HO-HO-HO..We`ll put the RUM in Pa-Rum-Pum-Pum-Pum! 16 holiday nights at SF & RPR. A Nov/Dec 2023 Trip Report

[schumigirl]

Have been waiting for this report!!
Each ones you share with us, out do each report by hitting it out the window!

A big to macraven too......I`d normally say you were late, but since you were travelling home from Orlando yesterday, I won`t ask for a note......

Always a pleasure to see you post here mac and thank you for the lovely comments, I do appreciate that.....good to see you

 

[saskdw]

Here we go!!
Nothing beats the Christmas season in Orlando.


We'll arrive at RPR around 6pm on Dec. 1st.
We are soooo happy to be staying at RPR this time.

 

[disneyseniors]

You can say that I'm late, as usual, LOL.
Of course I'm looking forward to the great pictures and fun TR

 

[schumigirl]

Here we go!!
Nothing beats the Christmas season in Orlando.


We'll arrive at RPR around 6pm on Dec. 1st.
We are soooo happy to be staying at RPR this time.

back saskdw……..hoped you’d be along!

We‘ll definitely see you then, we “might” be going to the OI event on the 1st, but for sure we’ll make a point of saying hello at some point!!

Good to see you here again…..

 

[schumigirl]

You can say that I'm late, as usual, LOL.
Of course I'm looking forward to the great pictures and fun TR

lol…… Ruth…well, they do say better late than never

Always good to see you and glad you’ll be along for this one and we get to meet up too which will be lovely!

Hope you enjoy the latest TR…….

 

[schumigirl]

​

Yep, 8 weeks today we`ll hopefully be at our overnight hotel ready to start the trip.

Our vacation starts as soon as we leave for the drive up to Manchester, our car service has been booked and we still enjoy that night before as much as ever.

This year we have booked the Radisson which is attached to the airport itself so no need to go outside in the morning to get to the terminal itself, a quick walk down the skywalk and you`re there. We do alternate between this one and the Marriott which is lovely also, but we do prefer this one, we`ve stayed here so many times.











The Skywalk is right outside the main lobby area, turn right for T1 and left for T2 which is where we fly from, it takes less than 5 minutes to get down to check in.











It`s also very nicely lit up at night and in the early hours where we will be sauntering down there this year while it`s still pitch black outside.













It is a lovely hotel and service is very good, staff are always pleasant and very helpful. The rooms aren`t anything special, but they are always clean and the beds are a nice size with some nice bedding, we can`t fault it really.

After our flights were booked, again we had to call to book the Radisson as the website was showing us there were no Executive rooms available to book, but we`ve found in the past it`s sometimes worth a call, they usually find something and that`s what we did, managed to get another executive room which although the rooms are the same as others, we get access to the lounge which is very nice indeed.

With the Radisson you get points which we had never paid much attention to before, we had once asked many years ago what we could use them for and I think it qualified us for a bottle of wine, er, no thanks, but this time the lady asked if we wanted to use the points we had as it would give us over £75 off our stay, around $95 so we said absolutely, so we got another bargain in our overnight stay for once. I guess those points eventually added up.

People do think this hotel is outrageously priced, but you are paying for the convenience of being able to walk to all terminals and they do have lovely facilities, nice bar and restaurant, executive lounge and they have a rather nice Spa which I used last time we stayed, so for us, it`s worth it.

Rooms are a good size for one night, not overly fancy but most importantly, clean.












Usually we arrive in time for lunch, drop our luggage off if the room isn`t ready and head into their Little M bar for something nice and sparkly to start the trip and have some lunch and generally enjoy the hotel for the afternoon and chill out. Last time I used the Spa while Tom relaxed in the Lounge, so I might do that again as it was very nice.


The lounge is very nice and you have soft drinks, snacks, teas and coffee available all day, then at 5pm the wine, beers and hard liquor are put out. It is a help yourself bar which is nice, we also like they don`t let kids in now, so at 5pm they have to leave as soon as alcohol is served. I`m not averse to having kids around, but an adult only space is nice now and again.

And it`ll be nicely decorated for Christmas too this visit.


















Some of the cold afternoon snacks on offer below, they also offer a hot selection too, things like egg rolls and minature variations of savoury dishes. They`re usually very nice and everything is replenished nicely.












They also offer a continental style breakfast in the lounge from 6am, which we thought we might get to partake in this time as our flight wasn`t going to take off till after midday. However, we recently got a flight time change which means we now have an earlier take off time of 10.30am, so we`d have to eat around 6ish which is far too early for us, so we`ll bimble over to the terminal, check in, go through security and then get some food.

We did look to book the 1901 Lounge which is the other side of security but it was fully booked, I do think however for us, it was never worth the money as we don`t have much to drink there as it`s just too early, a couple of glasses of champagne and bacon on toast......so it`s a pass this year for the lounge. I`m sure we`ll find something.

​

 

[Gr8t Fan]

Yay! Another trip report - and a holiday one to boot! Looking forward to all of your adventures.

 

[schumigirl]

Yay! Another trip report - and a holiday one to boot! Looking forward to all of your adventures.

