Day one of our trip got off to a bit of a shaky start. Our flight was fine, but as we were loading up our rental car, the two rolling suitcases my brother was pulling along abruptly broke and he went flying and ended up with a pretty decent gash on his knee and his Disney excitement went a bit south. Nonetheless we all rallied and soon enough we were pulling up here:
Nick and I were extremely excited to be staying at a hotel neither of us had experienced before. Nick's pretty new to Disney so he's only tried a handful of the hotels so far, but I've stayed at nearly all of them. It was fun to be trying something Disney that was new to BOTH of us.
I'd have to give the hotel great reviews overall. The moment we checked in we were sprinkled with some major pixie dust - because the trip was a special 50th birthday celebration for my mom, the hotel upgraded us from a 2 BR villa to a 3 BR grand villa upon check-in!!! I can't even begin to overstate how fantastic this was - it really made a huge impact on the trip. It meant Nick and I now had our own room & bathroom rather than sharing with my brother and his gf. Everyone had plenty of privacy. It gave us tons more space and so many bathrooms made getting ready in the mornings nearly stress-free. It was also absolutely beautiful.
The view of the Magic Kingdom (which we had booked all along) was something I had been looking forward to, but I was really unprepared for
just how cool that would really turn out to be.
View from our room:
Needless to say I spent a fair amount of time gazing out at that view! It really was spectacular and the room upgrade definitely got us all in a giddy mood for our first day!
A few comments about the hotel overall: I personally really liked it. I really liked being just a covered walkway away from the Contemporary Resort, which had two really great giftshops as well as The Contempo Cafe, a CS restaurant. I also LOVED being able to walk over to the Magic Kingdom. Usually I find getting to the Magic Kingdom to be sort of a process - I don't like parking my car and still being another mode of transportation away from the park. I feel like it makes it tough to do a really quick trip over there. Walking over was great and I feel like because of that convenience, we made it over to the MK a lot.
Three complaints our group had about BLT:
1. The pool is kind of small and also kind of shallow. I think in a crowded season it would be packed! The slide was cool though.
2. There is no food actually AT the BLT. I personally didn't find this to be too much of an issue but my parents felt it was kind of a walk to have to go to the CR every time you wanted a cup of tea or something. It would be nice f there were a small CS restaurant for the BLT specifically.
3. There is no gift shop specifically for the BLT, and although the CR gift shops carry a few BLT items, this basically amounts to one very ugly (IMHO) teeshirt and little else. My mom especially really wanted a nice BLT souvineer to celebrate the trip and that really couldn't be had.
That being said, I would happily stay here again! For me, being so close to the MK really just keeps you fully in the Disney mindset 24/7. I really enjoyed it. Nick would like me to add that the bedding here was extremely luxurious, to a point that he now wants to buy a set of it for at home!
A few pics of our room:
Kitchen area:
View from one of the balconies in the villa:
View from Nick's and my room:
On to the next part of the day... a quick lunch at the Contempo Cafe. My one and only picture of this makes us all look absolutely horrible, so I'm just going to pretend it doesn't exist. I think this restaurant is a decent choice for a CS meal. It's not one of my favorites but it had plenty of choices and the food was good... kind of just not spectacular I guess. I had some sort of salad, which was good but not great. A few members of our party had the flatbread pizzas which they seemed to enjoy. You place your order yourself at a kiosk and then go pick up your food when it's ready, which is sort of cool.
After lunch we were all feeling a little refreshed and more than a little ready to head over to the Magic Kingdom, which is always the first stop on our
Disney vacations!
Up first was one of my favorite rides, The Haunted Mansion!
It was sometime after this that I suddenly realized that my Open Heart Tiffany necklace was not around my neck, and I must admit I was nearly in tears over it. With a sinking feeling in my stomach I remembered leaving it at our hotel in NYC right on my beside table - I'm a total zombie when I have to get up early, and we had a super early flight. I called the hotel, who luckily enough had not cleaned our room yet - but they apparently never recovered my necklace. I was pretty devastated - that necklace was a gift from Nick our first Christmas together, and it had a lot of sentimental value. I wore it every day, and last Christmas he bought me earrings to match it. I was trying not to let it get me down on our first day of the trip, but it was tough. Nick felt terrible and repeatedly reassured me that we would replace the necklace later. I forced myself to let it go and enjoy the rest of our day at MK but my neck felt very bare for the rest of the trip!
After a fun afternoon at the Magic Kingdom, we headed back to the Contemporary Resort for dinner at The Wave, which I had been really looking forward to. I will say right off the service was TERRIBLE, but Nick and I are still planning to eat there again on our next trip. It seriously took us over two hours to eat dinner, the service was that slow. We waited forever just to place our order, forever for the food to come, forever for drink refills, etc etc. It was excruciating. That said, the food was seriously delicious. My mom and I couldn't decide what to order so between the two of us we ordered the pork tenderloin and the beef something or other (maybe tenderloin also?) and shared. Both were absolutely fantastic. The desserts are great here too, you choose an assortment of small desserts. Nick and I ordered different trios and shared, and I can't remember what the heck they all were, but there was some wonderful stuff in there and I do have a picture!
All in all, we will give this place another shot and just brace ourselves for a long night. I think that much of a wait on the first night of our trip was just not a good scene. We had all been up since 430 and we weren't up for a marathon meal. I'm hoping part of the problem was that the restaurant was brand new and still working out the kinks.
All in all, knee injury and missing necklace aside, a pretty magical first day!
Up next, a big surprise in store at the Animal Kingdom...
We go to WDW faithfully every September and January or February, and in between visits we desperately count the days until our next trip! 
Sorry about the necklace though. 
That is a bummer, but at least you were able to cheer up at the Happiest Place on Earth!
