{Disney 2018] Day 1 - The Grand Floridian

I booked this trip through a travel agency in order to take advantage of a special deal only available with that travel agency.  From what I understand, the travel agency books blocks of rooms, as one would do for a conference.  This allows the travel agency to offer rooms at a significantly lower rate than one would receive by booking directly with Disney.  Because we book a package that includes room and park tickets, I'm not sure of the exact discount but by my rough calculations (and from others who have booked this same deal) we end up paying about 50% of rack rate.

I had wanted to stay at Wilderness Lodge for this trip.  I should note that this deal is only good for deluxe resorts from the end August through some time in the early fall.  I wasn't opposed to the Contemporary or the Polynesian either.  I requested quotes for those three resorts, and I knew from past dealings, she would send me quotes for a couple of other resorts, just in case.

The quote I received had the Grand Floridian at the same exact cost as the Contemporary.  I forwarded it to Rich and asked him what he thought.  Wilderness Lodge was the least expensive of our options, but not by a significant amount.  Rich responded that we should stay at the Grand Floridian seeing as it was priced basically the same as the other resorts.  I actually thought it was a typo and the travel agent would tell me so when I went to book it.  No, not a typo.

So that's how we came to stay at the Grand Floridian.  I know some hardcore Disney folks pooh-pooh the theming here, but I think it's perfectly fine.  The girls say it's very grand.  Grammy sent my brother, who lives in San Diego, a photo of the resort while we were there, and he responded that he it looked like we were at the Hotel Del Coronado.  We drove through the front driveway of the Polynesian a couple of times during our stay and that's probably my favorite themed resort, but honestly, I'd rather be in Hawaii than at a resort themed to look like Hawaii.

I've told you all before how we live between Boston's Logan Airport and Providence's TF Green Airport.  We prefer Providence over Boston due to the easy commute and less expensive parking.  The trade-off is that there are not as many flight options.  Our best bets for an inexpensive, nonstop flight to Orlando come from Southwest and Jet Blue.  I prefer Jet Blue, mainly for the fact that you are assigned seats.  Southwest is not a good airline for those with anxiety.  If I was flying without children, the open seating wouldn't bother me.  Rich and I have flown together and not been seated with each other.  Not a big deal.  My children, however, are not going to sit with strangers.

When flights for August were finally released, sadly, Jet Blue did not work for us.  There was a 6:15 am flight or a 4:30 pm flight.  With nervousness and anxiety, I simply cannot do super early morning fights.

Southwest had more options, including a direct flight leaving at 11:35.  That is much more doable for me.  But there's still the open seating issue.  To eliminate some of that stress, I suggested paying the extra $15 for Rich's ticket and having him board early and save seats.  Now, I know people get all up in arms over seat saving.  He wouldn't be saving prime seats.  Unless you think the back of the plane is a prime location.  When we purchased our tickets, the website only gave us the option to upgrade all of the tickets for $15 each.  We couldn't pick and choose, and Rich didn't think it was worth the extra $90.  Rich doesn't have anxiety.

Leading up to our departure day, I checked and our flight was not sold out.  At exactly 11:35 the day before, I clicked the check in button and secured our boarding positions.  I was so freaking proud of myself.  We were in boarding group B, numbers 6 through 11.  I wasn't as stressed about getting seats together at that point.

My opinion of Southwest dropped a bit when we checked in our suitcases at the airport.  One of the employees was not helpful at all and was being fake nice to me because she knew I was irritated with her.  When we walked away, I told Rich that I wouldn't be surprised if my suitcase did not make it to Orlando.

[Spoiler alert:  All the luggage made it safe and sound, which leads me to the packing strategy I hear others rave about.  You are supposed to spread out everyone's clothes throughout all the suitcases.  That way, if one suitcase is misplaced, one person does not lose all of his or her luggage.  While this sounds nice in theory or possible if you have very young children, it does not seem practical at all for families with older kids.  For me alone, I don't plan out when I'm going to wear what and I don't like to unpack my suitcase, which would leave me rummaging through various suitcases looking for clothes.  Also, now that the girls are older, they want to pack their own suitcases and be responsible for their own items, and I fully support that.  Maybe I'll change my mind if a suitcase ever goes missing.]

