sharona
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2008
Hi All. This TR is about our 10 night vacation to Key Largo and Orlando (both Universal and WDW/MK).
For those who have not read the PTR (found here: http://www.disboards.com/threads/were-back-pretr-–-me-dd12-and-mom73-–-girls-trip-to-fl-keys-universal-and-wdw-4-18-4-27.3384558/ ), here’s a little bit about us. I’m a happily divorced mom of a 12 year old daughter. I traveled with my DD, aka Boo and my 73 year old Mom. Boo’s a typical tweenage girl who flips back and forth from child to teenager several times each day. Mom is a very young 73. She is a tiny thing who eats like a truck driver and has enough energy to put most 20 year olds to shame. She’s usually very easy going but we call her The General when she gets all bossy. We three have taken many vacations together and we usually all get along pretty well even when we’re tired and cranky!
This trip we planned to spend 1 night in Ft. Lauderdale, 5 nights in Key Largo and 4 nights in Orlando at the Universal Royal Pacific with one epic open til close day at Magic Kingdom scheduled for Friday 4/24!
I don’t have a picture of the 3 of us together but here is one of Mom and Boo and another of Boo and I:
How this trip came to be:
The past few years we’ve traveled at the end of the school year (mid-late June for us) returning on or around July 4th weekend – each time from the West (Hawaii and Cali), ending up with jet lag and missing out on one of the best times to be home in Boston. By the time I recovered from the time away from work, the summer was ½ over! This year we decided to go away during April school vacation instead. Boo is a great student, mostly A’s so I don’t mind if she misses 1 or 2 days of school at the beginning or end of a break. The original plan was to go on a Caribbean cruise along with my DB, DSIL and DNephew. I thought a cruise would be fun for Boo as she has never been and it would be a great way to see multiple islands with no packing/unpacking and no driving. We had a cruise from San Juan all picked out (but not booked) and were just waiting for a better airfare window to open up when DSIL and DB decided that they could not swing the cruise this year after all due to some unexpected other expenses.
I didn’t think just the 3 of us on a cruise would be as much fun as with a group so we started looking for a single Caribbean island to visit instead which soon turned to a search for a FL beach vacation so I could use my hotel points and Southwest points to pay for most of our trip. We ended up deciding on the FL Keys because we are not ones to lie around on the beach or by the pool all day and the Keys has plenty to see and do. I’ve been to Key West several times and have always wanted to see the other Keys. With that decided, I started checking reviews on Trip Advisor and flyertalk. Originally I booked the Hilton Key Largo Resort but a few months later I got scared off by a sudden influx of bad reviews. I switched us over the Key Largo Hampton Inn which had glowing reviews from just about everyone. We decided to research but not plan any specific activities, just to wing it while we were down there. NOT our usual style at all. I’ve been accused of over planning by Boo several times, especially after last year’s 10 day, 9 night, 6 hotel, road trip from San Diego to San Francisco. I agreed to wing it this time around hoping we would not come to regret that decision!!!
Since Boo and I have APs for Universal which are good through November, we decided to add a few days on the back end of the trip and stop in Orlando on the way home. The General has had her fill of theme parks over the years after raising 3 children and then doing it all over again with 4 grandchildren… She opted to fly home and skip Orlando altogether.
After this first bit, this TR will be a bit pic heavy as I am a photo hobbyist and there was some gorgeous scenery to be found on this trip!
Friday – Travel Day
This was a very easy day for us. We had an 11:35am departure scheduled on Southwest. We live less than 20 minutes from Logan airport in Boston so we didn’t need to get up at the crack of dawn which was nice. On the other hand, we were so excited that we were up and ready to go by 7am so we ended up going out for breakfast before heading to the airport just to kill some time. Our local diner has THE best pancakes I’ve ever had anywhere.
We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare courtesy of our usual driver, my stepfather. This was the first time on Southwest for Mom and Boo. I tried to explain the no assigned seat and boarding position thing to Mom but she just couldn’t quite grasp it. I had paid for early bird check in for all of us so that we would not have to stress about getting seats together. IMO, the $12.50 pp for EBCI on SW is well worth it. I consider it part of the price of the ticket when comparing with other airlines. No way am I sitting in the middle seat between 2 strangers and fighting for overhead space when I can buy my way up front and on the aisle. We ended up just in front of the wing.
