Sunday, February 6, 2011

More Disney ~ Our Hotel

I thought I would continue my Disney posts with a little bit about our hotel.  The only other time we have been to WDW we did not stay on the property.  I knew this time, it would make everything so much easier with the 10 of us to be right on the property.

Bob had a business trip to Orlando in August, and we checked out several hotels on the property at that time.  They were all quite nice, but my favorite was this one...for several reasons.


Our hotel, viewed from the boat launch at Magic Kingdom.  I'm not sure if you can pick it out, but that building in the foreground, kind of round, is a restaurant that was quite yummy.  Bob and I had a great dinner there one evening.  Bob had steak and lobster ~ nice!
 This is the only shot of our room, we had asked for a king, but this was still a lovely room.
 The mouse is every where.  Elizabeth and I had fun looking for the hidden Mickeys.
 This was the beautiful view from our room.  That is the Polynesian Resort in the background.  I enjoyed sitting at that table down below one evening watching the kids on the beach.
 Can you find the Mickeys in the wallpaper? {and Donalds etc} ~ and what a beautiful rose waiting for us in our room.
 This was our breakfast spot in our hotel.  Bob and I had a room in the main building.  The monorail connects to the 2nd floor of this building.  From our hotel the Magic Kingdom is the next stop.  About 2 minutes.  This is one of the reasons we liked this property.  We knew with the ages of our grands, we would spend a lot of time at MK and we loved the quick trip over.  The hotel was the first stop on the boat ride back, so you take the boat to and the boat from.  Worked great.


Our kids were in the next building over, and had breakfast every day in their place.  This was the one morning we got a little later start, so they came to our building for breakfast.  The breakfast was so great, pastries and cereal, yogurt and fresh fruit...and more.  It was so handy to have it ready in our hotel so we didn't have to find a restaurant for the 10 of us.
 This was the nightly boat show on the lake outside our hotel.  You can see the spire of Space Mountain on the left, and the building on the right is the Contemporary Hotel.  This was the view from our dock.

 The beautiful lobby.
 Piano player every afternoon, and a live band every evening.  Of course we weren't here much to enjoy it, but I think we managed to make it to 2 cocktail hours.
We loved staying at The Grand Floridian.  Who knows where we will stay next time, but I would love to stay here again.  We will see when the time comes.  There are so many lovely properties, you really can't go wrong.


We also did the Disney Dining Plan ~ another new thing for us.  It did work great, but we picked the 1 snack, 1 quick meal, 1 dining plan.  It would probably have worked better for our big group to have just the quick meals.  It was hard to make reservations for dining for 10 in advance.   We decided which parks we would visit in advance, but once you are there, plans change...so I'm not quite sure if we got all of our meals ~ I think Disney made out on us!  {just a little though, we tried hard to eat up at the end!!}  {loved my mint chip ice cream on Main Street!!}


I know these posts aren't really of interest unless you are planning a Disney trip.  If you are, and want more of our trip, go to this post, where I have linked my daughters' in depth posts.

7 comments:

Teresa @ Grammy Girlfriend said...

My favorite hotel too....with Animal Kingdom being second....Loved your pictures....

Debbie said...

My parents took each grandchild for their own personal WDW introduction for their fifth birthdays. Because the oldest one had stayed at the Contemporary, they followed suit with the others (We're such creatures of habit in my family.)

I said all that to say that by the time my older daughter had her turn, the Grand Floridian was built, and it was difficult not to covet THAT hotel. It looks wonderful, and PLUS... I hear that my daughter's favorite Disney character, Mary Poppins, joins you for breakfast.

Maybe someday we'll go back and stay there.

Penny from Enjoying The Simple Things said...

It looks like a beautiful place to stay!!
Hugs,
Penny
p.s. I am looking forward to your book post...I just signed up as a follower so I wouldn't miss it. By the way - I love your wine celler closet. What a great idea!

Carolyn said...

This is interesting to me because we are going to Orlando with our 3 daughters and families(16 Of us)in April.We rented a big house 15 minutes from Disney. I hope that was a good decision on our part.
Carolyn

Cathy~Mille Fleur said...

Oh Sue...how wonderful! What an amazing family trip! Your hotel is gorgeous...how blessed you all are to have enjoyed such a special time together!

lily said...

Thanks a lot for the good article.

TLEB said...

I loved that hotel! It's gorgeous! We had such a great time - thank you so much for this experience!