It was going to be a busy weekend! Friday night marked our first wedding anniversary, Saturday afternoon was my wife’s graduation ceremony from nursing school, and then Sunday morning we were all to be off first thing in the morning on a 7-day Carnival cruise down through the Western Caribbean! So much to do and so little time, but still, you only celebrate your first anniversary once…
A Division of Anniversary Responsibilities
After we got married last year, my wife and I came up with an interesting way of doing our anniversaries – instead of just getting each other things and collaborating on something to do together, we thought it might be a little more fun to trade off each year and have one person surprise the other with that year’s anniversary festivities! I volunteered to be the guinea pig this inaugural year, partially because I knew that we only had a limited amount of time between graduation and our cruise, and partially because I already had the perfect plan for what we could do in such a short time that Sara was still going to absolutely love.
It all started at Saratoga Springs. We had been wanting to try some of the other fancier resorts ever since splurging and staying Club Level at the Beach Club last year for our honeymoon, and since Disney has been offering some really good deals lately to Passholders specifically for Saratoga Springs and Old Key West, I thought it seemed like a good opportunity to give DVC a try and see what the best kept Disney secret was all about! Although she did catch on that we were going to Disney, she hadn’t a clue until we pulled in the driveway which resort we were staying at, although what happened shortly thereafter ended up being quite the surprise for me as well…
Welcome Home, Indeed!
You always wonder when you’re filling out that Special Occasion blank during the reservation process what actually goes on behind the scenes … whether anything will actually happen at all! … but apparently this visit was one shining example of Disney really going above and beyond to make us feel special, which was especially nice because frankly our honeymoon had felt a little lackluster, at least as far as resort perks had been concerned. 
After taking my info and pulling up our reservation, our hostess excused herself for a moment and came back with a gigantic bundle of balloons and announced to the entire lobby that for celebrating our anniversary with them, we had been chosen as their Family of the Day! And while the blushing and attention soon vanished, it was still clear that the essence would stay with us for the remainder of the trip because our room had been upgraded from a studio to a 1-bedroom suite, which frankly just ended up being out of this world…
So many doors, so many doors! I think we ended up counting something like 13 internal doors between closets and bathrooms and room dividers and whatnot as we explored our massively oversized room, and even though we knew we really wouldn’t end up using much of anything as far as the kitchen, living room, or even the garden tub, the room had a really cool view of Downtown Disney’s West Side … which little did Sara know was actually where we’d be heading right after dinner in a couple of hours!
Nightlife Near and Far
We ended up just walking over to the Turf Club, where I had made reservations for dinner, knowing that later we could just hop on the ferry to take us across the river to Downtown Disney. The food was nice – we both ended up having steaks, which is something different for me, but it was a good meal and the dining room wasn’t overly noisy with only a couple of other families nearby. I don’t know if it was just our timing, maybe it was an off-night, or if this just really isn’t much of a restaurant for kids, but it did seem a little more upscale to the point where the kiddies might be bored here, especially compared to so many of the other restaurants with luscious themes and characters to mingle with.
For our purposes on this particular evening, however, the peace and quiet for a change was marvelous!
Keep in mind that my wife had just finished nursing school, so having barely seen each other at all in the past several months, it was definitely nice to be able to just sit and enjoy a nice meal together, around the amenities of Disney but without someone else’s crazy kids running through them the entire time. That said, it was finally here after dinner – just before boarding our vessel to take us across the water – that I revealed our entertainment plans for that evening…
CIRQUE TICKETS PIC
Cirque du Soleil is Worth Every Penny!
As I mentioned before that I predicted an easy home run with this one, Sara has wanted to see Cirque for a really long time. The thing is, up until now I’ve always been a little bit skeptical because the tickets are sooo expensive and what guy really wants to sit and watch two hours worth of gymnastics, anyways?! Well, needless to say as the headline indicates, my opinions ended up being dead wrong and we both ended up having an amazing time at the show. Some of the moves that those guys and girls do can only be described as incredible, and the entire show was definitely so fast-paced that I never once sat there wondering when the current act would end so that they could move on to something more entertaining. In fact, there’s a concession stand out in the lobby for snacks and whatnot, but we ended up forgoing anything but the drink we grabbed before it started simply because neither of us wanted to get up to miss a single moment!
Unfortunately, I don’t really have any pictures because they ask for no photography during the show, so all I can recommend is that if you’ve considered it, you really should make plans to splurge and give it a try someday. Yes, it is very expensive! Honestly, the two tickets that I bought for us total came to slightly more than our hotel room for the night, and those weren’t even the best seats you could buy (close though – we were almost in the front of their “Category 1″ section, just off the right side of the stage). It’s certainly one of those things that you won’t do every time that you visit, but man, are you in for a show when you do! 
Early to Bed, Early to Rise
Well, sort of – knowing that we had to be out fairly early (at least by my standards) to drive back to Tampa for her graduation the next day, we headed back to the resort after the show (and after a quick stop for candy!), and ended up just spending a short while kicking around one of the quiet pools near our room before officially calling it a night. The next day we grabbed a quick breakfast at The Artist’s Palette on our way out, and that was that. It definitely would’ve been nice to have a little more time to stick around and explore the rest of the resort – we walked past their feature pool on the way to breakfast and it definitely looked pretty sweet, but I have a feeling that we’ll be back around these parts again someday. The location right across from Downtown Disney is just too much to beat, especially if you’re not planning on visiting the parks, and we’d still like to get a look at those new tree houses that they put in a year or two ago!
But for now, one anniversary officially under our belt, we had a graduation ceremony to go celebrate and shortly thereafter, a cruise ship to catch… 
