Perfectly Planned - But Who Invited Alberto?!? Day 3 is on the board!!

[edcopp]

Our Disney/Orlando Trip Part I - Planning

All righty then. Time to try and give back to all of the good people on this board who made our trip to Disney and the surrounding area such a success.

We decided late last year that this Summer would be a most opportune time to take our kids to Disney. So back in February we started planning in earnest.

The cast of characters:

Me - 37, tireless vacationer, thrill-ride lover, blessed with a good job, a nice home, and a beautiful family. (Must be the payoff for years of misery with my beloved New York Jets.)

DW - 36, beautiful, busy, successful, slightly stressed out Mom who could really use a vacation where we just get to relax. Good thing we're going to Orlando in June, huh?!?

DD - 9, great little girl who needs a little bit of magic in her life - she's growing up waaaaaaay to quickly.

DS - 8, a carbon copy of me in miniature, much to my DW's chagrin. He's a little bundle of energy and a super little kid.

So we really have just one requirement when we go on vacation nowadays. We need space. We cannot put the four of us into a hotel room for a week and come even close to enjoying ourselves. So we look for condos wherever we travel nowadays. Two bedrooms is preferable, but we could make do with one.

So when it comes to travel, I'm a bit of an obsessive planner. Which is what led me to this website 4 months ago. I read about resorts. I read about swimming pools. I read about restaurants. I read about rides, and pins, and autograph books, and fireworks, and I read and I read and I read. I even read every single page of that ridiculously long "Best Themepark Secrets" thread that resurfaced a few weeks ago. So I guess you can say that I was as well prepared for this trip as I could be.

We decided to stay offsite, and in an effort to get some relaxing downtime we decided to do just 4 parks. MK and EPCOT were must dos, and we decided to do SeaWorld since my kids had never been there and IOA since we like thrill rides. (Brfore some of you guys pass out, let me just say that this wasn't our 1st time to Disney - the kids have already been to AK and MGM...) That would leave us with at least one full day to relax by the pool and soak some rays into our pasty white, NE Pennsylvanian bodies. So we wanted to find a place with a cool pool to keep the kids occupied. With those criteria in mind, we opted to stay at Sheraton's Vistana Villages on I-Drive. We booked a nice package through Expedia - 4 round trip airfares from Newark, non-stop at good times and 7 nights in a 2 bedroom villa with daily housekeeping for less than $1900. Good enough. I know that I could've probably saved some $$$ by booking a promotional stay that included a 2 hour timeshare pitch, but I'm not doing that ever - particularly on my vacation. (For more of my thoughts on the subject, read some of that "Saying 'No' to Timeshare" thread.) I e-mailed the resort a few weeks in advance, and thanks to info culled from this website I requested a top floor room in the new Keys section of VV. We booked an SUV through Alamo for less than $200 for the week to help get us around, as we're definately not bus people.

As for dinners - we sat down with the kids and booked a couple of reservations. After a lot of reading of people's favorite experiences, I was sold on getting a patio table at the Rose and Crown for Illuminations, so I got a 7:50 ADR for Wednesday. I knew that being seated outside wasn't guaranteed, but I was determined to make it happen. In addition, we thought that the Luau at the Polynesian resort would be a nice way to wrap up our trip, so we booked the 5:15 show on our last full day, Saturday.

Other than that, we were going to play it by ear. The only thing we had to do was go to EPCOT on Wednesday, since that was when we had an ADR. I don't know how a lot of you do it - having all of those ADRs lined up for every night of your stay. I guess I'm not that organized. I kinda' like going with the flow a bit - letting the day take us where it will. Of course, this doesn't allow you to get into some of the most desired Disney restaurants, so I guess it's a bit of a give-and-take thing.

So, in my mind's eye, this is what our vacation was going to look like:

Sunday - Travel, check in, hit the grocery store, hit the pool, just chill.
Monday - MagicKingdom.
Tuesday - Hang by the pool - more chillin'.
Wednesday - EPCOT, R&C for Illuminations.
Thursday - SeaWorld.
Friday - Islands of Adventure.
Saturday - More chillin' poolside, Luau at Polynesian.
Sunday - check out, travel back home.

Sounds good, right?!?

Well, a few days before our trip, we found out that we would have an unexpected guest along with us. Alberto.

Next - Day one. Airplane, Alamo and Alberto.

 

[MouseEarsJenny]

Nice job so far! As a fellow pasty NE Pennsylvanian who tangoed with Alberto this week (and has a too grown up 9 year old daughter), I look forward to the rest of your report! Hope you didn't get too drenched!!

 

[GADISNEYGIRL]

Those Tropical Storms can certainly be pesky, hope your vacation wasn't impacted too negatively!

 

[Lisa_Belle]

OK I'm in. This is the first "non-planner" trip report I've run across. Can't wait to see how the (non?)-logistics of a laid-back vacation to Disney work. In June no doubt.

 

[MinnieGal]

Great start! I sure hope your unexpected guest didn't ruin any of you plans!

 

[FSUMARCHIEF]

Don't you just hate seeing those pictures on the weather channel? We watch them every time they come! Hope your trip wasn't awful. It was only there for like a day, though wasn't it?

Look forward to more!

Blessings!
MarkyMark

 

[Avivasmom]

Want to read more from another NY JETS fan.

 

[AnneMcD]

I was there too when Alberto decided to stop by and visit. Luckily it wasn't as bad as it could have been. We really lucked out. I NEVER expected a tropical storm to appear! The weather had looked so great before I left! Looking forward to more of your report!

 

[edcopp]

Our Disney/Orlando Trip Part II - Getting There

With all of our plans set, we got down to packing and getting revved up to go. Saturday was an extremely busy day for all of us. I worked the entire day from 9 to 5, the kids had a birthday party to go to, my wife was busy with last minute packing, and my son had a Little League game at 6PM. So we were all on the run all day long until about 8:30 PM. Then it was time to get the kids their showers and a late dinner and try to get them to bed. I still hadn't finished my packing, so I ended up staying up until about 1 AM.

I don't know about you guys, but the night before any vacation is a restless one for me - too excited to get good sleep. It's a bit like Christmas Eve for grown-ups. I had set my alarm for 6:30, but my eyes popped open at 6:15 so no need. Coffee, shower, rousing the kids and out the door by 7:30. So far, everything's cool and we're on time.

It's just over an hour from our home to Newark airport, so we get there with no problems. I had a reservation with Avistar, which is one of those off-site parking services with a Shuttle that takes you right to the door of your terminal. It's a little cheaper than parking at the airport, and the service is usually pretty reliable. So we drop the car off there, and within 5 minutes we're on our way to the terminal. Dropped off at the door, check our bags, get through security and stroll over to the gate with no problems. The kids are hungry, so my DW takes them to McD's at the food court for some good greasy sustenance. As our flight time approaches, we do the whole "Who has to go to the bathroom?" thing, and between the coffee and the McDonald's, everyone does. So the gals go first, while DS and I watch the bags. In 7-8 minutes they're back, so the guys go. My son only has to use the urinal - I have to sit. So I stand there watching him and I hear them with the first boarding calls for our flight. No biggie. Plenty of time, right? There's just one guy in line for the stalls, so I walk DS back to the gate, tell DW I'll be right back, and head back to the Men's Room. Upon entry, I'm faced with a 5 man line for the stalls now. So I wait. And wait. And wait. What in God's name is he doing in there?!? SHOWERING?!? It must have taken close to 10 minutes just to get a seat, and while I know that they're not going to take off without me - I'm not exactly panic-free. So I rush through as quickly as possible (I think I lapped the guy in stall # 3 ), wash the hands and hustle out to the gate. By this time the waiting area is empty, except for the DW, DS and DD standing there, giving me the "What Took You So Long" look. I gave them a quick recap and we started boarding the plane. As we walk onto the plane, we have our first and only celebrity sighting of our trip. We enter through 1st class, and who's sitting in the 3rd row window seat?!? Steven VanZandt. AKA Little Steven form Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. For those that aren't familiar with him, this is him singing with The Boss.

Or perhaps you know him as Silvio Dante, Tony's right hand man and owner of the BadaBing! on The Sopranos.

Well, I see him as I'm walking past, but he looks up as I'm standing there and gives me a nod when he sees that I know who he is. I have to say, he was hard to miss - he was wearing a purple, satin paisley shirt with his trademark matching bandana. I was half inclined to sneak back up to 1st class to try and get a pic - but decided to leave him alone. So it's back to coach with us!!

The rest of the flight was fine - easy up, no turbulence to speak of, easy down. We disembark and hit the restrooms again, then we proceed to the monorail that takes you over to the Baggage Claim area. We locate our carousel, and unbelievably there's already bags coming around on it. At first I thought that we must be looking at the wrong one, but nope - it's ours!! How can that be?!? We just got off the plane 10 minutes ago!! Terrific. Fastest I've ever seen my bags. We collect our luggage and head off in the direction of Alamo.

