Monday 10-6-03
We got up at our usual 5:30am, and got showers. I ran over to the McDonalds in the Crossroads to get us some McDonalds, while everyone got ready. Today we would spend time down at the pool. Aidan loves the water, so we brought his blow up innertube for him to float around in. We headed down to the pool around 9:00 and grabbed some chairs. The pool is really nice. They have 1 large pool, a small pool, and a hot tub. It was all really nicely landscaped, and there was no one else around. The temperature was in the 80’s but the water was freezing cold, I guess they are not heated. After a couple of hours I was getting bored, not to mention going crazy from the oldies music that continuously played through speakers around the pool deck I just can’t sit in a chair all day in the sun. I decided that I was going to go look around at some of the Disney resorts, like AK lodge, and Wilderness lodge and come back. Well, everyone then decided that they wanted to go shopping instead, so we headed over to the Belz outlets on I-drive. I had been reading about Disney discount stores on I-drive on the internet, and decided to search for them. There are 3 malls within walking distance to each other. We went to mall #1 first, and found the Disney store, it had a lot of discounted items, and we ended up spending around $70 dollars. We then walked over to Mall #2, to the second Disney store. It was a little bigger, but basically had the same items as the other one. We spent around $40 here. We then headed back toward our hotel, it was around 5:00pm and we were getting hungry so we decided to eat at the Rainforest Café. There was hardly a line and we were seated within 10 minutes. Aidan was asleep in his stroller when we were seated. We ordered the blue crab dip for an appetizer, and some drinks. I had the mushroom/spinach foccacia sandwich. Karen had the barbecue roll up sandwich, and Deanna had some sort of salad. Add another round of drinks and our bill came to $78 including tip. Aidan began to wake up so I walked around with him looking at the animals and the fish tanks. We were seated right next to a gorilla and her baby, so Aidan stared at them intently when they began moving and making sounds. We shopped in the Christmas shop, and bought a few things. I also bought a bandana for our dog Bella Mia. It said “My human went to WDW and all they brought me was this lousy bandana.” I thought it was cute. We went to the homestore to buy some Mickey Mouse pewter drawer pulls for Aidan’s dresser. ($40 for 8) Karen’s cousin just had a baby and we saw a pillow that said “The princess has arrived”, and you can embroider the name, weight, etc. on the front of it. They said we had to go to the back of the Christmas store to have them do that, so we walked back there to see about getting it done. The castmember was really snotty with us, and told us that they can do it, but that they don’t like to do it. What was that about? I got into it with her, and then went back over to the other store that sold the pillow to complain, and told them that they might not want to send anyone else over there to have a pillow empbroidered, as the castmember doesn’t feel like doing it. Why advertise that the pillow can be personalized, if you’re not going to do it. Well no one seemed to care, so we went back to the hotel. Deanna called to check on her luggage as no one from Airtran had called her to update her. We needed to get her some more things until her luggage showed up. (toothbrush etc.) The lady at Airtran was very rude and still had no clue where her luggage was. They would reimburse her $25 a day, but it had to be missing for at least 24 hrs first. It was around 6:30 so we gave Aidan a bath, bottle, and put him to bed. My parents were going to come over and stay in the room with Aidan until around 11 or 12 so we could take Deanna to Pleasure Island. They arrived at 7:00 and we walked over to PI. I had a 20% coupon from a book that the hotel gives you when you check in, so it ended up being $51 for the 3 of us. Karen and I love the Adventurers Club, and decided we should go there first. The first show was fun, but there was alot of kids there so it wasn’t as funny as it usually is. The later it gets, and the more people have drank, the funnier and raunchier it gets. We then went to the Jazz club. We had never been there before, but we found it very nice. The lady playing the piano and singing was very good. We stayed for a drink and then went to the Comedy Warehouse. We had never been here before either, but we were pleasantly surprised. We knew it was kind of like “Who’s line is it Anyway”, but we never thought it was like this. It was so funny, I was falling out of my chair, I was laughing so hard. This is definitely our new favorite place on PI. We had to be back to the room in an hour or so, so we stopped into 8 trax and Mannequins for a bit on the way out. We were home by 11:30 and went to bed. We got a call from the front desk at 3:00am telling us that Deanna’s luggage had arrived from Airtran, even though we said not to call us and wake us up if it came in the middle of the nite. The weather today was sunny and 86.
