Hi all!!! Well, we’re back from our 6 kid-free days at WDW (yes, much sadness), but now I at least get to share our trip with all of you! If you’re new to my trip reports, my name is Sandy. I did a pre-trip report for this one, but it wasn’t exactly my best work…i.e. I neglected it much of the time. Bad Sandy! Oh well, the real report will be significantly better. I swear, this is probably one of my best trips to WDW- EVER!!!
As many of you know…my reports are heavily picture infused things…mainly because I take TONS of pics so you can “walk” along with me. I took close to 4,000 pics this time…some better than others…but all to help paint the full picture of this trip. I will get into all of the pictures and heavy duty Disney stuff, but first a little background on the days leading up to the trip. Sorry- not much in the way of pictures in this portion, but I promise you…there really are TONS of pictures to come.
So, it’s the evening of November 4th and I’m prepping for our departure on November 7th. DH gets home as I’m putting our girls to bed and informed me that his mom was coming by to talk to us. Ok, so I’m now freaking out. His mom was supposed to have the girls stay with her so we could go on vacation, so this didn’t sound good. We’ve also have really bad luck before all of our recent WDW trips. I think we’d all agree that the car accident last year was the worst, but I am starting to think we’re cursed. In any event, my MIL comes by and drops a bit of a bomb on us. It’s really sad and scary stuff…I’m not at liberty to share the details…but from a safety standpoint, we couldn’t have the girls stay with her at her house. Thankfully, she was willing to stay at our house- so the big problem was solved, but now I had to work in time to deep clean the house. I mean, I was planning on a light cleaning…but I had to pack for me as well as for the girls (school day stuff, softball stuff, etc.) + I had to make a birthday cake!
Many of you know me from the Cake Talk thread over in the dining section, but I also make my own custom cakes on the side. My younger one’s bday is Nov 6th, so I had to have a cake the day before we went out of town…and of course she wanted something crazy (gee, I wonder who encourages this kind of madness???
). She wanted a 'fluffy' killer whale cake…just like her furry Shamu-esque plush named “Shammie.” Thankfully, the cake was fairly easy…well, minus the nearly 7 tubs of black food coloring I needed to achieve black buttercream. So, here’s the finished product as well as a pic with my ‘model.’
Day 1
So, the house is clean, the cake is done and we’re pretty much packed…and it’s after midnight…so, it’s officially our departure day!!! Our flight from Houston Hobby was supposed to take off at 6:15am, so we had to leave the house around 4am. I got about 3 hours of sleep, packed up the car, said good-bye to the girls (who were still in bed- asleep - MIL was in the guest bedroom), and drove to the airport. The roads were dead, but the airport was surprisingly busy. It took a while to get through security, but we at least had a good laugh when checking our bags. The ladies helping us overheard that it was a kid free trip to Disney and they made sure everyone in the area knew we were heading there without the kids. Most of the people just looked really confused, but we got a good laugh.
After DH forgetting to empty his pockets at security and having some minor issues, we make our way out to the gate and wait. Hey, at least it looks like we’re going to be on time.
Boarding and take off are pretty uneventful. I’m utterly exhausted and fall asleep shortly after. I mean, I tend to sleep on planes even when I’m well rested, but this was that uncontrollable … sort of passing out … kind of deep sleep. I didn’t sleep for the entire flight. In fact, I woke up to a lovely cloud filled sky…
Actually, shortly after this pic the clouds started to clear and I could tell we were approaching the Florida coastline…
Ok, I actually took a series of pics as we approached. I guess this is the air equivalent of people taking pics of the state signs when crossing the state line on a road trip…
I also realized that we were flying over the Tampa/St Pete area. My parents lived just outside of St Pete for a few years after leaving Gainesville and before heading to the Ft. Lauderdale area. I took this pic because I noticed a large pink building right at the coastline. Anyone who knows this area knows this is the Don Cesar hotel. Unfortunately, even when cropping, blowing up and saturating the colors in the pic below…you can’t really see that there’s a big pink hotel…but it’s there- I swear it is!!!
Now, I really enjoy being able to pick out familiar sites from the air. I regret not having my DSLR out with the telephoto hooked up for this, but you’re just going to have to take my word for it with the pics below. See, I usually can pick out Epcot from the air with no problem- in fact, it's why I intentionally sat us on this side of the plane. I mean, the “Swalphin” is super obvious and SSE kind of stands out. Still, for whatever reason, I couldn’t find them for the life of me. Then I spotted something…something I’ve never noticed before from the air. I’m sitting there thinking, “man, that white blob over there kind of reminds me of Space Mountain.” Then I realize the buildings I’m looking at to the right are BLT and the Contemporary!!! And while it was more a white blip from the air…I could see…THE CASTLE!!! And as my eyes adjusted and started picturing the WDW map in my head, I realized I could see the Poly, the GF, and yes…I was also able to pick out SSE and the Swalphin too! I could see all of this until shortly before landing. Talk about WELCOME HOME!!! I'll share one of these pics, but it's really tough to spot any of this...
