than "no line, no waiting" anywhere else in the world.

We'll find out what's in store for us in this waiting area in 52 days!

Unless we drive to the park...

56 Days to Disney (missed 57--been busy), and Tortuga Tavern?!

Time kind of got away from me last night so, I skipped the "56 Days to Disney!" post. So, here we are. It's Friday night and, tonight, Caleb was able to get the Wii U version of The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker; Joy and Molly watched some old Fred Astaire movie (which, surprisingly, had a lot of inappropriate scenes); and I was able to finish working on my schoolwork. Sophie and Lily hung out and played in various places.

Instead of just saying, "X-number of days to Disney", I decided to write about something Disney-related: The Tortuga Tavern (formerly El Pirata y El Perico) at the Magic Kingdom.

A couple trips back, Joy and I discovered this quick service restaurant located in the Magic Kingdom, near the Pirates of the Caribbean. We were super excited to find out that this restaurant served our favorite sort of dish: Mexican food! Well, maybe not super authentic Mexican food but, Taco Bell style burritos--which is completely awesome! And they didn't just serve some mega-burritos; you would order your food--which was a tortilla shell with meat and/or beans--and then go to the fixin's bar (for lack of a better term) where you could load up on lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, guacamole, etc. We truly enjoyed eating there.

Our only problem with the restaurant was the hours. This place keeps really weird hours. And I do mean weird: how about 11am -2:30pm (going off my memory here)? Try checking for the restaurant's hours on the Disney site and the hours are "varies". Definitely strange.

But, knowing they weren't open all day long, we arrived at The Magic Kingdom one day and, even though I was already full from breakfast, we ate at El Pirata y El Perico. I really shouldn't have done that because, as I stated, I was already full but, I couldn't bear the thought of passing up the opportunity to eat there since, by the time I would be hungry again, they'd be closed. I felt a little sick after that and that's probably as close as I've ever come to gluttony.

But, anyway, El Pirata y El Perico went from this:

To this:

When we saw this in 2012, we were really okay with the change. Tortuga is an island in the Caribbean so, it fits with the Adventureland/Pirates of the Caribbean vibe of that area but, I was shocked, and slightly dismayed, this year when I looked at the Tortuga Tavern menu and I saw that, instead of burritos and other Mexican fare, they now only serve barbecue. Barbecue?! Yes, barbecue. Reading the menu on the Walt Disney World website spells it all out.

I know that I can't really complain and say, "Hey, they didn't eat barbecue sandwiches in The Pirates of the Caribbean movies!" because, did they even eat bean and beef burritos in a tavern, with a fixin's bar? Not that I recall.

Anyway, suffice to say that the pressure to force feed myself the next time we're walking by the Tortuga Tavern won't really be an issue. I mean, I like barbecue but, it just doesn't have the same pull (get the pun there? Pulled pork? Not funny, I know.) that the burrito bar did.

Oh well. We'll still go to the Magic Kingdom and we'll still have a great time, even without a Taco Bell-style lunch.

I'm hungry now.

Are These Post Titles Getting Old?

I was, of course, originally going to title this post "58 Days to Disney!" But then I thought, maybe the sequential titles are getting old. I mean, they're a little old to me but, what else am I going to write? Posting a little bit everyday causes me to kind of run out of ideas--quickly--so, I'm going to pick another picture from my Flickr account and write a quick note about it.

But again: 58 days to Disney!

This picture was taken inside one of the Rubik's cube staircases at Pop Century. This particular picture was taken May 1st, 2010 but, on our last trip in 2014, Joy, the kids, and I were walking down these Rubik Cube stairs and, as were climbing down, I heard a loud slap against  the concrete steps. Joy and tripped and fallen! The slap sound was a combination of her hands and her leg hitting the stairs. Thankfully, she did not fall very far, but those stairs are just not very forgiving.

We'll all be sure to be a little more careful this year.

Tomorrow, another shot from Flickr and some more nonsensical comments. 

61 Days to Disney!

As a way to force myself to blog daily in the lead-up to our Disney trip, I'm going to try to do daily "countdown" posts. I'm also going to try to post pictures of our Disney trips from years past (except for the first one since none of those are digital yet). So here goes:

At the risk of being redundant... 61 days to Disney!

Joy and Molly worked on an awesome countdown chain (pictured below). So, it's officially "on". As Molly has told me, once Tuesday rolls around, we'll be able to start saying, "We're going to Disney next month!" (See, we're going to Disney at the end of April so, once it's March... Well, you get the idea.)

Well, that's it for this countdown post.

The countdown chain:

Soon, very soon, we'll be standing near this spot. In 61 days. Or more, depending on when we go to The Magic Kingdom: