Walt's 5th Park

Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios.

Ever heard of Walt Disney's 5th theme park down here at Walt Disney World?

Orlando International Kingdom. AKA: the airport. The Orlando Airport.

Today, we had the privilege of enjoying this park for pretty much the entire day. It's great -- we arrived, enjoyed the run around at the TSA security area, ate lunch, then boarded a plane. Planes are a lot of fun . . . especially when you get to hang out on one for over 3 hours with two young kids. It was the ride of a life time, I tell you.

After de-planeing after our 3+ hours (during which we never even left the gate!), we got to enjoy the park in reverse. We ate dinner at the same place we ate lunch, our flight was cancelled, went back through security and claimed our bags, then got back in a taxi and went back to our hotel. The same hotel we checked out of this morning.

What a day at Orlando International Kingdom!

All kidding aside . . . due to the 'blizzard' in Atlanta, we are still enjoying our Orlando vacation. As we packed to leave this morning, Delta called to tell us our flight plans had changed, and Jim was no longer going to Charlotte. We knew the weather at home was bad . . . and many flights were being cancelled . . . and the day was starting off with some changes . . . so we called Delta to to see if we could just go ahead and change our flight to come home on Monday. We figured we could just hang out and enjoy one more day -- doesn't everyone want to do that when they are on vacation?

Little did we know that -- after our day at OIA -- we'd get TWO more days out of this trip.

We ended up keeping our original flight -- a 12:30pm departure -- because it was still set to leave Orlando, and we figured we should be good and just go on home. Jim was able to get booked on our flight to Atlanta -- so at least he'd be coming home with us. We went through the whole process -- got to the airport, boarded the plane with both girls, then waited. We waited and waited and waited. Our flight was on a gate hold because of the snow in Atlanta (you guys got like 3 inches, I hear!). The girls both fell asleep, so the wait for the first 90 minutes wasn't too bad. But, as 3:00 turned to 4:00 and we were getting closer and closer to dinner time . . . it started to feel quite ridiculous that they were keeping us 'hostage' on the plane. Clearly, we weren't going anywhere. Sometime shortly after 4pm we were asked to get off the plane. About 15 minutes later, the flight was officially cancelled. So there we were, 5:00-ish, and back to the idea of extending our vacation for another day or so.

The terrible weather in Atlanta wreaked havoc on all kinds of flights, so our attempt to re-book and return home tomorrow (Monday) didn't quite work out. The earliest flight out of Orlando to ATL is on Tuesday at 5:30 pm.

But, you know what? Our DW park passes are still good for three days. We bought 3 days and got 4 free, but we've only used 4 . . . and the rest don't expire until a week from Wednesday. Our trip up until this point has been incredibly cheap, in Disney terms anyway (free flight, free hotel, and we packed our food each day). Jim is at a point with work that he can miss a day or so, as long as he does some catching up from the hotel.

We are extending our vacation until Tuesday. Why not? How often do you get a chance like this?

Our 5 day retreat is now going to be a full 7 days -- 6 at the parks, 1 at the airport. Tomorrow we are going to head to Magic Kingdom once again and do some of the things we missed out on . . . the race cars, Aladdin's carpets, maybe even a roller coaster or two.

I guess you could say that the magic really doesn't stop down here . . . magically, we were given a two day extension to our Disney World Vacation.

Hope you enjoy the snow in Atlanta! We are a bit sad to miss it (it is so rare, after all), but happy to stay where we are for -- as Meg would say -- just a Yittle Bit Longer.