DVC Scouting Trip - UPDATED 6/9

[KPH500]

Here's my two cents ...

Yes, your itinerary looks very ambitious but it could turn out to be a very enjoyable trip. If you decided to make this less of a park commando trip and more of an 'enjoy what DVC resorts have to offer' trip.

You have a unique opportunity to take in many different DVC resorts in a very short amount of time, make the most of it. Try taking it slow and easy, the pools at every property are great, spend time relaxing by the pool, most afternoons there are CMs offering activities for kids by the pool, eat meals at the restaurants at your resort. Take slow leisurely walks to explore the property.

Once you buy in to DVC, and I have a feeling you will pretty soon, then you'll have the next 40-50 years to do the parks!

Also, as far as doing the tour, this is how we did it. It was the end of our vacation, and a very very hot and humid day and we were on our way back to our hotel. DH took an unexpected turn into the DVC center near the entrance/exit of MK and told the CM that we were interested in the tour. The CM then escorted us out to the front of MK where there was a very air conditioned van waiting to take us to SSR to meet our Guide. We took the tour of SSR (AKV and BLT weren't available at the time). Once I saw the 1br, 2br and especially the GV, I was sold!

Please come back after your trip and let us know how it went.

Enjoy!

 

[CarolAnnC]

Just adding a couple of things here - everyone did a great job of covering all the bases already.

Once you have turned your luggage over to Bell Services (either when they arrive in your room, or when you leave them there) they transport them at various times during the day to the various resorts. You will need to be physically present in your room to receive them. Once you are in the room, give Bell Services a call and they will bring them up while you are there.

Also, if you are checking out of BCV and heading to BWV, I would say it is an extremely ambitious undertaking to think of taking your luggage, child and pregnant wife and walking it over there. That would be out of the question for me, lol. Very long walk, very hot, very strenuous with all the luggage IMHO.

 

[Deb & Bill]

Thanks for the advice. Can we take our luggage to the porter downstairs and leave it with them for retreival later? Should we walk our luggage from BCV to BWV and leave it there? Do cars park far from BCV or close by?

Parking at BCV is very close to the villas - right next door. No need to hike a million miles from your car like at BWV.

 

[Opie100]

Great tips - thx y'all. Some more newbie questions:

1) I will have an 4 mo. pregnant DW and 5 year old DD with me - should we plan to take the boat from BCV to DHS (rather than walk)? Same question for between BWV and Epcot.

2) Am I correct that guests cannot go to DVC pools with us (midday break)?

3) While staying at BCV and BWV, do we want to come back to lunches/dinners around there, or in the parks?

 

[Deb & Bill]

Great tips - thx y'all. Some more newbie questions:

1) I will have an 4 mo. pregnant DW and 5 year old DD with me - should we plan to take the boat from BCV to DHS (rather than walk)? Same question for between BWV and Epcot.

2) Am I correct that guests cannot go to DVC pools with us (midday break)?

3) While staying at BCV and BWV, do we want to come back to lunches/dinners around there, or in the parks?

If you are staying at the BCV, you have to walk over to the Yacht Club dock to catch the boat. So going to DHS, yes, catch the boat. Going to Epcot from BCV, walk, much shorter distance. If you are staying at the BWV, take the boat either way - or walk if you like. It's about ten minutes to Epcot and 15 to DHS.

Any guests staying with you in your villa or on your reservation can use the pools with you. If they are staying elsewhere, you can swim at their pool, but they cannot swim at yours. Unless you are not staying at the BC/YC/BCV or AKV/AKL and they are. Members cannot pool hop to those pools. Plus, I'd bet we'll get the official word on BLT soon.

With the ages of your child and soon to be child, taking a break is a good idea. We've always taken breaks from our first trip when our son was four to now, when he is nearly sixteen. There is no need to commando your trip when you will be coming back next year or in a few months (depending on your schedule and number of points). The three of us sometimes will hit the pool or take a name - even my teenaged son likes a mid-day nap from time to time. Plus it gives him the energy to hit the parks for EMH when they don't close until after midnight.

