17 Days of Disney Magic (aka Brits, Pirates & Princesses) - Lots of PICS!

[seobaina]

wow the Flower and Garden Festival is so amazing I will be going next March to show my mom she loves flowers and plants and all those beautiful colors

Oh you'll love it. This was our second year experiencing it!

 

[seobaina]

After illuminations we noticed most people leaving the park. We grabbed our EMH bracelets and figured this would be a good time to try the nemo ride out, as there wouldn’t be a huge line of families. We headed over, for the first time, to the seas.

We went on the Nemo ride, which thankfully was much more as it was advertised than Paris (will explain when I do that triprep). We thought it was cute and after the ride we went to ‘Turtle Talk with Crush’. I had done this in Disneyland so I really wanted Karen to experience it. I just love it, what a great, magical show with some fun audience participation. Luckily there were still a lot of kids up and about who could get involved. So funny, especially when the kids continued counting how long it took Crush to swim the area about twenty seconds after he’d returned. His face was hilarious!
Sorry these two pics are dark but we didn’t want to use flash

After the show we took a couple of photos with the sharks (I love sharks), which wasn’t easy as there were a number of kids with absolutely NO parental control at all continually getting into everyone else’s shots and pushing in. We did finally get them though.

Then we headed back to the busses via the left hand ‘billie jean’ walkway.

and took one last photo of the globe before it was time to go to the hotel and bed.

 

[lizet313]

Great day Illuminations is very pretty and talkiing to Crush made my day when I was there I'm such a kid lol

 

[MaleDisneyBeliever]

Oh my days am I loving this report! Everytime its updated I am here!!

 

[smithpack]

I can not believe how many updates you have posted since I was on here about 6 hours ago. I love all the pictures. I have never seen illuminations, and your pictures are awesome. I will definitely put that on my must do list!

 

[redlight]

Wow! You've posted so many pictures. I'm enjoying them.

How was the funnel cake?

 

[seobaina]

Next morning (Saturday) we had tickets for Discovery Cove. We’d experienced this for the first time in 2006, when we’d swam with Hutch, and we’d loved it. So we were both really looking forward to it.

We’d got there using the mears shuttle (thanks again dis) and it was EARLY! The line wasn’t long so we were given one of the first dolphin swims of the day. With our time and ID in our hand we headed through to the park to go get our wetsuits, snorkels, etc.

We took a couple of photos as soon as we got inside the park

And then they took our complimentary photo

After finally squeezing into the wetsuits we dropped our things in our locker and headed to one of the beaches. One small problem with dropping everything off…we have no watch! Because it is early we had our choice of chairs in the area facing the dolphin pool

So we put on the suntan lotion (they give you their own safe one) and took a couple of photos before wandering towards the meeting hut for our swim.

We were actually very slightly late getting there – see no watch and time goes so fast when you’re getting ready. They didn’t mind though and after listening to the presentation and instructions we headed to the dolphin pool. We were put together with six other people (they do groups of 8 per dolphin) and taken into the pool (which is kinda cold) with our fab guide/trainer. Then began our dolphin experience.

Our dolphin was a youngster called Marea (Mar-ay-a). She came over to meet us all and we all tickled her tummy and stroked her back. Then we had our first photo with her in our individual families.

After that we are told some more about her and are asked to come up one by one for a kissy-kissy photo. I went first. The trainer tells you exactly what to do and you hold the pose while they take the shot. My first attempt didn’t turn out in the photo so I was called out again to take another one and kiss Marea again – oh the hardship LOL

When everyone has had a go they talk to you more about the dolphins and then we swim out to deeper water for our ‘swim’ in. Karen and I went out together and then Karen was pulled in first this time. I don’t have her photos on my computer but here are mine.

When everyone had been pulled back our trainer asked if we’d like to meet a second dolphin. We of course said yes (not that we didn’t by this time completely adore Marea) so we swapped dolphins with one of the other groups. We got Lester, who is the oldest male dolphin they have and, which was special to me, Hutch’s dad!
We didn’t have any photos taken with Lester because he wasn’t our main dolphin. I tried to buy one later in the day but they didn’t have any of him on his own so I emailed Sea World when I got home. And they very kindly sent me a postcard of him, along with some other pictures, when I got home.

Anyway, we got to meet Lester, stroke him and play with him. They do lots of getting the dolphins to nod, make noises, etc with our commands. Then, as the dolphin time drew to an end, all four of the dolphins in the pool at that time put on a little show, jumping together etc. It’s great to watch and I love the whole experience.

