MommyPoppins
<font color=green>Tangled with the TF in a moment
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2004
- Messages
- 4,821
Who Went?
DH - Chad, Chadwick, Chaddy, idiot(27) loves Disney, but thinks he'll be over it soon....though he actually now has mentioned DVC, IF someone dies and we inherit money.
Myself - Amanda, Mandee, wench(24-25) I had my birthday while we were there, I love Disney and don't think I will ever be over it, dreams of owning DVC, IF someone dies and we inherit money.
Dkids - They weren't invited, get over it. We're taken them for a 10 night stay in Sept. Free Dining, ya know!
The way this trip came about:
We've gone away to WDW by ourselves since 2004. The first year we went to Pop Century for 3 nights, in 2005 we stayed off-site - oh the HORRORS - for 2 nights(maybe 3?). This year we were going to skip it, building a house ya know, trying to save our money. Yeah right. We sold our house in January, we were approved for the money we needed, bought a lot, and were just waiting for the go ahead from the mortgage people(a government program which we used before) which we were promised would be in February. April came around and we were told with no sympathy that we would have to wait until NEXT year(2007) before we would be able to build our home. Meanwhile, we're living with a single friend who has a house bigger than our old home, but it is a VERY stressful situation. So we decided(in March I think, or maybe Feb) that this was NOT the year to skip our weekend away, and in fact we should make it a week. hehe. So I booked us at POR for 5 nights, May 24th-29th. Then free dining came out, which made us move our family vacation from Dec. to Sept. Within hours of hearing about the free dining, I had us booked at POR for 10 nights. But then the conflict within began. I mean, I love POR, but staying there in May AND Sept? We're stuck at POR with the kids, we have to have the 5 person occupancy, ya know. So, I began to daily look on the website for both AP and FL Res rates at different hotels. I really wanted to stay at CSR, but nothing, then I started thinking about AKL, because that was the only place besides GF that had anything. But I just didn't know if we would like it enough to spend THAT much money on...so I kept playing. I secretly wanted to stay at the Poly, and the money seemed well worth it for there. But there wasn't anything available. Meanwhile, I had to devise a plan that would work, DH wasn't going to go along with spending more than twice as much as at POR for nothing. So I started thinking. I REALLY wanted our trip to be special, we never had a honeymoon, we never do anything for our anniversary, even I usually forget it.(Our firstborns birthday is 2 days before our anniversary, on our 1 year anniversary we were taking our baby home from the hospital.) Plus it was my 25th birthday, and I don't know about you, but in my family, once you become a Mom, it's like you don't even have a birthday anymore. Yeah you get a card and a present, but no party, no celebration. I wanted a special birthday, is that so wrong? So I had a plan, DH had put aside an amount of money for a diamond ring(no honeymoon, no engagement ring, we eloped.), I decided that a special trip with a extra special stay was more important to me than a diamond. So I told him so. He didn't believe me, I'm very spontaneous, not always in a good way either. So it took some convincing, but I finally made him understand that this is what I wanted and he could get me a CZ for now, I'm not a big jewelry person anyway. Once I got the okay I began REALLY searching. I found that if we left a day earlier we could stay at the Poly, but only for 3 nights. Well, 3 nights is better than none. Now I needed to find something else for our last 2 nights. WL made perfect sense, it's the only Disney Resort that DH has ALWAYS wanted to stay at. I found a FL rate online, but when I called, like 2 seconds later, the man on the phone couldn't find it. So I went ahead and booked it at rack rate. At least we had a room, and I knew I would keep looking for the discount. Two days later I found it online again, while I was online I called CRO and the lady on the phone couldn't find it. This time though, I went ahead and booked it, while she held, she was wonderful and when it was all booked she canceled my rack rate one. All was set. We would leave on May 23rd and come home on the 28th. Five whole nights away, we'd never been away from our boys for so long, but we really needed it and couldn't wait!
Oh yeah and about a month before we left, DH gave me a ring. He didn't get the CZ. He's the best, I got a beautiful ring AND the ultimate trip! He's the best!
