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Royal Caribbean Cruise And Walt Disney World Good Neighbor Hotel
721 Plays9 days ago
We take a very long trip to Orlando to stay at a Walt Disney World Good Neighbor Hotel, The Grove Resort & Water Park, for a few days in a 3 bedroom before getting on a Royal Caribbean Cruise on the large Utopia of the Seas! Our daughter also makes a few stops at the USTA National Training Center for lessons.
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Uncertainty
00:00:00
Speaker
everybody, it's another episode of detours, Damon's detours, I don't even know what we call it anymore, golden button detours, ah rhubarb traveler, don't know, it doesn't really matter. This is another episode of some non-Disney sort of stuff.
Vacation Planning and Initial Hotel Stay
00:00:16
Speaker
So recently we went on, i guess it would be our longest vacation. We decided to go to one of the Disney Good Neighbor hotels before our Royal Caribbean cruise. So we'll kind of break this up into two parts and talk about the...
Travel Challenges and Resort Arrival
00:00:31
Speaker
trip to the resort first and kind of what we did there and then we'll we'll get into the cruise and kind of how ah a royal caribbean cruise is is different and maybe the same as you know a disney cruise so let's start by saying that we ended up making a reservation at the grove resort and water park which is a disney good neighbor hotel from my understanding And we were were going down again. that We were driving down, but we don't have a big car anymore. Our Odyssey is just not up to making these long trips. And we ended up looking for Kia Carnival, and I just couldn't pull the trigger on it, especially before this trip. So we decided to take two cars, which actually worked out well because it allowed my wife and our two boys to continue to work an extra day because I had gotten off some extra vacation. So ended up going down with just my daughter to start with.
00:01:23
Speaker
And we ended up staying in a three-bedroom part of the Grove. So, you know, we, we the first thing, that this trip was an interesting trip. So the first thing that happens is is I go into Waze and I just put in the Grove.
00:01:38
Speaker
I don't know why I did that. and I don't know what that was about. but I kind of did that, got up in the morning, and then we just started driving. So obviously we ended up at an apartment complex instead of the resort.
Check-in Issues and Resort Perks
00:01:51
Speaker
And I think because it was like on like Starlight Lane or Starlight something, I just kind of assumed that it was the resort. And because normally I'm not the one driving the whole time, I would have checked. But because my daughter was sleeping for most of the trip, I just didn't even check. So we thought we were there. We weren't. We had another good old 45 minutes left. Orlando is a big place. And we got to see kind of the other side of Orlando.
00:02:18
Speaker
So we we get to the the Grove Resort and Water Park, and there's a line, like there's a line for check-in. You know, i will say that the people at the resort were phenomenal, but it was a pretty long line. It does take a while to check in.
00:02:34
Speaker
So we get up to the check-in, and you know, it's just me and my daughter, and they're like, well, we can't
Resort Experience and Dining
00:02:40
Speaker
check you in. And I'm like, well what do you mean? And they're like, well, your wife made the reservation in her name, not in, didn't add you or anything to the reservation. So I can't check you. And now again, my, my wife is still back at home and it is during the work day. So I'm like, Oh, this is going to be trouble because for whatever reason, my wife doesn't always answer the phone when I call, I feel like she doesn't answer the phone a lot. So I'm kind of joking with this lady saying, Oh, this is going to be interesting. Like, I don't know if my wife's even going answer the phone. I don't know what we're going to do.
00:03:10
Speaker
So I call my wife. She does answer the phone, which was great. But, you know, it started this and she added me to the reservation. It started this kind of this connection. So the lady that was checking us in kind of hooked us up a little bit. She was super nice. She gave us free parking, which is at this place is expensive. I want to say it's like twenty five dollars a day. And we were there for five days.
00:03:28
Speaker
She also gave us a bunch of free towels and and things like that. So that part was good. And, you know, we got to our room And it is a great size room. Like I said, it it fit all of us really well.
00:03:41
Speaker
it's It's a nice place, but it's a little bit older when it comes to, you know, the the rooms themselves. It's very big. And, you know, my kids decided that the the place was actually too big for them. And they're kind of, they like to go exploring and things like that, but they found it to be rather large.
00:03:59
Speaker
And my daughter decided to go to the restaurant on site the first night and just wasn't up for what we were looking for, I guess. it it wasn't necessarily our speed. So that wasn't necessarily, you know, a good start.
