From Ragged to Royal...Two sisters journey. Sept 2015

[disneyaddicted]

We had our own little corner roped off for us, it was at the very end of the route right across from the barber shop. We love the parades at Disney, we always stake our viewing spot out an hour prior, we watch for our favorite characters and try to get great pictures of them. A lot of time is spent missing the parade while trying to get the perfect shot and that's not even guaranteed. This day Bo and I were able to just watch and enjoy, we told Andrew ahead of time what we were excited to see most, and who our favorite characters were, he did a phenomenal job of capturing all our favorites. Bo and I were so into watching the parade that we forgot to turn around and let Andrew get pictures of us, but he still recorded some great memories for us.
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We had a lot of interactions with the characters.
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Bo was making fish lips in this picture and mimicking this guy. I wish I had a picture of her face.
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He's looking at Bo like "Lunch"
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Minnie had pointed to my shirt and then held her heart, I think she liked that I was representing her.
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There are so many pictures, I wish I could post them all, Andrew had taken well over a 150 pictures.
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This was by far the best parade ever. When it was over we were presented with a certificate each with the date and our names, we were also given a free 5x7 each of our choice out of all the pictures that were taken by Andrew and an any time fast pass.
Bo and I said our goodbyes to Mindy and Andrew then headed back to Fantasyland, we had tons of time left in the day and we planned to cram more fun into it.

 

[BoBippity]

omgosh Ty! It's so great to read about and see the pics of our trip agin, I remember it like it was yesterday, and my face is hurting from smiling so much. ( I must confess, i'm concerned that all future trips may pale in comparison to this one...but then again, maybe each trip will be better than the one before)

 

[DisneyJo]

Oh wow what an amazing experience

 

[disneyaddicted]

We had fast passes that we needed to use, we had missed our first fast pass for the speedway we discussed using our any time fast pass but decided to save it for something else later. We FP for 7DMT starting at 4:20 so we happily made our way to the ride. I was a bit nervous for this ride, I had read that the seating was tight and I had put on some weight, what if I didn't fit? or what if I did fit but then got stuck? the fear was real. The FP line was...well it was fast, we didn't have time to take pictures of stuff and we said we would have to ride it again standby so that we could get some fun pictures. It was our time to ride, I stepped into my mine cart and I didn't have to wiggle and squirm to get in, I didn't feel wedged at all. the ride left the terminal and Bo and I screamed with excitement, we tried to sing the Hi Ho song but really didn't know the words, at times the ride is really fast and the cart swings side to side, then it slows down.
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http://vid177.photobucket.com/albums/w227/Disneyaddicted/MK_MINETRAIN_7463201428.mp4 <<<<Click this link for the video
This was a fun ride, all in all though I didn't think it was worth the posted 85 minute standby time, I would ride it again if the wait wasn't long, it was cute but too short.
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Our time in the mines were over, I will say visually it is a beautiful ride. Disney never cuts corners when in comes to that.
The sky was starting to get a little dark, we wanted to go visit Gaston and pick up some Lafus Brew, (I'm sure I spelled that wrong) There was a photoPass CM by 7DMT so we stopped to get a picture, I was really starting to look rough by then.
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The look on Bo's face, lol. The photographer took forever to take the picture, he said he was waiting for the train to come so he could get it in the picture, he finally got it and was so excited. I didn't like it, so it's not posted.
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We tanked him for his time. It had started to sprinkle by then and was a full on down pour by the time we got to Gastons, Florida weather doesn't play around.
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Gaston disappeared but his little tavern filled up quickly. Most people were in there just to escape the rain, Bo and I got our brew and a caramel bun to split, we couldn't find seating inside so we found a table out in the rain, it had an umbrella over it so we set up camp. Not too far into our snack a family of 3 came to our table and set up camp as well, from their conversation they were not American, I'm thinking maybe German. I was not happy, I thought it was rude, had they asked or made a gesture like "Is it ok to share your table" I would have said yes, I don't know, call me mean, but I just thought they rude. They ate quick and left all their garbage for us to clean up. After 30 minutes of rain without any signs of it letting up we went into the little shop to buy a poncho. We waited in line for a long time, finally it was our turn and the CM helped the person who just walked up at that minute instead of helping me who was next and had waited, usually things like this don't bother me, I think I was tired and in an ill mood cause of the rain. I spoke up and said, "I thought I was next in line." The CM ignored me but there was another CM who wasn't working the register who came over and helped me and Bo, she apologized to us and I felt kind of dumb, I made the decision to just roll with whatever happens. I should be happy regardless because I was at Disney and the morning and early afternoon was perfect, the rain held off and didn't ruin the parade. So with poncho on and my umbrella over head we walked to Little Mermaids under the sea adventure. We had a fast pass for it but really didn't need it. once we got under cover we took of our ponchos, let me tell you those things are like a sauna, they hold in all kinds of heat, we had said earlier in the planning stages that we wouldn't do ponchos for that reason and just use our umbrellas, but we didn't take into consideration that some times it rains sideways in Florida.

 

[disneyaddicted]

I love the queue for this ride just as much as the ride itself. It's fun and interactive, the line moved so fast, actually there wasn't a line we just walked and walked until we got to our clam mobile, we tried taking lots of pictures but it's hard to do when you can't use a flash, the one selfie we got you can't even tell what it is.
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I mostly took video in here because pictures can't do it justice, and one day I will be tech savy enough to post them...one day...maybe.
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I'm pretty sure I didn't take the 2 pictures poste above, they were in my photobucket so I'm using them. It's a cute ride, a must do for every trip.
After this we decided to go pick our free 5x7, so up to the front of the park we went. The CM that helped us was really cool and super patient, we both kept going back and forth on the ones we wanted, in the end we ended up getting one of us in the grand marshall car, she added a cute border to it. we also got to look at all of our photpass pictures take up till that point. The computer froze just as we were wrapping things up so we got to hear the woman next to us throw a fit about how much money she spent at CRT and didn't get anything for free. She had an accent so my spelling is not wrong, I'm just using phonics, so try and read this with an English accent.

Tourist: Ah wes told Iah was to get a frey peckcha, ah got nowtheeng, ah wont me frey peckcha coz ah speent alo a mowney.

CM: they aren't doing the pictures anymore.

Tourist: Yes they AW, they took me peckcha awnd wheen ah asked fo me frey peckcha they told me to come heya.

CM: yes they still take your picture for the memory maker but you have to purchase it.

Tourist: No ah wes told it wes frey, ah spent alo a mowney, ah wont me frey peckcha.
The CM got a manager who told her to just give her a picture, so that's what the CM did, gave her the 4x6 picture that you used to get for free.
Tourist: Wot ees thes? Ah wes told ah Would get a 5x7 peckcha weth a frem.

This went back and forth for some time, they ended up giving her the 5x7 as well but told her if she wanted a frame she would have to purchase one. The rest of the day I would tell Bo that I wanted to look at peckcha frems. An argument with an English accent is so pretty. Had that same argument happened with a person from Brogue Pa it would have sounded more like.

HEY, I was toad I'd get a free fye by sem pitcher and a frame too aint?

