The NASTEE (Nate And Spencer Trip ExtraordinairE) Trip Report--Day 8: So Long, Farewell...
Cast:
Nate ("Aerobics"): 24, 4th trip to WDW, 1st trip in 12 years, 1st time staying on property
Spencer (Anti-aerobic): 29, 8th trip to WDW, hasn't stayed on property since 1992
Dates:
September 16-23, 2000
Lodging:
Wilderness Lodge--September 16-21, 2000
All Star Music--September 22, 2000
B-R-R-RING!!! B-R-R-RING!!!
Spencer: Oh, good morning, Mickey! I'm sorry...he's a little hungover right now...would you mind calling back in a few hours?
Thus began our last day at WDW, or should I say, last few precious hours, since it was already 7:30 a.m. and we were due to MCO airport for an 11:50 a.m. flight non-stop to The City With No Scruples (oops, I mean, Washington, DC). As Spencer crawled back into bed, I crawled (almost literally) to the shower in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to shake off those 3 Kungalooshes from the previous night.
Not a lot was spoken this morning, as we were both probably too contemplative about the end of our vacation to verbalize it. After I finished showering and foo-foo-ing (is that an official verb now?
), I quietly packed up the few remaining items while Spencer showered. By 8:15 a.m., we were ready to go, so I gave a quick call to the Front Desk to ensure that our luggage would be picked up at 8:30 a.m. (as we had agreed upon the prior evening).
Stepping out of our room onto the 3rd floor walkway, we were greeted by a completely different picture of the All-Stars Music resort. Instead of the large numbers of guests ambulating every which way, a surprisingly serene and quite picturesque scene lay before us. The "Broadway" street was completely deserted, and with the sun shining on it ever so slightly, it was incredibly peaceful--perhaps we had just jumped to too quick of a conclusion the previous night?
We definitely liked the resort much more as we strolled past the deserted piano-shaped "quiet" pool and also-empty guitar-shaped main pool. One note about this resort, though--is it me, or is the green on the Calypso buildings just the slightest bit offensive? We renamed the color from lime green to Vulcan Vomit Green, but I'm sure someone out there likes it, so, perhaps they had you in mind when they painted the building?
Our stroll to Melody Hall and Intermission took about 6 minutes, and inside, we observed a level of decorum (or lack thereof) similar to that which we noticed the evening before. What an absolute zoo, but yet, I wonder if it only seemed that way after we had been spoiled by the absolute peace that abounds at the WL? Regardless, we needed to grab a quick bite and go, so that's what we did. After having gone to sit-down, usually buffet breakfasts w/characters for the past 6 days as part of the Fall Fantasy plan, I must admit it was weird having to actually pay for breakfast...
After we had grabbed our food, we made a bee-line for a booth that was in the process of being vacated--as we raced closer, we almost had a full-on collision with another couple who had spotted the emptying booth. We let them take it, as they had 2 kids in tow, and we continued our search for a table. This felt eerily too similar to trying to obtain a parking spot at the local shopping mall, but Spencer's eagle eyes (probably trained as such after years of working in a mall and having to eat in a food court on a nearly daily basis) spotted a table in the distance. This time, we definitely had sitting rights as a similar race with another couple ensued.
With that major obstacle behind us, we munched on our breakfast as I whipped out the PassPorter to continue with my obsessive note-taking (having no clue at the time that I'd still be referring to those notes one year later as I finally finished the NASTEE). We definitely noticed that it was more difficult to hear each other in the food court, thus further discouraging us from making a return trip to the All-Stars (but, hey, never say never, eh?)
With my notes almost completely updated, we finished our food and headed over to Maestro Mickey's to browse a little while before our scheduled pick-up time of 10:00 a.m. While in the shop, I purchased another Mickey poncho since my first poncho suffered a most tragic death the previous day in a desperate effort by me to remove it before boarding Spaceship Earth. It was in this shop that I first really noticed the Millennium snowglobe--what an absolutely gorgeous piece of art (is it considered art?). Unfortunately, our budget couldn't accommodate snowglobes so, with my new poncho in hand, we left Maestro Mickey's and headed up to the main lobby.
As Spence went out front to wait for the town car to arrive, I decided to see what movie they were showing in the lobby. As luck would have it, a new movie was beginning. Being the absolute Disney animation nut that I am, I recognized from the first screen (you know, the one that usually says something like "Buena Vista Films Distribution") that it was Lady And The Tramp. So, since most of the seats on the couches and chairs were taken, I just plopped my rump down on the floor for a front row seat for this timeless Disney classic. I'm not sure, but if you added up the ages of the 3 next-oldest people watching the movie with me, I still don't think you'd have a number higher than my age, but, hey, aren't Disney animations truly for the kid in all of us?
Lady hadn't even yet convinced her owners that she should sleep up in their bed when Spencer tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that Rafael, our town car driver, had arrived. For once, I was ruing the fact that one of our transportation providers was early (I was really getting into the movie, just laughing and giggling along with the 5 yr old girl next to me who had never before seen Lady and was quite disappointed when, not long after my "parent" told me that I had to go, her parents did the same thing).
As I headed out of the main lobby, I observed all sorts of travel parties arriving at the resort: excited kids bouncing around like little Tiggers, young couples strolling closely together with romance in their eyes and joy in their hearts, huge extended families choosing the ultimate locale for their 10th annual family reunion. I thought it absolutely fitting that the Disney movie with which we had begun our trip on the flight down was the same movie with which we would be leaving behind the utopia that is WDW. However, what we would not be leaving behind were the countless memories and numerous "Magical Moments" which were forever immortalized in our minds (and now, our PassPorters )--can you really put a price tag on those? I sincerely doubt it.
Our luggage arrived a few minutes later, and as Rafael drove us past the location of the forthcoming Pop Century resort, I suddenly grew disturbingly quiet. Spencer quickly picked up on this fact, and leaned over in the car to see if I was all right. I silently nodded assent, that I was indeed ok, but inside, I wasn't.
Words are difficult to come by when one must describe that post-trip letdown that inevitably hits each and every one of us as we head home. I had always expected that it would wait until I was at least off of WDW property, but I didn't fight it, either. Interestingly, judging from my previous experiences, I expected to break into tears right on I-4, but fortunately, I was able to keep it together.
As we disembarked from the town car, we handed to Rafael our final tip envelope; again, he thanked us profusely and bid us farewell. Check-in at the airport was uneventful, and, with 90 minutes to kill, we seated ourselves in gate B-whatever and just silently replayed the previous 7 days in our minds. To pass the time, we filled out the other postcards that we had bought (and forgotten to send earlier in the week)--at least they'd still be stamped "Orlando", right?
When we were finally situated in our seats on the plane (Spencer in Seat A and me in Seat B), a woman next to me glanced at our 9,437 WDW bags that we had brought on board with us. "Did you all go to Orlando?", she asked. Now, I know she was just trying to be nice and make conversation and all (God bless her heart), but, um, wasn't it just slightly obvious that we had indeed "gone to Orlando"? As we flew home, Spencer slept while I continued to fill in "missing pieces" of my PassPorter notes, like Day 6's "The funniest thing today was being crowned Viking Of The Day".
A few hours later, we touched down in not-so-good-ol' DC, definitely weary and eager to just get home and collapse. We were quickly brought back to reality when, after asking the taxi attendant to please place us in a cab that accepted credit cards, we were quite rudely yelled at by the cab driver as we approached our apartment--turns out he didn't accept credit cards, so we had to make an extra out-of-the-way pit stop at an ATM. And you can bet your sweet bippy the tip we gave him reflected our impression of his "service".
I suppose I could technically end the report here, but it would feel odd to do so, so I'm just going to keep writing...and since it's MY report, I'm allowed to do that, right?
