The "Mr. and Mrs." Trip Report--8/26-9/1

[smartestnumber5]

Well every time we take a trip I start a trip report, and by the time I'm halfway through, I give up!

I can't promise it won't happen again, but I'll give it my best shot.

The Preliminaries

Who are we?
GF--32. She works in IT and is a recent WDW convert thanks to me.
Me--26. I'm a grad student, have loved WDW since teenage-hood.

How often do we go to WDW?
We've gone twice each year for the last two years--a full on vacation trip during August (free dining) each year and a quickie trip during January for the past two Januarys. (We actually got an AP which took care of two Jan trips and one Aug trip .)

Why Disney?
Well, I have loved Disney for a long time and GF is a recent convert. I really am not the type who can just lie on a beach for 7 days. I need a little bit of entertainment each day. And we're indecisive, so figuring out what to do while on vacation can be hard. It's much easier when there are 4 theme parks waiting for us and our tickets have already been purchased!

What kind of Disney goers are we?
On past trips we did morning/early afternoon in the parks and then a big break in the afternoon and then more parks/dinner or some other type of entertainment (downtown disney, swimming, etc). It works for us--we get some rest and some play and lots of food (given the free dining!). This trip, though, we got a lot lazier.

How have our past trips been?
Most have been good but very tiresome. In case you weren't aware, it is HOT in August! Strangely the heat bothers GF more than me. It's strange because at home I am an air conditioning princess. When we first started dating it was summertime in MI and my apartment had no air conditioning, so I made GF rub me down with ice on really hot nights. Luckily she thought it was endearing . Even now, if the temp in the apartment creeps above 72ish I suddenly am jumping up to turn it down. But at WDW it's GF who is really dying in the heat while I can take it for longer before feeling as if I might die of heatstroke.

Also in case you didn't know, going to WDW involves A LOT of walking. GF has a foot problem and now has special no motion shoes with special inserts which help a lot (though she still has issues). But our first few trips were before she was seen by a doctor for the foot problem--boy there was a lot of sitting on benches and icing her feet on those trips!

During our past trips we always just used bus transportation. Since we did the free dining on our August trips we had a lot of dinners at the resorts and we like to eat dinner in the 8ish hour. That meant being done at 10pm or later a lot of nights, which meant that our transfer options for the buses were limited. We spent a lot of time taking buses too and from Downtown Disney. And we also spent a lot of that time either sitting at a bus stop waiting forever for a bus or standing on an overly crowded one (hence further injuring GF's feet).

But this trip was quite different than the past because this time we rented a car. I must have announced 20 times during the trip "WHY DID WE EVER DO THIS WITHOUT A CAR? WHAT WE'RE WE THINKING?" I will never go back to WDW without a rental car!

Our last trip (Jan 08) was a real quicky--only 3 nights/3 days. Unfortunately it was also a complete disaster. GF has sleep apnea (also something that was untreated during our first WDW trip) and on that trip she managed to knock her breathing machine out of bed and broke it. Well that pretty much meant know (or very little) sleep for her since her throat closes up and chokes her awake about 30 times an hour without the machine. And it meant little sleep for me since I was worried about her and the constant choking results in very loud snoring. On top of all that, we also ended up in the ER because GF was having some serious stomach issues. It was the a really horrible trip. In fact, after that one GF announced that she wasn't sure we could ever stay at Pop again since there were too many bad, painful memories there .

What was our supposed schedule?

Tuesday, Aug 26--Stay Offisite at Ramada Celebration Hotel
3 pm--Flight leaves from MI
6 pm ish--Flight arrives
8 pm ish--Dinner at Cheesecake Factory
10 pm ish--Swimming

Wednesday, Aug 27--POFQ
9 am ish--Stop at Starbucks and head to POFQ
Noonish--Lunch at Raglan Road
Afternoon/Early Evening--Downtown Disney, Nap, Swimming, Grocery Store
9pm--Dinner at California Grill

Thursday, Aug 28--POFQ
9 am ish--Breakfast at 1900 Park Fare
11 am ish--Blizzard Beach
Late Afternoon--rest/nap
8 pm ish--Dinner at Flying Fish

Friday, Aug 29--POFQ
9 am ish--Animal Kingdom
Noonish--Lunch at Tusker House
Afternoon--swimming and rest/nap
6 pm--Dinner at The Wave
9 pm--Pleasure Island

Saturday, Aug 30--POFQ
10 am ish--Mini-golf
Noonish--Lunch at Beaches and Cream
Afternoon--rest/swim
8 pm ish--Dinner at Jiko

Sunday, Aug 31--POFQ
9 am ish--Magic Kingdom
Noon--Lunch at Liberty Tree
Afternoon--swim, rest
8 pm ish--Dinner at Narcossees
10 pm ish--Magic Kingdom

Monday, Sept 1--POFQ
9 am ish--pack and move luggage to car
10 am ish--Epcot
1 pm ish--Lunch at Le Cellier
4 pm ish--leave for airport
7:45 pm--flight leaves

 

[smartestnumber5]

We got up at 6:45 am (GF’s normal time to get up for work). She missed the bus so I had to drive her a little before 8 at which time I decided to just run some of my errands. Unfortunately nothing I needed was open at 8:30 am. I settled for an egg sandwich at Panera next to the post office which was not yet open so my trip wasn’t a total waste. I went back home, cleaned up the house a little, printed out reservations, confirmation numbers, and directions, packed, and put out extra food and water for cats.

After that there was nothing to do but wait….not for Disney, but for the car dealership to give me my car back. I had dropped the car off at 8:30 am the day before and they still weren’t done with it! All they were doing was a fixing a wheel cylinder leak, fixing a radiator hose leak, and doing a coolant flush. They kept going on about how the coolant was the wrong kind (for GM cars instead of Hyundais) and the wrong color (green instead of orange or orange instead of green or something) and so this was no ordinary coolant flush, but was really difficult and important. They claimed that the kind of coolant in the car would eventually just ruin it if I left it in there. At first I said I’d just wait a bit to get it flushed since I had to bring the car back a second time to get something else fixed they didn’t have the part for at the time. (Really I was intending to get it done elsewhere where it was likely going to be 50%--70% of the price.) But then a few hours later they called again and insisted that they could not fix the radiator hose until I did the coolant flush. So what was I supposed to do? I said okay. At the time of that phone call they had already had the car for about 6 hours. A few hours later as it was quickly approaching 5 pm (they closed at 6 pm) they called again to say that the car wasn’t done yet—that the coolant flush was so intensive and they couldn’t rush it. They offered to give me a free loaner car for the night if I needed one (which I did).

Of course, I had already rented a car for the day and was just going to take that back to Enterprise. They had told me they couldn’t give me a loaner car until they took the car in and found out what it needed (which took about four hours from the time I dropped it off to the first phone call). I had things I had to get done in that time and couldn’t just sit there waiting for them to maybe give me a loaner car. So if they had just been willing to give me one in the first place I could saved myself $50 on the one I rented! Ugh.

So I was waiting for the car to be done. Over the phone before saying yes to them keeping it I had indicated that I had a flight to leave for around noon and I needed the car to be done by then and were they sure that would be the case. The person I spoke to said “Oh yes, of course. It will be done by early morning.” Then when I got to the dealership to get the loaner car, he told me he was having the mechanic aim for 10:30 am. It was actually more like 11:00 by the time he called. What happened to “early morning”? Around 10:30 decided to just go to do errands which I hadn’t been able to do earlier. At this point I was thinking, “when are they going to give me this car back?” I figured I might have to call and threaten to take their loaner car to the airport (and leave it there for 7 days) if they didn’t give me mine back. Luckily they finally called at 11 am. I finished my errands and then went and got the car. After paying and the guy telling me all of the things they did (and all of the thousands of dollars of things which he recommends I do!) I got the car just in time to go pick GF up at noon. We went home for about 30 minutes to do last minute stuff—pack the car, say goodbye to the cats—and then we were on our way to the airport around 12:30 pm for our flight at 3pm.

Our previous Spirit flights to Disney out of that terminal have been in the afternoon and generally the terminal is very empty—security takes less than 5 minutes. But the last trip I took I left at 7 am and the terminal was much busier, with security taking 25 minutes at least. So we wanted to make sure we arrived with plenty of time to spare. We got there around 1pm and I dropped GF off at departure area with the bags and parked the car myself. Luckily I found a good parking space that was close to the terminal and quickly went and found her. We actually had plenty of time at airport. There was no line to check the baggage at the spirit counter and no line at security either. I guess morning is the only busy time. The TSA agent at the metal detector said he wished he was going to Orlando (after checking my boarding pass); he said he likes Planet Hollywood and House of Blues. Once through security (without either of our bags being searched for once!) we picked up some water and got to our gate. We’d brought some sandwiches to eat from a local bread bakery. GF had eaten their sandwiches numerous times and really liked them. She got one with turkey and cranberry and was happy. I hadn’t tried their sandwiches yet and picked the mozzarella, pesto, and tomato which came grilled on foccacio bread. Unfortunately I had picked up the sandwiches 2 hours prior so they were lukewarm at this point. And the bread on my sandwich just didn’t go with the mozzarella, pesto, and tomato—the bread was too sweet. I ate half and then just handed it over to GF and she happily finished it for me. I filled up on a bag of cheetos we’d brought with us.



After eating I called mom and then shortly after hanging up boarding began. Wow, the person in charge of boarding was cranky. She started boarding earlier than the boarding pass even said it would start (it’s rare for it ever to happen on time, let alone early!) and seemed to expect people to just jump up at a moment’s notice. She announced “We now want to board zone 5, anyone who needs special assistance, and anyone with children under two—with babies.” She paused for about 3 seconds and nobody at the gate really moved much in those three seconds and she came back on saying, “No one?” I turned to GF and said, “Gee, I guess she’s in a real hurry.” A woman next to us overheard me and said “Yeah, great we’ve got a crabby flight attendant and we’re not even on board yet. Can you believe we’re paying for this?” Actually she wasn’t a flight attendant—they were perfectly nice as they usually are. She was a gate agent and I’ve seen them be less than friendly before, but she was just clearly unhappy. After our zone was called she got on the intercome again to announce “I don’t need your license” in an annoyed voice. Then she got on again to say “Please have your boarding pass out and unfolded.” Some of the people in line during boarding seemed to be ticked at her crankiness and were pretty cranky back to her. I’m not sure why they were pushing so hard to get the plane off even earlier than they are scheduled for? We were all boarded by 2:45 even though flight was at 3.

Onboard, we sat in the window and middle seat. A few minutes after we got on, the third person in our row on the end was asked if she could move back a few rows to a middle seat by a flight attendant, because he needed to have a party of two take the two seats on either side of the aisle in our row. She didn’t seem happy and asked why they needed that. The flight attendant told her that on the other side of the row (the window and middle seat) a mother and her baby (maybe 4 months) needed to sit together. The other party was a woman who wanted to make sure that she was sitting next to (across the aisle from) her husband who was blind. The woman who was being asked to move still seemed quite unwilling and unhappy about this and said as much. We overheard this entire exchange and I thought, “you know, I understand that the middle seat really, really sucks (especially when you don’t know the people on either side of you, but come on—it’s not like they are asking you to move for a frivolous reason.) The flight attendant promised that he’d move her to a better seat if he could. She finally moved. A few minutes later I saw two flight attendants talking about her (referring to her new seat number) and then she was called to move up to the front row—one of the “big front seats” that usually costs extra money. I was thinking “well all of those people who think that karma exists should see this.” She seemed to have no compassion or decency toward other people (what must the woman with her baby and the couple that included the blind man have felt like knowing that she was sitting there arguing with the flight attendant about whether to move?) and she ended up getting rewarded for it! Oh well—I never believed in karma anyway.

