We get spoiled easily. What seemed lavish & luxurious & semi-exotic has become routine & customary & expected. Timeshare vacations are squarely in that category.
Even so, we had some stand-out timeshare vacations, starting with 2003 when the extended family decided to do Thanksgiving With Mickey Mouse in Orlando FL. Bursting with pride of ownership, we snagged a week-long reservation in our outstanding 3BR-3BA floating-week lock-off unit at the timeshare then known as Cypress Pointe Grande Villas Resort (more recently, just Grande Villas Resort, which we no longer own).
The Chief & Staff & I took the 1BR-1BA "B" unit. Our son & daughter-in-law & baby grandson, plus our grandson's other set of grandparents, divvied up the adjoining 2BR-2BA "A" unit. Meanwhile, the Chief Of Staff's sister & sister's husband camped out in their AirStream B-van motorhome at Disney's Fort Wilderness Campground RV park, while our nephew (Chief Of Staff's sister's son, a single dad at the time) stayed at the WDW Contemporary Resort with his 2 little girls (ages 4 & 6 at the time), who both dressed up as Disney princesses. The whole crowd enjoyed a wonderful noisy & chaotic Thanksgiving dinner in a huge dining hall at Disney's Polynesian Resort. What a time !
A few years later, our customary week-long January Florida vacation had stretched into 2 weeks. We thought we had mastered the art of snagging prime RCI reservations for next to nothing by reserving back-to-back 3BR timeshare weeks, each for only 7
,500 points (plus exchange fee) via what was known at the time as
Instant Exchange (9
,000 points maximum for a 1-week reservation made within 45 days of check-in). These days we still get pretty decent digs for Florida in January, but nothing quite like that.
Back during the era of using
tiger trader South African timeshares as RCI exchange bait to stay in other people's nice USA timeshares, we snagged a wonderful 3BR-3BA lock-off unit at HGVC Sea World during a September week when we vacationed there with an old friend from college days plus her teen daughter. The week featured a day at Discovery Cove, a day at Disney's Animal Kingdom, plus several days at Sea World & 1 night at the outstanding Arabian Nights dinner show. Uncle Alan was designated entertainment director while
The Chief Of Staff & her old college friend relaxed, shopped, & mostly took it easy. One afternoon, the teen girl said, "Uncle Alan, will you play ping-pong with me?"
She was shocked to hear me say, "No way! Absolutely not! Not no, but heck no!" That was shocking because until then I had been pretty much up for most any & every resort activity she suggested, & she really kept me going.
"No? But why not?" she said.
"Because," I pleaded, "I'm just too poofed from all the stuff we've been doing all day at the parks."
"Oh," she said. "Then what about going to the pool?"
"OK," I said. "But I'm too tired to swim. I just want to get in the water up to my chin & stay there in 1 place."
So that's what we did until suppertime, when we rejoined The Chief Of Staff & the teen's mom for dinner.
-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.