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

[eandesmom]

Love these logos. Good thing I don't go to DVC resorts often, because I'd be spending a fortune at the gift shops.

Seriously. It was a good thing they didn't have a bigger selection of stuff with the cool logos or I'd have been in bigger trouble than I was already!

 

[jedijill]

Seriously. It was a good thing they didn't have a bigger selection of stuff with the cool logos or I'd have been in bigger trouble than I was already!

Glad they are finally getting some DVC resort logo merchandise again. Everything went generic a while back and it just wasted the same!

Jill in CO

 

[eandesmom]

Glad they are finally getting some DVC resort logo merchandise again. Everything went generic a while back and it just wasted the same!

Jill in CO

Me too. They have updated a lot of the DVC stuff to the new logo but nothing really excited me there. I hope they plan to continue this with the other resorts but I guess time will tell.

 

[englishrose47]

Just checking in !!!

 

[eandesmom]

Just checking in !!!

Hi Rosie!

 

[rentayenta]

Ooooo.....new DVC merchandise? I'm excited. The AoA stuff looks fun.

 

[eandesmom]

Ooooo.....new DVC merchandise? I'm excited. The AoA stuff looks fun.

Oh have you seen AoA specific merchandise? Cool!! Yeah there's some new resort specific stuff and then new logo stuff for DVC. you'll have to let me know what you se at SSR!

 

[rentayenta]

Oh have you seen AoA specific merchandise? Cool!! Yeah there's some new resort specific stuff and then new logo stuff for DVC. you'll have to let me know what you se at SSR!

In their shop I believe. Someone on the AoA thread posted a bunch of pics from the resort including the gift shop.

AKV has the best shop. I'll just add a zero to the budget. If I add a zero that means I have more money, right?

 

[eandesmom]

In their shop I believe. Someone on the AoA thread posted a bunch of pics from the resort including the gift shop.

AKV has the best shop. I'll just add a zero to the budget. If I add a zero that means I have more money, right?

Yep, definitely a zero gives you more money

Unless you add a zero to a zero!

I SOO wanted to find something I loved at the AKV store, still a bit shocked that I didn't. Then again I may have been shell shocked after paying for my AP.

AoA looks so cool, I kind of want one night there on our next trip if it works out. We will see though! It's a LONG ways off.

 

[2xcited2sleep]

Fun update! I loved OKW when I stayed there several years ago and you are making me think about going back. I am totally with your son on loving the villa. The one reason I haven't splurged and gone with a 1 bed is that I know I'll never go back to a studio!

LOVE the coffee mug. Hope Beach Club has one in Oct!

I'm going to guess you went to World of Disney first... or lunch... Disney has a way of making one hungry!!

 

[eandesmom]

Fun update! I loved OKW when I stayed there several years ago and you are making me think about going back. I am totally with your son on loving the villa. The one reason I haven't splurged and gone with a 1 bed is that I know I'll never go back to a studio!

Seriously! I'll have a hard time staying in a studio after that, I'm dreaming of a 2 bedroom! Sigh. Points go SOOO much further with studios though! OKW really is an oasis.

LOVE the coffee mug. Hope Beach Club has one in Oct!

I'm going to guess you went to World of Disney first... or lunch... Disney has a way of making one hungry!!

I hope so too! I am not sure if they plan a different approach for the DVC only resorts or not on the new merch. I didn't see anything at AKV and sadly, didn't love the mugs they had enough to buy one. Hard to top the one we all got though after the trek, which I'm actually drinking out of right now, so I didn't feel the "need". The blog that announced it was way back in Feb. Took till summer I think for the new logo stuff to show up at Vero, not sure when it landed at OKW. But they don't mention if all of the resorts will eventually get them or not. I really hope so! Although I do have suggestions on what specific merch they should have with the resort logos lol!

 

[rentayenta]

Yep, definitely a zero gives you more money

Unless you add a zero to a zero!

I SOO wanted to find something I loved at the AKV store, still a bit shocked that I didn't. Then again I may have been shell shocked after paying for my AP.

AoA looks so cool, I kind of want one night there on our next trip if it works out. We will see though! It's a LONG ways off.

This is what I'm thinking: 100 turns into 1,000. That's the fuzziest Disney math ever! I might even go for two extra 00s.

Was your AP $$?

