It's gonna take a lot to take me away from this view! 7/10 - Finished!

[teekathepony]

Great start! I can't wait to read all about your trip

And thanks!

Yay! Joining

aboard!

Hurry up with the update lady!

Coming right now! (Would have been sooner if I didn't have to reply to someone's demanding comment... )

 

[teekathepony]

It's Thursday which means I'm off! I've spent my morning baking -- cranberry pistachio biscotti, cranberry pistachio white chocolate bark (can you see a trend? Johnny's favourite flavours) and next on the list is shortbread cookies. I'm finally feeling healthy enough to bake! I got a lot of decorating done and when it gets dark and I turn all my lights on tonight I'll take some pictures.

Johnny has been working night shift so he's in bed, so I'm using the quiet time to do an update.

Tuesday, November 12

"Discovery"

Morning. Some people dread it, I'm not one of them. I'm a morning person at the worst of times, and this was not the worst of times!!

I was up at 5:30 and itching to see what was outside my window. It was still too dark to see. As I promised I would, I woke Johnny up. He didn't want to miss a second of our wonderful resort! Out on the balcony with the cameras we learned we were on the sunrise side of the resort:



Wow. We were too excited to keep still so we got dressed, grabbed our mugs and cameras and headed outside. We got some hot chocolate and took a photographic stroll around the resort. I don't really need to do much explaining for these:















As we roamed around, Johnny noticed his camera seemed to be out of focus. We stopped and played with his for a bit, finally discovered a nice big thumbprint on the lens! But here are some of our test shots from his camera, since we're at it:





Check it out! He actually took a picture of me! Now I can (for the first trip ever) prove I was there with him!






It was still very foggy out on the savannah:


We topped up our hot chocolate and went back to our room. We grabbed some granola bars and sat on the balcony to eat and discover which animals we might see.

[Instagram]

"I want to wake up to this every morning!"

Here's the view with the sun up! Finally!


A few animals were out eating their hay. What were these guys? Donkeys?


Probably not, but for that moment we didn't know what to call them, so we stuck with donkeys. (Later we found out they are Somali Wild *** [<-- Come on Disboards! It's the name of an animal!] or just Somalis, more on that later!)



Are those deer? Definitely Thompson's gazelle on the right.

We were too excited to sit still, too excited to leave! But soon I had to get us in gear because we had some FP+ to catch.

Up next:

 

[SAT887]

Ahhh as a fellow morning person I love when you get a great sunrise room in WDW!! Add that view SPECTACULAR! Such a beautiful first morning - I really like the picture of you with your back turned and the "fog" pictures . Can't wait to read and see more!!

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

Love the pictures from the resort! Especially with the fog as a backdrop. Looking at your morning tour of AKL is making me giddy about our trip in January which is exactly 54 days away!! I'm planning on doing a photo tour the evening we arrive after the kids fall asleep and maybe during sunrise. The problem with going in January? Sunrise is at 7:15am! And by then we should be getting ready to head out to the parks with the kids. I'll have to see what I can squeeze in the mornings.

 

[geckodani]

I'm late! But I'm here! And I'm so glad you're starting to feel better.

Hooray for pixie dust after your hellacious travel day! Even though I knew about it from the PTR, I'm with Rob - goose bumps reading along! I don't know how you do arrival and departure with such a long trip. I'm so glad the trip started magically!

And dude. You watched Star Trek. I love you more now.

 

[JulieODC]

Subscribing!!

Great report so far -looking forward to hearing more!! We overlapped your trip dates --- it was a fabulous week that week!!

 

[MEK]

I love looking at your AK pictures because they bring back so many memories (of last month). It seems like ions ago. That's what reality does.

It was fun taking pictures from my balcony. I stayed in that "just one more mode" throughout my entire stay.

Love your pics.

Can't wait to see your Christmas decorations!

 

[BridgetR3]

What beautiful photos you have of the resort areas!!!

Great picture of you as well!

We may or may not have seen any animals from our balcony. lol....

 

[khaleesi]

So beautiful!

I'm a morning person too, and I prefer sunrises to sunsets. I always say that I like to think there's some deep philosophical meaning to that, but probably not. Haha.

 

[teekathepony]

Ahhh as a fellow morning person I love when you get a great sunrise room in WDW!! Add that view SPECTACULAR! Such a beautiful first morning - I really like the picture of you with your back turned and the "fog" pictures . Can't wait to read and see more!!

Definitely! I'm always in the parks at sunset so I wouldn't enjoy that.
It was a great morning, I loved the fog, it almost let me see the view little by little so I wouldn't be overwhelmed!

Love the pictures from the resort! Especially with the fog as a backdrop. Looking at your morning tour of AKL is making me giddy about our trip in January which is exactly 54 days away!! I'm planning on doing a photo tour the evening we arrive after the kids fall asleep and maybe during sunrise. The problem with going in January? Sunrise is at 7:15am! And by then we should be getting ready to head out to the parks with the kids. I'll have to see what I can squeeze in the mornings.

