"Seeking the Sun" January 2-9, 2013 Trip Report - Page 9 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
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If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Sounded like a nice full day at MK. The Wishes Dessert party sounds nice. I hate having to fight the crowd to watch the fireworks.
We love the dessert party, if not for the yummy desserts, then it is worth it for the reserved viewing of Wishes! We have already purchased this again for our return trip in June for our last night.
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Originally Posted by MayraLR
What a great day at MK!
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by Cam22
Great last full day at MK!
It was a very busy and full day, but we had a great time!
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Originally Posted by chezp
What a great day at the Magic Kingdom! I like the idea of trying out the new way of paying at Be Our Guest - that sounded very neat.
BOG should offer this all the time. I am not sure if they are still trying it out or if they have implemented this, but it would save a lot of people from standing out in the hot sun without cover.
Wednesday, January 9th, 2013 Magic Kingdom and Saying Goodbye
This morning was a rough morning. Teagan had not slept well and her fever was up and down all night long. I could tell she didn’t feel well and debated taking her to Urgent Care instead of going to Magic Kingdom before getting on the plane, but in the end decided that I would continue to give her Tylenol and wait until we got back to Ohio for the Dr. We all got ready pretty quickly, and packed everything up. Donnie called Bell Service to help with the luggage and crib that needed to be returned. A wonderful helper arrived after a 20 minute wait. Trey and Kennedy were playing outside in the pool area while we were waiting. After Donnie walked the luggage to the airline check in and the rest to Bell Service, we loaded up and headed to Magic Kingdom.
We had an 11:30 dinning reservation at Crystal Palace, and we arrived at Magic Kingdom around 10:50. There was just enough time for a quick picture and a run to get Space Mountain fastpasses, before heading to lunch.
It was also raining a bit, so we went to Crystal Palace to try and get out of the rain. I didn’t realize this, but they close the restaurant between breakfast and lunch (or at least they do not allow anyone in the building until right at 11:30 for lunch) so we had to wait outside on the porch, where 50 of our closest friends also decided to wait to get out of the rain. We checked in around 11:20 and were not seated until 11:40, so we waited for 20 minutes shoulder to shoulder on the covered porch.
Once seated, the characters came quickly. Teagan still was not feeling well, so she did not interact with the characters much, nor did she really eat anything. But the food here was very good. There were many different salads to choose from, and that was perfect for lunch!
After eating, Kennedy decided she did not want to ride Space Mountain, so Donnie and Trey headed out to use the fastpasses, while I settled the bill. Only, there was a slight problem, I had no more dinning credits according to my KTTW card. The server explained that it was showing no more credits, and she would have to charge the meal to our room and we could sort things out back at the hotel. I was not too happy with this, knowing I should have had meal credits left, and I settled the tab at the hotel earlier in the morning, but I really had no choice in this.
Kennedy, Teagan and I headed to Space Mountain to meet up with the boys. They had an uneventful ride on Space Mountain!
After explaining to Donnie about the problem with the dinning credits, we decided we would not have too much time to enjoy Magic Kingdom before going back to the resort for our 3:00 pick up from the airport, especially since we had to get this problem fixed. So we decided to take a spin on Buzz Lightyear.
It appears Donnie is taking this game very seriously!
Next was our family tradition of our last ride of each visit on the People Mover. We make this our first and last ride of each trip, so we can say hello and goodbye to our favorite area at Magic Kingdom. After our ride, we decided to walk through the shops so the kids could spend some of their money. I also have a tradition of getting a charm for Kennedy and Teagan for their charm bracelets. My mother had a silver charm bracelet she had bought for me when I was born. Each time we went on vacation I would get a charm from the places we visited. It is very special to me and I wear it for very special occasions, with each charm bringing back fond memories of family vacations. After I had Kennedy, I stopped buying for my bracelet and started purchasing a charm for her on our vacations. Now both Kennedy and Teagan have their own charm bracelet and we continue the tradition for them. I couldn’t find the perfect charm anywhere! I had waited too long to look and nothing really caught my eye. The other problem was the many of the charms were the bead type charms. I could find many of the cheap, clip on charms, but I like to buy sterling silver charms for the bracelets. I found two crystal Mickey heads and decided on them. The kids also picked out some pins for their lanyards and we were on our way back to All Star Music.