Once we were back home, our first task was to unpack all of the cool crap that we bought--as soon as I found where we had packed it, I pulled out the Millennium Celebration DC and popped it into the stereo so that we could at least be surrounded by Disney tunes as we sifted through all of our new "toys".
When we finally placed together all of our new purchases, we were quite astonished to see just how much we had amassed over the previous seven days--we grabbed the camera and took a picture for posterity (and, yes, I still intend on scanning and uploading the rest of the trip pics...and I've still got 7 days before I start my new job, so there's still time! ) Within a few hours, with most of the clothes put away, and neither of us in the mood to cook anything, we headed over to Don Pablo's to place a "To-Go" order, which they prepared while we were at Target picking up a few necessities (and a few non-necessities, too, like The Little Mermaid II).
Back home, we enjoyed our meal while watching TLM II, which both of us gave 3 stars out of 5--I don't know, I'm just not into the sequels that much, I guess. By 9:00 p.m., we were both absolutely whipped so we decided to call it a night; I especially needed the rest since I was due back at the gym the following morning to teach my "Sunday morning double"--a killer 2 hour class which I was actually eager to get back to.
However, before we actually fell asleep, we decided to put the ultimate cherry on the top of this fantastic voyage--we popped in the WDW Planning Video (which surprisingly still worked, even though we had viewed it, like, 2 million times) and, as each little scene rolled by, we'd say "We did that", if we saw something in which we had engaged. This little event had been planned since last April when, the first time we watched it, we were saying "We want to do that" (instead of "We did that").
Looking back on the week we had, I was thoroughly surprised that, for each "We did that" that one of us uttered, there was at least one (or more) "We didn't do that" to go with it. Heck, in that entire week of running ourselves ragged all over WDW, we had only scratched the surface of all that's available to us--truly amazing!!!
As the VCR rewound the tape and we settled in for what would prove to be one of the best sleeps that either of us had in a long time, I closed my eyes, and instantly, I was transported back to a place where dreams really do come true...
And, please stay tuned for the final installment: The NASTEE Trip Report--Epilogue: What A Long, Strange Trip (Report) It's Been
Cast:
Nate ("Aerobics"): 24, 4th trip to WDW, 1st trip in 12 years, 1st time staying on property
Spencer (Anti-aerobic): 29, 8th trip to WDW, hasn't stayed on property since 1992
Dates:
September 16-23, 2000
Lodging:
Wilderness Lodge--September 16-21, 2000
All Star Music--September 22, 2000
B-R-R-RING!!! B-R-R-RING!!!
Spencer: Oh, good morning, Mickey! I'm sorry...he's a little hungover right now...would you mind calling back in a few hours?
Thus began our last day at WDW, or should I say, last few precious hours, since it was already 7:30 a.m. and we were due to MCO airport for an 11:50 a.m. flight non-stop to The City With No Scruples (oops, I mean, Washington, DC). As Spencer crawled back into bed, I crawled (almost literally) to the shower in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to shake off those 3 Kungalooshes from the previous night.
Not a lot was spoken this morning, as we were both probably too contemplative about the end of our vacation to verbalize it. After I finished showering and foo-foo-ing (is that an official verb now?
), I quietly packed up the few remaining items while Spencer showered. By 8:15 a.m., we were ready to go, so I gave a quick call to the Front Desk to ensure that our luggage would be picked up at 8:30 a.m. (as we had agreed upon the prior evening).Stepping out of our room onto the 3rd floor walkway, we were greeted by a completely different picture of the All-Stars Music resort. Instead of the large numbers of guests ambulating every which way, a surprisingly serene and quite picturesque scene lay before us. The "Broadway" street was completely deserted, and with the sun shining on it ever so slightly, it was incredibly peaceful--perhaps we had just jumped to too quick of a conclusion the previous night?
We definitely liked the resort much more as we strolled past the deserted piano-shaped "quiet" pool and also-empty guitar-shaped main pool. One note about this resort, though--is it me, or is the green on the Calypso buildings just the slightest bit offensive? We renamed the color from lime green to Vulcan Vomit Green, but I'm sure someone out there likes it, so, perhaps they had you in mind when they painted the building?
