Are you Push?? Our sister trip around the World - COMPLETED 6/13!

[cfw213]

I'm late to the party, but I'm here! I've enjoyed catching up on your TR - looks like you had a great trip! Excited to hear about the rest of it

Hey, I was wondering what happened to you! Thanks for joining and hope to read your TR soon!

 

[cfw213]

I'm in for your TR.

Thanks for reading!!! I am on a business trip this week but I'm hoping to squeeze in a post sometime, or definitely this weekend !

 

[cfw213]

Hello all! I'm having an early night on my business trip and I uploaded some pictures to my photobucket last week so I'm ready to post for an update! I know I always don't respond to every comment, but I LOVE everyone's feedback and if you are writing a TR, I'm probably following

Anyway - on with this show! These will be some photo-heavy updates! These next couple post are a photo tour of Art of Animation, so if you've been already, feel free to skip - I won't be offended! Also, I changed to the new photobucket and it's being weird, so sorry if the pics are huge!

We were so happy not to have to set an alarm this morning! We had designated this our "slow" day, and we weren't heading to a park until much later in the day. We woke up around 8:45 and had breakfast in the room while we watched a little Stacey. We both showered and got ready, then head out of the room around 10:00 to do some exploring!

As soon as we walked out of the room, this was our view!

And King Triton guarded the front of our building!

We wandered to the other side of the Flippin' Fins pool to see the big statue of Ariel...

Sebastian was hanging out on the other side of the Flippin' Fins pool

Ursula is huge!

And checked out all the other stuff in the LM section! Here is Jess posing as Prince Eric -

The icons around Little Mermaid were so cute!

Dinglehopper!

Keep reading below!

 

[cfw213]

Next up, we walked through the Lion King section on the way to Landscape of Flavors to fill up our mugs! I already posted some pictures of the Lion King secion, but here are some more!

Simba looking proud!

Apparently I took a picture of Rafiki's behind? I'm not sure why.

Kisses for Rafiki!

We made a pit-stop at Landscape of Flavors to fill up our mugs and of course take some pics!

I loved these cool lights at Landscape of Flavors. Here was the Little Mermaid light...I love how the underside looks like Ariel's grotto!

Nemo! Check out all those fishies!

I loved this cute sign going into Landscape of Flavors! This was the way to check in desks, store, etc.

When you walked out of Landscape of Flavors, of course we saw the Big Blue Pool! I tried to take a picture, but it's so massive you can't really realize it in pictures.

The Drop-Off Pool Bar! We never got a chance to have a drink there but I love the name!

I want to keep going but Photobucket is being realllllly buggy and weird. Check back later this week for another update!

 

[Fratthouse]

Hey, I was wondering what happened to you! Thanks for joining and hope to read your TR soon!

Ha Ha - Yes, I dropped off the radar for a little while after my last trip. It was a bit of a disaster, and I had to take a little while to recover before I could feel excited about Disney again But I'm back and finally feel ready to share about my trip and to plan our next one! Look forward to reading the rest of your report - and congrats on the new house!!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Love the LM AoA pictures! It looks so amazing. I definitely need to stay there at some point, LIttle Mermaid is my absolute favorite!

 

[katt789]

Yay! Updates, I may have stayed at AoA, but I’m gonna read along anyways, I miss it!! Also, new photo bucket, just no, I so do not accept!! Dude! We were in the same building, like, if you went right under Triton, and kept going straight, we were among the first couple of rooms in there! I wonder how close we were!

Prince Eric pose! Yes!! I love the LM light in the food court! Paige and I decided that they need that in the ceiling in the bath tub!! Lol

 

[rachel09985]

Great AoA pictures! Photobucket is weird. I absolutely hate the new format and am dreading when they switch permanently to the new one.

I am heading for a business trip Wednesday night too to Chicago!

 

[Aussiesalad]

I love that picture of Jess with Ursula!!

