"I've Waited A Long Time for a Mother/Daughter Extravaganza" 9/8 Update!

[Charleston Princess]

Hi, Allyson!!! Yes, please come back and finish!!!

 

[glennbo123]

I just read your account of the 1/2 marathon and loved it! Way to go! That run down Main Street must really be something. Thanks for sharing your story.

 

[princess&her4princes]

Looking forward to hearing more!! I know the feeling, this is my first TR without a trip in the works at the same time.....

 

[PISCESANGEL]

And so happy to see my friend PiscesAngel here! Yeah! I wondered what had happened to you! I hope things are now well with you. I see you have a ticker, that is always nice! And I will tell Bashful for certain! Honestly we were talking the other day about something computer related and she brought it up, how you would read my reports and your son would say HI to her. Too funny!

Allyson

I'm so happy to be here-thank you for missing me!

To make a long story short, the hubby and I split this past year. I am single for the first time in my whole adult life, and while it has been difficult I am a much better, much happier person these days!!

I think I'm most sad because I didn't even get to finish my last trippie because it sat for too long and my moderator closed it. I had amazing news... on that last trip, my family made it in time to be picked to open the park! It was the best morning of my life!

But now, we are planning a new trip with some wonderful people in my life and my DD is even bringing her boyfriend...should be interesting!
Which brings me to my DS- he actually asked me if I would ask you to bring Bashful and meet us there! He definitely still asks me about her and what she is up to now. I told him that she wasn't on the current trippie, and he was definitely bummed.

Anyway, great to hear back from you...I hope you get to finish this report, and I hope you get a ticker real soon!!!!!

 

[ObsessedwiththeMouse]

..

 

[DisneyJo]

I'm so pleased you like Brit's Allyson and did you ever say you needed the loo?

What a shame you missed the MMC party, I heard it was good and you could have met my Moms Panel friends, I'm sure there will be more though

DC looks wonderful, what a fabulous way to spend a day

 

[Ellester]

Great report thus far, Allyson! I too have been off the boards for a while, but stumbled on your report while looking at some old posts of mine. I know what you mean about not having a trip in the works. I didn't even do a trip report for our trip last Feb. (Of course, we have another baby now, she just turned one last month. She does keep me pretty busy!). I love the idea of a mom/one kid trip. I'm going to have to really think about approaching dh with that idea. I know my oldest (who will be 12 in April) could really use some intensive "mommy time". I look forward to reading about the rest of your trip!

 

[princess&her4princes]

 

[CJsMom]

Hi Allyson! I'm glad I found this...I always enjoy reading your trip reports. Love the idea of taking the kids separately and 12 sounds like the perfect age. My oldest will be 12 in three years, maybe that's enough time for me to convince DH - although my "Grumpy" is not as tolerant of my Disney obession as your Grumpy seems to be! Can't wait to hear more about your trip! And congrats on your half-marathon finish!

 

[PISCESANGEL]

Hi Allyson! I hope your holidays went well, and I hope you are coming back!

 

[OhMari]

Please let me know if you are going to finish.
Friendly bump.

 

[princess&her4princes]

Hey! did you reopen this?

 

[MomofCKJ]

I did! I asked if they would and they said yes so I am back to finish! Even if it is for just to have the story saved for future rereading and smiles. I do hope you'll stay and read Kristen! I have no idea if any other old readers will find me!

So pull up some coffee and I may need some serious gingko biloba to get my memory going on this one! Thank goodness for pictures, I can usually recall the day by the order of the photos.

Now where the heck were we???

Seriously where were we? I need to go back and see what day I left off on! Be right back!

 

[MomofCKJ]

Okay so it is Tuesday and we are heading to the jungle today! Yes Animal Kingdom!

I happen to really like AK, I know some people don't rate it high on their list for whatever reason but I love it. I love zoos, that might be one reason. I also just like the layout of it, the lushness, the winding paths here and there. One thing I have not done, and would love to, is go to an evening EMH here. I think it would be really pretty and exotic at night. One of these days.

But it would not be today. Today, we were up early as always (Belle is a natural early riser like her Mom) and at AK before the rope drop. It was hot and not raining (yet, always a yet when you go in August). Our main mission today, ride EE as many times as we possibly could.

