Grand Theft 3D Glasses: A May 2022 Report. FINAL THOUGHTS 9/26

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I break for the Nautilus
Joined
Jul 4, 2008
Hey folks, ain’t it pretty?

Look who’s back in good ol’ Disney!

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Sorry, I’ve been really into Beetlejuice the Musical (the Musical, the Musical) lately, since I saw the opening number on Youtube a few weeks ago. (You should watch it, but it’s NSFW!). Also, it’s coming to Orlando next year!

Anyway!

Welcome to another brutally honest, sometimes hilarious, occasionally helpful, and always quirky trip report. I am Rachel, your narrator and our family’s main planner, and I’m here to recap our most recent adventure to Walt Disney World.

A little bit more about me. I’m Rachel, an Orlando resident, having moved here with my husband in 2016. We live about 30-40 minutes from property, on the north end of the city near Altamonte Springs and Winter Park. I am a massive retro Disney and Epcot fan, and one of those folks who actually like spending time at the resorts. I work part time from home and am a Mom to an amazing two-year-old.

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This is my daughter, April. She is about as toddler as you can get, very sweet and funny, but she will turn on you at the drop of a hat if you dare to give her a green cup when she wanted a blue cup. She is a budding Disney fan, though her latest obsession is Peppa Pig. At the parks, she loves Figment, Mickey, and Nemo best of all.

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While I take her to the parks fairly regularly for an afternoon visit here or there, once or twice a year we are joined by my Dad, who bought DVC shortly after I moved to Orlando. He lives in New York, where I grew up as well. He fell in love with Disney pretty quickly after poo-pooing it for years, and he likes having an excuse to stay in a nice resort instead of at our house, which isn’t really set up for overnight guests and also he claims to be allergic to our dog. Whatever! I’m happy for the excuse to have a staycation. Our home resorts are Polynesian and Riviera.

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We weren’t planning on doing a DVC stay until October, but earlier this year I discovered that we had a bunch of points we needed to use by the end of May or we would lose them, so we set this trip up. We hadn’t been using as many points as usual due to the whole Covid situation. So we set one up for early May!

We also finally, after over a decade of me living in Florida, convinced my uncle to come down as well. I’ll be referring to him as just Uncle. This was his first time in Disney World, or even in Orlando, and let me tell you, if you want to inject some energy into an otherwise regular Disney trip, bring someone who has never been before and just watch them take it all in. I wish I had been video recording him the whole time, but I genuinely did not think he would be as impressed as he was.

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Rounding out the trip is a special guest star, my husband! I’ll refer to him as DH. Those of you who have read my reports before know he is not a Disney fan. He doesn’t like crowds, he doesn’t like most Disney IP (with the exception of Marvel), and in general he prefers to spend his time and money on other things. Which I completely understand. He doesn’t usually come with us on these trips, but he will usually come for a day or two to join us at the pool and for a few meals. Lately he has shown more interest in Disney because he knows our daughter loves it, so you will see him pop up in this report more than normal.

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Next up: the trip details!

As I mentioned, this trip came about because we had some DVC points to burn; thanks Covid! May is not usually an ideal time to visit because of the heat, but what can you do?

Because we only booked a couple of months in advance, pickings were a bit slim (for those of you who don’t know, DVC is great in a lot of ways, but so few rooms are set aside to book with points vs. direct w/ Disney using cash, so you have to book very far in advance in most cases). We ultimately decided to do a split stay. So we stayed May 4th-May 7th at Boulder Ridge Villas, and May 7th-10th at the Boardwalk, both in one bedrooms. We had stayed in a one bedroom for the first time for our trip last September and we loved it. We had previously been skeptical because it’s double the points to be able to hold the same number of people as a studio (less in some cases, actually!), but the extra space was well worth it.

In the next post, I’ll get into some of the pre-trip planning details and drama. And boy, did this trip have some unique drama, so stay tuned!
 
I love your reports! Looking forward to hearing all about your adventures!

Also, how is April 2?????
 


Looking forward to reading more, especially about Topolino's! We're excited to try it on our next trip.
 


Looking forward to reading. Love the picture of April with her Daddy and Mickey. She is getting so big!
 
I love your reports! Looking forward to hearing all about your adventures!

Also, how is April 2?????
I can't believe it myself!

Hurry back … the line to wait starts behind me …
I'll try, haha. I try to write at least a little bit a day, and will update as frequently as I can!

Excited to read this ,how do I follow you so I know when you’ve posted?
At the top right of the page there should be a button that says, "Watch." That's how I follow other people's reports!

Looking forward to reading more, especially about Topolino's! We're excited to try it on our next trip.
Topolino's is so good!

Joining in!
Welcome!

Yay love your TR's! :surfweb:
Thank you so much!

popcorn:: following along for another one.
Good to see you!

