5-week Split Stay in Florida, Feb/March 2020 - Day 22: Epcot & Checking into the Polynesian!

[nothingless]

Day 22: Epcot & Checking into the Polynesian Village Resort!
March 2, 2020
[-- Trip Index --]

Today's quick movie:


This morning, we woke up for the last time in Animal Kingdom Lodge after a good sleep. Michael had skipped his gym session today, so it was really nice to all wake up together. We had loved our few nights here, and wished we could have stayed longer - this hotel is right up our alley! We vowed to come back though, and we weren't too sad... as we were leaving AKL for the Polynesian! The Poly is a total bucket list hotel for me, so that definitely more than made up for any sadness!

Our park for the day was Epcot, and the weather was finally looking lovely and warm again. So we were determined to get to the park early, get a bunch of stuff done, and hopefully head to the Poly early for swimming - after nearly a week of cold weather, we were determined to swim any chance we had lol. To that end, we all got up around 7 and had a quick breakfast in the room.

After I got Myla dressed, Michael took her downstairs to the lobby where they went to the Savannah lookout point to look for animals and play in the playground. That gave me the time to I admire the zebras and ostriches from our balcony, get ready, and finished the last packing in peace. Like last time, it didn't take long - we hadn't unpacked much at AKL and 2 of our 3 cases were never opened. I just zipped the packing cubes back up, and collected toiletries and food items, and that was us, pretty much! I had kept swimming gear aside, and put that into our park bag so we could swim at the Poly before our room was ready.

I was all done for 8:15 and texted Michael. He came back to the room, we all had one last pee, and decided to take our bags to Bell Services ourselves - it was literally 1 minute to the elevator so not really worth getting them to collect it!


We were on a bus for Epcot not even half an hour later. Myla had picked another Frozen dress to wear for today, plus her little Frozen crown. This was part of an Elsa costume from Primark that we have at home - I didn't bother bringing the costume as even at home she won't wear it for more than 10-20 minutes, but bringing just the headband was a good idea, she loved it when I showed it to her!


We were at Epcot for just after 9. It was still a tiny bit cool, but nothing like the past week, and I especially was so happy I was finally not freezing anymore!


Our first destination was the Land pavillion. I had an FP booked for Living With The Land, and we wanted to have a snack at Sunshine Seasons, so we headed to the right after entering.


However when we got there, it was an absolute walk-on, so I swapped the FP for Spaceship Earth later on in the day. Myla loves this ride - she likes anything with boats anyhow, but she loves seeing all the plants and fish too. Great leisurely start to the day!


It was around 9:45AM now and we were all hungry for a mid-morning snack, after the quick and early breakfast this morning. We headed into Sunshine Seasons - Myla picked a banana and an apple juice, Michael ordered the breakfast wrap (which is vegan), and I decided to get a coffee and get stuck into the left-over Flamingo Cake we had with us still from last night! It was all yum, Michael especially enjoyed the breakfast wrap.


Our next FP was for Figment, so we headed on to the Imagination Pavilion. To my happy surprise, the wall of butterfly wings from the Festival Of The Arts was still up! We stopped to let Myla pose for one - she loved seeing these photos of herself haha.


Out the front of the pavilion, we stopped for a popcorn refill, and watched something being filmed. No idea what and I didn't recognize either of the guys presenting it either!


We headed inside for the ride. This turned into a bit of a disaster! We had done this ride with her last year, when she was 2, and it'd been fine - in fact, Figment had made her laugh. However this time, she absolutely hated it. Every time he pulled a prank and something unexpected happened, she jumped and it scared her. The icing on the cake was at the very end, when it gets totally dark all of a sudden for a few seconds, and there is a super loud WOOSH sound/wind (and when the lights come back on, there's all the bright and colorful scenery). She cried out at this, absolutely clung to me, and came off the ride in tears. She was crying so much she was hiccuping, I felt soooo bad for her! She said Figment scared her so much, she didn't like him, and she didn't want to do that ride again ever! I explained that it was all just make-believe, it wasn't real, and Figment was only making jokes, he wasn't really scary! But it took her a while to properly calm down, this had really made a bad impact on her. She refused to go on any other rides the whole rest of the day, and even the whole rest of the holiday she would periodically ask if Figment was in such-and-such a ride, and it made her very wary of anything else in the dark. I'm hoping that by next year, she will have forgotten about this, and enjoy it like normal!


What finally cheered her up, were the characters she spotted at the ride exit. As soon as she spotted Ralph and Vanellope she jumped in that queue - she loves Wreck-it-Ralph. The queue was about 20 minutes, but well worth it, they were both lovely!


