Thanksgiving Tomfoolery at BLT

[makewifehappy]

Welcome one, welcome all, to the first trip report for our family. We're so glad you could come by to share in the excitement of our annual family Thanksgiving trip to Walt Disney World. Enjoy this report as you read it; it is here for your viewing pleasure, whether out of education for how we do our trip, out of amusement for the tomfoolery that you will experience while reading, or out of just the pleasure for reading about other experiences.

I'm typing this out at the 30-day mark of our trip. The excitement again starts now. Checking out DisneyExperience, I noticed that our MagicBands are to be sent to us in the near future. Mail has never been more exciting.

Hey, how about that cast of characters that will bring you all forms of tomfoolery?

DDad - That would be me, the 42-year-old technology geek that works from the comforts of his own home, who pulls his hair out (figuratively speaking) on a daily basis with regards to corporate policies and politics, all the while trying to make the daily lives of a set of employees easier with regards to the technologies they utilize to do their daily jobs. It's a good life; one monitor on work, one monitor on personal happenings in my life, including a share that contains all sorts of WDW-related videos to keep me sane. Nothing better than sitting on a conference call while watching a walk-through of Animal Kingdom or EPCOT, or working on technical documentation while listening to music from Main Street USA.

DW - That would be the source of my obsession with WDW, the lower-than-42-year-old wife of mine, who drives every day to a school and takes care of the future minds of the world, this year handling the minds of a set of 5th grades here in our community. Like I mentioned, she's the one who got me started with this WDW obsession. I should have known it was going to happen, when we honeymooned at WDW, even attending the opening day of Animal Kingdom because of it, where more animals were wanting to get into the park than animals actually in the park. Obsessive reader, she just got done with her first 3-day Susan G. Komen walk with her best friend who is a survivor. I know a lot of people in this world, I don't think I know of anyone with a bigger heart.

DS - Known as 'Frick', soon to be 15 year old son who is attending a Quaker boarding school north of the city of Philadelphia, PA, as a freshman in high school. Biggest transition our family has ever gone through, as it's hard to be a parent to your child when he is 600+ miles away. While our life at home is definitely easier right now from an everyday standpoint, it's harder from an emotional standpoint, as we can't celebrate those daily successes with him in personal like we could before. And don't worry folks, he's not a troublemaker; it's a wonderful opportunity for him to grow in a fantastic support system versus slugging it out in the public school system.

DD - The 11-year-old daughter of mine who will be known as 'Frack'. As a father, I'm over the condition of my house, as it is sometimes hard to go into rooms without seeing glitter or clothes on the floor, dropped from the hands of this young girl, but I deal with it. A girly-girl to the extreme she is, attending a local dance company three nights a week, and rides with mom to the school she teaches at every day. Next year will be hard, as she'll go to middle school with a new set of classmates. It'll be a difficult transition, but she's a strong-willed girl, like her mother, so I only expect a few speed bumps along the way.

As far as planning goes, our family is nuts. It seems as if it always works out that we pile on a ton of activities all at the same time, and preparations for this trip will also include that, with regards to Frick and Frack. Here's how the 48 hours before we leave for WDW will work out:

• Frick (DS) flies home from school on Thursday evening.
• Frack (DW) leaves Friday morning to head to a dance convention outside of Orlando with some friends. We pick her up Sunday afternoon.
• Frick goes to the dentist on Friday to have his braces removed, a cleaning, and retainers fitted and made.
• Frick, DW, and myself will go home Friday evening, finish packing, finish closing things up at the house, and then wake up early on Saturday morning to start the drive, most likely even before McDonald’s opens up. More on that later in this report.

I'd like to believe that we are the only family that does things like this, but I'm sure there are other families that do more. Personally, it's not what I want to do, but to appease all members of the family, we do what we can.

