My First TR- there WILL be pictures! Updated Jan 29, 2008! FINALLY!

[DisneyFreak06]

I’ve decided that since I can’t take a trip to WDW anytime soon, I’d write my first trip report, even though my last trip was almost 7 months ago! )

This is a trip that almost didn’t happen, so be prepared for some long explanations, but I will definitely be posting pictures!

Characters: Me (Tina) 31, teacher, wonderful aunt
DN (Nephew) 12, good kid who deserved a trip

Why, do you ask, would someone who has 13 nieces and nephews take only ONE with her to WDW? Because that’s the only one who’s mother said I could! LOL And of course, I really couldn’t afford to take anyone else! I offered to take another nephew, but he said no, and his mom would never have let him go with me anyway. We’re planning a big family trip in the summer of 2009 or 2010. He’ll go then, he wasn’t ready to leave his family on such a big trip.[/FONT]

Since I said this was the trip that almost wasn’t, I’d better explain that. My sister and my nephew’s dad were never married, and the father lives in Alberta. DN needed a passport, and a letter from his father saying I could take him on this trip. My sister had an incredibly busy Fall, seeing as how she got married in November!

She was late getting the passport stuff ready, and needed to send it out west, and then the father wasn’t the fastest at getting it back to us either. Needless to say, the week before we were planning to leave, the passport wasn’t back! So we called Passport Canada and they hadn’t even opened DN’s passport yet. They called my sister back on the Sunday before (we were flying out of Halifax on Saturday) and said that they would see what they could do. We didn’t have the letter from DN’s father yet either. I had typed up a form letter and left the blanks for his information (and I even typed in his address, to make it easier for him) and sent him Express Post the letter, and included the Express Post envelope for him to mail it back. I included a little note saying how sad it would be if DN couldn’t go just because we didn’t have a “permission slip” from his dad. (We hadn’t even left yet, and I was paying for his passport and letters! This was really going to cost a fortune.) Tuesday the passport arrived at my sister’s house! Then on Wednesday the letter from DN’s father arrived!

Then we start paying attention to the weather, and it’s announcing snow/freezing rain for the Friday evening/Saturday morning. Uh oh, we have a 3-3 ½ hour drive to Halifax and our flight is scheduled to leave on Saturday afternoon. I call DN on Thursday and tell him that I hope he’s all packed because we’d be leaving as soon as school was out on Friday. I was teaching in Summerside (50 minutes from Charlottetown) and was planning to meet him at my house and we’d go right away and get a hotel in Halifax, just in case. I didn’t want to miss our flight because we got bad weather in PEI and they didn’t in Halifax, and with the drive over…

So we head out, listening to Disney music in the car. DN starts to cry a little and says “I want to cry now, because I know I’m going to Disney World and I don’t want to cry there. I want to get it all out now!” Good plan! So that works, and we drive to an airport hotel and they tell us they are all booked. Darn it, why didn’t I call first! (I don’t travel all that often) But they do give us a number for another airport hotel and we call them up and get their LAST ROOM!!! It was a lovely hotel and my nephew loved swimming in the pool.

 

[DisneyFreak06]

We woke up Saturday morning and are jumping for joy because we’re leaving for WDW this afternoon! But then we go to get something to eat and start hearing about all the flights being cancelled! Not good. We check the screens and our flight is not listed yet, but EVERYTHING had been cancelled all morning. I guess it had been freezing rain and the planes and runways were not ready. Eventually our flight shows up as cancelled too.

At this point the hotel is crowded with people who had rooms but no longer do, and are hanging out in the lobby trying to figure out what they should be doing. We call Air Canada and they put us on the first flight out the next morning. At least we won't miss TOO much.

I then checked with the hotel, and they don’t have any rooms left.

I tell DN that it will be an adventure and we’ll just sleep at the airport. Our flight was scheduled to leave at around 6 or 6:30 am, so we’d have to be there quite early anyways.

Well, we didn’t really sleep much, but we really got to know the Halifax Airport!

Here's DN getting comfortable.

Trying/Pretending to sleep.

Here I am... We should have been getting up at Pop Century for our first day in the parks!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

What a great aunt you are taking your nephew to Disney World!

That passport/letter of permission situation must have been very stressful! Thank goodness everything arrived in time.

DN starts to cry a little and says “I want to cry now, because I know I’m going to Disney World and I don’t want to cry there. I want to get it all out now!”

That is so cute!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Aren't you cute in your Mickey ears!

Yuck! Being stuck in the Halifax airport, that is no fun at all!

 

[DisneyFreak06]

So, after bumping into a bunch of teachers and students that I know and friends of DN’s, (It was our March Break, and yes, we do have an airport in PEI, it’s just usually way cheaper to fly out of Halifax, even with the toll from the Confederation Bridge, the toll roads, and the gas!) we were checked in and ready to go.

DN in the secure area, doesn't he look excited?

Here is DN on the plane! Halifax-Montreal

I promised DN that if I posted a TR, I would post some of the pictures of me that he took with my little digital. Here I am, with my tongue out! Yes, I am just a big kid at heart!

We arrive in Montreal and wait and wait for our luggage so we can go through Customs. Some woman comes through and asks if anyone else is travelling to Orlando that doesn't have luggage. She herds us all out and says we'll have to fill in lost luggage forms in Orlando! Lost luggage already. DN wondered if this was what the whole trip was going to be like.

We arrived in Orlando, luggageless, but safe. We check in at DME and they tell us not to bother with the lost luggage forms, they will get the luggage to us. That's fine with us, the faster we can check in, the better!

I forgot to mention that once I found out our flight had been cancelled, I called Disney and they noted it on my file. They never did charge me for that night. Only Disney is so sweet!

Here is one of the first vews that DN had of Orlando.

Up next: Break-down at Pop Century!!!

 

[DisneyFreak06]

Aren't you cute in your Mickey ears!

Yuck! Being stuck in the Halifax airport, that is no fun at all!

Thanks! I really don't look my age, especially with Mickey ears in the Halifax Airport!

It wasn't too bad in the airport, we watched flights leave/arrive from the viewing room upstairs, we found a quieter area when we wanted to close our eyes and we wandered around, quite a bit. Being excited for our trip, and not having a bed made it really hard to sleep though!

 

[MedCruise07]

Subscribing! I have been stuck in an airport overnight and i have to say that I did not handle it nearly as well as you did . . .

 

[disneynephew]

DN in the secure area, doesn't he look excited?

Thats me!!!

 

[DisneyFreak06]

Subscribing! I have been stuck in an airport overnight and i have to say that I did not handle it nearly as well as you did . . .

It was definitely hard, but we tried to make the best of it. I had Mickey playing cards, and we had Disney word searches and other puzzles too. I thought we'd be needing things to do on the planes and in layovers, not before we left! But I did come to the conclusion that I'll do my best to pay the extra and fly out of Charlottetown from now on. It is usually a lot more expensive, but at least if our flight gets cancelled, we can go home and sleep in our own beds!

 

[DisneyFreak06]

Thats me!!!

Hi DN! Are you coming over tomorrow night so we can work on the next installment? I need to figure out which pictures to post!

 

[snowwhite325]

Hi DN! Are you coming over tomorrow night so we can work on the next installment? I need to figure out which pictures to post!

Can't wait for the next installment

 

[spicemom]

Sounds like you might be your nephew's favorite aunt! Looking forward to reading more and seeing more pics!

 

[disneynephew]

 

[disneynephew]

Here's DN getting comfortable.

 

[disneynephew]

DN (Nephew) 12, good kid who deserved a trip



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[disneynephew]

Me (Tina) 31, teacher, wonderful aunt

 

[DisneyFreak06]

Can't wait for the next installment

Thanks for joining us! We'll try to hurry up and get the next one ready as soon as we can.

 

[DisneyFreak06]

Sounds like you might be your nephew's favorite aunt! Looking forward to reading more and seeing more pics!

Actually, DN says I'm his favorite "Disney Freak" aunt. He's too nice to say that he really has a favorite. (Seeing as he's got 6 aunts on this side of the family, not to mention his father and step-father's sides.) But I do think he's enjoying the whole TR idea and posting things!

Thanks for joining us, and we'll definitely be posting some more pictures.

 

[DisneyFreak06]

We are the first hotel to get off the bus!

We were in the preferred section, top floor. Right near the stairs, it was really close to the pool and to the main building, but it was quite quiet. Here is DN on the way to our room.

It was cold in Canada when we left, so yes, he looks over-dressed for WDW. Thank goodness we packed summer clothing in our carry-on luggage. We were very pleased with our room, we went up the yo-yo stairs to the top floor, went around the corner and there we were. Not the corner room, but I think the next one. It was perfect for us.

Some Pop Century Pictures

We were in the Play-Doh building.

We got something to eat and then we headed for the bus to EPCOT. DN was really excited; he’d never been to WDW before.

Now this is where you start to realize that our trip was 7 months ago. I can’t remember exactly in which order we did everything. Oh well, we’ll do our best!

Here’s DN with the Finding Nemo characters.

I believe that DN wanted to ride Test Track, Mission Space and Soarin’ especially, so we headed to the line with the shortest wait, which was Test Track.

We then rode Test Track and Mission Space before doing some shopping. I had forgotten to put my watch on Friday morning before school and it got left behind! I can’t stand not having a watch or at least some way to tell time, so I had to buy something. I wandered around looking at watches and debating between getting something quite fancy and nice, or even a little girlie one. I ended up getting a keychain Mickey Head watch. I love it. But I lost DN! He kept looking at things and the store was huge with all kinds of nooks and crannies.

I guess this didn’t help him find me very easily!

Arr! I’ve got a Pirate nephew!

At this point DN started to get cranky and told me he couldn’t take the park anymore! I couldn’t believe it! We’d only ridden two rides!!! He really was cranky though, so we decided to head back to Pop. We went to our room and he called his mother. I believe this was the time I left him to get us something to eat and drink while he talked on the phone. I had stood outside the door to make sure he locked all the locks! When I came back, DN was just a sobbing like crazy! He was so upset. He told his mom something to the effect of “I know I’m at Disney World, and it’s awesome but I wish you were here too!” It was so sad. When we got home, his mother told us that when she got off the phone, she was crying too! If she’d had the money, she would have jumped on a plane then and there.

He was so tired though, he really hadn’t had much sleep though, remember? He spent the night before in an airport!

In order to settle him a little bit, I told him that I had two surprises in store for him. I told him that one was only little and I wasn’t sure which day it would be on, and the other was really big and that was going to be Tuesday during our Magic Kingdom Day.

You see, DN has always loved looking at Disney stuff with me, watching the planning videos and everything, so he was pretty in on the planning the whole way. I had decided that he deserved a big surprise that he didn’t know anything at all about, so I planned something special. I’m just not going to tell any of you that yet!

Once he took his mind off his mother, he fell asleep almost right away!

Day 4: Cranky at AK and MGM… hmm… I’m starting to see a pattern!

 

[MedCruise07]

I'll be at Disney with a 12 year old this December. I have post-it notes to myself to schedule break times and be aware of when people are getting cranky . . .