She's On Top of the World, a September 2018 TR at Copper Creek Villas and Cabins (Completed 12/20)

[thumper*]

Hi Paul and Melissa I'm following along, your family and friends are so cute and I can't wait to read more about your exciting vacay.

Luckily he didn't get to meet the paramedics this trip.

UH OH

Your room looks amazing.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Beautiful room!!! I love the layout!

So did we! We loved having so much useful common area in the middle, and a lot of space int he bedrooms as well. We truly can't wait to stay in one of these rooms again, and we decided that we will book the dedicated two bedroom for next trip.

Hi Paul and Melissa I'm following along, your family and friends are so cute and I can't wait to read more about your exciting vacay.

Thanks for joining in. We had a great time and will enjoy sharing it.

UH OH

Yeah, that was last year when he tested Gravity at Geyser Point. The Reedy Creek Fire Department is quite nice, but we were very happy not to see them this time.

Your room looks amazing.

Thanks, we were super happy with it. We have some more pics to show as we go along.

 

[Cloe Colton]

Following along! What a fun start to your trip! We stayed at WL on our trip in July and LOVED it. I love how Copper Creek is in the main building.

Also love that you write the TR together! Very fun!

 

[Stitch808]

Can't wait to hear all about your trip. One day I'll be ambitious enough to do a trip report, except all I take pictures of is the resorts and food!

 

[Leesha.Monster]

Wow that 2 bedroom is amazing! We’re all booked for our first CCV stay this July and my son wanted a 2 bedroom.. well there’s only 3 of us

You got the Halloween mugs.. so lucky! We thought maybe we’d get them for our August trip but we were just about a week too early.

I really can’t wait to try that magic cookie bar on our trip. It sounds amazing!

Looking forward to your next update.

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

I am following along!

 

[dnllmz]

The kids were so cute, and they were glad to pose for a selfie with Allie. Her day was made, and we’d only been in Orlando for under an hour.

That's awesome!

Really, the view from the 7th floor is terrifying for me, beautiful but terrifying.

I would feel the same way. Eeek!

I can't believe it was our only Magic cookie bar of the trip!

That looks delicious. I finally tried a magic cookie bar in July. It was pretty good and I'm thinking of replicating them at home. Maybe when I do some Christmas baking which I haven't done much of the last few years. This year we won't have a Disney trip in December so I should have more time.

 

[SCSteve]

I was just watching the Target gift cards disappear, and we hadn't even done anything yet..

That made me LOL. Its only funny because its true..

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Following along! What a fun start to your trip! We stayed at WL on our trip in July and LOVED it. I love how Copper Creek is in the main building.

Also love that you write the TR together! Very fun!

We love being in the main building. We never seriously considered DVC until we had the chance to buy at Copper Creek. The cabin was slightly disappointing in that we missed having the benefit of all being under one roof, and having to walk outside just seemed so not lodge-like.
We have fun writing the report, and found what works for us. We're glad that people are willing to follow along.

Can't wait to hear all about your trip. One day I'll be ambitious enough to do a trip report, except all I take pictures of is the resorts and food!

SOunds like a great basis for a trip report to us. Those are our favorite pictures too. We just throw in some of the kids because they are kind of cute too.

Wow that 2 bedroom is amazing! We’re all booked for our first CCV stay this July and my son wanted a 2 bedroom.. well there’s only 3 of us

I'm sure your son would be quite happy with that Master Suite. It really is a nice room layout, and we loved it even more than we thought we would.

You got the Halloween mugs.. so lucky! We thought maybe we’d get them for our August trip but we were just about a week too early.

Aww, it's too bad that you missed out on getting them. It is nice to have something different. I brought my green lid and used it on the mug, which got a lot of comments from people looking to get one like that.

I really can’t wait to try that magic cookie bar on our trip. It sounds amazing!
Looking forward to your next update.

We do enjoy the cookie bars, both at WL and POR. We really can't believe we only had one this trip. Maybe that's one side effect of not having snack credits...

I am following along!

Welcome again, we're always glad to have your participation.

