Cindy & Erin Smoke around the World updtd 5-12 final

[sindertinker]

I'm getting all these pictures over with right away because this picture posting thing is too much work. By the way, my caption below the picture above was supposed to say that my neck was bigger than Cinderella's NECK. Not so funny anymore.

Here's Erin enjoying breakfast at the Music food court

Here's Erin enjoying a smoke break

Here's Erin at Ohana

Here's us outside Nemo

Here's me on the monorail

 

[sindertinker]

The next day we are up earlier because we have to pack and move. Bell services comes up and gets our bags. This whole process goes so smoothly. For now at least. Our bags head to Music and we head to breakfast at the makeshift food court. Today we go to Epcot.

Early for us means not getting to a park before 10 or 11:00 am. I’m ok with that. The weather is perfect again, but with a chance of rain later. Who cares?! We head to Soar’n first. Love that ride. We go on and get a fastpass for later. We do Mission Space, the rough side cause we’re tough chicks and Test Track.

We do Nemo for the first time and love it.

The bottom falls out of sky and there is a HUGE thunderstorm with torrential rain. We have our ponchos along and find a spot under a bridge for a smoke. This is the ONLY time we smoke in an unauthorized location the entire trip. But there was nobody around anywhere so I figure we’re safe. I keep a look out for the smoke police just in case. Erin says I’m paranoid. We wait out the rain by going into The Ball. When we come out the sun is shining and all is well again. Today I’m really feeling the lack of sleep and the wear and tear on my feet from yesterday. Erin offers to push me in a wheelchair, but I’m ok. We never ventured over to the World Showcase this time. Last year when we were here, Erin’s roommate was on a quest for some expensive foreign perfume. We spent HOURS, really HOURS, checking out perfumes. It was fun and boy did we stink but Erin and I had enough last year. We did everything we wanted to at least once. We do Star Tours and exit into the shop. My son LOVES Star Wars so we decide we will buy him something from here as a thank you for driving us to Chicago and picking us up. We find a Risk game with the Star Wars theme and decide on that. It’s really big and heavy so I ask to have it shipped to our resort. Problem is we are technically still at POR even though tonight we will sleep at Music. The CM decides the best thing to do is ship the game to POR. This means that before we can head back to Music for the night we have to take a bus to POR, get the game, then bus back to a park, then bus back to Music. Sheesshhhh. I’m only just barely making it through the day and now we have to do all this other junk. Oh well, DS is worth it. We grab something to eat at the food court in the Land. This part was funny to me. We’re walking towards the food and Erin says she smells the stuff that school used to use to cover up barf and just as she’s saying that…CRUNCH she steps in it. Yup, the smelly kitty litter stuff used to cover barf. She grosses out and I double over in convulsive laughter. We have a nice lunch despite the barf thing. The good thing about going to Disney with her is that she’ll find something to eat anywhere. My DH has to pretty much have a hamburger at all times and that becomes challenging. I would rather have anything other than a hamburger. It’s vacation for pete’s sake. We decide to make it an early day at Epoct, have a rest and then go to Downtown. Erin is a shop-a-holic. Another thing DH does not like to do. We make that stupid trek to POR then back to Epcot then back to Music. DS better like this game. It took an hour just to pick it up. Now off to Music. A huge line for check-in. I don’t have the strength for this but do it anyway. Finally I make it to check in and there’s a big challenge with getting a smoking room. What the heck? I thought nobody smoked anymore? Finally we are assigned to the boondocks of course. Better to keep our kind away from the healthy lung-ed people. We get in our room and whoosh! Fresh paint. It takes all of 5 minutes for our throats to start hurting from the fumes. And no ashtray. I’m thinking there’s no way they’re going to let us stink up a freshly painted room with smoke. They must have given us the wrong room. I call the desk to verify that we are in a smoking room because I would NEVER smoke in a non-smoking room. They assure me we can smoke, I give Erin the nod, and she lights up with a smile. I request an ashtray which arrives in about 10 minutes. Now we are happy. We are at an All Star resort, we can smoke in our room, we have three nights here. Ahhhhhhh. We lay down for a short nap. When I wake up, it’s almost dark. We slept for 3 hours. Erin’s kinda mad. She wanted to go downtown and eat and shop. It’s my fault I let us sleep too long. It’s about 7:00 pm. We head for downtown anyway. We wanted to eat at the Rainforest Café but the wait is over an hour long. We grab a sandwich at Earl of Sandwich instead. Really good! We do a little shopping and head “home”. I promise her we’ll be back downtown. We decide it’s warm enough to go for a swim. I grab my one and only beer during the trip which Erin looks longingly at but doesn’t ask. We have a nice swim but it was colder than we thought. Our teeth chattered the whole time. But it’s negative 20 degrees back home, we are going to tough it out and swim! Back to bed after a relaxing cigarette. Life is sweet. Tomorrow is MGM day. That place where my nemesis resides. That terror in the sky. The only ride I have a Love/Hate relationship with. The Tower of Terror. It scares the crap outa me. I’ve been on it dozens of times. I liked it when it had the bar across your lap. Now it has the seatbelt and that’s so scary. I know my belt will come loose or break. I know it. I’ll have spent 7 long years fighting cancer and then I’ll die in a flash on the Tower of Terror. I tell Erin I think I will skip it this time. She says no way! We’ll see tomorrow I say. Yes, we will, she says.

