2 Disneymoons (Oct. and Dec. 2007) and 1 Anniversary Trip (Sept. 2008)--Updated 2/20

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For the larger part, here’s how it is now when you walk in:

And this is what it will be when they are done:

There was a bar area, and they re-doing that into a computer area where you can plug your laptop in

The kitchen now:

And after the remodel

Nice new tv in the living room:

Master bedroom now:

And after the remodel:

It all looks really nice, so hopefully it won’t take forever for them to get to our unit!

 

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game room and headed over to the Magic Kingdom:

Got on the Monorail with no problems this time!

And got to the Magic Kingdom a little after 4! This was going way too smoothly for us this time, so much better than when we went to MVMCP!

When we got into the park, Brittany and MIL had to use the bathroom, so I walked around and took a few pictures:

I LOVE this picture, I don’t know what it is about it, but I just love it:

I’ve been trying forever to get a picture of Roy with the Roy and Minnie statue, and finally there was no one there and we got the picture:

Then I had to get a picture too:

 

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We walked up Main Street:

Strangely, we did not see a single Photopass photographer when we were walking up Main Street, so we had to make due with the pictures from my camera:

I love how these turned out of MIL and stepFIL:

I can’t get enough of Cinderella Castle!

We went on our regular path of heading to Adventureland first

And went straight to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride! After we got out of the ride, we had some fun in the store next to it:

 

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After that, we made our way around to where Splash Mountain and BTMRR are, no one wanted to get wet, and the line for BTMRR was still kind of long, so we decided to skip it, and we decided to head over towards the Haunted Mansion. On our way, we stopped and bought some ears so we could have “costumes”

Roy in his new ears:

Then we headed towards The Haunted Mansion:

Love that ride! We did get stuck on it twice though, once while our ride vehicle was tilted back….kind of awkward way to be stuck, but oh well!

When we got out of that, we headed towards Fantasyland. We passed It’s A Small World and Roy and I decided we did not want to do that this time. But MIL, stepFIL, and Brittany went on it instead. While they were on the ride, Roy stayed there and waited, I told him I was going to wander around Fantasyland and take some pictures.

My favorite bathroom:

Here they are on IASM:

After that, we headed over and did the Indy Speedway, Buzz Lightyear Ride. Roy and Brittany went on Space Mountain, while MIL, stepFIL and I did the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. MIL chatted the whole time, so I couldn’t take pictures or anything while we were on the ride. Although when we were going through Space Mountain and you could see where people were loading into the ride, we saw Brittany and Roy in their ride vehicle getting ready to start the ride. Pretty cool! They actually made it off their ride before we finished ours! After that, we headed over to do the Laugh Floor Comedy Club. All this was before the park officially closed and the party officially started! We did pretty well!

At this point, we did a little bit of trick or treating, then grabbed some dinner, since we hit all the main rides we wanted to get on. We ate at Cosmic Rays and got to watch some of the dance party going on in there.

 

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After dinner, we did some more trick or treating, headed back over to Adventureland and got a Photopass picture taken

Made our way over to ToonTown because we wanted a picture with Mickey Mouse:

We did some more trick or treating, went through the treat trail, and then decided it was getting close to fireworks time, so we headed over to find a spot to watch them. We found a quiet spot with no one really there, and set up to take pictures. Since this was my first time doing firework pictures with my dSLR, I had no clue what I was doing! We had a monopod and remote release for the camera. So we got it all set up and somehow managed to get a few decent shots:

After the fireworks, my MIL and stepFIL decided they wanted to leave for the night since we had done everything we wanted to do. Brittany was being moody teenager and decided to go with them. Roy and I wanted to stay a little bit longer. We decided to skip the parade and head back to find some characters we hadn’t seen yet.

 

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First we headed over to see Minnie, I enjoyed the plants in her house:

The palm tree

daisies

tiger lilies:

tulips:

When we finally got our turn with Minnie, she was so excited that I had Minnie ears on! She started jumping up and down! Very cute!

We went back through the treat trail to get more candy, as well as to see a few characters we hadn’t seen before.

We had met the Queen of Hearts before, but it has been a while. She seemed pleased that when we walked up to her, I curtsied and call her “your majesty”.

Now two new characters for us…

The Mad Hatter! I was so excited to meet him! He was also very excited when we told him it was our un-birthday, and he said it was his un-birthday too:

Then we saw The White Rabbit!!

After that, we were going to head out, but we passed by the Winnie The Pooh ride and there was no wait at all. We never see it where there is no wait, so we had to go on it. I think that ride is really cute! I love when you are bouncing with Tigger!

After this we were finally going to leave, and we saw that the Stepmother and Stepsisters were coming out and I told Roy that we had to see them! He didn’t seem thrilled, but we got in line anyway. They are such a trip, I love them! When it was our turn, I said to the stepmother that I was an evil stepmother myself. She told me that the word evil is never in the title of being a stepmother and that I may kiss her hand since I know all that she has to deal with being a stepmother. After we took the picture, I asked her if she had any advice for me, since I haven’t been a stepmother all that long. She told me to smack them around a little bit! She cracked me up, so funny!

Finally after this we were on our way out and heading back to the timeshare. But of course because the evening had gone so smoothly, there was going to be a glitch! This was at about 11:15 when we left. We go up to get on the monorail and there is not any running! They stopped running the monorail to take a car of the track. Not sure whose bright idea it was to do that when they knew it was going to get busy with people leaving the parks. You could tell the cast members there were getting really frustrated because it was just backing up really badly with people ready to leave! We were tired, our feet were hurting and we had to wait about a half an hour for the monorail to get there. Not a great way to end the evening! I think as soon as we got back to the timeshare, we just passed right out!

 

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Wednesday, September 24th—

We got up early today to go to Animal Kingdom. If we had been able to, we probably wouldn’t have planned to go to AK on this day, but we were supposed to meet up with my best friend from high school that day. She lives in Orlando and they have passes for Disney. This was the only day that would have worked, so we planned it out. Then we found out that she wasn’t going to be able to make it to AK that day, so we still decided to go anyway. Then that evening we were going to meet my friend and her family at Downtown Disney for dinner.

We ended up getting a much later start than I wanted to because Roy wanted to talk to Brittany that morning about her attitude. Now, I know that teenagers have attitudes, but she was really bad this week, and she already has issues with me being married to her dad to begin with, so the treatment I was getting from her, as well as just her attitude in general was just not acceptable anymore. So Roy talked to her and she seemed to be better that day, and well, for the rest of the trip.

Anyway, we finally got to the park

On our way into the park, we saw that there were some characters out, and we managed to get in line to see Pocahontas. They cut the line off with us. I’m so glad we got in line in time! We hadn’t met her yet!

When it was our turn, she asked if Brittany was our tribal princess, we said yes. I’m not sure how Britt felt about being called a princess, it’s not her thing! I told her that we were from near where she is from. She asked us if we were from Jamestown and I said “No, we are from Virginia Beach”. She replied “Oh, just around the river bend!”. Very cute!

When we went through the gates, of course we had to stop for some Photopass pictures:

After the pictures, we saw what times the Finding Nemo musical was playing, there was one soon and I told Roy that we had to head straight over there. Thank goodness he agreed! We headed over there and waited for it to start. I didn’t even try to take any pictures, I knew they wouldn’t turn out that good. But oh my gosh, we LOVED the show, it was so good!

 

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After that was over, I told Roy that we probably should head over to Expedition Everest next so they could do that. So we headed that direction, I found a spot to take pictures. I ended up taking pictures of every car that came down the big drop so I could hopefully catch Britt and Roy on the ride.

Roy and Brittany are in the second row…the picture ended up kind of blurry

 

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After they got off that ride, it was already time for lunch, so we headed over to Pizzafari to get something to eat. Which I believe was totally out of our way, but we went anyway! After we had lunch we went over and did Kilamanjaro Safari. Love that ride!

 

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After the safari ride, we walked along the animal trails

I love meerkats!

