Show Me Your Smolder! October 2012 B-Day TR NEW 4/1 Trip Wrap Up & NEW PTR LINK!

[khertz]

Here we go again, time for another TR! This is my 6th TR since joining the DIS, and my 4th from a trip to WDW. We had another amazing trip full of wonderful and magical memories that I'm excited to share with all of you who choose to follow along! I did do a PTR for this trip which can be found HERE if you are interested, but I know some people do not do PTR's, so don't worry, I'll have a quick recap of the details of this trip before jumping into our trip. We took 5000 pictures in 10 days, so this TR will definitely be photo heavy! Hopefully that's enough to draw you in, and I hope you will decide to follow along with our trip via this TR!

SHOW ME YOUR SMOLDER - A BIRTHDAY TRIP REPORT!

Introduction

Saturday October 20th
Day 1 Part 1: Not a Great Start!
Day 1 Part 2: Downtown Disney...(Not) the Place to Go on Saturday Night

Sunday October 21st
Day 2 Part 1: Ready for Rope Drop
Day 2 Part 2: Mouse!
Day 2 Part 3: A World of Fantasy
Day 2 Part 4: Haircuts for a Song
Day 2 Part 5: I Am Your Host...Your Ghost Host
Day 2 Part 6: Not A Pirate's Life for DS!
Day 2 Part 7: We're Pumpin' Up the Party Now!
Day 2 Part 8: All Aboard
Day 2 Part 9: Celebrate the Dream Inside of You, a Dream That Just Came True!
Day 2 Part 10: Bonnet Creek

Monday October 22nd
Day 3 Part 1: Who Needs Soarin'? We Want Mickey!
Day 3 Part 2: The Search for Nemo
Day 3 Part 3: One Little Spark
Day 3 Part 4: Beauty & the (Little) Beast
Day 3 Part 5: A Delicious Lunch or Un Pranzo Delizioso
Day 3 Part 6: A Journey Through Time
Day 3 Part 7: Excuse Me, Are You In Line?
Day 3 Part 8: Duck, Where Are You?

Tuesday October 23rd
Day 4 Part 1: Where's THAT Attraction?
Day 4 Part 2: So...It's a Movie?
Day 4 Part 3: Yo Ho Let's Go!
Day 4 Part 4: Duck Overload
Day 4 Part 5: Mmmbop Revisited!

Wednesday October 24th
Day 5 Part 1: A Bright and Early Birthday Morning
Day 5 Part 2: Main Street Memories
Day 5 Part 3: A Tiggerific Meltdown
Day 5 Part 4: First Attraction as a 2 Year Old!
Day 5 Part 5: A Morning of Fantasy
Day 5 Part 6: A Little Spooky & A Little Country
Day 5 Part 7: I Know DS is Sweet, But Come On...
Day 5 Part 8: Meeting the Big Cheese!
Day 5 Part 9: Ladies Man
Day 5 Part 10: A Fairytale Ending

Thursday October 25th
Day 6 Part 1: You've Got a Friend in Me
Day 6 Part 2: Who Dat Hatin'
Day 6 Part 3: Jammin' in the Jungle!
Day 6 Part 4: Jungle Buddies
Day 6 Part 5: Downtown Disney
Day 6 Part 6: The Adventures of Nonni & Poppi!

Friday October 26th
Day 7 Part 1: 'Ohana Means Family
Day 7 Part 2: Cranky in the Magic Kingdom
Day 7 Part 3: An Afternoon in Hollywood
Day 7 Part 4: Characters & Thrills!

Saturday October 27th
Day 8 Part 1: Let's Go On a Safari!
Day 8 Part 2: Rafiki's Planet Watch
Day 8 Part 3: Everybody Walk the Dinosaur
Day 8 Part 4: A Magical Evening
Day 8 Part 5: A Spectacular Festival Pageant of Nighttime Magic and Imagination
Day 8 Part 6: And All Your Wishes Will Come True

Sunday October 28th
Day 9 Part 1: First Family of the Day!
Day 9 Part 2: Gaze Into My Crystal Ball
Day 9 Part 3: Adventure Awaits!
Day 9 Part 4: See Ya Real Soon...

Monday October 29th
Day 10: Headed Home

Trip Wrap-Up & New PTR Link!

Extras
Bonus Post: Halloween!
Bonus Post: Disney Live! and Christmas 2012
Bonus Post: Mardi Gras Mambo!

​

 

[khertz]

Since I know not everyone who will read this will have read my PTR, here's a quick introduction to the cast of this trip and the details of what we were doing!

First up, the Cast of Characters!

Who are we? We are a family of three from South Louisiana. We love Disney World and our Saints (don't hate! ).

First up is me, khertz. I'm 27 years old, a pediatric nurse, and a Disney nut! This was my 10th trip to Disney World, and I'm also fortunate enough to have visited Disneyland not once, but twice this year. You would think I'd be Disney'd out after 4 trips to the parks in a span of 12 months, but not even close! I do have other interests besides WDW (one of which will pop up in this TR, and if you followed my PTR you know who that is!), but I absolutely LOVE talking Disney. I am the go-to girl at work for anyone planning a Disney trip! I sometimes think I missed my calling as a Disney travel agent/vacation planner.

Next is my wonderful DH, DDuck4Life here on the boards though he doesn't post very often. He's 28 years old, and an electrical engineer though he works in the oil field. He too loves visiting WDW, but doesn't enjoy the planning aspect quite as much as I do. What he loves most about our trips is photographing everything! His favorite character is Donald Duck, obviously, and he also enjoys collecting and trading Vinylmations both at home and in the parks. This was his 9th trip to WDW, and in addition to our two trips to DL this year, he also spent a day there solo while in California for work a couple of years ago.

And last of our primary family is the love our lives, DS! He is bright, funny, silly, sometimes crazy, but always adorable. He turned 2 years old right in the middle of this vacation, and this trip was mostly centered around celebrating his birthday. He has many interests, primarily including Elmo, snacks, and trains (or as he calls them, choo choos). He is pretty obsessed with trains in general, but really loves Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. He does recognize all of the Disney characters, though he has never really taken much interest in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse despite my attempts. This was his second trip to WDW, and he joined us for our first trip to DL earlier this year, so it was technically his third Disney Parks vacation.

Here is a picture of the three of us from our first trip as a family of three last year.

And a more recent one from our DL trip in May.

Also joining us for part of this trip was my parents who will for the purposes of this TR be known as Nonni & Poppi since that is what DS calls them. They started taking my sister and I on trips to WDW when I was 12 and from there the obsession began. Both love Disney World, but again, my mom is more of the planner than my dad. He mostly enjoys going for the atmosphere and the food. They were originally supposed to join us for more of this trip than they did, but their house flooded during Hurricane Isaac a couple months ago, which limited the time they were able to get away from home and work, and limited their funds somewhat, so we had to scale down their involvement in the trip. However, there was a time we thought they wouldn't be able to come at all, so it was a wonderful blessing that they were able to join us even if only for part of the time. They loved spending the time in the parks with DS!

Here is a picture of them from our trip together a few years ago.

Now that you have met all of us, here's some of the details of our trip.

We were there from Saturday October 20th until Sunday the 28th with my parents joining us from Sunday evening until they left early Saturday morning, so a total of 5 days. We had to change resorts 3 times! Our first night was spent at Wyndham Cypress Palms before moving to Wyndham Bonnet Creek for the next 7 nights, and spending our very last night at the Ramada Suites near the Orlando airport.

DH and I were using our Premier APs for the very last time. Those golden tickets sure were fun while they lasted! My parents had 4 day Magic Your Way Park Hoppers and one day Park Hoppers to Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure.

DH, DS, and I flew round trip from New Orleans on Southwest Airlines while my parents made the drive in a rental. DH and I rented a car through Dollar for a GREAT rate! We actually both ended up with the same kind of car, a Nissan Altima, which was great and totally fit our needs.

And finally, why did we take this trip? To celebrate DS turning 2! We visited last year to celebrate his birthday, but we went a couple weeks after the actual day in order to experience some of the holiday happenings around WDW. This year, we decided to visit the actual week of his birthday and did our best to make it the most exciting and fun day we could!

I hope you will choose to follow along with our trip. We made lots of great and magical memories, had a lot of laughs and a couple not so great moments, but that's what you get traveling with a 2 year old!

 

[wiigirl]

In for this!

 

[Chelley00]

Followed the PTR, so should probably follow the TR too

 

[khertz]

DAY 1: Saturday October 20th

If you have followed any of our previous TRs, you might remember that we usually drive to New Orleans the night before our flight to stay at my parents house so we can fly out super early the next day. This year was a little different. We were originally going to fly out early Sunday morning, but then we found a much better fare leaving in the afternoon on Saturday instead. So we did things a little differently this time. And it's probably a good thing we did because we wouldn't have been able to stay at my parents house the night before since it is currently gutted and they are living in a camper in the front yard at the moment thanks to the flooding from Hurricane Isaac!

So I spent all day Friday doing laundry and packing, and Saturday morning we only had a few last minute things to pack. We were leaving our cat Callie at home with my cousin coming in every day to check on her, feed her, and clean up after her. But just before this trip, we added a new member to our family, a puppy we named Belle. We arranged for her to stay with my aunt while we were going, but she also lives in the New Orleans area, so Belle was making the drive with us.

We got up around 7 am and finished packing while letting DS sleep in a little since we weren't sure how much of a nap he was going to get that day. We finally got him up around 7:40 am and fed him some breakfast. We were aiming to leave at 8:30 am but we were ready to walk out the door at 8:25. 5 minutes early, great way to start the day! DH was nice enough to snap a picture of my countdown calendar before we left.

We piled into DH's truck and were on our way. We were halfway down the highway about 5 minutes from home when DH said, "Do you smell poop?" We turned around to find that our new puppy does NOT like driving in cars! We stopped at a pharmacy up the road and were just going to throw away her now defiled dog bed, wipe her up and keep going, but the mess was WAY worse than we anticipated. We had to turn around and go back home. WHAT?! This was NOT how this day was supposed to go!! I'll spare the gory details and just say after cleaning her up at home, she pooped two more times and had to go in the back of the truck in her crate because I was freaking out just a little bit that we were going to be late and miss our flight!

Luckily, we had given ourselves PLENTY of time since driving through Baton Rouge can sometimes take forever, and there was no traffic along the way. We made it to my parents exit on I-10 and they met us in the Wendy's parking lot instead of having to go all the way to their house. I went inside to grab us some lunch to take in the car since we couldn't guarantee we'd have enough time to eat at the airport. My dad jumped out and got in the truck with us so he could drop us off and drive the truck back to their house, and my mom took Belle home in their car. When we opened the back of the truck I was prepared for a poopy mess, but instead she had vomited. Poor dog just does NOT travel well!!

When we got to the airport, we were relieved to find that flying in the middle of the day, there is hardly anyone else there. So we were able to check our bags in no time and print our boarding passes. The lady helping us with our bags told us there were plenty of empty seats on our flight so DS could get a seat for free! She also made sure we knew since we were flying home after DS turned 2 that we had bought a seat for him on our return flight, but we had already done that. We were assigned to the B boarding group, but knew we could board with family boarding after the A group so we knew we shouldn't have a problem getting 3 seats.

We were at our gate waiting by noon, so we had some time to kill until boarding. DS enjoyed looking out the windows at the airplanes.

Me & DS

If you'll notice how blurry his leg is from him being in motion, this is a reoccurring theme of the pictures of DS in this trip!

He did very well with the wait, playing with his choo choos and mostly staying where we told him so he wouldn't annoy anyone else around us. He did have some fun playing around in the basket under his stroller too.

Our flight was for 1:15 pm, so a little before that they started boarding. We chose a row and put DS's car seat in the window seat. As we settled in, we realized we probably should have chosen the last row. He slept SO well on our flights home from Seattle a few months ago in that last row with no one behind him and the plane noise drowning everything out. But DH had already fought with the car seat and people were still coming onto the plane, so we didn't move.

Getting ready for take off!​

The flight left right on time, and DS promptly fell asleep. Score!

I tried to catch a nap too while I could, but the row behind us was all kids talking, laughing, kicking my seat, and playing around, so that was pretty impossible. DS only napped for about an hour, and he woke up confused and crying. Luckily we were able to calm him down with some airline pretzels and water, and he did fine the rest of the flight.

Airport Monorail!​

When we landed, we were a little ahead of schedule around 3:50 pm. DS was pretty agitated at that point, and waiting off to the side while DH got our bags was torture! I was manning our carry on bags, so I couldn't walk around with him in the stroller and he was getting MAD just sitting there. Even trying to get him to watch Thomas on the iPad wasn't working. Finally, DH got our bags and we were on our way to pick up our rental car.

That didn't take very long, and soon we were driving off in our red Nissan Altima towards Kissimmee. DH had printed off directions avoiding toll roads, and they were the most confusing directions EVER since almost every street was named Boggy Creek. I'm not kidding, I'm pretty sure most of the intersections were something like Boggy Creek Rd. crossing Boggy Creek St. or Old Boggy Creek Rd. Seriously, is the Boggy Creek SO amazing you had to name ALL of your roads after it?!

Enjoying a snack on the drive​

We made it to our destination, Wyndham Cypress Palms, at about 5 pm to check in. DS was a bundle of energy at that point, and the lady directed us over to a station where you could get a reversible paper hat that was a pirate hat on one side and a princess crown on the other. He loved that hat!

We got the keys to our room in building 11, just across from the main building. So DH drove over while I walked with DS instead of putting him back in the car seat. We found our room, a 1 bedroom unit that was just enough space for us for a night.

Walking into the unit, living room & kitchenette

Living room

Master bedroom

Bathroom

Vanity area

Laundry closet

DS!​

We dropped off our bags and needed to regroup. The original plan had been to head into MK for some dinner and maybe a ride or two, but it was already almost 6 pm and we knew it would take awhile to get to MK after driving there, parking at the TTC, taking the monorail, etc. We tossed around the idea of Epcot too but going to a park just seemed like a lot of effort that late in the day after being tired from traveling. So we decided to head to Downtown Disney instead!

UP NEXT: DTD...a Mistake?

 

[khertz]

In for this!

Followed the PTR, so should probably follow the TR too

Happy to have you both here!!

 

[disneybarbie]

subscribing! Looking forward to reading about your vacation ... DS is getting so grown up!! I really need to start my TR soon

Emma x

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

Welcome back!! I'm joining in!

What an adventure with your dog! Poor thing. Think of the fun you would have had if the puppy had traveled with you on the plane!

Your hotel looks awesome! Can't wait to see what happens at DTD!

 

[xkaittloveex]

I'm joining in!

Your son is absolutely adorable! Can't wait to read more!

 

[kaileighbug]

Joining in can't wait to read more. Your son is just too cute.

 

[khertz]

subscribing! Looking forward to reading about your vacation ... DS is getting so grown up!! I really need to start my TR soon

Emma x

Ooh, yes you do! I know our trip overlapped by a couple of days so I made sure to keep an eye out for you. Too bad we didn't run into each other!

Welcome back!! I'm joining in!

What an adventure with your dog! Poor thing. Think of the fun you would have had if the puppy had traveled with you on the plane!

