Adventures in Disney (The Flight)

It's about time I recap about our trip to Disney. It's taken me a while to work up the nerve to write this post. I feel like some sort of disclaimer is in order. Nothing is worse than a friend coming back from vacation and going on for days about how fabulous it was. I feel I ought to warn you that because of the amount of pictures I took and things we did, it's going to take several days of blog posts.

My intention in documenting so many details from our trip (and writing this blog in general) is to help remember. It was a dream of ours to take our daughter to Disney and a surprise when the opportunity presented itself. We hope to go back someday, but realize that may never happen. With that in mind, each day we were there I was deliberate in soaking up as much as I could.

It's never my intention to use this blog as a platform to brag about our lives or subject our readers to the mind-numbing details no one would ever be interested in knowing. It's just that I have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad memory. If I don't write this stuff down now, it'll be gone for good and I'll have to harangue Daniel to recount the memories for the rest of the my days. I completely understand if you want to skim over these posts, or skip them all together.

And that bloggers, would be the world's longest disclaimer. You've been warned. Now enough with explaining myself and on to the trip!

Three months ago, my Dad emailed me saying he and Kristine were taking their boys to Disney in April and he wanted to know if the Hintons wanted to join them. After I picked myself up off the floor, I checked the dates and it just happened to fall on the perfect week for us. Our schedule is pretty tight these days, so that in itself was a small miracle. We have so much to celebrate this spring and there's nothing like commemorating at the happiest place on earth. Danny went when he was five and I haven't been since middle school. A few weeks later we found out my sister's family was coming as well. Yippee!!

With just a few months to plan, I ordered this book off of Amazon.

Worth. Every. Penny. It guarantees to cut your time waiting in line by three to four hours. Um, yes please! It's a huge book, but it's easy to read and you can skip the sections that don't apply to you. I got through it in three nights. My sister bought it as well. We spent many phone conversations (as the source of major teasing by the husband) going over packing plans, dinner plans, park strategies, stroller decisions, etc. We were just too excited not to.

I started packing a week out. It was completely out of character, but when you're charged for every bag you take on the plane, desperate times call for desperate measures. I'll show you unreasonable airline company! We managed to fit everything in two suitcases. We pulled out the bathroom scale but because it's not digital we couldn't get an exact read of their weight. Anything over fifty pounds and you get charged an arm and a leg for the overage. (On top of the ticket you already purchased to get your arms and legs there.)

We tried to tell Chica where we were going several days before we left. She's an avid fan of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse so she knew the main characters. We told her we were going to see where Mickey lived. I waited until the day we left to tell her the cousins were coming too, because that would have done her in.

As we left for the airport I prayed for light luggage favor. Each item in the suitcases was planned and purposed. I didn't know what I was going to do if we were over the weight limit. Before we knew it, our co-worker dropped us off at the curb and we headed in to check-in. Dan hoisted the first suitcase onto the scale.

Forty-nine pounds. And then the next one. Forty-nine pounds. I'm pretty sure I gave my husband and my daughter a high five. We were going to have to use a lot of sunscreen and diapers and wipes if we planned on returning with any souvenirs, but we were cleared for take off!

We flew through the Atlanta airport. As our first flight took off gaining speed and altitude, Dan turned to Chica saying, "Look Reese, are we flying? We're flying!"

She rolled her head in his direction and raised her eyes to correct her clearly mistaken father. "No Daddy. The airplane's flying."

Our bad.

We had thirty minutes in the Atlanta airport to wait for the stroller, run through three terminals and board our next flight. We dashed through the airport Home Alone style and I prayed for diaper absorbency favor. There was no time to change it. The three hour wait for the next flight to Orlando served as great inspiration to throw any self-respect we had out the window and run for our Mickey bound lives.

Praise the Lord, we made it. We were disheveled, out of breath and heavy diaper laden, but we made it. The best part about the flight was that each seat had its own little T.V. Dan found a trivia channel, kind of like the one they have at Buffalo Wild Wings. For the next hour and a half we battled against other people on our flight. I'm not sure what Chica did. If you think we supervised her while we played, then you have grossly underestimated how competitive we are.

Pretty soon we descended into Orlando. Our family was waiting for us in the airport and we couldn't wait to see them!