My Legendary Trip

MrJT

Collector of Mickey Merch
Joined
Mar 21, 2008
Even though my trip was only three days in the parks, plus some time in downtown Disney, it was a major project, so it’s going to take me a few posts to do this report.

First off, I want to set the stage, and give a little backstory. I currently live in San Antonio, Texas with Shelley, my wife of 21+ years, with our 19 year old son Austin, and our 7 year old autistic son, David. I also have a 25 year old daughter, Maddie, who lives in Reno, Nevada.

Over the years, I’ve made my way around Disney. I grew up in Redding California, so I went to Disneyland a few times growing up my first trip was probably 1976, and my last trip there was 1996. I spent 20 years in the Air Force, and because of that I was able to visit Tokyo Disneyland twice, once in 1990, and once more in 1992. I spent part of 2004 in Germany, and during that time I did get to the Disneyland park in Paris. In 2003 and 2008 I visited Walt Disney World.

I have always been a fan of Disney, and over the past 10 years or so, I have really been into Mickey Mouse. I own a lot of stuff related to him, and in 2014 I decided to document my collection on a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/jermshouseofmouse). At first, I would post a whole bunch of stuff, but eventually, I decided to post once a week, and just share one item. I tried to mix it up, one week, I would show a toy, the next week I might show a t-shirt, and so on. If I shared a t-shirt, I would try to show a clean shot of it by itself, paired off with an “action” shot. Preferably one taken with family, or at a park.

Last August, I shared a picture of a shirt that I bought for my 2008 trip. It was a shirt, that my wife, my 1st son Austin (11 at the time), my daughter Maddie (17 at the time), and I wore on our first day of the trip. The picture was taken in front of Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom. It was more or less the 7th anniversary of the trip when I posted the pic, and I mentioned that. My sister Rachel, who lives in Redding, commented on it, saying that we should all meet up in Disneyland the next summer.

I thought about it, a lot. Shelley and I talked about it, and decided that we needed a vacation, and Disneyland would be perfect. So that evening, I created a Facebook event, and invited my parents, my sister, and my daughter to a trip in July.
 
Shortly after I put together the FB event page, I pitched the idea of a vacation shirt. My first trip to Walt Disney World, we did different colors of the same Mickey shirt, and for the second trip, we had two sets of shirts. These were all bought at the Disney Store. But knowing the age range of possible vacationers (in the last post, I forgot to mention that my niece and her future baby were going to try to fly in from England), so there was no way the Disney Store could meet our needs. Luckily I work with a shirt vendor, and they do great work. My sister and I talked it over, and we decided to that the shirts should say “Legendary” on them. We loved Barney on How I Met Your Mother. I remembered an episode where he wanted to “make every night legen…wait for it…dary, LEGENDARY!” I thought that I twist on that would be great for our shirt, so we decided that they would say “Make every day legendary”.

A month or so passed, and not much planning happened. My wife, Shelley, and I decided to start looking at lodging. I mentioned that to my sister, and she told me to talk to our mom before I booked anything. It turned out that she had a friend was a Disney Vacation Club member, and he had extra points. So he was going to try to get us into the Villas at the Grand Californian…at NO cost to us. The trip started looking really good now.

In November, work was slow, so I was looking at Disneyland related stuff on the internet. I found retro attraction posters, and they reminded me of the old days, so I decided that I should share them on the FB page. I thought that I could do a weekly planning update, and include a poster or an image from a previous trip. I found something like close to 60 posters that I liked, but I had less than 40 weeks until the trip. So I kept the update idea, but also added a virtual tour to it. Every Sunday, I would post a poster, and give a little history on the attraction.

I still liked the idea of the pics from old trips, so I would post those every Wednesday. At first, Wednesdays were going to get random pictures, but shortly after I started, I tried to tie the images in to either the previous update, or an event that recently occurred, like a birthday. It didn’t always work out that way, but more often than not, it did.
 
