In my last update I left off when we were at Magic Express. Specifically when we were about to walk on the famous red carpet and announce to the CM with the large waving hand which resort we were headed for. Dh thought it was POP. He wasn’t wrong in thinking that.
In fact for a while we were heading to POP. Until I got it into my head that an upgrade to a different resort would be a nice belated B-day present for him. I had originally inquired about an upgrade to the Poly but after I manually lifted my chin off the floor decided that perhaps a moderate was better. So Coronado Springs it was.
I took pictures of DH when I broke the news to him. Here he is.
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What do you mean we aren’t going to POP?”
He knew something was up. He had seen the extra charge on my credit card. He had already been grumpy about it at home. He suspected another backstage tour or something of that nature. Not a resort upgrade.
Here he is at our red carpet waiting spot. He seems to have recovered nicely.
“So tell me about Coronado Springs. Is that where we stayed on our honeymoon?” He asked.
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No. That was Saratoga Springs. Only remember it was called the Disney Institute and believe it or not I haven’t done much research on this place.”
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Okay that I do NOT believe.”
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I do know it’s kind of like POR in that there are four bus stops and a big themed pool with a couple smaller quieter pools. Oh yeah, the food court works differently.”
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How so?”
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Well, as far as I understand you order the food, eat it and then pay for it. Plus they automatically charge you a 15% tip.”
His eyebrows went stormy.
If it’s one thing DH doesn’t like it is mandatory tips.
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We’ll just have to figure it out when we get there cause I’ve got us eating at their food court tonight.”
We were the only ones in the lineup for CSR. Actually there weren’t many other people waiting on the carpets at all. I suppose they were all in the buses.
We didn’t wait long until a mears bus pulled up. I cringed. We had mears both ways last trip and I really wanted to experience a Disney bus complete with the cheesy movie.
A CM came our way and told us to follow her. I was thrilled when she passed the Mears bus and lead us on to an actual magic express themed bus. Not even a
Disney cruise one but magic express one.
YAY!
It was 4:30 but we didn’t leave until around 5pm. The bus was packed by then.
My initial excitement died down and instead of getting revived up by the movie I had to admit it but I fell asleep. I totally missed taking a picture of the front gates to the property.
We had two stops before heading to CSR. We stopped at POP first. Tons of families got out.
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So this is where we were supposed to stay?” Dh asked
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Yeah,”
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It looks pretty fun.” He was motioning to the kids playing with hula-hoops while waiting for the buses.
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Yeah”
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Just maybe not the type of fun we’re looking for this weekend.” He says with a twinkle in his eye and a tentacle escaping momentarily.
CBR is next. I would like to stay here one day. It was on my list but my TA mentioned that CSR would be priced higher than the other moderates soon. So I thought I’d better strike while it was still the same price. However, I am sorry now that I choose CSR for this trip. If you permit me a digression for a moment I will tell you why.
When I booked this trip I knew that my kid’s dance studio was thinking of going to a competition at Disney next July. They hadn’t committed yet. At least not at the time of booking. When the Dance studio did a competition at Disney two years ago (we belonged to another studio at the time) the competition was offsite. It was at one of the hotels on Disney property but not owned by Disney. I can’t remember which one. But because of this, I assumed the competition would be off site again. I was wrong.
About a week before we left for this trip, I found out the competition was going to be onsite. In fact it was going to be none other than CSR. The Studio was still just thinking of going to the competition. Now that it’s two months later I can tell you that we are going and even that after 6 weeks of convincing DH we are going with the studio. Well, not all of us. DH and my youngest son (he doesn’t dance, he plays hockey and baseball) are staying home and my Mother will be accompanying me, DS11 and DS9 next July. So you see, I should have booked CBR because I will be staying at CSR next July. But as they say hindsight is 20/20 and what was done was done.
Oh, all during this trip DH has no knowledge that the Dance studio is even considering going to Disney next summer. Anyone besides me notice I tend to keep things from DH?
Okay back to the current TR. We are pulling up to CSR. Naturally it starts to rain and it is around 6:00. It’s getting dark. Here is a picture I took from inside the bus. Horrible I know.
I did a little better once I was out of the bus.
The lights look lovely in the twilight but the rain and the cold… yes, I said
COLD.
Notice the capital letters in the word. It was defiantly chilly. I started to worry that I hadn’t brought enough warmish clothes for us. They had records high this week but apparently that was all over with now.
We shivered our way into the front lobby. It was lovely. The layout did remind me of POR though. Here are some pictures.
