Mom, is there really such a place on earth? Yes, son, there is.

[sailing mom]

Hi All-

This is my first time ever posting a trip report, but wanted to share our impressions as first time Disney visitors...okay, well maybe not a first time. I visited Disney 15 years ago right after Disney MGM studios opened. The only things I remember from that trip are:
1. My two year old son falling out of his stroller at the Alladin Light Parade and the subsequent ER trip for stitches. He still has the scar on his forehead today!
2. Same two year old being terrorized by characters at a breakfast in the Contemporary resort. For years, he was scared of Chip and Dale.

Other than that, I can't tell you where I stayed, what I saw or anything else. Fast forward 15 years and you have

Me: 43 yo homeschooling mom of 6 (4 biological, 2 adopted). 3 kids grown and out of the home. Our youngest 3 would be traveling with us.

DH: 53 yo retired Army Major who currently works with the Department of the Army as an Intelligence Analyst. Has been deployed to Iraq 5 times since the start of the war and works in battlefield forensics. Needs a big break from reality right now.

DS: 17 yo, recent high school graduate. Will be starting Community College this fall full time in the Engineering program.

DD: 13 yo princess. A competative gymnast and the only girl in our group of kids. Don't let her beauty confuse you...she can hold her own with the boys.

DS: 9 yo boy....need I say more?

A disney trip really hadn't been on our radar at all. We usually take very low key trips that involve renting a cottage somewhere on water that we can put our sailboat in. We usually stay a couple of weeks, and spend every moment possible out on the water, no agenda, just where ever the wind may take us. This year, DH surprised me with a trip to St. Kitts in the British Virgin Islands for our anniversary, just the two of us. Because we got an "adults only" vacation, we asked the kids where they would like to go for vacation. Disney world was it hands down. My youngest son was watching TV one day, and saw an ad for Disney with the castle and fireworks. He turned to me and asked "Mom, is there really such a place on earth?". We went to find out. We planned our trip for August 15 - 22, knowing that it would be hot but hoping that the crowds would be lower because schools were starting back. We live in VA, and are used to the three H's...hazy, hot and humid. Schools around here start on the 10th.

I'm not normally a big planner for trips. I'll arrange for the cottage, but beyond that, any other planning goes to DH, the world traveler. This trip was going to be different though...all the planning would fall one me. I started researching, and arranged reservations with a travel agent. Because DH was retired military, we were going to use the Military Discount for 2 rooms at POFQ, get the dining plan so I wouldn't worry about food and the ongoing cost, and use the military salute and companion tickets. Sounded good right?

Now comes the worry. Sometimes you read too much on the internet. About 3 weeks before we were to leave, I had read online that Disney was turning away military with the old pink ID (the military calls them gray area retired). They are the retired reservist awaiting pay. DH falls into that catagory. He served 14 years active duty, then finished in the reserves. Now I was freaking out. All my plans had been based on the military discount thing. We had already paid for the rooms and dining plan, and I envisioned going to Disney and suddenly having to come up with the other 40%. Not to mention, DH had already purchased the companion tickets at the Pentagon. $99 is much different than $280 (or whatever the full price 5 day tickets were). Having just paid tuition for my son, and still needing to purchase books, I was pretty much an anxious wreck. Good thing my DH is so even keeled. He just said, "We'll deal with it if we need to". Oh, did I say I was blessed with my family??? I am.

We were flying out early Sunday from an airport around 1.5 hours away from our house, so we decided to stay in a hotel overnight, so our vacation felt like it started a day before it really did.

We had an uneventful flight to Orlando. We had arranged for the Magical Express service, but really didn't know what to expect by anything. DH had never been to any type of amusement park, ever, and he only point of reference was the local state fairs....okay, you can stop laughing now. From the moment we walked off the plane and got on the magical express, we knew that whatever expectations we had were not realistic at all.

We literally got off the plane, found the Magical Express desk, and within 5 minutes were on our way to Disney. The bus driver was so nice and friendly, helping with our bags and just treating us like special guests. Little did we know, this was just the first of many events like that.

We got to POFQ around 11:00. I had done online check-in, but remember, I was still worried about the whole military ID thing. The Cast Member was so nice and sweet. She just looked at his ID and said "Thank you". She didn't even blink. Our rooms were ready, and we could go right up. I had just booked standard rooms, but we had 2 rooms overlooking the river, right next to the pool in Building 2. Best of all, one was a corner room which I had secretly hoped that we would get because I like the light!

We decided to enjoy the pool and then head down to DTD to look around and have dinner. We also thought we'd go to guest relations and activate the tickets while we were there. That way, if there were any issues, we could take care of it before we hit the park.

We enjoyed the pool and just enjoyed being together. I could already see DH relaxing. We got dressed, walked to the boat dock, and there was a waiting boat to take us to DTD. Amazing...I had heard about all the waiting time for transportation. I figured this was a fluke.

We enjoyed the little boat ride down the river, and were overwhelmed by DTD. So many shops (we live in a very small town in VA). We went straight to guest services so I could stop my worrying. You've probably guessed by now, no problems. We upgraded the companion tickets to parkhoppers and were on our way in 5 minutes. Outstanding!

We looked around a bit, then went to our first ADR at Regland Rd. We were immediately seated and had the most wonderful dinner I have had in while. We were expecting some cheesy imitation of an Irish pub. Were we ever surprised. DH felt it looked like some of the pubs he had visited in Dublin (just bigger). Having the dining plan was wonderful. I didn't have to worry about what everyone was ordering and budgeting for the meals. It was all taken care of. Our bill came, and it was $185 (both DH and I had a drink), but all we had to do was take care of the tip. This definately worked for us.

