Day 1: 12/10/15 Below! (all the links that is, not below your computer. That would be weird)
Day 3: 12/12/15
Part I: A morning in Animal Kingdom
Part II: We meet Darth Vader & the Wishes Dessert Party
Day 4: 12/13/15
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT)
Day 5: 12/14/15
Hello Tampa! We board Brilliance of the Seas (again)
It's vacation day! Which makes it okay that we had to get up at 6 am for our 10 am flight. Otherwise, I'd want to punch myself on the face for getting up that early when I don't have work. Like all people before going on a 2 week vacation, I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off the week leading up to vacation trying to clear off my desk at work, buying everything Amazon told me I needed in a panic because somehow I forgot I was going to ORLANDO, which has EVERYTHING we have here in Orange County, trying to run around and get my Christmas shopping done (it was a miserable, miserable failure) and generally just being a crazy OCD person who likes to have everything planned down to the minute. I was up until about 2 am the night before (the morning of?) finishing up my packing (I kept taking stuff out, putting it back, etc. I was a moron. I should have just left it. Because then I'd have more summer clothes - yes, in December - which was sorely needed). So I'm groggy, but excited because hello! TWO WEEKS OFF = super duper awesome times a thousand.
Brian, the guy we always get to drive us to the airport rolls up early (as usual) and we load our 4 big suitcases and drive to the airport. We got lucky and 3 of us got TSA pre-checked. And it was glorious. I didn't have to remove my laptop, little quart baggie, or take off my shoes. Yay!
Except uh...my brother, who was NOT pre-checked, ended up at the gate faster than us. Because my mom's carry on was searched. The TSA dude was confused by the bag of rice (yeah...we're those people) and package of tofu (I know) she had in her carry on. So we stood there while he took out a box of tofu and examined the bag of rice she had in her carry on. Lord knows why it wasn't checked instead, but alas, we stood around for about 10 minutes while he searched our carry on for dangerous weapons and explosives. Because we look like terrorists. In our Skechers Go Walks and our hoodies and jeans. Anyhoo, he confiscated our INCREDIBLY dangerous box of Mori-Nu tofu and we went on our way...to the gate. Where we sat around for about 10 minutes before boarding. We got lucky and because our tickets were booked with my parents' account so instead of being in boarding group 2084, I was in boarding group 2 (see, my
unawesome boarding experience going to Alaska when I booked my own ticket with my own non-premier account - sob!) - which is awesome because 1) there's less people trudging backwards in front of us and we can actually get to our seat within 2 years and 2) there's room in the overhead bins for our carry ons. Which are actual carry on sized bags (it's a touchy subject for me. I get super judgey).
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| I'm not demonstrating the Asian squat, I was actually digging through my carry on for hand sanitizer because I am crazy. |
But we get lucky on the flight - we're seated in 2 rows of three across from each other and none of our rows have a 3rd person in the middle. And because we're in Economy Plus, we have plenty of leg room, which is wasted on us shorties. While it's not super comfortable, it was okay and I even managed to doze for a few hours.
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| I don't even know how to take a selfie! :( |
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| look how much leg room I've got! |
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| my brother's the tallest of us shorties at 5'9" - look how much leg room he's got! |
We knew that we wouldn't have time to grab food for our flight (because we are lazy and like to sleep) and being super cheapasses (and proud of it) we didn't want to spend $10 on a snack box with dried fruit and nuts, my mama (who is awethome!) packed us fake sushi as a snack. Fake as in it ain't sushi. But it has rice. And seaweed. Basically it's just steamed sushi rice with cooked salmon rolled up in seaweed so we can grab them without needing utensils (because we ghetto like that). After a very unsatisfactory nap (you can only sleep so well on a crappy airplane seat) I stuffed my face. So. Good. Then Raymond woke up and stuffed his face. Then I was an anal retentive OCD person and took photos of the leftovers. By the way, my mama made two containers. This was what was left. Which was soon eaten when we reached our rental condo.
We arrive a little ahead of schedule, ride the cute tram and pick up our luggage.
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| he's happy. I swear. |
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| see? we're all happy |
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| Hello Orlando airport Christmas tree! |
Is it stupid that I thought the little tram was cute? I guess because we don't have one of these at LAX. I'm clearly deranged.
