What ELSE could go wrong?! You had to ask... (UPDATED 5/22!)

[CoolDisneyKitten]

Hi, kids! You might remember me from my pre-trippy, "You Can Take the Boy Outta Wales..." No? Oh. Well. Not all that many of you read it. Well anyway. You can all make up for that now by reading my trip report!

Why the melodramatic title, you ask? Well, um... this was an *interesting* trip. I did all the planning, and let's just say things went wrong from minute one. Even *before* minute one, which you can read about in the pre-trippy. There were definite *good* things, don't get me wrong! But wow... I've never had such a zany, crazy, upside down style trip before!

The cast...

Me, Meg, 26. I graduated college May 3, and we (DBF and I) left for Disney May 4. I love WDW, and this trip was my baby.

DBF25, Mike. Welsh, his first time at WDW and only his 2nd time in the States. The whole idea of Disney made him a bit nervous.

Mike and I... bah, I look so dopey in this pic. I'll post a newer one once I get them off Mom's computer.

Also Mom, aka CoolDisneyCat. She arrived May 8. Loves Disney as much as I do.

Mom.

Mike and I stayed at SSR in a 1bd, and on the 8th we switched to OKW to a 2bd.

The schedule:

Day 1, 5/4: Get me to the plane on time!
Day 2, 5/5: We're here. Now what?
Day 3, 5/6: It's hot. We're tired.
Day 4, 5/7: AK, here we come!
Day 5, 5/8: Moving day!
Day 6, 5/9: Epcot time!
Days 7&8, 5/10-11: Laziness, thou art our master.
Day 9, 5/12: The Magickest Kingdom that ever was.
Day 10, 5/13: Let's do the Time Warp again! (Epcot style)
Day 11, 5/14: Home? Say it ain't so!

Fasten your seat belts: it's gonna be a bumpy trip report!

 

[Booknut]

Great start - nothing like a little stress to make your holiday more enjoyable

You're a great looking couple, looking forward to reading more

BTW, what did you graduate in? Did you enjoy the ceremony?

Am enjoying your food trippie too

 

[pooksma]

Haha! I found it!

I am proud to say I was a faithful reader of your Pre Trip (the rest of you should be ashamed and go read it! )

You Dining Reviews are making me drool. Wonder what reaction this will provoke??
Congrats on Graduation and looking forward to more.

 

[OhMari]

Welcome again and congradulations on your graduation.

What are you going to do for a job?

 

[CoolDisneyKitten]

Thanks for the replies! My major was Comparative Arts with a minor in Ancient History. My major was basically liberal arts, how music, art, literature, and theatre have interacted and influenced each other throughout history. My main focus was art history, and that's what I'm gonna focus on in postgraduate education.

I knew you could find me, pooksma! Hopefully now some of these folks'll read the pre-trippie.

Ok, back to the report...

The overall plan for this trip was simple. Mike and I flew down on Sunday, May 4 to spend a few days at SSR just the two of us. Mom was joining us on May 8 and we were switching to OKW. She would be driving down, and then the three of us would drive back on May 14. Easy peasy, right? Not once the gods of transportation got through with us! Muahahahahaha!!

Ahem. Pardon me. Our plane was departing at 9:25, so Mom was picking us up at 7:45. Something inside me said, "That's too late. Tell her earlier." But I kept my mouth shut and just nodded. It was a Sunday, after all, so there wouldn't be any traffic. When she got there I had some things I had to put in the suitcase (which she knew ahead of time), but it ended up taking like 15 minutes, so we didn't leave til 8.

Mike and i hadn't had time for breakfast, and I pitched a minor (very minor) fit when I saw her Starbucks cup. She said we could go, but I insisted we didn't have time. She insisted we did, so off we went. I must've said 6 times that we didn't have time, including when Mike and I were walking up to the Starbucks, standing in the Starbucks, and returning to the car *with* our Starbucks. I wanted to make myself clear, I guess.

