Disney World June 22-27

I have been flying down to WDW for  a few one day trips and then for a long weekend with my husband (off property).  Lil' Bit does not like the one day trips - they are too exhausting and does not like to stay off property.  Therefore, I promised her that once school was out for the summer, she and I would take a girls trip.

We were on the road at 3:00AM for the hour drive to the airport with the hopes of getting on the first flight of the day at 6:10 AM.  We got on our favored flight with few empty seats to spare.

We arrived at Pop Century, dumped our carry on bags at bell services and headed straight to the parks.

While at the parks, I hit send" on my Amazon Prime Now order.  We had a great day in the parks.  Lil' Bit had set up all of our fast passes and she did a great job.  We made a short day of it and headed back to check out our room. 

Lil' Bit was disappointed with the location of our room (based off of the text notification) so we stopped by the front desk before going to the room to ask if we could be moved.  They were so accommodating.  They switched rooms and arranged to have our bags and groceries moved to our new room. 

All of the rooms at Pop century have been refurbished or are in the process of refurbishment so there are no "old" rooms left in inventory  I wasn't sure how I would feel about the new rooms but it turns out that I love them.  When the Murphy bed is up, the room is very spacious.  There is plenty of storage and the new Queen sized beds will come in very handy when I have to share with the husband.

Per Lil' Bit's plan, we got to the parks very early each day and rode rides with little or no wait in the standby line.  we then went back tot he room for a rest and afterward, headed to a different park where we had fast passes scheduled. 

It rained every day right about 4:00 but we did not let that slow us down.  We threw on ponchos and grabbed umbrellas and laughed our way thought he downpours.

We pretty much rode everything we wanted to ride all week and even hit some favorites several times. 

We had a bit of an adventure coming home, though.  Two flights were cancelled so we knew that there would be no room on standby so we rushed and bought tickets home via Houston.  Our Houston flight was delayed so we missed our connection and ended up spending the night in a hotel near the airport.  But all is well that ends well.  We made it out on the first flight in the morning.

I have not logged the receipts yet so I have no idea what the trip cost us.

I'm baaack - and ready to travel

Bringing you up to speed:

Big Boy started playing football a few years back and trust me when I say it:  Football eats up your life.

Then football ended and we got tied up moving to a bigger house to accommodate my aging mother.  Then, I spent every available weekend fixing the attached apartment up for Mom.  Finally, Mom moved in with us which meant that our travels were severely limited.

We managed to fit a few Disney trips in with mom but, there is no way she could have kept up with the pace of our little adventures.  Mom's health declined to the point where even a trip to the grocery store required making arrangements for her care.

We lost mom about a year ago and have finally gotten our life settled enough to think about travel again.

I have left my job as a Court Bailiff and am now working full time for our local County.  The kids are now 13 & 15.  We have pretty much lost Big Boy to friends and video games.  And, on top of that, he is about to play high school football so there goes the Summer and Fall.

But, I still have Lil' Bit.  She wants to continue our quest to visit each state.  She and I have a Disney trip planned for later this week and then the whole family is off to California in July.  Of course, Disneyland is on our agenda!

I am still a Disney Travel Agent and have recently become certified to also sell Sea World, Universal Studios (and all related parks) as well as other Florida Destinations.

My Big News

No, not pregnant - I am almost 50, remember.  No, I didn't win the lottery and can suddenly travel with no limitation. 


I have a new job.  And tis is a big part of my writer's block.   There are some very specific rules and limitations about how I am allowed to promote my new position so bear with me as I tread carefully.


This past November, I applied for and was hired for a position with a company which I am not allowed to name without prior corporate approval.  I can say that they are a well known auto club / travel agency.  The reason I have to be so discrete involves agreements between the different local clubs of this national organization. 


Here is one example of the official language I am authorized to use:

I recently took a position where I am working part time helping people plan their trips to the most magical

place on earth. In this role I have the ability to make reservations and really help all of my friends and

family to get the best value on their vacation. I would be more than happy to help everyone with

planning their next vacation to Disney and sharing my knowledge and experience.

As a result of this new position, I attended and graduated from the College of Disney Knowledge (an online course) which is required by Disney for anyone who sells Disney vacation packages.  I am not an Authorized Disney Vacation Planner.  I also attended a two day "in person" class where we learned even more about booking Disney vacations as well as more about our agency.


I am very excited about this because I am one of those self proclaimed "Disney experts" who perks up every time I hear that someone is planning a Disney trip.  I cannot help but jump in and try to help people plan their trips.  Now, I can do this and also help them save money by passing along discounts that are available through my affiliation with this agency.  So far, I am having a blast.


In my position, I am expected to generate my own sales but at the same time, I am limited in what I am allowed to do on the internet.  This is a very new program and they are trying to adapt the rules of an existing program to this new one.  With the old marketing methods, it was very easy to keep marketing within the geographical boundaries of this club.


