A pictorial trip report! Updated 18/06/08, 990 Pictures so far, not close to done!

[Shir Kahn]

Alright, here goes! This will be my first PTR, shortly followed by my first full trip report! I'm a serious picture taker, as you'll soon see. I take a lot of pictures and I'm very prepared for this upcoming trip! I"m hoping that all the pictures will distract you from the trip report itself, as I'm sure there's no way I'll be able to compare with the many wonderful TRs I've read so far here!

So this trip will be the very first one that DW and I will be going by ourselves! Quite excited about that, as we'll be able to do what we want, when we want! So yeah, here we are, the cast of this TR:

No wait, come back! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have started the TR off by scaring you! I'll try and keep pictures with me in them down to a minimum! DW prefers to stay hidden in the shadows as well, but this trip, we're probably going to be flagging down every photopass person we can find. We're very big Disney fans. Our plans actually include moving to Florida at some point in order to visit a lot more often. We're both on these forums daily and we both listen to Live365 to get our Mouse fix. We even named our dog "Disney"!

We've been to WDW once before, in August, 2006. We drove down from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It was a 32 hour drive down in a car with no air conditioning. There were 4 of us, DW, myself, DMiL and DBiL. DBiL has Down's Syndrome and really, really loves Disney.

Here's what DMiL and DBiL did for most of the ride down:

And when he wasn't asleep, he would entertain himself in various ways, such as pretending to be Queen Amidala from Star Wars:

Yes, it was a long, long drive.

Some highlights from our trip in 2006 included:

Yeah, you know where this one was taken!

This guy was fantastic! Very nice guy.

Kermit sang us a song!

Goofy being....goofy!

Now, you'll notice that some of those pictures didn't turn out so well, which annoyed me quite a bit. At the time, I was using a Pentax Optio MX4:

It was a nice camera, very good at the time I bought it. 10x optical zoom, kind of looked like a camcorder and had a flip-up screen! It didn't have stabilization though and didn't do very well at all with night shots or any sort of action shot. Since that trip though, DW and I have both bought ourselves new cameras! DW did inform me that I couldn't buy a new camera until she got one, as I tend to be a bit of a camera hog. I think I let her take roughly 25 pictures of the 1000+ we took last trip! So she now has this:

The Canon S5 IS!

And my new camera:

The Canon Powershot 870 IS!

I love both of these cameras, they take fantastic shots. I believe this trip, we'll be taking a heck of a lot more pictures than last time. I have 4 lithium-ion batteries for my camera and DW has 16 AA rechargables! Her camera takes 4 at a time, but they last quite a while. We also each have two of these:

That's right, 16GB of memory each! Each 8GB card gives me over 2200 shots at 8mp and Superfine quality. I figure that should do us for each day and then we can offload the pictures onto our laptop to get ready for the next day! I did say I was a picture taking lunatic didn't I?

Next up: The Itinerary!

 

[j_lehr]

I love to take pictures too, even though I am not that great at it! My husband is definitely the better photographer, but he is not coming with us this next trip. He has an awesome camera...but I think I will leave that at home as if anything happened to it, I would be and my husband would probably shoot me. I am taking with me a Fuji S5000. I will be posting tons of pics when I get back!

Great start to your report...when are you going and where are you staying? I couldn't imagine driving for 32 hours...I did a 20 hour drive to Florida twice (Northern FL from PA) and well...never again!!!

Jes

 

[Shir Kahn]

Thanks!

We're leaving in 2 weeks now and we're going to be staying at Pop Century. We absolutely loved it there. Here are some pics from when we stayed there last:

I'll be doing the next installment later today. I keep getting distracted reading everyone elses!

Pal Mickey has been taken out of his place of honor and recharged! Little does he know, he's going home soon!

I think I may have enough of these to prepare for this trip:

So, time for sleep, I'll leave you with one last shot from our last trip to tide you over until the next installment:

 

[dizprincess717]

Hi! Looking forward to reading more, I LOVE TR's with lots of photos!

Pop looks like so much fun. I'd definitely stay there!

 

[Shir Kahn]

It is so hard to sit here and think about what I'm going to write and how to present everything. Apparently chronological order has no real meaning for me, I just seem to write things down as they occur to me! One of the things I'm going to be bringing on this trip is a voice recorder so that I can keep track of everything that happens! I read these fantastic trip reports by everyone else and try to think back to my trips and realize that I have no idea what order anything happened in! This trip will be different!

One day, back in November I think, DW and I were out paying bills and we drove into the parking lot where our bank is located. In that same parking lot was our CAA office (same thing as AAA). I'm really not sure why, but instead of going into the bank, I dragged DW into that office and we sat down in front of one of the travel agents! This was a total impulse on my part, I really had no idea I was going to do it until I was practically saying hello to her! An hour later, we were walking out with travel guides in our hands, having just booked a trip for 8 days in March/April! That has since grown into a 10 day trip, which usually happens whenever I'm doing the planning!

We went out and bought the that book from those "Unofficial" guys and started reading it from cover to cover. My Disboards post count, which around November was at about 55ish for a two year span all of a sudden jumped up as well! I'm still not really sure how I stayed away from the Disboards for so much time until we started planning this trip. I'm hooked for sure now. I probably visit these boards at least a couple of hours per day now. Since November, I think about Disney almost every waking hour. I'm always tweaking our trip just a little bit here and there. I think I've probably day-dreamed my way through each and every minute that we're going to be there! Yeah, I'm Disney-obsessed for sure. Before I met DW, I had never been to Disney. My mother just isn't a Disney type of person. It actually had never occurred to me that I'd ever go. To be honest, I don't think I would ever have gone if it weren't for DW and her family.

About a year after we got married, her parents told us that they were going to be taking us to Disneyland! I thought it would be fairly cool, I had been to amusement parks before and liked them, so yeah, Disneyland should be pretty OK right? Yeah, I knew nothing at that point. Oh yeah, I also had never been on a plane until that point either! Or been out of Canada farther than North Dakota! We were supposed to get up at 4:30am to be out of the house by 5:15am in order to get to our plane on time. I woke up at 4:55am and nobody was stirring in the entire house! We had all slept through our alarms! Somehow, we managed to get out of there in time and didn't even forget anything. DW let me have the window seat, because as nervous as I was about flying for the first time, I wasn't going to miss any of it! The flight was fantastic, no turbulence, hardly any clouds to block my view of the ground below, it was amazing! Before I knew it, we were landing at LAX. We disembarked and I got my first breath of California air. Everything went smoothly and we got to our suite, ready to spend two wonderful weeks in California and a bit in Nevada (side trip!). We went to Universal, the San Diego zoo, we went on the Queen Mary and the Russian Skorpion sub and we did a two day side trip to Vegas! We stayed at a little hotel a couple of blocks from one side of the strip and DW and I walked the entire strip the first night. That was a long, long walk! It was amazingly hot in Vegas, but every second step we took was into an air-conditioned casino. Oh yeah, we went to Disneyland too! It was, as you all know, nothing like the amusement park I had envisioned. This is where my memory gets a bit fuzzy, I know we were there and that it was a great trip, but I barely remember the details. I have no idea where we ate in Disneyland. I vaguely remember some of the rides from that trip. I do however vividly remember going on Soarin! Wow!

Amazingly enough, I didn't even bring a camera that first trip! I do have some pictures from my in-laws and I have lots of pictures from a subsequent trip to Disneyland and surrounding areas, so I'll share some of those. Can't be having an installment without pictures you know! These are mixed up pictures from two separate trips to Disneyland, most are from the second time there in August of 2007. Seaworld Pictures are from the second trip as well:

Vegas, here we come!

There is a rollercoaster and a couple of other rides at the top of this hotel!

Where we stayed our second trip to Vegas.

Still want to try the restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Lights, lots and lots of lights!

A picture I took on our way to Disneyland from Vegas, though this was a pretty cool sight.

A few pictures from Seaworld. I really liked feeding the dolphins!

 

[Shir Kahn]

Up next, Universal!

We're there!

Yes, I wore a Disney shirt to Universal, got razzed by the Universal employees about it too!

One of my favorite rides.

The dancing cars were very cool, and unexpected!

This one is closed now and they replaced it with the Simpsons ride...

This was a great show.

One of the cars from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

 

[Shir Kahn]

Yes, I know this is turning into more of a trip report for trips we've already gone on instead of a PTR, but I'll be getting to my itinerary shortly!

And finally, Disneyland!

I think we got all of the methods of transportation to the hub in one shot here!

This was a pretty good show.

The submarine ride was fun! Very well done.

A few from the now closed Disneyland Gallery

Looks like he's about to push this tower over!

Another great show!

