Really nice view from your room! Our DVC home is CCV, but we've yet to stay there after joining in 2018. We've stayed 10 nights at RR 1/20 and will be staying 9 nights at SSR in 11/21.Day 1: Saturday February 22nd
Despite the late night, of course the kids didn’t sleep in much. They were up at 7:15 am. We had a brunch at ‘Ohana scheduled for 10:40 am, and had been debating the whole drive the night before if we should just cancel it. I decided to keep it to see how we felt upon waking this morning, but ultimately we decided we didn’t want to rush around to get ready, get on the road, and get to the Polynesian in time. So I sadly got on MDE to cancel it. I had to modify it to another day, then cancel it so we wouldn’t get hit with the penalty and it worked out fine. We were so bummed, because ‘Ohana breakfast is one of our favorite character meals! But it didn’t hurt to save the money it would have cost.
We took our time getting showered & dressed, and had some breakfast at the hotel. We had stayed at the Fairfield Inn, which was pretty nice and had a decent breakfast offering. Soon enough the kids were starting to get a little stir crazy though, so we got in the car around 10 am to finish the drive. We stopped in Ocala for lunch at Chick Fil A so the kids could play in the play area for a little while. I got a call from one of my aunts, who I didn’t realize was going to be in the WDW area the same time as us, to see what our plans were for Saturday & Sunday. She has 4 sisters, so she, her siblings, and their mom and a bunch of their children were going on a 4 night DCL sailing leaving Monday, but they were in the area for the weekend.
It was a little before 1 pm when we found ourselves driving under this beautiful site!
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And soon after that, we were arriving at the resort I was SUPER EXCITED to be spending an entire week at, The Wilderness Lodge!!!
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More specifically, we were spending our week in a 1 bedroom villa at Copper Creek. This was our very first stay using our resale purchased DVC points! Our home resort is Animal Kingdom Villas, and though we did stay there for a pre and post night in a studio for our DCL vacation, we were using rented points because our contract purchase had not gone through yet by that time. We had originally booked at AKV when our 11 month booking window opened, but when it hit 7 months and we could book at other resorts, we looked to see what was available and for not too many more points, we were able to switch to CCV. We had in a waitlist at Bay Lake Tower for the walk to Magic Kingdom, but it never went through. I was very happy about CCV though, as Wilderness Lodge has always been one of my favorite resorts!
We left our stuff in the car and headed inside.
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Unfortunately, there were no 1 bedrooms ready when we arrived around 1 pm. But we hoped by checking in at the front desk, we would get one a little sooner since they knew we had arrived. In the meantime, we decided to check out the resort. First, we hit up the gift shop, of course.
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If you read my December Universal TR, you might remember this photo:
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Ever since this day when DD was introduced to the back to back pose, she has been obsessed with it and anytime I take a picture of her and DS together, she asks to do one. The Wilderness Lodge gift shop was no exception!
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After letting the kids look around and point out allllllll the things they wanted (and reminding they only had so much spending money, they couldn’t afford one of everything in the store), we went over to check out the bridge in the lobby then headed outside to walk around.
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The kids got very excited when they spotted a painted rock with a picture of a cat on it. We lost our family cat a few months ago, and they are really missing her, so it was a perfect one for them to find.
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I posted it in the FB group written on the rock to let the painter know our kids had found it and how excited they were about it. We are thinking we will take it with us on our trip later this year to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and hide it for someone else to find.
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We walked all the way down to one of the rows of CCV cabins to check them out. They look so nice!! Too bad we will never have enough points to stay in one. Lol It was a nice walk around property. Once we walked through the cabins, we turned back to the main building.
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Then the excitement started to wear off a bit, and the exhaustion was settling in. We were tired and just really wanted to get in our room. We were going to mass at 4 pm in Celebration, so there really wasn’t the option of leaving the resort to go somewhere else because it was getting close enough to the time we needed to leave for that.
I took the kids up to the top floor to look down over the lobby, but DH stayed on the couch where he was sitting, so he got our photo and we got his.
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Then we relocated over to the corner where they had Disney Jr. playing on a TV for the kids, and DH and I sat on the couch nearest them and tried not to fall asleep.
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One of the DVC reps came over to talk to us, and asked if we were interested in going to the members update at Riviera that week, and we would each get 3 Multiple Experience FPs that could be used for the next 3 days after the tour at any park. The only restriction was that they couldn’t be used for any of the Toy Story Land or Pandora attractions, 7 Dwarfs Mine Train, or Peter Pan’s Flight. We decided to book it for our rest day on Wednesday because it had been planned for a pool day, but it was not looking like the weather was going to cooperate for that. She suggested the 2:30 pm tour when we told her we had Hoop Dee Doo booked for 4 pm that day, because she said the van that would transport us could bring us right there for our dinner show if we wanted. She explained a van would pick us up from the resort around 2 pm and that it would be equipped with car seats.
