PTR:Orlando (for a change)
- Thread starter davidm
- Start date
Martyn B
CF Legend
I'm not fussed about Halloween events, but it doesn't it seem to look that good to me.
A few years ago I was given some leaflets and pics from when some people I know went to HHN, and it looked proper **** scary, like every maze looked horrible. Yet this years theres Bill and Ted, and Alice Cooper?
I suppose they have to change it each year to keep it interesting, but from what I have seen, it looked a lot better a few years back.
Oh, and nice pics, Dave!
A few years ago I was given some leaflets and pics from when some people I know went to HHN, and it looked proper **** scary, like every maze looked horrible. Yet this years theres Bill and Ted, and Alice Cooper?
I suppose they have to change it each year to keep it interesting, but from what I have seen, it looked a lot better a few years back.
Oh, and nice pics, Dave!
davidm
Strata Poster
Tuesday : DisneyQuest... and another hotel
The next day I was swapping hotels again, figured I'd have my last couple of nights in
somewhere a bit up-scale, but more on that in a moment.
Daytime, I had a bit of shopping I needed to do at the BassPro store up at the Festival
Bay mall at the top of I-Drive - which I thought had been fairly deserted the last couple
of times I had been there, but this time it was even worse. Huge mall, about 6 shops
open. The BassPro shop was busyish anyway.
After that I went down to Downtown Disney and had a play in that there DisneyQuest thing.
I'd never been in here before (been to something similar in Tokyo) and it was a bit odd
I thought. Somehow I managed to spend a fair few hours in there, but I suspect thats just
because I can kill a fair few hours playing video games generally.
Some of the games were good, but there was a lot of old junk in there - only a few real
modern arcade machines. Some of the "installation" games were OK but looking dated and
some (I'm looking at you VR-cartoon battle thing) were just awful.
The reason I had never been in before was just it seemed a lot of $$ for the effort (think
it should have been $44 entry) but the ticket I had got this time included it, so I was
really just making use of that.
Anyway, after the excitement of Cyber-Space Mountain et al I head to the hotel for the
last 2 days of my trip.
And this is the view from my room;
Which is nice. That shot was just after I checked in, didn't actually see anymore
giraffes from the room after that :-(.
So clearly I'm at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and I play around in the evening trying
to take some pictures of the nice lobby.
To be honest, I wasn't too impressed by the AKL - it was silly expensive (and I'd paid
extra for a "savannah view" and balcony, which was nice but not wonderful) and the room
itself was no better (possibly worse) that I'd had in the hotel before where 4 nights
cost me less than one night here.
But the hotel public areas (lobby and animal bits) were nice enough - you could wander
around various animal viewing areas just fine (so the savannah view room upchage wasn't
really needed) and the hotel had quite a nice relaxed vibe to it.
The animals were a bit "managed" too, there weren't lots of them out on the "savannah"
and they all seemed to be in their dedicated zones at their specified times. But it
was quite nice sitting out on the balcony in the dark watching a few wildebeast wandering
around.
Wednesday : AKL/Epcot
OK, so I'm running out of steam on this TR a bit by now, so I'll wrap it up...
Next day I spend the AM wandering around the lodge taking some daytime pics of the
place and the animals;
(not sorted any animal pics yet though, so none to see here for the moment).
After a swim in the pool for a while and pretty relaxed I head off to the final park
on a resort bus in the late afternoon.
Now returning to Epcot was a good plan, because they had started up their annual
"Food&Wine" festival since I visited the previous week. What this entails is a load
of country themed mini-food (& drink) stalls all set up around the World Showcase.
Easch stall had a few main course selections in themeing with the country (and not just
the WorldShowcase countries but others as well) a couple of other foods and a couple
of drinks. The servings were small, but only a couple of $$ each, so the idea is
that you wander around the park and have a few things from a few stalls as you go.
And very nice it all was too, they had lots of different beers in small (1/3 pint)
servings so you could try a load of those out as well as the food stuff. All-in-all
it was a bit like a giant tapas event - no idea how many items I ate (or mini-beers
I drank) but it was really quite cool : recommended (but not if you want to "do"
Epcot, its something else besides that really.
Thursday : Downtown/Travel
Checked out, wandered around DowntownDisney for a hour or so, played a few games in
DisneyQuest for a bit and drove back to the airport, successfully returning the hire car
with about 20 miles worth of gas left in it - result!
Thats it, tale over - might post more pics as I process them if I can summon the
enthusiasm now I'm back at work (boo, I wanna be on holiday again :-( ).
Blue Everest
The next day I was swapping hotels again, figured I'd have my last couple of nights in
somewhere a bit up-scale, but more on that in a moment.
Daytime, I had a bit of shopping I needed to do at the BassPro store up at the Festival
Bay mall at the top of I-Drive - which I thought had been fairly deserted the last couple
of times I had been there, but this time it was even worse. Huge mall, about 6 shops
open. The BassPro shop was busyish anyway.
