I'm back home! Overall it was a wonderful trip and I can't wait to tell you all about it. In our short 4 days in the parks we experienced pouring rain, the FP+ system going completely down for an entire day (yes you read that correctly, complete and utter FP+ system failure, park wide), our first adult Run Disney race in the freezing cold rain, a couple new restaurants for us, and our first Magic Band failure. But lets start first, with the good stuff, the Grand Floridian Villas.
We arrived at the wonderful hour of 2am-ish. Skipped happily over to the villas and arrived in room 1428, a room on a corner facing the Poly. Our arrival was saddened a bit because Grizzly immediately bristled as we were assigned a handicap accessible room. For some reason, don't ask me, Grizzly was completely fixated on the rain shower, and he was just not going to be happy unless he had a rain shower. Good grief. He called the 'front desk' (in quotes because who knows where these people actually are) while I did what any good DVC person does when entering a new DVC room for the first time. That's right, I went on the hidden mickey hunt. Well I had plenty of time for this hunt, and you know how many Mickey's I found? Take a guess? Nope not 7, not 3, not a respectable number like 5. One. I found 1 hidden Mickey in the whole studio. How pathetic was that? There was a questionable hidden mickey on the shower curtain, but Grizzly said it didn't count. I was totally disappointed in the lack of hidden Mickeys. All throughout my hidden mickey hunt I got to overhear Grizzly's fantastic conversation with the cast member. It went something like this:
Grizzly: I would like a studio room with 2 showers, not one shower.
Cast Member: All the studios only have 1 shower.
Grizzly: I'm looking at your website right now, and the pictures show 2 showers.
Cast Member: All the studios only have 1 shower.
Grizzly: I'm looking at your website right now, and the pictures show 2 showers. We are in a handicap room, and there is only 1 shower.
Cast Member: Room 1428 is not a handicap room, it is a hearing impaired room.
Grizzly: Well, there are bars on the walls in the shower and around the toilet, and I'm pretty sure those aren't necessary for the hearing impaired.
Cast Member: Well, all the studios only have 1 shower.
Grizzly: Well can I please switch to a non-handicap accessible room?
Cast Member: We are fully booked for the night, but we'll try to find a room for you in the morning...
Needless to say Grizzly was in a less than magical mood when he got off the phone. How could the cast member not know that the studios had 2 showers? That's the best part of the GFV studios! So we were told to sit tight for the night, and in the morning before heading off to the parks, to store our stuff with Bell Services, and we would be assigned a new room later that day. Sounded like a reasonable plan, little did we know this small decision would actually cause us a number of significant hassles!
So the room. While Grizzly was on the phone, I had plenty of time to survey the room. My overall impression was that the room was very nice. I think they did a great job with all the details, and the finish work was nice. But of course you only get to know a room after living in it a for a few hours. I went to bed thinking, 'oh this room is nice and fancy', but by morning I woke up feeling like 'Oh my goodness, I'm going to be eaten by crown molding'. Seriously overnight it went from fancy, to 'could there BE any more crown molding in this tiny space'. (Said in Chandler Bing's voice for those of you who watched Friends). I was just overwhelmed with fancy to the point where it felt like they were almost trying to hard. It was like smack you in the face fancy, where what I was really look for was a more subtle fancy that sneaks up on you. There was nothing subtle about this room. The crown molding was HUGE. Almost too big for the space. The marble floors screamed fancy! The giant 6 inch plank wood (maybe pergo?) floors screamed "I'M A FANCY WOOD FLOOR!" After a while I just couldn't take it! And then since they were clearly into details with these rooms, the details that they missed drove me bananas. Here are a few:
1. The cabinet under the wet bar did not shut. This seems to be a common theme because the cabinet in our next room also did not shut. For me, the number one job of a cabinet is to stay shut. Not slightly ajar, shut. Apparently Disney has a different set of standards because the doors did not stay shut, and for such a fancy room, I expect my cabinets to shut properly.
2. You know all that talk about extra storage in the rooms. Well, in the ADA room the bed didn't even have the drawers under it, so there was essentially a grand total of NO storage in that room. While in the second room there were 2 drawers under the bed, however, you could only open up one of the drawers, the other drawer being blocked by a night stand. For us drawer-using unpacking-people, the single drawer just did not cut it, and living out of my suitcase for a few days drove me bananas.
3. Shall we talk about the rain shower? No, lets not because there was no rain shower. There was, however, this device attached to the ceiling that shot out needles. It was designed to look like a rain shower, but in no way shape or form was any sort of rain shower. When I think rain shower I think big sumptuous drops of water cascading sensuously down over your body, making you feel like those old Herbal Essence shampoo commercials. Apparently, Disney ordered the rain shower from the same people they ordered the cabinet doors from. Someone who knew nothing about what they were designing. The rain shower was evil. It hurt when it was turned on. If you managed to get it to a setting where it wasn't hurting you with tiny spikes of water, then it was barely dripping. Maybe it was a drizzle shower? Who the heck wants a drizzle shower? No-one. Needless to say we felt a bit foolish for demanding to switch to a room with the rain shower because it was complete and utter crap.
4. Since we're talking about the shower, lets discuss the sheer lack of ability of the door to keep the water in the shower. Again, a shower door has one job. Keep the water in. Disney's door could care less if the water stayed in. In fact it practically shooed the water out of the shower. There was a gaping 1/4 inch gap at the front of the shower, a gap on the under side of the door, and guess what? The door didn't actually stay closed. I know, just shocking. Grizzly and I took a normal shower, nothing fancy, and the bath mat was completely soaked when we were done. Not damp. Soaked.
5. Not really Disney's problem, but have you ever tried to talk to someone taking a shower in one of the stall showers with a door? Well it's impossible. Grizzly and I spent so much time screaming back and forth at each other with the person in the shower just screaming "WHAT?". Until the person outside the shower physically walked over to the shower, opened the door, and screamed at the deaf person in the shower. Another point goes to the tub shower for not making people deaf. Now that I think about it, maybe that's why the ADA hearing room didn't have a stall shower.
6. The pocket doors. I have a love hate relationship with the pocket doors. If you've read my SSR post you will know that I felt like that room just had waaaaaaay too many doors. GFV effectively solved this with the pocket doors. I loved that. However, Disney was clearly talking with their door vendor (pretty sure it's the same guy who sells lousy cabinets and showers), and Disney described their need of doors like "We would like a pocket door, but we want a complicated one that no-one can actually figure out how to use". Seriously, what is up with these doors? One of the doors even has instructions, and I read them, and I still had trouble. So we basically just didn't use the doors, but those of you with tweens and teens who want their privacy are going to have at least one person locked in a bathroom, I guarantee it. Seriously, watch your little kids too because you could talk a tween out of the bathroom, but I have no idea how you would get a 3 or 4 year old out if he locked himself inside. I could barely get me out, and I don't even remember locking the door!
Next up, some room pics and the view. The view, the view, the magnificent view. If you ever feel overwhelmed by the fancy, just step outside to enjoy the 'standard' view.
Anyone want them? I'd be happy to mail them to you. Just send me a private message. I think they need to be used by December 2014. 
