my3princes
<font color=red>Looking for a milestone to claim<b
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2004
- Messages
- 16,065
Day 1, Travel Day October 14th, 2005
Cast of Characters:
SuperMom - Me - age 36
Kitchensink Guy - DH - age 34
Stitch - DS - age 10
Missing Tooth kid - DS - age 7
Little Guy - DS - age 2 ¾
Our day started at 6:30 AM. We got the kids up and sent the older two off to school. We showered and dressed in our long sleeved 7 dwarf T-shirts as it was barely 40 degrees in Vermont. I figured that if we all traveled in our warmest clothes that would be less to pack, so jeans, long sleeved T-shirts, sneakers and fleece jackets for all. We packed all of our last minute items and finished tidying up the house as we would have family in and out caring for our 2 dogs and cat. The morning seemed to drag, I cant imagine how the kids were doing at school. At around 10 AM we went and got gas. The bags had been put in the car the night before with the exception of our carry ons that needed all our last minute items. At 10:45 AM we threw the rest of our stuff in the car and headed to school to pick up the kids. They were bouncing off the walls and both forgot their fleece jackets in their classrooms. SuperMom saves the day and notices before we leave the building. I check with kids to see how much homework we would need to get done while on vacation as I know that it isnt likely that we will have much time to get homework done with the schedule that I have developed over the last 9 months. Stitch says that he has to read a book for a book report that is due at the end of the month and has to write a rough draft for his sea creature report that is due on the 28th. He will be back at school on the 24th so that gives us a little wiggle room. Missing tooth kid says that he has a spelling packet and that he has to write in his travel journal and his teacher had told me that it wasnt mandatory, only if he had time. Since we have a 2 ½ hour drive to Boston I suggest that they start their homework in the car. I know that Missing Tooth kid can do the spelling packet in less than ½ hour so I tell him he has to have it done before we leave our car in Boston, I am not carrying anything extra. Stitch tries to read his book, but starts to get car sick. It takes Missing Tooth kid almost the entire drive to get his spelling done as they are too wound up, but he does get it done. Yeah. We get to Boston in the pouring rain. During our drive the kids pull everything out of their carry ons and have their stuff from their book bags strewn around too. I figure no problem as it is only 1:45 PM when we arrive at the Shuttle Parking lot and our flight doesnt leave until 5:10 PM. I was wrong. As soon as we park in the parking spot the shuttle stops behind our car and waits for us to board. Now mind you there are already other people on board so we have to hurry. We manage to get shoes and coats back on the boys, and we are standing in the pouring rain trying to help. We send them to the bus and Kitchensink guy starts to move the luggage out of the back of the van. I packed very light for this trip. We usually take our camper down so I take everything that I could possibly need with us. This trip I packed 3 large duffle bags, 2 collapsible coolers (for carry ons) a diaper bag and a back pack for each of the boys. SuperMom shuffles through the van repacking the boys backpacks and making sure that we have their homework, my folder of info which we used to find the Park & Go and my purse. I lock the door and still have no idea if a actually have everything that is in the car. Did I mention that we also were taking 2 strollers. We knew that we would definitely need one for the little guy and Missing Tooth kid suffers from severe flat feet. Even with orthodics he will have extreme leg pain if he is on his feet too long. We bought a Maclauren stroller for him to make sure that it could handle his weight. He is only 45 lbs soaking wet, but I didnt want to haul our double stroller down again as we have done on our 6 previous trips. We planned to use the Mac in the airports and packed the Chicco Caddy in its stroller bag to check with the rest of our luggage. The shuttle dropped us off right in front of the Delta terminal and someone had left a luggage cart on the curb. It is still pouring and we do have a lot of bags. I put the boys in the enclosed bus waiting area with the Mac and the car seat (did I mention that we also had a car seat?) Kitchensink guy gets most of the luggage on the cart, I manage to strap the carseat to one of the collapsible coolers (they are the wheeled ones with the telescoping handle) and Stitch puts his packpack on the other one. Missing tooth kid pushed the little guy in the stroller and we managed to get into the airport and out of the pouring rain. Since we are very early as it is just after 2 PM we take our time and everyone uses the restrooms. We go over to the E-ticket kiosk and load up our info. OH NO!! our flight is delayed by ½ hour. That means we do not have enough time to make our connecting flight. I knew that I didnt print those tickets at home for some reason. Now Supermom is in panic mode, what do I do now. The Delta lady standing their says to pick up a phone and call Delta, I say no I dont think so, give me a person to deal with face to face. We get into the short line for an actual person. I explain our situation and she loads up our info. With out asking anymore questions she asks how many bags we a checking. We tell her 4, 3 large duffles and a stroller. She is now in panic mode for some reason and insists that we give her our luggage