Boats, Bahamas and Boos: DCL October 2019: Day 1:Shopping, Starbucks and Springs

iheartwdw · 2 Aug 21, 03:35 PM

Day 1:Shopping, Starbucks and Springs
Sunday 13th October 2019

Well, this day could have really been titled shopping, shopping and more shopping!

It is a pretty short trippie today, as we spent the vast majority of our time in shops and hunting down bargains. I was so entranced by all of the offers and sparkly things, I barely took any photos either

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We both managed to have a good night’s sleep, but still woke up super early because of jet lag. We really liked our room. The bed was comfy, there was plenty of storage and the Disney touches were cute. We would definitely stay again, if we got a good price.

As the sun was coming up we took the opportunity to explore the resort in more detail, taking some pictures of the fun, larger than life theming as well as having a look around the food court and shops.

Our first plan today was to pick up our hire car. For some reason, they were charging an extortionate one way fee to pick up from the airport and drop-off at Port Canaveral, but this wasn’t the case if we collected from the Disney Car Care Centre. We have done this trip a couple of times before and even contacted Alamo to see why the fee was added, but even they didn’t know?!

As we were staying at a Disney hotel and could use the Magical Express, it made sense and wasn’t too much of a hassle to collect today. I’m not sure if there was some sort of glitch or rule change, but we had no problems booking a one way hire car (still with Alamo) from the port to the airport.

Sorry, that was a very long way of telling you guys that we went to pick up our hire car this morning!

It was quick and easy, with no real push for upgrades. We were in the car and on the way to the Vineland Outlets in no time at all.

It was getting nice and toasty already, so we grabbed some cold Starbucks drinks to cool us down whilst we waited for the shops to open… Yes, we were that early, I warned you we had jet lag!

We got into the queue for Character Warehouse – when did this become a thing?

On previous visits we have never had to wait to go in, there were lots of resellers in the line though. We could tell as they were buying lots of multiples of the same thing and in large quantities. It was a short wait and we were in the first group allowed in. We picked up a few t-shirts for ourselves, as well as my biggest bargain of the holiday, a cute Christmas Mickey nutcracker. He was reduced to $20 from $55

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Here he is, in pride of place on the windowsill at Christmas this year.

After the Character Warehouse, we nipped in and out of some of our favourites – Kate Spade, Tory Birch, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Osh Kosh (for our nieces and nephews) etc. We managed to find a fair few Christmas presents for our family, which I was really happy about. We had made sure that we had room in our cases to do this. We also knew that we wouldn’t buy much on the cruise, so would have plenty of space to bring some lovely gifts back within our luggage allowance. It was one of the main reasons we chose to fly PE this time, as you are allowed two suitcases each.

After munching our way through the Chinese from the food court at Vineland, we headed to Rolling Oaks to scout out treats from Target. You are allowed to take some alcohol in your hand luggage aboard a Disney cruise, so Nathan chose some beers to drink on our balcony later on in the week. We also picked up some water, crisps and sweets as car snacks for our drive to the port. I also couldn’t resist nipping into Ulta and stocking up on some of my favourite American brands, without the high shipping costs or mark-ups in the UK.

Shopped out, well Nathan and our bank balances were

, we headed back to the room to freshen up, change and sort through our purchases. We popped all of our shopping into the spare case we had brought with us, which we were having transferred to the Poly for our stay after the cruise and only taking one suitcase with us to the ship.

The evening was spent at Disney Springs. Many of you will probably remember that we like to enjoy the atmosphere and food trucks here in the evening and that is exactly what we did. Nathan had a Mexican cone type thingy (very descriptive, I know) and I had some mac and cheese. Both were delicious.

With such an early start, we didn’t manage to stay long before our bed was calling us.

We had such an amazing, if not expensive, first day.

Laura Xx

Disneycraft · 17 Aug 21, 07:32 AM

Love that nutcracker.Shopping in the outlets is such fun ,I wish they’d limit the resellers to 2 per item

iheartwdw · 17 Aug 21, 08:16 PM

Originally Posted by Disneycraft

Love that nutcracker.Shopping in the outlets is such fun ,I wish they’d limit the resellers to 2 per item

I am in love with my nutcracker!

Me too, it seems unfair on people that just want to purchase something for themselves. We have just got back from the DCL Staycation cruise and they have decimated the shops onboard

They have limited to 2 items pp on the Magic now, so fingers crossed this is a good sign for the future.

Laura Xx

Disneycraft · 18 Aug 21, 03:23 PM

Originally Posted by iheartwdw

I am in love with my nutcracker!

Me too, it seems unfair on people that just want to purchase something for themselves. We have just got back from the DCL Staycation cruise and they have decimated the shops onboard

They have limited to 2 items pp on the Magic now, so fingers crossed this is a good sign for the future.

Laura Xx

That’s good ,it’s just ridiculous isn’t it . I hope you do a trip report for the staycation xx

iheartwdw · 22 Aug 21, 07:05 PM

Originally Posted by Disneycraft

That’s good ,it’s just ridiculous isn’t it . I hope you do a trip report for the staycation xx

It really is ridiculous!

I've done a mini cruise trippie, well mini for me, I think it is still over 3000 words

There's a link in my signature if you fancy a read

Laura Xx