Disney Christmas Death Match: East versus West UPDATE Osborne lights 3/10

[OhioStateBuckeye]

'Tis the season to be jolly and joyous
With a burst of pleasure we feel it all right
It's a season when the Saints can employ us
To spread the news about peace and to keep love alive!










It’s a holly jolly Christmas death match in this trip report! Wait a minute, Christmas isn’t about Death Matches?! Hmm, you guys have never been to one of my family Christmases, where it isn’t Christmas until somebody cries.




I finally went off the Disney deep end and scheduled two Disney trips within the same month. One to Disneyland in mid-December on the Adventures by Disney Backstage Magic trip which was planned years ago. Then a trip to Disney World in early December, which was a last minute decision made over the summer so that I could attend the DISapalooza private party at Diagon Alley. We ended up having annual passes to WDW, so that trip was mostly Disney with just the palooza party thrown in at Universal.




So where does the Death Match come into play? Well, I decided to do a trip report on how both parks do Christmas. Everything is a competition, of course, so we'll have to see which park wins!


At the end maybe everyone can help me decide which I liked better.




So what is ahead for my readers? I’ll list some of the holiday highlights:


Disney World:


-Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party
-DISaplooza private party at Diagon Alley with the Podcast team
-a quest to see all the Epcot World Showcase Holiday storytellers
-the Osborne Lights
-newly opened Star Wars Launch Bay


Disneyland:


-ride overlays: Jingle Cruise, Christmas Small World, Nightmare Before Christmas Haunted Mansion, Hyperspace Mountain
-special behind the scenes tours from the Adventures by Disney trip (will mostly likely try to make these spoiler friendly somehow so people don’t need to spoil the surprise of what happens on the trip if they don’t want to)
-a new highlight of my life meet and greet with an impossible to find character (in which we become best friends)
-the Force Awakens Hollywood premiere








Before I get started I’ve gotta do a cast of characters:

I’m Rachel. I now live in Austin, Texas (recently moved from Columbus, Ohio and still no closer to Disney. Sigh). Then there is my long suffering boyfriend, Brian. We both like to watch football (Ohio State Buckeyes and the Steelers), obsess over Star Wars, play video games and go hiking and camping.



Stephanie, Brian's younger sister, joined us for the WDW portion. She likes Clemson football, sewing costumes and obsessing over RunDisney.



And our furry little companion, Sirius. He enjoyed multiple staycations here in Austin at his boarding place.



He doesn't take good pictures. I am of the belief that he thinks the camera is going to steal his soul.




Last trip report I did a little questionnaire that everyone seemed to enjoy. So I’m going to do a Christmas one, hope you haven’t had Christmas overload yet. Feel free to copy and paste in your own responses!

No, really, please do. I can get very unmotivated if people don't chime in on my trip reports (I'm looking at you Jeremy!) and I really want to write about these amazing adventures.

Don't be a grinch/silent lurker.



Join in the Christmas cheer with the Whos. It is fun in Whoville, I promise. We have roast beast.





Favorite Christmas Movie or Special: Muppets Christmas Carol and Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

I could quote Aunt Bethany all day long, and I frequently do. 'Don't throw me down, Clark'. 'I'll try not to, Aunt Bethany'.



Favorite Christmas song: Oh Holy Night and One More Sleep Til Christmas (from Muppets)

Favorite Reindeer: Vixen. So far as I know, he isn’t featured in any Christmas song, movie or special. I like a bit of mystery.

Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park: DCA. The creativity of the Carsland decorations can't be beat.

Favorite Disney Christmas Tree: The Animal Kingdom tree and the Be Our Guest tree.

Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort: Grand Californian

Favorite Ride Overlay: Disneyland Jingle Cruise

Favorite Disney Christmas special: Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas



Now Brian's answers:

Favorite Christmas movie or special: Die Hard and the Grinch cartoon

Favorite Christmas song: Charlie Brown song at the end of the special

Favorite Reindeer: Chet from the Santa Clause 2

Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park: Disneyland

Favorite Disney Christmas tree: The Jingle Cruise tree

Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort: Grand Californian

Favorite ride overlay: Jingle Cruise at DL, but he said it should be the Country Bears, except they don't do that anymore. He is a touch bitter.

Favorite Disney Christmas Special: Tale Spin Jolly Molly Christmas


First up:

Put on your favorite ugly Christmas sweater, we are about to experience arrival day at WDW!

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Stephanie has given her answers to the Christmas survey:


Favorite Christmas Movie or special: A year without a Santa Claus
Favorite Christmas song: Silent Night
Favorite Reindeer: Rudolph
Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park:
Favorite Disney Christmas Tree: Grand Floridian
Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort: Animal Kingdom Lodge
Favorite Ride Overlay: Small World
Favorite Disney Christmas special: 2013 Disney Parks Christmas Parade (still on my DVR)


Our travel day was Wednesday. Stephanie had already arrived in Orlando around 9 and taken the Magic Express and was running like a tornado through Epcot (and texting me what she was doing and making me very jealous). Brian and I arrived much later after the work day. We landed in Orlando early around 8:30 pm.

I tried to take a picture of something really cool from the plane but it didn't really come out at all:



There was this dark purple band to the horizon like I'd never seen before, it was very pretty.

I had optimistically scheduled FPs starting at 8. I knew we wouldn't make the 8-9 but I was hopeful for the others. However, we ended up sitting at the gate for half an hour (thanks Orlando gate traffic control). Then we ran towards the magical express like the McAllister family late for Paris.



OK not really, it was more of a happy frolic. But Christmas and airports are synonymous with Home Alone for me.

We arrived at the Magical Express ticket counter. We were sorted into our line for All Star Sports and we started our wait behind about 20 other people. This part seemed to take forever, especially with fastpasses for the MK burning a hole in my back pocket (might wanna have my phone replaced).



We were finally told which bus to go to, there was a group of 16 getting on before us, by the time we got on there were only two single seats not next to each other left and people had their bags on the seats, so we went to the front and said all the seats were full so they took the reserved signs off two of the front seats and we got to sit there! Nice. The poor family of 4 behind us didn't even get on the bus, hope they didn't have to wait too long for another bus.



The driver turned on fake, not good Stacy (seriously, was Stacy not available??) and we were off in the rain to WDW!



