Kevin & Heather - August 2006

Cast of Characters: Kevin & Heather Schiffer

Dates of trip: August 4, 5, 6, 2006

Last weekend I took my wife to WDW as a surprise for our anniversary. I told her a couple of weeks early, so we could prepare the kids (they stayed with my mom) and get all four of us packed. Since we live in Middleburg, a small southern suburb of Jacksonville, we were going to leave early on Friday afternoon, and return on Sunday after lunch. I made the reservations with Laura from TMFL (she was great, as usual. I think this was the fourth trip we booked with her), and won't hesitate to use her again.

We left around 3:30 on Friday afternoon. Since we live south and west of Jacksonville, and we would be driving on I-4 during rush hour, we decided to take what we call the "Western Route". Basically, we take some back roads to get to I-75, take that south to the turnpike, that to 429, then in on Western Way. The trip takes three hours exactly, where I-95 to I-4 to WDW takes us two hours 45 minutes, without traffic, and as much as 4 ½ in traffic. We arrived at the Boardwalk at 6:30 PM, and went to check in.

Check in took a while. They didn't have a room for us, at least at first. The CM that was helping us spoke with housekeeping to check on a room, and was waiting for a call back. The manager came over and they talked privately for a minute, the CM re-printed some of our paperwork, and we were on our way.

It appears that we were upgraded; our room looked like a regular room, but we overlooked a courtyard and had a nice large balcony. We thought the balcony would be great to eat breakfast in the morning. We put our bags away, Heather changed into "park shoes" (walking shoes), and walked over to EPCOT for dinner. Yeah, I said walked over. We loved staying at the Boardwalk…the rooms were huge, and we were in walking distance to EPCOT.

We had dinner at the quick service at Mexico (a nacho plate, kids beef burrito plate, and a margarita!...no kids!!), then walked around before Illuminations!. We stayed for the show (amazing as always, but since there was almost no wind, the smoke hung over the water so the fireworks didn't look quite as crisp…still, better than most other fireworks), then walked back to our room stopping at the bakery for pastries for breakfast, then to the car to drive over to the Magic Kingdom for EMH.

Now, a quick aside. We have always driven our own car to the parks, at least since the first trip we took staying on property. The first trip we took, we found the busses overcrowded, and nobody would let Heather sit down with our daughter, who was only 2 at the time. Since then, we always drive…that is, when we can't walk (or take the boat, as you'll see later).

We knew that there was a Spectromagic showing at 11:00, so when we made our way into the park, we immediately walked to the right, into the shops, then past the crowd. We had thought we would ride Space Mountain (Together for the first time since you sat in double seats, you know, where the rider in front sits in the lap of the one behind), but the line was about an hour, and we were on a mission! We made our way over to Big Thunder, which only had a 20 minute wait…so we got in line. Really, the wait wasn't bad, and the ride was great as usual. Then we went over to the Haunted Mansion, which we also hadn't ridden in more than a decade. We waited about 10 minutes, but the ride was anything but uneventful. There was a group of about 8 older teenagers, very loud and obnoxious, riding a bit in front of us. The ride stopped for about 10 minutes, and a cast member went walking by. Shortly after that, the teenagers got really quiet……then the ride continued. When we got off, the teenagers were gathered in a group right inside the gates to get out, and were blocking the way. Basically, we had to push our way past. Not pleasant, but this was the only time we saw them. We rode a few more rides, but were getting tired, so we decided to call it a night at about 1:00. We had planned to go to AK for EMH on Saturday morning, but decided we needed sleep more than we needed to ride Everest. That said, we still set the alarm for 7:30 that morning, and went to sleep.

Two more days...

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