Here we gooooo! A November 2013 TR {Update 4/23: The Last Installment}

[happybelle]

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

[kayemgi]

We hopped back on the boat to go back the Marketplace and headed over to the LEGO Imagination Center first because that's what DH was most excited for. We wandered around there for a bit and also wandered a bit aimlessly around Team Mickey and Once Upon a Toy.

Outside Once Upon a Toy, wearing my Mickey tie-dye!

Then we headed into World of Disney for our first pass through that enormous store! I knew it was going to take two tries to figure out what I wanted to buy there. A first pass to check everything out, then go to other stores to make sure I didn't want anything else more, and then back to make purchases.

Can you see the Hidden Mickey?

There is so much to see in World of Disney! Even besides merchandise, just the displays and the wall art are so amazing. So we looked around there for quite awhile and scouted out a few Hidden Mickeys before we moved on to other stores.

I thought these black and white plush dolls were so cute!

I loved the mosaics in the World of Disney villains room.

Can you see the Hidden Mickey?

We also asked if they had any Wall-E merchandise. DH had said a few times before the trip that he wanted to find something Wall-E related. But alas, they didn't have anything. We went to the Days of Christmas Store and we picked out an ornament with Mickey and Minnie riding a reindeer. By that point DH felt he was needing a break so he said down on a bench outside while I went into Mickey's Pantry and picked out Mickey glove chip clips, an adorable Mickey mouse ears gingerbread man cookie cutter that came with gingerbread cookie mix (that I could have lived without but there was no other way to get the cookie cutter, which I NEEDED; we do gingerbread men cookies as a tradition every year and this cookie cutter was too cute), and a Stitch coffee mug, just because I liked the starry background and the picture of Stitch they used for it was adorable. Stitch can go either way for me, but when he's cute he's really cute!

I wandered through the Pin Store and marveled at the cost of those things and was grateful I didn't ever get into pin trading, and through Mickey's Mart, where I didn't see much of interest. We went back to World of Disney to get this Mickey sweater that I knew I could not live without. It was a tough call between Mickey, Minnie and Goofy, but I decided that indecision goes to Mickey. Then we went back to Once Upon a Toy to ask if they had anything, anything at all Wall-E related. We didn't have much hope since the monstrosity that is World of Disney didn't have anything. But Once Upon a Toy had exactly ONE Wall-E thing! It was this cute Christmas ornament. DH was on the fence since we had already picked out a Christmas ornament earlier, but I quickly overruled him. You can never have too many Christmas ornaments and I knew it would make him happy!

Mrs. Potato Head in Once Upon A Toy

Mrs. Potato Head's Hidden Mickey

We weren't that hungry but we had run out of things we wanted to do (with one exception and I'll get to that later) and I really had my heart set on experiencing T-Rex Cafe, so we headed in that direction. We walked over to Raglan Road first to see if they had anything cool for DH's super-into-their-Irish-heritage family, but their selection was disappointing. It looked like the main shop was under construction and they only had a little area under a tent while we were there, so maybe that was why. We headed back to T-Rex and were a bit taken aback at the already long line.

Jeep outside of T-Rex

Hidden Mickey inside the Jeep!

I think it was before 6:00 still. We looked around the gift shop and kind of scoped out the situation. Our plan all along had been to sit at the bar, but I was concerned that with the long line it wasn't going to be available. We asked at the host stand if we could just sit at the bar and they assured us that it was first come first served, so we headed over there and lucked out with two seats right at the end! I always prefer to sit at the end if I'm going to sit at the bar because you get to see all kinds of server activity down there. We saw a lot of yummy looking drinks go by us! We still weren't that hungry so we decided to share an appetizer and an entree. I got the Lava Flow (piña colada mixed with strawberry puree) and DH got a beer, and we shared the bruschetta appetizer and the fish tacos entree. I was prepared for TGIFriday's level cuisine, but everything was pretty delicious! Maybe because we had low expectations, but still. It was good and I'd definitely go back there. The atmosphere is amazing as well. It really has to be seen to be understood. The ice cave was especially cool looking, and I loved that there was a huge aquarium behind the bar. It was really, really fun, the highlight of our day.

Giant octopus hanging over the bar area in T-Rex.

Yet another Hidden Mickey!

The ice cave room.

After T-Rex, we wandered around the shops a little more, and finally headed over to Goofy's Candy Company to make some custom creations. DH had seen a clip of people doing this on one of the Disney Parks specials I DVR'd before our vacation and it became one of the things he wanted to do the most. He chose a gingerbread man cookie, and I did a "crisped rice treat." I guess Disney doesn't own Kellog's…yet. Unfortunately we missed most of the process of our treats being made because our cashier was very confused about how to use snack credits to pay for these. She eventually figured it out and was very apologetic about how long it took, so it was fine, but I was a little bummed that we didn't get to watch our treats get made! Oh well.

