A very overdue Holiday TR ~ A toddler, a reunion & Thanksgiving ~ Update 9/17

[Sunset Cliffs]

Wedding plans are going well! Some stuff for our center pieces came in last week! I'm not posting anywhere else. But, I will be doing a PTR and a TR for our "Disney-moon" next year!

On a side note, today was Little Guy's first day of his second year of pre-school. I was sad all day.

Yay! Wedding planning is so fun. All the details can be stressful, but it always ends up so beautiful! I can't wait for you to start your PTR. It's never too early to start, right?

Oh no! Preschool. I totally understand. You poor thing! We decided to start Dylan in preschool this year, just 2 days a week for the mornings. It was kind of a last minute decision and suddenly it was time for him to go. He has enjoyed it so far, and I went with him the first day to drop him off (I'm usually at work by that time, so Todd drops him off). He just hugged me, said, "Bye mom." and walked inside. No tears. Nothing. Which was good & bad, since I didn't have to go back to work a crying mess. I will post a picture after these replies so you can see him now. He looks so grown up, and him going to preschool a couple of days a week is a big transition for us!

It's funny. In dream analysis, the one driving the car is "in control" or the boss of the situation. If you have a dream where you are driving, you are in control. Maybe D gets that on a subconcious level. (that's supposed to be him driving lol)

I don't think there was any subconscious about it. He wanted to drive the car and he wanted me to be the passenger in the back! I think he is sick of being strapped in the back seat all the time. We switched him to riding in my Jeep the other day (he is always in Todd's car), and he kept telling me how "beautiful" my car was and how much fun he had in my car. I think he needs to get out more. lol.

I love your POR pictures. It is very hard to see how pretty POR is in pictures, it is sooooo much prettier in person.

I never got a chance to walk the grounds at night. DH did one night and said it was beautiful. I had a cold during our trip and as soon as we would return I would be in bed, completely out. I thought about staying there for our one night stay but I want to wait until the refurb is done to go back.

Ugh, I don't get that guy that sat down next to you.

Poor Dylan, being forced to go to Epcot instead of being able to swim. That pool does look inviting.

Chefs is on my must do list for our next full trip. I hope Remy is still there since Ratatouille is one of my favorite movies. The onion soup looks so good.

I never realized how pretty POR is until we were there for a few days. Everywhere you look is so pleasant to look at. That's disappointing that you were sick and had to go straight to bed. One of the things I kept thinking was that they used their lighting really well at night, and there was a total feeling of safety when I was walking around by myself.

Yeah, someday Dylan will realize how good he has it on vacation. When I was a kid, we never got to do big trips like this. He loves to swim though, so I don't blame him.

The onion soup was one of the best I have ever had. I like that kind of soup, but normally Todd doesn't, since he is not a big onion person. I think he ate at least half of it, and he wished he had ordered his own. Chefs was great!

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

I wanted to just post a current picture of Dylan, for all of you that have followed along with my past TRs. It has been almost a year since this trip that I am writing about right now, and he is so much bigger.

Tink mentioned her Little Guy going to preschool, and we have started Dylan in preschool a couple of days a week this year. He is really liking it and we are happy that he is going, but it is a big transition for us!

This picture is of him about a month ago before we went to church. This was just a few days before preschool started, and I thought he looked like such a big boy. He is still 3 right now, but turns 4 next week. I wish this was his first day of school picture but they tell us to dress him to play and get dirty. No cute clothes for the first day of school. Once I upload his 1st day pictures, I will post those too.

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and we were expecting bigger crowds today, so the plan was to get up early and get to the AK before it got too hot or too crowded. So far on this trip, the weather had been perfect. It was hot, but not nearly as hot as during the summer time, and I prefer being hot to being cold. It was freezing back at home so I wasn’t going to complain about the heat!

Todd got up at 7:00 am to shower and I was up by 7:30. We both got ready for the day and woke Dylan up at 8:00. After getting him ready, eating a quick snack in the room and packing our bag for the day, we were all ready to go by 8:35. Considering our goal was to leave at 8:30, I was impressed with our group! We drove all 3 of our cars to the park this day and we pulled in right around 9:00. I love that free parking is included when you stay on-property! We walked to the entrance of the park since it was so close and we didn’t want to wait for the tram. Once we got to the entrance, we found a PP person taking pictures by the Christmas tree, so we took advantage of that.

Dylan was being super clingy this morning, and he looks like a little monkey baby in a lot of these pictures. Ha, ha.

The Christmas decorations are so unique at the AK. They must have the most creative people working for Disney, because I could never come up with the things that they do.

Our plan was to get a Fastpass at EE and then go to the Safari. If we were going to do a lot of walking, we wanted it to be early in the day when we weren’t tired & it wasn’t too hot. We had missed rope drop, so there wasn’t a ton of people walking in a pack, so we made it through the Oasis pretty quickly, but stopped for a couple more PP pictures in front of the tree.

We took a right at the Tree and headed towards EE. There was not quite the herd of people that you get during rope drop, but there were still quite a few. Not very many people were stopping at other attractions. Everyone was heading for EE. I felt bad because there is so much detail to this park and I wanted Bryan to see it and enjoy it. Angelyn said we would slow down once there were more people in the park. Right now we were on a mission. We made it to EE and the FP return time was for 10:30, which was only an hour away. Perfect. We got our FP’s and then saw that there was about 15 people in the SRL, so we decided to get in that line. We were on the ride in no time at all. There was a mix up with the loading, and my dad and Elijah ended up riding together anyway. I LOVE THIS RIDE! It is my favorite of all the coasters at WDW. The only disappointing thing is that the Yeti was not moving around. They just used the strobe light effect on him again. Is that a permanent situation now?

My mom stayed with Dylan since she doesn’t ride many of the coasters. Dylan loves to play on the stairs right outside the exit. She told me that every time a train would go down the big drop, Dylan would ask if that was the fast train that mommy & daddy were on. He kept calling it the “snowy mountain train ride” the whole trip. Now that we are back home, you can see mountains all around our town with snow on top of them. A few months after we got home, Dylan kept referring to the mountains as “scary”. I asked him why & he kept talking about the “snowy train ride”. I finally realized that he thought all tall mountains with snow on them had a roller coaster at the top. So funny.

We walked around to the Safari, but it took forever to get there because of the tight walkways in that area. When Disney designed the park, did they not realize the massive amounts of people that would be going to EE? Not only that, but there are a lot of people waiting around for their group that is riding on the coaster. It was so congested with strollers and people just standing around.

Once we got closer to the Safari, we saw Divine. She was so well hidden that we almost walked right past her.

Can you see her?

She is so beautiful! She blends in so well, that a lot of people walked right by her without seeing her. She finally started to cross the road and a guy almost hit her with his stroller because he wasn’t paying attention. We watched her for a few minutes and she is amazing, the way she can move on those stilts. She was wrapping herself around trees and basically doing crazy yoga moves. She would make eye contact with people and smile. Such a flirt! This is the 2nd or 3rd time we have seen her and it is great every time.

The posted time at the Safari was 45 minutes, but we waited no longer than 20. It was nice & cool in line, not sweaty & gross like it usually is if you go later in the day. It was so nice to be there early and avoid the heat. This park is so humid and traps in the heat more than other parks. We took advantage of waiting in line to take some family pictures.

I love this picture. Angelyn took this while I was talking to Dylan. He is such a sweet little boy.

We had a great driver. She was a young blonde girl, who was VERY into the acting part of the job (poachers chasing you, etc). Her voice sounds just like the princesses in the stage shows and she was overly animated in everything she said. I have no doubt that she was just trying to earn her way into the performing part of Disney, but for now she was stuck being a Safari driver. Lol. She was still very entertaining, which was good because the jeeps were backed up from the beginning of the ride and we went really slow. That would have been really nice, if there had been any animals out. You could tell the driver was really trying to find animals to point out to us, but it was very sparse for the first half of the ride.

I won’t post all of the animal pictures, but there were a few good moments. The white rhino was just hanging out…

The baby giraffe was hiding in the tall grass while he ate.

My favorite moment of the Safari. The baby elephant. The real one, not the one rescued from the poachers at the end. Lol. The baby was just hanging out with the mama elephant and it was the sweetest thing to observe. I was scrambling to get my camera turned on and missed some really good photos. By the time I got it on, they had turned to walk away, but the mama put her trunk around the baby and was hugging/guiding it along. It brought tears to my eyes. The maternal instinct is strong in every mother, not just humans.

I never get tired of looking at these trees.

The ride took so long that by the time we got off, there was not time to walk on the Pangani Forest trail like we had planned on doing. We wanted to make the 11:30 showing of the Nemo show. We power walked all the way back around past EE to the Nemo building. It is so frustrating that there is no faster way to get there, than to take that long walk around the water. We got there about 10 minutes early but we were still very far back in line. They let most of the people in, but we had to wait. Then they let us in, but we were sitting on the bottom row of the bleachers in the back. They are terrible seats for seeing the stage. Here is the view, when I stood up.

I sat Dylan on my lap so he got a little higher to see. He was wiggly and wanted to leave, but I told him no. The show started going and he was fine…until the sharks came on stage. He got scared of them and even after they were off the stage, he could not recover. He just wanted to leave. Then he said he had to go potty. I thought it was a trick to get us to leave the show, so I told him he needed to wait. It wasn’t a trick, and I should have listened to him. He peed all over my lap. This was a day that we had not put pull-ups on him, just regular underwear, so we both got soaked. I took him to the bathroom outside and changed all of his clothes, but my pants were still wet. We sat outside in the sun to let my pants dry and wait for everyone else to come out of the show, which was about 10 more minutes. I felt really bad about not believing Dylan and realized that until he was fully potty trained, I have to trust that he is telling me the truth and not just using it as a manipulation. For what it’s worth, after we got him changed, he had a great time playing outside and forgot all about it.

Coming up next…a delicious and totally annoying lunch.

 

[eecteacher82]

Oh my goodness! Dylan looks so grown up! I'm glad he is liking preschool! We actually just started Olivia in preschool as well. Just 2 mornings a week, but it was time to break the mommy bond since we literally spend all day, everyday together and have since she was born! She loves it as well and I'm glad we decided on it.

Isn't the not listening to them when they say they have to go to the bathroom the worst! I have had the exact same thing happen to me when we were still potty training Olivia. We learned quickly that when she would go, she wouldn't go all the way, so 10 minutes later she would have to go again, and of course we knew she had just gone. It was so much nicer when we finally got her to go all the way at once! I'm glad you didn't let it ruin your day! Can't wait to see how the rest of the day went and how bad the crowds got!

 

[Purple Opal]

I will only add one photo to supplement the day: my favorite safari photo.

Every time we have done the safari, we see these birds doing this same pose:

I used to think the birds were doing it for intimidation (i.e., to look bigger) when the jeeps went by. But Mom said they are warming up or else drying off.

Either way, I think it's hilarious and I love it every time.

 

[basketkat]

The baby elephant pictures melted my heart... so precious!!!!

Your photopass pictures are really nice too!!! I love family photos!

Dylan looks so sweet and grown up...that is great that he is enjoying preschool so much!!!

Don't feel bad about the accident...I think it has happened to all of us! My oldest was sitting on my lap at Disney Princesses on Ice when she told me she needed to go potty...we had JUST gone, so I thought she just wanted to get up...nope.... It was about 20 degrees outside when we left and my jeans were still soaking wet! No fun...lol!

 

[tinkgurl]

Oh my gosh, I cannot believe how big he is! I got teary-eyed just looking at that pic. He reminds me so much of Little Guy.

 

[LilAnn]

Wait, what?! When did Dylan get so big and grown up? Oh my gosh, such a little man now! They just grow up so fast, don't they?

Oh, I totally died when I read your "peeing accident" story. I tend to err on the opposite end of the spectrum. When she tells me she has to go, she usually has to go and is doing the dance to prove it. Poor you for having to go the rest of the day with pee-stained pants.

 

[MEK]

I read your update BEFORE I went to work, so I saw all your fun pictures. Great PP pics! Your son is soooooooo cute. What a handsome young man. Bummer about the peeing accident. I, like LilAnn, was forever asking my kids if they had to go to the bathroom. I was almost a nag about it.

Sorry you missed Nemo. did you get to see it later? It's so cute.