I had checked in for our rental car online, so I just had to find where they kept their cars and go pick one out. Only problem is that there were no good signs directing you to where you should do this, so I cut in line a bit and asked a lady at the Alamo counter where I needed to go. She directed me across the street from the terminal into that big parking garage, where there were lots of signs. We got to the Alamo section of the garage, told a girl there we were already checked in for an SUV, and she told us what row to look in. The DD and DS were in charge of picking out our ride for the week, and they quickly settled on a blue Buick. Nice looking truck. Nice leather seats all around. Good enough. So we exited the garage, followed the signs towards Orlando and that's when we first saw our uninvited vacation guest. Alberto. It was probably 1PM by now, and it just absolutely started pouring. So we slushed our way down the highway, paid those ridiculous 2 tolls in 2 miles - what a ripoff!! And found the International Drive exit. Within minutes we were pulling into the front gate of Vistana Village.

Check-in wasn't supposed to be until 4PM, but I figured I'd give it a shot. So I parked the SUV in front of the reception area, dodged the raindrops and entered the lobby. Nice lobby. Immediately saw the Disney Tickets desk over on the left and knew that I'd be depositing large sums of money there in the next few days. Saw the Reception Desk and a cute, smiling girl behind it and headed over. I had e-mailed a request for a top floor unit in the newer Keys section of VV a few weeks earlier, so I reminded the girl of this. She was really nice and helpful and produced the keycards for room 15-505. Top floor, in the Keys, thank you very much. She gave me a map of the resort and some other materials, reminded me that there was a "Welcome Gift" for me and my family over at the Vacation Services desk, and I was on my way.

(This post will continue at a later time... Have to stop and watch the World Cup game for now. USA!!! USA!!!)

 

[Minnie]

I'm enjoying your report!!

The owner of the company I work for flew into Tampa that day for a trip south. Thankfully it was a safe trip but it had everyone concerned.

 

[lauren_elizabeth]

I can't wait to read more!
AND GO USA!!

 

[MommyPoppins]

(This post will continue at a later time... Have to stop and watch the World Cup game for now. USA!!! USA!!!)

I'm sorry but that is unacceptable. Feed your family? Fine. Go to work? Okay. Watch TV? I don't think so. Get back to work. We expect a new installment every couple of days.

I guess I should go work on mine. heh.

Great report. Keep it coming! Our weather here(southwest) was rainy for 3 days with Alberto. I wondered what it was like in Orlando. Now, I will.

 

[edcopp]

Well, that was certainly a disappointing effort bt Team USA. Oh well - it's not like soccer's a real sport anyway...

So we were checked in, and now we're off to our room. Around to the back of the resort, turn right, go around the activity center and there it is - building 15. We park right up front, grab our bags and dash through the rain, which is thankfully subsiding a bit. The only bad thing about our building - the slowest elevator East of the Mississippi. This thing took forever to come, was stuffy as anything and crept along at about 2 feet a minute. And we had to go to the 5th floor.

But we find our room after our ascension that took the same amount of time as the trip up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, we open the door and boy, were we impressed. Huge 2 bedroom condo. Big kitchen. Granite countertops. 4 closets. Screened in balcony overlooking the pool. 2 bathrooms. Jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom. Really, really nice. You can check out my full review of Vistana Village at tripadvisor here .

So we check the place out - we're digging it. We get right to unpacking so that we're settled in as soon as possible. DW starts helping the kids, I start unpacking our stuff in our room. After we're done unpacking, I see that the message light on the phone is flashing. I check the message, and it's the 1st of about 5 identical messages I'll receive over the course of the week. "Hi, EdCopp. This is CheeryVoice at the Vacation Services Desk at the lobby. I hope that you're enjoying your stay here at the Vistana Village, and I just want to remind you that we have a reaaaaaaally nice welcome gift for you and your family that includes some nice items and some great savings on the local attractions. So, if you want to get some free crap for giving us the opportunity to try to get you and your family to waste 2 hours listening to our timeshare pitch, stop by the BlackHole, Two Go In One Comes Out Desk in the Main Lobby anytime between 7 and 5 tomorrow. Thanks!!"

While I was unpacking, what did I discover? I forgot to pack my bathing suit. How do I forget that?!? I remember everything else, but I forget to pack a bathing suit when we're spending a week at the resort that was voted to have the best pool in the US by the readers at tripadvisor?!? Well, I guess we'll have to find me a new one. So instead of going shopping at the nearby Publix, we find that there's a WalMart Supercenter a little farther away, so we head out the door to get some groceries there, and to get Dad a new suit.

