Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered - A Sep/Oct trip report

[MissStitch626]

Hello fellow Disers! Welcome to my trip report.

After two glorious weeks of Florida sun (most of the time!) and WDW fun, our trip is over (pause for a sob) and we’re back in gloomy reality, yearning for a place where everyone sings and dances, the sun shines (most of the time) and it’s socially acceptable to wear mouse ears on your head.

We had an amazing time in Walt Disney World. We had lots of new experiences and met some amazing people. We ate, drank, laughed, cried, sang and danced. We were tired, our feet hurt - everything hurt - and we were ready to drop by the end of it all. Was it worth it? You know it was.

Highlights include some amazing character interactions, terrific ride experiences, a visit to a certain school of witchcraft and wizardry and some of the best meals I have ever eaten.

Coming up…Did we pluck up the courage to do Halloween Horror Night? Did I overcome my fears and face Mission Space and Tower of Terror? Did I ever find Lotso Huggin Bear? Did I finally get to have my Fiesta Margarita?

This trip report will be packed full of pictures and details of our trip, reviews of shows, rides and new experiences and a day-by-day account of the last two weeks. I look forward to explaining how we learned that “70 minutes is almost an hour” and that the Tower of Terror is “just like the Haunted Mansion, right?” Other highlights include the Great Battle for Beast, the Dinosaur ‘No Posing Required’ Duck and Cover, and why parts of our trip have been dubbed “Two No Shows and One Sick Triceratops.”

I'll start uploading photos shortly and we'll get this show on the road.

Please keep your hands, legs and arms inside the trip report and take small children by the hand…

 

[TanzUnited99]

Yay your started!

Joining in and looking forward to reading the answers to the questions, esp if you did HHN!

P.S. We hate how the weather has changed in the UK - there was actually some sunshine when we returned

 

[MissStitch626]

The Cast
Planes, Trains and Automobiles pt 1
Planes, Trains and Automobiles pt 2
The Magic, The Memories and the Magic Kingdom pt 1
The Magic, The Memories and the Magic Kingdom pt 2
The Magic, The Memories and the Magic Kingdom pt 3
Breakfast with friends, the Monorail Tour and the Magic Kingdom

 

[MissStitch626]

Yay your started!

Joining in and looking forward to reading the answers to the questions, esp if you did HHN!

P.S. We hate how the weather has changed in the UK - there was actually some sunshine when we returned

Glad to see you here!

To be honest the weather here is really no different to how we left it in Orlando It was raining when the plane took off and raining when it landed in Glasgow - the only difference was the temperature!

 

[MissStitch626]

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

An all singing, all dancing Disney extravaganza starring…

Me! For those of you who don’t know me from my PTR, my name is Elizabeth and I am a Disney-holic. I am 28 years old (though I have trouble remembering that!), and I’m a writer with a day job in insurance. I love most things Disney, and this is my third trip to Walt Disney World.

My pre-trip resolutions were to overcome my fear of ‘face’ characters like the princesses and to leave no ride unconquered.

Ross. My husband of three years is as big a Disney fan as I am. This is his fourth trip around The World and he’s spent as much, if not more, time planning this trip as I have.

His pre-trip resolution was to ride Tower of Terror (though this one may have been imposed on him by me!) and Space Mountain

Coming up...planes, trains and automobiles as the adventurers set off!.​

 

[MissStitch626]

The day I thought would never come had arrived!

(Not too many pictures for this instalment – the camera was safely packed away in Ross’ bag.)

Learning from the previous trip’s experience, I had checked, double checked and triple checked that my alarm was set for 6am, but I was awake long before then. We had plenty of time to dress, check we had all the right documents in the right places and say goodbye to our bunnies before it was off to Glasgow airport just before 7.30am.

