Trip Report Feelin' hot, Hot, HOT!

How on earth are we back already! But, that's the way it always goes when you go on vacation - you're back before you even know it! We had a great trip with many new experiences, new foods and great, great memories! We had an interesting flight down, a more interesting flight back (details later!) and if you hadn't guessed, it was HOT!

I'm still getting my notes and photos organized, so I will update this TR soon, but wanted to share that the "G" Family has a new addition!! Prior to our trip, we had filled out an application at our local Humane Society to adopt a kitten. We received a call on the Friday we were getting packed up to leave that our application had been approved and that we could pick up the kitten any time that worked for us. I explained we were heading out of town for a week and asked if we could pick her up after we returned and they of course said not a problem. So now we had something fun to look forward to upon our return! When we got home this past Friday, we weren't even in the door 15 minutes and we drove over to the Humane Society to pick her up:happy: Meet Belle:inlove::inlove:

Belle 1.jpg


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She is just the sweetest thing and is very loved in our home!

Be back soon! I see lots of TR's I need to catch up on too:)
 

gdisneyfans

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I'm excited to hear all about your trip. We are staying for the first time at the Beach club villas in December. Too bad about Emily getting sick on the plane.
Thanks for following! I hope you enjoy the resort as well. We really have enjoyed staying there, especially the convenience of walking to Epcot and HS.

Thankfully she felt much better afterwards, but for a few minutes I was a little nervous that she'd be that way the whole flight!

Haha! My Brian reacts the same way when I ask him to carry a bag for me!! In his defense, they are usually a Vera Bradley in a not very masculine pattern or there is Mickey Mouse somewhere on it!! Can't wait to hear about the rest of the trip!
Yep, they sure do not make them masculine at all! But I love pink, what can we do:joyfull:

Thanks - just caught up on yours!

Great report so far. The kitty is very cute!
Thank you - she is a cutie. We really have enjoyed having a furry baby around again!!

And we're off! :)

Great start (except for Emily feeling ill)! Thanks for the photos of the BC room. The room looks really nice and a bit different from last time we stayed.

Looking forward to more!
Thanks! Yep, the rooms are definitely different. My next post I'm going to post pictures of what the room looked like before the refurbishment - they really did do a nice job updating the rooms, but as you said in your TR about the Yacht Club, they have definitely
de-Disney'd most of the room!

What a cute picture! Glad you took photos of the room--never been inside the Boardwalk, so it's nice to see interior rooms there.
Thank you!
 

gdisneyfans

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Back to the Beach Club rooms...they have taken most of the Disney touches out of the room. For instance this was the lamp prior to refurbishment:
Old Lamp.jpg


This is the new lamp:
Lamp.jpg


I do like the look of the new rooms, don't get me wrong, but we did enjoy the little touches like the Mickey lamp. But definitely an upgrade to the bed!
Old Bed.jpg


They still have these :)
Mousekeeping.jpg

and hidden Mickey's in the shower curtain!
Shower Curtain.jpg


All in all, we like the new look to the room. The color scheme is very soothing and relaxing.

So Friday before we left the house, Emily was making sure that we all remembered to pack our carry-on bag with a swimsuit in case our room wasn't ready, we could hit the pool for a while, plus our FP's were for later in the evening at Epcot. Guess who forgot to pack a swimsuit in the carry-on - Emily! They had one style of swimsuit in the hotel gift shop but she didn't like it, so a new plan was needed! We went searching for food as we were all starving at this point! We went to Hurricane Hannah’s first (this is a little grill area they have out near the pool), but the line was really long and seemed to take forever. So we ended up going into the Beach Club Marketplace and all had the cheese flatbread.

As Brian and Emily were waiting for our lunch order, I told them I would meet up with them and go get my Magic Band figured out. It took quite a while for this to be done because they were having technology difficulties. The Cast Member was a little irritated – not at me but the computers. She thought she’d have to give me a whole new band because she couldn’t get mine to work, but after about 10 minutes, she was able to take down all of our bands and reinstate them (thankfully this was after Brian paid for our lunch through the Magic Band!). Because of our inconvenience, she loaded on three more Fast Passes on to our bands for the next day at Magic Kingdom. We weren’t sure if it was one each, or three each based on how it read on My Disney Experience, but even if it were one, that would be better than nothing! We would find out the next day which it was!

