Hope everyone had a good holiday. I wound up sick and no voice for a few days but it gave me time to organize my pictures and notes. So without further ado I start the trip report.
Day 1 - And we are off
D-Day minus one always has me wondering why I waited til the last minute to pack. This trip was no exception. I did have all of my lists made out and fine tuned so packing was easy. I wound up with 2 bags to be checked in because I just couldn't fit all of our clothes into one bag. I had purchased new luggage and the largest bag wasn't very large, only about 25 inches. My old suitcase was 29 inches and it's amazing what that 4 inch difference makes. I had one carry-on with all of the electronics: FIVE cameras (yes 5 cameras), power cords, Christmas lights, spare batteries, chargers, camera chargers, etc. The bag was HEAVY! I also had a carry-on with all of Jim's meds and a few other things and my backpack with snacks and my Kindle.
My son came earlier than I expected to pick up my spoiled pup Chewbacca. She loves appending the week with his family and their 2 dogs. She is spoiled rotten by my grandson. My Chewbacca - she is a Chug and not a big and hairy dog.
I cleaned out the cat box, did the dishes, took out the trash, all the mundane household chores that need to be done anyway and hoped my son would get the trash to the curb. I should have told him to do it because he is no different now than when he was a child and had to be told to do it constantly. The cans were still full when we returned home. With that done I actually got to bed by 10 and managed about 4 1/2-5 hours of sleep so I was happy.
I was up by around 3 AM. We had a 7 AM flight and with the amount of people and Jim's medical issues I wanted to be at the airport by 5 AM. I made a quick cup of coffee in the Keurig. Fast and easy clean up and did a last minute check of everything, especially the electronics. I went to Scotland a couple of years ago and packed the wrong charger for one camera and wrong extra battery for the other camera. I didn't want to make the same mistake.
I had the bags by the door and I waited. Since Mike backed out of the trip he was taking us to the airport in my car. Mikey and Crystal were going with Big Crystal, or DML as I may refer to her from now on. She was supposed to head to Jennifer's and grab the kids and some luggage and then Jennifer was heading to my son's house to get Jay. My kids all live within 5 minutes of each other. I told Jen to be at the house by 4:15 at the latest. At 4:15 Jen called to tell me that she couldn't reach Jay and oh yeah all of us were going down in my car. WHAT??? I have a van so it seats 7 people. We would be cramming 8 people, 5 of them adults, and all of the luggage in my car!!!
I called Jay he was ready and already heading out of the door. Just as I hung up Yoko texted me to find out what gate as American flies out of Terminal B and C. They were already at the airport. Then I waited to find out why we were all going in my car. I am used to Jennifer being late but DML is usually on time. She overslept. We emptied my storage area as best as possible. OK granted it probably needed it as I have some chairs and pool things in there from the summer. Somehow we managed to fit 6 suitcases, 8 carry-ons, 2 backpacks and 4 purses in the car. I just couldn't see anything and I may need new rear shocks soon. I was scraping the ground and could not see out of the rear window at all. Mike told me I could drive. As I scraped my undercarriage backing out of the driveway DML called to say she was 5 seconds from the house. OK then. I slowly pulled back into the driveway. We shifted some luggage and people and finally got on the road at 5:01 AM. Only 45 minutes to an hour later than I planned. Mike told me I could drive again. Probably a very good thing as I made it to the airport in 20 minutes. On a good day it's a 30 to 40 minute drive. Yes, I was speeding. I have FOP tags on my car so I can get away with it.
We arrived at the airport around 5:19 and I headed right to
ARRIVING flights. I couldn't figure out why i couldn't find the terminal. Oh yeah, I needed
DEPARTING flights. DUH! Went around the airport and finally reached the right terminal at 5:30 AM. Now I was over an hour behind my nice relaxing plan. We got all of the luggage out of the cars and headed in to check all of the luggage. We were on 3 different reservations so it got very confusing. While the kids dragged the luggage for me I made sure Jim had a wheelchair. After we paid for all of the suitcases, downside to American is you pay for luggage, and got them on the conveyor belt I relaxed just a second or two. Then I realized that the tags and boarding passes were all mixed up. Got it fixed, boarding passes anyway, and we were off to the TSA. We still had a ton of carry-ons to deal with and Jim. i took Mikey with me and Jim. He is Autistic and I figured a melt down would be easier handled by me. I talked him through everything and he did great. Jim sailed through TSA with no problems. I had my carry-on pulled for further inspection. The agent was great and explained to Mikey that I had so many cameras they wanted to see them all. Satisfied we were safe I was cleared and on we went. We were on the
FURTHEST gate away. I made sure Jim would pre-board and chatted with the friends for a couple minutes, frantically looking for Jen and Beth et al. We had gotten to the gate at 6:15 so not bad timing all things considered but pre-boarding started at 6:25. They called Jim, me and Mikey to get on the plane and still no family. I panicked a little but needed to get Jim on the plane and settled.
