Thanksgiving Week Trip Report 2022 Completed 1/22/23

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 4, 2022

Birds!

Soon it started raining even harder... so we go looking for cover.
We find it next to yak and yettie and we get some snacks. A lot of people are doing the same thing. I get my son a donut, he looves them.

I got a hot chocolate with Bailey's in it. I was feeling xmas

and it was chilly with the rain.

This was a great little break. The heavy rain stopped! Time to venture out and looks like entertainment is doing the same thing.

We get distracted....this was a very hard decision for my son, I said he can only pick one for the family to share.

And he picked a big gingerbread mickey cookies! It was soft and yummy. I just wish the icing was on the whole cookie.
Ohh and they had a carver out!

It starts raining hard again and we head for cover.... this will be our theme for the day. We have a tusker house reservation coming up for lunch so we decided to head that way since we know there is outdoor bar and most important cover! We get drinks and find a table out for the rain. Also this hat I bought yesterday has been doing great. The shiny material is pretty rain resistant and still looks good in rain. We grab a drink and we relax till out reservations come up.

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DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 4, 2022

Dotluvsdisney said:
Love love love all of those happy faces!!! We were just at AKL too. Such a fabulous time of year to visit!

Thank u!
Yes,Thanksgiving week is such a fun time. We looved it.

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 5, 2022

As we wait my mom got some coffee with a little extra in it and we chill and wait. I check in with the Tusker register desk and they say the earliest I can check is 20 mins early. So I check in at exactly 20 mins early and they got seat us right away. Yeah! We make a quick sprint in between the cover spots to get to the entrance of tusker house and it is amazing! The ceilings are cover with cloth.

And the best part it is dry!!! We got to sit in the main part which I loved. Super close to the food.

I get my wet gear off put on my ears and get ready to eat!
Mom grabs drink!

Here are some quick pics of the buffet choices in no particular order.

The food pics look a little empty but when I put down the phone and they refilled them all of course.
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marryfrmtx · Dec 7, 2022

Great trip report. I am really enjoying reading it. Taking a 4 and 5 year old in April. Definitely need to spend sometime in the boneyard.

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 7, 2022

They brought us bread and this butter in honey is to die for!!!!

We see mickey!! My son is soo happy to finally see mickey!!

Then next daisy!

At tusker house the characters seem to come around all the time. My son had such a fun time interacting with them.

Also notice the cute holiday touches they add their costumes.
We met mickey, Goofy, Donald and daisy here. Which was great since we meet some different characters at our other character meals.

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DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 7, 2022

The food here was great. I really enjoyied the more unique not boring options. They still have some more traditional food so picky eaters are still good. The bread service here is amazing here. The shawarma was a hit! Everyone loves it.

Desserts next!! The pineapple tart was really yummy.. The pick flamingo look cute but plain.

The characters come around and doing dancing too. And we get to see many a 2nd time. Soo much character interaction we get here.
Overall highly recommend this character meal. Great food and great character interactions with super cute outfits.
Sadly we have to leave and it is still raining heavily

We head out. We stop to get another wilderness explorer badge stop and hey at least it is covered!

We stop at a little shop that has cover and see these cute Navi daggers. We decided this will be his glow stick for out trip instead of the bubble wand.

continuing next post...

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 10, 2022

Soo I messed up the order of things my husband reminded me... oops. So let's go back in time... so before everest we took a quick pic, no line at our first offical disney photographer. I love this pic so cute but you could see my son not getting it. He was like but it is not cold... lol. He was very confused, poor guy not getting magic shots yet. He started getting then later after I showed him some of the pics.

Then the other part I missed was when we went to the safari! We did it after the eating the donuts

. We got it through das early reservation system.
Man do we love this ride. It really feels like a real safari. Even my dad likes it. My son is loving all the animals. Luckily the animals seem not to care to much about the rain. This ride really is the best ride and I love how it changes each time.

Lions were hidden in the back.

