Don't want to leave OKW!!! Trip/thoughts so far. UPDATE: I'm back in the cold (LONG)

[SleepyatDVC]

Don't want to go home. It's TOO COLD up there.

We don't want to leave our home at OKW! 3 more nights to go. Yikes!

We spent first 8 nights in a GV - Room 6322. It was a handicap GV unit. The location was great - right across from the Hospitality Building. We also had 2 studios, 6320 and 6310.

I believe that the building was renovated. I think that all units larger than the studio now have DVD players. The view was fine with a water view. The counter tops in the kitchen were a little lower, I think. But since I am short, I didn't really notice. No cabinets under the sink, no garbage disposal for the kitchen sink.

Loved the front loading washer - similar to the one I have at home. Roll in shower in the master - worked out fine. Not much storage/counter space in the bathroom for toiletries. Most things wound up on the "window" ledge between the jacuzzi and the bedroom.

Unit was clean. Dishwasher needs to be replaced soon. Works fine but a corner of the door is cracked - cosmetic problem only.

T-mobile cell phone reception was poor - o'kay outside unit, on patio, etc.

Perfect park weather all last week. A little cool in the evenings. Never made it to the pool but the kids loved the sand playground.

The lines at the parks were o'kay but there always seemed to be a crowd of people at the MK. More so than I am use to. Never waited more than 10 minutes for a bus.

We checked out of the GV on Monday and into a 1 bedroom in building 62. My aunt is in the 2 bedroom next door to me. Can I tell you all that I LOVE MY UNIT?!!!!

The view is gorgeous. Same great proximaty to HH and bus stop. Excellent cell phone reception INSIDE unit. "Practically perfect in every way."

(to be continued later... sleepy now at dvc )

 

[sandieb]

Lucky you...have a great 3 days. Sandie

 

[bobbiwoz]

I'm happy you're having such a great time!

bobbi

 

[MiaSRN62]

Glad you're having fun Grace.....savor the mild days ! Siberian air here in the northeast/midatlantic !

 

[PamOKW]

Originally posted by SleepyatDVC
Don't want to go home. It's TOO COLD up there.

We don't want to leave our home at OKW! 3 more nights to go. Yikes!

That is perfect thinking. This winter is nuts!!! Stay and enjoy as long as you can. Thanks for checking in (even if it is killing me).

 

[SleepyatDVC]

Sorry it took so long to get back to my report. Never made it back on-line while we were at OKW. Then it took over a week to recover from the drive home and the pile of work waiting for me when we got home.


We first spent the first 8 nights in an OKW GV and a studio split between 7 adults and 6 kids, 5 and under(1/11 - 1/19/04) DH's parents, brother and sister and their families.

My friends from Miami came up with their 2 boys for 5 nights over the long weekend and I reserved another studio for them. We were all in the same building. Unfortunately, except for one breakfast and 1/2 a day at the MK, we didn't get to see them much. One of their boys came down with a fever and they decided to quarrantine their kids from our group of 6 kids, just in case.

The GV was very nice. There were a few maintenance problems that were fixed almost immediately after a quick call to maintenance. Didn't know they were open until midnight until I had to call at 10:30pm one night (expected to leave a message) to report a sudden and serious leak under the kitchen sink.

It was a family reunion to celebrate my DD's 5th birthday. It was NOT a relaxing trip. DH and I have decided NEVER to invite any of his family again. The kids had a good time. But everyone else got on DH's nerves and to a lesser degree on mine. DH does NOT enjoy spending time with his immediate family, which is funny because he really enjoys spending time with all his uncles and aunt and their families. But since we had never vacationed with his siblings before and he thought to give it a chance for the sake of the kids who are all cousins.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a disaster or anything. But our collective personalities don't gel to well. Different priorities and vacationing styles too. Except for DH's parents, none of his siblings or their kids have ever been before. It took them forever to get out the door in the mornings or for our one dinner out. They got to the parks when the kids were already tired and ready for naps and had to stop every hour for snacks and breaks. After spending one park day with them (for the kids), we ditched them at AK on the next park day to get back to the room early.

