When I See A Glenda Fly: The Story of the IcyHot That Wanted to be a Toothpaste (F&W)

[Sam33]

SPOILER ALERT: She loved it!

I forced my mom to go to Disney World. Well, I talked her into it at least. She thought I would forget about it until I called her up and finagled her credit card numbers from her and booked us a trip (don't worry, I paid her back! Get married once and all of a sudden you have to pay for your own vacations that you force people to go with you on).
Luckily, by the time we left she was stoked. She jokingly would complain to her coworkers about having to go to Disney World and of course they'd all been as adults with no kids and LOVED IT so that shows her!

We went November 8th through the 14th (yes, it was hellish) and lucky for me, she was expecting "crowded" to be CROWDED so while I was complaining about the crowds (a tad worse than September) she didn't seem to mind

On this trip was just me and my mom. This is me:

The dip on the right is my newish husband. He didn't want to go

And this is my mom!

The only things you need to know about me is that I LOVE hockey, I LOVE beer, I LOVE Colorado, and I LOVE the Broncos. That's pretty much it.
My mom is a Kindergarten teacher and LOVES Winnie the Pooh (knowing this, you'd think it would be easier to talk her into Disney World!)

We somehow had the best time EVER even though I had indigestion 98% of the trip and the crowds were the worst I'd ever encountered. Planning and waking up early paid off GREAT for us.

-There was ONE thing the entire trip we ate and didn't like (including all of food and wine and some restaurants with bad reviews!).
-We had 29 cocktails
-We cried happily at least 8 times
-We got to sit down on 3 bus rides total
-It took one day for my mom to say "We have to go back before you have babies!"
-It took two days for my mom to say "OMG WE HAVE TO TAKE YOUR DAD AND BROTHER HERE!"

All in all it was quite the success. Tune in to see why!





ARRIVAL DAY 11/8
DAY 1 PART ONE
DAY 1 PART TWO
DAY 1 PART THREE
DAY 1 PART FOUR
DAY 2 PART ONE (part 1)
DAY 2 PART ONE (part 2)
DAY 2 PART TWO
DAY 3 PART ONE
DAY 3 PART TWO
Osborne Lights Pictures
DAY 3 PART THREE
DAY 4 PART ONE
DAY 4 PART TWO
DAY 4 PART THREE
DAY 5 PART ONE
DAY 5 PART TWO

 

[AnnaBeth2012]

I'm here! Can't wait to hear about your trip!
~Tami (from the Nov fb group)

 

[Sam33]

I'm here! Can't wait to hear about your trip!
~Tami (from the Nov fb group)

YAY! So glad you're here

 

[WDWCPALUM03]

I'm here! Another Nov FB'er (Jerri)

SPOILER ALERT: She loved it!

I forced my mom to go to Disney World. Well, I talked her into it at least. She thought I would forget about it until I called her up and finagled her credit card numbers from her and booked us a trip (don't worry, I paid her back! Get married once and all of a sudden you have to pay for your own vacations that you force people to go with you on).
Luckily, by the time we left she was stoked. She jokingly would complain to her coworkers about having to go to Disney World and of course they'd all been as adults with no kids and LOVED IT so that shows her!

We went November 8th through the 14th (yes, it was hellish) and lucky for me, she was expecting "crowded" to be CROWDED so while I was complaining about the crowds (a tad worse than September) she didn't seem to mind

On this trip was just me and my mom. This is me:

The dip on the right is my newish husband. He didn't want to go

And this is my mom!

The only things you need to know about me is that I LOVE hockey, I LOVE beer, I LOVE Colorado, and I LOVE the Broncos. That's pretty much it.
My mom is a Kindergarten teacher and LOVES Winnie the Pooh (knowing this, you'd think it would be easier to talk her into Disney World!)

We somehow had the best time EVER even though I had indigestion 98% of the trip and the crowds were the worst I'd ever encountered. Planning and waking up early paid off GREAT for us.

