April 2018: A MAGICal April Vacation: Day 4, Part 2

Tuesday April 24, 2018: Part 2

Within a few minutes, Nick had convinced his dad to follow the commands from the backseat (my phone GPS) and we were on the FL Turnpike headed for Miami.

Most of the trip down the FL Turnpike was relatively uneventful. Nick slept a lot. Kim and I had the backseat and we passed the ride chatting, flipping through the Disney Cruise brochure we had found in the hotel, looking at pictures, and joking about our driver, who had decided it was ok to listen to something separate, since he would have 2 ½ hours without “heather commands” (aka...navigation directions).



We did pass through 2 thunderstorms, which were typical FL thunderstorms: relatively quick in duration, but brutal. Kim was visibly nervous about them. Hmm...I hope the forecast for widespread thunderstorms while we’re in Nassau and Castaway Cay turns out to be as false as the forecast for widespread thunderstorms the previous two days!

By the time we reached the West Palm Beach area, we were pretty hungry, and everyone needed a stretch break, so we stopped at one of the turnpike rest areas. We were more than a little excited to see that they had Earl of Sandwich. Nick’s parents had never eaten at one before, but...it was evident from their reactions to lunch that they will probably eat at Earl of Sandwich in the future. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed their lunches.

As we were leaving the rest area, we noticed a “windshield washer” at the edge of the parking lot. And I’m not talking about the people in movies who randomly pop up at city traffic lights to wash your windshield. This was some sensored thing that when you drove up next to it, it blasted your windshield with water. Being from NH, where we don’t have anything like that, we thought it was great, and had to join some other cars in passing through it. Yes, we’re dorks.







From here, the rest of the trip was pretty short. We arrived at our hotel in Miami, the Doubletree Grand Biscayne Bay just a few minutes before the official check in time of 4 pm. We shooed the valet guys away, unpacked the car, and headed in to check in. Nick and I checked in first, and headed to our room, a standard king, bayview room with a balcony on the 8th floor, agreeing to text Nick’s parents in a bit to meet up.

Nick and I had stayed at this hotel on our last trip, and had felt a little meh about it then. It had the bones of a “grand” hotel, but was missing something, like completed maintenance perhaps? I had debated heavily as to where we would stay for this trip, but then saw that they had just completed a mega renovation of the hotel, so, since we loved the view of the cruise ships last time, we decided to give it a second try.

It was evident immediately that the renovation had been successful. For one thing, the elevator button wall plates were actually hung appropriately. When we got to our room, almost at the very end of the hallway, the renovations were evident there too. I, of course, was most excited to see the view. Nick was most excited to see the bidet. Boys!































Shortly after we got to our room, we got a text from Nick’s parents. They’d been upgraded from the partial bayview junior suite John had booked to a 2 bedroom, 2 ½ bath condo on the 36th floor of the other part of the building. They told us to let them know when we were ready to come up, and they’d meet us in the lobby, because apparently our key wouldn’t work for their elevator.

We hung out, enjoying the view for a bit, and then headed for the lobby, where John was waiting for us. We took the elevator up to the 36th floor, and he lead us to the condo. Woah.

We spent quite a bit of time exploring the condo, enjoying the view, checking out what a lobby looks like from 36 floors up, and watching planes make their final descent into Miami airport. We are definitely not in NH anymore! Caution: items in cell phone pictures are closer than they appear!



































































After quite awhile, we decided it was dinner time, so we made our way down to the “retail gallery” and checked out different menus. This hotel has several restaurants, including an Italian place, a Chinese place, a Brazilian steakhouse type place, a deli, some way too healthy smoothi and fruit bowl place, and a seafood restaurant. In the end, we decided on Italian food at Primo’s. Nick and I had eaten there before, and enjoyed it, and the menu appealed to everyone. It was a great meal.

Following a couple of jam packed days, we all agreed that the hot tub was the place to be after dinner, so we agreed to meet “shortly” and went our separate ways in the lobby to change.

