Author: John

It’s been almost 5 years since we have had the privilege of giving Disney World our hard-earned money. We have been slightly busy birthing children and after our 2014 experience, we are pretty adamant about not bringing babies to Disney World. That’s still our policy so we are going back childless. The girls are still not old enough to get enough out of Disney World to justify the extra effort and expense. The boy is definitely ready but we decided it would be a little unfair to bring him along for his second trip when the girls have never been. Besides, this trip is actually counting as our 10th wedding anniversary trip. We are only going for 4 nights, so our park touring pace would not be suitable for children anyway.

We will be staying at Disney’s Pop Century Resort again. We thought about trying a deluxe resort since it is a special occasion but I just cannot bring myself to pay the exorbitant rates Disney wants for their deluxe or moderate accommodations. The cheapest deluxe I could find was over 350.00 USD and quite frankly I think the transportation options at Pop Century are far superior. Considering the amount of time we will actually spend in our room, paying for a deluxe or moderate seems insane to me. 

We actually first booked a standard room at Disney’s Art of Animation for a bit of a change from our previous trips, but then switched to Pop Century when we realized that all the rooms at Pop had been renovated and Pop was $25 USD cheaper per night. What really swayed us though was the queen beds and the coffeemaker. On our 2013 trip, Leanne and I actually slept in separate beds as they were only doubles and I guess we like our space. We were too exhausted to use the beds for anything other than sleeping anyway. The coffeemaker in the room was a nice surprise and will save us from having to buy a coffee for $3.25 USD each every morning at Everything Pop.

We really have no complaints with Pop Century but we were looking forward to the Little Mermaid theming and food court at Art of Animation. We still may visit Art of Animation’s food court, Landscape of Flavors, especially considering that “some preferred Pop Century rooms are closer to Animation Hall (at Art of Animation) than The Little Mermaid rooms.”

Another big change for this trip is that we will not have free dining.  Actually, when we booked a few days ago there were no discounts available at all for our dates. I’m sure this is due to Disney having no trouble filling the resorts in light of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opening at Disney’s Hollywood studios a week before we arrive in September. 

As I mentioned above, we are only staying for 4 nights which means we will only have 3 days at the parks. We will be skipping Hollywood Studios completely for this trip. I consider myself a Star Wars fan but I have absolutely no desire to battle level 10 crowds to see any attraction regardless of how spectacular it may be. Hopefully, Galaxy’s Edge’s popularity will result in extra low attendance levels at the other 3 parks which we will be visiting.

The absence of free dining means we will be eating at table service restaurants much less often (possibly only once) and eating a bigger breakfast instead of trying to save our dining credits for a more expensive quick service lunch. Epcot’s Food and Wine festival will be taking place while we are there so that will leave us with plenty of dining options at Epcot (not that Epcot has ever been lacking in dining options).

We have the California Grill booked for our last night as our “Anniversary Dinner.” We both really enjoyed that place on our last trip, especially the view. It will be nice to enjoy a meal there without an infant, although to be fair he slept through almost the entire meal.