Tuesday, May 10.

Departure day. The day the wheels officially came off the wagon. You know, just another Tuesday in Walt Disney World. (Far from it!)

Today is best described in two parts: the ORIGINAL plan, and the ACTUAL happenings.  You see, I had this day all planned out – we had a late flight, so technically it was like having a fifth full day at the parks.  We’d pack up in the morning, head to Kona Cafe at the Polynesian Resort for breakfast, and then finish up at the Magic Kingdom or Epcot. Maybe we’d even hit Toy Story Mania! first thing in the morning.

Well.

Packing up on our last morning.

So what ACTUALLY happened is that we got up around 7am, and in the midst of final packing I noticed that there was a message blinking on our phone. I picked up the phone and found out that there was a problem processing our credit card, and thus we couldn’t utilize Express check-out.  I then felt the feeling of utter panic that everyone must feel when getting this kind of message – after all, we were paying for the trip in cash out of my debit card, and thus if there was a problem, would that mean…I had no money left? In any case, I sent CP down to the front desk to figure out what the problem was, and she came back in a huff.  Apparently, way back on our first night, Sarah Vowell-lookalike had problems getting our card approved, but instead of saying anything, she just sent us on our way, with our room not paid for. The problem, we then figured out, was that although we had called our bank on the 1st day of our trip to have them authorize a larger-than-$500 withdrawal, we checked in after midnight (and thus the day after), so our card was declined.  Granted, this turned out not to be the biggest deal in the world, but we lost a significant amount of time dealing with the front desk and the bank, time we could have saved if Sarah Vowell-lookalike had let us know on night one.

A final and beautiful morning at the Studios.

Between packing and dealing with $$$ drama it became clear our Kona Cafe reservation was out of the question. Around 8:20 we headed out to the car and over to Hollywood Studios, with a plan to ride TSM one more time and possibly get a Fast Pass for later if time allowed.  We parked, we grabbed a tram, and were at the front gates by 8:45, and promptly took our place among the gathered masses.

Our TSM ride was, as usual, terrific, but it was at this point that the wheels totally came off our trip. Why? Our feet. For some reason, even though we both wore broken-in, comfortable shoes (and different pairs each day), our feet were a torn up mess of blisters and callouses and all-over hurt. Worse, CP’s ankle had given out, and she was walking with a pronounced limp. Suddenly, our whole day was in jeopardy.  We had TSM FPs for later, but would we use them?

TSM!

We decided to head out of the park and go to Starbucks before returning to the BoardWalk one last time and vacating our room.  First, however, we stopped at the Studios’ First Aid Station, where I would get some band-aids for my terrible, hockey-puck sized blister (seriously), and CP would ask for an ACE bandage to wrap her ankle for some extra support. For some reason, I had kind of envisioned going to First Aid, asking for a band-aid, and going about my way, not realizing that you had to sign in, consult with a triage nurse, sit in an exam room, and then take aftercare instructions with you. All for…a blister? The nurse did do a bang-up job wrapping CP’s ankle, though, so the awkward visit to First Aid was saved.

Hobbling out, feeling dejected, we drove to Kissimmee to get Starbucks, and headed back to the BoardWalk to pack up.  As it turned out we *just* made the 11am cutoff to vacate our room, and feeling a bit homeless and wayward, we drove back to Epcot, with the intention of making a quick trip to

Hello and goodbye to Epcot.

Mouse Gears to pick up a couple pins we couldn’t find anywhere else.  Pins successfully acquired, we hobbled back to the car, and – this is gross – my giant blister popped, sending a gush of nasty into my shoe and increasing my pain level exponentially. That’s it. We were officially DONE.