After that I went down to Downtown Disney and had a play in that there DisneyQuest thing.
I'd never been in here before (been to something similar in Tokyo) and it was a bit odd
I thought. Somehow I managed to spend a fair few hours in there, but I suspect thats just
because I can kill a fair few hours playing video games generally.
Some of the games were good, but there was a lot of old junk in there - only a few real
modern arcade machines. Some of the "installation" games were OK but looking dated and
some (I'm looking at you VR-cartoon battle thing) were just awful.
The reason I had never been in before was just it seemed a lot of $$ for the effort (think
it should have been $44 entry) but the ticket I had got this time included it, so I was
really just making use of that.
Anyway, after the excitement of Cyber-Space Mountain et al I head to the hotel for the
last 2 days of my trip.
And this is the view from my room;
Which is nice. That shot was just after I checked in, didn't actually see anymore
giraffes from the room after that :-(.
So clearly I'm at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and I play around in the evening trying
to take some pictures of the nice lobby.
To be honest, I wasn't too impressed by the AKL - it was silly expensive (and I'd paid
extra for a "savannah view" and balcony, which was nice but not wonderful) and the room
itself was no better (possibly worse) that I'd had in the hotel before where 4 nights
cost me less than one night here.
But the hotel public areas (lobby and animal bits) were nice enough - you could wander
around various animal viewing areas just fine (so the savannah view room upchage wasn't
really needed) and the hotel had quite a nice relaxed vibe to it.
The animals were a bit "managed" too, there weren't lots of them out on the "savannah"
and they all seemed to be in their dedicated zones at their specified times. But it
was quite nice sitting out on the balcony in the dark watching a few wildebeast wandering
around.
Wednesday : AKL/Epcot
OK, so I'm running out of steam on this TR a bit by now, so I'll wrap it up...
Next day I spend the AM wandering around the lodge taking some daytime pics of the
place and the animals;
(not sorted any animal pics yet though, so none to see here for the moment).
After a swim in the pool for a while and pretty relaxed I head off to the final park
on a resort bus in the late afternoon.
Now returning to Epcot was a good plan, because they had started up their annual
"Food&Wine" festival since I visited the previous week. What this entails is a load
of country themed mini-food (& drink) stalls all set up around the World Showcase.
Easch stall had a few main course selections in themeing with the country (and not just
the WorldShowcase countries but others as well) a couple of other foods and a couple
of drinks. The servings were small, but only a couple of $$ each, so the idea is
that you wander around the park and have a few things from a few stalls as you go.
And very nice it all was too, they had lots of different beers in small (1/3 pint)
servings so you could try a load of those out as well as the food stuff. All-in-all
it was a bit like a giant tapas event - no idea how many items I ate (or mini-beers
I drank) but it was really quite cool : recommended (but not if you want to "do"
Epcot, its something else besides that really.
Thursday : Downtown/Travel
Checked out, wandered around DowntownDisney for a hour or so, played a few games in
DisneyQuest for a bit and drove back to the airport, successfully returning the hire car
with about 20 miles worth of gas left in it - result!
Thats it, tale over - might post more pics as I process them if I can summon the
enthusiasm now I'm back at work (boo, I wanna be on holiday again :-( ).
Blue Everest
Nice PTR. Disney Quest is weird isn't it? But it does seem to just eat away at the hours without you realising and all the exclusive installed stuff was dated and didn't really work very well. I'd be a bit cheesed off if I paid full dollar for it.
Very jealous about you staying at the Lodge, I love the look of that hotel, shame to hear it's not as amazing as it looks though.
Very jealous about you staying at the Lodge, I love the look of that hotel, shame to hear it's not as amazing as it looks though.
davidm
Strata Poster
Yeah DQ was all just a bit "meh" - the Sega Joypolis equivalents were better (mind you its >10 years since I went to the one of those that is closest to DQ in what it is)
--
@M&M : I remember you posting some of those shots you 2 had done the other year ; I''ll go back and look at the pics you posted
EDIT: can't find a TR, swear you posted some though? (found one in old Photos of Members)
The DVC bit of the lodge is another building (Kidani Village) next door to the original AKL (Jambo House) ; the trappings / exterior bits were very similar at the Kidani bit (the pool looked nicer at the DVC and I think all the DVC rooms overlooked the savannah whereas some of the AKL rooms overlooked the pool / car park). The lobby at the timeshare place was nothing like the main one though, pretty small and functional (guess the difference between a hotel lobby and a timeshare check-in!) - got some pics of that too but haven't processed them just yet.
The silliest bit regarding the timeshare / hotel setup was that to get from one to the other, it was a 5 minute walk through 2 car parks (there is a bus as well, but why take a bus, its a 5 minutes walk for crying out loud) - shame that there wasn't some sort of themed walkway or path between the two places!