P.S. this posting pictures thing stinks with dial-up!

 

[dmthoma76]

That terror in the sky. The only ride I have a Love/Hate relationship with. The Tower of Terror. It scares the crap outa me. I’ve been on it dozens of times. I liked it when it had the bar across your lap. Now it has the seatbelt and that’s so scary. I know my belt will come loose or break. I know it. I’ll have spent 7 long years fighting cancer and then I’ll die in a flash on the Tower of Terror. I tell Erin I think I will skip it this time. She says no way! We’ll see tomorrow I say. Yes, we will, she says.

P.S. this posting pictures thing stinks with dial-up!

I know exactly what you mean! Unless they put a bar back in there that I can put the Darth Vader death grip on I am not going on that crazy ride! I did feel bad that my son went on twice by himself (he's only seven!) and I went out the chicken exit!

Also I have have a twenty year old daughter and would think nothing of getting her a drink during dinner. We like those fruity things like smoothies or a pina colada. We went on a cruise, I think she had one drink the whole time. Just a special occasion thing like a relaxing vacation!

~Donna

 

[sindertinker]

A quick update..I just got out of the hospital today, 10 days. Man was I ready to get out. Nothing too serious, just a bowel obstruction, one of those things we cancer patients have to put up with sometimes. On with the show...

Up and at em! Not early of course. There’s really no point in rising early. I’ll never make it 8 hours in a park anyway. Breakfast in the food court is the way I like it. A barely edible amount of way too expensive food and crowed and noisy. Disney!


We’re off to MGM. The Tower of Terror mocks me. Erin mocks me. You’ve done this a million times mom. I know but it scares the crap outa me. I insist we let our breakfast settle before we tackle it. Today we do all the rides we want and some twice. Like the Tower of Terror. Yes that’s right. I did it. And as soon as we got off I asked Erin if she wanted to go right back on. Back to back…no wait…it scared me but I loved it anyway. Did rock ‘n’ roll a couple times. Today is rainy, drizzly and there aren’t long lines. We do all the good stuff and call it an early day. I am fighting fatigue every minute now. I’m in pain from all the walking. We are going to spend some quality time downtown today even if I have to rest up first.

After a rest we head to downtown. Erin lights up (not smoking) (well, yeah that too, but) at this place, she loves to shop. We eat at Planet Hollywood. Good as always. It was quite a long wait which was cutting into Erin’s shopping time and ticking her off. We went into every shop except maybe the Lego store. I bought an awesome purse, Erin did too. I got some swizzle sticks. Erin bought a BUS load of stuff. Something for this friend and something for that friend. She spent a lot of money on her friends. We had an exhausting but fun time downtown.

Back “home” to rest up for our last day. I thought we would hop around to several parks tomorrow doing the best of the best and catching Wishes. Alas, it was not meant to be. I made a PS for O’hana for breakfast the next day. We both love coffee and O’hana has the best. Final smoke and then sweet sleep.

 

[Dreaming WDW]

I really was worried about you! It all ended so abruptly. Anyhow I hope today finds you with much energy no matter where you are. You may contact me any time.

P.S. My Ex is taking Chantix now and is into the third day of quitting. Only difference she reports is that you dream alot.

 

[sindertinker]

I wake up in pain. My legs and feet have had it. I have Vicoden along but if I take it I’ll be doped up all day. I pop several Advil and head for the shower. I let Erin sleep every morning until I’m finished getting ready. We are up earliest today to get to O’hana by 9:00. Breakfast at O’hana is awesome. This was the best meal the whole trip. We ooooed and awwwwed over the Kona coffee. Just unbelievably good. The food is great. It’s expensive, but this was our only splurge meal the whole trip. We take our time here. The place was only ½ full.

Now we head off to Animal Kingdom. Home to the greatest ride EVER. Expedition Everest. Last year we were fortunate enough to be some of the first riders on EE when they had an unscheduled soft opening. Nobody knew about it except our CM friend, who found out the day it would be running and tipped us off.