Tues. 10-7-03
Today is Magic Kingdom day. We got up at 5:30am for our 7:00am PS at Chef Mickeys. We arrived at the parking lot, and came to the where you pay to park. Apparently if you get there that early they don’t charge for parking. Great, that’s $7.00 more I get to keep. Since we were the only ones in the whole parking lot we just parked in the first row near the TTC, and just walked under a tunnel and we were there. It was 6:50 and the monorails still were not running from the TTC. Finally after sitting in one for 10 minutes they left for the Contemporary, after making several stops to let employees off on their way to work at the Grand Floridian. There was no narration turned on in the monorail yet. We arrived at Chef Mickey’s at 7:20 and after the obligatory picture, we were seated. Aidan was mezmerrized, and was so excited that he couldn’t wait for a character to come by and see him. I think Chip came by first, then Minnie, Pluto, Mickey, and Goofy. They all kind of just said hi to him and posed for pictures, except for Pluto. He spent a large amount of time at our table with Aidan. Aidan was kind of shy at first but then he really warmed up to Pluto. He kept playing with his whiskers, and his nose. Then Pluto took Aidan’s piglet and began to play peek a boo with him, Aidan was having a ball. After looking at our picture, which we all agreed we didn’t care for, we paid our bill, $65 incl. tip and made our way to the monorail to go to Magic Kingdom. We waited at the gates for 10 minutes or so as it didn’t open until 9:00 am. The character arrived on the train and began to countdown. Once again Karen and I looked at each other and tears began to well up in our eyes. Luckily, I had sunglasses on so no one saw me. It’s sort of like that country song that is currently out “When tough little boys grow up to be dads, they turn into big babies again”. I forget who sings it though, but it gets to me everytime I hear it. They opened the gates and we went in. Adventureland was closed until 10:00 today so we walked to the right and into tomorrowland. The first thing we did was Alien Encounter. I waited with Aidan while Karen and Deanna went in, then we did baby swap and I went in with Deanna. This has always been one of my favorite attractions, and since they are closing it down next week and replacing it with Stitch, I had to ride it one more time. We then went to Buzz Lightyear, as Timekeeper and COP were closed, and only opened occasionally. We all loved Buzz. I managed to have the most points, because I somehow hit a volcano in the 1st room and got 40,000. I finished with 180,000.
Next was SM, we did baby swap, and the line was only 5 minutes. Since that was all that we wanted to do in Tomorrowland we headed over to Toontown Fair, to go through Mickey and Minnies house. We also met Mickey, Pooh, Tigger, and Eyore at the Judges Tent. It was around 10:30, so we headed into Fantasyland and rode the carousel. Karen taped me and Aidan riding it together, it was probably one of the greatest moments in my life, riding the carousel at WDW with Aidan for the first time. Mickey’s Philharmagic was next. They had all kinds of bleachers and plants and speakers set up in front, as Thurs. is supposed to be the Grand Opening. There was no line and we walked right in. Most of the feedback that I heard about this on the internet was not good. I thought it was really good, and would give it a 9 out of 10. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so I won’t say anymore about it. We decided to get some lunch at Pinocchio’s Villagehaus, as it was almost noon and we were starving. What a madhouse. I do like this place though, because of all the things on the bar that you can put on your hamburger. I could probably just make a meal out of the tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese. The total for lunch was $26.57 for the cheeseburger meals and drinks. There was one guy by us who was being an absolute ______. He was sitting at the table with his 2 little kids, while his wife was in line to get the food. He kept yelling at her at the top of his lungs, and ordering her to get this and that. If we weren’t at WDW I would have probably had a talk with him about how he was treating his wife and would have probably ended up punching him in the mouth. I honestly don’t know about some people. The civility of people in this country is almost non-existent anymore. Anyway, after eating lunch we got in line for Winnie the Pooh. We sat in our honeypots for 20 minutes, while the ride stopped, watching Tigger jump up and down, over and over and over. Next we went on IASW, I’m just glad this ride didn’t stop. I’m not sure what I would have done. After changing Aidan and giving him his bottle we went to the Haunted Mansion, where there was no line. I got in my own doombuggy with Aidan, where he promptly fell asleep through the whole ride. We then got Mickey bars and watched the Share a Dream Come True Parade from in front of the Liberty Tree Inn. The only thing I didn’t like was that we couldn’t hear the beginning from where