FINALLY!! Day 6 added - Epcot/Home! Mickey Cheeseheads, Band Geeks and Pixie Dust
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marciemi
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Most that we saw were from Brazil - pretty routine to find them there in January and July; however, it seems like their numbers have been increasing dramatically over the past few years. We were at WDW the same week in 2005 and I don't recall seeing a single group then. I have to say we didn't encounter any problems with the groups other than sheer numbers but those numbers led to problems of their own - especially as we saw in terms of CS restaurants or when hitting a ride at the same time as a large group (which by mid-afternoon seemed impossible to avoid).
marciemi
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@BrookTrout - if you look through the forums from most years in July or January, you'll see a lot of threads on this topic, and they tend to quickly degernerate into stereotyping or worse comments and arguments, which is why I intentionally left out the nationality. I actually wondered if your first post was a way of trying to "bait" me into revealing it (only to jump on me!), but I see from your join date that you're new to the forums so probably just haven't seen this discussed yet! For your planning, from what I understand, most of the groups are gone by the end of the month so the end of January to early February is usually a great time to visit if you can work that in your schedule!
To everyone else, I'm waiting on my son to finish his day of the trip report, which would be the same day as I just posted so hopefully I can post that next before moving on. I also got word that my Photopass CD's were shipped yesterday so hopefully I'll have them by the end of the report. Thanks for reading and for your patience!
To everyone else, I'm waiting on my son to finish his day of the trip report, which would be the same day as I just posted so hopefully I can post that next before moving on. I also got word that my Photopass CD's were shipped yesterday so hopefully I'll have them by the end of the report. Thanks for reading and for your patience!
marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
Okay, I finally got my son to do his portion and it's definitely extremely casual and no pics (since you already saw all of them in mine!) but a lot more jokes/humor than you get from me! This is written by Stephen (17) and other than editing a bit of the language/slightly inappropriate humor, this is straight from him - enjoy! 
Hokay, I do not even know where to begin. I suppose a good trip report author would let the readers know where he’s coming from. Well I am a high school senior, in the band, and I like cookies and crème ice cream. Those are the three points relevant right now to understand because my high school band recently went to Disney World (the reason I am writing this), and the ice cream part…well that’s relevant just because I say it is. When other points are necessary to understand the who, what, where, when, or why of something, I’ll be sure to elaborate.
Now the background of why I am writing this, besides the point that my band went to Disney. My mom writes trip reports for all of our various Disney trips, and most of them are famous, in fact, the 2009 trip report is coming out as a movie!!! Well, not really, but could you imagine? I just imagine a booming announcer voice saying for the preview, “In a world where a mouse reigns supreme, and Brazilian tour groups run rampant, there is mankind’s only salvation. But no one knows where, except one family. Unaware of the dangers they are about to face, join them in: Disney Trip 2009.” That’d be a great movie. Better than a Justin Beiber one.
But really, I decided to contribute to the endeavor that is the 2011 Disney trip report, offering a unique view of someone who got to be a cast member for the parade and go backstage and stuff.
Relevant to that, this will be the day I will write about. The day the Bay Port High School Marching Band performed in the pre-parade at the Magic Kingdom (This is where you should be applauding…fine then don’t, I never liked you anyway).
Well to start this day, I must actually reflect on the day before.
Now some people say long bus rides with your friends are fun, and that they are an experience to be had, and that it is easy to sleep on a bus. Well if I meet those people again, I’ll punch them. Prior to this day we had a 27 hour bus ride down, and it was fun at times, but mainly boring and annoying. If I had to sum up that trip into two words it would be simple: waffle house. You could not imagine how many of those we passed getting to Disney and our hotel. It made us all aware that Wisconsin has no waffle houses, a fact that still depresses me when I remember it.
But whatever, the points to get taken out of this, we were tired, had a night with actual beds, and did not wake up to the gentle rumbling and jostling that is a bus in motion. So time to start my day. Crap, do I write in present or past tense? Is this language arts or history? GAH DECISIONS.
I may flip between the two, so watch out.
So my room of me, my brother, and two amigos got up at some arbitrary time, got showered and stuff, and went down to our mandatory breakfast where I had a bagel, a granny smith apple, and some water (I remember this specifically because every day I had the exact same breakfast). Now since my room was intelligent people, we did this about 15 minutes before the required time to avoid the rush, so we went back to our room, packed up everything we were bringing for the day, brushed our teeth and just waited around. So what do we do? Turn on the television. After watching some random show called bloopers where we watched a man attempt to say “environmentally” to no avail, which was actually funny, we had to go out to our bus and pack all of our goodies under the buses. Other people had instruments, but being Drum Major, I had no instrument, so I packed my uniform under, and got on the bus.
Now after a (graciously) short 15 minute bus ride we got to the Magic Kingdom, and we all met up in our groups with our chaperones (I was in group 1 and our chaperone was Bob. He was the coolest adult I have ever met, except my Mom of course- love ya!, and it was the best group ever, except my family of course-love ya!) So then we were faced with the decision of how to get to the Magic Kingdom. It was either the ferry or the monorail. My group decided on the ferry.
...WORST DECISION EVER!
It was slow and windy. To anyone who has a choice, take the monorail. That’s my piece of advice.
So then we got into Magic Kingdom, and here’s where my report will start to differ from the norm. I shall not regale you with the details of all the rides, because I am relatively sure you do not need to hear that again. Also, I choose not to go through every ride mainly because I cannot remember exactly what we did and what order. I am not so squared away as my mother. So this is what I shall do: I shall go through some the rides we did in an arbitrary order and include one random unique memory of that ride.
Starting with my favorite ride at Magic Kingdom: Space Mountain, yay! So one of my friends in my group (of about 6) had never been on a roller coaster, and this was the first one he did. So after the ride we looked at the picture of the four of us that went on it. Now I shall describe the emotions going from front to back, with the aforementioned roller coaster virgin in the rear. 1)Happy 2)Indifferent 3) Kinda maybe resembling happiness 4) SO MUCH HAPPY! He enjoyed the ride, needless to say.
Now my high school mascot is a pirate,
so I shall next include the Pirates of the Caribbean. My memory from this comes not from the ride, but the queue itself. One of the jailhouse scenes you look in, there is a table, with two skeletons playing chess. As soon as I looked in, I felt obligated to say, “Mate in 4”. Now bear in mind, any chess game I see I feel obligated to say, “Mate in 4”. But this time it was different. I altered my typical quote by saying, “Mate-y in 4”. Ha…no one is laughing. See, it’s a pirate term…but it has mate in it, okay moving on. 
Hm…decisions. What ride to do next? Oooo I know! The most intense ride at Magic Kingdom! Let’s see if you can guess. Is it a)Thunder Mountain b)the TTA c)Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin or d) It’s a Small World?
That’s right, it is b) the TTA, but it could be argued that d is pretty darn close. But TTA time it is. I hear if you ride that ride backwards, you get really spotty cell-phone coverage…wait for it…you’re trying to figure it out…well I’m not gonna spoil that pun. FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF!
But let’s see, on the TTA we met up with my parents and rode it together. Now on the ride, something unbelievable happened. My parents. Took. PICTURES! Now I’m sure if my mom was so inclined, she could provide the photos, but I hate photos of myself, so I shall not include them.
Is that enough on rides? I believe it is. So now I shall go on to the part of the day that makes me superior to you: I got to go backstage and march in a parade. So at two in the afternoon, our entire band met at the Golden Oak Corral (I think that was the place) and we were met shortly by a man who introduced himself as a Disney Cast Member assigned to us (I cannot remember his name. We shall call him Mickey). So he opened up the gate behind Woody and Jessie who were there signing autographs and we walked back on an unmarked path to our busses which were parked by an unmarked building, except for the sign that was announcing the Magic Music Days and every so often had our high school name scroll across. So we got there, Mickey talked to us, told us we were important in helping warm up the crowd, and then we were sent to our busses to get our uniforms and then to the changing rooms.
Now here’s a tip to anyone setting up changing room lay-outs. NEVER think it is a good idea to put a thick, black curtain dividing a giant room in two, and set one side to each gender. The females handled it maturely, but the boys did not. Although you could not see through the curtain, sounds were not blocked, nor was the curtain unmovable. So needless to say, people got in trouble. Also needless to say, I changed as quickly as possible so I would not be associated with them. So then we got all our instruments out and lined up our big block and practiced our song (Soul Sacrifice by Santana) and did other boring bandy things that I shall not care to reiterate. Now here comes the fun part. We started walking along the path that was outside the Magic Kingdom, but still in the fences, so the perimeter of the park. As we were walking we passed all the characters getting ready, and this is where my heart broke.
SPOILER ALERT! The characters aren’t real.
But what confused me was not a single character had their right head, for example, Jafar was carrying the Mickey Mouse head, the Genie had Donalds, Chip and Dale had Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee’s. 
Must be some elaborate Disney Plot to make all their employees friends, but I thought they needed to get their head in the game. Wow that was a double pun. It was a play off the costume heads, plus it referenced a Disney movie. I hope you appreciate these puns. I’m slaving over a hot stove for these.
So then we marched. It was a 12 minute parade. Now here’s the funny math involved. That was all we did as a band. No clinics, no concerts, no nothing. So 12 minutes as a band on the band trip. It was a 27 hour bus ride down. Double that, and its 54 hours of driving. That is 3420 minutes of bus ride (just to put that into perspective. If I could take my best mile time, and run it over and over consistently, in that time I could’ve ran from Detroit, Michigan to Nashville, Tennessee). But ratio wise, that means for every one minute of marching, we spent 285 minutes on a bus.
Note, not me because my loving parents kept me an extra day and we flew back. 
Well the evening went okay. Except it was cold. It’s funny, take a Wisconsinite after they have been in 0 degree weather and put them in 40 degree weather, and they start barbecuing and going for walks because it’s so warm out. But take that same person after they have been in 80 degree weather and put them in 40 degree weather, and they will start complaining and turning the heat up and wearing thick coats. Ah Wisconsin. Gotta love it. And to my dear Pittsburghian readers, GO PACK GO.
Well that’s pretty much it. This report is probably different from my mom’s. It’s very informal, doesn’t really recap my day, now to think of it…why is it called a trip report if my part didn’t add anything to the trip portion? Hmm oh well. Too late for you not to read it. HAHAHAHAHAHA!
But before I go I shall thank you for reading, and shall go and see if there is my favorite type of ice cream in the freezer (See. I told you it would be relevant). 
FINAL PUN: I entered a contest where the funniest pun sent in would win $100. So I submitted my ten best puns, thinking it would increase my chances of winning, but no pun in ten did. LOL!
Hokay, I do not even know where to begin. I suppose a good trip report author would let the readers know where he’s coming from. Well I am a high school senior, in the band, and I like cookies and crème ice cream. Those are the three points relevant right now to understand because my high school band recently went to Disney World (the reason I am writing this), and the ice cream part…well that’s relevant just because I say it is. When other points are necessary to understand the who, what, where, when, or why of something, I’ll be sure to elaborate.
Now the background of why I am writing this, besides the point that my band went to Disney. My mom writes trip reports for all of our various Disney trips, and most of them are famous, in fact, the 2009 trip report is coming out as a movie!!! Well, not really, but could you imagine? I just imagine a booming announcer voice saying for the preview, “In a world where a mouse reigns supreme, and Brazilian tour groups run rampant, there is mankind’s only salvation. But no one knows where, except one family. Unaware of the dangers they are about to face, join them in: Disney Trip 2009.” That’d be a great movie. Better than a Justin Beiber one.
But really, I decided to contribute to the endeavor that is the 2011 Disney trip report, offering a unique view of someone who got to be a cast member for the parade and go backstage and stuff. Relevant to that, this will be the day I will write about. The day the Bay Port High School Marching Band performed in the pre-parade at the Magic Kingdom (This is where you should be applauding…fine then don’t, I never liked you anyway).
Well to start this day, I must actually reflect on the day before.Now some people say long bus rides with your friends are fun, and that they are an experience to be had, and that it is easy to sleep on a bus. Well if I meet those people again, I’ll punch them. Prior to this day we had a 27 hour bus ride down, and it was fun at times, but mainly boring and annoying. If I had to sum up that trip into two words it would be simple: waffle house. You could not imagine how many of those we passed getting to Disney and our hotel. It made us all aware that Wisconsin has no waffle houses, a fact that still depresses me when I remember it.
But whatever, the points to get taken out of this, we were tired, had a night with actual beds, and did not wake up to the gentle rumbling and jostling that is a bus in motion. So time to start my day. Crap, do I write in present or past tense? Is this language arts or history? GAH DECISIONS.
I may flip between the two, so watch out. So my room of me, my brother, and two amigos got up at some arbitrary time, got showered and stuff, and went down to our mandatory breakfast where I had a bagel, a granny smith apple, and some water (I remember this specifically because every day I had the exact same breakfast). Now since my room was intelligent people, we did this about 15 minutes before the required time to avoid the rush, so we went back to our room, packed up everything we were bringing for the day, brushed our teeth and just waited around. So what do we do? Turn on the television. After watching some random show called bloopers where we watched a man attempt to say “environmentally” to no avail, which was actually funny, we had to go out to our bus and pack all of our goodies under the buses. Other people had instruments, but being Drum Major, I had no instrument, so I packed my uniform under, and got on the bus.
Now after a (graciously) short 15 minute bus ride we got to the Magic Kingdom, and we all met up in our groups with our chaperones (I was in group 1 and our chaperone was Bob. He was the coolest adult I have ever met, except my Mom of course- love ya!, and it was the best group ever, except my family of course-love ya!) So then we were faced with the decision of how to get to the Magic Kingdom. It was either the ferry or the monorail. My group decided on the ferry.
...WORST DECISION EVER!
It was slow and windy. To anyone who has a choice, take the monorail. That’s my piece of advice.So then we got into Magic Kingdom, and here’s where my report will start to differ from the norm. I shall not regale you with the details of all the rides, because I am relatively sure you do not need to hear that again. Also, I choose not to go through every ride mainly because I cannot remember exactly what we did and what order. I am not so squared away as my mother. So this is what I shall do: I shall go through some the rides we did in an arbitrary order and include one random unique memory of that ride.
Starting with my favorite ride at Magic Kingdom: Space Mountain, yay! So one of my friends in my group (of about 6) had never been on a roller coaster, and this was the first one he did. So after the ride we looked at the picture of the four of us that went on it. Now I shall describe the emotions going from front to back, with the aforementioned roller coaster virgin in the rear. 1)Happy 2)Indifferent 3) Kinda maybe resembling happiness 4) SO MUCH HAPPY! He enjoyed the ride, needless to say.
Now my high school mascot is a pirate,
so I shall next include the Pirates of the Caribbean. My memory from this comes not from the ride, but the queue itself. One of the jailhouse scenes you look in, there is a table, with two skeletons playing chess. As soon as I looked in, I felt obligated to say, “Mate in 4”. Now bear in mind, any chess game I see I feel obligated to say, “Mate in 4”. But this time it was different. I altered my typical quote by saying, “Mate-y in 4”. Ha…no one is laughing. See, it’s a pirate term…but it has mate in it, okay moving on. Hm…decisions. What ride to do next? Oooo I know! The most intense ride at Magic Kingdom! Let’s see if you can guess. Is it a)Thunder Mountain b)the TTA c)Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin or d) It’s a Small World?
That’s right, it is b) the TTA, but it could be argued that d is pretty darn close. But TTA time it is. I hear if you ride that ride backwards, you get really spotty cell-phone coverage…wait for it…you’re trying to figure it out…well I’m not gonna spoil that pun. FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF!
But let’s see, on the TTA we met up with my parents and rode it together. Now on the ride, something unbelievable happened. My parents. Took. PICTURES! Now I’m sure if my mom was so inclined, she could provide the photos, but I hate photos of myself, so I shall not include them.Is that enough on rides? I believe it is. So now I shall go on to the part of the day that makes me superior to you: I got to go backstage and march in a parade. So at two in the afternoon, our entire band met at the Golden Oak Corral (I think that was the place) and we were met shortly by a man who introduced himself as a Disney Cast Member assigned to us (I cannot remember his name. We shall call him Mickey). So he opened up the gate behind Woody and Jessie who were there signing autographs and we walked back on an unmarked path to our busses which were parked by an unmarked building, except for the sign that was announcing the Magic Music Days and every so often had our high school name scroll across. So we got there, Mickey talked to us, told us we were important in helping warm up the crowd, and then we were sent to our busses to get our uniforms and then to the changing rooms.
Now here’s a tip to anyone setting up changing room lay-outs. NEVER think it is a good idea to put a thick, black curtain dividing a giant room in two, and set one side to each gender. The females handled it maturely, but the boys did not. Although you could not see through the curtain, sounds were not blocked, nor was the curtain unmovable. So needless to say, people got in trouble. Also needless to say, I changed as quickly as possible so I would not be associated with them. So then we got all our instruments out and lined up our big block and practiced our song (Soul Sacrifice by Santana) and did other boring bandy things that I shall not care to reiterate. Now here comes the fun part. We started walking along the path that was outside the Magic Kingdom, but still in the fences, so the perimeter of the park. As we were walking we passed all the characters getting ready, and this is where my heart broke.
SPOILER ALERT! The characters aren’t real.
But what confused me was not a single character had their right head, for example, Jafar was carrying the Mickey Mouse head, the Genie had Donalds, Chip and Dale had Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee’s. Must be some elaborate Disney Plot to make all their employees friends, but I thought they needed to get their head in the game. Wow that was a double pun. It was a play off the costume heads, plus it referenced a Disney movie. I hope you appreciate these puns. I’m slaving over a hot stove for these.So then we marched. It was a 12 minute parade. Now here’s the funny math involved. That was all we did as a band. No clinics, no concerts, no nothing. So 12 minutes as a band on the band trip. It was a 27 hour bus ride down. Double that, and its 54 hours of driving. That is 3420 minutes of bus ride (just to put that into perspective. If I could take my best mile time, and run it over and over consistently, in that time I could’ve ran from Detroit, Michigan to Nashville, Tennessee). But ratio wise, that means for every one minute of marching, we spent 285 minutes on a bus.
Note, not me because my loving parents kept me an extra day and we flew back. Well the evening went okay. Except it was cold. It’s funny, take a Wisconsinite after they have been in 0 degree weather and put them in 40 degree weather, and they start barbecuing and going for walks because it’s so warm out. But take that same person after they have been in 80 degree weather and put them in 40 degree weather, and they will start complaining and turning the heat up and wearing thick coats. Ah Wisconsin. Gotta love it. And to my dear Pittsburghian readers, GO PACK GO.
Well that’s pretty much it. This report is probably different from my mom’s. It’s very informal, doesn’t really recap my day, now to think of it…why is it called a trip report if my part didn’t add anything to the trip portion? Hmm oh well. Too late for you not to read it. HAHAHAHAHAHA!
But before I go I shall thank you for reading, and shall go and see if there is my favorite type of ice cream in the freezer (See. I told you it would be relevant). FINAL PUN: I entered a contest where the funniest pun sent in would win $100. So I submitted my ten best puns, thinking it would increase my chances of winning, but no pun in ten did. LOL!
SuzieDizney
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2005
- Messages
- 147
Hey Marcie,
Great Trip report!!! Stephens too!! now I can't wait to go, just wish hubby would go, I think he is awaiting 4 days of quiet in the house!!!!
Talk to you later,
Suzie
Great Trip report!!! Stephens too!! now I can't wait to go, just wish hubby would go, I think he is awaiting 4 days of quiet in the house!!!!
Talk to you later,
Suzie
CreightonsMomma
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2010
- Messages
- 445
haha Stephen is too funny!
Marcie,
I appreciate the info on the crowds in the parks. In no way was I attempting to bait you into anything. As you correctly surmised I am a newbie and was just fishing for advice on when the WDW crowds would be at their lowest.
Now, as to Stephen; what a hoot! You rocked the trip report but, some of the puns....
Sharon
I appreciate the info on the crowds in the parks. In no way was I attempting to bait you into anything. As you correctly surmised I am a newbie and was just fishing for advice on when the WDW crowds would be at their lowest.
Now, as to Stephen; what a hoot! You rocked the trip report but, some of the puns....
Sharon
marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
Okay, I finally got my photopass pics so I'm going to catch up here on the days I've done so far and at least get the pics in for you and hopefully get to the next day of the trip report this weekend. We didn't get hardly any photopass pics the first day so I'll include the pics from Day 1 (arrival & MK) and Day 2 (Epcot & AK) together first:
marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
Part 1 of 2
Okay, from here on I’ll just try to incorporate the photopass pics instead of mine when I can since they’re probably usually better. Going to end up with another two part message here though!
Day 4 would prove to be a memorable day, starting at the very beginning! As I mentioned earlier, Royce had brought a cheesehead (for the Packers) with him, and purchased Mickey Ears at the shop on Main Street. We had brought superglue with us, and he’d glued the ears on a couple nights earlier in preparation for today. We were up and ready early, and although it was a very cool morning, at least it wasn’t raining. Actually it was a VERY cool morning, as evidenced by our car which was covered with a layer of frost! Of course there was no ice scraper in the car as would be standard in our part of the world! Luckily Royce had parked facing into the sun, so we could at least see out of the front windshield for the short trip to Epcot:
We were there early enough to be near a turnstile again, and both of us in our Packers jerseys and Royce’s cheesehead immediately drew attention:
We had a lot of interest from kids and other guests and Royce posed for a LOT of pictures – both then and throughout the day. Soon it was time to go into the park, and once we got over near the rope area to head to Soarin’, we found that not only were guests amused by the hat, the characters definitely were as well:
Incidentally, the last picture made it into the Green Bay Press Gazette the following week before the Super Bowl! Obviously we got a lot of attention during the wait here, but alas, no Family of the Day again today! (Although we did see today’s family get to ride in the Test Track car!). Soon it was time for ropedrop, and we followed the predictable sequence. Royce stayed as near the front of the crowd as possible and went directly to the FP machines while I worked my way over to the standby line and waited outside the actual entrance into the ride for him to join us. It took hardly any time, and we had no trouble getting on the first “revolution” of the ride. Even ended up with a front row so perfect timing!
After Soarin’ we decided to head over to Test Track to try to get another set of FP’s – we were trying to accumulate some since we’d be meeting up with the boys here this evening. Grabbed them for TT and since there was still virtually no line, decided to ride as well. We rode through and Royce held his hat on his head for the picture! When we got to the end of the ride, the CM came over to us and asked if we’d like to ride again since “she loved his cheesehead”! Once again, of course we said yes, so they let everyone else off the ride and again sent us off on our own! Beginning to notice a trend here!
When we got off we weren’t quite in our window for a FP yet (trying to get another 2 for Soarin’) so we decided to stop at Character Connection (or whatever the new name is!) and get our pictures with all the characters. These were all the same characters who’d been out at the opening ceremony so were thrilled to see Royce and his hat again. First I made him get a pic of just us and Mickey without the hat (just in case the Packers lost – yes, I know, “ye of little faith!”):
Then we went through the rest of the characters. I had originally put in my shots, but just put in these photopass pics instead:
Made it to Soarin’ and picked up another set of FP’s. We went from there over to the Seas pavilion and rode Nemo, talking with another family also from our HS who were there at the same time. We wanted to try to do another Kim Possible mission, so we stopped in Innoventions and got a FP for that for later. We then decided to ride Ellen’s Energy Adventure (I’m not really sure why, but we did anyway)! This took awhile, and we knew we needed to start working our way towards France for our noon ADR at Les Chefs. We stopped several times along the way at shops, etc. and picked up our Kimmunicator. Asked to do one of the countries near France but we ended up with China, which wasn’t all that close so we decided to hold off on that until after lunch. We got over to France a bit before noon, but just waited in the area to check in. They had large space heaters in the waiting area outside and I realized how different it was this time than on our previous trip when Stephen and I had stood in that same area just sweltering in the summer heat!
We were called fairly quickly once the restaurant opened and given a great table with a beautiful view out into the park – I think the same table Stephen & I had had (or possibly the one next to it!).
We both chose the 3 Course Meal for lunch – Royce went with the Quiche again and I had the Mac & Cheese and we had planned to share but were both very full even by that point in the meal! Of course we both had the French Onion Soup:
Royce’s quiche & salad:
My Mac & Cheese:
For dessert, Royce decided to try the Profiteroles and I went with the Chocolate Cake, which they hadn’t had on our previous trip. Both were good but we were way beyond stuffed at that point!
Late in the meal we had fun watching one of the street shows outside our window:
Pretty sure Stephen and I saw the same show back in 2009, but it was still fun to watch from the comfort of the restaurant. Before we knew it, it was time to head out. Looked at the timing and decided we could go catch Miyuki (the Candy Lady!) if we hurried. Arrived just a few moments before the show started and Royce definitely enjoyed it. Stephen and I had really enjoyed it as well back in 2009, especially since he was selected to receive one of the candy sculptures! We knew the rules had changed since then and she was no longer able to give them out but it was still fascinating to watch:
Continued in part 2:
Okay, from here on I’ll just try to incorporate the photopass pics instead of mine when I can since they’re probably usually better. Going to end up with another two part message here though!
Day 4 would prove to be a memorable day, starting at the very beginning! As I mentioned earlier, Royce had brought a cheesehead (for the Packers) with him, and purchased Mickey Ears at the shop on Main Street. We had brought superglue with us, and he’d glued the ears on a couple nights earlier in preparation for today. We were up and ready early, and although it was a very cool morning, at least it wasn’t raining. Actually it was a VERY cool morning, as evidenced by our car which was covered with a layer of frost! Of course there was no ice scraper in the car as would be standard in our part of the world! Luckily Royce had parked facing into the sun, so we could at least see out of the front windshield for the short trip to Epcot:
We were there early enough to be near a turnstile again, and both of us in our Packers jerseys and Royce’s cheesehead immediately drew attention:
We had a lot of interest from kids and other guests and Royce posed for a LOT of pictures – both then and throughout the day. Soon it was time to go into the park, and once we got over near the rope area to head to Soarin’, we found that not only were guests amused by the hat, the characters definitely were as well:
Incidentally, the last picture made it into the Green Bay Press Gazette the following week before the Super Bowl! Obviously we got a lot of attention during the wait here, but alas, no Family of the Day again today! (Although we did see today’s family get to ride in the Test Track car!). Soon it was time for ropedrop, and we followed the predictable sequence. Royce stayed as near the front of the crowd as possible and went directly to the FP machines while I worked my way over to the standby line and waited outside the actual entrance into the ride for him to join us. It took hardly any time, and we had no trouble getting on the first “revolution” of the ride. Even ended up with a front row so perfect timing!
After Soarin’ we decided to head over to Test Track to try to get another set of FP’s – we were trying to accumulate some since we’d be meeting up with the boys here this evening. Grabbed them for TT and since there was still virtually no line, decided to ride as well. We rode through and Royce held his hat on his head for the picture! When we got to the end of the ride, the CM came over to us and asked if we’d like to ride again since “she loved his cheesehead”! Once again, of course we said yes, so they let everyone else off the ride and again sent us off on our own! Beginning to notice a trend here!
When we got off we weren’t quite in our window for a FP yet (trying to get another 2 for Soarin’) so we decided to stop at Character Connection (or whatever the new name is!) and get our pictures with all the characters. These were all the same characters who’d been out at the opening ceremony so were thrilled to see Royce and his hat again. First I made him get a pic of just us and Mickey without the hat (just in case the Packers lost – yes, I know, “ye of little faith!”):
Then we went through the rest of the characters. I had originally put in my shots, but just put in these photopass pics instead:
Made it to Soarin’ and picked up another set of FP’s. We went from there over to the Seas pavilion and rode Nemo, talking with another family also from our HS who were there at the same time. We wanted to try to do another Kim Possible mission, so we stopped in Innoventions and got a FP for that for later. We then decided to ride Ellen’s Energy Adventure (I’m not really sure why, but we did anyway)! This took awhile, and we knew we needed to start working our way towards France for our noon ADR at Les Chefs. We stopped several times along the way at shops, etc. and picked up our Kimmunicator. Asked to do one of the countries near France but we ended up with China, which wasn’t all that close so we decided to hold off on that until after lunch. We got over to France a bit before noon, but just waited in the area to check in. They had large space heaters in the waiting area outside and I realized how different it was this time than on our previous trip when Stephen and I had stood in that same area just sweltering in the summer heat!
We were called fairly quickly once the restaurant opened and given a great table with a beautiful view out into the park – I think the same table Stephen & I had had (or possibly the one next to it!).
We both chose the 3 Course Meal for lunch – Royce went with the Quiche again and I had the Mac & Cheese and we had planned to share but were both very full even by that point in the meal! Of course we both had the French Onion Soup:
Royce’s quiche & salad:
My Mac & Cheese:
For dessert, Royce decided to try the Profiteroles and I went with the Chocolate Cake, which they hadn’t had on our previous trip. Both were good but we were way beyond stuffed at that point!
Late in the meal we had fun watching one of the street shows outside our window:
Pretty sure Stephen and I saw the same show back in 2009, but it was still fun to watch from the comfort of the restaurant. Before we knew it, it was time to head out. Looked at the timing and decided we could go catch Miyuki (the Candy Lady!) if we hurried. Arrived just a few moments before the show started and Royce definitely enjoyed it. Stephen and I had really enjoyed it as well back in 2009, especially since he was selected to receive one of the candy sculptures! We knew the rules had changed since then and she was no longer able to give them out but it was still fascinating to watch:
Continued in part 2:
marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
Part 2 of 2
We knew we needed to hurry to get over to China and save the world before we had to leave for the game. We got over there, despite lots of photo ops with various “fans”! Even Alice wanted to be part of it, and Dale also like the hat:
Finally made it over to China and began our quest. Went well but the time was getting away from us here so as soon as we saved the world, we dropped the Kimmunicator into the secret box and started working our way out. It was after 2:30 at this point, and the game started at 3. And we still needed to get back to the hotel! Did a quick stop for a group of Packers’ fans:
As we passed Norway, the photopass photographer was insistent that we stop for a picture with the Viking since we were “football fans”. Guess he didn’t realize the Vikings and the Packers weren’t quite the same team!
Before heading out, we got a few last photopass pics:
Took awhile, but we made it out of the park, despite the number of people telling us to “hurry” or that we’d miss the game! We started walking to the car and a CM in one of those little assistance vehicles stopped to do some quick trash talking in favor of the Bears! He then asked if we wanted a ride out to our car which we politely declined since we were parked very close. He responded “Good – because I wasn’t going to give you one anyway!” and drove off! (all in good humor of course!). We got to the car and zipped back to the hotel. Royce headed straight to the pool bar and I took stuff up to the room and told him I’d come down a bit later.
We’d scoped out possibilities for fun places for him to watch the game beforehand and had first considered ESPN zone. But after numerous warnings on this forum and others about how crowded it would be, how early we’d need to be there and minimal purchases per quarter, etc., we decided that wasn’t the best option. I did book him an ADR at Planet Hollywood as a backup, which we’d been told was a possibility. But it was a nice afternoon (probably upper 60’s and sunny) and he’d asked the previous day if they would be showing it at the pool bar and they’d confirmed they would. He ended up feeling this was an ideal place to watch the game. There were probably about 10-12 Packers fans there watching the game at various times, and strangely enough pretty much no Bears’ fans. He said a few stopped in but didn’t stay. I went and bought some post cards, stopped in the food court and got some mustard, and went out to the pool area near where Royce was watching the game and got a lounge chair in the sun. Ate my leftover Pretzel Breadstick from Le Cellier from the previous evening and wrote postcards while Royce watched the game at the bar. There was a TV on each side of the bar, both tuned to the game:
In the meantime, I talked to my mom, who was actually on board her cruise ship at this time and calling from the balcony before they sailed. And to the boys, who had made it over to Epcot from Animal Kingdom and were asking where and when they could meet us in order to avail themselves of our FP’s! Since Royce was obviously engrossed in the game, I asked if they could get away from their groups and if we had me, Eric & his GF, and Stephen, we could use the FP’s together while Royce stayed for the end of the game. They agreed so I told them I’d head over and let them know once I was in the park.
