HINK Couple on Free Dining Report

[smartestnumber5]

Characters & Vital Info:


Us: HINKs. I’ve seen the acronym DINK used to mean “double income, no kids.” Well we are “half income, no kids.” Actually, more specifically, we are HINKOK—half income, no kids, one and a half kitties (one adopted but not yet in our care).

More specifically:
Me: 24 year old, grad student (hence the half income), obsessive Disney planner, vegetarian.
GF: 30 year old, changing careers/getting a 2nd
bachelors (hence the half income), 1st time to WDW, meat-eater.
Kitty: 2 year old Turkish Van mix, likes to eat, sleep,
and be adored. He has never gone to WDW and never will.
Kitten: 10 week old long hair brown/white/gray tiger. He is currently being neutered and then we can bring him home. Should be wearing a t-shirt “My Mommies Went to Disney World and all I got was my manhood removed”

Why did we decide to go to WDW? Because I love it there and GF wanted to make me happy so she said we could.

Okay, there’s more to it than that. This was my 5th trip to Disney—the other four were with my family (parents and brother). Those trips occurred when I was 12, 16, 19, and 21. I think it was only during the last 2 trips that I really became obsessed with Disney; that was about the time we realized how many great restaurants Disney has and started sacrificing the money (okay, MY PARENTS started sacrificing the money) to experience them. Even so, I didn’t think I’d be getting to Disney again for quite awhile because a) now that I’m out of college I didn’t think my parents would want to pay to take me on vacation again, 2) even if they wanted to, they probably couldn’t afford to, and 3) I didn’t think there was any way I could pay for it given I’m a grad student living on a stipend. Anyway as of summer of last year Disney wasn’t even on my radar—not like I had anyone to go with. Enter GF.

This is her first trip to Disney World. She’d visited Disneyland a few times as a kid, long before the California Adventure Park opened. I believe the talk of Disney World came up casually, I guess with me explaining past family vacations and where I’d want to go on vacation if I could go anywhere. She seemed shocked that I’m a Disney World fan. “But you don’t even like Disney movies,” she said. “And how can you spend that much time in one park?” Ah, well, she’d been under the mistaken impression that all there was to WDW was the Magic Kingdom—rookie mistake. I explained the deal about the 4 parks, 2 waterparks, 1 downtown area, and dozens of resort hotels to clear things up. She was interested in Epcot for its science/technology emphasis and she wasn’t hostile to the rest. That was a start.

So once I realized that there was a small possibility I could someday convince her to take a trip I decided to look up some pricing stuff. That was when I found out about the dining plan, specifically about free dining. This was late summer/early fall of 2005 and apparently right then thousands of people were enjoying free food in Disney World. Curse them all, I thought—they’ll probably never offer that again! GF began getting more interested as I did research—a prepaid food plan sounds pretty good after all. But alas, even the cheapest of trips would cost us in the upwards of $1500—far from pocket change for us. So we waited; we decided that *IF* they offered free dining again we would jump on it and take the trip. If not, we’d just have to see what happened. Though I usually checked online and read the disboards every few days, sometimes I would go a week or so without bothering. This was one of those times. It was late at night in early April that I happened to look at the disboards and suddenly found thread after thread talking about “free dining.” Were they offering free dining again? I got excited—I went to the WDW sight and found the information. YES —free dining in August—we’re going to Disney World (most likely)! I called to GF and told her the news. I said I would do some quick pricing and that we should take a few days to think about it, but we should wait to long. After all, this offer had been out for a few days. I figured everyone would jump on it and they might run out of availability quickly (doesn’t seem as if that actually happened). While doing the pricing I realized you can book the package, put down at $200 deposit, and then still get a full refund of that if you cancel before mid-July (given the dates we were looking at)—wow. It was a no-brainer. Book it! Worst case scenario we can cancel if we can’t afford it. Woo hoo—we’re going to Disney World!

What worries and reservations did we have ahead of time? I was afraid GF wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I do and thus my dream of a future filled with Disney vacations would be crushed. There was much danger here—
strike 1: GF is very easily annoyed by young children (mostly the misbehaving kind).
strike 2: GF is made very, very anxious by crowds.
strike 3: GF has only spent 2 summers in a humid climate. There is no way she is prepared for Disney weather in August.

(Hah—sounds fun right!)

Plus there were the normal worries—What if someone gets really sick? There is a hurricane? A family member dies/gets injured? Something happens to the cat? The world ends?

