Hi Groupies,
Live from SSR report. Magical moments do live on. So, we arrived on Saturday and my wife’s terminally ill BFF did make the trip! She stayed back Saturday night as we adventured over to Studios, Did the Alien Saucers thing & RNR (missed the window on Star Tours). We also stumbled into a 30 minute stand-by for TSMM (Never ever happens!) , so rode this as well. When we got back, our guest ventured to DS solo, which we thought was an encouraging sign! Then, we slept in Sunday morning as we were tired from early morning travel the day before. Sunday we did the Edison for lunch at DS, really liked it! Then off to AK around 2, did FP’s then finally got word that our guest was feeling well enough and joined us at AK about 6 PM. She got in both FOP & NRJ along with the Tough to be a bug show. So, good, she got that Avatar stuff off the list, as she had seen the movie 4 times in the theater.
Then, Monday happened. My daughter & I got up and got to MK planning on my wife and her friend to join us at least by 2 PM for a dining reservation. Instead, her condition had worsened over night and my wife spent the morning and early afternoon getting our guest on a 2 PM flight back to Minneapolis, where she was met by another friend, brought to ER, and was admitted (and remains).
Disney was awesome. They picked up the cab fare to the airport and back for my wife. They inserted 3 FP’s usable anywhere onto the remainder of our party (had to be used by Monday night), and they are buying us a nice dinner out tonight (basically, we just had to make a reservation and they are picking up the tab to a $ amount that seemed ridiculously high which we won’t reach and I don’t feel comfortable disclosing). Then, the on sight manager at Saratoga stopped by with his card, asked my wife what he could do, and we had the sheets our guest was using swapped out. They really went above and beyond and with all the complaints you hear I just want to say that there is still magic.
While my wife was going to the airport, my daughter and I saw heavy crowds at MK, upon entering both POTC & HM were down. We saw 5 minute standby at Splash and decided to do that in front of our BTMR FP’s. Of course, we then got over to BTMR only to watch it go down. So now, there are 3 big attractions down at the same time at 10:00 AM and I can tell cast members are getting anxious about it. We decided to have nachos for breakfast at Pecos Bills before a PeterPan FP, and then we stumbled into HM coming back up. Then cruised over to Space Mountain and on the way observed a 210 minute wait for 7DMT (..not interested). {I later talked to a DVCer on the bus that claimed he had seen 465 minutes for Soarin’ one Christmas....???}. Anyways, we got in Tiki Room, TTA, & Country Bears before we found out what was going on with our guest, and we headed back to the resort to meet my wife after the whole ordeal. Went swimming, figured out we had to go back to MK to use the “special FP’s” they had given us mainly because MK was open the latest and we had to grab a quick bite before heading out. Got in BTMR, POTC, & Jingle Cruise. — kept things close so we could get in and out as we were exhausted.
Anyways, I will wrap this up for now & plug in a conclusion when I get home.