Finally it was time to head back to ASMu. It was standing room only on the bus, and boy is the trip from DTD to ASMu looooong. And SO MUCH TRAFFIC in the DTD area. AND, as packed as the bus was, the driver still made a stop at Pleasure Island, which took forever because I guess they were doing a shift change, even though no one else could possibly have boarded. Luckily for us this was by far our worst bus experience of the entire trip, and it wasn't really that terrible in retrospect. And it gave us very low expectations for using the buses the rest of the trip, so we were usually pleasantly surprised!

Up Next: Animal Kingdom!

 

[MeeskaMomma]

All caught up. Love all the hidden Mickeys! We weren't hugely impressed with downtown Disney but you made it look so fun! You brought up a good point about mugs. I didn't think of that. Can't wait to see more!

 

[STLMickeyMom]

LOVE all the hidden mickeys! I love finding them when we're there. when our kids get older, I want to get a book or the app for my phone and see how many we can find.

we have an ADR for t-rex the day we arrive. i'm glad you liked it. I've been wondering how good it would be. I think the kids will like the atmosphere either way, since they love rainforest café.

we love DTD but didn't have time to get over there on our last trip. all your pictures are making me even more excited to get there this trip!

 

[scrpbookr]

Great trip so far! Can't wait to read and see the rest!

 

[missangelalexis]

Love those Toy Story legos, so cute! And the pic of you and Buzz, the shirt looks great on you!

Glad you guys enjoyed T-Rex!

Mmm your treats look so delicious!!

Sounds like a great first day

 

[kayemgi]

All caught up. Love all the hidden Mickeys! We weren't hugely impressed with downtown Disney but you made it look so fun! You brought up a good point about mugs. I didn't think of that. Can't wait to see more!

Thanks! I don't think we'd make DTD a must-visit every trip, but it was definitely fun and we got a lot of our shopping done in one go, which was nice.

LOVE all the hidden mickeys! I love finding them when we're there. when our kids get older, I want to get a book or the app for my phone and see how many we can find.

we have an ADR for t-rex the day we arrive. i'm glad you liked it. I've been wondering how good it would be. I think the kids will like the atmosphere either way, since they love rainforest café.

we love DTD but didn't have time to get over there on our last trip. all your pictures are making me even more excited to get there this trip!

Yeah, we purchased the Hidden Mickeys app, but unfortunately it wasn't updated with New Fantasyland even though the website is. If I had known that, I would have just brought our book from two years ago, as it has all the same info.

Great trip so far! Can't wait to read and see the rest!

Thanks!

Love those Toy Story legos, so cute! And the pic of you and Buzz, the shirt looks great on you!

Glad you guys enjoyed T-Rex!

Mmm your treats look so delicious!!

Sounds like a great first day

Thank you!

 

[kayemgi]

The next morning we woke up feeling kind of crappy. Neither of us had slept very well. But we were super excited for our first ever visit to Animal Kingdom, so we got up when the alarms went off anyway! I had also set up a wake-up call just to hear it one morning, and we got Mike Wazowski calling to tell us to get up and enjoy this beautiful day at Disney!

I guess Mike didn't check the weather report, because it was very overcast and rain was moving our way.

We headed to the lobby and decided to quickly stop into the food court to grab some breakfast to go. I got a mini-loaf of banana bread and DH got an apple danish, with OJ for both of us. We headed out to the bus stop to eat while we waited and the bus arrived perfectly on time -- right as we finished up our breakfasts! I was glad we were following easyWDW's recommendation and heading to AK today -- the bus line for the AM EMH-having Hollywood Studios was HUGE. There were only two other people on the AK bus with us.

We arrived to AK very quickly, at about 8:20 am. We asked about the $1-per-open outside-the-park lockers that I had read about on the Touring Plans site -- TP said they would be "near the restrooms on the right before the entrance turnstiles" -- and either they've been removed or I'm a real dolt because I couldn't find them. I asked a CM and he directed me to the lockers inside the park. Oh well!

We got in line for entry and they started letting people in at 8:45. We scanned our Magic Bands with no problems and procured a locker, then we headed straight to Kilimanjaro Safaris. On the way there, a woman walking next to us asked me if we were on our honeymoon. "No, why?" I asked, surprised. She said I had such a big grin that we must be newlyweds! I told her I was just so excited to be visiting Animal Kingdom for the first time and she laughed with me.

