Where Have I Been? WDW!!

4:38PM

I need to apologize to all my fans. Ok, to the few people that read this. Ok, ok, the one person that happened to stumble upon this blog. Sorry, dude. I know I haven’t written in a while. The end of the school year was absolutely crazy and I found myself with no spare time to sit down and type the last couple of weeks. Any time that I did have was at night and I was so tired. I found myself having to get up super early every morning and I was just too tired to write anything. Plus, to be honest, I didn’t relaly have anything worthwhile to say so I would’ve been just rambling about something unimportant. But now that summer is here…..I’ll still be busy. It’s a full one. BUT, I will try to find time to keep this thing updated at least once a week. And at this very moment, I have several things to write about, the big one being Disney. We just got back. Disney 2010 is officially over. What follows is the report. What we did. What we saw. Blah Blah Blah. If you’re not interested, skip to the last paragraph for some running news. But if you are interested in all that Disney stuff, here’s what went down.

Our flight left at 8:30 last Wednesday morning. We got to the airport and caught the bus to our hotel. We stayed once again at the Sports. We love our All Star Sports. We were meeting Susan’s parents this time. They were driving to Daytona anyways for their annual trip and we asked them to join us a couple of days in Disney. What’s funny is our bus arrived at our hotel and the exact time their car arrived. I mean we literally saw them getting out of their car as we pulled in. What are the odds? We didn’t plan it at all. We checked in and had great rooms. Close to the main building. First floor. We were there by 1:00 Wednesday afternoon and so we had the whole afternoon to do whatever. We swam in the pool for a couple of hours and then caught a bus to the Animal Kingdom Lodge (via the Animal Kingdom park). We had reservations at Boma in the lodge. We loved it so much last time, we wanted to go again and let Susan’s parents experience it. It was great again. We got there a little early so we went out back to see the animals and search for hidden Mickey’s. Loved doing that again this time. Found some I had been looking years for as well as some of the same old favorites. The boys really got into it too.

The next morning, we were up waiting at the bus stop at 6:40 to catch the first bus to the Magic Kingdom. We got there a little after 7:00 and were the first ones at the turnstiles. The park would open at 8 for resort guests. We had a great day at the MK. It was hot as it would be every day. We were worried about crowds for this time of year and they were worse than in October when we’ve been going, but it was still manageable. We followed our regular plan and never waited longer than 25 min. the entire trip. We rode everything there that we wanted to ride, several things more than once. I got an amazing score on Buzz Lightyear. Wish I knew how I did it. My score just kept going up but I’m not sure what I was shooting. We rode the “new” Space Mountain. Seemed the same to me. We ate at the Crystal Palace that night. Great meal but I was not super hungry. The rest of the family decided to leave around 8:00. I wanted to stay for the fireworks. I hadn’t seen “Wishes” in a long time. When they left, I decided to ride a couple of things that we don’t usually do. I did the “Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor” and “Stitches Great Escape.”. The laugh floor was good, pretty funny. Stitch was terrible as I expected it to me. There is just nothing to that “ride”. But I’m glad I got to try both. It started raining right before the fireworks were to start so they did an abbreviated show. Bummer. Tinkerbell didn’t fly and the show was obviously shorter. But it was good anyways. I got back to the hotel around 11:15 and went to bed knowing I would be getting up in just a few hours for Epcot.

Epcot wasn’t an extra hour morning so we didn’t have to catch the bus until 7:30!! Wow – got to sleep “late”. We were first in line once again at the turnstiles. There were a few people there when we got there but luckily, there were several turnstiles. When they dropped the rope at 9:00, we ran to Test Track and were the 2nd family on it. Always a fun ride. Then we ran over to Soarin’, got fastpasses, and rode it. This is when we waited about 25 min. – our longest line of the trip, but it really wasn’t too bad. We ended up riding Soarin’ later in the day as well and I’ve decided this is my favorite at Epcot and one of my favorites in all of WDW. I really love that ride. Definitely saw the hidden Mickey on the golf ball this time. We got to ride everything in Epcot and several things multiple times. We ate dinner at LeCellier – soooo good. I was so full when I left. I always eat too much at Disney. I’m afraid to get on the scale right now. I decided to leave when the family left around 8:30 and not stay for Illuminations. I just saw it in October and I was tired. Plus the next day was another early morning hour at the Studios.

Susan’s parents went ahead and left for Daytona the next day so they didn’t go to the Studios with us. I am very glad they went with us though. We enjoyed having them and I think they had a good time. It had been a while since they had done Disney and I don’t know if they’d ever stayed on property. We got to the Studios early for an 8:00 opening for resort guests. First again. We got to the rope ready for the most stressful part of the whole trip – TOY STORY!! Our plan is always for me to get fastpasses while Susan and the boys wait for me. We ride it immediately so we get at least 2 rides with the FP’s. It worked beautifully. I threw the stroller who knows where and walked around the crowd and was first at the fastpass booths. So important. By the time I got the 4 fastpasses, Susan and the boys were just going into the ride and I hopped the rope and joined them. It was perfect. We ended up getting FP’s one more time and so we got to ride 3 times that day. Fastpasses were gone by 10AM. Such a popular ride, but one of the best. We again got to ride everything we wanted and several things more than once. It was Star Wars weekend there which made the park crowded, but a lot were doing that and so the other rides weren’t bad. We didn’t care a thing about Star Wars – thank goodness. Susan got picked AGAIN for Indiana Jones, however, the show was cut short due to storms so she didn’t get to do much. Bummer. It did start raining on our way to dinner but it pretty much stopped once we came out so we didn’t get too wet. The best surprise of the trip was that they added Fantasmic back into the day. It wasn’t on the original schedule and I was upset b/c it’s my favorite show by far. But I guess b/c it was SW weekend and so crowded, they put it back in. We were afraid they might cancel with the rain but it stopped about an hour before and so the show went on as scheduled. It was great and the boys loved it too. It was the perfect end to our trip.

We didn’t do Animal Kingdom this time and while I missed it, it would’ve been hard to do a fourth day. Being the end of the school year, I was worn out before we started and Susan and I agreed that we’ll try to go a different time in the future. It’s hard at the end of the year b/c you are worn out plus it’s more crowded than we like. We may try February in the future.

Overall, it was a great trip. I’ll post some pictures and our video soon. Quick running news – one of my 2010 goals was to run at Disney. I learned that was a bad goal to make. I was way too tired to run any morning or night, but I didn’t want to back out on my goals so I ran 3 miles this morning before our flight home. It was hot but fine. I’m glad I did it. It got me thinking about the Goofy challenge in January and I cannot wait. Also, tomorrow morning, Carter and I are running in our next 5K here in Nashville. We haven’t trained as much as we did for the first so we’ll see how it goes. I’ll post about that this week at some point.

Sorry for the long post but it’s Disney you know. Hope everyone has a good week. I’m worn out and am going to bed early tonight. Yeah, right.

Keep runnin’,
Albert