Spring at Disney World is one of the most magical times to visit. I have enjoyed many a magical spring break with the Mouse as the Flower and Garden Festival blooms at Epcot and the temperatures start to creep up to their summer highs. COVID made this spring break pretty unusual since the theme park crowds were capped, keeping the typical hours (and hours) long wait times much lower than usual. We started the week in the low 90s and ended with a high of 60! Talk about needing to pack a variety of clothes!

The trip started at Disney’s Polynesian Village resort, in a studio villa room. The Poly is under heavy renovation right now with only the villa side of the resort open for guests. The Great Ceremonial House is open but services are limited and the monorail station at the resort is completely closed. For those looking to travel to Magic Kingdom, the resort boat, bus, or walking along the new (long) walking path are your options. The Epcot monorail line has been out of service for quite some time, so you have to catch a bus to get there or go to the other theme parks. ‘Ohana, one of my favorite restaurants, hasn’t reopened yet either, which keeps guests that aren’t staying at the resort to a minimum. Both pools are open and as beautiful as always. I love the saltwater quiet pool that is closest to the villas. The Barefoot Pool Bar at the main pool was still serving up delish drinks, including my new favorite margarita, a frozen margarita with Dole Whip lime. And the stuff around the edges? Chili-lime seasoning. Oh… so very good! The resort was so relaxing that I might seek out a resort in major renovation stage in the future to help thin the crowds!

We wanted this trip to be a little more ‘chill’ than some of our trips have been, so we made sure to factor in a good bit of downtime into our plans. I like having time to just explore the resort I’m staying at, taking photos, walking around and seeing what you’d normally blast right past on your way to the parks, and enjoying the pools. Each resort is so different, and things change so often, that you could truly have a completely different trip every time you visited. That’s what keeps Disney fresh for me too, that there are constant changes and improvements with each adventure. We’ve now visited on five separate trips since the parks and resorts reopened last July and each trip has been so different. The festivals at Epcot help keep the options there fun and exciting and I can never get enough time in Galaxy’s Edge in Hollywood Studios.

I hear grumbling about masks and will admit, don’t love ’em, but they’re a fact of life that we’re all dealing with right now. I refuse to let them hamper my fun. I have never been one to run around from one end of a park to the other, trying just to check off everything that (I think) there is to do. I don’t encourage that approach for my clients either. While you might ‘think’ you’re doing it all, you most certainly are not. You’re probably hitting the main attractions but you are missing what makes Disney unique. If you go to Disney with that plan right now, you’re likely to have an epic fail. This is the time to go to enjoy yourself. Take the time to see things you’ve never seen before. Ride the rides you can never get on because the lines are normally too long (and don’t for one second think that a 20-minute line for an attraction is outrageous, you’ve never seen a Disney line if you think 20 minutes is a long one). Sit down, relax, and take in the sights and sounds of the parks. Enjoy the food. Interact with the Cast Members. Take off that mask in a Relaxation Station while you enjoy a snack and a cool drink. Disney was always meant to be a place where a family could go and do things together, making memories and having fun. It morphed into a checklist of everything you had to do or you just didn’t do Disney ‘right’. That’s ridiculous. You can go to Disney multiple times each year and never do all of the things there are to do. Go, wear your mask, squeeze your kid, stay hydrated, and talk the whole way home about how awesome that favorite ride was.

Now that I’m off that soapbox, back to the trip. The parks, fantastic as always. The lines I saw were laughable at best. Mine Train well under an hour. Ha, that’s crazytown compared to the normal 2-3 hours during spring break. We rode Haunted Mansion back to back with no wait in the early evening. Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway with a posted 30-minute wait, might have waited for 20, tops. The other cool thing that people aren’t thinking about is that, for some of the most popular rides, have you ever even been in the normal queue? Most people can only ride these popular rides with FastPasses, when that service was available because the lines were hours long without one. So you never saw the regular queue, some of which are incredibly themed and have exhibits and games. That doesn’t mean I’m going to wait in a three-hour line to look at a queue, but I sure will enjoy it during my 20-30 minute stroll through. Darn soapbox.

