Whenever Sandra and I visit Florida, we usually stay at our time share at Hilton Grand Vacations. It’s a great place, close to everything we need it to be, and having our own kitchen means we can save money by buying and making food, instead of spending money we dont need to. For real, think about it. Think about how much money you spend on food and drink in the parks. That’s not to say we dont buy stuff when we’re out and about, I mean, how can I resist getting a Citrus Swirl every chance I get?? So, we’ve never stayed at a Disney resort, although we spend heaps of time, especially at Christmas, walking around the different resorts and just enjoying being there.
When it came to the wedding, part of our Disney Weddings package allowed us to pick 3 resorts for us and our guests to stay in at a disocunted rate. (Mind you, this rate was only given to us if we managed to fill our room blocks, which of course we did)
We knew straight off the bat, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right, and this will be our chance to stay at the Grand Floridian. Boy am I glad we did. Well, glad, but also kind of regretting it. No no no i’m not regretting it because it was a bad experience… in fact the opposite… I’m regretting it because now I want to stay at the Grand Floridian EVERY SINGLE TIME we go to Florida, and well, we all know that’s just not possible.
When we drove in, we were greeted and welcomed as though we were the only people staying there. They took our bags, led us to check in and the first thing we did, was stare up at the Christmas tree and inhale the scent of gingerbread from that famous gingerbread house in the lobby. We.. were.. home. Christmas music was playing softly throughout the lobby, and even though it was only November 24th, it felt like Christmas Eve.
Now, we’ve seen a lot of discussion online on different forums for people who’d stayed at the Grand for their wedding, and to be honest, we were pretty nervous about where our room would be. I mean, it didnt really matter where our room was in reality, it’s the Grand, so every room is a great one. But when they told us we were staying at Sago Cay, we couldnt get to our room fast enough to find out what the view would be. We raced to the building (which for those unfamiliar, is down by the marina, right on Seven Seas Lagoon), but as we got there, we slowed down. We didnt want to build up our excitement too much, hoping for a park view, just in case we didnt get one. As we took the elevator upstairs, I checked the room signs, and tried to do some quick checks of which was was north in my head. Oh, by the way.. we love the carpet and wallpaper there, there’s Mickey heads and other characters all throughout. Not in a childrens hospital room sort of way, but in a very elegant fully adult kind of way.
When we finally opened the door to our room, our jaws dropped. Aside from super cute mickey lamps and of course the mickey head towels left on our bed, our balcony looked RIGHT OUT over the lagoon and we had a completely unobstructed view of the Magic Kingdom. Suddenly I thought about plans we had that evening and tried to figure out ways to cancel ALL of our night time plans that week to make sure we would be back at our room to watch Wishes every night. Obviously this didnt happen, but it would’ve been pretty neat huh?
I could hear Dream Along with Mickey carrying over the water and to our room, and suddenly wanted to run to the Magic Kingdom. (This of course is not possible, as I showed Sandra on our last trip, since there is no connecting path between the Grand and Magic Kingdom.. I know it looks like it from the monorail, but trust me. THAT PATH DOES NOT CONNECT AND YOU CANNOT WALK!)
Now, I’m not gonna give you a running commentary on how are week was spent, so here’s the short story, and then you can look at the pretty pictures 😉 We had an amazing view of Wishes from our room, we were also incredibly happy to be able to watch the Electric Water Pageant from our room, and even with the door closed, we were able to hear it really clearly. I woke up ridiculously early every single morning and would sit out on the balcony with a coffee, watching the sun come up and watching the fog roll over the lagoon. The sounds of all the activity happening at Magic Kingdom while it’s still closed is incredibly soothing. No kidding.
AND, on the night of our wedding, the Disney fairies had snuck into our room to decorate while we were out partying it up. (It was a surprise from Sandra for both of us, and yes it was a service that we had to pay for). There were rose petals covering the floor, a rose petal heart on the bed, candles everywhere, flowers, a signed picture of Mickey and Minnie, personally embroidered towels and of course, our Bride and Groom Mickey ears.
It was stunning, I didnt want to mess any of it up, but we had to get to bed, we were exhausted and had a big day the next day (starting early in the morning with our Epcot bridal shoot). We sat outside taking in the night air and the sounds of Disney and we went to bed….
well, we went to bed after taking all the rose petals off the bed… for the record, if you’re ever thinking of covering your bed in rose petals… dont do it unless you have a vacuum cleaner handy.. in fact the next day, room service didnt vacuum the floor and left us a note reading “we didnt vacuum because we didnt want to ruin your beautiful rose petals” I thought that was kinda cute.