Trip Report Mooooooooove! An Irma-centric first Disney trip

gdisneyfans · Sep 15, 2017

A first haircut on Main Street - that's so sweet!! She is so adorable! Love your matching t-shirts too! Enjoying your report so far - can't wait to read how the night ends

rag88 · Sep 15, 2017

Tuvalu said:
FYI ~ the red peppers in the braised pork at BOG are actually part of the green beans jardiniere which accompany it. I love red peppers and often order the green beans jardiniere (instead of fries) with my sandwiches at BOG.

Ah, thank you! I should've look that up before ordering.

75disney said:
Very cute. Did you save a few locks of hair for her baby book?

We did! It's not something I would've thought of, but they put some in a baggie with pixie dust and give it to you at the end

fractal said:
Tom Sawyer Island then the Barber Shop - awesome! Love the family pic in the barber chair - lots of smiles!

It was definitely a unique visit for us - we really enjoyed it!

gdisneyfans said:
A first haircut on Main Street - that's so sweet!! She is so adorable! Love your matching t-shirts too! Enjoying your report so far - can't wait to read how the night ends

It was such a good experience, and we liked the shirts too :happy:

Jeff had some eye surgery today, so it may be a few days before I'm able to post again as I'm taking care of him - but I'll be back on Monday for sure!

PrincessL · Sep 18, 2017

E's haircut was so precious! Those are the moments Disney is all about

ALONZO LAUREL · Sep 18, 2017

very cool trip, even with hurricane

rag88 · Sep 18, 2017

PrincessL said:
E's haircut was so precious! Those are the moments Disney is all about

Couldn't agree more!

ALONZO LAUREL said:
very cool trip, even with hurricane

It certainly was

rag88 · Sep 18, 2017

Day Two, Part Three: "BOOM"

When we last chatted (I like to think we're having a conversation here :chat

, E was gearing up for debuting her radically new hairdo. We walked her pixie dust over to meet Mickey Mouse! I may not have emphasized earlier, but we were incredibly spoiled with remarkably low wait-times this trip. We never waited 20 minutes for a ride. Granted, some of that was due to FP+ and not needing to hit some of the headliners this trip, but overall crowd levels were low - probably a combination of typical low season and Irma scaring folks away. That being said, Mickey had a 180-minute wait at 4:15 pm! Thankfully, we had a FP+ and hopped in that relatively short line. Of course, E chose this moment to poop, so she and Jeff hopped back out of line to visit a bathroom and get cleaned up. I saved our spot, and very quickly after they re-joined me we were ushered into our room.

Hands down, this was another top moment for our trip. I hadn't told Jeff that this Mickey could talk, and the surprise was so much fun! The two families in front of us were from Japan and Brazil, and when Mickey started talking in their language, Jeff was floored. We walked up, and E was slightly hesitant. She loves Mickey, and is very familiar with him, as evidenced by this picture from almost a year before our trip:

So once Mickey saw that she was a little shy, he asked if she wanted to play "choo choo train" with him. We played choo choo train all around the room, and that girl smiled the biggest smile I've ever seen. She had a blast. After that we got together for a family photo, the photographer asked us to say cheese. E said in her loudest voice, "CHEESE!" and when anyone asks her about meeting Mickey, she still exclaims Cheese

After our time with Mickey, we headed to an extra FP+ that I was able to grab for "Bzzz". E really loved this one because she likes saying his name, she got a sticker, and she figured out how to spin the vehicle using the little lever. Trifecta!

At this point, our early lunch was starting to wear off. We had originally wanted to head to Columbia Harbor House, but the app was saying it had closed at 5 pm (I'm not sure that was true), and Jeff remembered when we had gone to Sleepy Hollow on a previous trip and gotten waffle sandwiches. My wonderful husband is obsessed with waffles, so he requested that we head that way. I'm a big fan of the view from Sleepy Hollow, so I went along with the spontaneous decision and shared one of my favorites spots in MK with E.

Dinner was delicious - I would never hesitate to suggest getting both waffle sandwiches and splitting them between two adults. It makes a filling and decently nutritious meal for a good price. After dinner, we let our waffles digest by circling around the park on the train. It was a good respite from the heat of the pavement, but otherwise not incredibly exciting. I think I'd rather spend time on the PeopleMover, honestly.

We exited the train and hopped on the teacups - I had grabbed another bonus FP+ for this, but it was totally unnecessary. E loves playing "Dizzy" at home and spinning around in circles until she falls down, so I figured this would be a hit. And it was! This ride was the only one all day that E immediately demanded to re-ride, and since it was a walk-on, we literally walked right back to the entrance and hopped on for the very next spin. Can you tell that humid-prone hair runs in the family?

