I’ve been a very busy bee this morning – no day of rest for this little worker, who is already feeling anxious about tomorrow’s BIG START to our renovations. I may have mentioned a time or 20 that I’m not the best at dealing with stress; I can turn myself into anxiety-ridden knots over things that should really be NBD (although I suppose completely gutting and renovating your bathroom – your only bathroom – and replacing all of your flooring qualifies as an actual big deal.) So I’ve been up for many hours removing framed photos and other artwork from the walls, stashing boxes of our belongings on the balconies, and making two raspberry cream cheese pies for a celebratory, kick-off to the renos dinner we’re having this evening with my mother, who has been acting as our in-the-know general contractor (we have a contractor, actually, but my mom has a lot of experience in the area of construction and home renovations, and we couldn’t have arranged ANY of this without her invaluable assistance and oversight.) So it’s been a bit of a busy day, and it only just turned noon!
I accidentally tore off three of my four “good hand” nails the other day pulling up the last of our flooring, so I’ve been looking for other blogging and vlogging ways to occupy my online creative energies. Enter a couple of short videos I made for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, all about some of the delicious food we’ve enjoyed at Disney World over our last number of trips – just try not to fall ravenously hungry looking at all this yumminess. Happy watching, and bon appetit!
That’s me, the Scorcese of hotel room tour videos! You know, just with fewer brutal gangland murders, epically long tracking shots and Rolling Stones cues.
But I don’t know what to tell you – I really like putting together these room tour videos, everything from the filming to the editing to the nitpicky little adjustments that have to be made before it can see the light of streaming day.
And I positively LOVE getting the opportunity to stay in these fabulously themed Disney resorts. I’ve always been a little enchanted by the Disney hotels. We all know the biggies across from the Magic Kingdom, the Grand Floridian, the Polynesian and the A-frame Contemporary. These resorts have been there since I was a kid (and in the case of the Polynesian and the Contemporary, there since my parents were just kids themselves, vacationing at the brand new World of Disney in Orlando, Florida in 1971.) I can’t have been more than three years old, but I remember my parents taking me over to the Polynesian during the blazing heat of a July afternoon for a fortifying nap. Before conking out with my head on my dad’s lap, I remember thinking of the palm tree-shrouded pool, “That pool is awesome and I want in there with all those kids!”
Polynesian prices being what they are (A LOT) we’ve never stayed there, even though it remains a pretty major item on my Disney accommodations bucket list. One day, gigantic passholder discount willing.
But for now we’re quite content to work our way through the moderate resorts that also occupy space on our bucket list, like the Port Orleans French Quarter, where we recently stayed. This is one that I’ve wanted to stay at since it was built over 20 years ago, and I’m delighted that it lived up to my admittedly pretty high expectations (that’s what happens when you dream about something for two decades!)
And our room was lovely, so I filmed a video of that for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed filming it, and also getting the opportunity to stay at the French Quarter. 🙂
During our last Disney trip (the one we took three weeks ago and which I very much wish I was enjoying right this moment instead of hiding out in my home from another weekend of Eastern Ontario Nightmare Snow) we stayed at the Port Orleans French Quarter, a resort I’ve wanted to stay at since it opened nearly 30 years ago. A sister property to the exquisite Port Orleans Riverside, which is just on down the river bend, and at which we have stayed twice, the French Quarter shares its sibling’s incredible attention to detail in its (deeply sanitized) presentation of Louisiana, here with architecture, food, entertainment and an overall design aesthetic modeled after The Big Easy herself.
I lamented in an earlier post the unfortunate experience we had at Pop Century during our last trip. In short, it was a gong show of noisiness, uncleanliness and general mismanagement. We wound up cutting our stay short by four days and moving over to Coronado Springs to see out the remainder of our vacation.
No such drastic measure was required this time, because our stay at French Quarter was perfection, everything I had hoped it would be when I first spied its colourful wrought iron balconies in travel brochures many, many years ago and thought, “I want to stay THERE.”
Like both Coronado Springs and the Riverside, the French Quarter is a moderate level resort, meaning it sits at about the mid-way point in terms of room rates and offered amenities. Being on the smaller size (1,000 rooms to both Coronado and Riverside’s 2,000) it doesn’t have its own table service restaurant, although its food court, the charmingly-named Sassagoula Float Works, named after the meandering little river that runs along the back side of the resort, is outstanding – efficient, nicely laid-out and featuring some of the best Cajun grub you’ll find outside of N’Awlins itself. I continue to have nostalgic thoughts about the sweet-and-spicy fried chicken on a biscuit I had twice, wondering if maybe I should have replaced one of those biscuits with a steaming bowl of shrimp and grits. Or maybe just had both. Ahh, now we’re talkin’! Followed up by pillowy, powdered sugar-dusted, Mickey-shaped beignets, because the French Quarter is the only place in the whole of the Walt Disney World Resort that has them.