After the ride this is when we go get the gingerbread cookie

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 10, 2022

Okay now back to after buying avatar dagger.
We are trying to kill a bit more time before we can get into our next das ride the Navi River journey and we need to stay out of the rain.
So we go shopping some more. Lol.
We see the a build your own necklace station and my son loves doing these things. So perfect time killer and I love a cute craft. These

The bead choices are pretty cool actaully. I love the little the set up here.

My son loved it his necklace.

Then we went on the Navi River journey. My son looved his dagger glowing in the dark. Soo happy. No pics on the ride, just too blury but it is a pretty ride. Not worth a really long weight though.

So it is still heavily raining after we get off the ride and the radar and weather reports do not look good. My son is asking to go back to the hotel he is done being in the rain. I ask if he wants to see a show and he said no. So my parents head back too cause they are done with the rain too. My husband and me with his parents stay to watch lion king.

even though we are all kind of done with rain 🌧 but we really want to see the show! So we head on over to lion king and get in line. We are told that we are on the edge of may or may not be making it in.... so that is fun. So we wait not knowing if we can get in... in the rain. The hotel is looking better and better. Lol. They finally let in the non lightening lane people and we shuffle along. We make it in!!! We are in the back but who cares. This show is amazing!!! I am soo glad they brought back the flying monkeys!

Continue next posts.

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 10, 2022

Last few pics of lion king show..

After the show we decide to head back to the hotel. I wanted to see pandora at night but I am just done with the rain. We did a few quick pics since the rain started to go to just sprinkling for a bit and the photographers came back out.

Then we hit up the xmas tree

!

His parents have a rental so we hop on in the mini van and head back to the hotel. Super quick. One of the best parts of the hotel, the under ground parking and elevators to get u right to your hotel room. My son was super excited to see us and show his grandparents around the hotel room. My son and the grandparents play in the room while we relax.

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 11, 2022

We relax in the room. After a while I decide to head to the hot tub. There are not a lot of people in the pool area. But I chat with some of the adults in the hot tub.

And that is the end of day. We head to bed and tomorrow we will be heading to Hollywood studios.

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 11, 2022

Day 3!
We wake up early. We check the the weather less rain today yeah! We head on down to the busses. Again we get on the first bus and while we are on the busses we have to do lightening lanes for rise of the resistance.... bah I hate this... why can I not do these a week or two ahead of time instead of having to stress and do it on the bus...
My husband has the atomic clock going so I can refresh at the right time. We get an early boarding group yeah!!! Also prices went up for Thanksgiving week on it too... so much fun...
Now we wait in line. We will be heading to the new mickey ride first. Since we have das passes for slinky dog and millennium falcon and lightening lanes for rise. So when we get close to the gates opening guess who needs to go the bathroom... my son. Even though we tried to get him to go earlier. So husband takes him... and then of course soon the gates open. I send the grandparents off to the ride while I let people pass me to wait for my son and husband... the longest mins of my life. But I see them and they wiggle there way through to me and we get in. Yeah! We meet up with the grandparents and luckily we are still really close to the front since not many people were heading to this ride. Once the park opens up we wall ride in.

The effect is soo cool. My son is looving it.

We all really loved this new ride.

I love disney bringing new life to classic family friendly dark rides. This ride is really perfect for the whole family... but why do they have to make Goofy look like he is on drugs... lol but that is a whole different complaint.
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DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 12, 2022

Next we head to toy story land.

We went next to toy story mania. The line is still short. Man I remember when this was the line everyone ran too. It was mostly a walk on.

Lol the look I got on Mr potato head is hilarious. This ride is always amazing. The whole family and fun shooting.

Okay this is the cutest xmas decoration ever!

The park is open to everyone and crowds have increased even more. Slinky dog dash line was sooo long. Next we went on alien swirling saucer. We were able to das it the regular line is was not to long yet though. This ride is so much fun and it is cute they have an xmas song too!!

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DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 13, 2022

We made it the star wars area and we get a photo done cause I know it is where baby yoda is!! The closest I can hope for till we get one like Disneyland.

