Disneyland March-April Trip Report 1, through Mar. 30: Planning & Travel About This Page:

[EticketLiz]

<u>Caveat:</u> I write novels, so if you don’t have time to read a lot of descriptive narration, don’t even start! I prefer to ramble, it’s just my nature. If you have time, grab a cup of tea (my preference) or a beer (if you’re home!) and enjoy!

<u>Cast:</u> Me (39), DH (Art, 50), DS (Stuart, AKA Monster, Busto, Monkey-Boy, Punkin, Mr. Man, Destructo Boy—it’s his “secret” superhero identity—I figured it out when he was about 4 months old—21 months—and if you want to know why he has so many names, have you ever seen how many moods a toddler has?), Grammy (MIL, Marlene, 70-ish)

<u>Setting:</u> Disneyland Hotel, Thurs. March 30-Mon. April 3, 2006

Planning
We are WDW people, and just went in early Dec. We love WDW and Florida in general, but are mostly WDW people because flights tend to be quite a bit cheaper from our home airport (Kansas City International) to Orlando than to anywhere in the LA area. However, I have Ding! on my home computer. If you don’t know about Ding!, but you are willing to fly Southwest, I suggest giving it a try. Ding! is a downloadable program (get it at southwest.com) that “dings” you when there are specials, usually 1-2 times a day (sometimes as many as 4). I am looking, just out of curiosity, with no plans whatsoever to go anywhere, when I see great rates from KCI to LAX. $64 each way! The schedules look good, and DH’s 50th birthday is coming up, so I call Disneyland and get a package held for us—we’ll stay at the Fairfield Inn, across the street from the gates, if we can get someone to go with us to help share some expenses. Then I start calling family members to see if they want to go to Disneyland. Mom &amp; Dad are broke, one brother is going to Florida in a month and doesn’t have any more vacation time, and the other 2 brothers are WAY busy. My fallback person, however, is interested. MIL wants to go, because she went with us to WDW and thinks seeing DL now would be a blast. However, she can’t go the first weekend of March, for Art’s birthday. How about later? I check the SW schedules, and we can go the first weekend of April for the same rates. I call the package people again, and there are no rooms anywhere for that weekend. They offer to transfer me to the Disneyland reservations, and voila! Plenty of rooms available at the Disneyland Hotel. Okay, it’s a lot more expensive, but it’s only for a few nights. I hold that package and call Marlene back—yes! It’s a go! I grab airline tickets, and we’re set. We fly out at 8:40 pm Thurs. March 30 and return at 11:45 pm Mon. April 3. The latest return flight leaves a little early, and has a plane change in Phoenix, but that’s just the luck of the draw.

Marlene &amp; I decide not to tell Art right away. We’ll go out to dinner for his birthday in 2 weeks and let him unwrap Disneyland guide books. In the meantime, our 30-day window opens up, and I manage to nab Fantasmic! dessert buffet tickets. Woo-hoo! Then Art’s birthday arrives, and the look on his face when he realizes we are going to California is absolutely priceless! He can’t believe we’re going, and he’s really excited about the Fantasmic! package.

I start hitting the boards pretty heavily to plan our trip, and get some pretty good advice. I do some cost comparisons on shuttles, and then see a special for Budget rental cars that looks good. I check it out, and we can rent an intermediate car for about $30-40 less than taking a shuttle. Okay, I’ll drive. That means we can stop at a grocery story and grab some milk for the kid, plus if we have time, we can hit the beach before we leave LA. This trip is really starting to shape up!

About a week later, I’m looking at Ding! again because one brother may need to fly home. Whoa—another great rate from KC to LA? So I look again, and it’s even cheaper, and there’s a nonstop return flight available that leaves LA later in the day. I have never tried to change tickets before, but I call SW, and the very nice customer service person walks me through the change. I am able to grab a better flight schedule, with cheaper fares, at no penalty! Wow. I love this company! Now I have a $56 credit in my SW account to be used by anyone (and I mean anyone, not just anyone on this itinerary) within the next 12 months. Cool.

As our trip approaches, Art &amp; I plan our meals and I get our ressies. We’re going to have a big eating day on Friday, which is also our first day in the parks. We really want to try to Carnation Café (it just looks good), Art is dying to go to Napa Rose and Grammy thinks it sounds good, and that’s the day for our Fantasmic! tickets, so we’ll have a late dessert. Then on Sat., we’re going to have dinner at Brennan’s, Sun. evening we’ll try the Plaza Inn, and Monday morning we’ll have breakfast at Goofy’s Kitchen. Art really wants to try the Storyteller’s Café at the Grand Californian, too, so we decide we’ll pop in there for lunch on Sat., while we’re at DCA. That seems like it will be a nice break.

