Enchanted? Who said anything about this TR being enchanted?*UPDATE*MNSSHP*3/13

[jen22984]

Day 6 - Part 1

Today, would be our 2nd day at Animal Kingdom. They had PM EMH so we intended to make use of them. We knew we would have a late night, the night before, so we planned to sleep in as much as we could. However, the girls were up by 7:30!!! We let them watch a little bit of cartoon while DH & I tried our hardest to wake up, neither of us are morning people! We ended up leaving our room around 10am and heading over to AK. We had a lunch reservation for 11:00am at Yak & Yeti. I sent DH to grab the FPs we would be needing (1 EE and 2 Kali River). We ended up meeting back at Yak & Yeti at around 10:30, but they weren’t seating people for lunch yet so we signed in and they gave us a little slip of paper to bring back with us.

The girls and I had seen some characters out on our way to Yak & Yeti, so we back tracked a little and got their autographs.

A bad spot for a character meeting at this point in the day…the sun was glaring in every one of my pictures!

Aryanna waiting in line for some more characters

DH scratching Baloo’s back!

Finally, it was time to head back to Yak & Yeti for lunch.

We were so hungry and had heard good reviews of the food so we couldn’t wait! We were seated on the 2nd floor, at the corner table over looking the bridge between Discovery Island and Asia. DH ordered the Shaoxing Steak & Shrimp, I ordered the Crispy Honey Chicken, and the girls were going to split the chicken bites with applesauce. For dessert, DH ordered some type of cheesecake, I ordered the fried wontons, and the girls had chocolate pudding with marshmallows.

With our bellies full, we headed out to see some things that we skipped on our first day at AK. First up was the Maharajah Jungle Trek. The girls loved seeing all of the animals and I got some pretty good pictures!

Komodo Dragon

Tigers

I cant remember exactly what these were.

McKenna looking beautiful by the bicycle!

A couple types of birds

Next, we decided to head to Camp Minnie Mickey for the Festival of the Lion King. I had wanted to see this last year, but no one else wanted to so we skipped it. We were definitely going to see it this year!

A shot of Everest on the way to Camp Minnie Mickey

We got to FOTLK about 20 minutes or so before they started letting people in. The girls had fun playing in the rocks while DH and I enjoyed the shade and the breeze of the fans. We were so lucky to be standing in a good spot!

Finally it was time to go in for the show. We were seated in the warthog section, in the second row on the end. The girls loved all the singing and dancing. Then it happened….Aryanna would NOT be disappointed over not getting picked to participate again. She took it upon herself to follow all of the other kids up that had gotten picked to dance. I tried to get her to come back, but one of the dancers was so nice about it. He could see that she really wanted to participate, so he went back to a little area and came back with her a little can thing to shake. She was so proud!

About 5 minutes before the show ended, DH tapped on my arm and when I looked at him, I saw McKenna asleep on his shoulder. She was so tired! My girls are used to a good 1-2 hour nap after lunch and an early bedtime so they hadn’t been getting as much sleep as normal.

DH wanted to see Its Tough to Be a Bug, so we headed over that way. On the way, we meet up with some characters that we hadn’t seen before.

Then we headed over to ITTBAB. McKenna did not like it at all and Aryanna liked it except for when it got dark.

Aryanna waiting to see Its Tough to Be a Bug

Up next…..the AK parade & another shot at the safari

 

[jen22984]

Day 6 – Part 2

When Its Tough to Be A bug was over, we staked out seats for the parade. This was another of the things that we missed last year. The girls are really into parades so we found a seat and had a little snack.

The girls enjoying a sucker

When the parade was over, I took the girls and headed to Dinoland. Our plan was to hang out in the play area while DH went and rode Expedition Everest. The girls loved the slides, but their favorite was definitely the dig site.