Next up was Joy, who was meeting just across from Ralph and Vanellope. I haven't watched Inside Out with Myla yet, so she didn't know who this was, but that didn't seem to bother her. She just asked me what she was called, and said she definitely did want to meet her. This queue was a bit shorter at only 10 minutes or so, and the PhotoPass photographer must have been new to the job, as most of the photos were blurry!


Myla was getting very tired and a touch cranky now so I put her in the stroller with some snacks, hoping she'd fall asleep as we slowly walked over to Norway. We spotted some topiaries for the Flower and Garden Festival on the way.


I had to take a photo of this spot - this is where we celebrated New Year's last year! There were benches here then, instead of these tables. Still the best New Year's ever.

Minnie passed us on the way too!

[nothingless]

Alas, no luck on the napping front. We got to Norway and she was still awake. Our FP window for Frozen Ever After was opening in a few minutes, but when I mentioned the ride to Myla, she was not having any of it, saying she absolutely did NOT want to do any rides. I personally really did want to do Frozen again, so I suggested her, why don't we go see Anna and Elsa first, and then do the ride? She agreed to that, so we joined the meet queue - it was giving 25 minutes, so not too bad. They were both lovely again, noticing her little crown and loving her dress. Myla was super impressed again, so cute!

We already had their autographs from when we saw them last week, so this one was solely for the hugs lol!

When we came out, we were intending to go to the Frozen ride as agreed, but Myla had a major meltdown. She started crying again, didn't want to walk or sit in the stroller and only wanted me - but she's a bit too heavy to carry for more than a few minutes. I tried to put her down on the ground and was getting a touch annoyed at her, which just caused her to melt-down. She was in absolutely floods of tears, repeating that she did NOT want to do the ride and that in fact she wanted to go on the plane and go home! We took her over to a railing beside the water, in between Norway and China, and I sat down on the ground with her, trying to talk to her and find out what was wrong. She was eventually able to tell me that it was Figment, and she was so scared he'd come into the Frozen ride too and pull pranks and he scared her so much and that's why she wanted to go home on the plane. I gave her a big cuddle - I assured her that Figment wouldn't go near her, he was only in that other ride and we wouldn't do it again. We could both see she was a little bit traumatized and we felt really bad - I honestly never thought Journey Into The Imagination would freak her out this much!

We told her we were here on holiday to have fun, and if she wasn't having fun on the rides, then we wouldn't do them! That made her feel a bit better, and I cancelled both our Frozen and Spaceship Earth FPs for later that day. I was hoping, and turned out to be correct, that by tomorrow she'd change her mind on all rides - but I did cancel other FPs we had for the coming week for rides like Pirates, Haunted Mansion, and It's Tough To Be a Bug. I'm pretty sure these would have freaked her out too, and we didn't want to push it.

After sitting on the ground with her for a good 20 minutes, I convinced her to walk on a bit by asking if she wanted to go and find the drums in the Africa bit with me!


She helped me 'find them' and had a good time exploring everything with Michael.


Next I asked her if she wanted to go look for the little trains, and she ran ahead with Michael to go and 'search' for these - mission successful! She had cheered up a good bit again now.


After some playing here, we eventually ended up at the American Pavilion around 12:30, and we were all hungry for lunch. That worked out perfectly, as the Regal Eagle had opened only a week ago, and we really wanted to try it out! Their mobile ordering wasn't working, so I queued for the food while Michael and Myla went to look for a table. I ordered the plant based burger, and Michael wanted the salad, but without the chicken. When I asked the CM about this, I got her totally confused - she said it was her first day here and she didn't know how to do that! In a funny coincidence, the girl behind me in the queue, turned out to be a CM who normally works here but was on her day off! So she showed the CM how to make a substitution in the till, and then made sure the guys in the kitchen knew what to do too - apparently because it's such a new restaurant, they were still kind of finding their feet. Altogether, it took at least 15-20 minutes to order and get my food once it had been my turn. All worth it though, because the food was delicious! My burger was SO yum, I took a bite before I remembered to take a photo and Michael was in love with his salad - they'd substituted the chicken for BBQ jackfruit and he said it was yum!


Myla didn't want anything to eat, but I shared my fries with her and she had a bag of grapes we still had with us from earlier. Outside it was actually getting hot now, and to make up for Myla's bad morning, we asked her if she fancied going for some icecream. Of course that was a big yes, so we slowly walked from USA to France, taking in the sights on the way.


There was an awesome performance of girl drummers going on in Japan, so we stood and watched for a while - they were amazing!

[nothingless]

Michael waited outside while I took Myla into L'Artisan Des Glaces - we decided to get 1 cup with 2 scoops of chocolate (her choice) and we'd share.


We found a nice shady spot to sit and eat it - it was delicious! While we were eating, both Belle and Aurora walked right past us and waved at Myla, to her absolute delight.

