BE's Never Ending TR -- That kind of ... Ended? Or did it?

[DisneyStitch626]

This is the one

The sketch one you are talking about, is the one I ended up getting. I love it. And I love this one too. If it wasn't $220 with ridiculous shipping on top of that, I might consider it.

 

[Belle Ella]

Man, I need to stop thinking about the crazy prices. I couldn't help myself, I really couldn't. I just love them all so much though.

 

[DisneyStitch626]

My brothers girlfriend picked up a Snow White wallet while we were down there. It was really nice too. It was about the size of the one you just got, but it wasn't dooney and i think it was no more than $40. She got it in a store in DTD. Studio Disney 365 I think it was at.

 

[DisneyStitch626]

This is the wallet

It's so nice. When she picked it up, I thought of you.

 

[Belle Ella]

I totally has that wallet! Poor thing is a little run down now which is why I wanted a new wallet and why I caved and bought the D&B one. That wallet has served me well. Now it is sitting on a shelf with all my Snow White stuff looking pretty!!

 

[DisneyStitch626]

Haha, and here I thought I found something new for you, lol.

Yeah it doesnt look like it's one that should be used every day, lol. It's pretty soft. Hers already looks kinda worn, and it's only been a few months.... I can't believe that was 3 months ago already!!

 

[Belle Ella]

it's the thought that counts!!

UGH. I wanted to either edit more photos or start this TR right now, but I am exhausted. I want to go sleep for years and years and years.

 

[Belle Ella]

Aw. I made some progress while eating. I have my header done for this TR!! It's gold and sparkly.

I think I will get that first post up today at least to get things rolling. Maybe entice a few more readers/posters, lol. Depends on if I can get my sister to loan me her laptop charger.

 

[kaoden39]

I was at Sprint earlier getting my new toy er telephone and they offered me a free notebook laptop if I signed up for the Sprint internet service, which I already wanted to do so it is a win win. I pick up the new laptop on Monday.

 

[wvnative]

Jazz!!!!! Late as can be but present and accounted for. Can't wait for pics.

Can I just add... I am so jealous and..... OMG, I can't believe I don't know how many days we have left

 

[Belle Ella]

I was at Sprint earlier getting my new toy er telephone and they offered me a free notebook laptop if I signed up for the Sprint internet service, which I already wanted to do so it is a win win. I pick up the new laptop on Monday.

Yay for 2 new toys!! I can't wait until the day I have a new one to play with.

Jazz!!!!! Late as can be but present and accounted for. Can't wait for pics.

Can I just add... I am so jealous and..... OMG, I can't believe I don't know how many days we have left

Ooh. Somebody can start making dining ressies soon (I miss saying PS). Go you!! Happy New year to you!! And you are always forgiven for being late to the party. All that counts is you show up.

 

[Belle Ella]

OK, total news update I just have to mention. I'm chilling at the not-quite-family-family's house for dinner and to drop off the pins and pressed pennies that I got for them and a decision was just made: we are totally doing Halloween 2011 and going all out on costumes.

And she is just the person to do it with. May I present to you her totally awesome Buzz Lightyear costume (from 2008):

Now the brainstorming begins!!

This be the same totally creative spirit who makes the bracelets from pressed pennies. Fun times indeedy.

 

[kaoden39]

Yay for 2 new toys!! I can't wait until the day I have a new one to play with.



Ooh. Somebody can start making dining ressies soon (I miss saying PS). Go you!! Happy New year to you!! And you are always forgiven for being late to the party. All that counts is you show up.

Now we are a maybe on the computer. But, I was thinking it would be cheaper to buy a new notebook because my new phone can be used as a hotspot for computers and I don't have to add another $50 a month to my phone bill.

OK, total news update I just have to mention. I'm chilling at the not-quite-family-family's house for dinner and to drop off the pins and pressed pennies that I got for them and a decision was just made: we are totally doing Halloween 2011 and going all out on costumes.

And she is just the person to do it with. May I present to you her totally awesome Buzz Lightyear costume (from 2008):

Now the brainstorming begins!!

This be the same totally creative spirit who makes the bracelets from pressed pennies. Fun times indeedy.

Oh that is great!! How fun!!

