October 2009 Visit.

 Just Getting Away from It all!

The weather was almost perfect, well at least for me. My wife found the first day a little cool at 60 degrees, however the other three days stayed in a perfect range of high 70's and 80's.

We opted for the Animal Kingdom Lodge this trip because they have only one bus stop and if you are in a standard view or Pool view it is close to the smoking area for Carolyn.

Their was a 25 minute delay in the airport baggage area so that put us behind for our dinner reservations for the Sanaa Restaurant. We requested our usual room on the 1st floor closest to the smoking area. The Lodge had upgraded us to a Savannah room which would have been great except Carolyn would have to hike a mile in the middle of the night to smoke (I know YUK!  But she won't quit.). Carolyn is in charge of negotiating the room locations because I do not want to play middle man. The only room available closer to the cancer area was a pool view room with one Queen bed and a set of bunk beds. I stepped in and said that would be fine I will sleep on the bunk bed and Carolyn finally agreed.

To tell the truth the bunk bed was fairly comfortable even though it was a little short. NO, I did not opt to put my fat behind up on the top bunk. I did however pull the top bed spread over the side to make myself a fort. Just to drive her nuts I would flick the light inside the bunk bed off and on like a 6 year old.

Other than a 40 minute wait past our reservation time at the Sanaa the 1st night the trip went smooth. We traded Cast Members for almost two hundred different pins. I found a Disney Bus pin the 2nd day of trading and decided they were cool enough to add to my Grumpy pins. There are 5 different Disney Bus pins from this same collection plus a couple others including a Cast Exclusive. I was lucky enough to find another Pin Trader at Downtown Disney that had all the other Pins and they were more than fair in their trades (Judy and Jake Gillison at postcard9@aol.com).

Carolyn purchased enough new pins at the Pin Trader center to qualify for 9 10th anniversary mystery pin packages. Would you believe she got 9 different pins - Not one duplicate. The only Pin she needed to complete her set was the Mickey Mouse Pin. Later that evening a young lady at the Hollywood Studio Pin station felt around on several mystery packages until she found a Mickey Pin to complete the set.  Now the only thing left to do is to make a set for each of our three granddaughters. Before this Disney Adventure was over I had traded Cast Members for 5 more of the Mickey Pins as well as others.

We attended the Epcot 2009 Food and wine festival. Unfortunately my medications do not allow me to drink very much alcohol, however it does not stop me from eating. There was a wide variety of Kiosks offering food samples from many different countries with prices ranging from $3.00 to over $8.00. A little known fact (at least to us) is any of the Epcot Food samples can be purchased with your Disney food plan snack - This is a great way to save money.

We enjoyed our Pin Trading, SORIN, Pirates and Haunted Mansion and I was saved the embarrassment of my wife beating me at the Toy Story 4D ride.

Disney Dining Plan - The advantage of the Disney Dining Plan is the savings you get when eating at Disney World. The basic plan provides for One Sit down meal, One Standup meal and one snack per person per day. We have opted for the plan on each trip and find we usually end up with 1 or two standup meals. Why? Well we get up to late for breakfast and by the time we decide to eat we are concerned that we will not be hungry for our evening sit down meal. The other problem my wife and I have discovered is we are always chasing our evening reservation. What do I mean by this? We have to make sure we stop what we are doing in time to head for the Park or Resort where are dinner reservations are located. This is not a problem unless we are having fun elsewhere and do not really want to stop. The real issue is that if you do not use this reservation you will most likely not find another sit down meal reservation for the evening. Also, if you do not use the sit down meal you will lose as they they will not carry over to your next visit.

We had a great time and never of us wanted to leave and come home. Can't wait for the late November trip. So we booked an earlier trip for the beginning of the trip. You got to love the Air Tran $59.00 one way flights.

A Magical time was had by all. My wife and I are looking forward to our November Disney trips. Yes we are going twice in November