Not to mention that DH's parents are currently on our bad side. (A business matter with MY family.) But we didn't let any of this pop up during the trip for the sake of the kids. It was almost funny to see his parents walk on egg shells around DH. I could visually see his Mom bite her tongue and refrain from arguing with DH. It's funny because DH and his Mom ALWAYS argue when they are around each other and usually about stupid, unimportant things. He says it's just a habit. She knew that it wouldn't take much to set DH off since he was upset at his parents already before the trip.

In any case, the kids had fun. My now 5 yo DD was in birthday heaven. She got birthday balloons with autographed pictures on different days from Cinderella, Snow White and Mickey Mouse from the OKW CMs. We had her birthday breakfast at Chef Mickey's (our treat for 17 people) and spent a few hours over at the MK where she got to pick 3 or 4 things/rides to do. Btw, DH's family was 30 mins late and we almost lost our table. We drove over first since we got tired of waiting for them to get out of the house. We gave them driving directions.

She then had a princess themed birthday party at the GV the next day on Saturday. DH and his brother decorated the villa with streamers. I ordered a Disney Princess Cake from publix - chocolate, as she requested. The 2 SIL's took the kids over to HH to get some balloons. They made princess coned hats and other arts and crafts.

We had one sit-down dinner out at the Flying Fish to "celebrate" DH's parents' wedding anniversary. They all knew the time of the PS which I had to secure with my credit card, and yet all took their sweet time getting there. We left them to go ahead to check in and to get pre-approval from the manager to use my DDE card discount for a group of 13. They were kind enough to sit us immediately even though only 4 out of 13 of our party was there.

This time, they were all 45 minutes late. The waiter and staff at FF were great about it. When it was time to pay the bill, we found out that DH's brother had already charged it to his credit card. Not because he was paying (we had agreed to split the meal to treat the parents) but because he got rewards on his card! HELLO?!! I get 20% off with my DDE card which we had told him about earlier. I asked our waiter and he was happy to reverse the charges in order to apply the discount. However, it took about 30 minutes to accomplish.

While we were waiting, we examined the old bill to discover that his brother had originally only tipped 2 times the sales tax! (13%) His sister and DH told him since he insisted on using his card, to at least tip the full 20% discount. DH and his brother almost got into an argument over the tip amount with DH calling BIL a cheapskate under his breath. I slipped some extra $$$ into the payment folder as we were leaving to solve that problem. Our waiter was excellent even when he thought he was only getting 13% when he was gracious enough to NOT tack on the usual 15% gratuities that they charge parties over 8 people.

Well, we moved to unit 6224 (one bedroom) after DH's family were gone. My aunt and her kids joined us and were next door in unit 6223 (2 bedrrom) on her own DVC points. We were there from 1/19/04 - 1/23/04. As I mentioned before, I really enjoyed this unit. Not one problem to report.

It was so relaxing. Our girls slept in the LR sofa bed and we finally got the master bed to ourselves. They had slept with us in the king bed in the GV because we didn't want anyone in the living room. Besides, they probably wouldn't have slept outside anyways - too many people and distractions.

My kids actually enjoyed playing with my young cousins, ages ranging from 4 to 16, more than with their own cousins. They are obviously, Disney seasoned travelers like us.

After 4 relaxing days at OKW, we decided not to stop by DH's brother's house in NC on the way home. Younger daughter developed a fever that we didn't want to expose his kids to and DH really didn't want to see his family again, much less sleep under their roof. So, we wound up driving 19 hours straight through to NYC!

We started out at 6:30am and we got home at around 1:30am that Friday. It was good to get home. We took the overnight bag we packed just in case out of the car and picked up our girls. We left everything else in the car and parked it at the garage we keep our car 2 blocks away.

We got 8 inches of snow in our neighborhood that Tuesday. So, we never went to unload our luggage. Thank goodness for the laundry at DVC. All our clothes were packed clean. Can you image dirty packed clothes in the car? DH joked that we should just leave the luggage in the car for our next trip!

We used the car to attend church this Sunday and we finally unloaded all our luggage and the toys and gifts that the girls got when they were at Disney.

Well, we're back in the cold again... and Florida is a distant memory with only the Disboards to warm me up...

 

[floridafam]

What a nice report!

I could never go to WDW with my family. It would be bad!

Glad you had a good time.

 

[Erin12303]

Thanks for the report....very fun to read.
I'm guessing your next trip will not include DH's family??? HA!!

