The best/worst trip to WDW ever--New and Improved!!

[harleyquinn]

Our trip was from Jan 25-Feb.1

I'm going to start out rather unconventionally and skip ahead to the worst thing that can happen to anyone while on vacation.

Cast:
Me: Sarah (25) Disneyoholic librarian
DH: Jay (26) it's his fault b/c he pushed for WDW for our honeymoon
T: (25) Jay's best friend since HS. Is really more of a Universal guy (yuck!)
C: (26) T's wife. Loves characters...really, that's why she married T and is friends with us. HA! Get it "characters?" Sorry...it's not the same if you have to explain it!

Anyway, I'll set the scene. It's Thursday night at 7:30 we've spent an awesome day at MK (even though it was REALLY busy--and before you say it--no, not holiday, peak busy, but waayy worse than what I expected...damn EE)
Wait I have to go backwards, maybe it won't be so shocking then. MIL--oh, I'm just going to say it. Thursday night while we were watching Wishes at MK my MIL (51) died. Before Wishes started I told DH to call his mom who was in the hospital with what we thought was nothing serious. He wanted to wait til we got back to POP, but I made him do it then. So he called her and she said she wasn’t doing to good and that the doctors didn’t know what was going on. She told him she had to let him go and he said “okay, bye.” She passed less than an hour later.

After the fireworks we got back back to POP and T and Jay went to everything Pop to fill their mugs. he told me to call his sister, b/c he was worried. So I called, and the doctors had JUST told her and her dad that she was gone. Luckily a family friend is a nurse at the hospital and she heard the page and came running. She took the phone from SIL and clamed me down. Then I had to tell DH. Luckily C was there to help me wait for him to come back.

He took it really hard at first, but we all stayed up til 3am talking about her amazing life (over 500 people came to her memorial after we got back!) Dh decided after talking to his dad and sister that we should stay. I now most people will never understand that decision, but it turned out to be the best thing for him by far. DH thrives around people and especially children. WDW was MIL's favorite place in the world, so we did everything she loved, and did our best to have fun.

So anyone interested in the rest of the story? I promise to be upbeat! We really did have awesome moments. Lots of them..

 

[Alicnwondrln]

yes please share the rest
god bless your DH family and your MIL

 

[harleyquinn]

It's so fitting that an Alice fan would be the first to post! You'll see why tomorrow!

 

[pumba]

You had an amazing MIL.....she loved Disney too.......please share your good times too with us.......we would love to hear them.......HUGS to you and your hubby and family

 

[CrazedDisFan]

I'm so sorry for your family's loss. Please continue on with your story.

Think less of you for staying? Nope. You honored her memory by doing things she loved.

 

[Dismom+two]

First of all, I am so sorry for your loss. I lost my MIL in Sept and it was awful! I totally understand you staying to finish your vacation. Dear MIL would have wanted you and him to stay I'm sure! She would not have wanted you to go home!!
May she rest in peace, she is well now and in a beautiful place!!

My thoughts and prayers will be with you while your going through this rough time in your life.

I would really love to hear the rest of your report!

 

[Minniespal]

I'm so sorry for your loss

Please continue.

 

[jennymouse]

Yes, please finish your trip report! So sorry for the loss of your MIL; she must've been special and I'm sure will be greatly missed.

 

[harleyquinn]

Day 1, Part 1

We flew out of Cleveland on USA3000 airlines for less than $300 total for both of us R/T w/ taxes and all!! And it was completely smooth and professional. They even gave us FREE headphones. Sure they hurt my ears like crazy, but they were FREE!!! So what if they showed really old episodes of Seinfeld and Friends and some thinly veiled commercials for Apple vacations (USA3000 is owned by Apple), it was FREE!!! So what if they also offered 10 channels of some of the worst music I’ve ever heard?? Where the highlight of the musical selections was “Lean on Me.” (Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE that song, but beyond it and some Phil Collins song, I couldn’t tell you what the rest of the drek they played was.) But who cares????!! The headphones we’re FREE!

Okay, anyway. We get to Hopkins a little over 2 hours early, and there are like 2 other people in the airport with us. Guess flying out on a Wednesday around 2pm is a good thing. Of course my only other experience with Hopkins was the day after the huge blackout of 2003. We were the first flight out that morning. It was nuts. T and C are coming a bit later because C had to work until noon. I was afraid of missing the flight so we drove separate. They still got there with about an hour to spare.

We had a bit of excitement when a horribly annoying fire alarm started going off. Okay, sit back and imagine the worst sound you’ve ever heard (nails on a chalk board, wailing infants, the quiet sound of a empty change jar) got it? You like me a lot right now right? Well take that sound and turn it up REALLY REALLY loud, and then sit that way for the next 40 minutes. Why? Because that’s how long it took them to turn the thing off. On the upside, after about 25 minutes we got to see some really cool firepeople wonder around trying to find the source. I got DH to take pictures for all of you, so I’ll add them later. I was giggling my butt off. “You HAVE to take pictures of the cool firepeople (oxymoron?) so I can show the DISers!!” DH thought I was nuts, but he did it anyway.

