Chasing a Dream: September Trip Report Update 12/11 FINAL THOUGHTS/TRIP FAVORITES

[kaysmommie]

Loved your HS update and the Pop picturs too. We can't wait to try TSM. congrats on wining the dream FP'S!!!

 

[RinkyTinkyTinky]

Hi! I just found your trip report and I am caught up! I had to read the whole thing after reading your intro because we had so much in common. We live in NC too and I also have a country boy husband who likes to hunt and fish and isn't into the Disney planning at all! And I have a 4 year old girl who has just started taking tap/ballet. I am also a serious bargain hunter and new to Disney but obsessed with planning. I'm in my ealry thirties too and I also loved the timandlesley trip report. So after all those similarities, I just had to keep reading. So far I have really enjoyed your report. Can't wait to read more!

 

[tmkinney]

Dream fastpasses on your first day in the parks!!!!!!!!! That's amazing! Didn't you just love TSMM! We rode it 3 times during our trip and it was just as fun each time. I hate that Rach didn't get into it, though. Maybe by your next trip she'll be ready to enjoy it. (My mind is always planning "the next trip"! LOL!) Can't wait for more . . .

Yes, TSMM was awesome! I know what you mean about the "next trip"!!!

Wow! Great start! Isn't winning a dream the BEST!! I am so happy for you guys!

It was so great winning the dream! The parks weren't very crowded so we would have been okay without the FP's but its just the thrill of winning!!

How lucky to get dream fastpasses your first morning in the parks!

I know! We were in shock!

We were in 50's building 1 on the 2nd floor. We faced the pool and were on the end near the jukebox. I loved it!

We were at DHS the same day! We got to the bus at 8:00am I think.
I was madly searching for DBF and I in the background of your DHS pictures!
You guys really scored with the Dream FP's! I can't belive we didn't see you but I wasn't really looking for Dis'ers too much. I was all wrapped up in Disney!

Too funny! I know what you mean, I was too wrapped up in the magic to pay attention to much else too!!

Hi! Just got back and had a great time~! We were in DHS yesterday and went into Walt's and just missed the Dream Squad by minutes! Can't wait to hear more about your trip!
Dana

Glad you had a great time Dana!! How was the sangria?

Wow! Score! What a great way to start out your trip. We just got back last night. What a great trip. We were in 50's building too. Except I had requested building 3 Lady and Tramp building. So, we were pretty close. I kept my eyes open for people I'd seen on the Dis but never did see anyone I recognized. I had a broken arm on the trip so if you saw a blond w/ a cast it was probably me. Can't wait to read more about what you were all up to.

Thanks! That is too funny we were that close and still missed each other! Glad to hear you had a great trip, let me know if you start a TR.

That's so cool that you got Dream fast passes! You whole family is very cute. And your daughters bangs look much better from her hair cut. Sometimes I guess its a good thing that hair grows fast!

Thanks so much!! Yes, it is a GREAT thing hair grows fast (in her case for sure! )

Loved your HS update and the Pop picturs too. We can't wait to try TSM. congrats on wining the dream FP'S!!!

Thanks! You will love TSM!! Not long to go now!!

Hi! I just found your trip report and I am caught up! I had to read the whole thing after reading your intro because we had so much in common. We live in NC too and I also have a country boy husband who likes to hunt and fish and isn't into the Disney planning at all! And I have a 4 year old girl who has just started taking tap/ballet. I am also a serious bargain hunter and new to Disney but obsessed with planning. I'm in my ealry thirties too and I also loved the timandlesley trip report. So after all those similarities, I just had to keep reading. So far I have really enjoyed your report. Can't wait to read more!

OMG, that is too funny! I think we could be twins! Thanks for reading/posting! I will have to send you a PM to find out where in NC you are, we may have to coordinate a "dis meet" and get together to do some bargain shopping!

 

[lmillercrew]

Back from a mini trip to Wisconsin and just got caught up on your TR. I am SO excited to see the TSM ride! It looks like a blast and the entrance looks so adorable! I loved that the guys were crashed on the bus, because you know the moms wouldn't be able to do that. Every kids would wake us up with the "mom, mom, mom" thing. And, we would be worried about who was taking care of the kids. Too funny! My DH could sleep anywhere with any amount of noise.
Congrats on being so observant and noticing the Dream Fast Passes! I'm going to have to keep my eyes peeled next time we're down there. I haven't even gone into One Man's Dream and I look forward to it.

 

[srandsr76]

Love your report so far!!! I live in NC as well and would love to plan a trip with friends. We always go with in laws, since they are DVC members and room is paid for!!!

