Giving Thanksgiving a Whirl (and a Hurl) in WDW *COMPLETE! 5/20*

I feel so bad that you were sick! Half the fun of Disney is the food! Glad you were able to eat a little breakfast. I really hope you have dealt with the Disney bug all that you need to in this lifetime!
 
This has been such a great trip report...minus the :sick:. Looking forward to hearing your final thoughts on it.
 
Those waffles DO sound really good! You actually just inspired me to considering adding in a breakfast here to my plans. Sadly, there's just no where for me to fit it into my schedule. Oh well, maybe next year! :cutie:
 
OK for some reason my quotes got all out of order here :crazy:
Looking forward to your final thoughts and more importantly for this years thanksgiving trip to be all whirl and no hurl!
OMG yes, no hurling, no hurling!!!

I really hope you have dealt with the Disney bug all that you need to in this lifetime!
Thank you, me too! I hope nobody who has followed either of my TR's or who is currently following my PTR gets the stomach bug on any future trips! For those not following - eh :rotfl: Just kidding, of course!

I've heard much better things about Captains Grill, which I think you are trying on your next trip.
We originally had planned to try Captains Grill on this trip but never made it; I had considered switching our last morning breakfast over to there but since I wouldn't have eaten much I'm glad I didn't. Looking forward to trying Captains this year, though!

This has been such a great trip report...minus the :sick:. Looking forward to hearing your final thoughts on it.
Thank you so much for following along! I'm glad you've enjoyed it :goodvibes

Those waffles DO sound really good! You actually just inspired me to considering adding in a breakfast here to my plans. Sadly, there's just no where for me to fit it into my schedule. Oh well, maybe next year! :cutie:
You do have quite a full (and YUMMY) schedule for your upcoming trip! Maybe you need to start your PTR for your next trip so you can begin keeping track of what you want to do/where you want to eat on that one?? :D It's less than a year away!!!!!
 


You do have quite a full (and YUMMY) schedule for your upcoming trip!
And yet even once I admitted defeat on squeezing in another breakfast, yesterday I added two more dinners... Paradiso 37 and Trattoria al Forno. :rotfl: Since I'm doing Deluxe Dining now, it's go big or go home!

Maybe you need to start your PTR for your next trip so you can begin keeping track of what you want to do/where you want to eat on that one?? :D It's less than a year away!!!!!
Guuuurl, don't think I haven't thought about it! I've decide to hold off on starting the February 2017 PTR until the rooms are booked, so probably next month! :goodvibes
 
I am finally finding time to reply! I am so sorry you felt so crummy. :( I love your photos in Epcot of the Storytellers!!
 
I am finally finding time to reply! I am so sorry you felt so crummy. :( I love your photos in Epcot of the Storytellers!!
Hello and thank you! Congrats on being published on the Dis, too by the way, that's awesome :banana:
I should probably know this from reading your TR, but were you able to catch any of the Storytellers last year? I absolutely love them and can't wait for our trip this Nov. to see the ones we missed last year :goodvibes
 


I'm so sorry you were sick. That is no way to spend your last days at Disney. The last day blues are the worst. It's so hard to say goodbye.
 
Oh no, crowds at Thanksgiving are NOTHING like those between Christmas and NY's. Nothing near what I'd call horrific. Steve doesn't like crowds and we were a bit nervous it would be too crowded for us since we're used to lower-crowded times, but we were pleasantly surprised, which is why we're returning the same week this year. I did find that 1. Like many other times, RD is pretty necessary if you want to ride the headliners more than once and avoid lines in general over 40 mins. 2. Try not to eat QS meals during peak meal times. Those lines can get 3x as long as ride lines! 3. Other than possibly MK there will not be good 4th, 5th, etc. FP availability. No idea if the recent changes to the way you can get those additional ones will improve this or not, but my $ is on......no :( What are your actual dates this Nov?

Thanks so much for all of that great info! We will be checking in on the 22nd, leaving the 27th. What about you guys?? My brother and his GF aren't huge Disney fans, so we are taking a shorter trip to get them acclimated again :)
 
I'm so sorry you were sick. That is no way to spend your last days at Disney. The last day blues are the worst. It's so hard to say goodbye.
It could have been worse, which is what I've told myself over and over! I will say not feeling good made it a little easier to be going home - that, and knowing Steve and I would be coming back in less than 60 days without the boys ;)

Thanks so much for all of that great info
You are most welcome! I hope I made you feel a little less nervous lol.

