Trip Report That Disney Swing- February 2014 trip report

UberPlannerMom · Mar 10, 2014

akayw0718 said:
Uh, so sorry about the room issue!!

Thanks! It was really frustrating to deal with. We completely understood that these things happen but they flubbed the handling of it and that is what killed us. :/

UberPlannerMom · Mar 10, 2014

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
Despite our extremely late night the night before we still had to be up bright and early for our second day. We were going to Magic Kingdom. We once again wanted to hit rope drop and once again missed it. This time the blame doesn't lie with the guys. We were up and ready in plenty of time because we knew that we wanted to go speak with the manager about how poorly things were handled the night before. So, our first stop for the day was the main building. It took forever to get to the front of the line and then it took forever to get a manager. Hubby started to explain but Kinsey, who was exhausted, was screaming his head off so Hubby asked me to finish. I was exhausted, the boys were exhausted. I was actually crying as I tried to explain just how unmagical our trip was already as a result of all this. Kinsey kept saying how he just wanted to go home, Mickey Mouse's house not ok. That is heart wrenching. The manager gave us a few fastpasses and said she would refund the night's hotel charges. (When we checked out we could see that the night returned to us was $79.) And then she sent us on our way. She never tried to sweeten up Kinsey, never even offered me a tissue. It was another totally unsatisfying interaction with the staff at Pop.

I checked the time and it was already too late for rope drop and Kinsey was still asking to go home. We distracted him as best we could in the arcade, just to try and give him time to feel ok about moving forward. I had to convince him that Magic Kingdom would be ok. I will say that one of the check in women brought Kins a little activity book but she definitely seemed like she had to sneak out to do it. Oh and when we were explaining how he was just really tired from the night before she said, "Oh, did you have that problem too?" I guess we weren't the only people with a flooded room...

Eventually we had convinced Kins to let us take him to Magic Kingdom and so we started to head that way. Now, remember that jerking I mentioned before with the scooter? The day before we had chalked it up to wearing the battery out. Well, it was still doing it despite having been charged. So, on our way to the van I called up the rental company and asked what to do. The lady on the phone said they couldn't do anything until at least 1 pm and so I said we were just going to have to deal with it at the park til then. Then, when we were in the parking lot of the TTC the driver calls and says he's at pop, where am I? Umm, wow, that was super fast but we aren't at pop right now. I felt bad but we were told 1 pm, ya know? Anyway, the guy met us at Magic Kingdom with a new scooter and this one worked so much better!

Now, you may be asking yourself why we didn't stay and take a nap since we were so tired... well, we couldn't. Brad had an early morning appointment to have his first haircut. Once we were in the park we only had about an hour before we needed to check in. We decided to hang out on main street while we waited.

We played some sorcerer's of the magic kingdom. (@Wildflower you were Boogie's hero!)

utilized a photopass photographer

And even met the local fireman

Before too long it was time to check in. As we approached the barbershop I started to freak. The line was HUGE! I heard people coming out from checking in saying it was an hour. :cry:

Still, we had an appointment so I bravely checked in. We had been told to check in 15 minutes early so our wait was... 15 minutes. Umm, awesome!

A couple of his last pictures with his baby gy look.

Kinsey filling the time.

UberPlannerMom · Mar 10, 2014

Finally it was our turn, but this is where everyone being exhausted rears it's ugly head again. Brad is the calmest, most docile of my kids. He is sweet and gentle. BUT when he sees something he needs to be awake for and is exhausted he becomes squirmy. Any idea how well that worked with getting his first haircut? Yeah, it was rough. I'm still glad he got to have his first haircut there but I really wish it had been under better circumstances.

UberPlannerMom · Mar 10, 2014

He got to keep the ears and we were given a certificate of bravery and a bag of Mickey confetti to go along with it. Our total was less than $20 so, despite the issues of having an overly tired baby, we are happy to have been able to do that for him. And I swear he aged about 6 months with a hair cut. He looks like a little boy instead of a baby now! :cry:

Lyear · Mar 10, 2014

Wow, sounds like a very rough start to your trip. What a long first day! I hope it got better for you. I love the photo of Kinsey with the cupcake. He looks like he was really enjoying that thing.

