Tanner's WDW birthday surprise About This Page:

[Beth L.]

When: June 14th - June 21st
Who: Beth (45) Planner & evil early morning waker-upper
Bill (47) He of the open wallet and carrier of heavy things
Tanner (9 almost 10) The unsuspecting birthday boy
Why? Because it's a birthday surprise trip of course [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Prologue:

Thursday, June 13th: Never thought it would happen but after a 10 hour day, work is finally over, woo hoo!! Get home and send Bill and Tanner out so I can finish packing without Tanner knowing what's going on. Sweep & mop the floors, vacuum, dust and last but not least, clean the dreaded litter box. [img]graemlins/ukid.gif[/img] DD Melissa comes over and since she's going to be staying here with the furry ones, we give her final instructions and give last kisses and hugs to our precious granddaughter Kiyah (okay, more kisses & hugs than previously stated [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img] ). At 9 pm we all turn in for the night.

Friday, June 14th:
Finally it's here. The day I've been so excited about and also have most feared. Why feared you ask? Well, because I know my son so well. We are leaving on his most favorite day of school. Field Day!! [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] I'm up at 2:00am shower and dress, wake Bill up at 3:00am and he gets ready. Melissa is here at 3:30 (YO! I am so impressed! I guess the threat of bodily harm if she was late actually worked). All the suitcases are downstairs and now it's 4:00am and time to wake Tanner up. The three of us head upstairs, Melissa with the video camera to catch every moment of Tanner's reaction when we wake him up. [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img]

The three of us creep into his room, I shake Tanner and tell him it's time to wake up, mom & dad have a surprise for him. Tanner opens one eye and says "Leave me alone, I'm sleeping!" Okaaayy. So with video camera rolling, I ask him "If you could go anywhere in the world today where would you pick?" he replys "Field Day!" Ut Oh, this isn't quite the way that I pictured it. So I say, "Tanner, how would you like to skip school and go to Disney World?" To which he replies, " No, I want to go to field day!!! [img]graemlins/achoo.gif[/img] . " Well, so much for that feel good, woohoo, experiance I had hoped for. [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] With camera still rolling, I tell him that yes, we're going to WDW, why else would his sister be here at 4:00 in the morning? All our luggage is packed and downstairs by the front door and we even have tickets to go see Shammu at Sea World! Tanner's reply? "You're lying!" Now Bill and I are about to give up! So I tell him "Tanner, come downstairs and look, you'll see your suitcase all packed and by the front door with ours, already to go. We have to hurry up because if you don't we'll miss our plane." Finally he realizes that we might just be telling the truth and bounds out of bed, flies down the stairs, looks into the livingroom and sure enough, there's all our luggage just waiting to be loaded into Melissa's car. Finally, the whoop of joy we've been waiting for comes! YES!!! We're going to Walt Disney World!!! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[ 06-22-2002, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: Beth L. ]

[SMG]

Oh how fun!!! I wish I would have thought to surprise my 2 DS's! [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

More, more, more please!!! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[travlin gal]

Beth, I envy Tanner. What a wonderful surprise. It is great just going to WDW but not knowing about it would even be more fun, although anticipation is fun too. I am looking forward to the rest of your trip report. I know you had a great time. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Travlin Gal, Colorado Jan [img]graemlins/usa.gif[/img]

[Mel & Richard]

So I take it he managed to get over his disappointment about missing field day? [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Can't wait to read the rest!

Mel

[ 06-22-2002, 08:33 PM: Message edited by: Mel & Richard ]

[Beth L.]