That whole thing had taken about an hour, we shopped a little bit but we didn't buy anything we weren't too sure of what to do next, the rain had stopped so we put all our gear away and headed to the back of the park, Mickeys Philharmagic, my favorite show at MK, it always makes me tear up. I love the music, the smells, the wind in my hair, the groovy glasses
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just kidding, they're not that groovy.
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I love this theater, it's so fancy.
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I bet you're wondering if we sang all the songs? Well wonder no more...we sang ALL of them and we sang them with pride, we sang them like we were good singers, we were Diva's. We got looked at, the kind of look when somebody feels sorry for you, but we kept singing from the depths our souls and the frogs in our throats. From the very first note to the last, we sang. I didn't even blink an eye when I got splashed in the face by champagne bottles bursting their cork, Bo did though, she yelled, woo! then laughed. When the show was over we gathered up our things and decided it was time for supper. We wanted to try something new, really most of it was still new for Bo it only being her 2nd trip but I had always stuck to the tried and true, I wanted something else, so we went to Cosmic rays, I had read somewhere that their greek salads were pretty good. in trying to keep costs down we split a salad but it was more than enough, the salad was huge, plus we each had our packets of Tuna to add to it, I think the flavor that night was lemon pepper. Oh my goodness was it ever good. I'm hungry now.
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We had also asked for cups of ice water, the water tasted nasty so we added some flavoring brought from home, it was ok. We sat back eating our salad and enjoying the musical stylings of this alien guy.
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[disneyaddicted]

omgosh Ty! It's so great to read about and see the pics of our trip agin, I remember it like it was yesterday, and my face is hurting from smiling so much. ( I must confess, i'm concerned that all future trips may pale in comparison to this one...but then again, maybe each trip will be better than the one before)

I have the same worry, but we'll just have to make each trip special in it's own way, we can't compare any trips to each other. Besides it's nice saying it was once in a life time, if every trip were like that it would be monotonous and that's no fun, so here's to our next trip, new memories to be made, new magi to be found.

Oh wow what an amazing experience

It was totally amazing, I think sharing it with my sister just added to it because Bo is always excited. Thank you for reading.

 

[BoBippity]

I don't know what you're talking about...i sang well and sounded great!

 

[disneyaddicted]

I don't know what you're talking about...i sang well and sounded great!

Oh Bo, my dear sweet sister.....NOPE

 

[disneyaddicted]

After dinner we walked around a bit, did some people watching and slowly made our way to the castle front to wait for the evenings show of wishes. The electric parade was scheduled to come through before then, the place we had staked out was far back from the parade route and we knew this, our plans were to catch that parade on another night from our favorite parade viewing spot across from Liberty Tree Tavern, that night was just about the castle show and wishes. Other people were not aware that that particular spot would not allow them to see the parade, they were pretty upset when a CM came through and let them know. We waited about an hour when the parade finally started, we were able to see the tops of the high floats, Bo tried taking pictures, I didn't cause I knew we'd have prime viewing on another night so why bother.
Bo did manage to get this great picture of Mickey.
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Eventually the castle show started, it was pretty crowded, I had staked a spot out near a trash can to keep my personal space from being invaded, it helped some. My camera did not do to well with capturing pictures, they all turned out pretty blurry, I had better luck with my cell phone. The firework pictures were all crummy.
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And our only barely decent shot of the fireworks
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As soon as wishes was over we high tailed it out of there in hopes that we would not have a long wait for the bus back to AoA. This is always the worst part of staying till park close and that's the fighting the crowd to get out, my anxiety rears it's ugly head, I have to just grab on to the back of Bo's shirt, put my head down and let her lead the way. once we were outside of the park it was less crowded as people were breaking off into different directions for different modes of transportation back to their resorts. The line for the bus was long but it moved quickly and I'd say were on a bus, standing room only, and headed back to AoA within 15 minutes of getting in line. When we got back to our resort we didn't stop in the store but made it to our room as quickly as possible so we could get in some pool time, which we did. we only had about a half hour but it was enough to cool us down and give our muscles some relief from a long day of walking. Back in the room Bo did some journaling and I updated facebook with this picture.
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We then got ready for our next park day, Animal Kingdom, of course we wanted to make rope drop so we set 3 alarms just to be sure.
I have to share this picture
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Mousekeeping at this point was no longer doing towel animals but they did origami our tushy paper.

