Losing our jobs... but still went to Disney! A Halloween 2009 TR - FINAL Update 3/1

[jordanyosh]

I know you hate them, but if you ever get a chance to go in October for the party you should watch it at least once. They give out free candy! And they show it twice so you can watch the first one and then ride rides during the second one!

I went once at the beginning of october.....maybe it warrants a return during that time...

 

[Simba22]

I went once at the beginning of october.....maybe it warrants a return during that time...

Seriously, just DON'T go ON Halloween. It was atrocious....but you'll read all about it later.....

 

[jordanyosh]

Seriously, just DON'T go ON Halloween. It was atrocious....but you'll read all about it later.....

 

[Simba22]

I took a picture of the crowd waiting in line to get on the BUS at the end of the night.... It was a madhouse and that's putting it mildly.

 

[jordanyosh]

I took a picture of the crowd waiting in line to get on the BUS at the end of the night.... It was a madhouse and that's putting it mildly.

double

 

[ILMICKEY]

Great party pics! I so loved that parade. I can't believe they cheapened the candy. That's terrible. GIVE THE PEOPLE CHOCOLATE! They can give away free dining, but no good candy. Oh well, off my soap box.

We went to the party on Halloween too. Won't do that again. YIKES!

Great update Ali!

 

[Simba22]

Great party pics! I so loved that parade. I can't believe they cheapened the candy. That's terrible. GIVE THE PEOPLE CHOCOLATE! They can give away free dining, but no good candy. Oh well, off my soap box.

We went to the party on Halloween too. Won't do that again. YIKES!

Great update Ali!

Thanks, Nikki! How's the weather out there today? It was sleeting and snowing and cold here yesterday and today it's like 60 degrees... My poor plants don't know what to do with their lives and my animals won't stop shedding because the seasons are changing on a daily basis....

 

[Simba22]

OK so why are there 5,473 views to my TR but only 10 pages! Stop lurking all of you....lurkers!!

Hoping to update tonight for all of you secretly stalking me!

 

[ILMICKEY]

The weather here is cold, cloudy and just plain yucky! It's been around 30 but supposed to get way colder next week. I am SOOOOOO excited. 60 degrees your way? You lucky girl. I cant wait for 60.

You have a pretty big fan base eh? They are closet dissers!!!

 

[Simba22]

The weather here is cold, cloudy and just plain yucky! It's been around 30 but supposed to get way colder next week. I am SOOOOOO excited. 60 degrees your way? You lucky girl. I cant wait for 60.

You have a pretty big fan base eh? They are closet dissers!!!

Well...it WAS 60 that one day...now it's back down to the 40s during the day and the teens or low 20s at night. It's 37 here now, and they are predicting almost 50 for Monday so who knows. No snow in the forecast though....

I can't wait to get out of work today...longest day ever!

 

[M303871]

Ok I will not lurk any longer, as I lurked through your last TR and was happy to se that you were wrighting a new one. It is also nice to see another person from CT.

 

[amosser]

ok - de-lurking
Great trip report. I can not wait to hear about Halloween - we are going back and forth about going to the party on 10/30/10 (if they have it that night) but I am really worried about the crowds

 

[Simba22]

Ok I will not lurk any longer, as I lurked through your last TR and was happy to se that you were wrighting a new one. It is also nice to see another person from CT.

ok - de-lurking
Great trip report. I can not wait to hear about Halloween - we are going back and forth about going to the party on 10/30/10 (if they have it that night) but I am really worried about the crowds

YAY!!!!!

Thank you for coming out of lurkdom! It's very disheartening when you think only 2 people are reading your TR (Nothing against you, Nikki and Jordo! )

Thank you so much for reading! I'm glad that people actually DO read my TR's!

Hey M: Where in CT are you? I'm originally from Stratford but moved to Naugatuck about a year ago. And THANK YOU for reading my last TR, too!

ETA: I just saw you're from Brooklyn, CT Sorry, I didn't see it before!

Hi amosser! I'm working on the next installment now, but I will tell you the Halloween night was an absolute zoo! We're planning to go back this coming October, but we'll probably be coming home on the 29th this time.

Thanks again to EVERYONE who is reading, even if I can't convince you to stop lurking, as long as your reading and entertained, I'm a happy camper!

 

[Simba22]

I did take quite a few pictures on this day but most of them were at night so I apologize in advance because you have to just read my banter for a few minutes.

I woke up kind of late today...we went to bed well after midnight and I didn't sleep well again - having all kinds of weird dreams and such. I didn't realize the toll that the hospital's phone calls were having on me until this morning.

I got up around 8 and cleaned up the room a bit while Lumar was building us an ark in the bathroom. At least that's what I assumed he was doing since he was in there for so long.