Even with our VIP seats, this is the best we could do of that oh so magical shot:



Stephanie texted us our shared room number so we were able to bolt right off the bus (no checked luggage). We headed straight for the room, dumped our luggage and changed and were soon waiting at the bus stop.



Good news: the rain had stopped. Bad news: we missed our first two FP and had about a half hour to make our last FP, my beloved Peter Pan. Getting from your plan to an actual park took way longer than I had imagined. The MK closed at 11 but had EMH until 1 am.

When our bus pulled up to the farthest spot in the universe from the MK gates, we hopped off and had 9 minutes to reach Peter Pan. We were pretty shocked at the number of people headed to buses. I wasn't sure if people weren't aware that it was EMH night or if they were just finished, but it was A LOT of people.

We utilized our patented 'Disney Walk' (i.e. our little old lady mall speed walk but never break into a trot). I had to stop for a picture of this gem.



I could stare slack jawed and drooling at that lit up castle for the rest of my life and not realize the passage of time.

We ended up missing our FP time by 4 minutes. There is usually a 15 minute late window built into the FP system, but since the park was into EMH there were no longer any FPs. I was pretty sad, so we decided to get into line anyway, which turned out to be a good idea. Though the line looked long, it only took us 15 minutes to get through. That Peter Pan line really does move along when there are no FPs interrupting the standby flow.

We also had the pleasure of watching Tinkerbell work her magic. Tinkerbell will sometimes show up on the shadow wall in the kid's bedroom. She did show up this time and was immediately swatted, hard, by some punk kid. Tinkerbell, not one to take things laying down, immediately retaliated by making the kid's shadow disappear, which I think means she killed his shadow. Don't mess with Tinkerbell, she really isn't all that nice.

After being pixie dusted (my favorite part of the new queue), we were off to Neverland. I love this ride, and I would like to have the flying over London scene in my house someday. I think one of my favorite Disney experiences ever was when the ride broke down for 5 minutes and we were smack in the middle of the London scene. Talk about a drooling stare.

Once off the ride we met up with Stephanie and headed toward HM.



Not bad for a bathroom.

Once we walked on HM Brian was able to get a couple decent no flash pictures (he has been working on his photography).







Pro tip: if you are in love with the HM and would like to see how the ballroom scene works, you get to go behind the scenes in the Marceline to Magic Kingdom tour, which is one of the cheapest tours and one of my favorites.







Disclaimer: I did not give Brian time to clean up any of those shots, so they'll most likely look better later.

Next up we took the shortcut to POTC. It had been closed for refurbishment on our last trip and it's Brian's favorite so we were eager to see what they did to it.



I know they brightened up some of the costumes, but it looks like they also changed Barbossa and Jack to their Stranger Tides costumes, including lightening Jack's hair.

Not really sure if that was necessary.



They also changed the redhead a lot, she has a whole new body with, I guess, more realistic proportions? I don't know if I liked this change, she was good the way she was before.



We could smell the new scents a little bit. The marketplace scene kind of smelled like Soarin though.





Next up we decided to see a Tiki Room show. I asked the CM at the door if I could wake up Jose, I'd never done this before. Before I knew it I was rapping on Jose's perch with my little bamboo cane. I didn't speak loud enough though, so I had to do take 2 before he woke up from his siesta. Poor guy, they keep getting shorter and shorter. Michael was always my favorite of the birds, I am a sucker for green parrots.

The Jingle Cruise was a walk on so off course we had to drop by. Here is a not too great picture of Brian's favorite Christmas tree:



You can't really tell but it is decorated using stuff that might be lying around a jungle.



I just love the Jingle Cruise. I love the Jungle Cruise to start with, so adding Christmas themed jokes just makes it better. I love all the mother in law and extended family jokes, and the 'get down! hide! it's Christmas carolers!'. I also love all the fruitcake jokes. One of my favorite Christmas specials when I was little was Peewee's Christmas, and fruitcakes are a running joke in that one. I'm not sure if it is a holiday joke or not, but we also heard the 'backside of water! and the only thing in this park that is not Frozen!'.



At this point it was around midnight and Stephanie had been theme parking all day, so she headed back to the room and we made the tough decision to soldier on, haha.





We shortcutted through the hub and ended up walking onto Winnie the Pooh.



That bear and his honey.

Then we walked onto Little Mermaid.



I really like the improvements they made to this ride. Darkening the ceiling alone made a huge difference. It is supposed to be a dark ride, after all.



For some reason I've chosen this guy as my favorite under sea dweller in the big musical scene:





Brian misses Ariel's ice cream cone hair.



Flounder has a rough life.





Has anyone else noticed that there is always someone taking flash pictures on this ride? We rode with 2 parents and a kid in the clam shell next to us, and the boy's grandparents in the next one over. The grandparents spent the whole ride taking flash pictures of the kid, which meant we spent the whole ride looking right into bright light flashes. Thanks grandpa.

My favorite scene:



Ariel and Eric both just look very off in this scene:

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Next up we wandered into the circus area and rode Dumbo since it had no wait. I'm a bit obsessed with taking pictures of the water feature here.



We chose the purple Dumbo:



We must have chose poorly because this Dumbo was afraid of heights and refused to go any higher the entire trip.



Thanks bud, nice flying with ya.

We were pretty tired at this point ourselves and decided to head out a little bit before close. I'm pretty sure I remember the wait for the bus being horrible, but we were finally back at the room and ready to sleep.

Next up: DHS and MVMCP. Also, I'm pretty sure we took actual pictures of ourselves this next day, in case anyone was interested in seeing any of those.

Christmas review:

-castle: I'm not sure how many sights in the world could be better than the WDW MK castle covered in those lights.
-Jingle Cruise: tons of fun, love all the corny Christmas jokes.
-Main Street decorations: they look really nice at night, I don't miss the bunting across the streets at all (also, I don't even know what bunting is, I guess it means garland with lights in it. I'm just using that word because people on the boards seem to use it).
-Christmas tree: not pictured here, but it is also very pretty and huge. The only thing about the tree, if you get a photopass picture in front of the tree, your really only getting the base of the tree with the presents around it. I'm not sure I always think of that when I'm getting a picture there. If you want the whole tree in your picture, you have to find one of the photopass people farther down the street whose tripod faces the tree. This is probably obvious to everyone else, but there you have it.

