"For a few Fastpasses more!" TR-Nov 9-18, 2013 (Cruise TR LINK added April 10th)

[Tinker326]

UGGGGGGGGG on that party!!! You are right, I didn't know the whole story!

I would have been furious if that happened to me... I would forced some zipedee do dah spirt up my kids behinds!

We went to the Xmas Party in 2009- and while we didn't have the experience you did, we still found it crowded and not worth the $$.

Least you had a pretty good day up to that point. Right? Oh well, live & learn..and possibly bring it up 100 times to your DD in the future.. 'remember that time..... ' It gives them something good to bring to the therapy table! Ha!

 

[skier_pete]

Thanks for the CBR info. Can I ask one more question? If we stay there and free dining is announced (which we've never had) do you get the regular dining plan free or the deluxe plan, do you know?

I can so relate to the troubles with your foot. I wore the wrong shoes on our last trip and my feet and legs were killing me the whole time. I started taking Tylenol a lot and sitting down whenever (and wherever) possible. Got some looks, but whatever gets through the day....

Love the Epcot pp pic--cute!

We are trying MNSSHP next trip--I'm worried it will be crazy packed. Fingers crossed its not too nuts. I predict a meltdown or two in our future too. Don't you just love it when you're in the middle of doing something they SWORE up and down they couldn't live without doing and then they say they don't want to do it.....kids!

We have yet to actually see fireworks with the kids, but someone told us to bring earplugs for the kids to block the noise. We haven't tried it but something to keep in mind if the noise bothers DD

flat butted gingerbread men!!

Geez--for $200 they could have at least given you 3 cookies...

OK - first to answer your question - free dining gives you the standard dining plan. This is how its always been, with the exception that since 2010 the values give only quick service dining free. However, you CAN if you want deluxe dining upgrade the free dining to deluxe dining for the difference in the price. Understand if you are going in November, you shouldn't EVER pay full rack rate (unless it's Thanksgiving week) if you can't get free dining, you should at least get a room discount - I would pre-book before ticket price increase in June, and then when the discount comes out, either free dining or room only, apply it to your existing reservation. Save on both tickets and room that way.

If you do the party choose a Sunday night or a Tuesday. Don't do a Thursday or Friday, these are the most crowded. However, if you are near Halloween, you might not be able to avoid the crowds.

You CAN go back for more cookies, so in theory it's all you can eat cookies for $200! What a deal!

UGGGGGGGGG on that party!!! You are right, I didn't know the whole story!

I would have been furious if that happened to me... I would forced some zipedee do dah spirt up my kids behinds!

We went to the Xmas Party in 2009- and while we didn't have the experience you did, we still found it crowded and not worth the $$.

Least you had a pretty good day up to that point. Right? Oh well, live & learn..and possibly bring it up 100 times to your DD in the future.. 'remember that time..... ' It gives them something good to bring to the therapy table! Ha!

We are definitely cut from the same cloth Nicole! I am sure I won't let her forget this one!

 

[khertz]

Wooooow, the party sounds downright awful. Kids can be SO unpredictable with how they will react to staying out late. I had some reservations about committing that much money to Halloween party tickets too, because you just never know how a 3 year old is going to act when he's up way past his bedtime. What a bummer that DD had a complete meltdown at the beginning of the night! And that it was so crowded on Main Street. That's what really sucks, when you pay all that money and you can't even enjoy what you went to enjoy.

Pretty cool that you ran into the podcast crew though. We had a lot of fun that night watching their livestream of the parade and fireworks!

 

[JulieODC]

Kids. Sheesh.

Great photopass pics!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Dang! That's one major meltdown with perfect timing. It sucks that it happens at the hard ticket event. I hate not getting my money's worth either. And then to come back and not have your MB work? YUK!

Hope your foot is better now.

Great PP pictures.

