Last Minute Trip: Twenty-something Couple Playing Hookie in WDW...Update: Chapter 1

[smartestnumber5]

The Details:

Hotel: Pop Century, 50s area
Number of Nights: 7
Travelers: 2
Number of previous visits to WDW: Me--5, all but 1 during childhood/teenhood, GF--1, our last trip, but had childhood trips to DL
Level of planning put into trip (on a 1 to 10 scale, 1 being no planning): 3.5
Stress level before trip (on a 1 to 10 scale, 1 being no stress): 7
Tickets: APs
Dining Discount: DDE
Average temperature at home during trip: high 20s
Average temperature in WDW during trip: high 60s
Favorite Park: Epcot
Favorite Disney Character: Alice in Wonderland
Favorite Restaurant: California Grill


Characters:

Me: 24, Disney lover since my teens. Grad student, doing pre-dissertation/dissertation work with no classes or teaching this year. In other words, plenty of time to go to Disney World! Also, easily stressed--especially when I haven't planned enough and have last minute problems, feeling guilty about taking off for a week to WDW instead of doing work. Vegetarian.

Girlfriend (GF): 30 (Okay, yes I lied in the title of this thread when I said "twenty-something couple." But "twenty-and-thirty-something couple" just doesn't have the same ring to it.) Recent convert to Disney appreciation given our first trip together this summer. Getting a 2nd bachelors degree. Had to miss a few classes for our trip, but it was the 2nd week of class so she's still caught up. Generally kind of anxious, but no worries about lack of planning or last minuteness. Omnivore.

Alice: -3 to -5, our future, not-yet-conceived child-to-be who we hope will arrive in 3 to 5 years. She's really just a minor character (given her lack of existence and all), but we associate her with Alice in Wonderland so she's relevant--kind of. Omnivore/Vegetarian

Kitty: 3, Turkish Van cat. Another minor character, but at least this one exists. A little overweight, but working on it. A total scaredy-cat, but also insistent about getting his way--usually he insists by way of loud screaming. Mostly carnivore, though he does love doritos, yogurt, milk, cheese, and plastic.

Emmett: 8 months, long-haired domestic cat. Yet a third minor character. We like to call him "the little rat" because he's always accidentally getting into some kind of trouble. Loves to stick his butt up in the air to be pet on his back and hips. Mostly carnivore.

 

[smartestnumber5]

A few weeks before Christmas GF noticed that Expedia was having a deal where if you booked anything by Jan 1, within 30 days you got a coupon for $200 off a 5 night hotel stay w/ flight. GF had mentioned the Expedia deal casually, but, of course, my first thought was, “hey, what if we did a cheap trip to Disney?” An August trip during free dining (hopefully) was already in the plans, so I thought we could just get AP passes, which would save money on tickets and stay at the cheapest hotel possible. I figured out that if we stayed the minimum amount at the cheapest hotel Expedia offers (like $34 a night) with the discount it would only be a few hundred dollars for two flights plus hotel. Since AP passes aren’t that much more expensive than 10 day tickets and we could just eat cheaply, it ended up being only another $600 more than the August trip would cost for two trips. I thought, “hey, why not?” and told GF about it.

At that point, we were excited, but we still weren’t sure if we should do it or not. First of all, even though it was going to be very inexpensive, the August trip was going to be an extravagance in itself. GF is currently in school full-time getting a 2nd bachelors, so she doesn’t have any income coming in during the school year. And I’m trying to put away some money for a future wedding and then eventually a house and a baby—but those things are far away, and a Disney trip is NOW! Secondly, the only timing for the trip that would really work was in the 2nd or 3rd week of January. But that would be about 2 weeks into our winter semesters, which would mean GF missing courses and me taking a week off from my pre-dissertation research and writing. Decisions, decisions . We were already planning to stay one night at a hotel during the trip back from my family’s over Christmas, so we thought “why not book the hotel and then go from there?” which is what we did.

During those couple weeks before Christmas I did some research about various hotels and we figured out that it could be pretty difficult to do Disney the way we do while staying outside. We like to do things in small bursts with plenty of resting periods back at the hotel. We usually don’t get out of the hotel til mid-morning and we usually have pretty late dinners. That all works fine while staying inside WDW, but if we stayed offsite we’d have to arrange our schedule around the shuttles, which ran (at most) twice in the morning and twice at night. That meant we’d really need to rent a car—which would add $200 on the trip (since I’m 24, it costs me almost twice as much as anyone over 25). Until this point I hadn’t thought about booking a Disney hotel though Expedia, but the thought suddenly occurred to me! I calculated that once we included rental car and transporation to/from airport, staying at Pop was only $150 more than staying off-site. It was a no-brainer—let’s stay at Pop! Woo hoo!

Somehow during these few weeks our dining plans also evolved for the better. Originally we planned to eat cheaply—mostly CS, TS only at the most inexpensive restaurants for breakfast or lunch as opposed to dinner, sharing entrees, not ordering anything but water for drinks. GF even suggested we start looking at what’s on the kids’ menus. Since I’m a vegetarian pretty much the only things on the kid’s menus I can eat are uncrustables and mac n cheese. This is when is started getting nervous—I felt the need to announce, “Honey, I don’t want to spend our trip eating pb&j and drinking only water!” GF replied that she had meant the kids’ menus as an option more for her than for me, but she relented a bit to my need for good dining experiences. She left all the dining up to me and slowly I started to squeeze in more and more TS meals at more and more expensive restaurants. I also started assuming that we’d be staying 6 nights instead of 5—hey, what’s one more night right?