 

[Dugette]

Wow, Dylan's really growing up! Seeing as your first TR was one of the very first ones I read, the little 21-month-old version is still stuck in my head. He's such a big boy now. But still adorable!

Sounds like a nice start to your day at AK. Great Photopass pics. As for the Yeti, I've only seen him in "B mode." I don't think there are any plans to fix him anytime soon. I'm bummed about that, as I'd really love to see him do what he was built to do. Oh, well. Great that you got to see DeVine--so fun to watch her. Too bad there weren't many animals out on safari. Adorable picture of Luna (baby elephant) and her mom, though! Sorry about the Nemo incident.

 

[BurleyGirl]

I am enjoying your TR! We are going next year during the same time you went last year, so I am enjoying getting a feel for what to expect. Also enjoyed your review of Chefs de France...I think I'll give it a little more consideration. I did not realize that the Osborne Lights were open prior to Thanksgiving, and am hoping that will be the same when we are there. Thanks for posting!

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

Oh my goodness! Dylan looks so grown up! I'm glad he is liking preschool! We actually just started Olivia in preschool as well. Just 2 mornings a week, but it was time to break the mommy bond since we literally spend all day, everyday together and have since she was born! She loves it as well and I'm glad we decided on it.

Isn't the not listening to them when they say they have to go to the bathroom the worst! I have had the exact same thing happen to me when we were still potty training Olivia. We learned quickly that when she would go, she wouldn't go all the way, so 10 minutes later she would have to go again, and of course we knew she had just gone. It was so much nicer when we finally got her to go all the way at once! I'm glad you didn't let it ruin your day! Can't wait to see how the rest of the day went and how bad the crowds got!

Preschool has been great for him. His teacher is very sweet and will give us updates when Todd picks him up every day as to how he is doing. It is a very small preschool so there are only 8 kids in his class (with 2 teachers!!) so he is getting a lot of individual attention. She said he is still pretty quiet at school, which is interesting to us, since he has such a big personality when he is around us. I'm sure when he settles in, he will come out of his shell a little more.

I think I didn't trust him about needing to go potty because we were so close to being done with training before we went on the trip. I realized after this moment that the momentum we had gained was going to stall out or revert while we were on vacation. He was out of his routine too much. I felt so bad about it, but after he was in dry clothes he was completely happy climbing on some rocks outside & forgot about it.

I will only add one photo to supplement the day: my favorite safari photo.

Every time we have done the safari, we see these birds doing this same pose:

I used to think the birds were doing it for intimidation (i.e., to look bigger) when the jeeps went by. But Mom said they are warming up or else drying off.

Either way, I think it's hilarious and I love it every time.

I'm glad you have that picture. I notice them sitting like this every time we go on the Safari, and I always thought it was an intimidation thing too. Of course, the real reason is something boring like they are cold and are trying to warm up in the sun.

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

The baby elephant pictures melted my heart... so precious!!!!

Your photopass pictures are really nice too!!! I love family photos!

Dylan looks so sweet and grown up...that is great that he is enjoying preschool so much!!!

Don't feel bad about the accident...I think it has happened to all of us! My oldest was sitting on my lap at Disney Princesses on Ice when she told me she needed to go potty...we had JUST gone, so I thought she just wanted to get up...nope.... It was about 20 degrees outside when we left and my jeans were still soaking wet! No fun...lol!

I loved the baby elephant pictures too. Some of my favorites from the whole trip. I think the driver said something about elephants staying with their mothers for 10 years at least (?), which is 2nd only to the human species. That made me love it even more.

This was our first time doing PP, and I'm glad we did it. We mostly got group family photos, which is exactly what I wanted.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has made that mistake. I felt terrible but after he got over it, I got over it. It was better than letting it ruin the day. I think that if it was cold outside, I would have been more unhappy about it, but it was so hot that my pants dried pretty quickly.

Oh my gosh, I cannot believe how big he is! I got teary-eyed just looking at that pic. He reminds me so much of Little Guy.

I knew you would like that picture. The boys are both turning into little boys and losing their toddler-ness. It's so cute but I get sad about it too. His birthday was this week, and I can't believe he is 4 now.