 

[skier_pete]

Wooooow, the party sounds downright awful. Kids can be SO unpredictable with how they will react to staying out late. I had some reservations about committing that much money to Halloween party tickets too, because you just never know how a 3 year old is going to act when he's up way past his bedtime. What a bummer that DD had a complete meltdown at the beginning of the night! And that it was so crowded on Main Street. That's what really sucks, when you pay all that money and you can't even enjoy what you went to enjoy.

Pretty cool that you ran into the podcast crew though. We had a lot of fun that night watching their livestream of the parade and fireworks!

Yeah, I was going to try and hang with them after the fireworks, but they disappeared on me!

Kids. Sheesh.

Perfect summation!

Dang! That's one major meltdown with perfect timing. It sucks that it happens at the hard ticket event. I hate not getting my money's worth either. And then to come back and not have your MB work? YUK!

Hope your foot is better now.

Great PP pictures.

Thanks for asking about the foot! It is doing better than it was then. It was really bad up to the trip and of course on the trip. I finally got some time off of it after the trip and it was MUCH better by the end of November. Unfortunately it is STILL not 100 %, and I am very concerned about the affect of my upcoming ski trip. (Going skiing for a long weekend with some friends, and will be going at it hard-core - at least if my foot lets me.) The other day I was swimming and pushed off from the wall and it was really painful again. Not sure what it will take to fully heal. (I was a pretty awful injury at the time. )

 

[skier_pete]

Day 4 – One of the smartest planning things I did on this trip was plan that the day after we did the Christmas party was to plan for a day off! Yup, nothing to do today, or at least not until the evening where we would get some DTD time.

DD had asked specifically to do the Pirate Cruise again. It’s a two-hour Pirate adventure for kids 12 and under in which they sail around the Caribbean Lake. This sounds like lots of fun, and it’s not very expensive (I think $27 or something like that.) so I planned our off-day on a day she could do this. Of course, I didn’t end up having to take her there. I had another task – fixing our Magic Band problem! (YAY!)

For those that don’t know, the main check-in desk and guest service center at CBR is NOT where the central pool/food court/shopping is located at Port Royale. Though there is a small one there, most check-in/check-out/issues go through custom house. And the best way to get to custom house from our resort in by shuttle. The nice thing is from Jamaica, you just hop on ANY shuttle and ride two stops and get off again to get to the Barbados stop, which is right near custom house.

So, arrived at custom house at 7:30 AM with my non-working Magic Bands (all SIX of them, BTW – since we had one for each set of reservations.) I explained the situation and handed them the bands we’d been using the whole trip. Well, after about thirty minutes of trying they told me that they simply couldn’t get the bands to work at all, there was some glitch in the system, and they would have to go and reset our reservation completely to reset the bands. This took another 20 minutes probably,

After close to an hour, they claimed the bands were all working and that we should be fine to get back into the room. They also gave us the regular KTTW cards, just in case.

With that straightened out, I asked about needing another day on our tickets, as I had originally bought an eight-day pass and we were going to need nine. Well, somehow one of our tickets hadn’t gotten used one day, so we only needed to add a day to two of them. I half-joked that for all the inconvenience these stupid bands had given us, they should add the day no charge. (Just imagine if we DID have a park day planned today.) They actually agreed to this ( no big deal, it was like $24) but said I needed to have the extra day added to the ticket at the parks and then come back and get the money refunded here. I was leary of this, but agreed to do it. (Spoiler alert – that didn’t go smoothly either!)

By this time, it was coming on 9 AM and DW had to get DD to the Pirate Cruise, so I took the shuttle from Custom House to Port Royal, and we walked back across the Island to test our Magic Bands. Well, they DID in fact work, so at least we were done with that for now.

The weather was fairly nice (not real warm, but warm enough) so DW and I took the advantage to lounge on one of the beaches while DD sailed around the lake. Here’s a few pictures taken from my hammock.



That’s the boat that the Pirate Cruise was being held on. They kept criss-crossing the lake in search of buried treasure. We would see them land and get off the boat searching for stuff. It looked like a LOT of fun.





Ah, if only this was actually relaxing!



DW enjoying her hammock.







