Mom and teenage son take on Pop and Free dining Aug 24-30. NEW Summary!

[marciemi]

Day 0

Ok, I’m going to start off with the pre-trip report well after the trip! But I figure I need a day zero at least to introduce everyone (all two of us) and start the trip off right. I’m Marcie and I’m a Disneyholic (everyone...Hi Marcie!). No wait, that’s for something else! Anyways, although we’re huge Disney fans here, our lack of proximity to WDW has made it so we’ve pretty much only been able to do trips about every 2 years. Now that the kids are older and have SO much in their schedules, and everyone is a Disney “adult” and not everyone is as into Disney as I am, we started thinking about a mother/son trip about a year ago when reading about free dining then. Since our kids go back to school here a bit later than a lot of areas (Sept 1st), and with free dining starting earlier, we thought maybe we could squeeze in a trip at the end of summer. But with two of the kids having soccer starting in early August at the high school, there was no way we could all go.

My middle son, Stephen (16 shortly before the trip) is my only “true” Disney fan. He also had been feeling the “middle child” syndrome lately – seems like his brothers are in many activities that they do a lot of travel for, while he gets shuffled around or gets left home. We decided that a mother/son trip might fit the bill – help him to have some fun away from his brothers and allow me to get my Disney fix! Of course the free dining appealed to both of us, so once they announced it back in late March, we went ahead and booked Pop Century. The goal was to do the trip as inexpensively as possible – 6 nights, no park hoppers, no rental car, no water parks. Just do the main parks and of course...the FOOD!

Well, the most important part of any Disney trip is a well organized countdown calendar. I knew from our last trip in 2007 that I could get 77 days worth of Home Depot Mickey heads on a science fair type poster board. So now I had to come up with 77 days of trivia – appropriate for a teenager, and that I hadn’t used before and that he wouldn’t know. And without his help. In 2007, he helped me search the internet, scour books, pick the best trivia, and put it all together for the rest of the family. This time since the rest of the family wasn’t coming, of course they didn’t want to help out and I wanted it to be a surprise for him. So it was all up to me. Honestly, getting all the trivia and the pictures was the hardest part. Putting the calendar together was a bit time consuming, but fun as it all came together.

Here is my son with the completed calendar, hanging in his room:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/Summer%2009/IMG_3139.jpg

A closer look at the calendar:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/Summer%2009/IMG_3142.jpg

His room with an awesome comforter I found at a garage sale – doesn’t it match the calendar nicely?

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/Summer%2009/IMG_3144.jpg

A couple close-ups of the pictures or numbers:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/Summer%2009/IMG_3156.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/Summer%2009/IMG_3157.jpg

And finally, an example of the trivia:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/Summer%2009/IMG_3158.jpg

Of course the next thing to do was to plan our ADR’s. Stephen and I downloaded the menu app on our iphone, and spent hours looking over the menus, discussing possibilities, and making choices, alternates, and alternates for the alternates! We read horror stories the week before we made our ADR’s 90 days out of people not being able to get anything they wanted, and even practiced making calls before – to know the prompts and the right buttons. This was of course before online ADR’s. Come 6am (central) on May 26th, we were ready to go!

Well, we got nearly everything we wanted. Got Le Cellier, but couldn’t snag either a Tusker House lunch with the Nemo seating or an ‘Ohana dinner any day of our trip. We reworked and booked Coral Reef instead. I called every day for the next several days, and finally got a 9:40pm for ‘Ohana – probably not the best time for Rope Drop Warriors like us! I was posting on the August ADR’s wanted/trade/etc. thread and found another DIS’er with the exact same time. With younger kids, she wasn’t happy about the time either. We discussed seeing if there was any way we could get a reservation with a party of 6 (if we all went together). I called and VOILA! Got one for all of us at 5:15pm! We started emailing one another and felt that by the time we ate dinner together 3 months later that we already knew each others’ families! It was a lot of fun and a way to meet someone from another party of the country. (Plus I was wondering if Stephen would be getting sick of me by that point in the trip!).

Once online ADR’s came out, we did a little bit of fiddling with the times on a few of them as some things came available, but for the most part, stuck with what we had during those first couple days. Going with a teenage boy, we wanted to do several of the buffet or family style “all you can eat” restaurants, so we chose a lot of those. The more we looked at the menus, the more excited we got. We had a garage sale in mid-July, and set the money aside into tip envelopes so we’d be ready when we got there!

Then we decided that we just didn’t want to be dependent on buses all the time. I was worried about getting to the parks on time in the mornings (as you’ll see in later pics, we’re determined to always be first at a turnstile). I also can never find a comfortable pair of shoes to last all day at Disney, and since we were planning several long days, I thought with a car I could at least bring a spare pair of shoes and run out and change during the day (well, not at MK, but at the rest). Fares seemed to be in the $250-300 range, but finally, about a month before the trip, I found a basic car for $170. So we decided to go with the car and make our lives simpler. Of course with Stephen’s navigational skills (or lack of!!), that may not have ended up being the case, but I think it was a good decision overall. Getting the car with the black leather interior was definitely not a good decision, but I didn’t realize that until we did all the paperwork and climbed in. I strongly recommend checking out your interior before deciding on a car!

Unfortunately, I had a very busy time coming up before the trip itself. My parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary on August 22nd back in Michigan, and my brothers and I had decided that we’d all fly home to spend time with them that weekend. Well, of course that spiraled into a party, family portraits and a vow renewal ceremony at the church. I ended up trying to coordinate much of that from home (none of us live in the same state as my parents) and flew out on Friday afternoon. I returned Sunday afternoon with enough time to unpack, repack, and try to get some sleep before driving the two hours down to Milwaukee early the next morning for our flight! As if we didn’t have enough stress already!!

So I guess that’s it for the pretrip! I made it home, luckily on time, and did all the last minute checklist things I had written up that simply couldn’t be packed before I left for Michigan. We tried to get to bed early so we’d be ready for the 5am wakeup call! One quick picture of both of us from the trip here, just so you know what we look like!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0161.jpg

Hope all of you enjoy the report and I’ll be glad to answer any questions! Looking forward to sharing our journey with all of you!

[DiSNEYDARliNGxoxo]

Aw! I love the calendar!:goodvibes

[RAPstar]

Hey, Marcie! Checking in!! Can't wait for the rest. Your son has a very cool mom! ;)

[circelli]

Hey there Marcie, I am here and waiting...so far so good :banana:

My youngest ds is sitting on my lap and he wanted me to use the "banana"!!!

[marciemi]

Glad to see all of you around - thanks for stopping by and reading!

Okay, on to the actual trip report! Day 1 went as well as we could have scripted it, which is always a good thing! We decided we had to be out of the house by 5:30am, which didn’t end up being that hard. My husband and oldest son were coming down with us to Milwaukee, and were heading on to the Great Lakes Naval Station north of Chicago for a tour after that. My older son is usually good at getting up, and my husband is normally up by that point, so they weren’t a problem. I did have to wake Stephen up, but since we were both excited to get going, it didn’t take us long to get up and out of there, just a few minutes behind schedule.

We didn’t encounter any trouble and made it to the Milwaukee airport by about 7:40. Got the bag checked and through security quickly. Possibly a bit too quickly, since when we looked at the breakfast options in our gate area, they were very limited. Finally decided on a ham and cheese and “generic preformed egg substance patty”. Stephen opted to discard his egg patty. This was not particularly good, but we needed something in our stomachs since our flight left at 9:25am and didn’t get into Orlando until after 2:30pm (with a short stop in St. Louis – not enough time to get off and get anything). Our flight boarded on time, and we were delayed by a short medical emergency while they requested a doctor onboard. Not sure what the problem was, since it was up in business class, but they resolved it quickly (I don’t think the passenger got off) and took off. Made it in and out of St. Louis without incident. Although we haven’t been happy with Air Tran’s schedule changes (3 major changes in the first month after we booked our reservation), our experience with them this time and in the past is that they have the quickest, most efficient boarding of any airline out there.

We landed in Orlando nearly 20 minutes ahead of schedule and got off quickly. Here’s where we made one small mistake. We had our car rented from 3pm on Monday through 3pm on Sunday, and since our flight on Sunday wasn’t until after 5, I figured we didn’t want to get to the car rental too early since it was only about 2:30 at this point. We decided to wait for our luggage together, rather than splitting up. Of course it took quite awhile for the first bag to make it onto the carousel, and by the time we got ours and walked down to car rental, there was a pretty long line. We did all the paperwork and had to go out to the garage and choose a car, and go through the whole checklist there. By the time we actually left, it was closer to 3:30, so we really could have started on that process earlier.

However, after settling in to our very hot black leather seats (did I mention this was a mistake!), Stephen had already plotted Pop Century into his iphone so we headed off. We made it there without any issue (although $3.00 in tolls!), which was about the only time that happened this week (not getting lost, not the paying tolls part!).

We had checked in online, but it really didn’t make a difference since when we walked into Pop shortly before 4pm, we were the ONLY people in either check in line. Went to the online one, handed the CM my Drivers’ License, she handed me a packet and our room keys, and we were ready to go. Well, not really, since I’d never been to Pop before, didn’t know where to go, and wanted to make sure we were on the top floor in a quiet area like we’d requested. She pulled out a map of the property, showed us where our room was and where to park, and we headed off.

We had no trouble finding the room:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0129.jpg
We were on the 4th floor in the 50’s section. Our room overlooked kind of a woodsy area, although we could see some of the 60’s and if we looked right, some of the lake. I decided to do some unpacking, and Stephen went down to the Bowling Pin pool for a quick swim. Timing worked out well – I had most things unpacked by the time he got back, and put him to work hanging our Packers’ decals on our window:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0127.jpg

We had problems with these since they were obviously designed to hang on the outside of the window, not inside. We hung them all facing out and they kept falling off. Finally, we turned them backwards and figured people could still figure them out. Even so, they still kept falling off throughout the week – oh well, it was an idea!

We got some ice and filled our water bottles and headed off to Epcot. We had a 7:10 ADR for Garden Grill, but we’d met some TGM’ers online that we were hoping to meet up with. They had a 6:00 ADR, so we were optimistic that if we arrived together for theirs, that they might be able to seat all of us at that time. I hadn’t wanted to try to change ours, just in case our flight was late. So we made it to Epcot by around 5:00. Again didn’t get lost, but that was due in part to the many large signs all over Disney property – we quickly found that getting TO a park wasn’t the problem, but finding Pop again afterwards was.

One piece of quick advice here that I’d read on the boards. We brought a Packers’ car flag and put it on our car window. I can’t tell you how many times this helped us find our car. We never saw another car that used this idea – even with a different flag. At the parks we tried hard to remember where we were parked, but at our resort and the other resorts (we ate at 3 different resorts during the week) and Downtown Disney, we didn’t always do such a great job. Definitely a life (okay, maybe just time) saver! I will recommend though that you put it on a back window, NOT the driver’s window because then every time you open the window when you enter your resort to put your card in the gate, the flag will fall off and you won’t notice until you drive a bit and then you’ll have to stop the car and run back and get it and everyone will look at you like you’re very, very clueless. Just hypothetically of course!

Anyways, we got there and got a very close parking place and walked into the park. Through the gate with no trouble and since Stephen’s favorite ride is Test Track, we headed there to try to grab a FP first. Well, didn’t have to go all the way there because we could quickly see that the board said that all FP’s had been distributed, and it currently had a 120 minute wait! Decided even the single rider line would most likely be too long right now, so we headed back and did Spaceship Earth without a wait. This was closed on our last trip in 2007 so we enjoyed the changes, and especially the fun ending sequence. Unfortunately, we chose the Spanish option, which although Stephen’s in Spanish 4, and I had many years of Spanish, was just a bit beyond our grasp. We knew we could handle most of the written Spanish on the screen (and we were right), but had forgotten about all the narration, which was a little too quick for our limited comprehension skills! Vowed to choose English next time!

We decided to head over to the Land for Garden Grill since it was about 5:45 by this point. Right then we got a text from Kerry (the TGM’er we were meeting) and her family saying they said they probably could seat us together and to head over. Got there quickly, got a buzzer, and were all seated together by about 6:00 anyways!

Now, keeping in mind that we hadn’t really eaten anything since our crummy airport breakfast around 8am, we were starving (for about the only time during this whole week)! We got both the kids and the adult options at the meal, since Kerry was traveling with her daughter, Nicole, and grandchildren (Logan and Mackenzie). On that note, the best part about this trip was meeting so many people I’d communicated with online through both the DIS and TGM, and Mackenzie and Logan were definitely at the top of the list! Seeing Disney through the eyes of younger kids helps give you a true appreciation of Disney (especially when they’re not your kids and you don’t have to have them 24/7 – just the fun parts!) Back to the food though, we went through several platefuls of all the types of food, and since neither of the kids liked the macaroni and cheese, Stephen was willing to eat the two bowls of it they’d brought by himself. Along with I think 8 pieces of the flank steak, several servings of salad, and some of everything else! Stephen set as a goal for the trip to gain as much weight as he could. Unfortunately, I was much more successful in this regard than he was! He’s about 6’1 and 140 pounds, so he could use the weight. Me – not so much! In the meantime, we tried to get pictures with all the characters:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0138.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0139.jpg

You’ll note in the pictures that Stephen is a good head taller than Mickey these days. He actually had fun figuring out how many (or more correctly, how few) of the characters he would be able to play if he ever worked at WDW! Well, we wrapped up dinner with dirt and worms (pudding and gummy worms) for everyone except Kerry, who was willing to try the blueberry buckle. I tried a bite of it, but it was too much blueberry for me! We said goodbye to our new friends and headed out! (Actually, we’d met Kerry and Nicole a couple weeks earlier in Milwaukee on a drive out to Detroit, but since it was a surprise trip for the kids, we hadn’t met them yet).

Well, we got out of dinner around 7:10, just a tad bit too late to head to either Imagination or Nemo, so we decided to try our luck at Test Track again. Unfortunately, that luck wasn’t good, since it had started to rain in the meantime. We determined it wasn’t running, so decided to head up into World Showcase and try a few of the attractions there. We made it onto the Gran Fiesta Tour ride in Mexico, but with the “no speak English, take lots of flash photography” group ahead of us! (Who incidentally spoke English quite well except when being told not to take flash photographs). The young woman ahead of me was the biggest offender, so after the 3rd or 4th picture, I tapped her and explained the rules. She just shook her head. Took another pic. So I tapped her and told her again. This went on for several pics and eventually she probably decided she was tired of listening to me, so she stopped taking the pictures. Of course the rest of her group further up didn’t, but at least theirs weren’t effectively right in my face. Always lots of fun.

Quick picture of Stephen before heading into WS:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0144.jpg

When we got off, it was still raining lightly, so we walked up to Norway. The line for Maelstrom was still long (I believe 40 min), so we grabbed a FP and decided to go try Test Track again and come back for the FP later. We got in the single rider line, which showed 20 minutes (but the regular line was still 90 so we decided it would be the best bet). It wasn’t actually that long, because in about 10 minutes we were near the front where you go into the briefing room. Right at this point, I got a text from Kerry, asking where we were. I called her and she told me they were heading out of the park and had Soarin’ and Test Track FP’s if we wanted to come meet them. We quickly decided to let Stephen go in and ride single rider, and I weaved my way back through the line to meet her. Got many glares from people while I was doing it and people would look at me like they were going to say something, then figure out I was going OUT of the line, rather than cutting into it. So I met them, and got their 4 Test Track and 2 Soarin’ FP’s! Looking good!

As soon as Stephen came out, we decided to ride again using the FP. Went in, probably waited 10 minutes and rode with no problem. But by this time it was getting late – probably 8:30 so we figured there was no way we’d have time to ride it again and make it to Soarin’. We decided to give our extra two FP’s away to another couple. We watched them as we headed out and the CM at the entrance REFUSED the FP’s! We paused and watched them argue. Now granted they were from late morning and it was nearly park closing, but they’d taken ours without any problem (for the same time). We were shocked because we’d simply never seen this happen before, and I’ve been using “late” FP’s since 2003 when I found out about it on the Disneyland boards. I then felt really, really bad because I’m certain they figured that we knew they weren’t any good and that was why we’d given them away. Sigh.

So all we could figure was that maybe in the last half hour or so, they stopped accepting late ones in order to close the ride down on time. We headed over to Soarin’, without any real confidence they’d take our FP’s (which also were for an early afternoon time). But we got in with no problem – so I guess it just depends on the CM. However, we timed it wrong. We found this happened EVERY time we went to Soarin’ during the course of the week. Got there about 5 people after a “flight” had filled and had to wait for the next one. Now, the positive flip side of this is that nearly every time we then ended up in the front row (on the side, but I still would prefer the front row to center section in another row – those dangling feet are distracting!). We did get a chance to talk to a couple funny CM’s this way – one time they had one slot remaining in the previous flight and asked for any volunteers “Any solo aviators?...Anyone flying alone? Anyone not like the party they’re with?” Stephen and I both tried to volunteer at this point, but they didn’t really believe us!

