Day 1 was a total disaster. When I decided to tack a few solo days on the front of our Halloween trip, I picked Oct. 7 as the first day of my trip so I could meet up with my pal Lori (whose
wedding Jensey and I stalked last May).
The plan was to arrive in the early evening, check into the Dolphin, grab a quick bite at bluezoo, and then meet Lori and her husband for IllumiNations. However, as I was heading out the door to the airport, I got a text from Delta saying my flight had been delayed
by five hours! I frantically tried to get them to put me on another carrier's flight or one from another airport, but all the flights from LA to Orlando that day had either already left or were leaving in the next 45 minutes. Thanks for the last-minute notice, Delta. And thanks for starting LA-to-Orlando service, Virgin America, because now I will never have to fly Delta again!
So let's pretend Day 1 never happened and make Day 2 be Day 1.
Day 1: This might run long cuz I never did a pre-trip report, which would have covered all the boring planning details
.
Originally I was going to stay at Pop Century for the Patrick-less part of my trip, with the first night free on Starwood Preferred Guest points at the Dolphin. I had never really been interested in staying at the Swolphin before, but now that we've had the good fortune to stay at so many of the Disney resorts (I don't count the Moderates because I think they are overpriced, glorified Value resorts), it's become like a game to try out new places whenever I can afford it.
So when the Swolphin announced the debut of its Epcot Food & Wine Festival counter-programming, the Swan & Dolphin Food & Wine Classic, with dates that exactly matched mine *and* discounted hotel packages, I tacked on another day at the Dolphin. The package came with two all-you-care-to-choke-down wristbands for the food booths at the Classic, which were supposedly worth $50 each, so in my mind I was actually SAVING money by staying there.
And then I started thinking how much fun it would be to knock another hotel off my list using the 40% discount code Disney was offering during my stay. I'd always been curious about Old Key West because if you wanna buy into the Disney Vacation Club on the cheap, one of your best bets is to get a resale contract at Old Key West. But I could only get two nights in a studio there cuz it was Columbus Day Weekend, which left me with this one Pop Century day between the Swolphin and OKW. So I rang up the Swolphin to see what they could do to for me and got a nice young man who told me about a fabulous AAA rate. Perfect!
Fast forward to THE WEEK BEFORE MY TRIP [ominous music], when I discovered that the nice young man had booked my last night at the Swolphin for
September 10th instead of October 10th, which meant I'd been charged the full rate as a no-show fee back in September and I HAD NO PLACE TO STAY on the night of the 10th! The Dolphin was booked. The Swan thought they might have a place for me, but it was almost $100 more than I'd already been charged. I was furious at myself for not noticing the wrong date on the confirmation email, and I was sobbing on the phone with the Starwood customer service agent telling me the place was sold out. The agent told me she was going to work things out and call me right back. Hours passed
I called again and spoke to someone else, who called the manager at the Dolphin and got the same "sold out" spiel. And then I got an email from the first agent. Perhaps it was my blubbering insistence that I was going to have to sleep in a ditch, or maybe she was just doing her job really really well, but somehow she'd managed to find me a room at the Dolphin for the same rate I'd already paid and link it to my other 2 reservations so I could stay in the same room the whole time!
Which is all to say
here are some pictures of my room at the Dolphin!
The main room was OKa little more generic than I expected given how plush the lobby is, but quite spacious. The bathroom area was grim. That's where you can tell the Dolphin is just another Sheratoncramped shower room, dull stuccoed sink area with fluorescent lights, cheap-smelling toiletries
Still, the lighting around the sink was better than at any of the Disney hotels I later stayed at!
I got up early enough that morning to catch the sunrise. Here's what my view looked like:
My camera can see Sea Breeze Point from here!
I think these are actually the sunset views
The first thing on the agenda today was a 9am meeting at Franck's Bridal Studio with members of the Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings marketing team and Carly from
The Disney Wedding Blog. She and I had been talking about joining forces on some DFTW research, so when she learned I was going in October, she was able to take advantage of Disney's deals to come down too! She also lined up a bunch of interviews, including this one. The plan was to tour ceremony and reception sites in Animal Kingdom, so I was toting the nifty wide-angle lens I'd discovered for Patrick's camera. (More gratuitous pre-trip-report info ahead!) If you've liked Patrick's camera (the Sony HX-1) enough to buy one, you might also want to check out
this lens. Sony doesn't make a wide-angle lens for that model, so an enterprising company that sells photo/video equipment to Realtors has created one.
I bought the lens specifically for taking pictures and videos of the various Disney wedding sites, but when Patrick arrived and tried it out, he was smitten! As you may know from past trip reports, he's a huge fan of the detail shot. Well, on this trip, it was all wide-angle, all the time! You'll start to see this on Day 6 (Harry Potterland Day).
While we're on the subject, there are three other things I got for this trip that I want to recommend. One is a
laptop backpack designed for passing through TSA with ease. I'd never taken my computer on a trip before and didn't want to be the one fumbling with a complicated case as the security checkpoint, so I found this thing. The laptop sits in a mesh sleeve inside a separate compartment that opens with one easy motion. The sleeve slides out so the 'pooter can sit on the scanner belt but remains attached to the backpack. At the end, the sleeve slides easily back into its compartment and you're on your way. I loved it!
Another thing I got was
a
hip pack! A dorky, dowdy, ultra-touristy hip pack. After toting a garish green and purple fanny pack (that one's for you, my UK and AU readers!) for most of the '80s, I was dead-set against ever being so fashion-backward again. But years of dragging (or making Patrick drag) our backbreaking blue backpack all over the parks finally made me acknowledge that a hip pack makes so much more sense. It still allows me to bring the essentials (and more "just in case!" stuff than I ought to) but it's sooooooo much more comfortableyou can almost forget you have it on. So there. I said it. I wear a hip pack.
The third cool thing I got for the trip was a new
Bobble. I love these thingsespecially now that they come in bright color combosbecause you can fill them up just about anywhere but a Florida lake and they make the water taste great! No more shipping huge cases of bottled water to our resorts. Unfortunately, my decision to ditch the blue backpack meant I didn't have a way to carry the Bobble in the parks. So we quickly became familiar with the best places to get free ice water in the parks (some places only give you tiny red cups, but others give you giant soda-sized cups!).
That morning I was still trying to figure out how all my new gear was going to work together to make me trek-ready, so I just tossed the whole pile in the rental car and hit the road for Franck'slaptop pack, hip pack, Bobble, lens, camera, tripod, giant hat, notepad, bed roll, pup tent, and tin cup all tumbling from side to side in the backseat as I careened around those curvaceous Disney onramps. And I was so pleased with myself for not getting lost on my first drive of the trip!
As you may know, Franck's Bridal Studio is the storefront for Disney's Fairy Tale Weddingsthe place where they meet you for site visits and hold your planning session and display their wares. It is named for Martin Short's character in the Steve Martin version of
Father of the Bride and sits next to the Wedding Pavilion at the Grand Floridian. Franck's recently got a facelift, so I was sure to exhaustively document the new look.
Same old carpet
Welcome out of lurkdom - I appreciate your, er, de-lurking...?