The quiet pool, which was right next to our room, but DD wouldn’t go in because it had no slide. (IT was a VERY quiet pool!)









DD truly loved her outing. Unfortunately, she might be too old for it next time:







We had lunch at the resort (I can’t remember if we brought the food back to our room but I don’t think so.) and after that we spent the afternoon swimming in the pool and enjoying some of the pool party games they had for kids. They did a “Don’t Forget The Disney Lyrics” game that went on WAAAYYY to long, but DD and I got every answer right and won the game. (Another family only missed one, but everyone else quit.)

 

[skier_pete]

We headed back to the room somewhere around 4 PM and washed up and changed to go down to DTD. DTD is one of my least favorite places in all of Disney World. Part of this is because I dislike shopping. And actually its not so much that I dislike shopping, but that I find that our house is currently so full of crap that I don’t actually know where we will put more useless stuff we don’t need, which is every single item for sale at WDW. In fact, I bought no souvenirs for myself at all, except a sweatshirt which was an item of necessity.

Anyways, we headed to the only store that interests DD and I – The Lego Store. I dropped $100 in that place. I especially like to load up on loose parts, but also bought a couple of kits for DD as well. (I said I didn’t buy anything “for myself”, so I wasn’t lying two sentences ago.)



After that we headed across DTD and saw the OTHER reason I can’t stand DTD – The depressing area that used to be Pleasure Island. Why don’t they take down these G-Damn signs!



The Advaentures Club looked so pathetic hiding in the bushes. I kept excepting Fletcher Hodges, Hathaway Brown or Samantha Sterling to come breaking though the foliage, but alas no dice!



We were headed to a new dining experience at Bongo’s. I had let DW pick our mealtime experience tonight, as we really hadn’t used dining credits at DTD before, and this was the place she picked. Reviews were mixed but I agreed to give it a try. The restaurant had a large open air to it and was only moderately busy.










We ordered an appetizer first of Papa Rellena - Round breaded mashed potato stuffed with ground beef creole served with our homemade gravy. These were really tasty.


For dinner, DW and I ended up with the same thing from a huge menu as it was recommended by the waiter -Bistec de Sirloin - Sirloin steak grilled to perfection and seasoned in garlic and salt, served with white rice and green plantains. This was fantastic and was actually very filling. I didn’t even finish the Plantains, even though they were very tasty.



DD had the kids chicken nuggets. We used a few kids meals that we paid for OOP to stretch our free dining a little extra. Technically as a 10-year old we were cheating Disney with this, but we only used the “kid” card for actual kids meals that we paid for in cash, when we were at Buffets, we used the full adult dining credit, so hopefully the dining Nazis here on the boards won’t be too hard on me.



For dessert – a big plate of CHURROS. These were kidna…CHURRO-like. I don’t get the fascination with these things, especially out in DL. They’re just OK.



Overall, we were happy with the dining experience. I don’t know if I would necessarily say it was great, but it was very good.

After dinner, we split up. DW had more shopping to do, and DD and I were going to try something totally new for us. Disney Quest!



The thing was, we had free passes that came with our package, so there was no cost to get in. I certainly would NOT pay full price for this experience. Right up front I’m going to say this about Disney Quest. Disney Quest would be the most amazing experience – if this were 1998. Unfortunately, it is 2013, and while we had fun there, it mostly felt like the games were terribly out-of-date to me, even when they were pretty neat. There was a whole two floors of “retro” games from the eighties and nineties, but we never got to experience any of them. The first thing we hit was a Jungle Cruise ride where you sat in a raft and paddled.



This was pretty fun, as was a 3D Pirates of the Carribean Ride.