We left around 10am and on our way to get FPs for Soarin', our new best friends at the hospital called us AGAIN. To this day I still don't get what was so hard for them to understand about "we'll be home on the first of November and we'll meet with you then." I sat on the bench (where the lightup sidewalks are) while Lumar paced back and forth for about 10 minutes. He didn't want to NOT answer, just in case they were calling with bad news, but he didn't want to answer either because he knew they were just going to put him in a bad mood and waste our time.

Our Soarin' FPs had a noon return time so we found a table at Seasons and grabbed some breakfast.

After we ate, we went to do Honey, I Shrunk the Audience which we had never done before. It was a cute show but the 12 minute Kodak commercial at the beginning (that you have to STAND through) that they try to disguise as a "pre-show" is completely unnecessary and needs to cease existing.

We went back and rode Soarin' (after checking to see if Figment would be doing Meet & Greets - he wasn't), then headed off into World Showcase!

Our first stop was in Japan, of course. I needed to return a shirt I had bought when we were here earlier in the week.... It was a white and blue Hello Kitty shirt and I totally loved it but it was much too small for me. I did, however, keep the blue fleece Hello Kitty pajama pants that I bought.

Lumar surprised me with another pearl ticket and although I didn't get twins this time, I did get a 7.25mm one. We left and stopped in Italy but they didn't have the hoodie I wanted so we moved on.


On our way to Norway, however, we ran into this:

The dang drawbridge was up and we had to sit and wait for about 20 minutes for that thing to go back down. Luckily, we had a table with an umbrella to sit at because it was HOT!

We got FPs for Maelstrom but there was only a 10 minute wait so we got in line, too. After our first ride, we stopped into Kringla Bakeri for some yummy pastries!

School Bread (to DIE for!! SERIOUSLY)

What's left of a Cloudberry Horn (ALSO AMAZINGLY GOOD)

We also split a sandwich but it was so darn good that we inhaled it before we remembered to take pictures. As you can see, we got halfway through one pastry, as well, before remembering.

We went back to ride Maelstrom again then headed off to find the Argentina booth for some empanadillas! (this was about 2:30pm)

We went back to Japan to pick up my pearl, then headed off to Mexico! As you can see, the sun was going down....

We went on the boat ride, which I suppose isn't as bad as I made it out to be back in 2007. I still don't think I like it very much since they changed it, but it's not HORRIBLE....I guess.

I have too many pictures, apparently, so I'm splitting this up into a two-parter...

 

[Simba22]

Our dinner ressie at San Angel Inn was for 6:30pm but we checked in at 5:30pm and they were able to seat us right then.


I had their version of crab cakes for an appetizer but I didn't write down the name of it and it's not listed on the menu on wdwinfo.com but I know they were super deelish!

For dinner, I got Camarones de Guajillo:

And Lumar had the Tacos de Ribeye:

And of course, they serve tortillas and salsa which I happily scarfed down...and Lumar caught me:

For desert, I had ice cream with caramel (but I ate half of it before I took a picture...sorry )

And Lumar had Flan:

After dinner, we walked back to Italy and I was able to find the hoodie I wanted and pick up a t-shirt for my sister.... while waiting for Lumar...

I love the Carnivale masks....they're just amazing and beautiful:

I don't know why the guy on the left is laughing because it looks like he has a bloody mouth and nose... But I just noticed that as I was loading the pictures into Photobucket.

We stopped in Germany where Lumar got a beer:

Then we found a spot for Illuminations and I got some OK pictures:

After Illuminations, we headed towards the exit but stopped to ride Spaceship Earth. We had so much fun on it this time! I don't know why, but we found our little video at the end hilarious. We were actually able to email the video to ourselves and I have uploaded it for your viewing pleasure.



The wait for a bus back to Pop was nothing short of atrocious. The first two buses had two wheelchairs each, so they filled up quickly.

When they were loading the 2nd bus first person in a chair got on with 3 other party members. The 2nd person in a wheelchair got on with SEVEN other party members. I can understand letting one or two other people on to sit near the person in the chair and assist them in getting in and out. But not the whole Grand Gathering rotfl2: I just typed Grand Fathering by accident and had to share with you so could laugh too. What a difference ONE letter makes!).

We were finally able to get on the 3rd bus but by the time we got home and navigated our way through parking lot to get to our room, it was almost 1am. DHS tomorrow!

 

[elcodfish]

lurker reporting in, love the pics! I stole your flame tree BBQ pics to e-mail to my husband because somehow we never eat here!

Erica

 

[Simba22]

lurker reporting in, love the pics! I stole your flame tree BBQ pics to e-mail to my husband because somehow we never eat here!

