A Gem of a trip-quality, clarity, color and "Cut that out!" completed 8/4

[Diamondintheruff]

so ... do you think we'll get this years trip report next august when you go again???

I promise. I promise. Bug me all you'd like. I'm still thrilled everytime anyone posts anything on my thread. Yes, construction is going along well on the new school. My kindergarten class can see the site from our window and sometimes it's hard to compete with the mighty machines for their attention. It should be ready to go by next september. Great to see you at the fair the other weekend.

I've been catching up on everyone's TRs. Yours has come to the end! It was wonderful experiencing WDW with you and your family. I'm glad to hear you are going back!!! I am too! I booked the bounce-back for myself and my BFF. She is so excited

I will be touching on the returning to Disney in my trip report. I'm glad to hear you are back and look forward to your report too!

 

[Diamondintheruff]

The day we leave for Buffalo or the day we leave our House but the day before we arrive at the House of Mouse.​

The day was finally here. We were leaving for Disney. When you count down for such a long time for something-it almost seems unreal when it finally arrives. I had been in a sort of haze or fog the last few days and fighting with my brain to stay focused on the tasks at hand ie packing but I kept getting side tracked. However I did finally get us all packed and sem-organized and into the Van ready to leave for the airport.

Just to re-cap in case anyone needs reminding or has just joined us. Me, DH, our three kids and Nanny and Poppa (my parents) are staying at POR for 9 nights and using the dinning plan.

This is a picture of us from our trip last year.

We had tickets on Jetblue out of Buffalo the next day. We were going to stay at the Millenium Hotel in Buffalo tonight. So this required an extra bag for our overnight wear. Not that that should of slowed me down that much but just saying. I had a lot to pack. !0 days for five people and I'm one of those people that like to leave the house neat for our arrival home. It drives my DH crazy but then many things he does drives me crazy so I guess it works somehow.

I tried to be so organized and to be fair I was organized in some categories but lagging behind in others. It didn't help that there was this tropical storm/possible hurricane heading into Florida. I spent a fair bit of time tracking and checking it on the internet. I threw in our windbreakers as well as the 5 dollar store raincoats each that we had just in case. The plan was to leave between 12 and 2 pm. It didn't happen. Sigh.

Hubby was busy all morning. You don't think he was busy packing do you? He had put the roof top carrier on the day before so his job was almost done. He still had to pack for the trip. In our house DH packing consists of handing me his electric razor and his deodorant. I know I could just grab both of those things out of the bathroom for him but well…. That is where I draw the line. I will pack all of his clothes, his outerwear, his footwear, his book to read, any medication he might need and really anything else but his deodorant and electric razor. We all have our principals and apparently those two items are mine.

So if DH wasn't packing then what was he doing? Entertaining the children so they would stay out of my way? Lawn care? No to both of the above. He was in his office downstairs. DH runs his own business out of the house so I figured that was acceptable. I mean he was going to bring his cell phone to Disney with us but leave his laptop behind so I could give him this morning to finish off some work. However, I found out later that he was working on his Hockey Pool by trading some players with the other members of this Pool. He spent the morning "playing". Hope the steam coming out of my head is not blurring the text in this report and that you can still read it clearly. Obviously I was not thinking clearly when I overhead him on the phone. And the door was open-I was not snooping.

After DH finished working (ahem) in his office we got moving along a lot quicker. DH feed the kids lunch and we had a surprise visitor. It was Nanny. Now Nanny and Poppa live an hour away from us in the big city of Toronto. There really is no reason for Nanny to just pop in like this so it is quite a surprise.

Nanny and Poppa have this horrid behaving dog. I feel enormous amounts of guilt about it because I actually picked this dog out for them. My brother and I went to the pound (I was 7 month pregnant with my first child and you should never ever go to the dog pound when you are feeling over-emotional. Luckily pregnant women are always so logical about their feelings and I was no exception LOL) and brought Buster home to them. In our defense they had a wonderful dog (it was trained by someone else) that they loved but had passed away. They talked about getting another dog and since my brother still lived at home then-He thought he could help out. (Don't believe people when they tell you they will help raise the dog. He did nothing)

Now, Nanny and Poppa are wonderful people but they have a tendency to spoil their grandchildren and as it turns out also their dog. Buster is a disaster and even Nanny and Poppa can barely stand him. My brother refuses to look after Buster as do a few kennels in Toronto. This leaves Nanny to search for a place for Buster outside of the Greater Toronto area and she found a lovely one not too far from me. Nanny was making the drop off and needed to recover at my house. Amazingly this when Nanny picked up Buster after our trip the kennel said they would love to have Buster again. But they feel Buster's needs could be better addressed with an individual (a.k.a. away from other dogs) day plan. This individual plan costs more than a Value at Disney each day.

Anyhow, Coffee was served to Nanny and after a few mouthfuls she left me to search out the kids. She kept the kids busy for a bit while I finished up. Yeah Nanny! Let's call that number one on the Nanny and Poppa save the day chart.

So by 4:10 we are in the Van loaded up and with one final touch of the plane tickets, passports and other assorted Disney paperwork we are ready to take off. Is it just me and my OCD or do you all have to actually touch your tickets before you leave the driveway?

Here is the Van and roof-top getting loaded (by me at this point which is why you don't see anyone else in the picture. Opps did I bold that?)

Here is DS9 helping out because he was actually excited and motivated to get going.

It is a three-hour drive to Buffalo. DH drives most of it. Poppa gave us a GPS this summer (not just for Disney so it doesn't count on the Nanny and Poppa save the day chart. Let’s just put it on the Nanny and Poppa ROCK chart) and I play with during the drive. The kids all have a MP3 player and we can here DS5 playing "Tricky" by Run DMC over and over again. DS5 discovered it earlier this summer. No one wants to watch the Disney movies I have carefully pre-selected. The answer to all of the "When will we be there" questions is "Look at the GPS".

The ride is pretty uneventful until Burlington. Then DH and I have our first argument. Because I can't count the nagging at him to help me get ready that morning while I felt he was goofing off as an argument. An argument involves two conflicting opinions. He knew he was wrong to goof off and he even apologized before we left. I guess I could count that as the first apology. Because there will be more nagging, more apologizing and many more arguments to come this trip.

So back to this particular argument. It centers around Food and Dinnertime. The plan was to eat at the Olive Garden. It's a big deal to us Ontario folks as we used to have them here. We got used to them and then they just "poof" disappeared. Our hotel is across the street from an Olive Garden and I wanted us to eat there. Of course I also wanted us to leave a few hours earlier but to quote the Stones "You can't always get what you want". DH wanted to pull off the road and eat dinner now. Granted it was around 6pm and past our normal dinnertime. I wanted to wait. So guess what we did? We compromised. We all had a snack.

Now before you go thinking that DH and I were all adult about this and calmly discussing this in the car using our adult voices and using the listening skills we had picked up watching Oprah. There were no "I hear you saying that you are hungry now" and "I hear you saying that you have been looking forward to eating at the Olive Garden for months now". Instead it went more along the lines of angry grumbling combined with dirty looks and it continued for close to an hour while we drove and finally stopped at a Wendy/Tim Horton's in Grimsby (a small town close to the border) for a bathroom break.

After much negotiating the kids all got frosty's at Wendy's. It's like they pre-planned it. Let's confuse Mom and Dad with what we want to eat and ask for at least three different choices each. Then when they are trying to keep track of who wants what from which counter-service place we'll say we'll all have frosty's if that is easier for them. Okay?

I'm not sure who won that negotiation but hey it was the start to our vacation so what's a little ice cream? Or rather frozen dairy treat since Frosty's are so NOT ice cream.

Up next crossing the border. Will I get accross or be detained as usual?

Part 2 here http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=27789563&postcount=211

 

[DisneyJo]

Great start, I do all the packing too, there again if DH did it we'd have to take twice as many cases to fit the same amount of clothes into

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Great start, I do all the packing too, there again if DH did it we'd have to take twice as many cases to fit the same amount of clothes into

See it's the opposite for us. If DH packed we would have had one bathing suit and one change of clothes for the whole ten days. Of course that would have meant that I would have had to buy things so maybe I should have let him.

