greensombrero
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2019
- Messages
- 347
Welcome aboard me hearties! This be a bit of Disney therapy for yours truly now that our epic adventure has concluded. So climb aboard, sit close together and keep your ruddy hands in board. That be the best way to repel boarders. Wait, we are in 2020 so scratch sitting close together, leave 6 feet between you and other parties please.
Our adventure actually begins a year ago Christmas Day 2019. My wife and I had just revealed via an epic Christmas morning scavenger hunt to my 4 kids that their Christmas present for 2019 was a Marvel Day at Sea cruise out of Miami in early January 2020. It was our first ever cruise and first chance trying something different for our Disney fix after many family trips to Disneyland. You can read all about that epic adventure in my first trip report: Our First Ever Disney Cruise Was Magical, Marvel-ous, and Magnificent! (Disney Magic out of Miami with MDAS) Completed 2/19
I say our trip began there because it was our first time doing a vacation for Christmas as our primary gift. My kids had so much fun on our first cruise that they all said they wanted to do it for Christmas again next year. So shortly upon returning home I found a great 5 night Very Merry Time cruise on the Magic again out of Miami for a week before Christmas. We used our placeholder and had it booked, we were going from me never wanting to cruise to two cruises in 2020. At that point Covid was making a little news but not anything we figured would impact our plans. My parents even decided to join our cruise.
Of course then the world changed. Shortly after entering lockdown my company decided to close the office I was based out of and I found myself looking for work. I wondered if this would be the end of our vacation plans. Fortunately I was extremely blessed to quickly find a much better career opportunity through my network. So after a couple stressful weeks I was employed by a company doing really well despite all that was happening. I was optimistic that everything would blow over by summer at the latest. Summer came, my parents cancelled but I was sure by fall cruising would resume. Airlines were offering great deals with extra flexibility so we booked flights in early July. Because airfare was cheaper and it gave us some other options we booked flights to Orlando planning to spend a few days there relaxing at a Marriott resort, visiting Disney Springs and then drive to Miami for the cruise. We did something similar last time and found the drive to be a non issue. We paid in full for our cruise getting a bit more nervous but still holding out hope. We also booked opening day a Fall 2021 7 night Mexican Rivera out of San Diego as a backup. We wanted to try the Wonder and not having to fly would give us the chance to do a bit longer cruise.
Of course before too much longer our December Very Merry Time cruise was cancelled and we found ourselves stuck with a tough decision. Take the 125% credit or get all our money back and lose our placeholder 10% discount? We had talked about possibly pivoting to do Disney World instead of our cruise as we had seen it was open. People seemed to feel safe and enjoy it. Ultimately we decided we really needed to get away. I am very much a travel motivated person. I work hard for the privilege of getting away and seeing the world, it's how I chose to spend my money and I was struggling with the lack of travel for the year. The last few years I've had business trips in addition to going somewhere with the family but 2020 brought an end to all of that. We did camp a couple nights during the summer which was fun but a ton of work. I wanted to go somewhere to escape from reality that would provide lots of ready made entertainment for the whole family. So we decided to get the refund and pivot to a Disney World trip. The credit was appealing but we just had no idea at this point when cruising would resume and didn't want to just wait.
At this point I'll add my wife and I spent part of our honeymoon at Disney World back in 2006. That was the last time either of us have been there. We both had been a couple times prior to that. Living on the west coast though we started going with our kids to Disneyland and hadn't had a reason to go back. Things changed a couple years after our honeymoon with all the new fast pass reservations and the amount of planning just never appealed to us. Not when we were a decent drive from Disneyland and we liked it so much.
