ALL ABOARD our June 2011 T/R! Autotrain, heat & lines oh MY! (12/05/11 Update)

[kittylady1972]

Universal Studios - Our First Park Day

Sorry for the delay...I keep meaning to update from home but life...you know, it gets crazy! I finally have most of my photos up on Shutterfly though, so I should be able to at least post photos.

Unfortunately I let a friend borrow my netbook which has my complete trip report on it...so I'm going to attempt to do this from memory! Looking at the photos, I think I can recall some of it.

So we arrived at the park close to 1pm:

So great to be here...force the kids and DH to pause for a photo. Kids do so reluctantly...cutting DH out since he hates me putting all kinds of photos of him up on the evil internet!

It was a a long walk through the park to find the rides...why I don't I remember that from our trip in August of 2003 without the kids? Anyway we decided to do Jaws first I think. The line was about a 30 minute wait according to the sign...and I think the wait was more like 20. This would be a resounding theme at Universal for us...the wait times there were SO far off we never knew what to think. Don't get me wrong, we did do some line waiting...but there were times it would show 50 minutes and we'd wait 20 or less. We didn't know what to think.

Anyway, kids weren't exactly thrilled with Jaws...but they survived it. I wanted a picture with the big shark...but there was LINE for that! So instead I improvised and tried some forced perspective shots making it look like they were holding the shark. However this was tough...it was hot...so these are what I got:

Then it was off to the Simpsons ride. This ride was a BIG hit for the kids. It was new for us, since it used to be Back to the Future when we were last there without the kids...and I remember it being rough. We were thrilled to realize it was not that bad.

The wait for Simpsons was also around 20 to 25 minutes or so. I recall the frustration at the line attendant there. We reached the end of this ramp where they also had people entering from another side for ExpressPass. From this point, there were several entrances to the ride...and the one in front of us was clearly way up ahead...but we were sorta stopped...though there was no rope or anything. The attendant had just motioned to us...quickly...once. So we waited. And waited. And people behind us were wondering why we were not moving. We told them we were told to stop. We waited some more. The attendant still wasn't even acknowledging us, but he was clearly letting plenty of ExpressPass people go up the ramps. We were all in line wondering what the heck. Finally the attendant started motioning people as to which ramp to go up and told us which one. Just another reason I like WDW much better!

Anyway the kids loved this one...I think we may have ridden it a second time but I can't recall if it was right away. I think we may have walked out and over to MIB first (another favorite of ours from our last trip) and did that one first.

Inside MIB:

We then decided to head to ET. However when we got there the ride was just closed down...maintenance issues. Then we noticed it looked like rain might be rolling in...so we decided to catch a nearby animal show:

Waiting for the show, see how thrilled DH is here:

The show was cute...but I like the SeaWorld/Busch Gardens animal shows so much better.

So it was about 3:30pm or so and no rain...but we weren't sure it wasn't still going to happen. We thought about hitting ET still...but my daughter had a headache.

Side note here: My 8yo daughter was diagnosed with migraines right before this trip. We started her on a migraine medication just a few days prior to our trip...so this created a challenge. We didn't know how she would react to the medication, how her headaches would be, etc. and as it turned out she had quite a few emotional episodes that we suspect may have been from the meds...but back to the story!

We decided instead to just head out of the park and go check into the hotel and maybe take a swim! As we got into the car, I found the nearest WalMart on the GPS and we made a very quick grocery run there for some essentials.

By about 5pm or so we were heading back through the gates of the Magic Kingdom and to our hotel at Bay Lake Tower!

We found our room easily on the 7th floor and the kids just walked into the room and were thrilled! They were a bit confused when they couldn't find THEIR room. That's when we told them the bedroom was OURS and they'd get a fold-out couch and chair to sleep in this trip. DH and I have never had the king bed on our previous DVC trips. We usually give that room to his parents since we take the other bedroom with the 2Q beds for us and the kids. So this was nice!

