Hey, You Lions Can't Do That! This is Disney! A Frozen Harambe Trip Report! NEW 8/27!

[AAshleySEG]

Looks like you had an amazing trip! I am bummed we will miss frozen by going in Nov.

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Aww, I am sorry you are going to miss the Frozen stuff, but I Love Disney World in November!! We will be going then too! I can't wait for all of the decor, and Very Merry Dinner at Liberty Tree, and Very Merry Christmas Party! I love it!! I hope you guys have a great time on your trip!! Thanks for reading along!!

 

[ljcrochet]

I read you were staying at AKL so I hope you don't mind if I ask a few questions about your stay? We are staying 10 nights at AKL CL and it's our first stay there out in the wild! So can you give me a travel time from the resort to each park? What makes you go back to AKL since I think you did a split stay on your last visit as well? Is is your DVC ownership? Or is it something else like the animals or resort itself?
For us I wanted to stay at WL since we've never stayed there but then the pool and courtyard is undergoing major rehab. So I went with AKL since that's the only other one new for us ... Also doing 4 nights at GF RPC since we love the Floridian and can't visit WDW without staying there : )

5 years ago ( i think) I did a split stay with AKV and BLT. I found it quicker to get everywhere except MK from AK.

 

[AAshleySEG]

5 years ago ( i think) I did a split stay with AKV and BLT. I found it quicker to get everywhere except MK from AK.

The bus routes have changed a little over the years, it used to be that you would take the Animal Kingdom bus for Blizzard beach, but now the Hollywood Studios bus goes to Blizzard Beach first before stopping at HWS, not sure if there were other changes implemented or not especially with Typhoon Lagoon and DTD transitioning to Disney Springs, I am definitely gonna figure out some time frames on this next trip!

 

[AAshleySEG]

After we finished our ride on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, we decided that we would go ahead and jump in the small line that was forming for lunch at Be Our Guest. I took the liberty of taking a photo of Jeremy while we were standing there, he isn't making one of his normal "fun" faces, I think because we were standing in direct sunlight and it was a little warm out.

We didn't have to stand there too long though because right at 10:30 they started letting groups of people into the restaurant. By 10:35 we were inside and waiting to place our order! We paid with the cash that we received last night from our dinner companions, so we had to go to a cash specific line inside! We got our food ordered and then to find us a seat! Last time we dined here we ate inside the Rose Gallery, this time we chose to eat inside the ballroom!

We found ourselves a lovely little spot right next to the windows in the back!

Elsa totally had to have been over here visiting earlier, otherwise, how would it be snowing out and so chilly! The windows were all frosty!

We really loved the food here for lunch last time we came, so we were very excited, for one, we didn't have to wait long at all to get in here, and two it was nice and cool! You could see the silly excitement on Jeremy's face while we were waiting for out food to come!

Right after that our food showed up to the table! I had the Tuna Nicoise Salad and Potato Leek Soup, along with a bottled water! Last time I had the quiche and that was awesome too, it was definitely a difficult decision as to what I should order!

Jeremy chose to get the Carved Turkey Sandwich with fries, and potato leek soup. I think he had fountain coke to drink! He said that the sandwich was just ok, and he wished that he would have gotten the Tuna Nicoise which is what he had last time we ate there! Oh well, its always good to try something else at least once!

Its always good to try different things at a restaurant, you never know you might find something else that you love! We finished up our lunch and it was still quite empty inside, there were plenty of open tables! We took this little bit of rest time to update some TR notes, and clear out our Streetpasses we had gotten on our Nintendo 3DSXLs

We were finally done with lunch and we were going to go check out Big Top Souvenirs to see what kind of desserts they had for us! Next time we eat at Be Our Guest, we are definitely going to try the cupcakes there! Oh and there was no line outside of Be Our Guest when we left, just in case anyone is thinking about going to try and eat lunch there! If you go early, you "should" be fine! So off to Storybook Circus we went!

I chose to get the Dumbo Cupcake! It was a chocolate cupcake with swirled icing and a little white chocolate Dumbo on top! The cake was moist and delicious! The icing was a tad on the too sweet side, but it wasn't so bad I couldn't handle it! We walked over to the shade near Mad Tea Party to eat our treats!

Jeremy went with his go to sweet, which is a chocolate drizzled Mickey Head rice crispy treat on a stick!! You will remember that he got that one on our last trip as well!

Our next Fastpass of the day was a little princess meet and greet! We would be seeing Rapunzel and Cinderella! Rapunzel because of course, we were dressed as Maximus and Pascal!! So we headed toward Princess Fairytale Hall and scanned our bands and were next in line to head into the doors to meet them!

