The Dodgem, The Bumper Car and The YOLO Trip- August 2013- Day 18

[xAimeex]

Hooray I've finally reached the end! I'm so glad to have finally got to this point! I'm uploading early today as I have the afternoon off and I'm out for the next couple of nights! This is also my smallest update of the entire trip I think, not many photos today!


Hope you've all enjoyed reading along with this report, just the final thoughts to go now which will be up in the next week or 2 depending on how much I decided to waffle on about stuff! Thanks for reading


Day 18- Monday 2nd September 2013-Time to say goodbye


Despite not falling asleep until about 3 I still woke up naturally at 7:30, 4 and half hours sleep, that’ll mean I’ll definitely be tired enough to sleep on the plane home right! (If only!)


It’s the worst feeling waking up on the last morning isn’t it. It’s that weird mix of melancholy but also a sense of relief that everything has gone to plan. Does anyone else feel like that? I think it’s because we all plan for so long that the relief of knowing that everything came together and nothing went wrong is a great feeling. But then that takes you back full circle to being sad that it’s over again haha.


Lauren was still asleep so I grabbed the ipad and tried again with online check in. Luckily it was all fine this time and we were soon checked in. We still had bubble seats which we were happy about (if only we’d known the night we were in for up in that bubble!)


I let Lauren sleep in a bit and did my make-up ready for the day.


At 8:45 I woke Lauren up and went down to the food court to grab us some breakfast. We had 4 CS credits left so I used 2 to get us both french toast and sausages. This seems to have become our traditional last morning breakfast!


I took the food back to the room and we sat and talked about what a brilliant trip it had been while we ate.



Yum!


We spent the next couple of hours packing, having showers, tidying up etc. We left the room just before 11 and I checked and double checked every nook and cranny of the room to make sure we hadn’t left anything.


We grabbed our suitcases and said our last goodbye to our lovely corner room before heading down to check out/leave our bags with luggage services etc.


Now that we were free of our bags we headed over to the boat dock for one last trip to DTD. The boat is so relaxing but when you know it’s the last day it gives you far too much time to think! I struggled to break a smile as I thought about the fact that we’d be on a plane flying home in a few hours .


There was the small fact though that I somehow still had $170 left so the thought of spending that cheered me up a fair bit. Lauren had even more left than I did so we were both looking forward to going on a bit of a shopping spree.


When we arrived we headed straight to Once Upon A Toy to look at the CD’s. Lauren had been debating over whether to buy the CD for Illuminations or not. They had it in there so she decided she would get it. Between us we already had the Wishes soundtrack and the Fantasmic one so it was nice to have the full set!


Our Four Parks One World CD had gone missing back home so I decided to buy the new Disney park music album to replace it. Well who can guess what turned up when we got home? Yep our Mum had found the original CD while we were gone! They are slightly different though and it does mean I can keep my new copy in the car. The 4 year old I look after asked if we could listen to Grim Grinning Ghosts while we were driving the other day. I’ve never been more proud haha.





I also bought a small tube of flavoured sugar. I love this stuff, I can’t remember what flavours I had but they were all good. One thing I will say is that despite it being aimed at children, a child would be the last person I’d give one of these tubes too haha it would send them wild!



Think of the E numbers!


After we finished in Once Upon A Toy we headed to get lunch from Earl of Sandwich. It was bang on 12 now so it was crazy busy in there! I mean, when is it not busy but this time of day is mad!


The queue moved fairly quickly and we both ordered a holiday sandwich without cranberry sauce again as they were so good when we’d had them earlier in the holiday. Desserts were a chocolate brownie for Lauren and chocolate pudding for me! No pictures of this but it looked exactly the same as the ones we had here at the beginning of the trip!


We got to the till and the girl serving was a right moody mare! She huffed at us when we said we were using dining plan credits and told us we’d have to wait for the register beside her to be free as she couldn’t do the dining plan on hers. Our bad, we must have missed the sign on the till that informed guests of that. Oh wait there wasn’t one! She looked at us as though we definitely should have known that and had really put her out by coming to her till!


We were eventually served by the girl next to her who was lovely and let us pay with our credits!


That was our last 2 CS credits gone! 3 receipts declaring that we had 0 credits left! It really did feel like an achievement haha. 17 nights on the dining plan didn’t beat us! The shameful thing is, I paid extra for a lot of my snacks at the end of the trip plus we paid oop for Sci Fi Dine In and still managed to use up every single credit
hehe.



What an achievement!


We went to get our fountain drinks and were lucky enough to spot someone just leaving their table so we grabbed it quickly! The holiday sandwich was just as good as before! My new must have at EoS, which is a good thing really seeing as they’ve taken my old favourite, the cannonball, off the menu!


After lunch we walked over to Basin as we had a 10% off voucher and our Mum bought some lovely Satsuma moisturiser in there in 2012 and we wanted to get her some more! I also bought a Christmas soap to go in the bathroom come December.








Our next stop was World of Disney. We’d let time get away with us a little and we still had a lot of dollars to part with so we decided the best plan of action was to grab a basket each and walk around the store as quickly as we could just putting whatever we fancied in and then we’d review it at the end haha. It was a bit like supermarket sweep, lots of things I’d looked at over the trip but had been unsure about buying went into my basket.


We separated for a little bit as we both wanted to look in different sections. It was literally so much fun! We met up again and both went through our baskets deciding which items we definitely wanted to make sure we weren’t buying things just for the sake of it.


My haul ended up including a new handbag, a mug (which I totally love!), some earrings, Minnie’s bake shop biscuits, Mickey shortbread and a couple more car toppers (I managed to replace the one that was stolen from my car!)



This cost about $35 I think.



These were $16 or $17 and I’ve literally only worn them once, woops!



Not sure how much these cost but they were soo good! I wish I’d bought more than 1 pack of each!





I’m so glad I bought this mug! It was $12.95 I think.


Lauren bought a set of make-up bags, slightly different to the one she bought earlier in the trip but a similar style. She also bought some Beautifully Disney nail varnish that she’d been tempted to buy all trip! She got some biscuits and a blanket as well I think but I don’t have any pictures unfortunately.


We headed over to the tills to pay. My lot came to about $90. I paid part cash part travellers cheque only the CM thought I’d given her a $500 TC rather than a $50 one so the receipt said I was due over $400 in change! Luckily she noticed but obviously I would have pointed it out if she hadn’t. Bless her she was quite old and it took ages for her to re do the transaction and print the correct receipt.


We were really pushing it for time now so we had a quick look in the Art of Disney shop but didn’t buy anything. Lauren decided she really fancied some caramel corn as she liked the stuff she got from Epcot so much.


While Lauren headed to Goofy’s Candy Co. for that I popped into the Christmas shop as I’d spotted a Halloween car topper earlier in the trip that I wanted to spend my last dollars on. I had something like $40 left now so I found the pumpkin Mickey car topper and picked the glass slipper ones too as they were 2 for $10 or something like that.



My selection of car toppers from World if Disney and the Christmas shop!


I also picked out a Mickey decoration as it had caught my eye every time I’d been in that shop this trip! It’s so pretty that I actually don’t use it as a Christmas decoration, I have it hanging up in my room all the time! It makes me smile whenever I look at it!





Continued below...

[xAimeex]

...Continued

I had a few dollars left to spend at the airport but I’d just about managed to spend all of my money. I never bring any back! I always feel like I’ve gone to the effort of saving it and changing it into dollars so I might as well spend it all! Lauren is the opposite and still had about $130 left!


I met up with Lauren again and we headed straight down to the boat dock. It was getting on for 2 o clock now! We only had 40 minutes left to get the boat back to FQ, get the suitcases, repack all the stuff we’d just bought, get changed into travel clothes and be ready and waiting for the Magical Express!


I took some last DTD photos.









Luckily a boat had just docked and it wasn’t that busy at that time of day so we got on without a problem. I tried to relax and enjoy the last boat journey of the trip but I couldn’t help but watch the clock a little.





We arrived back at FQ just after 2:15 and headed straight over to luggage services to collect our suitcases before heading back to sit in the lobby.



Our building


What ensued next was the craziest 20 minutes of the entire holiday!


Lauren went to get changed in the restrooms first while I started to pack up all the stuff I’d just bought. I decided to use my new handbag as my plane bag as it was bigger than the one I already had. I really carefully packed everything into my new bag making sure I hadn’t left anything in the old one. It was just a chaotic mess of open suitcases and bags by the time I’d finally found a place for all the new bits. I was feeling pretty stressed by the time all that was done.


I left Lauren with the bags so that she could sort out her stuff while I went to change into my travel clothes. Luckily she hadn’t bought as many new things as I had but it was at this point that she remembered that her luggage lock had broken before we went to Yacht Club! She also needed one for her hand luggage as we knew we wouldn’t be able to keep it with us in the bubble. When I got back she went to have a look in the gift shop in the hope they might sell them and luckily they did!


Unfortunately when she got back and tried to use them, one was broken! We were really cutting it fine now! It was gone half 2 and our Magical Express was due in less than 10 minutes. Lauren rushed back to the gift shop where she got stuck with a bit of a ditzy CM!


Lauren explained to her that she needed a new pack and the CM told her to get a new packet off the shelf. When Lauren explained that 1 lock from the original packet still worked the CM insisted on Lauren keeping that one before she opened up the new packet of 2 and proceeded to get them all mixed up! She and Lauren had to go through the locks and the different keys to find 2 that worked! Thankfully they found them! Poor Lauren was so stressed by this point though!


By the time she got back, the Magical Express was pulling up outside so it was another mad panic to get the new padlocks on to Lauren’s cases!


We finally headed outside to get on the bus. I actually breathed a sigh of relief when we sat down after all that craziness! Then I remembered this was the bus taking us back to the airport and I wasn’t so happy anymore.


We stopped off at Saratoga Springs and Old Key West to collect people before we were on our way to the MCO.


What can you say about this journey! It’s never a happy one is it! The video they play is just depressing! I looked out of the window catching the last glimpses of the familiar sights .


We arrived at the airport at 3:45 ish and headed straight over to bag drop. We got our boarding passes and still had our bubble seats which was good (or so we thought!) Our bags both only weighed about 20kg!


We decided to get some food first as we were both a bit hungry by now and we wanted to make sure we’d had something in case there wasn't any good food options on the plane.


We picked chick-fil-a as we hadn’t eaten there for a couple of trips. We both had just plain chicken burgers but they weren’t as nice as the last ones we had there but it was good for a quick airport meal.


After we’d eaten we stopped and had a quick look in the Disney
Store where I bought a Minnie Mouse pen to use up some more dollars. We also had a look in the Universal shop but nothing caught our eye.


We finally headed through security. It was still a little crazy getting through but nowhere near as bad as 2012 when it had been a free for all with people joining the queue wherever!


It still doesn’t flow very well though and the queue was pretty slow moving. I’ve said it before but it’s not a patch on Gatwick’s security area!


We did eventually make it through. Again there were no plastic bags for liquids, they still didn’t seem too bothered about them as long as they were under 100ml. Luckily we only had small bits of make-up that were liquid.


We both went through the scanners without setting them off and headed over to catch the monorail. It was at this point that we spotted the rain. It was absolutely pouring it down!


We stopped off in the little shop that sells magazines/sweets etc and picked up some bits for the journey home. I spent up the last of my dollars on a bottle of coke and some strawberry mentos. I literally came home with $2 all in small change!


We walked to the gate at 5:10 as boarding was due to start at around half past.


We found seats and got comfortable which was a good thing as soon after they announced that the storm was so bad that boarding had been delayed until 6. We messaged Mum and Dad to let them know that we were going to be slightly delayed as they were picking us up the next day.





