Bella’s Very Merry WISH-mas Party ~ 10 Days of Dreams Come True MAW/GKTW Dec 3-10

[kimmylaj]

love the update. so sad about your pictures. my pics from 2007 trip got lost in my computer. the thing crashed before i backed them up and they are all gone. i understand crying about them, trust me i understand

 

[jessica52877]

Oh no! I would be crying too! Not silly at all. In fact I have cried over lost pictures!! More then once (I don't learn quick do I?). I found out after the fact that I could have taken my card to a camera store (or some good folks at disney sometimes) and they probably could have recovered most. I didn't know that at the time though.

So, maybe just maybe, they could do something with your jump drive???

 

[cleostar09]

Oh NOO Stephanie!!!! I'm so sorry about your pictures!! I'm very excited for your TR anyway!! Did you get my other post about our girls meeting up? Sunny and Bella sat at the Ice Cream Shop and chatted for a bit. They got the same toy at Christmas... LOL

 

[that's nice]

I feel horrible about the pictures. I hope someone is able to help you get them back.


Glad MAW was able to rectify the van situation... You had me LOL about putting grandma on the roof!

 

[StefaniLyn]

LOVE your update--sorry for all of the bumps in the road but how exciting that you are finally there!!!

And I was so sick reading your update about your photos--I would be flipping out if that happened to me! I'm praying you can access them somehow!!

Thanks. We did hit a couple more bumps on our first day, but it was no big deal. I'm working on our GKTWarrival update right now.

The lost photos still make me tear up every time I think about it but I am slightly less pessimistic than yesterday after reading several posts with offers of assistance. Thank you for your prayers.

I am so sorry to hear about the possible demise of your poor photos. I hope they can be revived. I haven't read the last update on the trip yet ( I can't wait) but I had to post about the photos first. I totally understand. A few years ago everything from our house was taken in the middle of a move unfortunatley that included all of our pictures. Pictures from my childhood, my husbands, his time in the military, all of our kids baby pictures including the ones from those long hospital stays when my little boy was sick, birthday's even most of our wedding pics. I still mourn those photos! I will definatley be praying you find a way to retrieve your photos. Now I'm off to read your latest TR entry.

I am so sorry about the loss of your photos. I cannot imagine losing so many of your precious memories. As if moving isn't stressful enough, and you had to deal with that as well? You have every reason to continue to mourn. I would probably require hospitalization if I lost that many photos.

love the update. so sad about your pictures. my pics from 2007 trip got lost in my computer. the thing crashed before i backed them up and they are all gone. i understand crying about them, trust me i understand

I'm sorry abour your lost pictures. I feel your pain, lol! The silly thing for me is that I know better than to put all my eggs (photos) in one basket (jump drive). But with Christmas and the chaos surrounding the last couple of weeks, I just didn't make the time to back them up. My bad. Lesson learned (the hard way).

Oh no! I would be crying too! Not silly at all. In fact I have cried over lost pictures!! More then once (I don't learn quick do I?). I found out after the fact that I could have taken my card to a camera store (or some good folks at disney sometimes) and they probably could have recovered most. I didn't know that at the time though.

So, maybe just maybe, they could do something with your jump drive???

I am looking into a few options right now to recover the photos on the jump drive and I will definitely post here first if there is any success. First my uncle will take a look at it. If he can't do anything with it, a couple people here on the DIS (which I now deem the 2nd happiest place on Earth), might be able to help. And if not, I have found a service that claims a 96% success rate for recovering information on damaged drives. It would cost $50-100, but well worth it in my opinion.

 

[All7OfUs]

This is so incredibly sad to me!! I"m really praying for a major miracle here- but have every hope you'll get them back!!!

Glad the car thing worked out! Even though 30 minutes doesn't seem long on a regular day, this ISN"T a REGULAR day!!!! You were trying to get somewhere important!!!

 

[heaven2dc]

Oh no!! I feel so terribly bad for you and completely understand how important photos are especially for such a magical trip as this. I keep hoping somehow you will come on here and say that they magically appeared and all was right with the world but in the meantime here's a

Your princesses are adorable - loved their princess capes!

 

[StefaniLyn]

Oh NOO Stephanie!!!! I'm so sorry about your pictures!! I'm very excited for your TR anyway!! Did you get my other post about our girls meeting up? Sunny and Bella sat at the Ice Cream Shop and chatted for a bit. They got the same toy at Christmas... LOL

I did get your other post . . . . .I thought I replied to it? Hmmmm maybe over on my PTR. Let me check. Ah yes, here it is:

Originally Posted by cleostar09

Hey I hope your trip was AMAZING!! Funny story My family and I ran into your girls EVERYWHERE! But every time we did you were not with them. Sunny and Bella talked for awhile after the Christmas Party because they had gotten the same toy from Santa. LOL

I can't believe we kept missing eachother! I wish I had been able to meet you and your family. My MIL told me about meeting your family at GKTW Christmas while I was in orientation. Any chance you got a picture of Bella and Sunny?

Sorry, it took me a while to reply to posts on my PTR. The holidays were twice as crazy after being gone for 10 days!

I feel horrible about the pictures. I hope someone is able to help you get them back.


Glad MAW was able to rectify the van situation... You had me LOL about putting grandma on the roof!

Thanks Tim, I hope so too.

I literally dropped my suitcase when I saw the first vehicle. Honestly our luggage would not have even fit in that thing! And you know we wouldn't REALLY put grandma on the roof, right? It would have been DD10 AJ because by that time she was whining like crazy about being sooooooo hungry!

This is so incredibly sad to me!! I"m really praying for a major miracle here- but have every hope you'll get them back!!!

Glad the car thing worked out! Even though 30 minutes doesn't seem long on a regular day, this ISN"T a REGULAR day!!!! You were trying to get somewhere important!!!

The extra time spent with Avis along with the tardiness of our flight actually messed up our plans a little. I was hoping to go to Wal-Mart after we ate lunch but instead we ended up going after the kids were in bed that evening. It wasn't a huge deal, but we didn't have extra food for Bella so she only had 3 meals that day instead of 4 as planned.

Oh no!! I feel so terribly bad for you and completely understand how important photos are especially for such a magical trip as this. I keep hoping somehow you will come on here and say that they magically appeared and all was right with the world but in the meantime here's a

Your princesses are adorable - loved their princess capes!

Thanks for the hug. After posting on here and reading replies, I have more hope than I did previously. And although I would love to keep checking the drive in my computer to see if they have magically appeared, I have been instructed not to put the jump drive back into the computer until my uncle looks at it to prevent further damage. I am headed out to pick AJ up from a DI meeting and when I return I am going to call my uncle.

I love those capes too! I actually purchased them on clearance about 18 months ago from disneyshopping.com with a $25 credit (making them free!) I recieved for signing up for a Disney Visa. Who knew then that they would be PERFECT for our Christmastime Wish Trip to Disneyworld?

 

[kdzbear]

Oh no! I know exactly how you feel about your photos. I hope that someone with more knowledge will be able to recover them. When Tyler was 6 months old I lost about 3 months of photos. We were having problems with one of our computer drives and when the technician changed it out, he never checked to see if there was a disk in it. I had emptied it and then grandma called and needed a photo so I put a disk in to print it for her and forgot to take it out. The technician had already mailed the drive back and it was never found. However, just two weeks ago I was on FB and someone sent me a code to a website for a free photobook. It was a site that I don't remember going to, but there were many of my missing photos. I had previously checked all of the sites that I regularly upload photos to. They were not all there, but enough of them were. I was so happy! I have also recovered photos from erased memory sticks before so I think you will be able to as well! Good Luck!

 

[Chelley00]

Oh no. I think I cried a little for you. I'm a huge picture freak, and I would have just cried if I lost my pictures from any trip. I hope you get everything recovered!

 

[buzz for boys]

HI,
Im so gutted for you I believe when you have special children photos take on a whole new meaning and in bad imes I know photos keep me going!!
Now heres a strange suggestion but have you tried phoning gktw and asking if they can help?? They have afab team of tech guys that managed to get a video from a corrupt disc so they may be able to help you !! Worth a shot !!!!
Hope you manage to retrieve them soon
LOuise x

 

[pipersmom]

Okay..I don't know how in the world I missed that you had started this, but I'm here now!! The girls reaction to the limo was soo classic. I haven't mentioned to Piper yet that someone will be picking us up, but I also don't know if it will be a limo, towncar, etc. I'm with Melissa..the picture of Bella and Kennedy sleeping in the limo was tooo cute. Eeks at not finding the GKTW Greeter, but good thinking on your part to having him paged, I don't know that I would have thought of that!! LOL@ grandma on the roof..when Piper starts acting up in the car, I ask her if she'd rather ride on the roof..lolol.

