Updated Oct 23/"Um, where are my shoes? WHERE ARE MY SHOES?!" Our first trip & report! August '18

Chapter 2: "Are we ever gonna get there?"

On Thursday, August 16, Hubs and I decided we were definitely not canceling our trip. I spent most of the day doing laundry, cleaning up around the house, and packing our suitcases. I had a huge packing list I created with help from other Disney packing lists online, so we were sure not to leave behind anything essential.

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Gang's all here!

Originally, we were going to fly to Disney, but after doing all the math, we came out ahead by driving down.

"It'll be fun!", I said. "We wanted to rent a car down there anyway, so now we'll have our own. Plus, we'll have free parking at POR since we made our reservation last year."

"Ok!", said Hubs. "This idea is the best you've ever had! Plus think of how much 'me time' I'll have sitting up front alone, while you're in the back, reading and taking naps! Let's do this!"*

(*exact conversations have been edited for content)

We had decided that our Suburban had superpowers that would allow us to get to Orlando from Minnesota in two days...


which we learned, IS TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE.....


you know, because it was about 22 hours, according to Google Maps....


So we were thinking, oh 12-14 hour days, ok we can do that....


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Yeah...about that...we knew we'd have to stop for gas and food. We just forgot to figure in 1) losing an hour when going into EST from CST, 2) all the rain in Appalachia, and 3) that apparently, driving through Tennessee means you're driving up a mountain for half the state. We've driven across the country, from TX to CA, then from CA to TX, then from TX to MN....but man...this was a HARD DRIVE.


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They didn't notice though! We packed lots of movies and toys and books, and Hubs listened to books on his bluetooth.
This is my view from the back.

Oops.

I mean, this was my view from the back:

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Tennessee, while a beast to drive through, was far more scenic through my window than Wisconsin and Illinois #sorrynotsorry, where all I saw was...the sky. I'd post a pic, but if you look at the grayish-blue part of the picture above, you'll get the idea.

So for our first day, we decided to drive as far as Murfreesboro, south of Nashville, so we would miss the morning traffic the next day. We got there at about 10 pm and basically went straight to bed.

The next day - August 18 - we wanted to be on the road by 8. Which means, we were on the road by about 8:30. Our plan that day was to get to Orlando by dinner time. We were staying with my aunt that night, and estimated we could be at her place between 6-7 pm if we kept our stop short.

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Do I even need to tell you that didn't happen? Because obviously, that didn't happen. We texted with my aunt all day, and didn't end up getting to her place until after 9. We had told her, when we realized, we wouldn't be there for dinner so she didn't wait for us.

Since we didn't have to get up early the next day, we showed the kids some old family photos before putting them to bed, then stayed up chatting before finally turning in after 11. We were super excited about checking in the next day!!!!



 
I'm along for the ride! (If there's room because evidently you hogged the whole back seat.) Love your style of writing! :sunny: Wow, that's some major pre-trip drama--hope all is well with your FIL.

I'm also curious to see how things went with you and the back situation. I went to WDW last December with back/leg issues and it was AWFUL--just gutted it out the whole trip because I didn't want to disappoint anyone --and no pain meds except OTC. :crutches:
 


Hope you enjoy the rest!:hmghost: (My kids are reading this and chose the HM emoji for you!):dancer:(Ok they chose this one too!)
My youngest, Gwen loves that silly dancing guy as well!

"Ok!", said Hubs. "This idea is the best you've ever had! Plus think of how much 'me time' I'll have sitting up front alone, while you're in the back, reading and taking naps! Let's do this!"*

(*exact conversations have been edited for content)
Ha! I can imagine the "extras" in here.

Yeah...about that...we knew we'd have to stop for gas and food. We just forgot to figure in 1) losing an hour when going into EST from CST, 2) all the rain in Appalachia, and 3) that apparently, driving through Tennessee means you're driving up a mountain for half the state. We've driven across the country, from TX to CA, then from CA to TX, then from TX to MN....but man...this was a HARD DRIVE.
That is a lot of driving! I don't think we could ever drive to Florida. I think the girls would be ok but not the adults!

Do I even need to tell you that didn't happen? Because obviously, that didn't happen. We texted with my aunt all day, and didn't end up getting to her place until after 9. We had told her, when we realized, we wouldn't be there for dinner so she didn't wait for us.
You made it! That is what is important! I am impressed! I thought you were going to say that you had to find a hotel somewhere.
 
Following along too!

"It'll be fun!", I said. "We wanted to rent a car down there anyway, so now we'll have our own. Plus, we'll have free parking at POR since we made our reservation last year."

"Ok!", said Hubs. "This idea is the best you've ever had! Plus think of how much 'me time' I'll have sitting up front alone, while you're in the back, reading and taking naps! Let's do this!"*


(*exact conversations have been edited for content)
I dunno, seems pretty legit to me!
 
I'm along for the ride! (If there's room because evidently you hogged the whole back seat.) Love your style of writing! :sunny: Wow, that's some major pre-trip drama--hope all is well with your FIL.

