And I think to myself: "It's a wonderful World!" UPDATED: (post 238 & 239)

2Tiggies · Feb 13, 2011

teetee830 said:
I have really enjoyed reading your trip report so far. I started reading back in December before my last trip. I was a bit nervous to go on my first trip alone with my DS and loved that it really seemed like no big deal from your trip report. So thanks!

I actually laughed out loud at your description of your Astro Orbiter ride.

It looks like we will be there the same time in September. Are you staying at POFQ again? That is where we will be. I loved it when we were there and can't wait to get back.

Thank you so much! So did you also feel it was no big deal going alone with your DS? I find it so easy with just the two of us and occasionally wonder how in the world I would manage to cater for a range of different interests. With just two ofyou it is pretty easy to keep both parties happy almost all the time

Oh that Astro Orbiter. It was funny after but at the time ... :scared1:

They stopped it just in time, honestly. I have been put off of the teacups before when DD wanted to go again, but I thought this was just a mundane, boring old spin. It was also the way the boarding process went that made the whole experience seem so dramatic. :rotfl2:

Yes, it's POFQ for us again - at the moment there is no other place. Except the Poly, but I noticed that POFQ came in slightly cheaper

Besides, we loved it so much. Now we get to go back to refurbished rooms too :cool1:

Pegasus928 · Feb 13, 2011

2Tiggies said:
I didn't actually go back to where the Dwarves were for long enough to observe them taking a break, but that would make sense as it is regular practice for the characters to break for 5 every half hour (or less in the heat of the day). I did see that the line was showing now sign of letting up close on 11 pm when we went past again.

And I agree, we would have missed a wonderful memory if we had gone commando style (am I still allowed to use that term on the UK boards - with reference to a recent thread I wondered if it was now a banned word )

5 minutes I can live with - but 30 minutes seemed a little excessive considering how long the line was. Surely they have more than 7 vertically challenged people living in the area that are available for seasonal work :rolleyes1

And personally I am more than happy to keep the word 'commando' on the permitted list - if only for the laughs it gives us when it gets used in all innocence :goodvibes

teetee830 · Feb 13, 2011

2Tiggies said:
Thank you so much! So did you also feel it was no big deal going alone with your DS?

I agree it was actually so much nicer. We did what we wanted when. I don't know why I was worried he has never been one I had to chase everywhere.

2Tiggies said:
Now we get to go back to refurbished rooms too

The refurbished rooms are really nice. The queen beds a bonus given my ds won't sleep alone in a hotel.

disney_princess_85 · Feb 14, 2011

Looks like you had a fabulous time at MNSSHP. Lovely pics. :goodvibes

13.8kg!!!! :scared1:

wickesy · Feb 14, 2011

What a great report of MNSSHP! I had been thinking of doing this for the first time on our trip in October but you've just made it a must-do. :goodvibes

exwdwcm · Feb 14, 2011

Hey there, found your report and just read it all in one sitting. I should be working. :lmao:

Anyhow- we are going in October, so I love reading Oct reports. Love the MNSSHP update too! wow on the candy!!!!

you and your daughter are just so darn cute together! I've loved reading your adventures and can't wait to finish the rest!

2Tiggies · Feb 14, 2011

teetee830 said:
I agree it was actually so much nicer. We did what we wanted when. I don't know why I was worried he has never been one I had to chase everywhere.

Did you feel it brought you and your DS closer spending that time together there?

teetee830 said:
The refurbished rooms are really nice. The queen beds a bonus given my ds won't sleep alone in a hotel.

I am really looking forward to it.

disney_princess_85 said:
Looks like you had a fabulous time at MNSSHP. Lovely pics.

13.8kg!!!!

Thanks Lauren. And no, we won't be getting that much candy next year. Anybody want some? We can't get rid of the stuff!

wickesy said:
What a great report of MNSSHP! I had been thinking of doing this for the first time on our trip in October but you've just made it a must-do.

Oh you must - you will love it. To be honest, I don't do Halloween and have never liked it at all. It was only at the last minute that I thought it looked fun and decided to give it a try as I wasn't expecting to go in October again in the near future.

exwdwcm said:
Hey there, found your report and just read it all in one sitting. I should be working. Anyhow- we are going in October, so I love reading Oct reports. Love the MNSSHP update too! wow on the candy!!!!

you and your daughter are just so darn cute together! I've loved reading your adventures and can't wait to finish the rest!

Welcome!