This hotel has an amazing hot tub. It’s like a giant four leaf clover, so a) it’s a very large hot tub and b) a group can have their own section without the awkwardness that goes with small, basic round hot tubs. Aside from the view and Primo’s, it’s absolutely the best thing about this hotel.

The hot tub was also a perfect temperature, so we stayed up on the pool deck (10th floor) for at least an hour, before deciding we were sufficiently relaxed and ready to crash. Absolutely no one had to be rocked to sleep that night, despite the excitement that was rapidly building for the next morning.

April 2018: A MAGICal April Vacation: Day 4, Part 1

Day 4: Tuesday, April 24, 2018

We were all a little bit slow moving this morning. We had agreed to be ready to leave for breakfast about 8, but, we quickly pushed that back by about 10 minutes. I think everyone was tired, and although we all agreed that it’s a lot easier to leave Disney when there’s still more vacation left, we were also all not looking forward to 3+ hours in the car.

Once we were ready for breakfast, we hopped in the car for the relatively quick ride over to Port Orleans French Quarter. Nick and I stayed here on our “walking wounded” Food and Wine Festival weekend trip and loved it, so we decided the best way to end this part of the trip was with beignets.

In fact, when we pulled up to the guard shack, John announced to the security person that “we’re here for the beignets!”. The guard chuckled and directed us to visitor parking.

Kim and John were both impressed about as soon as we stepped out of the car. John asked why we hadn’t stayed here if we loved it so much. Oh, you know...just an extra $100/night when we’re already doing essentially 2 vacations in one. He got it!

We headed straight for the food court, which Nick and I had not gotten to experience when we stayed here. The renovated food court re-opened about 4 days after our departure from that trip. We were pretty impressed.

This was one great breakfast. Nick got steak and eggs. Kim got baguette french toast with cinnamon sugar. John got something I’m not remembering. And I got a fried chicken biscuit sandwich thing, with maple bacon jam on it. Plus, we had beignets with strawberry and chocolate dipping sauces!

It was a great meal to wrap up this part of the trip with. We all enjoyed it. Then we walked around outside for a bit, with Kim visibly falling in love with this resort. She particularly enjoyed the jazz animals. And I enjoyed the palm trees. 

Once we were done walking around POFQ, we headed back to Pop to finish packing. Checkout time was quickly closing in on us.

On our way back to the rooms, Kim and I stopped to take the pictures she had mentioned wanting on our arrival night. We were in the building with the giant yellow Walkman, and that was something she had owned, so she wanted a picture of her “listening” to it. I was happy to take on that assignment.

After that fun, we really had to get serious about packing. We hadn’t truly unpacked (Nick and I never waste precious vacation time unpacking) but we had been there for 3 nights, so we had plenty of stuff lying around. Packing was a process, as it always is, but it got done, and we had some entertainment while we packed.

Within a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. I groaned, remembering the previous day’s events. This was different, though. This was guest services. Could they switch out the faceplate on our door lock for the upcoming transition to being able to unlock doors with cell phones. Uhh sure.

We had no idea how entertaining those 5 minutes would be. The door lock switch team was a male and female pair. She was wicked pregnant, and working harder than we had ever seen at picking up the guy. Yes, we totally eavesdropped while we were packing. They were standing in our open doorway, like 3 feet from the suitcase we were packing!

Shortly after the door lock was finished, we were finished packing, and headed for the car. The boys played luggage tetris, and pretty soon we were in the car, to drive a super far distance...over to Art of Animation.

Kim had expressed interest in seeing this resort, so we made it a point to go over there. It’s a pretty cool place to walk around. We walked all around the resort. I think John took more pictures here than he’d taken the whole trip, so far. I didn’t take any pictures here; I have before. I think Kim has decided that’s the next Disney resort she wants to stay at. I don’t blame her. It is really cool.

While there, I ran into a former Title One professional from the elementary school I used to work at, before switching schools in the district last year. She wasn’t my favorite person there. Murphy’s law is that she would be the person I’d run into on vacation!

