[COMPLETE] One, Two, Three, Four, Five... Do we make it out alive? -- Jan 2019 TR FINAL UPDATE 9/10/19

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 5 Part 5 -- Party Time and Trip Highlight!​

After a few hours of relaxation, we made our way back to the Animal Kingdom for the After Hours party. (I had such a great time, that I'm still saving the wristbands!) We really desperately wanted to make it back in time to watch the Rivers of Light show that was to take place at regular park closing. The thought was that even though there was a ROL showing taking place during the After Hours event, we didn't want to waste time watching it when we could be riding rides. So we really rushed back to the outdoor amphitheater and only missed a few of the floats coming out on the water.








Let me tell you, even now just writing about it, this show makes me emotional. It is sublime, it is beautiful and moving. We resolved then that it wouldn't be a waste of time to watch the 9 o'clock showing, so we left the amphitheater, planning to return later.
So we made our way into Dinoland USA to ride Dinosaur. We had actually made a 4th fastpass for it during the day after Finding Nemo the Musical, but the ride was down so we just left. But now was the time!

If you cannot tell, this is a blurry selfie with the little scientist in the video.
Since the park was now officially closed, Dinosaur was a walk on. For whatever reason it doesn't look like we got a ride photo...
I snapped this pic while in Dinoland:

I don't know why, but the look on this dino's face was really funny to me.
We rode TriceraTop Spin, which was my first time, and then we got our first complimentary ice cream Mickey premium bar and pop corn. And it was time for the real party to start. There was a DJ in Dinoland and I got to dance with Chip and Dale, practically by myself since there really wasn't anyone else back there. This was a true highlight of the whole trip. Even though it was freezing outside, the ice cream and the dancing... It was so fun! Not to mention, we were dancing to an old school Jonas Brothers song, (and this was before they announced their reunion.)

(This is actually a video if you click on it.)
We stayed and danced for a while, and then made our way to Rivers of Light for another show!

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 5 Part 6 -- Sivako! Rise to the Challenge (of staying up late)​

So we went back to the Rivers of Light amphitheater for another shot at watching Rivers of Light. We didn't really take any photos this time since we had gotten so many the first time, but there was practically no one else there. We sat right by the water and it felt like a truly private event! I got one photo, so you can see how close we were!

After this, we rode Expedition Everest twice in a row!

(Our faces are totally blocked, lol.)

Now, we made our way to the main event, which is of course Pandora and Avatar Flight of Passage. But we did grab our complimentary drinks on the way!
We had a truly magical moment! I had only ever seen the fastpass queue for FOP and have never seen stand-by. They were just sending everyone through the fastpass line for the after hours event, but I asked the CM at the front of the line if we could go through and see it and she gave us a walk-through tour of it! She told us a fun fact: they took the streams of water out from the queue because people were peeing into it! Gross! But I was so happy to see the stand-by queue! It was quite a walk! And I finally got to see this dude in person!

We were so happy with how well she did, Jacob sent a tweet out that night to thank her and hopefully she got some recognition. (Disney Parks did tweet Jacob back).


We rode it twice in a row.

Then we hopped on Navi River Journey!
Jacob adjusted the settings on the camera and actually got some good shots!






Then we went for one more go on Flight of Passage, our 4th time that day, if you're counting. Our group was only 2/3 full! I imagine you would never see that on a regular day! Now it was 11:15 and I thought the party was over! But turns out the party lasts until 11:30, so we went for a little more ice cream and one last go on Expedition Everest, our 4th time on it that day!
And we rode it in the very back of the train!

We made it on the last train of the night! It was AWESOME!

I took one last photo of a tired Jacob on our way out!
The Animal Kingdom After Hours party is unbelievable! We rode FOP and EE 3 times each AND got a solo dance party with Chip and Dale, AND 2 free ice creams AND a great view of ROL! I would recommend this to anyone. It was so much fun and I wish I could relive it!

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

I'm excited to hear you had such a good time at AK after hours. I get to go next month and I can't wait!

Your RoL and FotLK pictures are wonderful.

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 6 Part 1 -- Lazy Morning in Hollywood Studios​

When we last left off, we had stayed up pretty late at Animal Kingdom for a truly wild and awesome party. As such, we really were not in the mood for Rope Drop. We had a fast pass for Slinky Dog Dash at Hollywood Studios and decided to just show up in time for that. Well, that, and a carrot cake cookie from the Starbucks. Delish. From there, we went on to Toy Story Land.


The lines for rides were already pretty long, so it was a fast pass only kind of day. After Slinky Dog, we went to watch the Frozen Ever After Sing Along.

I will say, the show is really cute, but it's not as fun the second time you see it. A lot of the jokes aren't really funny more than once. LOL.
After this, we went to catch our fast pass for Star Tours and we got my favorite ending in which the crash landing actually breaks through the front window of the space ship.
On our way to our next fast pass, we grabbed a Mickey Pretzel.




I feel like this photo pass is actually decent as well, which is remarkable because I normally look like an idiot on this ride.
After we escaped the Twilight Zone, we were ready to take a friendship boat ride over to Epcot for lunch and dinner.

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 6 Part 2 -- Shopping around the World​

We enjoyed a peaceful ride from Hollywood Studios to Epcot to enjoy lunch and shopping. The ride is longer than I would have maybe expected because it stops at several resorts along the way, but we weren't in a rush and I believe it was on this ride that I finally caught a Pokemon in Pokemon Go that I had been trying to catch all week, so hooray! LOL.
We got off the boat at the World Showcase entrance to Epcot and walked our way over to Morocco for lunch.


We went to Tangerine Cafe and got the big plates and it was delicious and wonderful and I recommend this place a ton!

I love the architecture of this restaurant as well as the food. It's awesome, but open air, so I don't think I'd choose to eat here on a hot day in the summer, but in January, it's perfectly cool.

We got a few photos in the pavilion while we were in the area.

Now we just walked around the World Showcase and shopped.

In Japan, we spotted really cool Godzilla t-shirts, but we passed once we found out we could probably get in on amazon later if we really wanted it.
In Italy, we got a photo pass and Gelato.

The gelato was just okay,honestly. It left my mouth feeling kind of gritty and slimy afterward from all the sugar. The best part was the handsome Italian man serving it.
In Germany, we went in the stuffed animal toy store and I fell in love with this bunny and made Jacob take my picture with it, since he wouldn't let me buy it.

It was the softest, highest quality stuffed animal EVER. I want to get one for a future child, but I also really just want it for me.
We couldn't help ourselves. My original plan was to stay in the World Showcase to try to avoid walking myself to death and getting grumpy, but we made fast passes in Future World, so we went that way.

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 6 Part 3 -- Attractive Italians​

We got a fast pass for Soarin' at 3 so we made the long walk that way and while we were in the Land, we decided to brush up on hydroponics too in Livin' with the Land, since there was not much of a wait.




Livin' with the Land is definitely not that exciting, but it can be very relaxing and beautiful.
We were actually able to get a fast pass for Space Ship Earth at this point, but had a moment, so played Pokemon go for a little bit and rested.


Now it was about time for dinner, so we made our way back to the World Showcase for dinner at Via Napoli.
We got some raviolis for an appetizer, pizza for dinner and a cannoli for dessert.



I also got this Strawberry Fresca drink, which was decent, but a little bland. The food, however, was AWESOME! The pizza was reeaaalllly high quality and looking at the photos is making my mouth water. The service was really good, too. It may have been a little slow for WDW service, but I didn't care. The restaurant was completely operated by incredibly attractive Italian people, so I didn't mind waiting.
After dinner, we took an evening ride over to Hollywood Studios again to catch Fantasmic. I think we sat on benches and rested enough to keep from getting too grumpy and tired walking around Epcot and we enjoyed some really good Pokemon Go'ing at the park as well.

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 6 Part 4 -- More Shopping?​

We made it from the friendship boat to Hollywood studios and made a fast pass for Fantasmic and got some pretty decent seating.















Fantasmic is difficult to photograph, but I'm glad we didn't miss it.
Now we left the park and went to the bus station, but we were not going to ride back to the hotel just yet. We decided to go to Disney Springs and finally do some real souvenir shopping. We got t-shirts and pins and a few other things.
Then we took one final boat ride for the night and went back "home."

All in all, it was a pretty slow day, filled with a lot of boat travel. But we ate the best food! And got a lot of fast passes, which was good, because it was finally starting to get pretty busy ahead of Martin Luther Kind Day.

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

I just want to pop in and say sorry for waiting so long between updates! And thank you to anyone who is still reading my report 7 months after the trip occurred! Last month in July I was really focused on a novel writing project and an art project and so didn't make much time to come on this website! I'm going to try to wrap up this report this month. Have a great week ahead everyone!

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

An excellent day split between HS and EP. I'm jealous of your carrot cake cookie- I never managed to get over there myself.

I love all the PP shots around WS. The magic shots are super cute.

I think you got pretty good Fantasmic photos, all things considered. Mine are all just colorful blurs.

