Trains Depart Every 20 Minutes. Allegedly.: February 2012 TR (Lesson #5)

[jenneth79]

Trains depart every 20 minutes...”allegedly”: February 2012 TR
by Jen

, dear reader, to our whirlwind February trip to the World! My DH and I decided we just couldn’t wait until this October to get our Disney fix, so we planned a quick 4 day Valentine’s getaway. Ok, so I planned it as a surprise for him. But, I kind of blew the surprise altogether and we planned the last bits of the trip together. Probably better that way.

Want to know more about us?

Wait, you really DO? I like you already

Me: I’m Jen, 29 years old (+3) and I’m an engineer. With a lower-case “e”. That means my title is Solutions Engineer, but I never got an EE degree. Or any degree, actually. I work in the IT industry for a major hosting provider. I also love Disney. A lot.

(I also love Figment, a lot.)

My DH: Mike (35) is also in the IT industry. He has a degree in Psychology. This you will understand in the days to come why he married me. He is also a former Army Infantry soldier and National Guardsman. I’m not sure if that has anything to do with why he married me or not. He also loves Disney. Yay!
One of my favorite moments from the September trip w/ my DH:

For those of you who already know me from my PTR and/or September (still ongoing!) TR and DRs, welcome to this report, I’m glad you’ve decided to come on over and join in! For those who would like to catch up on what brought us here, the best place to check that out would be HERE: We’re only on Day 3 (very pic intensive) so you’ll have some time to catch up if you’d like! ( I may be slow, but I ALWAYS finish my reports…might hold off on Oct PTR for a bit however )

This report will be much smaller than that one (after all, it was only 4 days!) but I have so many fun stories to share, as well as a few restaurant reviews (not enough for its own DR, so I’ll add them in here). Hopefully I’ll get my Photopass CD back very soon; we have some great pictures to share! Either way, I hope you enjoy and are at least a little amused by our trip!

 

[jenneth79]

~*~*~ DAY ONE ~*~*~
It’s OK to spill a secret sometimes…
The path of least resistance is not always the best choice. Or: Why TTC stinks.
It looked good on the hanger......
In order to make friends you must be willing to talk to people.
It helps to know the history....

 

[saintstickets]

I'm in....looking forward to your TR!

 

[IheartDDuck]

Joining! Can't wait to hear about it.

And you're right, trains "allegedly" depart every 20 minutes. *ahem*

 

[KatMark]

I'm joining in.

 

[Nermel9]

I'm in, can't wait to hear about your trip!

 

[jenneth79]

I'm in....looking forward to your TR!

And you win the first responder prize!!!! Thanks for joining in, I hope you like it!

Joining! Can't wait to hear about it.

And you're right, trains "allegedly" depart every 20 minutes. *ahem*

Oh man, did I learn that lesson the HARD way!

I'm joining in.

I'm in, can't wait to hear about your trip!

Woo hoo! Glad to see you here!

 

[MinnieMoose]

Figment was the first thing I remembered about Disney as a child! I had the stuffed animal for years. Looking forward to hearing about this trip and getting caught up on your September one!

 

[mike the canuck]

Following along

 

[jenneth79]

Hello everyone, I hope you had a great weekend! I'm happy to report that our Photopass CD arrived today.... so the TR can now start!

Just to give you a bit of a teaser on what this trip was like.....

(Yeah, you could say we had fun.....)

Report to start officially tomorrow.

Jen

 

[KatMark]

Love the photo...can't wait for this to start.

 

[jenneth79]

Figment was the first thing I remembered about Disney as a child! I had the stuffed animal for years. Looking forward to hearing about this trip and getting caught up on your September one!

Yay, and thanks! Figment is such a cutie... he was my first favorite troublemaker, and even though I love Stitch, Figment was there first.

Following along

, Mike!

Love the photo...can't wait for this to start.

And here we go.......

 

[jenneth79]

My September 2011 Trip Report (see signature for link) ended up with something of a “chapter style” format… but I wanted to do something a little bit different with this one. So, because we certainly came back with a few new ones, we’ll approach this from a lessons learned, or “what Disney taught me” angle. Sounds good to you all? Ok, let’s get started then!