And the bonus...the view from our balcony:

I can't remember if we decided to eat some dinner first or we headed to the pool, but I'm pretty sure we did hit the pool and I know we ate dinner in our room. We heated up our leftovers from T-Rex from earlier...they were yummy!

That evening was pretty much a night inside, getting unpacked and organized and getting a good night's rest on a real bed so we'd be ready to hit the Magic Kingdom the next day! Would we make early entry? Well some of us would anyway....

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Great view of the park!

 

[kittylady1972]

June 16th (DAY 3) - First Full Day!
It was our first full day at Walt Disney World...yippee1 Our plan was to try our best to hit the MK at rope drop as it was an EMH morning...that meant 8am. Perfectly doable with kids that usually are up before 7am anyway.

Everybody got up and ate breakfast in the room. I decided I didn't want to haul around my mini sling bag all day...so I grabbed my camera and the tickets and we headed out. This information would be very important later.

As a background, you should now that as the mom I am, of course, the carrier of all of the stuff. Kids tickets, money, snacks, camera(s), sunscreen, etc....all moms know this drill. Since I have more stuff, this means there is more stuff to lose...or misplace of course. I am forever misplacing things on trips. I usually find them. The one time it did not work out was when I misplaced my wallet at Saratoga Springs Resort while eating there in November of 2007. The wallet was turned in...minus the cash. Lucky for me, I rarely have a lot of cash. At least my tickets and credit cards were all there!

Ok, so we make our way walking down the nice path to the MK. I LOVE staying at the Contemporary so we can use this path. Sadly, we did not use it as much as I had hoped on this trip. I had visions of spending many evenings walking over to MK to ride rides on our long trip there. That didn't happen.

We arrive at the front gate and see these crowds waiting at the turnstiles:

Now I was the only one without a park ticket. I had pre-ordered my DVC Discounted annual pass online, so I knew I had to go to the ticket window and get that, plus order a Tables in Wonderland card. That was my plan. I get the kids' tickets all out to hand to them so they can get in line...only one was not there.

Yep, my oldest DS ticket was not with me. Just. Great. I search and search but it's not there. I know we had it that morning, so the only thing I figure is it's still in my mini-sling bag because I had taken out only the stuff we needed...leaving behind our Universal Park Passes and other stuff.

So yes it's about 15 minutes before 8am. I tell my DH to take the other 2 kids into the park, we'll head back to the room and get DS11's ticket, and we'll meet them in the park. I then walk over to guest services to at least get my annual pass.

The paper I have tells me all I need is a photo idea...but the paper which is my receipt from my order. The man behind the counter asks for my DVC card. What? I don't have that either...because it didn't say I'd need it. If it was a big deal, I would have argued and made him look it up, but the fact is I have to return to the room anyway...so I can get that as well. I'm sure it's with my son's park pass!

So DS11 and I start hauling tail back to the room. Yes, while other people are walking down the walkway towards the park, we are running away...and yes we were running/jogging. We wanted to get there and back. Oh we wouldn't be making rope drop like the rest of the family...but we'd still get in the park soon afterwards!

Now I should mention two things here. One is that my DH did offer to go back and get the tickets. I told him no...and it was a good thing because they were NOT in the bag as I suspected. I ended up finding them elsewhere in the room among some other stuff. It was quite a frantic search, let me tell you.

Some of you veterans may be asking...why didn't you just have them replace the ticket at guest services? Well we had pre-purchased our tickets from Undercover Tourist...not from WDW directly....because it was cheaper that way. Of course, that makes it not so easy to replace because Disney doesn't have a record of the purchase in their system. One hint that I would learn later (yeah foreshadowing...you think I would have learned it sooner) is to take photos of your tickets...the backs of them with the numbers. This way they can easily be replace and re-issued.

Anyway, we get back to the room, I frantically search and find the ticket and my DVC card, and we return to the gates. I go to guest services to get my ticket and my TIW card as well. We are ready to go, I text DH and he is here:

They are about to ride Peoplemover for the SECOND time so I tell them we will meet them as they exit the ride.

