I Wonder if Disney Will Get Mad if We Disassemble the Furniture. Sept/Oct 2024 TR! (Updated 1/18!)

[VAtink]

I was really glad to see the return of the resort boats, mostly for the WL/FW leg of the trip. I'm really surprised to see how long the wait was. At least the boat ride to WL is quick.

Those boats are super convenient, when they arrive at a reasonable time at least! I am wondering if maybe they had a delayed start this afternoon, I can't think of how else it would take so long for one to arrive!

You were smart to get to the head of the line when you went to Geyser Point. We love that restaurant but usually for lunch. It is much too crowded at dinner time.

This was our first time heading there for dinner instead of lunch, we didn't realize how much busier it would be! I do prefer how chill it is during lunch.

The Cascade sangria is my absolute favorite sangria at Disney. I love it.

I believe that is one of the only sangrias on property that isn't made from a mixer! I think that's something we learned at the sangria university....I think.

That's interesting about the burger contest. My husband has ordered the bison burger many times, but I haven't tried it.

Yeah, I'm not surprised the bison wins, it really is so good!

 

[KPeterso]

On our recent trip, I tried the walk up for Yak and Yeti. I had not been able to get a reservation at all 60 days out or during the 2 months leading up to he trip. I know I could have gotten a Landry's card, but never got around to it. Walk up list was closed online, but I walked in and asked if they were taking any walk ins and they said of course. Put our name in and was quoted a 25-30 minute wait. Went back outside to my mom to tell her what was up and got the text that the table was ready maybe a minute later. Fastest 30 minutes of my life!

 

[StarCruzer]

On our recent trip, I tried the walk up for Yak and Yeti. I had not been able to get a reservation at all 60 days out or during the 2 months leading up to he trip. I know I could have gotten a Landry's card, but never got around to it. Walk up list was closed online, but I walked in and asked if they were taking any walk ins and they said of course. Put our name in and was quoted a 25-30 minute wait. Went back outside to my mom to tell her what was up and got the text that the table was ready maybe a minute later. Fastest 30 minutes of my life!

We're planning on trying Y&Y for the first time on our December trip. We got the ADR, then a few weeks later I was thinking about swapping our HS and AK days....no dice! I had no idea that Y&Y would be our toughest ADR this trip

 

[VAtink]

On our recent trip, I tried the walk up for Yak and Yeti. I had not been able to get a reservation at all 60 days out or during the 2 months leading up to he trip. I know I could have gotten a Landry's card, but never got around to it. Walk up list was closed online, but I walked in and asked if they were taking any walk ins and they said of course. Put our name in and was quoted a 25-30 minute wait. Went back outside to my mom to tell her what was up and got the text that the table was ready maybe a minute later. Fastest 30 minutes of my life!

Wow, I didn't realize it was so hard to get reservations there! We keep saying we want to try it some year, but keep ended up at Tiffins instead.

Funny enough, back in 2016 we were in AK and realized we wanted to do a sit down meal there that day, so I looked to see what was available on the app. I remembered there was a place people on here on the DIS kept recommending, but I totally forgot the name. I ended up narrowing it down to either Yak and Yeti or Tiffins, both were available, so I guessed it was Tiffins and booked it. Found out later it was actually Y&Y that everyone raved about, but we ended up falling in love with Tiffins and haven't looked back! Still would like to try Y&Y some day.

I love when the wait time is SO much less than what was quoted!

 

[VAtink]

Quick RL update! So as many know, booking for Nov/Dec 2025 FINALLY opened today! We've been waiting for what feels like forever for this!

The timing actually worked out really well in a way. Originally we had planned on staying at the YC for the whole trip, but on Monday I had the thought that it may be nice to do part of the stay at club level since our goal is to try them all out. I also realized this trip would be great to try out another MK resorts club level so we can have quick transportation home after MVMCP. I presented this idea to my mom, who surprisingly thought it was a good idea!

I put together some preliminary schedules to see what worked best, originally I had staying club at the end of trip, but my mom didn't like that since she wanted full days at club level to take advantage of the lounge and we'd have to check out early the last day for our flight. So I shifted it to the start of the trip, but once again my mom didn't want to start there since again we wouldn't get a full day that first day. (I feel like some of you can guess where this is going)

So we decided that we'd start the club level stay the second day before moving to the YC later in the week. But of course this means one thing. Once again we are doing a triple split stay! Seriously, we need help.

