Cast of characters:
Me: 37, school SLP, the trip planner
Nick: also 37, sells Ford for the commercial division of the local car dealership, the travel prince. Hates heat and humidity.
So…if we thought my trips usually have some plot twists and drama leading up to them, well, we were just getting started.
In roughly February of this year, I booked 4 nights at All Star Music for myself, with the killer (by 2024 standards) discount that was being offered at that point in time. Those 4 nights would be August 17-21. I then watched Southwest prices for about a month. And when the flights down dropped to a price point I was willing to pay, I booked…and added a day at the start of the trip, because those Saturday flights down didn’t get in until midday and it’s such a short trip already...
By this point the REALLY good discount had ended, and another slightly lesser discount had taken its place. So I couldn’t…err…didn’t want to…add on a night to my Music reservation, because I was pretty sure I’d then lose the really deep discount I had for the original 4 nights. So, I decided to try a new to me resort, namely, Coronado Springs. Prior to this trip, it’s one I wouldn’t stay at for a whole trip, because it’s SO big and internal buses and all of that. And I’m solo. But for one night, where I could try that restaurant I’ve been wanting to get to (Three Bridges)? Let’s do it. So I booked August 16 at Coronado Springs.
And then the school year got even wilder than it had been. At some point I booked my flight home. At another point Southwest changed my flight times, so I had to adjust those, because no I’m not arriving in Orlando during peak thunderstorm hour because they eliminated the morning nonstop, thank you very much.
On the last day of that hellish school year, as I was driving home from work, I got a phone call from Disney. “We see you have two reservations. We’d like to offer you a complimentary upgrade to Coronado Springs for the 4 night reservation, so that you’re at the same resort for your whole stay. Do you accept?”
Well twist my arm. Sure! So they upgraded my 4 night reservation to a king room at Coronado Springs, and then I spent the next couple months planning the logistics of a bottled water delivery when I would likely have to change rooms after one night (because obviously my first night reservation was for a standard room), at a massive resort. And, of course, I planned my trip.
And then somewhere around July 3rd, Nick told me he’d taken the week of my Disney trip off, to paint the ceilings in the house. Apparently he’d finally gotten sick enough of looking at the water stains from where ice damming had created roof leaks approximately 9 years ago. But, he didn’t really think it would take the whole week to paint. And he didn’t really want to spend the whole week working at the house. So would I like him to go to Disney too? My response? “Do YOU want to go to Disney in August?!”
He posed that question as we were driving to get ice cream so when we got home we looked to see if it was even realistic price-wise for him to go with me. Turns out it was, and bonus points, tickets were still available to the Halloween party I had a ticket to. So we booked plane tickets, bought him his MNSSHP ticket, and I got on the phone with Disney to get him added to the reservation, since, with the hotel upgrade, the system wouldn’t let me add him. And in fact, it wouldn’t let the phone CSR add him either; she had to escalate it to her supervisor, but by morning, he was on the reservation, which was good, because the next morning a Boba Fett Magic Band+ popped up in the discounted options available for the reservation, sealing the deal that we would have +s for this trip that weren’t just our DCL bands. Nick loves Boba Fett. I decided to mix and match for myself, since I was on two reservations, and got two basic colored + bands for myself.
Summer program really got rocking, I completely revamped trip plans, and the countdown got smaller.
As we got into August and things started to wind down with summer program, things started to wind up on the home front. My grandpa is 99. He’s aged pretty gracefully overall, but, he’s 99. Things are starting to go downhill. So on August 13 (you know…3 days before my trip), he was admitted to the hospital, for, well, not the first time this year, or even this summer. Mom had spent most of the summer at his place (a couple hours from home) and her birthday was on the 15, so, since it was clear she wouldn’t be coming home in time for that, as she’d originally thought, I decided I’d head north on the 14th, and come back on the 15th, before flying out early on the 16th so that she could see one of her kids on her birthday (my sister was…somewhere in the country…for work).
So, after racing around doing laundry and loading up packing cubes on the 13th, I went north on the 14th. And to make a long story very short, we “celebrated” mom’s birthday on the 15th by spending time, approximately 24 hours before I was scheduled to land in Orlando, hanging in the surgical waiting room, while grandpa was in, let’s call it, urgent surgery, me wondering if I really should be going on the trip that mom was acting like I was still going on. Thankfully, he emerged from surgery with better vitals than he’d gone in with (and much better than the day before!). So at mom’s insistence, I headed south to finish packing. And I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise that about 80 miles of my 120 mile trip home was in torrential downpours courtesy of thunderstorms.
I got home about 12 hours before my flight was scheduled to leave. I think we had grilled cheese sandwiches because grocery shopping is the first thing to go when living in survival mode. And then I packed for real, showered, and finally collapsed into bed well after 9 pm, with alarms set for roughly 3:00 the next morning, genuinely concerned that I’d sleep through said alarms.