Looking forward to reading. Love the picture of April with her Daddy and Mickey. She is getting so big!
I can't believe it! She's in a toddler bed now.

I love your reports. Will be following.
Thank you!

Can’t wait to hear about your trip!
Can't wait to talk about it!

cant wait torrid about your trip
Thank you!
 
Pre-Trip Planning

The weeks leading up to the trip were a bit stressful, because we didn’t know for sure if my uncle could come. He really wanted to, but his stepdaughter was pregnant with a baby boy and due the week before our trip, and we are Jewish. So for those of you who don’t know, a baby boy’s bris (circumcision) is done eight days after the birth. Meaning that if the baby was born on time, the bris would fall right during our trip, making it difficult to know if he could come, or for how much of the trip he could join us. He is not extremely close with his stepdaughter, as he married his wife when her daughter was almost an adult, but obviously he wanted to be around for the birth and bris if possible.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be a big deal. I’d already made sure to include him in our ADR counts, and we could add him to our room at no extra cost at any time because it was booked with points. He also didn’t mind paying more for last minute flights, assuming he could find one. But he lives right outside of NYC, so there are plenty of airports to choose from.

With park passes, however, it was a different story. Passes were filling up closer and closer to the dates, and I was getting nervous. If we couldn’t get him park passes, it probably wasn’t worth it for him to go. I tried not to stress; either he would come, or he wouldn’t and he would just join us on another trip. But I really did want him to come! While making park passes is not a complicated process and I can usually get what I want, I do have to soapbox a bit on how this is specifically the reason I don’t like them. I just want to be able to show up when I want, where I want. Wah, wah, wah.

Anyway.

About two weeks before our trip, his stepdaughter had the baby. He was a bit early, but all turned out to be well, and my uncle was cleared to come on our trip with us! So exciting! I immediately got online to check the park passes. A few days had booked up for the parks we originally wanted, but I was able to move things around and came up with a schedule that worked. So I went to go purchase his tickets, since he didn’t know how to navigate that system and we all agreed it would be easier for me to just take care of it.

Now, one thing to note is that I haven’t bought regular tickets for myself or anyone else in a long time. But I thought, how hard can it be?

Well.

I went to the official website and purchased a five day ticket with park hopper. Then I got to the final page just before purchasing, and one of the options was to indicate whether this ticket was a gift. And even though my uncle ultimately planned to pay me back, I figured, okay, this is a ticket for someone else, so it must be a gift, right? So I selected that option, then proceeded to purchase the ticket.

I got an automatic email from Disney indicating that my order was being processed and I would receive an official confirmation with a confirmation number “soon.”

So I waited.

And waited.

Finally, after a couple of hours, I started to get concerned, so I called Disney to figure out what was going on. And the rep told me something that was a bit chilling. A gift ticket takes at least 24 hours to process. Sometimes, it takes up to 72 hours.

Well, dear reader, this was obviously not what I wanted to hear. 72 hours??? The park passes could be filled up by then. I asked what could be done. I was bounced around to a couple of different departments, disconnected while on hold at one point, and finally got through to someone who confirmed that yes, gift tickets take a long time to process, but this sort of thing happens all the time. People think a gift ticket is any ticket purchased for another person, but it’s meant to be used for tickets when the person will not be accompanying the purchaser. If you are buying a ticket for someone else but they will be coming with you, you can just purchase the ticket as normal and link it to that person in your MDE.

So, what to do now? The cast member on the phone advised me to re-purchase the ticket, and then call back once the original gift ticket processed for a refund. Otherwise, I would risk losing the park passes.

It was a lot of coin and felt kind of risky, but I did it. And then I called back the next day for the refund on the original tickets. The first person I spoke to seemed to have no idea what I was talking about, but finally I was bounced to someone who knew exactly what to do, and thankfully, the refund went through just fine.

So that was done!



Another thing to note about this trip was our dining plans. My original list looked nothing like what we ended up with. I had a few ADRs booked that we just ended up canceling, including San Angel Inn and Tiffin’s. But there were a few that I really wanted that I wasn’t able to snag at the 60 day mark. I kept refreshing and refreshing like it was my job for weeks, and turned up with nothing, so I did something I never in a million years thought I would do.

I paid for an ADR alert service.

I have Touring Plans but have never found their including ADR alerts to be very effective. I kept hearing really good things about a website called Mousekepros so I looked them up. It was $6 per month, and at this point we were about a month to our trip. So I figured, for $6, what the heck, let’s try it.

Within a week, I had the two ADRs I wanted: Storybook Dining and Beaches and Cream. I also got a last minute reservation during our trip, which I’ll recap later.