we were at, when they sing the Share a Dream Come True song. We thought it was really cute when the characters pulled kids out from the parade route and danced and played with them. We both teared up again. After the parade we walked down to Splash Mountain and did baby swap on this also. There was hardly a line for this. Moved on to POTC and Alladins flying carpets. Wasn’t real impressed with the carpets, seemed kind of a cheap space filler for Disney. I got a Dole whip, because everyone is always talking about them on the boards. I didn’t think it was all that, and probably wouldn’t get one again. The park was closing at 7:00 today, and it was 5:30 now, so we walked to the front of the castle for Cindy’s Surprise Celebration. After the show it started to lightning and it started to look really dark out, so we headed back to the hotel. Today was Karen and I’s 3rd wedding anniversary. We wanted to have a nice dinner, by ourselves, but things didn’t work out that way, so all of us ended up going to Golden Corral. I hate Golden Corral. The service was horrible, people are rude and will run you over, and the steak was disgusting. I don’t even think I would call it steak. One thing that bugs me about these feed troughs is that parents let their 5 yr old kid take his/her plate up to the bars by himself, and he/she ends up making a huge mess, and mixing items together on the food bars. Oh well. It was pouring down rain, and we still had some shopping to do at Downtown Disney. We shopped for a couple of hours at WOD and came back to the hotel. Our flight was at 1:15 tomorrow, and I had to get the rental car back to dollar by 10:00 am so I was charged for an extra day. We got to bed around 11:00 and got up at 6:00. Aidan let us sleep in today (ha ha) The trip to the airport was uneventful, and we had a couple of hours to kill there, so we had some lunch at Sbarro. Deanna was on our flight to ATL, and then we split off and she went on to LaGuardia and us to Dayton. We got into Dayton around 4:30 where it was around 70 degrees. We got home with no problems at around 6:45.
We had a great trip. I would have relaxed a little more, but when you can only go for 4 days you feel like you have to squeeze as much in as possible. Our next trip will be in July 2004, and we hope to stay at least a week, relax more, and do some things that we’ve never done before.
Thanks for reading!
Brian
We got up at our usual 5:30am, and got showers. I ran over to the McDonalds in the Crossroads to get us some McDonalds, while everyone got ready. Today we would spend time down at the pool. Aidan loves the water, so we brought his blow up innertube for him to float around in. We headed down to the pool around 9:00 and grabbed some chairs. The pool is really nice. They have 1 large pool, a small pool, and a hot tub. It was all really nicely landscaped, and there was no one else around. The temperature was in the 80’s but the water was freezing cold, I guess they are not heated. After a couple of hours I was getting bored, not to mention going crazy from the oldies music that continuously played through speakers around the pool deck I just can’t sit in a chair all day in the sun. I decided that I was going to go look around at some of the Disney resorts, like AK lodge, and Wilderness lodge and come back. Well, everyone then decided that they wanted to go shopping instead, so we headed over to the Belz outlets on I-drive. I had been reading about Disney discount stores on I-drive on the internet, and decided to search for them. There are 3 malls within walking distance to each other. We went to mall #1 first, and found the Disney store, it had a lot of discounted items, and we ended up spending around $70 dollars. We then walked over to Mall #2, to the second Disney store. It was a little bigger, but basically had the same items as the other one. We spent around $40 here. We then headed back toward our hotel, it was around 5:00pm and we were getting hungry so we decided to eat at the Rainforest Café. There was hardly a line and we were seated within 10 minutes. Aidan was asleep in his stroller when we were seated. We ordered the blue crab dip for an appetizer, and some drinks. I had the mushroom/spinach foccacia sandwich. Karen had the barbecue roll up sandwich, and Deanna had some sort of salad. Add another round of drinks and our bill came to $78 including tip. Aidan began to wake up so I walked around with him looking at the animals and the fish tanks. We were seated right next to a gorilla and her baby, so Aidan stared at them intently when they began moving and making sounds. We shopped in the Christmas shop, and bought a few things. I also bought a bandana for our dog Bella Mia. It said “My human went to WDW and all they brought me was this lousy bandana.” I thought it was cute. We went to the homestore to buy some Mickey Mouse pewter drawer pulls for Aidan’s dresser. ($40 for 8) Karen’s cousin just had a baby and we saw a pillow that said “The princess has arrived”, and you can embroider the name, weight, etc. on the front of it. They said we had