I don't have a picture, but after teacups I had another bonus FP+ for "Bzzzz", so we did that again. I'm avoiding reporting our scores, because I did miserably both times

It's because I was enjoying E enjoying the ride too much! After that, it was a few minutes past 8, so we decided to grab a spot for fireworks. I was hoping that we could keep E entertained and happy for a little under an hour even though it was already past her normal bedtime, she had woken up early, had a busy day, and a shorter nap that usual. She LOVED the fireworks on July 4th in our hometown, so I knew she'd be a happy camper if we could keep her up just until they started.

We managed to nab a REALLY great spot, in front of where the dessert party garden view folks go. We were right behind the curb and managed to have quite a bit of space to ourselves thanks to the stroller.

Pro Tip: if you need a time killer, go with snacks! That's what always worked for us.

I set E up with some cheese crackers, Jeff went to go grab us an ice cream, and when that ran out, we let her annihilate a bag of mini marshmallows. She doesn't get many cheese crackers or marshmallows at home, so she was happy and distracted until just a few minutes before showtime. At that point, I whipped out the bubble wand that her Nana bought for her when she went to Disney in May. I'm almost 100% it annoyed those around us, and it's not something I would've purchased for her on my own, but E had a blast with it and it saved those last few crucial moments for us, so I would call it a win.

I don't have any pictures from the rest of the night. Happily Ever After was awesome, and E watched the whole thing with wonder. One of those Disney moments that I won't forget. The mass exit from the park wasn't too bad since they opened up the overflows behind Main Street, and because there were EMH for a few more hours. E didn't want to ride in her stroller, so I sucked it up and carried her, hoping she would get comfy and drift off on the way back to the lodge, and Jeff pushed the stroller.

This was our only bad bus experience of the trip - we got to the bus line pretty quickly, and were about 20 people back in line for AKL. It took over 20 minutes for any bus to get to us, despite OKW being 3 buses deep right next to us. Eventually our chariot arrived, and it was packed! E and I shared a seat, and she eventually drifted off.

It was a great and successful day! So many new family memories. Couldn't really have asked for anything better, honestly. That being said, when we got back to the room the real world caught up to us a little. We had messages from both sets of our parents saying models were shifting Irma our way and that we should pay attention and stay safe. The next morning, things would certainly accelerate ... but we'll get to that in due time

rag88 · Sep 19, 2017

Day Three, Part One: "Mittey"

This morning was definitely all about our pal Mickey. We met him twice and ate his delicious waffles!

Our plan today was to wander EPCOT and have a slower pace so that E could recover from our long day in the Magic Kingdom. EPCOT had morning EMH this day, but we knew we weren't going to try to take much advantage of those. Instead, we let E sleep until 8, got her up and dressed, and let her eat a banana on the bus. We were headed straight to breakfast anyway!

We ended up getting a bus by 8:15 and were inside EPCOT past security by 8:40 - crazy fast that morning. Since it was still EMH, the park was pretty deserted, and we decided we had enough time to enjoy Spaceship Earth as a walk-on. I'm actually glad this is the way the timing worked out - I had hoped that E's first EPCOT ride would be SE

I guess the facial recognition piece of SE only recognizes 2 faces. For some reason, E and I got priority, and poor Jeff was cut out of our future! :rotfl:As a side note, I've never been a big fan of the touchscreen interaction on this ride, but E loved it. She was so happy that she could push the screen and make things happen - she determined our whole future for us.

The ride slowed to a crawl a couple of times during our ride, so we got off with about 5 minutes until our breakfast reservation at Garden Grill. Oops! Thankfully, we are really fast walkers, so we booked it on over there, parked the stroller, and made it in with about a minute to spare.:thumbsup2 I knew I wanted to have one character meal for E, and this was definitely a reasonably priced option with some characters I thought she would most like to meet. Plus, our plan for the rest of the day was to browse F+W booths whenever we got hungry, so a big breakfast to start off the day sounded like a good plan. Overall, I would highly recommend this breakfast, especially to families with small children. It's so easy to just sit there and have the food and the characters all come to you!

Unfortunately, our server greeted us by asking when our flight out of Orlando was supposed to be. When we said "Sunday afternoon", she gave us a funny look and suggested we call our airline because she had been told that the airport was shutting down on Saturday afternoon. NO! That effectively burst our Disney bubble. So, during breakfast I started formulating a plan for how I could take care of things with the least disruption to our day. More on that later ...

Before the food or characters come, E demonstrates why today would definitely need to be a slower pace!

Thankfully, things started picking up once we got some food in her. She saw Mickey coming from a few tables away and remembered her interaction with him from the day before, so she said lots of "Cheese!"