Our stroll to Melody Hall and Intermission took about 6 minutes, and inside, we observed a level of decorum (or lack thereof) similar to that which we noticed the evening before. What an absolute zoo, but yet, I wonder if it only seemed that way after we had been spoiled by the absolute peace that abounds at the WL? Regardless, we needed to grab a quick bite and go, so that's what we did. After having gone to sit-down, usually buffet breakfasts w/characters for the past 6 days as part of the Fall Fantasy plan, I must admit it was weird having to actually pay for breakfast...
After we had grabbed our food, we made a bee-line for a booth that was in the process of being vacated--as we raced closer, we almost had a full-on collision with another couple who had spotted the emptying booth. We let them take it, as they had 2 kids in tow, and we continued our search for a table. This felt eerily too similar to trying to obtain a parking spot at the local shopping mall, but Spencer's eagle eyes (probably trained as such after years of working in a mall and having to eat in a food court on a nearly daily basis) spotted a table in the distance. This time, we definitely had sitting rights as a similar race with another couple ensued.
With that major obstacle behind us, we munched on our breakfast as I whipped out the PassPorter to continue with my obsessive note-taking (having no clue at the time that I'd still be referring to those notes one year later as I finally finished the NASTEE). We definitely noticed that it was more difficult to hear each other in the food court, thus further discouraging us from making a return trip to the All-Stars (but, hey, never say never, eh?)
With my notes almost completely updated, we finished our food and headed over to Maestro Mickey's to browse a little while before our scheduled pick-up time of 10:00 a.m. While in the shop, I purchased another Mickey poncho since my first poncho suffered a most tragic death the previous day in a desperate effort by me to remove it before boarding Spaceship Earth. It was in this shop that I first really noticed the Millennium snowglobe--what an absolutely gorgeous piece of art (is it considered art?). Unfortunately, our budget couldn't accommodate snowglobes so, with my new poncho in hand, we left Maestro Mickey's and headed up to the main lobby.
As Spence went out front to wait for the town car to arrive, I decided to see what movie they were showing in the lobby. As luck would have it, a new movie was beginning. Being the absolute Disney animation nut that I am, I recognized from the first screen (you know, the one that usually says something like "Buena Vista Films Distribution") that it was Lady And The Tramp. So, since most of the seats on the couches and chairs were taken, I just plopped my rump down on the floor for a front row seat for this timeless Disney classic. I'm not sure, but if you added up the ages of the 3 next-oldest people watching the movie with me, I still don't think you'd have a number higher than my age, but, hey, aren't Disney animations truly for the kid in all of us?
Lady hadn't even yet convinced her owners that she should sleep up in their bed when Spencer tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that Rafael, our town car driver, had arrived. For once, I was ruing the fact that one of our transportation providers was early (I was really getting into the movie, just laughing and giggling along with the 5 yr old girl next to me who had never before seen Lady and was quite disappointed when, not long after my "parent" told me that I had to go, her parents did the same thing).
As I headed out of the main lobby, I observed all sorts of travel parties arriving at the resort: excited kids bouncing around like little Tiggers, young couples strolling closely together with romance in their eyes and joy in their hearts, huge extended families choosing the ultimate locale for their 10th annual family reunion. I thought it absolutely fitting that the Disney movie with which we had begun our trip on the flight down was the same movie with which we would be leaving behind the utopia that is WDW. However, what we would not be leaving behind were the countless memories and numerous "Magical Moments" which were forever immortalized in our minds (and now, our PassPorters
)--can you really put a price tag on those? I sincerely doubt it.Our luggage arrived a few minutes later, and as Rafael drove us past the location of the forthcoming Pop Century resort, I suddenly grew disturbingly quiet. Spencer quickly picked up on this fact, and leaned over in the car to see if I was all right. I silently nodded assent, that I was indeed ok, but inside, I wasn't.