As 2015 was coming to an end, while I was still planning my legendary vacation, my life changed direction. At the time, I was working two jobs. During the day, I am an Air Force contractor, pretty much doing what I did while I was still active duty. In the evenings, I was working at U-Haul, and many days, I was working pretty hard there. I was rarely home and I was always beat down. One day, while I was at U-Haul, my wife Shelley was talking to a friend at church. He is also a veteran, and a college student. And he gave her knowledge about the G.I. Bill that I wasn’t aware of. So one evening, Shelley passed on what she knew.

It turns out that not only will the V.A. pay for me to go to college, they pay for housing expenses too. And what they pay was more than what U-Haul paid. I could be home more, take less of a beating, and make more money if I became a student. So I decided to look a little deeper into it. Right before Christmas, I talked to an advisor at a school very close to home, and right before the year ended, I started the paperwork to use my G.I. Bill.

Some time after I started school in February, I started looking at the DISign page, and thought it might be fun to commemorate our time in Cars Land when custom Cars shirts. You see, back when my youngest son David was really young, Cars was his thing. He was obsessed with it, until he discovered dinosaurs, which is now his true passion. So reached out to one of the DISigners, and requested some DISigns. She was on vacation, and her request line got bigger and bigger, so I tried doing my own creations. I liked how they turned out, cancelled my request, and became a DISigner myself. http://disboards.com/threads/mrjts-thread-for-mickey-heads.3509869/

Somewhere around this time my niece reached out to me. She had previously said that her family was going to try to fly in from England. But decided against it. Now she was wanting to show up as a surprise to her mom, my sister. But in the end, she wasn’t able to get the time off. Also during this time, my oldest son Austin decided that he wasn’t going to go either. He doesn’t really like theme parks, and he hasn’t always gotten along well with my parents.

Now before Spring started, our plan was always to drive there. Google maps lists the drive at about 19 hours. And we even chose Deming New Mexico as our stopping point for the night, both there and on the way back. So, I booked us a room at the Quality Inn, because they had breakfast. Now, we realized that we didn’t want to put unnecessary wear and tear on either of our cars, so we were going to rent car for the trip. We made a budget just for the drive, including meals, gas, lodging, etc.

In April, we started to dread the idea of a cross country drive, so we started looking at flights. It turned out that for a little more than we had budgeted to drive, we could fly the three of us there. Right before we booked our flights, we gave our oldest one last chance to go with us. He still chose to stay home, so we booked Southwest. Instead of a 2 day drive, with close to 20 hours in the car. We now had a three hour non-stop flight from Texas to LAX!

We knew that we now needed to get from LAX to the hotel, so I used the DIS to find the best option. I looked at shuttles, and Uber. But I eventually decided to go with Lanskys. They cost a little more than the rest, but all the plusses outweighed the minuses.

Things were starting to really come together…but that is usually when things go wrong…
 
A couple of days later, and I’m back! I very rarely check the boards from home. My laptop doesn’t connect to the DIS that well. So unless I have something pressing like a DISign request to answer post, I rarely get on at home.

Around this time, I decided to add some fun to our first night at the hotel. So I started working on a game. At first I was going to just ask some questions from my weekly posts. Then I caught an episode of 500 Questions, and I thought that the Battle round would go well in the game too. Next thing I knew, I was working on a major PowerPoint presentation, full of all kinds of fun.

About a week and a half before we were set to leave, I finalized my booking with Lansky’s. I put the deposit on my very large t-shirt order. And I went to the base ticket office, and paid for my Military Salute tickets. I went for six, one for me, one for Shelley, one for each of my two kids, and my mom and sister were each going to buy one from me, and save some money at the gate.

Now, at this point, I had almost $2,000 invested in the trip that was non refundable: plane tickets, park tickets, and the deposit on my shirts…

The day after I paid for my park tickets on base, I was going to go back on base and pick them up. That afternoon, after lunch, about two hours before I get my tickets, I get a text from my mom. My dad was in the hospital. He may have had another heart attack. They were going to do some tests later that day.

