Minnesotan's MEA Vacation - Pre-Trip Report

[Minnesota]

Minnesotan’s MEA Vacation
(aka Minnesotan’s Messed up Morphing Vacation)
Pre Trip Report

Who: As of 8/25/05, Me 20’s, Mom 40’s, and Dad 40’s. I have been to WDW 6 times DL once, and DCL twice. Mom has been to DL a few times, never WDW or DCL. Dad has been to WDW once, DL a few times, and DCL once.

What: My annual trip to WDW, Mom’s first trip, Dad’s using vacation. Going over a fall break in college classes since summer was too busy.

When: Mid-October

Where: All Star Music

Why: Why not?

What to say about this trip other than the second title fits as well as the first, the first is just more official. I started planning this trip with my best friend, my usual travel companion. We were going to book the two of us as usual in May when we got our tax returns. Then it began to morph. Between May and August we were sometimes as low as me going by myself and as high as a total of 6 people. It’s still probably going to change but I have my portion booked, so as per my tradition, I always post a pre-trip report within 24 hours of booking.
One of the main reasons it kept changing is my friend invited her two siblings to come with us. Then they were told there was a family reunion in Holland (as in Europe, not Michigan) but no one knew when it was exactly or if they were even going. We finally decided that I would book for my parents and I now then add my friend and possibly her siblings to my package later if they can go.
As for the general idea of our trip we will be arriving by air and trying to navigate the Magical Express in the late morning of our first day. We’re hoping to get into the parks by that afternoon. We are also planning on checking out the Food and Wine Festival in Epcot and Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party in the Magic Kingdom. As I only have a few days free of college we’ll try doing as much as we can in the rest of our time, hopefully giving Mom a good first taste of WDW. Then on our last day we leave WDW in the afternoon and land back home for me to go to class that night.
This will be the first time any of us have done a “holiday celebration” or special event at WDW. My friend and I saw some of the Christmas Decorations when we went over New Years but we spent the actual holiday at Sea World. It will also be the first fall trip for all of us. We have only “done Disney” In the dead of summer or the dead of winter.
That’s about it for now, check back in about 55-65 days for the official trip report, possibly sooner if I do a pre-trip part 2 report. Coming Soon to a Bulletin Board near you! (Also my web site if I can figure out my new web publishing software)

Minnesota

 

[Minniespal]

Can't wait to read more.

Hope you have a fantastic time

 

[Minnesota]

Well I am a little late but for all of you who enjoy reading my trip reports here is a breif (sort of) trip report from last october. Since I am posting this as a reply to my pretrip report I won't recap the details.

Day 1: We checked into the Minneapolis International Airport VERY early in the morning. Even though we flew from MSP to detroit and landed there at dawn, the tickets were really cheap. All three of us slept on the plane to detroit which is pretty amazing as Mom and I can hardly ever sleep in a moving vehicle of any type. I don't remember much about Detroit as I was half asleep but we got on the next plane to Orlando no problem.

Once in Orlando we checked in with the Magical express, which I have to say IS AWESOME!!!! I loved it. We never had to go fight for our luggage or anything. we just went to the desk, cheked in and stood in a line for maybe 15 minutes then we were on the bus and right to our resort. Check in there was also a breeze and the next thing we knew we had our park gear on and were off to Epcot Center.

Epcot unofficially became the hub of our vacation as I believe we at least walked through it every day we were there. In Epcot we started with Future world and just before heading to our dinner reservation at the rose and crown we found my tile from 2000 on the walls by spaceship earth. I was the first time since 2000 that I remembered to go look for it and take a picture of it.

Dinner at the rose and crown was great as usual and was our first experience with the dining option. Both are something I would most deffinetly do again. It was great and for a budget minded me I got such a deal. the option cost something like 43 dollars per person per day and while that sounded like a lot at the time once I realized what it included I got more than my 43 dollars worth every day and it was SO EASY!! We got an outside table but really could not see Illuminations so we asked out waiter about it and he showed us a public spot that was right on the rail and still open 15 minutes before the show started, it was great. We also discovered that if you eat inside you get to go to a priority seating place by the Rose and Crown. This was Mom's first experience with Illuminations so she was quite impressed, it was almost funny for me as I have been there every year since 1999.

