I reserved a two bedroom at BCV's without any requests since it doesn't seem to matter anyway until you check in. I figure most people arrive on a Friday so a Sunday check in around 6 pm I would have a pretty good selection of rooms.
We flew Transmeridian out of Rockford Illinois, a new route, which is wonderful. This is the only airline at this little airport so checking in and security is a breeze. The only little issue is that you fly into Sanford instead the larger airport.
Rented a car from Dollar, their computers were down so they had to do everything manually. We appeared to be the only people not complaining about the long lines so they upgraded us without us asking thanking us for being so patient. I mean really, people, what can they do? The computers are down. They did ask us to hold on to our internet reciept when we returned the van to ensure accuracy with the amounts. When we returned the car, the amount owed was to the penny what I has reserved it for. I highly recommend Dollar.
We stopped at a grocery store on the way to the resort. A suggestion for those who also do this.... EAT FIRST. We way overbought, and ended up leaving almost half a case of Pepsi, Sierra Mist, a six pack of Coronas and a gallon of milk and ended up throwing away almost two loaves of bread. We did bring home in our little collapsable cooler much of the lunch meat, mayo and cheese we bought.
We valet'd our van, here's where tipping gets messy. We tipped the guy that took all of our food and luggage out and moved the car for us, we tipped a different guy that brought it all to our room, and then had to tip a different guy when we went to retrieve our car later. Oh my. Although valet parking is free, the tips will kill ya, lol. We self parked after that which was actually easier and closer to the villas.
Here is one of my gripes, the check in people at BC. There was no wait which was great, but when I went to check in, they had already preassigned me a room, this is of course fine, since I didn't request anything special, but the room was horrible. I knew this was going to happen and was prepared to discuss our options. Ideally, I would like a two bedroom on the first floor by the quiet pool, since we usually end up in the pool daily with the four kids. The room they had assigned us was off on some side with no view. I was very nice about it and requested they check what else was available. It is so obvious the front desk people have no idea about the rooms at the villa's. I asked what the difference was between a two bedroom dedicated and a lock off, and she couldn't answer me. I am pretty sure I know, but I definately wanted a dedicated two bedroom. The check in girl had to call someone to see what was available, which I believe is an offshoot office that deals with the villas which is fine. BUT, we went back and forth numerous times about rooms. I just requested anything towards the quiet pool at the end, and we ended up having a great room, but really, it shouldn't take this long, having to make numerous phone calls, etc. We were in room 402 or 442, the last two bedroom on the floor. I expected quite a hike, but it was fine. Also, when she gave us our room keys she gave us six chargable keys. I had already requested that we only have two with charging option for dh and myself, and two without charging capabilities for our teens and the 7 yr olds didn't need keys. I can't even imagine what our bill would have been like if our teen and younger ones were able to charge what they wanted, lol. As we walked away from the desk, I had to go back because the girl had forgotten to give my little ones the coloring books and crayons all the kids get. Little things like that shouldn't happen, BUT we did get "welcome home's" from many people. The kids thought it was funny when the first person said that to us, and I cheered, lol.
The room was great, no problems at all EXCEPT for the pair of leopard print women's panties in one of the drawers. Sorry if that was someone on this board, but I threw them away
We had three balconies, one off each room, which was nice. The first night I was standing on my balcony off the second bedroom and kept telling the kids to be quiet since the light was on two balconies down and the light was on and we didn't want to disturb the people there. HA, silly me hadn't realized it was the balcony off the master bedroom.
We hurried to unpack and drove over to AKL for dinner at Boma's. We had never been to this resort and wanted to check it out. While absolutely lovely, I am not sure we would want to stay there. It seemed very dark inside the main building. Of course when we were finished with dinner, we went ouside to see if we could see any animlas, and there was only one out. Dinner was OK, not great, not bad. We brought our 7 yr old nephew with us this trip. He is a very picky eater and has never been away from his mother and is very clingy with her, so I was expecting a whiny kid the whole trip. Let me tell you he was the exact opposite and so much fun to be around. He tried everything at this buffet, he was in heaven. He is still talking about it. For a kid that has never been exposed to anything but spaghetti, chicken and meatloaf, he tried and liked most of the foods that were offered. It was only at the end he figured he better eat something off the kids part of the buffet and decided he liked the "adult" food much better than the chicken nuggets, lol. He had to call home and tell mom and dad how much fun he had there. What a riot. For us, dh, myself and the teens, it was okay. I am glad we tried it, but we would go to Jinko's next time for something different. We just are not buffet people.
