Caribbean Beach, Death Ovens and conquering the NYE crowds

[AMB1]

We have just returned from our first holiday week trip to Disney World (December 28th to January 3rd). It was a Christmas morning surprise for our daughters (14 and 11) and I’m amazed we were able to keep it a secret for 5 months. It was worth the wait to see the look on DD11’s face. All year we’ve been telling them we wouldn’t be going back to Disney any time soon because we have a big trip to Europe booked for August and, well, travel is expensive! DD11 (let’s call her Nora) didn’t fully believe we were going until we were in the car headed to the airport. DD14 (let’s call her Elizabeth) is in Grade 9 this year and is adamant that she doesn’t want to miss any school for travel, so that is how we ended up visiting the Mouse for New Year’s! Also, I’m married to a 47-year-old, force sensitive Star Wars/Comic Book Fanboy who has recently joined The Resistance and was going to be physically unable to stay away from Black Spire Outpost once Rise of the Resistance opened.

For context, we are a family of 4 from Canada that had previously taken the following Disney trips:

2005 Boardwalk Inn
2009 Grand Floridian
2010 Contemporary
2012 Beach Club
2013 Disney Wonder to Alaska
2014 Disney Magic / POFQ
2015 Disney Fantasy
2017 Cruise, with pre- and post- nights at Caribbean Beach and All Star Music
2018 Yacht Club

As you can see, we typically stay in Deluxe resorts and love the EPCOT area. So where did we stay this time……………. Caribbean Beach Resort! As I’ve already said, we are going to Europe this summer, so I was not prepared to pay holiday rack rates for our beloved Yacht/Beach Club. Great news though – we LOVED our stay at CBR for a whole bunch of reasons that I’m going to tell you about.

Instead of trying to give you a day-by-day recounting of our trip, I’m going to post my thoughts on the following topics:

• Caribbean Beach Resort
• Skyliner (AKA – Flying Death Oven Orgy Pods)
• Candlelight Processional dining package
• Tony’s Town Square reserved parade viewing package
• Fireworks Dessert Party
• Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge (what are 14 year olds like when woken at 4:40am?)
• Dining Plan vs. OOP with two “Disney Adults”
• New Year’s week crowds and craziness (will we do it again?)

Here's the girls and me checking out the MK decorations on our first morning.



I hope something I have to say will help you plan your upcoming trip. Stay tuned for more!

 

[bwvBound]

Hmmm. Flying Death Oven Orgy Pods??
Can't wait to read your thoughts on this ...

 

[AMB1]

You will have to wait a day or two for that one.

 

[suse66]

Joining in! I'm another Canadian who was recently in Disney for pre-Christmas festivities. We have a few things in common including the Tony's party for reserved parade viewing and the Candlelight processional. I will be interested to hear your thoughts on those as well as your views on OOP vs DDP.

 

[AMB1]

Topic #1: Caribbean Beach Resort

We stayed for 6 nights at CBR in a 5th Sleeper Room in the Jamaica section, Building 46. This location was very close to the Jamaica bus stop, a quick walk over the bridge to Old Port Royale for food/the feature pool and about equal distance either way to the Riviera Skyliner station or the CBR Skyliner station (we used both). The location was perfect for us. Despite it being New Year’s week with a sold-out resort, we were not bothered by noise and never felt the resort was crowded. Here is a view of our section and beach, taken from the walkway over to Old Port Royale:





Our previous moderate stays were 4 nights pre-cruise at POFQ in 2014 and a 1-night pre-cruise stay at Caribbean Beach in 2017, right before they started demolishing buildings and did the big renovation.

We didn’t really like our stay at POFQ and were always reluctant to try another mod for any length of time. Although POFQ is beautiful, the following things didn’t appeal to us:

• All park transportation was by bus (crowded, often delayed and just not fun)
• Back then, the beds were doubles, not queens
• Our girls had to share a bed and argued/kicked the whole time (at deluxes, one daughter sleeps on the day bed)

Although the resort was compact and we didn’t need to walk far, it was also lacking in amenities that we were used to. There wasn’t really any lobby to relax in. We missed having sit-down restaurant options and the food court was a madhouse. We felt like we needed to leave the resort for dining/activities and then really resented the bus wait times.