 

[HollyannHeck]

Thanks for the warm welcome, and yes, I am close! I had planned on going in January since my last trip in August... until Black Friday when my DH surprised me with a new MacBook Pro. I decided it was worth skipping the trip for that, and financially we had to. Until.... my birthday last month when my Dear Daddy surprised me with quite the large check, with the excuse that it's my last year to have any fun before I turn 40. I have my suspicions that he actually just miscounted and believed I turned 40 last month, but I'm not complaining. So suddenly we were back on again!! I suppose I really should do a PTR, but since I have to work ALL day tomorrow and then I have a concert to go to, it will just remain to be seen if I get it squeezed in before we actually leave. Actually, after the first couple hours I've got nothing to do at work tomorrow except answer the occasional question, and there is free internet, so maybe I will just do it then.

OK, total news update I just have to mention. I'm chilling at the not-quite-family-family's house for dinner and to drop off the pins and pressed pennies that I got for them and a decision was just made: we are totally doing Halloween 2011 and going all out on costumes.

And she is just the person to do it with. May I present to you her totally awesome Buzz Lightyear costume (from 2008):

Now the brainstorming begins!!

This be the same totally creative spirit who makes the bracelets from pressed pennies. Fun times indeedy.

How very exciting! I have never been on actual Halloween, but I have been a couple times during Halloweentime, and I love it!

 

[Belle Ella]

Thanks for the warm welcome, and yes, I am close! I had planned on going in January since my last trip in August... until Black Friday when my DH surprised me with a new MacBook Pro. I decided it was worth skipping the trip for that, and financially we had to. Until.... my birthday last month when my Dear Daddy surprised me with quite the large check, with the excuse that it's my last year to have any fun before I turn 40. I have my suspicions that he actually just miscounted and believed I turned 40 last month, but I'm not complaining. So suddenly we were back on again!! I suppose I really should do a PTR, but since I have to work ALL day tomorrow and then I have a concert to go to, it will just remain to be seen if I get it squeezed in before we actually leave. Actually, after the first couple hours I've got nothing to do at work tomorrow except answer the occasional question, and there is free internet, so maybe I will just do it then.

How very exciting! I have never been on actual Halloween, but I have been a couple times during Halloweentime, and I love it!

Anytime! We love having new faces to chit chat with and who are following along. It's what makes the whole TR thing so much fun. I wouldn't have the heart to do it if I had nobody to share it with.

Hm, maybe we'll forgive you for not writing a PTR Then again I haven't done a proper one of my own, to my own standards, for a couple of trips now. But hey, life dictates what we have time to do and what we don't have time to do. At least you're getting a Disney trip!

I'm so excited about the prospect of an actual Halloween trip. Hecks yeah.

 

[wvnative]

We'd totally join you for Halloween Jazz but as we plan to be there the weekend of Veterans Day, I don't think it'll be feasible. lol. Hmm... I'll ponder it though. Might be better not to be there on my actual birthday. Crowds could be bad that weekend and mom is not gonna be happy if I'm not home for my 40th since it is a milestone.

 

[tdashgirl]

Those costumes are ADORABLE. How fun!!!! I can't wait to see what Halloween 2011 brings.

 

[Belle Ella]

What a party that could be, huh? But I have a feeling it's always gonna be crowded on a Holiday weekend. I'm really excited about the prospect of doing a ticketed event where the levels of people are controlled. We'll see how the planning works out.

OK, so I just ofund out my sister is leaving for my Grandparents tomorrow. Which means I will be laptop chargerless until mine arrives in the mail. I technically can use the family PC to write my report so I'll try and get at least the updates done through what I have edited photo wise. Hopefully that works out. I'm antsy to share it with everyone. It was such an awesome week.

 

[Belle Ella]

Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls! Children of all ages! Step up, step up! Come one, come all, to ...

Do you ever sit down to start telling a story with absolutely no idea where to start? Should you give a little background story so that everyone is all up to speed or should you just dive in head first and figure out everyone will catch up at some point. This is the trouble that I am finding with writing a trip report without a proper pre-trip report. Sure, for anyone who's been following along with the many adventures of Jazz (*cough* me *cough*) it's easy enough: Jazz goes to Disneyland. Jazz meets boy who lives near Disneyland. Jazz gets an AP. Jazz wants to spend NYE with said boy at Disneyland. Tada, that's it in a nutshell. So I guess that means everyone is all caught up!!

Now it's on with the show.

