EVERYONE remembers their "FIRST TIME"TR by Timandlesley 11/27 Day5 pg.18

[purplepeg]

Great Tr so far! We leave a week today for a surprise trip for the kids. We're in a 1 br at BLT. Can't wait. Thanks for all the pics and firsts. Loving it all!

 

[amyngary]

I have read your last couple trip reports, and I have never posted on your threads, but I have to thank you for such great reports. I love reading about your family's adventures and I love your photos! We are leaving for our first BLT stay (and our first trip as DVC members) in 22 days, so I was anxiously awaiting your TR.

And it is like you read my mind! We will be trying the Never Land club this trip, and it will be our first kids club at Disney. I love the photo of the window. I have been talking to DD9 about the build your own coaster, and she is a little nervous about the idea. Now I can show her your photos and tell her about the panic button - thanks so much!

I can't wait to read about the rest of your trip. You guys seem to have a lot in common with us (except that we have never gone in the summer - early December is our favorite time). I would love to experience the food and wine festival someday....

--Amy

 

[Lovemy3babes]

Yay, I'm not too, too late! What a great start. You have got to be one of the cutest families ever. You have SO much Disney fun together. I love it! The date night you and Tim had at Epcot Lesley sounds awesome! What a special night for the two of you.

 

[LISAMWDW]

Great update! The kids must have loved walking thru Wendy's window! So cool! Your night looks like it was just fabulous!

Can't wait for more!!

 

[jblb1020]

Subscribing!! Great Trip Report so far! We just got back from nine nights in Disney and four of them were on the Disney Wonder (our 5th Disney Cruise)! I so miss being there and can't wait to go back!! Looking forward to hearing the rest of your trip!

 

[tiggrbaby]

Great update! Glad to hear that date night was magical!

 

[lmillercrew]

Just back from a week in Mexico, and as fun as it was, I would still rather be in DisneyWorld! I know, psycho, right?
I'm loving your TR already. I love that you've done whole days at a time. I'm glad to see that you and Tim take the time to have alone time. There are SO many couples who forget to "date" each other after they get married and start taking care of their kids.
Tim and Brian are going to have a great time. It'll be a different great time than when they are there with you and the kids. What a great friendship that has formed just from a DISmeet!
Looking forward to the rest of your report.
Oh, btw, what a great hotel you found in Columbus! I'm in NW Ohio and I can never find any cheap rates out of Columbus. We've found REALLY good tickets to Hawaii out of Cleveland, and fly to Orlando out of Detroit. It's nice that you guys have options for airports.

 

[timandlesley]

Day 3 of our October Adventure

So, today was supposed to be an Epcot morning, I had booked a reservation at LeCellier which we were totally looking forward to. BUT and this is the big BUT we had already been to Epcot a few times and we wanted to experience something different due to the limited days we had in the parks during this trip so we (gasp) decided to forgo LeCellier and Epcot and head to Animal Kingdom (I got on line early and scrambled and cancelled LeCellier and the only thing I could get at Animal Kingdom was Tusker House for lunch – so that settled we headed for the Contempo Café for a quick breakfast:

the bus and were on our way to Animal Kingdom by 9:00

We got to the park around 9:20:

We decided to head to Expedition Everest, the park was soooooooooo crowded………………………………………………………………..NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Check this out:

The standby line for Expedition Everest was only 10 minutes so we hopped in line, and literally walked on:

What a great ride (Tim’s favorite and in my top 5 : )
It was so much fun, we got off and walked on a second time, WHY NOT!!!

Then we headed over to get Fast Passes for the Safari, on our way we stopped for a family photo:

Then as we were walking I was LITERALLY saying to Tim “I hope we get to see Divine today” and then we hear Luke saying “WHAT IS THAT!?!” and I look up and there she is!!!

We got our fast passes for Safari and we only had about 30 minutes until our ride time and it was a 30 minute wait time so we decided to get a snack and shop around in some shops (something we have NEVER done at Animal Kingdom) while we waited. While we sat down to eat our snack Hirambi school was going on:

I just LOVE that we had time to sit there, relax, experience the wonderful temperatures on a beautiful day and listen to this interesting speech from this African resident. It was fascinating. He talked about their flag, their culture, their heritage and traditions. He allowed us to ask questions, it was wonderful. Luke got called up too:

Then both Luke and Lauren had to come up and answer some animal questions:

They both were given certificates which was super cool:

Then we decided to shop for a bit:

Then it was time for the safari:

When we were finished with our 2 week safari adventure it was time for Tusker House, we went to check in and waited for our table, once again Luke grabbed the camera and Lauren was the model:

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST!

 

[timandlesley]

We were seated. This meal was nothing to write home about but was fine. The food was pretty good and they had a decent variety. This was NOT a character meal for breakfast. It reminded me a bit of Boma but not nearly as good.

