ScoJo15
There will be days when I don't know if I can run
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2005
- Messages
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TR: Father & Daughter Take On The World Day 6 (9/23 MGM & World Showcase)
The Cast:
Me Disney obsessed 34 year old IT Manager from Canton, GA
DD7 7 year old Disney lover with 5 trips to the world already under her belt
Links to the entire report & photos:
POP Century Review
Dining Reviews
Pre-trip Report
Day 1: Wishes & Princesses
Day 2: AK & 48"
Day 3: MGM
Day 4: Incredible MK
Day 5: Epcot & Spectromagic
Day 6: MGM & World Showcase
Day 7: ToT & DTD
Post-trip Report
Photopass
300 Pictures that I took!
Day Six (9-23)
Back to Mickey & Stitch on the wake up call again this morning. We planned on a pretty easygoing day. Over to MGM to ride RnR a couple times and then over to the World Showcase where DD wanted to hit the Kidcot stops and make a mask (shed done this twice before and really likes it). We also wanted to see Illuminations. But our first order of the day was to bandage up the probable between big and second toe blister spot from wearing the flip flops around the lagoon. Dr. Dad finished the procedure in record time and we were off to the World once again.
First stop was MGM to get the last couple of rides in on the Rock N Rollercoaster. Besides Soarin, this was easily the favorite attraction of the entire trip. On our way to ride it, I reminded DD that she had wanted to go on Tower of Terror on our last visit to MGM, but we had run out of time. She then said that she didnt want to do it now. Ugh what was I to do? I couldnt pressure her into going on it, but I knew that she would love it if she rode it just one time. My mind was working in overdrive trying to come up with a plan. One ride on RnRC had passed and we found ourselves standing in front of the doors leading into the pre-show when Tinkerbell came to the rescue once again. There was a little boy behind us in line and the mom was pointing to DD saying to the boy see, there is a girl smaller than you that is going to ride it DD then said how much she likes it & how its not scary at all and that hed have a blast riding it. He then responded with I hope its as much fun as the Tower of Terror have you done that yet? DD answered with a no to which the boy replied oh, you have to do it, it is a blast and not scary at all. I seized the opportunity and asked DD wow! Wanna go on it after this ride? and she nodded that she would in fact give it a try. Yess!! The great magical Disney god had pulled through again. Aerosmith then directed us to the super stretch and we once again had an awesome ride.
On the way out, I asked if she was ready and she started wavering again. So at this point I said you wanted to do it two nights ago and kids smaller than you are saying how much fun it is ..trust me, youll love it and want to ride it again and again..I wouldnt let you do something that you werent going to like She said ok and we proceeded to the entrance. I briefed her on the story of the tower being struck by lightning and the elevator containing the five people disappearing and then told her about the old episodes of The Twilight Zone and how they were more weird than scary. We entered the first room where the TV comes on and she paid close attention without getting scared at all. We boarded the elevator and I reminded her that the ghosts would be fake, just like in the Haunted Mansion. She made it through the ghost/Twilight Zone scenes just fine. I glanced over at her during the first of many drops during the ride part and she was laughing up a storm! It was a great ride and I love the new programming, we seemed to get a lot of float time. When it was over, she immediately gave the that was awesome! I wanna do it again line. Yes! She had conquered the Tower of Terror. The funny thing was when she said What happened to Mickey? The little girl boarding the elevator had a Mickey in her hand, but when we saw her as a ghost, the Mickey was gone. I had no answer for her, but congratulated her on her observation skills! We picked up a commemorative ride photo and exited, ready to ride again. The wait time had changed from 13 (cute) to 20 minutes and DD really wanted to get started on the mask & spend time in the countries at Epcot so we skipped riding again and headed over to the boat dock.
Its kind of a neat feeling when you see a bunch of people entering the park and you are leaving, with three thrill rides already completed for the day. It made me feel good about our plan of getting up, hitting the parks early and making it back to the room between 9-10pm.
We boarded the Friendship VII boat and took a nice ride over to Epcot, stopping first at the Swan/Dolphin, Yacht & Beach Club and Boardwalk resorts. The ride only took about 20 minutes and was a neat way to do something that we hadnt done before.
Since we were already over by England & France due to the boat docking there, we decided to do the countries in reverse order starting with Canada and ending with Mexico. It was around 11am and we also wanted to make sure to do the private Disney Visa meet and greet that was between 1:30 and 4:30. So, we figured we would do half of the countries (ending with USA), take the boat across the lagoon and go to Innoventions for the meet & greet, then head back over via boat and finish up the countries.
She started her mask in Canada and I asked her if she wanted to do the Passport again to which she declined. I then thought of buying the generic blank Disney autograph book and having each country representative sign it. She really liked this idea and it worked out great! She decided to color in the entire mask, outlining squiggles in black and coloring them in stained glass style this will take a while, dad. I suggested that she do a little section in each country so we could move along and she liked that idea also.
We visited England next and stopped at the Yorkshire Fish and Chip place for a nice lunch (see dining review again).
Next was France, where I remembered to seek out Belles library. We did the mask/autograph thing and then found the library but no Belle or Beast. I asked a CM if they would be appearing anytime soon and she said that Belle was out front by the lagoon. We walked out and had a nice meet and greet with Belle. It was funny, I dont think the people walking by even noticed that she was standing there. There was no line and she was just kind of hanging out like a tourist would! She was happy to see that I was wearing a Belle pin on my lanyard & gave DD lots of great attention. She mentioned that Beast would be out soon, but we had to be on our way so we said our goodbyes and walked on to Morocco.
We hit the kidcot stop first and then noticed that Aladdin and Jasmine were together by the lagoon and went over to get their autographs. We had to remind Aladdin that he had already signed his page at the MK (which he remembered
). Jasmine, noticing the page we made for Ariel, asked if wed be dining at Akershus tonight and we told her that we were. She said shed see us there.
Next stop was Japan. Their Kidcot place is in the Tin Toy exhibit which was really neat to see. We decided to pick up a gift for our princess at home (the wife, not the dog) and browsed through the Japanese gift shop. We settled for some nice chopsticks so she could eat her sushi in style and a lantern/candle holder thing that would be perfect for the stand in our entry way. We checked out the koi pond and the Japanese garden and then proceeded to the American Adventure.
In all of our visits to Epcot, we had never seen the show at the American pavilion so we figured wed see it on this visit. We were lucky enough to walk in and see the Voices of Liberty performing in the rotunda. They were awesome as usual. Their closing rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner was tremendous. We made it into the theater and finally watched the American Adventure show. Im not gonna sugarcoat this at all .I thought the show was terrible. While it was neat the way the animatronic figures came to life from the film, I thought that we could offer so much more for our pavilion. It was a slow lesson in our history and never quite gave you that proud to be an American feeling. Luckily, DD did not fall asleep, but it did put a screeching halt to the fun we were having.
So we got the necessary Kidcot stuff out of the way and walked over to the boat that took us back towards Future World.
We went into Innoventions and asked a CM where the meet and greet was located & she took us right to it. There were two families in front of us so we waited a few minutes and were then taken in to see Minnie and Goofy. Some music was playing, so Minnie and Goofy danced with DD for at least two minutes..spinning her around and having a grand time! It was just us and them. This alone made the meet and greet worth it. They finally stopped for a few pictures and we were on our way. We took the coupon for the free print immediately over to the Kodak (maybe they should tear down Spaceship Earth and erect a Kodak logo instead) center where we picked out our free 5X7 print. All in all, it was a pretty nice perk!
We went back to Innoventions for a while and participated in the IBM build a ship that is impossible to control game and then did the Where is the Fire? Game. That was pretty cool DD and I found all of the fire hazards in two rooms and our team was victorious by a large margin!
We boarded the boat back across the lagoon to finish up our World Showcase trip, starting with Italy.
We completed the Kidcot stop there and scoped out the Gelato cart. Did I mention that we love gelato?? We grabbed a bench and watched some street performers do a funny rendition of Romeo and Juliet (called Romeo and Maude, or something like that) while we ate our delicious gelato.