Rapunzel was up first, she was so fun and talkative! She was totally having the Best Day Ever as always!! The CM who was working with her chatted to us a bit before we went up to meet her, we talked about how we were channeling Pascal and Maximus and he asked if I knew where Pascal was in the park? I did not??? He said, "talk to me later", winked and went about his business!

I'm not sure why but lots of our Photopass photos end up being pretty dark. I get home and see them and sometimes am a little sad about it! Our photo with Cinderella was a good photo, with the exception of the exposure. She wasn't quite as talkative as Rapunzel, but she was still polite! Which I liked!

On our way out the CM who had spoken to us earlier followed us, and told us where we could find Pascal!! We now had a mission!! The Hunt for Pascal was officially underway!!

 

[HarkiQuinn]

The Hidden Pascals by Rapunzel's castle right? We've only found six of them, can't wait to see how many you find!

And the detail in BOG is INSANE, I hope to dine there one day.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

It really is funny how a new/popular attraction takes all the crowds freeing up the previously hot thing. I recall last trip which was before 7DMT was open we had close to an hour wait for Ariel's ride - you hardly ever see waits even close to that there any more.

Thanks for the info on Ralph "Harper Goff", H. Goff - I hadn't heard that one before. I do love how Disney tries to have something to remember old rides by when they are replaced by new ones. Like the one you mentioned or that on Pool Mr. Toad can be seen handing the deed to Owl or even on 7DMT where the animatronics used inside the cottage are the same ones from the old Snow White ride.

Glad things worked out and you got on 7DMT no problem

 

[disney meema]

Thanks for the info in your reply about AKL will be staying in Jambo club level so although I'm not overly concerned about getting to the parks ect. ( since no kiddos or grandkiddos this trip just the two of us ) but we do have dining reservation and soon fast pass plus to make so timing to parks is important on a few mornings : ) How in the world did you end up with Grand California as your home resort? Just surprised since your from the East Coast so a curious mind would love to read how that came about : )
On to your current travel day report .... Amazing you got in BOG so quickly it has to be your earlier lunch time for sure as most get lunch lunch between noon and 2 pm. Do you think it would be odd to go eat a cupcake and coffee there instead of a full lunch? I could look at Jeremy's turkey sandwich and see it was a whole lot of roll with a tiny bit of turkey. Yep I wouldn't of liked it either. Your salad looked great and it seems this is a good CS choice for sure and the added plus of how beautiful it is makes it quite special. What an adorable dumbo cupcake you had and yep lots of frosting with that big dumbo on top ... Yum! For sure adding looking for pascals at the tower, so fun and curious how many you found : ) I agree the photo pass pictures generally come out dark indoors. I seems like they do a bit better with the lighting or something? I have so many over the years and really not much change in them in 30 years so that's a bit odd since so much has improved in lighting ect. Oh well I still bought the memory maker like most everyone.
As always enjoying the read : )

 

[AAshleySEG]

The Hidden Pascals by Rapunzel's castle right? We've only found six of them, can't wait to see how many you find!

And the detail in BOG is INSANE, I hope to dine there one day.

Yes ma'am! Those are the ones I am speaking of!

Yeah, Be Our Guest is a beautifully themed restaurant! I have had dinner in there once, and lunch twice! For some reason, I didn't enjoy the dinner so much, I will try again sometime when the hype dies down for ADRs. But we LOVE it for lunch!

 

[AAshleySEG]

It really is funny how a new/popular attraction takes all the crowds freeing up the previously hot thing. I recall last trip which was before 7DMT was open we had close to an hour wait for Ariel's ride - you hardly ever see waits even close to that there any more.

Thanks for the info on Ralph "Harper Goff", H. Goff - I hadn't heard that one before. I do love how Disney tries to have something to remember old rides by when they are replaced by new ones. Like the one you mentioned or that on Pool Mr. Toad can be seen handing the deed to Owl or even on 7DMT where the animatronics used inside the cottage are the same ones from the old Snow White ride.

Glad things worked out and you got on 7DMT no problem

It is pretty crazy! I am a little surprised that Under the Sea doesn't draw more people than it does, it is sort of like Nemo at Epcot, just a long queue line to walk through which is the wait time!

Yeah, it makes me really happy that they honor things from the past while still moving forward into the future!

Me too! I was worried for a minute, since we didn't have a really long time at Magic Kingdom that day!

