70 to Freezing in 7 hours. A Nov/Dec 2011 trip report. Updated 4/28

[petals]

Looks like you got to enjoy Hogsmeade without a lot of crowds!

Yeah we were actually pretty surprised. I think the wait tiime for Forbidden Journey was 20 mins when we were there so wasn't to bad. I think we were there at the calm before the storm in December

 

[petals]

Soo I made another update. Again I apologise in advance because it's long and excitement filled. Lol I'm even excited for this day again just by typing it. Yay for trip report reliving the memories, oh and my Disneyland Paris ticket arrived yesterday. Anyways:

Day 13, part 1:
Tuesday 6th December, 2011

Okie so we got up early and finished packing. I was a little panicked over the fact that I had a suitcase and four pieces of hand luggage but decided I wasn’t going to worry about it. Why? Because we weren’t going home just yet I was being a big tease in the other update making y’all think we were leaving. We were only moving on from International Drive and I was super excited because we were moving to a Disney resort but first we needed help with all our luggage. So we called down to reception and a guy came up with a cart for all our luggage. While we were waiting I was saying a final farewell to the squirrels out our window and one of them crawled up under the bonnet of this car:

Well yer man came for the luggage about the same time as the driver of the car came and I was so upset for the poor squirrel. I wanted to warn the driver about the squirrel so it wouldn’t get killed but had to do the luggage and then when I looked back at the window the car was gone. I was a little upset for the squirrel and Momma goes “it’s fine if it was dead there’d be blood on the road do you see blood no so the squirrel is fine let’s go!” We headed up to reception and I told Momma to ring a taxi because hotel would charge us ten dollars extra. She wasn’t picking up what I was saying though and I couldn’t say it bluntly out because she was standing at reception so she asked the hotel reception to get us a taxi! I didn’t care at that point though because I WAS MOVING TO DISNEY!!! Some last pictures of a second Christmas tree the hotel had put up:

And a fountain the hotel has which I noticed gives money to Give Kids the World:

Then we were loading our luggage into a taxi and finally waving goodbye to International drive and heading for Disney property! Soon enough we saw this:

And then this:

And I was practically bouncing off the walls of the taxi with excitement! More picture taking along the way:

And then we arrived here:

Remember the 2010 trip report and I said we stopped at the POP bus station to change buses and I wanted to stay there sometime. I was staying in POP until we were going home in two days and I was super excited about it. We arrived at about 9 or maybe shortly after 9 and because we had so much luggage I sat and minded all the bags while Momma got in line to check us in. Of course I couldn’t sit still though and I started taking pics of everything the floor, the reception, the walls:

Then Momma came back and said our room was ready AND she had also asked about the bus back to the airport. As I said waaaaaaaaay back in the first day before we went I thought we were going to be going back to the airport on the Magical express and when we got to Florida we learnt that we were booked in some boring ordinary taxi to go back to the airport. She told them at reception in POP that I really wanted to go on the magical Disney bus and they said it would be no problem just to come back the next day to arrange what time we would like to be picked up! Woo sleeping over in Disney, getting hotel room by 9.30am and going on the magical express! So we bundled up all the luggage my Momma handed me the map and showed me where the room was marked and we headed off in search of our room. We didn’t have to look very far though. Our TA had requested close to reception, pool view and not top floor. We got one of those requests we were close to reception in building 1 in 50’s section but a view of trees instead of the pool and on the top floor, room 1443:

And another burst of super excitement to find this little dude waiting for me:

My first ever towel animal! (he may have fallen into my case coming home as well.) I named him Frederick (I don’t know why?!)
My Disney bedroom:

Close up of some characters on the bed covers:

Picture over the bed:

I need a carpet with hidden Mickey’s for my bedroom at home:

Those little shampoos and soaps may have come home with me as well:

The room was about half the size of the one in the International Palms resort but I really didn’t care I was bouncing off the walls with excitement to be finally sleeping over in a Disney World hotel. Then I turned on the telly so I could meet the much talked about on disboards Stacey:

So we didn’t really hang around in the room to long despite my excitement because we needed to get somewhere pretty quickly so we dumped the bags. I left Angel minding Frederick and we headed for the bus stop:

Around the corner by the lifts this was the view:

And we came out beside a very pale looking Lady:

And spotted Tramp across the path:

These were the first things Momma complained about she said they weren’t very real because where did you ever see a dog that size! Anyways we continued on towards the bus stops. Bowling pin section that’s where we were staying:

Saw a giant yo-yo off in the distance as well:

And eventually made it to the bus stop:

Don’t let that sign deceive you we weren’t going to Hollywood studios.