McKenna on the slide

Finally, about 30-45 minutes later, DH came back and found us. He had a look on his face like he was trying to hide a smile. I asked him how the ride was and he says “I don’t know, I didn’t ride it.” He said he stood there and watched it a few times and he just couldn’t bring himself to get in line. He likes roller coasters, but he doesn’t like to ride alone. I don’t ride them (big ones) because I get really bad motion sickness. He usually rides them with friends. So he chickened out and came back to find us. He said he wasn’t going to tell me that he didn’t ride it, but I could read all over his face that he was hiding something.

From here, we went and rode TriceraTop Spin. It was fun for the girls, but just like every other “dumbo” ride in Disney!

After TriceraTop Spin, we walked as fast as we could to Finding Nemo the Musical. We got in right before they closed the doors for the last show of the day. About ½ way through, Aryanna says she has to pee and she cant wait! So we all end up leaving, we know we wont be able to get back in after going to the bathroom and decide we can all miss the end so we can go find something we can all do as a family.

The park was now closed to non-resort guests and we were getting pretty tired. We still had one thing to do on our to-do list, the safari! So we headed over there. We walked right on, it was so great! I had my good camera so I was hoping for some great pictures, but that didn’t happen. We got a couple good shots, but not many. We also got stopped for about 20 minutes in the giraffe area because there were animals in the path that wouldn’t move.

Once we got off of the safari, we decided it was time to head back to Pop. We had dinner in the food court at Pop, then we took the girls swimming while I did some laundry. Once the laundry was done, we all got showers and headed to bed because we had an early morning the next day.

 

[jen22984]

Day 7 – Part 1

This morning, DH & I were up at 6am. We were heading to Magic Kingdom and they had AM EMH this morning. We got up and got everything ready for the day before waking the girls. We woke them around 7:00am, got them dressed and loaded into the stroller before we headed out to the bus stop.
We arrived at Magic Kingdom at about 7:45. I took a few pictures of the Halloween decorations before and during the opening show.

Our plan was to get as much done in Fantasyland as we could, so we headed towards the Castle.

Our first ride of the day would be Dumbo! The line was really short at this point and we were on in less than 5 minutes!

After Dumbo, McKenna requested a ride on the carousel. She just loves them!

Aryanna

McKenna

From there, we headed over to Peter Pan’s Flight. The girls enjoyed it more this time, but were still really fascinated that their clothing glowed under the lights! Snow White was next, there was no line at all and we walked right on.

When we came out of Snow White, we saw that the line for Dumbo was still really short so we hopped back in that line. There was still no real wait, we were on the 3rd group on the ride after we got in line. This time both girls rode with Daddy while I rode alone. It was what they fought over the whole trip, who gets to ride with Daddy! They never asked to ride with Mommy, kinda made me a little sad, but I know its because they are with me all day, everyday and they really wanted some Daddy time.

Our next ride would be Pooh. The line was pretty short, but Aryanna was a little grumpy (she hates lines). So she asked DH to teach her to snap her fingers. I was trying to get a picture of it and this is what I got. It cracks me up every time because if you didn’t know that he was trying to teach her to snap her fingers, you would think he was trying to show her to flip someone off!

Soon enough, it was our turn in line!

This is one of the girls’ favorite scenes. McKenna, especially, had been all about kangaroos for about a month prior to our trip. Or should I say “tang-a-woos.” The first time she ever said it, I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. I knew it sounded like kangaroo, but no one had been talking about kangaroos so I didn’t know where she would have come up with it. As it turns out, she saw one on a sign for a Kangaroo gas station and it just clicked with her.

Our last ride in Fantasyland would be the Tea Cups, of course!
After our spin on the Tea Cups, we headed over to Adventureland. We hadn’t spent a lot of time over in that area and the girls really wanted to ride the Magic Carpets again so that was our first stop.

After that, we went on Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean before it was time to head back to Toontown!

 

[jc040404]

You're definitely going to beat me to September 13th!

LOVED the story about Quentin not riding. Toooo funny!! Great pics on the safari, even if you didn't think you got much. I loved 'em!

I have got to try to get to MK early on a morning EMH day! I can't believe you were able to do Dumbo twice like that!

