April 20-27, 2009, at POFQ

How was your stay at French Quarter? Leave your comments or full trip reports here. Photos welcome.
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pwdebbie
Posts: 1
Joined: April 30th, 2009, 8:49 am

April 20-27, 2009, at POFQ

Unread post by pwdebbie »

We had a very nice stay at POFQ from 4/20 to 27. When our TA made our reservation, she requested a quiet location as my dh has health problems and needs to be able to sleep during the day. We paid for a king bedded room. Well, I think we may have gotten the very best room in the resort. We were in Room 5323, Building 5, third floor, and away from all pedestrian traffic. From one window we looked up the river toward Riverside and from the other we looked out over the river. We had a short walk to the elevator.

Mousekeeping was great. Our room was refreshed daily. We took our own sheets and blanket and had mousekeeping remove the resort's linens the first morning (so they wouldn't be in our way). We had three towel decorations -- a Mickey head on our bed when we arrived, a dog on dh's birthday, and a pair of swans on our anniversary.

Photopass cards (for a discount, not for free) were delivered to our room for dh's birthday and our anniversary. Would have been nice to have been able to get a complementary photo, but that was not the case.

The food court offers a good selection of foods for all the meals. It is not outstanding food, but it is satisfying. A lady that cleans the tables (Ethel? Edith?) saw that it was our anniversary and made a big to-do over it. Now, this lady must be in her 70s, but here she was hollering out loud enough for the whole dining area to hear: "Hear ye, hear ye. We here at the French Quarter love to celebrate and today we are celebrating an anniversary. Jim and Deb have been married for 32 years. . . ." Then she brought us a card, some beads and some coins and told us how much she loves making a fuss over people's special days. You know how sometimes you know people are being nice just because it is their job? It sounds fake and you can see right through it. You know they are doing it because it is their job. Well, not this lady. She is REAL. She loves what she is doing and puts her whole heart into it. We saw her at another table talking about her husband and all the years they've had together (I believe she said 58 years of marriage) and she had a couple tears on her cheeks.

We didn't make it to the pool while we were there, so I can't comment on that.

The buses didn't go to POR about 50% of the time. Only once did a bus drop off at POR before going to POFQ. Not sure why he did that. It takes about 15 minutes to make the entire loop around POR. There doesn't seem to be rhyme nor reason to how they decide whether or not to go to POR. We had a packed bus one morning and the driver still did POR even though the bus was so full. Another morning, there were only ten of us on the bus and he went straight to the park. We had one long wait for a bus -- 45 minutes -- to get back to POFQ from AK. That was annoying because we watched four buses come for Coronado Springs while waiting for our bus.

If you want to get to rope drop (and actually be able to SEE rope drop), do plan to leave the resort an hour before the park opens. And, as I've read elsewhere on the DIS, get in line to enter the park at the gate marked Castmembers -- it is off to the side and most people don't realize that you don't have to be a castmember to use that entry point.

I wore my LGMH the entire week and never attracted another DISser. I did attract a beautiful butterfly several times that was the exact same color as the LGMH though! Gosh, I just read through six pages that you all filled up while I was gone and some of you were there the same time as I was. I can't believe we didn't connect. Even my husband started looking for people with LGMHs after a while.

Oh, we did see Elliot Dyson one night. He's very good. I could have listened to him longer but dh was tired and ready to head to the room.

Every staff member we encountered was courteous, no grumpies to be found. We actually "met" our mousekeeper the day we were leaving and found her to be a delightful bubbly young lady from Korea. She truly seemed sorry to see us leaving.

My one complaint is that people don't use the designated smoking areas. We had to ask two girls to not sit outside our room smoking on our last day. These were teenagers who were probably on a senior class trip and should have been more well-monitored. But earlier in our stay, we saw adults who should have known better on other balconies smoking. And we also saw quite a few cigarette butts left laying around the grounds. The management needs to be more clear to people about where they can smoke. I think "no smoking" signs on the balconies would be a good idea. It would be nice to see management actually enforce the use of the designated smoking areas.

Almost forgot -- we did the carriage ride at POR one night. The driver (Joe) asked whether we wanted to go through POFQ or POR and we decided that we'd like to see POR so he took us around there. It was a very nice ride. $45.00 (that was a bit of a surprise because on the phone I had been told $35.00).

And, we saw a few otters in the water one morning. (Also, on our last day there appeared to be a lot of toilet paper floating in the water -- I don't know if it was seniors tp-ing or perhaps there was a sewage problem.)

To all those of you heading down there soon -- Have a great time! And if you are celebrating something, wear your button so the lady in the food court can do her thing. It truly seems to make her day.

(This was originally posted on the POFQ FAQ Thread on the DISboards)
Last edited by Admin on April 30th, 2009, 10:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Neatened link to DISboards thread
John McBride
Posts: 8
Joined: January 16th, 2009, 5:55 pm

Re: April 20-27, 2009, at POFQ

Unread post by John McBride »

Thanks for the report! It was a good read, can't wait to go in August and I'll look out for Ethel/Edith!

John
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