 

[goodmorningirl]

Oh, I'm so excited you have a new report! I can't wait to hear about MVMCP and to see your report on Disneyland. That picture of you and the Three Caballeros is hilarious. Donald always has to be the center of attention. Here's my list!

Favorite Christmas movie or special: Christmas Vacation
Favorite Christmas song: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Favorite Reindeer: Rudolph. (I love his little congested voice in his special when he has the false nose. Too cute.)
Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park: Magic Kingdom
Favorite Disney Christmas tree: The tree at Art of Animation
Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort: Oh, man I don't have an answer for this!
Favorite ride overlay: Jingle Cruise at Magic Kingdom
Favorite Disney Christmas Special: Probably Prep & Landing. (I haven't seen many others)

Looking forward to more of your report!

 

[Malia78]

Hi Rachel--one of your fellow ABD travelers here. Definitely looking forward to reading your thoughts of the ABD trip.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Oh, I'm so excited you have a new report! I can't wait to hear about MVMCP and to see your report on Disneyland. That picture of you and the Three Caballeros is hilarious. Donald always has to be the center of attention. Here's my list!

Favorite Christmas movie or special: Christmas Vacation
Favorite Christmas song: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Favorite Reindeer: Rudolph. (I love his little congested voice in his special when he has the false nose. Too cute.)
Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park: Magic Kingdom
Favorite Disney Christmas tree: The tree at Art of Animation
Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort: Oh, man I don't have an answer for this!
Favorite ride overlay: Jingle Cruise at Magic Kingdom
Favorite Disney Christmas Special: Probably Prep & Landing. (I haven't seen many others)

Looking forward to more of your report!

Welcome! Thanks for joining in. Rudolph is exceptionally cute, can't disagree with that. I have some pictures of the AOA tree coming up! Prep and Landing was surprisingly a lot better than I thought. I like all the little touches it has, like the elves call signs and all their little instruments and phrases.

Hi Rachel--one of your fellow ABD travelers here. Definitely looking forward to reading your thoughts of the ABD trip.

Who are you?! I'm so excited someone found me!

 

[Malia78]

Welcome! Thanks for joining in. Rudolph is exceptionally cute, can't disagree with that. I have some pictures of the AOA tree coming up! Prep and Landing was surprisingly a lot better than I thought. I like all the little touches it has, like the elves call signs and all their little instruments and phrases.



Who are you?! I'm so excited someone found me!

Solo traveler Karilynn--table mate for the farewell dinner at Carthay Circle

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Solo traveler Karilynn--table mate for the farewell dinner at Carthay Circle

Ah the fellow character hunter! Welcome, glad to have you aboard and to know your DISboards name

 

[Kari0180]

Very excited to read about your death match. We've done Christmas season at world, one day we'll get to land, I can't wait to see your highlights!

 

[soniam]

Yah I found your report. I have been wondering when you would do one. I can't believe I just found it. Ever since you told us about the ABD tour at the movies, I am set on going for Star Wars Land opening. Luckily, I have some time to plan, especially since I have already seemed to pick our vacations through 2018 Can't wait to read more.

And our furry little companion, Sirius. He enjoyed multiple staycations here in Austin at his boarding place.

He doesn't take good pictures. I am of the belief that he thinks the camera is going to steal his soul.

I have never seen a picture of Sirius. I love Siberian Huskies. I grew up with a Himalayan cat, so I always think of Siberian Huskies as the dog equivalent, but with less attitude. However, Sirius looks to me like he's saying "Really? Another picture of me?"

Favorite Christmas Movie or Special: Muppets Christmas Carol and Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
I could quote Aunt Bethany all day long, and I frequently do. 'Don't throw me down, Clark'. 'I'll try not to, Aunt Bethany'.

Now Brian's answers:
Favorite Christmas movie or special: Die Hard and the Grinch cartoon

I love National Lampoon's Christmas, especially Aunt Bethany

Die Hard is great! DH always thinks of Die Hard as a Christmas movie too

Here goes mine.
Favorite Christmas Movie or special: Polar Express & The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (Original animated one with Boris Karloff, because as we know, evil, scary, European men make the the best Christmas shows)
Favorite Christmas song: Silent Night (makes me teary a little sometimes, and reminds me of the beginning, animated, river/castle seen for Disney movies)
Favorite Reindeer: Donner (Is it Donner or Donder Also, reminds of Donner pass/cold/cannabalism, all good xmas things)

I can't do any of these, since I haven't been to a Disney park during the holidays yet Any of them would do for me.
Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park:
Favorite Disney Christmas Tree:
Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort:
Favorite Ride Overlay:

Favorite Disney Christmas special: The Christmas special at the Disney Family Museum (This isn't a a true xmas special, but it was the most touching one I have ever seen. I just loved how Disney Studios made them special xmas cards every year. Diane narrated it, and you could tell how much she loved growing up a Disney. It was so well done and made me feel as if I had been part of their family. I had to dry my eyes quickly before the lights came on

I had optimistically scheduled FPs starting at 8. I knew we wouldn't make the 8-9 but I was hopeful for the others. However, we ended up sitting at the gate for half an hour (thanks Orlando gate traffic control). Then we ran towards the magical express like the McAllister family late for Paris.

That is optimistic. I have had to run for the chunnel to Paris with a 3 year old. That was definitely not one of our better examples of parenting or marriage

We arrived at the Magical Express ticket counter. We were sorted into our line for All Star Sports and we started our wait behind about 20 other people. This part seemed to take forever, especially with fastpasses for the MK burning a hole in my back pocket (might wanna have my phone replaced).

If it's a Samsung, I didn't work on that phone

We were finally told which bus to go to, there was a group of 16 getting on before us, by the time we got on there were only two single seats not next to each other left and people had their bags on the seats, so we went to the front and said all the seats were full so they took the reserved signs off two of the front seats and we got to sit there! Nice. The poor family of 4 behind us didn't even get on the bus, hope they didn't have to wait too long for another bus.

Why do people take up whole seats for luggage? There's a rack or you can put them on the floor

Good news: the rain had stopped. Bad news: we missed our first two FP and had about a half hour to make our last FP, my beloved Peter Pan. Getting from your plan to an actual park took way longer than I had imagined. The MK closed at 11 but had EMH until 1 am.

