Oh It's A Jolly Holiday With Katie! - Beach Club / Grand Floridian

[TheLittleKatie]

Hardheadedwoman - Hi Lissette, that's so cool! I can't imagine travelling over here, it's so cold and rainy! But I guess that's part of our charm

weswife - October.. Not long now!! You must be so excited And thank you for your kind words

 

[TheLittleKatie]

Day 1
(September 2nd 2014)
Tell everybody I’'m on my way! ..And there'’s nowhere else that I’'d rather be!
Part 2 - Off to Neverland!

“Come on everybody! Here we goooooo!
OFF TO NEVERLAND!”

Oh cold, cloudy, rainy England, how I shall not miss you!

As soon as we got above the clouds it was smooth sailing all the way.

I tend to get a bit jumpy if we hit turbulence, but everything about this flight was perfect.

All we had to worry about was pretending we belonged in Premium Economy.
I must say, we did a pretty good job.
Our reputation was only slightly tarnished about 10 minutes in when Jamie, whilst reading the newspaper with his noise-cancelling headphones on, released a burst of ridiculous laughter.

But thankfully he gained some self-control after this embarrassment!



We were brought some more wine, and I put on Neighbors (with Seth Rogan and Zac Efron).

This film is frankly hilarious.
I had a great little giggling session to myself.

Soon enough, my favourite time arrived.

FOOD TIME.

For our lunch we both had cucumber salad, beef in tomato sauce with mash and veg, orange cheesecake, and cheese and biscuits.

This was really yummy, although I wasn'’t too keen on the orange cheesecake.
AND I LOVE CHEESECAKE.
But oh well.

And how cute are these little salt and pepper shakers?!

Jamie gave me one of his biscuits, claiming he made it especially for me..

I'’m skeptical. But it’'s still kinda sweet

Later on, I watched The Wolf of Wall Street.
This film is also hilarious.
It’'s fairly long, about 3 hours I think, but it passed the time nicely!

There were a lot more alcohol offerings throughout the flight.

And we were given pretzels and ice-lollies!

And of course, this happened.

After The Wolf of Wall Street I put on The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
For some reason I watched 3 films that I’'d already seen rather than trying something new.
But at least I knew I’'d enjoy these.

However, I soon put on my Disney Parks playlist and fell asleep listening to things like Soarin’, Wishes, and the Splash Mountain loop.



It was a very light sleep though. I woke up feeling just as tired as before.

But I DID wake up to MORE FOOD, so that’'s something.

This meal was ‘afternoon tea’, and consisted of some little cheese and sun-dried tomato sandwiches, crisps and caramel shortbread. There were also cups of tea and peppermints.

This meal was also hilarious.

For two reasons.

Reason 1. The crisps.

Plane crisps. How punny.
Also the dog with flight goggles on.
I LOVE DOGS.

Reason 2. These shortbread jokers.

I'’m easily amused.

And not much later, THIS HAPPENED.

HELLOOOO FLORIDA !!!

My exhaustion coupled with excitement resulted in this photo..

Good Lord.

BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE AT DISNEY.

We were landing!

Baaaahhh!

We touched down on Floridian soil at around 2:20pm.

We had all of our belongings gathered and ready to speed-walk off the plane. We were very eager to beat the hundreds of people all heading towards immigration.

But it turns out they let us and the First Class passengers off first! That itself has to be worth paying extra for.
I'’ve waited in the immigration line at Newark and JFK for HOURS before.
So this was wonderful!

However, another plane from the UK had landed a little while before us, and there were still quite a lot of people from that plane waiting.

But we were still thankful we weren’t at the back of the queue from our plane AND the previous plane!

However, it seems like baby Jesus was looking down on us that day..
We met a member of staff in line who let us join a MUCH shorter queue to use electronic kiosks!



I think this was because we'’d been here before within the last 5 years so our details were still valid? And that we were on ESTAs rather than Visas?

I don’'t know.

And frankly I didn'’t care.

JUST GET ME TO DISNEY.

ASAP!

So after we were done at immigration, we went to collect our bags!

…Where we ran into a slight problem.

Jamie had the most generic, average sized, black suitcase you can imagine.
With no luggage tags or identifying features.

Basically we had no idea which one his bag was. We checked every tiny printed name on every Virgin label on every black bag on the luggage carousel.

Luckily we DID find the right bag eventually.

PHEW.

Now I’'m sure you guys know the next step..

FAKE-O-RAIL!

