JessietheNCCowgirl
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2010
- Messages
- 311
Hey there fellow Disney fans! After much lurking on these boards and reading other people’s trip reports it has inspired me to try my hand at writing my family’s story. I enjoy reading the reports and living vicariously through other people’s trips when I need a ‘WDW fix’. 
Here are the characters in my story:
Me, my name is Beth and I am an executive assistant at a bank (after all Charlotte is the "Wall Street of the South".) I have been married to my husband John for almost 18 years and I am a proud mother to my daughter, Alexia (who turned 8 two days after we returned from our trip). My parents took me to Disney when I was 6 and a few other times, although we never stayed onsite. My first onsite stay was our honeymoon in October 1992 at Port Orleans. I am a runner and have signed up to run the Wine & Dine half marathon and then the full WDW marathon in January.
My top 5 Disney Must-Do’s: Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a Small World, Soarin’, the Main Street Electrical Parade, Dole Whips
My husband, John was hired by my bank back in April. For four-years he worked for the other bank that got bought up by that stage coach bank, and back in January was told that due to down-sizing he would no longer have a position as of April 30th this year. The beginning of the year was a rough start for us. We did A LOT of praying and he sent out A LOT of resumes. Our prayers were answered when my bank hired him and so this trip was a spur of the moment, celebratory trip.
John’s top 5 Disney Must Do’s: Mission Space, Monster’s Inc. Laugh Floor, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, Haunted Mansion, Cosmic Ray’s
Our daughter, Alexia as I said before turned 8 on August 9th. She is my pride and joy. We waited 10-years for her, and she is truly my gift from above. At the moment she is all into the Toy Story Movies (1,2 & 3), and particularly into Jessie (hence my avatar and screen name). I think I passed down to her in my genes the love of all things Disney. People also call her my ‘mini me’ because she looks just like me, you wouldn’t know my husband had anything to do with it.
Her favorite princess are Tiana and Ariel.
Alexia’s top 5 Disney Must Do’s: Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Test Track, Rock’n Roller Coaster (yes, she’s got a need for speed!!)
The plot and unfolding of my story:
As previously stated, we had a bumpy start to the first part of the year, with my husband’s job situation. We are so thankful that our prayers were answered and he is employed! My daughter’s church camp was closed the first week in August so at the end of July we were thinking of getting out of town since her camp was closed and also to celebrate my husband’s job and also my recent promotion. We were pricing out going to Sunset Beach, here in NC. My husband was looking at the Disney website and said “hey did you know that we could go to WDW for about the same price as the beach?” It didn’t take much to twist my arm, so I said let’s do it!
We booked a 6-night package at Pop Century with the QSDP (first time for us) and also MYW base tickets. This was the first time we haven't had about a year to plan a WDW trip. It was kind of fun doing it spur of the moment. I kept pinching myself thinking - "we're going to Disney World in 2-weeks!!!" A couple nights after booking the reservation, the doorbell rang at 9:00 and it was the UPS man with our paperwork for our trip! Disney had to overnight to us - we were so spontaneous!
Well, how in the world does the bayou title fit into all this, you may ask? Well being the Disney nut I am, 2-days prior to our trip I was sitting on the laptop looking at the Disney site and priced out a moderate for our dates. It was about $350 to upgrade from Pop to a moderate. We have never stayed at a value and although I know we would be fine and just happy to be going, we were kind of looking for that relaxing piece of vacation that we were worried we might not get at Pop. So my husband said do it and handed me the phone to call Disney. I called and got a nice agent and told her we wanted to change our hotel reservations. She asked to which resort and I asked my husband – which one? He said, I don’t know - Riverside? So I told the lady POR and she had to talk to her manager about us switching because we were within 3-days of arrival. After about 30 minutes of being on the phone the changes to our package had been made – we were going to POR! Wait, we only stayed there one night back in 2003 – I don’t remember it. So what do I do? Of course, I get on the DIS and look at the POR thread! Good, something else to do since I had already packed for our trip and was looking for something to help keep me occupied in my anticipation!
To be continued…
I will post pictures, but I may be too new to the boards to post, so will try in my next update
Here are the characters in my story:
Me, my name is Beth and I am an executive assistant at a bank (after all Charlotte is the "Wall Street of the South".) I have been married to my husband John for almost 18 years and I am a proud mother to my daughter, Alexia (who turned 8 two days after we returned from our trip). My parents took me to Disney when I was 6 and a few other times, although we never stayed onsite. My first onsite stay was our honeymoon in October 1992 at Port Orleans. I am a runner and have signed up to run the Wine & Dine half marathon and then the full WDW marathon in January.
My top 5 Disney Must-Do’s: Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a Small World, Soarin’, the Main Street Electrical Parade, Dole Whips
My husband, John was hired by my bank back in April. For four-years he worked for the other bank that got bought up by that stage coach bank, and back in January was told that due to down-sizing he would no longer have a position as of April 30th this year. The beginning of the year was a rough start for us. We did A LOT of praying and he sent out A LOT of resumes. Our prayers were answered when my bank hired him and so this trip was a spur of the moment, celebratory trip.
John’s top 5 Disney Must Do’s: Mission Space, Monster’s Inc. Laugh Floor, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, Haunted Mansion, Cosmic Ray’s
Our daughter, Alexia as I said before turned 8 on August 9th. She is my pride and joy. We waited 10-years for her, and she is truly my gift from above. At the moment she is all into the Toy Story Movies (1,2 & 3), and particularly into Jessie (hence my avatar and screen name). I think I passed down to her in my genes the love of all things Disney. People also call her my ‘mini me’ because she looks just like me, you wouldn’t know my husband had anything to do with it.
Her favorite princess are Tiana and Ariel. Alexia’s top 5 Disney Must Do’s: Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Test Track, Rock’n Roller Coaster (yes, she’s got a need for speed!!)
The plot and unfolding of my story:
As previously stated, we had a bumpy start to the first part of the year, with my husband’s job situation. We are so thankful that our prayers were answered and he is employed! My daughter’s church camp was closed the first week in August so at the end of July we were thinking of getting out of town since her camp was closed and also to celebrate my husband’s job and also my recent promotion. We were pricing out going to Sunset Beach, here in NC. My husband was looking at the Disney website and said “hey did you know that we could go to WDW for about the same price as the beach?” It didn’t take much to twist my arm, so I said let’s do it!
We booked a 6-night package at Pop Century with the QSDP (first time for us) and also MYW base tickets. This was the first time we haven't had about a year to plan a WDW trip. It was kind of fun doing it spur of the moment. I kept pinching myself thinking - "we're going to Disney World in 2-weeks!!!" A couple nights after booking the reservation, the doorbell rang at 9:00 and it was the UPS man with our paperwork for our trip! Disney had to overnight to us - we were so spontaneous!
Well, how in the world does the bayou title fit into all this, you may ask? Well being the Disney nut I am, 2-days prior to our trip I was sitting on the laptop looking at the Disney site and priced out a moderate for our dates. It was about $350 to upgrade from Pop to a moderate. We have never stayed at a value and although I know we would be fine and just happy to be going, we were kind of looking for that relaxing piece of vacation that we were worried we might not get at Pop. So my husband said do it and handed me the phone to call Disney. I called and got a nice agent and told her we wanted to change our hotel reservations. She asked to which resort and I asked my husband – which one? He said, I don’t know - Riverside? So I told the lady POR and she had to talk to her manager about us switching because we were within 3-days of arrival. After about 30 minutes of being on the phone the changes to our package had been made – we were going to POR! Wait, we only stayed there one night back in 2003 – I don’t remember it. So what do I do? Of course, I get on the DIS and look at the POR thread! Good, something else to do since I had already packed for our trip and was looking for something to help keep me occupied in my anticipation!
To be continued…
I will post pictures, but I may be too new to the boards to post, so will try in my next update
Here are some pictures of the aforementioned cast (we didn't get any together as a family this trip) 
:
We finally got to FL after midnight (took way longer than expected) and checked in at POR. After getting in the room, I tried to get my DD to go sleep in a pack and play that was delivered to the room. She wouldn’t have it – she fussed, so finally I put her in bed with me and my husband got in the other bed. We all finally fell asleep well after 1:00 AM, but then someone started knocking on our door. My husband got up and it was someone from maintenance or housekeeping with a TV remote. I guess they got the rooms mixed up because we certainly didn’t ask for a remote, we were trying to sleep! Anyway it woke us all up and took a while for everyone to get back to sleep again. I guess we had that memory and never looked at staying there on our future trips. I'm SOOOO glad we gave it another shot! 
) We did our last minute packing: snacks and drinks for the car and are on the road by 7:00. (I didn’t know at the time I was doing a trip report so I don’t have any pictures of our drive). We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Columbia, SC (a tradition on trips to WDW) to use the restroom and eat lunch. My husband took a different route this time. Instead of going I-95 he went Route 301 near Orangeburg, SC. It went through SC, GA and FL. It took a bit longer, but it was interesting to see. It reminded me of Radiator Springs in the CARS movie. It must have been the route people took before the interstate was built. It was lined with closed motels so that was kind of depressing but sparked the imagination, thinking how it must have been when it was all touristy.
Where are you staying? Maybe we will see you at the World!
We've stayed at POFQ 3 times in the past (the first being for our honeymoon) and we visited it on our trip this time as well. I like that you can share the pools between the 2 resorts!
I don't know why but I am scared to try the orange side. I don't even really like the green side. I don't like being in tight enclosed spaces so I think that has something to do with my dislike of the ride. I tell her I'd ride if we could be the green team so that's what we did. 
When we got off it was about noon and I thought we had accomplished a lot for it being a busy time of year. In 3 hours we had ridden Mission Space twice, TT twice, Soarin and had eaten lunch. Next on the agenda was Figment, so we walked across the park and I took a few pics:
