It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Needs An Eyepatch - A Dec TR Complete 8/31

[englishrose47]

Great pix of the parade , I really like all the floats , sorry but Tink is still my Fav!!!!

 

[hokieinpa]

A great spot for the parade and ice cream sounds like the perfect way to enjoy FOF!

I love the parade pictures. I don't think I've noticed that part of the Cinderella float with Suzy and Perla making the dress before!

 

[Steppesister]

What a GREAT looking parade. You took some fantastic photos. Yes, the dragon is super cool! I need to find out when it'll be showing during my trip- I'm really not much of a parade kinda gal, but there are really some great characters in this one. So glad things are smoothed over. I know how lack of sleep, hunger, mis-communicated expectations can cause friction.

 

[court9008]

I'm late, but I have enjoyed reading your TR so far. By the way, you took some great pictures.

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Great pix of the parade , I really like all the floats , sorry but Tink is still my Fav!!!!

The floats were very neat, a nice change from the previous afternoon parades.

A great spot for the parade and ice cream sounds like the perfect way to enjoy FOF!

I love the parade pictures. I don't think I've noticed that part of the Cinderella float with Suzy and Perla making the dress before!

Ice Cream makes everything better!

What a GREAT looking parade. You took some fantastic photos. Yes, the dragon is super cool! I need to find out when it'll be showing during my trip- I'm really not much of a parade kinda gal, but there are really some great characters in this one. So glad things are smoothed over. I know how lack of sleep, hunger, mis-communicated expectations can cause friction.

Hint, every day at 3pm

I'm late, but I have enjoyed reading your TR so far. By the way, you took some great pictures.

Definitely not late as there is still lots of TR to go.

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

After the parade it was time to use our next fastpass, this one was for Big Thunder Mountain. When we got to Frontierland we were shocked at the relatively low crowds in the area. i have found that the area around Splash and big Thunder is usually bustling with people.

We had a great time on our ride through the Wild West and then had to decide what to do next. We still had our third fastpass for Splash but it wasn't for another hour. However, looking at the standby time of 20 minutes we decided to just go standby instead of waiting for our fastpass window. Mom and Erich opted not to ride and we arranged to meet them by the popcorn cart next to Big Thunder.

The line moved fairly quickly but Alek and I had an annoying group of three tweens in front of us, looked like cheerleaders with Pop Warner. They kept jumping across the barrier between the standby and fastpass line or not moving when the line moved forward holding the rest of us up that were behind them. The same girls ended up in the same log as us for the ride and I was dreading the antics they would get up to. Luckily they calmed down once on the actual ride.

Also in the log with us was a couple that hadn't been on the ride before. Every time we came to a drop they would get nervous and say "Is this it?" Was rather amusing.





We tapped our Magic Bands at the end to get our ride photo. I think it is pretty funny. Behind us you can see the "nervous couple". In front of us are the "annoying cheerleaders" and I just love the father son duo at the front.





We had time for one more ride before we had to start thinking about finding a spot for the Castle Lighting Show. We opted for Jingle Cruise.

I LOVED the Jingle Cruise. The Christmas touches throughout the queue were great and I wish the line had been slower so we could have enjoyed more of them. As it was we had to speed by some of them. i especially enjoyed the Christmas Lists from the Skippers.



















All the scenes on the actual cruise were rethemed for Christmas as well. As I said, I loved it! A nice change from the regular jokes.

We were feeling rather tired at this point and we were torn over whether we wanted to stay for the castle lighting or if we should leave and catch the lighting on our party day...

 

[KathyM2]

I love all the holiday touches on the Jingle Cruise...so awesome!!! I would love to go at that time of year...along with everyone else lol. The christmas list was so cute!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

I love all the holiday touches on the Jingle Cruise...so awesome!!! I would love to go at that time of year...along with everyone else lol. The christmas list was so cute!

It is a wonderful time of year in the parks although makes for a very different sort of trip we found.

There were more Christmas lists that i found hilarious but the speed of the line meant no pictures of them to share.

 

[DonnaBeeGood]

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[hokieinpa]

I love your Splash picture! Every row is just too funny!

We missed the Jingle Cruise since our trip was so short. The overlay looks like so much fun!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

I'm looking forward to the regular Jungle Cruise, as I've only been on the Jingle cruise. I've also never been brave enough for Splash Mountain (insert chicken emoticon) - I wonder if DH will want to try it? Nah, I think I'm safe!

Never been on Splash! I get it though as Erich won't ride it anymore either. It's a shame though as it is a fun ride and only a few seconds of it are the drop and the other 10 are the fun dark ride.

I love your Splash picture! Every row is just too funny!

We missed the Jingle Cruise since our trip was so short. The overlay looks like so much fun!

The Splash picture did turn out pretty well, I love all the others in the picture with us, even the annoying cheerleaders!