 

[AAshleySEG]

Thanks for the info in your reply about AKL will be staying in Jambo club level so although I'm not overly concerned about getting to the parks ect. ( since no kiddos or grandkiddos this trip just the two of us ) but we do have dining reservation and soon fast pass plus to make so timing to parks is important on a few mornings : ) How in the world did you end up with Grand California as your home resort? Just surprised since your from the East Coast so a curious mind would love to read how that came about : )
On to your current travel day report .... Amazing you got in BOG so quickly it has to be your earlier lunch time for sure as most get lunch lunch between noon and 2 pm. Do you think it would be odd to go eat a cupcake and coffee there instead of a full lunch? I could look at Jeremy's turkey sandwich and see it was a whole lot of roll with a tiny bit of turkey. Yep I wouldn't of liked it either. Your salad looked great and it seems this is a good CS choice for sure and the added plus of how beautiful it is makes it quite special. What an adorable dumbo cupcake you had and yep lots of frosting with that big dumbo on top ... Yum! For sure adding looking for pascals at the tower, so fun and curious how many you found : ) I agree the photo pass pictures generally come out dark indoors. I seems like they do a bit better with the lighting or something? I have so many over the years and really not much change in them in 30 years so that's a bit odd since so much has improved in lighting ect. Oh well I still bought the memory maker like most everyone.
As always enjoying the read : )

Yay Club Level!! We are staying at Jambo Club Level for my birthday weekend! It is a trip that Jeremy is planning all by himself though, so everything is a surprise to me!

Ok, so Grand Californian! Since there are so MANY DVC resorts at WDW it is really easy with the shorter booking window to get into them, but since there is only one at Disneyland, and it doesn't have that many rooms, we wanted to have the 11 month booking window since we knew that if we went out there it would be a trip planned much further in advance than the ones we take to WDW. Which is why we decided for our home resort to be Grand Californian! We are HUGE Dodger fans, so we have been to the LA/Anaheim area twice for that purpose, so when we go again, it will be nice to be able to book there in advance and be able to stay on property!

As far as BOG, I don't think it would be odd to eat those things there, a little unorthodox maybe, only because they bring your food out to you as opposed to picking it up at a counter like most quick service, but I don't see why you couldn't enjoy a nice cupcake and coffee in the West Wing! That Tuna Nicoise salad is delicious! As is the quiche, but man that potato leek soup...yum! The food there is amazing, except I guess when you order a sandwich and fries...LOL

I am so happy that you are enjoying!! Yeah, we are getting the Memory Maker again to share between our September/October trips! We have really had fun character/photopass hunting and getting photos together, that we definitely would not have had otherwise!

 

[MidnightParade]

Funnily enough, our meal companions, our friends Dan & Mindy are the ones who got us playing WoW!

Well now I think Dan and Mindy are awesome!! (Even if they are Alliance! )

You are awesomely channelling Pascal!!!! Love it!!! That purse is perfect!!

Happy that you got to ride 7DMT! I love the nods to 20,000 Leagues! I'm hoping I can find the nautilus in the Little Mermaid ride. Is it hard to find?! I just thought it was such a great and fun ride!

Ooooh, I wonder if we will be able to walk into BOG on our trip?!!! That would be awesome! Must get Grey stuff!!! (Its delicious!)

Mmmmm Mickey shaped krispie treats!! Cupcakes!! The raisins I'm eating right now seem extra boring now!

 

[FancyNancy]

I loved your disneybound for your MK day It's awesome that you had such good ride luck. It definitely pays to hit rope drop!

 

[AAshleySEG]

Well now I think Dan and Mindy are awesome!! (Even if they are Alliance! )

You are awesomely channelling Pascal!!!! Love it!!! That purse is perfect!!

Happy that you got to ride 7DMT! I love the nods to 20,000 Leagues! I'm hoping I can find the nautilus in the Little Mermaid ride. Is it hard to find?! I just thought it was such a great and fun ride!

Ooooh, I wonder if we will be able to walk into BOG on our trip?!!! That would be awesome! Must get Grey stuff!!! (Its delicious!)

Mmmmm Mickey shaped krispie treats!! Cupcakes!! The raisins I'm eating right now seem extra boring now!

Dan and Mindy aren't Alliance, so you don't have to hold that against them! They play Horde side, they only play a little Alliance because of us, well me it seems. I just love my gnome I can't help it...

We hadn't even tried to find the Nautilus at Little Mermaid! New mission for this next trip!! I didn't know about it, but now that I do, I will certainly look for it!