I have to say, when I read about your drive I literally got nauseous..praying that your Uncle or someone else will be able to recover them for you. I think any of us put into that situation would have been crying our eyes out, I'm almost crying for you right now just thinking about it!

Looking forward to the next installment..and the next..and the one after that! I've loved following along with you guys..I enjoyed reading all the completed wish trip reports, but I think it's even cooler when you can follow the whole thing from pre-trip to post-trip!

 

[maroo]

Thanks for the tips. That is great information to know. I was actually hosting my pictures on Facebook. It had been working fine but for the last two days I get an "upload failed: try again" message every time I uplaod. I may need to move over to photobucket if Facebook doesn't cooperate soon. DH and DD10 both have separate email accounts so I may be starting photobucket accounts under their names to spread out the photos.

Thanks. I am praying for a miracle too.

I will definitely let you know if my uncle isn't able to recover the photos. He definitely knows his way around a computer and for him to be pessimistic really worries me. Thank you so much for your offer to help. I will PM you if we are unsuccessful tomorrow.




I do feel a little selfish praying for a jump drive, but then agian, this isn't just any jump drive. It's a WISH TRIP! In fact, when I attempted to pull files from the drive onto my computer, I actually named the folder 'PleaseLord.' Sadly, the file remains empty.

I am hoping to get it to my uncle tomorrow sometime. If he can't do it, there is another DISer (see above) who has offered assistance. I also did a little googling and found a couple of services who claim 96% success rates for recovering files from damaged jump drives. So I still have some options. But I'm not getting my hopes up.

As per your suggestion, I am going to upload the photos to several sites this evening. I hope it's not a virus, but who knows?

And yes, thanks to you, I did do photopass! I need to call them though because our pics from the entrance at Epcot are missing from my account. If they are able to find those, then I will be ordering our CD ASAP.

Just for the sake of clarification...because I went back and read what I wrote...and want to make sure I was clear...


I was praying...fervently...to have your jump drive fixed to find those pictures!

And I even entertained the notion of alerting our "emergency" prayer chain...but figured they may not quite "get it"...(which is what I meant when I said I would not alert the prayer chain...)

Just wanted to clarify...that I have, indeed, been praying that you get those pics back and that I definitely think it is prayer worthy! I hope that made sense.

 

[pacrosby]

Just add me to the long list of 'friends' here who are feeling your pain. I got a little teary myself as I was reading your red alert.

I also must add that I thought those capes were soooo cute. I had thought perhaps you had made them (or someone had made them for you)

Enjoying your report and looking forward to reading more!!

Pamela

Matty's Wish Trip PTR (completed and closed) http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2325607

Matty's Wish Trip TR "Mom, Dad, 3 Kids, and a Gingerbread Boy" http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2356739

 

[StefaniLyn]

Oh no! I know exactly how you feel about your photos. I hope that someone with more knowledge will be able to recover them. When Tyler was 6 months old I lost about 3 months of photos. We were having problems with one of our computer drives and when the technician changed it out, he never checked to see if there was a disk in it. I had emptied it and then grandma called and needed a photo so I put a disk in to print it for her and forgot to take it out. The technician had already mailed the drive back and it was never found. However, just two weeks ago I was on FB and someone sent me a code to a website for a free photobook. It was a site that I don't remember going to, but there were many of my missing photos. I had previously checked all of the sites that I regularly upload photos to. They were not all there, but enough of them were. I was so happy! I have also recovered photos from erased memory sticks before so I think you will be able to as well! Good Luck!

I am so glad you were able to recover some of your lost photos. Those baby pics are so precious

Oh no. I think I cried a little for you. I'm a huge picture freak, and I would have just cried if I lost my pictures from any trip. I hope you get everything recovered!

Thanks. I hope some of it can be recovered as well, but I'm not holding my breath. Every time I think about it

HI,
Im so gutted for you I believe when you have special children photos take on a whole new meaning and in bad imes I know photos keep me going!!
Now heres a strange suggestion but have you tried phoning gktw and asking if they can help?? They have afab team of tech guys that managed to get a video from a corrupt disc so they may be able to help you !! Worth a shot !!!!
Hope you manage to retrieve them soon
LOuise x

They are so very precious to me. It's so hard to believe they can be wiped out in an instant. Just. Not. Fair. I hadn't thought of calling GKTW. I have a couple other avenues that I will explore first, but I might give them a call if those aren't successful.