I won't go into details about which parks which day, but we did go to parks every day but Thursday which was an off day and we just hung out at SAB. We let the kids swim there several other times as well, it is wonderful. There is a mommy duck with five babies walking around, all over the place, in the pool, under the chairs, in the bushes. They would follow her in the water, she would jump out, but it would be too high for them, and they would know where to swim to be able to get out over some rocks. Everyone had a riot watching this, and many people took pictures. It was a great learning experience for our kids, when we explained how when baby animals are exposed to people early, they lose their fear of people and will come right up to eat out of their hands.
One day we did PS at Brontosauraus and the kids loved this. It was nice being able to get into the park before everyone else. The Lion King show is one of our favs so we made sure to see this. With Fast Pass, the first four days of our trip were great, we never waited more than half an hour for a ride. But my new favority attraction is their new show with the roller bladers, wow, this is outstanding. One of the boys obviously thought my two teen girls were 'interesting' since they kept skating up to us and smiling at them. It made their day, lol. Something similar happened at the millionaire game. All of a sudden the two girls were being shown on the large screen and for a long time. They obviously loved it but of course talked about how they just wanted "to die". ROFL.
If you play your cards right, you can get a FP and then go on another ride while you wait, and then be able to walk right into the FP ride. By Friday afternoon this all changed and it started to get very crowded, which was fine, we expected these types of crowds all week and it wasn't like that at all. Saturday was the day to hit MK and Epcot to do our fav's once again. Unfortunately it was so crowded, we ended up leaving MK by one, as it was wall to wall people and headed to Epcot.
The day we did our bfast PS we also had PS at Rose and Crown for dinner for Illuminations We had done this before and it was great. This time was awful, absolutely awful. The service was horrendous, it took over half an hour to even have someone come to our table, and then half an hour later, I had to flag someone down to remind our waiter about our drinks. The kids were very thirsty and just wanted water, forget about the special drinks they had ordered in the light up glasses which arrived after dinner was served. We did have a great table, right along the water, but the food and service was horrible. We ordered an appetizer which was shrimp and rissoto. When this was served with our meals btw, both were ice cold, I sent it back, and it was served again the same way, it was probably the same plate. They serve the rissota in a little upside down bowl, and when you take the bowl off, you are supposed to have a nice serving of warm rice, but this was cold and hard. It was pretty gross. No sorry's, no nothing. Everyone at our table ordered the fish and chips, their specialty and it was just okay, nothing special. I am not sure if it was just our waiter or what, but the service in this place has really gone downhill, definately not up to Disney standards. We heard grumbling from many other tables as well, so it wasn't just us.
The fireworks at MK were wonderful, hubbie thinks they are much better than Illuminations. I guess we both just think that it is time the change Illuminations, the same show has been going on for awhile.
We did the boardwalk several times. The kids love playing the arcade games here. If it only your family playing the water game, you are guaranteed to win, but of course it ends up costing you $20 for two stuffed animals that retail for $3.50, lol.
There was one evening as we were walking thru Epcot, I ran across a little boy, about 5, who just stopped and started looking around, got very scared and said "uh, oh'. I asked him if he was lost and he was. I then calmed him down, and we started looking around for his parents. We didn't walk away, we just stayed where we were. Several minutes go by, and this woman walks up and just takes him away, asking him if he got lost. Not a word to me or anything. When we walked away and I looked back, he was off running off again. Wow. Your welcome, lady.
