Hold On, Let Me Wipe Off My Death Star - A May 15 SWW TR UPDATE 8/27 Pg. 6!

Joining in!

Welcome!

The pictures are already great-as usual!
I never realized how much your brother looks like your dad!

That was a common statement as I was posting pictures on Facebook and Instagram. LOL.

Hi Dr. Nick!

I'm here!!!

Yay, hi Jen!

I'm here!

I'm glad you are my friend. :)

I may have trouble keeping up but I'm in :duck:

No worries at all Dawn, keep up when you can.
 
Reporting for duty!

Jill in CO

Yay, I'm glad you're here1

I'm here!!! and made the first page...I'm impressed with myself!! LOL

Nice! One plus is the new DIS has more messages per page!

I'm here ... although I haven't read the introductions yet. I'm kind of super behind on my DIS right now ... but I'll read the intros & catch up eventually. I know I have to if I want to read all about your (hopefully) awesome trip!

Haha, that's okay I'm super behind on the DIS too.

Hey Chicky!!! Here and excited to hear all about your latest adventure!

And I was so glad to meet you and Shan. :) I wish we had more time to spend together.

Here!!! My son wanted to hit the 24hr party again. We had other plans and he was bummed out.

Truthfully you didn't miss much. I'll cover that when we get there, hahaha.
 
How did I miss this start? Glad to see the report started and ready to read along. Love the Smee look.

You didn't miss it by much, and nothing's really happened yet so it's all good! Thanks, I really liked how that outfit turned out.

I'm here too!

Glad you're here!

I'm here! :wave:

Still following along on your other two as well!

Yay! I'm trucking along on those two TR's too.

You really are super ambitious to have 3 TRs going on at once, but I LOVE IT! Your TRs are the most entertaining; I get excited when I have a chance to sit down and catch up on your stories. With such a difficult beginning of the year, I'm glad you were able to get away and enjoy some crazy antics with your brother!

Either I'm super ambitious, or I'm crazy. I might have to say I'm crazy. Thanks so much hon! I try to make them as entertaining as possible.

And I'm here....

Yay!
 


I am here also. Looking forward to living vicariously through your trip report.

I'm glad I can help anyone live vicariously through my trip reports. :)

No Popadon???? Jason better represent. Can't wait to read all about it

Nope, no Popadon. Jason is a decent replacement for him though, no worries.

HIIII Dr. Nick!

Here and ready to read all about this trip! :)

Hi Alexis! I'm glad you're here.

Joining in! Three TR's at once- you're my idol!!

Haha, I'm just crazy.

I'm in! I'm going to really like this one. I'm a Star Wars junkie.

Then this will be the TR for you!
 
I'm here and can't wait to read all about it!!! popcorn::

I'm glad you're here.

Joining in. Looking forward to reading about your trip!

:welcome: Thanks for joining!

Here! I cannot wait to read all about the Star Wars stuff.

Oh and I do have to say that Jason sure has his Popadon faces down!

Haha, he does have the Pop faces down. He definitely inherited them from my Dad.

Hi Danielle!
I was in MK on the 24-hour day too. I tried to keep an eye out for you but never did see you. It was the last park day of our trip and we were fairly pooped by then so we didn't even come close to attempting to do the extra long hours. As in, we didn't even get to MK until noon (after late breakfast at Ohana) and we left right after Wishes. And, in hindsight, I wonder if I should have switched our last two park days (Epcot and MK) so as to avoid the craziness of a 24-hour day. But, since I had already done all our ADRs and FPs before they announced the 24-hour day, I decided to just plow on through.

Anyway, I look forward to getting your take on the day and the weekend! (And, as long as you're updating your other two TRs, I'll be right here reading them!) popcorn::

Aha, that makes sense why we would have missed each other. We were at the MK at 6am, and we left after the first showing of Festival of Fantasy, and then we came back late in the evening. Next year, if they have the 24 party again, I know we're planning a trip around that time, but it's a longer trip so everything will be better.

Another report? I'm in!!!

:welcome: I'm glad you're here!
 
I'm following along! I would love to do SWW but I'm tied to school holidays. I'm sure it's been said many times before but Jason looks so much like Popadon.

Awww, that's sad! It does run through June, but that would depend on when school got out for you.

Joining in! Definitely funny how that happens sometimes that you get home and first think you didn't get much done ... and then realize you actually did do a lot.

Jason is definitely channeling Papadon in that picture with the Jawa

Yeah, I've gone back and forth with the trip, one moment feeling like we got a ton done, and then another moment thinking that we got nothing done at all. Short trips can definitely do that sometimes though.

Like father like son is definitely the case here.

Well I'm DEFINITELY in. Excited!!