Flash forward to 2017 when we needed a place to stay for one night before our cruise. I booked CBR because I thought the pool looked good and we planned to spend the afternoon swimming. I had very low expectations, but was pleasantly surprised. The Pirates of the Caribbean themed pool was fun and fabulous and I think my kids like its slide even better than Stormalong Bay’s slide. We were in a 5th Sleeper Room with a little murphy bed that was perfect for Nora. What a difference that one little thing makes! No kicking, fighting daughters. Nora loved the playground in the centre island and we had a great resort day. The grounds were beautiful and I started to think that CBR might be a possibility for a future trip. Elizabeth and my husband were not convinced, so our next trip was to the Yacht Club with all its amenities and proximity to EPCOT restaurants.

So then came 2019 and our plan for a holiday trip that didn’t break the bank. I knew we would be spending more time than usual at HS due to Star Wars and EPCOT is always our favourite place to hop for dining. I started reading about the new Gondola and the changes to CBR and saw that 5th Sleeper Rooms were a bookable category. I was sold, but DH took some convincing (he thought he couldn’t be happy without being at an EPCOT resort). At the end of the day, I do the Disney planning and reservations, so I won out and booked 6 nights at CBR. I then held my breath until we got confirmation that the Skyliner was going to open before our trip.

During the planning I remained concerned about the lack of storage space at CBR compared to the deluxes (they really need to raise the beds like they have elsewhere to allow suitcases to slide underneath). My solution was to fully embrace packing cubes for each family member. These are my favourites and I now own them in 4 different colours:


Even though I couldn’t start packing until Boxing Day (do Americans get that reference?), I was still able to get everything washed, rolled and packed into the cubes in record time. Each person had their own colour and, once we got to CBR, I slipped the cubes into drawers and stored my own cubes on the shelf in the bathroom/dressing area. I won’t lie. The storage on our last Yacht Club trip was much better, but we did just fine and the room didn’t feel cluttered.

Okay. This might be our last successful trip with one bathroom and I’m not sure Nora will fit on the little murphy bed much longer. Elizabeth is now 14 and uses every drop of hot water. Although the sliding doors across the bathroom have really improved the mods, my poor DH had to spend a lot of time waiting for females to vacate the space. The good news is that we liked CBR so much, that I can foresee a future trip with two connecting rooms at CBR for around the same as we pay at a deluxe.

Here are some of the things that made our trip to CBR really successful:

• The grounds are beautiful and there was great energy with people jogging along the water, hanging out on the beaches (Nora and I enjoyed some time in a hammock) and wandering through the Caribbean Cay island.
• You no longer have to check in at the Custom House and then take a bus to your building/food. Since the reno, the Magical Express drops off at a re-designed Old Port Royale. It contains a beautiful lobby area with comfortable couches/chairs, nice décor and the best coconut smell (now my favourite lobby smell over the Beach Club).
• CBR now offers multiple food options. There is a re-designed Quick Serve that offers Mobile Ordering (we love mobile ordering and don’t understand why more people don’t take advantage). SpyGlass Grill is in the Trinidad section. Sebastian’s is a table serve restaurant and there is also the pool bar. In ADDITION, you can now also grab coffee and pastries at Joffrey’s at the CBR Skyliner Station and all the restaurants of the new Riviera Resort are a short walk away.
• The Skyliner (aka: Flying Death Oven Orgy Pods)
• 5th Sleeper is a bookable category
• The feature pool is large, really well themed, and has a fun slide.

For this trip, for this family, CBR was great! I think all the renovations have been positive and the addition of the Riviera Resort adds dining options. Every section feels close to something now and we had no problems with distance/location.

