Trip of New Phases, Friends & 40! Updated 8/31 - As If Goodbye Wasn't Enough! The End

[brookelizabeth]

Beautiful room pictures!!! Takes me back to a couple weeks ago. That is SO great about getting the same room! Did you request to be in or near that room, or was it completely by chance?

not as bad as they expected, eh?! That's funny!

Ours startled us at first but they weren't too bad. Maybe ask to sit anywhere but in the dinosaur room?

Ah! Good to know there are other rooms - I'll keep that in mind. Thank you!

 

[TyRy]

What a fun update!! I am looking forward to all of you wearing the t-shirts!

I think I had the standard room just below your DVC room once and I agree it is one of the best pool views you can have! I am really hoping for a view like that in 16 days!!

What are you down to now - 12 days? (gotta go get caught up on your PTR). I LOVE that view and the location and wouldn't mind if we had a third time this year in that room.

Sorry I totally missed your T-Rex post!

Wow the dessert looked awesome, what exactly was it? And too funny that your DH ordered it first

It was four HUGE pieces of chocolate cake, eight scoops of ice cream (or four very large ones) covered with carmel and nuts. I couldn't even see four people polishing this off. DH didn't even care that he knew he would only eat a tiny bit of it. It sounded good, he didn't want to be too full and bam -it was his appetizer!

I'm glad you liked the view from your room and how wonderful that you got to meet up with friends. I had the fillet and mac and chesses last December and although I thought it was a very odd combination (us Brit's have different tastes to you guys ) it was nice

It is a bit of an odd combo and I ate it as if it were two totally separate dishes. It was either a bite of mac n cheese or a bite of the steak...never combined.

Great update! We'll have to try TRex next time, the kids love RFC so I'm sure this will rate up there with them too! DSis and I went out to dinner a long time ago and got dessert first (Death by Chocolate at Bennigans-yum!).

They really will like it. I know there have been mixed reviews, but we loved it, and it was just so cool in there. People were up and taking photos the whole time we were in there. I loved sitting next to our dinosaurs and watching them move theirs heads and such during our meal. We thought at one point that maybe they wanted a bite of our food.

Don't you just love AKV? The rooms at Kidani will blow you away, so big!

Will have to check out your videos later, can't get youtube to work.

Hope you were able to see the videos! I do love AKV and DH really really wants to stay at Kidani, but I LOVE Jambo house and the pool view. I'll eventually give in, maybe not just our next trip.

Beautiful room pictures!!! Takes me back to a couple weeks ago. That is SO great about getting the same room! Did you request to be in or near that room, or was it completely by chance?

I put the same request in but it wasn't super specific (Zebra Trail), so we were shocked.

not as bad as they expected, eh?! That's funny!

I can't imagine what they thought they were getting, but we are supposed to be going with Red and her family in 2011...she may have to get a "special" shirt!

 

[brookelizabeth]

I can't imagine what they thought they were getting, but we are supposed to be going with Red and her family in 2011...she may have to get a "special" shirt!

Do it!!!

 

[TyRy]

Our first full day altogether was our Epcot day and it looked nice and sunny as we headed out. While we loved the sun, we learned it was not always our friend. As soon as we walked out of AKV we were drenched from the humidity…story about that once we get to Animal Kingdom Park. While I think both Red and DH could have slept in, Evil Twin wanted to get there early. A compromise was reached and we arrived around 9:30am. The plan was to head right to Soarin’, but we were detoured by a Photopass photog.

They then told us to look down and be surprised…well we were! I think Stitch had some fun with this…

Soarin had almost no wait, so we jumped in line, and ten minutes later we were ready to take flight.

After Soarin, we headed over to The Seas…Evil Twin wanted to ride the Clam Mobiles and Turtle Talk. Have I mentioned that she had a HUGE list of things to see/do in every park? Thank god the crowds were really small.

I have to admit, I thought Turtle Talk was great. It was our first time doing that and even DH enjoyed it. I wasn’t sure if four adults without kids would have fun, but we did! The reason being we were probably all acting like little kids…here’s a little proof of that….

We then wanted to show them Spaceship Earth and this time we would be ready with cameras to video the little film at the end. So after a quick grab of TT FP’s we hit SE. It was almost a walk on. So DH and I rode together and so did my BFF’s. We were so excited as we had told them all about how funny this was, and then we had our first letdown of the trip. Here’s what we looked like:

Last time I checked we were not totally cartoon characters (although DH may disagree by the end of this trip ) Our car didn’t work!!! We were so sad. BUT – Evil Twin had her list so we decided to skip riding it again for now. I believe we then headed to Innoventions and then Ellen’s Universe of Energy. Somewhere in between, the sun had run away and we now had rain. Did anyone have ponchos since it was the rainy season…nope! Here’s how we got to TT finally:

We had just a couple minutes wait before we were let in. We got into our car and made it to the checkpoint. We then heard what was the quote of the trip. The CM at the checkpoint makes sure you are wearing your belt properly. After telling us what to do, we did and he said “Thank you for knowing how to buckle your seatbelts and pull on the yellow safety” This almost sent us into hysterics…we could not believe he said that – or that he had to thank us for knowing what to do!!!