No pictures unfortunately, my phone and camera were tucked away in my bag.

But you all know what it looks like!

Then we followed instructions to ‘B side, level 1’, which I think was just an elevator ride down and a short walk towards…

DISNEY’'S MAGICAL EXPRESS!

OK IT'’S OFFICIAL

WE'’RE HERE!

We were even given Buzz Lightyear and Princess Aurora stickers when we arrived at the desk :')

The bus was waiting for us when we got there, and no more than 5 minutes passed before we were on the road!

I love the old Mickey cartoons they play

We stopped at Caribbean Beach…...

The Boardwalk…...

And then…...

We are here!

DISNEY'’S BEACH CLUB RESORT!

Click for Day 1, Part 3!
​

 

[DisneyKid4Life]

You know, I'm glad I'm not the only one with travel to Disney anxiety. Not of flying or anything, but all the "What did I forget"?? It's rough and I am waiting on the support group.

Frank Sinatra / Dean Martin playlist???? You are officially awesome.

You're on your wayyyyyyyy!!! And yes, that plane is ginormous.

I almost forget now about immigration since we (thankfully) have many pre-clearance setups in Canada before you even get on the plane. Whoever came up with that, THANK YOU!!!

But YAY, you're IN DISNEY!!!! And Beach Club too. Jealous! What an awesome location.

 

[401Disney]

Subbing!!!! I'm really excited to see how your trip went staying at deluxe resorts of the first time. My fiancé and I are staying at our first deluxe in May (contemporary) for our honeymoon and I'm insanely excited so this TR will subdue my Disney obsession for now lol

 

[TheLittleKatie]

Day 1
(September 2nd 2014)
Tell everybody I’'m on my way! ..And there’'s nowhere else that I’'d rather be!
Part 3 - Disney's Beach Club room 4582

This was my first time (in for-)ever visiting the Beach Club, and it is SO much better in person than in the pictures!

(There will be more photos of it later on today.)

Alongside how beautiful this resort is, the main thing I'’ll remember about the Beach Club is the AMAZING smell as soon as you walk through the doors.

If only DISboards had smell-o-vision!
If anyone knows of a Yankee Candle or ANYTHING that smells like the Beach Club lobby then pleeeease share!

ANYWAY.

We had checked in online beforehand, so we went to collect a welcome pack and our Magic Bands (I had green and Jamie had blue), and we headed off to our room!

Check out the super-cute carpet in the hallways!
I need to get me some of that for my 'Dream House' !

We were in room 4582. This was on the 4th floor, and was far away from the lift, with a large balcony! Some rooms at the Beach Club have a small balcony, only big enough to stand on, so we were very happy

(I'’ve had questions about that far light. It'’s not broken, they each have individual switches.)

The room was HUGE! There seemed to be a big open space between the bed and the balcony door.
This was great as it gave Jamie enough room to do some stretches.
(He's a bit rickety, bless him.)

Also, we are more than happy with two double beds rather than a king bed. We actually slept in a bed each to spread out!

Overall, we were very pleased!

I'd read on the 2014 Yacht and Beach Club FAQ thread over on the Disney Resorts boards that they are due a 'hard goods' refurb, meaning the rooms will be "stripped down of everything including new sinks, new air conditioning units, new everything pretty much".

I can maybe see this being necessary, there was the odd scuff here and there, but we really liked the general theming. I think if Disney can do better theming than in the current rooms, this hotel will be more of a dream than it already is, and I would definitely want to stay again!!

We put on Must-Do Disney straight away and did a little unpacking.

Stacey is the Queen of the world.

As soon as I opened the door to check out the balcony, the Orlando humidity came flooding in..!

We got settled for a little while and did some post-flight stretching.

Then we put on our Magic Bands and headed out to explore the Beach Club and the Boardwalk area.

We checked out the Marketplace, which is by the lobby of the Beach Club. This sells a little bit of everything. It has a small quick service food canteen, clothes, jewelry, toys etc.

We then went to see Stormalong Bay, which I had heard was the best pool on Disney property!

It was very impressive. It had a great slide, it’s own lazy river, a big area for kids to build sand castles, three hot tubs and an awesome ‘sand bottom’.

We walked out to the beach and strolled over to the Boardwalk.

Click for Day 1, Part 4!​

 

[jamieann]

Subscribing! Sinatra/Martin, puns, and GIFs? Sign me up.