But the trip will include seven nights at Bay Lake Towers at the Contemporary Resort, our DVC home resort, stretching from one Saturday to the next Saturday. So hopefully, come Saturday afternoon as myself, DW and Frick head into the Magic Kingdom, we'll be able to put aside all the worries of everyday life to rest and be able to enjoy our time together. Plus, as we always do for our Thanksgiving trips, the Disney Dining Plan comes into play; heck, I paid for it last night so it’s fresh in my mind (although the excitement of shelling out the money does make me sick sometimes, but I do it anyway with a smile on my face.)

We always attempt to book Bay Lake resort for Thanksgiving trips, as we did one trip at Saratoga Springs and weren't happy with our location. Being on the monorail, especially after doing the Candlelight Processional on Friday evening, makes getting back to the resort easy. I can deal with buses, just not all the time, although our last trip, back in June, when we stayed at Kidani Village, we did use buses a lot due to the location of our room to the bus depot. I figure this time, we'll use the car at least twice, once to go to Downtown Disney, once to go to Animal Kingdom, but other than that, we’ll do the buses.

And, why do we book at Bay Lake? Well, we purchased DVC. I'd say DW tricked me into buying into it, but if she did, then it was the best trick she ever did on me. Back in our June 2009 trip (Port Orleans Riverside) we did, for the first time, the DVC sales pitch. Both my wife and I are lucky right now as we seem to be in pretty recession-proof jobs, so discussing it was not a bad thing. We were actually putting money away for a Disney Cruise for Thanksgiving of 2010, but due to the sales incentives they were offering at the time, we went on ahead and signed on the dotted line. Hey, I got a new computer for home out of the whole deal, as well, so everyone wins.

Tomfoolery item #1 - Part of the agreement for signing up for DVC, negotiated by the Mrs., was a request of as many Walt Disney World resort pens as we could get our hands on. We figured it would be the weirdest request they ever got at DVC sales; they claim it wasn't, but who knows. We walked out with 200 points at DVC, two fat and happy kids from the ice cream and snacks that they provide, and about 40 pens.

I'm actually looking forward to a future trip in April where we will be at Old Key West for the first time. It's always fun to try out new resorts. Our remaining DVC resorts at WDW that we still need to stay at are all resorts between EPCOT and Hollywood Studios, although we did a cash-only reservation at Beach Club once, just to enjoy the pool there. At some point, we need to head to Vero Beach and Hilton Head, but we'll probably hit the west coast or Hawaii before that.

Anyway, that's a start to our trip report. I plan on sarcasm, very raw humor, and more fun and surprises as time goes on. Stay tuned, folks.

 

[OurDogCisco]

Following along.... We have done 2 trips during thanksgiving and I really enjoy going during that time of year. Can't wait to hear more about your trip..

 

[makewifehappy]

Thanksgiving trips for us officially started in 2006, as we took our first trip to Disney for MVMCP during December. Sure, not Thanksgiving, but seeing the park and resorts decked out with holiday decorations really makes WDW a different place altogether. Oh, sure, you know it's WDW, the rides don't change, but getting snow on Main Street or the Osborne Lights at Hollywood Studios isn't something you see every day.

In our current schedule, the kids both get the week off from school, so we leave as quickly as we can and, most of the time, stay as long as we can. For those who have kids that have the entire week off, I strongly suggest getting there as soon as you can. We've found that crowds don't usually start getting bad on Thanksgiving week until Wednesday, and are still manageable on Friday. We do EPCOT on Friday, along with the Candlelight Processional. (That monorail ride back to the resort really works out...)

Sadness, as we head back home on Saturday in order to get laundry done and face the fact that reality is going to sink in again.

DW just got back from a surprise trip up to see DS at school, one of those last minute decisions. DS mentioned that he was really looking forward to coming home for many reasons, he'll see us, he'll get his braces off, and he'll get to spend the week at WDW with us. He's already threatened to beat my at DisneyQuest games, and I'm sure he'll try to beat me at Toy Story and Buzz Lightyear, as well.

Quick Shout-out to Frontier Airlines for having the lowest price for a round trip flight from Atlanta to Trenton, three days before leaving, for DW. $350 was a good price. While an early morning trip both ways (6:00am) isn't the best, we might be using this more often for those quick trips up and back, since it looks like $170 round trip if we book ahead of schedule.

