70 to Freezing in 7 hours. A Nov/Dec 2011 trip report. Updated 4/28

[petals]

Originally Posted by jenseib

I was wrong. My friend from California is in town this week and I asked her. From here it's 5 hours and coming back it's like 4 1/2. Still a long flight though.

Yeah that's like flight to canary islands for us.. except Mickey isn't in canary islands! I went there once or twice went swimming with sealions there actually but it just doesn't have the same feel as getting off a plane and knowing Mickey is like ten minutes away sorry random tangent there!

[petals]

I need a little bit of help from all of you wonderful people again. I bought my niece a 12 inch Duffy (naked) and the book for Xmas and her momma just rang and apparently Duffy is her new best friend to cut a long story short but Build a bear clothes aren't fitting it. Can anyone suggest where I might get clothes small enough for a 12 inch Duffy for her to dress the poor naked bear


Also want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas

and want to take a quick moment to thank each and everyone one of you for reading my ptr and joining this tr (there's an update coming for Xmas ) and also for making me smile. This year has been a tough one and I've had alot of down moments but everytime I come on disboards and read your lovely comments or your trip reports or ptr I come away with a smile and happy thoughts of Disney so thank you all. (ok soppy end)

[petals]

So back to the trip report.
Day Two Part 1 (this trip report could get long)

This morning was Black Friday and I don't think we are brave enough to try shop in the conditions I heard about plus I needed a Disney fix ASAP so we had our first Disney day.
First off we were woken up at 6am because somebody (must not start rant) rang momma from Ireland and once they disturbed my sleep I just got up washed and dressed to head for our Disney bus because there was no way I was going back to sleep when I knew we were hours away from getting to our first park
We went out to wait for the bus from our hotel to Disney and I took early morning pic of hotel entrance:

At 8.30 a big BLUE (this is important take note) bus arrived to take us to Disney. This isn't my pic but because of importance of colour of the bus for later in the day I wanted to share the bus was kind of this colour:

By 9 o'clock we were seeing this:

It's a little lopsided but I had the BIGGEST smile on my face ever when I saw that and every care, worry, annoyance in the world just floated away I was back in my happy place!
Our hotel bus brings us to the Epcot coach park so we had to use our first Disney bus to take us to our first park. While we were waiting in line two seperate people asked us if we knew how to get them to Magic Kingdom and I directed them to the monorail like Disney was a second home. Momma was like woah you do know alot about Disney and that was only at the start of the trip. I had warned her as well that once I saw the castle I may cry and while waiting for our at Disney that morning I told her I was so happy I could cry and she was like don't start blubbing here. I held it together because soon the bus arrived and it was time to:

Like that?... Can you guess where we were headed yet?



Yup:


And it was all decorated for Xmas as well. Walking towards the park we started to notice the first of many Xmas trees we would see and this one was GIANT!:

and that's only the top half!
I loved the decorations and how they had Winnie the pooh characters underneath:


We paused for a photopass pic (i don't have that disc yet) and I took a few more pictures before we headed over to get our tickets:

The tickets actually said Our family name Safari on the back which I wondered was it because we got them in Animal Kingdom or do they all say that on them.
Tickets in hand we headed in to Animal Kingdom (after a few more pics )

There was some birds out to greet us:

and then we stopped for some more photopass pics in front of Tree of Life since I had ordered the photopass cd already I planned to make full use of the photographers lol. I told momma if you see a photopass person let them take your photo they already have my money
Anyways once we had our pics taken and I took my own pics of tree of life we headed for our first destination




Next up quit while you're ahead

[petals]

Day Two, Part Two:

In above post I'd left off where we were headed to our first destination and probably the main reason I was very anxious to get to Animal Kingdom on time but even in a rush there's always time to take pictures along the way:

and get our first ever fast passes:

We have never used fast pass before and would definately give it a huge
And then it was time.. If you haven't guessed already we were headed to Africa and our reason was because we had our first adr of the trip in Tusker House for breakfast at 10:05. I was a little anxious about it because I wasn't sure we would make it on time but we had loads of time that morning. We stopped for our photo with Donald and then I sneeked this so I wouldn't have to buy their photo (which they never did show us but anyhow) :

We were seated fairly quickly and informed our waiter would be Neil and once he served us drinks we could head for the buffet. While we waited for Neil, Goofy came along (pic is missing from my computer ) I had last years autograph book and Goofy's name was last and when he spotted it he started pointing to himself. Neil came and gave us our drinks and I told Momma that breakfast had set price so take as much as you like we're paying for it anyway so I practiced food pics first:

this is what all that is:

Then when I went back to table took a pic of my plate:

Doughnuts for breakfast? Gotta love it but more importantly. MICKEY WAFFLES:

Daisy came along and there was no sign of Momma so I asked some guy at table behind me to take the pic which he did. Daisy was tiny like smaller than me and I'm 5ft 3 or shorter lol:

Then Momma came back and this was her plate:

and this was her other plate:

no way would I be able to eat all that!
This is also where fun began because Neil decided to make it his mission to win Momma's affection. He kept coming over to chat and Momma wasn't happy with this. First he asked her if it was the best breakfast she ever had and she went NO! He left for a while to prepare the bill but came back with new determination to win her over (plus he'd spotted her bagging some of her brekkie for later... well we paid for it) So he said to her since you've got half the buffet in your bag am I the best waiter ever. She was like NO! So he asked her if it was his hair that she didn't like (he was bald) She just gave him a dirty look and he said he'd go off to brush it so it parted in the middle. In the meantime a parade started and this guy marched on by:

Neil our lovely waiter came back after the parade with a tray of paper cups saying these were lovely hot chocolates and we had to try them and then tipped the tray on top of our table......