 

[TheLittleKatie]

DisneyKid4Life - Let's start the support group! We'll send calming thoughts to those frantically gathering their travel documents Rob - I hope you have another trip set up, and are planning on writing a new TR! I'm part way through your most recent one and I'm loving it! It's wonderfully written


401Disney - Hey your upcoming trip sounds amazing! Honeymoon at the Contemporary I hope you have an incredible time

 

[TheLittleKatie]

jamieann - Haha, thanks! I hope you enjoy

 

[Nohal]

Loving your review. You guys are so cute. Can't wait for more.

 

[IheartDDuck]

Hi Katie! I'm hopping on board. You guys are too cute, and I absolutely love your writing style so far. Right up my alley!

 

[DaisyDuck001]

Looking forward to following this trip report.

You two had excellent seats on the plane, and the plane food also looked good. You mentioned you booked the flight far ahead of time -- is that how you got such good seats? Was it a year or two ahead?

40% discount at the deluxe resorts is excellent! How did you find this deal? Is it only available for UK visitors?

 

[DisneyKid4Life]

Rob - I hope you have another trip set up, and are planning on writing a new TR! I'm part way through your most recent one and I'm loving it! It's wonderfully written

Awww thank you Katie!! I actually just got back from a trip last week and hope to have a new TR started soon.

Beach Club is definitely on my list of "wishes". I adore the Epcot resort area and always manage to visit on every trip. Looking at your photos along the Boardwalk brings back such lovely memories. I was just there!!!

 

[polyforme]

The Beach Club scent is green clover and aloe by scentair

 

[TheLittleKatie]

Nohal & IheartDDuck - Thank you guys and welcome!

DaisyDuck001 - Thanks we booked the flight about 8 months in advance, and (with Virgin Atlantic) seat reservations become available at 8am 60 days out, so I made sure I was online for that I love having our own little space just the two of us!

I have no idea about the 40% off! It seems that you either get 30%/40% off hotel rooms OR free dining, here in the UK at least. I think for, say, a family of 4 free dining would be a much better option in terms of saving. But since it was just the two of us this seemed to work better? I don't know, And I think the offers tend to be different here than in the states. I know the free dining offers can come out at different times over here. If you know a time that free dining is finishing then maybe see if Disney have alternative offers during those times?

DisneyKid4Life - Very glad to hear you're making good use of the annual pass!!! It's one of my life goals to own one We absolutely LOVED the Beach Club and Epcot resort area. It was sooo great to be able to stroll over to Epcot for dinner, or down to DHS on the lovely boat

Very excited for the new trip report! I hope you took the Stacey t-shirt again! I need to make me one of those!!

polyforme - oh my goodness, THANK YOU! I've not heard of scentair before so it might be quite hard for me to get hold of here in the UK, I'll definitely search the internet though

 

[TheLittleKatie]

Day 1
(September 2nd 2014)
Tell everybody I’'m on my way! ..And there'’s nowhere else that I’'d rather be!
Part 4 - Under the Boardwalk.. Down by the seeeeaaa

I had never visited the Boardwalk before. I had this vision of it being a really lively place, full of dancing people and street entertainment.

IT WAS DESERTED.

I don'’t know if this is good thing or a bad thing.
It certainly wasn'’t what I expected.
It was pretty though!
And we saw one guy doing some juggling, so that’'s something.

I can imagine it gets much more lively during the height of summer, so I'’ll "let it goooo."
After all, I do purposefully plan Disney around the quietest times of the year!

We realized we were starving so we headed into Big River Grille & Brewing Works.

I ordered a Big Brew Cheeseburger and Jamie got the Kobe Burger.

So this was no later than a few hours after landing, and you pesky Americans had already fooled us.

As some of you may know:

USA = Chips
UK = Crisps

USA = Fries
UK = Chips

We knew about this, but after our loooong day we excitedly ordered ‘burgers and chips’ from the menu, and we ended up being a little disheartened..!

But nothing against the restaurant, this was obviously our own fault!

I think the burger was good, but anything tastes good to me when I’m hungry.

I didn’'t even take a picture of it, I had scoffed it within minutes!

At $12 and $15 it was a little expensive for the size of the meal. If it came with fries instead, it probably would have been worth it.

As we left and headed back around the Boardwalk the sun began setting.

And I just had to check out the Boardwalk Bakery!

This was one of those TRAGIC situations where I tell myself,
"“I’'ve got 2 weeks, I’'ll get something another day.”…"

AND SADLY, THAT DAY NEVER CAME.

Don’'t worry though, I made up for it with lots of other sugary Disney goodness.

