This isn't REALLY Philly and Alicia's Last Dance Competition Trip Report - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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This isn't REALLY Philly and Alicia's Last Dance Competition Trip Report
This is my first attempt at a real trip report ( I have started a pretrip report for our upcoming Disney trip but I have no idea how to link it).
There are too many actual people on the trip so the main people I hang with are:
DD Alicia who turned 18 the day we left (June 26th)
Haley 12 1/2 - Alicia's "little sister" by friendship because evil Mother never got around to giving her a genetic one
Pauline - BFF and Alicia's other Mom (Haley's actual Mom)
Maggie 16 - one of Alicia's Dance team mates and Roomies on the trip
Lynn - Good Friend/ Roomie and Maggies Mom
There are several other girls that dance with Alicia that I will try to name as they show up in photos. In her immediate group are Alicia, Haley, Maggie, Chelsea, Courtney and Kelci.
Alicia Haley Maggie Courtney
I didn't really mean to hit the submit button... oops. OK, So This was Alicia's LAST dance competition (at least on that level). It was a Nationals level competition and was SUPPOSED to be held IN Philadelphia PA. We booked our hotel and were very excited about being right on Benjamin Franklin Parkway! A bit expensive, but right near all the wonderful historic sites. The venue where the competition is going to be held has unfortunately double booked ONE of the days, and we get bumped. No big deal, we are now moving to a smaller area just north of Philly. The theater looks nice, the area looks nice. We rebook a new hotel closer to the new theater, with a great savings per night! It is about 40 minutes to drive into Philly, so we will hopefully still get in to see the sights. Cancel the first hotel. Time does march on, and yes... you guessed it, so does our new venue. The theater where the girls were supposed to dance does not allow tap shoes. WHAT!!! HOW can you book a DANCE competition and not allow tap shoes in your theater?? Needless to say the competition people are now scrambling to find a new location. And we are all wondering if it is even worth going. I could just drop the whole thing, but it is her LAST chance to dance with these girls!! A final site is found - in New Jersey, just 15 minutes outside of Philly REbook the Hotel yet again, and hope that this will actually be our FINAL location!
Yup! New Jersey it is! Now for anyone from NJ please don't be offended, but Alicia was very disappointed. She did not want to be in NJ on her birthday. She was so excited about being in the heart of Philly that even when we originally moved to the outskirts of Philly she was bummed. But I must say the place we stayed was very nice. We stayed in a Marriott Residence Inn, 2 bedroom suite. There were several restaurants and shops nearby and the competition was about a 15 minute drive away. It took us 4 hours and 56 minutes to get to our home away from home with 2 "stretch" breaks along the way. We made really good time by avoiding the GWBridge and taking the Tappen Zee (my preferred route when driving south!) Pauline, Haley, Alicia and I were in one car (with me driving and in the lead)) and Lynn and Maggie were following in another car (with most of the stuff!).
Once we arrived and got settled in, we let the girls take a dip in the pool. Well, Maggie and Haley did, Alicia was a bit hoarse and not feeling great (a bit tired) and it was an indoor pool with about six billion children in it. (Okay only about 12, but when it is your 18th birthday, and your feeling run down which would you pick: jump in a small indoor pool with children or sit and chat with adults?) It was now about 5:30 and I was getting hungry. There was a pizzaria uno 2 buildings away so I opened up an invitation to anyone who wanted to join us for a birthday celebration dinner. a bunch of the girls/mothers said they would meet us at 6:15 and we left the pool area to change. Once everyone was ready we met in the lobby and headed over to Uno's. I walked with the girls ahead of me so we could sneak Alicia's birthday present over behind her. In all there were 13 of us for dinner. Though I wouldn't let her get ice cream for dessert (it bothers her stomach, but she eats it anyway!), Alicia had a great time! Sadly most of my pictures came out too dark.
For her present, we gave her a scrapbook of pictures from this past dance year both professional shots and snap shots. Pauline and I started with Nationals and our Disney trip from last year (the trip that started it all!) and had all the girls write her a note about a memory or funny story they had about her at dance. It was great! Coming up next, First day of competition, and feeling yucky turns UGLY
Great beginning!
Sorry to hear about all the venue-changing, and it looks (by your sig pic) that you got a chance to visit the City of Brotherly Love at some point during your trip. I can't wait to read more!