Every resort that we have stayed at (four now, three moderates and a value) seems to have prioritized one element of its service above all others. At French Quarter, this was everything surrounding food and beverage service, from the actual food and beverage (oh, that chicken!) to the service itself, which was always prompt and friendly. Zero complaints about the lack of a “proper” restaurant; if anything, I liked the food I had at Sassagoula Float Works better than the meal we had at the Riverside’s similarly menu’d restaurant, Boatwright’s.
But there’s so much more to the French Quarter than its fluffy beignets, and thankfully, their exemplary approach to food extended to nearly all other areas of service, including maintenance and cleaning, groundskeeping and landscaping, check-in (fuss-free and speedy, a Disney resort first for us) and both boat and bus transportation. The French Quarter just really seemed to have its act together on all fronts, and I liked it. THIS is the Disney vacation experience I always hope we’ll enjoy – a virtually seamless one.
Not to say there aren’t a few nit-picky little things I’d change about the French Quarter. While I loved the free-form, Mardi Gras-themed pool featuring a giant sea serpent water slide (loved zipping down his tongue into the pool even more!) I found myself wishing for a second, smaller pool, a quieter spot for more lap-oriented swimmers to work off the last of the day’s amusement park energy. Even with its smallish footprint, it’s odd that the French Quarter only has one pool; the Riverside has six!
And while I really liked our recently refurbished and redecorated room (it felt solid and well-insulated, like our own little bubble amidst the low key hustle and bustle of the rest of the resort) I didn’t care for the lighting, which was all of the sallow, overhead variety. I HATE OVERHEAD LIGHTING!!! Always have. I’m a real low lighting, desk lamp kind of person. Even the shaded sconces above our beds cast an odd light (nasty little LED lightbulbs at work, I’m sure; I hate those things, too!)
But in all areas where it actually counted – and a lot where it didn’t – the French Quarter knocked it out of the park. The architecture is gorgeous, a picture perfect recreation of the cleanest and most charming bits of New Orleans – wooden slat shutters, grand balconies, brick pillars and wrought iron everything. The entire resort is laid out like a small city, with painted wrought iron balconies framing brick-edged streets dotted with hitching posts and streetlamps. As you near the lobby, jazz music drifts through the air, beckoning you inside, where you can relax in the plush, chandelier’d lobby, or perhaps over by the soothingly trickling fountain, or maybe even inside Scat Cats’ lounge, something like a Sloe Gin Fizz in hand. The pool was beautiful and overseen by some of the most attentive lifeguards I’ve ever seen. The cast members we dealt with were friendly and helpful. The buses ran frequently and on time. The food was delicious. Our room was quiet. Again, excepting the One True Pool issue and my own hangups about overhead lighting, zero complaints!
One morning a couple of days out from our flights home, I couldn’t sleep (side effect of being terrified of flying) so I slipped out of our room and took myself on a solo, 5 am walking tour of the resort, which I filmed! Because of course it’s the new normal to be walking around at 5 in the morning talking to yourself through a small camera. Weird world, man. But I do hope you’ll check out this video, if not to see this lovely little resort for yourself in the (mostly) still and quiet of a balmy Florida morn, then to lend legitimacy to my whole, “See, I really was talking to someone and not just myself!” argument. Thank you. 😉
Though we certainly gave it our very best shot with our just-just concluded 11-day vacation at the most expensivest place on earth! I’m sorry, I mean the happiest place on earth, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It also may be the hottest place on earth; save for maybe just 12 approaching-cool hours, every day topped 90 degrees with full, bright sun and sticky humidity. As always, we had a wonderful time, and we’ve arrived home with bookings for our next trip already in place, so clearly we’re those nuts that embrace the insanity that is wildly overpaying for a vacation in the devil’s sweaty armpit. No sense denying that! But this vacation also came with some first-time challenges on the accommodations side of things that made coming home that much sweeter – shelter from the Disney storm. I’ve been glad to return to non-Disney life, as tempting as it is to just blow off adulthood altogether and live forever in the Haunted Mansion.
The objective of this trip, because we are Type A Disney nerds who do things like plan out mini challenges within an already packed vacation schedule, was to bridge the Halloween and Christmas holidays with two special event parties, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party on Halloween, and then Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party one week later on the final night of our trip. In between we’d enjoy a lot of great meals at favourite restaurants, celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary, attend our first fireworks dessert party, don our first ever couples costumes, lay waste to Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival, meet lots of fun characters, take a pile of goofy (and sometimes Goofy) photos, ride the Mansion half a dozen times, complete Mr. Finger Candy’s first and second decks of Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom cards, and hopefully enjoy a fun and relaxing stay at another great Disney resort.
And, you know, with the exception of but one of those things (our underwhelming, ultimately truncated stay at Pop Century is a blog post for another day) we tackled everything on that list, and have arrived home victorious! Also utterly exhausted, and in possession of about 3,000 photos and videos that need to be organized into posts to share with our friends and family, and of course anyone else who might like to join in on our Disney vacation fun. Come on over to the dark side, we have Poison Apple Cupcakes!
