Brandie & Alan's WDW Trip 9/21-9/30

[Mnchknbrat1982]

9/21: Leave for Florida

Cast: Brandie~ age 25, college student/day care provider, Loves Disney
Alan~ age 26, maintence for a plastics factory, loves Disney just not as much as I do.
Alan's parents also will be joining us a couple times this trip.

The plan here was to leave as soon as Alan got home and got a shower. We ended up leaving for the 14 hour drive to florida around 4:30 pm. Alan doesn't get off work till 3:30 pm. We was hoping he could manage to get off early but it didn't happen. We had dinner at the Cracker Barrel in Antioch, TN at 7:30 pm. Only cost Alan & I $15.93 before tip. After dinner we drove until about 2 am when we stopped at McDough, Georgia and stayed the night at the Super 8.

 

[imsorry]

Ok, keep it coming!!! We need more details!

 

[happybratpack]

Jumping on to read more!

 

[Mnchknbrat1982]

9/22: Arrival Day

We got up about 8 am and checked out of the Super 8. Went across the street and had breakfast at the Waffle House. We were on the road headed to florida by 9 am. We made some stops on the way for gas and such. We arrived at Disney World at 4pm. We got checked into the Port Orleans French Quarter by 4:15 pm. Was checked in by a lady from Russia. We went and found our room and dropped off our suitcases.

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Then we went shopping at Downtown Disney from about 4:30-7:00pm. We went to check in at our dinner reservation at Boatwright's about 7:30 pm. We was told by the hostess to come back at about 8:15pm as our reservation wasn't until 8:30 to check in. Which we knew we was early but wanted to see if we could get in. Went and looked in the gift shop at Port Orleans Riverside until 8:15 pm. Then Alan & I went to check us all in for dinner. We were then handed a pager. We went and found his parents in the gift shop and looked around a little bit more. It was about 8:45 when we were paged to be seated. After our server came to the table and we was handed the menu's I noticed that they had changed the menu items. As I had just checked the menu's a couple days before we left. No one saw anything that we wanted. So we asked the server about substitutions and he wouldn't work with anyone. Also sayed they didn't have like a plain backed potato or anything. So we all decided to get dinner elsewhere. This really irriated me that they change the menu on such short notice when you make your reservations so far in advance. I don't think we will be returning here unless we stay at Riverside then maybe like breakfast.

Once we left Boatwright's we decided to head down to the Riverside food court. Alan's parents got the roast beef dinner.They paid for their's seperate. Paid $ 28.46

Alan and I both got the create your own pasta. Alan's was a penne with marinara sauce and chicken. I got the fettuccine alfredo with chicken. Both came with a breadstick. These portions were huge! They came in really cute to go boxes. Alan also got a chocolate chip cookie and I got a piece of carrot cake. As we used the dining plan counter service credit. Cost was $29.62

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After we left the food court we stopped at listened to Bob Jackson perform for an hour or so at the River Roost. After this Alan's parents headed to Leesburg and Alan & I went exploring the French Quarter. Then we went to our room for the night. Got to our room around 11 pm.

I took some pictures of the room if anyone wants to see. When we got to our room we had 2 towel animals One was a rabbit and I think the other is supposed to be a turkey.

Next up: Magic Kingdom and my big news!

 

[Mnchknbrat1982]

9/23: Magic Kingdom

We started the day bright and early with a wake up call at 6:30 am. We were down to the bus stop by 7:15 am. We had a breakfast reservation at Crystal Palace for 8:10 am. We ran a little late getting to our reservation as it took longer than I had expected to get from the French Quarter to the Magic Kingdom. We ended up checking in about 8:15 am. I thought that we were going to be waiting a while. There were lots of people waiting. Plus they called a party of 32 right before us. We ended up waiting only about 10 minutes. Gave me a chance to get some pictures of the restaurant and the castle.

Once we were seated our server Vinnie came right away and explained the buffet to us and got our drinks. We both got a coke, needed something to wake us up for the long day ahead. Then we headed to the buffet. It was your normal breakfast food. They did seem to have a couple odd things though. Lots of variety of food. We even tried the salmon it was okay nothing I would get all the time. I am not a fish eater though. Alan loved the cinnamon balls and the buttery biscuits. During the breakfast we saw Tigger, Pooh, and Piglet. Eeyore somehow missed our area. So I asked our server about seeing him. And then he told the manager. We were told to find him before we left. We paid the check using the dining plan. Would have cost us $47.29. We find the manager on our way out and she said as soon as he returned from break to get his attention. So we finally did get a picture with him. They also did the 100 acre woods birthday celebration while we were there.
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As we are leaving I called Christi (tinksmom02) and said we’re running a little behind. We had planned to meet up at 9:15 am. We go get a locker and but our extra clothes in the locker. As we are going to get a locker we see Chip & Dale. We also saw some of the opening ceremony. I call Christi again and told them we are on our way to Pirates. Once we got to Pirates of the Caribbean we had to wait a couple minutes on Christi’s family as they were on another ride. We meet up about 9:30 am and Christi rode Pirates of the Caribbean with Alan & I. We then go into the gift shop. We had then planned to ride the Jungle Cruise with them but that didn’t work out as planned. We walked right on to Pirates.