 

[jamstew]

Also keep in mind that your luggage won't arrive at the new resort until later in the day, so you won't have access to your swimsuits unless you take them to the park with you. I think both times I've had Bell Services move my luggage, it didn't arrive until after 3:00.

 

[disneynutz]

Thanks for the advice. Can we take our luggage to the porter downstairs and leave it with them for retreival later? Should we walk our luggage from BCV to BWV and leave it there? Do cars park far from BCV or close by?

I still think that you should drive your own luggage from resort to resort.

Tue 5/19 - Hollywood Studios - stay one night at BCV!
Check in early in the day, if your room is ready, move in, if not, keep the luggage in the car until they call you. If you need help with your luggage, pull up to the front door and have them bring your luggage to your room. When you check out, reverse the process.

Wed 5/20 - Epcot - stay one night at BWV!
Same as above.

Thur 5/21 - Epcot - first night at Kidani!
Same as above.

My thoughts are... you are in control of your luggage, if you need something out of your luggage before your room is ready, you have access to it.

Room ready is after 4:00 PM, but your room could be ready earlier. Check-out is at 11:00 AM.

 

[Anal Annie]

Great tips - thx y'all. Some more newbie questions:

1) I will have an 4 mo. pregnant DW and 5 year old DD with me - should we plan to take the boat from BCV to DHS (rather than walk)? Same question for between BWV and Epcot.

2) Am I correct that guests cannot go to DVC pools with us (midday break)?

3) While staying at BCV and BWV, do we want to come back to lunches/dinners around there, or in the parks?

I would say that returning to the room for lunches would have to be played by ear. Since you're going to be on the move so much, for me it would depend what time we GOT to the park. I mean, you have so-o-o much going on you may not even GET to the park until 10 or 11:00. You spent a small fortune on park tix. Are you going to be ready to call it quits by 12 or 1:00? Your 5 yo might be having a blast meeting the characters for the first time. IMO you lose a lot of valuable time in going back & forth.

I would also think it would depend on how your DW is feeling. I felt just fine at 4 -6 mo. I didn't really even start showing until almost 5 months. I was out washing my car & gardening etc. at 8 months. It was awkard but I wasn't an invalid. I should think that 4 mo. is certainly better than 7 or 8 months and she may feel just fine. I say just wait & see how it goes and leave that part as an option to go either way. I wouldn't go saying "OK, it's 1:00 we have to go back to the room NOW to eat". Leave it open. You've already got a jam packed, leave nothing to chance schedule. Why not just wing it on something? We usually go back to our villa in the afternoons too...but we play it by ear and go after lunch, once we've done all the rides we consider "must do's" and we're hot & cranky & ready for a dip in the pool. Then we shower & go back out for the evening (and do dinner in the parks as well).

 

[thepops]

A couple of quick things... depending on how orginized you want to be, you could have seperate bags for each day (or group of days) so that you don't have to unpack/repack all the luggage each time you switch. Also having the luggage in the car will most likely be easier since you know you'll have access to anything you'd need.
As for the tour, another option would be to visit the DVC room at BWV since you are staying there. No need to make a reservation, just drop by and take a look. You won't see the AKV or BLT rooms, but you will see the 1BR Boardwalk room.

 

[Opie100]

Thanks again to everyone who responded. I am in Kidani now but heading back tomorrow after a crazy week. I'll post a trip report when I get back (9 hour drive return home tomorrow). Here are the top things that come to mind:

1) The drought in Orlando is over thanks to the weather this week - 8 inches of rain in four days, and at least a couple more today (10-15 in seven days). I'll probably never forget our Safari at AK today driving through the monsoon/flooding, and lightning storm that even startled the guide.