We had a late sunrise too, but with a tripod I think it could be pretty cool pre-sunrise! I seriously can't wait to see what photos you get around AKL!

I'm late! But I'm here! And I'm so glad you're starting to feel better.

Hooray for pixie dust after your hellacious travel day! Even though I knew about it from the PTR, I'm with Rob - goose bumps reading along! I don't know how you do arrival and departure with such a long trip. I'm so glad the trip started magically!

And dude. You watched Star Trek. I love you more now.

Glad you're here! Not too late
The long travel is tough, I can barely stay sane long enough to get there. But keeping the destination in mind always helps!
Hahaha I never knew Star Trek would get such a warm reception around here! We just started watching the Original Series last night.

Subscribing!!

Great report so far -looking forward to hearing more!! We overlapped your trip dates --- it was a fabulous week that week!!

I'll have to take a look at your report too! See if our paths crossed

I love looking at your AK pictures because they bring back so many memories (of last month). It seems like ions ago. That's what reality does.

It was fun taking pictures from my balcony. I stayed in that "just one more mode" throughout my entire stay.

Love your pics.

Can't wait to see your Christmas decorations!

Reality does have a way of making dream trips feel like just dreams, doesn't it?
I loved having that balcony. My first deluxe stay so I was sort of culture shocked. But I definitely got my use of that balcony.
I will have to do an intermission post with some Christmas photos

What beautiful photos you have of the resort areas!!!

Great picture of you as well!

We may or may not have seen any animals from our balcony. lol....

Thanks!
Ahhh it was such a beautiful resort, we would have been happy with any view (though we're quite spoiled now... lol!)

So beautiful!

I'm a morning person too, and I prefer sunrises to sunsets. I always say that I like to think there's some deep philosophical meaning to that, but probably not. Haha.

Hmmm, I'm sure we could apply a deep philosophical meaning to it, but personally I like to go to bed no later than 10pm which means I'm up by 6:30!

 

[jash08]

When we stayed at Kidani with a safari view, I started and ended everyday on the balcony. It was sooooo amazing.

Zebra Domes are the best! That is awesome that they just sell packs of them at the Mara.

 

[WDWaddictt]

I am joining in...

You beautiful pictures make me really miss AKL from Feb of this year. It is an absolutely beautiful resort!

Zebra Domes... those are sooooo yummy!


Can't wait to see and read more... thanks for sharing!

 

[teekathepony]

When we stayed at Kidani with a safari view, I started and ended everyday on the balcony. It was sooooo amazing.

Zebra Domes are the best! That is awesome that they just sell packs of them at the Mara.

It was absolutely the best way to start our day! Balcony and zebra domes.

I am joining in...

You beautiful pictures make me really miss AKL from Feb of this year. It is an absolutely beautiful resort!

Zebra Domes... those are sooooo yummy!


Can't wait to see and read more... thanks for sharing!

and thanks for coming!
I'm so happy we were able to stay there. What an experience!

 

[teekathepony]

Wow! Sorry it's taking me so long to get back for updates. My head is absolutely spinning with how busy I am, especially at work. On top of things picking up because it's Christmas, we also do the Santa photos at the mall which I mentioned, and on top of that we took on a $3,500 video transfer order... one tape is $25 so that should give you some indication of the enormous amount of work involved in this one! I see this guy's family home videos in my sleep!

I'm definitely not complaining. I love my job, I love the Christmas season, I even love being busy around this time! But it does keep me away from the Dis.

Sunday we were at the mall so we stopped in to see Santa! I print the pictures every day so I always feel like I should at least visit the guy, put in my list, you know. Plus Johnny and I have a tradition of getting our picture taken every year.

In the card I wrote:

Name -- Wendy & Johnny
Age -- 27
Year -- 2013

Monday I got my Photopass CD and I'm off today so priority 1 is getting an update done!

Tuesday, November 12
"Busy morning at Epcot"

We had been up for a while, finding our way around our beautiful resort. It was time to head to our first park for our first FP+!

We headed down to the bus stop.



It felt like we waited a long time. It was probably 20 minutes. We shrugged it off thinking we must have just missed a bus.

After what felt like a very long drive, we were there. We had just missed rope drop by about 2 minutes so we walked right in.



We spotted a PP Photog and knowing we had already paid for the CD, we wanted to get every photo we could!



I actually really like this one. And that's big, because I never like photos of myself!

No time to waste, we headed straight to The Land and into the FP+ line. No problems with our Magic Bands so far today!



