Cancelled Flight -but that's good.

[HarrisonFromIndiana]

Pre-Trip Trip Report

Day 0: Cancelled Flight -- August 31, 2007

[Initial disclaimer: As the date above is actually correct, I expect either my Dis-login to be revoked or to receive some kind of procrastination reward for the latest trip report ever. My apologies. I wrote this a few years back, but never pulled the trigger.]

My wife is a real Dis-er at heart. She’s like most of you. (After all you’re reading someone’s trip report right now.) She’s great at research, planning, and everything trip or Disney related. She had the best laid plans for our first day at Disney, when one week before we were to leave, our flight from Indiana to Orlando got canceled. We decided to take the airline’s offer and go one day earlier (for some strange reason, starting our vacation one day later didn’t sound as appealing).

Flashback to the first day that the free Disney Dining Plan was offered to the general public. We were happy to find that they had extended the maximum stay from 10 nights to 14 nights. So having 2 young Toy Story fans in our household, we booked 14 nights at All-Star Movies.

Then, about a month later as she was about to trash some of the junk e-mail from Disney… my wife wondered if a “free room upgrade” message might actually be real. All-Star Movies was overbooked. She checked it out, and discovered that even though it was an offer to stay at a Disney Vacation Club resort, they didn’t do any real high pressure sales job or even require you to sit through a timeshare presentation to get the upgrade. So we jumped on it.

We didn’t really realize how nice of an upgrade this was until a few days later when my professional Dis-er wife completed her extensive research. We had our choice between Saratoga Springs and Old Key West. And we didn’t know which one might be better for us, but we found a picture of the Old Key West slide at the main pool and we picked that one. This means that Disney gives us a taste of how nice it is to stay in a wonderful Disney Vacation Club resort and this frees them up to sell another room over at the value resorts which overall will mean more money for them. Old Key West certainly wasn’t booked full, and that made the upgrade good for both of us.

So we were all set to arrive, get a rental car and head straight to Old Key West and check-in. But, our flight being moved up one day threw a wrench into the “best laid plans”. We couldn’t just add on a day to the Old Key West reservation because we were already booked for 14 days. A single day out of pocket was way more than we wanted to spend. Even for a studio. An extra day for me sounded great. Forced to take another day off work (how horrible!). Forced to get down to Orlando one day early before our plan started and be more rested to take full advantage of the tickets and dining, just horrible.

My wife on the other hand was pretty stressed about everything that had to change due to our early arrival. We have one extra night at the beginning. Where do we stay? On property? Old Key West? All Star Movies? Some other value resort for one night? Get our bags transferred from that resort to Old Key West? Move them ourselves? Off property? If so where? This hotel? That hotel? Use Magical Express? Extend rental car reservation? Change park visit plan? Leave it? Change meal reservations? I didn’t see much of this as a problem. But for my personal, professional Dis-er and planner, it was a lot to squeeze into just a few days.

So since we weren’t even supposed to be in Orlando yet, I called this Day 0.

I helped out my stressed wife and said I wanted to stay on-property. I picked a familiar resort: All-Star Movies. My reasoning was, it would start our “Disney vacation” one day earlier and maybe we would get lucky and get a Toy Story room. When we reserved it, we couldn’t book a premium room. So I knew that the chances of that were slim but that’s okay.


We’ve never flown to Florida before. But this time we did. It’s striking when you exit the plane and head towards the main terminal all excited and happy…the only faces you see are tired and unhappy (they’re all going the other way). Ohhhh, so that’s how this works. MCO should post signs inside the airport so we don’t get lost.
“Happy dwarves this way. ->"
“Grumpy dwarves that way. <-”

Our plane landed at 2:00 pm on August 31, 2007. Alamo offered the cheapest mid-size rental car we could find. We picked a Malibu Maxx, which turned out to be a great car for us. We loved it. It had remote start, which was very nice. And a movable back seat, which gave the flexibility we needed to fit our stroller and luggage and still be comfortable. We grabbed a fast-food lunch at the first spot we saw after leaving the airport. There was some major rain just after we landed, but it let up just before we stopped for lunch.

We headed straight to All-Star Movies and arrived around 4:00
It took us a little over 30 min to check-in (something we’ve never before experienced). I saw at least 2 people in line that were on our flight. “Welcome to Labor Day weekend at DisneyWorld.” So the boys and I checked out Andy’s Room and the Fantasia pool and still had plenty of time to check out the gift shop too.

It’s exciting to plan something for so long and know that it’s finally started. That’s the best thing about it to me. You know what I mean. That feeling you get when you realize and maybe even say out loud to each other that “we’re here, we’re finally here”! Isn’t that what we pay all of that money for? (We make a paper chain with one link for every day and cut one off to countdown the days [literally] until our next Disney vacation. [We say it’s for the boys so that every day when they ask “are we going to DisneyWorld today?” we can point to the chain and say, “no not today --go count the links” and they can look and see how many days are left. But truth is, that it’s for me too.]) We go through all that planning and ritual and anticipation. And there’s always a moment when you realize that it’s finally arrived. Maybe it’s when you see the sign at the edge of Disney property. Maybe it’s when you first see that monorail or glimpse the castle. Or for some it hits when you actually set foot on Main Street. Wherever or whenever it happens, you know what I mean.

Turns out they gave us a premium room in the Dalmations section. Wasn’t a Toy Story room like we wished for or tried to book a few days earlier, but it was in a section we’d never stayed and close to both pools, so we were fine with it. First we swam in the Fantasia pool, which I like and (other than the huge Buzz and Woody in the Toy Story section) is probably the reason we didn’t end up offsite for one night. Then we visited the Mighty Ducks pool on the other side of our room. It was much quieter and more relaxing. The fantasia pool was full of people that maybe got rained out of the water parks. It was exciting, but busy and loud.


