Kevin75 and soon to be wife's almost trip

[kevin75]

ok, this story goes back a loooong way, so this will be written in installments.

first, let's take a trip back to 1991, when i was a sophmore in high school. i was in the band and it was time for our band trip to disney world. it was a great time for all....well a good time for me. see, back then (and still today), i was sort of a ride wimp. i've never really liked all of the exciting rides that everyone else likes and so during that trip, i had to sit there while everyone else rode space mountain a million times. we had to stay in groups so me being the odd guy out, my opinion lost. a good trip, but i didn't get to see the hall of presidents which i really wanted to.

so fast forward 10 years and i am a band director and we are taking our band to disney world in the spring of 2002. this being the fall after 9/11, none of the parents feel secure in letting their kids fly so we end up being on a bus for 22 hours from texas. and the trip is only 5 days. plus when we were there we only visited 2 parks, and this being a trip for kids, once again, lots of tower of terror, but no hall of presidents.

so FF again to 2006. i had recently recieved some money from my grandparents and i decided that i would take a trip. where? why disney of course! this time, i decided that since i had some money that i was going to take a great trip and see what I wanted to see without having to deal with what everyone else wants to. so of course, i will be seeing the hall of presidents.

i had started planning my trip to go in may 2007, after my semester of teaching was done. originally i had planned to be going by myself. however, a nice wrinkly entered the picture. i started going out with my girlfriend and while still in the planning stages, she joined in and started saving her pennies to join me in the happiest place on earth in may 2007.

FF again, to early january 2007. i get an email from disney with the infamous 40% code, which is great. i call up the girlfriend and we talk about the dates offered and the only one that works with both of our school schedules is one in december, so we agree to change it to that. however that means 6 more months of waiting. but it was such an interesting 6 months.

in that 6 months, we got engaged and decided that we would make our december trip a honeymoon. she loves christmas and so it will be lots of fun. so we had to plan a wedding as well as the trip. we will be married in 39 days and leave for florida in 45. woo hoo!

 

[Avivasmom]

How exciting...congrats..

It will be really romantic since decorated for the holidays..the parks and hotels are beautiful.

Where are you staying and eating?

Make sure you get the groom and bride's ears to wear.

 

[kevin75]

thanks. we are staying at POFQ and eating at Le Cellier, and a couple of other places. we aren't on the dining plan and are only eating 3 (i think) table service meals. the rest we will either CS it or order from a restauraunt.

the ears and buttons are definitely a must.

 

[Avivasmom]

You will love POFQ..it is smaller then the other hotels..really pretty grounds..can walk along the river or even take a horse and carriage ride.

Take to boat to and from DTD.

We are staying there again January.

 

[kevin75]

so now it's my actual wife and i making the trip. we had our wedding on saturday and it went great! so far so good and we are having a blast. now we are just going over the final things that we need to take care of before we leave on friday. woo hoo!

 

[kevin75]

we are taking an afternoon break from epcot right now and things have gone great so far, except for the luggage on arrival but there will be more about that later. so far so good.

 

[kevin75]

ok, i know that this TR is pretty late, but here goes anyway.

PRETRIP and the trip down:

my wife and i went on our honeymoon during december and it couldn't have gone any smoother, much in part thanks to all of the great information found here. we had been planning a trip in may 07 but it got put off and it turned into a honeymoon instead. woo hoo! my fiancee just finished up the coursework for her 1st masters degree and still has to write her thesis but will be moved back home with me now.

beforehand, i had done mucho planning and i was having a blast figuring out where we would go on what day, etc. i printed out the park recommendation charts from TGM and took some other stuff, but mainly i looked at the park recommendations and based our days off of those, with a couple of changes. we had originally aimed to go to each park for 2 days with an off day in the middle to rest. we were aiming to also take a break in the middle of each day to go back to the hotel and rest so we wouldn't get worn out.

we stayed at port orleans french quarter and it was great....except for the fact that we thought the bed was a bit small. because we had changed the reservation from what it originally was, there weren't any king beds left, so we made due with the smaller ones. they were a bit cramped, but overall it was still okay.

