I was an English and history major in college, and went on to get a masters degree in American history. My areas of interest were generally American social history around the turn of the century, so the BWI was seriously right up my alley. I was so excited to be there.
Right, so we are staying club level, too, because of a decent discount rate Disney offered when we booked. And I knew that if you stayed club level, someone is supposed to greet you and take you up to the fourth floor to check in. Only I don't think anyone knew exactly when we were coming, and so no one greeted us, and...yeah.
This was kind of the beginning of club level issues we had. You see, the whole time we stayed there, I felt...weird. I felt odd about having people so dedicated to waiting on ME. I felt weird having the gold KTTW card. I felt like the Clampetts had come to the Boardwalk. We are such average people, you know, not terrifically wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.
We are not the 1%.
I felt rather like an imposter.
Anyway, I went over to bell services and asked where you check in for CL, and they said to go to the regular check in desk, and I was fairly certain that wasn't right, and now I was starting to get uncomfortable, and then someone else said they'd have someone escort us up, and now I'm really feeling weird. Like, I wanted to say hey, don't worry about it! Us po folk will find our way up yonder, don't y'all worry bout us none.
But I didn't, and someone nice came and brought us up to check in at the concierge desk.
That's where we met Pete, who WAS SO NICE. Just so friendly and kind. He told us right away that it was almost 7 and we should go to the lounge and get some food before checking in, since they take the appetizers away at 7. Listen, you don't have to tell me twice if someone's taking away my food.
(Clampetts, remember?)
We walked on down to the lounge, where again I felt like everyone could see right through me, like they knew my net worth and were saying to themselves how ridiculous it was that these average, not rich, run of the mill people were tainting the lounge with their averageness.
But of course no one did. In fact, no one was anything but nice. If they could see through my facade, they didn't say a word.
I have serious issues.
The food in the lounge was good—lamb skewers, some sort of potsticker thing, cheese and crackers, etc. Beer and wine, too (the Clampetts like beer, hic!). We all ate, and relaxed for a few minutes. The lounge is pretty big, and there are several tables and chairs, as well as couple of sofas. We spent a decent amount of time there this trip, and we never had difficulty finding a place to sit.
I went back to finish the check in process with Pete while everyone else stayed and ate. It was smooth and simple (and for those who may have been wondering, I did not do online check in for this resort). The only bump was that Pete said he couldn't add our tickets to our KTTW cards. He said the numbers on them weren't right. I hate to be like this, but I don't think that was correct. They were tickets from
UT, totally valid, and at CBR they had even offered to add them to our KTTW cards.
Whatever. Continuing to use the paper tickets wasn't a big deal. And I'm not a Disney employee, and I certainly didn't want to act like a know it all, so no big deal.
Pete gave us our room keys, we sorted out the charging privileges, he had our luggage sent up and we were done. Off to the room to check it out and then to MK for some more EMH. BRING IT.
View from our balcony. I had requested Garden, Epcot view.
And there it was—the Eiffel tower, off to the left. Score.
Quinn immediately flopped on the sofa.
I tried to get a pic of the desk and one of the beds. Liam decided to play football at that exact moment.
Our bags arrived, we freshened up, and headed out for some MK EMH. We were ready to rock.
Folks, this is where it gets good. This is where, as if watching a horror movie, you may find yourselves screaming at your monitor. If I were you, this is what I would scream.
“HOLY CRAP! YOU GUYS ARE COMPLETE MORONS! TURN AROUND! MORONS, HEY, I'm TALKING TO YOU!!!”
Let's backtrack a second.
We walk down to the BWI bus stop to wait for a MK bus.
I love it, people. I love this place.
After not too long (seriously, we never have to wait too long for a bus no matter where we are), a MK bus comes and we get on. And that's when we see a storm coming. Looks like a big one, too. Lightning and foreboding clouds and all sorts of things that make the outside viewer say “TURN AROUND AT THE MK AND GO BACK TO THE BOARDWALK!!!!!”