We arrived at the Safari and boarded a vehicle with no waiting.

Guys.

This ride blew me away. It was so amazing! Disney did such a good job with making it look like there is nothing between you and the animals. We were so close to so many of them! I think it's one of the top five coolest things I've ever gotten to experience. (Number one is when we got to feed the giraffes at our local zoo. If your zoo ever has an opportunity like that, do it! It was so awesome.) The giraffes were (I think) the only animal we actually didn't get to see on the Safari. But we did see okapi (one of my favorites and so close!), bongos, hippos, pelicans, crocodiles, ankole cattle, an elephant, flamingos, both white and black rhinos, cheetahs, lions, warthogs, ostriches and addax, among others. Those are just what I managed to get photos of! My first impression of AK was soaring as high as Mount Everest at this point.

Up Next: Will the rain ruin our day?

 

[STLMickeyMom]

oohhhh, your safari pictures look awesome! I hope we see so many animals when we go!

 

[missangelalexis]

I'm glad you enjoyed KS, love the pics!

 

[kayemgi]

Sorry it's been so long without an update! Christmas really got the jump on me this year, with Thanksgiving being so late. I've been so busy and even though I've had this part written, I haven't had the time to go through the photos to go with it! Anyway, without further delay, here is Day 2, Part 2!

After we exited the Safari, it started to rain, so we changed our plans and decided to head to Rafiki's Planet Watch for a little while to try and stay dry. We had to wait a little while before they would even let us down the path to wait for the train, but luckily there was a little standing umbrella there, so we took cover and chatted with the CM manning the rope while we waited. Then we boarded the train and headed over. I knew from the DIS boards it was going to be a longish walk to the Conservation Station. It wasn't raining too heavily by this point but it wasn't a light rain either so we speed-walked as fast as we could! Finally we arrived at Conservation Station and I took some time scoping out the mural as I had read there were tons of Hidden Mickeys in the painting. Here are a few I found:

DH was getting impatient with me hovering at the entrance staring at the mural, so I finally joined him inside and we scoped out the exhibits. DH had fun playing with the behind-the-scenes cameras and he found the giraffes! They were in their barn. So we got to see them after all. Then Rafiki came out and DH wanted to get our photo with him, so we did. He was very sweet, and he liked my Pocahontas shirt a lot! His helper translated that he was telling me I should make sure to visit Pocahontas later in the day. I told him that was definitely part of our plans!

After meeting Rafiki we decided it was time to venture out into the rain again. Unfortunately it had only started raining more heavily. I decided it was time to bust out my poncho. DH was being macho and said he didn't want his. By the time we got to the train, he was putting it on! The rain was no joke.

We headed over to It's Tough to Be a Bug since it's another indoor attraction. It's a pretty cute little show, but I can see how it would be frightening for kids. Parts of it were a little intense! After that it was still raining and I was feeling pretty chilled so we walked over to our locker so I could grab my cardigan. I also dumped off our clearly unneeded sunscreen bottles. This was when I was glad that our locker was inside the park, just to save us that extra walking in the rain!

We had a FP+ for the 12:30 show of Festival of the Lion King, so we decided to grab some lunch at Flame Tree BBQ before heading over there. We both got the pulled pork sandwich, and thankfully the lady ahead of us had the foresight to ask the CM at the counter for some tin foil to cover their food on the exposed walk to the pavilion with seating for Flame Tree. I never would have thought to ask that and our food would have gotten all wet with how hard it was raining!

After lunch we headed to FOTLK, still in the rain. I felt like this was an unfortunate waste of a FP+. They send you in the exit right before they let the standby crowd in the entrance and tell you to sit anywhere. If you weren't there early, you'd be entering with all of the standby people anyway. I really feel like Disney is missing the mark on FP+ for shows. The bonus should be that you DON'T have to arrive early to get good seats. You should be able to arrive right before show time and get to sit in a reserved section. If you have to arrive 15-30 minutes early anyway, you might as well do standby.

Anyway, FP+ weaknesses aside, the show was awesome! We unknowingly sat in the lion section which of course is the best section! Haha I was glad we didn't have to bleat like sheep—I mean giraffes—anyway. I have never been a Cirque du Soleil person, but I felt this was very Cirque-like and I still really enjoyed it. Maybe because the story is such a familiar favorite. I even got a little emotional towards the end! Luckily DH was focused on the show so he didn't make fun of me for tearing up like he usually does.

Up Next: Angels sing down at us from heaven and we ride Expedition Everest for the first time!!

