Magic in the Kingdom 2012! BIG 2/16/2014 FINAL UPDATE!

[jenseib]

I remember the FP+ issue. Thats too bad that they decided to change their minds. I personally would've said OK, but I want my dress back then! LOL

Katie looks great, and I think Belle was short, because Claire was taller too.

 

[mom2rtk]

Hi! I need to catch up here! Kadence is chomping at me to show her Katie and Claire and I think that's not a bad idea! LOL

I hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Hey stranger! I was just thinking of you today. I hope you got all settled back into the rest of the school year. Tell Kadence Katie and Janet said hi!

I remember the FP+ issue. Thats too bad that they decided to change their minds. I personally would've said OK, but I want my dress back then! LOL

Katie looks great, and I think Belle was short, because Claire was taller too.

LOL. Can I declare "no comment" on the ETWB FP+ issue?

I think we already declared that Claire is going to be very tall. She's 4 years younger than Katie but only a couple years behind in dress length if I recall properly. And Katie is fairly tall.

 

[Caretames1]

Hey stranger! I was just thinking of you today. I hope you got all settled back into the rest of the school year. Tell Kadence Katie and Janet said hi!

School....nope. Haven't worked a full week since before Christmas! It's been so cold, -45 to -60, so we've had numerous days off and scheduled days off. Maybe Feb will be more settled.

Kadence is thrilled about seeing your pics again!

 

[mom2rtk]

Saturday December 15th, 2012 Continued:

Breakfast at the castle had been at 10. Dinner was at 7:15 that night. I hadn't really planned on having lunch that day, but we had counter service credits left. So when Kim suggested we go into BOG and sit in the Rose Gallery for lunch, I said why not. We had asked about peeking into the Rose Gallery when we were there at dinner and they said absolutely not. So why not pop in have a little snack or at least dessert and see for ourselves? We were planning to ask to be seated in the West Wing at dinner, so seeing the Rose Gallery at lunch would complete our tour of the restaurant.

We met back up with Kim and got in line at 1:10. We were handed our magical rose at 1:38. Not bad for such a heavy crowd day. Our food arrived at 1:50. I wandered the room taking pictures as we waited for the food to arrive. Katie ordered a turkey sandwich and I had the steak sandwich. Neither of us took more than a couple bites. It was more of a tasting for us than anything, but yes we were all over the dessert. Katie had her usual triple chocolate cupcake and I tried the chocolate eclair, which I just loved. Lunch was great, but just too packed for my taste. Dinner was just as packed, but since they only call one party back at a time, it's not as "in your face". And when you leave, you get to enjoy a very uncongested area at dinner. Not so at lunch.


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My next priority was to meet Ariel in her Grotto. Kim and the girls had to make one of their FP+ appointments, so we went on without them. Ariel's sign said there was a 30 minute wait so we got in line. While we were waiting we passed a little girl in front of us wearing a pink Ariel gown. As I thought about it, I thought that gown looked awfully familiar. So I left Katie in line to hold our spot and wandered back. Sure enough, it was one I had made. The line moved pretty quickly, far better than Ariel in her old Grotto. Of course that's because they now have 2 rooms running, a huge improvement over the previous system. In fact the line moved too fast. I had wanted Ariel to sign our dinglehopper. I had the dinglehopper out but had forgotten to dig out the black Sharpie. So there I was waiting to meet Ariel digging frantically to find the right pen. Then out of nowhere McKenna showed up just in time to get her picture taken with Ariel too. I'm still not sure how that happened. Maybe they came in the back entrance.


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I really enjoyed Ariel's meet & greet. It was a beautiful setting and I loved how quickly the line moved. It was nice to see her greeting guests on her rock again.

 

[mom2rtk]

ARIEL Flashback:

My photos from our first time meeting Ariel were from the summer of 2004. I wasn't digital yet, so I don't have those to post. I do remember that being our first serious trip to the Magic Kingdom, but us being woefully unprepared for how to accomplish what we wanted to. I think it took me 3 trips to Ariel's Grotto before we even were able to get in line. I think we caught the line closed the first 2 times.

Here are a few other times meeting Ariel on her rock:

June 2005 (Disneyland):


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June 2006 (Disneyland):


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June 2007 (Disneyland):


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December 2008 (Magic Kingdom):


Ariel brought her own DINGLEHOPPER! by mom2rtk, on Flickr

 

[mom2rtk]

Saturday December 15th, 2012 Continued:


Katie was still asking to ride Space Mountain with McKenna. We already knew they weren't coming to the park the next morning so it had to be today. And we were quickly running out of time. So the first priority was to get fastpasses for Space Mountain. Kim and Mikayla wouldn't ride so if we used all 5 tickets I could ride once with the girls and the girls could ride again by themselves. With fastpasses in hand, we headed back to Storybook Circus.

I still had not ridden Dumbo and I intended to at some point. Kim decided Mikayla still needed to meet the characters at Pete's Silly Sideshow so we went back in and met Daisy and Minnie again. We barely finished in time at there to make it to Space Mountain. I really needed to stop at the restroom but just didn't have time. The Fastpasses expired at four and we got there just a little ahead of that. So I sent the girls on in by themselves. I decided it was not wise to ride Space Mountain when overdue for a trip to the restroom. I waited for the girls at the exit in the gift shop. It seemed to take forever. They finally showed up around 4:10. The other set of Fastpasses were expired but still within the grace period. I hustled them back around to the entrance and told them not to be surprised if they were turned away. Thankfully they had no trouble getting on and got to enjoy one last trip on Space Mountain. Kim and McKayla had stayed in Storybook Circus, so we went back and met them there. They moved on to their next Fastpass Plus appointment while Katie and I stayed to use our Dumbo fast passes.



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I'm not a big circus fan. I never expected Storybook Circus to do anything for me. I loved Dumbo where it was and was very disappointed that they were moving it. I felt like most of the appeal of Dumbo was the View of Fantasyland from the ride. So it was a nice surprise to find myself walking away from it totally in love with the new ride. The colors...... the atmosphere...... it was all just adorable. Oh and the addition of Fast Pass to Dumbo? Priceless. Of course, now that they have moved to FP+ exclusively and Dumbo counts as one of your 3 choices, I'll probably never fastpass it again. Sigh. It was good while it lasted.

As we were about to leave Storybook Circus, we ran into DIS member Finally08 and her daughter Layla coming out of the gift shop. Layla was in an Ariel land costume and was cute as ever. It was really fun to have friends we could just run into at Disney.

Next we headed back into Fantasyland. There was something in the gift shop Katie wanted to look at. I waited in the courtyard and decided to text Finally08. We had just a little bit of time before we had to meet Kim and the girls for our last BOG dinner. I thought it would be nice to see if Layla wanted to do a ride with Katie before we had to go.

We had almost been too busy to notice how packed the park was, but that was starting to dawn on me. It looked like the only ride option at that point was the Carousel. They had their ride together and soon we were all on our way. It was a great addition to our last evening in the parks.


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[mom2rtk]

Saturday December 15th 2012 Continued:


Dinner wasn't far away so Katie change back into the yellow Belle gown. I still hadn't taken any pictures of New Fantasyland at night so we tried to walk into New Fantasyland to do that. It was really crowded we could barely make our way back to Eric's castle. Along the way, I heard someone behind me yelling "lady, lady!" I had no idea who he was talking to. When I turned around, he said "lady, my wife wants to know where you got that dress." I couldn't help but chuckle at that.

Back up near Gaston's tavern a couple of guests had stopped Katie and wanted a picture with her. Katie said yes and enjoyed the experience immensely. I loved when she commented how fun these costumes could be.


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This time when Kim checked in at BOG she asked if we could be seated in the West Wing. It was the only room we hadn't eaten in yet. They said it could take quite a bit longer, but honestly I think they tell everyone that just to keep the requests down. We were actually seated fairly quickly. We had an awesome table near the fireplace and the magic rose.



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We were totally mesmerized watching the petals fall throughout the evening:



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We also loved waiting for the storms to hit. I kept the camera at the ready to see if I could catch the lightning:



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The dark lighting was hard to adjust to, but in the end I enjoyed that room as much as the ballroom. We had an awesome server named Mark who was just full of BOG trivia. I asked him about my theory that Disney had overbooked the restaurant the day they opened reservations. He said that not only had they not overbooked, but that they were having some no-shows and would now be starting to overbook . I still find that hard to believe. But it was really amazing to see as many empty tables in the room as we did that night. And the park had been packed that day.

We also enjoyed Mark's trivia about the various Hidden Mickeys throughout the restaurant. Somebody in the room pointed out the hard to find hidden Mickey in the tapestries near the ceiling.