But us? Oh no. You see, I have my trusty weather app on my phone. And my weather app says the storm won't be coming to the MK. So nobody worry! We're golden.
We get off the bus and walk towards the MK, and wow, it sure seems like a lot of people are leaving the MK, doesn't it? And lots of them are running. Gosh, that's weird.
We then turn down the walkway that leads up to the entrance and make comments such as these.
“I don't remember it being so congested here before.”
“Does it seem like a lot of people are leaving to you?”
“Um, did you see that ginormous flash of lightning right over the MK?”
As we approach the bag check, the thunder cracks and it starts to rain. And that's when things got kind of scary. A CM hollers “GET TO THE TICKETING GATES!” and basically shoves us over there. No bag check tonight, folks. At the gates, we are told NOT to put our finger on the scanner—just stick the ticket in, grab it and GO.
We quickly follow orders and run to the safety of the left archway, which is crowding with people, because THIS STORM IS MASSIVE AND IS NO JOKE AND I AM GOING TO BE TALKING TO MY WEATHER APP PEOPLE.
The thunder and lighting is RIGHT above us. While we're safe, it's kind of scary. We have our ponchos on, but are relatively dry anyway due to where we're standing.
Hey, speaking of standing, I'm thinking something's up with the drains because we are standing in 2+ inches of water. Tim has on his waterproof boots. The kids have their
crocs on, but Tim brought their rain boots in his backpack just in case.
I'm in sneakers and socks. Wet feet, holla.
He takes the boots out and hands them to the kids. Quinn takes off his crocs and sets them down to switch into his boots, and looks up and we hear “MY CROCS ARE FLOATING AWAY!”
And he wasn't kidding. His crocs were floating downstream.
I snagged them (not that they'd have gone that far, what with all the people under the arch) and we bagged them and stuck them into the backpack.
And waited for the storm to subside.
And waited some more.
The popcorn cart was abandoned. The poor guy running it didn't even have time to cover it up. He must have just hightailed it out of there and figured he'd deal with the consequences later. We all tried to figure out a way to get someone out there for some free popcorn, but could never come up with a suitable solution, so alone it sat.
For some reason, my phone took a clearer picture than my camera. Stupid cheap camera.
After several more earsplitting thunder cracks and lighting strikes, the rain started to lighten a bit. We hung out some more, until we felt it had definitely passed. And then...we entered the MK.
Which was basically dead.
No more rain = no more poncho!
You want to take my picture? Only if I can show you strong muscles.
So, yeah. The rain pretty much stopped after that, and the Magic Kingdom was virtually empty. They didn't show MMY, but after many announcements about inclement weather causing a delay, did run Wishes around 11:15 pm.
We rode It's a Small World, which, despite its cheesiness, the fact that it goes on forever, and of course the song that stays with you until long after you've gotten home, returned to work, and become a grandparent, is a sweet little ride.
What I could have done without would be the jerk family behind us, with Dad and a couple of boys, making obnoxious jokes and snide comments about the ride the whole time. We didn't say anything, but I kind of wish we had. They were really rude.
The rest of the night was great. Liam and I rode BTMRR, Quinn did Pooh, we did Peter Pan, Liam and I did Pirates, Quinn and I did Aladdin twice, we all did Dumbo, and Liam and I did the Barnstormer twice (in a row!).
The moral of the story is: If you are dumb enough to enter the Magic Kingdom when everyone else is running like mad to escape a storm of epic proportions, and you spend an hour of your life under an archway in water up to your ankles while your kid's shoes float away, you just may be rewarded with a super fun evening in a rather empty park.
Don't miss tomorrow, guys. Tomorrow, I'll be doing laundry.
Vacation doesn't get more exciting than that.
I should really think about what my pregnancy cravings were and if they've carried over to my kids' preferences or not. Nothing really stands out, but I wonder if there's something?
Next time, lamb shwarma, my love. Next time.
Thanks!! I'm working on the next chapter now. 
And club level, no less. Which I will have a lot to say about. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. 
Whatever, impatient readers. I'm posting one more, because you complained.
