BrdwayBoy
"I know now that theatre saved my life." S.Stroman
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2010
- Messages
- 518
Alright, let’s give this a try!
Again.
I’ve been trying to do one of these trip reports for every trip for last ten years, but it always seems to fall apart after the first day… well really after take-off. However THIS time I have decided to do a PTR in the hopes that it will compel me to keep going and *actually* follow through and complete a TR! We’ll be celebrating our tenth anniversary, so it would be nice to have a detailed account of the trip.
Introductions!
I’m Eric, I live in NY and I am consumed by all things Theatre and Disney. I’m grateful that I’m able to get into NYC very frequently; If I’m not cuddled with my dogs on our couch planning a Disney trip, or taking a trip to Disney, you'll find me sitting in a Broadway Theatre (Oh… and sometimes I have to go to work to pay for it all). Every June we host a TONY Awards viewing party – it’s my Superbowl/World Series.
Some of my favorites:
Disney movie: Pocahontas
Disney Character: Jiminy Cricket
Disney Park: Animal Kingdom
Other faves: The Golden Girls, I Love Lucy, Designing Women, The Harry Potter series, Ina Garten, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, reading memoirs, and some trash TV (1,000 lb sisters, MBFFL...)
I live with my partner of ten years, Felipe. He’s originally from NJ (near Asbury Park), but now calls NY home, though he isn’t always thrilled about it. He was not a Disney or Theatre guy before we met but lucky for me he has come around to being a fan of both. His favorite park is Magic Kingdom and his favorite attraction is The Haunted Mansion.
That's me on the left, with the glasses, and Felipe on the right.
The rest of our crew:
Remy is our 6 year old Frenchie and he joined our family in 2019. He has been with us since he was 8 weeks old. Arya is 4 years old and we adopted her in November 2025. It was a big adjustment for all of us, but I am happy to report that everyone is settling in and finding their place in our pack. I may never have thought it possible but I love these two quirky characters more than anything in the world. They are my heart.
A prologue of sorts.
Picture it. New York, 2025.
We were gearing up to celebrate my 40th birthday in October and decided to go on an adventure and explore the parks on the other coast. We had plans to visit back in April 2020, but well, we all know what happened to that. I haven’t been to CA since I was a kid, and Felipe has never been. It took a bit of convincing as I don’t think he loves the idea of the longer flight from NY, but once he came around to the idea I was off and planning. I looked into renting points for the Disneyland Villas, but that wasn’t happening so I turned my attention to the good neighbor hotels. I stressed and researched where to stay in while in CA. I watched about 80,000 reviews of every hotel and then watched videos of how long the walk to the parks was from each one and finally settled on one. The only thing I had left to do was book it but I kept dragging my feet because I really did not want to book the “wrong” hotel.
The universe had other plans and through a series of fortunate events we ended up becoming DVC owners(!) in June of 2025 (‘twas definitely not on my 2025 bingo card). Since it was only four months before our trip there wasn’t any availability for any of the CA properties and not much to pick from in Florida either. I didn’t want our entire trip to be at the mercy and stress of a waitlist. I thought that after such a large purchase, I would be patient and wait for our trip to CA. I mean, after all I did kinda, sorta get DVC for my birthday, no? The birthday plan would now be to see the big, new broadway revival of Ragtime (based on the E.L. Doctorow novel, and my absolute all-time favorite musical) with a group of friends.
The day our points hit our account, we booked our first trip for January 2026. We decided to just do a long weekend – a “welcome home” trip and quick Disney fix. Booking that far in advance also let us book our first trip at our home resort – The Polynesian. I had only stayed here once in 2013, and this would be Felipe’s first visit to Poly ever. Felipe and I hadn’t been to WDW together since 2019! I didn’t do a trip report but just in case you were curious, we left a blizzard in NY only to FREEZE in Florida… oh, and Felipe *loved* the Poly.
I’ll share some pics from that adventure a little later.
Still with us? OK good!
Now that brings us to our 2nd trip and this PTR! We don’t mind that booking with DVC generally means that you have to know in advance what you want to do because we love having something to look forward to. After we booked our first trip, we started looking at the calendar to see what other trips we might like to plan and we realized that the following June (of 2026), we would be celebrating our 10th anniversary. It was obvious to both of us that there was no other way we’d want to celebrate. So in July at our 11-month mark, our room at the Polynesian was booked with the hope that at the 7-month mark we’d be able to modify and move over to The Grand Floridian. I was fortunate enough to spend a week at GFlo in June of 2023, with my best friend (you’ll meet her later) and absolutely loved it – and I knew our anniversary would be the perfect reason for our first :
: stay there. I figured if there wasn’t any availability we’d just have to accept our fate and stay at the Polynesian. Ugh.