So by the time we waited, got on, and then off again, it was nearly 9:15. We knew Illuminations would be ending soon, and wanted to beat the crowd out. Literally, we walked outside and could tell the finale was going on, so made a quick dash for the exit. Out to our car, out of the lot, and onto the road. Um, it might have been better to take a few minutes to establish just exactly where we were heading first. Stephen’s trying to pull Pop up on the phone again and I’m driving and he’s insisting we’re going the right way. Hm... I’m not quite as sure as he is. I know I’m not sure when we next encounter the MK parking lot. Nowhere to turn around, so we go through the tollbooths (not manned anymore since it’s about 9:30 at this point) and follow the signs to the exit. So although we managed to beat the crowds out of Epcot, it’s always nice to try to catch up to them at the Magic Kingdom too! Meanwhile, I’m explaining to Stephen that I know that Pop and Epcot are fairly close and that MK is nowhere near them!

So eventually we get back. Getting late at this time, so we quickly get some ice and some cold water, decide we’re not up to finding the food court or refillable mugs tonight and that we just need some sleep. Find everything we need for the morning, figure out the alarm clock and call for a wakeup call, and day one is done!

[circelli]

Great TR :goodvibes

Keep it coming popcorn::

[AmandaSparks730]

Stephen's cute :blush:

And he's my age ;)

(Plus, I'm in Spanish 4 this year, too)

You've got me on board!

[mpetti]

Hey Marcie:

:banana:Great trip report. Love the picture of you and Stephen at GG. Can't wait to read more.

Maryann :surfweb:

[dawnbu40]

You're off to a great start and I'm looking forward to reading more! :goodvibes

[RAPstar]

lol, I love funny "getting lost" stories!! Can't wait for more!

[marciemi]

Day 2

I’m glad to have all of you reading! Today will be the test, since it’s a LLOOOONNNGG one!

Well, today our plan for the day was a mistake, but thanks to the weather, it all worked out for the best. We decided that since we were early in the trip, rested, and it was just two motivated teen/adults, that we could easily do MK from opening until our ADR at Whispering Canyon at 5pm. I will say in retrospect that I won’t try to do that again. However, since the evening ended up being non-stop rain and storms, we were at least able to accomplish everything we wanted to – just a bit more hot, tired, cranky and sweaty than we would have wanted to!

We are definitely type-A people. I’ve never gone to a park and arrived at like 10 or 11am. Have no idea what it would be like to arrive with the masses, and really don’t want to find out! We have park-hopped in the past, so I’ve arrived places early afternoon, but I think that has to be better than late morning, and by then we’ve usually accomplished a whole day’s worth of plans anyways! Most days on this trip we decided we wanted to be hungry for our CS and TS meals, so we’d just brought a few granola bars to hold us during the morning. Mickey woke us up bright and early, and we were showered and in the car quickly, and ate our “breakfast” on the way.

Made it to the monorail by about 7:50, which was still fairly late for us. But we figured with the fact that MK has 2 internal rope drops, plus the fact that we weren’t heading to a popular location first, that we didn’t need to be quite as early. Found someone to take our pic on the monorail:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0149.jpg

Of course we were still early to the turnstiles, which gave us a brief chance to get on suntan lotion and talk to the CM’s:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0152.jpg

However, when I say brief, I mean brief. Unlike all of the other parks, where we were let in at say 8:45 or so (what I was expecting), at MK they started to let people through the turnstiles early. As in 8:15. As in I was still sitting on the ground and hadn’t even thought of digging my KTTW card out of my fanny pack. Suddenly we realize people are going in and we’re sitting there. I frantically pull out our cards while the people behind us glare at our cluelessness – yep, I would have been doing the same thing! But we get in with no trouble and find a shady spot near one of the tunnel entrances. On the key note, I will say that the plastic key cards you get from the resorts are WAY better than the papery tickets you get if you purchase them online from somewhere else. On our last trip, I would say nearly every time we went into a park someone’s ticket wouldn’t work and we’d have to go to guest relations – sometimes they’d pass us through and just tell us to get it replaced before we left that day, other times we’d have to go over there immediately. With the plastic keys this never happened once.

Anyways, before we’d left we’d bought a lot of 50 pins on ebay for I think $1.20 per pin. Our goal was to trade the “less fun” pins that we’d received for character ones and then pass them out to kids who needed some “magic”. So we had our first Ziploc baggie of pins in my fanny pack and managed to find a couple CM’s to trade the boring pins with for some Mickey/Tink/Pooh ones. The CM’s handed out confetti (Mickey heads) and we were ready to count down. We got in the park and made our way down Main Street. We were surprised by the bubble blowing trash cans – hadn’t seen those before!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0294.jpg

(Okay, I know, not the best picture, but it’s hard to do while moving quickly!). We worked our way over to the entrance between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland (nearest Pooh). Went to get a quick picture with the Photopass photographer and realized we’d already managed to lose the Photopass card we’d gotten the previous evening. Luckily I’d already texted the number on it to my husband to look up the pics, so we didn’t lose those (eventually we would find that card in our hotel room). But we got a new card and back to the second rope. Where we were the only ones waiting. A CM came to lead us to our first attraction choice, and when I say lead us there, he led us (and ONLY us) ALL the way through the line queue and onto the ride platform! Well, since we were the only ones on the ride, I took a few pictures of the ride with flash photography (gasp!), which you’ve probably already figured out my feelings toward!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0157.jpg

Off Pooh, and onto Snow White. We quickly decide that this is one that although we always seem to have to do for old times’ sake, we can probably skip in the future. On to Peter Pan, where we wait maybe a couple minutes. We both enjoy this ride, but we always do!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0160.jpg

At this point, I have Stephen break off to get our Splash Mountain FP’s while I walk quickly to Big Thunder. Evidently I don’t walk fast enough, because he’s already there waiting for me, FP’s in hand, as I get close (yes, it’s easy to pick him out in this shirt!). We ride this with nearly no wait – just getting through the long queue line. As we board, Stephen realizes that one of the CM’s has a pin that he’s been looking for – one of the Pirate Mickey series (our high school mascot is the Pirates). We determine that it’s probably not a good time to trade, and wait until after the ride. Stephen trades for Pirate Goofy, and is now determined to collect all the pins in that series (despite my intentions to give pins to kids – not 16 year olds related to me!). Oh well, what can you do?

We head from here to Pirates of the Caribbean. Not a huge fan of the ride, but on a day like today we’re a huge fan of the cool air inside! We ride and enjoy the song at least with the air and too quickly it’s time to head back out into the heat and sun. We go to Jungle Cruise, again with no wait. We weren’t impressed with our “skipper” this time – a college aged girl who mumbled the whole spiel into the microphone. Stephen managed to catch a few of the jokes, but most people (myself included) were looking at her blankly. Okay, whatever – we’ll come back to this one on our next day here! The picture from this is back in post 1!

Off JC, and time to go back across the park to Haunted Mansion – this was closed during our trip in 2007, so we’re interested in seeing the changes. One funny story here – we’re walking into the darkness of the stretch room (again after waiting only a minute or so). I notice my son has his iphone out, texting his friends, which is of course illuminating the room. I turn to him and hiss “Put the phone AWAY!” Well, the teenage boy in front of me looks startled, and quickly slips HIS iphone into his pocket! I tried to explain quickly that I wasn’t talking to him, but I don’t think he bought it! We did manage to pick out a few changes in this ride, but not a lot since it’s been so long since we have ridden it. We still enjoy the ride though, except for the fact that when we get to the part where the ghost hitchhikers join your car, the car in front of ours contained a girl who was NOT happy about that fact. VERY not happy, as in screaming at the top of her lungs. We got off the ride and I was surprised to see that she was probably around 7 or so, not the 2 or 3 year old I was expecting. Stephen (with a teenager’s sense of humor) said to me that he could go up to her and tell her "It’s okay, it’s all over, it’s not like the ghosts will follow you home or anything....oh, wait, that’s what they said isn’t it? Well....good luck!”

We quickly figured out the way to get rid of any of these ghosts was to head directly to It’s a Small World. No self respecting ghost would be caught dead in there. We ride and it’s the same as always. On our trip in 2005, I was really disappointed that this ride was closed. The last two trips, I’ve wondered just exactly why I felt that way! Okay, we did it – we can check it off our list.

We are planning to meet Kerry and family in Pinocchio’s Village Haus at 11 when they open and thought it would be around that time now, but it’s only 10:30 at this point, so we decide we can use our Splash Mountain FP’s. Back over there quickly, grab a new set, ride with literally no wait. This is one area where I have to say Disney just excels. With the exception of our poor timing at Soarin’, everywhere else we rode with Fast Passes – we literally walked onto the rides. They do a great job of keeping that line short, which of course makes us question why people would wait in a 60 minute or longer line, rather than just getting one themselves! Oh well – ours is not to reason why!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0169.jpg

Yes, that’s us in the front – I know you can tell! Incidentally, I always tried to take photos like this of the monitors. Maybe half of them came out clear and crisp. The other half like this or worse. Not sure if they’re scrambling them now or something so people don’t do this – I know on our last trip we got a lot of nice pics of the monitors. This time, not so many.

I send Stephen back ahead to Pinocchio’s so that we can grab a table overlooking Small World. Why? Who knows – it just seemed like a cool thing to do when we read about the restaurant on the boards. I get there and find him and Kerry and her family join us shortly after. We go in line to get the food (although there’s not really a line yet) and quickly have pizzas, salads, sodas and desserts. Yes, just starting to find out that even the CS meals are WAY too much food for me. Stephen manages to polish off his food, but I only eat about half of my pizza (which was just normal pizza – nothing spectacular, but not bad either). I eat a little of my salad, and a few bites of my dessert (strawberry cheesecake; Stephen had the chocolate cake). Didn’t get any food pictures from here, but at least one of us with Small World in the background:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0171.jpg

We decide to do a few rides with Kerry and her crew, especially since Mackenzie is a big fan of spinning fast on the Tea Cups (as are Stephen and I), but the rest of her family is not. We decide to do Philharmagic first, and by now Mackenzie and Logan are best buddies with Stephen:

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Well, of course the kids loved this ride and Stephen thought it was hilarious watching them trying to grab at the 3D objects. We headed from here to the Tea Cups. I ran ahead and grabbed a FP for us for later for Buzz Lightyear, and still made it back in time to join them in the tea cup. A picture of Stephen with his new best friend:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0177.jpg

We come off the ride and Kerry is motioning to us to follow her quickly. We get in a line, to realize it’s a character meet with the Stepmother and Stepsisters from Cinderella. Not something we’d do normally, but hey – we have little kids with us. We let them go up first and get their pictures and autograph books. Then it’s our turn (with many curious looks from the families of small children behind us!). The characters here were hilarious. We walk up and the Stepmother takes a look at Stephen’s Guest of Honor nametag (which we had made back in 1997 at the 25th Anniversary party). She turns to him and says “Guest of Honor? Why? What did YOU do?” Meanwhile, one of the stepsisters starts bowing deeply and saying “Oh – Guest of Honor, Guest of Honor” while the mother is snapping at her to knock it off! Bowing to Stephen:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0180.jpg

The family shot:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0181.jpg

Well, it was time to say goodbye to the Kerry Crew as they headed back to their hotel for a swim (really, this would have been the best thing to do at this point!). But we figured we were doing mostly indoor stuff, so we’d be okay. We quickly grabbed another FP for Buzz and then went in and watched Monsters, Inc. We really enjoyed this show each time we did it. Stephen texted some jokes this time, but none of his were chosen. But it was nice and cool and we were both laughing much of the show.

We went from here over to Carousel of Progress. Another one that we just have to do every time. Part way through though Stephen was whispering to me “I’m bored”. I pointed out it was cool, he was sitting, deal with it. Not too long later, it was done and we were ready to head to Buzz to use our FP’s. We never do spectacularly on this ride, and even with the ride stopping for a minute, we both score somewhere in the 200,000 range each time we ride. But it’s still fun. Ride photo on the way out:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0185.jpg

Next we decide that we want to go over to Frontierland. Rather than walk all the way, it sounds like a better idea to take the train. So we take the secret trail (okay, not really) by Space Mountain over to Toontown. Since much of the area is barricaded, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to get to it, but finally we find the trail. We stop for a couple pictures on the way:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0187.jpg

Stephen’s opinion of Space Mountain being closed:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0188.jpg

We get there right as a train is pulling away, so we sit down to rest. We get on the train finally, and another family joins us with three young girls. By now everyone is hot, crowded, and cranky as the train finally pulls off. We stop at the Main Street Station, and a lot of passengers disembark. So part of the family moves to the row behind us, in order to have some more room. Meanwhile, mom and middle daughter (probably 5 or so) remain. The girl is NOT happy. She is pouting, turning away from her mom and whenever she looks at her, sticking out her tongue. I mention to Stephen that she looks like she needs a pin. I pull out one of our Tink pins and Stephen gives it to her. Well, her attitude did a 180 degree change. Her face lights up and she gets all excited. Gets mom to pin it on her Princess dress and is all excited that she has a pin. Then the sibling rivalry thing kicks in (yep, ALWAYS with my kids too) as she turns to her sisters in the row behind her just gloating that she now has a pin (and they don’t). It was just hilarious to watch. We get off at the next station and she grabs Stephen’s hand and says “Thank you, thank you, thank you SO much!” However, she was covered with glitter, and after that, so was Stephen!

We handed out a lot of pins during the week and many times the kids/parents just took them and said thanks, sometimes they were more excited, and many times the people we chose obviously didn’t speak English but would get the idea and smile and nod when you gave the pin to their child. But this one was definitely the most fun! One other funny one was when Stephen gave a Mickey pin to a young boy – maybe 4 or so. He had a British accent (didn’t know this until he gave it to him) and the boy spent the next few minutes in line saying (in completely accented tones) “I got a Mickey. Father, I got a Mickey!” We will definitely do this on our next trip because it was just an easy way to share in some of the joy of young kids at Disney (since I no longer have those cute young kids anymore!).

Anyways...(yes, just a short OT there!). We get to Splash Mountain, again use our FP, and again marvel at all the people standing in the long standby line:

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Head over to Adventureland and decide that before we do anything else, we need to use a snack credit to get something cool. We look at our Dining app on our phone and decide slushes sound good. Head over to Aloha Isle, and apparently everyone else has the same idea. This was definitely our longest line of the day. Stephen was asking why they don’t have a fast pass for the snack stands! We get our slush, a large glass of ice water, and find some shade. After eating, we quick duck into the next showing of the Tiki Birds. Okay, it’s totally corny, but we both love this show. And it’s a nice break from the heat. We come out and realize the 3pm parade is passing nearby us in Frontierland (we can see it through the restaurant), so we head through to watch for a bit. This is the first time I’ve watched a daytime parade since 1997 (we’re not big parade buffs) and it’s not at all crowded. We manage to walk right up into a shady spot behind a group of kids (all of them a good foot shorter than we are) and watch the parade. Just one token photograph since probably most of you have seen all the parades and I’m not a great photographer!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0192.jpg

Well, we’d debated doing the Swiss Family Tree House. Stephen wanted to since it was one attraction he had never done (and the last time I did it was on my first trip in 1978 when I was 12!). I was afraid it would be too hot in the afternoon sun, but we were pleasantly surprised to find out that nearly all of it was in the shade. There was (obviously) no line and especially as you get to the top, beautiful views of the rest of the park:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0196.jpg

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-----Quick break in the action since I have too many image codes - Part Two continued below!------

[marciemi]

By now it’s getting near 4pm, and since we have our ADR at 5 (and don’t know how great of a job we’ll do getting there), decide it’s time to head out. Out to the monorail, to the car, plot Wilderness Lodge in our phone, and really, really soon we’re there. Like by 4:15. Since we’re both exhausted and tired, we decide to see if there’s a chance of checking in early. Luckily there is, and within a minute or two we’re seated in Whispering Canyon.

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We both ordered the skillet meal and it was good, but once again, WAY too much food. The corn bread and especially the whipped butter were awesome. This was one meal where I didn’t feel as rushed, probably because the restaurant was still mostly empty. As it filled in, it became more and more fun. Our server just did some standard stuff (threw the straws at us, had us ask for ketchup):

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0203.jpg

But a lot of the tables around us were even funnier and watching them was more fun than actively participating ourselves. This was one of the restaurants I managed to actually get some pictures of the food:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Food%20only/100_0201.jpg

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Well, by now we were just completely stuffed, and asked if we could get our desserts to go. We got the smore cheesecakes for each of us, and were amused to note that they were packaged up with a silverware packet, but also salt and pepper for each of us. Ended up being critical later in the week (and no, we didn’t need it on our cheesecake!). We walked around the Wilderness Lodge for a bit and took a bunch of pictures of it, most of which didn’t come out that well. Found a Photopass photographer and got a few more pics. One last shot, and we were ready to head back to our resort:

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Got back as it was sprinkling lightly. One quick photo for Stephen who told me it was an inside joke with his friends. Never figured out what that was about:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0214.jpg

We wanted to go to the pool (and had been thinking about it all day), but by the time we got unpacked, got some ice to put the cheesecake on, and started digging our suits out, it was lightning. The progression from our room over about a 10 minute period:

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We decided to brave it out in the room and not head anywhere. Stephen with his new towel buddies:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0216.jpg

It eventually stopped lightning and we made it to the pool, but it was still raining steadily at the time. A quick swim, in much cooler temperatures, and of course the A/C in the room was even cooler! Again got our stuff ready for the next day and...WAIT! Have to eat that cheesecake! Still not hungry, but we weren’t sure it would make it until morning! Yes, it was very good even then! Set the alarms and decided to call it a night!

[MickeyisBeast]

I'm on board! I love it so far, it seems like you had a great time! :]

[donaldduck352]

Great TR.I have'nt been to Disney in along time,so I'm loving this.
Cant wait for more.popcorn::

[keishashadow]

checking in:thumbsup2

still laughing re 'the other' kid putting down the cellphone

congrats on snagging the pinocchio table overlooking small world, quite a feat!

[RAPstar]

Nothing better than cheesecake for breakfast!!

[circelli]

keep it coming!!!:love:

[WanttobeaCMagain]

Let's keep it going. Sooo much fun

[Sleepingbooty]

I'm in! popcorn:: A mother/son trip - what fun! Can't wait to hear more!

[keishashadow]

I'm in! popcorn:: A mother/son trip - what fun! Can't wait to hear more!

OT - what a great screen name:thumbsup2

[MEK]

Love your TR so far. I don't see pictures at work, but your TR is good even without them! I'll look at them later tonight.

I did a mother - son trip with my DS15 when he was 13. We had a lot of fun. Now both my boys play high school soccer so the only time we can go is in June right after school lets out. I miss those late August trips.

Looking forward to reading more!

[Krista in MA]

I'm really enjoying your trip report so far! What great memories for you and Stephen! I also wanted to comment how thoughtful it was of you two to give pins away to kids! How sweet! Looking forward to reading more...

[Disney4nonah]

Great TR, can't wait to read more! :surfweb:

[marciemi]

Day 3

Okay, hopefully this day won’t be quite as long as the last one! After our exhausting and very hot experience yesterday, we decided that today either we’d take an afternoon break right after lunch, or leave immediately after dinner. Ah, the best laid plans!

I will say that Epcot is much less exhausting than MK is, at least in times of heat. Now we definitely walked more on this day – we did two complete loops of World Showcase, in addition to criss-crossing Future World a couple times, and of course it’s a larger park. But we spent so much time indoors that it didn’t seem nearly as bad. And once again we were at the park turnstiles before 8am, having eating our hearty breakfast of a granola bar yet again.

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However, this time around 8:30, a couple of the CM’s came over to us and asked us if we wanted to be the “Family of the Day”! Well, of course we did! Not sure exactly what it entailed, but it had to be more fun than sitting at the turnstile! So they brought us into the park. Asked us if we wanted a picture in front of the “ball” without anyone in it:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0223.jpg

Then we basically just chatted with the CM’s for the next few minutes – all of whom were new to their jobs as part of the college program. One went to college just a few miles from our old house in Michigan so we discussed that. They then gave us a fast pass good at any one attraction in the park, and a "Family Reunion" pin - (not sure why on that one!). Meanwhile, the park is getting ready to open. So they introduced our family and had us do the countdown (5,4,3,2,1!) and then we were on our way. Not as exciting as some of the other opening ceremonies/Families of the Day I’ve read about here on the boards, but still made us feel special.

We had been planning on both heading to and riding and FP’ing Soarin’, but we figured since we had an extra FP now, that he could go ride Test Track and I’d just get Soain’ FP’s and meet him over there and we could get on to Mission Space faster. I join the Soain’ Stampede – along with another dad who is arguing with the CM about why he can’t run, other parks allow people to run, Disney is stupid this way, etc. Okay, whatever! I have no trouble keeping up with the CM, and getting the FP’s quickly, but a much more challenging time fighting my way up the escalator and out of the masses of people still entering the building! I zip over to Test Track, where Stephen comes off just a few minutes later. We decide to head right to Mission Space and although we get there with NO line, end up waiting quite awhile for enough people to come to fill an entire cycle of simulators (I’m thinking 32 people, but people were straggling in a couple at a time so it took awhile). We ride, and run back over to Test Track to do single rider.

Oops – want to grab another FP first. Put the tickets in and we’re too early! Check the clock and we have a minute to wait. I can’t tell you how many times we did this during the week – my watch is fast and Disney’s is slow and I kept forgetting to account for this. So unlike the idiots you always read about blocking the FP entrance while they wait for their FP time, we were the idiots standing between the FP machines and the FP entrance where we could see the clock and waiting for it to change so we could get more FP’s!

Anyway, we got in the single rider line (no wait at all) and zipped through without having to even watch the preshow briefing. We end up in different cars (never once did we end up together all the times we rode single rider), and I end up with a mom and son (who is probably ¼ inch over the 40 inch height restriction). The car pulls up, mom climbs in, son climbs in, I climb in, and we all buckle up, at which point the mom realizes her son doesn’t have a shoulder belt, like she and I do. She gets very, very upset about this, and even tried unbuckling her and her son’s belts. Meanwhile the car has started moving forward. I quickly try to tell her this is far worse than not having the shoulder belt, it’s not a bad ride, the shoulder belts are probably only there to keep people from leaning out of the cars, etc. But she was very upset the whole ride.

I tried to calm both of them down by telling them what would be happening next (especially the sudden stops!) and assuring her that the final lap was only one lap and wasn’t much different than being in your car on the freeway. They both did fine on the ride, and when she got off, she commented on my DIS shirt, pointing out how much she’d learned from the DIS, but that “NO ONE HAD EVER TOLD HER NOT TO PUT HER SON IN THE MIDDLE ON TEST TRACK!” Okay, she was still not happy about that one!

One more Test Track story I want to share here since it really, really annoyed me. It wasn’t on this time through, but later in the day (don’t remember exactly which of the many times we rode!). The regular line those times (this happened twice while we were there) was probably 60 minutes. But I was SO frustrated by families with young kids who (cut the line) went in the single rider line. Then when they got to the front threw a complete hissy fit when the CM tried to split them up from their precious angels who couldn't possibly ride without mom and dad. BOTH times this happened, the CM just gave in and let the family ride together. Probably wouldn't have left such a bad taste in my mouth if one of the time I hadn't seen the mom give a smirk and thumbs up to dad as soon as the CM let them through. What's the point of the 17 "your party will be split up" signs if they don't bother to do that?

All right, enough venting! From here we went over to Nemo – I guess thinking there might still be lines for it like we saw in 2007.

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No line, and quick ride later, we were in the aquarium. Looked briefly, and then entered the waiting area for Crush. This is a cute show, but was much more fun back in the small venue they used to have it in during 2005. This time it just seemed like a madhouse, with kids scrambling everywhere, and the CM quite rudely telling them to stay off the green, parents keep back, not in the front, clear the aisles. The first time we saw this it was more of a casual conversation between the kids and Crush. Now it just seemed canned and rushed. Okay if you hadn’t seen it before, or had kids who were Crush fans, but I wouldn’t go back again. We headed out of the Seas:

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And back in to use our Soarin’ FP’s I’d gotten at ropedrop. But of course it’s time to get another set first. Well, actually, not, we have to wait that minute or two first! We ride, and check in at the tour desk to confirm our Behind the Seeds tour on Saturday (just making sure it would still go with the boat ride closed!).

Well, of course at this point, Stephen is starving. And we’re right by Sunshine Seasons. And they have all these delicious looking pastries! Yes, we realize it’s just an hour until our lunch ADR, but we have to get something! So we grab a blondie, which Stephen hasn’t tried before (I think it’s kind of a peanut butter brownie). Head from here over to the Imagination ride, which surprisingly has about a 5-10 minute wait. We decide we aren’t in a rush, and wait a bit and ride. Again determine this is a fairly corny ride, that was much better a decade or so ago, but at least it’s cool, and they still have the good song!

On that note, a separate quest we were on at this point was to find the CD’s that had the soundtrack from Soarin’ on them. While we were waiting at the turnstiles, he was listening to that track over and over in the background and each time telling me as the music changed, what the scene would be during the movie at that time. He really, really wanted to get it. We asked at the ride/gift kiosk outside of Soarin’ and they told us we were looking for a red CD case, that would have 2 CD’s in it, with music from all the parks/attractions. We stopped in Mouse Gears (on their recommendation) quickly and confirmed that they did not in fact have it, had never heard of it, and told us to try Downtown Disney.

Next we headed over to Club Cool to get a bunch of the sample drinks! I remembered I’d really liked the one from Mexico the last time, and still did. I think that one was either watermelon or strawberry – I know there were two I liked. Stephen liked one (don’t remember from where) that he insisted tasted like Mountain Dew. Since I don’t like Dew, I found it fairly disgusting, but he was happy drinking it. We grabbed a (tiny) glass to go, and headed back over to Test Track for a quick single rider ride. Just a FYI, we almost always found the single rider line to be shorter than the FP line, so if you’re willing to ride alone, this is definitely the way to get extra rides in. In the future, I’d do FP once a day for this (to get the ride photo scanned on my photopass account) and just stick with the single rider. I’m guessing this is when we encountered the “lines don’t apply to me” people!

Well, by now it was getting close to the ADR time, so we started to work our way to World Showcase. Oh, first we passed the Kim Possible kiosk, so we had to grab our “FP” for that for later in the day. Stopped briefly in the UK to get a picture of Stephen:

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We get to France about 11:50, and go inside to check in for the ADR. They look at us strangely and tell us to wait outside and someone will be out there shortly. We wait there with another family for a few minutes:

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Finally, the hostess comes out with a list on a clipboard and mans the little stand outside. We allow the family who was waiting to check in, and the CM has no record of their ADR. Finally writes their name in, along with their (theoretical) ADR time, and number of people. We check in, and the same thing happens. More people are waiting by this point, and I hear the next few also told they don’t have their ADR’s either. Hm...I think something’s wrong here. This was the only place we weren’t checked in on a computer of all our ADR’s and it didn’t seem to work. Meanwhile, the waiters near the door are starting to call people in (all of us even without ADR’s) and I see someone rush out to hand the hostess a new sheet of paper! Think someone got the wrong list!

However, we’re seated quickly, and have a beautiful window seat, with a great view!

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Stephen checks out the menu and we’re happy to find out from our server that the Chef’s menu is included at lunch time. I’d read some conflicting reports on that on the DIS, so I wasn’t sure. We were really excited because the choices we wanted were on that list anyways, and now we could get the yummy French Onion soup (that we both like) too!

I did a good job taking pictures here (this is about the last time!):

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Stephen orders the ham and cheese sandwich (okay, I’m not even going to try for the French translations) and I order the quiche, both of which come with a salad (so we get soup, salad, entrée AND dessert...which turns out to be about 2 too many courses for me!). Well, the soup was delicious. And they brought bread as well, and pretty much by the time I’d polished off both of those, I was done.

And then our main courses came:

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Okay, I managed to eat maybe half of the inside of my quiche. Stephen ate half of his sandwich, and both of our salads ( I took a bite just to try it). This was kind of disappointing after months of drooling over this menu being just way too stuffed to even eat all of it, let alone enjoy it!

Next we each tried one of the desserts that came with the Chef’s meal – the Crème Brulee and the Profitolores (sp?):

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http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Food%20only/100_0241.jpg

Neither of these were exactly what we were expecting, although we may have been just too full to enjoy them. I’ve never had Crème Brulee before, and it pretty much tasted to me like the burned outer shell of a marshmallow toasted over a campfire, with a bland pudding inside. Similarly, the other dessert, which looked like a hot fudge creampuff, was also fairly bland. I ate the big blackberry (best part!) and Stephen picked at a bit of the rest of it but we’d just had too much already!

Oh, one more tip I’d read on the boards before I went and turned out to be a lifesaver (and the best 25 cents I spent for the trip) was to bring the pink sweeteners (Sweet and Lo I think?!) which are the only kind I like in iced tea. I thought the iced tea at all of the table service restaurants was really, really good, and usually went through about 3 glasses each meal. But they only had the yellow and blue sweeteners which I think totally change the flavor of the tea. I bought a Ziploc baggie full of them at a garage sale before we left and it was a great investment for me for the trip! You could of course stock up at a local restaurant easily too! Incidentally, I tried the tea at a CS restaurant once and ended up spitting it back into my cup, rinsing the cup out (luckily we were at AK without lids) and getting Sprite instead since it was that bad! I never found Caffeine Free Diet Coke anywhere, but did find Sprite Zero most places which works for me in a pinch!

Finally Remy came by. This isn’t a big deal, but was really cute. The Server bringing him around wasn’t as stuffy as I’d read some of them were, so it was more just a cute interaction. I wouldn’t go just for this, but I would definitely go back again for the food and the service. And next time we wouldn’t get a blondie an hour beforehand. And I wouldn’t eat all the soup to save room for the rest! If we were paying a la carte – the soup would have been easily enough to share.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0239.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Food%20only/100_0240.jpg

So now we needed to do some walking to digest all of that food, right? We decided to head over to Italy (our Kim Possible kiosk check in location) while waiting for the next show by Miyuki, the candy lady. Well, Stephen checks in and the college aged CM there and he have about a 10 minute conversation about iphones (evidently he either saw Stephen’s or vice versa). Finally as people are getting backed up waiting for their Kimmunicators, I kind of step in and we choose Japan for our first location and we’re on our way.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0245.jpg

Okay, the Kim Possible missions were a lot neater than I thought they would be. Of course it was too hot to really enjoy them, but in the cooler months, they’d be awesome! I thought you’d mostly just find things and enter them in as you walked around the pavilion, but the first clue led us to a special location and something appeared inside and smoke filled it an all (don’t want to give too much away):

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0243.jpg

Next we went to another location that had a boring looking rock, but when we used our Kimmunicator:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0247.jpg

It just all seemed to be things like this – something actually happened and it was a lot of fun. Well, of course we eventually saved Japan, just in time for the Candy Lady! We’d read about this during the past many years, and she was on vacation during our last trip, so we were determined to see it this time. We got there a bit early, but off to the side. It really is a lot of fun and simply fascinating to watch. Again though it would have been much more fun if it were 20 degrees cooler! But it’s amazing how quickly she can turn a lump of white blobby stuff into a complete animal. Literally within the first step or two you can already see it. She made about 5 different animals for the kids waiting:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0252.jpg

Then on the last one, asked Stephen what he wanted! He was so surprised (didn’t think he really had any chance of being picked with masses of young kids around) that he just said a porcupine! She made his, which I videotaped all of – really neat! Since the show was over then, his didn’t as much of a chance to dry (she was using several fans) and she told him to keep it in the bag upside down. But you know how kids are – he wanted to look at it and take it out, and the next thing we knew, it was all droopy:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0255.jpg

Stephen compromised by then EATING (gasp!) “Porkie”! Since I could tell he wasn’t going to make it through the rest of the day, I gave up on my thoughts of bringing it home. Stephen said it was really good, which surprised me since I had read the opposite on the boards!

Anyways, at this point we were heading over to our next Kim Possible mission – back in France. This one seemed quite a bit longer, and it was starting to rain fairly steadily at this point, so it wasn’t quite as much fun. I still was amazed by many of the effects though. When we were done here, we decided that was enough missions and followed the instructions to the secret turn in location (even that was cool!).

We decided to head over to the American Adventure and hope to catch the show at 3:30 (it was around 3:15 now). But when we got there, we found it was actually at 3:45. I never found out where you were supposed to find the timing for this show – it wasn’t on Steve Soares’ website or on the Times Schedule we got at entrance. We went inside and watched the Voices of Liberty for a few minutes and I told Stephen he could stay there and I’d run over to Norway and get us a FP for Maelstrom. In case you’re wondering, that’s a long walk/run, especially in the rain, and especially wearing Crocs, that slip quite frequently! But I got back in time and asked a CM about getting the reflective captioning. On our last trip here in 2007 it wasn’t working, so I was hoping to use it this time, but they explained that the building had been “stuck by lightning” so it wasn’t working. For 2 years? Anyways they offered me a penlight and script (which I used the last time) but I thought I’d seen it enough to be able to follow it (I’m hearing impaired). Didn’t turn out to be the case and I wish I’d accepted the script, but it made it really hard to watch at the same time last time.

We left America and worked our way slowly over towards Norway, just checking out the different countries as we went. We got there and there was a 30 minute line for Maelstrom, and with the FP we literally walked right on. Directly through the line and onto the boat without stopping. We determine that although this is an okay ride, we certainly wouldn’t wait 30 minutes for it!

Edited to add that I forgot to put in a story from here. At this point Stephen was still working on collecting all the Pirate Character collection pins. He had them all displayed on his fanny pack, and had them all except Mickey, which he was keeping his eyes open for. Well, when we came off Maelstrom and through the very crowded gift shop (that exit is incredibly poorly designed) apparently I "bumped" him and he caught his Minnie Pirate pin and it got knocked onto the floor, pin part up. A young boy went sprinting by, stepped on it, and took off with it on the bottom of his shoe! Stephen tried to chase after him, but he was trying to catch up with his family and Stephen lost him quickly in the crowd. Of course all of this was MY fault, so before we did anything else, we headed over to the gift shop right where you enter World Showcase, en route to Canada. He finds a CM with the Minnie pin and asks her to trade. She explains that her lanyard is one of the colored ones only for trading with young kids, but tells him to wait a minute and she'll see if another CM in the back "happens" to have that same pin (luckily it wasn't crowded in the shop). Soon after another CM comes out with a regular lanyard, which coincidentally has that same pin on it, so Stephen manages to trade and all is right in the world! Oh, and a bit later that evening he managed to find the Mickey at the pin trading area in the middle of Epcot. We also invested $8 in locking pins there so he didn't lose any more. We have a zillion of them at home, but I hadn't planned on him wanting to wear (or get) any pins there so didn't bring any. Guess I know better next time now matter how old they are!

So now it’s time to head back into Future World. We head in, yes, once again Test Track is closed (yes, it’s raining, remember?!). We grab ANOTHER FP for it (I really don’t know why) and go back to ride Spaceship Earth – in English this time fortunately. Yes, that is a cool ride! Spend a little bit of time exploring Innoventions and decide to start working our way back around to Japan for dinner at Yakitori House. Which would be better if we were at all hungry.

Again we work our way CCW around the lagoon. This time we take a little more time to stop in a couple of the pavilions and by the time we get to Japan, Stephen at least is somewhat hungry. He LOVED the ginger salad here last time, but they won’t allow it as a snack credit (even though it’s under $4), so he orders the chicken ginger salad as a CS meal. He decides he doesn’t want to try the ginger cake, so gets the prepackaged cookie for kids.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Food%20only/100_0256.jpg

I order the Tempura Shrimp Udon, which is probably the best thing I ate all week. Except I’m totally stuffed at this point. I ate the shrimp, and as much of the noodles as I could, and all the broth (which was really good). Then gave up. I tried one bite of the ginger cake (which I thought looked so good) and decided the chocolate chip cookie might have been a better option! It just had a really strange flavor. Overall it’s such a bummer that all the good food places are in Epcot – we could have eaten here every day for both CS and TS and been happy, but didn’t have park hoppers and wanted to hit some other parks!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Food%20only/100_0257.jpg

Ugh – remember the plans to go back early and/or take an afternoon break? Yep, it’s after 7pm by this point. And we still have 2 sets of Test Track FP’s, a set of Soarin’ ones, and that special FP for Family of the Day! Well, we might as well head to TT first. We ride quickly twice there (well, it’s not quickly, but as fast as we can!) and head over to Soarin’. By the time we’re done there it’s getting close to 8:30. We examine our special FP and decide we’ll try to save it for our next day at Epcot and see if they take it then (nothing on it says only valid that day, although it does have a date on it). Oh well, we’re exhausted! On our way out of the park we check the two gift shops near the front of the park, but still no CD with Soarin’ on it – not even sure it exists by this point!

We head back to Pop. Again we don’t take the direct route, and this time we come back via Downtown Disney. Nope, don’t ask me, ask my navigator! We get back to the room and decide we should at least check out the food court and store and buy a few postcards. Quick stop there, didn’t bring enough money (75 cents per postcard?), back for a quick swim (yes, it’s raining again – we’re wondering if we’ll ever get to swim when it’s warm and sunny instead of dark and raining), pack everything up and call it a night.

But wait – first an even funnier story. Many, many months back (around April), I was involved on a thread on TGM. I met someone online who saw I was from Green Bay who was on both the DIS and TGM (jajone – Jennifer). We contacted one another and it turned out that we lived just a couple miles apart and our kids were in the same school district! She was taking a mother/daughter trip (and leaving her other two kids home) and I was doing a mother/son trip and doing the same (yeah, unfortunately her daughter was only 9, but Stephen can’t have all the luck!). We were both heading to Pop Century, and they were arriving just two days after we were! We emailed and even got together several times before the trip to discuss planning and just share the excitement in general.

Well during the day today, she is texting me and asking our room number after they’d checked into their room at Pop. Totally coincidentally we ended up with connecting rooms!!! We’d requested only top floor, quiet area (no section); meanwhile, they’d just requested 50’s section! So we ended up together, on the top floor, in a quiet area, of the 50’s! I ask you, what are the odds of that?! (Or do they segregate people from Green Bay to one section of the hotel that I’m not aware of?!) The connecting room with Jennifer and her daughter:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/IMG_3363.jpg

Pretty neat, eh?

All right, so it wasn’t shorter than yesterday, but maybe there are fewer pictures at least?! Thanks to anyone who’s hanging in and still reading!

[Nancy for Disney]

Love your trip report. You and your son look like you are having a blast. I would love to do a one on one trip with my kids some day.

[MEK]

Nice Day 3 Update! You guys are tireless! Phew....I need a nap after reading your adventures. Your pictures are also really nice. Glad I stopped by this evening to see them.

Really enjoying your TR. I'm also really annoyed at those people who cheated their way through the single rider line. That is so uncool!

Looking forward to more.

[RAPstar]

I love the candy lady!! She's totally in her own little universe! "Shiny, shiny". :rotfl:

[Katy Belle]

Loving your report! I have 3 boys, ages 9,12, 14. It would be so fun to do a one-on-one trip! Perhaps someday!

Looking forward to the rest!

Katy

[dawnbu40]

Wow! What a full day! How exciting to be the Family of the Day! I love special moments like that at Disney!

That soup looked delicious! I've never wanted to try that restaurant but you have me rethinking that now!

Looking forward to more!

[Jennyfer]

What a great son you have! Your trip sounds awesome so far. Looking forward to day 4!

[circelli]

looks like the 2 of you had a GREAT time together!!;)

[mpetti]

Marcie:

Love your report...keep it coming. Your pictures are great. Love the one of you and Stephen at Epcot (The Ball).

Maryann :surfweb:

[marciemi]

Day 4 - Part One

Well, today could have been a more relaxing day. I’d read on the boards about the new centralized FP system that they were testing at AK, and there really wasn’t much that we wanted to do at AK – we needed to do the Nemo musical (probably my favorite show in all the parks), really wanted to do Everest, kind of wanted to do the Safari, and a little wanted to do Dinosaur. Really, that was all. So my thought was that we could sleep in, and get to the park around 10 instead of our normal 8, go to the central FP area and grab the 3 FP’s for the (coincidentally) 3 rides we wanted, and then go see Nemo. By then we should have been in the window to start using the FP’s. Hm, I’m really not sure why we didn’t do this. My backup thought was that if by some chance the centralized FP’s weren’t there, or wouldn’t let us get more than one (despite what we’d read), that we’d simply skip Dinosaur (no great loss!), grab KS FP’s before Nemo, and just ride EE whenever using single rider.

But when I suggested this idea to Stephen – that we sleep in – he replied in mock seriousness “You can DO that? At DISNEY?” I asked if he was sure he didn’t want to sleep in and he said no. But we vowed to get back earlier tonight at least! So once again, we were up at the crack of dawn. Another exciting nutritious breakfast of granola bars, and then we headed over to AK. Yes, once again first at the turnstiles, probably a bit before 8am:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/100_0260.jpg

Is Stephen looking a little less enthused? We got through and watched the short preshow. Talked to a lot of families, and it seemed like wherever we went, everyone we met was from Canada (but all over the country). Chatted with some families while we waited, and from the rope drop area near the tip board, we could see the centralized FP machines. We quickly asked a CM when they opened for the day and were told around 9:15am. Since they were all still covered, it was obvious that they weren’t going to be open at ropedrop, so we decided to go with plan A, FP and ride EE.

But we’d read on the boards that you could go through Dinoland and it was quicker than following the CM’s through Asia since nobody led you there. We’d also seen people do this during our trip in 2007 and wondered where they’d came from when they beat us to the FP machines! We decided to go with this option, and took off (with about 5 other people) through Dinoland. Ran probably half the distance before we were stopped by CM’s who told us we still had to follow them the rest of the way (and laughed at our Triathlon shirts that we were wearing – found them a bit appropriate for the situation!). They walked us up near the entrance to the FP machines, and made us wait while the other group all caught up and then let us go ahead. So Stephen probably was the first one at the machines, but probably would have been even if we’d gone (much more slowly) the other way!

One frustrating thing from this though was that Stephen grabbed the FP’s, I waited at the standby entrance for him, and then we both joined the line. But since the line snaked around outside before entering the actual queue, pretty much everyone else did the opposite – had people get in line first, and then just ducked under the rope to join them. Did it make any difference in the long run for us? No. Was it annoying at the time? Yes. I think if I did this again, I’d probably go with the crowd and get in line. I know at TSM they were telling you not to do it, but here it seemed to be the norm.

Anyways, we rode quickly, got off, and went right to Dinosaur. We enjoyed the ride, again primarily because it was nice and cool, and had no wait. We were looking for the red, yellow, and white tubes in the loading area that have the chemical equations for ketchup, mustard, and mayo on them (yes, we’re weird) and were happy to see them. We came off this ride and it was probably about 9:25. Hm, not enough time theoretically to make it all the way to Africa and ride KS and get back in time for Nemo. At least that’s what folks on the board told me. I personally think it would have been plenty of time, and even later in the day when we went to KS, the lines were only about 10 minutes. But it is a long ride, and we really didn’t want to miss Nemo.

So now what? We decided to annoy the photopass photographers and got our pictures taken several times. Saw the same photographer (Alex) many times as we went back and forth between Dinoland and said hi each time.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/100_0269.jpg

We next went back to the centralized FP area and quickly got our FP’s for KS and Dinosaur (although we’d already ridden it). But it wouldn’t give us another Everest one since we were still in that window. So we went in the gift shop in search of the ever elusive Soarin’ CD, and this time when we asked the CM, she told us the same thing – it was a red CD case, with 2 CD’s in it. But of course they didn’t have it. However, maybe now we at least believed it existed. Went out and waited the last few minutes to countdown for our next FP window, and quickly grabbed Everest FP’s as well. Here is our accumulation of FP’s at 9:45 in the morning:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/100_0264.jpg

Then we headed over to Everest to ride it for the second time (first set of FP’s). Still a short wait.
We came off Everest and said hi to Alex yet again. Decided that although it was shortly after 10, we didn’t have time to ride anything again (or yet, although we were almost in the Dino window). Some people were already waiting for the 10:30 Nemo show, so we just got in line with them and went in very shortly after this. Again I asked about the reflective captioning, and we were seated near the back center area and given the reflective stand.

We hung out in the cool area and about 5 minutes before the show was about to start, they came over and told me they were having trouble with the captioning and they might not work or might start a bit late. I said okay. A few minutes later, a manager-type CM came over and told me the captioning wasn’t working. I asked if they had any kind of a script (like at American Adventure) and she said she’d never seen anything like that but would go ask. Shortly afterwards, as the lights dimmed, she ran back in and handed me a script and a flashlight. Right as the captioning flickered on! I quickly adjusted the reflector, handed her back the script, and sat back to enjoy the show! I strongly recommend you download the songs from itunes for this for your trip as it makes the show so much more enjoyable. For me it was especially fun because although I’ve heard the songs in the car a zillion times, this time I could actually read/understand the words to all of them. Lots of fun.

By the time we left Nemo, it was a bit after 11 and Stephen really wanted to hit Restaurantosaurus. Just because it had a cool name. We were texting Kerry and friends during this, since her grandkids were trying to collect all the alphabet pins, and we had some they didn’t have to we wanted to give them to them. We got to the restaurant, got our food. I think Stephen got a double cheeseburger (although he “wasn’t really hungry”), and I got the Mandarin Chicken Salad, which was okay. I think he got the chocolate cake, and I got the carrot cake, but ate very little of it. We got our food, and Kerry texted to say they were at the Boneyard. They headed over to meet us and Stephen got to hug his friends again, before they headed off. Don’t ask me about the lady behind us in this picture:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/100_0272.jpg

We came out and decided we weren’t going to use our extra Dino FP’s, so we handed them off to a couple headed in that direction (actually in the window!). We headed back to Everest to use the last set of FP’s. (Yep, hi to Alex again on the way!). This time I took a few more pictures:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/100_0277.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/100_0275.jpg

We next headed over to KS. It was after noon at this point, and as I said, a 10 minute standby line. And it really wasn’t even that. They were just holding it every now and then to give the people in the FP line (us) the feeling that we were going ahead. But it was pretty much walk on for everyone. I took a few token photographs, just because it’s expected, but my camera isn’t great enough to get really good ones. On that note, we brought our good camera too, but it’s a bit heavier and bulkier, and the case for it has a strap on it that’s not removeable. So with the case, camera, and strap, it pretty much filled my fanny pack (with no room for essentials like a brush, deodorant, snacks, money, etc.!) I tried carrying it around my neck one afternoon and hated it. So we had our cheap, black-Friday 5am special, $80 digital camera that we ended up using for most of the trip because it was really small and the case had a removeable strap so it fit in my fanny pack much better. Unfortunately not as good as a camera, but I’m not a great photographer anyways, so these pictures would probably be equally bad with my good camera anyways!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/100_0279.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/100_0285.jpg

At this point it was time to start working our way out of the park. We contemplated doing Kali, both on our way to KS (could have grabbed FP’s then) and now, but we didn’t really feel like being soaked. Thought it would be more enjoyable to just go back to the hotel pool and actually swim during the daytime before heading to Downtown Disney. Got stopped for a quick survey on our way out (some really elaborate questions like our zip code), got in the very hot car, and headed back to Pop.

Well, we quickly found out that the pools weren’t particularly refreshing during the hot daytime hours. In the sun, the water was simply too warm, but we swam for a bit anyways:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0288.jpg

Got showered and changed, and rested for a very short bit. Then headed over to Downtown Disney to hit the few places I wanted to hit here. I’m sorry, but we didn’t bring the camera with us (left the fanny packs in the car and just carried the credit cards – you know, the important stuff!), so there’s not a single picture from DD. We went into World of Disney first, and bought exactly what we’d been planning on – 2 t-shirts for us, and a photo album. Yep, we’re not big spenders I guess. We went over to the Lego store next and I saw a cool Frank Lloyd Wright Lego that I thought my inlaws would like so I sent a text to my husband about it. Except I accidentally sent it to Jennifer. So now I’ve managed to confuse two people at once. I call my husband a half hour later or so, yelling at him for not responding to my text, and he’s insisting he never got it. Meanwhile, Jennifer is getting the text asking her if she’s interested in the Frank Lloyd Wright Lego for her parents (who I will just randomly guess aren’t FLW fans!). Finally got it straightened out, and got the Lego, along with a cute lime green Lego brick keychain for Stephen.

We headed over to the Christmas store, and managed to find a couple ornaments for us and my mom. Next headed into Goofy’s, which we’ve never been to before, so weren’t as upset as others on the boards about the limits on snack credits. We both made one of the make your own snack things – Stephen did the fudge cookie and I did the marshmallows and we both thought they were more than adequate for a snack credit and actually never even managed to finish them during the rest of our trip (and couldn’t bring them home since we’d be spending the last day at DHS after checking out and they would have melted). Well, we enjoyed what we had of them and I got a cute Mickey head straw to bring home out of it!

Of course we checked at both World of Disney and at the big Toy Store (can’t remember the name) for the CD, but neither of them had it in stock or could tell us who might. They told us to check at the American pavilion at Epcot, but that was all they could suggest. Which surprised me because on our last trip when we were looking for a certain size shirt, I know they told us which stores had it, even in and out of the parks if we didn’t want to use a park ticket, but apparently this one isn’t tracked as well or the CM’s weren’t as trained or as interested in helping us! Think this was all we did at DD.

Okay, too many images again, so I'll have to make a part two for the evening of this day!

[marciemi]

Day 4 - Part Two

Again, we weren’t sure of our driving time, so we decided to head over to the Grand Floridian for our 4:30 ADR at 1900 Park Fare. We’d also heard it was a long walk from the parking area, but it really turned out to be not bad at all. We probably arrived around 4:10, after a very quick stop at Pop for Stephen to run our chocolate concoctions into our room. They were just starting to check people in for opening, so we checked in. Stephen sat down, and I walked around the GF exploring just a bit and watching the wedding party that was obviously getting ready for the big moment! Snapped just a quick pic of the pool:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/IMG_3321.jpg

I stopped quickly in the gift shop, where the CM’s were all in a cluster, evidently waiting for something. They all kind of looked at me like “What do YOU want?” (Maybe it was just my lime green Crocs!). I looked over at the small section of CD’s in the corner, and guess what I found!? Yes, the CD we were looking for! Bought it quickly and I headed back quickly to meet Stephen and get seated. First we had to get the “formal” photograph, which they then tried to pawn off on us for $30ish during the meal, but at least they were nice enough to take a quick shot with our camera:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/IMG_3294.jpg

They had a young girl lead the crowd in a chorus of “Bippity Boppety Boo” and then we were in. We had a nice seat near the middle of the main room, and I tried to go grab some quick pictures of the buffet before it was attacked:

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Okay, everything I’d read about this meal was how great the character interaction was and how bad the food was. Getting there at opening at least, we thought the food was pretty incredible. There was everything you could have wanted, and since I hadn’t really eaten since breakfast, I was at least hungry for a change. Unfortunately, since I still wasn’t carrying my fanny pack, I didn’t have my pink sweeteners and had to go with the Sprite Zero for my beverage. Stephen and I each got several plates of all the different foods.

One big mistake. I looked at the seafood salad (pictured above and on my plate) and although I’m definitely not a big seafood fan (especially cold), decided that it had olives and artichokes in it, both of which I really like so I’d try some. I took care to NOT get any of the shrimp and just kind of scooped around it. Well, my plate is sitting there while I eat my soups (above too) and finally I say “What IS that?” to Stephen. He says the same thing – he was wondering why on earth I would have gotten that. It looked like octopus or squid or whatever – all shriveled/curled up and you could see the little suction cups from the tentacles. EEWWWW! Okay, I know some people are more adventurous eaters than I am, but that was it for the salad for me. Quickly covered it up with another plate and grabbed the first waiter going by to pawn it off on! Besides that incident, we thought the rest of the food was good and were enjoying ourselves.

But by now it’s getting on 5:30. We’ve been done eating for 15 minutes and are dawdling over our desserts. We still haven’t seen the first character at our table. They’ve introduced them all (Prince, Cinderella, and the 3 “steps”), but they all moved through our room, into the back room, and haven’t even resurfaced from there yet. It’s not just us – other families in the area are getting a bit antsy. Even the CM’s are getting antsy. We have one of the supervisor types with a clipboard come a couple times and ask us if we’re waiting to see the characters. We explain that we are (that’s what we came for darn it!). Now I didn’t care about Cinderella or the Prince, but I did want to see the Stepmother/sisters again since we’d found them so funny yesterday and Stephen was really hoping to ham it up with them here.

As you can imagine, by the time they got to our table, the only interest was turnover. How quickly they could move through the area. We did the basic “quick pic” with the Prince and Cindy:

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Getting on an hour and a half and still haven’t seen anyone else. One of the clipboard CM’s asks us if we’re still waiting. Um, still yes! She offers if she wants she can take us over to meet the other characters on our way out. I thought this was fairly rude – both to us, and to anyone else waiting (as everyone in our part of the room was – not sure why they were just asking us this unless they felt that we shouldn’t be waiting for characters as adults/teens). We decline and continue to wait.

The stepmother and first stepsister (sorry, I still get Anastasia and Drizella confused) finally come over fairly quickly. Stephen tries to play it up a bit with both of them, but they’re basically like “take the pic so we can get out of here”. So we do:

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We had plenty of time to get a shot of both of us as we waited around:

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Finally, the last stepsister makes it to our table and we have our only funny interaction of the evening, and it’s all due to Stephen. We do the obligatory quick pic, and Stephen comments on her dress, how stuck up Prince Charming seems to be, how nice her stepsister is, etc. and she just kind of says “yeah, yeah”. Meanwhile, she reaches for his CD case which he has now sitting on the table (we’re looking through the songs as we’re waiting), apparently thinking it’s an autograph book. She picks it up and says “Do you need me to sign this?” Stephen, always quick with a joke, quickly picks up our check (which has also been sitting there for the previous half hour) and says “No, but you can sign this for us if you’d like to pay for our meal!” She just kind of rolled her eyes at him, but I thought it was hilarious:

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Okay, okay, we’re leaving already! I definitely wouldn’t go back and do this again. Really disappointing after all I’d read about the great character interaction. Guess you have to have cute kids to qualify or be there on a less stressed night! We walked around the GF and did a bit more picture taking:

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I took the picture of the grand piano, and then as we were walking out, Stephen suddenly stops and says “Wait, they’re playing Joseph!” So we go back in to watch the pianist play a classy variation of “Close Every Door” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (once of Stephen’s favorites). I quickly record it all on my camera for the folks back home (also fans). The pianist seemed to appreciate the interest at least! Oh, and the other picture is because Stephen plays the bari sax, but this one was much bigger than that!

So tonight we headed back to Pop before dark! Decided to write our postcards from last night and go down and get a few more and write those as well. While we were down there, Stephen decided to go for another of those tie dye cheesecakes. I took a few pictures along the way (you can sense Stephen’s excitement about all the picture taking!):

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We came up and decided we needed to get some well-needed rest at about 8:30pm. I decided to look up the show schedule for Hall of Presidents on my phone (Steve Soares’ website) and the next thing I knew, I woke up a few hours later with my phone still in my hand! I’m one of these people who never, ever fall asleep easily so this definitely shows you our amount of exhaustion! But really, both of us slept through from before 9pm until 7am the next day for a good 10 hours of sleep. And yes, we needed it!

[circelli]

woohoo!! :cool1:

[dawnbu40]

I'm sorry to hear you didn't have good character interaction at Park Fare! Our family (2adults and an older teen) had the opposite experience in May. We hated the food but loved the character experience. At least you liked the meal!

[Worfiedoodles]

What a fantastic TR! Really enjoying your memories and adventures!

Maria :upsidedow

[Worfiedoodles]

Oops! Double post

Let me add, I'm taking ds11 to Universal by myself for Thanksgiving as a special mother/son treat (dad would rather stay home and watch football), so it's great to read about your trip!

Maria :upsidedow

[Sleepingbooty]

Great update!

I guess I'm naive, but I'm surprised to hear about a family trying to cheat their way throught the single rider line - and being successful at it! Boy, that would have really annoyed me too!

[macraven]

you pack deoderant in your fanny pack?

i would have never guessed.......:laughing:

[ortholablady]

Enjoying your TR so far. It's nice to see another teenage boy who doesn't mind taking a trip with his Mom. I was actually there with my DS16 (almost 17) some of the same days as you. We were there Aug. 28 - Sept 1.

[AmandaSparks730]

Just stopping in to say that the CD you mentioned on Day 3 DOES exist!

It's called "4 Parks, 1 World" (Not sure if you found it, as your TR isn't over yet). I found it in the giftshop at Mickey's Philharmagic.

[ILuvJimny]

I am enjoying your TR! DS15 and I are headed to WDW in October, so it's good to hear that someone else is brave enough to go with a teenager. We are actually taking his best friend along so I will likely get ditched or should I say - have a chance to do a little touring on my own. We are able to get in on free dining, but are trying the express one with just the 2 CS and 2 snack credits each day.

One question - is there a reason you chose to use a car instead of the Buses? We are doing a day at Busch and a short Bahama Cruise, so will likely use a car for those but planned on the Magical Express and the buses for the rest of our getting around.

I love your idea with the pins for kids that need a little joy. I think we will have to try that!

I hope we can have as much fun as you guys did!

[marciemi]

Thanks everyone! We were gone camping for the weekend so hopefully tomorrow I can get back to the next update!

AmandaSparks - yes, we did find it if in the previous installment - at the Grand Floridian while we were there for dinner at 1900 Park Fare. Actually listened to many of the songs while driving to and from camping this weekend. One funny story - we were up in the upper peninsula of Michigan driving along a remote area and I was picking songs from the CD (okay, actually on the ipod now) to see how long it took my son to figure them out (he was driving). We were listening to the song from Imagination and suddenly there was a very STRONG skunk smell - for real! We're like - "Wow, we're back in the Scent Lab on the ride!" Just great timing!

ILuvJimny - the reason we finally decided to use the car was just that we're so paranoid about being early in the mornings (if you haven't found that out yet in the report! :rolleyes1 ). We were just really afraid we'd be up and ready and waiting for a bus at 7:45 and then one wouldn't come until 8:30 or something. Also I liked the option if we spent the day of being able to run back to our car to change shoes. And of course the one day we went to Downtown Disney, I think it would have taken a LOT longer to go from AK to Pop to DD to Pop to GF back to Pop on a bus than it did in a car. I just didn't like the lack of independence not having a car would result in. Just me - YMMV!

[MEK]

Bummer about the characters at 1900 Park Fare. What's up with that? I had that same experience several years ago at Donald's breakfast when it used to be at Restaurantsaurus (or however you spell it). The characters completely snubbed me. They were only interested in the kids. I had quite the opposite experience at CP.

Glad you guys decided to give yourself a bit of a rest. Great TR.

[marciemi]

Day 5

Well, hopefully the next few days are going to get a bit shorter. We’re past the “must do everything” part of the trip, and trying to step back and just enjoy stuff now. Of course that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be at rope drop or anything! We debate sleeping in since there’s not that much we want to do at MK, and so much of it can be done with FP’s, but after getting a good night sleep last night (finally!), we’re ready to face the world (pun intended!) again and think going early and taking a mid-afternoon break would be better for us. We deliberate where we want to start the day, and decide that – darn it – we haven’t done Dumbo since 2000 when Stephen was 7. Yes, we’re not the target audience, but Space isn’t open so why not? Who cares if all the parents of young kids glare at us! Yep, we’re heading there first.

Well, we get to the TTC, park right up front again, but this time, although we’re not any earlier than Monday, we have to take the resort monorail. Takes quite a bit longer, but we still have no trouble being first at a turnstile. We recognize Jennifer over on the turnstiles at the other side, but before we even have a chance to go say hi, they’re letting us through the first gate. Not even enough time to grab a picture! We get through and it’s probably only 8:10. So we work over to the other side where Jennifer and her daughter (also named Mackenzie!) are waiting. We find a shady area to wait and make ourselves comfortable:

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We hang out together and socialize. Watch person after person come up and explain to the CM why THEY have to go in (“but I’m a resort guest, I get to go in early” or “I have a breakfast reservation”). She sends the ADR folks over to the correct line, where many of them obviously DON’T have a reservation and end up coming back to join our waiting group. I feel bad for the CM having to explain the same thing so many times. Finally, it’s time for the preshow and we’re let in. On our way into the castle, I stop and grab a quick picture of Stephen:

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We get up to the rope at the front of the castle, and the Fairy Godmother is out signing autograph books and taking pics. Glance over, and HEY – those autograph books look familiar! Yep, it’s Kerry and her crew, also waiting to head to Dumbo:

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Well, now we have an excuse to go to Dumbo. Rope drops and we head over with them. They grab a quick picture of us on Dumbo together (because I’m sure Stephen wants to post it on his facebook page!):

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And we do our best to get one of them behind us:

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Well, that’s about it for pictures from the MK morning. From here we’re replicating a lot of what we did on Monday, so I didn’t even bother taking any more pictures. We say goodbye to Kerry, Nicole, Mackenzie and Logan and wish Mackenzie a happy birthday – today is her real birthday and she’s off to get a birthday card and do some shopping.

Stephen and I head over to Winnie the Pooh, and then Peter Pan again. Same routine as Monday from here. He grabs the Splash FP and I meet him at Thunder Mountain. We ride and although we weren’t planning on doing Pirates, we walk right by there, and again it’s hot, so why not? From here we go right to Jungle Cruise, where we’re again not lucky in our choice of tour guides. This time through I have to wonder if I’m actually on JC, or if we somehow ended up over at AK on the safari! Our older male guide sits down the entire ride, never looking back at the passengers, and gives a basic play by play. “On your right you will see hippos, hippos can grow to this size, yada, yada”. “Rainforests and jungles are endangered these days”. Occasionally a droll question “should we go into the cave?” but not funny at all. Very disappointing since we love this ride and now we’re 0 for 2 on it. Oh well, guess there’s always next trip!

We next head back up to use our Splash FP and decide to grab one for Thunder Mountain for later in the evening when we return. Well, we rode Splash twice on Monday and got misted/sprayed each time, and even were in the front row once. This time, we’re in the middle of the boat (supposedly safer) and just get completely drenched. As in Kali, wring out your shirt and socks, shake out your shoes wet. Somewhat frustrating because although it was hot, it was also very uncomfortable. By now it’s getting near 11am, so we decide to head to Main Street Bakery for lunch. Not all that comfortable since it’s air conditioned and we’re squishy, so we grab a spot near the door which isn’t quite as cold. Since we have two big meal events (‘Ohana dinner and Wishes Dessert Buffet) coming up this evening, we decide to just split one CS meal here. As we’re waiting in line, another DIS’er (aksunshine) sees our lime green Mickey heads on our fanny packs and introduces herself. We chat quickly in line but the tables are too small to even possibly find a space together. Luckily, she gives me her card (I’d never remember a name otherwise!). Okay, wait, I do have another picture – our meal here:

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If you look closely at Stephen’s shirt you can see how wet it is. We’re partway through the meal, and suddenly a parade passes! Yes, I’m not sure of the name of this one, but we do have an awesome view of it out the door so we watch as we eat our meal. Finish the small amount of food quickly, and head to Tomorrowland to grab Buzz FP’s. Realize that we really wanted to see Monsters, Inc. again, so we pop in and watch that show. Still really funny – we really like this show. This time Stephen had a couple of his jokes used - he submitted about 10 of them in the waiting area - after he ran out of names for him, me, and his brothers, he started using "fake" names like Ilene Dover, from Steep Cliff, California, and Joe King. One in his name was used, as was "Joe's", but they just read it as J. King. By the time we get out, we can grab yet another set of FP’s for Buzz so we go ahead and get them. It’s not much after noon, but we’ve accomplished our agenda and are ready to go take a break (yes, we’re being intelligent today).

Stop and get some photo pass pics on the way out and Mackenzie and Kerry walk by. We quickly get them to stop and join our pics as well. Unfortunately I don’t have my photopass CD yet, so none of those pics here. We head out and Stephen decides he wants to take the monorail over to Epcot. Sure – why not? Sounds cool and relaxing, so we ride over there and enjoy looking around at the park from above. We sit a very long time at the station (guess they’re waiting for the train to fill up a bit before heading back to the TTC) and eventually we’re on our way. But wait, now we’re stopping. They tell us they’re adding in a train at the TTC and we have to wait. So we sit out on the track for about 10 minutes. We can see our car, but unfortunately can’t get to it! Finally we’re off the train and back to Pop!

Well, it’s just unbearably hot outside, so we decide this would be a great time to walk all over the resort and take pictures! No, not really, but it’s actually sunny out so that’s why we decide this. And we figure we can swim in the pools on the way. The first thing we want to do is go find all of our birth years and get the pics of those signs. So we get our bathing suits on, and a quick pic before leaving the room:

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Then the view from the room:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/IMG_3335.jpg

And the end of our hallway – all the pictures of the Legendary years area. I know that a lot of people find this depressing, but I find it just fascinating to see these buildings, left like this for so long:

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Well, we make it down to the trail by the lake and (obviously) Generation Gap bridge. We are in the 50’s so work our way up to my birth year. We have no trouble finding 1964 for my husband, and then 1965, and...no 1966. We couldn’t find 1966 to 1969 no matter how hard we looked. We’re getting near the bridge at this point, so we look on the bridge, near the bridge, heading up toward the pool, no luck. We’re really getting hot at this point, so we decide just to go in the Hippy Dippy Pool and at least cool off a bit. Well, again the pool is just too warm, so we swim for about 5 minutes and figure at least walking around wet will help some. On for more pics:

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We walk a bit further and manage to find Stephen’s birth year (and both his brothers’ signs as well):

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We go over to the 80’s and 90’s section and snap a pic of one of the Rubik’s cubes, for his brother who is a huge Rubik’s fan:

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And decide that once again we’re getting too hot, so stop at the computer pool:

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Another quick swim in warm water and we’re ready for more pics:

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Hm, about this point I realize that I have my camera on the wrong setting and the above 5 pics (which we took already) didn’t come out. We quickly go back and recreate all these pictures, much to Stephen’s excitement (or lack thereof!). We are still hot, so this time work our way back to our room area and go in the 50’s pool. Nope, no cooler than the rest. I ask Stephen if he wants to stay longer and he does so I tell him he can while I go up and get showered and ready for dinner. I do and he times it and gets back at the right time (so he’s not banging on the door while I’m in the shower, since I didn’t have a second key with me!). He gets showered as well, and now we actually have some down time to relax.

Well, if we’re relaxing, why not book our bounceback right now? Honestly, the odds of us coming back are fairly low, but it seems like we have nothing to lose by booking so I call the number and speak to a very knowledgeable CM who helps me make all our decisions, confirms that Pop is still the regular dining plan for next year and I book for all 4 of us (planning/hoping that my oldest will be at college by then). He confirms that I can change/cancel, etc. everything up until 45 days prior, so why not? We can always hope it might happen! We call over and Jennifer and Mackenzie are also taking a break (Stephen saw them in the 50’s pool) and getting ready for dinner so we chat a bit with them.

Again continued due to too many pics! :sad2:

[marciemi]

We decide we don’t want to be late for ‘Ohana, and get all our stuff and head out for the Poly! We get there a bit early and try to call the family from NY that we’re meeting. Get their voicemail so check in at the desk and make sure we’re on the list – yep, so we decide to explore the hotel a little bit and get some pics.

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We get a call from MaryAnn and they’re on their way. They join us and we check in and are seated almost immediately. Now, I spent months looking forward to this meal and in a lot of ways it was very, very frustrating because the meal was completely rushed. I didn’t get any pics of the food because there simply wasn’t time. We hardly had a chance to eat, let alone chat, and by the time I got to much of the food it was already cold. They brought the salad, and the bread, and the wings, and the noodles and the pork dumplings and we hadn’t even served it all yet before they were bringing the dipping sauces and all the meats. Honestly, they were on seconds of the meats before I’d even tried a first of anything. And we had NO room on the table for everything. And the waiters were kind of just throwing things down. They came over with a bowl of something and kind of glared at me to make room for it and when I tried to move the salad, it hit Lou’s (MaryAnn’s husband) water glass, which dumped all over him. Again, the waiters weren’t particularly interested in helping, so it was kind of frustrating (I’m sure even moreso for him).

As far as I can tell, the food all seemed to be good. I’m not sure what the alternative would have been or what we should do the next time? Maybe just say no the first few times they came with meat? I didn’t get a chance to enjoy anything and a lot of the time didn’t even know for sure what I was eating at that point! I will warn that the shrimp was very spicy – we like spicy, but even so, a few of them went a long way. And I’d read so much good about the dessert, but I literally wasn’t half done with my meal before they brought it and I barely got a chance to sample any of it. Before we knew it, the meal was over – honestly, our ADR was for 5:15, we checked in shortly before 5, were seated immediately and were probably done by not much after 5:30. More than a bit rushed!