All in all we had a great, wonderful time. We borrowed most of our points for next year for this trip. When we bought DVC, we figured we would do Disney every other year, well it seems like we have done it every year, and now we have to sit back for awhile, wait till next year and bank those points so in 2006 we can do a long trip at Vero, our favorite and home resort. As much as we love Disney, we need to go back to our old ways of vacationing and do some islands or cruises or something different. In a couple of years, our teens will be in college and your youngest, who loves Disney, but loves other places also, will really want to go back. It is so hard to teach our kids that most people don't go to Disney every year, many families save for a long time to go once in their lives. Our kids just take it for granted, that we do nice vacations every year. Wow, this is a very different lifestyle than how hubbie and I grew up, but of course you always want better for your kids, right? But of course they can't wait till we are older and give them our DVC points, yeah right, lol.
Hubbie and I decided we need to do a trip to Disney, just him and I, to do the things WE really want to do and not all the kiddie stuff. Nice restaurants, spas, etc. That would be a dream.
I did get a pedicure at the BC which was wonderful, I highly recommend it.
We also have a wakeup call every morning, which the kdis love, hearing Mickey telling them to get up.
I looked every morning and every evening for the alligator in the canal, but never saw him unfortunately. This was one of the highlights of our last trip. Does anyone know if they took him out? We did see many large turtles, some very large. It was also mating season this trip and the turtles and ducks all appeared to be participating in this ritual, lol. One afternoon, we were at the MK walking into go a show, I can't remember it's name, but it is a county western show with Goofy and everyone dances. Anyway the show is fun for the kids. As we were entering the builing, Mr and Mrs. duck started their 'um shall we say, 'procreation dance' while several CM's looked on with eyes wide open. You had to pass the ducks to get in and couldn't miss them. I laughingly whispered to the CM's that they might want to shoo the ducks away, since all the very little kids were getting upset at daddy duck hurting mommy duck. I know it is nature, and we get all kinds of stuff like this in our wooded back yard, but most people were covering their kids eyes and directing the kids right inside. It was pretty funny.
We also missed Art the greeter at the BC. This guy is adorable and hubbie and I were wondering what happened to him. On Friday, as we all meet on the sidewalk in back of the BC, hubbie asks me if I saw him. Of course I didn't and had to go say hello. My 7 yr olds asked him to sign their autograph books and we took a picture with him. Most people couldn't figure out what we were doing, but this guy is a fixture at the resort and we missed him when he wasn't there.
That is it in a nutshell, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Kelly
We flew Transmeridian out of Rockford Illinois, a new route, which is wonderful. This is the only airline at this little airport so checking in and security is a breeze. The only little issue is that you fly into Sanford instead the larger airport.
Rented a car from Dollar, their computers were down so they had to do everything manually. We appeared to be the only people not complaining about the long lines so they upgraded us without us asking thanking us for being so patient. I mean really, people, what can they do? The computers are down. They did ask us to hold on to our internet reciept when we returned the van to ensure accuracy with the amounts. When we returned the car, the amount owed was to the penny what I has reserved it for. I highly recommend Dollar.
We stopped at a grocery store on the way to the resort. A suggestion for those who also do this.... EAT FIRST. We way overbought, and ended up leaving almost half a case of Pepsi, Sierra Mist, a six pack of Coronas and a gallon of milk and ended up throwing away almost two loaves of bread. We did bring home in our little collapsable cooler much of the lunch meat, mayo and cheese we bought.
We valet'd our van, here's where tipping gets messy. We tipped the guy that took all of our food and luggage out and moved the car for us, we tipped a different guy that brought it all to our room, and then had to tip a different guy when we went to retrieve our car later. Oh my. Although valet parking is free, the tips will kill ya, lol. We self parked after that which was actually easier and closer to the villas.
