I have had so much fun reading everyone else's trip reports that i decided it was only fair to make one myself. To that end, i bought a journal and wrote everything down before going to bed each night.
I live in Westchester, NY and my friends live upstate, so I drove up on Wednesday January 5th, after work. i dropped my dog off at some friends house for the week and then on to meet up with most of the party. Two of my friends do not like to fly so they left this morning to go by train and will arrive within 1/2 hour of when we do flying tomorrow. There are six of us going, all veteran disneyworld travellers. We had each put in what we really wanted to do this trip so we had a pretty full agenda. We had a light dinner of pizza and then an early bedtime since we had to leave the house by 5:15am.
January 6
Up and actually out on time!! Even the ever late friends were up and ready. Got to the airport park-n-fly and dropped the car off and shuttled over to the airport. We flew US Airways. They do not fly direct anymore so we have a layover in Charlotte. I requested exit row seating, being 6'5" tall I need all the leg room I can get, and got great seat assignments for both legs of the trip. On to airport security checkpoint. Thanks to a tip from a DS'er I hand checked my 16 rolls of film which was 800 speed, which they were fine with. I had lots of change and all of the pins I was taking down to trade in my carry on and was sure that they would check it, which they did for the rolls of quarters more than the pins!! The only thing I did not realize was that my shoes had metal in the soles so I got stopped and totally checked out going through the checkpoint, even my belt buckle registered. Then, while I am barefoot, another guard tells me that she is opening my bag. I figured that would happen but everything was fine. All in all everyone was very polite and it really did go very quickly.
Breakfast and then waiting for the flight. This is the part that makes me the most nervous, then takeoff and landing, I am totally fine with flying but seeing the plane buck and shake is unnerving for me. I try to think of it as a thrill ride at a park and that kind of makes it better!!
The flight boards quickly and we are on our way! We get to Charlotte a little early. This turned out to be a good thing, because the guy who was supposed to arrnage our travel told us he was just going to get a taxi when we got there. I told him about YourRide, which I heard about here and so while we were in Charlotte we called until we found their number and arranged a pick up. So far so good. Then we are told our connecting flight will be a little late. What really happened was that the earlier flight had mechanical problems so they took our plane and made us wait until they could steal another plane which in turn caused yet more delays for even more passengers. What a mess. We finally arrive in Orlando
about an hour and a half later than originally planned and sure enough Thom from Your Ride is at baggage claim waiting for us. We told them we were four adults with lots of luggage and as it turns out we had to keep smaller bags with us and he had to bungee cord the trunk because he had other things in there. he was pretty nice though so it was OK. We get to Caribbean Beach to find our friends waiting for us. Turns out their train was late too so they had only been there about 15 minutes.
We go inside and get in line to check in. lots of teenagers. We find out that there is a cheerleading competition for HS squads and the teams are at all the reorts. They were omnipresent and while in ones or twos they were fine, in herds they tended to be a little loud and obnoxious. There was a CM named Doris working the line and talking to guests. She was a riot! She told us about the resort and kept us pretty well entertained while in line.
We were able to chekc into our rooms in Barbados, and I unpacked first thing before we left for Epcot. One of the members of our party must eat his first meal at Garden Grill. he called to get a PS and was told we would have to split into two parties of three. So we head on over to Epcot and first thing walk right onto SE. We all love this ride and wish there was someway to keep it but all things must change I suppose. Then some strolling and pintrading on our way to The Land Pavillion. The hostess Leigh Ann told us we should be able to all sit together and went to arrange that while another CM Chau brought his lanyard over to us for some predinner pin trading. He then went and got another lanyard and showed that to us. Pin trading with the CMs is a lot of fun, as we discovered on our last trip, so we came prepared this trip! Moments later, our table is ready and we are seated. Marcus is our waiter and he was a blast. They had turkey and corn stuffing instead of rotisserie chicken and the catfish and beef were fabulous as was the pumpkin cheesecake desert. Chau even ckecked in on us a couple of times to make sure our meal was going well. We were so stuffed we needed to walk so we went in WS and walked through Canada and UK. Then we decided to go back to the resort to freshen up for a trip to PI.
We got to PI around 10:30 and wandered in and out of the clubs until time for the new years Celebration and saw the fireworks. I had been up since 4:30 so I was ready to call it a day and we left to get some sleep. But just to make sure sleep was good, took a swim in the pool first!! Sank gratefully into bed. Happy to be at Disneyworld!!!
I live in Westchester, NY and my friends live upstate, so I drove up on Wednesday January 5th, after work. i dropped my dog off at some friends house for the week and then on to meet up with most of the party. Two of my friends do not like to fly so they left this morning to go by train and will arrive within 1/2 hour of when we do flying tomorrow. There are six of us going, all veteran disneyworld travellers. We had each put in what we really wanted to do this trip so we had a pretty full agenda. We had a light dinner of pizza and then an early bedtime since we had to leave the house by 5:15am.
January 6
Up and actually out on time!! Even the ever late friends were up and ready. Got to the airport park-n-fly and dropped the car off and shuttled over to the airport. We flew US Airways. They do not fly direct anymore so we have a layover in Charlotte. I requested exit row seating, being 6'5" tall I need all the leg room I can get, and got great seat assignments for both legs of the trip. On to airport security checkpoint. Thanks to a tip from a DS'er I hand checked my 16 rolls of film which was 800 speed, which they were fine with. I had lots of change and all of the pins I was taking down to trade in my carry on and was sure that they would check it, which they did for the rolls of quarters more than the pins!! The only thing I did not realize was that my shoes had metal in the soles so I got stopped and totally checked out going through the checkpoint, even my belt buckle registered. Then, while I am barefoot, another guard tells me that she is opening my bag. I figured that would happen but everything was fine. All in all everyone was very polite and it really did go very quickly.
Breakfast and then waiting for the flight. This is the part that makes me the most nervous, then takeoff and landing, I am totally fine with flying but seeing the plane buck and shake is unnerving for me. I try to think of it as a thrill ride at a park and that kind of makes it better!!
The flight boards quickly and we are on our way! We get to Charlotte a little early. This turned out to be a good thing, because the guy who was supposed to arrnage our travel told us he was just going to get a taxi when we got there. I told him about YourRide, which I heard about here and so while we were in Charlotte we called until we found their number and arranged a pick up. So far so good. Then we are told our connecting flight will be a little late. What really happened was that the earlier flight had mechanical problems so they took our plane and made us wait until they could steal another plane which in turn caused yet more delays for even more passengers. What a mess. We finally arrive in Orlandoabout an hour and a half later than originally planned and sure enough Thom from Your Ride is at baggage claim waiting for us. We told them we were four adults with lots of luggage and as it turns out we had to keep smaller bags with us and he had to bungee cord the trunk because he had other things in there. he was pretty nice though so it was OK. We get to Caribbean Beach to find our friends waiting for us. Turns out their train was late too so they had only been there about 15 minutes.
We go inside and get in line to check in. lots of teenagers. We find out that there is a cheerleading competition for HS squads and the teams are at all the reorts. They were omnipresent and while in ones or twos they were fine, in herds they tended to be a little loud and obnoxious. There was a CM named Doris working the line and talking to guests. She was a riot! She told us about the resort and kept us pretty well entertained while in line.
We were able to chekc into our rooms in Barbados, and I unpacked first thing before we left for Epcot. One of the members of our party must eat his first meal at Garden Grill. he called to get a PS and was told we would have to split into two parties of three. So we head on over to Epcot and first thing walk right onto SE. We all love this ride and wish there was someway to keep it but all things must change I suppose. Then some strolling and pintrading on our way to The Land Pavillion. The hostess Leigh Ann told us we should be able to all sit together and went to arrange that while another CM Chau brought his lanyard over to us for some predinner pin trading. He then went and got another lanyard and showed that to us. Pin trading with the CMs is a lot of fun, as we discovered on our last trip, so we came prepared this trip! Moments later, our table is ready and we are seated. Marcus is our waiter and he was a blast. They had turkey and corn stuffing instead of rotisserie chicken and the catfish and beef were fabulous as was the pumpkin cheesecake desert. Chau even ckecked in on us a couple of times to make sure our meal was going well. We were so stuffed we needed to walk so we went in WS and walked through Canada and UK. Then we decided to go back to the resort to freshen up for a trip to PI.
We got to PI around 10:30 and wandered in and out of the clubs until time for the new years Celebration and saw the fireworks. I had been up since 4:30 so I was ready to call it a day and we left to get some sleep. But just to make sure sleep was good, took a swim in the pool first!! Sank gratefully into bed. Happy to be at Disneyworld!!!
