Tag: theme park

Hotel Review – Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter

Our daughter finished her freshman year at Eckerd College a couple of weeks ago, and since we were headed down there to move her out of her dorm anyway, we decided to tack a week at Disney on to the trip. Originally we’d booked a 7-night stay at Disney’s All-Star Movies resort, but a week or so before driving down we found that we could move over to the Port Orleans French Quarter for a little bit more money, and jumped on it. That’s one thing about Disney’s online reservation system (restaurants included), always keep checking the site leading up to your trip, you never know what you might find or what might open up.

Upon arrival, we saw what many of the reviews I’d read about this place were talking about, in that it’s smaller than the average Disney hotel. I’ve gotta say, that was one of our favorite things about the place. We felt All-Star was way too big the last time we stayed there, as we had quite a hike to get from the room to the main building every day, and that was never an issue at French Quarter. We had a ground floor river view room in building 6 (specifically room 6145), which is out on one edge of the property, but the walk to the main building was only a couple of minutes each way. The place really had a small resort feel, which we absolutely loved. A few shots from around the property:

DSC00377 DSC00378 DSC00388 DSC00391 DSC00392 DSC00395 DSC00398 DSC00438 DSC00444 DSC00445 WP_20150518_16_23_16_Pro

The room itself was pretty standard, and being one of their moderate hotels, had two queen beds as opposed to the doubles that the All-Star rooms come with. Definitely a welcome upgrade. The room was tastefully decorated, no complaints there. There was something in the room I was allergic to, however, and I never did figure out what it was. Usually I have issues with down pillows, which I don’t know if we had here, but Bayley had a pillow with her that wasn’t, which I used all week and still had issues, so I don’t think it was the pillows. Oh well, some Claratin took care of it. Really, the only room-related complaint we had is that we didn’t get either of the requests my wife asked for. She’d asked for a high floor (the buildings here are 3 floors high) and a corner room, and we got neither. No biggie though, we had no issues related to room location. We also had a 4th guest, as Bayley’s boyfriend was with us for the week, and were able to fit a twin air mattress in the room with little issue. Additionally, the privacy curtain between the sinks and the room were really nice, as was the double sink setup so two people could be getting ready at once. Some pics of the room itself:

DSC00400 DSC00401 DSC00402 DSC00404 DSC00405 DSC00407 DSC00409 DSC00410 DSC00416 DSC00952DSC00560

Note that the fridge was actually fairly roomy. I ordered an 8″ cake from Disney Dining for my wife’s birthday, and the full-sized cake box fit in the fridge without issue, along with quite a few bottles of water and some other random stuff. The safe, on the other hand, was tiny. Small little wall safe that used keys. All this technology in the parks and hotel, and we can’t use a magic band to access our safe?

Some additional benefits of this property:

  • They have a water taxi that will take you to Port Orleans Riverside, or Downtown Disney. We used this a few times, and while most trips were fine, our last attempt to take it over to Downtown Disney exposed a big issue. Riverside is a much bigger resort than French Quarter, and water taxis to Downtown Disney originate there. This means that during peak times, the boat arriving to pick you up can be pretty full. On our last day, we got to the boat ramp right as one was leaving, and waited 20 minutes for the next one out in the hot sun at the end of a line of about 15 people (the previous taxi didn’t have enough room to accommodate everyone in line). When it arrived, it only had room for 13. With 4 in our party, and being at the end of the line, that meant we were out of luck, and were pretty rudely told by the captain we had to wait another minutes for the next one. We were already overheated, having to wait in the sun, so we headed to the bus stop and grabbed a bus over there. On a busy Saturday when the hotel is 100% full (like it was that Saturday on Memorial Day weekend), they really should have the boats running more often, and maybe even have one or two dedicated to French Quarter as demand dictates. Additionally, more shade, and/or misters while waiting in line. Outside of that one time, we never had an issue with the water taxis, taking them to Downtown Disney twice, and over to Riverside once. Definitely a better way to get there versus fighting traffic at Downtown Disney. Some water taxi shots:

DSC00663 DSC00664 DSC00665 WP_20150519_10_33_35_Pro

  • In typical Disney fashion, there are plenty of things for the kids to do. We used the pool a couple of times, and in both cases, saw dance parties and hula hoop competitions going on. Additionally, they show Disney movies each night in the little park between buildings 5 & 6 at 9pm, and host a marshmallow-roasting campfire on property each evening too.
  • For a fee, up to 4 people can take a ride around the property in a horse and buggy. Looked pretty cool, but we never did it.
  • Bus service was good. We never waited long for a bus, and never missed one due to overcrowding. The Magic Kingdom bus from French Quarter doesn’t stop anywhere else, but the others do. The Hollywood Studios bus, for example, makes 4 stops at Riverside after picking up at French Quarter (that should tell you how big Riverside is). On our first Saturday there, I took the bus from the Magic Kingdom to the hotel a little after 9pm and back to the Magic Kingdom after resting in the room for about 10 minutes, and the round trip time was roughly 50-55 minutes. We took the bus to various parks about half the time we were there and never had any complaints.
  • The crew over at luggage storage was great. That cake I mentioned earlier that we’d stored in our room fridge? Yea, it was big. We’d only eaten about half by the time we left, so we kept it at luggage storage the day we checked out, as they had a fridge they could hold it in. We didn’t want to waste it, but not having anywhere to store it while we were at parks that final day didn’t leave us much choice.