2) DW liked AKV the best (over BCV and BWV), other than location (although we really liked all three) due to newness and theming. However, location probably put BCV first on our list for now. If you are an AKV fan, and you haven't seen Kidani yet, you're in for a treat. Sanaa was excellent too.

3) It is easy to see how DVC has so many fans. Add two more to the list.

 

[Opie100]

Ok better late than never. Thank you to all those who responded! Here's the brief rundown: Two cars caravanning two families - my family: Me, DW (4 mos. pregnant), DD 5 years old and our neighbors (two adults, two boys 7 and 11).

Sat May 16: (8:30am) Drove from NC to Orlando. Took a restroom break after being passed by a trailer home, only to find out that minutes later one trailer drove into two other cars causing accident that blocked 95 for hours and left three drivers taken by helicopter in critcal condition to SC area hospitals. Not joking. We were incredibly lucky that one car in our caravan needed to pee. http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/may/17/briefly82612/

After that auspicious beginning, we still made it safely to Orlando in about 10 hours and our first night, a one-night stay at the Courtyard Marriott - Lake Buena Vista village area. We used a discount code to get a night for $100 with a free hot breakfast and $25 in credit for the room. We enjoyed some pizza and swimming before heading off to bed.

Sun May 17: Typhoon Lagoon

This ended up to be our only day of sunshine all week! Orlando had been in a drought until we arrived, but we had 10 inches by the time we left (Daytona had 20!!) Anyway, back to the trip report. The Marriott breakfast was terrific, and Typhoon was only 10 mins away. We were there for most of the day, and really enjoyed it. DD loved how the small water slide near the tide pool ended on your butt, so that you didn't need a life preserver. This was a terrific day. DW didn't like the birds being so aggressive near the eating areas, but that's what you get when people keep feeding them.

We retired that night to our friends timeshare, the Wyndham Cypress in Kissimmee. It was a great deal for military families, who can get lots of RCI week-long stays (like this one) for only $325. We stayed here for a couple of nights (sorry no pictures - the rain slowed our picture-taking down).

Mon May 18: Magic Kingdom (aka the DELUGE)(this was my families first trip to the Magic Kingdom, although we have been to Disneyland once).
We had a good morning using our Ridemax, which was only off about the Dumbo wait time at the beginning (will skip that next time). Everything was fine until approaching lunch time, when we took the boat to Tom Sawyer's Island - on the boat ride it started POURING, and we were told we couldn't have our umbrellas up for the ride for safety reasons (!). We should have had ponchos at this time (my fault) and as a result, we got drenched. I have a terrific memory, however, of all of us huddled underneath the kids playground treehouse (with open slats) as the rain and lightning hammered the island. The sirens eventually went off to evacuate, so we got to ride the boat back, again with no umbrellas. By the time we got into the CS restaurant, there were a lot of unhappy campers. About $100 in new shirts and ponchos later, we salvaged the rest of the afternoon, but ended up skipping our Crystal Palace lunch and BBB ressies and went home a little early. Tough start to the parks portion of our week.

Tue. May 19 - DHS
We gave it a go even with the weather reports looking very rainy, and they were right. HOWEVER, this is a good park for rain, since most of the attractions are indoors or have covers. At one point we got whisked into the animators area to meet characters, which was fun, and had dry clothes in the lockers in case we needed them. This was our first time there and it was great. The Rockin Roller Coaster was terrific, and the shows were very good (the Indiana Jones attraction was cut short of the airplane scene due to the weather, which was disappointing). Otherwise our ponchos kept us ok until around 6pm, when the group moved to head home before we could see the American Idol finale for the day (this was the same week of the actual finale as well).

More to come in a second...

 

[Opie100]

Tue May 19 Continued...

We packed up our stuff and left our friends to go stay at the Beach Club Villas for one night. We got there around 10pm and got into our corner studio room. It was very nice and we enjoyed the bed very much! One caveat, we were a the end of the call (I think room 566 or something like that), which had a weird noise every few moments. Found out it was the single elevator at the end of the hall. There were no other rooms available, but we were so tired that it didn't really matter much.