When: June 14th - June 21st
Who: Beth (45) Planner & evil early morning waker-upper
Bill (47) He of the open wallet & carrier of all things heavy
Tanner (9 almost 10) The unsuspecting birthday boy
Why: Because it's a birthday surprise of course

Friday 6/14

At 4:30 Tanner finally believes, the car is packed and we're on the way to the airport. Melissa who thinks she is related to Star Treks' Scotty is driving the speed of light and we make the hour drive in 35 minutes. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] Check-in and security is a breeze (a huge difference from our trip in October!). Our flight isn't due to take off until 7:00am so, much to my husbands dismay I start talking to everyone around us. Hey, we're all going to Disney and besides that, why not? Everybody just loved talking about where they were staying and how many times they had been there. By now Tanner is wound up as tight as he can get, so I start singing the Mickey Mouse Club song with him and DH crawls under his chair. The next thing you know there's about 20 people singing along with us. YES! You just gotta love that Disney magic! [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img] The ratio had to be three adults to every child. It's obvious that Connecticut loves Disney! All of a sudden, a voice comes over the intercom saying that since everyone is there early, they've gotten the okay from the flight tower to depart early and that we are going to start boarding now so we can leave 20 minutes early. Wooo Hooo!

After leaving black and blue finger prints on Bills' bicept during takeoff, I sleep almost all the way to Florida. (Thank you Dr. Popavichi!) A nice easy touch down and we are here. The first thing I do is look for a palm tree, this way I know I am truely in Florida. [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img] Thanks to being National Car Rental Emerald Club members, we just pick out a car and we're on our way.

NOTE: I just love this Emerald Isle set-up. It makes renting a car so easy and with our Disney Club membership the discount we got was substantial! We only paid $187.00 for a full size car for a week. You definately can't go wrong with that! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Now with sunglasses firmly in place, the a/c on high and tuning into a good rock 'n roll channel on the radio, we're off. We had originally planned on visiting my niece and her DH in Clearwater for two days but decided that because Tanner loves everything that has to do with sea life that we would make a visit to Sea World. So with that in mind we decided to stay at the Comfort Inn at LBV for the first couple of days. We got to the the hotel at 10:30am and to our delight the room was ready. This is a nice, clean hotel. Decent size rooms with microwave, fridge and coffee maker in it. With our AAA membership we only paid $35.50 per night. We drop our bags, grab our e-tickets for Sea World that I purchased on line and headed out the door. Sea World was only about a 15 minute trip from the hotel and we were really surprised to see that an entrance to the Magic Kingdom was right around the corner from the hotel!

At Sea World the first thing we do is head to feed the stingrays. I buy a container of the stinky little fish to feed them with, at 4 fish for $4.00 it's definately a bit steep but seeing the joy on my son's face as the stingrays swooped down and took the fish out of his hand it was worth every 25 cents per quarter inch that I paid! Next it was onto the dolphin tank where I paid the same amount of money for the same amount of stinky fish. This time Bill decided to join in with Tanner and while they fed the dolphins they were able to pet them. Well, DH was down to his last fish and thought he'd be cute and tease one of the dolphins by holding the fish just out of reach of the dolphin. Next thing you know, that dolphin stood up (as much as a dolphin can) and spit water at Bill, totally soaking him. HA! Now you tell me that these beautiful creatures aren't smarter than some humans! [img]images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Now it was time to head to see Shamuu. As upset as Tanner was with me, I absolutely refused to sit in the soaking section! My momma didn't raise any foolish children (okay, there was my brother & sister), and I was not going to sit there and be soaked by 56 degree salt water. The preshow is a real kick and Shamuu and his trainers are wonderful to watch. We really enjoyed this show and hope to see it again the next time we come.

By now it was going on 3:00pm and since we hadn't eaten since dinner the night before we decided to find something to eat. We went and saw the Clydesdale horses then went into the Anheuser-Busch Hospitality center for lunch. I had a delicious carved turkey breast sandwich with all the fixings on a grinder roll and DH had the same except he had roast beef instead of turkey. The only thing Tanner wanted was carrot cake and when I tried to get him to eat something sensible he pitched a fit so I decided, hey, you want to bounce off walls from the sugar, go for it. By now it was 4:30 and since Bill and I had been up for 14 hours we were starting to drag and decided it was time to head back to our room. As we leave it is starting to rain which believe me when I say, it was only the beginning. By the time we leave on Friday, we will have wished we came by arc instead of by plane! We are in bed and asleep by 8:00pm and dreaming of our next day at Epcot.

Next: Who says you can't puke going 65 mph?

[Fortissimo]

You didn't want to sit in the "soak" section? Where is your sense of adventure? [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Did Tanner get over missing field day?

Patiently waiting for more!