Prior to arriving I recall reading about something being tested, central FP machines. They were near the Tree of Life. So we headed there and lo and behold, there they were.

And! And! And! We were able to get FPs for ALL the rides at once. I don't know if they continued with this, I don't know if it was a glitch, I have no idea. I do know we pulled a Safari, an EE and a Dinosaur FP all at the same time and it felt like we hit the Fast Pass Jackpot.

So off to EE we go!

The standby line was not long so we hopped in for our first ride of the day. Love it!

I believe we headed over towards Dino Land now and rode Primeval Whirl, it was only a 10 minute or so wait. Not bad. Not my favorite ride but it was fun.

This was followed by Dinosaur! No waiting for this either. As I've said before, I have a love/hate relationship with this ride. No matter how many times I go on it, it always scares the pants off of me! We had fun, Belle and I screamed like the girls we are and had a good laugh too. Also from our handy trivia/treasure hunt book we learned about what the red and yellow pipes with the chemical equations on them running through the inside of the loading area stand for. Anyone? Anyone?

Having had our fill of running for our lives from dinosaurs we maneuvered back to EE. The Single Rider line was now available so we decided to try it. And fell in love! Seriously! It was great that she was 12 and didn't mind not sitting with me. We must have gone on 7 or 8 times as the day went on. We never waited more than 5-6 minutes and many times we ended up in the same train. If we didn't she would go first and just meet me in the dump shop. Worked beautifully and allowed us all the rides we wanted with the Yeti.

Finally after one of our many rides Belle decided to buy the shirt she had her eye on in the dump shop. It is black with sort of rainbowish letters and says Yeti on it with EE in the background. It is cute, you'll probably see it in future pictures. We had it sent to our hotel, great and convenient service that is!

It was hot, real hot, so we decided Kali would be the best place to be. I have to think this is one of my most favorite queues in all of the World.

Again, no long wait, the longest part was walking through the queue. Very fun, we got wet and cooled off a little bit. Only thing I wish is that this ride was a little longer. Just as it gets fun, its done.

We were hungry now if I recall correctly and had to decide, what to eat? Well if you've read any of my other reports you know Belle loves pizza. Sooooo, it was Pizzafari for us. I have long since misplaced all the receipts I carefully saved after the trip but I do recall us both having the same thing here. Pizza what else? I like the colorful decor in Pizzafari and I honestly like the pizza too. Very tasty in my humble opinion.

Blurry Food Porn shot:

So we still have a FP from the morning for the Safari so we headed over. We took many a photo but guess what? They probably look just like YOUR safari photos! LOL! Am I right?

Belle took the window seat! Will she ever be old enough where I won't be worried she is going to drop the camera off the side???

After this I think we rode EE some more and walked the trail with the gorillas, I never remember which is which. We rode Kali again and then decided to head out. We had thought about the Nemo show but just never got around to it. Same with FOTLK. We had seen it before and loved it. We just didn't feel like doing the wait in a long line thing today. And so, we didn't

We wanted to head back to catch a little rest. We were heading to the Magic Kingdom tonight and had a special birthday suprise planned for dinner that night!

We did however get a bunch of character photos this day so here you are!

Coming up, our beloved MK and dinner with Prince Red Pants!

 

[princess&her4princes]

I'm here and plan on reading, yay, glad you're back! WOW score on the FP's! I've never heard of getting the jackpot like that before!!

Looking forward to hearing more! Love the pics of you and the characters!

 

[dizneyfreak]

I am so glad to see that you are going to finish this report. I love mother/daughter trips! I want...no I need to know what the red and yellow pipes are now...please? You hit the jackpot with the fastpasses...I so wish! I can't wait to hear more...
Anna Marie

 

[MomofCKJ]

I am so glad to see that you are going to finish this report. I love mother/daughter trips! I want...no I need to know what the red and yellow pipes are now...please? You hit the jackpot with the fastpasses...I so wish! I can't wait to hear more...
Anna Marie

Glad you found me again! The Red and Yellow pipes have the chemical equations or symbols for Ketchup and Mustard on them. Its because McDonald's was the original sponsor of the Dinosaur ride so its a shout out to them! That is your Disney trivia of the day!