Yay, Marissa!

Hey girl!!! Made it over here. Your brother looks SO MUCH like Popadon, it didn't really hit me until his intro pic...but yeah. Doppelgängers!!

I finally got to experience a little of SWW so I'm excited to hear about what you did!

I'm glad you're here! Yup, they are doppelgängers for sure. They have a ton of similarities.

That's cool that you were able to experience some of it. I absolutely loved it even more, so I want to try to get back every year.

I'm here!!

Yay!
 


:banana: Yay another TR!!

I am barely keeping up with anything right now but I am defiantly in for this! ::yes::

Off back to read your last update on your other TR! :rotfl:

Glad that you're here!

Hi Danielle - I'm in! I've been a lurker on all your past trip reports so thought I'd step out and say hello. I love seeing your make-up creations and reading about the fun you share as a family. I'm sorry that the beginning of 2015 hasn't been very kind to you and your family and I hope it turns around for the better!
Also - wanted to say congrats on completing the PHM!! I've run two Disney 1/2's and the marathon in 2011 and I agree with what you said about it being one of your greatest accomplishments in life, as that is exactly how I feel about finishing my races.

Your brother really does resemble Popadon!
So excited to read more!
Beth

Thanks for coming out of lurkdom Beth! :) We definitely have a fun time together and I do love that about my family. Thanks very much, yeah, the beginning of 2015 hasn't been the greatest, but hopefully it continues to get better.

Tanks so much! Wow, that's amazing that you've run the entire marathon. That just scares me a bit. Maybe someday.

I'm here! I'm a lurker but I'm here!

Yay!!!

I'm in, Danielle! Three TRs going at once?! How ambitious of you.

Yup, I've officially lost my mind it appears. LOL.
 
Awww, that's sad! It does run through June, but that would depend on when school got out for you.

School gets out in our council this year on 24th June which is pretty early for us. I need to just hope they create a Star Wars Land in the future. I do get a long weekend at the end of May but it would be a bit expensive to come over for the weekend! Until such times I will feel the force through you.The force is strong with this one!
 
School gets out in our council this year on 24th June which is pretty early for us. I need to just hope they create a Star Wars Land in the future. I do get a long weekend at the end of May but it would be a bit expensive to come over for the weekend! Until such times I will feel the force through you.The force is strong with this one!

That's actually late by us, but that totally stinks for timing! It is expensive to go for weekends, which is what we did for this trip technically, but sometimes I think it's worth it.

I'm here!

I'm glad you're here!

I'm finally here. Will go back to start reading

Yeah, you better get to reading. LOL.

I might be late but I'm definitely here for the party :thumbsup2

Yay!!!!

Here and looking forward to hearing all about it.

Woo hoo, let's get started!
 
"And So Continues My Departure Day Bad Luck."

Departure Day - Thursday May 21, 2015

Those of you who have read my previous trip reports know that something always seems to happen to me on departure day. Now, I'm not implying that it's anything bad by any means, but something inevitably happens. Food snafu, travel snafu, you name it, it has happened to me.

Today would be no different.

Jason opted to work from home on this day, and I was working 6am to 12pm. Our flight was leaving Milwaukee at 3:30pm, so I headed to work and was planning to pick Jason up after I left, and we would go directly to the airport.

I woke up at 4:45am. (ugggggghhhhhh). Let's be real everyone, this would definitely be me at some point later at work.



So my plan was in place to stop through Dunkin' Donuts, which is my departure day breakfast of choice. I really should learn from this and not go to DD on departure day. They're fine under all normal circumstances, but man they really mess it up the day I head to vacation.

Me: I'll have a number 3 with a plain bagel and plain cream cheese.

DD: Um, we're actually out of plain bagels.

Me: Okay, do you have blueberry? What flavors do you have?

DD: Um, we actually don't have any bagels.

Me: Seriously? Like none?

DD: We have croissants, sandwiches...

Me: Yes I'm clear on what your selections are, I'm just confused as to why at 6am on a weekday you don't have any bagels.



I had to sacrifice at this point and order an egg and cheese muffin sandwich, but I will say I was not happy about it. Obviously the DD guy was making the donuts, but not making the bagels. Did the bagel guy oversleep? We will never know.

Thankfully the rest of the day went by fast and I did not fall asleep at my desk! Yay for a productive work day!

Jason and Jeni only live 5 minutes away from our office, so I was at the apartment in no time. Jeni took the same days off of work to spend with the kids over the extended weekend while we were having fun in WDW. She came out to give me a hug goodbye as well, before heading out for a run.

We made good time to the airport and made it by about 1:15pm. It took about 10 minutes to find parking, because I prefer to park on the level that walks into the terminal. Yup, I'm that weird.

