Extreme Split Stay - 5 Nights 5 Resorts 5 Studios

[DisneyRegulars]

I like to think of this trip report as the "lost trip report," as the events that are about to unfold actually occurred back in August. Our beach house plans fell through, so we decided to piece together a last minute DVC stay, coupled with a weekend visiting friends in Vero Beach. This trip was very different from all our previous trips for many reasons:

1. It was a surprise trip for Tigger. We told him we were going down to Florida to go to the beach for the weekend, and would be coming home after the beach. He was only 5 at the time, and to him it seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to fly down to Florida for 2 days. Boy is he in for a shock when he has to buy plane tickets someday!

2. Due to the unexpectedness of this trip, we had very limited points available to use, so we were limited to studios. This will be our first Disney trip with our son staying in a single room. We were very apprehensive about this, but we figured a Disney vacation staying in a studio was better than no Disney vacation at all. We'll see how we feel about this after the trip is complete.

3. Due to our last minute planning, we would need to do a split stay. Since a split stay was already involved, we decided to really go for it, and try out as many resorts as possible in a single trip. It was August, we figured we would be spending a lot of time swimming, and the idea of trying out 5 different pools sounded appealing at the time of booking. Our itinerary would take us from OKW to AKV to BLT to POLY to BWV.

4. About 20 days before our trip my brother informed me that he wanted to do everything with us, and that I needed to copy all my fastpasses over to his account. Now I knew my brother already had plans to go during our same time period, but the fact that he suddenly wanted to do everything with us caught me by surprise. Especially since he had gone on about how excited he was to be going on a solo trip. I thought maybe we would meet up for dinner or something once while we were down there. This certainly threw us a curve ball. My brother and I don't always get along the greatest. Just the previous month my mother actually yelled at us for fighting at the dinner table, with my 39 year old brother responding "She started it." So yeah, we bicker easily, like little kids. He likes to push buttons, and I fall for it every time. We didn't get along at all growing up until he left for college. So 20 days out, my brother invites himself on our vacation. This should be interesting!

Casting call for this report:
Me: Your narrator. 33 year old college professor with a passion for Disney, llamas, and board games.
Grizzly: My husband. Slightly older than me. Completely addicted to Disney. Very agreeable and generally is happy with whatever I plan.
Tigger: Five year old beasty with a passion for marble tracks, hot wheel cars, and the Barnstormer. He doesn't know about this trip.
My Brother: Math teacher. Workaholic. Disney Fanatic. Loves board games, collecting things, and driving me bananas.

Following along with me in this abbreviated trip report as we explore the different resorts, enjoy the Typhoon Lagoon Beach Party Bash, try not to kill my brother, and survive switching resorts 5 times in 5 days. First up, do we manage to surprise Tigger?

 

[TeeterTots]

Hooray! I've been waiting for this one!! Yay!!

 

[GGOOFY1]

I stay for 8 nights and don't like split stays. Can't wait to hear how things turned out.

 

[alohamom]

Briiing it on, this sounds like it is going to be great!

 

[T00dles]

I love the extreme split stay! I'm in

 

[KristiMc]

I'm in. Staying at OKW and BWV (studios) both for the first time in June.

 

[cabloom]

You come across as such a nice person but I've realized that you're really a sadist - pulling us all into your reports and then sitting back and watching us die with anticipation. I can hear your evil laughter!

Kidding, of course ... Kind of. But I really am eager to see how it all went!

 

[peabody58]

Sounds very do able, especially if you are prepared to live out of suitcases, optimize your transfer time (pools are a great idea), and go in with a spirit of adventure. My DW would kill me if I tried this extreme Split Stay, but we do enjoy our two 3-4 day split stays. It's like 2 vacations in one. Enjoy!!

 

[DVCjj]

I love split stays and my DH would do this in a heartbeat.

Can't wait to follow along.

 

[dvcmbr94]

Can't wait to read about this trip! More please!

 

[TeeterTots]

Just checking in! You must be busy with family and work, but hoping all is well!

 

[Fastpassminus]

I loved your last TR. I can't wait to hear more.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

For those of you that haven't lost hope, I'm back! Thanks for your patience. Work is just crazy. I spend 80% of my day on a computer, so once I get home at night and the beast is in bed, the last thing I want to do with the 2 hours left of my day is spend more time on my computer. Which kind of stinks if you like writing trip reports.

So to get back to the report. Before we start our crazy resort hopping madness, we have to get to Walt Disney World, and we have to surprise our 5 year old along the way. We spent this morning with our friends in Vero Beach, and in the early afternoon we told Tigger we needed to head to the airport. We were going to use this story line as long as we could, and see how far we could get before he figured out something was up. I had visions of a little boy jumping up and down in excitement as he walked through the Magic Kingdom gates. I have no idea why I bother imagining things at this point, it never works out the way it does in my head.

We lucked out on the first hurdle: passing under the Walt Disney World sign because the beast was asleep:

Once we parked the car beastling woke up, and we asked him how we should get to the airport, should we take a monorail or a boat? He looked at us kind of puzzled, and then decided that we should definitely take the monorail so that we didn't miss our plane. Our evil plan was working so perfectly!

We went along with our story some more and told Tigger that we were pretty late, so we were just going to leave the luggage in the car, and someone would come pick it up for us. This seemed fairly logical to him, so off we went to ride the parking tram. Unfortunately, the parking tram announcement guy was not in on our surprise. In fact, he was the opposite of in, it seemed as though he was trying his absolute best to make sure that Tigger knew darn well where he was. He just went on and on and on about Magic Kingdom hours, fireworks hours, rides to ride, and all these messages that were just screaming "WE ARE AT WALT DISNEY WORLD!!". I didn't want anybody screaming this at Tigger. I was a little aggravated, but I watched Tigger with the camera rolling waiting for that aha! moment when he would put all the pieces together and realize we were not indeed at the airport. He just sat there in a sort of daze, it was only when we got off the tram and were approaching the monorails that he began to put the pieces together.

It was super cute, and I wanted to stop and enjoy it as he unraveled the mystery of where we were, but Grizzly was hellbent on getting on the next monorail and was dragging us through the gates. Aaaargh! So while we were being dragged to the monorail Tigger did ask at one point: "Is this the place with all the rides?". Except it took him forever to get this question out because he was stuttering big time and you could tell the whole situation was just really confusing him. I assured him we were at the airport, and that we needed to hurry to catch our plane, and on the monorail I think I still had him fairly well convinced we were just going to the airport, and it only happened that the airport used the same trains as Disney:

When we finally made our way into the Magic Kingdom he had everything figured out, and was super excited. We didn't get a scream of delight or anything like that, but he was pretty excited. To top it off, his uncle was waiting for him right by the entrance. We hadn't told him that part and he was smitten to find his uncle waiting for him. Overall I think the surprise went well. Tigger was definitely in a fun mood this evening and we enjoyed our time together.

We didn't spend too much time at the Magic Kingdom, but we did manage to ride Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain, the Mine Train, and the Carousel. Here are some of my favorite photos of the evening from my phone. I suspect we have some Photo Pass photos that I have to track down at some point too. We learned on this day that we probably wouldn't kill my brother which was nice to learn.

The look of wonder of a boy who thought he was going to the airport, but instead got to ride on Prince Charming's Carousel:

And the crazy adults he had to ride with:

Up first for our first night of resort hopping madness was Old Key West. Our very first DVC stay was in a 1 bedroom at OKW, so it was nice to return. This night was our very first night staying in a studio with Tigger at Walt Disney World. We were pleasantly surprised by the size of the OKW room. It was huge! This place definitely had some room to spread out, and we could easily imagine being able to survive here for multiple days if we needed to. At least, this is how we were feeling on day one!