-There was ONE thing the entire trip we ate and didn't like (including all of food and wine and some restaurants with bad reviews!).
-We had 29 cocktails
-We cried happily at least 8 times
-We got to sit down on 3 bus rides total
-It took one day for my mom to say "We have to go back before you have babies!"
-It took two days for my mom to say "OMG WE HAVE TO TAKE YOUR DAD AND BROTHER HERE!"

All in all it was quite the success. Tune in to see why!

 

[Tiggeye]

I love mother/daughter trips. We leave in 28 days. It is just the two of us. My daughter finished school in 13 days and is very excited.

She also has some friends that live close to Disney World and she gets a chance to see them when we are down there.

 

[Sam33]

I love mother/daughter trips. We leave in 28 days. It is just the two of us. My daughter finished school in 13 days and is very excited.

She also has some friends that live close to Disney World and she gets a chance to see them when we are down there.

Welcome! Mother/daughter trips are apparently the best. We had the best time! And I think she's the only person other than DH that I can spend five days with and not fight at all
Hope you guys have as great of a trip! Is she finishing college? Best feeling in the world.

WELCOME JERRI! November FB DISers fo life!

 

[saintstickets]

Great TR opening. I'm convinced...sign me up coach, I'm in!!

 

[Sam33]

The week leading up to the trip went so fast and I was strangely not very excited. I think it was the disbelief that the trip was FINALLY here. When we planned our honeymoon to Disney we did it 2 months in advance and when you have a wedding to plan you don't really think about it that much. This trip was planned MONTHS in advance and had nothing to look forward to other than the trip so when it was finally time to go I wasn't too excited until we were on our way to the airport and I was like "holy crap we're going to Disney World!"

We were leaving at 2PM for a 4PM flight. My mom was trying to take as little time off from work as possible so she worked for a half day. She always feels awful about leaving the class with subs. They didn't believe her that she was going to Disney World and were shocked when she actually left them!

I woke up too early and had time to kill so I watched some Donald Duck cartoons and waited for my mom to get off work. He's my fave.

(arrival day posts are so boring...)

The night before we had gotten manicures and pedicures and watched Little Mermaid so we were so ready to be leaving.

Of course my dad took his time getting home from work to drive us so mom was anxious about getting to the airport. We only live 20 minutes away and left two hours early but we're always SO ANXIOUS ABOUT EVERYTHING! We're the same person. Dad is so laid back so the bickering started then. Because OF COURSE we ran into the SLOWEST TRAIN EVER! No competition. It took 15 minutes to go by and we finally made it past the train and to the airport without any further hitches.
Security was a breeze. DIA has a great system going there. Going to other airports just makes me more thankful for ours. We were flying Frontier which has it's own terminal so we didn't have to take the train. The train is usually fine but it broke down a couple weeks before the trip and I was NOT looking forward to getting stuck on a train on my way to Disney.

After all the fretting we were at the gate an hour early! Sitting at the gate on my way to Orlando is my favorite. So many happy kids in Disney gear!
And then two ran up to my mom...ex-students! They were cute, and going to Disney! And after we boarded the plane we found out they were sitting right behind us!
It was an uneventful flight but we started to descend into Orlando right as the fireworks were starting and we all leaned over and saw the castle and my mom's ex-students just starts weeping and saying "we're here!"

Tally that up as the first set of happy Disney tears cried!


We landed post 10PM so we had to collect baggage which took seemingly forever. Then we headed to ME and found it without any maps or hitches! Walked straight onto a bus and left 30 seconds after we were seated. NO WAITING! Then the video started and I cried again.
First stop: Saratoga Springs. Looked beautiful but that wasn't our stop!

Shortly after we arrived at Port Orleans Riverside! Yee Haw Bob was raging in the bar (we'd never get around to seeing him )
Check in was a BREEZE but the walk to building 35 at Alligator Bayou was a little less than a breeze. We were FREEZING and my suitcase was broken and it was awful to lug to the room. And as beautiful as Alligator Bayou is during the day, it is CREEPY at night. We kept hearing things in the bushes and we were a tad petrified! We finally got to our room. We didn't worry to much about the distance, we figured there's plenty of older adults and people with kids that deserve the closer rooms. Being able bodied adults we should take one for the team. It didn't bother us the rest of the trip.