our flight got into orlando from dallas about 10pm and we found a very nice lady who pointed us in the direction of the magical express. they checked us in very quickly and put us on a bus, where we had to wait 15-20 minutes before leaving but it was all right because we were almost to disney! just sitting on the bus was cool! we got to the hotel and it was so neat to pull up to the front, especially at night. the minute we got off of the bus, my new wife pulled out our new camera and started taking pictures. we checked in and went to our room (3309), which was in a very convenient spot as it was very close to the food court and facing the other side of the pool. we decided to wait for our luggage, but this was one of very few bad things. our luggage didn't get in until 2am and we hadn't packed an overnight bag on the plane so we waited.....and waited.....and waited. however, the bags finally came, we got ready for bed, and quickly went to sleep, anxious to get up in the morning to get to AK.

 

[kevin75]

Saturday Dec. 15, 2007

Day 2- Animal Kingdom…We got up about 7am so that we could be at AK by rope drop. It was tough because of the late night but we got there okay. We made a quick trip by the concierge desk to get out tickets put onto our room keys. We got to the bus stop right as the bus was pulling out so we didn’t have to wait. After that, it only took about 15 minutes to get to the park. Once we got there, we had to go through the security checkpoint to get the bag checked and then it was into the park. Neither of us had ever been to AK before so this would be a new experience. We got to the front of the park and after about 10 minutes of waiting, they had a little presentation with Minnie, Goofy, Pluto and Mickey. Then when the rope dropped, the CM's led us to Asia, and Expedition Everest.

I was very nervous going onto the ride because i really don't like big roller coasters. big thunder mountain at MK i can handle, but really big ones usually don't agree with me. Being first into the parks, we zipped through lines and as we sped through, i was getting more and more nervous. (my wife didn’t think I was serious). however, i did okay on it and I was fine until the BIG drop. That was really bad. if it would've been something i could prepare for, i think i would've been better but that last drop just sneaks up on you. She, of course, LOVED the ride. I liked the atmosphere of the ride and I thought it was well done for roller coaster fans, but I am not one of them. Anyway, she got off of it and immediately wanted to go back on, to which I said, NO! We walked over to the other side of the lake and went to Dinosaur, which was much easier on my system, although very LOUD! Still a pretty neat ride, all in one vehicle. Then we were going back to EE so the wife could ride again via Fastpass, but stopped to see the Finding Nemo stage show. It used puppets like they have in the Lion King broadway show, which I think are very cool. It was equal parts lame and really cool at the same time. There were some very cool props though and the music wasn't too bad. After that, we went back across to EE, where I sat on a rock while my lovely wife defied death itself to ride the roller coaster.

Then, we started to walk across to go on the Safari ride. There was a really great shot behind the Tree of Life where we found a Photopass person to take our picture.

**we had wondered whether or not photopass was a good thing to get but we went ahead and preordered it and let me say, it's well worth the money!

There were photographers everywhere we went today and it seems that the money that we spent on that will pay off. We got LOTS of pictures taken. After we went to get our FP’s for the Safari ride, we stopped to eat lunch. We shared a hamburger which wasn’t too bad. After that, we went and saw the ‘It’s tough to be a bug” show, with Flik. It was cool and in 3D,. Then we went back to the safari ride and rode it. There were lots of animals of various sorts . After that, we decided that our feet were tired so we came home.

After we rested for awhile, we decided to head over to DTD, so we went down to the river and got on the boat that took us down there. Once again, disney transportation comes through. It only took about 20 minutes which wasn’t too bad. MUCH better than driving. We went over to Rainforest Café but they said it would be an hour and a half wait! On our way out the door, a woman said that we could go to the bar immediately, and so we did and got served pretty quickly. We had the appetizer plate which was okay but not great-definitely overpriced. After that we just walked around for a bit and looked around. Lots of shops to spend money in but we just looked. Took the boat back and relaxed some and then went to sleep. Whew!