- Joined
- Jan 16, 2006
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- 5,903
Our latest trip is complete and now I'm beginning the hard part - going through my all my photos! I easily beat all previous trips thanks in part to our longest stay yet and an extremely fast new camera.
The cast: me, Mrs Groucho, Jack (5 years old and a veteran of WDW, this being his seventh trip, not counting a DL trip), and Leila (19 months, this is her third trip.) Disney World is Jack's favorite place in the world and he knows many of the attraction songs by heart, and in particular loves Grim Grinning Ghosts yet has recently become terrified of the image of Master Gracey turning into a skeleton in the first room. Leila started going nuts for Mickey Mouse in the past few months and happily says "Mow mow!" when she sees him. She has since dubbed Donald "duck duck" and Pluto "dog dog". She traditionally has not traveled well and I was not looking forward to another noisy plane ride with her.
The trip: we left Rochester on January 1st and returned on the 12th. We stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge, Kidani Village. I had Bay Lake Towers on waitlist but I knew it was a longshot for such a long block to free up at once. We've moved between rooms on a trip but always at the same resort; I wasn't sure that I wanted to deal with actually switching resorts so it was Kidani for the whole time.
The plan: to take it pretty easy and have fun. Mrs Groucho, after taking up running during the summer, was signed up for the 5k. We also signed the kids up for the kid's races - 100 meters for Leila and 200 for Jack.
...and so the trip began. My father drove us all to the airport, and we made our way through security... to find that we were facing a hour delay. Apparently our Airtran plane was sitting in Atlanta waiting for crew. (I originally had JetBlue booked, but a couple months ago, they suddenly stopped doing nonstops between Rochester and Orlando, leaving Airtran the only option if you didn't want a layover.) Fortunately, the Rochester airport has a pretty nice kid's play area near our gate, which quickly filled up with familes waiting to go to Disney.
The delays kept coming... two hours... three hours... I spent some time on our laptop checking Airtran's site for the latest estimates, and also tracked the flight from Atlanta, which was being updated more quickly than the Rochester one. This was cutting into my plan to head for the parks when we arrived to see the Osborne lights!
We've always had pretty good luck traveling so this was pretty frustrating for us - especially as the weather was clear and relatively warm! We've been on the plane when it's getting deiced before and those delays were nothing, relatively speaking. Finally, our plane arrived and we hopped onboard, about four hours late. The crew seemed to have a good attitude about everything, with some guilt about the delay and various attempts at humor. (Part of the preflight safety spiel: "You'll have to turn off your Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, dingleberries, snozberries, and any other kind of berries that you have!")
The long delays also screwed up our plans for timing Leila's nap. Fortunately, she played along nicely and fell asleep around the time that we took off, and slept for a while and was pretty well-behaved the rest of the time. Meanwhile, Jack and I had a good time looking out the window at the sunset, then he played his Leapster until the batteries died.
We landed safely and began the long taxi to our gate... only to be told that there were no gates free and that it might be 15 minutes or so until one is available. Well, 45 minutes later, we finally start moving again...
We finally disembark and head towards the Magical Express location. We hopped on a bus and naturally, our stop was last... finally, at about 10:30, we made it to Kidani Villages and got checked in. Our late arrival also meant that all the nearby rooms were already booked up, so our room was a good 4-5 minute walk from the lobby. The late hour also killed any plans to head to a park that evening. Fortunately, the hotel was quite beautiful, with a much more intimate feel than Jambo House, and with African artwork everywhere.
We made it to our room and the first thing I did was head to the balcony, and we were not disappointed!
Everyone else crashed and I stayed up until 1am or so to see if our luggage might arrive. It never did, so I went to bed. I called in the morning and they knew us immediately ("are you so-and-so or so-and-so?") and delivered the luggage right away. Apparently it didn't make it to the resort until 4am or so...
That's the beginnings of our trip... next stop, Chef Mickey's!