We got our rental car through Costco and were assigned to Budget. We got a great price, but the guy who worked the desk (my brother swears his name is Mohammed Ali - I just remember the Ali part) SUCKED DONKEY BALLS. He was rude, he was condescending, and an all around asshat when I refused to upgrade our standard Kia SUV into a BMW X5 or an Escalade. Because uh...we're going to Disney World and leaving the car at a lot during our cruise and don't want a BMW or an Escalade it means we are stupid? Anyhoo, he dicked us around, bullied and threatened me trying to force me to buy their crap insurance and became all offended when I told him I purchased rental car insurance through Amex. Then he threatened me with liability issues like I couldn't speaky engrish. Honestly, he'd sell so much more insurance if he wasn't such a dick. What REALLY pissed me off was that he then assigned us a car in the furthest possible space in the lot...except after we dragged our suitcases in the Florida humidity, the space was empty. Like I said, the butthole of a retarded donkey. So we wandered around in the humidity until we found someone who helped us out and pulled up in another gray Kia SUV. Random black dude who was cool and found us a car and changed our paperwork = super awesome. Mohammed Ali who dicked us around = sucks balls. Do I make my dislike of him obvious enough? So Orlando didn't start out the greatest for us (thanks bunghole Mohammed Ali) but we bucked up and were determined to have fun dammit!
I really wanted to stay in the World, but I really didn't want to pay $400 a night for a hotel room with 2 full beds. With four adults, there's no way we could function in a 300 square feet hotel room with 2 full sized beds. For $400 a night. We'd need two rooms, which would be $800 a night - and as I work for the government, that ain't happening. Sadly, my dream of staying inside the World had to die (sob!). So I hopped onto homeaway.com like I always do and found a great 3 bedroom 2 bath condo about 5 miles away from the Main Entrance for $500. Total. Win!
It was super clean, the beds were comfortable, and it was fantastic to have our own kitchen, as little as it was used. And honestly, since the WDW portion of our trip was so short (3 days to do 4 parks - which I do NOT recommend ANYONE do - we were about to keel over from exhaustion), we weren't there except to sleep and shower. And we didn't even sleep that much! Paying hundreds of dollars a night for a room you're barely in is totally not worth it. If I had to do it again though, I'd stretch out the WDW visit from 3 to 6 days. It's that tiring.
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| master bedroom |
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| second bedroom - I stayed here |
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| third bedroom - my brother stayed here. And slept on both beds - one for napping and one for sleeping at night. He likes variety! |
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| our bath |
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| master bath |
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| dining area |
Once we find our condo (ahhh...) and settle in and unpack for the next 3 days and my mama makes magic in the kitchen. Because that's how we roll. She knew that we were in for almost two weeks of theme park and cruise food and wanted to delay that and alleviate the pain as much as possible. So she packed the ingredients for potstickers and that's what we had for dinner our first night in Orlando.
Dumplings are delicious. And my mama even remembered Sriracha! Because she is magic.
After dinner we sit and watch NBA games. And being the crazy person I am, I scour My Disney Experience one more time and find an 8 am ADR (advanced dining reservation) for breakfast at Be Our Guest, which is the FREAKING hardest ADR to get, and seeing BOG was one of the things I had to do. Also, a pre-opening ADR means that we can beat the crazy ass rope drop crowds and get on the Seven Dwarves Mine Train whose Fastpass+ was gone before I could even book our FP's for our trip. Seriously - this is what I've learned: booking and planning a Walt Disney World vacation is a fine art. If you want to eat where you want and hit the rides you want without standing in line for 3 hours - it literally takes months of planning, researching, and scouring the limits of the internets. Oy. It's not for the faint of heart. Because I couldn't get the Mine Train FP 30 days out (sob!) my original plan was to get to the gates by 8:15 for the 9 am opening and literally dragging my parents through the park during rope drop hoping to get in line for Mine Train without having to wait more than 30 minutes. Fingers crossed. If we fall behind even a little, that wait becomes 60-90 minutes. Because that's how crazy Disney people are. So getting a pre-opening ADR for BOG (which is right next to Mine Train) made me so freaking happy since we get to hop on the ride before the crowds from the main entrance arrive as we're so close to it. Even if it meant paying $19/pp for breakfast and getting up at the butt crack of dawn. Because 6 am Orlando time = 3 am So Cal time.
I celebrate my ADR find by high-fiving myself because no one else shares my excitement. Then we realize that we need drinking water. And snacks. And mascara. And we venture out in search of bottled sustenance and find the mother ship. It was beautiful. And wondrous. I wish we had a Super Target, but if we did I'd be too poor to go on vacation because all of my paycheck would be going to Super Target.
Even though I could have spent oh...another 4 hours there, I force myself to leave because we have to get some sleep to prepare for the long day ahead. Tomorrow we go to the Magic Kingdom!
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