Day 1 - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - Crappy weather, Driving Miss Daisy, The Bird Flu, and Another one Bites the Dust
Our goal was to be on the road by 10:30am. We were to be dropping the kids off between 10-10:30, that's what we told Mom anyway. I always had planned on leaving our house by 10 sharp. We ended up leaving earlier, because we were all ready and we needed to go by the bank, so I called Mom to make sure it would be okay to drop them off early. It was, so we left. The bank took forever, I think she was making the money in there. Then we had to go back by the house and pick up the dog, she was going to Mom's too. It took at least 30 minutes to give all the instructions for the kids and to say good-bye. We ended up on the road at 10:30 anyway. Good thing we left early.
The odd thing is I wasn't even excited. I was depressed. Depressed? I'm going to be at WDW in less than 3 hours and I'm depressed? It wasn't even about leaving the kids...I don't know what it was, but DH felt it too. We were bummed.
It felt like we would never get there, like we had a lifetime's journey ahead of us and it didn't help that we were behind Miss Daisy herself. On a 2 laned road, traveled by many large trucks..no passing here. We were stuck, hoping she turned off soon. Thankfully she did, it would have been a long 15 miles had we been stuck behind her doing 45 on a road with a speed limit of 65.
About half way there we started talking about the bird flu. I can't remember why, but it didn't help the depressed mood. Then DH brings up the subject of death and what's after death. What WILL heaven be like? We don't know and it's hard to imagine, so we turned to leading up to death. You know the act of dying, that's what scares me. I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want it to hurt. Then it happened...the music that IS the song. I don't think I can duplicate it in words, but I'm game for trying anything, once.
bbbbmmmppp bbbbmmmpppp bbbmmmppp
Another one bites the dust
bbbbmmmppp bbbbmmmpppp bbbmmmppp
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
How ironic is that? We decided it was a good ice breaker to the tension and stopped talking about death, dying and the afterlife. We also decided that we would in fact never have chickens.
We made it to the Poly in less than 3 hours. We did stop once, at McDonalds, for a snack wrap, to hold us over till we made it to Epcot later. You see the plan was to check in, go to Epcot for lunch, go back to the resort and have a nice afternoon/evening at the pool. But it was cloudy, and not just partly cloudy like the weather said. It was statewide, no chance of the sun peaking out, even raining a little cloudy. So we had to change our plans. Sitting by the pool, drinking tropical drinks soaking up the sun, just wasn't the same you know, without the sun and all. So I threw out some ideas for Chad and we parked to check in. We self parked, because we cheap, and because we're cheap we didn't even leave our luggage with bell services, because we didn't want to tip. I know, it's shameful. So we walked in, which wasn't like, "ooohh, aahhh" because we had been in the lobby before, last Sept, we ate breakfast ate Kona. But it was awesome to be checking in, here, at the POLY! I was horribly nervous. I don't know why, DH said it's because I had to deal with a person, I'm really shy. But while waiting in line to check in I was nervous, like waiting in line for RnR or EE nervous. We were called over by a nice lady and I gave her my name, told her we were checking in. She said, "I see you requested Fiji, 3rd floor, we have you assigned to that, but it's not ready yet. And I have something in the back for you." I didn't expect them to be so on the ball! I wasn't even going to have to haggle about a room, or ask for someone to find Pluto! I never got ANY of my room requests before, so I was so excited! She asked if we'd stayed here before, we told her no, this was our first stay at a deluxe. A few minutes later she asked how I knew what to request since we've never been here. Instead of the obvious, a friend told me. I got all shy and mumbled something about "the DIS boards" and "research". I'm pretty sure DH stepped away from me and she looked at me like, "alrighty then". I guess she'd never heard of the DIS...my first time stepping out of my shell and mentioning the DIS, thinking maybe I'd met someone else who knew of it, but alas, nope. <goes back into shell> After getting lai'd, getting Pluto, and going to the bathroom we headed back out to the van to drop off Pluto and our lai's. Then we headed back inside and up to the monorail. We decided to go and walk around MK for a bit, since we weren't going to be relaxing in the sun. It's was sooo nice to hop on the monorail and be there in just minutes! We strolled down mainstreet hand in hand, and stopped for a picture. Then we decided to just go and see what the wait was for SM, maybe there would be FP left. On the way across TL, Chad says, "It's only a 20 minute wait!" I said,"No it's 30", "No it's 20." "It looks like 30 to me" "Oh, maybe it is 20." We get right up to it, look up before going under it and it says, "50". Either we're both blind or it changed, just like that. We got FP. Surprisingly the retrun time was only an hour out. We continued our stroll around MK. It was not very crowded, of course people were lined up 5 deep on main street for the parade, so that helps a lot. We casually strolled around, through FL, through Liberty Square, through Frontier Land, Adventureland. Back to TL we rode TTA and then used our FP for Space Mountain. We LOVE space mountain. We love the music, the dark, the whippy turns. Everything! It's my all time favorite ride! We did some window shopping on the way out and then hopped in the line for the boat back to the Poly. We got in line a few people behind a family with 4 boys. They were all dressed in matching shirts(I just told DH last week I was going to get matching shirts for the boys for our upcoming trip). Nothing to make you miss your kids like watching another family with 4 boys. So we sit next to them on the boat and I chat it up with the Mom. I mentioned how I loved the idea of the matching shirts and how we too had 4 boys. They were on their dream trip, first time, waited a long time for it, traveled from Washington. They were staying at the Boardwalk and going to the Poly for the Luau. Her DH was chatting it up with the captain, he turned to her and mentioned something about asking the captain about that building(the wedding pavilion) and said to her,"But I guess I should have just asked you." My ears perked up. Could she be a DISer? Could it be that I actually finally ran into one? I guess we'll never know, remember, I'm back in my shell? I didnt ask. I didn't want to be shot down again. Not twice in one day, no siree I'm on my Poly high. We dock and I point to Fiji and tell DH that's where we're staying. We go get our stuff and call for our room number. 3320, I didn't know what side that was on. Marina or Luau Cove, so it was going to be a surprise! We clank clank our way, redneck style with our 2 suitcases and smaller bag with our alcohol and frozen bottles of water(I refused to let DH bring a cooler to the Poly) We finally arrived at Fiji and hopped in the elevator. Thankfully neither of us are claustrophobic, or we'd have been clank clanking it up the stairs. We stepped off the elevator and looked up at the first room number, 3321, we were one room to the left. Just a few steps off the elevator, how sweet is that. I open our door, run in, throw down my suitcase and just start zipping from one thing to the next. "Look at the beds, look at the TV, look at the chair, get my picture, look at the couch, get my picture, look at the bathroom, WOW, OMGosh, I forgot the balcony(runs over, throws back curtains), look at the view!" Okay, so I wasn't impressed at first with the view, we were just 3 doors from the end, marina side, so we had the WHOLE marina, and actually it is smaller than it looks in pictures. But, hey, I'm at the Poly, I have a balcony(sorry PMM) and OMGosh, what is that? I can see space mountain from my balcony. GV price, lagoon view. Sweet! So what was Chad's impression? Chaddy like! He loved how HUGE the room was, and how awesome the TV was, and you know what I think he liked most? "Cool, look at the crapper!" Yes, my wonderful simple husband, loved the toilet. Why? Well, because it was tucked away behind the sink, all semi private. We don't use doors around here, at least not when its just us. There is no such thing as privacy and even Mommy doesn't get much privacy. You know what happens when Mommy locks the door? Someone pukes on the floor, instead of the toilet, or someone has an accident. So, nope, no privacy for us, so the fact the the toilet was semi private, but still in the same room was pretty neato. The bathroom was beautiful, green fake marble(is it real?), awesome decorations, a HUGE HUGE tub...and of course the crapper. Even our pop up laundry basket fit nicely without being in the way, unlike at the WL...but it's not time for that yet. So, after picture taking and unpacking we decided to set out for Epcot for dinner.
Up next: I'm so pretty, oh so pretty, monorail ride from h e l l ooooooooooo my goodness is this potted meat?
