Day one
When planning this trip, I
wanted a early flight.
I like to travel in the mornings.
Sooner to get there, sooner to enjoy. So we picked a flight leaving JFK at
Another
problem this time of year, the threat of a hurricane impacting my trip. This years hurricane was called Hermine. As we will be traveling south, it is heading
north. The question is, when will it hit
I go to sleep by
I finish my packing which is
just my laptop and shaving razor. I
close my luggage and head downstairs to walk over to my mothers house where
Access a ride will be picking us up.
Walking across the street, it
seems the only other things up at this hour are the sprinkler heads.
Access a ride is right on time at
We check our baggage with the
Magical Express tags, the place is so very empty.
We go through security and
make it to our gate 3 hours before our flight is due to leave.
The airport was empty.
Our plane is still sleeping by the gate.
Good Morning.
When they board us, the plane
has plenty of empty seats, another reason I like a
early flight, not too many other people do
They do mention that due to
weather, they will be taking a longer route to
Our flight path takes us near
I watch a movie on my tablet
using earphones I take with me. And look
out the window at the clouds and other sites along the way.
See the slight dark spot near
the middle in the above photo? Our plane is making a shadow on the clouds.
That arrow is pointing to
another plane shadow on the ground.
The descent down was a little
tough on my ears, my right ear is all clogged up. We exit the plane and start walking towards
the monorail to the main terminal. I
remembered about taking the escalator to my left once we leave the monorail in
the main terminal, but not much else. We
were on level 3, now on level 2, I ask for some help and told we need
to go one more level down to go to level 1.
So we walk to the elevator and take it down to 1. We walk towards the Magical Express at the
end of the terminal. We check in with our Magic Bands and are assigned a row 5
to queue up on the bus for the trip to our resort. We sit almost in the back of the bus.
We make it to Art of Animation
resort and I look for the online check in counter. I didn’t get a text message with my resort
room number yet. Good reason, the room
isn’t ready yet. We check in, showing my
drivers license and travel agent id. The
problem is when I check in, my ears are so clogged, I
can hardly understand him when he is saying that there is no room request
associated with my reservation. I tell
him, my name screams Finding Nemo, Bruce for the
shark,
First thing I had to do was
purchase my reserved Travel Agent discounted ticket. No ‘will call’ ticket
booth at the studios. After asking, we
are directed to the normal ticket booth. I show him my email. The gentleman in the booth has some trouble
till he finds the will call number. I
pay for my ticket and he gives me a normal ticket media. I ask about adding the
ticket to my Magic Band and he tells me I need to do that at Guest Services,
they don’t allow him to do that anymore.
She had a problem trying to do it.
She issued me a new ticket media card,
I do like Spaceship Earth the best out of all the park
icons
It still didn’t work. She then got some help, and the ticket was
finally transferred to my Magic Band. Next job was to match the fast passes I
set up for my mother weeks earlier to me.
Some passes she could do on the system, some they had to write me a
golden ticket as the system wouldn’t let them.
Once in the park, we checked
in early for Fantasmic Dinner Package at
I even had some of the chicken, tasted very good. She couldn’t
finish it all. Disappointed
here. Two new items is no longer
being served. They had a pasta station
and fondue dessert station. Both no longer being offered.
While eating I received my
text notification that our rooms are ready.
See the previous time,
When we enter the room the
luggage is there. The
view from my window, another wing of the resort.
Interesting thing about the
sink in the living room/Kitchen area… see the color on the knobs??
The knob on the left is
labeled blue, right red. So which knob
has hot water?? Wrong..
the blue is hot water, red is cold. The plumbers got the pipes backwards.
I go back to luggage services, we get the scooters we ordered and the carry on
luggage. Funny problem
with the scooters. My mother made
the phone calls and reserved them. They
spelled our last names with a ‘C’, not a ‘S’. To make sure there is no issue to get the
scooters, we call the scooter rental company, Best Price Scooters, explain the
issue. They had a person at our resort
and correct the last name issue. We head
back to the studios without the scooters as our fast pass plans include rides
in the studios and Fantasmic tonight too.
Back in the
studios, doing Toy Story Midway Mania. We made it back to the studios
after the
my score
on the left
The same for our next
attraction Voyage of the Little Mermaid.
While walking to Voyage of the Little Mermaid
it was raining but not too heavy in the rain. While waiting in the queue
we can see it was raining heavy.
I am using a new
camera to record this. A pair of
sunglasses that is water resistant. I
learnt afterwards that there is a flap that closes charging port that also
records the sound. So the video is very
quiet. Afterwards I was pretty sure I
had Fp’s for Muppetvision.
I walked by Sci fi to cut
across the plaza to Muppetvision, only to be greeted
by plywood construction walls. We had to walk by Star Tours to get to Muppetivision. We didn’t even need FP’s to
enter. The CM gave me one that expires the end
of Sept even.
Again,
sorry for the silent video. Leaving Muppetivsion, we see some
of the new plywood construction fences showing what is currently being built.
This was Pizza
Planet, now being themed for the Mupppets.
it was raining very
heavy. we made it as far as ABC Commissary to
wait for the rain to slow down. It was a steady rain. My friend was
streaming live on Facebook the falling rain by
Universal, so I did the same for the Studios.
Having spent time
in the stadium where Fantasmic is shown, I don’t
think they will be doing the show in this rain.
So I stopped by Guest relations. Since I did the Fantasmic Dinner Package at
Crush in front of our resort building, in
the rain
my scooter being charged overnight
Again, like last
year, I gave my mother the master bedroom which has its own walk in shower
while I was going to use the sofa bed.
end of day 1