Nex time we're staying in Windsor Hills! a semi-live Trip Report (May 2nd -May 15th)

[dawnball]

I never write trip reports, but on this trip I seem to be having a lot of trouble winding down at night, so I thought I'd give this a try, we'll see how it goes.

Cast:
Grandma - Parks commando, but trying to reform on this trip (and she's technically my mom, not my Grandma, but still). Gluten Intolerant.

Grandpa - He just tags along with his wife and lets his grandkids wrap him around their tiny little fingers

Cousin Aurora - she's almost 4, fond of everything princess and beautiful. Also excellent at wrapping grandparents around various digits. 40 inches tall, at least mostly.

Auntie P - Mom to Cousin Aurora, generally immune to finger-wrapping, but very susceptible to neglect related guilt ("But Mom.. you said after tax season you'd spend more time with me!")

MonkeyGirl - My DD, newly turned 3, obsessed with Mickey, Donald and Monkeys. Mostly Monkeys. Generally non-manipulative, but learning fast from her older cousin. Also gluten intolerant. 37.5 inches.

Me - Your fearless reporter, willing to ride Everything just for your edification. Well, almost anything. Unless it's scary. Or goes backwards. Or upside down. Or drops. Or.. well.. ok.. I ride some things. My DD is too short to ride anything, that's my excuse! Gluten and dairy intolerant.



Grandma and Auntie P are accountants, so they were busily working away until April 17th (and beyond) telling clients just how much money they owed. That left me to do the planning. I picked dates and finally got them approved by everyone. I found a rental house. I rented it. I made spreadsheets and charts and graphs and newsletters and handouts and little packets full of all the information people needed. Remember this. *I* planned the whole trip. No one else did anything. They did cheerfully read everything I sent, and Auntie P made a few ADRs, but in general - it's all my fault.

May 1st I ran around and picked up a few last minute items, loaded the car and tucked my beautiful 3 year old into bed at 8:30 (having let her stay up an extra half hour). Then I went to bed because we were leaving the house at 4am, which meant I would be up a little after 3. The plan was that I could get a good 4 or 5 hours of the 11.5 hour drive done before she woke up for the morning.

At 9:00 there was a large bang, followed by screaming. She was trying to go to the bathroom and knocked the stool/seat combo over while she was on it. She spent the next hour perched on the toilet, trying desperately to stay awake. Then she fell out of bed, had a crying fit or two about her bedroom being dark, and generally kept me awake until 11pm. It took me another hour to fall asleep.

You know, when you've only had 3 hours of sleep, 3am is even earlier than it normally is. I was torn between going back to sleep until 6:30 and just biting the bullet and getting up. Since I'd woken up at 1am and 2am, and was likely to wake up at 4am, 5am and 6am I just crawled out of bed. Coffee. Much coffee. Load the cooler, put the last things in the car, kiss DH goodby, load the sleeping pre-schooler in the car. Sleeping pre-schooler woke up as soon as I lifted her and chattered all the way down to the car. We hit the road at 3:45am. At 4:30am, MonkeyGirl was *still* awake. She was asleep when I could see her under a streetlight at 5 though. At 6 I stopped for gas near the NC/SC border. She woke up, looked out the window at the pre-dawn greyness and said "It's light out!" She was up for the day. It doesn't pay to leave home at 4am.

MonkeyGirl was a very good girl in the car, and we made good time. However, somewhere in the middle of Georgia I realized that I had forgotten to pack the stroller. 13 days at Disney world, and no nice stroller. Ouch. I can rent one, I could buy one, but that's nearly as expensive as renting and we *have* a perfectly good stroller, I just forgot it.

Around 1:30 we stopped in St Augustine so that she could look around the outlet. We're trying to teach her money-handling skills, but I didn't want to deal with the problem of her losing all her cash at WDW, so I had made "Monkey Money". Each "bill" was worth one food item (like a Mickey Bar) or $3 (pre-tax) toward merchandise. That was mostly to keep the numbers low enough she could grasp them. At the outlet I told her that she could spend 3 pieces of monkey money to get something she wanted. "Like a Monkey!" she says. I didn't think that she could find a monkey, but said we could look.