It is 8:22am when I snap this shot of my DS11 as we walk through the park heading towards Futureworld:

We still have plenty of time left for our extra magic hour. We wait the Peoplemover and look up to see this going by:

As soon as they exit we have one goal...DS6 finally is tall enough to ride Space Mountain!!!

We head over there and the wait time is about 15 minutes I think. As we approach the front, we're trying to figure out how our group of five will fit in the cars. For some reason the older two kids decide their younger brother should experience the ride for the first time from the very front car!

He's good with is...but it means I can't take any photos of his face as he is in the car or as he exits it. DH and I end up in the back of the car and the three kids are all in front of us.

Ride is rough, as always...why don't we remember this. Of course all the weight is in the back so we are helping push it along I'm sure! I remember we are approaching the unload and we can't see DS6 in the car. We have no idea if he loved it or if we have manage to scar him for life!

We exit and he LOVED it...thank goodness! He's ready to go again. We come out and enter and go back to ride it one more time!

(in line for another ride)

Then we must snap a photo to record the memory:

At this point I think we decide to hit some other BIG rides...so we make our way towards the castle and will head through Adventureland next. We must snap a few more photos along the way though:

This one was DH's idea...a joke of course:

Even more funny because we tell the kids we don't NEED a map here...we know where we are going!

Along the way to Frontierland (our goal) we stop in and ride Pirates of course. I can recall DD8 asking me if they have a boat ride here. Of course they do...Pirates! Then she is disappointed because she means one of those swinging boat rides...um no! Not here...sorry.

Out of POTC, we head to Frontierland. We want to ride BTMRR of course! The wait time shows I think 20 minutes or so, but we almost walk onto it after weaving through the lines.

The other plan is to do something else DS6 has never done. He had been on BTMRR before, but he had not been to Tom Sawyer Island. I totally forgot my plan to do an early entry day and try to get paintbrushes from there for this trip...oh well. The kids are hungry so we grab some snacks first. My directive to them is NO CANDY...so they get some chips and popcorn instead and DH and I get some trail mix stuff to share. As we are heading back to catch the Tom Sawyer Island boat I decide to duck inside Pecos Bill's and get a free cup of ice water. I will meet them at the docks!

This ice water thing takes longer than I had planned despite no real lines inside yet...after all it is barely 10am. The front counter has my water but I guess assume it is with a food order. The guy in front of me had only ordered 4 cups of ice water himself ! I point it out to them, get my water, and hightail it to the docks.

I am just missing a boat, and my family has waited behind for me...not happy of course. I guess the boat driver wondered why they did not get on it as well, and they told him they were waiting on me. I know this because when he gets back the boat driver looks at my family in an understanding way...like AH she DID make it back!

Soon we are on the island and free to explore:

What would we see?? (to be continued....)

 

[nessz79]

Following along!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Sounds like a hectic morning! You made good time getting back to the park.

 

[Native NYer]

Joining in!
Great tr!

 

[kittylady1972]

Sounds like a hectic morning! You made good time getting back to the park.

Yep...such is life on vacation I guess...especially with me! We did make pretty good time! ​

 

[kittylady1972]

Joining in!
Great tr!

Welcome and THANKS!!

 

[kittylady1972]

Island Exploration!

Ok, so we left off exploring Tom Sawyer Island. A great shot of the kids there:

We wanted to make sure to explore all parts of the island. We went through all of the caves and headed over here:

We exited from the secret escape route here, another fun cave. DH tried to scare us while in the caves...but that didn't work. He also cheated and turned on the light feature of his smart phone to make it easier...ah technology!

We admired the view of BTMRR from the island...and I forgot to mention we had at least two or three conversations where DH was sure we could just WALK back to the rest of MK. I'm not even kidding! He kept saying I'm sure we can just walk back...we don't have to take the ferry. Ummm...it's an ISLAND!!! Yet we walked around the entire island and I'm sure his goal was to find a way to walk back to MK. Anyway, one quick photo with BTMRR in the background, taken with the camera propped up and the self timer:

Then YES we took the ferry back:

A quick self-portrait of us on the ferry:

We got off the ferry...and headed to someplace else...where would we go next??

 

[Goofy442]

Great to see your point of view on the auto train. We have wanted to do it but having our dog with us doesn't work. We will be staying at BLT in September, so I can't wait to hear all about it.

 

[kittylady1972]

Great to see your point of view on the auto train. We have wanted to do it but having our dog with us doesn't work. We will be staying at BLT in September, so I can't wait to hear all about it.

We really enjoyed the Autotrain and are already talking about it for our next trip!

Bay Lake Tower was just incredible. We really enjoyed it, but I don't think there's a Disney Resort that we would not return to at this point. The monorail convenience was huge though. Normally we drive to the parks a lot more but not this time.

 

[kittylady1972]

Backtracking a bit....
Ok, so I have us leaving Tom Sawyer Island and heading over to our next stop...only I'm pretty sure we made one other stop before that. I forgot that before Tom Sawyer we had a choice of two of the big rides...BTMRR or Splash! Wait times were both about the same...so which did we chooose?

Yep, this is a favorite and DH and two of the kids even got the front row...not sure we've ever been in the front! Anyway, there was that ride followed by Tom Sawyer Island, then our walk over to here:

Now I knew ahead of time about the new interactive stuff in the lines but we had never experienced it. So when given the choice between SCENIC and NON-SCENIC lines, I made everybody go SCENIC even though the non-scenic appeared shorter. We had to try out the stuff even though the line was moving pretty fast through here:

LOVED the new fun ending to this one as well! Afterwards there were some more quick photos:

Now it was starting to warm up a bit and we knew we'd have plenty of chances to return to this park, since we were staying at Bay Lake. So we headed out from here, stopping briefly to try to watch some of the show at the castle:

Can you spot Mickey and Minnie?

Daytime fireworks:

Leaving Main Street:

On the monorail...check out my youngest...foreshadowing here:

We returned to the room and grabbed some lunch really quick...and then it was time to hit the pool!

 

[kittylady1972]

POOL FUN!
So after three hours at the park, it was time for the pool. We spent a good 3 hours at the pool and the kids must have done the slide a zillion times. They loved it!

The boys also spent some time running around and playing in the fountains:

The girl was all about the contests and fun stuff...especially when she could get prizes! She is trying out the hooping skills here. She wasn't great at it but she got a little bit better. Of course, the heat fogged my camera lens right up:

Tonight was the night the rest of the family was due to arrive to the resort after driving all day. DH was in communication with them throughout the course of the day tracking their progress. I think they were finally in the vicinity around 5pm or so, and that's when we headed back to get ready to greet them, figuring we'd all have dinner together.

We got to our room and got cleaned up and dressed. When the family arrived, DH took DD8 down to greet the family and I stayed in the room with the boys. We were still trying to decide what to do about dinner. I had not been successful getting the internet to work on my netbook, so I was searching sites on my phone and thinking pizza sounded good.

Then the fun began...and DH lets me know that since his parents have arrived, his key to the room no longer worked. Since DH and his dad share a first and last name (JR and SR) for some reason when his dad (SR) checked into his room, it invalidated his key (JR). Now I don't know why I didn't notice this on our DVC reservation, but I guess they somehow had the same person occupying two rooms. So now our party of 10 was taking up three rooms. BIL, SIL and nephew were fine since there was no name sharing there. Our room and MIL and FIL rooms and keys were now an issue...and it was taking FOREVER to fix the problem.

This is what we found pretty unacceptable. This did not seem like a difficult issue to resolve. DH was at the front desk with his dad and they had no record of DH being in a room, even though he pointed out that HE was the DVC Member that made the reservations, he is the one with the DVC card and membership, shouldn't be that hard to put him back in our room. They are down there for a while working through this issue and in the meantime all keys to both rooms have been invalidated.

Did I mention in order to even get into Bay Lake Tower (the building) you need a room key? You will soon understand why this may be an issue.