I'm looking super forward to our night at AoA and I'm so glad I changed the flights. After Gussy's review of it, I know we'll love it. I can't wait.

 

[eandesmom]

This is what I'm thinking: 100 turns into 1,000. That's the fuzziest Disney math ever! I might even go for two extra 00s.

Was your AP $$?

I'm looking super forward to our night at AoA and I'm so glad I changed the flights. After Gussy's review of it, I know we'll love it. I can't wait.

The DVC discount helps a ton, basically I think I save $3 over buying a park hopper for oct, plus the 1 day in august, but then I get some extra discounts on a few things which helps and the following year I'll save more with the renewal for the big trip. I wouldn't have done it without the DVC discount.

Add 2 zeros! Go big!!!!

 

[rentayenta]

The DVC discount helps a ton, basically I think I save $3 over buying a park hopper for oct, plus the 1 day in august, but then I get some extra discounts on a few things which helps and the following year I'll save more with the renewal for the big trip. I wouldn't have done it without the DVC discount.

Add 2 zeros! Go big!!!!

Is the AP discount better than the DVC discount?

 

[eandesmom]

Is the AP discount better than the DVC discount?

It varies. Some places offer both, some only one or the other. Some none! In general AP is at all retail locations with no minimum purchase and seems to be at more restaurants overall than DVC. 10% is the usual discount but it varies a bit as well. One of my apps shows which discounts by location which is super helpful.

 

[eandesmom]

I had been up since 8. The kids since 9:30 or 10. We had enjoyed a light, late, breakfast, caught a bus, and a boat. It was now 12:40. With the late breakfast no one was starving yet even though all that sugar really is not terribly filling. Interestingly enough, everyone wanted to go to the same place first.

Can you guess?

I was not sure where it was. PI is in the middle of DTD and I am no expert on where things are at all. Plus I am a bit dyslexic. So we started out, turned left went a bit and then I said, no...Let’s go the other way. So we did.

All the way to…

Here.

Recognize it?

Cannot imagine why not.

It is.... the bathroom.

Yeah. A whole 40 minutes of “travel” and a bio break is the first thing on everyone’s mind. Figures huh. Everyone feeling better we decided we’d head down the west side, all the way to the end and work our way back. We also decided we would go in anywhere people wanted and peruse menus as we went. We’d checked the menu at Paradiso 37 after we docked and unloaded but given that burritos were on the menu at the villa for dinner, it didn’t really appeal. Working our way through Pleasure Island the first stop was Curl, by Sammy Duvall. Ok, not Disney but it certainly had a ton of stuff that appealed to most in the crew.

On Evan's agenda..Sunglasses. He wanted to use his own money for it, after he somehow conned Jeff into paying half. Still not sure how me pulled that one off but it didn’t come out of his souvenir fund.

Eric’s…a watch. None jumped out at him. At least none he could afford.

K. Cute clothes. Of which they had a ton. After much debate she decided that there was not anything she loved enough at the right price. We were in that store a surprising amount of time. I found a few things I might have liked for myself to be honest but again, the price for the item was more than I wanted to pay or I just did not love it enough.

Moving west I got the mandatory fountain shot.

As we entered the West Side, we passed on even looking at the menu at Bongos as I knew it had horrible reviews. Planet Hollywood, nixed for that same reason and we’d eaten at HOB before. We had liked it and it was an option but we were thinking counter service, not sit down. We did pop into Blink and D Street but didn’t see anything there that anyone had to have. The regular Wolfgang Puck didn’t appeal to anyone so it was off to the marketplace where we knew we’d find the most shops…and food.
First menu we checked? Cookes of Dublin. Otherwise known as “The Raglan Road Counter Service”. For whatever reason Jeff could not call it anything other than Raglan Road. Okay…whatever. He really really wanted to eat there. However we agreed that we’d keep looking, some other folks had opinions that were different about where they wanted to eat, plus there was a little more shopping we could do before we tucked in for lunch. Still, all agreed they could eat at Cookes and find something that worked. It worked for me as I knew we’d get a 10% DVC discount there. We had used our discount the previous night at Olivia’s and well, it’s only 10% but every little bit helps. If nothing else it lessened the pain of tax. Though FL tax is a LOT lower than ours is.

Portobello. Nope, no interest. Pollo Campero and Fresh A Peel? Maybe as an extreme fall back. Fultons and TRex? We did look at the Fultons menu but did not want sit down nor the noise of TRex. Starting to get a bit concerned, we did what any normal family would do after about an hour of shopping.