 

[Nemo32]

I'm so excited you finally started! Great start!

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Hey Nemo32. Good to hear from you again.

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

I'm along for the 2008 adventure!!! And I say again MEN

 

[purplepeg]

Glad you started. I can't wait for more. It's no wonder we're so exhausted by the time you arrive after you've spent the last 365 days getting ready Men will never understand the work. Is that when you started drinking Can't wait to hear more.

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Is that when you started drinking

Did I mention that DH doesn't enjoy Disney the same way I do? I really ought to ditch him next trip. Perhaps I should start interviewing replacements now?

 

[Diamondintheruff]

I say again MEN

I think it bares repeating

MEN!!

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Let's move on from Wendy's. We got ourselves to the border. I always panic here because as I mentioned last year I have been detained at the border before. So far this year the three other times I have crossed I made it through but you never know and since we were getting closer to it my stomach was starting to twitter.

There was a huge lineup and I was really rethinking my whole let's wait until we get to the Olive Garden for dinner plan. I was sure DH was going to gloat. But then a worker in an orange vest flagged me down. They opened another lane on the bridge. I zoomed past everyone. It was a happy happy moment. There I was passing all these cars in a stand still. I'm sure I received some hand gestures but I didn't care. I was going by too fast to even notice.

Could my luck continue once I reached the border guard? Yes, it could. Our passports were scanned and with friendly exchange about how there seemed to be more Canadians flying out of Buffalo than Americans we were on our way. I had made it through!

Our luck did not continue at the Olive Garden. It was 8pm by the time we got there. We were told the wait was 30 minutes. So we took our flashing hockey puck (no it is not really a puck but being Canadian we noticed it resembles one so from thereon it was referred to as a puck) and headed across the street to our hotel to check in. The puck did not like our hotel. It kept beeping. Apparently if you take those things too far away from their restaurants they get homesick and give off a very loud beeping noise. The hotel desk clerk pretended he didn't notice. We knew he did but he tried to stay professional.

DH in his very best negotiating voice (while trying to ignore the beeping in his pocket) attempted to wrangle a free breakfast from the hotel restaurant for the morning. It is a full service restaurant and honestly the only person in the family who cares to eat a full breakfast first thing in the morning is him. I packed cereal and bowls for the kids and me and I knew that this would be more than enough for us. I wasn't going to make the kids sit at a restaurant for an hour right before taking them on an airplane. Silly man. The kids were going to go swimming in the indoor pool in the morning to burn off some energy. Anyway, the hotel desk clerk gave DH one ticket for breakfast free after I said the rest of us weren't interested in it. I think he probably gave it to us because of the beeping noise though and not DH's negotiating skills.

As it turned out dinner at the Olive Garden was very disappointing. Our server forgot our appetizer and bread sticks. After very precise directions about DS9's dinner order "No foods are to touch each other. The chicken can only have salt and pepper on it and the pasta is to plain. There can't be any sauce on the plates at all. The chicken, the pasta and the broccoli are to be served on separate plates so as to ensure that nothing touches each other". I thought my directions were very thorough. However the server still let the broccoli touch the pasta. It took forever for our orders and before we knew it it was already 9:35. The pool closed at 10 pm so I took off with DD7 and DS5 who had eaten their meals. Since DS9 hadn't touched the offending foods that had touched each other and since DH is the fruit and vegetable enforcer those two stayed at the restaurant to battle it out. I heard later that some broccoli was consumed in exchange for his sibling's chocolate mints left by the server.

After a very quick swim we were all in our PJ's and snuggled into the queen size beds watching the Olympics on TV. It was gymnastics and it totally fascinated the kids. Can't say that it made them sleepy though. It was midnight before everyone was asleep.

Here are the kids testing out the beds and DH brushing his teeth.