That looks delicious. I finally tried a magic cookie bar in July. It was pretty good and I'm thinking of replicating them at home. Maybe when I do some Christmas baking which I haven't done much of the last few years. This year we won't have a Disney trip in December so I should have more time.

We found a recipe on Disney Food Blog for them. We will be trying it: http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2013/...magic-cookie-bar-at-disneys-wilderness-lodge/

That made me LOL. Its only funny because its true..

We're glad you are enjoying it. There's nothing like spending over $100 at a QS to kick off the spending. In the end it worked out great though, and we survived (and actually saved money) by not buying the dining plan.

 

[buteraa]

What an awesome trip report so far. Love the 2bedroom, it looks like a ton of space!

 

[Wood Nymph]

Happy Birthday to Allie! I hope she has a fun birthday.

We are busy getting ready for our birthday boy (grandson), our daughter and son-in-law to visit us this weekend. We'll celebrate both his birthday and DH's birthday on Saturday. Then I'll be back to comment on your trip report. A Disney trip and then a birthday makes for a busy week.

 

[cinderaimee]

Following along! We are staying at BRV in January so I'm obsessed with WL TR's right now!

Your family is super cute and it looks like you had a great group to travel with. Your room is huge and gorgeous! Love that giant tub.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

What an awesome trip report so far. Love the 2bedroom, it looks like a ton of space!

Thanks, we're just getting started, but we should have the start of our our first full day at Disney up soon.

Happy Birthday to Allie! I hope she has a fun birthday.

We are busy getting ready for our birthday boy (grandson), our daughter and son-in-law to visit us this weekend. We'll celebrate both his birthday and DH's birthday on Saturday. Then I'll be back to comment on your trip report. A Disney trip and then a birthday makes for a busy week.

Thank You so much. That is so sweet that you remembered and commented on Allie's birthday. It is super busy having it the week we get back from Disney, and there's a lot going on as Melissa's sister is getting married next weekend and the shower is this weekend. Things should calm down eventually...

Following along! We are staying at BRV in January so I'm obsessed with WL TR's right now!

Your family is super cute and it looks like you had a great group to travel with. Your room is huge and gorgeous! Love that giant tub.

Thanks, we're glad to have you following along. WL is such an awesome resort, you should have a great time. There will be lots more resort pics coming up, as I got up and took pictures every morning. We all loved the room, and Melissa got to spend some time in the tub too.

 

[dnllmz]

We found a recipe on Disney Food Blog for them. We will be trying it: http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2013/...magic-cookie-bar-at-disneys-wilderness-lodge/

Thanks. I'm saving that for later.

 

[mcjaco]

We got back yesterday. I can say that I was excited to get back home (the heat was ridiculous), but now I'm totally missing WDW.....

Following along!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

I started my first morning at WDW by getting up about 5:30 and taking a shower. The walk in shower in the two bedroom was really nice, and had your choice of a handheld shower massage head or an overhead rain head. I played with the knobs for a while and figured out how it worked.

I slept. I don't know how he gets up this early on vacation.

I was finally at Wilderness Lodge! I wasn't going to miss my first sunrise by sitting around in bed. I just am too excited to sleep there once I wake up, and I really enjoy my quiet mornings. I left the room just after 6:00, and walked the hallways to check on room sizes to finish up my floor plan map, where I had some questions about rooms on the first floor. (This would be a recurring theme all week, but I think I finally got it. )


I watched the sunrise from Geyser Point and got some pictures.







Then I caught the first Geyser of the day at 7:00, and headed to the front desk to purchase our park ticket upgrade.


We had leftover 2 day park hoppers that we decided to upgrade to cover our tickets for this trip. I had a pocket full of gift cards to accomplish this. I got to the front desk at 7:13, and didn't leave until 7:43. It was good that I got a mug refill on my way there. The upgrade went as planned though, and for a mere $880 we were set to visit any park for the rest of our stay. It was good to get these tickets used before next year when Marshall will need one. On my way out I took some more pictures of the lobby.


I went back up to the room and got breakfast orders, then ran down to Roaring Fork for a breakfast platter and some Mickey Waffles, and the obligatory mug refills.