I'm also curious to see how things went with you and the back situation. I went to WDW last December with back/leg issues and it was AWFUL--just gutted it out the whole trip because I didn't want to disappoint anyone --and no pain meds except OTC. :crutches:

Let's see...there might be some extra room on top of the suitcases! ha!

The medicine my doctor gave me REALLY helped. That, and adrenaline of being at Disney!
 


That's quite a drive! The first time my wife and I went together, she wanted to drive because she had never flown. Needless to say, after only the 14 hour drive from here in WV, she was ready to fly next time. Funny enough, no matter where we go now, she wants to fly. Her tolerance for a car ride now is about 1-2 hours max.
 
That's quite a drive! The first time my wife and I went together, she wanted to drive because she had never flown. Needless to say, after only the 14 hour drive from here in WV, she was ready to fly next time. Funny enough, no matter where we go now, she wants to fly. Her tolerance for a car ride now is about 1-2 hours max.

Yeah...we were pretty exhausted after it!

On board! Looking forward to the journey!

Welcome aboard!
 
Chapter 3: Aug. 19 - "Why aren't the boats running? It isn't even raining!"

Hello mes amis! Where did we leave off?

Oh yes. We made it to Florida. And more importantly, to bed.

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The morning of the 19th was the day we'd been waiting for: 0 DAYS UNTIL DISNEY!!!!

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We were so glad to be able to sleep in. I have no idea what time the kids woke up. I think it was after 9 when Hubs and I crawled out of bed and found them watching tv with my aunt. It was a nice slow morning, hanging out and getting ready. At one point, Hubs and I went to the grocery store to stock up for things we needed. We had decided not to do online check-in, since we needed to stop by the front desk anyway because we had a few questions. After forcing the kids to put away Legos and a memory game because we were, you know, GOING TO DISNEY, and dealing with a little whining because of that (like, seriously? You'd rather play a matching game than go to Disney...you couldn't have told me that $2000 dollars ago?!)....we packed the car back up, gave my aunt hugs and kisses, promised to text her throughout the week with plans to meet Saturday night for dinner, and drove the longest 20 minutes down the road to Disney!

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They were more excited once they got the All-Magical Bands to the Portal of Happiness on their wrists.

The route from my aunt's house was a back way to avoid the freeway (believe me, I checked Google Maps and it was still faster!). I did manipulate the map so that it would end up taking us through one of the big welcome arches, as opposed to the tiny one at Hotel Plaza Blvd, which was more direct. I didn't care. What's 15 extra minutes when you get THIS:

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I'm pretty sure this is when we all started screaming for real. After years of planning, we were finally here. I'd looked at the Google Maps street view so many times for all of our directions, that it had this weird sense of being familiar and yet surreal.

Finally we got to this:

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I wish I had something more sophisticated to say other than "This resort is so beautiful!"....but really, it's such a pretty resort. It felt like we were at an exclusive southern estate. Just beautiful. We parked our car and went into the lobby to check in. The kids immediately parked themselves in front of the kid's tv while we got our room assignment. I was secretly praying for an upgrade to a preferred room, but alas, we got a standard room in building 17, as we'd expected. The great thing? Well, even though it faced the parking lot, there were plenty of trees to block the view, which was nice. And since we were driving to the parks each day, we could actually see our room from the parking lot, so it was a quick walk down to the car and up to the room. Since we were planning to eat breakfast in our room each day, this suited us just fine.

We brought up all of our luggage (which would have made you think we were moving TO Disney World instead of just staying for 10 days) and unpacked while the kids took turns using their Magic Bands to open the door over and over. :rotfl:Then we kinda banished them to the balcony area to play while we finished. (Can you call it a balcony if you share it with 20 other rooms?) Our plan was to take the boat to Disney Springs that night for dinner, and around 6:30 pm we hit a wall with unpacking, so we decided to go. We headed out to the boat dock.

We got there....

and horror of all horror....

the boats weren't running.

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They said it was because of the "weather". Something about "lightening" and "thunder."

I didn't take a picture then, but basically it was sunny with one lone light gray cloud in the sky.

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Well, fine then, boats. Be closed like that. We didn't want to ride you anyway!!!*

*(except for that whole, staying at POR because of the boat to Disney Springs thing.)

Whatever. It was fine. We had a backup! Disney has buses. So there.

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So we headed to the buses. I was really excited to see that the bus stop had a board with wait times on it! We only had to wait...20 minutes?! Wow, that seemed kinda long for a place that was just around the corner from us. But, whatever. Now it was the principle of the matter:

Get.to.Disney.Springs.for.dinner.even.if.Disney.transportation.fails.us.

Yeah. After like 10 minutes, Hubs turns to me and says, "Um...so you see those really dark clouds over there? Maybe we should...stay here and have dinner? After all, we didn't bring an umbrella with us..."

Ugh.

FINE, MURPHY. WE'LL STAY AT THE RESORT FOR DINNER THEN.

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I took this a few minutes later, before the heavens opened.