We set stuff down and had a MISSION! Food court closed at midnight and we hadn't eaten since lunch time! We were STARVING.
All that was open was the pasta station but we had our eye on the pizza. Does anyone else LOVE cruddy Disney pizza? I dream about Disney pizza. Nothing special but somehow soooo good.

I got a Monster for the next morning. Magic Kingdom opened at 8AM and we were DETERMINED to make rope drop. So we enjoyed our pizza and headed back to the room for some sleeping.
But not before a couple of room pictures! We REALLY enjoyed the room. I thought it was adorable
The bathroom

(good thing my mom doesn't use the internet and doesn't know about Disboards. She would KILL me for posting that picture of her but I just HAD to show the bathroom)
the Bed

I wanted to steal the pillow. I LOVE Princess and the Frog. But it didn't fit in my suitcase and my mom said no because it was HER card attached to the room

I slept like crap because I was so anxious about waking up. But the next day was perfect so it was fine. And my mom slept great so all was well!


Up next we battle the 9/10 crowd rating at Epcot Food & Wine! But not before a morning of walk-ons at Magic Kingdom

 

[Sam33]

Great TR opening. I'm convinced...sign me up coach, I'm in!!

WELCOME!
And sorry about your Saints this year
I feel about 1% of your pain as DH has Brees on his fantasy team and probably won't make the playoffs now because of this week. Not that I care but listening to him whine about it is brutal!


I think I'm gonna go off and write another update as that last post was no fun at all.
It's time for the MEAT AND POTATOES!

 

[Sam33]

The mood of the mornin'


We woke up with time to spare, took showers and prettied up and headed to the food court for some grub. We're not much of breakfast people so the choice of the morning, and pretty much the whole trip, was 1 orange juice, 1 croissant to share, 2 bananas and a milk for mom. No pictures because, well, we all know want croissants and bananas look like.
Mom also bought a souvenir mug and filled it with coffee and I chugged my Monster in the room. ENNNERRRGGGYYY.
The Croissant was spectacular. Perfectly flaky, yet not dry.

We got on an empty-ish bus and we were off. Straight to the Kingdom with no other stops! We pulled in at about 7:20 and were second in line at the turn stiles. So we took a couple of pictures while we waited!

It's...beautiful

Mom and the trashcan

Me and the trashcan

We didn't take pictures with the trashcan on purpose, it just happened like that. Sneaky trashcan

Some holiday decorations!

And...we were IN!

Cue #3 of happy tears (I made that up, I don't remember what number we're on. You guys weren't there! I can lie!)
Love the Welcome Show. We thought it would be the PERFECT start to the trip even though we were planning on leaving around 10:30 for Food and Wine. And to my surprise, my mom knew the words! I guess the "Good Morning" song is one she used to sing to Kindergartners!

First stop on the way was getting a birthday pin for mom! We had a perfect day and I'm convinced it was because of her birthday. She didn't want the attention but I told her "It's your birthday, it's unavoidable".
Next stop was centering ourselves on mainstreet for happy tears #4 and some pics

Okay, I guess it was "a" pic. I thought there were more

It. Was. Empty. Which was good because Epcot that day was supposed to be absurd and I didn't want my mom's first experience in Disney to be getting swallowed by angry mobs running for Soarin Fast Passes.

First order of business was Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in which I have no pictures or stories. Other than it was a walk-on and super fun.
Then we headed over to Splash which was even emptier. We watched flume after flume go without people and wondered if it was open even (it was). It was still mid-fifties so we assumed that was the reason for the avoidance and said "eh, we're from Colorado, cold weather shmold weather". LOVE THIS RIDE I TELL YOU WHAT. It's perfect. And since it was right in the morning we didn't stop ONCE. Brer fox and Brer bear didn't get into any trouble causing us to get held up. Mom loved it and we didn't get too wet.

