"This is NOT the once in a lifetime trip I was hoping for!" - (Baby Simba - 12/18)

[Pluto0809]

I saw the trolley show before I saw the rope drop one so I thought the opposite of you. I thought that the opening show took songs from the trolley show.

I guess it was very crowded if you had to wait for two trains!

I've never eaten at Pecos Bills but the food looks really good. One of these trips I'll make it there.

 

[PhoenixStrength]

Claudia looked so adorable sleeping on Ron's shoulder!

Pecos Bills is one of my favorite places to eat CS at MK, mostly because of the taco salad and wonderful fixins bar! Glad Claudia enjoyed her lunch as well!

 

[ronnmel]

Joining in the fun!!

The pictures of Claudia on the carousel and getting her first haircut are too cute!

Thanks!

What were you overall thoughts about the quality of the PhotoPass pictures? The second picture of Otaku (with the people/castle out of focus in the background) was a nice portrait shot. Was that a close-up of the first one (done by you in editing) or was that a second shot from the PP photographer?

I LOVED Photopass for our Disneymoon. We had so many great pictures then. This time... not so much. We still had several great shots, like the "princess" photoshoot that morning, but we also had a lot more blurry shots than the last time. I don't know if the quality is descending, or if we were just unlucky. I don't remember if that close-up shot of Otaku was taken by the photographer, or if it was me. If it was indeed me, all I did was zoom in, no other editing.

I think it is great that Claudia had so many firsts at Disney so far.

I am also not a fan of the turkey leg-they are always too tendony feeling for me..

I know she won't remember, but I do think Claudia enjoyed her trip.

Tendons AND bones, not a combination I would want to eat.

Wonderful pictures. Just love all the Photo Pass pictures you got and the pictures of Claudia on the carousel and getting her first hair cut are just adorable!!!! I just love her big eyes.

Hoping you managed to get in what you wanted to do even with the crazy crowds and super long lines.

Looking forward to the next update.

Thank you so much! I do get lots of compliments on her eyes.

I don't want to give too much away, but that MK day did not turn out how we wanted to. Let's just say if I had known the crowds would be that crazy, I would have planned differently.

Adorable!

Isn't the First Haircut so fun? We did the same with my DS, such a great memory!

Thanks.

Yes, it was a lot of fun! Maria (the CM) was so sweet and made it a very enjoyable experience.

I think you need to rename your TR.... Something about being the TR filled with cute Claudia pictures!!! Love the carousel pictures, and the haircut!

Also I appreciate the info in photobucket. I had quite a few issues finding pictures after uploading them...

Awww, that's sweet! Thanks! Unfortunately, even though I was feeling better, there are still plenty of things coming up later on in the trip to give this TR its title.

You're welcome.

 

[Marsheliz]

HMM I love Pecos Bills. Wish I had a taco salad right about now..

Bummer Splash was closed down! That is my favorite ride there and I would be so dissappointed!

 

[ronnmel]

Finally caught up! I'm never going to remember everything I have to comment on though! And I'm sick, which makes it even worse, I can't seem to focus on anything when I don't feel good!

Being sick sucks, but at least you're not in Disney anymore.


I love the Minnie Ears! They have such fancy ones now, I want every pair of them!

I know! They really came up with great styles!


Aren't the Osborne Lights magical! I love them! They're one of main reasons I keep going every November/December, because they are just so specatcular! It looked like there were a ton of people there in one of your photopass pictures!

So magical! I can see why you want to go back year after year. There were lots of people, but it wasn't as crazy as it looked. We could move easily and didn't wait too long for PP pics.


Brandon went crazy looking for that purple cat, but he finally found it once he was ready to give up!

So funny that just like us he found it after giving up.


Yay, MK! Always nice to get there in the morning! Looks like Claudia had fun riding the carousel!

Well it was almost the end of the morning by the time we got there. She did have a lot of fun though!


Aww, her first haircut at MK! That is too cute, she is so adorable! If I ever have a baby, you can be sure mine will be getting their first haircut in Disney too!

Thanks! For Disney fans like us, the first haircut in Disney is a must.


Taking the train is a nice way to relax for a few minutes, isn't it! I kind of wish the Fantasyland stop was in New Fantasyland and not Storybook Circus though, but I guess they had to go with what was already there!

Yes, the train ride is so relaxing. As nice as it would have been to have a stop in New Fantasyland, it probably would have made the area even more congested than it already is.

Other replies above in teal.

Claudia looks precious sleeping on daddy's shoulder.

Mark loves taking the train around the park an dwe somehow missed it in December. Guess I'll be making that up to him once or twice on our next trip.

The CM's at Pecos Bills are always a little "surly" with the amount of people, having to sit you, etc.

Peanut's lunch looks very appetizing.

Yes she does. She falls asleep on us so rarely now, gotta cherish those precious moments!

I'm with Mark, I love taking the train. I hope you guys take it next trip.

That sucks if the grumpy Pecos Bill CMs are a recurrent thing.

I think socks are her favorite snack.



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Gonna come back to finish replies later, Peanut is up from her nap and Otaku is going back to her mom's in an hour.

 

[SAT887]

Oh geez! You posted sleeping baby pictures!! Why isn't there a heart melting emoticon!! I have a picture similar to that when we took Zoey, she was 1... She fell asleep on me on Kilamanjaro Safari and I walked around with her like that for quite a bit...

 

[deserrai]

I've been following along and I just have to tell you your little one is so cute. She looks like just the sweetest little thing ever!

 

[pktbMouse]

following along and loving your trip report, I too called my oldest "peanut" and my youngest "peapod" when they were babies ....still let the names slip on occasion, cant wait for the next report. Your photos look amazing.

 

[ronnmel]

I'm always too impatient to wait to take the train, but I think it would be really nice. Maybe on this next trip when Maddie's walking we'll try it.

I love that taco salad. The fixings bar is perfect for it!

Cute pictures. Love the sock eating one

I find the train to be the perfect thing to do in the middle of the day when 1. you could use a break (but not enough of a break to go back to the resort); and 2. lines at all the main attractions are long. that way I still feel like I'm doing "something" instead of waiting in line or just sitting on a bench.

Love that taco salad and fixings bar too! Yum!

Thanks.

http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb403/RonMelDisneymoon/2013 day 4/288_zps7922f565.jpg

Hi

Remember I said we were there when Claudia had her hair cut. Well that's my husband in the orange & blue top and me in the blue & white stripes ��

She was so well behaved and everyone was cooing at her!!!!

Of course I remember. That's so cool that I managed to get a picture of you guys! I never would have thought it would end up being in the reflection though! Did we end up in any of your photos?

Thank you for saying Claudia was well behaved.

I saw the trolley show before I saw the rope drop one so I thought the opposite of you. I thought that the opening show took songs from the trolley show.

I guess it was very crowded if you had to wait for two trains!

I've never eaten at Pecos Bills but the food looks really good. One of these trips I'll make it there.

That's so funny that you thought the opposite. Classic case of the chicken and the egg.

Just wait until you see how long we waited for the train later that day. We had no idea how crowded it would actually get later tha day, but we would soon find out.

You need to get yourself to Pecos Bill! Sure it's nothing special, burgers and taco salad, but it's very tasty and they have so MANY option at the fixings bar!

Claudia looked so adorable sleeping on Ron's shoulder!

Pecos Bills is one of my favorite places to eat CS at MK, mostly because of the taco salad and wonderful fixins bar! Glad Claudia enjoyed her lunch as well!

Thanks! I love sleeping babies pictures.

I really could go for that taco salad right now! It's one of my favorite places in MK as well.

Oh yeah, Claudia has socks for lunch often. Or should I say, used to. I don't even bother putting on socks on her anymore unless we are going out since I know they'll just end up in her mouth or on the floor in 3 seconds.

 

[ronnmel]

HMM I love Pecos Bills. Wish I had a taco salad right about now..

Bummer Splash was closed down! That is my favorite ride there and I would be so dissappointed!

I wish so too! A taco salad would have been a much better dinner than half a bowl of chicken fried rice...

Splash is also one of my favorites ride, but at least I knew that it's always down in January every year so it wasn't too much of a shock. I just had forgotten that we were in January...

