[DisneyTeacher]

Cast:

Me--The sole planner of part one and co-planner of part two of this trip
Mike--my husband, my go with the flow guy
Nathan—my 7 year old son, lover of the WEDWay

Judy—my mother-in-law, the greatest MIL in the world
Jerry—my father-in-law, the nicest guy I have ever met

Paula—long time friend of mine
Kent—college buddy of my DH and husband to Paula
Ben—17 years old
Sydney—11 years old
Lauren—5 years old (girlfriend of Nathan but don't tell anyone-it's a secret)

This trip is two parts. The first half of the trip was with my in-laws and later in the trip we met up with our friends. Keep in mind that our trip was 2 weeks long so we were not trying to cram a lot in each day. We wanted to do some things we hadn’t tried before and focus less on hard park touring.

[Laneysdad]

::: Pops popcorn changes into comfy clothing and hunkers down for a darn good TR :::
::: Fears anything less than a spectacular TR could devestate me and put me in hiding :::

[DisneyTeacher]

Originally Posted by Laneysdad

::: Pops popcorn changes into comfy clothing and hunkers down for a darn good TR :::
::: Fears anything less than a spectacular TR could devestate me and put me in hiding :::

That's a lot of pressure, I hope I can live up to your high expectations.

This took me a little longer to get started than I thought. I came home so tired and then Nathan woke up throwing up this morning. He can't seem to get to the bathroom in time so I have been cleaning carpets, couches, and bathroom floors all day.

[Princessbaby]

WOW-what a cast! Can't wait for the details!

[tigger]

Originally Posted by Laneysdad

::: Pops popcorn changes into comfy clothing and hunkers down for a darn good TR :::
::: Fears anything less than a spectacular TR could devestate me and put me in hiding :::

This is exactly why I will never go to WDW

Oh the pressure...I would need a trip just to recoup from the TR.

[DisneyTeacher]

Day one

I had to do all the running around this morning since my DH had to give a final exam in his two summer classes before we could leave. I took the dog to the vet. It was so much harder than I thought it would be, I cried all the way home. Jake is old and not doing well and I knew he may not make it two more weeks. I had to have “The” talk with the vet before I left—so sad. My DH surprised me by getting home an hour earlier than he expected so we had time to get grab Nathan a final happy meal before we left town. The roofers were finishing up so Mike went out and paid them *cough, choke* and we were off to the airport.

I really have learned to hate flying. I used to love it but now I have grown to fear it more than I realized. When I booked the flights it didn’t sound too bad but during the last week my anxiety has grown. I ended up not getting much sleep the night before because my mind kept racing. By the time we left for the airport I was sure we weren’t going to make it to Florida. I think I was pretty good at hiding my fear from my son because he was pretty excited about getting on the plane.

We were really early getting to the airport but not as early as my in-laws. We never know how traffic is going to be getting the airport, I-70 can really back up and we knew there was road construction along the way. My DFIL talked to the people at the ticket counter and he was told we couldn’t get on an earlier flight since we had DING! tickets that cost much less than full fare. We had some lunch at Burger King and headed to our gate. Once at the gate we decided to give it one more try to get on the earlier flight. This SWA agent acted like it was no big deal; he put us on stand by for the earlier flight since the flight was full. In the end we ended up on our original flight, it turns out the earlier flight was delayed and left about 40 minutes after our flight.

I decided to make the first move and got my family in line first. We had A boarding passes so we were the first family to board the plane after the one pre-boarding family. We had a great flight, it was a smooth as could be and we were in Orlando in 2 hours. Nathan and I played Uno for about an hour and I read a little while Nathan played. We got off the plane and easily found the people with the large white Mickey hands. They directed us to the ME desk and we were checked in in less than 2 minutes. We headed over to get in line for our resort. There was only one other family in line way down on the other end of the room at the time. A very nice CM named Albell came over and talked to us while we waited for our resort bus. She and Nathan had fun talking about hidden Mickeys around WDW. She told him he would have to look for the hidden Mickey in the fire place at WL.

After waiting about 10 minutes we were directed to a bus going to WL and GF. Once on the bus we waited about 10 minutes before we headed to WDW. It felt like forever to me since I had an AP to activate by 11 pm. We had one other person on our bus and she was going to the GF. We were the first stop. Yea! We were at our resort about 1 hour and 15 minutes after touching down. That includes getting off the plane, using the restroom, checking in at the DME counter, waiting for the bus, waiting on the bus, and the ½ hour trip to WDW. Not too bad for free.

[Laneysdad]

Originally Posted by DisneyTeacher

This took me a little longer to get started than I thought. I came home so tired and then Nathan woke up throwing up this morning. He can't seem to get to the bathroom in time so I have been cleaning carpets, couches, and bathroom floors all day.

Poor guy. I had the same problem as a boy. Now after a wild party I just use the neighbors lawn. They really appreciate it. Hope he gets to feeling well soon.

[DisneyTeacher]

Check in at Wilderness Lodge was easy, no one else was in line so we walked right up. The guy who checked us in was nice but told me we couldn’t have 2 different credit cards on our 2 different rooms since they were booked on the same reservation. I explained to him that we have booked two rooms in the past and have used two different credit cards for each room. He said impossible and only took my credit card for both rooms. I asked him if he could get us our tickets while he was checking us in, sure no problem--until I told him I didn’t have the conformation number handy. He said I would have to go to Guest Services to get them, I think he just didn’t want to bother to look them up. Darn, I still need to get to MK to get my AP activated.

