Honestly, I don’t understand all the ins and outs of the
knowledge that comes with frequent Disney trips, but I am thankful to be able
to benefit from the knowledge. (Case in
point: the meal plan. I still don’t understand the rules, but, following
Leila’s direction, we stuck with out pre-paid food limits and I wasn’t out any
out-of-pocket money at all.
We had one major hiccup, but it wound up paying off. The
first morning, Leila and I went our separate ways so that I could catch up with
Dana, down visiting for Tom’s nephew’s high school graduation. That was such a
blessing on the timing; I had no idea she’d be down there when I planned the
trip and had failed in my attempts to get to Detroit.
So hanging out with Dana was definitely the highlight for
the first day, followed by the lowlight of trying to get into our hotel room.
Leila and I had checked in at 8 a.m., but the room wasn’t ready, of courses.
Since the transportation system took me from Disney Springs (what I know as
Downtown Disney) to the hotel before I could get to the Magic Kingdom, I
figured I’d check out the room first. It took longer than I expected.
When we arrived, we were told we’d be in building 39, but
the text message told us 3720, so I went to that room. These days, there are no
keys and all you do is press this watch band thing to the door and you get it.
It’s also used for food and tickets – kind of scary.
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| Where to properly sleep with the fishies |
Anyway, I went right into the air conditioning and
immediately noticed three suitcases that weren’t ours. That started the saga. I
called the front desk and explained that my key had opened the room they said
we’d get but someone else’s luggage was there. I was on hold forever and a day,
and right when the guy came back I was reaching for the remote control and the
phone fell and cut him off.
So I started over with another guy and went through it all
again. He told me they’d switched our rooms and to go to 3629 and he’d call me
there, so I did. It was a building over and when I got there, the key didn’t
work, so I went all the way back to building 37 and called again. I got a third
person, who told me to go back to the other room and a runner would be there to
pick up my watch band thingie in order to re-key it. This didn’t make a lot of
sense since they’d initially keyed it remotely, but whatever.
I headed over there and sure enough, a lady standing there,
greeting me with, “I’ve been waiting and wondered where you were.” Quite
exasperating, considering I’d been going back and forth between buildings, but
she let me in and then disappeared with my watch band thing.
Fifteen minutes later and texting Leila all the while, she
still wasn’t back and I called the front desk for the fourth time. They said
they’d just received the key (it’s a large place, I give them that) and they’d
get it back to me in another 15 minutes or so.
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| Bathroom privacy curtain scared LB to death |
By this time, it had become annoying since it was eating
into my Magic Kingdom time and getting dangerously close to FastPass time. I
mean, it was after 3:30 p.m. and I hadn’t even entered MK for the day yet. But
a quarter of an hour later, I got the key and ran to the bus stop, where the
next bus wouldn’t arrive until 4:04 p.m., according to the announcement board.
Leila messaged me and said go back to the room and call the
front desk and explain the FastPass thing. The whole point of the trip was to
enjoy Disney, and I was going to miss my well-thought-out-plans. I did that,
and the woman changed my FP for the one ride to be “open,” meaning I could go
at any time separate from my party with no expiration. She also had the gall to
tell me that I’d have no problem making my window, because once I got to the
park I’d just turn left – she’d made it from hotel to Thunder Mountain in 20
minutes, no problem. Of course, I am not her, am more familiar with Hong Kong Disneyland
than Orlando Magic Kingdom and, as of that moment, still sitting in a hotel
room on the phone instead of catching a bus scheduled for 4:04.
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| Refridge"arr"ator |
But I tried. I hung up and went back to the bus stop, where
it’d been pushed back to 4:19, but what can you do? I came and I got to MK and
found Leila, who’d gone through her own drama more successfully than me. She’d
lobbied in person and got the whole lot of FastPasses reorganized so that the
vacationing crew could stay together.
Fast forward to later that evening: We left the park
exhausted, but still not really understanding what had happened at the resort.
I mean, they switched our rooms for some reason, then gave us the runaround. On
the way to the rooms, Leila went to the front desk, where she tried to get
answers. Considering we’d checked in at 8 a.m., it was just bizarre that
somehow I lost about two hours of my life for something that could have been so
simple to do.
We never got answers, but we got an $80 credit to our
account to make up for the hassle. They also gave us extra FastPasses for the
following day, which saved me enough time to compensate for going from building
to building. So that was fair compensation.
Before we left the park that evening, we got another bonus.
Leila went to the FP area to check up on our FPes and noticed something was
askew. She asked the cast member to help, and in assisting us, he learned it
was LB’s birthday trip and my “between tours” time and he gave us an extra
FastPasses for that. So those turned out to be real bonuses.
I think in the end, we went standby on one, maybe two, rides
all weekend. I almost did the Star Tours ride standby when the line was only 10
minutes anyway, but right at the gate, a guy was standing there giving away his
FP, so I basically walked right on that one, too.
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| Chest of (dead man's) drawers |
The park – and many of the rides – have changed since I was
there last, like Pirates. That’s not how I remembered it. A couple others are
totally new, like a Toy Story thing in Universal. (Not to be confused with the
Buzz Lightyear one in EPCOT.) There’s also a Snow White roller coaster that we
did twice – once in the morning, and once during the fireworks.
Sunday, we took a third of a day or so and hung out at our
hotel, which was the Caribbean resort on property. We stayed in pirate rooms! I
loved it. I splurged on the room, I know, but when else am I going to sleep in
a pirate bed?
There was a pool and a splash pad. When we hit the pool, it
was closed for the time being, as it was being cleaned. (A little girl tipped
me off: “Someone poopied in the pool.”)
So we hit the splash pad, which was pirated-themed with a
broken ship-ish sort of thing in a tidal pool. Kids, all under 48 inches, were
everywhere, with parents kind of keeping a wary eye. I sat in the water to keep
an eye on LB, as her mom hung back in the hotel room for a little. It was great
fun, splashing around. Kids had water cannons and there were two slides. Bells
would ring, signaling that water would soon pour out of a couple places and as
the kids figured that out there’d be a mass storm to get in the line of fire.
Eventually, the poopie got cycled out and the big pool
opened up, so we rotated there. That slide was fabulous, and for adults, too.
It was a huge, dark and winding tunnel. LB and I did it twice each, with her
wearing a lifejacket the whole time. Sadly, lunch called so we had to abandon
ship (literally) to eat and then head back to Universal for the fun Toy Store
midway ride. It was my first introduction to that ride and I felt my 65,800
points was respectable.
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| Shower curtain |
We traded with the Jawa, one of whom managed to pickpocket
me, and saw the Star Wars exhibit. It was really cool, the way it was done.
They made it out to be something like a hall of fame. You’d see a display of
helmets and they’d be captioned something like, “Luke Skywalker wore this
helmet when he …” instead of something like, “The prop Mark Hamill wore in a
scene depicting …” They made it up like something that happened historically,
albeit a long time ago in a galaxy far away.
All trip, the food was darn good. Oddly, the most fantastic
dish was macaroni and cheese. Sounds bizarre, but it also had lobster, which
put it so far over the top it was incredible. I never knew mac and cheese could
be so good.
But we also had clams and shrimp, and I had salmon at every
meal that started after 11 a.m. We did two breakfasts in the Beast’s castle,
which had themed rooms you can’t see unless you eat there. The last day was a
character breakfast at one of the other resorts, where Leila and LB got to meet
Lilo and Stitch, one of their highlights.
The whole weekend was lots of highlights, really. I had a
blast. But now it’s over and a week from now I will be in Turkey. It’s getting
close.
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