00:04:17
Speaker
But we also then decided to hang, you know, up our stuff and then get some bathing suits on and go over to the safari water park. which is a little dated. So, you know, even when my other kids got there and they ended up going to the water park, it's a little dated. And, you know, it just wasn't, i guess we're used to something like the Gaylord Palms and it was not necessarily at that level for us.
00:04:42
Speaker
So again, it was a little bit different and we were there for five days. And the reason we had kind of gone early is because my daughter was going to be doing some tennis training. So we did head over to the USTA training center that's in Orlando And that place is phenomenal. i I was surprised at how many courts that there are there.
00:04:58
Speaker
And the lessons went extremely well after the first day. i think the fellow that did the lesson in the first day was very flustered. There was a lot going on. i don't know. He had just hurt his hand or whatever. I don't know. That lesson didn't go great. but The other people, she had two other people. She had a lady for the next two and another um guy for the last one. They worked out extremely well. They were super nice. And, you know, was good for us to go. we were actually thinking about maybe next year.
00:05:23
Speaker
What we'll end up doing is doing a week and letting her train there and just staying at Disney in terms of using our DVC points. Again, we have no DVC points till December.
00:05:35
Speaker
which is why we're, you know, not staying there when we go to places. We would have obviously stayed at a Disney resort if we could have prior to the cruise, if that was the case.
00:05:47
Speaker
So the one thing, though, I will say is we we did a lot of breakfast food eating, especially when the rest of the family got down there. We went to Kiki's and Hash House, both which were phenomenal, by the way.
00:05:58
Speaker
So I would say that if you're in the area and you're kind of breakfast food people, those two
Transition to Royal Caribbean Cruise
00:06:03
Speaker
places are really good. I mean, Hash House, we ended up going to twice because it was so good. So I thought that was interesting. So, yeah, overall, the start of the trip, the first five days,
00:06:12
Speaker
at the Grove Resort and Water Park, we're just okay again. i don't necessarily think that we would as a family stay there again, but you know our goal is to kind of try all the Disney Good Neighbor hotels at some point, and they do have a rather large you know safari water park with a lazy river, with some slides, with, you know I think there's a Flo Rida there as well, and and some other things.
00:06:36
Speaker
It is funny, though, the kids ended up spending a fair amount of time in the arcade for some reason. i don't know why. They just kind of got hooked on this arcade stuff. So they did spend some time there, and we do have some claw machine plus plush prizes, i think, of Paw Patrol and something else that they ended up getting. So they did have a good time at least doing that, and we did spend some time in the gym as
Sports and Activities on the Cruise
00:07:00
Speaker
well. So Overall, like I said, that was kind of the start to our trip before we had to get on this Royal Caribbean cruise.
00:07:09
Speaker
Okay, so let's get to the second part of the vacation. So we put the Grove Resort and Water Park behind us. We're getting to go on a four-day cruise Royal Caribbean Utopia ship.
00:07:20
Speaker
This is actually our first time on Royal Caribbean, but Disney's so expensive for their cruises, and we we didn't really feel like Carnival fit our family. So We're going to do Royal Caribbean. We had talked to Matt over at the Royal Caribbean blog as well. We've had him on the show and he referred us to his people that he uses for getting his cruises set up. And again, it worked out perfectly for us. I believe it's MEI is who handled setting up our cruise.
00:07:50
Speaker
Anyway, this boat was huge. I mean, I say huge. It was so huge. So we walk onto the boat. The only thing is the first day in the music is a little loud. But this cruise is set up like some water-based Olympics. I mean, I think the good part of the cruise was all the things that there are to do. Like we found ourselves on a Disney cruise sitting around a little bit looking for things to do. Like we did the drawing one day and we're like, oh, what are we doing before this? What are we doing after this?
00:08:17
Speaker
The Royal Caribbean utopia, it was not like that at all. There was times when there was three things we wanted to do at once and and we couldn't do them all at the same time. So let's let's just talk about kind of what happened in terms of sports and stuff. So the first day...
00:08:33
Speaker
i I think I made a little bit of a mistake at my age, and I played knockout twice. um My son won the second round of knockout. ah There was some discrepancy about who actually won, but what whatever, we'll we'll go with that.
00:08:47
Speaker
And then we played a 3v3 tournament that night. against like athletes like these people are athletes i think the team we played against those me and my two sons and we played against some d2 baseball players which obviously they were in great shape we got absolutely destroyed and and that was fine but i was so sore the next day and don't even remember being that sore in a very long time but It was really fun. So from there, the other sports that we played, we played two ping pong tournaments.