It was pretty boring sitting there waiting as the wifi was absolutely rubbish. We both listened to our ipods to pass the time.


We finally started boarding at 6:10 and made our way up to the bubble.


I was expecting it to be small in there as we’d read about it on here but it really is tiny up there! I felt a bit squashed in just walking through the aisle to our seats. We already knew that our hand luggage suitcases would be too big to fit in the small overhead lockers up there hence the panic earlier to find Lauren a lock for hers as they had to be stored in the wardrobe at the back.





We took off at 7 and saw a rainbow in the distance. Sadly it didn’t take us to Oz!


We both decided to watch Monsters University. The man in front of Lauren reclined straight away which is fine on a night flight but they soon started bringing round dinner and it became clear that he wasn’t going to sit up so that Lauren could eat. I asked him politely if he’d mind putting his seat up just for dinner and he did but I don’t think he was particularly happy with me! A few minutes later one of the air hostesses put out an announcement asking people to put their seats upright during the in-flight meal so I hope he realised that it wasn’t just us making a fuss about it!


I had beef stew for dinner and Lauren had some sort of cheesy pasta dish. They were both nice enough for plane food if I remember correctly.


Pudding was a GU key lime pie which was delicious! I had 2 again as Lauren doesn’t like them!


A little while after that they bought around hot drinks to signify to us all that it was now sleep time! I don’t drink hot drinks but Lauren had a hot chocolate.


The lights went out shortly after and that was where it all went wrong to be honest! We both bought those J shaped pillows for the journey home and they were great apart from the fact that we’d stored them in the little side cubby in front of the window. Someone must have left a bottle of water or something in there which had leaked as our pillows were sitting in a puddle of water so we couldn’t really use them properly without getting soaked . They did dry out eventually for us to be able to use them and as I said they were great, really comfy!


The pillows might even have helped us to get some sleep had it not been for the 3 children sitting alone behind us who proceeded to kick us in the back, talk and squabble for most of the night until eventually one of the parents decided to come and actually sit with them. I never normally bother to recline my seat if someone is behind me but to be honest after being kicked repeatedly in the back I thought I might as well seeing as my seat was going to be kicked either way.


Lauren and I were never allowed to sit together as children on aeroplanes for precisely this reason.


I did eventually manage to get an hours sleep once the children quietened down but it really is just impossible to sleep properly on a plane!


The lights went on at about 6am and they served breakfast which consisted of a blueberry muffin and a granola bar which was great for me but not so great for Lauren as she doesn’t like either so she declined it.


I watched Les Miserables for a bit after that. I thought I might as well seeing as I was already feeling so depressed!


We eventually landed at 8:15am and just when we thought our experience in the bubble couldn’t get any worse. It did!


The man that I’d asked to put his seat up while Lauren ate got up to get his suitcase out from the overhead locker above us. Lauren and I had both also stood up. To be fair he did say watch yourself to Lauren but she quite clearly hadn’t heard him. Before I had a chance to tell her he needed her to move or before he had the chance to ask her again just in case, he decided to open the overhead locker right on to Lauren’s head anyway!


The sound it made was awful and Lauren had tears in her eyes! I even said loudly to Lauren “Did that just hit your head”, just in case the man hadn’t realised what he’d done.


Now fellow dibbers you might have thought now would have been an appropriate time for him to apologise. It seems however he had yet to evolve to that level of good manners. He obviously didn’t mean to hurt her but even if you accidently hurt someone you should still apologise. Even the 4 year old I look after knows that!


I just couldn’t believe it! I’d be mortified if I’d caused someone pain, even by accident, I wouldn’t be able to say sorry enough times!


To be honest I was absolutely seething angry which was clear from the language I used to describe him in today’s trip report notes which I obviously won’t be repeating here! :angry:


We’d had the night from hell and this was just the icing on top of the cake! The less said about the flight the better really or I might go off on one about the above idiot again!