On the way to Germany, I realized that she hadnt complained of any blisters on her feet and asked her how she was holding up. She said her feet werent bothering her at all. Yet another thing that went right for us on this trip .
Germany was pretty uneventful, since DD is not too much into beer yet so we Kidcoted and went to China.
The acrobats were performing out front and I scoped out Mushu hanging out by the temple/theater thing. DD had never met Mushu before and was extremely excited to see him!! Mushu lived it up and loved the fact that he had his own page in the autograph book. I asked the CM where Mulan was (another DD fav that she had never met) and she informed me that Mulan would be there in about 5 min. Great!! We went and did the Kidcot stop where we learned that DD was born in the year of the Tiger and her dad was born in the year of the pig (ugh). We went back to the greeting spot and there was Mulan! Mushu hadnt left yet so DD got to spend some time with both of them which was awesome! It was a definite highlight of the trip for DD.
We then tackled Norway and the Maelstrom (minus the movie) and Mexico and El Rio del Tiempo. Love that Mexico ride, the Magnum PI looking dude in the hot tub cracks me up every time! Some of the pavilions really need to update some of their films!
DD completed her mask and it looked awesome. We had almost two hours before our ADR at Akershus, so we decided to try and get a few Test Track rides in.
We zipped through the line at Test Track and were soon in front of Door #1 for the pre-show. An announcement then came over the speaker informing us that due to inclement weather, the ride had been temporarily shut down. We peeked out the exit doors behind us and it was raining pretty good. It was 5:45, our ADR was for 7:25 and we didnt really want to get soaked. We decided to stay there for a while and see what happened.
By 6:05, the group in front of Door #1 had dwindled down to two people (me and DD).
Doors 2 and 3 were empty and there were five people in the queue line .everyone sitting down. In what was easily the funniest moment of the trip, the big yellow police light came on above our door, shining a rotating light onto the floor. DD decides to get up and jump the light each time it rotated over the carpet, much like a jump rope. The queue broke out into laughter as DD was there in a totally magical moment, innocently jumping the light in front of the Test Track door. It stopped after a minute, but shortly after it stopped, the light went off over door #3 & DD ran to it and did the same thing. It was really a moment to treasure the things kids will do to entertain themselves!
By 6:30, the ride had opened up again and we got on. When we broke through the doors to do the loops outside, it started lightly raining again. As we were exiting the car, the ride had shut down yet again due to the rain. We had gotten pretty lucky!
We checked out our ride photo and DD noticed a hidden Mickey in the photo (the ropes on the ground beside the car). Shes getting pretty good at spotting them! Next trip I think that will be one of our goals to find as many as we can.
It was still raining a bit so we went to Akershus to see if theyd seat us early and they did.
We had a nice dinner there (see dining review), with the highlight being seeing Ariel with feet! All the princesses there were sweet and we had a great dinner.
Afterwards, we grabbed a spot near Future World, dead center to the ball to watch Illuminations. It was fantastic as usual but we did notice that the big ball of fire was missing. We assumed that the show had changed and didnt know about the barge accident until our return back home.
We headed to the busses for our one of our final trips back to POP and encountered our longest bus line yet. While waiting in line, I saw something that really disturbed me. There were two little girls (maybe 5-8 years old) sitting on a bench by themselves. To make a long story short, the mother had left them there while she went back to the park to get something. If you dont know, its quite a walk from park entrance to the bus stop and really, really irresponsible of the mother to do that. A nice lady volunteered to sit with the kids while security was called and they attempted to locate the mother. Six busses came in rapid fire and we were on board in no time. As we were pulling away, the mother finally showed up. I dont understand why you would ever, ever leave your kids alone in a place like that.
Well, my kid was getting pretty tired and I was too, so we made our way back to our room for our last night. It then hit me that I needed to pack up because I wanted to sleep in a little in the morning. DD fell asleep pretty quickly and I spent about 30 minutes cramming everything back into our bags. I did a pretty good job and was off to bed in no time.
The next day was our choice of parks in the AM (I thought DD would choose AK) and then a trip to DTD to do some last minute shopping. We needed to be on the road by 2pm. I was a little sad knowing this was our last night there, but tired enough to fall asleep quickly.
The Cast:
Me Disney obsessed 34 year old IT Manager from Canton, GA
DD7 7 year old Disney lover with 5 trips to the world already under her belt
Links to the entire report & photos:
POP Century Review
Dining Reviews
Pre-trip Report
Day 1: Wishes & Princesses
Day 2: AK & 48"
Day 3: MGM
Day 4: Incredible MK
Day 5: Epcot & Spectromagic
Day 6: MGM & World Showcase
Day 7: ToT & DTD
Post-trip Report
Photopass
300 Pictures that I took!
Day Six (9-23)
Back to Mickey & Stitch on the wake up call again this morning. We planned on a pretty easygoing day. Over to MGM to ride RnR a couple times and then over to the World Showcase where DD wanted to hit the Kidcot stops and make a mask (shed done this twice before and really likes it). We also wanted to see Illuminations. But our first order of the day was to bandage up the probable between big and second toe blister spot from wearing the flip flops around the lagoon. Dr. Dad finished the procedure in record time and we were off to the World once again.
First stop was MGM to get the last couple of rides in on the Rock N Rollercoaster. Besides Soarin, this was easily the favorite attraction of the entire trip. On our way to ride it, I reminded DD that she had wanted to go on Tower of Terror on our last visit to MGM, but we had run out of time. She then said that she didnt want to do it now. Ugh what was I to do? I couldnt pressure her into going on it, but I knew that she would love it if she rode it just one time. My mind was working in overdrive trying to come up with a plan. One ride on RnRC had passed and we found ourselves standing in front of the doors leading into the pre-show when Tinkerbell came to the rescue once again. There was a little boy behind us in line and the mom was pointing to DD saying to the boy see, there is a girl smaller than you that is going to ride it DD then said how much she likes it & how its not scary at all and that hed have a blast riding it. He then responded with I hope its as much fun as the Tower of Terror have you done that yet? DD answered with a no to which the boy replied oh, you have to do it, it is a blast and not scary at all. I seized the opportunity and asked DD wow! Wanna go on it after this ride? and she nodded that she would in fact give it a try. Yess!! The great magical Disney god had pulled through again. Aerosmith then directed us to the super stretch and we once again had an awesome ride.
On the way out, I asked if she was ready and she started wavering again. So at this point I said you wanted to do it two nights ago and kids smaller than you are saying how much fun it is ..trust me, youll love it and want to ride it again and again..I wouldnt let you do something that you werent going to like She said ok and we proceeded to the entrance. I briefed her on the story of the tower being struck by lightning and the elevator containing the five people disappearing and then told her about the old episodes of The Twilight Zone and how they were more weird than scary. We entered the first room where the TV comes on and she paid close attention without getting scared at all. We boarded the elevator and I reminded her that the ghosts would be fake, just like in the Haunted Mansion. She made it through the ghost/Twilight Zone scenes just fine. I glanced over at her during the first of many drops during the ride part and she was laughing up a storm! It was a great ride and I love the new programming, we seemed to get a lot of float time. When it was over, she immediately gave the that was awesome! I wanna do it again line. Yes! She had conquered the Tower of Terror. The funny thing was when she said What happened to Mickey? The little girl boarding the elevator had a Mickey in her hand, but when we saw her as a ghost, the Mickey was gone. I had no answer for her, but congratulated her on her observation skills! We picked up a commemorative ride photo and exited, ready to ride again. The wait time had changed from 13 (cute) to 20 minutes and DD really wanted to get started on the mask & spend time in the countries at Epcot so we skipped riding again and headed over to the boat dock.
Its kind of a neat feeling when you see a bunch of people entering the park and you are leaving, with three thrill rides already completed for the day. It made me feel good about our plan of getting up, hitting the parks early and making it back to the room between 9-10pm.
We boarded the Friendship VII boat and took a nice ride over to Epcot, stopping first at the Swan/Dolphin, Yacht & Beach Club and Boardwalk resorts. The ride only took about 20 minutes and was a neat way to do something that we hadnt done before.