When did we go to WDW? We were there last week, 8/24-8/31.

How did we get to WDW? We flew—no 20 hour drives for us. Paying for gas alone would have cost us more than our flights.

Where did we stay? Pop Century, in the 50s, 4th floor, right near the bowling pin pool.

Finally, when will the next installment of this trip report be posted? Probably sometime this evening. Stayed tuned.

 

[rlduvall]

Sounds interesting. Can't wait to hear more. I am going on a girls only trip to POP in 15 days, so looking forward to your thoughts on POP. Thanks for taking the time to post.

 

[pumba]

I love how everyone can talk some one into going to disney.......my husband and I do it together though........Hope you had fun

 

[smartestnumber5]

Day 1—Part 1--Delayed flight, Toddler sing along, Room pics

7:00 am—Time to get up. It’s too early, but the promise of Disney makes it better! GF goes to a meeting for school while I do some last minute packing/cleaning of the house.

9:50 am—We leave for the airport. We’re excited! We arrive about 25 minutes later. We get out of out of car and get the bags. 10 steps later GF says “these are heavy.” She asks “what’s in this?” while shaking her right arm to demonstrate what “this” refers. In her right hand is a small carry-on bag, while on her right shoulder is a big duffle bag to be checked. I assume she means the carry-on and say “magazines and books.” She says “Books! Why are we taking books to Disney World?” I’m confused for a second, and then I realize she isn’t talking about the carry-on. That big heavy duffle bag is actually our “medicine cabinet” which is so heavy. Turns out I packed fifty pounds of ultimately unused diarrhea medicine, gas pills, Nyquil, laxatives, moleskin, etc, and neglected daytime cold medicine, Kleenex, something to cut the moleskin with, and aloe, all of which we ended up needing.

Security is no problem--not busy at all. There are about four different lines for metal detectors and one of them seems to have no wait at all. That particular line includes two security measures, some machine that blows air on us and then a metal detector. GF looked info about the strange machine and apparently it is meant to find traces of explosive materials. It’s in the test phase, and according to what she read, it doesn’t work. Well, whatever. We realize once through security that we had a handi-snack pack in our carry on—you know, those little cheese and cracker snacks. The cheese is pretty gel-like, but either they don’t count such cheese as gel-like or they didn’t know we had them or both.

A little before noon we board our flight. I tell GF that just yesterday I switched our seats to a row with just us and one empty seat. Hopefully that seat will remain empty and we can have the whole row to ourselves—wouldn’t that be nice. As the cabin fills up it becomes obvious that we won’t be having the row to ourselves. Also we notice an overabundance of children—many of them screaming and crying. GF remarks, “Good job. You moved us to the toddler section of the plane.” I tell her, “Well honey, it is the plane to Disney World.” We go through the normal preflight boarding stuff and the plane pulls away from the hanger. But then it stops moving and we sit for a few minutes. Then there’s an announcement—we’re having mechanical problems. About a half hour later they announce that the problem cannot be fixed at this time, so we all have to move to another plane. At least, we figure, we'll probably get free snacks or free alcohol on the flight to make up for the inconvenience--that's what happened on other delayed flights we've taken at least.

Our new plane takes off almost exactly 2 hours after the original one was supposed to take off. We get nothing except a few words of apology to make up for the delay. This is on NWA--they have also stopped giving out bags of pretzels with drinks and when my GF asked for a pillow they reported they no longer carry them. I guess this is why our flights were so cheap.

During the flight I'm horribly ancy GF suffers from some back cramps at one point. And we're treated to the cloying sounds of a children's tv show as one of the parents in the front row treats the entire cabin to her child's sing-a-long dvd.

Once off the flight we are in Terminal B and must go to the Disney Welcome Center in terminal A to catch the Magical Express. I look at the little booklet about the ME and use the map to help us over to terminal A--glad we don't have the luggage with us at this point. Once in terminal A we make our way to ground transportation (which seems to be where the welcome center is on the map). We see a number of buses which say something about Disney on them, but they all seem to be unloading. I tell GF there's supposed to be a "Welcome Center" not just one bus. Finally we go back inside the terminal and find the Welcome Center in there. We check in, stop in the restroom, and then get right onto the ME going to Pop. It pulls out within 2 minutes of our arriving. Good timing! On come the TVs with Disney scenes and music. I hear something like "Now that you’re returning to your normal life, let us thank you for staying with Disney” and proceeds to try to convince us to come back soon. It’s the wrong tape. The driver says they gave him two copies of the return to the airport tape. I am incensed (not really)—I want a movie darnit! The driver says “Just enjoy the view.” It is only at this moment that GF catches on that we were watching the wrong tape (sometimes she's a little slow on the uptake). In total it took 45 min from when our flight touched down to when we stepped food on the ME and another 30 min from then til when we got off at Pop (the first stop).

