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??).
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??).
Last edited:
