Ok, who brought Hades along? 7 full days in Disney World!

[Step]

This is my second trip to the world and it was a doozy!

You may wonder why I mentioned Hades in my title... trust me, I'll get to it later on in the report.

I've had a long history of wanting to go to Disney World. Like any sane child I begged my parents to take me, but we never seemed to have the cash.
The first time I stepped foot on property was for my honeymoon two years ago. I didn't have the trip report bug at that time but I'll fill in some details as we go along. ( Maybe someday I'll even write that long over due report. )

As an introduction to the cast of characters you can see my pre-trip report here:
First PTR For Fantastic Free Fall Food with Family and Friends!

My husband and I are silly people, children who have cash to burn. I'd only been away from the World for one year when the itch came back. A $3000 tax return?? Why... that's enough to go back! Free dining came around again in April and I snatched up a family suite at ASMU. Got on the phone with my mom and invited her to come along with us and her brother (who lives with us so it was a given he was coming along for this second trip.... I hope no one thinks we brought him with us on our honeymoon )

Long story short: When I was a child I promised my mom that if she couldn't afford to take me to Disney World, I would take her when I grew up!

She was pretty excited to go!

Here she is in her hotel room the night before the trip officially started. She flew up the day before to get cheap airfare.

While she was spending the day travelling I was sitting around at home waiting anxiously to leave. We'd decided to drive to Detroit the evening befor our flight and stay at the Fairfield Inn and Suites. I've stayed here twice now and I have to recommend it. The rooms and decor are delightful, the breakfast is decent fare, and the 8 days of parking with quik park is worth its weight in gold.

We left the house around 3, stopping for a bite to eat on the way. We had no problems crossing the border (oh how I wish I could say that about our return journey) and we arrived at the hotel around 6. We dined at Leonardo's, an italian restaurant nearby. The food was plentiful and surprisingly good, though I couldn't say I enjoyed emptying my pocket book of disney souvenir funds.

Stuffed to the gills we returned to our room to retire. Yes you heard me right... room. There were four of us sharing one room for the night. What can I say, I was cheap with our pre flight accommodations. Needless to say Jimmy was terrified of sharing a bed with Tigh and I don't think he got any sleep, lol. Jimmy is afraid of snores.

We woke up bright and chipper the next day, ready for our flight!

Here we are waiting for our flight and showing off our amazing color coordinated clothes. I in no way planned this.. seriously. I was in charge of picking out outfits for everyone's carry on bags... but if I did choose these colors it was totally unconscious.

Apparently I like khakis and the color green.

After a fairly uneventful flight (oh how I wish I could say that about our return flight... are we sensing a trend here?) we landed in Orlando and met my Mother at the Borders book store. We were just raring to go but I had to deal with that pesky Magical Express stuff. So we trotted through the airport and I toddled up to the Cast Member with my documents. It took a bit to sort out that my mother would be flying back on a different flight (I'm pretty sure the cast member I dealt with was magically new) but things got sorted. I put all our magical express vouchers away, (even mom's.. whoops~! You can bet she was cursing me at 4am on her return trip when she had to beg the driver to let her on the bus)., and off we went to Disney World!

Can you tell I'm excited?

First trip to Disney World, yay!

I'm paranoid this is getting too long so I'll post now and come back.

 

[mplsmom1]

It's not too long. How fortunate you are to take your Mom to the world. I hope you all had a wonderful time...I'll be checking back too!

 

[Step]

Day 1 - Continuing on

I noticed a disturbing lack of Tigh in all the photos posted so far. He does show up during the trip at some point... really.

I invited Tigh along since he'd never been to Disney World. He seemed to enjoy the trip and aside from the snoring I think everyone liked him being there.

Back to the trip at hand. By this point I'd come to the realization that I was back in orlando, and that meant one thing: I was hot! It was a searing 99 degrees celsius when we arrived! I didn't even know people could survive in that kind of heat. Thankfully the weather would cool off over the coming days.. to a chilly 89, lol.

I also noticed that my mother was mesmerized by palm trees. Had to pull her off of them from time to time during the trip (not kidding... really!)

Alright I lie, but all in good fun!

We escaped from the wonderful air conditioning of the bus into the excellent air conditioning of the ASMU lobby. Check in was a breeze... but silly me I forgot to grab 1st visit buttons for the newbies, and I didn't even think to mention I was expecting a package from virgin mobile!

Off we traipsed to the amazing air conditioning of our family suite at ASMU. I'd submitted a 1st floor pool facing room request. I got the 1st floor part, and I'm kind of glad we didn't face the pool in retrospect. We had a nice lush view from our window and we weren't very far from the pool. Of course these benefits were negated by the fact that the ASMU food court was undergoing renovations for our trip and we had to make several trips around the outer edge of the building to get to teh buses in the blazing heat. No... I'm not bitter, could have happened to anyone.. but why me? lol. At least everyone else at ASMU suffered with me.