 

[englishrose47]

Awesome pix of Jingle Cruise .I can't remember doing that when I was there for Christmas . I do remember seeing "Jingle Cruise" though !!. I still wont do ANY coaster Keep those pix coming Lessa and Hi Beth

 

[westcoastfldisneygirl]

Just read your whole trip! Looks like a great time!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Awesome pix of Jingle Cruise .I can't remember doing that when I was there for Christmas . I do remember seeing "Jingle Cruise" though !!. I still wont do ANY coaster Keep those pix coming Lessa and Hi Beth

Still lots more to come, don't worry Rosie!

Just read your whole trip! Looks like a great time!

Welcome! Yes, it was a pretty good trip! Hope you stick around for the rest!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

We were all fairly tired but we decided to stick around to see the Castle Lights Show. I figured it was better to see it this day and then we wouldn't have to worry about fitting it in during the Christmas Party.

We made our way over to the hub/Main St area and scouted out a spot. The sun was starting to go down and it was so pretty with all the Christmas decorations all lit up.





We ended up in the hub with a decent view of the castle stage. There was already a pretty sizeable crowd gathered so we didn't have the best spot but it wasn't a bad spot either. I did end up having to shift around several times though as a rather tall family came and stood in front of us so I had to adjust my position to see between them.



I didn't have the worst of it though. There was a guy fairly close to us who got really frustrated as once the show started the family in front of him popped their kids up on their shoulders completely blocking his view. For the first few minutes of the show I could hear him saying "come on guys, i can't see, this isn't fair". The family ignored him and so he eventually gave up and pushed his way through the crowd to get past them. What is your view on this type of behaviour? I get that the family just wanted their kids to see the show but do you think it is right to block the view of others by popping your kids on your shoulders?

We enjoyed the show and it was beautiful seeing the castle lights on. I had been waiting years to see the Castle all lit up at Christmas and it was definitely even better in person. Erich grabbed a few photos and I took a video.

After the show we had to exit the park with the rest of the masses as it was closing for the Christmas Party. We did stop for some photopass pictures on the way out!





This next border was automatically added, poor Mom got blocked out by the snow.



The exit out of the park was crazy, so many people pushing their way down Main St at the same time.



Once we got down near the train station it got so much better, no longer felt like sardines.



We said goodbye to Erich at this point. We were going to go to the Grand Floridian to see the Gingerbread House and then to Ft Wilderness. Erich wasn't interested as he had seen the GF decorations during his college program and he just wanted to go back to the room and relax.

The wait for the monorail was crazy. In hindsight we should have waited for the boat over to GF, it probably would have been faster.

I think 6 or 7 monorails were loaded before our turn to get on arrived.

We had the Star Wars monorail. Love Star Wars!



Continued in next post

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

The monorail was absolutely crammed. We were lucky to get seats. Despite being crammed in we had a good time as there was a cute little girl riding with us who made friends with Alek. She kept peeking at him from her stroller, would giggle and then look away. She started making faces at him so he played along and made faces back at her and the two of them entertained all of us. This went on for the whole ride over to the GF which took longer than usual it felt, probably due to the massive amounts of people getting on and off at each stop.

We squeezed our way off the monorail at the GF and made our way in to see the decorations. First order of business though was finding the bathroom! I had been holding my bladder for awhile and it was getting to be an emergency at that point!



I loved the gingerbread house! So many little details to take in! Each of the windows had a stained glass scene from a different movie.























I think I took a million pictures of the Gingerbread House before eventually getting pulled away.

Back onto the monorail for another ride around the Seven Seas Lagoon. Once at the TTC we decided to take the tram to the car even though we were parked in the closest section of the parking lot. I'm glad we did as we got to witness some hilariously bad guest behaviour. We are all seated on the tram and they are making their safety announcements and starting to pull away when a group of guests runs up to the MOVING tram and jumps on!!! The driver was pissed and gave a big lecture on safety etc and basically shamed the guests. Who does that? Jumps onto a moving tram? There was another tram right behind ours that they could have gotten on! So thoughtless.

Mom told us when we got back to the car that she no longer wanted to go to Ft. Wilderness to see the decorations. We were shocked by this as it was all she talked about for months leading up to the trip. I asked her several times as we were leaving the parking lot and she stuck firm to that she was too tired and didn't want to go... I told her this was pretty much the only evening we had free to see them but she still didn't change her mind. She just wanted to go back to the hotel, get dinner and go to bed.

Back at the hotel Mom and I grabbed dinner at The Mara, Alek decided to just eat some of the breakfast food we had in the room. We decided to take our food up to our room and would drop the tray off at Mara the next morning.

I wasn't ready for bed yet after dinner so I wandered around the hotel and browsed the gift shop again. I ended up getting a comfy lightweight zip-up hoodie. Don't have a picture though. It was maroon in colour and on the back it says Animal Kingdom Lodge and has some giraffes.

I then wandered up onto the bridge for a look down at the lobby and the tree.



And that was the end of our second park day and third day of vacation. Coming up next, a day at Epcot, Candlelight processional and an explanation for the title of this TR!