I had done the pre-check in the on the computer. Only because I noticed last trip that the lineup for the pre-checkin was way shorter. I figured ir I had any questions I could always ask. Besides being on the disboards so often I really didn't have any questions.
I hadn’t asked for any particular room as I hadn’t done my research and quite frankly without any children I didn’t care where we were placed. I knew the resort was big and had prepared myself mentally for it. I was ready to walk to the end of the resort lugging my bags.
Well, we got casita 1. It’s the closest building to the main building. In fact it is attached to the main building. Was I ever surprised when the CM showed us on the map. Score.
On our walk to our room my first thoughts were about how pretty everything was. How huge the lake (okay I know it’s not a lake but that body of water is pretty huge) looked and how wrong it seemed to be so cold while passing by palm trees.
We made our way up the elevator to our room. Room 1477.
Everything looked okay upon first inspection. But you know that looks can be deceiving but I'll get into that later. After the prerequisite photos I started to unpack. That's when I noticed something strange about my feet. Or rather one in particular. It was wet.
When I walked by the front of the fridge I noticed that my socks got wet.
YUCK!
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HONEY!” I called in a panic. “
Come and check out this wet spot.”
After some investigation on his part and some disinfecting of my foot on my part we realized that the fridge was not working. It had leaked and defrosted. We called maintenance.
They were pretty quick to bring a replacement fridge. It was smaller and they apologized but we were fine with it, as we weren’t planning on using it for anything really.
About now, I realized I had left our refillable mugs at home. Least I be flamed from the boards let me state that DH felt it was perfectly reasonable to reuse our refillable mugs from our trip 5 months ago. The point on whether to reuse them or not was really moot as I had forgotten about them. We discussed whether to purchase new ones or not. They were not part of our dinning plan. Since we were so close to the food court I thought we would get good use out of them. Dh wasn’t so sure.
So Dh went to do some thinking in the room he does his best thinking in.
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Really now?” I asked. I was hungry and we had already waited for the replacement fridge. I didn't feel like waiting for him to finish *ahem* thinking.
I finished our unpacking. I turned Stacy on. It wasn’t long before I heard.
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Honey!” I hear him calling me.
Wanting to keep my olfactory senses in working order I went closer to the door but left the door closed.
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What?”
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How many towels did you use to wash your foot?”
This seemed like an odd question to me. In fact I was waiting to hear the punch line when he repeated the question.
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Did you use more than one towel to wash your foot?”
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I thought I only used one towel.”
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Where did you put the towel?”
I was quite intrigued now. It’s not often that Dh shows this type of interest in my personal hygiene.
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I left that towel and my sock behind the door” You see at the time I wasn’t sure what I had stepped in and I was undecided as to whether I was going to keep said sock or just chuck it. Since I know it was just wet with water from the defrosting broken fridge I decided to keep the sock.
“I’ll pick up the sock later if you don’t mind. You know. After the place has aired out.”
I was getting a little peeved that Mr. .Messy himself was upset that I had left a sock in the bathroom.
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No, it’s not the sock. It’s the fact that there is another wet towel hanging on the shower rack and I think it smells. Would you come and smell this?”
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Of course it smells in there. I am NOT coming in there. If you think it smells that is good enough for me.”
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You’re sure you only used this one towel behind the door?’
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Yes.”
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Well then, our bathroom has not been cleaned.” He said finally emerging out of the room. “
Come and see”.
“Honey, I am tired and I am hungry and to be frank I just don’t have it in me to go and look at the bathroom right now. I want to go down to the food court and get something to eat. Then I will deal with it.”
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Okay but where’s the camera. I’ll take a picture of it first.”
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Great idea”
Here is the picture.
Normally a bathroom that was not cleaned would freak me out more. But as I said I had been in the bathroom when I was washing my foot off. I had seen it. It looked fine. I knew it had been cleaned but maybe not as well as it could have been. After looking at the picture I was still determined to get something to eat first. I had seen much worse looking bathrooms on other people’s reports before. This left over towel was not so bad. It was however, a bargaining tool. One we could use to get ourselves some new refillable mugs. And so a plan was laid. We would phone mousekeeping after our meal.
We were off to find out how the mandatory tipping thing worked at Pepper Market.
Coming up. Does one broken fridge and one dirty towel equal two refillable mugs? Click here to find out.
http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=34905017&postcount=76
Great report so far!!! 
My DH is notorious for disappearing right before a party or something important, even if it's something he wanted! He's also notorious for being grumpy when he doesn't get his way 
Can't wait to hear how DH likes the resort switch.
More shopping money for the mama!!!