I met up with Brian and Emily after this and had our lunch. The cheese bread was just fine to tide us over (even though we were having pizza for dinner:joyfull:). We decided on a stroll into Epcot.

Beach Club Back.jpg

Brian and I.jpg


Construction walls - the new gondolas should be exciting!
International Gateway.jpg
 

gdisneyfans

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I supposed I should get movin' on this report - I've been enjoying everyone else's instead!

So we were on our way into Epcot...It was really, really warm and the humidity was horrible, but it didn’t matter, we were there!

Entering 1.jpg

Entering 2.jpg


We let Emily decide where she wanted to go. I told her we didn’t have a Fast Pass for Test Track this week, so she said she wanted to ride that and the app showed a 40 minute wait, which isn’t too bad, so we walked that way. It was about 35 minutes, so pretty spot on. When we got in line, the line was into the building already, so we didn’t have to wait out in the heat. But as soon as we got in line, the line grew quite large – which seemed to be a nice trend that we experienced throughout the week! As we were standing in line, Brian said “pinch me, we’re here!” Yep, my sentiments exactly –I couldn’t believe the time was finally here:inlove::happy:

TT Brian and Em.jpg


Making the Car.jpg


The masterpiece!
TT Car.jpg


For some reason I'm not able to upload the shot of us in the car...but that's okay, it looks just like everyone else's, just with Brian, Emily and I in it!

After Test Track we went on something we’ve never done before:
Mission Space.jpg


We did the green side because none of us could handle the orange side very well (we also have never done Star Tours because of the same issue!)...and I think that's why we've always avoided this attraction. But I read about the green side refurb so thought we'd give it a try. We get put into our capsules and they close the doors and the harnesses come down....well I'm claustrophobic - like bad, so as soon as the harnesses came down and we began to get closer to the screens, I started panicking a bit because you do get quite close. But thankfully they have the air right above you so you can adjust the amount coming at you, so that helped tremendously! And once we took off, I didn't even notice the close quarters were were in. It was a lot of fun and I’m glad we did it. Would definitely do this again!

Epcot.jpg


We wanted to go on Spaceship Earth after MS, but the wait was 25 minutes out in the sun, so we decided to skip it for now and to head back to the Beach Club and hopefully go swimming if our luggage had arrived. We stopped and got a beer from Canada on our way back. La Blatt Blue – it was good!

Our luggage was in our room when we got back – yay! So we quickly changed into our suits and made our way down to find some chairs. Of course most of the chairs were taken, but we were able to find three together in the second row. We put our stuff down and went into the pool right away to try to cool off, except the water was quite warm so it didn’t feel like it was refreshing. So we swam for about an hour and a half. We walked over to Hurricane Hannah's to get a drink and the concrete was so hot I think we scorched our feet:in pain::in pain:
 
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gdisneyfans

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We got back to the room about 5:30 and got ready to go to Epcot for the evening. We went right to The Land Pavilion and road Living with the Land first. Brian trying to be funny that LwtL is a thrill ride:rolleyes: (but we all actually really love the ride!!).
The Land.jpg


The Land 2.jpg


The Land 3.jpg


The Land 4.jpg


Horsetail?:confused: Of course I had to Google it, so for those who don't know, Horsetail is an herbal remedy that dates back to ancient Roman and Greek times. It was used traditionally to stop bleeding, heal ulcers and wounds, and treat tuberculosis and kidney problems. Now we all learned something new today!
The Land 5.jpg


The Land 6.jpg


The Land 7.jpg


Some interesting plants this time around! It was fun to see new things and a great ride as always! After LwtL we went to:

Soarin.jpg


This was our first ride on Soarin’ over the World. It was amazing! We love it just as much as we loved Soarin’ Over California. We can't say that we like one more than the other - we enjoyed them both the same!
 

gdisneyfans

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
After Soarin' we made our way over to the World Showcase. We had an ADR to get to! But first we stopped for a few photos!