Your hotel looks awesome! Can't wait to see what happens at DTD!

OMG I can't even imagine trying to get her on a plane!! I'm freaking out about having to take her to the vet next week and that's only 5 minutes away!!

Glad to see you here. I need to go get caught up on yours!

I'm joining in!

Your son is absolutely adorable! Can't wait to read more!

Aww, thank you & welcome!!

Joining in can't wait to read more. Your son is just too cute.

Thanks so much! I'm happy to have you here.

 

[debrapagliasotti]

I'm here

Cant wait to hear all about your trip!

Sorry to hear Belle had a hard time in the car

 

[Imagineer5]

YAY! So happy to see you started. Travel day sounds exhausting, with the long drive then the flight - I bet Paxton was very happy to run around when you got to the hotel! With it being 6PM I can totlaly understand scrapping park plans!

Poor Belle! My chihuahua usually throws up on long car rides but that smell can be awful - I can't imagine poop and throw up! Ugh! Hopefully she settled in fine at your aunts. your poor parents - still in a trailer. whats the ETA on house repairs? I can't imagine!

 

[khertz]

I'm here

Cant wait to hear all about your trip!

Sorry to hear Belle had a hard time in the car

Yay, happy to see you!

YAY! So happy to see you started. Travel day sounds exhausting, with the long drive then the flight - I bet Paxton was very happy to run around when you got to the hotel! With it being 6PM I can totlaly understand scrapping park plans!

Poor Belle! My chihuahua usually throws up on long car rides but that smell can be awful - I can't imagine poop and throw up! Ugh! Hopefully she settled in fine at your aunts. your poor parents - still in a trailer. whats the ETA on house repairs? I can't imagine!

It was a long day, but it was actually nice, despite the long drive in the morning, not to be getting up at 4-something am to kick off our day. But by that evening, since Paxton didn't nap much, all I could think of was putting him to bed early!

You definitely don't want to imagine it, it was the most awful thing I have ever experienced with an animal! I looked over at DH as were cleaning poop off of pretty much everything and said, "Should I take a picture of this for the TR?" Not a great start to our day, but the fact that everything went more smoothly after that made up for it. And big plus, DH and I didn't get into a huge fight like we usually do on our travel day.

It's going to be awhile before their house is done because their friend is doing most of the sheetrocking and laying the floors, etc. It's what he does for a living, but he does it mostly on his own. They have picked out their new appliances, furniture, paint colors, etc. so it's just getting everything put in. Hopefully they can get their bedroom and living room/kitchen done soon so the house is at least livable for them.

 

[leshunlenese]

Im here! Seems like your trip went by so fast! And paxton is getting so big! He is such a cutie!

 

[afwdwfan]

Well, the trip must have been a good one if you're so eager to get started with the TR already!

The first day doesn't look like it was all that bad of a start once you finally got rid of the dog.

 

[khertz]

Im here! Seems like your trip went by so fast! And paxton is getting so big! He is such a cutie!

I'm glad you are here! Yes, the trip definitely went by WAY too fast. As we were leaving, I told DH, "You know how a lot of people say 'It was fun but I'm ready to go home'? I'm NOT ready to go home!"

Well, the trip must have been a good one if you're so eager to get started with the TR already!

The first day doesn't look like it was all that bad of a start once you finally got rid of the dog.

Once we got rid of the dog, absolutely. But before then, it was definitely all that bad! I definitely skimmed over a loooooot of detail there.

 

[afwdwfan]

I definitely skimmed over a loooooot of detail there.

And for that, we're grateful.

 

[khertz]

And for that, we're grateful.

There was actually a moment during the cleanup when I turned to DH and said "should I be a good tr writer & take a picture of this?"

 

[afwdwfan]

There was actually a moment during the cleanup when I turned to DH and said "should I be a good tr writer & take a picture of this?"

Yeah, but don't worry about using it in context. Just sneak it in there between a couple of food pictures and see what happens.