Back to the rooms. We didn't take many interior shots, which is fine by me since Linda has taken a million of them so far here on the DIS boards. We did get some fine shots of our shiney new towel critters:

These were the only towels animals we got, but they stayed with us for the length of our trip.

We unpacked and enjoyed being cold while Lindsay skipped down to the front desk to ask about my phones. When he came back he said there was no evidence of them which disappointed me. i passed him his deluxe lanyard full of new stitch pins and he decided to go buy our refillable mugs for the trip and check with someone else on the phone. He came back a short while later with his first pin trade of the trip and word that my phones had been found but I'd need to come pick them up myself. Phones retrieved we set about trying to open them up without any scissors!
Have you ever tried opening up hermetically sealed electronics witha can opener? Lindsay did:

I'm surprised he didn't kill himself! You can also see the first pin trade of the trip. You can see why I was excited! A lime green mickey head is welcome on any trip!

Too many exclamation points? Probably so, lol.

Phones tucked in soundly to sleep with their chargers, we headed to Downtown Disney for some eats and minimal browsing. I think this particular bus trip was the only time all 5 of us got to sit down on a bus together. Seriously, the buses were so bad that I will NEVER stay at a value resort again. Too many people and no alternative travel paths.

Back to downtown disney:

Lindsay took advantage of the first photo opportunity he saw.

We at at Wolfgang pucks which has the best counter service meals on all property to my knowledge. We did take pictures but we weren't consistent through the whole trip so I'll save them for the food porn thread. We also forgot to bring any cash, so I came back later in the week to give Jose his tip. Sorry about that Jose!

We left downtown disney on a bus to the boardwalk area, figuring we'd be a quick boat ride from there to Hollywood Studios. We ended up stopping at the Swan and everyone was just amazed at the beaty of the place.

See I told you Tigh would show up!

We went to DHS by boat as planned. Mom and I bee lined straight for the great movie ride, while the guys hit tower of terror. We only had time for that one ride before we had to queue up for Fantasmic. I had a couple blurry pictures of us sweating in the dark waiting for the show, but I don't think anyone needs to see those,lol. We ended up using a round of snack credits to buy water for everyone. I think I almost fainted from the heat. We were standing there for about 30 minutes with no breeze in a press of people! Good thing it was worth the wait and the heat. Fantasmic was awesome as usual. My mom loved it!

Wrapping this report up, we stood in a long line for the bus, stood all the way home.. a trend that would repeat itself throughout the trip, and ended up getting to bed waaay too late after calling to set up our new pre paid cell phones. That was probably a run on sentence but I have to wrap this first day up.

We dropped in to bed exhausted from a long day of travel and fun.

Hope you've enjoyed the report so far. I'll post day 2 as soon as I'm able.

 

[Step]

It's not too long. How fortunate you are to take your Mom to the world. I hope you all had a wonderful time...I'll be checking back too!

Thanks for reading! We did have a wonderful time in spite of the Hades remark. Hope to see more of you

 

[Lady Lallie]

I'm here! I'm caught up!

What Fantasmic show did you end up going too?

 

[Step]

I'm here! I'm caught up!

What Fantasmic show did you end up going too?

We went to the later one. It was so crowded though and I didn't see single DISer. I was pretty close to the front too. I was wearing a lime green shirt and my face was bright red, lol.

 

[Lady Lallie]

We went to the later one. It was so crowded though and I didn't see single DISer. I was pretty close to the front too. I was wearing a lime green shirt and my face was bright red, lol.

We went to the second one too. I was looking but it was too crowded. Oh well, I was comfy once we were able to sit down.

 

[Step]

We went to the second one too. I was looking but it was too crowded. Oh well, I was comfy once we were able to sit down.

Man oh man it was hot that night. I felt like we were standing in line for Fantasmic in an oven! We ended up sitting on the middle/left side close to the front. We got lots of nice cooling spray from the show.

 

[Lady Lallie]

Man oh man it was hot that night. I felt like we were standing in line for Fantasmic in an oven! We ended up sitting on the middle/left side close to the front. We got lots of nice cooling spray from the show.

It sounds like we were close to each other but we got a lot of spray on us too and we were towards the left as well. I don't think everyone thought that 2nd show would be as crowded. I would hate to see what the first one was like if that was the less crowded of the two. I suspect it was as there were still a lot of empty bleachers.

 

[Sererena]

Hey did you get any shots of the interior and exterior of the hotel? I remember how excited you were about it, I wanna seeeeeee.

 

[Step]

We got a few, I'll be posting them later.

 

[PISCESANGEL]

I'm here! I hope you will be writing more soon!

 

[tiggerbell]

It took me a while, but I'm here!