A Tale of WDW in the "Terrible 2s" - Days 3 & 4 Completed =)

[Gabes_mommy]

Hello everyone and welcome to my Trip Report of our recent trip to WDW with my 2 year old DS.

Here is a link to my PTR if anyone is interested:

http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2237497

Let me provide some background information about my title. When my DS was 18-24 months old he was very challenging. There was a lot of running away from me in public, screaming, tantrums - the whole enchilada. Then all of the sudden when DS turned 2 he totally changed. He turned into the sweetest, most agreeable little boy. You could take him anywhere and people would rave about how cute and good he was. He also developed wonderful manners, always saying please and thank you. I was such a proud mommy.....well you know how in the Bible it says "pride comes before the fall"? Boy did it ever! Fast forward to about a month ago when the terrible 2s emerged with a vengeance - we're talking screaming, hitting, total defiance.

Needless to say, I started to get nervous about taking this child to Disney World.

So, how did it turn out????

Well, if you were at CBR on Thursday, that child running around shoeless in the food court at lunch time? Yeah, that was my DS. And the mommy trying to contain him who looked exhausted? Yeah, that was me.

Yes, we had our challenges, but we had our wonderful moments too and overall, I am so glad we did it and I can't wait to tell you all about it.

 

[mommyof2Pirates]

I cant wait to hear this story I too know all about the terrible two's. I am hoping ours are finishing up just in time for the trip. The story about the food court is classic. I am sure you can laugh about it now but at the time its not funny at all.

Well I am glad you enjoyed the time none the less and I will catch up on your TR when we return.

 

[Gabes_mommy]

I cant wait to hear this story I too know all about the terrible two's. I am hoping ours are finishing up just in time for the trip. The story about the food court is classic. I am sure you can laugh about it now but at the time its not funny at all.

Well I am glad you enjoyed the time none the less and I will catch up on your TR when we return.

Have a great trip!!!

 

[Gabes_mommy]

OK, let's talk about the Who's, When's, and Where's of the trip:

The Who's

Gabe - my wild son, the star of the show Gabe will be 3 in December so he is 2.75 years old

Me - Joy, aka mommy.

DH - Steve, aka daddy.

Recently DS became obsessed with stealing my camera and taking pictures - this continued througout our trip, so lots of the pictures I have were taken by a 2 year old. Also, lots of my pictures are blurry due to a smudged up camera lens.

This picture of DH and I was taken by DS and it cracks me up - mommy and daddy from Gabe's perspective.

Mimi - my mom, Gabe's grandma

PopPop - my dad, Gabe's grandpa

The When's

We live in South Florida and drive to WDW so we take shorter, more frequent trips. For this trip we were there for 4 days and 3 nights, September 15th - September 18th. The 18th was PopPop's birthday so we celebrated that during our trip.

The Where's

Over our many trips I have discovered that I am truly a "moderate" kind of girl. I love the theming of the moderates and I love the outdoor entrances and walking to the food court to fill up my mug. For our last 3 trips we have stayed at POFQ, but for this trip we decided to try something different and stay at CBR for the first time. So we were at Caribbean Beach Resort for 3 nights with free dining.

 

[Angies1274]

Joining in!! I'm excited to hear all about your trip!! Okay, now I'm off to read your PTR so I can catch up!!

 

[Gabes_mommy]

Joining in!! I'm excited to hear all about your trip!! Okay, now I'm off to read your PTR so I can catch up!!

Welcome!!! Thanks for joining! I need to get caught up on your TR now that I'm home.

Day 1 coming soon.

 

[Gabes_mommy]

I started planning this trip back in March so it was really exciting when the day of our trip finally arrived.