We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale on time and headed to collect our luggage and find the Alamo car rental check in. Leaving the terminal to walk over to the car rental area, it was the first time we had been warm while outside since our last FL trip in November! We all stood for a minute just soaking in the warmth and sunshine. At Alamo we chose a Dodge Journey from the mid sized suv aisle. I loved this car! It was easy to drive and tons of room for all our stuff - bigger than a Honda CRV but smaller than my Pilot. Luggage stowed and phone GPS programmed, we headed off to the Hyatt Place - Ft. Lauderdale Convention Center and our first snag of the trip.
I had to do some haggling with the front desk - they tried to put us in a 1King room instead of 2Queens which I had reserved and confirmed prior to arrival and then they mentioned a $7 parking fee that I hadn’t seen on the website. We prevailed on the 2Q room but they would not budge on the parking fee. I think it’s a total rip off when hotels charge for parking unless they’re in a major city where parking is at a premium like DC or NYC. I pay it when I have to but I always put up a fight first. You’d be surprised how many times they wave it “as a courtesy” if you push back nicely and politely. Not this time however!
We got our room assigned and went to freshen up. We were starving at this point and wanted to get right to the beach to find some dinner. Boo was in charge of the GPS with the General tossing out instructions and suggestions from the back seat so of course we ended up at Bubba Gump’s which is a favorite vacation restaurant of hers. There seems to always be one at our destination when we travel. So far we’ve been to Bubba’s in Maui, City Walk, Santa Monica, Miami, San Fran and now Ft. Lauderdale. Since there isn’t one back home, I don’t mind that Boo and Mom always want to eat there. Boo had the fried chicken dinner (a family favorite), Mom had shrimp scampi and I had ribs. We were totally famished and ate like it was our last meal, lol. One of our favorite items on the menu is the chocolate chip cookie dessert. It’s a freshly baked warm chocolate chip cookie with ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Boo and I split one of those and the General had strawberry short cake. All items were totally yummy!
Here’s a pic of our cookie dessert – sorry about the missing bites, I couldn’t snap the pic with my spoon in my hand. There won’t be much food porn in this TR as I don’t usually remember until after we’re done that I should’ve snapped some pics of our meals…
We were all greatly anticipating our arrival in Key Largo the next day as it had been so cold and horrible back home and KL was expecting sunny and high 80s for most of the week!!! Yeay! It started to sprinkle as we were left Bubba’s. Hopefully it would not be raining for our drive south in the morning! The plan was to sleep in, have the free Hyatt Place breakfast and then take our time getting to our hotel in KL. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards…
For those who have not read the PTR (found here: http://www.disboards.com/threads/were-back-pretr-–-me-dd12-and-mom73-–-girls-trip-to-fl-keys-universal-and-wdw-4-18-4-27.3384558/ ), here’s a little bit about us. I’m a happily divorced mom of a 12 year old daughter. I traveled with my DD, aka Boo and my 73 year old Mom. Boo’s a typical tweenage girl who flips back and forth from child to teenager several times each day. Mom is a very young 73. She is a tiny thing who eats like a truck driver and has enough energy to put most 20 year olds to shame. She’s usually very easy going but we call her The General when she gets all bossy. We three have taken many vacations together and we usually all get along pretty well even when we’re tired and cranky!
This trip we planned to spend 1 night in Ft. Lauderdale, 5 nights in Key Largo and 4 nights in Orlando at the Universal Royal Pacific with one epic open til close day at Magic Kingdom scheduled for Friday 4/24!
I don’t have a picture of the 3 of us together but here is one of Mom and Boo and another of Boo and I:
How this trip came to be:
The past few years we’ve traveled at the end of the school year (mid-late June for us) returning on or around July 4th weekend – each time from the West (Hawaii and Cali), ending up with jet lag and missing out on one of the best times to be home in Boston. By the time I recovered from the time away from work, the summer was ½ over! This year we decided to go away during April school vacation instead. Boo is a great student, mostly A’s so I don’t mind if she misses 1 or 2 days of school at the beginning or end of a break. The original plan was to go on a Caribbean cruise along with my DB, DSIL and DNephew. I thought a cruise would be fun for Boo as she has never been and it would be a great way to see multiple islands with no packing/unpacking and no driving. We had a cruise from San Juan all picked out (but not booked) and were just waiting for a better airfare window to open up when DSIL and DB decided that they could not swing the cruise this year after all due to some unexpected other expenses.