Beeline for the stuffed creatures bin, and she starts hunting through for a monkey. "Not a monkey" "Not a monkey" "Not a monkey" No monkeys in the whole bin. So we look some more. She finds a coloring book. That's one monkey money. She looks some more. Princess hats were examined and discarded. Clothes were found wanting. All she wanted was a monkey. Then she found the trading pins.

I had thought she was *way* too young for trading pins, and had considered and discarded the idea of buying her a few trading pins from e-bay (5-10) as a way to get her to interact more with people. Apparently I was wrong (again).

She really wanted a moving Donald pin, but it was 4 pieces of Monkey money. Then she saw IT. An Abu pin. "Monkey!" she shouts. She she starts jumping in circles, chanting "Monkey! Monkey! Monkey! MONKEY!" Fortunately it only cost 2 pieces of Monkey Money.

We took her purchases and went to check out. She proudly set her coloring book up on the counter with one piece of Monkey Money on it, and then her pin with 2 pieces of Monkey Money next to it. The CM exclaimed over her money and invited her back to help run the cash register. So MonkeyGirl scanned her own items and put them in the bag. Then she got 2 Mickey stickers (which were promptly applied to her shirt), a magical moment certificate (guest of the hour) and a goofy pin! She was over the moon, and I thought it was an excellent start to our vacation. I completely forgot about the stroller issue. The last few hours flew by. Then we got to the rental house and our vacation lost a little magic.

 

[dawnball]

So we arrived at the house a few minutes after 4pm, and there was a 4pm check-in. MonkeyGirl had fallen asleep as we drove through downtown Orlando, then woken up on 192. I pulled into the driveway and she looked out the window then crumpled.

"I thought we were going to MICKEY'S HOUSE" she wailed. And cried and sniveled and generally made the world aware of how miserable she was. Apparently the condo we stayed in the last two times (at Windsor Hills) was "Mickey's House" in her mind, and she refused to believe that we were going to WDW. I got her to agree to look around before she decided that she hated it.

Fortunately, there was one room decorated with a Mickey Theme. Mickey curtains, comforter and pillow shams. That makes it Mickey's house when you're three. Grandma and Grandpa had apparently come and gone, because their things were in the big bedroom. The Mickey room had a set of bunk beds that were double on the bottom/single on the top, so that's where she and I were sleeping. The bunk beds were really rickety though, so I made the rule no one was allowed in the top bunk. I don't think that her 30lbs moving around up there would have collapsed it, but I wasn't really sure.

The house was very large, and well decorated (or at least well enough - it was odd looking, but I'm not much of a decor person). However, the grass desperately needed to be mowed. And the kitchen had a film of cooking grease on it. And the grill on the pool's patio had a pool of grease overflowing the little rubber mat it sat on. And the cabinets in the kitchen had dirty dishes in them (covered with food particles from the dishwasher, not never-washed after use). And a lot of the silverware was dirty. The dining room table was set. With dishes that had food particles (and in some cases cheese chunks) stuck to them. Like wine glasses with crud inside. It was really pretty disgusting. The rest of the house was reasonably clean.

Oh, and we discovered that the track for the silverware drawer in the kitchen was broken, so sometimes that drawer would just fall in when you went to close it. And I swear that someone washed auto parts in the washing machine - I've never seen an agitator that badly damaged (or with soap on the inside of the agitator).

On the bright side, there was a (apparently very seldom used, and clean) stroller in the garage. Score!

So I unpacked, since the house was generally clean, and called Grandma and Grandpa to come back and visit with us.

