The mean bird and the nice fish with an indenity problem. A Halloween Trip to Disney

[MomToAp1699]

Ok! Starting my Trip report out now so I don't totally forget about it. Its all typed up on my blog just have to copy it a bit at a time to here. Got loads of pictures to get uploaded as well. So once I get the report up I will try to add those to each day as well. I took well over 12 gb worth of photos so I am sure there will be plenty on here before too long.
A bit of background. This trip started October 28th and Ended November 8th. It was orginally supposed to be a 10 day trip starting on October 30th but when free dining was extended we ran some numbers and found that if we added two days to the front of our trip we could hit free dining. Save 600$ Change our flights and even after the feeds etc still get some money back. So of course Disney math won out and we added two days to the trip. Once we got there we started wondering if we had over extended our stay. 12 days is a VERY VERY long time.
On this trip is myself Valerie. I am 31 years old and this is my 4th trip to Disney. 2nd as an adult. My husband Jason is 30 and this is his second trip. Both made as an adult. Alex our son is 11. He has Aspergers Syndrome and can be both a handful and the most polite child you could find. Sometimes all in the same hour long period! Its just who he is. This is also his second trip. Our first as a family was a 6 day trip in April of 2007.
So, on to the report.

 

[MomToAp1699]

Our first day of vacation started out very early in the morning. Our flight wasn't leaving til 12:49. Its a roughly 3 hour drive from our house to the Pittsburgh Airport. So we technicaly didn't need to arrive at the Airport til around 10am. The problem with that is, rush hour in Pittsburgh is a devil to deal with and if we left at 7:30 or 8:00am then we would hit rush hour in Pitt. So we made the choice to leave much earlier and get to the airport early rather than risk being late by leaving on time. Either way we where going to be having time issues. It ended up working out best the way we did it. Got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. We did hit some traffic going into Pitt at around 7am. If we had left later I think we would have been running way behind. Once we got there we checked out baggage and headed through security. Pretty easy process as it was still pretty early in the Am and there wasn't really anyone in the lines. Now security did take us a bit longer than most people would take, because through some unlucky twist of fate Alex had broken his wrist less than a week before and is in a cast. Because of that they had to pull him aside and scan and swap it seperately. They where very good about it. Explained to him and me what they where doing. Took me up with him when they did it etc. Overall a good experience and I don't think it held us up all that much in reality.
After that was over we wandered around the airmall for a while before deciding it was time to eat. We chose to have our early lunch at TGI Fridays. The airport has 3 of them. So... lol.. go with the popular choice. I got my favorite which is a Jack Daniels Flat Iron as did Jason. Alex went with the breakfast options they had and got himself some french toast. Our waitress was really nice and the only hitch in the meal was the fact that since its after security you can't have a steak knife so all the meat has to be cut with a butter knife. Lol. We made due but it was something I hadn't thought about ahead of time.
The flight was very smooth. It was a nonstop and we arrived just a bit early and where on our way down to the Magical express desk in no time. Now the wait was really really long down here. Much more than our last trip. Not too bad overall but we where really tired so we where ready to go. Our trip was as expected. We watched the video and enjoyed the ride. It was relaxing after the long drive over to the airport.
Once we arrived we headed to the Online check-in desk and got our paperwork all ready for our room. We where farther away than last time. In the 80's building but I don't think it was too bad overall. Just stinks when you are really really tired. Or when, like me.. you hurt yourself 5 days into your trip. So up to our nice little room we went. Dropped off our carry-ons and just chilled out for a while. Rested etc. Cause we had been up since 4am. When it was time we headed out to catch the bus to Magic Kingdom. From there it was up to the Monorail to go to the Contemporary. Tonight was Chef Mickey! Yay.. what a nice start to the trip. We like it a lot but my favorite part of the meal is always the chocolate mousse mickey/oreo dessert.. lol. We ate lots of them. Its so nice that even at 11 Alex really still enjoys seeing the characters and he greeted them all and posed for big smiling pictures. Its nice to have a kid who enjoys the fun things and doesn't think he is too big for it. Once dinner was over it was time to head back to the hotel. Since our trip is for 12 days we have two non-park days because we have 10 day park hoppers. So the first two days we are skipping the parks. ( in retrospect we realized that was dumb we should have gone to the park the second day since we ended up not going the last day and had one unused park day left when we came home. Oh well.. Lesson learned.. I don't think we will ever go so long again anyway. So it works out) Once we got to pop we stopped and got our refillable mugs. We upgraded our dining plan so the mugs where not included but it was still worth it to get them for us.. So got them and then headed up to our room with our nice cool mugs of soda! After that we all agreed it was DEFINATELY bedtime. We where exhausted. I had told alex he had to share a bed with one of us. He was grumping at me.. So I said.. well. We can take this HUGE THICK BEDSPREAD and you can sleep on the floor. At first he was all against it.. Once I laid it in the corner in the little walk in vanity room and he tried it out he was all for it. His bed was soo thick even more so than the mattresses that he was in bed and out like a light in 5 minutes flat. He loved having his own little area where he could draw the curtain closed and sleep or play etc without us keeping him awake. I think it was one of the better ideas we had for the week. Though he does think its funny to tell everyone he slept on the floor in the closet. lol.. Oh well. He is a funny kid. What can I say. He was happy. We where happy.. So it works well.
Tomorrow we are headed to Downtown Disney for shopping and lunch. Will try to post that as soon as possible.. Gotta copy and paste it from the personal blog..