Ah, how a supposedly minimalist trip evolves into an extravagant one!

More to Come--Pre-Trip Problems: a stomach virus, Expedia problems, APs MIA, and the ME

 

[smartestnumber5]

Fast forward to Christmas . We still hadn’t booked anything, because we needed to wait until the Expedia coupon was delivered electronically, and that could take up to 30 days after the booking of the hotel. I figured it would at least take until after we stayed at the hotel we had booked for Dec 28th after spending Christmas with my family.

We arrived at my parents (an 8.5 hour drive ) to find a stomach virus passing through the entire family. I was sure that we would end up getting it just in time to drive back home. And I was right! On 12/28 we were going to leave in the afternoon and just drive 2 hours away and stay at the hotel. But that morning I woke up and my stomach felt rumbly all day long. By around noon I was pretty sure something was wrong, and we had to decide what we should do about driving. Should we stay an extra day at my parents? But what if we did that and I was still sick the next day or GF got it the next day? Then what? We’d end up being stuck there for days (and we had been looking forward to getting home). Should we go to the hotel as planned? Except, the hotel we booked was actually a detour from the main route home. So if we went there and I got sick, the next day we’d still have an 8 ½ hour drive to do—so going to the hotel would actually make us have to drive more. (That was pretty stupid of us not to figure this out ahead of time.)

We decided to just skip the hotel and try to drive home that night and hope for the best. For the first hour I was fine. I hadn’t eaten since the morning it was hitting 3 pm, so I had a soda. This wasn’t the smartest thing given my burping issues (caused by acid reflux), but soda is supposed to be go for stomach virus right? After I finished the soda my tummy felt rumbly again, but I was also burping…so I couldn’t tell if it was sickness I was feeling or just acid reflux. Then suddenly I felt amazingly tired as well. I thought, “We’re in the middle of nowhere and I’m definitely sick. This is so not good.”

I asked GF to drive and she began to panic. She has a phobia of seeing or hearing other people throw up, and even though I’ve had a stomach virus around her before (and ended up in the ER because of it), she was still nervous. She kept asking, “If you’re going to puke you’ll have some warning, right? You’ll be able to tell me so we can pull over?” I really had no idea if I’d have warning, but I figured I’d just lie to her so she kept driving. I knew if I told her “Maybe I’ll have warning and maybe not, how am I supposed to know?” she’d just pull over and we’d sit there for hours. We drove another 20 minutes while GF tried to convince me it was okay and I was going to be fine when I decided that it was definitely sickness—at that moment I was so tired all I wanted was to curl up in a comfy bed. So I told her to pull off the highway. We were in the mountains and there weren’t many towns around, but I recognized the name of the town we were just entering as one with a university—I figured that would mean there were some hotels. We had a choice between a Hampton inn and some local motel. I chose the Hampton even though I knew it would be more expensive than we wanted. I figured if I was going to be sick in a hotel room, I wanted a really nice hotel room and comfy bed.

We went in with just a few minutes to spare before I got sick. Lucky we got there in time. Gf managed to get a 10 discount on the room and unloaded some of the necessities while I beelined it to the bathroom. I actually felt much better after puking—still horribly tired and in some stomach pain, but no longer nauseoius and burping. I had a fever all that night and then around 7 am gf woke me up to tell me that she was feeling some stomach pain and thought maybe we’d better start driving—6 ½ hours to go. Luckily GF never did get the virus. We listened to Harry Potter for the rest of the drive and made it back by early afternoon. By that time I no longer had a fever, but a headache had set in. I had that headache for at least another 2 days.

Through all of this ordeal there was the issue of what to do with the Expedia booked hotel which we had decided not to go to when I started feeling sick. We couldn’t cancel it, because we needed to get the $200 coupon from Expedia for the Disney trip. But should we call the hotel and say we weren’t coming, but we needed them to charge us as if we did come? Or should we just not go and they would automatically charge us? Would we not count as having fulfilled the requirements for Expedia if we didn’t go? We debated these questions on the first hour of the drive before I got sick, but it turned out that in the area we were in when we pulled off the highway I didn’t get any cell phone reception. So there was no way to call and talk to them. We figured they’d charge us anyway and it would take care of itself. Of course, we thought it was pretty ironic that we were now paying for two different hotels for the same night and getting no enjoyment out of either!

The few days after we got back I called Expedia 3 or 4 times. Every time their system was down, so they couldn’t do anything for me. I just wanted to make sure we were going to get our coupon since my credit card hadn’t been charged for the hotel at that point. Eventually I did see a charge show up, so I figured it was all fine—we’d get the coupon by 30 days from the booking date, which would be about Jan 5th. Just a few more days to wait (or so I thought)…

 

[kristinanderic]

sounds good, keep going!

 

[burly]

ok i'm hooked...

 

[pumba]

I always stress if someone around me has the stomach virus.....like oh no.......we are going to Disney and I dont care.......
Glad that you are all feeling better

 

[smartestnumber5]

Thanks for the encouragement everyone. I was getting worried no one would read.

More shortly...

 

[soupy11]

Great tr so far, keep it coming!

 

[smartestnumber5]

had to repost

 

[smartestnumber5]

So it's around New Years and the Expedia coupon is supposed to arrive by Jan 5th. Needless to say, I checked my Expedia account everyday at least a dozen times a day. Were they really going to take all 30 days to deliver the coupon? I mean, we already got charged for the hotel stay, so what are they waiting for? And they had already delivered two other coupons (which I didn't even know I was getting).