One interesting thing – no flames please. MaryAnn and her family had bought the Deluxe Dining plan and hadn’t made enough ADR’s so knew they were going to have a lot of credits left over. When we came in, they offered to pay for our meal using their credits. I thanked them but told them that I knew that they wouldn’t allow them to use more credits at one meal than there were people in their party (all 4 of their family were there). She insisted it wouldn’t be a problem so I let her ask the waitress, who told her it was fine! I was amazed because I KNEW that they aren’t supposed to do that but they didn’t even blink – just said “Oh, you want us to charge 6 meals instead of 4, okay, sure!”

So we waved goodbye to MaryAnn and family, but got a quick pic first (and it was very challenging to get our waitress to take this for us):

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Well, Stephen and I are true DIS’ers, so now what’s the most important thing to do? Well, let’s see, we have 2 extra TS credits and no ADR’s left for them! Time to get on our phones and check online dining! We’re doing this on the monorail over, while we wait for the train at the MK, while walking up to Thunder Mountain only to find out that it’s closed for some unknown reason, while we get back on the train and head to Toontown, while riding Barnstormer. Yep, we’re going to find something!

We already have lunch at Le Cellier tomorrow (Sat) so first start looking for a possible dinner in Epcot as well. Pretty much all we can get is Biergarten or Nine Dragons, neither of which is appealing to either of us. So we decide to try to Sunday before we have to leave for the airport. We’ll be at DHS, and originally booked 50’s Prime Time, but decided we wouldn’t have enough time with catching ME so cancelled it, but now that we have the rental car, we probably would have time for a lunch. Stephen searches on his phone for 50’s for 11 or 11:30 and gets offered only Hollywood and Vine (sorry, but somehow I don’t think we’ll fit in with the preschool character meal crowd!). At the same time, I check Sci-Fi for the same times and get offered 50’s Prime Time at 11:20?! I quickly snatch it up and spend the next 20 minutes trying to get my confirmation on my phone. Finally – yay – we have a lunch!

We go in and use our two sets of Buzz Fastpasses, although both times we are chided by the CM at the entrance for using them so late. Oh well, at least he let us ride. We work our way back over to Main Street and get several photopass pics along the way as it’s getting darker. When we get there, we ask a CM if he can check for us and see if Thunder Mountain is open yet. He calls over and about 5 minutes later we’re told that it is. We quickly hightail it over that as it’s getting near 7:45 and we’re supposed to meet Jennifer for the Dessert Buffet at 8.

We get there and get in the short FP line quickly. She texts us and asks where we are and we tell her and she tells us that she’s waiting for us over by the Plaza restaurant. As soon as we’re off, we run back over there and we all get in line to check in for our wristbands. I’d heard horror stories about how bad this was, but it takes maybe 5 minutes and we’re shown to our table, in the first row, with a beautiful view of the castle. We snap some pics of one another quickly:

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You’ll notice Stephen and I are wearing our DIS shirts and TGM pins. We knew a lot of people from both boards were supposed to be at this party, so we had them in to hopefully meet people. We did some of the photopass pics, and then all headed up to get our first plate of desserts and sit down to enjoy:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Food%20only/100_0322-1.jpg

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Sorry I didn’t get more pics. We weren’t starving or anything so certainly didn’t get as much as we could have after dinner at ‘Ohana! Meanwhile, we had brought stuff to share with the kids – both glow stick bracelets and little tiny flashlights (you can see the bag of them in the second pic), so Stephen went off in quest of kids to share them with. Apparently as he walked around, he met many TGM/DIS’ers who asked him where he’d gotten his shirt (of course he had no idea). Some of the folks then came over to chat with us and I got to at least meet a few of you! Stephen pretty much ran out of kids before he ran out of lights so he started giving some out to people outside the party, who were apparently much more willing to take them! But he had fun making people happy and before we knew it, it was time for Wishes! Just a few pictures because my camera isn’t great and neither is my photography!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0320.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0328.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0330.jpg

Well, all too soon it was over. We had debated if it was worth lingering and socializing or rushing out to beat the crowd, but it seemed like pretty much everyone just headed right out so we opted not to stay. Obviously with just a mom and a teen, we can move more quickly than a lot of folks, so we made it to the monorail ahead of a lot of the gaggle and went right to the resort monorail. However, it seemed like everyone had the same idea, whether they were actually staying at a resort or not (we had our car still at the Poly). And the Poly was after the TTC, so it was very, very crowded the entire way. We were amazed at the number of people getting ON the monorail at the resorts, since it was so late, and only figured out the next day that it was due to the midnight EMH at Epcot. So eventually we made it back to the Poly, hit a restroom, and headed back to Pop. We were pulling in and saw Jennifer and Mackenzie walking back to their rooms as well (they were parked at GF from their dinner at 1900) so apparently we were on the same timeline!

But now it was really late for us. After 10, and we weren’t even ready for the next day at all yet. Got Everything put away quickly, stuff ready and climbed into bed. Yep, so much for that rest last night. We’re back to exhausted again!

[AmandaSparks730]

First post :)

Stephen is a '93 baby, like me. Ah, Beanie Babies, I collected those.

[Sleepingbooty]

Hey, I just noticed that you two have been wearing lime green every day so far - just how many lime green shirts do you have girl!:goodvibes Way to represent the Dis!

[Disney4nonah]

Still with you great updates.... :D
I'm more and more nervous about getting ADR's for the many of the "popular" Character Meals, because of so many mixed reactions about them.
I guess, i'll just have to strike out and take a chance :)
O'hana for dinner is on my list as we had done breakfast there, but oh man how they rushed you....
And Chef Mickey's for dinner, there's only two of us, oh well, we'll take a chance. Thanks!

[mpetti]

Hi Marcie:

Just caught up with your trip report. Thanks for all the great details. I just love the picture of you and Stephen on the Dumbo ride.

Maryann

[marciemi]

Thanks for reading everyone. I'm hoping to start on the next installment soon here. MaryAnn - do we not look like the typical Dumbo first cycle crowd? :rotfl:

Disney4nonah - I agree that on the character meals, it really comes down to the experience on that exact day. We did Garden Grill on both trips and had a great time, and the previous time it was 3 teen boys and they still spent a lot of time with us. I really think a lot of it was the free dining this time and the focus on turning over the tables as quickly as possible. I'm definitely a person who wants to eat and go (especially on vacation), so if I felt rushed, trust me, it was rushed!

Sleepingbooty - yep, our vacation revolves around wearing lime green shirts! Although we did wear our super wicking, lightweight triathlon shirts (white) on our AK day just because it's so hot there. But I had at least a couple lime green shirts that we didn't get to bring along this trip so we'll never have a shortage of them! First started collecting them on our trip back in 2000! And we bought lime green 2009 shirts this trip too so even more to figure in our trip planning!

[marciemi]

Day 6

Well, we’re getting there! Definitely on the downhill slope of the trip! Today we decided since we were going to end up with some extra CS meals now, that we’d go down to the food court and split a CS meal. Since our room was on the fourth floor, it didn’t make sense to go all the way back up, so we just brought everything with us and headed down. We got an adult breakfast platter, which was too much food for both of us combined, let alone one of us! We each got an apple juice, and also got scrambled eggs and sausage (which I ate), bacon, a biscuit, and potatoes (which Stephen ate) and 2 French toast sticks (which neither of us ate). All for one CS credit!

Great – so we headed over to Epcot for our last full day of touring. Coming probably not a surprise to many of you, we’re first in line at a turnstile and sitting comfortably waiting for the park to open. I pull out my little Ziploc from my fanny pack that we used to keep our passes/room key and any FP’s in and only see Stephen’s card. I ask him if by chance he has mine, which of course he doesn’t. I pull everything out of my fanny pack and go through it all and I don’t have my KTTW card! Of course I’m starting to freak out. I give Stephen his card, tell him to stay there while I go over to Guest Services, and if I’m not there when they open the park (it was probably 8:30 at this point), to go ahead in and just keep me updated by text. I know I used the card to pay for our CS breakfast using credits, and all I can imagine is that it was on the tray and under a napkin or something and got thrown away. I’m having visions of having to go back to Pop and dig through the trash cans!

I get to Guest Services and explain my whole situation to the CM who simply asks me for identification (I give him my drivers’ license) and bam – prints me a new card! Yes, it was that simple. He told me that if I found the old one that it would have been deactivated so to just throw it out, but everything is the same as how it was before. I easily make it back to where Stephen is with plenty of time before entering the park. I guess computers are good for some things!

On the card note, one funny thing we noticed. I always carried the room keys and FP’s. Stephen always carried our Photopass card (after we lost it on the first day). Well, we went to about a zillion photopass photographers during the trip. Every time Stephen would hand them the card after they took the pics and EVERY time they’d hand it back to me, instead of him. After awhile he thought it was kind of funny (although he acted insulted) – guess not one photographer figured a 16 year old could handle carrying the card!

Okay, no pictures at the turnstile since I was busy running back and forth to Guest Services, but I managed to get one of him once we were through and waiting at the next rope:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0336.jpg

Okay, and we didn’t take nearly as many pictures today, again since we’d been here already. We went to Soarin’ first together and this time did the standard FP and then ride scenario. When we were done there, we headed over to Test Track, got a FP for later in the day, and rode single rider once. At this point, we headed back to the Land Pavilion. We were scheduled to do the Behind the Seeds Tour at 3pm, but were thinking in terms of our energy level and the heat of the day, maybe it would be better to try to do an earlier tour. We had an ADR at Le Cellier at 12:25 that we had to work around though, so since it was a bit before 10 now, we checked to see when the first tour was.

That tour began at 10:30, and since they still had plenty of room on it, they were happy to switch us to that tour. We still had plenty of time though to go use our Soarin’ FP, so we went in and rode. Back, grabbed yet ANOTHER Soarin’ FP, used the restrooms, and joined our group for the tour.

I’ve read all kinds of wonderful things about this tour – how they gear it to the ages on the tour and it can be fun for younger kids as well. I was happy to see that it was all adults in our tour, but this ended up being a strong negative (for me at least since I’m not knowledgeable about gardening type things). Seems like most of the other people in our group were serious about the subject (one of them kept insisting to our poor guide that Disney was doing some things wrong and telling her she had to tell her bosses to do what he said was better!). I thought the tour was fine, and it was neat going back and seeing everything up close, and especially since the boat ride was closed, it was great to be able to do that. However, I didn’t really learn much from the tour. Our guide was very soft-spoken, so I couldn’t understand much of what she said. Plus, other people in the group were asking questions far beyond my level of expertise (or even interest). I think next time I’d prefer to be with a group of young kids and have more “fun” with the tour, but if the boat ride was open, I don’t think we’d bother with this again. Some pictures from the tour:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0338.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0343.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0351.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0354.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0357.jpg

The sad picture of the “beached” boats out back through the window:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0360.jpg

And the really cute baby alligators! I tried to get Stephen in the picture to get a proportion of how small they were, but none of them came out (either he was blurry or they were!):

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0358.jpg

Well, the tour was over, and it was almost time for our next Soarin’ window. Not enough time to ride before we had to head back to Canada, but of course time to grab another FP! So again we stood there waiting for our window to come open in a couple minutes. And then headed back to Canada:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0366.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0365.jpg

We waited a few minutes for Jennifer and Mackenzie to join us, and then we checked in. Again, we were seated within a few minutes (although we noticed that by the time we left an hour later that there were much larger gaggles of people waiting for a table – seems like it’s good to have the earlier reservation times). Unfortunately Jennifer and Mackenzie had eaten a large breakfast at ‘Ohana and weren’t all that hungry (Mackenzie didn’t get anything but ate a bit of the pretzel breadsticks). Stephen and I were hungry at this point though and ordered a bowl of the cheese soup for dipping the breadsticks in. It was awesome as a dip – I think it might have been a bit too “plain” for me as just a soup (kind of just like eating nacho cheese or whatever!), but it was great with the breadsticks, especially the pretzel ones. I ordered the filet, Stephen ordered the strip steak, and Jennifer ordered the Mac & Cheese (which looked very good, but also like WAY too much to finish!). Everything we had was great, although when I asked Stephen about his (which he ate every bite of), he told me it was just okay and he doesn’t like steak. Um, why order it then? I had told him he didn’t want to order the chicken Caesar salad (yes, we can get that at the Pop food court), but thought he liked steak somewhat (which he must if he ate it all!).

So it was on to desserts. Stephen wanted a milkshake (again, I don’t know why he didn’t order this as his drink, since that was presented as an option) so he and Jennifer each got one to go. I ordered the chocolate “Moose”, although it was also appropriated by Stephen. In retrospect, I think I got a bite of it and recall I never even got to try the milkshake. Ah, gotta love teen boys!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0369.jpg

And some pictures of us and the Jennifer crew:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0368.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0367.jpg

After this we decided to stay and see the CircleVision Canada movie, since we’d read it was redone recently and was fairly funny. Well, actually, I don’t think we’ve ever watched a CircleVision movie at Epcot – at least not in the last 20 years since we’ve had the kids with us. This was one of the unexpected surprise hits of the trip. Stephen really enjoyed the movie and still talks about parts of it. Probably somewhat because he grew up 30 minutes from Canada and camped there several times a year. But it had a lot of funny parts and we both had fun here.

We left and worked our way around WS yet again. We ran into Jennifer and Mackenzie again many times and made the mistake of not jumping in line with them when we saw them waiting to see Alice. My mom is a big Alice fan and we never managed to take a pic with her on this trip, but we figured we’d have time on the way back, but then when we came back, she was taking a break. Anyways, we worked over to Japan so that Stephen could have his coveted ginger salad (yes, it’s been at least 30 minutes since we ate lunch!). We asked if he could use a basic salad as a snack credit (we had a lot of those left too) but were told no, so he got the Chicken Salad, cookie, and drink option and we used a CS credit for it. I really, really wanted another Udon soup, but was so stuffed from lunch that I couldn’t even think about it!

Oh, one funny thing. Going WAY back to our meal at WCC that first day, when they packaged up our cheesecakes along with salt and pepper. When we were at Yakitori House on Tuesday, Stephen had asked for salt and pepper for his salad. They offered him pepper. I asked if they had salt and was told “no salt, only pepper”! So today we made sure to have our leftover salt from our cheesecake along for him to have on his salad! (Yes, I realize we probably could have gotten it at a lot of other places, but figured it was meant to be)!

Neither of us really wanted to continue around WS, so we headed back the way we’d come (missing Alice as I’d said). Stopped in the little gift shop near the entrance to FW so he could buy his girlfriend a German Mickey doll (she’s taking German in school). We got back to Future World, and stopped in Mouse Gears again to see if they had any good snacks we could get for a credit. Stephen found a little alcove that he fit nicely into:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0371.jpg

And when he came out of it, a kid watching had thought that he was a mannequin! Next, we headed over to Test Track to use our last FP there, and Stephen finally got to get the picture he wanted to of himself next to the 16 Year Old Boy graphic (seems like every other time we were too far front in the line or were in the single rider line and didn’t wait there). Yes, he's a bit taller than your average 16 year old:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0372.jpg

We came out and walked over to the Land pavilion and used one set of our FP’s to ride Soarin’ one more time. By this point, we’d ridden it enough that Stephen could do almost the entire preshow from memory (“Hello. My name is Patrick and I’ll be your chief flight attendant.”) He could also tell which scene was showing just from the music. So maybe we rode Soarin’ just a few times too often! We decided we didn’t need to ride it again and gave away our last set of FP’s to a couple coming in, and started to work our way out. Oh, but we have to ride Spaceship Earth one last time, and this time I videotaped the entire end sequence where it shows our “future”. I did also send a video postcard, but can’t figure out how to save that as an image to upload to photobucket, so I guess you don’t get to see it!

We left the park for real, after stopping for a few last photopass pics, and then in the photography studio in order to get our free 5x7 pic from our package. Chose a nice one from Epcot from our earlier day there:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/EpcotPP001.jpg

We headed out to the parking lot to our car, only to find evidence of how hot it was on the ground out there:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0377.jpg

Yep, someone lost their crayon! We headed back to Pop, and on the way in I took one better pic of the Generation Gap bridge (the last one was quite blurry):

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0378.jpg

We decided to do some quick swimming and some not-so-quick packing. We got nearly everything packed up and the one full duffle bag taken out to the car. I left the carryons in the room to finish up the packing in the morning, and we hung our swimsuits out to dry some as well. We went down to the food court. Since we had 3 CS meals left, we debated using two tonight and saving one for later tomorrow or the other way around, but decided to go for two tonight. Mistake since we both ended up throwing out much of our meal. I let Stephen get that Chicken Caesar salad he’d been craving at Le Cellier, and it was way too much food for him. Meanwhile, I got the “big bowl” of chicken noodle soup, thinking he’d share it with me. The soup was actually pretty good, but much more of an Asian flavor than regular chicken noodle, so when I had Stephen try it, he didn’t like it at all.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Food%20only/100_0381.jpg

I probably didn’t eat more than a quarter of it. We both got our dessert (muffin for me, tie dye cheesecake for him) to bring back for breakfast the next morning, and used some more snack credits to get an apple juice for breakfast as well and a cupcake to share. A couple more pictures of the Rubik’s Cubes for his brother:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0383.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0385.jpg

We stopped in the gift shop to use up some more of our snack credits. Oh, on this trip too, Stephen discovered Itzakadoozie popsicles (the long, twirly ones), so we’d gotten several of those during our days for snacks. This time we were trying to find something that we could bring back with us. After several attempts (they’d tell us something was a snack credit, but then it wouldn’t ring up as one), we finally got Mickey and Minnie decorated lollypops to bring back. We headed back to the room, to set our alarm and get ready for our last “sleep” here in the World! This was the second time I laid down with my phone to look up something, and this time Stephen ended up taking my phone out of my hand and plugging it into the charger without me noticing, because the light from it was bothering him. Set our alarms for very early the next day since we had to completely pack up and we were heading for DHS and Toy Story Mania Madness!

[Sleepingbooty]

Hey! No lime green shirt today - whats up with that?:goodvibes

Great update - but sad to see the trip winding down.

[RunningGirl]

This report is touching to me because DS and I went a couple days before the rest of the family last year and stayed at Pop. We were first in line at every turnstile as well! It is so much fun to just take one kid and go do whatever they want. I'm so glad you did it and know you'll both always treasure the memories from this trip!

[keishashadow]

wow, that was quite a read:thumbsup2nothing like detailed TRs!

couple things jumped out @ me...

*the onion soup & creme brulee looked delish

*tenacles:scared1:? im now worried re our ADR @ 1900 Park Fare. The guys are meat & tater types, will they starve? bummer re the interaction there too:confused3. Im starting to worry that our time 5:00 pm will get us to the party later than i'd like...what do u think? probably too late to try & change it.

*very cool to be picked for both family of day & receive the candy lady's goodies...melted green crayon a hoot (too bad it wasn't lime green:laughing:)

*do you think the food offerings/quality has declined since your last trip?

[circelli]

I must admit I LOVE the green crayon!! :rotfl:

Great read :thumbsup2

[marciemi]

Well, we do have matching lime green Wisconsin shirts that we were going to wear together, but then Stephen got a lime green "Por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas" shirt that he wanted to wear too, so we decided to go with a different color combination on this day and be "Wisconsin-y" instead. We did have a lot of people comment on the shirts so it was nice.


*tenacles:scared1:? im now worried re our ADR @ 1900 Park Fare. The guys are meat & tater types, will they starve? bummer re the interaction there too:confused3. Im starting to worry that our time 5:00 pm will get us to the party later than i'd like...what do u think? probably too late to try & change it.

*very cool to be picked for both family of day & receive the candy lady's goodies...melted green crayon a hoot (too bad it wasn't lime green:laughing:)

*do you think the food offerings/quality has declined since your last trip?

Janet - we thought the food was fine at 1900 Park Fare other than my one weird experience! :eek: There was prime rib and several types of potatoes for the meat and potato types and so many desserts that you wouldn't even need that! Most of the stuff was more normal, which was why I guess I wasn't looking too closely at that seafood salad!

Honestly, we've never really done Disney dining before. Every other trip, we ate 1 or maybe two table service meals, nearly always character meals. And we're not very picky eaters at all (well, except for things like tentacles :rolleyes1 ), so we're probably not the best ones to ask. We thought the service was great everywhere (rushed possibly a few times, but still good) and the food was fine and the quantities were generally too much.

Out of the restaurants we did this time, if I went again, we'd do Le Cellier and Chefs for sure, possibly Garden Grill (just average, but if I wanted to get a pic with Mickey, I prefer the family style meal to a regular buffet), and not 1900, 50's Prime Time (food was Denny's quality, but we went for the fun - I'd use the credits for somewhere "nicer"), or WCC (same thing). I'm not sure on 'Ohana - if I went with just Stephen again, definitely not. If I went with the rest of the family or anyone else, probably just so they could try it and we'd hope for a less rushed time! Some of my problem was that this time I was worried about Stephen being hungry and tried to do more buffet/all you can eat type restaurants. Now that we know we have more than enough food, I think I'd stick with more of the "order an entree" places.

[Sue88]

I have been enjoying your report on my breaks at work! It is so nice to take a few minutes to dream about a nice trip to Disney!
Thank you for shareing your trip. I am glad you included so many photos! And I love all the details so don't worry about long entries!
I'm looking forward to more report!:lovestruc

[Disney4nonah]

Caught up with Day 6 and jotting down to get a 12:30pm ressie at Le Cellier!
Thanks for the tip :D:surfweb:

The Crayon was great, man on man that's hot

[marciemi]

Day 7

Well, we’re almost at the end! Today is the last day and our only day at DHS. And once again (like losing the key card yesterday), the day didn’t start off on a good note. I had seen the doors with their check out information hanging from them on various other mornings when we left, and was expecting ours this morning. But when I looked, after we were up and ready by around 6:50am, it still wasn’t there. I read the information I’d been given back in the beginning, and it said the envelope would be there before 8. Well, since we wanted to be over at DHS by around 7:30, this wasn’t going to work (and yes, in retrospect, that was WAY too early, but we hadn’t done TSM before, had read bad things, and were concerned!).

So I called down to the front desk and said I hadn’t received it and just wanted to make sure we didn’t have a balance before we checked out. Although I’d put a credit card on my account, we’d been careful to use either dining credits or cash for everything we’d purchased (or my regular credit card for a couple of the larger purchases in DD). She said she could check for me and came back and told me all I had on it was a charge for $50ish from the Garden Grill our first night!? Well, I know I used TS credits and paid my tip in cash, so I had no clue what that was for. She told me I needed to come clear it up at the desk in person. And of course all my receipts are stuffed in various locations that are either in the car already or packed away in our carryons. I try to look quickly through everything to find that receipt, but of course can’t (and incidentally, even though I tried really hard to save all my receipts just in case something like this happened, I never found that one, even when I got home and went through everything carefully).

So of course I’m totally stressed out at this point. I tell Stephen to finish packing up (so much for a relaxing morning getting out of there) and rushed down. Actually got there a minute or two before 7, and they weren’t even open yet to help customers, but when I went up there, one CM flipped over her sign for me so she could help me. I explained the situation and she looked into it and said it was a “gratuity”. Now, I realize there were 6 of us at that dinner, and they have the automatic gratuities, but we’d explained to the waitress that we’d all be paying for it separate. Plus, even with 4 adults and 2 kids, there was no way an 18 percent gratuity would be $50, since it was buffet and there were no real “extras” to calculate in. The CM told me she would take it off, and said to come back on my way out. Well, since we were pretty much on our way out, I asked if I could just wait while she did it. No problem, and it was all cleared up. She did tell me that my card had already been charged, but that there would be a credit for the same amount. Whew.

So...where were we? Everything back into suitcases, fill water bottles, grab my muffin and try to choke down a few bites (I’m too rushed and stressed to eat at this point), everything in the car, and we’re off to DHS. Since it’s about 7:35 by this point, I’m really concerned we’re going to be late as we pull in the parking lot. (And no, it’s not an EMH morning, we’re just early to beat the TSM crowd!). So I tell Stephen as soon as we pull in, he can run ahead and get in line and I’ll get everything out of the car, etc. and meet him there. Only to find that we are the FIRST car in the parking lot. Just in case, we rush over to the turnstile to be the FIRST people at the turnstile. And the ONLY people for about the next 20 minutes. And even then, anyone arriving is heading to an early ADR at Hollywood & Vine. Here’s us and the (very empty) entrance area:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0387.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0388.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0389.jpg

Well, this was a bit more interesting while waiting at least (once some other folks got there!) since they were trying to drum up interest for American Idol, so they had people walking around as film crews, filming “wanna-be’s” and having them show off for the crowd. Many of them were younger kids who wouldn’t meet the age requirements, but had fun singing for a group. Stephen enjoyed watching them all, but wasn’t motivated to get up and sing anything, or consider auditioning for American Idol (or even watching it for that matter, although if we’d had a full day we might have considered it).

For a change, I was at an organized turnstile. Pretty much with no warning, the CM told me to put my ticket in, and I was through the gate. Stephen was still standing there watching the film crew and finally saw me on my way down the street and reacted! The view up ahead:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0390.jpg

We were right where we wanted to be – at the rope, on the left, but still near the middle. Stephen took both tickets, but we decided to both head to a FP machine, just in case one of us had trouble. A photopass photographer came around and got a pic of us waiting in the front of the crowd (still don’t have those pics yet). Next we got to watch a cute preshow. I don’t remember this one from 2007, but it was funny this time. Each time the “director” gave the instructions, he would say something like “Now when the rope is dropped, you will all WALK (this word said in a much louder, deeper voice)...”. He repeated it several times during his instructions for the “extras” (us). Good way to get the point across and have it be humorous.

After all our stress (I actually had dreams about this the night before because I was so worried about how bad this would be), it didn’t seem any different to us than the many rope drops we’d done heading to Soarin’ or Dumbo or Space or Everest or wherever. I can understand how it could be a bit scary if you had young kids or a stroller, but I didn’t think there was more of a crowd or that anyone was more assertive/obnoxious/aggressive than at any of the other biggies at rope drop. Stephen had no trouble staying with the CM’s at the front, I stayed near him just in case, and he was one of the very first at the FP machine. He got a return for 10am, so that’s obviously where they were starting at this morning. We made it into the regular line very quickly as well – probably 20 people back or so. Near enough to the front that we never slowed down. The CM’s led the crowd through the line queue, singing and clapping as they went, and we moved pretty much up to where the loading platform was before we slowed down. It was hard enough for me to grab a couple very quick pics of some of the cute things in the queue area, so I really don’t see how anyone would be able to catch up to someone further up in line (without running or jumping over rails, which I think the CM’s would have stopped them for). Just a few pics (including the lead CM!):

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0393.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0394.jpg

Okay, I don’t want to sound negative about the ride, but honestly, after all the excitement and hype over the last couple years, I was a bit disappointed. I had heard how much better it was than Buzz Lightyear, and I guess I was thinking it would be more like that ride, where you were actually shooting at real things, not just pretty much completely a video game. I don’t know, I mean I guess I thought you really shot at things and knocked down targets and “popped” balloons. I feel somewhat now that since it’s out for Wii, I can do all of that at home on my TV without having to rush and stand in line. I don’t know how I missed for two years that it was all video game, but I did. It was still fun, and I’m glad we had the FP’s and got to do it a second time, but I really don’t feel it compares to ToT as my favorite ride at DHS! Stephen enjoyed it, and was also glad we did it again, but wasn’t like “oh, I wish we had more days here to do this again” or anything.

So...we finished up our ride here and zipped over to ToT. We weren’t yet close to our window for FP’s so we decided we’d try to ride both of these without getting a FP. We rode ToT first, since this was our priority, and literally walked on. For whatever reason, I really enjoyed the “ride” part of this much more than normal this time. Seems like usually I’m impressed with the show, and the ride is much more just like any “drop” type ride at a regular amusement park. This time it seemed much more thrilling and fun. We came off and headed over to RnRC. Decided to ride single rider, so we’d have more time throughout the day, but based on the line at this point (it said 20 minutes, but it didn’t seem to be near that), we probably waited nearly as long as we would have had we just rode together. It was a fun ride though, although once was enough for me. Got a quick pic of Stephen’s ride pic:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0397.jpg

Since by now it was right after 10, we decided to grab another ToT FP for later in the day. We discussed riding one of those again, but decided to go try the Great Movie Ride instead. Okay, the main reason we did it was because one of the pieces of trivia I had for my calendar was that they used the same airplane in Jungle Cruise (back half) and Casablanca scene (front half) in GMR, so we wanted to see that! We headed there, only to find ourselves blockaded a bit by the High School Musical 3 show. Cut through some of the shop areas to get around it and finally got to GMR. Again, virtually no wait. We walked all the way into the room where they were showing the movie clips, and about 5 minutes later were loaded onto trams. Yes, the gangster scene this time, but I think that’s always the case for us. Stephen in the land of Oz:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0402.jpg

Well, our next objective was Muppetvision. We headed over there, only getting mildly lost on the way – for whatever reason, DHS is by far the most confusing park to me and I never had a real sense of where anything is in relation to anywhere else. We went in and watched the show, probably waiting about 10 minutes in the preshow area. We definitely enjoy this show, and the bubbles were working, despite some reports I’d read on the boards to the contrary. Their reflective captioning was also working, which was good as well.

We left here and attempted to work our way back to TSM to use our FP’s. But needed a bathroom break, and got lost a few times, and ended up in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground. I tried to convince Stephen to reenact a few of the scenes from pics we have at home here from when he was little, but he refused to go on the slides (I wonder why?). Him this trip:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0405.jpg

Back in 1998 – he doesn’t look THAT much different, does he?

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1998trip/98MGM070-1.jpg

Anyways, we left here and by the time we finally found TSM again, it was about 10:50. We asked the CM at the entrance how long it normally took to get through the line with a FP and she said at least 15 minutes, including ride time. Since we weren’t optimistic about finding 50’s Prime Time, and had an ADR there at 11:20, we decided to head there first, especially since we normally didn’t seem to have trouble being seated ahead of our ADR times. So we worked our way back towards the Sorcerers’ Hat, through the main area...only to get quickly shoo’d back by a CM. Yes, it was now 11am, and time for the next High School Musical 3 show. Auggghhh!!

Okay, we worked our way all the way around again, and made it over to Prime Time by about 11:05. Took our name (yes, it was on their computer, which was a relief), and we sat down in the lounge area, only to have our name called about 30 seconds later. We were taken into one of the back rooms. No TV at our table for 2, but certainly others we could see in the room. There was already another family of 3 seated across from us, and the waitress was with them. She left and came over to our table, asking where we “kids” were from. When we told her Wisconsin, she pointed to the other table and told us those kids were from Wisconsin too! Unfortunately, we’ve only lived here 3 years and asking them where they were from and them naming several small cities we’d never heard of, we decided we must be from a different part of the state! But they were friendly, and we discussed school starting for both their and our kids in just 2 days time.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0407.jpg

I decided to try the Pot Roast and Stephen went for the sandwich – not sure of the name but it was like a stacked turkey and ham club type. Our waitress was a bit “fun” without being overly pushy about it – harassed me a couple times for playing with my “toys” at the table (really, I was trying to use my cell to take a pic of my son to send my husband) and telling me it was “family time”. Also, when I got my pot roast, I ate most of it, but probably left a quarter or so. Before taking the plate, she picked out the remaining tiny carrot slice and told me I had to finish my “veggies”. She couldn’t harass Stephen since there was nothing left on his plate!

Next we ordered dessert. Stephen ordered the Smores, which was about the only thing I remembered from the one other time DH and I had eaten here, back in the early 90’s. I went with the sugarfree cheesecake, which I thought was fairly good.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0409.jpg

We finished up and headed out. After the heavy meal, we decided that perhaps heading to TSM first would be better for our stomachs than ToT would be so we decided to work that way. But what’s this? Yes, as we head toward the sorcerer’s hat, we’re right on time for attempting to avoid our THIRD HSM3 show of the day! Boy, too bad we didn’t want to see this show. Again, we maneuver around the people and make it back to TSM:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0406.jpg

We both do better this time, but we find out that consistently Stephen scores well better than I do, but his accuracy is way lower than mine. Meaning of course that he’s younger and can pull his cannon much more quickly than I can. And goes with quantity over quality! But I at least figure out this time to shoot at the higher point targets (yes, I realize this is obvious, but at least figuring out what ARE the higher point targets in each scene!). A quick shot of Stephen:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0412.jpg

We leave TSM, and begin working our way back to the ToT area. A bit longer of a wait this time, even with a FP, but we’re on fairly quickly. We go up in our elevator and are moving through the hotel and watching the scenes, when another person in the elevator takes a flash photo. And another, and another, as we’re getting to the point of the actual drop (I mean, honestly, what ARE you trying to get a picture of?). As I’m sure you can imagine, this is both distracting and annoying. Finally, I can’t stand it and say “No flash photography, moron!” (okay, I’m not very tactful) in a loud voice. Several other people laugh, but I think they appreciate it. They didn’t take any more pictures, which achieved the objective at least!

We leave and as we work our way back up the street, stop and do a bit of window shopping. Stephen gets another one of those Itzakadoozies to use up our last snack credit. Strangely enough when he uses it, it doesn’t just show our snack credit as now being at zero (as it did for our TS and CS credits), instead it says “see front desk for assistance”. Since we’re not going back to the front desk, I know we had the credit, and he got his popsicle, we decide not to worry about it. We still have several pins left, so we walk around for a bit looking for kids with lanyards to give the last few away to. Finally, we only have one CS credit left, so we head over to Starring Roles to get a meal “to go” to take to the airport with us, since of course we’re not hungry right now barely an hour after lunch!

We pick out the stacked ham sandwich, which is huge, and a white chocolate cupcake, which we’ve been waiting for all week. We also get a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, and a large Sprite to take with us. This rings up at somewhere near $16, so definitely a good deal for a CS credit. We get little plastic storage containers to put our cupcake (okay, it got squashed a bit) and sandwich in, put it all in a plastic grocery-type bag, and we’re ready to head out. Oh, wait, it’s right at 1pm – time for, yes, you guessed it! Our 4th encounter with HSM3! Okay, it REALLY must be time to go! But one quick picture for Stephen, to show (sadly), where we’re now on our way back to:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/DHS/100_0413.jpg

We get to the car, and I need to top off the car with gas before heading to the airport. We left out yet another change of clothes so we can arrive at the airport not all sweaty at least. Stephen changes his shirt in the car (once it’s cooled down some) and when we get to the gas station, I quickly do some packing and organizing, fill the tank, and then head in to the bathroom to change as well. Of course by the time I come back out, pack away my clothes and get everything back in the car one last time, I’m sweaty anyways in the heat, but hey, it was worth a shot!

