.. A Tower of Terror 10 miler trip report of course!!! 
Aloha boys and girls and welcome to my fall 2012 trip report!! I’ve decided to stop the trend of losing my vacation pictures starting with this TR. If you read my last 2 trip reports (well, one and a half since my May TR still isn’t finished… oops!!) you know that my sister accidentally deleted the last day of pictures after our November 2011 trip which included our Crystal Palace character breakfast, meet and greets with Aladdin, Jasmine, Davy Crockett Donald as well as a couple others.. Then while in the process of writing my May 2012 TR I lost my memory card and only the first 2 days worth of photos were saved Obviously, I don’t have good luck with vacation photos. HOWEVER - When I got home this time, I immediately saved them to my sister’s external hard drive and put the memory card in a safe place. We also ordered the Photopass CD and I took over 1300 pictures so needless to say this will be a picture infused trip report for sure!
If you’d like to read my PTR, you can find it here:
http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/...-crazy-a-tower-of-terror-10-miler-ptr.848349/
At first it was just going to be a long weekend trip to run our first Disney race: The Tower of Terror 10 Miler. Yes, you read that right. 10 miles! And I’m not a runner by any means but my sister and I signed up for the race in February. Clearly we are just crazy. Or we were just cold up here in snowy, frigid Maine and the thought of getting out of Maine for any reason seemed appealing at the time, even if it meant running (or fast walking) 10 miles. Training didn’t go as well as we had hoped and there were times we thought of dropping out cause let’s be real here, 10 miles is no short distance. The longest run I put in before the race was 5 miles. My hip acted up here and there and it hurt me to run sometimes. But we decided to give it a shot. The worst that could happen? We get swept but at least we could say we tried it. Besides, my gal pals Jess, Courtney and Shelley (@PartOfYourWorld @enchanted_belle and @Fashionista007 respectively) were going to be running as well. So I had some motivational support right there. I’m sure by now you’re probably wondering… Did I finish the race? You’ll have to read all about it to find out!! So who’s with me? Alright then… let’s get this thing rolling!!
Monday September 24 – Arrival day and our trial of Fast Pass Plus!
My alarm went off bright and early on Monday morning. Actually, it was more like dark and early since it was 3:20am. Mom and my grandmother would be there at 4am sharp to pick me up for our 1 mile commute to the airport. Our flight was at 5:40am and after researching the outgoing flights that morning and finding that 6 flights were leaving within 30 minutes of each other at our small little jetport, I decided we should be there by 4:15. That would give us a solid hour and a half before our flight to check our bag, get through security and maybe grab some breakfast. A little before 4, I let my pup Luca out and gave him lots of kisses as I would miss dearly while I was gone. I mean who wouldn’t miss this face?!
Mom and Grams showed up and we loaded my stuff into the car and we were on our way (I should mention here that Ashley would not be flying in until Wednesday evening due to her not being able to get as much time off from work) I had already checked us in for our flight with AirTran so all we had to do was check our one bag, print our boarding pass and get through the security line…. Only there were no lines. No line to check the bag and maybe 3 people ahead of us at security. And here I thought the line would be huge with so many people traveling early. Oh well. Better safe than sorry. We had an hour and 15 minutes to kill so I grabbed a magazine and read.
It was still dark out when we took off and we made it to Baltimore without issues. We landed in BWI at 7:10 so we had about an hour or so before the next leg of the trip so I went and got us some Jamba Juice. Mmm….. yummy!!
When we went to board the plane to Orlando, the ticket lady scanned my ticket and then she told me that our seats had been changed. She handed me and my Mom new boarding passes and told us “Here sit in these 2 seats. They’re in business class” A free upgrade to business class? Heck yes!! The extra leg room was nice and we got some Milano cookies as opposed to mini pretzels. You didn’t get anything additional other than a little extra leg room and priority boarding. The extra leg room was DEFINITELY nice but the fact it was about $300 more each way than what we paid, it just didn’t seem worth it. The only thing separating business class and coach was a curtain behind the seats so it wasn’t like you were really secluded. Sorry but the additional $600 that business class cost could be better spent elsewhere… like a stay at the Polynesian It was nice though to try once, especially since it was free. Since we were close to the front of the plane, we were first to disembark when we landed in sunny Florida 14 minutes ahead of schedule. No waiting at the back of the plane. That was nice…
We headed straight for DME and there wasn’t really a long line. We hopped on the bus headed for the All Star Resort and at promptly 10:38am we were bound for the happiest place on earth!!!
Getting closer……
We’re here!!!!!