I didn’t think just the 3 of us on a cruise would be as much fun as with a group so we started looking for a single Caribbean island to visit instead which soon turned to a search for a FL beach vacation so I could use my hotel points and Southwest points to pay for most of our trip. We ended up deciding on the FL Keys because we are not ones to lie around on the beach or by the pool all day and the Keys has plenty to see and do. I’ve been to Key West several times and have always wanted to see the other Keys. With that decided, I started checking reviews on Trip Advisor and flyertalk. Originally I booked the Hilton Key Largo Resort but a few months later I got scared off by a sudden influx of bad reviews. I switched us over the Key Largo Hampton Inn which had glowing reviews from just about everyone. We decided to research but not plan any specific activities, just to wing it while we were down there. NOT our usual style at all. I’ve been accused of over planning by Boo several times, especially after last year’s 10 day, 9 night, 6 hotel, road trip from San Diego to San Francisco. I agreed to wing it this time around hoping we would not come to regret that decision!!!
Since Boo and I have APs for Universal which are good through November, we decided to add a few days on the back end of the trip and stop in Orlando on the way home. The General has had her fill of theme parks over the years after raising 3 children and then doing it all over again with 4 grandchildren… She opted to fly home and skip Orlando altogether.
After this first bit, this TR will be a bit pic heavy as I am a photo hobbyist and there was some gorgeous scenery to be found on this trip!
Friday – Travel Day
This was a very easy day for us. We had an 11:35am departure scheduled on Southwest. We live less than 20 minutes from Logan airport in Boston so we didn’t need to get up at the crack of dawn which was nice. On the other hand, we were so excited that we were up and ready to go by 7am so we ended up going out for breakfast before heading to the airport just to kill some time. Our local diner has THE best pancakes I’ve ever had anywhere.
We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare courtesy of our usual driver, my stepfather. This was the first time on Southwest for Mom and Boo. I tried to explain the no assigned seat and boarding position thing to Mom but she just couldn’t quite grasp it. I had paid for early bird check in for all of us so that we would not have to stress about getting seats together. IMO, the $12.50 pp for EBCI on SW is well worth it. I consider it part of the price of the ticket when comparing with other airlines. No way am I sitting in the middle seat between 2 strangers and fighting for overhead space when I can buy my way up front and on the aisle. We ended up just in front of the wing.
We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale on time and headed to collect our luggage and find the Alamo car rental check in. Leaving the terminal to walk over to the car rental area, it was the first time we had been warm while outside since our last FL trip in November! We all stood for a minute just soaking in the warmth and sunshine. At Alamo we chose a Dodge Journey from the mid sized suv aisle. I loved this car! It was easy to drive and tons of room for all our stuff - bigger than a Honda CRV but smaller than my Pilot. Luggage stowed and phone GPS programmed, we headed off to the Hyatt Place - Ft. Lauderdale Convention Center and our first snag of the trip.
I had to do some haggling with the front desk - they tried to put us in a 1King room instead of 2Queens which I had reserved and confirmed prior to arrival and then they mentioned a $7 parking fee that I hadn’t seen on the website. We prevailed on the 2Q room but they would not budge on the parking fee. I think it’s a total rip off when hotels charge for parking unless they’re in a major city where parking is at a premium like DC or NYC. I pay it when I have to but I always put up a fight first. You’d be surprised how many times they wave it “as a courtesy” if you push back nicely and politely. Not this time however!
We got our room assigned and went to freshen up. We were starving at this point and wanted to get right to the beach to find some dinner. Boo was in charge of the GPS with the General tossing out instructions and suggestions from the back seat so of course we ended up at Bubba Gump’s which is a favorite vacation restaurant of hers. There seems to always be one at our destination when we travel. So far we’ve been to Bubba’s in Maui, City Walk, Santa Monica, Miami, San Fran and now Ft. Lauderdale. Since there isn’t one back home, I don’t mind that Boo and Mom always want to eat there. Boo had the fried chicken dinner (a family favorite), Mom had shrimp scampi and I had ribs. We were totally famished and ate like it was our last meal, lol. One of our favorite items on the menu is the chocolate chip cookie dessert. It’s a freshly baked warm chocolate chip cookie with ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Boo and I split one of those and the General had strawberry short cake. All items were totally yummy!
Here’s a pic of our cookie dessert – sorry about the missing bites, I couldn’t snap the pic with my spoon in my hand. There won’t be much food porn in this TR as I don’t usually remember until after we’re done that I should’ve snapped some pics of our meals…
We were all greatly anticipating our arrival in Key Largo the next day as it had been so cold and horrible back home and KL was expecting sunny and high 80s for most of the week!!! Yeay! It started to sprinkle as we were left Bubba’s. Hopefully it would not be raining for our drive south in the morning! The plan was to sleep in, have the free Hyatt Place breakfast and then take our time getting to our hotel in KL. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards…
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I'm here...can't wait to read all about your trip.