After dinner, we looked around a bit, but decided to go back and turn in as we had gotten up early for our flight and everyone wanted to get an early start at our first park picked by our future engineer: Epcot.

To be continued:
Next chapter: We go to Epcot, lose a ticket, and learn about Fastpass

 

[sailing mom]

The next morning, I had planned for the family to go to Epcot for three reasons. (1) I had done research and everything I had read said avoid MK on Mondays as that is usually the first park people visit (2) DS-17 was most intrigued by Epcot and (3) I wanted to save MK to have a magical experience.

Prior to our leaving, I had arranged for some basic groceries to be delivered by Garden Grocer. Even though we had the meal plan, I was particularly concerned with breakfast. We don't like to eat too much "snacky sweet" foods for breakfast (though we did splurge with some Beignets a couple of times) and usually have yogurt and fruit. They had delivered yogurt, fruit, granola, mixed nuts and waters to the room the day before. I was pleased with the service generally, but wish they had more fresh fruit options. I provide home baked bread to a local grocery delivery service, and they are able to obtain fresh fruits and veggies from local farms around here...but that's a different story. We had breakfast in our room and then went in search of the buses to the park.

Once again, we literally walked to the bus stop and around the corner comes the bus for Epcot. One thing that really surprised us was the immersion technique that Disney uses. For instance, the bus from POFQ plays "southern" music while it travels until it gets to the specific park. When we entered the grounds of Epcot, the music changed to more futuristic and majestic. Am I the only one who pays attention to that sort of thing?

From reading online, I had also purchased lanyards for each of us to carry our Keys to the World cards as well as our admission tickets. I didn't know about the whole Disney pin thing yet, but proved to be useful for the couple of pins my guys bought as souvenirs.

Entering the park was much easier that I expected. We did not get there right at rope drop, but within 15 minutes. Everything went smoothly. I had also read about photo pass, and we wanted to utilize that. I am not a big camera person, and having someone available to take pictures sounded like a good idea. We had our first photo done in front of Space Ship Earth.

We had decided to see if we could do soarin first as a standby, and probably get fasspass for mission space. We were new to all this, so weren't exactly sure how it all worked out. So we headed over to soarin, and were pleased to see that there was only a standby time of 20 minutes. We got in line.

Another tip I had learned from reading the boards was to photograph your tickets backs, and this is exactly what we did right after we activated the tickets. I must admit, I thought we were being paranoid; after all we had purchased those nice little cases for our tickets, right? Well as we were standing in line for our very first ride, DH looks down at his lanyard and says "Where's my ticket?". It's no where to be found. By this time, the line has gotten quite big behind us. I tried to get DH to stay in line until the ride was over, but he was determined that he wanted to take care of this right away. He said he'd meet us over at guest services, so he left.

The kids and I rode soarin. I enjoyed the ride and liked the whole effect of the smells as you were flying. All the kids had huge grins on their face when they got off the ride.

We linked up with DH over by guest services. More pixie dust for us. He got there and someone had turned in his ticket! He had also headed over to Mission Space to pick up the fast passes while we were in Soarin. We really learned to utilize the whole fast pass thing. I have to say, that made the park experience so enjoyable. We were amazed that some of the standby times were 90 - 100 minutes at times, but we did fast pass for all the big headliners and never waited more than 5 minutes for any of them. We must have had luck too because a lot of times, our fast pass returns were within 90 minutes. I enjoyed the rides, but not sure I would have wanted to wait 90 minutes in line with temperatures 90+ degrees and high humidity. Having the fast pass was like someone holding a place in line for you, and was able to go explore other exhibits during that time.

While in EP, we rode mission space, test track, spaceship earth, visited the aquarium, rode the nemo ride, visited innovations. The only thing we didn't get to do that we wanted to, but just ran out of time was the film with Figment. We had 2:50 late lunch ADR's at Tempan Edo in the Japanese pavilion. We had to wait about 10 minutes to be seated, but had a very enjoyable lunch with another family there (they seat family style). Once again I was reminded at how small a world (I mean global, not Disney ) it is out there. The other family's DH works for a sister agency to my DH's agency, and they had worked together briefly on some projects! We particularly liked that Teppan Edo had a kids menu that allowed the kids to choose a real meal and not just limit them to hamburger, chicken strips, etc. That is the only complaint I have about the dining plan. I have pretty adventurous eaters, and we don't eat a lot of burgers and never have chicken strips at home. They like international foods, hot spicy foods, and will try anything. We did learn that on your plan, even though Disney says kids quick service meals, on their tally, they count them all the same. They don't differentiate between Adult Quick Service and Child Quick Service at the register. One of the CM at POFQ told us that, and that opened up new dining opportunities for DS-9.

We stayed in EP until about 7p, looking around the world showcase. We felt we had had a great day. Our only disappointment was that DH wasn't able to go on Soarin. Once the ticket thing had been taken care of, the standby line was over 90 minutes and when we checked for fast passes they had all been distributed by noon. As we were walking out of the world showcase, a woman with a sleeping toddler came up to us and asked if we had done soarin yet, because she had 7 fast passes, but they were heading back to the hotel and weren't going to use them! Unbelievable! We were so thrilled.

We headed back to soarin, and got into the fast pass lane. On our way in we gave the extra two fast passes to a couple at the end of the standby line (at this point >120 minutes!). Needless to say they were so surprised. DH got to do soarin after all!!!

Back to the hotel around 8:30. Everyone was tired, but happy. Once again, we walked onto a waiting bus. Now we're becoming spoiled. A quick swim and it was off to bed for everyone.

To be continued:
Next--Day 3 at Disney in which we do Magic Kingdom, learn why you don't buy new shoes to take to Disney, and we become the Munsters!