We're going to do our first night at the Swalphin to save some money before moving over to the Grand Floridian for our club stay! Then later in the week we'll move over to our home, the Yacht Club.

I am so excited, and can't believe my mom agreed to this!

 

[Paulaparm]

Woohoo! Good for you and mom

 

[VAtink]

Day 2, Part 6: A Room with a View, A Fireworks View!​

We last left off heading back to the Contemporary after dinner at Geyser Point.

Once back, we decided to swing by the lounge to check out the hors d’oeuvres that evening. The food looked good, but we were pretty stuffed, but I did grab a shrimp fried rice to try since it smelled amazing! (it was just as good as it smelled!)

We also grabbed two glasses of wine each (love the self pour), before heading back to the concierge desk with our extra magicbands to get them programed since none of them worked.





At that point it was a bit before the fireworks, so we headed back to the room to watch a bit of the PSU game while waiting for them to start.

Also what a beautiful sunset!



Around 8 we headed back to the lounge to see what the desserts looked like and grabbed a few. Mom also poured herself some Baileys. We took this all back to the room as well to enjoy a bit, again while waiting for the fireworks.

A few minutes before they started, around 8:20, we headed out to our balcony with our glasses of wine to settle in for them.

The show started right at 8:30, and it was amazing being able to watch from our balcony! I only took a few pictures since I wanted to really just enjoy the show, and my wine.





I did take this one with my mom in the foreground to really show the view. I feel like so many pictures of the fireworks from these rooms are zoomed in a lot (including all the ones I just posted ), so I like the perspective this picture gives.



Once the show ended, we headed back inside to watch the rest of the PSU game (we won!).

While watching, I heard the music for the Electric water pageant start, so I peeked outside and saw it!



When I first saw this picture I was so confused, I was like “why did I take a picture of the reflection of the tv in the window?” but then I realized it was a picture of the pageant, I hadn’t noticed the reflection when I took the picture! HA!!!!!

I do like that we got to see the pageant three times! Once in front of the GF, then in front of the Poly, and then like an hour later in front of the Contemporary/MK! We did go outside for one of them, but I didn’t get any pictures other than the bad one through the door with the reflection!

Eventually, after the game ended, we got ready for bed. We had an exciting day coming up!

Next up: I Wonder if Disney Will Be Mad if We Disassemble the Furniture.​

 

[HappyGal]

I love that pic of your mom watching the fireworks, very cool shot!

 

[VAtink]

I love that pic of your mom watching the fireworks, very cool shot!

Thanks! I really liked that shot as well!

 

[VAtink]

Day 3, Part 1: I Wonder if Disney Will Be Mad if We Disassemble the Furniture​

It’s finally the moment I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for, it’s time to explain where the title of the TR came from!

I got up this morning at, well, I didn’t actually. I was already awake. I basically was up all night.

You may be wondering why?

Well, I was up all night due to the strangest thing. I noticed after getting into bed the previous night, that every now and then my bed would shake quite a bit. My mom also felt it and thought it was the monorail, but I knew that the monorail track was an independent structure, so it wasn’t that.

So I tried to ignore it and sleep, but the problem with me is that I’m a structural engineer, and two bad things about that is: 1. if there is a problem I’m trying to figure out, I struggle to sleep until I can figure it out. Stupid engineer brain. And 2: Being a structural engineer, I was getting a bit concerned about just HOW much motion I was feeling in the Contemporary. Like it seriously felt like we were having small earthquakes every few minutes all night long.

After a few hours of this it suddenly occurred to me that for some reason, these “earthquakes” seemed to be related to me moving in bed. I noticed every single time I moved just a bit, like 30 seconds later my bed would start shaking again. So of course once I realized this, I tried my best to stop moving for the rest of the night.

This also had me so confused. The logical/intelligent side of my brain knew there was no way that me moving slightly in bed would cause an entire building to shake, but the “it’s 3am and you haven’t slept in the past three nights so logic is being thrown out the window” side of my brain started to get really concerned that there was this massive structural flaw in the building where my movements would cause this shaking in the building! (I swear I am actually a good engineer! )

So yeah, I was up all night long trying to come up with a logical engineering reason why we kept shaking, and why it was related to my movement in bed.

Finally, sometime after 4am, it just hit me. And I truly have no idea how I realized this, but somehow it finally occurred to me that it was my mom moving in her bed that was causing my bed to shake!