We stopped at Coronado Springs first and then All Star Sports. We were finally there and I was super excited. We walked right up to the online check in and checked in with a CM name Sena. At this point I realized I did not have my ID on me and it must have fallen off my lap on the bus. FAIL! Good thing I brought my old ID with me. At first the CM seemed ok. We had requested the football section, ground floor and our requests were met. But when I asked her about our 2 day base ticket that we had to purchase in order to get free dining, she started talking to me like I was a moron. Sorry lady, but I don’t understand how it all works. I DON’T WORK HERE! YOU DO! Which Is why I’m asking you. Basically I asked her if our tickets were on our Key to The World card and if I could get them taken off that and put on a separate ticket, like when you just buy your park pass from guest services. She told me “No, the tickets are on there. It’s a package!” with a very snarky attitude. I told her I figured that would be the case but told her we have annual passes. This was where she rudely interrupted me and said “Then just don’t use the room key to get into the parks!!” Ummmm, ok, but how would I use the tickets in the future? Just bring that same room key when I wanted to put it towards my annual pass next year? “You would save it! Just like you would any other ticket!” At that point I was sick of her attitude and I sharply said “OK! Thanks!” took my packet and walked away. She did NOT have the friendly attitude I would expect from a Disney employee. There was no need to talk to me like she did. I’ve never booked a package so I don’t know how it works. I understand you get asked the same questions every day probably but this is the first time I am asking it. No need to be nasty with me. I think they need to sprinkle her with some pixie dust or something, make her a little more friendly.
So after a not so nice first encounter, we took stopped in the food court to pick up our refillable mugs. We have 4 mugs already at our house and if they weren’t free with the dining plan, we probably wouldn’t have gotten them. Honestly, we probably would have brought our ones from May and used those. Don’t hate. I know you’re not supposed to use them past your stay but we just got them 4 months ago. And we don’t use them that often. At least we’re not using the old ones from like 5 years ago or even older ones back when they had resort specific mugs (both of which I saw being done.) We then took our stuff to the room.
We were room 121, a corner room. We were super close to the main building so that was awesome. I don’t think if we had booked a preferred room that we would have been much closer. We actually could have even been further away so I’m glad we saved our money, switched to a regular room and just requested the football section so thanks John @blackthidot for suggesting that. I’ll review our room and the resort in full at the end of the TR.
Of course I took a picture of the room. Just one. Because what trip report would be complete without at least one room picture!
After a quick change and a phone call from a CM at the front desk letting me know our DME driver had found my ID, we headed to the bus stop for our first park: Magic Kingdom! We had some Fast Pass Plus cards to trial!!
Aloha boys and girls and welcome to my fall 2012 trip report!! I’ve decided to stop the trend of losing my vacation pictures starting with this TR. If you read my last 2 trip reports (well, one and a half since my May TR still isn’t finished… oops!!) you know that my sister accidentally deleted the last day of pictures after our November 2011 trip which included our Crystal Palace character breakfast, meet and greets with Aladdin, Jasmine, Davy Crockett Donald as well as a couple others.. Then while in the process of writing my May 2012 TR I lost my memory card and only the first 2 days worth of photos were saved
Obviously, I don’t have good luck with vacation photos. HOWEVER - When I got home this time, I immediately saved them to my sister’s external hard drive and put the memory card in a safe place. We also ordered the Photopass CD and I took over 1300 pictures so needless to say this will be a picture infused trip report for sure! If you’d like to read my PTR, you can find it here:
http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/...-crazy-a-tower-of-terror-10-miler-ptr.848349/
At first it was just going to be a long weekend trip to run our first Disney race: The Tower of Terror 10 Miler. Yes, you read that right. 10 miles! And I’m not a runner by any means but my sister and I signed up for the race in February. Clearly we are just crazy. Or we were just cold up here in snowy, frigid Maine and the thought of getting out of Maine for any reason seemed appealing at the time, even if it meant running (or fast walking) 10 miles. Training didn’t go as well as we had hoped and there were times we thought of dropping out cause let’s be real here, 10 miles is no short distance. The longest run I put in before the race was 5 miles. My hip acted up here and there and it hurt me to run sometimes. But we decided to give it a shot. The worst that could happen? We get swept but at least we could say we tried it. Besides, my gal pals Jess, Courtney and Shelley (@PartOfYourWorld @enchanted_belle and @Fashionista007 respectively) were going to be running as well. So I had some motivational support right there. I’m sure by now you’re probably wondering… Did I finish the race? You’ll have to read all about it to find out!! So who’s with me? Alright then… let’s get this thing rolling!!
Monday September 24 – Arrival day and our trial of Fast Pass Plus!
