Do your teens still like Disney? A two week SSR trip report.

[DisneyRegulars]

So I’m back! It’s been a few years, but I thought I’d catch you all up on our most recent Disney antics. The actors on this trip report are as follows:
Me - 40+ years old, college professor, runner, lover of jigsaw puzzles and reality tv.

Grizzly - Old! Likes fixing appliances and cars. Has a nagging Achilles injury and a chronic sinus infection. (The sniffling is adding a lovely soundtrack to our trip)

Beasty - 14 years old!!! Loves mine craft, clash of clans, clash royale, and some new game he’s been trying to teach me very unsuccessfully. Cannot tolerate hot weather. Doesn’t seem to be the biggest Disney fan.

Brother- My brother will be joining the crew for four days. It’s often hit or miss with how much we want to kill each other.

We are just finishing up our first of two weeks in an SSR two bedroom. Our room in the Paddock section is superb. Awesome view of the drone show, but those are details to come. I was worried that two weeks would be too long and I’d get bored, but my fears have been put to rest. I’m not bored. I’m luxuriating. Well, as much as one can luxuriate in this ten thousand degree heat. Okay, maybe I’m just melting, but I’m enjoying my time here as we venture out of the room in very small stints. We’ve been here a week and we haven’t even made it to all four parks yet!

So what is a trip like with a Disney indifferent teen, 10,000 degree days, and 14 nights in a two bedroom? Come join me as I bring you up to speed on our adventure so far.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So I know it’s been a while since I did a trip report because I ran into a Dis’er in the DVC lounge last summer who said something super creepy like “Are you disneyRegulars?? You work at XYZ university right and your son rides BMX!” Oh my! Not only was she correct, but I realized I hadn’t posted something in a bazillion years because my son doesn’t do bmx anymore, and moved on to American ninja warrior training long ago. Clearly I haven’t been sharing nearly enough personal details with internet strangers, so I better get on that.

I’ve attached a picture of us now. Beasty is taller than me, which I don’t really like. I also don’t like that I can no longer throw him around the pool during monkey in the middle games.




I seem to have reached my max time limit out on the balcony. Good grief it’s hot here! Must go inside to cool off.

 

[Wayland10]

I’m following! Also a 40+ college professor with Disney-indifferent teens. Maybe they’ll get past it, maybe they’ll develop their own interests and vacation styles and maybe someday they’ll take me somewhere new! I also miss tossing them around in the pool, but my 4 year old nephew provides me an outlet.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Day 1 of trying not to roast we did what any good Disney fanatic would do and headed straight to … mini golf! Seems we temporarily lost our minds because not only did we head to mini golf, we arrived around 11:00 to find about a thirty minute wait for the fairways course at Fantasia Gardens. We actually really liked this course but it was so hot that around hole 14 I was actually getting light headed and pass out dizzy. I was shocked melty teen beast wasn’t putting up more of a fuss. At any rate I’m pretty sure I won, dizzy or not my golf skills are stunning. We followed golfing up with some pool time and then headed to Hollywood Studios. I have no idea why HS, but we arrived around 3:00 with a goal to ride every single attraction in all of Walt Disney world during our two weeks here. We started with Star Tours, then headed to Millenium Falcon, and concluded our first mission with Rise of the Resistance. Wait time said 50 minutes, maybe took 30. Where are all the people???

And this concludes our attempt to ride all the rides in WDW. It’s too hot! Mission aborted! And it turns out our teen has an attention span of about three rides. I don’t understand why staying in the room on his phone is any different than standing in line playing on his phone, but apparently the standing part is just too much to bear.

This evening we discovered we had an amazing view of the drone show from our room!


Did beasty care? No! I’m so confused! It looked so nifty! He literally glanced out the window for about 2 seconds of the whole show. I’m not sure if it’s a teen thing or a generational thing or a perhaps disneyed out DVC kid thing, but how is Disney going to survive if these younger kids could care less about super spiffy flying drone shows? Sigh!


