Pixie Dust, or Pixie MOUNTAIN? A Grand (Roy) Disney TR *NEW TR LINK 8/11!*

With all the excitement about the pixie dust, I hope it didn't involve any hot towels. I don't think your son would have been happy... ::yes::
 
Ugh you are making me look bad as I haven't even started my report yet. I did at least go through picture finally. Baby steps. Anyway while I'm still monumentally upset that I missed you in August I'm gonna follow along nonetheless!
 
Wow, thank you everyone for joining me! As I said to some of you in my comments, I think I'm more excited to share this trip than any of my previous ones I've done reports for. So if you're all ready, you can come and

Greet Me at the Grand:
arrival day, part 1
Our story begins on Thursday, Sept. 13th, with a smooth and uneventful plane ride from Westchester County, NY to Orlando. Kids were in school, mom would be over after work to take Ricky to p/t and stay for the weekend. We landed 30 minutes early (yay!!!) then sat on the runway because, being so early, there was another plane at our gate. We still made it to ME around when I expected and things started off right when not only was our bus waiting for us, it left about 7 minutes after we sat down! Steve considered this a big helping of good luck to begin with because, as some of you may know, he's NOT a fan of ME. We normally either wait forever, or get right on and then sit for 25-40 minutes. We also got one of the new buses so I had this gal was smiling at me from my window:

IMG_8506.JPG

The ride was smooth, driver was slow. FINALLY we went through everyone's favorite arches, and after a quick stop at the Poly were pulling in to our "home" for the next 4 nights, the GF!

IMG_8512.JPG

view from the CL lounge

This was our first stay at the GF, and I'd booked an outer building, standard view with my work rate. We'd been here numerous times for dinner but that's it, so we were both pretty excited. Originally we were booked at the BWI, the Epcot resorts being Steve's favorites. But when the GF became available we decided to make the switch as the rate was so good!

As we approached the entrance with our fellow ME riders, the greeter caught my eye since he was coming towards us. He approached us and said, "Ah, The DeVizio Family!" Still gets me how they know when you arrive lol.

Back to the greeter: as soon as he said this my heart started pumping because I KNEW. I knew we'd been upgraded to club level! Then he added, "I see you're in the Main Building". Not really, but OK :cool1: Some of you may know and some may not, but when you're staying CL you're greeted and escorted up to the concierge desk (usually). And that's really the only reason you'd be greeted unless maybe there was something else super special going on for you!
Steve had absolutely no idea anything had happened because he never pays attention to anything I say, so was unaware of the CL check in process. We'd stayed CL once at Wilderness Lodge but didn't arrive on ME, so we didn't get greeted and escorted up. As we walked towards the elevator I tried to mouth to him, "we got upgraded to CLUB LEVEL"!!

Finally he got it.

We arrived on the 4th floor and sat down with one of the concierge CM's on duty, John, and began getting checked in. He had to fix our MB's so they'd unlock the elevator :snooty:. It was around 2:30 now and he eventually said, "hmm, I'm so sorry, your suite isn't quite ready yet". We played it cool, like, "that's ok man, no worries".

But inside we were freaking out! If I knew how to put gif's here I would totally have some awesome ones lol. We figured maybe a room with a sitting area, or a 1 bedroom suite, 2 bathrooms, something like that. Offhand I didn't have the GF rooms memorized and I wanted to be surprised so instead of looking it up we just decided to be surprised, and took a stroll down to floor 3 to visit the lounge where afternoon tea was being served!

This post has gotten really wordy so I'll just move on to pictures:

IMG_8507.JPG


IMG_8508.JPG


IMG_8509.JPG




IMG_8510.JPG


IMG_8511.JPG
I took these kind of fast; we were both still a bit in shock, we were hungry, and even though I was excited for the upgrade I was anxious to get on with our day! After all we only had 4.5 of them! I was impressed with the lounge area though and especially love the table above as I love Victorian era furniture. Yeah it's BIG and can be gaudy, but I like it. As you can see, this was the tea set up. I also liked that the lounge was very bright as opposed to the WL lounge (no hate for anything WL though, you guys know it's my favorite!) The GF lounge was just always so bright and airy. Snacks during afternoon tea are light as expected.

