Trip Report *COMPLETED* SURPRISE.... Christmas Road Trip

Christmas Road Trip


Intro

Hello again everyone.

This is a kind of an unexpected trip report about a kind of unexpected trip. Let me explain…

If you read our last trip report (http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/...ve-a-cat-a-pill-an-august-trip-report.904022/), you may remember that we had planned on coming down around Christmas, but a bit of a mix-up/miscommunication with regards to being able to upgrade our tickets to annual passes put the trip on hold. However, once we got home we started talking about it some more, and were not completely convinced that the trip was off yet. I did a bit of number crunching (you know, something us accountants tend to do), and figured that getting annual passes that we didn’t activate until December wouldn’t cost that much more than getting 10 day park hoppers when we go down for our normal late August trip, and would allow us to go in December and August (and then Disney almost messed it up again by introducing tiered AP pricing, but we decided it was now or never). Couple that with the announcement that it was the last year for the Osborne lights, and we committed to going. We ordered the APs, and with that the trip was back on.

Going down at this time of year has been a “bucket list” kind of thing for us, and so has doing a road trip, so we combined the two into one epic trip.


The cast

Same group as always. There is my wife Tammy, our daughter Stephanie (who was 14 when the trip started, and 15 when it ended), our son Liam, and myself (Graham).


Some lead-up stuff

So we were all pretty pumped to be going down to Disney around the holidays. Yes, we heard that the crowds would be insane. Yes we knew that a road trip in December from Ontario to Florida could be called off at the last minute because of weather (especially since our route was going to take us through Buffalo which is kind of known for its big winter storms), but we put that all out of our minds and started prep.

Now December is normally an insane time for our family. We have all the normal Christmas stuff, as well as a church Christmas play that I’m responsible for which just makes December crazy busy…and then I got sick...Really sick. It all started November 30th when I came home from work feeling lousy. The next day was worse (I had a bad cough, vomiting every 30 minutes (but was so dehydrated that nothing would come up), insomnia, etc). December 2nd I went down to the urgent care centre where I was told I had the flu, was given some anti-nausea meds, and told to go home and drink lots of fluids by the doctor. I was also sent for a chest x-ray which allowed the Dr. to rule out pneumonia. The nurse who was helping me wasn’t happy that I was being sent home because I had a fever, but what could she do. Well…It turns out her concerns were well founded. The next afternoon she called me and said I had to come back right away….I had pneumonia. I was driven back down to the urgent care centre where I was hooked up to an IV and had a bunch of different things pumped into me. It was a rough week.


The following week I was feeling well enough to at least go back to work, but it took a lot out of me. We were a bit concerned that the trip could be in jeopardy (it’s a road trip, and I’m the only one in the family who drives). I also still had a terrible cough. The cough lasted for weeks. Fortunately, we have a friend who is a doctor who prescribed me an inhaler on Christmas Eve, and there was no way I was going to miss this trip, so it was on.

One more thing…for the most part all the pictures were taken with my phone. I didn’t want to have to go through bag-check every morning, so I didn’t carry the DSLR with me. This means that night pictures will be a bit grainy.

Wow, that’s a lot of background….so let’s get started


Christmas Day

As if Christmas Day isn’t exciting enough for the kids, we threw in a trip to Disney on top of that. Needless to say the kids were super excited. Liam told us he didn’t sleep at all the night before. We get up, do all the Christmas stuff (open presents, etc), and then head over to my brother’s house for Christmas brunch. Brunch was fun, and ended nice and early (around 1:30). After that it was road trip time.

I should mention that the weather was perfect for driving. Slightly overcast, and way too warm for snow.

We headed home after the brunch and packed the car. I’ll be honest, I was really looking forward to the drive down, but also a bit concerned. We’ve never done a trip like this before, and I wasn’t sure how the family unit would handle that much time in the car (specifically the two kids in the back of the car). We made sure they had plenty of junk food to keep their blood sugar spiked the whole trip.

We're all happy right now...hopefully it lasts:

When we planned the trip, we decided we’d split the drive into 3 days on the way down. Leg 1 would take us from Hamilton (our hometown) to Pittsburgh, leg 2 from Pittsburgh to Charlotte, NC, and then day 3 would be Charlotte to Disney.