Our flight was scheduled to take off at 12.05pm, so check in should in theory have opened at 9.05am. We arrived at the terminal at around 8.20am and were surprised to find check in already open! We rushed to the check in desk and quickly realised why it had opened early. We were greeted at the doors by staff from the airline who explained that the flight was overbooked! All kinds of horrors flashed in front of my eyes at that point and I thought my heart might actually stop. The staff went on to ask if we would like to volunteer to take a different flight the following day and they would pay for overnight accommodation and all our meals. I politely explained that we had various plans and reservations for the following day that we would like to keep and declined.

It did make me wonder what would happen if everyone turned up for the flight and no one volunteered to take a different flight – would it be first come first served? I hated to think of some poor family turning up in what they thought was plenty of time to check in and not being able to board the plane. I never did find out what happened.

After check in our luck held out and there was no line at security. We were checked in and through security in less than ten minutes!

We had a quick wander around the duty free store before heading to Frankie and Benny’s for breakfast. It seemed like we were first in a long line of people with the same idea – the restaurant was empty when we arrived and quickly filled with people.

The time in the airport seemed to fly by – a definite bonus! I passed the time in the departure lounge indulging in a little people watching and reading either a magazine or on my Kindle, and after what seemed like the shortest wait ever we were boarding our flight to Orlando.

I was actually really excited about this flight. Ross is a bit of a super-geek when it comes to things like this, and he had told me that we would be flying on a brand new Airbus with a touch screen, on demand entertainment system. As soon as I was in my seat I was leafing through the movie listings, choosing everything I wanted to watch. No flight has ever seemed shorter! In the 8 plus hours we were on the plane I watched Super 8 (amazing), Bridesmaids (overhyped but ok), Red Riding Hood (amusingly bad), some of Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (just bad – I turned this off after about half an hour) and some of Thor (which I loved but ran out of time to finish).

It felt like we’d only just taken off before the captain was announcing our descent into Orlando…

Coming up…arrival at MCO, Magical Express to Port Orleans Riverside

 

[PixieMama]

I'm here! Can't wait to hear all about your trip!

I can't imagine being on a plane for over 8 hours! But sounds like you passed the time with some good movies! (I totally agree with your assessment of "Red Riding Hood"... but at least Shiloh Fernandez (Peter) and Max Irons (Henry) are nice to look at! )

 

[MissStitch626]

I'm here! Can't wait to hear all about your trip!

I can't imagine being on a plane for over 8 hours! But sounds like you passed the time with some good movies! (I totally agree with your assessment of "Red Riding Hood"... but at least Shiloh Fernandez (Peter) and Max Irons (Henry) are nice to look at! )

Hi Shannon! Glad you're here

You're totally right about that movie. I felt sorry for DH on that flight - after I was done telling him all about how pretty those two were, he had to endure several outbursts of "Chris Hemsworth (Thor) is really quite handsome isn't he?"

I think the flight might have been a little longer for Ross

 

[Kat in GA]

I'm in!! Trip reports just make me happy - but I can't seem to get my act together to write one of my own. (I'll just let Pixie Mama do all the writing!)


Sounds like your flight was great - especially since you had entertainment. I was doing the driving on our last visit. But when we leave in ten days (yippee!), my DH will be driving - so I can entertain myself with my book.

Can't wait to hear more!!

 

[MARsMama]

Hiiii!! I'm not quite home yet, but no longer in disney We'll be heading home early tomorrow. Subbing as I can't wait to read your trip report.

 

[oxfordgirl]

Subbing - can't wait to hear all about your trip

 

[MissStitch626]

I'm in!! Trip reports just make me happy - but I can't seem to get my act together to write one of my own. (I'll just let Pixie Mama do all the writing!)


Sounds like your flight was great - especially since you had entertainment. I was doing the driving on our last visit. But when we leave in ten days (yippee!), my DH will be driving - so I can entertain myself with my book.

Can't wait to hear more!!

Hopefully I'll be able to keep the report up to date though so far as spent most of the last few days sleeping! Who knew a trip to WDW requires weeks of intensive training beforehand?!