After Mickey stopped by, our server dropped off our main skillet, and E happily tucked into her first ever Mickey waffle. I can safely say that she is now addicted to them, and is trying to convert others to the Religion of Mickey Waffles as well. Exhibit A: trying to feed Pluto a Mickey waffle.

Next came Chip, followed by Dale. E is a huge fan of chocolate chips, so meeting Chip was especially exciting to her. She kept saying "Bip! Bip!" as he came close. But by the time he made it to us, she was back in full waffle-adoration mode.

After breakfast, E was still chattering non-stop about "Mittey". Thankfully, I had a FP+ for the Character Spot immediately following breakfast, so we paid our bill and headed that way. Even with FP+, there was about 10 minute wait, so my silly family burned off some of their breakfast sugar.

It was finally time to meet our best friend (Mickey number 3 in less than 20 hours ...), and E had finally warmed up enough to him that when we got close, she just leaned forward and kissed him on the nose! Ah!

We then moved on to Goofy. E has a stuffed Goofy, but she was not feeling his meet today. She kept asking to leave - no idea why. :confused3 But, after that was Minnie and she was back to her happy little self.

That's a lot of characters, and a pretty good place to take a break, I think. Next up, we go under the sea and let it go - the highlight of the trip for our daughter that watches Frozen at least 3 times a week.

rag88 · Sep 20, 2017

Day Three, Part Two: "Baboff"

A bit of background here is probably good. My girlie E is absolutely obsessed with most things Frozen, and especially Kristoff. About 2 months ago I happened upon a gently used set of Frozen figurines (that accidentally also came with Snow White's prince that Jeff thought was Prince Philip, and so named it Philip and once I corrected him it was too late, so he's now Philip forever ...) - and that boy Kristoff goes EVERYWHERE with her. His head has popped off thanks to drops over tile a couple of times, and we quickly super-glue it back on to avoid devastation. He comes in the car with us, he goes shopping with us, he sits on the table while E eats her meals, and she asks for him first thing out of the crib every day. So she was pretty disappointed in the lack of all things Kristoff in the parks, but I knew today we'd at least see her main man on FEA! (She pronounces Kristoff "Baboff", thus our title for this chapter)

First, we followed up our character spot fun by heading over to the Seas. The ride was a walk-on, so we did that and then dumped out and used our FP+ for Turtle Talk with Crush (which also wasn't necessary). I think the adults definitely enjoy this one more than the kiddos, but E has seen Finding Nemo/Finding Dory a fair number of times, so she enjoyed seeing some familiar faces and gamely joined in saying "Duuuuuuude!" whenever possible. After that, we spent a significant amount of time viewing the tanks. I don't find that those photograph well, so I'll just show this one photo to show that we were there

Double bonus - we had spent so much time indoors this morning that we didn't even have to apply sunscreen until we were ready to leave the Seas. As a family of really pale folk, this meant a lot to us. :rotfl: Once that was completed, we headed to the World Showcase - this is normally my favorite part of Disney. I'm a big traveller, and I love taking a relaxing stroll all the way around the lagoon. Plus, it was our first ever F+W festival. We're big foodies too. So what could go wrong? (insert ominous music). But first ...

She was more excited than she looks, I promise. But she was also tired and it was approximately 762 degrees outside. It was rough. We all enjoyed the ride, although it's interesting that even on the ride you only see Kristoff once. I mean, I seem to remember that even Sven was there at least twice. Show the guy some love! We exited the ride and visited our favorite giant troll friend, who E decided needed a high five.

And we made our way over to Anna and Elsa's abode. We figured this meet would be a huge hit, but it went a little bit off the rails. First, we met with Elsa, but E could see Anna just a few feet away and spent the whole time asking for "Anna" :confused3

Side note - am I the only one that thinks all of the Elsas look awful? I have yet to see an Elsa I appreciate. Maybe it's the wig...

So, we eventually finally make it over to Anna, and E starts interrogating her about Kristoff. Now, she doesn't put more than two words together at a time yet since she's just 19 months old, but it was pretty easy to catch her drift. Once I explained to Anna that "Baboff" meant "Kristoff" even she figured out that E wanted to know where he was. Photographic evidence of interrogation:

Anna pleasantly explained that Kristoff was very busy with his job as the official ice deliverer of Arendelle, and so unfortunately was currently on the North Mountain. E obviously decided that wasn't an acceptable answer.

At this point, E was wiped. We put her in the stroller, headed clockwise (the only way to do the WS, IMO) and she was out before we hit China. Now, this is where today got a little sad for me. I knew that the best time to try to call airlines and reservations in order to not disrupt "family" time was do call while E napped. Original plan was for Jeff and I to do the leisurely WS stroll and discover all the fun hidden quiet spots, but that all went out the window. It was hot and humid and sunny, so the best way to keep E asleep was to head straight to the fountain courtyard in Morocco and ... circle.

