Departure Day - Dec 4th
I woke up around 6 am the next morning. I was not in a good mood. Major sadness had set in. How can my dream trip, built up for over 10 years be over already!!! No one was awake so I walked over to the POR Food Court and used my Resort Mug (Oddly that was the ONLY time ANY of the 5 resort mugs were used). I am kind of glad we decided to do breakfast in our room each day. Even at 6 AM the food court was packed!
When I got back to the room Jennifer and the kids were awake and eating. The kids were in good spirits so they did not seem to be sad about leaving. They knew they were headed to Downtown Disney and both Nathan and Mattie seemed excited. Michael just wanted to know where we would be eating lunch!
The rest of the morning involved showering, packing, and loading up the van. We left the room about 10:30. I had to return the stroller we rented and check out. That was a very smooth process. I kind of dreaded getting that final "charge to room" visa bill but I was pleasantly surprised! There would not be a need to take out a 2nd mortgage. That improved my mood a tiny bit
We drove to Downtown Disney and having done little research about it before going I was not prepared for the construction mess. I had heard something about a parking garage that had just opened I think... wherever that was! We came in and I turned in to the first lot I saw which ended up being down near Cirque Du Soleil. The parking lot was almost full but luckily we found a spot. We got out and headed in.
I apologize for the lack of photos... I guess my departure day depression did not have me taking a lot of photos.
Mattie running ahead...
...and dancing...
Cool water tower...
Food trucks were not opened by this time.
Candy Store was open! We had several snack credits to use. Everyone got a nice treat.
Some more Christmas decorations and a Nathan.
I spied some water traffic. Probably coming from POR that we just left...
"Mom!!! Can we.... " "Heck No!"
Monster Energy was there for some reason...
Lunch
We ate at Wolfgang Puck Express. This was probably (at least to me) the second ho-hum meal I had the entire time. The other being a lack luster burger across from Fantasmic in HS. I don't have any photos from lunch. I think we all ordered some sort of pizza. It was nothing special to me. I think Jennifer and the kids enjoyed their respective pizzas.
After lunch (about 12:30) we headed east. We walked a lot through massive Disney Springs construction. Mostly just temp walls until we came to
Lego store. The boys love Legos. We spent about 45 minutes here.
Mattie digging! Double hands!
Mattie building...
Michael constructing his racer.
Nathan making his. Nathan actually told the boy in the green shirt he was more interested in his racer looking good than being fast. Lol.
and finally racing....
We moved on after dragging the boys out and walked some more chcking out other things until we finally got to World of Disney.
We spent a good amount of time in here. I told the kids they could pick anything they wanted under $40 and they went to town looking for stuff. We spent another 30 minutes in here. Mattie discovered the magic mirror. She loved that!
Notice Michael doing bunny ears behind.
We purchased the souvenirs Mattie had to wear hers immediately! Nathan got a pair of huge Stitch gloves. Michael opted for a shirt.
It was 2pm by now. I had wanted to be on the road by 1pm. We were driving from Disney World to Destin that day. It had got quite warm this afternoon and we had to walk from World of Disney back to the west parking lot! We stopped to use the very last snack credits and got the kids Mickey ice cream bars.
The Long Ride....
We all said our goodbyes to Disney World. I was a little less depressed and everyone else settled in for the ride home. Remember how I said we had our house on the market while we were at Disney World? Well about 3 hours in to drive home we got the news as were about to head west on I-10 from I-75 that the buyer agreed finally to the purchase. We had sold our home on the way home! Finally that mess was behind us and we were in closing.
We stopped for dinner at a drive through in Tallahassee about 5pm. We still had another 2.5 hours to Destin where we were spending the night. We had a very sketchy drive in to Destin because navigation told us to exit in Ponce De Leon as opposed to Defuniak Springs. We were dead of night driving down some 'squeal like a pig' country roads before we finally got to highway 331 to Destin.
We got to Holiday Inn Express Destin at 8ish. We barely unpacked the van, which by now was a mess of pillows, blankets, food wrappers, and Disney merchandise. Literally stuff fell out of the back of the van when I opened the back door. We got in room and Mattie immediately went to bed.
Destin Beach - Dec 5th
The next morning we woke up and decided to take the kids to the beach. It was chilly for 9 am but not too bad. Those beaches are beautiful! Here they are walking to the beach.
Mattie and I walking along the beach.
Michael and Nathan
Mattie
Sad Panda...vacation OVER!
Jennifer had the kids gather Destin sand. We always take sand and shells from the beaches we go to and Jennifer displays them at home.
So we checked out of the hotel and we decided to drive west on 98 and then back down to 399 all the way to Pensacola Beach. More beautiful sugar sand beaches! These are Pensacola Beach pictures from window of van.
We stopped and picked up Chick-Fil-A in Pensacola at lunch. Then drove 6 more hours to Jennifer's mother's house in Louisiana. We spent the night there. We showed them pictures and the kids told their stories to their grand parents. We had a nice home cooked dinner.
The Final Leg - Dec 6th
We left Louisiana Saturday morning and drove for 3 hours and stopped in East Texas to visit Jennifer's father. We left after lunch and drove the last 3 hours to Dallas Ft Worth and making it home around 6PM.
I hope to post a follow up with a summary of my trip experience in a couple of days.
Thank you for reading!