We head to the airport and quickly realize it would have been a good idea to have an idea of where we’re going. The maps are packed, so again Stephen is pulling it up on his phone, but I’m driving simultaneously (déjà vu anyone?). We decide to follow a ME bus in front of us, deciding they’re probably heading to the airport too. Coming as not a huge surprise, that plan doesn’t work, but at least by then Stephen’s found the airport on the map and I’ve found a freeway with signs leading me there. We don’t get hopelessly lost, but probably don’t go the most direct way either.

Once we’re there, we quickly follow the signs to the rental car turn in. We meet some confusion as to where we’re going to go since different people are directing us different places, but after moving the car once, end up in the right location. Take everything out, get the receipt and we’re into the airport. We’d seen some real backups for security on our way in, so we’re here a bit early this time. We get in line to check our baggage (which I paid for online using my cell phone already). Evidently we get in the wrong line, but they help us anyways, and we take our bag where requested and head to security.

Not as bad as we were expecting. We probably wait 10 minutes, but it’s fairly hassle-free. So now it’s about 2:45 and our flight isn’t until after 5 and we have nothing really to do. We just stop at the first gate and sit and rest a bit. Stephen stays with the stuff while I do a bit of shopping and hit the restrooms and then vice versa. We decide it’s time to eat our lunch, which he has in his backpack, from Starring Roles. The ham sandwich is huge, and definitely enough food for both of us, but it does come with a mustardy sauce, that from what I understand from reading the boards isn’t an option to not get it with. Basically I take the two top halves of the sandwich and make it into a sandwich for Stephen (without mustard) and I eat the bottom halves. But this wouldn’t work if you went with someone who really didn’t want it and weren’t sharing.

We ate the chips as well and then went on to the dessert. Hm, it didn’t hold up that well in the heat of the car I guess since the pretty chocolate (all white) was kind of melted and squishy. But it still tasted good, so we split that too. I talk to my husband, and before too long we’re boarding the plane. No problems, and this time we have a non stop to Milwaukee. We wait for our luggage there without issue, and actually meet another TGM’er (Tasha04) in the airport and get a chance to chat. My husband is there to pick us up, and we begin the 2 hour drive home. All the way home we share our stories from the trip, and Stephen and I look over our pictures on the camera. Yep, it’s over!

Coming up: A summary of some of our good and bad things, suggestions, recommendations, thoughts, etc. Also hopefully, at some point, my photopass pics to be added! Thanks for hanging in!

[Worfiedoodles]

Fantastic Report -- I like how even when your days had a discombobulated start, you rallied and had a terrific time! It is bittersweet how quickly they grow, but how great you were able to do a wonderful one-on-one trip!

Maria :upsidedow

[macraven]

i'm sorry your trip is over marcia.

i really enjoyed it !!

[Sleepingbooty]

:)Great last day. I so enjoyed reading your report!:)

[jstack]

Thanks for sharing. I loved reading your trip report:thumbsup2

[circelli]

I LOVED your TR Marcie!! :thumbsup2

Can't wait for more pics...I LOVE PICS :yay:

[Jennyfer]

Can't wait for the wrap-up!

[marciemi]

Okay, before I go on to my summary, I thought I’d do a quick “Stephen” montage – kind of like the MGM one above (okay, okay, DHS – I keep forgetting). Some pics from this trip and something similar going back to one of our trips between 1995 and 1998. Sorry if you’ve seen some before, but probably not the old ones at least! So here goes!

Dale 1995

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1997trip/95MK009.jpghttp://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0135.jpg

Pluto 1997

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1997trip/97MK010.jpghttp://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Epcot/100_0132.jpg

Cindy 1997 (He’s the one on the left)

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1997trip/97MK012.jpghttp://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/AK/IMG_3311.jpg

Mousekeeping 1997

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1997trip/98AS013.jpghttp://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0216.jpg

Cars 1998

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1997trip/98MK014.jpghttp://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0187.jpg

Dumbo 1995/1998

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1998trip/98MK005.jpghttp://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1998trip/98MK004.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0298.jpg

Just to show that I’ve gotten older too - Me, Stephen Dumbo 1995

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1998trip/98MK006.jpghttp://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/MK/100_0297.jpg

Pool 1995
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/1997trip/98AS007.jpghttp://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Pop%20Century/100_0288.jpg

Hope you enjoyed it. I’ll be back for the summary later!

[macraven]

beautiful pictures of him !!

you are a good mom marcie.

[Disney4nonah]

Great TR, Thanks! and loved the Montage, they grow up way too fast!!!

[keishashadow]

i didn't know starring rolls did 'takeout':thumbsup2good to know

good thing u checked ur bill:eek:i wish they'd go to system u could check on tv in the am:confused3

had to laff re u getting lost on way back to airport, ive been there more than once lol, I think it's a subliminal thing where u don't want vacation to end.;)

aw, sweet photos of ur kiddo, they do grow up so quick

[circelli]

you mean our kids grow up??? :scared1::eek:
great montage!!!:thumbsup2

[littlezar]

Enjoyed reading your trip report! LOVE the pics at the end! :goodvibes

[Sleepingbooty]

Fantastic pictures! Its so fun to look back on how they've grown:thumbsup2

[marciemi]

Disney Summary

Okay, unfortunately, no pics in this one. I’m not going to do what I’ve seen a lot of other people do and make separate lists of the good, the bad, and the ugly, or something similar, because really, it was almost all good. A couple rude people in 7 days are to be expected. It was too hot, but that was to be expected too! So I’m just going to give some random thoughts and reflections in no particular order!

1. If anyone gets the chance to do a solo trip with one of your kids, I would definitely jump at the chance. Although honestly, I think there would be a huge difference between doing it with a “kid” and a “teen”. Going with Stephen was just about the exact same as going with another adult – maybe a friend or something. We could both compromise, talk about what we wanted, make plans together and enjoy things just because the other enjoyed them. It was a lot different that I’d imagine going with a younger child – where the trip would truly be just for them. Not saying better or worse, because of course with a younger child you enjoy their enjoyment. With us it was just like a week of being friends with my teen and having a good time together. Without worrying about anyone else in the family or fighting or arguing etc.!

2. To us free dining was just an awesome deal. Yes, I realize that you pay tips, and at some places those tips were more than we’d pay normally for a meal at places near to home, but it was a chance to experience meals, hotels, characters, etc. that we never would otherwise. Staying at a value, you just come so far ahead on the meals. Contemplating doing this again next year but with 4 of us at the value, which would of course be an even better value! (We booked bounceback, but I don’t know how likely we are to be able to use it). I think we did as many TS meals this trip as in all our previous trips combined. Maybe because we go so rarely, we didn’t see that decline in service, food quality, or longer wait times that others complain about. We thought pretty much everything was top notch. Maybe not super-high gourmet food, but we don’t eat that at home. I do think next time I’d focus more on sit down meals. Two reasons I chose more buffets this time were to keep Stephen fed (I was concerned about having enough food) and to be in and out more quickly. After our experiences this time, I no longer have any concern about being hungry after pretty much any TS meal (or CS for that matter). Also, we had more problems with being rushed through meals than any taking too long, so I think I’d prefer in the future to sit and relax and order fresh food rather than jump up and down and go to a buffet for more generic food. I think our family is pretty much beyond the character stage at this point as well, and I’d enjoy doing some of the nicer restaurants instead. Out of the restaurants we tried this trip, I would definitely go back to Le Cellier and Chefs. I’d do ‘Ohana if I went back with other family members, but not if Stephen and I just went back again. Beyond that, I’d try others for the experiences!

3. I can’t see any reason to stay at a resort other than a value if we returned. We spent so little time in the hotel, and each time we were at one of the Deluxe resorts (we ate at 3 of them), just kept asking ourselves how that could possibly justify spending 4-5 (or more) times as much. For us – maybe not for everyone. But we do the parks hard and our room was for collapsing and sleeping. I found the beds at Pop Century to be incredibly comfortable. Didn’t realize how comfortable until we returned home the first night and I went back to my bed for the first time. (And normally I’m the opposite after coming back from a trip!). Going in the summer, I certainly didn’t miss the hot tubs, and my kids aren’t big waterslide fans, and we liked the nearness of everything compared to a moderate. I think if I went with our whole family or extended family again, I really, really liked renting a house on our last visit. But would jump on a value for the free dining again in a heartbeat!

4. I do think we did too much on this trip, but I’m not really sure how to NOT do that! Well, last trip, renting a house, staying 16 days, and just doing parks in the morning and enjoying the house and pool each afternoon/evening – yeah, that was great! But assuming we won’t be able to fit that in our schedules again in terms of time or money, I’m not sure how to relax more on a shorter trip. We know we spent too much time doing some of the big attractions multiple times (ie Test Track 4 times in a day isn’t necessary) and at Epcot, there were a lot of things we didn’t get to that we should/could have done instead. But at MK, we didn’t need to do things as many times as we did. But I’m not sure what the alternative is. Going back for an afternoon break seems so time-consuming and the pools didn’t seem particularly refreshing. Downtown Disney was just as exhausting, and we really aren’t big shoppers. We could have done the Water Parks option, but living near Wisconsin Dells, we have the opportunity to go there (which I think is just as good as the Disney WP’s) not on the Disney time, and my kids aren’t big water park fans anyways. So I guess we’d go back, do the pools briefly, and rest in the room more in the afternoons, but that also seems like a bit of a waste of the vacation time! Maybe try to alternate a day of that with an early day (like our AK or DHS day) and get to sleep early on the alternate days? Open to suggestions here!

5. To me the overall highlight of the trip was meeting up with folks from the boards – DIS or TGM. Meeting people online beforehand, talking to them via email for several months, and then getting a chance to meet them and maybe spend a meal or so with them was the best part of the trip. I realize if we had gone as a full family that this would be a lot harder (and get a lot more complaints from my guys), but it turned out great for us. I still keep in touch with people from our cruise in 2004 and our last Disney trip in 2007. This obviously isn’t for everyone but we loved it!

6. I would go in the summer again to get the free dining. Well, not really summer, but temperature-wise at least! The crowds even during the week we were there decreased dramatically over the course of the week. But using a good touring plan, honestly crowds don’t make a difference much to us! We just found that as the week went on as we rushed back later in the day to use our many FP’s, that the lines would be 10 minutes that we’d be avoiding instead of an hour or so – even less satisfying! We tend to plan to go hard early and stay ahead of the crowd either way and use FP’s so I don’t think it would make a difference. I don’t think I’d want to go a week earlier (first week of free dining) just because of the difficulties in getting ADR’s though. Given the option I would prefer to go when it was cooler, just because a lot of things would have been more enjoyable if it wasn’t unbearably hot – like the Kim Possible missions, many of the outdoor shows at Epcot, the parades, etc. But if nothing else, it certainly makes packing much easier. We’ve gone in December and January several times, and dealing with layers now without a stroller would be very challenging. Not to mention the shorter hours. I didn’t pack a single pair of pants for either of us, and threw in a small windbreaker for me only, that I didn’t touch until we got off the plane back in Milwaukee (and it was 52 degrees!). In these days of paying for suitcases, that could make a big price difference if you had to bring a whole lot more layers for more than a couple people!

7. In some ways Disney seems to be more about survival than enjoyment! I do recall that after our first full day in the parks, I was thinking about it and calculated that we were about ¼ done with our entire trip. Rather than being sad or depressed about this (that time was passing quickly), my first thought was “We’re never going to make it!” I guess my thought is that IF we make it back next year, I’m going to do my best to not feel pressured to get every FP and do every ride. I’ll try to enjoy some of the other, little things, that seemed to result in even more fun sometimes! Still not going to give up rope drops, but we also probably don’t HAVE to be there a half hour before everyone else!

8. Reading the boards is the best way to learn the little things that can really help in making a trip enjoyable. Without them we wouldn’t have know about using a flag for our car (and would have spent much more time wandering aimlessly!), wouldn’t have know about the centralized FP experiment in AK, or that they don’t have Sweet N Lo at the park restaurants. About Miyuki or the Kim Possible missions. About how to send a fax to the hotel requesting a location beforehand. Or Remy or the Dessert Party. I’ve been on the DIS for 10 years this December, and I still learned a lot before this trip. Hopefully the trip report can serve not only as my “diary” of the trip in the future, but also help share a bit of what I learned (and some excitement and anticipation!) with everyone else!

Thanks for reading!

Still waiting for the Photopass CD and then I’ll post those pics as well! I’m sure I’ll also think of some other last minute thoughts to add. I’ve had this up on the computer for a day or so trying to make sure I don’t have anything else critical to add!

[schumigirl]

:thumbsup2 Fantastic trip report, I really enjoyed it. And seeing your son over the years was just lovely. He does look like a lovely lad.
Glad you had a wonderful time :)

[luuuceee]

Marcie, great trip report! I've only gotten to Day 3 so far...will have to play catch up another time!

I CANNOT BELIEVE that people abuse the single rider line like that. Never has even crossed my mind. Wow.

I also think it's just awesome that you did the pins for the kiddos. That's a good idea for us to do in the future!

I'm so glad you and Stephen had such a great time. Even if we weren't there to hang out with this time. LOL.

Can't wait to read more when I can find the time!
--Kristy

[keishashadow]

imo, there is no wrong or right way to 'do' WDW

what can be a dream trip for one person is another's nightmare

and that is exactly the beauty of WDW, so much pick & choose from; anybody can enjoy it:thumbsup2

i enjoyed reading ur TR marci, good job~

[Worfiedoodles]

Reading this TR has been a pleasure from minute one -- thank you for sharing your fabulous adventure, I feel like I got to come with you on a wonderful trip!

Maria :upsidedow

[Sleepingbooty]

Sounds like you had just an all around wonderful experience :thumbsup2 I never thought about doing a trip with just one of my kids before reading your report, but now it seems like a really neat idea to spend some special bonding time together.:goodvibes

[MEK]

Really enjoyed your TR. It was a great read and you guys had tons of fun. Thanks for posting and for your final thoughts. I hope you are able to pull off a trip next year.

[claryche]

I can't believe that I didn't find this trip report before now. I absolutely loved your previous trip report and you didn't disappoint me this time either. I don't know if I have told you this before, but your 2007 trip report is one of the main reasons I got hooked on this dis board. Your trip brought tears to my eyes, good tears. And I just hope that when my DS is the age of your sons, he will want to spend time with his parents at Disney. I also love your pictures from past years to compare. I have always done that on my blog for past holidays and now I do the same with our Disney trips. Thanks so much for sharing your life with all of us.

[marciemi]

I can't believe that I didn't find this trip report before now. I absolutely loved your previous trip report and you didn't disappoint me this time either. I don't know if I have told you this before, but your 2007 trip report is one of the main reasons I got hooked on this dis board. Your trip brought tears to my eyes, good tears. And I just hope that when my DS is the age of your sons, he will want to spend time with his parents at Disney. I also love your pictures from past years to compare. I have always done that on my blog for past holidays and now I do the same with our Disney trips. Thanks so much for sharing your life with all of us.

Wow - thanks! :goodvibes I feel so honored! Really, I do the trip reports as much for me, so I'm always glad when anyone else enjoys them as well. But it's so much fun even now to go back and read our 2007 one. I'd never remember 90 percent of that stuff otherwise. I just wish I'd done this back during the trips when the kids were young. Of course I hadn't found photobucket yet (and for the first few trips, even the DIS!), but it would be nice to read all the details of everything from those days!

And thanks everyone for reading and all your positive thoughts/posts! I'm still waiting on the photopass pics and will get them up and finish up this trip report then!

[marciemi]

Just letting everyone know I'm STILL waiting on those photopass pics. Got the CD but a lot of the pics wouldn't upload so they're sending a new one. Mods - please leave this trip report open until I get to post those - thanks!

[mpetti]

Hi Marcie just finished reading your report. I loved it!!! :thumbsup2 I liked the before and after pictures. What a great touch. So sorry the report had to end. I hope you go next year so I can read your report. Thanks.:cool1:

Maryann:surfweb:

[marciemi]

Yay! I finally got my photopass pics! :banana: I'll post them one day at a time - not too many at the beginning. First day was our arrival day and Epcot:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image058.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image077.jpg

[Worfiedoodles]

Yea! I'm looking forward to seeing them, especially the any "magic" ones! Love the photo in front of the fountain, really a nice effect :lovestruc

Maria :upsidedow

[marciemi]

Ready for Day 2?!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image079.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image081.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image084.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image104.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image106.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image109.jpg

[marciemi]

We look kind of scary today! Looks like we're in front of Tower of Terror instead of in France! And the other family in our car at Test Track is having more fun than we are!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image159.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image156.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image175.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image226.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image225.jpg

[marciemi]

We took a lot of pics this day since we had so much down due to the centralized FP system they were using then. I'll only include a few since they seem a bit redundant after awhile!

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image233.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image235.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image240.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image248.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image264.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image268.jpg

[mpetti]

Hey Marcie: Love the photopass pics. They came out great. Thanks for sharing.

Maryann :surfweb:

[marciemi]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image344.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image384.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image459.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image472.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image474.jpg

[marciemi]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image602.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image604.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image608.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image619.jpg

[marciemi]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image645.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image715.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/marciemi/2009trip/Photopass/Image719.jpg

Well, that's all folks! I've finished up my Photopass pics and the trip report! Thanks to everyone who read and hopefully we'll be able to try this again next year! :thumbsup2