Trip Report Quick Birthday Trip, but in style-Grand Floridian!

August 18-20, 2017.
First, a little background. We live in Marco Island, FL, about 4 hours south and west of Disney World by car. We just returned from our amazing, magical 12 day Disney Cruise through the British Isles near the end of July. Our plan was to get annual seasonal passes again for Disney World in 2018 (our plan is cruise every other year, and annual passes on the alternative years). But it was quickly approaching my husband's birthday on August 20th and we wanted to do something fun for the weekend. Usually, my husband goes fishing in Montana with his parents, however, due to his business partner having surgery, my husband couldn't go to Montana this year. We talked about spending a night at the Hard Rock Casino in Immokalee, Ft. Lauderdale, or Tampa, but my daughter protested, saying she wanted to spend his birthday with him too. So we talked about getting our annual passes early and doing a quick Disney weekend. As we haven't been to Disney World for a year and were jones-ing for a fix, we all quickly got excited. I have no more vacation time left this year unfortunately, so we would have to leave Friday night and come back Sunday afternoon. So it was going to be quick. So should we go (relatively) "cheap"? We talked about staying in a value resort. But that didn't seem special for my husband's birthday. So we decided to focus on the moderate resorts. We found some decent deals but now we were only a week out of the vacation and we kept getting second thoughts and not clicking them fast enough. I had Coronado on my screen in my cart, but then wanted to check with hubby. By the time he came home, it was gone. Hubby had Port Orleans Riverside in his cart, but wimped out and wanted to check with me, and by the time I came home, it was gone. We were now 5 days away from the weekend and hadn't planned anything. So one morning before work, I got a bug, and decided we were doing it! I decided we should first purchase the annual passes to see what annual passholder discounts there were on rooms (as opposed to the Florida resident discounts). Purchased!!!!!!!!!! Ah!!!!!!!! What a good feeling to be a passholder again! The freedom of knowing that you can go to a park at any time (except for block out dates because we get Silver) is priceless! Even if you know you are 4 hours away, just having that card in your pocket makes the possibilities SEEM endless!
So now we are committed. We pull up the annual passholder deals, and there is a Grand Floridian room for $360.00 a night! We thought this was a great deal as we had only ever dreamed of staying at the Grand Floridian since it was always listed at over 600.00 per night, even on special. So we hit the button and booked it! Since we were only going for 2 nights, we decided it was a nice time to splurge and cross the highest end resort off our list (our goal is to stay in every resort on property). YAY!!! Now for fast passes. Obviously, Flight of Passage, Frozen, and Test Track fast passes were all gone 5 days out of the trip, but we put together a plan that would work. We wanted a nice dinner for hubby's birthday on Saturday night and a nice lunch on his actual birthday on Sunday. Sunday, I knew we would be spending a 1/2 day at Magic Kingdom, so that was a no brainer. I've been dying to try the Skipper's Canteen and got a reservation pretty easily there!
But dinner on Saturday was harder to obtain a good time that fit in with our plans. We wanted to spend the afternoon at our hotel and enjoy it and then go to Epcot that evening. A lot of the good reservations were gone. But we had heard great things about The Grand Floridian Cafe so we decided to book dinner there. Plans made, Disney ears and shirts were hastily packed, magic bands waiting for us at our hotel, and we were off!

 

[JenTen1585]

So I arranged with my boss to work through lunch and leave at 4pm on Friday. We were on the road by 4:30 pm and drove up the center of the state in the back roads (this is really only 5 minutes savings from taking I-75 and I-4, maybe less, but my husband enjoys the drive better). We stopped at Wendy's for a healthy and nutritious dinner (NOT!)! We arrive at the beautiful Grand Floridian at around 8:40 pm. I was anxious because I wanted to get to Magic Kingdom before 10pm to get our annual passes activated so that we could rope drop extra magic hours at Animal Kingdom for Flight of Passage the next morning. I know we needed to have no delays if we were going to accomplish this! We could have just gone straight to Magic Kingdom but we didn't have our magic bands yet. So we checked in the beautiful lobby, and got our bands and then headed to put our stuff down in our room. What a beautiful campus! We had a room in Building 7 on the first floor. So you walked along the pool, or along the marina by the water to get to our building. A quick walk from the main building. The lobby of our building was even pretty. The room is lovely and more spacious than most, and I was so happy to see the bathrobes in the closet (for some reason, bathrobes always make me happy in a hotel room).
(I'm having a hard time posting pictures, but will upload them once I figure out how.)
So we threw down our things, quickly admired our view of the water (we got a standard room, but I though our view out over the Marina was gorgeous!), and then headed over to the main building to take the monorail!
Dakota (my 8 year old) was so excited to take the monorail! We hadn't taken it in a while since when we last went to Disney we stayed at Wilderness Lodge, and before that, Fort Wilderness, and took the boat. We arrived at Magic Kingdom at a little after 9 and got our annual passes activated within 10 minutes. I had booked a fast pass just in case for Splash Mountain at 9:30pm so we decided to enter.
As we entered, the show was going on. So we walked up main street sidewalks, trying to both watch and walk at the same time. We are not real night time show people. I don't know why. We just never make the time for it. But Happily Ever After, from what I saw, looked beautiful! The lit castle was amazing! We reached Splash Mountain right at around 9:30pm and walked on with our fast passes! As always, I adore that ride! It's long and has everything - beautiful colors, great music, a good story line, good animatronics, and thrills to boot!!! It's my favorite ride at Magic Kingdom so it was a great start to the trip! We quickly made our way out of the park after the ride as we were exhausted! We took the boat back to Grand Floridian and collapsed into our comfortable beds! We set our alarm for oh dark 5:45am to get ready to open up Animal Kingdom. But what must be done for Flight of Passage, must be done.

