Disney Day 7 - Coming Home and Parting Thoughts

I neglected to mention that the on the last night of our trip I got a bit cranky with the family because we never got a full family picture during the trip.  I mean, we got a couple selfies, but the best options we had got screwed up because various unnamed family members chose not to smile or look at the camera.  Disney does have a Memory Maker package that costs $200, where you can stop all over the parks and get your photos taken.  I considered it, but then realized our family would not be into the silly pictures they have you pose for (holding Tinkerbell in your hands and that sort of thing), nor would they have the patience to wait in photographer lines or smile endlessly.  I just wasn't sure they'd cooperate given the heat and long days, and it was one extra battle I didn't want to fight, especially at that price.  I thought about finding another mom taking her family's picture and switching off, but honestly none jumped out at me and most of the time I just didn't want to bother given the hot and sweaty state we were in.  But I still hoped it would magically happen at some point.  And when our last good chance at Animal Kingdom got ruined twice, by different family members, I was really annoyed.  The whole vacation sort of proved we have a hard time operating as a complete family since we're usually split into duos at home and the second half of our Disney days were no different.  The lack of a good picture from a week-long trip sort of affirmed it, and I was sad and frustrated.  How do you go on the trip of a lifetime and not have one good Christmas card photo?!  As we headed back to the resort that last night and I expressed my annoyance, everyone was like, "Oh, let's take one back at the resort," but I refused because I didn't really want another selfie and I doubted it would turn out in the darkness anyway.  Too little, too late, folks...should have smiled when I told you to.

The next morning was predictably hectic.  My alarm went off at 4:30am, with a 5:45 golf cart pickup and a 6:15 airport shuttle.  I just did a quick rinse-off shower and had braided my hair the night before so it was a quick fix in the morning.  We roused the kids before 5am and started working through getting ready, breakfast, and final packing.  It was a bit of a scramble near the end, but we were only about five minutes late for our golf cart ride to the main shuttle stop.  We had about 20 minutes to kill after that, and the photo topic came up again.  I relented and we tried to take one looking back down the lighted walkway to the Hospitality House.   

It was nice, I guess--we were all smiling and not super sweaty, but it was uneven and yet another selfie.  When we got back to our bench, Craig took a picture of me and the boys.  Despite it being totally dark outside, it came out well.

So, I finally said Craig could ask the bellman who had driven our golf cart to take our picture.  Not half bad, eh?

And after all of Carter's and my selfies, here's one of him with Craig.

We stopped at a few resorts on our way to the airport, including one Carter and I took the Skyliner over the previous day, and the sunrise on the ride to the airport was once again lovely (darn bus wrap made a picture impossible).  The boys all slept on the ride, but I sat there uncomfortably awake due to a hastily drunk morning bottle of water that apparently was a quick mover through my system!  Luckily the ride was shorter than the driver said, and the bathroom was an easy first stop at the airport.  We got through security quickly, grabbed some breakfast, arranged an earlier boarding group so Carter and I didn't get separated, and finally boarded the plane to Chicago.

On our way out, Carter and I eagerly looked for any signs of Disney World from the air.  Sure enough, Carter thought he spotted EPCOT, and when I looked closer from my spot, I could see Space Mountain!  Zoom in on the pic below and you can see all of Magic Kingdom!  The castle is really hard to make out but Space Mountain and Tron are quite obvious.  You can also see the resorts across the water.

Unfortunately, our flights were almost entirely cloud covered, but we did see this really interesting shelf cloud out in the distance. 

I had never been to Chicago Midway before.  I thought O'Hare was bad, but no...this one took the cake.  It was crazy busy, from the food lines to the bathroom lines to the gates.  There were no chain restaurants for Jacob to safely eat at, so he got a snack from the overpriced, self-serve Hudson News stand (enter with a credit card and they somehow scan what you leave with).  We got in line for the Dunkin' kiosk, but they had no plain bagels and did not toast.  I got a cold multigrain bagel, and Craig and Carter got donuts, just to get us through.  It was...underwhelming.  

Then we got to the gate, which was overrun with people.  It was so uncomfortable, and our flight was delayed a bit because the crew was just landing in another terminal.  

Pre-COVID this was inconvenient; in the COVID era, YUCK.