The ladies loved the ride and DH grabbed a picture of the picture…not sure why since we then added it to PP

Since the rain had let up, we decided it was time to tackle World Showcase and grab some food...

 

[DisneyJo]

You disappoint me so much Ty........ your TT photo was so boring

Other than the rain it sounds like a fun morning, too bad the cameras weren't working on SSE I hope you managed to ride it again later

 

[TyRy]

You disappoint me so much Ty........ your TT photo was so boring

Ok - that was odd - I posted a reply and it showed at first but is gone now?

Anyway...I know we let you down I always thought that the camera was at the braking by Evil Twin had her arms up after the outside part, but maybe she had them up the whole time? So now I'm confused!!!

I think DH is just sitting there trying to formulate a plan on how to get away from us for the rest of the vacation after only a few hours.

 

[brookelizabeth]

You guys were having a blast weren't you?!?! Love it! The pictures inside Bruce's mouth made me laugh out loud!

 

[jelloarms]

I’m now starting to have those Disney dreams as well – I’m sure lots of you have them too. The ones where you are at the parks and forget your schedules, or completely forgot to go to a park…yep – the crazy types of dreams. DH claims to never have them, and that if I didn’t plan everything out I wouldn’t either. Ummm – yes I would, I would then be stressed that nothing is planned!

My maybe trip isn't until next year and within the past 6 months, I have had this dream 4 times:: I find out that I am going to Disney the actual day that I am supposed to go to Disney and 15 minutes before I have to leave for the airport so I rush the packing and while on the plane, I realize I forgot my digital camera charger.

 

[TyRy]

You guys were having a blast weren't you?!?! Love it! The pictures inside Bruce's mouth made me laugh out loud!

We really were having a blast...if I can get the next part written, you'll see the fun we had in Norway and a few other places that day!

My maybe trip isn't until next year and within the past 6 months, I have had this dream 4 times:: I find out that I am going to Disney the actual day that I am supposed to go to Disney and 15 minutes before I have to leave for the airport so I rush the packing and while on the plane, I realize I forgot my digital camera charger.

I'm soooooooo glad I'm not the only one!!!! I've only had one or two for our upcoming trip and it's not until October! I know they'll start even more once our plans are more finalized

 

[TyRy]

The rain had momentarily stopped and it was time for lunch. We decided headed to China to grab food for lunch.

Our goal was to hit every country, but our tummy’s were winning the battle for now. So off to Lotus Blossom we went where Evil Twin, Red and DH discovered a food they raved about the rest of the trip…..the Potstickers – which kept disappearing so fast I barely got a photo!

I don’t know what it was about them, but they went back and got more. They also noted that they wanted to come back again later in the week. DH and I split an Orange Chicken

and it was ok….probably not as good as their potstickers though .

We then had to decide what to do next…and it was still sprinkling out. Since we were already in China we headed off to see the movie and explore each store. Evil Twin wanted to see EVERYTHING in all the countries and this was fine with us…as many times as we have been, there were still things we had never seen or explored.

We came across Mulan and no one was waiting to see her, so we all got photos together!

We then spent a lot of time exploring the Tomb Warriors exhibit. This was really fascinating to us and especially Evil Twin who loves most things historical.

We moved onto the movie next…since we had not seen it, we consulted my little cheat sheets to see if we needed to know anything. Glad we did since it was in 360 and half our group is prone to motion sickness.

After China we worked out way backwards and Norway was next. We headed straight to the ride, which, of course, had no wait. DH even snapped a quick picture on the ride.

We then posed for our Norway visit picture…we had decided that the girls needed a picture in each country – these are our Norway photos:

We then moved into the store, where we had a lot of fun…who knew hats and coats could be a blast:
Click Picture to Play


Red ended up buying one of the hats she tried on, and I meant to go back and get the coat I had on, but completely forgot!!!

Mexico was up next, but before we got there we found a PP guy and he took these of us:

Mexico was next and Evil Twin loved this pavilion.

And our country photo

After exploring a little bit inside we then went back outside to grab some guacamole and chips – and as a side note I don’t like guacamole but this was FANTASTIC. So fantastic that we forgot to take a picture!