Up next the plane ride, magic express and our first view of Port Orlean's Riverside. Did I get the buildings I requested? Did our luggage arrive? Click here for the next installment http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=27838146&postcount=219

 

[mollyseven]

O.k I gotta say that whole plan (overplan) is totally me. I would've had the restaurant for dinner in buffalo also picked and then been irked by the whole time thing and late dinner issue also. My husband also packs ....let me see...his man-bag (my term) with razor, deodorant, contacts, clippers and will lay out a few shirts/shorts on the bed and that is that. He then hangs out on his laptop and waits for me to have all the bags ready and at the door, even the 2 dogs bags are my responsibilty. He then stands in the way at the door and then says...You are better at packing the car so I'll let you do it!!!!!!!!!!!!! yeah. I can totally understand your position.

Also apparently he feels I ditch him and spend my time with other family members...hmmmm could it be because when we go to the pool, he sits in the room on his laptop checking his work emails...hmmmm.
MEN

yeah, can't wait to hear more.

 

[Nemo32]

I'm so glad you made it across the border successfully. And Olive Garden is always hit or miss for me.

 

[pl'smama]

Great start to the TR!! You are so entertaining with your descriptions, I just love it! I am sorry the Olive Garden was not up to it's expected stadards. I remember it fondly from it's days in Ontari-ari-ari-o and I loved it! Maybe not so much anymore??

Can't wait for more TR!!!

Suz

 

[Diamondintheruff]

yeah. I can totally understand your position.

So glad someone can. Because apparently it is lost on DH. And I love your term "man-bag". We're off to the cottage this weekend and I know I can count on DH to pack his "man-bag". I'll be packing everything else.

I'm so glad you made it across the border successfully. And Olive Garden is always hit or miss for me.

I'm glad too! I always panic about it. The border guards have always let me through eventually but they're not very nice about it.

You are so entertaining with your descriptions, I just love it!

Thank you pl'smama. I'm glad you are enjoying it. I forgot to mention that DH and I love the salad at the Olive Garden. As long as we get Salad and bread sticks we are happy. We always order a bottle or two of the Salad Dressing to bring home.

Our food was fine it was just our server that was off. I'm sure I threw her off with my order for DS9. I always ask for his no touching request in the nicest way posible and apologize in advance to server. After I ordered the family next to us with teenagers leaned over and told us that they had to do the same things when their kids were young. So I must of been nice about if the family next to us felt they could talk to us right? Anyhow, you will see more of these special food seperating requests come up again in the report. DS9 actually tries a new food in Disney.

 

[Alysa]

We're off to the cottage this weekend

Have fun! Looks like a lovely weekend for it!

DH and I love the salad at the Olive Garden.

It is good isn't it. I wish I knew how to make it! East Side Mario's is good too. Or "The Lady with the Tomato restaurant" as DD calls it.

 

[Alice BlueBonnet]

Hey! I'm back from my trip, and thrilled that you're doing your trip report, I can't wait to hear all about it. And as a fellow Canuck, I totally get the Olive Garden thing, although my last 2 trips there were less than stellar.

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Looks like a lovely weekend for it

The weekend didn't turn out as nice as we had hoped so we're just going up to the cottage tonight. That leaves me time to catch up on a couple of things. I just ordered my photo CD and have finished sorting through Cindy's wardrobe and winterize it. I know you know Alysa how emotional that can be. I can only do one person's wardrobe at once. Otherwise I end up with piles all over the upstairs. You know, the pile that goes to the younger cousin, the one that goes to the second hand store, the one that has to be thrown out due to stains or rips, the pile that can be put away until next year etc etc... Plus I need to visit with each piece of clothing and reminise about it. Course it also leaves me some time to post another installment.

I totally get the Olive Garden thing, although my last 2 trips there were less than stellar.

Glad you are back Alice and I can't wait to hear about your deluxe dinning in the world. Truth be told my last three trips to Olive Garden have been just so-so. But I still keep going back. I've got my annual ladies only shopping weekend booked at that same hotel coming up soon and I know we will eat dinner at the Olive Garden at least one of the nights. We always do IHOP for breakfast on sunday too.

