You Get a Suite! You Get a Suite! Everybody Gets a Suite! December 2023 Trip Report! (RL Update 10/6!!)

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Welcome everyone to my December 2023 Trip Report and thank you all for following along!

This trip was a very special one for us, so special we’ve been planning it for over two years! On this trip my dad made his triumphant return to Disney after a TEN YEAR hiatus! We decided to celebrate his return by staying in club level this trip for the first time, it was also my parents first time seeing Disney all decked out for the holidays, and it was really my first time experiencing all the holiday offerings in earnest.

For this trip we may have gone a tad nuts and booked a triple split stay. Yeah, that was a lot of moving, but it was great to be able to check out three different club levels and see what we like. As you may have guessed by the title of this TR, we did stay in suites this trip (three different ones!), some we had booked, others were a complete total surprise upgrade which, to be honest, may have skewed our opinion to that club level a bit.

Now for this trip we had the usual players, my mom and I, and then the addition of my dad!

Here’s my mom, she’s my usual travel buddy, we typically go to at least Food and Wine every year, sometimes add a Flower and Garden in the mix as well.



Next up is my dad, Bob. After his last trip to Disney back in 2013 he declared he needed a break from Disney, so we’ve left him home over the past ten years. Well, after hearing about all the fun mom and I have been having in Disney World the past few years, my dad decided he needed to give it another try, so we booked this trip just for him!



Finally, there is me, Debbie! (with my parents here obvs)



I’ll be your narrator for this TR and I cannot wait to get into it. This was one of my absolute favorite trips we’ve had in years, we had so much fun and it was great to have a trip with both of my parents for once.

Now on with the show!​

 

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TOC

Friday December 1st
Day -1: This Trip is Happening!!

Saturday December 2nd
Day 1, Part 1: Disney Here We Come!
Day 1, Part 2: The Most Awesome Exciting Fabulous Surprise!
Day 1, Part 3: First Taste of Festival of the Holidays!
Day 1, Part 4: A Brand New Ride....For Dad!
Day 1, Part 5: Pre-Dinner at the Boardwalk!
Day 1, Part 6: This is Why You Never Became A Pilot!
Day 1, Part 7: A Perfect End to the Night!

Sunday, December 3rd
Day 2, Part 1: Dad Tries Out Guardians!
Day 2, Part 2: More Festival Food Booths!
Day 2, Part 3: MVMCP, Part 1!
Day 2, Part 4: MVMCP, Part 2! (Liberty Tree Tavern!)
Day 2, Part 5: MVMCP, Part 3!
Day 2, Part 6: MVMCP, Part 4!
Day 2, Part 7: MVMCP, Part 5!

Monday, December 4th
Day 3, Part 1: Goodbye Boardwalk, Hello Animal Kingdom Lodge!
Day 3, Part 2: Exploring AKL!!
Day 3, Part 3: Animal Kingdom Time!
Day 3, Part 4: Dinner at Tiffins!
Day 3, Part 5: We Finally See Our New Home!

Tuesday, December 5th
Day 4, Part 1: Please Don't Make a Boomer Joke!
Day 4, Part 2: Early Entry Madness!
Day 4, Part 3: Geyser Point!
Day 4, Part 4: All the Decorations! Part 1
Day 4, Part 5: All the Decorations! Part 2
Day 4, Part 6: Much Needed Down Time
Day 4, Part 7: Jiko!

Wednesday, December 6th
Day 5, Part 1: Complete Change of Plans!
Day 5, Part 2: Maybe Swimming Isn't the Best Idea...
Day 5, Part 3: Jollywood, Part 1!
Day 5, Part 4: Jollywood, Part 2!
Day 5, Part 5: Jollywood, Part 3!
Day 5, Part 6: Jollywood, Part 4!

Thursday, December 7th
Day 6, Part 1: Suite Number Three!
Day 6, Part 2: More Decorations, and the Skyliner!
Day 6, Part 3: Our New Room!
Day 6, Part 4: New Future World! (Nope, Never Going to Stop Calling it That)
Day 6, Part 5: Coral Reef for the First Time Since the 90s!
Day 6, Part 6: Living with the Land - Christmas Edition!
Day 6, Part 7: Candlelight Processional!
Day 6, Part 8: Our First Luminous!

Friday, December 8th
Day 7, Part 1: The Saddest Day of the Trip





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[summerlvr]

Can't wait to read more!

 

[alohamom]

following along!

 

[Counting Stars]

Looking forward to more- love your trip reports!

 

[rdkeim]

Following!

 

[Wood Nymph]

I can't wait to hear all about your trip!

 

[VAtink]

Can't wait to read more!

, thanks for joining in on the fun!

 

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following along!

, thanks for following along!

 

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Looking forward to more- love your trip reports!

