That was the BEST Most Magical Trip EVER!! (A Sept 2011 TR) [COMPLETED]

[katt789]

Alright, so I've got some AMAZING NEWSSSSSSS!!!

I've got my photopass!!!! I decided that I'd just check the mail just in case, even though it would probably just have been sent off, but IT WAS THERE SOOOO EXCITED!! There were enough pics that there are TWO, read it, TWO, discs!! Do I know how to get my money's worth, or what?!?!?!

Now, onto a little bit of real life:

1.) My mom almost called me on the surprise trip! When I had first gotten back from the May trip, I asked her to come with me in Sept 2011, but she said she was going on a cruise, so I proposed Sept 2012, which she said maybe. Well, she remembered this when I proposed the "Mountains" trip for Sept, and said "So no Disney then?" I of course managed to tell her that I didn't have the money for it.

2.) It appears that I might be taking a break from Disney trips I was planning on attempting to go to DisneyLAND in May, but most all of my friends want to go to the WORLD. I may take a solo trip down, who knows?! If I can get that much money. Otherwise, it looks like I might be going to Vegas in the Spring, and then Vegas/Miami for a friends 21 birthday celebration later in the year. (Sidenote: did you know, for everything, for 4 people to go to Vegas for a week, it costs the same as 1 person going to DW for a week...)

3.) Just to throw some pictures in here, Sylvia(the Dec trip companion) and I went to Cora's for breakfast the other day, DELCIOUS. She did ask me at one point "you're seriously taking photos of food?!" Yup...she has no idea what's coming .

Cora's is a breakfast chain in Canada, coming from the Eastern edge of the country, and it is AMAZING, they have SO MUCH fresh fruit, and it's always amazing, even in the dead of winter. If you ever hear of one near you, GO, it's delicious.

So, moral of the story: stay tuned for a photopass catch up, and then I will be posting the rest of the photopass in with the next updates, hopefully this doesn't delay the TR too much!!

 

[katt789]

Yay!! So the photopass has finally arrived this morning, so I'm going to catch up on at least part of Day 1's photos now!

Sorry they're all so giant, I just want to get on with the trip report, and really don't have time to resize the ones on the days I've already done...don't care that much haha

After we had stopped on the way in for some castle pics, we quickly zipped through Frontierland, as you may remember, and then swooped through Adventureland for some character meets, where the photopass got some of the best pictures EVER! (All of them, if you remember) Also, this was the awesome Ariel, just such an amazing pair of characters here!

You can see the happiness on my face!! Eeee, so excited!!

The "swooning" picture that Ariel suggested! Next up; we meet some fairies (and Katt makes a ridiculous face...surprise....) You can just tell in these pics that I'm nowhere near as impressed with them as I had been with Ariel...

After that, we had been heading over to Tomorrowland, but not before some more castle pics!!

AAAANNNDD...that's where I am going to have to leave you for now!! I have to get some time to hit the gym before lunch with a friend, hopefully I'll finish everything up from MK today, we'll see how the night goes!!

 

[shan23877]

We saw the exact same Arial, Eric, and Rosetta as you guys did, and I thought they were all amazing! My DD was over the moon for Eric (stay tuned for Day 5 of my TR for the details )

Great pictures. I love the one of all the boys posing gallantly and all the girls swooning. Too cute.

 

[katt789]

We saw the exact same Arial, Eric, and Rosetta as you guys did, and I thought they were all amazing! My DD was over the moon for Eric (stay tuned for Day 5 of my TR for the details )

Great pictures. I love the one of all the boys posing gallantly and all the girls swooning. Too cute.

Ah that's so awesome!! I loved that Rosetta, Tyler definitely swooned over her as soon as he heard her accent! I looooove Ariel, so no matter what she's like, I'll love her, the best one I've met was at Akershus in May, she just LOOKED so much the part,

 

[katt789]

We saw the exact same Arial, Eric, and Rosetta as you guys did, and I thought they were all amazing! My DD was over the moon for Eric (stay tuned for Day 5 of my TR for the details )

Great pictures. I love the one of all the boys posing gallantly and all the girls swooning. Too cute.

Ah that's so awesome!! I loved that Rosetta, Tyler definitely swooned over her as soon as he heard her accent! I looooove Ariel, so no matter what she's like, I'll love her, the best one I've met was at Akershus in May, she just LOOKED so much the part:

This Ariel was just as great! And I'm so over the moon for Eric, no matter what. This one, yeah, he's cute, but simply because he's my prince of choice: Ahaha, they were awesome!!

