Do live trip reports work better when you do them during the trip?

[Shir Kahn]

Hiya people! It's been a long time since I've attempted a trip report. Quite possibly this will be the first one I ever finish! Four of us are headed down to WDW on Thursday and staying until Dec. 7th. The cast include Jason (me!), my DW Tammy, DMiL Josie and DBiL Tim! We've all been down multiple times but it's been a year and a half since our last trip! This will be the shortest trip any of us have been on to WDW, so it's going to be quite a change. Normally, we stay for at least 14 days and we've been known to stay for up to a month! This will also be our first December trip. DW works for one of the school divisions here and up until last year, I worked in retail. So the choices were spring break, summer break or Christmas break and with me in sales, there was no way I was taking off any time at Christmas!

About a month and a half ago, I bought an Apple Ipad and I absolutely love it! This thing is amazing and well worth the cost. DW and I have this deal that I can buy whatever toys I want, but she gets to spend an equivalent amount on whatever she wants! Works for me! I've always wanted to do a live trip report and I finally get my wish! It almost didn't happen though. I'm using the Rogers plan for my 3G and apparently they don't provide coverage in the states. I found this out a few weeks ago, so I ordered a sim card from At&t off Amazon. It arrived today and we leave tomorrow! Cut it a bit close!

So the plan for tomorrow is to drop our dogs off at the kennel. Then I'll pack my stuff, the rest of us have already packed but I rarely pack until the day we're leaving. Once DW is done work, we'll be picking her up and heading off to Fargo where we're staying overnight. Our flight leaves at 5:20am and we're supposed to get there two hours early! Should be fun!

I'll be bringing my ipad with me to the parks and I'll be posting frequent updates while waiting in lines and any time I have a spare moment really. I'll be adding pictures later as well. I take a ton of pictures, so expect a lot.

The schedule so far is:

Dec 2nd: MK + MVMCP
Dec 3rd: Epcot
Dec 4th: DHS + DTD
Dec 5th: AK + Epcot
Dec 6th: MK
Dec 7th: Epcot until we have to leave

We have ADRs at:

Biergarten
Sci-Fi
T-Rex
Tutto Italia
Liberty Tree Tavern

We haven't tried Biergarten or Tutto Italia yet, but we know and love the rest!

EDIT: The live part didn't work out so well, as I'll explain later, but I'm still going to finish this sucker!

 

[Shir Kahn]

Alright, bags are packed and I'm about to take the dogs to the kennel! Here's a few pictures of them:

This was the very first moment they met! The black dogs name is Disney and the white dog is named Ella, after Cinderella! When she's being bad, I say that she was actually named after Cruella!

Didn't take long for them to get along.

Never mind the hideous couch!

Someone got into the mud!

 

[Shir Kahn]

So, I get both of the dogs collars and leashes on and head out to the car. I pull out my keys and notice that my car key isn't on the ring! I had just driven DW to work not too long ago, so I knew it had to be somewhere close. The problem was, Disney really, really hates to go back inside right away when I've just taken him outside. He won't even go into our yard, he struggles like crazy! So the second I turn to head back to the house, he immediately digs in and pulls his head back, straight out of his collar! So I've got a missing car key and a dog that's running around having a great time. He's a very smart dog and unfortunately, will not come if you call him, as he knows he'll just be put back on the leash! So leaving him outside, I take Ella back into the house and begin to search for the key. I finally find it in a different jacket, the one I wore to take DW to work. I had forgotten that I put the other jacket on this morning. Then I headed outside and whistle for Disney while opening the car door. Fortunately, he was in the mood for a car ride and hopped right in! They're both at the kennel now, time to finish up a few more errands.

 

[Shir Kahn]

I am officially completely ready to go now! Just have to wait 2 hours and 15 minutes for DW to get out of work and off we go! We're going to stop in Grand Forks to grab some Culvers on the way to Fargo. We love Culvers but they don't have one in Winnipeg. We really love Checkers too but there isn't one within an 8 hour drive from here! DW and I are sort of rolling around the idea of taking a midnight taxi to the Checkers nearby WDW at some point during the trip! I also really, really wish we had a Cracker Barrel! On the trips that we drive down to Florida, we stop at CB at least 2-3 times during the three day drive. We love our food, but we're starting to get to that point where we actually have to work off the results. Good thing food in WDW doesn't count! All the walking cancels out any calories you might ingest!