After we get back from dinner and head off to bed Alicia is flip flopping around and can’t get to sleep. She keeps complaining it’s too hot, which it’s not, but she sleeps with a hoodie on with hood up around her face because she is afraid of hotel sheets! So I tell her to stop being germ-o-phobic and take her hoodie off - which she does! Not just off her head, but completely off! I should have known right then and there that something was wrong! The next morning she wakes up early to get ready for competition and has a fever, disgusting cough, can’t talk (not for lack of trying, she is one VERBOSE human being!) and is blowing the most colorful green stuff out of her head. I like to describe it as Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts on family oriented sites, as my other description would gross out even the most hardy of medical personnel! And to top it off I hear in a very hoarse whisper from the bathroom…”Mom, I think I have a UTI” Welcome to Adult hood.
The hotel provided a lovely hot/cold breakfast buffet, but Alicia didn’t really eat much of anything. I grabbed a couple of things to bring with us just in case, finished packing our cooler with lunch stuff and we head off to find the site where the girls will be dancing.
We find the Auditorium with no problem. Even though she has a while yet till she has to dance, we get there early so we can support the younger dancers. I want Alicia to put on her make up and get her hair ready and stretch out a bit, but one of the mom’s grabs her and asks her to run her daughter’s solo. Olivia is very young for having a first solo and is suddenly very nervous. So Alicia puts on her game face, and takes Olivia into a quiet area to help her get ready! After some alone time with her favorite dancer Olivia is ready to go on stage! We had some very young Dancers compete solos, but they did great! Olivia is only 6! And Ari pictured below was 4 at Regionals, won Regional Mini Miss (Title part of the competition) - just turned 5 in May!
When the littlest ones were done, Alicia rushed off to get make up done, hair started, costume on, and get back in the auditorium in time to see the junior level dancers. She stretches on the floor while waiting and watching.
Finally it is her time to dance. She looks a little bit like the color of the Pillsbury Dough Boy – pasty white! Even with the stage make up!!!
The first dance she does is a solo and she is running for Title. Over all she does pretty good. She changed a little bit of the choreography – not sure if she forgot something or just felt she couldn’t do what ever was supposed to be there, but it looked pretty good. I went to meet her where she comes off the back stage area and she was crying. Usually if she is crying when she comes off stage it is because she thinks she did badly, but this time it is because it is because she felt like she was going to throw up. I told her she didn’t have to do her other two solos if she didn’t want to. “I don’t want to waste your money” she replied. To which I told her “I don’t care about the money, I care about you feeling better!” But she cared about dancing! So she persevered and got through the other two solos with the same crying and “I think I’m going to throw up” as after the first!
Coming Up: Duos and Trios oh my...
Shortly after finishing her last solo, it was time for the first awards ceremony. By this point I had gotten Alicia to eat a bite of a banana, drink a little bit of water and take some da-quil (generic equivilent). The Title portion of the competition would be awarded here as well. As it is impossible to compare an 8 year old dancer to an 18 year old dancer, they break it down into age categories as follows: Mini – 8 and Under, Junior 9 –12, Teen 13 – 15 , and Senior 16-18. I am very proud to announce that our studio won title in the Mini, Junior and Teen categories and poor miss sick Alicia was first runner up for Senior Miss! She is usually a very gracious loser and will congratulate the winner, but on this day she was half asleep on the stage. (though she did congratulate the winner later on in the competition!) When the awards were over, she came off stage and said to me “Mom, you know I’m not even the least bit upset about not winning. I’m just so happy I didn’t hurl on stage!!!” That’s my girl!
This is her Haley and Maggie. She was getting ready for duo/trios and looking at me like "are you kidding me!"
Of course she then burst into tears with the thought of all the dances she still had left to do that day. She is normally not a crier. She was upset about having to dance, not because she wasn’t feeling well, but because she felt she was going to let the other girls down! The next round of dances would be the duos and trios categories. Alicia had two duets and one trio. I was very concerned when her first duo was up as it usually knocked the wind out of her on a good day, but they had changed the choreography up just a bit before coming to the competition and I hadn’t seen any of the changes. I was very pleasantly surprised. The dance was with one of her good buddies Kelci and was to one of the songs from the musical Wicked “What is this Feeling”. If you haven’t seen the play or read the book, it is about the two witches (good witch from the north and wicked witch from the west) learning they will be room mates in school. I was very proud of the wonderful job she did! It went very well and the changes were perfect. She could actually breathe when she got off stage.