 

[Shir Kahn]

Really thought that Rhino was fantastic. The last picture was taken from a bobsled on the Matterhorn.

I kind of like this picture, took it while I was waiting for DW one time!

Goofy trying to steal my DW!

Loved this ride!

REALLY loved this ride!

Another great show.

For all you Kingdom Keepers fans, here's a picture of the room above the Firehall!

Not sure what this thing is, but the guy inside waved at us as he went by!

Over so fast.

Ok, so next up really will be the Itinerary for this trip coming up!

 

[Pryncesa]

Thanks for dropping by my PTR. Yours is GREAT!! I absolutely love, love, love all the pictures. Looking forward to reading more and seeing more awesome pix!!

 

[Shir Kahn]

Ok, at last, it's time for the Itinerary! Unless of course, I get distracte....oooh, shiny!

Ok, ok!

We were not able to get a morning flight for a reasonable price unfortunately, so our plane leaves at 4:25pm on March 27th. I'm betting we don't sleep in this time! DW is going to develop a strange, entirely coincidental 48 hour flu two days prior to her Spring Break (March 29th) actually starting and will have to miss those last two days. I do hope she pulls through ok! Everyone knows about this, so she won't be in any trouble.

I know she'll be packing soon, but I likely won't start to pack my stuff until you know, the morning of the 27th. DW would like me to add that guys have it so bloomin' easy. I am not going to argue that one, mostly because I'll probably get thumped on the head if I do! She is in charge of all those things like sunscreen, bandaids, after-sun lotion etc, not because I don't want to help with that, more that I am woefully inept when it comes to packing the essentials. So, here's a to her for taking charge of that! I know I'll remember my camera at least!

A couple of days ago I got a phone call from our travel agent while DW was at work. She said that our travel package, tickets, coupons, luggage tags, etc. had arrived. When I went to pick up DW, I told her that I just wanted to stop in and ask our agent a quick question. She came in with me, I sat down at the desk and said to our agent, "She thinks we're here to ask a quick question!". As Gloria our agent pulled out the tickets etc., DWs face just lit up and she burst out with "Now it really feels real!!"

So, here's what we have planned so far:

March 27th: Flight takes off at 4:25pm from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, lands at Minneapolis at 5:55pm. At 7:15pm, our next flight takes off and lands in Orlando at 11:23pm. All according to the schedule of course, who knows how accurate that's going to be? We're taking the Magical Express to Pop Century, probably going to be there by about 12:15-12:30 from what I've read on these boards. We're going to check in, we've got a preferred room somehow, even though I said at least twice that we didn't want/need one, as the standard rooms at Pop seem to be just as good. Both of us have agreed that it's likely that we're not going to be tired at that point and that we both want to wander around the grounds and take pictures before heading for some sleep.

March 28th: We'll be getting up at probably around 7:30am to grab some breakfast at Everything Pop. I love the food set-up there, tons to choose from and it's great quality! After a quick breakfast, we're going to hop on a bus to Epcot for rope drop. I was kind of surprised that we decided Epcot for the first place to go, as I was thinking we'd probably be making a tradition of seeing the castle first each trip, but this works out better for us this time. Anyway, once the park opens, we're heading over to Soarin' quickly, then we're going to get FPs for Mission Space and hit Test Track. After we're done with the big three, we're just going to let the wind take us wherever it wants until about lunchtime. At lunchtime we're going to leave Epcot and head to Downtown Disney. We're thinking about heading to Earl of Sandwich for lunch and then checking out the availability and price of renting a car for our stay. We really loved having our car on our last trip to WDW, when we drove down from Winnipeg. We used the bus system for the first couple of days and then switched to the car and never looked back.

After wandering around DTD for a while and emptying our pockets on high priced Disney merch, we're going to head to the Contemporary for a 7:30 dinner reservation at the Concourse Steakhouse. I thought the food was wonderful the last time and this will be our last chance, as it is closing in May. After we're done there, it's off to the Magic Kingdom to see the castle at last! MK is open until 3am that night and both DW and I want to be shooed out by security at about 5ish or so!

March 29th: It's back to the Magic Kingdom for us on this day, rope drop is at 8am with early EMH. We'll um, see if we're able to make this one after staying at MK until sunrise. We'll want to be there for at least 9:50am though, as that is when our CRT reservations happen! When making ADRs about a month ago, I said to the customer service rep "I know this is a long shot, but are there any openings at CRT any of the dates we'll be there?" and after about a minute she said "I do have an opening on the 29th." I couldn't believe it! After reading these boards for months, I had the impression that I'd have to call at the exact perfect millisecond 180 days in advance at too-early-in-the-morning o'clock to have any sort of chance at breakfast reservations there! DW was somewhat happy about this as well.