(Dear Trenton-Mercer Airport, please expand your airport. You have a gold mine there with regards to access.)

A note on our picture, it was taken this past Memorial Day week at Chastain Park for Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers tour that came to Atlanta. First time we ever took the kids. If it was up to me, I'd keep the XMSirius radio on Radio Margaritaville channel the entire trip down, but onto the holiday channel on the way back home for this trip. Unfortunately, my country-music-loving DW and DD won't let that happen. The sacrifices I make for happiness.

 

[makewifehappy]

Happiness again in our preparations for our November trip happened yesterday, where I figured it'd be just one item, but turned into two items.

First off, I knew that our MagicBands were coming on Thursday, so the anticaption of seeing them come with our names and DVC inserts was exciting. Again, the little things in life. (This, along with tomfoolery, might become a theme for this trip.)

What is it that whenever you receive an actual package in the mail, you feel important? I can get 12+ pieces of mail, even if some of it is junk, but having a single box in the mailbox is so much more exciting? Am I the only one that feels like that, or is it just the fact that I work from home?

Side note: The kids make fun of me. When both kids were born, I worked for a company based out of Alpharetta, and I had many friends. What was great was that my son and a co-worker's son went to the same daycare for a short period of time. Now, not a big deal to me, but my son always thought it was cool that he got to see Marcus. It still sticks with him today, although I don't work with Marcus anymore, and haven't seen him in about three years.

Anyway, now that I work from home, they don't get to see my co-workers, since I'm in the Atlanta area, and only one of my co-workers lives in this area. Everyone else lives in COlorado, Indiana, Canada, India, and other places. Therefore, everyone I work with doesn't live in these cities....

They live in a box.

My computer box.

If I Skype with someone, the person that I'm Skyping with is in the box.

If I IM someone, the person I'm IMing with is in the box.

Somewhere...... in the box.

Anyway, it's moments like this that I realize that physical interaction with other carbon-based units is warranted. Only 22 days left until then.

So, the first happiness from Thursday was the arrival of the MagicBands. The second piece of happiness had to do with an email that allowed me to set up a FastPass for lunch at Be Our Guest! The only resturant that we could not get reservations for that we wanted to, and now we are going again. A hard day for DW was brightened up by the email from me letting her know that we were going.

Dare I say it again..... The little things in life...

Another update once more preparations for tomfoolery becomes available.

 

[makewifehappy]

In our continuing adventures of Tomfoolery, we come to you live from the comforts of my own basement; albeit somewhat chilly right now. However, as we have just reached single digits with regards to our countdown to leaving, we are now officially in the timeframe where the weather for our arrival starts appearing in extended forecasts. For those interested, I always utilize Intellicast.com, which for some reason seems to be one of the better long term forecasting models with regards to determining our choice of clothes and/or rainwear necessary.

Looks like at this time, around 77 degrees on arrival day, 80 degrees with possible thunderstorms the next day.

Is this good or bad?

Does it matter? We're going to WDW again; that's all the matters.

OK, so we want it to be warm, too, but seriously, you're at Disney, does it matter...

I'm hoping for continued warm weather, even with the minor threat of thunderstorms.

Anyway, gift card balance is up to $300 now. I might buy another $100 before we leave, just because I go to Kroger and get double points on gift cards. Night before we leave, we'll fill up on gas so we don't stop until we get to south Georgia, normally around exit 9 in the state, to top off on gas before crossing over. I've noticed that the gas prices at the Hess stations are pretty reasonable, but that's how we roll when driving down; one fill up before leaving, one on the way down, one partial on property, and then not again until we get back into Georgia. We normally don't stop anywhere along the Turnpike or I-75 in Florida since the gas prices are always slightly higher.

As our kids were growing up, and we started making trips down to WDW, DD always referred to the Florida Turnpike as the 'Turning-pike'. Call it one of those little things that has always stuck with us since she said it.

