Coffee on the Verandah -The Last Slide, Recap & Souvies 5/29 - Link to Aulani TR 5/31

[englishrose47]

beware Muggles! Rosie's coming!

Hey I ressemble that remark

 

[KatMark]

Cynthia, I am finally caught up.

First, I already KNEW you were awesome.

Second, I am so glad you loved OKW. It is such a beautiful resort, isn't it? Your room looks terrific (love the larger bathroom in the bedroom villa over the studio), and I will definitely be trying a Turtle Crawl in 19 days.

Olivia's is a hidden treasure at Disney. We did dinner our first trip and breakfast the second (well, the girls and I did breakfast) and we loved everything we had and the CM's were some of the best we've ever had).

 

[eandesmom]

Okay...I'm going back to read the last two updates (somehow I missed them ). But I hope you understood when I said your TR put me to sleep the other night. It wasn't because it was boring or I wasn't enjoying...I love your TR's. But you exhaust me, woman!

Well I'm glad I didn't put you to sleep. LOL! I have my engergizer bunny moments.

Hey I ressemble that remark

Why yes, yes you do!

Cynthia, I am finally caught up.

First, I already KNEW you were awesome.

Second, I am so glad you loved OKW. It is such a beautiful resort, isn't it? Your room looks terrific (love the larger bathroom in the bedroom villa over the studio), and I will definitely be trying a Turtle Crawl in 19 days.

After doing 3 of the 1 bedroom villas, a studio just isn't on my radar, even with 4 of us. Which is a bummer as points would sure go farther.

I really loved OKW. We all did. There are different things I loved about each resort we stayed at, OKW couldn't have been a more perfect start to the kind of trip we too.

Olivia's is a hidden treasure at Disney. We did dinner our first trip and breakfast the second (well, the girls and I did breakfast) and we loved everything we had and the CM's were some of the best we've ever had).

It is such a gem! Amazing service, food, ambiance, everything. I'd like to have breakfast there someday though unless I was staying there, it probably wouldn't happen. I'd make the trek for dinner though, you really feel away from the craziness of the parks and DTD and even many of the resort dining options.

 

[Moira222]

I he thought it would be a GRAND idea to eat up all the bacon we had left as a “snack”.

What? Bacon is not an essential food group? I know men who will argue! LOL glad he was none the worse for it after a few hours.

A mom and her 2 kids on their way to WDW.

“I will take a picture of you on vacation if I want to”. As she snapped in flight pictures of them
“Suck it up, I’m taking pictures, get used to it, we are not starting our vacation out this way”.

I loved this woman even if she didn’t know it. They were headed to Orlando and were playing a board game on the plane, clearly having fun. I can't recall what game but somehow we started chatting. They had decided they weren't "park people" and I think were on their way to a cruise, but not a Disney one.

Too funny!!! I'm thinking of Lidian, who I believe has a hubby & child who roll their eyes when she breaks out the camera.

Truly truly you do earn the supreme awesomeness title Cynthia! WOW WOW WOW on the room. see homework pays off! especially on vacation.

Your room & verandah photos have me wanting to hop on a plane now (ok so I nearly ALWAYS am ready to hop a plane, but stilll...)

All of that settled, with charging privileges only to the adults we finally had our key cards and welcome home packet. Since it was my first one, of course I had to take a picture of it.

can I tell you this got mey all warm & fuzzy. someday we will get a "welcome home" packet....

As I started to walk back to the stop he said, “or I can have one of the guys run you over to your villa if you like”.

Like? Love!

Still supreme awesomeness (even if you didn't know the bus details, you still scored a ride!)

LOVE your photos and review of Olivia's! I've been thinking of this place since I read a great review - maybe MEK's?


Question for you - I know you used ME so no car on this leg of your trip. Would you have preferred a car at this resort, especially if you were doing parks? or once you got the knack of the busses, was Disney Transportation just fine?

Love reading you day -- sounds like a fantastic first day of vacation!

 

[eandesmom]

What? Bacon is not an essential food group? I know men who will argue! LOL glad he was none the worse for it after a few hours.

Everything is better with bacon!

Truly truly you do earn the supreme awesomeness title Cynthia! WOW WOW WOW on the room. see homework pays off! especially on vacation.

Your room & verandah photos have me wanting to hop on a plane now (ok so I nearly ALWAYS am ready to hop a plane, but stilll...)

It was a lovely room and verandah, very happy I was a pita with my room request!

LOVE your photos and review of Olivia's! I've been thinking of this place since I read a great review - maybe MEK's?

