Trip Report **completed**Our not so perfect, but good enough July 2021 trip

Hi, all! It took me much longer to get this started than I wanted, but my computer decided it didn't have room for any more of my photos and I had to get an external hard drive and transfer some in order to start! We've also been a little busy getting everything ready for Logan to leave for Iowa in 2 weeks!

So, if you didn't follow along with my PTR, we were supposed to be on a cruise to celebrate Logan's HS graduation, but instead had to switch gears and decided to spend a few days at WDW.

Now, the specifics:
Who: Me (Amy), my husband Brian, Logan (18), Lily (16), and Owen (13)
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Where: Cabana Bay Beach Resort and Pop Century

When: July 11-20, 2021

Why: as I previously mentioned, this trip was to celebrate Logan's HS graduation. He asked for a cruise, so I do have another one scheduled for next June and we quickly threw together the Disney portion of this trip (so I guess we can call this his preliminary graduation trip!!)


We had some truly magical moments on this trip and some definitively un-magical moments as well! Unfortunately, our first day held one of the most un-magical moments.

We drove from Ohio and always try to leave very early to try to avoid as much traffic as possible. We set an alarm for midnight and our goal was to leave the house between 1 and 1:30 am. We were spot on!
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We made a quick stop at McDonald's for Cokes and were on our way. It was smooth sailing all the way to northern Florida. We even made it through Atlanta with no drama or slow downs!!
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Florida was stop and go the whole way, but we still made decent time and were pulling in to Cabana Bay Beach Resort about 4:00 which was about 1-1.5 hours later than we had anticipated, so not too bad! However, that is official check in time, and the parking area was a mess, as was the lobby!
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Luckily, they had sent me an email that allowed me to check in prior to arrival and that line was fairly short! The regular line was wrapped all the way around the lobby and was said to be 2 hours long! Brian dropped me off and found a parking spot that he probably shouldn't have been in to wait for me and sent Logan in to the lobby to guide me back to the car!

Now for the most un-magical moment of our trip! I had booked a 2 bedroom volcano view suite as a surprise for Logan since it was his celebration trip and I thought it would be cool to see the volcano lit up at night and watch all the activity in the park from our room. I paid way more than I normally would for a room, but felt it was a reasonable splurge. Well, we get to our room which happened to be on the second floor and this was our view:
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Yes, that is the back of a service building and the very tip of the volcano!! I don't understand how they can charge the same amount of money for this view as they can for the higher floor rooms (which I did request)! They need a lower partial or obstructed view charge for the rooms on this floor. I did say something and no one cared at all and basically told me to stuff it! Needless to say, we won't be back there any time soon!
 

TheMouseFan

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Since we were back at Pop early that night, I decided to head to the lobby and ask about adding park hopping to our tickets so we could revisit Epcot on Monday since the kids decided they wanted to keep our reservation for DHS for the morning. I naively thought it would be $50-60/ticket like it would have been when I first booked our package. Nope, it was going to be upwards of $700 just to spend an afternoon and evening at Epcot!! I almost cried when she told me that. She was very empathetic and seemed to truly feel horrible for me. She told me to talk to someone in Guest Services at whatever park we were going to the next day because they had access to a different ticketing system than the resort did and they MAY be able to help me. Brian about died when I told him the price and said "please tell me you didn't pay that!" Had I not been so devastated, I would have toyed with him and told him that of course I did!! Everyone took the news surprisingly well.

Sunday, July 18
We were up early and in a huge line to wait for the MK bus. Luckily, they had multiple running and we were there in no time. Our beautiful first view of MK:
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Not much that could be done about it, but it was pretty unsightly!

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TheMouseFan

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
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We decided to stop for Logan's ear hat pictures since it wasn't very crowded yet.
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Unfortunately, shortly before our trip they started doing an actual rope drop again, so we were held on the bridge headed into Liberty Square.
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We stood on the side of the bridge closest to the castle so I could get some pics.
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TheMouseFan

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
So, we had an exciting and action packed weekend. Owen played his last soccer game of the fall season in the cold and rain.
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The kids went trick or treating.
Lily and Eithan went as Michael Myers and Laurie Strode from Halloween
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Owen dressed as a pirate
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And I broke my elbow!!
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Which means that I now have time to work on this report since I need to take a few days off work to let it start healing! (It is a non displaced fracture of my radial head so no treatment needed other than time and rest! I slipped on Brian's freshly cleaned basement floor and landed right on my arm.)

Back to our MK day!

We decided that our first destination would be Splash Mountain since that was one everyone wanted to be sure we got on since we probably won't see it again as Splash Mountain.
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We got to this point and they made us wait a little bit longer before leading us to Splash.
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