First "Home" stay - VGC - June 2024

[ClaraOswald]

We don't go on our trip until next month but I'm just so excited and wanted to start my thread now.

This will be our 2nd time staying at the Grand Californian and our first time in the Villas. We'll be in a studio villa for 6 nights. We have 5-day park hoppers. We'll be driving so it's a fairly long trip, overall. Here's what it will look like....

Saturday 6/15 - Drive 550 miles to the Denver area.
Sunday 6/16 - Drive 570 miles to Cedar City, Utah.
Monday 6/17 *our 18th wedding anniversary* - Drive 430 miles to the Grand Californian.

Once we arrive, we'll get checked into the hotel. Then we'll do our usual Target run for bottled water and snacks.

We'll be in the parks Tuesday 6/18 - Saturday 6/22. We have park reservations at Disneyland on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday and DCA on Wednesday/Friday. But we'll park hop a lot, I'm sure. We aren't going to the Pride events that occur on our dates. But we'll probably try to wear some LGBTQ shirts or something those days for fun anyway.

Sunday 6/23 - Drive 550 miles to Richfield, Utah
Monday 6/24 - Drive 545 miles to Fort Morgan, Colorado
Tuesday 6/25 - Drive 460 miles home

We did this same route for our trip in June 2022. Though we took an extra day on the way there last time so we could stop at some museums and parks. But this time we likely won't stop nearly as much. Just bathroom and meal breaks. If our son (he's 10 and autistic) gets too antsy, we'll try to find some parks for brief stops.

(Hopefully we don't catch Covid on this trip like we did in 2022!)

My husband does all of the driving and I'm just a passenger princess, relaxing and eating my little snacks. So I'm really looking forward to it. I plan to do a lot of Instagram posts and stories throughout the trip so that's always fun. Well, for me, anyway. Probably bores my few followers to tears since a lot of them aren't Disney people. Most of them don't even know we're DVCers because some are already a bit judgmental about how often we travel to Disney parks. But I'm not going to let them ruin my fun! (If anyone wants to follow along, just let me know.)

This trip will mark 20 years since my very first visit to Disneyland. In June 2004, my husband and I were newly dating and lived 1500 miles away from each other at the time. I made my first trip to California for a visit. We did 1 day at Disneyland and 1 day at California Adventure. I didn't have a digital camera at the time so I have very few photos (and the quality is just crappy but maybe I'll scan them or just take some pictures of the pictures to share.)

As I mentioned above, our wedding anniversary is also the day we arrive. We don't have anything planned to celebrate at all. I wish we could swing by our wedding chapel for fun but I doubt we'll get around to it. But it's such a cute chapel. I took this last time we visited (June 2017.)



We have no dining reservations so we'll just do what we always do, which is eat at quick service places. We haven't talked about what we'll do for breakfast yet. When we stayed at the Grand Californian (hotel side) in 2023, we ate at Craftsman Grill every morning. I suspect we may do that again, even though eating cereal or something in the room would be quicker and cheaper. But we'll see, I guess.

That's all for now! We leave in 38 days!

 

[Sprinkles&Sprints]

I'm excited just reading your pre-post and I'm not even going, haha!

We still haven't made it to DL (I'm hoping we can swing an AUL and DL combo next year) so I'll be here for all of your details!

And Happy Anniversary!

 

[DonnerB]

Hope you have a great time, neighbor!

 

[tx911]

We don't go on our trip until next month but I'm just so excited and wanted to start my thread now.

This will be our 2nd time staying at the Grand Californian and our first time in the Villas. We'll be in a studio villa for 6 nights. We have 5-day park hoppers. We'll be driving so it's a fairly long trip, overall. Here's what it will look like....

Saturday 6/15 - Drive 550 miles to the Denver area.
Sunday 6/16 - Drive 570 miles to Cedar City, Utah.
Monday 6/17 *our 18th wedding anniversary* - Drive 430 miles to the Grand Californian.

Once we arrive, we'll get checked into the hotel. Then we'll do our usual Target run for bottled water and snacks.

We'll be in the parks Tuesday 6/18 - Saturday 6/22. We have park reservations at Disneyland on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday and DCA on Wednesday/Friday. But we'll park hop a lot, I'm sure. We aren't going to the Pride events that occur on our dates. But we'll probably try to wear some LGBTQ shirts or something those days for fun anyway.

Sunday 6/23 - Drive 550 miles to Richfield, Utah
Monday 6/24 - Drive 545 miles to Fort Morgan, Colorado
Tuesday 6/25 - Drive 460 miles home

We did this same route for our trip in June 2022. Though we took an extra day on the way there last time so we could stop at some museums and parks. But this time we likely won't stop nearly as much. Just bathroom and meal breaks. If our son (he's 10 and autistic) gets too antsy, we'll try to find some parks for brief stops.