Sad, defeated, and dejected, we headed back to the Epcot parking lot and decided to head back to the Studios, where we used our TSM FPs, and then we headed to Downtown Disney for lunch, where we could maybe get some free Wifi and at the very least, sit off our feet for awhile and kill time. It was only noon, and we didn’t have to leave for the airport until 4:30 at the earliest, but we just couldn’t physically do anything else.  As we did on our October trip, we headed to Wolfgang Puck Express for lunch, and ordered a barbeque chicken pizza and salad to split.  Ten minutes later a salad was brought to our table, and the server with it gave us a receipt and promptly left. We felt a little puzzled, wondering where our pizza was, and then realized that somehow our order had been screwed up from the get-go, and all we would receive was a chicken caesar salad. Now, this makes the second visit in a row with a lackluster WPE experience, and we weren’t feeling like waiting to re-order, so we split the salad between us and decided we’d make up for it with a snack from Goofy’s Candy Company later.  We lingered at our table, drinking refills of soda and playing with our iPhones, and me doing a bit of work that showed up in my inbox.  Inside, I felt devastated – this was not how I wanted to spend the last 20% of our trip.

Disappointing lunch behind us, we hobbled over to World of Disney to buy some candy for my coworkers, and then headed to Once Upon a Toy to use the bathroom. By this time, it was after 1:30pm; it was blazing hot outside; and there wasn’t much we could do to entertain ourselves as hobbled as we were.  Not knowing what else to do, we decided to get in the Camry and take a scenic tour up International Drive, which we did, marveling in the tacky tourist attractions and roadside stops.  We took I Drive as far as it would go, dead ending in an outlet mall in a less-than-lovely area of Orlando.  We turned back around, and somehow ended up driving through the grounds of Universal Studios, until finally we were back at I-4 and soon back on Disney property.

YUM.

Once again we ended up at Downtown Disney, where we went straight to Goofy’s Candy Company and made ourselves a custom Mickey Rice Krispies Treat, dipped in chocolate and m&ms and covered in chocolate drizzle. We sat in GCC eating it quietly, both feeling sad about the shortness of our trip and the injury we both had endured.  After cleaning up our table I – on impulse – made a beeline back to the pin store, where we purchased another box of limited edition mystery WDW 40th anniversary pins. What can I say – I am one of the suckers on the backs of which Disney makes a pretty profit on pin trading.

In truth there’s only so much time you can kill by killing time.  Our bags were packed and now repacked, with CP ferreting away our last-minute DTD treasures.  There was no way we could hobble through another park, and no point doing that anyway, since we had time left but not enough time to make a trip to a park worth it.  Absent any other good idea, we decided to head back to the airport, but instead of taking 417 or 528, we’d take the back roads, a trick I’d learned nearly ten years ago as a Cast Member on the WDW College Program.  In my recollection, we simply had to head north until we hit Sand Lake Road, and then take that until we hit the airport grounds. No problem.

Yeah, well. The first part was indeed no problem; following the route we took to Whole Foods the first day, we took I-4 and exited near Sea World, and then took Turkey Lake Road north until it hit Sand Lake Road.  We turned right on SLR, and drove. And drove some more. And further on still.  Good thing we had time to kill!  Eventually I saw a Wal-Mart that I remembered from years past, and knew we were on the right track. We stopped to gas up the rental car, and soon I could tell we were close to the airport. Except for some reason, Sand Lake Road wouldn’t get us right there – we either had to get on 528 and pay a toll (which I guess we could have done), or we had to make a quick turn onto an unknown road and hope we could figure it out.  We chose the latter option, and ended up driving down a desolate road past cargo companies and airplane maintenance hangars.  Clearly, this wasn’t working.

Waiting to board at MCO, either the best or worst place you'll see on a WDW trip, depending on when you see it.

Dejected that my memories from ten years ago were failing me, I sullenly and quite dejectedly turned back onto 528, paid a toll, and in what felt like mere feet we found ourselves back on airport grounds.  We followed the signs back to rental car drop-off, and with the exception of one harrowing moment of following bad signage which led some cars to honk at me, we returned our car and checked in without incident.  Our only real hurdle was the security line, which was longer than I’d seen it at any airport we’d flown out of during the past few years, NYC airports included.

From that point on all we had to do was hurry up and wait.  We boarded on time, flew out on time, and landed on time, back in dark, chilly Connecticut.

How many days until our December trip?

/fin.