When she finished her icecream and I wiped the copious amounts of chocolate off her cheeks, chin, nose, and basically everywhere else , she announced she needed to pee VERY BADLY. That threw me for a loop - where on earth were the toilets! I Picked Myla up and popped my head into Les Halles and didn't see any, and asked a CM where the nearest toilets are. She told me Morocco! How annoying - so I had to powerwalk, carrying Myla, all the way back to Morocco. I have since found out there are toilets in Les Halles too, but it's only 2 of them. Still - that would have been much preferable with a 3-year-old who needed to go! Anyway, we got to Morocco, she went into the toilets with me, and she properly peed on the toilet! If you've been reading along, then you'll know this was another big yay moment for us - she was finally slowly getting over her fear for the noisy toilets.


It was 13:45 now, quite hot, and Myla was very tired after this morning with her big upset and no nap. So we decided to call it day, and head back to the monorail to go check out the Poly and do some swimming! We finished our World Showcase loop and found some more cool topiaries along the way.


Only realized she'd picked a flower when it was already too late! I did tell her she wasn't supposed to do that, and made her promise not to do it again!


When we passed Goofy under the breezeway, he had no queue, so we let Myla go and give him another hug.


We were all excited heading for the monorail - Myla had already asked if we could go on it when we saw it inside Epcot.


It was a quick and easy ride, so nice to not have to collapse the stroller on the monorail!


First glimpse of the Poly from the Ticket & Transportation Center!


We arrived at the Polynesian for 14:40, and walked into the lobby all excited! It was all so beautiful and so well themed! We immediately had a good look around, checking out the shops and all the details. So gorgeous!

[nothingless]

Since we'd done online check-in, we were happy to bypass a sizable queue at the check-in desk, and headed out the back of the lobby to look for the pool.


I just love the theming here, and that you can see Cinderella Castle from so many places!

However, when we scanned our bands to enter the Lava Pool, they didn't work. I tried all 3 of ours, and none would open the gates, so we still had to turn around and go to check-in after all. A bit annoying, but oh well - we weren't in a hurry and there was still plenty of time to swim. Back at the desk I queued for about 10 minutes, and then explained that even though we'd done online check-in, our bands wouldn't work for the pool. The girl apologized, took us over to some comfy seats, got Myla a coloring book and a box of crayons she could keep, and sorted it out.


It turned out our old bands were still set to Animal Kingdom Lodge - she called it a glitch in the system, and to be fair, this was the only time this happened on all our split-stays. She soon had it fixed, was able to give us our new magic bands already, and was able to tell me our room would be in the Tokelau building - it wasn't quite ready yet, but it was good to know it was in the building I had requested. She gave us each a lei, and officially bid us welcome in the Poly!


Now that I knew we had a room in Tokelau and it was that little bit later, we decided to go to the quiet pool (which is right beside Tokelau) instead. I got Myla and myself changed in the toilets, and she headed into the water with Michael around 15:30, while I relaxed in the sun and got caught up on my notes.


At 16:06 I got a text to say our room was ready. Myla finally left the pool at 16:30, and we wrapped her up in a big towel as we set off to find our room. It was actually really close to the pool, on the third floor of Tokelau. Unfortunately we were on the opposite end of the building to where MK is, so we couldn't see any fireworks - but that meant we were right beside the staircase outside, so it was only a 2-3 minute walk to either the monorail or the bus stop! I was pretty happy with the location - a ground floor room would have been ideal, as with the stroller, we still needed the elevator, which we had the room furthest away from. But that was truly minor, it honestly wasn't far from the elevators!


We were very impressed with the room itself too. It's all tropical themed, and it has 2 bathrooms! One with a gorgeous walk-in shower, and one HUGE one with a bath and toilet! Plus there's a fold-down bed under the TV, which meant we could keep the sofa bed folded up and gave us a ton more floor space and seating space. Overall this room felt really spacious and luxurious - even the chairs beside the table (where I sit and do my work) were super comfy!

I want this lamp. Seriously, I would have bought this if they had it in the gift shop!


I ran bell services for our suitcases, but they weren't quite there yet - the CM estimated another half hour or so. I went ahead and got Myla in a warm bath while we relaxed, and the suitcases were indeed delivered about 35 minutes later. I did some unpacking and started on my work, while Michael took Myla to the shop in the lobby for some bread, peanut butter, and snacks - none of us were overly hungry for dinner. Myla relaxed on her new bed (which she LOVED) with the iPad.