Well friends, on that fateful October morn, we managed to switch and booked four nights in the GFlo Resort Villas. Now, The only downside to this entire plan is that the first time I went in June I had been absolutely miserable with the heat, and I swore I’d never do it again, but I figured this trip was worth breaking that promise to myself. Is this what love can do to you?!?!?
I dunno y’all… but we’re gonna find out.
While we were in the process of creating an initial rough itinerary, we decided that since we were limited on time because of our work schedules, that maybe we should fly out the night before and that way we could just wake up and start fresh the next morning. I kept stalking the DVC website to see what, if anything, was available for that extra night. Now, since we’d be getting in on Thursday evening, I didn’t want to spend too many points (points are precious, after all) on a room that we would only be spending a few hours in and not really even get to explore/enjoy the resort. The exception would be if the same resort/room type at GFlo popped up, I’d book it and see if they would be able to combine that first night with the rest of our stay so we wouldn’t have to switch rooms.
Fast forward to that luckiest of days, St. Patrick’s Day, I logged in and searched as usual… and while our room at GFlo didn’t show up, that (almost literally) rarest of unicorns revealed itself to me and I was able to grab one night in a Value Studio at Jambo House. I don’t think I’ve ever booked anything so fast in my life. This works out nicely because we were planning on starting our first day at Animal Kingdom. We've stayed at AKL before, so we're alright having very limited (almost no) time at the resort.
Our Plan (for now)
Here is our current itinerary, but as we all know… this could change 80 more times before our trip.
Thursday
PM: Arrival.
Our flight lands around 10 pm, so I don’t think we’ll get to AKL before 11. I’m not sure about food options at the hotel, but I figured that worst case scenario we could always just door dash something to the resort. We won’t have a car, otherwise we’d stop on our way. Who knows, we may not even be hungry.
Friday
AM: Hoping to be at Animal Kingdom for rope drop at 7:30. Figured we’d grab a coffee/breakfast from Creature Comforts, and then spend the morning in the park. Depending on the heat, we’d probably head out around 2/3, grab our luggage from AKL and head over to Gflo.
PM: Hoping our room is ready, our plan is to freshen up, relax, and then head over to MK for Starlight/Happily Ever After. I hate the parade/fireworks crowds, so I’m hoping that just going in and grabbing a spot for both won’t stress me out too much.
Saturday
AM: Thinking/hoping to book a Keys to the Kingdom tour and then head back to relax and freshen up. I don't want to book the tour if I am going to be miserable for 5 hours in the heat. Thoughts?
PM: Around dinner time, our plan is to head over to Epcot, maybe grab a bite to eat and catch Luminous. Neither of us has seen it yet.
Sunday
AM: Hoping for a relaxed, slow start to our day. Plan is to see Drawn to Life at 1:30 and maybe do a bit of shopping.
PM: Head over to studios, for a few rides and the later showing of Fantasmic! Felipe hasn't seen the updated version, and its one of our favorites.
Monday - Our anniversary!
AM: If we want, another slower relaxed morning. If not, we'll be heading to Magic Kingdom.
PM: I was thinking of doing a nice dinner, but looking at all the menus, there isn't much at any of the restaurants that Felipe would eat; sometimes it's tough with a picky eater. So I think we're going to do Dinner at CRT; We know the menu will work for us, and it's become a last-night-of-the-trip tradition for us. We won't worry about Starlight or HEA because we will have (hopefully) caught it earlier in the trip. Now, there is an AH event at MK this evening, and I have a bit of FOMO, but I don't think we'll do it. For the price, I just don't know if it will be worth it for us.
Tuesday - Departure Day
AM - Thinking of having some kind of sit-down breakfast. Either The GFlo Cafe or taking a walk over to Kona Cafe. Thoughts? We'll have until about 2/3 pm until we have to make our way to the airport for our PM flight home, so I'm thinking we'll most likely head back over to MK, though if we're beat it may just be a few hours by the pool.
Any thoughts? I'm really trying my best to accomplish most of what we want after the sun goes down. We're not worried about cramming everything in, because we've done it all and we know we'll be back in December.
If you've made it this far, thank you for sticking with us! I definitely did not think I would have this much to say; Hopefully I'll have as much to say for the actual trip report.