Wait, what?! When did Dylan get so big and grown up? Oh my gosh, such a little man now! They just grow up so fast, don't they?

Oh, I totally died when I read your "peeing accident" story. I tend to err on the opposite end of the spectrum. When she tells me she has to go, she usually has to go and is doing the dance to prove it. Poor you for having to go the rest of the day with pee-stained pants.

I feel the same way about your daughter. They grow up more quickly than I realized. I am trying to figure out a way for you & I & Tink to all get our kids together before they get too big.

Dylan was at the point where I should have trusted him, but because he was being squirmy and asking to leave for the whole show, I thought he was just using it. It was totally my fault, and I was so glad that I had brought an extra set of clothes for him. My pants dried really quickly because it was getting hot outside, so it could have been much worse. I learned my lesson though! We had no more accidents on this trip.

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

I read your update BEFORE I went to work, so I saw all your fun pictures. Great PP pics! Your son is soooooooo cute. What a handsome young man. Bummer about the peeing accident. I, like LilAnn, was forever asking my kids if they had to go to the bathroom. I was almost a nag about it.

Sorry you missed Nemo. did you get to see it later? It's so cute.

I had seen Nemo before and I really like the show. Last time Dylan had fallen asleep during it, so I wanted him to get to see it this time. I think that was my problem. Trying to force an issue that I shouldn't have. We just tried to get Dylan to go every couple of hours, even if he didn't ask to go. If it was convenient to take him, we would. That way we weren't allowing it to get to an emergency situation.

I love that picture of Dylan too. It is one of my favorites from the last few months.

I see your ticker for your upcoming trip to the deep South. WHere are you going? We have been considering a trip in that area, but have no idea where to start...

Wow, Dylan's really growing up! Seeing as your first TR was one of the very first ones I read, the little 21-month-old version is still stuck in my head. He's such a big boy now. But still adorable!

Sounds like a nice start to your day at AK. Great Photopass pics. As for the Yeti, I've only seen him in "B mode." I don't think there are any plans to fix him anytime soon. I'm bummed about that, as I'd really love to see him do what he was built to do. Oh, well. Great that you got to see DeVine--so fun to watch her. Too bad there weren't many animals out on safari. Adorable picture of Luna (baby elephant) and her mom, though! Sorry about the Nemo incident.

The 21-month old version is still stuck in my head too (at times). I think it is because I want him to stay small for a little while longer. He has always been a taller kid for his age, so sometimes I feel like we missed some of the "baby" times, you know?

I was really happy to get to experience PP this time. It was just a bonus to get to have all of the holiday stuff up. The first few times we rode EE, the Yeti was fully functional and he was scary! I remember feeling like he was reaching down to grab you, right as you started down the big hill and he felt very real. I wish they would fix him. DeVine is so beautiful! That girl is very talented with what she does. I like watching other people's reactions to her, when they are not expecting to see her.

I am enjoying your TR! We are going next year during the same time you went last year, so I am enjoying getting a feel for what to expect. Also enjoyed your review of Chefs de France...I think I'll give it a little more consideration. I did not realize that the Osborne Lights were open prior to Thanksgiving, and am hoping that will be the same when we are there. Thanks for posting!

Thank you for reading! I think that it is the best time of year to go, although the actual weekend of Thanksgiving was pretty busy everywhere we went. I think the Osbourne Lights will be up around that time again. I remember reading that they try to have all lights up around the whole World by the Thanksgiving weekend, so it might be hit & miss at certain places before the actual holiday. The lights went up at our resort the night before Thanksgiving. We got to see them as we were checking out.

I was not expecting to like Chefs as much as I did. It is expensive, but we probably could have shared some food and brought the price down a little. I just didn't know what Dylan would like to eat, so I wanted to try a few different things. Next time, I think I will bring a PB&J sandwich for him so that I know he has something to eat, then we will share something. We liked everything that we got, and we will probably try to go back next time if we can fit it in.

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

After everyone came out of the Nemo show, we had planned to head over to EE to use our FPs, but Angelyn had to leave the AK at 1:00 because she had a phone call she needed to take for work by 2:00. We were all hungry so we decided to eat lunch first and then she could leave. We went to the Flame Tree BBQ, which is a must do for Todd when we go to the AK. He LOVES the BBQ sauce here, and has tried to make it at home from a recipe online. He got the ribs and I got the smoke turkey breast sandwich.

We found a table at the very bottom of the seating area, down near the water. It was pretty crowded and we had to save 2 tables while we waited for everyone to get their orders. I had sent Angelyn a text to tell her where we were sitting, but after 20 minutes they had still not come to find us. We spent the time looking at EE and watching Dylan throw little pebbles into the bushes. He was pretending to be a baseball pitcher and was doing a pretty good imitation of winding up for a pitch. My mom took this picture because she loved the feathers that were just floating in the breeze.

After about ½ hour, Angelyn and Bryan finally came down with their food. She was angry because they had lost their order, and even though they were standing at the counter in front of the server, they kept skipping them and handing food to people behind them. Every few minutes they would show the receipt to the CM, and the CM would ask someone else to check on it and then kept taking orders. They stood at the counter for 20 minutes (in front of the same CM) and no one would help them. They finally asked for a manager, who came over and said they would look into it, and finally got their food. Angelyn said it was total chaos in the background and it was figured out that someone probably threw away their receipt so they had no record of their order. Since she was in a time crunch, it felt even that much more frustrating to her. I don’t think there was an apology or anything. They finally figured out how to hand them their order (which wasn’t complicated) and that was the end of it. We all enjoyed our food, but it was kind of ruined by the situation for her, and she said she will probably never eat there again, not because the food was bad but because she is upset at the lack of customer service. I felt bad because it is one of our favorite places to eat and I wanted them to enjoy it.

After lunch, she & Bryan left so that she could get back for her phone call. As we were strolling along, we found a cart with a bunch of little drums and other noise makers. Of course, Dylan wanted to play with everything.

Elijah is a very good drummer and started messing around on the drums. He is very good! I am trying to post video for the first time. We’ll see if it works!





Did it work for you?

By that point, Dylan was getting cranky & it was hot, so we decided to leave the park and go back for a swim and a nap. We waited for a tram since all of us were tired and didn’t want to walk.

Pretty tree

We got off the tram and realized that none of us could remember our row for the parking lot. We had walked up to the entrance in the morning and had not paid attention. 7 adults and not one of us could remember. We finally found our row and got in our cars.

As we were walking around, I was noticing how many different license plates were on all of the cars. I started taking pictures of all of the plates that were parked in our row ONLY, just to see how many there were. In our row there was Georgia, Virginia, Missouri, S. Carolina, Texas, N. Carolina, Illinois, New York, & New Jersey. It became a game for the rest of the trip to look for the license plate from the state that was furthest away from Florida. At one point later in the week, we saw a plate from California! Pretty amazing to see how far people will travel for Mickey Mouse.

Todd dropped me off at the front to fill up our mugs and by the time I got back to the room, they were both ready to swim. We walked over to the big pool, which took less than 5 minutes to get to. Even though POR is huge, the walking paths are designed very well, and I never felt like it took us very long to get anywhere. Dylan was so happy to finally get in the pool and he had a great time.

Bryan & Elijah showed up to swim as well and all the guys went down the slide, except for Dylan. He didn’t want to go down by himself and he wasn’t allowed to ride with Todd. It turns out that Bryan really loves water slides and wanted to get to a water park before our trip was over. There were a lot more people at the pool on this day, so you could feel that the crowds were starting to show up for the Thanksgiving holiday. The pool was very nice though and it had a lot of chairs in the shade to sit in.

We stayed for about 40 minutes, then went back to the room for Dylan’s nap. Todd caught up on some work and I wrote up my TR while he slept. He woke up about 6:30 and we got ready to go back to AK for EMH. This was one of the main reasons that I was so excited to stay on property. Every time we had gone to AK in the past, it closed before it got dark. It seems like the only way to get to experience AK at night was to go to EMH, so that was one of my main goals for this trip.