Here is our planned itinerary from Day 1:

Tuesday, September 15th
8:00 - Depart from the house, stopping for breakfast on the road
11:00 - Arrive at Caribbean Beach Resort and check in
11:30 – Visit Downtown Disney for lunch and shopping. Counter Service Lunch.
3:30 – Depart CBR to head to the Magic Kingdom for the Halloween Party!
4:35 – Dinner at Liberty Tree Tavern

I was actually pretty nervous about Day 1 because DS really needs his nap everyday. He isn't a great sleeper at night so we rely on him getting a 2 hour nap midday to have a good afternoon and evening. I was worried because I knew if we didn't get an early check-in and DS didn't get a nap he would be a grouchy mess for the Halloween Party. So, what happened....did DS get a nap? Did we stick to our itinerary???

 

[Gabes_mommy]

So we were scheduled to leave our house at 8:00 and at about 7:45 we were all ready to go and DH was packing up our van.

DS was so excited. Here he is pulling his suitcase out to the van:

While DH was loading the car and moving DS's carseat to the backrow of our van I turned on the Disney Channel on Sirius Backseat TV for DS and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was on. DS was so excited pointing at Mickey knowing that he was going to see Mickey that day:

Here is DS peaking over the backseat while DH loaded everything up:

My parents were supposed to meet us at our house so we could all ride together and 8:00 rolled around with no parents in sight. This was not a good sign. Thankfully they rolled up at about 8:10. Here is DH greeting his PopPop:

Once my parents' luggage was all loaded in the van we said goodbye to our pug Gigi and hit the road. Gigi seemed to understand that we were leaving her and didn't want to go in the house.

Fortunately Gigi loved her dog sitter and had a good time without us.

Finally we were on the road. DS watched the Disney Channel with Mimi and PopPop until we stopped for breakfast. At some point Special Agent Oso was on and my dad made some rude comments about Oso's mental prowess.

 

[MickeyisBeast]

I'm joining in!
Your son is too cute! And I LOVE his suitcase!
Can't wait for another update :]

 

[Gabes_mommy]

I'm joining in!
Your son is too cute! And I LOVE his suitcase!
Can't wait for another update :]

I'm so glad you stopped by!

Thank you for the complimemt about DS. I think he is cute too! I got DS's suitcase at Walmart and they had other animals too.

Another update will be up later tonight.

 

[Lamping3]

I'm here!

 

[jana616]

I'm in as well! I thought that suitcase was cute in your PTR, but it's even cuter when being pulled by an adorable almost-3 year old! He looks so excited! Can't wait to read more.

 

[Gabes_mommy]

I'm here!

Yay!!!

I'm in as well! I thought that suitcase was cute in your PTR, but it's even cuter when being pulled by an adorable almost-3 year old! He looks so excited! Can't wait to read more.

Thanks!! I was just reading your TR this morning. Drinking the puddle is so something my DS would do as well. Yesterday when we were driving home DH saw DS eating something in the mirror - it turned out it was a tissue - I have no idea where he got it. I only hope it was unused. Boys!

 

[Gabes_mommy]

About an hour after leaving our house we stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Being the Disney fanatic I am, I would have rather stopped for something faster or not stopped at all, but I was overruled.

Ready to go eat:

At the table in the restaurant:

Finally with full bellies we were back on the road and on our way to Disney! Back in the van PopPop put Finding Nemo in the DVD player. Gabe had never seen Finding Nemo before and it was a hit! He loved it and ended up watching it at least 3 times throughout the week.

About a half hour from our destination we had to make a "potty break" pit stop. I always like stopping at the rest stops on the Turnpike because they have Disney Brochures and other fun stuff.

My boy with his PopPop:

Notice the blankie in DS's hand? That is his lovey named Little Blankie. DS is very attached to Little Blankie and cannot go to sleep without it. After everyone used the facilities and we stocked up on brochures for Gabe to look at we briefly stopped to look at the sunglasses and then we were on our way out to hit the road. As we were walking into the parking lot, running up behind us was the woman who worked at the sunglass stand with DS's blankie. He had sat it down and we almost left it there. I am so grateful to that woman. Losing blankie would have been a serious tragedy for DS and would have caused a lot of hardship on our trip. Sunglass lady - if you are out there bless you!!!