Of course, we always made fun of the wonderful signs that WDW can't control along I-75 in Georgia and Florida. For those that know, once you get south of Macon, you'll see bright neon signs telling you, in some cases, three words. WE..... BARE..... ALL.... Yep, for years, it's always been a source of entertainment, although it has gotten old over the years. Plus, they put new sayings on them now.

However, the best sign I've seen recently on our trips down has to be the sign along I-75 in Ocala, FL, that advertises vasectomy surgeries.... along the interstate.

What concerns me is it also tells you that this is a walk in location...

Does this mean you can drive off the interstate, go straight in, and get your snip snip done? You know, this sign faces the southbound lanes away from all the we bare all signs, maybe this doctor can make more money by placing it on the northbound side of the interstate next to one of those neon signs. Perfect marketing, folks...

Back to preparations for our trip, my new t-shirt has arrived.

I'm 42 years old, and I still purchase funny t-shirts. You'll probably find me at 85 years old wearing a 'Where's the Beef?' t-shirt, telling kids that 'I remember when that phrase was the funniest phrase out there. NOW GET OUT OF MY YARD!!!'

I've got many t-shirts with funny sayings on them. I'm sure my son and I will have our hump day t-shirts on during our Wednesday day at Magic Kingdom, and I'm sure like a couple of goofballs, we'll take our picture by the camels in Adventureland.

Oh, and DW asked me the other day which suitcases we should take with us when we go down. She didn't find the response, 'Suitcases that pack our items up so we could easily transport our clothes and other items down with ease.' Gee, I thought it was a good answer. The look of daggers coming from her eyes said another story.

Tomfoolery.... Starting to understand now?

 

[mama03]

Looking forward to your families trip report. We love staying at the BLT, can't get better then going up to top at night to watch fireworks!

 

[makewifehappy]

A very overcast morning as I am sitting out on our balcony eating some chocolate chip muffins and having a nice cup of morning juice (coca-cola). Today is considered our somewhat lazy day here at WDW.

Normally, I'd be upset, but the amount of privacy that we have is good. We reserved a standard deluxe studio room for this trip, which means most of the time, your view isn't the best, but as everyone knows, the amount of points utilized for a trip is very low. I have a wonderful view of the back of the loading dock for BLT; however, a half view of Bay Lake, which is very peaceful this morning.

I plan on writing a full trip report when we get back home, but just a few quick notes on where we are so far after less than 24 hours at WDW:

• Left the house around 5:30am Saturday, stopped at McD's for breakfast, DW didn't get her sweet tea (more on that later) and then a stop for gas.

• Stopped at the Cordele WalMart along I-75 because, well, we know how to party, don't we? Wife need a couple of items to complete Christmas cards in the car as I was driving.

• Stopped in Ocala, FL, for lunch and gas, and realized we never picked up stamps for said Christmas cards, which means we played, "Who can find a post office quickest on their cell phones?"

• Completed the trip, arriving on property at around 1:45p

• No room available at check-in, go into Magic Kingdom with a light drizzle.

• Amazed that with the drizzle and cloudy skies just how busy Magic Kingdom was, but it's all cool.

• I was 'That Guy' at the Monsters., Inc. Laugh Floor, got a sticker.

• Not a good surprise once we got to our room, but was very impressed with how Disney handled it.

Of course, there's more tomfoolery to tell you about, but I really don't want to spend all day typing it out. Only thing I'll give additional details on is this - DW headed back to our room first, as she was pretty tired, so DS and myself decided to hang around the park a little longer. On DW's arrival in the room, she found a room that was not fully turned over from the previous guest. Not only was there towels still on the floor from the previous guest, but that same guest had left items in the room that weren't removed, and even the things that Mousekeeping is supposed to do wasn't done properly.

Of course, once Mousekeeping and Disney staff realized the situation, they couldn't run fast enough to handle their mistake and handled things promptly and professionally. Kudos again to the folks at Disney for not only admitting their screw-up, but fixing it correctly. More to come later.

That said, I've eaten my breakfast, and am heading inside to shower and head to DTD with DS to DisneyQuest, while DW will be picking up DD from her dance convention.