I really don’t know how this came to me since at that point I hadn’t seen that the beds were connected to each other, but I guess after hours of doing engineering analysis in my head the only logical conclusion was it was something about the beds that was making them shake, not the building, and I concluded that the beds must somehow be connected to each other.

So of course in the morning I took a look and sure enough, the beds were connected!



So basically all night long, whenever I moved, it would make my mom’s bed shake, so she would get disturbed and roll over which would make my bed shake. We ended up doing this to each other all night long not realizing we were interrupting each other’s sleep! HA!!!!!

I’m happy to finally get that figured out, and I will say knowing what was going on did help me sleep the next few nights! Although we did joke that we might have to take the shared platform the beds were on apart so we could actually get a good nights sleep!

I will also note, while we did enjoy our stay in the Contemporary, the rooms were a bit odd beyond the strange decision to connect the beds. Like there were hardly any horizontal surfaces to put stuff (at least not what we’re used to in other deluxe resorts), and we discovered we have a lot of stuff we like to put on those surfaces. The beds were close together and super close to the walls on the both sides so it just felt cramped compared to other rooms we've been in, but the thing that drove us the most nuts throughout our stay was the toilet paper holder. Yes, a simple toilet paper holder drove us mad (also could be the lack of sleep due to the beds…)

Anyways, I don’t know if ours was just broken, but essentially one side of the thing was on a hinge, and the other side just sat on this tiny little ledge with nothing holding it in place, so every time you tried to get toilet paper off, the TP holder would fall off that ledge and the roll would fall on the floor.





Even got a video of it!​

https://flic.kr/p/2qpVfaF

It didn’t take long before I gave up on it and just put the roll on the back of the toilet!

OH! And there was also this weird like ticking/cracking sound in the room. It sounded just like ice cracking in a glass of water, and it was never in the same place, it kept moving around the room and even made it into the bathroom sometimes! We kept hearing this every single time we were in the room and were so confused! But this we could at least laugh at since it wasn’t super loud and only happened like every 10 minutes or so (and we didn’t notice it when trying to sleep).

Oh yeah, and one last thing that isn’t a Contemporary specific issue since it actually happened in all three hotels this trip, but I figure since I’m airing my grievances I might as well add this. This morning after getting out of bed my mom noticed a bunch of what looked like old blood stains in her sheets. Crazy enough because the morning I checked out of the Boardwalk I also found old blood stains in the sheets there, and later in the trip at the YC we found more old blood stains on the sheets there one morning. It was wild, I’ve never had that happen at a Disney hotel before, so for it to happen at three hotels in a week was just crazy! Not to be super negative, but the cleanliness definitely seemed to have gone downhill this trip. I forgot to mention earlier, but in the Boardwalk I found clumps of black hair all over the shower wall (ewwww), so definitely not my hair, and shocking that something so obvious would be missed by housekeeping!

Anyways, there were a lot of weird things about this room, but we did really enjoy our stay here. It did make us appreciate the layout of the rooms at other resorts more (and the TP holders at other resorts a LOT more!). And while I know that was a whole lot of complaining, we would actually stay here again, while these things were annoying, they weren’t a deal breaker for staying here.

Next up: Now to Start the Day!​

 

[HappyGal]

I’m a lousy sleeper so the connected beds would’ve driven me crazy! But the TP holder! That’d push me over the edge!

 

[Mary Pops In]

My goodness the fun of being on SDMT in the rain, your photo says it all!

I love the silhouette of Dug. It's a fun souvenir and an affordable memento. To hear a cast member talk about 20 years in the park, I would have had mine and my mother's silhouettes cut, too.

I was surprised you mentioned a DAS pass. A family member declined to join us on our January trip because they limited the DAS to children with specific conditions. We'd love to have her join us if a DAS can be secured.

I am looking forward to reading about your room, especially with your TR title.

 

[Mary Pops In]

Day 3, Part 1: I Wonder if Disney Will Be Mad if We Disassemble the Furniture​

It’s finally the moment I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for, it’s time to explain where the title of the TR came from!

I got up this morning at, well, I didn’t actually. I was already awake. I basically was up all night.

You may be wondering why?

Well, I was up all night due to the strangest thing. I noticed after getting into bed the previous night, that every now and then my bed would shake quite a bit. My mom also felt it and thought it was the monorail, but I knew that the monorail track was an independent structure, so it wasn’t that.