00:09:16
Speaker
My middle son came in second and one. And then my daughter came in first and another one in the girls division. My boys came in, I think, second and third in that one. My oldest ended up doing a speed climbing competition. He came in first and my middle son came in third.
00:09:35
Speaker
My oldest also played in a dodgeball competition. i think that was probably the most... interesting one. He asked me to play and it's like, I just can't, like, I'm just too sore for that. So he ended up playing that. His team actually won.
00:09:49
Speaker
He also played in a soccer tournament. So they had on the basketball court, they had a soccer tournament as well. It was kind of set up like futsal almost. There was teams of five, you know, and no true goalie.
00:10:03
Speaker
You were playing with without a goalie, but that was also fun. And his team came in Yeah. forget there but ah kids racked up medals i think that for us as a family that was really fun we're you know sports people were super excited to play sports and with you know almost seven thousand people on the boat there' is a lot of good competition there's a lot of events that we didn't play like we didn't play the mini golf tournament We didn't play, I think, two of the ping pong tournaments and and a few other things. I mean, and people get serious. There was people that brought their own basketballs, people that brought their own ping pong paddles.
00:10:37
Speaker
You know, we did enjoy that, though. I think for us as a family, who it was really enjoyable, and we did like that about the cruise. I guess I'm going to leave the the worst part of it to the end because it's not really anyone's fault. So let's just continue on. So we went to the, ah well, let's go with the Aqua Show. The Aqua Show was actually really good, very enjoyable. I mean, some of the things that they do jumping from so high up into this little pool of water. I mean, it's just a really fun show and the music and everything makes it really great.
00:11:09
Speaker
We also sat in on Friendly Feud, which is kind of like a family feud knockoff. That was fun. My kid really wanted to be picked for that. kind and i didn't want to be picked for that, so we did not get picked, and that was fine by me.
00:11:24
Speaker
think the other thing that we played, which was probably our favorite event for all of us, was this game called, I think, Majority Rules. And you you know, as the name suggests, you you write down, you know, what you think the answer would be to some of these questions.
00:11:39
Speaker
And then whoever has the majority of the same answer gets a point. That was really fun. And what they did is they made it to whoever the last person is to hand in their answer had to like either sing or dance on stage in front of everybody. And that place was packed.
Coco Cay Visit
00:11:54
Speaker
It was really packed. But that led to some funny things. And the hosts of that were really great. My middle son, when I guess one of the questions was, you know what do you think parents are most frustrated about that their kids do or something like that something along those lines. young People are saying, we're lying. this My son says, naked changing.
00:12:16
Speaker
And the audience just went ballistic. like They thought it was so funny. I can't even get into that, but that that was funny and it was a super fun show. So i would say check that out.
00:12:28
Speaker
You know, getting on and off the boat was super easy. We did have a problem when we got on getting our luggage quickly. know, it took a while to get both of the boys luggage. we were a little concerned that maybe one of them might not show up, but you know, they all said, don't worry about it. Like you'll get your stuff. It's not a big deal. And you know, the tags are just falling off. So my wife at one point had to go down to the guest services desk, I think to pick up the last bag and just, you know, kind of say, hey that's our bag there. And that was fine. She said there was a few other bags there as well. So that, that wasn't a big problem.
00:13:02
Speaker
So let's talk about the island, Coco Cay. So Coco Cay, Coco Cay, I don't remember it actually is called, but it was really good. I was surprised at how...
00:13:14
Speaker
easy it was to find a place to kind of hang out. I know on the Disney Island, the last time we had gone, well, not the last time, the time before that, we we had some trouble finding a place. Like, remember, if you you know remember the story, but like we were like running and rushing and people like threw their stuff on chairs from like 20 feet away to beat us to chairs. It was the most ridiculous thing. Well, on this island, it's big. And there was two ships there, our ship and then a smaller Royal Caribbean ship.
00:13:40
Speaker
And there was enough room for everyone to do anything and to find chairs wherever you wanted it i thought that was nice it was very low pressure in terms of that so two things that happened there were my wife and daughter's kayaking adventure got canceled because it was windy and the wind was kind of nice though because it did kind of keep a little bit cooler me and my one son went to the water park my other son was not feeling well we'll get into that at the end though And I have to say that the water slide that they have, that one that's super tall, this is the biggest in North America, maybe. I don't know. um Maybe I'm making that up. You'll have to look that up. But it was good. It's an enclosed slide and it's long. It's good. It's fast. It was probably, you know, in top 10 of my favorite rides in general, not just water rides, but just rides in general. It was that good.