 

[Steppesister]

Finally caught up, My Dear. Such a lovely day all in all. But OY! Yeah, that's rude to hork your table and then leave their trash. WTH?! No. Just no. I might have said something.

Nice touch on the tushy paper. Not seen that before, and only a 2nd best to towels, but hey, still a nice touch.

 

[disneyaddicted]

September 17th, Day 3 of our vacation, day 2 for parks. Animal Kingdom. It was a busy day, we had a lot of plans one of them being lunch at Tusker House, this would be new for both of us. We didn't waste time, we were all business that morning. In hindsight I wish I would have stopped to look in the mirror, maybe I would have realized that the shirt I was wearing was hideous. I've since donated it, I don't know what made me think I could get away with that style of shirt.
We tried to plan our days according to the crowd calendar, AK wasn't supposed to be busy that day, the line for the bus to go there said otherwise. Standing room only, we could have waited for the next bus but that might have interfered with rope drop. We talked all the way there which helped make the ride go faster. We exited the bus and were walking pretty darn fast, rope drop was soon, we were cutting it close, we didn't want to miss it, but then we saw the photographer and decided to stop for a few pictures, we had paid for memory maker and wanted to get as many pictures as possible.
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I have to applaud Bo, this was the first time she had ever worn a Mickey Mouse shirt, and she totally rocked it!
We gathered up our stuff and started walking to the park again but stopped right by the little gift shop, we heard a lady talking to a CM about her daughters Daisy Duck doll that they had dropped somewhere between the busses and the front of the park, she was retracing her footsteps. Bo and I had seen the doll on the ground, we were going to pick it up and turn it in but the person in front of us grabbed it and put it in their bag. We told the lady we had seen the doll and no kidding within a few seconds that the person who had picked up the doll came over with it, she had gone to a different CM to turn it in and they redirected her back to the mom looking for it. Another Disney happy ending.
It was hot that day, well it was hot every day, but this day was extra muggy, it was cloudy and hazy, the jungle environment of Animal Kingdom just adds to the heaviness of the air. We had made it for rope drop sort of, we were at the back end of it but we still had plenty of time to do what we wanted before our 11:15am ADR. We stopped in front of the Tree of life for our next picture.
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Our first official business of the day was to explore the tree of life up close and then go inside for it's tough to be a bug. It wasn't busy there at all, most of the rope drop people headed straight back for the Safari or over to Expedition Everest. We were able to take our time exploring. One thing we had noticed was that there were now nets overhead as you walk down further into the tree. On our trip in 2011 they didn't have that, Bo happened to be looking up at the tree when something fell and hit her in the face, she had a nice little bruise for a few days after that. We were wondering if that's why the nets went up, maybe it had happened to other people as well?
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Down, Down, Down further into the depths of the tree we went. Nobody in front of us, nobody behind us. I set up my camera to take a picture of us.
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This photo opp never gets old, I have a picture taken here with this guy from all of my trips.
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This was however the first time I ever kissed him. I know you're wondering if I disinfected my lips after, the answer is yes, with hand sanitizer. It kind of burned, that's how I know it was working. lol

 

[disneyaddicted]

Finally caught up, My Dear. Such a lovely day all in all. But OY! Yeah, that's rude to hork your table and then leave their trash. WTH?! No. Just no. I might have said something.

Nice touch on the tushy paper. Not seen that before, and only a 2nd best to towels, but hey, still a nice touch.

I appreciated the effort with the tushy paper. It was a nice touch.

