Poor Unfortunate Souls: So Wet, So Full ~ Updated 12/22: Day 8 - Complete & New TR!

[Dugette]

Welcome! Thanks for joining in on our latest WDW adventure!

Trip Details
When: Weds. 10/5/11-Weds. 10/12/11
Why: It was our anniversary celebration...and we really needed a vacation!
Where: Good ol' Pop Century! (with free quick-service dining)
Special Stuff: Food & Wine, Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, dinner at Artist Point, and Keys to the Kingdom Tour!

The cast consists of me ("Dugette") and my husband ("Dug"):

If you'd like to check out any planning/background info, the pre-trip report can be viewed here: "The Year of Disney is Over...But We're Going Back Anyway!"

By the way, we had a great trip--the title of the trip report is just a take-off on some of the music playing during HalloWishes. Don't want anyone thinking that we really consider ourselves "poor" and "unfortunate"--not after a great Disney trip!


Chapters
Day 1 - "It Looks Like Your Hair is on Fire!"
Day 1 - Our Two Vacation Homes
Day 1 - Mmmmm, Dole Whip!
Day 1 - Hangin' Out
Day 1 - Let the Eating Begin!

Day 2 - Just Around the Corner is a Fantasyland
Day 2 - Dumbo With a View
Day 2 - Feeling Adventurous
Day 2 - From Rocking Chairs to Dancing
Day 2 - Let the Eating Continue!

Day 3 - It's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrowland!
Day 3 - Eat, Drink, Nap, Eat!
Day 3 - Aloha!

Day 4 - The Mickey Monsoon
Day 4 - A Cozy Dinner

Day 5 - Eating in the Rain
Day 5 - Tequila! (& Some Other Stuff)
Day 5 - Magic & Memories
Day 5 - Stupid Overtakers!

Day 6 - What's That in the Sky?
Day 6 - Fantasia Gardens
Day 6 - Food & Scenery
Day 6 - DHS Night

Day 7 - Must Try Everything!
Day 7 - Um, Yum!
Day 7 - Not So Scary - Part 1
Day 7 - Not So Scary - Part 2

Day 8 - A Quiet Little Main Street
Day 8 - Walking Right Down the Middle of Main Street USA
Day 8 - A Rae of Sunshine
Day 8 - Jungle Cruise with Rae
Day 8 - Look at All those Windows & Lightning Rods!
Day 8 - Lunchtime!
Day 8 - Choo Choo!
Day 8 - New Construction!
Day 8 - We're on a Boat!
Day 8 - View from the Water
Day 8 - The Dreaded Hour Approaches
Day 8 - Magical Depress

If You Can't Get Enough of Our TRs...



Life Updates
Life Update - Posted 3/3/12
Baby Report Link - Posted 4/16/12
Prince or Princess? - Posted 4/20/12

 

[IheartDDuck]

Yay! I'm here.

 

[TheThomsLuvDisney]

Subbing in.......as usual!

 

[jc040404]

I'm here!!

 

[LisaKeys]

Wahoo. Found your report and on the first page!!! Nothing better than a Dugette/Dug trip.

Looking forward to reading more!

 

[zhonggu54]

here,here,here, i am here

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

Subbing in! Hope to get on board early and stay caught up!

 

[AprilRenee]

I'm in!! So glad you started already!! Can't wait to hear about it all, but especially the Keys to the Kingdom tour!

 

[Nermel9]

I'm in!

 

[newtexan]

I made it!

 

[MiaBella05]

joining in

 

[reelmom]

Count me in!

 

[wild.zinnia]

Yay! Subscribing.

 

[Dugette]

Yay, I'm so happy to have followers! I didn't scare everyone away or anything!

Yay! I'm here.

Glad you're here (and first)!

Subbing in.......as usual!

Glad you're back! How was your Disneyland trip?

I'm here!!

Good to see you!

Wahoo. Found your report and on the first page!!! Nothing better than a Dugette/Dug trip.

Looking forward to reading more!

I'm honored! Glad you are enjoying my random ramblings!

here,here,here, i am here

Subbing in! Hope to get on board early and stay caught up!

So glad you're here! I'll try to space the updates out enough to keep up

I'm in!! So glad you started already!! Can't wait to hear about it all, but especially the Keys to the Kingdom tour!