Question for you - I know you used ME so no car on this leg of your trip. Would you have preferred a car at this resort, especially if you were doing parks? or once you got the knack of the busses, was Disney Transportation just fine?

Love reading you day -- sounds like a fantastic first day of vacation!
[/COLOR]

I should have done a better job on the actual restaurant photo wise, as well as the outdoor sitting area. Wasn't quite in the TR photo mode yet...which always seems to happen on the first day of any trip. Or the first day of a trip segment....when we move.

Honestly part of vacation for me is NOT having a car and dealing with driving, directions, parking, hot cars, all that stuff. For what we did during our OKW portion the only real benefit would have not having to go pick up a rental car on the morning we were trying to leave. For that, it wouldn't have been worth the extra 2 days of rental. To me, by the time you drive to a park, park, catch shuttle or ferry or walk in...that all takes time. And sometimes not much more than just waiting for the bus will. Yes sometimes a bus can take forever but for me, no, I wouldn't have wanted or felt the need for a car. Surprisingly Jeff whined about the internal buses a little. But he really didn't want to deal with a car either. That said, a lot of folks would probably prefer a car and one nice thing about OKW is that you can park basically right at your villa.

 

[baseballmickey]

A cruisemate is here! YAY!



Can I just say...without giving anything away(though there will be pictures later lol) , we loved Jeff's FE gift, it was pretty darn cool to see something for just him

Thanks! So glad Jeff liked the gift!!

I'm ALMOST done uploading everything. Whew! 2 cameras, (actually 3 but I don't think K ever used hers, she kept stealing Jeff's phone instead), and 2 iphones. Had to download all 4, then upload to photobucket. And edit, delete, sort as I went. I did not realize (just got our phones in Dec/Feb respectively) that the iphone won't show you the orientation properly within the phone itself. So for example, I can take a picture and it looks normal to me, I go to upload it and it's actually upside down! On my camera I can change the rotation on the camera itself but everything else is post upload. I still need to go through and rotate/flip anything that is off from Jeff's camera and phone. It was an insane amount of pictures. Complicated by the fact that apparently Jeff can't figure out how to do his himself so I had to do the airshow as well.

Which had something like 31 videos. That of course need compression and to be sent to other folks etc. LOL! He was cracking me up. I don't think I've ever gotten everything uploaded so fast before but the man was breathing down my neck.

Still going through our pictures. Ugh.

Found some time to read today. Still behind, but wow, what a departure day and flight across the country for all of you. Very well written!

 

[eandesmom]

Thanks! So glad Jeff liked the gift!!

He did! He's got a special use for it and it's come in handy!

Still going through our pictures. Ugh.

Found some time to read today. Still behind, but wow, what a departure day and flight across the country for all of you. Very well written!

Ugh is right. I've gotten them all sorted and uploaded but editing and orientation...not so much. I've gotten thru the next day is am good for a few more updates but need to try and stay ahead of it and get the rest of it done. Still a little scanning to do too.

It was a very long first day to be sure, always much easier to get thru when you know you are headed to Disney!

 

[rentayenta]

I guess I answered your questions in my thread.

Looks like I am doing groceries and food separate. You've got me wondering on the booze delivery now though.

 

[winkers]

I'm to lazy to go back and copy and paste...but the picture of Eric or is it Evan?....anyway the candid shot of him poping up out of the water is priceless.

 

[eandesmom]

I guess I answered your questions in my thread.

Looks like I am doing groceries and food separate. You've got me wondering on the booze delivery now though.

Well I'm sure she will let you know! Very curious to see what she says. Mind you I never asked as I thought I saw on her FB page that she didn't but I could be confused. It happens all the time!

I'm to lazy to go back and copy and paste...but the picture of Eric or is it Evan?....anyway the candid shot of him poping up out of the water is priceless.

That's Evan and yeah, I'll need to remember it and add it to the blackmail pile. He's been awful all year about pictures (as in talk to the hand) but was a ton better this trip, even posed quite a bit as it went on. I'm sure he will regress but it was nice while it lasted. Kendall on the other hand would try to take our phones and delete pictures of her if she didn't like them. Which was almost every picture.

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

Everything is better with bacon!

Amen. And amen.

 

[eandesmom]

Amen. And amen.

Bacon and Chocolate I'm told.

Though personally, give me salt any time.

 

[rentayenta]

I'm a salt lover too. Potato chips are my weakness. *swoon*

 

[eandesmom]

I'm a salt lover too. Potato chips are my weakness. *swoon*

Which makes dark chocolate salted caramels...the perfect food.

In every respect!

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

Bacon and Chocolate I'm told.

Though personally, give me salt any time.