So today we head over there, grab a fast pass and get in standby line. Not too long of a wait. My goodness, I’m just exhausted today. And it’s hot. At least 80° and we had come from -20°. Yes negative 20. This is a 100 degree swing we are experiencing. I won’t last long today. I’ll be like Frosty the Snowman in the hot house. I’m fading fast. We did EE and then decide to do it again, because our fastpass is for 4:00 and it’s only 11:00am. I’ll never make it to 4:00, well maybe, but I was hoping to hop back to MK for Wishes. So now we go and ride Dinosaur. Man, this is a rough ride. I love it but I’m so sore and tired it’s hard to just hang on. It kicked my butt.

The park is busy today. It’s getting close to the weekend of president’s week, one of the busy times at Disney. We can feel the crowds swelling and wait times are growing. I really wanted to see the new Nemo show but the line! It stretched for miles! I told Erin there was no way I could make that. We took the trek and saw the bats. Erin hates bats. I love them. They are one of my favorite animals. A rat and bird all in one. How ingenious is that. God is creative.

We are in a smoking spot near Everest trying to determine how much longer we can stand this physical torture. A VERY handsome Latin man approaches us and with a sexy accent and two quarters in his out stretched hand and says something like” I buy a smoke from you?” only real sexy like. Erin and I both dive for our purses to be the first to offer Mr. Sexy Latin man a smoke. I ask him, do you want menthol (me) or non-menthol (Erin), he wrinkles his nose and says something like “regular”, but real sexy. Erin hands him a regular and he extends the 50 cents, she shakes her head no, and says no, but Mr. Sexy Latin Man insists. Now he says something like “I try to quit, but I only quit buying my own”, but sexier. Erin and I giggle at his joke. Now he says the best of all “You got fire?” and makes a lighter flicking motion with his hand. You got fire? you bet we got fire! He smiles the smile of sexiness and wanders off, out of the smoking area mind you. (Appalling) Erin and I look at each other. WOW…. That was cool. She tells me he had on a wedding ring. Since I’ve been married for 24 years I quit checking out wedding rings, well 24 years ago. But I told her I was sooooo happy that she was finally checking that sort of thing out. It means maybe, just maybe, she’s ready to locate Mr. Right. The phrase “you got fire?” would be our mantra from now on.

We’ve been here a couple hours now and have done three rides. It’s too flaming hot. I’m pooped. We get something to eat and without any enthusiasm try to figure out what to do next. It’s like 1:00, our fastpass for EE is at 4:00. We find a nice young couple and give them our fastpasses. They are appreciative as the line was 90 minutes and fastpasses were gone. We head out. No safari, no Bug’s Life, no Kali River. I can’t help but think that we wasted about $50 each today. Back to the Music and a long nap for us both. We determine we just don’t have the energy to go to MK for Wishes, or Epcot for Illuminations, or anywhere for that matter. We start to pack our bags and try to figure out where to go with all the crap Erin bought. And that giant game we bought for DS. We jam and cram and somehow we manage to successfully pack. I’m disappointed we didn’t get back to MK. We bought a hopper pass and never once hopped. I just underestimated how tired I would get. But at least Erin was tired too. She was happy enough to rest when I wanted to. We wandered around the resort and used up our film and ate at the food court.

Off to bed and morning arrives way too soon. We get ready and start the long haul to M Express check-in/out. Soooo smooth. What a wonderful service they offer. We grab breakfast and then out to wait for the bus and have a smoke. Our flight is on time, we’re there plenty early and the flight home is smooth. We meet DS and DH at baggage claim back in Chicago. We had to throw away our lighters in Orlando because Magical Express already had our luggage somewhere and we couldn’t take the lighters with us. DS decides it’s funny to torture us by withholding his lighter. DD has gone 5 hours now, this is no time to kid around. We stop at an Olive Garden somewhere between Chicago and Milwaukee and have a nice dinner with just the 4 of us. Our little family. Erin and I are shocked at the temperature change. From 80° to 3°. We were experiencing a “warm-up”. Super. Oh and DS loved his Star Wars Risk game so it was worth all the hassle. At dinner Erin and I tell the guys that we’re not so sure we will come back next year. 2008. We sorta felt like there was nothing new and interesting and we were a little burned out, having gone two years in a row. The guys are shocked.

Well it’s been 2 months since we’ve been home and we already discussed going back in January of 2008. Erin’s roommate wants to go along again. I wish I could do it but DH and I will be celebrating our 25th anniversary and are going to Hawai’i. Can’t afford two trips in one year. So I’ll hang on to the dream of still being healthy enough in 2009 to get back to the World with Erin.

Thanks for reading along on our adventure!

 

[OhMari]

A quick update..I just got out of the hospital today, 10 days. Man was I ready to get out. Nothing too serious, just a bowel obstruction, one of those things we cancer patients have to put up with sometimes. On with the show...

I'm really sorry I didn't get back to your TR and see that you were out and sick. I hope you are feeling better.

I plan on being in Sheboygan for the new Music Festival. Maybe we can have a little Sheboygan DIS meet. Keep in touch ok.