The big walk in shower was really really nice and I've decided we're installing an overhead rain shower when we remodel our bathroom. I absolutely loved that.

I made Fastpass + reservations while Melissa showered and got ready. Since we only had two days of tickets in advance, we had only been able to do two days of fastpasses ahead of time. We were able to get some good stuff though, basically everything except Flights of Passage and Seven Dwarves Mine Train.

We had stressed about not being able to get fastpasses early but it turned out to be not that big of a deal.

We all got up and headed out of the room about 10:05. I texted my parents, and we met them in the lobby. We went down to the bus stop and got there at 10:16, and then on an Epcot bus at 10:25.



The bus arrived at Epcot at 10:39, and didn't make any additional stops on the way to the park.

We had lunch reservations at Garden Grill so once we got to Epcot we headed straight to The Land to ride Living with the Land before lunch.



Marshall really loved the boat ride, he called it the Monorail Boats.


We all love The Land, and it was a great first ride of the trip.

It also fit our timing perfectly, since it was almost a walk on, and let us walk right upstairs after to check in for our lunch at 11:30. It seemed the restaurant wasn't very crowded. For the first time we got a table on the upper level, which gave us more room for everybody but not as nice of a view.



It actually worked out really well for the size of our group and being able to handle the kids with the characters and such. Plus we didn't have to reach as far to fill up on food!

And we did enjoy the food. Despite not having the sausage from dinner everything was great.

I really love the food here and my favorite was probably the potroast. The strawberry shortcake was great too. You can't get good shortcake like that in California.


I liked the fries and the mac and cheese, and the mashed potatoes were really good too. It was just a bunch of great food, and throwing in Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale was nice too.

Marshall adored meeting the characters and somehow knew the difference between Chip and Dale.






We had a bit of a negative interaction with the character handler, when Jon tried to get a picture with Chip and Dale, just like the table next to us did. She proceeded to give us way more information than any of us needed about why that wasn't allowed and how if she let us do it it would throw off their whole dinner schedule, and there were already too many characters and on and on. Who knew that getting a picture with a couple of chipmunks was such a big deal.


She really stepped in like two minutes too early.

More like a couple of seconds. Jon was standing between the chipmunks when she ran him off, but that's ok.

We still had a great meal and I love that you can see characters and not have to go to a buffet.


We all agree that it is the best food of any character meal, and that's how it maintains its spot on our list. We were done by 12:40, and had fastpasses for Soarin at 1:00, so we went back downstairs and rode the Land again.

We actually got stuck on the boat momentarily right at the end. It was like the pump shut off and the boat actually drifted backwards a bit. Kinda strange but didn't last too long.

I was hoping that that was going to be our chance to finally walk off of a Disney ride, but soon the water was moving again and we were on our way to Soarin. We checked in at 1:11, and were introduced to the new baby swap process. Instead of them just hading out paper fastpasses, they now scan the Magic Band of the person that will ride later, as well as two people to ride with them, and then they are issued a fastpass that is good for one hour. It makes sense, but isn't as flexible as the old system.

No I really liked being able to come back the next day if we needed to or being able to change who the second riders were. We figured out the system pretty quickly though and used baby swap a couple more times during the trip.

While Melissa, Jon , and Brandy rode Soarin', I took Marshall and Allison on The Land one more time.


What's next? Check back in our next update...

 

[GrandCalifornian]

We got back yesterday. I can say that I was excited to get back home (the heat was ridiculous), but now I'm totally missing WDW.....

Following along!

Aww, well hopefully we can help with that post-Disney depression. It was a little warm, but we preferred the weather this time over our trip last August. There wasn't much it kept us from doing.

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Sounds like a great breakfast. We have never done Garden Grill. I always have it on my list to start but I always end up cutting it at some point.

 

[Jenny Sanders]

Garden Grill is definitely a great character meal!!!

 

[Stitch808]

Great pictures! DW usually sleeps while I explore the resorts in the morning. Love being in an empty lobby before the chaos begins. Looks like the walk in shower is like the one at PVB. We loved that shower!