What an idiot... Feb. 2015 TR

[TangledInLove]

Hi, and welcome to my very first trip report.

Let me start by saying, I have no idea what I’m doing. So buckle up and get ready for possibly the worst, or potentially the best (who knows) TR you’ve ever read.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, and hopefully someone is still reading this, I guess I should introduce myself.



Hi I’m Katie. I am 24, for the next 9 days anyway, and I live about an hour outside of Toronto, or Niagara Falls, whichever you’re more familiar with. I am a little Disney crazy. I have been visiting WDW at least once a year, often twice, since I was 3 months old. People always ask me “Don’t you get sick of going to the same place for every vacation? Wouldn’t you rather go to an all-inclusive somewhere?” To which I reply “No I don’t ever get sick of Disney, how could you? They are always adding something new and there is just so much to do and see. There is so much magic in this one place that it could never wear off and become boring.” Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I am secretly, or not so secretly, a 5 year old who still believes in magic and dragons and princesses, but if that’s wrong I don’t want to be right. In July 2013 DH and I got married in Disney at the Boardwalk Inn, had our honeymoon at POR and have been back to WDW 3 times since.

Speaking of my wonderful DH, he was my partner in crime on this adventure, so I suppose you’d like to know who he is too.



This is Joe, he is also 24 years old and is the love of my life. We have been together for 7 years and married for 1.5. Before we met he had never been to Disney, but let me tell you, I have changed that. I took him to Disney for the first time to celebrate my 18th birthday and he loved it!

So onto our current trip.

We planned our trip for the last week of February for a few reasons. #1 The weather should be pretty good, it’s not the rainy season and temperatures should be in the mid 20’s (Celsius, I really don’t understand Farenheit.) #2 it was the easiest week for us to get off work seeing as we work together there need to be 2 people around to cover our shifts. And most importantly it was close enough to my birthday that I could use it as a birthday celebration week! I would have gone on my actual birthday, but since my birthday falls on march break and we work in a childcare centre, that was definitely not going to happen.

So, we booked our trip for Feb. 22 – 28, 2015 at Pop Century, which is where we stayed for our very first trip together. We booked POP under one of the special offers and decided to add the dining plan since it pretty much worked out to the same price we would have paid OOP and it is just so much more convenient.

This is what our plans looked like as of Feb. 21 before we left.

Sun. Feb. 22 – MK for the day ADR at Crystal Palace for dinner
Mon. Feb. 23 – HS for the day ADR at Mama Melrose Fantasmic lunch
Tues. Feb. 24 – AK for the day ADR at Boma
Wed. Feb. 25 – EP for the day ADR at Garden Grill
Thurs. Feb. 26 – MK for the day ADR at Liberty Tree Tavern
Fri. Feb. 27 – MK for the day ADR at ‘Ohana
Sat. Feb. 28 – HS for our last day L

Next up: The worst day of my life.

 

[TangledInLove]

Warning: Because this was the worst day ever there are going to be very few pictures. I will try to make up for this later.

It’s Disney time!!! Even though we have to wake up at 2:00 am I am super excited to be heading out of this snow that never seems to end and to the beautiful Florida sun. Joe and I jump out of bed and quickly get dressed and ready to go. While I pack our last minute things and make sure we have everything Joe packs the suitcases in the car. Amazingly everything fits in out tiny VW Beetle, I never realized just how small it was until we tried to fit 2 large suitcases in the back.

Now that everything is packed Joe comes back into the house to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything. This is where we messed up…

Okay, here is the conversation we had.

Joe: “Oh yeah, the CDs, let’s drop them off at the library on the way to the airport.”

Me: “Can’t we just ask your brother to do it? He’s coming to take care of the cats anyway I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

Joe: “No let’s just do it on the way. I don’t want to ask him and this way I’ll know they got returned.”

Me: “Okay fine.”

So we grab the stack of about 10 CDs and jump in the car. I have my carry-on backpack at my feet because our passports are in the front pocket so they are easy to access. And we’re off, Florida here we come! A quick drive and we are stopping at the library to drop off the CDs.

Joe asks if I can quickly drop the CDs in the box and he will put the carry-on in the trunk so that it doesn’t have to sit at my feet the whole drive to the airport.

Me: “Okay that sounds good, but we have to put the passports in the front so we can get them at the border.”

Joe: “Where are they?”

Me: “In the front pocket.”

Joe: “Which front pocket?”

Me: “The front one. Nevermind, I’ll get them.”