Oh geez! You posted sleeping baby pictures!! Why isn't there a heart melting emoticon!! I have a picture similar to that when we took Zoey, she was 1... She fell asleep on me on Kilamanjaro Safari and I walked around with her like that for quite a bit...

Aren't sleeping baby pictures the best? It's not the last one I took that trip! The picture of your sleeping DD must be so cute as well! Btw, I love the name Zoey!

I've been following along and I just have to tell you your little one is so cute. She looks like just the sweetest little thing ever!

Thank you so much! She has quite the character, but when she is smiling/sleeping she is the sweetest little thing.

following along and loving your trip report, I too called my oldest "peanut" and my youngest "peapod" when they were babies ....still let the names slip on occasion, cant wait for the next report. Your photos look amazing.

I love the name "peapod"!! We were just talking yesterday about what nickname we could give baby #2. I'll keep peapod in mind for when the time comes.

 

[jenseib]

I finally had a chance to join in and catch up today! That's such a bummer that you were feeling so poorly. That really can put a damper on the trip. But it sounds like you made the most of it and did do some new things. I saw osborne lights for the first time this past year too and WOW....they are just so neat.

 

[Snooks23]

Hi!
Ill be catching up on this tonight after work! Loved reading so far.

 

[ronnmel]

I finally had a chance to join in and catch up today! That's such a bummer that you were feeling so poorly. That really can put a damper on the trip. But it sounds like you made the most of it and did do some new things. I saw osborne lights for the first time this past year too and WOW....they are just so neat.

I'm glad you made it here. I usually try not to let sickness affect me too much. With nausea it's harder, but I was not going to let that stop me from enjoying Disney!

I'm so glad I got to see the spectacular Osborne Lights! That's great that you saw them too for the first time this year.

Hi!
Ill be catching up on this tonight after work! Loved reading so far.

I'm glad you decided to post.

 

[ronnmel]

Day 4 part 3  The One Where We Hit The WALL... of People


After lunch it was time to use our Peter Pan FP so we started walking in that direction. It was CROWDED.

Somewhere in Liberty Square we came across this.

Its a CM holding a sign saying where the line for Haunted Mansion started. It was all the way down by the Liberty Belle Riverboat! I took a few pictures of the surroundings to try and show where the line started, but really all we can see is PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. It was a madhouse!

We continued making our way to Fantasyland, and that is where we HIT THE WALL... of people that is. There was MAJOR congestion in the area between Its A Small World and Peter Pan. We could barely move. Speaking of, IASW now had a 90 minutes wait.

Eventually a CM was able to make his way in the middle of the sea of people and sort of try to direct traffic. We went to park the stroller next to Phillharmagic, then came back and tried to find the end of the line for PP fastpasses. It was way out of the building, and basically more like a blob than a line. Somehow, though Im not sure how, we made it inside the real fastpass queue.

Surprisingly we made it on the ride in about only 15-20 minutes. I pity the poor people in the standby line because they basically had to hold them there forever while trying to shorten the FP line.

Claudia did not appreciate the darkness of the ride and cried a little. She got better at this later on in the trip. She was already fussy to begin with though, so who knows if she really was afraid of the dark or just over tired.

We wanted to get another set of FP for something, but all the return times were for the evening and we would be gone to dinner at that time. We somehow found our stroller in the sea of strollers and decided to walk towards Tomorrowland. On the way there I was checking the Line app on my phone and saw that it was only 15 minutes to meet Minnie & Daisy, so we turned towards Storybook Circus instead. Turns out the standby wait time was actually 40 minutes, so we nixed that idea. While there though we did see that the return time for Dumbo FPs was 5pm! That was perfect for us, so we grabbed them. We checked out Big Top Souvenir as well. Its a very neat store! I did some pin trading on this cool popcorn boxes board.

I got a few more photos of the area on our way to make a pit stop.

This was the pit stop.

Look Peanut! Theres a peanut on the ground.

Nevermind. Youre busy sleeping. I guess that is why she was fussy.

Besides peanuts, there are also different paw prints in the ground.