Seriously the best part about AoA is going around and posing with all the massive fun things!!

 

[cfw213]

Ha Ha - Yes, I dropped off the radar for a little while after my last trip. It was a bit of a disaster, and I had to take a little while to recover before I could feel excited about Disney again But I'm back and finally feel ready to share about my trip and to plan our next one! Look forward to reading the rest of your report - and congrats on the new house!!

Oh no, sorry to hear it wasn't what you expected!! I will definitely be reading along if and when you start a TR!

Love the LM AoA pictures! It looks so amazing. I definitely need to stay there at some point, LIttle Mermaid is my absolute favorite!

Thanks! LM was awesome! I now have DVC so we'll be staying at those resorts, but we agreed that some years when I'm low on points we'd definitely stay there again!

Yay! Updates, I may have stayed at AoA, but I’m gonna read along anyways, I miss it!! Also, new photo bucket, just no, I so do not accept!! Dude! We were in the same building, like, if you went right under Triton, and kept going straight, we were among the first couple of rooms in there! I wonder how close we were!

Prince Eric pose! Yes!! I love the LM light in the food court! Paige and I decided that they need that in the ceiling in the bath tub!! Lol

Ugh the new photobucket is TERRIBLE. When I was putting photos into the DIS, they were all giving me the same code, so I had to manually type in the photo name, so annoying!

At AoA, we were on the third floor, behind a cute little dolphin! I wish I was on the first floor, those steps were annoying, ha!

Great AoA pictures! Photobucket is weird. I absolutely hate the new format and am dreading when they switch permanently to the new one.

I am heading for a business trip Wednesday night too to Chicago!

I hate the new Photobucket too! Last night I was using the old one and for some stupid reason decided to switch...so buggy and glitchy!! BUT I didn't have to resize all my pictures and they are pretty normal sized. Maybe that's part of the new system?

Have fun on your business trip! At least Chicago is fun!! I'm in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina, ha.

I love that picture of Jess with Ursula!!

Seriously the best part about AoA is going around and posing with all the massive fun things!!

Haha I love it too! You can really see how big the icons are when someone is in front of them.

 

[teekathepony]

Yeah we had the exact same view! So awesome, bringing back memories here hehe. I loved that resort!!

 

[pattiken]

joining in We were there around same time. Love the resort pics. I agree about EMH late nights at MK were crazy busy..we avoided after one night..mornings are better

 

[cfw213]

Yeah we had the exact same view! So awesome, bringing back memories here hehe. I loved that resort!!

It was such a nice view! I think it was actually an upgraded view? I don't know if pool view is considered upgraded at the values.

joining in We were there around same time. Love the resort pics. I agree about EMH late nights at MK were crazy busy..we avoided after one night..mornings are better

Thanks for joining! We will never do EMH night again! Way too crazy. The morning EMH are the best, then we just go back to the hotel for a rest in the afternoon.

 

[cfw213]

Hello all! I had another pretty early night on my business trip AND...it's my birthday! I'm sitting in a hotel room all by myself so I figured - what a better way to celebrate than a little TR update, right?!

Where we last left off, Jess and I had filled up our mugs at Landscape of Flavors and head over to the Cars section of Art of Animation. This was the first time we had been over there and it was just AMAZING! I think this was my favorite area of the resort as I think it was the most immersive and realistic - I felt like I had just walked into Radiator Springs. I would love to stay there if they had standard rooms!

Hello Radiator Spring!

Sheriff

Doc!

I loved how the ground looked like a highway - Disney always has such amazing details!

Loved these signs!

Loved this area!

My favorite - Mater!!

Cozy cone pool. We never made it over to the cabanas!

Lighting McQueen was under construction

 

[cfw213]

Photobucket is zooming right along, so I'll continue with another update! From Cars, we continued onto the Nemo section! Of course, you can see alot of this when you come out of Animation Hall, but behind the pool there are alot more icons.

