Commandos Try to Chillax at WDW: Sept. 16-24 Trip at ASMU

[minmate]

Join me, will you, in retelling the adventures of our 9 day trip to the World in September.

Cast of Characters:
Minmate -- aka ME, Disney Lover, Commando at heart -- need I say more?
DH -- Not a Disney-holic but definitely enjoys the trips and is a good sport.
Kids: DD9, DD8, DS7, DD6 -- all very strong personalities in their own right. All prone to princess fits (except for ds who is prone to setting his mind on something and not letting up until he gets to do it...). But all love Disney and all are extraordinary kids who display a kindness, compassion and good behavior... just usually not all at the same time! In other words, they're still very much kids!

So let the adventure begin...
Sometime shortly after Christmas my dd8 and I saw a Disney Commercial on TV. She turned to me and said what I was thinking, "I miss Disney." Yup, they hooked us. A few commercials and a little plotting later and we'd planned another trip to the world, thinking September would be a good time to go as it would give us a little more time to save and plan. Only, I was just too busy to do much of the planning part. Sure, I'd researched the Dis... It's the first place I go when I plan a trip. I decided to try the Family Suites at ASMU this time for our family of 6. We'd always liked Pop but I wanted to try the suites. Luck would have it I had a code attached to my name.

And of course, I had my alarm set early on the 180-day mark and while in the pitch dark called Disney Dining to get my ressies. Dh laughed at me but who was laughing when at 1 minute after 7 a.m. the ONLY, and I mean absolutely ONLY LeCellier ADR available for our entire 9 day stay was our last night at 4:10 p.m.? So, I booked that along with the rest of our ressies.
ADR's planned included:
W 9.17 Lunch at Akershus with Princesses
R 9.18 Dinner at Hollywood and Vine w/Fantasmic Dinner Package
F 9.19 Dinner at Les Chefs de France
S 9.20 Dinner at Chef Mickeys
S 9.21 Dinner at Tony's Town Square Restaurant
M 9.22 Dinner at Maya Grill (Coronado Springs Resort)
T 9.23 Lunch at Kona Cafe, Dinner at LeCellier
W 9.24 Lunch at Crystal Palace

I tried to make ADR's earlier than I normally would've because I remembered that you don't always get seated right away, so most of these were at 5 p.m. (Le Cellier being at 4). Lunches were at 11:40. This, as you will see made the Free Dining craze really manageable. Speaking of which, when I heard Free Dining was to be offered while we were there I was all excited! Lo and behold I totally forgot to call the day it was offered to the general public (not a Disney Visa Holder) and didn't call until about 11:30 a.m. So I found I had to give up the Family Suites b/c they didn't have any left to go with the Free Dining.

This was much out of character for me as I am normally on the Dis for Hours and have lists and lists and a whole notebook I take with me when I go. Not this time. Something in my blood (maybe someone slipped me some Xanax), just told me we needed to not spend more time researching the trip than the time that would actually be spent taking it. See, the whole past year has been really busy for us and I expect a lot of my kids in the summer - as I work from home and they here with me but not really "HERE" with me. When I overheard my dd6 singing a song, "I love my mommy but she can never play because she's always working... la la la" it really broke my heart and I vowed I would find a way to change her impression of me.

So this trip was going to be more about the family and less about how many rides we would conquer. But at the same time, with the economy as it is, and having already spent a lot of time and money on a 10 day road trip this summer to Massachusetts for my sister's wedding along with some new expenses coming up and other places we need to spend our money, I know there is no 2009 trip in the works. Knowing this will be our last visit for maybe two years, could I do it? Could I set aside my Commando ways and let the Chillax Factor rule the Day? Could we still feel like we got the most out of our trip? More importantly, would everyone get along?

 

[minmate]

We're On Our Way...
After a minor hissy fit about five weeks out, I felt fairly prepared for our trip. See, I'd booked our flights on Northwest Airlines because they offered multiple flights out so I figured if something was wrong with ours (as they are notorious for delays) we would still have opportunity to get down to Disney. Lo and behold, they cut the flight we booked but NEVER bothered to tell ME! What?! Luckily, I was putting all my confirmation numbers in my phone a few weeks out and realized this when I went to double check it. Wow, was I mad. They had me leaving an hour EARLIER so if I'd never checked that or hadn't checked until the night before to "check in" I would have FREAKED! AND... they had us on a connecting flight. I was livid because I wanted a non-stop flight! I can't stand prolonging the agony of traveling! Not to mention we just conquered a 48 hour road trip this summer, I am just so burnt out on the traveling part! Luckily, after blowing off some steam with NWA reps (yeah I know - not their fault) I got us switched but this threw a kink in our plans. I had originally wanted to go to MNSHHP the first night we arrived but now our plane wouldn't be landing until 3:30 ish so I decided to get MNSHHP tickets for our last night. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea but I knew it beat trying to rush the first night and possibly missing the party if our travel plans got delayed.