To avoid the heat we of course scheduled some nice relaxing foot golf for the following day at roasting o’clock. Will we make it through the course?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I’m following! Also a 40+ college professor with Disney-indifferent teens. Maybe they’ll get past it, maybe they’ll develop their own interests and vacation styles and maybe someday they’ll take me somewhere new! I also miss tossing them around in the pool, but my 4 year old nephew provides me an outlet.

More than one teen? I’m not sure I would survive. My husband spends about 2/3rd of our time as a family growling at my beast.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

It’s balcony time! We just got back from a sun hat quest to Disney springs. You see, back on day two or three Grizzly woke up not only with his chronic sniffling, but also an added cough and decided it was best to head to an urgent care. I was happy for this as I’d been nagging him for quite some time that allergies don’t last all summer. So he got himself a second set of antibiotics for his never ending sinus infection, and a directive to see an ENT back home. His antibiotics make him super sun sensitive, like he’s still burning wearing 50 sunblock with only an hour or so in the sun. So one of us is super sun sensitive, and then there’s me. My face is very unhappy with any sunblock. I’ve managed to muscle my way through the first week, but my face is now red and alligator textured all over, and I just can’t bear to put any more sunblock on it. So we went on a floppy sun hat hunt.

But I digress, I should let you fine readers know that we have a new favorite thing to do. Since we have an anti park beast, we have ample time to just do “whatever” we please. And our favorite “whatever” we please is to take laps from our room around Disney springs and back. It’s like 2 miles ish, and we always stop and get ice coffee at Starbucks on the way. We’ve figured out the best place to place our mobile orders so we can walk right up and collect our drinks. (Coming from either side, it’s right after you go through security!). So we’ve taken many many loops to get coffee and collect steps, and one loop we ended up going into every store, and spent significant amounts of time snickering to each other about the “performance fishing gear” at Columbia. Really? Performance fishing gear? How much performance do you need to just sit there? It became our little inside joke and every time we saw someone wearing it (there are giant PFGs written on all the gear) we would comment to each other about how great the performance was for their fishing. Well my dear friends… guess who is the proud owner of a performance fishing gear hat? It’s me. Grizzly too!


In our trips around the lake I like to visit the items I’m thinking about buying. Currently on my list are the Kermit smooshy animal, the wildly bright Donald Duck zip hoody, and the Winnie the Pooh weighted blanket. If I took less trips to get coffee I could probably afford all of them!

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I have not roasted myself off the balcony yet, so I thought I would share something else that’s changed for us in the last few years. We used to spend significant amounts of time tracking down and eating our favorite snacks, or finding new snacks to devour. About 2.5 years ago we switched to keto. This basically means our sugary snack hunting days are over. And also why we spend so much time tracking down Starbucks ice coffees with heavy cream, it’s one of the best keto treats in the heat. For anyone wondering, our favorite keto friendly meals and snacks we’ve found are the following:
- Polite Pig Brisket or pulled pork with side of plain brussel sprouts. (This is our favorite! They’ll leave off the maple glaze on the brussel sprouts if you ask. )
- A kiosk in Epcot between the imagination pavilion and the land sold a huge container of cheese chunks and berries. Yum!
- Propel packets to flavor water.
- Turkey legs!

So not too many favorites. We mostly eat in our room, though we can always find something when we are out and about, we’d just rather save money and eat back in the room. We’ve been eating a lot of sandwiches this week.

Beasty eats whatever he wants and recently discovered the fancy popcorn at the confectioners near the entry of the magic kingdom. He thought the chocolate drizzled, m&m and pretzel caramel popcorn was amazing! It looked amazing. I will eat yummy snacks vicariously through him.

 

[SleeplessInTO]

Love this so far. Going to be at Disney for 3-4 weeks over July and August with an 8 year old (that’s going on 13… so full of sass!) and following for tips on how to survive. Will be looking up performance gear hats lol.

Also love jigsaw puzzles! Ravensburger ones mainly.