We all met for dinner at the food court at POR, just to make it easy and fast. Dylan wanted a kids pizza, I got a turkey sandwich and Todd got a burger. I didn’t write down what anyone else had, besides Angelyn who took advantage of the make your own pasta station. I really like how big the food court is at POR. When it is not crowded, you can have a conversation without shouting. On this night, there was barely anyone there and we had a whole section to ourselves, right next to the drink refill machines. For whatever reason, this was another Disney moment to me because the meal was very relaxed and quiet, and we were all together. Nothing special about it, just a family bonding time.

My mom gave Dylan a plastic sleeve full of little animals for Dylan to play with. I think she had found it at AK that day, and he was so happy with it that he played through the whole dinner. He kept talking about how he had seen all of those same animals on the safari that day. Elijah decided that he was too tired to go back to the park with us, so he stayed at the resort. I’m not sure what he did all night.

We got back in the park around 7:30. My mom had an app on her iPhone that said their was a FOTLK show starting at 8:00. We asked some CM’s just to confirm it, but no one knew the answer for sure so we just walked over. There were not very many people in the park at all! I was so surprised, considering it was the night before Thanksgiving. Since there were so few people in the walkways, it took us no time at all to get over to the show and we arrived 10 minutes early. We got pretty good seats in the Lion section.

Dylan started saying he didn’t want to watch the show and was really whining about it. I reminded him that he had seen this show before and that he really liked it. I realized later that he was scared of seeing Simba in person, because he is a lion. I forget that kids still think the characters are real at this point. Once I figured it out, I told him that Simba was going to stay far away and he calmed down after that.

The show was great of course! I think this is my favorite show at WDW.

I love this picture. I know it is blurry, but it looks so cool to me.

Everyone enjoying the show

Once the show started, Dylan was fine. He didn’t get scared at any of the dark parts and really loved the tumble monkeys. He has started taking gymnastics lessons and he was pretty impressed with all of their flips on the trampoline.

I love the Bird girl the most. She has always been my favorite, and this time was no exception. I love watching her fly and look so free. I want her job! How cool would it be to fly around in the air all day at WDW? The ending is so much fun and I usually get tears in my eyes when I watch it. Not sure why, it just really moves me. I think it’s because it is so joyful.

Continued in next post…

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

After the show, we stopped at the bathroom. When we were done, there was no one around in that area. There were a lot of Christmas lights though and it felt very still and magical. Our cameras took terrible pictures in the dark, but I want to post the pictures anyway, just to show how empty the place was.

We were able to get a few family pics, in front of some lights too.

I really felt like we had the park all to ourselves. We slowly walked back towards the middle of the park, and really took the time to enjoy all of the details of the park as they were lit up. They have done a really good job of highlighting the details at night.

We went to the Tree of Life to check it out up close. Once we started walking up the trail, Dylan started to freak out a little and say that he didn’t want to go in the tunnel. This was referring back to the first night on the Peoplemover, when we went through the dark area on Space Mountain. I had to convince him that it was not going to be too dark and eventually he walked through, but after a while he got in his stroller and pulled the hood over him. I am glad that we are past that stage now!

I feel like you can see the animals so much better at night. They use a lot of spotlights on each animal and it really creates good areas of light and shadows to bring out the detail of the animals. It was a neat experience to have, and again, there was no one on the path with us!

We got to the other side of the trail around 9:00, and we walked towards EE to use our FPs from earlier that day. On the way, we checked the line for Dinosaur and it was not that long, so we decided to do it. Todd took Dylan to look at the rides in the Dinoland area while the rest of us went on the ride. We only waited 5 minutes to get into the movie area and another 5 – 10 to get on the ride. No lines at all!! There was a family with 2 very small girls in front of us. They looked way too small to ride, but the CM measured them and then said, “Well, they will measure them again when you get up to the front”, and let them keep going (!). When they got to the front, the CM’s didn’t even measure them and they put them all in the front row of our car. You could tell that the girls were terrified and the parents just kept going. The girls basically hid their faces in their parents chests throughout the entire ride and were crying. It made me so mad because it was so obvious that they were scared. I still get scared on that ride. I truly have a love/hate thing going with that ride. My face in the picture at the end showed how freaked out I was. Everyone else liked the ride, and thought my face was hilarious in the photo. I wish I would have taken a picture. My mom said she had never ridden it before, which is surprising since she has been there a few times.

