Oh My! Did Tinkerbell do That? A Feb 2012 TR. Updated 2/23

[Oliquig]

Hi! My name is Rachel and if you are one of the five people who read my PTR (link in my signature,) thanks for following over here!

My best friend, her 11 yo daughter, and I spent 8 days at POFQ, and having a grand time throughout the parks. We were on DDP so I have food pics as well as tons of photos from two cameras, two phones, and photo pass (when I finish editing them, oy.)

So here goes!

Monday January 30th 2012

I woke up at my normal time (5:30 AM) and got ready for work, packing my toiletries as I went. Then I checked into our flight for the next day, and double checked all my luggage. We were staying overnight at the Holiday Inn Express near the airport for two reasons. One, our flight was at 6:30 AM and we live 35 minutes from the airport and that's just too early to be on the road. Two, we live in CT and the chance of buckets of snow was too great a chance to take.

Then I was the subject of the "You can't possibly leave me for a week!" look from Sadie.



Off to work! Longest Day Ever. Seriously.

At about two-thirty I get a call from a local number, but one I don't know. It turns out to be the manager of the Holiday Inn Express. Now in my experience when people call you before you are going to stay/eat/play at a place it's never good news. Nobody calls to say, "Hey, we've decided to comp your stay!" or "You wouldn't mind if we upgraded you to a suite, would you?" No. That never happens. So now I am slightly freaking out over either (A) our reservation being screwed up or (B) them telling me their airport shuttle wasn't running, and we would have to walk to the airport at 4:30 in the morning.

It turns out that their elevator broke and wouldn't be fixed until the next day. On my scale of awfulness, this barely reaches a 2. Especially when she said we would be on the second floor. No problem. She then became very effusive is her thanks for my not flipping out (my words not her's) over the elevator thing.

So I got home and then my parents (who were driving us to the hotel) arrived, we packed up the car and off we went. We had dinner at Ruby Tuesday's, and no I did not take pictures. I did really like what I had for dinner though, it was a Medditerrean Shrimp Pasta, and it was gooood.

My parents dropped us off at the hotel, this is our room. It was quite big and the sofa was a sofa bed, so Noelle got her own one instead of sharing with her mom! There was only one problem, which I will go into later.



5 minutes later, Noelle was ready for the pool.



So off we went! I wasn't paying attention to the focus with this photo, so instead of a smiling Noelle, you get a lovely photo of my pedicure.



Noelle swam for about an hour,



while I read my Nook.



Then we headed back up, took showers and went to bed. Which is when we noticed the problem. The beds were soooooo un-com-for-table. Both Nina & I were able to doze on our respective beds but between excitedness of the vacation and the suckiness of the beds, no deep sleep was going to happen.

Up Next: First day at Disney!

[Marssiful]

I just caught up on your ptr. I am excited to learn about your trip!

[Colleen27]

I'm in!

[JD698]

Looking forward to your report. The end of my trip coincided with the beginning of yours. We also stayed at POFQ. I'm hoping to post my own trip report 1/29-2/4. It was our first visit to WDW, our sons' first plane ride, their 7th birthday on 2/3 (twins). And, this will be my first trip report - if i can figure out how to post the pix and i'd like to create links to each day. only time will tell . . .

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Oh no! No sleep the night before Disney isn't a good way to start! Oh well, you can sleep after vacation, right?

Can't wait to read more!!

[caralyn817]

I'm new to your report and can't wait to read more. We leave in about a month so I will be enjoying your report while I wait for my trip to begin.

[Stringbean&Wingnut]

I'm here!!!

Ugh, uncomfortable beds are the WORST. Noelle looks like she had fun at the pool though!

[IheartDDuck]

I'm joining! Can't wait to hear all about it.

[Oliquig]

Originally Posted by Marssiful

I just caught up on your ptr. I am excited to learn about your trip!

Thanks so much!

Originally Posted by Colleen27

I'm in!

Yea!

Originally Posted by JD698

Looking forward to your report. The end of my trip coincided with the beginning of yours. We also stayed at POFQ. I'm hoping to post my own trip report 1/29-2/4. It was our first visit to WDW, our sons' first plane ride, their 7th birthday on 2/3 (twins). And, this will be my first trip report - if i can figure out how to post the pix and i'd like to create links to each day. only time will tell . . .

I use photobucket.com for my photos, looking foward to reading yours!

Originally Posted by Twoboysnmygirl

Oh no! No sleep the night before Disney isn't a good way to start! Oh well, you can sleep after vacation, right?

Can't wait to read more!!

Since we had to get up so early the next day, it wasn't too bad, but man did my back hurt.

Originally Posted by caralyn817

I'm new to your report and can't wait to read more. We leave in about a month so I will be enjoying your report while I wait for my trip to begin.

Thnaks so much, I hope you have a wonderful time!

Originally Posted by Stringbean&Wingnut

I'm here!!!

Ugh, uncomfortable beds are the WORST. Noelle looks like she had fun at the pool though!

Noelle loves pools. She will swim until her entire body becomes one big prune.

Originally Posted by IheartDDuck

I'm joining! Can't wait to hear all about it.

Thanks! I'm trying to edit and prettify all the photos, which takes some time!

[MelMel11]

Count me in!!

[francis6306]

I'm in!!

At least it was only ONE night of no elevator and uncomfy beds!

[Oliquig]

Originally Posted by MelMel11

Count me in!!

Great!

Originally Posted by francis6306

I'm in!!

At least it was only ONE night of no elevator and uncomfy beds!

Yes, it wasn't so bad. At least it was just the first night, not the whole week.

[Oliquig]

We all got up around 4-ish and got all our stuff downstairs.

Our Stuff:



The Holiday Inn has a free breakfast, but we were too early for that, but they did have fruit, pastries, and yogurt, plus cofee and tea. Nina & Noelle each had a banana, and I had a yogurt and tea.

We took the shuttle to the airport and checked in our luggage, thankfully under the 50 lb limit JetBlue imposes. We saw the Lego Mark Twain house on the way to security:



It was pretty neat. We made it through security fine, although Noelle's bag needed to be searched as the mini M & M tubes filled with pennies and quarters (for pressed pennies) confuzzled the screener.

The funniest was the guy asked if there was anything sharp that would stick or cut him, and it was so hard not to say, "Noelle, did you pack your knife collection?" Thankfully I held myself back.

After a quick breakfast



at MCDs we headed off to the gate to board. The flight was fine and spent watching TV, as we were all too tired to do anything else.

We landed and took the faux monorail



(please excuse Noelle's hair, she went to bed with it wet, and woke up with it electrified)



over to the main terminal. We took a wrong turn before we finally found Magical Express!



We waited for awhile for a bus, when the most dreadful part of our vacation occured.



Yep, no awesome ME bus for us, but the yellow Mears bus instead. Sigh, I guess if that's the worst part of our vacation, it was a pretty awesome vacation.

Our bus driver was really weird, going WAY overboard on the sob story to garner tips. I ignored him and just concentrated on getting this shot:



SQUEE!!!

We were the first stop



and we headed off to registration to find out where we would be staying!
Next Up: Our room and lunch!

[My sister's princess]

I am here to join in the fun!!!!! Fun report so far!


What was the sob story the bus driver told? Now you have me wondering!!!

[Stringbean&Wingnut]

Hahaha I guess a Mears bus being the worst part of the trip really is a fabulous trip!!!

Can't wait to see more about POFQ!