Go your own way - Decade of Dreams - UPDATED 6/24 - COMPLETE!! About This Page:

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Go your own way

Dates: Thursday 30 April – Wednesday 6 May (arriving home the next morning)
Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (35) and Wendy (wendyismyname) (34)
Itinerary: the Decade of Dreams tour
Resorts: BoardWalk and Contemporary – Tower!
Meets: Lots and lots, with all the PassPorters joining us on the tour!

Pre-trip report: “you could go on your own”

Cast your minds back to the dim and distant past... well, OK, maybe not that dim and distant, but we’re still talking about January 2008, which is a while back now. It was then that the plans for PassPorter’s Decade of Dreams tour was unveiled, a spectacular set of trips that would take in a cruise, visit to Walt Disney World and Disneyland. I knew immediately that there was no way that we would be able to join this tour sadly, as it was just a bad time of the year to take vacation for Mark. It was a shame, but there was no way round it – or that’s what I thought for about 24 hours.

Not long after it was announced, my great friend Wendy, who I’ve been in contact with almost daily for about five years now (time flies when you’re having fun!) that she was planning on going. In fact, I think she made the decision so quickly that she was one of the first – if not the first – to book her place. She’d be taking her youngest, Gabby, with her. This news on an e-mail really shocked me. I don’t know why, but I had never expected her to be interested in going, never mind on her own.

I half jokingly e-mailed her back and said that was a shame, as I’d love to have gone on the tour, but knew Mark couldn’t and would need someone to go with, as I wasn’t go to stay on my own – heck, flying Transatlantic on my own would be more than enough! Imagine my surprise when I got home that night and Mark told me that Wendy had called.

I don’t remember the exact words of the conversation, but I do remember telling him that she planned on going and it was such a shame, as I’d love to see her again. Somewhere in there, those magic words were uttered – “you could go on your own”. I think Mark half expected me to refuse straight away and say that I’d never go to Disney without him, but I didn’t. I thought about this offer for about half a millisecond and I knew what my answer was. “Do you really mean that?” (I had offered him a get out clause here, you notice). He nodded and said words to the effect of “I must be mad saying yes” and I told him I’d definitely go. Of course, the next words out of my mouth were “thank you” and “I’ll miss you while I’m there”. I think the “I must be mad saying yes” was repeated a number of times in the following hours, days, weeks and months.

I e-mailed Wendy the next morning and told her the upshot of the conversation and I waited on tenterhooks to hear back from her – after all, she was booked with Gabby... would she want to go with me? No problem on that count. I got home to an e-mail from her that night, saying she’d cancelled her original plans (after all, as she said, Gabby never knew what she was planning and was so young she wouldn’t understand anyway) and where would I like to re-book? I knew immediately I wanted to stay at the Contemporary, if the budget could stretch that far. I’d always fancied trying it and it seemed a perfect choice, as I wouldn’t be renting a car, and I wanted somewhere with good transport links.

We decided that the Tower room was out of our price range, which was a shame, as I really had always liked the idea of that, so instead we went for a garden wing room and I called up to book it a day later. The deposit was paid and we were all set.

Now you know us Disney planners – we can’t resist talking about our plans, no matter how far away they are. Wendy and I were no exception. We would occasionally chat via e-mail and sometimes on the phone about the tour and our plans for it. I knew that I wanted to do some things that I wouldn’t usually get to do with Mark – and try and do things he wasn’t keen on. That meant that some of the bigger rides, where I need a ride buddy, were a must – things like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Soarin’, Mission Space, Test Track, Tower of Terror and Expedition Everest. Automatically that meant getting to the parks early, but with my jetlag, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem and Wendy was happy with getting up early. We would obviously be following the tour schedule during the Decade of Dreams tour and, as we were getting there the day before, we decided to head to Epcot that day, as it’s my favourite park and any extra chance to see Illuminations sounds good to me!

All too soon, we were talking about where to eat and again, I tried to go for places that I knew Mark wasn’t keen on. There were certain places that he told me I couldn’t go to without him, such as the California Grill, which was fair enough, so I sat down with him and talked about restaurants he either wasn’t keen on trying or on going back to and we made our choices around that. We were soon sorted and ended up with the following choices for sit down meals:

• Raglan Road (Mark isn’t keen on trying this place)
• Rose and Crown (Mark didn’t enjoy our last meal and isn’t keen on returning – I don’t mind giving it a second chance)
• Coral Reef (see above)
• Crystal Palace (I was told that dining with my donkey was fine – I think he was just glad to escape that torture! )
• Trail's End (neither of us have ever been, but Wendy always tells me how good this place is, so she was determined to take me there)

It was amazing how easy it was to put all our plans together and we kept commenting on that, especially as the trip was almost a year away and Wendy was going through what seemed like almost daily changes to her (then upcoming) family trip in June. However, we were all set and sorted and ready to go – all we needed now was airfares. Or were we?

Next: there had to be a change in here somewhere!