VGC Trip Report. First DVC Visit!

[wbl2745]

Villas at the Grand Californian
April 26 - April 28
2 Bedroom Dedicated, Room #1518
Travelers: Myself, DW, & DD, Disney Friend from the Bay Area (DFBA) and Disney Friends from Colorado (DFC1 & DFC2). Staying separately: Disney Married Daughter (DMD) and Disney Son in Law (DSIL)
Locations: Myself, DW, DD, DMD, DSIL from Utah, DFBA from Sunnyvale in the Bay Area, DFC1 and DFC2 from Colorado.

Planning

In February we bought into the Villas at the Grand Californian at the Disneyland Resort and in April we made our first visit. Last year we had planned a trip with friends from April 26 through 28 and decided that we’d convert that into our inaugural DVC visit by reserving a two-bedroom villa. The participants are myself, DW and DD, a long time friend of DW from the Bay Area (we’ll call her DFBA) and our Disney Friends (DFC1 and DFC2) from Colorado. They are all great Disney friends and we’ve been to WDW and DL quite a few times with them. In addition DMD and DSIL decided at the last minute to come down and join the fun, but they were staying elsewhere.

Since April, outside of Spring Break, is a low attendance month, it was very easy to make the reservations for the two-bedroom unit without any waitlisting at all, even though we made the reservations about 3 months out. DW prefers to stay on lower floors in a hotel, so we made that request.

Arriving

Our friends from the Bay Area and Colorado all drove and we flew from Utah. There are very early flights out of Salt Lake to Long Beach, my favorite airport in the LA basin, but we’re just getting too old for that. (One time DW and I tried to make a day trip from Utah to Disneyland, taking a 6:00 AM flight from Salt Lake to Long Beach and an 8:00 PM flight returning. In theory it looked like a good way to get a quick Disneyland fix, but in reality we were dead tired by noon and didn’t really enjoy the rest of the day. We ended up going to the Aladdin show just to be able to take a 45 minute nap.) We got into Long Beach about 11:30 AM and were on our way out of the airport in 20 minutes. I love using Long Beach. You are out of the airport in no time. There’s no way you can pick up your luggage and be driving out of LAX or John Wayne Airport in 20 minutes!

Our friends from Colorado picked us up at the airport and had already picked up breakfast and snacking goodies before hand. The drive to the DLR is only about 30 minutes, regardless of whether you go straight out of the airport on Wardlow Rd., which becomes Ball Rd. at the north side of the DLR, or you take the freeway. It may be faster from John Wayne Airport, but not by much. We pulled into the Grand Californian and when the gate keeper found our name on the reservation list and that they were expecting us, I knew we were going to have a great time.

We drove up to the front entrance and said that we were checking in. DFC1 and I went to the front desk and since it was about 12:30 I expected that our room wouldn’t be ready yet, which is wasn’t; however, they took my cell phone number and said that they’d send a text message when it was available. They gave us our keys, everyone’s name was printing on the key, and they could be used to charging in the park. Everyone thought that was a good idea since my credit card was the one tied to the charges. Ha ha...

Tickets

After parking the car in the self-parking across the street, we headed off to the parks. Everyone had purchased the special 3-day park hoppers. The offer had expired on April 1 and the tickets expired the day after we were leaving. Our friends had participated in Give a Day, Get a Day promotion, but the cost of the special park hopper tickets was less than converting the Give a Day tickets to a full-priced 3-day park hopper. They looked at the alternatives, which were to get six fast passes or a figurine, and decided that the fast passes were not needed since most of the attractions had very short lines and they didn’t want the figurines. They chose instead the third choice: to donate the tickets to a local Boys and Girls Club.

More to come...

 

[wbl2745]

1st Day at the Parks

Everyone went directly into DL, but we were all hungry and decided to meet at the River Belle Terrace. I went to Rancho del Zocalo and got the Burrito Sonora to go and met everyone at the River Belle Terrace.

After a filling lunch we jumped around a bit, even between parks. Without going into a blow-by-blow account of the trip, let me focus on a few favorites and some specifics about the DVC stay.

Since the day was warm we decided to ride Grizzly River Rapids, twice. The line was really short and having gotten wet once, we decided we might as well get wet again. This is one of the best rides in the whole resort. You always get wet and usually soaked. Since we were already wet, we decided to switch parks and ride on Splash Mountain.

