After a night of tossing and turning (I thought I kept my house cold; it’s got NOTHING on my now typically unoccupied childhood bedroom), that 3:30 alarm absolutely did come early. It was about 18 degrees outside overnight, which, while balmy compared to the 0 I had seen Friday morning, was pretty cold.
I quickly got ready, having organized surprisingly well the day before for a quick departure. T was working this morning, before he and mom flew to Florida that night, and had said he could take me to the airport before work (therefore letting mom sleep) if we left PROMPTLY at 4:15.
I’m going to put this out here right now. T and I are generally civil. He and my mom married when I was 13, and like most 13 year old girls, I was not the most pleasant human being. T is pretty arrogant, so we got off on the wrong foot, and never created the same bond he achieved with my sister. These days we’re civil, but that’s about it. As much as I didn’t want to start the trip with him driving me to the airport, I appreciated the fact that he was literally going in the opposite direction of work to take me to MHT before work, and even moreso, I appreciated the fact that he was actually doing something nice for my mom for a change, by letting her sleep, so I was determined to not be late.
We were out the door at 4:09. Go me! At 4 am, all of those sensor traffic lights go straight to green, so it was about a 12 minute trip to Manchester airport. It was exactly enough time to discuss trip plans without leaving room for our typical awkward silences.
T dropped me at the curb, and I headed inside where I received comments of gratitude from my 6th grade science teacher’s husband (who I swear is at work at the Southwest counter EVERY time I’m at the airport, no matter what time of day I’m checking in for a flight), as I flawlessly found an open kiosk and tagged my bag, while dozens of others stood around staring into space, not even trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing.
With my bag checked to Orlando, I hopped on the escalator and walked through the empty precheck line. I believe it was 7 minutes from stepping out of T’s truck to parking myself at my gate, and that included buying myself a bottle of water.
My gate was 14, and I was very happy (but not surprised) to see that my plane was already there for this 6:15 am flight.
The last time I sat at this gate, I was in this airport for 7 hours, and wasn’t sure we would actually get on a flight in time for what turned out to be our FANTASTIC cruise on the Fantasy. Thankfully this was a much smoother travel experience.
About 5:45, boarding began. I was B34, despite early bird check in, because, vacation week. All I could do was stand back and marvel at the size of the family boarding line, and the size of some of the families (what happened to 2 adults per child?!) and those teenager-looking 6 year olds…
Eventually I got to board, and shockingly found a window seat in row 8. I actually ended up in a row of adults, and my seatmates were pretty great. The guy on the aisle is a pediatric dentist, and the woman in the middle seat runs an afterschool program and preschool. Both had a great sense of humor, and we chatted until we were airborne.
Once airborne, I got to see a great sunrise.
Following sunrise, I settled in to read. I actually put a pretty good dent in the book (After Anna), managing to read about 200 pages, before we began our final descent into Orlando, despite the scenery being great. This is probably the only flight I’ve ever taken where the entire trip down the east coast was clear enough to see ground. We were about half an hour early, and as we cheered about the idea of extra vacation time, the flight crew was quick to remind us that there might not be a gate available for us. Such buzzkills!
As it turned out, a gate WAS available for us. Being a New England based flight, deplaning was very quick, and pretty soon I was at baggage claim. This is where I discovered that while a gate was available for us, a baggage crew must not have been, because here I waited for a solid half hour before bags started emerging. And for the first time in the history of flying, I actually saw the first bag to emerge be claimed by someone, rather than the usual, where that bag typically never seems to belong to anyone.
Once bags started emerging, mine made an appearance pretty quickly, and I set off for the rental car garage. I had done the “skip the line” online check in, so all I had to do was walk out to the garage and find Alamo. The girl directed me to the midsize lane, and I cruised the lane to find the most eligible car. The most eligible bachelor award went to a black Toyota Corolla. I checked for bumps and bruises, loaded my luggage, and realized I didn’t have enough cell phone signal to link the car to my Sunpass account. Well, crap!
I came up with a plan, and got underway. And then changed plans once I exited the garage and saw the sign for the cell phone lot. I pulled in the cell phone lot, marvelled at it for a few minutes (it has real bathrooms! MHT just barely paved their cell phone lot), and then got to work on that Sunpass account.
Usually this is a quick process. But Sunpass felt it was necessary to have me reset my password, and establish security questions. So...what seemed like 20 minutes later, my rental car was finally connected to my Sunpass, and I was finally on my way to DISNEY!
Check in isn’t until 4 at Silver Lake, and timeshare resorts are pretty obnoxious about check in times. And let’s be real, you didn’t really expect me to spend this day somewhere other than Disney did you?
Traffic didn’t really want me to get to Disney in a timely manner, but eventually I made it to the Orange parking garage at Disney Springs, despite Google’s best attempts at messing me up. I parked, swapped the sweatshirt for a lighter open cardigan, and was on my way to the bus stop. It was in the upper 50s, headed for mid 60s, and VERY windy.
