Today’s blog is a bit different.  It's not about a destination, or a specific trip. It's not even about a travel tip.  It’s about a mode of travel that almost everyone uses. Driving.
As so many people are starting to venture out from home after the past year, they are choosing short close to home trips.  More and more are choosing to drive.
Living in the metro Atlanta area I have the privilege of seeing some of the worst drivers on the planet earth!  I believe the only ones that came close were the drivers in Washington DC, but that was 30+ years ago so they may have the title now!

If you haven’t visited Disney in a while, you might question the need for all the planning.  I know on our first several trips to Disney, there really was no need for much planning.  We picked a resort, made a dining reservation, and winged the rest!

Now, the parks have grown so much, and are so much more crowded, that planning is the only way to be able to do anything.  I’m not saying you have to plan out minute by minute (while some do just that).  I’m saying the days of deciding on Monday that you want to do Disney next week are all but gone. 

The first decision is when you want to visit.  This used to be simple, but now, not so much.  There really are no more uncrowded times to visit.  When Disney sees the rooms aren’t filling as fast as they want, they might throw a limited promotion out to get more people in. 

And, as much as I love Disney, I have to agree it is getting harder and harder to do Disney inexpensively.  The days of Disney being a cheap vacation are long over!  Those promotions?  They are always very limited.  The number of rooms available for that promotion on that date in the room category of the resort you want, were probably grabbed as soon as the promotion was released.

With all the crazy 'stuff' happening in the world today, I thought we should revisit this topic! 

Do I recommend Travel Insurance?

Short answer...YES!!

Another year has come and gone.  Every year people make tons of resolutions.  

Exercise more. Eat better.  Be a better (fill in the blank).  Spend more time with my family.  And on and on.

Everyone gets busy and things you meant to do get lost in the endless ‘work’, and suddenly you forget that trip you had meant to plan with your family until it was too late to get what you really wanted or you end up spending way more money than your budget liked.  I can relate!

This year, how about you make some resolutions that are more fun.  Ones that you can easily keep for a longer period of time.  And, maybe include some of those other resolutions that often get pushed to the background.

TRAVEL!

That’s right.  It is as simple as TRAVEL.   Want to spend more time with your family?  Travel with them.  Want to Exercise more?  Travel to a beautiful location that will scream “get out and enjoy!”  Want to save money?  Book your travel EARLY!  Want to be pampered?  Cruise!  Want to catch up on some reading?  Travel to a nice beach resort.  

Yes, it really IS that easy, and I’m here to help. I plan amazingly stress free family vacations for busy families who want a magical getaway before the kids are too old to enjoy it!

Yes, I do Disney and Universal, but I do so much more!  Are you looking to cruise?  How about a Caribbean All Inclusive?  Yes, I can do that and so much more!

Ready to get started?

Give me a call at 770-207-0135 or email at Jeanne@JMorrisTravel.com.

Although they did have some items in the Grab n Go section.  Cereals, chips, assorted drinks, juices and small containers of milk.

Even though there are places to eat, although very limited, we chose to eat every meal at City Walk with the exception of one member of the party had a room service pizza delivered.  She said it was good but only ate one slice.  Room service charged her for two pizzas but did eventually reverse the charge.  

Universal opened up a new resort geared to families on a budget a few weeks ago.  Of course, that meant I needed to do a recon trip!  And in order to see how well it worked for 'families' I needed to drag my family with me!

First Impressions!

Upon arriving, my first impressions were over all a very bright lobby!  Themed as an under the sea adventure.  Check in went smoothly, with a very nice and helpful staff!

Lobby area was very easy to find your way around.  Much easier than Cabana Bay!  There are two towers on each side of the lobby, and lobby is clearly marked with excellent signage!  There is a small store that has devoted half the space to Harry Potter merchandise while the remainder of the shelves are divided between generic Universal merchandise and other characters.  There is also a pretty good variety of those items you may have forgotten to bring!

Staff was extremely friendly and went out of their way to find me two birthday buttons!

Multiple elevator spots (Unlike Aventura where all elevators are in one spot and always busy!), and elevators were quick and clean.  The one issue to remember is that if you go to one of the front elevator sections for either tower, you have to scan your room key to get it to work.  They are right beside an entrance from the outside. It is a security thing, and not a problem as long as you are told at check in.  It is amazing how many people weren't aware of that!  