A little history. Back in 2003, we had just left Hawaii, and we were visiting San Antonio before we moved to Massachusetts. On our way there, we were going to take a detour. Instead of driving north east to New England, we were going to go directly east first. We were going to our first Walt Disney World trip. While we were in San Antonio, we were at my wife’s younger sister’s wedding. As we were getting ready to leave the wedding, we saw that we had a missed call and message from my mom on my wife’s cell phone (this was back in the day when we only had one cell phone, instead of the three we have now).

I called my mom back, my dad had had a heart attack, and was in the hospital, and we was going to have bypass surgery. Naturally, we were all upset. A day or two later, I talked to my aunt, and she told us to not cancel our Disney trip. Have fun. There was nothing we could do in California anyway. She was right. So we pressed on and had a great time.

Now, 13 years later, right before our next Disney trip, history seemed to be repeating itself. The next day, I heard from my mom, and he did have a heart attack.

Nothing was said of our trip, and here I became torn. Now if he was in serious condition, of course things are going to change. But what if he’s going to be okay, but he can’t go. Do we go? At this point, like I said earlier, I had close to two grand in this vacation that I couldn’t get back. Am I going to go it with just my household? Would my daughter be able to make it? She was planning on driving to Redding, and meet up with the family, and drive down. Would she be able to make a solo trip to Anaheim on her own?

What was going to happen next?
 


A day or two later, my Dad was out of the hospital, so I just called to see how he was doing. Still not sure how I would approach the vacation issue. While we were talking, he quickly said that the vacation was on, and even if he wouldn’t have been able to get there, everybody else was going to go. I talked to my sister about that later, and she was already checking to see if we could check in without my parent (since the Villas were reserved in my mom’s name, by her friend from work), and she already knew that whether or not my parents made it down, she was going, and we were going to have a place to stay.

Over the course of the next week, I picked up our shirts. I did my homework for that week. Then I did my Business Law homework for the next week. The only thing that I was going to really have to concern myself with would be my algebra class for the week I was gone. It’s an online class, and it was going to be due until a two days after we got home. I don’t usually touch the algebra until the end of the week anyways, so this was going to be no different.

I got off work on Friday about 3. But I didn’t consider myself on vacation yet. I had to attend an event that evening, and I figured that I would get home around midnight. It was closer to 1 AM. Then I had to get up somewhat early, while it was still not too hot out, so I could mow the lawn. Then I finished my Algebra for the week. Finally, sometime around dinner on Saturday, I officially considered myself on vacation!

So we packed that night and went to bed. We had to get up Sunday morning, and fly to Disney!
 
On Sunday morning, a friend picked us up, and drove us to the airport. Check in went pretty smoothly. Then we went to the security line. That went pretty quickly, until our bags went through the X-ray. They had to take a look at David’s backpack. It turned out that he had a box of brownies that couldn’t be recognized when they went through the x-ray machine. As we were walking towards our gate, I could smell Cinn-a-bon. I hadn’t had any in a really long time, so we stopped and got second breakfast. The diet was officially off!

We waited at the gate, and while we were there, we found out that our plane was delayed. We eventually got on, and then we waited even longer to take off. I believe that we took off about an hour late.

While all this was happening, my parents, sister, and daughter were all headed down from Redding. My daughter drove from Reno to Redding on Saturday morning, and they all headed south that afternoon. My parents didn’t want to do the one day, 8+ hour drive that I grew up with, so they stopped in Santa Nella for the night. It’s about half way between Redding and the Los Angeles area. Growing up, we stopped there many a day for our mid-way point lunch break when either going to Disneyland, or just visiting family. So, while we getting ready to fly, they were already driving down from Santa Nella.

By the time we landed, the rest of the family had made it to Anaheim. As we were leaving the plane, they were on Disneyland drive. So they got to the hotel way before us, but they couldn’t check in yet. As we came down the escalator from the departure area into the baggage claim area, I saw a gentleman with a sign holding my name. That was a pretty cool feeling. I have always seen it on TV and in movies, but it was pretty cool when there’s a driver waiting to pick you up.

We met him, and went to our carousel. He helped me when our bags came off, and when he realized that I was also waiting for our car seat, he took me right over to where it would be. Had he not been there, I might have waited forever!