Fortunately we still landed in Rochester approximately on time, but we came back to a chilly, drizzly Rochester.  The house and yard were mostly intact.  The rafts were blown around, likely from a stormy day early in the week, and one of my plants blew over but has since recovered.  My watering system (lots of upside-down bottles stuffed in the soil) seemed to work well enough along with the rain we had.  The few days after we got back were equally blah, which was hard coming from so much sun and heat.  Monday was super lazy but Tuesday I had the double-whammy of work and needing to get ready for school the following day.  I'll get into that in another post, but for now, a bunch of random final thoughts on this trip:

1) If you've made it to this point in these trip posts, kudos!  I know these were exhaustively detailed posts, but the whole trip was such a whirlwind and I wanted to remember it.  I really appreciated the details in our last Disney posts that I had forgotten over the years, so I wanted to take the same care here.  The only way I could do it was to purposely take a lot of pictures to prompt myself.  If there was a detail I was worried I would forget, I took a picture that was just enough to remind me.  That's the only way I remembered the many stops during Carter's and my late-night wanderings at Magic Kingdom and EPCOT or how we spent times that were far less photogenic.  It worked even better than I expected, and I'm thankful to have these memories recorded here now.

2) Disney never ceases to amaze me with its size, its attention to detail, and how well it all functions.  I will say that we were there at a down time so it was all probably much better than usual, but it just amazes me to think of all the shuttle buses in operation at any given time, how many people move from place to place on any given day, and how many people need to be employed to make it all work.  The parks are so clean and so well-manicured.  The ride lines move as efficiently as possible, even to the point of there being multiple different cars or theaters or simulators for certain attractions.  Other amusement parks can't be bothered to run more than one roller coaster train, but Disney is running multiple trains and loading in multiple areas.  It's amazing what money can do.  The efficiencies and sheer amount of people movement made me marvel daily.  That said, I looked at 2/3 empty parking lots and short lines and cringed at the thought of how much busier Disney could be and usually is.  

3) Speaking of which, I never want to be there when it's busy.  We picked this time specifically because most of the country was already back to school, and lower prices confirmed it was a down time.  We had success with a similar time period last time, but after this I genuinely feel like if we ever go back we're going to have to pull the kids out of school.  I don't think we can go back during this time of year because of the heat and weather, but I also don't want to go during breaks because it's super expensive and the busyness can be very uncomfortable, particularly while COVID is still active.  The heat definitely impacted what we were able to do, and the rain was quite frustrating.  I can't adequately express how hot it was.  The heat index was routinely around 100, and all but maybe one day I put my hair up the second we walked outside because it was so hot and sticky even at 9am.  We drank a lot of water, used cooling towels and fans, and tried to get into A/C whenever possible, but even with that we were all pretty drained.  Last trip it only rained 2-3 times, only one of which was significant in duration.  This time it rained every single day and at least half were significant.  Whether it was bad luck or nine additional years of subtle climate change, I don't know, but the forecast was like that for weeks before and after.  We mostly worked around the storms due to being efficient in other ways, but it was frustrating to have a chunk of the day off limits, every day.  I much preferred the weather Craig and I had on our trip in December, which was all 70s, one rainstorm, and one crappy day as we left.  But I'm not sure that time now would even work because the popularity of the holiday parties has left most of November and December busier and more expensive.  If you're going to spend the money, you want to maximize your experience, but that seems to be getting harder, particularly as people are still catching up from a couple years away from traveling due to COVID.

4) The savior of the whole trip was probably Genie+.  Going in it was probably among my biggest frustrations, and a prime example of the ways that Disney is now sucking every dollar out of people and pricing themselves out of the middle class.  But I have to admit, it was probably the best $240 we spent.  Being able to skip the line 95% of the time was hugely helpful.  I felt guilty about it most of the time as we walked past everyone knowing we were making their wait longer, but it was such a huge help in getting through the parks more quickly and with less frustration.  There was definitely a learning curve and a different brand of stress associated with maximizing its use, but it enabled us to not get up crazy early or have to stay all day until late or waste our day sitting in long lines.  And I think our MagicBands ($40 total) were totally worth it to not have to keep track of cards or pull things out every time we used Genie+ or got back to our room.  But knowing something like that was free in the past is annoying, and that's about where my comfort with extra costs ends.  We had to pay for the airport shuttle this time, food was horribly expensive, and souvenirs were worse.  We didn't have to pay for our accommodations and it was still a terribly pricey trip.  Worth it for a one-time big trip, I guess, but we probably could have also done something pretty awesome somewhere else for less.