--
Anyway in lieu of pics of the Kidani Village lobby heres 2 more from the main hotel;
First one is 3 shot (actually 9 shots, 3 sets of 3 shots) panorama (so the original is rather large) which has not quite worked I think (not enough "downwards" in there is it?)
and the second one is across the bridge/walkway that you can see at the other side of the lobby in the shot above
--
@M&M : I remember you posting some of those shots you 2 had done the other year ; I''ll go back and look at the pics you posted
EDIT: can't find a TR, swear you posted some though? (found one in old Photos of Members)The DVC bit of the lodge is another building (Kidani Village) next door to the original AKL (Jambo House) ; the trappings / exterior bits were very similar at the Kidani bit (the pool looked nicer at the DVC and I think all the DVC rooms overlooked the savannah whereas some of the AKL rooms overlooked the pool / car park). The lobby at the timeshare place was nothing like the main one though, pretty small and functional (guess the difference between a hotel lobby and a timeshare check-in!) - got some pics of that too but haven't processed them just yet.
The silliest bit regarding the timeshare / hotel setup was that to get from one to the other, it was a 5 minute walk through 2 car parks (there is a bus as well, but why take a bus, its a 5 minutes walk for crying out loud) - shame that there wasn't some sort of themed walkway or path between the two places!
--
Anyway in lieu of pics of the Kidani Village lobby heres 2 more from the main hotel;
First one is 3 shot (actually 9 shots, 3 sets of 3 shots) panorama (so the original is rather large) which has not quite worked I think (not enough "downwards" in there is it?)
and the second one is across the bridge/walkway that you can see at the other side of the lobby in the shot above
davidm
Strata Poster
Room was fairly bog-standard to be honest, nice enough decor and the bathroom/vanity area was quite large.
Not much spare space in the room tho' - other rooms have bunk-bed options or a bed and a day-bed apparently but for some reason I couldn't book one of those.
Balcony view was good, but not "super" by any stretch.
The BIG problem that I had with the room however, was with the air-con in the room;
#1 : You could not turn it OFF. Don't think I've ever been in a hotel where I couldn't just switch the air-con / ventilation system off. :shock:
#2 : Even if you switched it from air-con mode to fan mode (nearly OFF) after a while it switched itself back to air-con mode all on its own. STUPID THING! :roll:
#3 : Since you couldn't turn it off (I asked obviously), their solution to my 'wanting to turn the air-con off' problem was offering to send a maintenance guy around to take a panel off the wall and swich the unit off inside the air-duct - clearly NO USE WHATSOEVER since I only wanted to turn it off when the room was an OK temperature and I didn't want the air-con noise. :?
#4 : Because of the air-con switch-off solution detailed above, the panel in the wall was not well air-tight / sealed very well. So the air-con was making a huge racket because of this gap and THIS IS REALLY WHY I WANTED TO TURN THE BLOOMIN' THING OFF IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!! :evil:
After a while I realised that if I stuffed the gap in the wall-panel with some paper and wedged it shut by ramming a chair up against it, then the noise was greatly reduced (and my seething rage at needing to turn the air-con off was abated).
But I shouldn't have had to do that in a de-luxe resort property should I now?
(and the TV was a bit crap too)
Not much spare space in the room tho' - other rooms have bunk-bed options or a bed and a day-bed apparently but for some reason I couldn't book one of those.
Balcony view was good, but not "super" by any stretch.
The BIG problem that I had with the room however, was with the air-con in the room;
#1 : You could not turn it OFF. Don't think I've ever been in a hotel where I couldn't just switch the air-con / ventilation system off. :shock:
#2 : Even if you switched it from air-con mode to fan mode (nearly OFF) after a while it switched itself back to air-con mode all on its own. STUPID THING! :roll:
#3 : Since you couldn't turn it off (I asked obviously), their solution to my 'wanting to turn the air-con off' problem was offering to send a maintenance guy around to take a panel off the wall and swich the unit off inside the air-duct - clearly NO USE WHATSOEVER since I only wanted to turn it off when the room was an OK temperature and I didn't want the air-con noise. :?
#4 : Because of the air-con switch-off solution detailed above, the panel in the wall was not well air-tight / sealed very well. So the air-con was making a huge racket because of this gap and THIS IS REALLY WHY I WANTED TO TURN THE BLOOMIN' THING OFF IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!! :evil:
After a while I realised that if I stuffed the gap in the wall-panel with some paper and wedged it shut by ramming a chair up against it, then the noise was greatly reduced (and my seething rage at needing to turn the air-con off was abated).
But I shouldn't have had to do that in a de-luxe resort property should I now?
(and the TV was a bit crap too)
davidm
Strata Poster
Just a catch-up on some processed pics;
Chester&Hester's Dino-Rama!
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Lobby (BW)
House of Blues
Planet ...lywood
Tomorrowland
Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio
Chester&Hester's Dino-Rama!
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Lobby (BW)
House of Blues
Planet ...lywood
Tomorrowland
Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio