The Cat and the kittens do Disney: A Birthday Celebration, finished About This Page:

[Wondcat]

The Cat and the kittens do Disney: a Birthday Celebration!





Who:

Me, Pat the Wondercat, Mom to Mandy, "Minnie voice" and Alissa. The "Chef"

Where:

Pop Century and The Fabulous Polynesian

When:

February 4-8, 2004

Why: Why, because we love you, oops, I mean OUR BIRTHDAYS!!!





Preface:



Originally, my two daughters, Amanda and Alissa and myself were supposed to go the Walt Disney world in December of 2002. We planned and made our reservations, after much searching, at the Polynesian, Concierge. After all, we all had good jobs and we could afford it.

In March of 2002 I quit my job of 15 years. I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired. I hadn’t had a Manager for months and I was working all day almost every day. I had been offered what I thought at the time was a better situation, but boy was I ever wrong.

After almost three months of sheer frustration at this new job I was blessedly fired. No one wants to be fired, but I really did! I didn’t do anything wrong, it was just not a good fit for me and both my “druggie” boss and myself knew it. She was a huge part of the problem and because of the drug problem there, I was even a little afraid to work there.

When I left the old job, my B-witch of a temporary supervisor that I had told me that if I wanted to come back after I quit, I would have to wait six months. So, I just decided to sit on my well-cushioned tail and collect unemployment. Of course, this meant we would have to postpone the trip.

In September of 2002, my youngest was involved in a terrible car accident, not her fault. She suffered a terrible cut on her forehead, sustained some body injuries and had to go to therapy for months. Just as she was recovering from her accident, my eldest was hit in the rear, totaling her car, injuring her and my two Grand-dogs, who were also in the car. She started therapy soon after. We knew that we weren’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Sooo, we changed the ressie to December of 2003, we had really wanted to go at Christmas. It is my favorite time of year and I love to be at the World when all of the decorations are up.

In October of 2002 I returned to my former employer and found out that if I had gone back within 90 days, I could have resumed my old position with the new manager and gotten back all of my benefits. I started at a different location and it was much better. Ce la vie, I knew that the B-witch would get hers, because what goes around come around. (P.S. She was recently tried for embezzling) The girls continued to have therapy into 2003, they were both out of work for a while and it looked like our trip would have to be postponed yet again.

We decided that we didn’t want to wait until December of 2004 and made up our minds to make it a birthday trip instead. So, we changed our reservations to February, also value season. Both of my girls were born on the 19th, the first one just happened to be. The second one, I planned that way. I though at least when I am old and senile, I would remember that their birthdays were on the same day. Anyway, and mine is on the 20th, so we would go for a triple birthday trip!

We changed our ressie from a three day long weekend to a four day one and canceled the concierge. We figured that all we would do was sleep there and why not have more money to spend on our birthdays! We planned and planned, we decided that since Pop Century had recently opened and it is our ambition to stay at every resort, we would add yet another day, at a substantial discount!

Now, we were leaving on Wednesday and coming back on Sunday, five super days with the mouse! We would arrive at Pop Century, spend the night at our $70.00 discount room and then go on to the Polynesian the next day!

For Christmas we asked for Disney dollars from everyone and gave them to each other. Mandy surprised us and gave us the plane tickets for Christmas. We already had our leftover passes and passes from the park closing on 9-11, we were all set! All that was left for us to do was call Tiffany Town car and get Mandy’s husband to take us to the airport.



Next: The plane, the plane!

[goofy4goofy]

Great start! I can't wait for more!

Kelly

[Bert & Sully]

I'm so glad to see you back Pat!! Great start.

Elaine

[Waltismyhero]

Terrific intro, Pat! I'm eagerly awaiting more.

[Mel & Richard]

3 birthdays in two days! I can't wait to here how you celebrated them.

Mel

[Colexis Mom]

wow, you have all been thru a lot Great start to your report, and can't wait to read more

[DrDolphin]

Great start to the report!

[luvnwdwgal]

Great start Pat!! Hurry with more!!

[buckysmom]

So glad you FINALLY made it! Can't wait to hear more!