Since the KTTK tour isn't until the last day, I'll just give you a few notes now:
*If you have a chance to do it, it's well worthwhile!
*There are all kinds of discounts. I got 20% off for paying with my Disney Visa, so it was the same price as the Halloween Party.
*Even people like us who think we know a lot about Walt and WDW learn things. Plus, I liked having someone to point out the things I'd read in books.
*If possible, request Rae as a guide. She is AWESOME!

I'm in!

Glad you're here! (Did you try the Dragonberry Colada?)

I made it!

Welcome, glad you made it!

joining in

Welcome back! Here's some more...

Count me in!

Good to have you here!

Yay! Subscribing.

Welcome, glad to have you along!

First update coming right up!

 

[Dugette]

If you’ve followed our past trip reports or the pre-trip report, you know that we have always left for WDW in the evening, after work. Not this time! Due to using frequent flyer miles, we had limited flight choices and our best option was to fly out bright and early at 6:30am!

Dug dropped our dog Bailey off with my dad and step-mom the previous evening, since we’d be leaving so early.

We went to bed around 11pm the night before. I was all packed, so I slept later, but Dug was up at 2:45am that morning! He packed for a bit and I got up around 3:30am. I got ready and threw the last-minute things into my bags.

On a side note, I was very proud of the organizing system that I used to pack for this trip. Since I am not a morning person, I knew that the odds were high of me forgetting things or putting them in the wrong bags if I had to pack them that morning. So, when I had packed most of my stuff earlier in the week, I made lists for each bag (checked bag, carry-on bag, toiletry bag (to put in carry-on), and quart-sized bag (also for carry-on). As I packed, I added things to the list. If there was something I could not yet pack (if I needed it before leaving), I put it on the list of the appropriate bag with a blank check-box. So, when I got up in the morning, I just looked at the items with a check-box, put them in the bag listed, checked them off, and that’s it! It was also really helpful to have the list of everything I’d packed and where it was.

After packing all the last-minute things, loading the bags into the car, and eating some cereal, we stocked Kitty up on food and water and headed out (Dug’s best friend would be stopping by a couple times during the week to replenish her food and water).

Our goal had been to try to be ready to go at 4am, knowing that quarter after 4 would be okay too. We ended up a few minutes behind schedule, but were still on the road pretty early:

Not too shabby. There’s really no traffic to speak of at that time of morning, so it wasn’t long before we were seeing this:

Hey, there’s the airport:

We passed it up, though, as we were going to Dug’s sister’s house to leave our car and get a ride. She lives just a few minutes away from the airport and is super-awesome to give us these rides (especially this early!) We pulled up and Dug gave her a call to let her know we were in her driveway. She came out, we transferred our luggage to her car, and she dropped us off. It was somewhere around 5am, which had been our goal.

We said goodbye to Dug’s sister and headed in. We had done online check-in for our flights, so we just needed to get our bags checked. And, for the first time, we had Magical Express tags attached! We each got our bags checked for free, because of the Delta American Express perk. Headed over to security and it was pretty low-key that early in the morning. No real impatience and the TSA folk were quite friendly. Some people ahead of us were having some issues—my guess is that it was their first time flying—and the TSA person was patiently walking them through what to put on the belt, what to leave on, etc. We got one of the old-fashioned metal detectors (yay!) and were quickly on the other side, putting our shoes back on. I realized afterwards that I’d completely forgotten to remove my quart bag from my carry-on, but I guess it didn’t cause any problems.

We headed for our gate:

On the way, we passed this:

Those of you who followed our last trip report know why the Delta Sky Club brings back memories! This one was actually the newly remodeled one that was closed last December. I bet it’s pretty nice!

We had a fair amount of time to pass before boarding, so we grabbed seats facing the window by our gate. I decided that this was the perfect time to try to finish reading Kingdom Keepers (the fourth one), so that Dug could have it while I was sleeping on the flight:

I read and Dug played a game (Puerto Rico) on the iPad.

Around 6am, we made bathroom runs, as we knew boarding would be soon. And it was. We got to board in Zone 2, as that’s another (new) perk with the Delta credit card. We were following a guy onto the plane that was interesting: he had long, unusually dyed hair and he had a jacket (in a garment bag) over his colorful gun-print carry-on roller bag (nothing like seeing handguns while entering the plane…at least they were colorful!)

As he boarded, the female flight attendant greeting people said to him (and I’m not making this up), “It looks like your hair is on fire…….because you’re HOT!” OMG, did we just hear that?!?