Next up: Can’t shop because no space left in luggage!

 

[amandaw]

So glad y'all weren't leaving just yet! And for moving to POP! How fun! And isn't it always so nice when you're room is ready at check-in?

That was really sweet of your mom to inquire about Magical Express for you. And I'm glad they were able to work that out for you.

Can't wait to find out where y'all were going!

 

[Caretames1]

YAY! Off to Disney! Love the POP pictures, Now that we've stayed there, I can see what all the fuss is about. We enjoyed POP very much.

I have to say, your Momma cracks me up! The squirrel comments are too much!

Park time!!!

 

[petals]

So glad y'all weren't leaving just yet! And for moving to POP! How fun! And isn't it always so nice when you're room is ready at check-in?

I'm so happy we got to stay in POP. We don't usually stay at the Disney World hotels but I really wanted to experience it at least once. Wasn't expecting the room to be ready. We had planned to just check in and dump the bags somewhere for a while.

That was really sweet of your mom to inquire about Magical Express for you. And I'm glad they were able to work that out for you.

Yeah I had been so disappointed to learn we weren't booked on the Magical express but the taxi was with the same company that run th emagical express so didn't see why we couldn't. Momma couldn't remember the name of the bus though so she just called it the disney bus!

YAY! Off to Disney! Love the POP pictures, Now that we've stayed there, I can see what all the fuss is about. We enjoyed POP very much.

I love POP.

I have to say, your Momma cracks me up! The squirrel comments are too much!

She comes out with one liners sometimes that are just hilarious. She complained alot about POP but eventually told me when we got home why she didn't like it. I'll tell y'all eventually her real reason for not liking it.

Can't wait to find out where y'all were going!

Park time!!!

All will be revealed soon. Also this is prob going to be another long day

 

[vleeth]

Yay for Disney hotels!!!

Where are you going??? Guess I'll have to wait for the next update!!!

 

[petals]

Yay for Disney hotels!!!

Where are you going??? Guess I'll have to wait for the next update!!!

Disney hotels are the best. They're so close to Mickey Mouse

 

[petals]

I just discovered Disney movie rewards and put in all the points that they would let me... I have five more to put in. I'm wondering what the catch is though because it appears I can claim free dvd's now

Day 13, part 2:
So when I left you we were headed to the bus stops. Momma said as we walked down towards the stops I bet the one we want will be the very last stop and she was right lol! As well as it being the very last stop it also seemed to be the last bus to arrive as all the park buses seemed to arrive and none for where we wanted to go. Eventually though the bus we wanted arrived. Where were we headed? Here’s a clue:

They had cute little Christmas decorations on their bus stops. When we packed up to move hotels we had gone through all our receipts and those 20% off vouchers I mentioned before that were on the ends of some of the food receipts well Momma had three and I had four or five. The only catch with them seemed to be that you had to use them before noon and in certain shops oh and you couldn’t buy DVD’s, cd’s or books with them whatever. But since we had them it would be rude not to use them and I know you’re thinking but your luggage is already stuffed how will you fit in more. I had said that as well to Momma that I couldn’t do more shopping and I had so many dollars left and wanted so much more Disney stuff that I had waited to buy so we decided that we would not worry about the luggage and if they made us we would both pay towards checking in an extra case. Yay so let’s go to Downtown Disney:

So we headed towards World of Disney first since that was the only place in Downtown Disney you could use the vouchers. I of course took pics along the way though:

I dared Momma to stand at a certain spot in front of Stitch for a few mins but she wouldn’t do it. The wet ground may have been a give away though lol:

When we got to World of Disney we had an hour and a half to use the vouchers that morning and wowsers time flies when you have to use those things by a certain time. We decided since we were limited on time to split up grab what we wanted and meet at the pirates in the cage if we got lost (well it’s a big store isn’t it!) So I wandered around taking pics and picking up the bits I wanted:

I got the monorail chocolates:

I also got a Minnie ears Santa Hat, the hoodie that went with the tracksuit bottoms I had bought in Epcot the first day we were there and nerd Minnie Vinylmation. Everything I got should have come to 96.80 and then tax on top of that but with the voucher and tax it came to 82.48. Dear Disney please can I have 20% off vouchers every time I go?! It was kind of funny though because Momma and I both met up at the tills at about a quarter to 12 ready to go with our purchases.