Mom had meant to stop by the bank the night before to get me some cash (there was a whole big mess up with my debit card; it doesn't bear repeating), but we were all SO tired the night before that she dropped us off, then went home and crashed. I couldn't blame her for that, since that's what Mike and I did! She stopped at the ATM on the way to pick us up, but the ATM at our shiny, brand-new Wachovia was out of service! Excellent timing. So we spent about 10 minutes looking for an ATM near the airport. You'd think there'd be one, but no dice.

Finally I said forget it, I'd give her the cash I got for graduation to get her through until Wednesday, and she could just give me her debit card. Plus Mike had cash and his credit cards. We agreed on that, but we got to the airport at about 8:40. By the time we got in line to check in, it was 8:45. By the time we got to an attendant it was 8:50. You can't check in less than 45 minutes before your departure time, so we'd missed our flight!!

She put us on standby for the 11:20 flight, but I realized later that if she'd been doing her job more thoroughly she could have done 2 things. 1, LOOKED to see that there was not a SINGLE OPEN SEAT for the rest of the day until 10:20pm. 2, told us that while we'd technically missed the 9:25 flight, we could still hop over to the gate and ask if they could board us. That's what an agent at a ticketing desk told us later... after we'd not gotten on the 11:20, 1:25, and 2:30 flights.

After we missed the 1:25 flight, a ticketing agent booked me on the 10:20 flight, so at least I knew I had a seat sometime that day. We were still on standby for the other flights, but because they were overbooked for every flight, the overbooked people kept getting bumped ahead of us on the standby list. Also, somehow, Mike got pushed *off* the standby list altogether!!

At the 4:20 flight a bunch of people were standing at the gate, so Mike and I popped up there to see what was going on. She asked our names. She saw me on the standby list, but not Mike! She knew they had 5 no-shows and 4 people standing at her desk, so she just told us to get on the plane and find empty seats. I found one quickly, Mike found one at the *very* back row (which, of course, I didn't know), the other man found one in the middle, then I hear... "Do we have another seat? I have two people, one seat!" I was like, "If that is Michael, I swear he will be sitting on my lap! We are NOT getting off this plane!!" It was the other man's wife, though, and she found a seat at the front.

We were finally on a plane. We'd been at the airport since 8:45 that morning, and our plane took off about about 4:45pm. I have never been so happy to be on an airplane!!

We landed at MCO and headed to the Magical Express desk. We were told in Charlotte that our luggage had taken the 2:30 flight (good of it...), so at the ME desk they told us it was either at the resort or otw. We waited 10ish minutes or so for our bus, then were seated in air conditioned comfort to watch the movie.

There was no line at SSR check in, and the only problems we had were I thought the reservation was under my mom's name (long day), and they wouldn't let us put my credit card on my KTTW card and Mike's credit card on his. Now I know that we've split up the KTTW cards before, but the CM at check-in told us that they could split our bill when we checked out. *sigh* Oh well.

We were never so happy as when we saw...

We were in the Springs area, per my request, and on the top floor. I'd requested a high floor, and since the buildings are only 4 stories, this was perfect.

The living room... (with Mike's butt)

The bedroom...

We were very impressed with quality of the furnishings at SSR. Really lovely. I have a bajillion more pics if anyone's interested.

I called my mom (who was having major guilt attacks) to tell her we were there safe and sound. We'd missed our 7:15 Raglan Road ADR, and if we'd realized that you can get pizza delivered at SSR, we'd've done that! As it was about 8:30, we decided to go ahead and drag our worn-out butts to the Turf Club (they close at 9). We waited about 5 minutes, then were lead to a table for two in the very back corner of the restaurant. It would've been fine, except there was a large table with three very loud, tired kids right behind us. I know, kids are everywhere at Disney... but the father was really preachy to them, and it was annoying in our half-drunk-with-tiredness state.

We enjoyed our food (you can read about it in the dining report), but service was a bit slow. We told our waitress we weren't on the dining plan, but she brought us a dining plan receipt when I charged to the room. I'd never seen one before, so I was really confused. I was like, "Normally it just works like a regular credit card. Why did we get 40000 pieces of paper!?" Maybe on a less tired night I would've been ok... though it would've been nice if she'd explained it a little. We managed that hurdle successfully, though, and we made it back to our room to crash.

