Hello everyone. My family of six are just back from a great vacation at HIFS & WDW. Since we received so much help from this board in planning our trip. I wanted to return the favor & post our trip report in the hope of helping someone else. Feel free to email me or post a reply here if you have any specific questions not covered here in this report.
First off, every good thing you heard about HIFS is true. It is a very nice hotel, new, clean & very accomodating. We stayed in a KidSuite with a Disney theme. Our 3 youngest loved their own "private" room with bunk beds and a pullout bed. The pullout bed is smaller than a normal rollaway, but big enough for our 6 year old. He loved having his own bed. My 10 yr old slept on the top bunk as HIFS recommends for safety reasons, no one under 6 sleep in the top bunk. HIFS is big on safety both in the rooms & on property. They have a video that runs constantly on their cable tv about safety.
Housekeeping did a great job keeping our room clean with our messy group. They were generous with towels but stingy on soap & shampoo, leaving them only every other day. For $125.00 per night I thought we could get toiletries every day.
About the restaurants....
Kids do eat free as advertised, but we found that their food was overpriced in all their restaurants. Their in house Pizza Hut charges $13.00 for a medium pizza. Since our eldest was 15, she was considered an adult, so we paid for 3 adults, and got 3 free kids meals. But with their higher prices we found we didn't save anything as the total cost was about the same as if we would have ate at a Ryan's, Ponderosa, Old Country Buffet, etc and paid for everyone. And something I did not like at all was the mandatory 15% gratuity added to each check at all the sit down restaurants. I do not like this practice at any restaurant, as I find it usually promotes poorer service. Why bust your butt to give good service when you know you're going to get a 15% tip regardless? And this was the case every time we ate at a sit down restaurant. From long waits to be seated to long waits for food. We saw our waiter/waitress only 2 times. When she took our order, and when she brought the food. Not once did they ever ask if we wanted anything else, or offered drink refills. We had to flag them down if we wanted another drink, and to ask for the check. So that was a minus, in my opinion.
The breakfast buffet was great. and this did save us a lot of money, as we ate a big breakfast each day, and only ate once in the Disney parks. If we were hungry later in the day, we would pick up something on our way back to the hotel.
The eggs are "different" but my wife said they were "ok" but the kids didn't like them, but there was plenty of other things to choose from. A great selection everyday. But I must admit, by the 7th day I was kinda tired of breakfast in general.
If you need anything else while you are there I would recommend getting it off property as they do have a general store on site, but as with everything else there, it was overpriced. An example: 2 liter drinks were $2.25 each.
Other than that we would gladly stay at HIFS again.
About the parks...
We found all the Disney parks to be not as crowded as in the past.
We bought our park hoppers at AAA before we left, and they included a special pass to park in the AAA diamond lot at each park. This worked great at Magic Kingdom & Epcot, but not at MGM & Aninal Kingdom. We could walk to the entrance at MK & Epcot, but at the other two parks the cast members directed us to the same area as other guests. So I don't know if MGM & AK don't have diamond lots or we just encountered bad cast members.
In all the parks the lines were not too long, but I would highly recommend FASTPASS. It worked great. We never waited longer than 5 minutes in line using FASTPASS. What a great Disney invention. The longest line we waited in was for the Millionnaire show & that was because the shows are scheduled at certain times and we had to wait for our time. But the FASTPASS helped get us in first, thus allowing us to get better seats. So use FASTPASS, you'll love it!
We finished our vacation with a 3 day stay in Panamal City Beach. We stayed at the Beachcomber by the sea. A nice hotel right on the gulf.
Well, I think I rambled on long enough. Like I said, please feel free to email any questions, I'd be glad to help.
And thanks to all on this board who helped make our vacation better.
Jim
First off, every good thing you heard about HIFS is true. It is a very nice hotel, new, clean & very accomodating. We stayed in a KidSuite with a Disney theme. Our 3 youngest loved their own "private" room with bunk beds and a pullout bed. The pullout bed is smaller than a normal rollaway, but big enough for our 6 year old. He loved having his own bed. My 10 yr old slept on the top bunk as HIFS recommends for safety reasons, no one under 6 sleep in the top bunk. HIFS is big on safety both in the rooms & on property. They have a video that runs constantly on their cable tv about safety.
Housekeeping did a great job keeping our room clean with our messy group. They were generous with towels but stingy on soap & shampoo, leaving them only every other day. For $125.00 per night I thought we could get toiletries every day.
About the restaurants....
Kids do eat free as advertised, but we found that their food was overpriced in all their restaurants. Their in house Pizza Hut charges $13.00 for a medium pizza. Since our eldest was 15, she was considered an adult, so we paid for 3 adults, and got 3 free kids meals. But with their higher prices we found we didn't save anything as the total cost was about the same as if we would have ate at a Ryan's, Ponderosa, Old Country Buffet, etc and paid for everyone. And something I did not like at all was the mandatory 15% gratuity added to each check at all the sit down restaurants. I do not like this practice at any restaurant, as I find it usually promotes poorer service. Why bust your butt to give good service when you know you're going to get a 15% tip regardless? And this was the case every time we ate at a sit down restaurant. From long waits to be seated to long waits for food. We saw our waiter/waitress only 2 times. When she took our order, and when she brought the food. Not once did they ever ask if we wanted anything else, or offered drink refills. We had to flag them down if we wanted another drink, and to ask for the check. So that was a minus, in my opinion.
The breakfast buffet was great. and this did save us a lot of money, as we ate a big breakfast each day, and only ate once in the Disney parks. If we were hungry later in the day, we would pick up something on our way back to the hotel.
The eggs are "different" but my wife said they were "ok" but the kids didn't like them, but there was plenty of other things to choose from. A great selection everyday. But I must admit, by the 7th day I was kinda tired of breakfast in general.
If you need anything else while you are there I would recommend getting it off property as they do have a general store on site, but as with everything else there, it was overpriced. An example: 2 liter drinks were $2.25 each.
Other than that we would gladly stay at HIFS again.
About the parks...
We found all the Disney parks to be not as crowded as in the past.
We bought our park hoppers at AAA before we left, and they included a special pass to park in the AAA diamond lot at each park. This worked great at Magic Kingdom & Epcot, but not at MGM & Aninal Kingdom. We could walk to the entrance at MK & Epcot, but at the other two parks the cast members directed us to the same area as other guests. So I don't know if MGM & AK don't have diamond lots or we just encountered bad cast members.
In all the parks the lines were not too long, but I would highly recommend FASTPASS. It worked great. We never waited longer than 5 minutes in line using FASTPASS. What a great Disney invention. The longest line we waited in was for the Millionnaire show & that was because the shows are scheduled at certain times and we had to wait for our time. But the FASTPASS helped get us in first, thus allowing us to get better seats. So use FASTPASS, you'll love it!
We finished our vacation with a 3 day stay in Panamal City Beach. We stayed at the Beachcomber by the sea. A nice hotel right on the gulf.
Well, I think I rambled on long enough. Like I said, please feel free to email any questions, I'd be glad to help.
And thanks to all on this board who helped make our vacation better.
Jim
