After 7 Trips We're Finally Staying At the BC! May 2012 PTR: New TR Started!

[wakica]

Subbing in Came over from FB. Love love LOVE all the theme nights. We've done a few as well but with dd being 14 now she loves it but doesn't want to go all out so ours are about the food and the movie pretty much. We are doing some other parks too on our trip so we've also done a Cat in the Hat day and will do Harry Potter but for Disney we've done Cars 2 and Toy Story 3 They are on my ptr if you are interested in peeking at them. I was wanting to do a ToT night but found it too hard to find food related to it - maybe we should just do fancy food and make it a formal night??? I was inspired to try again after I saw your post

Looking forward to watching the rest of your ptr unfold.

 

[Kat in GA]

Hi Kat! I see you have a PTR! I'll be checking that out soon. Wow, we do have quite a bit iin common. Do you understand what your hubby does? I try, but I think after him trying to explain it for about 13 years I'm never going to get it!

Well...I have both an incomplete PTR and TR! And the PTR was supposed to be for all the trips we've done during our "year of Disney" - but I manage to sidetrack myself!

As for what my engineering hubby does - he's a chemical engineer. So. Um...nope, no idea as to what he does!

 

[PixieMama]

Thanks! I do feel better. I had to ask Mike what the ride is called (no matter how many times he tells me I can't remember). It's called River Battle. Alex used to call it the shoot ride.

River Battle, that's it! For some reason I was thinking the word "Beaver" was somewhere in the name!

 

[cinderella crazy]

Love your Disney Nights--they look like a blast!!! And it's something awesome for your kids to remember as they grow up, all that hard work is def worth it
Looks like you have a lot of fun planned for each day and glad your mom can go with you as well.
Look forward to reading more

Thank you! Glad to have you along for the ride!

YAY that you got your ADRs worked out. YUCK about the stomach virus! Hope everyone gets over it quickly!

I was pretty stressed about the ADRs. I mean a girl has to eat and I love me some Disney food!

Subbing in Came over from FB. Love love LOVE all the theme nights. We've done a few as well but with dd being 14 now she loves it but doesn't want to go all out so ours are about the food and the movie pretty much. We are doing some other parks too on our trip so we've also done a Cat in the Hat day and will do Harry Potter but for Disney we've done Cars 2 and Toy Story 3 They are on my ptr if you are interested in peeking at them. I was wanting to do a ToT night but found it too hard to find food related to it - maybe we should just do fancy food and make it a formal night??? I was inspired to try again after I saw your post

Looking forward to watching the rest of your ptr unfold.

Hi Kim! I've been following along on your PTR and I love reading about your plans! You should definately try to do a ToT night! Once I figured out what direction to take it wasn't to bad. I kept thinking 1940's Hollywood. The hardest one was the one we had last night, Splash Mountain. I had a hard time with the theming.

Well...I have both an incomplete PTR and TR! And the PTR was supposed to be for all the trips we've done during our "year of Disney" - but I manage to sidetrack myself!

As for what my engineering hubby does - he's a chemical engineer. So. Um...nope, no idea as to what he does!

I had fun reading through the PTR! I'm jealous of how many times you're going! Have you all had the girls only trip yet?

Whenever Mike tells me what he does I nod and smile and try to ask questions. But really, I understand about 5% of what he does.

River Battle, that's it! For some reason I was thinking the word "Beaver" was somewhere in the name!

It does have a lot of beavers in it. I think I'll start calling it that from now on. Then people can look at me strange when we walk past it and I say "Look! It's Beaver Battle!" Since I do have a knack for saying things the wrong way...

 

[wakica]

oooh, a plash mountain night sounds good!!! Sorry i didn't recongnize you from mine. I'm SO bad at name remembering. LOL and with code names, and real names i find myself even MORE confused!!! hahaha

We did do our ToT night. It wasn't all that exciting and I decided to just do a formal black tie dinner like the event at the Tip Top Club and then the movie. We figured while we were all dressed up we might as well get in a family photo too so that was a bonus

Can't wait to see how Splash Mountain went!!!

 

[cbcrockett]

Ok, I TOTALLY need to hear about your Splash Mtn. Night! I might have to plan one for DH and myself. We are slightly obsessive over it and love us some Brer Rabbit !