Grandma and Grandpa were at Animal Kingdom, having arrived at 10am, unpacked into the cleaned (well, ok, the cleaning crew had visited at least) house, and gone to get tickets and ride some rides. They were on their way into FOtLK, and would head back after the show. I unpacked, and unpacked, and unpacked. MonkeyGirl tried to help, and I finally plopped her in front of the TV and turned on cartoons. Grandma and Grandpa stopped at KRR on their way out (because that's on the way to the exit from FotLK, you know) and rode 4 times with no waiting.

Once Grandma and Grandpa were back Grandma and I left MonkeyGirl with Grandpa and headed for the Walmart to deal with all the things that we had forgotten or needed for the house. Then we came home and washed dishes. And washed dishes. And washed dishes. Although, we only washed the dishes we anticipated using, so we didn't wash all the silverware, or the filthy wine glasses, etc.

Then I emailed the owner to let him know he might want to speak with his cleaning crew. The owner manages the house himself, but from a distance, and I thought he might like to know that he isn't getting the cleaning service that he's paying for.

By that time I need to go pick up Auntie P and Cousin Aurora from the airport. It was midnight when we got back and we all tumbled into bed with the plan being to sleep in and then go to Epcot in the morning.

 

[dawnball]

Thursday morning I woke up around 8:30 because MonkeyGirl was awake, and when MonkeyGirl is awake, everyone is awake. We got dressed, drank lots of coffee and checked our email. I had one from the house owner. He had CC:'d me on an email to his local cleaners/maintenance crew saying that what I reported was unacceptable and he expected them to send someone out immediately. Great, strangers in the house with all our stuff. We'd already cleaned most of the things we really cared about ourselves. We shrugged and headed out for the parks. After an abortive circle down to the old AAA parking (it looks like they're moving the AAA and Handicapped parking over to Journey) we parked in Journey 4 around 9:45am. Auntie P and I headed through the no-bag line to turn our AP vouchers into APs and the Grandparents took the toddlers through the bag check line. We were all through the turnstyles within a minute or two of each other.

Grandma and I were both inclined to take things easy and smell the roses on this trip. She was recovering from tax season. I'm recovering from pertussis (whooping cough) and MonkeyGirl is much more aware of things around her at the parks on this visit. I wanted to let her be in awe of big and little things while she was still young enough to appreciate them this way. So when Cousin Aurora wanted to ride spaceship earth first thing, we got in line - even though it was 10am and fastpasses were a-wasting.

After that I handed my and MonkeyGirl's fastpasses over to Grandpa so that they could get Soarin passes and we went to Character Connection. With a stop at the big fountain (Innoventions Fountains) to watch for a few minutes. She hugged and danced and told Chip that she liked him better than Dale. Much fun was had by all. Then we headed toward the Land. We made it out of Innoventions at least, then had to stop and watch Baloo and Mary Poppins from a distance. She didn't know either character and so had no interest in hugs, but she watched. Then she watched the fountain in front of the Imagination pavillion, and watched the still water pools.

Finally we made it to the Land. We found Grandma and Grandpa and colored a bit at the kidcot station while we waited for Cousin Aurora and Auntie P. to finish riding Living with the Land. Aurora and P. picked up an early lunch, and while they ate, Grandma took MonkeyGirl on Living with the Land while I used a Soarin fastpass as a single rider.

I was diagnosed with pertussis in early April, and had been sick for about 4 weeks at that point. At home I consider myself essentially recovered. I can jog (although not in the rain), walk miles and bicycle miles without triggering a coughing fit. The only thing that would still trigger a coughing fit was trying to do anything in the rain. Nevertheless, I brought all my cough suppressants to Florida. And left them in the house, because I seemed to be fine.