And another back to Gr8t Fan....

Good to see you, yes, we`re excited for the Holiday stuff this year again, I`ve had Feliz Navidad and Kelly CLarkson underneath the tree in my head since I started this, it`s the only time we ever hear those songs is at Universal! Love em....

Happy to have you along again.....

 

[schumigirl]

HOTELS

​

It`s no surprise to anyone when I share our choice of hotels for our stays, we are predictable I suppose but we absolutely love our time in both hotels that have become our second home in Orlando.

As most that have read these reports for what seems like a billion years, we first stayed at Royal Pacific way back in 2009, the previous year we had stayed at POFQ which I will say we absolutely loved that hotel, we had a really enjoyable stay. Our first visit in 2007 we stayed in the Buena Vista Palace in Downtown Disney as it was then, again another really enjoyable stay.

But as soon as we stepped into Royal Pacific we knew that`s the hotel we would always stay in when we visited Orlando. It has never let us down in every way over the years and in many ways it just gets better. We have met so many folks from there over the years and fortunate enough to be able to keep in touch with many of them to this day.

When Sapphire Falls opened we thought, eh, not sure, looked beautiful but would we want to stay there. Well, after a tour of all the property from our friend Raymond, we saw all the different types of rooms and then decided abso-bliddly-lutely would we want to stay there!!

We loved it.

So, for our first part of this trip we are staying for 10 nights at Sapphire.

It is such a beautiful hotel, we absolutely love it and so look forward to staying there. The lobby is huge and very welcoming and many folks mention the aroma which is absolutely gorgeous. It differs from RP as it has pineapple in it which they don`t have in the lobby scent from RP, both are gorgeous however.

They have two wonderful restaurants in Sapphire, Amatista which is on the lower level, Strong Water Bar which is on the lobby level and a rather small quick service also in the lobby The Dutch Trading co which has lots of hot and cold dishes is open from 6am through till 11pm every day.

There is also a beautiful pool bar which is The Dhrum Club, we don`t eat there very often, but it is excellent, they used to do a lovely shrimp dip, but it`s gone now, however there are plenty of lovely options for everyone in the family.

Amatista is open for breakfast through to dinner and they do the best onsite buffet breakfast of all the hotels. You never need to make a reservation for lunch, but dinner at times reservations are probably a good idea. We plan to go to the Thanksgiving Buffet again this year and it`s probably going to be in Amatista.

Food is recommended here for sure and they do have a little bar to sit at if you don`t want full service.












I don`t think it`s any secret our favourite onsite place is Strong Water Bar. It has everything you need for food, drinks and service. They have entertainment on Fridays and Saturdays, for us Saturday is better as we like the couple who sing together on those nights, the guitar guy we are not as keen on, he`s so loud!

Food is out of this world, drinks are amazing and you will not get better service anywhere, of course we`re not biased of course......lol.....

Drhum Club is somewhere we`ve eaten a few times and it`s always been lovely, they serve some excellent food, but in all honesty we both prefer Bula Bar at RPR for poolside food.

We do like the pool area and they have a rather lovely firepit area which is always very popular especially at night. The Dutch Trading place sells smores kits which again are very popular for folks wanting to spend time there, it`s something we`ve never done when staying there, maybe we should, but I doubt it`ll be in November!!! If it`s not above 90F we don`t go in the pool!!

Anyone who knows us, knows we are not gym people at all to say the least, but Kyle is a fitness person and he enjoyed both the RP and Sapphire gyms, I think he preferred this one out of the two but thought both gyms had enough for most people.Sapphire`s is certainly much larger than RP.

I can`t see us visiting either gym anytime soon, it was only for Kyle we looked!!!

So, a little taster of Sapphire if you haven`t seen it before, we have thousands of pictures from both hotels, but obviously won`t post them all.....we do take an alarming number of pictures on our trips and love looking at them all.

And of course we look forward to all the Christmas trees and decorations in all the hotels!!

​

Coming up.....RPR......

 

[saskdw]

We would love to stay at SF sometime, but no express pass there for us regular folks.

I use the fitness center on all our trips. RPR has a decent one, but the new Universal resorts like SF and CB have really outstanding facility's. When we were staying at PB last December the spa and fitness room was being renovated. They moved a couple pieces of equipment into a conference room to use, but it wasn't much. Probably didn't help with my impression of the resort.

 

[schumigirl]

We would love to stay at SF sometime, but no express pass there for us regular folks.

I use the fitness center on all our trips. RPR has a decent one, but the new Universal resorts like SF and CB have really outstanding facility's. When we were staying at PB last December the spa and fitness room was being renovated. They moved a couple pieces of equipment into a conference room to use, but it wasn't much. Probably didn't help with my impression of the resort.

lol.....it`s a good place to visit for sure and such a short walk from RP!

I haven`t seen CB`s fitness centre, but I was impressed with Sapphire`s. I have been in the indoor hot tub at RP, but for like 38 seconds as I detest hot tubs with a passion......as Sheldon calls them, people soup......

I again am in the minority though as most folks love hot tubs lol....