Next was Haunted Mansion and still no pictures! I must have put my camera away. I was bad this trip but I didn't miss a single food item I promise!
Looking at photobucket, y'all won't get pics until Adventureland!

Haunted Mansion was literally another walk-on. A creepy CM scared the crud out of me when he snuck up behind me in the dark.
I love this ride. It's so whimsical and clever and the technology is amazing. My mom was in complete AWE of this ride. She couldn't stop say "wow!" around every corner. Or "How did they do that!"

After we picked up the hitch-hiking ghosts we headed over to Adventureland. It was still EMPTY

I forgot what we did next until I saw the Jungle Cruise picture come up. Thanks past Sam for taking that picture.
Another walk-on. I was a little nervous now because this ride is Cheese with a capital C. I was hoping my mom wouldn't think it was stupid. Well, we had the FUNNIEST SKIPPER EVER! He told jokes CONSTANTLY and they were hilarious. We laughed the entire time. Not only did she love it, but I loved it after riding it several times and not appreciating it much. Just another tidbit I remember making the day perfect. Haunted Mansion will always be spectacular but we had to get lucky on Jungle Cruise. The CM makes all the difference.
It also appears my mom is easily amused by animatronics. She thought the were amazing. Which is good because Disney uses animatronics for everything.

After Jungle Cruise we hopped on Pirates. Another walk-on. And when I say walk-on I mean it. Like, we didn't walk straight to the loading area and wait for the next boat. It was straight onto the boat!
My mom continues to name this as one of her favorites even though she seemed less amused. Suppose I'll take her word for it. This was another "wow" filled ride.

And last but not least, we had to see the Tiki Birds! My first trip, my FIL MADE me go on Tiki Birds and Country Bears. HE didn't go in but he made me! I figured it would be a little initiation to Disney World.

She thought it was the stupidest thing on the planet.

It was about 10:00 now and we had walked on to 6 rides and had a great time so we started heading out of the park with pics on the way and onto the monorail for some food and some beverage!

 

[carlaewalter]

I'm here too also from FB Nov group. Can't wait to see your F & W pictures.

 

[Sam33]

I'm here too also from FB Nov group. Can't wait to see your F & W pictures.

Yay! Welcome!

 

[heaven2dc]

Love the pedicure! Love the pillow too (I would have wanted to hijack that in my suitcase too)! and am so happy your mom had a great time. What a perfect Magic Kingdom morning! Disney at Christmas time is so beautiful

 

[Sam33]

Love the pedicure! Love the pillow too (I would have wanted to hijack that in my suitcase too)! and am so happy your mom had a great time. What a perfect Magic Kingdom morning! Disney at Christmas time is so beautiful

Thank you! And thanks for reading! We went first week of January my first trip to the World and the Christmas stuff was still up. It's so much more special BEFORE Christmas, though! It's more festive!

 

[reelmom]

I would love to do a Mother/Daughter trip. Looks like the perfect morning.

 

[glennbo123]

I'm here Sam! Wow, great job with the TR; it's like I'm right there with you. I love TRs like this, where a Disney newbie is in awe the whole time. That's so great that your mom wants to go back already.

Can't wait for more.

 

[Sam33]

I would love to do a Mother/Daughter trip. Looks like the perfect morning.

It was PERFECT. I tad chilly for shorts between the bus stop and the park but other than that, totally perfect. My goals were adventureland and frontierland before we left and we did! It was even a long shot!

I'm here Sam! Wow, great job with the TR; it's like I'm right there with you. I love TRs like this, where a Disney newbie is in awe the whole time. That's so great that your mom wants to go back already.

Can't wait for more.

Thanks! She totally underestimated everything I had been telling her about Disney. It just blew up her expectations. I even showed her the History Channel Modern Marvels episode and it didn't do it much justice at all.