Wed May 20(Rain Stopped for the Morning!!)

We really enjoyed swimming and relaxing in the morning, after our first night in a villa! It was SO nice to have sand beneath my feet. (Before I forget, wear sandles in the rain, not tennis shoes!). The slide at SAB was awesome, although DD just wanted a life preserver and the small slide. We were able to hang out there until around 1pm when the pool area closed due to lightning, but we enjoyed lunching in the marketplace before loading up the car and heading out to our SSR DVC tour! When we arrived, it was POURING! But we escaped and put our DD into the kids area while we got our tour - which was really nice. The only bad part was that I asked to see a grand villa, which required us to get out from underneath the overhang and so we got dumped on again. The worst part was our guide didn't have a key that worked, so we never saw it. All in all, however, we did enjoy seeing the models (AKV and BLT).

From there, we drove to BWV for our second DVC night! We checked in and went to our room, which was a standard studio lockoff. It was fine, except that the neighbors were SUPER noisy (had 5 kids in their room). So we were moved into a different room which didn't smell as good. We asked housekeeping to take a look while we were out for dinner and it was much better once we returned. We ate at the ESPN Zone that night, which was very cute (although overpriced). Later that night the juggler was inside (due to the pouring rain) and entertained the kids (very good little show). And then, off to bed... (it was raining too hard to stand outside to watch fireworks but we could see some reflections from our standard studio room)

Thurs, May 21 - Epcot
We got up and packed up, left our luggage with the porter, and took the boat to Epcot. Most of this day the weather cooperated (barely) until a stormy evening, but it kept the temps down and we had lots of fun at our first family trip to Epcot. DW was in an Asian mood, so we had Japanese for lunch and Chinese for dinner. DD got to do Test Track twice, and we all did Soarin' twice (that thing rules) - and I love listening to the soundtrack here: http://www.subsonicradio.com/

It rained pretty hard during Illuminations but we still enjoyed it. We got back to BWV and got our luggate from the porter and off to AKV!

Check in was easy at AKV, and the parking was very convenient (once I figured it out). What a terrific resort at night! We loved it here, although this room had a small smoke odor near the HVAC, we recieved a $50 credit which we used at Sanaa later.

Friday, May 22 Animal Kingdom

This was our first trip to Animal Kingdom. We had a great day with great shows, but man did it RAIN RAIN RAIN!!!! We were on the Safari, which had so much lightning that the guide had to repeat three times that we were grounded in our vehicles. I'll have more picts later but we were still able to enjoy most of the day - the bird show was rained out, and we really got drenched even with the slickers. However, I must say that the BUG SHOW RULES. Probably my most favorite surprise out of Animal Kingdom. Everest was also closed for most of the day so I am looking forward to seeing that next trip. That evening, the skies cleared and we had a relaxing evening at the Kidani pool (after a great meal at Sanaa!!). The hottub was heavenly and the music created an amazing ambiance (very few people were there). LOVED IT.

So that's pretty much our trip. Drive back was uneventful on Saturday. The weather was a challenge but at least it wasn't boiling hot, and the parks were not overcrowded - a good thing. And to think my DW is still interested in DVC after the weather and some back luck with a couple of rooms says to me that we still had a good trip. We ended up not needed to have luggage moved around, and moreover, moving locations really wasn't that bad since we were at the parks each day anyway.

Thanks again to everyone that provided excellent suggestions!

-Opie

 

[Deb & Bill]

Sounds like you made lots of lemonade out of the lemons you were handed. Glad you enjoyed your trip. Your photos are very good.

 

[princessfionasmom]

Glad it all worked out for you and you had a good time.

 

[bmalonef45]

Tue May 19 Continued...