Day 1 part 2 - page 1
Day 2 part 1 - page 2
DH - Chad, Chadwick, Chaddy, idiot(27) loves Disney, but thinks he'll be over it soon....though he actually now has mentioned DVC, IF someone dies and we inherit money.
Myself - Amanda, Mandee, wench(24-25) I had my birthday while we were there, I love Disney and don't think I will ever be over it, dreams of owning DVC, IF someone dies and we inherit money.
Dkids - They weren't invited, get over it. We're taken them for a 10 night stay in Sept. Free Dining, ya know!
The way this trip came about:
We've gone away to WDW by ourselves since 2004. The first year we went to Pop Century for 3 nights, in 2005 we stayed off-site - oh the HORRORS - for 2 nights(maybe 3?). This year we were going to skip it, building a house ya know, trying to save our money. Yeah right. We sold our house in January, we were approved for the money we needed, bought a lot, and were just waiting for the go ahead from the mortgage people(a government program which we used before) which we were promised would be in February. April came around and we were told with no sympathy that we would have to wait until NEXT year(2007) before we would be able to build our home. Meanwhile, we're living with a single friend who has a house bigger than our old home, but it is a VERY stressful situation. So we decided(in March I think, or maybe Feb) that this was NOT the year to skip our weekend away, and in fact we should make it a week. hehe. So I booked us at POR for 5 nights, May 24th-29th. Then free dining came out, which made us move our family vacation from Dec. to Sept. Within hours of hearing about the free dining, I had us booked at POR for 10 nights. But then the conflict within began. I mean, I love POR, but staying there in May AND Sept? We're stuck at POR with the kids, we have to have the 5 person occupancy, ya know. So, I began to daily look on the website for both AP and FL Res rates at different hotels. I really wanted to stay at CSR, but nothing, then I started thinking about AKL, because that was the only place besides GF that had anything. But I just didn't know if we would like it enough to spend THAT much money on...so I kept playing. I secretly wanted to stay at the Poly, and the money seemed well worth it for there. But there wasn't anything available. Meanwhile, I had to devise a plan that would work, DH wasn't going to go along with spending more than twice as much as at POR for nothing. So I started thinking. I REALLY wanted our trip to be special, we never had a honeymoon, we never do anything for our anniversary, even I usually forget it.(Our firstborns birthday is 2 days before our anniversary, on our 1 year anniversary we were taking our baby home from the hospital.) Plus it was my 25th birthday, and I don't know about you, but in my family, once you become a Mom, it's like you don't even have a birthday anymore. Yeah you get a card and a present, but no party, no celebration. I wanted a special birthday, is that so wrong? So I had a plan, DH had put aside an amount of money for a diamond ring(no honeymoon, no engagement ring, we eloped.), I decided that a special trip with a extra special stay was more important to me than a diamond. So I told him so. He didn't believe me, I'm very spontaneous, not always in a good way either. So it took some convincing, but I finally made him understand that this is what I wanted and he could get me a CZ for now, I'm not a big jewelry person anyway. Once I got the okay I began REALLY searching. I found that if we left a day earlier we could stay at the Poly, but only for 3 nights. Well, 3 nights is better than none. Now I needed to find something else for our last 2 nights. WL made perfect sense, it's the only Disney Resort that DH has ALWAYS wanted to stay at. I found a FL rate online, but when I called, like 2 seconds later, the man on the phone couldn't find it. So I went ahead and booked it at rack rate. At least we had a room, and I knew I would keep looking for the discount. Two days later I found it online again, while I was online I called CRO and the lady on the phone couldn't find it. This time though, I went ahead and booked it, while she held, she was wonderful and when it was all booked she canceled my rack rate one. All was set. We would leave on May 23rd and come home on the 28th. Five whole nights away, we'd never been away from our boys for so long, but we really needed it and couldn't wait!
Oh yeah and about a month before we left, DH gave me a ring. He didn't get the CZ. He's the best, I got a beautiful ring AND the ultimate trip! He's the best!
