Cue the Music: How we MADE money and slept with Ariel! Done!

[mickeystoontown]

Hey Lisa, so happy to find your new TR! I am home sick plus it’s one of those southern snow days here so was able to get caught up on your 2016 TR and saw the link to your new one, great start so far. Too funny about the cd with the repeat song and loved that you stopped for a picnic! As always am looking forward to reading more of your TR cause they are the best!

I somehow missed your post when I was doing replies yesterday! It's always good to see you! John had the best intentions with the CD and I love him for it!

Nice stop for a picnic. We used to stop at the rest stops for picnics all the time on various trips growing up, but I only remember doing it on 2 trips to Disney, and one of those was with my DH about a year after we got married, and we had my BFF with us. We were in Va at the time, so it only took us 12 hours to get there (that was awesome getting there same day!)

We did too! We always had a water cooler/jug and a small ice chest. Always.

Gotta love a really late night and early morning. The only time I'm eager to do that is when Disney World is involved!

I love that you had a picnic. I grew up picnicking too. We went almost every Sunday when I was growing up after church. My parents liked to go on drives...no place in particular most times...and we would always have a picnic en-route. We probably visited almost every state park/national park/random small town within driving distance of my house by the time I was an adult. I take my kids on picnics now, but not nearly as much as I did growing up. My kids always know the way to make me happy in the summer is to suggest we go on a drive and have a picnic. Of course, they also know that it will involve a stop at some random roadside ice cream shop. We can't seem to pass those up.

Looking forward to see what you think of AS Music.

We are night owls anyway and it's not unusual for us to hit the sheets around Midnight. Even on workdays. And, then, of course, our bodies are used to getting up at 5 in the morning for work.

My daddy used to love driving around and just looking and picnicking. I miss those times!

Oh and I don't blame you at all for stopping at a roadside ice cream shop. Those are the best!

 

[Bethislucy]

We were doing a picnic lunch our trip down too but there was a down pour so it was moved into the car

 

[mickeystoontown]

We were doing a picnic lunch our trip down too but there was a down pour so it was moved into the car

Darn it! At least you still had a picnic and a break from driving.

 

[pooh'smate]

When we drive to see our family back east (24 hrs if we drive straight through) we stop for a picnic on our first day. It is always nice to get out of the car and stretch. The second day we stop somewhere in Canada (Tim Hortons or Swiss Chalet) because dh misses the food from his home country.

 

[mamamelody2]

Great start!
DH and I were at WDW "just the two of us" November 12-18. We loved it!

 

[Caretames1]

I’ve always thought we could drive to Disney, do some sightseeing along the way. But, I’ve come to realize I have a bad case of road rage and I don’t think that would be good for my heart rate. Oh and I get car sick within mins of leaving the driveway, so I drive everywhere.

 

[mickeystoontown]

When we drive to see our family back east (24 hrs if we drive straight through) we stop for a picnic on our first day. It is always nice to get out of the car and stretch. The second day we stop somewhere in Canada (Tim Hortons or Swiss Chalet) because dh misses the food from his home country.

Oh wow, a 24 hour drive? That's a long time in the car so I can certainly see why you'd want to stop for picnics.

Great start!
DH and I were at WDW "just the two of us" November 12-18. We loved it!

Thank you! Some of our days at WDW overlapped!

I’ve always thought we could drive to Disney, do some sightseeing along the way. But, I’ve come to realize I have a bad case of road rage and I don’t think that would be good for my heart rate. Oh and I get car sick within mins of leaving the driveway, so I drive everywhere.

You have a very valid reason for having road rage. I drive everywhere too. It's very rare that John drives. Well, he does when he is driving his mammoth size truck but that's about it.

 

[pooh'smate]

Oh wow, a 24 hour drive? That's a long time in the car so I can certainly see why you'd want to stop for picnics.

We don't drive straight through anymore. We did drive though once but now it takes us 2 days. We leave around 2 or 3 am and drive about 12 or 13 hours which gets us right to the boarder. Then the next day we usually try to leave around 8am and drive until we get to Montreal. They are very long days and dh and dd always laugh at me because I sleep alot but long car trips always make me sleep. I have been like that even since I was a child. I don't mind it makes the time go by faster if I am sleeping lol.