He then asked if they could hang his jacket up. She took it from him and got a glimpse of a jacket that was at least as colorful as his gun-bag and hair. She remarked, “It’s like Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat!” Quite the lively crew for 6am!

And, because I knew you all would need to see this to believe it, we staged a quick photo “of me” for you to see what I was following:

We were in a plane with a row of two seats on one side and three on the other. We were together in the two-seat side, which was nice. I took the window seat and Dug the aisle seat. I finished up reading Kingdom Keepers and passed it on to Dug. He read and I settled in for my nap. I think Dug napped too. I believe I had some orange juice and pretzels when they came around and I think Dug had orange juice, coffee, and a cookie. More sleep and Dug napped some too.

At some points, when we were awake, we checked out the pretty sunrise and a big river…maybe the Mississippi??

It was a fairly uneventful flight and we arrived early for our layover in Atlanta:

Unfortunately, there was quite the plane back-up going on, which prevented us from getting to our gate. By the time we made it, we were probably about on time. Which was fine for us, as we had a decent layover (nearly 2 hours).

Our mission upon exiting the plane, as you know if you followed the PTR, was to locate the nearest Chick-Fil-A. Other trip reports have sold me on trying this place (we don’t have them around here yet) and I had read online somewhere that the airport one had one of those fancy new make-a-flavor Coke machines! It was way on the other end of our concourse, but it was nice to get out and take a walk between flights:

And, yes, they had the fancy Coke machines:

As people who drink non-caffeinated pop (or soda, to you non-Minnesotans), we were excited at all the new options that would be available to us with this.

So, we figured out what we wanted from Chick-Fil-A (breakfast, as it was only 10:30 or so, which was 9:30 to us at the moment). If you followed the planning, you know that I had a $15 Chick-Fil-A gift card that I’d bought at Target, using my discounts, so it had only cost $12-something. We placed our order (holding out the gift card the whole time) and it came out to $12-something. Perfect! We handed over the gift card and the cashier called over someone to help her, assuring us that it would be okay. The helper told us that they don’t accept gift cards and have no way to run them. What, how could that be? Isn’t a gift card simply cash that is made specifically for your restaurant? How can you not accept that?!?

By this point, our food was all sitting there. They called the manager over and we explained that we thought we had pre-paid this meal by buying a gift card and it seemed pretty strange that they couldn’t accept a Chick-Fil-A gift card when the sign overhead clearly says Chick-Fil-A. We were nice about it, though. Probably wanting to keep us from holding up the line, he told us that the meal was on them. Comped. And gave us the gift card back. Ok, then! Nice!

As a follow-up to this story, once we got home I took a good look at the gift card, including reading through all the fine print on the back. Well, sure enough, it says that it’s not accepted at licensed locations at airports, schools, etc. Who knew? It never would have occurred to me that some locations of a restaurant chain couldn’t accept gift cards for their restaurant chain! So, beware of airport restaurants, I guess! On the bright side, we did get our money’s worth, since I’d paid about the same amount for it that we were comped. But, even better, I brought the un-used gift card back to Target once we’d returned, explained what happened, and got a full refund! So, free breakfast this day!

And back to that breakfast! We grabbed our food and went over to the Coke Machine. First, we had this choice:

We picked Sprite Zero, as we thought it would take flavor well. Next choice was:

Hard to see, but those are the different flavors, mostly fruit, I think. We chose peach, as I have a weakness for peach-flavored things.

There was no seating nearby, so we wandered down the concourse a bit until we found a nice, quiet area to relax in. There were cushy chairs with small tables in between. This would work!

Here’s an overview of our food:

We got an order of Chicken Minis:

And a chicken, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich meal (which came with hash browns):

Everything was quite tasty! I can see why people crave this place. And we really enjoyed our Peach Sprite! It reminded me a bit of the Peach Fresca we sometimes buy at home. Very refreshing!

Oh, and Dug also got a coffee as part of the meal. He enjoyed hanging out with it and his iPhone:

Happy Dug!

After enjoying the secluded area for a bit, we decided to make the trek back to our gate (just a couple gates down from where we arrived). As we did so, they paged Tony Bennett, which Dug thought was awesome.

This next flight was a 3-on-each-side arrangement. When we boarded, Dug took the window and I took the middle seat, leaving the aisle open. They announced that this was a completely full flight, so we knew someone would be seated there.

