Walt Disney World Trip - July 2010 - Part One

So as I have written before, I recently visited Disney World over the 4th of July weekend. I took my 9yo niece Bianca on her 1st Disney trip. I originally told my niece and nephews that when they turn 10 years old, I would take them to Disney World. Well what prompted to take my niece a year earlier to Disney World? Usually my family (Mom, Sis, her three children and I) take a weekend trip to Wisconsin Dells for the 4th of July. But back in December, my Mom took a nasty slip and fall on black ice and she has been recovering from ankle surgery and therapy. We decided to cancel the trip for this year. Well I started thinking if it was feasible to take my niece to Disney World instead. After spending a few hours on Disney.com, pricing some various options, it turns out that Disney was offering a 'Summer Kids Stay and Play Offer'. Well, that's all I need to book the trip. I added the quick service dining plan for the trip to give it a try. Our trip was for July 1st to 4th, Thursday to Sunday. We were booked at the Pop Century Resort. I always wanted to stay at this resort. Plus I wanted to stay at POP before they start any changes or rehabs to the resort when the new Art of Animation Resort is built next to POP.

So on July 1st, we head out to Chicago's Midway Airport, which is located 10 minutes away from where my mother and sister live. We are flying Southwest Airlines and our flight is at 6am. Yes I know, its gonna be a long day! We arrive in Orlando around 9:30am and we head directly to Disney's Magical Express ticket counter, located at the baggage level of the airport. After we check-in with Magical Express, we get corralled into the line that will take us to the POP Century resort. After a 20 minute wait we board a bus and we're on the way. After dropping off guests at Disney's Caribbean Resort, we arrive at POP. We then head into the lobby and look for the line designated for those who already registered on-line. I step-up to the counter and tell the Cast Member my info. He heads to a desk behind him and searches for a folder with all my resort info. He hands us our resort keys that have my park tickets and quick service dining plan on them. Since we arrived at the resort by 11am, the room is not ready. The Cast Member asks if I want a text message or phone call when the room is ready. I say text message might work best.

Now that we're at Disney World, what do we do? Well since we have been traveling all morning, I think lunch is in order. We go to the POP Century food court that's located in the main lobby of the resort and check out what's available. I love the food courts that are located in the Value Resorts, and the one in POP Century is awesome. From sandwich's, salads, personal pizzas and daily specials, the food court has plenty to offer. My niece gets the children's chicken tenders and I get the adult chicken breast nuggets. Both are very good and satisfies our hunger. Now its time to hit the parks. Today's park is Disney Hollywood Studios.

Its now about noon as we take the bus from POP Century to DHS. The most important thing I want to get accomplished is to get Fast Passes for Toy Story Mania. With it being the holiday weekend, I'm afraid we might not get to ride Toy Story. When we arrive to DHS, we go to guest services and request a 1st Visit button for my niece. We get one and then head into the park. We head over to Pixar Place and see that all the Fast Pass machines are covered. My fear has been realized: all the Fast Passes for the day have been distributed. Its now about 12:30pm. We go check what the stand-by time is for Toy Story. Its listed at 110 minutes. And another thing: IT'S HOT AS HADES!!! So there's no way my niece and I are waiting three hours in line, in the heat, in the sun for Toy Story. I decide we will come back at night and hopefully the line is shorter then. You can see in the following video clip how long the line for Toy Story was:

Since its hot, we need an in-door attraction to cool off. We head over to MuppetVision3D. As we walked in, the next show was starting in 5 minutes. Perfect! I love the Muppets, you can never go wrong with the Muppets. After MuppetVision, we headed into The Great Movie Ride. This is one of my fave attractions. I love watching classic films on the big screen. Today's tour included the 'Cowboy' show. I've never seen this version of the attraction before and it was great. After the Movie Ride, we walked over to the Tower of Terror and Rock N' Roller Coaster to see how long the time waits were. For Rock N' Roller Coaster is was 20 minutes, so we got in line. While moving thru the line, you could tell how hot the day was. But as soon as we got into the building of the attraction, the AC was blowing full blast and it felt good. This was gonna be my niece's 1st ride on a major roller coaster. I was kinda nervous because this considered the most intense of the coasters at Disney World. My niece is tall for a 9 year old and she is pretty tom-boyish, so I thought she would be fine. As we got into the ride, all seemed fine. As we rode Roller N' Coaster, I was trying to hear if my niece was screaming. How could I with all the loud Aerosmith music playing in my ears. As the ride came to its end, I leaned over to see my niece's reaction. She asked if the ride was over. I said it was. Then she said 'Is that it?' That's when I knew she would be ok. As we stepped out of the ride building, it was close to 3pm and time for our reservation at Sci-Fi Dine In. As we checked in, the cast member said our reservation was actually for 3:30pm. But since it was only two of us, they could seat us sooner, and in 5 minutes they did.

For our meal, I had the Italian Grilled Chicken Sandwich with bruschetta topping served on a kaiser roll with french fries plus a vanilla flavored Coke. My niece just had a strawberry milkshake. She's on vacation, she can eat whatever she wants!  After our meal, I checked to see if Pop Century has texted me with my room info. They have! Since it has gotten very hot, we could use a break. Plus I wanna make sure that Magical Express has delivered our luggage. We take the 15 minute bus ride back to POP Century. As we arrive at POP, I notice some grey clouds are forming. Is a rain storm coming? We'll see. We are in room #7132 in the 80's section. When I did my on-line registration, I requested a ground floor room in the 80's section because my niece is a fan of 80's video games like Pacman and Pokemon. I was happy that my request was honored.

As we enter the room, we see our luggage. All is good! Since we wanna re-fresh, we decide to go for a quick swim in the nearby Computer Pool. So we change into our swim wear. As we approach the pool, I notice that the life-guards are telling guests to empty the pool. Well my niece is so excited, she just right into the pool before I can tell her no. Seems like a rain storm is rolling in and they need the pools empty. Oh well. So we head back to the room to shower and relax while it rains. I think we took a two hour nap. After our nap, we get up and I check if its still raining. It is. So what to do. The rain is more like a misting, so we decide to wear our rain-gear and head back to the Studios to at least ride Toy Story Mania. As we head into the park, I see there are less crowds than the afternoon. Hopefully this means there are fewer lines for rides. So we head directly to Toy Story and the wait is less than 30 minutes. So we jump right into line. The line actually moves fast. Here is a clip of us going thru the line in Toy Story Mania:

My niece and I had a blast on Toy Story. This is definitely one of the best rides at any Disney park. My niece wants to ride again, but the wait time is now back up to 60 minutes. Oh well, next time I tell her. Its still raining pretty good, so I think Fantasmic! is out of the question for this trip. We then head over to see how long the wait is for Tower of Terror. Its only 20 minutes so we head in. I explain to my niece what to expect so that she is not really scared by the ride. We get on and she LOVES Tower of Terror. I love the new enhancements to the ride. We get to ride Tower twice. After that, it was getting close to 9pm and we are pretty much tired since we have been up since 4am. So we head back to POP and get some late night snacks to take back to the room. We end up watching some TV before bed. But finally sleep takes over. Thus ends a great 1st day of our trip. We plan on getting up early on Friday because we want to get to Epcot real early because this is the day that Captain EO returns. Hopefully we can.

John