With that squared away, in between kids' activities, back-to-school and the like, I tried to get us packed. The morning we were scheduled to leave we got up around the same time the kids get up for school, did the last minute packing up stuff and headed out. As we drove past the school the kids clamored, "We don't wanna go to school today?"
Dh said, "No? Well what do you want to do?"
"We want to go to Disney World!"
I said, "How about it?"
Dh said, "Oh, well okay, let's go!"
Cheers all around. Of course they knew that but it tickled their funny bone anyway. Last winter I'd surprised them one morning by driving past their school and asking them 'who wants to go to school today?' they all said 'not me' so I said, well then let's not go, let's have an Anything Can Happen Day. They totally freaked out as I drove them into Minneapolis and took them to see High School Musical On Ice... I'd gotten some last minute tix for it and they just loved it!
Anyway back to the morning of Sept. 16. Traffic was a bit slow but we left ourselves plenty of time. On the way I spoke to the stage manager for a play my dd9 auditioned for. She had been selected to be in the play, "Yes Virginia There is A Santa Claus" so we were excited and thought at least we have something to look forward to when we come home!
Everything went very smooth at the airport. We've more or less got a routine down... dh leaves me with all the kids and all the bags while he parks the car. Normally this is a bit of an awful task to try to lug all our stuff and kids through the registration line but there was curbside check-in to my delight so no problems this time at all! While waiting for dh to park the car and rendezvous with us an elderly couple struck up a conversation with the kids guessing they were going to Disney. They told us all about their plans to go to Germany's Oktoberfest.
On the flight, an attendant brought back to warm chocolate chip cookies from first class for the 4 kids to share. They stayed pretty well entertained and well-behaved.
As we disembarked the plane we took our first "ride" in Florida... the monorail at the airport!

Magical Express was easy to find once we landed. We were already in terminal B. The line was about 8 people deep but at least 6 people were working the desk. We got on a bus right away and after a few minutes we were off. DD9 picked the very first row to sit in for her own strategic reasons - because she wanted to be in front of the screen. It turned out to work in our favor because as we unloaded the bus I was the first one into the resort check-in line. Wow... just like magic. Two minutes later, my dh came straggling through the doors with the other 3 kids in tow, along with 15 dozen other travelers who now had to wait in line behind me! We were helped by a nice French man who put us in a first floor room of the Broadway building.
"It must be because I love to act," said dd9... yes, Disney is magical like that.
The Broadway bldg. is the third bldg. on the left so it's a decent walk but nothing compared to the miles we would be logging all week. We had no complaints about the rooms, although Frenchie almost forgot to give us two rooms. We were on our way to check out the rooms of course, stopping every 500 feet to take the obligatory picture in the hot Florida sun. Music was blasting from the Calypso pool area that spoke to my dd6 as she proceeded to dance and sing and wiggle her way to our room.
We were greeted by towel animals and mickey heads on our beds. We did the "Check and Chuck" -- checked for bed bugs and chucked the bedspreads into the corner of the room.
The evening's plan was to include dinner and Disney Quest. We'd never done it before.
A quick freshening up and we were off to the food court which was a total ghost town. A ghost town with ghastly green walls up due to construction. The kidlets ordered spaghetti and pizza. Dh got a cheeseburger and I got the chicken and alfredo pasta -- it was really good. Everyone liked their food. A friendly CM brought out an autograph book for the kids to sign - it was a book she said belongs to Mickey Mouse and his friends. All the kids wrote messages to Mickey while we chatted with the CM who said it was dead and they were so bored. That sounded good to us though!
By now it was probably close to 6 (see I say probably b/c I really tried not to constantly be watching the clock when I didn't need to - we're trying to chillax remember?!)and we waited for about 15 minutes for a DTD bus to get there. And when it did we had to stand. This did not bode well for dead crowds in my opinion. Then we stopped at ASMovies and they had a DTD line three rows deep but there was no place to put them all! They just grimaced as our bus traveled along after dropping off like 1 person.
Finally we made the hike to DTD and proceeded at a leisurely pace to DQ. Once inside we headed straight to Create Zone. I figured my artistic dd8 and dd6 would like that area... and they did. We spent time exploring everything... tried drawing Mickey Mouse...

and going on all the virtual reality rides. DD6 did NOT like being told there were things she was too short for, but there were - Cyber Space Mountain and Buzz Astroblasters. I think she could've totally done Cyber Space Mtn. but I didn't try the Astroblasters myself so I don't know. It wasn't crowded and we ended the night playing skee ball and reminiscing about the old 80's arcade games. Dh said he could've spent hours and hours more in there. It was 10:30 or so by the time we left as it was.
We waited for quite a while (okay again probably only 20 minutes) for a DTD bus to come pick us up. Again, mostly standing room only until we dropped off ASSports peeps. It was dark in the bus and I was still standing when I entertained my dh (and apparently the folks behind me) with my interpretation of the SNL character "Superstar" - giggles around in the bus on that one.

We took a late night swim in the piano pool and headed back to the room to sleep. Tomorrow, I would be letting a bit of the commando in me out as we hit Epcot for rope drop. I can only take so many deep breaths and go with so much flow you know! We're in Disney -- and there's more to do than can ever be done... but that doesn't mean I won't try!

The dd's commandeered one room as their own while ds6 enjoyed the bed next to ours. He slept with three pillows over his head while dh listened to CNN/MSNBC and tried to let the realities of every day and the AIG fallout leak into our trip but the idea of $700 billion bailouts seemed so very far detached from the lovely little world I was in!