We walked to EE and my mom watched Dylan again while we got in line. The CM’s at the FP entrance gave us a little bit of grief for using our FPs so late in the day, but they let us get in line and we were on the ride in less than 5 minutes. The stand by line was only 15 minutes long. We all got in the front car and Todd & I got the front row. We’ve had the front row before, but never in the dark. It was SO fun and SO scary! The track is not lit up at all, so it feels a little bit like Space Mountain where you have no vision where you are going. That ride was probably my favorite time EVER on that ride. Todd & I were like little kids when we got off the train. We were so excited & freaking out about how scary it was. I wish we would have ridden it one more time.

By now it was 10:00, so we started walking towards the exit. My mom stopped in a shop, so while we were waiting for her I walked back down to the area where we had lunch at the Flame Tree BBQ to take a picture of EE from across the water. I tried a bunch of settings on my camera and could not get a really good one. It was a little creepy to walk down there in the dark with no one around.

Waiting for my mom to shop.

Decorations on the shop.

Now that I figured out how to post video, I want to include this one of Dylan. We were sitting on a bench waiting for my mom & he was being so cute so I took video of him. He cracks me up.



I forgot to say that my mom set a GPS tracker on her phone when we left EE to walk to the exit. It shows you a map from above to show where you are, and when we were in the Dinosaur area, it showed that we were not that far from the exit. The problem is that there is a row of trees that separates the Dino area from the front, so they make you walk all the way back to the Tree of Life and through the Oasis to the exit. Total walking distance from EE to the exit gates was ½ mile!! No wonder we get so tired by the end of the day at a park.

We stopped to take one last photo of the Tree of Life. I love how everything else around it is pitch black and the spotlights are only on the tree. It is so pretty!

A PP guy asked us if we wanted a picture in front of the tree and we said yes. He proceeded to take the worst PP picture that I have ever seen. I laugh every time I see this picture, because it is so bad. Are you ready??

Isn’t it great? We are totally off-center, to start. On top of that, apparently there was a woman that wanted to photo bomb our shot. Or maybe she is the ghost of a woman who haunts the park (considering that you can see right through her)? Not too sure. Whatever the case, I love this picture for how terrible it is.

We tried it again, but we are still off center, so I tried to add a little logo in the corner to make it feel more balanced. Oh well!

We hit up the PP person outside the park by the tree on our way out.

This was such a great day! I wish that we could do EMH at AK all the time! It was so worth it to have a pretty empty park and no lines at all. On top of that, the park feels very different at night. Sort of like a large Adventureland.

It was a long drive back to our hotel and we finally got to bed around midnight.

Coming up…Waaaay too many pictures of POR

 

[Purple Opal]

A PP guy asked us if we wanted a picture in front of the tree and we said yes. He proceeded to take the worst PP picture that I have ever seen. I laugh every time I see this picture, because it is so bad. Are you ready??

Isn’t it great? We are totally off-center, to start. On top of that, apparently there was a woman that wanted to photo bomb our shot. Or maybe she is the ghost of a woman who haunts the park (considering that you can see right through her)? Not too sure. Whatever the case, I love this picture for how terrible it is.

We tried it again, but we are still off center, so I tried to add a little logo in the corner to make it feel more balanced. Oh well!

That is hilarious I just remembered from this that I still need to get the Photopass pictures from you!

Elijah is a very good drummer and started messing around on the drums. He is very good! I am trying to post video for the first time. We’ll see if it works!





Did it work for you?

…

Yes, it worked. that is so cool! I need to get copies of this from you too. The video doesn't play within the thread, it takes you to a Photobucket page, where you can play the video. Thanks for this

 

[eandesmom]

Figures! You started back up while I was on the cruise and so I missed it!

I had the same lunch at les chef's, YUM! I need to get my gang there as I think they'd like it.

I love love love your magic Disney moment, that's really what it's all about. Poor Dylan and the bed rail, rough night for everyone.

AK is VERY dark in spots during EMH. Cool but yeah, a little creepy at times.

Great updates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[bkandreu]

I read this whole PTR in one night and it was so good and so entertaining! I love your family, and I am ready for more updates! Your son is so adorable!

 

[jordanyosh]

peep