Our 2011 August Adventures at Disney World

[LuvDisney]

Well our trip finally arrived. This will probably be a fairly quick trip report with a minimum amount of pictures. My husband is the picture taker and I just don’t think he was into this trip. This trip was definitely different from our last trips, but I will elaborate on that later on.

Just to recap:

Friday, August 19th – Sunday, August 28th

Cast of Characters: Me (Gail) 39 – Loves everything Disney
DH (Marc) 41 – Kinda Likes Disney but won’t admit it
DD (Haillie) 12 – Shares Mom’s Obsession
Dad (Paul) 70 – My Dad, Loves Disney, hasn’t been since 2008, when he and my Mom had to cut their trip short and come home because my Mom’s mother passed away. They never had the opportunity to go back because my Mom’s health declined. Mom passed away in 2010 so we thought it would be nice to invite Dad to come with us for this trip. He is excited to be going back.

Tuesday, August 16th

Let’s start three days before we are supposed to leave. I wake up and feel fine. Take a shower to get ready for work, still fine. While getting my lunch together I bent down to get my lunch box and I feel a sharp pain in my upper leg, lower butt check (sorry TMI). Think well maybe I just slept wrong or something. Thought nothing of it. Well all day, I could barely walk and getting in and out of my chair at work was torture. I’m thinking “REALLY?? Are you kidding me?? I am leaving for Disney in three days; I have to be able to walk!” So as the day went on and I moved more, it seemed to be feeling a bit better. So I figured I had just pulled something and the more I used it the better it would be. Slept fine that night, wasn’t in enough pain to keep me awake. So I figured that was a good sign.

The past couple of days I had been putting everything together to get ready to pack. That evening, when we pulled out suitcases, 2 large and 1 medium, we discovered that one of the suitcases was broken. Of course the broken one was mine! We only own 2 large suitcases. So now what do we do?? Our other suitcases are fairly small. I called my dad to ask if he had a large suitcase that I could use. We measure the broken one and he measures his. They appear to be about the same size. Asked him to bring it down with him. In the mean time, my MIL offers me her suitcase to use. Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but if you knew my MIL you would know that everything she buys was expensive. She doesn’t go cheap on anything. So I was a little leery about borrowing her suitcase. The last time I borrowed one of her TSA luggage locks, I lost it!! (Well, I lost it for a year. I found it in one of the suitcases when packing for this trip. LOL) So I told her that my dad was bringing one and if it worked I would just use his.

Wednesday, August 17th

Woke up and my leg/butt felt much better. Little bit of pain when I did certain things but nothing like the day before. Figured I was in the clear. Worked my normal day.

My dad came down today so he could be there for my daughter when she got off the school bus since my in-laws had to be somewhere that afternoon.

He brought the suitcase down with him. NOT even close to the size of my original suitcase. In fact it was barely as big as Haillie’s suitcase. I of course knew that there was no way everything would fit in there. So I reluctantly went over to my MIL’s and asked to see hers. We climbed up into her attic and took the suitcase out. While we were up there, I was moving stuff around for her so she wouldn’t have to and the pain in my leg/butt came back FULL FORCE! OMG! I thought I wouldn’t be able to climb out of the attic. I struggled my way down the attic stairs and went back to the spare room to continue getting everything ready. Grimacing in pain the whole time. Well my MIL’s suitcase was nice size wise, but the thing weighed 16 pounds! So I was already behind the eight ball when it came to the 50 pound weight limit for my bag. And when you are packing for 10 days, you need all the weight allowance you can get! At this point I was so uncomfortable I just decided to leave everything there and went to sit on the couch for the evening. I just kept thinking how miserable I would be at Disney with my leg/butt feeling like that. I just wanted to cry.

Thursday, August 18th

Woke up and my leg felt a bit better. I assumed that I would be dealing with it feeling better, doing something and it feeling worse and I assumed that cycle would continue the entire vacation.

