the EIGHTEEN years, TEARS, CHEERS & Hurricane FEARS TR About This Page:

[tinker_me_happy]

This is my preamble of my long awaited TR! I shortened the name a bit to fit the the title section better. The full title would have read something like this:
The "It took us Eighteen Years to get to Disney World, and we had some TEARS, some CHEERS and some HURRICANE FEARS Trip Report!
While I patiently (ha!) wait for my pictures to download to my home computer I thought I'd at least get started with a few basics.
If you want the whole history behind why it took us 18 years to get to Disney, you'll have to go back and read my pretrip report, but for those of you who just want the synopsis, here it is: Kids took lots of individual trips, mom worked REAL hard to pay for them, we never took family vacations before this, mom FINALLY put her foot down and said "We're GOING to DISNEY!" Ok that's it in a nutshell! (But the PreTrip Report definately is more interesting!)
So here is the cast of characters (really we ARE a bunch of characters!) who went on the trip:
Karen and Jeff (aka Mom and Dad) Karen's 2nd* trip to WDW, Jeff's FIRST TRIP!! (*There's some explaining to do there, but I will get to that later)

Alicia 18 - she graduated High School (#1 in her class I have to add just cuz I'm so proud of her!) this past June. Her Second trip to WDW. Oh and in case you can't guess where she will be attending college (move in day on Thursday ) She will be going to Hofstra University on Long Island NY! Honors College as a Bio-Chem Major! (Yea, she's a geek, but a cool geek!)

and last, but hardly least, my two favorite boys Evan 16 who starts his Junior year of high school Tuesday and Corey 19 (aka Grumpy - you'll soon learn why!) who starts his Junior year of College next week - also working on trying to change his major for the third time - at least he knows what he DOESN'T want to do!
oh and in case you are wondering NO that is NOT an alcoholic beverage in the hands of my underage child!! Seriously he WAS JUST HOLDING IT FOR ME!!

[B.M.]

Great start, hurry back with more.........

[MaryEL8775]

hurry hurry i dont think i can wait for another installment but i will try lol....

[chezp]

Great start!

[lakelandcallsme]

Read the pre-trip and the live report can't wait for the full report!!

[DrDolphin]

Great start!!!

[Minnie Lor]

I got hooked on the LIVE reports, had to go back and read the Pre-TR, and now I'm looking forward to more of the post-TR. Bring it on!

[tinker_me_happy]

WARNING!! There is a reason that "tears" comes first in the title of the TR. I promise it DOES get better!
Day One: We live in South Central Massachusetts and have a choice of several airports within a couple hours drive. I chose Providence RI in part because it is the closest, and in part because that is where we got the best airfare. Before the trip I had to decide if we would leave from home for our 6:30 am flight (which meant leaving the house at 3:15 am!), or if we would get a room at an airport hotel and do the sleep/park/shuttle thing. Given the fact that we would probably NOT really sleep much anyway, paying to stay close to the airport didn't make sense. It is only about a 50 minute ride so we left home at 3:15am. Of COURSE I went to bed about midnight and got up at 2am to shower. I think Alicia slept for 45 minutes. Evan and Corey didn't sleep at all. And I know Jeff was in bed next to me, but how much he ACTUALLY slept, I can't be sure. So when it was time to go, EVERYONE was TIRED and CRANKY. Now one thing about Alicia and Jeff... They are VERY MUCH alike. So much so that they think they are Nothing alike at all ! HA! And because they are so much alike, they get on each others nerves A LOT! Especially when they are tired! Can you see where this is going?
YES we haven't even left home and there is fighting going on. Honestly at this point I have totally blocked out what they were fighting about, because it was something absolutely ridiculous. And because the two of them are fighting Corey is grumpy oh... and TIRED~! Have none of these people heard of sleep? Apparantly NOT! Oh well, not to worry too much, we get the car packed... well I got the car packed - even though my intention was to pack it the afternoon before, Jeff decided not to pack his stuff until 11pm! So with car packed and fighting over who gets stuck in the middle of the back seat done we finally hit the road.
Getting to the airport from my house is pretty easy, but Jeff insists on having written directions. Ummm I get car sick reading street signs people, I'm not going to be reading no written directions! Fight # 3 when I don't read the paper to tell him to get on 95 south (even though we are now ON 95 south!). The airport exit sign is in front of us before he can finish complaining!. UGH Am I going to have to spend a week like this?????
I know it is hard because everyone is TIRED (yes there is a theme running here) and once we take off and they sleep a little it will be better! We get into the airport and I tell Jeff to park in Garage C - not worth going into the verbal scuffle or how many times we drove around the outside of the airport to get into Garage C (I will admit I was hesitant at first in choosing between Garage B & C - give me a break, I was tired too) But we did manage to park the car, walk 6 billion miles with luggage in tow and find the terminal with no blood shed! As we approached the terminal there is an outside place to check your luggage for SWA. At the time of day we arrived there is only one attendant who was busy helping ONE person in front of us. I wanted to wait for the attendant to come back (YES A LIVE HUMAN PERSON PEOPLE!!) because I have been at that airport THAT early and flown THAT airline before. But JEFF insisted we go inside and stand in line and WAIT for the Southwest desk to open. Ummm... ok. Mr. Always Right has to have his way (just like Alicia - keep this in mind for future postings) So instead of waiting 5 minutes for the skycab guy to come back and get our bags xrayed and checked in we waited 45 minutes for SW counter people to open . On the bright side we were first in line. Okay, bags checked, we get through security with no further issues. Of course no one is talking to each other at this point either. Hmmm I'm REALLY looking forward to my Disney vacation that I've waited EIGHTEEN years for!!!!!
There is a Dunkin Donuts where I am expecting to buy everyone breakfast. Corey doesn't want to eat. Jeff wants to run off and look for a Starbucks. Evan and Alicia go with him while I wait in the painfully LONG line knowing there is NO Starbucks at TFGreen! (at least not at 6am!) They find their way back and Jeff has bought 3 waters. "Is one of those for me?" I ask. He KNOWS I drink A LOT of water. "No". He says "I didn't think you'd want one". . Alicia gets in line with me while the boys go back to wait with Corey and the carry-ons. I end up buying something for everyone because even though they said they didn't want anything NOW, in 60 minutes when we are flying over Delaware, they're going to be hungry! Guess what?? Everybody ate what I bought them (except Corey who was being exceptionally GRUMPY and said "I TOLD you I didn't want anything!") That child would STARVE before admitting it was ok to take something he didn't ASK for!