(Hopefully we don't catch Covid on this trip like we did in 2022!)

My husband does all of the driving and I'm just a passenger princess, relaxing and eating my little snacks. So I'm really looking forward to it. I plan to do a lot of Instagram posts and stories throughout the trip so that's always fun. Well, for me, anyway. Probably bores my few followers to tears since a lot of them aren't Disney people. Most of them don't even know we're DVCers because some are already a bit judgmental about how often we travel to Disney parks. But I'm not going to let them ruin my fun! (If anyone wants to follow along, just let me know.)

This trip will mark 20 years since my very first visit to Disneyland. In June 2004, my husband and I were newly dating and lived 1500 miles away from each other at the time. I made my first trip to California for a visit. We did 1 day at Disneyland and 1 day at California Adventure. I didn't have a digital camera at the time so I have very few photos (and the quality is just crappy but maybe I'll scan them or just take some pictures of the pictures to share.)

As I mentioned above, our wedding anniversary is also the day we arrive. We don't have anything planned to celebrate at all. I wish we could swing by our wedding chapel for fun but I doubt we'll get around to it. But it's such a cute chapel. I took this last time we visited (June 2017.)

View attachment 857903

We have no dining reservations so we'll just do what we always do, which is eat at quick service places. We haven't talked about what we'll do for breakfast yet. When we stayed at the Grand Californian (hotel side) in 2023, we ate at Craftsman Grill every morning. I suspect we may do that again, even though eating cereal or something in the room would be quicker and cheaper. But we'll see, I guess.

That's all for now! We leave in 38 days!

This sounds like a great trip!
Maybe you two can just re-write your own vows to each other and recite them somewhere cool when you arrive

 

[NVDISFamily]

Hope you have a great time at VGC. It's the most magical resort in the system (IMO).

I think you will also love that entrance into DCA. The VGC wing of the Grand Cal is so close to that I've even been known to run down with my boy and grab a few corn dogs for the room because it's so close.....

 

[ClaraOswald]

When we stayed at the Grand Californian last year, we were on the far west side of the DVC wing in one of the regular rooms. At the time, I didn't know about the 2nd DCA entrance....so I'm excited to use it this time.

 

[itr452]

Wait what entrance is close to the dvc wing? We were there and the dca entrance(grizzly run) is not close at all to to the dca wing. Did i totally miss out in another entrance would have saved my poor feet some walking

 

[VGCgroupie]

Wait what entrance is close to the dvc wing? We were there and the dca entrance(grizzly run) is not close at all to to the dca wing. Did i totally miss out in another entrance would have saved my poor feet some walking

I have only ever used the Grizzly Run entrance so I am curious too.

 

[ClaraOswald]

I believe it's here....

 

[VGCgroupie]

I believe it's here....

View attachment 864400

oooooh yes now I remember. Ive never used it but now I remember it being by goofys sky school. Clearly I need to make a note so I don't forget again.

 

[itr452]

OH man..that woudl have saved me the walk thru the pool, lobby and past napa rose ._. on the way back, not going to tell my wife otherwise she'll think im an idiot for not going this way

 

[ClaraOswald]

We are 9 days out from our trip. I'm currently trying to figure out where we will stop to eat on each day of our drive. It's so hard when you have a son with a restrictive diet. I wish he liked chicken nuggets and fries like other autistic kids. Ha!

So yeah....I'm going through each day and writing down possible choices based on where we might be around mealtimes. Then I need to write down how many 'extra' things I need to pack for him like fruit cups and snacks. I don't want to pack more than we need. I'm hoping I can just pack enough for the drive and then re-stock with purchases from Target when we arrive.

In general, I tend to overpack. I seem to get slightly better with each trip. Well, maybe not. I always seem to subtract a few things but then add a few things.

I think I'm going to do laundry part way through the trip this time. I've NEVER done this on a Disney trip before so we'll see how it goes. We're only in a studio so I'll need to go down to the laundry room. Oh well.

 

[AstroBlasters]

We are 9 days out from our trip. I'm currently trying to figure out where we will stop to eat on each day of our drive. It's so hard when you have a son with a restrictive diet. I wish he liked chicken nuggets and fries like other autistic kids. Ha!

So yeah....I'm going through each day and writing down possible choices based on where we might be around mealtimes. Then I need to write down how many 'extra' things I need to pack for him like fruit cups and snacks. I don't want to pack more than we need. I'm hoping I can just pack enough for the drive and then re-stock with purchases from Target when we arrive.

In general, I tend to overpack. I seem to get slightly better with each trip. Well, maybe not. I always seem to subtract a few things but then add a few things.

I think I'm going to do laundry part way through the trip this time. I've NEVER done this on a Disney trip before so we'll see how it goes. We're only in a studio so I'll need to go down to the laundry room. Oh well.

9 more days! Woohoo!

