Sitting here typing this while watching the MST3K presentation of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians – awesome stuff. A fun and happy show for a fun and happy picture!
The photo / memory for today is from our list trip to Disney World. We stayed at the Beach Club and while we were there we decided we were finally going to get around to renting one of the Surrey bikes which you can do at a few places at Disney World. I can’t remember all the spots but definitely at Port Orleans Riverside and the Boardwalk Inn. In this case we wandered over to the Boardwalk Inn Resort and renting from there.
We got one of the ones with 2 adult seats and 2 kid seats out front. We did a couple trips around the Boardwalk area just enjoying the exercise and fresh air in a quiet and picturesque setting. Definitely a good memory and well worth the cost of the half hour rental! Highly recommended.
Heather and Ted riding a Surrey bike at the Boardwalk Inn
Disney’s Beach Club Resort at Walt Disney World – the folks there have been very good to us. We had stayed at the Yacht Club once as the second half of a split vacation – spent 4 nights at Caribbean Beach and 5 nights at Yacht Club. We ended up picking the Beach Club for our next family vacation after that (just because it was closer to the quick serve meal locations which is important with the kids). That trip we ended up getting a lovely surprise of a bump up to Club Level which was awesome and helped make the trip.
That helped us decide to go back to the Beach Club Resort again on our next family trip in Jan/Feb 2013. My wife and I had stayed at the Boardwalk Inn for the Disney World Marathon weekend earlier in January and with the cost of that trip there was no way we could splurge on Club Level but if we really scrimped we could do Beach Club with the family (plus a good deal as Annual Passholders). So we told the kids that we weren’t going to be able to use the Club Level snack room / lounge (the Stone Harbour Club) but we would have the pool and be super close to Epcot. They were very happy that we were going to be able to use the big pool at Storm Along Bay and weren’t concerned about the snack room.
When we arrived though we were escorted up to the Club Level for check in – we had apparently been upgraded up to Club Level again! We were extremely surprised and very grateful as we knew the snack room would actually let us save some money on breakfasts and the ambience on the Club Level is just fantastic. We were told our room was on the 2nd level (which was a surprise as the Club Level is on the 5th floor but we figured we just given a normal room and access to the Club Level – we were fine with that) so we grabbed the kids and wandered over. After walking what seemed like miles we got to our room – very far from the snack room but extremely close to the walk way to Epcot – we were happy with the trade off.
We walked into the room and were stunned to find that we had actually been upgraded to a 2 bedroom suite – there was a room with 2 queen beds for the kids, a living room and wet bar area and a separate bathroom for the “master” king bedroom. The kids’ room had views of the quiet pool as did a balcony off of the living room and although the king bedroom did not have a balcony it had many windows facing south to catch the sun and provide a view of the Boardwalk area. It was a fantastic view both during the day and at night. You can see here for a complete trip report for that trip and more pictures for the room specifically here and here.
This picture reminds me of how great the room felt and how magical Disney made the trip this time – we had such a good time being able to walk to Epcot in under 5 minutes and it is hard to put a dollar value on how much more time we had in the parks just from that.
Beach Club 2 bedroom suite view to BoardwalkBeach Club 2 bedroom suite view of path to Epcot