I was pretty ancy, especially since as the days went on we were getting close to being only 2 weeks away from the trip. I was afraid that flight prices would suddenly jump hideously as we got closer. Plus, everyday I watched more and more flights with good times get fully booked on Expedia. All that was left was flights with layovers and flights that arrived at midnight and left at 8am. That would mean we'd miss the whole first and last day of our vacation

So I started trying to figure out out how much things would cost if we didn't use the Expedia discount so we could just book now and buy our own flights. I was surprised to find that getting the hotel at an AP discount ($59/night x 6 nights = $354) was almost exactly the same price as using the Expedia discount (about $92/night minus $200 = $352). That sounded pretty good to me--why wait for Expedia? That meant we could pick our flights on our own instead of being limited to what Expedia was offering and that night I found nonstop NWA flights for $75 each roundtrip! GF and I decided, let's do it!!

So on Jan 4th I booked it all. (I sure am glad I did, because currently the Expedia coupon has still not shown up. I don't know if there was a problem in their system, or if they didn't count not showing up at the hotel as fulling the requirements for the coupon, or what.) The Disney CM I talked to when I booked didn’t seem that knowledgeable about things. I first asked her to check for avilability at Pop for rooms with the AP discount. She said there were some available. I had intended to just make a reservation with the AP discount over the phone and then buy the AP passes over the internet. I told her I wanted to do this, but she said I couldn't; she said I needed to buy the AP first. Now I was pretty sure that according to various folks on the disboards, one definitely can make a reservation at the AP rate without yet having purchased the pass. But, since I needed to buy the pass anyway, I didn't mind doing that first. I asked her how best to buy the pass and she said either online or through her. I said, “Okay, can I buy it through you right now and then right after book a room with an AP discount?” Again, I knew the answer was yes, but she said “I don’t think so, but let me check.” A few minutes later she came back and said I could do that and asked what order I wanted to do things in. I said, “well, can I get the hotel w/ the discount first and buy the pass second?” She said no. I thought, “Well I’m only doing two things. If I can’t do them in that order, than there is only one other order I can do them in. So why are you asking what order I want to do them in?” So we did the whole shebang--bought the pass first and booked the hotel second. Unlike the last time I booked, she didn't tell me a lot of information about what is included with my reservation or what I'll be getting in the mail or anything. I thought nothing of it, since we were just at Disney and I knew all I had to know . (or so I thought!?!)

So we're going to Disney World. And in just 2 weeks. It'll be smooth sailing from here....yeah right!

 

[smartestnumber5]

In the last few days before we left we were both pretty stressed out. I was desperately trying to finish a paper which will be part of my dossier for applying for candidacy in my PhD program. It was getting up to 50 pages and I really just needed to turn in a rough draft before we left. GF was trying to get ahead on her work since she’d be missing classes. Plus, we had to clean up the house and pack and do all the pre-trip errands. GF and I almost never fight and we try our best not to take our stress or anger out on one another (sometimes we fail and often that always leads to me crying); but we were doing a good amount of being short with one another in the days before the trip. It doesn't really put one in an excited mood to take a vacation together.

In addition to the usual stress of going away in the middle of the school, we also had some extra trip stress because of the relative lack of planning involved in this trip. A few days before we were scheduled to leave I started to get really worried that the AP passes hadn't come yet. I couldn’t figure out why other than that they got lost in the mail. The CM I talked to just said to bring the confirmation number with us on the trip and that would be all we needed. That was mostly fine, except I wanted to order the DDE card and needed the vouchers for that. Plus, I kind of wanted to see the discounts listed on the passholder website, which I couldn’t access w/out the vouchers. Ugh.

By the night before we were leaving both of us agreed that we’d never do a last minute trip during school again. It was just too stressful and I started feeling really guilty that I shouldn’t have encouraged GF to miss classes and that I shouldn’t be going on vacation during the semester (even though I don’t actually have any classes or teaching responsibilities). In the midst of all this, while looking at our suitcases it suddenly occurred to me that we didn’t have any tags from the Magical Express. Hmm, how strange I thought. Then I realized, "Wait, I haven’t received anything about the ME. And I haven’t given them any flight info either. They don’t know we want the ME!" How did that happen?! I realized the CM I booked with never mentioned the ME and I just assumed it would automatically happen. Don't they usually offer the ME or ask for flight info right as they book the room? Maybe not when it's a room only or an AP discounted room?

AHHHH! This was about 24 hours before our arrival in Orlando. I freaked out of course. GF tried to get me to calm down. She grabbed my hands and asked in a soothing voice, "Honey, what is Disney World?" "A theme park?" I said skeptically. She tried again: "And what is it known as?" Ah, I got it this time: "Oh! The happiest place on earth." She replied, "That's right. Don't worry--they're going to make it okay. They'll add us to the ME--we're not going to be stuck at the airport. And of course, GF was right; I called Disney and they easily added me to the ME. They told me since I didn't have tags we'd just have to take our luggage receipts to the ME desk so they could pick up our bags in Orlando. Woo--crisis averted!

The day of our departure GF had some classes and I spent that time editing and proofreading my paper. I sent it off after she got home and it was time for errands. Turned out we had to leave the house pretty cluttered and dirty because we just didn’t have time (boy was that unfun to come home from). On our list of errands was 1) dropping a movie off at blockbuster, 2) buying GF new crocs, 3) stopping at bank to deposit a check, 4) pick up new equibment for GF's sleep apea mask, 5) dropping off a paper to my department, 6) picking up a book at the library, 7) picking up sandwiches for dinner before the airport. And after all that, we had to finish packing and take our kitties and all of their stuff over to a friend's who'd be watching them for us.