My alarm went off bright and early on Monday morning. Actually, it was more like dark and early since it was 3:20am. Mom and my grandmother would be there at 4am sharp to pick me up for our 1 mile commute to the airport. Our flight was at 5:40am and after researching the outgoing flights that morning and finding that 6 flights were leaving within 30 minutes of each other at our small little jetport, I decided we should be there by 4:15. That would give us a solid hour and a half before our flight to check our bag, get through security and maybe grab some breakfast. A little before 4, I let my pup Luca out and gave him lots of kisses as I would miss dearly while I was gone. I mean who wouldn’t miss this face?!
Mom and Grams showed up and we loaded my stuff into the car and we were on our way (I should mention here that Ashley would not be flying in until Wednesday evening due to her not being able to get as much time off from work) I had already checked us in for our flight with AirTran so all we had to do was check our one bag, print our boarding pass and get through the security line…. Only there were no lines. No line to check the bag and maybe 3 people ahead of us at security. And here I thought the line would be huge with so many people traveling early. Oh well. Better safe than sorry. We had an hour and 15 minutes to kill so I grabbed a magazine and read.
It was still dark out when we took off and we made it to Baltimore without issues. We landed in BWI at 7:10 so we had about an hour or so before the next leg of the trip so I went and got us some Jamba Juice. Mmm….. yummy!!
When we went to board the plane to Orlando, the ticket lady scanned my ticket and then she told me that our seats had been changed. She handed me and my Mom new boarding passes and told us “Here sit in these 2 seats. They’re in business class” A free upgrade to business class? Heck yes!! The extra leg room was nice and we got some Milano cookies as opposed to mini pretzels. You didn’t get anything additional other than a little extra leg room and priority boarding. The extra leg room was DEFINITELY nice but the fact it was about $300 more each way than what we paid, it just didn’t seem worth it. The only thing separating business class and coach was a curtain behind the seats so it wasn’t like you were really secluded. Sorry but the additional $600 that business class cost could be better spent elsewhere… like a stay at the Polynesian
It was nice though to try once, especially since it was free. Since we were close to the front of the plane, we were first to disembark when we landed in sunny Florida 14 minutes ahead of schedule. No waiting at the back of the plane. That was nice…We headed straight for DME and there wasn’t really a long line. We hopped on the bus headed for the All Star Resort and at promptly 10:38am we were bound for the happiest place on earth!!!
Getting closer……
We’re here!!!!!
We stopped at Coronado Springs first and then All Star Sports. We were finally there and I was super excited. We walked right up to the online check in and checked in with a CM name Sena. At this point I realized I did not have my ID on me and it must have fallen off my lap on the bus. FAIL! Good thing I brought my old ID with me. At first the CM seemed ok. We had requested the football section, ground floor and our requests were met. But when I asked her about our 2 day base ticket that we had to purchase in order to get free dining, she started talking to me like I was a moron. Sorry lady, but I don’t understand how it all works. I DON’T WORK HERE! YOU DO! Which Is why I’m asking you. Basically I asked her if our tickets were on our Key to The World card and if I could get them taken off that and put on a separate ticket, like when you just buy your park pass from guest services. She told me “No, the tickets are on there. It’s a package!” with a very snarky attitude. I told her I figured that would be the case but told her we have annual passes. This was where she rudely interrupted me and said “Then just don’t use the room key to get into the parks!!” Ummmm, ok, but how would I use the tickets in the future? Just bring that same room key when I wanted to put it towards my annual pass next year? “You would save it! Just like you would any other ticket!” At that point I was sick of her attitude and I sharply said “OK! Thanks!” took my packet and walked away. She did NOT have the friendly attitude I would expect from a Disney employee. There was no need to talk to me like she did. I’ve never booked a package so I don’t know how it works. I understand you get asked the same questions every day probably but this is the first time I am asking it. No need to be nasty with me. I think they need to sprinkle her with some pixie dust or something, make her a little more friendly.
So after a not so nice first encounter, we took stopped in the food court to pick up our refillable mugs. We have 4 mugs already at our house and if they weren’t free with the dining plan, we probably wouldn’t have gotten them. Honestly, we probably would have brought our ones from May and used those. Don’t hate. I know you’re not supposed to use them past your stay but we just got them 4 months ago. And we don’t use them that often. At least we’re not using the old ones from like 5 years ago or even older ones back when they had resort specific mugs (both of which I saw being done.) We then took our stuff to the room.
We were room 121, a corner room. We were super close to the main building so that was awesome. I don’t think if we had booked a preferred room that we would have been much closer. We actually could have even been further away so I’m glad we saved our money, switched to a regular room and just requested the football section so thanks John @blackthidot for suggesting that. I’ll review our room and the resort in full at the end of the TR.
Of course I took a picture of the room. Just one. Because what trip report would be complete without at least one room picture!
After a quick change and a phone call from a CM at the front desk letting me know our DME driver had found my ID, we headed to the bus stop for our first park: Magic Kingdom! We had some Fast Pass Plus cards to trial!!