 

[jen22984]

Day 7 – Part 2

We got in line for the Toon Town opening alittle before 10am, probably right around 9:45. There was already a HUGE line by this point, but the girls really wanted to meet the fairies so we needed to head that way. As soon as it was 10am, we headed straight to the line to meet the fairies. We stood in line about 20-25, with the last 5-10 minutes taking forever! Soon enough, we were taken in the “shrinking” room so that we would be the same size as the fairies once we got to Pixie Hollow!

First up, we met Rosetta. She was very sweet and took a lot of time to really talk to the girls.

Next was Tinkerbell! The girls had been so excited to meet her! She was nice, but not as talkative as Rosetta.

(Aryanna looks like she’s crying because she poked herself in the eye with her pen for her autograph book.)

Then was saw the newest fairy, Vidia. She wasn’t very nice and didn’t spend hardly any time with the girls. I’m not sure if she was having an off day, or if it was just part of her character.

After we were finished seeing the fairies, it was time for a little break. I sat on a bench outside of the Hall of Fame, while the girls took turns riding Barnstormer with Daddy. While we waited, we had a yummy frozen lemonade (we drank more than our share of these things on our trip)!

I am pretty sure we had lunch after this, but I can not think of where we ate, maybe Cosmic Rays again?

By this point in our trip, we had a new mission: to get as many character autographs as we could! We had a lot of them already so we were on a mission to get ones we hadn’t seen yet and up first would be Tiana & Naveen! They were getting ready to leave once we got over to where they were, but we decided to just wait around and see them when they came back out. We weren’t in a hurry to do anything, so we sat in the shade and the girls played in a little water puddle for a few minutes.

We were 1st in line when Tiana & Naveen came back out. The photopass photographer was having a problem with his equipment, so the girls got to spend a decent amount of time with them. It was so much fun to see the girls intereact with them and when we were getting our card back from the photopass guy, Naveen came over to us and made sure to tell us that he really enjoyed the time with our girls and that he thought they were just the sweetest little girls! It totally made my day that someone else noticed just how wonderful my girls are (even if I get overwhlemed with them sometimes). Later, when I looked in their books, Naveen wrote on McKenna's "You are SO Cute!" and on Aryanna's "We love you!"

From there, we headed up to the Castle, by the Cinderella fountain to see the Fairy Godmother! She was supposed to be out about 10 minutes later. We waited and waited and waited, but she never came out. About 10 minutes after her scheduled time, a nice CM came over and asked us if we were waiting on the Fairy Godmother and when we said yes, she said she was sorry to tell us that she would not be out right now as she “was helping with a problem with Cinderella’s dress.” She offered to tell us where & when any other characters we wanted to see would be out, but at that point the only characters we still needed to see were Buzz, Woody, and Jessie and we knew when/where they would be out. Then she offered to take the girls autograph books and have the Fairy Godmother sign them for us, if we didn’t mind waiting for about 10 minutes. So we waited!

After she brought the autograph books back, we headed back down to the front of the Castle to get seats for the Move It, Shake It, Celebrate It Street Party. The CMs that were setting up, told us where a good spot would be to see the Toy Story characters so we waited and she was right, it was a perfect spot!

When the street party was over, we headed back to Pop Century for naps.

We headed back to the room and had about an hour long nap. Then we got up and got ready for our dinner ADR. We were headed to OHana! This was one of the meals we had been waiting for since I made the reservation months ago!

We decided to drive over so we wouldn’t have to transfer buses and we got there about 30 minutes before our ADR time. We were seated almost immediately though. The meal was amazing! Our waitress was great too. She offered the girls some more “kid friendly” meal than what was on the reg. all you can eat menu. We decided that they would probably not eat too much off of the reg menu, except shrimp so we ordered them the kids PB&J meal. She asked me if 1 was enough but I ordered 2 because I knew that it was most likely an Uncrustable sandwich and 1 of those would not be enough for 2 kids to split. We asked for grapes as their side item. When she brought out the meals, eat meal had 2 Uncrustable sandwiches, fries, and a huge bowl of grapes! One of them would have been MORE than enough! I wish she would have told us that 1 meal came with 2 sandwiches!