So I tried to ignore it and sleep, but the problem with me is that I’m a structural engineer, and two bad things about that is: 1. if there is a problem I’m trying to figure out, I struggle to sleep until I can figure it out. Stupid engineer brain. And 2: Being a structural engineer, I was getting a bit concerned about just HOW much motion I was feeling in the Contemporary. Like it seriously felt like we were having small earthquakes every few minutes all night long.

After a few hours of this it suddenly occurred to me that for some reason, these “earthquakes” seemed to be related to me moving in bed. I noticed every single time I moved just a bit, like 30 seconds later my bed would start shaking again. So of course once I realized this, I tried my best to stop moving for the rest of the night.

This also had me so confused. The logical/intelligent side of my brain knew there was no way that me moving slightly in bed would cause an entire building to shake, but the “it’s 3am and you haven’t slept in the past three nights so logic is being thrown out the window” side of my brain started to get really concerned that there was this massive structural flaw in the building where my movements would cause this shaking in the building! (I swear I am actually a good engineer! )

So yeah, I was up all night long trying to come up with a logical engineering reason why we kept shaking, and why it was related to my movement in bed.

Finally, sometime after 4am, it just hit me. And I truly have no idea how I realized this, but somehow it finally occurred to me that it was my mom moving in her bed that was causing my bed to shake!

I really don’t know how this came to me since at that point I hadn’t seen that the beds were connected to each other, but I guess after hours of doing engineering analysis in my head the only logical conclusion was it was something about the beds that was making them shake, not the building, and I concluded that the beds must somehow be connected to each other.

So of course in the morning I took a look and sure enough, the beds were connected!



So basically all night long, whenever I moved, it would make my mom’s bed shake, so she would get disturbed and roll over which would make my bed shake. We ended up doing this to each other all night long not realizing we were interrupting each other’s sleep! HA!!!!!

I’m happy to finally get that figured out, and I will say knowing what was going on did help me sleep the next few nights! Although we did joke that we might have to take the shared platform the beds were on apart so we could actually get a good nights sleep!

I will also note, while we did enjoy our stay in the Contemporary, the rooms were a bit odd beyond the strange decision to connect the beds. Like there were hardly any horizontal surfaces to put stuff (at least not what we’re used to in other deluxe resorts), and we discovered we have a lot of stuff we like to put on those surfaces. The beds were close together and super close to the walls on the both sides so it just felt cramped compared to other rooms we've been in, but the thing that drove us the most nuts throughout our stay was the toilet paper holder. Yes, a simple toilet paper holder drove us mad (also could be the lack of sleep due to the beds…)

Anyways, I don’t know if ours was just broken, but essentially one side of the thing was on a hinge, and the other side just sat on this tiny little ledge with nothing holding it in place, so every time you tried to get toilet paper off, the TP holder would fall off that ledge and the roll would fall on the floor.





Even got a video of it!​

https://flic.kr/p/2qpVfaF

It didn’t take long before I gave up on it and just put the roll on the back of the toilet!

OH! And there was also this weird like ticking/cracking sound in the room. It sounded just like ice cracking in a glass of water, and it was never in the same place, it kept moving around the room and even made it into the bathroom sometimes! We kept hearing this every single time we were in the room and were so confused! But this we could at least laugh at since it wasn’t super loud and only happened like every 10 minutes or so (and we didn’t notice it when trying to sleep).

Oh yeah, and one last thing that isn’t a Contemporary specific issue since it actually happened in all three hotels this trip, but I figure since I’m airing my grievances I might as well add this. This morning after getting out of bed my mom noticed a bunch of what looked like old blood stains in her sheets. Crazy enough because the morning I checked out of the Boardwalk I also found old blood stains in the sheets there, and later in the trip at the YC we found more old blood stains on the sheets there one morning. It was wild, I’ve never had that happen at a Disney hotel before, so for it to happen at three hotels in a week was just crazy! Not to be super negative, but the cleanliness definitely seemed to have gone downhill this trip. I forgot to mention earlier, but in the Boardwalk I found clumps of black hair all over the shower wall (ewwww), so definitely not my hair, and shocking that something so obvious would be missed by housekeeping!