I eventually spent almost 2 hours on the phone with Southwest as we walked and E napped, and all they would do for me was move our cancelled Sunday afternoon flight to a Monday evening flight that they admitted would probably also get cancelled. But they claimed they could do nothing else. Argh. This will be continued later this night and the next morning ...

Eventually E woke up and we kept walking, and then I got off the phone and was admittedly hot, hungry, and cranky! Only one way to solve that mood issue - F+W festival! It was soooo hot this day I decided I would forgo the alcoholic portion of F+W. I really wanted to at least try some of the hard ciders being offered, but I was already so thirsty and sweaty, I just couldn't get myself to commit.

Before the trip, I had made a spreadsheet of all of the food options available at the festival, along with their prices and where they were located. I rated each one on a scale of 1-5 based on how much I wanted to try it, and Jeff did too. We compiled those, figured out some options that would make us all happy, and had a strategy for which booths to hit

Like any good trip reporter, I diligently took pictures of all of our dishes. But ... it was so hot and muggy this day, the food was *not* visually appetizing, so I don't think I'll share the pictures here. Thankfully, it still tasted amazing! At this first stop, we all shared the Filet from the Canada booth and the Venison Loin from the New Zealand booth. The Filet was melt-in-your-mouth delicious and perfectly cooked. Obviously over-priced for the portion, but that's what you get at F+W. Jeff and I have been to New Zealand before, so we're familiar with their cooking and especially their love of venison, and so this dish was somewhat nostalgic for us. It was so yummy, and we both liked the kumara puree.

After roasting in the heat and eating some hot food dishes, it was time to cool down. What better place to cool down than Mexico, right? Ha. We knew this would be a good break because of the cool and darkness, and because it has a boat ride, and we all know now how much E loves any Disney boat ride. Bonus - this boat ride has fake fireworks near the end, so I thought she would especially like it. We've arrived!

We completed our Gran Fiesta Tour and then put off returning into the heat by joking around at the various souvenir stalls

I really wanted to get a giant sombrero for E, but how in the world would you actually get one of those home with you?!

At this point, our time in the World Showcase had come to a close. It definitely wasn't relaxing, but E had a great time. If/when we get to go back in a few years, hopefully a hurricane won't be bearing down on us, and I'll be able to enjoy it more

75disney · Sep 20, 2017

Is Kristoff not available for M&G at WDW? We just got back from DL and my girls met him with Olaf. He spent about 5 minutes with us while I gushed over Olaf; my girls thought he was hilarious. Trip to DL in your near future?

Cetta · Sep 20, 2017

I'm enjoying your trip report! I love Little E's big smile after her first haircut! Such an amazing memory for all of you! I'm enjoying your tips as well. Taking notes for our first trip as parents next year. I cannot wait to read more (I just finished the haircut part...)

rag88 · Sep 20, 2017

75disney said:
Is Kristoff not available for M&G at WDW? We just got back from DL and my girls met him with Olaf. He spent about 5 minutes with us while I gushed over Olaf; my girls thought he was hilarious. Trip to DL in your near future?

I don't know that Kristoff does any meets at WDW. Olaf meets at HS, but we avoided that park this trip. I have sadly never been to DL, but I took Jeff on a Disney cruise for his 30th birthday three years ago, and I've been dropping hints that he could take me to DL for my 30th next year ... :angelic:

Cetta said:
I'm enjoying your trip report! I love Little E's big smile after her first haircut! Such an amazing memory for all of you! I'm enjoying your tips as well. Taking notes for our first trip as parents next year. I cannot wait to read more (I just finished the haircut part...)

Aw, thank you so much for joining in - you're going to love your first "parents" trip so much! I'm excited for you! More tips to come.

rag88 · Sep 20, 2017

Day Three, Part Three: "Babies!"

When we finally emerged from Mexico, it was unsurprisingly still hot. On our way to the nearest diaper-changing spot, we passed an ice cream cart ... and you can guess what happened next. A momentous life event, that's what. E's first Mickey Bar!

After we downed the Mickey Bar (I made her share with me because I'm a mean Mama), we walked toward the bathrooms to change E. It just happened that the EPCOT baby care center was right next to the bathrooms, so we hopped in there instead. Holy Moly!

Pro Tip: Even if you just have to change a diaper, go to the Baby Care Center! It is so nice, clean, cool, and uncrowded. We didn't want to go out of our way to go to the Baby Care Center, so I changed E in the bathrooms all day at MK. What a mistake! We actually took a picture of the diaper-changing area and then thought it was weird. Ha. Even if it's out of your way, go there to change your baby. Seriously.