 

[cinderella crazy]

oooh, a plash mountain night sounds good!!! Sorry i didn't recongnize you from mine. I'm SO bad at name remembering. LOL and with code names, and real names i find myself even MORE confused!!! hahaha

We did do our ToT night. It wasn't all that exciting and I decided to just do a formal black tie dinner like the event at the Tip Top Club and then the movie. We figured while we were all dressed up we might as well get in a family photo too so that was a bonus

Can't wait to see how Splash Mountain went!!!

I have children in my choir who, after two years, I still don't know their names. That's how bad I am with them. That's without screen names. I'm lucky on here if I remember my own screen name to log in!

Sounds like your ToT night was fun! How great that you got a family picture too!

Hopefullly I'll post Splash Mountain night tomorrow.

 

[cinderella crazy]

Ok, I TOTALLY need to hear about your Splash Mtn. Night! I might have to plan one for DH and myself. We are slightly obsessive over it and love us some Brer Rabbit !

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the pictures up. Considering I thought we wouldn't have many decorations for it, it did turn out better than I thought. At least everyone seemed to enjoy it.

 

[PixieMama]

I had fun reading through the PTR! I'm jealous of how many times you're going! Have you all had the girls only trip yet?

I'm going to answer for Kat. Yes! She has had the girls only trip... I know, 'cause I was one of the "girls" who went on it, LOL!

It does have a lot of beavers in it. I think I'll start calling it that from now on. Then people can look at me strange when we walk past it and I say "Look! It's Beaver Battle!" Since I do have a knack for saying things the wrong way...

 

[Kat in GA]

I had fun reading through the PTR! I'm jealous of how many times you're going! Have you all had the girls only trip yet?

Whenever Mike tells me what he does I nod and smile and try to ask questions. But really, I understand about 5% of what he does.

As Pixie mama said - yes, we've had the girls trip - it was last August! I was going to do PTRs for all my other trips (and we went a lot!) - but it really didn't happen! We went last July, then the mom trip in August, then October for the FWF, Nov for Thanksgiving, Dec for xmas, Feb for my anniversary - and then we leave a week from tomorrow for Spring break - and then my May/June trip - to finally round out our APs and our year of Disney!!

And, hey, another connection - my DH is Mike, too!!

 

[kansasdisneygal]

HI!!
I'm joining in on your PTR!! I love all your Disney themed nights and your kids are so cute!! My best friend and I will be there the same time as you and your family!! (May 26th-June 1st) Looking forward to reading the rest of your PTR as we get closer to our trips!!

 

[cinderella crazy]

I'm going to answer for Kat. Yes! She has had the girls only trip... I know, 'cause I was one of the "girls" who went on it, LOL!

How fun! Glad you all got to have a trip together!

As Pixie mama said - yes, we've had the girls trip - it was last August! I was going to do PTRs for all my other trips (and we went a lot!) - but it really didn't happen! We went last July, then the mom trip in August, then October for the FWF, Nov for Thanksgiving, Dec for xmas, Feb for my anniversary - and then we leave a week from tomorrow for Spring break - and then my May/June trip - to finally round out our APs and our year of Disney!!

And, hey, another connection - my DH is Mike, too!!

Those APs are getting a lot of use! How funny that we're both married to engineers named Mike who have jobs that we have no idea what they do.

HI!!
I'm joining in on your PTR!! I love all your Disney themed nights and your kids are so cute!! My best friend and I will be there the same time as you and your family!! (May 26th-June 1st) Looking forward to reading the rest of your PTR as we get closer to our trips!!

Thanks for joining in! Thank you! I'll be sure to check out your PTR! Hopefully we'll all have good weather when we're there!

 

[cinderella crazy]

Gatlinburg Day of Fun

Taking a break from our normal PTR posting to bring you the latest here from the East side of Tennessee. We've just finished Spring Break, and kids were running around all over the place having fun!

Since we’re going to Disney in a couple of months, we decided to stay close to home and have some homespun fun. Which for us usually means Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, Dollywood (which has just this past weekend opened). Thankfully the kids still find the stuff to do near home fun.

The two big places we went to were Gatlinburg and the Knoxville Zoo. First let’s visit Gatlinburg!

Mike and I used to go to Gatlinburg multiple times a year before the kids were born. We’ve just now, within the last couple of years, started taking the kids. It’s crowded, lots of traffic, and if you can’t play mini golf and walk around there’s not much to do and would be pretty boring for a tiny child.

So now that the children are older we can have more fun in Gatlinburg. We were actually killing two birds with one stone on this Gatlinburg trip. Mike likes to go here to celebrate his birthday and the kids’ spring break gives us the added excuse of going.

Our first stop was to go somewhere to eat lunch. We love Smoky Mountain Brewery!

It has really good burgers and fries. We walked from our parking space to the restaurant and arrived before opening. So we sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful sunshiny weather. We even got to see a squirrel enjoying the sun too:

After lunch we went to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum. This was the first time for the kids to go here so they were excited. When we first walked in we were greeted by figures made out of “junk.” The “dad” had a Mickey as part of his torso:

He also had a foot made out of a mouse trap:

I don’t think Mickey would like that very much!

As we made our way further along into the museum, Lauren started noticing some funny looking things. Her response was priceless:

One interesting area in the museum is a room that talks about various people that were imprisoned for silly things (One guy was put into a small cell in France for splitting his trousers in front of the queen. I think it was for something like 50 years. It was stupid whatever it was). There was also a ball and chain that was sometimes attached to peoples’ legs. They encourage you to try to pick it up to see how heavy they really are. Here’s Lauren’s attempt:

Alex’s attempt:

Mike’s attempt:

I was smart enough to not try.


Right after the prison room is a graveyard room. It has headstones with hilarious epitaphs. There’s also a chest that if you try to lift up the lid, a recording of a girl screaming plays. And it’s not a little scream. It’s really, really loud!! Alex thought it was great. Lauren…well this is the point she started to get scared.

As we continued through the museum, Lauren started to get more and more determined that we needed to leave. Thankfully we found a trusty pressed penny machine that helped Lauren realize that we were having fun. This is one of the things about my little girl. She acts so big and brave and when things do scare or bother her, it’s usually just so out of the blue that were shocked. Thankfully there wasn’t much more to go through and she seemed much happier after getting her pressed penny.

We made our way through the rest of the museum and everyone seemed to have a good time. When we got outside the children played with a rotating marble ball:

We then hopped back into the car to make our way to Ripley’s Davy Crockett Mini Golf. We had done this last year when we went to Gatlinburg and the kids loved it. There are two different courses to choose from. We chose the one side we had not done last year. The kids tried their best to get those little colorful balls into the holes. They both are getting better.

Who won? Well, that depends. On paper I won. But when you take away all the do-overs that Mike let me take, he won.


Since it was getting so hot out we decided to stop at one of Mike’s favorite places: Baskin Robbins. The kids both got cones and Mike got a scoop in a bowl. Lauren had chocolate:

Alex had cherries jubilee:

Mike had chocolate:

I had my favorite, mint chocolate chip:

It was a yummy end to a fun day! And after all that fun, one fell asleep:

And one looked annoyed that I was taking his picture:

Up next, the kids and Mike go to the zoo.

 

[wakica]

Looks like it was a good trip!!! You all picked my faves for ice cream - chocolate, cherry and mint are all my top choices. Made me really hungry for lunch and tempted to add ice cream to my dessert!!! But I will use my will power - trying to eat good this week b/c we over indulged this past weekend. lol.

 

[cinderella crazy]

The Zoo

Later in our spring break week, Mike was sweet enough to take off work so the kids could do something else fun. This was day two out of three for me having a stomach bug. I originally was going to take the kids and I felt so bad that I wasn’t able to go with them. The original plan was for me to take the kids to the zoo on Thursday and then Mike would take off from work on Friday and we would all go to Dollywood (Dollywood’s opening day for passholders was Friday). Well, the weather people here in town kept increasing the chance of rain for Friday and I started not feeling well. So we scrapped our Dollywood idea and instead Mike took off Thursday.

I’m not entirely sure what they did. Most of the pictures that Mike took are of the kids doing fun things but not many of the actual animals. So here’s what I’ve pieced together through the kids’ and Mike’s stories and the pictures:

It looks like the kids and Mike saw the black bears first and the bears were out and awake:

Next they played on some lizard looking thing(?) and a frog:

The kids then posed with some fake macaws (they take pictures here every year):

What’s the next thing you do at the zoo? You stick your head between the jaws of an alligator:

You can even ride a lion:

Has anyone seen Alex and Lauren? All I see are a bunch of monkeys:

Owl bet you can guess the reason Mike took these pictures:

And to end the day, they stopped to brush some goats:

And this guy looks happy:

I don’t know about you, but that looked like a fun zoo trip.

 

[mickeystoontown]

It looks like a great day in Gatlingburg. We were there over the Thanksgiving holidays and there were waaaaaaay more crowds than those in your pictures. There were so many people around the marble ball outside Ripley's that you couldn't even walk through them. We had to walk around them and across the street.

I hate to hear that you were battling the stomach bug and couldn't go to the zoo. From the pictures, though, it looks like Mike and the kiddos had a good time.

 

[cinderella crazy]

Disney Night #10 – Splash Mountain

So this week was Lauren’s turn and it was a surprise to all of us that she picked Splash Mountain. I mean, she likes Splash Mountain but for almost all her other Disney nights, she picked girlie/princessie stuff. We did a Splash Mountain night for our last Disney trip so I went to check the pictures from that night and was under-whelmed by the table decorations. We had a small Brer Rabbit, a potted plant, and a canoe from the Wilderness Lodge. I must have been pre-occupied that week.

So I was on a mission to make this Splash Mountain night better! So here’s what it looked like:

The Invitation:

Our Table Decorations:

Mickey’s ready to go on an adventure:

The Food: Pecos Bill’s food
Burgers with all the fixings
Baked Beans
Fries
Carrot Sticks

Carrot cake cupcakes

For one of our activities we made rabbits. How about a little game can you guess who made each bunny? Here’s your choices:

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

So who made each one? There was me, Mike, Alex, Lauren, and my Mom.


Lauren also had fun with watercolor paint. We even had some activities that weren’t listed on the invitation. During dinner we started talking about roller coasters that Lauren was tall enough to ride and how we think everyone should be able to ride Expedition Everest and Space Mountain this year. Neither of the kids has ever ridden Everest or Space Mountain. So then they started asking what was Space Mountain like. So we started looking up rides on YouTube. They got a kick out of that.

So that was our Splash Mountain night. Next Disney night: Expedition Everest. Brrr! I’m getting cold just thinking about it!

 

[cinderella crazy]

Looks like it was a good trip!!! You all picked my faves for ice cream - chocolate, cherry and mint are all my top choices. Made me really hungry for lunch and tempted to add ice cream to my dessert!!! But I will use my will power - trying to eat good this week b/c we over indulged this past weekend. lol.

I'm not much of an ice cream person but if it's mint chocolate chip, I'll say YES!

It looks like a great day in Gatlingburg. We were there over the Thanksgiving holidays and there were waaaaaaay more crowds than those in your pictures. There were so many people around the marble ball outside Ripley's that you couldn't even walk through them. We had to walk around them and across the street.

I hate to hear that you were battling the stomach bug and couldn't go to the zoo. From the pictures, though, it looks like Mike and the kiddos had a good time.

Hi Lisa! I can imageine that it was crowded then! Pretty much after they put the Christmas lights up it gets crazy in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. The kids had a blast at the zoo!

 

[wakica]

I'm not much of an ice cream person but if it's mint chocolate chip, I'll say YES!

Well then, if you like the mint/chocolate combo as much as me then you would LOVE york peppermint patties!! They are my TOTAL WEAKNESS!!! GUH!!! now I need one - good thing I have a stash in the cupboard

The Splash theme turned out GREAT!! I love the watery look to the table

The theme went good with Easter coming up so soon too!!!

Here are my guesses...
1. YOU
2. Alex
3. Lauren
4. Grandma
5. Mike

How'd I do??? How'd I do???




you, Mike, Alex, Lauren, Grandma

 

[cinderella crazy]

Well then, if you like the mint/chocolate combo as much as me then you would LOVE york peppermint patties!! They are my TOTAL WEAKNESS!!! GUH!!! now I need one - good thing I have a stash in the cupboard

LOVE york peppermint patties! I could eat a ton of them in one sitting! I don't keep them on hand because I would be eating them all the time. But my breath would smell nice!