AN AP-ALOOZA with a baby! October TR turned year of Disney! NEW 2/7 AUG FINISHED!

[smile4stamps]

Very cute stockings! They are awesome!

Aria totally has the princess hand pose in the photo with Ariel!!

 

[Imagineer5]

Why does Belle look so...manic is maybe the right word? And ugh Aurora's wig just drives me crazy. It never looks good. Never.

/end rant lol

I love Aria's outfit! So cute!

Yeah that Belle was the worst I had seen and she was awful with Aria too

Aurora is always odd looking I think! funny!

Thanks! haha

Very cute stockings! They are awesome!

Aria totally has the princess hand pose in the photo with Ariel!!

Thank you! I'm so glad to be done with them haha. I enjoyed my first stocking free evening in a LONG time last night!

LOL she's a princess in the making.


I thought the Snow White pictures were cute!

 

[Imagineer5]

After that it was nap time for a baby. Somehow we obtained rider swap passes for Soarin (may have been from earlier), Andrew ran over to ride Mission Space while I finally did some good shopping. Unfortunately Mission Space was having issues and Andrew sat in the 10-minute wait line for over 40 minutes before riding, he ran over to meet me at Soarin so I could ride that but by that time little miss was already waking up and would need to eat. So instead I had to go to the baby care center while Andrew got to ride Soarin, since we had a 12PM ADR at Les Chefs and I had to get Aria fed before then. Coming out of the BCC, I gave Aria her new Minnie pillow (which consequently our Chihuahua mix Oliver has taken as his own at home haha).
 

And t hen we booked it to France but I was stupid and went clockwise when I should have just passed Canada, UK and ended up in France. IT was HOT and I was running but made it to our ADR right at noon. Whew! Andrew met me over there, and we were seated pretty quickly since they just opened right at 12.
We took some pictures while waiting to be seated –

We had a beautiful window table! Though this reminds me of something. Almost 100% of the time when checking in, we were asked if we needed a high chair, answered yes, and then when we got to the table they didn’t know we needed a high chair so they had to run to get one. Not sure WHY Disney had such problems getting high chairs for us while they were picking out our tables, but more often than not Aria started out in one of our laps while we cleared her spot. On that note – they also liked to leave full servings of silverware right in front of her, hand her crayons and drawing paper, AND had no qualms about putting our drinks, food, etc within reach of her at just about every single meal. She’s 8 months old! Grrr. It was obvious we didn’t encounter many servers with kids!

Rant over, time for pictures!

I had a nice glass of white wine, and would have ordered the onion soup to start but was too hot to even consider it, so instead I had a delicious breaded goat cheese salad. MMM!

Andrew had lobster bisque to start, and for the life of me I have no idea what his main dish was. I kind of think he just had soup, and wasn’t that hungry.

I had the mushroom and chicken pie thing (hows that for restaurant talk!) and it was absolutely DELICOUS! I want a total repeat of this meal, which is why I have an ADR in March! YAy!

We had to wait quite a while for Remy to make an appearance. We had time to order a 2nd drink, finish up our meals, a diaper change a la Andrew, and pay our bill before he made it over, be he was super cute and Aria was really interested in seeing him.

After lunch, we joined Andrew the SMART way back to FW, stopping in Canada briefly to laughs of people passing by –

This is where it sort of went downhill, we were becoming indecisive about what to do – head back to the condo to freshen up before our photo shoot? Skip Illuminations? Andrew was obviously melting and I was getting annoyed at him, so I think I agreed to leave if we headed to the Chase lounge for Illuminations viewing wristbands and also somehow convinced him to go to the Chase Visa cardmember meet. That was a bad idea – the Chase lounge was pretty quick to get in and out, but the character meet had a very, very long line. I don’t know why I pushed it, but I did and we waited for about 25-30 minutes before meeting the characters. I really just wanted PP pics with Minnie but no luck, she wasn’t there. She was being cute in the line though!

I picked up this baby Minnie rattle too, and she still LOVES it! It became her very favorite toy during this trip!

And the meet was fine but not worth the wait, IMO!

 

[khertz]

Ooooh, Belle does look a little scary in that picture!! But Aria is simply adorable in her Belle dress though. At least they included the picture on your Photopass instead of having to pay! I am almost positive that's the Aurora we met at the Town Square Theater on our trip too. And I agree with you & Jenny, that wig is just AWFUL!

Awww, she looks so cute checking out Remy! I really want to eat there just to see him. He's so cute! I think Paxton would really get a kick out of that.

We found the Visa Meet to be hit or miss. Either the line was short and moved quickly or it was CRAZY long and we skipped it. Pretty cool getting Mickey & Pluto though.

I am sorry to hear Aria was not as much of a fan of the characters on your most recent trip. So many things can change with kids in just the span of a few months, as I too learned on our last trip! Hopefully she will be better for your next trip. I found over the past two Paxton was more shy at the beginning of the trip, but as we got further into the trip he warmed up to them a lot. And the bigger the better! He seemed to really love all of the huge characters that you'd think a kid his age would be afraid of!!