 

[cassidy57]

I am enjoying your report and can't wait to hear more

 

[kclark9830]

What a fun day! I was actually thinking that you guys packed a lot into one day...and then you mentioned it was a slow, relaxing sort of day. Ha! I guess it's all I perspective . I love your magic shot with Figaro in Italy. I'm going to have to remember that one and hope they still have it when we go!

What kind of novels do you write?! Inquiring minds want to know .

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

An excellent day split between HS and EP. I'm jealous of your carrot cake cookie- I never managed to get over there myself.

I love all the PP shots around WS. The magic shots are super cute.

I think you got pretty good Fantasmic photos, all things considered. Mine are all just colorful blurs.

The line for the carrot cake cookie was really long. It's sad that it's in Starbucks now for that reason.

Looking back on this day, I feel like it really wasn't very eventful, but we did get really cute photos. And I'm now remembering that we met the artist in Norway and got a really cool Haunted Mansion art print too. So a great day for cute photos and shopping. LOL.

Jacob gets the credit for any Fantasmic Photos taken. I think he did pretty good too.

I am enjoying your report and can't wait to hear more

Thanks!!

What a fun day! I was actually thinking that you guys packed a lot into one day...and then you mentioned it was a slow, relaxing sort of day. Ha! I guess it's all I perspective . I love your magic shot with Figaro in Italy. I'm going to have to remember that one and hope they still have it when we go!

What kind of novels do you write?! Inquiring minds want to know .

To me a busy day is ride after ride after ride. I think on this day we only rode like 6, the 3 fast passes in HS and 2 in Epcot + Livin' with the Land. Haha. I'm like my father in that I want to go go go and accomplish a lot when I'm on vacation. I have a hard time taking it easy and relaxing. I really liked the Figaro shot too!

I have written 3.5 novels so far. As far as the kind of novels... So far I'd say the bad kind! LOL. I hate the first 2 I wrote. They were realistic fiction and super boring and depressing, which is totally not the kind of thing I like to read so I don't know why I wrote them. The third was kind of a sci-fi, fantasy type thing about a secret city and magic, but half way through writing it I realized I didn't agree with the message I was writing, so I changed the ending totally and it was really weird. Haha. My most recent story is somewhere between. It's a little more realistic but it's not depressing. It's for middle school/high school readers, probably. I'm hoping to finish the first draft within the next month or so. This book is the most fun to write and I actually like the characters and the story line is the kind of thing I would have liked to read in middle school or high school (or now, honestly) so I think I may actually share this story with others, as opposed to my other works which I have been the only one to read.

 

[kclark9830]

I have written 3.5 novels so far. As far as the kind of novels... So far I'd say the bad kind! LOL. I hate the first 2 I wrote. They were realistic fiction and super boring and depressing, which is totally not the kind of thing I like to read so I don't know why I wrote them. The third was kind of a sci-fi, fantasy type thing about a secret city and magic, but half way through writing it I realized I didn't agree with the message I was writing, so I changed the ending totally and it was really weird. Haha. My most recent story is somewhere between. It's a little more realistic but it's not depressing. It's for middle school/high school readers, probably. I'm hoping to finish the first draft within the next month or so. This book is the most fun to write and I actually like the characters and the story line is the kind of thing I would have liked to read in middle school or high school (or now, honestly) so I think I may actually share this story with others, as opposed to my other works which I have been the only one to read.

Cool! I am a writer, too ! It definitely can take a few tries to get into the groove of "your" genre. I also write YA stuff, all fantasy and sci-fi. But I also write children's books, and then boring adult nonfiction for magazines and newspapers . Those things pay the bills! Haha!

Good luck with all of your writing! We writers have to stick together!

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 7 Part 1 -- Bonjour!​

Our day began at the same time as Extra Magic Hours at the Magic Kingdom. If you recall from my pretrip report, I was really disappointed to learn that our pre-park opening Be Our Guest reservation turned out not to be... due to the early opening of Magic Kingdom. I had a hunch this would negatively impact crowd levels. And I'll leave it a mystery for a bit if I was correct in that fear or not...
We arrived early for our reservation and Be Our Guest wasn't even open yet! There was a bit of fanfare outside and one guest in particular was incredibly exuberant. He said bonjour to everyone and they were happy to greet him. I wasn't quite awake enough for all that yet.

We decided to sit in the West Wing/scary room.
I ordered an open face bacon and egg sandwich and Jacob got the croque madame.

This is Jacob's meal.