[DouglasE]

What a great start to your trip report! I am eagerly awaiting the next installment. The three of you must have really NEEDED the getaway.

[Wondcat]

Who:

Me, Pat the Wondercat, Mom to Mandy, "Minnie voice" and Alissa. The "Chef"

Where:

Pop Century and The Fabulous Polynesian

When:

February 4-8, 2004

Why: Why, because we love you, oops, I mean OUR BIRTHDAYS!!!







The Plane, the plane!



On the day of our departure we met at my house, Mandy worked that day and Alissa and I were off. We knew that we would not be able to have dinner before we left, so Mandy stopped at “Sheets” gas station and sandwich shop ( I know, I know strange combination) to pick up sandwiches for us to eat on the plane. This was per Jennifer’s instructions to “bring your own food and live in the lap of luxury.” I think that Alissa had Chicken salad and Mandy and I got Hanszel and Pretzel. Ham and cheese with honey mustard on a pretzel roll, yum! Mandy’s husband Ryan was to take us to the airport, Ryan is retired (he’s 28!!!)So, he was available to take us.

Not to be outdone by us, Ryan and my DH, Richard were planning a golf trip at the end of the month and Alissa’s Fiancée’, Donald was leaving for Mexico with his brother or had actually left before we did.

So, we piled into the van and off we went. We got to the airport in record time and Ryan dropped us off and we went in to check in.

All went very well until we got to the metal detectors, Mandy went though, and Alissa went through. I went through and I beeped, I went through again and I beeped. Please remove your shoes said the officer, I did. I went through again and I beeped, they wanded me and I beeped. I just couldn’t understand it. Apparently, at the same time, my purse had beeped, I said could it be my phone?” They said no, but it's about the same size, and they started taking items out one by one and checking it after each item. In the meantime I was still being wanded, do you have any metal in your body? Pins, plate’s etc? No, I didn’t I told them. Then the light bulb went off over my head, but I do wear a magnetic bracelet for my Arthritis, I told them! That was it, I took it off and I didn’t beep anymore. In the meantime the girls were standing outside of the railing that I was being held in, looking at with their mouths open. This could not be their mother beeping and causing trouble. I still had the purse to deal with, they said they did not want to take everything out, did I know what it could be? I said could it be my perfume? It’s in a metal case, that was it! They practically threw everything at me and told me to put my shoes on. By now, the girls who had been very quiet and careful not to cause any trouble were laughing, along with the woman who had checked my shoes. We got out of there as quickly as we could.

We went to our airline's boarding area and found three seats together. Actually there were many seats together because we were quite early. It was only about 6:00pm, we had left early to allow for rush hour traffic, but there hadn’t been any. Our flight wasn’t until 8:10pm. We got some drinks for ourselves and settled in, we figured since we had so long to wait we would ignore Jennifer’s advice and enjoy our sandwiches right there. We finished them and I got out my Passporter and we talked about what we would do when we got there and before we knew it they were calling us onto our flight.

It was pretty much uneventful, which is a good thing nowadays. With Alissa by the window, Mandy in the middle and me on the aisle, we settled in. There was a couple in front of us with a little boy; they must have been newly married with the father being a stepfather because he was really trying to impress the kid. I read and listened to them talk, they were really funny and the kid was doing his best to keep up with them. When we got close to Orlando, we could start to see the lights of the city. It is so amazing to see all of those lights from so far up. It just looks like a big carnival or circus.

We took the shuttle to pick up our luggage and to meet our driver from TTC. We didn’t see anyone with our name on a sign; we saw a lot of other names. We walked about looking for someone looking for us. Finally, I went outside and called TTC with my cell phone, he was there, just in the wrong place. This should have alerted us to something. He came to meet us and took my luggage for me and we followed him out of the airport to the Town car that was waiting for us.