Day One
Lesson Learned: It’s OK to spill a secret sometimes…

For those of you familiar with the plans for this trip, I had intended it to be a surprise Valentine’s Day getaway for my DH, Mike. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a person who likes Valentine’s Day. It’s a personal thing, I just feel as if it adds to much pressure to people’s relationships by manufacturing expectations that are rarely met. I also don’t want to sound too self-righteous here either, I think if you want to celebrate the holiday and tell someone you love them, great! But, if you tell them you love them every day, what does one day really matter?

While I have this opinion, I think my DH secretly doesn’t, so when we returned from our September trip and I noticed he had so much fun, I thought, why not? So the trip was planned (in secret) for 3 nights, 4 days of Disney fun. There might have been an over/under going about my ability to keep this secret. (Dee!!!)

You know what? I did a great job, keeping the secret all the way until Christmas Day. Mike gave me an iPad for Christmas, and dingbat over here (that would be me, for those keeping track) blurted out “Oh, this will be great for Disney in February now that they have WiFi.”

Oops.

Now, he was (thankfully) pleased to hear that’s where we were going, but the real lesson here was not apparent until the week before our trip, when we started checking the weather forecasts. Because the weather, up to this point, had been fairly mild. Now, though, it was fluctuating wildly. Secretly packing a few pairs of shorts and tee shirts for my husband? No big deal. Packing half his wardrobe due to inconsistent forecasts? Not so much.

We literally ended up with the same amount of clothing we took on our 9 day September vacation for just 4 days in February. Phew. Thank goodness the other surprise for my husband had been decided upon…

We got to fly first class!!!!

I used to fly all the time. Twice a week, for a period of two years back and forth from DC to Detroit. I was lucky enough then to be on the same flight each time, so I was often upgraded to first class. I’ve never purchased that upgrade on my own though, so this was a special treat for me as well as my DH, who had never flown First before.

Worth EVERY penny. Not only do they provide you with an actual meal, your bags are checked free. Your luggage also comes off the plane first! Nowadays, that almost works out to a wash!

We enjoyed a super comfortable and on-time flight (I <3 United) down to Orlando and our luggage and driver were waiting for us. At just 11AM, it was a whopping 80 degrees out! (Note how happy I am about this…. It will change…) We used Tiffany Towncars again on this trip, and I would recommend them hands down once more.

(See how happy you are while flying down the road in a nice, comfy car?)

(On a side note, my hair was actually curly when I got up at 5AM that morning….just sayin’….)

We were lucky enough to get the same driver as we had last trip, Renata, who is an absolute sweetheart. We caught up on each other’s lives over the Holidays, and before we knew it, we were passing under the Happiest Sign on Earth:

(This is hereby known as the WORST picture of the HAPPIEST SIGN….. yeah…. Total picture FAIL.)

We did manage to catch a glimpse of one of the Disney Cruise Lines busses, which sparked a conversation with our driver (her son in law is a CM and gets awesome discounts on cruises…) about Disney Cruising for those of us without children. Yet again, someone has told us to do it, that in many ways, it’s better than most cruises even though you don’t have kids. It’s looking more and more like a Disney Cruise is in our future one of these days…. We shall see.

A few moments later we pulled up to the gate, and the guard asked for our confirmation number. Me, being the super crazy organizer, pulled our my trip notebook and showed him the reservation number written on the first page.

His response? “I was looking for something more formal.”

Wait. What? Was this guy SERIOUS? He then asked if I had the confirmation number printed on Disney letterhead. I sweetly informed him he was more than welcome to call the hotel with our name and reservation number and I showed him my license. He was seriously put out by this! At one moment I was sure he wasn’t going to let the car go through, but he just huffed and waved us by. This was at the Main Disney gate, btw, not the Contemporary resort.

So here is my question to you, dear readers: Have you ever experienced something like this before? It was odd to both us and our driver, who quipped afterwards “Does he want a DNA sample next time?”