So I started looking into Disney World options. I would have liked to stay on property but there aren't a ton of options for a family of 6 without getting two rooms. I found a couple but they were surprisingly expensive to me. Also so many of the benefits of staying on property aren't available in this covid world. I also started comparing prices if I stayed at a Marriott property. I have titanium status with Marriott and I was going to save a ton of money if I took one of the promotions they were offering me. So we ultimately ended up extending the original reservation I had made at Marriott's Harbor Lake. The decision to stay here was honestly based on how cool the pool looked and the fact we could get a two bedroom villa for a really good rate. Normally when we go to Disneyland we leverage my Marriott perks and stay at one of the walking distance Marriott brands with a family suite that can accommodate 6, there are several of them. This would be our first time trying a Marriott Vacation Club property (their time share brand). You don't get all your perks when you go to one but it looked like a great set up for our family and the kids were super excited by the pool photos. I'll give my review of it later but hint we really liked it.
Now I really love when we go to Disneyland we can park at the hotel and I generally do very little driving until we drive home. There is something magical about being in that Disney bubble the whole time and we just can walk everywhere. I realized that would not be the case here given we weren't staying on property. I did run the numbers on the rental car cost and the cost of parking at Disney World, parking at our hotel was free. I was still saving a ton of money over staying on property so it was going to be worth it and I'd just deal with driving. Given the current Covid situation I felt having our own transportation and being able to remove our masks in the car might be nice and it was.
Our airfare was originally based on finding cheaper days to fly that gave us some pre time before our cruise. Now that we weren't cruising we had the option of adjusting dates. We needed to decide what we intended to do. We wanted to visit Universal to see the Harry Potter areas as we are big Harry Potter fans. We also wanted to see every Disney World park. I went and investigated ticket options and we ended up settling on 5 day Disney World tickets and buy 2 get 2 free promotion at Universal. Looking at our airfare dates we could do 5 days at Disney, have a resort day and do 2 days at Universal. We wouldn't fly out until evening of our last day and could use one of our free Universal days to do a partial day there. So we decided we would avoid the stress of changing flights and we could make it all work with our existing dates. It would maybe be a bit packed but we'd have one down day at the resort. At this point hours both at Disney and Universal were also rather short. We wouldn't be doing the long Disneyland days we were used to. Of course by the time we went hours had been extended a fair amount.
As I was considering our hotel I did want the ability to get a late checkout our last day given our late flight. I'm technically guaranteed a late checkout with my status but it does not apply at vacation club properties. I also had a free night certificate I couldn't use there that was expiring and I wasn't sure if Marriott would extend it. So I decided to do a split stay. We'd check out of the nice 2 bedroom villa and I found a 2 queen studio with a sofa bed that would sleep 6 at a brand new Westin Element that just opened in the summer. I haven't stayed at Element before but now that it is part of the Marriott family and being a brand new hotel I figured we'd try it. They'd accept my certificate and I had enough points to add 3 more nights. So I decided to do a total of 4 nights there and overlapped it so we'd technically have two hotel rooms one night. I wanted that so we could move our stuff and have access to the new room early and not have to interrupt a park day, this ended up working out great. It was a smaller room but for a couple nights we'd make do.
So there you have it, we had our plans made, treasure map in hand, and we were ready to set sail. I think it was end of September, early October everything was figured out. Our kids were disappointed they wouldn't get their planned Christmas cruise but they were excited for Disney World and Universal instead. I knew from our Disneyland trips it wouldn't be the relaxing we fell in love with on our first DCL cruise but it would still be a ton of fun and much needed. My wife usually makes trip t shirts. However in 2020 t shirts would be swapped for custom themed masks. She volunteered early in the pandemic as part of a big service project to make masks for medical workers. They supplied the materials and patterns and she sewed. She made a copy of the pattern and made us a ton of masks all summer long to ensure we had them for work, school, shopping etc. So she went looking for material both at local stores and online and started ensuring we'd have Disney and Harry Potter themed masks for our trip. I mention that now as all the masks you see in our photos were made by my awesome wife.