Well, apparently hot, humid air full of perfume, stale cigarette smoke, BO, pollen, and all the misc irritants that many people carry around with them will trigger coughing too. And not just one little cough or two that I can quiet with a drink of water. I coughed and I drank, and I coughed. And I said "it's the fastpass line, it's only a few minutes long, I'll make it" By the time I was standing on an arrow, I was coughing enough that people were standing at a distance from me and I felt obliged to explain that no, I wasn't contagious, I was just recovering from a respiratory disease. I managed not to throw up (which was something of an achievement from my point of view) and I never got close to passing out (which is good, because I probably would have left the queue then). I barely made it, and the ride on Soarin' was somewhat less fun than usual since I was still coughing intermittantly. I'm guessing it wasn't any fun for the people near me. Sorry about that.

So I collected MonkeyGirl from Grandma and Grandpa and we toddled off to Guest Relations to ask for a GAC, because I didn't think that I could manage a wait like that again today, and I would rather not ride at all than ride when I was so miserable and everyone around me was so miserable. I coughed all the way there because coughing is the only way I can clear the irritants, and apparently I had 2 lungs full of junk. I coughed all the way through my conversation with the Guest Relations CM, who seemed to think that "provide a shaded waiting area" would help. She also thought that I should ride in a wheelchair, but a wheelchair won't help me at all, because exercise doesn't make it worse. We finally worked something out though, and I appreciate her time and effort. Having seen GACs on ebay, I know that they really don't like to hand out the more easily abused options, I just wanted something that would help.

I pushed MonkeyGirl in her borrowed stroller back over the Land and we picked up the rest of the crew and headed for the Living Seas (after a snack for the girls). I wanted to try the new Nemo ride, but MonkeyGirl was scared. I offered her a piece of Monkey Money if she tried, and she thought that was a good deal. 30 minute wait posted for the new Nemo ride and I knew that I couldn't wait through it, since I was still coughing intermittently. After a few mis communications with CMs about where we should go, we were directed to a side entrance for Nemo and we were on our way.

Nemo was nice, but MonkeyGirl didn't like it. It was dark. She really didn't like being in a wave with the turtles, and it made me slightly carsick, so it probably made her much more carsick. She also had her hands over her ears, and said it was too loud.

After Nemo we discussed things, and decided that while there was no way I could have waited in the line, using the GAC *felt* like cheating. Cousin Aurora wanted to go again but we told her that she'd need to wait in the really long line with her mom if she wanted to go again. We'll see how we feel about using the GAC as the trip goes on.

We went over to Turtle Talk with Crush and found a quiet place in the back of the lobby to wait until the next show filled. MonkeyGirl said she didn't want to see Turtle Talk, because it was dark and scary. I asked her if she just wanted more Monkey Money for going and she said yes. So I explained that she had to go into the room where the show was and look around, but that if she didn't like it we could go back out. There was no bribe being offered, just watch the show or don't watch. Then we talked about the kids being able to sit up front all together so that they can see, and she allowed that she might be willing to sit up front with Cousin Aurora and be brave.

We hung out in the back until there wasn't such a press to go through the doors. That seemed to work well, since I didn't cough for this attraction. I ended up sitting up front with the two girls since there were extra seats that they were filling with adults. MonkeyGirl sat on my lap for the last bit but seemed to really enjoy it. Once was enough for her though.

We went out and watched more water and had a snack while Cousin Aurora played in the shark play area. Then we headed back to Character connection (with a stop by Club Cool) and did two rounds of hugs. The first trip through Chip stole Cousin Aurora's cell phone and made phone calls on it. Dale fiddled with MonkeyGirl's flashlight and had to get Chip's help to turn it one. Chip then proceeded to shine the flashlight into Dale's eyes as Dale struggled to get away. The second round through Cousin Aurora very carefully handed every loose item to her mother. Then tried to take Dale's bow to run off with it. Fortunately they're well attached. We rolled with laughter most of the time we were there.

Then through Minnie's butterfly house to Innoventions to play some games before we went on to Universe of Energy. MonkeyGirl did *not* want to ride Universe of Energy, but since I didn't think she'd like it and I knew it would be loud I offered her wearing her earmuff hearing protection and some Monkey Money. When they told us all to squish forward I just stayed back so that I wasn't near too many people. We had a ride vehicle practically to ourselves (except the shrieking 7 year olds behind us). MonkeyGirl and Princess Aurora did really well, and didn't cry or wail. MonkeyGirl had had enough, Aurora wanted to do it again.