We utilized our patented 'Disney Walk' (i.e. our little old lady mall speed walk but never break into a trot). I had to stop for a picture of this gem.



I could stare slack jawed and drooling at that lit up castle for the rest of my life and not realize the passage of time.

Yah to the rain ending, boo to missing FP+. I've done the Disney "walk" before The castle does look so good. We watched the live stream of the Frozen castle lighting thing. It was really beautiful. Good shot BTW.

We ended up missing our FP time by 4 minutes. There is usually a 15 minute late window built into the FP system, but since the park was into EMH there were no longer any FPs. I was pretty sad, so we decided to get into line anyway, which turned out to be a good idea. Though the line looked long, it only took us 15 minutes to get through. That Peter Pan line really does move along when there are no FPs interrupting the standby flow.

We also had the pleasure of watching Tinkerbell work her magic. Tinkerbell will sometimes show up on the shadow wall in the kid's bedroom. She did show up this time and was immediately swatted, hard, by some punk kid. Tinkerbell, not one to take things laying down, immediately retaliated by making the kid's shadow disappear, which I think means she killed his shadow. Don't mess with Tinkerbell, she really isn't all that nice.

After being pixie dusted (my favorite part of the new queue), we were off to Neverland. I love this ride, and I would like to have the flying over London scene in my house someday. I think one of my favorite Disney experiences ever was when the ride broke down for 5 minutes and we were smack in the middle of the London scene. Talk about a drooling stare.

We haven't always done PP every trip. We always do Pooh though. However, with the new SB queue, I really like it. In fact, I prefer to do it with FP+ now.

Once we walked on HM Brian was able to get a couple decent no flash pictures (he has been working on his photography).

Pro tip: if you are in love with the HM and would like to see how the ballroom scene works, you get to go behind the scenes in the Marceline to Magic Kingdom tour, which is one of the cheapest tours and one of my favorites.

Disclaimer: I did not give Brian time to clean up any of those shots, so they'll most likely look better later.

The pics aren't bad. It's really hard to get good shots in the dark while moving without a flash. The key is a really good lens. I am so in love with our new lenses, especially our 24 prime. It's a set focal length and is awesome in the dark. They aren't too expensive, relatively speaking, because they do not zoom. I want to do that tour sometime. Who am I kidding? I need to do all of the tours

Next up we took the shortcut to POTC. It had been closed for refurbishment on our last trip and it's Brian's favorite so we were eager to see what they did to it.

I know they brightened up some of the costumes, but it looks like they also changed Barbossa and Jack to their Stranger Tides costumes, including lightening Jack's hair.

Not really sure if that was necessary.

They also changed the redhead a lot, she has a whole new body with, I guess, more realistic proportions? I don't know if I liked this change, she was good the way she was before.

We could smell the new scents a little bit. The marketplace scene kind of smelled like Soarin though.

I can't wait to do POTC. We haven't done it since the refurb either. I liked the busty red head; she was comical

Next up we decided to see a Tiki Room show. I asked the CM at the door if I could wake up Jose, I'd never done this before. Before I knew it I was rapping on Jose's perch with my little bamboo cane. I didn't speak loud enough though, so I had to do take 2 before he woke up from his siesta. Poor guy, they keep getting shorter and shorter. Michael was always my favorite of the birds, I am a sucker for green parrots.

We love the Tiki Room. I didn't know you could ask to wake up Jose I am so going to try that next trip. Maybe if I am wearing my Tiki Room 50th anniversary t-shirt, that will help

The Jingle Cruise was a walk on so off course we had to drop by. Here is a not too great picture of Brian's favorite Christmas tree:

You can't really tell but it is decorated using stuff that might be lying around a jungle.

I just love the Jingle Cruise. I love the Jungle Cruise to start with, so adding Christmas themed jokes just makes it better. I love all the mother in law and extended family jokes, and the 'get down! hide! it's Christmas carolers!'. I also love all the fruitcake jokes. One of my favorite Christmas specials when I was little was Peewee's Christmas, and fruitcakes are a running joke in that one. I'm not sure if it is a holiday joke or not, but we also heard the 'backside of water! and the only thing in this park that is not Frozen!'.

The Jingle Cruise sounds awesome. I have got to get there during the holidays. Maybe 2017. I am concocting a play for Food & Wine during my birthday. (How come there's no evil, conniving emoji?)

Then we walked onto Little Mermaid.

I really like the improvements they made to this ride. Darkening the ceiling alone made a huge difference. It is supposed to be a dark ride, after all.

Brian misses Ariel's ice cream cone hair.

I don't think we have done Mermaid at WDW. We did it at DLR but always seem to skip it. We will do in in March.

Has anyone else noticed that there is always someone taking flash pictures on this ride? We rode with 2 parents and a kid in the clam shell next to us, and the boy's grandparents in the next one over. The grandparents spent the whole ride taking flash pictures of the kid, which meant we spent the whole ride looking right into bright light flashes. Thanks grandpa.

This drives me nuts

Ariel and Eric both just look very off in this scene:

They look plastic or something

Next up we wandered into the circus area and rode Dumbo since it had no wait. I'm a bit obsessed with taking pictures of the water feature here.

I am ashamed to say that we have not done Dumbo since NFL. In fact, DS & DH have never ridden it. NFL was being constructed on our first family trip. I have vowed that we will go back over there this trip and do Dumbo and the circus area.

Next up: DHS and MVMCP. Also, I'm pretty sure we took actual pictures of ourselves this next day, in case anyone was interested in seeing any of those.

We are usually really bad about that. I realized that we didn't take many people pictures in Germany or very many pics at all there. I think I was too busy concentrating on keeping warm, not spilling my very hot, very red mulled wine, and not losing DS in the crowds at night at the market

Glad I finally found your report

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Ugh. I've been waiting on Brian to fix his pictures and its been taking forever. I think he is almost done because I'm very eager to get on with this.

Very excited to read about your death match. We've done Christmas season at world, one day we'll get to land, I can't wait to see your highlights!

Thanks for joining in! I actually loved dl Christmas, I can't wait to talk about it.