We went to work and I wanted to leave early so I could be sure that everything was done and ready since we had to leave the house before 5:00am in the morning. We ended up leaving around 1:00pm which was fine. Gave me the extra time I needed. While at work, I remembered that we had another medium/large suitcase in the attic. It was older, but I was hoping it was bigger than my dad’s and not as heavy as my MIL’s. When we got home I gingerly went into the attic and it was there. It was a bit bigger than my dad’s and half the weight of my MIL’s, so I opted to use that one. I put all my clothes in the suitcase and surveyed everything to make sure we had everything. Everything looked good and we were in good shape. Off to bed early for a 3:45am alarm in the morning!

[Grumpy]

looking forward to reading more

[LuvDisney]

Friday, August 19th

Forgot to mention that I checked in with Southwest 24 hours before our flight and got all A boarding passes. Which turned out to be all for nothing, which you will read about soon.

I actually got some sleep that night. Alarm went off bright and early at 3:45am. (My leg/butt was barely hurting so I was hoping that was a good sign and I wouldn’t be in pain the whole time.) It only takes me about ½ hour to get ready but I like to be up and out of the bathroom so everyone else can use it. DH needed to shower and Haillie needed to get ready as well as my Dad. I got out of the shower, got dressed and woke Haillie up at about 4:00am. Made sure that my Dad way awake – he was already! Finished up in the bathroom and made sure DH was up. We all finished up and packed last minute things (curling iron, medications, etc). My husbands’ step father was driving us to the airport. He is not a morning person and I’m shocked he even said yes. LOL But he was up and we were ready to go and headed out at about 4:50am.

The airport is less than ½ hour from our house so it’s really nice. We got to the airport at just about 5:20am for our 6:40am flight. Now usually at Manchester Airport, this is more than enough time to check-in, and get through security. Well for some strange reason, there were tons of people at curbside check-in, which is usually empty. So I quickly glanced inside to see if maybe everyone just decided to stay outside instead of going in to check-in. NOPE – twice as many people in there! So we elected to stand in the curb side check – in line and hope for the best. While waiting in line, our friends happened to show up and were in line right behind us (for the same flight). So we kept ourselves amused in line and finally got to the podium. I don’t recall how long it took. 25 minutes maybe. We check in, hand over our luggage and head to security. Again, what’s with all the lines?? Manchester is usually a breeze and this morning it was crazy. So we waited in the security line for a bit. Didn’t take too long. Then the trouble started. My husband had a backpack which contained his GPS, Camera and Portable DVD player. He put it on the belt. They stopped it. Asked who it belonged to. They made him take everything out and they put everything through the machine separately. Then they swabbed everything. They kept him there for like 20 minutes. Finally they let him go with his backpack and all its belongings. He now had to jam everything back in the backpack since it barely fit and he had to put everything in like a puzzle. As he was finishing up I looked at my watch. It was 6:30am. Our flight was at 6:40am!! I hear over the PA system that all checked passengers for flight “whatever # it was” need to board immediately or we will sell your seats to standby passengers!! OMG! That’s us. Luckily, the gate was right next to the security area so we rush over. We are pretty much the last people to board so my fast fingers for A boarding passes yesterday was for nothing. LOL Our friends were our saviors. They actually saved us seats with them. I know that’s a no-no on Southwest but I was greatful. Haillie sat with the mom and daughter, Marc and my dad sat with the husband and I sat by myself in an aisle seat but we were in the middle of the plane and together. Then, after all of that rushing, the flight was delayed by an hour because the landing gear light wouldn’t turn off!!!!! They kept us on the plane because maintenance was on the way. It was a good hour before they had it fixed and then we were on our way.

They actually made good time going down. The flight was supposed to land at 9:50am. Even taking off an hour late we landed at about 10:15. So they made up quite a bit of time.

We are at Disney World! Ok, not yet, still at the airport.

I send my husband down to get the rental car since usually it takes forever in the Alamo line. My dad, Haillie and myself head to get the baggage. Ok, not sure how this happened, but when we get there the belt is stopped with luggage on it. We are figuring it is from a different flight. I walk over and look, hey that’s my suitcase. I look more, and there are the rest. It was weird how fast everything came out. I mean we didn’t rush down there, but we weren’t THAT slow. We used the restrooms and walked down. Ah well – worked out perfect.