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Monday August 18, 2008

Our Disney Arrival Day!

I might not have mentioned it but over the summer both DS and myself had picked up a nasty cough. The kind that overtakes you right in the middle of a sentence and forces you to do a large intake of air (while making a wheezing sound) before finally coughing. We can thank Nanny for it. She gave it to us in the late spring and it was hanging on to her too. We sounded like a full service smoking family some days.

Anyhow I was worried that I would need some more medicine for the kids and I so I just had to make a target run. At least that is what I told DH and I did buy medicine too. Of course I also wanted to buy a bunch of other stuff but when I got up to the cashier I discovered that my mastercard was missing!

You know that horrible panic you feel when you have misplaced your wallet or car keys or passport or credit card? I wallowed in that panic for a few moments until I remembered where my card was. It wasn't at home but in the hotel room in DH's wallet. This Disney trip was funded by money left to me from my grandparents (the first Nanny and Poppa who since the birth of DS9 went on to be called great-Nanny and Great-Poppa) estates. So I was footing the bill for everything including the Olive Garden dinner

Remember DH and DS9 stayed back to finish up the non-touching but still offensive to DS9 broccoli? So I could only pay for a few essentials (medicine for the kids and a new pair of dry-fit shorts and a t-shirt for myself) with the cash I had in my wallet. I decided not to dwell on it because it was my Disney arrival day after all. I wasn't going to let anything burst my bubble today.

My target trip took from 8:15- to 9:00am door to door. DH left for breakfast then and I took the kids to the pool to swim.

Our flight was at noon and I had booked the shuttle for 10:30. So at 9:40 I got the kids out of the pool and back into the room to dry off and organize our luggage. Now do the math with me. I have three kids, one van parked far away from the door due to our late check in, 5 carry on bags, 5 check-in bags, 2 strollers, 2 overnight bags and a purse. I also needed to re-organize a few things from our overnight bags. A few things needed to be left in the van, put into our carry-on bags or into our checked in luggage. DH took his wallet with him with included my credit card and the keys to the Van. By 10:10 am I am realizing that I'm not getting any help from him and I'm not going to make it on my own in time. If I had been on a reality TV show I would have given Kate a run for her money. There I was muttering to myself and uttering curse words under my breathe (all directed at DH of course) while trying to calm the kids down (Yeah like that was possible. They knew we were going to Disney today) and carrying everything.

So I did what every good fishwife does. The three kids and I ran down into the restaurant and stormed the entranceway. There he was all by himself drinking an orange juice and reading the paper. The rage that grew in me was not magical. It was almost 10:30 and we were going to miss our bus and maybe our flight and here he is reading the financial section of the paper. Do you think it would make more financial sense to actually make your flight so you don't have to pay for a separate one? UGH!!!

The next moment is not a particularly proud moment for me. My inner fishwife emerged. From the entrance way I yelled something to the extent of "Do you know what time it is?" while my three children in their excited states moved wildly around the restaurant. Well, no DH did not know what time it was and he swears he didn't know what time I booked the shuttle bus for either. The man was right beside me. Perhaps all that beeping from last night affected his hearing.

Let's call this next 30 minutes argument number two shall we. DH felt that I goofed around at Target (he wasn't even out of bed when I left) so he felt he was entitled to some time too. His excuse was that it was the kitchen that took too long with his order and he was angry that I yelled at him in public. Not saying that I am perfect in any way but in my books he doesn't have a leg to stand on with this one. We had some nasty words for each other while we were frantically re-organizing the luggage in the Van in the parking lot. Again DH mentioned that he didn't know we would have to do this. I really should say while I was re-organizing everything but he did open and close the roof-top carrier. I could have stayed in that angry place all day but since it was our Disney arrival day and he did apologize, so I moved on.

We missed the 10:30 shuttle. There was a backlog of people taking the shuttle that morning and we missed the 11am shuttle too. You can imagine the state I was in by now. I did have lots of time to take some pictures of our luggage laying out by the front of the hotel while waiting for the 11:30 bus.

Here are our bags. I always like to take pictures of them so I can describe them to the airport staff when they go missing.

