I Paid Someone $5 for a Catchy Trip Report Title, and This is All I Got-Updated 12/29

Please wait until the train has come to a full stop before gathering your belongings to exit.

Also remember: "Por favor manténgase alejado de las puertas".

Tribilín, you must have used half of your 40+ posts on my TR alone. I feel honored.
Your TR is great glennbo123, I'm enjoying it a lot. Beautiful family, good humor, nice pics and lots of new info.

And there's more to come so... :woohoo:
 
We are now onto Friday, July 3rd. You may have wondered what I meant when at the end of the last installment I called the next installment “The beginning of the end”. It simply means that at this stage of the trip we’d already hit each park once, we had two park days left, and so now we’d begin revisiting them for a final spin on our favorite rides or to make sure we got in everybody’s “must do’s”. In my master-plan spreadsheet I hadn’t even planned which parks we’d be at for these final two days -- dangerous, I know. Judy and I talked earlier in the week and decided that we’d do “abbreviated” visits to parks over these two days and squeeze-in two per day. We definitely did not want to be anywhere near the Magic Kingdom or Epcot on Saturday, July 4th. So, we’d save Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom for July 4th and go to MK and Epcot today.

I also want to mention that even though I didn’t talk about it previously in the trip report, we did do laundry in our suite periodically. :laundy: So now, when you start seeing clothes that you saw earlier in the trip report, they’re clean! It’s so nice to have a washer and dryer in the suite.

We got up pretty early, although at this point in the trip it was getting even harder to get the kids up. I thought it was tough earlier in the week, but was worse now that they had a lot of miles on their feet and legs. We got to the bus stop at 8:15, and after a short wait and wheelchair/scooter finagling at Jambo, we eventually arrived at the Magic Kingdom at 9:00. Apparently we were destined to be just behind the rope-droppers on this trip. I guess that’s not too bad.

I thought we’d immediately head over to Big Thunder and Splash, but was surprised to learn that James and Marlene wanted to hit the Tomorrowland Speedway again. That’s best done early, as the line gets long real quick, so we immediately came up with a plan that I’d go get fastpasses to BTMRR and hurry back (all the way across the park) to meet the rest of the gang at the Speedway (after they leisurely strolled there). Welcome to the life of a fastpass volunteer.

On my way to BTMRR I passed near the Hall of Presidents (I think I took the long way) and saw a big crowd :crowded: waiting to get in and a bunch of cameras and lights. It hit me that today was the day they were re-opening the HoP with the new animatronic Obama. I somehow got past it relatively quickly and got what I was after.

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On my way back across the park I noticed that in front of the castle CMs were taking down a bunch of chairs. I found out later that a mass naturalization ceremony had taken place and over 1,000 immigrants had become American citizens.

I caught up with the rest of the gang and we rode the Speedway cars. I don’t have any pictures this time -- I think I consciously decided I was going to soak-in the moment rather than try to get pictures. I remember that James wanted to try driving :drive: a little more than he had the last time and he was reaaaaly giving that guide rail that the car straddles a workout. He’d hit it and then try to correct, but oversteer, and hit it the other way. I finally got him going a little more smoothly and then I looked in front of us and Marlene was doing the same thing in her car. It made me think that our oldest will get a learner’s permit next year and then these two won’t be far behind. Yikes. When will department of transportation install these guiderails for our car to straddle on the highways?

From there we went back across the park to Splash Mountain. Well, first we had to make a pit stop for James at the Splash Mountain restrooms, which he had visited a couple of times earlier in the week. We were riding standby this time and the line was fairly long considering it was still pretty early. Here’s our “redneck” picture. I hammed it up a little, Marlene looks terrified, and James looks like he’s staring over toward Countrybear Jamboree or something.

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Then we used our fastpasses on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad -- one of our favorite rides. Here, ride BTMRR along with the kids.

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Judy expressed to me that one thing she wanted to do was get a picture with Minnie. So we made a plan to catch Mickey’s Philharmagic, then go to ToonTown to Minnie’s house, and then hop on the train to the front of the park. I stopped to take a few pictures along the way. Some people enjoying “the big drop” on Splash.

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A couple of shots of the riverboat.

