Welcome (almost) to another weekend ladies and a gentleman here and there! Mine are starting to fill up with basketball again 
and this weekend I need to do a little birthday shopping for our soon to be 14 year old:
And some Disney-work-trip shopping for me! Chris's birthday is the 22nd and I leave the 23rd so 13 days from today. It's coming so fast! When it gets a little closer I'll give you guys a little rundown of our itinerary. For now I'll move right back in to July!
I left off with us leaving off after our Maya Grill dinner
Well, at least thumbs down for me. But we were all looking forward to our next destination, After Hours at Hollywood Studios!
FYI Chris took this artistic picture lol. And also FYI, Forky was gone by our Sept. trip! I was very sad, also sad that I couldn't find a Forky plush (for myself) because he's one of my 2 favorite characters from TS4 along with these guys:
But I digress-
We arrived before the official start time so we could watch what is right now the Wonderful World of Animation although I honestly cannot remember if that's what it was called in July - I seem to think not. But you know what I mean, that cute show with all the classic Disney movie clip projections. The kids had never seen that so we watched and it was still about 10 minutes before official "AH" time! This was during the TOT refurb where one side was down and then the other, so I was afraid we wouldn't get to ride over and over which was my main goal for the night. Therefore we went right there and since the wait time was 50 minutes we did this walk on instead:
And believe it or not Chris did have a good time and asked to do it again, so we did!
Picture #1 Chris: "do I like this?"
Picture #2 Chris: "you know, I think I Do like this??"
It was his 2nd and 3rd time on and afterwards he pronounced it a ride he did, in fact like. Oh and look at Ricky, not his usual ride face!
By now it was officially After Hours and after 2 rides on RnRc we were ready to move on. Of course I wanted to ride TOT but the wait was still at 40 and I was hoping that was the day crowd not gone yet. Instead we moved in to Toy Story Land and something else Chris wanted to do:
This was a walk on, yay! It had been awhile since we'd done this and I'd forgotten how long the walk was from the ride exit back into the land.......we then moved on to SDD and a posted 30 minute wait which was closer to 20. Not horrible but not as good as when we did this in January and had no wait to 8 minute waits. The boys had ridden this back in Nov. and neither were impressed so we only did this once.
At this point Ricky was slowing down so we stopped for some Mickey ice cream and popcorn. As some of you know, he was just about nearing clearance for his ACL injury (today was July 5th and he'd be cleared on the 22nd) so his knee was feeling fine. He'd been back to playing basketball although not full force, and he'd been training at a sports facility since April, 4 days a week, pretty damn hard. I mean the things he does there make me exhausted just hearing about them. Bottom line he was feeling good and back to being really active before we left, but earlier in the day at AK his RIGHT foot started bothering him
His LEFT knee was the injured one. So after a good 90 minutes in HS it was noticeably bothering him.
After our snack we saw that TOT was down to a mere 30 minutes and no way was I leaving without riding, so we decided to go back that way. We had one thing left to do in TSL though! I'd been texting with Susan
@suse66 who was there with here DH celebrating their anniversary, and after "knowing" each other for quite some time here we were hoping to finally meet up in person. And that we did!
We hung out for a few minutes chatting, introducing everyone
It was really nice to meet and Ricky enjoyed talking to her DH Bill about basketball. However time is $$ during these events and they had some characters to meet while we were on our Sunset Blvd mission so we said our good-byes and parted ways. I'm hopeful and confident we'll meet up again in the future!
TOT was up to 40 again when we got there; So disappointing. We rode numerous times during AH in January with NO wait to the point that we were walking right through the library, not watching the pre-show. But this was a full blown solid 40 minute long line that in actuality was 30, which is way too long for an AH event. Chris does not like TOT at all so he sat this out and while it doesn't make me nervous anymore to leave him waiting, I just didn't like it being that I'd wanted us to experience this as a family. But I wanted to ride TOT more lol.
Popcorn on TOT what??? I didn't notice when we left but I guarantee there was at least one piece on the floor. Oh and Ricky's "ride face" is back complete with looking off in the corner at nothing. Unless.......did he see a
Also not sure what's going on with my hair? It looks like I have extensions in the back and I swear I don't. I do have 40 gallons of hair though so I guess that's it!
The wait time was up to freakin' FIFTY when we got off. Steve said it would probably be no longer than 40, and since it was only 11 if Ricky and I wanted to ride we should and he'd take Chris somewhere. But I don't wait in a posted 50 minute TOT line ever so that was a hard nope. Ricky's foot was really hurting at this point and he was done; I needed at least one more ride so Chris and I opted for our 3rd ride on RnRc which was still a nice walk on:
And with this - we were done. Sadly done. We left about 30 minutes before it ended and only rode 5 attractions, pathetic! We definitely could have done more, we could have done TSM again as a walk on, or SDD with another 20 minute wait, and RnRc was a walk on all night. But between Ricky's foot and my anger over the TOT wait times we all felt it was time to go. So this my friends is what was worse than that pathetic looking Maya Grill chicken, the fact that during a 3 hour special event at HS I only got to ride TOT 1 time. I hang my head in defeat and shame
The bus to the Contemporary came quick so we boarded with some popcorn and also a purchased pretzel for the boys because popcorn and ice cream were nice but weren't cutting it. I was severely disappointed in this event this time around and don't know that I'd do it again even though I know the TOT thing had mostly to do with them not running both sides................I still read good reviews of all the AH's so I'm hoping it's not just that they 've increased ticket sales for all of these. I did AH at MK in May with
@Elevationist ,
@IowaTater and
@Jenny Sanders and her DH Joe and it was amazing! It was like there was hardly anyone else in the park! Steve and I are doing it again with Jenny and Joe in January and I'm crossing my fingers that one is just as great.
When we got back to the room we got ice for Ricky's foot as his ankle was looking a tad swollen - ugh this kid and his injuries! We were sleeping in the next morning with no big plans but it ended up being probably the best morning of the trip
Anyway while they were here they booked their very first Disney vacation!! Not only is it Hayden's but my DIL Candace's first trip
Now I just have to count down the days!!!
Did you ever see them in concert?
Wanting to know what’s mor disappointing than that chicken...
And yes it does seem blasphemous to write that lol. We did 4 wonderful mnsshp's and then the one last year was SO crowded it was ok but not as special as in the past, so it soured me a bit. Not to mention the taking away of the villain's stage show with the M&G after and the fact that the special party characters I wanted to meet were "roaming" and hard to actually meet 
I'm going this month for work and I'll see what I think, but HHN was just so.....relaxing believe it or not! Nothing to run to and with the EP nothing felt crowded.
When he says that, my DIL just look at each other and smile knowingly lol
On the other hand for instance Aerosmith whom I love and Motely Crue, both groups I've seen numerous times, if they toured without certain original members I don't think I'd see them anymore so I get you!
I'm glad you're here! I showed Billie your post to make her smile and she was very happy
Forky!