COMING UP:
A few pics from our first DVC stay this year
The SAGA of my name!
Again.
I’ve been trying to do one of these trip reports for every trip for last ten years, but it always seems to fall apart after the first day… well really after take-off. However THIS time I have decided to do a PTR in the hopes that it will compel me to keep going and *actually* follow through and complete a TR! We’ll be celebrating our tenth anniversary, so it would be nice to have a detailed account of the trip.
Introductions!
I’m Eric, I live in NY and I am consumed by all things Theatre and Disney. I’m grateful that I’m able to get into NYC very frequently; If I’m not cuddled with my dogs on our couch planning a Disney trip, or taking a trip to Disney, you'll find me sitting in a Broadway Theatre (Oh… and sometimes I have to go to work to pay for it all). Every June we host a TONY Awards viewing party – it’s my Superbowl/World Series.
Some of my favorites:
Disney movie: Pocahontas
Disney Character: Jiminy Cricket
Disney Park: Animal Kingdom
Other faves: The Golden Girls, I Love Lucy, Designing Women, The Harry Potter series, Ina Garten, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, reading memoirs, and some trash TV (1,000 lb sisters, MBFFL...)
I live with my partner of ten years, Felipe. He’s originally from NJ (near Asbury Park), but now calls NY home, though he isn’t always thrilled about it. He was not a Disney or Theatre guy before we met but lucky for me he has come around to being a fan of both. His favorite park is Magic Kingdom and his favorite attraction is The Haunted Mansion.
That's me on the left, with the glasses, and Felipe on the right.
The rest of our crew:
Remy is our 6 year old Frenchie and he joined our family in 2019. He has been with us since he was 8 weeks old. Arya is 4 years old and we adopted her in November 2025. It was a big adjustment for all of us, but I am happy to report that everyone is settling in and finding their place in our pack. I may never have thought it possible but I love these two quirky characters more than anything in the world. They are my heart.
A prologue of sorts.
Picture it. New York, 2025.
We were gearing up to celebrate my 40th birthday in October and decided to go on an adventure and explore the parks on the other coast. We had plans to visit back in April 2020, but well, we all know what happened to that. I haven’t been to CA since I was a kid, and Felipe has never been. It took a bit of convincing as I don’t think he loves the idea of the longer flight from NY, but once he came around to the idea I was off and planning. I looked into renting points for the Disneyland Villas, but that wasn’t happening so I turned my attention to the good neighbor hotels. I stressed and researched where to stay in while in CA. I watched about 80,000 reviews of every hotel and then watched videos of how long the walk to the parks was from each one and finally settled on one. The only thing I had left to do was book it but I kept dragging my feet because I really did not want to book the “wrong” hotel.
The universe had other plans and through a series of fortunate events we ended up becoming DVC owners(!) in June of 2025 (‘twas definitely not on my 2025 bingo card). Since it was only four months before our trip there wasn’t any availability for any of the CA properties and not much to pick from in Florida either. I didn’t want our entire trip to be at the mercy and stress of a waitlist. I thought that after such a large purchase, I would be patient and wait for our trip to CA. I mean, after all I did kinda, sorta get DVC for my birthday, no? The birthday plan would now be to see the big, new broadway revival of Ragtime (based on the E.L. Doctorow novel, and my absolute all-time favorite musical) with a group of friends.
The day our points hit our account, we booked our first trip for January 2026. We decided to just do a long weekend – a “welcome home” trip and quick Disney fix. Booking that far in advance also let us book our first trip at our home resort – The Polynesian. I had only stayed here once in 2013, and this would be Felipe’s first visit to Poly ever. Felipe and I hadn’t been to WDW together since 2019! I didn’t do a trip report but just in case you were curious, we left a blizzard in NY only to FREEZE in Florida… oh, and Felipe *loved* the Poly.
I’ll share some pics from that adventure a little later.Still with us? OK good!
Now that brings us to our 2nd trip and this PTR! We don’t mind that booking with DVC generally means that you have to know in advance what you want to do because we love having something to look forward to. After we booked our first trip, we started looking at the calendar to see what other trips we might like to plan and we realized that the following June (of 2026), we would be celebrating our 10th anniversary. It was obvious to both of us that there was no other way we’d want to celebrate. So in July at our 11-month mark, our room at the Polynesian was booked with the hope that at the 7-month mark we’d be able to modify and move over to The Grand Floridian. I was fortunate enough to spend a week at GFlo in June of 2023, with my best friend (you’ll meet her later) and absolutely loved it – and I knew our anniversary would be the perfect reason for our first :
: stay there. I figured if there wasn’t any availability we’d just have to accept our fate and stay at the Polynesian. Ugh.Well friends, on that fateful October morn, we managed to switch and booked four nights in the GFlo Resort Villas. Now, The only downside to this entire plan is that the first time I went in June I had been absolutely miserable with the heat, and I swore I’d never do it again, but I figured this trip was worth breaking that promise to myself. Is this what love can do to you?!?!?