to go to the back of the Christmas store to have them do that, so we walked back there to see about getting it done. The castmember was really snotty with us, and told us that they can do it, but that they don’t like to do it. What was that about? I got into it with her, and then went back over to the other store that sold the pillow to complain, and told them that they might not want to send anyone else over there to have a pillow empbroidered, as the castmember doesn’t feel like doing it. Why advertise that the pillow can be personalized, if you’re not going to do it. Well no one seemed to care, so we went back to the hotel. Deanna called to check on her luggage as no one from Airtran had called her to update her. We needed to get her some more things until her luggage showed up. (toothbrush etc.) The lady at Airtran was very rude and still had no clue where her luggage was. They would reimburse her $25 a day, but it had to be missing for at least 24 hrs first. It was around 6:30 so we gave Aidan a bath, bottle, and put him to bed. My parents were going to come over and stay in the room with Aidan until around 11 or 12 so we could take Deanna to Pleasure Island. They arrived at 7:00 and we walked over to PI. I had a 20% coupon from a book that the hotel gives you when you check in, so it ended up being $51 for the 3 of us. Karen and I love the Adventurers Club, and decided we should go there first. The first show was fun, but there was alot of kids there so it wasn’t as funny as it usually is. The later it gets, and the more people have drank, the funnier and raunchier it gets. We then went to the Jazz club. We had never been there before, but we found it very nice. The lady playing the piano and singing was very good. We stayed for a drink and then went to the Comedy Warehouse. We had never been here before either, but we were pleasantly surprised. We knew it was kind of like “Who’s line is it Anyway”, but we never thought it was like this. It was so funny, I was falling out of my chair, I was laughing so hard. This is definitely our new favorite place on PI. We had to be back to the room in an hour or so, so we stopped into 8 trax and Mannequins for a bit on the way out. We were home by 11:30 and went to bed. We got a call from the front desk at 3:00am telling us that Deanna’s luggage had arrived from Airtran, even though we said not to call us and wake us up if it came in the middle of the nite. The weather today was sunny and 86.
Tues. 10-7-03
Today is Magic Kingdom day. We got up at 5:30am for our 7:00am PS at Chef Mickeys. We arrived at the parking lot, and came to the where you pay to park. Apparently if you get there that early they don’t charge for parking. Great, that’s $7.00 more I get to keep. Since we were the only ones in the whole parking lot we just parked in the first row near the TTC, and just walked under a tunnel and we were there. It was 6:50 and the monorails still were not running from the TTC. Finally after sitting in one for 10 minutes they left for the Contemporary, after making several stops to let employees off on their way to work at the Grand Floridian. There was no narration turned on in the monorail yet. We arrived at Chef Mickey’s at 7:20 and after the obligatory picture, we were seated. Aidan was mezmerrized, and was so excited that he couldn’t wait for a character to come by and see him. I think Chip came by first, then Minnie, Pluto, Mickey, and Goofy. They all kind of just said hi to him and posed for pictures, except for Pluto. He spent a large amount of time at our table with Aidan. Aidan was kind of shy at first but then he really warmed up to Pluto. He kept playing with his whiskers, and his nose. Then Pluto took Aidan’s piglet and began to play peek a boo with him, Aidan was having a ball. After looking at our picture, which we all agreed we didn’t care for, we paid our bill, $65 incl. tip and made our way to the monorail to go to Magic Kingdom. We waited at the gates for 10 minutes or so as it didn’t open until 9:00 am. The character arrived on the train and began to countdown. Once again Karen and I looked at each other and tears began to well up in our eyes. Luckily, I had sunglasses on so no one saw me. It’s sort of like that country song that is currently out “When tough little boys grow up to be dads, they turn into big babies again”. I forget who sings it though, but it gets to me everytime I hear it. They opened the gates and we went in. Adventureland was closed until 10:00 today so we walked to the right and into tomorrowland. The first thing we did was Alien Encounter. I waited with Aidan while Karen and Deanna went in, then we did baby swap and I went in with Deanna. This has always been one of my favorite attractions, and since they are closing it down next week and replacing it with Stitch, I had to ride it one more time. We then went to Buzz Lightyear, as Timekeeper and COP were closed, and only opened occasionally. We all loved Buzz. I managed to have the most points, because I somehow hit a volcano in the 1st room and got 40,000. I finished with 180,000.