Then next up our rise of the resistance LL is up! It is pretty quick to walk on.

Wow words do not describe this... this is an experience. U really feel like your apart of it.

Wow... just wow.... this ride. I have never felt soo in the story before. This is worth all the wait and paying for LL.

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DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 18, 2022

Next we needed to go to make your own lightsaber. My son has been begging for his own lightsaber this whole trip. My son is 5 so we did not do the super expensive one. We went to Tatooine Traders. In the back they have a make your own plastic lightsabor. First choice was double or single lightsaber. Ours choose double of course. It cost about 40 dollars and double lightsaber come apart to be single ones. The cast member was soo patient and sweet with my son building it. You get soo many options to really make it custom. I highly suggest this for younger kids over the more expensive one.

The happiest boy in the world right now. Warning these are super big.

We go find a place to sit. We are outside Backlot express right next to star tours and our son wanted to play with his new lightsabers.. this area was great. It was not crowded since Backlot was not opened yet and since they do nothing on this stage any more we had room to play. My son tried out all the adults.

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DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 19, 2022

While the epic battles were happening we were getting a little hungry... I decided to go get a breakfast ronto wrap. I moblied ordered it and got a couple for the rest of the group. They stayed while I went on my mission.

I was super quick. Yeah training for a marathon pays off!! And brought back the yummy goodies.

Breakfast ronto wrap are better the regular ones I think. Our das pass was up now and we went on star tours. Some of the grandparents stayed behind not wanting to go on the ride so they kept our table. Even though it is older it is still really great they keep adding in new scenes.

None of us were the spy

but my son looved it.
We talk to him about what he wants to do next and he is now having a melt down. So we chill and relax here for a while. Giving him a chance to recover and Backlot is now open so drinks time!! We also get my son hamburger. This is a fun alcoholic holiday drink. (Epcot one in France is better though)

After a whike the holiday parade came by and it gets my son out of his meltdown. Yeah Santa!

I loove those deer!! So cute and happy we were able to see them outside the MK special event.

Santa made my kids day!!!

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snikki · Dec 19, 2022

Looks like you guys are having an awesome trip! Your son looks so happy!

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 19, 2022

snikki said:
Looks like you guys are having an awesome trip! Your son looks so happy!

Yeah, thanks! My son is still talking about it.

DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 20, 2022

My son is now ready to go do some stuff now. I get a das pass for Oalf. My son looves Oalf.
The grandparents stay behind at that the table.

The weird part was there was no photopass photographer. We had the photo box. The pic turned out good but I miss a real one.
We got a little snack. My son did not want mickey ice cream bar but fruit bar.... well what ever makes him happy.

We then to Millennium falcon ride but a photographer comes out so we take a quick pic before we head out.

Then we head on down and we see another photographer with a lightsaber!!! So of course we have to stop. I mean look at how happy he is with a "real" lightsaber.

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DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 26, 2022

Then we did some family pics.

My son kept hiding his face... lol.
Then we head on in and actually do some shopping and looking around. When we went here in the morning we did not get a chance since my son just wanted to get to the shop to make his lightsabor.

We head to the millennium falcon and of course we freak out.

Then guess who we see, Rey and Chewie. It is crowded to get around them but we manged to get close enough for some pics. My son stayed back with grandparents it was just to crowded for him which is understandable.

We wonder around some more and we see some storm troopers looking for spies... my son has a Kylo Ren shirt so they said they appreciate his support and like his shirt.

Then we spot Kylo! My son freaked out cause he looves him and is super scared of him. So we have to follow him around from a distance. Lol. Could not get to close though. So yes we are stalking Kyle Ren... lol

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DisneyMountainWoman · Dec 26, 2022

Then we continue to explore.

And they had an officer lecture the storm troopers. It was a very cool little show.
Then pictures of course. My son was not into pics now, so we did it on our own.

I maybe should have taken off my minnie ears they really do not go with the evil empire look, lol.
More exploring leads us to chewie and the other star wars character disney created for this area.