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[mom2rtk]

Saturday December 15th 2012 Continued:



On our way out we stopped for one last visit with the Beast. We had been told in no uncertain terms on our other 2 visits that they could not allow individual shots of the girls with him. It was one photo per group, regardless of whether we had 2 separate checks at dinner. This time through I was pretty sure we would get the same story, because he had the longest line by far of any of our visits. So how surprised was I when they said "of course you can take some separate shots". LOL, whatever. I LOVE the shot of Katie dancing with the beast and was so happy to get that one when she was in her yellow gown.


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And one last shot with the half naked prince. This one's for you Jen!...........



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We took some more photos on the way out and finally left around 9:40. I really wasn't paying much attention to the time. I think I thought wishes with at 9 that night so never gave it much thought. I really should have.

The girls loved what the ground lighting did for their gowns!



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Katie and I headed toward the front of the park. I still wanted a picture in front of the castle on our way out. That wasn't even remotely possible. What a shame too, because we hadn't gotten a single night picture in front of the castle this trip. That will definitely be a priority again next time. When we got to Main Street it was just plain crazy. And I've been to Main Street on a sold out party night so I know what crazy is. But this was worse. There wasn't even a single line of traffic open behind people waiting to see wishes at 10.

We probably should have just stopped and turned around to watch, but I was dragging in a really big way. And no way did I want to exit the park with all of those people after Wishes. So we continued swimming upstream. One step at a time, we finally made it to the Plaza Inn. Then I caught a cast member pointing people to the left for a quicker exit. I was a little suspicious they might funnel us back into Tomorrowland, but had heard about them opening the back entrance behind the shops on Main Street when it got really busy. Thankfully that's just what they had done. Not exactly a magical way to exit the park on our last night, but a welcome relief for sure.

Thankfully the wait for a bus wasn't long and we were back at our resort quickly. Over the course of that day I had gotten a progressively worse sore throat. I really didn't think much about it because my allergies give me sore throats pretty often. But by the end of that day I was starting to suspect it was more than allergies. I knew we still needed to pack up some things in the room so I was really glad we beat that crowd out of the park.

 

[jenseib]

I know now that I mentioned that about the Prince, no one looks at him the same way again!

I did not know that Ariel had 2 rooms. Good to know. where did you get your dinglehopper? I am sure you mentioned it but I have a bad memory.

Dinner and lunch both look great. it's funny as when i ate at BOG during the preview they allowed us to go in that rose room. Couldn't you and Kim get in line separately and pretend to be 2 different clients to get individuals? Also are those on photopass/memory maker, or just you own camera? I seem to hear mixed things on this.

that is so awesome you saw one of your dresses walk by. And wouldn't someone say Mame instead of lady. Were they disappointed that you made it or did they take your info?

 

[mom2rtk]

I know now that I mentioned that about the Prince, no one looks at him the same way again!

I did not know that Ariel had 2 rooms. Good to know. where did you get your dinglehopper? I am sure you mentioned it but I have a bad memory.

Dinner and lunch both look great. it's funny as when i ate at BOG during the preview they allowed us to go in that rose room. Couldn't you and Kim get in line separately and pretend to be 2 different clients to get individuals? Also are those on photopass/memory maker, or just you own camera? I seem to hear mixed things on this.

that is so awesome you saw one of your dresses walk by. And wouldn't someone say Mame instead of lady. Were they disappointed that you made it or did they take your info?

I actually can't believe I never thought the prince looked half naked until you pointed out!

I remembered you saying you had gotten to look around in the rose room and was surprised when they told me no. Maybe when you were there they were treating it more as a preview and really were focused on wanting people to see the whole thing. Or maybe that's where the Beast was getting dressed!

We probably could have gotten in line separately. But honestly, I'm quick, and wanted one shot together and one shot separately. We only had shots of the girls together with the Beast from our other 2 visits, so I did sort of want to complete the set that night.

Having that man chase me down going "lady...... LADY!!!!" was really just too funny. And I don't give out info when I'm at Disney. I don't want to get in trouble. We were probably walking on the edge letting those other guests take photos with Katie. She's not technically "legal" in a costume any more. But she did get a big charge out of it. And at age 12 there really wasn't much chance of her being mistaken for an actual adult. Although at 13 she inches closer to that every day!

 

[mom2rtk]

Sorry Jen, I missed your other question. Photopass was definitely there that night. I don't remember if it was there all 3 nights we were there, but I think they usually are.