My first stop at Disney Springs? The bus stop. I took in the sunshine and palm trees, until my bus driver finished “refilling his pixie dust” (really, the bus marquees say that now) and the bus pulled up to the bus stop.
For some reason we didn’t use the shortcut past Golden Oak, so it was a longer trip than normal, but eventually I made it to the Wilderness Lodge. I wasted no time in heading for Geyser Point, where I was rewarded with a table with a great view of Bay Lake.
I had the bison bacon cheeseburger for lunch. The food appeared quickly. It wasn’t quite as good as when I had it in August, but it was still very tasty. I enjoyed lunch and my view, despite some ducks that came begging for handouts.
Once lunch was done, I headed for the boat dock. I was a bit surprised to see the ancient looking boat they were using for the trip to the Magic Kingdom.
Pretty soon the boat to the Contemporary came along, and I was grateful that it was a short boat ride. It was COLD on that open air boat.
At the Contemporary, I took a few minutes to poke around the shops, and then made my way to the monorail. The monorail actually was running reasonably efficiently, so it was a relatively quick ride to the Polynesian, with some great views along the way. It really was a beautiful day, when the wind wasn’t blowing!
Once at the Polynesian, I poked around the stores, hoping the line at Pineapple Lanai would decrease. It actually got longer. So I sucked it up and waited in line for about 15 minutes, but it was worth the wait. They were still serving the “Polynesian Lava You” float that had appeared around Valentine’s Day. I got this without the rum floater. What is this? Pineapple soft serve, with POG (passion fruit, orange, guava) juice and some pop rocks and a tiny amount of red syrup (that didn’t negatively impact it) to give that volcano look.
It was amazing. This should be a year-round offering.
Once I’d enjoyed my float (inside the lobby, out of the wind), and a cast member had quickly removed my empty cup from my hands (the cast members are taking cleaning seriously right now), it was off to the bus stop. Time to return to Disney Springs for real.
The wait for a bus was a bit long, but eventually I was back at Disney Springs, marveling at just how crowded it was. Seriously. WHERE DID ALL THESE PEOPLE COME FROM?!
I took my first ever trip through Ron Jon, where I found some new flip flops to replace a pair lost to a bit of a (dog) shitty situation last summer, and confirmed my thoughts that the Ron Jon in Cocoa Beach absolutely has to be on the itinerary in April. Then I poked around some other stores, before finding my way to Dockside Margaritas. You see, it just happened to be National Margarita Day. And it would be wrong to not honor such an important holiday.
The line here was long too, but worth it, and there was steel drum music to listen to while waiting in line. I got the Sunset Margarita, and it was excellent.
While I enjoyed my margarita, I continued wandering through stores, simply blown away by the crowds. There were wait time signs for the lines in Disney Springs. Yes, you read that right. I didn’t buy anything else in terms of merchandise, and was relieved when it was late enough to work my way toward the resort for check in. I DID stop at Amorette’s for the Cinderella Carriage cake to go, because I couldn’t pass up that social media-able treat!
Cake purchased, I made my way back to the car, and to Silver Lake Resort. It was about a 20 minute drive, and relatively straight forward. Silver Lake Resort is about half a mile from the Animal Kingdom Lodge.
Check in was reasonably painless, despite the fact that my stepdad hadn’t bothered to purchase a guest certificate when the reservation was initially booked, so the guest certificate that allowed me to check in was purchased at the last minute, and therefore the paperwork was a little wonky. I had about 10 pages of reservation paperwork and they needed to see ALL of it. But, I got checked in, and somehow managed to avoid being forced into a timeshare tour while there, and pretty soon I was on my way to find my unit, 9201A, in the 900 building.
Silver Lake Resort is pretty compact, so it was easy enough to find my unit. I left my luggage in the car, went up to find the unit, checked for bedbugs, and took some pictures. The unit was very nice.
Then I brought my luggage up and settled in, debating heavily what to do for dinner. Eventually I decided to go eat at Animal Kingdom Lodge. I spent a few minutes checking out the animals before the sun went down.
Then it was dinner time at the Mara. I got the chicken sandwich. This was good, but would have been better if the menu boards had mentioned the pickled onions on it, so those could have not been put on it, where they soaked through some of the bread. I hate onions. I hate pickles. I REALLY hate pickled onions.
I ate about half of my sandwich and then was full. Thankfully, my table was very close to a stack of go boxes, so I was able to pack up the rest of my meal (which never did get eaten), and soon enough I was back at the resort, where I enjoyed half of that social media-able treat. Yes, now you get to see it!
Then I crashed shortly before 8, relieved that plans had changed earlier in the week and I no longer had to pick up mom and T when they arrived at MCO around 9 pm. Only problem? I didn’t respond to mom’s texts upon their arrival, and she worried that I’d gotten lost at dinner, so she called me around 10:30, as they drove to The Villages. Thankfully, I went back to sleep quickly.
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