The Trip Report that almost wasn’t a trip report

[DisneyCrzy]

The Trip Report that almost wasn’t a trip report or at least a postponed trip report but instead turns out to be a Trip Report.

I am amazed that we actually were able to go on this trip. Seriously amazed. We spent most of October and November waffling on whether we were going to go or when we were going to go. I had plans I tell you! Lots of plans. Plans on top of other plans. Then I woke up out of my perfect Disney dream world into my life. My life kicked me in the face with a golf shoe and left the imprints as a gentle reminder.

Now don’t get me wrong, my life is great. Honestly it is. I’ve been through some valleys in life and this was nothing like that. It was more like when you see a speed bump sign with your eyes but your eyes don’t send the message to your brain to slow down until you are hurtling over it and change is flying out of the change holder. Not that I have ever done that.

*ahem*

Moving right along.

Anyways back to my so-called great life, which was a great show too, but I digress. I do that often, so in advance, sorry. Lookie there, I did it again. So why is my life so great you ask? Well let me tell you.

I turn 30 this year. Specifically on December 27th. I am highly looking forward to turning 30. Life is too short to worry about the details of age. My great-grandmother died at 67, my grandmother at 57 and my mother at 47. There is a pattern that I am well aware. I cherish every single moment of my life until checkout time. Let’s see, what else about me…..I’m married to a fantastic man, whom indulges my inner child and treats me like a queen. Can’t ask for much more than that! I started two businesses and am in the process of helping a third business get off the ground. Which is why we spent October flip-flopping between going on this trip or not, but I’ll get to that in a minute. We don’t have any kids….yet. We have a really fat kitty, Thor, (he’s just big-boned ) and a 9 month old puppy, Nala, who thinks that she is a kitty.

DH, as I mentioned is a gem. I know we all think our respective spouses or partners are the best in the world, but he really is. Just like everyone else’s. He’s been with me through the thick and thin, the pretty and ugly. We spent the first 2 years of our relationship long-distance. I was in Arizona and he in LA. We survived and I moved to LA. That was an experience of a lifetime and I would not do it again if you paid me……well it is negotiable depending on where and how much you are paying me. DH comes from a large family and me a small family. He is 1 of 4. I am 1 of 1. He’s brown and I’m pink. He hates sports and I love spots.

*gasp*

A dude who hates sports. Serious.

He’s a computer dude. Our ying and yang, opposites attract (NoPaulaAbdul) thing really works for us. He has two ponies in our stable, a 1965 Ford Mustang and a 1990 Ford Mustang McClaren convertible. We have been together almost 10 years and I have yet to drive the ’65. Not that I want to, it’s just the principle of it.

Back to why this almost wasn’t a trip report or a slightly postponed trip report which actually turned out to be a trip report. Kind of like the department of redundancy department.

Well we planned the trip at the very end of July. It was a fluke thing. We hadn’t been in a couple of years and we could book the trip and have it paid off by October. Sounded good. In theory. Everything sounds good in theory. So we booked it, August went by and of course I planned. I planned like Obama raised campaign funds. I was a woman on a mission.

Then September hit like a hurricane and I was the house that wasn’t boarded up. I was volunteering helping a business get started along with running my 2 businesses that I own. I was working way too much and having fun but it was ugly and I was looking forward to my Disney vacation in December. Then all of the sudden I was no longer volunteering and this business asked me to help full time. Great!

Then the hurricane hit. We needed to go to Las Vegas and Puerto Rico. Las Vegas was to be at the end of October…whew. But Puerto Rico was going to be December. OH NO!!!!! Then it was going to be October. YES!!!!! Then November….uh oh! Then December…..NO!!!! It went on like this for a month. Then finally it was November. Whew! We avoided a direct hit. We were only mildly hit. I was going to go to Puerto Rico exactly 2 weeks ahead of Turkey day. Then I was going to come back and get ready to host Turkey day for 21. I was a possessed woman. I think I started to look like the medusa ghost in Haunted Mansion.

Then November hit and my MIL informed us that she needed to have a hysterectomy and it would probably be in December. Praise God that it wasn’t an “emergency”, but rather a means to remove some unwanted things. We found out approximately 8 days before we were going to leave that she wasn’t going to have it until January. Then on Sunday, November 30th, she tells us that it is scheduled for December 10th.

Seriously we cannot buy a break.

She is pushing it back because of the holidays. Whew!!! And again Praise God that it is not serious enough that she can do that.

Everyone had Black Friday circled on their calendar for shopping but I had it circled for commitment day. We were either going or we weren’t. There were no in-betweens for me. It’s like in football there are coaches who go for the win and those who go for the tie. I go for the win. I don’t believe in overtime.

The plans were these…. (Pushing Daises reference….love that show!!!)

December 5th-15th at Pop Century, preferred room, park hoppers, dining plan and ADR’s.

Simple yet effective.

Very much like a little black sweater which every woman should own.

DH and I for 10 glorious nights and 9 beautiful days. It was pure magic. We also promised my niece a very creative trip for her. She has never been and wants to go very badly. I said that we would take her…..in Flat Stanley form. For those of you who do not know what Flat Stanley is, here is a brief description.

It’s Flat Stanley.

I told you it was brief. Seriously.

Flat Stanley is this cutout of a cartoon like dude that kids send to their families around the country and you are supposed to write a journal about all the things that Flat Stanley did. So we took a picture of my niece and we are calling it Flat Sami. This way we can torture her by forcing her to look longingly at the pictures of WDW which she so very badly wants to go to. Cause I’m mean like that.

It was a fantastic trip to say the least. Great moments. Things like, dancing lights, light crowds, spending time with my husband and no one else, the castle, the food, remembering family members, princesses with attitude and many more!!! And of course some not so great moments. But I will get to them all in future chapters.

