Palm Fronds & Nom Noms

After the COLOSSAL pain in the butt, anxiety producing, week-long experience of trying to nail down a DVC Rental reservation for December 2025... we had some time to reflect on the experience and our priorities.   We had been willing to make so many concessions to visit this year, but the more we were willing to do, the more forced it all felt.  We were actually flirting with the idea of booking something just for the sake of doing it.  Checking a box rather than booking what we actually wanted or would feel good about.  In the past few years especially we have had the loose guideline of "if we can't afford to take the trip the want, the way we want, we aren't doing it."  That might mean we put something off for a year to save up, or accepting a few compromised or inconveniences to preserve the big picture goals.   This last Disney planning experience took all of the fun out of planning.  (I can't believe I just typed that!)  The requis...

 It finally happened.  We failed at Disney.  Or Disney failed us?  The semantics don't matter, the end result is the same.  We are not taking a trip to Walt Disney World (WDW) in 2025.  In the 14 years that we have been married, Adam and I have taken seven (yes, SEVEN) trips to WDW in Orlando (plus a trip to the California Disney parks).  Six out of seven were at Deluxe Resorts, and five of those were just the two of us.  In 2019 though the prices started feeling a bit too steep and we were introduced to the idea of renting DVC Points for a stay.   This worked our amazingly well for our 2020 stay in a Deluxe Studio at the Polynesian where we could watch Magic Kingdom fireworks every night from the balcony.  The price was right in 2022 when we knocked Bay Lake Tower off our wish list for stays (even though the room view was a total disappointment and we came home with COVID-19).  With some other, more far afield travel prioritie...

  I have been asked more times than I can count why we travel as much as we do.  My standard answer is some variation of, "because we never know when we might not be able to."  Enter the year 2020.  Nothing like a global pandemic to drive a point home.  Nearly overnight one of the world's most powerful passports became just a fancy blue booklet with some neat stamps and too many empty pages inside.  In the grande state of the COVID-19 ridden world, we would not have wanted to use it even if we could.  The risks were just too great.  We don't have the kind of jobs that would allow us to join the trend of "digital nomads" who are now working in comfort at luxury resort properties abroad for extended periods of time.  And unlike the glamorously wealthy, we cannot quarantine repeatedly or access repeat rounds of testing in order to escape to a remote vacation locale without either bankrupting ourselves or losing our jobs.  While the pandemic...

  There are innumerable quizzes and matrixes found online to help anyone, of any fan base, determine which character they would be in the fantasy world of their choosing.  Some are based on the old school Myers Briggs personality types, others link to astrological or Chinese Zodiac signs.  It's always fun to go down those rabbit holes to explore which book, movie or gaming character most closely reflects your personality.  (Or in the case of many, many online quizzes, frustrating to have the final outcome be your least favorite character.) It is another thing all together to be brave enough to ask you family members which character they think you would be.  Adam and I have had a version of this conversation with characters from the TV show Leverage.  One of the show's tag lines is "Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Thief, Mastermind."  (Clearly I am the Hitter.) I don't recall why it came up at bed time a couple of nights ago, but I somewhat randomly asked Ada...

Yes, yes they did.  Constance Moofushi , Thank You! Despite the lengthy and exhausting transit effort, the Maldives experience made it near impossible to book an all-inclusive in the Caribbean the next year.   How could we justify spending per night rates on par with "Maldives Money" when we KNEW the service and experience would NEVER compare anywhere else (at least that we could afford and would be willing to risk that bucket of $$ on....) We agreed that our best bet value wise would be a return to the Dominican Republic.  First I booked the Excellence El Carmen with a two-story, beach front suite .  It was pricier than where we had stayed before, but maybe it would pay off.   That lasted about a week, and then I switched us to Sanctuary Cap Cana , Oceanfront Castle Suite.  Although with their over abundance of room categories, being satisfied with room location would be a bit of a crap shoot even with an extra $2000+ added to our typical DR/AI b...