 

[DLo]

Following along. Looking forward to reading more about your adventures

 

[AMB1]

Topic #2: Skyliner (AKA – Flying Death Oven Orgy Pods)

I booked CBR largely for the Skyliner. We don’t like having to rely on buses to get everywhere because we are big park hoppers and we also like to come back to our resorts for a mid-day break before heading out for dinner (usually to EPCOT). The gondolas sounded promising, so I started following the rumours thread about the Skyliner and holding my breath to see when the system would open. It did, and here is the view of Caribbean Cay from the Skyliner:



Have you read the Rumours thread about the Skyliner???? It gets very heated. Many people have a passionate hatred for the Skyliner and are very upset with Disney for infecting the Land with this unreasonable form of transportation. I understand that some people fear heights or have claustrophobia (and am glad that Disney continues to offer other resorts and transportation options) but some of the comments really make my husband and I laugh. To sum up that thread, the Skyliner is an unreliable failure of a transportation system comprised of Flying Death Oven Orgy Pods that will reach life-threatening temperatures come August and trap guests with other travellers engaged in inappropriate displays of affection and spewing bodily fluids all over the gondolas . Although we didn’t describe all of that to Nora and Elizabeth, we did tell them the Death Oven part, so that is how our family referred to the Skyliner on each ride. As in: “should we use the Death Ovens to make a quick hop to HS tonight?” We caught a stare or two, but it made us laugh.

All kidding aside, we had no problems with the Skyliner and it made our trip to CBR. The weather varied during our stay, with the final two days being extremely sunny, hot and humid. With the vents open there is a nice breeze through the gondola and on cloudy days we closed the vents because it got too cool (how dare they install this system without individual heaters/furnaces in each car???????). Kidding. On the very hot days it was cooler in the gondola than outside. I know the fear is what happens if the system stops for several hours, but I still don’t think it will be hotter than outside.

We probably shared a gondola 40% of the time. Usually at the end of the night when leaving a park or when there were long lines. They can really push a lot of people through that system! We weren’t bothered by companions and, if the lines were short, they often had us ride alone – and we were there at one of the busiest times of the year. Oh, and we did not see any evidence of, ahem, passionate displays of affection!

We used both the CBR station and the Riviera station, depending where we were going and whether we were coming/going from our room or Old Port Royale. There’s lots of flexibility. I found park hopping almost as easy as when we stay at YC/BC/BWI and I had no problem hopping on an Death Oven to grab my Starbucks from EPCOT (which then gets consumed in a hammock on a CBR beach:



The CBR to HS line is quick and we never experienced it slowing down at all. It is a straight shot from station to station and you can hop to HS in under 10 minutes. Fabulous! That line was not running early enough to get us to HS for 5:30am to get a Boarding Group for Rise of the Resistance, but was otherwise perfect.

The EPCOT/Riviera line experiences slow downs and sometimes stops. I believe it is due to the two turning stations and the fact that Riviera does not have a dedicated loop for loading ECVs/Wheelchairs. They have to slow the line to board certain passengers. Sometimes people get confused at Riviera and decide to jump off at the last minute, which also causes issues. For us, the longest stop was 3-4 minutes. We had several stops of less than a minute. To me it felt like it does when a continuous loading attraction like Haunted Mansion or Spaceship Earth slows or stops to load passengers who need more time.

We found it very funny that the audio when you go through the turning station on the EPCOT line almost apologizes for this utilitarian station not being themed. We think it needs a better name than “Turning Station.” At first we thought of calling it the “Elbow of Orlando,” but that raises the question of where the armpit of Orlando is (we all know that’s Sea World, but to say so is mean). So then Elizabeth came up with a brilliant idea: The Poppins Pivot. The station is up in the air, so should be themed with clouds and umbrellas and kites a weather vane that spins as you change direction with chimney sweeps dancing on the roof. You see, the Skyliner isn’t perfect, but it is practically perfect, in every way. From then on, we took the Death Ovens through the Poppins Pivot to hop to EPCOT.

We love the Skyliner. It is a complete game changer for Caribbean Beach and allowed us to hop into HS and EPCOT almost as easily as when we stay at an EPCOT resort.