Words are difficult to come by when one must describe that post-trip letdown that inevitably hits each and every one of us as we head home. I had always expected that it would wait until I was at least off of WDW property, but I didn't fight it, either. Interestingly, judging from my previous experiences, I expected to break into tears right on I-4, but fortunately, I was able to keep it together.
As we disembarked from the town car, we handed to Rafael our final tip envelope; again, he thanked us profusely and bid us farewell. Check-in at the airport was uneventful, and, with 90 minutes to kill, we seated ourselves in gate B-whatever and just silently replayed the previous 7 days in our minds. To pass the time, we filled out the other postcards that we had bought (and forgotten to send earlier in the week)--at least they'd still be stamped "Orlando", right?
When we were finally situated in our seats on the plane (Spencer in Seat A and me in Seat B), a woman next to me glanced at our 9,437 WDW bags that we had brought on board with us. "Did you all go to Orlando?", she asked. Now, I know she was just trying to be nice and make conversation and all (God bless her heart), but, um, wasn't it just slightly obvious that we had indeed "gone to Orlando"?
As we flew home, Spencer slept while I continued to fill in "missing pieces" of my PassPorter notes, like Day 6's "The funniest thing today was being crowned Viking Of The Day".A few hours later, we touched down in not-so-good-ol' DC, definitely weary and eager to just get home and collapse. We were quickly brought back to reality when, after asking the taxi attendant to please place us in a cab that accepted credit cards, we were quite rudely yelled at by the cab driver as we approached our apartment--turns out he didn't accept credit cards, so we had to make an extra out-of-the-way pit stop at an ATM. And you can bet your sweet bippy the tip we gave him reflected our impression of his "service".
I suppose I could technically end the report here, but it would feel odd to do so, so I'm just going to keep writing...and since it's MY report, I'm allowed to do that, right?
Once we were back home, our first task was to unpack all of the cool crap that we bought--as soon as I found where we had packed it, I pulled out the Millennium Celebration DC and popped it into the stereo so that we could at least be surrounded by Disney tunes as we sifted through all of our new "toys".
When we finally placed together all of our new purchases, we were quite astonished to see just how much we had amassed over the previous seven days--we grabbed the camera and took a picture for posterity (and, yes, I still intend on scanning and uploading the rest of the trip pics...and I've still got 7 days before I start my new job, so there's still time!
) Within a few hours, with most of the clothes put away, and neither of us in the mood to cook anything, we headed over to Don Pablo's to place a "To-Go" order, which they prepared while we were at Target picking up a few necessities (and a few non-necessities, too, like The Little Mermaid II).Back home, we enjoyed our meal while watching TLM II, which both of us gave 3 stars out of 5--I don't know, I'm just not into the sequels that much, I guess. By 9:00 p.m., we were both absolutely whipped so we decided to call it a night; I especially needed the rest since I was due back at the gym the following morning to teach my "Sunday morning double"--a killer 2 hour class which I was actually eager to get back to.
However, before we actually fell asleep, we decided to put the ultimate cherry on the top of this fantastic voyage--we popped in the WDW Planning Video (which surprisingly still worked, even though we had viewed it, like, 2 million times) and, as each little scene rolled by, we'd say "We did that", if we saw something in which we had engaged. This little event had been planned since last April when, the first time we watched it, we were saying "We want to do that" (instead of "We did that").
Looking back on the week we had, I was thoroughly surprised that, for each "We did that" that one of us uttered, there was at least one (or more) "We didn't do that" to go with it. Heck, in that entire week of running ourselves ragged all over WDW, we had only scratched the surface of all that's available to us--truly amazing!!!
As the VCR rewound the tape and we settled in for what would prove to be one of the best sleeps that either of us had in a long time, I closed my eyes, and instantly, I was transported back to a place where dreams really do come true...
And, please stay tuned for the final installment: The NASTEE Trip Report--Epilogue: What A Long, Strange Trip (Report) It's Been
