We Can Fly, We Can Fly, We Can Fly......We Flew Trip Report - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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We Can Fly, We Can Fly, We Can Fly......We Flew Trip Report
Okay, first things first - here are all the links to my previous PTR and TR's for anyone who wants to read them for the first time, for information or just to relive one of our trips.
Thursday before we left, I really didn’t have much of anything to do. I was up at 7:30, which had been my usual time much of the summer and at 8, I was online and ready to print my boarding passes. What should have been a simple process didn’t turn out to be. Back when I booked my tickets, I used points to purchase them so SWA gave me 3 different reservation numbers - one for each ticket - instead of giving me one reservation for all 3. Not a big deal I thought. I figured I would just go online, open 3 browsers and be able to have all my boarding passes done in no time. Well I was online at 8 and I had my 3 browsers open, but by the time I was done clicking "check in" in all the windows, it was then I noticed something funny had gone on. Instead of having 3 boarding passes to be printed, one for each of us, I had 3 for Abby and none for myself and Lenny. I don’t know if that’s something SWA did or if it was my browser, but it was very frustrating as it meant I now had to go back and redo the online check in for myself and Lenny. By the time I was done, I had all 3 boarding passes in the B group (with the increase in EBCI, I wasn’t surprised by that) but the numbers were 22, 44 and 51. I wasn’t super happy about the gaps but knowing with Lenny and Abby’s disabilities we could preboard, it didn’t really matter what our numbers were. It was just frustrating that I had booked our tickets as a family but I received 3 different confirmation numbers instead of 1.
With online check in done, pretty much all I had to do was finish stuff around the house - cleaning out the fridge and the bird cage, finish up the laundry and finish up packing. I didn’t get to any of it right away as there really was no rush to do it. At 9, I took Abby to school for her last day of her summer program, then I went home, did some bills and did the most productive thing of the day - played computer games (crazy face). Okay, so it was a totally non productive thing I did but I did start my laundry before doing it (tongue out). At 1, I went and picked up Abby and after we got home (and she changed into her jammies for the night) I started the last load of laundry to do and I went through all of my bags that I had already packed. Everything that was packed got checked off a final time, I made sure I had our luggage tags on them and then I moved the bags downstairs. Once downstairs I added the final touch of my DME tags. That didn’t take too long and I had very little not packed so I just made a hand written list of the last things we needed.
When I finally headed back downstairs, I checked out our fridge but between not buying much at the store over the weekend and making a conscience effort to use up anything that would go bad, the fridge was done - there was all of 1 item I had to take out and toss. Over the afternoon I finished my laundry and packing and played more computer games. Dinner that night consisted of small take out pizzas so I didn’t have to cook, it created next to no cleanup and what little was left we threw in the freezer for Lenny to eat at some point in time. All that was really left at that point in time was to unwind and go to bed for the night.
Abby succeeded by being in bed the earliest - about 6:30. She didn’t fall asleep right away - no surprise there - but she was asleep by 8 pm . I wanted Lenny asleep by then too but that didn’t happen. He was finally asleep by about 9:30 pm. And that left me. I was really tired but 9:30 came and went. 10 pm came and went. 10:30 came and went. I know I dozed after that as I had my tv timer set to turn it off at 11 - which I wasn’t awake for - but I did wake up a few minutes later. I tossed and turned and finally fell asleep again. At 2 am, I woke up to use the bathroom and I figured, "ok, I can sleep for another hour." Wrong. What I did was toss and turn for half and hour and then I decided it wasn’t worth staying in bed. As I was sitting up thinking of what to do, I heard noises from Abby’s room. She was up already and heading for the bathroom, although when she was done, she did go back to bed. I highly doubt she slept but she stayed in her room until 3 am. Me? I had decided to head downstairs and turn on the computer. I checked out my pressed penny site and found out there were 11 new coins not on our lists that we could look for so I added them to my spreadsheet and then I started typing up this TR believe it or not. It was easier to type it out while I was thinking of things then waiting to get to the airport and start making notes.
When I heard Abby up and about for the second time at 3, I headed back upstairs to wake Lenny up and to get ready for the day. I had everything we needed for vacation packed except for Abby’s stuffed friends but I took care of that right away since I knew who was going and just like that, I was back to the waiting game. Luckily this time the wait was really short - only about an hour instead of the weeks and days we had before. We left for the airport ahead of schedule - at 4:20 instead of 4:30 - and made really good time. At 5:17, mom was dropping us off at curbside check in where we had a really, really pleasant skycap. In no time at all, our bags were set, Lenny had his wheelchair and we were off to security. When we got to the first TSA agent, I gave her our licenses and when she looked at Lenny’s and then looked at him, she gave him a really strange look. I’m not sure why but we were let through anyway and got in the next line.