 

[DisneyFreak06]

Oh! That's too bad you weren't feeling well. But you were able to get incredible shots in the meantime! I think I want to eat in the West Wing next time. I love your shots of the portraits and the rose. I was seated in the Ball room for my dinner, and then my friend insisted on sitting there when we went for lunch too. I snapped pictures of the other areas, but they were nothing like yours!

 

[DISNEYaddict4evr]

half naked prince… TOO funny

 

[mom2rtk]

Oh! That's too bad you weren't feeling well. But you were able to get incredible shots in the meantime! I think I want to eat in the West Wing next time. I love your shots of the portraits and the rose. I was seated in the Ball room for my dinner, and then my friend insisted on sitting there when we went for lunch too. I snapped pictures of the other areas, but they were nothing like yours!

Thanks DisneyFreak. I was just happy that if I was going to get sick that it would wait until the trip was almost over.

I actually did like the Ballroom the best. It's so iconic and grand. But I'm so glad we got to experience the West Wing that night. It was so cool to just relax there and watch the painting change, and the rose drop its petals. It's an experience I'll always remember.

Thanks for the kind words on the photos. That entire restaurant is really quite a challenge photographically. My fastest lenses are not the widest, so I kept having to settle for what I didn't want.

half naked prince… TOO funny

I know!

I blame jenseib! She started it!

 

[mom2rtk]

Sunday December 16th, 2012: Departure Day


It's hard work to get to a park on your last day. It requires being up early, packing every last item, checking the luggage and leaving early enough to have time in the park to do a few things. But it's so worth it. Besides, I would have been sad if our trip ended with that mass of humanity on Main Street Saturday night.

My sore throat was worse on Sunday. So I downed some ibuprofen and went about my business. I packed almost everything before waking Katie up at about 7:15. I needed her to finish packing her things so I could go check the luggage. So while she got up and moving I headed for Animation Hall to borrow a luggage cart. I also wanted to take a few more pictures along the way. It was actually funny that might have been our first morning we were met with sunshine. But the ground was wet so I walked into Animation Hall with wet sneakers. My feet went out from under me and down I went. I heard my camera hit the floor. Someone came over to ask if I needed help. I said not really, I was just worried about the camera. I tried it and it seemed to work fine so I breathed a big sigh of relief and moved on. It was only later than my hip would start hurting so bad (and I limped around home for days after I got home). I ran the camera through its paces taking more photos around the lobby. The colors were just stunning, probably my favorite Christmas decorations we had seen all week.



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I took Katie on one last walk around the AoA grounds. All of my other early morning photo safaris had been while she was still asleep. So I wanted to get a few shots of her around the grounds.




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[mom2rtk]

Sunday December 16th, 2012: Continued:



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We left our room for the final time a few minutes after 8.


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We were very fortunate to find nobody in line in front of us at airline check in. That went far smoother and quicker than I expected. All that was left was to hit the Magic Kingdom bus stop and head for the park. We got lucky there too as we found a Magic Kingdom bus just waiting for us.

 

[mom2rtk]

Sunday December 16th, 2012: Continued


We walked through the gates of the Magic Kingdom around 9:15. Not bad for check-out day.

I really didn't feel like I have done a good job photographing Ariel's ride yet so I hoped we could get a fastpass early enough to use it before leaving the park at noon. Katie just wanted to ride BTMRR one last time.

I wasn't moving very fast so I let Katie run ahead to get the fastpasses for Ariel. I really enjoyed giving her extra freedom like this in the parks this year.

And off she goes......



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See her off to the left?



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I took my time and took more photos along the way:



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We met back up at the times board with some bad news. It looked like BTMRR was down. So we decided to keep an eye on it but head that direction. Fortunately for me there was a Dole Whip stand right along our path. Just like last year at cold Dole Whip float felt so amazing on my sore throat. Best use of a snack credit ever!


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Katie wanted churros, so we stopped at the cart in Frontierland. Thunder Mountain was still down so Katie decided to settle for Splash. That really was a calculated risk in our traveling clothes with no changes left. But it was her last day in Disney so I broke out the remaining ponchos and off we went. She whimped out on the ride photo so I made her go again. This time she promised to put her arms up in the air.



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When we got off of Splash we noticed people getting in line for BTMRR finally. Yeah! We were going to get to ride! But then just as we got to the loading platform ...... everything stopped. It was down again. And likely to be down longer than we would be in the park. They gave us "any ride" fastpasses but I wasn't optimistic would be using them on BTMRR.

It was now time for our last trip to New Fantasyland to use our Ariel fastpasses. I couldn't resist more photos along the way against that brilliant blue sky.



