With this being a day after September 11th, I thought it fitting to write about where I was during that day in 2001, and the simple fact is I was in the Happiest Place on Earth...Walt Disney World. This was Nicolas' first trip to Walt Disney World and it was our second day there. He was almost 18 months old at the time. We started off the morning having breakfast with Mickey and the gang at Chef Mickey's. We headed to the park afterwards but Nicolas was a bit cranky having not slept well his first night there. We walked back to our hotel, the Contemporary, to see if he'd nap.
That wasn't happening so a little while later we took the monorail back to the Magic Kingdom to meet up with Frank's parents there. I vaguely recall some conversation on the monorail from strangers about airplanes and New York but wasn't paying much attention.
Once inside the park, we rented a stroller and I walked into the baby changing station to get Nicolas a new diaper. When I came out, Frank informed me they were closing the park.
"They don't CLOSE the Magic Kingdom" I told him. Yet, they sure were and as we got bits and pieces of info about what was happening in the rest of the country, I was in a bit of a panic. I remember hearing that there were several planes that were unaccounted for and I remember thinking how perfect Disney would be as a target. It was scary to think about. We walked back to our hotel room and Frank's parents met us there not too long afterwards.
There, in our hotel room at the Happiest Place on Earth, we watched the events of the morning and day unfold. It was terrible. Hearing about the attack at the Pentagon was even more frightening, as my mom was working in Washington, DC, at the time. I called my dad who said she was trying to get home, but as you can guess that was no easy task. I didn't hear until much later that evening that she had arrived home safely but she had to catch a ride with somebody else out of the city and my dad had to go pick her up.
I can remember walking through the lobby of the Contemporary later as we got food and hearing people at the front desk crying, talking about how they needed to get home.
Of course, knowing that we were scheduled to fly out on Friday of that week, we also wondered how easy that would be especially as the days following the attacks had airports in such a disarray.
Despite all of this, we did have a lovely trip. It was even extended another day for free, but not for the reasons we expected. That Thursday evening Hurricane Gabriella came into town and that had our flight for Friday cancelled. Disney put us up in the room for one more night for free. We used the free park pass we got on September 11th, the day we had to leave the park, to go back to the Magic Kingdom one last time that trip. It was a perfect day, weather was perfect and crowds were light. We couldn't have asked for more.
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