I dunno y’all… but we’re gonna find out.
While we were in the process of creating an initial rough itinerary, we decided that since we were limited on time because of our work schedules, that maybe we should fly out the night before and that way we could just wake up and start fresh the next morning. I kept stalking the DVC website to see what, if anything, was available for that extra night. Now, since we’d be getting in on Thursday evening, I didn’t want to spend too many points (points are precious, after all) on a room that we would only be spending a few hours in and not really even get to explore/enjoy the resort. The exception would be if the same resort/room type at GFlo popped up, I’d book it and see if they would be able to combine that first night with the rest of our stay so we wouldn’t have to switch rooms.
Fast forward to that luckiest of days, St. Patrick’s Day, I logged in and searched as usual… and while our room at GFlo didn’t show up, that (almost literally) rarest of unicorns revealed itself to me and I was able to grab one night in a Value Studio at Jambo House. I don’t think I’ve ever booked anything so fast in my life. This works out nicely because we were planning on starting our first day at Animal Kingdom. We've stayed at AKL before, so we're alright having very limited (almost no) time at the resort.
Our Plan (for now)
Here is our current itinerary, but as we all know… this could change 80 more times before our trip.
Thursday
PM: Arrival.
Our flight lands around 10 pm, so I don’t think we’ll get to AKL before 11. I’m not sure about food options at the hotel, but I figured that worst case scenario we could always just door dash something to the resort. We won’t have a car, otherwise we’d stop on our way. Who knows, we may not even be hungry.
Friday
AM: Hoping to be at Animal Kingdom for rope drop at 7:30. Figured we’d grab a coffee/breakfast from Creature Comforts, and then spend the morning in the park. Depending on the heat, we’d probably head out around 2/3, grab our luggage from AKL and head over to Gflo.
PM: Hoping our room is ready, our plan is to freshen up, relax, and then head over to MK for Starlight/Happily Ever After. I hate the parade/fireworks crowds, so I’m hoping that just going in and grabbing a spot for both won’t stress me out too much.
Saturday
AM: Thinking/hoping to book a Keys to the Kingdom tour and then head back to relax and freshen up. I don't want to book the tour if I am going to be miserable for 5 hours in the heat. Thoughts?
PM: Around dinner time, our plan is to head over to Epcot, maybe grab a bite to eat and catch Luminous. Neither of us has seen it yet.
Sunday
AM: Hoping for a relaxed, slow start to our day. Plan is to see Drawn to Life at 1:30 and maybe do a bit of shopping.
PM: Head over to studios, for a few rides and the later showing of Fantasmic! Felipe hasn't seen the updated version, and its one of our favorites.
Monday - Our anniversary!
AM: If we want, another slower relaxed morning. If not, we'll be heading to Magic Kingdom.
PM: I was thinking of doing a nice dinner, but looking at all the menus, there isn't much at any of the restaurants that Felipe would eat; sometimes it's tough with a picky eater. So I think we're going to do Dinner at CRT; We know the menu will work for us, and it's become a last-night-of-the-trip tradition for us. We won't worry about Starlight or HEA because we will have (hopefully) caught it earlier in the trip. Now, there is an AH event at MK this evening, and I have a bit of FOMO, but I don't think we'll do it. For the price, I just don't know if it will be worth it for us.
Tuesday - Departure Day
AM - Thinking of having some kind of sit-down breakfast. Either The GFlo Cafe or taking a walk over to Kona Cafe. Thoughts? We'll have until about 2/3 pm until we have to make our way to the airport for our PM flight home, so I'm thinking we'll most likely head back over to MK, though if we're beat it may just be a few hours by the pool.
Any thoughts? I'm really trying my best to accomplish most of what we want after the sun goes down. We're not worried about cramming everything in, because we've done it all and we know we'll be back in December.
If you've made it this far, thank you for sticking with us! I definitely did not think I would have this much to say; Hopefully I'll have as much to say for the actual trip report.
COMING UP:
A few pics from our first DVC stay this year
The SAGA of my name!
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