Here's the planned route (thanks Google maps)

So the car was packed, and there was nothing but 19ish hours of road ahead of us, so off we went. The drive to the border was great, and the Nexus passes made the trip across the border pretty smooth.

Up first...NY state.

One thing we wanted to do was stop at every state welcome centre and at least get a picture at each one (The only problem was, we couldn’t find the one for NY state). Before long, we were in Pennsylvania.

After a quick stop at the welcome centre we were back on the road, and hit Pittsburgh around 6ish.

Everyone was feeling a bit hungry now, and I was concerned that we wouldn’t find anything open since it was Christmas day. Fortunately McDonald’s was open, so we had the traditional Christmas dinner of Big Mac’s and chicken McNuggets (I really feel bad that the employees had to work on Christmas day).

After dinner we went to the hotel, checked in and called it a night (after the kids had a quick swim). I thought this tree in the lobby looked pretty neat (there was a "waterfall wall" in front of the tree).

Tomorrow is more driving (I’ll probably compress the driving days down to a few paragraphs since there wasn’t anything overly exciting to report, and really, I know you all just want Disney pictures right??).

 

[gwhb75]

day 1 continued
After dinner we made our way over to the Streets of America to check out the Osborne Lights.

It was really an impressive sight.

I can only imagine how much it cost to buy all the lights and to operate them. There were a lot of people tonight too. We spent about a half an hour looking at all the lights.

It was quite impressive, and I’m glad we got to see them before they were taken away.

ummmm...does someone want to tell them they won't be back??

After the lights we were going to leave, but we noticed that they were just lining people up for the next showing of the “Path of the Jedi” movie in the old Sounds Dangerous theatre. Why not?

The movie was a recap of how Luke became a Jedi through episodes IV, V and VI. Not bad.

After that we called it a night. We headed back to the hotel and fell asleep quickly. Tomorrow is December 29th, which is Steph’s birthday. The plan was to go to Epcot in the morning and the Disney Springs in the afternoon (Steph wanted to go to T-Rex for her birthday).

End of Day 1

 

[Shane7694]

Haha.. Goat selfie..

 

[gwhb75]

Day 3

It’s December 29th, which means…Steph’s 15th birthday. She was pretty excited to be at Disney for her birthday (and now her brother is expecting to come back for his birthday in April...).

The plan today was to wake up early and go to EPCOT for the 9:00 rope drop. I’m up first and put the coffee on

(it’s not Tim Hortons, but since we didn’t bring any coffee down from Canada I knew we wouldn’t be able to find it in Florida). Before long we were all up and getting ready. I took a quick peek out the window

While Tammy was in the shower I checked the Disney schedule channel…and found out there were EMH’s at Epcot this morning. Well that sucks. We were hopeful it wouldn’t be too busy this morning (we wanted to ride Soarin’ but had booked a FP for Test Track instead, so the whole reason to make rope drop this morning was to get on Soarin’ before the line got too long). We were out the door in good time, and got the park right around 9. We headed over to the Land pavilion, still hopeful that the stand by line for Soarin’ wouldn’t be too bad..

but it was...

Not happening.

So with Soarin’ out of the question, the kids decided to take off and go to Innoventions to go on Sum of All Thrills. Tammy and I weren’t sure what to do, so we decided we’d ponder it over a piece of strawberry shortcake from Sunshine Seasons.

It was good.

After eating the cake, we decided we’d wander over and meet up with the kids. On the way we passed Starbucks.

We thought about getting some more coffee, but the line up was almost out the door, so we passed.

We found the kids quite soon after (and they didn’t ride Sum of All Thrills since…you know…there was a line). Liam really wanted to go on Mission Space, so I said I’d take him. Tammy and Steph don’t care for this one, so they headed over to the Land pavilion again, to ride Living With the Land.

Liam and I made our way over to MS, and decided to rider the Orange side (and, at last, we found a ride that only had a 10 minute stand-by).

Before long we were travelling to Mars.

It was fun.