Epcot 2.jpg


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I love the PhotoPass - I'm usually the one taking all of the photos, so it's fun to be in some of them!

Imaginaton Pavilion.jpg

Brian and Emily.jpg

Mom and Emily.jpg


We made our way over to:
Via Napoli.jpg


I was so excited to eat here! Cool chandelier in the waiting area.

Via Napoli 1.jpg


Our ADR was at 8:00 p.m. and we had just a little wait for our table – maybe 10 minutes – and the lobby waiting area was pretty full. I went outside and took some pictures and when I came back in, quite a few of the guests were seated, which opened up some seats for us. Of course what to do while waiting for your reservation – people watch! There was this lady who marched in (they had a party of 8) and she went right up to the podium and told the cast member that her entire party was here so she was ready to be seated – in a rude and condescending way, even though there were plenty of others there way before she was:rolleyes: Thankfully we were seated first! So she did have to wait for her table, just like everyone else did!

Via Napoli 6.jpg
 
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gdisneyfans

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We were seated at a four person table in a corner, which was nice so we could see all around us! We started out with the Mozzarella Caprese. Emily didn’t want any so Brian and I shared – it was delicious.

Via Napoli 2.jpg


Brian and I also shared a bottle of Pinot Grigio as well - it was very good. Emily wanted a chicken Caesar salad for dinner. She said it was very good – they brought her salad out right away plus bread and olive oil.

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The bread was good – the olive oil could have used some spice and herbs to it though. Then was the pizza – OMG so delicious! We did half Margherita and half Italian sausage and mushroom.

Via Napoli 5.jpg

Of course we couldn’t finish it all. We took it back to the room to hopefully eat later in the week, but we ended up throwing it away because it was too soggy – oh well – we tried!
 

gdisneyfans

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We finished shortly before 9:00 so we made our way back out into World Showcase to watch Illuminations!

Italy.jpg


We started walking around World Showcase to find a spot to watch and found ourselves in front of the American Pavilion. A couple of photos - not the greatest, but they'll do for us:p

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Illum 2.jpg


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The show was great as always! We then slowly walked back towards the International Gateway back to the Beach Club. We stopped into World Traveler, the shop right before you exit and browsed a bit, but we didn’t buy anything.

When we got back up to the room, probably about 9:30, our Garden Grocer order still hadn’t been delivered to our room (I had received an email from them at 5:00 indicating the order had been delivered to the Beach Club!), so I called down to Bell Services and they told us they would bring it up shortly, which they had it to us in like 10 minutes! We decided to call it a night – we were quite exhausted from the long day and getting up early for our flight (my fitbit showed we walked 20,342 steps; 8.64 miles - no wonder we were tired)! We were hoping to get to Magic Kingdom close to the opening so wanted to get up earlier as well.

A wonderful first day at Disney!!!
 

dizfan917

Well-Known Member
After eating at Teppan Edo last September, we were leaving just as Illuminations started. We decided to watch the show from the balcony of the restaurant. It was a great view (with a tiny bit of roof in the way) of the Earth and all the fireworks! And there were only a few peeps up there with us. I'd head back there to see it again, for sure!
japan illum.jpg
 

fractal

Well-Known Member
I hate warm pool water! It wasn't too bad when we were there but seems like it got worse. The last time we were at the BC in 2011 it was almost unbearable. I was hoping they would bring a dump truck full of ice to drop in.

Love the photo of the 3 of you in front of SSE!

Looking forward to day 2!
 
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gdisneyfans

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I hate too warm pool water! It wasn't too bad when we were there but seems like it got worse. The last time we were at the BC in 2011 it was almost unbearable. I was hoping they would bring a dump truck full of ice to drop in.

Love the photo of the 3 of you in front of SSE!

Looking forward to day 2!
Agree - I was going to mention later in the report (I don't remember which day!), but we felt like they might have added water because the water seemed higher than the day before and it actually felt a little cooler! One day we did walk over to the quiet pool for a bit and the water was actually much cooler!

Thank you!
 

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