We had a 2 bedroom suite.  My first impression was TINY!  It was only slightly larger than what a standard room would be in a Disney Value resort.  The main area had two beds, as well as the kitchen area with a picnic table a bench and two chairs.  There was a small sink, a coffee maker, microwave and small fridge.  The bathroom sinks were also in the main room area but in  an alcove.  With a standard toilet and shower/tub in the actual bathroom.  The second bedroom, had a bed with only a few feet of space to walk around the bed.  

The floors were a tile that looked like gray driftwood.  Actually very nice, and had small area rugs on each sides of the three beds to put your feet on when waking in the morning.  

There is a serious lacking of storage!  This room sleeps six people but there were only three drawers and one small 'closet' with only a cloth covering it, not a door.  I suppose that saves some space, but when you consider all the wasted space the room had, it made no sense!

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There is a phone area/desk.  Below it is the three drawers, so you couldn't pull a chair up to it for a desk.  Above it is a picture.  Completely wasted space.  This becomes important when you see that in addition to the three drawers, all you have for storage is open shelves under the bathroom sinks and under the kitchen sink!  The area under the bathroom sink is where the towels were kept as there are no towel rods in the bathroom!

The 3 drawers are in the main room and the 'closet' is in the second bedroom.  This made for quite a bit of difficulty in getting dressed in the mornings!  The only thing that made it semi workable was the fact that we at least had two bathroom sinks!

Luckily I was sleeping in the second bedroom because the air conditioner was very LOUD in the main room!  Our family's other complaint was there is no exhaust fan in the bathroom.  Since we were on the 9th floor, there wasn't a lot of updraft in the vent...and with four people taking showers the room was always humid!

I had originally had some concerns about the distance from the main parks and the travel time in the bus.  Most trips were about five minutes (same as it was when we stayed at Cabana Bay) and only at times closer to closing did we really see an issue with longer trips.  Our longest trip was still under 20 minutes, so no real concern there!
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Major pros of this room was the number of outlets!  At least twice the number you find in Disney's Art of Animation suites!  And most of the outlets also had a USB port!  Made charging five iPhones, one iPad (plus other miscellaneous electronics)  much easier!  

Now for my major complaint about the resort.   Housekeeping!

On the first day, only a  few minutes after we checked in, my daughter and I stayed in the room while the guys went down to get the luggage.  Suddenly, without warning, the maid used her key and came in.  I'm not sure who was more surprised, her or us!  She screamed, we screamed... she didn't seem to know that we had checked in.  I have no idea why she was there, as the room was cleaned.  She quickly left without speaking and we thought it was strange, but forgot about it.
The next day, when we went back to the room briefly at 5, our room had not been cleaned, but we saw the maid in the hall and she said she would have it done before we returned.  On Monday, my daughter became sick from too much heat and went back to the room at 2 pm.  The maid had not come but came and knocked on the door a few minutes after.  She said she would only take about 20 minutes and my daughter went down to the lobby.  After thirty minutes, my daughter came back upstairs and the maid was standing in our room talking with a couple other people.  (not in any way identified as being part of the staff!) and the room had not been touched!  It was after 5pm before my daughter could return to the room.  She had not been able to take a nap as she had planned, so she missed dinner.
At this point we were still chalking it up to a fluke.  However, the next day we returned from the park at 4pm due to a short storm.  Our room had not been touched and our maid was no where to be seen.  After 45 minutes, I went downstairs to see what was going on.  
Finally about 5:30 a supervisor came and took out the trash (which had not been emptied the day before) and brought us some towels.  She offered to make the beds, but I declined.  At this point we wanted to get showers and back to City Walk for dinner!
I discovered later on the bus, that everyone on our floor was complaining about the housekeeping, or lack there of!

I'm sure this is due to it being a new resort, and some training issues.  I know that our maid just quit in the middle of the day for unknown reasons.  She didn't seem to let anyone know she was leaving.  So this is all on the particular maid and not the resort itself, however I do have to wonder what they are going to do when the sister resort Dockside opens in a few months with twice the number of rooms as Surfside!  When a resort is brand new you expect things to go wrong.  You expect hiccups along the way.   I'm concerned that resources are being spread a bit too thin at the current time.

So, would I recommend this resort?  Possibly. It's price point alone makes it attractive.