 

[katt789]

We branched across into Tomorrowland, and after saving the galaxy from Zurg, we were off to meet the Space Ranger who helped us! Tyler's fave of course!

This was while Buzz was telling Tyler to put on his sunglasses to look like a Space Ranger. Then he stole Amy's, cause they were more space like!

Then we all jumped in and made some superhero poses, and I do love how this picture turned out!!

Over by the Haunted Mansion we stopped on the way out to get scared by some more ghosts! I had to zoom in on our scared faces!

Our next stop with photpass photographers was over in a small place called Agrabah (also known as Adventureland!) with Jasmine & Aladdin.

This was yet another place that we managed to get an AWESOME photopass photographer, who took TONS of action shots while we were talking, rather than just the picture of the pose & that's it.

Another great interaction with characters, these guys were super chatty & great to talk to!

While we were headed over to meet the princesses, we made a stop on Main Street & managed to actually get a good jumping picture! (This is something that I want to get more of, especially with some dance jumps, I think it'd be awsome!)

 

[katt789]

Next up: we were at Town Hall, meeting some royalty. If you remember, Aurora talked to us about how purple, or stripes would have been a good comprimise for her dress between the fairies!

Nick had to get his own solo picture with Belle of course, which he was really excited for!

We stayed in Town Hall to visit the big cheese himself and is Misses! (I know, I know, they're not married, but they're still )

 

[ronnmel]

All the pictures look great, but I especially love the jumping pictures. I have a thing for jumping pictures, as you can notice from my TR, and wedding, and another shoot I did before.

 

[katt789]

After leaving Town Hall & our Mousey friends, we stopped for a photoshoot on Main Street. During all of these pictures, none of us had any idea that Nick was doing the faces! When we got home late late after the flight, and went through the photopasses, I was laughing so hard I was crying at the surprise of the expressions!

Personally, I think he looks like Calvin from Calvin & Hobbs!! After Main St, we stopped over near the Adventurland bridge for MORRRREEE!!

And we got one last one infront of the castle that night.

 

[katt789]

All the pictures look great, but I especially love the jumping pictures. I have a thing for jumping pictures, as you can notice from my TR, and wedding, and another shoot I did before.

Thanks! I was REALLY happy with how the photopass turned out, we definitely got our moneys worth! I love jumping photo's too! I'm hoping to some day get some dance-jumping photos infront of the castle, we'll see!

 

[katt789]

Our second day in the parks was spent all at Disney's Hollywood Studios. We didn't get as many pictures as the day before, but I feel like Magic Kingdom has the most spots & new types of photos. Plus characters!

We did get some good ones though! Amy & I specifically, got as many as we could at most every photopass spot we saw!

I included two of the practically same one, because I like the b&w with the frame! And hey, who can turn down a "scared" picture infront of Tower of Terror?

Oh no! Stitch is breaking things!! Next up, we have some shots from the Animation Building, with Pooh bear & his new meet & greet area~~

Again, some amazing photos! I always prefer when they take lots of interaction pics, the hug ones just always are adorable!! We got some group shots around the park!

Amy & I made sure to stop on the way out after Fantasmic! to get a night-time shot!

 

[katt789]

Our Animal Kingdom day began with a little bit of a hiccup, but after an enjoyable breakfast at Tusker House with some friends, we were off through Africa headed toward Asia, and stopped to say hi to some more furry friends on the way!

And of course, some professional pics infront of the Mountain we were to brave later!

After facing the yetti, and jupming over to watch FOTLK, the boys decided that they were going to take off, and Amy & I continued through the park on our own. Naturally, we stopped for every character we saw!

While we crossed the Oasis to head over to Camp Minnie Mickey, we stopped for some tree shots, and asked if they knew where we could do the Baby Simba pics, and they did those for us too!!

Over at Camp Minnie Mickey, we made sure to hit up Thumper & Miss Bunny first, but then got into Goofy's line to say hello!

 

[katt789]

We said good-bye to Goofy, and headed back over to the other character trails across the oasis to meet some more friends.

After leaving our 100 Acre Wood friends, we trained our way over to Rafiki's Planet watch, then caught the parade, and then headed out of the park, but of course stopped for some shots on the way out, Amy & I can't resist!!

 

[katt789]

On the evening of the 16th, we were setting off to enjoy a night at Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party! We arrived at the park around 6pm to enjoy an early start, and get some rides in before the party actually started. Obviously, we had some time to get some shots in our cotumes on Main Street.

Specific shots in some character poses

After some quick rides, we jumped into the line for Cinderella's Royal Coach.

Next up was the Villian' Mix & Mingle, where Facillier had his own photopass guy!