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We enjoyed Mickey’s Philharmagic, but I didn’t remember it having songs and scenes from recent movies like “The Little Mermaid”before. Did they revamp it since 2005?

At Minnie’s house, Minnie wasn’t out. A CM said she may be in the barn out back, but wasn’t sure. We looked, and saw a huge line, but couldn’t tell if she was there or not. We didn’t want to wait in the line only to discover she wasn’t there, so we decided to make our exit.

Here’s a shot of Bay Lake Tower taken from the train as we went through the Space Mountain area of the park.

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Then we said goodbye to the Magic Kingdom and made our way to the monorail to continue our farewell tour.


In the next installment: A misty Minnie moment.

Link to next installment
 


wow, that's alot of people there for the naturalization ceremony! Was the park more crowded than usual?

so, were they becomming citizens of the US or Magic Kingdom?
 
Love the BTMRR shots. Too funny about straddling the rail..that can make for a painfully long and slow ride. Very cool about the naturalization ceremony, I had no idea they did that there, that's neat!
 
wow, that's alot of people there for the naturalization ceremony! Was the park more crowded than usual?

It was pretty crowded, but at the time I attributed it to being the Friday before a holiday weekend and the re-opening of the Hall of Presidents.

so, were they becomming citizens of the US or Magic Kingdom?

:laughing: Where do I sign up for MK citizenry. I'm sure I could pass the exam.

Love the BTMRR shots. Too funny about straddling the rail..that can make for a painfully long and slow ride. Very cool about the naturalization ceremony, I had no idea they did that there, that's neat!

I didn't know what had taken place until later; I figured it was related to the Hall of Presidents. I've read that Andy Garcia (Godfather III, The Untouchables) was the keynote speaker, but we didn't see him.
 


I was kinda amazing that you're not saying that it was a zoo the day before the 4th of July! Nice!

I love BTMRR action pix. I think it's going to become a tradition in my family
 
I was kinda amazing that you're not saying that it was a zoo the day before the 4th of July! Nice!

It was pretty busy but we got in, did what we wanted to do, and got out. I guess I didn't make a note of what time we left, but I think it was probably around 11:30.

I love BTMRR action pix. I think it's going to become a tradition in my family

Thanks. It seems like it has in mine already. I think it's a good ride for that....exciting enough to be fun, but not so rough that you can't take pictures while you're on it.
 
:thumbsup2 Love the ride photos. I am always too scared I am going to drop the camera. :blush:


I couldn't imagine saying goodbye to MK with a full day left! :faint:
 
It was pretty busy but we got in, did what we wanted to do, and got out. I guess I didn't make a note of what time we left, but I think it was probably around 11:30.

Good info....thanks.


glenn said:
Thanks. It seems like it has in mine already. I think it's a good ride for that....exciting enough to be fun, but not so rough that you can't take pictures while you're on it.

my thoughts exactly
 
I would try to squeeze in all of them myself on the last two days. How were the crowds on the 3rd? I went years ago on July 4th week and you couldn't hardly move through the crowds.
 
I would try to squeeze in all of them myself on the last two days. How were the crowds on the 3rd? I went years ago on July 4th week and you couldn't hardly move through the crowds.

Yeah, it was pretty crowded. We started with MK, figuring it would fill-up the most, and we tried to keep it strategic, just doing the rides that we wanted to do.
 
You've got some great photos, as always. I love the ones "on" BTMRR!
 
From the Magic Kingdom we took the resort monorail over to the Ticket and Transportation center. Here’s another shot of Bay Lake Tower, taken as were were about to go into the Contemporary.

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While we waited for an Epcot monorail we ate some sandwiches we had made that morning, then caught a ride to Epcot. We were able to finish our sandwiches before getting on the monorail, but ate some carrot sticks while riding…shhh.

Here’s a picture of my gang arriving at Epcot. You can see Spaceship Earth through the window…we were actually in Epcot -- we were at that little loop the monorail takes into Future World and then back out.

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Once we got into Epcot I went to get fastpasses to Test Track while the rest of the gang made a pit stop.

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Then I backtracked, found the rest of the gang, and we got in line for Spaceship Earth. The line was kind of long. It looped a couple of times on each side of the entrance, and man, it was extremely hot out at this time of the day. We just about melted when we were in the sun, and felt very fortunate when we got to a shady spot. Fortunately the line moved pretty quickly. I think it only took us about 15 minutes until we got inside the doors. I hadn’t been on this ride for a long time, and I really liked the changes they’ve made.