Basically, I have been told that I can go outside of our marketing boundaries if I have a pre-existing relationship with someone outside of the club's territory.  I was told that since this is an existing blog, I have a relationship with my readers. 


Although I do plan on posting more about Disney in the future (ins and out, tricks, suggestions etc), I do want to keep this blog as originally intended - a travel blog, chronicling our adventures.  I am hoping to find the right balance between the  two concepts.  I may try to split eh blog off into two blogs while adhering to the policy of my new employer.  Stay tuned to see what I come up with.




So, that said, if anyone is planning a Disney trip or just wants to have me run some numbers, please contact me and I will gladly provide a no obligation quote.

Updating the Travel Blog

I developed writers block about halfway through my Las Vegas trip report and took a long, long break from both of my blogs.  Hopefully I will give people a reason to return. 


We are still traveling but I am afraid that life has a way of getting in the way and I fear that we will not be able to achieve our goal of 50 states in 2 years.  I am thinking about renaming the challenge "50 states by 50" in honor of my turning 50 in October. This would make it more plausible to reach the goal but doesn't really honor the kids' role in the challenge.


We are sitting at 29 states visited so far.  We took some time off from traveling for football season since Big Boy had games every weekend for a few weeks, then the holidays came around and we were too busy to travel. Then, of course, after the holidays we were too broke to travel.  Then it was too cold, then it was... yet get the picture.  We have had more reasons not to travel than to travel.


But, there is plenty of blogging to do.  Since I last wrote, we have been to the following states.


Florida (again)
Wisconsin
Rhode Island
Pennsylvania (again)
Florida (again)
Tennessee
Washington
Alaska
Connecticut
Florida (again)


So, I have a  lot to write about.


Now, part of my writer's block came from being stuck on what to say about Las Vegas.  But, a big part of my block came from how to word an important announcement.  I am going to post this now and work on the wording of my announcement.  Stay tuned - it will be posted tomorrow.

Las Vegas, NV - February 26 - March 1

My poor working husband never gets to go on any of our trips.  And, he is the reason we get to travel to begin with.  So, as he approached his 50th birthday, I asked him how he wanted to celebrate and he said that he wanted to go to Las Vegas.

So, he took a couple of days off, as did I and off we went (with the kids, of course).  Although taxis are readily available, we decided to rent a car so that we could take a couple of side trips.   We stayed at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino.  The hotel is at one end of the strip and there were several things within easy walking distance.

We used Priceline to book our room and received a very good rate.  We also were exempt from paying the ridiculous $25 per night "resort fee" that the regularly book guests are forced to pay.  I am guessing that they received too many bad reviews on Priceline for the surprise fee.

As soon as we walked into the casino, Lil' Bit made a beeline for the slot machines with eyes as wide as dinner plates.  She had never seen an "arcade" so big, bright, colorful and loud.   
There was no explanting to her that they were not video games and she was not allowed to play them.  She was almost inconsolable.  But, we did manage to drag her away and we made our way to our room. 

The room was comfortable.  Not huge, but nicely appointed and comfortable. 

We dumped our bags and headed out to explore.

The pool was very nice and we spent a good amount of our vacation time soaking up the sun while the kids swam. 

Next post:  photos from the strip

Live...from Alaska!

I am posting this from our resort in Girdwood, Alaska! We made it!.  My husband ended up ordering himself a ZED fare ticket and joined us on our trip.  I will make a full post on our trip at one point but I am trying to keep the trips in order and I am way behind on trip reports.  I just could not contain my excitement and had to check in to say how awesome this place is.  And huge.  We are overwhelmed with the expanse of it.  We would like to visit Denali and Mt. McKinley but it is a six hour drive from here.

We are planning on setting off tomorrow to see glaciers and hopefully some wildlife.  Look forward to an amazing trip report in the future.

How to get to Alaska

Step 1.  Get your husband to go on his employee website and show you how to book a Zed Fare ticket.  Since our airline does not fly to Alaska, we have to book on affiliated airlines.  We pay for our flights based on a zone system which is based on miles and this is called a Zed Fare.

Step 2.  play with the system and book a random set of travel dates "just to see how we do it"

Step 3. reassure said husband that we probably can't accidently book the tickets without putting in a credit card number

Step 4.  notice that the website mentions that the tickets will be paid for by payroll deduction....  oops

Step 5. wait for the paid for tickets to arrive in the mail.

Guess what...., we are going to Alaska.   The dates we put in the computer were for four or five days starting July 29th (I think) but I have been reassured by the helpful operator at the Pass Bureau that we can change the dates.  This is good because apparently we are still in the high tourist season with very expensive hotel rates and difficult to find rental cars. 

Although I am loathe to take the kids out of school right at the beginning of the school year, I can't afford to go during the tourist season and don't want to go after it starts to get cold.  So, if we can indeed change the dates, I will probably try to find a way to go in early September.

While I am very excited about seeing Alaska, I regret that we will only be able to go for a few days.  I have a felling that I could spend a month there exploring (in the summer, of course) and still not get my fill.