I want a DO-OVER Trip Report! We arrived at the POP!

[ClaraBug]

Okay Folks,

I am taking a gamble here and going to re-do my trip report! I did not like the first one. My heart just wasn't in it, sorry. I am now ready to share the ups and downs, the good and the bad, the stinky and the sweaty!

Brief Intros:

Gramma and Grandpa "Jersey"

Dh, Me, Emma (6), and MJ (4)

The Plan:
Meet Gramma and Grandpa "Jersey" in WDW.
-Stay at same Resort -- Pop Century
-Watch the girls enjoy their first time at WDW.
-Do all that we could do (this comes back to bite me in the behind!)

Y'all might be wondering why Jersey is in Parenthesizes. When Emma was a little toddler, we would always refer to my mom as "gramma in New Jersey." Emma heard Gramma "Jersey." I told my mom that and she loved it, so it stuck.

Coming soon to a forum near you: Departure!!

 

[Tinker'n'Fun]

I am on board....

 

[purpledisneyprncess]

Count me in.

 

[ClaraBug]

I am on board....

Thanks!!

Count me in.

Thanks!!

 

[VanniGirl]

Looking forward to reading!

 

[ClaraBug]

Side Story!!

We live about 2 and half hours away from Dulles International Airport. So I had the bright idea to stay at a "park and ride" hotel. Just in case you are wondering what a "park and ride" hotel is, you pay about $20 extra bucks at a hotel and they will shuttle you to and from the airport. So Priceline, here I come. Found a great hotel, Fairfield Inn by Marriott for half the price! Indoor pool with park and ride! I am Awsome Mom!!

Okay on Sunday, we were to fly JetBlue on a 9:20 am flight! (Another great deal, btw!)

Friday night, I leave work early since I am just beside myself with giddines! (Giddiness, is that a real word? ) I was worthless at work and so the bossman told me to get out and not come back until I was normal again! Well, sort of normal!
I do a once over on the luggage and make sure saturday clothes are set out.
And of course, do the mad dash to clean the house from top to bottom! Someone please explain to me, why to we do this? We go on vacation and we HAVE to clean the house!
About midnight, into bed!!

Saturday Morning
All four of us are up and moving about 7:30-8 am. I shower real quick and do the last load of laundry (bath towels) and do up the couple of dishes we used while DH loads up the car. Girls are dressed and hair combed.
If you knew my girls, they hate having their hair brushed. Emma has thick hair and tangles easily. There are always tears when I comb her hair.
Meri is just as bad only her hair is thin and silky. It tends to not hold the hair band in.

Finally after the War of the Hair, its in the car......only to go half a mile to Nanny's house. Okay Girls, say your goodbyes, we won't see Nanny and Papy for one whole week! cool1: I won't see my in-laws for one whole week! THANK-YOU Disney! )

Finally (again) we are on the rode. We stop in Winchester at Wally-World to get a couple last minute supplies and grab lunch at SubWay! I love the Veggie sub, which is basically the fixin's without the meat. Oh, I am a carnivore but something about the honey-oat bread with the veggies and fat free honey mustard is just out of this world to me....

On the road againrolleyes1 gotta love Willy) about 3 pm, we get to the Fairfield Inn and I run inside to check-in. Scott and the girls are watching the planes overhead coming and going. They were facinated. We were about 3-4 miles from the airport, so the planes were REALLY close.

We get up to our room, and I was extremely surprised! The room was immaculate! I was afraid that since I was paying half price, I was ready for something on the Knight's Inn side. But the room was beautiful!

We quickly threw on the swim suits and down it to the pool we went. The girls had a time! I kept having to fuss at Meri because she would get out of the pool and into the hot-tub and two minutes later get into the pool. I had enough after three turns of this. So we tried to keep them in the pool until my bright husband sad2: ) decides to get in the hottub and turn on the "bubbles" as the girls would say. So BACK out of the pool I go, and follow my rugrats into the hottub.

Hunger pangs were the only reason I could get the girls out of the pool/hottub. After getting dressed, we walked over to Bob Evans and had a light dinner. I had a baked potato and ceasar salad, Meri had hd the chicken strips with the smiley face tater thingys. Emma had a salad. For a six year, she could put away a salad! I don't remember what Scott had, I just remember fussin' at the girls, trying to get them to eat more.
The excitement was getting to them too!