 

[LieutLaww]

Damn 05:45 for AK that is some dedication !

 

[JenTen1585]

As a place holder, I will use standard photos of the Grand Floridian (better than my sorry I-phone photos anyways):

I loved the smell!!!!!!!!! So elegant!

Our room was in the building on the back left. It's not like Riverside, this is a less than 5 minute walk from the main building.

From the Marina side, so you can see our beautiful view. Our building was the second on the right and our room was on the first floor with the balcony right on the sidewalk bordering the water.

 

[JenTen1585]

So the alarm went off at 5:45 am and my husband, myself, and my daughter were out the hotel room door by 6:20am. I admitted then that I went a little overboard on the alarm. Could definitely have slept till 6/6:15. We're pretty quick at getting ready. We went down to Gasperilla, the quick service at Grand Floridian. They were open, but only for pastries, not for the hot items. Nevertheless, we shared a cinnamon roll, bananas, and a bagel. It worked. We caught the bus right at or right before 7am to Animal Kingdom! We arrived at Animal Kingdom around 7:15am I believe and there were already lines at the bag checks and security line, as they would not open until 7:30am. Today I decided to forego my usual backpack, and instead shoved my phone and my license, a credit card, and annual passes in my pocket. So none of us had to go through the bag check, saving valuable time.
At 7:30, they opened the security and we proceeded through to wait by the turnstyles at the entry. There, cast members with handheld devices scanned our magic bands to make sure we were resort guests.
At around 7:45, they opened the turnstyles. I got right through, but my husband and daughter got caught behind a family having problems. UGH!!!!!!! They finally got through and we started, run/walking with the crowd. Run, run, run ("Running? Who's running? I'm not running!") and then walk to pretend like we are not crazy! Then jog a bit again. By doing this, we got near the front of the crowd at the rope to Pandora. Not the total front, but I could see it! My husband is proclaiming the whole time how crazy this is, but we are also giggling and honestly, surging on the adrenaline of the dash. I assured them that after this, we could relax the rest of the day. The rope dropped and again everyone dashed towards Flight of Passage. There was a small squeeze to get into the line and my daughter got a little crushed. We quickly picked her up and got in line. We ended up walking on in about 5 minutes.
So after that craziness, would it be worth it??!!
Of course it was!
What a fantastic ride!!! All 3 of us loved it! Although, the glasses did not fit my daughter at all!!! They need kid sized glasses! She had to hold them the whole time, which I'm sure took away from the fun of holding the handle bars. But other than the glasses complaint, what an amazing ride!!!!
We got off of FOP with a high! My daughter said she wanted to go again, but by the time we got out, the wait was already 90 minutes!!!! Can you believe it?? Crazy! My husband pointed out that the wait times on everything else was 5 minutes, so we quickly cancelled all our fast passes for the morning and decided to use them for Epcot for the evening instead as a Soarin fastpass was still available at a good time.
We walked on the Navi River. Great ride but a little bit of a let down after FOP, but wouldn't anything be? It was still beautiful colors and I loved the animatronic at the end! The computer graphics are not as fun as animatronics to me. But it was beautiful and relaxing and I really enjoyed it!
We then walked quickly to the Safari, which again, was a walk on. We had a good Safari as a lot of the animals were active in the early morning relative cool.
After the Safari, we walked quickly again to Everest, which was at only a 10 minute wait!! We rode that - which is one of my daughter's favorite rides. For me, it's one and done because it gets me a little queasy but I do enjoy it!
At this point it was 9:30 am and we had done the 4 big wait rides in the park!! We were high five-ing and congratulating ourselves!
We decided to go on Kali River Rapids as the wait was only 15 minutes (which really was a walk on). We got lucky and got a little wet, enough to be refreshing, but not enough to get soaked and uncomfortable. The plan was to wait for the 11am Nemo show, so we next made our way to the Dinosaur area and my daughter was finally tall enough to ride the Primeval Whirl. I was worried about getting motion sick as I forgot to take/bring my dramamine so I decided to wait for them in the gift shop instead. They said it was really fun and that it wasn't to bad from a motion sickness perspective, so I will try it next time.
I then went and played with my daughter on the playground for about 15 minutes before I was dripping with sweat and proclaimed it way too hot for this! Luckily, my daughter agreed!
So it's now 10:30, time to head over to Nemo. But when my husband rejoined us, he was all lit up over what he thought was a great idea - he wanted to go play miniature golf at the Fantasia golf course. We had done this years ago .... back when I was in college in Orlando ... but not for like 16 or 17 years. I thought it would be a little too hot, and miniature golf is not my favorite, but it was my husband's birthday weekend, so I kept my concerns to myself and proclaimed it a great idea!
We got back to the hotel and went to Gaspirilla for a snack. I had the chicken flat bread which was amazeballs! My husband agreed and kept stealing pieces. We also got a couple of desserts. A brownie I think, and a cupcake. I don't remember. They were good, but not spectacular.