We stuck around for the little kid games that they had and Aryanna insisted on getting leis for all 4 of us! When she got back to the table she handed them all out and asked her to take the one she got me to the table next to us, as the dad was trying to get his daughter to go up and get one, but she was much too shy. She thanked Aryanna and the dad was so happy to see that Aryanna shared with her when we noticed that she was being shy about getting her own. (We really didn’t need 2 of them, let alone 4 of them!)
After dinner, we had planned to watch Wishes from the beach there at Poly, but I had a killer headache so we just headed back to Pop and headed to bed.

 

[hill6]

Phenomenal review so far. Your girls are adorable.

 

[jc040404]

My Prince Naveen!! Isn't he the best? We always pass through that area on MK visits now and just to see if that friend is out. We've only noticed him once in the last couple months when we've been, but the line for Tiana is always soooo nuts. Love him! I love that he wrote such sweet things in the girls' books!

And how awesome about the Fairy Godmother! That was so sweet that she signed their books, even if she was busy with Cinderella.

 

[jen22984]

Phenomenal review so far. Your girls are adorable.

Thanks! I hope that more people are enjoying my TR and are just lurking. And thanks for the compliments on my girls, I think they are pretty adorable myself!

My Prince Naveen!! Isn't he the best? We always pass through that area on MK visits now and just to see if that friend is out. We've only noticed him once in the last couple months when we've been, but the line for Tiana is always soooo nuts. Love him! I love that he wrote such sweet things in the girls' books!

And how awesome about the Fairy Godmother! That was so sweet that she signed their books, even if she was busy with Cinderella.

We loved Prince Naveen! He is totally one of my favorite "moments" from the entire trip!

The girls were sad at first that they didnt get to see the Fairy Godmother, but were hapy that she signed their books. Meeting the characters was one of their favorite things to do this trip!

 

[jen22984]

Day 8 – Sea World

Today was our only non-Disney day. We would be heading to Sea World for the day. We woke up around 7, got dressed, and then headed to the food court for breakfast. I don’t remember what we ate, but I don’t remember it being bad. When we were finished we headed to Sea World. We got there right around 8:45am.

They opened at 9am, so we got in line to get our tickets, then waited in line again to get into the park. The first place we headed was the penguin exhibit. The girls, especially Aryanna, love penguins!

Aryanna after the penguin exhibit

From there we decided we were going to see the show “Clyde & Seamore Take Pirate Island.” We had awhile before it started, so we headed over to watch the sea lions being fed.

Once we were seated, we still had about 15 minutes before the show started. They had a mime out to entertain the audience and he was hilarious!

Finally, it was show time! The girls loved the show!

From there, we headed over to watch the Shamu show, Believe. We had a little bit of time before it started so we rode the carousel, played with some metal drums, and took some pictures by the Shamu sign.

We headed up into the stands about 30 minutes before Believe was supposed to start. It was already packed but we found a spot up at the top. We enjoyed a little snack of grapes (left over from breakfast) while we waited.

The show was awesome! The girls didn’t move the whole time, they just sat and stared at the show! We all loved it!

When it was over, we headed back over to the little kid rides. DH took Aryanna on the Shamu Express and I took McKenna on the Jumpin’ Jellies. Then, we looked in a few stores and got the girls each a souvenir. McKenna picked a small stuffed orca and Aryanna picked a little case that you can fill with all kinds of plastic animals. Then we saw the baby dolphins in the little dolphin nursery. After that, we headed back to Pop. The girls were really grumpy and there we no more shows that we wanted to see for a couple of hours. The shows here are really set up so you have to spend multiple days there. They were all over lapping in times or too far apart to make it between shows since they aren’t really close to each other. So we picked 2 and decided we’d try to do different ones the next time.

When we got back to Pop, we ate dinner in the food court before heading back to the room to change so we could head to the pool. We swam for probably 30-45 minutes then headed back to the room for showers and bedtime.