00:14:30
Speaker
We only went up there once. the The lines can get a little bit longer. i think if you get off the boat right away, that's probably the best time to do all the stuff at the water park because it does get a little crowded later in the day.
00:14:42
Speaker
I'm sure if we had stayed to almost, you know, time to get back on the boat, maybe it would have gotten a little bit better. But... We were
Dining and Comfort on the Ship
00:14:48
Speaker
just wiped out. We also had split up at that point and we did not get the sunscreen. So my sunscreen on the island, which was ridiculous. It's so funny because I went in and made such a big deal about how I got such a great deal on a three pack of sunscreen. And then I ended up having to buy an island.
00:15:04
Speaker
Twenty eight dollars, by the way, for sunscreen because we had to like we were would have roasted out there. So we ended up getting that, but the island was great. The thing about it is, is that the buffet on the island was probably the best buffet of the cruise.
00:15:20
Speaker
It was tacos, but they were so well done that we really did enjoy them. And there wasn't a lot of bugs. There was tons of places to sit. Like I said, the island is set up really well. So we did have our our lunch there and it didn't have any problems there. So kind of on the food situation, I would say that a few things that were kind of tough for us. So we did not get any beverage packages and we did not do any dining upgrades.
00:15:46
Speaker
And I think in the future, i would say that I probably wouldn't do it that way. So we had a hard time at night just finding water because you can't use the soda machines to get water because we didn't have the package. So you had to find standalone water machines.
00:16:02
Speaker
And you could find them, but sometimes they were kind of far, especially from where our room was. and we did get rooms across each other. So we had a balcony room that overlooked the ocean and the kids had a balcony room that overlooked Central Park or the Aqua Show or something like that. So they did not...
00:16:19
Speaker
complain about the noises. and it mean It was kind of noisy, but we had no noise. And let me tell you, the other thing is, this ship is so big, it was like you weren't on a
Health Incident and Cruise Line's Response
00:16:28
Speaker
ship. You didn't feel any movement at all.
00:16:30
Speaker
That was the thing that was so different from the Disney Cruises, which had some of the smaller boats, to this huge, massive boat that really, when you're walking on it, you couldn't even tell you were moving. And sometimes when you're in the middle of that boat, because it's so big and you don't even see the ocean, it really just...
00:16:45
Speaker
felt like you were in a mall somewhere or some, you know, getting something to eat somewhere. It didn't really feel like you're on a ship, which was definitely a good thing. There's some water slides on the boat, which were really fun. We did those one day as well. There's also a zip line. The kids did that. I did not do that.
00:17:00
Speaker
And then they have the slide called the abyss, which is a couple, I don't know, 10 stories. I don't remember how many stories it is, but it's a dry slide. That was fun. We did that a few times as well. Everyone did that besides my wife.
00:17:13
Speaker
Again, there's so much to do there. And just on the boat itself, there's just so much to do, which we're like, that's the guy she got a t-shirt too. There's a lot of stores to shop in and very low pressure in terms of the stores.
00:17:25
Speaker
We did not get off at NASA. I think next time we would probably do some sort of excursion. i know people say that the Atlantis one is tough if you book it through the cruise line because you don't get as much time as you would like.
00:17:37
Speaker
But we'll we'll kind of see. I think we would do that. like Like I said, we would do the dining upgrade and we would do the drink package, not the alcoholic drink, but the soda drink package would just be fine for us.
00:17:49
Speaker
So all in all, great trip. But let's talk about kind of the bad thing that happened and has nothing to do with the cruise line. all My son got sick and quarantined for a day. So he was throwing up. ah You know, they said it was not norovirus. But let me tell you,
00:18:05
Speaker
The way that Royal Caribbean handled the whole situation was so well done and so nice that I really have to shout it out. So everyone involved in the situation was really nice. So he goes down to, you know, the car they make sure that he goes down to the medical area and they give him a shot for his nausea.
00:18:26
Speaker
And then, you know even though he didn't have the drink package, he was allowed to order room service and PowerAids at no cost. He was allowed to rent any movies he wanted at no cost.
00:18:36
Speaker
They gave us money back for the time that he couldn't be out of his room. They also gave us our money back as he was supposed to come to the water park with us on the island. And they would not let him actually leave his room until you know the doctors talked to him and he hadn't been sick for 24 hours. So it came and went.
00:18:54
Speaker
you know, rather quickly, probably just a little bit over 24 hours. I mean, when you're a 19 year old, things like that go kind of quickly. I don't think that would have been the case for me. I think I would have probably been sick a little bit longer, but again, they handled it so well.