Acronyms Side-Note

It’s not that I hate acronyms. Or lazy people…(‘cause I’m REALLY lazy). Look there’s proof right there as I couldn’t even type out because. But except for here, you just won’t see me using many acronyms. There are a few that I think are just plain silly like DH, DW, DS, DD. I mean why not MH for my husband? Do you normally go around talking like that to strangers? My wife just happens to be “dear” but the only time I call her that is at the top of a greeting card. I know, I know, I admit it, I’m a horrible designated hitter. I can already feel the heat of the electronic flames on this one, so if it’s okay I’ll just apologize in advance.

My Dear utmost apologies to anyone out there who refers to their relative as a Dear ______ (please fill in the blank) and abbreviates it as DH, DW, DS, DD, D?, etc. Please feel free to use any and all of your favorite acronyms as often as you like. Most people will know what you mean. In fact, on very rare occasions I might even throw one out there as well (see the peace-offering reference to the Orlando airport in my message above?) …just to join in. But, I hope that it’s also okay if I type out the long way Dear Wife.

That one especially always gets me. I mean DW. Let’s see what else could that mean…think, think, think. Dear Hunny? No, doesn’t fit that’d be DH. Dear Hefalump? No, still doesn’t fit. Think, think, think…Dear Woozle? Nahh, not appropriate. Ummmmm. ……. What else in the World (of Disney) could that DW stand for? DisneyWorld??? Hey there’s an idea.

Actually now that I thunk, thunk, thunked about it, when someone says “DW” I think of the NASCAR guy who used to be a driver but now is an announcer. Daryl Waltrip. What, you say? You’re a Dis-er and not a race fan. Well, it just so happens and most of you already know that DW has a Disney connection. He played himself (sort-of) in the Disney-Pixar soon-to-be-classic movie Cars. And it just so happens that my Dear Wife is named Daryl Waltrip just like him. So, I call her “DW” all the time! And my 2 boys, they’re both named Daryl too! I call them DS1 (that’s the oldest boy) and DS2 (you guessed it young Daryl). So we are Harrison, Daryl, Daryl and Daryl.

Just in case you’re still reading, here’s my second peace offering. I’m going to get these acronyms thingys out of my system and maybe you’ll get your fill of them at the same time. Here goes. Wait though, before you start you have to promise to start reading them slow and gradually read faster until the last ones are just a blur. (Imagine the deep-voiced announcer in the old, and now new, Goofy cartoons where goofy tried to keep up with everything the narrator was saying but, well…you know the rest.) Agreed? Good, here goes…








A short list of only the most important acronyms that you need to know: DH, DW, DS, DD, DW, TR, ADR, ASM, PC, MS, MK, AK, AKL, WL, WC, GF, PR, CR, TC, TTC, POTC, TR, JC, HM, AO, BLSRS, OKW, SSR, CBR, CSR, TTFN, PR, PPR, SW, DR, SWNSSA, IMO, IMHO, LYLAS, PYT, TLC, DW, BRB, POW, MIA, FBI, CIA, OTI, OTC, CFD, LOL, DW, BBB, LIL, PCP, SOL, OTL, KFC, IRS, SNL, DIS, DVC, CP, LT, TL, CR, LS, RCP, POR, POFQ, BB, DTC, YBC, BYOB, RSVP, DW, CS, QS, TS, SC, CD, CM, DQ, RC, CJ, CDC, DD, RR, MS, TT, TTWC, TOT, RNRC, SM, SM, SM, EE, KS, ST, BLT, HAV, SFT, TH, MCO, DW and OMG.

(That last one, in case you were wondering, means “Oh my Gawrsh!”)
That was fun, wasn’t it? Now back to my TR.

After checking out both pools at All-Star Movies, we headed out to grab some things at the store for our stay and grabbed some more fast-food for dinner. The McDonalds at the intersection of Hotel Plaza Blvd and S. Apopka Vineland Rd (535) is off-property but it has some old Disney memorabilia under glass. We went north on 535 to the nearby Publix and found some great swim goggles for both boys (only $1.99 each) and stocked up on whatever else we thought we’d need. (Turns out we bought way too much.) What more do you really need when you’re on the dining plan? It’s a lot of food.

We headed back to our room and watched channel 96 until bedtime. Most of you probably know exactly what that is, channel 96. For anyone that doesn’t it plays on the TV at the end of the food court area at All-Star Movies. And in the rooms, I’ve pleasantly noticed that mousekeeping (or maybe just the previous guest) commonly leaves it on that channel. It’s a series of pretty old, classic cartoons usually with Mickey, Goofy, Donald and/or Pluto. Great cartoons that my kids (for the most part) have never ever seen. I love them. My boys love them. They only air so many cartoons, and then they loop. So you might get to see that same cartoon as soon as you get to the room, again after you get back from the pool, and a third time around bedtime, for example. My boys pick out their favorites right away. I wish it was available at home. This is what programming on The Disney Channel should be. I’d watch it. Gawrsh, I’d even pay for it. (I don’t say that about too many things.) They could call it Disney Classic (ESPN already has a model). Check the Disney Channel right now as you’re reading this. Those channel 96 classic cartoons are way better than whatever is on there right now. Great cartoons. And to me, it was another reason to stay on property at All-Star Movies.

Thanks for reading. Tomorrow.?, we move to Old Key West.