I grab the passports out of the backpack to put in the front seat and go to get the CDs from the front of the car. Apparently you can’t grab 10 CDs in one hand and I managed to drop half of them on the floor of the car. I pick them up in 2 hands this time so I won’t have to try to grab them all out of the snow. I open the drop box and drop all the CDs in, close the box, and make sure that they have all made their way into the box and haven’t gotten stuck.

Great! That job done, we are ready to start our vacation. Nothing but relaxing from here on in… Or not… I get back in the car and can’t for the life of me remember where I put the passports. Did I give them to Joe? Nope. Are they in the glovebox? Nope. On the visor? Nope. Where the hack did I put them?

And then, the worst realization EVER… I never put them back in the car. They were still in my other hand when I dropped all the CDs and had to pick them up. And now? They are in. the. drop box.

And that is when the panic set it. What do we do now? The box is locked. It’s 2:30 in the morning. No one is around. Can we call someone? Who would we even call? Okay, okay, calm down there has to be something we can do. But there just isn’t anything I can think of so when you can’t figure out what to do who do you call? Mom. At 2:30 in the morning. Thank god my mom sleeps with her phone under her pillow. She answered the phone and I explained the situation. Her solution, call the airline and bump back your flight until something this afternoon, that way when the library opens you can go in, grab your passports and be on your way. But no, that will never work. Firstly, we booked the wanna get away fare so there is no way they’ll let us change it without a huge fee. Secnodly, then I’m missing a whole day in Disney that I’ve already paid for. Oh god! Why did this happen. I am an idiot. I hate myself. This is the worst day of my life. Eventually my mom gives up on trying to calm me down and offers to call for me. Okay, that’s probably the best idea. So I send an email to her with all of my flight information and we drive over to her house. It really is convenient that we still live in the town I grew up in and everything is so close.

When I get to her house she is already on hold with SouthWest. She tells me not to worry and she will figure it out. Good, I cannot deal with this at 3 in the morning. I am too upset and exhausted. Now that I know she is working on it and there is obviously nothing I can do, I run up to what used to be my bedroom, turn on reruns of Friends because this is what comforts me at my worst, and collapse into to tears on my bed.

A short time later Joe comes in to tell me that my mom has managed to get our flights pushed back and even added an extra day to our trip! (The benefit of my mom being my boss, she can give me an extra day off) And these changes were going to cost us double what we paid for our flights, but my mother is a conversational wizard and the SW employee felt bad so we got it for FREE! Hallelujah! Now that the flights have been dealt with all we have to do is call Disney and make sure we can change our dates. Shouldn’t be a problem, they are usually pretty accommodating. So I call and guess what? They are not open at 4 in the morning. While I am trying to call Disney Joe sends and email to the library asking them to please call when they open, which actually isn’t until Monday.

We stayed at my mom’s house for a little over an hour, just chatting and trying to calm down. I thank her about a million times and then we head home. We get home just before 6 and decide to go back to sleep because we are totally drained. When I open the door to the bedroom out runs one of our cats. Poor thing had been stuck in there for hours. I guess it’s a good thing we came back or he might have been stuck in there all week!

We wake up around 11 and before I do anything else I call Disney. I am on hold for 33 minutes. Living in Canada and calling Florida is not cheap. Being on hold for 33 minutes costs me about $20. So does everything get fixed after a $20 phone call? No, that would be too easy. Instead after waiting for 33 minutes I am told that their system is down and I will need to call back later. Okay do you know when the system will be back up? Nope. Try back in an hour. Okay.

Yeah, I can’t really afford to keep calling back just to see if the system is working, especially since I now have to pay another day of hotel fees. Dad to the rescue. He has a long-distance plan on his phone and says that he will call for me and get everything sorted out. YAY! Dad texts me an hour later to let me know the system is still down. Since there really isn’t much else we can do Joe heads out to play hockey and I go to the store to pick up some nail art polish. I spend the next hour or so designing our MagicBands, since we don’t get them until we check in I can’t actually decorate them yet.

My Design:

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Joe’s Design:

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And I did my nails to match my MB

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At 3:00 I get a text from my dad to let me know that he is on the phone with Disney. By 3:30 Everything has been sorted out and our dates have been changed. Finally, I can breathe. Now I just need to add another day to our trip. I hope online and book a day at AOA. This is the hotel I initially wanted to stay at, but it wasn’t part of the promotion, so I booked POP instead. Now I get to do both.

Because we have a later flight the next day, Joe and I decide to have a relaxing night and go to the movies. When we get home, we set our alarm and go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a busy travel day.

Next up: Will we actually make it out of town this time?[/url][/url]

 

[accountingbabe08]

I hope everything goes better

 

[beckyx3]

I'm in! Your parents are awesome. It's so great that they helped you out in your time in need, parents are the best! Can't wait to read more, I hope you had a great vacation!!