 

[MissStitch626]

Hiiii!! I'm not quite home yet, but no longer in disney We'll be heading home early tomorrow. Subbing as I can't wait to read your trip report.

Yay you're here!

It was great to bump into you in the food court, can't wait to read about your trip too!

 

[MissStitch626]

Subbing - can't wait to hear all about your trip

Glad to have you joining in!

 

[MissStitch626]

After an unbelievably quick flight – and a grumble that I didn’t get to finish watching Thor – we had landed at MCO and were preparing for the stress and hassle of airport security. I was happy to find that the queue had been changed since our last visit – instead of individual lines forming at each desk we were put into one long line. No more line jumping from later flights!

There was a bit of a delay as the computers were down at security but it was way too early into the trip for this to make me grumpy. Once we were through we collected our bags and headed to the Magical Express desk.

I will stop here to point out that I have no sense of direction whatsoever and it always amazes me that Ross seems to remember exactly where to go! If it was up to me I would wonder around MCO completely clueless and end up living in the airport.

The good luck we seemed to be having continued at the Magical Express desk and we managed to get the last two seats on the bus that was waiting at our depot. The first stop was Port Orleans Riverside!

As we were arriving there was no line at check-in, and we were soon checked in and on our way to room 9202 in Oak Manor.

We were so happy to be back in the Magnolia Bend mansions – Alligator Bayou is lovely but my first love will always be the mansion houses! We already knew how to find our building so we headed there straight away, dumped our bags in the room and headed back out to take a few photos and grab a bite to eat in the Riverside Mill food court.

First view of our room

A welcome from housekeeping

I have lots more photos of the resort but seem to be having trouble with Photobucket - will upload more soon as I plan on doing a full review on the resort itself later in the report.

Here we had our first experience with the QSDP – so much food! We both had burgers and fries with cookies for dessert and we were both defeated by our cookies. This would become a theme throughout the trip and we found that with ADRs booked as well, the dining plan was just far too much food for us!

Even though we hadn’t been here since 2009, everything was so familiar that we already had the strangest feeling we had never left!

After dinner we took the bus to Downtown Disney for a quick look around. This was our first break with tradition as normally we would have taken the wonderful boat trip to DTD, but there had been quite a bit of lightning already which usually takes the boats out of service.

In DTD we had a look around all of our old haunts – Art of Disney (where I saw at least a hundred things I wanted to buy), Mickey’s Pantry, Days of Christmas, Once Upon a Toy, Team Mickey, TrenD and, of course, the World of Disney. This was a window shopping evening only and we soon headed back to the resort to unpack and crash before our first full day at Disney.

Coming up…where else on day 1? The Magic Kingdom of course!

 

[PrincessCharlie]

I'm in and looking forward to reading the rest!

 

[PixieMama]

I, too, have no sense of direction. When I got my Magical Express info, I noticed on the map in the booklet that the ME desk wasn't too far from the gate I was to land... yay!

And when I got off the plane, the first thing I noticed was a sign stating that ME was located on Level 1... yay!

But... I could not find ANYthing to tell me what level I was on, or how to get from where I was to Level 1. I eventually had to ask someone! On the bright side, I now know how to get to the ME desk if I ever need to in the future!

 

[Kat in GA]

What did you think about being in that building?? We have royal rooms reserved for May - and they are in Oak and Parterre -- but it looks like they are pretty far from the bus - what did you think?? It looks like it's close to a bridge to walk over to the food court - maybe we'd go to the main bus stop. Anyway...just wondering what you thought of the distance between your room and the bus/pool/food court. Thanks!

 

[BarbP]

Subbing. I LOVE trip reports. Looking forward to yours!!!

 

[TanzUnited99]

Yay on your flight passing so quickly and having the movies to keep you entertained

Lol I think I would be the same at the airport as I can get lost in my home town

Your room looks great! Looking forward to seeing more pics.