Since we were already over by England & France due to the boat docking there, we decided to do the countries in reverse order starting with Canada and ending with Mexico. It was around 11am and we also wanted to make sure to do the private Disney Visa meet and greet that was between 1:30 and 4:30. So, we figured we would do half of the countries (ending with USA), take the boat across the lagoon and go to Innoventions for the meet & greet, then head back over via boat and finish up the countries.
She started her mask in Canada and I asked her if she wanted to do the Passport again to which she declined. I then thought of buying the generic blank Disney autograph book and having each country representative sign it. She really liked this idea and it worked out great! She decided to color in the entire mask, outlining squiggles in black and coloring them in stained glass style this will take a while, dad. I suggested that she do a little section in each country so we could move along and she liked that idea also.
We visited England next and stopped at the Yorkshire Fish and Chip place for a nice lunch (see dining review again).
Next was France, where I remembered to seek out Belles library. We did the mask/autograph thing and then found the library but no Belle or Beast. I asked a CM if they would be appearing anytime soon and she said that Belle was out front by the lagoon. We walked out and had a nice meet and greet with Belle. It was funny, I dont think the people walking by even noticed that she was standing there. There was no line and she was just kind of hanging out like a tourist would! She was happy to see that I was wearing a Belle pin on my lanyard & gave DD lots of great attention. She mentioned that Beast would be out soon, but we had to be on our way so we said our goodbyes and walked on to Morocco.
We hit the kidcot stop first and then noticed that Aladdin and Jasmine were together by the lagoon and went over to get their autographs. We had to remind Aladdin that he had already signed his page at the MK (which he remembered
). Jasmine, noticing the page we made for Ariel, asked if wed be dining at Akershus tonight and we told her that we were. She said shed see us there.Next stop was Japan. Their Kidcot place is in the Tin Toy exhibit which was really neat to see. We decided to pick up a gift for our princess at home (the wife, not the dog) and browsed through the Japanese gift shop. We settled for some nice chopsticks so she could eat her sushi in style and a lantern/candle holder thing that would be perfect for the stand in our entry way. We checked out the koi pond and the Japanese garden and then proceeded to the American Adventure.
In all of our visits to Epcot, we had never seen the show at the American pavilion so we figured wed see it on this visit. We were lucky enough to walk in and see the Voices of Liberty performing in the rotunda. They were awesome as usual. Their closing rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner was tremendous. We made it into the theater and finally watched the American Adventure show. Im not gonna sugarcoat this at all .I thought the show was terrible. While it was neat the way the animatronic figures came to life from the film, I thought that we could offer so much more for our pavilion. It was a slow lesson in our history and never quite gave you that proud to be an American feeling. Luckily, DD did not fall asleep, but it did put a screeching halt to the fun we were having.
So we got the necessary Kidcot stuff out of the way and walked over to the boat that took us back towards Future World.
We went into Innoventions and asked a CM where the meet and greet was located & she took us right to it. There were two families in front of us so we waited a few minutes and were then taken in to see Minnie and Goofy. Some music was playing, so Minnie and Goofy danced with DD for at least two minutes..spinning her around and having a grand time! It was just us and them. This alone made the meet and greet worth it. They finally stopped for a few pictures and we were on our way. We took the coupon for the free print immediately over to the Kodak (maybe they should tear down Spaceship Earth and erect a Kodak logo instead) center where we picked out our free 5X7 print. All in all, it was a pretty nice perk!
We went back to Innoventions for a while and participated in the IBM build a ship that is impossible to control game and then did the Where is the Fire? Game. That was pretty cool DD and I found all of the fire hazards in two rooms and our team was victorious by a large margin!
We boarded the boat back across the lagoon to finish up our World Showcase trip, starting with Italy.
We completed the Kidcot stop there and scoped out the Gelato cart. Did I mention that we love gelato?? We grabbed a bench and watched some street performers do a funny rendition of Romeo and Juliet (called Romeo and Maude, or something like that) while we ate our delicious gelato.
On the way to Germany, I realized that she hadnt complained of any blisters on her feet and asked her how she was holding up. She said her feet werent bothering her at all. Yet another thing that went right for us on this trip .