We then headed across the park and let E right Journey into Imagination. She likes Figment (I have a stuffed Figment at home), but Jeff refuses to ride because he swears the skunk smell lingers in his nose for days. :confused3 He waited for us at ImageWorks and we let E run around play. It was obviously really crowded in there ...

E really enjoyed building her own virtual Figment and even named it "Baboo".

And we got to play with the musical area once we fought through all the crowds of people wanting to do the same (the sarcasm is thick today).

But seriously, this afternoon was when we really started to notice the unbelievably low crowds. It was apparent that folks had already opted out of travelling down to Florida with Irma threatening,and while it made wait times awesome, it did give us an eerie sort of feeling!

We had some time before the bonus FP+ that I was able to snag for Soarin' (which, again, turned out to be totally unnecessary), so we were going to head to MouseGear to let E do some more souvenir shopping. This was likely to be our least-wet day, so the best chance of getting things back to the room without them getting drenched. On our way, we happened to run into the Muppet Mobile Lab. Yay! I had been wanting to see this show, but unfortunately we only caught the last two minutes. I'm not a huge Muppets fan, but these two are definitely my favorite!

We spent about 30 minutes in MouseGear, and it was very obvious what E needed to spend her "Nana money" on when she picked up the same two dolls that she had picked up at World of Disney, the Emporium, the Norway gift shop, and here. Every time she would see them, she would exclaim "Babies!", run over to them, and scoop them both up. So we finally let her make the Elsa and Anna babies her very own.

After adopting two new babies, we headed over to yet another boat ride! E wasn't as impressed with Living with the Land, but she still sat through the whole ride without much issue. I enjoyed spotting the hidden Mickeys.

Finally it was time for our Soarin' FP+. When I headed over to redeem mine at about 4:30 pm, this was the standby wait time:

In reality, it was a walk-on. Crazy. This was my first time with the new film, and I did get the middle set of seats, so I didn't notice much distortion. That being said, I really did not enjoy all of the CG elements. I get that it gives them more flexibility, especially in scene transitions, but it seemed like a cheap trick. But, I did get a whole row to myself! (I was really tempted to ask a CM to take a picture of me alone in my row, but settled for a shot of half of the row)

I got out, grabbed E, and let Jeff take his turn. He agreed about the yucky CG elements. After that, it was time for some F+W dinner options. Again, the food did not look appetizing, so here's a picture of Figment instead

E and I split the Duck Confit. I feel like this dish is a good value, because it's a lot of filling duck and beans and it's very yummy. You get a lot of bang for your buck. While E and I ate, Jeff ran over to get a Handwich, which he ate on his way back to us. I believe he shared some bread cone with E.

Since the weather was looking bleaker for the rest of the week, we decided to head out of EPCOT around 6 this night. Since our flight was *currently* booked for Monday night, I needed to try to add a night to our stay. I had been calling the reservations line intermittently, but it was always so busy that I couldn't even get on hold. We figured I could do that while most guests were still in the parks, and Jeff and E could enjoy the pool. We had a water park day planned for Saturday, but E loves the water, so some pool time would suit her well.

On our way out of the park, I grabbed the Dark Chocolate Raspberry Torte (soooooooo good and chocolatey) and Jeff opted for the Peanut Butter Mousse. We both enjoyed our choices and shared some bites with E. I'll tell the story of the rest of our evening in the next chapter!

BigMac74 · Sep 20, 2017

Decent trip report. I have just one comment. MICKEY BAR best dessert at WDW. I make myself sick on them every trip. One at the start, one at the end, and uncounted numbers in between. My wife pretends to not want one because she wants to eat "healthy". However, she never misses a chance to "try a bite".

rag88 · Sep 21, 2017

BigMac74 said:
Decent trip report.

Ha! Thanks?

rag88 · Sep 21, 2017

Day Three, Part Four: "Sim, sim, sim"

Our bus ride back from EPCOT was blessedly quick, and I hopped behind 2 other people that were in line at the concierge desk. Jeff and E had plans to go swimming ("sim", as E calls it), but they caught some Mickey Mouse cartoons on in the lobby and plopped there for a few minutes with E's new babies.

Note: if you are just interested in the parks part of the trip report, skip this section. It just deals with hurricane issues.
After a few minutes, it was my turn. I explained my flight situation and said that I would need an extra night of accommodation due to our flight being pushed back one day (for now). The kind man re-iterated that my Monday flight was unlikely to remain scheduled, but he would just add one night to our stay for now and I could come back if I needed more. A little bit of background - I mentioned in my intro that we booked this room on a VERY good deal. We typically stay at Value resorts, because now that E is around, Jeff is a stay-at-home dad and we survive on my salary. I make a solid amount of money, but we're pretty rigid savers and prioritize college fund for E, paying off our mortgage quickly, and saving for retirement - so it doesn't leave much wiggle room for vacations at this point in our lives. That all being said, this vacation was already a stretch of our budget. So adding *any* extra nights made me pretty nervous. I was honestly hoping for some *really* magical pixie dust that would say something like, "Sorry for that big meanie hurricane stranding you here, we'll keep you for free until you can get out." But obviously that just isn't feasible. Fortunately, they were able to get us a continuation of pretty close to our awesome rate and booked us an additional night for $215.33. I figured if we had to swing that, we could do it. And we could eat cheaper than we planned to for the remaining days and stretch our food budget to cover us. More on this later this evening!

By the time I was done, E and Jeff had gotten distracted by all of the animals (who wouldn't?) and were looking at the savanna before they made their way to the pool. I joined them, explained the room situation to Jeff, and we all tried to get that off of our minds for the rest of the evening.

As we went back to our room to change into our suits, the man at the Disney Cruise Line desk stopped us and asked if we wanted a towel animal. If you stay up with Disney news, you know that by this point, Disney had cancelled all of their cruises for about the next week and a half, so this guy really didn't have anything to do for a while, but I guess he was still getting paid to be there, so good for him

He made E a beautiful towel elephant and we had a fun interaction all making elephant noises in the lobby. Yay for little magical moments!

Finally after all of those distractions, we changed into our suits and made it down to the pool. As a family of pale folk, it was really nice to go swimming this late in the evening and not have to lather ourselves in thick white goop! :yay:

E had a BLAST. This was seriously one of her favorite parts of the trip, I think. We go to the pool at my parents' house a few times each summer, and E had a 5-week swimming class at the local pool over the summer, but this was so much better than either of those. I attribute a lot of that to the zero-entry pool that she could walk in and determine the water height herself. She seemed so much more comfortable than we've seen her in the water before.

I got in and enjoyed pool time with my family, and generally just tried to appreciate being in this beautiful resort. It was such a fun and relaxing time.

One more bit of the hurricane saga
After we got E into bed, Jeff and I checked email and news and realized that at this point, Irma's path had shifted to directly over Orlando, and arriving in the wee hours of Monday morning. It was almost a foregone conclusion that our Monday flight would be cancelled, and we'd be stuck here a while. We talked about the financial impact of having to stay a few more days, and decided that I should try to get on the phone with Southwest again and talk over options. So I literally went into the bathroom, turned the fan on, and got on hold with Southwest - hoping that when I started talking, it wouldn't wake up E.

I should mention that I'm much more comfortable just changing my itinerary online, but since E was travelling as a lap infant, all bookings/cancellations had to happen over the phone with customer service. Thankfully I got a helpful person on the line. First she checked Saturday flights for us before the airport was closing, but there was nothing available to get us to St. Louis :sad2: Then she confirmed that our Monday flight was likely to be cancelled the next day (Friday), but that since so many people had been rebooking (apparently the agent from that afternoon was an unhelpful one that didn't give me all of my options), we wouldn't be able to get a flight to St. Louis until THURSDAY. Eep. I thanked her for the information, told her I needed to talk things over with Jeff, and we would be keeping the Monday flight for now and praying.

As we discussed, I started doing the quick calculations in my head. $215.33 x (4 extra nights) = over $850. :teacher: And we definitely didn't have enough diapers to get us through to Thursday, so we'd have to do a Prime Now order to get some of those, plus probably additional food for our room in case we were stuck there. There had been bad stories about Disney charging $13 for wimpy boxes of food during Matthew, so our food budget would be expanding too. Suddenly our vacation budget was going to go up by over 50%. Jeff calmed me down, said there was really nothing we could do about it right now, and that we would be fine riding things out. I was upset that I couldn't really enjoy Disney when I was worried about how we'd have to make up for all of the additional expenses, but knew he was right and eventually drifted to sleep ... after all, tomorrow was supposed to be a beautiful day at the Animal Kingdom, and I could focus on that for a while!

Stay tuned - more hurricane drama before we even get to Animal Kingdom! (but then a nice full park day for those more interested in that)

kimberlymautz · Sep 21, 2017

Following along! Your daughter is adorable and I'm definitely interested in hearing how Disney handled Irma!

Balki228 · Sep 21, 2017

Great trip report!! My own daughter (E as well) enjoyed Disney World this past June (13 months old) and always glad to read what others did.

rag88 · Sep 22, 2017

kimberlymautz said:
Following along! Your daughter is adorable and I'm definitely interested in hearing how Disney handled Irma!

