Are you Push?? Our sister trip around the World - COMPLETED 6/13!

[cfw213]

Hello all and welcome to my second trip report! My name is Christina and I will be your tour guide through this magical trip report! We just got back from a wonderful 8 days at WDW and I can't wait to share all the details of the trip!

Some of our highlights from this trip:
-Our first ride on TSM!
-Cupcake from Starring Rolls
-First stay at a Deluxe resort & first stay on DVC points/as a DVC member
-Being at LM at AOA on opening day
-The PeopleMover (loveeee!)
-The Animation Class
-Big Blue Pool
-Fantastic meals all around
-Low crowds!
-Photopass
-Remy!
-Good weather
-So many laughs and wonderful company

The lowlights (not many of them!!)
-HOT!
-Lovebugs, yuck
-Astro orbiter
-Some bad encounters with foreign travelers
-Bad service at TS restaurants

Of course I will go into detail on all of these highs and lows in detail! If you are new to my TR, welcome! Pop over to my PTR (link here) for a full background of the trip...below are the basic intros!

Who? - This time it was just be my sister & I!

We are both accountants - I am 24 and she is 22. I work in Philadelphia and she is starting a job in October in the building right next door. She's my best friend and I'm so happy to be taking another trip with her!

When? - September 15th - September 23rd! We had 8 day park hoppers with WPFAM.

Where? - Saturday - Thursday night at Art of Animation - Little Mermaid section!! Friday & Saturday was spent at our first DVC resort - Animal Kingdom Lodge. We also had free dining for the first part of our stay, upgraded to the regular dining plan from QS. We purchased DDP for the AK portion of our stay, since DVC is not eligible for FD.

Why? - No reason, just fun

I love to read and respond to comments from readers, so please join me and leave me some comments - I hate to be all alone out here in cyberspace! And if you are doing a September TR (or any TR really), I would love to read along! Please leave the link for me if it's not in your signature

Also, since I *love* food, I will be doing a dining review for each table service meal, which will be included in a separate post from the respective days trip report. I will rate it on the following categories:

Food (obviously)
Service
Ambiance
Wait time
Would we visit again?

Each dining review will be accompanied by loads of pictures (much to my sister's dismay). Each restaurant will be ranked 1-7. Since we had 7 table service meals, I will rank them in the order that we liked them the most (ie: 1 was our favorite TS restaurant of the trip and 7 was our least favorite).

I also took TONS of pictures on this trip (over 700 on my regular camera, plus another 250 from Photopass with edits!). We did a PP share so unfortunately I won't be getting the disk until the beginning of November. I'll have to leave the PP pics out for now and then do a separate post when the disk comes in.

Thanks for reading along, I hope you enjoy!

 

[cfw213]

Friday - September 14, 2012
Day 0 - Part 1 - Pre-Departure Day!

Saturday - September 15, 2012
Day 1 - Part 1 - Departure day is here!
Day 1 - Part 2 - We've finally arrived!
Day 1 - Part 3 - Tour of our Little Mermaid room!
Day 1 - Part 4 - Our first park - Epcot!
Dining Review - Le Cellier
Day 1 - Part 5 - Taking a dip in Big Blue

Sunday - September 16, 2012
Day 2 - Part 1 - Animal Kingdom
Day 2 - Part 2 - Blizzard Beach, resort pics & a big mistake!
Dining Review - Kona Cafe
Day 2 - Part 3 - First visit to our favorite park!

Monday - September 17, 2012
Day 3 - Part 1 - Typhoon Lagoon
Day 3 - Part 2 - Studios fun!
Day 3 - Part 3 - Hollywood Studios, Pt. 2
Dining Review - Mama Melrose
Day 3 - Part 4 - More HS & Fantasmic!