So after that we decided to take the rest of the stores at a slower pace. My first mission however was to find Basin because I wanted to look at it in 2010 and we never found it this year we were in luck though. For those that may not know Basin in an expensive Disney soap shop:

We wandered in there and weren’t going to buy anything until we spotted these baskets at the counter which had little packets made up of samples and there were three to five different samples in each for various prices but they were all cheaper than buying one slab of soap. So we got one of those each. This was my one:

And the selection I got for 3.29 was:

So happy I finally found Basin we continued our wandering around Downtown Disney:

Next stop was Once Upon a Toy:

I got myself and my niece the Duffy book and got another Kingdom Keepers book for me. I’ve just finished the fourth one of those and really want the next one now but that’s a side point.
Next stop was at the pin trading shop.
I loved how the wall behind Cogsworth was all Disney pins on the picture:

And I finally found these two as well:

I wanted to trade a Vinylmation and get some more pins well one pin. I picked out a Figaro pin and went up to pay and here’s where I met rude lady number 101! When I went up there was one person standing at the counter and I stood to their left with my pin and Vinylmation in hand to trade. The CM saw me fine whatever and when she was finished serving the one person that had been there went to give me the Vinylmation boxes to choose one to a rude gasp from a lady that had appeared on the first person’s right if that makes sense. The CM said sorry this girl was here for a while I’ll just let her pick which box. So I did my trade then the CM went to take Figaro and let me pay and rude lady went “Excuse me what do you think you are doing” to which the nice CM went “well this lady was here before you so I’m serving her” Rude lady went eh no she was not my child was in this queue before anyone else and you are just ignoring my child and that is not good enough I am not happy at all blah blah blah (she may not have said blah blah blah.) The CM looked helplessly at me; she was right though I was there first. There was no proper queue and I had just stood to the left of the guy that was there. Obviously Rudey McRudeson hadn’t seen me and stood to yer mans right and then proceeded to give the CM a hard time. I felt sorry for the CM so I just said serve her first I’m in no rush. The CM could not apologise enough when the rude lady left but I assured her it was fine. I just felt bad for the way the rude lady had treated the CM. After the drama of the pin shop we started heading back towards the buses but stopping in several shops along the way, including Mickey’s Pantry for Momma and Days of Christmas just because. Less talk more pictures:

Next up: Back to POP for lunch

 

[petals]

OMG facebook has changed me to that timeline thing and it is so annoying everytime I go on I've been deleting stuff from years ago. It's annoying me know so if they put a picture on and it won't hide I'm deleting the whole album because I'm losing patience! On the plus side I put in all those movie point things I had and had 1580 in total so have claimed a Cars 2 dvd and I made another trip report update thing:

Day 13, part 3:
So we finished in Days of Christmas and then went to Goofy’s Candy store where I got the Pinocchio chocolates and took pics of their yummies:

Those apples are so cute but so expensive:

I forgot to say before in World of Disney I may have unintentionally started an argument with a small boy and his parents. I had my tye dye Mickey head t-shirt on again to go along with the POP theme and the lady came over and asked me where I got it and if I bought it somewhere in Disney. I told her no I had bought it online from a group on facebook at which point the boy cheekily went to his parents SEE I TOLD YOU and sulked off. Oopsey!
Anyways after Goofy’s we then decided to head back to POP for some lunch. We had a bit of a wait for the bus but we didn’t mind as it was another warm day. Saw this on the way back to POP. I so want to go on that someday:

Back at POP we took a few mins to admire the Christmas decorations in the reception area:

Then we went to the food court for lunch/dinner. POP yummies:

Momma got a fruit bowl:

We both got Chicken Alfredo and Momma was very impressed with this (win!):

And I got the Tye dye Cheesecake of course:

Momma laughed a lot at this (after she turned her nose up in disgust the first time she saw it) because it turned my teeth blue.
We had a quick look around Everything POP because Momma wanted me to pick a plushie or two but we left with nothing but a picture of their Christmas tree:

And then headed back towards our room me snapping all the way:
See that little Belle and Beast in the bottom of that frame. I have those in my attic still:

I also have that TY beanie:

And I’m pretty sure there’s one of those games with the green, blue, red and yellow buttons in our attic from when my bros and sis were small:

In the room I spotted this which I thought was cute enough for a picture:

We freshened up and got changed for park time in the room before heading back to the bus stops.

Next up: The build up to the party!

 

[amandaw]

I do the Disney movie rewards & love it. I've gotten all sorts of good things from free DVD's to Disney gift cards.

Looks like y'all had a fun day shopping in DTD. Well, besides the rude lady. Some people are just ridiculous.

 

[petals]

I do the Disney movie rewards & love it. I've gotten all sorts of good things from free DVD's to Disney gift cards.

It seems to good to be true. They want to give me free stuff for points like but free stuff?!