After MS, we headed back to meet up with Tammy and Steph. On the way I pulled out the MDE app and checked the ride wait time. It was showing Soarin’ at 70 minutes. While that would still have been quite a wait, I thought it may be worth it. Until I got there and found out the app had been quite wrong. It was now almost 210 minutes. Maybe I missed the part that said it was 70 minutes X 3? Regardless, if we weren’t doing 120 minutes, we sure weren’t doing 210. Then we got a text from Tammy saying they were in line to meet Baymax, so we headed over to the character spot and met up with them there.

family picture

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Day 3 continued
Picture of the birthday girl

After our Baymax pictures, we headed over to Test Track to use our fast pass.

The standby line was around 120 minutes, so we were quite thankful we had fastpasses.

We scan our bands, walk in to the main theatre area,

are assigned to a group number...

….and then the announcement comes over the PA system…”the ride is experiencing technical difficulties and is now closed. Please exit now”. I can only imagine how frustrated the people who waited 2 hours would have been. Anyways, they gave us a paper FP for a list of rides we could use it on during the day (sadly, Soarin’ wasn’t on it).

We exit the ride and head over to Mission Space with Tammy and Steph. We told them we’d ride the green side with them (Tammy was convinced we weren’t telling the truth about the green side not spinning).

picture with a celebrity

The family astronaut team

It was fun riding together, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

day 3 continued

After our family trip to Mars, we venture into World Showcase. It was OK. We stopped in at the bakery at Norway and picked up a chocolate pastry pretzel (which was pretty good)

and a lefse (which was only $2 so we decided to try it, but it wasn’t to our liking).

Liam was getting into one of his low blood sugar moods around this time, but was refusing to eat. We knew he’d come around eventually, so we just kept touring the world. We visited Germany, Italy, Canada and France.

By the time we got to England, Liam was willing to eat, so we went and got some Fish and Chips from the take-out window at the Rose and Crown. Tammy found some great seats by the water, and we enjoyed our lunch.

After lunch Steph and Liam went shopping in England (they had both gotten into the show Dr. Who and were hoping to find anything Dr. Who). They found some shirts they liked, so we bought Steph the shirts for her birthday. Liam picked up a shirt too.

With lunch done, we headed back toward Future World. We heard the cars running on Test Track again, so we headed over to use our paper FP….until we saw the line...

NOPE....not doing that.

We made a quick stop at Club Cool

We decided to call it a day for EPCOT. We checked out the group singing by the fountain, and the headed out.

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Day 3 continued

We grabbed a bus to Disney Springs and got there around 2ish. We spent some times touring the stores. We went to Basin and picked up some soap (exciting I know). We also did Ghiradelli (had to get our free chocolate),

and World of Disney.

Steph in a Chewbacca hat (she really likes weird hats)

Before long it was time for our T-Rex reservation (Steph decided a bit late that she wanted to go there for her birthday but I couldn’t find any reservations. I kept checking the MDE app, and finally a spot came up for 3pm, so I took it).

Before too long our name was called, and in we went. We were seated in the Ice Cave which was a really cool spot.

We decided to start with their appetizer sampler while we perused the menu. The sampler arrived, and we all found something on it we really liked.

For our meals, Liam and I had burgers,

Tammy got a chiken-pizza dough

and Steph got pasta with shrimp.

The meals came and were really good…but the portions were way too big. We all left half our meals because there was just too much to eat. We agreed that if we ever came back we’d split meals. They also brought Steph a cupcake and sang happy birthday to her. I’ll be honest, we really liked it here. I never really had any interest in coming to T-Rex since we have two Rain Forest Cafes within an hour of our home, and we came out of there thinking this may be one of our new favourites. Steph really liked it.
One last picture before leaving

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Day 3 continued

After our meal we looked around the store there. Liam saw that they had a sale on the woolly mammoth stuffed animal at the Build-A-Bear, so he spent the last of his Christmas money

It’s kind of funny to see him straddling that line between being a younger kid and a teenager. There are times he acts too cool for everything, and then times he does something like this. I’m glad he doesn’t let his age get in the way of the things he likes.