Yah I found your report. I have been wondering when you would do one. I can't believe I just found it. Ever since you told us about the ABD tour at the movies, I am set on going for Star Wars Land opening. Luckily, I have some time to plan, especially since I have already seemed to pick our vacations through 2018 Can't wait to read more.



I have never seen a picture of Sirius. I love Siberian Huskies. I grew up with a Himalayan cat, so I always think of Siberian Huskies as the dog equivalent, but with less attitude. However, Sirius looks to me like he's saying "Really? Another picture of me?"



I love National Lampoon's Christmas, especially Aunt Bethany

Die Hard is great! DH always thinks of Die Hard as a Christmas movie too

Here goes mine.
Favorite Christmas Movie or special: Polar Express & The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (Original animated one with Boris Karloff, because as we know, evil, scary, European men make the the best Christmas shows)
Favorite Christmas song: Silent Night (makes me teary a little sometimes, and reminds me of the beginning, animated, river/castle seen for Disney movies)
Favorite Reindeer: Donner (Is it Donner or Donder Also, reminds of Donner pass/cold/cannabalism, all good xmas things)

I can't do any of these, since I haven't been to a Disney park during the holidays yet Any of them would do for me.
Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park:
Favorite Disney Christmas Tree:
Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort:
Favorite Ride Overlay:

Favorite Disney Christmas special: The Christmas special at the Disney Family Museum (This isn't a a true xmas special, but it was the most touching one I have ever seen. I just loved how Disney Studios made them special xmas cards every year. Diane narrated it, and you could tell how much she loved growing up a Disney. It was so well done and made me feel as if I had been part of their family. I had to dry my eyes quickly before the lights came on



That is optimistic. I have had to run for the chunnel to Paris with a 3 year old. That was definitely not one of our better examples of parenting or marriage



If it's a Samsung, I didn't work on that phone



Why do people take up whole seats for luggage? There's a rack or you can put them on the floor



Yah to the rain ending, boo to missing FP+. I've done the Disney "walk" before The castle does look so good. We watched the live stream of the Frozen castle lighting thing. It was really beautiful. Good shot BTW.



We haven't always done PP every trip. We always do Pooh though. However, with the new SB queue, I really like it. In fact, I prefer to do it with FP+ now.



The pics aren't bad. It's really hard to get good shots in the dark while moving without a flash. The key is a really good lens. I am so in love with our new lenses, especially our 24 prime. It's a set focal length and is awesome in the dark. They aren't too expensive, relatively speaking, because they do not zoom. I want to do that tour sometime. Who am I kidding? I need to do all of the tours



I can't wait to do POTC. We haven't done it since the refurb either. I liked the busty red head; she was comical



We love the Tiki Room. I didn't know you could ask to wake up Jose I am so going to try that next trip. Maybe if I am wearing my Tiki Room 50th anniversary t-shirt, that will help



The Jingle Cruise sounds awesome. I have got to get there during the holidays. Maybe 2017. I am concocting a play for Food & Wine during my birthday. (How come there's no evil, conniving emoji?)



I don't think we have done Mermaid at WDW. We did it at DLR but always seem to skip it. We will do in in March.



This drives me nuts



They look plastic or something



I am ashamed to say that we have not done Dumbo since NFL. In fact, DS & DH have never ridden it. NFL was being constructed on our first family trip. I have vowed that we will go back over there this trip and do Dumbo and the circus area.



We are usually really bad about that. I realized that we didn't take many people pictures in Germany or very many pics at all there. I think I was too busy concentrating on keeping warm, not spilling my very hot, very red mulled wine, and not losing DS in the crowds at night at the market

Glad I finally found your report

I'm so excited you guys are going to do the backstage abd!!! It is so worth it.

Aww a Himalayan. We had to put down our cat (my profile pic) this year. His name was Toulouse and he was a Persian, so similar to Himalayans.

Dumbo is so easy now, there is rarely a line.

Ugh I hate doing long replies on my phone, I'm going to post this then come back and finish tonight.

 

[soniam]

Ugh I hate doing long replies on my phone, I'm going to post this then come back and finish tonight.

The entire reason that I didn't get a tablet and got a new small laptop was that I hate reading this board and posting on my phone. A tablet is just all of the things I hate about my phone but bigger

 

[stacy~**]

So I didn't know you started a new report! Also did I know you went to WDW? (I did know about the ABD trip). I feel terribly out of the loop. Anywaayyyys very excited to be here reading along!

And in the spirit of playing along I will answer the questions although I'm not *gasp* a big Christmas person.

Favorite Christmas movie or special: How the Grinch stole Christmas/Elf
Favorite Christmas song: Do they know it's Christmas?
Favorite Reindeer: Rudolph. I guess I don't give the others much thought.
Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park: Magic Kingdom..aka the castle
Favorite Disney Christmas tree: The tree @ Animal Kingdom Lodge-Kidani.
Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort: The Grand...aka the gingerbread house
Favorite ride overlay: n/a for me
Favorite Disney Christmas Special: We always watch the parade on Christmas day

That picture of you and Brian in the Walt and Lillian chairs is perfect! I love it.

Sorry for the slow-ish travel start to your trip but sounds like you packed a lot in on your EMH.

I can't wait to hear more especially about the ABD/Disneyland side. We are planning for a DL trip this summer and it's only been 3 years but I feel super unsure of my planning! I actually have a pretty specific question but will PM you that in the next couple days!

Also.....asking admits I fell off the wagon but did you finish your last report?

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

@soniam , in answer to some of your comments I not so nicely ignored since I was on my dumb phone:

I always thought it was Donner. Yeah, I could totally see Donner eating the other reindeer if they get into a bind.

I remember those Christmas cards from the Disney Family Museum. Oh my gosh, speaking of drying eyes...when you enter the Walt Disney death room...I was like nope and had to walk straight through to the next room.

Haha I did have a Samsung Galaxy, just recently got the new LG, supposed to have the best camera phone ever.

I was ok with the people taking up seats with luggage, didn't want to sit with them anyway and we got the VIP seats

If you do a solo July trip that'd be the perfect time for tours!

Hey, I have that 50th anniversary Tiki Room shirt!

The entire reason that I didn't get a tablet and got a new small laptop was that I hate reading this board and posting on my phone. A tablet is just all of the things I hate about my phone but bigger

I really don't mind reading the board, I actually prefer to read people's trip reports on my phone. I just hate responding on it.

So I didn't know you started a new report! Also did I know you went to WDW? (I did know about the ABD trip). I feel terribly out of the loop. Anywaayyyys very excited to be here reading along!

And in the spirit of playing along I will answer the questions although I'm not *gasp* a big Christmas person.

Favorite Christmas movie or special: How the Grinch stole Christmas/Elf
Favorite Christmas song: Do they know it's Christmas?
Favorite Reindeer: Rudolph. I guess I don't give the others much thought.
Favorite Christmas decorated Disney park: Magic Kingdom..aka the castle
Favorite Disney Christmas tree: The tree @ Animal Kingdom Lodge-Kidani.
Favorite Disney Christmas decorated resort: The Grand...aka the gingerbread house
Favorite ride overlay: n/a for me
Favorite Disney Christmas Special: We always watch the parade on Christmas day

That picture of you and Brian in the Walt and Lillian chairs is perfect! I love it.

Sorry for the slow-ish travel start to your trip but sounds like you packed a lot in on your EMH.

I can't wait to hear more especially about the ABD/Disneyland side. We are planning for a DL trip this summer and it's only been 3 years but I feel super unsure of my planning! I actually have a pretty specific question but will PM you that in the next couple days!

Also.....asking admits I fell off the wagon but did you finish your last report?

I was wondering when you'd find me

It is ok if your out of the loop, you had a good reason with all your running training

Ugh, the Disney Christmas parade has just gone downhill for me so much the past few years. I always go to my grandmother's house on Christmas morning to watch with her, and I've just been disappointed the past few years.

DL has changed sooo much in three years! And will be even more different this summer. I need to get moving and get WDW out of the way so I can talk about DL!

You might have been close on my last TR. I believe I left it unfinished by about half a day. To be honest, I don't even remember that stuff anymore. I want to talk about now! Well, not now, I guess a month ago hahaha.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

It was time for rope drop at DHS!

We had early FPs for this day. I usually don't schedule FPs during the morning, but this day I did since we were going to MVMCP for the afternoon and I wasn't worried about having MK FPs.

First up was a galactic voyage on Star Tours. Our little mascot for the day was an extremely rotund owl wearing a Christmas hat, his name is Woozy Hoots and here he is wearing his ST glasses:



ST was really fun with seeing the new scene for the first time. I wonder how much money it cost them to do it. It seems like an easy way to freshen up the ride often to get ridership up. I'd love to see new scenes more often. I often read a complaint on the boards that having the Jakku scene really messed up the ride's timeline, which always confused me because sometimes your ride would consist of a pod race followed by a visit to Hoth, which happen about 25 years apart. So I never understood how Jakku would mess that up.

Next we wanted to ride the Great Movie ride before the line got too long. I liked the new queue film a lot, I'm a big old movie fan so I really appreciate all the clips from classics. I know a lot of people think this ride needs updated but I'm good with it the way it is. The ride has influenced us to see many of the movies we're unfamiliar with, like Alien and Casablanca. Maybe if you want to change out a scene or 2 you could replace the Tarzan scene. The rest are pretty iconic I think.

Once off the ride we found the new hand print photo opp.



Of course Stephanie waited until after this picture to mention how, in her dine with an imagineer dinner last trip, that the imagineer told the group how germy this photo opp was and how they were thinking of changing it somehow because of all the grime that accumulated in the hand prints. Ugh.

We had a few minutes before out TSMM FP so we posed for some classy photo pass pictures:



Then we saw that Sorcerer Mickey in his new building had no wait so in we went.





Our TSMM FP time was good to go. I always appreciate the over sized Christmas lights in Andy's room:



We got the Woody car:



Brian has got very intense about this game lately and managed to get high score of the hour:



We decided that we hadn't had nearly enough Star Wars for the day,so we headed to Launch Bay for our first visit!







I asked a CM inside the Launch Bay if any of the models or costumes were actually from the movies. He told me that only the above pictured speeder bike and the not pictured pod racer were from the movies, the rest were just replica models and costumes that weren't in any movie.

We discovered that the Jawas were conducting business in the cantina. We got the attention of one with Stephanie's BB8 sipper cup. Boy do those jawas love droids. We told the first jawa that he didn't have anything we wanted, so he went and got his friend to see if they could combine their resources.



Together, the jawas were able to construct an entire droid with a santa hat in exchange for BB8!



In the end, the jawa let Stephanie keep her BB8 and the new droid! (I'm sure this has something to do with health codes and he could not accept the sipper). Needless to say, Stephanie was delighted with her new tiny friend.





Meanwhile Woozy Hoots and I decided to booze it up at the cantina with some blue milk:





Then we played some drunk holochess:



Ahhh I'm just a touch crazy.

We continue our tour of the Launch Bay:







We didn't see any characters at this time since they both had 30 minute+ wait times and we knew we'd be back.

We exited into the gift shop and there were lots of CMs standing around with lightsabers, so I got to take a picture with one.



We headed out and got involved in an impromptu photo shoot on the Streets of America.





It was past time for lunch. We all decided to try out some of the Star Wars fare at the Backlot Express.



The burger was pretty tasty but I was not very impressed with the blue milk and fruit dessert. I love the actual blue milk and the soft serve blue milk, but this dessert, in my opinion was pretty awful.

We had some time before our last FP for TOT, so we headed to the new Dance Club. It was kind of an awkward space. There were interactive walls where you were supposed to be able to paint pictures, but it didn't really work that great. It consisted of a CM trying to correct people to how to do it correctly, the people would catch on, give it a try for 5 seconds...and you could tell they just completely lost interest and moved on. Then the cycle would continue.

There was a snack bar that no one was utilizing. There were a few couches that were all being used. Then in the middle there was a big dance floor where a couple characters danced with the 10 kids out there.



Every so often random confetti fell from the ceiling, Dale decided to make a hula skirt out of it.

As you can tell, none of us were very impressed with the dance club. I guess maybe the kids liked it, so that was good. It was still pretty empty though.

Finally it was time for my favorite TOT!