There was a virtual reality Aladdin’s Magic Carpet ride which DD really liked, but which worked so poorly it was the epitome of the problems with this place. We moved onto the next floor, and they had an drawing class (Like DHS Animation Academy) in which we got to draw a character. I wanted to skip it, but DD insisted. We spent a good 45 minutes here, as we had to wait a bit for it to start. The difference between DHS and here is that here we used a computer pad to draw. Here’s are results. Mine:



And this one is DD:



Both vaguely Goofy-like! Next up we had the roller coaster simulator. This was really cool, except for it taking too long. They had like 10 simulator bays, but because it was a slow night, they only had two running. So, after programming our roller coaster, we waited in line behind about 6 people for 20 minutes. The simulator itself was fun though, and the coaster even took us upside down. DD got a real big kick out of this – but still won’t try and real inverted coaster.

We went through the rest of the building pretty quick. I wanted to play the Fix-It Felix game, but DD didn’t give me the chance:



We tried playing the Buzz Lightyear Space Blasters ride, which looked like it was bumper cars that shot nerf balls, but after waiting 15 minutes that they couldn’t get the ride to run, we gave up. At this point, DD was getting tired. (I point out it was now about 9:15 PM, making it 2 hours later than when she fell apart the night before.) So, we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel.

Overall, DD had a lot of fun at DisneyQuest, and I even would admit I wouldn’t have minded spending a little more time there, but at $35 or whatever full price was, not so much. They really, really, really need to update this place.

The Good
A decompress day is always a good thing!
Pirate Cruise and swimming at the resort
A fun evening at Disney Quest

The Bad
Another hour and a half spent fixing DME/MB problems. Not how I want to spend my vacation.

The Ugly
I want Pleasure Island back!!!

 

[STLMickeyMom]

That pirate adventure DD did looks really fun! I've read about it and thought it looked pretty cute and a nice time for parents to relax!

Your CBR pics look so pretty!

DD looks so happy at legoland! My DH and oldest spent quite some time in there too. My DH has quite the Lego collection and the girls have started on theirs too. (House full of stuff everywhere? I can relate!)

Your dinner sounds nice. Your appetizer looks tasty!

Oh, Disney Quest.... We were going to go and skipped it. We were just too tired. I'd like to try it sometime, but I think the only thing we really want to do is play fix it Felix. Also--I don't know that I want to pay for the girls to get in...why cant they give you a free pass for your whole family, not just for 2?

I like your goofy pictures! They are both better than I could do. Did you get a paper copy of them or just have to take a picture?

Sounds like a pretty fun night!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Fantastic decompression day. Pity about your magic band experience. So far, if we were basing it on your experience with it, I would rate it a 3 out of 10.

Glad that you and DD got to go and enjoy DQ. I agree - there are some very retro things in there.

 

[JulieODC]

There is nothing quite as relaxing as a hammock!

Nice review of Bongos --- I'm not sure I have ever seen a review of Bongos actually, so it was fun to see that! The bar seats were fun

 

[Tinker326]

I should have looked into some pirate cruise for Sarah- she would have loved it. Hopefully next time we go, she'll still be young enough to love it!

Bongos looked very very good. I'd never in a million years get anyone in my family to eat there, but perhaps in some distant 'adult only' trip again... I'll give it a whirl. I have lots of resturants in line for that time.

Disney Quest does seems a bit outdated. But then video games were never my thing.... My kids would probably love it. And hubby too......

 

[khertz]

It's nice to have a relaxing day during a Disney trip! DD seems like she had a good time on the pirate adventure. It's so good that they still have little activities like that for the kids that don't cost a ton.

UGH, Magic Band issues...the one and only reason I can't let myself get too excited about our upcoming onsite stay. I'm so worried about MB issues! And with it only being a really short trip, I definitely don't want to waste a ton of our time getting those issues straightened out. Hopefully by May, they will have tightened up some!

I'm not a huge fan of DTD either, mostly because the only store I'm interested in shopping at or buying anything from is World of Disney, and it's always chaos in there!

 

[skier_pete]

That pirate adventure DD did looks really fun! I've read about it and thought it looked pretty cute and a nice time for parents to relax!

Your CBR pics look so pretty!

DD looks so happy at legoland! My DH and oldest spent quite some time in there too. My DH has quite the Lego collection and the girls have started on theirs too. (House full of stuff everywhere? I can relate!)