 

[holleypie]

The Belle dress is super cute! I love all the princess pictures. Especially Snow White. Aria's looking at her as if she's saying something very interesting.

We had Mickey and Pluto for the Visa meet and greet too. We didn't wait too long, but the couple in front of us had to round up literally TWELVE other people when it was their turn! That wasn't annoying at all.

 

[Imagineer5]

Ooooh, Belle does look a little scary in that picture!! But Aria is simply adorable in her Belle dress though. At least they included the picture on your Photopass instead of having to pay! I am almost positive that's the Aurora we met at the Town Square Theater on our trip too. And I agree with you & Jenny, that wig is just AWFUL!

Awww, she looks so cute checking out Remy! I really want to eat there just to see him. He's so cute! I think Paxton would really get a kick out of that.

We found the Visa Meet to be hit or miss. Either the line was short and moved quickly or it was CRAZY long and we skipped it. Pretty cool getting Mickey & Pluto though.

I am sorry to hear Aria was not as much of a fan of the characters on your most recent trip. So many things can change with kids in just the span of a few months, as I too learned on our last trip! Hopefully she will be better for your next trip. I found over the past two Paxton was more shy at the beginning of the trip, but as we got further into the trip he warmed up to them a lot. And the bigger the better! He seemed to really love all of the huge characters that you'd think a kid his age would be afraid of!!

With the price of buffets I think it's ridiculous that most photos are NOT included. Makes me mad! Esp at like Tusker House when Donald doesn't come around and it's HIS breakfast, and they make you pay for the photo. Ugh! End rant!

I wanted to eat at Les Chefs for SO long, I don't know what took me so long, but finally made the reservation and made it, and was so glad we did! It was delicious, service was great, Remy was fun, and it was a beautiful restaurant.

December was like that! By the last day Aria was actually okay with the characters, smiled at Daisy even! I told Andrew looks like we just have to go for longer trips then, giving her a chance to get acclimated before we have to pick up and leave!

Everything I've heard about the Disney Visa is how fantastic it is with no wait. We must have just been dumb and hit it at a bad time, if we do it again, we'd just plan it out better so there was no wait, otherwise it just wasn't worth it. The photos were cute though.

The Belle dress is super cute! I love all the princess pictures. Especially Snow White. Aria's looking at her as if she's saying something very interesting.

We had Mickey and Pluto for the Visa meet and greet too. We didn't wait too long, but the couple in front of us had to round up literally TWELVE other people when it was their turn! That wasn't annoying at all.

Thank you! Yeah I didn't realize how cute those Snow White photos came out til I was putting them in this report, I am not a fan of Snow White and she's the one princess I don't even have a dress for Aria to match haha (I'm sure she will end up being Aria's favorite since I don't like her!).

So annoying when people do that to you in lines! I hate that!

 

[Imagineer5]

After that Aria napped in the car back to the condo, we carried her in the car seat and she stayed asleep while we both quickly showered, I dried my hair, and made an attempt at makeup, she was still asleep while we put her back in the car and drove to the Polynesian (haha), and luckily we were early because she did finally wake up when we arrived and was hungry! So I quickly nursed her in the car, changed her outfit, and we arrived at the 2nd floor photopass desk right at 4. Our “Disney event photography” photographer was already there, and we made our way back downstairs and outside. My only request was for some beach photos, and she worried me at first by starting her phone stop watch for 20 minutes, but after that weirdness we started taking photos in the greenery around the resort, in the grass, and then headed to the beach but it was packed so we were unable to take those photos. I was worried about having wasted all that time walking, but when her timer went off she just shut it off and kept taking photos, and then even had us put Aria in her stroller and took a few with just Andrew and me, too. She was super sweet and we really enjoyed the photo shoot! Without further ado, here are the photos!

 

[Imagineer5]

Aria was such a good girl throughout the photo shoot and I really loved our photos. She sat down and went over the photos briefly afterwards, then quickly put them on a USB stick and we headed back to EPCOT. We took a few PP pics- (some of my favorite of the trip, Aria was just miss smiley that day!)

Then we headed right over to Coral Reef for dinner – we had not originally planned for the poly photoshoot and I was worried we wouldn’t make dinner, but the timing worked out fine and we got there right at our ADR time. We waited a couple minutes –

And I had requested a tank table of course but instead we were all the way up top. That was a little disappointing, especially as Aria was pretty tired of being cooped up and would have really enjoyed the tank, but that was really the only bad thing about the meal!

I think she was delirious at this point

I had a lobster pasta which was pretty good!

And Andrew had his best dish of the trip! It was a special for the evening, and neither of us remember the type of fish it was (nothing we’d ever heard of) but the sauce was amazing. Very spicy and delicious, and I even loved it! MMMM.