We finally settled on going back to the house for a swim. Auntie P. wanted to try the tuna salad at Sunshine Seasons and MonkeyGirl wanted some grapes, so we agreed to meet at the Innoventions fountain once we were all ready to go out. Grandma and Grandpa were going to go burn the 6-8 Soarin' Fastpasses we still had. MonkeyGirl gobbled down her grapes and chocolate milk, and then we went shopping at the pin kiosk while we waited for Auntie P. and Princess Aurora.

MonkeyGirl picked out a Donald pin, and we paid for it. Princess Aurora and Auntie P. arrived and they looked at pins for a bit then we all headed out. MonkeyGirl and I stopped to perform her first trade. Her Hidden Mickey Goofy (which she got as part of her magical moment at the outlet) for a cutie chip. She did really well, and was very polite. I really appreciated the CM being patient with her and letting her see how a trade worked. I also noticed that the lanyard (a cheap short lanyard I had purchased to hold only a AAA flashlight for dark rides) wasn't holding up well to pins going in and out. I think I'll have to get her a new lanyard if I can find one she likes that isn't too long.

Once we were back at the house, we changed into swimsuits and explored the pool. It had a lot of floaty things in it (just dust/pollen/misc from through the screen) and the pool toys that were floating in it were a little on the slimey side. We ejected them and used our own. The water is warm, like a warm bath, even though in theory there isn't any pool heat. While it's nice having a private pool, this one isn't spectacular.

I had a shower afterwards and noticed that the shower head in my bathroom desperately needs some teflon tape. It sprays water all over the bathroom when you use it. I'm staying at Windsor Hills next time. Even if it's in a condo.

With one thing and another (and the kids being tired) we didn't go back for Illuminations tonight.

Tommorrow is an AK day, I'm hoping we get a bit more done, but I'll be delighted if we just have as much fun as we did today. We're hoping to do the new Nemo musical, and I'd like to ride Primeval Whirl because I haven't ridden it yet.

 

[DawnA401]

I am enjoying your trip report!! I have always wanted to rent a house while in Fla. but have never made the plunge, I am afraid I would be stuck with a dud.

 

[Minnie]

I was soooooooo close to going ahead with renting a townhome from one of the owners here on the Dis at WH.

This report though has me very worried.....

Maybe we'll stick with WDW resorts

 

[dawnball]

I've stayed at WH before. This trip we are *NOT* staying at Windsor Hills. We're in Indian Creek. I'd happily stay at Windsor Hills again. In general Indian Creek looks *much* less well-kempt. I just made a bad choice, there are lots of good choices out there. I passed out early last night, but we had a great time at Animal Kingdom - and we've pretty much cleaned up the inside of the house, so it's fine now.

 

[OhMari]

I stayed in Indian Creek in 2000 and we didn't have any problems. Our owners were from Florida and they called us the first day to make sure everything was okay. I'm glad your owner responded back to you right away, but I'm sure the last thing you wanted to do is clean on your first day of vacation.

I take it the crowds have simmered down. Was Character Connections still a walk in. I actually had Mickey Mouse wave me in, when I walked by and this was during Easter Week. I don't think anyone knows the place exists.

 

[dawnball]

Yeah, I don't think that all Indian Creek homes are as bad as this. It's more that the homes are older and less popular. Older means more things to go wrong and less popular means that there's less rental income to pay for keeping everything in tip-top shape. The space is really nice, and while we occassionally find bizzare things or things that make us cranky it isn't spoiling our vacation. We just wouldn't stay in this particular house again.

 

[OhMari]

I realize you are now home, so I hope you still continue your report.

 

[flafan]

I am enjoying your report.

i can't wait to hear more