We're all blaming each other for suggesting that we ride Grizzly twice and get so wet.

At 3:00 PM I got the text message saying that our room was ready. About 5:00 we decided to go back and get settled in. Since we already had our keys, the text message just told us which room we were in, 1518, which is on the ground floor (made DW happy) facing Redwood Creek Challenge Trail. You’ve all seen pictures of the facilities and if not DVC News has a comprehensive collection.

The Villa

We were all thrilled with the accommodations. We had seen the models before buying, which was what put DW over the top to agree that we’d buy into DVC, but somehow knowing that we were actually moving in was different. Truly the rooms are spacious and luxurious. We had our friends from Colorado stay in the master bedroom since there were only two of them, our friend from the Bay Area stayed in the living room, we DW, DD, and I stayed in the second bedroom, which since it was a dedicated 2-bedroom had two beds instead of a bed and a sleeper sofa. (DW and I are looking forward to our next trip where we will have the master bedroom.) This arrangement was truly the best and worked extremely well for everyone.

The master bedroom was perfect and the master bathroom was a big hit, particularly the jacuzzi tub. The second bedroom was very nice and worked well for DW, DD, and me. The bathroom was standard hotel tub/shower. It is always nice to have the sink outside of the bathroom so that people can be getting ready while one person showers. All of the beds were wonderful!

DFBA in the living room had decided to use the Murphy bed underneath the TV. She discovered that it is a “youth bed,” which I don’t think anyone has really ever said. It is a little short. Although we didn’t use the sofa bed, I am going to assume that it is full length. People may want to be aware of this limitation in that you can’t really plan on an adult sleeping on the Murphy bed unless they like to curl up. Our friend said that she preferred that, so she never moved to the sofa bed.

Since the villa has three bathrooms, it worked out great so that each family had their own bathroom facilities. I can’t say enough about how nice it was to have three bathrooms. It made everyone very comfortable. The bathroom off of the kitchen/living room only had a shower, but DFBA thought it was very nice.

After settling in for a bit, we decided we better get the luggage and food from the car. There was quite a bit, so we just pulled the car into the front entrance and had a bellman take a dolly with all our stuff to the room.

That is another nice thing about the DVC units. They are quite close to the front lobby and convenient to the pools and not that far from the restaurants and entrance to DCA.

We unloaded all the stuff, tipped the bellman and put the food in the fridge and cupboards. By now it was about 7:00 PM and we decided to go to Storyteller’s Cafe for dinner. I usually have lunch there since it is a convenient respite from DCA. The dinner menu was OK and the waitress was very accommodating to our various needs and to splitting the bill three ways. (I was worried that they would not, but it was no problem.)

We took our time over dinner so by the time we were done it was close to 9:00 PM. We went back to the room and at about 9:15 I thought I heard music outside. Then it occurred to me that they must be running WoC! Since we had no view of anything, we dashed up to the 6th floor terrace and watched about 15 minutes of the show. As other posters have mentioned, the view from there is not good. You can’t see the water screens at all, but still it was clear that the show was going to be great! I can’t wait to come back later this year to see it for real. We weren’t the only ones on the terrace. There was another man there filming the show. Just as the show ended a Disney employee came out there and told all of us we had to leave, that we could not be there. I thought that was interesting. I suppose they are tired of all of the unofficial film showing up on YouTube, but the terrace had been open with our room key and there were no signs saying that we couldn’t be there. The show was over so it didn’t make any difference to us and we left.

(Sorry the image isn't very good. I took it with my cell phone.)

I don’t have a picture of the “view” from the room since there wasn’t much. We had two small patios with furniture, a narrow strip of small shrubs, a wide paved path, a fence, and then the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail in DCA. Clearly there are good things about being higher in the building, but it turned out that this room was very convenient, no elevator to the room, very near the pool, and it is possible that we could have used the path to get to the pool, but I didn’t check that out.

More to come...

 

[DVC Mike]

I hope you enjoyed your trip to DLR and your stay at VGC!

More pictures, please?

 

[Garthilk]

Thanks for the trip report. I'm a new member myself and won't get a stay in villa till this December. Great to see more first timer perspective.