Our Pantheon of foods that make everything better include bacon, cheese, chocolate, and pineapple. One of those will always work.

 

[eandesmom]

Our Pantheon of foods that make everything better include bacon, cheese, chocolate, and pineapple. One of those will always work.

hmmn. Pineapple. that's an interesting one! I have a feeling my list of things that make everything better might be different than some in my family. Jeff would say caramel. Caramel, caramel and caramel. And anything that has caramel.

I'd have to put trail mix and strawberries on that list though. Coffee. Though that's life sustaining, which definitely does make things better!

Ultimately for me?

Homemade mac and cheese makes everything better!

 

[eandesmom]

Our first day had been very long, but a huge success. We'd survived wrangling cats, missing homework. hurling cats, boating kids and too much bacon. We'd dozed at times on a red eye despite cracklers, tappers and foulers. We'd been rewarded for all of that with pixie dusted bus rides, room readiness, gorgeous weather, refreshing swims, an amazing dinner and some quiet family time watching the Olympics. All in all, a truly great first day and one that ended up being surprisingly relaxing and really started things off right!

In fact it was so right, it became a huge conversation topic during our dinner at Olivia's. Which I'd forgotten about until I looked at my notes. (notes are great…if you remember to look at them when writing the update!). Eric is our single minded kid. He gets stuck on something and he will go on and on and on and on about it!

“A villa is SO much better than a hotel room, don't you agree Mom?”

“Mom, isn't a villa better than a regular resort room”

“I'm so glad we are in a villa, it's so much better Mom, thank you!”

To the point of, enough already! I'm glad you are happy, now eat your dinner!!!

The first night was interesting. As Karin (dizneat, who is there now!) had warned, the door configuration is a bit confusing. Basically part of the bathroom is actually in the master bedroom, the part with the tub and one sink and tons of storage. There is no privacy door between that and the master, although it is relatively separate, the entry is right by the door to the master itself so anyone walking into the bedroom actually sees into that part of the bath first. Then, from that part, there is a door into the rest of the bathroom, which houses the toilet, shower and another vanity. This has another entry, which is through the laundry room. What is confusing about the whole thing is that the same hall that you take to get to the master, leads to the laundry room. As a result, when you exit the bathroom it’s easy to either end up in the master bedroom, or the laundry room, and often when you mean to do the opposite.

It is also easy to get locked out. Our rule (ok the rule we tried to enforce) was to NOT lock the door between the bathroom and the master. If the door was open, the bathroom was available, closed, not. Otherwise kids would go in there via the laundry room, lock the door that led to our side and voila, locked out parents. Now for the most part it was all just humorous and a bit of walking around the long way to get in, when Jeff and I would get locked out. Once they started following our rule, we did realize there was a small issue with it. There may or may not have been an incident the first night where a child started to walk into our bedroom at an inopportune time let’s just say I was thankful that the “window” between the tub area and the bedroom (shutters that you can open) was closed and we were able to redirect said child (who never remembers his middle of the night adventures anyway) back into the right room and exit.

Ok, back to our regularly scheduled update!

We'd gone to bed around 11pm I think. At 8am, I was up and ready to go. Rested and content but couldn't sleep any longer. So was Jeff. You know what that means don’t you?

Coffee on the verandah!

We LOVE this quiet time together, enjoying the outdoors, our coffee, each other and the peace and quiet of no kids. They needed to sleep in a little, it was 5am Seattle time and with the long day, some catch up was in order. As some of you know from my PTR, I had some targeted souvenir purchases. One of which was a “new” OKW logo mug. I’d seen the logo, but not the actual mug so had really hoped they actually had a mug with the new logo and that I'd like it. I had stopped into Conch Flats after our dinner at Olivia's and found it, and liked it! Was it my dream color? No but the size of it was perfect and it had these great ridges on the inside of the handle that felt so good in my hand. I'm funny about coffee cups. I choose mine very carefully each morning depending on my mood, the weather and what feels “right”. For example right now as I wrote this update I was drinking out of my Minnie diner style mug from 2004. I should have bought the full set back then as the style has changed but it has held up beautifully and I love it. I find that the typical mug in a condo, villa or resort room is too small and just doesn't feel right. To feel at home, I wanted my own mug!

First things first, I had to brew the coffee

I found it amusing that there was a “strong” setting. I worked for Starbucks for 13 years and as a result, probably know more than anyone needs or wants to about the brewing process and what it would mean for the brewer to be able to deliver either “strong” or regular. I chose “strong”. As soon as it was ready, I filled my cup and headed out to the verandah via our bedroom access door as to not wake the kids who hadn’t budged while I was brewing. In fact they looked awfully cozy!