No time for a better picture, we waited less than 5 minutes in line! We got to the front and the CM told us row 3 but we asked for row 1. No problem, we got row 1, section two, right in the middle of the middle of the top. Perfect spot! I noticed the film had been cleaned up a lot, it looked great, and the smells were nice and powerful. Yum! Oranges! Excellent.

We decided to hop on Living with the Land while we were in the area. There was no wait at all.

I took so many pictures in here, but I'll show some restraint!







Everyone gets the hidden Mickeys in the shrimp tanks, but I had to get the hidden Minnie!


Hmmm... this is weird to still see set up on November 12th isn't it?


It was at that moment we realized we hadn't seen a single holiday decoration in Epcot yet. I was a little disappointed because we read online that everything was up by the 8th in the parks. I was hoping for some decorations in World Showcase later on!

And of course, Blueberry Boy.


We were still too early for our next FP+ so we wandered around a little, stalled by the Fountain of Nations to take a few pictures.



(Continued in next post)

 

[teekathepony]

We headed over to our next FP+ destination:



... but we were still a little too early, so we took some pictures here too.






The back side of signage!






And finally it was time to go in. Swiped our Magic Bands no problem, green team please! I'm claustrophobic and tend to get motion sick so we're going to stay away from the more intense one for this particular ride! (Though I did tell Johnny, who loves orange team, to go do a solo round but he didn't want to.)





We had a great ride! I was the engineer (so I put my sunglasses on and pretended to be Geordi Laforge... you know, since we were on a Star Trek kick anyway!) Johnny likes to be the engineer since he was an engineer in the military. I offered to switch, but he really liked the sound of his own title -- Commander! It was less claustrophobic than I remembered, which was weird. When the panel comes toward you I was braced for the tight space but it felt roomier than usual. Cool! No panic for Wendy! I really love this ride once I get past that part.



Next?


We didn't really have a plan and our next FP+ was quite a bit later. We watched these guys for a few minutes:



Amazing how much they can do with garbage cans!

We stopped in front of Spaceship Earth to decide what to do next and were hit with some inspiration... let's do Spaceship Earth!

There was a long line but we were in no rush for anything so we decided to risk it. It was actually only a 15 minute wait. We amused ourselves for those 15 minutes with some more picture taking.



Yeah, a bit of a line:






Getting closer!



I really wanted to push my new lens in here. See what it could do in the dark.

(Continued in next post)

 

[teekathepony]

Meh. I hate to admit it but I wasn't blown away.





I'll also admit that I tend to lose interest in photography while on vacation. I just want to enjoy my time there. Who wants to do their job on vacation, right? So maybe I wasn't paying as much attention as I could have. Oh well! I had fun.











I was excited to send my future home but our picture didn't work. Darn!



Next? We hated to criss cross all over the park, but we were hungry and I really wanted to go to Sunshine Seasons. Johnny is not a fan, but he agreed to go because he wanted the apple cake they have for dessert. I got the sweet and sour chicken with fried rice:



It was pretty good! Johnny had spicy cashew chicken with noodles. He did not like it. He picked at it a little though. Then we moved onto desserts.



Johnny's apple cake. He loves it. I didn't even try a bite because I was too busy with my:



Strawberry shortcake! Yum! Best strawberry shortcake anywhere.

[Instagram]

"#SunshineSeasons #StrawberryShortcake -- alliteration and dessert at their finest!"

After lunch? Well, that's coming up next!

 

[ZehnJahren]

Love your pictures, as always! Those dark pictures in SE still look great if you ask me; I especially like the one of the man painting the fruit. ... Was that guy someone in particular? I cant' remember but I don't think so.

I have never ridden M:S. I figured it would be too tight for me to handle. But I am considering it for my next trip, just to at least go up and see how tight it is before I say no. Seems like it's a pretty cool ride! I know the tech is state of the art!

Ok, tell me about blueberry boy. I haven't been on LWTL in 14 years.

 

[wiigirl]

Great pics!

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

You know, as much as I LOVE Soarin' as a ride, I have to say that it has one of the least photogenic queue in all of Disney. There's really not much to take pictures of! Sure, I have a thousand pictures of Puddy (aka Patrick Warburton) telling to stow those "puppies" away. But that's about it.

I was pretty surprised how much darker SE turned out to be than I had imagined. You probably remember me fessing up on my PTR that I had never gone on the ride prior to my October trip. Was not an easy ride to take pictures in. HM still ranks as THE most difficult for me but SE is up there too. But hey, Judi Dench narrates it and I could listen to her read the phone book.

 

[BridgetR3]

Your photos of SE are great!!! I could never get that with my point and shoot! Awesome job!

The "game" you photographed at the end of Mission Space is my kid's favorite thing in Future World. We could spend HOURS there competing as Orion and Triton but I eventually pull them away.

We still had pumpkin decorations at LWTL on our trip the week of Thanksgiving. Maybe it was their Thanksgiving display?