I’ve never ever been so glad in all my life to get off a plane! I’d say we hated 90% of our time in the bubble! I know most people love it, whenever I see posts about it I see everyone saying how quiet and peaceful it is but just remember they let anyone sit up there so if you’re unlucky like we were you might end up getting less sleep than you would downstairs!


I’d never sit up there again on a night flight! It’s just too much of a risk. We have agreed to try the bubble again during the day as I’m sure it wouldn’t have been as bad had we not been desperately trying to sleep!


We got through passport control really quickly and headed to collect our luggage. It took a few minutes for the baggage carousel to start moving but we soon had our suitcases and were on our way to meet Mum and Dad.


We just couldn’t wait to see them now! We walked through arrivals and soon spotted them and our Mum had made a sign that said The Dodgem and The Bumper Car haha I love her so much! Lauren was mortified and told her to put it away but I thought it was hilarious! It put such a smile on my face after our night flight hell!


We headed off to the short stay car park and loaded up the bags. We had to drop our Dad off at work so we made a quick detour before finally heading home.


It was lovely to be back and we spent ages chatting with Mum about the trip! It was lovely to relive it all!


All was going well, I spent the morning unpacking and uploading the hundreds of photos and videos I’d taken while Lauren slept.


Unfortunately we had a bit of a shock in the afternoon when one of my Dad colleagues called to say he had almost passed out at work and they’d had to call an ambulance . My Mum and I jumped in the car and drove straight to his work, she told me in the car that he hadn’t felt well for a couple of days but they hadn’t told us as they didn’t want us to worry.


The paramedics were already there when we arrived and when I saw him lying on the floor I literally burst into tears straight away. Like proper floods of tears! To be fair at this point I’d had less than 6 hours sleep in 48 hours after our late night in MK and the flight home!


Luckily he was fine! The paramedics thought it was because he hadn’t been eating properly what with feeling unwell so he was dehydrated and had low blood sugar etc.


We took him home in the car after that and the drama was over!


I think that pretty much wraps this thing up apart from the final thoughts! I feel that this last day has been a bit of a negative read really but after the most amazing 2 and a half weeks we’d had first we really couldn’t complain!


I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get to this point but I’m so glad I saw it through to the end! The whole trip report is around 65,000 words and I haven’t even written the final thoughts yet!


I just wanted to thank everyone who has read along and left such lovely comments! They always put such a big smile on my face and I appreciate them so much! It's made writing each day out a lot easier!


Thanks for reading x

[ariel2006]

Yay, you are done that's is NOT a "Yay it's over" just so glad you finished it before I go, it's made the waiting a (little) more bearable! What a fab trip... I hope when my little sis is a bit older we may go together, but, I don't think my Mum would ever let us two go without her! Thanks for a great read (and making me really miss POFQ)

[Beaker's Fluff]

I have really enjoyed reading along, it has been a really fab trip report.
I may have missed a few days so I am going back to check on that.
Have I missed a pre trippie, is it just the two of you for the next trip, or are Mum and Dad coming?
I hope that your Dad is ok now.

[Guest]

Followed all of your trip and absolutely loved it, thankyou for sharing it with us
Xxx

[Jessika]

Great last day but not so great flight home. I was thinking of trying to reserve seats in the bubble but I'm not so sure now reading this. Off to find the rest of your report, thank you for posting.

[lovedisney89]

Awww I'm so sad your report is over, really enjoyed reading it

You bought some lovely bits in DTD, the last day is always depressing though.

Your flight home sounds terrible, I can't believe that guy in the row in front of you

Also sorry to hear about your dad but glad to hear he is ok

Thanks for sharing your holiday with us, fab report!

[Magic Mouse]

Thank you so much for sharing your holiday with us.

I've really looked forward to you posting each new day - I'm disappointed it's all over now!

It sounds like you had a wonderful time xxx

[mick]

I have enjoyed reading your trippie thanks for taking the time to do it

Such a shame you had a bad journey home

Joan

[Milner]

Have really enjoyed your report thanks for sharing. Love the mug you bought.