Checking in was mostly painless. The line was maybe 15-20 min long. Most of those in line were adults whose children were looking around the hotel or sitting in the kids area nearby. I wished I could go be one of the kids and look around while GF does the hard stuff!

The CM who helped us was training and we asked him to take a gift certificate and Disney Visa rewards and put them on our account as a credit, so he needed some help. Everything worked out though and he was very nice.

Before going to our room we stopped at the gift shop and bought some toiletries which we'd forgotten or weren't allowed in our carry-ons. On to our room. At first I had requested the 80s or 90s since GF and I were actually children during these decades. But then I heard that these areas were far from the buses and main buildings and busy, so I changed the request to the 50s. My other requests were a smoking room and a king sized bed. We got a smoking room on the 4th floor of the 50s right next to the bowling pin pool, very close to the main building. It did have 2 double beds instead of a king, but this came in handy because we actually slept better having our own beds and we needed the rest.

Coming up: MK, California Grill, Crying

 

[schoen]

I am enjoying your report so far. I hate NWA! We always call it NorthWorst. We use the airline almost exclusively though! I am looking forward to the rest of your trip!

 

[BeckWhy]

Awating the continuation of your trip report... but I would like to comment.

You requested a king bed, as did I. They gave you two doubles which was better for you... after talking with my boyfriend, I started to think two doubles would be better, also... oh well.

 

[dvc at last !]

waiting for more........

 

[smartestnumber5]

By 7:30ish it was time to head out. We had planned to go to Epcot today as GF's first introduction to Disney, but by the time we could get there we'd only have an hour til close. So we choose MK instead. We have an ADR at California Grill at 9:50 pm so we'll be close by which will be convenient.

The bus ride to MK is pretty long from Pop. We get inside and I'm excited--I want to get right to the rides. GF, however, want to take pictures of the castle. The camera is somewhat new so she has to take two pictures of everything to make sure one comes out, and taking a picture without the flash (as she prefers) takes a 30 sec exposure time. That's way too long for me to wait, but I indulge her. GF takes issue with the term "indulge"--she says that's putting it extremely generously--more like I barely tolerated her.

After some pictures I pull her over to Aloha Isle and get a dole whip (dining reviews here: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1212360). She asks if we can sit and of course I say yes. I eat a few spoonfuls, take a picture of her eating, and then exactly 120 seconds after we sat down I say "Can we walk over to Pirates of the Caribbean now?" She says yes (but I don't think she really means it) even though she clearly wanted to stay sitting for some time. Then I rush her over to Pirates where there is only a 5 min wait--yay! She is a little winded already, but I don't really care because I'm in Disney World (yes, I'm a bad girlfriend right now). GF has ridden Pirates at Disneyland as a child, and she has managed to magnify the small drop in the ride to about 15 times its size. Once on the boat she keeps asking "are we there yet? are we there yet?" Once we finally hit the drop she screams only to find it's about 10 feet tops. I make fun of her and compare her to a child.

Next it's on to the Haunted Mansion. I continue being commando and grap her hand to PULL her along. She gets a bit out of breath and has to trot to keep up with me (Bad girlfriend, bad!). We arrive and there's no wait at all--woo hoo! Free dining and no lines! Once done with HM it's a little after 9pm and the parade is starting. We need to leave the park soon and we'd like to avoid the parade. We ask a CM about how to get on the railroad (the only thing GF actually did want to do tonight at MK), thinking that will help us avoid the crowds on Main Street. He tells us to forget the railroad and just walk through fantasyland and into tomorrowland and then out Main Street. Umm, that doesn't sound like avoiding the crowds to me. We walk over to Toontown which I'm pretty sure does have a railroad stop. Indeed I see the train waiting there. I pull GF some more to make sure we get on board before it leaves. After we sit down she says "I'm tired and my knee hurts already. And I'm dripping with sweat. It's so humid. Aren't you tired?" I reply, "Honey, I'm in Disney World!"