Weather_Lady · Mar 10, 2014

UberPlannerMom said:
Thanks! It was really frustrating to deal with. We completely understood that these things happen but they flubbed the handling of it and that is what killed us. :/

That was terrible! I'm so sorry to hear about that -- and as a mother of 2 kids, I know what havoc a 2:30am bedtime can wreak on your vacation! I'll keep reading and pray it gets better from here...

disneyfirstLJ · Mar 10, 2014

I am sorry to hear about your troubles at the beginning of your trip.

ShookieJones · Mar 10, 2014

The way they handled your flooded room situation is pure BS.
I am not a huge complainer, but that qualifies for a strongly worded letter to management ASAP.

I'm sure you know this already but your kids are ridiculously cute.

UberPlannerMom · Mar 11, 2014

Weather_Lady said:
That was terrible! I'm so sorry to hear about that -- and as a mother of 2 kids, I know what havoc a 2:30am bedtime can wreak on your vacation! I'll keep reading and pray it gets better from here...

Absolutely! It does get better after a bit

disneyfirstLJ said:
I am sorry to hear about your troubles at the beginning of your trip.

Thanks

ShookieJones said:
The way they handled your flooded room situation is pure BS.
I am not a huge complainer, but that qualifies for a strongly worded letter to management ASAP.

I'm sure you know this already but your kids are ridiculously cute.

Thank you, I think they are pretty cute myself. And I am definitely going to contact Disney about it all. Funny enough I received a survey from Disney today so they will end up dinged in two ways!

UberPlannerMom · Mar 11, 2014

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014 continued...
After Brad's haircut we meandered down main street. We hit up a few photopass photographers to get these gems:

On the way we had a discussion about how few rides we had managed to get on. It was lunch time on the second day and the ride count was at 3 for Boogie and 2 for Kinsey! Anyway, we decided to remedy that. In rather quick succession we rode it's a small world, prince charming's regal carousel, and peter pan's flight (which we had fastpasses for thanks to a few clicks on the app).

We then decided to eat lunch. Now, this is where we went a bit askew. If you read my pretrip report then you saw that I managed to get a fastpass for lunch at be our guest. Well, in my sleep addled brain Tuesday turned into Thursday and I thought the lunch was for our second day at Magic Kingdom. So yeah- add that up and you get that we didn't go to eat at be our guest.

We tried to eat at Cosmic Rays but they were enforcing the no seat till you have food thing. That doesn't work when the way you are having to do things is to have one person take the babies to the table while the other person and Boogie get the food. I don't know why that is so hard for people to understand? Anyway, that issue meant we were headed over to Columbia Harbor House. Not only did they understand the way we handle things but they encouraged it! Woohoo!

Hubby and Boogie had the lobster roll and shared with Brad. They all seemed to really enjoy it!

Kinsey and I shared the fish and chicken plate. Good as always.

My favorite was this delicious little blueberry cobbler thingy. Soooo good!

It's Brad approved!

As our meal was ending the discussion of what to do next came up. Of course that lovely little house across the way was our decision. Now, we know Kinsey gets scared of things. (I have recently discovered that Boogie has been playing a Halloween sound effects tape while Kinsey is sleeping so that may explain a few things!) Anyway, we figured that if we avoided the stretching room then we could convince him that it is a funny ride. Yeah, even in the ecv they ushered us straight into the stretching room.

I tried my best but by the time we were in the doom buggy he was sufficiently freaked out. He was sobbing. So, I did what any good mom does

, I asked if he wanted to hide under my extra shirt. He quickly decided that was a good idea and the crying stopped. In fact, I am pretty sure he fell asleep for a minute under there.

I felt pretty bad about the whole haunted mansion thing so, without even checking with my hubby (sorry Hubs) decided the next thing we did would be just for Kins. We checked the wait for Tiana and Jasmine (ugh no!) before ending up on the Magic Carpets of Aladdin. Kinsey LOVED it. I know it gets a lot of flack because it is just a spinner but seeing his eyes light up makes that ride a major winner for me.

(OK, I have to include this. All day I kept telling Hubby he was giving Brad a wardrobe malfunction and he would blow me off. I finally took this picture to show him how bad it was. That is one complete baby butt cheek!)

Boogie's sad face because even at Disney World when you use a turnstile to smack your brother in the face you get a talking to...