Yes, not the best idea to move a couple of pieces into a conference room, surely they could have done better than that.

 

[DoryGirl1963]

lol.....it`s a good place to visit for sure and such a short walk from RP!

I haven`t seen CB`s fitness centre, but I was impressed with Sapphire`s. I have been in the indoor hot tub at RP, but for like 38 seconds as I detest hot tubs with a passion......as Sheldon calls them, people soup......

I again am in the minority though as most folks love hot tubs lol....

Yes, not the best idea to move a couple of pieces into a conference room, surely they could have done better than that.

Right there with you on the community hot tubs - just...eewww...no, nope, not happening for this girl

I LOVE Sapphire Falls - so incredibly beautiful - & I'm biding my time until I can finally find an excuse to stay at RPR. We usually go for 5- 7 nights & have APs, so don't really need Express Passes and we like having more room to spread out at the resort in our room which comes a budget busting cost for us at the premiers, LOL!

Looking forward to the RPR pics - we're going to take some time to pop over there when we're on site in November this year.

 

[angryduck71]

Dang it, I'm going to keep up with this one. Hopefully you got my email! Now going to try to catch up on the last one!

 

[schumigirl]

Right there with you on the community hot tubs - just...eewww...no, nope, not happening for this girl

I LOVE Sapphire Falls - so incredibly beautiful - & I'm biding my time until I can finally find an excuse to stay at RPR. We usually go for 5- 7 nights & have APs, so don't really need Express Passes and we like having more room to spread out at the resort in our room which comes a budget busting cost for us at the premiers, LOL!

Looking forward to the RPR pics - we're going to take some time to pop over there when we're on site in November this year.

lol......thought I was the only one that hated hot tubs, everyone seems to love them!!

Oh you`d enjoy RP for sure, and yes, it is so close to walk from Sapphire. They`re both such pretty hotels in their own way, we are always torn with which one we love the most!!

 

[schumigirl]

Dang it, I'm going to keep up with this one. Hopefully you got my email! Now going to try to catch up on the last one!

Yay..... along Alice.....you made it!!!

Yes, I did get it, I owe you a reply!!!

But, glad you made it for the beginning, I`m so glad you`re along too for this one.....I will get that reply to you.....

 

[heidijanesmith]

Hi Carole!

We just got back from a week's stay at SF and it was great! I missed the fact that you were not coming back for HHN this year, so I kept my eyes out looking for you I loved the Carole's punch drink, delicious!

We have not been going to HHN as long as you have, but I understand how you can get burnt out. We loved the way HHN was when we first started. More adult and scary. Several years have been more "tween" friendly which we did not care for.

This year was better as far as more adulty and less tweens in the park, so we really liked that.

The crowds were insane, Sat the 16th was so crazy. I do have some claustrophobia issues, but have never felt claustrophobic at HHN. We ended up leaving due to the crowds, I was having serious issues.

Hope you enjoy Christmas time!

 

[schumigirl]

Hi Carole!

We just got back from a week's stay at SF and it was great! I missed the fact that you were not coming back for HHN this year, so I kept my eyes out looking for you I loved the Carole's punch drink, delicious!

We have not been going to HHN as long as you have, but I understand how you can get burnt out. We loved the way HHN was when we first started. More adult and scary. Several years have been more "tween" friendly which we did not care for.

This year was better as far as more adulty and less tweens in the park, so we really liked that.

The crowds were insane, Sat the 16th was so crazy. I do have some claustrophobia issues, but have never felt claustrophobic at HHN. We ended up leaving due to the crowds, I was having serious issues.

Hope you enjoy Christmas time!

along Heidijane, it`s so good to see you here!

Yes, I`m so glad you enjoyed Sapphire and especially Carole`s Punch!!! And yes I am biased....lol.....

I`m glad you had a good experience at HHN overall, but sorry you had a negative reaction with too many crowds, we`ve heard several folks say the same thing and know many people who have no idea how much better it used to be crowd wise.

But, thank you, hope to see you post and enjoy the report

 

[Matty123]

I haven`t seen CB`s fitness centre, but I was impressed with Sapphire`s. I have been in the indoor hot tub at RP, but for like 38 seconds as I detest hot tubs with a passion......as Sheldon calls them, people soup......

I again am in the minority though as most folks love hot tubs lol....

There's an indoor hot tub at RP?! Is it within the fitness center?

Asking as one who has been to RP a few times, is going again in a few months, and does enjoy a hot tub (but prefers it without the germy people soup element if possible! ).

 

[jocelyn6]

Looking forward to reading about your adventures!!

 

[schumigirl]

There's an indoor hot tub at RP?! Is it within the fitness center?

Asking as one who has been to RP a few times, is going again in a few months, and does enjoy a hot tub (but prefers it without the germy people soup element if possible! ).

along Matty!!

This isn`t my picture below, got it from the net. It was years ago we went in to see it, the picture I have is blurry so won`t post it. Yes, it is inside the fitness centre.

lol.....I do see why folks love them and yes, it would be better without other folks.....





Good to see you post, hope you enjoy this one and hope you have another lovely stay at Royal Pacific