I was finished with work just before 7PM, and we decided to go for a little walk to look for the gym, plus I wanted to get a dole whip (my fave!) and thought maybe we could watch some fireworks on the beach. We headed out, Myla in the stroller in her pajamas, and followed the signs for the gym, through the lobby, past the little harbour, out the far side of the Polynesian towards the Grand Floridian. There we went past the Wedding Pavilion and past the GF Villas until finally we found the Grand Floridian Spa - the gym's attached to it. To Michael's disappointment it was small and cramped, with zero showering facilities and one single toilet. It was a total let-down, nowhere near as nice as the gyms in SSP and AKL (and Wilderness Lodge and Beach Club from our previous trips) were. In fact, he said this was the smallest and worst gym out of all of them, which actually really surprised us as it's shared by 2 of Disney's most expensive resorts! It was a bit of a downer - you can't have it all, but I know that would make Michael very hesitant to spend the extra money on a Poly room when we can have something similar nice with a much better gym for cheaper at most other DVC resorts.

It was around 7:30PM now, and we walked back to the lobby, to Pineapple Lanai. As I queued for my Dole Whip cup, I realized Myla had fallen fast asleep. We decided that'd be the perfect opportunity to watch the fireworks, so we strolled down to the beach and found a spot to sit.


We sat and chatted about the holiday so far, what we loved and didn't, our plans for future holidays, and it was just super chill and relaxed. Happily Ever After started at 8, you have a great view across the lake and they play the music over the speakers on the beach pretty loud too so it really does feel like you’re there. A great spot to watch it from, without dealing with any of the usual crowds!


We were back in our room for 20:30 and just popped Myla into her new bed straight from the stroller, she didn’t even wake up lol! 😊

Another very successful day!

[mrsdjh]

What a shame Figment scared Myla so much she didn't fancy any more rides today.

Your new room looks a good size and what a nice way to spend an evening watching the fireworks from the beach.

[Ivegottadream]

I've never been on the Figment ride, and now I'm not sure I want to! 😱
Your split stay is a really interesting idea, you are giving me lots of ideas to research. Would you say you prefer the poly over AKL?

[nothingless]

Originally Posted by Ivegottadream

I've never been on the Figment ride, and now I'm not sure I want to! 😱
Your split stay is a really interesting idea, you are giving me lots of ideas to research. Would you say you prefer the poly over AKL?

See more...

Hmm that's a tough one! The Poly has an amazing location. If the monorail isn't broken, you're in MK in 7 minutes and can skip the busy bagcheck there - like that's an absolutely awesome perk. From AKL it'd take around 20 minutes on the bus, plus then the bag check.

That said - I loved the theming of the 2 almost equally - AKL has great theming too. Pools in both were great. Food in both were great. AKL has all the lovely animal views, Poly has the castle views - my 3-year-old would prefer the animals though, and never once stayed awake long enough to watch the fireworks from the beach! Also, the Poly has no kids' playground, where Jambo House has a great one... this may not matter to some couples/families, but was a definite downer to us. And the Poly gym sucks - again, may not matter to most families but was a downer to us. All in all, if the two cost the same, I'd say it'd be a tossup and the Poly may win out based on location. The Poly's downsides are balanced out by that great location.

But of course, they do NOT cost the same, the Poly is considerably more! So from that point of view, I think we'd choose ALK over the Poly in the future and just put up with the slightly longer travel times... to us as a family, the Poly isn't worth the premium you pay for it.

That's my very biased view with having a 3-year-old though - I imagine the playground thing won't matter in a few years' time, for example. Argh it's hard lol, we did love the Poly... just didn't feel it was worth that much extra money, you know?

To compare, the Poly studio was 25 points a night, the ALK one was 17. Taking around $18 USD cost per point, that's a difference of $144 USD PER NIGHT, or just over $1,000 for a week. So for us, we did really enjoy the Poly, but the AKL was nearly just as great, and is a lot cheaper. I think we'd opt for the savings next time!

[JackyH]

Oh poor Myla. Hopefully she will get over her trauma soon. When I was in Florida with my grandson, the first ride we went on was Pirates. I thought he would love it but it really scared him! Probably for the best that you cancelled the FP. Poly looks lovely but let down by the gym etc. We are DVC owners at Bay Lake Tower. Love how close it is to MK. As always loving your trip report so far.

[mick]

What a shame Myla had such a bad reaction to Figment we can never know how children react to certain things could be a ride or even a character in a book that upsets them.

Joan

[nothingless]

Originally Posted by JackyH

Oh poor Myla. Hopefully she will get over her trauma soon. When I was in Florida with my grandson, the first ride we went on was Pirates. I thought he would love it but it really scared him! Probably for the best that you cancelled the FP. Poly looks lovely but let down by the gym etc. We are DVC owners at Bay Lake Tower. Love how close it is to MK. As always loving your trip report so far.

See more...

Yes, BLT is one of the few DVC resorts we haven't stayed in yet, but I think we'll love it, and I think we'll end up preferring it over the Poly as it has a similar great location but for less of a premium! We have a week booked there for this September...not holding out much hope. Hopefully we'll get to experience it in the future!