We all got in, me in the front, girls in the back and he starting asking us questions. Where were we from, were we staying, where was my husband? He started to creep me out. I was glad when we finally got through all of the tollbooths and started to see the Walt Disney World signs. We were spending our first night at Pop Century in the 50’s building. He made the turn into the resort; I was surprised that it was very dark there. We drove down a long tree lined road with very few lights until we got to the actual resort. Then low and behold there were lights everywhere and the first thing that I saw was giant bowling pin. I groaned, I just couldn’t get away from them! We showed him our Passporter coupon and paid and tipped him and got away from him as fast as we could.

We went to check in, it was around 11:30pm, we were given the map and told that our room was right out the front doors and just a short walk. Since we hadn’t eaten anything since the airport except some stale pretzel mix, we decided to go to the food court since it was still open. We all shared Chicken Caesar salad and a little pizza and had coke. By then, it was 12:00am, the front doors had been locked and we had to walk around the entire building instead of taking the short walk out of the front doors. It still didn’t take very long and finally we slipped our card into the lock and opened the door, only to see one bed.

I was like, Cheese and Rice!, What the he_ _ is this??!! The girls were saying calm down. I called the front desk, a young man answered, I said we only have one bed, he said but, it’s a king sized bed right? I said yes, but I asked for two queens. He said hold on. I held on so long that I finally hung up. Was this Disneyworld or had Hakim driven me into some parallel universe? The phone rang, it was the man from the front desk, he said did you call about having one bed? I groaned and said that I had. He said well, if you want to bring your luggage to the front desk, we will change your room. It was almost 1:00am we were tired, we had just made that longer walk and we had to be out of there by 11:00am. I said, no thank you, we will just stay here. We got undressed got into bed, me on one side, Alissa in the middle, Mandy on the other and amazingly, we all went to sleep. My last good night’s sleep of the trip.



Next: What the heck is she doing?

[Mel & Richard]

You are cracking me up. I can't believe the three of you slept in the one bed and it was the only good nights sleep you had.

I hope that things went smoother in the morning.

Mel

[wdwlovers]

What a start to your vacatoin! Hope things got better the first day there! Looking forward to reading more!

[luvnwdwgal]

Hey Pat! Sorry you only ended up with one bed, but it kinda reminds me of the kid's song....."3 in the bed and the little one said "roll over, roll over" so they all rolled over and 1 fell out!" LOL

[Wondcat]

Who:

Me, Pat the Wondercat, Mom to Mandy, "Minnie voice" and Alissa. The "Chef"

Where:

Pop Century and The Fabulous Polynesian

When:

February 4-8, 2004

Why: Why, because we love you, oops, I mean OUR BIRTHDAYS!!!



Next: What the heck is she doing?



We woke up the next morning to the sound of Mickey’s happy hello. We tumbled out of the bed and stumbled into the shower, one by one of course. It’s one thing to sleep together, but quite another to shower together. We had to arrange to have our luggage transferred to the Polynesian and unbeknownst to Alissa, we had a 1:00pm PS at Cinderella’s Royal Table.



When Alissa was in Disney World on 9-11 when they closed the parks. She had a reservation for breakfast at the castle and when the parks were closed, they of course had to miss it. You know how hard it is to get a ressie anyway and poor Alissa was just devastated. So her big thing for the trip was to eat there. I told her before we left that I had been unable to get a reservation for breakfast, but that maybe we could stop by while we were there and see if there was an opening for lunch or dinner. She said OK, but was very sad that we didn’t have a PS already. So Mandy and I decided when I finally did get one, that we wouldn’t tell her until we got there. I mean right there, at the Castle.



We took our luggage to the luggage transfer place and they said that they would send it on ahead and that we could go play in the parks. We looked around a little before we left. We were sorry that we wouldn’t be able to stay at Pop Century longer, but we had bigger fish to fry at the Poly!



So we hopped on a bus to the Magic Kingdom. When we got to the entrance of the park, at the turnstile, my pass didn’t work. It was a complimentary one from 9-ll so, I knew that it was good. I had to stand around and wait while Guest services confirmed it and finally let me in. We headed off to our favorite ride, the Haunted Mansion. We got right on and at the end of the ride the ghosts are singing Grim, grinning ghosts something, something, something. Well, we couldn’t really understand what it was, but Alissa said that it was “String bean roasts cannot be socialized.” She sang this to us for the remainder of the trip at every opportunity she got.