Germany was pretty uneventful, since DD is not too much into beer yet so we Kidcoted and went to China.
The acrobats were performing out front and I scoped out Mushu hanging out by the temple/theater thing. DD had never met Mushu before and was extremely excited to see him!! Mushu lived it up and loved the fact that he had his own page in the autograph book. I asked the CM where Mulan was (another DD fav that she had never met) and she informed me that Mulan would be there in about 5 min. Great!! We went and did the Kidcot stop where we learned that DD was born in the year of the Tiger and her dad was born in the year of the pig (ugh). We went back to the greeting spot and there was Mulan! Mushu hadnt left yet so DD got to spend some time with both of them which was awesome! It was a definite highlight of the trip for DD.
We then tackled Norway and the Maelstrom (minus the movie) and Mexico and El Rio del Tiempo. Love that Mexico ride, the Magnum PI looking dude in the hot tub cracks me up every time! Some of the pavilions really need to update some of their films!
DD completed her mask and it looked awesome. We had almost two hours before our ADR at Akershus, so we decided to try and get a few Test Track rides in.
We zipped through the line at Test Track and were soon in front of Door #1 for the pre-show. An announcement then came over the speaker informing us that due to inclement weather, the ride had been temporarily shut down. We peeked out the exit doors behind us and it was raining pretty good. It was 5:45, our ADR was for 7:25 and we didnt really want to get soaked. We decided to stay there for a while and see what happened.
By 6:05, the group in front of Door #1 had dwindled down to two people (me and DD).
Doors 2 and 3 were empty and there were five people in the queue line .everyone sitting down. In what was easily the funniest moment of the trip, the big yellow police light came on above our door, shining a rotating light onto the floor. DD decides to get up and jump the light each time it rotated over the carpet, much like a jump rope. The queue broke out into laughter as DD was there in a totally magical moment, innocently jumping the light in front of the Test Track door. It stopped after a minute, but shortly after it stopped, the light went off over door #3 & DD ran to it and did the same thing. It was really a moment to treasure the things kids will do to entertain themselves!
By 6:30, the ride had opened up again and we got on. When we broke through the doors to do the loops outside, it started lightly raining again. As we were exiting the car, the ride had shut down yet again due to the rain. We had gotten pretty lucky!
We checked out our ride photo and DD noticed a hidden Mickey in the photo (the ropes on the ground beside the car). Shes getting pretty good at spotting them! Next trip I think that will be one of our goals to find as many as we can.
It was still raining a bit so we went to Akershus to see if theyd seat us early and they did.
We had a nice dinner there (see dining review), with the highlight being seeing Ariel with feet! All the princesses there were sweet and we had a great dinner.
Afterwards, we grabbed a spot near Future World, dead center to the ball to watch Illuminations. It was fantastic as usual but we did notice that the big ball of fire was missing. We assumed that the show had changed and didnt know about the barge accident until our return back home.
We headed to the busses for our one of our final trips back to POP and encountered our longest bus line yet. While waiting in line, I saw something that really disturbed me. There were two little girls (maybe 5-8 years old) sitting on a bench by themselves. To make a long story short, the mother had left them there while she went back to the park to get something. If you dont know, its quite a walk from park entrance to the bus stop and really, really irresponsible of the mother to do that. A nice lady volunteered to sit with the kids while security was called and they attempted to locate the mother. Six busses came in rapid fire and we were on board in no time. As we were pulling away, the mother finally showed up. I dont understand why you would ever, ever leave your kids alone in a place like that.
Well, my kid was getting pretty tired and I was too, so we made our way back to our room for our last night. It then hit me that I needed to pack up because I wanted to sleep in a little in the morning. DD fell asleep pretty quickly and I spent about 30 minutes cramming everything back into our bags. I did a pretty good job and was off to bed in no time.
The next day was our choice of parks in the AM (I thought DD would choose AK) and then a trip to DTD to do some last minute shopping. We needed to be on the road by 2pm. I was a little sad knowing this was our last night there, but tired enough to fall asleep quickly.
Looking forward to Day 7!!! 