Tuesday - September 18, 2012
Day 4 - Part 1 - AoA Little Mermaid photo tour
Day 4 - Part 2 - Lion King/Landscape of Flavors photo tour
Day 3 - Part 3 - Cars photo tour
Day 3 - Part 4 - Nemo photo tour
Day 3 - Part 5 - Downtown Disney afternoon
Day 3 - Part 6 - Disney Quest
Day 3 - Part 7 - Fun around Epcot!
Dining Review - Coral Reef
Day 3 - Part 8 - Meeting & Greeting

Wednesday - September 19, 2012
Day 4 - Part 1 - One more waterpark!
Day 4 - Part 2 - Hooray for Hollywood!
Day 4 - Part 3 - Nighttime in Hollywood

Thursday - September 20, 2012
Day 5 - Part 1 - A magic kingdom morning!
Dining review - Les Chefs de France
Day 5 - Part 2 - Evening in Epcot

Friday - September 21, 2012
Day 6 - Part 1 - Goodbye Art of Animation
Day 6 - Part 2 - Hello Animal Kingdom Lodge!
Day 6 - Part 3 - Lunch & a relaxing MK afternoon
Day 6 - Part 4 - Lots and LOTS of pictures
Day 6 - Part 5 - The worst ride EVER.
Day 6 - Part 6 - Downtown Disney
Day 6 - Part 7 - Shop til you drop!

Saturday - September 22, 2012
Day 7 - Part 1 - Dining in the Hundred Acre Woods! And our *almost* celeb encounter
Day 7 - Part 2 - Last stop in Hollywood!
Day 7 - Part 3 - Magic Kingdom Chaos!
Day 7 - Part 4 - Goodbye Disney World

March 27th - Real life update!

PTR link!!!!

 

[mxkris]

Woo Hoo! Can't wait!!! Looks like it's gunna be a great TR! Unlike mine!!!

 

[TMGosizk]

Followed you over from your PTR, which I really enjoyed! So excited to read your TR!!

 

[luckylady]

Nice to have a sister to do Disney with. Green here. Can't wait to read about all your fun.

 

[729tink]

My sister and I are planning a trip for next year! Can't wait to read about your trip!

 

[leshunlenese]

Hi. I think is so wonderful to have a sister to go to disney with. My sister will go sometimes but she deos not love it and never would go on a trip with just me.

 

[cfw213]

Woo Hoo! Can't wait!!! Looks like it's gunna be a great TR! Unlike mine!!!

Thanks for joining! Last year I took like 20 pictures and they were all crap, so I'm sure yours will be better than my last one - can't wait to read it~

Followed you over from your PTR, which I really enjoyed! So excited to read your TR!!

Thank you for following!!

Nice to have a sister to do Disney with. Green here. Can't wait to read about all your fun.

I am really lucky - my sister and I are really close! She's the only person I can spend 8 days with without killing!

My sister and I are planning a trip for next year! Can't wait to read about your trip!

Thank you for following! You'll have so much fun with your sister!

Hi. I think is so wonderful to have a sister to go to disney with. My sister will go sometimes but she deos not love it and never would go on a trip with just me.

Thanks for reading along! I'm lucky to have a sister that will put up with my OCD planning.

 

[teekathepony]

I'm in! Looks like we were in the Little Mermaid rooms around the same time! I'm excited to hear what you thought too!

 

[cfw213]

These first two posts don't have a whole lot of pictures - I didn't break out the camera until I got to WDW - please bear with me!

Departure day had finally arrived! Oh wait - not yet! Just when you thought I was actually going to start this thing...let's back up a second to PRE-departure day. Unfortunately I had to work on Friday and it was the longggest day ever! Luckily we had a catered lunch at work that day and it was a "dress down" day so that made it slightly more bearable. I ran my last minute errands - made sure all the bills were paid, went to the bank to get cash for me and allowance for DH (yep, he gets an allowance - aren't you jealous?), and made sure everything was in line for the doggie. I had gotten a mani/pedi the day before with my friend so that was all set!

I finally left work a little early (I think I left around 5:15) so I got home a little early (around 6:00 I think). Jess, Mike (her boyfriend), Bryan (my DH) and Oscar (my doggie!) arrived with pizza around 6:15 - yum! We ate quickly, took Oscar for a quick walk, and headed to the movie theater around 7 to see Finding Nemo 3D! We had bought our tickets earlier in the week thinking it was going to be super crowded, and the website said 7:30. We got to the movie theater around 7:05 (I obviously live super close!), and when we went to retrieve our tickets from the kiosk, they said 7:45 - so annoying! Jess and I didn't feel like going home and coming back again so we went in to grab a seat. The boys walked to the Applebees across the street to grab a beer. Well...it was NOT "super crowded" we were the only ones in the theater for about 20 minutes! Of course the boys showed up around 7:50 since we'd saved them seats. They showed the Pixar short ("Partysauros Rex") and it was HILARIOUS! Bryan asked me when the movie was coming out...guess he didn't understand that it was a short!

