Walt Disney World Firsts

It Was a Week Full of “Firsts” – and Oh-So TRIPPY…

We just got home a couple of days ago from another terrific and memorable trip to Walt Disney World.  Was I sad to leave?  Always.  But as I tell me kids time and time again, all good things come to end.  And so yes, this trip ended as well, and we had to come home once again.  Was it nice to sleep in my own bed again?  You bet.  I always love sleeping in my own bed again after being gone.  There’s just something about sleeping in your own bed, you know?

Despite all of the dozens of times that I have been to Walt Disney World (and yes, it’s close to five dozen times), this trip was full of quite a few “firsts” for us – both collectively as a family, and for me personally as an individual. 

• Driving my own car at Walt Disney World was – in a word – trippy.   I have driven rental cars all over the place multiple times there, but never before had I driven my own Jeep there.  Growing up in Southern California, driving to Disneyland was no big deal… but driving to Florida?!?  Something we had never, ever done before.  You have to understand that long car rides… just not something we’ve done much of since the kids were very little.  It’s true our kids have visited 26 states, but most of those trips were taken when they were a lot younger.  Thinking about it, they’ve been on planes nearly as many times as I’ve been to Walt Disney World.
• My oldest son was part of the driving crew!  Yikes.  He drove about 6 hours on the way down to Florida, and about 6 hours on the way home.  Again, in a word… trippy.
• We spent a lot of time in the pools… I mean a LOT of time.  We were there just about every single day.  This is so not like us.  While we enjoy the occasional dip, we are just not pool people.  And spending hours at the pool – at Walt Disney World – has just never been something we’ve done.  Sure a dip here, maybe there, once or twice during a visit – but never every single day – until now.  Very trippy.
• We enjoyed a pool-side movie.  Fancy that.  I’ve talked about them here in my blog previously, and told many people about them – but we’ve never experienced one for ourselves.  We watched “Finding Nemo” while enjoying the pool at Kidani Village.  Huh.  Trippy. 
• Not going into the theme parks, of course, meant no theme park meals.  We planned to avoid the theme parks all along – but we also ended up not planning any table service meals at all.  So NO ADR’s for this trip.  That was different.  Kinda trippy.    We did end up going to BOMA, thanks to a mix-up on the resort’s part and the subsequent “we messed up” gift card, but we didn’t plan that in advance.  I did arrange a reservation for us 2 days in advance – but again – trippy, since the typical long-term “ADVANCED” in ADR was absent.  Most people don’t make ADR’s 2 days in advance. 
• We did not buy souvenirs on this trip.  No pins.  Nothing.  We’ve been so often, there really was no need to bring more of the same old crap home.  While I was pleased to see some new resort-specific merchandise in the shops, there really was nothing that made me say “I’ve GOT to have that.”  So the wallet stayed in the pocket, and came home no worse for the wear.   Trippy.  I almost always come home with something.
• We enjoyed many of the same “free” or “nearly free” things that I have been talking about in my semi-regular “Saturday Savers” posts.  

We took our daughter over to the Tri-Circle D Ranch at Ft. Wilderness to check out the horses. Sadly she was 3 inches too tall to be able to ride the ponies, despite being within the age and weight range.  Sigh.  The tears only lasted a few moments, and then she was happy to at least be able to pet them.  

In the Cars section of Art of Animation

The new DVC resort under construction

 I took the family over to explore new resorts that they had not yet seen - such as the all-new Art of Animation Resort and the Yacht and Beach Clubs - and from a distance we saw the progress being made on the new DVC resort, the Villas at the Grand Floridian, currently under construction.  Kinda trippy doing things with them, that I’ve done numerous times before on my various solo research trips.

• We did NOT sit and watch Stacy!  
• We did watch "I Love Lucy" - in fact numerous times, as it was requested by my daughter numerous times as we scrolled through the on-screen listings menu.  Anytime she saw it, she would shout out for Lucy! (I love that girl... she loves Lucy almost as much as her daddy does.)  Sitting and watching television while at Walt Disney World has never happened before... except to sit and watch Stacy. 

• We enjoyed the Kitchen Sink at Beaches & Cream at Disney's Beach Club.  Finished it, too (well, we did leave some melted ice cream mixed with about 7 or 8 cherries in the bottom that my son kept calling primordial soup… but otherwise, we finished that monstrosity!)   If you’ve never experienced it for yourself, or if you’ve never even heard of the Kitchen Sink… let me elaborate just a bit for you.  It’s 8 scoops of ice cream, topped with EVERY kind of topping they have, plus a whole can – yes, I said it – a WHOLE CAN of whipped cream.  It’s ghastly – yet fun – in a trippy sort of way.  The toppings alone amazed me.  The menu made it seem like just the standard liquid topping variety – but OH NO – there were cake bits, brownie pieces, pieces of candy bars, bananas, pineapple, candied fruit, nuts, and probably an entire jar of cherries, since each of my three kids had at least 6 to 7 cherries apiece (plus those 7 or 8 left in the bottom of the dish).  Crazy.  Fun.  DEFINITELY memorable.  But not something that we need to do again. 