As we turned and were going to start walking back in to go on the ride, we saw DH’s favorite character…and may I say he LOVED our shirts. Donald started clapping his hands and being really animated when we saw we were all wearing him on our shirts –

We then headed back in for the Three Caballeros ride…and how appropriate that we ended up in this boat!

Yep, that was this trip…goodbye 39 and hello 40!!

Continued in next post....

 

[TyRy]

We then wanted to try and work our way around all the countries to see as much as we could before dinner at Norway.
Of course, on the way to Germany Evil Twin and I decided to put on a show for people
Click Picture to Play


We then finally made it to Germany and we weren’t sure where to start! But then, some in our group found beers and I found the yummiest, most frostingest cupcake ever!!

OMG – it was soooooooo good and sugary!! I ended up throwing part of it out which shocked DH as I am never one to turn down frosting!

The twins and the all the girls in Germany

In Italy we went basically walked around the plaza, although Evil Twin almost bought a soccer jersey she saw in one of their stores. Our Italian picture -

At American Adventure we saw the show, which I did nor remember seeing before, but DH said we did. And for some reason, we have no pictures of us in America!?!

Japan was explored next, and we had a great time…Epcot was so empty that we could really take our time. The ladies in Japan:

When we hit Morocco it started to rain harder, so we were in and out of the stores trying to stay dry. We even lost DH for a bit, we just went one way and he went a different one. No matter, we had our fun without him

Not sure what it was with us and trying hats on that day!

We found where Jasmine and Aladdin do meet and greets and since they were not there, we decided to have our own fun…

After hiding out in the Tangerine Café for a bit while it was raining, we realized we had better start heading back to Norway for our dinner reservation. Thankfully, the rain had let up again.

Continued in next post....

 

[TyRy]

We checked in with a lot of other people and got our buzzer. I said we should probably stick close as I had no idea how they would pronounce my last name. But Evil Twin and I had to make a pit stop, so we left Red and DH. Of course, DH was waiting just outside a doorway with air conditioning coming out and Red was in the heat. DH took advantage of this of course

Click Picture to Play


We took our pictures with Belle

and then sat down to dinner. I was looking forward to the meal that I could only kind of eat last year thanks to my throat. Unfortunately, they had changed the menu and my pork shank no longer existed As you may remember, I am really picky, so I was not happy about this. Here’s the menu from Sept:

Mats was our server and he was just ok. Maybe it was because we had already had some great servers, but he was just ehhhh.

My first plate:

DH’s first plate:

Red asked all of us to get Tink straws so we did! We even convinced DH to wear one

The Princesses all came around and we they were a lot of fun:

Dinner arrived, I had the Grilled Pork Chop

And the rest of the gang had Traditional Kjottkake which is Ground Beef and Pork Dumplings served with Mashed Potatoes, seasonal Vegetables, and Lingonberry Sauce (in case you couldn't read the menu!)

The dessert plate which we all shared:

Continued in next post....

 

[TyRy]

After dinner we continued our quest to visit each country. We headed back towards France since that was where we left off.

We hit each of the shops and WOW – I’d never been in the perfume shop before…it was a bit overwhelming. DH left right away and we were pretty quick behind him. It certainly didn’t smell badly, just really overwhelming!

I think we also found this guy in France and had a bit of fun!

And since we had tried to stick everything possible on our heads that day, the trend continued

I also managed to show them Belle’s library, but our brains must have all been on not working mode as we didn’t take any more pictures until after Illuminations!

We did manage to hit England and explored that thoroughly. I really liked the shop where you could get the name Crests – might have to do that this upcoming trip. Saw Mary Poppins and Alice, but the lines were too long and we were starting to get short on time.

The decision was made to skip our neighbor to the north and come back later in the week to explore that when we had our LeCellier reservation. Off we went to find a spot for Illuminations. Luckily, nothing was happening in the area in front of Italy, so with about 20 minutes to go, we were able to get front row spots there.

The ladies loved the show and too soon our first full day together was over. We did have one more surprise though, as we were walking through the stores in Future World on a quest for Wall-E’s, the CM’s noticed my birthday button and I was serenaded with “Happy Birthday”.

And to wrap up the trend of hat day, the CM’s had one more for me to put on while they sang to me –

Of course, this would have been great on video, but DH was nowhere to be found! Thankfully Evil Twin had her camera to at least get a couple of shots!

One more picture to end our day at Epcot

It was then back to AKV as we had a long day, and had another full one tomorrow. It was a lot of fun, and having two of my best friends with me just made it that more special. DH put together a nice wrap-up of our Epcot day together!