I tried to get pictures of each of our studios for comparison sake. I admit I didn't do the best job, here was our OKW room:

View of the two beds:

View of the sitting area:

I was in charge of putting Tigger to bed, while Grizzly ran over to Earl of Sandwich to get us some dinner. We ate on the huge balcony while Tigger slept. This place was amazing. We were so high on our OKW studio. Why get a larger unit when you had this amazing balcony and all this space? It was all so fantastic.....until morning!

I took only a few notes for this first day, and one of them was about the blinds in the room. I opened the blinds on one of the doors, and it frustrated me so much, that I closed them, and opened them again just to count how many pulls it took to open the blinds. 45! FORTY-FIVE! How incredibly ridiculous is that, that in order to let some light into the room, it took 45 pulls on the blinds. Thank goodness we were leaving because by the time I opened the second blind I would have been dead. (We are just going to ignore the fact that I opened the same window twice just to count the number of pulls it would take, and we are going to keep on thinking that I'm sane.)

View of the most annoying blinds in the world:

Prior to opening up the blinds the next morning Grizzly and I were first reminded why we don't like studios. Reason # 1 To Not Like Studios: If your kid is asleep, you have to be quiet and can't really do anything. Now our kid being asleep usually happens for us at night and during nap times, but this first morning at WDW our beast's internal alarm clock didn't go off, and Grizzly and I were left trapped in bed waiting for him to wake up. Here we are, wide awake, patiently waiting for our beast to wake up too so we can go have some fun. It reminded me very much of that Disney commercial where the mom and dad are waiting with their ear hats on sitting on the bed waiting for their kids.

Being trapped in bed in the morning was a new one for us as usually Tigger is bouncing off the walls by 6:30am. We were okay with Tigger sleeping in today as we had a loooong day planned, and the more rested Tigger was the better our day would be.

Up next, a day in Animal Kingdom followed by the DVC Member Typhoon Lagoon Beach Party! Will we kill my brother? Will we kill Tigger? Will the studios kill us? Stay tuned as our adventure continues.

 

[TeeterTots]

Yay! So glad you're back! I totally missed reading your trip reports!

 

[traceyg]

I can't wait to read more. You are way more adventurous than I am. The thought of 5 resorts in one stay would make me crazy with all that packing and unpacking. I can't wait to hear how it goes.
So cute on the surprise. My DS is about Tigger's age and the only one who lives with me that shares the WDW passion that I do. I could not not share, I need a partner in crime! lol

 

[Fastpassminus]

Studios are hard. Luckily DS can sleep through us getting dressed most of the time.

I am wondering what your packing strategy was for this trip? Did you put food in the fridge? Does Tigger have any " lovies" he needs to sleep? Everytime we do split stays I am scared to death DS will loose one of his "babies" when we are packing up.

 

[a742246]

How did I miss your trip report for so long! I always look forward to them, you are such a good writer. Thank you.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

How did I miss your trip report for so long! I always look forward to them, you are such a good writer. Thank you.

It's probably better that you did since I'm having a heck of a time finding time to write it! You found it at just the right time because I'm trying to finish it up this week. Thanks for the compliments!

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Studios are hard. Luckily DS can sleep through us getting dressed most of the time.

I am wondering what your packing strategy was for this trip? Did you put food in the fridge? Does Tigger have any " lovies" he needs to sleep? Everytime we do split stays I am scared to death DS will loose one of his "babies" when we are packing up.

I addressed our packing strategy in the next post I'm about to submit, but as for the lovies...Tigger has a brown blanket that he needs for sleeping. I wasn't too concerned about losing it because we kept our luggage with us in our rental car. I think having Disney transfer bags for a 5 hotel split stay would be a nightmare as you'd be spending most of the trip without your things or waiting for your things to arrive in your room, or carrying them around the park in case you wanted to swim later.