Okay, back to business.  So after we successfully made it through security, we had just enough time to buy bagels and sandwiches, and to cath Anna, which was not an easy process.  But we did it.  Now it was time to line up and this is my most favorite part of this post.  Remember how I was all patting myself on the back for having secured boarding group B with low numbers?  Well, we were almost the last passengers to board the plane!  Five others got on after us and that's not due to the overall number of passengers.  Anyone who wasn't pre-boarding or in group A used family boarding, which boards before group B.  From what I've seen and read online, Providence is one of the more relaxed airports when it comes to family boarding.  Meaning they don't necessarily follow the one adult per one child age 6 or under rule.

It all worked out for us though.  We were able to sit in the last two rows on the right side of the plane.  A guy had actually plopped down in one of the seats but nicely offered to move over to the last row on the other side, which was also completely empty, when he saw us coming.  While the flight wasn't completely full, when all was said and done, there were only a handful of rows with one empty seat.  All other seats were taken.  So, yeah, the beginning of boarding group B doesn't mean a thing when half of the plane uses family boarding.  Southwest stock increased in my market after we boarded due to all the very friendly flight attendants and employees working the gate.  (It will go up even further on our way home.)  

     

Allie and Anna wanted to sit with Grammy.  That left Emily with me and Rich for a slightly turbulent flight.  Southwest had us at the gate in Orlando ten minutes early and because we were using Disney's Magical Express, we didn't have to stop at baggage claim.  Magical Express was uneventful.  I will say that while this service is extremely convenient, we waited about 15 minutes after getting on the bus before we left the airport.  Sometimes their transportation seems slow.  Maybe it's because I'm from Boston.

Disney has an option where you can check into your room via the My Disney Experience app.  This allows you to skip the front desk all together.  We had wanted connecting rooms and because Disney states they can't always meet room requests, we opted to stop at the front desk in case our rooms were not connecting.  I figured it would be easier that way instead of checking in and then having to go down there to ask for different rooms.  There was no line at check in but the process took some time, and then we were told that the rooms were in the same hallway but not connected.

I asked if we could be moved to connecting rooms and the cast member made a phone call, which seemed to last for an eternity.  Rich was waving me over asking what was taking so long.  She told me that if we could wait one night, they could move us to connecting rooms tomorrow.  (So here's my question:  Were there no connecting rooms available at all? Or was it that they wanted to keep us in the same class of rooms?)  Neither option was ideal but we decided to move rooms the next day, which meant we were going to have to pack up everything and leave all of our luggage with Bell Services before we left for a park.





I had read online that convention guests were placed in the Sago Cay building and that's exactly where are rooms were, on the second floor, facing the marina.  We really liked the location of this building.  The bus stop was right around the corner, it was a short walk to the quick service restaurant (where we were constantly filling up our mugs with beverages) and it really wasn't too far to the pools or the monorail.  Compared to our stays at both the Beach and Yacht Clubs, the Grand Floridian seemed to be more compact and it didn't take 10 minutes to walk everywhere.



We love having a balcony.  It gives a little bit of extra space, allows for people watching and was a nice place to eat breakfast in the morning.





We walked around and explored the resort and pools before getting ready for our dinner reservations.



In the photo above, our building is on the left.  Straight ahead, behind the tree line is the castle at Magic Kingdom.  This is a great spot to view the nightly fireworks.


Checking out the Courtyard Pool.


We found a little friend.









Both pools were closed due to lightning in the area.  We were told that Disney's rule is to shut down pools when lightning is within 6 miles.  They then wait for 30 minutes after the last strike before re-opening.  We didn't have much time before dinner so we made plans to hit the pools later that night.  
~To be continued~