It's probably going to become a pattern in my Trip Reports of late, but the real Day 1 -- wait, wait, we're making it Day 0 -- of this trip is as uneventful and un-worthy of mentioning (in the whole 'not the point of the DLR TR' aspect). Nobody wants to hear about the way-too-early wake-up and hour of packing the car. Why would someone want to hear about my torturous day of work knowing that I would be hitting the road the second that I was off, all the while watching the clock like a hawk. Certainly nobody is so much a masochist that they want to hear about the drive down there (it was long and it was boring -- but I made it without stopping once). Of course, there's always the arrival and the excitement over seeing Jason again but if any of that is something you'd actually like to hear about, you are in the wrong place.

What I will comment on was the complete and utter disappointment I suffered when I realized that I left my beloved Duffy Bear at home, next to my bed. I think I died a little inside! Tear.

But believe me, there is plenty of good stuff!

Day 1 was the kind of day that epic times are made of. I mean, it was New Years Eve after all. The last day of 2010. The last day of a decade (you may argue this point with me if you'd like and say that 2010 was the start of the new decade and I will gladly disagree with you). And did I mention that I was spending it at Disneyland with a pretty awesome person? I have never done anything big for New Years in my life. Sure, I may have stayed up with family from time to time, but it would have been rare for me to actually make it to midnight. And I certainly had never had anyone to share it with before. So regardless of how the day went it was already a win-win thing for me.

Now here is something that has changed for me as an AP holder and as someone who isn't staying at a hotel nearby the resort: the time that I leave in the morning. If you've read previous Trip Reports that date back to September 2010 or earlier you've probably got an idea of my usual routine of waking up early enough to be at the gates before opening. I don't even want to think about what time I would have to leave from Jason's in order to do that, especially if traffic were involved. So it's safe to say we didn't leave super early, but I definitely wanted to be there as early as possible since I had this horrible imagine in my head of what the crowds would be like after the reports that had been streaming in during the week (Disneyland tickets no longer being sold at 10a, etc.) and while I was preparing myself for it I wanted to have time to do some things earlier in the day as well. Looking back at my photos we probably got there sometime between 8a and 9a and it was time to decide what to do first. This list included attempting to get coffee and attempting to get a locker. Haha. Funny story there. Well, not so funny. But all I cold do is laugh at the line of people waiting at the Market House (you know, with that awesome free refill thing) and for the lockers. Both ideas were squashed like that. Besides, we had more important things to do. Like get me some gloves. Somehow I left mine back at his house and my poor fingers were already freezing. This is going to be a pretty important part of the story later on, so don't forget it!!

So there we were, both with freshly mittened hands off for our first destination. OK, scratch that. There I was with freshly mittened hands off to my first destination (grabbing Fast Passes for Thunder) while Jason went to look for another pair of gloves for himself. Just trying to save some time where we could! By this point, 9:28a, the stand by line for BTMRR was already zigzagging though Zocalo Park. Suckers. I had no problem grabbing our FP's with a return time of 10:10a.

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The best part about this moment was this: getting to play with my new toy -- er -- camera lens! It was the big Christmas gift that I had been looking forward to this year and I was so excited to use it for some fantastic shots around Disneyland. Because I'm a total Disney-photo-stalker. Take a looksies at what she can do:

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And a couple more photos I took of the area while waiting for Jason to play catch up:

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I've photographed this area (and just about every area of Disneyland) many a-times, but it was even more exciting to do so with this new lens. Even things that I already had maybe 20 or so shots of waiting for me at home. Thank you Santa for the most awesomest of presents!!

We had about 45 minutes until our FP's for BTMRR could be used so we consulted and decided to make our way over to Indiana Jones where we would completely bypass the stand by line which was well over an hour already and the FP system as well since that is still a hefty wait right there. We went straight for the single rider pass which would be the only way we were gonna go on IJ this particular day. It freed us up a FP opportunity and kept us from waiting in another long line. I even timed how long it took us. We got our little passes and started heading down the exit 9:31a and we got out of the ride at 9:57a. Not bad, huh! The best part of all was that there was a little snafu when the CM's were getting us on the ride. They stopped loading on one side and had us all move over to the other side and in the shuffle people got stupid and didn't know where they were going. So instead of sitting in two different rows we got to sit together and nobody else got in our row. Go figure, right? And of course I had my camera out to see what this new lens could do in the dark/low light for the first time.

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As we got out of the queue for IJ we still had roughly 10 minutes before we cold use our BTMRR FP's and 10 minutes before we could get new ones. It would be a good idea to make sure we got new FP's as often as possible so with a quick restroom stop we slowly dragged ourselves over to the Haunted Mansion to grab a FP as soon as we could before going back to BTMRR. Before long we had new FP's for 11a in our hands and I had more fun experimental photos of another area I have photographed endlessly in the past couple of months!