Anyways, there were a lot of weird things about this room, but we did really enjoy our stay here. It did make us appreciate the layout of the rooms at other resorts more (and the TP holders at other resorts a LOT more!). And while I know that was a whole lot of complaining, we would actually stay here again, while these things were annoying, they weren’t a deal breaker for staying here.

Next up: Now to Start the Day!​

 

[2xcited2sleep]

Oh goodness ... those beds would have driven me nuts. And, me not being an engineer, I'd be convinced the building was collapsing. That view is compelling, though. As is the lounge. And the walk to MK -particularly if attending a party. And the dining is pretty good with Steakhouse 71 and Cali Grill. But the rooms themselves are just not appealing to me and the little things like the TP holder and mysterious sounds would really annoy me. So glad you guys were able to laugh at it.

 

[Wood Nymph]

Around 8 we headed back to the lounge to see what the desserts looked like and grabbed a few. Mom also poured herself some Baileys. We took this all back to the room as well to enjoy a bit, again while waiting for the fireworks.

We've stayed club level a few times and I love going back for desserts and a glass of Kalua. This looks like a perfect evening to me.

Could you hear the fireworks music from your balcony?

I do like that we got to see the pageant three times! Once in front of the GF, then in front of the Poly, and then like an hour later in front of the Contemporary/MK!

I love the pageant. It feels like old time Disney.

So basically all night long, whenever I moved, it would make my mom’s bed shake, so she would get disturbed and roll over which would make my bed shake. We ended up doing this to each other all night long not realizing we were interrupting each other’s sleep! HA!!!!!

I don't know of any other room layout that has the beds attached like this. It actually looks like a very cheap construction which shouldn't be at a deluxe resort.

 

[VAtink]

I’m a lousy sleeper so the connected beds would’ve driven me crazy! But the TP holder! That’d push me over the edge!

Right?!? I was so annoyed by that stupid TP holder! Like it made me unreasonably mad

 

[dizneedoll]

The bed thing is hysterical! Is there any practical engineering reason that the beds would be connected? And the weird cracking ice thing...maybe you guys had a haunted room

 

[VAtink]

My goodness the fun of being on SDMT in the rain, your photo says it all!

It was such a fun ride, I love the pictures we go from it! We were laughing for a long time even after getting off it!

I love the silhouette of Dug. It's a fun souvenir and an affordable memento. To hear a cast member talk about 20 years in the park, I would have had mine and my mother's silhouettes cut, too.

Thanks! I'm so happy we finally got it done, the artist did a really good job!

I was surprised you mentioned a DAS pass. A family member declined to join us on our January trip because they limited the DAS to children with specific conditions. We'd love to have her join us if a DAS can be secured.

Yeah, my mom has DAS, I was really surprised she got approved for it since she doesn't have a developmental disability, but she got it. I think it helped that she gave some real world examples of how her disability impacts her.

I am looking forward to reading about your room, especially with your TR title.

Haha, this room was a very special special one, so many little annoyances, but the location and the view made up for most of them!

 

[VAtink]

Oh goodness ... those beds would have driven me nuts. And, me not being an engineer, I'd be convinced the building was collapsing. That view is compelling, though. As is the lounge. And the walk to MK -particularly if attending a party. And the dining is pretty good with Steakhouse 71 and Cali Grill. But the rooms themselves are just not appealing to me and the little things like the TP holder and mysterious sounds would really annoy me. So glad you guys were able to laugh at it.

Oh yeah, those beds were so annoying, I really don't understand why they designed them like that! The view and location definitely helped make up for the weirdness of the room, but that stupid TP holder was just maddening. We would actually stay there again though even with all the little annoying things, being able to walk to the MK is amazing, and being so close to home after the parties is a gamechanger. We left the party later than normal this year, and still got back like an hour earlier!

 

[VAtink]

We've stayed club level a few times and I love going back for desserts and a glass of Kalua. This looks like a perfect evening to me.

We really loved doing that as well!

Could you hear the fireworks music from your balcony?

We could a bit, but it was very faint. The do have the music on the TVs though, I think on channel 72 (or maybe 68?), but then you have to leave the door open to hear that and lots of bugs come into the room!

I love the pageant. It feels like old time Disney.

It was so cool to see that from the room, and multiple times!

I don't know of any other room layout that has the beds attached like this. It actually looks like a very cheap construction, which is ironical considering the expense of staying at the Contemporary.

Haha, right? Like were they trying to save money by not having legs for the nightstand? Such a weird choice!