No worries the cups were empty but Momma went from shocked face to angry face in about 2.5 seconds and Mr. Neil scooted off finally accepting he wasn't going to win her over. It was kind of funny though

Afterwards he quietly came back because I think we had a late breakfast there and it was obvious they were trying to clear the area we were seated in and characters had stopped coming around there so we didn't see them all and Neil came over to find out what ones missed us and made sure that Mickey Mouse came to see me so they got him to come to a side wall for a pic with me which I thought was nice of them.

I had asked momma most days what she thought of what we did that day and regarding tusker house she said she didn't like the big bald (i'll put the nice word in) man who wouldn't let her eat her breakfast in peace



Next up Safari Time!

[afwdwfan]

Good call on going to the parks on Black Friday. I wouldn't go anywhere near a store on that day.

The Christmas decorations at the parks are great. I'd never seen them before this year, and I really want to do it again.

It looks like a great breakfast. It sounds like you had a good server, who was really trying hard to make it a fun experience. I know how your momma felt though. Sometimes I just want to eat in peace and be left alone too.

[petals]

Originally Posted by afwdwfan

Good call on going to the parks on Black Friday. I wouldn't go anywhere near a store on that day.

The Christmas decorations at the parks are great. I'd never seen them before this year, and I really want to do it again.

It looks like a great breakfast. It sounds like you had a good server, who was really trying hard to make it a fun experience. I know how your momma felt though. Sometimes I just want to eat in peace and be left alone too.

Yeah I can't handle Xmas sales crowds so don't think I'd have been in to good a humour if we started the holidays at Black Friday shopping!

The Christmas decorations were amazing! I really want to go that last week in october and first week in november though so i'd get halloween and christmas in all on the one trip

The breakfast was funny (I thought) and I thought it was really nice of them to make sure I'd seen all the characters since they were obviously trying to clear up.

[Caretames1]

Aww, we loved the Tusker house! the characters were very interactive and the waitstaff was great!

I'm enjoying the Christmas decor, I can't wait to someday hit Disney for Christmas!

Nice bus

[petals]

Originally Posted by Caretames1

Aww, we loved the Tusker house! the characters were very interactive and the waitstaff was great!

I'm enjoying the Christmas decor, I can't wait to someday hit Disney for Christmas!

Nice bus

Disney at Xmas is amazing!

Yeah pay attention to the bus it will be important for later on in day 1!

[petals]

Day 2. part 3:

So after breakfast momma took a moment to compose herself and we wandered the shops of Africa for a few mins i took pics of the pretty stuff :


I noticed in shops in Animal kingdom there was a top similar to mine which was:

except tops for sale were gold and black. People kept asking me where I got mine! I'd made it. I got the mickey head online and then glued/sewed it to the top. Mine cost like 6 dollars altogether the one for sale was 32!
Anyways after that it was time to try out this fast pass system (we loved it) and we were off on a two month Safari in Africa:


We saw baby elephants:



We had to cut our safari short though because poachers interupted it. So once back at base we headed off through a lovely forest trail:


We were standing watching those ducks when Momma felt a PLOP!!! Some fat little bird just pooped all the way down her top and got a bit in her hair as well. She had a white top on and was very upset about it being destroyed. A CM saw her distress and brought her to a backstage CM bathroom to try wash a bit of it off while the fat little bird sat victoriously in the tree above us! While I was waiting for Momma I went hippo watching as well:

This next pic you will see a hippo in the water if you look really really really really really close...

Yeah I can only barely see it but only because I had a vague idea where it was from the fact a Daddy was telling his small boy beside me look it looks like a big rock!
When Momma was back we headed off in search of Lilly but first stopped by Timon's cousins:

Then Baby Lilly.. but she was nowhere to be seen. I asked a CM because I had come all the way from Ireland the least baby lilly could do was come out and say hi but NOOOOOOOOOOOOO CM said she thought she was in the cave but wasn't out however Daddy decided this year that he was in a posing mood and so I got these pics:


After our voyage through the forest we decided to head to a different continent but along the way I found two other friends with no lines and so got pics with these guys:


Before stopping at this pretty view to get a few magic shots taken (I don't have those yet )



Next up Beware of unsocial Tigers?!

[MEK]

Subbing and back to read. Just skimmed through your pictures and they are lovely!

[petals]

Originally Posted by MEK

Subbing and back to read. Just skimmed through your pictures and they are lovely!

Welcome
And thank you I like pictures. I took over 3000 on this trip

[afwdwfan]

Wow, your momma just isn't having a very good morning. I'm glad that a CM was there to step up and try to make things better though.

Sorry that you didn't get to see Lilly.

[Windsor Princesses]

That AK Christmas tree is so pretty, I see why you wanted to go at this time! We're taking our first Winter Disney trip in just 3 days we are so excited and seeing all these beautiful photos makes us even more excited to go!

[GoofyIsAsGoofyDoes]

Disney is certainly lovely during the holidays. I seen it twice, I’d like to do it again (but in early December next time).

We haven’t been to tusker house since it was made a character experience, but we always enjoyed the breakfast available here. When my son was younger, we’d head over to Harambe and get passes for the Safari and then go eat breakfast. I always found the atmosphere at Tusker to be very relaxing.

The Pangani trail is a lot of fun as well… most of the time… ummmmm….
Your mom was having a fairly difficult morning now wasn’t she?
May that nonsense not continue any farther (and may it not include any chance encounters with unsocial tigers).

Looking forward to the next installment!

[jenseib]

Wow, what a morning. Bird poop and all. When I was a kid, we walked out of church once and bird flew by and pooped on my moms head. We had to rush home and she was NOT happy at all. I think my sister and I cried about it.