I'm looking very forward to seeing CoP, Space Mountain, Pirates, HM and if you can believe it, IASW! I actually love IASW! I am very much looking forward to skipping CBJ as well! A couple of musts on this day will be:
1 - Dole Whips!
2 - Frozen Lemonaid!
3 - Churros!
4 - Mrs Pott's Cupboard for some ice cream!
5 - Hotdogs from Caseys
6 - We have to find some Mickey Crocs for DW and possibly myself too
7 - I'm sure there's more, but I forget what they might be

We don't have any reservations for lunch or supper this day. We figure we'll maybe do Pecos Bills for lunch and Cosmic Ray's for supper.

The park is open until 12am this day, so we'll probably be back at Pop by 1am.

More to come!

 

[Shir Kahn]

Ok, time for the next addition!

March 30th: Looking forward to this day. We'll be arriving at MK for our 8:30am Keys to the Kingdom tour! I've heard mostly good things about this tour. The only bad things I've heard are when people get a guide that just isn't into it. Here's hoping we get a good one! We have reservations at Tony's Town Square at 7:30pm. I seem to remember liking Tony's, even though I've read a lot of negative reviews. MK is open until 2am this day, so we'll probably get back to Pop by about 3:30am.

March 31st: It's time to hit MGM! Yes, I know the name changed, but I'm stubborn as a mule. I suppose in a couple of decades or so, I'll start calling it by its new name. So with a wonderful 4 hours of sleep under our belts, we're going to stagger up to the gate around 8:30am to get ready to rush to one of my favorites, Rock 'n' Rollercoaster! A nice upside down rollercoaster is just what one needs on little sleep and first thing in the morning! At 11am, we're going to be heading to another not-so-wonderfully reviewed restaurant, Sci-Fi! DW has been wanting to go here for a long time, so we're going. It's her birthday today by-the-way! She's turning...ouch! Nevermind. Around 4:10pm, we have reservations at The Brown Derby for our Fantasmic Package! We for some reason didn't see Fantasmic at WDW last time we were there. On the videos, it looks much better than the show at DL and we though the DL show was wonderful! Very much looking forward to this one. MGM is open until 1am this night, I'm wondering if we'll make it.

April 1st: Yay, Epcot again! We're going to get up, have breakfast at Everything Pop and then head to Epcot for rope drop. Sleep is for the weak! We have lunch reservations at Coral Reef for 11:30am this day and we think we'll probably be hitting the Liberty Inn for supper. This will be our first chance to watch Illuminations, which I absolutely love! Epcot closes at midnight this night, so off to bed for about 1:30am.

April 2nd: Off to see some animals! First, the usual breakfast at Everything Pop, then off to AK for rope drop at 9am. We're planning to head straight to the safari first thing and the trail right after that. Then it's off to hit Expedition Everest, another of my favorites. We're planning on going to the Flame Tree BBQ for lunch, although DW isn't quite so thrilled about this one, and Tusker House at 7:20pm for supper. AK is open until 11pm this night, an early night for us maybe? Here's a couple of AK pictures from our trip in August 2006:

April 3rd: It's back to MK for this day. But wait, a change in our habits! We're not eating at Everything Pop for breakfast this morning, it's off to the Crystal Palace for 8:05am breakfast reservations! I'm really looking forward to this one as well! Using the advice of a poster on the disboards, we're going to get in for our reservations as quickly as possible while other people are taking pictures of the empty park, eat and interact with the characters and then get out of there! Then, while everyone else is eating, we should really have the castle and main street view to ourselves! Hoping it works, I'll be taking pictures from the moment we enter MK anyway, so I should get some great shots regardless. This is our only reservation for today, we were thinking of doing the Main Street Bake Shop for lunch and Columbia Harbour House for supper. MK is open until 2am this night.

Some pictures from last trip:

April 4th: Back to Epcot and our usual routine, eating at Everything Pop, getting to Epcot for rope drop, rushing to one of the big three, etc. Eating lunch at Sunshine Seasons and then supper at Le Cellier at 8:00pm. There were no other time slots open at Le Cellier for supper on this date. I've read that the CMs will let you leave your table to watch Illuminations and then head back in. We'll probably do this if it's possible.