I'm so excited she wants to go back but she wants to stay at the Poly and so she says 2015! AH I can't wait 700+ days to go back! Oh well, I guess I should be grateful. Lol

 

[Sam33]

We hopped on the monorail and headed to the TTC to transfer to Epcot and as we're going around on the ramps to the Epcot monorail we see the biggest crowd of people EVER head up the ramp and onto the monorail (we wouldn't have made it to that monorail anyways, we were clear on the other side).
At this point I'm starting to get nervous. Epcot was a 9/10 that day and I had never experiences crowds higher than a 5 and the monorail was going to be PACKED. I mean, look at all those people going to Epcot!
We made our way over and as we had just missed a monorail we were first in line for the next one.

No one else ever came? Everyone had a seat. So I'm not sure what that hoard of people was (I'm talking HUNDREDS of people) but I'll chalk it up to poor timing.

We showed up a little early with time to kill before the World Showcase opening so we snapped some pictures. We were going to head straight for Greece because I heard the lines can get long but since it was 10:30 by the time we got through bag check we had so time to kill with no rides to ride. Soarin Fast Passes were for right in the middle of dinner and I wasn't able to get over there for a window that would work so we missed out on that. Rides weren't the priority for today, anyways!

We headed over to Club Cool, which was packed, we had to wait for a machine. The only ever time I'd been in there we had the whole place to ourselves!
Now, I had been planning this for a while. I had sent my mom SEVERAL detailed itineraries with pictures and details of EVERYTHING. I planted several "the beverly is sooo good" statements in several documents I'd been sending her way all year. And the time had come to watch her drink it!
I said "mom, you have to try the Beverly first, it's totally the best one"



She liked it? Ugh. So anti-climatic. She goes "mmm!"
WHAT.
She then admitted it was only okay but she didn't want to hurt my feelings. Since when! (my family gives it and takes it a lot, making fun of each other is fun, I guess!)

Oh well, the only part of that experience she didn't like was that she found it seriously stupid that you can't buy bottles of the fancy soda so we contemplated why as we headed over to world showcase for some serious eating. But not before we stopped and read about cranberry bogs!

We got over to the World Showcase at about 10:45 (and if you've been paying attention you'll know that somewhere, previous times were wrong because it just doesn't make sense how much we did between leaving MK at 10:30 and getting to World Showcase after Club Cool at 10:45, but I know for sure we were about 15 minutes early to World Showcase so who really cares!)

To our supreme satisfaction they had opened the booths early! So it was time to dig.
We only had ONE day at Food and Wine and we had dinner reservations at 6:45 so we decided we were going to split every food sample so we could taste the optimum amount of food!
At Greece, I ordered the Chicken Souvlaki and my mom was SUPPOSED to order the GriDDled cheese.
She walks right up and loudly states "I'D LIKE THE GRILLED CHEESE PLEASE!"
And everyone laughed at her.
"mom...griddled. It's griddled cheese"

*sigh*

The meat was good, the sauce was good, the pita was good.
Sauce to meat ratio=not good. Sauce is a meal enhancer not a main course!
We enjoyed it, but like most things it could have been slightly better. I'm pretty sure I ate some sauce with a spoon there for a bit. It was tasty, tasty, fattening sauce

OMG. So good. So, so, so good. This was definitely in our top 3 F&W entrees of the day. It was unique and tasty and honestly, you can't go wrong with cheese. We think ours was slightly old since it was kind of chewy but it was still so good.

We attempted to not waste forks and just carry one with us but that lasted between Greece and going to the restroom after eating at Greece. We felt bad for about 5 seconds but we were at Disney World and we were not going to feel bad about being slightly wasteful

Next on the agenda was Canada! Canada is my favorite because they gave the world hockey and there is nothing better on this planet than hockey (and yes, I'm quite depressed thank you very much. Greedy poopheads).

On the menu here was the filet, cheese soup, and apple ice wine.

My verdict: Truffle sauce= to die for, mushrooms=yummy, steak=overcooked. I assume they kind of have to overcook it since it's not made to order. My mom likes her beef thoroughly dead and I like mine barely dead. So she enjoyed it but man, it could have been good if it were mooing. It was, however, tender.

