Mike and I celebrated 7 years married this year, and we checked a big item off our bucket list to celebrate. We have now visited every Disney resort after staying at Disney's Vero Beach Resort. We also checked off some other bucket list items but I will get to that later.
Vero Beach is just a two hour drive from Orlando on the East coast of Florida. We stayed 2 nights but arrived early on our first day. Our room was ready by noon to check in, and we are pretty sure they upgraded us. We had a cute little balcony and pool view, and if you squinted real hard, you could almost see the beach.
The accommodation was really lovely, complete with a kitchenette, bathtub, and an additional pull down murphy bed.
and look at the cute room keys!
This resort is a true r&r resort. There is not much in the area and the activities at the resort consist of either lounging at the pool or going to the beach. It helps that the beach is right on property, and only a short little walk from your room.
There were showers and hoses to rinse all the sand off you. This made is easy to bounce back over to the pool and read your book, hop in the hot tub, or ride the slide.
There are 2 food options on site. The first is the grab and go place called
Wind and Waves Market, where you can find breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but they are faster options like corn dog nuggets, Mickey pretzels, churros, chicken fingers, burgers, etc. Breakfast was eggs, cinnamon rolls, bacon/sausage, hash browns, etc.
They also had a key lime dole whip, topped with graham crackers. This was very tasty, but in my opinion needed to be mixed with vanilla or its a little tart.
The other restaurant on property is
Wind and Waves Grill, where you can find more upscale dining for breakfast and dinner. We tried delicious dishes like shrimp and grits, a low country burger, a ricotta and pepper wood fire pizza, and for breakfast, Mickey key lime stuffed waffles and a loco moco.
As far as resort activities, there was a handful of things going on. There was usually trivia happening at the pool, one night there was a campfire with s'mores included, which was fun.
There was an ongoing hunt for Tinkerbell, and if you find her, you get a little button prize. She would move on the daily, and we actually only found her once.
The resort also had a mini golf course, which was Peter Pan themed. I got a hole in one on the first course...and that's all you need to know.
The natives were also wanting to play mini golf with us.
Our favorite event though was the pop up surprise meet and greet with Goofy and free ice cream!
The resort also had a little underground tunnel you could take to the park across the street. We did the little adventure walk, but it was so hot and we were being attacked by bugs that we kept it pretty short. The sports courts are also located over here, with pickleball and basketball to play at your leisure.
This area is infamous for a really annoying type of biting bug called no-seeums, which is like a tiny gnat that leaves a big, itchy impact. The resort had lotion to use to protect yourself from them, and we did really well not getting bit until the last day.
The main reason people come to Vero Beach is to see the sea turtles. April through October is sea turtle season, where usually through July the sea turtles will come on to the beach and nest and lay their eggs. August is usually the time you start to see the hatchlings making their way to the beach if you're lucky. We visited with the Disney Conservation team member on site to hear her speak about the sea turtles and ask some questions.
She was extremely helpful and taught us a lot of info on how to try our best to see these guys. Mike and I spent almost the whole night scouring up and down the beaches marked off nests watching for any signs of a nest boil, and sadly we never saw one.
We saw little tracks and big tracks telling us that sea turtle life had been there, but no actual sea turtles.
We saw abandoned sea turtle eggs that had told us there had been a hatching, but again, no actual sea turtles.
We watched the sun go up and the sun come down every single time in hopes of life, but again, no sea turtles.
We did however, get to see some other cool things, like a rocket launch we didn't know was about to happen-
And at one point I thought the sky was on fire because the moon was rising and looked so crazy!
and we saw so many shooting stars! I guess all that wishing on stars finally worked though because our last night around midnight, a mama turtle made her way up the beach to nest. We kept our distance to let her do her thing, so it was quite hard to see on a dark, dark beach, but it was still amazing. (photo below she is that dark spot on the sand)
Our last morning, after almost no sleep, the Disney Conservation team member was making her rounds. There was a nest we had camped out near that had hatched 3 days ago, and she was planning to open up and make sure no stragglers were left behind. We didn't have a lot of hope since there had been so many tracks the days before, leaving us to believe it was empty, but to our surprise, she found 2 alive, baby hatchlings who hadn't made their way out yet, and helped them back home to the ocean.
We named these guys Vero and Pip and if they were not the cutest thing I had ever seen!!
It's been on my bucket list a long time to watch baby turtles released back into the ocean, so this was a pretty emotional moment.
This was such a top tier experience, I could not even put into words what this meant to me.
Bye little guys! We wish you luck!!
This will be a hard one to top, but I feel like because of it, we can say one day we will be back Vero Beach Resort!
We did spend a little time in Vero Beach town area itself and I would totally recommend going to
A Kitchen of Her Own Bakery.
We took a little walk by the water and just enjoyed each others company.
The
Twisted Pickle Deli also was super cute, we had the cubano with guava jam and it was a delight.
Thanks for the memories Vero Beach, you were cute.
Back to Orlando, before our trip Mike's family was in town for their annual Summer visit. It was a busy few weeks with lots of park time.
We stayed at Fort Wilderness with them a few days and they came and stayed at our house for a few days.
Some of the highlights was doing family style dining at Garden Grill at Epcot!
Another highlight was Mike won a cast lotte
ry for the dessert party at Fantasmic!Complete with a passion fruit Maleficent cream puff, a cookies and cream steamboat Mickey macaroon, and a fruity star mousse, and all the Mickey ice cream bars you can eat.
We even ran into my old chipmonk buddy Ali, and that was just the icing on the cake!
One of my favorite nights was a late Magic Kingdom evening to see the new Starlight parade and fireworks.
It was almost as cool as when I went back a week later and for a film shoot for my new job with Disney. I have technically been in this job for months now, but I say new cause I am seasonal and rarely there.
Bethany recently celebrated a big birthday, and in to celebrate her, we went to the new Cirque show at Disney Springs, Drawn to Life! The story was absolutely beautiful, and I loved the Disney elements. There was so much magic and amazing talented performers.
The main reason people come to Vero Beach is to see the sea turtles. April through October is sea turtle season, where usually through July the sea turtles will come on to the beach and nest and lay their eggs. August is usually the time you start to see the hatchlings making their way to the beach if you're lucky. We visited with the Disney Conservation team member on site to hear her speak about the sea turtles and ask some questions. 
We watched the sun go up and the sun come down every single time in hopes of life, but again, no sea turtles. 
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