We were going to follow that up with a ride on the jungle cruise BUT... when we got down there there was this really huge line. I mean HUGE! I tried to ask my hubby where the fastpass line was and this guy informed me, really angrily, that that was the fastpass line. So, we switched fastpasses and ran away from there. In retrospect I think that perhaps that was one of the huge ugly lines to make fastpass selections and not the line to ride jungle cruise. At least I hope that was the case.

We opted for Pirates of the Caribbean instead. Pirates is one of the rides that Kinsey had watched videos of online in advance. I wanted to know if he would be interested in it. When we watched the video he would squeal everytime he saw Jack Sparrow. So, I knew, call it Jack Sparrows ride. He was stoked. Then my husband starts talking about all the pirates. That was almost the end right there.

Luckily I managed to shut him up before it fully caused a fit and we were cool to ride along and hunt for Jack Sparrow. The couple in front of us giggled every time Kinsey called out, "Yay! It Jack Sparrow!" Whatever works, right folks?

When we got off of Pirates we realized it was time for our Big Thunder mountain Railroad fastpasses. We be bopped our way over because we only had about 4 minutes left in our window. Because Hubby had gotten to ride tower of terror the day before and I hadn't we decided I would get the first ride this time. We got to the start of the fastpass line with literally one minute left in our window. And there stood two women a third of the way up the line (with no one in front of them) just standing there talking. I said excuse me. No response. Boogie said excuse me. No response. Boogie said , "Please let me by!" No response. At that point I said, "sorry Hubby you'll have to take care of the scooter." and shoved it to the other side of the rope and began ducking the ropes to get up there in time. Those women never acknowledged our pleas to get by but they sure managed to give us a nasty look about ducking under a rope to get around them! And for the record I saw three more groups have to do the same thing because those women continued to stand there in line.

They either weren't real bright or they were real... anyway, moving on.

When I got back from my wild train ride Hubby was super mad. He apparently ran over his own foot trying to move the scooter.

I think he was scared to try and drive it for the first time with so many people around looking at him. Alas, we had another fastpass to catch over at space mountain so he hobbled on over with us. We got there in plenty of time this time around! Now, even with a fastpass this line always seems to take forever so instead of trying occupy the babies with peekaboo for 20 to 30 minutes I said I would take them on the TTA. Well, this was the one cast member who would not allow my hubby to get the ride swap fastpass without interrogating me and since I wasn't about to carry the babies from TTA to space mountain again we just let that one go. It's not really a complain just a warning to other people. Some cast members are sticklers!

Oh well. To TTA we go...

UberPlannerMom · Mar 11, 2014

I think so! They even let us stay on for a second ride!

Brad's stamp of approval.

We finally got the call that Boogie and Hubby were done so we disembarked and made our way towards the exit for the day. We had dinner reservations to get to. It was 5:50 and dinner was at 1900 Park Fare at 6:40, think we can get there?

UberPlannerMom · Mar 16, 2014

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this. Boogie had another dance competition this weekend so he was my focus. I'll try to knock out the rest of day 2 here in just a minute!

FlaggNL · Mar 19, 2014

hej there... can't wait for the rest of your TR

Hope Boogie had a good competition LOL

UberPlannerMom · Mar 19, 2014

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014 continued- Downswing again

So, when we left off we had a full 40 minutes to get to 1900 Park Fare from Magic Kingdom. Surely we can go from Magic Kingdom to a Magic Kingdom resort, right? Turns out the answer is no.

We zoomed to the front of the park to monorail over. Nope, monorail was still closed and wouldn't reopen until 7 pm. OK, no problem. We'll just take the boat launch over. Nope, no ECVs on the boats. I offered to leave my scooter at the park during dinner but hubby said no. That meant we were left with the bus. We have had horrible experiences with the bus system before but we thought surely the bus service is better for the deluxe resorts. It took about 25 minutes for a bus to arrive. We loaded up without much incident and headed off. I was very surprised to discover that the bus had to service all 3 of the monorail resorts. That still seems crazy to me. Anyway, somewhere along the way I mentioned to my husband that the bus seemed to be leaning and he agreed. A little further on and we noticed that the bus would make a pretty awful rubbing noise at every turn. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what was going on? Yep, our bus had a flat tire. The driver stopped and talked to someone about it for about 10 minutes... and then continued to drive on it! Finally we were dropped off at the Grand Floridian. We were 30 minutes late!