[tinker_me_happy]

No REALLY it DOES get BETTER!!!
We FINALLY get on the plane and once we take off something wonderful happens:


YAY!!! They FINALLY get some MUCH NEEDED SLEEP!

[Minnie Lor]

Oh my word. Glad everyone is getting some good zzz's. My DH starts stressing a couple of weeks before a trip. He gets a little testy and starts looking for a fight. Happens everytime.

From reading your LIVE TR, I know it gets better. More please.

[tinker_me_happy]

I think I may have dozed off for about 30 minutes during the flight, but for the most part I was awake during the flight. As we approached Orlando, it looked liked it was going to be a nice day, but as we landed, it was really pretty overcast . That's ok... I'm going to my happy place!
I have only been to the Orlando airport twice (once coming and once going last July) so I am not outrageously familiar with the layout, but remembered it enough to get us heading in the right direction for Disney Magical Express. Poor Man Jeffrey was APPALLED that I stopped and ASKED directions -just to be SURE we were actually going in the right direction!! Which of course we were! There IS of course a Starbucks at MCO, but it was on the furthest side from where we were. I was willing to wait so Jeff and Alicia could go get their beloved lattes (grumpy Corey aside) but they decided against it and wanted to "just get going". So off we trudged to find the DME area. Now a normal person would have just walked the extra couple of feet and taken the elevator, but me... . I had to go down the escalator. Oh and I should mention that I had the MOST luggage of all the carry-on stuff. Not because I had the most stuff. I was carrying on all the family stuff! But that didn't deter me from trudging down the escalator and if you have never been to MCO airport and tried to find your way down to the first floor let me just tell you : TAKE THE ELEVATOR!!!
The line at the DME check in was pretty long, but moved along at a pretty good speed. People were generally quiet and respectful and one of the CMs even joked around a bit when he saw a kid with a Universal "character" tee shirt on. I am a bit on the short stature side and the counters at DME check in are LONG. There was a CM waving to me, but I couldn't see him as he was pretty far down, and I was tired and spacing out a bit. I finally noticed him when he airplane waved both arms Honestly I think he was only trying to get my attention for about a minute! The other problem I had at the counter was the noise level. Even though people were pretty quiet, there were a LOT of people just talking. CMs talking to the people in front of them. People talking to each other in line. People in the waiting area talking to each other. Well it may not be much, but with my hearing problem, it made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to hear what the CM was saying to me. Add that to the fact that he had a lovely Jamaican accent. Very sweet but he might as well have been talking to me in Greek! I could see his lips moving and I knew sounds were coming out of his mouth, but none of it made any sense! I just nodded and looked like an idiot and followed his hand gestures and HOPED I knew what was going on. After gathering my fellow travellers, I followed the other people who I had seen finishing up at the original check in desk. I figured they must know what to do, even if I was clueless!

[MaryEL8775]

oh yeah I am lovin the pictures lmao...

[Dawn in Scotland]

Loving the family stuff - brings back many happy memories - not sure how remembering my children being tired and moody on holiday makes for happy memories but somehow it does.

[tammyd_rn]

Great start. Looking forward to more.

[Princess_Wantabe]

the TR! You have me