That night was a late night for park guests at Epcot so we did stay a while after park closing and rode a few more rides but in the end we had been up for close to 18 hours (not including a time change) so we turned in earlier than the second park closing.

When we got back to the resort our luggage was waiting there just as promised and without any problems whatsoever. We were very tired at this point so we called for a wake up call and went to bed after watching the weather channel to find out where Hurricane Wilma was at.

As I have to get to Organic Chemistry in an hour and I am still just bumming around the house I'll have to continue after class and work tonight. Stay tuned, I promise I'll be back to continue much sooner than I did the last time.

Minnesota

 

[Minnesota]

Okay, as I promised here is the conclusion (or at least some more)

Day 2 - Even though we wanted to sleep in that morning we did get up in time to get to Magic Kingdom for early entry and stayed there most of the morning until it began to get busy. We then hopped back to Epcot to finish (or so we thought) everything that we wanted to do there. We were hoping to go back to MK in time to catch the Share a Dream Come True Parade but it didn't work out that way.

We did get back to MK that night but for the Halloween Party instead. That was a great deal of fun and I would love to do it again. about half of the people there were in costume adults and children alike. There were characters and candy everywhere and it was busier than I thought it would be but we still didn't wait for anything long. We didn't dress up, I couldn't convince my parents to dress up. We also did discover that if you plan on eating during the party you want to have PS arrangements ahead of time. We ended up at a counter service instead of a sit down like we had planned and Dad just about had a diabetic reaction while we tried to track down what was still open.

The Halloween parade and fireworks were AWESOME! and we did not have any problem finding good viewing spots. The oly problem we had was finding the special edition pin for that party. I had heard several people had problems so we started looking early and it was a good thing. It took about a half hour and 4 stores to find the pin for that night. FYI Skip any stores, just go to Exposition hall.

Following the party we again went back to the AS Music resort and had our nightly ritual of checking on Wilma before going to sleep.

 

[Minnesota]

Day 3 - This morning we did "sleep in" but not by much, hence the quotation marks. We started the day in Animal Kingdom so we could see the animals at their most active point in the day. We did see a lot of them but it was already hot and humid due to the impending hurricane so they were all resting or hiding in preperation.

It was great showing mom the tree of life. I had been telling her about it since we started booking the trip. She had seen Bugs Life in California but there's no tree of life there, she was pretty amazed at the carvings. We did get to see the construction of Expedition Everest and I can't wait to go again and ride it.

We finished what we wanted to see in Animal Kingdom early in the afternoon so we went back to Magic Kingdom to finish some of the rides that were not open during the halloween party. We also got to see the regular Wishes show and the Spectromagic parade. Both of these were fun as Dad and I were both playing with what our digital cameras could do in the dark.

This night was one of our earlier nights and it was probably a good thing as we had been streaching pretty far to that point in the trip. At park closing we headed back to the hotel to check on Wilma who had seemingly taken up residence in Mexico (good for us, bad for them).

To be continued...

 

[Minnesota]

Day 4 - the last full day in Disney and the arrival of Wilma.

As we had yet to even set foot in MGM studios we decided to spend our last full day only in MGM - or so we thought. We began the day on the wrong bus so we arrived at Epcot, not MGM so from there we took a boat and arrived later than we had wanted but that was just that. We missed a few shows throughout the day which was kind of a bummer but we did get to see some things we didn't think we would get to so I guess it all weighed out in the end.

We had booked a Fantasmic Dinner package that evening so we ate a really good dinner at Hollywood and Vine then trecked to the stadium to wait for Fantasmic. By this point in the trip we had gotten to see every major show and most of the parades, only missing a few mid day ones. We were hoping that our luck would hold and we could catch Fantasmic before it began to rain but then...

Hurricane Wilma arrived.

That night we were just getting hit by the leading edge squall lines but I have only seen anything like that once before in my life. It began to sprinkle 15 minutes to show time and within 5 more minutes there was lightening, thunder, and rain so hard the streets were flooding. We and the several thousands of people in MGM all began herding to the gate as we knew it was only going to get worse and the shows were cancelling anyway. We decided to wait a little and let the majority get on their way before we tried catching a bus so we stopped under the hat, took pictures and bought a few pins before heading back out into the shin deep water. Even with rain gear we were fairly well soaked.

