terbethk
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2007
Well this is my first crack at writing a trip report, so bear with me.
First of all, let me introduce you to my cast of characters.
Just two of us, me and the hubby, and we've been married for four years, but most of our married life has been spent apart, because he served four years active duty in the Army.
Here's me, Theresa, I'm 27. I'm a hairstylist, nail tech, and a Disney fanatic.
And here's my husband, Ryan, who's 26. Since getting out of the Army about 10 months ago, Ryan's been in the National Guard Reserves and working overnight/early morning freight at Home Depot.
The pictures are from our trip in December 2008. We also went in November 2007 (and I went two times prior to that with family, and actually again in 2009 with two friends).
I've been a Disney nut for as long as I can remember (and was born into a family of them, as well). Ryan loves Disney movies, but definitely wasn't LOVING WDW on his first two trips (despite the weather being good and crowds being low). After this trip, I'm pretty convinced that it's just that we hadn't spent enough time there on each trip. Our 2007 trip we spent two days at Universal/IOA and two days at Disney (one day at AK, Epcot, and DHS and one day at MK). On our 2008 trip we were there four days (but two of those days were travel days). So our trips up until then were really pretty rushed.
We started planning this trip in May 2010, and I was about to graduate from Cosmetology school. It took quite a bit of convincing on my part to get him to agree to this. But eventually, he agreed, and I started planning and booking. I booked our trip around what days had the cheapest flights. For me - the longer the better. We got our flights for $84 each way pp, and our dates shaped up to be October 26- November 2. 8 days - perfect! We would be flying out of Milwaukee on Airtran there (leaving at 6:20 AM with one layover) and coming home on Southwest leaving at 3:00.
Since we'd been mentally planning our trip since the last one, we already knew which resort we wanted to stay at - All Star Music! We stayed at Movies in '08, I stayed at Coronado in '09, and offsite in '05 and '07. We originally booked ASMu with a 30% discount, but shortly thereafter, free dining got released, and we decided to go with the QSDP instead, since the trip was so much longer, and in my mind, it would be easier knowing all our food was already paid for. I think that's really all the pretrip info you need...so, here we go!
I had asked off for the day prior to my trip in order to give me two days off to prepare. On Sunday, I went to the spa to see my manager, Marissa to get my nails done (I'm also a nail tech at this spa). I had her do the same Mickey heads on my toes as last year, and we did Fedora Shellac on my fingers. It looked fantastic, as always!
Most of Monday we spent packing and cleaning. It was a little stressful, I had a huge headache and of course packing in itself is a huge headache, but we did get everything done and were in bed early - like 8ish I think. Of course I was tossing and turning until at least 9:30. I woke up 15 minutes before the alarm went off at 2:45 AM. We set the alarm for 3, because we had a 6:20 AM flight, as always. Ryan's dad took us to the airport, and we arrived there at about 4:45 AM. It was the morning of a bad storm, and it was REALLY rainy and windy. It didn't get really bad until we were already at the airport, but they were hoping for our plane to make an early departure. Here's a very unflattering picture of us (me, actually) waiting to board the plane.
It wasn't long before we boarded our flight to Baltimore. It already seemed as most of Wisconsin was headed to Disney. The flight was CRAZY. Ryan fell asleep before we took off and slept almost the whole time, including the insanely turbulent takeoff and most of the flight was pretty bouncy - like I said that storm was pretty intense. It was kind of funny to watch Ryan's head - it was bouncing all over the place, lol.
As we were landing in Baltimore, I had "Good Morning, Baltimore" from "Hairspray" stuck in my head. Our layover was only half an hour, and as we realized we were already at our gate when we landed - we were just reboarding our plane. lame-ish. But we were on our way quickly and shockingly I wasn't going too crazy. I was pretty calm, but I was next to a weird lady on the flight. We landed in Orlando at 11:50 - about 25 minutes ahead of schedule. We deplaned, stopped by the restroom, hopped on the tram to the main area and made our way down to the Magical Express area. Nobody was in our line, we were the only ones, but there were tons of other lines, so I was a little annoyed thinking a bus to our resort had just left. A few seconds later, however, a nice castmember came over to us, asked us which resort we were going to, and told us to go talk to some castmembers at the desk up front. So we did, they kind of looked at us funny, but they quickly put us on the next bus, followed by one more family, then we were off! We were on the bus at 12:10, which was before our flight was even scheduled to land! woohoo! Already ahead of schedule, I love when things run smoothly! Especially because on our 2008 trip we were almost 3 hours behind schedule at this point. So things were off to a great start!
Here we are on the bus! Couldn't be happier! We also got to see the Disney Welcome video, which I was happy about, because we didn't get to see it last year.
Okay, I did get a little happier, when we passed under this sign!
To even make this trip smoother, our resort (All Star Music) was the buses first stop (we got there at 12:45) AND we were the only people getting off there. How convenient for us. Of course, I had done online check in before we left, so I got to skip the line (Oh wait, there wasn't one) and we were helped right away. Our packet was already put together, and we got the exact room I had requested! We wanted a king bed in the Jazz section. Perfect! Check in went very quickly and our room was already ready! So we headed on back to our room. Here's the view as you walk out of the main hall and into the pool/resort area.
I was in HEAVEN. Palm trees, heat, water. Oh, heat. It was HOT. As hot as last year, high 80's, low 90's, OUCH.
Can't complain though.
The room was in a good location. It only took a few minutes to walk from the main building. Not like the resorts I've stayed at the last few years. Yikes!
We freshened up a bit, and I took a few pictures of the room.
There was a privacy curtain, which was nice, because I was able to get ready without waking Ryan up.
Ryan also got pretty wrapped up in watching Stacey on the Must Do's.
We finally headed out to the bus stop at 1:20 PM, ready to head to the MK! Here's Ryan waiting for a bus!
We waited about 20 min for a bus, and there was only one other couple on it. We also weren't sharing busses with the other all star resorts, so we arrived at the Magic Kingdom at exactly 1:56. Of course once we got to the Magic Kingdom the first thing we had to do was take TONS of Photopass pictures, especially since we actually bought the CD this year.
To be continued....OUR FIRST DAY AT THE MAGIC KINGDOM!!
First of all, let me introduce you to my cast of characters.
Just two of us, me and the hubby, and we've been married for four years, but most of our married life has been spent apart, because he served four years active duty in the Army.
Here's me, Theresa, I'm 27. I'm a hairstylist, nail tech, and a Disney fanatic.
And here's my husband, Ryan, who's 26. Since getting out of the Army about 10 months ago, Ryan's been in the National Guard Reserves and working overnight/early morning freight at Home Depot.
The pictures are from our trip in December 2008. We also went in November 2007 (and I went two times prior to that with family, and actually again in 2009 with two friends).
I've been a Disney nut for as long as I can remember (and was born into a family of them, as well). Ryan loves Disney movies, but definitely wasn't LOVING WDW on his first two trips (despite the weather being good and crowds being low). After this trip, I'm pretty convinced that it's just that we hadn't spent enough time there on each trip. Our 2007 trip we spent two days at Universal/IOA and two days at Disney (one day at AK, Epcot, and DHS and one day at MK). On our 2008 trip we were there four days (but two of those days were travel days). So our trips up until then were really pretty rushed.
We started planning this trip in May 2010, and I was about to graduate from Cosmetology school. It took quite a bit of convincing on my part to get him to agree to this. But eventually, he agreed, and I started planning and booking. I booked our trip around what days had the cheapest flights. For me - the longer the better. We got our flights for $84 each way pp, and our dates shaped up to be October 26- November 2. 8 days - perfect! We would be flying out of Milwaukee on Airtran there (leaving at 6:20 AM with one layover) and coming home on Southwest leaving at 3:00.
Since we'd been mentally planning our trip since the last one, we already knew which resort we wanted to stay at - All Star Music! We stayed at Movies in '08, I stayed at Coronado in '09, and offsite in '05 and '07. We originally booked ASMu with a 30% discount, but shortly thereafter, free dining got released, and we decided to go with the QSDP instead, since the trip was so much longer, and in my mind, it would be easier knowing all our food was already paid for. I think that's really all the pretrip info you need...so, here we go!
