Thanks so much to all! No one else finds this to be a big deal. I'm so glad I have the DISers to share it with.
Loved hearing the stories posted and thanks to disneynerd for the video link. Have you seen the one where he dances? The guy could turn himself into a pretzel. lcasa, how lucky you got to be there at the Golden Horseshoe party!! Wasn't it funny when Laurence shared those stories about how his dad told him there was a screw in his belly button and if he turned it the wrong way, his rear end would fall off (etc)?! pycees, your coworker is so lucky!! Maybe she'll invite you along!
Now I need your help. What to do? I looked into changing my flight from Sat night to Sun. Too $$$$. So if I want to stay at their house, it will need to be Fri night and I'll give up Fantasmic dessert seating for dd and me (believe it or not, I've never seen it!). Ok, it's more than a fair trade-off, but now I have to figure out the following:
How do I get from DLR to Santa Monica Friday and then Santa Monica to SNA on Sat evening? I looked into car rentals but I have never done that before and the prices I'm getting are way out of my range ($250-300 for our whole stay, Oct 22-24). I just don't have that much extra right now. Maybe we could take a shuttle to SNA on Friday afternoon and then rent a car? I think it would count as 2 days since we probably couldn't return it within 24 hours. Unfortunately, Laurence can't come pick us up since he's the sole caregiver for his parents at that time and it wouldn't be safe to leave them alone for so long. If we were going in/out of LAX he could, but I looked into switching airports and that didn't work without a big cost, either.
Are there options I'm not considering? We thought of driving down instead of flying, but dd has to go to work at 3 AM Sun so we would actually have less time to spend with the Boags and I don't think it would be worth it when you factor in gas cost and time lost.
We thought maybe we could just go visit on Sat and spend the day with them, and try to go back in Dec. for a longer visit, but...well...you just never know whether these things will work out again.