Of course the hardest part of any trip is the waiting as it approaches. We had some excitement as we hit the 60 day mark to make ADRs and made several. I had a chance to fly for a short business trip the end of October. Gave me a chance to scope out flying in the world of Covid. Also gave me a chance to see our new airport terminal that had just been opened and be prepared to guide my family through it. I should probably add that when we originally planned this trip our 3 youngest kids were supposed to be out of school from Thanksgiving to Christmas because they go to year round school and that was their assigned break cycle. Only my oldest would have to miss school and she is a good student and we were sure we could work it out with her teachers. Of course Covid changed things and they moved the school to a traditional schedule because they weren't ready for it to restart the end of July as it normally would. This means my kids would be missing school but the school said they'd be flexible since they changed things and the whole year is a bit of a mess anyway.
As we hit the week of Thanksgiving we all went into our own quarantine as my biggest fear was someone getting sick before our trip. We were being careful anyways but we made sure we had what we needed from the store, we weren't seeing family anyways and I stopped going into the office. Most of my company works remote right now but I was going into the office fairly regularly due what some of my team does and the fact I like the separation of work and home. Everyone is socially distanced, wearing masks and doing all the things we do now plus it is pretty empty most days. Nevertheless I didn't want to risk any sort of exposure before we left so we went into our bubble two weeks before leaving.
Finally the big day was here! Everyone was healthy and we were ready for a much needed vacation! The trip to the airport and the flight out was uneventful. Before we knew it we were here in the MCO tram. I will add for our flight we opted for medical masks we had in our basement for years. I certainly never expected we'd be wearing them on a trip to Disney. We opted for the potential extra protection they offered for our trip through airports and the flight.
After we checked into our hotel we had a dinner reservation in Disney Springs at Paradiso 37. How often do you get this much personal space at a restaurant?
After dinner we went and bought our magic bands. I thought it would be nice to have our tickets on them and we thought we could find more options if we bought them at Disney Springs. We didn't spend too long though as we had a busy day planned for tomorrow. Our first day would be at Hollywood Studios which meant being up bright and early to try and score a Rise of the Resistance Boarding Pass.
Our adventure actually begins a year ago Christmas Day 2019. My wife and I had just revealed via an epic Christmas morning scavenger hunt to my 4 kids that their Christmas present for 2019 was a Marvel Day at Sea cruise out of Miami in early January 2020. It was our first ever cruise and first chance trying something different for our Disney fix after many family trips to Disneyland. You can read all about that epic adventure in my first trip report: Our First Ever Disney Cruise Was Magical, Marvel-ous, and Magnificent! (Disney Magic out of Miami with MDAS) Completed 2/19
I say our trip began there because it was our first time doing a vacation for Christmas as our primary gift. My kids had so much fun on our first cruise that they all said they wanted to do it for Christmas again next year. So shortly upon returning home I found a great 5 night Very Merry Time cruise on the Magic again out of Miami for a week before Christmas. We used our placeholder and had it booked, we were going from me never wanting to cruise to two cruises in 2020. At that point Covid was making a little news but not anything we figured would impact our plans. My parents even decided to join our cruise.
Of course then the world changed. Shortly after entering lockdown my company decided to close the office I was based out of and I found myself looking for work. I wondered if this would be the end of our vacation plans. Fortunately I was extremely blessed to quickly find a much better career opportunity through my network. So after a couple stressful weeks I was employed by a company doing really well despite all that was happening. I was optimistic that everything would blow over by summer at the latest. Summer came, my parents cancelled but I was sure by fall cruising would resume. Airlines were offering great deals with extra flexibility so we booked flights in early July. Because airfare was cheaper and it gave us some other options we booked flights to Orlando planning to spend a few days there relaxing at a Marriott resort, visiting Disney Springs and then drive to Miami for the cruise. We did something similar last time and found the drive to be a non issue. We paid in full for our cruise getting a bit more nervous but still holding out hope. We also booked opening day a Fall 2021 7 night Mexican Rivera out of San Diego as a backup. We wanted to try the Wonder and not having to fly would give us the chance to do a bit longer cruise.
