SURPRISE! We left the twins with Grandma and took Anthony to WDW!

[Mamapapa]

Well, this is my first shot at a TR, so I hope it goes ok! I don’t have a ton of free time, so I’ll try and post as much as I can, as often as I can.

Following the unwritten TR rules, let me introduce my cast. First, our adorable understudies who were not invited on this trip due to their age and the immense amount of baby gear they would have required if they had joined us! Our twins were 15 months at the time of this trip and had a wonderful week with Grandma and Grandpa, which is where we left them in order to travel to Disney.

Second, the star and reason for this trip, our 7 year-old son Anthony who had NO IDEA this trip was going to take place. He’s been asking to go back for the last year (we went when he was 4 and he doesn’t really remember any of it), but we told him there’s no way we’re taking the twins until they are 5yo as we want to go stroller-free. This part is true as our next trip will be in 2015! Anthony has been the best big brother ever and has sacrificed a lot this last year due to the high demands of raising twins and he has never once complained. So once we realized that with a really good travel agent, a kick butt PIN code and free dining that we could afford this trip, we booked it! Then we waited until 5am the morning our flight left to surprise him…

Next would be DH and I... let’s call DH “Disney Tolerant”. He doesn’t dislike Disney (but his wallet does!), but he doesn’t love it either. He does, however, enjoy seeing Disney through the eyes of his child and therefore begrudgingly agreed to this trip. What a good sport! I love Disney, not enough to want to move 1 mile away and go daily, but enough to already be dreaming of our next trip in 4 years and we just got back last week (see my ticker which is already updated for 2015!!).

I hope I have some subscribers for this TR, it will include a hurricane, a very tired fireman, last minute change of plans, an amazing travel agent and Southwest agent, plans for SeaWorld scrapped, a BIG surprise for Anthony with a t-shirt I designed, ADR’s changed non-stop, an EMPTY theme park (with photos to prove it!), a lot of bugs, a lot of flatulence (I think it was free beans week at WDW), a lot of heat, a never ending search for a medium sized plush Mickey, a few funny ride reviews, some restaurant reviews, and NO STROLLERS! So thanks for joining, I’ll start my next post with “Day #1 – The Surprise”.

 

[ChattaAlley]

Sounds fun. I am in.

 

[Mamapapa]

So “Day #1” should have been on Sunday, August 28th. But Mother Nature had other plans for us as the first hurricane in decades to hit the North East actually made it all the way up to NY. So after 45 frantic minutes on the phone with the nicest Southwest Travel Agent ever, and then another 30 minutes with my awesome Disney Travel Agent, our departure date changed to Tuesday, August 30th. We had to drop the one day we planed for SeaWorld, but since this trip was a surprise, Anthony still has no idea about what he missed out on so that worked out perfectly! As DH is a fire fighter, he spent about 40 hours between Sun-Mon pumping out all the houses in our neighborhood that were flooded. By the time we got up at 5am on Tues morning, he was running off of about 8 hours of combined sleep from Sun-Tues. And he was still in a good mood! So we got Anthony up, got him showered and brought him in our room for his surprise. We handed him his t-shirt and then asked him to read it. It said…

He read the shirt, and then put it on like it meant nothing! In hindsight, I think 5am might have been a little too early for this kind of surprise! So this is how the conversation went…
ME: “what does that mean?”
HIM: “we’re going to WDW?”
ME: “Do you think we should go?”
HIM: “Yes!”
ME: “when should we go?”
HIM: “I don’t know”
ME: “what if we went right now?”
HIM: “That would be perfect!”.
ME: “PopPop (DH’s father) is coming to get us right now to take us to the airport, our bags are packed and waiting for us downstairs”
HIM: “are you lying?”
ME: “No! So, do you want to go?”
HIM: “Yes!”
For the record, he still thought we were full of crap right up until we stepped foot in the Orlando Airport. He seriously thought we were joking around and weren’t really going to take him to WDW!

So our flight landed and we found ME with no problems, we also found the start of our reoccurring “no line” theme as we walked right up to check-in and then right onto our bus which left 5 minutes after we got on it! And before we knew it, we were checking into our room at Pop Century. We were in the 50’s building adjacent to the main building and the bowling pin pool. Awesome location! Very quiet and a short walk to main building, bowling and hippy dippy pool and the bus stops. We checked into our room (which was ready at 11am) and then off to the food court for lunch. I have to say, the Pop Centruy food court was the only disappointing meal of the entire stay. Our lunch food was ok (pizza for DS, burger for DH and Mediterranean chicken pizza for me) but the place was so crowded and loud, and basically pretty dirty. There’s just no way Disney can keep up wth the mass amount of people who go threw there every day. So we ate lunch, quickly, and moved on to the bus for HS. Having gone from Poly to Pop, this was our first real adventure with buses only and I have to say, it was fantastic! Never waited more then 6-8 minutes for a bus and the only times they were crowded were at park closing. My new favorite saying is “if you can see the floor, we can fit some more!”. Our bus drivers were so funny! So we made it to HS and Anthony decided his first ride would be ToT since it’s one of my favorites, yeah, he wasn’t a fan! We decided to scar him for life and take him on RnRC next. Check out his face! (back right side, next to DH)

Apparently, in the 3 years since it’s been since we were there last, I totally forgot how many times this coaster goes upside down and once again, Anthony was not a fan of this ride either! He claimed he liked them both, but then flat out refused to ride them again!

So then it started to POUR, really pour. Feet squishing, shirt dripping, underwear wet kind of rain! And we had left our ponchos in our room. So we decided that instead of standing around doing nothing but hiding from the rain, we'd stand around in the TSM line, at least we'd get something fun at the end! Wait time was listed as 80min, but we were loading into the ride after 46min! Check out how soaking wet I am!

One quick side note about TSM, I swear women will never win this game. Teenage boys and married men will always have an advantage if you know what I mean! DH said this ride made him feel "dirty"! You'd think the Imagineers would have tested this before building it...

Next we went to 50's Prime Time for dinner. I think Anthony's favorite part of this was the dessert menu in the view finder!

The food was great, our server was great and it was a nice break from the heat and rain. Our server Josh was super knowledgable about the DDP. We had used it before, but he had some great tips and info about it.

Next it was off to Fantasmic which we had never seen before. It was still pouring so we had our doubts if the show would take place but the arena was filling up quick, so in we went. We bought new ponchos at this point as we couldn't take the rain anymore. Show started, and 15 minutes later, after Ariel almost fell off her rock, the lights came back on the and the show was cancelled! Mad dash to the buses and we were back at Pop in no time. I didn't have time scheduled during the week to fit this in on any other day, but little did I know that it would work out on it's own...