I hope everyone has been having a lovely holiday season and that if you are celebrating Christmas that it's wonderful! See ya real soon!

 

[STLMickeyMom]

Oh, darn rain! I'm glad you got foil to cover your food and didn't have to eat soggy sandwiches!

I showed our girls (who woke me up at the crack of dawn on a day we could all sleep in--kids!) the hidden Mickey pictures. They loved them and are very excited to look for hidden mickeys when we go now. I love the ones on the butterfly and the owl.

I'm so jealous you got to see FOTLK! It's going to close the day we get there so we won't see it. Oh well, I guess it's just something to look forward to next time.

Hope you have a Merry Christmas!

 

[kayemgi]

Yay I'm glad your girls are excited for Hidden Mickeys! They really are so fun to find and I think they just add another layer of Disney magic to everything. Apparently there are hundreds in that mural (that could be a slight exaggeration, but I could swear I read that somewhere) so you should definitely go to Conservation Station!

Aw that's a bummer about FOTLK. Just another reason you always have to plan another trip, right?! Disney knows what they're doing on that front.

Merry Christmas to you as well!

 

[missangelalexis]

Booo to the rain I like your picture with Rafiki! FOTLK is a great show and I'm glad you enjoyed it!!

 

[kayemgi]

Hi everyone! I hope you all had awesome holiday breaks. I know I did! But it's back to the grind, and back to this TR! I'm going to bang it out now, I promise, faster and more frequent updates. Happy reading!

We exited FOTLK to blue skies and beams of sunlight and angels singing Hallelujah from above! Ok, not really, it was still pretty cloudy but it had finally stopped raining, so that's what it felt like! I wanted to meet Pocahontas, but she wasn't out due to the earlier rain. I asked the CM in the area and she said to check back later. Unfortunately we never made it back.

It looked like either the easyWDW recommendation was right on, and/or the rain really scared people away. This is a pic of the walkways at about 1:30 in the afternoon:

We checked the showtimes for Flights of Wonder, as that was another top priority for us and it only has a few shows a day. We decided to hustle over for the 2 pm show, since the last one was a 3 pm and we didn't want to come back to the area at that time.

Red-Legged Seriema

Harris Hawk

Bald Eagle

Spectacled Owl

Another incredible experience! I'm a big bird person, I just think birds are so beautiful and amazing, so this was a real treat for me. Seeing the Spectacled Owl and the Bald Eagle were highlights, and I thought the Red-Legged Seriema was a really cool bird I had never seen before.

After Flights of Wonder we walked the Maharajah Jungle Trek. Seeing the giant bats was high on my list of must-dos for today. They didn't disappoint! Of course they were just sleeping, but wow, it was so neat to see how big they are and to get to see them in daylight. At our local zoo they have vampire bats, but they are in the nocturnal house and pretty much impossible to see in any detail. I've never been afraid of bats, but seeing the giant bats in the light made me see how people could be afraid of them. Their wings really are creepy looking!

We also had a great view of the tigers on the trek, and I enjoyed seeing the little finches in the aviary. I would love to have a pair of domesticated finches, if only we didn't have cats. I'd be afraid the poor birds would be so stressed out with the cats staring at them all the time!

Finally, it was time. Time for Expedition Everest! We headed over in that direction, enjoying some of the sights now that we weren't hiding under ponchos.

I love this detail!

There was pretty much zero wait so we decided to go for broke and wait for the front car for our first ride. Whoa! Awesome again! What a great roller coaster. Both DH and I felt it was one of the best roller coasters we had ever ridden, and we are amusement park fans. It has a great story, it's not too short, it's not too rough, but it's still thrilling…it's a really great ride. Love love loved it!

Up Next: Finishing up our day at Animal Kingdom

 

[Miss Potts]

A little late to your TR but I caught up tonight!! Enjoying everything so far!

 

[STLMickeyMom]

trying to get caught up from being gone....I love the bats too! I've never been afraid of them either and think they are so cool! one year we were at Disney we actually saw them moving around because they were being fed. it was so cool! I could look at them all day! but the birds.....I like the flights of wonder show, but birds freak me out! i'm such a baby!

 

[missangelalexis]

Love all the photos in this update! You two look great in front of EE!

 

[kayemgi]

A little late to your TR but I caught up tonight!! Enjoying everything so far!

Thanks for joining!

trying to get caught up from being gone....I love the bats too! I've never been afraid of them either and think they are so cool! one year we were at Disney we actually saw them moving around because they were being fed. it was so cool! I could look at them all day! but the birds.....I like the flights of wonder show, but birds freak me out! i'm such a baby!