NOW. Ok, lady, whats going on? She says that she just booked us on a nonstop flight to Tampa. I think great as we were flying into Tampa anyway. I had scored tickets from BOS to TPA back in March for $99.30 round trip per person and we were planning to get a rental car anyway so why not save at least $100 per person? This was an awesome break to be flying non stop. There was a small hitch though, did I say small? It was now 2:20 PM and the flight leaves at 3:05 PM. We had not even gotten in line for the Security Check and the line was huge. I asked the Delta Lady if we could make that flight and she looked me right in the eye and said I have no idea, but Ill help you get through security. Boy am I confident now. She walks us to security and puts us in the express line. It was moving, but not too quickly. After 10 minutes or so we make it to the front of the line. There are 5 of us to get through Security. We put the carryons on the conveyer belt, then the jackets, then the shoes and finally we empty our pockets. The kids go through with no problem, then its time for Supermom and Kitchensink guy to go through. Guess what, if you have your tickets changed at the last minute you will be fully screened. They take us to the glass cubicle and explain how they are going to wand us and pat us down. They will use the back of their hands for all sensitive areas. Like that matters, They will touch every area of your body and you are in the glass cubicle where everyone walking by can watch. Ok already, we are not terrorists and we arent hiding anything on our bodies can we go already? I had even worn a bra without underwire to avoid setting the machine off. Apparently I wasted time worrying about that. We can now redress all 5 of us, reorganize our carryons and sprint to the complete opposite end of the terminal. We take off on a run. Part way through the terminal a nice guy with a golf cart offers to give me a lift (I was dragging both coolers with the car seat and backpack attached) We picked up the 2 older boys as we passed them and by some miracle we made the plane. The door was locked behind us. We threw our stuff overhead, well we tried, turns out that the coolers wouldnt fit so they had to gate check them. I figured that was ok, at least I know that they are on the same plane with us so we will at least have something to wear tomorrow if our other luggage is lost. We settle down and get ready to take off. The little guy had never been on a plane before and he was very excited. He kept putting his arms our like he was the plane. Once we took off his excitement turned to anxiety. We had a very turbulent take off and were in Pennsylvania before the Captain took off the seatbelt sign. The little guy kept asking kitchensink guy to get us down. I dont like it. For any of you that have a 2 year old you know how many times he can repeat that statement in a 45 minute period. It wasnt pretty. I figured the kids would watch their DVDs on the plane and all would be quiet. Oops, the dvds were in one of the coolers that is now under the plane. We have the dvd players, but no dvds. Thank our lucky stars we were put on a song flight so there were Tvs in the back of the seats. There were several stations to choose from and one was a cartoon channel. We ask for head phones and everyone is tuned in. Well not everyone. It turns out that Stitchs Headphones only play music, he cannot hear the show. He tried everything, the guy next to him tried everything, but no luck. We broke the law and changed seats while the seatbelt sign was still on. I knew that I would survive the flight with no TV and he would not. Those Tvs are quiet nice. We could trace our flight path and knew where we were at all times and at what altitude. There was also a Trivia game that you could play against other passengers. I did not need headphones to do those things and before long everyone buy little guy was playing along. I did have one worry on the flight though, How would National handle us arriving 4 hours early to pick up our car? Would they make me wait, would they make a new reservation and charge a higher rate? I was pretty nervous. We had planned to eat at BOS, but that didnt happen and the snacks were also under the plane so we had to order something off the Song menu. We got 2 of the cheese and crackers platters. That did say platter, but really was 3 small slices of apples, 3 grapes a few crackers and the worst cheese that I have ever tasted for the low price of $5. We were starving and ate it anyway. We arrived in Tampa at 6:15 PM a full 4 hours before we had anticipated arriving. We got our luggage with no problems and after a little research found the National shuttle. We got all of our luggage onboard and were off for our rental car. The driver asks if anyone is an Emerald Club Member. We say yes and everyone else on the bus is impressed. We get dropped off first. We unload the luggage and I run to the office to see if we can get our car early and what the price for that would be. The bus literally moved up 50 yards from where they dropped us off and let everyone else off. At least I was ahead of the herd. I got to the counter and announced that I was very early. He said how early, I said 3 ½ hours and he said oh I thought you meant 3 weeks. We both laughed and he said we could take the car now with no extra charge. Could this be, another magical thing and we havent even gotten to Disney yet. I run back outside and scan the Emerald Aisle, It is all sedans except for one silver hatchback. I literally ran to it. It was mine. Would everything fit? I yell to Kitchensink guy and the crew and they drag everything over.
