Winter Break 2025. Part 7. Aren't You Nick?
And now for the thrilling conclusion…
Friday
Friday I woke up and saw that my mom had texted me at 2am. Apparently their toilet had started leaking from the bottom and their bathroom was all flooded. They had someone come fix it, but while they waited they had to go to the main areas to use the bathrooms. At 2am. The guy who fixed it says the valve was broken, which is not unusual on older ships like this one. All was well.
Usually we feel like we’re being rushed off a cruise ship, but we kind of felt the opposite here. We got up, had breakfast at 8:15 in the dining room (originally they told us to come at 7am – we said no and the head waiter fit us in at 8:15 instead). This was great and it was nice to have a last meal with our servers, except we didn’t realize our driver was coming at 9 and not 9:15. So all of a sudden he’s texting us that he’s coming and when we said we’d be there at 9:15, he said we need to be down by 9am or he’s leaving because he has another pickup. So that was stressful. It snapped Tzvi’s no-stress vacation mode and jumped his stress level from the usual two or three he has from dealing with the kids to a five. We had a quick breakfast and I’ll tell you, we made it to the car by 9:17, which is 17 minutes after we were apparently scheduled, but only 2 minutes after we told him we’d get to him.
We made the hour-long drive and pulled up at The Conrad at the Evermore Resort. The Evermore is a new resort (only a year old). It’s not on Disney property but it’s right next door. The resort is huge and most of it is vacation homes or apartments. The Conrad is the one true hotel on the property (Conrad is Hilton’s highest-end brand). We booked three rooms (two connecting and one additional for my parents) with a combination of cash and Tzvi’s Hilton free night reward and points. Because Tzvi is a Hilton diamond member, he got an email a few days prior saying that one of his rooms had been upgraded. When he called, they said they were only able to upgrade the single room, but that they could probably upgrade the connecting rooms when we checked in.
It was early when we arrived, so our rooms were not ready, but this was when Tzvi got the news that they would not be able to upgrade the connecting rooms. This meant we would have rooms without balconies overlooking the front of the hotel, while my parents would have a balcony room overlooking the resort and with a view of EPCOT fireworks. This brought Tzvi’s stress level from five to seven.
We decided to leave the bags and head to Disney Springs! We ordered an Uber, waited nine minutes for a Honda Odyssey. We were seven people, so it took a couple of minutes to get all of us buckled in. We were about to pull away when the driver asked Tzvi which terminal he was going to. Then he asked Tzvi, “Aren’t you Nick?” Turns out we had gotten into the wrong Honda Odyssey! We looked ahead of us and there was a second Honda Odyssey sitting there. We all piled out and tried to go to our actual Uber, but he pulled away just as we were walking up to it, so we had to order another.
We got dropped off on the West Side, which is not near the Disney Stores but is near the M and M store. That was fun. My mother bought a blanket and then proceeded to walk around with it draped over her, kind of like a homeless person. We kept walking and Tzvi saw the Summer House, a relatively new restaurant. That was when he finally woke up to our plans. He decided he loved the menu of this place and was like “why don’t we eat lunch here.” Well, we had lunch reservation at The Rainforest Café, a fan (read: Stephanie) favorite, and Hallie was also very excited for it. I was like, are we cancelling lunch? Like what’s happening here? Then Tzvi got all upset in one of his moods because all of a sudden, after 6 months of plans, he remembered he doesn’t like the Rainforest Café and doesn’t like when the chef has to come out to discuss his allergy. It’s not like I asked him over and over if there is any other place he wants to eat at over the course of planning. So that was super fun for all of us to deal with.
So we get to the Rainforest Café and Tzvi’s like, “well, we have to be in the Elephant room.” So, I ask for it and they say no problem. Then they put us on a line to wait for our table but the kids had to go to the bathroom so we left Tzvi and my parents waiting. Then they said the table was ready and walked him over to a table by the bar, not even near any of the animals, and Tzvi was not having it. They told him to wait again and said they’d get a different table but that they couldn’t seat him until his whole party was there. [Tzvi: It was absurd. Stress level up to nine.] Anyway, I came back and all of a sudden we were sat at a beautiful table by a large Elephant. Our server was lovely, and the chef who came over was lovely. We did have to wait for our food for a solid 45 minutes which was ridiculous, but everyone did great and the girls had a great time.
After lunch we walked around more and did the basic Disney Springs shopping. We went to the Lego store where the girls made personalized Lego people, except Madeleine named hers Rosie. I don’t know why. I think Tzvi almost had a full scale meltdown waiting for us in Zara. I stopped tracking his stress level.
We got back to the Evermore maybe 20 minutes before Shabbos started, got our rooms, and got ready for dinner. Our room is beautiful, spacious and modern, but Tzvi was still salty about the upgrade.
Dinner tonight was at the Italian place in the Conrad, Sophia’s Trattoria. We sat down, ordered, but twice during the meal I took the girls to go watch the fireworks because you could see both the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT fireworks from the hotel. That was fun. The food was good – we shared everything, really good pizzas, pastas and some appetizers. Then we went back to the room and got the kids to bed.
Saturday
We got up slowly Saturday morning, got coffee in the lobby, hung out, and walked around the hotel. We pretty much didn’t do anything until we got brunch at noon, again at Sophia’s Trattoria. The woman that seated us was wearing three Hebrew necklaces. Our server was from Jersey, now lives here and commutes an hour from wherever he lives. That seems excessive. We had a great table and a lot of food. The fruit platter was gorgeous and delicious.
Tzvi and I had a massage at the spa at 2. It was a good massage, and then we spent an hour just hanging out at the hot tub in the spa. We met two guys, both who live in Florida. One ended up being a Syrian Jew from Brooklyn, no surprise. This is where you really feel the difference between Disney and non-Disney properties. The conversation at the hot tub centered around how expensive Disney was, and then Mr. Syrian Jew was vaping. You’d NEVER see that on Disney property.
We packed, Shabbos ended, and we Ubered over to Disney Springs for our final evening of shopping! We didn’t have dinner plans, so we hit a bunch of places. The kids had gigantic pizza slices at Pizza Ponte and we shared a tuna sandwich from Pepe, the Jose Andres quick service spot (the sandwich was good despite not liking Israel - Jose Andres (I don’t think the sandwich had an opinion about Israel)).
I got a fresh diet Coke from the Coke store, hit Goofy’s Candy Co. for my caramel apple, had our ice cream Sundae’s at Ghirardelli, and then did our final late night shopping at World of Disney. It was great.
We didn’t leave until like 11:30. I think everyone was pretty spent. Tzvi was complaining that he didn’t feel well and just wanted to make tea at the hotel and get into bed. At one point we were trying to pay using the Disney mobile checkout app when Tzvi caught my mother scanning a QR code on a shelf.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
“I’m trying to check out.”
“No, you’re signing up for a Disney visa credit card.”
Time for bed.
Sunday
We were up early Sunday morning and had room service breakfast, then headed down to meet our driver, who, you guessed it, was our same driver who took us from the ship to the hotel. He was already upset because he had pulled into the wrong entrance to the hotel. He doesn’t seem like a happy man. Anyway we made it to the airport, checked in, of course saw people we knew on the flight, and headed home! Tzvi was complaining again about not feeling well. He couldn’t even walk around the Disney store in the airport and just got himself a big tea at Starbucks and sat alone drinking it.. The whole trip I was thinking in my head how great it was that no one was sick. We made it through the entire trip healthy and everyone had a great time. Well, Tzvi made it through the flight, but by Sunday night he had fever, and by Monday we knew it was the flu. So, perfect timing!
Great trip.
