A duck pushed me, a goofy dude put his foot out, a mouse took my money - Trip Report.

[Googelibear]

Vincent, I hope you only interrupted this delightful report to celebrate a new year coming in.
So, hangover or not, tomorrow I will come back here and would love to see more, more, more.
The pictures are wonderful.

Thank you for the entertainment

 

[mom of 3 (or 4) boys]

I'm reading along. Keep it coming.
Looking forward to your daughters first experience with the castle!

 

[Vincent405]

Oh, Vincent, Vincent, Vincent! If you had worn an Orioles sweatshirt, Tigger would have given you two thumbs up and a high five. If you had worn a Red Sox sweatshirt, Tigger would have given you two thumbs up and a high five. If you had worn a Milwaukee Brewers sweatshirt, Tigger would have given you two thumbs up and a high five.


Thankfully I know it's just jealously popping threw. Others near us with other teams colors on got a thumbs down and a nose hold!

 

[Vincent405]

Thanks for letting me know I've got readers

 

[hotcarib]

Vincent,
Loving your report and your daughter is adorable.
FWIW I always pack Hot Hands for winter trips to the World

 

[Vincent405]

Too much work to get caught up on, so I'll post an update tomorrow.

 

[npierce25]

i like your report.......... were going for our 1st tripin feb with our 4dd

 

[Vincent405]

I saw Toon Town wasn't open yet and thought they might hold to the 10am rope drop time. So, DW and DD rode the Teacups. No spinning rides for me thanks.

After they got off, we went towards the Toon Town rope to wait since I heard from several sources that the line for the faries gets long fast. The rope still wasn't dropped, so I went to get fast passes for Winnie The Pooh. As the first fast pass came out a second one dropped. What's this said I? Well, it was a a Surprise Fastpass for Mickey's PhilharMagic with an early return time. I put in our other 2 park tickets and got the same surprise, I figured the machines knew we were a party of 3. Score thought I - but was it really? See what happens later.

So, with fastpasses and surprises in hand, I rejoined DW and DD to tell her of the good news. The line was a little longer, nothing crazy though, and the rope dropped right as I was walking up. Everyone started to move right before I got there, but I was tall enough to see over everyone and easily got right up with my family. We made our way right back to the faries and ended up being 3rd in line. While waiting, we were able to see the other interactions and saw that there was only three faries there. Rosetta, Tinker Bell, and Vidia. They took their time with each kid and also interacted with each other just as much. They were fun. As we walked down the exit hall and turned a corner, Peter Pan was waiting for a meet/greet and pictures also.

They had good fun showing Vidia that on the picture on the front of DD's autograph book, she was smiling.

We left there and went through Mickey's House and looked and there was nobody in line to see Mickey and Minnie. So, we headed in the Judge’s Tent and sure enough, there was only 1 mom and daughter in front of us and they were already talking to and taking pictures with Mickey and Minnie. So, we waited and had a fun, long interaction with both Mickey and Minnie. Our DD was laughing and having fun.

Stockings were hung.

When we finally left after several minutes, there may have been 1 family waiting, but no more than that. We then went through Minnie's house.

DD had fun playing in Minnie's kitchen and making the corn pop and cake rise in the oven and teapot steam.

 

[ChildAtHeart82]

I just found your trip report today and now I'm all caught up. It's been a fun read so far! Im looking forward to hearing about the rest of your trip.

 

[Vincent405]

DW and DD then rode Goofy’s Barnstormer and I could hear DD laughing as they rounded the last bend. This was the first of her several rides on Goofy's coaster as you shall see. We then headed towards Winnie the Pooh since our fastpass window was open and I grabbed us fastpasses for Peter Pan’s Flight. As I got the first fastpass, I got another surprise fastpass, this one was for............ Mickey’s PhilharMagic. That made 6 fastpasses for the same show I now had in hand. Hummm, curiouser and curiouser. I figured that it must be that not many people were going in to see PhilharMagic, so they were giving away fastpasses to try and get people in. Oh well, I figured I’d just give them to someone else.

We rode Winnie the Pooh and then headed to Dumbo. The wait was maybe 10 minutes at most, so DD and DW rode.