We packed up our stuff and left our friends to go stay at the Beach Club Villas for one night. We got there around 10pm and got into our corner studio room. It was very nice and we enjoyed the bed very much! One caveat, we were a the end of the call (I think room 566 or something like that), which had a weird noise every few moments. Found out it was the single elevator at the end of the hall. There were no other rooms available, but we were so tired that it didn't really matter much.

Wed May 20(Rain Stopped for the Morning!!)

We really enjoyed swimming and relaxing in the morning, after our first night in a villa! It was SO nice to have sand beneath my feet. (Before I forget, wear sandles in the rain, not tennis shoes!). The slide at SAB was awesome, although DD just wanted a life preserver and the small slide. We were able to hang out there until around 1pm when the pool area closed due to lightning, but we enjoyed lunching in the marketplace before loading up the car and heading out to our SSR DVC tour! When we arrived, it was POURING! But we escaped and put our DD into the kids area while we got our tour - which was really nice. The only bad part was that I asked to see a grand villa, which required us to get out from underneath the overhang and so we got dumped on again. The worst part was our guide didn't have a key that worked, so we never saw it. All in all, however, we did enjoy seeing the models (AKV and BLT).

From there, we drove to BWV for our second DVC night! We checked in and went to our room, which was a standard studio lockoff. It was fine, except that the neighbors were SUPER noisy (had 5 kids in their room). So we were moved into a different room which didn't smell as good. We asked housekeeping to take a look while we were out for dinner and it was much better once we returned. We ate at the ESPN Zone that night, which was very cute (although overpriced). Later that night the juggler was inside (due to the pouring rain) and entertained the kids (very good little show). And then, off to bed... (it was raining too hard to stand outside to watch fireworks but we could see some reflections from our standard studio room)

Thurs, May 21 - Epcot
We got up and packed up, left our luggage with the porter, and took the boat to Epcot. Most of this day the weather cooperated (barely) until a stormy evening, but it kept the temps down and we had lots of fun at our first family trip to Epcot. DW was in an Asian mood, so we had Japanese for lunch and Chinese for dinner. DD got to do Test Track twice, and we all did Soarin' twice (that thing rules) - and I love listening to the soundtrack here: http://www.subsonicradio.com/

It rained pretty hard during Illuminations but we still enjoyed it. We got back to BWV and got our luggate from the porter and off to AKV!

Check in was easy at AKV, and the parking was very convenient (once I figured it out). What a terrific resort at night! We loved it here, although this room had a small smoke odor near the HVAC, we recieved a $50 credit which we used at Sanaa later.

Friday, May 22 Animal Kingdom

This was our first trip to Animal Kingdom. We had a great day with great shows, but man did it RAIN RAIN RAIN!!!! We were on the Safari, which had so much lightning that the guide had to repeat three times that we were grounded in our vehicles. I'll have more picts later but we were still able to enjoy most of the day - the bird show was rained out, and we really got drenched even with the slickers. However, I must say that the BUG SHOW RULES. Probably my most favorite surprise out of Animal Kingdom. Everest was also closed for most of the day so I am looking forward to seeing that next trip. That evening, the skies cleared and we had a relaxing evening at the Kidani pool (after a great meal at Sanaa!!). The hottub was heavenly and the music created an amazing ambiance (very few people were there). LOVED IT.

So that's pretty much our trip. Drive back was uneventful on Saturday. The weather was a challenge but at least it wasn't boiling hot, and the parks were not overcrowded - a good thing. And to think my DW is still interested in DVC after the weather and some back luck with a couple of rooms says to me that we still had a good trip. We ended up not needed to have luggage moved around, and moreover, moving locations really wasn't that bad since we were at the parks each day anyway.

Thanks again to everyone that provided excellent suggestions!

-Opie

Sounds like it all went well except for the weather. My wife and I took a similar trip without the kids before we purchased. To save money and keep my wife from feeling too guilty we didn't go to the parks but we went to every resort INCLUDING driving down to Vero Beach. Needless to say we've been owners ever since. GOOD LUCK in your future purchase.