At this point I'm really not taking GF's complaints seriously enough (stupid, stupid). I figure she'll feel better soon. We're going to sit on the train and then get the monorail and sit for dinner in air conditioning--she'll be fine. We head out and get the monorail and she's lagging during that walk. Around 9:30 pm we check in on the 2nd floor of the Contemporary for dinner. They send us up in the elevator with an escort and we're given a pager. The lounge is full and we're pointed to the observation deck outside. I figured this would happen as we're early plus it's right before wishes so people may not be eager to leave the restaurant just now. We go outside and try to take some unsuccessful pictures of MK. After a few minutes, GF is not looking so good. She tells me she really, really needs to sit down. We go inside to the bar area and take a seat, hoping we don't have to buy a drink to sit here. GF seems to be extremely tired and after a few seconds she begins making the "I'm about to cry face" in which she pushes up her glasses with her fingers and rubs her eyes while squeezing them shut. I know this look but I don't know why she's crying. She gets very upset because she's starting to cry in the middle of a very crowded fancy restaurant. She tells me that she's afraid she's ruining things for me--that she's walking too slowly or going to be in too much pain and I won't get to do everything I want to do. I realize I've been way too commando and haven't listened at all to her needs. She's said she's tired and asked to sit numerous times today. I knew that she was having back trouble on the flight. And she hasn't gotten to rest at all today since she got up at 7 am. I try to tell her it's okay and I'll stop being so demanding.

We try to find a private place to talk and we can sit (which is really hard when you're at CG) but the place is only private for a few minutes when half the restaurant begins walking by to go outside to see Wishes. Well now that they've all left at least there are some seats in the lounge area. We grab them and we're seated not long after Wishes starts. Neither of us feels like eating at this point and now GF is upset that she's ruining watching Wishes for me. I really didn't care all that much about watching Wishes in the first place and right now I'm much more concerned about her not being upset. As Wishes finishes we decide to step outside again to talk. GF feels much better once she gets a few moments away from all of those people. We decide that she should get to make more decisions so she's not always feeling like I'm pulling her along to places. Tomorrow is her day--she decides what we do, where we go, and when. We both feel better and go in and enjoy a very good meal.

It's approaching midnight when we're done eating. I think that maybe we can get the monorail to MK and get one of the last buses back to Pop, but at the monorail station we're directed to taking a bus to downtown Disney and then another bus back to Pop. GF is totally worn out and I'm starting to join her, so taking two buses is out of the question. We agree to take a taxi--how expensive can it be? $21 (yes, 21!) we're back at Pop. We realize we've just spent all the money we can on taxis, so we'd better make friends with Disney bus transporation very quickly.

 

[smartestnumber5]

Awating the continuation of your trip report... but I would like to comment.

You requested a king bed, as did I. They gave you two doubles which was better for you... after talking with my boyfriend, I started to think two doubles would be better, also... oh well.

You might still be able to change the request. Plus, there's always a chance you won't get the king bed anyway.

One of our beds was pretty soft and one of them was firmer. We probably could have slept okay in the firm one, but soft ones are always a problem--all the rolling toward the middle! We thought it would have been really unfortunate if we only had one bed and it was a soft one.

Anyway, good luck!

 

[smartestnumber5]

I wake up at 8:40 am. The first two things I notice are that a) I have to pee and b) there is music playing outside--50s music. These are in no particular order, so I'm not sure if the music woke me up and then I realized I had to pee, or if I woke up because I had to pee and then I noticed the music. Or maybe I woke up for some different reason altogether (such as--I'm in Disney World)! We had the alarm set for 9 so I took care of my business and then cuddled with GF a bit. GF wasn't ready to get up when the alarm went off, and since it was her day to choose what, when, and where, I didn't mind that she went back to sleep. I transferred pics from the camera to the computer and recorded some receipts from the day before.