Me: 37, school SLP, the trip planner
Nick: also 37, sells Ford for the commercial division of the local car dealership, the travel prince. Hates heat and humidity.
So…if we thought my trips usually have some plot twists and drama leading up to them, well, we were just getting started.
In roughly February of this year, I booked 4 nights at All Star Music for myself, with the killer (by 2024 standards) discount that was being offered at that point in time. Those 4 nights would be August 17-21. I then watched Southwest prices for about a month. And when the flights down dropped to a price point I was willing to pay, I booked…and added a day at the start of the trip, because those Saturday flights down didn’t get in until midday and it’s such a short trip already...
By this point the REALLY good discount had ended, and another slightly lesser discount had taken its place. So I couldn’t…err…didn’t want to…add on a night to my Music reservation, because I was pretty sure I’d then lose the really deep discount I had for the original 4 nights. So, I decided to try a new to me resort, namely, Coronado Springs. Prior to this trip, it’s one I wouldn’t stay at for a whole trip, because it’s SO big and internal buses and all of that. And I’m solo. But for one night, where I could try that restaurant I’ve been wanting to get to (Three Bridges)? Let’s do it. So I booked August 16 at Coronado Springs.
And then the school year got even wilder than it had been. At some point I booked my flight home. At another point Southwest changed my flight times, so I had to adjust those, because no I’m not arriving in Orlando during peak thunderstorm hour because they eliminated the morning nonstop, thank you very much.
On the last day of that hellish school year, as I was driving home from work, I got a phone call from Disney. “We see you have two reservations. We’d like to offer you a complimentary upgrade to Coronado Springs for the 4 night reservation, so that you’re at the same resort for your whole stay. Do you accept?”
Well twist my arm. Sure! So they upgraded my 4 night reservation to a king room at Coronado Springs, and then I spent the next couple months planning the logistics of a bottled water delivery when I would likely have to change rooms after one night (because obviously my first night reservation was for a standard room), at a massive resort. And, of course, I planned my trip.
And then somewhere around July 3rd, Nick told me he’d taken the week of my Disney trip off, to paint the ceilings in the house. Apparently he’d finally gotten sick enough of looking at the water stains from where ice damming had created roof leaks approximately 9 years ago. But, he didn’t really think it would take the whole week to paint. And he didn’t really want to spend the whole week working at the house. So would I like him to go to Disney too? My response? “Do YOU want to go to Disney in August?!”
He posed that question as we were driving to get ice cream so when we got home we looked to see if it was even realistic price-wise for him to go with me. Turns out it was, and bonus points, tickets were still available to the Halloween party I had a ticket to. So we booked plane tickets, bought him his MNSSHP ticket, and I got on the phone with Disney to get him added to the reservation, since, with the hotel upgrade, the system wouldn’t let me add him. And in fact, it wouldn’t let the phone CSR add him either; she had to escalate it to her supervisor, but by morning, he was on the reservation, which was good, because the next morning a Boba Fett Magic Band+ popped up in the discounted options available for the reservation, sealing the deal that we would have +s for this trip that weren’t just our DCL bands. Nick loves Boba Fett. I decided to mix and match for myself, since I was on two reservations, and got two basic colored + bands for myself.
Summer program really got rocking, I completely revamped trip plans, and the countdown got smaller.
As we got into August and things started to wind down with summer program, things started to wind up on the home front. My grandpa is 99. He’s aged pretty gracefully overall, but, he’s 99. Things are starting to go downhill. So on August 13 (you know…3 days before my trip), he was admitted to the hospital, for, well, not the first time this year, or even this summer. Mom had spent most of the summer at his place (a couple hours from home) and her birthday was on the 15, so, since it was clear she wouldn’t be coming home in time for that, as she’d originally thought, I decided I’d head north on the 14th, and come back on the 15th, before flying out early on the 16th so that she could see one of her kids on her birthday (my sister was…somewhere in the country…for work).
So, after racing around doing laundry and loading up packing cubes on the 13th, I went north on the 14th. And to make a long story very short, we “celebrated” mom’s birthday on the 15th by spending time, approximately 24 hours before I was scheduled to land in Orlando, hanging in the surgical waiting room, while grandpa was in, let’s call it, urgent surgery, me wondering if I really should be going on the trip that mom was acting like I was still going on. Thankfully, he emerged from surgery with better vitals than he’d gone in with (and much better than the day before!). So at mom’s insistence, I headed south to finish packing. And I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise that about 80 miles of my 120 mile trip home was in torrential downpours courtesy of thunderstorms.
I got home about 12 hours before my flight was scheduled to leave. I think we had grilled cheese sandwiches because grocery shopping is the first thing to go when living in survival mode. And then I packed for real, showered, and finally collapsed into bed well after 9 pm, with alarms set for roughly 3:00 the next morning, genuinely concerned that I’d sleep through said alarms.
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