I had asked off for the day prior to my trip in order to give me two days off to prepare. On Sunday, I went to the spa to see my manager, Marissa to get my nails done (I'm also a nail tech at this spa). I had her do the same Mickey heads on my toes as last year, and we did Fedora Shellac on my fingers. It looked fantastic, as always!
Most of Monday we spent packing and cleaning. It was a little stressful, I had a huge headache and of course packing in itself is a huge headache, but we did get everything done and were in bed early - like 8ish I think. Of course I was tossing and turning until at least 9:30. I woke up 15 minutes before the alarm went off at 2:45 AM. We set the alarm for 3, because we had a 6:20 AM flight, as always. Ryan's dad took us to the airport, and we arrived there at about 4:45 AM. It was the morning of a bad storm, and it was REALLY rainy and windy. It didn't get really bad until we were already at the airport, but they were hoping for our plane to make an early departure. Here's a very unflattering picture of us (me, actually) waiting to board the plane.
It wasn't long before we boarded our flight to Baltimore. It already seemed as most of Wisconsin was headed to Disney. The flight was CRAZY. Ryan fell asleep before we took off and slept almost the whole time, including the insanely turbulent takeoff and most of the flight was pretty bouncy - like I said that storm was pretty intense. It was kind of funny to watch Ryan's head - it was bouncing all over the place, lol.
As we were landing in Baltimore, I had "Good Morning, Baltimore" from "Hairspray" stuck in my head. Our layover was only half an hour, and as we realized we were already at our gate when we landed - we were just reboarding our plane. lame-ish. But we were on our way quickly and shockingly I wasn't going too crazy. I was pretty calm, but I was next to a weird lady on the flight. We landed in Orlando at 11:50 - about 25 minutes ahead of schedule. We deplaned, stopped by the restroom, hopped on the tram to the main area and made our way down to the Magical Express area. Nobody was in our line, we were the only ones, but there were tons of other lines, so I was a little annoyed thinking a bus to our resort had just left. A few seconds later, however, a nice castmember came over to us, asked us which resort we were going to, and told us to go talk to some castmembers at the desk up front. So we did, they kind of looked at us funny, but they quickly put us on the next bus, followed by one more family, then we were off! We were on the bus at 12:10, which was before our flight was even scheduled to land! woohoo! Already ahead of schedule, I love when things run smoothly! Especially because on our 2008 trip we were almost 3 hours behind schedule at this point. So things were off to a great start!
Here we are on the bus! Couldn't be happier! We also got to see the Disney Welcome video, which I was happy about, because we didn't get to see it last year.
Okay, I did get a little happier, when we passed under this sign!
To even make this trip smoother, our resort (All Star Music) was the buses first stop (we got there at 12:45) AND we were the only people getting off there. How convenient for us. Of course, I had done online check in before we left, so I got to skip the line (Oh wait, there wasn't one) and we were helped right away. Our packet was already put together, and we got the exact room I had requested! We wanted a king bed in the Jazz section. Perfect! Check in went very quickly and our room was already ready! So we headed on back to our room. Here's the view as you walk out of the main hall and into the pool/resort area.
I was in HEAVEN. Palm trees, heat, water. Oh, heat. It was HOT. As hot as last year, high 80's, low 90's, OUCH.
Can't complain though.
The room was in a good location. It only took a few minutes to walk from the main building. Not like the resorts I've stayed at the last few years. Yikes!
We freshened up a bit, and I took a few pictures of the room.
There was a privacy curtain, which was nice, because I was able to get ready without waking Ryan up.
Ryan also got pretty wrapped up in watching Stacey on the Must Do's.
We finally headed out to the bus stop at 1:20 PM, ready to head to the MK! Here's Ryan waiting for a bus!
We waited about 20 min for a bus, and there was only one other couple on it. We also weren't sharing busses with the other all star resorts, so we arrived at the Magic Kingdom at exactly 1:56. Of course once we got to the Magic Kingdom the first thing we had to do was take TONS of Photopass pictures, especially since we actually bought the CD this year.
To be continued....OUR FIRST DAY AT THE MAGIC KINGDOM!!