Day 1 - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - Crappy weather, Driving Miss Daisy, The Bird Flu, and Another one Bites the Dust
Our goal was to be on the road by 10:30am. We were to be dropping the kids off between 10-10:30, that's what we told Mom anyway. I always had planned on leaving our house by 10 sharp. We ended up leaving earlier, because we were all ready and we needed to go by the bank, so I called Mom to make sure it would be okay to drop them off early. It was, so we left. The bank took forever, I think she was making the money in there. Then we had to go back by the house and pick up the dog, she was going to Mom's too. It took at least 30 minutes to give all the instructions for the kids and to say good-bye. We ended up on the road at 10:30 anyway. Good thing we left early.
The odd thing is I wasn't even excited. I was depressed. Depressed? I'm going to be at WDW in less than 3 hours and I'm depressed? It wasn't even about leaving the kids...I don't know what it was, but DH felt it too. We were bummed.
It felt like we would never get there, like we had a lifetime's journey ahead of us and it didn't help that we were behind Miss Daisy herself. On a 2 laned road, traveled by many large trucks..no passing here. We were stuck, hoping she turned off soon. Thankfully she did, it would have been a long 15 miles had we been stuck behind her doing 45 on a road with a speed limit of 65.
About half way there we started talking about the bird flu. I can't remember why, but it didn't help the depressed mood. Then DH brings up the subject of death and what's after death. What WILL heaven be like? We don't know and it's hard to imagine, so we turned to leading up to death. You know the act of dying, that's what scares me. I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want it to hurt. Then it happened...the music that IS the song. I don't think I can duplicate it in words, but I'm game for trying anything, once.
bbbbmmmppp bbbbmmmpppp bbbmmmppp
Another one bites the dust
bbbbmmmppp bbbbmmmpppp bbbmmmppp
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
How ironic is that? We decided it was a good ice breaker to the tension and stopped talking about death, dying and the afterlife. We also decided that we would in fact never have chickens.
We made it to the Poly in less than 3 hours. We did stop once, at McDonalds, for a snack wrap, to hold us over till we made it to Epcot later. You see the plan was to check in, go to Epcot for lunch, go back to the resort and have a nice afternoon/evening at the pool. But it was cloudy, and not just partly cloudy like the weather said. It was statewide, no chance of the sun peaking out, even raining a little cloudy. So we had to change our plans. Sitting by the pool, drinking tropical drinks soaking up the sun, just wasn't the same you know, without the sun and all. So I threw out some ideas for Chad and we parked to check in. We self parked, because we cheap, and because we're cheap we didn't even leave our luggage with bell services, because we didn't want to tip. I know, it's shameful. So we walked in, which wasn't like, "ooohh, aahhh" because we had been in the lobby before, last Sept, we ate breakfast ate Kona. But it was awesome to be checking in, here, at the POLY! I was horribly nervous. I don't know why, DH said it's because I had to deal with a person, I'm really shy. But while waiting in line to check in I was nervous, like waiting in line for RnR or EE nervous. We were called over by a nice lady and I gave her my name, told her we were checking in. She said, "I see you requested Fiji, 3rd floor, we have you assigned to that, but it's not ready yet. And I have something in the back for you." I didn't expect them to be so on the ball! I wasn't even going to have to haggle about a room, or ask for someone to find Pluto! I never got ANY of my room requests before, so I was so excited! She asked if we'd stayed here before, we told her no, this was our first stay at a deluxe. A few minutes later she asked how I knew what to request since we've never been here. Instead of the obvious, a friend told me. I got all shy and mumbled something about "the DIS boards" and "research". I'm pretty sure DH stepped away from me and she looked at me like, "alrighty then". I guess she'd never heard of the DIS...my first time stepping out of my shell and mentioning the DIS, thinking maybe I'd met someone else who knew of it, but alas, nope. <goes back into shell> After getting lai'd, getting Pluto, and going to the bathroom we headed back out to the van to drop off Pluto and our lai's. Then we headed back inside and up to the monorail. We decided to go and walk around MK for a