• We enjoyed spending some time (albeit just an hour or so) with friends from another state, who checked in while were at the World!  In the same resort that we had just checked out that morning no less! (Long story short but due to a relatively last-minute change of plans, we had to change resorts for the last couple of nights of our trip - but it was a blessing in disguise because the original plans would have had us leaving WDW 2 days prior to Mark & Julie's arrival... this way we got to visit with them after all!).  Prior to checking out we were joking that they might even end up with "OUR" room at Kidani Village (sadly, no dice, they ended up on the OTHER end of the savannah). Encounters like that do seem to make the famous (and often famously maligned Sherman Brothers song from that iconic Fantasyland attraction ring true - it IS a small world after all!).  

• We got to watch Wishes from the Top of the World Lounge at Bay Lake Tower! Not being BLT point owners, and not having stayed at that resort - we have not had the usually exclusive pleasure of experienced this perk previously.  But since it was made available for a "limited time" to any DVC owner staying on points at any DVC resort, we decided to head on over and see if we could get in and watch from there.  Knowing the Top of the World has limited space, we weren't sure if we would get in or not, but tried anyway.  We were told guests could arrive as early as 6pm, but Wishes wasn't until 10pm.  No way were we going to sit over there for that long.  We arrived at 9pm, and figured if we couldn't get in, we'd simply ride the Monorail over to the Polynesian and watch from the beach (something else we've never done).  But we got in with no problem.  All told, when the fireworks began - the Lounge was probably little more than half full - so there was no need to stress about it at all.  Other nights it might have been more crowded - but our night - not at all.  A big bonus right there!  As a show, Wishes, to me, is very stale and needs to be replaced (especially after watching two different far-superior fireworks presentations at Disneyland in the years since Wishes was first rolled out, and were created after Wishes by the same dude who created Wishes in the first place... it's time Steve Davison to put your fireworks focus back on Walt Disney World!) - but I digress, enough to say that it was fun to experience it from a new vantage point - especially to see how truly far behind the Magic Kingdom the shells are actually shot up from.  The show does lose a LOT in the translation when not watching it from within the confines of the Magic Kingdom - BUT it was fresh and new watching it from the 16th floor of Bay Lake Tower.  Despite being stale to me, it was a great final night bit of fun for all of us. 

• We went in JULY.  For any of you following along who have ever read any comments I have made on the DIS, or any other online spot I may have commented… we do NOT like the heat and humidity of Florida in the Summer time.  I have avoided it like the plague – until this year.  When we realized that this 10 day period of the summer was pretty much the ONLY time during the entire summer that all five of us would be “home” at the same time – and not off on some Scout, Church or other outing.  So way back in February we decided that the only way to protect that time – and give us the much-desired family time that we needed – was to effectively get “out of dodge” and enjoy our timeshare.  That way none of us would be tempted to respond to the various text messages, phone calls, Facebook posts or Tweets that would come around saying – “COME…. Do this, that or whatever else....”  By being 900 miles away from all of that – we could have that coveted family time.  It was a wise choice.  We enjoyed spending time together, reconnecting, being silly, playing games and just hangin’ out together.  Very, very trippy.  I highly recommend taking your own family doing something similar – especially when the busy-ness of the teen years creep in and overtake your household!  With one super active teen, one getting more and more active all-the-time teen, one slightly busy pre-teen and two busy parents – we must SCHEDULE this kind of time in order to capture it – at all.  Otherwise this friend, that friend, this activity or that activity WILL overtake one or more family member each and every week. 

It’s crazy – but it will all change in just two short years when our eldest leaves for college – followed a couple of years later by our middle son, and then it will all come crashing down in just a few short years when the last of the kids is off on her way to college.  It’s very trippy how all those years ago when the boys were but wee ones people would exhort us to “enjoy this time while it lasts” – we were so full of ourselves thinking it would last longer than it actually does.  And here we are – with a son driving us to Walt Disney World, getting ready to start his Junior year of high school and the college information keeps coming in the mail each and every week.   Trippy is definitely an understatement for the week that we experienced – but even more appropriate for the short 16 years that have literally flown by.  Now to start figuring out which week will be the “one week” next summer so that we can hopefully do it all again…

Until next time,