 

[VanniGirl]

Sorry for your loss - looking forward to the rest

 

[kutchyone]

Looking forward to the rest of your lively report.

As I said earlier in the PM, very sorry about your loss.

 

[exwdwcm]

wow, so sorry for your loss. My sister and I went on a 5 day trip after I had a tradeshow at the gaylord nearby- it started off great. my grandmother had been ill and in the hospital in south carolina (we all live in TX). She passed while my sis and I were on our trip. We were eating at cosmic ray's on the patio and were so bummed the rest of the trip that we didn't even use our last day in the parks and flew home early. We thought about flying to SC for the funeral, but it would have cost a bundle to change our flights and we just decided to stay the last few days. i regret not going now, no matter what the cost. it really bummed out the rest of the trip. i know how that can suck.

 

[DebIreland]

I'm so sorry about your MIL. What a terrible loss and such a young woman. Very sad. I totally understand your decision to stay. When my Dad died two years ago it was just a few days before our holiday to Italy. Everyone pursuaded me to go anyway and I did with raw grief in my heart (I was devastated - it was unexpected) but I'm glad we went on the holiday because it gave us lots of quality time together as a family to talk about and remember my Dad.
Off now to read more.... I just read your first post so far.

 

[harleyquinn]

wow, so sorry for your loss. My sister and I went on a 5 day trip after I had a tradeshow at the gaylord nearby- it started off great. my grandmother had been ill and in the hospital in south carolina (we all live in TX). She passed while my sis and I were on our trip. We were eating at cosmic ray's on the patio and were so bummed the rest of the trip that we didn't even use our last day in the parks and flew home early. We thought about flying to SC for the funeral, but it would have cost a bundle to change our flights and we just decided to stay the last few days. i regret not going now, no matter what the cost. it really bummed out the rest of the trip. i know how that can suck.

Staying was hard on me for a number of reasons, which will come out in future reports, but it was definitely the best thing for DH. I truely believe we were meant to be down there, because it helped him so much. It would have been a different story if we had been here. MIL was cremated, so they held off the memorial until we got back. So we didn't miss that.

Back to the report!

 

[harleyquinn]

Day 1, Part 2

So while we waiting for the Horrible Noise to be turned off T and C show up. Everyone is psyched. About 5 minutes later the Horrible Noise is finally shut off. A cheer goes up from the waiting passengers. Wait it was just me—hehe. Did I mention that I have a tendency to be a dork about cheering? My first trip (2003) I cheered for Teddy Roosevelt at the Hall of Presidents. Yep, that got me some looks. I couldn’t help it, I love Teddy. Don’t ask me why, I couldn’t tell you.

Anyway, I digress. So we load the plane, which is an airbus according to the person that checked me in. I couldn’t tell a difference. It was big, I guess that makes it an airbus. The airplane-bus is a little run down looking inside, but looks tip top from what I can see outside; I was on the wing. So we get going with our FREE headphones. There’s a lot of turbulence, the big jock-looking guy behind me asks the flight attendant what’s wrong. “Just turbulence Sir, nothing to be afraid of.” DH and I turn to each other and say in unison, “just watch the flight attendants.” As long as they don’t look fearful, it’s all good. (if this is wrong and FAs have a secret training session where they are thought to look calm all of the time don’t tell me, I don’t want to know!)

The pilot comes on and tells us we will be landing at about 4:25. 4:25!! That’s 45 minutes early! More Disney time. Yay! There is much cheering by the passengers—oh wait, it’s just me, no one else seems to care. We land at 4:30 at MCO. We get our bags and head to the DME counter, which is a bit of a hike with no signage, but sticks out a bit with all of the lines. Yep, we’re queuing to get on a bus, my WDW vacation has begun!! Cheers!! No? No, cheers? Oh well.