 

[mickeystoontown]

We don't drive straight through anymore. We did drive though once but now it takes us 2 days. We leave around 2 or 3 am and drive about 12 or 13 hours which gets us right to the boarder. Then the next day we usually try to leave around 8am and drive until we get to Montreal. They are very long days and dh and dd always laugh at me because I sleep alot but long car trips always make me sleep. I have been like that even since I was a child. I don't mind it makes the time go by faster if I am sleeping lol.

John sleeps a lot when we go anywhere further away than 4 hours. He just can't help it. LOL

 

[Mopedmom1]

John sleeps a lot when we go anywhere further away than 4 hours. He just can't help it. LOL

Hopefully not while he's driving!

 

[mickeystoontown]

Hopefully not while he's driving!

Oh heck no! That's why I drive most places.

 

[pooh'smate]

John sleeps a lot when we go anywhere further away than 4 hours. He just can't help it. LOL

I can't either. I have tried and just can't stay awake.

 

[mickeystoontown]

Cue the Music! This food court doesn't strike the right chord!

If you've ever driven down I-75, you know that there's really not that much to see. Oh there's the We Bare All Cafe Risque. (image borrowed from the internet) You start seeing these type of signs soon after turning onto I-75. Did you know that they also offer free showers? To me, that's not surprising because, well, I am pretty sure that you'll feel as if you need a shower after stopping there. Nasssssssty!


No stopping at Exit 374 for us. Instead, we continued along I-75 and I kept on a truckin' over the speed limit to keep me from getting eaten up by the other cars and semis. After a while, we got off of the interstate and cut through Wildwood and Leesburg and through to Clermont where we saw the Citrus Tower and the vineyards. As you can see, it was beginning to get dark out. But, I wanted John to try to snap some pictures anyway so that I would at least have something to put in my trip report. Oh great! Blurry pictures!




Traffic was pretty heavy as it was around 5:00 p.m. so we hit work traffic. And construction. Why do we always seem to hit construction on the last 50 miles or so? At least this one isn't that blurry. You can juuuuust make out the vineyard.

After what seems like a hundred million hours, we got out of construction and were looping around to Hwy. 192 which is the last leg of the trip. We drove past the gawdy buildings (borrowed from the internet again because it was dark).


MapQuest had given me a different route to take but on our first drive/trip to Walt Disney World, we took this route and when we see these buildings, we know that we are almost there. So, instead of turning off of Hwy. 192 onto the road to Disney's All Star Music Resort, we chose to continue down Hwy. 192 (also known as West Irlo Bronson Drive) until we reached World Drive.

Immediately after turning onto West Irlo Bronson, John called Mama to tell her that we had almost made it and that we were on the final stretch of road. Again, she said "y'all are moving on along" like she always does. John talked to her until we got almost to the big loop onto World Drive. He had just hung up when we got to the one mile until Disney World exit sign:

Around the exit ramp/loop. John was trying but, bless his heart, they were all blurry.



I asked that he try to to get pictures of the beautiful Walt Disney World archway. Yeah, that didn't work.

Try again!


**Continued in next post


​

 

[mickeystoontown]

Cue the Music! This food court doesn't strike the right chord! continued

We put the camera and phones away so that we could focus on finding our resort. Several years ago, John's brother and his family had joined us at Boma for dinner and we drove them back to their resort, Disney's All Star Sports Resort. So, I had an idea of where the resort was but that's it. We drove to the security building and the guard looked at my ID and then pointed us towards the entrance to All Star Music Resort.

I forgot something earlier. At 10:20 a.m., I received a text saying that our room wasn't quite ready and that they'd send me a text when it was. At 12:05 p.m., I got the resort room ready text. We were assigned to room 2642 in Building 2 of the Jazz Inn section. We had been upgraded to a preferred location. Cool! Followed right behind the room ready text was a text with the resort map. I had studied the resort map like crazy before we left because I wasn't sure what building to request. Because of this, I kind of had an idea of where Jazz building 2 was.

We turned in and drove to the right and found a parking spot not far from our building. Before we unload the car, we like to find our room. But, we did grab a couple of things from the back seat. We took the stairs at the end of Building 2 and, of course, walked all the way around the building when we could have just gone straight. Oh well, we found it!