My daughter at this point was gazing at the pool longingly, and decided she didn't want to go miniature golfing. Even though we assured her we would have plenty of time to swim when we got back. She is a kid, she didn't want to wait. But I told her it was Daddy's birthday and to suck it up. We're going miniature golfing.
We had about a 10 minute wait to golf, and I have to tell you .... it was half fun and half tourture in the heat. The course is awesome and a lot of fun in the layout. But in the heat and sun and humidity, we were all roasting. I was dripping with sweat and eventually started giggling. My husband asked me what was funny, and I told him that I was having fun, but he had to admit this was part torture chamber. He agreed. Of course, he beat us all. Thank god for the 6 stroke maximum!
We drove back to the hotel and got into our bathing suits as quick as we could peel off our sweat soaked clothes! We quickly walked to the pool with the slide. My daughter and I got wet and then quickly got in line for the slide. I love the water slides! I'm not a huge hang out in a pool person. We have a pool at home and I go in it maybe twice a year, whereas my daughter is in it almost every day. But I do enjoy water slides and the water felt so great on such a hot, hot day!
We did the slide about 5 times in a row and then swam around a bit. We only stayed in the pool area about an hour and a half as we were starting to feel like we were cooking.
We went back to the room and all took refreshing showers. I put on that beautiful bathrobe and cuddled up in bed. Everyone napped/watched tv in the cool.
However, a little complaint part here. When we got back to our room after miniature golfing at around 2pm, the room was still not cleaned, but I saw cleaning people around so I hoped they would get to us soon. There was a basket in front of our door with clean sheets and towels waiting for the cleaning staff. When we got back from the pool at 3:30, it was still not clean, and now I was a little upset as I knew we wanted to relax in the room until we left around 4:30 for dinner. So I called housekeeping and told them that we would be putting the do not disturb sign out but to tell them to come at 4:30 as we would be leaving for dinner. They assured me they would.
When we left for dinner at 4:30 pm, the basket was gone and no cleaning staff around. I wondered what would happen, but had faith in Disney. Unfortunately, in this case, my faith was misplaced. So in Disney's premier property, our room was never cleaned. And we were only in it for about an hour that whole day, so in my opinion, there is no excuse for that. When we got back that evening around 9 pm and the room was still not cleaned, I was angry and annoyed. I called the front desk to complain and the front desk said "I'm not trying to hear that! Are you kidding?!" The way she said it actually took my temper down and made me giggle a bit. She quickly offered a $100.00 credit, which I decided was fair enough and worth a dirty room (actually probably worth more than the dirty room, as we aren't that dirty). And she sent someone with clean towels and shampoo and conditioner for us.
Now back to the day. It's 4:30, and time to head towards dinner, at the Grand Floridian Cafe at 5pm. Of course we are there at 4:35 and they aren't open yet (why do I think I need a half hour to walk 5 minutes? LOL!), so we decide to walk through some of the beautiful shops. My husband decides the t-shirts are too much, even though he needs one as he didn't pack enough. Oh well! But my daughter, always good at finding something, finds an adorable minnie watch that actually fits her tiny little wrists!! She's thrilled.
We are quickly sat at dinner near a window overlooking the grounds. I think the Grand Floridian Cafe looks a little casual for the price (I think it's the lack of table cloths) but it's open and airy. And that night they had 30% off for passholders who ate before 6:30pm! We decided to order a cheese plate as we always enjoy the adventure of trying the new cheeses, even my daughter! And she LOVES the chunk of honey (SUGAR!) it comes with. The cheese plate was fun!!
I ordered the mushroom ravioli, my daughter the mac and cheese (her go to), and my husband, the steak. Unfortunately, when the food came out, the steak was way overdone. I mean, my husband ordered it medium rare and there was not a bit of pink in it. So he had to send it back, which takes at least 15 minutes to replace, makes me feel bad for eating when he doesn't have anything in front of him, and throws us off schedule on our fast passes! Honestly, a improperly cooked steak can break a meal, and in this case ... it broke us. When they replaced it, it was cooked ok (still not very pink but ok), but the steak had no sauce. It was pretty standard and blah. Just very disappointing. The mushroom ravioli was pretty good - nothing spectacular, but I liked it. So now we were running late for our soarin fast pass and we had to skip free birthday dessert! What's the point of having a birthday at Disney without free birthday dessert? We probably could have squeezed it in, but our waitress was pretty slow and not all that attentive. Honestly, I have to give the Grand Floridian Cafe a thumbs down. I know so many people enjoy it, so I feel like our experience was an anomaly. So don't take my word for it! But that was our experience.
To be cont. ... the monorail shuffle to Epcot.