Erica

Hi, Erica! Thank you for de-lurking! It makes me feel so much better to know that people are actually reading and following along and not just clicking into the report, reading the first post, and then leaving!

You can use all the pics you want! We had never eaten there before this trip, either. It was pretty good and definitely a change from our Disney Diet Staple Item: Pizza!

 

[Simba22]

We ate breakfast at Everything Pop – I had chocolate chip pancakes and I think Lumar had a Mickey waffle with bacon, then we headed out to DHS around 9:45am.

We practically ran to TSMM to get FP’s. When we got there it was just after 10am and the FP machines were cranking out tickets with a return time of 1:50pm!

Since we had some time to kill…. We went back to Sunset Blvd and rode RNRC twice in a row on Stand-by. This is a view from the stand-by line:

We had less than a 10 minute wait each time. Next we went over to ToT and rode once via Stand-by, with a 20 minute wait.

It was now about 11am. So we went over to the Streets of America for some more Power Rangers. Can you believe that someone actually asked us if it was OK for some Make-A-Wish kids to go in front of us in line? Who says “no” to that?? There is a special layer of H-E-Double Hockey Sticks for anyone who says “no” to a Make-A-Wish kid.

Here we are with the Blue Jungle Fury Ranger.

BTW, we take pictures with the Green RPM Ranger when we were here earlier in the week, but it’s probably the worst picture of me ever taken so it will be lucky if it even makes it into the scrapbook. Seriously, it’s THAT bad.

Next we went to see MuppetVision 3D then walked all the way back to TSMM. Why? Because it was 12:50pm and it was time for us to use our FPs, right?

WRONG.

It was in fact 12:50pm, and I THOUGHT it was time to use our FPs, but as I said earlier, the return time was actually for 1:50, not 12:50. Lumar decided he needed a break after that hike (in the 90° heat, BTW) so he played with his phone while I took some pictures:

We were getting hungry so we checked in early (2 hours early) for lunch at Mama Melrose’s. I had Chicken Parm with a Pink Bikini Martini:

And Lumar had steak with no alcoholic beverage…

For dessert, Lumar had a Chocolate Truffle Cake:

And I ordered gelato but got plain old chocolate ice cream. It was ok though since I love chocolate ice cream:

After eating, we headed back to TSMM. I was actually WINNING for the first 4 rounds then Lumar somehow came back and beat me by like 12,000 points.

We got more FP’s on the way out then spent the rest of the day kind of dawdling around doing a whole lotta nothin’. Lumar beat me again when we went back on TSMM around 6:30pm.

There was no Fantasmic tonight so we got on the bus back to POP at 6:45 and ate dinner at Everything Pop. Apparently (and I don’t remember this AT ALL) I had a cheeseburger with cheese fries and a pickle (oh wait, it’s coming back to me now!) and Lumar had nachos. We went to bed nice and early (10pm) because the next morning we were going on our Backstage Safari!!!!!!


At this point, I would like to share some completely random things that I happened to write down in my TR notebook:

1) We saw a woman on the bus with us one morning who was wearing the tightest pair of neon pink shorts in existence. They left nothing whatsoever to the imagination.
2) When we arrived at Epcot the day before, there was a woman (I would guess mid 50s) in front of us as we walked towards the entrance from the bus stop who was wearing a white thong. I know this because her “khaki” shorts were see-thru.
3) While in line for TSMM on our first DHS day, there was a family behind us consisting of a grandmother, a mom and her two kids. The kids were approximately 4 and 10. The 10 year old was a girl who was so incredibly obnoxious that her grandmother had to grab hold of her hand and embarrass her in front of the entire Q. Her grandmother held her hand for the remaining 50 minutes we were in line.

You know how every year you go on vacation, you have a list of random things that you bring and then NEVER use? The last two trips I have tried to cut back on the “useless stuff” I was bringing. Last year, I didn’t bring lotion because I figured they’d have some in the room. They didn’t.

These are the “Things I Wish I Brought With Me” for this trip, so far:
- A pair of scissors
- Nail clippers

 

[2Tiggies]

Really enjoying your report. Do you mind if I ask what camera you used? Your pictures are great quality!

 

[Simba22]

Really enjoying your report. Do you mind if I ask what camera you used? Your pictures are great quality!

Thank you for reading and for coming out of lurkdom!

My camera is a Canon SX10 IS and I LOVE it I had the Canon S2 IS and it broke last summer so I replaced it with the SX10. It's a FANTASTIC camera and probably the best $350 I ever spent!

Some of our pictures (most of the ones of food) were taken with Lumar's camera which is a Samsung something or other...but I broke it yesterday so I need to get him a new one....