I had already printed out our boarding passes and made a stupid error. I had to make the reservations separately, because my flight was booked on points and a voucher, while Jason's was out of pocket. Online doesn't allow you to book flights on points and cash, so I had to book my two flights as one ways.

Well, when I made my reservations, I bought Early Bird Check In. And when I made Jason's, apparently I forgot! When I checked him in the night before, it placed him in the B group. I had no idea why it did that, until I investigated further and found my mistake. I quickly purchased Early Bird for the flight home for him. However, this put me in the A group and Jason in the B group. I could go backwards, but he could not come up to me. Guess we would be boarding B! It wasn't a big deal, I was more irritated with myself than anything else that I forgot. Oh well.

I dropped my bag off at the counter (Jason didn't have a checked bag) and we headed over to TSA. We were sent through the pre-check line, which was a score.

In Milwaukee that translates to 1 person being in front of you in line instead of 2. Hahaha! Actually, it also means you don't have to take your shoes off or anything, which is an added bonus.

After we made it through, we decided to stop to get a bite to eat at the pizza place. I can't remember what it's called, but it's pretty good stuff. I wasn't too hungry, I had eaten right before I left work, but Jason hadn't eaten anything.

I had a drink first. Spotted Cow on tap. :)



And Jason did his best duck face. We discussed possibly doing a duck face in Disney series.



I didn't get a picture of Jason's pizza as he devoured it pretty much immediately, but I had gotten an appetizer of bread knots, which were pretty good.



At 2:45pm we headed to the gate, and boarding was at 3pm. Jason headed off to the shop to get some headphones and all of a sudden they were calling for the B group to line up. I grabbed all of our stuff and went into the store to hurry him along. Just as we were walking up to line up, they started boarding our line. Nice timing.

We decided to head to the back of the plane to try to prevent someone from sitting next to us. Jason put on his best Billy Bob Thornton from Sling Blade impression to prevent anyone from taking the seat.



I think he did a pretty good job.



No one sat between us!

Seriously, no one sat between us. However, it had nothing to do with the fact that Jason looked like that, it was because the flight wasn't full. The flight crew ended up being delayed. I'm unsure exactly what happened, but they ended up getting a completely different flight crew at the last minute. We ended up sitting on the tarmac for about 15 minutes, but the awesome pilot made that time up in the end.


I was messing around on Facebook at that time, and was showing Jason that picture of Matthew Lewis from Harry Potter. You know, Neville Longbottom.



Now the picture I showed Jason would not be appropriate to share on the DIS, but let's just say DAG UM! Jason's natural response?

"What, is he all like "my patronus is a protein shake!" now?


We're all a bunch of dorks folks, get used to it.

Finally, we were on our way! Yay!! The captain really did want to get us there fast, because we ascended super quickly. He certainly wanted to make up the time we lost sitting on the tarmac.

I had drink coupons from my Southwest rewards, so I treated myself to this. I never drink on the plane. Don't ask me why, I just don't.



We ended up landing only 10 minutes late, which was awesome! We deplaned pretty quickly. Before heading down to baggage claim, I had to make a potty stop, but then we were on our way to the faux-norail. :) No pictures necessary, we all know what it looks like.

At the baggage carousel, we stood and waited for about 3 minutes, until we heard an announcement that it was on another one. I head over there and my bag was already sitting on a cart. So I grab it.

Holy smokes, you would have thought I was a criminal. The airport employee starts freaking out on me and yelling "no no no no!" I backed away and I'm like "but it's my bag..." He told me he needed to see my ID or the ticket for the bag, which I was trying to find from my bag. He had such a look of disgust and impatience on his face, I seriously felt like a criminal.

So bag on carousel = anyone can grab no ID checking.

Bag off carousel = treat people like criminals.


Good to know. I was like "what the what man!" Made no sense to me. That was absolutely the fastest I've ever seen my baggage come off a plane too. I mean, I peed. That was it, and boom the bag was there.

We walked to Alamo to pick up the rental. I got the rental for about $100 with tax, so I wasn't going to turn that down. Even though we barely used the car, I like the freedom of being able to leave when I want to. I tried to get my reservation from the kiosk, but it wouldn't read my license. The lady managing the line told me it was common with older Illinois licenses.

It was at that moment I wished I hadn't procrastinated and renewed my license early.

The line moved fairly quickly though and then we headed out to pick our car. I had booked a compact, but it was more like an economy car. Seriously, it was a Chevy Spark.

Jason pointed out that he thought it was the smallest car he had ever been in.