Before we left GF needed to find the check mentioned in #3. Except, when she started looking, she couldn't find it. So we had to tear the living room apart hours before leaving to try to find the check. Unfortunately it was no where to be found. It was a check from GF's grandfather for Christmas for a substantial amount (every year he sheds some of his substantial amount of money for tax purposes); this grandfather is a little bit out of it, so when she couldn't find the check we started to worry that he might refuse to write another check or at least give her parents a hard time about doing so So we kept looking and eventually just had to accept that the check must have been thrown out. Well that at least meant we didn't have to stop at the bank.

So off we went on our errands. On the way I stopped by the office of our apartment complex and it turned out that our AP passes were in a fed-ex envelope that was sitting there waiting for us--they'd been there for a week! Of course, we never got a note saying we had a package, so good thing I decided to check. Our errands went smoothly until we got to number 4. GF had ordered a new nose part for her mask about 10 days earlier and they were supposed to send it to her, but she hadn't received it. The machine starts to lose its effectiveness (the pressure of the air is lowered I believe) when the parts get too old, and since we were going to Disney she was going to need all the effectiveness she could get! So we stopped to just get the part in person. But they told us they couldn't give her the part, because it had already been sent out twice. The first time it was returned saying the address (our correct address) was incomplete . They sent it out a second time (with the same exact address), and according to the delivery company it had been delivered the day before and someone named "Fisher" signed for it. Who the heck is Fisher, we thought. And where is the mask part? We figured that our apartment complex office must have received it so we decided to finish our errands and then go back to the office to pick it up. When we got to the office, though, there was no package. The office workers said that no one there is named Fisher. So back to the medical equipment company we went and told them that apparently some person named Fisher had stolen GF's nose part--lots of use for that! This time they were able to give her the part thank goodness. And after that we finally were done with our errands. As we walked up to our building, we found a fed-ex note on the door telling us there was a package for GF waiting at the office and it was from the medical equipment company. At this point we so confused. What happened to Fisher who supposedly received the package yesterday? Did the delivery company just lie to the medical equipment person? Did they somehow mess up the tracking number when they looked it up? Whatever, at this point GF and I were just hours away from leaving for Disney World. Such mysteries would just have to wait til we got home.

 

[kristinanderic]

Did you ever find the check?

I think you need to find a new place to live...apparently your apartment complex office doesn't really care about your mail!

 

[smartestnumber5]

Did you ever find the check?

I think you need to find a new place to live...apparently your apartment complex office doesn't really care about your mail!

Nope never found the check. It probably got in with a stack of old papers or something and we threw it out.

Yeah our apartment complex really is horrible about the mail. We've only been here 5 months so this was the first time I had a package end up in the office. When I went in to see if there was one for me they just had various piles of boxes in a certain spot and I was told to go ahead and look through them. Then when I found the envelope that was mine I asked the woman working whether she needed to record me picking it up. She said, "Nope, I'm recording you with my eyes. That's all I need." Except she had no idea what my name was or what the name on the envelope was! She could have recorded me with her eyes as I took 10 boxes that weren't mine

Luckily most of the packages that get delivered get left outside our door. That's probably safer than in the office!

 

[smartestnumber5]

Finally after a day full of stress it was time to leave for the airport. We had just dropped off the cats at a friends house and tried to sooth the big guy a bit (he's very anxious and gets easily freaked out when we take him out of the house) and had some sandwiches. We left for the airport a bit after 7pm; our flight was scheduled for about 9:40 pm. We arrived at the gate and GF went off to find coffee while I called my mom. (She had asked for the flight info earlier that day but I hadn't had a chance to email it to her. She gets worried that our planes will crash so likes to be able to check online and see that they landed.) She was playing on the computer and looked up the flight info as I was telling her the numbers and saw that it said our flight was delayed until 10pm. Indeed, that's what the monitor said as well. Guess we should pay more attention to those things.

Turned out that the flight left almost on time anyway. GF and I were lucky enough to get a row of 3 seats all to ourselves, so we got to stretch out. Less than a half hour into the flight both of us started to feel a bit hungry. I should have figured as much since we'd eaten just sandwiches (and I only ate half of one) for dinner 4 hours before. Unfortunately, I had not packed the snacks in the carry on. I had packed thinking we'd be eating while at the airport so we wouldn't be hungry while on the flight. Oops. We ended up buying one of the snack boxes for $5 which included a pack of cashew and raisin mix (with the worst raisins ever), a pack of 100 calorie chips ahoy (which were amazingly thin wafers), a pack of goldfish, and two kinds of processed cheese with crackers. GF also decided to get creative with her drink. She asked for bloody mary mix and a glass of seltzer water. Umm, okay this just reminded me too much of that seen in "When Harry Met Sally." Luckily the snack box was enough to keep us satisfied. Unfortunately, when we paid for it I realized that I had forgotten to pick up some 20s that were on our end table--which meant that the only cash we had with us was about $12, $5 of which we'd just spent on the snack box. GF told me not to worry because we could just get more from an ATM to which I replied, "Actually, I didn't bring the ATM card...I figured, why would we need to be getting cash?" Oops! Thank goodness I did bring the credit cards.

We arrived on time and headed over to the Disney Welcome Desk. On the way we saw someone holding a Magical Express sign and stopped to ask her the way (which was pretty helpful). At the desk we gave them our luggage receipts and they entered the info into their system and then had us describe the colors of the bags and pick out a picture which showed the design. Ours were, of course, the most common black ones that you can't tell apart from anyone else's bags. Then they gave us a voucher and sent us on our way.