Royce enjoyed the end of the game and said that as it got cooler, they brought out some of the space heaters to keep everyone at the bar (for that and the following game) warm. He made some good friends and really enjoyed watching with a group of Packers fans from around the country. In the meantime, I found where to mail my postcards, and headed for the bus stop. First and only time I would ride the bus on this or the previous 2 trips (2007 trip was off-site). And again reinforced why I hate taking buses. I rushed out there and of course there was no one waiting for Epcot. Asked the folks in the DHS line if I’d just missed a bus and of course that was the case. So I made myself comfortable talking to a family with 3 young kids and waited. And waited. And watched THREE buses go off to DHS (in their defense, it was a late EMH there and most people were heading there). Watched a DD bus. And a MK bus. And finally another DD bus and – YAY – one for Epcot. By then there were only around 5 people waiting so I probably had just missed it but it still seemed like a really long wait (although actually probably 20 minutes at most). But just reminding me how much I prefer the independence of a car!
So I texted both boys and told them to meet me at the entrance to Soarin’. We all rendezvoused there – probably around 5:30, and we quickly moved from there to Test Track. I took (or grabbed someone to take!) a few pictures along the way:
By the time we were getting off Test Track, we’d gotten a text from Royce saying that he was in the park and that he’d meet us there (he’d been giving us game updates and status reports along the way). We met up with him in the gift shop and Eric and his GF were ready to take off and meet up with their friends so we said goodbye to them. Stephen said his friends were in Japan, and we’d wanted to eat dinner at Yakisoba house anyways, so we started walking that way with him. We got there and ordered our food (I love the Tempura Udon they have there) and he’d finished his meal by the time his friends showed up, but was still hungry and went and ordered another meal (teen boys, gotta love them!). So we chatted with his friends while he ate and then they all left too. As we started walking around World Showcase, it seemed like nearly every other person that passed us gave us a “Go Pack!” or a high five. Had one guy question whether Royce had had the guts to wear this hat BEFORE the game and Royce told him he’d had it on since 8 that morning!
We decided to work our way back into Future World where we’d hoped to catch Captain EO. We hadn’t realized that whole pavilion closed at 7pm though (I looked it up somewhere and it was obviously incorrect) so really didn’t have much else to do. We rode Spaceship Earth again and this time had a few minutes to actually look at our pictures and send ourselves the little video from the end (note the cheesehead in the pic!):
Again stopped for one last photopass pics:
Told Royce that I guessed now his 15 minutes of fame were up and no, he wasn’t wearing the cheesehead any more on the trip! Fun for a day though! We left the park a little after 8pm and got back to Pop Century. Decided to see if we could watch Illuminations from our room and found that with the lights off, if we laid down on the beds backwards (head at the foot of the bed) we could actually see all the fireworks from it when it began a few minutes later! Definitely a neat thing to do and a great room location! Called it an early night because we had (surprise, surprise!) another early day the next day!!
I still have a bunch of photopass pics of the boys and their friends so I'll add those in a separate post since this one is close to having too many images already!
Next up – Day 5 – Hollywood Studios, “The Boys are Back”, and ‘Ohana – January 24
We knew we needed to hurry to get over to China and save the world before we had to leave for the game. We got over there, despite lots of photo ops with various “fans”! Even Alice wanted to be part of it, and Dale also like the hat:
Finally made it over to China and began our quest. Went well but the time was getting away from us here so as soon as we saved the world, we dropped the Kimmunicator into the secret box and started working our way out. It was after 2:30 at this point, and the game started at 3. And we still needed to get back to the hotel! Did a quick stop for a group of Packers’ fans:
As we passed Norway, the photopass photographer was insistent that we stop for a picture with the Viking since we were “football fans”. Guess he didn’t realize the Vikings and the Packers weren’t quite the same team!
Before heading out, we got a few last photopass pics:
Took awhile, but we made it out of the park, despite the number of people telling us to “hurry” or that we’d miss the game! We started walking to the car and a CM in one of those little assistance vehicles stopped to do some quick trash talking in favor of the Bears! He then asked if we wanted a ride out to our car which we politely declined since we were parked very close. He responded “Good – because I wasn’t going to give you one anyway!” and drove off! (all in good humor of course!). We got to the car and zipped back to the hotel. Royce headed straight to the pool bar and I took stuff up to the room and told him I’d come down a bit later.
We’d scoped out possibilities for fun places for him to watch the game beforehand and had first considered ESPN zone. But after numerous warnings on this forum and others about how crowded it would be, how early we’d need to be there and minimal purchases per quarter, etc., we decided that wasn’t the best option. I did book him an ADR at Planet Hollywood as a backup, which we’d been told was a possibility. But it was a nice afternoon (probably upper 60’s and sunny) and he’d asked the previous day if they would be showing it at the pool bar and they’d confirmed they would. He ended up feeling this was an ideal place to watch the game. There were probably about 10-12 Packers fans there watching the game at various times, and strangely enough pretty much no Bears’ fans. He said a few stopped in but didn’t stay. I went and bought some post cards, stopped in the food court and got some mustard, and went out to the pool area near where Royce was watching the game and got a lounge chair in the sun. Ate my leftover Pretzel Breadstick from Le Cellier from the previous evening and wrote postcards while Royce watched the game at the bar. There was a TV on each side of the bar, both tuned to the game:
In the meantime, I talked to my mom, who was actually on board her cruise ship at this time and calling from the balcony before they sailed. And to the boys, who had made it over to Epcot from Animal Kingdom and were asking where and when they could meet us in order to avail themselves of our FP’s! Since Royce was obviously engrossed in the game, I asked if they could get away from their groups and if we had me, Eric & his GF, and Stephen, we could use the FP’s together while Royce stayed for the end of the game. They agreed so I told them I’d head over and let them know once I was in the park.
Royce enjoyed the end of the game and said that as it got cooler, they brought out some of the space heaters to keep everyone at the bar (for that and the following game) warm. He made some good friends and really enjoyed watching with a group of Packers fans from around the country. In the meantime, I found where to mail my postcards, and headed for the bus stop. First and only time I would ride the bus on this or the previous 2 trips (2007 trip was off-site). And again reinforced why I hate taking buses. I rushed out there and of course there was no one waiting for Epcot. Asked the folks in the DHS line if I’d just missed a bus and of course that was the case. So I made myself comfortable talking to a family with 3 young kids and waited. And waited. And watched THREE buses go off to DHS (in their defense, it was a late EMH there and most people were heading there). Watched a DD bus. And a MK bus. And finally another DD bus and – YAY – one for Epcot. By then there were only around 5 people waiting so I probably had just missed it but it still seemed like a really long wait (although actually probably 20 minutes at most). But just reminding me how much I prefer the independence of a car!
So I texted both boys and told them to meet me at the entrance to Soarin’. We all rendezvoused there – probably around 5:30, and we quickly moved from there to Test Track. I took (or grabbed someone to take!) a few pictures along the way:
By the time we were getting off Test Track, we’d gotten a text from Royce saying that he was in the park and that he’d meet us there (he’d been giving us game updates and status reports along the way). We met up with him in the gift shop and Eric and his GF were ready to take off and meet up with their friends so we said goodbye to them. Stephen said his friends were in Japan, and we’d wanted to eat dinner at Yakisoba house anyways, so we started walking that way with him. We got there and ordered our food (I love the Tempura Udon they have there) and he’d finished his meal by the time his friends showed up, but was still hungry and went and ordered another meal (teen boys, gotta love them!). So we chatted with his friends while he ate and then they all left too. As we started walking around World Showcase, it seemed like nearly every other person that passed us gave us a “Go Pack!” or a high five. Had one guy question whether Royce had had the guts to wear this hat BEFORE the game and Royce told him he’d had it on since 8 that morning!
We decided to work our way back into Future World where we’d hoped to catch Captain EO. We hadn’t realized that whole pavilion closed at 7pm though (I looked it up somewhere and it was obviously incorrect) so really didn’t have much else to do. We rode Spaceship Earth again and this time had a few minutes to actually look at our pictures and send ourselves the little video from the end (note the cheesehead in the pic!):
Again stopped for one last photopass pics:
Told Royce that I guessed now his 15 minutes of fame were up and no, he wasn’t wearing the cheesehead any more on the trip! Fun for a day though! We left the park a little after 8pm and got back to Pop Century. Decided to see if we could watch Illuminations from our room and found that with the lights off, if we laid down on the beds backwards (head at the foot of the bed) we could actually see all the fireworks from it when it began a few minutes later! Definitely a neat thing to do and a great room location! Called it an early night because we had (surprise, surprise!) another early day the next day!!
I still have a bunch of photopass pics of the boys and their friends so I'll add those in a separate post since this one is close to having too many images already!
Next up – Day 5 – Hollywood Studios, “The Boys are Back”, and ‘Ohana – January 24
marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
The boys went to Animal Kingdom this morning while we were wowing the crowds with our Cheesehead at Epcot! Then as I mentioned, we met up with them at Epcot in the evening. These are some of the pics either they, their friends, or the photopass photographers took throughout that day:
Then as I mentioned, we met up with them at Epcot in the evening. These are some of the pics either they, their friends, or the photopass photographers took throughout that day:
marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
Hm, evidently another 2 parter! Too many pics I guess!
Well, we were up early for yet another action packed day! On our last trip, Stephen and I had been over-stressed for the Toy Story Mania dash – enough that I couldn’t sleep the night before and woke up having nightmares about it! So we’d gotten there WAY too early to find it really wasn’t much different than any other headliner in terms of crowds. So we did our typical routine this morning, arriving at DHS around 8:20 after a nutritious breakfast (once again!) of Pop Tarts! Since it was already quite a bit crowded (not a good sign!), Royce stood in one of the established lines and I waited at one of the empty turnstiles to the side, banking on them opening that one, and if not, at least one of us would be in position to get a better position by the rope. They ended up opening all of them, and we both managed to find ourselves up near the rope easily.
The next two pics are while we were waiting at rope drop. I just found Royce’s sweatshirt to be funny – guess the reflectors in the logo really light up when they’re in the sun – hard to believe this is the same shirt in both pics:
They did the short pre-show and then opened the park, actually a couple minutes before 9. We followed the gaggle heading to TSM, and Royce was first in line at one of the FP machines while I worked my way with the crowd surging over to the regular line. By the time he had his FP’s, we still hadn’t entered the building, so he just merged next to me and in we went. We enjoyed this ride, but I still don’t see it as the “Be All, End All” that so many people do. With all the buildup and all I’d read about it, last time I really expected it to be more than just a video game, which is what it comes across as to me. But still fun, although Royce was complaining about how sore his arm was by the end of it!