We popped in and out of a few places and we circled around so that we were back in front of the castle. I said, Lis I’m really sorry that I couldn’t get a PS for Breakfast. She woefully said that’s OK. I said, but I was able to get one for lunch! Her face lit up and she jumped up and down and it was all worth the wait to surprise her. We went up to the podium and told the CM our name and she sent us into the throne room to wait for them to call Princess Alissa. We waited and waited and looked around the room. Did you ever notice jock and Gus Gus running across a beam on the castle wall? Then Cinderella came in and all of the little children clamored to be near her and they finally called our name.



We went up the stairs to the Royal Table and were seated. Our server, Fernando, came over to take our drink orders. We all decided on Bippity Boppity Brew, the girls had Mango lemonade and I had Strawberry cream and we each got to keep our mug. I had already been there for lunch and could highly recommend the grilled chicken with slaw on apple cake, yum, which Mandy ordered. Alissa had the Major Dommo pie, which she still talks about to this day and I had the Coachman sandwich with field greens in raspberry vinaigrette, yummo! Fernando popped by and asked whose birthday it was, we told him that it was all of our birthdays. He appeared a few minutes later with birthday cakes with candles for all of us. These were sort of like a Hostess snowball, but quite tasty and filled the birthday bill. We thanked him and paid the check and headed into fantasyland



Alissa bought a beautiful pair of Austrian crystal Champagne flutes with Cindy and the prince etched on them for her wedding. We practically walked onto every ride that we wanted to ride. We had stopped at City hall to get birthday pins when we got there and many people wished us happy birthday. We stopped mid afternoon for a Dole whip, our first and discussed the string bean roasts. Whether they were roasts made up of string beans who wouldn’t socialize together or, our favorite, roasts that the string beans were trying to force into tuxedos and they wouldn’t let them because they didn’t want to be socialized. We could see their little faces screwed up as they shook their heads no at the beans.



We went into every shop and all of the ones on Main Street. The MK closed at 7:00pm that night and it was getting close to that time and we still had to check in at the Poly. So we took the boat to the Polynesian to check in. We got in line and waited until Christina, the CM called us over. Although, she was pleasant, she was not especially friendly. Our room was already paid for and when she said that she had to go check on something. We stood there as other guests checked in and got lei’s put around their necks from their friendly Cm’s. Finally, after quite a long time she came back and giving us no explanation of why she had been gone so long and also no apology. She handed us our leis and our room information and sent us out to a golf cart with a very nice young man to take us to our room.



We loaded our bags onto the cart and off we went, I should have known that to need a golf cart we would have a very long walk every day from Tahiti. I’m surprised that Tahiti used to be concierge since it is so far away from everything. We finally got there and took the elevator up to our room, which was unlocked with the door propped, open. The CM said that it should have been locked and helped us with our bags. It was a very nice room, beautifully decorated in a south pacific sort of way with canopies over the beds and with three, count them, three beds! Alissa claimed the daybed and I went into the bathroom. I had only been in there a minute when someone knocked on the door. It was the CM, Christina bringing us a Birthday cake, balloons, hats, favors, plates, napkins, candles and matches. We were totally surprised, but at least now we knew what the heck she had been doing.



We tried to turn on the lamp but it didn’t work, so we turned on the overhead light and headed off to O’hana (O’hana means family) for the all you care to eat skewered dinner. We had several types of meat with different dipping sauces. I ordered a “Backscratcher” which sounded great on paper but was waaay too strong and I didn’t finish it. It did come with a lovely wooden Backscratcher though. Their desserts looked fabulous, but we were too stuffed to order any. Instead our server brought us fresh Pineapple with caramel sauce and we ate it all, it was sooo good. While we were eating the bartender announced a Hula-hoop contest and we watched as he put them through their paces. Then we left because we were all exhausted and our feet hurt and we wanted to rest. But not before we perused some of the shops and made a few purchases. We stopped to get some ice and coke from the machines and went to our room.



Next: Are there cameras in the hall?