Wow, that was some reading. I won't tell your employer :rotfl:

All though you could claim that reading a TR is hard work

Just a few more days to add.

mcarthur205 · Feb 14, 2011

We attended MNSSHP on October 1st and loved it! As you say, there is so much to see and do, we just couldn't do it all. We did wait in line for the dwarves, I think we waited about 40 mins for them but it was worth it! They went for a break just as we got to the front of the line, but they were only away for 10 mins so not too long. We also got pics with Cinderella's carriage.

We didn't get as much candy as you did, we didn't want to have too much to carry LOL! The lines for rides were so short - we rode Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain several times without getting off, they are such fun in the dark! Didn't ride Astro Orbiter though, we rode that once a few years ago and NEVER AGAIN! Felt sick the rest of the day..... :sick:

I'd love to go to another MNSSHP, but I don't know when we'll be back at that time of year. We're going at the end of June this time, so no parties then :sad2:

Rohais · Feb 14, 2011

Oo, loved your update! DF and I really enjoyed our first MNSSHP back in 2009, but we didn't really get to do much. I was having a pretty bad day painwise and felt miserable, especially plonked in a wheelchair so ended up heading back to the room pretty soon. We're determined to make the most of September's party though...though I don't think we could manage to collect anywhere near 13.8kg of candy!! Impressive! Oh, and lovely Rosetta costume :cutie:

Disneymad · Feb 17, 2011

Awww, I loved your MNSSHP report, it makes me feel all nostalgic as I love the atmosphere at that party - it sounds like you had an amazing evening!

I commented somewhere else the other day that I think that the costumes and atmosphere remove a lot of barriers - on a normal park day people are in some ways in competition with each other to get that good parade spot, or to race ahead to beat the crowds all heading to an attraction etc etc. Somehow though at MNSSHP, you're not rivals anymore with other guests any more - everyone's at a party together, people laugh and talk with each other, they relax and have fun! Hearing you mention someone making room on the curb for the parade or the lady sitting down and counting candy with you just demonstrate that atmosphere beautifully to me!

So glad you enjoyed it as I know it was a last minute decision on your part to go. Good job on the candy front...colour me impressed, me and 'him indoors' barely filled our single bag each, hehe.

I'm with you on Astro by the way, I've never done Dumbo but have done Aladdin and was fine with the spinny stuff - that one though, I was feeling icky very very quickly, I couldn't wait to get off!

Chilly · Feb 27, 2011

I cannot believe how much candy you got :faint:

Nubbedy · Mar 2, 2011

Brilliant Lee! Am home from work ill today, so have really enjoyed catching up on your trippie - it's really getting me excited for our October trip.

Love how you just kick back and go with the flow, I think that's made your experience even better. We are planning to do two MNSSHP nights - one for rides and candy, one for charaters and parade. But hopefully we wont end up with quite as much candy as your DD - 13.8kg :scared1:

!!!

DaveinFallsChurch · Mar 5, 2011

Great TR, especially your report on MNSSHP! Thanks for taking the time to put this all up - it was very helpful.

torsie24 · Mar 8, 2011

......?

disney_princess_85 · Mar 8, 2011

torsie24 said:
......?

Hear, hear! :thumbsup2

2Tiggies · Mar 10, 2011

Sorry guys, I am working on it - I promise :guilty:

Piccies are all uploaded to Photobucket and now just to get the typing done.

By the way Torsie, very subtle :rotfl:

How about I make sure it's complete before you leave - you can think of it as a wedding present from me ......

torsie24 · Mar 10, 2011

2Tiggies said:
Sorry guys, I am working on it - I promise Piccies are all uploaded to Photobucket and now just to get the typing done.

By the way Torsie, very subtle How about I make sure it's complete before you leave - you can think of it as a wedding present from me ......

Weeeeeeeeee! Sounds like a deal!

Question is will I get mine finished before you go? Lol!

2Tiggies · Mar 13, 2011

We were absolutely exhausted this morning and slept until after 9 am, then lay in bed for over an hour talking about the party before finally getting ourselves up and dressed. By the time we made our way to the food court it was already 10.45 am and we didn’t feel like breakfast food so we decided to wait it out for 15 minutes until the lunch menu was being served. Breakfast consisted of a shrimp salad, kids chicken nuggets (why she orders them is beyond me – they get pulled apart and pushed around the plate and only the fries are eaten), a crispy treat which went into the suitcase to bring home and some juices. We were really ordering for the sake of ordering and again food was wasted. I think we had reached the stage where we had eaten ourselves silly and just couldn’t face any more food.

We ventured over to the resort gift shop to try and use some of our 40-something snack credits on things to bring home which was easier said than done and we must have been in there for a good half hour.

I also purchased one of the Disney woven throws which was the offer at the time if you spent a certain amount, allowing you to purchase it at a good price ($15.95 I think? Can’t remember exactly). I'm hoping for a new design this year so I can get another one.