The service included a text which had a link I could click to book directly with Disney. You definitely have to be fast to snag the reservation, and there were a couple of times I missed out, but eventually I got what I was looking for. It did feel a little weird paying for this service, but with the time and stress it saved me it was well worth it. I would definitely recommend them.


Other than all that, there wasn’t a ton of planning we had to do, apart from the usual flight and hotel booking. We were just all excited for a fun time at Disney!

Next up, I’ll recap the days leading up to our trip, and the start of our first day!
 
Disney planning isn't for the weak! I wish it was like the days of old but sadly those days are probably gone forever. Good to know about the ADR alert service. I tried to snag what I wanted with Touring Plans but even if I logged in immediately they were always gone. Looking forward to hearing about your family trip!
 
Following! I feel you on the park passes! My newlywed daughter’s hubby is a pilot. Due to Piedmont screwing vacation slots around, he lost his slot. We leave in 4 days on the auto train, and he has gone from having 2 weeks to 2 full days and some hinge part days. But they might let him drop a trip. But he won’t know that till the day we go. So I still have his 10 day Park hopper. Which he might use all or, or maybe 4 days of. And there is nothing I can do to move park reservations around. It is quite the mess.
 
Following along.

The park reservation system is just annoying. I don't hate it but it's just annoying....
Yeah, I mean in some respects you can argue it's functionally similar to the old Fastpass+ system, in the sense that you pick where you're going for the day and make reservations, just for the park instead of for attractions. But in practice, obviously it's quite different, since if there was no Fastpasses available, I could still go to the park.


Disney planning isn't for the weak! I wish it was like the days of old but sadly those days are probably gone forever. Good to know about the ADR alert service. I tried to snag what I wanted with Touring Plans but even if I logged in immediately they were always gone. Looking forward to hearing about your family trip!
Touring Plans alerts have never come through for me in time! I thought $6 was a small price to pay for a service that did what I needed it to do, but it does feel weird to pay for it.

Following! I feel you on the park passes! My newlywed daughter’s hubby is a pilot. Due to Piedmont screwing vacation slots around, he lost his slot. We leave in 4 days on the auto train, and he has gone from having 2 weeks to 2 full days and some hinge part days. But they might let him drop a trip. But he won’t know that till the day we go. So I still have his 10 day Park hopper. Which he might use all or, or maybe 4 days of. And there is nothing I can do to move park reservations around. It is quite the mess.
Ugh, that's so annoying. I considered for a hot second buying my uncle's tickets just in case but then realized we didn't know if he would be able to join us for the whole trip or part of it, so we chose to wait and see. It worked out in the end but it was sooooo much time and energy to get it to work, even without my "gift ticket" screwup factored in. I get that it's good for Disney and it certainly hasn't slowed down traffic at the parks, but in the long run I don't know how much longer guests will put up with it. I mean, I will put up with whatever I have to do to go to Disney, so maybe that tells you all you need to know, lol.
 
Day 1, Part 1

The days leading up to the trip were fairly uneventful. I did my packing (I highly endorse an app called PackPoint, which I’ve used for pretty much every trip I’ve taken for years), and the big exciting news there is that for the first time ever, I decided that April and I should have different suitcases. Previously I tried to put all our stuff into one big suitcase, but I finally had to admit this was just not going to work. Literally the night before is when I gave up. It turned out to be a wise decision.

I also coordinated a grocery pickup order. I had been debating whether to do a pickup order or just go to the store myself. I was kind of sort of trying to self-isolate in the weeks leading up to the trip, just to avoid picking up anything that might either lead to our trip getting cancelled or to me getting someone sick while we were there. So in general I was avoiding going to the grocery store. Plus, there was also the fact that a grocery trip takes time, and if I wanted to go the day before our trip so everything would be fresh, I’d have to take April with me because it would be on a weekday while DH was working, and she is not always the best shopping companion. For all these reasons, I decided a pickup order on the way to the airport would be the best move, so after some back and forth texting with my dad and uncle, we figured out everything we would need. Here is our full order, in case you’re curious.

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Some of this stuff we got way too much of (like the eggs. I think we ended up eating like four of them), and some we didn’t get enough of (like the hummus, which we pretty much finished on Day 1). Judging by the number of posts I see on social media where people are leaving whole packages of food outside their resort rooms, it’s a common issue to not know how much food you will need for a Disney stay. I think in general it’s just hard to predict how hungry you’ll be when you’re in the room, or how often you’ll be there. But we do our best!

Another issue that came up the day before was a call from my boss. I didn’t mention this in my intro, but I currently work part time from home. The company I work for is a small software firm based in Oviedo, a suburban town outside of Orlando. I like my job a lot and the flexibility is great. DH works second shift at his job so I basically work until he leaves for his job and then I take care of April. It saves us so much on childcare costs and overall working part time is great. It sucks not getting benefits or PTO but to me the tradeoff is worth it, at least at this point in my life.

