LizEN
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 5, 2010
- Messages
- 157
NOTE--this going to be pretty texty, but I'll add pictures once I figure out how to do it!
Crazy trip this time.
On the Way--Snow
My two 16 year olds (Boy and Girl) and I were booked on a direct flight (important for this white knuckle flier) on Thursday March 5, but mother nature had other plans. Big snow was heading to DC. Now to decide if I should rebook our flight as a one-stop via BOSTON for Wednesday. JetBlue was one of the first airlines to begin weather related free rebooking. I changed our flight at midnight on Tuesday after holding my hand on the change button for 20 minutes! Then I had to arrange an extra day with the dog sitter, find us a hotel and rebook our car rental in the wee hours of the morning and finish packing us up!
We were showered with pixie dust and everything worked out and it was the right call ALL flights to Orlando were cancelled the next day. We would not have been able to fly out until Friday, and would have missed our Whispering Canyon Cafe res for Thursday night and our very hard to get BOG res for Friday. Whew!
Wednesday--Long Day of Many Flights
We caught the flight to Boston at 2pm. Then another flight to Orlando at 3:45 (I think). It was strange to pass over our home at 5:30pm that evening--all that time just to get back to where we started!
Arrived at 7:30pm and waited a long time for the shuttle to the airport hotel. (Couldn't pick up the car until the next morning.) Directly to bed after only three hours sleep the night before.
Thursday--Vacation Begins at Last
Got our car and headed over to the Springhill Suites in the Marriott Village. Although I prefer to stay on site at Disney, I couldn't resist getting 3 free nights there on my points for this quick trip. It was also more practical as the suites come with two beds and a pull out couch which is a lot easier than dealing with a roll away. We liked the hotel very much except for the traffic backup on the only road leading to Rte 4. We eventually found a work-around for that, cutting through the Longhorn parking lot.
We settled in and met up with our travel companions, my friend Amy and her three boys ages 13-18. We like to get a jump start on getting Disney energy by eating at a resort the night before our visit and Whispering Canyon worked well for us. I couldn't book a table for 7 but we were able to book two separate reservations within 5 minutes of each other and when we arrived they combined us into one big group.
Food was great, the theming of the hotel was lovely and the lobby was perfect for an after dinner card game for the teens.
I was a late night and plans to be at rope drop the next morning, so off to bed after dinner.
Friday—A Hitch in the Proceedings
I am usually a Disney commando, but not so for my friends, so I tried to be as loosey goosey as I could stand for this trip—i.e. No too loosey goosey! As the experienced Dis traveler, I linked all 7 of our tickets and booked FP+ in advance. Friday was MK and we had Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise and 7DMT. Since all I could get was a 5-6:30pm FP+ window for 7 dwarfs, I knew those would be our only FPs for the day. This bothered me in the pre planning, but when we got there, I actually found it pretty relaxing. We had been on all the MK rides before, so if we missed one due to long waits, no big deal.
So here's the hitch—my friend had forgotten her tickets at home and due to the snow storms, Fed Ex was running late with them. Come Friday morning, no tickets. We decided it would be best to split up and we would start in on our touring plan and she and her group would catch up when they could.
Flexibility with teens meant we were there later than rope drop, but it didn't really matter since FPs were handled and we had no must-dos this trip. But WOW—the crowds! We had never seen such crowds before. We have always come on the off season and at rope drop, so 10am spring break crowds were something we had never seen. Now I get what everyone is talking about!
I decided to start with Dumbo, since we had not seen the new ones and thought it would be less embarrassing for my kids if I got them to ride before their friends arrived. Turns out—I am the smallest in our group now, so I got into my elephant first. The new line is cute and so much easier and faster than the old one. But here is where our family curse began—just as we got to the front of the line, they stopped the ride and had to figure out what was wrong with it. This turned out to be a theme throughout our trip—there was either a shut down just as we got to the front, or while we were on just about every ride.
I enjoyed the ride and also the view of the new Fantasy Land. My kids tolerated my requested photos which is about as much as I could expect from teens, I guess.
Since we ended up with such a long wait at Dumbo, we had to go directly to BOG to make our reservation time. It was not an easy reservation to get, I checked several times a day for a few weeks but finally found an opening for 11:25am. It was worth it. B&B is my favorite Disney movie and my DD watched it every day for a year as a tween, wrote fan fic about it and researched all the versions of the original fairy tale. The smile on her face was worth the effort to get us in. And it is magical! Plus, the food was great, if expensive.
After lunch we got a message from Amy and crew that they had been issued replacement tickets and would meet us at Haunted Mansion. It took a while for us to actually meet up, but at last got in the line. Sure enough, we had a ride stop at the dinner section. Not a bad place to spend some extra time.
After HM I had to adjust our touring plan and we skipped BTM as the wait had gotten too long. I sent the kids off to Splash Mountain to use their FP and Amy and I took our time heading in that direction. Next was our FPs for Jungle Cruise, but when we got there, one of the Amy crew had lost their ticket!
I handed over my ticket so the kids could get onto the ride and she and I went back to Splash to track down the missing ticket. After waiting for them to check all the flumes, we convinced them to let Amy walk the FP line to see if the ticket fell out there. Success! The CMs laughed at us as we did our happy dance.
To be continued...
Crazy trip this time.
On the Way--Snow
My two 16 year olds (Boy and Girl) and I were booked on a direct flight (important for this white knuckle flier) on Thursday March 5, but mother nature had other plans. Big snow was heading to DC. Now to decide if I should rebook our flight as a one-stop via BOSTON for Wednesday. JetBlue was one of the first airlines to begin weather related free rebooking. I changed our flight at midnight on Tuesday after holding my hand on the change button for 20 minutes! Then I had to arrange an extra day with the dog sitter, find us a hotel and rebook our car rental in the wee hours of the morning and finish packing us up!
We were showered with pixie dust and everything worked out and it was the right call ALL flights to Orlando were cancelled the next day. We would not have been able to fly out until Friday, and would have missed our Whispering Canyon Cafe res for Thursday night and our very hard to get BOG res for Friday. Whew!
Wednesday--Long Day of Many Flights
We caught the flight to Boston at 2pm. Then another flight to Orlando at 3:45 (I think). It was strange to pass over our home at 5:30pm that evening--all that time just to get back to where we started!
Arrived at 7:30pm and waited a long time for the shuttle to the airport hotel. (Couldn't pick up the car until the next morning.) Directly to bed after only three hours sleep the night before.
Thursday--Vacation Begins at Last
Got our car and headed over to the Springhill Suites in the Marriott Village. Although I prefer to stay on site at Disney, I couldn't resist getting 3 free nights there on my points for this quick trip. It was also more practical as the suites come with two beds and a pull out couch which is a lot easier than dealing with a roll away. We liked the hotel very much except for the traffic backup on the only road leading to Rte 4. We eventually found a work-around for that, cutting through the Longhorn parking lot.
We settled in and met up with our travel companions, my friend Amy and her three boys ages 13-18. We like to get a jump start on getting Disney energy by eating at a resort the night before our visit and Whispering Canyon worked well for us. I couldn't book a table for 7 but we were able to book two separate reservations within 5 minutes of each other and when we arrived they combined us into one big group.
Food was great, the theming of the hotel was lovely and the lobby was perfect for an after dinner card game for the teens.
I was a late night and plans to be at rope drop the next morning, so off to bed after dinner.
Friday—A Hitch in the Proceedings
I am usually a Disney commando, but not so for my friends, so I tried to be as loosey goosey as I could stand for this trip—i.e. No too loosey goosey! As the experienced Dis traveler, I linked all 7 of our tickets and booked FP+ in advance. Friday was MK and we had Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise and 7DMT. Since all I could get was a 5-6:30pm FP+ window for 7 dwarfs, I knew those would be our only FPs for the day. This bothered me in the pre planning, but when we got there, I actually found it pretty relaxing. We had been on all the MK rides before, so if we missed one due to long waits, no big deal.
So here's the hitch—my friend had forgotten her tickets at home and due to the snow storms, Fed Ex was running late with them. Come Friday morning, no tickets. We decided it would be best to split up and we would start in on our touring plan and she and her group would catch up when they could.
Flexibility with teens meant we were there later than rope drop, but it didn't really matter since FPs were handled and we had no must-dos this trip. But WOW—the crowds! We had never seen such crowds before. We have always come on the off season and at rope drop, so 10am spring break crowds were something we had never seen. Now I get what everyone is talking about!
I decided to start with Dumbo, since we had not seen the new ones and thought it would be less embarrassing for my kids if I got them to ride before their friends arrived. Turns out—I am the smallest in our group now, so I got into my elephant first. The new line is cute and so much easier and faster than the old one. But here is where our family curse began—just as we got to the front of the line, they stopped the ride and had to figure out what was wrong with it. This turned out to be a theme throughout our trip—there was either a shut down just as we got to the front, or while we were on just about every ride.
I enjoyed the ride and also the view of the new Fantasy Land. My kids tolerated my requested photos which is about as much as I could expect from teens, I guess.
Since we ended up with such a long wait at Dumbo, we had to go directly to BOG to make our reservation time. It was not an easy reservation to get, I checked several times a day for a few weeks but finally found an opening for 11:25am. It was worth it. B&B is my favorite Disney movie and my DD watched it every day for a year as a tween, wrote fan fic about it and researched all the versions of the original fairy tale. The smile on her face was worth the effort to get us in. And it is magical! Plus, the food was great, if expensive.
After lunch we got a message from Amy and crew that they had been issued replacement tickets and would meet us at Haunted Mansion. It took a while for us to actually meet up, but at last got in the line. Sure enough, we had a ride stop at the dinner section. Not a bad place to spend some extra time.
After HM I had to adjust our touring plan and we skipped BTM as the wait had gotten too long. I sent the kids off to Splash Mountain to use their FP and Amy and I took our time heading in that direction. Next was our FPs for Jungle Cruise, but when we got there, one of the Amy crew had lost their ticket!
I handed over my ticket so the kids could get onto the ride and she and I went back to Splash to track down the missing ticket. After waiting for them to check all the flumes, we convinced them to let Amy walk the FP line to see if the ticket fell out there. Success! The CMs laughed at us as we did our happy dance.
To be continued...
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