But hey, who cares how late you are arriving when the line to check in is another 30 minutes? No, seriously- the line to check in was huge! Finally we got checked in and got in yet another line to have our picture taken. As we were waiting a cast member approached us and asked if I would be transferring out of the scooter for dinner. I said yes and received a simple ok as a reply. Then the cast member told my husband where to park the stroller. We had our picture taken and headed out to wait for our buzzer to go off.

Isn't my tiny Prince Charming adorable?

Rather quickly our buzzer went off and we headed in to claim our table. Then we had a huge problem. The way to get in for your table is the same as the way to get in to check in. No one seemed to understand that we weren't trying to cut in front of them for the check in line and they were far from single file. They actually took up the entire hallway. So, here I am in the scooter trying to get through a doorway where no one would actually move over no matter how many times I asked and said excuse me, etc. I tried to scoot through in this tiny little opening and was bumped into the door frame. Some people behind me offered to let me back up but that only got the scooter even more stuck. It had to be lifted to get unstuck. My hubby tried to get through to lift it but again no one would let him through. I felt mortified. There I was, stuck and with no way to get any help. I guess the embarrassment was a good thing because it gave me enough adrenaline to lift the dang thing myself.

Finally free we took our buzzer up to claim our table. The hostess looked at me and asked if I was going to transfer. Again I answered yes. She said, "oh." That was it. She just stared at me. And then she asked again. Again I said yes and this time I asked if I need to park it somewhere. Again she just stared and said oh. Then the chick turned and started seating the people behind us in line. I was already so mad. We were hungry. The kids were cranky. I was on the verge of a panic attack. And this woman is acting like she has no brain cells. When she came back from seating a group that was behind us she again asked if I was going to transfer. I said yes but someone has to tell me what you want me to do with this thing! Again she said oh and started to stare into space. I just turned and said to my husband, loud enough for her to hear, someone better tell me what is going on and make a decision right now or I am going to really get angry! Finally a totally different cast member came over and told me that if I want to park it I can just park it with the stroller. Was that really so hard lady? Ugh! We parked it and then had to get in the back of the line again. By the time we were seated I had already decided I would never eat here again!

And then...
we were inside the restaurant and everything was different. Our waitress was attentive. The food was yummy. Tons of people adored sweet little Kinsey. And the characters...

(Why can't these two have cute expressions at the same time?)

Kinsey was scared of Lady Tremaine until I told him she is only mean to girls who might take away a prince and loves little princes! She got quite a kick out of that!

Anastasia loved that Boogie knows her love story from the Cinderella sequels.

UberPlannerMom · Mar 19, 2014

At this point Boogie decided to start showing off for Drizella. He was dropping into splits and such and she would shriek and giggle. She even pulled Anastasia over to show him off to her.

When Cinderella came over Boogie was in full swing. Cinderella took him out into the main dining room and took him around to all the tables and showed him off. She even told Prince Charming that he has some work to do! Boogie loved it all though it made Kinsey sad to have his expected limelight stolen! Haha!

Brad didn't care too much about the face characters (we are in the stranger danger phase) but boy did he like the sushi!

When dinner was over we had plans to watch wishes and the electrical water pageant from the beach of the poly. Well, we had long since missed wishes due to all the bus and line issues and we had no time to head to the poly for the pageant so we just got on the monorail to head to the van. We actually did get to watch the water pageant from the monorail. We were pretty far away but the boys didn't mind. All they could see was the back of their eyelids!

We headed back to the hotel and hoped to call it an early night. Yeah, not really an early night. When we got back to the room we discovered that mousekeeping must have been mad at us. Now, I fully admit that we left the room that morning in the worst shape we have ever left a room. We absolutely did. After the night we had had we were lucky to be upright, ya know? Anyway, mousekeeping responded by making the beds and then just dumping stuff on them, even switching which beds had what on them. I spent about an hour trying to straighten things back out. At least the room was beautiful and completely moved into by the time I was done. :/

FlaggNL · Mar 20, 2014

Thanks again for sharing! Love the pics inside the restaurant! And excepty the stephmother every character with a nice smile

joshsprincess921 · Mar 20, 2014

loving this report! What cute kiddos!
Oh and I busted out laughing mid-coffee sipping at the clothing malfunction! Poor thing, haha

UberPlannerMom · Mar 20, 2014

FlaggNL said:
Thanks again for sharing! Love the pics inside the restaurant! And excepty the stephmother every character with a nice smile

Thanks! The characters at 1900 Park Fare really are great!

joshsprincess921 said:
loving this report! What cute kiddos!
Oh and I busted out laughing mid-coffee sipping at the clothing malfunction! Poor thing, haha

Someday Brad is going to hate me for that, at least he isn't a girl! Haha!