Have to admit that I don’t remember in what order we did everything that day but I think that after the dolphins we went to have a quick swim in the river. The river is long and starts in the cave you see over to your right.

This is where I switch to the underwater disposable camera. It’s a nice swim around the river. The current isn’t strong and there is lots to see on the way round, as you can see:

 

[seobaina]

Wow! You've posted so many pictures. I'm enjoying them.

How was the funnel cake?

lol yes sorry I'm a fellow photoholic!

The funnel cake was lovely but very sticky

 

[seobaina]

Oh my days am I loving this report! Everytime its updated I am here!!

Aw, thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I can not believe how many updates you have posted since I was on here about 6 hours ago. I love all the pictures. I have never seen illuminations, and your pictures are awesome. I will definitely put that on my must do list!

yeah sorry. Monday/Tues is my weekend and as I didn't have any urgent editing to do I figured I'd get this report done while I could You SO have to do illuminations, it's very moving and I've heard they are thinking of replacing it sometime in the not to distant future! Magical Show!

 

[seobaina]

Then, having done the river we had a quick swim around the ray pool before heading out. We decided at this point to go and get some lunch/brunch. The dinner hall is fantastic with plenty of choice for any appetite and it’s all nicely prepared too. I’m afraid I didn’t take pictures because I only had the disposable on me and I knew I’d use that on the fish.

After lunch we figured, as we were already dry, we would go and feed the birds. We didn’t do this last time and I have no idea why because it’s great. We took this photo of the river on the way to the first aviary.

In the aviaries they give you pots of food for the birds…different food depending on the birds and the aviary. They have bird identification cards and staff in there to answer questions but you’re fairly free to interact as you wish. Picture time:

Pretty sure this was a vulturine guineafowl

Oh and they have butterflies too

Having fed enough birds and with the day going fast, we went back to the ray pool, where you can swim freely with fish and rays. It’s such a cool experience seeing these lovely creatures below you in the water.

They also have barracuda, which are luckily behind glass in the wreck of a boat.

As are these guys:

 

[jenseib]

Just caught up again. great pictures. Are all those pics they took included with the price, or do you have to pay for them too?

 

[seobaina]

You have to pay extra for the dolphin pics but there are different package deals and you chose your pics!

 

[seobaina]

After finding myself in the middle of an entire school of fish and briefly visiting the ray feeding area, we finally and reluctantly headed back to the deck chairs. The last dolphin swims were going on so we took a few photos from the beach

This duck was swimming happily at the entrance to the dolphin pool

And this was our deck chair area

Then we went to get changed, where we met and chatted to a one of the members of staff for a while. Finally, with all our stuff we went to pick up our photos (which we’d ordered on the way back from the aviary) and get some dinner before leaving. Of course we took some more photos on route.

Finally, the Mears shuttle collected us and we headed home to the hotel. Our driver was really cool on the way back and he was chatting to us a lot about Disney and Orlando. We even got him talking about gators and he told us the last one he’d seen on Disney property was near the Wide World of Sports area.

 

[lizet313]

Oh wow lol my sister asked me if Disney had a gators and I told her no at least not loose just in the animal kingdom. Your pics are great Dolphins are just so much fun I would want my sis to go and have that experience but she doesnt know how to swim.

 

[vettegirl]

Fantastic trip report!

 

[seobaina]

Oh wow lol my sister asked me if Disney had a gators and I told her no at least not loose just in the animal kingdom. Your pics are great Dolphins are just so much fun I would want my sis to go and have that experience but she doesnt know how to swim.

You don't have to be able to swim. Most of the time you are in water that is about waist deep. You don't actually swim out, you walk. The only time you are 'swimming' is when the dolphin pulls you in. Check out the site, I'm sure it says something. The whole time you can get a lifejacket rather than a wetsuit (we did that last time). You can't actually swim underwater unless you can manage it with the wetsuit on...which trust me is really hard cause it keeps you afloat too. No chance with the jacket. And I think they have extra floatation devices for the river too. Might be worth checking out if it's something that your sister would like to do. I seem to remember in 2006 there was someone in our group who couldn't really swim.

Fantastic trip report!

Thank you

 

[seobaina]

I honestly can’t remember what we did that night but I think we just vegged out in the room. I wasn’t feeling too hot…with a stinky cold coming on and Karen was tired so I’m pretty sure we just got some medicine from the store and sat in watching TV. I should probably point out at this point that US medicine is different to UK ones so I took the advice of the cast member in the store. I think, as you shall see in a few days time (Trip rep wise) she obviously didn’t realise that I had no clue. All will be explained .