I took this pic on the way back...

Next up: DHS for the travel-weary.

 

[VanniGirl]

Sorry you had such travel troubles.

Looking forward to reading more!

 

[CoolDisneyKitten]

My plan for our first full day at Disney was to get up around 9ish, have some breakfast, then wander over to DHS around 10ish. I wanted us to see the second Fantasmic! at 10:30 that night, and I figured we could fill our day with shows, rides, food, etc.

We decided to sleep in longer than I'd initially planned, and we didn't leave the villa until about 11am. I wasn't worried about it; we were tired from wandering around the airport most of the day before. We decided to hop the boat to DTD and eat at Raglan Road to make up for our missed dinner ADR the night before.

One of Mike's favorite parts of Disney became the boats. He wants a boat to AK. He said he'd help dig the canal himself. The ride from SSR to DTD is very nice, esp on the beautiful, sunny days we had. We took the ferry from Marketplace to West Side, then to Pleasure Island.

Raglan Road is empty at lunch. Really. If you wanna know about our lunch, read my dining report.

I couldn't remember if buses ran from DTD to the parks or not, so we hopped a bus from there to OKW to DHS. We got there about 1, which was unfortunate since it was the sunniest part of the day. Mike just wasn't used to the Florida heat/sun at all - the low in May in Florida is the same as the high in Wales in July. Add to that he's getting over a bout of mono, and he got worn out really quickly.

The main problem we had today: tickets. Mom and I had bought our tickets ahead of time at AAA. The lady at AAA activated them, and everything shoulda been fine... well, when I put mine in the machine at DHS, the machine ate it with this really horrible, frightening grinding noise. The CM made the machine give it back, and I reinserted it. Again, it ate it. The CM said I might have an invalid ticket!! She inserted it again, in a different machine, and it worked that time. Whew! Mike's worked fine.

Mike and the hat, once we finally got in.

For his first ride (ever), I chose Great Movie Ride. I warned him it was pretty cheesy in parts, but I figured it was nice and slow (and air conditioned). He liked it, though he agreed it was cheesy. The wait for RnRC was 20 minutes (same for ToT), so we decided to wait in line for that one. Mike's first coaster!! I was nervous!

He really liked it, though. He said the flash of the ride camera blinded him at first, but once he adjusted, he liked it a lot. We decided to get FPs to ride again in an hour, and that was an adventure. The FP machine ate my ticket. I called the CM over, and she got my ticket for me, and told me to feed it in again. Again, it ate it. And again. And again. Finally she manually gave me an FP, and asked Mike to feed his in. It ate his ticket twice before she manually gave him one, too. She told us either the tickets had been demagnetized or they hadn't been magnetized well to begin with.

After that drama, we wandered over to the nearby CS place (Rosie's Red Hots?) to get some drinks. We ordered a diet coke and two bottles of water. I took a sip of the coke as we walked away, and I was like, "AGH! What!?!" It wasn't coke. It was really bad unsweetened iced tea. It even had the "diet" bubble punched on the lid.

We were both too tired/lazy to take it back, so we found a table in the shade and drank our water. We debated going back to use our FPs, but Mike was feeling really tired by that point. We decided to grab the boat to BC and eat at B&C. On our way out I took several pictures of the art deco-style buildings. I love those details at DHS!

Just a couple.

The boat was packed (everyone always leaves at the same time...), but once we got to the Beach Club it was such a nice evening we decided to sit outside. We even saw a bunny!

bunny!

Disney bunnies: minding their own business for 30+ years.

Once the skeeters started biting, we headed inside, then on down to B&C. It was good as always, esp the ice cream (again see dining review). We took a cab back to SSR and went to concierge to get our misbehaving tickets put on our KTTW cards. The line was SUPER long with only one CM at the desk, and since I wasn't planning a park for the next day, we decided just to wait.

After a stop at Artist's Palette to pick up a few necessities, it was back to the villa to craaassh. Poor Mike. The heat was nearly his undoing. The ice cream helped, though.

Next up: More mocking by the transportation gods.