 

[TutuWahineLV]

Well, that's a once in a lifetime trip start.... hope this was just a one-of and not a foreshadowing of things to come. Can't wait to hear the second start, and the rest of the trip went.

 

[caralyn817]

I'm hooked! I can't wait to read more. We leave in 13 days.

 

[jundland]

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Wow - that was stressful just to read! That is great that your parents we able to help - I am sure they were able to be much calmer on the phone than you would have been (or at least than I would have been in your place)

And things sometime happen for a reason - you were able to let the cat out if the room and are now able to stay a night at AoA.

Hope the rest of the trip trended up from this day.

 

[TangledInLove]

I just want to post a quick update to let you know I haven't forgotten about you. Things have been really busy the last fee weeks with my birthday last week, work has been crazy and DH and I are in the process of buying a new car. I will try to get a real update in ASAP, but first I need to either find or buy a USB cord for my camera which I have somehow lost otherwise you will be deprived of pictures for the first couple days of our trip.

 

[TangledInLove]

Oh. My. God. You guys are not going to believe what happened. Okay, wait let me start off by saying, yes I know it's been FOREVER since my last post. I'm sorry!

Anyway, as I said in my last post over a month ago, I lost my USB cord for my camera. I didn't want to post without pictures because that's no fun. Plus how would you live vicariously through my trip without pictures? Like I said... NO fun. I tore apart my 3 suitcases and basically my whole house looking for it and it was NOWHERE!!! I was so mad and convinced that I left it at the hotel in Disney and that my camera was officially useless. But do you know what miraculous thing happened? I found it I was packing for my next Disney trip (a surprise trip for DH) and out of the corner of my eye I saw it! It was sitting right on the shelf in plain sight. Seriously though? So without further ado, here comes: Departure Day take 2.

 

[TangledInLove]

Okay, let’s try this again. We woke up around 8:30 and had a quiet morning and tried to relax a bit before we leave for the airport. Joe was thankful to have the extra time to be able to clean up the house and do some laundry we hadn’t had time for the day before. I customized our MBs for our stay at AOA, we both chose green. My mom came to pick us up at 12:30 and after I check our carry-on for our passports about 1,000 times we’re off to the airport! Disney here we come… For real this time.

When we got to the border crossing in Fort Erie there were only 2 cars in front of us and we made it over without any issues. From our house to the airport it took us about an hour and 15 minutes. Not bad at all. When we got to the airport it literally took us less than 5 minutes to check-in and check our bags. Seriously, there was no one in front of us, it was awesome. AND we breezed through security! This was a much better start to our vacation. Since we were actually supposed to leave earlier than 12:30 and had planned to stop for lunch we were starving once we finally got there. Our solution? Airport food court. For those of you who don’t know, the Buffalo airport does not have great variety when it comes to food. I think there are like 5 choices. So we figured we’d play it safe and get burgers. Neither of us have ever eaten at Checker’s, but it seemed like the safest bet. We each got a cheeseburger, fries and a Pepsi.

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The burgers were okay, but not something I would order if I had another choice. It wasn’t important though because in a few hours we would be in Florida and eating Disney food!!!

When we got to our gate we scored 2 of those comfy leather chairs with the chargers next to them. We still had some time to kill before our flight boarded so Joe played his NHL game and I read my book. We were flying Southwest and were boarding in position A48 and A49. Since we were in the A group I was hoping to be able to sit in the front row with some extra legroom like we did on our wedding trip. Unfortunately, those seats were taken, but we did get in row 2 which meant that we got to get off the plane super fast. The flight was pretty uneventful. We got drinks and some Ritz snacks.

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I really don’t like flying, but the view is always so beautiful.

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We arrived at MCO at 5:20 and got off the plane really quickly. We made a stop at the washroom and then we were on our way to DME!!! We walked through the Earport on the way to get us in the Disney mood. When we got to the DME counter they directed us to row 5 which was heading to POP, AOA and AKL. Our driver’s name was Bill and Joe thought he was hilarious. His favourite joke? “What’s the one thing can you do to stop the rain at WDW? Buy a poncho! As soon as you buy it it’ll stop, but as soon as you leave it in the room it’ll start again. By the time you go home you’ll have 22…” Well, he’s not wrong. I tried to get a sign picture, but the combination of sitting in the second row and not having my good camera out was not optimal, so this is what I got.

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[Cando86]

Ohmygosh I'm stressed out just reading what happened! You have awesome parents! So glad you finally made it.

I have a Joe too who is also a hockey freak
Looking forward to more!