Find another bathroom.

Sigh.

At least this time it was near some nice photo ops.

The plan was for everyone to relieve themselves, then head into WOD. The boys were dying to go there, Jeff and K, not so much. However across from WOD is a stage and it had a lot of step dancing activity going on. It was HOT out and those girls had to be dying. They also wanted their picture in front of WOD so we waited for the crowd to clear. Finally we were able to make a break for it and went in. We found a meeting spot and the boys took off like lightening. On their lists?

Eric. A hat and pins

Evan. A t shirt and maybe some pins. Eric still “owed” him a pin from that stupid rock wall climbing bet, and that boy intended to collect.

Kendall agreed to walk around with me and check stuff out. Jeff, well he just hung out and tried not to look in pain.

On my list? Nothing in particular. I wanted to look at T shirts and kitchen stuff but that was about it. I found a tee I liked…but didn’t like the price. Found some towels I liked. I had seen them the night before at Conch Flats. Again, I was not loving the price tag, and figured if they were at Conch Flats, they might also be at AKV at the end of the trip and if I really loved them, I’d get them then. I also knew I would be back in Oct so stuff like that, I could afford to wait on. I did see one kitchen item I liked and figured I would see how the boys added up. At $50 we could get a discount with our disney visa rewards (dream dollars) card so if I needed to “fill out the bill”, I could.

Eric..found a hat! And a pin. And a pin for Evan. Evan..found a T shirt! And…with my kitchen item we got to the magic number. Ok, we would have gotten to the magic number without my kitchen item but..I liked it and the price was right.

At this point, my darling husband started to get the growls. You know, the stomach growls. The “hey, I am a grown man and need more than 2 boxes of sugar coated crap to get through the day” growl. It is NOT pretty when this happens. In fact, it is more like a snarl. 1.5 hours in the shops and the snarl had arrived. In full force. We needed to move on the food. As we excited, it was time for a princess parade! Too cute.

We have actually never been in to this Ghiradelli. I always think we will but it never works out. Oh well. As we went we looked at menus for EOS, Cap’n Jacks and WPE. Evan really wanted to go to EOS. I mean really REALLY wanted to go there.

And Dr. Jones snarled.....

I DON'T WANT A SANDWICH!


Okayyyyyyyy…we will not make you eat a sandwich. Even though EOS does have other things the fact of the matter was Jeff wanted to eat at Raglan Road. Which is really Cookes. Which meant walking back. As we went I did point out a few stores I still wanted to hit. Which was meant with snarling.

Okay…..lets feed the beast.

Cookes is cute. But not all that big. We found one small table in the corner as far away from the door as we could and squished in. Far away from the door because the door was constantly open and the AC simply couldn’t keep up with it. It was muggy in there. Better than outside but muggy. While they did that, I ordered and though it caused some confusion, got our 10% DVC discount applied. We had the sweetest CM working the register but speed was not her forte. As I told her what items, she’d shout them back. Jeff’s choice was apparently the last one in the house for the day, they shouted back saying “Last one!”. WHEW. I can only imagine having to go back to him at that moment and have him select something else. NOT on my top 10 list of fun things to do! Water cups in hand I headed back to the tiny table. As I did, a tall corner table was leaving and offered it to us. It actually had enough stools and a window seat. SCORE! As we sat, had water (and ice) folks…I mean Jeff…began to cool off.

And finally…the food arrived. It had to be at least 10 minutes. Maybe it wasn’t but it sure felt like it. Not exactly "quick" service but at that point, no one cared!

So what was it that Jeff wanted?

This beauty

Dublin Style Pies
Baked fresh daily, limited availability. All served with chips.
Beef and Lamb - ground beef and lamb, fresh carrots and potatoes $11.95

The boys went for Fish and Chips

Cooke's Specialties Hand Battered Day Boat Selections
all served with chips and freshly made tartar sauce
The Original One & One - Fish & Chips $10.95


Kendall, a wrap

Grilled Chicken Caesar Wrap - Char grilled chicken breast with caesar salad in a whole wheat wrap $10.95

Didn’t exactly photograph well.

