Upgrades, Underwear and Upside Down Fun -5/7 King Louie totally ROCKS!

[karajeboo]

Well, if you’ve followed my Crazy Life of a New Floridian report, and all my mini-TRs in there, you’ll know that since we’ve moved to Florida, not only have we had a lot of crazy occurrences – snakes, lizards, frogs, even a wild monkey loose in our neighborhood! But we’ve also had lots of opportunities for quickie trips to Disney!

Each time I plan a trip Daddy says, "Again?" And each time we leave, he is the one with a lump in his throat, saying goodbye to the parks, the resorts, the terrible Disney coffee, whatever it is that he can bid farewell to. And asking me when our next trip is.....

So this is another quickie trip to a new resort for us. See, now that we’re so close, my new goal is to stay at EVERY Disney Resort, and eat at EVERY table service restaurant on property. And we’re slowly getting there.
This will be the 6th Disney resort we’ve stayed at. Prior stays were at Boardwalk, Yacht Club, Coronado Springs, Port Orleans-Riverside and Pop Century. We chose ASMo this trip (or so I have led you to believe....) because we are staying at AKL in May. And this is just a mother/daughter weekend so we don’t need much room, and we’re never in our room anyway…..

Wait! Did I say Mother/Daughter weekend? Yeah, that’s what I said back in November, too. And Daddy joined us midway through the trip.

See, Daddy is not much of a planner. I am the planner and control freak. So when he told me he was planning a golf weekend with all his buddies, at our house, I jumped at the chance to have some mother/daughter time with our only child (therefore I can call her my favorite daughter ), Ally, who will be 8 very soon. This is what we did in November. And the golf weekend fell through. Because he’s not the planner. But if I help him plan the weekend, then it might just happen, and if it happens, I lose all my excuses for Mother/Daughter trips to Disney!

Flash forward (no, you’re not watching Lost!!!) to March, and the golf weekend is again in the tank. So the whole family is off to Disney again!

Me…. Kara…. 42 year old Disney junkie. Seriously, if there is a 12 step program I don’t want to be a part of it!!!

DH….. Jeff…. 38 (and loves to remind me of this!). Loves Disney too but thinks it’s uncool to bring that up. But put him in the World and he’s like a pig in… well, you get the idea. He can’t say no to anything in Disney! Why do you think I try to get him there as much as possible? I’m wondering if he is intentionally sabotaging these golf weekends just so he can join us in Disney???

DD….. Ally…. 7 going on 17. She, too loves Disney! Whew! But she is slowly outgrowing the princesses. They are great as long as we are in Disney, but anywhere else and they are “for babies.”



So on to our Mother/Daughter weekend…. With Daddy! Up next, tons of pics with my handy dandy new waterproof camera, and the bomb diggity of all bomb diggity resort upgrades!!!!!

[MiaBella05]

tuning in

[UsNew2Disney2008]

Subscribing.

Kara - where are the photos? BAD Kara!

PS - No wonder the basic dining plan is too much for ya - all those "pit stops" in EPCOT.

[karajeboo]

So on Friday, we all anxiously got ready and off to school and work in the morning. The game plan is for Jeff to leave work at noon, get home, get changed, and off we go to pick Ally up at school around 1:30. Of course anyone who has ever had a “game plan” knows that they rarely go according to plan. If we had left by 1:30, we would have been comfortably in our room by 4:30, and at a park by 5pm.

Jeff left work late. So he swung by and picked Ally up on his way home. Once he got changed and the two small bags in the car, we were pulling out of our driveway around 2:00. Not too bad. Except I realized I didn’t have our passes until we got to the front of our subdivision. And it’s a large subdivision. So that little setback cost us another 15 minutes!!!!!

And of course when we pulled back into the driveway, Ally announced she needed to use the little girls room. And of course, Jeff and I were too excited to think about lunch, so we needed to swing by McD’s on the way out. So we ended up getting on the road at 2:30, and this one measly hour was going to bit us in the butt as soon as we hit Orlando…… at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon.

Now Jeff gets a little cranky in traffic. Even traffic within minutes of Disney World. Cause the pixie dust hasn’t infiltrated his pores yet. So I’m getting the third degree.

“Why are we staying at All Star Movies?”
“Because we have never stayed there before.”
“Refresh me again on this. If we’re gonna stay at a Value, why not Pop? We like Pop?”
“Because we’ve stayed at Pop twice, and you know my goal. We’ve never stayed at an All Star resort so we’re staying at Movies this trip. If we don’t like it, we’ll say that we’ve done All Stars and move on.”
“So where are we staying in May?”
“Animal Kingdom Lodge.”
“Why a deluxe? Why not a moderate?”
“Because we’re doing a Value now, and a Deluxe in May. Add them together and divide by two and it equals two moderates.” Well, sort of. But he doesn’t need to know my Disney math.

So we take the WDW exit, take the obligatory pic of the Welcome gates, and text to all my friends up north with snow on the ground. Yeah, you know who you are!!!

And we drive. And drive. And drive. As we enter the All Star gate, we’re told, “Oh, Movies, last resort, just drive until you can’t go any further.”

I get the chuckle from Jeff. You know, that I told you so chuckle. So we drove. And drove. And finally pulled up to check in. With Jeff smugly commenting, “yeah, this ought to be a fun ride back at the end of the day.”

Now the grounds looked great. A lot like Pop Century, and we love Pop! We are a bit of Disney snobs, but as long as I’m on Disney property, I’m good in any level of resort. Honestly. It’s just that the entire All Stars complex is so ginormous, that it seemed like the bus transportation was going to take us 15 minute just to get out of the compound!!!

So Jeff dropped me off to check in while he and Ally parked the car.
So I waited. And watched the CMs doing some scrambling behind the counter. Seemed to be taking a loooooong time. And I was getting cranky. We are already an hour and a half late checking in, so that’s an hour and a half of Disney time that I’m missing.

I’m wanting to smack the gum right out of the mouths of the two women in front of me who find it necessary to SHOW everyone their gum and their pearly whites, with every obnoxiously loud smack and crack of their gum.
I’ve got that nails on a chalkboard thing going on in my head right now.

Until I step up to the counter. The CM is new, she’s in training, and I love her!!! I have no problem with new CMs. Hey, we’ve all been there at some point in our lives and jobs, where we’ve been in learning mode.

But that’s not why I love her.

I love her because she said,

“How would you like to experience one of our moderate resorts this weekend?”
Huh?
By now, Jeff is at my side, and being the dubious man that he is he responds, “What’s the catch?”
CM: “Well, we are oversold this weekend, so we’d like to move you to Coronado Springs.”
Jeff: “Well, I guesssssss that’s okay. <to me> What do you think?”
Yeah, like it’s a worth a second thought. What a jerk……

So off we went back to the car and on our way to Coronado Springs….. where we just stayed in November for our OTHER girls weekend.

But first, some pics of ASMo, the only ones we were able to take!





So there you have the “Upgrade” part of this TR, as reflected in the title. But wait, there are more upgrades to come……..

[karajeboo]

Originally Posted by MiaBella05

tuning in

Welcome aboard - I promise it will be entertaining once we get to cruising altitude!

Originally Posted by UsNew2Disney2008

Subscribing.

Kara - where are the photos? BAD Kara!

PS - No wonder the basic dining plan is too much for ya - all those "pit stops" in EPCOT.

Oh, just wait til I get to the pit stops portion of this TR!!! And the photos are coming. Patience my young Jedi....

[JaxJags08]

Hi, Kara! I've been away for a while but it looks like I have great timing. I had no idea that you had a trip planned. Can't wait to read more and that is too cool that you got upgraded!

[Camster0307]

Oh Kara - you just love those "quickies", don't you?

I'm here and looking forward to reading all about the latest quickie!

[podsnel]

Cool! I love a good upgrade story!! And FYI- it was 71 degrees here on Saturday- the snow is GONE!!!!!!

[karajeboo]

Originally Posted by JaxJags08

Hi, Kara! I've been away for a while but it looks like I have great timing. I had no idea that you had a trip planned. Can't wait to read more and that is too cool that you got upgraded!

Perfect timing! Glad you're back!

Originally Posted by Camster0307

Oh Kara - you just love those "quickies", don't you?

I'm here and looking forward to reading all about the latest quickie!

I'm taking the Fifth here....

Originally Posted by podsnel

Cool! I love a good upgrade story!! And FYI- it was 71 degrees here on Saturday- the snow is GONE!!!!!!

Get OUT!!!! Another Seinfeld reference for you my friend!!!

[Camster0307]

Originally Posted by podsnel

Cool! I love a good upgrade story!! And FYI- it was 71 degrees here on Saturday- the snow is GONE!!!!!!

Yeah - it was in the 60s here yesterday. And the snow was gone. And you know what?

It's 30 degrees today and I've got 3inches of snow outside.........and it's still coming down!

[poohbearluver]

I'm on board! I can't wait to read more!

Pretty cool that you got upgraded!

[askelton]

Great that you got an upgrade, but now that means you still haven't stayed at All Star Movies, and you know what that means.

[Camster0307]

Aren't we staying in All-Star movies in May?

[CRdisMom]

im here tooo!!!

[karajeboo]

Originally Posted by Camster0307

Yeah - it was in the 60s here yesterday. And the snow was gone. And you know what?

It's 30 degrees today and I've got 3inches of snow outside.........and it's still coming down!

Ouch! It's 82 today, and gonna hit 85 tomorrow..... not that I'm bragging or anything....

Originally Posted by poohbearluver

I'm on board! I can't wait to read more!

Pretty cool that you got upgraded!

It was wonderful to be upgraded like that! And there are more upgrades coming! Thanx for reading!!!

Originally Posted by askelton

Great that you got an upgrade, but now that means you still haven't stayed at All Star Movies, and you know what that means.

I don't know. Something tells me I'll never make the All Stars.....

Originally Posted by Camster0307

Aren't we staying in All-Star movies in May?

All Star Music. The other bad thing about AS Movies is that I heard it was the only one that hadn't been upgraded, and people were really complaining about it here on the DIS. So for my DVC friend, I made sure we got a remodeled room as AS Music!