We went inside and decided to eat at Boatwright's instead of the food court. We ended up making a good choice to leave the bus stop when we did, because we were followed by a crowd of people looking for dinner too. Luckily for us, we only waited ~5 minutes for our table. I took the above photo while we waited. You could hear the rain on the roof inside the restaurant - that's how hard it was coming down.

We got our table and the menu looked really yummy. I was particularly drawn to the crawfish bisque and the cajun charcuterie board. Hubs picked out some fried green tomatoes (can't remember what else), and the kids were super excited that Hubs agreed to get them the first of their expensive, light-up souvenir drinks on this trip. #kids1dad0

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Look yummy, right??? Well unfortunately for me, it didn't sit well with my stomach. I'm not exactly sure what I ate that upset it, but sometime during the main course I just did not feel good. Hubs and I decided he would stay and finish the meal with the kids while I went back to the room - if I was gonna be sick, I wanted to be able to crawl into bed right away.

So they stayed to enjoy dessert #ripdessertforme, while I braved the rain and lightening to get back to the room. And I got lost in the process! In the dark. In the lightening. With all the lizards and wild animals. Eventually I made it to the room and started popping the Pepto tablets. I'd basically packed every kind of medicine and essential oil we had, so I also rubbed Peppermint on my tummy.

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I started to feel better, so took the opportunity to finish unpacking and get clothes set out for the next day before Hubs and the kids came back. I'd guess we were in bed by about 9:30, which was way later than I'd planned for the kids, considering our first day was going to be an early one, at Hollywood Studios.

Now, we just had to go to sleep, and wait for Rex to get there. Speaking of my big sis, earlier in the evening she had texted me that her plane was delayed, meaning she wouldn't even be LANDING until after midnight. She was going to have to stop by the front desk in order to get her Magic Band and set it up with her credit card. We arranged for her to text Hubs so that he could drive over and pick her up from the lobby when she got in....at like, 2 am. Poor things. The plan was to leave at 6:15 am for HS, which meant not a lot of sleep for us! (I'm a light sleeper and take Melatonin when at Disney to help with excitement and hotel noise, so I still woke up when she got there.) Bubs is also a light sleeper, so he camped out on the alligator-themed daybed all week (which he LOVED), while Boo got to snuggle with her auntie in the other bed.

I took one more look at our schedule for the next day...

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...and passed out for the night.

 
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The first Disney trip my wife, daughter, and I took was at POR. Words cannot state how amazingly beautiful it is there! We unfortunately never ate dinner at Boatwrights.

Sucks that you got rained out from going to DS. Taking the boat ride down is one of the best things about staying there, so hopefully you get lots of other chances.

Also, I hope you guys checked out YeeHaw Bob while you were there!
 
After forcing the kids to put away Legos and a memory game because we were, you know, GOING TO DISNEY, and dealing with a little whining because of that (like, seriously? You'd rather play a matching game than go to Disney...you couldn't have told me that $2000 dollars ago?!)..
I am glad to hear that this isn't just my kids. Sometimes when we go back to the room to rest they complain when I turn the tv off. Really? You can watch Puppy Pals anytme!

. I didn't care. What's 15 extra minutes when you get THIS:

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Def worth it!

npacked while the kids took turns using their Magic Bands to open the door over and over. :rotfl:
Ha! It is magical! We stayed at French Quarters last time and loved it. Might have to try Riverside soemtime.

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I took this a few minutes later, before the heavens opened.
It does look like you make a good choice! Those are some really dark clouds!


We got our table and the menu looked really yummy. I was particularly drawn to the crawfish bisque and the cajun charcuterie board. Hubs picked out some fried green tomatoes (can't remember what else), and the kids were super excited that Hubs agreed to get them the first of their expensive, light-up souvenir drinks on this trip. #kids1dad0
Could yummy! I love fried green tomatoes!
 
Reading along!

I laughed out loud at your “edited” quote from your hubs regarding driving. Too funny.
 
The first Disney trip my wife, daughter, and I took was at POR. Words cannot state how amazingly beautiful it is there! We unfortunately never ate dinner at Boatwrights.

Sucks that you got rained out from going to DS. Taking the boat ride down is one of the best things about staying there, so hopefully you get lots of other chances.

Also, I hope you guys checked out YeeHaw Bob while you were there!

It was just so gorgeous. I told my husband, let's stay here, it's prettier than home! Haha!

Unfortunately, we didn't make time to see YeeHaw Bob! Guess we'll have to plan another trip!

Oh the rain...stay tuned!
 
I am glad to hear that this isn't just my kids. Sometimes when we go back to the room to rest they complain when I turn the tv off. Really? You can watch Puppy Pals anytme!


Def worth it!


Ha! It is magical! We stayed at French Quarters last time and loved it. Might have to try Riverside soemtime.


It does look like you make a good choice! Those are some really dark clouds!



Could yummy! I love fried green tomatoes!

We only had the tv on a handful of times on our trip (like when we were repacking at the end and needed them to be occupied). It was amazing how they acted like they'd never seen it before!

Try Riverside! It is so peaceful and scenic!
 
I'm really enjoying your re love your style of writing. I can't wait to see what happens next.
 

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