She's On Top of the World, a September 2018 TR at Copper Creek Villas and Cabins (Completed 12/20)

GrandCalifornian

Can't Wait To Go Back
Joined
Mar 16, 2012
Guess what today is? The saddest day of the year. The first day back to work after a Disney trip....

In order to brighten this most dreary day we knew there was one thing to do: Start writing our Trip Report!

Welcome aboard this crazy ride. We've got 10 days of fun and excitement to cover.

As we have done in the past, we will both contribute our comments to this report, with Paul writing in Blue, and Melissa writing in Orange. We also have a ton of pictures, which are really the best part.

They are the best part, that and the stuff written in orange.

As your loving husband, I have to agree... (Really, I have no choice.) Anyway, for anyone who's new to our reports let's begin with introductions. I'm Paul, a 38 year old Mechanical Engineer and general "car guy".

I've been to WDW seven times now, with the first being a week at Fort Wilderness when I was five years old. I didn't make it back to WDW until our honeymoon, and we've shared every trip since then. My favorite park is Epcot, my favorite ride is Test Track, my favorite character is Tow Mater, and my favorite movie is Cars (followed very closely by Cars 3...) See, I am a car guy.

And I'm Melissa, I'm a mom first and second I work at my family's elevator company.

We've really grown in the past couple years and work is busier than ever. I always end up having to deal with something at work while at Disney but this year may have been one of my smoothest years yet. I love our Disney vacations and they are my favorite trip we take during the year. My favorite characters are Stitch and Perry the Platypus. My favorite park is Epcot and my favorite ride is Living with the Land.

Here's Allison, She's the "she" in our trip reports, and is just about to turn nine.

She loves Disney, especially Beauty and the Beast, and is often accompanied on trips by her sleeping companion Eeyore, who she's had since she was 1.

She's super excited to be Mary Poppins for Halloween this year and she loves to read.

And finally here's Marshall.

Despite being just two years old this was his third WDW trip, so he's a pro at it. He loves cars, trains, dinosaurs, and robots, and being crazy. He's either running full speed or passed out asleep.

Luckily he didn't get to meet the paramedics this trip.

We were again joined by our friends Jon and Brandy, who joined DVC along with us last year.

They are as big of Disney fans as we are, and were excited to head to the world with us again.

We love them to death and they put up with all of our crazy.

And we do bring the crazy, especially with the kids. Our party of eight was completed by my parents, who were making their fourth WDW trip with us.

Grandpa Jim is a retired middle school math and science teacher who loves The Seas and Test Track, and Grandma Nancy is a retired elementary teacher and librarian who loves Belle and Disney watches.

Our home for the trip was our new home resort, the Copper Creek Villas and Cabins at Wilderness Lodge, where we purchased DVC during our trip last year.





For the first part of the trip we split a two bedroom villa with Jon and Brandy then we moved to a cabin for the last three nights.

Thanks to buying points at the time we did, when we had already taken a trip, we had basically two years worth of points for this time, so we chose to spend some of the extra to try out the cabin. We knew it was a rare opportunity, and we really wanted to see what it was like to stay in one.

We hail from Southern California about 45 minutes from Disneyland. We have spent a lot of time there and even had our wedding at the Grand Californian. People always ask why we venture to Florida when Disneyland is so close.

For us, Disneyland is home, and somewhere we can go after work or on a weekend, but we really love the longer term Disney immersion that we get at WDW.

It’s an actual vacation!

We then honeymooned at the Wilderness Lodge, when we fell in love with the resort. We love the quiet secluded feel it has despite being so close to the world’s busiest theme park.


I grew up in a log home and Wilderness Lodge is all kinds of homey for me.


Our only problem with our honeymoon trip was that a week seemed too short, so since then we have started going for nine nights, which makes it worth the trip across country.

I’m still lobbying for longer trips.

And more frequent ones...

Paul just looked at me and gave me a yeah right chuckle. Hey a girl can dream.

I should have bought a lottery ticket today.

Me too. Well this is enough gabbing let’s get on with the show!

I think that sums up the basics, and if we missed anything we can cover it along the way. We hope you'll join in and follow along as we relive our September 2018 trip to Walt Disney World. Let's get started!
 




Woohoo! I’m so excited to read your TR!
Welcome to our first poster of this report! We're glad you're here, and we are looking forward to sharing it.

Very excited to read along.
Thanks and welcome!

Those were great pictures on the Wilderness Lodge thread, too!
Thank You! We just love the Wilderness Lodge, and it is hard to take a bad picture of it.