We got right on a (mostly empty) bus and three seconds later the driver was ready to leave. He announced that we'd be making 5 stops: the 3 All Stars, CSR, and Pop. I was hoping things would not go in that order, but alas they did. On the drive the little ME movie was playing. We'd hadn't seen it last time so I was a little excited, but mostly exhausted by this point in the day. GF, however, was getting her 2nd wind and was very talkative while I just kind of slumped over against the window. At this point, I realized that I still wasn't feeling all that excited about the trip. I didn't think that was a good sign. I was on the ME bus for goodness sakes--when was I gonna feel it?

Though the four stops in front of ours made our bus ride at least 20 minutes longer, we were happy we got to see a little bit of each of these resorts (none of which we'd been to before). On the way we debated about the moderate resorts and their bus systems--the way that there are numerous stops throughout the resort. We'd been to POR last trip and there was no air conditioning on the bus when we left--it was horrible stoping 4 times within the resort. After 10 minutes on the bus I said to GF, "Oh God. It's been 10 minutes and we haven't left POR yet." Given that, I'm not sure if we'd want to go to a moderate over Pop where the buses only have one stop.

Finally we arrived at Pop. It looked pretty deserted--it was after 1 am after all. GF had a quick cigarette while I went to check in. There was a woman and a small child at the desk talking to the only person behind the desk, so I figured it'd be a quick check in and then I could go collapse in bed! I noticed after a minute or so, however, that the woman in front of me seemed unhappy. She seemed to be talking through gritted teeth in a low "I'm trying to keep my cool type of voice." There seemed to be some conflict about the rooms her party was assigned to. Eventually two more people came out and tried to help with the situation. One of those people eventually called GF and I over to check in. Just as he was beginning to check us in the woman and child left the desk. The CM who had been helping them promptly began to tear up and the other CM tried to comfort her. GF and I are nosy of course so we were quite ready to take sides (in our minds of course) regarding what was going on (especially when somebody ends up crying). Unfortunately, with all the low talking, we couldn't quite tell (serves us right , aren't we horrible? ), but we came away from this one thinking it might have been a no-win situation. It sounded as if the woman and her family had tried to reserve a block of rooms at Pop and they had not been given the rooms they thought they were getting (i.e. rooms that were a combination of adjoining and connected). Complicating this was that the at least one of the travelers in her party seemed to have special needs, so another office was involved in making promises that couldn't be kept. So we could certainly understand her being upset and we also felt bad for the CM who ended up crying. No clear bad guy in this one.

I should have asked right away if any king bed rooms were available, but it didn't occur to me and before I knew it the CM had produced our room cards. I figured, "Eh, what does it matter. I just need somewhere to sleep." And we were off. We had requested the 50s and a smoking room and we were in the same building as last trip, same floor, just 8 or so rooms down the hall. We had the same view of the pool as last trip:

It was almost 2 am so it was off to sleep for us.

 

[kristinanderic]

No cash? AHHHH I think I would go crazy. We usually use all credit cards too, but I like having the cash available for small purchases, sodas, and tips.

 

[mickeymum]

More Please

 

[smartestnumber5]

After having gone to sleep so late we needed some extra sleep in the morning so we set the alarm for 9:30 am. We got up, did our morning routine, and headed over to Everything Pop for breakfast. We brought packages of oatmeal and cereal and planned to use the microwave in Everything Pop and use the refillable mug to get milk for the cereal. Unfortunately milk is not one of the drinks available at for the mugs so we had to buy it. GF got lazy and tried to make her oatmeal with just hot water (no microwaving) and she ended up with uncooked oatmeal soup. So much for our big breakfast ideas! We sat for awhile so gf could drink some coffee we headed out. She had big coffee problems this trip because she needs a few cups of coffee per day, but she could hardly get the Nescafe down. While she drank, I pondered why I was still not feeling excited. What was wrong with me? What if my Disney excitement had run out?

We hopped on a bus to Epcot and once there headed right over to Guest Relations where we picked up our AP passes and DDE card. The CM asked for our IDs and luckily I noticed that she was typing in our addresses as listed on our licenses. Both of these addresses are wrong (we've both moved a lot in the past few years). It scared me a little, because I wondered how many other times someone has taken my address info off of my license and got it wrong. We gave her the correct information and she said the mistmatch of the address associated with the AP and the address on our ID could be a problem if our pass ever stops working at the gate and they ask for ID. Guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

We headed on inside. Since I was holding the bag and GF didn't have one she went through the nice "no bag" entrance while I headed over to get in line with the masses to have my bag "checked." I say "checked" because of the amazing variance in what counts as "checking" for any given security person. Some insist that every zipper be opened. Others are happy to squeeze the bag a little. Most just want to peak inside the largest compartment of the bag. Of course, for all the checking I could have a machine gun in my pants and they'd never know, but whatever.

We hit Spaceship Earth right away since it is GF's favorite ride I can't say I enjoyed it as much as usual because I just kept obsessing about why I wasn't excited yet. Once I stopped obsessing I also realized I was really tired. In the part of the ride where you go down at a steep angle and you just fall against the seat behind you--boy I needed a nap right then!

Next we headed over to Sunshine Seasons and picked up a fast pass for Soarin. We figured we'd go on Living with the Land, which was right there, while we waited. This ride had been closed last trip and GF was excited to go on it. She liked it and said she'd be very interested in going on the Behind the Seeds tour, because they definitely seemed to be pushing genetically modified food (you know, the 9 lb lemons) and she was skeptical of that.