DD wanted to swim, as usual, and by this stage of the day it was nice and warm so we went back to the room and changed before heading down to the pool. I am really not interested in swimming. I like to lie in the sun and would be quite happy to just take a quick dip when I get too hot and then flop back onto the sun lounger, but it is hardly fair to expect DD to spend the entire time in the pool on her own. So you can just imagine my delight after about an hour when she met a little girl about her age who also wanted to play and swim together, but her parents just wanted to sit in the sun. I took that as my cue and wasted no time announcing that they could have a good time and I would be lying where I could see them – in the glorious sun! They played and swam happily for a good couple of hours.

Somewhere in between we were a bit hungry and I was regretting my decision from earlier to bin the food instead of putting it in our fridge, but leftovers seemed to accumulate and never get touched so I had stopped saving up half eaten meals. I ordered us a quesadilla to pick on. It was chicken and cheese but they made us one without the chicken. Very yummy!

We stayed at the pool until around 4.30 pm and went to get dressed for an evening at Epcot. It was supposed to be our last visit there for this trip and Epcot is my favourite park. We had only seen Illuminations once this trip and that is never enough! Took a few pics of the resort grounds on our way to wait for the bus.

We arrived at Epcot fairly late. According to my notes it was around 7 pm which didn’t leave much time if we wanted to watch the fireworks. After a few rounds on Figment we saw that Mission Space had a 5 minute wait so we decided to keep riding that until it was time to stake our spots for Illuminations. We watched from the Mexico area and stood with a couple with two little children who were absolutely delighted with the glo sticks DD handed to them to keep them amused while they waited. It was EMH that night so the moment Illuminations was over we said farewell to our new friends and made a beeline for Test Track. On exiting we toyed with the idea of another last whizz around the track but the wait time now was posted at 30 minutes so we gave it a miss and went back to Mission Space.

We milled around the little store afterwards and DD purchased herself some kind of stone (she loves stones and has a not so little ‘rock collection’ at home), a couple of tins of Mickey Mints and tried on one of the space helmets.

The evening was very relaxed and we really didn’t do very much except ‘be’ there, soaking up the atmosphere. Did I mention that we love this park?

Two last rounds on Figment brought us to midnight and time to go back to the resort. We took our time leaving, stopping to dance on the sparkling lights on the paving stones until we were politely hastened along towards the exit by one of the CMs there. We really needed to get going as it was rope drop at AK the next morning and being late would really mess up the plans for the following day. I did warn you all that this one was uneventful ..... It was 2 am when we got to bed, having checked that the alarm was set to get us up in a few hours.

2Tiggies · Mar 13, 2011

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oNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w

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ontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> I got up at 6.30 to get myself ready. DD takes her time getting ready anyway, but I knew she was going to be tired this morning so the plan was to be ready myself so that I could be on her case to get her up and at it in the hopes of being out of the door in time to get to AK for rope drop. She was as tired as I had expected and I eventually ripped the covers off of her and stood her on her feet about three times to get her moving, but we made it. :eek:

I know, terrible on holiday, but she would have been unimpressed if I had left her to sleep and we had missed the AK day altogether. Timing was very important here because our photo session had been booked at the Polynesian for 4.30 pm and I knew she would want a quick dip in the pool before we headed over there so realistically we would have to leave AK by 1 We even had time to go and get some breakfast before moving out to wait for the bus! :thumbsup2

When we arrived we went straight to EE, collected a Fast Pass and walked through the standby line. We came out through the exit and went to ride again but as we got to the loading area everyone was turned back as there was a problem. Urgh, ride down dont you hate it when that happens?! :sad2:

Not wanting to waste precious time we went to Dinoland so that DD could have another spin on Primeval Whirl and Triceratop Spin before stopping for a photo with Goofy and Pluto. [FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot][/FONT]We saw that Tigger, Eeyore and Pooh were at their meet and greet areas so we did a slight detour along their character trail. Although we had been the previous week, Eeyore had not been there at the time and we figured it couldnt hurt to say hello as we were unlikely to see them for a while. I dont think we waited more than 10 minutes.[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot][/FONT]I had checked the Times Guide and we had a bit of time to kill before the FOTLK show. Not wanting to venture off too far from where we needed to be we decided to see if there were any different characters roaming around Camp Minnie Mickey and DD was delighted to see Miko there with a reasonably short line. (At the time I had no clue who this character was, but it DD soon filled me in).

There was time for a quick stop for DD to enjoy and ice-cream in the shade before enjoying FOTLK.
It was getting late so we crossed the bridge back to Asia to see if EE was up and operating again, which it was, so we used our FP for our last ride on there for 2010 before leaving the park right on time at 1 pm. We did the whole POR and waterpark detours and after waiting for our bus and following the scenic route it was 1.40 pm by the time we got back.

