There are times we take vacations with our families where we have wonderful times and can't wait to go back to experience more. Then there are times where you take a vacation and for whatever reason, you feel at HOME. You can exhale. Your goal changes from seeing things and experiencing things to just breathing and enjoying one another. For us, our past WDW trip became just that! The quest of attractions and short wait times became less important and instead the search for laughter, memories and just enjoying the little things became our focus.
This trip was planned after a hard long three years of taking care of both of my parents who became ill and passed away. During that time I also started and completed graduate school. The past three years my family has had to take a bit of a back seat to my parents and my schooling. So, we were going on this trip to reconnect, to play again and to just love our time together. My sister, who had never been to Disney and who helped me take care of my parents, decided to come along for the first half of our trip. That meant that we had to do as much as we could while she was there but when she left we would be able to slow down considerably.
Allow me to introduce my family...
Myself (Cat), DH (Rob) and DS (Jonah)
Then there's my sister... Mary.
We had a total of 11 nights planned (Wed, 10/25 - Sun, 11/5). The first seven night we stayed at Pop Century then after my sister went home we moved to an one-bedroom Savannah facing room at Kidani Village. We just had to get to Orlando....
The plan was to leave work about noon on Wednesday, however we had a tremendous fall storm the day before we left. Living right on the coast of Lake Superior we experience some wacky weather in the fall. We were having 60mph winds with 35-40ft. waves on the lake. School had been canceled that day due to the wind. What do you do when the wind is raging, trees are falling and you are trying to get ready to leave the next day for WDW? You use up whatever food is left in the house and put on The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - Happy Windsday!
The next morning we woke up to major damage in our neighborhood. However, we were very lucky. Our block was ok, school was back on and we were ready to head to Walt Disney World!
After a good busy day at work, we all hopped into the van and went to pick up Jonah from school and head out to the airport.
We were lucky that all the flights were on time and scheduled to depart. Flights went smooth and the magic started when we got on our connection from Detroit to Orlando. Rob surprised us with Delta comfort. Extra leg room? Umm, yes! This 6ft. woman was so happy! It was late night (we got in about 11pm) but everyone was doing well and we were so excited to be back HOME.
We had a great ride to Pop, but were amazed at all the construction happening on property. We had done online check-in so we didn't have to stop at the lobby so that made things really quick. We did use Touring Plans "Room Finder" and requested a certain room. It worked! We didn't get the exact room we asked for, but it was only like two doors down. Thank you Touring Plans! We did ask for a joining room however OR a room close to Mary's. We weren't able to get that though. She was on the other side but not extremely far away. We dropped our things off in our room and brought Mary over to hers. It was time for bed... we were going to try to sleep in, but something told us we would be too excited to sleep.
Coming up.... Day One - turkeys on property, some tears and Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.
This trip was planned after a hard long three years of taking care of both of my parents who became ill and passed away. During that time I also started and completed graduate school. The past three years my family has had to take a bit of a back seat to my parents and my schooling. So, we were going on this trip to reconnect, to play again and to just love our time together. My sister, who had never been to Disney and who helped me take care of my parents, decided to come along for the first half of our trip. That meant that we had to do as much as we could while she was there but when she left we would be able to slow down considerably.
Allow me to introduce my family...
Myself (Cat), DH (Rob) and DS (Jonah)
Then there's my sister... Mary.
We had a total of 11 nights planned (Wed, 10/25 - Sun, 11/5). The first seven night we stayed at Pop Century then after my sister went home we moved to an one-bedroom Savannah facing room at Kidani Village. We just had to get to Orlando....
The plan was to leave work about noon on Wednesday, however we had a tremendous fall storm the day before we left. Living right on the coast of Lake Superior we experience some wacky weather in the fall. We were having 60mph winds with 35-40ft. waves on the lake. School had been canceled that day due to the wind. What do you do when the wind is raging, trees are falling and you are trying to get ready to leave the next day for WDW? You use up whatever food is left in the house and put on The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - Happy Windsday!
The next morning we woke up to major damage in our neighborhood. However, we were very lucky. Our block was ok, school was back on and we were ready to head to Walt Disney World!
After a good busy day at work, we all hopped into the van and went to pick up Jonah from school and head out to the airport.
We were lucky that all the flights were on time and scheduled to depart. Flights went smooth and the magic started when we got on our connection from Detroit to Orlando. Rob surprised us with Delta comfort. Extra leg room? Umm, yes! This 6ft. woman was so happy! It was late night (we got in about 11pm) but everyone was doing well and we were so excited to be back HOME.
We had a great ride to Pop, but were amazed at all the construction happening on property. We had done online check-in so we didn't have to stop at the lobby so that made things really quick. We did use Touring Plans "Room Finder" and requested a certain room. It worked! We didn't get the exact room we asked for, but it was only like two doors down. Thank you Touring Plans! We did ask for a joining room however OR a room close to Mary's. We weren't able to get that though. She was on the other side but not extremely far away. We dropped our things off in our room and brought Mary over to hers. It was time for bed... we were going to try to sleep in, but something told us we would be too excited to sleep.
Coming up.... Day One - turkeys on property, some tears and Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.