The week before our trip, I take my sister-in-law and niece down to my folks in the Ozarks for a few days, and, unfortunately, we all get sick. Art has to ride down with my brother so he can ride back with me, in case I need help. I think I’m okay, but I get the bug Sat. night after we make it home. So Sunday, instead of writing the paper that’s due Wed., I’m home sleeping. Grammy comes over to take Stuart to her house so I can rest and Art can do some work, and then Monday Art gets sick. I call Grammy Tues. morning and sure enough, she’s got it. We’re supposed to fly out Thurs! This is bad.

Wed. night I hit the sack with still several things to do before leaving tomorrow afternoon. I’m making t-shirts for the trip, and although the designs are done, and the shirts are ready, I can’t find my transfer paper. I guess Stuart &amp; I will have to run to Office Depot or Max or something like that tomorrow. We’ll manage. I can do that in the morning, and then finish the shirts while he’s napping. He’d better nap!

About 4 in the morning, I wake up with a nagging feeling. Oh my gosh, I forgot to print boarding passes! I try to go back to sleep, figuring I’ll do it later (after all, we’re preboarding with our toddler, so it really doesn’t matter). No, I can’t sleep. I run downstairs, turn the computer on, and get online. Zip, zap, there they are—print, and we have all 4 boarding passes, and they’re even “A” passes. That actually bothers me a little, because we don’t need to take up somebody else’s “A” pass. Oh, well, nothing I can do about it. At least I can sleep now!

By Thurs. morning, we’re all fine at our house, but Marlene is still sick. She can’t make it to CA with us. We decide to go anyway, since everything is set, and she decides she’ll spring for her half of the room and the car, since we had planned on her help with those expenses. Poor Grammy. She wanted to go so badly! I call Southwest, and even though I’ve already printed boarding passes for everyone, there’s no problem canceling Marlene’s ticket. The money goes right back into my customer fund, so it’s added to that $56 I already had from changing flights. At this rate, we’ll have our Jan. trip to Tampa already paid for!

Travel
Art makes it home by 3:30, helps me finish packing and the other assorted stuff one does before a trip, and off we go. (Yes, I got the shirts done.) We grab dinner at Sonic (told you we all felt better!), and we make it to the airport parking lot with plenty of time to spare. We have to unload the van, haul luggage to the bus stop, and manage to keep Stuart under control. We don’t put him in the stroller because we know he’ll have to get out to ride the bus, but he enjoys pushing the heater button in the bus stop, so he’s happy!

We make it to the airport, get checked in, and after waiting until nearly 20 minutes before our flight takes off, we hear the plane is delayed. KC has been having thunderstorms all day, and the plane can’t land. We’re going to be about 30 minutes late taking off. Finally, the plane arrives, unloads, and we’re called for preboarding. We get Stuart’s carseat strapped in, and Stuart strapped in, and we take off. Stuart plays for a while, and kicks the seat in front of him (sorry, Mr. Sitting-in-front-of-us, but he has long legs, and he doesn’t understand that he shouldn’t do that) for a while, and finally falls asleep. Good boy! I get to read a bit of my novel, and Art watches movies on our DVD player. We finally land and get unloaded, find baggage claim and get our luggage (which we can put on a SmartCart), then I call Budget because I can’t remember what we’re supposed to do now. It takes forever to get an answer, but finally someone answers the phone and tells me to go right outside the baggage claim area and look for the purple “rental car busses” sign. The bus will come along every 6 minutes. Okay, easy enough.

Of course, just as we’re hauling everything to the bus stop, a Budget bus comes and goes. Oh, well, we get our SmartCart unloaded &amp; returned, and the bus is there pretty soon. I signed up for Fastbreak when we reserved our car, so the bus drops us off at the Fastbreak shelter. It takes me a minute to figure out what we’re doing, but I find my name on a list, find a car I like (I got the red one!), and we load up. It’s now after 11:30, so it looks like my planned grocery stop will probably not happen, since Albertson’s closes at midnight. Oh, well, we’ll just try to fit it in tomorrow.

After a few wrong turns getting out of the area where Budget is located, we make it onto I-405, and the rest of the trip is uneventful. The map and directional signs are easy to follow, and I drop DH &amp; DS off at the unloading area of the Disneyland Hotel while I park the car. We check in (no problems there, except the computers are down for maintenance so everything has to be done by hand), we find our room (Bonita tower, facing the central courtyard, 4th floor), and try to hit the sack. Oops. I forgot to request a crib again while I was checking in (I requested it on the reservation, but they told me to get one at check-in). It takes a while to get someone to answer at the front desk, but they say they’ll send a crib right up. We get Stuart ready for bed, and we wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, the crib arrives, I set it up, we turn off the lights, and Stuart goes to bed. Right? He starts screaming hysterically the second he hits the sheet. After several attempts at calming him down and getting him to bed, I give up. He can sleep with us tonight. I’m too tired to listen to him scream! We finally all get settled in, and after Stuart kicks us in the head a few times, we’re all asleep. What a day!