Day 8 Last Day
Leaving day is always sad and today was no exception. Mom had woken up at 7:45, packed most of her stuff and went down to the pool. I woke up around 8:40 started packing, took a shower, and sat down to watch the rest of Dumbo. I definitely did not remember the strange champagne elephant scene that seemed to last for ages. I really enjoyed it though, and I think I cried when Dumbo saw his mom locked up. Im a total sap for touchy feely moments.
At some point mom texted or called and said shed be up around 10:20 to go grab breakfast with me. Well breakfast closes at 10:30 and she still had stuff to pack and a shower to take and we had to be out of the room at 11:00. Needless to say she was stressing me out. We were already planning to enjoy the pool for the afternoon why did she need to push the envelope at check out time
At 9:30 a CM knocked on the door to clean. I am in here milking all the time I have left, why are you bothering me I said to myself, not her. It was a different CM from the rest of the week and she said shed be back later. Ugh. Around 10:20 mom did finally show up and we went to grab some breakfast. I will admit I was irritable. I was feeling overwhelmed and a bit sad that it was our last day.
We did make it out of the room by 11:00. We decided to give our tip envelope to Elaine to give to Elsy when she saw her next. Im still unsure about tips and didnt want this new CM to get Elsys hard earned money. Does anyone have insight on tipping? Should we have left some every day and not waited until the end of the trip?
We chatted with Elaine for a bit before leaving and gave her a hug. She has really made our CL trips even more special than they already are. She greets us by name every time she sees us and makes sure we have everything we want/need. She is an angel. I happened to ask if we could come up later that day since DME didnt pick us up until 4:00. They said absolutely, our cards still worked until closing that night. Excellent, no need to say good bye just yet.
We headed down to do airline check-in. I just love this service, it makes the day so much easier. In no time we were bag-less and had a good 4 ½ hours to enjoy. R & M still had a park day on their tickets and wanted to head to AK. Well before this trip I swore I wouldnt let them out of my sight on the last day since they have a bad habit of being late for things. I was still nervous about letting them go, but I really didnt want to go with them since we had just done AK yesterday. I told them that wherever they were at 2:00 to start heading back to the resort. Our DME was coming at 4:05 so I figured that would give them plenty of time to get back. So they headed off and we headed down to the pool.
I really didnt want to sit by the pool for the whole afternoon and found myself getting grouchy. I tried to control it but couldnt stop. Mom quickly caught on to my mood and asked what Id like to do. We acquiesced and decided to stay at the pool for an hour and then head to HS. It was another scorcher. I caught up in the journal and then went for a swim. The water was just right. We headed out to HS around 12:30 but left our bags with bell services.
We headed straight to RnRC and ToT. They both had a posted wait of 20 minutes but RnRC was really only a 5 minute wait and ToT was a walk on. So perfect. There was a family in front of us at ToT and one of the younger boys absolutely refused to go on. He was probably 8 or 9. Nothing could convince him to go on. I was impressed by his determination. Hopefully one day hell get to enjoy it.
Then we headed to Star Tours since mom hadnt gotten a second ride the other day. We stopped for a Mickey bar along the way. Mom just adores those Mickey bars. It was a five minute wait for Star Tours which was great. I think Im understanding how they shuffle the story lines around. Its been fun to see the different scenarios but I dont think Id go if mom didnt want to. It always makes me feel a little queasy.
After that we headed back to the resort. I stopped for some popcorn along the way though. Usually I always get a souvenir popcorn bucket but not on this trip. All the ones I saw I have already. The little stand actually had air conditioning which I thought was so nice for the CM. Theyd probably have people passing out in there if there wasnt at least a fan. R called at some point asking where we were. They were back at the resort and looking for us. Oops. I felt a little guilty for not going with them so I said we headed to HS so mom could ride Star Tours. Mom let the cat out of the bag later on in the day. They were going to grab a last lunch at the Mara and wed find them when we got there.
We left HS around 2:50 and there happened to be a bus waiting at the bus stop. They were switching drivers which was great luck. Back at the resort we stopped in the Zawadi Marketplace and got mom a Halloween reusable bag shed been eyeing and another mini Donald for me. It was a different color than the one I had, I needed it!
We collected our bags from bell services and went up to the CL for some last snacks. We went up with some CMs who were changing the door locks to the swipe locks. We had gotten three messages that week saying it would happen while we were there but it never did. I asked the guys how long the resort would take to do and they said about a month. Thats one big undertaking.
R & M were still eating their lunch by the pool and just decided to stay down there. Elaine had gone home for the day so Im glad we had said good bye earlier. We had about 20 minutes to enjoy the CL and they went by much too quickly. I changed into jeans before leaving because I am always cold on the plane and then we headed out.
The flower arrangement in the CL was so pretty
We met R & M out front and caught up with them. They had a great time at AK. They did the Festival of the Lion King again, the Safari, and one of the trails. I think the Pangani would make more sense since its right by the safari but I cant remember. Last night at DTD M found a couple shirts she fell in love with and R got a 2012 baseball cap that was on clearance for $13. The DME came right on time and we were off to pick up a few people at the AoA and then Pop Century.
At the airport we were presented with the harsh reality of not being in Disney anymore. The bathrooms were horrible. Disney just does such a great job of keeping everything so clean. We stopped in the Disney and Universal stores before going through security. Ive never been to Universal which one of these years Id really like to do. I just cant seem to drag myself away from WDW.
We had about an hour before our flight so just relaxed and chatted for a bit. The flight was uneventful. It wasnt full which was great so we had two rows to ourselves. When we got to BWI we had to wait on the runway for a good twenty minutes since there was a plane in our way. Ms mom was picking us all up and circled for quite a while before finding the cell phone lot. I was dropped off first and I went straight to get Conner from my dad and stepmoms. I was very happy to see him. He seemed surprised to see me. Thankfully he didnt shun me like he usually does when I get back.
All in all it was a great trip with some important quality time spent with family. Time has already healed a lot of my negative feelings. R & M had a wonderful time which Im so glad about and mom loved being with all her kids.
Thanks to everyone for following along and sharing my adventure.