OMG - This PLATINUM SURPRISE Might REALLY Work!

[dax248]

Can't wait to read all about it.

Just notify a Mod to move this thread over to the Completed Trip Reports Board. (there's a sticky about this at the top of this board page.)

Welcome to the fun!

I will go look into that right now.

I am slightly freaking out because I can't find some of our food pictures... EEK!I can't find our GF Cafe meal, and the parasailing pictures aren't working well either. I also realized that I am going to have to get my momma to email me some of the ones that they took on their cameras when my started flaking out.

 

[Symans3honeybees]

I have never been so anxious to read a TR before. You're putting me on needles and pins.....

 

[dax248]

OK. Starting the actual TR. I am kinda scared of this, but I know if I don't work on it tonight then I probably won't get a chance to again until late Sunday night... I had an interesting event pop up for this weekend. One of my best friends is allowing me to kidnap her this weekend and we are going to go over to Universal to try to ride Rip, Ride, & Rock-It.

So, like I said before we told Momma some of the surprise, but apparently she really didn't put it all together. She was a little confused as to why in the world we were making her get up at 5:00 AM. Well, DH wanted to check in around 7 AM hoping that our room would be ready the way it was in April. Well, we make it out of the house by 6:30 (GO US!!!! - We are notorious for being as slow as a herd of turtles).

We Are Here!​

We arrive under the sign at about the same time that most of the CM do... look at all those red lights!​

Well, we keep telling Momma to keep driving. We pass all the turn offs for all the other hotels. She is starting to get slightly confused, but keeps driving. We go through the main toll booth to MK. She is looking at us with a weird face when we tell her to get in the lane to go to the hotels. About that point she ask if we are going to the Ft. Wilderness cabins (which she HATES- we stayed there before and it was our ABSOLUTE WORST Disney trip EVER!!!!), we tell her no. She gets to the stop light past the toll booth and we tell her to take a left. She still hasn't figured it out. We pass the Poly. Still hasn't figured it out. We pull up to the sign of the GF. Then we get a scream when DH tells her to pull up to the security gate for check in. She just kept saying, "Are we really staying here? I want to stay here. We AREN'T staying here. Oh, we are staying here." It was really cute.

Well, we get there about 15 minutes before the CL CM are out at check in, so we check in at the main desk. There was no waiting. SWEET! But we find out that our room isn't ready. Darn! The reason is that they were giving us connecting rooms. Had we know that at the time we would have requested non-adjoining rooms to have ones that were done earlier.

So, we have about 2 hours before we need to head to Ft. Wilderness for horseback riding. We head over to Gasprillas and get our coffee mugs and then to the CL to get breakfast. Then we wandered around the hotel some.

Pretty inside the GF! I love the way everything looks from up high. I wish we had been upgraded to RPC, but alas we weren't. Though we spent a lot of time up on the second floor.

I swear he looks like he is up to trouble. I think Momma is still in shock that we are actually staying at the GF. Also, she had just gotten her schedule for the day, so I think she is still in a little bit of a shock.
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We were still hoping that our room would be ready by the time we went horseback riding. Still no luck. So, off to horsey world!​

We got to the barn and checked in. All of the horses were waiting on us. Yay! Unfortunately, the horse my daddy wanted was off for the day. Oh, how Daddy pinned for "Romeo".

Aren't they cute? I love these hats. They picked them up cheap in one of the Caribbean islands... wish they had brought me back a pirate... oh wait, I am married now

We had to wait a while because the other people that were on our tour were running late. They had been told that there were no buses running to Ft. Wilderness at 9AM, so they had to have a special van to pick them up.

Sorry the picture is so blurry, but I was on a moving horsey. I also had the most difficult horse on the ride. The guide said mine was INFAMOUS for deciding to just pick a different road to wander down, or just dart off into the woods. Gee, thanks! Actually Louis wasn't to bad of a ride, until he tried to dart off to make friends with a deer. There was much excitement on my side and lots of reign yanking and "Whoa"ing.​

I almost made it to lunch. Next post though will be lunch at the GF Cafe and dinner at Citricos... with a brief interlude into the private golf lesson for DH, afternoon tea for parents and I, and the Spa for all (no pictures though because DH had the cameras, and well pictures in the spa would just be wrong).

 

[scoot241]

Looks like an awesome start! What a surprise for your mom to be staying at GF.

