And I'm back! I wanted to start a vacation journal about our Disney trip before I forgot the details. Which made me remember that I started this blog a long time ago, so what better place to put our vacation notes. If I actually finish updating our vacation notes, I will try to keep updating our lives in this space, because I just went back to read my previous posts and it definitely helped refresh my memory of some of the little moments in our lives.
For our spring break trip, this would be our first vacation with just us 4. We have gone on lots of vacations with family members and have had a blast with plenty of people around to play with. So I was a bit nervous how we'd do without other people to a) help keep kids entertained and b) handle being just us 4 for over a week. However, the trip went really well and the kids did amazing with each other that I am already in the planning stages for our next trip!
We decided to go to Walt Disney World and make it a joint celebration of an anniversary trip for Paul and I and combine with his 40th birthday. Paul and I have not taken a vacation just us since our honeymoon. We had tossed around the idea of going somewhere without the kids, but spring break is a week after our anniversary and also had Paul's 40th, so I wanted Paul to pick a place that he wanted to go. His favorite vacation was Disney with his parents, brother-in-law and family, that he wanted to go back there again. We decided since we were doing Disney, it wouldn't be fair to go without the kids so they got to come along on our anniversary trip as well.
I began planning for our trip in October. With Disney, so much planning goes in to the vacation before you even arrive that I wanted to make sure we were booked before 180 days out, so I had time to get reservations that I wanted. I was super worried about traveling over spring break and the crowds, but we lucked out with crowds and had no troubles getting any ADR's or fast passes that we wanted.
Our initial package was staying at the value resort Art of Animation, in a little mermaid room. We were staying March 18-23 and would have 6 days in the parks (with park hoppers), a memory maker, and the meal plan which included the following per person over the length of our stay: A refillable mug, 20 snacks, 5 quick service meals, and 5 table service meals.
I am sure we could have saved money by not doing the meal plan and paying out of pocket (since at Table Service meals you still need to tip and we didn't really need all the food or use all our snack credits) but I prefer to have the majority of the vacation paid for before we even arrive.
The kids (and my) last day of school before spring break was Friday, March 16th. I spent the evening packing and cleaning so that we could leave bright and early the next morning. We actually didn't do that bad, and on Saturday, the 17th, we were out the door, had a car full of gas, and on the road by 8:30 am. We spent the entire day driving and stopped in Valdosta, Georgia overnight so that we only had to spend about 3.5 hours on the road the next day.
Art of Animation is a beautiful resort. The outside is just so well decorated. I have heard that the value resorts are more in your face with decor, but we loved it. I think the kids were the perfect age to enjoy (all kids are) and it definitely felt like we were in Disney. We would stay there again (even with some of the issues I will post about later).
So we arrived at 11:30, and official check in isn't until 3:00, but we were told our room was ready. We were really excited and went and parked our car (the farthest building you can get from the food court, main pool, and bus stops, but we knew that was most likely going to happen when we booked our standard room). We make a trip up to our room with our things, open the door and all pile in. We see a wallet, hat, and keys on the bed and my initial thought is, oh no, someone left it behind and housekeeping forgot to grab it for them. I go to pick it up and turn it in, and a man calls out from the bathroom about who is in the room. We get out as quickly as possible and are all a bit shaken up by this.
I have to make the 1/2 mile walk (not exaggerating that's how far it is from our room to the check in desk) to the front desk. They had no idea how someone was in the room, and I was initially told maybe it was housekeeping or someone from maintenance. I have a couple of issues with this if that was the case, but the main one would be due to the fact it was marked as cleaned and ready for guests, no one should then be using the restroom!
They gave us another room (same building but at least the new one overlooked the pool area and not the parking lot) and in order to make up for the random start, we got three anytime fast passes to Epcot the next day.
Our new room was completely empty except for us (good news!) and we started the trip to unload all our belongs (as usual I overpacked). I will admit I was a bit disappointed in our room. The outside of the resort is beautiful, and the inside of our little mermaid room just looked a bit dated. We had some cobwebs in the corners of the room and the bathroom door took several tries to get it to close with a click and lock, and finally no matter how you closed the shower curtain water ended up all over the floor.
The beds were clean, housekeeping was nice, but even though it was a value I expected maybe a bit more inside to match the great decor outside. It also was really lacking in storage space. Would I stay at this resort again, definitely, however I would probably choose a suite just as it is closer to all the main places you need to be. I would also go in with expecting the rooms to feel like a motel, and not the hotel feel that you get at the moderates. The other issue with the standard room is that it is two double beds instead of queen beds. Not a big deal, but Paul and I each took a double bed and the kids switched each night who they were sleeping with.
I did like the bus situation at Art of Animation. At moderates you have several bus stops around the property. When we stayed at Caribbean Beach, with the multiple bus stops, it could take longer to get to the parks and you never knew how full a bus would be until it arrived. At Art of Animation, they had only one bus stop, and you knew how full it would be based on where you were in line. On really busy days, if we knew we needed a place to sit and not stand, we could just wait for the next bus. Also, once the bus was loaded, you only had one stop and that was your destination. We never had a long wait for the buses, except once for Magic Kingdom where it took over 35 minutes for a bus to arrive to take us to the park. I did speak with the front desk about this issue, because all of the bus boards (tells you when to expect a bus) say every 20 minutes will be a bus. The front desk said, well actually it's every 20-30 minutes a bus. However, it was only 1 day out of 6 where we used transportation, so not bad at all.
On Tuesday I did send an email to let them know about the shower and bathroom door (if no one ever reports the issue they don't know to fix them) and we received a call while we were at the parks on Wednesday to call back the front desk. Because we were in the parks so late on Wednesday, I didn't call back until Thursday morning. They were offering to move us to a suite, but at that point, we only thought we had 1 night left, and packing up everything to move for 1 day just seemed like a lot! So we said thank you for the offer, but we are fine staying and just want to let you know about the rooms. The assistant manager I was speaking with was very nice and wanted to make things right for us. He comped some of what we had already charged to the room, and gave us a credit to do something fun as a family in Disney with. He also gave us more fast passes to use on Thursday and Friday in Epcot which was amazing. Great service!
So again, while I was a bit disappointed in our room, I would stay at this resort again. I absolutely loved the outside theming, everyone was extremely nice, and for the most part I was really happy with the bus system. However, the walk (it was over 1k in steps to the main building) at the end of the night could be really long with tired kids. So we would most likely pay the upgrade for a suite to be closer to where we need to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment