He's with the Band! a DL Performing Arts TR- 7/13/15 A little Tiki Tiki Tiki Rum!

[franandaj]

We just docked (I dont know why I'm up so early! And on the DIS, withdrawal I guess) I had a proper chance to read up and while I knew the LSP, it was good to have a refresher. Looking forward to hearing about it again and reliving some of the moments!

 

[afwdwfan]

Sorry I'm late, but I'm here! Looking forward to reading about the big Easter band trip!

 

[eandesmom]

We just docked (I dont know why I'm up so early! And on the DIS, withdrawal I guess) I had a proper chance to read up and while I knew the LSP, it was good to have a refresher. Looking forward to hearing about it again and reliving some of the moments!

You ARE up early! I looked at my phone when I got up and it had a 2:30 am stamp on it...and then I realized you are on the ship but still, that's early!

It was a LSP. I'm not sure if a BFP would have been better or not. It may have been with as many cats as I was herding. On the flip side, Ann and I really had a LSP too for the half weekend and that worked out really well.

Sorry I'm late, but I'm here! Looking forward to reading about the big Easter band trip!

You aren't late at all! I didn't send out a bat signal, just the links in the existing TR's so it may be a little slow for folks to find it. I love the concept of the bat signal but hate that the DIS limits how many you can PM at once. Super annoying.

Andy! It is going to be nice to be going back to spring in this TR as the weather gets worse here

 

[Leshaface]

Man! Just when I think i'm going to make the first page, it NEVER happens! You're just too popular. But i'm here!

 

[Poolrat]

Back and caught up and here!!!!!



Love the LSP. All your pictures will be fresh in my mind.

 

[eandesmom]

Man! Just when I think i'm going to make the first page, it NEVER happens! You're just too popular. But i'm here!

Alicia!!!!! so happy you are here

Back and caught up and here!!!!!



Love the LSP. All your pictures will be fresh in my mind.

back and to the TR! I hope it was a great trip.

Yep, LSP.

 

[eandesmom]

This trip started off a little bit differently than usual. Typically the week before the trip is full of all of those last minute details. Packing, shopping for last minute "needs", laundry, hauling out suitcases, tweaking of plans and always, craziness at the office for me. This time, Evan had his own kind of craziness at the office on top of everything else.

This was somewhat compounded by the fact I had a work trip, the week before that last week of prep. Which normally would have been ok but add in Evan's stuff and it was not a terribly fun week for me to be sure. I did have fun watching the band do their last minute prep. It was going to be interesting. This would be Evan's first time marching, as it would for all of the freshman. They also did not have a ton of practice going into it.
Still, the looked and sounded good to me at their one and only dress rehearsal!











The next day we took over his uniform, and instrument and the loaded up a van that would be driving down.

Can you say....tetris, blockus or zenga? Holy creative loading. About 150 kids went on this trip.

We had

• A Marching Band
• Flag Corps
• Highland Dancers
• Cheerleaders
• Orchestra
• Bagpipes

Some kids played more than one instrument, some had one thing for marching and another for the "concert" band portion of the trip. Some kids in Orchestra did things in the marching band. It was INSANE amount of stuff.

And the van was late arriving, it had some mechanical issues when they picked it up that had to get fixed.







Eventually it was locked and loaded, and we headed home. On Friday, I found out that Evan would be able to hitch a ride to the airport. I cannot tell you how happy this made me! He had an EARLY flight into LAX and was supposed to be at the airport at 6am or something crazy like that. Not having to drive him was huge. That allowed me to have a relatively normal Saturday morning. I was fully packed so hit the gym, took a shower and had some lunch. With that, we loaded up and headed over to pick up my parents. Jeff was able to drive us so that really helped. The weather was NASTY. While it made for a slightly stressful drive due to traffic (Seattleites really do NOT know how to drive in the rain believe it or not) there really is nothing better than knowing you are leaving YUCK for SUN!



As we drove I got a text from Evan saying they had landed and were on the way to the bus. Their agenda today was the Santa Monica Pier and the Grammy Museum.

Security was a bit of a mess. Eric, my mom and I all got TSA pre-check. My dad did not. Even with the pre-check somehow my mom’s CPAC caused issues and those two took FOREVER to get through. Once through I heard....I'm hungry! Which annoyed me to no end. I had tried to get Eric to eat at home and of course he wouldn't. In the interest of family peace however, I caved and bought him a Beechers mac and cheese. For those who don’t know what Beechers is, it is a lovely local handcrafted cheese that started at the Pike Place Market. They have a small food location at SeaTac, luckily located in the terminal we were at. Their mac and cheese is the BOMB! We arrived at the gate, with our Mac and Cheese, a coffee for me, iced tea for my mom, to find our plane pretty much half full of people we knew. Other parents and siblings all going down for the trip. Many of whom I knew would be there but hadn't realized were on our flight, a few of whom are some of my favorite mom’s and friends. It was kind of funny to realize we hadn't compared flights, 2 of the families were headed straight to meet up with Cali relatives and I think that is why, we knew we’d see each other down there so hadn't been worried about it. We got seated and cracked ourselves up texting each other on the plane with plans for after landing.
We really cracked ourselves up posting pictures like this on FB and tagging each other.



Eric was really sad to be leaving the rain



He thinks it’s funny to do that for pictures. Me, I am over it! LOL.
I had loaded Planes onto my phone so once we got going, these two got busy watching



Other than that I don't know what I did on the plane. Probably online or maybe I read a book? It was uneventful. Landing we got our bags and picked up our rental car. I LOVE flying into Long Beach. It takes all of 5 minutes to get your bag and I swear, another 5 to pick up a rental car. However, I hate driving. Period. Any time. I didn't want to drive. I had hoped my dad would. But somehow I ended up doing it and listening to directions from my mom who was reading the gps on my phone. Our first stop was the grocery store. We had a lot to pick up as we needed adult beverages, breakfast and lunch items and bottled water. For some reason it took a lot longer than we expected which meant by the time we got to the Grand Californian, we were cutting it close! I had been texting with a DISer we planned to meet. She was incredibly flexible but our timing wasn't. Well it wasn't if we wanted to go to our desired dinner destination.

Our hope had been to meet at Trader Sam’s and eat there. None of us had ever been and if you go before 8, kids can be in the bar. We quickly checked in and headed to our one night studio to drop off bags.
For those that don’t know, the GCV do not have view categories. Basically you get what you get. You can make requests but in reality you can have a great view, an ok view, or....this.



Ok actually it doesn't look that bad in the first picture but this room was literally smack next to a gate to the pool. Not only was it kind of loud with a lot of traffic it was SO not private it bugged me. I do not care to be on the first floor ever and always request higher. I didn't mind the bad view but I did mind the first floor in this case and was pretty bummed that they totally ignored the request as usually I have decent luck. Oh well, it was just one night. Good thing too as honestly in the 5 minutes we were in there, I felt cramped! I did like the bathroom décor quite a bit, especially the shower curtain.













Missions accomplished (the dumping of stuff and bio breaks) we headed off to our meet! And, arrived at Trader Sam’s to find it ridiculously packed both inside and out. It was after all a Saturday night and Easter weekend to boot. Had it been earlier, we could have waited but with the 8pm cutoff, it didn’t make any sense. We did have time for a meet though! Who were we meeting? Why the lovely Brenda (emmysmommy), her DD Emmy and DH Michael!





Having Emmy and Michael there was like a bonus prize. We chatted for a little bit and then headed off in search of dinner. Brenda and her crew had made dinner reservations elsewhere but planned to try and find us later so we could chat for real. Fortunately we had a backup plan. Or at least I had one. My dad wanted to eat at ESPN. It was the first thing we saw leaving Trader Sam's. Um, I don't mean to be whatever about it but I am sorry. Over my dead body am I eating dinner at ESPN! And I said as much. Probably not as nicely as I should have. Luckily, our ( I mean my) backup plan totally came through, WHEW! We headed to Uva Bar, on Alison and Jenny's recommendation (Jill too I think!) and were able to be seated outside right away. My mom had a meet of her own, a distant cousin of some sort she'd turned up in her genealogy work met us there for dinner. Not long after we’d ordered we were pleasantly surprised to see Brenda and her crew and were able to snag them a table next to ours, sort of merging them together into one big group. They ordered drinks and we all settled in to chat.

As we chatted, our food arrived.

For Eric, the famous lamb burger (my mom's cousin had this as well)



LAMB BURGER 17
House ground lamb, piquillo peppers, feta, arugula, lemon dill aioli, pickled red onion, French fries

For Dad, a Gyro



CHICKEN"GYRO" 15
Seared chicken breast, hummus, cucumbertzatziki sauce, tomatoes, lettuce, onion with Uva salad or spicy "Greek" fries

For me, these beauties



CORN AREPAS 13
Seared com cakes topped with pulled pork, avocado, mojo sauce, cilantro,shaved red onion

Mom went for Fish and Chips.



FISHAND CHIPS 18
Beer battered cod, fries, house tartar

Continued in next post

 

[eandesmom]

Continued from previous

I had SO much fun chatting with Brenda, Emmy and Michael. Poor Michael was on the far end and it was hard to hear each other but a nicer family isn't out there, it was like we'd known each other for quite some time. Brenda brought me a lovely goodie bag full of treats and a coffee cup (and we all know how I feel about those!) and the mug has been used many a time.





It was dark, Brenda's are a little better.



A really cool thing happened while we were eating. I had my back to the walk way (Uva is literally in the middle of the "street" in Downtown Disney) and was chatting away. All of a sudden I felt a tap on my back. It was Evan! With 4 of his closest friends, kids I've known forever. It was SO cool to have him stop and not only stop but chat for a while. All his friends too. They seemed super happy and were having fun. When I was that age I might have actually tried to avoid being spotted. Apparently he didn't spot me first, one of his friends did and they all decided to come over and say hi. It's the little things but in the "I’m too cool" teenager world, that little thing really made my night. They stopped by another time later on as we were finishing up.

I absolutely loved UVA and would eat there again in a heartbeat. I learned a painful lesson though. For my Disney trips I like to buy gift cards at our local grocery story with my Disney Visa. I get gas reward points, Disney reward points and prepay for food and souvies. UVA was not a Disney owned location and did not take them. Nor does most any store in all of downtown Disney. Great. So I had a large chunk of change on gift cards and a fair amount of dining planned not in the parks or resorts. Grr.
After dinner we had a conundrum. I needed to take care of a park ticket situation but my dad had an agenda.

His agenda?

ESPN.

Turns out there was a Sounders game that night, and they were playing the LA Galaxy. That's why he wanted to eat there. Not because it was close and certainly not for the food or beer (he is a NW beer snob with the best of them). Well gee dad, why didn't you say so? I wouldn't have snapped and I would have promised that we could go after dinner. So to ESPN we went. Where the soccer game was not to be found, on any screen. What we did find was one of Eric's close friends (older brother, Evan's age, was in the orchestra)and he happily scampered away to play video games with him. My mom was tired and decided to head to the room. Dad, and the father of Eric's friend headed to find the game (and ended up convincing someone to turn it on) and I hung with the mom, who is a former neighbor and friend.
ESPN in general, and the whole "gameworks" atmosphere is NOT my thing but Eric and my dad were a happy campers and at least I had someone to hang out with while the game finished up. Once it was over, we all headed out. We had an early morning planned, as did our friends and I still had a ticket errand to run. Dad, Eric and I headed to the park guest services. The parks were still going to be open for hours. I had wanted to add a day to Eric's ticket and upgrade my WDW AP to a Premium that covered both parks. DVC had a great promo going on that was literally only good for a few more days so the timing was perfect. They could take care of Eric's ticket no problem and my dad was able to buy their tickets. My ticket however could not be upgraded. Turns out that the DL and WDW computer systems do not talk to each other and they were going to have to call florida to be able to upgrade mine, to confirm what price to charge me.

Ugh. So much for saving time on Easter! Mission only partially accomplished we stopped by Marcelline's for a treat and headed to the room. We sat outside on our not remotely private patio, (though there was no traffic at that hour) ate our treats and discussed the plan for the next day. We had planned to go to sunrise service on the beach but both Dad and Mom were tired. Eric really wanted to go. We decided Eric and I would go and Mom and Dad would sleep. I told Eric that if I woke him up and he gave me a hard time about getting up, I'd be going back to bed!

 

[franandaj]

Yup! Band Schleppage is a lot of stuff!

I knew it from the patio picture, you had the HA studio.

Too bad you didn't get to do Trader Sams, but I understand the tradeoff. I would have been the same about ESPN, I have no desire to eat my dinner with sports all over the place. I'm glad you liked the Uva Bar, it's definitely one of my top choices there. Sucks that they don't take Disney Gift Cards, we've tried that too.

It's not that he stopped by to say "hi". It's that he stopped by to say "hi" and didn't ask you for money!

Glad everything worked out, because I know in the end your AP does as well!

 

[jedijill]

That's a lot of stuff!!!!!!

Fun Dismeet! That was so sweet of Evan to stop by and say hi with his friends! Definitely a proud Mom moment.

I haven't tried Uva Bar yet but it looks yummy! Too bad about the gift cards...I got excited about buying gift cards for the cruise but forgot that I wouldn't be able to use them for the PR hotel. Oops!

Jill in CO

 

[Leshaface]

Wow that's a lot of bags I wouldn't want to even attempt to organize!

We must have really lucked out with our park view room at the VGC. That's too bad that they didn't grant your request of a higher floor, I would have been bummed too.

Aw yay! Love Brenda and Emmy! Haven't met Michael yet but i'm sure we'd love him too.

Isn't the Uva bar delish?! And soooo sweet that Evan went over to chat with you guys with his group of friends. You've got a great boy there to not feel embarrassed by his mom. Hope my DS will be like this one day.

Whaaa?! How do you not like ESPN Zone?! I thought you enjoyed sports??

 

[ARmom30]

I went on a few group trips in my HS days, but never one of that magnitude! Wow. Too bad about the 1st floor room. I'm usually not that bothered by the view, but I don't like to hear people over my head.

I just want to say I love your TRs. I've read all of them, I just don't usually comment.

I'm also following your PHM training/plans. I'll be there!

 

[PrincessInOz]

That's a lot of band schlepping going on!
Sorry you didn't like the room.
I really like that UVA bar lamb burger as well. I finally figured out what the addictive element was in that burger for me. It's the pickled red onions.
YAY for a great DisMeet.
At least your dad got to enjoy the game at ESPN and it worked out in the end.
I hope that you managed to sort out your ticket in the end.

 

[teekathepony]

So. Much. Stuff! Wow. I can't believe it all fit!
YAY for Dismeets! Sounds like a wonderful meal with Brenda & family!

 

[Pinkocto]

Great start to the trip! Crazy amount of bags for all the kids. Fun that your flight had lots of familiar faces. Bonus to be leaving all that rain for sun.

I would have loved to be that close to the pool. To each their own of couse. At least it was only one night, hopefully your next room is better situated.

Too cool Evan stopped by dinner. Exactly, why didn't your dad just say what he wanted? Glad everything worked out.

 

[afwdwfan]

Wow... a lot of organization and packing skills must be necessary for a high school band director.

I'm glad that the trip got off to a good start... everyone made it in one piece, and you had a nice dinner! Too bad about the room location. I'd be kind of bummed about that too, especially if you put in requests for a higher floor and they couldn't even get that for you.

I'll be honest... I'd be happy as can be eating dinner at ESPN.

 

[eandesmom]

Wow that's a lot of bags I wouldn't want to even attempt to organize!

We must have really lucked out with our park view room at the VGC. That's too bad that they didn't grant your request of a higher floor, I would have been bummed too.

Well it was only for one night, we were moving to the 1b the next day. It was less about the view and more about the total feeling of being exposed, like anyone could walk into my room. I have first floor issues!

Aw yay! Love Brenda and Emmy! Haven't met Michael yet but i'm sure we'd love him too.

Isn't the Uva bar delish?! And soooo sweet that Evan went over to chat with you guys with his group of friends. You've got a great boy there to not feel embarrassed by his mom. Hope my DS will be like this one day.

Loved Uva and incredible company! It was a great mom moment for sure.

Whaaa?! How do you not like ESPN Zone?! I thought you enjoyed sports??

I like some sports. Generally speaking though I do not care for sports bars unless it is for a specific game with a group of people. I like to go to games, or watch things at home. I'll enjoy part of a game at a smaller brewpub for sure. But that kind of huge, loud sensory overload with a lot of games on I could care less about and food that doesn't wow me...not my thing. Not to mention being nickled and dimed for the arcade and lame wine selection, it's just not my thing at all.

I went on a few group trips in my HS days, but never one of that magnitude! Wow. Too bad about the 1st floor room. I'm usually not that bothered by the view, but I don't like to hear people over my head.

I just don't like feeling someone could walk in at any moment from my back patio.

I just want to say I love your TRs. I've read all of them, I just don't usually comment.

Awww, thanks! And I'm happy to have you here.

I'm also following your PHM training/plans. I'll be there!

Fun! Is it your first time doing PHM? I am excited!!!!

That's a lot of band schlepping going on!
Sorry you didn't like the room.
I really like that UVA bar lamb burger as well. I finally figured out what the addictive element was in that burger for me. It's the pickled red onions.
YAY for a great DisMeet.
At least your dad got to enjoy the game at ESPN and it worked out in the end.
I hope that you managed to sort out your ticket in the end.

Ah, it was a bunch of things. The studio is just way too small for 4 adults and I have first floor issues. LOL! It was only for one night but I was really glad it was only for one night, it would have impacted the trip for me.

It took my dad at least 20 minutes to get someone to turn on the game, I'm not sure it was worth the hassle but he was happy to see the end of it and I was happy to have company!

Dinner and the meet were fabulous!

So. Much. Stuff! Wow. I can't believe it all fit!
YAY for Dismeets! Sounds like a wonderful meal with Brenda & family!

It was a great meet, I could not believe it all fit either!

Great start to the trip! Crazy amount of bags for all the kids. Fun that your flight had lots of familiar faces. Bonus to be leaving all that rain for sun.

I would have loved to be that close to the pool. To each their own of couse. At least it was only one night, hopefully your next room is better situated.

Except....you can't enter the pool there. You can only leave it! It was a privacy issue, not so much the pool being there but feeling very exposed. It's a first floor hang up lol. I have similar issues with moderates and values, folks walking by and looking in my window in the exterior halls. I do not like that at all! Give me an interior hall and a patio/balcony that no one can walk onto. Which usually means no patio.

Too cool Evan stopped by dinner. Exactly, why didn't your dad just say what he wanted? Glad everything worked out.

Well I still wouldn't have wanted to eat there but I could have gotten us back there faster for him so he could see more of it. Silly man! Evan made me happy for sure.

Wow... a lot of organization and packing skills must be necessary for a high school band director.

I'm glad that the trip got off to a good start... everyone made it in one piece, and you had a nice dinner! Too bad about the room location. I'd be kind of bummed about that too, especially if you put in requests for a higher floor and they couldn't even get that for you.

thankfully it was one night only

I'll be honest... I'd be happy as can be eating dinner at ESPN.

Lots of people would. Lucky for me Jeff feels the same way

 

[Pinkocto]

They must have changed that entrance because I went into the pool through that gate last year. Very bizarre. I'm glad you only had it for one night.

 

[annmarieda]

I thought I subscribed... ugh.

Just had to say I will have to go back to read.

 

[eandesmom]

They must have changed that entrance because I went into the pool through that gate last year. Very bizarre. I'm glad you only had it for one night.

Oh how funny! Nope, we couldn't get in that way. Which wasn't a big deal ultimately but I did have to go the long way around once. Maybe due to the time of year?

I thought I subscribed... ugh.

Just had to say I will have to go back to read.

Ann!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!