With our meal out of the way, we had some time on our hand. We weren’t sure what to do until I checked the MDE app and saw that AK was open until 9 tonight. We have never been to AK in the dark, and had always heard how amazing the park is at night, so we decided that would be our destination.

A not-so-short bus ride later we were there. People were right, this park is just amazing at night. The mood and feel totally changes.

The first stop was Primeval Whirl again (which had about a 10 minute wait).

Not bad.

Next up was Dinosaur. This was really a walk-on.

Want a story about how much of a child I really am? Here goes...

So we get seated in the front row of the Time Rover, and the first thing I notice is all the switches and stuff that are right within reach. Figuring they wouldn’t put anything vital to the ride operation within arms-reach of the passengers, I start touching things. Especially this big silver dome thing.

Tammy did not approve of this and told me to stop. OK I’ll stop….or….I’ll bide my time. See, I know that Tammy always shuts her eyes at the point where the Carnatorous comes out and they take your picture. So, when that point came:

Of course I thought this was just hilarious, and started shaking with stifled laughter. Tammy kept asking what was so funny. “Oh, you’ll see”. She thought it was pretty funny once she saw the picture (“you’re such a child”).

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Day 3 continued

Next up was Everest.
The lighting on the way to Everest is really cool

This ride is so amazing in the dark.

You can really see the yeti when there is no light seeping into the mountain. It was so good. The one thing we found kind of weird is that they close the single rider line about 45 minutes before the park closes. Not really sure why they do that.

Anywhooo…we call it a night.
One last picture on the way out

We get back to AKL and stop by the Mara for a final birthday treat for Steph (Liam had actually had a frozen chocolate banana at AK, so he was done).

Tammy and I split a box of Zebra Domes,

and Steph had a brownie covered in M&Ms.

Everything was good, and Steph declared this her best birthday ever.

End of Day 3

 

[lostpro9het]

….and then the announcement comes over the PA system…”the ride is experiencing technical difficulties and is now closed. Please exit now”. I can only imagine how frustrated the people who waited 2 hours would have been. Anyways, they gave us a paper FP for a list of rides we could use it on during the day (sadly, Soarin’ wasn’t on it).
View attachment 127707

You should have headed over to the pavilion and demanded your ride on Captain EO....

 

[joshsprincess921]

Love your report!

 

[gwhb75]

Day 4 – December 30

Another early morning start today. A quick peek outside the window while everyone was getting ready.

The kids decided to wear their new Dr.Who shirts

Today the plan was to head back to the MK. We were out the door in good time, and made it to the park just after rope drop.
This is why we didn't want to bring bags to the parks

This was our first day daytime trip to the MK this trip, so it was neat to see all the decorations up.

Our first stop this morning was the Haunted Mansion (with a slight detour through Liberty Square to get the kids pictures taken).

The standby line was pretty long, but we had a FP, so all was good. The ride did stop in the attic scene for a minute, so I took a quick picture (nothing too exciting, it’s just one of those things you don’t normally get to do).

poor dead kitty

Next up was our FP for 7DMT. On the way thought Fantasyland we noticed they had a New-Year photo area set-up, so we decided we may as well get pictures done to post on the 31st.

While in line Liam made a new friend

Our New Year's picture

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Day 4 continued

After the pictures we headed over to the 7D. The standby line was insanely long but, again, we had a FP so all was good.

Tammy was put to work a bit.

The ride was fun.

After 7D we really weren’t sure what to do next since we didn’t have another FP for a while. I had wanted to try the standby line for Dumbo, so we headed there.
This is how crazy the 7D standby line was today...

This is right across from Dumbo. INSANE. Why would you get into this line???

The posted time for Dumbo was around 60 minutes. Normally we’d never wait that long, but we were in it more for the line than the ride. We stood in line for around 25 minutes before we got to the inside play area.

We were given a pager and found some seats.

Liam played around a bit while the rest of us sat.

Eventually our pager went off, we went headed out, and rode.

I like the idea of the “line-less line”. The ride was OK. We enjoyed it.

We decided to head out after this...

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Day 4 continued

It was now around 12:00, so we decided it was time to head over to our ADR at 1900 Park Fare.