 

[dianeschlicht]

Great report! We were there from the 14-21, so our trips overlapped a bit. I think building 62 will be one of the later buildings to be refurbed, since it is one of the newest buildings. We were in 64 in August, and I noticed it still had the older style appliances. We were in 29 this trip, and there were wonderful new appliances in the unit.

 

[SleepyatDVC]

Thanks for the update on the refurbishment, Diane.

Even without the refurbishment, the units in building 62 were in excellent condition, IMHO.

 

[MJTinNH]

Sounds like a great trip overall! Great break from this cold weather too. Thank you for posting.

 

[SleepyatDVC]

I was a great trip even with the not so great company.

It certainly beat the frigid weather up here.

 

[dianeschlicht]

I wish we would have been there the past week! We got home on the 21st, and it was below zero air temp, and didn't go above zero until Friday! It has been snowing since then, and now that the snow has stopped, we are supposed to get below zero again!

 

[MiaSRN62]

It was NOT a relaxing trip. DH and I have decided NEVER to invite any of his family again. The kids had a good time. But everyone else got on DH's nerves and to a lesser degree on mine. DH does NOT enjoy spending time with his immediate family,

Hi Grace,
I enjoyed reading your TR update. I can totally understand about the family part. We've had our own problems with this over the years. We've taken family to WDW with us on at least 4 occassions. IF we ever do it again, we'll totally go our own ways during the day---maybe just meet up for a meal or something. Too much friction and different vacation styles otherwise. Glad u all "survived" the trip

the kids had fun. My now 5 yo DD was in birthday heaven. She got birthday balloons with autographed pictures on different days from Cinderella, Snow White and Mickey Mouse from the OKW CMs. We had her birthday breakfast at Chef Mickey's (our treat for 17 people)

Happy Birthday to your dd......sounds like she had a terrific b-day celebration(s) during the week

we examined the old bill to discover that his brother had originally only tipped 2 times the sales tax! (13%) His sister and DH told him since he insisted on using his card, to at least tip the full 20% discount. DH and his brother almost got into an argument over the tip amount with DH calling BIL a cheapskate under his breath. I slipped some extra $$$

Boy, this is a pet peeve of mine ! Your bil sure didn't tip enough---especially for a large group. Sounded like your dinner at FF was a nice experience and the CM sounded exceptional. Glad u slipped the extra $'s.......I would have too !

 

[SleepyatDVC]

I'm all out of points until 12/04.

We used 608 points for this last trip. Sniff... it was worth it and I wouldn't change anything. But... I wouldn't want to do it again... with the same people.

My friends who I didn't get to see are buying into DVC!!! Even though we hardly saw them, they kept apologizing about their son being sick (as if they had any control over that) and thanking us for inviting them (it wasn't that many points to me).

My MIL and BIL did go on the DVC tour to get the free meal vouchers they were giving out and probably to find out "how much we spent on the timeshare and the trip." So, I guess they did have an idea about the costs.

Despite that, we didn't feel or hear the thanks from DH's family. I did hear some compliments about the GV, a comment about "this must have cost you guys a bundle," from MIL and one "thanks for inviting us" from BIL's wife as they were heading out the door to go home. But who's counting? O'kay, I admit it, I was! A teeny appreciation would go a LONG way.

But that's o'kay. To be honest, we only wanted to invite the kids anyways! But there was no way to do that without inviting the grown ups too!

Gotta wait for those points to come in at the end of the year...

No need for an add-on. Most of of the people I would want to vacation with, either have their own points or will be smart enough to buy their own!

Good thing I have the Disboards while I wait for those points!

 

[Duchie]

Wow - I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks for the details - and Happy Birthday to your little one!

Our next trip will be the first with family. I'm hoping for a positive outcome and by reading DIS I'm getting lots of good advice to make this happen. Fortunately those going with us (my sis, my parents, and my grandmother) are people I feel comfortable discussing potential issues with ahead of time so we're already talking about "ground rules". Plus, they are all just thrilled we've asked them to go and are "paying" for their room.

We'll be leaving for the trip the day after my 40th birthday, and will be there for my DS 8th birthday, so I love the birthday ideas you shared.

Can't complain about the cold here, but I'll think warm thoughts for you!