It is certainly a possibility of being able to walk into Be Our Guest, I mean we were there in July and did it, so anything is possible I guess!! I don't remember waiting very long the other time we went for lunch though, but that was way back when it had just opened. I will keep my fingers crossed for you!

I am dreaming of which cupcakes I am going to get when we go in September! Ahh...but at the same time drooling about the F&W Festival food!!

 

[AAshleySEG]

I loved your disneybound for your MK day It's awesome that you had such good ride luck. It definitely pays to hit rope drop!

Aww thank you! I had so much fun being Pascal!! I was very happy that we were able to do so many things, but I feel like it is usually like that for us, although, we tend to stay away from super crowded attractions anyway, I always go to things that don't have lines to maximize our time! It was so funny that we kind of made rope drop and didn't even try! I guess waking up early in the morning by accident serves us well at Disney!!

 

[AAshleySEG]

With our Magic Kingdom park time ticking away, I at least wanted to get to see one Pascal!! So we left Princess Fairytale Hall and started walking over to see Rapunzel's Tower! This is one of my favorite photos from this trip!

We did take the time to use the facilities quickly and then tried to spot my little buddy!! It didn't take too long and we had found him!

I was so excited! I just had to get a shot of me posing with my inspiration for the day! He is just so tiny and cute!

Since there were a few more things we wanted to do before our time was up here, we decided that we would search again for all 10 in the future! I am excited to go back and have time to look for them all! But for the moment at least, that would have to wait! But seriously, what a genius idea to have tables and charging stations over there! Super smart!

Next we were headed to one of our favorite things to do, which is so simple, but yet, it so quintessentially Disney, that for us, just has to be done! We walked over to the Frontierland Station to board the Walt Disney World Railroad! Lucky for us, it was pulling up just as we got to the platform! All aboard!!

We were off and ready to go!! I guess if you could really feel connected to Walt on an attraction, for me, this would be the one! Besides, I mean, it is covered and breezy, what better way to cool off on a hot day in July!! I'll let everyone else stand in a 2 hour line to ride the Mine Train! I'll ride this train loop any day! Besides, it lasts a whole lot longer!

We decided to ride it around and then hop off on the Main Street station instead of Fantasyland, we could just as easily cut through Tomorrowland Terrace as we could walking down the pathway between Storybook and Tomorrowland. Plus it gave us a little more train time, which is always a no brainer! Out last Fastpass before we had to leave Magic Kingdom was for Space Mountain! I was trying to hit up all the rides that had photos, I think we will have to get Splash Mountain on our next trip!

Quick and painless!! Walked right in, had a party of two so we even got to go around the Fastpass line, we were on and off like the speed of light! Now it was time to head over to the monorail! As we were walking toward the monorail, the boat was there waiting and starting to let people on, so we just decided to get on it instead! I love riding the Seven Seas Lagoon boats!

We made it to the Grand Floridian by 1:15! That meant we could relax in the lovely air-conditioned lobby on a nice comfy sofa until it was time for our respective appointments! Again we took a little time to catch up on TR notes and Streetpass Games!

At about 10 minutes until 2:00, Jeremy and I parted ways, he was to be going upstairs for a haircut at Ivy Trellis, and I was going to be heading over toward Senses for a nice manicure!

As I was walking over there, I noticed that the sky was getting a little dark! I wondered if it would be raining soon! It certainly looked like a storm was brewing!

I love this walkway that takes you to the Grand Floridian Villas from the Main building! I always feel like I am going on some sort of stroll in the Victorian era! I just need a giant dress and maybe a silk fan or frilly umbrella to really make it convincing!

Within 5 minutes I had made it to Senses and was checking in for my Renew Manicure, it was supposed to Renew your spirit with this evocative Jasmine aroma, known to soothe the nerves, produce a feeling of optimism and euphoria, and reduce stress. I don't know if I was under any stress or not, but it sure sounded nice to me!