Okay..I don't know how in the world I missed that you had started this, but I'm here now!! The girls reaction to the limo was soo classic. I haven't mentioned to Piper yet that someone will be picking us up, but I also don't know if it will be a limo, towncar, etc. I'm with Melissa..the picture of Bella and Kennedy sleeping in the limo was tooo cute. Eeks at not finding the GKTW Greeter, but good thinking on your part to having him paged, I don't know that I would have thought of that!! LOL@ grandma on the roof..when Piper starts acting up in the car, I ask her if she'd rather ride on the roof..lolol.

I have to say, when I read about your drive I literally got nauseous..praying that your Uncle or someone else will be able to recover them for you. I think any of us put into that situation would have been crying our eyes out, I'm almost crying for you right now just thinking about it!

Looking forward to the next installment..and the next..and the one after that! I've loved following along with you guys..I enjoyed reading all the completed wish trip reports, but I think it's even cooler when you can follow the whole thing from pre-trip to post-trip!

Welcome! Glad you made it over here!

The Limo was great and I hope Piper gets one too! I know it is the 'standard practice' for Wish Kids here in WI to get a limo, but I'm not sure about other states.

I was pretty sad about the (lack of a) greeter too to be honest. It was one of those moments that I truly looked forward to.

The photos . . . oh the photos. How I miss those photos so much. I keep praying for a miracle.

I'm going to try and get another installment written today, maybe. It's difficult because everytime I start writing, I think of those pictures and then the waterworks start all over again.

Just for the sake of clarification...because I went back and read what I wrote...and want to make sure I was clear...

I was praying...fervently...to have your jump drive fixed to find those pictures!

And I even entertained the notion of alerting our "emergency" prayer chain...but figured they may not quite "get it"...(which is what I meant when I said I would not alert the prayer chain...)

Just wanted to clarify...that I have, indeed, been praying that you get those pics back and that I definitely think it is prayer worthy! I hope that made sense.

Thank you for your prayers Maroo.

Just add me to the long list of 'friends' here who are feeling your pain. I got a little teary myself as I was reading your red alert.

I also must add that I thought those capes were soooo cute. I had thought perhaps you had made them (or someone had made them for you)

Enjoying your report and looking forward to reading more!!

Pamela

Thanks so much Pamela.

The capes were wonderful during our trip. Just enough to keep the girls warm and stylish enough for pictures.

The next installment of my trip (check in) is going to be a little depressing, especially after reading your installment yesterday. Let's just say I should have been more persistent with our check in person. But fortunately, it will get better from there!

 

[StefaniLyn]

I called my Uncle Kirk yesterday morning to see if he was available to take a look at the flash drive which holds hundreds of very precious pictures from days 1-7 of Bella's Wish Trip. He told me to come over anytime, so I fed the kids lunch early and we headed out. Thankfully, he just lives about 15 minutes away so it was a quick drive.

I spent the next 3 and a half hours at my uncle's house. He tried every recovery program he has and nothing worked. He went over the drive with programs that read each tiny bit of every nook and cranny of the drive and was unable to recover even a single piece of anything. It appears that the drive is not simply corrupt as I suspected, but completely erased! I fear now that the photos are gone forever.

Kirk said that sometimes flash drives can just be erased in an instant because of static, electrical surge, or magnets. None of those were around my computer at the time that I am aware of, but alas, the drive appears to be empty. Everything is completely gone. As my uncle explained it to me in computer lingo, it's like someone took the series of 1's and 0's that makes up the digital images and reset them all to 0's. And once it is that far gone, I'm not sure they can be recovered. Digital photographers take note of this very important lesson. DO NOT save anything onto a flash drive that you don't have copies of in another location. I learned this this hard way.

The little twinkle of hope I had is fading fast. I can't even look at the drive without breaking down into tears. And although I'm trying to avoid losing it in front of the kids, it just sometimes happens. The poor kids must think mom has gone crazy. When I'm not crying, my eyes are red from wiping away tears. To be completely childish about it . . . . It's just not FAIR! Talk about a case of post Disney Wish Trip Depression. I don't think it could get much worse than this.