Click Picture to Play

 

[irish dancer]

What a great Epcot WS day! In all our many trips I've never seen that exhibit in China, will have to seek that out next time.

 

[DisneyJo]

What a fantastic day, you all look as though you had so much fun

 

[TyRy]

What a great Epcot WS day! In all our many trips I've never seen that exhibit in China, will have to seek that out next time.

It was very cool and I'm so glad we checked it out.

What a fantastic day, you all look as though you had so much fun

We had a blast in Epcot...we truly we adults acting like kids that day...and it was soooooo much fun.

I hope everyone has been well and had a good Easter or Passover.

Life got a bit rough again, as I had a very close friend pass away the week before Easter week. She had been sick with a couple of differnt cancers, but in the month before she died, really took a turn for the worse. I was mopey for a lot of that time, and was grateful I saw her the night before she passed. She recognized my other friend and me and gave us a weak smile, then was out of it again. I'm was really hoping this year would be better, but it's not going that way!! We had always talked about going to Disney together as she LOVED it, but we never had the chance and I'll always be sad about that.

She used to dress for Halloween as many of the characters and I have her Curella DeVille cost hanging on the back of my office door...she gave it to me when she was laid off from our company a couple of years ago. All I can think of is I (hopefully!) now have yet another person watching over me, but it would be much more fun if she was here!

Thanks for letting me vent, and now she'd kick my butt if I didn't get back to happy land. So here comes and update...it's all written, but I may post it in a few different parts today!

 

[TyRy]

Today was going to be a full and fun day…and we had a little surprise planned for the girls, which I hoped would turn out nice!

We wanted to be at DHS EARLY…you can guess with DH – we weren’t LOL. We were not too bad though (think it had more to do with Evil Twin and Red being up and ready) as we made it to the park by 9:15. We wanted to get right to TSM, BUT, we saw the Photopass people and had to continue to document this very special trip:

Had a fun FP guy who noticed it was DH and three ladies, so he played up on that:

We then headed to TSM, but found another PP guy. DH said just the girls should be in it…little did we know he was sneaking around and being a goof

Finally made it to TSM and grabbed FP’s for later. Also noticed that is was only a 15 minute wait….this should have told us something about the week coming up….such as NO ONE was in the parks!

All I can say is we LOVED TSM! Loved the que –

And the ride. After DH bought me Wii for Christmas I had to go out and buy the TSM game…love playing it.

Evil Twin wanted to head for the Studio Backlot Tour. We tried to talk her out of it and explained it was just a shell of its former self, but she still wanted to see it. Remember I mentioned the park being empty…here’s what we encountered for the tour:

So we went and the highlight was Red pointing out the house she thought I needed to have a picture with. Unfortunately I hadn’t see the Hannah Montana movie yet (yes, I’ll admit, I’m a big fan of the show!) so I didn’t know what it was till she told me. Then I HAD to take the photo LOLOL.

A couple of must have photos on the tour:

Evil Twin practicing her Oscar speech for when we get it for our first movie we’ve written:

ooooo - look - it's the White Witch (had to remind DH is was part of Narnia!)

And playing with Pirates (although you can barely tell!)

Evil Twin and I are both BIG Star Wars fans, so here we are trying to use the Force to make DH get up early from now on

And here we are transformed…wish they had a photo like this for the original three!
ARGH – just realized I don’t have it here…gotta scan it later!

I must vent here just for a minute…they have not changed out the pictures (it seemed to me) in this store in FOREVER. DH and I usually take one together, but this time, we realized in just a few trips, we’d done all the “couple” ones we would like. There was one of Princess Leia and Luke, but the ladies decided there was something wrong with that with DH and me.
Continued in next post....

 

[TyRy]

I think we decided to grab lunch next, and headed towards the ABC Commissary. All I have to say about this is..WORST meal of the trip. We all have the cheeseburgers and fries and all had about half eaten.

It was so bad; I think we’ve permanently written it off. The pop and bottled water was good though

We headed to Prince Caspian next…the three of us loved the Narnia books…DH had no idea what it was about.

We then headed over Sunset Blvd to ride R&R and TT – we grabbed a FP for R&R, and then headed to TT. I was hoping since DH had friends with him, I would not have to ride. Nope – my dearest friends in the world turned on me and made me go with them. Red let me hold her hand though

We then headed to R&R which had just a small line and the FP’s we grabbed we for only about 20 minutes from when we grabbed them. We were a few minutes early for our return time, but we had a great CM who said maybe if we walked really slow we’d get to the next point just when our FP’s were avtive. Since no one else was in the que with us, we had a bit of fun trying to walk/run/talk going backwards:

We probably still had a couple of minutes to go, but the next CM let us by since it was pretty empty and no one was coming after us.