We will be checking in on the 22nd, leaving the 27th. What about you guys?? My brother and his GF aren't huge Disney fans, so we are taking a shorter trip to get them acclimated again :)
Well then you have a job: MAKE them into huge Disney fans!
We're checking in on the 19th and leaving on the 26th, so a nice week. Our schools have off the day before Thanksgiving so luckily the boys will only miss 2 days. Actually Chris will only miss 1.5 days as the elementary schools have a half day that Monday for parent/teacher conferences. I started a PTR if you'd like to take a look :)
 
[QUOTE="ariane37, post: 55774796, member:
Well then you have a job: MAKE them into huge Disney fans!
We're checking in on the 19th and leaving on the 26th, so a nice week. Our schools have off the day before Thanksgiving so luckily the boys will only miss 2 days. Actually Chris will only miss 1.5 days as the elementary schools have a half day that Monday for parent/teacher conferences. I started a PTR if you'd like to take a look :)[/QUOTE]

I definitely want to check out that PTR, my brother doesn'tget very many vacation days, so we needed to make it where he would use as little as possible, and working in the school, I don't get vacation days and its frowned upon using personal days to extend school breaks, so decided to leave Tuesday afternoon. We also won't over-Disney them with only spendingspending 3 days in the parks. However I am finding it somewhat difficult to try and fit in everything I think is worth seeing along with night time festivities in only 3 days! They don't seem to have extended park hours, is that something they will change the closer it gets? 9pm for Epcot...7pm for DHS...yea thats not helpful at all!
 
Just finished your trip report! I was excited to see a Thanksgiving report as we'll be heading down on Black Friday this year and I wanted to get an idea of what you experienced with crowds right after Thanksgiving. It seems like you were still able to have a great time.

I know how horrible it is to be sick in Disney. When we took our daughter for her first trip, I came down with some 24 hour bug and was completely out of commission for a day, worst feeling ever to know how close you are to the parks and not able to get out of bed to go!
 
They don't seem to have extended park hours, is that something they will change the closer it gets? 9pm for Epcot...7pm for DHS...yea thats not helpful at all!
I don't think I answered this over in my PTR, but yes they'll do some extending of hours although probably not at Epcot other than pm EMH. Last year they did move Illuminations to 9:30 on Black Fri. but otherwise it was a 9pm close every night. I don't know why that's the only park they don't extend night hours in? Well and AK except that will change this year. HS was open anywhere from 8 until 10 last year in addition to whenever they had their pm EMH, and actually either on Thanksgiving or the night before I believe they were open until 11. However, I don't know if that was due to it being the last year of Osborne Lights or if it'll be the same this year.....either way they should most definitely extend some if not all nights past 7. SO annoying that they don't just post the final hours now, isn't it :mad:

Just finished your trip report! I was excited to see a Thanksgiving report as we'll be heading down on Black Friday this year and I wanted to get an idea of what you experienced with crowds right after Thanksgiving. It seems like you were still able to have a great time.
Hi there and thanks for reading :goodvibes You're heading down at a good time, crowds tend to thin out by the Sunday after Thanksgiving. In 2012 we arrived late at night on Thanksgiving and stayed for 10 days, and by the Sunday after it was absolutely wonderful! But yes, Black Friday last year was very doable even though it was far from empty. Are you planning on a park that day?
I know how horrible it is to be sick in Disney. When we took our daughter for her first trip, I came down with some 24 hour bug and was completely out of commission for a day, worst feeling ever to know how close you are to the parks and not able to get out of bed to go!
Ugh, that must have been so frustrating with it being DD's first trip :( The worst part for me was feeling like I was letting the boys down by not doing anything fun with them, just lying around in bed - as you said, with the parks right there. I actually felt guilty. That mom guilt never quits lol! I'd say I'm crossing my fingers for no sickness on our trip this Nov. but I'm not even THINKING about it enough to hope for no sickness!
 
I don't think I answered this over in my PTR, but yes they'll do some extending of hours although probably not at Epcot other than pm EMH. Last year they did move Illuminations to 9:30 on Black Fri. but otherwise it was a 9pm close every night. I don't know why that's the only park they don't extend night hours in? Well and AK except that will change this year. HS was open anywhere from 8 until 10 last year in addition to whenever they had their pm EMH, and actually either on Thanksgiving or the night before I believe they were open until 11. However, I don't know if that was due to it being the last year of Osborne Lights or if it'll be the same this year.....either way they should most definitely extend some if not all nights past 7. SO annoying that they don't just post the final hours now, isn't it :mad:
I just remember being at MK until almost 2am on NYE...it was such a long day for us all and we are adults! So it's not like I'm wanting to relive those long days, but I would like to be able to spend ample amount of time in the parks, especially since we are leaving each day for dinner outside the parks. It's really hard to plan things if they don't have the correct hours posted, don't they know how crazy we all are??!! :crazy:
 
Ah, well, as I mentioned in my last post, we had an uneventful trip home and I jumped right in to decorating for Christmas, Christmas shopping, and running the Holiday Shoppe at Christopher's school. I also didn't feel "myself" until about 4 days after we were home; my appetite was off (which is really strange for me) and when I did eat I felt yucky afterwards-the remnants of that damned Disney stomach bug! I hate saying this, and at this point 6 months later I can't believe I felt this way, but for the first time ever I was actually GLAD to be home from Disney :( Between not feeling good and the problems we had in the beginning with our room and the BW staff, it just put such a cloud over the trip that I couldn't get out from under. I still had ADR's and FP's to make for mine and Steve's January trip and I wasn't feeling it at all :rolleyes2 So I put all that off and didn't make either until 2 weeks before we left. Got everything we wanted though!

I know it's silly to let the attitudes and shortcomings of the resort/resorts CM's to affect my whole trip, and honestly while there I didn't. And it wasn't about the room/sewage issue: that can happen anywhere at anytime and as long as they were willing to move us, in my eyes that was enough. It was the stuff afterwards that got under my skin and I guess-no, I know-I'm not that good at "letting it go" :snooty: Plus pretty much as soon as those issues started getting out of my head the sickness kicked in so it was one blow after the other!

Now having bored you with all that, at this point I can say we did have a good trip and I enjoyed it. Certainly we enjoyed it enough to be going back for Thanksgiving again this year!!


1. We were worried about crowds since in the past, we've never gone during what is considered a real "busy" time. We were pleasantly surprised overall that crowds were NOT as bad as we thought they'd be! I've since told many people I think it's a great week to go, especially if you're tied to a school schedule and can only go during school breaks/holidays.

2. I had decided to let the boys have their way and NOT do that many RD mornings. This proved to be a very bad idea lol! Although the crowds weren't bad, it's definitely a time of year you want to do RD if you like riding the headliners multiple times or don't like waiting in lines over 45 minutes.

3. We did quite a few new to us things that we all enjoyed: Fantasia mini-golf, seeing the holiday decorations at the Swan/Dolphin, 6 new restaurants, watched Wishes from behind the castle, a new M&G and a couple new storytellers. Finding new things to enjoy in Disney while still enjoying the "old" is one reason I love it and a reason we keep going back :love:

4. Steve was concerned he would miss being around our extended family for the holiday ( I was not). Um, as I've said, we're going back this year so clearly, this turned out to be a non-issue!

5. Craziness is attempting to eat QS during peak mealtimes this week :crazy: Such a simple thing.....I'd heard folks suggest not doing this before but never paid much attention to it. If you ever go this week, PAY ATTENTION TO IT!!!!


That's all I can think of right now and it's about time I wrap this up. I've started a PTR for this years' Nov. trip; if you're interested, take a look, the link is in my signature :) Thank you all for following along with me! Since we returned from this trip at the beginning of the 2015 Christmas season I'm going to leave you with a picture of one of my favorite Christmas gifts from last year:




C U REAL SOON!
ARIANE
 
Thanks Ariane for such a great trip report. I've really enjoyed following along from start to finish. I love trying new things each trip as well as some old favourites. All of our trips have been in the summer holidays, which are really busy, so we definitely are up early every morning.
 
Great finish! I've read a few more people having issues at BWV so now I might be leaning BCV or AKV. In any case, thanks for sharing your experiences and as you know, I'm keeping up on the PTR!
 
I can certainly understand why you were glad to be home, but it sounds like the January trip got you back on the disney trip. Despite all the set back you all really did make the most of it. Now if only I can get Jason to go for Thanksgiving in the world o_O
 
So I just binge read your report, and it was great! Thanks for sharing, despite the not great aspects of your trip with the CMs and the stomach bug :( And I'm glad you got to eat in the Castle! My DH and I just made our first trip in April, and I was lucky enough to score a reservation there, despite only booking a month before the trip. But yea, I couldn't hear the whole Wishing Ceremony thing either, so you're not the only one!
 
I know it's silly to let the attitudes and shortcomings of the resort/resorts CM's to affect my whole trip, and honestly while there I didn't. And it wasn't about the room/sewage issue: that can happen anywhere at anytime and as long as they were willing to move us, in my eyes that was enough. It was the stuff afterwards that got under my skin and I guess-no, I know-I'm not that good at "letting it go" :snooty: Plus pretty much as soon as those issues started getting out of my head the sickness kicked in so it was one blow after the other!
I completely get where you're coming from. And I wouldn't "let it go" either. Hmph!


Craziness is attempting to eat QS during peak mealtimes this week :crazy: Such a simple thing.....I'd heard folks suggest not doing this before but never paid much attention to it. If you ever go this week, PAY ATTENTION TO IT!!!!
Will do! We usually have lunch around 11 and dinner around 5. Does that sound like a good plan for when we have to eat QS meals?


I've started a PTR for this years' Nov. trip; if you're interested, take a look, the link is in my signature :)
Oh, I'm in! Gonna go read it now...
 

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