Aw, thank you so much, and !

 

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Following!

, thanks for following along!

 

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I can't wait to hear all about your trip!

I can't wait to get into it, this seriously was one of the most amazing trips we've taken. And !

 

[Nicnicnic.nic]

Following!

 

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Day -1: This Trip is Happening!!​

After years of waiting, it was finally here, the day before the trip! Now, if you’ve been following my September trip report you probably already know this, but I came down with a head cold the weekend before this trip, so I had about a week to get healthy. Needless to say, it was a super stressful week.

I did go to the doctor to make sure it wasn’t anything that needed meds, or covid, and that was negative all around which was good. So I stocked up on over the counter cold medicine and tried to basically sleep my way through the week.

Fortunately, about two days before the trip I started to feel a LOT better, and the day beforehand I was feeling 100% better. YAY!!!!!

Funny enough, I think this week of sleeping 12-14 hours each day actually ended up helping with the Disney trip since, per usual, time is precious in Disney and if anything has to go to fit everything in it’s sleep! So showing up to Disney super well rested I think made the late nights/early mornings much more doable for me this time around.

The day before the trip I brought my dog over to his boarding facility, then came home to start packing. Yes, I was so out of it all week, and I was seriously thinking we’d need to postpone the trip, I didn’t even think to pack until the day before we left!

It was a hectic day, but fortunately I took the day off from work so had the full day to do panicked laundry and packing.

By about 6 this evening I had everything ready to go, so settled down with a celebratory glass of wine, and about 45 minutes later was sound asleep.

Yup, a Disney trip miracle, I actually slept the night before a Disney trip, and slept a lot!

I ended sleeping like 9 hours this night, which is a lot for me! I think it also helped that I prebooked a car to pick me up in the morning so I didn’t have to worry about trying to get an Uber early in the morning (since covid those can be very hard to get).

Overall a very different way to kick off a trip for me!

Next up: Disney Here We Come!​

 

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Day 1, Part 1: Disney Here We Come!​

Ok, one last pictureless post until we get into all the picture fun!

I woke up around 4:30 this morning and quickly got ready to head out. The car I hired arrived about 10 minutes early, but he texted to let me know to take my time, which I definitely did, I woke up with just enough time to make it out the door to meet him right at 5!

It was a quick ride to the airport, I know I say this every TR, but I love how close I am to the airport, at that time in the morning it was only like 6 minutes!

The airport was busier than I’m used to at this time of the morning, but I guess we were into the holiday travel season, so not unexpected. Being DC, everyone has precheck, so there was a bit of a line to get through security, but it moved quickly.

I did my usual routine of picking up a bottle of water once through security and running to the bathroom one last time before heading to my gate.

It was only about a 30 minute wait once I made it to my gate, so not too bad of a wait. I really hate just sitting at the airport for hours, so limiting the wait time there is always a win in my book!

Somehow I got very lucky on this flight and ended up having the whole row to myself! Wahoo! The flight also was pretty short, only about an hour and fifty minutes, and it took off a few minutes early. So far this trip was off to a great start! We even ended up landing a bit early at 9:12!

Once we were wheels down in Orlando, I checked my parents flight and saw they were right behind us and landed a minute after I did. What perfect timing!

This trip we were all flying Jetblue, so we planned to meet up at the baggage claim in Terminal C. So once off the plane I headed to my baggage claim to get my bag and then planned to go find my parents at theirs. I assumed they would be a bit behind me since they landed after me, but as I’m standing there waiting for my luggage, I see this man wildly waving his arms at the next baggage claim and realized that, oh, that’s my dad!

I was a bit surprised they made it there first since we had landed first, but it did take a while for my plane to drive around the airport looking at all the sights before finally making its way to a gate. Good thing for me though, my bag came out first, so I at least won that round!

Once we had all our bags I called for an Uber and got one quickly. One thing I didn’t realize beforehand was that they don’t have Uber Black SUV down there (or at least it wasn’t available that day)! I had wanted to order an SUV since we had so much luggage, but without the option I just crossed my fingers that we’d get a big car.

Well, of course we ended up with a sedan.

It actually worked out though, I was very impressed with the amount of trunk space in that car. Somehow everything fit, although just barely! Once everything was Tetris-ed into the car, we headed off to the Boardwalk.

It was a quick drive over to the Boardwalk and soon we were checking in for our first hotel of the week!

Next up: The Most Awesome Exciting Fabulous Surprise!​

 

[Wood Nymph]

By about 6 this evening I had everything ready to go, so settled down with a celebratory glass of wine, and about 45 minutes later was sound asleep.

Yup, a Disney trip miracle, I actually slept the night before a Disney trip, and slept a lot!

That was pretty good to have laundry and packing done by 6pm. I usually pack my clothes the day before the flight but do laundry and "other stuff" the day before that.