 

[ClaraOswald]

So...I'm a bit nervous. I had a respiratory illness for almost a month. My cough is lingering but I think it's mostly gone. However, about 2 weeks ago, I started having chest pain. I figured it was from the cough but it's really bad now. And I'm concerned it could be pericarditis or some other heart issue. HOPEFULLY it's just from my RA or leftover from my illness. But because of my RA and the recent virus, I am at a higher risk for pericarditis. I put in a message to my doctor to see what she says. I just don't want to have problems while walking for 9 miles a day and going on rides! Please send good vibes my way! I'm trying to relax as much as possible...but it's hard when we have regular day to day life, plus packing and whatnot.

 

[ClaraOswald]

UPDATE - My doctor ended up sending me to the ER for testing. EKG and a CT scan. Spent 3 hours there (on a bed in the hallway because it was so crowded that they ran out of rooms) the other night. Thankfully, my heart looked great! So it is just from my illness and RA/fibromyalgia. A bummer that they couldn't do anything for my physical pain but it definitely helped my mental health to hear that my heart looks good. Now I won't need to stress about it while on our trip.

I have 3 days to get all of my packing done. I'm definitely more excited now. I was able to check-in at the Grand Californian this morning. Fingers crossed that I get my room request to not be on the park side.

My son likes to have a schedule to look at for every day....this is an all-the-time thing, not just for vacation. I make one for about 7-10 days at a time. I gave him one that goes through the entire trip. You never know if new things on the schedule will stress him out or not. But he seems okay with and maybe even a little excited! Fingers crossed that he has a good trip.

 

[ClaraOswald]

We had a wonderful trip! I think I'll write about the whole thing here, not just the DVC aspect. Hope that's okay. Feel free to skip it since it will be long and told in many parts. I just really want to re-live the trip so writing about it will be fun for me. I have a Kindle Scribe and took notes throughout the whole trip, because I'm a weirdo like that. So be prepared for pointless details.

Day 1 - Saturday, June 15th

We got on the road at about 9:30. Only 30 minutes later than planned. An hour or so in, I saw my very first Cybertruck. I saw a game online where you "lose" once you see your first one. After that, we decided to guess how many we'd spot on the trip. Husband guessed 7, I guessed 8. (Spoiler - I won. We saw 8.)

We drove about 550 miles this day. Stopped at a rest stop in Nebraska. Then had lunch at a McDonalds in Lexington, NE. Our son didn't eat much, unfortunately. Later in the day, we stopped at the Colorado Welcome Center and rest stop in Julesburg. We decided to sit at a picnic table for a bit so our son could have a snack. It was warm outside but kind of nice to just get out of the car for a while.

We got to our hotel around 6:15pm local time (which would be 7:15 back home.) We went to Denny's to get food to go and ate it back in our room. This was what we had done on our last trip due to Covid and it works out well this time as well. Our hotel was fine....except all the pillows were feather pillows. YUCK. So we had to ask for new ones. I just hate bugging housekeeping for stuff and sadly, it wasn't the last time we had a bedding issue on this trip.

All in all, it was a good first day. Our son was happy in the car. We didn't encounter too much horrible traffic or construction. Including lunch, we just made 4 stops.

 

[ClaraOswald]

Day 2 - Sunday, June 16th

Father's Day. My husband has had to spend several Father's days driving. But he says he doesn't mind. He's pretty easy going, thankfully. We got up and had breakfast at the hotel. Got on the road around 8:30 after stopping for gas.

There was still some snow on the mountains. It's nice when the scenery finally starts to get better.





Our first rest stop was the Grizzly Creek rest stop in Colorado. It had a little trail and was right by the river so we were able to take some cute pictures of our son as well as some pics of the three of us.





Next was our first "oops" of the road trip. So we have on gps to tell us where to go. We were leaving the parking lot and going the way it said....only to realize, it was having us get on the interstate going East, going up to the next exit, and then turning around. By the time we realized it, it was too late and there was no way to turn back. So we just had to roll with it.

While sitting there, I pulled up the maps on my phone and put in the rest stop and our destination to see what directions it gave. It also had us going east and turning around. I'm still not even sure if there's a way to get back on going west or not. It looks like there's an entrance so I'm not sure why we weren't directed to it. Thankfully, it didn't add too much time to our day to have to backtrack. We laughed because it actually brought us back to an exit that had a different rest stop that we almost stopped at.

Our next stop was a Subway in Fruita, CO. Here we discovered that Subway was the best road trip food option for our son. He liked the grilled chicken, spinach, black olives, and pickles. (Plus I brought other things like a fruit cup, bread, and Pop Corners chips.) Unfortunately, this is where we had one of the worst experiences of our trip. If you're a member of the controversial section of the Dis, you can read more about it over there. (As well as some supportive and not-so-supportive comments.)

