We were scheduled to stay at Big Cedar Lodge for a week. But after three nights and two days, we decided to leave. Why? Well it wasn’t just one thing but a collection.
It had been over a year since our last vacation (to Fairfield Bay, Arkansas). We bought some fractional ownerships (timeshares) about ten years ago to force ourselves to take vacations every year–if left to our own self-employed devices, we likely would have just worked straight through the decade. And it’s worked, for the most part, although now that the boys are in their late teens, it became harder to schedule time with them as they have school activities (band camp or cross country practice) in the summers and they have jobs now. This year, we booked early in the year and early in the summer a quick trip down to Big Cedar Lodge. The resorts in Branson (and Big Cedar) have been our fallbacks when we cancelled Miami trips a couple of years, but we might have to narrow that to Branson proper.
Big Cedar Lodge, and the Wilderness Club at Big Cedar Lodge (our fractional ownership company adjoins the official Big Cedar Lodge and offers some of the same amenities and access, but not all) are outdoor destinations. They have access to Table Rock Lake, some woody and hilly paths to explore, and a couple of restaurants and amusements on site, but they’re located fifteen rural minutes outside of Hollister and probably thirty outside of Branson proper.
My oldest has taken up fishing. I’m not sure how or why, as we’ve only gone fishing a couple of times as I’m not a default fisherman. Perhaps if I lived on water, but no. Perhaps one of his friends took him and he cottoned to it. But he’s been watching YouTube videos on fishing and has bought a lot of gear. He’s had some better luck, catching some small fish at Lake Springfield, where he has gone almost daily for weeks. So he was looking forward to fishing on Table Rock Lake.
Me, I was looking forward to reading during the day. Frankly, that’s what I get on vacation: permission to read books during daylight hours. At home, I only read books in the evenings when chores and work are done. But on vacation, I will take one or two books out on the balcony or deck with a glass of tea or wine and look out, preferably over water, before settling in. Big Cedar is generally good for that.
I thought, additionally, we would get out on the lake with the free kayaks or canoes we could get. We would go into Branson to visit thrift stores (Calvin’s Books, RIP, you are not forgotten) and maybe catch a matinee show. Maybe walk down to the coffee shop, go to Fun Mountain which features go carts, a bowling alley, and an arcade. But mostly just walk around, swim in the pools or float on the lazy river, and read during the day.
However, we left early.
Why?
Our unit was on the ground floor. Well, not exactly: The lowest level of the lodges lies below grade at the front and at grade at the back, so it’s like staying in a walkout basement. Our unit faced a line of mature trees about twenty feet away which were hiding one of the main roads through the resort. So its view was less than looking out my back door.
And it rained. A cold and steady rain–highs were in the low 60s–pretty much from Sunday afternoon to our departure on Tuesday morning. And it’s been raining off and on since back at home.
Also, one of the contracts I’m currently on required me to work a couple hours each day. So it was a little less like vacation and more like working remotelier.
And the Internet was not very fast; I was running into errors in the test suite due to slow Internet speeds that I don’t normally see. My beautiful wife and I were using our phone hotspots, and the boys tried the resort wi-fi which did not support playing games very well. I had a couple meetings scheduled to take during the week, and I did not expect the Internet speeds to handle video and/or screensharing.
Also: The lights in the unit were not conducive to reading. Most of the little table lamps have 40 or 60 watt bulbs, and these had fixed shades that would not move to direct more of the dim light at the edge of the sofa. I pulled a chair to the exterior doors to get some reading in, but I only read two books out of the fifteen or twenty I brought.
The boy(s) went fishing several times in the rain but had no luck even though they traveled to various Walmarts and Dollars General in Missouri and over the Arkansas line looking for Pokémon, new lures, and junk food. The oldest wears his heart on his sleeve, and he was very loud in proclaiming how he was going to just go home right now. And in his frustration, he sniped at his younger brother a lot.
I took a couple of walks in the rain myself, going to the coffee shop on property to finish a poem. The youngest and I walked down early on Tuesday as well when he got up fairly early. However, the trips to the coffee shop cost about $35 each; I got a cup of coffee, a sandwich, and some chili; he and I got drinks and cinnamon rolls. Big Cedar amenities are priced for the weller-to-do.
