"You'll Die in a Fiery Crash"- A Mother's Day Tale

[Pixie Princess]

It all started innocently enough on a beautiful Friday afternoon in Georgia. For no good reason my DD had the day off school (the last day of school was just a week away). In fact she had been off the day before as well. Earlier in the week I told DD that we’d go see The Avengers one day that she was off. So we pile in the car around 3:30 and head off to the theater for the 4:00 showing.

Did I mention it was a gorgeous day? Low 80s, low humidity, a very welcome change from the very hot and humid weather we had been having. Being the sort who, oh you know, randomly checks out the weather in Orlando because it makes you feel happy to know what’s going on there, I knew that the weather was pretty darn nice there. So, on the way to the theater, I say something to the effect of how it is nice at Disney World, and how I wish we were there. To which my DD replies, “So why don’t we go.” Wait! Did I just hear this?!? This is the conversation from that point:

“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“No, seriously, I’ll turn this car around now if you are.” I feel sure I’m about to bust her.
“I am serious.”
“Okay, I guess we’re going to Disney World.”

I turn the car around and head home. I ply her with more questions like, “You realize you are going to spend 8 hours in a car to basically turn around and come back home.” She is unfazed by my questions to dissuade her, and insists she knows what she’s signing up for. So, I hand her my phone and tell her to open up the Lines app, and tell me what the predicted crowd levels are for the weekend. We discuss our options a bit, and decide we’ll just go to MK and Epcot. It would have been nice to go to HS since we didn’t go there over during our trip for Spring Break (yep, we were just there a little over a month ago), but there are a.m. EMH on Sat. and the crowd prediction is a little more than I feel like dealing with on Sunday. Plus we’ll be back for SWW so…..

We arrive back home to pack and what not. Finally, having a duffle bag with all our Disney stuff in it really pays off! I fire up the computer to book a room. After some searching, I decide on staying at Pop Century. We pack up the car and are on the road by 6:00. As I mentioned it is about an 8 hr. drive. At this hour it just isn’t feasible to make the entire trip in one shot. Not for me
anyway. So my plan is to hopefully make it to Lake City, FL, and then be up and on the way early in the morning to make RD at MK.

On the way down, I get a call from my mom. She lives in a different state, and had called to thank us for the flowers we sent for Mother’s Day. We are chit chatting away about her difficulties in finding something to wear to my sister’s upcoming “wedding” (my sister’s quotation marks, not mine), and the fact that she has no television or internet (I am her help desk) when she asks if I can look up some flight information for her. The conversation proceeds as follows:

“I’d like to [look up her info], but I’m not at home.”
“Oh, where are you?”
“In the car on the highway.”
“Where are you going?”
“Out of town.”
“Where?”
“Oh you know, just out. The weather is so nice, we just wanted to get out of the house.”
“Where are you going? Are you going to Disney?”
(giggling) “Yes.”

Well the conversation continued with mother chastising me about being on the road so late (it was maybe 9:00), and ended with her telling me to get off the highway or, “You’ll die in a fiery crash.” She cracks me up. I assure her we’ll be off the road before too long.

We pull in to a Hampton Inn in Lake City at 11:00. I like Hampton Inn because a) they have a good breakfast in the morning and b) because the beds are uber comfortable. Well usually. For some reason the beds at this particular Hampton in were not the normal “sleeping on a cloud” beds they have. However, I was pretty darn tired at this point, so frankly the parking lot would have sufficed as a bed. The rest of the hotel was lovely, and if you need a place to lay your head just a couple hours away from the World, I highly recommend.

We head off to our room, and for a few hours, sleep. My plan is to be up at 5:00 a.m. so we can both get ready and have the car packed by 6:00. I had hoped to be on the road at 6:00, but breakfast is not until 6:00, and my daughter loves breakfast. This little adventure was her idea, so the least I can do is let her have a decent breakfast. I figure as long as we are on the road at 6:30 we should be okay. We may not be watching the Magic Morning Show (as I call it), but we should be walking through gates shortly there after. Or so I hope….

 

[Pixie Princess]

Well, 5:00 a.m. comes awful early folks. I finally stagger out of bed at 5:30, and as quickly as possible get myself together. I wake DD so she can get herself together. We pack up and head down to the breakfast area around 6:15. I tell DD to go ahead and get her breakfast while I go load the car. I’m thinking we might still make it out of here by 6:30, until I join my DD at the table. And then I see it….

by way of comparison, here's mine

Now that is a breakfast feast! I couldn’t help but laugh. I point out to her we are trying to get out of here, to which she says, “I can’t help it I like breakfast.”

We finish our breakfast, fuel up and are blazing down I-75 by 7:00. At 9:15 we see this happy sight:

We reach MK and are parked in the lot at 9:30.

There is a mass of humanity waiting on the tram. There is no way we will make the next tram, so we decide to walk to the TTC. We head up to the express monorail. As you might imagine there was quite the (blurry) crowd

By comparison, here is line the resort monorail.

The Avergerail is loading as we are making our way to the platform.

Much to DD’s disappointment we did not make it on that one. We get to take the Silver Bullet instead. Not having any bags, head straight to the turnstiles and ahhhh finally..

We go ahead and pick up some cards for Sorcerers of the MK while we are here, and then head back to Space Mountain. Some pics along the way.

Don't know how, but neither of us have noticed this guy before.

We arrive to find the wait to be 15 minutes. The games in the queue are turned on. I don’t even remember the last time, or if we’ve ever, been through the standby line and found the games on and operational. We play as we wait to find out today we will be taking the A-train (Alpha) on our space journey. One of the nice things about it being just the two of us, is we are often pulled out of line for this ride (and occasionally for Soarin’) to fill empty positions. That was this case this go around, although we were pretty close to the front of the line anyway. Not long into the ride, I notice we are missing the soundtrack. Hmm.. I can hear faint strains as we get closer to the end of the ride and wonder if perhaps it was just working on the other side? Is that even possible? Perhaps it was just down for our ride, or something. Anyway, it comes to and end, and head off to the gift shop..um..exit.

When we enter the shop we spy this awesome shirt!

That will be on the purchase list for the next trip. Then I spy it..hanging there on the wall of D-tech merch… the Pan-Am-esque line of electronics cases! I have been searching for this stuff for months. Unfortunately the laptop case is not quite big enough for my laptop, and wasn’t able to justify the $$ for the cell phone case since I just bought one during Spring Break. *sigh* I have a couple more weeks to justify spending the money on it during the next trip.

We grab a FP to ride again later, and move on to Buzz since the wait is short. I won. Never happens. I have no idea where I’m shooting on that thing. I got lucky this go around. The Laugh Floor had a short wait so we head over there for some chuckles. And chuckles a plenty there were!

 

[partyof2]

I so wished I lived in the US and an impromptu trip to the World was a possibility! I'd love to jump in the car and know that it's only a few hours ago (somehow an 8 hr car journey seems more bearable than a 10 hr flight!).

 

[Pixie Princess]

I so wished I lived in the US and an impromptu trip to the World was a possibility! I'd love to jump in the car and know that it's only a few hours ago (somehow an 8 hr car journey seems more bearable than a 10 hr flight!).

You are absolutely right about that. I'm not a fan of flying, and the 5 hour flight from here to California is more than care to withstand. I can't imagine 10 hours!

It is nice to be able to head to the World with little or no pre-planning. Of course it helps (or hurts depending on how you look at it) that we have APs. Makes it much easier to be spontaneous.