How different can two trips be? Let me count the ways! COMPLETE!

[irene_dsc]

Greetings! As implied in the title, this is the TR for our family's second trip to Orlando. The two trips were about as different as they could possibly be!

I'll gradually reveal the differences, but since I really ought to be working, you'll have to come back later to find out more...

Chapters Links - added thanks to help from HSMandLKfan!

Intros - part 1

Intros - part 2 (aka - the next post)

Mini PTR Part 1 - Compare and Contrast

Mini PTR Part 2 - Location, location, location

Trip Report
Days 1 and 2: Road Trip and arrival
And we're off!

Road trip!

How about a few condo photos?

Don't forget the pool photos!

You were wondering what we forgot, right?

Day 3: EPCOT
Magic Bands, Unite! Plus, the Itinerary!

Future World, Part 1

Future World, Part 2

Showcase of grumpiness

World Showcase of grumpiness, Part 2

Unlimited Buffett! Grumpiness, begone!

Day 4: Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom, Part 1

Magic Kingdom, Part 2 or Everyone Needs Deadlines...

MK Part 3 / Sorcerers of the MK, Part 1

MK Part 4 / SOMK, Part 2

MK Part 5 / SOMK, Part 3 and done!

MK Part 6 - Wishes, etc.

Day 5: Animal Kingdom
AK Part 1 - Start the photo overload

AK Part 2 - Safari photo overload

AK Part 3

AK Part 4

Day 6: Down Day / Date Night

Resort down day

Date night!

Day 7: Dark Side, Part 1

Intro to IOA

Seuss vs Hulk

So many choices...

Diagon Alley at last...

Day 8: Dark Side, Part 2

Motionless Minions?

Platform 9 3/4

Say goodbye to the Dark Side...

Days 9 & 10:

Travel back north

Final thoughts...

 

[irene_dsc]

But first, to introduce the cast:

my daughter, Gwen, then and now:


with her favorite princess at the time, at 1900 Park Fare... and as a Pokemon trainer for Halloween this year

Then: age 3
favorite character: Cinderella
favorite ride: Peter Pan
favorite Disney movie: Peter Pan

Now: age 10, almost 11
favorite character: Merida
favorite ride: Expedition Everest
favorite movie: Peter Pan (at least some things stay the same!)

Other big changes for her: somehow in the last year, she turned into our ride thrillseeker! She definitely did *not* get that from me!


my son, Thomas: will have to wait for later...

 

[irene_dsc]

On with the intros! I realized it is difficult to add photos at home, so I'll have to add them in later. But, this is going way too slowly...

So...

Thomas!

Two photos from our day at AK - silly and serious
Then: age 6
favorite character: Nemo?
favorite ride: Buzz!
favorite Disney movie: Aristocats

Now: age 13

Why yes, he's grown! He's now taller than his tae kwon doe master (and both his parents)! This is from Black Belt testing this past February.
favorite character: Donald Duck or Baymax
favorite ride: Everest? or possibly still Buzz
favorite Disney movie: Big Hero 6

Other random changes for ds: He got his Black Belt in tae kwon doe this year, which was a huge accomplishment. He also got through the parks this time without any electronic devices to entertain him. (Last time, he had his brand new Nintendo DS).

husband Michael
Hm, no only hubby photos from the last trip...here's one from our AK day where apparently I was photo crazy:


You don't *really* need our ages, now do you?
Then:
favorite character: Sorcerer Mickey
favorite ride: Safari
favorite Disney movie: Fantasia

Now:

(No, that's not a trip photo - that's from lunch at a local Mexican restaurant that was quite yummy)
favorite character: Walt Disney for putting it all together
favorite ride: Everest
favorite Disney movie: looking forward to the 7th Star Wars movie (he says that counts)

Other big changes for him: Way too busy at work. This is both good and bad, since he's been super-stressed. Poor guy should've probably had a week at the beach to unwind instead of running around the parks.