... to be continued ...​

 

[Belle Ella]

Now that our BTMRR FP's were ready and waiting to be used it made sense that after grabbing new FP's that we hopped back to Frontierland from New Orleans Square to continue with the rides we love. But of course me being me I got sidetracked. Did I mention I had a brand new lens to play with? I remember giving Jason plenty of warning that this would probably mean a lot of random stopping to take photos. But funny enough I don't even remember doing it all that much. It's gotten hard for me to stop and take photos with someone waiting on me who's company I actually enjoy. But here be one of those few moments that I actually did. I had to continue with my NOS Mask Quest! Because they are gorgeous.

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So where were we? Ah, yes. On our way to BTMRR! And all those poor suckers in the stand-by line. In all honesty, I would have been fine with waiting in the long lines and only getting a couple of rides in for the day, but I liked the way our plan worked out as it was. With our FP's in hand we got in line at 10:18 and barely had a 5 minute wait before we were sent off to row #5. Fun, fun!!

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As we got off BTMRR I got the urge to go up Big Thunder Trail towards Reindeer Round Up so guess where we headed next? Reindeer Round Up of course!!I love the reindeer, they are so cute. They look cuddly, but I bet they aren't really. Not that I have any intentions of finding out or anything like that at all. Because I don't ... So the big man, Santa Claus himself, has now long since departed but I got to take a little peak-see around. I was tempted to get a photo lounging in his chair by my lonesome but somebody beat me too it and had no intention on moving anytime soon so I passed on the idea and just took a few photos here and there of whatever struck my fancy.

i bet this one is rudolph -- he's just trying to fool you with the red scarf













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At this point, I remember we got to talking about Maps. I love collecting my DLR maps and I love that now I have somebody to get some for me if I don't make it down for some absurd reason when a new one comes out but I also can get them on my own! Now, I had already grabbed more then enough Holiday maps during my pre-Christmas trip but this was New Years Eve which meant special maps for both parks! I was completely not even expecting it so I was excited when we walked through the gates earlier and saw them with all their celebratory glory and a big old 2011 printed on them. We had already grabbed a handful for Disneyland but DCA wasn't factoring into the plans for the day at all but I still had to get DCA maps!! So when I had my photo-fill of Reindeer Round Up we made our way to the Esplanade for a mad dash to grab DCA maps. And now I shall present them to you ...

i may have a couple extras to give out if anyone is interested -- let me know​

That was literally just a small side trip to grab maps and nothing else. We didn't even actually go in to DCA and before we knew it we were back through the gates at Disneyland where I tried to explain that even with an AP New Years Eve is a good day to get your hand stamped on your way out but somebody wasn't buying this whole explanation. At least we had no other intentions of leaving the Park again until it was officially 2011. Here's a quick little photo that I took of the Main Street Station on our way back in:

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An added bonus to swinging by DCA was the fact that it ate up some time until our HMH FP's were good and could get another FP. Since I'm not adventurous enough for Space Mountain or Splash Mountain (it was too cold anyway), we would only for SRL for Indy, and because we would go on HMH again later on the Tour it was only logical that we save our FP's for BTMRR. Because that ride is just the bestest. So that was what we did before slinking back over to HMH at 11:08a where I died and went to dark ride photo heaven.

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On our way out of HMH I stopped to take another entry for my own NOS Mask Quest. The color scheme for this one in particular felt very New Years for me. I don't know why, but I relate it more to New Years than I do to the Christmas season.

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By this point it was getting to be eatin' time! If it had been eatin' time before then we probably would have eaten at Rancho del Zocalo because of the coupons included in the entertainment schedules and on receipts but unfortunately there was no way that would have been happening in the time frame given due to the mass of people waiting for food. So we went for the next best thing: The Golden Horshoe. And this of course turned out to be a wonderful idea. Whenever you walk in and see the tables packed with no food in front of people that can only mean one thing: Billy Hill and the Hillbillies!! Naw, I wasn't excited at all. So while Jason stood in line to get us our food it was my task to find us a place to sit. Unfortunately because it hadn't been planned there was no table-grabbing, but I did manage to snag a couple of chairs on the balcony and saved us a spot while I took a few photos here and there.

i really, really, love these two



... to be continued ...​

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