 

[OurDogCisco]

Sounds lovely... We get the entire week off for Thanksgiving so we normally do a vacation either to Disneyland, WDW or Hawaii or Disney Cruise. This year we are staying home to fill out college applications. We are all sad. First time in 11 years we have been home for Thanksgiving. So... Very sad... But I'm excited to hear about your trip...

 

[Firepath]

Looking forward to your report. We are considering a Thanksgiving trip next year and I'm curious to hear how the crowds are. We too would probably arrive the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I hope you have a wonderful trip!

 

[makewifehappy]

So, the Sunday after we arrived back was a bummer. The checkout lady at WalMart looked at me funny when I tried to us a MagicBand to purchase groceries for the week.

OK, not really, but that'd be funny if I actually did it, wouldn't it? Maybe in a future trip report.

I'll be starting the future posts later this week, as I have to get my kid down the airport, then got to do that whole 'work' thing that pays for future trips. Only 123 days until the next trip!!!

 

[makewifehappy]

So, let's go back to Friday, November 21.

Friday evening, as a celebration of our son coming back home for a short period of time, as well as him losing his braces, we had a small get-together at our house to allow him to visit with his friends and our close friends that are considered family, plus a few on top of that. Nothing like a party before we leave for WDW.

Our daughter left in the morning for a dance convention about 30 minutes south of WDW, and during the party we get a phone call that they have arrived safety into their hotel for the night.

Before you knew it, we headed to bed by 11pm, but then...

Day 1 - Early morning with some fun at MK

5am in the morning, DW gets up and grabs a shower, followed by myself. We wake DS up enough to get him into the car, and head out. (forgot to mention that we packed the car the evening before, minus bathroom items)

Heading out, we talk about stopping for something to eat and drink, and around the corner a new McDonald's opened up not long ago, and it opens pretty early, even for a Saturday, so a quick stop there. Now, let me premise this by stating, for the longest period of time, DW would stop here every morning and pick up two sweet teas to take to the school. (remember, she's a school teacher.) One sweet tea had no ice, the other one had lots of ice. The caffeine would help get her through the day. The morning shift employees knew my wife by name after a while; that's how much she had been going.

She doesn't stop there as much as she used to, so she doesn't know the employees as well. I found out what she meant after this stop. We got DS some food, myself a breakfast sandwich and a drink, and DW a biscuit with a 'sweet' iced tea, or at least that's what we ordered. Turns out, we got an unsweet iced tea instead.

After further discussions with DW on this topic, it turns out that this has been happening on a regular basis. If I had known this, I would have turned around, because DW was not happy.

Thankfully, it meant that the lack of caffeine helped get DW back into a drowsy state, and by the time I had drove 30 minutes, both DW and DS were asleep, which meant I could change the radio to Radio Margaritaville and jam. I can't get over some of the popular country that she and DD listen to, songs called "Dirt", and "Drinkin" just don't seem too original to me.

It was a beautiful morning, at least. Seeing the sun rise was nice. But, notice the traffic - nothing. This picture was taken just south of the Atlanta airport on I-75. We found out from two families we know that left later that by 11am this was a parking lot due to the amount of traffic on this road.

DW always sends out Christmas cards on our trip. We normally try to stop somewhere different, but decided to send from BLT this year. However, they weren't addressed yet, so shortly after we hit the Macon area, DW started working on them again. She realized as she started working on them that she needed some stamps to help seal the envelopes, so as the wild party people we are, we stopped at the WalMart in Cordele, GA. (wasn't a big deal anyway, we were going to pick up a case of water, anyway, so why not do it here)

Let the Tomfoolery start. Nothing better than walking through WalMart at 8:30am in the morning, on a Saturday, talking loud and making fun of everything in the store. I don't even remember what all I said; what I do remember is that at the end of the trip, DW was ready to leave myself and DW at the store.

Back into the car, we continue our drive south til we got to the Ocala, FL, area. We were getting hungry and needed some petro, so we pulled off and grabbed lunch at a Zaxby's. While exiting, we realized we had no postage stamps.