Here is one of my gripes, the check in people at BC. There was no wait which was great, but when I went to check in, they had already preassigned me a room, this is of course fine, since I didn't request anything special, but the room was horrible. I knew this was going to happen and was prepared to discuss our options. Ideally, I would like a two bedroom on the first floor by the quiet pool, since we usually end up in the pool daily with the four kids. The room they had assigned us was off on some side with no view. I was very nice about it and requested they check what else was available. It is so obvious the front desk people have no idea about the rooms at the villa's. I asked what the difference was between a two bedroom dedicated and a lock off, and she couldn't answer me. I am pretty sure I know, but I definately wanted a dedicated two bedroom. The check in girl had to call someone to see what was available, which I believe is an offshoot office that deals with the villas which is fine. BUT, we went back and forth numerous times about rooms. I just requested anything towards the quiet pool at the end, and we ended up having a great room, but really, it shouldn't take this long, having to make numerous phone calls, etc. We were in room 402 or 442, the last two bedroom on the floor. I expected quite a hike, but it was fine. Also, when she gave us our room keys she gave us six chargable keys. I had already requested that we only have two with charging option for dh and myself, and two without charging capabilities for our teens and the 7 yr olds didn't need keys. I can't even imagine what our bill would have been like if our teen and younger ones were able to charge what they wanted, lol. As we walked away from the desk, I had to go back because the girl had forgotten to give my little ones the coloring books and crayons all the kids get. Little things like that shouldn't happen, BUT we did get "welcome home's" from many people. The kids thought it was funny when the first person said that to us, and I cheered, lol.
The room was great, no problems at all EXCEPT for the pair of leopard print women's panties in one of the drawers. Sorry if that was someone on this board, but I threw them away
We had three balconies, one off each room, which was nice. The first night I was standing on my balcony off the second bedroom and kept telling the kids to be quiet since the light was on two balconies down and the light was on and we didn't want to disturb the people there. HA, silly me hadn't realized it was the balcony off the master bedroom.
We hurried to unpack and drove over to AKL for dinner at Boma's. We had never been to this resort and wanted to check it out. While absolutely lovely, I am not sure we would want to stay there. It seemed very dark inside the main building. Of course when we were finished with dinner, we went ouside to see if we could see any animlas, and there was only one out. Dinner was OK, not great, not bad. We brought our 7 yr old nephew with us this trip. He is a very picky eater and has never been away from his mother and is very clingy with her, so I was expecting a whiny kid the whole trip. Let me tell you he was the exact opposite and so much fun to be around. He tried everything at this buffet, he was in heaven. He is still talking about it. For a kid that has never been exposed to anything but spaghetti, chicken and meatloaf, he tried and liked most of the foods that were offered. It was only at the end he figured he better eat something off the kids part of the buffet and decided he liked the "adult" food much better than the chicken nuggets, lol. He had to call home and tell mom and dad how much fun he had there. What a riot. For us, dh, myself and the teens, it was okay. I am glad we tried it, but we would go to Jinko's next time for something different. We just are not buffet people.
I won't go into details about which parks which day, but we did go to parks every day but Thursday which was an off day and we just hung out at SAB. We let the kids swim there several other times as well, it is wonderful. There is a mommy duck with five babies walking around, all over the place, in the pool, under the chairs, in the bushes. They would follow her in the water, she would jump out, but it would be too high for them, and they would know where to swim to be able to get out over some rocks. Everyone had a riot watching this, and many people took pictures. It was a great learning experience for our kids, when we explained how when baby animals are exposed to people early, they lose their fear of people and will come right up to eat out of their hands.
One day we did PS at Brontosauraus and the kids loved this. It was nice being able to get into the park before everyone else. The Lion King show is one of our favs so we made sure to see this. With Fast Pass, the first four days of our trip were great, we never waited more than half an hour for a ride. But my new favority attraction is their new show with the roller bladers, wow, this is outstanding. One of the boys obviously thought my two teen girls were 'interesting' since they kept skating up to us and smiling at them. It made their day, lol. Something similar happened at the millionaire game. All of a sudden the two girls were being shown on the large screen and for a long time. They obviously loved it but of course talked about how they just wanted "to die". ROFL.
If you play your cards right, you can get a FP and then go on another ride while you wait, and then be able to walk right into the FP ride. By Friday afternoon this all changed and it started to get very crowded, which was fine, we expected these types of crowds all week and it wasn't like that at all. Saturday was the day to hit MK and Epcot to do our fav's once again. Unfortunately it was so crowded, we ended up leaving MK by one, as it was wall to wall people and headed to Epcot.