Looks like y'all had a fun day shopping in DTD. Well, besides the rude lady. Some people are just ridiculous.

It was fun. I really felt sorry for the CM with the way the lady was talking to her there was really no need for it like.

 

[amandaw]

It seems to good to be true. They want to give me free stuff for points like but free stuff?!

Well see, they figure if they reel you in with the "free stuff" then you'll want to buy more Disney movies to get more points.

 

[jenseib]

I got so behind!!

I did the Movbie rewards too. For a long time I just kept adding them and didn't find anything I wanted, but over the last year or so they have offer gift cards, which for me is the best "prize". I also got a pooh pillowpet for Claire. Now my points are very low though, and we haven't bought a moive in quite some time.

Great updates. How exciting to move over to Pop. I love it there. It's what I consider home. I'm sure after I get the AoA stay out of my blood, we will go back to Pop for future trips. The bad thing about AoA is that the standard rooms are so far out.

I know all about having to buy another suitcase to get things home!

 

[petals]

I got so behind!!

I did the Movbie rewards too. For a long time I just kept adding them and didn't find anything I wanted, but over the last year or so they have offer gift cards, which for me is the best "prize". I also got a pooh pillowpet for Claire. Now my points are very low though, and we haven't bought a moive in quite some time.

It still seems like a trick to me that I'm getting it for free like I was actually going to buy Cars 2 during the week and then got the email from Movie rewards and just looked to see what it was about and put in the points I had like

Great updates. How exciting to move over to Pop. I love it there. It's what I consider home. I'm sure after I get the AoA stay out of my blood, we will go back to Pop for future trips. The bad thing about AoA is that the standard rooms are so far out.

I love POP so much! I wanna stay at AoA sometime to but POP will always be my favourite now because it was my first Disney World resort to stay in.

I know all about having to buy another suitcase to get things home!

We didn't buy a suitcase in 2011, in 2010 we bought two bags to come home. In 2011 what we did was I used the red mickey mouse suitcase as hand luggage going over but had another bag inside it and Momma put an extra bag in her suitcase as well. The problem was all 5 bags were stuffed and three more plastic bags were stuffed as well when we got to POP

 

[vleeth]

Rude people suck. It's like they are so unhappy in life that they have to make everyone else unhappy too.

 

[petals]

Rude people suck. It's like they are so unhappy in life that they have to make everyone else unhappy too.

There seemed to be a few of them around that day. I'll tell you about another one later on day 13 although the one in DTD was the worst one of the day

 

[Caretames1]

What a great day at DTD! Heck, If I had a coupon, you had better believe I'd use it to the fullest!

Sad news, the hot air balloon is down, and not to come back. Apparently a similar balloon overseas had an issue and Disney doesn't want the same problems. I'm sad, I had wanted to go on it too, but every time we were there, the winds were too high or it was after hours.

POP was a huge pleasant surprise for us, I'd go back. The food looks good!

 

[petals]

What a great day at DTD! Heck, If I had a coupon, you had better believe I'd use it to the fullest!

I loved those vouchers so much.

Sad news, the hot air balloon is down, and not to come back. Apparently a similar balloon overseas had an issue and Disney doesn't want the same problems. I'm sad, I had wanted to go on it too, but every time we were there, the winds were too high or it was after hours.

Aw no and last two times I went it was running and I kept saying must do it and never did. May do it in Paris now.

POP was a huge pleasant surprise for us, I'd go back. The food looks good!

I loved POP. I loved the theming, the food court, how close it was to the parks and the fact I was sleeping over in Mickey's house (kind of) it was Mickey's Property anyway

 

[afwdwfan]

Congrats on moving to POP. I really do love that place. The food court there is really one of my favorites. For a value resort, it really does seem to have some better bus service and food options.

I'm glad you were able to get to DTD soon enough for your 20% off coupons. Congratulations on taking the high road and showing a little class at the pin store. I guess you just have to remember, you're in Disney World and it seems like everyone thinks the world revolves around them...

 

[petals]

Congrats on moving to POP. I really do love that place. The food court there is really one of my favorites. For a value resort, it really does seem to have some better bus service and food options.

I loved everything about it. Was so happy staying there

I'm glad you were able to get to DTD soon enough for your 20% off coupons.

I was as well. Just how much Disney stuff can you get into over-stuffed luggage

Congratulations on taking the high road and showing a little class at the pin store. I guess you just have to remember, you're in Disney World and it seems like everyone thinks the world revolves around them...

I just felt so sorry for the CM and I wasn't in that much of a rush that I had to abuse a poor CM and try start a fight over some lady skipping the queue! How can anyone be that angry in Disney World like