I tried cropping and zooming, but it’s still really hard to pick them out…but I swear they are there!
So, landing was uneventful and we were soon ready for the first “ride” of our trip.
Kind of sad...I am now using the DSLR (vs my phone), but I'm so jittery from excitement that I can't take a decent shot!
I also had temporary amnesia…or magical euphoric memory loss (your pick)…and forgot where to find DME. Of course, the jetways now have it labeled on there…but I guess I also had some selective blindness upon arrival. So, I sucked it up, went to Information, and got directions to DME. I was kind of embarrassed, but clearly I needed the help. At least the info was correct…
As we get down to the ground level and start heading towards the DME area, I start seeing DME and DCL buses…and I’ll admit it, I got kind of misty. Thankfully, DH didn’t notice because I would have been mocked considerably. We had our magic bands on, so getting through everything was a breeze. In fact, the only tough part was convincing DH that our checked baggage would be delivered to our hotel. It’s like he’s never been to WDW before!!! We’re directed to line 2 and make our way all the way to the front.
We’re the only ones there and it kind of looks like we just missed a bus for our grouping of resorts. Just then the CMs manning that section of lines asked which resort we were headed to for our trip. I said we’re going to the Poly and magically, they opened the ropes and led us out to a bus. Sadly, it was a magical yellow Mears bus, but hey…it would get us where we needed to go.
Although, I was kind of jealous with all of the DCL buses around us…just something about having the Disney labeling on the bus. OK- feeling quite shallow right about now!
Still, I really can’t complain…we were on a bus, that bus was nearly full and about ready to go. I think we waited less than 5 minutes to start heading towards the resorts. This was also our first time seeing the new DME video and can I just say…I HATE IT!
Before ever crossing onto Disney property, we saw a sign that Disney was near!
Yeah- the Characters in Flight balloon is kind of a give-a-way that Disney is near! Shortly after spotting the balloon, one of the best views on earth came into sight…
I was obviously not in a good seat to snap any good pics, but I think most of us know that we were getting ready to pass under the Maingate!!! I remember being really frustrated after this as well. I wanted to check in on Facebook, basically confirming that we’re officially “inside the MAGIC BUBBLE,” but it wasn’t until we were farther in that I was able to get ‘Walt Disney World” to come up as a check in option. i.e. I didn’t want any of the parks or resorts. OK- minor annoyance…I know!
More to come on Day 1! Thanks for reading!
As many of you know…my reports are heavily picture infused things…mainly because I take TONS of pics so you can “walk” along with me. I took close to 4,000 pics this time…some better than others…but all to help paint the full picture of this trip. I will get into all of the pictures and heavy duty Disney stuff, but first a little background on the days leading up to the trip. Sorry- not much in the way of pictures in this portion, but I promise you…there really are TONS of pictures to come.
So, it’s the evening of November 4th and I’m prepping for our departure on November 7th. DH gets home as I’m putting our girls to bed and informed me that his mom was coming by to talk to us. Ok, so I’m now freaking out. His mom was supposed to have the girls stay with her so we could go on vacation, so this didn’t sound good. We’ve also have really bad luck before all of our recent WDW trips. I think we’d all agree that the car accident last year was the worst, but I am starting to think we’re cursed. In any event, my MIL comes by and drops a bit of a bomb on us. It’s really sad and scary stuff…I’m not at liberty to share the details…but from a safety standpoint, we couldn’t have the girls stay with her at her house. Thankfully, she was willing to stay at our house- so the big problem was solved, but now I had to work in time to deep clean the house. I mean, I was planning on a light cleaning…but I had to pack for me as well as for the girls (school day stuff, softball stuff, etc.) + I had to make a birthday cake!
Many of you know me from the Cake Talk thread over in the dining section, but I also make my own custom cakes on the side. My younger one’s bday is Nov 6th, so I had to have a cake the day before we went out of town…and of course she wanted something crazy (gee, I wonder who encourages this kind of madness???
). She wanted a 'fluffy' killer whale cake…just like her furry Shamu-esque plush named “Shammie.” Thankfully, the cake was fairly easy…well, minus the nearly 7 tubs of black food coloring I needed to achieve black buttercream. So, here’s the finished product as well as a pic with my ‘model.’
Day 1
So, the house is clean, the cake is done and we’re pretty much packed…and it’s after midnight…so, it’s officially our departure day!!! Our flight from Houston Hobby was supposed to take off at 6:15am, so we had to leave the house around 4am. I got about 3 hours of sleep, packed up the car, said good-bye to the girls (who were still in bed- asleep - MIL was in the guest bedroom), and drove to the airport. The roads were dead, but the airport was surprisingly busy. It took a while to get through security, but we at least had a good laugh when checking our bags. The ladies helping us overheard that it was a kid free trip to Disney and they made sure everyone in the area knew we were heading there without the kids. Most of the people just looked really confused, but we got a good laugh.