There’s a blackmail picture for you!

Of course, I needed to document the event

And try to catch our morning view; you could actually see a bit across the canal without the afternoon glare we’d had the day before

I tried playing with photosynth, a stitching app to create panorama shots. It kind of worked.

Mostly I just enjoyed the dappled light and shade

Until I realized I was getting bitten!

The dreaded No see ums. Yep, canal + shade = bugs. I went inside and put on some of my organic decent smelling bug spray. Not nearly as effective as the stuff with Deet but I knew they wouldn't be that bad for long. Not to mention I didn't have any on me, it was on the Vero shopping list! It did the trick and I enjoyed the quiet start to the day. By 9:30 though I was getting ansty and kids were not moving. Besides, the coffee was almost gone. It was time. Time for a long standing vacation tradition. The breakfast of Champions!

When I was a child we would do this only when camping and I always looked forward to it. As an adult, it’s turned into a camping/condo vacation treat that the kids look forward to and ask about even before a trip starts. Not stuff I normally have around the house for sure.

It did inspire Kendall to get out of bed, though not until it was almost 10! I kept hearing “it's 7am at home”.

And the race was on. The race to see who gets their favorite kind before it’s down to the kind no one wants.

NO ONE was moving fast. The Olympics were on TV and between breakfast, the Olympics and putting on sunscreen somehow we didn't make out the door till almost noon. Granted, I took a shower as I figured if I didn’t keep myself busy somehow I'd get cranky but still, it was a LAZY morning. Earned I suppose but I was ready to get out the door!

Eric is the only one who looks awake!

The destination? Downtown Disney. The original plan had been to have breakfast in the villa, hit DTD, and go back to the villa for lunch. With breakfast turning into brunch neither Jeff nor I saw that happening and decided we'd have to have a late lunch at DTD instead. Which would work since dinner was in the villa that night. We didn't have to wait too long for a bus and since any bus would get us to HH, we hopped on. Our desitnation? The DVC Ferry! It is a relatively small waiting area and mostly in the sun. It was quite warm already and so we huddled a bit under the one umbrella so try and stay cool. We did have to wait about 10-15 minutes I think for the ferry as it wasn't until 12:20 that we saw this as we pulled out from the dock.

Continued in next post

 

[eandesmom]

Such a pretty ride!

Pretty soon we were seeing this!

This is where the OKW/SSR boat lets you off for reference, at PI.

DTD is a funny place for us.

In 1992 I went there for the first time, and spent most (if not all) of it on Pleasure Island.

1996 and 2004, didn't make it there at all.

2009 was our first “real” trip to DTD. We had lunch at HOB, hit WOD and Goofy's. That's about all we did.

2010 we'd planned to spend more time there.

1st visit, we ran late, had enough time for dinner at Raglan Road, a couple of shops and ended up at DQ for an hour since we had the water and more tickets (and it was crazy in the crowded shops and the kids begged!).

2nd visit that trip, we ran late (thanks to getting stuck at Rafiki's planet watch) and myself, Kendall and my MIL dashed off to the GF for tea after a very rushed WPE lunch and no shopping. The boys had some shopping time after we left, but not a ton and by all accounts Jeff was rushing them along though they did have fun at RideMakerz.

In 2011, on my girls trip, we made it there. Again after Raglan Road, again crazy crowded in the shops. I was coming off a red eye and WOD well...almost put me over the edge. Sensory overload that place. I found a few things I liked but didn't have the energy to actually buy.

The idea for this trip was to really take our time, go in anywhere anyone wanted and not feel rushed. Of course, due to our late arrival, hunger might interfere with that grand plan.

It was 12:40. We'd been in the World for 24 hours and were about to take our first step outside our resort. Where to first?
Next: I don't wanna sandwich!

 

[DisMomAmy]

I want to stay at OKW now.

Do me a favor... ask Eric if he thinks it's better staying in a villa than a regular hotel room? The funny part is that when I read those quotes, I could hear Alex's voice! Story of my life! The latest one has been about locks & lockers... Last week we went to his new middle school so he could walk through his schedule before school started. His case manager was explaining how things were going to work this week & every other sentence out of his mouth was about lockers & locks!

 

[Happydog]

When we stayed at OKW for a week back in 2009, we really liked it, and I remember taking the boat from DTD to OKW. It was a pretty ride! I like how your first day was leisurely... this last trip just me and the guys, we had some time like that. And I was so glad we were at BCV to enjoy the resort for that reason. I bet you are getting excited for F & W!!!! By the time you almost finish this TR, it will be time to head back over to this coast!!!