Trip Report When WDW Became HOME.

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.

 

[catnrob]

Great report so far - you're descriptions are perfect!

Ash, Thanks!

 

[catnrob]

Just love, love your report. Your Sister's reactions are just great! It's so good to see other adults having some "kids" fun. My husband is 71 and I am 68 and we ride all the rides, and we are kids again at WDW! It's such a happy place to be. I'm so glad you got to go after your difficult couple of years caring for your parents, and going to grad school. Wow, that is so awesome and so much work. Can't wait to hear more. (I know about boy's ball schedules in the summer. Our grandson travels all over the state of Mn. which keeps us all busy)

It’s funny, when you live in the upper Midwest you have to cram 12 months worth of activities in the 3months of summer!

 

[catnrob]

Loving all of your pictures!! I need to go during the fall - it is just lovely. So glad your sister felt the way you feel about Disney

The fall is wonderful. First, the weather is great. Especially the end of Oct and the beginning of Nov. then you have Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival and the Halloween Party. It’s a great time!

 

[catnrob]

MNSSHP....

Now, about a month prior to us leaving my husband says to me, "You don't have to do this, but I'm going to meet some Liners (members of a disney forum called "Lines") during the Halloween Party. To quote Clark W. Griswald, "If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn't be more surprised that I am now." That was pretty much my exact thought at my husbands plans. All I could think of was us telling our son, Now don't ever meet folks that you talk to online except for this one time. In addition to that, I kept imagining that we would walk up to this family and they were going to be creep-Y! I mean, we didn't know them. Then it dawned on me... the spouse of the liner from that family is probably thinking the same thing of our family! I was able to tease my husband about his passtime for a long time, we got a lot of good laughs at his expense.

After we got off the train we all went to the lockers to get our costumes and went our separate ways to change. Rob had a Peter Pan shirt on and had made a green felt hat to wear, Jonah was a lost boy (we used some animal pelts that we got from CubScouts and sewed it to a shirt), Mary was an old lady Tinkerbell (as she called herself) and I was Mr. Smee (I had spray painted an old shirt of mine and Rob crocheted me a red scrunch hat). Our costumes were easy yet fun!

The boys headed to Tomorrowland to meet with the liners and Mary and I ended up meeting them all in front of Cosmic Rays. I will go on record to say - I was wrong! These liners were really nice! Normal, intellegent, and had social skills. I'm not sure what they thought of us but I thought they were a pure delight. We met them, talked a bit and then got some pics! I'm very happy we did that, and I will say again that I was wrong!!!!

Jonah even made a new friend...

It was time to eat and we had done a mobil order so it was time to head over to Columbia Harbor House. Man, do we love it there! Their lobster rolls are SO good!!!!! Rob and I got the lobster rolls, Jonah had the chicken nuggets and Mary and the chicken pot pie. Everyone was very happy with their meals.

After eating we were ready to partake in some attractions. We poured over the entire park.... we left very few stones unturned. Under the Sea, Dumbo, Magic Carpets, BTMR, The Cadaver Dans, The Haunted Mansion, Peter Pan, Small World and then we hit the wall... pure exhaustion!!!!!

So, we found a curb and sat down until the fireworks began. We were able to listen to the Villians Spectacular and finally enjoyed the parade. It was between the fireworks and the parade that we decided that if we were going to be able to keep going, we were going to have to slow down a bit. So, we decided that instead of getting up at 6am the next morning and hitting rope drop at Epcot, that we woudl sleep in a bit and take it slower. This helped us immensly and allowed us to keep going for the next 10 nights.

Our first day had been very long but full of so much fun, memories and cherished moments. We couldn't imagine how the days could get better. But, somehow they did....

 

[catnrob]

Friday, 10/27/17

Holy Smokes! Did the morning ever come quickly! Our plan B that we had decided upon the night before got changed again. We decided that we would still get up for Epcot rope drop (it's nutty to waste the low wait times for some sleep). Plan C was to get up for rope drop and then head back to Pop Century for lunch, rest and then head out to Hollywood Studios for dinner at Primetime Cafe.