Of course the movie was great, and even better in 3D. But the whole theater was full of preteens that recited EVERY.FREAKING.LINE. It was so annoying! From now on I'm sticking to my rule of only seeing movies after 10:00pm! The movie was done around 9:30 and we headed back to the apartment and got ready for bed...Mike and Jess stayed the night since we live close to the airport. We don't have a second bedroom but they slept in DH's "mancave" which has a big couch. We all went to bed pretty early since we had an early morning the next day!

 

[cfw213]

Woohoo, departure day was finally here (I'm serious this time!). Bryan's work alarm normally goes off around 5:45, and of course he forgot to turn it off! So it went off at 5:45, but we didn't need to get up until 6:15. But naturally, once it woke me up and I remembered we were going to Disney that day I couldn't fall back asleep! I laid in bed and played on my phone for a little bit and got up around 6:15...I straightened my hair and Jess was up shortly after. I grabbed this shot of all the boys having their AM coffee on the porch.

Since we were going to be traveling all day, I wanted to have a big breakfast. Jess and I packed the last of our things and went to pick up bagels around 6:45...we were back by 7:15 to pick up the boys, give goodbye kisses to Oscar...

and we left for the airport right on time, woohoo! It doesn't take long to get there and we were arrived and checking in by 7:45, maybe earlier for our 9:00am flight. We were flying Southwest so we each got to check two bags for free, yippee! It was so nice to not have to jam everything into one suitcase.

We breezed through security and checked into our gate. We had done pre-flight check in and got the A group so we were pretty excited about getting to sit together. Our goal was to get a spot near the front of the plane since we had a 25 minute connection in St. Louis (so stupid, as it's a two hour flight to Orlando!). So we got our seats, everyone got loaded on and.....**cue dramatic music** - something was wrong with the plane!

I was having flashbacks of our December trip when we got stuck on the tarmac for an hour. Of course, my mind went to the worst place - we would miss our connection, they couldn't get us on another flight out and horror or all horrors, we would have to stay in St. Louis until Sunday and we'd miss our Le Cellier reservation. *gasp!* Once I snapped back to reality, I went up and asked the flight attendant if they would hold the St. Louis connection (I assumed there were lots of people flying to Orlando on this plane). By now they were allowing people to get off the plane to get food, so I knew this wasn't going to be a quick fix. They eventually talked it over and told all of us going to Orlando to get off the plane and they would have to switch us to another flight. I was surprised that only 3 or 4 other families got off - guess most people weren't going to Orlando!

Being the extremely pushy person that I am, I basically shoved everyone out of the way (not really, but it's a funny visual) and got to the gate. The woman in front of us had the sweetest guide dog. They were able to put us on the 12:45 flight from PHL, landing in North Carolina (Raleigh I think), and landing in MCO at 4:10. Ok, not terrible. We would be two hours behind schedule but wouldn't have to switch planes (we landed in Raleigh but just to pick up more passengers) and we would still be able to make our 7:05 ADR at Le Cellier! Whew, all was okay. By now it was probably 9:30, so we had quite a while to sit around and wait at the airport! We sat near a nice warm window since the airport was frigid...I played on my phone and iPad and read my Kindle for a little while. Here is Jess, clearly very annoyed to be sitting around the airport!

We had to board the plane around 12:15 so around 11:30 we grabbed some McDonalds since it would be our last meal until Le Cellier! I just had a few nuggets and Jess had some nuggets and a parfait - starting the trip off really healthy!

 

[teekathepony]

Yikes! I'd be freaking out too if my flights got messed up. Glad they provided you with a fix that got you there on time for Le Cellier!

