Hi Eddie,
My favorite place to stay on site is the Wilderness Lodge. It's like all the National Park Lodges combined into one building. It's lobby (and fireplace chimney made from boulders) is/are seven stories tall. Fireplace is the size of a walk in closet, $30,000 chandeliers made like Indian teepees hang from the ceiling. There's even a Yellowstone style hot spring bubbling up in the lobby that flows out through the wall into a whitewater stream and down to a swimming pool that you'd think was a lake in the High Sierra. There are Indian arts and crafts everywhere: papooses, birch-bark canoes, and old mountain man stuff too. I just know this place would be your style. Fairly big bucks though, yet not as much as the Grand Floridian: big Victorian place-big time eastern & preppy-not my style and I think not yours either, though the golf courses on it's premesis are nice. If you can't stay at the Wilderness Lodge, at least drop in for a meal in the restaurant that is open to that cavernous lobby.
If you stay off site, check out renting a time share condo unit for a week. You can often get a 2 bath, 2 or 3 bedroom unit with full kitchen for $700 for a full week. The prices are that low because there are tens of thousands of them surrounding the Disney property. You can save big $$ by having inexpensive bkf. in your condo, pack up sandwiches, chips, and half freeze sodas the night before, put them all in a daypack, and then stow it all in a $1 rental locker at the entrance to whatever park you start the day at.
I recommend a 4 day park hopper pass. Besides the 4 theme parks, there are several water parks, the boardwalk, Downtown Disney, the Richard Petty raceway and driving school, and Disney Institute where you can learn anything from gourmet cooking to rock climbing or practice with pro baseball players.
At Downtown Disney, the Cirque du Soleil show is amazing, great dancing in the club section if you hire a Disney babysitter for an evening. The Polynesian luau at the Polynesian Resort is a great evening dinner show with Polynesian hula dancers, fire batons, etc.
For restaurants with great atmosphere, the Rainforest Cafe at both Downtown Disney and in the Animal Kingdom are great. They won't let you shoot the leopards that growl at you though, and you don't get TOO wet when the thunderstorms come through (it's set up like you're actually in a jungle). My favorite restaurant is at the Mexico pavillion in Epcot, You sit on a dark terrace with an OLD Mexican pueblo village on one side, a high ceiling looking like a starlit sky above, and to the other side a lake beyond which a volcano glows and oozes lava in the night sky. Boat rides through the pavillion slowly drift by the terrace restaurant. Make reservations for this place, luau, and Circue du Soleil WAY in advance.
As far as the 4 big parks, you want to do everything at Magic Kingdom. Main Street Electrical parade and fireworks at night are great. Pirates of Carribian, Small Small World, the roller coaster through the desert with dinosaur fossils, Splash Mountain, and Space Mountain are good rides. Hall of Presidents is good. At Epcot, the energy pavillion takes you through a realistic dinosaur (think Jurasic Park) ride. Don't miss the aquarium. The country pavillions are pretty good (kids get some good U.S. history ot ours), but the fireworks show on the lake with the illuminated globe (huge thing with high-res TV images all over the outside, and the globe opens like a lotus flower, lasers everywhere) is great. At MGM, the Indiana Jones show is good as is the Tower of Terror, and the Mickey laser and fireworks show at night is a don't miss. The backstage ride goes through a Hollywood set canyon where an earthquake makes an entire oil refinery explode around you and a 10,000 gallon water tower falls over and drenches you. There are lots of stage productions put on by live actors. The Animal Kingdom is huge, yet the sidewalks far to narrow. Tree of Life, and a Bugs Life are good. The whitewater raft ride good and the African Safari is beyond belief. It's huge, and you would absolutely swear you were in Africa on a safari. Don't get too excited though Eddie, they don't let you jump out and shoot any hippopottomi, rhinoceri, lions, giraffes, etc. But for guys like you and me who love the outdoors, it's just plain COOL.
Don't forget, the place is bigger than Manhattan, bigger than the entire city limits of San Francisco. If you stay a week, you'll realize you can't see it all in a month. Also remember, within a short distance are two Universal Studios parks, Sea World, Busch Gardens, and other attractions. Kennedy Space Center is an easy day trip.
I know I used "great" a great number of times. Thing is, it all really is great. Have fun. I'm jealous!!