Your dinner sounds nice. Your appetizer looks tasty!

Oh, Disney Quest.... We were going to go and skipped it. We were just too tired. I'd like to try it sometime, but I think the only thing we really want to do is play fix it Felix. Also--I don't know that I want to pay for the girls to get in...why cant they give you a free pass for your whole family, not just for 2?

I like your goofy pictures! They are both better than I could do. Did you get a paper copy of them or just have to take a picture?

Sounds like a pretty fun night!

I can see where they still get people through DisneyQuest. It would still be fun for kids, and even was for adults. It's just sad that the technology is so dated. Disney World usually does such a good job of not feeling dated.

Fantastic decompression day. Pity about your magic band experience. So far, if we were basing it on your experience with it, I would rate it a 3 out of 10.

Glad that you and DD got to go and enjoy DQ. I agree - there are some very retro things in there.

Well, I wouldn't quite rate them that low. From this point forward, we had no more problems with the bands, and when they work, they are great. Overall, I still like them and would like to use them again (not that we'll have a choice), so maybe rate them a 7 out of 10.

There is nothing quite as relaxing as a hammock!

Nice review of Bongos --- I'm not sure I have ever seen a review of Bongos actually, so it was fun to see that! The bar seats were fun

Thanks, it's true you don't hear much about it. While I wouldn't go out of my way for it, if someone in your party wants to try it, I wouldn't say no. I think they have music on Saturday nights, too, which would've added a lot to the atmosphere!

I should have looked into some pirate cruise for Sarah- she would have loved it. Hopefully next time we go, she'll still be young enough to love it!

Bongos looked very very good. I'd never in a million years get anyone in my family to eat there, but perhaps in some distant 'adult only' trip again... I'll give it a whirl. I have lots of resturants in line for that time.

Disney Quest does seems a bit outdated. But then video games were never my thing.... My kids would probably love it. And hubby too......

I wish I could go on the pirate cruise. But the hammock (and a puzzle book) was a good alternative.

DQ is definitely great for kids/dad. It's a great place to send us so you can get some shopping done. (DW I think spent a small fortune while we were in there.)

It's nice to have a relaxing day during a Disney trip! DD seems like she had a good time on the pirate adventure. It's so good that they still have little activities like that for the kids that don't cost a ton.

UGH, Magic Band issues...the one and only reason I can't let myself get too excited about our upcoming onsite stay. I'm so worried about MB issues! And with it only being a really short trip, I definitely don't want to waste a ton of our time getting those issues straightened out. Hopefully by May, they will have tightened up some!

I'm not a huge fan of DTD either, mostly because the only store I'm interested in shopping at or buying anything from is World of Disney, and it's always chaos in there!

I wouldn't sweat the MB. A lot of our problems were due to the fact we had two reservations and the package started late in the trip, but we picked up the tickets early. I think if you just have a straight up trip you will be fine.

BTW - how'd I miss that you added a spring trip! LUCKY! We actually have a weekend trip booked for next fall for just the two of us - but I haven't really talked about it because I seriously doubt it will actually happen - the money just isn't there this year - but I can't bring myself to cancel it just yet.

New update coming!

 

[skier_pete]

Today was our planned for our one day at Disney Hollywood Studios. We are NOT a big fan of DHS, but there are certainly a few must do rides! And the #1 of those is Toy Story Mania. We used to manage to get three rides in on this one, one at rope drop, and one with a FP. We were hoping to continue this streak, with one rope drop, one FP, and one FP+.

Well, bus karma was well against us this morning. I may have mentioned this before, but starting today, we seemed to have a streak of incredibly bad morning bus karma, and incredibly good evening bus karma. Today was far and away the worst. We arrived at the bus stop at about 8:05 AM, and as it happened as we were walking to the bus we saw a DHS bus just pulling away. Well, we figured, no biggie we would get another one in about 15 minutes.