 

[VBsHustla]

Lovely GF photos! Can't wait to read more. BTW, I found your mom's reaction to the thought of a potential Wilderness cabin stay to be hilarious.

 

[UncleOrville]

Love the report so far! I also LOLed at your mom's reaction to a potential stay at the cabins! Very cool that she was so excited at the GF - it's always great to see your planning work pay off!

 

[dax248]

Onward and Upward

Well, I finally got my momma to upload her pictures for me. Things have been crazy up in their neck of the woods, and well that means that things get a wee bit delayed. Sorry about that folks.

Since I got more pictures, I did want to post a couple of her's from the horseback ride.

The boys waiting. Don't they look like trouble?​

I am excited, too!​

OK. Lunch time.​

We headed back to the GF. Leaving the car at the valet (if I haven't mentioned it yet, I think this is one of my favorite things on vacation), we head to the GF Cafe. I wasn't expecting much, but I was really wrong. Oh my, it was very good.

Daddy got the strawberry salad. He liked it ok, but put strawberries on anything and my Daddy likes it.​

Because of my bell pepper allergy (if I haven't mentioned it before, Daddy and I are deathly allergic to bell peppers), the chef made me and DH a special version of the shrimp and corn cake appetizer. It was amazing. DH said he wasn't going to eat the corn cakes, but then when I told him how great they were, he ate most of his.​

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Momma got the tomato bisque. She loves soup of any kind, and especially tomato. She really liked this a lot, saying it was very good.​

Daddy got a NY strip steak for lunch. He said it was pretty good. (Daddy isn't much of a talker, if you hadn't noticed ) He did think it was weird that people cared about what he ate and what he thought about it, but he was a good sport and played along as long as we didn't keep him from eating relatively quickly after the food came out.​

I got the Rustic Chicken Sandwich (weird that this is the only item so far that is on the DIS menu for GF Cafe). It was really yummy. I only ate the chicken on the sandwich because there was so much food. I normally don't like chicken, but on this high protein diet I have to eat more of it. So, I was really happy that this was so yummy. The homemade potato chips were good too, but a little cold.
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Momma and DH got the Surf and Turf sandwich (again, not on the DIS menu). It had lobster tail under that really yummy cream sauce, and steak ground to make the burger. It also had asparagus on it. Both of them really loved this. They had to use a knife and fork to eat it because it was so big.​

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Daddy and DH got the Key Lime pie. They liked it. If it is fruit those boys are happy.​

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Momma and I pooled our dessert credits to get this. It is the sampler tray that they bring around to show you all the desserts. We couldn't choose what we wanted and the waiter said we could pool the credits and share this, but all the desserts were smaller than the normal size portions. That was fine with us. This way we got to try everything! The tiramisu was really yum. The hazelnut mousse was by far the best, followed by the NY cheese cake with the raspberries (oh so good). Lastly was the key lime pie. I didn't like it, but Momma said it was ok.​

Afterward we waddle out, completely stuffed. It is about time for DH to head to his private golf lesson. Momma, Daddy, and I have a little while to wait until tea... OH MY GOODNESS... More food already?

So, we call for the car so we can get DH changed into his golf clothes and called him a taxi. Turns out if you are going golfing at WDW, Disney will pay for your cab to the course and back with tip included. We get DH sent off and we go to wait on the rooms. About 15 minutes later we get the text and head to the room. WOW!!!!

Let's just say we were in awe. We have stayed in a lot of the WDW resorts, and all of the other deluxe resorts. It was nice to finally see what the GF was all about. We were really happy with our rooms. They over looked the marina, and that was fun.

 

[scoot241]

That strawberry salad looks delicious! So does the steak... and all the dessert.

The rooms look great too! Looks like the trip is going quite well.

 

[dax248]

That strawberry salad looks delicious! So does the steak... and all the dessert.

The rooms look great too! Looks like the trip is going quite well.

The salad was really clean and crisp. That was the part that Daddy liked the most. He doesn't like soggy salads.

Other than the room not being ready until about 2:15 things were going well. We do start hitting some snags very soon... a potential major one with the golf lesson/ spa. But, I will say that all most all the snags are more me freaking out rather than real problems.

 

[Scott MC]

Oh that room! So beautiful....

"Memories....like the corners of my mind....."

 

[UncleOrville]

Gotta love the rooms at the GF! Did you try out the H20 Spa products? I became addicted last year, and forced my parents to bring home all of their products from this year's trip for me.

Lunch looked great too!