One of the escorts came and wheeled Jim while I struggled with all of the carry-ons we had. I found Jim's seat and got him settled and the largest and heaviest carry-on with him. I told Mikey we were further back in the plane so follow me. I was halfway to my seat to find Jim following me. Since the strokes he gets confused at times and forgets things. He was in row 5 and we were in rows 28 and 29. Told Jim not to move and got Mikey back to his seat. Thankfully one of the very nice air stewards helped Jim back to his seat and helped him buckle in. I got Mikey settled and my other carry-on stowed away and called Jen, then Beth and DML. Finally got one of them to answer and they were at the gate waiting to board. I relaxed for a few seconds again. Bill decided he didn't want the seat I paid extra for and I wound up sitting with Jim for take off.
Plane Pictures
Mikey all settled in
Jennifer, Mikey and Ella
Crystal and Jay who was already giving me a hard time about pictures
Crystal (AKA DML) and Isai (AKA "Z")
Sitting up front paid off for take off pictures. It was a clear day and I got some nice pictures of the Delaware River
When we were allowed to move around the plane I switched seats with Jay. I got a picture of Beth, Bill and the boys
I was proud of the boys though they did really great flying. I had cookies to eat that we made at church but no one wanted any. We played musical seats with Jim and I got to sit up there for landing too. I don't know what the flight plan was but we were further out over the Atlantic than I am used to but finally we were seeing the Florida coastline
We landed about 20 minutes ahead of schedule but had to wait for the ENTIRE plane to unload before we could get moving. Of course we had to stop at 3 different bathrooms because nobody could go at the same time and one had a changing table in use and Ben needed a new diaper. Seriously we landed about 9:20 and this group shot was taken 30 minutes later but at least we were finally heading to the Magical Express
And of course we needed a picture in front of the airport tree
Fake monorail pictures, the only ride we all took together.
We got to Magical Express and it was a nightmare. The lines were long and we were shuttled into several different ones so we got split up. Of course Beth's group was totally separated and the people between us refused to allow her to join us. I wasn't overly concerned but her friend Fallon was ready to go off. We just yelled over their heads to Beth. I wasn't sure we would even get on the first bus anyway the lines were that long. I was wrong. Of course as we got Jim to the bus I realized that people were in the accessible seats. I told the Disney people we would wait for the next bus because there was no way he was steady enough to go to the back of the bus. The driver went on board and pointed out to the people that they had to move. They weren't happy and tried to put up a fight that they were there first. The driver just pointed to the accessible sign. We all got on the bus except for Beth, Bill and the boys. Fallon tried arguing they were with us and needed to be on this bus. Beth didn't care. Finally all settled in we were on our way and soon were seeing this
I called Walker as soon as we got off of the bus since they had called twice to deliver the scooters. No sooner had we gotten all of our carry-ons off of our bus, Beth's bus pulled up. I knew they would be right behind us. Of course because we used a
travel agent I didn't do on-line check-in. That was a
HUGE mistake. Yoko and Danielle didn't know to skip it and were already checked in. Then Beth headed to the store to price shoes for the two little ones. She had them in PJ's for the flight and forgot to bring their shoes. Seriously I still want to know how you can forget shoes! DML went with Jay to wait for the scooters and Jen and I got in line to check in. If you have the option to check in online DO IT!!! It just makes life so much easier. We arrived at the resort at 10:53 AM. This is based on time stamps on my pictures. It took us 90 MINUTES to check in and there was no line ahead of us.
When I made the reservations I told the travel agent I had 2 requests: Baseball or Football Building although I knew that was on an availability basis, and that the rooms be close together and Jennifer's and DML's rooms had to be connecting since Mikey was in DML's room. Close together was important because one of the scooters was going in their rooms. Now we were listed as a group so close proximity should have been accommodated. There was one room ready so Beth took that one since she and Yoko were taking Uber to Walmart. Bill took the boys to the park and her friends went to the parks. We stood there for 90 minutes while the CM did who knows what. Seriously how hard is it to get
THREE rooms checked in. Finally, we took everything to Bell Services assured that we were checked in and that we would get a text when the rooms were ready. I needed to get Jim's meds in a refrigerator and thankfully Bell Services could handle that.
Finally at 12:43 we were heading into our first park.
To be continued and will things begin to look up after such a rough start. Stay tuned to find out.