Unlike 2 years ago, mom didn’t come in to say final goodbyes but that was ok. We were all tired and she had the day off from work so I knew she wanted to go home and back to bed for a bit. As for security, it went almost as well as it did 2 years ago. I say almost because this year 2 of our bags needed the additional screening. The process was simple and quick enough but I had to chuckle that 2 of them needed more. Providence also has the full body scanners - which Lenny said he did set off because of his hips. When I was explaining what to do to Abby, one of the TSA agents heard me and offered to open the traditional metal detector. I thanked her and said Abby should be okay with the other one but because she’s Autistic, I had to explain to her what to do.
Just as I thought, Abby had no problem standing how she needed to and when she was done, she wad given a TSA badge sticker (cool). After I went through, we went to the gate, I left some of our stuff with Lenny and Abby, then went to stand in line at Dunkin Donuts. I grabbed 3 drinks and ordered 3 sandwiches and didn’t really pay attention to my total or the slip because all I received was one sandwich. It turns out that’s all I was charged for so I headed back to the gate. Here I’ll spare you the details but it involved Lenny getting really, really ticked which started our vacation off on a really sour note. I did eventually go back to get the other two sandwiches but it’s not because I wanted to, it’s because I really just wanted to get away from Lenny. Of course by that time, I didn’t want a sandwich and that got Lenny mad again. For me, it was a good thing I didn’t get myself a sandwich because after a couple of bites of Abby’s, I knew I’d never be able to eat it. There was something about it that would have set off my stomach . After a while, I did get hungry so I headed off to the gift store where I bought a granola bar and a bag of Fritos. I wasn’t able to finish either one of them so I gave Abby the granola and kept the rest of the fritos which Lenny ended up eating on me later in the week (anyone surprised by that?)
As we waited for 8 am, there wasn’t much to see or do. I wasn’t talking with Lenny , Abby was playing her DS and the weather was lousy, making for bad plane watching (IMO). It was gray and cloudy out and before we left the house, mom had heard on the news there were lots of delayed flights due to the storm. Ours had been listed as being on time so I was hopeful it would actually be on time. Around 7 am however, one of the gate attendants came over the loud speaker to announce that the fight from Baltimore was running late. The good news was they anticipated us departing by 8:15 instead.
With nothing else to do but wait, I sat there minding my own business and somehow ended up in a conversation with a lady sitting next to me. She was on her way to Florida to get her kids who had spent the summer with their uncle. We talked for a while and before I knew it, the plane was in and it was time to board. SWA was very good - we were sitting on the tarmac at 8:15 waiting to take off - which was very smooth despite the cloudy, rainy weather.
Once we were up in the air, I grabbed my magazine I had brought and started to read while Lenny napped and Abby tried to read her summer reading books for school. By 9 am we were seeing blue skies instead of gray and it was almost snack time.
Instead of getting a soda, Abby surprised my by getting a hot chocolate. I was very happy when she told me she liked it. Of course Abby being Abby and me knowing her like I do, it couldn’t have been too hot as she doesn’t always like hot things. She’ll eat food hod but she really prefers it warm or even cold (even things like mac & cheese).
After having our snacks, I pulled out my mp3 player as did Abby (monkey see, monkey do) and I actually dozed on and off for the remainder of the flight . We touched down and were sitting on the tarmac of Orlando at 10:45. We had to wait a couple of minutes though as there was another plane at our gate. As I already mentioned SWA was pretty good. Our original flight times were suppose to be 8 to 10:45. We left late but arrived on time - what more can you really ask? As for the flight attendants, we had Robert and two other guys. For those that know Robert, you know he kept us quite entertained during our trip. For those that don’t know him, you’ll know him when you have him.
We finally got off the plane but we had to wait for someone to come and push Lenny around - the airport that is .
We made it to DME and on a bus by 11:40 but there were a couple of nice things about our trip there. 1) I didn’t have to figure out where to go and 2) the wheelchair porter (or whatever he’s called) was extremely nice and we talked Disney the whole way there. I still wasn’t talking to Lenny so it was nice to talk to somebody. A few minutes after getting on the bus, it was pretty full and we were on our way. Abby sat next to me and I was feeling pretty cramped so I didn’t take many pictures. What I did do though was call mom to tell her we were on the bus . Once I was done talking to her, I texted Kate to let her know we had arrived. We actually texted back and fourth the whole ride (sorry Kate I’m so slow at texting - I have a dumb phone with only number keys) and in no time at all it seemed, we were at ASMu.
Instead of going to the food court like I had planned, Lenny and Abby followed me to check in so I thought they wanted to see how it worked. Sadly, I was wrong because before I knew it, Lenny was wicked ticked again. Once again, I’ll spare you all the details but we dropped our stuff in the rooms and headed to the food court where I waited in line to order, I waited in line to pay and I got the sodas. Once I put the food on the table (some sort of beef sandwich for Lenny and a kids turkey sandwich for Abby) I got another earful from Lenny about no lunch for myself. After some of the nasty comments he had made before getting to the food court, I had absolutely no intention of eating and told him so.
