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

[soniam]

The hotel looks so beautiful. Nice pictures. Maybe next year, I will get to see the xmas decorations if we go during F&W in November. Bummer about the gingerbread. I really like good gingerbread.

Those skirts are awesome! Did Stephanie make those? I could tell yours was the orange bird immediately.

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.

I think it's broken half the time. It wasn't in good shape the first time we rode it. I hope they replace it with something else. You come out of it confused, wondering what the heck was that

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.

What's heads up?

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.

That looks like fun. It would be cool if they had that all of the time, especially since the Diamond Horseshoe rarely seems to be open for food service. It's kind of a waste to just do a QS in there too.

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.

That looks like a great M&G. We have met Mary several times, but we have never met Bert or the penguin. Looks like a lot of fun and really no line too DS would totally be in heaven with this.

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

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

That's cool that they noticed her skirt. It's a really cool skirt and perfect for the party.

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

DS would have loved this too, since he's a big fan of the ducks. We got all of the Duck Tales from Netflix, and I swear he has seen each one about 10 times

The castle looks so pretty. Nice shots.

I took a picture of my new dream house:

I am really looking forward to hopefully eating there next month. I at least want to see it. It look really cool.

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

I like Anna better too. She seems so much more personable, and she's really silly and funny.

Those are nice pictures. I like Stephanie's snowgie The effect on the last pic looks really cool. I will have to play around with that once I get my AP and MM. I usually don't get the pictures, because they don't turn out well. However, if I get them for free, we might try to have more taken to increase our odds of a good one.

The party looks like a lot of fun. It's definitely on my list of things I "need" to do at Disney. I think DS would love it too. It looks so magical

 

[stacy~**]

Laughing at your review of Club Disney. I seriously loved "the club" and was super sad to hear they closed it. We spent many hours there last month. I do hope it is truly seasonal and will be back. I love dancing with characters! (and the people watching there is pretty amazing too)

OMG an Orange Bird skirt? ARE YOU SERIOUS? I loved it (Stephanie's was cute too but I'm an orange bird girl all the way). She did a great job with those!

I don't know much about MVMCP but it looks like you guys killed it! Nice job! You got some really great character pictures! And that dance party looked pretty wonderful too.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Well that was a very long absence. Sorry to everyone who was reading. I recently have been able to write articles for the DIS, so all of my writing time has been devoted to that. I would like to have a record of these two awesome trips, so I'd like to keep writing. My goal is to finish this before my next trip Mid-April.

The next morning we had an early ADR at BOG, we were able to enter the park around 7:45 when the MK opened at 9. We had some time to stroll slowly through the park taking pictures.

















We were very lucky and I was able to get my favorite table right next to the windows. The Christmas decorations inside BOG are stunning.





The angel on the tree is the angel from the Beauty and the Beast Christmas special.



The tree is covered in stain glass ornaments of all the characters like Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts and Chip.

I ended up ordering the meat and cheese plate:



I really loved this meal. It was actually pretty healthy food (for Disney, anyway). I probably could have shared this with Brian and still been full, especially with the pastry plate.



We were finished eating and out of the restaurant in time to ride 7DMT twice. As soon as we saw all the people hightailing it in from rope drop we made a beeline towards Peter Pan and had a 5 minute wait until we were soaring over my favorite nighttime London rooftops.



My hair is streaming out behind me a bit too majestically. Good thing I was in the back.

Next we decided to spend the morning doing non-traditional things that usually didn't need to be done at rope drop. First up was Little Mermaid.



We debated about meeting Ariel. Everytime we met Ariel in her fin she was always decidedly unpleasant. Brian had a theory that her unpleasantness had to do with how long she had to be cramped into that fin. So we tested it by going to see her.



I don't know if it was a coincidence but this was the best fin Ariel we'd ever met!

Stephanie had never been on the Barnstormer so we headed there next. We were the only people in the whole circus area so we had a car to ourselves.





Next up I had to meet my boy, Donald. To get to him we had to meet this Goof first:





We saw a train pulling in so decided to go for a spin.



Hello stragglers, you are late!

We disembarked at Frontierland and rode Splash with no wait.



I am very proud to say that we were in attendance for the first Country Bear showing of the day.



Brian is still eagerly waiting for Disney to bring back their Christmas show.

We saw some cowboy chipmunks and waited a few minutes to say hello.



We then walked onto Jingle Cruise. Here is another poor picture of that tree:







We were getting a little hungry for lunch at this point so we headed to our second favorite resort's counter service eatery:



We got a picture of Art of Animation's tree while we were at it. If you've never ate at the food court at AOA, it is definitely worth a try. We always appreciate the diversity of food. They even have a special naan bread oven there.




I'm about out of picture space so I'll pick it up in my next installment where we park hop over to DHS for some Characterpalooza, SW Launch Bay and Osborne Light action.

 

[soniam]

The empty park pictures look great! Can't wait to try this in July. BOG looks so pretty at xmas.

When I was reading the post, I scrolled down just enough that I could see your head and your flowing hair. I couldn't tell what it was. I thought it might be a magic shot or something I think it would have been funny if someone had been behind you. I can just hear it now, "see that's me behind that mass of luscious flowing red hair"

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

The empty park pictures look great! Can't wait to try this in July. BOG looks so pretty at xmas.