Me! (Irene)
Then:
not many photos of me from that trip, either! This is from our Garden Grill dinner:


favorite character: Mrs. Incredible
favorite ride: Soarin'
favorite Disney movie: Incredibles

Now:

From a date night this past summer at one of our favorite local restaurants - which we also designed when it remodeled. I had a hard time finding photos of me, since I'm always the one behind the camera! (I also need to get dh to put some of his photos where the rest of the family photos live, so I don't have to download them from facebook!)
favorite character: Princess Leia (she counts as a Disney Princess now...)
favorite ride: Space Mountain
favorite Disney movie: Peter Pan

Big changes for me: Also way too busy. It's amazing how the kid activities creep up on you, plus my own volunteer activities (and being a Girl Scout Leader overlaps both of those, lol). I didn't have quite as much time to devote to planning this trip as the last one, alas. Also, my PTR wasn't nearly as entertaining this time around.

Next: Let's compare the two trips!

 

[KathyM2]

I'm here!! Can't wait to hear about it!!!

 

[irene_dsc]

I'm here!! Can't wait to hear about it!!!

Welcome, Kathy!

 

[irene_dsc]

So, the first big difference - on our first trip, we went for the classic total Disney immersion experience. We stayed onsite (CBR), flew and did Magical Express, took all Disney transportation, and did the Disney Dining Plan. All Disney, all the time!

But, while I was planning the first trip, I started hearing about these offsite places you could rent that were so much larger. We could havea room away from the kids! The kids wouldn't need to share a bed! We could have a car and check out other places!

The Harry Potter expansion on the Dark Side was even more reason to escape the Disney bubble. Plus, dd was 10, and would count as an adult on the dining plan. But sometimes she would want a kid meal. Dining Plan made no sense.

We'd been talking about this plan for a while, and finally we decided to go for it. The first big thing was finding a place to stay...

 

[irene_dsc]

On a fateful Sunday morning, dh and I decided to look for a place to stay. Ideally a 2 or 3 bedroom condo (separate beds at least), close to Disney, affordable, preferably stuff on site to do, but a house could work, too.

We quickly realized we had waited a little late, and finally snagged a 1 bedroom condo (with bunk beds in an alcove) at Blue Heron Resort. It looked like it had gotten dissed on the Disboards a while ago, but new management was getting better reviews, so we decided to risk it.

The other big difference - driving instead of flying. We went back and forth on this a lot, but we saved so much by driving, we had to do it. Especially since doing Disney plus Universal is the most expensive way to do tickets! At least the kids are now much better in the car. ( a couple years ago, we did a 2 week road trip from Chicago to Yellowstone and back, so we have the experience!)

Next, to start the actual Trip Report...

 

[irene_dsc]

Btw, I don't think I mentioned, dh and I are both architects and work together. We tried to leave early the day before leaving to pack, but that only sorta worked. But, we finally finished packing the car about 9 pm (besides snacks, of course) and tried to get some sleep.

At 4 am, dh and I got up to finish the last minute packing. By 4:45, we had the kids up and in the car, ready to go and miss Chicago rush hour traffic! We had a lovely open road, and no worries missing familiar territory in the dark. We finally stopped for breakfast at a Waffle House in Indy.

I had had fond memories of Waffle Houses from grad school road trips, but it had gotten more expensive, and somehow didn't live up to my fond memories, alas. The rest of the family was also not impressed. But at least we were very full...

 

[jchurch0409]

Joining in!!

 

[KathyM2]

Sounds like a great start to the trip!! I have to say...wow...you and hubby work together and can do a road trip without killing each other lol That's a whole lotta togetherness!! Kidding of course...but I sometimes wonder how people do that How long is the drive from Chicago? I guess I will find out soon...

 

[irene_dsc]

Joining in!!

Welcome!

Sounds like a great start to the trip!! I have to say...wow...you and hubby work together and can do a road trip without killing each other lol That's a whole lotta togetherness!! Kidding of course...but I sometimes wonder how people do that How long is the drive from Chicago? I guess I will find out soon...

Yup, a whole lot of togetherness. Usually it's good. When one of us is cranky, it isn't so good, lol. Alas, there was more crankiness than optimal this trip, mostly to due with traffic and crowds and such.