 

[mom2mek]

Hi! Just joining in! Came over from paparazzimama's TR. I just started with the trip, so now I need to go back and read about your pre-trip festivities! But congrats on the dream FPs - good eye! I don't think in the morning I would ever be so aware of anything going on around me - I'm too engrossed trying to get my herd moving in one general direction...and with purpose!

I'm looking forward to hearing more about your DHS day! That park is so hard to plan for with all the shows, so I'm very interested to see what people are able to get done!

Sara

 

[tmkinney]

Back from a mini trip to Wisconsin and just got caught up on your TR. I am SO excited to see the TSM ride! It looks like a blast and the entrance looks so adorable! I loved that the guys were crashed on the bus, because you know the moms wouldn't be able to do that. Every kids would wake us up with the "mom, mom, mom" thing. And, we would be worried about who was taking care of the kids. Too funny! My DH could sleep anywhere with any amount of noise.
Congrats on being so observant and noticing the Dream Fast Passes! I'm going to have to keep my eyes peeled next time we're down there. I haven't even gone into One Man's Dream and I look forward to it.

I know, it amazes me that men can go to sleep practically anywhere! I definitely had my eye out for the Dream Team! You will love TSM!!!

Love your report so far!!! I live in NC as well and would love to plan a trip with friends. We always go with in laws, since they are DVC members and room is paid for!!!

Hey they sounds nice!! I would definitely take a room that was paid for! Thanks for reading/posting!

Hi! Just joining in! Came over from paparazzimama's TR. I just started with the trip, so now I need to go back and read about your pre-trip festivities! But congrats on the dream FPs - good eye! I don't think in the morning I would ever be so aware of anything going on around me - I'm too engrossed trying to get my herd moving in one general direction...and with purpose!

I'm looking forward to hearing more about your DHS day! That park is so hard to plan for with all the shows, so I'm very interested to see what people are able to get done!

Sara

Thanks for joining!! Yes, we were so excited to win the FP's! Dawn's husband Ray was confused when we got them, I was like "man, these are like GOLD!"

 

[Paparazzimama]

Thanks for joining!! Yes, we were so excited to win the FP's! Dawn's husband Ray was confused when we got them, I was like "man, these are like GOLD!"

That's hilarious!!!! I definitely would have treated them like gold too! Can't wait to find out what you used them on!!!!!

 

[tmkinney]

Okay, so when I left off, we were on after winning the Dream FP's! So we head straight to RnRC and TOT to put them to good use! We head to RnRC first since we hadn't rode before, and me, Alan and Hunter went first. The ride was awesome! Hunter loved it! The take off is the BEST! It does knock you around quite a bit, but a GREAT ride!! After we came out, Dawn & Ray went to ride. While they were riding, I took Hunter over to get a pic in front of the guitar:

Kids are so funny, I did not tell him to do the rock & roll sign, I didn't even realize he knew what it was!

After everyone had rode RnRC we did a bathroom break and headed over to TOT. Me, Dawn & Hunter went this time, Hunter was a little freaked out, but a trooper and went on. After the ride, Dawn asked him if he liked it and he said yes. She then asked him if he wanted to ride again with Alan & Ray and he said "NO!" When we went outside to watch the kids while Alan & Ray went on, we walked over and picked up the kids a snack. Here they are with their Mickey Ice Cream bars:

Rachel had chocolate EVERYWHERE when she got thru with it!

At this point I was feeling a little guilty that Rachel had not been able to do much this morning, so we headed to see her favorite princess at the VOTLM. Here is a not so great picture from the show:

After we left there, we walked over to the Animation building hoping to see Sorcerer Mickey. We walked in thru the store and skipped the animation feature as we had seen it last year and heard it had not changed. So we walked in and hopped in line for Mickey!!

This Mickey is so cute!! While we were there Hunter had to trade pins while in line. He LOVED trading pins so much. The bad thing was he wanted to do it with every CM we saw!!

We then stopped for a photo op with Wall E:

And then headed upstairs to see the Incredibles. Rachel was a little scared so she wouldn't get in the picture unless we all did:

Hadley has not seen the movie so they skipped out on meeting them. By this point it was lunchtime and the power rangers were coming out at 12:30 so we head to the Streets of America to see if we can meet up with them as this was something Hunter really wanted to do. After about 5 minutes, we see this:

Hunter really wanted to see the white ranger so we got in that line:

The pink ranger was in the next line so Alan took Rachel to meet her:

After that the other rangers lines were a little long so we decided to go meet with Mike & Sully instead:

By this point we were starving so we decided to head for lunch. On the way, Dawn & Ray had to stop for some smooching:

We decide to go to Pizza Planet. I was a little worried because Alan or Hunter did not like it last year but I guess Alan was too hungry to care, but, thank goodness, everyone liked it!!