It was a quick ride to the airport, I know I say this every TR, but I love how close I am to the airport, at that time in the morning it was only like 6 minutes!

It is nice to be close to the airport. We are about 25 minutes from our house to being inside the terminal.
Do you hear aircraft noise from your home?

Once we were wheels down in Orlando, I checked my parents flight and saw they were right behind us and landed a minute after I did. What perfect timing!

I was a bit surprised they made it there first since we had landed first,

That was perfect.
Maybe they had seats on the plane that were closer to the exit than your seats.

 

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That was pretty good to have laundry and packing done by 6pm. I usually pack my clothes the day before the flight but do laundry and "other stuff" the day before that.

Yeah, it was a lot to do in one day, but it worked out. So glad I took the day off of work to get everything done!

It is nice to be close to the airport. We are about 25 minutes from our house to being inside the terminal.
Do you hear aircraft noise from your home?

It really is, especially for the early morning flights! I do hear the noise, but I don't really notice anymore. The only time I do is when flights fly directly over my house, but that usually only happens for aborted landings or every now and then when the landing/take-off change directions they'll send a few flights directly over my house, but that's pretty rare.

That was perfect.
Maybe they had seats on the plane that were closer to the exit than your seats.

The timing was amazing! That's a good point, I actually think they were! For the small planes where the even more space seats are only row 1 and then mid-way back, I usually pick an even more space seat in row 13 since I've found fewer people pick that row so I have a better chance of getting the row to myself, and I like having the under seat storage. I believe my parents were in row 2, so yeah, makes sense they'd get off first.

 

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Day 1, Part 2: The Most Awesome Exciting Fabulous Surprise!​

We last left off arriving at the Boardwalk.

We headed in and went to the desk to check-in. The cast member quickly saw that we were in club level so called another over to guide us over to bell services to drop off our bags then bring us up to the club level.

Well, my mom decided this would not work out for her, she wanted to change outfits and put sunblock on before we got checked in upstairs, so the cast member told us to just come back to the front desk when were ready and someone would bring us upstairs.

It took a while for my mom to get ready, during which time I got some pictures of the decorations in the lobby.



By the time my mom was done getting ready, the lobby had become packed and there was a long line for the front desk. So we got into the line, which fortunately moved quickly, and soon were chatting with the CM Debbie! She was awesome and once again noted we were club level so brought us upstairs to check in up there.

We settled in at the club level desk to chat with one of my new favorite CMs, Stephanie. We had a great conversation, and at one point she tells us she has a bit of bad news, the deluxe room that we booked wasn’t going to be available, so she asked us if it would be alright if she put us into a TWO BEDROOM SUITE!!!!!!!

My jaw hit the floor. I seriously was sitting there mouth agape for like 2 minutes.

Of course we told Stephanie that it was perfectly fine to put us in the suite!

She then told us some other good news, apparently we had overpaid for the original deluxe room, so we were getting a refund on that too! So not only did we get this massive upgrade, we were getting money back from Disney for the room too!

Everything was going amazingly, until suddenly boom, we broke the computer system. We tried to add my mom’s credit card to the room, and it just wouldn’t let us. We kept trying over and over, but nothing would work, we even tried multiple cards.

Turns out this was a property wide problem, another CM came in while we were trying to get our card added and let us know that there were issues at the parks as well, apparently MK was cash only at that point and a lot of Epcot was as well. Looks like I was back to breaking everything, oops!

So we finished what we could with the check-in process, and just as we were wrapping up Stephanie gave us even more good news, the room just became available!

Of course we had to go check it out right away!















There was even a Christmas tree in the room!



It was an accessible room, so one of the bedrooms had a fully accessible bathroom and that bedroom had a lower bed.

Here’s a quick video tour I put together of the room:

This was the most amazing start to the trip! We ended up hanging out for a while in the room just taking it all in. We were just in complete shock that this upgrade happened to us.

Finally, after exploring and taking 1000 pictures of the room, we decided to head out, we were getting hungry! Our first stop was the lounge to check out the offerings. It was lunch so there wasn’t much, but we did grab some apples to hold us over, and of course a glass of wine. (in my excitement I seem to have forgotten to take pictures, oops!)

After enjoying a quick snack, we headed downstairs to see more of the decorations. I also wanted to swing by the store to see if they had the abracadabar shirt in stock in my size. Stephanie did call down to the store while we were checking in, and the confirmed they had the shirt, but they didn’t know what sizes were still in stock.

So we headed downstairs and of course took pictures of all the decorations!





We then swung by the store to see if they had the shirt in my size, but sadly they only had smalls and extra smalls.

Oh well, maybe they’ll be back in stock in September!

Next up: First Taste of Festival of the Holidays!​

 

[IDSkinner]

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