So let's get this trippie started!!! Just like last time... I'll try to keep the smileys to a minimum so that I can fit more pics in here. Wish me luck! I'm a smiley addict! Geez!
OK... so Tuesday night after work, I head to my dad's house so we'll be ready for our bright and early wake up call Wednesday morning. After my dad got home from work, we headed for a quick bite to eat at Houlihan's and then headed back to his house to go over menus for some of the dining reservations we made. Dad a-ok'd all the restaurants I picked (you'd think he would have looked at the menus sooner? haha!) so we were good to go. DDad (dad) and DSM (stepmom) went to bed while I checked the DISboards and said ttfn to all of you guys! Oh, that night for some reason my throat started to feel funny and I was getting paranoid that I was getting sick! DDad gave me some medicine that's supposed to help you NOT get sick so I crossed my fingers and prayed that it worked!
Fast forward to 4am Wednesday morning. I get woken up by my dad walking down the hallway trying to get all of his stuff ready. I quickly get washed up and dressed and sit around while the other two shuffle around. Oh..and my throat STILL hurt! BOO! Other than that I felt fine though so I kept on crossing those fingers!
We drove to the airport and quickly went through security without any problems. Grabbed a quick bite at my favorite place at the airport... Au Bon Pain and then headed to the gate to board. Unlike my trip to Disney last time... there was NO SNOW! yayyyyyy!
The flight was pretty uneventful...which means I slept for 1.5 out of the 2 hour flight. Glad I can sleep anywhere! We landed and quickly found our driver and then headed to baggage claim. (Dad had gotten a car service through Disney to bring us to the Poly. Apparently he's anti Magical Express...don't get it!). When we got outside the driver told us to wait by the curb while he pulled the car up. And what did he pull up in?!
A stretch limo!! SOOO not what my dad ordered but hey... it was the same price I guess and they ran out of the normal town cars... NOT COMPLAINING! haha!
So we enjoyed the ride and I crawled to the front of the car to take the standard 'welcome to disney' photo..
thats when I know we're finally HERE!!!!!!! yayyyy (insert dancing banana here please...lol)
We finally got to the Polynesian and there wasn't a wait at the front desk so we quickly found out our room wasn't ready yet. Dad asked to be close to the Great Ceremonial House and they told us that there was a room they were currently cleaning in Rarotonga. We got our Keys to the World cards and then decided to head upstairs to Kona for lunch. We got l'eid (hehehe) and then headed outside to drop our bags off. After a quick picture outside with the waterfall...we headed upstairs to Kona!
We weren't STARVING but we knew we had to have some food to hold us over until dinner at Chefs de France. DSM ordered the beef teriyaki salad, DDad ordered the burger, and I had the bbq'd pork lettuce wraps.
Sadly this trippie doesn't have nearly as many food pics as I would like! I honestly kept forgetting or didn't want to use flash in some restaurants!
So my bbq lettuce wraps were pretty tasty!! They were a tad salty but still really good! Dad liked his burger a lot and DSM really liked her salad too
We quickly ate and wanted to get started on Epcot. While DDad and DSM were freshening up by O'hana, I walked around and took some pics by O'hanas.
When they came back, we jumped on the monorail and in a few minutes, were heading into Epcot! So, my one request to DDad and DSM was that we use Photopass as much as possible. They were A-OK with that so we grabbed the first photographer that we saw in front of spaceship earth.
Oh, since it was the Flower and Garden festival at Epcot, there were gorgeous flowers EVERYWHERE! Topiaries around every corner too. So get ready to see some cool flower artwork!
I totally forgot at the moment that Spaceship Earth had been redone so we skipped it for now and headed over to grab fastpasses for Soarin. While we waited for our fastpass time to come up, we headed over to The Seas with Nemo so we can ride in our little clam-mobile. I finally figured out how to take a picture of the screens! YAY!
Chances are I'll never get as clear a picture though. I think the ride had stopped momentarily..haha!
When I had come in December, I had forgotten to take my mom upstairs to see the rest of the aquarium so we headed up there to see what I had missed. Sad to say it wasn't much and it's in great need of a little refurb! We did get to see the cute manatees though and learned that they eat about 100 heads of lettuce a day! Yikes!
When we got off the ride it dawned on me that Spaceship Earth was somewhat new so I dragged the fam over there to see it (we honestly probably haven't been on it in over 10 years just b/c we think it's one of the dullest things EVER!). Sad to say the main part of the ride is still just as dull for us, but the cool little interactive movie towards the end of the ride was hilarious! I saw them take our photo but didn't know what they were going to do with it! I was in the front seat with DSM so we had fun picking how we wanted to live in the future.
Our Soarin fastpass still had time to go so we quickly cut through Innoventions on our way through to Journey Into Imagaination. I saw the segway lessons were getting ready for another round but we didn't really want to wait that long for them to start. As we got to Journey Into Imagination we saw that Honey I Shrunk the Audience was about to start in a few mins so we ventured over there quickly to watch the show. I still think it's cute! I just make sure to cover the vent when the dog sneezes..hehe! I hate getting misted on!
After the 3-D movie we headed over and walked immediately onto Journey Into Imagination. I TOTALLY miss the original! Bring Dreamfinder back! booo! It was still cute to see Figment though!
We were ALMOST at our fastpass time for Soarin so we headed over to the Land. On the way we grabbed strawberry fruit bars...yummy! I tried the sugar free one just for the heck of it and it really wasn't that bad! Not as sweet as the normal ones but still hit the spot.
Once in the land, we STILL had about 10 minutes or so for Soarin so we jumped on the boat ride to tour the veggies. I still get a kick out of the pumpkins earning their ears..haha!
And when we got off the ride it was FINALLY time for Soarin! Yayyyy! Now I had NEVER understood the hoopla with Soarin. Yeah it was cool, but it never did it for me. Someone then mentioned that to really enjoy it, you have to sit in the front row so that you didn't have feet hanging above you. We finally asked for the very front...and they were right! It was MUCH better without feet hanging above you. Still not my FAVE ride...but much cooler!
After Soarin we started making our way towards the countries. There was a little Peter Pan topiary garden so we wandered through there for a bit and snapped some photos..
Ok..must continue in another post immediately following this one! Too many pics!