Everything for DME goes smoothly, and we arrive at POP around 6pm. Check in takes a while, because the poor CM gets to check us both in at once. I didn’t ask for connecting rooms, because of the noise issue. I didn’t really want connecting rooms. I asked for King rooms, 4th floor, lake view for both couples. He tells me its not a lake view, it’s a tree view, and that there are no lake views in the area of our room. Wrong!! If you crane you neck when you looked out our window, there it was! The lake! Cheers! So where did we end up? 80s section (which is cool, cuz we all grew up then) 4th floor, semi-lake view, we had a king bed, but alas we got connecting rooms so our friends had two doubles. This turned out to be a good thing later as when I got the news about MIL C was in her room with the connecting door open, so she helped calm me down. With all of the short cuts, we were actually very close to everything. We were happy. I have to address the noise though. I really thought the walls were very thin. We heard everything that went on outside. We could only hear our friends if they were loudish, but we could hear them. Luckily we didn’t have anyone near us for most of the trip, and I had earplugs. DH surprised me by saying that he’d rather spend the extra $$ for a Moderate. We’ve stayed at POR and POFQ, and much prefer them. Everything POP was ALWAYS insane even near midnight. We really missed the hot tub, bc it was too cold to swim when we were actually at the resort. I really like to spend some time at the resort, and I didn’t feel like I could at POP. It was good for this trip, b/c we spent most of our time elsewhere, but we won’t be returning. I thought the rooms were decent size, but I missed the curtain for changing.

The plan had been to go to DTD to eat and then PI, but it had been a long day, so we stayed in, ate at EP (everything pop), which was actually pretty good, no complaints yet. The boys bought mugs, even though we were on the dining plan. DH didn’t use his nearly as much as previous trips, but I wanted the mug J. This was the one evening when EP wasn’t a madhouse, and I thought the parks would be the same. I was wrong…

 

[Sollenberger]

I am so sorry for your loss - and yes, I do understand your decision to stay - we had reservations for a couples retreat through church for a weekend in Ocean City, my MIL died a few days before - my husband really wanted to still go - so after the funeral we headed straight for the retreat and it was the best thing for him (and us) ....

 

[harleyquinn]

Day 2, Part 1

Got my Mickey wake up call bright and early, because it’s EMH morning at MK, and I always start me WDW trips at MK. I’ve never seen the opening, so after talking it over everyone agrees to get up early so we can make it on time. This didn’t happen. T and C are notoriously late for most things. T swears it’s all C’s fault always, but it’s both of them. They’re just laid back when it comes to being anywhere. It’s time to leave, but the boys have to go fill their mugs and C isn’t out of bed yet. Why? Because she knows in the time it take T to fill the mug, she’ll be ready, so she wasn’t getting up til they left. Problem was they left late, and should have never gone. They came back, and she was ready (just about). They scarf down some Danish, and we head out. They drank all of one sip from the mugs.

We get to MK at about 8:30. Oh, another thing I hated about POP, it seemed to take forever to get anywhere. There were plenty of buses, but the rides took a long time. I should have listened to UG. I think MGM was close, but we only went there once.

Anyway, we are at MK, it’s awesome. There are characters all over the place. This is something I notice all week. Way more characters than in June or August. Wonder why? I had a ton of fun getting pics with characters on my last trip, so I’m ready to skip them all, but then I learn something about C that I never knew. She is a characteraholic. She simply MUST get pics with everyone. Today it’s not a big deal cuz the park should be empty right? Heh, would’ve thought so…actually today turns out to be one of the best days crowd wise. In the summer I avoid all EMHs except AK in the morning and MK at night. This trip I didn’t care, because the crowds would be non-existent right? Ri-ght. So we stop for some characters, and I say we’ll skip the shops for now, and get to riding since we are late. So what does everyone want to do first? No one cares…how about Pirates? The boys suddenly care…a lot. No not the land where the Care Bears live, the boys are suddenly super excited little pirates! AARRRRR! So we head to Adventureland.

So we’re walking and I mention that there are a lot of people walking around. I’m talking as crowded as it was on our June trip. There were a ton of adults, and TONS of foreign speaking families. They were everywhere. I began to wonder if their children were on a break from school or something. I’ll never know. T decides he has to “ride” the Treehouse. I say, “are you sure?” and he says yes, it one of his favorite “rides.” I think to myself that it is a glorified line with stairs, but say okay! And that is what it was this day. A line with stairs, literally. Yep there are a couple of cool things, but there are a lot of people standing in this line. Why are we moving so slowly? Because there are too many of us. So we “ride” the treehouse, and then make fun of T for the rest of the trip about his favorite rides. It was fun. Everytime we went to a new park—“Hey I wonder if there is a treehouse ride?” Lets do that first!! And such. We pick on T a lot, actually we pick on each other a lot, it passes the time in treehouse lines.

We skipped everything else and went straight to Pirates, which has no wait at all. We even get to queue in the area I haven’t been to before. It was neat. I tell T and C the story of how I got pics of the inside of POTC. Our last trip in June there was a lightning storm that scared everyone out of the park a couple hours before the evening EMH. So there was no one around for EMH. It was AWESOME! We rode POTC about 6 times in a row, because with no people you could actually really hear what was going on. On one of the trips there was no one in the boat in front of us, no one behind us, and just us in our boat. Did I mention it was our honeymoon? Instead of taking the opportunity to make out, I decided I should take some flash pics (no not me flashing!!) since I wouldn’t bother anyone. It was great.