We carefully loaded everything into the Silver Pontiac Vibe that only had 387 miles on it. It was tight, but we got everything in. If we had one of the Sedans there is no way that it would have all fit. That was part of the excitement of Emerald Aisle you can win or you could lose. So we got the Vibe for 9 days for $188. I was happy with that. Another bit of magic. Now off to Pop Century. We decided to stop at a McDonalds in Lakeland on our way as we really hadnt eaten anything all day. We got to the Disney area fine, but I had forgot to get directions to Pop. I couldnt remember what area it was classified as and to be fair it really isnt in a certain area. We wound up going some back route to Downtown Disney and got directions from there. Oh yeah, Little Guy kept saying he was going to pukey up so we had to stop a couple of times. Im not sure if he really was sick or just wanted attention as nothing happened. We arrived at Pop at around 9 PM. Not much of a wait to check in. When I made my ressies in March I requested 50s building, 4th floor, lake view. They had saved for us 80s building ,2nd floor, parking lot view. She showed me where the room was on the Pop map and it was literally the farthest room from everything. I was not impressed. I complained continually while she got all the info together and when I finally pointed out that I made 3 requests and got none of them she went to her supervisor to see if there was anything they could do. She was gone for at least 10 minutes. She came back and said they had been able to move things around and could give us 50s building, lake view, 1st floor. Ill take it and thank you very much. The room was nice and there was no noise from neighbors other than an occasional toilet flushing. The crew was tired and they decided to go to bed. I did some unpacking and we realized that there was no pack n play in the room. We had packed a ready bed because we didnt know if little guy would sleep in a pack n play after being in his own room for over a year. We blew it up and Kitchensink guy put the little ones to bed while Stitch and I explored the resort. We got our refillable mugs and had a drink by the Hippity Dippity pool. We turned in a bit later and the Crew were all sleeping so I took notes on our first day. Overall day one was full of magical surprises accompanied by the usual stress associated with traveling.
Stay tuned for Day 2 and the surprises from the characters.
Cast of Characters:
SuperMom - Me - age 36
Kitchensink Guy - DH - age 34
Stitch - DS - age 10
Missing Tooth kid - DS - age 7
Little Guy - DS - age 2 ¾
Our day started at 6:30 AM. We got the kids up and sent the older two off to school. We showered and dressed in our long sleeved 7 dwarf T-shirts as it was barely 40 degrees in Vermont. I figured that if we all traveled in our warmest clothes that would be less to pack, so jeans, long sleeved T-shirts, sneakers and fleece jackets for all. We packed all of our last minute items and finished tidying up the house as we would have family in and out caring for our 2 dogs and cat. The morning seemed to drag, I cant imagine how the kids were doing at school. At around 10 AM we went and got gas. The bags had been put in the car the night before with the exception of our carry ons that needed all our last minute items. At 10:45 AM we threw the rest of our stuff in the car and headed to school to pick up the kids. They were bouncing off the walls and both forgot their fleece jackets in their classrooms. SuperMom saves the day and notices before we leave the building. I check with kids to see how much homework we would need to get done while on vacation as I know that it isnt likely that we will have much time to get homework done with the schedule that I have developed over the last 9 months. Stitch says that he has to read a book for a book report that is due at the end of the month and has to write a rough draft for his sea creature report that is due on the 28th. He will be back at school on the 24th so that gives us a little wiggle room. Missing tooth kid says that he has a spelling packet and that he has to write in his travel journal and his teacher had told me that it wasnt mandatory, only if he had time. Since we have a 2 ½ hour drive to Boston I suggest that they start their homework in the car. I know that Missing Tooth kid can do the spelling packet in less than ½ hour so I tell him he has to have it done before we leave our car in Boston, I am not carrying anything extra. Stitch tries to read his book, but starts to get car sick. It takes Missing Tooth kid almost the entire drive to get his spelling done as they are too wound up, but he does get it done. Yeah. We get to Boston in the pouring rain. During our drive the kids pull everything out of their carry ons and have their stuff from their book bags strewn around too. I figure no problem as it is only 1:45 PM when we arrive at the Shuttle Parking lot and our flight doesnt leave until 5:10 PM. I was wrong. As soon as we park in the parking spot the shuttle stops behind our car and waits for us to board. Now mind you there are already other people on board so we have to hurry. We manage to get shoes and coats back on the boys, and we are standing in the pouring rain trying to help. We send them to the bus and Kitchensink guy starts to move the luggage out of the back of the van. I packed very light for this trip. We