August Birthday Trip- Day 7+

Tuesday August 16th:
6am wake up. Finished our final packing. Checked our luggage in and got our plane tickets. Then dropped off our carry on bags with bell services. We grabbed breakfast and were on our bus to MK by 8:20 for a 9am opening. Bag check took a while. We saw the Welcome show from the security area. We went straight to Mine Train with a 20 minute wait. Then Space with a 20 minute wait. Tea Cups in 5 minutes. Space again with a 30 minute wait. Met my sister at Jungle Cruise since we all had FP. Ryan and I then went to Pirates with our FP and my sister did the Tiki room. Pirates had been down, but came back up right when we got to the line. We grabbed ice cream on Main Street (sundae and a cookie sandwich). I got to meet the Mayor and get my pic taken with him! Just as we were finishing our ice cream, the skies opened and it began to dump. So we walked through shops while it lightened up. We went to Pooh to use our FP. Waked through shops on the way to Carousel of Progress, noticed the new paint job! It started to rain pretty good again. So we got a few castle pics with few people in them. We grabbed lunch at Casey’s and my sister had to head out to get my niece from school. Ryan and I finished our lunch, then off to the Tiki room. We grabbed a final for the trip. We got a pic at the train station before heading out. We were walking to the bus stop and saw the wall of rain moving in. We thought we would get to the bus stop in time to beat it, but no such luck. We got dumped on! We waited about 15 minutes for our bus.

We picked up our bags at bell services and bought a at the gift shop since I hadn’t had one on this trip yet! We were on the TRAGICAL Express at 4:30pm. We got a text while on the bus that our flight was delayed. There was really bad rain on the way to the airport and it took nearly an hour to go from RS to the airport! My sister and niece met us at the airport so we could have dinner at Chick-fil-a. We found out our flight was now 2 hours delayed and we might not make our connection. I said my really hard goodbyes to my sister and niece (we won’t see each other until April but have since booked a trip for January). We went through security and checked in with our gate.

They confirmed our plane coming in was delayed in Texas due to storms and we might not make our own Texas connection. We grabbed Chipotle to take on our flight since it could end up being a long night. We finally boarded and were going to cut it close to make our connection. As soon as our wheels touched down, the Southwest flight attendants on board said not to worry because so many flights were delayed, they are probably holding planes. We landed at 10pm and our connection was 10:05. Ryan and I were the first off the plane and RAN from gate 1 to 41. Ryan got there first and watched the plane back out. The gate attendant was pretty rude and said “we don’t hold planes”. There were a total of 4 of us from the Orlando flight trying to make that flight. So we got info on getting a hotel room. We needed to head to baggage so they could pull our luggage since it would have gone to a holding area. We saw many families from our Orlando flight down in baggage that had tried to make connecting flights that didn’t wait for them either. It took at least 45 minutes for them to get us our luggage. In the meantime, a friendly Southwest agent was able to call the Double Tree across the street and get us a room for $79 (instead of $160). It was right across from the airport and their shuttle picked us up. We got to the hotel and the check in staff was rude. It was after 11pm and we were exhausted and frustrated. We finally got to our room and discovered our luggage was soaked through! Completely! I was wringing out clothes and hanging them to dry for morning. We tried to get some sleep and had the alarm set for 5:45am for our 8:35am flight.
Miles Logged 11.52

Alarm went off and we quickly showered and packed up. We caught the shuttle back to the airport just before it drove off. Checked in our bags and went through security. We grabbed a quick breakfast before boarding. We had an on time flight home and landed by 10am. We had an hour drive home. We had time to unpack our bags and grab some lunch before having to be to work at 1pm! It was not a great end to the trip.

Overall:
It was such a great birthday trip! I’m so glad I finally had the opportunity to be at Disney on my birthday! Yes, it was hot, but not horrible! But it really wasn’t as crowded as I thought it would be! And we tried to give ourselves air conditioned breaks as much as possible. We also took our time on this trip. That seemed to help a lot! We really liked Riverside! Dare I say a bit more than French Quarter! Our room felt fresher and nicer and we loved the grounds. I wrote to Southwest a couple of weeks after we got home. They responded and gave us each a $75 voucher for the inconveniences we experienced. Had we known to report our wet luggage, they would have compensated us for that! But you have to report that within 4 hours of landing. We were exhausted at that point in the night and were not going to go back to the airport to show them our soaked belongings in our luggage. They did state it shouldn’t have been left in the elements that long to get that wet. I don’t know that I will ever go for my actual birthday again (maybe I can do a cruise though!!), but it was so fun! I loved seeing our friends and family too! If you haven’t been to Disney on your birthday, I highly recommend it!