Oh the Places We Go, The People We See Updated 11/03/2013 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Oh the Places We Go, The People We See Updated 11/03/2013
Welcome to my newest Trip Report. For those who don’t know me, I am Jen.
That’s my Daughter Claire with me.
We just got back from an amazing vacation with several family members. We traveled Nov. 1st thru the 15th, 2012. We rested our headed at 6 different places on this trip, and though it wasn’t always easy to keep moving from place to place, I am happy to have tried some new resorts out and stayed at some familiar ones as well.
This trip came about over a year ago. My Mom’s cousin Vicki wanted to take a trip with her and my Aunt Mary. Her Daughter Katie also wanted to come along. After some talking and planning it became a group of 16 traveling. I was elected ring leader since I have quite a bit of Disney experience. Plans were made, some were changed, and some were a little slower at making decisions than others. My husband Skip is what is known in the Disney groups as a resistor and he decided NOT to come along. He was not so happy about the amount of time I was going to be gone.
The dates for the cruise were set first, Nov 4 through the 8th on the Disney Dream. We all planned to arrive a day early and stay at the Residence Inn near the port. Soon I decided that I must add a few Disney days, and so did everyone else eventually. I thin decide…heck lets add some more, and Claire and I ended up staying 3 more days after the rest left. Then after doing some research and with a heads up from my good Dis-friend Carey, I was alerted to the fact that the last Halloween party was on Nov. 2nd. How could I pass that chance up? So Claire and I decided to fly in a day earlier than everyone else to hit that party. Claire and I also decided to fly out of Columbus. My family lives near the Toledo, OH area, and the best direct flights are out of Detroit. My youngest sister, who was not going on the cruise, lives in Columbus, and I was able to get a decent priced direct flight from there, so Claire and I drove down Nov. 1 and spent the night before our early flight.
Plans were finally all set in stone and we just had to wait for our time to arrive. Not an easy task, but we all managed.
Let me introduce you to the crew. This is a picture of a picture. My sister has the CD with the actual digital copy, but hasn’t yet loaded it to the computer, so I had to go with this for now till I can get a copy.
In the back row, left to right, we have my parents, Joe and Paula, next to them is my Uncle Geoff. Next to Geoff is cousin Vicki and her son in law Thad. Next to Thad is Pete, Vicki’s husband and then me. Aunt Mary is on the end, she is married to Uncle Geoff and my Mother’s sister. Down towards the front, left to right, is my nieces Alexis and Abby with their parents Rob and Gail. Gail is my sister. Front and center is Claire. Behind Claire are Jude, and Katie. Katie is married to Thad and is Pete and Vicki’s Daughter. And then we have baby Luke in the stroller. He is only about 9 months old and what a cutie he is.
This trip had the usual ups and downs that most every family will have, but I have to admit things went much smoother than I planned. We never felt the need to kill each other for the most part. LOL We had several cruise newbies and several Disney World newbies as well.
Please join me in reliving a very magical trip with all the places we traveled and all the people we met along the way!
That's quite a crew! Very ambitious to travel with such a large group, but it sounds like it worked out very well. I'm sure you all made some great family memories and it must have been nice for Claire to spend so much time with her little cousins.
That's quite a crew! Very ambitious to travel with such a large group, but it sounds like it worked out very well. I'm sure you all made some great family memories and it must have been nice for Claire to spend so much time with her little cousins.
I was a bit worried how it would al lturn out. I guess because of my worries, it worked out better than expected.
The memories we made are priceless.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Wow - that's a huge group!
Sure is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MayraLR
Great start! That's quite a group! I bet you had lots of fun.
We did. I would love to do it all ovr again....next week.
Quote:
Originally Posted by taylan1
What a great group and a great start! Love the picture! Can't wait to read all about it!
Today was the day….the day we had been looking forward to for so long. But it was a busy day too. Claire had to go to school today. Of course she tried to figure ways to be able to stay home and help, but I wasn’t going to fall for it. I had a lot to do, actually the whole week had been busy, so it was more helpful for me for her to be away from the action.
The night before had been Halloween. I worked hard that day to get as much ready as possible before we left for the big trick or treating extravaganza. Claire was a “nice” vampire. So nice that she refused to put in her teeth. Even for pictures. We went with some friends and here is a picture of the kids.
So with a sugar and Disney high, I sent her off to school. That poor teacher.
I had a project I had to finish and deliver before I could leave, so I spent my morning on that and then loaded my car up with luggage.
Before I knew it, it was 2:30 and time to pick Claire up. She was beyond excited…and so was I.
We went home and changed her clothes and had a little time to waste before leaving. We couldn’t leave too early or we would get to my sister’s house before she was home from work. I told Claire to be sure she put on her white tennis shoes, as those were going to be her main park shoes for the trip.
We said our good byes to Skip and lots of hugs and kisses were given. He acts like he is Mr. Cool, but I know he was going to miss us.
I think we hit the road around 3:30ish, give or take. This was going to be boring. Within 10 minutes, Claire asked how much longer. LOL She had her ipod and played with that for most of the trip and I had “Mocking Jay” (the last book in the Hunger Game series) on CD, so that kept us both occupied.
