We got up on “Day 2”, Tuesday June 19th, got ready and went down to check out the complimentary breakfast. It left a little to be desired, like most of those places do, but somehow we found enough to get us going.
We made one last trek back to the room to get our stuff, but before we took our things down to the van, I got a picture of Judy and Lauren in their newly-acquired I-Heart-NY shirts.
And after everyone else left, I took a quick picture of the room so you could see the sweet (suite!) extra bed/couch we had. We'd folded it back into "couch mode" before we left. Poor James, I know he was sooo looking-forward to the sleeping-bag-on-the-floor routine that he usually gets stuck with.
We got rolling at about 8:30, crossed the border into Florida and after several iterations of “only X more miles to go” which occurred every 15 minutes or so, we arrived at Disney’s Vero Beach resort a little before 1 o’clock. The guard greeted us with a “welcome home” and we proceeded into the lobby to get checked-in. I didn’t do online check-in ahead of time -- I haven’t seen any evidence that it really benefits you. In fact, if anything, it looks to me like it basically locks you into a room assignment rather than allowing the front desk person from looking for a room that’s ready, or has a good view, or whatever the case may be. Anyway, enough about that. We were really excited walking into the lobby for the first time, eager to make our first impressions and see if it really felt like “Disney”.
I went to the front desk while the rest of the family looked around the lobby and went to check out the gift shop. The front desk cast member gave me our check-in packet and some “First Visit” buttons, since it was our first time visiting the Vero resort. Then, after the required keyboard-tapping and mouse-clicking, she told me that our room was ready. Score! After just a few minutes we were back out to the van to drive to our building.
It might be helpful for you to know the layout of the Vero Beach resort. “The Inn” is at the center of the property, and it contains the front desk, restaurants, store, and the hotel-style rooms (I didn’t see any of these rooms, but I imagine they are the equivalent of Studio rooms at other DVC resorts). Towards the beach and running the length of the property north to south, are 6 cottages, which are basically the “grand villas” of the Vero resort. People staying in those have the whole unit. (That wasn’t us, it’s just for info.) And lastly, the suites are in buildings 12, 14, and 15, which you can see on the map below, to the left and right of the Inn. Our room was 1240, which would be on the 3rd floor of Villa Building 12. Here’s the map that the front desk cast member gave us, with her notes on it. (I put the red “X” where our room was.) Looks like she told us that the campfire would be held at 8:30pm, and something must have been happening at 1 at the pool.
We drove over to building 12 and I immediately noticed that the clearance to park under the building was very low. I don’t remember the exact height, but just visually I could see that there was no way that our van with a cartop carrier on the roof was going to make it, so I had to park in an outside space. Fortunately, there are a lot of palm trees and other vegetation providing shade around the buildings at Vero or else the van would have gotten super-hot during our few days here, but I wondered if I’d have the same height restriction at Kidani, where I
really wanted to park the van out of the sun. Time would tell. Anyway, we were able to find a spot right near the building, so unloading all of our stuff wasn’t much more of a pain than that chore already is.
We couldn’t wait to see the room, and the kids started to run off empty-handed, but Judy reminded them to at least carry an item or two to make productive use of the trip from the van to the room. I of course, decided to carry my camera as my item.
Don’t worry, I’m sure I carried something else too.
James was the first at our door, eager to check it out!
Oh, I see that Frostbite made the trip. He’s the yeti plush that James earned for conquering Everest, back in my 2009 trip report,
the “Yeti bribery” chapter .
I squeezed past James to unlock the door and…
…To be continued.
Up next: Our suite view
Link to next chapter
On second thought, I'm not even sure if this IS my picture.
Let's hope for my sake it is.
I love cheesecake factory - I'm with Cynthia - hard to eat the cheesecake if you've eaten the dinner. We usually get it to go if we can!So nice you got to see each other! I know for Glen and Mark it was a redo, but nice to meet your better halves! 
Hi Julie and Mark (I hope I get to meet the better half of this combo one day); 
I would have loved to have been there for that meet. 
That's just...wrong.
I thought Id have to go into my speech where I yell If I were the man I was five years ago, Id take a flamethrower to this place!