After DH forgetting to empty his pockets at security and having some minor issues, we make our way out to the gate and wait. Hey, at least it looks like we’re going to be on time.
Boarding and take off are pretty uneventful. I’m utterly exhausted and fall asleep shortly after. I mean, I tend to sleep on planes even when I’m well rested, but this was that uncontrollable … sort of passing out … kind of deep sleep. I didn’t sleep for the entire flight. In fact, I woke up to a lovely cloud filled sky…
Actually, shortly after this pic the clouds started to clear and I could tell we were approaching the Florida coastline…
Ok, I actually took a series of pics as we approached. I guess this is the air equivalent of people taking pics of the state signs when crossing the state line on a road trip…
I also realized that we were flying over the Tampa/St Pete area. My parents lived just outside of St Pete for a few years after leaving Gainesville and before heading to the Ft. Lauderdale area. I took this pic because I noticed a large pink building right at the coastline. Anyone who knows this area knows this is the Don Cesar hotel. Unfortunately, even when cropping, blowing up and saturating the colors in the pic below…you can’t really see that there’s a big pink hotel…but it’s there- I swear it is!!!
Now, I really enjoy being able to pick out familiar sites from the air. I regret not having my DSLR out with the telephoto hooked up for this, but you’re just going to have to take my word for it with the pics below. See, I usually can pick out Epcot from the air with no problem- in fact, it's why I intentionally sat us on this side of the plane. I mean, the “Swalphin” is super obvious and SSE kind of stands out. Still, for whatever reason, I couldn’t find them for the life of me. Then I spotted something…something I’ve never noticed before from the air. I’m sitting there thinking, “man, that white blob over there kind of reminds me of Space Mountain.” Then I realize the buildings I’m looking at to the right are BLT and the Contemporary!!! And while it was more a white blip from the air…I could see…THE CASTLE!!! And as my eyes adjusted and started picturing the WDW map in my head, I realized I could see the Poly, the GF, and yes…I was also able to pick out SSE and the Swalphin too! I could see all of this until shortly before landing. Talk about WELCOME HOME!!! I'll share one of these pics, but it's really tough to spot any of this...
I tried cropping and zooming, but it’s still really hard to pick them out…but I swear they are there!
So, landing was uneventful and we were soon ready for the first “ride” of our trip.
Kind of sad...I am now using the DSLR (vs my phone), but I'm so jittery from excitement that I can't take a decent shot!
I also had temporary amnesia…or magical euphoric memory loss (your pick)…and forgot where to find DME. Of course, the jetways now have it labeled on there…but I guess I also had some selective blindness upon arrival. So, I sucked it up, went to Information, and got directions to DME. I was kind of embarrassed, but clearly I needed the help. At least the info was correct…
As we get down to the ground level and start heading towards the DME area, I start seeing DME and DCL buses…and I’ll admit it, I got kind of misty. Thankfully, DH didn’t notice because I would have been mocked considerably. We had our magic bands on, so getting through everything was a breeze. In fact, the only tough part was convincing DH that our checked baggage would be delivered to our hotel. It’s like he’s never been to WDW before!!! We’re directed to line 2 and make our way all the way to the front.
We’re the only ones there and it kind of looks like we just missed a bus for our grouping of resorts. Just then the CMs manning that section of lines asked which resort we were headed to for our trip. I said we’re going to the Poly and magically, they opened the ropes and led us out to a bus. Sadly, it was a magical yellow Mears bus, but hey…it would get us where we needed to go.
Although, I was kind of jealous with all of the DCL buses around us…just something about having the Disney labeling on the bus. OK- feeling quite shallow right about now!
Still, I really can’t complain…we were on a bus, that bus was nearly full and about ready to go. I think we waited less than 5 minutes to start heading towards the resorts. This was also our first time seeing the new DME video and can I just say…I HATE IT!
Before ever crossing onto Disney property, we saw a sign that Disney was near!
Yeah- the Characters in Flight balloon is kind of a give-a-way that Disney is near! Shortly after spotting the balloon, one of the best views on earth came into sight…
I was obviously not in a good seat to snap any good pics, but I think most of us know that we were getting ready to pass under the Maingate!!! I remember being really frustrated after this as well. I wanted to check in on Facebook, basically confirming that we’re officially “inside the MAGIC BUBBLE,” but it wasn’t until we were farther in that I was able to get ‘Walt Disney World” to come up as a check in option. i.e. I didn’t want any of the parks or resorts. OK- minor annoyance…I know!
More to come on Day 1! Thanks for reading!
Last edited:
I'm very happy that I was able to rebook Narcoosee's and can definitely see us going back. In some ways, I regret not keeping my Wishes timed ADR for earlier in the trip but that leaves us something to try in the future. Oh, and there are A LOT more pics of that gingerbread house to come. I'm just a tad obsessed! 