By 10:15 am, I'm a little restless. I'm just about to go out and explore the hotel when GF rolls over and says "I'm getting up." I tell her I'll just go take some quick pictures and we can go as soon as she's ready. A few minutes later when I open the door to leave, GF has rolled over (she says she was probably only stretching). I tell her "don't go back to sleep" in a slightly paniced voice. GF can sleep like no one I've ever seen. She's just been diagnosed with sleep apnea (which means she stops breathing in her sleep every few minutes, so she can't sleep like normal people and her rest is continually broken up by a little bit of suffocation). With how tired she was last night and our late bedtime and her normal amount of sleep, she could easily have slept til 2pm, no problem. I imagine myself just sitting in the hotel room tapping my fingers. Why, oh why, did I say she could make all the decisions. On cue, GF says "hey, you said it was my day and I choose everything." Ahh, she's going to choose to sleep for the next 4 hours and I'm going to be stuck in the room tapping my head against the wall! I snap, "Well just let me know if I need to find a solo activity to amuse myself." GF replies "Don't get commando again. I'm getting up." This makes me feel bad, because I can feel myself slipping into the commando craziness. I leave to take some pictures while GF gets ready. When I get back I'm feeling more relaxed and she is feeling refreshed and excited to go to Epcot.

We get inside and of course walk right by Spaceship Earth. GF along with a few friends of ours were under the impression that ALL of Epcot is inside Spaceship Earth. I educated GF about the difference between "the ball" (as she calls it) and the whole park quite as soon as she put forth such a ridiculous notion. Upon seeing Spaceship Earth she remarked, "Yeah, I guess even though it's big, it's still pretty small to have a whole theme park inside it." Uh, yeah. There was very little wait for Spaceship Earth (less than 5 minutes) so we jumped right in line. Turns out that GF loves this ride. We went on twice, and she considered making me go a third time. She enjoyed the educational aspects and said from some of her studies that they were actually accurate in the historical aspects. She also really liked the planatariaum view of the stars and Earth at the top of the ride. I'm pleasantly surprised that GF is such a fan. I like Spaceship Earth, but I'm not in love with it. I'm glad she is quickly finding some favorites.

We try for Soarin but the line is too long so we have lunch and then go to Ellen's Energy Adventure. I kind of enjoy this ride--maybe because of the dinosaurs? I can't explain it. GF doesn't understand my attraction to it given it's obvious problems--lack of a coherent narrative, failing to actually explain what any of the energy resources it mentions are, referring to global warming as "controversial," etc. I'm with her on all of these problems. But I still just enjoy the ride.

Shortly after we left Epcot and went back to the hotel for a quick swim. We then got fancied up for our dinner at Artist Point and head out. We take a bus to Epcot and then a bus from there to WL. We happen to get lucky with the timing and we arrive at least a half hour early. I had been excited about GF getting to see WL. I stayed there with my family a few years ago and loved it. I thought it had the best decor and atmosphere of all the deluxes. I had suggested to GF that we should stay there for our honeymoon (someday). When she saw WL she agreed. We have an ongoing problem regarding vacations because she really loves camping and I don't. Partly I think it's because I never experienced it as a child, and in fact I think my mother tried to convince me it was unpleasant so I wouldn't want to go with the girlscouts. So I just can't think of having fun while being outside in the heat, with bugs, and no showers, and no bathrooms, etc. GF though doesn't mind these aspects and she used to go camping all the time as a kid, so she loves it. So far, the best she's gotten me to agree to is staying in a cabin in the woods. Well WL is the best cabin in the woods I can think of!


Coming up: candy, cigarettes, and more crying

 

[smartestnumber5]

Dinner is very quick, and we're done before 7 pm. We thought it would take until more like 8 pm and that we could just go from WL to downtown Disney. This was a little earlier than we planned so we thought about going back to the room for a bit as we had that after eating tiredness problem. Except, we were afraid we'd never go back out if we went back to the room. So instead of spending the evening taking a nap, we decided on downtown Disney. GF is very tired for the whole bus ride (which takes awhile), but she's hoping she'll feel better once we walk around. Unfortunately, she doesn't.

I, however, feel great when I discover Goofy's Candy Co and its create-your-own-candy option--woo hoo! I get some make your own pretzels while GF waits outside. I didn't realize how long it took for the create-your-own option (I guess they put them in a fridge/freezer for the chocolate to dry). By the time I was done GF was reaching her "done" point--i.e. the point where she's tired, crabby, frustrated, and in pain. One of the big reasons we went to downtown Disney was because she ran out of cigarettes (one of the reasons for her crabby-ness). Apparently there is a cigar shop on the Westside that is the only place in downtown Disney where one can buy cigarettes. But we were in the Marketplace near World of Disney and GF was quickly approaching crying in frustration given her tiredness and foot pain. More crying! We ended up just walking to a nearby gas station. I hope she's not going to cry everyday! :-(

Coming up: Yeti poo and coitus interuptus