Michigan Trip 2017 - Travel and Horror Con

It's been a long, long time since we've been up to Michigan to visit family so over 4th of July this year we make the very long trek to the state of our birth (at least for Todd and I).

My dear husband is always coming up with interesting ideas and he got one related to the drive up to Michigan. The drive sucks, it's long and mostly boring. But Todd found a horror convention, Days of the Dead, that was happening in Indianapolis the day we were driving up. It only added on like a half hour to our trip and there was some interesting guests there so we decided to get ticket.

I tried to sleep before we left and so did Todd, even though he got home from work at 11 pm and we left at 2 am. Neither of us got any sleep. I managed to sleep a little in the car but Todd was just high on caffeine.

Once the sun came up, Emily woke up and so did I. We stopped at a rest area and I changed into my Alice costume. I'm unable to go to a convention without a costume. Emily also was wearing her Chewbacca costume which is just pj's anyway.

Sadly the main person we wanted to see had canceled. That was George Romero and he canceled for health reasons. Once we got in and got our wrist bands, we found Matthew Lillard who was in Scream and Hackers, as well as being Shaggy in Scooby-Doo (both the live action movies and in recent cartoons).

His line wasn't too long so we got in line. Emily was a bit shy but she was very geeked that he pulled her aside and talked her in the Shaggy voice. The lady who had my phone to take a picture with us and him actually got a video of it put a couple of really cute pictures. We all got hugs from him (even Todd!) and got our picture taken.

We wandered around the halls. It was a mixture of dealers tables and celebrities doing autographs.

Being a horror convention, there was a lot of somewhat scary stuff but Emily was doing fine. We found the other person we wanted to meet, Lita, who is one of my all time favorite wrestlers. She was really nice and we got a picture taken with her too.

Todd had told Emily she could have $20 to spend at the convention. My kid found the table that was selling Pokemon stuffed animals in the middle of all that horror stuff and had to get one. I got some stickers for our car.

We were only at the convention maybe an hour but it was fun. It was nice to get out of the car and walk around for a while. I did nearly scar my child for life. They had a haunted house set up and I had Emily take a picture with it. Next to it was a giant pumpkin with Michael Myers standing there. I didn't realize that it was a cosplayer and not a statue. Freaked Emily right out! I felt so bad!!

After we got to the car, we went to White Castle for lunch which was yummy and then got back on the road. I was going to drive but Todd decided he was fine and actually drove the rest of the way to my dad's house.

It was supper time once we got there and my dad took us to this pizza buffet called Pizza Ranch. They had fried chicken and a great salad bar in addition to the pizza. It was really good!

Once we got back to my dad's house, I was exhausted and so was Todd. Emily, who had gotten the most sleep, was not so we let her stay up with my dad and they watched the first Harry Potter movie. Both Todd and I passed out as soon as our heads hit our pillows. It was a really long day.

Up Next - Beach Day!

My Disney World Honeymoon - Part 1

I love Mickey Ears!

This is the 3rd post in my series of Disney trips I've taken in the past. You can find previous installment here -  part one and part two.

Since I remember more of this trip, it will be in several parts.

I always wanted to go back to Disney World after my trip when I was 16. I spent seven years in college after I graduated from high school. My college roommate and I talked about taking a trip down to Florida, but it was just too expensive.

After I graduated, I moved back home because my mom was sick. She died less than a week after I moved back in. My life was in serious flux then so I didn't even entertain any thoughts of Disney. I met and started dating Todd. We moved in together and then as time progressed we got engaged.

We moved from Michigan to North Carolina about six months after we got engaged. Because we were still going to get married in Michigan, we decided to wait a year after the wedding to take our honeymoon.

Planning a long distance wedding is hard so we hadn't really talked about honeymoon destinations. One day, when Todd was sick with the stomach flu, the subject came up. He gave me a choice of Las Vegas or Disney World. Can you guess what I picked?

Even though I was still in the midst of planning a wedding, I started to look up information about planning a Disney World honeymoon. I started to realize that it was going to be more complicated that I had originally thought.

I found disboards.com which is a forum for planning Disney trips. It was and is an invaluable resource. It was there that I found my travel agent with Mouse Fan Travel. She helped with the planning, made all our dining reservations and even got us a discount that saved us nearly a thousand dollars.

Neither Todd nor I had ever stayed in a Disney resort so we decided we wanted to do that for our honeymoon. We also opted to use the Disney Dining Plan, which was pretty new then. On the dining plan, we got one fast food meal and one sit down meal a day, plus one snack a day and a refillable mug.

Since we only live about nine hours away from Disney World, we decided to save money and drive. We made pretty good time and got to our resort, Caribbean Beach, in the late afternoon. We didn't make any dining reservations for that night because we didn't know what we were going to do. We ended up eating at the restaurant at the resort, Shutters. It was good and they gave us free champagne because of our honeymoon.

The next day, we went to the Magic Kingdom. Originally we were going to use that day as a rest day but Todd’s favorite ride, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, was going down for rehab and this was the only chance we were going to get to ride it. We spent about half the day at the Magic Kingdom, riding all of our favorites. Then we spent a little time back at our resort before we went to our first dinner reservation.

I had spent a lot of time on the restaurant section of the disboards forums since I hadn't eaten at any of the table service places before. One place that was highly recommended was Ohana in Disney's Polynesian Resort. I had heard that you could watch the Magic Kingdom’s fireworks right from the restaurant and the music would be piped in.

We waited a while to be seated but we were able to explore the resort which is beautiful. Finally we got our table which had a perfect view of Cinderella Castle out of the window.  The food is served family style and it’s all kinds of meat – ribs, smoked turkey, pork loin and more. It was so yummy!

It’s all you can eat so the server would come every once in a while to refill our food. When Wishes started, I was entranced by the fireworks show. I didn't hear our server behind me and he scared me so much that I nearly jumped out of my chair. Todd thought this was really funny.

After dinner, we went back to our room and passed out. We had an early day in the morning as we were spending our first anniversary at Epcot. 

Tips for a Stress-Free Road Trip With Small Kids

A time machine would make road trips easier

The idea of taking a long car trip with young kids might make some parents nervous. I was lucky because my daughter has always tolerated long road trips well. While this could be partly because of her temperament, I do think some of the things we did when she was very small helped her be a good traveler.

My first tip would be to start early. My daughter went on her first road trip when she was very small. Our closest family lives several hours away, so we started with that short trip. But when she was eight months old, we made the big trip up to Michigan, which was a 13 hour trip. I was a little worried but my daughter did great. I think those earlier, shorter trips really helped.

Another tip is to make lots of stops. We tend to travel in the summer, so my husband bought a cooler that was powered through the cigarette lighter outlet in our car. So we could stop at rest stops instead of fast food places. We were able to have a decent meal of sandwiches as well as giving my daughter a change to run around and play out of the car for a little while. When we travel in the winter, we try to find restaurants that have play areas to let her play a bit during the trip.

And finally, toys and books are necessary for long car trips. My daughter has a great ability for keeping herself amused when we take road trips, but I always pack her a bag with extra toys and books. I try and get her something new for the really long trips to help keep her occupied. With all of these tips, we have been able to take many stress-free road trips with my three year old daughter.

Do you have any good road trip tips when traveling with kids?