This is mine, and you can see all the yummy pastries in the back!
We enjoyed our meal thoroughly, but we had wasted precious time in the restaurant while the park was busy whirring away! When we left the restaurant, 7DMT was already at 90 minutes and the park wasn't even officially open yet. I felt... discouraged.
So we decided to go ride something we knew wouldn't have a wait: Carousel of Progress in Tomorrowland.






I love Carousel of Progress, but it's not the most exciting way to start a morning at Magic Kingdom!

The hidden Mickey Nutcracker on the mantel is an awesome touch as well!
When we left Carousel of Progress, it was already time for our Space Mountain fastpass.

Now it was time for a game of "what has the lowest wait?" Haunted Mansion was our winner as stand-by was only 30 minutes.


The interactive queue makes the wait not only tolerable, but majorly fun!
Now it was almost time for our fast pass at Jungle Cruise, but we made a stop at the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room.

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 7 Part 2 -- In the Same Boat​

At this point we had an hour until our next fastpass, which I changed to Haunted Mansion from Pirates of the Caribbean.
We decided on a few more things with low waits, so we met Tiana and Rapunzel at the Princess Hall.





While Rapunzel is in my favorite Princess movie, I think Tiana may actually be my favorite princess now. She is so friendly and easy to talk to and she just embodies southern hospitality. I recommend this character meet above all others!
While we were still in Fantasyland we decided to go to Pete's Silly Sideshow to meet Daisy and Pluto, which was a brand new meet as of that day. (Minnie had moved to town hall with Mickey that day.)

I don't like Daisy so much. She spent the whole meeting flirting with Jacob! LOL.

Pluto was really hamming it up the whole time we were over there. His manager (not Pete, but like his real, cast-member manager) was there and I think he was feeling the pressure to really turn on the charm. Hahaha!
While we made our way to our Haunted Mansion fast pass, we grabbed a nutella waffle and it was really refreshing and sweet.

We also got a delicious, foamy lemonade.

Then, we had another chilling tour of the Haunted Mansion.
Now, onto the most frustrating and annoying portion of the trip. . . We wandered for a while, trying to decide what to do and ended up in the Pirates of the Caribbean queue anyway. It was a 40 minute wait, so we whipped our phones out and played Pokemon go in the queue. Now, as we all know, those stanchions are very wide and the cast members always ask you to "fill all available space in front of you." We both had our eyes trained on our phones and the floor and as we were instructed, moved forward to fill in the space in front of us whenever possible. I genuinely did not look up from my phone until this guy, maybe like 20 years old? said something to us about how many people we were planning to cut in line. I looked around and it seemed like we had not really moved in front of anyone except for him and his girlfriend. Jacob said something about filling in the space per the CM's instructions, and the guy said that he would never. Okay....? So we said, "well, there's a bit of room in front of us if you want to take your spot back?" And he said no, he would not. So I was like... what was the point of saying anything? Oh well. But it still ticked me off. He actually called us "rude." We weren't trying to cut anyone, just genuinely following directions and not really paying attention to other people. LOL. If he had been quicker, we would have never been able to get in front of him in the first place! And guess what. We all ended up on the same boat anyway. Hahaha. But anyway, after he fussed at us, I quit playing Pokemon Go so as not to accidentally slide in front of anyone else and I snapped some photos of the queue.


Awkward. You can see the fussy guy in the row in front of us in the boat. I hope he's not on these boards, or else we're probably in his trip report as the rude line-jumpers.
After this experience, we went to the Fire Station to get some Sorcerer of the Magic Kingdom cards and we played around the park for a while until we were ready to give up. As we were heading out, we saw it's a small world had only a 10 minute wait, so we jumped into the line on the way.

I love riding this again and again because there are always new dolls and animatronics that I never noticed before! Like this panda.

Now we headed out of the park for a trip along the monorail line. . .

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 7 Part 3 -- Fantasyland Fail​

So we arrived shortly at the Contemporary Resort and just relaxed.

In the gift shop there, we participated in a trivia challenge, which we were successful at. We were then dubbed trivia royalty by the CM cashier.

My button said "Trivia Queen" and Jacob's "Trivia Prince," which means I am the true Trivia Monarch and he has simply married into the Trivia Royal Family.
We watched the monorail go by for a while before getting back on to ride it over to the Grand Floridian.

We didn't do much there except for sniff some stuff at Basin, but we did peep this carriage while walking over to the Polynesian for our dinner reservation.
Before the reservation, we stuck our feet in the sand and sat on a bench swing and just enjoyed the cool breeze.
We had a pretty straight forward meal at Ohana this time around. Nothing was honestly too remarkable about the service, but the food was good as usual. We only got one plate of each course this time and didn't overeat as badly.