We left TSM and headed over to Tower of Terror – probably the only other “can’t miss” attraction for us. This was kind of frustrating because when we were fed down into the “basement” area, they had only one of the queues operating. So it was a fairly long wait (at least for 9:20am or so!). We waited about 15 minutes and then as we were past the breakoff for the first queue (which was closed), they then led the next group of people coming out of the pre-show brief right into that queue and onto the ride while we continued to wait another 5-10 minutes. Just seemed quite a bit unfair and I think they should have given those people waiting a chance to fill in the first few elevators on that side.
But we got through the ride and walked over to Rock N Roller Coaster.
Since we were already in the window for TSM though, I had Royce run back there to get another set of FP’s (trying to help the boys out again, who would be here a bit later). I used the restroom and just enjoyed one of the first actually somewhat warm mornings we’d had. He was back quickly and we decided to try the (posted 15 minute) standby line instead of the singles line. It ended up being right at 15 minutes so it worked out fine. As we got near the top of the outdoor portion of the queue, we saw Stephen and his friends grabbing FP’s for the ride for later. Yelled a few hellos, and then recommended he and his friends hit TSM before the lines got much worse.
By the time we got off RnRC, the wait was now posted as 35 minutes, with ToT at 30 minutes. Since it was still early, I found this a bit discouraging, especially since as we walked down Hollywood Boulevard, we again started encountering depressing numbers of tour groups in colorful t-shirts and flags. We headed to the Great Movie Ride, luckily with still a reasonable line. We waited in the large room with all the movie briefings and they asked for a party of 2 so we got squeezed into one of the last available slots on the cars just heading out. This is just a nice, relaxing ride so even though we were a bit crowded, it was still a break from the gaggles outside!
We left here and worked our way back to Muppetvision 3D, which is another show that I think we like more for the sake of tradition than the actual quality of the show! Still enjoyed it however, and by the time we left there, we had to decide what else we wanted to do. DHS is not my favorite park and we usually spend not much more than a morning there, but with the boys there and the fact that we really didn’t have a need to head anywhere else, we decided to see some things we normally didn’t. Since it was right at 11am though, we headed over to Starring Rolls – one of Stephen and my favorite restaurants on the previous trip. However, this time we had several disappointments. First of all, the LOUD show going on right at that time in the main courtyard made any kind of conversation impossible. For future reference, if I were to eat here, I’d be sure to do so on the half hour, avoiding the shows. Secondly, I didn’t notice this in the past, but there is a smoking area RIGHT next to the outdoor eating portion of the restaurant. Which is the only place to eat since it doesn’t have indoor seating. We sat as far away from the area as we could, but could still easily smell smoke throughout the meal. Third, I had LOVED the white chocolate cupcake I got on the previous trip (obviously I love white chocolate!) and was very disappointed to find out they had removed that from the menu. Finally, while I knew the sandwiches came with sauces (mustard/mayo) already on them, which Royce would NOT eat, Stephen and I had gotten around that by splitting them (top to bottom) and him eating the half without anything on it. When we tried that this time, the sandwiches had things on both the top AND the bottom. I managed to cut off some of the bread, and pick out ham/turkey from the middle for Royce to eat, but he definitely didn’t get half of the sandwiches! Why they insist on putting mustard, etc. on the sandwich, when they could so easily just provide packets instead (like every other restaurant we found at WDW) is beyond me.
But we decided to make the most of it. We’d gotten both the ham and turkey sandwiches, intending to share. For future reference again, the ham only had mustard on half of it so would be a better choice for sharing with someone who didn’t like it. The turkey had what seemed to be mayo on one part (can’t remember if it was the top or the bottom) and some kind of pesto-type spread on the other. Which even for me would have been too much seasoning (and I’ll eat about anything), not to mention too many calories! Which I realize is a moot point when you then bring up the cupcakes. I’d heard such good things about the Butterfingers one that I felt I had to try that. Meanwhile, Royce selected a different one. (Sorry, I don’t remember the name, but you can at least see the pic!).
They both ended up being WAYYYYY too sweet for me. Definitely could have shared one, and probably the meal too. A better choice might have been to split a meal here, with me eating the sandwich and sharing the cupcake, and having him just buy a burger or something from one of the other windows down by ToT. And maybe taken the food to eat down there away from the smoking area. I’ve really recommended this as the best CS in DHS over the past few years, but now don’t think I’d bother planning around it again like we did this time. If I was at DHS and had to eat a meal, I probably would still eat there, but in the future, I think I’d do the TSM/ToT rush at ropedrop, then head over to another park. That seems to be about enough of DHS for me, whereas I could spend weeks at Epcot!
While we were eating, Royce ran down to ToT to get us another FP for there, with the return window only about 45 minutes out. He took a quick break to get a picture with his favorite, a green army man:
I texted the boys while sitting there to see if either of them wanted to use our 4 FP’s for TSM, all of which would be valid after 2:15 (they were leaving at 3). Stephen said he’d already done it with his friends and Eric wasn’t interested, so we went over and used our first set of FP’s to ride again. This time again they called for a party of 2 (I really can’t see how it matters to ride in a larger group on that ride) and we got to walk past about 100 people in line it seemed like to jump right into a car.
We walked from here back over to ToT and rode that again, using our FP’s although at this point the wait time said only 13 minutes!
Even RnRC by the time we came off was only showing a 15 minute wait, so I was very confused – seemed strange that before 10am the lines would be over 30 minutes and then by mid-day (supposedly the most crowded) be close to walk-ons! We checked the line for TSM and it was only 25 minutes at this point!! Very, very unusual! Since we hit Beauty and the Beast right before the show started, we decided to sit and catch this show. I hadn’t seen it since 1997, when I spent most of the show trying to keep Eric from standing on the seats and banging the metal bleachers with his sippy cup (he was not yet 2 at the time). So it was kind of a bittersweet experience, remembering last being there with cute little kids, who were now off on their own having nothing to do with us!!
We left the show and it was getting close to 2pm. Since we were tired and wanted to head back to the hotel for a quick break before having to get the boys around 4:30, we decided we didn’t feel like walking all the way over to TSM to use our last set of FP’s. We knew another couple who had traveled down with their kids who were in the park today, so called their cell quickly to see if they had ridden TSM yet. They hadn’t and were interested in the FP’s so Royce went and met up with them to give them to them while I posted times from the times board on Lines! We did a little bit of shopping and hit a few photopass photographers as we walked out of the park and then headed back to the hotel.
I was getting exhausted by this point, and it was actually a nice afternoon so I was happy to just go down by the pool, find a lounge chair, and enjoy the sun. Royce decided to walk around Pop (he hadn’t been here before) and snap some pictures of the various icons. Just a few of the many, many pics he took!
Continued below:
Well, we were up early for yet another action packed day! On our last trip, Stephen and I had been over-stressed for the Toy Story Mania dash – enough that I couldn’t sleep the night before and woke up having nightmares about it! So we’d gotten there WAY too early to find it really wasn’t much different than any other headliner in terms of crowds. So we did our typical routine this morning, arriving at DHS around 8:20 after a nutritious breakfast (once again!) of Pop Tarts! Since it was already quite a bit crowded (not a good sign!), Royce stood in one of the established lines and I waited at one of the empty turnstiles to the side, banking on them opening that one, and if not, at least one of us would be in position to get a better position by the rope. They ended up opening all of them, and we both managed to find ourselves up near the rope easily.
The next two pics are while we were waiting at rope drop. I just found Royce’s sweatshirt to be funny – guess the reflectors in the logo really light up when they’re in the sun – hard to believe this is the same shirt in both pics:
They did the short pre-show and then opened the park, actually a couple minutes before 9. We followed the gaggle heading to TSM, and Royce was first in line at one of the FP machines while I worked my way with the crowd surging over to the regular line. By the time he had his FP’s, we still hadn’t entered the building, so he just merged next to me and in we went. We enjoyed this ride, but I still don’t see it as the “Be All, End All” that so many people do. With all the buildup and all I’d read about it, last time I really expected it to be more than just a video game, which is what it comes across as to me. But still fun, although Royce was complaining about how sore his arm was by the end of it!
We left TSM and headed over to Tower of Terror – probably the only other “can’t miss” attraction for us. This was kind of frustrating because when we were fed down into the “basement” area, they had only one of the queues operating. So it was a fairly long wait (at least for 9:20am or so!). We waited about 15 minutes and then as we were past the breakoff for the first queue (which was closed), they then led the next group of people coming out of the pre-show brief right into that queue and onto the ride while we continued to wait another 5-10 minutes. Just seemed quite a bit unfair and I think they should have given those people waiting a chance to fill in the first few elevators on that side.
But we got through the ride and walked over to Rock N Roller Coaster.
Since we were already in the window for TSM though, I had Royce run back there to get another set of FP’s (trying to help the boys out again, who would be here a bit later). I used the restroom and just enjoyed one of the first actually somewhat warm mornings we’d had. He was back quickly and we decided to try the (posted 15 minute) standby line instead of the singles line. It ended up being right at 15 minutes so it worked out fine. As we got near the top of the outdoor portion of the queue, we saw Stephen and his friends grabbing FP’s for the ride for later. Yelled a few hellos, and then recommended he and his friends hit TSM before the lines got much worse.
By the time we got off RnRC, the wait was now posted as 35 minutes, with ToT at 30 minutes. Since it was still early, I found this a bit discouraging, especially since as we walked down Hollywood Boulevard, we again started encountering depressing numbers of tour groups in colorful t-shirts and flags. We headed to the Great Movie Ride, luckily with still a reasonable line. We waited in the large room with all the movie briefings and they asked for a party of 2 so we got squeezed into one of the last available slots on the cars just heading out. This is just a nice, relaxing ride so even though we were a bit crowded, it was still a break from the gaggles outside!