I think that about covers it. The bottom line is that all three of us agree that this is our new favorite hotel on property, as there was a lot to like. Enjoy a few more pictures from the French Quarter!

DSC00381 DSC00389 DSC00396 DSC00397 DSC00426 DSC00430 DSC00432 DSC00434 DSC00436 DSC00437 DSC00440 DSC00441 DSC00443 DSC00446 DSC00447 WP_20150518_16_18_20_Pro WP_20150518_16_21_01_Pro WP_20150518_16_21_20_Pro WP_20150518_16_21_28_Pro WP_20150518_16_22_01_Pro WP_20150518_16_22_32_Pro WP_20150518_16_23_16_Pro WP_20150518_19_01_30_Pro WP_20150521_18_12_21_Pro

 

 

Four days in Florida

Mid last week, we headed down to Florida to drop our daughter off at Eckerd College to start her freshman year (if you’re interested, more on that here). Being that her best friend of 10 years is also going to Eckerd, we decided to caravan down there with their family a little early and spend a day at Universal Studios. Before we get to that, however, I’ll mention a little about where we stayed.

Thanks to my daughter’s competitive cheer schedule over the years, we’ve stayed in several hotels in Orlando over the years, usually ones associated with Disney. With this trip not including a Disney stop, we decided to go with a house my wife found on AirBnB. We’ve used AirBnB in the past, most notably last summer when we spend a couple of weeks in SoCal touring colleges, and have never had an issue. This trip was no different. The house is located in a gated community in Haines City, and fit the bill perfectly. We aimed for something outside of Orlando in the direction of St Petersburg on purpose, knowing we’d be making a couple of trips between the house and her college. In hindsight, we probably should have booked something a little closer to St Pete, but considering we paid $500 for 4 nights in a 4 bedroom house that had a pool and hot tub, and were splitting the cost with another family, we were pretty happy.

Back to the trip itself. We spent last Thursday at Universal, and it pretty much lived up to our last trip there. The last visit was right after the Harry Potter section first opened in Islands of Adventure, and suffice it to say the park was way too crowded that day. So much so that it took 20 minutes to walk from the Hogsmeade entrance back to the Forbidden Journey ride. For anyone who’s been there, you know that walk should take closer to 2 minutes, if that. On that day, I think we maybe got 3 rides in across the entire park due to the lines. This time around wasn’t much different.

Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Universal, but we all had one day left on our passes from that previous visit, and had to use them before the end of the year. For the money, I’d rather spend the day at Disney. At $136/pp for one day, it’s a pretty steep ticket. Yes, that single day price gets you in to both parks, but even with that, I think we only managed to get in 5 rides this time around (total, in both parks) due to lines. We never did try out the new Gringotts rode, as the wait was 240 minutes. None of us were interested in waiting 4 hours for any ride (an employee told us the longest she’d seen so far was 7 hours. Yikes). We did jump in the single riders line, but in the 20 minutes we were in it we never moved, so we cut our losses and headed for the Hogwarts Express to have some fun over in Islands of Adventure.

The positives for us when it comes to Universal:

  • Butterbeer. Yum 🙂
  • The Harry Potter sections themselves are pretty cool. Very well done on Universal’s part:

Castle Diagon Diagon2 Dragon Hogsmeade

The negatives:

  • The lines. At Disney you can deal with this by utilizing the fast pass. At Universal, they do have an express pass, which brings me to the next negative:
  • The express pass: When we first got to the park, I asked about this, and was quoted $89/pp for a one-time pass, or $109/pp for an unlimited pass for the day we were there (apparently this price fluctuates). Uh, you have to be insane. Not a chance. I know certain hotel guests have that included, but I’m not going to pay more to stay at the Hard Rock just to get an express pass. I made my choice and voted with my wallet, and the likelihood of me going back to Universal is slim in part because of this.
  • The staff. We live close to Carowinds, and rarely go in large part because the employees just don’t seem to have their heads in the game. Universal seems to be approaching that same level of employee discontent. As an example, we ate lunch in the park at Mythos. The wait was about 40min right at lunch rush, no biggie, but as our waitress was walking us to our table, our waiter saw he was getting someone new seated in his area, and very vocally said “you’ve got to be kidding me!”. I get that you very easily could have been overloaded with customers, but as someone who’s in front of customers all day, there’s simply no excuse for complaining like that in front of them. Just one example of what seemed to be a huge difference between the staff at Disney and those at Universal.

All in all we spent around 12 hours at Universal that day, minus heading out to the City Walk area to meet up with a few other people for dinner. Wasn’t a bad way to spend our last day together as a family before dropping my daughter off at college, but as mentioned, I think we all would have preferred Disney 🙂