Subscribed! Always love your trip reports!
Thanks! Were glad that you are joining in for another one.

Woot woot!!! I've been looking forward to this trip report and can't wait to read along!
Thanks and welcome. We've been looking forward to it for a long time too!

I'm here, just like I said I would be. Great pics so far!!!!
Welcome, we're glad to have you joining us again.

I can't wait to hear all about your trip. I enjoyed meeting you and your family. I'm glad that we were able to make it work out. :)
Hello! One of the highlights of our trip was getting to meet you, one of our TR followers from our very first trip and every one in between. It was great to see you in person, and we hope you had a great time at WL as well.

I'm in :) Can't wait to read along......
Welcome! We should have an update before too long.

Joining in. Excited to hear about your trip!
Great! We are excited to write about it.

Following along!
Thanks! Hopefully it is worth the price of admission.

Following along!!
Welcome, and thanks for joining in.

I am joining in! Can't wait to hear all about the trip.
Hello, we're glad to have you participating.

Joining in. I love that you both co-write the report! I think I'll go check out some of your past reports.
Welcome! You should be able to get a pretty good idea of how they go. We like going back and reading the old reports too. We can't believe Allie was so little in the first one, and she was just a couple of months older than Marshall was for this trip.
 
Our trip began with the alarm going off... doesn’t every day start that way though?

This time it was at 4:00 AM, since we decided to drive ourselves to LAX since parking was cheaper than a shuttle. Our flights weren’t until 10:30, but with LA traffic and the unknowns of parking at LAX we wanted to leave plenty of time.

It worked amazingly. We were at the airport about 6:15 and had a super relaxing experience.


Jon and Brandy met us at our house and we filled our Yukon XL to capacity with the six of us and our luggage.

It was like Tetris trying to make everything fit.

And that was after a trial run with our bags the weekend before. It is amazing the amount of planning that goes into a Disney trip.

It’s not all about the ADRs. After our flight issues with United (which you can read about in our PTR) Jon and Brandy ended up on a different flight from us so they ended up dropping us off then parking the truck. So we said see ya laters and headed to check bags.

That process went well, and before long we were through security and looking for breakfast. To get into a Disney mood early we decided on Wolfgang Puck Express. We have never been able to make it to Disney Springs to get breakfast there, so we did it in LA.


It was pretty darned good for an airport breakfast. Expensive but tasty.


Yeah, two breakfast plates with eggs, sausage, and a biscuit with two Diet Pepsis was $40, so I got some early practice in not worrying about meal costs.

After breakfast we found our gate and just hung out for a while.



Our flight was pretty uneventful. Allie worked on homework and Marshall watched videos and slept some.

We had a bit of turbulence over Texas where they even asked the flight attendants to take their seats, but we got to Orlando on time. On the flight I even bought the WiFi in hopes of getting the early check in notification with our room number. It didn’t come though, so we were held in suspense for a while longer.


It was pretty funny watching him try to decide if he should buy it.


And then refreshing my e-mail multiple times once I did...

When we got off the plane we ventured over to the gate where Brandy and Jon were going to arrive. They were only about 30 minutes behind us.

It turned out their flight was delayed a bit because they went around the turbulence we flew through. We were still super excited to be in Florida, and we wanted to all ride MDE together.
Once we found their gate I took the kids for a walk to a gift shop. On the way Allie told me she thought she saw the girls from Bizaardvark, a Disney Channel show about kids who make videos online. I kind of brushed it off, but told her that anything was possible.

Meanwhile I was sitting at the gate and sure enough the three kids walked up. I have watched the show enough to recognize them and their voices.

Melissa texted me saying who she saw, so we quickly bought drinks and a toy helicopter for Marshall.


Then we went to see them in person. Allie was star struck, and too shy to go say anything.

So her super helpful mom stepped in. I don’t think Allie will hate me forever. The kids were so sweet and introduced themselves and gave her hugs then took a selfie with her. She was over the moon.



The kids were so cute, and they were glad to pose for a selfie with Allie. Her day was made, and we’d only been in Orlando for under an hour.

It wasn’t too long after that that Jon and Brandy got there and off the plane.


We then headed to DME, which was a short trip because we were already in terminal B.


I had a theory that maybe scanning in to DME would cause us to get our room location notification, but that didn’t work either.

We were still left in suspense.


But that was somewhat short lived because the driver announced that WL would be the first stop. On the way we could see the MK fireworks from the bus, so we knew we were getting close.

