2-Day Anniversary Last Minute Trip

[sarobison]

My DW and I decided that we wanted to spend our anniversary at WDW since that's where we went on our honeymoon. I had been planning our August family trip to the world so a 2-day trip was a breeze to put together.

We stayed at POP and visited MK and Epcot. The trip started with an overnight drive down the east coast. We checked in at 6:45 am to get our Keys to the World and decided that even though we had ADR's for Maya Grill we wanted to find a later time for somewhere in MK. We lucked up and got an 8:15 for Crystal Palace. We waited for the bus to MK and got there about 7:40 am. Needless to say we were some of the first people there! As we were walking up we saw them pick the "first family" who would help Mickey open MK for the day. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity they finally opened the park. We went first to Space Mountain but for some reason (something was locked or some other thing) they wouldn't let anyone in and told us to get FP's. So, against all touring advice, we grabbed the FP's and then rode Buzz's Space Ranger Spin. We then trekked across the kingdom to ride Splash Mountain. We literally walked right on with no wait. We then rode BTMRR, with about a five minute wait. We took the short walk over to Pirates, and again no wait. Here it was ~9:15 and we had already ridden four rides and were in our FP window for Space Mountain. We could tell the park was filling but things were still pretty light. We got FP's for Peter Pan and went and rode Pooh while waiting for the FP time. After Peter Pan we went and watched Philharmagic before going back to ride Space Mountain (with our FP's we waited maybe 5 minutes). We then went and did the Laugh Zone Comedy Floor. By now it was about 11:15 and after being up all night I was a) tired and b) hungry .

We headed over to Cosmic Ray's to share a 1/2 chicken and ribs (there's more than enough for two adults, especially if you get a dessert and it's pretty good on top of that). We decided we wanted to go see the American President's (I was pretty tired) before exploring the Toon Town Fair (yes, two adults waited in line to have their picture taken with Mickey!). By now it was after 1:00 and I was about worn out. We called and found out our room number so we wandered down Main Street before heading back to POP for a welcome nap (or actually a short slumber).

When I woke up about 5:00 that afternoon the thunderstorms had set in and it was raining pretty hard so I went back to sleep. We left POP a little after 7:00 to head back to MK for dinner. Dinner at Crystal Palace was pretty good. I sampled pretty much everything on the buffet and was satisfied with everything. The Prime Rib and Mahi Mahi were awesome. Unfortunately, DW has a severe peanut allergy and she wavered around the peanut butter long enough to induce a mild reaction so off to the nurse's station we went. The benadryl pretty much put her in la-la land and since they had supposedly cancelled the parades due to the rain we decided to head back to POP for the night.

Up Next- Epcot (even though there was a morning EMH!) and DTD

 

[sarobison]

Epcot with EMH and DTD

Since we had gotten in pretty early for the last night we decided we could make the EMH at Epcot after all. Since we were planning on leaving from Epcot anyway we just drove over instead of taking the bus. We were parked in the 2nd row and I swear I think we were closer than if we had taken the bus and the corresponding long long walk from the buses to the gates. We weren't the first ones there this morning but we were among the first 100 or so. Once we were able to get in (about 7:50) we headed to the right towards Soarin'. After the official countdown and opening we walked briskley but safely behind the CM's to Soarin'. We were on the first flight and can I just say "WOW." This is an amazing ride, in fact we liked it so much we went back later for FP's to ride it again. We left Soarin' and went to ride Test Track and Mission Space. TT had about a 20 minute wait so we got FP's for it and waited about 10 minutes (maybe) to ride Mission Space (Orange Team). Space was great, even though we had the "spinning" version I really never felt uncomfortable. It is a truly immersive experience, you can feel yourself being pushed back in the seat at lift-off, etc. We played around in the Mission Control area for a little while after the ride waiting on our FP time for Test Track. When the time came we went over to TT and had to wait about 10 minutes to get on. By the time we left TT it was obvious the park was filling up. We decided to go and get FP's for Soarin' and rode The Land while we were there. I teach horticulture so we decided to do the Behind the Seeds tour for later that afternoon (more later). We went and rode Nemo in the Seas (get here early, there isn't a FP and it looks like it forms a line pretty quick. By now it was getting on toward lunch time and we hadn't had breakfast. We decided to head over to Tangierines in Morroco but when we got there DW decided she wanted something a little more. Since it was just barely 11:20 we decided to try our luck at Coral Reef. We had to wait about 20 minutes but we did get seated. She had the blackened catfish (pretty good, a little heavy on the rub for me) and I had the BBQ salmon sandwich (really good, would have liked more salmon though, the potato sticks were awesome). DW also had a Glow-tini and loved it! Since we had used out DDP TS at Crystal Palace the previous night we skipped the appetizer and dessert (hey this was a spur of the moment thing). We have ADR's here for the family trip in August and I can't wait to try the Chocolate Wave. Also, I overhead the waitstaff telling those on the DDP they could get virgin daquiri's or pina coladas as their drink.

After lunch we went to do Honey I Shrunk the Audience . I've done this every time I've been to Disney since it opened and this time I really understood why I likely won't be taking my DS (4) to see it. I paid more attention to the kids in the audience and it seemed that some of the smaller one's were pretty scared. Of course if he handles Philharmagic well we might try it.... We also played around at ImageWorks while we over there. Honestly, that area is in need of an update. When digital camera's were just coming out this was neat stuff, but now that everyone has one and many have them on their phones, ImageWorks seems outdated and kind of blah.

Next up was a walk to Norway to try and ride Maelstrom. The line was longer than I wanted to wait in since we had a Behind the Seeds tour coming up so we got FP's for it and headed back to do some shopping and to try the Coke Products from around the World. Eventually we made it to our Behind the Seeds tour. Like I said I teach high school horticulture and am a plant nut to I really enjoyed the one-hour walking tour of the greenhouses. I think it's cool to see some of the non-typical plants and to see how they grow the vegetables on the trellis systems. Also DW got to take a picture with one of the mickey pumpkins! Two kids on the tour with us got to release lady bugs in the greenhouse and they didn't seem bored during the tour. We've done the Garden's of the World tour before and found this to be a good (and much shorter) complement to that.

After the tour we decided to go ahead and ride Soarin' again using our FP's. At this point the standby line was over 2 hours long and the last FP's had been given out before 2:00pm. Like I said, the ride was awesome, but 2 hours? Not sure it's that awesome . After Soarin' it was time for Maelstrom and then dinner at Cantina de San Angel. I know that Cantina sometimes get a bad rap but we found the combination plate, plus the churro, to be too much to eat (we used our DDP CS for this) and well worth the money. Since it was now after 5:30 we decided to head to DTD for some shopping and a visit to Goofy's Candy Co.

Well we go to Goofy's and DW decided she didn't want to risk any cross contamination with the nuts ... I really wanted a dipped rice krispie but decided I'd do the same. We decided we'd stop by Earl of Sandwich to see what they had in the way of Snack offerings, NOT MUCH! I was excited to see that their smoothies were under $4 (which means they ought to be a DDP snack) but nope, at Earl it's only stuff under $2.50 which is basically only their cookies. So we decided we'd go to CBR to Old Port Royale to the store their. We're staying at CBR in August and wanted to see the resort (one of the few I've not stayed at) anyway. We wound up using our last DDP Snack credits on sliced apples with caramel (pretty good for the trip home) at CBR.

After leaving CBR we headed back up the East Coast for another overnight trip home. Hey, when you've only got the weekend to spend at WDW sometimes you pay for it on Monday.... !