Oh, I forgot to mention that we're staying at All-Star Movies this time. We're not big fans of the All-Stars but Pop Century was full when we booked. Pop Century is by far our favorite, although we haven't tried AKL quite yet and I'm sure we'll be adding that one to at least our top two! With DW and I being park commandos, we're only really in our room 5 or 6 hours a day, so we like hotels with life and color to look at while we're headed to the buses/our car. We've thought about staying at a mod or deluxe in the past but it just seems like such a waste of money with the way we do the parks. Having a Savannah view at AKL would be worth a look though.

We're not looking forward to Pop Warner hitting us on the 6th, but at least it's only a short time. Kind of wish the Christmas Parade wasn't being filmed during our first day at MK too! Hoping that a lot of people will be staying on Main Street and the hub, away from the rides! DW and I plan on being dragged out of the park as the last people there on our first day!

 

[Shir Kahn]

Well, we just arrived at our room in Fargo, about to head off to sleep. 2:30am isn't too far off! we managed to get out of Winnipeg by about 5:30pm, due to traffic being heavy. I was hoping that we'd get a few hours of daylight to drive in but that didn't work out too well. The weather and highways were perfect though, not a cloud in the sky, no snow at all to make things interesting. I had been worried for weeks that there would be a blizzard on the night we had to drive to Fargo!

We stopped at Culvers for supper, all of us got chicken tenders and the other three got fries. I got my favorite, Wisconsin cheese curds! As usual, everything was delicious. I don't think I've ever had a bad meal at Culvers, maybe I should be their spokesperson.

So we'll be getting up at 2:30am, get ready and head to Walgreens real quick so I can pick up a MasterCard gift card. Apparently Canadian credit cards aren't accepted for AT&T iPad plans. Then we're off to the airport to be groped at security and then we get to sit for two hours! I wonder if any of us will be awake by the time boarding starts?

Have a good night everyone!

Oh, btw, this is my first post done on my iPad!

 

[scottny]

Have a great trip. Will be reading along.

 

[Shir Kahn]

Have a great trip. Will be reading along.

My first reader, thanks for tagging along, hope it's not too boring!

Well, we've made it through security and it is currently 4:13 am. Just over an hour to wait until the plane takes off for Minneapolis. DW is falling asleep beside me. We had a bit of a scare this morning. I had set the alarm as well as arranging a wake-up call, as I'm a firm believer in backups. The alarm went off and as I'm fumbling around trying to figure out how to shut it off, I guess I must have changed the real time somehow! When I looked at the clock, it read 5:30am!! I pretty much flew out of bed and checked my watch, which stated the correct time of 2:30. It was definitely a nice shot of adrenaline though, I think we all managed to get ready at light-speed!

We headed out of the hotel and stopped in at walmart to pick up a visa gift card. There is something a little unsettling about walmart at 3am. It's eerily quiet. . Didn't take long to get to the airport and through security, mostly we had to wait for security to even open! More to come later!

 

[Shir Kahn]

We've landed in Minneapolis and have now taken off on our connecting flight to Orlando! Watching the sunrise from the sky is quite something! The flight is supposed to take us about 2 hours and 50 minutes. We're using Delta and right now they've partnered with Google to provide free wi-fi, which is pretty handy. Now it's time to see what Netflix has to offer today!

Edit: Apparently, not much! Netflix.ca only works when I'm actually in Canada due to licensing. Oh well, there's always YouTube!

 

[Shir Kahn]

Well, that didn't go quite as planned! For some reason I was thinking that it was wi-fi that you could purchase in your room at WDW, but it's an actual Ethernet cord connection. At the front desk, I found out that absolutely nowhere on Disney property is there wi-fi available for public purchase. So on our second night, as soon as we left Epcot, we went up to the first taxi we saw and asked him if he knew of a place with wi-fi. He didn't know, so I asked him to take us to the Best Western Lakeside. We've stayed there before and knew that they had unprotected wi-fi access. Well, we arrived and I headed into the lobby to enter in the details to activate my AT&T data plan. I entered the number off the prepaid visa I had bought at walmart in Fargo and entered the address of the Best Western. I hit submit and it took me back to the entry screen and told me I had to enter the info it hi-lited in red, which was everything. After trying this two more times I gave up and we headed back to the hotel.

We've just taken off from Orlando and should be landing in Minneapolis around 6pm. Then we get to wait for four hours until our next flight takes off at 10pm. We land in Fargo an hour later and then get to drive the 4-5 hours home. I'm going to try and sleep some on this flight, as I'll be the one doing the driving.

So this won't be a live report after all, but I will still finish it. I've got just over 800 pictures to upload as well. We had a great trip and I look forward to sharing it with all of you!