Oh the places We Go, The People We see

[jenseib]

2ed grade must be the age for Legos. I remember being her age and being into then

yes, lots of kids in her class were asking for them this year

Kindle fire is so cool I am sure both girls are loving it

The are having a ball with them.

 

[Woth2982]

Looks like you all had a wonderful Christmas! We tend to sleep in a bit on Christmas too now a days. My mom sleeps in the most and my brother and I have a new tradition of sending the dog in to wake her up, because she NEVER gets mad at the dog lol. Your Aunt Mary sounds like a riot being all impatient on getting her photo book. Such a wonderful gift idea. My mom always makes a photo calendar for his sister and all my cousins. It is always a hit as well.

 

[petals]

Sounds like you had a great Christmas. Luvin all the pics

 

[jenseib]

Looks like you all had a wonderful Christmas! We tend to sleep in a bit on Christmas too now a days. My mom sleeps in the most and my brother and I have a new tradition of sending the dog in to wake her up, because she NEVER gets mad at the dog lol. Your Aunt Mary sounds like a riot being all impatient on getting her photo book. Such a wonderful gift idea. My mom always makes a photo calendar for his sister and all my cousins. It is always a hit as well.

Too funny, blame the dog for being impatient.
My Aunt Mary is great. She is very giving and funny and truely loves being with her nieces and grand nieces. She will take Claire and Alexis for playdates and overnight parties sometimes. And they come home loaded up with sugar and cranky from lack of sleep. Abby loves Aunt Mary too, and she calls her Murry. I laugh every time I hear it.

Sounds like you had a great Christmas. Luvin all the pics

Thanks. We did have a good Christmas. The bad thing is, Claire has everything she could ever want, so I guess no more Christmas' for her!

 

[bitlerzx4]

I always love your TR's!

 

[Lovemy3babes]

Hi Jen! I followed you over from my TR this morning and am now all caught up. What a great trip with Claire so far! I'll be reading along for sure.

 

[dolphingirl47]

Goodness, Santa really was busy with your extended family. I am glad that they loved their photo books. I know how much work you put into them.

Corinna

 

[jenseib]

I always love your TR's!

Awww. Thanks for reading along!

Hi Jen! I followed you over from my TR this morning and am now all caught up. What a great trip with Claire so far! I'll be reading along for sure.

Hi and welcome to my slow going TR!

Goodness, Santa really was busy with your extended family. I am glad that they loved their photo books. I know how much work you put into them.

Corinna

Yep, I have spoled kids!
I wish I had more time to work on them, but for the time I did have, I am pretty happy with the books.

 

[jenseib]

After our failure at trying to get the sword out of the stone, we moved on.

I did a quick check to see if we could get into the new Fantasyland, but it was still a no.

I did ask them for a shot though, as they had the cutest outfits on.

So we headed off to Storybook Circus.

We had been lucky to already visit parts of this last spring when we spent the day here on our Universal trip, but more has been added since then. Only 1 Dumbo was running and Barnstormer was up and going then as well. This time around it was pretty much completed, though I suspect that more may be added or enhanced in the next year or two.

We got in line for Dumbo. The wait wasn’t too long.

This was the first time we went into the tent with the interactive stuff, which we passed by and just glanced at.

I still haven’t gotten the gist of how this works. I guess you can ask to play and then you get a pager when it’s your turn to ride? Correct me if you know how this works exactly. Anyways, just passing by this play area, it was unimpressive to us. The first thing Claire said was that it looked like it was for babies. And I have to agree. It really seemed to be more geared towards younger children, not for the very mature 7 year old with me! LOL But again, we only glanced in and we might have missed something good.

The longest part of our wait was actually back outside, so in all the wait time in whole was not bad at all.

And then it was our turn.

Claire gave me strict instructions! She would be controlling the flying and I was not allowed to touch it at all. I told her she better get us up high, as I wanted to take pictures. She failed!

For some reason she just wasn’t getting us very high. I did find out one disturbing thing. They planted trees all around this ride. TALL trees!!!! It’s impossible to get any shots of the rest of the park with trees in the way. I gave up on that idea real soon.

When we got off we walked over near the new splash train.

I am not impressed with this either. Now on a very hot summer day, I am sure Claire would like it, but for the rest of the year, I could see her getting wet and then complaining all day long about being wet. If you plan to visit this area, bring along another outfit to change into as kids appeared to be getting soaked!

Claire wanted to ride Barnstormer next. I don’t remember the posted time, but I do remember the line looked longer than I cared for, but we still jumped in.

The theming in the queue is very cute.

We stalled out for a few minutes so I looked back and took another shot of the train.

 

[jenseib]

And we got moving again.

These would provide shade on a hot sunny day ….though not much.