Then when they got off, DD and I rode Cinderella’s Golden Carousel with no wait. DD wanted me to sit on a horse next to her’s and I said sure and hooked my shoulder bag on the horse I was going to ride and helped her onto her’s and got her strapped in. I turned around to find my bag on the floor and a little girl on the horse with her father on the horse next to her. The bag couldn’t have fallen off and there were Plenty of empty horses. I really didn’t get that at all, but wasn’t going to even considering asking a little girl to move, so I just picked up the bag and stood next to DD for the ride. She noticed and said “Hey daddy, that little girl stole your horse”, but I just said I wanted to stand next to her and she was ok with that.

DD tried to pull the sword from the stone with no luck, despite her best attempts at added leverage.

To be continued..........

 

[mousebymarriage]

Great trip report and pics, your DD looks like she's having a great time. I understand how you feel about the cold, we were there in Feb. 6th-13th and it was freezing.

 

[Vincent405]

Great trip report and pics, your DD looks like she's having a great time. I understand how you feel about the cold, we were there in Feb. 6th-13th and it was freezing.

It was very cold for 2 days, cold for one, decent for one, warm for one, and rainy the other

DD had an overall good time, but there was also times when she just asked to go back to the room. I think she was a little overwhelmed a couple of times mostly by the fact we were going to different places all day. Some things she really liked and other she really didn't like.

Maybe when we go back in 5-10 years, it'll be better

 

[Vincent405]

I'll try and post more later to finish our first Mk day.

 

[Googelibear]

Okey dokey - I am still here and looking forward to so much more

 

[Vincent405]

We then went to see Mickey’s PhilharMagic and when I saw it was basically a walk-on with us just having to wait for the current showing to finish, I didn’t bother with any of the 6 fastpasses I had for it and we just walked in. DW and I thought the show was good, DD got scared when she thought something was going to actually hit her and then got a little water spray, so she took her glasses off and just sat on my lap for most of it.

Random sign pic from the area

We left there and convinced DD to go on Peter Pan. She was hesitant to do much after not liking PhilharMagic. So, we used the fastpasses and rode Peter Pan which we thought was fine and then rode it’s a small world with little wait - 5-10 minutes. We then went to eat at Cosmic Rays

We ate lunch at a very crowded Cosmic Rays. The ride lines hadn’t been too bad, but there was plenty of people here. Maybe everyone was in just trying to get warm. We found a table after a bit and DD and I went and got our food and came back and then DW went and got her’s. Overall the food was as expected for a counter service. We got our table by seeing someone get up to leave and asked if they were done. They said yes and asked if we wanted their dessert that they hadn’t opened. We said ok, and they left it, but figured they were on the dining plan too and had enough.

We ate and there was a family of 5 nearby. I asked them if they wanted 5 of the Mickey’s PhilharMagic fastpassess I had and they said sure, so I gave them 5 and kept 1 for a souvenir. When we got done eating, we also didn’t have room or desire for dessert, so when we got up and someone asked for the table we said sure and gave them the desserts. I wonder if they are still being passed down to the next table occupant.

 

[Vincent405]

After lunch, we went to Tomorrowland and I got fastpassess for Space Mountain for DW and me. Standby line time wasn't too long and fastpass time was soon. We then all rode Buzz Lightyear with a 20 minute wait.

We all enjoyed the ride. DD scored a few points and liked spinning around. We saw Buzz standing nearby doing a meet/greet but it was a long line and DD was not interested in waiting. DW then went to ride Space Mountain with the fastpass and DD and I went to ride Astro Orbitor. The wait for that turned out to be pretty long, I don’t remember the posted time, but I know we ended up waiting longer. At least 30 minutes. Right before we went up the elevator to the ride platform, DW came up and had already ridden Space. DD and I rode Astro and she liked it. While riding, the fireworks from the “Dream’s” show at the Castle went off, so that was cool.

When we got off, I went and rode Space with the other fastpass. I have mentioned before that I am tall, as in 6'4". Well, I did not fit in the ride vehicle for space and if I could have easily, I would have gotten right up and not ridden. It was mostly my legs and specifically my shins. I didn’t think the ride was all that great anyway, but really was in pain at each little herk and jerk from my shins getting slammed into the metal front of the ride vehicle. I couldn’t wait to get off.

