PTR-Cheating on Mickey w/Harry!...OMG! Only a month to go!

[franandaj]

Hey Alison!

We were on the East Coast with my family for Christmas and had a great vacation. The timing was perfect; we got to enjoy 20 inches of snow without any airport hassles. I enjoyed not having to shovel but missed out on sledding and snowball fights. Stephanie had to shovel at 7am with my Dad but got to go sledding with our nieces and nephew. Let us know if you are coming up to the Bay Area again, it would be fun to meet up for a meal and some Disney chat.

My parents and I visited the Pixar exhibit and enjoyed it very much. The Toy Story zeotrope (the same one that is at the Animation Academy) was a real treat. Did you have a chance to see the rest of the museum? The history of California gallery is one of the best exhibits I have ever experienced. Totally immersive with reproductions of original objects and books that you can pick up and climb on and read. As you move through the different time periods there is background music from the period and recordings of real people talking about their experiences. It's incredibly well done and worth a visit for anyone who lives in California.

I got the scoop on Marsala wine and as I should have realized, since it is wine, it is acidic. But I was thinking about making the recipe anyway, just leaving the wine out. The pan sauce should still have nice flavor from the chicken drippings, garlic, shallots and mushrooms. What do you think, still worth making?

Hope all is well this weekend.

I think the recipe should work without the wine, but you might want to add a little sugar or splenda since the Marsala adds a sweetness...we are planning on visting the Bay Area more often now than Fran has new knees and we're thinking that we'll be up again in March or April. We saw a little bit of the museum while we were waiting for our entrance time. Fran has some native American in her heritage so we really enjoyed what we saw of the CA history part. They had some great Native American stuff and we really want to come back and see some more of it.

I hope your knee is feeling better, and perhaps we can all get together soon. Things are actually really good, and I'll have a post about that, but I want to post our last night on our Christmas trip and that finale and then I'll let everyone know about the research and stuff we've been doing. Nothing has been booked or finalized, but we're almost ready to get another installment our our trip booked!

 

[franandaj]

So our last night is quite food porn worthy. For those of you who are not familiar with my culinary perspective…well I’d probably call it completely schizophrenic! I love V&A, CA Grill, Napa Rose and other 5 star restaurants, however, I will not turn down an awesome Chicken Fried Steak, Ribs, Burgers, Philly Cheesesteak, Sushi, and my most favorite….restaurants where you pay top dollar to COOK YOUR OWN FOOD!

Why would you want to pay to cook your own food? Well it’s fun! People are often amazed to learn that there are places that will serve you raw meat, but it’s done in almost every culture. In Asian cultures they have a variety of names for it, Shabu Shabu (where you swish your raw meat in boiling water), Korean BBQ (you have a BBQ in your table and grill your marinated meat), and I can’t remember the Chinese name. However this night we were doing the Swiss version of it, Fondue!

I always forget until the end of the night that they give you way, Way, WAY too much food for two people to possibly eat.-We had downloaded the menu the night that we made our reservation, so we had a pretty good idea of what we were ordering. We were going to get the Fondue Feast which is the third item down on the menu. Note the prices are dinner for TWO!

The only thing that we hadn’t chosen was which two meats to pick from each column. We knew that we were not getting Alligator, Llama or Ostrich, and ended up settling on Chicken, Teriyaki Sirloin, Buffalo, Scallops, Venison and Tiger Shrimp.

I think my parents ordered Chicken Japonaise, Spiced Fish, Scallops, Tiger Shrimp, and 2 orders of Filet.

So this is the “starter” kit that you get, bread, apples, grapes, pickles, potatoes and broccoli. They mix your cheese in the pot at your table. There are a number of choices for your cheeses, we got the four cheese blend (Emmentaler, Fontina, Gruyere, Surchoix) with kirschwasser

They started us off with this salad (which was large enough to be an entrée itself) while the cheeses melted.

Sorry I didn’t take a picture before it was almost gone, it was REALLY good!

As soon as we were done they whisked away our empty bowl. We opened a bottle of wine (actually this was our second),

I took this picture (though you can’t really see it) to show that they were selling the same bottle that we were drinking, but eight years younger for $250 Mind you it wasn’t a cheap bottle of wine when I bought it 10 or so years ago, but I didn’t pay no $250!

Next they brought us the meat and vegetables, this is our plate…

And this is the bouillon we cooked it in and my parents plate of meat.

These were the sauces you had a choice of. I believe it was garlic butter, green goddess, spicy barbeque, teriyaki, mango and smoky barbeque.

By this time I was stuffed, I could barely eat two pieces of each meat much less finish the plate, but there was chocolate coming! So I had to forge ahead.

This is dark chocolate mixed with Amaretto and cream, and then Fran ordered us another ½ a pot!

These were the tasty morsels that we got to dip in the chocolate. Ice Cream filled puffs, rice krispie treats, strawberries, marshmallows, snicker bars, cheesecake balls, bananas, I know there was more but I don't remember what, and each couple got a plate like this!

Needless to say they had to roll us out of there!

So to wrap this all up, we packed up the next morning and headed back southward via the 99. We made good time and arrived in Tulare around 3:30PM checked into the hotel and got together with our friend Arline to hit the outlets. Neither of us struck it big, but we each found a nice shirt. We had dinner at a local chain restaurant which was good (other than they forgot my mac & cheese and I had to wait forever to get it, but they comped it and gave us a coupon to come back for a free meal, so the manager made it good). The next day we had breakfast with our friend and hit the road before noon. We made good time and arrived home mid afternoon to hang out with our furkids!

Thanks for sharing my Christmas Trip, now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Happy trip update coming soon!

 

[Leshaface]

Wow! Had nooo idea there was a Walt Disney Museum!!! I have to check that out next time we're up there!!!

And the food...mmmmm looks fantastic! I LOVE the idea!

 

[franandaj]

So for the past two months, we have been on pins and needles. Fran’s father lived far longer than he wanted to and ended up draining all the cash that we had with round the clock caregivers. After he passed the little cash that we had left was spent on disasters that hit our rental properties. While her mother was alive she always said, “You can’t buy a loaf of bread with equity.” We have all this property and no money to maintain it or live on. So in early November we applied for a loan. For two months we have waited, and Friday we found out WE GOT THE LOAN!

Today we signed the papers and will hopefully have the cash by the end of the week. Most of it is going in the bank as cash reserves, but some of it will allow us to enjoy life and not worry about having a little fun. If you noticed the DC ticker in my siggie, that has been up in the air pending the loan. If we didn’t get it we were going to cancel the trip and use the airfare we had booked on miles for this trip to WDW. However, since we got the loan we booked our airfare today!

We got our airfare with our American Airlines miles and we were able to get our favorite non-stop flight from LAX to MCO. Our flight our leaves around 8:30AM CA time (which means we need to be at the airport around 6AM) and gets in about 4PM FL time. This will be perfect to pick up our rental car, head to the Universal resort, get settled and go have dinner. If nothing else we’ll start to get situated on East Coast time. Since I never get to bed before about 2AM the night we leave, I’ll be dead tired and want to turn in by 9 or 10PM. Perfect for us to get up for the Universal version of EMH to check out Harry Potter land!

Our return trip will take us out of Orlando at 1:15PM perfect timing to get up have breakfast, take the luggage down to Bell Services to check it to the plane and take ME back to the airport. But wait, didn’t we mention picking up a rental car at the beginning of the report…how does this work out? Do we ditch the car mid trip? Do we hoof it from Universal to Disney? Who knows? Keep your dial fixed! Stay tuned for the next installment!

 

[PrincessInOz]

That Fondue dinner looks great....but way too much meat for my pescatarian DH!

Congratulations on the loan.....makes the DC trip real now.

 

[franandaj]

That Fondue dinner looks great....but way too much meat for my pescatarian DH!

Congratulations on the loan.....makes the DC trip real now.

It was possible to order all fish & vegetables, but we're serious carnivores! I'm glad you know the correct description for your DH. Too many Americans say "I'm a vegetarian, but I eat fish." Well if you eat fish, you're NOT a vegetarian!

 

[Hawleys]

I think the recipe should work without the wine, but you might want to add a little sugar or splenda since the Marsala adds a sweetness...we are planning on visting the Bay Area more often now than Fran has new knees and we're thinking that we'll be up again in March or April. We saw a little bit of the museum while we were waiting for our entrance time. Fran has some native American in her heritage so we really enjoyed what we saw of the CA history part. They had some great Native American stuff and we really want to come back and see some more of it.

I hope your knee is feeling better, and perhaps we can all get together soon. Things are actually really good, and I'll have a post about that, but I want to post our last night on our Christmas trip and that finale and then I'll let everyone know about the research and stuff we've been doing. Nothing has been booked or finalized, but we're almost ready to get another installment our our trip booked!

Hi Alison,
My knee is feeling great! I got the ok to walk without crutches and it is such a wonderful feeling to be free after 8 weeks of gimping. I really feel for Fran after all her surgeries. It's a tough road but fingers crossed, it leads to recovery. Of course, Stephanie is very excited that fetch and carry duty is over for her as well.

I confess, I peeked ahead and found out what your really good news is. Congrats on securing a loan! And finalizing your tickets to WDW. It's been a couple big days.

Your fondue pictures had me drooling, especially the dessert plate. Not the usual sponge cake and strawberries, this looked so good. I was planning cook Chicken Not Marsala tonight but Stephanie was craving steak. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out. Keep us posted on your trip plans for the Bay Area.

 

[franandaj]

So we’ve been busy since the loan! Once I heard notification that we were approved, I emailed our rep at the DVC store and told him to go ahead with the 150 point contract at the VWL. It was a great price, maybe a few more points than we were looking for but at that price and in our Use Year, it was perfect. About five days later the money was in our account and our deposit went out to the Timeshare Store.

Then fast forward to last Tuesday 1/18/2011…DVC had a monumental announcement, they announced that resale contracts that close after March 20, 2011 will no longer have privileges to trade out to hotel properties, cruises and Adventures by Disney. I had done some research but it was in error, the cost of cruises that I found was per cabin based on two persons. I thought it was per person and figured that we could never rent our points to reputable people and get enough money for them to cover what we would pay for a cruise, so I decided we needed to have points that were good for anything. I didn’t want to pay Disney prices. Our TSS rep said we could close before the necessary date and a BCV contract came up THAT DAY! It was twice the number of points we were looking for but What the Hey? It’s at least $30+ less per point than direct from Disney. So if everything passes ROFR we’ll have a BOATLOAD of points! 888 to be exact

Everyone says that you don’t want to use your points for cruises or trading out, but I’m not sure that I want to rent to strangers. DVC members are responsible for the people who use their points. If we rent, it will be to people that I know somewhat and since a cruise will be 400-500 points per person and renting points at $10pp we could hopefully get somewhere near the $3000-$4000 we would need for the cruise, I might consider it, I thought that the cruises were $3000-4000 per person, not per stateroom, bad to me for accessing the information on my phone!

So anyways, we are now in ROFR for a 150 point contract at VWL and 200 points at BCV. This means we could probably stay at each place in a 1 Br unit for at least 5 or more days each year. Coupled with our SSR contract we could stay another week or two. Factor in the VGC, this is where we seem to be blowing most of our points since it’s close to home and easy to get to (but not easy to get into!). Now we can get 1 br units with the Jacuzzi tub instead of the studios, and if it’s a last minute trip no worries, we’ll have SSR, BCV or VWL points! That is if we pass ROFR!

So one last purchase was last week. We went out to meet PrincessInOz and her family at Disneyland for lunch. There is one item in particular that I have been eyeing for months, maybe even over a year. So we finally broke down and got it. I haven’t taken it off other than to take a bath or a shower.

Besides a new car and mattress, we’re pretty much done with our shopping spree now. The rest of the money goes into the bank to take care of our rental properties. Remodel of the FIL’s home (paint, carpeting, kitchen flooring…not to mention a HUGE Estate sale where we get rid of all their junk!) Then there’s the five unit building which will need to be treated for termites, that will be expensive, five tenants in hotel rooms for two nights! Not to mention the actual cost of the treatment. A new fence (as the termites ate the old one!) Perhaps we shouldn’t have spent all that money. Oh well too late now! We’ll just have to enjoy our points!

 

[DisneyFirefly]

If I were looking to rent points, could I maybe rent them from you someday? This is just a maybe, but it'd be something I'd be interested in if I ever wound up getting married and had a honeymoon at Disney. Or for our reunion next year, since my parents would love having a kitchen.

 

[franandaj]

If I were looking to rent points, could I maybe rent them from you someday? This is just a maybe, but it'd be something I'd be interested in if I ever wound up getting married and had a honeymoon at Disney. Or for our reunion next year, since my parents would love having a kitchen.

Absolutely! I think I'm going to have tons of points!