We had another early morning the next day so we wanted to get some sleep!

 

[jc040404]

Geeze. Now I wanna go to Sea World!! The Shamu show made me cry when we saw it when Andrew was a little guy. I think I was pregnant with Blake when we went. We've got to plan a day to cheat on Disney!

Is there a Sea World in CA? I think so, right.. Are you guys close at all? I totally agree with you on the shows being spaced out so you have to come back. We only managed two. We did "Believe" but the other had birds in it? Maybe dolphins? I don't even remember what it was now.

It does look like you all fun with what you did accomplish!

Can't wait for the next day!! What's the date now?

 

[Dina Monster]

I love Tiana! I saw here to DL! She was the sweetest! She told me happy birthday and gave me tons of hugs and kudos for being an adult and standing in line. She asked me if my fabulous hubby was my Prince and of course I told her yes!

I have to check out that 1900 Fair then! That is go great! I love your TR so far! You guys looked like you had so much fun!

Tucson is okay...but I'm ready to PCS.. Been here almost 3 years now.

 

[Kacimom]

Loving your trip report!! Your little girls are adorable! Also love all of their cute outfits, getting great ideas for my DD5's trip next June!! Looks like you guys had a fabulous time!!

 

[jen22984]

Geeze. Now I wanna go to Sea World!! The Shamu show made me cry when we saw it when Andrew was a little guy. I think I was pregnant with Blake when we went. We've got to plan a day to cheat on Disney!

Is there a Sea World in CA? I think so, right.. Are you guys close at all? I totally agree with you on the shows being spaced out so you have to come back. We only managed two. We did "Believe" but the other had birds in it? Maybe dolphins? I don't even remember what it was now.

It does look like you all fun with what you did accomplish!

Can't wait for the next day!! What's the date now?

I want to go back to Sea World too. There were a couple of the shows that I really wanted to see, but we picked the ones that we thought the girls would enjoy the most. I'm not sure when we'll get to go back though. The closest one is in San Diego and that is about a 5 hour trip, one way!

We definitely had fun there, just wish the shows were spaced better! And maybe a few more rides that the girls could ride!

I'm getting ready to start the next day in a little bit. I had planned to do it over the weekend, but life got in the way. It Day 9 of the trip, September 11th.

 

[jen22984]

I love Tiana! I saw here to DL! She was the sweetest! She told me happy birthday and gave me tons of hugs and kudos for being an adult and standing in line. She asked me if my fabulous hubby was my Prince and of course I told her yes!

I have to check out that 1900 Fair then! That is go great! I love your TR so far! You guys looked like you had so much fun!

Tucson is okay...but I'm ready to PCS.. Been here almost 3 years now.

Our girls just love Tiana! We didnt see her when we were at DL last time though. We actually didnt see many characters at all. We didnt mind though, it was our first time there so we just stuck to rides.

We really liked 1900 Park Fare. The girls are already asking when we can go back and eat with Cinderella & Prince Charming. I am glad you are enjoying my TR! We really did have a great vacation, I think partly because our trip was so long we had time to go at the girls pace and still get mostly everything accomplished!

3 years, thats about the time I get into the "I'm ready to move" phase! We were at both of our last 2 duty stations for over 4 years and we'll most likely be here for 4-5 too. We're enjoying it here, but I find myself already thinking of where we might be going next!

 

[jen22984]

Loving your trip report!! Your little girls are adorable! Also love all of their cute outfits, getting great ideas for my DD5's trip next June!! Looks like you guys had a fabulous time!!

Thanks! I loved getting all of their outfits together! I had plenty of other ideas as well. Last year they had custom outfits for everyday, but we were only there for 5 park days. This year we had 12 park days so it was just too many to try to pack. I think they ended up with 8 or 9 different outfits. Coming up with ideas and making their outfits was one of my favorite parts of the "planning" side of our trip!