With those out of the way, we started to trek back to LMA, as we wanted to make sure the ladies saw that. But wait, what’s that, a candy store that has Malificent in the window, who Evil Twin and I LOVE. So we stopped in for a couple of pictures:

The CM’s working noticed my birthday button, wished me a Happy Birthday and gave me a treat!

We then started to head over to LMA, but DH wanted to get a picture just like he did last year a couple of years ago in front of the streetscape…it wasn’t exact, but close:
New :

Old:

We made it to LMA with just a couple of minutes to spare, and I think everyone in the park was there.

It was almost time for the parade and DH LOVED this parade last year. I didn’t see it as that was the day I stayed “home” sick. DH raved about this and DH does not like parades. On our way, we passed a giant bottle of Coke. Evil Twin is a Pepsi only girl and hates Coke. We tried to make her pose with the bottle so I could send it to her parents, but she refused. So we took this instead

 

[TyRy]

We then made it back to near the entrance, grabbed seats on the curb about 20 minutes before the parade started, and it chooses now to start drizzling on us. No biggie we won’t melt. BUT it made the parade start late, and I’m guessing since the ground was wet, they couldn’t do any of the jumpy fun things that DH had gone on about. It was still cute, but we’ll have to try and see it again.

We need to head out after the parade as we had early reservations at 1900 Park Faire, so we could then go to the MK for Spectro and Wishes.

We got to the GF right on time, valeted the car (gotta love the TIW card) and went in. Even though we had an early ADR I still feared the wait time. Luckily, we got our pager, had our photo taken (which was nothing special, so we didn’t buy it…I know, shocking!) and were seated about ten minutes later. This was the first time there for all of us, and we were not sure what to expect.

The character interaction was fantastic and we were table full of adults. Lady Tremaine and the stepsisters spent quite a bit of time with us. When Evil Twin asked Drizella where Lady Tremaine was, Drizella threw a temper tantrum about how no one ever comes to see her. We had to calm her down, and it was great fun. DH was our photographer and didn’t want to be in any of the photos:

The Prince and Cindy spent the least amount of time with us. You may have noticed Red did not have a picture with the Prince, that’s because he looked very much like her little brother….back to the whole Luke and Leia thing.

We were so busy eating, and I was so busy worrying about my surprise that we forgot to take pictures of the food! It was ok, not spectacular, but we would do this again. We did get dessert pics:
First DH’s – which looked kinda gross!

Then somebody’s…

DH and I were trying to get the girls not to eat dessert, but our timing was off. The surprise was we...ok...I had ordered a custom birthday cake for dessert. When I asked our server about it, he said all the cakes were brought out at the same time during the “celebration” song. Well if that song didn’t hurry up, we were really going to have to stall.

 

[TyRy]

The celebration song finally started and here’s what came out:

I LOVED it…and took a million pictures of it, as there was so much to it. Here we go:

And finally the inside:

Everyone raved about how it looked, although it was a bit dry, but no one cared as it looked so good! We then treated the girls to dinner as well, as a thank you for being a part of my birthday. We finished up, got a box for the cake, and DH headed back to AKV to drop it off while we headed for the MK.

We found the PP people right away:

By the time we finished all our photos and browsing in the shops, DH was not that far behind us. I think we had already lost the car once so DH was smart and took a picture this time:

He also took a picture of the emptiness we kept running into.

He caught up to us and we then headed to stake our spot out for Spectro. We had great spots for the parade and everyone around us was in good moods, and very polite…UNTIL we had a new RUDE family barge their way in.

We were standing by the stockades. We were literally pushed out of the way as this family tried to take a space that was big enough for my little puppy perhaps. They were shoving, so that we accidentally knocked into others, who then realized this was the fault of the rude family! That started to tick us off, so we stood our ground even more. It was just annoying!
Didn’t really get any good pictures of Spectro

We then headed to watch Wishes. The Plaza was actually full and Evil Twin thought it would be a good spot to watch on the bridge from Liberty Square just as you got the spoke in the center. It was a good idea until the fireworks went off and we realized we had the trees in our way…oops. We still got to see most of it, so it worked out.

Our fun night was over, so it was back to the boat. But of course, we needed a few photos:

While we waited from the masses Red received a text from her DH…it was letting us know Patrick Swayze had died. The three ladies were all very sad. However, we tried not to let it really damper our mood, as the day had been really good and we all knew that was coming.

I think I was sadder as Red was leaving tomorrow afternoon, but at least we were coming back to the MK first thing in the morning. Now if we could only ride a bunch while she was with us…..