I’d give it about a 7 out of a 10. With our bellies full we headed out to do some more in Animal Kingdom before heading back to the room.
We passed by Lilo and Stitch and the line was short so we stopped to see them:

We decided to see Tough to Be a Bug since we didn’t do that this summer:

Great show as always but it freaked Lauren out a bit, she had her eyes closed for most of it. Tim and Luke wanted to ride Dinosaur (Lauren can’t be convinced to go on this since she rode it for the first time years ago) so Tim and Luke went to ride Dinosaur and Lauren and I decided to ride Primevil Whirl, a first for BOTH of us since she was finally tall enough this year. I was excited to ride this for the first time:

Boy, this sure does whip you around and make you a BIT dizzy but it was super fun, Lauren and I both loved it, chalk it up for another thing on our list of firsts for this trip, YEAH!!!
We met up with the boys who had a great ride on Dinosaur and we decided to head back to the room to relax before the big Halloween party. On our way to the bus we ran into another first:

What a wonderful morning we had, and it was another MAJOR FIRST, we had spent the morning and afternoon at Animal Kingdom and we weren’t hot and miserable, A LOVELY FIRST FOR US!!!!
So we headed back to Bay Lake Tower and got all dressed up and ready to go to the party.Before we got dressed we grabbed a quick light dinner at the Contempo Café and then went upstairs and got our costumes on.
Tim and Luke were Mario and Luigi:

And Lauren and I were witches:

We headed over to the monorail to get to the Magic Kingdom, we were SOOOO super excited for the

We got to the party around 6:30
I just love the decorations, we posed for some pics;

Then we entered and they gave us our bracelets, candy bags and the program for the evening:

Then we were on Mainstreet for the first time this trip, ahhhhhh what a great feeling!
Main Street looked so cool, I had to take a picture of the Halloween balloons:

Had to get a family pic in front of the castle:

Our plan was to head to Tomorrowland and work our way around the park counterclockwise, we got back there and realized they don’t start handing out the candy until 7:00, so we hopped on the Transportation Authority (we had missed it this summer since it was closed for refurb):

When we got off the trick or treat had started, so we hopped in the first line we saw:

TRICK OR TREAT!!!!

Boy, they really give you hand fulls of candy at each station : )
After we hit all of the candy stations in Tomorrowland we headed towards Toontown:

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

 

[timandlesley]

I had read about free face painting at the party and had told Lauren about it so she REALLY had her heart set on getting her face painted, so she and I waited in that line (about a 20 minute line) and Tim and Luke headed back into Toontown to trick or treat some more. They hit some candy stations and then Luke played Potato Head bowling:

He was the only kid who knocked them all down with one throw so he got a certificate:

Well, as Lauren and I waited in line I noticed tons of adults were getting their faces painted too so I decided to get my face painted too……….. why not!?! Here is Lauren getting her’s done, she chose tinkerbell, even though I tried to get her to do something “witchy” : )

The finished product (they did such a nice job on everyone and made the line move along quickly):

Here we were all painted and ready to go:

Here’s a close up of mine (Iooked so cool and matched my witches outfit perfectly):

After that the kids had their eyes set on Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs. My kids have ALWAYS wanted to see Snow White and the 7 dwarfs, years ago we asked a CM if they ever were all together and they told them “only at the Halloween party”, well Luke and Lauren NEVER forgot that so they were on a mission to see them tonight. We got in line but then after waiting about 5 minutes they said they were going on a THIRTY minute break, WHAT!?! Well, we didn’t want to leave the line since we had gotten closer and would lose our place, so Tim held the space in line and the kids and I hit some more candy spots:

Before we knew it we were face to face with Snow White and the 7 big guys. I swear, I wish I had this on video because as we walked up the looks on my kids faces was almost better than on Christmas morning, Snow White was PERFECT, greeting us and introducing us to her friends. I was even in awe, it was VERY cool!:

After that dream was fulfilled Tim wanted to get changed out of his uncomfortable/hot costume so the kids and I headed over to Donald and Daisy’s dance party while he found a restroom to change, the party was SO much fun!

The kids just had a blast dancing to Halloween music and interacting with the characters:

Then Tim reappeared in his Ghost Busters shirt:

We decided to squeeze one ride in before the parade and fireworks, so we walked onto Small World:

At this point it was about 9:20 and the fireworks started at 9:30 and I was panicked wanting to get a good spot so we tried to get to the castle, they had SO many areas (all of the direct routes you normally would walk) from Fantasyland to the front of the castle blocked off, so we had to ask a CM which way to go to get there and we got there JUST in time to get a seat RIGHT in front of the castle.
I took some pictures, but NOTHING can do this fireworks show justice, it is TAKE YOUR BREATH AWAY AMAZING. By far the most amazing thing I have seen on Disney property to date. Tim and I had our jaws dropped the entire time and during the “Scream” time fireworks (if you haven’t seen them you won’t know what this is but I’m sure the whole thing is on Youtube) we both looked at eachother and said “OH MY GOD THIS IS AWESOME!!!”
Here are some of my pics:

CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

 

[timandlesley]

This ended up to be the perfect spot because after the fireworks ended we wanted to see the Villians show so badly so we just were able to back up to the circle on the curb right in front of the castle and watch the show and have a spot for the 10:30 parade all at the same time. I took some pics of the villain show but they didn’t turn out so great, it was an entertaining show:

Then after that the villains came down to do a meet and greet so Luke and I jumped up and got in short lines. Luke wanted to meet Jafar:

I wanted to meet Malificent, Luke did a good job getting pics of that:
[COLOR=purple[/COLOR]

Then it was time for the parade. As we sat there waiting Lauren was sitting next to a little girl her age and I wish I could have tape recorded the conversation, it was HALARIOUS. They talked for 30 minutes STRAIGHT from the start of the Villian show until the parade started like they were long lost friends, everything two girls can talk about they talked about. The little girl had an older brother too so obviously she and Lauren were just in need of some girl talk : )
As the parade was about to start a CM came out and yelled to everyone NOT TO CROSS THE STREET UNTIL HE SAID SO, he said this about a hundred times and soon we knew why because the headless horseman came galloping through FAST, it was BEYOND cool. Well………… right as he was passing this idiot crossed the street and almost took out the horse and horsemen, the CM who had told us not to cross went BALISTIC, SERIOUSLY BALISTIC, he crossed the street yelling and screaming, put his finger in the guys face asking him what the hell he was thinking and turned to everyone and said “IDIOTS!!!” , WOW, I couldn’t believe it. I understood the CM’s anger because he could have seriously injured the horseman, but geez! Here it is a video of it:
The parade was KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF AMAZING. I can’t put it into words or say anything to do it justice, but WOW!!!!!!!!!! Again, I took some pictures but this is one of the reasons we just purchased a CANON rebel camera for our future trips because I am always so disappointed in the way our camera takes night shots, but here are the ones I got:

The dancers from the Haunted Mansion were AWESOME!!!!

Haunted mansion float:

Country bears even got their own float:

Another SWEET float:

Even the Hyenas from Lion King were in the parade, the kids loved that:

It all wrapped up with the Goofy’s Candy Company float and them passing out candy:

We had SUCH AN INCREDIBLE NIGHT! Wow, Disney really knows how to throw a Halloween party. The fireworks and parade were the best we had ever seen, simply took our breath away. We left with smiles on our faces, and what was even greater was with the location of Bay Lake tower we didn’t have to fight the crowds on the buses or monorail we simply strolled back to our room:

We headed back to the room and were STARVING, but we were too tired to treck over to the Contempo Café so we ordered some room service (sandwiches to split, etc.). Then we ended up falling asleep around 1 a.m.
COMING UP:
Magic Kingdom minus the crowds
Time for a boat ride
Fantasmic with a friend

CHECK OUT DAY 4 of our TR by clicking here and scrolling down a bit:[http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2322588&page=15/URL]

 

[beckanoah]

Wow. Fantastic update. I have been lurking on your last report and this one. Really cool all the neat experiences your crew has had this year.


And I can't believe someone would cross when the headless horseman was riding... what an idiot!

 

[charming23]

Joining in on your TR.

I loved your pics from the Halloween Party. I went in September and you are right the fireworks are the most amazing fireworks on property. During the scream-a-long I was mesmarized.

Can't wait to hear more.

 

[IluvXU]

What a fantastic day! AK minus the terrible summer heat and crowds, new rides and characters and the PARTY! I loved every pic, can't wait to do that someday!

So glad you were able to get Lauren her free face paint.... and the snow white picture is unreal! That would be a moment in our house!

 

[Trentmom]

Sounds like an awesome day

I so can't wait to give AK another try this December. The heat always makes it so miserable there.

All of your costumes look great

I love the Halloween Parade. Boo to you song was stuck in my head for weeks

 

[brookelizabeth]

Mario and Luigi! I love it!!

 

[Nicole786]

I LOOOVE Hallowishes! I hate to say that Holiday Wishes is a teensy bit better but Hallowishes is AMAZING!

Have a great time with your Rebel! Night shots are near impossible without stabilizing the camera with a tripod though I've learned that the hard way through a lot of frustrating pictures! Having the right lens makes a difference also, this trip I rented a lens and I was pretty pleased with the results!

But my night shots are comparible to a point and shoot most of the time because I don't feel like carrying around a tripod. Lesson learned though! Next time i'm bringing a Gorillapod and using it for night!

As an example here's a shot with the camera stabilized:

here's without:

 

[pmama]

Love it! Thanks for sharing your evening at MNSSHP. It brings back so many amazing memories from our time there last year. We were equally amazed by everything. One regret I have is not waiting in line to see Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs. I'm so glad you took the time to experience that and forever have that great picture. Love the costumes. Looking forward to seeing Tim's video. What is strange is that last year there was absolutely no warning to stay out of the road before the horseman came. I wonder if they ran into problems.

 

[2xcited2sleep]

Wow! Another great day!! I can't get over the lack of crowds. Perfect!! So super cool you met Snow White and all 7 of her buddies! The line was too long for us but your picture makes me regret not waiting! Oh well, there's always next year! Nothing beats being able to skip the buses and walk home at the end of a long day!!

 

[CRSNDSNY]

Another great chapter! Yes, the Halloween Party really is a lot of fun! We weren't that impressed with Hallowishes but the parade is the best we've ever seen!

Glad you were able to experience so many firsts. Costumes were cute!