Disney World or Bust

As I write this, I’m on a plane to Walt Disney World at a final cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. Where I should be is exploring Animal Kingdom Lodge after spending the morning at Animal Kingdom.

This trip has seemed ill-fated from the start and it’s our third attempt at making it happen. The child care had been arranged, time taken off from work, and an itinerary carefully crafted for some final fact-checking before the 2012 edition of my book, Beyond the Attractions: A Guide to Walt Disney World with Preschoolers, goes off to the publisher the first week in September.

The call came last week. My young adult stepson’s work schedule had opened up unexpectedly and he asked to join my husband and me. Our trip for two suddenly expanded to be a trip for three. After all, we couldn’t pass up a chance to spend time with our college-age son whose busy life often doesn’t have time for dear old mom and dad.
We pulled out of the driveway at 3:45 am this morning to catch a 6:20 flight to Orlando from a tiny airport with only six gates on an airline I swore I would never fly again. However, spur-of-the-moment trips often require compromise; it was the only flight I could get without costing a small fortune.

Everything proceeded pleasantly enough but we didn’t board at 5:35 am as we were supposed to. That should have been my first clue but it wasn’t. I knew something was up when two N.J. state troopers escorted an airline employee to the gate. The flight was cancelled. There were no more flights to Orlando today or tomorrow or even the next day. In fact, there would be no flights available for this airline for at least five days.

It soon became obvious the airline would be unable to help. After an hour on the phone calling airlines for airports in NJ and PA, I had to admit defeat. We were not visiting the Most Magical Place on Earth for our grown-up trip. AGAIN. Not so. Put a twenty-one year old together with his dad who wants to recapture his youth and I was told it was a road trip. “Come on, Lisa. We can do it. We can get to Disney World by midnight. Don’t you want to be spontaneous?” Never mind we would only spend two days at the parks and have to drive all night Sunday into Monday to get home by dinner Monday. No matter that there were three adults crammed into a mid-size car and the only entertainment we had were the homemade CD mixes my husband had burned for long drives on business trips. The crazy plan began to take shape and the guys were chortling like teenagers while I tried to be the voice of reason. My protests fell on deaf ears. They would not be denied. We had no provisions so a pit stop at the convenience store had them loading up on junk food while I chose the sensible fruit salad.

Mom to the Rescue

My mom, that is. After my distraught phone call to her, she sprang into action as she is known to do. Soon the phone rang. “If you can get to Reagan National in D.C., there’s a 1:15 flight to Orlando” on another carrier. It took a few minutes of convincing my guys as they were pumped for a road trip but soon I was dialing Jet Blue and booking tickets as my husband steered the car toward our nation’s capitol.

The captain just came on and we should be at the gate at Orlando International Airport in 25 minutes; it’s been 12 hours since we started our journey.

So there you have it. For us, it was Disney World or bust.

Tell me, have you gone to great lengths to visit Mickey?

Lisa M. Battista is the author of Beyond the Attractions: A Guide to Walt Disney World with Preschoolers. When she’s not chasing after her little ones, you can most likely find her at the beach or in the kitchen trying her hand at a new recipe. You can follow her on Twitter @DisneyExplorer or become a fan of Beyond the Attractions on Facebook.

This article is part of the 29th Disney Blog Carnival. For more articles like it, visit Dismarks.

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This entry was posted on August 20, 2011 at 9:00 am and is filed under Columns, Community, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.