UberPlannerMom · Mar 20, 2014

Wednesday, February 26th, 2014...
Wednesday morning I was up before the alarm. Why, you ask? Well, after Monday's spectacular failure I was determined to get Boogie signed up for Jedi Training Academy. I was up and moving in time for us to get to rope drop super early. We were gonna make it! And then my hubby did his normal thing... he squirreled. Oh no! Next thing I know we are back to rushing to try and make it to rope drop. We got to opening just in time but that dang double stroller always slows us down in the crowds. So what does a determined mommy do?

I turned up that ECV to the jack rabbit setting and told Boogie to keep up! I felt like I was driving a go cart! That thing really can go when it needs to! So Boogie and I zoom zoom zoomed and we (dun, dun, dun) made it! The line was already exceptionally long but at least we made it into the line! I saw when my hubby arrived and they had started turning people away so I am glad I left him in the dust. We took the earliest time offered- 11:30!

Obviously we had a few time before check in so we decided to see what had a short line this morning. To my dismay, it was Rock n' Roller Coaster. I have to be really honest here. I am a big girl. I honestly don't have a realistic idea of how big I am I guess because I have suffered from anorexia in the past so sometimes I see myself as much larger than I am (I have been told) but just the same I have this constant fear that I am not going to fit somewhere. Since I had never ridden rock n' roller coaster before that fear was sitting in the pit of my stomach. I felt it gnawing at me... so I pushed through it.

Boogie and I rode standby since there was no line and grabbed a rider swap fastpass.

A first for both of us!

Then it was time for Hubby to go but it was still walk on so we held on to our fastpass. While I was riding with Boogie my hubby had promised Kinsey some popcorn except he didn't want to get him the gourmet popcorn. He left me to find some. First of all, I had no idea how to drive the ECV and push the stroller so I walked. I'm capable of that, usually. Well, it didn't take me long to learn two things. 1.) the lack of sleep was really making me have some fibro issues 2.)the popcorn carts aren't open until close to noon! So yeah, Kinsey ended up with gourmet popcorn. Haha!

Hubby's turn!

Finally the line had started to appear- but we had a fastpass still so score!

Can you tell we really liked it?

Boogie was shocked to find out his mommy grew up as a coaster junkie. It really makes me wish I could figure out how to get this weight off so I could take him to all my favorite coasters from my childhood! (Between the old anorexia issues, PCOS and fibromyalgia my body is pretty messed up in that arena though.)

We decided we should make our way over to the check in area so we were right on time. When we got over there we discovered that Star Tours had a 10 minute standby! Hubby was pretty sore about not getting a second turn on Rock n' so he went with Boogie. The standby turned out to be a little longer than 10 minutes so there wasn't time for me to go after but no problem.

Hubby left me with the babies out by the penny press near Indy. It didn't take long for a line to form around the penny press so I had to get out of there. But how could I move both the stroller and the ecv? I couldn't just push the stroller and leave the ecv in everyone's way and I couldn't go back for the ecv and leave the babies alone... Soooooo... I grabbed the side of the stroller strong man style and steered it while driving the scooter. It was a little difficult at first but eventually I got pretty good at it.

After star tours it was time to check in for Jedi training Academy. When we signed up we were told to get there 30 minutes early. I thought perhaps it was so they could go over a bunch of stuff. Nope, it's just so that they can be sure everyone shows up. It was difficult for the babies to just sit there for 30 minutes waiting for other people to show up. I think next time (when Kinsey will be old enough) we will plan for that issue. Hubby managed to make it work by promising Kinsey that if he was a very good boy then he could get a Mickey lightsaber. Kid was seriously perfect from that point on!

During our waiting the cast member started doing trivia with the kids. He asked some corny questions and some "trick" questions and such. Eventually he asked a space balls question. My kid was the only one who got the answer and the only one who even got the reference! Winning! Haha! Finally it was time to head outside and wait our turn.