We left here and worked our way back to Muppetvision 3D, which is another show that I think we like more for the sake of tradition than the actual quality of the show! Still enjoyed it however, and by the time we left there, we had to decide what else we wanted to do. DHS is not my favorite park and we usually spend not much more than a morning there, but with the boys there and the fact that we really didn’t have a need to head anywhere else, we decided to see some things we normally didn’t. Since it was right at 11am though, we headed over to Starring Rolls – one of Stephen and my favorite restaurants on the previous trip. However, this time we had several disappointments. First of all, the LOUD show going on right at that time in the main courtyard made any kind of conversation impossible. For future reference, if I were to eat here, I’d be sure to do so on the half hour, avoiding the shows. Secondly, I didn’t notice this in the past, but there is a smoking area RIGHT next to the outdoor eating portion of the restaurant. Which is the only place to eat since it doesn’t have indoor seating. We sat as far away from the area as we could, but could still easily smell smoke throughout the meal. Third, I had LOVED the white chocolate cupcake I got on the previous trip (obviously I love white chocolate!) and was very disappointed to find out they had removed that from the menu. Finally, while I knew the sandwiches came with sauces (mustard/mayo) already on them, which Royce would NOT eat, Stephen and I had gotten around that by splitting them (top to bottom) and him eating the half without anything on it. When we tried that this time, the sandwiches had things on both the top AND the bottom. I managed to cut off some of the bread, and pick out ham/turkey from the middle for Royce to eat, but he definitely didn’t get half of the sandwiches! Why they insist on putting mustard, etc. on the sandwich, when they could so easily just provide packets instead (like every other restaurant we found at WDW) is beyond me.
But we decided to make the most of it. We’d gotten both the ham and turkey sandwiches, intending to share. For future reference again, the ham only had mustard on half of it so would be a better choice for sharing with someone who didn’t like it. The turkey had what seemed to be mayo on one part (can’t remember if it was the top or the bottom) and some kind of pesto-type spread on the other. Which even for me would have been too much seasoning (and I’ll eat about anything), not to mention too many calories! Which I realize is a moot point when you then bring up the cupcakes. I’d heard such good things about the Butterfingers one that I felt I had to try that. Meanwhile, Royce selected a different one. (Sorry, I don’t remember the name, but you can at least see the pic!).
They both ended up being WAYYYYY too sweet for me. Definitely could have shared one, and probably the meal too. A better choice might have been to split a meal here, with me eating the sandwich and sharing the cupcake, and having him just buy a burger or something from one of the other windows down by ToT. And maybe taken the food to eat down there away from the smoking area. I’ve really recommended this as the best CS in DHS over the past few years, but now don’t think I’d bother planning around it again like we did this time. If I was at DHS and had to eat a meal, I probably would still eat there, but in the future, I think I’d do the TSM/ToT rush at ropedrop, then head over to another park. That seems to be about enough of DHS for me, whereas I could spend weeks at Epcot!
While we were eating, Royce ran down to ToT to get us another FP for there, with the return window only about 45 minutes out. He took a quick break to get a picture with his favorite, a green army man:
I texted the boys while sitting there to see if either of them wanted to use our 4 FP’s for TSM, all of which would be valid after 2:15 (they were leaving at 3). Stephen said he’d already done it with his friends and Eric wasn’t interested, so we went over and used our first set of FP’s to ride again. This time again they called for a party of 2 (I really can’t see how it matters to ride in a larger group on that ride) and we got to walk past about 100 people in line it seemed like to jump right into a car.
We walked from here back over to ToT and rode that again, using our FP’s although at this point the wait time said only 13 minutes!
Even RnRC by the time we came off was only showing a 15 minute wait, so I was very confused – seemed strange that before 10am the lines would be over 30 minutes and then by mid-day (supposedly the most crowded) be close to walk-ons! We checked the line for TSM and it was only 25 minutes at this point!! Very, very unusual! Since we hit Beauty and the Beast right before the show started, we decided to sit and catch this show. I hadn’t seen it since 1997, when I spent most of the show trying to keep Eric from standing on the seats and banging the metal bleachers with his sippy cup (he was not yet 2 at the time). So it was kind of a bittersweet experience, remembering last being there with cute little kids, who were now off on their own having nothing to do with us!!
We left the show and it was getting close to 2pm. Since we were tired and wanted to head back to the hotel for a quick break before having to get the boys around 4:30, we decided we didn’t feel like walking all the way over to TSM to use our last set of FP’s. We knew another couple who had traveled down with their kids who were in the park today, so called their cell quickly to see if they had ridden TSM yet. They hadn’t and were interested in the FP’s so Royce went and met up with them to give them to them while I posted times from the times board on Lines! We did a little bit of shopping and hit a few photopass photographers as we walked out of the park and then headed back to the hotel.
I was getting exhausted by this point, and it was actually a nice afternoon so I was happy to just go down by the pool, find a lounge chair, and enjoy the sun. Royce decided to walk around Pop (he hadn’t been here before) and snap some pictures of the various icons. Just a few of the many, many pics he took!
Continued below:
marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
Way too soon it was time to head over to Downtown Disney. We were meeting the boys at Planet Hollywood after their band dinner there, but wanted to do a little bit of shopping first. We parked without trouble (unusual but guess it was still early!) and went to World of Disney. Bought all our typical things we do every trip – a photo album, a couple t-shirts, and maybe a gift or two. We really don’t spend a lot on souvenirs. Well, we DO it seems like but we don’t buy many of them!
Since we still hadn’t heard from the boys that they were done, we walked over to the Christmas store to again buy our traditional “year” ornament, then went to Goofy’s Candy Company. We’d planned to come back here with the boys and use our snack credits (as we had in 2009) to have everyone make their own candy, but were quickly informed it was no longer allowed as a snack credit, much to our disappointment. On the last trip, shortly before our arrival they had changed it so you could only choose from minimum things – I think only the pretzels or the marshmallows and only get one topping,; but now even that wasn’t allowed. So since we’d been saving snack credits for that, I decided to use a couple to buy some Mickey rice krispies treats for the kids across the street (whose parents were watching our house for us while we were gone). I guess I didn’t make this clear enough to Royce though because after I got them and we walked out he asked “so can we eat those now?” Went back in and bought him a HUGE non-Mickey shaped hunk of rice krispies treat instead to use one more credit!
We decided to drive over to where the busses, complete with Go Pack Go signs, were waiting:
Stephen appeared almost right away, but we waited quite awhile for Eric, who was taking a lot longer back in the restaurant to leave his GF behind! Got Stephen’s luggage in the car and came back and still stood around forever. Finally the last stragglers came out of Planet Hollywood, but then the band director began his pre-trip-home briefing so the boys wanted to stay and listen. Finally we got them both in the (way too small!) car, and headed back to Pop. Brought all their stuff up to the room, and decided Royce would take them down to the arcade and pool while I unpacked all of their stuff (ie laundry) and reconsolidated everything for the trip back in the morning. The timing worked out well – by the time I had everything unpacked, sorted, and repacked (luckily we were flying back Southwest so had plenty of room to pack everything and check it), they were just wrapping up down at the pool so I came down and watched them for a few minutes. Royce took several pics of them during that time:
The boys got changed into our more Disney-normal matching outfits and we were ready to head out. I wanted to go somewhere we could get photopass pics, but by this time DHS and AK were closed for the day and we decided we didn’t have enough time to make it all the way over to MK before our ADR, plus the fact that it was a late EMH would probably mean a lot more crowds and we determined we’d get there around the middle of the whole MSEP/Wishes mess on Main Street and probably wouldn’t even be able to find photopass photographers, so we headed to Epcot instead. Got quite a few photopass pics and decided we had enough time to ride Spaceship Earth (which at least one of the boys hadn’t had a chance to with their friends). Got one quick pic as we exited – boys on the lower left and us on the upper right:
We drove over to “Ohana and didn’t have any trouble parking. Since it was getting late (almost 8pm by this point), we decided to ask if we could check in early for the ADR rather than heading to the beach to watch the fireworks as we’d planned. However, they very helpfully explained to us there that probably most people would be waiting to see the fireworks from inside ‘Ohana and we’d end up waiting until after that most likely to be seated anyway. So we walked down to the Poly beach, arriving right as the fireworks began. Pulled up some lounge chairs and sat down and enjoyed it – again it was still a nice evening, at least with a jacket on, and it was nice to see Wishes without the crowds from several nights earlier!
When the show ended, we walked up to ‘Ohana and checked in and were given a beeper. Stephen and I walked over to the gift shop on the same floor to look for a t-shirt he’d wanted, and by the time we came back they were beeping us to be seated. We had a nice table for 4 with a view of the MK in the background. Overall we had none of the issues I’d read about on these forums – waiting forever to check in and/or be seated, poor food quality, bad service. Seemed like everyone was super friendly and we had a ton of food! We did notice that we seemed to get a lot more of everything on the first go-round than the table next to us with teen girls – think they decided that our teen boys would have to be a whole lot hungrier! Which wasn’t quite the case since they’d had a 4pm dinner at Planet Hollywood already!
I didn’t do a great job on taking pictures of all the courses, but at least got some family shots and a few random ones of the food!
Probably the most distracting part of the meal was that they had the speaker WAY too loud that was broadcasting all the children’s activities. It was literally blasting, and we were a couple tables away from the speaker. For those wondering how late the activities go – we were there from 8:30 until around 10pm and they never seemed to let up. There would be a couple moments of quiet, then back to the screeching noise again! This would not make for a romantic couples’ meal! However, we made the most of it. Royce and I went when they called the anniversary folks and were one of only two couples – the other celebrating 51 years of marriage. The boys of course considered themselves too old for all the “kids” activities, but when they announced the limbo competition, Stephen decided he just HAD to participate! As you can tell, our 6’3 son didn’t quite fit in with all the little munchkins doing the limbo, and they didn’t cut him any slack on the bar height, but he still did as well as all the little ones. He had fun, which was the relevant part I suppose!
They came over at the end of the meal and brought us an anniversary cupcake. Since of course we were stuffed from the meal itself and the banana dessert already, we donated this to Stephen who decided to attempt eating the entire cupcake in one bite, which luckily he completed successfully (have to love teens!).
Finally it was time to head out. We’d considered heading over to MK now for the end of EMH and grabbing some pics, but since it was after 10 and we were hitting a morning EMH, we decided to just call it a night. Got back to the hotel and set up the boys “beds” – no one was willing to share a bed and I wasn’t going to cram in a double bed so one of them could have a bed. After a few nights of sleeping on a bus and/or in a hotel with a bunch of other kids, they were happy to make a “pallet” on the floor with the comforters and the sleeping bag they’d brought and some spare blankets we requested from Mousekeeping. I took a few quick room pics before we crashed for the evening:
Oh, regarding the boys, if anyone is interested, what we did to add them to our room was wait until we were there. Had we attempted to add them on beforehand, they would have had to purchase the same room tickets and dining we did (we had paid the $11 a day each to upgrade to regular dining from the QSDP). Since they already had tickets and would only be there the last evening, Royce just went down that afternoon and told the front desk that they’d be joining us and picked up room keys for them for the EMH. We didn’t have to pay any extra and just left a note for Mousekeeping requesting an extra blanket. I don’t think I’d have wanted to have a family of four, with two older teens, in a Pop room for a week or more, but for a night it worked out fine. We got everything ready, set the alarm for an especially early wakeup, and went to sleep!
Since none of the photopass pics were particularly relevant to the story this time, I’m just going to add them all in as a separate post next.