After the Polynesian, we made the mistake of moving over to the Swan resort. I had never stayed at the Swan or the Dolphin resorts as they are not owned by Disney and do not come with some of the Disney amenities that you want like being able to use Magic Bands, Magical Express, charging to the room, and now even Disney bus service to the parks. They’re providing charter buses to the parks but those don’t drop off where Disney buses do up at the front of the parks so, hope you like walking! Anyway, had to see what the Swan draw was but, couldn’t find it. While the location is good, sitting in the Boardwalk area near the Disney-owned Boardwalk Inn, Yacht Club, and Beach Club resorts, that was the only perk. Someone commented to me that the hotels reminded them of Las Vegas and maybe that’s what some of the turnoff was. There was nothing at all special about these hotels. They are high-rise properties with one set of elevators per wing of the building that are slow and can get some pretty incredible lines in the evening as guests return to the resort. We even took the stairs up to our room one evening, and if you know me, I am not a stair taker. The pools look nice online, especially the Grotto pool over at the Dolphin resort. We walked to the Swan pool and all the way over to the Dolphin pools and could not find one single beach chair to put our stuff on to get in any of the three pool areas or the beach. Not one. Very luckily, this was the day we left the Polynesian so we were able to get right back in the van and go back to the Polynesian to enjoy their pool again until the end of the day. How many people were in the Poly pool? Maybe 10, including the three of us. The Swan room itself was ok, decent size but bizarrely shaped as a corner room. The bathroom was one of the tiniest bathrooms I have ever seen in a hotel. You could sit on the toilet and put one hand in the sink and your foot in the tub at the same time. Forget having more than one person trying to use the space at the same time. It was hard not to fall over the toilet trying to use the sink. Coming from the Polynesian with the split bathrooms where you had a big walk-in shower and sink in one bathroom and a normal tub/shower combo plus toilet and second vanity in the other bathroom, this was such a letdown. OK, I should know better than staying at the Polynesian and then downgrading to the Swan but jeez. Even the Courtyard hotel we stayed at on the drive to Florida had a bathroom twice the size of the one at the Swan. And don’t get me started about resort and parking fees! I knew about these going in but, for the resort being a huge bummer, the fees didn’t improve the impression. $140.54 charged to my card on departure for two nights of parking and resort fees. Lesson learned.

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Oh yeah! Outlets. I wanted to go to the Disney Character Warehouse Outlets near Universal to see what kind of great deals I could find. I knew they were operating with a line system where you would give your number and they would text you with a return time to enter the store. This helps with crowds and social distancing and is sensible right now because the store gets packed. What I didn’t know… Over 80 families in front of me waiting to go into the store. No idea how long that would take before I could go in. If you’ve been to these outlets, they’re not exactly ones I want to spend a ton of time in. I go for the Disney outlet and that’s it. I’m not a big shopper anymore either and there was no way I could find something to do for hours and hours waiting to be able to go into the store. Super disappointing. Add that to the time it takes to drive over there, traffic, and the horrendous parking at the outlets, this was another mistake I won’t repeat. The parking here is usually nuts where you drive up and down the rows until you see someone leaving and you race to pull into the spot before the next guy. The Character Warehouse outlets have been taken over by shoppers who go in and buy all that they can find to turn around and resell on various websites. So those folks hoard and spend way too long of a turn in the store. Grrrr. I’d love to go back to a time when what someone bought was actually for their own use and not to try to turn a resale profit. There are so many things you get shut out of buying now because of this practice and it frustrates me on the regular. If you don’t want the thing you’re buying, leave it at the store for someone that does!!

We had a lovely dinner at The Wave at the Contemporary resort after the outlet debacle, so that made the day perk up in a hurry. Some exploration at the Contemporary and a little pin trading put the smiles back on (under our masks.) One of our days was spent hopping from Hollywood Studios to Magic Kingdom and then to Epcot, a blast and a half! We hit our personal highlights and hopped ’til we dropped. So worth those sore feet the next day!

Giordano’s Pizza! I note this place as a delivery option for clients on their travel documents and always try to work it in for my own trips. Well, I worked it in twice on this trip! They have the best deep dish pizza and the hubs is now hooked on one of their subs. It is a really good thing Giordano’s doesn’t exist here in Virginia! You just place your order on their website and wait for the delivery person to text that they are almost to your resort. Delivery does take some time, so plan ahead and don’t worry about it running a little past their estimate, remember the traffic! You will not go to bed hungry after a Giordano’s delivery!

Another lovely trip in the books and we’re already planning the next one, set for the fall. That feels like so long from now though that we might have to squeeze another trip in before then. If only there was a high-speed train from my house to Mickey…

Until next time!

xoxo, Amber