What I did end up doing was calling for the shuttle to the CCC. Instead of calling and being picked up within the 30 minutes I was told is usually the case, I had to "schedule" a pick up time and at the All Stars, those pick up times are only on the hour. At the time when I called (about 1:40), the earliest they could pick us up was 3 pm. That did not make me happy, especially since the girl on the phone was very straight forward. No "I’m sorry but this is the only time available". It was simply "our shuttle will be there at 3 pm, how many in your party will be picked up?" And if you guessed that Lenny was mad about the pick up time, you’re right. Absolutely nothing I did that first day was right.
While we waited for 3 pm to roll around, we spent time in the gift shop and got some souvenirs . The time seemed to drag but we were finally on our way to the CCC, got the car with practically no wait and then started figuring out how everything operated. Lenny’s only comment about the car this year was he would have preferred a white car over a black car. I guess he remembered my threat of using the busses all week if he complained too much about the rental car this time.
When we were satisfied with what we knew about the car, we went to DTD for the Design a Tee store. Abby made her shirt and was disappointed that they didn’t send it through all the tubes like we had read about online. Time was getting short - we had to be back at ASMu for 6 to get the scooter - so we didn’t linger there waiting for the shirt. We opted to have it sent to the resort instead. Our next stop was Walgreens. We hurried through the store and went back to the hotel. About 2 or 3 minutes before we got there, a Walker employee called to verify that we were at AS Sports. I told him no, our ressies had changed and that it should have been noted ASMu was our resort. He changed that and asked if we were at the hotel. I told him no, we were in the car on the way to there and would be there any minute. He said he would wait in the parking lot and asked if I would call him when we arrived. I told him that wasn’t a problem.
When we got to the ASMu lot, we didn’t see any Walker vans but before I could call, we saw it pull in. I walked over to the van, talked with him a minute and then he proceeded to get our scooter. In no time at all, we had the scooter, everything about it had been explained to us and we went to the rooms. Our bags had been delivered (totally loved not having to do it myself) so I started unpacking. Of course the whole time I was doing it, someone was complaining about dinner instead of helping. When I was happy with what I had done, we went to have dinner. Lenny and I got the Chicken Alfredo with penne pasta and a salad. Abby got an adult nugget meal with fries. Everything was good as always and it didn’t take long to eat it. After dinner, I called home to talk to mom then we all went swimming . The pool was cool because of the shape and the fact that there was a fountain in the middle but the water itself was warm. Despite that, I got very chilled and had to get out after a little while. Lenny and Abby got out with me and once we were all ready for bed, it was lights out. By that time, it was close to 10:30 - much, much later than I wanted us to be up but everything took longer that day than I expected. I thought the plane would be early like the last time but it was on time, then we had to wait twice. Once to just get to the gate and the second time for someone to push the wheelchair. Instead of being on our way to the hotel at 11:15 like I thought we would have been, we didn’t leave MCO until 11:50. The CCC shuttle didn’t pick us up in 30 minutes after I called - it was almost 90 minutes after. The only thing that wasn’t late that day was the scooter. If and when we ever go back (and it doesn’t look likely right now) I will add lots of extra time for all the miscellaneous stuff we wanted to or had to do.
Okay - here I am going to interrupt this trip report to ask this - how is the font this time? The last time I did a TR, I typed it up in my program but when I put it into here, the font was really tiny for many people. Is the font a normal size (it is on my computer so I can't tell), can you read everything okay? Thanks for the feedback and I'll adjust my font if need be before I get too far into the report.
Okay - here I am going to interrupt this trip report to ask this - how is the font this time? The last time I did a TR, I typed it up in my program but when I put it into here, the font was really tiny for many people. Is the font a normal size (it is on my computer so I can't tell), can you read everything okay? Thanks for the feedback and I'll adjust my font if need be before I get too far into the report.
Welcome Back! I recently finished reading your previous PTR/TR's and they were great. I love how much detail you give and the earlier ones gave me a lot of great auto train info and ideas for Alex.
The font looks good to me too.
It's too bad Lenny was such a grump for your first day. I know how long you've waited for this trip and to have it start like that stinks. I can understand why you weren't very hungry, I would be the same way.
Abby is looking so grown up now!
Looking forward to reading more and I hope Lenny's mood improves!
Hope Lenny's mood improves the next day! Sorry things took longer than expected. I think arrival days are often like that-- full of details you'd rather not even think about, but need to be done.
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Waiting for our next adventure after enjoying our Alaska cruise. 
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