00:19:09
Speaker
And listen, I'm going to be honest with you. My son made a mess of the room. We'll just, we'll leave it like that. I think he threw up in the sink once and They came in and cleaned it, no questions asked, no issues, no problems.
Future Travel Plans and Reflections
00:19:24
Speaker
And I made sure to give those guys super huge tips because I just, I thought the way that was handled, not only of that, but every time that we we saw housekeeping, they asked how our son was doing, which again, like it made such a huge difference for us to to hear somebody like, Hey, actually asking about how he's doing and how he felt.
00:19:46
Speaker
100% was happy about, you know, the way everything was handled. Again, guest services handled everything great as well. You know, we stopped down there for a few different things and everything was taken care of with no questions asked, no problems and a smile on their face. So I would say in that regard, you should have no questions or problems like dealing with that. I think it went extremely well.
00:20:08
Speaker
So overall, great cruise. I think we're going to try do another Royal Caribbean cruise. The only problem was, you know how kids kind of get, you know, he was sick. So he feels like, you know, he doesn't necessarily want to do a cruise next year. Cruise aversion, I think, for a year.
00:20:24
Speaker
which is fine. Again, we would have probably done another cruise next year, but we're going to take a year break and we're going to do that trip. It's it's funny, it kind of forcing us to do that cross-country trip that we had talked about going to the Grand Canyon and Disneyland, but everyone has decided they do not want to go to Disneyland because they just don't think it's different enough than Disney World to warrant the extra hours and days that it would take to get there from the Grand Canyon. So we'll see how all that turns out.
00:20:52
Speaker
But for us at this time, we're looking to probably book, I think it's called Star of the Seas in 2027. That's a seven day cruise, which I think will be nice for us. And again, boat was wonderful in terms of, you know, not having any seasick feeling in terms of that day. Again, the elevator situation is a little tough. What we ended up doing is walking lot of stairs, which is not bad because I came off the boat and actually didn't gain all that cruise weight that I gained on with Disney with drinking the soda and not having to worry about climbing the stairs. So we did do a lot of stair climbing since the boat is so large. You do, you know a fair chunk of walking as well.
00:21:33
Speaker
We did the MDR. So the Windjammer was fine. Like I said, the buffet was fine. Breakfast was good. And I think that I even had Eggs Benedict one day, which I was like, I don't know. But it turned out it was fine. It was definitely cruise ship Egg Benedict, which was fine. Like I said, it was no problem. The Hash Browns are the star of the show, 100%.
00:21:53
Speaker
one hundred percent But breakfast was good. and Lunch was fine. There's there's a food truck on the ship that's very good. The Mexican place is okay. The main dining room, it's okay.
00:22:05
Speaker
It's not, like I said, what you'd expect from Disney or some other cruise lines. The food was just okay. but But again, it wasn't bad. It was just okay. And the bread, for whatever reason, was very good, though. So that's kind of our trip it in a nutshell. You know, what we decided that we liked and didn't like from Carnival.
00:22:23
Speaker
Excuse me, from Royal Caribbean. I don't think I'd ever do a Carnival cruise with the family. um And, you know, we've kind of looked at some of the other Norwegian and Virgin line cruises, Holland America, the problem is with the boat size. Now that we've been on a boat that's this big, it's very hard to think that you want to go on a smaller boat and maybe deal with those waves again, because this boat was so big, that you really didn't have that problem. So We'll see how it goes, but expect us to have another trip report in 2027 on one of the new Royal Caribbean larger boats because we did have a
Final Thoughts and Sign-Off
00:22:57
Speaker
blast. Hopefully, I know a little bit more now. I think we overpacked in terms of things, which we won't do again because we actually took our luggage off.
00:23:05
Speaker
the end day because we were driving home. We wanted to make sure that we got our luggage quickly. So we did take everything off with us. And that was was a lot of luggage to take off. I think in the future, we probably wouldn't do that. We brought some hooks. We brought some extra you know rechargeable fans, things like that, that we really didn't need.
00:23:23
Speaker
So I think we do a better job at packing. i also probably packed like eight pairs of shorts and wore like three, you know, right, the whole cruise. So there there is that as well. I think I had enough socks and underwear for probably 10 cruises.
00:23:36
Speaker
Anyway, so the expression of everything here that I've talked about is my own opinion. So kind of keep it as such. If you need to reach out to Royal Caribbean, Disney, the Grove Resort and Water Park, please do so for any follow up questions and have a good day and look forward to the next detours.