After a quick look at the room and a potty stop, we went back down to the car to get our things. Here's a picture of me sporting John's hat. I have no idea why I had his hat on but you can see that we were excited to have arrived!

Both of us grabbed as much as we could and, this time, we knew the way so we didn't walk allllll the way around the building to our room. One thing that we hadn't thought to do was look for the elevator so we lugged our suitcases up the stairs. Before we brought the rest of our 1000 bags up, I snapped pictures of the room. Not only had we been upgraded to a preferred room but also to a king room. When I booked, I booked a standard room with the two beds.

I hadn't turned on all the lights yet and I thought that the above picture would come out dark, so I turned on the flash which kind of washed out the picture. I forgot to mention that they also put us in an accessible room which we didn't need.


You can see that the curtain was a semi-circle. To the right of the sink/curtain was a small closet area.

The room had a small table and two chairs, a mirror about the table and a dresser. The dresser had three small drawers, itty bitty shelves on the end of the dresser and, then inside the dresser was the dorm size fridge. There was a space/shelf on top of the dresser that we used to put some of our things on.


I'm not sure what they expected you to put on the shelves on the end but it really didn't provide much space. There was a towel rod thingie on the end as well. We were also in a connecting room and the connecting door was to the left of the dresser.



On the wall beside the dresser and connecting door was a small peg shelf.

The sink/closet area was small. I'm not sure if that was because it was accessible.

The bathroom itself was quite large and I liked that it had a pocket door.


**Continued in next post​

 

[KimmyD]

I am really enjoying your report. We are thinking of staying at a value resort next time.

 

[MiracleCream]

Following along! Y’all seem so cute! We got two kids under age five so a road trip is not in the cards for us for a while but it was so much fun to read about it!

 

[mickeystoontown]

Cue the Music! This food court doesn't strike the right chord! continued

I pulled the curtain back to take a better picture of the sink/closet area. The safe was still the key operated style and it was on the opposite side of the peg shelf wall. There was a long shelf and then a smaller/shorter shelf underneath. Both were wire shelves which I thought was weird. Things didn't sit well on the shelves.


I then turned around and took one more picture looking from the bathroom area towards the door.


I have some more detailed pictures of the room that I took a few days later. One thing that I forgot to mention was the shower. There was no real shower head but, rather, a hand held shower wand/thing. And, while it could be snapped into a holder thing on the wall, it was quite low when stationary. I'm 5 foot 6 or 7 and it was a little low for me.

We are used to staying at Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort and the rooms are quite a bit larger than the value resorts. In 2016, we stayed at Pop Century Resort so I had an idea of what to expect size wise. We were fine with the size. What we had a bit of an issue with is the wear and tear of the room. The carpet was quite worn and had seen a better day. You can see it a bit in the picture above. See how the color is different in places? Even the star pattern was hard to see in areas. And the walls had several bumps and bruises. I'm sure that the wear was from wheelchairs and scooters but you could definitely see the wear.

But I kept saying "this is okay", "this isn't bad at all", "we'll be fine", etc.

We text Lacey and Hunter to let them know that we had arrived. I sent them the pictures of John and I and to them that we'd sent more pictures later.

Our original plan which was in my itinerary in my binder....with dividers....with tabs....had us going to Disney Springs for the evening. However, by the time we got all of our things in the room and unpacked and settled in, it was around 8:00 p.m. We didn't know anything about the bus situation yet so we decided to just stay at the resort and grab something to eat at the food court.

And, we hadn't had a chance to look around yet and we wanted to do a little explorin'. We walked over to Intermission Food Court and we were pretty disappointed. I don't know if it was because it was later in the day but only two stations were open for walk-ups. The other was a pre-order window and I couldn't find anyone to explain how it worked.

When we parked our car, we could see the gigantacor Coke cups at Disney's All Star Sports Resort. They were right there so why not just walk over to Sports and see what they had in their food court?

We walked through the Home Run area of All Star Sports and continued on until we found their food court. All of their windows were open in the End Zone Food so we were both able to find something to order. I went with the
Margherita Flatbread - topped with pizza sauce, grape tomatoes, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella served with a breadstick and side salad.

Oh my heavens, it took forever and two days to get my order. It wasn't really the castmembers' faults. There were quite a few ladies in front of us and they didn't speak English at all. They were having to use a translator on their phone. And, even after having the translations, they took a looooong time to decide what they wanted to order. John had his order way before I did and came over to see what was taking so long.