Next up – Day 6 – Epcot EMH and Journey Home – January 25
Since we still hadn’t heard from the boys that they were done, we walked over to the Christmas store to again buy our traditional “year” ornament, then went to Goofy’s Candy Company. We’d planned to come back here with the boys and use our snack credits (as we had in 2009) to have everyone make their own candy, but were quickly informed it was no longer allowed as a snack credit, much to our disappointment. On the last trip, shortly before our arrival they had changed it so you could only choose from minimum things – I think only the pretzels or the marshmallows and only get one topping,; but now even that wasn’t allowed. So since we’d been saving snack credits for that, I decided to use a couple to buy some Mickey rice krispies treats for the kids across the street (whose parents were watching our house for us while we were gone). I guess I didn’t make this clear enough to Royce though because after I got them and we walked out he asked “so can we eat those now?”
Went back in and bought him a HUGE non-Mickey shaped hunk of rice krispies treat instead to use one more credit!We decided to drive over to where the busses, complete with Go Pack Go signs, were waiting:
Stephen appeared almost right away, but we waited quite awhile for Eric, who was taking a lot longer back in the restaurant to leave his GF behind! Got Stephen’s luggage in the car and came back and still stood around forever. Finally the last stragglers came out of Planet Hollywood, but then the band director began his pre-trip-home briefing so the boys wanted to stay and listen. Finally we got them both in the (way too small!) car, and headed back to Pop. Brought all their stuff up to the room, and decided Royce would take them down to the arcade and pool while I unpacked all of their stuff (ie laundry) and reconsolidated everything for the trip back in the morning. The timing worked out well – by the time I had everything unpacked, sorted, and repacked (luckily we were flying back Southwest so had plenty of room to pack everything and check it), they were just wrapping up down at the pool so I came down and watched them for a few minutes. Royce took several pics of them during that time:
The boys got changed into our more Disney-normal matching outfits
and we were ready to head out. I wanted to go somewhere we could get photopass pics, but by this time DHS and AK were closed for the day and we decided we didn’t have enough time to make it all the way over to MK before our ADR, plus the fact that it was a late EMH would probably mean a lot more crowds and we determined we’d get there around the middle of the whole MSEP/Wishes mess on Main Street and probably wouldn’t even be able to find photopass photographers, so we headed to Epcot instead. Got quite a few photopass pics and decided we had enough time to ride Spaceship Earth (which at least one of the boys hadn’t had a chance to with their friends). Got one quick pic as we exited – boys on the lower left and us on the upper right:
We drove over to “Ohana and didn’t have any trouble parking. Since it was getting late (almost 8pm by this point), we decided to ask if we could check in early for the ADR rather than heading to the beach to watch the fireworks as we’d planned. However, they very helpfully explained to us there that probably most people would be waiting to see the fireworks from inside ‘Ohana and we’d end up waiting until after that most likely to be seated anyway. So we walked down to the Poly beach, arriving right as the fireworks began. Pulled up some lounge chairs and sat down and enjoyed it – again it was still a nice evening, at least with a jacket on, and it was nice to see Wishes without the crowds from several nights earlier!
When the show ended, we walked up to ‘Ohana and checked in and were given a beeper. Stephen and I walked over to the gift shop on the same floor to look for a t-shirt he’d wanted, and by the time we came back they were beeping us to be seated. We had a nice table for 4 with a view of the MK in the background. Overall we had none of the issues I’d read about on these forums – waiting forever to check in and/or be seated, poor food quality, bad service. Seemed like everyone was super friendly and we had a ton of food! We did notice that we seemed to get a lot more of everything on the first go-round than the table next to us with teen girls – think they decided that our teen boys would have to be a whole lot hungrier! Which wasn’t quite the case since they’d had a 4pm dinner at Planet Hollywood already!
I didn’t do a great job on taking pictures of all the courses, but at least got some family shots and a few random ones of the food!
Probably the most distracting part of the meal was that they had the speaker WAY too loud that was broadcasting all the children’s activities. It was literally blasting, and we were a couple tables away from the speaker. For those wondering how late the activities go – we were there from 8:30 until around 10pm and they never seemed to let up. There would be a couple moments of quiet, then back to the screeching noise again! This would not make for a romantic couples’ meal! However, we made the most of it. Royce and I went when they called the anniversary folks and were one of only two couples – the other celebrating 51 years of marriage. The boys of course considered themselves too old for all the “kids” activities, but when they announced the limbo competition, Stephen decided he just HAD to participate! As you can tell, our 6’3 son didn’t quite fit in with all the little munchkins doing the limbo, and they didn’t cut him any slack on the bar height, but he still did as well as all the little ones. He had fun, which was the relevant part I suppose!
They came over at the end of the meal and brought us an anniversary cupcake. Since of course we were stuffed from the meal itself and the banana dessert already, we donated this to Stephen who decided to attempt eating the entire cupcake in one bite, which luckily he completed successfully (have to love teens!).
Finally it was time to head out. We’d considered heading over to MK now for the end of EMH and grabbing some pics, but since it was after 10 and we were hitting a morning EMH, we decided to just call it a night. Got back to the hotel and set up the boys “beds” – no one was willing to share a bed and I wasn’t going to cram in a double bed so one of them could have a bed. After a few nights of sleeping on a bus and/or in a hotel with a bunch of other kids, they were happy to make a “pallet” on the floor with the comforters and the sleeping bag they’d brought and some spare blankets we requested from Mousekeeping. I took a few quick room pics before we crashed for the evening:
Oh, regarding the boys, if anyone is interested, what we did to add them to our room was wait until we were there. Had we attempted to add them on beforehand, they would have had to purchase the same room tickets and dining we did (we had paid the $11 a day each to upgrade to regular dining from the QSDP). Since they already had tickets and would only be there the last evening, Royce just went down that afternoon and told the front desk that they’d be joining us and picked up room keys for them for the EMH. We didn’t have to pay any extra and just left a note for Mousekeeping requesting an extra blanket. I don’t think I’d have wanted to have a family of four, with two older teens, in a Pop room for a week or more, but for a night it worked out fine. We got everything ready, set the alarm for an especially early wakeup, and went to sleep!
Since none of the photopass pics were particularly relevant to the story this time, I’m just going to add them all in as a separate post next.
Next up – Day 6 – Epcot EMH and Journey Home – January 25
marciemi
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 29, 1999
- Messages
- 4,842
Sorry about the long delay folks - life got in the way of Disney! Hate it when that happens! Well, this is always the hardest day to write the last day of any vacation! At least we still had a lot on our agenda for today, and of course (like always!) it started early. Royce got up and got the luggage out to the car while I got showered, and then we got the boys up to get ready while I packed up all the last minute things, Royce ran down to the check-out desk, and everyone finished up the luxury breakfasts of Pop Tarts. We were packed, checked out, and on the road by 7:30am, off to an early morning EMH at Epcot. Today we were wearing what we call our Space Shuttle shirts wed really enjoyed wearing these in 2007 and constantly had CMs telling us Whoa! Turn off your shirt! or giving us extra attention because of them! Its where my tag came from, and the idea for my comments are similar to one of the Frazz comic strips that Ive kept because of the reference:
Okay, heres some useful information that I hadnt read on any of these forums. I hadnt actually done an EMH since 2005 (we were there in mid-January right when they first started doing EMHs vs. the old EEs). And this was our first morning one of this trip. Id read all of the advice on various sites and in books about EMHs and knew what to expect to be open, but....I had no idea that it would be a different entry procedure. First of all, instead of lining up at the turnstiles like normal, they had a rope out before them and everyone had to just sit and wait until they were ready, with no real line. Advantageous if you move quickly like we do, but obviously not totally fair to the folks who were there first. This also was the only place they looked to make sure people actually had room cards and it was more of a general - hey everyone, hold up your card so we can see it thing. Certainly wouldnt have noticed if not everyone in your group had one or if they had an expired date on it or anything. Im not condoning this idea or anything just saying how different it was from all the times I did EEs back in the late 90s and even when I did the EMHs in 2005.
Then, around 7:55, they just dropped the rope, everyone walked to a turnstile, went through, and....that was it! No internal ropedrops, no one leading you anywhere, no CMs to stay behind. Just completely a free-for-all!! Now I realize this was how it was back a decade plus ago, but I thought that had all been phased out for safety reasons and now you were never allowed to run. Apparently morning EMHs are the exception! I was at a severe disadvantage (with my family!). Two teen boys who run track/XC and a husband who goes to the gym pretty much daily meant I had a serious struggle to stay with them because they certainly werent waiting for me! I think Im in somewhat good shape at least for a normal Soarin Stampede I can walk quickly with the best of them!! But running is a whole different thing. It did pay off though and we got to Soarin alone and through the entire queue without anyone near us (and even with Royce stopping for FPs!).
Rather than wait for everyone (another difference), as soon as the first people got there they started the preshow and our entire auditorium only had the first row of the center section filled (so maybe 9 people all together)! We were in and on before most people had wandered over to the entrance totally different than a normal rope drop on a non-EMH day! Bet you havent seen the Soarin queue like this too often:
(Side note that while Id like to pretend that I was the one taking these pics, I was actually the person straggling behind Royce and gasping for breath as he took these pics!).
Again, something new/different to me wed asked before on the forums and been told that the Character Connection area wouldnt open until the park itself opened at 9. Well, when we walked by it after leaving Soarin at 8:20 or so, it was already open. But...very hard to get to since obviously since our previous visit two days earlier there was now construction in the area and we had to follow some signs and go in the back way. Evidently still didnt detour others from finding it, but there were only about 10 people or so in front of us when we went in so decided to wait and get some family pics:
We left there and headed over to Test Track where we were already in our window to get another FP so we did. Got in line, which was still fairly short during these EMH hours. We rode TT and got some more family pics here as well:
We also saw the CM whod selected us for the Family of the Day back on Friday, and introduced her to our boys!
At this point, we went over to Mission Space. Stephen had suffered a concussion in late December (less than a month earlier) so we decided it might be better if he took it easy (despite having ridden Space Mountain, Everest, Rock N Roller Coaster, etc. already) and to stick with the Green Version for comparison purposes. Obviously a much shorter line, and I honestly didnt think you lost much by experiencing this side instead. Maybe not as much of the head plastered to the seat feel, but it was pretty much the same ride, even without the centrifuge. Took a few pictures here as well:
By this point the rest of the park was open, so we headed in to Innoventions and were about the only people in there. Went right to Sum of All Thrills Royce went with Stephen and they did a more relaxed ride no upside down segments and more just for fun. Eric of course selected all the highest level thrills he could, so we had a more exciting ride. I do still feel though that this is MUCH smoother than the Cyberspace Mountain ride, and without being bounced around as much, it doesnt seem all that thrilling no matter how hard you try. But it was fun for the boys to do once. We also picked up a Kim Possible voucher to use later on.