Before we left, I was texting Jacquie (Queenofallthings) that we were on our way. When I found out that she was going to possibly be there at the same time as me, I messaged her on Facebook to find out what their dates were. Our arrival night was their last night. Jacquie, sweet lady that she is, said that she didn't care how late we got in, she would be wherever to meet us. So the plan was for them to meet us at the Beach Club when we got there to check in. I knew they had dinner at Epcot that evening, so that would make it easier for them.

I was so excited to meet them. Jacquie's TR's were some of the first ones that I met, so to me she was DIS royalty. She's not on much anymore, but still, she was a must meet person to me.

The drive to the resort was pretty uneventful. You know the usual.

I had road rage.

Called people Jackwagons.

You know, totally normal!

We made pretty good time and pulled up to the Beach Club at 8:30pm. I had done online check in, but I didn't get any message with my room number. I valeted the car and we headed in, and the CM greeted us and brought us to the front desk. I totally saw Jacquie and Shanleigh sitting and waiting in the lobby. I felt torn, because the CM was leading me to the front desk, but I wanted to be all like



But I contained myself. I waved at them and figured check in would take 2 minutes.

Or 20 as it turned out. Jason's band wasn't working, so that took quite some time to fix. Then my band wasn't working, so that took quite some time to fix. The funny thing is the CM is like "oh it's a custom band, yeah sometimes these have problems." I looked at my band and then looked at him. "It's a sticker....." It wasn't a custom or special band, it was just a sticker, but okay then.

At this point, I waved Jacquie and Shan over and told them to come up to the desk. That we were having band problems. The CM goes "band corrections."

I'm sorry. "Band COR-REC-TIONS"

I'm going to say first and foremost that while we were chatting with Jacquie and Shan, it felt like we had known them forever. They were the kind of people that we just connected with. They loved Jason and he was definitely putting out all the stops. He's very funny and extremely charming, so this doesn't surprise me.

He is Popadon's son after all.

Jacquie was the sweetest and told me that I was a must meet for them. That when she found out we were going to overlap a day she knew that under no circumstances would she leave without meeting me. It was so sweet. After a while they said they felt like they were keeping us from eating, but I wasn't ready for us to part ways! So I invited them, if they wanted to, to stroll with us. They agreed, which made me excited. We headed to our room first to drop off the baggage. Jacquie said it gave them an opportunity to check out our hotel room since they'd never seen one at the Beach Club before.

We were chatting and walked down to Beaches and Cream. It was great, until we found out that the wait was 1 hour and 45 minutes. That's insane! At 9:30pm!

Obviously we said no way, so we decided to walk to the Boardwalk instead. This actually ended up being ideal, because it really gave us the chance to get to know each other. Jason wasn't weirded out by meeting them, which was nice, we all connected. We went to the bakery. I wasn't that hungry, but Jason was.

I opted for a cupcake. Cause it's the dinner of champions.



Jason and his tomato, basil, mozzarella sandwich.



Shan's half eaten cookie. She was hungry.



We chatted for quite some time, until 11pm! We talked about Canada and the fact that they live in the area in Canada with the most crime. 26 murders in one year!

Jason pointed out sweetly that in Chicago in one weekend alone we had like 40 shootings.

Jacquie seriously had this hysterical look on her face like we were lying! I told her no, that's what it was like, but that it's not really an unsafe place. Perspective I suppose, I don't know. Hahaha!

They were so sweet hanging out with us on our first night, even though they had a 4am Magical Express!

Jacquie, I truly hope that we cross paths with each other again. This meet felt like such a long time coming.

Of course, we had to get a picture. No worries, I have evidence.

You can tell Jason and I are total goobers. Jacquie had a better shot of us.



I'm a fan of this one myself.



We parted ways and gave hugs all around. They had an early ME and Jason and I had the 24 hour party ahead of us. I'm so happy that we met each other and it was the perfect way to start my trip.

When we got back to the room we unpacked quickly and our heads hit our pillows just after midnight. But the alarm was set for 4:30am. 24 hour party!

Or disaster.......

Up next: I didn't want a cold shower!





 
No bagels at DD? That's just weird! Glad you didn't end up landing too far off schedule. What a weird situation with your bag! Sounds like such a fun DISmeet :)

Oh boy can't wait to hear about the party.
 
So weird that they didn't have bagels that morning at DD.

You do seem to have little things go wrong on your arrival days. At least this one wasn't as bad as some of the others.

Jim and I had a similar car experience in February. We got a Toyota Yaris which I think is about the same size as the Spark. We just called it our "little clown car" for the whole trip. The Yaris was so little it only had one windshield wiper.

Yay for a wonderful DIS meet!

I think I need that cupcake like this minute!
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!











facebook twitter
Top