The day we did our bfast PS we also had PS at Rose and Crown for dinner for Illuminations We had done this before and it was great. This time was awful, absolutely awful. The service was horrendous, it took over half an hour to even have someone come to our table, and then half an hour later, I had to flag someone down to remind our waiter about our drinks. The kids were very thirsty and just wanted water, forget about the special drinks they had ordered in the light up glasses which arrived after dinner was served. We did have a great table, right along the water, but the food and service was horrible. We ordered an appetizer which was shrimp and rissoto. When this was served with our meals btw, both were ice cold, I sent it back, and it was served again the same way, it was probably the same plate. They serve the rissota in a little upside down bowl, and when you take the bowl off, you are supposed to have a nice serving of warm rice, but this was cold and hard. It was pretty gross. No sorry's, no nothing. Everyone at our table ordered the fish and chips, their specialty and it was just okay, nothing special. I am not sure if it was just our waiter or what, but the service in this place has really gone downhill, definately not up to Disney standards. We heard grumbling from many other tables as well, so it wasn't just us.
The fireworks at MK were wonderful, hubbie thinks they are much better than Illuminations. I guess we both just think that it is time the change Illuminations, the same show has been going on for awhile.
We did the boardwalk several times. The kids love playing the arcade games here. If it only your family playing the water game, you are guaranteed to win, but of course it ends up costing you $20 for two stuffed animals that retail for $3.50, lol.
There was one evening as we were walking thru Epcot, I ran across a little boy, about 5, who just stopped and started looking around, got very scared and said "uh, oh'. I asked him if he was lost and he was. I then calmed him down, and we started looking around for his parents. We didn't walk away, we just stayed where we were. Several minutes go by, and this woman walks up and just takes him away, asking him if he got lost. Not a word to me or anything. When we walked away and I looked back, he was off running off again. Wow. Your welcome, lady.
All in all we had a great, wonderful time. We borrowed most of our points for next year for this trip. When we bought DVC, we figured we would do Disney every other year, well it seems like we have done it every year, and now we have to sit back for awhile, wait till next year and bank those points so in 2006 we can do a long trip at Vero, our favorite and home resort. As much as we love Disney, we need to go back to our old ways of vacationing and do some islands or cruises or something different. In a couple of years, our teens will be in college and your youngest, who loves Disney, but loves other places also, will really want to go back. It is so hard to teach our kids that most people don't go to Disney every year, many families save for a long time to go once in their lives. Our kids just take it for granted, that we do nice vacations every year. Wow, this is a very different lifestyle than how hubbie and I grew up, but of course you always want better for your kids, right? But of course they can't wait till we are older and give them our DVC points, yeah right, lol.
Hubbie and I decided we need to do a trip to Disney, just him and I, to do the things WE really want to do and not all the kiddie stuff. Nice restaurants, spas, etc. That would be a dream.
I did get a pedicure at the BC which was wonderful, I highly recommend it.
We also have a wakeup call every morning, which the kdis love, hearing Mickey telling them to get up.
I looked every morning and every evening for the alligator in the canal, but never saw him unfortunately. This was one of the highlights of our last trip. Does anyone know if they took him out? We did see many large turtles, some very large. It was also mating season this trip and the turtles and ducks all appeared to be participating in this ritual, lol. One afternoon, we were at the MK walking into go a show, I can't remember it's name, but it is a county western show with Goofy and everyone dances. Anyway the show is fun for the kids. As we were entering the builing, Mr and Mrs. duck started their 'um shall we say, 'procreation dance' while several CM's looked on with eyes wide open. You had to pass the ducks to get in and couldn't miss them. I laughingly whispered to the CM's that they might want to shoo the ducks away, since all the very little kids were getting upset at daddy duck hurting mommy duck. I know it is nature, and we get all kinds of stuff like this in our wooded back yard, but most people were covering their kids eyes and directing the kids right inside. It was pretty funny.
We also missed Art the greeter at the BC. This guy is adorable and hubbie and I were wondering what happened to him. On Friday, as we all meet on the sidewalk in back of the BC, hubbie asks me if I saw him. Of course I didn't and had to go say hello. My 7 yr olds asked him to sign their autograph books and we took a picture with him. Most people couldn't figure out what we were doing, but this guy is a fixture at the resort and we missed him when he wasn't there.
That is it in a nutshell, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Kelly