After Living with the Land, we hit The Living Seas. We had not hit this pavillion on our last trip, and the last time I'd been to it, it's name was still just "The Living Seas"...not "The Seas with Nemo" or whatever. We headed in and GF and I were almost run over by a man pushing a stroller at a crazy speed behind us. Turned out half way through the queue he had to turn around and take the stroller back out as they weren't allowed in the building. (Strange since a CM was standing at the entrance to the building--you'd think she would have seen them with the stroller and told them it wasn't allowed.) I thought the Pavillion would be the same as it was before--that silly pretend elevator to the acquarium observation area--except for the Crush thing. But instead I was surprised to find the queue brought us to a ride--a ride which involved clam shell cars.

I got kind of excited at this discovery. " A new ride " I thought. We got in our little clam and began to see various scenes from Finding Nemo appear on the walls as we rode by. GF knew that I had not seen the movie, so she tried to explain a little bit about the characters. Mostly, though, I didn't follow anything at all. Things seemed to make a little bit more sense to GF, but not much. Near the end of the clam ride came a strange part in which the clams all turned to look at the same wall in a very narrow passageway. The entire wall had a scene from Finding Nemo which involved a lot of movement of air bubbles. So all one could see was air bubbles moving about just a foot or two away. The movement of the bubbles and the inability of looking at anything else made me feel like our clam car was moving in the direction of the bubbles--moving down that is. I usually have a pretty good constitution for thrill rides, but this made me feel a little weird (in an unpleasant way) . I ended up looking down at the clam car instead of at the screen, but the scene just seemed to last forever. I felt like the car wasn't moving at all (other than going down) and then I thought we might be going back the way we came. Ugh.

Luckily the ride was over just after that bubble scene and we were dropped off in the area I remembered as the area with all the aquarium observation areas. GF agreed that the bubble scene was horrible and made her dizzy. And we both thought the whole ride was a huge thumbs down. Last time Imagination with Figment had been the biggest thumbs down, but I think Nemo probably surpassed that. At least Figment tried a little to tell a story, but the Nemo ride just seemed to be playing random scenes from the movie. GF and I were thinking that it seems maybe they're trying to make Epcot more little kid friendly. Over Christmas we were talking to my cousin who is planning a trip to Disney next year for her three kids: 13, 10, and 4. She was saying something about the various parks and mentioned that she wasn't sure they'd even go to Epcot, because she didn't think there'd be much there for her kids (especially the little one). I wonder if the Nemo thing is an attept to respond to this type of "Epcot is for adults" thinking?

As I looked around in what I thought would be the aquarium area, I saw much less aquarium than I remembered. In fact, there was only one area where I could spot any aquarium at all. Where did it go? I thought about looking around a bit, but GF noticed the entrance to Crush in front of us and we decided to hit that as the doors opened. We were one of the last folks inside, and by the time we were there most of the seats on the benches were taken. Someone a bunch more people entered after us and they all managed to find seats, but we were left standing. Oh well. We didn't mind. The Crush show was quite funny. We thought we'd like to catch it again to see how much of it is scripted and what's off the cuff. But we never did get back to it during the trip.

After Crush we had another 20 minutes til our FP and were pretty hungry, so we hit Sunshine Seasons for lunch. (See dining reviews for the nitty gritty! )

After lunch we used our FPs for Soarin. GF had her first encounter of the trip with children who bothered her. There was a family with a couple of kids behind us who seemed to keep bumping into her. Her strategy in these situations is to get in front of me so I act as a buffer between her and the children (I really think she's going to be a mom who's like Miranda on Sex and the City--she says something like "I don't like any children but my own.") When we were queued up for Soarin in the lines for seating we were no longer near the same family. GF explained that one of the children had been doing some grabbing of her butt She demonstrated on me, but I think she probably enjoyed being groped by a strange 7 year old less than enjoyed being groped by her

This time on Soarin we were at the very edge of the right most block of seats. GF was on the end. She said during the ride she had a lot of trouble focusing on the screen, as if she was at the wrong angle. She ended up feeling a bit dizzy again. Too bad because she enjoyed it so much last trip! We both thought that the ride would be better if they included more smells--maybe some ocean smell!

After Soarin we hit the closest smoking area and tried to decide what to do next. We had dinner at Ohana a little after 8 pm. It was currently about 2pm. Should we go back to the hotel and take a really long break, or should we go have more fun at another park? We thought since it was the first day we didn't really need a break, so we headed over to Magic Kingdom. When we got there a parade was happening, so we decided to jump on the train to avoid it. The train was stuck at the station for a few minutes for some reason, so we took some pictures.

We noticed an awful lot of characters standing around just inside the gates of MK. Guess the off season is the best time for characters because we didn't see nearly so many during our trip in August. Maybe they're out more since it was in the high 60s this trip compared to the 90s last trip. I don't know how they don't die in those heavy animal costumes.

We got off the train at Toontown and decided to see what characters were there. We were looking for Alice in Wonderland, but there was no indication she was there. I knew that she was at 1900 Park Fare when I'd been there for breakfast, and I thought perhaps that was the only place one could find her. We headed on out to Fantasyland and got in line for the Snow White ride. Last trip GF was very disappointed that we didn't get to do a bunch of the rides in Fantasyland. She found out this trip that she wasn't missing anything!

After Snow White it was time for a snack. GF wanted a dole whip so that took us over to Adventureland. By this time we were getting kind of tired. Why did we decide that we didn't need a break? That sure was a mistake. But by then it was too late to go back to Pop, so we'd have to just tough it out.

