Now that I'm unpacked and laundry's all done and put away, I can post a few thoughts and pics!!!
We arrived @ the BC 7/21 @ around 9:50 am. Our family consists of DH, myself, DD (10 turning 11 two days after we got home), and DD 8. We had a standard view CL room booked but were elated to find we'd gotten upgraded to our very first water view room in over 14 stays!!!
This was our view:
AND just a few days into our trip, I recognized Robyn (Disneymomx7) from the meet pic on the first page just a mere 3 rooms over from us on the balcony one day! That's how we met!
This is to show where our room was (where I was shooting the photo from) and Robyn's room-the balcony on the left) (Oh, and please ignore the digital "crease" in the middle of the photo... for some reason, anything taken with my Canon Powershot won't download to photobucket properly, but my D90 pics and my Kodak watercamera pics all went through fine????)
The first night we were there, we'd gone into Epcot and returned to find this waiting for us:
We were there celebrating my DH's belated 40th (we just HAD to go to commemorate his 40th bday when the MK was turning 40
) and my older DD's 11th bday!
In addition to this very cool lightning picture I got after 40 minutes of persistence on our balcony...
I also caught this lightning pic from our balcony on our first full day....
This year we opted to NOT do the
DDP since our older DD is a Disney adult and she would never eat $47.99 worth of food a day...
We instead splurged on the Club Level (standard) with the 35% discount and paid OOP for food.... I kept a tally of our food costs just to see if I'd made the right decision. Normally on the DDP in the summer, we never bother with the desserts as it's just too hot to eat too much. The DDP would have cost us $942 for the 6 nights/7 days and we'd still have to pay for an extra meal that wouldn't have been covered. Our total cost of food/snacks/etc. was $748
If you throw in the cost of DH's beer excursions in Epcot's WS(which would not have been covered on DDP anyway), it brings the total to $847. We ate breakfast in the CL lounge every day but the last day in which we went to Cape May for breakfast (our traditional last day breakfast). We usually sampled the appetizers @ 5 before heading back into the parks so that we'd eat a light CS meal. We did 4 TS meals including the Cape May breakfast-the other 3 were lunch @ LeCellier, lunch @ Liberty Tree, and lunch @ Tusker House. The rest we did CS. I still gained 3 lbs. Darn!
This year we tried Typhoon Lagoon for the first time with our girls (I'd gone 20 years ago and used to do River Country as a kid)... They LOVED it, so I took them back a 2nd day
Loved shark reef!!!
We also loved Crush n' Gusher
Those donuts... OMG!!!!
So much more to say.... perhaps I should do a TR soon!!! Anyway, what you've all been waiting for... pics from the meet!!!
Teena was very surprised to see it was not just a meet, but also a baby shower
Here's a few pics from that night:
We had an absolutely magical time again and I'm having such severe withdrawals!!!! Can't wait to go back!!!
. We packed them all in my DH's suitcase, and checked it at the airport with no problems. I'm guessing the security people in Orlando see these things go through all the time. Just make sure you have a big suitcase!
.... 60% chance of showers so we brought the ponchos into MK.... very cloudy, muggy, and of course HOT.... 3:30 pm the skies opened up w/ a big thunder storm..... it eased up on our way to MCO @ 5:15... only to start again as we were about ready to take off @ 8:10 (the rain started, but the pilot was rushing all the last boarders to hurry up and pick a seat (SWA) as he wanted to get up before any lightning 
)