I believe at some point in time I texted Carey and asked if they wanted to sit together and watch the late parade and she said sure.
Also another co-worker of mine, Stephanie, was at the World this week as well. She had spent the day at Epcot with her son and some friends. She was coming over for the party and had just arrived. So we were sending texts back and forth as well. We planned to meet up at some point too. We had never officially met in real life yet, as we both do our jobs from home and online, so though we talk daily, we have never seen each other face to face.

More theming.

And finally it was our turn.

I tried to get a few shots as we were rolling all around.

It’s fun, it’s fast, and it’s way too short.

As we walked off I got this shot of a car going up. I thought it was neat and I had a poser in there …see the guy smiling for me!

I am still kind of curious what they will end up doing with this area.

Right now it has fast pass machines for Dumbo and Barnstormer. But it’s a big area for just that. And when the new system takes over I am not sure if it will be needed for that anymore either.

We headed towards Pete’s Silly Sideshow and for a moment I had a brain freeze and couldn’t remember what this area was for. Then it dawned on me …character meets!

And we came across some water art too.

 

[pooksma]

Great update!

 

[Wicket's Mom]

I love those American Girl dolls. I have two of them, Felicity & Elizabeth. Looks like Claire really cleaned up at Christmas. My grandaughters got bow & arrow stes from me. Merida made that impression on them. That's allright, they can shoot arrows with Grandma!

The Kindle will be fun for the girls. I've been playing with my iPad today, my son gave me his old one. His cat knocked it off the couch & the screen now has a hairline crack in it. It works fine & I'm happy!

 

[jenseib]

Great update!

Thanks

I love those American Girl dolls. I have two of them, Felicity & Elizabeth. Looks like Claire really cleaned up at Christmas. My grandaughters got bow & arrow stes from me. Merida made that impression on them. That's allright, they can shoot arrows with Grandma!

The Kindle will be fun for the girls. I've been playing with my iPad today, my son gave me his old one. His cat knocked it off the couch & the screen now has a hairline crack in it. It works fine & I'm happy!

What an awesome gift. That would be fun. We did archery in gym class in highschool and I loved it.

My Aunt Mary dropped one of their ipads and it cracked the screen too. Be careful because alexis was playing with it and got a glass sliver. Maybe put one of those clear screen covers on it.

 

[Caretames1]

I LOL'd at Claire saying it was for babies.
Kadence wasn't interested in going in at all, so maybe she had similar thoughts.

I see the tall trees and I know they out them there on purpose just to interrupt our photo taking!


We had discussed the barnstormer, but the circus area took all of her attention.

Nothing worse than a wet cranky child

 

[mickeystoontown]

Great pictures Jen even the ones taken on the non-high flying Dumbo. I love all of the new theming in the Storybook Circus area even if they did have to do away with my namesake portion of the park.

 

[Lovemy3babes]

Claire makes me laugh. Morghan wouldn't step foot in Dumbo. I was really bummed as I wanted to see all the fun new stuff but she said she was much too old for any of that. 13 year olds seem to know everything, ya know? lol! Too bad for those really tall trees! I do like the pictures you did get.

And yep, Barnstormer is WAY too short.

 

[dolphingirl47]

I did not really know what to make of Storyland Circus. I loved the costumes that the characters were wearing at Pete's Sideshow, but the rest left me relatively cold. Now, New Fantasyland was a different matter.

Corinna

 

[Wicket's Mom]

Don't worry the crack can't be felt. I do plan on getting screen protector to keep it from cracking further. The screen can be replaced, but I don't need to do that as of yet.

 

[HermanTriplets+1]

And we came across some water art too.

This is cool - I never saw water art when we were at the World! Is this common???
I could be a water artist I think!!

 

[mom2rtk]

OK Jen, just had an 18 point reply all typed out (and you know I'm fully capable of doing that......) then hit "submit" and it went bye bye!

Just a few of the points I recall:

1) Total bummer that your room was ready and they didn't text you. But I for one enjoyed your tour of AKL. I'm enjoying all of Claire's "rules". There's just something about little girls that give them the idea they are in charge. Yeah, I have that problem here occasionally.....

2) I enjoyed reading along with you meeting Carey and Kadence. And laughed along at the 2 of them having nothing to say. How often does THAT happen?????

3) What was your impression of storybook circus? I really liked it, but that could just be because my expectations were really low. I hadn't spent much time thinking about or anticipating it, than was surprised that I really enjoyed it!

4) I enjoyed the Disney on Ice shots. I really need a halfway decent point and shoot for stuff like that. I'm really tired of stressing over whether they'll let me in with my camera or not. Yours was not a show we have seen, nor is it the one we're seeing in March. I'd love to see it though. I loved the Small World pics! And I've never seen Lumiere skate. That would be worth the price of admission!

5) Enjoyed seeing all the Christmas pics. You really did clean up on that AG sale!

And with that, I am officially all caught up and ready for your next installment(s). It has been driving me nuts to see snippets of what you were posting but not really looking until I could get caught up. I wonder how long before I'm behind again!