Anyway, next morning was the start of a full Magic Kingdom day. I was really tired and just didn’t seem to have any energy at all…which is very unlike me, especially at Disney. Even at home I can go on four hours sleep a night so Karen figured it was just the cold wiping me out. Either way, we decided to have a slow, lazy morning and we didn’t get to the park until lunchtime.

On the way in there was another poster for the P&PP…and again I bopped up and down with excitement.

The entrance area wasn’t very busy so I grabbed some photos of the posters in the tunnel

As soon as we walked through we saw Pinocchio. There were only about five people in line so we HAD to go meet him.

Then we decided to sit by the talking goofy – yet another thing I wouldn’t have known about if it wasn’t for dis!

From here we decided to head over to Frontierland, as we’d pretty much done our main things in Adventureland the other day. On the way through though we had a bathroom stop and I sat down against a pillar outside. I just couldn’t keep my eyes open and I woke up with Karen standing over me asking if I was ok. See, that should have been my clue cause I normally wake if anyone even walks into my room. We decided I needed a coffee and some ‘thrill’ rides to get my adrenaline going. It’s not that I felt that unwell, I didn’t just a little stuffed up, but I was sooooooooo tired.

Anyway, Karen doesn’t really do ‘thrill’ rides and I have to watch the ones I do now because my blood pressure runs a little high (dunno why, even the docs couldn’t figure it out cause my cholesterol is only 3.8. I’m just odd). With this in mind though, we don’t do things like TOT (done it before but not now). So our ‘thrill’ rides are things like BTMR and Splash. So off to Splash we went.

The line wasn’t too long so we grabbed a fast pass for BTMR and then went onto Splash. Spot the person who doesn’t do the thrill rides LOL

We got wet but it was a lovely hot day, so off to BTMR we went

I LOVE this ride

It was around two so we decided to get a spot for the 3 O’clock parade. I like watching it from Frontierland because it goes past here early on and it doesn’t get too busy. We found a great spot but it was out in the sun and it was sooooooooo hot that day. All the shady places had gone so Karen and I did runs for ice cream and water while we literally melted! We continued to melt, as quickly as our ice cream, throughout the parade.

Before the parade we got to watch Woody’s Roundup

and a couple of marching bands

 

[seobaina]

Then it was parade time. Be warned, here come LOTS of pictures

Can you tell I love the parade?

 

[seobaina]

Parade over and passing out from the heat we went into the air conditioning of the Hall of Presidents.

The on to another favourite of mine, the Haunted Mansion

I like the revamp they’ve done on it and I’m glad they kept Leota’s voice. From here we walked round into Fantasyland. Obligatory photo of the back of the castle:

We decided our first stop here was to go and visit Ariel. The queue time said about twenty minutes, which is a LOT faster than we’ve found before…especially as she was on her break at the time. So we joined and chatted happily to the family next to us while we waited. I love that they have a specially built section for Ariel.

Then it was our turn to meet Ariel. Here she’s looking at me crossly because I had a villains t-shirt on LOL

But she forgave me and we had a nice photo. Then it was Karen’s turn. She asked where we’d come from and when we said the UK she said ‘Whoa, that’s a long way to swim’

From here we headed to a show Karen and I both love. Philharmagic. If you’ve not done it, we both HIGHLY recommend it. On route we passed Dumbo. We like Dumbo but it always has huge lines of families so we didn’t bother waiting.

We also like the carousel but that was closed for renovation, so we went straight in to Philharmagic instead.

Something we’d not really done on the last trip was visit Mickey’s Toontown.

We’d met the characters already but we figured we’d go have a look at a couple of the houses. So off to Minnie’s we went. It was REALLY busy in both the houses.

Then on to Mickey’s. I love how much thought has gone into the details in these houses.

Then, as it was a Spectromagic & Wishes EMH night we decided to go find a spot in front of the castle. Of course we did some shopping on route and grabbed some food too.

 

[seobaina]

We found a great spot and decided that while we waited we’d take some photopass photos with the changing castle lights. So we kept going back up as it got darker and darker.

The castle looked so beautiful in it’s colours. This is taken from where we were sat.

Obligatory, if dark, balloon photo

I continued taking photos of the castle as it changed…I was trying to get all the colours. Didn’t quite succeed but I got some.

While we were waiting for the show a man asked if his daughter could sit near us, as there was a little gap. She was about eight and I think they were from South America somewhere. We agreed and he sat her down, then he went to buy two of the light up swords. He gave one to her and then went and stood in the crowd on the other side of the path. From there he could see her and he had the light sword so that she could find him too. We thought that was really sweet.