GreatBiscuit
Golden but never flaky
- Joined
- Aug 20, 1999
You can never go back.
It is a mantra often invoked as a means of balancing nostalgia with reality. Its varied form is found in everything from song lyrics, to novels, to movie lines.
And yet, when it comes to Disney, we still try.
Our expectations, our planning, virtually every aspect of our trips is directly influenced by a driving need to go back. We try to recapture the feelings we had last time or to recreate moments that can't be duplicated. Despite our best intentions, there is a constant comparison running every moment of every day. Most of the time, we are not even aware we are doing it.
I was certain I would break that trend. I pledged that this trip would stand alone; an island in my mind, free from the confines of comparison and predefined expectations. Yet inevitably those comparisons did come.
Most were unexpected and were, more often than not, an afterthought. Some took the tone of This is WAY better than I remember, some fell into the bin of This has gone downhill, while the majority simply registered as This is different.
During my somewhat sporadic and disappointingly incomplete Pre-Trip Report, I christened this trip Adventures in Opposites, and truly that was what it became. Much of what we planned and did was completely opposite of what we did last time. (Driving vs. flying, off property instead of on, no dining plan, different FP system, no park hoppers, fewer table service meals, the list goes on.)
How did it all turn out? Well, as a whole, it was an amazing trip and one that will always be remembered fondly. I can honestly say I am glad we went; I loved our time together, and we shared some amazing moments which I cannot wait to tell you about.
Yet the trip was not without incident. While many moments were as good as, if not better than, our last trip in 2009, there are others which I would definitely label as worse.
Much, much, worse.
Perhaps now would be a good time for introductions. I am your host. (Insert Disney pun here). Call me GB, Biscuit, or Matt . I answer to just about anything you wish to throw out there. (So long as it is within reason and allowed under the scope of the almighty board filters.) When I am not pressing computers into service as travel planning tools, I am fixing them, cleaning them, supporting them, and inventorying them.
Over and over and over again.
Contain your joy.
My wife Tracy shall hence forth be referred to as First Lady Biscuit. (Possibly even FLB if Im feeling particularly devilish.)
We have two girls: Tahlia who is now an astounding 12 years old, and Hailee who just broke double digits. The fact that both are now adults in the eyes of Disney factors heavily into our dining selections.
We drove from Texas to Florida to spend eight days in Orlando. (Well eight and half I guess if you want to get technical, but I tend to negate any days that don't involve a park.) My original intent was to include two days at Universal, but that was abandoned in preference to two more days at WDW. We departed June 26, and spent the week of July 4th at The World.
While there, we met up with First Lady Biscuits sister Tammy and her family. On my last report, I mentioned that Tammy's husband Nick is a fellow Texan. (How two sisters from Minnesota wound up marrying two Texans is a story for another day.) They have two daughters, seven year old Sammie and nine year old Nikki.
That gave us a touring group of 4 adults and 4 little girls, ages 7-12. We met a LOT of princesses, visited far more bathrooms than I knew existed, and managed to make our day fun wherever we went.
The elephant in the room of this Trip Report is our budget which was mandated as minuscule. My oldest daughter is in All Star Cheer and my youngest is in Gymnastics. Between lessons, competition fees, uniforms and travel, they pretty well eat the lions share of our disposable income with a side of order of We have to pay for WHAT this month?
To do this trip required a number of finagles and alterations, but we made it work and (mostly) made it work well. Before I get ahead of myself though, I need to shoot you some keynotes for this narrative.
GB (your's truly) is the primary planner of all things Disney, including this trip.
And now without further ado, I give you our vacation.
This trip was born a couple of years ago when we were up in Minnesota visiting my in-laws. While there, we took a side trip with Nick and Tammy to the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells. (Really nifty place BTW.)
While at the Kalahari, we decided that we really needed to do Disney together. Nick and Tammy visited Walt Disney World on their honeymoon; but their girls had never been. We were there on our honeymoon, and returned with our girls and my parents in 2009.
Declaring joint operations to be a good thing, we sat about discussing timelines, budgets, and logistics several times over. After much comparison and checking of schedules, we nailed down the week of July 4th as the only time we could all coordinate breaks from work and other responsibilities. With our plan on paper, it was time to start putting some wheels in motion.
As this is not a Pre-Trip Report, I will spare you the pages of planning and changes that led to the eventual execution of this journey. In short the main points of interest are:
I stacked discounts to book 3 nights at the Wilderness Lodge as a room only reservation. (For full details on how that all came about, I refer you to the PTR.) Nick and Tammy were there for 5 nights on a package with Disney Dining. All remaining nights were to be spent at World Quest in the 3 bedroom condo. (5 nights for us, 3 for them.)
