Hello, all! We are home from our trip and recuperating nicely. I'll cut and paste most of a small trip report of sorts that I wrote for a different forum. Its actually rather long but not as long as some of the detailed accounts that go day by day as some folks do in writing trip reports... I was going to write separate trip reports for different audiences, but I'm so zombie like right now as I'm recovering from my trip and my illness that it took me forever to write just one and so I want to share it with y'all as well. (And there is a surprising thing in there for my fellow worry worts and control freaks.) Maybe after the fact I'll write something different for the families forum. So here it is:
We're back and we had a wonderful time! Which may sound strange considering I was very very sick on Thursday and Friday. But it turns out being sick at Disney is still better then being sick at home, plus I was able to tour the parks the other days which was amazing at every turn. I had gone to Epcot on Thursday morning but went down hill fast after about 11am. I ended up leaving around 1pm and took Liese back with me. She rested and watched cartoons while I napped. I tried to get in a couple of morning hours of touring again on Friday (MGM), but it about killed me and then I missed Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom that night. The rest of the trip I was OK to tour all day each day, but at the same time, not exactly in good health.
I had been to Disney several times when I was younger, always for just one day at a time and usually to the Magic Kingdom (once to Epcot). And I have to say that it just gets better and better. It far surpassed my expectations for this trip. The kids had a great time every single day with hardly any drama --- only one sad crying spell from Gwyn that only lasted a few minutes and only one rather longish cry from Liese from getting over tired at the end of our first day. After Liese got calmed down and got some good food into her, Gwyn basically told me that she understood how Liese felt. Then she kind of laughed and shrugged and said that "now" she understood why I kept making them walk on the treadmill, her legs felt "like jelly".
I had one little spell too. Our first day there DH got cranky about a few things before we even got in the park and was a misery to me until I decided that we would have to split up and tour separately. After Alec and I had our own little bit of fun riding Space Mountain twice in a row with hardly any waiting we got back together with DH and the girls who wanted to stay together as a family and did pretty well with them. Later on I told DH that if we ever get to go back, he would have to plan the next trip. [I know, my fellow worriers and control freaks are aghast. But I probably already mentioned, early on, that its only my trip to Disney that really bring out the controller and the planner in me. Normally my main struggle is with worrying. I've realized that I can give it up, if I work at it, better than I can cope with the non-planner blaming me for my efforts while he did nothing to prepare or plan. And once I manage to give it up and force him to plan it, I can probably cope with whatever I agree with or disagree with that he plans a lot better than he can cope with what I planned (even though I was right and he was wrong about the wisdom of my plan
)] I do not like being the one responsible when he doesn't like the plan. Anyway, I think he really ended up having just as much fun as the rest of us during most of the trip and he told me several times that he was really glad that I had "practically forced" him into a Disney trip and that he thought I did an awesome job planning it. [Now he'll have to do the work and end up realizing that my plans were good even on day one and that my thoughts on behaving nicely and especially not fussing at the person who put all the work in were right!]
And now that I've told the only negatives I have to repeat that over-all the whole trip was fantastic! Even with illness and everything words can't express how glad I am that we went.
Now, I have to make a recommendation here. The Dining plan is really wonderful and an amazing value. I mainly wanted to get it so that we wouldn't be faced with thinking over our budget at every restaurant choice and every menu. Getting the dining plan and making advance reservations seemed like the best way to go. Boy was it ever! I had no idea just what a great value it would turn out to be. If any of you ever buy a Disney package you HAVE to add on the dining plan! (And Disney packages at the value resorts are really a pretty good deal anyway. We really liked our "family suite" at the All-Star Music. It met our needs perfectly and really impressed us especially considering the good price.) My son couldn't get over telling us how great our dinner at Ohana was on the first night and he was right; it was worth every bit of his rave reviews. Then several of the other restaurants inspired me to be nearly as impressed as I was with Ohana rather than let down after having the best for our first meal.
... We ended up at MGM again on our day that I hadn't planned out minute by minute, which was DH's and Gwyneth's top choice for that day. And we gave Alec the independence to go where he wanted and he did Animal Kingdom and Epcot that day. He told me later that 4 days previous someone had set a new record by riding Kali River Rapids 37 times in a row and he had wanted to break it but he didn't make it. He only rode it 18 times in a row! His clothes were still not dried out when we had to start packing on Tuesday night. (a cool aside about our accomodations: there were 2 bathrooms in our "family suite" and both tubs had a laundry line that you could pull across to hang wet things! After we discovered Alec's heap of wet clothes and hung them they were close enough to dry to be packed by Wednesday morning!)