Each unit comes with a small but complete kitchen and a washer and dryer–I often joke that one of the things I like to do on vacation is laundry. But! The dryer, it turns out, was not working. It was good for one load, but then it would not dry clothing. The drum was tumbling, and it was getting hot, so it was probably a venting problem. We called on Monday, and a Dave came and swapped out the venting hose and cleaned some wet lint from the dryer itself. So we started laundry again, and…. the first load dried, but the second did not. So we called again on Monday night, and another Dave came, cleared the hose and some lint from the unit, and called it a day. So it dried one load, the load it hadn’t dried, and it did not dry the load which had been in the washer.
Ah, gentle reader, we just went through our semi-annual laundry failure at home when our washing machine leaked from the bottom seal. And the Internet-provided appliance repairman said you cannot buy a seal by itself and had to buy a complete new motor, transmission, and seal for $700. Get the fuck out of here, man. So we just bought a new Speed Queen washer at home, and laundry hassles are one thing we’re trying to get away from on vacation. We had penciled in Tuesday for our run into Branson, but that would have been scotched anyway since we would have to wait for another Dave to come to tell him it’s not just the flexible venting hose. So we decamped.
So what did we do whilst there?
Well, on Sunday, we got the “owner’s update” which is a sales pitch to buy more. A decade ago, we bought a large set of “points” from Bluegreen which has a lot of resorts in the middle of the country and a smaller package from Hilton Garden Vacations which has resorts on the coasts. In our decade of ownership, Bluegreen has gone through 4 different ownership structures, and the latest is that HGV bought Bluegreen and is trying to get current Bluegreen owners to “buy more” and to move their existing ownerships into HGV assets. The sales guy mentioned that HGV bought Bluegreen mostly for its premium properties like that at Big Cedar, so in my cynical nature, I expect HGV to skim the high-rolling owners and the premium properties and to spin off the rest some time in the future. So we’ll wait and see before we decide what to do with our ownerships.
But they gave us a sizeable gift card for showing up for the pitch. Mrs. Noggle thought it would be good for a dinner and a couple of activities at the resort, but Mr. Noggle had been to the coffeeshop and understood that it probably tracked with a meal at one of the nicer restaurants on property. And so it did.
We also tried out an “activity” on the calendar on Sunday night. It was a family fun bowling tournament, basically a crazy bowl with prizes. The event info says:
Sign up today to take part in the third annual Fun Mountain Memorial Bowling Tournament! This is not just a normal bowling tournament, you’ll have 10 frames of bowling in which each frame will be a new challenge such as granny style bowling, opposite hand bowling and backwards bowling. Each participant will receive a prize and a Fun Mountain game card.
Well: We did pretty well; our trio (Mrs. Noggle did not participate) scored in the 60s and 80s. We did comparably well–better than the trio next to us anyway–but the scoring rules were never explained. When we finished (after a twenty minute gap due to equipment problems), we were given our game cards to use while waiting for everyone to finish up. So we went into the arcade to discover our game cards had no balance on them. They were empty cards for us to put a balance on. And when we went back to wait for the results, the Caribbean guest worker who gave us the empty cards told us we didn’t win and should leave. Our prize to go with the empty gift cards? A store-boughten cookie.
So:
- Rain
- Poor light for reading
- Bad Internet
- Problems with appliances
- Activities and restaurants on site were expensive and underwhelming
So we left in the middle of our booked time, abandoning essentially a couple hundred dollars’ worth of lodging. Which is easier when it’s just “points” for which we’re paying thousands in annual maintenance fees. Sadly, the gap between payment and use (or abandonment) makes it seem like less, but I see friends traveling to Europe for vacation, and I think could we afford that without our fractional ownerships? This whole experience has made me question their utility for sure.
Could we have stayed? I suppose. It would have been easier with just my wife and me as the boys still want us to entertain them.
But now that we’re home, I can do my work and have my meetings with my regular office setup. We’re trying to do some “vacationy” things (when the rain stops), but it’s pretty much like normal days.
Man, this is a long brain dump cri de coeur (to mix body part metaphors). Have I learned anything? Probably not to book longer than a weekend at Big Cedar at a time. Familiarity breeds boredom. As with our trip to Fairfield Bay, we should not book vacations that are outdoor-themed or at outdoor-centric resorts because aside from walking a bit, we’re not especially outdoors people.
We have a couple of shorter trips coming up later in the year which I will probably enjoy more. And I will remember, maybe, fishing with the boys briefly when we had trouble setting up the boy’s long catfish rig for me to use, or…. Well, that’s probably it. Good enough.