 

[JenTen1585]

So we went to the monorail and took the resort monorail to the ticket and transportation center, then rushed to get on the monorail to Epcot. This whole process took about 40 minutes and the end of our fast pass window was looming closer. But we made it in the park with 15 minutes to walk to Soarin, which was plenty of time. On the walk to Soarin, my husband was complaining that the whole evening has felt rushed up to this point and he didn't seem to be in a very good mood. But Soarin always lifts the spirits, even though we were seated on the end of the row with the crazy bent Eiffel Tower, LOL! We then rode Spaceship Earth. The wait times for Test Track and Frozen were still way too high, so we decided to call it a night and get a good night's sleep. We did the monorail shuffle back to our hotel. On the way back to our room, I grabbed a brownie and some drinks. It was a great, but exhausting day!
On Sunday morning we got to sleep in, relatively, since Magic Kingdom did not have any extra magic hours. We packed up (=() and bid goodbye to our room, got breakfast in the Gaspirilla (Yummy breakfast sandwiches on croissants and mickey waffles), and put our things in the car. Then we rode the monorail to Magic Kingdom. We opened the park and went right to Jungle Cruise, then Pirates, and then our fast pass for Thunder Mountain. We then rode Dumbo and Tomorrowland Speedway, then the people mover. It was now time for our fast pass for 7DMT, but unfortunately, it was broken. Boo!!!! We decided not to wait around and used our anytime fast pass on Splash Mountain instead. We had one last fast pass, for Space Mountain. This would be the first time we got to ride Space Mountain in 8 years because my daughter is finally tall enough and reluctantly agreed to try it. Well ... we got to the boarding area and she started freaking out and chickened out. She didn't like that she would have to sit alone and refused to go on. My husband took her off and told me to ride. I asked about child swap and how to do it. When I got off the ride (which was jerkier than I remember, but still tons of fun) I went to find them and swap, but my husband wasn't into it. So then we went to our lunch reservation at the Skipper Canteen! Very cool decorations!

Aside: Back in the day, I went to undergrad at Rollins College in Winterpark, right outside of Orlando. This was back when Pleasure Island was closed off and contained 8 clubs as well as two stages and street dancing. It was so cool! You could get a yearly pass for less than 100.00 and then bring a free guest with you every Friday night if you arrived before 8pm. My friends and I would all pile into my old 1987 Buick Regal every Friday night and then go to Pleasure Island. We would always start with the Comedy Club and then to the Adventurer's Club. We were total dorks and always enjoyed all the cheesy Adventurer's club and would often do the salute to each other from across campus "Kungaloosh!" So the Skipper's Canteen brings back fond memories of a simpler time and lots of fun with friends.

Anyways, we had a very nice server and we enjoyed watching the host bring groups back past our table, each time with a different explanation. It was freezing in there after a while (on our sweat saturated bodies) so our server kindly brought my daughter and I warm cups to hold and a hot tea warmed me up. I got the steak salad which was DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My husband got the chicken with the spicy sauce on the side. He liked it. My daughter got the .... wait for it ... mac and cheese. After the meal, my husband got a free birthday chocolate dome and we also ordered the Kungaloosh, because DUH! Both were excellent!!! It was a great cap to a short but fun weekend!
Right after lunch we sadly got back in our car for the approx 4 hour drive home. But with our annual passes in our pockets and on our magic bands, the knowledge that we will be back soon!

(P.S. Very soon ... next weekend for another short trip 9/8-9/10 ... at the Yacht Club - YIPEE!!!!!!)