 

[jen22984]

Day 9 – Part 1

This morning we had a breakfast ADR at The Crystal Palace. When I made our ADR, Magic Kingdom was not supposed to open until 9am, so I was thrilled when I was able to snag an 8:15 ADR! Somewhere in the time between making this ADR and the week before our trip, the park hours for today changed. Magic Kingdom was now opening at 8am. My plan to get some pictures of the Castle with no crowds before breakfast and make it into Fantasyland at park opening were not going to happen now. We were ready to leave the room at about 7:15 and made it inside the park just a few minutes before the park opened. I didn’t get any pictures of the Castle because for some reason, I was feeling rushed to get the Crystal Palace.
Once we got checked in, I finally took out my camera.

The girls inspecting the buzzer

Soon, we were seated. We were in the room on the left hand side when you enter this time, towards the middle of the room.

Pooh came out first:

Followed by Tigger:

And then Piglet:

After Piglet came out, they did the little parade around the room. Aryanna was so excited to go and of course McKenna wanted to go with her. But, Aryanna didn’t keep a hold of McKenna’s hand so she got lost and DH had to go find her!

Soon after the parade, Eeyore came out to see us:

Not long after Eeyore left our table, we were done eating and ready to start our day! DH went for a Buzz FP run. The girls asked for Snow White’s ride first so we headed up past the Castle, where we ran into the Fairy Godmother!! There was only 1 other little girl in line, so we hopped in. We just got pictures because she had been so kind as to sign our books yesterday.

Once we got our pictures with Fairy Godmother, we were heading towards Snow White. Of course, we saw Mary Poppins & Bert out so we detoured over to see them first.

Then the girls decided a spin on the carousel was wanted they wanted to do first.

Finally, we got over to Snow White! It was a fun ride, as always!
After Snow White, we headed over to see if Buzz was out. We waited around alittle but he didn’t come out so we rode Buzz Lightyear instead. Then we decided to try to see the Dream Along with Mickey show. We hadn’t seen it yet and the girls really wanted too (so did I)! DH took the girls to find a good spot while I stopped off for some snacks (smoothies).

After Dream Along with Mickey, we headed back over to wait for Buzz to come out. He was/still is one of McKenna’s favorites so we just HAD to meet him!

Would he come out?

 

[heaven2dc]

Day 5


After the parade, we headed over to watch Storytime with Belle.

When it was over, we decided that it was naptime.

I loved the pic of Belle - how pretty! Enjoying your TR - what little dolls your girls are!

 

[jc040404]

I can sooo relate to rushing to an early ADR and forgetting to take castle pics. I think I do that everytime we try CP before opening! You got a gorgeous one once you made there though!

Looks like the girls had a great time at breakfast with Pooh! Poor McKenna though.. I hope she wasn't too worried when Aryanna lost her!

LOVE your show pics! I like that you caught such nice pics of their dresses twirling like that. Awesome!

I'm going to guess that you did see Buzz. At least, I hope so!!

 

[jen22984]

I loved the pic of Belle - how pretty! Enjoying your TR - what little dolls your girls are!

I loved that pic of Belle too! We really enjoyed the Storytime with Belle show and hope that they bring it back when the Fantasyland expansion is finished!

Thanks for the compliments on my girls!

 

[jen22984]

I can sooo relate to rushing to an early ADR and forgetting to take castle pics. I think I do that everytime we try CP before opening! You got a gorgeous one once you made there though!

Looks like the girls had a great time at breakfast with Pooh! Poor McKenna though.. I hope she wasn't too worried when Aryanna lost her!

LOVE your show pics! I like that you caught such nice pics of their dresses twirling like that. Awesome!

I'm going to guess that you did see Buzz. At least, I hope so!!

I loved that picture of the Castle too, especially the reflection in the water!

The girls love every character meal, if it was up to them, they would eat them for every meal! McKenna was a little scared, but not too bad. I think she was more in shock, she wasnt crying or anything just standing therelooking for Aryanna.

I have so many pictures from the Dream Along with Mickey show! It took me forever to decide which ones to share on here.