Haha aw I just love the birds! You're brave for even doing Flights of Wonder if birds freak you out, with them flying over the audience! I would love to see the bats being fed one day, that would be awesome!

Love all the photos in this update! You two look great in front of EE!

Thank you!

 

[kayemgi]

After Everest we headed over to DinoLand USA to ride Dinosaur and Primeval Whirl. Dinosaur had no wait. We enjoyed it, but gosh it is so dark! We found it difficult to even see what was going on. Another one I could see being pretty scary for youngsters. Primeval Whirl had a 15 minute wait, so I decided to change one of our FP+ items to that. We decided we didn't need to ride the Safari again, so I took that FP+ and changed it to Primeval Whirl. Easy peasy. PW was a fun ride too, but much more jerky than EE! I was glad we rode PW AFTER Dinosaur; it made the theming so much funnier!

After strolling around DInoLand for a little white, we decided to do the next Finding Nemo show. We wanted to find a snack first, as it had been a long time since lunch and our ADR for Sanaa wasn't until 8:30 pm. We had the hardest time finding a snack! Dino Diner was closed. Trilo-bites was only serving dessert waffles, which didn't sound appealing to us at the time. Dino Bite Snacks was closed. We finally found a pretzel cart on Discovery Island, which was exactly what we wanted.

We headed back over to the Nemo theater and sat outside for a few minutes to finish our pretzels before heading in to find seats. I felt like the show was a little long, but I guess I don't know how they could cut much more out of the story and have it still make sense. But I loved the puppets and seeing how they did the show with the live actors visible but blending in at the same time. It was something I had never seen before and I really enjoyed it for that aspect. I especially loved the giant Nigel and how they did Mr. Ray.

After Nemo we decided to head back to EE and ride again if the wait wasn't too long. Well, there was so little wait that they had closed the standby line and were ushering everyone through the FP line! We rode three times in a row before feeling like we needed to take a break or else make ourselves sick. We shopped around a little bit and I picked up a miniature gold Buddha statue to partner with the similar mini red Buddha I had gotten at Epcot on our 2011 vacation. DH really wanted a shirt he found in the Everest shop, but they didn't have his size, and up or down a size were both really ridiculous. I took a photo of the UPC code to try and get it via phone when we got back home (thank you DIS boards, it's because of you I knew this was an option!).

It was about 6:45 by this time. AK was open for another hour and 15 minutes, but we decided we were done. We thought we'd head over to Animal Kingdom Lodge early to see if we could get seated at Sanaa before our ADR time. We easily found the bus and arrived at about 7:15. We checked in at the Sanaa desk and they gave us a pager and said they would try to seat us early. We felt like they kind of forgot about us, because right as I was walking up to the desk to talk to them, at our ADR time, yes, an hour and 15 minutes later, they buzzed us. If we had had any idea it would take so long (like maybe if they had just told us, nope you're out of luck until your ADR time) we would have spent that time checking out the resort. But since we had false hope, we spent that time sitting on a bench waiting for the buzzer to go off. DH was pretty annoyed about it, but hindsight is 20/20 after all and I wasn't going to let it ruin our dinner.

As soon as we sat down we ordered alcoholic beverages (Malawi Mango Margarita for me and beer for DH, much needed by this point!) and the bread service with all nine accompaniments. It was so worth the wait! We had a great time trying all of the different sauces and choosing our favorites. Of course we don't know what any of it was, since they take the menus and there's nothing telling you what each sauce is, but we didn't mind. My favorite sauce was a peanut-y one with whole roasted garlic cloves, and DH's was the spiciest one. The spicy sauces still had a lot of flavor, which was great. For our meals I ordered the butter chicken and spicy durban shrimp with basmati rice and DH got the spare ribs and mahi mahi with five-grain rice. Both were delicious. It was all worth the wait! I'd go back to Sanaa in a second.

After our long day we decided not to mess with the bus transferring we'd have to do to get back to ASMu and just asked the front desk to call us a cab. It was there seemingly instantly and we were glad to get back to ASMu in probably a quarter of the time it would have taken by bus. We made a quick stop in the gift shop because I needed conditioner. I had planned to use the hotel shampoo and conditioner and didn't pack any, and I didn't realize it was a combo shampoo and conditioner in one. It just wasn't cutting it for my hair, so I sadly dropped $15 on some crappy Disney branded conditioner. I'm still trying to use it up at home, and it's got nothing on my much less expensive Tressemme. Oh well, live and learn!

Up next: Hollywood Studios!