Man, that's a big WalMart. The one here in East Stroudsburg is big, but this one is HUGE. We run in, I head over to the Men's department and my DW and DD go over to the groceries. I quickly find a pretty nice bathing suit for $13.99. Man, ya' gotta' love WalMart. 14 bucks for a bathing suit. Sweet. DS and I run back over to the grocery side and find the girls. One aisle later and what do we see?? Beer and wine!!! They sell beer and wine at WalMart?!? That's awesome. Here in PA you need to get beer from a beer distributor and wine and alcohol from a sperate liquor store. Talk about one-stop shopping!!! So we pick up some light stuff for breakfast and snacks. 12 pack of RollingRock, bottle of wine, some TGIF skins and wings, cereal, milk, Starbucks coffee, french vanilla creamer, chips, crackers, grapes, cheese, bagels, ice cream, soda, etc... After just 30 minutes in the store we were pretty much done, so we headed to the check out. On the way, we noticed some pretty nice Mickey shirts. We didn't buy them, but I wish we had - they were only like $6. So we go to the check-out and load all of our stuff. You know what the lady at the register asks me? "Do you have ID, sir?" You should've seen the look on DW's face. If you recall, I just turned 37 last month. And this lady's checking to see if I'm 21?!? God bless her soul, she just made my day.

So we leave the store and head back to the resort, and my DD starts acting like she's going to be sick. I think she was just a little worn out by the last 2 days, but once we get back to the condo, unpack the groceries and settle in she's crying that her stomach hurts and she just wants to go to bed. It's only 5:00 or so, but she really doesn't look good. So much for going out to eat, though. So DS and I head out in search of food, we head North up I-Drive and we decide on KFC. Of course, we spend a minute at the light by SeaWorld ogling Kraken, which looks cool as anything to me. More on that later... We get a 6 piece meal, all white meat, and 2 of those Ultimate Bowls. The kids had those, man they looked pretty good. We ended up with a couple of leftover breasts that we stuck in the fridge, and DS noticed that it wasn't raining out so he immediately began clamoring for the pool. I told him to wait a few minutes, as I had just finished eating, but he was all gung-ho so I soon got changed. Just as we were getting ready to leave, guess who pops her head out of her room and announces that she's feeling better? DD. So she jumps in her suit, and the three of us head down. DW says she's tired and may join us in a bit.

We take the elevator down for 10 minutes - I'm wondering which of the kids hit the "4th Coencentric Ring of Hades" button, but the doors open to show us that we've only gone down to the 1st floor, and we head around the back of the building. We go to the pool, stopping at the activity center to grab some pool towels. Nice place. Pool tables, air hockey, TV, arcade, state-of-the-art albeit small fitness center. We head out to the pool and the kids jump right in. I dip my toes in to see how warm it is, and it's plenty warm. So I jump right in with them. I swim around with the kids for a while. We're talking about our plans for the week. They're a little disappointed that we may not be going to a park on Monday - but if we can push our MK day back to a day that there's not torrential rain forecasted, all the better IMO.

After an hour or so, it's now after 8:30 so we head up to the room. The kids let the door slam when we walk in, which I think wakes DW up from a nap in the bedroom. Of course she denies it. Is there a human on the face of the Earth who answers honestly to the "Were you sleeping?" question? I'm guessing not. The kids have some ice cream, put their jammies on and it's off to bed. They, of course, pass out in a matter of minutes. DW and I get ready for bed, discussing our options for tomorrow. It doesn't look good after about 20 looks at our "Local Weather On the 8s" on the WeatherChannel, so we decide that we'll take the kids over to the ESPN Zone at the Boardwalk to watch the first USA game of the World Cup against the Czech Republic. We figured we'd have lunch there and then head over to DisneyQuest for the evening. I looked at it online a bit and it looked pretty cool. DW, ever the optimist, says "Maybe the forecast for tomorrow will change." RIGHT. I try to watch the season premier of Deadwood on HBO but fall asleep 15 minutes into it, visions of goals and games dancing in my head...

Next - Day 2, Pouring Rain, Pouring Beers and Poor Planning.

 

[DisDon]

Hey, fun report! I dug your interpretation of the welcome message from the front desk. We stayed at Liki Tiki and I tried to convince DW that the timeshare presentations are a waste of our oh so precious vacation time, oh well. Too bad for old US of A, you're right, maybe soccer would be more exciting if they could use their hands like humans beings, or even if they got rid of the goalies like basketball!
Keep 'em coming!

 

[Lisa_Belle]

So we go to the check-out and load all of our stuff. You know what the lady at the register asks me? "Do you have ID, sir?" You should've seen the look on DW's face. If you recall, I just turned 37 last month. And this lady's checking to see if I'm 21?!? God bless her soul, she just made my day.[/B]

Don't you just love those folks

Great report; can't wait to hear more about Alberto crashing the party.

 

[cjhinch]

Loving your report! Your shopping list sounds strangely like one we would have! LOL I am going to check out the place you stayed.....it sounds nice!!

 

[MelanieC]

Can't wait for the rest. Loving your report!

 

[Backstage_Gal]

Really enjoying your report, Ed. Keep it coming...

 

[missj1975]

Great report! Can't wait to hear how much fun you had at Magic Kingdom.

 

[PreppyPolyMom]

Great report, can't wait to read more!