usually take our camper down so I take everything that I could possibly need with us. This trip I packed 3 large duffle bags, 2 collapsible coolers (for carry ons) a diaper bag and a back pack for each of the boys. SuperMom shuffles through the van repacking the boys backpacks and making sure that we have their homework, my folder of info which we used to find the Park & Go and my purse. I lock the door and still have no idea if a actually have everything that is in the car. Did I mention that we also were taking 2 strollers. We knew that we would definitely need one for the little guy and Missing Tooth kid suffers from severe flat feet. Even with orthodics he will have extreme leg pain if he is on his feet too long. We bought a Maclauren stroller for him to make sure that it could handle his weight. He is only 45 lbs soaking wet, but I didnt want to haul our double stroller down again as we have done on our 6 previous trips. We planned to use the Mac in the airports and packed the Chicco Caddy in its stroller bag to check with the rest of our luggage. The shuttle dropped us off right in front of the Delta terminal and someone had left a luggage cart on the curb. It is still pouring and we do have a lot of bags. I put the boys in the enclosed bus waiting area with the Mac and the car seat (did I mention that we also had a car seat?) Kitchensink guy gets most of the luggage on the cart, I manage to strap the carseat to one of the collapsible coolers (they are the wheeled ones with the telescoping handle) and Stitch puts his packpack on the other one. Missing tooth kid pushed the little guy in the stroller and we managed to get into the airport and out of the pouring rain. Since we are very early as it is just after 2 PM we take our time and everyone uses the restrooms. We go over to the E-ticket kiosk and load up our info. OH NO!! our flight is delayed by ½ hour. That means we do not have enough time to make our connecting flight. I knew that I didnt print those tickets at home for some reason. Now Supermom is in panic mode, what do I do now. The Delta lady standing their says to pick up a phone and call Delta, I say no I dont think so, give me a person to deal with face to face. We get into the short line for an actual person. I explain our situation and she loads up our info. With out asking anymore questions she asks how many bags we a checking. We tell her 4, 3 large duffles and a stroller. She is now in panic mode for some reason and insists that we give her our luggage NOW. Ok, lady, whats going on? She says that she just booked us on a nonstop flight to Tampa. I think great as we were flying into Tampa anyway. I had scored tickets from BOS to TPA back in March for $99.30 round trip per person and we were planning to get a rental car anyway so why not save at least $100 per person? This was an awesome break to be flying non stop. There was a small hitch though, did I say small? It was now 2:20 PM and the flight leaves at 3:05 PM. We had not even gotten in line for the Security Check and the line was huge. I asked the Delta Lady if we could make that flight and she looked me right in the eye and said I have no idea, but Ill help you get through security. Boy am I confident now. She walks us to security and puts us in the express line. It was moving, but not too quickly. After 10 minutes or so we make it to the front of the line. There are 5 of us to get through Security. We put the carryons on the conveyer belt, then the jackets, then the shoes and finally we empty our pockets. The kids go through with no problem, then its time for Supermom and Kitchensink guy to go through. Guess what, if you have your tickets changed at the last minute you will be fully screened. They take us to the glass cubicle and explain how they are going to wand us and pat us down. They will use the back of their hands for all sensitive areas. Like that matters, They will touch every area of your body and you are in the glass cubicle where everyone walking by can watch. Ok already, we are not terrorists and we arent hiding anything on our bodies can we go already? I had even worn a bra without underwire to avoid setting the machine off. Apparently I wasted time worrying about that. We can now redress all 5 of us, reorganize our carryons and sprint to the complete opposite end of the terminal. We take off on a run. Part way through the terminal a nice guy with a golf cart offers to give me a lift (I was dragging both coolers with the car seat and backpack attached) We picked up the 2 older boys as we passed them and by some miracle we made the plane. The door was locked behind us. We threw our stuff overhead, well we tried, turns out that the coolers wouldnt fit so they had to gate check them. I figured that was ok, at least I know that they are on the same plane with us so we will at least have something to wear tomorrow if our other luggage is lost. We settle down and get ready to take off. The little guy had never been on a plane before and he was very excited. He kept putting his arms our like he was the plane. Once we took off his excitement turned to anxiety. We had a very turbulent take off and were in Pennsylvania before the Captain took off the seatbelt sign. The little guy kept asking kitchensink guy to get us down. I dont like it. For any of you that have a 2 year old you know how many times he can repeat that statement in a 45 minute