10-year Anniversary WDW Celebration - 5 days and 4 nites without the kids!

[kittylady1972]

Cast:

Dina - 36-year-old Disneyholic, lover of all things Disney for the most part, always looking for a way to squeeze in JUST ONE MORE TRIP to the World

Frank - my 37-year-old husband who once declared that a Disney trip every 5 years or so would be sufficient, then later had to be the one to convince ME to buy into DVC, which we did in November of 2006; he has since decided that we need to try to get back there every 2 years if possible while the kids are still young and we can afford it

This trip was planned about a year ago or more so when we took our big family trip in November of 2007, we made sure to purchase annual passes for ourselves so we could return in October of 2008 and not have to worry about park tickets. This was our first stay at the Beach Club Villas resort and it was FANTASTIC! My goals for this trip were to see and do things that we have NOT done in the past, and eat in some places that we have not tried in the past instead of our usual favorites. I think we managed to do everything that I wanted to do EXCEPT eat at Beaches and Cream but there is always our next trip...in May of next year WITH the kids!

 

[kittylady1972]

So leading up to the big trip I was constantly making decisions. Dining plan or not, deluxe dining plan or not? I couldn't decided what to do but I had a spreadsheet and was calculating estimated costs and reviewing menus all the time. Then the week before we were to leave, my 37-year-old husband starting having increasing chest pains. He was pretty confident it wasn't his heart, but still was having tests done and a scheduled visit with a cardiologist for when we returned from the trip. His doctor even prescribed nitro for him just to be safe, just a week before we were to leave.

Thursday before we are scheduled to leave we are discussing transportation. Our plan was to possibly use Magical Express from the airport to Disney, and then taxi back so we wouldn't have to leave as early on our return flight. With the health issues looming, we decide perhaps it would be better to have a car there just in case, and so I rent the cheapest econobox I can get from Dollar at the airport for less than $100.

So now it's Friday afternoon, and we are scheduled to leave on Tuesday morning. My husband calls me from work to say he's having chest pains again and is going to see the clinic at work. I am later notified by the clinic that they are taking him to the hospital E/R and so now I'm rushing home from work after making arrangements for the 3 kids. We would spend from about 2pm until about 10pm on Friday at the E/R where we would get results and learn that his cardiac enzymes and EKG are all showing normal. However, my husband's family doctor does not feel comfortable sending us on vacation the following week without a stress test, and the best way to get that done is to admit my husband to the hospital that night for a stress test the next morning. So that's that!

Saturday morning is DH's stress test and he comes thru with flying colors, so now we are more confident that this is just further complications from my husband's stomach. He has had stomach issues since he was about 7 or 8 and is on several medications for all kinds of ailments, stomach included. This is nothing new for him, but they change his current stomach meds and he is given the green light for release. He's discharged that night.

In the meantime, I spend Saturday at home making final preparations for our trip. I call and add the Dining Plan for us. I call the Cake Hotline and special order a Mini Castle Cake for our dinner at Narcoossee's on Wednesday evening. Everything falls into place and the vacation is back on, but I have to say that for a few days I was really thinking we'd have to cancel or at the very least postpone this trip.

 

[wood145]

So glad you were able to make your trip! As a cardiac nurse, I always say it is better to be cautious and have the tests done. I see a lot of people with stomach pain that seems like chest pain and it is always best to get it checked out and be thankful everything is okay.

I am excited to hear about your trip. DH and I are 13 days away from our first ever trip without the kids since our honeymoon 20 years ago I'm also a bit nervous about leaving them behind, sure I'll get over it real quick!

Looking forward to your next installment!

 

[kittylady1972]

We arrived at the airport at 6am for our 7am flight. This would be our first experience flying Air Tran. When they asked for anyone willing to sit in an exit row, we volunteered, thinking we'd be assured plenty of space, even though I'm all of 5'2" anyway. As it turned out, our flight had about 27 people...on a plane that held over 170! Frank still had somebody sitting right behind him kicking his seat despite tons of empty rows!

We pushed off 20 minutes early and arrived bit early too. The flight was fine. Once on the ground at MCO, we headed to Dollar to get our car and our budget car ended up being a PT Cruiser. Interesting but at least it wasn't too small.

Our studio room wasn't ready at the Beach Club Villas. After walking around for a bit we decided to head to Hollywood Studios via boat. While standing on the dock, we were debating lunch. We were both pretty hungry so we called Disney Dining to ask about availability at the Brown Derby. I have always wanted to try that place. They were wide open so we took the first reservation of the day at 11:30am.

We didn't have time to do much before lunch, but we did get Fastpasses for Toy Story Mania at 1:15pm. We decided to hit Tower of Terror since it had no wait. Then we went to lunch.

Lunch was fantastic! You can read my dining reviews in the Dining forum but let's just say we were still talking about the Cobb Salad DAYS LATER! Here we are at lunch:

Now it was time to enjoy the park. One thing I was determined to do this trip was see Beauty and the Beast, since I have not seen it in any of our previous trips. We headed there right after lunch to catch an early show. It was really great.

After that, it was right to Toy Story Mania for our Fastpass time. Great ride of course. We would have liked to ride it again that day, but the Fastpasses were already gone by that point.

We made our way over to Rock N' Roller Coaster, stopping to see a few street performers, another something we never seem to take the time to do in other trips. As we were watching some women perform in the street, one pointed in our direction and said "and THESE people are celebrating their 10 Year Wedding Anniversary" and at first I thought "Wow she's good" as we weren't even wearing Anniversary pins (yet). We found a couple standing right behind us with Anniversary pins on with 10th written on them. We talked to them for a bit and of course their anniversary was the same as ours - October 3rd. Too cool.

We then watched another street performance, headed to Rock N' Roller Coaster, then did some browsing before heading out of the park. It was approaching 4pm and we wanted to try to check into our room.

The room was ready...finding it was fun. I think it took us a good 3 or 4 days to really get the navigation down for the best routes to and from our room to wherever we were headed, just in time for us to be leaving the resort.

Around 5:30pm we made our way to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween party. I have to say, that I really questioned whether I wanted to fork over $110 for this experience. We went back and forth and in the end decided to go ahead and do it. You only have one 10-year anniversary, after all, and this trip was already somewhat inexpensive for us (for now) as we were staying on our DVC points and using Annual Passes. Plus we really had hopes of having dinner at the Columbia Harbour House.

We got the CHH only to find it was CLOSED already. Major disappointment. I decide "hey we've never tried that place in It's a Small World" but that is also closed, even though our MNSSHP program says they were both supposed to be open for dinner. Oh well. Frank decides to hit the standby of Pecos Bills, and I decide to grab a turkey leg from one of the carts in Frontier Land for dinner.

After dinner, it was all about the rides. We hit all of the Fantasyland rides with ZERO wait, including Dumbo. The only one we passed on was It's a Small World. With 3 small kids, I have been on that ride WAY TOO MANY times! We also made our way to the Haunted Mansion, POTC, Space Mountain, TTA, and Buzz Lightyear. The crowds were nonexistant pretty much all night. We stayed until about 10:30pm and even sat on the curb right outside of Tony's at the front of the park to watch the parade. We couldn't believe how easy it was to find a spot in the front to watch the parade. Crazy!

We arrived back at our resort around 11pm or so and crashed for the night!

 

[vdarrell]

Glad everything turned out okay with your DH. Hope your trip was a great one.
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