When I was reading the post, I scrolled down just enough that I could see your head and your flowing hair. I couldn't tell what it was. I thought it might be a magic shot or something I think it would have been funny if someone had been behind you. I can just hear it now, "see that's me behind that mass of luscious flowing red hair"

Haha yeah seriously, I sometimes feel bad for whoever sits behind me on roller coasters. I feel it is even more dangerous if it is in a pony tail, then it's more like a whip.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

We finished our delicious lunch at AOA and caught at bus to DHS to catch Characterpalooza. At this point, palooza was being held outside the gate of the park over in the corner. So really, you didn't even need a ticket to meet all the characters.

Aladdin was first out, he was super chatty and very Aladdiny.



Next up was Pocahontas and Meeko! I was excited to see Meeko, he isn't out a lot anymore.



I'm glad characterpalooza still happens at all...but it is really a far cry from what it used to be when it was inside the Animation building or on the Streets of America. There used to be a lot more characters and the characters varied as well. I still remember one of my best palooza memories was when it was in the Animation building and Tweedle Dee and Dum were out. We were just sitting on a bench watching the characters since we'd already met all of them. One of the Tweedles knocked into a trash can and fell on the ground and was rolling around and then jumped up and was being ridiculous. It was hilarious and very in character.

We headed straight to Launch Bay and ended up waiting 15 minutes for the movie I wasn't pleased about the wait but we wanted to see it. We did get to wait next to some concept art of my hero, Chopper:



After the movie, I double timed everyone to Chewie's line. My plan worked, since everyone else was behind us Chewie's line was basically a walk up. So we quickly took some pictures while moving through his line.




I love Ezra's lightsaber and how it is cobbled together. If they ever make an FX one I will probably buy it.



Ahsoka is another favorite of mine. She is the jedi that I had hoped and wished that the prequels would have. A strong, sensible, great woman jedi.

Chewie was really great, though I do like the Chewie of old, he looks a little different now.



We skipped Vader since we'd already seen him and played with some FX lightsabers in the gift shop.



I had a great conversation with a CM about Dave Filoni and Rebels and nerd SW stuff. I'm glad they're actually stocking Launch Bay with SW nerd CMs. Good job, Disney!

All three of us are huge rare character geeks so we needed to head to the dance party in front of the Great Movie ride. Our targets: Sebastian and Robin Hood! Robin Hood is Brian's favorite movie and the character was his holy grail. We got some awkward dancing pictures:





It was a little bit sad though, awkward dancing with characters isn't the same as getting to have a fun interaction with them. Sigh, I wish Disney would bring out rare characters for meet and greets more often. Luckily, we all decided we were a bit hungry so we headed to Pizza Planet. I say luckily because we discovered it was almost closed. For some reason, not only does DHS not have the best counter service meals, they also close hours before the park does.



I know some people knock Pizza Planet, but I think it is good pizza and big enough so Brian and I can share and save money. I really hope it is getting a Muppet re-theme.

We went to the Osborne Lights but it was crazy packed so we left pretty quickly.



Star Tours had a short wait and we had time to use before our nighttime spectacular so we took a crazy ride with C3PO.



While we were in the area, we noticed that Ferb was out meeting with only two people in line. We got in line and it kind of sucked. Ferb was playing with a little boy and they were picking leaves up off the ground and putting them places, which was fine but they did it for a legit 5 minutes. Ah well, they were both having a good time. Stephanie asked Ferb about going to college and he told her that never happened. I'm glad we did stop to see him since he is now gone



Stephanie had never met Minnie over by Launch Bay so we went over there, first we saw that Jake had no wait so we introduced our pirate parrot to him.



Minnie also had a very short wait.



From there we went to our beloved Fantasmic, my favorite Disney nighttime show, though I'm pretty sure that Rivers of Light is about to take that spot.





After watching Mickey vanquish evil we decided to pull out a DISboards trick. I knew that the Osborne Lights stayed open an hour past park close, so while everyone headed out of the park we headed back to the lights by way of Pixar Place. Which was a good thing because we saw that Santa Goofy's line was still open. We jumped into line to wait ten minutes to meet Santa himself. This just reminds me of the Mickey's Once, or maybe twice, upon a Christmas when Goofy dresses up as santa for Max and the neighbor kids.




Finally it was time to hit up the lights! Stephanie and I got drinks with special glow light bulbs. We were very pleased we had waited to see the lights, earlier they had been a mod scene and now it was almost empty.



We walked around slowly looking at everything. We even found a bored, wandering photopass photgrapher who spent a lot of time with us.














We found the cat! He was being very tricky and hiding in a big block of purple lights.







Sigh, I already miss the Osborne Lights. I hope that rumor about Universal wanting to buy them is true.

We headed out and took a picture by DHS' tree on the way out.



That is the end of this day! Stay tuned for more Christmas fun!

 

[soniam]

I hope Universal buys the lights too. I never saw them, and they look spectacular. Next week, I get to see Launch Bay. I may steal your "push everyone out of the way and crawl over them to get to Chewie after the movie" trick. I know that's really what you did, isn't it Actually, since I am short and walk fast, I am really good at maneuvering around/under people. I usually do this to get in line, and DH and DS catch up

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I hope Universal buys the lights too. I never saw them, and they look spectacular. Next week, I get to see Launch Bay. I may steal your "push everyone out of the way and crawl over them to get to Chewie after the movie" trick. I know that's really what you did, isn't it Actually, since I am short and walk fast, I am really good at maneuvering around/under people. I usually do this to get in line, and DH and DS catch up

I have my patented Disney walk. It is very fast. It was easy to beat everyone to chewie since I know where I was headed but no one else knew they should be rushing

 

[disneylove16]

Great review! I can't wait to see the reviews of DL, I've only ever been to WDW at Christmas time, and would love to see how DL compares!

 

[adelaster]

Is Disneyland coming soon?