Mary was at our room by 7:45am and we left right away for the bus, which was about to leave when we got there but they took pity on us and waited for us. Whew! Rope drop was great, I mean, who doesn't love the entrance music there? As we waited; we were chatting, laughing, getting excited, and even hugging because we were having such a great time together.

As soon as they allowed us to go in we headed over to Soarin. We had fastpasses for it but we were hoping that we could do standby and then go back on with our FPs. We hadn't seen the "new" Soarin yet and to be honest I wasn't blown away. The first time we went on it we were on the far end of the right section. Because of our location, we could see the curve in the image on the screen. So, everything was bent. It looked so odd. When we went right back on (using our FP), we were lucky to be in the middle section, and because of being in that section the images looked great. Some will say that you should just ask to be put int he middle section. But, I don't feel it's good quality of product when you are asking your customers to pay a LOT of money for a ticket to then position themselves in a certain way just to get an appropriate/accurate view. I think Disney could have done better on that one. Oh, and maybe they could add the orange grove scene...I really miss that smell. haha

We got off of Soarin and decided to head over to Living with the Land. Now, we had tickets for Behind the Seeds tour for later in the week, but we wanted to be able to go on the attraction since the wait times were so low. When we walked outside between the heat and the sun it was clear that a rest was a necessity in the not so distant future. But first, we needed to take a trip outer space so we had to forge on.

We had to trick her with the Beverly. haa

We hopped back ont he buses and headed back to Pop for some rest. Our beds and the pool were calling!

We all met at 3:45pm with Hollywood Studios in our sight!

Before going through the turnstiles, Bert was standing outside with a small crowd. Normally, when a character is working on the outside of the turnstiles it is because they are in training. So, seeing Bert I feel like I'm about to burst. He's one of the characters that I have always wanted to meet. If I can't meet Dick Van then I want to meet the character. So, I was SO excited to go over to him! I walked up and I turn and invite my sister to come with me. She comes over and realizes who it is and completely looses it. Now, 3 months prior when talking about the trip and about what she wanted to see she said, "I want to see characters. But, I'm not one of those crazy folks who will go all nuts about someone". Fast forward to Friday, Oct 27 at Hollywood Studios. My sister looses her freaking mind when it's our turn to meet him. I walk up to him first and offer him my hand and begin to say something. Then Mary just looses it! She starts to talk about how she loved watching him on Sunday nights on "World of Color", and how she never knew what color his suit was cause we only had a black and white TV. This poor college student on his first week as Bert just stands there with his mouth wide open and stunned beyond belief.

He recovers well and does a great job and keeping up with the insanity. I'm just standing there, trying to get a word in. If Mary had a coat, she would have thrown it at me and had me holding hit for her. I laughed at the whole thing and was just trying to protect the dear college sophmore who just wanted this job for the free tickets to the park and so that he could take a semester off without his parents having a fit. It was quite the experience. As we walked away, Mary was laughing and then stopped dead in her tracks and said, "Wait, I totally made that all about me". "Yup, you did", I answered. And we kept walking and laughing.

Because we got to the park early, we hit up Star Tours. Gosh, what a ride! Then we headed over to Primetime Cafe. The food was great! We didn't get the milkshake but enjoyed the entrys and cocktails. When Mary didn't finish her peas, our waiter Cousin ? (I can't remember his name) fed them to her while he was singing, "It's a small pea after all". Talk about a hoot!!!!!

All the times we had been to Disney, we had never been to Fantasmic. This was our chance. So, we headed over and found our seats. After Fantasmic, we were waiting to figure out the best way to get out of the park the quickest. I looked it up on my phone and found that the exit off front the bottom right hand side. We walked right out and down an alley. It was so quick and easy! A definite must if you've never gone that way before.

Next...Animal Kingdom - Pandora brings me to tears!