 

[kerickson]

We just returned from our first stay in a 1BR villa. We just loved how close the villas were to the pool and lobby like you said. Very sad that our APs expire today and we probably won't be back for a year. We couldn't be happier with our purchase, glad you enjoyed your stay too!

 

[franandaj]

I'm here right now, still exploring the resort. I had my first stay two weeks ago and I'm still working on posting pictures of the Resort and a new take on the parks as well. I'm looking forward to hearing more about a ground floor room, did you take any pictures in the room...Yes! More pictures!

 

[Longhairbear]

We'll be staying in a one bedroom in a few weeks for F&W a DCA. I can't wait to see how Carsland, and the vertical construction of Radiator Springs is coming along.

 

[BigEeyore]

Looking forward to more! We leave for GCV in 2 weeks, and I am so hoping we'll get a glimpse of WoC too!

 

[nunzia]

I'm enjoying this..we leave one week from tomorrow...whoo hoo...Good thing my DBIL is short as he's the one assigned to the Murphy Bed

 

[wbl2745]

2nd & 3rd Days

On Tuesday, we were going to go to Disneyland for early entry, but no one was really moving fast enough in the morning to get that done. DFBA went out for a run (and got lost) and DFC1 decided to make us breakfast. So by the time I got myself moving there was a great breakfast laid out on the dinning table. This is fantastic!

We actually did get to the park before the main gate opened and headed first to Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. The line was surprisingly long, about 30 minutes.

While in the line I noticed that across the Submarine Lagoon and behind some trees you could just see "It's a Small World" poking out. It seemed to me to be like a fairy castle viewed in the distance.

Later in the day, just as we were heading over to the Tiki Room for a Dole Whip (have to have my Dole Whip!) we found a gaggle of ducklings! I guess in some respects the park is a safe place for them since they are on one side of the fences we're on the other. I hear, however, that there are feral cats in the park, which I'd think would cause problems for them.

At some point everyone wanted to go on Splash Mountain again, but I just wasn't in the mood for getting wet, so I sat out and took this picture. I really like what Disney has done in Critter Country. There is a lot of interest in the train trestle and vegetation.

Late in the evening of the second day we were splitting up to do our own things. DW, DD, and I went to the Matterhorn to see if they've improved the track, which was so rough the list time I rode it. The line was way too long for me so we continued on to Space Mountain. The posted standby time was 20 minutes, but it was more like 40 minutes. In any case, as we were heading out of the park I caught this picture of the moon rising over the Moonliner. I wish I had had my other camera with me. This was just taken with an iPhone so the quality leaves something to be desired.

Near the end of our stay we were in DCA having lunch in the Monterey Bay area. There were more ducks, so I photographed them!

The DVC "Market" in White Water Snacks

On our last day we decided that we would have breakfast, pack, load the car and then go to DCA. Things were moving slowly so I decided to check out White Water Snacks to see the market that was supposedly there. If you plan on using the market at White Water to get real food to prepare in your villa, I’d rethink your plan. Here are some pictures of the items in the market.

Two whole loaves of bread! Wow!

Items from the freezer and refrigerator section. Usually just one or two.

Give me a break! $9.49 for mac and cheese! There are limits!

Looks like Hawaii prices for milk...

and eggs.

You can also see that the Disney reality distortion field is in full force with the prices. Seriously, if you intend to cook something remotely nice, even for breakfast, you better have a way to swing by a local market.

Final Thoughts

DVC is fantastic. The facilities of the VGC are outstanding. The room was quiet and comfortable. Three bathrooms in the 2 bedroom villa made things very comfortable for all of us.

The convenience of the Grand Californian can't be beat. (Although the Tropicana Inn and those next to it on Harbor Blvd. are actually closer to the front gate of DL and DCA than most of the rooms in the Grand Californian!)

Hope you enjoyed the report.

 

[junglejoy]

Loved this report! Thanks for posting the pics and telling us about your trip. I really appreciate the warning about getting stuff from a supermarket instead of Whitewater Snacks. Yikes!

We are also from Utah. I'll bet there are a lot of VGC members from Utah. I know we waited a long time for DVC to make it to Disneyland. Our first tour was over 10 years ago.

 

[blackjackdelta]

Great report, thanks for the link.

Jack