I just love this ride so much. The theme is so sweet and I love how the ride is different every time. I once found the perfect retro looking tshirt and I neglected to buy it, then of course it was gone next trip.

It was time to head out towards the MK and our Christmas party. On our way out we encountered a streetmosphere policeman undercover. Stephanie mistook him for a trashcan and tried to throw an old receipt away.



Before we left, I found my treasured Jingle Cruise t shirt and had to buy it. While we were leaving, we saw the MK bus as it was pulling out. We were pretty sure there was only one bus that went between each park. On a previous trip we had to wait over half an hour for a MK bus from DHS and we weren't going to have it this time. An Epcot bus was waiting, so we hopped on that so we could take the monorail to MK.



Well, that is it for this update. I really don't have any Christmas mentions for this part, but don't worry, Stephanie had made us special outfits for the party and there is about to be Christmas overload at the MVMCP.

 

[soniam]

I am very glad that I haven't done the handprints now. However, I haven't seen the new GMR scenes. I am looking forward to seeing it in March. DS doesn't really like it, so we only do it once in a while. That TSMM score is pretty awesome. I usually aim to beat my 9 year old son, because that's usually about all I can do I love your Star Wars ghosts shirt I can't wait to do Launch Bay. I have picked up some cool stuff for trading with the Jawas. Mainly I picked up extra Force Awakens birthday party supplies, like BB8 erasers, pencils, lightsaber glow sticks. DS is having a Force Awakens birthday party next month. I got some St Patrick's day beads too, since we will be there that week. Stephanie's trade was awesome. I was worried she was going to give up BB8. I will definitely be getting one of those. I am looking forward to trying the blue milk too. Does it come leaded or unleaded? I had heard that the blue milk panna cotta wasn't good; I think it's sugar free I can't decide if I am going to get the chicken & waffles or the burger. I am definitely trying all of the adult beveragesBummer about the dance party, but we already have a full plate at DHS. Now I won't feel like we missed anything.

Is the TOT picture taken when you drop? You guys are always so calm in your attraction photos, so it's hard to tell if it's the exciting part or not I have never done it. I hate drops. DS wants to do it, so I got FP+ for it. DH doesn't really want to do it, because he has a fear of falling, not heights, falling We will see if DS can convince him. We told him that we would at least wait in line with him. I will definitely be taking the chicken exit.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Sorry about that, for those of you who are interested in this. That was a long absence, I've been busy trying to de clutter the house and I've also become obsessed with the Expanse tv show, so I've been binge watching that. But now I think it is time to get back to Christmas and Disney!

When last we left off we had just headed to the monorail at Epcot to travel in a round about way to the MK for a Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party!

Stephanie and I needed to change into the special Christmas outfits she made for us, so we made a quick stop at the Grand Floridian. Brian took some pictures while we changed. He also got a blurry picture of our Mary Poppins umbrella in it's natural habitat.













The Grand Floridian is one of those resorts that really does Christmas well. Puffs of smoke even come out of the gingerbread chimney! I ended up buying a gingerbread shingle from the house (Spoiler alert: it was dried out and did not taste good at all). A quick monorail ride over to the MK and we were ready for the party. My crazy Christmas owl, Woozy Hoots, got into the Christmas spirit by wrapping up in my necklace.



We decided to get some pictures with our new skirts:



If you can't tell mine was Orange Bird and Stephanie's was Olaf.

We had a little bit of time to waste before the party activities started. I decided that I wanted to ride Stitch, since it had been years since I'd been on there. I remember this cute little guy from Alien Encounter (I'm one of those Alien Encounter fans). I think the ride was somewhat broken when we went on it. We couldn't hear the sound half the time so I think it was out. We had no chili dog burp. It was just...weird. I'm not sure if it runs better the rest of the time, but it was not good.



We got a quick dinner from Cosmic Ray's and ate it near the always entertaining Sonny Eclipse. I had come up with a plan for this party with military precision. Our next stop was to get in line for Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas, he was dressed as Sandy Claws. The party didn't start until 7, but Sandy Claws started meeting around 5. We were about 10 groups back at 4:30. Sandy Claws was out at 5 and soon it was our turn to meet him. We had a great conversation Christmas and he wanted us to all pose as snowmen. Not sure how well that worked out.



So it was now around 5:15, the party hadn't even started and we already had one character done. We had met the dwarves at a Halloween party earlier that year so we just went straight to the line for Snow White and her prince and Aurora and Phillip. We were 5 groups back and took a seat on the ground and got out our phones to play our new favorite waiting in line game, heads up. It started to sprinkle a bit so we put up our umbrellas. We were warned that if it really started to rain the royal couples would not come out. When the clock chimed 7 Brian went for hot chocolate and cookies. I'm always ok with the free offerings at the MVMCP. The hot chocolate was decent. The cookies were also decent. The only thing I might change, I think I'd add different cookies. So maybe one stop would have chocolate chip, another sugar, another peanut butter and so on.



The candy cane marks the free food and beverage lines.

Our luck held, and it was still only sprinkling a bit at 7 and they did come out! Snow White loved our skirts and wanted us all to twirl together, though first she asked her prince if he minded if he twirled. I think he is used to it and said she was to go right ahead and twirl. That finished, I asked her something I'd been wondering a long time. I asked what the dwarves did with all the gold and jewels that they found in the mines. Snow replied that they just locked them all up in a room. Hmm...I'm not sure that the dwarves know how to manage their money. They could have used it to hire an army to protect Snow White. But I digress.



I'm hidden behind Stephanie. But my twirl was glorious.



After that meet we were quickly onto a meet with Phillip and Aurora. They were a little less animated than the previous two but it was still a good time.



It was 7:15, the party had been going for 15 minutes and we'd already met 5 characters



We had the rest of the night ahead of us and we were on to our next stop!

Which just so happened to be...



The Diamond Horseshoe dance party featuring the country bears who switched off with Horace Horsecollar, Clara Cluck and Clarabelle the cow. Now, I usually do not like Disney dance parties. I don't really dance, I have no rhythm and there is no alcohol at the MK to make me forget that fact. However, the country bears were just so amazingly amusing at this dance party that I loved it.



These bears were just so animated, and I almost lost it when Taylor Swift's Shake it Off came on. The bears had a dance that they all did to the song (maybe the song has an official dance? I don't know). Big Al came over to Brian and I to show off his moves.