So we waited, and waited, other buses came and went. Every other park bus came at least THREE times, and no DHS bus. Finally at about 8:35 AM the bus showed up. I was going nuts by this point, because the ONE day that rope drop is CRITICAL is DHS day! (As a side note, this same thing happened the next THREE days in a row – where we waited for multiple buses, just not our bus. Every day was a different park, too. Just weird bad karma! What did we do wrong!)

So then we get on the bus, and the driver has to be the SLOWEST driver in history. At every stop he didn’t just open the doors, he opened the doors, and got off the bus, and looked for people to get on the bus. We luckily didn’t get a wheelchair/ECV, but it took FOREVER to get going, and then he drove sooo slow. We ended up getting off the bus at DHS right at 9 AM – over 50 minutes after we arrived at the bus stop. (Now I’m sure the anti-bus folks will chime in, but really overall I much prefer the buses over having a car, even for these occasional “bad” experiences.)



So, we got through the gates and headed for TSM. Because of the lateness, we decided to get right in line for the ride – which now had a 40 minute wait. I was still all agitated, because while my plans are usually very rigid, DHS tends to be a “clockwork” plan because there are so many scheduled shows. The delay did cause us to not do some things we otherwise would have, but I eventually calmed down. (I will admit I was higher agitated than I should’ve been over this…I think the problems of Monday at MVMCP and the Magic Band problems we were having had left me higher strung than I usually am by this point in the trip.)

I should also mention at this stage that it was a cold and windy day. DW and DD were wearing pants and a sweatshirt. I refused to wear long pants, and started out the day in only a T-shirt, but being as I knew were going to be out after dark I had to buy a sweatshirt at some point during the day!

Anyways, all the extra time in the queue gave me a chance to take some pictures. (Silver lining sort of.)



I had never noticed how the etch-a-sketch does a series of challenges and puzzles – again, we usually fly through the queue pretty quickly!





The actual wait time was only about 30 minutes, and the ride as usual was a lot of fun. We pulled a set of paper FPs at the end. They were for a return time of 7:40 PM (the park closed at 8 PM), meaning that paper FPs were almost out already at 9:40 AM. I knew it was unlikely we would use them, but took them anyways.

The original plan was to have DW and DD see the 9:40 AM Disney Jr show while I did the ToT and RnRC combo, but that was out the window, so we decided that we would do our first Star Tours ride of the day. At this time, the wait was minimal:







Next we headed over to Muppets 3-D. This is a favorite of DW. I love the Muppets, and though I don’t think the show is great – I know it is the last Muppet thing Jim Henson was involved with, and do enjoy it. DD “hates” it because she hates all things 3-D.





We continued to have bad timing, as we went in just as the pre-show was starting. In fact, we saw parts of it we had never seen before! It gave me lots more time for pictures:







I have a box of this stuff at work.



PIGS IN SPAAAAAAACE!



By the time we got out of here, it was close to time for the Indiana Jones stunt show. I had used one of our three FP+ for this show, thinking that FP+ would have its own section and be prime seating. WRONG-O! FP+ seating went in exactly the same as everyone else. (I don’t know if we had gotten there earlier if they would’ve let us in first.) But again, FP+ for a show proves to be a waste of time.

Love the Indiana Jones Stunt show. Even though we didn’t get there early, we ended up down in the third row, so we had really prime seats anyways.











After the show let out, we still had some time before lunch, so I suggested we make due with our earlier plan of DW and DD doing the Disney Junior show, and I ride ToT and RnRC. (As an unapologetic Disney geek and a big kid at heart, I love pretty much everything at Disney World – but I just CAN’T STAND the Disney Junior show. I have now seen it probably 8 times in all different permutation and I hope to never, ever, ever see it again. DD refuses to grow out of it even though she’s 10, so I make DW take her.)

First up – Tower of Terror – about a 5 minute wait! (Even though the sign said twenty minutes)









I always end up riding next to someone that has never ridden before, and did again! Next up was RnRC, where I took advantage of single rider.



As usual, fun ride but again too short. I took this picture below because after a couple of visits to Disneyland, it was interesting to note the ORIGINAL in-park Carthay Circle theater is much smaller than the one out west.