Anyway, I do go into the office once or twice a month but hadn’t been expecting to do so this week. Then on Tuesday, the day before the trip, my boss called to ask if I would come in on Wednesday for a lunch to help celebrate one of my coworkers celebrating 10 years with the company. As mentioned above, I was generally trying to avoid people up until the moment I had to go to the airport, but he laid the guilt on thick and said it would really mean a lot to him and to the coworker, and he promised I would be able to leave in plenty of time to start my vacation.

So, I relented. Two weeks of isolation, flushed down the drain just hours before the big moment.

It’s fine. It’s probably fine. It was all in the office and everyone there is vaccinated and hey, free lunch. I still feel like a giant hypocrite, but it’s done now.

With this new plan for Wednesday, I decided literally on Wednesday morning that I would switch the grocery order from pickup at a Publix on the way to the airport, to a pickup on my way home from the office, in order to save time on the drive to pickup my dad and uncle. This turned out to be more work than I expected; ostensibly, the Instacart app offered the option to switch your order to a different location, but in practice it just said that nothing was available. So I had to go in one by one and rebuild my order from scratch, and in fact I had to do it twice, because the first time I didn’t realize that I was just adding to my first order. But finally, I got it all set up, minus a couple of items from the original order, such as the beer.

At about 9 am I woke April up, and then I did a little bit of work from home, then around 11:30 I got in the car and drove to the office. Before I left, I let my husband know that she would probably need a nap around 2:30, but most likely I would be home by then.

Overall, despite everything, I was glad I went. I like my coworkers and it was good to see them in person for a bit, and I could tell it made my boss happy.

At about 1, I prepared to leave with some extended goodbyes to coworkers, including one who was on his last week, sigh! While I was hanging out in the parking lot, DH texted me that April was already asleep! That was pretty surprising to me, though not a bad thing. Usually she needs close to 5.5-6 hours between wake up and naptime, especially if she is just hanging around the house and not exerting a ton of energy. But I’ll take it!

I picked up the groceries on my way back and also stopped at the liquor store next door to pick up beer for my dad. If you’ve read my reports before, you know that his number one complaint about Disney World is that they don’t have much dark beer, especially after the pandemic when so many restaurants had to cut down on their menus. He likes beer that’s so dark it could legally be classified as sludge. Beer so thick you could cut it with a bread knife. The last kind of beer you’d want to drink in the humidity of Florida, basically. I asked the friendly guy at the liquor store if they had any. They had one four pack of a coffee porter, and a few six packs of an Irish Cream stout. I got one of each. I was questioned what kind of person would want to drink such beer in Florida. I said that I didn’t know. Some kind of maniac, probably.

I got home, and April was still asleep. DH was Facetiming with an old buddy of his from Switzerland who he hadn’t talked to in awhile, so I took the opportunity to tidy up and bring in and consolidate the groceries for the drive to Disney.

Once that was all done, DH and I sat down to watch the final episode of Moon Knight. Partway through the episode, April woke up, and when it was over, it was finally time for DH to head to work, as his shift started at about 3:30 that day. He was technically “floating” that day, though, meaning he didn’t need to be anywhere until he was needed, so all he had to do was drive to his workplace, switch his car out for the work car with the equipment he needed, and drive back home. So while he took care of that, I got April and myself dressed and ready for fun! Since we were just doing resort time today, I went with a wilderness theme for our outfits.

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Next I loaded up the car. It was a bigger challenge than I anticipated to get everything into the car. We have two cars, a Prius and a CR-V, and I usually drive the Prius because the CR-V is older, so my husband basically just uses it to drive the five minutes to work and back. But since the CR-V is bigger, I often take it to Disney for family trips. I had even cleaned it out and everything, but it was still a tight squeeze to get all the grocery bags (even after consolidating them into large reusable bags!) our two suitcases, the stroller, and a couple of other miscellaneous bags into the car. I was really nervous about how my dad and uncle’s bags would fit alongside everything. I pretty much vowed to myself then and there that next time, we’re getting groceries delivered to the resort. Or maybe I’ll just go pick them up AFTER all our stuff is at the resort. Anyway, here’s the mess that was the back seat.

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About when I finished packing the car, DH came back with his work car, and it was finally time to head out. By now it was about 4 pm. We did our family goodbyes, and I texted my dad and uncle (dad was still in an airplane, but it was a group text) that we were on our way to get them!
 
(I highly endorse an app called PackPoint, which I’ve used for pretty much every trip I’ve taken for years)
And I now have the PackPoint app! Thank you! This will be so helpful now that I pack for myself and our almost two year old.

Looking forward to following your trip!
 

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