We made sure to get a picture with our Favorite Froggy couple (especially since Naveen was the only one out the other day!)

 

[katt789]

Next up: MORE CHARACTERS!! Starting at the hub with Gaston! ( )

Just around the corner, we stopped to say hi to someone we would adore the interaction with:

Now we were back to the Hub, where Amy was asking some big questions!

And now: I will HAPPILY inform you, that the photopass updates are DONE, and now, back to your regularly scheduled programming!!

 

[katt789]

The parade was finished! Just before it, we had been talking with a cm, who had commented on my Tink costume, and asked if we had been over to see Tink in her new outfit at all, we of course hadn’t. This however became our next thing to do, if the wait wasn’t too long, so once we regrouped with Amy, we were off to Adventureland! Along the way, I peered over to see if my favorite princess was out (of course she was in the Town Hall) in her place, was Tarzan, Terk & Jane! We made a thought to come back after our stop in Pixie Hollow. The line for the fairies wasn’t that bad at all, and the CM working it was in a great mood, joking around and having a good time. We were shrunk down to size in no time, there was one family in front of us, and I lucked out with my other top fairy! Vidia! Right before I went up, I realized “Oh crap! She’s not gonna like me!” Thanks to me being dressed as Tink (at least, that’s what I’ve gotten from the Tinkerbell movies, she seems to be the “villain” of the fairies, the one with a bad streak at least).

She made sure to be friendly though! Nick seemed to be in the mood for some fairies tonight as he jumped into the next picture too!

Tinkerbell wasn’t too keen on Nick at first, but he promised he wasn’t a bad, stinky pirate, and she said that was okay.

Then it was my turn! Finally!! EEEEEEK!!
This Tink, was incredible!! Especially after the not-so-great Tink we had met on the first day, this one was fantastic, super chatty, super fairy, just awesome. She had a little bit of the spunk that Tinkerbell originally had, when she was in Peter Pan, which I like better than the new Tink movies, though she’s still awesome. You can also see in this picture, that we’re pretty much the exact same height! I still have NO CLUE what my “Disney height” will end up being, and I’m not sure if I’d want to be friends with a Fairy or a Princesses, but we’ll see!

We left Pixie Hollow, and turned around to the veranda to see that Tarzan had left, it was now just Jane & Terk, we had met Terk earlier, and didn’t really care about Jane, so we made a new plan. It was nearing the end of the night, and crowds were really thinning out, and according to the map, characters weren’t out past 11pm, so what else was there to do, but TRICK OR TREAT!! We were already in Adventureland, so we started there, and worked our way around the park counter-clockwise. We saw some pretty cool friends along the way too! (Here’s where the photopass reveals that my pictures were re-arranged out of order just to make the TR easier for everyone. I do want to include these here, just so they don’t get lost later.)

To recap: Jafar was laughing at the small size of Amy’s hands while taking pictures with us!

This is where some of the pictures are jumbled up, and where we discovered that some characters did have sets later than 11, or ones that extended past 11. We didn’t get in line for the dwarves, but just took some shots while we went through the candy trails.

All of the candy trails were hit by us, and let me tell you, at the end of the night, they are just DUMPING candy into your bags, we were getting SO MUCH, some of it was getting munched on right away, and we saved some for later. Amy stopped for a picture infront of Peter Pan’s Flight (how couldn’t she!)

Continuing on our wanderings through Fantasyland, we saw an old friend, still out, and alone over by the teacups! Mad Hatter was still out, with a handler, and a photopass, but NO ONE ELSE!! Seriously, everyone must have still been out in the hub, or riding rides, WHO KNOWS, but he immediately greeted us, shouting across the pathway to us “HI!” and such. I hesitated a little bit as I thought he might just be leaving, but he wasn’t, he encouraged us to come and hang out for a bit. Again, amazing interaction, he noticed that we had managed to lose Tyler, and congratulated us on it, and said “Now only if you could get rid of this one!” and edged at Nick. He also went to gently tap Amy & ask her what kind of tea she likes, and he accidentally smacked her pretty hard! He took the smallest fraction of a second to “break character” with an “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” Amy wasn’t too offended, it was actually just kinda funny for us all. We took a few more pictures (again, on the photopass) and then said goodbye to our new best friend. He continued to yell “BYE!” to us and wave until we had passed by the Tomorrowland Speedway.

 

[katt789]

Once we were in Tomorrowland, I think we had hit up all the candy trails already, but there was still a dance party on, we took a bit to sit down & relax, and dance & grab some final pictures of the night.