Over the coming days I’ll be sure to drive you bonkers with the recounted details of our trip in a slightly more organized fashion (brace yourselves for the all-food post, because we truly ate ALL the food!) but for now I’d like to leave you with a video I made for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, of our evening at Disney’s Hollywood Studios enjoying the Jingle Bell, Jingle Bam holiday dessert party and fireworks show! Spoiler alert: We get Girl Drink Drunk (that’s a Kids in the Hall joke about the potency of ultra stainy, rum-based cocktails, of which we both now have a great deal of experience!)
Closing out the long weekend for us Canadians and kicking off the work week for the rest of you fine folks with this little video I made for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, of one of my favourite rides at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid! As my husband has pointed out, my affection for this new-ish attraction is fairly unsurprising given that it’s essentially the Haunted Mansion, themed to the Little Mermaid (they share a similar ride profile, right down to the Doom Buggies/Clam Shells that usher you through the ride (don’t forget to pull down your sand bar, wah-waaaahhhhh) and the bats/stingrays printed on the moving walkway at the end of the ride.)
And while I was dinglehopper-deep in fond memories of Journey of the Little Mermaid, I thought it would be fun to round up the many, many mermaid manis I have done over the years, including a number of ever-evolving Little Mermaid manicures honouring our girl, Ariel. Gosh, some of my earlier stuff was dod-gy! That’s one of the very nice things about dabbling about in a visual medium – when your talents evolve (and they absolutely will, with enough practice) you’ll really be able to see how very much you’ve improved. It’s great (mermaid) motivation. 🙂
And just when you thought I had stopped yammering about this place! But the Port Orleans Riverside at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida is our favourite place to stay on property, and I apparently have lots more to say on the subject. So much more, actually, I made up this neat little video for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, extolling this great resort’s many awesome qualities. Please do check it out and at least have a good chuckle at the weirdness of my voice, if you’d be so kind. 🙂 And who knows, maybe you’ll see something you like well enough to get you down to the Riverside as well for your next Disney vacation.
No, wait, that can’t be right. May the Firth be with you? Ooh, as in Colin? I loved him in Kingsman! Hmm, well, what else could it be? May the Frick be with you? That’s an art gallery I once went to in Manhattan. May the Fort(nite) be with you? I bet there’s a lot of kids who would agree with that sentiment (my old ass is not so old that I don’t know what’s the hot, crazy-makin’ video game of the moment.) Truly, I’m stumped. Oh, wait, it’s that Star Wars thing, isn’t it? Yeah, I had heard that it was going to be kind of a big deal today. Never heard of the movies myself – are they popular? 😉
All facetiousness aside, I made another video for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, all about our galactic adventures at Disney’s Hollywood Studios this past Christmas. Please click on the link below to share in a little bit of the fun, and as always, may the Force (ahh, got it that time) be with you.
Hello friends, just a quick update to let you know I posted a new vlog over on our YouTube channel, Park or Perish! Fun reminders of an awesome vacation aside, I have loved putting together these picto-videos; I may have a journalism degree, but my forte is not, and has never been, audio-visual media. So I’m beyond pleased that over the course of a few weekends I’ve been able to work through the basics and not-so-basics of a couple of different editing programs, turning out some not entirely unfortunate end results! At the very least we have some slickly edited videos with which to bore our friends.
To that end, this post is also a mea culpa, and an apology. I do believe I remarked some posts ago that the launch of Park or Perish! would put an end to my incessant Disney chatter over here on my blog. But I’m clearly still talking about Disney, only now I’m doing it vocally and visually, as opposed to boring you silly with the written word.
I just have been completely unable to totally (or even really partially) disconnect from holiday vacation mode. Like, I know I have to come back down to earth eventually, but it’s not going to be any time soon. And it’s made all the more complicated by the fact that we’re actively planning our next trip; makes it quite hard to turn off when you’re gearing up for the next big adventure.
So with apologies to those who no longer wish to share in my Disney obsession, and with thanks to those who do, I’ll link to our video, in which I offer up a few useful tips for girding your sanity at Disney during the busy holiday season. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for watching and (mostly) understanding that the Disney stoke – it’s very real! 🙂
Quick bit of shameless self-promotion here (although can it be shameless if it’s on your own blog? Suppose that depends on the definition of “shameless” you’re working with!) But we posted a new video to our vlog, a kind of introductory thing, and I’m really super proud of it. I am notoriously TOTAL CRAP when it comes to audio-visual editing. Like, if it even still exists, there is an editing booth at Carleton University where the tears I alone shed in 1999 probably kept the ancient wood of the desk hydrated for use by another two generations of frustrated J-schoolers. May there be mercy on your souls if you know the particular analog hell of trying to physically – with tape and scissors! and blood and tears – edit an audio clip. It’s soul-crushingly bleak.
So seriously, obnoxious self-horn tootage aside, yay for me! Because I think this video turned out pretty well visually (and aurally) and I like that it explains where we’re coming from with this Disney thing we’re harping on about all the time (it’s okay, I’m not offended, I know it’s harping!) So please do click on the above video and check it out; I’d love to hear any comments you might have or any feedback you’d like to give. 🙂
Finger Candy 