By the time we sloshed to the main gate you could hardly see 10 feet infront of you for the rain. As we got to the parking lot where the busses are we discovered nearly every person was still there and we would have been waiting for hours in the rain for a bus.

Deciding to be a little more proactive (whether or not it helped any) we decided to get on a boat to epcot and try and get a bus from there back to the hotel. This did work well, I don't know if it was any shorter, it was a bit challenging to do the bag check at the epcot gate when my bag was a small backpack purse on under my poncho. We then sluged through Epcot center where they were still trying to put on Illuminations. It was almost funny, the fireowrks wern't going so well because of the deluge of rain but there were at least 8 people we saw trying to watch in the rain.

Once we finally reached our hotel the wind began to pick up and for the first time that trip, we didn't need to check the weather channel to find out where Hurricane Wilma was.

To be continued...

 

[Minnesota]

Day 5 - Hurricane Wilma and trying to get home

Suprizingly we all slept well. Our room was located in such a way that once we closed the drapes we had no idea what was going on outside. We woke up though to find WDW nearly blowing away. The wind was beyond nasty. As a former english major I am at a lack of words to describe the wind. Doubtful the plane would actrually fly that morning we called NWA several times and every time they said the plane was going on time.

This meant we had to get to the Orlando Airport. Easier said than done.

We trecked from our room in our shorts and tee shirts to try and stay drier under our ponchos which didn't work as well with the wind and we were probably wetter than the night before. We asked if the ME bus was running and we were told yes. When the bus was 15 minutes late I went in to check and as I was going in a CM was going out to say Disney was not running ANY transportation what so ever.

Another call to NWA yeilded the same answer. Disney wouldn't drive a bus but they would fly a plane. Go figure.

The CM's said they would get us a taxi at their expense as we had paid for the ME and they would get us to the airport. This was scary and the hurricane was the least of it. The driver was driving like a lunatic, well over speed limit the entire way there, with 100mph gusts shoving the van around like a toy, tree parts and even small trees themselves blowing across the road, bent and flying signs and other debris, and every time the driver wanted to avoid such a flying object he would change lanes like a nascar driver trying to get around the pack only we were probably the only vehicle in the county on the road.

Thankfully we made it to the airport and NWA still insisted they were going to take off in this weather. We checked in and sat dripping in the gate area suddenly realising that we had not packed anything dry or warmer in our carryons and we were going back to Minnesota in October.

We put a call into my brother in law and told him we didn't know what was happening with the flight - we would call again when we were boarding for Minneapolis (we had a transfer in Memphis) and to please bring warm jackets and have the car warm when he came to pick us up.

Then we boarded the plane. I was sitting on the window seat watching white caps roll down the runways (not the ponds inbetween the runways - the pavement type runways) it was raining and blowing so hard. A little girl ahead of us said "Daddy - we're flying!" and he replied "No honey, people are still getting on." to which she replied "But the plane is moving we're flying!" At this point Mom who gets motion sick started taking inventory of the airsick bags in our row, keeping a death grip on the arm rests alternating with My arm or dads arm, I nearly had a bruise.

Suprisingly the plane then backed off the terminal and headed to the runway. We did take off, one of the roughest I have ever had. Once we got over the top of the Hurricane it was just like any other flight only we had quite the view out the window. I took pictures of the hurricane from the top down as the eye was between Orlando and the coast.

We Made it to Memphis late and nearly missed our flight to Minneapolis but we did have time to visit the restroom very quickly and call my brother in law to let him know when we would actually be arriving home.

After all this, perhapse the craziest part yet... I was back in college classes that night. My ASL instructor asked how I was. He usually did this just to get us to practice but when I signed that I had just flown home he asked from where. I said Florida then he said I looked tired. I then breifly explained I had just been in a hurricane that morning, all in sign. He never asked me another question all night and even let me go home early if I brought back a picture of the hurricane. It was a riot! He was such an awesome teacher.

So that is that in a nutshell (a rather big one but short compared to my usual trip reports) I hope you enjoyed reading them, even if they are a bit late. Ask any questions you have as I am back online more often now.

Minnesota