We went off and got out on the runway and suddenly they announced an air traffic control problem affecting the whole country. Ugh. I saw other planes taking off at this time—was it just Spirit throughout the country? Actually later when I talked to my mom she said she had seen on the news that there was a national air traffic control problem, so it must have been all airlines. The pilot seemed really, really apologetic. He sounded as if he wanted to say, “Please, don’t yell at me. It’s not my fault, I can’t help it, it’s air traffic control.” We ended up sitting on the runway almost an hour. The pilot came back on the intercom several times and apologized again. He also made mention a few times of taking a vote to determine whether we would wait on the runway or go back to the gate. He explained that so long as we were on the runway, we had priority over all planes at the gate in terms of taking off. But once we were back at the gate who knows when our turn would come. GF and I were like, “What does he mean go back to the gate—go back to the gate and do what? Not go to Orlando? Get on a different flight? Just wait til the problem is over?” He had said numerous times that air traffic control had said it wasn’t a problem they expected would take long to fix, and I kept seeing planes that were taking off, so I didn’t understand why we go back to the gate. Luckily within an hour of the first announcement we got our clearance and we took off.

The flight, of course, was already not going that well since we’d just made a 3 hour flight into a 4 hour one by sitting on the runway for four hours. But throughout the entire flight a child around two year of age was screeching/screaming. She was strapped into her own car seat in a seat of her own next to her mother about 5 rows in front of us, and she cried through almost the entire flight. We noticed that there were a few breaks in her cries—whenever her mother held her/let her out of the car-seat she stopped screaming. She wasn’t screaming when her mom took her to the bathroom or when we took off or landed. So it seemed like she wasn’t sick or in pain, but just didn’t want to be in the car seat and was bored. And yet, her mother kept forcing her back into the seat as she screamed and she didn’t appear to do anything to try to entertain the child. At one point one of the flight attendants blew up a latex glove and tied the edges so it looked like a balloon. Then she waved it in front of the kid which seemed to quiet her down. WTH is the flight attendant coming up with entertainment for the kid!

We were about 4-5 rows behind this. People in front of us were older folks (60s+) and were pissed. Saw one man go to the bathroom and just glare at the child on his way there and back. The mother said something snarky to him like “Do you have something to say? She’s just a child!” Well I agree he shouldn’t have been glaring at the child—he should have been glaring at the mother who didn’t appear to be doing anything to stop the child from yelling. I can tune out their screaming unless I’m really, really close to them. But still, I couldn’t help but think it was ridiculous. I can’t even sit on a plane with no entertainment for 3 hours—how can a two year old be expected not to have a fit when they have nothing to do for 3 hours?! This child had no toys, no books, nothing!

During the flight my stomach was hurting—what’s with that. That stressed me out. I kept thinking “how am I going to eat all of the DXDP food?” I had to load up on the Prilosec.

Once we were off the plane I was surprised how quick we got our bags and got done at that counter. We really liked the rental car thing—it was definitely quicker than ME in my opinion. It had taken over an hour at La Guardia a few weeks ago to get the car and I didn’t have any checked baggage that time. This was much quicker. We left the airport around 6:40ish.

We had rented an economy car on priceline--the total price for 6 days was $140. When we got to the counter, the guy working went on about how economy cars are so small and won’t have a trunk and can only fit two suitcases. (We are only two adults. The car supposedly will fit two children, two adults, and two suitcases—so how can it only fit two suitcases when we have no children?) He suggested moving up to a compact "for $12." We assume he means that’s how much it would be for the entire trip and think about it. NO—he means $12 per day. Dude, why would I have bothered going through priceline so I was paying $140 for the entire rental, and then on a whim add another $72 to that price? I don't care if GF has to ride on the roof--I'm not paying an extra 50% of the original price for a little more suitcase room.

You'd think that our having used priceline would be an indication that we are cheap. We said no to that and he then said “let me see if I can tempt you” and offered us an upgrade to a convertible for the price of an upgrade to a compact. I thought “wow he picked the wrong people for this—wth do I want with a convertible?" We were significantly *less* interested in a convertible than we were in a compact! We told him as much and he said okay. After that he gave up on trying to sell us anything after that.

