December 2020 – Summary

Highlights

• Great weather! No snow! Only 2 days we’d consider cold, the rest were non-jacket days
• Loved, loved, LOVED! the suite in Fort Myers at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point
• Excellent time at Disney with the boys
• Overall, a relaxing tour of Florida

Lowlights

• A couple busy days at Disney, though to be honest we expected things to be more packed
• Poor planning for dinner on Christmas and New Year’s Eve
• Timing was tight finishing school after we had to checkout of our first hotel to start the trip
• Sitting in the cheap seats on the plane ride to Fort Lauderdale. Should have paid a few dollars more to be closer to the front

What Went Right

• We successfully managed to avoid getting COVID!
• Flights were mostly on time. Slight delay on the way down but made up most of it in the air.
• Car rental pickup and vehicle went smoothly
• Amazing weather in Fort Myers and an easy routine during school classes. The suite was perfect!
• Staying outside the park worked well for this trip. The resort had lots to keep the kids busy when we weren’t in the parks
• Park passes and reservations worked flawlessly. We got to ride all the rides we wanted to (except the ones that were closed, of course)

Takeaways

This trip was a leisurely tour of southern and central Florida over 17 nights. It was the longest trip we’ve been on and we mostly spent long periods in one place. It made for a relaxing trip despite the boys having school for the first week and my wife having to work most days.

If it seems like my wife is always working, it’s because she really is. As a self-employed contractor she has a lot on her plate and any day she takes off is one she doesn’t get paid. Her work is pretty high stress and I’m not sure how she balances it. Even when she can have “off days” she often has a call or two she can’t avoid, even on holidays. Holiday periods are especially busy because the full time employees she works with often take those days off.

That said, we try to adapt our vacations so she can take full advantage of the time she isn’t working. Working by the pool or with a beautiful view is more enjoyable than working from home (most times). When she’s done with her calls for the day we’re someplace new and we take advantage as best we can. It’s not ideal, but it does help us travel more than we would otherwise. Plus, the boys love these adventures and most times I’m able to take at least some time off from my work so we don’t have to split our attention as much.

Back to this trip! There was a LOT of planning for this trip, or at least a lot of planning churn that went on. We originally were targeting an 11 day trip, but then we found a way to extend it to 17 and we’re glad we did. The churn with the the flight schedules to Fort Myers forced us to think out of the box and fly in to Fort Lauderdale to spend a night there. While a one night stay in the middle of the work week when you have to work can be stressful, we managed it fairly well. I was happy we were able to use a free night certificate that was about to expire unused. IHG did extend that certificate expiration but not until it was too late to change our plans. Otherwise I would have used a different certificate at a hotel we could be more confident in getting a later checkout. It worked out reasonably well so I can’t complain too much.

I originally wasn’t sure I wanted to use a suite upgrade at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point in Fort Myers but I was extremely happy I did! I was irrationally trying to save up the suite upgrades, but at the moment I have multiple that I likely won’t be able to use before they expire at the end of 2021.

The suite we were upgraded to was amazing, and by extending that portion of our trip to 7 days we could take advantage of the fantastic Work from Hyatt rate for the base room. We could have used points, but the Work From Hyatt rate included a lot of bonus points, coupled with a fantastic rate which made it a no-brainer.

The vouchers for Cool Beans the hotel provided in place of the lounge access were like gold and we rationed them well. It won’t take any convincing for us to go back to that hotel. We were treated well by the staff and we have fond memories of our experiences there. It would have been a fantastic vacation on it’s own, but it was only the first half of this trip!

I was quite nervous about the reservation in Orlando at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress. I had made a half dozen changes to the reservations as rates changed and we waffled on the room type we wanted. The hotel would be full, and full hotels over the holidays can sometimes devolve into miserable experiences if not staffed and managed properly. After our experience in Palm Springs between Christmas and New Year in 2019, I was worried about a repeat of that miserable experience. I had nightmares of substandard rooms, indifferent staff, and entitled guests picking fights with the valet.

Luckily I had nothing to worry about. We didn’t have any issues and were treated very well by all the staff we encountered. The hotel was full, but it didn’t feel particularly crowded or overrun.

As for the parks, I had gone to Disney over Christmas and New Years *mumble* years ago when I was in high school. I remember it was wall to wall people at that time and had read that in recent years it was much worse. It’s one of the busiest times of the year for the parks.

With COVID restrictions in place and limited attendance, I was betting it would be a more manageable experience and I was correct. We missed many of the live shows that were closed, but the character meet-and-greets were never on our todo list. Most of the rides were open and that was our main focus. The biggest thing we missed was likely the nighttime fireworks shows, but there was enough to keep us distracted that we didn’t miss it as much as I expected we would.

The biggest adjustment was getting used to the length of the lines due to the physical distancing restrictions. They were long, but they moved relatively quickly. The longest we waited was 45 minutes for the Pandora Flight of Passage ride. The physical distancing markings on the ground in each queue helped keep us distracted while in line. The reduced capacity was also key. While the parks were limited to 35% capacity, they still seemed about as busy as when the boys and I went in late August of 2017 and 2019, which admittedly are less busy times.

Overall, I felt extremely safe inside the parks. Disney was taking COVID seriously and I appreciate that. At Disney Springs, things weren’t quite as good. People were much closer together but never to a degrees that I felt unsafe, and being outside certainly made things safer in general.

Overall, the trip worked out very well. The drives were reasonable and the rental car was fine. It even had some neat features like CarPlay and adaptive cruise control which I wish our cars had! The stays in Fort Myers and Orlando felt just about right in length. Fort Lauderdale portion was more of a necessary detour but it wasn’t as disrupting as we originally feared. The adrenaline and excitement of the beginning of the trip really helped with that. If it had been at the end of the trip is definitely would have felt like a drag. We got to drive down Alligator Alley which I didn’t know was a real thing. We avoided the snow storms back home and the two really cold mornings we had in Orlando turned into reasonably warm afternoons. We got to wear shorts most of the days and only had one evening of rain.

Most importantly we made it home safe and relaxed. I call that a successful trip!