After pirates we are headed to the Jungle Cruise when we run into Captain Hook & Smee so we had our picture made.
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Then we run across the Pirate Tutorial. So we watched that. The guy playing Captain Jack looks a lot like him but does not sound like him. After the tutorial we had our picture made with Captain Hook & Smee. We also had our picture done with Captain Jack. He sounded and looked like the real deal! We finally make it to the Jungle Cruise we only had to wait about 5 minutes. We had a pretty good skipper, Julie. We then did the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse, Tiki room, and rode the train from Main Street to Toontown.

While at Main Street I went to guest relations to see about getting any table services for the 25th since we didn’t use the one at Boatwright’s. We were able to get one for Prime Time at 11:30 am.

We then went into Mickey’s House and had our picture taken with Mickey in the Judge’s Tent. We also had our picture taken with Goofy, Donald, and Pluto and the Fair.
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Then we went to Minnie’s House. After Minnie’s House we started to head back to Main Street for the parade, we got a snack of fries and a drink at Village Fry Shoppe. While we are there it started raining on us. So then we start to walk toward the castle and they stop everyone because the parade is going to begin soon. So we luck out and get a front row spot at the very start of the parade loop. Got some awesome pictures, even if it was raining during the parade.

After the parade we went to Mickey’s Philharmagic and got our picture done with Ariel. Did this for my best friend who absolutely loves Ariel. While waiting for the picture it starts raining again on us. And no one bothers to tell us that Ariel went on break. As the sign said 20 minute wait. Ended up being more like 45 minutes. This was the longest we waited for anything the whole trip.

After Ariel we went back to the locker and got fresh shirt.

Then we headed down to the boat dock for the Wilderness Lodge about 4:30. We were on the boat about 4:45. Once we got to Wilderness Lodge we found the restaurant and got checked in about 5:15 pm. We had reservations at 5:40 pm. Then I went to the gift shop while waiting. Then after I was done with that we just waited in the waiting area of the restaurant. Took 40 minutes to be seated. Longest wait we had at any restaurant. Our server was Rusty Raphael, he was very good and liked to joke and play around. He explained the dining plan to us and what we could get. Then he came and got our drink order. When he brought our drinks back he threw straws and napkins on the table. We ordered: Appetizers: Alan~ cheese/sausage plate, Brandie~ western chips & dip. Entrée~ Alan~ Prime rib, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. Brandie~ roast chicken, mashed potatoes, seasonal vegetables. Desert~ Alan~ Chocolate Moose Stampede, Brandie~ Apple Carmel Pie. Everything was so good. Nothing was overdone. You could cut the prime rib with a fork and the chicken was so moist. This was the best meal we had all trip! We will be returning here. We paid with dining plan credit. If we hadn’t it would have cost us $ 87.56.

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With having to take the boat to and from the wilderness lodge and then having to wait for the table our reservation ended up taking about 2.5 hours. I had hopped to be back to Magic Kingdom for wishes but that didn’t happen. Instead we was on the boat during wishes. It was a cool view, still would have rather been in the park to see them. Got back to Magic Kingdom about 8:15 pm and had to get in line to get our wrist bands for the evening magic hours. Once in the park we got our picture taken in front of the castle with it all lite up for the night.

My big news: Engagement

I was trying to get some pictures of the Castle all lite up. So I turned and told Alan we could move on. Here we are in front of the castle with hardly anyone around. And he grabs me in his arms. Then he puts a ring box in front of my face. At first I wasn’t realizing what he was doing. But once I did he says to me so will you? My response what do you think! So after we kiss we just stand there for a minute in each others arms. He says I was actually speechless for a few seconds. He took me by surprise on this one. I had no ideal he was planning on proposing while we were in Disney World. He said he had the ring for 6 months lol. He had been planning all along to do it in Disney World. He had hopped to be able to do it in front of the castle and it just happened that it worked out that way.

Now for you all asking why didn’t he get on one knee? Well neither Alan or I like a lot of attention brought to ourselves and he wanted it to be a kinda private thing. You also have to know Alan and getting down on one knee is just not him. However, I couldn’t think of a more romantic way to do it than he did.

The ring~ 1/4 kt 14 kt yellow gold floating diamond~ I can't do big rings,small hands
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The rest of the night we did The Laugh Floor Comedy Club, Big Thunder Mountain, Haunted Mansion, and Splash Mountain.