The view from the lounge was neat too, and you got a close up of the pretty chandeliers:


IMG_8513.JPG

Believe it or not, as usual I DID shrink my pictures but they're still huge! As much as we wanted to sample the snacks we had a Food and Wine Fest to get to!
Speaking of Food and Wine, let me mention here that every day got switched around except our last day, and that's ok. It happens more often than not with our trips as some of you know, and I like that we can go with the flow and aren't stuck hard and fast to our plans.

Here was our plan for today:

-hit some booths at F&W
-move to HS for FP's including Alien Swirling Saucers
-Artist Point for dinner before they ruin the food by changing from a signature to a character meal

We were delayed a bit with our first round of pixiedust: so by the time we left for F&W we determined that HS was going to be out. Since our SUITE wasn't quite ready we took the elevator down to level two with the common folk to jump on the monorail, but first we stopped to check out the Halloween decor in the store windows:


IMG_8514.JPG

IMG_8515.JPG

So cute!

I promise the suite pictures will start soon but up next:


Our First Stop at F&W
 


Not too wordy at all, I'm loving all the detail and suspense. Also I'm reading all the CL CM parts in a British accent in my head :confused3

"Pip pip and cheerio DeVizio family, we're not quite ready with your suite so put your luggage in the boot and sample some crumpets"

:rotfl:

(Yes, I know something is gravely wrong with me. I blame the bourbon.)

Artist Point for dinner before they ruin the food by changing from a signature to a character meal
:scared1: Oh no you didn't! But... yeah. Agreed, lady. I'm already sad.

with the common folk to jump on the monorail
:rotfl2:

Peasants!!!
 
As we approached the entrance with our fellow ME riders, the greeter caught my eye since he was coming towards us. He approached us and said, "Ah, The DeVizio Family!" Still gets me how they know when you arrive lol.

Back to the greeter: as soon as he said this my heart started pumping because I KNEW. I knew we'd been upgraded to club level! Then he added, "I see you're in the Main Building". Not really, but OK :cool1: Some of you may know and some may not, but when you're staying CL you're greeted and escorted up to the concierge desk (usually). And that's really the only reason you'd be greeted unless maybe there was something else super special going on for you!
Oh man that’s so exciting! I would have been freaking out and probably making a fool of myself :lmao::lmao::lmao:
 
I'm in! Can't wait to read all about it!!
Hey Susan, :welcome: glad you're here! I need to get my butt back over to your TR and catch up!

Looking forward to another report!
Aw thanks, I'm glad you're here for this one :goodvibes

Excited for a new Ariane trip report!
:laughing: I hope Ariane does ok with this one, thanks for joining!

I’m glad to hear that. I come from a big sports family & I know how heartbreaking his injury must have been for him & your family. I hope his recovery continues to go well.
I remember you saying that before :hug: It's hard to convey just how much it's affected him, and all of us, because it COULD be so much worse. And we all know that. But basketball was every single part of his life and then it was gone. To a 15/16 year old it doesn't matter that it could be worse.
His recovery the first time was going really well until it wasn't and he retore it, but this time it seems to really be going better and we're finally all optimistic for the future again :)

I'm here! Looking forward to the Mountain of Pixie Dust!
Hey Su-Lynn! Thanks for joining! I'm sorry you'll have to sit through some repeat pictures but I appreciate you following along :hug:

I have been waiting too long to hear how this came about! Don't keep us in suspense too much longer!
:D Well I got to the "how" real quick and there wasn't much too it! I don't really know exactly why we got the upgrade, we tried figuring it out but then just stopped questing it and soaked it in :cloud9: The nice thing was, the "dust" kept settling even after the the first day!

:wave: I'm here, can't wait to read about your adventures :)
Yay, thank you for coming over! I'm just so sorry about the troubles you had on your trip :( We did have a trip like that a few years ago and I know how bad it sucks when things don't go as planned, and being sick is really pretty much the worst. I hope you can plan another trip soon to make up for it!

Joining in!!
:welcome:, thank you for joining!!

Hi Ariane, I'm looking forward to reading about your latest trip!!!
:wave: thanks for following along again, I'm glad you're here!

Following along... I gotta see what's lurking behind those doors. :magnify:
LOL can you imagine standing in front of them? The anticipation is extraodinary!
Thanks for following along :goodvibes

Woohoo, I’m joining in for another one of your TRs. I loved reading your last one! :yay:
:thanks:, and :welcome: again, I'm so happy you liked my last one enough to come back!