We walked back to the hotel and started to quiet down for the night. I gave the girls a bath and tucked them into their bed. I slipped on my Pj's and set out everyone's clothes for the morning. The girls were alseep by 9:30 that night. Scott and I laid there. We could not fall asleep! We were too "sited" to sleep!! (To quote the best Disney Commerical there is!) We both drifted in and out of sleep, but neither of us sleep deep. Boy, were we going to be tired!

 

[ClaraBug]

Looking forward to reading!

Thanks, Vanni!

 

[ClaraBug]

As mentioned earlier, DH and I did not sleep and about 4am, I turned on the TV. Well this woke Miss Emma. Th conversation went like this:

Em: "Mommy?"

Me: hmmm?

Em: "I'm wet"

Me: "Huh?!"

Em: "My bed is wet."

Me: "cr@p"

So I get up and check her bed and pj's, sure enough, she had an accident. This is rare for the both my girls. My only thought was that she swallowed a good amount of pool water.

I start to run the bath water to wash her up and here comes my little pixie, rubbin' her eyes.

Meri: "Mommy, are we goin' to Disney?"
Me: "Yes ma'am!"
Meri: "Today?!"
Me: "Yeppers"
Meri: "Yaaay"

Please remember this is 4:30 am! Meri wants a bath too. So here I am bathing my kids a 4:30am and they only had a bath at 7pm the previous night. I will admit, I have water babies. They even love to play in the sink while I am doing dishes. I dry the kids and Scott gets them dressed. I finally get into the shower around 5am and Scott jumps in while I am drying off.

Is Everyone finally dressed? Good, its time to lather the sunblock. We are a pale family, we don't tan very well. So I know that the Florida sun will be hard on us if we aren't careful.

It wasn't 6am yet and we were ready to go, only problem....shuttle didn't start until 7am, and we were scheduled for that 7am shuttle to the airport.
What were we going to do for an hour. Well, first I put the Disney Express tags on our luggage. I had EVERYTHING in a Disney binder, everything mailed to me, every receipt, you name it, I had it in there for this vacation! So I took out the Disney Express Luggage tags and Scott and I helped the girls put the tags on. The excitment and anxiety were starting to build.

Side story:
I have a bad anxiety problem. I have had it ever since I was about 10 years old. I take a daily maintainance prescription to be "normal" but sometimes a little sumpin' extra is needed. Flying, to me, requires something extra to keep from having a full blown anxiety attack.

I start feeling like the anxiety is starting to get away from me so I take half of the happy pill and we head down to the lobby for a yummy breakfast, which was free!!! It was not a full buffet but it sure wasn't bagels and doughnuts. The girls had cereal and DH had a hot breakfast sandwich. I didn't have a thing because my anxiety would not let me.

We go outside and wait for the shuttle. Well the van is there but no driver.
DH goes back inside and checks at the desk and was given an attitude that the van DID NOT leave until 7 am Sharp!

Well, excuse me!

Please note that when he asked it was only a couple minutes to seven!

I refuse to start our very first family vacation to Disney this way. So I take a deep breath and smile. That's right, we are going to Disney TODAY!!

The driver finally comes out and starts loading up everyone's luggage. There was another couple besides us in the shuttle. Scott sat in the front seat, the nice Greman couple in the middle and the girls and I in the back seat.

Get this, the girls were so excited about riding in the van without carseats/boosters seat. Simple Minds........

On the road and we head to the airport, and the good part was the other couple were also flying JetBlue.
Yea, one stop.

If you have never seen Dulles International Airport, well, it looks like a great big hammock. Seriously!! It does! I get a kick out of that everytime we fly out of Dulles.
Anywhooo.....We do curbside check-in because the line inside was pretty long. I am not a big fan of check-in because I am afraid that they will put my luggage on the wrong plane! I know this can happen inside too but Curbside Check-in bothers me more.

One hurdle down, so we head to security headache: ). Meri refuses to walk and wants me to carry her. I get the feeling she is apprehensive about what is going on, so I oblige her. She also weighs a little end of nothing.

In line for security and I notice a pretty good size family with four teenagers in front of us! D'OH!!!! They all had some type of electrical device, a laptop and everyone had a cell phone. Double D'OH!! Our longest wait was because this dumb family had to go through several time because someone didn't get out their cell phone or Ipod!

C'mon people, its not like these rules were just put into place!!

Now, I had two bins with my family's stuff in it and we walked through with no problem. In fact, they let me carry Meri through because she refused to get down without shoes on. I don't blame her, that was one reason I wore sneakers and socks, so I, at least, had socks on. I know, I have issues!!

Once we had put ourselves back together and got as far away from "that" other family! I was afraid I would say something I would regret.

 

[angela3676]

Great report, keep it comin'.

