angel8783
09-07-2008, 10:12 PM
The "planning" for this trip started approximately a few weeks before my last trip in 2007 began, before I ever knew it would become a redo trip. I found out about the free dining bounceback and I was sold!
We arrived last year on Oct 12, which was coincidentally the official (I think) but not posted last day of booking free bounce back dining for the next year. When we arrived I sat down on my bed at Port Orleans Riverside and and called the extension which I knew would let me book the trip and book for DH and myself.... little did I know how much I would need the trip!
So...
I guess you might want some background on why this trip is a redo for me...
There are TWO major reasons, the first being school, and not any old school, MBA or Masters of Business School, Grad School. In 2006, when DH and I got married, I moved strait from graduating with my undergrad degree into Grad School.
As I changed jobs and started working 40 hours a week, I was taking 6 hours (2 classes) and I was miserable. About the time we went on the trip I was in the middle of a BIG group project in Marketing and therefore, had to abandon my group members. Why take a trip in the middle of the semester? Well, lets just say that school had been constant since the age of 5, and if I wanted to experience MNSSHP in my life before we decided to have kids, I needed to throw caution to the wind and schedule vacations when I wanted to go, not when my classes allowed for them. So... I left for our trip just as my group was doing the most amount of research, and they were mad, real mad, so that was hanging over my head. I knew this was the risk I was taking, but you also have no idea what will be happening on that given week in a class 10 months out, and like I said, I had been in school since I was 5, so I decided to throw caution to the wind.
Reason #2... my mother-in-law.
Oh yeah, my mom and my mother-in-law went with us. Now, my mom loves Disney World and she is great. She is not a complainer at all...and neither is my mother-in-law usually, she was worse than a complainer, she was totally apathetic about our whole trip.
To this day I believe that the payments she gave us each month to pay for her part of the trip were paid for by her mother (DH grandmother, who tends to pick up lots of little luxuries for her, oh except she spends her money on nails and getting her hair professionally highlighted and a new sink and faucet just because she wanted them instead of getting her blind dogs cataracts fixed). Anyways, when your parents have been paying for monthly living costs and luxuries every month since 1990 when you got a divorce, then you might not really appreciate it anymore either.
I tried, I really did to get her excited. I had a little dinner get together one night to show her segments from the travel channel shows, we talked about rides, we talked it all up, her eyes glazed over, she didn't care, it was just a free vacation for her. She was most excited about the upgrade we got from All Star Music to Port Orleans Riverside.
While we were there, she followed us VERY SLOWLY around the park, didn't pick up a map, didn't care when we totally missed Dinoland in AK and complained about waking up early every morning, and she was 49, not 17! All she wanted was to dip her feet in the pool and sleep all day. When we had to leave my very first MNSSHP early because she was tired, and hot (because she wore a sweater in 90 degree weather) and wouldn't even get up off the sidewalk to watch Hallowishes, I went back to the hotel room and cried because she also didn't want to come to Epcot the next day with us after the late night at MNSSHP. She did come, and that was the best day of the trip, but when we asked her how she liked the day, she told us it was ok, but just all too much, she was on sensory overload from World Showcase, and no, she did not want to come see Wishes and SpectroMagic with us at the MK... she would just go back to the resort.
I promise, I had warned her of the walking, of the rides of the intensity of this type of vacation, but I guess when you don't pay for the trip, and you are used to trips to the family lakehouse which consists of LOTS of naps, then this type of vacation is maybe too much. Shame on me for not realizing she would react this way.
So, this time, when we leave in about 17 days from now, it will be a redo for DH and I, and he is looking forward to it as much as I am, because I can't imagine that holding you wife while she cries in the middle of her happy place because of your mother is very happy for you either.
Next time: our plans!
We arrived last year on Oct 12, which was coincidentally the official (I think) but not posted last day of booking free bounce back dining for the next year. When we arrived I sat down on my bed at Port Orleans Riverside and and called the extension which I knew would let me book the trip and book for DH and myself.... little did I know how much I would need the trip!
So...
I guess you might want some background on why this trip is a redo for me...
There are TWO major reasons, the first being school, and not any old school, MBA or Masters of Business School, Grad School. In 2006, when DH and I got married, I moved strait from graduating with my undergrad degree into Grad School.
As I changed jobs and started working 40 hours a week, I was taking 6 hours (2 classes) and I was miserable. About the time we went on the trip I was in the middle of a BIG group project in Marketing and therefore, had to abandon my group members. Why take a trip in the middle of the semester? Well, lets just say that school had been constant since the age of 5, and if I wanted to experience MNSSHP in my life before we decided to have kids, I needed to throw caution to the wind and schedule vacations when I wanted to go, not when my classes allowed for them. So... I left for our trip just as my group was doing the most amount of research, and they were mad, real mad, so that was hanging over my head. I knew this was the risk I was taking, but you also have no idea what will be happening on that given week in a class 10 months out, and like I said, I had been in school since I was 5, so I decided to throw caution to the wind.
Reason #2... my mother-in-law.
Oh yeah, my mom and my mother-in-law went with us. Now, my mom loves Disney World and she is great. She is not a complainer at all...and neither is my mother-in-law usually, she was worse than a complainer, she was totally apathetic about our whole trip.
To this day I believe that the payments she gave us each month to pay for her part of the trip were paid for by her mother (DH grandmother, who tends to pick up lots of little luxuries for her, oh except she spends her money on nails and getting her hair professionally highlighted and a new sink and faucet just because she wanted them instead of getting her blind dogs cataracts fixed). Anyways, when your parents have been paying for monthly living costs and luxuries every month since 1990 when you got a divorce, then you might not really appreciate it anymore either.
I tried, I really did to get her excited. I had a little dinner get together one night to show her segments from the travel channel shows, we talked about rides, we talked it all up, her eyes glazed over, she didn't care, it was just a free vacation for her. She was most excited about the upgrade we got from All Star Music to Port Orleans Riverside.
While we were there, she followed us VERY SLOWLY around the park, didn't pick up a map, didn't care when we totally missed Dinoland in AK and complained about waking up early every morning, and she was 49, not 17! All she wanted was to dip her feet in the pool and sleep all day. When we had to leave my very first MNSSHP early because she was tired, and hot (because she wore a sweater in 90 degree weather) and wouldn't even get up off the sidewalk to watch Hallowishes, I went back to the hotel room and cried because she also didn't want to come to Epcot the next day with us after the late night at MNSSHP. She did come, and that was the best day of the trip, but when we asked her how she liked the day, she told us it was ok, but just all too much, she was on sensory overload from World Showcase, and no, she did not want to come see Wishes and SpectroMagic with us at the MK... she would just go back to the resort.
I promise, I had warned her of the walking, of the rides of the intensity of this type of vacation, but I guess when you don't pay for the trip, and you are used to trips to the family lakehouse which consists of LOTS of naps, then this type of vacation is maybe too much. Shame on me for not realizing she would react this way.
So, this time, when we leave in about 17 days from now, it will be a redo for DH and I, and he is looking forward to it as much as I am, because I can't imagine that holding you wife while she cries in the middle of her happy place because of your mother is very happy for you either.
Next time: our plans!