Looking forward to hearing about your trip!!
Thank you, I hope I do a good enough job to keep you interested :laughing:

With all the excitement about the pixie dust, I hope it didn't involve any hot towels. I don't think your son would have been happy... ::yes::
Right? Luckily we didn't get any hot towel pixie dust lol but rest assured if we did I would have been texting those pictures to Chris :rotfl2:

I'm here too!
Hey Lesley, thanks for joining :cool1:

Ugh you are making me look bad as I haven't even started my report yet. I did at least go through picture finally. Baby steps. Anyway while I'm still monumentally upset that I missed you in August I'm gonna follow along nonetheless!
I purposely started this to make you look bad :P It doesn't matter, everyone is used to you starting your reports 9 months after the fact so you'd throw people off if you start it in 2018!
I hated missing you in August, I truly did. But now we have May party: and we'll make up for it!
 


Ahh makes me miss the GF, such a beautiful lobby. The CL looks awesome.
We common folks only got to level 2 for the shops and monorail :rotfl:
Excited to hear more about the suite! I’m sure it was lovely.
 
Wow, it just sounds so amazing already, and you didn't even know about the Roy suite yet! I don't blame you for missing your DHS plans…this seems MUCH better!
 
Ok, so this would be me if someone said the word "suite"......:banana::banana::banana::banana::banana: Good for you to be able to play it cool! I absolutely can't wait for details!
 
I purposely started this to make you look bad :P It doesn't matter, everyone is used to you starting your reports 9 months after the fact so you'd throw people off if you start it in 2018!

:P:P:P:P Well just to prove you wrong (or more importantly me right) its begun. And only a month late o_O
 
Last edited:
Wow, thank you everyone for joining me! As I said to some of you in my comments, I think I'm more excited to share this trip than any of my previous ones I've done reports for. So if you're all ready, you can come and

Greet Me at the Grand:
arrival day, part 1
Our story begins on Thursday, Sept. 13th, with a smooth and uneventful plane ride from Westchester County, NY to Orlando. Kids were in school, mom would be over after work to take Ricky to p/t and stay for the weekend. We landed 30 minutes early (yay!!!) then sat on the runway because, being so early, there was another plane at our gate. We still made it to ME around when I expected and things started off right when not only was our bus waiting for us, it left about 7 minutes after we sat down! Steve considered this a big helping of good luck to begin with because, as some of you may know, he's NOT a fan of ME. We normally either wait forever, or get right on and then sit for 25-40 minutes. We also got one of the new buses so I had this gal was smiling at me from my window:

View attachment 354677

The ride was smooth, driver was slow. FINALLY we went through everyone's favorite arches, and after a quick stop at the Poly were pulling in to our "home" for the next 4 nights, the GF!

View attachment 354699

view from the CL lounge

This was our first stay at the GF, and I'd booked an outer building, standard view with my work rate. We'd been here numerous times for dinner but that's it, so we were both pretty excited. Originally we were booked at the BWI, the Epcot resorts being Steve's favorites. But when the GF became available we decided to make the switch as the rate was so good!

As we approached the entrance with our fellow ME riders, the greeter caught my eye since he was coming towards us. He approached us and said, "Ah, The DeVizio Family!" Still gets me how they know when you arrive lol.

Back to the greeter: as soon as he said this my heart started pumping because I KNEW. I knew we'd been upgraded to club level! Then he added, "I see you're in the Main Building". Not really, but OK :cool1: Some of you may know and some may not, but when you're staying CL you're greeted and escorted up to the concierge desk (usually). And that's really the only reason you'd be greeted unless maybe there was something else super special going on for you!
Steve had absolutely no idea anything had happened because he never pays attention to anything I say, so was unaware of the CL check in process. We'd stayed CL once at Wilderness Lodge but didn't arrive on ME, so we didn't get greeted and escorted up. As we walked towards the elevator I tried to mouth to him, "we got upgraded to CLUB LEVEL"!!

Finally he got it.

We arrived on the 4th floor and sat down with one of the concierge CM's on duty, John, and began getting checked in. He had to fix our MB's so they'd unlock the elevator :snooty:. It was around 2:30 now and he eventually said, "hmm, I'm so sorry, your suite isn't quite ready yet". We played it cool, like, "that's ok man, no worries".