Travel time will be discussed, but this little hop onto the DIS was so I could try and add some photos to my earlier intros...(if I don't get interrupted!)

 

[irene_dsc]

And for those who are following along, you can now scroll back up to see photos in the intros!

 

[irene_dsc]

After our Waffle House breakfast, we continued heading south. The scenery in the rest of Indiana was still not very exciting. Dd was at least excited to see where we will be returning over the 4th of July for Pokemon Nationals, in downtown Indy!

The best part of driving south was gradually seeing spring unfold. We didn't start seeing green until about Louisville. Louisville was cute, but we didn't stop at all. We also realized we would pass right by Mammoth Cave. Dd was also excited about that, since in 4th grade, she had to do a big research project on a national park, and hers was Mammoth Cave! We talked about stopping, but the tour she really wanted to do is 2 hours long. We started plotting possible ways to do it on the way home, however.

Btw, Kentucky has a very nice welcome center. I don't think I have any photos, alas.

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

So glad you enjoyed my home state of Kentucky, although briefly! Although I've never heard of anybody referring to Louisville as "cute" before... Mammoth Cave is really worth doing, but maybe on a different trip. It really does take a whole morning or afternoon to get into the cave and back out.

 

[irene_dsc]

Lol. I guess when downtown Chicago is your idea of what a big city looks like, a smaller downtown tends to look, well, cute. Plus, iirc, it had the first blooming daffodils we saw all trip.

And yes, this is the TR of very short updates at any one time...

 

[KathyM2]

I heard about the Pokemon nationals from my DS...a friend of his went a couple years ago. Fun!! Cool that you might have a chance to stop where your son has done some research...he would be a lot more interested for sure! But the decision to stop on a road trip...that's a tough one...it's fun to see the sights...but you don't want to make the trip too much longer than necessary...sigh..if only there was unlimited time for road trips!

 

[HSMndLKfan92]

I'm in!

 

[irene_dsc]

It was funny that since I didn't have a lot of time to plan this trip, I didn't end up planning any road trip stops. When we did our big Yellowstone road trip, I used roadtrippers.com to plan out our route (with multiple stops), and it also had some really nice tools to find roadside attractions, etc. But when I went back there to plan the road trip part of this trip, they had totally re-done the site, and I got way too many things popping up as potential stops and I hit overload very quickly and never went back. So, I just used plain old google maps to map out the route (I-65 to I-24 to I-75 to the Florida turnpike to I-4).

Of course, once I was sitting in the car and looking at our handy dandy road atlas, I was able to notice things like driving right past a national park! Our family likes cave tours, too - we've gone on a few as a family already. But, they do tend to take a while.

 

[irene_dsc]

I'm in!

And - welcome!

 

[irene_dsc]

So, moving on with actual trip report stuff...

The rest of the drive is running together in my mind. Basically, it got greener and greener as we drove south. More and more flowering trees. I had to explain to the others that the reddish/purplish trees were redbuds, and reminded them that there is one on our block at home. It isn't blooming yet, of course! (I'm the family gardener, fwiw, and I also do a little bit of landscape designing for some of our projects.)

Dd was also excited to see all the rock walls where they cut through hills to make the roads. She took a lot of photos on her phone that mostly didn't turn out very well, lol. Tho I did go through her phone photos and emailed some to me, so a few will likely show up in this report. A lot of the photos on her phone were taken by dh, because we didn't let him take his phone to the parks. We figured that was the best way to keep him from talking to clients, contractors, etc! I did have my phone, just in case anyone needed us, and on the way down, I did end up answering some contractor questions.

We never did stop for lunch that day. I had packed lots of road trip snacks, so we just kept munching. Ds has also recently discovered baking, and had baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies especially for the trip, so of course, it included his cookies.

