This was our travel day, with a 2:20pm Southwest Airlines flight to make. We got DD7 off to school, and finished packing and loading the van. I had to run a few errands with DD4, like getting a prescription filled, mailing a package, and depositing some checks at the local bank branch.
I went to DD7's school at 11:30am to join her for lunch at 11:40am. She entered the lunchroom with her class, and was surprised to see me, but didn't think anything was up. We ate and chatted with her classmates, and then I asked her "Are you surprised to see me here today?"
She said, "Yes."
I said "Well, I have two more surprises for you. First, we're going on a trip. And second, we're not telling you where we're going until we get there!"
She said "Are we going to
Disneyland?"
"I'm not telling you until we get there."
She had fun guessing various guesses, and then she asked "When are we leaving?"
"Right now. Let's go get you packed up and signed out."
"Now? Really?"
She hugged her friends goodbye, telling them she wouldn't be back all week, and she didn't know where she was going. We packed up, signed out, and went home. She was allowed to pack a few toys in her backpack, and we finished loading the van and headed for the airport.
The girls continued to make guesses about where we were going. We got to the long-term parking lot, and quickly found a spot near one of the bus stops. A bus was coming down the aisle, and we were running a tad bit late, so we quickly unloaded the van, dragging the luggage to the stop. Then we loaded the bags onto the shuttle bus, took an inventory of how many bags we would be checking and how many we would be carrying on, made sure the van was locked, and off we went.
At the Kansas City airport, we effortlessly got our luggage checked in by a SkyCap, found our gate, used the restroom, finished our water bottles, and proceeded through security with our printed-at-home boarding passes. We were in Southwest boarding group A, numbers 26-29. Our boarding group was called, and we lined up at the designated place.
That's when I remembered the car seats.
"Oh, CRAP!" I quietly announced.
"What?" my wife asked.
"I forgot the carseats AGAIN!" I replied.
You see, we had taken a trip to Idaho Falls in early November when my wife's grandfather passed away. For that trip, we had rented a car at the Idaho Falls airport, but I forgot the kids' carseats so we had to rent carseats from
Avis for $10/day per carseat for three days, plus tax on that $60. I had vowed to never let that happen again.
So, we decided we would go to Target and buy carseats instead of renting them from Avis this time. This would snowball on us later...
Our flight was uneventful, and on time. We had a stop in Las Vegas, but I had selected a flight where we stayed on the same plane, which makes the layover as short as possible, and we don't have to do a gate change and lug around our carry-on luggage, etc. This turned out to be a great idea, and I would look for this opportunity again in a heartbeat. In-between flights, we stretched in the aisles, thought about changing seats, but decided to stay where we were.
Then we had our short flight from Las Vegas to Ontario. We landed on time at 5:00pm Pacific. During the walk from our gate to the baggage claim area, we stopped for a bathroom break, then proceeded to baggage claim.
There are four carousels (from what I remember), with LED signs to indicate which flights' luggage could be found on which carousel. I didn't see our flight listed, so I figured we needed to be patient. Within a few minutes, the crowd around the carousels had dispersed, and only our bags were on the carousel. I guess our flight's baggage had been delivered while we were in the bathroom. Now that's fast!
We loaded up our bags and proceeded to the pick-up spot for the car rental shuttle. It quickly came, and we soon made it to the Avis rental counter, with nobody in line in front of us. We were asked if a Chevy Impala would be OK, I said yes, declined the insurance coverage, signed the paperwork, and asked for directions to an area with several choices for a place to eat dinner.
We loaded up the car, which had just enough trunk space for our luggage, and went over highway 10 into a shopping and dining district. We ate at a "Black Angus" steakhouse which was pretty good.
While driving around trying to decide on a place to eat, we noticed a sign for a Target store. I had planned on driving without carseats all the way to Anaheim, then going to the Target on Harbor Blvd to get water, snacks, and carseats. But if there was a Target nearby, we should probably get the carseats
before driving on the LA freeways, no? So, we asked our server where it was, and she gave some less-than-confident directions. So, my wife called information from her cell phone, got the store's phone number, and called the store to get directions. We were told to take I-10 West to Milliken, and take Milliken to 4th Street, and they would be on the corner. Great. But we were actually west of them, not east of them, so when we went west on I-10, we were going further away! I finally decided to exit the freeway a few exits later, and we somehow ended up in Rancho Cucamonga. We turned around, called the store again, told them where we were, got better directions, then found the store. By this time, the kids were asleep in the car. So, my DW went into the store and came out a half-hour later with all the necessary stuff. We had to assemble the carseats in the parking lot, throw away the boxes, load the snacks/water/supplies in the trunk, and get the sleeping kids into their new carseats. At 9pm, we were on our way to Anaheim. Four hours after we had landed.
The drive to Anaheim was quite easy. Took the 10 to the 57, to Ball Road exit, to Harbor. I think we did it in about 40 minutes. I got us checked in at the HoJo, then we went to Building 2 and parked between it and the 5 freeway, which was verrrrrry noisy. We got the sleeping kids out of the car, and they were not happy campers. Especially DD7, who didn't want to walk. I pointed to the YOAMD banners displayed on the lightposts, to give her a clue about where we were, but she didn't seem to care. She was grouchy and was going to stay that way.
We found our room on the third floor, and entered to see a nice, large room all ready for us. I made a few trips back to the car to get the luggage while my DW got the kids ready for bed. After my last luggage trip to the car, she told me the front desk had called, and my Discover Card had been declined. "I'll take care of it" I said.
I called Discover, and got some explanation that the magnetic stripe on my card could not be read, and the customer service agent told me to have them swipe it again, or enter it by hand. I called the front desk, told them this, and learned it was not true, since the HoJo front desk was able to read me my card number from the swipe. We argued a little about what needed to be done, and I told them I would come down there and we would call Discover together.
I left the room in a huff and began dialing the Discover number again. Later, I learned that the front desk manager had called right back, and said she would call Discover, but my DW told her I was already on my way down there. When I entered the lobby, I was waiting in line behind some people checking in when I finally made it off of "hold" with Discover and luckily got to talk to the same person I had talked to before. A lady on the phone at the front desk (who turned out to be the manager) recognized me from my Driver's Licence photocopy and told me she could help me. She told me she was on the phone with Discover as well, and we then learned that the person I was talking with was sitting next to the person she was talking with. We got it all worked out somehow. I would soon have a few emails from Discover, as well as messages left on my cell phone and home phone voice mail, alerting me to suspicious activity. We now believe they were seeing a bunch of charges being made in LA all of a sudden, and they suspected my card had been stolen, and that's why the card was declined when we tried to use it to secure our $300-plus charge for our stay at the HoJo. They were just being protective, which is a good thing, but I wish they could have just said that on the first phone call.
I got back to the room, and set out the first set of gifts from Tinkerbell. I hand-wrote each girl a note on the Tinkerbell stationery, using my right hand (I'm left-handed) so my handwriting wouldn't be too much like Tink's. Tink thanked the girls for coming out to visit, and said she hoped they enjoyed their gifts.
Here's a picture of the sweatshirts, fanny packs, autograph books, and clickable Sharpies, plus the cards and the gold glitter (fairy dust) sprinkled on the table next to their bed:
At 11:00pm Pacific, I finally got to bed. It felt like 1:00am because of the time difference. I knew right then we would not be making the 9:00am park opening. So much for planning!
Up Next: Day One in the Parks!
. What kind of overplanner are you?
Next time.