John ordered
American Classic Burger - Angus Beef, Bacon and American Cheese, with Coleslaw and French Fries


When we got to the register, I asked if we were able to redeem our refillable mugs (we were on the free dining plan and had upgraded to the Disney Dining Plan) there even though we were guests at Disney's All Star Music Resort. The cast member said that wasn't a problem at all and to go pick out whatever colors we wanted. He also said that we could either get a fountain or bottle drink or a dessert with our meals. We decided to go with the dessert option since we had our mugs. He said to simply get a dessert and bring our ticket back to any register.

At the time, there were quite a few holiday dessert options to choose from. I got a delicious yellow cupcake. It was so good! Vanilla cupcake with strawberry filling and the icing wasn't too terribly sweet. The bow was chocolate. Just right. I thought that I had taken a picture of the inside of the cupcakes but I can't find them.

John's cupcake was a spice cupcake with an apple pie filling. There were nuts scattered about on the outside and it was topped with a chocolate square. This was amazing too.


End Zone wasn't super busy and there was ample seating. I'll insert this here since I am talking about the food courts. The value resorts have huge food courts. Huge! Big! Never a problem finding a table.




The resort was decorated with sports themed Christmas decorations.


**Continued in next post​

 

[mickeystoontown]

Cue the Music! This food court doesn't strike the right chord! continued

My flatbread was a little on the cold side but I didn't complain because it wasn't the cast members' faults. They were trying to attend to the non-English speaking guests and, while I could have asked about my order, they had their hands full. We both enjoyed our food but the desserts were the hit. All Star Sports knocked those out of the ballpark. Get it? Oh....I'm so funny. Not!

We walked back the way that we came and through the Home Run section. You can see the football themed area in the picture too.







When we got back to Disney's All Star Music Resort, we went back through the front of the resort and looked in the resort store for a little bit. I normally take pictures of everything in the stores so that I can come back and post in my trip report and on the resort boards. This time, I did a crappy job. I took just this one picture:


We strolled the resort grounds a bit and I didn't take pictures because it was dark and they wouldn't have turned out well. I did snap this one of the drum set though. That picture was taken in the area by the elevators.


**Up Next: Let's spend some of this free money honey!​

 

[mickeystoontown]

I forgot a big something in the updates that I just posted! You'd think that I'd remember the dang name of the report and how it came about. But, until I posted the name of my next update, I totally forgot.

After we put our things in the room and while we were explorin', we went to resort check-in. I needed to pick up our Hoop Dee Doo Revue tickets. There were probably three or four other families in front of us so we had a short wait. A cast member who was working at a computer behind the others came over to see if she could help us. I told her that we had done online check-in and had already accessed our room but I needed to get our Hoop Dee Doo tickets. She seems a little confused and asked us to wait there. She consulted with another cast member who I could tell was showing her what to do. The second cast member came over and apologized for the wait. She went back to help the other cast member. They were tap tap tapping away at the computer. The first cast member finally came over with a piece of paper that had our Hoop tickets printed on it. But, then she asked us to wait. So we did.

The second cast member came back and asked us if we would like to forego mousekeeping. She explained that we would get a credit for every night of our stay with the exception of the first night. We could still ask for linens, towels, washcloths and toiletries. We would basically be skipping out on mousekeeping making our beds and taking out the trash. We could give the mouskeepers our trash when they brought towels or we could place it outside the door or near the elevators and they would pick it up.

I had already asked John if he wanted to take the offer if they asked. We were a little leery about doing it but when they explained that we weren't missing out on much, we decided to do it. The cast member confirmed my email address and said that I would be receiving an email soon that had an e gift card. We could use that gift card anywhere on Disney property that we wanted. Sweet! Cha-ching! Second time we made money on this trip!
​

 

[Smilelea]

I'm not sure what they expected you to put on the shelves on the end but it really didn't provide much space.

LOL! We know those shelves well. We used them for lining up the boys little figurine toys and bottled water.

We decided to go with the dessert option since we had our mugs.

Oh how we loved this about the DDP. We did this every chance we could.

All Star Sports knocked those out of the ballpark.

We couldn't agree more.

Looking forward to reading more!