When we were planning the trip I saw that they had brunch at 1900 Park Fare during the holidays, so I booked it. we took the monorail over to the GF, and got there just in time for our reservation. The Grand Floridian looks really nice at holiday time too.

We make our way over to 1900 Park Fare, checked in, and were seated quickly. One nice surprise was that there were characters (when I reserved it was made very clear there weren’t characters). We all really enjoyed the brunch. There was a make your own omelette station, as well as all the normal breakfast items and roast turkey with all the trimmings. It was really good.

In terms of characters, there was Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Mary Poppins. They all stopped by the table at various points during our meal. We really enjoyed the brunch here, and would do it again.

Photobomb

Tammy is a big fan of Winnie the Pooh

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Day 4 continued

After brunch we decided to do another one of our “haven’t done this before” things, and toured a few of the resorts to see the Christmas decorations. We started with the GF.

We got our pictures taken at the tree there.

We also saw the gingerbread house which is amazing to see.

And just in case you have the crazy desire to make your own giant gingerbread house next Christmas:

See, this is why it's important to read all the ingredients before you start making something. It would suck to have 700lbs of chocolate, 140 pints of egg whites, 800 lbs of flour, etc. and then get to the end and find out you need Pixie Dust...


After the GF we grabbed the monorail back to the MK entrance, and then took a boat over to Wilderness Lodge. I was a bit surprised (and kind of saddened) to see all the trees gone from the waterfront. When we stayed at WL in August they hadn’t even started working on the new DVC cottages.

We made our way up to the lobby and spent a few minutes looking at all the decorations.

WL has a similar feel to it as AKL. It was really nice to see all the decorations there.

After that we made our way back to the boat dock and went over to Fort Wilderness. The kids went to the beach and played tetherball.

They both wanted me to come down and play with them, so I eventually relented. They both had this idea that they could easily beat me, and kept talking like they were world tetherball champs. After beating each of them 3 times (point made), we decided to head back to MK so we headed back to the dock.

When the boat arrived the captain noticed the kids' Dr. Who shirts and made a big deal about them. It turns out she was a big Dr. Who fan too. The kids were quite thrilled with this, and sat up near the front of the boat and talked to her while we travelled to the Contemporary and then to the MK. Turns out she was a REALLY big Dr.Who fan (she went to England to meet one of the Dr’s in person (and showed the kids the picture of him on her phone)). The kids were quite impressed. She also spent some time telling us how stupid it would be to go to MK tomorrow (NYE) since it will be way too busy.

to be continued

 

[gwhb75]

Day 4 contiued

We get back to the MK and head right to the Jingle Cruise (our last FP).

I wanted to make sure Tammy and Liam got to see it since we probably won’t be down again at Christmas again anytime soon. The standby line today was crazy long.

We all enjoyed the ride.

After that we decided to head out of the park again. On the way out we saw the flag lowering ceremony was about to start, so we scratched another one of the “things we haven’t done before” off the list. It was quite interesting to see.

After the flag was lowered we headed out…and back to AK. We just love this park at night and can’t wait until it is open at night when we’re back in the summer.

First stop was Expedition Everest.

It was a lot of fun again (and Tammy came on with us this time. She liked it more at night than during the day).

It was a lot of fun.

After Everest we did It’s Tough to Be a Bug. It was also fun (we hadn’t done it in a few years).

Bug eyes

After that we called it a night. On the way to the busses I passed an abandoned wheelchair, so I told the kids we were getting on the bus first tonight…

We headed back to AKL, and stopped by the Mara for some late-night snacks (some flatbread pizzas and fries).

We decided to have an earlier night as we planned on having a really early start to the day for New-Year’s Eve.

End of Day 4

 

[gwhb75]

Love your report!

Thanks.

 

[lostpro9het]

After that we called it a night. On the way to the busses I passed an abandoned wheelchair, so I told the kids we were getting on the bus first tonight…
View attachment 128763

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That is awesome.

 

[Shane7694]

That's hilarious!!

 

[LilWalt]

Following along! I like the music play list, some Christian rock in there.

 

[CtDisneyGuy33]

Great report. I love the GF pictures especially the Gingerbread house!