This is a picture from the Cars section looking right to the Nemo section

Nemo & Marlin

Crush and Dory!

Mr. Ray - not the best picture

Nemo play area

After Nemo, we walked around the back of the hotel, where the sidewalk goes along Hourglass Lake. It's really peaceful and quiet down there - very relaxing but very HOT! There isn't any shade over on that side and we were both sweating to death. Here was the pathway to Pop:

So relaxing and quiet!

These were so cute!

Lots of fun facts on the walk too!

Hello Pop!

Around 11:00, we had enough sun and decided to head back to the room to change and leave for our next destination. The rest of my photos are at home so unfortunatley I'm going to have to stop here until the weekend!

 

[cfw213]

We were trying another new thing today - DisneyQuest! We head out to DTD after we got changed and waited a long time for a bus (or so it says in my notes!). We arrived at Downtown Disney around 11:30 and did a little shopping before we had lunch. The first stop was the art store...I want everything in here!

Anyone wanna buy me this?

Then we made a stop I had been dreaming about since we arrived in Orlando - Goofy's Candy Co! I had read that you could get a "custom" made Mickey rice krispie treat for a snack credit, which seemed like a really good deal to me. So I filled out my paper and we waited for them to make it - I had it dipped in milk chocolate, covered in butterfinger and then drizzled with dark chocolate - that thing was amazing! It was HUGE and such a good value for a snack credit.

This sign was super cute!

This was made out of jelly beans!

Yum!

Here is my treat being made!

We had one more stop to make before lunch - the kitchen store (I don't actually know the name of it...). We were window shopping today for our big shopping trip later in the week, so I checked out a couple things and made a mental note of what I might want to buy. Finally, it was time for lunch at Earl of Sandwich! I had been dreaming about this lovely place for months and I was so excited to be back. It was pretty crowded and it was hot/about to rain outside, so Jess stalked tables while I ordered.

While we waited for our sandwiches, we shared a side of macaroni salad - so yummy there!

We both got the Earl's Club - SO GOOD! I had been dreaming about this thing for 9 months...

I had ordered the pasta salad instead of dessert (since I had my treat from Goofy's) and a soda. I believe Jess got a cookie and a soda or maybe a soda and a water - I can't remember. I do remember that it was all delicious!

As we were eating, the sky turned darker and it started to rain as soon as we stepped outside. Then it started to POUR! We pulled our cheap ponchos out and had a laugh putting them on since it was sooo windy. They kept getting stuck to our face and legs, it was so funny. We dashed into the pin trading store since Jess was still thinking about starting a collection, but ended up not buying anything. At this point it was raining WAY too hard to walk all the way to DisneyQuest, so we ran from store to store for the next hour waiting for a break in the rain. We hit up the toy store and then spent a long time browsing at WOD. I was in the market for some Mickey jewelry so we were in that section for a while, making a mental list of all the things we liked! FINALLY, the rain died down and we started our walk to DQ. It was still raining and there were periods of hard rain, but it wasn't terrible. We survived and made it to DQ! They were able to give us a plastic bag to put our wet stuff in, and off we went!

 

[cfw213]

The good thing about going during a weekday was that it was super slow! The first thing we did was the virtual jungle cruise. I have to say, I think I'll skip this next time! It was fun but made my stomach a little unsettled, and after a while my arms got tired. Also on this floor was a 3-D Aladdin ride where you rode a magic carpet to collect coins, which was fun. The Pirates ride was also downstairs but there was a 10 minute wait, so we decided to go do some other things.

We walked up to the second floor and an animation class was starting in a few minutes! We had so much fun at the class in Hollywood Studios so we thought we'd give it a try.

Instead of a pencil and paper, this class had an animated screen to draw on and it was really hard. The machines were cute though!

We drew Donald and mine was so jacked up.

But Jess is working hard!

