When – Saturday November 17th- Thursday, November 22, 2012
Where – Animal Kingdom Lodge, Old Key West and Saratoga Springs
Who – Just the 4 of us this time! Myself, Stephen my hubby, Chase 17 and Ally 15. Since it was just the four of us, I somehow neglected to get a single photo of us together! I think there are only three of them with myself even in them! So here we are in parts.
Stephen and I – Self portrait at Dole Whip
Stephen, Chase and Ally on the monorail, supporting their team, DC United, for the big game that evening:
Why – Well because we wanted to of course.
But why Thanksgiving week, one of the most crowded weeks there is? Well there were several reasons. For one, it’s tough to find a time to go these days that works for all 4 of us. I can go anytime, of course, and I do! But the teenagers and hard working hubby are harder. We had rooms booked for President’s Day weekend, but the kids had a lot of conflicts. Also, we had nothing to do for Thanksgiving. About 12 days before we left, I got an airfare alert for $176 flights to Orlando.
So what do you do when you don’t have anything to do for Thanksgiving and you can fly to Orlando cheaply? You go visit the mouse of course!! We go enough that the crowds don’t bother us much, so it seemed like the perfect solution.
The kids were more than game, and Stephen cleared it with his work. We bought the tickets and set to work trying to find somewhere we could use our DVC points and use about the same amount of points as we had planned to use in February. As expected, we didn’t have a lot of options, but that was no biggie either. Just happy to be going!
We ended up with the first night at Kidani in a savannah view studio. The next two nights were, get this, in a grand villa (yes for four of us ) at Old Key West, then two nights in a studio at Saratoga Springs. This would be an adventure!
Of course that was just the beginning. About 9 days before we left Ally was at basketball tryouts and rolled her ankle. Her ankle was huge when I picked her up, but she’d done something similar at volleyball tryouts and it was just sprained then. I assumed that was the case here, but we went to the doc just in case. When he told us there was a fracture, I was shocked! My first thoughts were sadness that she probably wouldn’t make varsity since she only went to one day of tryouts, and my second thought was how sad her volleyball coach was going to be when we told her that Ally wouldn’t be at the last volleyball tournament of the season in two days. It didn’t hit me until we were in the car going home that we were going to Disney in 9 days.
I screamed – “Oh no!! We’re going to Disney World!!” That may have been the first time I’ve used “Oh no” and “we’re going to Disney” in the same sentence. Ally immediately started clamoring for an electric scooter which seemed like a bad idea for too many reasons to list here.
She had a walking cast, but there was no way she was up for the amount of walking that Disney entails, so we were looking at our first trip to Disney with a GAC card and a wheel chair! This should be an experience.
Oh, and if you were wondering, Ally did make varsity. All five foot zero of her. And she’s a freshman! She’s out for a few weeks, but thankfully basketball season is long. Go Ally, go Ally…go go go Ally…
Where – Animal Kingdom Lodge, Old Key West and Saratoga Springs
Who – Just the 4 of us this time! Myself, Stephen my hubby, Chase 17 and Ally 15. Since it was just the four of us, I somehow neglected to get a single photo of us together! I think there are only three of them with myself even in them! So here we are in parts.
Stephen and I – Self portrait at Dole Whip
Stephen, Chase and Ally on the monorail, supporting their team, DC United, for the big game that evening:
Why – Well because we wanted to of course.
But why Thanksgiving week, one of the most crowded weeks there is? Well there were several reasons. For one, it’s tough to find a time to go these days that works for all 4 of us. I can go anytime, of course, and I do! But the teenagers and hard working hubby are harder. We had rooms booked for President’s Day weekend, but the kids had a lot of conflicts. Also, we had nothing to do for Thanksgiving. About 12 days before we left, I got an airfare alert for $176 flights to Orlando.So what do you do when you don’t have anything to do for Thanksgiving and you can fly to Orlando cheaply? You go visit the mouse of course!! We go enough that the crowds don’t bother us much, so it seemed like the perfect solution.
The kids were more than game, and Stephen cleared it with his work. We bought the tickets and set to work trying to find somewhere we could use our DVC points and use about the same amount of points as we had planned to use in February. As expected, we didn’t have a lot of options, but that was no biggie either. Just happy to be going!
We ended up with the first night at Kidani in a savannah view studio. The next two nights were, get this, in a grand villa (yes for four of us
) at Old Key West, then two nights in a studio at Saratoga Springs. This would be an adventure!Of course that was just the beginning. About 9 days before we left Ally was at basketball tryouts and rolled her ankle. Her ankle was huge when I picked her up, but she’d done something similar at volleyball tryouts and it was just sprained then. I assumed that was the case here, but we went to the doc just in case. When he told us there was a fracture, I was shocked! My first thoughts were sadness that she probably wouldn’t make varsity since she only went to one day of tryouts, and my second thought was how sad her volleyball coach was going to be when we told her that Ally wouldn’t be at the last volleyball tournament of the season in two days. It didn’t hit me until we were in the car going home that we were going to Disney in 9 days.
I screamed – “Oh no!! We’re going to Disney World!!” That may have been the first time I’ve used “Oh no” and “we’re going to Disney” in the same sentence. Ally immediately started clamoring for an electric scooter which seemed like a bad idea for too many reasons to list here.
She had a walking cast, but there was no way she was up for the amount of walking that Disney entails, so we were looking at our first trip to Disney with a GAC card and a wheel chair! This should be an experience.
Oh, and if you were wondering, Ally did make varsity. All five foot zero of her. And she’s a freshman! She’s out for a few weeks, but thankfully basketball season is long. Go Ally, go Ally…go go go Ally…
