Disney, the end

Friday was checkout day. Jen's parents along with her sister's family elected to head back to Magic Kingdom for one last trip while we decided against it. The weather in Orlando is very, very humid and we didn't feel like getting sweaty just trying to get through the turnstiles to enter the park let alone walking around it. We finished up things around the house, packed up our final sack lunch and headed out for a little trip around downtown disney. Our guide book we had stated things open around 10a there but we found out it was actually much later... oh well, WDW didn't get to take any more of our money. Next we hit an outlet store and bought some disney souvenirs.

Finally, knowing that storms were predicted for the afternoon, we decided to use one final fastpass and headed to the airport early. With a little research help from my dad, we elected to try and standby for the 3:15p flight and arrived right at the 4 hour limit for checking in to standby for a flight. We hung around the airport, ate our snack lunch, laughed at the crazy prices being charged at the Disney stores and then finally headed out through security to the gate. In the end, our plan worked perfectly. My many years of flying non-rev standby as an airline employee kid taught me that one of the main factors for the standby list is checkin time (well, after class of service). Once the 2p flight left, nearly 20 revenue standby passengers rolled over to the 3:15p... they all ended up on the list after us because we had actually checked in before them. I knew the 2p flight didn't have many seats, let alone seats together, so that factored into our choice. In the end, we ended up getting 3 seats together and one seat right behind them and maybe 4 or 5 people behind us on the standby list made the flight. It was a God-send as the 4:30p, 5:40p and our original 6:30p flights all got delayed with none of them leaving Orlando before 7p. We were even able to make it home early enough to pickup a very happy Bailey from the kennel before it closed.

All in all, we had a wonderful vacation. A couple of bumps along the way but it all turned out well. I'm very thankful for the touring book that we had that talked about tricks for getting on rides, what might be scary for kids, which parks are the best ones to visit on which day, etc. (thanks to the Webbs for letting us borrow it!) as it definitely allowed us to get more done. We were definitely exhausted after all the walking and the sauna heat (I lost nearly 5 lbs on the trip, and Jen lost a few as well). The girls did awesome and only a couple of times really got tired or tried not to ride some of the rides. You would not believe how many young kids we heard complaining about the heat, being tired, etc. Awesome Job Girls!

It will definitely be a cherished memory for all of us.