[fjs08]

Trip Report:

Just returned from the Beach Club. My wife and I were there with our son and his girl friend from 26 – 31 Jul.
Overall it was a marvelous trip. Few things I’d like to mention.

Restaurants were marvelous. Flying Fish, Yachtsman Steakhouse, Blue Zoo.
Parks were packed. We took advantage of the early and late hours. The line for Peter Pan was 30 minutes at 11:50pm. No kidding.
We loved Storm-A-Long Bay (SAB). Loved the Beach Club where we stayed, not to mention all the resorts in that area.

The Dolphin lobby is getting a face life. Looks pretty major too. They are doing a nice repaint in the Dolphin too.

Still not happy about the repaint of the Beach Club lobby. Very little color. If they wanted to make it look like a beach with it’s sandy hues, they actually made it look more like a desert. My opinion only. Others may be pleased. Still a cool place to hang out and people watch.

First of all when we checked in around 7am, I tried to buy park tickets from the Front Desk CM. He sent me to Guest Services. He and I had a discussion about this. I told him that I called the 407-934-8000 Beach Club number and asked for Guest Services (GS). The person who answered the phone gave me the info I requested. He just shook his head and told me that the number is answered by an “answering service” who most commonly gives out loads of bad/wrong information. He told me they didn’t sell tickets at the Front Desk, but that I’d have to go to Guest Services which we did. There the CM behind the counter tried to sell me passes for all four of us. I kept telling her my wife and I have Annual Passes (AP), but it was tough for her not to load our room cards up with Magic Your Way (MYW) tickets. Also, when we were at the Boardwalk last December, we bought what we thought were MYW-park hopper-non expiring passes for our son. I asked this CM behind the GS desk and she said the non expiration feature wasn’t ever placed on the card. This was a bit upsetting. I checked at the ticket booth at the International Gateway who verified that we paid for the MYW park hopper but not the expiration feature. We renewed our AP’s there. That we weren’t there an hour and already interesting happenings.

We were able to get into our rooms around 2pm which was nice. Rooms were very, very nice.

I noticed that there were new Resort Mugs. They had “Summer 2006” on them, but no resort name. Didn’t seem to matter. I saw loads of other guests with the older mugs using them and no one said anything.

We ran each morning around the boardwalk. Nice run. But I did notice about 5 bags of garbage lying on the “back” steps of the Beach Club leading out to the promenade. We ran around 5:45am. I’ve been staying at the Beach Club since it opened and I never noticed the garbage before. Also, there was a garbage truck that was driving on the promenade with liquid leaking out of bags. They had just loaded up the truck with random garbage bags. Later that morning, a CM picked the garbage bag from the bin right next to the pool in front of the Yachtsman Steakhouse. It was leaking and he had nothing to put it into. He just let it leak all over the deck, right next to the pool steps. We were at France and when the CM’s there removed any of the garbage bags, they had a hard container to put it into. Also, there were a couple sets of workers just standing around on the deck chatting while we ran. Now the boardwalk is 0.8 miles around. I did 4 turns and they were there the entire time. As an aside, I also saw a guy chatting on his cell phone while he was dusting the windows in the Yacht Club.

Also, Storm-A-Long Bay (SAB) was closed for about 2 hours one morning. Guess a mom put her non-potty trained (NPT) child into the pool without pool pants and they “leaked” if you get my “drift.” The entire pool was closed since I was told it all has a common filtering system. I’m sure this happens more then is “reported,” but guess it doesn’t hurt to remind anyone reading this with NPT kids to be considerate to others and to show some Public Health awareness.

We drove over from Tampa. I had a conference at the Hyatt Grand Cypress, which is a great place too, so I drove over and back each day. Some gate guards at the Beach Club were happy seeing the dated window paper they give you, while another wanted to see a photo ID, the window paper, plus my room key. Not sure who was correct there.

I had forgotten how hot Central Florida can get in the summer. But almost no rain. And we were eating each time it did, so it never interfered with any of our plans.

Frank