We get our room numbers and head off to check them out. We were on the first floor in rooms 1138 and 1136. By now it was dark but I could see we were looking out at Wilderness Lodge Villas. I was okay since I booked a woods view for this night to see what it was like. We threw out carry on bags down, left Nathan with his grandparents to hit the arcade and grab some dinner while we went to the MK to activate my AP.

We waited a few minutes for a boat but had to go Fort Wilderness first. I was going crazy with nerves because I had to get that AP activated before our 8:15 breakfast in the castle on a non-early entry day. I had to start laughing, we got behind the Electrical Water Pageant on our way to the MK. It seemed to take forever to get there but we were finally there. It took all of 2 minutes to activate my AP, why this can’t be done at the resorts I’ll never understand. While we were there I asked about the other 4 tickets I ordered. I still didn’t have the conformation number but using my home phone number he found them in about 30 seconds and printed them in no time.

With tickets in hand I finally had a few minutes to look around. The Magic Kingdom was mobbed! It was Extra Magic Hours and the entrance was PACKED! I couldn’t believe how many people were going in the MK at 10 pm.

I resisted the urge to go in the MK and look around. My DH didn’t get an AP and it would be a waste to use a day on his 10 day MYW ticket to go in for an hour or so. Man, I miss the old length of stay pass when I didn’t have to worry about using a day on a ticket to go in a park for a few minutes.

We headed back to the WL to meet up with everyone else. They were in Roaring Forks eating a hamburger for a late dinner. I love having cell phone at WDW, it makes it so easy to meet up with people after splitting up. We missed the grill by 2 minutes so I grabbed a turkey sandwich and Mike got some fruit.

We then went out to the lobby to look around. Nathan and grandpa had been looking for the hidden Mickey Albell told him about while we were waiting for our ME bus at the airport. I finally went over to the check in desk and asked the CM for a list of hidden Mickeys at the WL. Well, the list was more of a hunt with clues, not much help at 10:30 at night when I want to get my son to bed. I asked her for a hint as to where to look for the hidden Mickey, she then walked me over and personally pointed it out for us. Everyone saw it but ME! I couldn’t see it to save my life. Elizabeth was wonderful, she kept trying to get me to see it but I just couldn’t. I could tell she was going to stay there until I saw it so I lied and said I saw it but I didn’t. She finally left and went back to the front desk and my family tried for about 10 minutes to point it out, I just couldn’t see it. Even my DFIL with poor vision saw it. I am the Disney fan and I couldn’t see it—what a failure. I finally gave up and walked away.

We got to our rooms and our luggage was in our rooms waiting for us. I don’t know how long it took to get there but it was less than 2 hours after we got our rooms. We set our wake up call and went to bed to get ready for our big day at the MK.

[DisneyTeacher]

Day 2

We woke up early so we could check in again and get to the MK by 8 for our breakfast at CRT. We had the best CM who checked us in for the rest of our trip. Jackie was wonderful and so accommodating. She said it was very possible to have two credit cards on file, one for each room. She went in back and came back a few minutes later and said it all set. Funny, the CM the night before said it was impossible. We talked for a few minutes while Jackie finished things up. She said it was her job to make us totally happy with our stay, no matter how much work it was for her. She was a little unhappy and apologized several times for our CM the night before who wouldn’t take the time to split the reservation so we could have different accounts for the two rooms. She got us all set with our new reservation in about 10 minutes. When I asked for a card with the phone number to call for our new room number she was a little confused for a second then said we were staying in the same rooms. My turn to be confused for a second. We had a woods view booked for our first night and a courtyard view for the rest of our stay. She said we had been upgraded the night before and already had a courtyard view. I had read that there were two different courtyard views and one was of the Villas, I guess that’s what we had. Right away Jackie offered to change our rooms to an inner courtyard view. Once again she went in a back office back for a few minutes to make the changes. She came back out with new rooms for us with an inner courtyard view. The trade off was we no longer had connecting rooms. We decided to give up the connecting rooms and move to an inner courtyard view.

We waited a few minutes for Bell Services to come pick up our luggage before we headed out to the dock. At that early hour the only boat running was the small boat to the Contemporary Resort so we got on that and walked to the Magic Kingdom. We were there in plenty of time for our 8:15 breakfast at CRT. We had a wonderful walk up Main Street, there were so few people walking up with us once we passed Crystal Palace. It was so magical. Breakfast was wonderful and Nathan didn’t mind meeting all the princesses, he actually had fun and never once said it was too girl-ish. My DMIL finally got to see the inside of the castle so she was happy. The food was so good, I liked it all, my DS on the other hand didn’t eat a thing.

[Peppertink]

Great TR so far! But...I am confused. Why did you have to check in more than once???

[DisneyTeacher]

Here is a picture of the castle on our way up Main Street.

[DisneyTeacher]

We saw a private photo session with captain hook and a little boy dressed like captain hook as were were walking to the castle.

[Peppertink]

Wow! You weren't kidding...what a great way to experience Main St.....with hardly anyone else there. Did you get a picture of your family in front of the castle without anyone else around??

[daisyd]

Great TR so far DT! Looking at that picture of the castle and Main Street, and having just returned from Disneyland, I can't get over how BIG it looks, lol. I just can't wait to go!!!

Laneysdad--will you pass the popcorn please? I'll share my JR Mints if you do.

[DisneyTeacher]

Originally Posted by Peppertink

Great TR so far! But...I am confused. Why did you have to check in more than once???

When we decided to fly I added a night at All Star Music then chickened out and moved that night over to WL with the rest of our stay. I made a new reservation for one night only so I didn't have to change my AP rate for the 6 night stay and to save a few bucks I booked a cheaper woods view.