mickeystoontown
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2006
- Messages
- 29,283
Let's see, I've never done a pre-trip report (even though this will be our 15th trip to Walt Disney World). Hum? What should I post now? Oh I know......plans!
I work in a one attorney/one paralegal law office and have nobody to fall back on for a replacement. Meaning that my boss is going to make me find somebody to fill in for me. For our 2009 trip, I had a lady all lined up and she backed out. My backup to her found out that she had to stay with a friend who had surgery so she was out too. We ended up having my boss' sister come in and do my job. I say do my job but what I really mean is she came in, answered the phone and did, basically, receptionist duties. She didn't do any of my "real" work. That was waiting on me after I got back from vacation.

Since I do work in a small office, I can't take my full two weeks of vacation at the same time. The next best thing I can do is take a Thursday and Friday off (which is really a half day since we close at Noon anyway) and then the following week.
Like I said before, John and I own a cabinet shop so he's able to take off whenever he wants. It's nice being your own boss sometimes.

Hunter gets out of school on Wednesday, May 26, 2010. Mama's a retiree so she has no plans whatsoever but to pack her stuff and get in the car when we tell her it's time to go.

Now that I've said all that, I'll post our Day One plan.
Day One, Wednesday, May 26, 2010:
I have to work this day and Hunter has to go to school. By Noon, I know that I'll be about to bust my britches to get out of the office and on the road. Maybe, just maybe, my boss will get tired of all my excitement and send me home early. OR, he'll be so stressed out that I'm leaving for a week that he'll have me busting my britches to get everything done.


I'm not a last minute packer. I am also not a two week before the vacation packer. I'll probably have all of our stuff packed and ready to go a day or so before we are scheduled to leave. That way, John and I can load everything into the car the night before. And we'll have a few things that can't be loaded in until right before we leave.
It'll probably look something like this:

And then this:


As you can see, we had a lot of stuff packed into the trunk of our car for our 2009 trip. It'll probably be just as full for our 2010 trip since Mama is coming along. If Lacey gets to go, I have no idea where we'll put it all.

John will pick Hunter up after school and they, along with my Mama, will be waiting, ever so impatiently, on me to get home from work. Once I pull in, John willl start loading in the last minute stuff. Stuff like our "snack bag", Hunter's backpack full of games, the portable DVD player, etc. We'll make a final "Everybody go to the bathroom! Do you have everything?" call. Usually, we are hugging Mama goodbye but this time she'll be with us!
I hope to hit the road by no later than 5:45 p.m., hopefully, earlier. We have nearly 820 miles (818.96 to be exact) to drive before we reach the Caribbean Beach Resort.
This is where the over the river and through the woods part comes in. First river will be the Ouachita River which separates West Monroe from Monroe, Louisiana. (Who knew one little river could cause such football rivalry?) And, then the drive gets pretty boring. We'll see this:


And then comes the second river.....the Mississippi River which separates Louisiana from Mississippi.

See, I told you we'd see a river:

For those of you who have read my other trip reports, you'll remember that it's a tradition that we stop at McDonald's in Vicksburg, Mississippi. We'll go through the drive-thru and eat on the road so we can save some time.
Mama will need to stop and walk around a bit so we'll be making more stops along the way than we normally would. But, we hope to make it to either Pensacola or Crestview, Florida before it gets too late in the evening. I know we won't drive past 11:00 p.m.....Midnight at the latest.
***I think I'll stop here for now since I've covered Day One. You can see that I am a very detail oriented person and I like to ramble about all sorts of things.