We had strategically booked our hotel just north of Atlanta, in Smyrna, so we wouldn't need to deal with much Atlanta traffic at the end of a long day. We were at a Holiday Inn Express, and it was very new and modern looking. It was very nice, and of course, it got our vote also because it was big enough to fit a rollaway in the room so the kids wouldn't need to share. Dd has always been a pretty restless sleeper, and so no one really wants to have to share a bed with her, and especially now that the kids are older, they pretty much refuse to share a bed. A couple times on our Yellowstone road trip, dd made a nest on the floor with pillows!

For dinner, dh had already decided he wanted to go to Ted's. His grandmother lived in Marietta, and when he and his mom went down for her funeral, they went to a Ted's, and he wanted to return. Part of this is because when we were in Yellowstone, he tried bison a couple times, and it never came out right. He even sent back his bison steak 3 times one night! So, he was very happy that Ted's was able to properly cook his bison steak! Ds got a bison burger, and it met with his approval. Dd got macaroni and cheese, after determining that it was *not* Kraft. She is quite the mac and cheese snob lately. She's been making a point of trying it at almost every restaurant we go to, especially starting on the infamous Yellowstone trip that I keep referencing. Sorry, apparently we don't get out much. Sadly, I can remember what everyone else ordered, but not what I ordered! But, it was good.

So, we had a good night's sleep, a good breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express continental breakfast (featuring a machine that makes pancakes and rolls them out, after you just push a button!). We quickly packed up and left, without even doing my usual complete room sweep since we hadn't brought in much. (cue the music of doom...)

So, we hit the road, and managed to miss most of the morning rush hour by going around the city. Driving south in Georgia was pretty, and soon, we got to Florida!!!

We made sure to stop at the Welcome Center, and got our first good photo op of the trip.

Dh was quite impressed with the "Open for Business" sign.

Then, we had to go figure out the toll thingy. Since we live in Illinois, we are used to having our I-Pass so we can go through open tolling. Since we live near a toll road and use it way too often, this saves us both time and money. So, we figured we should try out the Florida version. You can buy it at the Welcome Center. They tell you to buy it in a vending machine. And yes, it is in the same vending machine as the one that sells chips and candy!!!(Yay, I finally found the rolling rofl smiley again!) But, you have to be careful. The closer vending machine sells the kind you can move from car to car. That one costs a little over $20, before you put any money on it. There is also a smaller kind that attaches permanently to one car - that one costs about $5. Fortunately, a guy who was buying his transponder helped me figure that out before I spent too much. There was a family after me who accidentally bought the more expensive one, thinking it was pre-loaded. Oops! Then of course, the screen to activate it wasn't working, so I had to call and activate it. And guess how much to put on it. We probably would've saved money if we had just paid cash, but anyhow, now we have it.

The kids and dh had a fun time gathering brochures and drinking Florida oj while I was figuring all of this out. Somehow, I missed out on my free oj! (We also had lunch sometime along the way. It was uneventful. I think it was KFC, since dd loves KFC, and we had just gone through Kentucky without having any.)

We had an uneventful drive through Florida, besides lots of rain. We kept noticing big billboards for Florida Welcome places that offered free Disney tickets. It seemed like they were also selling condos. We didn't stop to hear their pitch, and anyhow, we already had our tickets!

Btw, we played the license plate spotting game throughout the trip. Believe it or not, we saw 2 different Alaska plates on the way south! No Hawaii plates this time, however. Yes, we spotted both Alaska and Hawaii on the Yellowstone trip. However, the highways were better for the license plate game this time, with more traffic. Out west, there was so little traffic, we didn't see many license plates while driving. We spotted most of our states in parking lots! Strangely enough, in Orlando, we mainly saw Florida plates! We assumed lots of them were rental cars.

As we got closer, the traffic got busier and busier. And the rain was getting harder, and some lightning. On I-4, traffic was pretty much at a halt. We figured out that it was probably because of all of the people leaving parks due to the thunderstorms. But, it was pretty annoying, since we were so close and moving so slowly! Getting to our resort (Blue Heron), was also pretty stressful the first time. It is just off of a very busy road, with a small left turn lane, and no traffic light or stop sign. And it seemed like lots of people didn't know where they were going, including us, of course. But, we got in safely, and got our room. Yay!

Photos will follow in the next installment...