We Make The Griswolds Look Normal

[fairygagamother]

Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are non-fictitious. any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is not coincidental. And to preserve our dignity & anonymity , no pictures shall be posted. But mostly to avoid the wrath of The Queen of Hearts.

Which is a good place to start with introductions:
First off is her majesty herself, The Queen, aka, my DD. Married, mother of 2, tiny but scary. Do not disagree with her under any circumstances! May be suffering from a Napoleonic Complex, but she's mine & I love her! She's actually a lot of fun & we share the same sense of humor , as long as I do as I'm told.

Next is The Mad Hatter, my DH. I love him too even though he pretty much lives up to his name. He mostly behaves on vacations, but can have his moments. He looves Epcot & Las Vegas. His love of Las Vegas is the reason I get to feed my Disney addiction. Not because of huge winnings, (I wish!), but because he goes several times a year, which means I get to go where I want to go several times a year. It works for me!

Next are my precious grandchildren, Dee & Dum. They are boy-girl twins who turned 8 at Disneyworld. They look nothing alike & have totally different personalities. Dee is much more mature, loves thrill rides & sometimes lives in her own little world. Dum, despite his name, is scary smart, very immature & is scared of the most mundane Disney things. Such as Small World. Go figure! It makes for some interesting ride choices!
As an example of their differences, Dum wants to be an architect, while Dee wants to be, um , a unicorn.

Last, there's me, Fairygagamother. It goes without saying that I love Disneyworld!! Its my great escape & I love being in that particular bubble! I make ALL the plans, do all the research, & love every minute of it. I also am very claustrophobic & avoid certain rides. And flying. Yes, this limits me, but as long as I can drive myself to Florida, then it's all good!

 

[fairygagamother]

The somewhat Original Plan: Feb. 28 -March 14

Days 1 & 2 & 3: Drive 18 hours. Just me, my sometimes trusty GPS, & Sirius. And my best friend, my cell phone

Days 3 & 4: AKL standard view. Just me again.

Day 5: BWI, standard room. DH & me

Days 6, 7 & 8: BWI, deluxe room. DH, DD, DGD, DGS & me

Day 9: DH goes home. The rest of us spend the day & night @ Legoland.

Day 10: Polynesian CL

Days 11& 12: Polynesian, standard room

DD etc fly home. I start the drive home.

What Really Happened:

Mostly stayed the same, but I ended up having to change rooms at AKL & ended up getting to stay CL at Poly for the entire 3 days. That was a wonderful perk, as that's what I had tried it get for months. And I ended up staying one more night at POFQ after everyone left. I've done split stays before, but changing 7 times was a new record!

 

[fairygagamother]

If It Weren't for Bad Luck, I'd have No luck at All

We have quite the history of bad/weird/unusual things happening on every Disney trip. Every childhood illness you could think of, shattered windshields, a torn miniscus, cauliflower ear( that was a really weird one even for us), setting off fire alarms, superglued lips, lots of car & room lock outs, ; the list is endless. So we're really tempting fate every time we go. Disney +us = funky karma.

This time, I had the audacity to think we had averted disaster by getting all the illnesses & bad luck out of the way beforehand. Both kids had already been sick, & my car had been broken into right in my own driveway! Another shattered window, stolen birthday presents, And I got pneumonia a week before I had planned to leave. Couldn't ask for much more, could we?! Surely the funky karma gods were through with us.

 

[RDawn]

Enjoy your funny but true tale... following.

 

[fairygagamother]

Welcome, RDawn! I've been living in an internetless world for a few days, thus the delay in saying "hi"! So, hi to ya'!

 

[fairygagamother]

Driving My Life Away

It's an 18 hour drive from where we live to Disneyworld. If someone is with me, I'll drive 1/2 way the first day. I've done that by myself a few times, but have decided its much less stressful to make the trip in 3 six hour segments. The first day I usually stop & meet one of two friends for lunch, but cancelled this time because of the pneumonia. It had the lovely side effect of making me cough so hard I would gag & barf if I talked or laughed too much. So knowing my friend & I would certainly be doing a lot of both,(not the coughing & gagging!), I decided to catch her on the way back home.
The first leg of the trip is usually an easy drive & I made it easily to my first nights destination, a beautiful casino resort. I enjoyed a delicious veggie flatbread pizza for dinner. I devoured that sucker because I was starving. I had gotten an egg mc muffin for lunch& it was actually a blackened egg mcmuffin; completely inedible. I was beginning to regret giving up hamburgers & French fries for lent because my food choices were limited as to what could easily been eaten while driving. I consider myself a pretty dainty eater, but I'm pretty sure I resembled a caveman once that flatbread arrived.
I spent a few hours in the casino & was in bed by about 11:00.

 

[fairygagamother]

Real Time, Real Life Epiphany: It's Not just Disney, it's US!

Two recent incidents have convinced me that something really is amiss with my family. Or is it normal to spend Memorial Day in the back of a sheriff's car? That would be me, a señora citizen who's only had one traffic ticket in my entire life. Actually, it was a sheriff who rescued me, thank goodness. I travel by myself all the time & my #1 travel rule is to never let the gas gauge get below half empty. And now I know why it's a good rule! Anyway, DH & DS were in Las Vegas(hmmm--does that mean I get another Disney trip?!) & I completely & totally ran out of gas on a tiny 2 lane highway in the middle of nowhere. Ironically, I've had roadside assistance through my phone carrier for like the last 20 years. I recently changed carriers, but did I add roadside assistance? Well, that would be a big fat whattheheckiswrongwithme NO! I tried calling the number for assistance on the back of my driver's license, which is highly publicized. Nope! Can't help with gas & they were even very rude about it. It took about an hour to discover this as they kept passing me off to different people. I had called my daughter (the nice one, not The Queen), but she was about 1 &1/2 hours away. I called semi-close gas stations but no one could help. I had pretty much exhausted all my options when that angel disguised as a sheriff turned around & saved me. And, yes, it was an interesting ride in the back of a paddy wagon! Just another Griswoldian moment.

So, the other head scratching incident happened at the beach. My Dd(the nice one) & her DH were out in the water boogie boarding while I sat on the shore watching their baby. All of a sudden myDSIL started running out of the water holding his bottom. I thought he was just fooling around & being silly. Then my DD came running out doing the same thing. We'll, they had gotten into a "nest", for lack of a better word, of something. Either tiny just hatched crabs or shrimp. Although it sounds a lot better to say shrimp ! Those tiny whatevers had attached themselves to the inside of their bathing suits& were pinching or nibbling on their nether-regions! Oh my! I'm a bad bad person because I couldn't stop laughing! They almost tore off their clothes right there! They had a long way to go to get back to the room. The creatures washed right off in the shower & left no marks. But, once again, is this normal??! Unfortunately, it is for this family.