Once we’d finished exploring Art of Animation, it was time to hop in the car for the real drive. Mr. electrical engineer started plugging the address into his ancient GPS that has, at times, tried to send Kim into the ocean. I programmed the GPS in my phone.

April 2018: A MAGICal April Vacation: Day 3, Part 3

Monday April 23, 2918: Part 3

We ended up delaying departure for the Animal Kingdom by an extra 15 minutes, due to a very brief second storm. I think we headed out about 4:15. John had gotten about an hour and a half nap. Nick’s was probably around 3 hours. Everyone was in great spirits headed to the bus stop!

A bus to Animal Kingdom arrived within minutes, and it was a quick trip over there. Bag check was relatively uneventful (although guess who picked the slow line!), and pretty soon we were posing for pictures, at the only 20th anniversary photo op we found. 

Pictures taken, we headed for dinner at Pizzafari, which, from here on out, will forever be known as Pizzafarts, thanks to an unfortunate misread by our resident engineer.

Dinner was tasty and apparently the naps made everyone hungry because we all inhaled our pizzas and mandarin orange lemonade. Nick’s parents had apparently never eaten here before, but they were very happy with this dinner choice. And I was happy to see that Disney has greatly improved their pizza over the years. Most importantly; there’s finally an acceptable amount of cheese on it!

Full of pizza, it was just about time to use our first fastpass of the day. We only had to hang around the entrance (but not too close, I promise) to Safaris for about 3 minutes before our window opened up. We quickly realized, though, as we were walking through the line, that we didn’t even need a fastpass; there was virtually no line. It was a great safari!

High on all the animals we saw, we headed for the Tree of Life, to see some critters. The tree was particularly photogenic today. 

Apparently, it’s tradition with Nick’s parents to see Bugs Life. I had only ever seen it once, and was ok with that, but off we went.

After Bugs Life, it was time for the main event: Flight of Passage! I had logged on at EXACTLY 7 am (thank goodness we had a delayed opening that morning!), 60 days before check in to get this fastpass. There was exactly one time available for the 4 of us when I did that: 6:50-7:50 PM. The adrenaline pumping through me while getting that fastpass was more than when Southwest releases flights for school vacation week.

So we headed back to Pandora, where we were pleasantly surprised to find only a 90 minute standby line, and basically a walk on fastpass return line.

So...Flight of Passage. We were all wicked impressed by this attraction! We were all also excited to see that Nick and his dad were able to fit. Nick because of his waist, his dad because of his long legs. Nick actually found the ride restraints comfortable. Something about lumbar support? I wouldn’t go that far, but, we all got to enjoy the attraction, and enjoy we did! Seriously...amazing. We actually contemplated getting in that hour and a half long standby and we finally understood how people are willing to stand in line for multiple hours for a ride.

After Flight of Passage, we hung around Pandora for a bit, deciding what to do. Nick got some beverage that is multi-colored and sickeningly sweet. He said it tasted like a Starburst. He liked it.

Eventually Nick and I decided to go ride Everest, because it was showing a minimal wait. His parents decided to stay put; his mom wanted to see Pandora after dark. We agreed to meet them back in Pandora.

Turns out Everest was actually a walk-on. So we rode twice in a row, with barely any wait at all. We only have one picture though. Nick had read about some hand symbol that sneaks by the photo censors. The photo censors are apparently on to that though!

After 2 rides on Everest, and contemplating a 3rd, we headed back toward Pandora, stopping to catch the tail end of Awakenings at the Tree of Life, which was amazing. We weren’t sure of the schedule, but suspected it’d happen again, so when it ended, we went in search of Nick’s parents, with the plan of them experiencing it too.

It took a bit to find them, and then a bit longer for Awakenings to start again, but we did all get to see it in its entirety. It’s short, but it’s fantastic. And the light effects they do with the animal carvings before the little show are amazing too.

After Awakenings, Kim decided she wanted to check the store nearby for new socks, because the ones she had washed the night before had not dried at all, given the significant humidity, and she hadn’t expected to wear socks like she already had on this trip, so she didn’t have enough. While we waited for her, it was evident that Rivers of Light had just let out. Oh yay...bus lines!

