Compared to the hustle and bustle of the daylight and evening hours, there is a eerie stillness to Walt Disney World around sun up. No one waiting for buses to the parks, no families running to the pool to play, no cast members hauling luggage to someone's room. Aside from occasional landscaping cast member trimming some hedges, it's just peaceful and serene.
Want to know somewhere else that is peaceful? Right here:
And why wouldn't those two little lumps in the bed be peaceful, it was 5:45am. I was wishing I was still snuggled into bed, but we had to be at the Magical Express bus stop at 6:30.
We had just about everything packed up the night before so I took the bags down to bell services at 6 for them to take to the airport for us. I wish I could say that by the time I got back Bambi had the kids up and dressed, but after 5 days in Houston and 4 days at WDW, you couldn't pull those kids out of bed with a tractor.
We finally did get them moving and we arrived at the bus stop 15 minutes ahead of our scheduled pickup - just like the information sheet said to do.
Yes, we were to convince Evan to change into his pants, but he refused to change out of his pajama shirt. We decided that was not a battle worth fighting at 6:00am, so we let him win this round.
Well, 6:30 came and went and no Magical Express bus. 6:45 and no bus. I went in to the lobby to ask, but since the Magical Express is run by Mears, the cast members at the front desk had no way to contact them to find out where the bus was.
Finally, about 6:50 the bus pulls up. The driver apologizes and helps us with the carry on bags. The only good thing about being the first ones on the bus? The kids get to "drive"
We left Kidani Village and made several more stops to pick people up. I don't remember too much about the ride to the airport - it was too early to really pay attention to much.
Our flight back to Chicago was certainly a new experience to me. Our Southwest flight was billed as "direct", but with 3 stops. We never had to change planes, but we stopped in Birmingham, AL; Louisville, KY and Indianapolis, IN. Each time some people would get off and others would get on. It added about an hour or so vs. a nonstop flight, but you couldn't beat the price.
Somewhere before we landed in Louisville, the vacation caught up to her and Madison was out cold.
She slept through landing and taking off in both Louisville and Indianapolis, finally waking up on final approach to Midway Airport in Chicago. And the way the pilot hit the reverse thrust and the breaks as soon as we touched down, I expected a tail hook to grab some restraining wires like on an aircraft carrier deck. I've heard people talk about the short runways at Midway, but experiencing it is completely different.
We grabbed our bags off of the baggage claim, wishing that Magical Express operated at our home airports as well. But since they don't I called the hotel where we left the van, and they said their shuttle was about 20 minutes out. So, how do you kill 20 minutes at an airport?
Yeah, I have no idea either.
By the time we got back to the hotel and loaded up the van it was well past 2:00pm and we still hadn't had lunch. We found a hotdog stand not far from the hotel, grabbed some food to go and headed home. It took a little longer, but it finally caught up to Evan and he fell asleep in the van. Bambi had to wake him up a few times to remind him to finish chewing his last bite of hotdog before he went to sleep. He'd give her a dirty look, chew 3 more times, then his eyes would flutter shut and she'd have to do it all over again.
We finally made it home and started to unpack. But first, we had two new pins to put in our map - Houston and Galveston, TX.
(Map idea blatantly stolen from Captain_Oblivious. He took my cheeseballs, I took his map. I think we're even.)
And so our Houston Vacation with a surprise trip to Walt Disney World came to a close. I'll be back with one final entry to wrap everything up and shamelessly plug the TR for our summer trip.
That is a little weird. On my last flight to Florida, it was cheaper to fly back to Baltimore through Long Island. 
I guess you'll just have to read along 