period. It wasnt pretty. I figured the kids would watch their DVDs on the plane and all would be quiet. Oops, the dvds were in one of the coolers that is now under the plane. We have the dvd players, but no dvds. Thank our lucky stars we were put on a song flight so there were Tvs in the back of the seats. There were several stations to choose from and one was a cartoon channel. We ask for head phones and everyone is tuned in. Well not everyone. It turns out that Stitchs Headphones only play music, he cannot hear the show. He tried everything, the guy next to him tried everything, but no luck. We broke the law and changed seats while the seatbelt sign was still on. I knew that I would survive the flight with no TV and he would not. Those Tvs are quiet nice. We could trace our flight path and knew where we were at all times and at what altitude. There was also a Trivia game that you could play against other passengers. I did not need headphones to do those things and before long everyone buy little guy was playing along. I did have one worry on the flight though, How would National handle us arriving 4 hours early to pick up our car? Would they make me wait, would they make a new reservation and charge a higher rate? I was pretty nervous. We had planned to eat at BOS, but that didnt happen and the snacks were also under the plane so we had to order something off the Song menu. We got 2 of the cheese and crackers platters. That did say platter, but really was 3 small slices of apples, 3 grapes a few crackers and the worst cheese that I have ever tasted for the low price of $5. We were starving and ate it anyway. We arrived in Tampa at 6:15 PM a full 4 hours before we had anticipated arriving. We got our luggage with no problems and after a little research found the National shuttle. We got all of our luggage onboard and were off for our rental car. The driver asks if anyone is an Emerald Club Member. We say yes and everyone else on the bus is impressed. We get dropped off first. We unload the luggage and I run to the office to see if we can get our car early and what the price for that would be. The bus literally moved up 50 yards from where they dropped us off and let everyone else off. At least I was ahead of the herd. I got to the counter and announced that I was very early. He said how early, I said 3 ½ hours and he said oh I thought you meant 3 weeks. We both laughed and he said we could take the car now with no extra charge. Could this be, another magical thing and we havent even gotten to Disney yet. I run back outside and scan the Emerald Aisle, It is all sedans except for one silver hatchback. I literally ran to it. It was mine. Would everything fit? I yell to Kitchensink guy and the crew and they drag everything over.
We carefully loaded everything into the Silver Pontiac Vibe that only had 387 miles on it. It was tight, but we got everything in. If we had one of the Sedans there is no way that it would have all fit. That was part of the excitement of Emerald Aisle you can win or you could lose. So we got the Vibe for 9 days for $188. I was happy with that. Another bit of magic. Now off to Pop Century. We decided to stop at a McDonalds in Lakeland on our way as we really hadnt eaten anything all day. We got to the Disney area fine, but I had forgot to get directions to Pop. I couldnt remember what area it was classified as and to be fair it really isnt in a certain area. We wound up going some back route to Downtown Disney and got directions from there. Oh yeah, Little Guy kept saying he was going to pukey up so we had to stop a couple of times. Im not sure if he really was sick or just wanted attention as nothing happened. We arrived at Pop at around 9 PM. Not much of a wait to check in. When I made my ressies in March I requested 50s building, 4th floor, lake view. They had saved for us 80s building ,2nd floor, parking lot view. She showed me where the room was on the Pop map and it was literally the farthest room from everything. I was not impressed. I complained continually while she got all the info together and when I finally pointed out that I made 3 requests and got none of them she went to her supervisor to see if there was anything they could do. She was gone for at least 10 minutes. She came back and said they had been able to move things around and could give us 50s building, lake view, 1st floor. Ill take it and thank you very much. The room was nice and there was no noise from neighbors other than an occasional toilet flushing. The crew was tired and they decided to go to bed. I did some unpacking and we realized that there was no pack n play in the room. We had packed a ready bed because we didnt know if little guy would sleep in a pack n play after being in his own room for over a year. We blew it up and Kitchensink guy put the little ones to bed while Stitch and I explored the resort. We got our refillable mugs and had a drink by the Hippity Dippity pool. We turned in a bit later and the Crew were all sleeping so I took notes on our first day. Overall day one was full of magical surprises accompanied by the usual stress associated with traveling.
Stay tuned for Day 2 and the surprises from the characters.
What a busy first day you had! Really enjoyed reading your report - so glad you had some pixie dust to start your trip even tho it looked a little worrisome. Can't wait for the next installment! 