After a bit, a family of four came down the aisle (dad, mom, and two young daughters). The dad sat with the girls across the aisle and the mom sat next to me. A couple minutes after they got situated, one of the girls yelled out loudly for all the neighboring rows to hear, “Mommy, why are you sitting OVER THERE…next to the….OLD LADY?!?!” I swear all the heads near us swiveled around to see the “old lady” and got a look at…me. So, in case you’re wondering, I guess you become an old lady at 34 these days…

Anyway, I was not too traumatized, as I like to think I still look the same as I did in my 20’s. I think it was more perspective…I’m way older than a 5-year-old, for instance! Her mom made a comment to me that she was probably older than me herself (pretty sure she was). I did hear the girls later reciting the “there was an old lady” thing, so maybe that was on their minds. Anyway, after all that embarrassment subsided, we got on our way. Left on time at noon.

More naptime, uneventful flight. Well, except that the girls across the aisle were pretty out of control. Lots of screaming and never once did I hear one of the parents request an indoor voice be used. Oh, well. I can sleep through a lot.

Once we arrived at MCO, it was time for the traditional bathroom break. Dug went to his and I went to mine…and saw a lot of women waiting. I didn’t need to go that badly, so I backed out and waited for Dug. When he arrived, I informed him that, “There was a big line in the women's restroom, and I didn't have a touring plan for that, so I left." He was amused.

We hitched a ride on the mini-monorail:

And enjoyed some sunlight and palm trees:

It was fun to skip baggage claim for once. Instead, we went straight to Magical Express. We usually arrive at 11pm and there are very few people there (in fact no people at all last time—not even cast members!) This time, there were some lines. Nothing major, though:

I think we were 10th and 11th in the Pop Century/Caribbean Beach line. Dug was happy to be there:

After waiting a short bit, ours was the first line released onto a bus! We got a traditional Magical Express bus, but noticed some nearby waterpark-themed buses, which we had never seen before:

We were pretty far back in the bus (well, at least not our “normal” front-row seat), so we couldn’t get a good picture of the WDW sign, but we have plenty of those already! The ride was fine and we stopped at Caribbean Beach first:

A lot of people got off the bus. We settled in for the last leg of our journey.

Next stop: Pop Century!

 

[TheThomsLuvDisney]

Great update!

Chick-fill-uh, we will try it someday, it looked delicious!

When did the 4th Kingdom Keepers come out? My youngest daughter read the first three over the summer, she was hooked!

I love the "mini-monorail", when you board, you know you have arrived!

 

[AprilRenee]

You're doing flights like WE normally do and for our Jan trip we're doing it your way! LOL Our flight gets in at 12:30am on our Jan trip. I'm gonna have to go check your last TR to see where to go if there are no cast members to help us!

I'm really glad you got proof of that gun covered luggage...really??? who buys that??

So weird about the Chick Fil A gift card...but nice that you got a free meal! And that coke machine is SUPER awesome! Might have to check that out if we have time on our layover in ATL. PS I'm glad you got out of ATL quickly...I got a little nervous when it said that you had a layover in ATL! We had a bad (read "VERY bad") experience there. (coming up soon in my TR!)

Rude kid!! I would definitely say you could still pass for being in your 20s.

LOL at the touring plan for the bathroom!

Great start!! Can't wait to read more!

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

Great start to your TR! I love the travel day of people's TR's (I know, I'm weird). It's because you feel the excitement of the beginning of the trip. That is the best feeling!

You had quite an interesting bunch on your first flight! I'm so glad that you took a picture of that guy, because it would be hard to believe. Who buys luggage with guns on it? And not just guns, but PASTEL colored guns? Oh, it's just the guy with the flame colored hair, who some crazy stewardess thinks is hot.

I can't wait to hear more!

 

[Nermel9]

Glad you're here! (Did you try the Dragonberry Colada?)

LOL, I did, and I thought of you when I got it! It was good, but I feel like the one you were obsessed with last year might have been better, can you believe I didn't even finish it? I take so long drinking cold, frozen things that I got sick of holding that tiny cup and threw it away!

Glad you got to sleep on the plane and that your flight was uneventful, that's always good!

OMG I'm SO jealous of those flavor Coke machines they have at that airport, now I want to go there...that looks like so much fun to make your own soda! They should put those in Club Cool!

Wow, you took that old lady thing pretty well, I on the other hand, would have cried right then and there! You definitely do NOT look like an old lady, what a brat that kid was!

 

[KatGarcia]

I'm in! Great start so far with free breakfast!!!!