Staying on property was a complete surprise for our two girls. Staying at The Lodge rather than at Pop Century was a complete surprise for First Lady Biscuit. (As was staying 3 nights rather than 1.)
We departed on Thursday, June 26th after I got home from work. I will again spare you the two days of driving details and report only that we spent our first night in Baton Rouge, and our second visiting my cousin Kaycee in St. Augustine, Florida.
And we partook of the requisite cup of OJ at the Floridia welcome center.
Because it was free.
The actual big day, D-Day, driving under the purple & yellow arches and shouting Whoopiedeedoo! day, was Saturday the 28th. After a two hour trip from St. Augustine to Orlando that stretched into three hours with a construction / accident delay in Daytona Beach, we finally arrived on property and headed towards the Magic Kingdom toll plaza.
My cover story was in place. On the drive down, I told everyone we were meeting Nick and Tammy at a resort for lunch. As we drove onto property, the girls still didn't know we were staying on property and First Lady Biscuit was still unaware of my resort bait & switch.
My goal was to go as long and as far as possible before revealing the surprise. The only question which remained was how long I could keep them in the dark.
Next time on Biscuits Grand Adventure This is the best surprise EVER!
It is a mantra often invoked as a means of balancing nostalgia with reality. Its varied form is found in everything from song lyrics, to novels, to movie lines.
And yet, when it comes to Disney, we still try.
Our expectations, our planning, virtually every aspect of our trips is directly influenced by a driving need to go back. We try to recapture the feelings we had last time or to recreate moments that can't be duplicated. Despite our best intentions, there is a constant comparison running every moment of every day. Most of the time, we are not even aware we are doing it.
I was certain I would break that trend. I pledged that this trip would stand alone; an island in my mind, free from the confines of comparison and predefined expectations. Yet inevitably those comparisons did come.
Most were unexpected and were, more often than not, an afterthought. Some took the tone of This is WAY better than I remember, some fell into the bin of This has gone downhill, while the majority simply registered as This is different.
During my somewhat sporadic and disappointingly incomplete Pre-Trip Report, I christened this trip Adventures in Opposites, and truly that was what it became. Much of what we planned and did was completely opposite of what we did last time. (Driving vs. flying, off property instead of on, no dining plan, different FP system, no park hoppers, fewer table service meals, the list goes on.)
How did it all turn out? Well, as a whole, it was an amazing trip and one that will always be remembered fondly. I can honestly say I am glad we went; I loved our time together, and we shared some amazing moments which I cannot wait to tell you about.
Yet the trip was not without incident. While many moments were as good as, if not better than, our last trip in 2009, there are others which I would definitely label as worse.
Much, much, worse.
Perhaps now would be a good time for introductions. I am your host. (Insert Disney pun here). Call me GB, Biscuit, or Matt . I answer to just about anything you wish to throw out there. (So long as it is within reason and allowed under the scope of the almighty board filters.) When I am not pressing computers into service as travel planning tools, I am fixing them, cleaning them, supporting them, and inventorying them.
Over and over and over again.
Contain your joy.
My wife Tracy shall hence forth be referred to as First Lady Biscuit. (Possibly even FLB if Im feeling particularly devilish.)
We have two girls: Tahlia who is now an astounding 12 years old, and Hailee who just broke double digits. The fact that both are now adults in the eyes of Disney factors heavily into our dining selections.
We drove from Texas to Florida to spend eight days in Orlando. (Well eight and half I guess if you want to get technical, but I tend to negate any days that don't involve a park.) My original intent was to include two days at Universal, but that was abandoned in preference to two more days at WDW. We departed June 26, and spent the week of July 4th at The World.
While there, we met up with First Lady Biscuits sister Tammy and her family. On my last report, I mentioned that Tammy's husband Nick is a fellow Texan. (How two sisters from Minnesota wound up marrying two Texans is a story for another day.) They have two daughters, seven year old Sammie and nine year old Nikki.
That gave us a touring group of 4 adults and 4 little girls, ages 7-12. We met a LOT of princesses, visited far more bathrooms than I knew existed, and managed to make our day fun wherever we went.
The elephant in the room of this Trip Report is our budget which was mandated as minuscule. My oldest daughter is in All Star Cheer and my youngest is in Gymnastics. Between lessons, competition fees, uniforms and travel, they pretty well eat the lions share of our disposable income with a side of order of We have to pay for WHAT this month?
To do this trip required a number of finagles and alterations, but we made it work and (mostly) made it work well. Before I get ahead of myself though, I need to shoot you some keynotes for this narrative.
GB (your's truly) is the primary planner of all things Disney, including this trip.
- It has been five years since our last visit.