Here is my park bag.

We took two strollers. An old one I had planned on leaving there and a new one I actually cared what happened too. Here is the new one.

Here is Cindy out front of the Millenium Hotel.

Perhaps now would be a good time to mention that I hadn't checked us in yet. I screwed up my printer before we left by printing out too many TGM charts. So we still had that to do as well. No problem. We still had over thirty minutes to load the bus (when it arrived) drive to the airport (8-12 minutes) check in, go past security and board the plane. Easy peasy right?

Somehow we managed it. Before the bus arrives DH apologizes (again are we noticing a theme here?) and makes nice to me.
At the airport in the Jetblue check in lineup DH started up a conversation with a lovely family from Abbotsford British Colombia. This was their first trip to WDW and they were staying at POR too. Hi Kerry and Judy! We started chatting about the impending weather. We all hoped that it would pass over and we would be fine.

We really enjoyed Jetblue. Loved the individual TV's. I had bought the kids new tamagotchi's for the trip as well as a few other toys to keep them occupied. We all had a few snacks packed (a power bar, fruit leather, some pretzels and cookies) to tie us over until we could get a real meal.

Here we are on our flight.

Notice DH gets to sit alone and read the paper. Perhaps he hasn't had enough personal time today yet?

I should mention that Nanny and Poppa were taking a different flight. They flew out of Toronto on Air Canada (Where Nanny used to work until she retired last year). They were to arrive just after noon and we were to arrive at 2:30 which we did.

The other family followed us to the magic express counter because as you know it can be difficult to find the first time. I guess it was our matching Disney t-shirts because before I knew it we had a whole entourage of people following us. At first I didn't think anything of it until we went out of our way to go to the bathroom and noticed that all these families were waiting for us. It was kind of comical.

I'm not sure how long we waited for our Magic Express bus but it must have been at least 20 minutes because we just missed a bus and I could see the staff closing the line off in the distance.

Here are the boys being patient in line for ME. You can see the new stroller unfolded. I had taken a sharpe and written "CANADIAN" and "I LOVE WDW" all over it. No one was going to mistake it for theirs.

Here is a picture of the older stroller.

It came with a connecting infant bucket seat and I've had it since DS9 was born. The plan was that DD7 Cindy would ride in that one and DS5 my little Jedi would ride in the new one. DS9 was to walk. If he can dance with the countries national Ballet company for 6 hours five times a week for a straight month than he can W-A-L-K. As a matter of fact he should be pushing us.

Once we finally got on the bus and moving I was looking out the window and this is what I saw. My first glimpse of Florida.

It was cloudy and windy when we loaded the bus. Once we got rolling on the highway it started to rain. I mean really rain. I felt the bus buckle under the heavy rain and wind. I got my shawl out of my carry-on because just looking at the storm made me cold. Apparently it did for DD7 Cindy too. Here is a picture of us on the bus.

We sat back and watched the video and tried to focus on the magic, the excitement, and all the possibilities that could happen on this trip while we tried to block out the storm that was raging outside. I knew storms happen in Florida but they are usually fierce and quick so how long could this one last anyway? Little did I know how wrong I would be.

But back to the realm of possibilities you feel at the beginning of the trip. We started talking about what we wanted to do this trip. The kids and even DH were excitedly chatting about this ride or that and I felt a warm glow overtake me. Anything was possible this trip and regardless of the weather outside the Diamond clan were about to experience some Disney Magic. I wasn't going to let one quick little rain storm ruin my Disney arrival day. I gave Cindy such a squeeze on my lap she yelped for me to ease up on my hold.

What magic did we find when we finally checked in to POR? Click here to be taken to the next installment. http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=27913524&postcount=229

 

[DisneyJo]

Thank goodness you got across the border OK and wooohooo on the fast lane past the traffic!

OMG I would have been freaking too about missing the shuttle, can't believe you then had to wait an extra hour to get to the airport

How funny that people were following you to ME Oh and our first trip my DD was 7 and a small 7 but we were nasty and she had to walk everywhere