Again, an amazing experience, the dance parties are a great time to chill out and have some fun with the characters, they do a good job of meandering and giving some time to interact & dance with everyone. If you’ve got smaller kids, especially if they like Toy Story, I REALLY recommend the one in Frontierland, as it’s inside, and you can let them run around the room & not be too worried (especially during a parade)

After dancing our way into the end of the night, we decided that it was time to head back to the hotel. It had been a long day, with tons of activities & adventures, and the party was winding down. We hadn’t ridden a lot of rides (although we nearly did Dumbo during our candy trail fun times, but we JUST missed the start of a ride, there was no one in line, but we didn’t want to have to wait for the ride to be done), but we had gotten all the key points done! Within an hour, we were all sleeping!


ANIMAL KINGDOM;
Highlights: -Everest
-FOTLK
-Thumper!
-Amy bouncing w/Tigger
-Riding Everest multiple times and in the front.

Lowlights: -Miscommunication with the boys at the start of the day

Food Reviews:
Tusker House: 5/5. Great service, they’re super efficient getting you in, fed and out quickly, but you don’t feel rushed. Great way to get the Fab 5 characters. Amazing food, I love that they have more than just the average breakfast fare.
Pop Century Dinner: 4/5 I loved that lasagna, but the salad was weak…haha. Great deal for the money

MICKEY’S NOT SO SCARY HALLOWEEN PARTY
Highlights: -EVERYTHING
-Mad Hatter
-Tiana & Naveen
-Tinkerbell
-Gaston
-The Villains Show
-SO MUCH CANDY
-Parade

Lowlights: -We saw Lotso from a distance, but only once, would’ve liked to meet him
-Some grumpiness (but at least he was smart, and went off to do his own thing and had fun)

 

[shan23877]

Wow! You've been updating like crazy!

Looks like you guys got tons of great photopass pictures

Love that you saw Gaston! It's fun to see pics of the 'rare' characters.

Sorry that you missed Lotso, but it seems like you had a really great (if long) day!

 

[Merida]

It'll be an intense day, that's for sure, but we'll be able to handle it! Perhaps we'll see you at the party that night!!

Yes! I know logically that it's going to be PACKED being a Friday and one of the last parties, but I just can't accept that it won't be fun. I think it'll be easier since we have no kids to worry about? idk, I both want and don't want a plan!

Oh wow, your photopass pictures are amazing! I don't feel like ordering one since I really hate posing for pictures (I like taking them! I'm very awkward in front of the camera!) but I lovelovelove the candids from the character meet'n'greets. CONFLICT.

Tinkerbell's new outfit is adorable. And Facilier is awesome! I'm so glad there's more villains besides Gaston and the Stepfamily who are face characters. I think it's so much cooler when they don't have a massive plastic-y (?) face.

 

[katt789]

Our day began today with a little bit of a slower start, we had wanted to make rope drop at Epcot, but weren’t too concerned. This was another one of those parks that we had missed SO much of last time, and I was looking forward to actually getting to explore Future World this time. Nick decided that he would meet up with us later in the morning, giving himself some time to sleep in, so we left the room quickly & quietly to grab some breakfast from the Pop Century food court! Amy & I both got croissant breakfast sandwiches, while Tyler got the bounty platter.

It was good, not too greasy, though near the end I’m pretty sure I pulled out the piece of sausage and just ate the bread & cheese, as I said earlier, I really wish that the breakfast combos had more fruit, or at least some healthiness in them, but these options are still good!

With breakfast out of our way and everyone ready to go, we headed out to the bus stop, and jumped on a bus for Epcot! Through the turnstiles and bag check took no time at all, Amy & I were pros by now (another point that would be brought up by cm’s later that day) and we were right on time…or so I thought! (I had bought a watch the previous day, so I now was the one in charge of time ) I swear, we were there right at 9am, but there was no rope set up, there were no characters out, nothing. I don’t know if they just didn’t do anything special that day, or we had missed it, but, there was nothing exciting going on.

Our first stop of the day, can you take any guesses? If you guessed character spot, you would be correct!! We had gotten all the fab 5 previously, but it was always a good time meeting some characters, and this was the only time of the day that the line would be doable. We jumped right in line, and then the line seemed to just form behind us (yet another one of those “we got here JUST in time” moments) We saw Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto & Donald! Now, there was just the *cutest* little girl in front of us in line for the greets, she would toddle up to the character, give them the hug, then plop herself down on the ground to take a photo, and she kept trying to look above the bow on her head, oh my goodness, just too cute. There wasn’t anything to write home about in terms of interaction (aside from the adorable little girl infront of us) although the photopass did end up crapping out for Donald, so we had to get that one taken on our own cameras, which wasn’t a problem for us of course!