 

5) So, given that expense, what are our plans for the future?  Would we go back?  What will vacations look like moving forward?  The good news is that if we go back, we have now covered a lot of the basics.  We've done the attractions you do just to do them, the ones we wanted Carter to experience or just wanted to check out, so if we went back, we could likely have less overall park time and enjoy more resort time.  We could do 2-3 days of park hopper passes and just hit up the important stuff, the new stuff, or things we really want to do again.  Maybe we could stay at an off-site hotel with good amenities for cheaper and get a car to do other things in the area, or check out something different like a water park.  There's a possibility we could get in on Craig's parents' DVC membership for relatively cheap at some point, but before we'd commit we'd need to see what that would earn us.  That's a longshot, though, as I'm not sure I want to commit to going back anytime soon.  We have other fun trips to take and basketball trips to afford in the meantime, so I think we need to turn our focus elsewhere for a bit.  That said, when we do vacation, we need to change how we do it.  Jacob desperately wanted more resort time.  I can't say I blame him, but I tried to make him understand that when you go to Disney specifically, generally you do everything you can to make your (very expensive) park admission worth it.  Spending $100 to do a couple things isn't really a great use of money, so we tried to make the most of the experience this time.  If we really want more resort time, now that we've accomplished all we did, we can either build in more resort time next time or go somewhere else with similar amenities that costs way less.  I do still feel like I have a few things left there to accomplish--I still didn't ride The Little Mermaid, I want to ride Tron when it opens, Cosmic Rewind needs to happen again, and I really want to see the darn Magic Kingdom fireworks without rain.  There are more foods I'd like to try, the World Showcase needs more exploring, and I need to get my ornament.  I'd also like to resort hop a bit more.  We accomplished more than I expected--even if it was only half of us part of the time--but I need to reset my expectations (and try to reset Jacob's as well) for future trips to maintain a bit more balance.

6) On that note, what else can we do better?  I'd really like to do more for my feet, but I feel like I really tried to be careful and wear comfortable shoes, yet I still failed miserably.  So back to the drawing board there.  The biggest other things are researching food way better and having a much better grocery order immediately upon arrival.  We completely failed on both counts.  We definitely could have used more snacks, both for in the room and in the parks, in the event we couldn't get to real food soon enough.  We probably could have done a bit better with breakfast, too, but the snacks were a huge shortcoming.  If we ever go back, I really need to have Jacob look at every menu--especially quick service--to find things he wants.  He tried to rely on "top ten gluten-free" lists and things like that, but they tended to include lots of sit-down places which we couldn't afford or didn't want to waste park time on, and also which tended to skew toward the writer's fancy tastes rather than the broader (and simpler) menu.  Jacob will absolutely need to take the lead on that next time.

 

7) The whole COVID element of this trip still boggles my mind a bit.  As I mentioned, crowded airports and crowded ride areas certainly felt more uncomfortable than I liked.  We masked on the planes, and I will probably continue to do that for the foreseeable future--assuming it doesn't take me another four years to get back on a plane.  But for the most part it was too hot to do it anywhere else.  Even in air conditioning I mostly felt like I was still recovering from the overwhelming heat outside, and the last thing I wanted to do was wear a mask.  I'd say there were still maybe 10% of people wearing them at any given time.  More on transportation or in lines, but some on rides and walking around, too.  There was a lot of outside time, fortunately, but I will say that all of the rides that crowd the queue (we heard "Move up and use all available space" more times than I can count) or put a group of 30 people into a tiny room (i.e., Haunted Mansion or any of the newer rides with "pre-boarding" sequences) felt pretty risky.  Crowded buses were concerning, and even sharing a Skyliner car felt a bit odd.  I felt a little better by the second half of the trip that if we were going to get sick it likely wouldn't ruin the trip at that point, but it was definitely a set of risks I wouldn't take at home.  I feel very lucky we seem to have emerged without COVID, but I definitely have a cold now so we clearly couldn't avoid everything.    

8) One funny little sidenote of this trip was my new Apple Watch.  It was definitely interesting to watch the steps and miles add up, and I appreciated the instant notification when there was incoming rain or when I had calls or messages that I might not have seen or heard via the phone in my fanny pack.  It worked out really well for that and probably also saved me a little bit of phone battery at times.  I changed my watch face over to a cute Mickey Mouse one while we were there--sort of like the old analog Mickey watches, moving arms and all--and that was a cute little reminder that what we were doing was special.  I'm not one of those all-out Disney people so it felt like one small thing I could do to "fit in" while we were there.  My watch probably thinks I'm dead now because I blew all of my fitness goals out of the water every day and am now just sucking badly at all except my stand goal.  Hopefully once my cold subsides I can start working out a bit more, but I wanted to give my body parts (feet especially) a little more time to recover once we got home.  In the end the week featured more than 151,000 steps and nearly 69 miles.  Who knows how close that was, but wow.  This whole week combined has been lower than almost every single day was.  Oops.

