Alien Encounter gave me PTSD!! A Dec '14 PTR **Life Update 5/11 & 5/15**

PhoenixStrength

Found my Prince Charming!
Joined
Oct 7, 2010
Messages
3,751

Hello all and welcome to my latest PTR! For those that haven't read any of my TRs or PTRs before, welcome! :wave2: Please feel free to reply, I love hearing from everyone as they read along! To get this started let me introduce the players:

My actual name is Stephanie, and I live in Pasadena, Maryland. I am an Office Receptionist for a non-profit spay and neuter clinic, and I LOVE my job. I am 30 years old and while I'm single I do have an amazing boyfriend named George, who will be joining me on this WDW trip. I have been to WDW eight times already, and this trip will be my ninth trip and sixth time staying onsite.

George is 26 (will be 27 by the time of the trip) works with me at the same clinic, where he is a vet tech. He is doing college part time too to get his Bachelors in Biology with an emphasis on animal biology. He and I have known each other for a year and been dating for 6 months. He is absolutely the sweetest, funniest and most wonderful man I have ever met. :lovestruc He has only been to WDW once, when he was 4 years old, with his younger sister and grandparents. While he remembers quite a bit from the trip, especially for how young he was, most of what he remembers is gone now! He is the reason for the title, as one of the most vivid memories he has is being terrified on Alien Encounter. He was joking the other day that if he walks by the building (he knows it is Stitch now) he may have a relapse and PTSD still from the trauma, and I knew the title of our PTR! :lmao:

Here are a couple of pictures of he and I:








I don't have any two-legged children (and don't plan on having any!), but I do have 5 furry children. I have a dog, Phoenix, who is a 10 year old Beagle/Belgian Malinois mix. Sadly he was diagnosed with prostate cancer (carcinoma) earlier this month. :sad1: This type of cancer is extremely aggressive and there is very little they can do for him. For now he is on a pain medication and an steroid and those two seem to have him feeling good and acting like himself still. The vet who diagnosed it gave him 2-3 months, but I'm hoping for more time since he is my baby.


Phoenix-1.jpg





And 4 cats:
Jag, a 12 year old Maine Coon/Ragdoll mix. He was a rescue from the local animal control when he was 11 weeks old. He is mister laid back and is good buddies with Phoenix.







Turk, a 12 year DSH. His momma was found, while pregnant, by a woman working in Baltimore who was very allergic to cats. She didn't want her to give birth in the city, so she caught her, brought her home, put her in the basement, and told her husband that he had to care for her and the kittens once they were born :rotfl2:. She gave birth a few days later. I got Turk at 8 weeks, and she had named him that as all the kittens had been named after Disney movies, so I kept it, with a slightly different spelling! :goodvibes






Jynx, a 9 year old Torti with white. She was found by my parents with 4 of her siblings at around 6 weeks old. Their mom had been hit be a car and passed away. I kept her, my sister Lisa kept one of her sisters and my parents kept one of her brothers. They found homes for the other 2. She's been having some health issues lately, which I may mention from time to time. Over the course of a year she lost half her body weight and we (me and her vet) couldn't figure out what was wrong as her blood tests all came back that she was in perfect health. At the beginning of May I took her in for an ultrasound and found out she has either small cell lymphoma or Irritable Bowel Disease. I couldn't do a biopsy due to both her health (she had little chance of surviving the surgery) and money (it would have cost $3000+). Thankfully the treatment for both is the same medication, so she was put on Prednisone and B12 injections and has already gained back a few pounds and is doing great!






And finally Sweetie. She is an 8-ish year old DSH tabby. I found her when I was living in the boonies, and she adopted me. She went from injured and feral, to healed and sweet as can be in 3 weeks. She is difficult to get pictures of as she never stops moving, but here she is playing, which is her favorite activity!






So now that you met George and I, how about we get this PTR started? :dance3: Any questions or comments please let me know!


 
Thanks for the bat signal! Going back to read!

Awww, I love all of the intro pictures! You can tell that you are head over heels for George and you look so cute together.

I've said it before but it's definitely worth saying again, I am so sorry to hear about Phoenix. You're doing a great job keeping Phoenix as happy as you possibly can.
 
Here! I think I missed an update on your TR, need to go back and read that.
 

Yay! I'm here!! :wave2: Love the pics of you and George. So happy you have found someone so great for you! Cant wait to hear about your plans.
Every trip my husband moans about how they replaced AE with Stitch. He loved that ride, but I can definitely understand how it terrified a 4 year old George. :rotfl2:
 
Steph, just wanted to save a spot for when I get home. I can't wait to hear about the December plans.
 
Thanks for the bat signal! Going back to read!

Awww, I love all of the intro pictures! You can tell that you are head over heels for George and you look so cute together.

I've said it before but it's definitely worth saying again, I am so sorry to hear about Phoenix. You're doing a great job keeping Phoenix as happy as you possibly can.

Thanks Lisa! I am head over heels for him, and he for me! :goodvibes

Thank you again. For now Phoenix is doing great and still acting like himself so I am happy with that!

Here! I think I missed an update on your TR, need to go back and read that.

Hi Ariana! Glad you made it over. :wave2:

Thanks for the heads up. I'll be following along. :thumbsup2

You're welcome, and thanks for being here! :)

Yay! I'm here!! :wave2: Love the pics of you and George. So happy you have found someone so great for you! Cant wait to hear about your plans.
Every trip my husband moans about how they replaced AE with Stitch. He loved that ride, but I can definitely understand how it terrified a 4 year old George. :rotfl2:

Hi Val! I'm so happy I found George too! He is the best :goodvibes

Yeah, I remember reading that AE was recommended for ages 12 and over, so it's definitely reasonable for a 4 year old to be scared of it! He's afraid of no ride now, so I'm sure there will be no PTSD after this trip! :lmao:

Steph, just wanted to save a spot for when I get home. I can't wait to hear about the December plans.