After taking in the amazing sunset we walked back around to the Beach Club.

The Beach Club lobby is beaut!

We had ordered some goodies from GardenGrocer.com and they had texted me to say our delivery was here! So we went to pick that up.

We had bottled water, Corona, milk, bread, Philadelphia, jam and peanut butter.

We had ordered a pack of 24 bottles of water, but were given 32.
This was great!
Until we tried to carry everything up to the room.

We REALLY struggled!

Jamie and I are the kind of people that will always attempt to take in the groceries in one journey, no matter how/where we have to balance things.

And, by some miracle, we made it without dropping anything.

(That’'s 32 bottles of water, 12 bottles of beer, a gallon of milk, plus everything else. I'’d say that’s pretty impressive!)

(…and we giggled A LOT, shuffling down the corridor, having to stop every few feet and pick ourselves back up.)

We also had some treats that we had brought from home.

So at around 8:30pm we were just getting the room organized and settling down for bed.

Note that 8:30pm in Orlando was 1:30am the next morning for our internal body-clock. So after being up since 5:30am with 2 hours sleep we were super tired.

I started to hear a muffled announcement, but I thought nothing of it.

BUT THEN.

*The most magical thing to ever happen to me at Walt Disney World, HAPPENED.*

As I started to hear the drum beat I sat bolt up right and stared at the closed curtains over the balcony doors.

When I realised the beat was steadily increasing,
I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS.

First the screech, then the orchestra hit, and a clash of fireworks!!!!!

I shot a look of delight at Jamie as he wondered what was going on.

I jumped up off the bed and ran across the room, possibly the fastest I’'ve ever run.

THERE WAS NO TIME TO PULL THE CURTAINS BACK.

I HAD TO GO THROUGH THE CURTAINS.

I pulled them up over me and got in a tangle as I tried to pull the door open.

And I couldn'’t believe my eyes.

There, over the trees, directly in front of our balcony,

ILLUMINATIONS: REFLECTIONS OF EARTH!

I WAS COMPLETELY OVERWHELMED, AND OVERJOYED!!!!!

I couldn’'t for the life of me figure out how to take the best picture of the fireworks.

I fiddled with my camera settings, but I didn'’t get a single decent picture.

So I gave up on the camera, and Jamie and I stood on our balcony and watched one of the best shows to have ever been produced by Disney.

And I shed my first Disney tear of the trip!!!

*End of Day 1*

Click for Day 2, Part 1!​

​

 

[jenniferma]

subbing! love it!

 

[DaisyDuck001]

The Boardwalk area is a bit more lively after dark. Also they have a guided tour of this area on some mornings. I'll be trying that later this month.

LOL about the "chips" mix-up. Oops! Reminds me of a time long ago on a visit to England when I saw a sign that said "subway" and I thought if I walked in that direction it would lead to the rapid transit train. Instead it turned out to be a walkway below the street that just led to the other side of the street. They say we are two nations separated by a common language!

Pardon my ignorance, but what kind of treat are the "Digestives" in your mini-fridge picture?

 

[TheLittleKatie]

jenniferma - Thanks and welcome!

DaisyDuck001 - Awesome! I didn't know about the Boardwalk tour. I hope you enjoy, and I hope to see you write about it on the disboards!

Hahaha I love the subway story, I bet that was super confusing! This was not the first time we were loving the thought of some 'fries' and ordered a meal '+ chips' !

And chocolate digestives are these little pieces of heaven..!!



We just call them chocolate biscuits, but I'm not sure if biscuit is also the wrong word to use in the USA..?! These are like an Oreo type biscuit.

They actually sell them in the UK pavilion at EPCOT!
I took this photo because everything on these shelves is SO mundane to us Brits!
It amused me that I'd flown thousands of miles to the most magical place on earth, and found all these things I can pick up at my corner store!

 

[nrexxma44]

Love your trip report!!! Can't wait for the next installment

 

[DisneyKid4Life]

I so love the Boardwalk. Visiting has become a must do on every trip now. And trust me, it is so different at night. That's when it gets lively. Usually anyway.

Hehe, I sometimes forget about some of the word differences in the UK. I can see that creating some disappointment sometimes.

Interesting that your Boardwalk Bakery photo seems to highlight the Strawberry Cupcake, because it is to die for! I'd like one now please.

Oh My GOD Katie, I just absolutely LOVED your description of the realization of ILLUMINATIONS bursting up outside your window. That's some Disney Magic right there!