 

[disney meema]

I love the train as well nothing like resting your feet and feeling the breeze! Ok another question ... How do you link up your memory maker picture from the rides? Do you go to the photo area at the ride and then link your particular picture to your magic band? Looks like you both had a blast on space mountain and knew when the pictures was being taken by your reactions, yes? There's only 2 rides at Disneyland and WDW I won't ride and it's space mountain at both and Matterhorn just got added as my number 2 a few weeks ago at Disneyland ... It was so so jerky that holding onto the handles the inside of my arm was hurting me and I ended up with a 3 inch long and 1 inch across bruise (( ouch )) not to mention the temporary stiff neck. Space mountain I gave up 3 or 4 years ago but for an entirely different reason being I felt like I was gonna barf lol (( getting old sucks sometimes ))
Oh and ahh on going to senses for a special manicure and I love your description sounds so relaxing : ) Thanks for the info on your DVC membership at grand Californian so cool! So many dodgers fans all over the country it seems and it such a cool stadium isn't it. We lived in Southern California for 48 years so we were big angel fans but we loved going to dodger stadium for concerts ect. ( Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Prince and Queen were some of our favorites years ago ) We just sold our house in California a year ago so now we have to hotel it or we could stay with family ... Which we've never done since I prefer a hotel : ) Geez I miss our house there but after 8 years in Utah we found we only went to California 4 or 5 times a year so we sold it .. Sniff sniff.
Looking forward to hearing about your hambre nights experience and hoping they extend it ... Any chance that will happen?

 

[TheMaxRebo]

We love the train! Definitely an attraction close to Walt's heart ... I mean, he did build one in his backyard after all ... though it was closed our last trip which we were super bummed about

That is so nice to take a break and do something for yourselves and just relax. Hope you enjoyed your manicure and Jeremy enjoyed his haircut - I assume at the Grand Floridian they don't put sparkles in your hair like

 

[MidnightParade]

Oooh well in that case Dan and Mindy are super awesome! For the Horde!! <---Kinda looks like an orc/goblin!

Pascal hunting! It'll be fun to slowly check them off your list each trip!

Yay for train time. Theres a part of me that goes, thats wasting park time! But it really is perfect to relax, soak it in and as you said it's very Walt!!

Woooo! Love the spa! Soooo did any of them look at you funny being all green?!

 

[AAshleySEG]

I love the train as well nothing like resting your feet and feeling the breeze! Ok another question ... How do you link up your memory maker picture from the rides? Do you go to the photo area at the ride and then link your particular picture to your magic band? Looks like you both had a blast on space mountain and knew when the pictures was being taken by your reactions, yes? There's only 2 rides at Disneyland and WDW I won't ride and it's space mountain at both and Matterhorn just got added as my number 2 a few weeks ago at Disneyland ... It was so so jerky that holding onto the handles the inside of my arm was hurting me and I ended up with a 3 inch long and 1 inch across bruise (( ouch )) not to mention the temporary stiff neck. Space mountain I gave up 3 or 4 years ago but for an entirely different reason being I felt like I was gonna barf lol (( getting old sucks sometimes ))
Oh and ahh on going to senses for a special manicure and I love your description sounds so relaxing : ) Thanks for the info on your DVC membership at grand Californian so cool! So many dodgers fans all over the country it seems and it such a cool stadium isn't it. We lived in Southern California for 48 years so we were big angel fans but we loved going to dodger stadium for concerts ect. ( Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Prince and Queen were some of our favorites years ago ) We just sold our house in California a year ago so now we have to hotel it or we could stay with family ... Which we've never done since I prefer a hotel : ) Geez I miss our house there but after 8 years in Utah we found we only went to California 4 or 5 times a year so we sold it .. Sniff sniff.
Looking forward to hearing about your hambre nights experience and hoping they extend it ... Any chance that will happen?

The Memory Maker photos all link automatically, I think they have sensors on the ride somehow that tell it who is on when. So really you don't have to do anything other than have a Memory Maker on your account. We had no problems the entire time and all the ride photos were there without us having to do anything, well except wear our MagicBands!

Who knows! They may extend Harambe Nights, they extended Frozen Summer Fun, so I guess anything is possible? I will keep my fingers crossed for you!

 

[AAshleySEG]

We love the train! Definitely an attraction close to Walt's heart ... I mean, he did build one in his backyard after all ... though it was closed our last trip which we were super bummed about

That is so nice to take a break and do something for yourselves and just relax. Hope you enjoyed your manicure and Jeremy enjoyed his haircut - I assume at the Grand Floridian they don't put sparkles in your hair like

Yeah, sadly the train is going to be closed this fall for refurb too, so hopefully we will get a chance to ride it in September before it goes down.

I had a very relaxing afternoon at Senses, I only wish I could have spent more time in the actual spa part of it, I could have gotten a day pass to come back to it, since I didn't have time that day, but I didn't really have any time at all to go back, so one day I want to! Jeremy loves getting his haircut at Ivy Trellis so much, that that is pretty much the only place he gets it cut now, I think he is spoiled by it, at least we get the DVC discount! And yes...no sparkles