Next was a lyrical dance with her “sister” Haley. Those two are either dead on or horribly off. I was very fearful they would be awful! BUT they weren’t too bad. Alicia looked great, but sadly the day was catching up with Haley who hadn’t slept the night before and she was off quite a bit, but they pulled together and it looked pretty good. When they came off stage she told the back stage manager (who is always complementing them on their quick changes!) that he would be waiting a bit for her next dance or cleaning up some emesis (her word). He told her to take her time!
After a short rest she returned for her final dance for this part of the day which was a trio with Chelsea, and Kelci. It was an awesome modern dance to an acapella version of “Stand By Me” Again this dance either looks awesome or awful, and it was somewhere in between, but not by any fault of the sick one. Alicia can be very unforgiving at times and came off the stage feeling angry and exhausted and in tears AGAIN. Chelsea messed up the dance several times (which only the girls knew as they do several different parts, so the judges probably thought is was supposed to look like that). Alicia was mad because she was pushing herself to her limit and expected everyone else to do the same, not do less because “they might not do well since Alicia is sick”. Ah my daughter the perfectionist! At this point I knew it was time to take her out for a break!
I scanned this (and a couple others) from her scrapbook
I told the studio owner that we were going outside for Alicia to take a nap in the car and to call me when awards were done. Normally she would have a fit (all girls are expected to sit for awards) but she understood given the circumstances. Then I asked to her to text me when they were getting ready to start awards and if she was up to it we’d come in. We went out to the car and started it up for the AC (it was a roasting 90+ degrees with 100000% humidity). After the car cooled off I shut it off and just opened the windows. Normally the heat isn’t a problem and by now she was laying back resting and there was a nice breeze blowing through. A good 40 minute nap later, and before we had even gotten buzzed, Alicia was feeling better so we went back in just in time for awards.
Because they take the average ages of the girls, they fall into the teen age category. Alicia’s dances did very well!! Her Lyrical with Haley won 3rd overall Teen Duo/Trio and her Musical Theater with Kelci won 2nd over all Teen Duo/Trio. It actually tied in score with the 1st place over all Teen Duo/Trio but Kelci was also in that dance so it was judges choice as to 1st and 2nd place. With 6 down and 5 more to go, Alicia was finally getting a second wind…. Well I think maybe a first wind!
coming up next... five group dances and we finally see Philly!
Last edited by tinker_me_happy; 07-02-2008 at 12:32 PM..
I used to do quite a bit of stagecraft work for dance studios and troupes (I was an assistant stage manager when the USA IBC came to Jackson). My brother still does that kind of work.
Alicia is quite a trooper! I am very impressed! Is she going to try out for Disney, or did I miss that somewhere?
She was feeling so miserable she thought God was telling her to just give up on dance. She has had a very hard time with dance even though it is her passion. Multiple strains sprains and bruises (over 30 sprains to her ankles!) several broken toes, two broken foot bones and one fractured ankle bone that left her in some sort of casting device for 12 weeks with several weeks of rehab. Her plan for the fall is to double major in dance and bio-chem (if the schedule will allow) or minor in dance if the schedule won't allow. She will be entering college as a freshman with the same number of credits as most sophomores thanks to the 6 Advanced Placements classes she took in high school (yes she is a smarty pants - literally!). So that frees her up to take on a heavier load. She will know next week at orientation if she will be able to do it! And then NEXT May we go down to disney (Mother Daughter trip) after her first year of college - look out Disney College Program.........
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. She was so excited about being in the heart of Philly that even when we originally moved to the outskirts of Philly she was bummed. But I must say the place we stayed was very nice. We stayed in a Marriott Residence Inn, 2 bedroom suite. There were several restaurants and shops nearby and the competition was about a 15 minute drive away. It took us 4 hours and 56 minutes to get to our home away from home with 2 "stretch" breaks along the way. We made really good time by avoiding the GWBridge and taking the Tappen Zee (my preferred route when driving south!) Pauline, Haley, Alicia and I were in one car (with me driving and in the lead)) and Lynn and Maggie were following in another car (with most of the stuff!). 
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