 

[chiefdragon]

It is so much fun reading about your trip, please keep it coming.

 

[Tinker'n'Fun]

I feel for you, my husband has been tagged and we get stopped for the "special people" line everytime, and I have "LOTS" of Happy Pills on me?? You would think I would be the security problem not him..

Great start by the way.......

 

[ClaraBug]

Great report, keep it comin'.

Thanks!

It is so much fun reading about your trip, please keep it coming.

Thanks

I feel for you, my husband has been tagged and we get stopped for the "special people" line everytime, and I have "LOTS" of Happy Pills on me?? You would think I would be the security problem not him..

Great start by the way.......

Next year, we(as a family) are flying twice. Once to Disney in April and the second in Aug for family reunion. I can't wait... There should be a security line for A.) Large family and B.) Stupid People! Just my opinion!

Gotta Love me some "happy" pills!

THanks Tinker

 

[Marthonica]

Love the report so far! I myself tend towards the anxious side at times! I'm okay on a daily basis but I do indulge in happy pills for plane trips. And I'm here to say the flight is always much better that way

 

[ClaraBug]

Love the report so far! I myself tend towards the anxious side at times! I'm okay on a daily basis but I do indulge in happy pills for plane trips. And I'm here to say the flight is always much better that way

I know, Right!!

 

[Princesskeyblade]

I am subbing...

I can not wait to read more!

And I love that Dulles looks like a hammock, I flew into and out of there a couple of years ago and I loved that airport. It is much better than Logan!

 

[ClaraBug]

we had the great fortune of being able to walk to our terminal! So Scott in all his excitement does the Geico caveman airport commercial thing on the moving sidewalk.

Here is the commerical:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H02iwWCrXew

I could not get the camera fast enough to to take a picture of him doing this. He even had the people around us laughing. Yep, that's the man I married!

We settled down at the terminal and I realized we would be boarding in 30 min. I could still feel the anxiety building but it was mind over matter and I made myself call down. I felt like I had to go to the bathroom again (I just went when we reached our terminal.) The girls are excited and loved watching the planes come and go.

It was finally time to board and my stomach is doing flip-flops.
Because I booked our tickets super early, I guaranteed our seats at no extra charge! I didn't want to seperate the family, especially on the girls first plane ride! OVER THIS MOMMA'S DEAD ROTTING BODY!

Our seat were row 3 and 4, so basically we were up front, which meant, we boarded last!

Seated and buckled, finally! Meri is seating next to the window and the poor little pixie is so little that she can't see out the window. I have to make her stay seated. We are lined up at the end of the tarmac and we are next for take off. I have to stay calm for the girls. Scott has flown with me before and knows that the Happy pills saved his hand.

I don't know about you, but even though I have have some "issues", I love the take-off sensation.

See, I told you I have "issues"!

The other neat thing is that with JetBlue, They have TV's with satelitte in the back of each headrest. Well, one station is the "JetBlue" station. The flight attendants done really do the pre-flight drills. It is a video that you watch on the little TVs. A sign of the times, folks!
But while you are taking-off, that channel shows your acceleration and your altitude, along with a map of you location. That was absolutely neat! I lucked out and had an empty seat next to me, so I left that channel on the JetBLue channel and I watched Samantha Brown's European Travels on the little tv in front of me and Meri watched Spongebob. I don't remember what Scott watch and Emma surfed the channels, stopping occationally on Spongebob.

When they brought drinks and snacks around, Meri and I split a ginger ale and a bag of purple potato chips They were purple. They weren't that great but I was hungry. I also took the other half of that "happy" pill andabout 15mins late I had NO anxiety at all. I should have taken that d@mn thing sooner.

After that, it was a great flight. Here is a pix of my Meri coloring. She kept the shade closed b/c the sun was shining right on her and it was bright that morning.

Here is our plane before we boarded:

Here is the "Disney Binder" I put together:

And the Disney express tags with a "celebration" beverage :

 

[ClaraBug]

I am subbing...

I can not wait to read more!

And I love that Dulles looks like a hammock, I flew into and out of there a couple of years ago and I loved that airport. It is much better than Logan!

Thanks and welcome aboard!

 

[ClaraBug]

Dont cha love my brown shag carpet!

 

[Paparazzimama]

Loving the report!!! Everyone deserves a do-over! Keep it coming!

 

[Nee Nee and Biddy]

Enjoying your report! It is reminding me that I need to mentally prepare myself to fly in a few days! Thank goodness for "happy medicine". I come from a very anxious family so I understand.