Tootles!

 

[MEK]

Looking forward to your trip report. Wow - some serious ups and downs before the start of your trip. Can't wait to hear more.

 

[DisneyCrzy]

How about we just call it travel day? It was the day that we traveled to the House of Mouse. This day brings a combination of panic and excitement.

I had pretty much everything packed for both the dude and I. It was just last minute things that I needed to stuff into the suitcase. You know things that you don’t really need but think you just might. Things like a pack of 32 batteries. Who really needs 32 batteries on vacation? Apparently I thought I needed them. Yes. I packed a package of 32 batteries. I still don’t know why I packed it. But I did among other things.

We were scheduled to leave our house at about 3:45 pm. Our flight was at 5:15 pm and we only live about 7 minutes from the airport. I had the suitcases packed and at the door as I anxiously awaited my husband to come home and Limo Laura to pick us up. I tried to watch one of my many recorded shows but I had the attention span of a kid at Christmas opening up presents.

Limo Laura aka, my cousin Laura arrived in plenty of time to take us to the airport. She did the requisite teasing of me because I had a couple of our Disney lanyards out. The fact that I am Disney crazy doesn’t really fit with my tomboy personality, but for some reason it works for me. I don’t care if it’s dorky that I like Disney World. She just doesn’t know what she is missing.

My husband arrived with about five minutes to spare, which is not surprising. This then caused the requisite nagging by me. It’s a cause and effect relationship. He’s late then questions some of the things that I packed and then I nag him for not coming home sooner and packing it himself. It lasted a mere three minutes before we walked out the door and piled into the car. We made it to the airport, checked in, and breezed through security.

We were at our gate by 4:15. Plenty of time to relax and people watch. The Omaha airport is easy to navigate. There are only two terminals, A and B. We were in terminal A and as we were waiting in the security line there was a gentleman ahead of us who managed to get all the way through security just to have them tell him as he was going through the metal detector that it was the wrong terminal. I’m still trying to figure out how that managed to happen.

We made it to Atlanta on time, had just enough time to grab some airport food before we boarded our connection to Orlando. It was running just a bit behind so we were able to eat in the gate area. Although now that we were slightly delayed that was pushing our arrival time further and further back. We were flying Delta and were on one of the new Airbus planes. It was huge and each of the headrests had their own TV monitor, which for a charge, you could watch TV, movies or play games. We were one of the first boarding groups because we were towards the back of the plane. Of course we people watched. And I’ve made a startling discovery.

I travel quite a bit. Probably once a month I am flying somewhere. Almost always I check my luggage. I have lost my luggage only twice; the first time in 1995 and the second time in 2000. I’m not opposed to brining your bag as a carry-on, but I am opposed to the idea that airplanes now look like buses and trains from 3rd world countries. Seriously our plane looked like the Darjeeling Limited. I think there were chickens, goats, donkeys and people hanging from the overhead bins. I watched one passenger stuff his suitcase into the overhead compartment (the kind that fold up, not down) and managed to get it stuck in the bin. It took two flight attendants, one standing on the seat behind him, to get it out. I think there were close to 8000 bags and passengers on the plane.

The Orlando Limited made it and we touched down at about 11:15. And then I made another startling discovery. The plans that I had made where we were going to be at rope drop almost every day, went out the window. I couldn’t believe it. I consented to sleeping in and just showing up at the park whenever we were ready.

What was wrong with me? Did I drink something funny? No. It was that I realized we were going to be here for nine days and that we would have plenty of time to do what we wanted. Plenty of time….or so I thought. I’ll save that nugget for a later chapter.

We caught Magical Express at the right time. We were the second to last group to board the bus. Away we went. A short 30 minutes later there was the sign. The sign that every kid and adult gets filled with excitement to see, the welcome sign. We were home.

And then it happened. A rookie mistake. A mom in the seat ahead of us was so excited because she saw the castle. Now you and I both know that Pop Century is nowhere near the castle. Not even remotely close. What castle could she possibly have been talking about? Really, the castle?!?! I was appalled. I saw what she was talking about…..the center where La Noba is held. Look I know it has a pointy top but it looks nothing like a castle. I was disgusted. My husband had to pull me off the roof and I soon calmed down.

We made it to Pop without a hitch and were in the check-in line by about 1:15. We checked in and got our room for the week 4304. It was the king bed as I had requested, but it was close to the Hall which is nice. Especially when you spend a fortune for the refillable mugs. No point in buying refillable mugs if you have to walk 20 minutes to fill it up and have it emptied by the time you get back to your room.

We stayed up for about another 30 to 45 minutes thinking that our luggage would arrive shortly. Our little eyes couldn’t take it anymore and we drifted off into a half sleep. The kind of sleep where you know that you have to stay awake for something but you are so tired that you literally cannot keep your eyes open anymore. We both tossed and turned because we really couldn’t get comfortable. We were still wearing our clothes from earlier that day and had no pjs to change into. We left the TV on to help try and keep us somewhat awake. Finally at about 5 am, I called down to luggage services to make sure that they did have it. They did and they would send it up to us. We got our luggage at about 5:45. We both went to a real sleep.

It was a very non-adventure, adventure. We were there finally. After a few months of flip-flopping we were finally there. It was nice. Not just nice, wonderful. Disney is like another world. Every stress that you have just seems to evaporate as you check-in. I know that at times it can be stressful especially if you have kids, but it can also be a wonderful, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience. No matter how many times you go. It still feels that way. I wish I could bottle that feeling. Happiness, relaxation, excitement, and everything else that you go through. If anyone figures out how to do it, let me know.

On that note, I bid you adieu until next time. The one where our heroes go to Morocco.