Walking into the lobby of the resort for the first time of a trip is always fun. There is so much excitement and anticipation. I really thought Paul might explode because we didn’t have our room number yet.

My parents had arrived a couple of hours earlier and watched the fireworks from their balcony. They were waiting in the lobby as we walked in.


After a quick hello, we ran over to the front desk to find our room number. I watched in what seemed like slow motion as he wrote 7108 on the map. This was the room that I figured was most likely based on our room requests.

So the odds were in our favor.

It worked out, and we all ran upstairs to see what the room was like.

Continued in next update. (But don't worry, we won't make you wait long...)
 
We basically sprinted to the elevator and up to the 7th floor. Brandy and Jon were amazed at Paul's ability to accurately predict our room assignment. I just say he's crazy and move on.


We stopped briefly to check out the impressive view down into the lobby from the 7th floor.



Melissa chose not to go near the edge, but it is really a neat view.


Really, the view from the 7th floor is terrifying for me, beautiful but terrifying.

I get a kick out of the fact that it used to not be open to the public, but now with the Copper Creek conversion the South side is. We made the short walk down the hall to the second room on the right, 7108.

It was so fun checking out the room, we hadn't seen a dedicated two bedroom in person yet. There is just a ton of space in this room.



For those who aren't as obsessed with Copper Creek floor plans as I am, there are both dedicated two bedrooms like we had and lockoff ones, where a studio and a 1 bedroom next door connect to form a two bedroom. This is like the model we toured, and while the living room and master are very similar between the two types, the second bedroom is quite different because it has two real Queen beds, and since it doesn't need it's own entry door or kitchenette it has a very large bathroom sink area, with a larger shower and toilet room and a large walk in closet next to it.




This layout worked amazing for us, and felt very spacious.


Allie loved the big walk in closet.

She even used it as her own personal changing room. We had plenty of room to store the suitcases in the closet and under the bed, and lots of counter space with the two opposing sinks. The "living room" was great too, with a couch and chairs and a bench for the large dining table.


This worked very well as a common area for us to meet and hang out before heading to the parks. There was some nice theming in the kitchen I hadn't noticed in the model, with I-beams framing the kitchen cabinets.


On the master side there was a hallway near the entry door which had a closet for the washer and dryer, then a bathroom with a nice walk in shower and then that massive tub.


Seriously huge tub

Finally there was the master with its own balcony.


I absolutely adore the design of these rooms. I am planning on taking some of the same elements and using them in our own home.

Allie got a kick out of how they had the paper towels folded, and demanded that we not use them.


I didn't hear that demand, and used the paper towels. Honestly I would have used them anyway, seriously paper towels! I normally bring our own so it was really nice this trip to have paper towels and dish soap included.

Besides, it never takes long for there to be some sort of mess to clean up.

That's true we are messy.

After we all checked out the room, we decided to head down to Roaring Fork for some dinner. It was after 8:00 by now, and we were hungry.

It was hard to tear ourselves away from the room but we were starving by this point. I got the sausage flatbread which was super duper delicious.


I got the bacon cheeseburger and enjoyed it too. We also picked up our refillable mugs, and were excited to get the new Halloween design.


The new mug design for Halloween was adorable, I was excited to have a new mug design too.

For Dessert Jon got a fancy cupcake that he shared, and it was pretty darn good. Melissa and I had a Magic cookie bar.


I can't believe it was our only Magic cookie bar of the trip! I know we had tried to get one another time and they were out of them though.

It was a bit odd to spend over $100 at Roaring Fork, but we got three mugs and a nice dinner, so I didn't even complain. It was all part of the plan to go without the dining plan.

I think the poor guy had some sticker shock that first meal. But it totally made sense because we bought all three mugs at once. Dinner wasn't that expensive.

I was just watching the Target gift cards disappear, and we hadn't even done anything yet... After dinner we headed back up to the room. It was late so we got the kids in bed. At some point I took a walk to see Geyser Point and walk around the hotel a bit, but we were all in bed by just after midnight.



I don't know how this man doesn't sleep at Disney but I was thoroughly exhausted and he wanted to go check more stuff out.

I feel like a little kid at Disney, and I am too excited to sleep. That's how I get up early too, once I see it is close to sunrise, I want to go out and enjoy it. But, we'll show that in the next update.
 
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I'm so excited to read this report. I love the co-narrative. My husband and I wrote a report together a long time ago, and I enjoyed writing that with him. That's so cool that Allie got to meet the kids from the show.
Thank you for sharing the WL. I've always wanted to stay there.
 

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