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[mom2rtk]

Sunday December 16th 2012: Continued


It was already 11:20 when we got off the ride. We still had counter service credits left and Katie wanted to eat at Columbia Harbor House one last time. We sat upstairs so we could peek out at the Rapunzel restroom area:



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We had one Fastpass left. Since BTMRR was still down, I told Katie to pick a ride. She chose the Astro Orbiter. That's a notoriously slow loading ride so fastpasses are generally very helpful there. The line wasn't very long, and the attendant thought we were crazy for using our fastpass. But we did. The truth is we were just out of time and if we didn't make the next load we would run ourselves too far behind.


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We took a few photos in front of the castle on our way toward Main Street.



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Someone was getting a little nervous about the time..........



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We still headed to the Confectionery to use our remaining snack credits to bring goodies home. We're all addicted to the chocolate covered pretzels so wanted a supply to bring home. We walked out the gate around 12:40.
Thankfully we didn't wait long for a bus and had almost an hour back at the resort before we had to catch the Magical Express.

We shopped around the gift shop, but I still wanted to take more photos around the resort. The sky was finally blue and I didn't want to let it go to waste. I told Katie she could stay shopping in the gift shop while I ran out for a few photos. I won't post any more of the resort photos here. I'm pretty sure the several hundred I've posted already will suffice.


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The bus was actually a few minutes late but we got on at 2:30 and made it to the airport in plenty of time. Fortunately it didn't take long to get through security and we had time for a quick bite to eat. Last time we settled for McDonald's at the airport, but I was hoping we could come up with something better this time. When we spotted Panda Express at the airport we both jumped on it.


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We got to the gate about the right time. We were able to sit down for a few minutes and regroup before it was time to board. Our friends were on the same flight and Katie was really hoping she might get to sit by McKenna on the flight. I had already explained to her that probably wasn't happening because McKenna would probably want to sit with her mom and sister. Bless Katie's heart though. She tried hard to save that third seat in our row. Then they announced it was a full flight, so I told Katie somebody was going to sit there. In the meantime, somebody sat in the row behind us with a dog in a carrier. They put the dog under the middle seat in our row. The dog proceeded to yelp the entire time the plane was loading and didn't stop until after we took off. It appears the dogs scared everyone away. When Katie realized the seat would be empty, she asked McKenna if she wanted to move over and sit with us. She said she didn't want to sit by the dog so that's the story of how we ended up with an empty seat in our row for the entire flight home. Thankfully the dog settled down and was no problem after that.

This was the first direct flight home we've had in a long time and I was so grateful. I felt worse and worse as the day went on. By the time we got home I was knew I had more than allergies.

Drew was picking us up at the airport so I knew he would be there, but I was really surprised to see Robbie came with him. Okay so I know he really just wanted to stop for food on the way home, but it was still nice to see him after so long.

I ended up being sick for almost 3 weeks after we got home. I was a mess for a while. My hip turned many shades of black and blue as I hobbled around. By the end of the week my doctor's office took pity on me and phoned in an antibiotic for me since Christmas was just around the corner.

Not a great way to end our trip, but I was still just grateful it didn't hit a week sooner.

 

[KCmike]

Another wonderful entry into this trip report. Love those blues skies over the New Fantasyland area! Too bad about getting sick there at the end. We always will try to find direct flights as the take off and landing parts of the travel seem to hurt my wife's ears sometimes. She has used gum, earplugs, and other things to to try to alleviate the problem.

So are you ready to start the Disneyland report??

 

[mom2rtk]

Another wonderful entry into this trip report. Love those blues skies over the New Fantasyland area! Too bad about getting sick there at the end. We always will try to find direct flights as the take off and landing parts of the travel seem to hurt my wife's ears sometimes. She has used gum, earplugs, and other things to to try to alleviate the problem.

So are you ready to start the Disneyland report??

Thanks Mike! It was such a treat to have those glorious blue skies finally on our last day.

Those direct flights are great, but I'm never willing to give up much time in the parks to get one. So I'm usually at the mercy of the Southwest's schedule. On our 2011 trip we went home to KC via Chicago!

I really was lucky not to have a lot of congestion issues or the takeoff and landing would have been awful. I was pretty miserable, but at least my head didn't explode or anything.

And yes, I hope to get my DLR report under way very soon. This TR is just so 2012. I need to move on to 2013! I'll post a link here when I'm ready to go.