Thanks for joining! More Irma-related news in my next post coming later today.

Balki228 said:
Great trip report!! My own daughter (E as well) enjoyed Disney World this past June (13 months old) and always glad to read what others did.

Thank you!!

I applaud you going with a 13mo - I don't think I could be that ambitious. E was barely walking at that point!

rag88 · Sep 22, 2017

Day Four, Part One: Hurricane Happenings

This post will strictly be about how we handled the impending hurricane Friday morning. If you just want park touring, that'll be my very next post!

After an admittedly restless night, we woke up pretty early to get ready to go to Animal Kingdom. This was Friday morning, and our Monday flight hadn't yet been cancelled. But the hurricane path was still over Orlando, and it had picked up strength. We were being told to (by CMs, not "official" Disney channels) to be prepared for a category 3 hurricane directly over us. We discussed having to move the pack'n'play into the bathroom area, and all of the same financial concerns we talked about the night before. I told Jeff, "Our relaxing Disney vacation is turning into a stressful mess. If there's a way I can call Southwest and get us out of here on Saturday, it'll cut our trip short (wouldn't be able to use our water park tickets for Saturday) but will at least allow me to enjoy today. Are you OK with that?" We knew there were no flight options to St. Louis, but I wanted to explore all possibilities. He gave me the OK.

Thankfully, it was really early (not yet 7 am Eastern), so the phone lines were happily uncrowded. AND I got an actual helpful agent, which never happens. So the pixie dust was flying today! (Other than me being hunched in the corner of the bathroom with the door closed and fan running trying to un-ruin our vacation... ha). I went over the situation and asked her to confirm that there were no Saturday flights that could get us to St. Louis, which she re-affirmed. I then asked her to check Kansas City, Chicago, and Memphis. All are within about 5 hours of home, and we had lots of family from home checking in with us constantly and telling us they would help however they could to get us home and safe. She told me it was very unlikely, but she would check ...

No KC flights. No Memphis flights. (insert lengthy pause) I think I can find you something to Chicago. Eee! It was a long connecting flight. Jeff and I were also booked on separate reservations, so it was going to take some work to change around. I authorize her to make the switch for us. She works for about 10 minutes and said the availability disappeared while she was re-booking us. :headache: "But wait!" (imagine angels singing here) "While I was working on that, 2 spots opened up on a direct flight to Chicago Saturday afternoon." I nearly yelled "BOOK THAT FLIGHT!" but instead excitedly whispered. 10 tense minutes later, she had booked all three of us on a flight that left Orlando at 3:35 pm Saturday (Southwest ceased operations at 4 pm that day) and arrived in Chicago at 5:30 pm local time.

The hard part was over (or so I hoped) - already a huge weight was lifted off of me. We would be avoiding the hurricane and any financial impact that would have on our vacation. I got out of the bathroom, told Jeff what was up, and headed immediately down to the concierge desk. I brought a little breakfast with me and settled in for an expected wait. I told Jeff to get E up and ready and meet me in the lobby so we could catch the bus to AK, hopefully by 8:30. While in line for the concierge, I called my mom. I believe I said something like, "How do you feel about a nice, quick road trip to Chicago and back tomorrow?" She didn't even hesitate to agree once I told her that was our closest flight out. What a nice mom! 10 hours of driving all in one day. Yuck. She said she'd check to see if there were other options like a rental car for us to get back or a flight on a different airline that she'd pay for, but she was willing to make the drive (even though it meant we wouldn't get back to St. Louis until about 11 pm that night).

Eventually it was my turn with the concierge, and I explained that I needed to cancel not only the extra night that I had just booked (oops), but also Saturday night's stay from my original reservation. The lady there was not incredibly helpful or kind. I understand that the situation was stressful for everyone, so I didn't fault her. She said she cancelled the extra night, and said not to worry about the Saturday night - just come check out Saturday morning and they would take care of it then.

I also asked her to update our DME with the new flight info, which she did.

Jeff and E met me right as I was finishing with the concierge, and we made it to the bus stop by about 8:30. Yay! While on the bus, I realized that we would also need to cancel our Boma dinner reservation for Saturday. I asked Jeff if he would like me to change it to a Boma breakfast reservation instead since our DME wasn't until 12:40 (for now). He agreed, so I quickly made the swap on the app. Wouldn't it be nice if all of the hurricane impacts could've just been handled on the app?? Much better than standing in line or being on hold.

There will still be a few more tweaks made based on the hurricane, but that was the bulk of it. We stuck with this flight and headed out of Orlando at 3:35 on Saturday. I'll do a post for the trip home, but it went as smoothly as could be expected. Check-out/billing/refund was a mess, but I'll go over that in due time ...

rag88 · Sep 22, 2017

Day Four, Part Two: Isp!