Tragedy averted, we were back on the road. Not long after we started seeing signs for our destination:

When we passed Gaylord Palms I knew we were getting close:

And then there it was....Disney World!!!

When he spotted the big sign DS was so excited.

Yay, we're here!!!!

Soon we saw a sign for our resort:

And there it was...Caribbean Beach Resort:

 

[Gabes_mommy]

Pulling up at CBR I had butterflies in my stomach. Partly because I was so excited but also because I was nervous.

First I had heard that CBR was huge. We love to use the Food Court and I knew we were planning on using the pool a lot so I was concerned about being really far away from everything.

When I booked our rooms this summer I did not want to pay extra for preferred rooms, but I did request either building Aruba 51 or Jamaica 45 because they were directly across the lake from everything. Would we get our room request filled?

Next, like I already mentioned I was very concerned about DS being able to take a nap and I was really hoping and praying that our rooms would be ready early.

Up next: Checking in!

 

[Gabes_mommy]

When we pulled up to the Custom House to check in we were all really excited.

The parking lot was empty so that was a good sign.

Once inside we hopped into the short line for Online Registration. DS was literally running laps around the Custom House. You can see him in this picture.

Soon it was our turn and the CM grabbed our packet. This was the moment I was waiting for.....where would we be staying? Were our rooms ready?

The CM told us that our rooms were ready dance3 and that we were in Jamaica 45 - one of the buildings I requested. Woohoo!!!

I was so excited!!! We were so lucky!!!! This vacation was off to an amazing start!

 

[scoot241]

Sounds like you had a smooth check-in. Ours was similarly smooth and we had our room requests fulfilled. CBR is a resort I'd like to stay at in the future.

Looking forward to reading more!

 

[Gabes_mommy]

Sounds like you had a smooth check-in. Ours was similarly smooth and we had our room requests fulfilled. CBR is a resort I'd like to stay at in the future.

Looking forward to reading more!

Welcome!!! I love the new Online Check-In system. I think it helps the hotels place people in rooms that are ready when they arrive since they know people's arrival times.

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

Joining in! Love your title...it is something I'm sure that I will be facing in my near future, since my son just turned 2. It's nice that you live close enough to take shorter trips. So glad that you go the room that you wanted!! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a nap for you son happened.

 

[Gabes_mommy]

After we got our room assignments we were back in the van to drive over to Jamaica. I love the color scheme of the Jamaica buildings - so bright and cheerful.

I am so glad we watched Finding Nemo on the way to Disney because DS was so excited when he saw Nemo on the bedspread in our room.

Our room was nice and clean - we were very happy with it for our stay.

Once we had unloaded all our luggage into the room we decided to head to Old Port Royale to check everything out. We had originally planned to go to Downtown Disney that first day, but the excitement of checking out the resort won out.

Our first view of Centertown:

While we were at the Food Court we bought our refillable mugs and headed back to the room to change into our bathing suits to hit the pool.

I unfortunately forgot my camera in the room because I was rushing, but DS LOVED the new kids' area at the pool. He went down the slides non-stop for about an hour and had a wonderful time. I did get lots of pictures of him at the pool on our 2nd day, so I'll post those later.

At this point it was about 1:30 so we headed back to the room to give DS a nap. In all the excitement of arriving at the resort we had accidentally left Little Blankie in the car when we unloaded and when we got DS into bed for his nap it hit him that LB was missing and he had a FIT!!! He was wailing for LB. DH immediately headed to the car to get LB and I turned on the TV for DS. Almost immediately upon seeing Stacy and the WDW must-do's DS stopped crying and was captivated. It's the power of Stacy I guess.

DH did rescue LB from the van and we had a happy little boy who konked out for a solid 2 hours.

While DS was napping I took a shower and walked over to OPR by myself to check everything out again. As soon as I got back my mom knocked on the door and wanted to walk over too so I spent most of the afternoon walking back and forth. CBR is a lovely resort and I was already falling in love with it.