So we grab the bags and met up with my husband who was in the Alamo line with maybe 4 people in front of him. We get to the counter, go through the basis and she gives us our contract to sign. I checked the rate, went down $10! So our car was now only $170 for the 10 days. Sweet surprise.

Now I’m not picky or anything, but when you book a “full size” car from a rental car company you really don’t expect to be picking from Camrys’ and cars of that similar size. I was surprised how small their “full size” cars were. We ended up getting to the end of the line and there were a couple of Chevy Impalas that seemed a bit bigger than the models at the front of the row. Now my friend has an older Impala, not really close to the same size as they used to be. BUT, all four of our suitcases did fit in the trunk so that is all that really matter at this point. We pack the car and were on our way!!

I’m going to guess that we got to the hotel around noon or so. We head inside and there aren’t too many people waiting in line. There are some, but it wasn’t as bad as I’ve seen it in the past. Since we want connecting/adjoining rooms with my dad we both go up together to check in at the same time. We check in with no problems. Our rooms are ready yet, but I really didn’t expect them to be.

We head off to find the closest Walmart or Target to grab a few snacks and some bottled water. Don’t ask me where we went, but we found one. We picked up a few snacks and a couple of cases of water. Our friends (who were staying at a different hotel) ended up meeting up with us at Target. We decided we were all pretty hungry and it was lunch time. When we had visited once with DH’s friends, they took us to a buffet place called Sweet Tomatoes. We decided to check it out again and go there. It wasn’t far from where we were. It was pretty good (not as good as I remember it being, but ok). It’s a huge salad bar with anything you could imagine for salad fixings. They also have a few pastas, soups and baked potatoes. They have breads and ice cream for dessert. We all got our fill and by that time we had gotten the text message that our rooms were ready. We parted ways with our friends and headed back to the hotel to unpack and unwind.

We ended up in the building with the Mickey Mouse phone out front. Nice location, but not in close proximity to a parking lot. So we park in the closest one we could find and lugged the luggage up. DH and DD immediately crashed on the couch. I’m not really a nap person, unless I’m not feeling well, so I proceeded to unpack my suitcase and settle in. Now I know that the two sleeping beauties were expecting me to unpack their suitcases as well (which I admit I would probably normally do) but I decided that I was on vacation too and I wasn’t going to play house maid to the two of them all week (I’m the one who always makes sure the room stays neat and things are straightened up the whole trip). I don’t remember how long they both slept, but after they got up and realized that the maid stayed home, they both reluctantly and with grumpy tendencies unpacked their bags.

After spending a couple of hours in the room hanging around, which just kills me because I just want to go, go, go, we ended up heading towards Downtown Disney. We poke around in the stores for a while then decide that we were hungry again and wanted dinner. We decided to try the new quick service restaurant, Pollo Compero. They have like chicken and wraps, stuff like that. It was pretty good. You got to pick a dessert from the bakery inside BabycakesNYC. All of their products are gluten free, egg free and dairy free. The desserts were ok, not really what we are used to being four, egg and milk eating people. But they served their purpose. During our meal there was a family sitting at the table next to us (sharing the same wall length bench). Well they proceeded to allow their two boys (ages 6 and 8 maybe) to bounce up and down on the bench the entire time. I ignored it for a little while but after about 25 minutes or so I finally looked over at the father and asked him if he could tell them to stop. He spoke to them and told them to stop. Finally, we could finish our meal in peace. I will never understand parents who let their children jump all over the place in a restaurant.

We decided that we were not going to visit a park today as we were all pretty tired from getting up at the butt crack of dawn for our flights and then traveling for the day. We head back to the hotel to explore there. Haillie was tired so she decided to stay in the hotel room and take a shower. (She was asleep by the time we got back!) We walk around and go to the food court to grab our refillable mugs. I was expecting only a few colors, boy was I surprised. They had black, teal, pink, purple, orange and green (I think that was it). DH got orange, I got green for DD (her favorite color) and picked the purple for myself. My dad picked the black one. We explore for a little bit, hang out with all the turtles at the bridge and then head back to the room. I think the travel and heat really affected us, we were all pretty tired. We head back to the room to relax and just watch TV for the night.

Epcot in the morning!!