But inside we were freaking out! If I knew how to put gif's here I would totally have some awesome ones lol. We figured maybe a room with a sitting area, or a 1 bedroom suite, 2 bathrooms, something like that. Offhand I didn't have the GF rooms memorized and I wanted to be surprised so instead of looking it up we just decided to be surprised, and took a stroll down to floor 3 to visit the lounge where afternoon tea was being served!

This post has gotten really wordy so I'll just move on to pictures:

View attachment 354694


View attachment 354695


View attachment 354696

I took these kind of fast; we were both still a bit in shock, we were hungry, and even though I was excited for the upgrade I was anxious to get on with our day! After all we only had 4.5 of them! I was impressed with the lounge area though and especially love the table above as I love Victorian era furniture. Yeah it's BIG and can be gaudy, but I like it. As you can see, this was the tea set up. I also liked that the lounge was very bright as opposed to the WL lounge (no hate for anything WL though, you guys know it's my favorite!) The GF lounge was just always so bright and airy. Snacks during afternoon tea are light as expected.

The view from the lounge was neat too, and you got a close up of the pretty chandeliers:


View attachment 354700

Believe it or not, as usual I DID shrink my pictures but they're still huge! As much as we wanted to sample the snacks we had a Food and Wine Fest to get to!
Speaking of Food and Wine, let me mention here that every day got switched around except our last day, and that's ok. It happens more often than not with our trips as some of you know, and I like that we can go with the flow and aren't stuck hard and fast to our plans.

Here was our plan for today:

-hit some booths at F&W
-move to HS for FP's including Alien Swirling Saucers
-Artist Point for dinner before they ruin the food by changing from a signature to a character meal

We were delayed a bit with our first round of pixiedust: so by the time we left for F&W we determined that HS was going to be out. Since our SUITE wasn't quite ready we took the elevator down to level two with the common folk to jump on the monorail, but first we stopped to check out the Halloween decor in the store windows:


View attachment 354704

View attachment 354705

So cute!

I promise the suite pictures will start soon but up next:


Our First Stop at F&W

GF is my absolute dream, so I'm already kind of freaking out along with you!!! Can't wait for pictures!!!
 
As I said to some of you in my comments, I think I'm more excited to share this trip than any of my previous ones I've done reports for.

Woooh!! :hyper::hyper:

Back to the greeter: as soon as he said this my heart started pumping because I KNEW. I knew we'd been upgraded to club level!

Yay!! I know where this is going!!

Also, when I told Nathan about your upgrade, he was like "Seriously!? That's awesome! ....wait a minute...we stayed at the Grand for our wedding AND our anniversary...Where was OUR pixie dust upgrade!??" :rotfl:

Artist Point for dinner before they ruin the food by changing from a signature to a character meal

Amen. Do I want a chance to meet my spirit animal, Grumpy, without waiting 8 hours in line at a party? Yes, sure. Do I want them to change anything about Artist Point dinner? Hard no.
 
Oh, those were the days...I love the CL Lounge in the main building at the GF. Ali and I had the privilege of enjoying afternoon tea there before MNSSHP in 2016...I have no idea what Joe was doing...:rolleyes1And yes, they do greet you with an IPad and know exactly who you are...It's a bit freaky...

Get on with the show lady!!! I want to see that "Suite" room (Like what I did there)?!?!

LOVE that BOO TO YOU coffee mug. It will be mine...In 8 days...:love:
 
I found your last trip report near the end and ended up being able to binge read it this past weekend. I checked the TR section everyday until mid-week looking to see if you started your new one. Didn't get back on the boards until this morning and it's already on page 3. :eek:

I can't wait to read about this trip.

Luckily we didn't get any hot towel pixie dust lol but rest assured if we did I would have been texting those pictures to Chris :rotfl2:

That would scar the poor kid for life....remember when you didn't take us on vacation and you got all that pixie dust and another hot towel service. :rotfl2: I occasionally still bring up a couple things from childhood family trips...30+ years later - just because I am mature like that. :rotfl: My dad laughs with me....my mom doesn't always see the humor and thinks I am still harboring bad feelings.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Latest posts

Top