Once back at the resort, I went to the front desk to figure out the missing dinning credits. It turns out that our meal at Sci-Fi was run through twice and we were double charged for both the tip and the credits. If I had more closely monitored our bill, I might have caught the double tip charge. The nice ASMu cast member credited our credit card (it had been charged again for any charges 30 minutes before we came back to the resort) and gave us an extra credit for our trouble. We then went to the gift shop, where the kids picked out a few more things with their gift cards. We also headed over to the food court to see if we could get some snacks with our left over quick service credits. We picked up some sushi, rice crispy treats, bags of gummies, pretzels, and cookies. We also got some bottled waters and juice, (which was not too smart because we had to toss them at the airport before going through security.)
We boarded the ME bus promptly at 3:00 and headed to the airport. I think we stopped at Sports on our way. Once at the airport, I had to manually check Teagan in as a lap baby and then we headed to security. The line was huge!! It took an hour to get through security! The security line at Orlando always seems to be this long, no matter what time we get to the airport. Our flight did not leave until 6:45, so we had an hour to kill. We decided to get something to eat at McDonald and eat our sushi from earlier. Teagan ate some fries, but that was about it. She was whinny and coughing. I felt horrible for her; I knew she did not feel well.
After boarding the place we realized there were only about 20 people on the flight, so there was plenty of room to spread out. Teagan fell asleep for most of the ride and when she woke up she was very fussy and cried. After we landed, we all changed into some warmer clothes (it was 28 degrees outside in Columbus) and headed to the shuttle for our car.
On our way home we stopped at Children’s Hospital Urgent Care, where Teagan was diagnosed with a double ear infection and Croup. She was given some antibiotics and we were on our way. A few days later, she still was not getting better, so I took her to the ER (it was after hours and her fever would not come down) and we found out she had developed pneumonia and spent the night in the hospital getting fluids, medicine and breathing treatments.
Final Thoughts
Overall, our trip was great! The weather was perfect, aside from some rain, and we accomplished most everything on our must do list. It really helped knowing that we had already planned our return trip for June/July 2013. We learned a few things about how our family tours. We like to get to the parks early and leave early if we do not take a mid-day break. We also really dislike Disney transportation. It is unreliable and having our own car would be very nice. We realized that we are not big fans of the value resorts and will spend the money for deluxe or stay offsite in the future. We also found out that the dinning plan is not really a good fit for us. We had way too many snacks and quick service credits left over. The TIW card is a much better fit, allowing us to eat the way we want. But since we had the dinning plan as a promotion (adults play and dine for kids prices) we took advantage of the deal over a room only discount. Next time we will pass on the dinning plan and take the room discount.
Great final day and final thoughts! Hope Teagan is feeling much better now! Thank you so much for sharing your adventures with us! Can't wait to read about the next trip.
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Great final day and final thoughts! Hope Teagan is feeling much better now! Thank you so much for sharing your adventures with us! Can't wait to read about the next trip.
Thanks so much for following along. At times I felt like Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Bueller..... Bueller.....Bueller???) Teagan is long past her sickness, thank goodness!
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Originally Posted by chezp
So sorry Teagan was so unwell on your final day.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share your trip with us.
Thanks for following along. It was fun and a great way to document our trip!
A great last day, except for poor Teagan. Hope she recovered quickly once you got her to the doctor. Poor thing on the plane with a double ear infection! The photos from Crystal Palace and Buzz are wonderful. Isn't it great when you go enough to figure out your family's own style in accommodations and meals-- makes planning much easier in the future!
Poor Teagan. I could tell she wasn't feeling well in the pictures from CP Still, it was a great last day!
Thanks for sharing your trip with us! The next one is coming up soon, right???
Thanks for following along Jenn. She does look miserable in those pictures. We leave for our next trip in 5 days! I am so excited, but there is so much to do. I haven't even started packing yet!
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Originally Posted by lauriep
A great last day, except for poor Teagan. Hope she recovered quickly once you got her to the doctor. Poor thing on the plane with a double ear infection! The photos from Crystal Palace and Buzz are wonderful. Isn't it great when you go enough to figure out your family's own style in accommodations and meals-- makes planning much easier in the future!
Thanks Laurie! She recovered once we got the right amount of medicine in her. I know that plane ride had to be absolutely miserable for her! I wanted to cry when I found out about the ear infection. Our next trip is only 5 days away and I am implementing many of our changes into the trip so we will see how things go. I does make it nice that we have figured out many of the things that works for our family!
It sounds like you got quite a lot done on your last day, despite the rain and Teagan not feeling well! Great pictures! Thanks for sharing your trip with us!
It sounds like you got quite a lot done on your last day, despite the rain and Teagan not feeling well! Great pictures! Thanks for sharing your trip with us!
Thanks Marnie! It was a nice day overall. I had fun sharing with everyone!
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I like the idea of trying out the new way of paying at Be Our Guest - that sounded very neat. 
Love the pictures! 
Still, it was a great last day! 
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