First stay at FQ / First trip to Disney

How was your stay at French Quarter? Leave your comments or full trip reports here. Photos welcome.
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franko
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Joined: April 10th, 2014, 6:19 pm

First stay at FQ / First trip to Disney

Unread post by franko »

My family stayed in building 1 at the French Quarter during March break this year and overall our experience was so positive that we are seriously considering it again next year.

I won't bore you with details of our whole trip, but it was pretty much flawless with respect to planning, ease of use of the parks and transportation. Our longest wait for a bus was for our very first one, which had us kinda worried about what a week of long waits for shuttles would do to our park plans but it was a one-off. From the Magic Express to/from the airport, to the park buses, the ferries, the monorail... very smooth operation.

Port Orleans was a wonderful place for us to stay, it was fairly peaceful and we found the room to suit our needs just fine. Our 2 sons are 9 and 12 and there were no complaints about the room whatsoever. I will say that since it was our first trip to WDW we were up-and-at-em everyday so we didn't really spend a great amount of time at our resort. Unfortunately the pool was closed for the first 5 days we were there so we had to hike over to Riverside when we wanted a morning dip. Turned out to be fun as we got to experience both resorts' amenities.

We traveled by monorail one morning from Epcot to the Polynesian, rented a pontoon boat there spur of the moment and had a great tour of the waterways. The boat rental shut down at Riverside during the week we were there, which was too bad as my wife said one of the highlights was the boat ride! Also had lunch at the Polynesian and I would give it the edge over Port Orleans, but not by much. (Dining Plan. Loved it!) We both agreed after seeing the prices for a stay at the Polynesian that the Port Orleans was MORE than meeting our needs. It's close to twice as much, if you are going to Disney with energetic kids you will not spend that much time at your Resort. To each their own of course, with the dining plan you can cruise to all of the resorts and have a meal if you wish to explore. Not sure if you can use the pools though LOL...

Sorry about the rambling here, there was so much to experience that it's hard to be brief. Loved the Port Orleans, there was some maintenance going on but it wasn't an issue for us. Beautiful buildings and grounds, loved having the river at our doorstep. My only real complaint, and it's a stretch because as I said the trip was so positive for us, would be that the oranges at the food court were not so good. Being from Canada we were expecting to be blown away by the fruit on offer, but we get better quality up here! Maybe a bad week...

Thanks for letting me share, look forward to reading a few other reports. I was there the week the huge crane was spoiling the view of the castle at the Magic Kingdom as well, as I saw from another report. Bummer, eh?
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Re: First stay at FQ / First trip to Disney

Unread post by Admin »

Glad you had a good time, and sorry that the construction work partly impacted on your time at Disney. There's quite a lot going on at present (especially at the Magic Kingdom) and it'll be great once it's all done. Cranes behind the castle really should be restricted to out of guest hours, but I guess you can't just erect one for a few hours and take it down again. It does spoil that magical first view though (and photos - but remember, Photoshop is your friend).

No idea about the oranges though - you'd think that in Florida of all places they should be able to get oranges right!

Andre
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- The Unofficial Visitor's Guide to the Port Orleans Resorts in Orlando, Florida -
franko
Posts: 2
Joined: April 10th, 2014, 6:19 pm

Re: First stay at FQ / First trip to Disney

Unread post by franko »

Yeah, construction is a fact of life! (I forgot, we also missed out on Blizzard Beach)
It's good to have a curveball thrown at you every now and then, my oldest is autistic and is a details-and-plans guy. (He could tell us the tiniest details from our flights 6 weeks ago!)
We try to teach him that life is full of surprises and with that disappointments too. Even though we had quite a few things that didn't go as planned, we rolled with it and ended up having a great time.
Funniest thing about the oranges... we crossed the border by car to fly out of Portland ME, and we had some oranges and grapes for the road trip. The border guard confiscated them, we had no idea you can't bring citrus across the border. We all laughed that they were FLA oranges anyway and we were returning them!
Thanks, and good tip about the photoshop... hadn't thought of that!
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MardiGroggy
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Joined: August 11th, 2013, 10:30 am
Location: North Florida

Re: First stay at FQ / First trip to Disney

Unread post by MardiGroggy »

franko,

Nice to hear you had a good time. That crane was a pain (yes, I said that on purpose), but too big to just put it up and down for night shift. I don't know what else they could do, but it would certainly be a visual poke in the eye for anyone who is making the trip of a lifetime. Maybe the best way to think of all the construction is that WDW is always changing and expanding. Tomorrow will bring new adventures. In the meantime........... :x

As a FL resident I'll say this: Don't bet that you were getting Florida oranges. It should be that way, but they may well have come from somewhere else. Kind of like pineapples in Hawaii.

Our recent stay (as reported elsewhere) was also in Bldg. 1. Great views of the river! Hope you were on that side of the building.
MardiGroggy
Aka: Steve

"Laissez les bons temps rouler!"
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