There was time for a quick cool off in the pool and then it was time to get ready. We shared a quick chicken poboy baguette and strolled out to wait for the bus to MK.

We sat down at the bus stop and were there about 5 minutes. Two ladies were casually making their way along the path to join us, chatting and laughing when all of a sudden they let out an almighty scream and ran so quickly it looked like they had taken a giant 20 ft leap from where they had been a split second before ..... Right, Snake? I asked half jokingly. As I said it I caught sight of the offending serpent coiled up at the side of the path with its head reared. It was just sitting there. Some guy who had been sitting on the bench beside DD decided a closer inspection was in order and crouched down in front of it taking photos. Hey buddy, leave your pal there when you come back for the bus please! :rolleyes1

We took the monorail from MK to the Polynesian. While en route DD noticed that the ears on one of the the Mickey head croc jibbitz on my shoe had snapped off yup, both ears! She was not impressed since it was one of hers she had given to me (and now claimed all of a sudden that it was borrowed, not given). :rotfl2:

We were a little early to check in for our photos, so we browsed the gift shop for a while, not wanting to venture off too far as the Photopass desk was right outside. We checked in a little early and as our photographer was getting all her things together there was another minor drama when the strap on DDs croc snapped. :headache:

She now insisted that she couldnt walk around so I asked our photographer if I could nip down and try get her another pair quickly which was fine. Except that apparently none of these were good enough as they were all cayman style, not mary janes so we traipsed back up the stairs again with me telling DD not to get upset about it before she had her photos taken. I asked if they had a safety pin and used it to peg the two pieces of the strap together and we were off.

This photo session is not well advertised by Disney for some odd reason. I dont know why as it is really good value. We got a 20 minute session which yielded 80 photos.

At the time I booked it they were still offering the print packages as part of the deal which they no longer do, but for $99 plus tax you get the photo CD (we also got the prints as they were honouring the terms at the time of booking, which was nice) and all the images on a Photopass card. You dont have to buy the Photopass CD for this, but if you are getting it anyway or have pre purchased it, you can add the pictures and edit them with borders if you wish to do so. There is also a cheaper package for around $50 without the CD and you can just choose the print package. I feel it was money very well spent. Our only challenge was the glare, which seemed to be particularly bad at this time of the year for some reason so our photographer very kindly counted down so that we (actually I think I was really the one struggling with it more than DD) could keep our eyes closed and open them in time for the shot.

By the time we had chosen our prints, removed the thorn from DDs foot which she had picked up while walking on the sand bare foot and collected our CD, it was around 6 pm. We glanced longingly at MK watching all the guests ready for a MNSSHP entering in their costumes and briefly toyed with the idea of buying tickets at the gate, but common sense prevailed and we boarded our bus back to POFQ where we nipped up to our room to pack a suitcase, transfer our pics from the SD cards and stroll down to the boat dock for the DTD boat.

We had another meal at WPE. Not sure if you need any more pictures of this lot. You can see how adventurous we were ....

A quick stop at Goofys sorted out our sweet cravings and we sat down to pick at our sugar laden stash. No sooner had we planted our butts down when DD announced she wanted to look at something in the shop. I didnt feel like moving so I told her to be quick and come back to me. I could see into the store through the window and it took her all of about 20 seconds to appear behind the glass with a Thumper plush ... and a longing Can I please ... look (it may be worth mentioning at this point that she had now spent all her money).

I said no and we moved on. Just for the record, that Thumper is now sitting on her bed, along with the baby Simba which was purchased with it. :rolleyes:

It was a lovely relaxed evening just browsing and shopping. We had to get our picture taken with Pooh and friends and when we arrived there was a group of folk from England trying to decide who was going to use the camera and who would be in their photo. Perfect. I told them they could all be in the photo as I was going to take the pic for them and then they were going to take one of us with my camera. They were quite happy about this. It was actually DDs camera I had in my hand at the time, but after a quick smart remark from one of the guys about running away with our camera afterwards, that little compact was removed from my hands very sharply accompanied by an instruction Use your camera Mum! :lmao:

We milled around a now rather deserted Marketplace before getting the bus back to our resort. I have no idea what time we left. It was late and all the stores were closed, but we went to bed around 2 am. Straight to sleep for both of us!

torsie24 · Mar 13, 2011

Yay!!! Great update!

I'd love to meet Miko.

I sure hope it was MS Green you were riding over and over!

And I think to myself: "It's a wonderful World!" UPDATED: (post 238 & 239)

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