We headed out of the airport to the parking garage where you pick up the rental cars. We were told by the person working there "Pick anything in that lane." The lane she pointed to was mostly compact cars and just one economy (no trunk, hatchback, like the guy at the counter described). We were confused given that we had asked for an economy, but she had sent us to a lane with mostly compacts. I went back to check and said the same thing. So we ended up getting a compact car--a chevy cobalt--anyway. Wow we would have been pissed if we’d have paid an extra $72 and gotten the very same car. Of course, we would never have known since we would have thought that lane was a compact lane. What a racket they have going .

After leaving the airport we drove to our hotel. We had decided to stay the first night outside of WDW. Our flight to Orlando was originally supposed to leave a little after 5pm, which would have meant an arrival around 8pm, hence probably too late to have dinner or do much else. But then our flight was moved to 3pm which did leave time for dinner. Luckily around the time I realized that there was a Cheesecake Factory in Orlando . Well how perfect, it was like the universe telling us to eat there!

We decided to stop at the hotel and check in and bring our bags in and then go and chow down. On the way to the hotel we had to go through numerous toll booths. Most were $1 each, but upon getting off the last exit the toll was $.50 and only coins were accepted and there was no person at the booth. We only had dollars and we didn't know what to do. I sat there for a few minutes and beeped the horn, assuming some toll booth worker was around somewhere. But no, after like 5 minutes of sitting there and three or four long beeps, a construction worker came around the corner and shook his head as I yelled out "change?" So we went right on through the toll. I guess I'll be getting a ticket for that? I assume it must happen a lot that tourists don't have coins with them in their rental car and have to just drive through.

We arrived at the hotel--the Ramada Celebration. The check in area and lobby were pretty nice, but the outside of the buildings looked a bit like a motel. The room was okay--it seemed nice and clean, but was nothing special. GF noticed right away that there was no bathtub--this greatly upset her as taking multiple baths a day is her hobby.

After dropping off our bags, we headed right out to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory which was quite yummy. We got lost on way back and actually ended up going through WDW. Though we didn't love the hotel, it certainly was a nice distance away from WDW--probably about 3 minutes from the WDW sign.

When we got back to the hotel GF wanted to swim but no one was in pool and I assumed it was because of the lightening we had seen on the drive over. So we just took showers and GF got in bed and turned on the tv. When I went to get in bed next to her I found that the sheet on my side was totally undone—I sat down and it just pulled all the way up exposing the mattress. WTH—the sheet did not fit at all. It appeared not to be wide enough for a king mattress. It wasn't long enough to tuck under the mattress, so there was no way to get on the bed without pulling the sheet up and ending up lying on the mattress.

I got GF to call for new sheets (that fit) and an extra blanket (she's the more assertive one). It probably took an hour and a half and had to call a second time before we got the sheets. I kept thinking, "they don’t know how to make a bed with the right size sheets?" We ended up having to strip the bed and then make it again ourselves with the sheets that fit. At least I didn't have to sleep on a bare mattress.

I'm not sure how we feel about the one night offsite idea after that experience. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't Disney either.

In the meantime while we had been waiting for the sheets, I had been dealing with school/work stuff—ugh. I hate that we always go on vacation right before a semester is starting and I feel like I can’t really relax and just leave school/work behind. I spent the time waiting for the sheets mostly writing emails. I was thinking that I was glad Disney didn’t have free internet. I wasn’t going to pay for it everyday, so I didn’t have to feel bad going a day or two not answering emails or dealing with work/school.

By the time we got the bed made with sheets that fit it was about midnight. Though both of us had been very tired an hour earlier, we now were very awake. We tried to go to sleep anyway since we wanted to keep an early schedule. Both of us had a lot of trouble sleeping though. I couldn't seem to get the blankets on in a position that I was comfortable in terms of temperature. And I usually need white noise to sleep at night, so I wanted to keep the air conditioning on fan at least just for the noise. I had to keep getting up though to switch back and forth between "fan" and "low cool"--I just couldn't get things right.