9) I probably far downplayed a lot of the issues we had on this trip.  Jacob, in particular, had a lot of opinions on how this trip should go, what we should be doing, and what we were doing wrong.  A lot of it revolved around food, but the constant activity and lack of down time contributed as well.  Obviously the closed basketball court didn't help matters, and the time-intensive process to get him to a hoop was a bit challenging given the limited free time we had.  As I mentioned, he just didn't seem to understand the importance of doing Disney while we were at Disney.  He felt like the resort was more important than the rides, but if that's your opinion, you probably should have picked a different resort location.  Also, contrary to what he claimed, the bickering and put-downs that he said would go away when we had family togetherness at Disney followed us right down to Florida.  We still had a lot of that to work through on a daily basis.  Carter was a fantastic ride buddy and for the most part handled the long days and random wanderings really well.  He was almost always up for another adventure or ride.  It really only waned when his feet were sore (like mine, from walking in the rain in blister-creating slides) or when we were having trouble getting food.  He did have a few moments where he would repeatedly bring up the same ride that was at the top of his agenda, even if it didn't fit with ours at the moment.  I think both kids struggled with the understanding of trying to find the most efficient way to do things without adding a ton of extra time or effort.  For example, you may be hungry or want to ride this ride, but it's better to spend a few minutes now finishing off this section of the park and THEN heading where you want to go, so that we're not crisscrossing the park multiple times just because you want it NOW.  A little bit of waiting could save us a lot of energy, but sometimes the kids got a little too into "instant gratification" mode and couldn't understand the larger process.  Still, all things considered, I think the hard parts were way easier than last time, and the good memories will still rise far above the problems.

10) It's amazing to me how quickly the week went and how quickly the week after has gone.  To think we've almost been back a week already is mind-boggling.  We were looking forward to it so much (despite the worries) and I can't believe it's over.  It still feels a little miraculous we were there.  I can't say the magic felt quite as strong this time--going back to reality was so much harder last time--but the change of scenery (particularly with palm trees) was very much needed.  Jacob is already planning our next vacation (ugh), but I'll admit I'm dying to get on a plane (probably sans kids) and go somewhere else.  I almost forgot how fulfilling it is to get out into the world and live a little...and not clean my kitchen 10 times a day.  It wasn't idyllic, but we made a lot of memories.  It was fun and a much-needed post-pandemic feast for the eyes, in case all the pictures didn't make that obvious.  I'm thrilled it went as well as it did, and sad (but relieved) it's over.    

 

To wrap this up with a smile, let's look at one more set of photos.  Since I didn't buy them and it took me a while to take screen shots of them, I didn't get around to getting these in the park posts that they belonged to, but I still wanted to share some of my favorite on-ride photos from the trip:

This is from Dinosaur.  While our faces are expressive, the funnier part is the girls behind us freaking out.  They screamed like crazy the whole ride!

This one from Frozen would have been a good one had the woman not waved...at nothing.  

This is from Guardians of the Galaxy, and you can see how much fun I'm having, though Carter looks a bit surprised!

This Haunted Mansion one cracked me up because I'm enjoying the fake ghosts and Carter is (as usual) analytically pointing something out and explaining it to me.

This is probably the best one, from Splash Mountain.  We all have varying degrees of fun terror and real terror on the way down the big hill.

Space Mountain was another where I was just enjoying the ride and Carter was surprised by every twist and turn...

We were loving the funv twists and turns on the Seven Dwarfs Mine Ride!

Yet another one with me having fun and Carter looking slightly freaked out...but rest assured, he loved it!

This was our first one and one of the more telling ones.  Carter had his arms in the air, I look slightly pained but was actually just enjoying the fun, Craig was holding on for dear life, and Jacob was just trying to wish it away.

The funniest part of Expedition Everest was that on our first ride, the guy in front of us had his hands in the air and perfectly blocked our faces completely!  But this time we were in the front of the car and all smiles!

What a trip.