moonbabe989 - October 2006

My DH and I had a wonderful trip this weekend, which was amazing since it all started out so badly! My DH was going to pick me up on Thursday night after work. I got at call at 4:45pm from him just freaking out. He had loaded the dogs in the car to take them to the kennel and one of them pooped all over the back of the car. He was not happy! Needless to say, it was a stinky three hour drive down to Detroit that night! We stayed at the La Quinta Inn that night near the airport. They have a great rate for a night at the hotel, up to 8 days parking, and free shuttle to and from the airport. Everything else that night and the next morning went off without a hitch.

We arrived in Orlando at 9:15am, took the magical express to Pop Century and they even had a room available. It was in the 50's section on the top floor facing away from the pool. It was a nice room at a nice resort at a nice price. The only negative was the food court. The food wasn't the best and it was so noisy. My DH and I either ate outside or in the room. We had better luck with the pre- packaged foods than we did with the counter service foods. I really enjoyed the salads, fruit and the best chicken sandwich with brie and dried cranberries. We had some lunch, went swimming, and wandered around until about 4pm, when we boarded the bus to MK to attend MNSSHP.

We had a great time and rode almost all the rides without hardly any wait. The headless horseman was cool and so was the parade. We both were exhaused by about 10pm and went back to the room to sleep.

Sat. morning we awoke early to get to MGM for the EMH opening. We rode Star Tours, ToT (love the effects, hate the drop!), and R&Rcoaster (my personal fav. coaster) all before 10am. Because we only had this one day in the parks, we were just hitting the highlights.

Our next park was AK. The first stop was EE. What a great ride! The disney magic also kicked in and we got the front seat. Then we picked up fast passes for Kali River Rapids and went to Flame Tree BBQ for lunch. Had great smoked turkey sandwiches and then went to Kali. Of course we both got soaked. We decided to go back to the room to change and then headed to EPCOT.

Our goals were to ride Mission Space and Soarin (both of which we have never done) and then wander around the different countries and find somewhere for dinner. Unfortunatley, I started feeling sick (my DH had the flu just before we left) while waiting in the 90 min line for Soarin. It was great, but I was getting grumpy. Then on to Mission Space. My DH is a BIG astronaut fan so of course we had to do the full force ride. It was really cool, but I got so dizzy. I had to sit down for a few minutes right outside the ride and the cast members seemed to be a little worried. Because I still wasn't feeling the best, I didn't really want to walk around a lot. We decided to go to Boatright's for dinner.

We hopped a bus to POR, had a great drink (barkeep mixes them strong!) while waiting for a table, and ate the best meal of the whole trip. DH had the steak and I had the salmon. The waiters were wonderful but the resturant was very noisy. I guess that when you are somewhere as large and crowded as WDW, it is difficult to find a quiet place to eat.

After dinner, we headed back to the room. My DH went right to sleep, but I still wasn't feeling well and couldn't sleep. There was some noise from kids laughing, yelling and running, but it didn't last very long. I heard someone tell them to quiet down (prob. hotel staff from the sound of it) and they did.

The next morning we packed up and stopped at the airline check-in on our way to breakfast. What a great service! We got our boarding passes and checked our luggage within 5 min. We had a leisurely breakfast and then boarded the bus for the airport. This was a wonderful mad dash weekend trip. We had a lot of fun and were able to do even more than we expected we'd get to, but I can't wait to go back again when we have more time to wander the parks and really do them justice. P.S. - The car really stank when we got back!