Gorilla…

After we left there, we decided to head over to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. Made the trek over there, and once we got over there, I ran in to use the bathroom and when I came out, Roy was all excited because Jiminy Cricket had just passed by to go on a break and he heard that he’d be back out! Yay! We hadn’t met him yet!

Also, Brittany was excited to show me the hidden Mickey that she had found:

We went into the area where they have the characters at, asked where we should be for Jiminy Cricket, and got in line. We were the first ones there to meet him! I was so excited!

 

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We walked around the building, looking at what was in there, and then headed out to the petting zoo area. Brittany really loved this part!

 

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At this point, we realized it was getting late. We were pretty disappointed that we still had so much park to see, and yet the day was almost over with. We need to plan better the next time we go to AK! We decided we were going to head out and look at some of the shops on our way out. We were in one shop and I heard some noise outside and realized it was the Jammin’ Jungle Parade making its way back around! I left Roy and Britt in the store and headed out to catch the parade!

 

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After the parade was over, I went back into the shop and found Roy and Brittany. We made a few purchases and then started making our way out.

Had to take a few pictures on our way out

On our way out, we saw this gang saying goodbye to us:

When we left there, we headed over to Downtown Disney. We had dinner reservations at the Rainforest Café. We got there and I checked us in, kind of, we couldn’t really be seated until my friend Dana and her family showed up. They were running late, so we just kind of hung out, I ran over to the bathroom to freshen up. I hadn’t seen Dana in 14 years, we had just gotten back in touch with each other a few months before that trip, I was so excited to see her again! They finally showed up and we let them know our whole party was there, and we had to wait a few minutes to be seated. It was wonderful being able to see her again, spend time catching up and just chatting. Dinner was ok, although I thought it was kind of overpriced there. But it was still nice. After dinner, we found a table outside and chatted for a bit. Then we walked around a little bit before they had to leave. Dana’s a vet there in Orlando and her husband is a resident at a hospital, so they both had to get up bright and early the next morning. It was wonderful to see them and I’m already looking forward to seeing them when we go back this year!

After we left them, we walked around some of the stores for a little bit before heading back to the timeshare to just relax the rest of the evening!

 

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Thursday, September 25th—

Today was Sea World day! We have Platinum Passports for Busch Gardens Williamsburg and we can use them to get into Sea World. Best part was that we were spending the day with my best friend Darcy and her family!

We got up early, and headed out…

Parked….love that with our passes we get free preferred parking!

Headed in and took some more pictures because we were waiting for Darcy, Chuck and Delaney.

We had to wait a little bit for them to show up, so we decided to head over to the dolphin nursery and watch the babies swimming and playing while we were waiting for them. There was one that was so cute, it must have just found its voice because it was clicking and talking, it was so cute! Then another one was practicing its jumping skills. They are so cute and fun to watch!

While we were watching, Darcy called to say they were in the park, and I told them where we were at. They headed our direction. It was so wonderful to see them! We only get to see each other on my trips down there, so it sucks we only get to see each other once a year! Although I am getting ready to head down and visit her for a long weekend in a few weeks. I can’t wait for that!

I have to put the disclaimer that I won’t be posting many of the pictures I took that day because Darcy is not a member here and I’m not going to post pictures of her or her family for their privacy because of that.

 

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Anyway, after we said our hellos, we decided to head towards the main dolphin area, but stopped at the sting rays and watched them first:

We headed over to the dolphin area, and we decided to pay to go feed the dolphins, since we thought Brittany would enjoy that. Darcy & Chuck didn’t want to pay, so they went to the area where you just can view. It sucks because you have to pay to get in that one area. But then again at the same time, it was nice knowing that we were paying for the fish and we would be able to be near the dolphins. Anyway, we went and paid our money—it’s $7 per person to feed the dolphins, but with our discount, we only paid $6 per person. We got taken in to the area, were given instructions on how to properly interact with the dolphins, were told to find a spot, and then they brought us our trays of fish. So we got to feed them, and if we were lucky and the dolphins didn’t take the fish and run, we got to pet them as well. I ended up buying a CD of all our pictures they took of us interacting with the dolphins. It would have been $20 for a print of a picture, but with my discount, I paid $45 for a CD of the pictures with the rights to print them, as well as I got one print with that package as well. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Especially if I had gotten 2 of the pictures, which I would have done so Brittany could have one of her with the dolphins and I could have one of me with the dolphins.

