Patrick O'Connor - Animal Kingdom Villas (Jambo House), Bay Lake Tower, Boulder Ridge Villas
Travel Dates: December 12-18, 2020
Travel Method: Plane, Rental Car
Resort: Disneys Animal Kingdom Villas (Jambo House) (1 night), Bay Lake Tower (2 nights), Boulder Ridge Villas (3 nights)
Accommodations: Studios at each resort
Ages Represented: Male Adults 28 & 49
WDW Experience: Somewhere around 20 visits since 1996
Comments: First COVID trip; the last trip having been completed in January 2020
Cast of Characters:
Patrick, 49 (trip reporter) 20-ish WDW Trips since 1996 and countless Disneyland visits as a local
Ramon, 28 (partner) Second trip to Florida
OMG, upon checking, it would appear that the last trip report I posted was in 2013! Boy, have I gotten lazy! There have been several trips since then, but I guess I gave up on note taking and I don't even bring my laptop on the trip anymore. Then, by the time I get home, I'm too busy with real life to recount my trip. Well, this time I'm going to make a noble effort - but it's going to be summary style. I simply can't do the play-by-play anymore, although I enjoy reading YOURS, so please don't stop them!
This trip came about in the wake of COVID-19, because I'd purchased a WDW Gold AP back in January of 2020. When I saw that my refund for cancelling it would be almost nothing, I decided to leave it open and continue to USE it. Disney extended my expiration to April 2021, so between my January and current trip I will get about 11 park days out of it. That's decent, but I'm thinking a solo trip before the end of April next year might be in order as well. Ramon did not purchase a pass for his first trip, because we travelled with a Club 33 member who very graciously gave him complimentary admissions each day. On that first-ever trip, Ramon experienced a studio at the Poly, a Saratoga Springs treehouse, and an OKW Grand Villa. SMH! What a life for someone who has never been there. This time around, I already warned him that I was only going to spend my DVC points on studios for the two of us and that he'd have to purchase his own admission media. In the absence of any type of discount, not to mention no park hopping, he used undercovertourist.com and got a few bucks off, but basically paid rack rate, which makes me cringe. He's not into thrill rides and really only cares about pin trading and food, so for the few attractions that we did ride together, if I think about admission as a cost to ride rides, he was probably paying over $20 per ride some days. I try not to dwell on that, because I can't stand it!
Airfares were cheap early in the year, but I waited too long to book, and ended up paying just about the same as I would have any other year. I purposely paid a little bit more to fly Delta, the only airline that was still blocking middle seats, and I'm glad I did. It truly is a luxury in this age of no-frills flying to have an entire row of 3 seats for just the two of us. I'll miss that when it goes back to normal.
I also rented a car - something I hadn't done for the past several trips. I just felt it best to avoid as much enclosed contact with strangers on buses, plus I hate the buses in general, so this way I'd have a personal vehicle available any time I wanted or needed it. The other reason for the car was that I wanted to check out Downtown Orlando a little bit. I'd been there once in 1998, but not since, and since I always toss around the idea of moving to the area in the back of my mind, I wanted to see what was available in the core of the City. I really like using Magical Express - not only to make the approach and the return stress-free, but also to avoid the damn tolls - but this time, I made an exception. I'd stopped at the credit union before leaving home and picked up $30 worth of quarters for the toll booths, since I refuse to pay extra for the transponder. Yes, I'm frugal, and I reap the rewards of it
Reserved airport parking at a nearby hotel was cheaper than in past years - obviously because of decreased demand - so that was nice. It was super easy getting to LAX in time for an 8am departure, and everything went off without a hitch despite that disaster of an airport that apparently will never be finished. In place of the beverage cart are bagged handouts of Cheese-Its, bottled water, sanitizer and some sort of dessert biscuit. This entire package was offered twice during the 4.5 hour flight, as well as free headphones to watch the complimentary TV shows, movies, and more.
The flight home is another story. Taking advantage of the rental car, we stopped at Premium Outlets to visit the Character Warehouse on our last day - with about an hour wait to enter. I never would have bothered with this dump had Ramon not wanted to see the store. The great masking and social distancing enforced at WDW was nowhere to be found here, and we saw more than one group of patrons behaving like complete *****. I won't go into details. I really hate outlet malls in the first place - in most cases, they're a sham filled with second rate merchandise created just for the outlets that were never offered in the full line stores, and people fall for it year after year. After this, we raced to the Publix closest to the airport to pick up 2 subs we'd preordered on the app. There is so much buzz about how Publix has the best subs out there that I had to see for myself, plus, it made sense with there being no food offered on the flight home, plus the fact that traveling west takes about an hour longer. The sandwiches were good, but by no means spectacular - I can name a handful of other places with better subs at home, though all would be more expensive.
Anyway, after all this, we arrived 2 hours before departure and STILL MISSED THE PLANE. The check in counter where you drop off your bags for Delta was backed up with only a few employees working, and each one was on the phone, apparently dealing with a unique issue. No passenger simply walked up and dropped off - everyone had some sort of exception. I was getting furious. We finally got our bag checked and then raced to security, which, of course, was backed up fairly badly. HUGE families of 10 or more were all going through, with multiple triplewide strollers and enough crap to house an entire tract of homes for a week. We passed through as fast as we could, raced to the monorail, and power walked to the gate, only to find the door already closed and loading ramp retracted. This was 6 minutes before take off time, and the gate agent said they always do this and there is no way to reverse it. I was livid, but didn't give the agent a hard time. We were not the only ones to miss, either - several of us showed up out of breath, only to meet with this horrible news. The agent rebooked us on the next morning's first flight and that was that. We noticed the next morning several passengers throughout the Delta area asleep in chairs - I have a feeling our flight wasn't the only one with missed passengers the night before. I got on Expedia and booked a reasonably priced airport hotel. It advertised 24 hour free shuttle, so again, I was pissed to learn from the driver that this was not true at present due to reduced occupancy. Fine, but at least update your website. Grr. So, that meant an Uber fare the next morning to get back to MCO in time for the 8:15am flight home. Good thing this was over the weekend and didn't affect my work. Our shuttle driver was actually the hotel's engineer doubling up as driver, since there were so few guests in house and most of the staff was still on furlough. So sad. Thankfully, we had our Publix subs to eat for dinner, which was good thing, since there really wasn't anywhere to walk to otherwise and the hotel restaurant would've been expensive.
Once we finally made it back the next morning, the flight home was good. I had time to watch Mean Girls, Like a Boss, and part of an HBO show called, "Divorce". All were entertaining, and it passed the flight time quickly. Since I'd prepaid for a specific amount of time at the LAX parking hotel, of course, I was charged quite a bit more for exceeding the time, but what can you do. Not worth getting upset over it. When Delta emailed me their survey, I made sure to tell them that they need more gate agents, OR, they could do like Southwest where there are separate windows for those who need full service problem solving and hand holding vs. those who just want to drop off a bag.
Next up - the Parks, one by one!
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