To be continued!

 

[Tinker326]

I am kinda giggling over your agitated state because only a true fellow Type A personality person who is a Dis geek as well would get it. And I totally do & spend lots of (unwilling) time in this state too when things are NOT GOING AS PLANNED!!!! I really did try hard to curb mine this trip and just 'let it go' because I end up pissed off pretty fast over stupid stuff. I did good for me.. I am proud of myself.

I love muppets too- for the nostolgia factor & becasue those two old guys crack me up.

I liked new Star Wars ride. We didn't get to Indy show this time... and I also despise Playhouse Disney. I won't even let my kids do it- that's how much I hate it! Thankfully my two older ones didn't care this trip and Charlie was oblivious to what it was.... definite score for me!

Hollywood Tower of Terror. My fave ride at all of WDW. Wish it wasn't at HS since I don't care much for that park either!

Good update. Stop now though. Till I can catch up. Ha!

 

[skier_pete]

I am kinda giggling over your agitated state because only a true fellow Type A personality person who is a Dis geek as well would get it. And I totally do & spend lots of (unwilling) time in this state too when things are NOT GOING AS PLANNED!!!! I really did try hard to curb mine this trip and just 'let it go' because I end up pissed off pretty fast over stupid stuff. I did good for me.. I am proud of myself.

I love muppets too- for the nostolgia factor & becasue those two old guys crack me up.

I liked new Star Wars ride. We didn't get to Indy show this time... and I also despise Playhouse Disney. I won't even let my kids do it- that's how much I hate it! Thankfully my two older ones didn't care this trip and Charlie was oblivious to what it was.... definite score for me!

Hollywood Tower of Terror. My fave ride at all of WDW. Wish it wasn't at HS since I don't care much for that park either!

Good update. Stop now though. Till I can catch up. Ha!

Oh no, I'm not letting you get ahead! You have a whole extra week coming up to pass me by! I'm looking forward to reading our overlapping sections with

A Snake birthday party. Holy moly, DW would veto that in 5 seconds flat! I wonder if Sarah and DD will room-mate in college when they go to zookeeper school.

I really mostly try and "go with the flow" (I especially did this when our families got together at MK.) I am a big-time rope drop person and I get very stressed over it in the morning. As the day goes on, I care less about timing and schedules and relax. Then the next morning it starts all over again.

And the whole Toy Story Mania thing makes this my most stressed about rope drop. DW is in agreement, but doesn't get as stressed. It's why the rest of the trip we were down for the bus at 8 AM. We didn't miss any other rope drops after that!

Tower of Terror is my #2 ride, with Splash Mountain still #1. ToT would win, except it is much too short, and length weighs heavily on my grading system, making all the more impressive that ToT holds onto #2. (In case you were curious: #3 Expedition Everest, #4 Haunted Mansion, #5 Soarin' - unless you let me include Disneyland - then Radiator Springs Racers is #1 and DLs Space Mountain slots in at #5.)

 

[PrincessInOz]

I would have been agitated with waiting for the bus as well; especially when so many other buses had come and gone for the other parks.

Still....sounds like you got a good number of rides in.

DS never cared much for 3D Muppets nor Disney Jr characters; so that part of the park was always a miss for us.


And I will share that my MB experience was a 9 out of 10. The only hiccup we had was with the MNSSHP ticket; but you can wait to find all that out as it unfolds over the next few months.

 

[Tinker326]

So let's see- my #1 would be ToT, #2 (very close 2nd) is Everest, #3 is Soarin' (although I would like to see a digital upgrade), #4 is Splash (it ranks ONLY as #4 because of the drop at the end- I don't like getting wet but LOVE the story in the ride) & #5 is Pirates. Oldy but goody.

If I could throw in Disneyland, I would put Haunted Mansion in place of Everest (#2) but with the Halloween overlay which was AMAZING.

 

[Tinker326]

So.. .um.. yhea.. I just pulled ahead.



Get with it!