Instead of going back to the main walkway, we took the secret path to get to Tomorrowland.

It was like an oasis of calm! Probably one of our favorite parts of that day, finding this little hidden gem.

Tomorrowland.

Its interesting to see the grey sky in all the pictures. I seriously do not remember the weather for that day. All I can remember is CROWD.

It might have been grey, but it wasnt cold. We went to Auntie Gravity (I think) and got ourselves a snack. I chose chocolate soft-serve (classic and always yummy) while Ron got a tropical fruit smoothie and Otaku got Strawberry-banana. They liked it, but said it was definetely not as good as the Art of Animation smoothies.

What do you do when in Tomorrowland on a very crowded day?


​

 

[ronnmel]

Day 4 part 4 – The One With The Modes of Transportation


Any good DISer knows that you can always fall back on the Peoplemover when everything else has a line. Well... this too had a line snaking around Tomorrowland. Oh well, not much else we can do at this point, so we jumped in line too.

The ride even stopped for a while and we debated going to do something else, but ultimately stayed in line. I’d say it took about 20 minutes before we got to get on.

I took even more CROWD pictures, because what else was I suppose to do that day?

If you look towards the left of this picture you can see people on the Tomorrowland Noodle Station terrace (is that the name?) That restaurant was opened!

We enjoyed our relaxing ride while I took more photos.

This is our secret path, viewed from above. Look at how EMPTY it was!

Claudia cried inside Space Mountain, so maybe she is afraid of the dark?

The Peoplemover may have had a line, but something NEVER has one, and that is the Carousel of Progress, so we did that next. Ron almost fell asleep! He loves that attraction, but I don’t think he had had any coffee today...

We saw this. That’s almost 4 HOURS to wait for a ride!!! That’s Space Mountain, if you can’t recognize the sign.

By then we had about one hour left before we could use our Dumbo FP, so we thought we would go take the train at the Fantasyland station, get off on Main Street to do a little shopping, then come back to Storybook Circus.

They can’t post a wait time for the train station since they have no way to know how many will get off the train at any station. All they can tell you is how often the train runs, which was every 4 minutes that day. The line was very long, so despite the frequent trains we ended up waiting 30 minutes. Yep, 20 minutes for the Peoplemover, 30 minutes for the train and 220 minutes for Space Mountain, this did NOT feel like a 5.6 crowd. As I said in a previous update, this almost felt like a 10. Thirty minutes is longer than we’ve waited for any rides during our honeymoon. In summer! Christmas really is crazy.

Claudia passed the time by chewing on her new favorite toy, my photopass + card and lanyard.

I apologize to all the photographers who had to handle a wet card, but you gotta do what you gotta do to keep a baby happy. I’m sure other moms will agree.

The older kid did not feel like chewing on toys and instead spent her time with, what else, technology.

Obviously with such a long wait any plans of stopping by Main Street to shop were scrapped. Instead we decided to just enjoy a train ride around the entire park. I was the one holding the baby this time so I instructed Ron to take pictures, but he only took a few. Not that there is that much stuff to see anyway.

We got back to Storybook Circus just in time to use our Dumbo FPs.

​

 

[PhoenixStrength]

Wow, that is A LOT of people. Definitely not a 5.6 if IASW had a 90 minute wait. And 220 minutes for Space Mountain!!

 

[AvasMommy526]

No way that was a 5.6 crowd
I do love people mover and carousel of progress though! Sometimes it's nice to break from the crowds (or heat) and relax on those rides! Again, Claudia is super adorable, I love the pics of her sleeping with her hands behind her head

 

[inkedupmomma]

Holy COW! 4 hours for SM..and even bigger OMG is 90 minutes for IASW!! I have never seen more than a 10 minute wait for that and I always was shocked to see that! While I would love to go around Christmas, I am just NOT a wait person :/ Glad yall made the best of it, and agreed, gotta keep a baby happy however you can

 

[jenseib]

I have noticed the crowd calendar has been so off lately. It was terrible when I was there in Nov too.
I think the new fantasyland is bring in quite a few people right now.

 

[lovegrumpy]

I guess we left at a good time. We never really did see those crowds. We were there the 28th-1.