About 11:00 pm we headed for the gates to get to our bus stop. Got back to our room about 11:30 pm. By the time both of us got cleaned up it was about 12:30-1 am before we both were in bed.

Up next: Animal Kingdom/MGM

 

[Mnchknbrat1982]

9/24: Animal Kingdom/ MGM
Started the day bright and early again with a 6:30 am wake up call. After we got dressed we headed to the French Quarter Food Court to get some breakfast. I got a drink cup, orange juice and a ham croissant. This is a huge portion! I don’t think I ate even half of it. Would of cost $10.34. Alan had a drink cup, chocolate milk, and the King Croele breakfast platter that consisted of potatoes, eggs, biscuit, and meat. This portion is also huge, he didn’t eat it all but liked it! It would of cost $ 10.17. We used our counter service credit so in all it would have cost us about $ 20.51. When using the counter service credit for breakfast you do get two drinks.

We were to the bus stop by about 7:20 am and the bus to Animal Kingdom was there about 7:30 am. There was magic hour this morning so Animal Kingdom opened at 8 am. We got to Animal Kingdom right about 8 am.

We were here early enough that we heard the howler monkeys howling. You could here them throughout the whole park!

We started off the day on the safari; I have never seen so many animals out and active as they were today. The rest of the day we did the Pangani Forest Trail, Rafiki’s Planet watch, Maharajah Jungle Trek, It’s Tough To Be A Bug, Discovery Islands Trail, Expedition Everest, Finding Nemo, The Dinosaur, Kali River Rapids.

We also watched a performer at the Mombasa Marketplace. And the steel drum performers. We also spotted Lady Devine.
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I have to say I was pretty disappointed with Nemo. I think they could do something more with it and I also think that it is a little too drawn out. We’ll be skipping next time. We did not get soaked like everyone said you did on the Kali River Rapids. We got damp but not really that wet. We both loved Everest, Alan even did and he is not a roller coaster person. This was one of his favorite new things Disney has added since we were last there.

We left the Animal Kingdom by 3 pm, the most we wanted for anything was about 10 minutes. We went back to the French Quarter for about an hour.

We were on the bus on our way to MGM about 4:30 pm. We were to MGM by 4:45 pm. Once we got to MGM we went and found where the Sci Fi Diner was located as we had dinner reservations for there at 6:00 pm. Once we found it we only had about 30 minutes before we needed to check in so we just looked in some shops. We checked into Sci Fi about 5:45 pm and only had to wait about 5 minutes. Our server was Brent. He got our drink order and let us look over the menu. Neither of us was seeing anything on the dinner menu we wanted. However we had come for the atmosphere and Alan’s cousin had told us about this place. This was the one restaurant Alan had said he wanted to do. And before we got there I knew they had changed the menu. So from being on some of the Disney boards I knew that at the Sci Fi they do let you order the burger even though it’s not on the dinner menu. So I asked our server Brent about this which he had no problem with. Alan got the burger w/cheese and fries and I got mine w/cheese and onion rings. The burgers are huge, like ½ lb. You can also get them topped with just about anything you want for the original price. The onion rings are awesome like everyone says, very crispy! Very good burgers too. Our total was $32.75, I paid for this meal with a gift card. So I left Brent a good tip. I ended up paying $40.00 with tip for the meal. We will definitely return here.
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After we left Sci Fi Diner we got in line for the magic hours bracelets. We learned a trick here go to the guest relations line back by the Hat for the bracelet it is shorter and moves pretty fast.

During the evening magic hours we did the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, Muppet Vision 3-D, Star Tours, and Fantasmic.

We went to the 2nd showing of fantasmic that night. As when we got there they had a sign saying there would be two showings that night. We went to the 9:30 pm showing. We got in line about 9:00 pm. This show is awesome! And is definitely a must see. I now know why Alan’s cousin and her husband brag about that show!

We left MGM about 11 pm. We got back to our hotel around 11:30 pm. After we got back to the hotel we decided we wanted something to eat so we went to the food court. At the food court the only thing still open was the pizza station. The CM there told us we could get a 16’’ pizza, 2 drinks, and 2 deserts for 2 counter service credits. We did this. It is an awesome deal. More than we could eat but it was very good. We got a cheese pizza, 2 drink cups, a mickey rice crispy treat and a brownie. All of this would have cost us $ 28.05. We used 2 of our counter service credits.
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We took the pizza back to our room. After we ate got in the shower and into bed. It was about 1:00 am by the time I crawled into bed.

Up next: MGM/Epcot

 

[kors]

Congrats on your engagement!! Love your report so far...

 

[Mnchknbrat1982]

Thank you! More to come in a day or so!