Aria was being her cute self during dinner –

Afterwards we headed back to enjoy some world showcase – first stop was Mexico of course and we enjoyed the ride (well Aria and I did, Andrew isn’t really a fan) – we had our own boat bc is was so empty!

We had to try to get a photo with a sombrero. Last trip we brought a couple of these back for our dogs…

After, we headed out to Norway and got a FP for Maelstrom. It was so ridiculous – FP return time opened up in 35 minutes and the wait was 30 minutes! So we perused the shops for a little while.

 

[Imagineer5]

Then we hopped to China as it was 8PM and Aria was not only past her bedtime but past her last nursing time, and I didn’t care to go back to the BCC so instead I found a bench near the back of the pavilion and nursed her there. Turns out there was a private event inside and I just happened to pick the door to sit next to that drunk guests liked to stumble out of, and one startled Aria so much that her fingernail ended up in my eye, OUCH! I couldn’t open my eye for a good 20 minutes after that and once that finally happened, everything was blurry. Unfortunately, the next day did not get better.

But the show had to go on, and we wanted to get on Maelstrom before putting Aria down! We both love that ride. I just realized we missed that ride when we were just there! Boo!

Then we put Aria down but quickly uncovered her to show her the Chinese puppets LOL (and yes bought her her favorite one, a purple dragon) and then recovered her and put her down to bed, with the intention of enjoying a bit more of WS before heading to the Illuminations viewing spot.

No more photos of the evening – we stopped to get some drinks, a white wine for me and a stein of beer for Andrew, and then headed over to the Illuminations spot, which I was not impressed with at all (turned out to be the 3D Dessert Party spot), and between that and my bum eye constantly tearing, we ended up leaving about 20 minutes before the show started.

We tucked in pretty quickly (Aria slept in the car ride over, and transferred easily to her crib and slept very well overnight!

 

[Alysa]

What wonderful photo shoot images! You look so happy! I've never even thought of doing that before but they are lovely. Where do you get the information on booking one?

 

[Imagineer5]

What wonderful photo shoot images! You look so happy! I've never even thought of doing that before but they are lovely. Where do you get the information on booking one?

I think it was disneyeventphotography.com ?

It was the 20 minute shoot, and the photographers are the same ones that do the disney weddings - so really professional (vs like the photopass photographers). I think it was $150 for the session, and it came with the USB stick of images, and she did not try to sell us prints or anything, just handed us the images. She also would not accept a tip, we tried handing her maybe $40 (I don't remember) and she wouldn't take it even after insisting. So all in all, I thought that was pretty reasonable.

Thanks!

 

[Imagineer5]

Just wanted to wish everyone a very merry Christmas! In laws just left and we are so excited for arias first Christmas tomorrow. Hope you all have a magical day!

 

[Leger13]

Merry Christmas!!

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[Imagineer5]

Merry Christmas!!

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

Thanks! Hope you had a great one!!

I'm back at work, and starting next week I'll be here 4 days per week instead of 3. BOO. But that means possibly more DIS time!

Hope everyone had a great holiday and new year!

 

[cbcrockett]

Hope y'all are doing well and that Miss Aria had a WONDERFUL first birthday!!!

Sent from my iPad using DISBoards

 

[Bamadisdreamer]

Hope everything is ok, can't wait to hear about your other trips!

 

[cbcrockett]

Hope everything is ok, can't wait to hear about your other trips!

Second!

Sent from my iPad using DISBoards

 

[kmedina]

Subbing to make sure I do not miss the new one. Will catch up on this one soon.

 

[kmedina]

Aria gets cuter every time I see her. I cannot wait to read more about her trip. You got a 3 bedroom condo for 7 days for $350! That is fantastic. I would not pass on that either.

 

[kmedina]

Sounds like Aria did really well on the flight. It reminds me on how well Connor did at 5 months. We just took him again at 21 months, and that did not go as well. The flight home was especially hard. There were 3 lap kids on the plane, and I joked with another passenger that they all took turns crying. While Connor was not the worst of tethered, he was not the best either. The teenager who sat behind us asked Crap if his flight was stressful when it was over. That was not a good sign.

I always overpack too. I forgot I promised Crap I would do laundry during the last trip, because he did not want to buy new swim trunks while he is trying to lose weight. one and a half checked bags were filled with clean clothes when we returned, so I could have done with at least one less bag. I will keep that in mind next time but do not want to do laundry again. I will likely just buy him extra swim trunks anyway if he has not lost enough weight to get into his smaller ones.

Glad everything fit into the mid sized car and that the argument was not too bad. It stinks that Bells made him wait 25 minutes and still did not come. I would have been upset if I was him as well. Although the portions were small, the flat breads looked good, so did the pretzel bites. I cannot believe you are 30. You look so young. Happy belated birthday. Cannot wait to read about it.