A successful surpise trip!!! A picture filled trip report :)

[tinkgirl26]

Hello everyone and
Glad that you came to join in this fun filled trip report...For those of you joining in you can check out our PTR located in my signature...(darling disney diva's with a magical surprise).

Let me recap you all on our list of characters on this surprise trip...

first off there is me...i am Kathryn

Then my Aunt Martha who has been my Disney buddy since my 2nd trip there

Following her is her daughter Emily who is 8 she is adopted from China

and winding up our group is Emily's sister Mia who is 2 and adopted from Guatemala

In this trip we also have guess appearances from my parents and my younger brother who surprised us (we had our guesses that they would be coming) and came down and did some things with us.

We left of Friday April 30 and returned May 8, and stayed at Coronado Springs Resort.

This was a surprise trip for Emily she had no clue what was actually going on... So we had it set up that i needed a ride to the airport and so Martha was taking Emily out of school early so we could head to the airport.

Up next is the start of the trip and the big reveal of our actual plans!! Good reactions just to let you know!!

 

[JanetMom]

Sounds like fun! I was just at CSR last week so I can't wait to see your pictures.

 

[tinkgirl26]

Ok so we we had a 3:30ish flight so i got up around 7 to finish packing and get things done like a run to the gas station and to the bank...So then around 9:45 i headed over to Martha's house to get the car loaded up...

We were taking my mom along with us is paper form but then she showed up in real form so we didn't need the paper one of her!!

so we were loading everything up in the car and realized that all the suitcases and strollers would not fit in to my trunk so we put the stroller and my suitcase in the backseat with the girls and decided that we would tell Emily that my golf clubs were taking up all of the trunk... so we couldn't fit anything else back there.

Then we decided that we would go get my mom's car seat for mia so just put her in the backseat and drove around the block to my house and found out that my brother had my moms car so there was no car seat, so we drove back around the block and pulled into martha's driveway. When we were pulling in mia gets all mad at us and tells us...noooooo i wanna go to Disney...so we get the carseat loaded and mia buckled in and we were off to Emily's school to pick her up.
Mia waiting for Emily

Me waiting for Emily

Yay Emily is here and happy to be out of school so we are off...

Nothing to eventful on the drive, Emily wants to go shopping and is sick of listening to me brag about going to Disney and rocked out to some Disney music. Soon enough we arrive at Detroit International Airport, we find the park and fly lot. I hop out of the car and so does Martha... Martha tells Emily that she needs to get out of the car to say goodbye to me and Emily 100% for sure does not want to do this and we keep telling her Emily get out of the car, soon enough she does we pop open the trunk and our binder is on top so Martha hands her the binder on the cover it has our names and our disney vacation 2010...here is the response

and then Karen gets in on the action

She was BEYOND surprised!!! She was jumping up and down screaming and just saying thank you thank you thank you over and over again and giving us hugs...so the shuttle arrives and we board to head to the airport

on the shuttle Emily starts telling the bus driver ALL about it and the surprise. We took the binder back right away because we wanted the hotel to be a surprise for her too so she doesn't know about any of that at this point.

Up next travel time!!

 

[KatMark]

I'm anxious to read about your report and your new JOB!

 

[Goofy442]

Oh I love surprises, how did you keep it from the girls? That picture is so priceless. I will have to go back and start from the beginning.

 

[tinkgirl26]

Sounds like fun! I was just at CSR last week so I can't wait to see your pictures.

It was our first time staying there...i LOVED it!!

I'm anxious to read about your report and your new JOB!

I am glad you are here...so for the job i start training on Tuesday, i moved down here last week and i am ready to go!!

Oh I love surprises, how did you keep it from the girls? That picture is so priceless. I will have to go back and start from the beginning.

It was sooooo hard keeping it from them!! Luckily my cousin can be pretty oblivious at times and missed our few slip ups and we covered them by saying things like oh well if we go it the fall. It was great!!

 

[tinkgirl26]

So we got off the shuttle and made our way into the airport and found our line and waited to check in.

We got checked in and made it through security with no problem...then we were off to find Earl of Sandwhich...we love that place everytime we go to disney and were excitied that the airport had one. While we were eating Emily had a million questions. We finished out lunch the walked around the airport and found a quite place to sit, i ran around and played with Mia while Martha and Emily worked on her homework. Soon it was getting close to board the plane...

We were glad to see it was ontime. We had a 40 min layover in Nashville, we were a little nervous on weather or not we were going to make it, but we knew that the first leg had to be on time in order to make it...so far we were looking good.

We made it to nashville on time!!! We found our next gate and found out that flight was delayed by 15-20 min. perfect!! It gave us a chance to go to the bathroom and get something to drink before our next flight.

Both girls did great on the flights...Mia almost always sleeps on the plane which is great!

We arrived in Orlando around 7:30p and started to make our way to the magical express line. While we are walking both girls are so excitied. We hop on the airport monarail

We get off and start heading towards magical express when Mia sees the DIsney shop, she starts booking it because she sees mickey and disney!! I have never seen that 2 year old walk to fast it was so cute!! We head to the magical express line, i go up to check us in...

Does emily figure out our hotel surprise here??

 

[KatMark]

Love the surprise! Too cute. And the picture son the monorail are terrific. Can't wait to see if Emily figured out the resort....

 

[tinkgirl26]

SO i checked us into magical express and we head in the Coronado Springs Resort line and Emily looks at us and was like, i thought we were staying at Pop Century. We quickly come up with a story that when its later like this that sometimes they combine the lines and this is the line they told us to be in and not to worry about it. We were the only ones in the line, once we feed Emily this story we loaded on the bus and as all luck has it the first stop for that bus would be Pop century then Coronado Springs!! Wow this story is working out perfect!!

Soon we see this on the tv

When the bus gets close to pop century i look over at martha and tell her that i really enjoy the movie and wanted to see what cartoon would come on after so maybe we could stay on the bus and get off at another resort and find our way back later...martha goes along with it but EMily wants off the bus she wants to start our vacation. Well we win and stay on the bus so we can "watch the cartoon" haha. We get off at Coronado Springs and start walking towards the check in, Emily ask where we are going and we tell her that we are actually staying here and that we need to go check in. The big grin on her face gets bigger and we get more hugs and thank yous!!

We head in and had done online registration and walked right up with no wait!! Yesss!! Our room request that we sent in had been met. We got Casitas 4 on the first floor!! Yes!! So we leave and start making our way over there. As we are walking over we hear noise behind us and turn to see fireworks from one of the parks!! Cool!! We watched and made it too our room.

We dropped our stuff off and decided to walk and then go get dinner. So we walked around and went and checked out the Dig site pool then headed over to pepper market for dinner. We did OOP for this dinner. It was good, Martha had a sandwhich, i had a steak burrito and Emily had Nachos, mia just ate off of our plates, now that our tummies were happy and full we went and walked around Panchitos and bought some doughnut holes for breakfast that morning.

We headed back to the room and turned on....give you one guess....STACEY and the girls and Martha got ready for bed, i waited up for our luggage, around 11:30 it arrived i changed and fell quickly to sleep.

Up next our first day in the parks...where did we go? What did we do?

 

[Queenofallthings]

What a fantastic surprise! We did almost the exact same thing in 2004 when we surprised my daughter with a trip for her 12th birthday. I didn't quite get the response you did, I got tears, but not happy ones, my daughter hates to fly and knew in an hour she would be getting on a flight

The girls are precious! I cannot wait to read more of your trip report!! I'm also looking forward to your views on CSR...it's one of the resorts we're thinking about trying for next time.\

Hope you're having a great weekend!

 

[luckylady]

What a great surprise. When did you tell the 2 year old and how did she not blab it in the car? Can't wait for more. Good start.

 

[Goofy442]

Great update can't wait to hear more.

 

[wildcatfan]

Great report so far, I can't wait to read more! The smile on Emily's face is priceless. I hope the rest of the trip went as smooth and great as the start of the trip.

 

[tinkgirl26]

Love the surprise! Too cute. And the picture son the monorail are terrific. Can't wait to see if Emily figured out the resort....

She never figured it out it was great and her face there was priceless...i wish i had gotten pictures of that too!

What a fantastic surprise! We did almost the exact same thing in 2004 when we surprised my daughter with a trip for her 12th birthday. I didn't quite get the response you did, I got tears, but not happy ones, my daughter hates to fly and knew in an hour she would be getting on a flight

The girls are precious! I cannot wait to read more of your trip report!! I'm also looking forward to your views on CSR...it's one of the resorts we're thinking about trying for next time.\

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Oh no!! We were shocked we actually pulled the surprise trip off! It was so hard keeping out mouth shut. I would definitly stay at CSR again i really enjoyed it!

What a great surprise. When did you tell the 2 year old and how did she not blab it in the car? Can't wait for more. Good start.

It was hard because the 2 year old didnt understand so we played her favorite DIsney music in the car and kept the snacks flowing

Great report so far, I can't wait to read more! The smile on Emily's face is priceless. I hope the rest of the trip went as smooth and great as the start of the trip.

I think it is one of the biggest smiles on Emilys face that i had ever seen!! It was really neat!

 

[tinkgirl26]

So we got up Saturday morning and we were ready to go!! How could we not be our first full day in DIsney!! We got ready had some doughnut holes in the hotel and got ready to head out. Before we headed to our bus stop we got a few quick pictures of the resort...

here is the view from our door

the girls at the fountain

a few shots across the water

then we made our way over to..

Which for theme parks was the first bus stop to be picked up and dropped off...yay...

Then we were on the bus on our way to....

We made it there for rope drop this morning . We are waiting and Mia starts telling us that she wants to go to DIsney. We tell her we are in DIsney we are at animal kingdom...oh animal kingom? I want disney...hmmm

So we watched the rope drop and made our way to??????

The safari, we hop in line and already we are shocked by the heat this morning. We have been at this time of year before but we have never had heat like this...turns out later that they were having record highs...go figure!

So we are making our way through the line and it just stops and we dont go anywhere for awhile. Finally a cast member comes and tells us that the ride isnt going right now and it could be anywhere from a 5min wait up to and hour before it starts working, we can wait or exit and get fast passes, so with two eagar little girls we exit and get the fast passes. And then we are off to one of Emily's favorite rides...EXPEDITION EVERSET!!On our way there we see king louie and Baloo, Mia isnt too sure about these guys. We get over to EE and Standby is super short so we go up and get our baby swap pass and Emily and i work our way through the line...

Where do we go after this?? Mias first ride...any guesses on what it is?

 

[KatMark]

Great pics of the CSR in the morning before heading over to AK. I can tell how hot it is...my pictures look like that when it is really humid.

 

[Goofy442]

Love the pictures! When we went in Feb. it was so cold. Where was the heat then. Well they are making up for it now.