 

[smartestnumber5]

After our snack we headed over to the Hall of Presidents for a little rest. I didn't remember that there was a movie first and then a couple of speeches by the presidents. GF and I did some critiquing of the political messages of the movie afterwards and then headed on to the Haunted Mansion which had no wait at all. During the Hall of Presidents I had gotten a little bit of pain in my stomach and I felt it again on the way into the Haunted Mansion. I was fine during the ride though, but a bit distracted because I kept hoping the pain wouldn't develop into anything more. Unfortunately, just as we were leaving the ride it did

I suddenly needed a bathroom very quickly. I told GF she could just stay there but she said she'd come along. I asked her for the map and tried to check it quickly and then went in search of the bathroom. Except it wasn't where I thought it would be based on the map, so then I had to look at it again. Meanwhile, GF was about 5 steps behind me the whole time since I walk faster than her--especially in this kind of situation. She said, "Honey are you really that badly in need of a bathroom?" "YES" I said. She suggested maybe it was around the corner from where I looked and that I should run ahead. She was right thankfully. All I could think about was that during one of my trips as a teenager with my family my mom had gotten a stomach virus (or maybe food poisoning) and she was "going from both ends" in a bathroom in Epcot. Luckily my situation was much less dire. I actually felt better pretty quickly once I had access to the bathroom. The pain just went away. I came out and GF was concerned. I told her I felt better. Amongst our friends, we have a name for this type of bathroom situation--SSS. The first S stands for "Sudden" and the last S for "Syndrome. I think you get the picture GF then continued to laugh at my intestinal misfortune for the rest of the trip.

At that point GF said she was done with rides for the day. We were pretty tired so we decided to just head over to Ohana and see if we could get in early or find something else to do as we didn't have time to go back to our hotel. We arrived at the Poly a little before 6:30pm and checked in. I knew our reservation was for sometime after 8pm, but I didn't know exactly when. I figured I'd see if there was anything available earlier. Worst case scenario, at least they could tell me exactly what time our reservation was.

I told the hostess that we didn’t know when our reservation was and before I could finish the sentence about wanting to get in earlier she quickly said, “that’s okay, what’s the last name?” The area around the podium was full of folks who seemed to be waiting to get seated, so I definitely figured they wouldn’t have any room for us until our reservation time. The hostess found us in the system, but instead of telling us our reservation time as I expected, she just asked us “any allergy or diet restrictions?” I told her I was a vegetarian and she started to type this into the computer. She stopped after a few letters and asked, “how do you spell that?” I was a little confused about what was going on—was she checking us in 2 hours early thinking we wanted to wait in the lounge area that long? Or was she going to get us in earlier? In my confusion (well, that’s what I’m going to blame it on anyway! ) I failed miserably to spell “vegetarian”. GF interrupted my failed attempt: “Uh, honey, that’s not right.” Another hostess standing nearby overheard us having trouble and took over the keyboard from the first hostess, apparently typing “vegetarian” whether spelled correctly or not. This second hostess then handed me a beeper and said to come back when it beeped. I was still confused—they never said that we’d be able to get in early. So I asked how long it would be and she said 15-20 minutes. I thought, hey how lucky! I totally hadn’t expected that we’d be able to get in early.

We thought we’d spend a few minutes outside before it got close to our time to be beeped. I took a look at the pool and GF found an area free of people to have a cigarette. Then we went back inside and sat downstairs since the upstairs seating area was so full—along with all of the standing area near the walls. The beeper was still flashing green, which I assumed meant it was within range, and I remembered that during our last trip we got the same kind of beeper at Boma and it started beeping at me when I went out of range. We waited until about 20 minutes after we checked in and decided to go upstairs to make sure the beeper was working on the 1st floor. It was really crowded up there and there was no where to comfortably sit or stand w/out being in someone’s way. We waited another 10 minutes or more and GF decided to ask about the beeper—this was around 7 pm and we’d been waiting about 30 minutes. The hostess GF talked to said that it turned out we’d be eating closer to our original reservation time—30 to 45 minutes later—because there were still 10 people in front of us. She didn’t explain why we were told 15 or 20 minutes and now it turned out it would take more like an hour and 15 minutes and GF didn’t push the issue.

Needless to say, we weren’t very happy. How could there be 10 people in front of us when 30 minutes ago, there was apparently almost no one in front of us? We started to wonder if someone just messed up when they told us 15-20 minutes. Maybe the person who told us that didn’t realize that our reservation was for so much later? Maybe as people checked in for reservation times earlier than ours we just kept getting bumped back over and over? Of course it would have been totally understandable if they couldn’t get us in early, but it would have been good if we had been told that up front. We went back downstairs feeling somewhat annoyed and tried to make small talk. We both were getting pretty hungry so we went through the bag we carried and found some granola bars and such. GF was still starving even after a granola bar.

Once we’d been waiting another 40 minutes or so, we went back upstairs to check again. I waited in line for at least another 10 minutes before it was my turn at the podium. While I was waiting I saw another couple bypass the line at the podium and approach a hostess from the side. The hostess talked to them and then grabbed a manager and they began looking at the computer together. I heard the hostess say that the couple had been waiting almost 2 hours and their beeper hadn’t gone off, but she couldn’t find their reservation. The manager quickly found it, but as he read it out loud I thought he said that the party was listed as already having been seated. He then turned to the couple and apologized and brought them right back to the dining area to be seated. Witnessing this only made me more convinced that there was something weird going on with their system.