Basically, while we were eating, our son was laughing a lot and just being his usual happy self. Part way through, I realized there was an old man getting very loud and angry. He was upset about my son making noise. He also used the r-word to refer to my son. He didn't say anything directly to us but he was loud enough for the whole place to hear him. When my son would laugh, he would then do a mocking imitation of it. It was very upsetting. I wanted to confront him, but we decided it wouldn't do any good and you never know who could have a weapon or be unhinged. It did put a damper on the day a bit, sadly. I went on social media and vented to my friends and family a little and they cheered me up quite a bit, so that was good.

We continued on our way. I snapped more pictures from the car. (Not sure if these are Colorado or Utah.)







We got to our hotel at 6:30. Next door, there is an Ihop. There were literally no people there so we decided to eat inside instead of getting it to go. Unfortunately....our son started having a meltdown. We weren't sure why and hoped he'd calm down. When we realized it was because he wanted to eat in the hotel like the night before, we asked the server if we could just order to-go. She was super sweet and when we explained his autism, she really seemed to get it. I felt this cancelled out the mean old guy at lunch.

Once we got our food to go and went back to our room, our son was super happy again. We were able to video chat with my dad for Father's Day so that was nice. I felt like we ended the day on the positive note and didn't let the jerk in Fruita ruin it too much for us.

 

[ClaraOswald]

Day 3 - Monday, June 17th

Last day on the road. We started the day with a nice breakfast at the hotel in Cedar City, Utah. It's called the Abbey Inn. Their breakfast room is in a separate building next door. Well, it's actually an old house. Different, but it worked out well. We were able to sit outside and enjoy the nice morning weather.

It was just another day of driving. We had lunch at a McDonald's in Primm, NV. It was super crowded. We almost ate in our car but then we spotted and open table, thankfully.

It was very hot outside on this leg of the journey.



We ended up hitting bad traffic once we got closer to the inland empire. We expected this, of course. But our son started to get pretty antsy in the stop and go traffic. Plus, I think he could tell we were getting close.

About an hour before we arrived, I got an alert saying our room was ready. I was a bit sad to see we didn't get my request of pool view instead of park view. We were in room 4510. We got to the hotel at about 5pm. When we drove up, we asked about temporary parking while we unloaded and they pointed us toward the main area and said the attendant there would help us. They basically wanted us to use bell service but we prefer to just bring our own bags in. They seemed confused when we asked about temporary parking to unload. I had been told (and saw on Google maps) an area for us to park but I guess I was wrong or misunderstood.

They ended up telling us to just park our truck right out front and leave the keys in and they'd move it if they had to. Not gonna lie...this stressed me out a bit. So we took our bags to our room as quickly as we could. But, as many of you know, the DVC wing is about as far away from the main doors as you can get. Then the stupid mobile key was giving us trouble and not working. Finally got it to work on my husband's phone. Quick got into the room, did our usual bed bug check, bathroom break, and dropped our stuff off. Then made our way back to our truck which was thankfully still there waiting for us.

Next time, I think we'll just have to use bell services. But I hope they take our things in immediately. I don't want to wait forever for my bags. I'll need to ask about this on the forum, I think.

We jumped in the truck and headed to Target for a grocery stop. We went over to self parking across the street and thankfully found a spot (but it was VERY full with not many remaining.) Then we to the trek back over to the hotel.



We unpacked a little bit and then walked into Downtown Disney to get some dinner. We decided to go to Napolini and get pizza to go. It didn't take too long at all and the pizza was still nice and hot when we got back to the room. Pizza was really good but so greasy that it did give me a bit of an upset stomach after. Ha!

The room was good. Clean and more spacious than I expected. It was nice to have the table to eat at so I hope they don't get rid of that feature during the renovation. Some aspects of the room were definitely a bit worn but not enough to bother us. Well...except the t.v. Something was wrong with the speaker and it made everything sound weird. Tried to fix it with settings but not luck. Not a big deal though. Just slightly annoying. Overall, we were quite happy with the room and will likely book a studio for our December 2025 visit as well.

Like I said, I think we'll use bell services to unload our bags next time....if we don't end up having to wait forever for them. I also think we might just order bottled water and groceries to be delivered instead of going to Target. By this point, I'm also so tired...grocery shopping is the last thing I want to do. Plus, we'll be flying next time and won't have a car. (Last time we flew, we used a car service that had a grocery stop but we might just Uber next time.)

All in all, a decent day and we were so happy to have arrived!

 

[lilsonicfan]

I may be wrong but I think with Bell Services, you call when you want them to come up and I think it was about a 10-15 min wait, not too bad at all. Great trip report so far, and the scenery was so beautiful for your drive!

 

[ClaraOswald]

I guess since we're flying our next trip, we probably won't need bell services with our bags since we'll just be dropped off. But next time we drive, I think we will.