Back in the room, I have found a pizza place in Crossroads with an awesome sounding menu and I have essentially created my own online order for all of us...but still not sure what the plan is for dinner. DH is still at the front desk but I tell him I'm ordering our food and I'll go get it, so I do just that. I place the order and tell the boys we are heading out to pick up food. Of course, I let DH know he'll have to be around when I come back since I won't be able to return to our room or even inside the building without him!

We hit the road to go get dinner, glance back to find this:

That's my youngest out cold! It's a good 25+ minute drive to Crossroads and I'm not even sure where the pizza joint is located but I do eventually find it. I don't want to disturb the sleeping child, so I have my oldest stay in the car with the youngest and I sprint inside to get our food. I'm in and out pretty quickly thank goodness...and we drive back with the smell of food permeating the car! Yum!

Arrive back, call DH as I'm entering the MK gates to let him know to be waiting for me in front of Bay Lake Tower. I get there and hand the food off to my oldest while I wrangle the youngest one, still SOUND ASLEEP!

Get back to our room where the whole family is now waiting for us, drop my youngest off in our bed figuring he wants to sleep for a bit. He NEVER WAKES UP that night...not even for food. We all eat the pizza happily in our room and swap stories of our trip so far.

BTW the pizza...it was from Flippers at Crossroads and let me tell you it was REALLY REALLY good! I would definitely order from them again!

We eat and eventually the rest of the family retreats back to their rooms to unpack and we unwind for the evening in our room. Around 10pm I hear loud noise, walk out on our balcony and sit outside and watch the fireworks over the castle and MK that evening. So, so cool!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Wow, that sounds like a headache!

 

[teachermommy78]

How frustrating!!! Sometimes it seems like easy fixes take the longest!!! I hope your little guy isn't sick!!! Poor thing. He looked comfy at least!

 

[kittylady1972]

Wow, that sounds like a headache!

Yes, I can't believe how long it took to fix the whole ticket/room issue. And to top it all off, once they got the keys re-issued for our room and for MIL/FIL's room, they ended up giving MIL/FIL a regular room key. In other words, their room was not longer considered a DVC Member room. Bad: They could not access the Top of the World Lounge without one of us (or BIL/SIL) with them...which wasn't a problem as somebody was usually willing to go up there with them and do some drinking! The Good: They got daily trash and towel service, instead of every 4th day like the DVC rooms. Oh well...it just wasn't worth it to try to fix it AGAIN!

 

[kittylady1972]

How frustrating!!! Sometimes it seems like easy fixes take the longest!!! I hope your little guy isn't sick!!! Poor thing. He looked comfy at least!

Yes I agree...seemed like a pretty simple fix to us but it involved a call to DVC Member services and it was just nuts according to DH. I'm just glad he kept his cool as long as he did...he's not exactly Mr. Patience!

And no worries for the little guy...he was just TOTALLY EXHAUSTED! I think running up the steps to that pool slide a few hundred times will do that...plus getting to the bottom of the slide each time and having to swim against a slight current to get to the side....so he could get out and slide again! It was just a LOT for him!

Believe me, we've dealt with sick kids on our WDW trips in the past. And we would indeed deal with the sickies at some point during this trip too...you'll have to stay tuned to find out when that happens!

 

[Becc1]

All caught up on your report Tom Sawyer's Island looks like so much fun, I keep saying that we need to get over there but so far haven't.

Great view from your room! I would love to stay at BLT someday, maybe for DH and mines upcoming alone trip I can convince him!

 

[anjalee6]

If our kids had fallen asleep like that, they would have woken up at aout 9 or 10 at night and wanted to party while we all wanted to get ready for bed. Glad your little guy stayed asleep.

 

[kittylady1972]

All caught up on your report Tom Sawyer's Island looks like so much fun, I keep saying that we need to get over there but so far haven't.

Great view from your room! I would love to stay at BLT someday, maybe for DH and mines upcoming alone trip I can convince him!

Yes, Tom Sawyer's Island is a nice way to take a break from the crowds and have the kids explore. We had to do all of the caves!

I highly recommend if you can get a stay in BLT to do it! It is AWESOME!