When Kim re-emerged, we followed the masses to the busses, where a Pop Century bus showed up pretty quickly. We piled on, and surprisingly, this was the only bus ride of the (brief) park trip where we had to stand.

Once we got back to Pop, we headed for the food court. We really were in search of adult Dole Whip, which, according to some websites, was recently added at Pop, but we couldn’t find it. So, Nick and I got normal Dole Whip (well...the swirl) and some canned adult beverages we hadn’t seen before, and Nick’s parents got ice cream cookie sandwiches. We enjoyed those thoroughly and made the plan for the next day, before heading back to our rooms to crash for the night. Part 1 of vacation was quickly coming to an end.

April 2018: A MAGICal April Vacation: Day 3, Part 2

Monday April 23, 2018, Part 2

Upon our return to the room, we noticed that housekeeping was in the vicinity. And by that I mean we made eye contact with her as we put our “room occupied” sign on the door. Our room hadn’t been touched yet, which we totally understood, since it was early in the day, and we didn’t need more towels or pillows anyway. When we arrived, there had been 6 pillows in our room. Somehow when we returned to the room on Sunday, that number had multiplied to 8. Now, I know the second bed is a murphy bed, and we also each sleep with 2 pillows, but we had pillows stashed in every available corner of the room at that point.

But, for those who have smartly avoided a certain popular Disney drama...err...discussion board, and who have not been to Disney lately, Disney has changed their policies a bit. It used to be that if you hung the “do not disturb” sign on your door, housekeeping wouldn’t even knock. They might leave you a bag of toiletries, towel, and paper products (says the girl who once ended up with 3 of those bags...on a SOLO trip and could have taken about 16 showers without ever using the same towel twice), hanging from your door, and then they went away.

This isn’t the case anymore. The “do not disturb” signs have been switched out for “room occupied” signs, and housekeeping must enter each room at least once a day, as a deterrent, I guess against another Las Vegas style incident.

I’ve seen mixed reviews on this policy, and wasn’t anxious to see it unfold. But I was hoping they’d take the sign and our eye contact into account, so we could have that peaceful nap break in air conditioning.

To make a long story very short, my hopes remained wishes. It started reasonably enough with just a knock on the door, but over the course of approximately an hour we (I...Nick slept through it) were disrupted approximately half a dozen times by housekeeping. This included one housekeeper barging in (followed by others knocking just moments later, so clearly they weren’t communicating), and finished with the housekeeping manager paying us a visit to find out why we were refusing service (hi...my husband is SLEEPING) and swiping his key to prove he’d been there. Our “room occupied” door hanger also disappeared sometime in this door knocking process. And it wasn’t windy yet.

For future reference, per the email I received from Disney in response to mine, guests are able to schedule these “inspections” (their words, not mine). Since they’re carried out by housekeeping, I assume this means calling housekeeping upon arrival and telling them when you’d like your room cleaned. I’m very rarely a complaining guest (and even with this email, I tried to keep it to simply urging Disney to continue to evaluate their procedures). Both Nick and I have logged countless hours in customer service jobs, so we try to keep complaints to companies at a minimum. But I will be scheduling housekeeping moving forward, because half a dozen disruptions in an hour is not acceptable.

So...shortly before the housekeeping manager showed up, I got a text from Kim wondering where we were. When I told her Nick was sleeping and I was just hanging around, she suggested we walk to the pool to put our feet in. Ok!

The computer pool was very close to our room, so we headed over there. I think we had our feet in the pool for no more than 5 minutes before the lifeguard started clearing the pool. Incoming storm!

We walked back to the rooms, and decided since both boys were conducting an orchestra in snore-major, to pull chairs out of our rooms and sit outside between the two rooms, under cover. It was as we were pulling chairs outside that the previously mentioned housekeeping manager showed up.

Kim and I sat outside chatting for probably an hour, during which time it poured very briefly, before she decided to rest for 20 minutes before we left for the Animal Kingdom.