In October of 2021, Jennifer and I went on (another) vacation. This time it was two weeks in length and we had a phenomenal time. Our trip started from our island of Maui and we flew to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. As a reminder, traveling from Maui to anywhere on the east coast is a rather involved process. We had to have three legs with our final leg from Washington-Dulles to Punta Cana. When we got to Punta Cana, whether by sheer luck, timing, or Covid, getting through Customs wasn’t too painful and shortly thereafter we were on our way to the resort.
Punta Cana, DOM (week one)
We stayed at a place called Paradisus Grand Cana (Circle), another Melia property. Our original reservation was at Paradisus Palma Real. Of the two, Palma Real had a much more gorgeous area as well as being right by the ocean. Grand Cana was set back a bit and there were continuous golf carts that could take you down to the beach or any of the other Paradisus properties (there were a few in the immediate area). We did a lot of lounging around and reading… In sum, I read about 7 different books on our two-week vacation… I hadn’t read 7 books in probably the year previous! The property was still nice and modern at Circle and the staff were all friendly. We had to spend a few hours with the Melia salesmen on Wednesday morning and we ended up upgrading our vacation package to their new vacation package, Circle. The equity Jennifer had in her original package helped cover a large percentage of the cost of the package. There were several restaurants on the property and they were close together. Whether due to Covid, again, or just lower numbers, not all of the restaurants were open every night so we rotated through them on a schedule. As far as activities were concerned, we didn’t do much after dinner. Most of the activities for the evening were more “nightlife” oriented which isn’t quite our scene. There was one night where some performers were there and they were fun to watch. Below are some pictures from our stay at Paradisus Grand Cana in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
Florida (week two)
We left the Dominican on Sunday late afternoon, leaving our resort after one, and arrived in Florida about 7pm. It took us about an hour and a half to get through customs and pick up our rental car. We had realized we’d forgotten our Magic Bands for Disney, so we went to Disney Springs to pick up some new ones (we ended up with some neat Halloween limited edition ones because why not?). From Disney Springs we made it back towards our hotel to check in. We opted to stay at Dockside, a Universal resort, primarily because Jennifer’s friend SH was staying there as well as because we wanted the early hours to Universal. We were checked in and in our room a bit before midnight on Sunday.
The next morning, Monday, we went to Magic Kingdom to start the fun! We were at the park from open til close and, as usual, we had a great time. For dinner we had reservations at the Crystal Palace and then found us a spot to stand for the show which was changed for Disney’s 50th Anniversary. A few pictures from Magic Kingdom.
On Tuesday we went to Universal FL with SH and family. We started on Universal side and worked our way over to Islands of Adventure. Of course in Harry Potter land we had ourselves a butter beer which was oh-so-delightful. We left the park at closing time and had dinner at the NBC Grill there on Citywalk. To fast forward, we returned to Universal on Friday, this time without SH and family, and spent another day in the park. This time the difference was we didn’t leave at closing time… we stayed in the park for Halloween Horror Nights! HHN was fantastic and we really had fun. My parents had spent the week to the east in Daytona, so they’d extended a couple days and come over to Orlando and did HHN with us. We walked through 6 of the 10 Haunted Houses, walked through the scare zones, and saw both of the shows that were playing that night. The first was a bit BDSMish, still good, but def on the edge. The second was a water laser show that was pretty cool to see as well.
Pictures from Universal and Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, FL in Oct 2021 —
Wednesday was a relaxing day… we spent the morning around the pool at the resort. Jennifer and I opted to go to K1 Speed and do a 3-set of go-kart races. Wednesday evening we went with SH and family to Top Golf. We had never been to Top Golf before, and we don’t play golf, but it was incredibly fun.
Thursday we went to Legoland. There was plenty of cool things to see. As far as attraction rides… there wasn’t so much for adults. There was, but not so phenomenal. That said, we still had a good time. Legoland was a nice low-impact half-day. Unfortunately, their version of the world showcase was under construction, so we missed out on that section of the park. Pictures from Legoland —
On Saturday we went to Epcot with my parents. They picked us up from the resort and we had Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Really, you can’t go down south and not have Cracker Barrel (complete with Coca-Cola Cake). It was nice to spend some time with my family for a bit. We did a counter-clockwise tour of the World Showcase since we had a group assigned for the new Remy Ratatouille ride in Italy. We did dinner at the Nine Dragons in China and hung out for the evening show.
Unfortunately, travel to-fro Hawaii is a time investment and we had to leave early morning on Sunday and arrived back home late evening the same day. We were glad to see our animals and they were generally glad to see us, too. We had a great trip and two weeks is definitely the way to go for vacations (though not reasonable for every trip).