THIS IS #2. On Sam's List of Deliciousness. So smokey and delicious. And compared to the others, great portion size! Griddled cheese I liked more that my mom, but we both agreed that this was easily our favorite so far and only one thing the rest of the day would even compare.

COULD THIS BE SMALLER?! Not even joking you. Look how small that is! And the women in my family are graced with tiny clown hands that are comically small compared to our arms.
Poor value
Tasted fantastic.
I wanted a jug of it!
I will admit that it seemed a little stronger than most wines so maybe that explains it. But I found myself wanting more!

I liked this fence so we took pictures with it and then I tagged all my Canadian friends in it on Facebook for fun. Okay, I tagged one in it. The rest would get less kicks. Not worth my time. More kicks per tag I say.

The camera strap makes it's appearance here. Didn't notice until weeks later. ugh

Can you tell where we're headed?

FRANCE!

We got creme brulee, escargot, and cocktails!

Mom thought it was good but we're so used to her crappy grainy creme brulee that we've grown to prefer it cooked incorrectly.

That's her Sparking Pomegranate Kir. Very tasty! She's a huge fan of Pomegranate cocktails and this was tasty. Nice and strong and fizzy.

I got the Cosmo Slush which I forgot to take a picture of....It was also quite tasty!

And the escargot! This was my first experience with escargot. I was disappointed. I thought it would be more exotic! The bread was so deliciously garlicy and buttery that the escargot had very little taste. It was just like a chewy lump in the middle of your bite of bread! It was good of course, just was expecting something weird!

We decided to sit on our bench until our cocktails were done, just in case we passed another one we wanted while walking. It's hard to double fist and take pictures!

As you can see, it wasn't too busy yet. We had yet to wait in a single line for food and the crowds were fairly non-existent. We had found benches near every booth to sit and eat at. Such a pleasant day so far!

Next we headed to the New Zealand booth where we would encounter our favorite of the Food & Wine.
Was it...the Seared Sea Scallop with Kumara Red Curry Puree and Apple Radish Salad?
Or....Lamb Meatball with Spicy Tomato Chutney?

That lamb meatball blew my whole world. So fabulous. The bread that holds it was a tad soggy but the meatball had such great flavor and the tomato chutney really complimented it well!

The scallop was a tad bland but the sweet potato puree she said was delicious! I find scallops bland in general. I pretty much only like my dad's because he grills them so they taste like grill instead of nothing.

Next we decided to walk around and digest a bit before our next booth and luckily, Japan was right around the corner. My favorite World Showcase gift shop! We headed off in that direction, resort mug in tow...

We shopped and then decided mom just HAD to pick a pearl! Did I mention it's my mom's b-day this day? And she just had a super lucky day apparently...

She got a grey pearl! They're SO pretty. And she said she preferred white...the anger! I wanted a grey one SO bad when I did it last year (of course I lost the ring...it has to be in my house somewhere but she offered to trade and I couldn't )
It was beautiful and everyone just told her how lucky she was. I tired to be pissed but I was too happy that she was having a great time and a lucky day!

Okay, Broncos game in a half hour and I think I'm at my picture limit so I'll leave you here! What's gonna happen to that resort mug? Will we ever be able to go 15 minutes without needing a restroom? We'll see!

 

[glennbo123]

Great picture of you and your mom in France.

You can tell what a great time she's having from that picture of her posing with her sweet potato puree. She looks like she's having a blast!

I am wondering what you'll do with that mug. I see people with them in the parks and I've yet to figure out where they actually use them.

 

[Sam33]

Great picture of you and your mom in France.

You can tell what a great time she's having from that picture of her posing with her sweet potato puree. She looks like she's having a blast!

I am wondering what you'll do with that mug. I see people with them in the parks and I've yet to figure out where they actually use them.

She would bring coffee in it in the mornings and then we'd fill it up with water. She finagled it onto her purse in some non-obtrusive way. But it's a serious pain to lug around for barely using it...
And this day it was an extra pain!

And she had a blast! And everything was a surprise because apparently she recalled absolutely nothing from every menu I printed out and the five page itinerary! Lol