 

[Wayland10]

More than one teen? I’m not sure I would survive. My husband spends about 2/3rd of our time as a family growling at my beast.

I have a just-barely 13 year old and a not-quite 16 year old, and the Beastly period for my older child started letting up at around the end of freshman year of high school. May you find it so! My younger child is deep in her own throes of Beastliness, so I’m white knuckling it and hoping the pattern holds. They’re both still ambivalent about Disney because it isn’t gritty and authentic, but… meh. We try to combine Disney with other stuff they’ll like more. Last year we did a road trip that included Savannah, St. Augustine, Orlando, the beach, and DC.

 

[DeeBee3]

I could never do disney without those types of hats so I congratulate you on your purchase! Fair skin and blue eyes = mammoth sunburning and squinting at all times. With my Blue Lizard sunblock, hat and sunglasses, I have never been burned on vacation.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Love this so far. Going to be at Disney for 3-4 weeks over July and August with an 8 year old (that’s going on 13… so full of sass!) and following for tips on how to survive. Will be looking up performance gear hats lol.

Also love jigsaw puzzles! Ravensburger ones mainly.

That’s a long visit!! I bought the four pack of Disney parks puzzles to keep me busy while we avoid the heat. What resort will you be staying at?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I have a just-barely 13 year old and a not-quite 16 year old, and the Beastly period for my older child started letting up at around the end of freshman year of high school. May you find it so! My younger child is deep in her own throes of Beastliness, so I’m white knuckling it and hoping the pattern holds. They’re both still ambivalent about Disney because it isn’t gritty and authentic, but… meh. We try to combine Disney with other stuff they’ll like more. Last year we did a road trip that included Savannah, St. Augustine, Orlando, the beach, and DC.

We do other things too, last year we checked out Yosemite and went white water rafting and outdoor rock climbing. He liked those activities. This is our make the most of our annual passes trip, so we are just vegging with the mouse.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Day 2: I actually have no idea what we did on any of the days, which means this vacation is doing what it needs to do. I’m losing track of time and truly relaxing. One of these early days we headed to Typhoon Lagoon for park opening. We have our lagoon routine down! Arrive 30 minutes early, get a locker because Grizzly is absolutely terrified that someone will take his car keys. Grab some towels and wait at the rope that is closest to the crush n gushers. Head straight to Crush n Gushers. Right them in all configurations or until the line gets too long for us to wait. We usually get 3-4 rides in the first 15 minutes then head over to the family raft ride right next door. Then it’s off to the lazy river, but you have to enter to the right side of the park just after the food places because that is where they store all the tubes. One loop around the river being towed by the beast child and then it’s off to the wave pool to enjoy the last 30-40 minutes of our 80 minutes of sunblock.

My favorite tip this trip, which I can’t believe it took me like 7 years to think of. Our first day we were swimming in the pool and my poor blind beast was complaining he couldn’t see. It occurred to me that I could probably order him prescription swim goggles. Headed back to the room and lo and behold you can totally buy prescription swim goggles!!! Beast has been absolutely thrilled with them. I felt a little bad I never thought of ordering any before, they weren’t even any more expensive than regular swim goggles. At any rate, if you have a blind glasses wearing beasty that hates getting water in their eyes, I highly recommend prescription swim goggles. Since we have a car, we had them delivered to an Amazon locker about 2 miles away. We’ve ordered several items to several different locker locations this trip and they tend to be delivered around 3:00-4:00 in the afternoon the following day.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Day I’m not Too Sure: Grizzly and I returned from an afternoon in Magic Kingdom. Beast had started off the morning with us with the express purpose of riding Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. After Tiana Beast planned to get some of the spiffy popcorn and then he headed back to the room on the bus. This left Grizzly and I to roam the shops, but we also road the TTA, Carousel of Progress, Speedway, and Space Mountain all with minimal waits. Having been sufficiently roasted we returned home. Grizzly was looking pretty exhausted, so I insisted he rest and I lured beasty to Hollywood Studios with me to see what we could accomplish in the last 90 minutes the park was open. We ended up with only Toy Story Mania and Rock N Roller Coaster but we had a nice time. Since we headed to the busses before Fantasmic even started they were not crowded. It’s on this bus ride that Beasty suggested we go swimming when we got back. So we messaged Grizzly the plan and he was all cute sitting on the couch in his swim suit waiting for us. Paddock pool was actually quite busy at 10pm, but the High Rock main pool was practically empty, by 10:30pm we had the whole pool to ourselves. I’m surprised the lifeguards let us get away with our very wild and aggressive games of monkey in the middle where it clearly looks like we are trying to drown each other, but it seems as long as you aren’t committing the cardinal sin of sitting on someone’s shoulders you can quite literally get away with murder.