Unlike the paper, you can't make small adjustments to make it work - fail! I won't be doing this again, I was so frustrated.

The instructor's was good though!

Jess' final product

Next we went over to this fun little booth where you can make your own song and it was hilarious! I think I have it on video, but I definitely took a picture of the words.

I must have stopped for a bite of my snack, because here's a picture of it!

Cyber Space Mountain was also on level 2, but I don't like virtual reality type rides as they make me sick. I told Jess I would help her design and wait with her, but she's not too keen on them either so we skipped it.
On the next level, we played a pinball game where you stood on these huge things that looked like Segway's and you were the little arms on the pinball machine. Only one other person way playing with us but it was fun and we would do it again! There was also a ski game that looked like one of those racecar games, and that was a lot of fun! There were people waiting to use our machine or we would have played again. This floor had a lot of racing/car games and seemed to be more crowded than the other levels.

We each did one car race game and then head up to the 4th floor where we found the best attraction in the whole place - Buzz AstroBlaster! This was basically a bumper car game where you shot huge balls at other cars. One person drove the vehicle over the balls to scoop them up, then the other person loaded them in the cannon to shoot at other cars. If your car got hit by a ball, it stopped in place and spun around in circles with the lights going crazy. I swear, I have never had more fun in my life! We were laughing SO hard that my stomach hurt. Definitely do this if you go to DisneyQuest, it was the best!

Next, we went up to the floor with more video games and played DDR (I am horrendously bad), and Guitar Hero (decent, but not as good as I used to be). We also played air hockey for a little while and some light up game that tested your reflexes. We didn't go to the 5th floor, but I think it was just more carts for Cyber Space Mountain or another ride that is similar. We did Buzz one more time before leaving. All in all, we were probably there for about 2.5 hours and it was enough for us, since the crowds were so low. We would definitely go back again for an evening, especially if we had the guys with us. I think a teenage boy could stay for hours!

When we left, it was probably about 3:30 and it wasn't raining. We were planning on going to Epcot and decided to walk to Saratoga Springs (my DVC home resort, so I wanted to check it out!), then catch a bus to Epcot.

The walking path was close to DQ and the walk wasn't long, but it started raining again!! If it wasn't raining, it would have been a really nice walk. It probably took about 10 minutes and we were at what I assume is the front of SSR. The resort is beautiful and I can't wait to stay there someday. We grabbed a bus at the first bus stop to Epcot and it was FREEZING, they had the air cranked up so high. It really was not pleasant! Also, they were doing some repairs to the front of SSR, so we were on the bus for at least 15 minutes before we got out of SSR. Finally, we arrived at Epcot around 4:40. The sun was finally coming out and it looked like it was going to be a nice evening. We, however, did not look so nice - all that rain was not doing us any favors!! But, we had about 2 hours to kill before dinner and we were off to do some exploring!

 

[Aussiesalad]

firstly ...HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAYYYY!!!!!

I loved walking through the cars section of AOA! Seriously such great detail!!

There is so much amazing Disney art there! One day I'll deck out our place

Your snack looks delicious! I had no idea they did that!!

Good old Disney pour down! Keeps you on your toes...

 

[lvcourtneyy]

So jealous that you are now a DVC member!


Thank you for the review of Disneyquest! Both trips we planned on doing it and ended up cutting it out of the plans. Looks like you guys had a lot of fun though so maybe we will have to do it!

Sorry to hear about all the rain. At least you didn't let it get you down!

 

[cfw213]

firstly ...HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAYYYY!!!!!

I loved walking through the cars section of AOA! Seriously such great detail!!

There is so much amazing Disney art there! One day I'll deck out our place

Your snack looks delicious! I had no idea they did that!!

Good old Disney pour down! Keeps you on your toes...

Thank you! I just read through your whole TR and I love it so far! I can't believe you guys drove across the country! I want to drive to WDW one day but it's only 18 hours. And I think I would only do it once, just for the experience!