My wife Nadine and I decided to book our summer vacation at our favorite destination, Walt Disney World several months back. Usually we try for an out of state trip, last year was Washington DC. Being Florida residents and Annual Passholders we are privileged to be able to make it to the "Mouse House" as often as we please. It is a short 75 minute drive away. Realizing our boys, ages 7 and 4 won't be this age for long, we wanted to give them a true Disney vacation. So we went all out by booking the Contemporary Resort, Purchased the Dining Plans and booked 4 days and 3 nights. I plan on breaking this review of our trip into three parts. Part one reviewing the Contemporary Resort, Part 2 Reviewing the Disney Dining Plan and Part 3 reviewing our touring plans. Hopefully I can pass on some good insight when planning a future Disney Vacation of your own.
When looking at dates we knew it would need to be over the summer vacation since my wife is a school teacher and the kids have school of their own. Knowing the peak of summer vacation would be around the 4th of July Week and\or weekend we decided to shoot for the week before. This was so the crowds would be smaller and prime dining reservations would be available (More on this in Part 2). Over the years we have stayed at most Disney resorts from value to moderate to deluxe. Our favorite is the Contemporary Resort. We had stayed there six years ago and decided on a return trip. Our youngest son, Andrew (age 4), had not yet experienced the place.
Since we go often to WDW we decided to hold back from going leading up to the vacation date. It had been six weeks since we last were on property. Arriving the morning of our check-in was great. We arrived about 11 AM and even though check-in was not until 3 PM our room was ready. This was nice to allow us to get settled before getting into our day (More on this in Part 3). Since we were on the Deluxe Dining Plan we headed to the Wave restaurant. This was a new addition since our last stay. Disney had swapped the Counter Service Restaurant-Contempo Cafe to the Grand Concourse and opened The Table Service Wave Restaurant in the Lobby (More on the Wave in Part 2). After lunch the boys were dying to get into the pool after seeing the water slide. Disney pools seem to have this affect on kids somehow. We took them swimming for awhile. We didn't mind beating the mid-afternoon heat at the pool at all!
This allowed us to settle into our spacious room. We stayed in the Garden Wing which had been remolded recently. The rooms had an updated modern decor as you would expect from a place called the Contemporary. Our oldest son Matthew appreciated the 48" LCD HD TV with front AV jacks for his Nintendo Wii. The rooms were equipped with Wifi and a spacious desk area for our laptops. Our room had a built in mini-fridge, two-closets. The bathroom was very spacious with an equally spacious toilet room with privacy door. The room had two Queen Beds with a fold out couch bed. We could have easily slept six with enough room to move around.
The best reason to stay at the Contemporary though is the prime directive in real estate. Location! Location! Location! Being on the monorail system makes it very easy to get to our two favorite parks Epcot and Magic Kingdom. We were able to watch fireworks from the staircase balcony on the seventh floor with a fantastic view. Disney even accommodates by pumping in the music from the show to the outdoor area we were at.
Another nice perk by staying at the Contemporary was easy access to Chef Mickey's, WDW's premier character meal place (More in Part 2). The resort had many other fine features such as para-sailing, boat rentals, kids activities poolside. Basically there is something for everybody. You would need to stay many times before trying everything.
All in all we had a great time and would recommend the experience to anyone.
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