When I finally got to the podium, I told the hostess that we were told 15-20 minutes and had been waiting almost an hour and a half. I gave her the name and she looked us up. She cheerfully said, “Oh, we paged you already. We couldn’t find you.” Exasperated, I asked, “What?!” She asked, “Were you downstairs?” And when I said yes, she replied “That’s why. The pagers don’t work downstairs. We paged you….I want to say….maybe 45 minutes ago.” GF came over at this point and I told her what the hostess said. She looked just as exasperated. The hostess must have noticed our frustration, as she quickly said, “Well don’t worry. You’re still in the system. We’ll seat you as soon as possible.” As she began to print something out, GF pointed out that 45 minutes earlier was almost exactly the time when she checked about the beeper the first time. So how could they have paged us then, given she would have been standing right at the podium?! She made this point to the hostess who simply insisted that they had paged us at some point and the beeper doesn’t work downstairs. As we walked a few steps away, I suggested that maybe the hostess was off in her estimate—maybe they paged us 40 minutes before, when we would have just gotten downstairs. Except, as GF pointed out, that would have been 5 minutes after she had just been told it would be 30-45 MORE minutes until we were beeped. How could they have found us a spot that quickly?

Needless to say, we were feeling a bit annoyed. We had been hoping to see Wishes—either while eating dinner if we were on that side of the restaurant, or outside just before checking in for dinner. But it turned out that I was waiting in line at the podium during almost all of Wishes, which we could barely glimpse out of the window behind the bar. Plus, we were pretty hungry at this point. Luckily someone came to seat us within a few minutes. We had a bit of trouble with the table we were given at first and asked to be moved and luckily they accomodated us. And from then on, the evening was smooth sailing and really good food. GF's final thought about Ohana was "Meat on Sticks--Oh My! "

We left Ohana stuffed and caught a bus to MGM (where there were EMH) and then transferred to the Pop bus. On the way, GF indicated that she actually liked the Poly better this time around and so did I. The outside area is especially pretty and peaceful looking with all of the vegetation. After a very long day, we fell right into bed.

 

[smartestnumber5]

On Friday we went to Animal Kingdom in the morning. We think of AK as a park to be done on an early day--I think mostly because in the summer the animals don't like to be out in the most sunny, hot time of day. But we didn't actually end up getting up very early. And though it was only day 2, we'd already given up on the whole "eat something real for breakfast" routine. We were back to just coffee for GF and a granola bar or pop tart for me.

It was a bit after 10 am by the time we had arrived at AK and we headed right for Everest. I remembered making this same treck through Dinoland around the lake to get to Everest a few months ago, but that time it was so much worse. It was probably over 20 degrees warmer, plus at that time GF was much more tired (this was pre-sleep apena treatment) and in significant foot pain. Actually, GF commented numerous times that in her mind she pictured everything at Disney being so much further apart because all the walking had been so painful.

Everest standby line said 30 minutes so we got a FP and then got in line figuring it'd probably be less than 30. I'm sure it was. The ride was as good as I remembered. Afterward, GF hit a bathroom and I waited outside and overheard a man talking to a little girl about Everest (it seemed they had just ridden). He was saying that though he knows there is no upside down part of the ride, he really feels like you go upside down during the backwards part. When I thought about it, I could also see the similarity of the feelings.

By this time it was 11am and we were hungry. I knew that our DDE card could be used a few of the CS places in AK so we wanted to hit one of those. Though GF likes Tusker House, that was all the way on the other side of the park. So it was either Flame Tree BBQ or Pizzafari. We went with the pizza and decided to do some sharing which was good for not getting too full. After lunch we hit "It's Tough to Be a Bug." We were sitting about 2/3rds of the way away from the screen and almost directly in the middle. I noticed that when one of the sprayings of air happened I felt like the air was spraying directly into my face. For a moment I panicked because I felt like I couldn't breathe. (Ironic, because this is exactly what GF's sleep apena mask does--blow air into her nose--to try to help her breathe. Boy I feel for her sometimes.)

Over lunch we had checked out the shows in AK and GF wanted to see a show with animals. There was a Pocohantas show which involved "North American animals" so we decided on that. Turned out we were in fact just in time for the training session rather than the usual show. Unfortuantely, though, the training session was rather short and not all that exciting. Essentially, it consisted of Pocohantas doing strange poses and facial gestures (did these mean something to the animals?) while two porcupines and a skunk were sent out to do their performance (which consisted of nothing more than their walking across the stage in a certain area in an acceptable amount of time). We had been hoping for lions and tigers.

After the show I grabbed an ice cream (chocolate and vanilla swirl). Like Aloha Isle, I asked for sprinkles but they didn't have any. In fact, they said there were no sprinkles in all of AK!

We made our way back to the hotel to find a surprise--towel animals! Actually, the day before we had found one towel animal (the one in the middle) in our room and were very pleased. But today we found that one plus two more!

We kept wondering why a person in housekeeping would have taken the time to make those for us when we didn't even have any signs of having a child with us. GF suspected that perhaps her sleep apena machine had seemed like some strange piece of medical equibment that implied serious medical problems Or maybe since it's the off-season someone was bored that day--who knows?

We decided to brave the bowling pin pool for a bit. It was probably only in the low 70s but the water was heated nicely so it felt fine being in the water. It was just getting out of the water and back into the hotel and in a nice hot shower that was painful.

After that GF took a nap and I laid about watching "Stacy's Top 7" again and again.

 

[lennon2004]

I'm enjoying this.