But we were sooooo full anyway! Delicious.
Now we rode the monorail back to the MK.
We were able to make a fastpass for after dinner for Splash Mountain. The fastpass was not super necessary, though, since it was kind of cold outside.

The two little boys behind us cheered for every drop, which was really cute and fun. You can see I covered my face to try to avoid getting too wet.
At this time, Happily Ever After was beginning and we were walking to Fantasyland. We could see parts of the show, but decided not to dedicate the time to watch it, hoping that it would have drawn crowds away from bigger attractions...
No dice, but we went ahead and got in line for 7DMT anyway. We would have plenty of time to ride it, then go over to Space Mountain afterward for one more ride as the park closed.

Great plan, but then 7DMT went down. We waited for a second, to see if it would come back up, and this was a mistake. Then we thought, okay, we can go make it to Space Mountain and then still get off of it in time to run back to 7DMT before the park closes! Space Mountain was only supposed to have a 30 minute wait, which would give us maybe ten minutes to run back and get in line for 7DMT.
Fail again, since that 30 minute posted wait was more like 50.

We had fun, but by the time we got off the ride, the park was already closed.
We had a long wait for the bus, but still had a nice ride. And when we got back to the resort, we still had time for a little last-minute souvenir shopping.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

Bummer that your BOG PPO got blown up by hours changes.

I find it so frustrating when people don't fill in lines. I'm not talking about being elbow to elbow, but you should try to keep with the group in front of you. We experienced a lot of kids climbing all over the stanchions and then parents walking forward without them. Umm, can you please come get your offspring who are 5 ft behind you perfecting their parallel bar routine?

Dinner looks delicious! I don't think it's possible to go to 'Ohana without overeating.

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Popping in to wish everyone a happy labor day weekend! Looks like I won't quite finish the report this month as was my goal because I had to take an unexpected Trip to Texas this weekend! All good things, but it has impaired my progess. I will hopefully have the final updates up this week.

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 8 Part 1 -- The Fifth and Final Ride on Flight of Passage​

On the dawn of our final day... we were still in bed. We again opted to skip Rope Drop and instead sleep in, waiting to head to the parks for our first fastpass.

I snapped a photo of Jacob at the resort on the way to the bus stop.

After getting this photopass on the way in to the park, we entered the fray.

Then straight to Pandora for our first fastpass, a ride on Flight of Passage. Our 5th ride on a Banshee.

The standby line was at 255 minutes when we zipped by for our fastpass. Feels good to glide past a 4 hour+ wait.

So after another Ikran fight... We survived yet again.
Then on to our next fastpast at the Safari where the window had just opened.

A lovely walk across the bridge from Pandora to Africa....
Our safari was actually really good that morning, even better than the first safari we had taken earlier that week, but we didn't get very many good photos because we didn't bring our big camera.



We got several wonderful photos of the hippos who were actually out of the water.







This Rhino looked really cool laying out in the road.

The Lions were looking particularly majestic!

With that, our trek concluded and while it was a chilly ride, the safari was really good!

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Day 8 Part 2 -- The Fifth and Final Ride on Expedition Everest​

When we got off the safari, we realized that we hadn't eaten breakfast and we decided to get a nutritious meal of a big cookie and guava lemonade.



The bakery case goodies looked really cute.

And onto our final fastpass at Expedition Everest.



I actually really like the queue of this ride.

And we survived the yeti again! For the 5th time...
Then, as we didn't have much else to do, we headed out to go to the Kidani Village resort, but we snagged a photo pass on the way.


The resort was really cool and we did have a moment to observe the savanna before our reservation.

Of course we got the famous bread service and it lived up to the hype, I think. The sauces were fun to try and we got all of them.


Jacob got some kind of plentiful harvest sampler. He liked it.
I chose to get tandoori chicken, which is one of my favorite dishes anyway, and their rendition of this dish is quite good!

This may have been my favorite restaurant of the entire trip.
At this point we debated going back to the resort. Jacob had some souvenirs sent to the gift shop the day before, but looking at park hours, we realized that the gift shop would be closed by the time we got in for the night. But we called and they said they would just send them to the front desk.
We made a 4th fastpass for the Little Mermaid and rode the bus in the direction of the Magic Kingdom.
We got some Sorcerers cards on the way in to the park. Then to the Little Mermaid.





Then we basically played Sorcerer's of the Magic Kingdom all afternoon since the lines for everything were unbearably long.

We kept playing until we got to a broken portal, so we gave up playing and went to go ride the People Mover.

Then we got a Dole Whip. We were kind of all over the place and the portal started working again and we were back to playing Sorcerer's.