Here’s my pictures of us interacting with the dolphins:

And the images from the CD that I bought:

 

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After we left there, we decided it was time to get some lunch. Roy and Brittany went to Mama’s Kitchen because they had vegetarian choices there. I went with Darcy, Chuck and Delaney to Smokey Creek bbq, and then we all met at a table between the 2 places to eat.

After we finished eating, we went to see some of my favorite animals, the penguins! I love going to see them!

After that, Roy and Brittany decided to go on the Kraken. The rest of us took a bathroom break, then found a pretty spot to take some pictures at.

This is where we took pictures at:

After Roy and Brittany got off the Kraken, they decided to go on Journey to Atlantis, since there was no line.

Proof of no line…they were sending down empty cars:

We were chatting and missed Roy and Brittany as they were going down the big drop, but got pictures of them as they were passing by us, and getting squirted by bystanders with coins!

Ya think they got a little wet?!

 

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At this point, it was getting close to time for Blue Horizons (the dolphin) show to start. Darcy and Chuck have a friend that is a dolphin trainer at Sea World and was going to be in the 2:30 show, so that’s the one that we went to. I love this show, and this time it was especially good. We found out from their friend Nick later that they had potential buyers for the park in the audience so they threw in some extra stuff to impress them!

Darcy & Chuck’s friend Nick in the show:

 

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They had already talked to Nick before they got to the park, and he told us to hang out after the show for a bit and then come find him. So that’s what we did. We hung around, let the crowds leave, and then we headed out to find Nick. He was with some of the other cast of the show, taking pictures with guests. We figured we should get a picture too.

Our little group was the last to get pictures, and after they let the cast go, Nick came over and we were introduced to him. He took us back into the backstage area with him so we could talk. He also had them send the false killer whales over so we could see them. He had one of them come up on the edge of the pool and told us where we could pet it at, then we got to sit down next to it, pet it and they took pictures with my camera. It was so amazing!

We all got to toss it some fish for being a good dolphin for us!

He had them dance for us:

Then he told them it was time to say good bye so first they waved at us, then he had them kiss for us:

Then he told them to tongue kiss!

It seriously was one of the coolest things I have done at a theme park! So much fun and such an amazing experience! We really appreciated him taking us back there and giving us that opportunity. We also appreciated Darcy and Chuck for introducing us to their friend and arranging for that to happen. We talked to him a few more minutes and then let him get back to work.

 

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When we left there, we went to one of my favorite parts of the park, and that was to see the sea lions! They are always so entertaining!

When we left there, we decided to go over to the Shark Encounter:

Then headed to the Clyde and Seamore show…I love that show! I didn’t take too many pictures, because there was too much shade and I couldn’t get anything good.

After this, we decided to head towards the Wild Arctic ride. We were going to do the Shamu show but Delaney was tired and we knew she wouldn’t sit through it. Also, Brittany was kind of over going to shows. So Roy and Brittany went to the Wild Arctic ride, they went on the ride part. We went over to the kids play area so Delaney could run around for a minute. Then we headed over to the Wild Arctic area so we could see the animals and we met Roy and Brittany there.

At this point, the park was getting ready to close. We had to head back over to the dolphin encounter area so I could get our pictures from earlier. Then we left the park after that. We went around the corner to a Wendy’s for dinner and so we could spend a bit more time hanging out. It was nice visiting with them, and I hated saying goodbye!

We went back to the timeshare and just hung around and relaxed. We were pretty beat after going non-stop all week!

 

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Friday, September 26th—

Our last day, and we decided we wanted to go over to City Walk and have lunch at the Hard Rock Café.

But best of all, we actually got to sleep in!

We got up and got ready and headed out.

Got there in no time, parked and made our way over…

I told Roy he needed to upgrade my engagement ring…

We walked around, went into some of the stores, and just took it easy!