Here is a little food porn for ya:

After Pizza Planet (and a couple games of air hockey), we head to Star Tours area to see if we are on time for Jedi Training. Unfortunately, it had just started so Hunter missed out on being picked. So we went to ride the Star Tours ride instead. Some people we were in line with at the Power Rangers had told us that their son made a sword and got a free Jedi pin. The sword was $20. Hunter really liked the Jedi pin and decided he wanted to use some of his spending $ to make a sword. So after Star Tours I let him do this (sorry no pictures - I was so tired I got a little slack at this point!). I will try to remember to take a pic of the sword and the pin for the next post though! At this point it was around 2:00 and we had a ressie at Ohana's at 5:05pm. So we were trying to decide do we keep going and just go back to the room after dinner or do we go back to the room for about an hour's rest and then come back to HS after dinner and use our Toy Story Mania FP? We thought it best to go back to the room now because we knew Ohana's would be fun for the kids and we didn't want them to be ill. So we head back to the room and rest up for our dinner.

Coming up:

Our Ohana dinner & HS evening.....

 

[Paparazzimama]

The kids look so cute enjoying their mickey ice creams! And I couldn't help but notice Hunter in the background of Dawn and Ray's smoochin' picture - too funny! Can't wait to hear what you guys thought of 'Ohana!

 

[lmillercrew]

Great update! You can always tell that it's hot when the chocolate is sweating and there's chocolate all over the kids' face after only ONE bite! Can't wait to hear about O'hana's and if you make it back to DHS at night. I love the parks after the sun goes down and all the lights come on.

 

[tmkinney]

The kids look so cute enjoying their mickey ice creams! And I couldn't help but notice Hunter in the background of Dawn and Ray's smoochin' picture - too funny! Can't wait to hear what you guys thought of 'Ohana!

Update on Ohana coming up next!

Great update! You can always tell that it's hot when the chocolate is sweating and there's chocolate all over the kids' face after only ONE bite! Can't wait to hear about O'hana's and if you make it back to DHS at night. I love the parks after the sun goes down and all the lights come on.

It was VERY HOT!! And sooo humid! It was only about 10:00 in the morning too!

 

[tmkinney]

Sorry guys, I have been MIA! I promise after I get the photopass cd (which should be the end of this week), my updates will be coming a LOT faster!!

Okay, so when I left off we had went back to the room to rest up a little before our dinner at Ohana. We all did manage to get in a little nap and Dawn and Ray were ready to say forget Ohana, they wanted to sleep. But we had a reservation with another Dis'er and we didn't want to mess up their reservation. Boy are we glad that we did not miss this meal!!!!

We all got ready and headed to the bus stop around 4:15 (our reservation was for 5:05). We took the bus to MK and then hopped on the monorail to get to the Polynesian. This really was our lucky day because as soon as we stepped on the monorail, the bottom fell out and it was POURING!!!!!!!! So we managed to escape getting drenched at this point.

So we walk in and see this:

We get to Ohana and our dis friends were already there, Dawn & her extended family (from Chicago I think) Mrs. D on the boards. So she went to check us in. We were a party of 16 so I thought we might have to wait a while to be seated, but we were seated within 5 minutes! But it was so funny, while we were in the lobby waiting, there was this lady sitting on a sofa who had on this tank dress, apparently with no bra on!!! She was hanging out to the point where you could see something you shouldn't be seeing if you know what I mean!! Dawn (my BFF) thought this was particularly amusing so she takes a pic with her cell phone! I then handed her my camera to take a pic so I could post it for you all to see but the lady must have caught on and she fixed her dress! If Dawn still has the pic on her cell I'll tell her to email it to me (hope this lady is not a Dis'er!!)