Since we were in studios and moving so much we didn't bother with food for this trip.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Today was our first real test of our resort hopping extravaganza. Once Tigger finally roused himself, we packed up our things and headed to Animal Kingdom for the day. To make logistics easier, and knowing we would probably not have our room ready when we wanted it, each day we packed a backpack filled with our swimming supplies for the day. Swim suits, goggles, and sunblock were at the ready for emergency afternoon swimming needs. We also packed an empty dufflebag in our luggage and we filled this bag with dirty clothes as we collected them throughout the week. This was our first DVC trip without laundry in our room, and the dufflebag of dirty clothes worked out well for gathering everything that needed washing in one place. When we packed up and moved each day we had the following items:
1. Stroller
2. Backpack full of swimming gear
3. Dufflebag of dirty clothes
4. Carryon size roller bag of clothes for mom and dad
5. Carryon size roller bag of clothes for Tigger

We also had a rental car, which made accessing these items easier than if they were lost somewhere in the inter-resort transfer system. I would hesitate to do a 5 night resort hopping trip without a rental car to store your stuff in.

First up at Animal Kingdom was breakfast, and we ate what any good disney fan would eat for breakfast, Mickey Bars!

We had fastpasses set up this morning for Dinosaur, Kali River Rapids and Everest. My brother, being the lazy beast that he is, only managed to join us for the last ride of the morning, Everest. Here is Tigger and I waiting for the uncle to make an appearance:

I fell in love even more this trip with FP+ because it makes traveling with other parties sooooo easy. You can easily say "Hey, here are our plans, I've copied them to your my disney experience account, text me if you are going to show up, and we'll wait for you." Both parties can then go about their days as they please, and there are already a bunch of predefined meeting points to select to meet up at. It worked out great for us. My brother spent most of his mornings doing whatever it was he was doing over at the Yacht Club, and we enjoyed the parks and his company once he joined us.

We lunched at Yak and Yeti with my brother, then I sent Grizzly and Tigger off to Animal Kingdom Lodge for an afternoon swim and nap, and my brother and I spent some time bonding in Animal Kingdom. You know what two 30+ adults decided to spend their afternoon doing? We decided to acquire every single badge in the Wilderness Explorer's book. So we went to the sign up station, got ourselves a book, said an oath and were on our way!

One of the badges took us out to Rafiki's Planet Watch. I think I resemble this goat a little bit:

Now I should add, that the only reason we wanted to get all these badges, besides my brother's strange obsession with collecting just about anything collectible, was because we were absolutely certain we would get something amazing for our feat of determination. We were hellbent on filling the entire book, and after several hours of dutifully persuing badges, and listening to cast members all too excited to tell us about the Tour De Turtles and Meerkats antics we had only completed about 3/4 of the badges. Around 5pm we resigned ourselves to coming back another day to finish up the quest. One thing I love about Disney is that you can stand behind a 4 year old kid getting a badge, and then walk up as an adult and the cast members treat you with the same enthusiasm as if you were 4 too. It's great! I've never once been made to feel silly for doing any of the kid things, which is awesome, because I love to do everything there is to do.

I headed back to Animal Kingdom Lodge to find Tigger snoozing and Grizzly sitting angrily in the dark. His displeasure with studios evident on his dimmly lit face. Actually, I'm not entirely sure what his face looked like because it was dark. Dark dark dark. There's pretty much nothing good about sitting in a dark room waiting for your kid to wake up, unless of course you are some sort of bat or find pleasure in dark places. So far on our Resort Hopping Extravaganza the resort hopping part went fine, Grizzly got into our room early afternoon after a quick swim, but the studio part is just abismal when you have a child that still naps and goes to bed early.

Tonight on the docket was the DVC Beach Party at Typhoon Lagoon. We were very much looking forward to our first special DVC experience.

Stay tuned as I try to finishing recounting this trip hopping tale before we head off on a new adventure this Friday!!!