He then drove us to Ralph’s, and we picked up the breakfast stuff that we needed. They didn’t have my flavor of Sparkling Ice (Cherry Lime-Aid), but beyond that, we got what we needed. And then we hit the freeway. He had us in a very nice van, and the ride to Anaheim was quick. Very little traffic on a Sunday afternoon.

While driving down, I talked to my sister, and they were eating lunch at Downtown Disney. Then I started seeing the signs, and I started getting all excited! When the family heard how close we were, they left Downtown Disney and ended up meeting us when we pulled in to the lobby. We said our hellos, they helped us carry all our stuff, because by the time that we got there, we were able to go to our room.
 
During previous Walt Disney World trips, we stayed at the Contemporary and Shades of Green. To be fair, we only stayed at the Contemporary because Shades of Green was closed for renovation. And the Contemporary was amazing. Being on the monorail was awesome. Shades of Green is awesome too. Best place for the price that you pay. During our last trip, we did a photo session at the Grand Floridian, and that place was beyond beautiful. But we didn’t stay there, so I couldn’t really judge it. When we entered the Grand Californian lobby, I was completely blown away. It was beautiful. There was fire place with chairs around it. There was the grand piano that was being played. I was in awe of it all. Then we walked to the Villas, took the elevator to the 2nd floor, and found our way to 2518. We weren’t staying in a hotel at this point. We had an apartment! So our views weren’t the greatest. We saw mostly trees. And what I later figured out was part of the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail in Disney California Adventure.

My parents got the master bedroom. My wife, son, and I took the studio. My sister and daughter each claimed their beds in the living room. I suppose that was the one lodging complaint. The hide-a-bed in the couch was a little lopsided, so I was told. And the bed under the TV was a little short. But the beds in the studio were perfect. My parents never had anything bad to say about their room either.

After we got our stuff situated in the room, it was time to go to Downtown Disney! We explored Anna and Elsa’s Boutique, D-Street, the gallery, and a couple of others. I really enjoyed World of Disney, but I couldn’t really explore or appreciate it during that first visit. A lot was going on, my son David was restless, and so I kind of rushed through it. His highlight was the Build-A-Bear. He ended up getting a stuffed carnotaurus. He loves dinosaurs, so this came as no surprise.

After this, we went back to the room. My parent were going to head to Wal-Mart with my daughter and sister for their supplies and we needed something, so I tagged along. We didn’t go to an actual Wal-Mart, but their grocery store. Its name is slightly different, and we have at least on in San Antonio, but this was my first time in one. I found what I needed, as well as my Sparkling Ices that I couldn’t get at Ralph’s. Once everybody was checking out, I was in line when my wife called. She left her make-up bag at home! She needed me to get a couple of things. So I left the line, found the make-up section which was under glass. So I had to get somebody to help me. I don’t buy make-up, so while I was on the phone and working with the girl who worked there, I got the first couple of things. Then I needed mascara. And the girl gave me something else. Of course I didn’t realize this, and Shelley didn’t figure out it was wrong until the next morning. She ended up buying something from Sephora in Downtown Disney later.

After we got back, it was dinner time. My parents went to Northwoods Inn. I wanted to go too, but just for the bread. I couldn’t justify paying their prices, so we had already decided to go to Earl of Sandwich. Originally it was going to be myself, my wife, my son, and my daughter. My sister ended up joining us. I took David to get us a place to sit, so I told my wife that I wanted, the flatbread. I meant flatbread barbecue chicken, but my wife interpreted it as a flatbread pizza. Which doesn’t exist, so she got me a pepperoni pizza. Which I wasn’t a fan of. It was still pleasant, although it was starting to get a little cold.

After dinner, we stopped at the Lego Store. I loved the Beauty and the Beast statue that they had there. Then I decided to go back to World of Disney. My daughter went with me, and the rest of our group headed back to the room. I looked at few different things. I looked at some hats, both for me, and for my son at home. He wanted a snap back. This might have been when I first saw the castle mug. I really liked that. It was a mug with a 3-d relief of a castle. And while I was there, I picked up a handful of “I’m Celebrating” buttons. I needed a prize for the game that I put together…
 



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