Next was SM, we did baby swap, and the line was only 5 minutes. Since that was all that we wanted to do in Tomorrowland we headed over to Toontown Fair, to go through Mickey and Minnies house. We also met Mickey, Pooh, Tigger, and Eyore at the Judges Tent. It was around 10:30, so we headed into Fantasyland and rode the carousel. Karen taped me and Aidan riding it together, it was probably one of the greatest moments in my life, riding the carousel at WDW with Aidan for the first time. Mickey’s Philharmagic was next. They had all kinds of bleachers and plants and speakers set up in front, as Thurs. is supposed to be the Grand Opening. There was no line and we walked right in. Most of the feedback that I heard about this on the internet was not good. I thought it was really good, and would give it a 9 out of 10. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so I won’t say anymore about it. We decided to get some lunch at Pinocchio’s Villagehaus, as it was almost noon and we were starving. What a madhouse. I do like this place though, because of all the things on the bar that you can put on your hamburger. I could probably just make a meal out of the tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese. The total for lunch was $26.57 for the cheeseburger meals and drinks. There was one guy by us who was being an absolute ______. He was sitting at the table with his 2 little kids, while his wife was in line to get the food. He kept yelling at her at the top of his lungs, and ordering her to get this and that. If we weren’t at WDW I would have probably had a talk with him about how he was treating his wife and would have probably ended up punching him in the mouth. I honestly don’t know about some people. The civility of people in this country is almost non-existent anymore. Anyway, after eating lunch we got in line for Winnie the Pooh. We sat in our honeypots for 20 minutes, while the ride stopped, watching Tigger jump up and down, over and over and over. Next we went on IASW, I’m just glad this ride didn’t stop. I’m not sure what I would have done. After changing Aidan and giving him his bottle we went to the Haunted Mansion, where there was no line. I got in my own doombuggy with Aidan, where he promptly fell asleep through the whole ride. We then got Mickey bars and watched the Share a Dream Come True Parade from in front of the Liberty Tree Inn. The only thing I didn’t like was that we couldn’t hear the beginning from where we were at, when they sing the Share a Dream Come True song. We thought it was really cute when the characters pulled kids out from the parade route and danced and played with them. We both teared up again. After the parade we walked down to Splash Mountain and did baby swap on this also. There was hardly a line for this. Moved on to POTC and Alladins flying carpets. Wasn’t real impressed with the carpets, seemed kind of a cheap space filler for Disney. I got a Dole whip, because everyone is always talking about them on the boards. I didn’t think it was all that, and probably wouldn’t get one again. The park was closing at 7:00 today, and it was 5:30 now, so we walked to the front of the castle for Cindy’s Surprise Celebration. After the show it started to lightning and it started to look really dark out, so we headed back to the hotel. Today was Karen and I’s 3rd wedding anniversary. We wanted to have a nice dinner, by ourselves, but things didn’t work out that way, so all of us ended up going to Golden Corral. I hate Golden Corral. The service was horrible, people are rude and will run you over, and the steak was disgusting. I don’t even think I would call it steak. One thing that bugs me about these feed troughs is that parents let their 5 yr old kid take his/her plate up to the bars by himself, and he/she ends up making a huge mess, and mixing items together on the food bars. Oh well. It was pouring down rain, and we still had some shopping to do at Downtown Disney. We shopped for a couple of hours at WOD and came back to the hotel. Our flight was at 1:15 tomorrow, and I had to get the rental car back to dollar by 10:00 am so I was charged for an extra day. We got to bed around 11:00 and got up at 6:00. Aidan let us sleep in today (ha ha) The trip to the airport was uneventful, and we had a couple of hours to kill there, so we had some lunch at Sbarro. Deanna was on our flight to ATL, and then we split off and she went on to LaGuardia and us to Dayton. We got into Dayton around 4:30 where it was around 70 degrees. We got home with no problems at around 6:45.
We had a great trip. I would have relaxed a little more, but when you can only go for 4 days you feel like you have to squeeze as much in as possible. Our next trip will be in July 2004, and we hope to stay at least a week, relax more, and do some things that we’ve never done before.
Thanks for reading!
Brian