We then went towards the hub by the castle and got a spot where the walkway from one side passes across the road to the other side. As we walked up, I realized that they would close the walkway corridor with the rope that was there right before the parade came through. So, we stood near the rope bannister and just moved over a touch when the CM closed it off. We had an unobstructed view, just 5-8 feet off the road. My DD wouldn’t be able to interact with any characters, but I really don’t think she was overly interested in doing that and it worked out fine. The unobstructed view with no crowd behind us worked very good. From the pictures below, I hope you can see what I mean and where we were.

We followed the end of the parade down main street, which DD thought was fun and stopped in the Main Street Bakery to get a cinnamon roll I had heard so much about. Well, I was very disappointed in it. It was about the same quality as I could get in the local grocery store. Oh well, after coffee and the pastry, we slowly made our way back to the room. My DW went and used the health club and did a workout while DD watched a little TV and I read. DW got back and cleaned up and we went and got dinner from Gasparilla’s and brought it back to the room. Ate and relaxed and went to bed. The whole day was cold and windy and while it may have helped with park crowds, it tired us out enough to crash early.

 

[Vincent405]

Bet you thought I forgot about you huh? I'll have an update in a bit since I actually have a little time today.

 

[Vincent405]

Wed, Dec 15th, Epcot

This day did not go as we would have liked overall, part because of monorail breakdowns and part because it was a long day on our schedule that got longer and longer. The plan for this day was to go to Epcot, have lunch with the princesses in Norway, and head back to the resort at a decent hour. But, from reading on the Dis , I saw that our ADR scheduled for the next day (Thursday) at the Castle at 7 pm might be an issue since we were not going to have tickets to MVMCP. I read that having a 7pm ADR and no party tickets could be a problem. I contacted my travel agent and she said it could be an issue and when she made the ADR, the person at Disney should have caught it, (they had for her in the past) but didn’t.

So, we ending up having to switch the ADR for the Castle to today, Wednesday. Our plan then became to go to Epcot for the day and then to Magic Kingdom for dinner at the Castle.

We were up and out the door by 8:15and headed to the monorail. We got to the TTC and were told that the monorail to Epcot was down and so we’d have to take a bus. So, we headed down the ramp and got in the bus line. It wasn’t right away, but I remember we didn’t wait more than 10-15 minutes. I should mention that today was the first day that is wasn’t crazy cold and eventually made it into the 50s, but it was certainly cold to start the day. Plus, the cold that I had caught (I think from DD) was really starting to hit me.

We got through the bag check and gates and I headed over for a fast pass for Soarin’ and we then went over and rode Nemo with no wait. Right at the beginning, there is a fish with big teeth that comes on screen that scared the beejezus out of DD, so she didn’t really enjoy much after that. We walked around a bit and looked at the fish and took some pictures until the next Talking Crush showing. We all enjoyed that.

We then went over and rode Soarin with our fast passes. It was a fun ride. We then went into the food court for a snack and I went over and got fast passess for Test Track for later. Then we were off to the World Showcase. We took our time and strolled through Mexico and made our way to Norway and I checked in for our lunch ADR. There were a good amount of people standing around waiting, so we ended up waiting 20-25 minutes before we got in. I grabbed fast passess for Malstrom (sp) while we were waiting.

 

[Vincent405]

We finally got in and had DD's picture taken with Belle and got shown to our table.

While on our way in, we saw many empty tables and asked the waitress if they were short staffed and she said no and that the staff was wondering why it was taking so long to fill the place. We enjoyed the food and selections and the princesses all were nice and spent time with DD. DD also joined in the parade around the restaurant. When the princesses were visiting our table I chuckled from time to time and DW asked why. I told her about the guy at the next table, the pictures can tell the rest of the story. I cropped him out of the picture with Jasmine and will let you guess why.

 

[Vincent405]

After lunch, we slowly made our way through the other countries. But other than food and shopping, which were not interested in, we didn’t see much to check out. We did catch a bit of a few of the storytellers, which we had planned.

I grabbed beer in Germany, to help with my cold of course and DW got coffee in Italy. And we also saw Santa.

We then went and did Test Track with our fast passes and we all liked the ride. Glad for the FP since the wait was 40 min or more I think. DD was cracking up most of the ride. We then made our way to the entrance, first we caught the jammitors and had a few photopass pictures taken and thankfully, the monorail was working now, so we took that to the TTC and changed trains and made it back to the resort for a little downtime before our 7pm ADR at the Castle.