bit, since we weren't going to be relaxing in the sun. It's was sooo nice to hop on the monorail and be there in just minutes! We strolled down mainstreet hand in hand, and stopped for a picture. Then we decided to just go and see what the wait was for SM, maybe there would be FP left. On the way across TL, Chad says, "It's only a 20 minute wait!" I said,"No it's 30", "No it's 20." "It looks like 30 to me" "Oh, maybe it is 20." We get right up to it, look up before going under it and it says, "50". Either we're both blind or it changed, just like that. We got FP. Surprisingly the retrun time was only an hour out. We continued our stroll around MK. It was not very crowded, of course people were lined up 5 deep on main street for the parade, so that helps a lot. We casually strolled around, through FL, through Liberty Square, through Frontier Land, Adventureland. Back to TL we rode TTA and then used our FP for Space Mountain. We LOVE space mountain. We love the music, the dark, the whippy turns. Everything! It's my all time favorite ride! We did some window shopping on the way out and then hopped in the line for the boat back to the Poly. We got in line a few people behind a family with 4 boys. They were all dressed in matching shirts(I just told DH last week I was going to get matching shirts for the boys for our upcoming trip). Nothing to make you miss your kids like watching another family with 4 boys. So we sit next to them on the boat and I chat it up with the Mom. I mentioned how I loved the idea of the matching shirts and how we too had 4 boys. They were on their dream trip, first time, waited a long time for it, traveled from Washington. They were staying at the Boardwalk and going to the Poly for the Luau. Her DH was chatting it up with the captain, he turned to her and mentioned something about asking the captain about that building(the wedding pavilion) and said to her,"But I guess I should have just asked you." My ears perked up. Could she be a DISer? Could it be that I actually finally ran into one? I guess we'll never know, remember, I'm back in my shell? I didnt ask. I didn't want to be shot down again. Not twice in one day, no siree I'm on my Poly high. We dock and I point to Fiji and tell DH that's where we're staying. We go get our stuff and call for our room number. 3320, I didn't know what side that was on. Marina or Luau Cove, so it was going to be a surprise! We clank clank our way, redneck style with our 2 suitcases and smaller bag with our alcohol and frozen bottles of water(I refused to let DH bring a cooler to the Poly) We finally arrived at Fiji and hopped in the elevator. Thankfully neither of us are claustrophobic, or we'd have been clank clanking it up the stairs. We stepped off the elevator and looked up at the first room number, 3321, we were one room to the left. Just a few steps off the elevator, how sweet is that. I open our door, run in, throw down my suitcase and just start zipping from one thing to the next. "Look at the beds, look at the TV, look at the chair, get my picture, look at the couch, get my picture, look at the bathroom, WOW, OMGosh, I forgot the balcony(runs over, throws back curtains), look at the view!" Okay, so I wasn't impressed at first with the view, we were just 3 doors from the end, marina side, so we had the WHOLE marina, and actually it is smaller than it looks in pictures. But, hey, I'm at the Poly, I have a balcony(sorry PMM) and OMGosh, what is that? I can see space mountain from my balcony. GV price, lagoon view. Sweet! So what was Chad's impression? Chaddy like! He loved how HUGE the room was, and how awesome the TV was, and you know what I think he liked most? "Cool, look at the crapper!" Yes, my wonderful simple husband, loved the toilet. Why? Well, because it was tucked away behind the sink, all semi private. We don't use doors around here, at least not when its just us. There is no such thing as privacy and even Mommy doesn't get much privacy. You know what happens when Mommy locks the door? Someone pukes on the floor, instead of the toilet, or someone has an accident. So, nope, no privacy for us, so the fact the the toilet was semi private, but still in the same room was pretty neato. The bathroom was beautiful, green fake marble(is it real?), awesome decorations, a HUGE HUGE tub...and of course the crapper. Even our pop up laundry basket fit nicely without being in the way, unlike at the WL...but it's not time for that yet. So, after picture taking and unpacking we decided to set out for Epcot for dinner.
Up next: I'm so pretty, oh so pretty, monorail ride from h e l l ooooooooooo my goodness is this potted meat?
Day 1 part 2 - page 1
Day 2 part 1 - page 2