Hi Kathy! I'm loving your posts with the pictures of the trip you are on now. Glad you managed to pop by. Don't worry, I won't be posting much before you get back!!
 
I can't wait to hear more about your plans! Congrats on you and George finding each other....it's not always easy to find a great guy, but it's so worth the wait!!!
 
I can't wait to hear more about your plans! Congrats on you and George finding each other....it's not always easy to find a great guy, but it's so worth the wait!!!

Thanks April, I'm so glad you made it over here! And you are very right, it is not easy to find a great guy but I'm lucky that I did! :goodvibes:goodvibes
 

Our Plans!

So, I thought I would start with a generic breakdown of our plans. Later on I will do more detailed per day breakdowns, but here are the basics!

We are flying into Orlando the afternoon of Sunday December 21st and flying out the evening of Thursday January 1st. We will be there for both Christmas and New Years! :dance3:

We are staying at Caribbean Beach Resort, in a standard room. It will be my third stay there and George's first (his family stayed at The Contemporary when he went at 4 years old, and all he remembers is the monorail going through it!). :beach:

We have an 8 day MYW ticket, no park hopper. The plan is 2 days per park and 2 full down days to do other stuff. Plus we will have lots of time both our arrival and departure days for non-park stuff too. :banana: And we have the water parks and more option as well so we can take advantage of all of the things under that. Typhoon Lagoon will be closed while we are there, but Blizzard Beach will be open.

We got Free Dining for our dates and stayed with the option it came with, which is the regular dining plan since we are staying in a Moderate. We already have all of our ADRs set and are pretty happy with them! In fact, when I asked George the other day what all he most looked forward to on our trip, the food was the first thing he named! :lmao: He did name other things after that too at least :laughing:

Oh, and we are doing Memory Maker, so be prepared for lots of pictures in the TR.

I think that is the basics for our trip. I'll be back soon with the breakdowns for each day of the trip, FP+, ADRs, etc. :goodvibes


 
Sounds like a wonderful long trip! I'm doing 8 days in December because I've always wanted to have a long trip with time for down days. Still wish we had some crossover days but I'm long gone by the time you get there which is Dec 7th.

I hope you have great weather so you can take advantage of the water park.

Free dining is wonderful isn't it? And I totally agree with George that the food at Disney is very important! :rotfl: ADRs is usually one of the first things I start working on when I'm planning a trip.

Lots of pictures is a good thing!!

Can't wait to read more specifics on each day.
 
One of these days I'll make it to Disney while the Christmas stuff is going on. Looks like you have the makings of a wonderful trip!
 
You know that we love the parks but enjoy our "down" time too. I would love to be at the parks during both Christmas and New Year's! Do you read Tinksthree's reports? She was there over the New Year's holiday and gave some good insight.
 
I love the overall plans, Steph. There is nothing like Christmas at Disney. :goodvibes
 
Sounds like a wonderful long trip! I'm doing 8 days in December because I've always wanted to have a long trip with time for down days. Still wish we had some crossover days but I'm long gone by the time you get there which is Dec 7th.

I hope you have great weather so you can take advantage of the water park.

Free dining is wonderful isn't it? And I totally agree with George that the food at Disney is very important! :rotfl: ADRs is usually one of the first things I start working on when I'm planning a trip.

Lots of pictures is a good thing!!

Can't wait to read more specifics on each day.

Sorry we will miss each other, but yay for you going to WDW in December too! Longer trips are great! Down time is important but hard to achieve on shorter trips when you want to get so much done!

We hope we can go to Blizzard Beach too, but if not we will have fun somewhere else!

I agree that the food is very important too! And I wasn't surprised at all that he was so looking forward to it, he has been practically drooling over the menus of where we are eating!

One of these days I'll make it to Disney while the Christmas stuff is going on. Looks like you have the makings of a wonderful trip!

You definitely have to go during the Christmas decorations are up, it's so magical!

You know that we love the parks but enjoy our "down" time too. I would love to be at the parks during both Christmas and New Year's! Do you read Tinksthree's reports? She was there over the New Year's holiday and gave some good insight.

You definitely need to go over the holidays one year! :goodvibes

I love the overall plans, Steph. There is nothing like Christmas at Disney. :goodvibes

We cannot wait!! :hyper:
 
The plans look great.

And in George's defense, I've never stayed in the Contemporary, but all my life I've wanted to simply because the monorail runs through it! :rotfl2::lmao:
 
The plans look great.

And in George's defense, I've never stayed in the Contemporary, but all my life I've wanted to simply because the monorail runs through it! :rotfl2::lmao:

Thanks!

:rotfl: George was also only 4 years old, so it makes total sense that the monorail would stick out in his mind. Definitely a cool thing for a 4 year old, and adults too!
 
The problem with going at Christmas time is that it will probably be too cold to swim and swimming is what my dd9 likes best about vacation. :confused3

She'll grow up eventually!:upsidedow
 
The problem with going at Christmas time is that it will probably be too cold to swim and swimming is what my dd9 likes best about vacation. :confused3

She'll grow up eventually!:upsidedow

The pools are all heated and kept at 82 degrees year round! :thumbsup2
 












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