Note: This post is one year late. I originally wrote this around February 2024.
Late last year my wife asked me if I wanted to go to Walt Disney World with my daughter and my son, Austin. I originally said ‘no’ but eventually changed my mind after my son had been off to college, and I was missing him. So, all four of us planned to go to Disney’s Wilderness Lodge for four days in the middle of January to get away from everything and, hopefully, to get a little sunshine.
My wife booked our plane tickets on Frontier and we were to fly out of Trenton, NJ, a tiny little airport from us on the other side of the state. Not too long after she booked the tickets, we got bumped to a later flight around 9:45 pm, which meant we lost an entire day at Disney. So now we were down to 3 full days in the parks, which was fine by me, but there was no way to change the tickets without the plane fare going up by double. Frontier’s customer service is entirely automated, with no human interaction available through their chat or text systems. Welcome to 2024, where companies have gotten rid of 1000s of jobs and made everything automated, and you are left on your own to do everything yourself.
I scheduled myself off for an entire week of work because I didn’t know when I would get another chance to take a week’s vacation. I have mini-vacations planned, but nothing more than several days. In March, I’m taking my son on a camping trip up to the Finger Lakes area in New York for two nights, and then in April, the wife and I might take a trip to San Francisco to meet up with some friends.
We were booked at the Wilderness Lodge 1 bedroom for the duration of the stay, one of my favorite hotels. The DVC (Disney Vacation Club) area of the resort is called Copper Creek.
When we go to Walt Disney World, my wife always tries to ensure everyone gets to do what they want while we’re down there. For both my kids, it’s the rides or specific rides; for me, it’s the food and drink. Even though the food and drink are ridiculously priced (especially the alcoholic drinks), we always have a redemption card(s) from our Visa Chase Disney rewards points. Laurie and I had around $400 each to spend on whatever we wanted. So I spent on – you guessed it, drinks for myself and food for all of us. We only scheduled two sit-down meals this time. The first one was Tony’s Town Square, the first day in Magic Kingdom, located at the beginning of the park entrance on Main Street. We had eaten there for breakfast when all eleven of us went years ago. The second sit-down meal was Mama Melrose at Hollywood Studios two days later on Sunday. Both sit-down meals were delicious. Unfortunately, neither one of us took photos of the meals. In the last several years, I have been lax at taking pictures at Disney. I have to rely on my wife for almost all the images I display on my website and any pictures that I post on Instagram. I guess I don’t care enough or I forget, one or the other. However, this time, I did manage to take some photos at Oga’s Cantina in Hollywood Studios, which we booked the day of. I remember when Galaxy’s Edge was brandy new you couldn’t get a reservation for a week out.
Overall, the trip was very welcome and enjoyable, but the weather stunk, and the flying part was, as usual, not fun at all. I hate flying out of Orlando Airport. At 5 AM, many hundreds of people tried to get checked in on Frontier and many hundreds had their flights canceled by Frontier. One guy was screaming and yelling at the women at the ticket counter, and he eventually got taken away by the police. It’s like going to a 3rd world country with the amount of people and chaos at that airport. The city of Orlando and the airlines should be ashamed of how things have developed there. They need a second larger airport to support the amount of people coming through Orlando. If it hadn’t been for the fact that we all had TSA pre-check and had breezed through security, we would have been late to our flight. And yes, we were there 2 hours before our departure.
If I remember correctly, it didn’t matter if we were late for our flight because it was delayed by 4 hours. There was a mechanical/electrical issue, and we had to de-plane and board a completely different aircraft. The good part was the same flight crew could fly us home because they were still within their working time frame. Flight crews have a window where they are off and on, and if our flight had been delayed much longer, Frontier would have had to find another flight crew or cancel the flight.
This post was supposed to be about our trip to Disney, but I seemed to have gone off the rails about air travel. My son and daughter had a great time, you can tell on their faces, and my wife, Laurie, certainly enjoyed the trip. My son and wife are both leaving AGAIN in March for a day and a half to Disney. My daughter will be in school and I will be working so we decided not to go, especially because it’s such a short time.
As of this writing, I’m finalizing plans to go camping in the Finger Lakes Region of New York with my son in mid-March for two nights. Also Laurie and I have recently booked our trip to San Francisco in mid-April as well. We will be there 5 days and will be there to meet my friend, Dave and his wife, someone I’ve known since Middle School. We are celebrating 30 years of marriage and we will be not necessarily celebrating in April, but we will be married 25 years this May 30th, 2024.