Lauren rode with me, and I guess we selected some kind of undersea adventure.

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And James and Marlene must have made similar choices.

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From there we went into Innoventions West, which can be dangerous since James loves computer games and could easily spend his whole vacation in there. We went in and the kids wanted to do this videogame-thing sponsored by IBM. Judy hates videogames so opted to wait. I love videogames, so volunteered to chaperone the kids. I don’t remember the name of this thing, but it puts you in a videogame. Each of the four of us went to a separate booth and it took pictures of us jogging, jumping, and doing a victory dance. Then we got to play a videogame where we were the characters we were controlling. It was pretty cool. It reminded me a lot of the videogame that the band Journey had out in the early 80’s. (There I go, showing my age again.) Then we could enter our e-mail addresses and supposedly we’d be able to replay the games from home for a month. None of us ever received an e-mail from this game. (But we did receive postcards from our future, from Spaceship Earth.)

While we were putting ourselves into videogames (remember TRON?), Judy discovered the Epcot Character Spot and saw that Minnie was there, so that’s where we went next. The kids didn’t want to spend all that time in line, but we said, “hey, we’ve done a lot of things you wanted to do, so you can wait for a while so Mom gets to do something she wants.” After watching a few cartoons on the monitors repeat themselves about 4 or 5 times (Donald’s are the best…watching him throw a fit never gets old) we were finally next. Mickey was the first character, and as we watched the people ahead of us get their pictures we noticed that Mickey’s shoe was kind of crumpled-in. Then we got our turn and Mickey had to take a break to “eat a piece of cheese”. When we came back we noticed his shoe was fixed also!

Now I could post a bazillion pictures from all of these character-meets, since we got a lot of individual and group shots, from both my camera and the photopass people, but I’ll try to keep it manageable.

Here’s James getting the Big Cheese’s autograph.

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And a group shot with Mickey.

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Then Pluto.

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And next was Minnie. First, some shots of the kids.

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Does this guy look like he’s not enjoying meeting the characters?

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Now I had never known that my wife had such a soft spot in her heart for Minnie. I had always thought she was more of a Tink fan -- she’s got Tink pajamas, a Tink charm on her bracelet, I don’t know what-all. But here we were on a quest to meet Minnie, and when we got there most of the pictures look like she’s getting overly-misty. (Nobody tell her that you can get pictures with the fairies!)

Here’s one of the better ones from photopass.

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I was able to get a couple after she regained her composure.

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And a group shot.

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Then on to Donald, who by his own admission is #1.

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And finally, Goofy.

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I was excited to meet Goofy. The kids pointed out that I was wearing my Goofy shirt, so when I met him I pointed to my shirt and said let’s do this pose. Well, Goofy got it right, but because (I guess) I looked at the shirt upside-down, I was doing a “raise the roof” pose instead of a “blissful state of Simplicity” pose. Who’s lookin’ goofy now? Duh.

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And finally, our group pose with Goofy.

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I love my Goofy shirt though. It says…

World’s Best Kept Secret
The Blissful State of Simplicity
Your Own Personal Utopia Awaits
Thinking Causes Thought (our family favorite, we still say this)
Goofy Is What Goofy Does
The Goofy Mind is a Happy Mind
What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know
Trust Your Heart For Answers


In the next installment: A Final Test.

Link to next installment
 
Great photo's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everyone certainly looked like they enjoyed the characters.

Good info on the new video game thingy whateveritscalled. I'd read about it, but not anyone doing it yet so that's wonderful. I think we will be hitting it on our trip, a good heat escape item for the agenda.
 
And finally, our group pose with Goofy.

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All of your pictures are great, but as Goofy is my favorite I have to say this one is the best... your "rise the roof" one is funny too :lmao:


World’s Best Kept Secret
The Blissful State of Simplicity
Your Own Personal Utopia Awaits
Thinking Causes Thought (our family favorite, we still say this)
Goofy Is What Goofy Does
The Goofy Mind is a Happy Mind
What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know<--- This one is my favorite!
Trust Your Heart For Answers
 

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