We were seriously dying, these bears were so awesome and they made me love that song. I think they were switching off every half hour, so the bears ended up leaving and the other gang came in.



Horace actually got me on the dance floor.



What I won't do for a cow in a stylish hat.

We waylaid Clara for a picture since we'd never met her and we love characters:



Best dance party ever.

We headed towards Main Street to get a seat for the parade. It had always been my strategy to watch the second parade at the holiday parties, but this year and the past year the parties were so crowded that I found myself waiting just as long for a front row seat for the second parade as I would for the first. So we did this new strategy at a Halloween party and it worked really well. While the crowds were either leaving or getting settled for the second parade after the fireworks, we ran around and did rides and saw characters. Especially now that the time of the second parade got pushed back a bit, that leaves very little time to get stuff done after the second parade before the party ends at midnight.

So, we decided to get a spot on Main Street. I'd heard that down below the train station across from the tree was a good spot. We grabbed some more cookies and apple juice and got some curb spots. Mary Poppins, Bert and some penguins were supposed to be meeting near Snow White's daily spot (in that little patio area where you exit from visiting Mickey or Tink). Stephanie held our spots while Brian and I went to investigate. We realized that there was only one group in line so we queued up.

Mary and Bert loved our parrot umbrella. Bert grabbed it and commenced a 3 minute chat with the parrot. I'm not kidding, he spoke to the umbrella exclusively and it was great.



This, as an adult, is why I love character meets. It is basically like meeting and interacting with the real movie characters. I love to see what they'll say and how they'll respond when we speak to them as their character.



When finished we hurried back to Stephanie and took over saving the spots so she could go see Mary and co, who still had a very short wait.

Soon after Stephanie came back it started to sprinkle again, so we pulled the umbrellas back out. So happy we brought the umbrellas, they saved the night.

Even though it was sprinkling, the parade had already started in Frontierland and it was coming. The pre-show entertainment came by. It was a bunch of entertainment CMs who did a dance with a giant ball, then stopped and played with kids from the crowds. An adorable little boy in a santa suit was next to us and he had tons of fun playing with a CM and the giant ball. They moved on and the parade moved in!

This turned out to be a fantastic spot! I think there was a break in the dance routine for all the walking characters at our spot, so we got a ton of interaction from the characters.











Kristoff walked right by us and Stephanie asked where his float was. He said it melted then looked really sad. Poor guy. Olaf should have made room on his float. Sharing is caring, Olaf.



Stephanie tried her hardest to get Elsa to notice her skirt (Olaf had not).

Anna saw first and pointed it out to Elsa! Victory.



I'm not sure what this face was about.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Here comes the best part of the parade! They finally gave Venelope her race car to drive in the parade! Up to now she always walked and danced around.









Clarabelle's nose looks suspiciously like a part of the female anatomy...or is that just me?







We had a nice interaction with Grumpy, we compared our grumpiness:





Snow White's prince looked a little off. I guess being the first royal couple of Disney they got their own float.

It was starting to rain in earnest now.



Then came the prince/princess character explosion float! So many!



You can't tell but Belle has her pretty red Christmas dress on.



Jasmine and Prince Ali are on the other side.



Rapunzel needs her frying pan here.





I liked how all the dancers had Disney toys in little pouches.





Bullseye is so cute!



I felt bad for these guys, it was really raining hard and I hoped their boots weren't slippery. They have to have metal or something on the bottom because of the loud stomp they make.



When the parade ended there was a downpour and people were just streaming out of the park in huge crowds, which was ok with us. We had umbrellas and it looked like the party was getting emptier by the second. Turns out it was a good thing we saw the first parade, the second one ended up being delayed by the rain and when it finally did go, a few of the floats were cut. The prince and princess float doesn't go in rain, so all the princesses squeeze onto Snow's gazebo and the princes get left out entirely. The horses also don't go in the rain, Cinderella is usually pulled by her coach with the little white ponies and Anna and Elsa are usually in a horse drawn sleigh.

Anyway, we ended up ducking into Mickey's meet right before Santa's float so we had a very short wait to meet the main cheese.



It was still pouring so we got into Tink's very short line next.





I forget what Stephanie said to shock her that much...I do like Tink's winter outfit.

When we exited we saw that Mary and co were all alone, so we met them again, this time all together.



We knew where we were headed next! The best rain secret of MVMCP! When it rains, all the storybook circus characters run for cover. Which means that you can get a group shot with Scrooge, Donald, Daisy, Minnie and Goofy. We had around a 15-20 minute wait for these guys in which we took turns getting cookies for the group.



Scrooge looks kind of sad there.



Not sure how Goofy got both the ladies at the same time while there were 4 other characters.



I was all ready to go with my two favorite ducks.



I couldn't resist....



We were way ahead of where we thought we'd be and had plenty of time and saw on the app that Space had no wait so we took a spin around the galaxy.



For lack of anything else to do, we headed back to the dance party.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

We had the place to ourselves basically.







We waited for one character change so we could see our favorite one last time:



We had another special Christmas picture we were after. Another very short wait, we were playing around with the elf and reindeer! We asked the reindeer which one he was, to which he promptly did some stretches and took off down the path.



If you hadn't guessed, he was Dasher.

I took a picture of my new dream house:



There was still an hour left in the party so we figured we may as well see the other set of princes and princesses. We waited in our longest line of the night, I think it took around 40 minutes to make it to Rapunzel and Flynn. We entertained ourselves by playing our heads up game.

Stephanie finally got to do something she'd been dying to do, which is to ask Flynn what was in his satchel. One thing led to another and then this happened:





Poor Cinderella and Charming, Rapunzel and Flynn are a hard act to follow.



Looks like I'm sleeping. Charming did talk with us about how he was trying to teach Flynn courtly manners. I don't think the lessons had been going so well.

Stephanie really wanted to meet Anna and Elsa and we had about 3 minutes until midnight so we were able to get in line for them. It only took about ten minutes.





I know everyone loves Elsa but to me, Anna is definitely the best.

Since the party was officially over we slowly meandered out and got some pictures.

 

[Malia78]

Great post on the party--I can take from pointers from that. You got a lot accomplished.