Trip Recap: Leaving PA

And it's time to do the recap!


Day 1: October 28th

Things all started to go crazy early in the week before the wedding when there were some rumblings about a storm named Sandy. I kept watching the news and posting about it on Facebook in between doing the last minute wedding projects and packing.



There was some talk she'd hit Florida and then do some wacky S-curve thing and hit the northeast where all of my family lives. Combined with it was the full moon and another storm coming in from the northwest that would make this the weather event of the century. Just my luck, right? And it was. New Jersey is utterly destroyed along the coast.  It's so incredibly sad.



Our flight was scheduled to leave early Monday morning so our plan had been to do Park Sleep Fly on Sunday and wake up early and head to the airport. Predictions regarding the landfall of the storm was fluctuating between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.

I kept watching the news and the airline's webpage. Finally, on Friday, US Airways posted a notice that they'd let you change your flight without a penalty or fee so I changed our Flight to Sunday evening. They did tell me that while we were all guaranteed seats, at the time of booking, those seats weren't together, but the earlier we got to the airport, the sooner they could fix that.

So Sunday morning we headed out to Philly's airport and it was a gray and windy day. Really windy. The airport was already starting to take storm precautions and there were a lot of cranky travelers around.

We arrived at the airport around noon for a 6:30 pm flight with 6 kids, a wedding gown and lots of baggage. We trudged through a ridiculous security line, herding the kids and beginning the futile effort of keeping their hands to themselves. We sat through two different flights at our gate, grabbed an overpriced airport meal and had our flight delayed an hour.

It sounds bleak, right? Nope, we were on our way to DISNEY WORLD!!!! We managed to get all of our seats in the same general area. Prince Charming got to sit with Munchkin #4 in the row in front of me and Munchkin #3.  Munchkin #1 was one row back and across the aisle. Munchkin #2 was across the aisle. It all worked out.I had an extra seat in our row, so my little guy's special bunny friend sat there.











It was a rough flight with a lot of turbulence. The little ones who were seated with a parent were occupied with electronics but I was worried about the two sitting alone, with strangers. The poor guy seated next to our princess! She talked his ear off but he was really good with her, patient and friendly. My big guy was seated next to an older lady and her husband was across the aisle from her. My son is oblivious to other people and was dancing in his seat to his MP3 player and reading over the lady's shoulder. I could tell she was irritated but she was stuck.

When we first switched our flight, I tried to get an additional night at Disney but the price was prohibitive and I was put on hold for 45 minutes. I ended up booking a room at the Hyatt Regency in the Orlando airport but there was an issue. Apparently they are really strict about the whole 4 people to a room thing, even when the person is three feet tall.

So we had to sneak in two of the kids.

Once in our room, we put the three boys in one bed,  Prince Charming and his daughter in the other and the bride made a nest for herself on the floor.



The bride didn't sleep well and was the first one up, but that meant I got to take a shower in relative peace before trekking down to the Magical Express!