Monthly Archives: April 2011
In which the nerds visit WDW with an entourage
The plan for our April, 2010 trip was hatched shortly after we returned from our trip in 2008. This time, however, the nerds would have an entourage. Although the plans weren’t formalized until February, 2010, it was decided that this would be a family trip. In attendance, besides CP and me, were my grandparents, aunt, and youngest cousin, T. The trip was planned to coincide with T’s cheerleading world championship, which was held the last week in April at Disney’s Wide World of Sports.
Since returning from our 2008 trip I had become something of a WDW trip planning savant. I had spent countless hours (days, weeks, months?) reading guide books, websites, and message boards, making spreadsheets and creating custom touring plans, and I wasn’t shy in sharing my opinions. Several marathon planning phone calls with my grandparents ensued, and I lobbied them into staying at a different DVC than they at first might have chosen. Since five of the six on our trip were women, a 2-bedroom, 3-bathroom (hallelujah!) villa at the Animal Kingdom Lodge would provide the most space for the fewest number of DVC points. They were convinced, if a bit dubious. Would it be a good decision?
On seeing Disney again…for the first time…again.
By July, 2008, CP and I needed a serious break from the drudgery of daily life. We were done. It was time to go. The only thing to figure out, then, were the logistics.
Let’s just say that during this period neither CP nor I were flush with cash. We were both in (or had recently dropped out of) grad school, the economy was tanking, and we had for several months been attending to a series of family issues that had sapped us of both energy and funds. In spite of these things, we were determined. The wheels in my head started spinning, and we decided to take a kill-two-birds kind of trip to Florida – we would first visit my mother on Florida’s east coast, and then we would drive to WDW, stay in a DVC studio courtesy of my grandparents, and find ways to have a cheap yet enjoyable vacation.
The plan worked reasonably well, with a few exceptions. First, I had perhaps suffered a bout of amnesia at some point, since I had clearly forgotten in the time following my employment at WDW that August in Florida offers breathtakingly horrible weather conditions. Hot, humid, and stormy – the trifecta. This might not have given us much pause, but I had also never in my adult life been in charge of planning a full trip; thus, I was unfortunately ignorant of the need to get up early to beat both the crowds and the heat. Thus, we spent many mornings sleeping in, and many afternoons in the parks fighting both crowds and ridiculously hot and humid conditions. We also didn’t eat particularly well (save a fantastic meal at the California Grill), both on account of the heat and our desire to keep it a cheap trip.
Our splurge meal of the week...dinner at the California Grill.
On saying uncle; or, how two nerds began a love affair with Disney
In 26 days, CP and I will be back in the World. It has been 5 months, 24 days since our last visit. 11 months, 8 days since our visit before that. In approximately 7 months, we will go again. I think it’s official: we have a Disney habit.
In the circles we run in (read: cadres of over-educated, left-leaning, corporation-suspicious, MSNBC-watching bleeding heart liberals), there is something of a notion that vacations should be….serious. Exotic ports of call. Patronage of cultural institutions. Service trips. At the very least, haute cuisine. That’s fine. We like those things, too. But a few years ago, something happened – maybe it was the recession, or family/work/school drama, or the drudgery of year after year of terrible New England winters. Maybe it was all of those things. In any case, we cried uncle, and decided it was time for a WDW vacation. Serious could wait. It was time to enjoy some nice weather, ride some rides, be a kid again in a place no one would judge us for doing so.
I think the idea might have been mine, but CP was the easier sell. For several years, I had kept my distance from Disney. On a lark during my sophomore year of college, I applied for and was accepted into the WDW college program. This experience sits squarely in the column of “things I wish I had known more about before I jumped into.” My roommates partied constantly; thus I never slept. My work location was considered one of the least desirable; my coworkers suffered from a dispirited malaise. I felt trapped in a bad decision. Seeing Disney from the inside out was equal parts fascinating and frustrating. Underpaid and overworked, a series of incidents ultimately led to me leaving the program early. I was burned out on Disney. I ran the other way, headlong into my books, my exams, my family drama, and into the uncertainties of the post-9/11 world.
Several years passed, and then we cried uncle. Or maybe I was the one who cried uncle, finally ready to forgive Disney (and myself) for one bad spell in an otherwise unblemished record of lovely childhood trips to – and countless family memories made in – WDW. It was time to go back and suspend disbelief for a time, to revel in an environment where the real world stopped at the water’s edge. And, as they say, the love affair began.
Up next: A brief stop in 2008, and a retrospective of 2010 as we prepare for our first trip of 2011.
Nerds in Wonderland 