A dear friend of mine has offered to have some of her techies at work take a look at it so I will be sending it off to her in the next day or so. I don't know if anything can be done, but I must exhaust all possibilities to maintain my own sanity at this point.

I can't quite explain why this affects me so profoundly or how much these pictures mean to me. Like a mom buckling her kid into a car seat, a smart woman would have backed these pictures up - multiple times. I have no good excuse for not having copies of these pictures, and thus have only myself to blame for the loss. There were so many precious moments captured in those pictures that are now gone forever:

~Bella and her GKTW greeter (on facebook, but not printed)
~Bella's Star on the ceiling at the GKTW Castle of Miracles and her making her special pillow there. Also almost all pictures of the carousel at GKTW (we rode every day and I took photos almost every time). Many more casual GKTW pictures. Losing these photos hurts the most.
~MVMCP - the parade, fireworks, and ride pictures. I do have some photopass pics.
~AK safari pictures - I only have 3 out of 100+
~Everyone's first taste of Beverly at Epcot (I do have AJ's reaction)
~Kim Possible Mission moments - I documented every clue.
~Bass Fishing on 7 Seas Lagoon. I had photos of every fish but only printed a few of them.
~Bella eating a magically pleasant meal and playing checkers with me in the Wish Room at MK. We will never even see the inside of the Wish room again.
~so many more. I could go on and on. As best I can, I will try to explain these in detail so you can mentally picture it while I'm writing my trip report. I am sorry I won't have the photos to share with you.

What really, really sucks is that I can literally picture almost every single photo in my mind. If only my level of artistry rose above stick figures I would spend my time recreating them all. But alas, until my memory fails me, it seems that these mental photographs will be all I am able to recover from the flash drive fiasco.

In trying to look at the bright side of things, I hope my experience has encouraged all of you to back up your precious memories and save every photograph in multiple locations. CDs are so inexpensive and easy to burn. Maroo posted some great tips on her PTR as well - stuff like having copies somewhere outside your home, etc. I find some comfort in knowing that even one other' person's photos might be saved because they read about my mistake and backed them up.

 

[thatkid]

I'm so sorry you lost your pictures. I'm in the process of backing mine up right now- to 5 different places. I really hope someone can help find them.

 

[praisehisname]

So glad that you arrived safely and got the rental car worked out!

I'm so so sorry about your pictures! I can only imagine how devastated you must be. You have absolutely inspired me to have multiple backups of my photos.

 

[kdzbear]

I am so sorry about the loss of your pictures. I know I can't replace the pictures of your girls. However, if you would like I will put all of my generic (without my family members) pictures on a disk including the ones I took of the Christmas Party and mail them to you, I will. Then at least you will have a little piece of the magic back. Send me an IM if you would like this and I will put one in the mail tomorrow.

- Kristin

 

[StefaniLyn]

I'm so sorry you lost your pictures. I'm in the process of backing mine up right now- to 5 different places. I really hope someone can help find them.

I am so glad you are backing yours up! The ones I have left have been backed up on 3 different websites as well as on CDs (one in our firesafe and another in my backpack) and on the original #2 flashdrive. Gee, do you think I learned my lesson? I hope so to. Too bad I don't know any CSI stars. They make data recovery look so easy!

So glad that you arrived safely and got the rental car worked out!

I'm so so sorry about your pictures! I can only imagine how devastated you must be. You have absolutely inspired me to have multiple backups of my photos.

I'm glad the rental worked out too. If it was just a matter of room, I wouldn't have complained (out loud! LOL). But since we literally could not fit everyone in the vehicle something had to be said. Unfortunately, between that, the flight delay, and the absent greeter, we probably lost a couple hours of time. And we were HUNGRY!

I'm glad I inspired you to back up your pictures!

I am so sorry about the loss of your pictures. I know I can't replace the pictures of your girls. However, if you would like I will put all of my generic (without my family members) pictures on a disk including the ones I took of the Christmas Party and mail them to you, I will. Then at least you will have a little piece of the magic back. Send me an IM if you would like this and I will put one in the mail tomorrow.

- Kristin

Thank you Kristin. I think I will take you up on that offer. I miss my Christmas parade pictures already! I will send you a PM.