- Walt Disney World has been a part of my life for a LONG time. (See my TR Biscuit's Grand Adventure which covers 8 trips made over the course of 3 decades.)
- I am an optimist by nature and am mostly even tempered.
- I have a deep-seated & fanatical love of meat.
- First Lady Biscuit and her sister Tammy are identical twins. I've only mixed them up once...From behind...When I patted the wrong behind ...It was a teachable moment ...I'm moving on now.
- We drove to Florida while Nick and Tammy's family flew.
- During our last trip, we visited the Wilderness Lodge to eat at Whispering Canyon Café and First Lady Biscuit fell in love with the resort. She said then that she wanted to stay at The Lodge (as it shall now be dubbed) the next time we came.
- My aunt owns a condo at Orlando World Quest resort and makes it available to anyone in the family who wants to use it. Several Uncles / Aunts / Cousins / Siblings have gone and done so before us. When none of us are there, she allows World Quest to rent it out to vacationers. (That last fact will become a key, and dare I say, highly disturbing plot point a few episodes down the road.)
- I took more pictures than last time, but most were of the point / shoot / go variety. I think I only broke out the Big lens once. Lots of photos to choose from for posting, but fewer artsy-fartsy shots than last time.
- I tend to be nostalgic. (See introduction above.)
- Not everything I intend to report on was pixie dust and sparkly pants. There will be some honest assessments of what I perceive to be some flaws with the current state of The World. Conversely, I'm not a hater so there will be good points mentioned as well.
- I believe opinions, my own included, are like rear ends. Everybody has one and most of them stink. Bear that in mind as you view my take on things and I will reciprocate.
- I do my best to make my posts reader friendly so I will try to keep the acronyms to a minimum and include chapter links in the Table of Contents and at the end of each post. (While Im sure most of you would know exactly what I meant if I said we took the boat from the WL to the MK to use our FP+ on 7DMT before lunch at CRSC in TL, it makes my brain hurt to both write and read that way.)
- I always love your feedback and will make every effort to answer each post here.
- My postings are typically longish. If you like em short and sweet, you may want to cut your losses and skip going further. Warned Ye Be. (Which, coincidentally, is the same phrase I utter just before eating Mexican food.)
- I have NO idea how often I will be able to post updates, but I do hereby pledge to see this report through to completion.
And now without further ado, I give you our vacation.
This trip was born a couple of years ago when we were up in Minnesota visiting my in-laws. While there, we took a side trip with Nick and Tammy to the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells. (Really nifty place BTW.)
While at the Kalahari, we decided that we really needed to do Disney together. Nick and Tammy visited Walt Disney World on their honeymoon; but their girls had never been. We were there on our honeymoon, and returned with our girls and my parents in 2009.
Declaring joint operations to be a good thing, we sat about discussing timelines, budgets, and logistics several times over. After much comparison and checking of schedules, we nailed down the week of July 4th as the only time we could all coordinate breaks from work and other responsibilities. With our plan on paper, it was time to start putting some wheels in motion.
As this is not a Pre-Trip Report, I will spare you the pages of planning and changes that led to the eventual execution of this journey. In short the main points of interest are:
I stacked discounts to book 3 nights at the Wilderness Lodge as a room only reservation. (For full details on how that all came about, I refer you to the PTR.) Nick and Tammy were there for 5 nights on a package with Disney Dining. All remaining nights were to be spent at World Quest in the 3 bedroom condo. (5 nights for us, 3 for them.)
Staying on property was a complete surprise for our two girls. Staying at The Lodge rather than at Pop Century was a complete surprise for First Lady Biscuit. (As was staying 3 nights rather than 1.)
We departed on Thursday, June 26th after I got home from work. I will again spare you the two days of driving details and report only that we spent our first night in Baton Rouge, and our second visiting my cousin Kaycee in St. Augustine, Florida.
And we partook of the requisite cup of OJ at the Floridia welcome center.
Because it was free.
The actual big day, D-Day, driving under the purple & yellow arches and shouting Whoopiedeedoo! day, was Saturday the 28th. After a two hour trip from St. Augustine to Orlando that stretched into three hours with a construction / accident delay in Daytona Beach, we finally arrived on property and headed towards the Magic Kingdom toll plaza.
My cover story was in place. On the drive down, I told everyone we were meeting Nick and Tammy at a resort for lunch. As we drove onto property, the girls still didn't know we were staying on property and First Lady Biscuit was still unaware of my resort bait & switch.
My goal was to go as long and as far as possible before revealing the surprise. The only question which remained was how long I could keep them in the dark.
Next time on Biscuits Grand Adventure This is the best surprise EVER!
Last edited:
,
Now going back to read !!!!!