I love Mother/Daughter trips too! I just booked the next one, to take my middle daughter Bashful next Oct 2011 for her 12th birthday!

Allyson

 

[MomofCKJ]

So we headed back to Pop for a short rest. This was our usual routine, I'm a big fan of the afternoon break. Even for an hour, to get out of the parks, go chill, watch a little tv, take a shower, whatever.

We had been getting trivia questions from our fab Mousekeeper and when we returned we had a note from him. The question had been if I recall something out the first animated film to get an Oscar. We guessed Snow White. We found this upon our return to the room.

Rest over we headed out to MK. It was sunny, now, but we had ponchos packed, thankfully!

And then we saw the Castle.....and the crane. Boo.

Such a bummer. The crane was there I think because they were starting to string the lights in prep for Christmas. It really destroys the beauty of seeing that Castle down Main Street. At least I think so. They were also all decked out for Fall already too as evidenced by this random shot on Main Street.

We took some shots with the statues:

I can't recall honestly what we did here. Not much I know because we had a ressie over at 1900 Park Faire for dinner that we had to get to. As we started heading over via Monorail the skies once again opened. Sheets upon sheets of monsoon rains. Nice.

We were seated quickly at a table in the main area near the buffets. We were happy with the food here and have enjoyed breakfast here on past trips. There is a lot to choose from and we always find things we like. While we were hitting the buffet I made sure to discreetly check in with the hostess to be sure my suprise for Belle would be all set. She let me know it would.

So we ate and what is so fun about this dinner is the Evil Step Mom and Step Sisters. I love face characters for the conversations you can have and these three are a hoot!

She asked her where her prince was. When Belle told her she didn't have a prince she asked her if she was going to grow up to be a crazy cat lady.

She asked if today was really her birthday since she was wearing a birthday button. Belle said it was not buy that we were celebrating it now and she loudly proclaimed Belle to be a "birthday fibber".

Cindy of course was sweet and asked about Belle's prince and was just, well, so Cinderella-ish.

Belle found him oh so cute (me? Not so much! LOL) and we dubbed him Prince Red Pants since he was wearing very red pants. Not too often you see a man in red pants.

Cindy and Prince Red Pants doing their dance in the center of the room. The little princesses around just eat this up!

Then came out the suprise, yeah!

Twas expensive for the size of it but oh so cute, oh so tasty and it made my girl smile so oh so worth it!

Dinner done we wandered around GF for a bit. I have to tell you about the weirdest story that to this day still makes Belle and I scratch our heads. It was pouring out still so we were killing time just walking around the lobby. We see on this couch a woman, an old woman, sitting with a few stuffed teddy bears around her. She was not moving and she didn't look real. It was weird. We thought maybe she was fake, you know just something set up in the GF lobby on a couch, old lady, teddy bears, I don't know how it fits the Victorian theme but really she was not moving. We walked by several times, perplexed at why this would be here? On maybe our third pass, she moved! She was real! We were freaked out. It was really bizarro. To this day we wonder about her, was she in some sort of character? Was she just a real old lady sitting there? I wish wish wish I had a picture, it was the strangest thing!

I know we did go back to MK for a bit but I have no pictures from the night. I am guessing we did some rides, did some gift shop browsing and headed home.

Tomorrow was Wednesday and we were spending the day at MK and experiencing our first meltdown....


Allyson

 

[dizneyfreak]

So, I was lucky enough to stay at the Grand Floridian for my 2nd anniversary (my husband suprised me with the trip!). While we were there we went to the hair salon to get cuts and we saw the lady on our way up. We asked the ladies doing our hair if she was part of the show and they said no...that she was just a very lonely little old lady that lived close and came to the GF almost every day to people watch and listen to the live music from the baby grand or the orchestra. They said that she gets her hair done with them once a week and eats there often as well and that all of the cast members love her and know her by name. They said she is very sweet and to strike up a conversation with her sometime...that she loves it!
Ta-da! Now I got to answer a trivia question for you too...sort of
Keep it coming girl!
Anna Marie

 

[MomofCKJ]

NO WAY! LOL! That is great, I am so happy you posted that! I can't wait to tell Belle the mystery is solved. Seriously, we bring her up now and then as one of those unsolved mysteries! LOL!

Now we are even on the Disney Questions!