From here we went back to Soarin to use our FPs one last time. We then rode the Land boat ride, with the boys:
Ran from here over to see our buddy, Nemo:
From here we had different ideas of what we wanted to do. We knew the boys wouldnt be interested in Michael Jackson (Captain EO) so suggested they go to the Imagination ride/pavilion, but that suggestion was met with less than an enthusiastic response. They finally decided on going to Innoventions, and we went to catch MJ. Okay, Im sorry but this was one of the strangest things Ive ever seen! Probably because I was never a MJ fan and had never seen this when it was here originally, but I felt a bit like Id wasted a bit of our last few hours at Disney!
We planned to meet the boys in France, but theyd gotten caught up in Canada, watching the movie there (which I have to recommend as we enjoyed it on both trips!). We waited for them outside in France, while the weather began to get more and more ominous. Looking at the radar on our phones it didnt seem likely we were going to make it out without getting soaked, but the written forecast wasnt as dire. The boys showed up and we got a variety of snacks from France and used our last remaining CS credits. Forgot to take any pics here for some reason!
Next we worked our way around WS, stopping in Japan to again get some more food. Eric, who hadnt liked any of the France meal options, and Stephen (who had, but can always east again!) both got a meal here while I at least got a salad. Still nice out temperature-wise, but a bit windy and getting gloomy (can you tell by their expressions that the picture-taking thing is getting old fast?):
We then worked our way to Norway to do the Kim Possible mission. First we grabbed a FP for Maelstrom, which wasnt too far out, then the boys did the mission. They seemed to have a bit of fun, although they strongly denied it afterwards:
Next the guys decided to do Maelstrom while I took a quick break. Around this time Eric decided that he HAD to have another chocolate croissant from France and we still had a snack credit left, so he ran back there while we started slowly working our way out of WS.
It was kind of funny, because in his fluorescent shirt, we could see him coming from a long way out as he walked around the lagoon!
Part 2 coming up:
Okay, heres some useful information that I hadnt read on any of these forums. I hadnt actually done an EMH since 2005 (we were there in mid-January right when they first started doing EMHs vs. the old EEs). And this was our first morning one of this trip. Id read all of the advice on various sites and in books about EMHs and knew what to expect to be open, but....I had no idea that it would be a different entry procedure. First of all, instead of lining up at the turnstiles like normal, they had a rope out before them and everyone had to just sit and wait until they were ready, with no real line. Advantageous if you move quickly like we do, but obviously not totally fair to the folks who were there first. This also was the only place they looked to make sure people actually had room cards and it was more of a general - hey everyone, hold up your card so we can see it thing. Certainly wouldnt have noticed if not everyone in your group had one or if they had an expired date on it or anything. Im not condoning this idea or anything just saying how different it was from all the times I did EEs back in the late 90s and even when I did the EMHs in 2005.
Then, around 7:55, they just dropped the rope, everyone walked to a turnstile, went through, and....that was it! No internal ropedrops, no one leading you anywhere, no CMs to stay behind. Just completely a free-for-all!! Now I realize this was how it was back a decade plus ago, but I thought that had all been phased out for safety reasons and now you were never allowed to run. Apparently morning EMHs are the exception! I was at a severe disadvantage (with my family!). Two teen boys who run track/XC and a husband who goes to the gym pretty much daily meant I had a serious struggle to stay with them because they certainly werent waiting for me! I think Im in somewhat good shape at least for a normal Soarin Stampede I can walk quickly with the best of them!! But running is a whole different thing. It did pay off though and we got to Soarin alone and through the entire queue without anyone near us (and even with Royce stopping for FPs!).
Rather than wait for everyone (another difference), as soon as the first people got there they started the preshow and our entire auditorium only had the first row of the center section filled (so maybe 9 people all together)! We were in and on before most people had wandered over to the entrance totally different than a normal rope drop on a non-EMH day! Bet you havent seen the Soarin queue like this too often:
(Side note that while Id like to pretend that I was the one taking these pics, I was actually the person straggling behind Royce and gasping for breath as he took these pics!).
Again, something new/different to me wed asked before on the forums and been told that the Character Connection area wouldnt open until the park itself opened at 9. Well, when we walked by it after leaving Soarin at 8:20 or so, it was already open. But...very hard to get to since obviously since our previous visit two days earlier there was now construction in the area and we had to follow some signs and go in the back way. Evidently still didnt detour others from finding it, but there were only about 10 people or so in front of us when we went in so decided to wait and get some family pics:
We left there and headed over to Test Track where we were already in our window to get another FP so we did. Got in line, which was still fairly short during these EMH hours. We rode TT and got some more family pics here as well:
We also saw the CM whod selected us for the Family of the Day back on Friday, and introduced her to our boys!
At this point, we went over to Mission Space. Stephen had suffered a concussion in late December (less than a month earlier) so we decided it might be better if he took it easy (despite having ridden Space Mountain, Everest, Rock N Roller Coaster, etc. already) and to stick with the Green Version for comparison purposes. Obviously a much shorter line, and I honestly didnt think you lost much by experiencing this side instead. Maybe not as much of the head plastered to the seat feel, but it was pretty much the same ride, even without the centrifuge. Took a few pictures here as well:
By this point the rest of the park was open, so we headed in to Innoventions and were about the only people in there. Went right to Sum of All Thrills Royce went with Stephen and they did a more relaxed ride no upside down segments and more just for fun. Eric of course selected all the highest level thrills he could, so we had a more exciting ride. I do still feel though that this is MUCH smoother than the Cyberspace Mountain ride, and without being bounced around as much, it doesnt seem all that thrilling no matter how hard you try. But it was fun for the boys to do once. We also picked up a Kim Possible voucher to use later on.
From here we went back to Soarin to use our FPs one last time. We then rode the Land boat ride, with the boys:
Ran from here over to see our buddy, Nemo:
From here we had different ideas of what we wanted to do. We knew the boys wouldnt be interested in Michael Jackson (Captain EO) so suggested they go to the Imagination ride/pavilion, but that suggestion was met with less than an enthusiastic response. They finally decided on going to Innoventions, and we went to catch MJ. Okay, Im sorry but this was one of the strangest things Ive ever seen! Probably because I was never a MJ fan and had never seen this when it was here originally, but I felt a bit like Id wasted a bit of our last few hours at Disney!
We planned to meet the boys in France, but theyd gotten caught up in Canada, watching the movie there (which I have to recommend as we enjoyed it on both trips!). We waited for them outside in France, while the weather began to get more and more ominous. Looking at the radar on our phones it didnt seem likely we were going to make it out without getting soaked, but the written forecast wasnt as dire. The boys showed up and we got a variety of snacks from France and used our last remaining CS credits. Forgot to take any pics here for some reason!
Next we worked our way around WS, stopping in Japan to again get some more food. Eric, who hadnt liked any of the France meal options, and Stephen (who had, but can always east again!) both got a meal here while I at least got a salad. Still nice out temperature-wise, but a bit windy and getting gloomy (can you tell by their expressions that the picture-taking thing is getting old fast?):
We then worked our way to Norway to do the Kim Possible mission. First we grabbed a FP for Maelstrom, which wasnt too far out, then the boys did the mission. They seemed to have a bit of fun, although they strongly denied it afterwards:
Next the guys decided to do Maelstrom while I took a quick break. Around this time Eric decided that he HAD to have another chocolate croissant from France and we still had a snack credit left, so he ran back there while we started slowly working our way out of WS.
It was kind of funny, because in his fluorescent shirt, we could see him coming from a long way out as he walked around the lagoon!
Part 2 coming up:
marciemi
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By this time it was getting late and we needed to head out for the airport (sob!). We stopped for a few last photopass pics on the way out and I entered my last times on Lines enough to get me up to an Unofficial Lines Consultant!
Headed out from the park to the airport this ride and the one this morning were a little tight with 4 adult-sized folks in the car, plus all of our luggage, but we managed to squeeze in. Made it to the airport and encountered a HUGE security line! One side seemed to not be moving at all so we finally left that side and went over to the other, which seemed to help somewhat:
Took the train from there to the gate somehow this seems to be much more fun when youre arriving than when youre leaving!
Boarded on time, and talked with some other families from our high school who were on the same flight. Eric enjoyed the Southwest Airlines crackers:
And all too soon it was time to think about the real world including...HOMEWORK!! (gasp!)
Got back to the cold and gloom of Milwaukee and fortunately all of our luggage made it without incident. We were renting a car since wed flown out of Green Bay coming down, and only ended up paying $11 for the car with a free day rental Royce had from Emerald Aisle. Luckily he got a much nicer upgraded car than wed gotten in Orlando so it was a nice ride back to Green Bay. Then we had to do the car shuffle. The boys had left a car at the high school so we stopped there first to pick that one up, which somehow I got volunteered to drive home in the cold! Then we got the boys dropped off and the luggage unloaded and had to drive back down to the Green Bay airport in two cars to drop off the rental and make it back home. It was well after 9 at this point (feeling like 10 to us after nearly a week on Eastern time) so nobody was overly enthusiastic at this point especially the boys who still had a lot of homework left to do! But everyone survived and it was finally time to get some sleep!
Next up Summary
Headed out from the park to the airport this ride and the one this morning were a little tight with 4 adult-sized folks in the car, plus all of our luggage, but we managed to squeeze in. Made it to the airport and encountered a HUGE security line! One side seemed to not be moving at all so we finally left that side and went over to the other, which seemed to help somewhat:
Took the train from there to the gate somehow this seems to be much more fun when youre arriving than when youre leaving!
Boarded on time, and talked with some other families from our high school who were on the same flight. Eric enjoyed the Southwest Airlines crackers:
And all too soon it was time to think about the real world including...HOMEWORK!! (gasp!)
Got back to the cold and gloom of Milwaukee and fortunately all of our luggage made it without incident. We were renting a car since wed flown out of Green Bay coming down, and only ended up paying $11 for the car with a free day rental Royce had from Emerald Aisle. Luckily he got a much nicer upgraded car than wed gotten in Orlando so it was a nice ride back to Green Bay. Then we had to do the car shuffle. The boys had left a car at the high school so we stopped there first to pick that one up, which somehow I got volunteered to drive home in the cold! Then we got the boys dropped off and the luggage unloaded and had to drive back down to the Green Bay airport in two cars to drop off the rental and make it back home. It was well after 9 at this point (feeling like 10 to us after nearly a week on Eastern time) so nobody was overly enthusiastic at this point especially the boys who still had a lot of homework left to do! But everyone survived and it was finally time to get some sleep!
Next up Summary
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That’s right — when you book your Disney Cruise with Dreams Unlimited Travel, you’ll receive incredible shipboard credits to spend during your vacation!
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