We get seated and immediately here comes the food!!! First we got salad that was really good. Then the bread, then the wontons (these were my FAVORITE!!), then chicken wings... (I'm telling you, it was constant food!!) There were a couple birthdays at our table (I told them we were celebrating Hunter's birthday when we checked in since his birthday was October) and he had on a birthday button so at Ohanas they noticed it. But anyway, since we had some celebrations going on, they brought everyone at our table the leis. The festivities immediately started and we got a visit from this lady:

Then the kids (Hadley was still not fully awake so he didn't participate) went to join in:

Then came the main course, first skewers of shrimp, then chicken, then turkey, then steak.... Alan and Ray were in heaven!!! They had these sauces to dip the meat in, peanut sauce, and some others (can't remember) and they were really good. Ray was so into his meal he didn't even hardly speak to anyone! Alan had saw on timandlesley's report that Tim had gotten a backscratcher to drink so Alan decided he wanted to try one. Here he is with his:

Then Dawn decided that she wanted to try something but she didn't really like Alan's so she asked our waiter what he recommended. He recommended a Malibu McCall so she got one of those. Here she is with her drink:

I tasted it and it was really good, so I told the waiter to bring me one with 2 umbrellas (to give to the kids). Our waiter was soooo awesome btw. He joked with us and just made it all the more fun. Well I guess he thought he was funny when he brought me this:

So the kids loved the umbrellas, and even Ray stopped eating long enough to take a pic:

Here is Rachel with a full mouth playing with umbrellas:

She was loving the food. Hunter didn't like it (he is a very picky eater who won't try anything). So I asked the waiter to bring him some chicken nuggets and fries. Which he did.

Dawn loved her drink so much when the waiter came back (I wish I could remember his name) she was joking with him and said "these were buy 1 get 1 free, right? Because I want another!" She was kidding but about 10 minutes later, he comes out with another and says "this one is on me!" We couldn't believe it! Luckily these drinks didn't have a bunch of alcohol in it, because we are not normally drinkers and Dawn would have been on the floor if it had!

So, after all the meat they brought out, we were full, even Ray was saying how he didn't think he could eat anything else. Well, this was before they brought out the best thing YET!! The bread pudding with banana foster sauce topped with vanilla ice cream. OMG, this is the BEST dessert I have ever ate!!! It was sooooo good. We thought we were full, but when this came we just kept eating!! They also brought out these HUGE cupcakes for all the kids at the table since there were birthday celebrations.

Rachel really enjoyed hers (the icing that is... )

Here are some general pics that I didn't stick in above:

Here's Dawn doing her favorite thing - Texting! (She was probably sending the pic of the woman hanging out of her dress to her mom.... because her mom texted back wanting to know if she was drunk! ):

Here is a pic of our awesome waiter:

After I took the picture he looked at me and said "I wasn't ready!!" He really was the best. We left him an extra good tip! (He was pretty good looking too, I think Alan & Ray were a little jealous, especially after he brought out the free drink!)

 

[tmkinney]

So, after our 2 HOUR meal, we head to catch the monorail. It poured down rain the entire time we were in Ohana and just quit when we were coming out. So it worked out perfectly for us!! It was a little after 7:00 when we left so we got the monorail to EPCOT and then caught a bus to HS. Well during our stop at EPCOT, all the food Ray had ate was starting to affect him (if you know what I mean )... so we had to take a bathroom break that lasted 1/2 an hour!!!!

The kids on the bus on the way to HS:

So when we finally got to HS, we really wanted to use our FP we had won earlier at TSM. Well we get there about 8:15 and they told us the rides had closed at 8:00!?! So unfortunately we were unable to use our FP for TSM.... But we decided to stay for Fantasmic so we head that way. Since it had poured down rain, I did pull out the ponchos to sit on. Luckily that is the only time our whole trip we needed them! Here are a few pics from the show:

We head back to POP and turn in for the night. Up next, Day 2 starting out at Animal Kingdom!

 

[iluvuwdw]

Great trip report... can't wait to read more

I have to agree that that waiter was pretty nice looking

 

[KayLuvsMickey]

I just found this TR, and havin fun so far!

karen

 

[dddisrunner]

Great update! Glad you liked Ohana, it was one of our faves too! I totally agree though SO MUCH FOOD! I was laughing at the "bathroom break" comment! Glad you got to see Fantasmic and that the rain held off for you guys!

 

[kaysmommie]

Enjoyed your update. We love 'Ohana too. Funny same thing happened to my DH right after 'Ohana. Didn't agree with him and we were stuck sitting in the lobby for quite a while. Looking forward to your AK day.

 

[morgtroy]

Love the pics from Ohana. We loved the breakfast there, can't wait to try the dinner, looks like fun and great food.
Poor Ray, 30 minutes? Were his legs numb
Looked like Rachel enjoyed her cupcake

 

[pmama]

I've been wondering where you were. So great that the rain cleared up so you could watch Fantasmic. BTW, I started my TR too! The link is in my sig.