After talking to her, I went out to the car to get the clothes I needed to change into for church so I could change in the bathroom. While I was outside, I got the text that our room was ready! I called DH to see if he wanted me to bring the car around to unload our stuff, but we didn’t think we’d have enough time to make multiple trips before needing to leave for church. Instead he said he’d head up to the room with the kids and I could meet them up there.
I ended up catching up to them in the hallway, and each kid suddenly had a Mickey balloon in their hands! Turns out a housekeeper saw them passing and offered each kid one. I guess someone had left them behind in a room she was cleaning!
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Our room was on the 5th floor, and we had a view of the pool and the lagoon beyond it.
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Of course, the kids were checking out things like the coffee table ottoman to see if they could fit inside of it. You know, important things.
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UP NEXT: Home Away From Home
Boy, such beautiful pictures and as many others have already said, your kids are so cute.Day 2 Continued: Sunday February 23rd
This Rapunzel one was AMAZING! You could lay on it and pretend you were climbing her hair!! There were too many people to do it ourselves, so DH did his best to just sneak a photo but it certainly doesn’t do it justice.
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There were tons of booths featuring different artists around the WS, but we focused mostly on the Disney artists as we started making our way over to the Italy pavilion.
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We spotted Pascal hanging around Karamell-Kuche.
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Finally, we made it to Italy, and our dinner location, Via Napoli!
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DD felt very fancy drinking her water out of a coffee cup.
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DH ordered a large Margherita pizza for him and the kids to share, and I got my usual Quattro Formaggi.
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We didn’t finish everything, so we took our leftovers to bring back to the room. The kids had gotten side tracked by the trains in Germany, and we only prized them away for dinner by promising we could go back to see them after we ate. So that was of course our next stop.
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World Showcase was just lovely as the sun was setting.
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The kids helped George Washington cross the Delaware.
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By the time we had made a circle of WS only stopping for the booths, not really exploring the pavilions, we were ready to head back.
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We got the bus back to Copper Creek, and were back in our room very quickly. We had an early wake-up for the next morning, so we got to bed as early as we could!
UP NEXT: Garden Grill
It’s always so tempting to try out somewhere new when you see something available. We really loved Riviera when we did the DVC tour there and had it booked for our pre-cruise night for our canceled cruise in January. Hopefully we get to stay there one day!
Has your DH ever sold photos? I do and his are pretty spectacular. I'm sure he could sell a lot of pictures if he wanted to.Day 4 Continued: Tuesday February 25th
We had to HURRY back after the ride because DH said it was filling up around him quickly, so I had to carry DD so that we could move efficiently through the crowds and get back to where he was standing. When we got back to him, he said another DIS Dad had liked the post he had shared on their FB group of the kids eating Mickey Bars at Fantasmic the other night, and had sent him a message saying the next round of Mickey Bars was on him, then sent him enough on Paypal for 4 more! How kind is that?! So since we still had a little more time before HEA, I went over to the cart and got a couple more for us to share.
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DD took over my phone and snapped away while we waited.
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(She took A LOT more selfies than this!)
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Meanwhile, this was DH’s view.
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Finally, it was showtime! We had all watched this fireworks show on YouTube when it premiered in the parks, but it was the first time for all of us seeing it in person. As soon as the first firework went off, DD hugged me tight and said “WOW!” It was beautiful to experience in person, and even more so to watch my kids experience it for the first time. They were amazed and enthralled from the beginning to the end!
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WHEW!!! I know that was a lot of fireworks photos, but the show is a long one, and it was so hard to choose! Needless to say, we all LOVED it! DH and I were actually a bit disappointed that we hadn’t set up a second night to be able to see this again.
We waited on the curb for a few minutes before joining the shuffle down Main Street out of the park, but it had at least thinned out a little bit. There was a Photopass photographer out by the train station, so we stopped for a photo before leaving.
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After discussing our two options for getting back to the resort, boat or bus, we decided to go over to the bus because there was no way of knowing how many people were waiting for either form of transportation, but we at least knew the bus could hold more people than the boats. I don’t know if the boat was any busier, but the bus was a great decision because it was only us and 3 other families, so we had plenty of room!
When we got back to Wilderness Lodge, we made a stop at the gift shop to pick up DD’s Frozen II Playset that we had gotten at Epcot and had sent to the resort. While in there, I spotted a former co-worker that I hadn’t seen in years! I was very excited to see her and chat with her a bit to catch up!
It was about 9 pm when we got up to the room, and we got baths done as quickly as possible and got the kids into bed. But soon after putting them in bed, we started hearing the music of the Electrical Water Pageant. We figured this was probably the only night the kids might be up late enough to watch, and we had a sleep-in morning coming up, so we went out to the living room to see if they wanted to watch. They enjoyed watching it for a few minutes, but then they headed off to bed when it started to move on. We followed close behind. It had been a long but fun day!
UP NEXT: A Much Needed Rest