Not too far out of the Toledo area we ran over something. It appeared to be just a piece of rubber road “stuff” sticking up. All the cars were running over it and when I saw it I quickly tried to avoid it by having it go down the middle of my car. It looked harmless, but you never know. Well my car made a horrible noise when we went over it. I was surprised because I didn’t appear to hit it with my tire. A few curse words “might” have escaped my mouth and I told Claire that I sure hope we don’t get a flat tire as we had a long ways to go yet. Things kept running smoothly after that and no flat tires appeared while driving. Thank goodness!
As we go closer, my sister Amanda called and said she was on her way home from work. I think we still had about 45 minutes to go, but we were assured she would be there when we got there.
As we got closer, we thought about using the bathroom, but we decided we could make it. Claire was more interested in finding a McDonalds anyways. I told her no, because we had a dinner date a little later that evening.
We arrived at Amanda’s and used the potty and sat and relaxed a little bit. Claire was talking a mile a minute with Amanda.
I pulled out my kindle to check out what was happening in the real world ….aka facebook. LOL
I was sitting in a chair and just looked up and my glance fell on Claire’s shoes sitting on the floor ……and it clicked. Claire had her school shoes with her, which meant the white tennis shoes were still sitting on the floor in my living room. UGH! I quickly panicked. “Where are your tennis shoes?” She swears I never told her to put them on, yet I know I told her at least 3 times. Plus she had known for weeks that those shoes were what we planned to wear “on the plane”. So a quick trip to Target was in order before our dinner date.
We found the exact same shoes that she has at home and they were purchased and luckily didn’t break the bank. We also picked up some headphones for her ipod since I did leave those at home in another bag. I just never thought about it till we were on the road and I kept hearing the ipod noises.
Next stop was the Cheesecake Factory.
I visited one for the first time in Florida last year and I was hooked. Boy that food is darn good.
When I realized my sister lived right down the road from one I insisted we eat here tonight. We were also meeting a Dis/facebook friend, Carrie, here too. She said she likes any excuse to come there as well. We arrived a little earlier than planned so I texted Carrie and let her know we had arrived and were seated and to just ask for the Jennifer table.
This actually worked out really well for me. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure exactly what Carrie looked like …..because she doesn’t post many pictures of herself online ……shame on you Carrie. I knew she would probably recognize me first, since I am kind of unusual, LOL, but this worked out great. She was brought to our table soon after we arrived and we introduced her to Amanda and Claire and we all chatted. She was really easy to talk to and a big Disney fan as well.
We soon were brought bread, which was really good, and Claire devoured a lot of it.
Then we settled in to make our dinner choices.
For dinner, Claire and I planned to share a pizza. I had had their pizza last year and really liked it and I knew Claire would like this choice as well.
Carrie got the Alfredo…I think with chicken in it.
And Amanda got some sort of club if I remember right.
The food was good, but I think we all ended up with to go boxes with leftovers.
Now for the real reason we came here ….the Cheesecake!
I got the reeses peanut butter one. Yum yum yum!!!
I couldn’t finish it so I brought that home with me as well.
Carrie got a pumpkin.
Amanda got hers to go, and I can’t remember which flavor she got, it might have been pumpkin as well.
Carrie also got one to go for her DH. She said he made her promise to bring home a slice. LOL.
All too soon it was time to say good bye. I was really happy to have the chance to get to meet up with Carrie. It was also amazing how many things she and Amanda had in common. Before we left I did have Amanda take a picture of us.
We walked out together and then separated to head to our cars.
We headed down the road to Amanda’s house and once again I got on the kindle for a bit and we turned on some TV. Claire pulled out some homework to do too. We figured we wouldn’t have a lot of time to do it once we left, so we better at least put some effort into it now.
Well ….let’s just say …Amanda and I could fail the 2nd grade. We worked on phonics. Who invented such a horrid subject. Neither of us understood how to do her work, but she seemed to know what she was doing. It looked “wrong” to us, but what do we know. In the meantime, we pulled out the cheesecake and finished that off too. She only did a few pages and we gave up and I insisted on going to bed. Amanda was packing her lunch for the next day at work. She also was driving to Toledo to visit a friend after work, so she was getting that all ready as well. She kept asking me if I was going to eat my pizza, then it dawned on me that she wanted it for her lunch and I told her to take it as I didn’t think I would eat it before we left in the early AM.
We had the car packed with luggage and decided on a time to wake up and leave. I think it was something like 4:50 AM…or some awful time like that. I knew I really didn’t have to do much to myself that morning. So I wasn’t going to get up earlier than needed. We hit the sack and Claire was anxious …and so was I. But soon she was asleep. Let me tell you sleeping with Claire is drawing the short straw. She is ALL over the bed. I did not sleep well that night at all. It was much too hot and I kept waking in a sweat. Claire kept shimmying over to my side and I kept pushing her back. One time I realized she had absolutely no blankets on her and I realized she was probably cold, so I pushed all the blankets back on her and things went a little better after that.
My inlaw clan keep saying they want to do a cruise , so I'm quite interested to see how your group did it! And a Disney cruise is always worth tuning in .
That's A LOT of cheesecake! and it looks delicious
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sorry. Luke belongs to Katie and Thad, Jude is his brother.
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