 

[DonnaBeeGood]

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[court9008]

Great pictures of GF. I hope to see that gingerbread house sometime in the near future. On the subject of bad guest behavior, what gives? Jumping onto a moving tram?! I think some people lose a portion of their common sense when they're on vacation. Now the whole Castle Light Show is a tricky situation. I understand that it can be hard to score a spot in the very front in order to accomodate small children, but it doesn't mean that you totally ignore someone who's clearly struggling to view the show. I'm height-challenged and don't have the best vision, so I would have probably pushed pass the family. I know some people may look at it differently, but that's my two cents.

 

[Mrs Doubtfire]

Great pictures on Main Street, I love the decorations although the crowds are mad. The GF is so pretty too.

FW is always on our list to have a visit at Christmas and a Hallowe'en (if we are lucky enough to be visiting at these times) as the RVs are great to see. We normally try and schedule tea at Trails End and then have a walk around. But as pp said, sometimes you have to know when to give in.

 

[GoofyFan1515]

Ok, I been too quiet on this matter... Lessa failed to mention that at lunch at BOG I had apologized to Lessa and said that I felt bad for getting upset and over reacting to her words and had promised that I would like to find a solution so that it would not happen for the rest of the trip, as I know that people do not like to be awaken too early. I was hoping that the apology would be accepted and that Lessa would have apologized as well, did Lessa accept my apology?? did she apologized? did I find a solution so that the kids were able to sleep in, in the mornings despite my early mornings? Stay tuned.

Well, I don't remember that happening at lunch, I remember it being later in the day. But yes, you did apologize and I was stubborn and said I didn't think I had said anything wrong.

Okay children........ somebody needs a timeout!

That's better.........smiles and arms around each other!

We grabbed a spot on the curb right near The Plaza Ice Cream Parlour and then decided to get ice cream from there since my ice cream craving still needed to be dealt with.

It's funny but I usually don't have an ice cream craving at Disney............until I get near The Plaza Ice Cream Parlour!

Not much more to say here so I will let the pictures do the talking. I think we all enjoyed the parade and the new floats. The dragon was very cool. I also really enjoyed the Tangled float and the colourful costumes of the parade dancers.

Yes, good parade pictures usually speak for themselves.

Great pix of the parade , I really like all the floats , sorry but Tink is still my Fav!!!!

I'm sorta partial to Ariel........or really any of the redheads!

After the parade it was time to use our next fastpass, this one was for Big Thunder Mountain. When we got to Frontierland we were shocked at the relatively low crowds in the area. i have found that the area around Splash and big Thunder is usually bustling with people.

You picked a good time. With a Christmas party it isn't unusual for a lot of people to head for the exit after the parade instead of heading towards the back of the park.

We had a great time on our ride through the Wild West and then had to decide what to do next. We still had our third fastpass for Splash but it wasn't for another hour. However, looking at the standby time of 20 minutes we decided to just go standby instead of waiting for our fastpass window.

When we see a short wait time, we usually go ahead and jump in the line and then use the MDE app to change the FP+ to something else.

Also in the log with us was a couple that hadn't been on the ride before. Every time we came to a drop they would get nervous and say "Is this it?" Was rather amusing.

Newbies...........

We tapped our Magic Bands at the end to get our ride photo. I think it is pretty funny. Behind us you can see the "nervous couple". In front of us are the "annoying cheerleaders" and I just love the father son duo at the front.

I never have understood the concept of hiding your face in your friends chest/shoulder. Does that make the drop go away???

I LOVED the Jingle Cruise. The Christmas touches throughout the queue were great and I wish the line had been slower so we could have enjoyed more of them. As it was we had to speed by some of them. i especially enjoyed the Christmas Lists from the Skippers.

I really like all of the holiday overlays they have started adding to some of the attractions!

What is your view on this type of behaviour? I get that the family just wanted their kids to see the show but do you think it is right to block the view of others by popping your kids on your shoulders?

Personally, I wish they would make everyone sit down. Then the kids could stand in front of the parents and nobody's view would be blocked. However, kids on the shoulders seem to be inevitable, but no more annoying than all the people who think they have to hold their oversized tablet over their head and record the whole thing on video.......that they'll probably never watch again.

This next border was automatically added, poor Mom got blocked out by the snow.

I guess they thought Beth needed some pasty color on her rosey cheeks!

We squeezed our way off the monorail at the GF and made our way in to see the decorations. First order of business though was finding the bathroom! I had been holding my bladder for awhile and it was getting to be an emergency at that point!

Grand Flo lobby is absolutely gorgeous and must do at Christmas........with or without the bio break!

I loved the gingerbread house! So many little details to take in! Each of the windows had a stained glass scene from a different movie.

Christmas trees, decorations, and gingerbread houses are must-do's during the holidays! Did you find all of the Hidden Mickeys?

I then wandered up onto the bridge for a look down at the lobby and the tree.



And that was the end of our second park day and third day of vacation. Coming up next, a day at Epcot, Candlelight processional and an explanation for the title of this TR!

There are much much worse ways to end a Disney day than to take in THIS view!