Of course before too much longer our December Very Merry Time cruise was cancelled and we found ourselves stuck with a tough decision. Take the 125% credit or get all our money back and lose our placeholder 10% discount? We had talked about possibly pivoting to do Disney World instead of our cruise as we had seen it was open. People seemed to feel safe and enjoy it. Ultimately we decided we really needed to get away. I am very much a travel motivated person. I work hard for the privilege of getting away and seeing the world, it's how I chose to spend my money and I was struggling with the lack of travel for the year. The last few years I've had business trips in addition to going somewhere with the family but 2020 brought an end to all of that. We did camp a couple nights during the summer which was fun but a ton of work. I wanted to go somewhere to escape from reality that would provide lots of ready made entertainment for the whole family. So we decided to get the refund and pivot to a Disney World trip. The credit was appealing but we just had no idea at this point when cruising would resume and didn't want to just wait.
At this point I'll add my wife and I spent part of our honeymoon at Disney World back in 2006. That was the last time either of us have been there. We both had been a couple times prior to that. Living on the west coast though we started going with our kids to Disneyland and hadn't had a reason to go back. Things changed a couple years after our honeymoon with all the new fast pass reservations and the amount of planning just never appealed to us. Not when we were a decent drive from Disneyland and we liked it so much.
So I started looking into Disney World options. I would have liked to stay on property but there aren't a ton of options for a family of 6 without getting two rooms. I found a couple but they were surprisingly expensive to me. Also so many of the benefits of staying on property aren't available in this covid world. I also started comparing prices if I stayed at a Marriott property. I have titanium status with Marriott and I was going to save a ton of money if I took one of the promotions they were offering me. So we ultimately ended up extending the original reservation I had made at Marriott's Harbor Lake. The decision to stay here was honestly based on how cool the pool looked and the fact we could get a two bedroom villa for a really good rate. Normally when we go to Disneyland we leverage my Marriott perks and stay at one of the walking distance Marriott brands with a family suite that can accommodate 6, there are several of them. This would be our first time trying a Marriott Vacation Club property (their time share brand). You don't get all your perks when you go to one but it looked like a great set up for our family and the kids were super excited by the pool photos. I'll give my review of it later but hint we really liked it.
Now I really love when we go to Disneyland we can park at the hotel and I generally do very little driving until we drive home. There is something magical about being in that Disney bubble the whole time and we just can walk everywhere. I realized that would not be the case here given we weren't staying on property. I did run the numbers on the rental car cost and the cost of parking at Disney World, parking at our hotel was free. I was still saving a ton of money over staying on property so it was going to be worth it and I'd just deal with driving. Given the current Covid situation I felt having our own transportation and being able to remove our masks in the car might be nice and it was.
Our airfare was originally based on finding cheaper days to fly that gave us some pre time before our cruise. Now that we weren't cruising we had the option of adjusting dates. We needed to decide what we intended to do. We wanted to visit Universal to see the Harry Potter areas as we are big Harry Potter fans. We also wanted to see every Disney World park. I went and investigated ticket options and we ended up settling on 5 day Disney World tickets and buy 2 get 2 free promotion at Universal. Looking at our airfare dates we could do 5 days at Disney, have a resort day and do 2 days at Universal. We wouldn't fly out until evening of our last day and could use one of our free Universal days to do a partial day there. So we decided we would avoid the stress of changing flights and we could make it all work with our existing dates. It would maybe be a bit packed but we'd have one down day at the resort. At this point hours both at Disney and Universal were also rather short. We wouldn't be doing the long Disneyland days we were used to. Of course by the time we went hours had been extended a fair amount.