 

[TMGosizk]

Oh dear! Delays and flight problems are never fun, but when on the way to Disney they're ten times worse!! Every time I've flown through PHL I've been delayed for hours!!! And I fly through PHL to visit my family in Williamsport all the time! It's very frustrating!

I am glad to hear it didn't ruin your plans for later that evening though!! Can't wait to hear about Le Cellier!

 

[cfw213]

Oh dear! Delays and flight problems are never fun, but when on the way to Disney they're ten times worse!! Every time I've flown through PHL I've been delayed for hours!!! And I fly through PHL to visit my family in Williamsport all the time! It's very frustrating!

I am glad to hear it didn't ruin your plans for later that evening though!! Can't wait to hear about Le Cellier!

This was PHL! Knock on wood, I never usually have problems, except these last two times I've flown to Disney...guess they really don't want me to go!!

 

[luckylady]

Bummer about the plane but great that you were able to make your ADR at such a great place.

 

[cfw213]

Bummer about the plane but great that you were able to make your ADR at such a great place.

Yep, I was worried about that! Le cellier was worth the wait though!

 

[cfw213]

This is slow moving trip report - this week has been crazy! I'm going to try to update tonight, thanks for sticking with me!

 

[cfw213]

Side note: this doesn't really fit anywhere else in this timeline of events, so I'll just tell you now - we encountered one of the craziest people ever on this day! She was behind us in line in security (I want to say mid-40s) with a teenage daughter and she just yelled at the poor girl constantly for no reason. Maybe she was a stressful traveler, but she was just so miserable. She ended up being on our flight and going to Orlando and she totally lost her $hit when they had to rebook us. We just kept running into this woman all day and at every turn she was either yelling at her daughter or asking for special treatment from flight crew/desk workers/ME team, etc. Ugh she was so awful! Back on track...

Around 12:15 we boarded (but we were in group C since everyone was already checked in when we got switched!), and took a seat near the back of the plane. The flight took off right on time and was very uneventful, thank goodness! We landed a few minutes early (Around 3:55 at MCO). I think I was in shock that we finally arrived!

We quickly got off the plane and made our way to the mini-monorail and on to baggage claim. Here's Jess on the monorail!

The big joke here was that we had to be on level 1, B side. Last time Jess flew down alone and literally got lost for an hour in the airport because she was on A side. So we successfully found the ME, gave them our vouchers and lined up for AoA!

We encountered this really friendly woman who commented on my shirt and was shocked to hear that they had Disney stores other places than Orlando! Anyway, we must have just missed our bus because we probably waited for 30 mins or so (maybe less, but it seems like it took forever!). We boarded our *real* ME bus (not a Mears bus!) and pretty soon*they were shuttling us off to Art of Animation!

The weather at this point was overcast and semi-crappy, but not raining, so that was good news. First we crossed under this little beauty-

Not a terrible picture, considering we were a few rows back.

We first stopped at CBR, then Pop, then FINALLY Art of Animation!

I was sooooo excited I couldn't contain myself. I was surprised that there was only 2 other families staying at AoA from our ME bus! I thought it would be more packed since it was opening day for LM, but I was wrong again.

We did online check in so I stepped up to the podium (no line), while Jess used my camera to take lots of pictures of the lobby and check in area.
If you love classic Disney movies, this resort is so amazing! I fell in love. Check in was quick - our only request was two double beds instead of single and our request was met! Also, they gave us our 2nd set of FP+ cards at check in - that was a nice surprise! I was thinking we would have to go to MK to pick them up on Thursday morning. We were instructed to go to baggage services since our groceries had been delivered around 10:00am that morning. We got to baggage and low and behold, they were already in our room. Lots of pixie dust already since we arrived at Disney! Here is the amazing lobby at Art of Animation:

Next up...we check into our brand new Little Mermaid Room!

 

[BearcatsFan]

How did I miss this TR for so long? I'm all caught up now, though!

Sorry to hear of your plane troubles - what a way to start the vaca! Loving the photos of AoA - the lobby is beautiful! Can't wait to see your room pics.

Carry on!

 

[teekathepony]

Awwww I just got chills looking at your pictures! I can totally remember the feeling of walking in that amazing lobby!
Glad to hear your check in process was quick and easy!!