One of my favorite pictures going to Epcot:

I don't know if this will work, but here are a couple of horrible videos I've uploaded to photobucket. They're from the Pentax and I didn't have a great spot, so not very good quality. Better than nothing though!







April 5th: Our last full day. We're going to be spending it in MK. We have reservations for the Plaza Restaurant for 11am and supper reservations at the Liberty Tree Tavern at 5pm. Unfortunately, no EMH for this day at any of the 4 main parks. Oh well, we'll probably be exhausted by this time anyway!

April 6th: We'll be getting up really early today, walking around Pop Century for a while, having breakfast at where else, Everything Pop. I think we might use our park hoppers to the max this morning and try and hit as many of our favorites as we can before lunch. At around noon, it's onto the Magical Express to head to the airport. Our plane leaves at 3:15pm to begin our 5 month prison sentence until we get back home to WDW in August!

I think I might have enough time between this trip and the summer trip to upload most of the pictures we're going to take this trip. I'm going to be doing a couple of different reports when we get home from this trip. One will be a regular trip report with many, many more pictures than were in this one. The other is going to be a food trip report! Yep, I'm going to take pictures of everything we eat and make people buy new keyboards because they've drooled all over the old ones. DW is fully supportive of this plan and has agreed not to start eating until good shots have been obtained!

There are a couple of things that we're going to try and do/experience/eat that I didn't manage to fit in anywhere in this PTR. We want to try Sleepy Hollow and DW really wants to try Yorkshire fish'n'chips. We'd really like to head over to Beaches 'n' Cream to get some ice cream. Probably not going to attempt the Kitchen Sink though. I'm going to probably average about 2 dole whips a day. I'll have to eat extras for the days we're not in MK! I've also heard that there are chocolate covered frozen bananas at vendors here and there! I'll have to try one of those! And churros! Must have churros! Sounds like all we're going to be doing is eating while we're there! I've heard that calories don't count at WDW though, so that should be ok!

So I think that's about it for my PTR, 11 days to go now! I may update this if anything new develops. Here's hoping you all get to go to WDW soon and often! Thanks for reading my PTR!

 

[Msslaydbug]

I can't wait to read your trip report !

Love your cameras. I am a huge Canon fan. I can't wait to see how your pictures turn out with your new SD870IS. I went back and forth on a camera for this vacation. Here at home I have a photography business and I shoot with the 30d and back up with the XTi - no way am I lugging either one on vacation with me !

I wanted a smaller option and was kicking around the SD lines but ended up with the SX100. I already have the S1 and love it as well but it is the older model - but still no need to invest in the new one since the old one works just fine

Anyway .........

I can't wait to see all the pictures you post !!

 

[duckyislost]

Wow, what a great start! We're going to be in the world April 1-5, so overlapping with you. I can't wait to see all your pics as you will no doubt get to see much more than us, we have a preschooler in tow. Ah, to be a commando again....

Love, love that pink castle pic! -ducky

 

[Shir Kahn]

Thanks for the kind words. It was a lot of fun putting this together. I'm wondering if I should have them move this to the trip report board and continue on as an actual trip report or start a new thread with a link to this PTR? What would you do?

 

[Disney Brat]

Well I am joining in!! I found you through your sig when I was over at Scotts PTR!! Great job on your PTR!! As for your TR and PTR, a lot of people just keep adding their TR to the PTR and changing the title to match as you go. That is what I have seen so far anyways... but there are also quite a few seperate ones as well. I guess it is whatever you would prefer to do, just let us know you new link if you are going to do a seperate thread!!

Can't wait to hear more!

 

[Shir Kahn]

I think I'll probably just ask for this one to be moved once I start my real trip report then. Real trip reports actually, as I'll be doing the dining TR as well as the regular one. I didn't realize that it would be this much fun to write them!

Hmm, how does one go about changing the title?

 

[Msslaydbug]

You click on edit for your original post and then advanced edit - you can then change the title !

 

[Shir Kahn]

You click on edit for your original post and then advanced edit - you can then change the title !

Thanks very much!

 

[Disney Brat]

You must be getting excitied!! Almost ready to do the one week countdown!!

 

[Hollywoodhaha]

reservations for brown derby on the 31st in the afternoon?

we do too around that time, i think!!

see ya there