 

[DisneyFirefly]

Yay, thanks!

 

[bangzoom6877]

WOW!!! Congrats on everything! It's always nice to hear great things like that! You guys certainly deserve it!

VWL and BCV are both beautiful resorts! And very different from each other, giving you lots of variety in where you stay!

Enjoy everything!

 

[ACDSNY]

Sounds like an awesome shopping spree to me! Enjoy all your new goodies.

I've been eyeing that necklace too for the last year, but we did the Panama cruise instead. DH is still floating on cloud nine from his surprise birthday dinner at Club 33 last Sunday.

 

[Leshaface]

Ahhh VWL and BCV!!!

Okay, first that necklace is LOVELY!!! And second i'm so glad everything worked out for you guys!!!

Also, I want to hear about your dinner last night at the park!!

 

[BeadyLady]

Ok! great necklace!

i'm jumping on-board, love the whole report. Hope all is going your way now, as you and DP have been thru alot.

 

[Hawleys]

Gorgeous necklace!

 

[franandaj]

WOW!!! Congrats on everything! It's always nice to hear great things like that! You guys certainly deserve it!

VWL and BCV are both beautiful resorts! And very different from each other, giving you lots of variety in where you stay!

Enjoy everything!

Thanks! I just hope that we pass ROFR and before the time when our resale points are second class points.

Sounds like an awesome shopping spree to me! Enjoy all your new goodies.

I've been eyeing that necklace too for the last year, but we did the Panama cruise instead. DH is still floating on cloud nine from his surprise birthday dinner at Club 33 last Sunday.

I'm glad you two had a wonderful cruise and were able to top it all off with a special surprise dinner!

Ahhh VWL and BCV!!!

Okay, first that necklace is LOVELY!!! And second i'm so glad everything worked out for you guys!!!

Also, I want to hear about your dinner last night at the park!!

Still crossing our fingers on the points! I've only taken the necklace off for showers, otherwise I've been wearing it 24-7! Hopefully I'll post some dinner pictures later today, it was awesome.

Ok! great necklace!

i'm jumping on-board, love the whole report. Hope all is going your way now, as you and DP have been thru alot.

You're just in time, the good part is coming soon! Hopefully soon I'll be making the real reservations and then booking ADR's! Thanks for wishing us well. I think not only have we seen the light, but we're even out of the tunnel!

 

[franandaj]

Gorgeous necklace!

Thanks!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Just catching up....

That necklace is gorgeous; much more so in real life. And I'll stick my hands up in the air, if you're offering rental of points!

 

[franandaj]

So the other night along with some of our friends, we went to an amazing Winemaker Dinner with the Frank Family Vineyards here are some shots of the evening….

Fran and I relaxing before dinner

Butler passed hors d'ouvres served with California Champagne (yes they call it that, and the Proprietor’s reasoning, Prohibition was going on when the treaty was signed that only beverages from the French Champagne region could bear that name, America never signed that treaty, and he didn’t like the French!

Camembert Apricot Fritter, these were REALLY yummy!

Pastry Wrapped Baked Shrimp & Pattypan Squash Ratatouille

At the table we were treated to Pan Seared Day Boat Scallop, Toasted Grapefruit paired with the Frank Family Vineyards, Chardonnay, Napa Valley 2008

Farm-Raised Pheasant, Crenshaw Melon, Black Mission Fig, paired with Frank Family Vineyards, Pinot Noir, Carneros 2009

Portobello Mushroom eggplant Tart, Caramelized Maui Onion, paired with Frank Family Vineyards, Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley 2007

Prime New York Steak Sheppard’s Pie, in the shot glass were these wonderful little shoestring potatoes (now while this was a delectable dish, I thought the use of Prime New York Steak was wasted as it was cooked to well done, we could have been eating sirloin and wouldn’t have known the difference!), paired with Frank Family Vineyards, Cabernet Sauvignon “Reserve”, Napa Valley 2007

Sorbet of Wild Blackberry, we actually got two of these because the waiters like us and we are seated near the edge of the dining room, paired with “Promise” Tasting, Cabernet Sauvignon, Rutherford Napa Valley, 2008

Fromage Blanc Panna cotta, Manjari Chocolate Gelato, paired with Frank family vineyards, Zinfandel, Napa Valley 2008

By the time we got home, we were in such a food coma that I floated off to sleep in bliss!