At any rate, swimming from 10:00-11:00pm has become our nightly ritual and it’s glorious. I’ve particularly enjoyed giving beasty ratings for his sliding abilities. We’ve convinced him to do ridiculous things for style points such as “jazz hands” before entering the water. We shout out random ratings after like “9 out of 10!!!” and pretend to hold up number signs. The slide lifeguard thinks we’re nuts!

I also really loved that the other night Grizzly and I were back at Hollywood Studios, we got off of Tower of Terrir at 8:50 and could have easily snuck in line for RnR but Grizzly wanted to make sure we got home in time to swim with beasty. He growls at this poor beast constantly, but still wanted to make sure we got to swim with him because he knows it’s what Beasty likes to do best.

Here we are at HS. I had to put on my glasses because I think I burned by eyeballs earlier in the day when we went to typhoon lagoon just to swim in the wave pool.

I asked Beasty to share the one picture of him earlier, but other than that one I won’t post other pictures of him. Just know he’s occasionally with us!

 

[SleeplessInTO]

That’s a long visit!! I bought the four pack of Disney parks puzzles to keep me busy while we avoid the heat. What resort will you be staying at?

A whole mix of them… we start at Boardwalk, then pop to Old Key West, then Fort Wilderness, followed by a park break to see Vero Beach, and lastly Bay Lake

 

[alohamom]

Following and glad you are back!

 

[DisneyRegulars]

So my brother arrived on Monday and is leaving in a few hours. We’ve had a nice time. I was worried he would want to make the most of his time here and spend lots of time in the parks, but turns out he was quite content to be lazy like us which worked out great for me. We had a puzzle race the other day and I destroyed him by over 2.5 hours. We are in the middle of puzzle race number two, but this time it’s me versus the three other traveling companions. We are on pause while my brother is earning his $200 gift card for going to a dvc presentation but I’m confident I can beat all three of them. Here is our current state (I’m the animal kingdom one):

Today is our last day so our plans include one last trip on Cosmic Rewind, a quick run to AK to buy a t-shirt I saw there, and then we will close out our parks with a visit to Typhoon Lagoon from 6:00-8:00.

I’ve read two whole books on this trip, which is insane to me. I’m in book number three! I was very concerned two weeks would be way too much time here, but it’s been great!

 

[paults]

I told my 2 40+ kids I was going to sell BWV soon. They both said (no your not) they want to keep it and will pay dues after this year trip in Oct. Go figure.

 

[dez1978]

More than one teen? I’m not sure I would survive. My husband spends about 2/3rd of our time as a family growling at my beast.

I have 10 & 13 yr old beasts. I think the 10 yr old is just trying to keep up with his 13 yr old brothers beastliness. It's annoying. My husband also spends 2/3 of our time growling at at least one of them lol. Have kids they said.... It'll be fun they said.....

It occurred to me that I could probably order him prescription swim goggles.

Tell me more!!! I could use these myself lol

 

[Simba's Mom]

Another jigsaw puzzle addict here. Could you please share where you bought those puzzles? I bought a 4 pack of the 4 parks (one puzzle for each park) a couple of years ago in the store to the right as you face the US pavilion. I think they were Thomas Kinkade, all night time photos, 500 piece puzzles.