Now we were ready for the fun to begin. We officially knew this would be our last full Disney day of the trip, and we were determined to put everything else out of mind and enjoy it to the fullest! We got to the park around 8:45 before the 9:00 opening, and once again it was very uncrowded. I was setting up to take a picture of Jeff and E in front of the TOL, and a kind couple offered to take a family photo for us. Thank you friendly strangers!

Our plan was to avoid Pandora immediately and go do things in other (less crowded) areas of the park. We had FP+ for FOP much later in the afternoon, and figured we'd catch the boat ride at the same time. We figured lines wouldn't be an issue this day, no matter what time. But ... Pandora really does sort of lure you in. Especially when it opens a few minutes early and is basically empty. For the first time in my Disney-going life, I figuratively threw the touring plan out of the window and decided to somewhat wing our day. Let's go crazy!

We took the path toward Pandora, and were greeting by teeming throngs of people everywhere in hours-long lines to experience all of the new things:

Just kidding. I mean, seriously. Not a single other person even in that picture. Are you kidding me?! My Mom visited Pandora in the week after it opened, and I sent her this picture just to torment her (maybe not smart considering she was our chariot home the next day?).

The River Journey had a 15-minute wait posted, but the CMs at the front told us it was a walk-on. No need to twist our arm ... away we went!

There may be one other person in that picture, but it was still basically a ghost-town. Two notes about our ride. E has never seen Avatar (it doesn't seem to be popular among the 1-year-old crowd :confused3), but when the little woodsprites (I had to look up what they were called) were floating all around the boat, E (who has seen Brave once or twice) started pointing to them and exclaiming, "Isp! Isp!" So apparently they look like the wisps from Brave. This was definitely her favorite part. She made very sure that both Dada and I saw all of the wisps each time they were around. It was adorable.

Pro Tip: In general, I think River Journey is an awesome ride for the younger set. Assuming they can withstand the wait (if there is one), there is lots of movement and color that seems to hold attention very well.

Second note is that I had heard/read a lot about the Shaman animatronic at the end of the ride. We get to the end and the Shaman is ... a video screen! Are you kidding me?! I literally thought perhaps the Shaman had already Yeti-ed (that's a verb, right?) and they had to replace it with a video screen. I was so disappointed! (We rode this again later in the afternoon, and the Shaman was magically back, working, and appropriately impressive)

After River Journey, FOP still had very little wait, but we wanted to stick to our resolution to only do one non-E ride in each park, and we had FP+ for later, so we held off and instead headed toward Africa to find some wildlife, while stopping to see this beautiful sight on the way.

We really like the animal trails at Animal Kingdom. Normally I would suggest leaving these toward later in the day when ride lines are long, but we kinda figured ride lines would never be long this day, and honestly we just didn't do that many rides at AK anyway on this trip. Anyway, we discovered that the crowds expected in Pandora had obviously all come here instead ...

Just kidding again. That never gets old. I mean, that was the biggest bright spot of all of the hurricane mess - such unusually deserted parks! It was just after 9:30 at this point, and we were literally the first guests on the trail. This meant lots of animals to ourselves, and lots of CMs willing/wanting to talk to us about animals, about life, about the hurricane ... it was so much fun! I don't want to overwhelm with lots of animal pictures because I think we've all seen plenty of them. But, I have to share a couple. First, in the bird area, we had a CM that was very friendly and informative. Jeff is a bird-enthusiast, so he really enjoyed that interaction. My favorite part was this set of three birds. The CM told us the first two were ducks and the third was a small goose. Our very own Duck, Duck, Goose moment!

Apparently the goose is a female who isn't particularly fond of the male, and just tags along with the two ducks all day. Ha!

We kept moving along, and encountered many more friendly CMs. Seriously, the people behind the desk at AKL were showing their stress and somewhat taking it out on guests. All of these CMs must have had at least the same stress levels, but they were all so friendly and concerned and helpful. They just wanted to make our time there special, and it really showed. They even convinced us to let E do the Wilderness Explorers. She's obviously too young to do *any* of the activities, but she loves stickers, so they said she could just go and get stickers from people. It was so sweet. I wanted to give them all big hugs.

Only one more animal picture to show from the trail, just because I don't think I've ever seen such a majestic-looking gorilla!

I think that's a good stopping point for now. It was about 10:30, and our day was already SO much better than it had been at 7:30. We had so many good interactions and good vibes! I think my last post probably came off as a downer, so I wanted to get this one out quickly to show that it wasn't all bad, and Disney is still magic even when the world is going crazy :joyfull:

Trip Report Mooooooooove! An Irma-centric first Disney trip

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