Speaking of packing... I was about brain dead by then and luckily DH came to the rescue and handled it. He really took over and made our exit easy on me. On a trip like that you sort of suffer from a little bit of diminished capacity, a little more and more with each passing day, or so it seemed. And we were both feeling it on the way home on Tuesday. Maybe adrenaline keeps you from realizing it until you actually leave Walt Disney World Property. At the airport, we had to keep telling the kids that we were feeling frayed and that they just had to try to understand and calm down for us. DH told me that he wanted to try to go back again, but if we planned for the same length of stay we'd be just as frayed (and we both knew we were a little too frayed at that point). We settled on the idea of either taking a shorter trip or taking a longer one with a couple of rest days built in. For example on this trip we went to church on Sunday morning, ate lunch at Subway and then went to Animal Kingdom until 7pm. Then we capped that off with DH and Liese driving our friend Amy back to Tampa and me and Alec and Gwyn going to see Animal Kingdom Lodge and view the savannah with the night vision goggles and eat at their counter service restaurant, Mara. (The food there was great by the way.) But if we get to go back in some future year, we'll plan on just church followed by pool time and naps or maybe walks or putt-putt on Sunday.
Incidentally, I had looked up some Church of Christ congregations in the Orlando area and ended up thinking that I didn't know anyone living in the area at the time and didn't know anything specific about any of the congregations so I just picked one that would allow us to get back to WDW early in the day compared to the others. But when we got there I turned my head to glance around and saw someone that I knew from when I was a teenager in Atlanta, then the preacher mentioned the man by name while he was talking about joint work teaching a class with him. So I thought, I guess they live here now. After church I got to speak with them and catch up, which was really nice. It turned out that they were just visiting their son, (same name as dad) and that he and his new wife lived there now. I babysat their son when I was a teen and thought it was pretty cool to see him all grown up and responsible! And that isn't even all. I also happened to pick up one of their church bulletins and looked down and saw a name I recognized on that too. It was a man that grew up with my dad in Texas and now lives in Orlando and is an elder at that congregation! I mentioned all of this too DH. After church while I was chatting with the one family that guy came up and introduced himself to DH. DH mentioned that he knew a connection with the guy through his father-in-law and then that guy came up and introduced himself to me and told me all about staying at our house in Virginia once when I was very young and he had come there to preach a gospel meeting. Then he also told me a story about when he was a teenager and had been in a bad accident (he was a pedestrian hit by a bus) how my grandfather who had worked for his father at a filling station he owned had been driving the car to bring his dad to the scene of the accident and then rushed him to the hospital. I never knew my father's father, but it was very cool to talk to this guy. So the whole time was like old home week and, of course, we did not leave and get to Animal Kingdom early in the day. But the man who knew my dad asked for me to give his number to my dad and ask him to get in touch and the mom from Atlanta asked after my mother and wanted her number and address to contact her. And needless to say, I was very glad to have visited that particular congregation! It's a small world after all, isn't it. (yes, I know I'm very corny!
)
MIL is coming to pick up our "pooch" (Chloe) tomorrow. We'll miss her. I got everything done I needed to. Never thought I'd get it done though!
I have never been to WDW during a major holiday, but from what I have read, it is close to impossible to ride a lot of attractions, so maybe just take in the atmosphere on Christmas Day and save the rides for the other days. You are right about Jan. This is our 3rd trip in Jan and we love it during that time. The crowds are light and I know that I most likely won't have a problem getting most of the ADRs I want if I call next week.
I can't wait till the holidays are over and people go back to a somewhat normal state.
Yeah, I know...serves me right!
Holidays have to be hard. My Mom said she will never get over her parents being gone either. They have been gone 20 years. I miss them too. I lived in the same house with them like my set up now. 
you in 
, but maybe George Jetson can use his Turbo Blaster 680 to zoom you on over. 
But if not...I'll be thinking of everyone when we are enjoying our Ghirardelli sundaes. 
I know what you mean about missing your parents around the holidays. For some reason, this year is particularly hard for me. My mom loved Christmas and she loved her grandkids. There have been six new grandkids born in the last 3 years and she would have been so excited to see them all at Christmas. At least I have my sisters and brother...we are always telling funny stories about my mom to keep her memory around. I still so have my dad, but he lives in FL, so he is not around. 
We ran around to ADRS, park hopped like crazy, didn't have time to swim, wandered around aimlessly, and completely exhausted ourselves! We still had a great time, but believe me, next time, our trip will be better planned so we can relax more and enjoy everything!