As I was considering our hotel I did want the ability to get a late checkout our last day given our late flight. I'm technically guaranteed a late checkout with my status but it does not apply at vacation club properties. I also had a free night certificate I couldn't use there that was expiring and I wasn't sure if Marriott would extend it. So I decided to do a split stay. We'd check out of the nice 2 bedroom villa and I found a 2 queen studio with a sofa bed that would sleep 6 at a brand new Westin Element that just opened in the summer. I haven't stayed at Element before but now that it is part of the Marriott family and being a brand new hotel I figured we'd try it. They'd accept my certificate and I had enough points to add 3 more nights. So I decided to do a total of 4 nights there and overlapped it so we'd technically have two hotel rooms one night. I wanted that so we could move our stuff and have access to the new room early and not have to interrupt a park day, this ended up working out great. It was a smaller room but for a couple nights we'd make do.
So there you have it, we had our plans made, treasure map in hand, and we were ready to set sail. I think it was end of September, early October everything was figured out. Our kids were disappointed they wouldn't get their planned Christmas cruise but they were excited for Disney World and Universal instead. I knew from our Disneyland trips it wouldn't be the relaxing we fell in love with on our first DCL cruise but it would still be a ton of fun and much needed. My wife usually makes trip t shirts. However in 2020 t shirts would be swapped for custom themed masks. She volunteered early in the pandemic as part of a big service project to make masks for medical workers. They supplied the materials and patterns and she sewed. She made a copy of the pattern and made us a ton of masks all summer long to ensure we had them for work, school, shopping etc. So she went looking for material both at local stores and online and started ensuring we'd have Disney and Harry Potter themed masks for our trip. I mention that now as all the masks you see in our photos were made by my awesome wife.
Of course the hardest part of any trip is the waiting as it approaches. We had some excitement as we hit the 60 day mark to make ADRs and made several. I had a chance to fly for a short business trip the end of October. Gave me a chance to scope out flying in the world of Covid. Also gave me a chance to see our new airport terminal that had just been opened and be prepared to guide my family through it. I should probably add that when we originally planned this trip our 3 youngest kids were supposed to be out of school from Thanksgiving to Christmas because they go to year round school and that was their assigned break cycle. Only my oldest would have to miss school and she is a good student and we were sure we could work it out with her teachers. Of course Covid changed things and they moved the school to a traditional schedule because they weren't ready for it to restart the end of July as it normally would. This means my kids would be missing school but the school said they'd be flexible since they changed things and the whole year is a bit of a mess anyway.
As we hit the week of Thanksgiving we all went into our own quarantine as my biggest fear was someone getting sick before our trip. We were being careful anyways but we made sure we had what we needed from the store, we weren't seeing family anyways and I stopped going into the office. Most of my company works remote right now but I was going into the office fairly regularly due what some of my team does and the fact I like the separation of work and home. Everyone is socially distanced, wearing masks and doing all the things we do now plus it is pretty empty most days. Nevertheless I didn't want to risk any sort of exposure before we left so we went into our bubble two weeks before leaving.
Finally the big day was here! Everyone was healthy and we were ready for a much needed vacation! The trip to the airport and the flight out was uneventful. Before we knew it we were here in the MCO tram. I will add for our flight we opted for medical masks we had in our basement for years. I certainly never expected we'd be wearing them on a trip to Disney. We opted for the potential extra protection they offered for our trip through airports and the flight.
After we checked into our hotel we had a dinner reservation in Disney Springs at Paradiso 37. How often do you get this much personal space at a restaurant?
After dinner we went and bought our magic bands. I thought it would be nice to have our tickets on them and we thought we could find more options if we bought them at Disney Springs. We didn't spend too long though as we had a busy day planned for tomorrow. Our first day would be at Hollywood Studios which meant being up bright and early to try and score a Rise of the Resistance Boarding Pass.
Hello! What an awesome start to your Trip Report! 
Our Merrytime cruise was cancelled and we ended up extending our pre-cruise WDW stay to add a few more park days. We had a blast, but did not get lucky with Rise of the Resistance. We ended up rescheduling our cruise to February of 2022, so I think another try for Rise of the Resistance will be possible. Congratulations on scoring your boarding group! It looks like you had a great time at Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom!