This brings us to our next round of tomfoolery - Everyone in the car pulls out their phones at the same time to be the first one to find a post office. We do find a post office, but it's closed on Saturdays and doesn't have an automated machine, so we find a Wells Fargo and purchase stamps in the drive thru. More expensive, sure, but I wasn't about to spend another moment in Ocala, we had places to go.

Onto the Florida Turning Pike, followed by Florida 429 Southbound, we finally saw, in the distance to the east, the Contemporary, BLT, the castle, and EPCOT. (no pictures, sorry) Exiting off at the Western Way, we cross under the sign, and head onto the property just west of Coronado Springs, and drive straight to Bay Lake Towers.

Finally, we are here.

A quick check in, and we find our room is not ready yet. No problem, we figured we'd go get our mugs from our drink plan, grab a drink, and then head to our room, because it has always worked that way for us - Do something quick at the resort after checking in, and we'll get that text letting us know that our room is ready. While over at the Contemporary, I came across this at the Contempo Cafe:

Now, this may not mean much to anyone else, but because I work in technology, especially technology that affects general corporate users, as well as customer facing technology, my non-diagnosed A-D-D saw this and freaked me out. Biggest problem is that this lasted for three straight days. I wanted to do nothing more than break into the small hole in the bottom of the display and reset the computer running this display.

So, killing time to get into our room didn't happen this time, so we put our cups into the car, took a couple of pieces of luggage to be sent up to our room once we got in, and left it at that. ONTO THE MAGIC KINGDOM!!!!

I'm normally not a selfie guy, but had to do one.

A few rides in Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, and BTMR, plus a quick service dinner at Casey's, and DW was showing the day wearing on her, so she decided to go back to BLT to get out luggage, get settled, and relax. I continued on with DS, we did the raceway and Monsters, Inc. Laugh floor, where, to the amusement of DS, I was 'That Guy'. Needless to say, DS had a good time.

Not watching my phone, I had no idea that DW was texting me pertaining to the condition of our room. Turns out, after she got into our room, she immediately noticed some towels on the floor by the door, followed by someone's toiletry bag in the bathroom, followed by an unmade bed. Not what she wanted.

She called housekeeping. I don't think they believe that the room was left in the condition it was at first, but once DW demanded a manager come to our room, they changed their tune. No available rooms at BLT this week, as it must have been completely sold our, so they sent a cleaner to our room, who was extremely embarrassed at the condition of our room once she arrived.

Give it to Disney; they not only cleaned the room on the spot, but did a deep clean of everything the following day as well, and gave us a $200 credit to our room.

DS and myself returned to a cleaner room, we had a story to tell, but bottom line was it had been a long day and we were ready for bed. A few minutes on my tablet checking the news, and then a night of sleep.

 

[jmkeeku]

We just purchased DVC with BLT in 2014. I'm wondering if we made a mistake because all I've been reading about BLT is how filthy and run down the Villas are. I'm hesitant to make a reservation there and use our points somewhere else...

 

[montrealdisneylovers]

We just purchased DVC with BLT in 2014. I'm wondering if we made a mistake because all I've been reading about BLT is how filthy and run down the Villas are. I'm hesitant to make a reservation there and use our points somewhere else...

We just came back from our 6th trip to BLT. The first two, 2009 and 2010 paid rack rates and the last four as DVC members. Perhaps we are really lucky or not very fussy but I have nothing to complain about any of the trips!!! We always go at peak Christmas time and have had wonderful units (studios and one and two bedrooms) and super, friendly staff!!!

This past trip I was looking for some of the negative stuff I was reading about. I could only come up with one thing: the shower caulking needed to be redone as parts were getting black. However, I have seen this in regular chain hotel rooms too. Nothing specific to BLT or DVC.

 

[FoodieFriend]

thank you for your review of BLT. i'm staying there for the 1st time in Sept & yours is the 2nd i've read about unsatisfactory room conditions. that is something that would make or break a trip.