 

[disneyaddicted]

We donned our super cool bug glasses
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and then went into the theater, we found seats near the middle, the thing with 3-D is you don't want to be too far away or too close, both can ruin the effect. We settled in for our bug experience. I had a lot of little surprises planned for Bo on this trip, I was about to pull one off here. When it got to the part where all the bees are buzzing around in your face I reached my hand out and grabbed at them then whispered to Bo, "Got one" I then opened my hand to show her.
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I knew Bo would appreciate this, we are both sentimental saps and love to give cute gifts and small reminders of special things and events. I had spent many nights online looking for things that would coincide with parts of this trip, the bumble bee ring was one of my first purchases. She put the ring on and gave me a hug. I had done something else like that earlier, but forgot to give it to her right away, it was a necklace with a blue fake gem inside a silver bottle, I was supposed to give it to her after we rode the mine train at MK and tell her that I had done some mining when she wasn't looking, but due to the days events I had completely forgotten about it and ended up giving it to her at the resort later. But anyway, I remembered this time and Bo was tickled pink. We think a lot alike, she also brought little prizes for me too but they were in the form of scrapbook stickers and die cuts pertaining to our trip. I love my sister. Now back to the show. I always sit on the edge of my seat for this one, not because it's an edge of your seat kind of show, it's a cute show, but I sit on the edge to keep from being poked in my back and stung on my bum by all the little tree critters. When the show was over we exited the tree into the middle of a major down pour. We took a few minutes to put our ponchos on and then headed to Africa.

 

[Whit64130]

Joining in for the TR! This sounds like an awesome trip! So exciting to be the grand marshals! I also went this past September. I don't have a sister But I have a cousin who shares my love of Disney. This was our "one time whatever we want to do trip." It was so much fun we are planning another this year! Can't wait to read more!!

 

[disneyaddicted]

Joining in for the TR! This sounds like an awesome trip! So exciting to be the grand marshals! I also went this past September. I don't have a sister But I have a cousin who shares my love of Disney. This was our "one time whatever we want to do trip." It was so much fun we are planning another this year! Can't wait to read more!!

As long as you have somebody that shares your love of Disney it's always a good time. Bo and I really splurged on this trip but all the extra magic gifted to us through out this trip by the CM's just completely set this trip over the top for us. Thank you for reading, I will update again real soon.

 

[Shelbizzles]

Following along. Great report so far
My husband and I were there with his family the 22nd-30th!

 

[BoBippity]

Ty, too much to quote and like, so I'm just adding... you did an amazing job making this trip special. I fall short, but you love me anyway and keep right on sharing all that Disney magic! I love that ring...i still wear it! You kissed a lot of stuff on this trip, I think we, and by" we" I mean "you" should do a whole series ... "things TY kissed at Disney"

 

[Steppesister]

We went through the door and was met by the wardrobe and another CM, they had planned to surprise Belle by retelling the story of how she met the Beast, parts and props were handed out to the crowd, Bo and I were to play the parts of the audience, that's just a more exciting way of saying we didn't get picked to be in the show. We went into the library and took our seats. Limier was there.

This is one thing I haven't gotten to do yet... it's one of the top things on my list of to-dos!

then the CM said it's not cutting if you move forward to fill in the spaces if the people in front of you do not, so Bo and I made the decision to move up but not cut, we probably shaved a good 10 to 15 minutes off our weight time by doing so, we gave the people in front of us a chance to move forward, their lack of following the rules was our gain.

Just follow directions, People! Really, they know what they're doing.

I LOVE this shot!

Tourist: Ah wes told Iah was to get a frey peckcha, ah got nowtheeng, ah wont me frey peckcha coz ah speent alo a mowney.

CM: they aren't doing the pictures anymore.

Tourist: Yes they AW, they took me peckcha awnd wheen ah asked fo me frey peckcha they told me to come heya.

CM: yes they still take your picture for the memory maker but you have to purchase it.

Hilarious! OY!

 

[disneyaddicted]

I'm sorry that I have been MIA, Ive had a few health issues, all is well, I'm just busy getting my ducks lined up. I will be having surgery Mid July and plan to use my recovery time to get a lot of this trip report done, I mean shoot, my next trip is just around the corner. Anyway, I will try to update before my surgery, hopefully this weekend.

 

[Steppesister]

Hope you're feeling better and that your surgery goes very well!! Healing prayers for you Ty!