Shortly thereafter we pulled up to the front of the Contemporary (after NO problems at the CR guard station…), a hotel I’ve wanted to stay at since I was a little girl first watching the monorail travel through it. Many people complain that it is a bit sterile in the décor, and I’d have to agree. When you walk into the hotel, it’s no different than any other nice upscale big city hotel chain. The difference here is in the staff. We were met by a gentleman who welcomed us to the hotel, and gave us a really good overview of the hotel layout as he accompanied us upstairs to the Club Level lounge. The CMs there were very nice and had a room ready for us, which was great because we got to drop off our bags right away! The room was very nice, if a bit dark for my tastes. We had booked a Club Level Bay Lake View room in the A Frame building. That’s exactly what we got. I had requested a king bed, but there weren’t any available. One of these days we’ll get lucky….one of these days…. The room was #4823 and had a lovely view both from the front door (of the MK) and off the balcony:

(Hey look, that might be Epoct!)

I wanted to point out the view from the front door for one reason… you could actually see the fireworks at night if you wanted to, just by walking to the far end of the hall. Sort of a little added bonus for those of you on the Bay Lake side of the hotel. Also, these rooms are as far away from Chef Mickey’s as you can get… didn’t hear a PEEP out of them all weekend!

We literally threw down our bags and bolted out the door, we had a plan to visit two parks before dinner, and we had to get moving if it was going to happen!

What follows next is perhaps the most painful lesson I learned this weekend…..stay tuned.

 

[NMW]

Subscribing

 

[KatMark]

Great update, Jen.

First class is awesome...we got upgraded twice, thanks to my boss, and really is the way to fly. Nice car ride to the resort too.

Can't wait for the next update.

 

[Nermel9]

Great update!

Wow, first class! We usually fly Southwest (occasionally Jet Blue) and they don't have first class! That would be nice on a cross country flight...if I ever go to Hawaii or Alaska, I'll have to splurge on first class!

So weird the guard asked for your confirmation number...they usually just need your name and a photo id! I mean, I know they don't like random people parking in the CR parking lot, but...you guys weren't even driving!

Oooh, your view on your balcony is awesome! I'd really love to try the CR someday, not so much because I really like it, just because of how close it is to MK! And the MONORAIL!

 

[MEK]

I'm in! Great start to your TR. Everything seems to be going great so I'm a little afraid of what is going to happen next.

Your room view is lovely. I stayed at BLT and loved that lake view! It's so perfect!

Looking forward to more!

 

[kimbo0569]

I'm in!

 

[jenneth79]

Subscribing

Great update, Jen.

First class is awesome...we got upgraded twice, thanks to my boss, and really is the way to fly. Nice car ride to the resort too.

Can't wait for the next update.

Thanks! I just did the math for our October trip and the ticket prices went WAY UP. Looks like no first class for us right now unless I can score an upgrade. I'll just save up and hope for availability!

Great update!

Wow, first class! We usually fly Southwest (occasionally Jet Blue) and they don't have first class! That would be nice on a cross country flight...if I ever go to Hawaii or Alaska, I'll have to splurge on first class!

So weird the guard asked for your confirmation number...they usually just need your name and a photo id! I mean, I know they don't like random people parking in the CR parking lot, but...you guys weren't even driving!

Oooh, your view on your balcony is awesome! I'd really love to try the CR someday, not so much because I really like it, just because of how close it is to MK! And the MONORAIL!

The really strange thing was that it was at the Magic Kingdom entrance... the main gate. Who knows, maybe they have people who park at CR and walk to MK w/o paying?

Totally stay at CR for the super easy walk to MK... it's AWESOME. The monorail...ah....well.......

I'm in! Great start to your TR. Everything seems to be going great so I'm a little afraid of what is going to happen next.

Your room view is lovely. I stayed at BLT and loved that lake view! It's so perfect!

Looking forward to more!

Welcome, thanks for joining!

We wish we had gone over to BLT to check out the rooms, they seemed to be really quite nice! (Well, from our stalker-style view we had!)

I'm in!

 

[407-W-DISNEY]

Hi Jen! I'm here!
Great arrival so far! We loved our stay at the CR....can't beat walking to the Magic Kingdom!
Weird about the guard.....

Yeah, for 1st class! that's the way to go...I only flew in 1st class once, on a work trip...and it was only from boston to philly...like a 90 minute (or something like that) plan ride....figures...oh well, it definitely a nice experience.

Can't wait to read more!