hollywood studios, epcot, & pretty much a miracle

We spent another half day finishing up everything we hadn't done at Magic Kingdom. If you're making future plans I would say that you really need 2 full days in Magic Kingdom.  We did a 1.5 at a pretty fast pace. Then the plan was to head straight to Hollywood Studies for the second half of the day.   Everyone with Premier could come into Hollywood Studios at 4 to enjoy the park and be there for a big dinner that night.

 

But at lunch time our day took a bad turn.

 

Dave asked me where our cash card was (the $700 gift card that I had gotten from Premier and a pretty big deciding factor in going on this trip).

I had no idea. He insisted that I was the last person to have it, so I checked my purse and insisted that I wasn't the last person to have it.  Neither of us could find it anywhere, but Dave wondered if it could be back in the hotel room.  Our moods were a little down, but we were counting on finding it.  Instead of going straight to Hollywood Studios we made a detour to the resort to look for it.

It was no where.

And then during our search, it hit me that I was the last one to have it.  And I remembered that it was loose in my hand the night before, along with a box of pizza, plates and napkins.  It must of slipped out and I didn't realize since I was carrying so many other things. I was carrying in my hand instead of my purse so I could give it right back to Dave.

I burst into tears.  I knew it was gone.

 

We checked with lost & founds, called the card company, made other phone calls and tried to accept that our $550 that was still on the card was gone.  My stomach was in knots, all I wanted to do was throw a big pity party and cry, and I pretty much did. All I could think about was how much this was going to mess up our entire trip budget and cause us to have to pull money from our cruise budget - ultimately affecting not just that trip, but 2 trips.  I definitely let my attitude go negative really fast.  I wanted to pack up and go home, I didn't want to go to the Hollywood Studios party that night or talk to anyone.  I was just sure that if I had to talk to anyone, it would be hard to hide how depressed I was feeling and I'd just end up crying all night.  After I was all done with my emotional wreck, I came to my senses and tried to pull it together for the kids, and told them all we could do was pray. 

We prayed that the right person would find it and turn it in and that some how we would get it back.

I prayed for peace as I tried to accept it was really gone, and tried so hard to trust that God works out all details.  He knew who had it, he knew if it was going to help them more than us, he knew how our trip would turn out regardless.

 

We walked back over our tracks from the night before and even talked to the people at the pizza shop. My tears earned me a free piece of chocolate cake. Ha! 

 

I really really didn't want to go to Hollywood Studios where everyone we knew would be. My face was tear-stained and I just had no energy to talk to anyone.  But my wise sister-in-law reminded me that we needed the free dinner more than ever at this point.  So we went.

 

We had a few hours to explore the park before the Premier event started. So we watched a stunt show, which of course had a nice surprise for Mason!  Lightning McQueen came out of the white truck beside him, and Mason's eyes lit up like no other.

 

 

We were all the way at the top of the stadium when they called for a volunteer from the audience.  When they pulled a boy from the audience out and asked him his name we realized it was our nephew Jaden!  We cheered loud for him!

 

 

Our black shirts kind of took over the park.

 

 

We met back in the stadium where the stunt show was for a quick presentation from our president and event coordinators.  It was so fun for the kids to get to see the big group they were a part of, and it was so sweet to have them stand up and cheer and gives hugs to their mamas who worked so hard to earn this trip for them.

 

It was here that God answered our prayers, in front of 4000 people.

When our event coordinator took the microphone and joked around about "So who here has lost their $700 cash card!?!?"  I didn't find it all that funny when lots of people jumped up and down jokingly in hopes they were going to be giving one away (like they had done the first night with a few $200 cash cards).

But then I heard my name.

"Amanda Balzer...we have your card right here! Come and get it!" 

I screamed and everyone around me screamed too.  And because we were in the VERY top row, I got to walk down all of those stairs in front of lots of people feeling so incredibly blessed. I caught several glances as I walked down the isle, faces that all looked just as relieved & excited for me as I was for myself.

 

We sat there in shock.  Still not really believing that card was back in our hands. We have no idea who found it, or where they found it or how it got back into the hands of the head Premier people.

But that little bitty card was an extreme example to our kids of answered prayers. I had a friend on Facebook say "and that may be the exact reason that the Lord took you on this trip!"  That lesson and the memories of losing and getting that card back will be in our minds far after we forget what rides we rode and what characters we met.

 



 

After dinner we enjoyed more of the park before it closed.  My sweet Premier great grandma (we're all one big happy family in Premier :-) and her husband from Virginia took the kiddos for ice cream and hung out with them for awhile, so that Dave and I could get in line for the Rockin' Roller Coaster.  It was one of the only rides that neither of the kids were tall enough to ride, but the one ride that we heard was a must.  It was a nice 30 minute break from the kids.  And the picture and sweet note we got later about our kiddos brought tears to my eyes.

 

 

For the record, all 4 of us rode the Hollywood Tower or Terror, and I'm pretty sure all 4 of us were scared to death.

There were no tears or complete terror from anyone.  We all screamed and laughed in the moment.  But afterwards, we were in pretty strong agreement that it was the scariest one of the whole trip. 

 

 Our trip came to an end on Father's Day.  It was not in any way a relaxing day for Dave, but we tried to at least do what he wanted to do that day.

 

So it was off to Epcot.

 

 Our original plans didn't include Epcot at all.  We knew it wasn't as appealing to the little kids.  But we decided to check it out after hearing there were at least 2 or 3 things there our kids would love.  Out of those 2 or 3, we did one of them.  The lines for the others were way too long.  After just a couple of hours, we were out of there.

 

And on to ride the Monorail (we had only taken bus transportation but Dave really wanted to ride on the Monorail to see more of the entire Disney World property and other resorts).  Around lunch time we headed to Downtown Disney, a shopping and eating district, and a Father's Day weekend car show.

 

We had a seafood (and hotdog) lunch, free samples at Ghirardelli, we sweated our booties off, stopped in LEGOLAND, and finally did some shopping for souvenirs.

 

 

 

Oh, and we saw the real Lightning McQueen again and Mater.  You could stand in line to get a picture just like all the other characters at the other parks, but Mason didn't want to.  He settled for a picture with Lightning in the background.

 



 

 

For 4 days the kids thought hard about the one thing they wanted to buy the most.  They had both been settled on Mickey and Minnie pillow pets the entire time.  And then in the last minute they both found something else they liked more.  Taylor got a baby Minnie, Mason got Stitch (he has slept with him every night since) and they picked out a Pluto pillow pet for Gavin.

 



The next morning our alarm went off at 4:30am. Total yuck!

The good thing was we were home by 1pm.  (supposed to be home by 11am but a weather delay set us back).  There was A LOT more sleeping on the trip home than there was on the way there.

 



 

We all missed our little Gavin soooo much!  The kids even missed him so much that a few times they said they wanted the trip to be over so we could go home to him. He did great with Mema and then Nana and Papa.  I don't think he even knew we were gone.

 

 And that's the end of Disney.  What a treasure it was to spend 5 days with our kiddos here.

Thank you Premier.

Thank you to everyone who supported my business from August 2012-March 2013.

Thank you Dave for cheering me on right down to the very last points that came in.

It was truly a magical vacation.  And we are truly thankful.