Anyway Back to the Future, I mean present, actually past, but whatever…While on POTC someone annoyingly started taking pics, and a disembodied voice reminds us no pictures with flashes. They didn’t tell me no on the last trip! I’m a happy camper J We get to the dump shop and the boys’ eyes light up. I can tell we will spend some $$ here. Of course I’m the one that finds the cash takers. T gets a pirate hat that says POTC and has braids and an earring. And I find an AWESOME Jack Sparrow one with dreads and beads for DH. It’s really cool. I’ll add the pics soon. It was really pricey, but soon to be worth every penny. For some reason we never saw another soul with these hats on the rest of the trip. And every child and some adults that saw my two pirates thought that they were the coolest thing ever. Everywhere we walked we hear “AARRR,” and I saw more smiling children’s faces than ever before (and this is at WDW people!) Every CM commented. We heard every pirate joke under the sun. What’s a pirate’s favorite letter??? RRRR! It was better than when we had the bride and groom ears. It was great.

After pirates we head back and do the rest of Adventureland. So we head over to JC, and there is a 25 minute wait. What, what?? There was to be no waiting for anything besides Soarin and Expedition Everest on this trip! I say lets get fast passes and go do the Tiki room. So we do. As we’re headed away, I see my very first tour group complete with a flag and everything. “Oh, a tour group!!! Take a picture DH!!” I actually do slip and call him that from time to time—he just rolls his eyes. This huge group of foreign teenagers head to JC. I say “betcha the wait goes up big time.” So we head to Tiki and the people are filing in, we missed the pre-show. Darn. T& C have been to MK and Epcot before. They assure me they have seen the pre-show, so we don’t have to wait. Inside I meet the first of many people that I will bestow my DIS wisdom upon. I don’t remember what I told them, but whatever it was, it was wonderfully helpful I assure you.

After Tiki we still have time, so I talk everyone into riding Aladdin’s Carpets. Turns out that everyone in my group besides me is a ride wuss. No one else will do anything that spins or is a motion simulator (there goes Mission: Space). But I convince them to ride the carpets since we control the movement of the carpet. We ride and have fun with no loss of lunch (we haven’t eaten it yet! HA!) We never did figure out what the scarab beetle does…

Finally it’s time for JC. The line is up to 40 minutes!! I smile knowingly. It was that tour group. We walk on, and had a great cruise guide. Though the other people in the boat weren’t all that into it. Most likely, bc they couldn’t speak English. I mean how can you NOT laugh at the amazingly funny JC jokes? Really? During the trip we did see more of those red headphone translator things than ever before, but not on this cruise.

We now head to my favorite area. Splash Mountain is closed for referb, and I get some cool pics of the dry log floom. At least I think they’re cool. We get in the 10 minute line for BTR. T and C have never ridden it during the day. It was great. Really fast. I slammed into DH at one point, which he complained about jokingly for the next couple of hours. “Man, my leg STILL hurts,” and such I wish would have ridden it a second time. When we went back on a different day, it was MUCH slower. Off to HM, my favorite ride in all of Disney. One of the CMs yelled at me in the picture room, because I was mouthing what the narrator said. Okay, I was saying it out loud, but really quietly L he actually smiled at me when he “yelled,” which HM CMs don’t do, so it was all good. We rode it twice, b/c DH and I had taken the KTTK tour last time. We split up so we could show T and C all the hidden Mickeys. We couldn’t find Donald’s chair tho. L After this C became the characteraholic AND hiddenmickeyaholic. She wanted to find them everywhere. She found LOTS of maybe-hidden mickeys, and a few real ones. I’m gonna get her the book for Christmas to bring on the next trip.

Next we went to fantasyland. We did IASW after I begged. It looks great, but I don’t really remember it looking shabby before. The big thing I did notice was that the music was MUCH quieter than the last trip. The ride wasn’t nearly as annoying.

More coming later! Hope you are enjoying the report!

 

[kutchyone]

This has to be one of the best trip reports that I have read. You really have a gift for telling/writing a story. I am thoroughly enjoying your report. Please keep it up.

 

[Thumper's Tara]

I am so sorry for your loss.

I don't think any less of you for staying. I think that it is great that you did! I can't wait to read the rest of the report.

Actually, we were both in WDW the same time!!

ttfn,
Tara

 

[harleyquinn]

This has to be one of the best trip reports that I have read. You really have a gift for telling/writing a story. I am thoroughly enjoying your report. Please keep it up.

Thanks!! Before we got the bad news, I had stars in my ears hoping to write a report that would be good enough to be up there with happyhaunts and zzub and vettechick. I'm glad someone thinks it's good!

Tara, did you think it was busy? I think I hit all the wrong parks on all the wrong days.