 

[MomToAp1699]

I would say today has been a pretty nice non park vacation day. We started off around 9 this morning. Showered and headed out. We planned to go check out Animal Kingdom Lodge but decided to do it later since alex really wanted to go to downtown disney. So off we went. We did some shopping. Mostly for alex. Got legos and a perry platypus and some nightmare before christmas silly bandz. We had lunch at Earl of Sandwich( we took pics) it was really nice. wandered around some more than decided to come back to the room to chill a bit. Hung here for a few hours then headed out to go play fantasia minigold. Now I am not sure what disney was thinking with this one. The place is really nice but has no direct bus. so u have to get us bus to swan resort and wak. Worth the hassle but geesh.
So, speaking of hassle. Here is the story of what happend when we decided to go Mini Golfing. Sorry if the stream of though seems a little off.. but this came from two seperate blog posts. The story starts at our hotel. Jason went to the desk to ask the cast member at the counter how to get Fantasia Mini-Golf. Well the girl told him the wrong directions. She told him how to get to Winter Summerland. Which involved going to Blizzard Beach and walking to winter summerland. The only way to get to Fantasia from there would be to hike 5 miles down the highway. lol.. Thankfully I figured out along the way what was happening. So we stayed on the bus. Problem is the busses at Disney do some wierd things. So when we left pop we got on the blizzard beach bus, but when we left blizzard beach the bus had changed its route. So it was now a bus to Poly.. Sooooo.. we get off the bus at Poly and walk to the ticket and transpo center next door and take the bus to the Swan.. this is the bus that you ACTUALLY take to get to Fantasia mini golf. So after we get there we walk what is a fairly long walk to the mini golf. We had a great time so it was worth it. On the way back we went a diffrent path and came through the middle of the swan and dolphin resorts and went through the swan lobby to get the busses out front. Well when you exit Swan they have some of those spinning glass doors. Alex and I walked up and the door stopped. So we stepped in. All the sudden the door decided to start again and slammed right into Alex's shoulder. He was hysterical and crying. Thankfully it was not the side with the cast but I don't know how much better that made it cause then he was crying cause both sides hurt. From this point we where supposed to take the bus to downtown disney and then to Coronado springs so we could have dinner at the Pepper market. But since he was crying and we where tired we just headed back to pop and ate at the food court.
From that day on each time Alex saw the big swans overhead on the top of the resort he would hiss at them like a cat attacking the mean birds.. Then he would point out that the dolphins on the top of the dolphin resort sure didn't look like Dolphins they looked like fish. So he kept calling the hotels "The mean bird and the fish with the identity problem. Even now when you mention it he says the same thing. Its both funny and annoying.. lol..