Back from my mini trip to Bay Lake. It was fun to take someone who has never enjoyed Disney in the way that we do. I had two guests, one is a fellow DVC owner, and the other has taken a few trips to Disney, stayed in only value resorts, and goes to the park from sun up until it closes. I'm the oldest of the bunch, but we are church camp counselors together every summer, and just have a great time together. The short trip report was that I had a 1 bedroom standard reserved at BL. When we arrived at 6:15 in the evening, our room was not ready. I had gotten a text around 4:00 saying it wasn't ready. I went to the counter and a very kind woman at the counter seemed surprised the room wasn't ready and started making phone calls. She promptly said she was putting money on our account so we could enjoy dinner until it was ready. I didn't ask for anything, she just started offering. We already had a dinner reservation at 8:15 for Steakhouse 71, so we were just going to hang out for a few minutes until our 3rd party arrived. We flew into Sanford, and our 3rd person flew into MCO. Our 3rd person had landed, but it had started lightening in the area, and they would not send out the crews to get the luggage off the plane. In the end, she didn't make it to the resort until 9:15. Our room was deemed "ready" before we ever left the counter. She mentioned an upgrade, and that our room was on the 10th floor, so I knew it was no longer a standard view. We went up the elevator to find we had been "upgraded" to a theme park 1 bedroom. We loved the view and then I quickly realized it was a handicap accessible unit (8012). I was honestly not in the best of shape. The stainless steel refrigerator door was beat to death, as were most of the walls and trim. I know it must be difficult to keep these up when they are being run into by wheelchairs and scooters. We had a miniature island in the kitchen with no stools. The top cabinets were literally about 1 foot higher than the bottom counter. The paper towel dispenser was touching the faucet. I never complained because we didn't have any intention of cooking anything for the three days we were there. If I would have been there with my family of 5 for the week, I probably would have asked to be moved. We went to our 8:15 reservation just the two of us, and kept hoping that our friend would be able to make her way there. We had planned to eat quickly and then try to see the 9:20 fireworks from the observation deck. As 9:00 approached, the weather was looking pretty bad, and I knew there would be no fireworks. So we just opted to linger over our meal, and I ordered an additional plate for our friend who rolled in about 9:15. Her food was delivered to our table and we pulled her up a chair! We ended up leaving the restaurant about 10. We decided to walk around for a few minutes and go deliver the last of the luggage to the room. As we got to the Bay Lake elevator I asked if we could just go up to the observation deck to show our friend around. The CM said, "actually, it just opened back up and you all will be the first ones up there!" She also told us they had delayed the fireworks. We were so excited that we were going to get to see them after all! We waited for about 15 minutes on the deck and then they put on the show. There were some people in the lounge that had wandered out with their 3D glasses to watch them. We watched the show and then took a ride on the monorail so our friend could experience it.
Thursday we ate breakfast at Ohana (another monorail ride), stopped at the GF to shop and take some ridiculous photo pass pics with the glass slipper, which we are still laughing about. Monorail ride back to BL, then walked to the bus stop at MK, caught a bus to the Boardwalk. Shopped and ate snacks, boarded the Skyliner to Riviera (so our friend could have another Disney transportation experience), got off at Caribbean Beach, caught a bus to Disney Springs. More shopping, then back to Bay Lake. Our intention was to by at Hollywood Studios a few minutes before 7:00 for moonlight madness. Around 6:15 the bottom fell out! You could see nothing out of our 10th floor window. Lots of lightening and thunder. We waited until it just about passed and then headed to the bus stop to head to HS. Got there around 7:20 and got checked in. We walked straight back to ROTR. Waited about an hour then rode it. We were able to ride Smugglers Run, Slinkydog dash, Mickey and Minnie's runaway railway, Tower of Terror, and Rockin' Rollercoaster. We also got our snacks and popcorn buckets. They closed the park at 12:30. I do appreciate the special member events, they are so much fun! Got to bed around 1:45 a.m.
Friday, up at 7:00 and walking over to MK at 8:00 (yes I was so tired). We did buy genie plus for this day. This is my first experience with it. Since we were only going to be there for one day, we opted to pay the extra fee and give it a try. 7 Dwarves is not included in genie plus, so we headed there first. Posted wait time was already 55 minutes, but I think it was a little shorter than that. We used our first genie plus to ride Space Mountain. We ended up doing pretty much every ride in MK that day, most with genie plus. We did wait in some lines, but most we did not. Not sure I'd want to fork over the money for my family of 5 everyday that I'm there in the future, but for our purposes it worked. I did take 1 small break in the afternoon back at the room. My body decided Friday was a good day for a headache, but I pushed on and took my migraine meds and kept moving anyway. We had a great time! I'm exhausted, but I'd do it again tomorrow!
