10th Anniversary Trip WDW/Disney Magic About This Page:

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10th Anniversary Trip WDW/Disney Magic
January 28 – February 6, 2010

I took the trouble to write up this trip report mainly because I want all the newbies out there to learn from my mistake(s) and NOT go through the nightmare that I did! Look for TIPs that I spell out within the report, these are the tips you should use to avoid my pitfalls. I'm a Disney veteran having been to several parks throughout the world and WDW too many times to count, and Disney cruises as well, but my story shows we can all live and learn. Plus I figure everyone likes to read a trip report now and then, and mine certainly is dramatic. I give fair warning that this is LOOOOONG due to the dramatic events that occurred and my need to tell each one, so, refill the liquid caffeine of your choice, pull up a comfy chair and read on! Sorry for the length, they do get shorter - promise!

Pre-trip Report:
Cast of Characters:
Me - Annette (43) Disney fanatic (or Freak as DH says….)
DH (57) - converted Disney FAN
Small Chip & Dale in cruise attire and a Baby Poohbear accompany us on the trip.

Living in Wisconsin, we planned to fly down early to avoid any possible snow storms that would have us missing our cruise. The dates we would now be in Orlando prior to our cruise coincided with Disney’s 40% off room rates at WDW promotion, so we secured our favorite resort, POR Alligator Bayou and we were all set. The cruise had been paid in full and we had difficulty in getting reservations for Palo (could only do 8:30pm one night which was too late for us). I was surprised about not getting the Palo reservations for the time we wanted at 180 days out, but decided not to sweat it as we had been lucky enough in the past to get them once on board the ship.

Since we were flying down on a Thursday, and disembarking on the cruise Saturday, that gave us one day in the Park(s). We began batting around “which park should it be?” a few weeks prior. I should insert here that we had been fortunate enough to spend 10 days at WDW last fall during the last week of Sept/1st week of Oct 2009. Man was it hot then! Regardless, we had done our fill of park days so weren’t too stressed about which park it would be for our 1 day on the Friday, but at the same time, had never had to choose just one before. I finally told DH that it came down to what tickets we had left, either Park Hoppers or those single day tickets you have to take when you buy the Free dining package, as we have for the past 5 years in row. Those single day tickets we had accumulated and the leftover PH tickets were on several different Key to the World cards which I had carefully notated how many days left on each with a black sharpie when we left WDW in Oct. Tip#1: Carefully notate how many days of tickets you have left on your KTTW card on the back with a black sharpie! This will save you so much time and aggravation in the future, trust me. This particular aggravation can only be saved if you then put your KTTW cards and leftover ticket media in a safe place where you know to find them in the future. Tip#2: ALWAYS put your leftover media in it’s own special place as soon as you return home, or notating on the back of the cards does not help much. Tip#3 Always travel with your ticket media on you (hand luggage) as opposed to in your suitcase, as your suitcase might not make the destination but you and your hand luggage probably will. I had the clearest memory of arriving home in early Oct, unloading my carry on bag and coming across the envelope with all our ticket media in it. I distinctly remember saying to myself “I should put this up in it’s special spot immediately”. And then I didn’t. So now I don’t know where they are. It’s been 4 months and I don’t have a vivid memory of what I did with the darn things after that one movie reel in my head where I tell myself what I should do! So I begin slowly tearing the house apart room by room and trying not to panic. The tickets represented a lot of money, as we always get the maximum 10 day Park Hopper, No Expiration, Water Parks & More version of the tickets then just use them until they’re out. I knew we had some days left but was unsure how many. I didn’t panic at this point in time (hey, I had like 10 days before we left..no need to panic) but did start thoroughly tossing my home office, the living room, the bedroom, etc. As I did this one room at a time, DH did not notice. It wasn’t until our departure was T-3 days that I sat down and told DH I could not find them. He reacted very calmly and said ‘Huh – they are not in their special place?”. He took it really well considering I had hit full panic by now. I knew we were not going to pay $75.00 each for a one day – one park ticket. I continued to search madly and we have an extra bedroom that is the “junk” room and routinely accumulates lots of boxes of things and paper. I spent 5 hours going through every box and every piece of paper and still did not find them. I did, strangely enough, find both DH’s and my KTTW card from our recent fall trip. I finally decided the movie reel in my head was wrong when I pictured several cards in an envelope and these two must be it. They did have 2009 dates on them, even though they did not have any sharpie writing on the back. I just talked myself into the fact that these MUST be it. So I packed them and off we went. With just a slight nagging that there should be black sharpie writing on them….but I just tried to ignore that little whispering in my head like I tried to ignore how many rooms I had tossed and not really put back into place during my home search and would have to after vacation.

Day 1: We had an early morning flight out of Madison on that Thursday. I have a relatively new assistant who is still learning the job so I promised him I would have my Blackberry on me at all times until Saturday and then it was sink or swim for him as I would only call in once during the week. On the flight down we got bumped to first class because I was a Delta Premiere flyer. Very nice. This meant that we could each check up to 2 bags at no charge, which we were kind of counting on as after we packed 1 bag each we still had large snorkeling fins and beach towels that weren’t in a bag. We chose a large rolling duffel as the 3rd bag and check it for a total of 3 bags. Not bad – I had managed not to pack the entire house (probably because I had tossed all the contents and now couldn’t pack it!). The flights went smooth and we connected in Detroit. It was on the 2nd flight to Orlando that the migraine hit. I could tell the minute it hit that I wasn’t going to have a good day. So I took my medication on the plane and willed it to go away. It got worse instead. Bummed me out as I was on vacation with a capital V and expected to have a fabulous time. We landed, got our Budget rental car and off we went to WDW. I had gotten a really good rate with Budget for a pick up at Orlando and drop-off at Port Canaveral where you board the Disney ships/boats whatever, I’m not nautical. There’s another tip coming if you use Budget and plan to drop it at PC, but I’ll tell that in it’s correct chronological order later. We checked into POR-AB and while I was dealing with the check in, I handed my 2 KTTW cards to DH and had him go over to the concierge and check how many park tickets we actually had left on them. He came back with a smile and said he had been told we had 7 PH days and 6 WP&M uses on them. I can be happy just as well as the next person, but I had figured we had about 3 days left and 7 days sounded just plain wrong to me. Since I was still completing the paperwork at check in, I asked DH to return to Concierge and ask a different employee to check it to verify. (Yes I know I sound anal here, but I can’t help it. I knew 7 days was wrong). HE did just that and came back and said the other concierge told him we had 3 PH days and 8 WP&M. Hmmmm, two very different answers from within the same hotel. Strange. We would discuss it at dinner. I had planned to have dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack right next to Disney. I love crab and we just don’t get it here in Wisconsin. Off we went and had an early and delicious dinner of crab. We stopped by Walgreens there next to the restaurant for last minute snacks for the room, etc. My migraine had become less painful with the food and relaxation but it was still there, hovering. We were tired from the early morning flight and getting up at obscene hour to get to the airport, so we decided to go back to the hotel and just relax. I took more meds and went to bed.

More to come, Annette in Wisconsin