And for me, something nice and cool

Fresh Salads
Cooke's Farmhouse Salad - organic field greens, tomatoes, carrots, and cucumbers. Balsamic or Raspberry Vinaigrette, Ranch, or Honey Mustard dressing $6.95
Add grilled chicken, grilled Atlantic salmon or shrimp to salad for $3.00


I added salmon.
And the crowd dug in

The verdict? Kids loved the fish and chips, Jeff liked his pie but whined that it was too much pastry and not enough meat. That is a normal whine for Jeff though, servings are never big enough or have enough meat so take that with a little grain of salt. K liked her wrap. My salad was…good. The salmon…okay. I am spoiled, I guess somehow I was expecting it to have freshly grilled salmon on it, which is what you would get here at home. Nope, it was grilled but chilled and that surprised me. The chilled part. I might have gotten something different had I known. Not in a bad way, just not what I was expecting. I prefer my salmon warm. Not that big of a serving either, though for $3, I wasn’t really expecting it to be huge.

Savage beasts soothed it was back to shopping. A quick peek into Team Mickey's revealed nothing of interest to the clan. I wanted to hit Trend D. The boys, pin traders. Jeff agreed to sit outside and wait while the girls went one way, the boys another. At Trend D, Kendall hit the motherlode of sundresses and found several cute things to try on. I saw lots of things I liked, but none I loved. One sundress and sparkly OPI nail polish later (to hit the magic $50 to get our 10% off, making the nail polish free) we were done. Or almost done. Eric realized some of the CM's at TrendD had a few pins he was looking for so more trading ensued. With that, we were done. And DUN. As Jeff would say.

Other than maybe Goofy's (no one was hungry) and Basin (somehow I missed that, although taking the family in there might have been torture) I feel like we did all we wanted to, as a group. Sure, I would like to go into the Christmas store but the pain of doing it with my family? Not worth it. With that, and the feeling that it was a relatively productive trip in which everyone got something except Jeff (and therefore no one could complain later), we decided that it was pool time. I had all our suits and was getting tired of carrying them, the plan had been to head back and go straight to the pool and not worry about having to go back to the Villa.

We made a stop on the way back to the boat dock. At that stop, Evan HAD to put on his new shirt. He’s a patient kid that one.

Clearly Kendall and Eric were not only shopped out, but hiding from the sun. Errand completed we headed to the dock to wait for the boat. Jeff of course decided then that he needed what…another bio break. While waiting Eric decided to get cute.

Anyone know what he has in his mouth?

Evan decided to get cool

Eric added his new pins to his lanyard

And me? Well I tried one of these

I do not have a picture of Jeff’s drink. He was debating between 2 different ones and got a VERY strong recommendation from the bartender. “Stronger, better and $2 less” was I think his tagline. It was pretty funny! Jeff took the recommendation.

Continued in next post

 

[eandesmom]

I tried playing with photosynth again

First on the dock

And then as we headed out

Ok, THAT didn't work so well. Let’s go back to normal mode.

These two look excited don't they?

Ok, let's add a little excitement

And try a backwards shot.

Better!

SSR. Still seems SO huge to me but it is pretty

Kendall LOVES instagram, she had fun with Jeff's phone for a bit

Almost home

Funky trees

Not our villa

Which was good, the boys had been worried we'd get pink.

Approaching our destination

With that, we were back and after 4.5 hours in DTD, including lunch, we had one thing on our mind. Well, most of us had one thing on our mind. Others may have had a different agenda, it was, amazingly enough…almost 5!

Next: Pedal, Paddle, Patootie!

 

[scottny]

First that mug is adorable.

Then TMI on certain parts. LOL

I love the boat rides from POR, OKW and SSR to DTD. It makes staying at them so much better.

Paradiso is so good and so is Bongos but I suggest them when they open and they are not busy because after that the service goes down.

That pie he had for lunch looks so good I might have to try that next time.

Great updates and pics.

 

[MEK]

Just read this on my phone. You guys are troopers for spending that much time in DTD in August. Glad you found some loot. I do feel like most of the merchandise I find in Disney exceeds my acceptable price point so I never end up with much.

I wanted to try Cookes but never got a chance. Looks good. Was that the grapefruit Rita? Yummmmmmmmmmm!

 

[MAGICFOR2]

Well your "not a sandwich" looks great! I didn't know they had CS at RR. The pie looks good, but if both choices are lamb, it would not be on my list. You did a good job on scaling back the shopping.