The cast: me, Mrs Groucho, Jack (5 years old and a veteran of WDW, this being his seventh trip, not counting a DL trip), and Leila (19 months, this is her third trip.) Disney World is Jack's favorite place in the world and he knows many of the attraction songs by heart, and in particular loves Grim Grinning Ghosts yet has recently become terrified of the image of Master Gracey turning into a skeleton in the first room. Leila started going nuts for Mickey Mouse in the past few months and happily says "Mow mow!" when she sees him. She has since dubbed Donald "duck duck" and Pluto "dog dog". She traditionally has not traveled well and I was not looking forward to another noisy plane ride with her.
The trip: we left Rochester on January 1st and returned on the 12th. We stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge, Kidani Village. I had Bay Lake Towers on waitlist but I knew it was a longshot for such a long block to free up at once. We've moved between rooms on a trip but always at the same resort; I wasn't sure that I wanted to deal with actually switching resorts so it was Kidani for the whole time.
The plan: to take it pretty easy and have fun. Mrs Groucho, after taking up running during the summer, was signed up for the 5k. We also signed the kids up for the kid's races - 100 meters for Leila and 200 for Jack.
...and so the trip began. My father drove us all to the airport, and we made our way through security... to find that we were facing a hour delay. Apparently our Airtran plane was sitting in Atlanta waiting for crew. (I originally had JetBlue booked, but a couple months ago, they suddenly stopped doing nonstops between Rochester and Orlando, leaving Airtran the only option if you didn't want a layover.) Fortunately, the Rochester airport has a pretty nice kid's play area near our gate, which quickly filled up with familes waiting to go to Disney.
The delays kept coming... two hours... three hours... I spent some time on our laptop checking Airtran's site for the latest estimates, and also tracked the flight from Atlanta, which was being updated more quickly than the Rochester one. This was cutting into my plan to head for the parks when we arrived to see the Osborne lights!
We've always had pretty good luck traveling so this was pretty frustrating for us - especially as the weather was clear and relatively warm! We've been on the plane when it's getting deiced before and those delays were nothing, relatively speaking. Finally, our plane arrived and we hopped onboard, about four hours late. The crew seemed to have a good attitude about everything, with some guilt about the delay and various attempts at humor. (Part of the preflight safety spiel: "You'll have to turn off your Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, dingleberries, snozberries, and any other kind of berries that you have!")
The long delays also screwed up our plans for timing Leila's nap. Fortunately, she played along nicely and fell asleep around the time that we took off, and slept for a while and was pretty well-behaved the rest of the time. Meanwhile, Jack and I had a good time looking out the window at the sunset, then he played his Leapster until the batteries died.
We landed safely and began the long taxi to our gate... only to be told that there were no gates free and that it might be 15 minutes or so until one is available. Well, 45 minutes later, we finally start moving again...
We finally disembark and head towards the Magical Express location. We hopped on a bus and naturally, our stop was last... finally, at about 10:30, we made it to Kidani Villages and got checked in. Our late arrival also meant that all the nearby rooms were already booked up, so our room was a good 4-5 minute walk from the lobby. The late hour also killed any plans to head to a park that evening. Fortunately, the hotel was quite beautiful, with a much more intimate feel than Jambo House, and with African artwork everywhere.
We made it to our room and the first thing I did was head to the balcony, and we were not disappointed!
Everyone else crashed and I stayed up until 1am or so to see if our luggage might arrive. It never did, so I went to bed. I called in the morning and they knew us immediately ("are you so-and-so or so-and-so?") and delivered the luggage right away. Apparently it didn't make it to the resort until 4am or so...
That's the beginnings of our trip... next stop, Chef Mickey's!
Jack kept a journal through this trip (though we usually forgot to have him write in it) and Leila beginning to talk... they are definitely getting big fast!
I won't post quite that many - but I do have a lot!
I am subscribing.
so thank goodness that she started holding out hands! So, the leash will probably be retired. Jack is certainly growing up fast - he's already starting to complain about going to school every day and he's only in kindergarten. 
