I beat cancer,now we're going to Disney World!!! 4/23-5/1/10

[Mombits]

All caught up! Love the photos......so hear you about the sticky airport in Orlando. I have to wear leg things (similar to your green arm wrap) for my missing lymph nodes and the FIRST thing I do when I land in Orlando is run to the ladies room and peel those puppies off.....sticky city. Looking forward to the rest of your report

Those darn missing lymph nodes! This is probably TMI, but since I had the arm wrap my arm didn't swell, but my bust did on that side! So now I get to wear a "swell spot" to try to get that fluid out. It's like an oven mitt for your breast. Or maybe a tea cozy.

Glad you're here!

 

[Mombits]

Sorry I have been MIA. I came down with pneumonia so I have been in bed sick for awhile but I am back and ready to resume TRing!!! Can't wait to get caught up on everyone's trips!!!

 

[Mombits]

So we got on the bus and let me say, my kids were not excited about how long it took to get from ASMu to MK

Finally, though, we saw this and had to stop for a couple of quick pics!

<Then we went in and hit mainstreet. I loved this part!!! Here is Hannah's face when she saw the castle for the first time:

And Donovan's:

We were sort of in a hurry as I had no idea what time it was! I knew it had taken a long time for the bus to arrive and a long time to get from our hotel to MK, so I felt like we could be really late.

We saw this fine lady outside turning all the girls into princesses.

Having never been to Cinderella's Royal Table, I wasn't sure how to get there. A very nice CM directed us over the bridge and around to the back of the castle and we checked in (with 15 minutes to spare as it turned out!).

Hannah spotted Cindy's friends up in the windowsill.

My demonic-looking children, lol.

 

[Cory's Gal]

Great update Chris, so happy you are back on the DIS! I am glad you are feeling better and got rid of the pneumonia!! Great pics too!! Thank you for such a nice review of Vero, it looks like such a lovely place!!! I LOVE Hannah's face looking at the castle, PRICELESS!!!

 

[Mombits]

Great update Chris, so happy you are back on the DIS! I am glad you are feeling better and got rid of the pneumonia!! Great pics too!! Thank you for such a nice review of Vero, it looks like such a lovely place!!! I LOVE Hannah's face looking at the castle, PRICELESS!!!

Thanks, Beth! I'm glad to be back. Being sick is the pits. I am loving getting caught up on everyone's trips! Makes me really miss Disney, though!

 

[Mombits]

After we meet Cinderella, they called "Princess Hannah and Lord Donovan" to the table. The girls were given wands and the boys got swords. Immediately, Donovan's sword broke. So he got a second one.

We weren't sure how to take meeting these characters as they were our first. I can't say much for most of the interaction but Ariel was awesome!

First they brought us this nice fruit plate.

I wasn't in the "food porn" mode yet, so I pretty much forgot to take pics. I had the major domo, Brian had the salmon and Hannah had a chicken breast plain. Donovan got the kids spaghetti. We all liked the food well enough. They came around and gave the kids "wishing stars" and then they did a little ceremony where we all held the wishing stars, made a wish and said "Bibbity, bobbity, Boo!" Later, Hannah told me that her wish had already come true. Awwww.
Here is where I was worried that Hannah would think she was too old for all this stuff. As you can see, I was worried for nothing! She jumped right in and had a ball. She even said "Do you think I should have gone to BBB?" I told her no, that we were pretty much too late for it anyway, but I think it was sweet that she thought about it. I think she was thinking it would make me happy.

Then Ariel showed up! She was a livewire. First of all, she LOVED that we all had red hair and insisted that ours was "the very best table EVER!"

Then Donovan knocked his fork onto the ground and she told him not to worry, they would get him a new dinglehopper. Very fun.

After lunch, we got our ice cream and I did remember to take some pics. Here is Donovan's.

Hannah got the no -sugar-added sorbet and was NOT fond! She ended up asking me to switch with her.

Brian got the rice pudding and it was good!

and I got the chocolate dessert- which was really good and I ended up sharing with both Hannah and Donovan.

After we left we saw this beautiful little wishing well and had to throw some coins in (this is when Hannah said that her wishes had already come true!)

And then we moved on and met another character. Any guesses?

 

[wdwgirl03]

Ooh, sorry you got sick but glad you are better and back on the DIS!

Love the pictures of the kids' faces at seeing the castle. Very cute.

CRT sounds fun! We have never eaten there. It sounds like the characters were great too. I love how Ariel called the fork a dinglehopper.

 

[Mombits]

Ooh, sorry you got sick but glad you are better and back on the DIS!

Love the pictures of the kids' faces at seeing the castle. Very cute.

CRT sounds fun! We have never eaten there. It sounds like the characters were great too. I love how Ariel called the fork a dinglehopper.

I loved Ariel. She asked Hannah if she washed her hair with Kelp Shampoo. I thought she was really funny.

For me, CRT was all about the atmosphere and getting to meet all the princesses in one shot. It was definitely worth the cost. It was a great way to start off a magical Disney vacation.

 

[longing2Batdisney]

Hey! Chris
I'm so happy to hear you are feeling better...
I find the two meals we have done so far is always more about the atmosphere than the meal itself. So, it really helps when you find characters that are really into it and help set the mood and the magic.
Great start! to your magical adventure...can't wait to hear more!
Connie

 

[Mombits]

Hey! Chris
I'm so happy to hear you are feeling better...
I find the two meals we have done so far is always more about the atmosphere than the meal itself. So, it really helps when you find characters that are really into it and help set the mood and the magic.
Great start! to your magical adventure...can't wait to hear more!
Connie

Hi Connie!!!
It definitely was more about the atmosphere. I was worried that Hannah wouldn't find her "inner princess" but she really did! Though she was less than thrilled about them actually calling her "Princess Hannah"

I found it a great way to get into the spirit of Disney by meeting all those princesses right off the bat and I would really recommend it to anyone because it really has that "disney feeling" and was pretty darn exciting to boot.

 

[goofy's_gurl]

I just started reading your TR.
You guys seem to be having a grand time. We did CRT last year and it was a fun experience.

 

[Mombits]

I just started reading your TR.
You guys seem to be having a grand time. We did CRT last year and it was a fun experience.

Thanks for reading! We really had an awesome time!!! CRT was a lot of fun and I'm glad we did it.

 

[KatMark]

I just wanted to congratulate you on your "beating cancer." I too am a bc survivor and wish you continued good health.

 

[jillianml]

I have loved reading your TR! I am so glad to hear you kicked BC in the rear end!We are leaving very soon and will be staying at DVB for our 1st 4 days of our trip,your pics are awesome I cant wait to feel the ocean breeze!I am wondering if you could elaborate a little more on why the beach closed while you were there?

 

[Mombits]

I have loved reading your TR! I am so glad to hear you kicked BC in the rear end!We are leaving very soon and will be staying at DVB for our 1st 4 days of our trip,your pics are awesome I cant wait to feel the ocean breeze!I am wondering if you could elaborate a little more on why the beach closed while you were there?

Hi Jillian. Apparently that is what time the beach closes. They come and close up all the umbrellas and pick up the beach chairs and the CM's tell everyone that the beach closes at 5. I thought it was weird and wasn't expecting it at all but it was fine, we just moved to the pool, which is open until 10. Also, they have a lot of activities that you can do. We really wanted to do the campfire, but that night it was extremely windy and they couldn't do a fire. When you check in, they give you a list of all the activities that are going on and you can go to as many or none if you'd like. Most of them do have some charges associated with them but they all sound really fun.

I'm sure you'll love Vero Beach. It was just so lovely and relaxing. Hopefully you can beat the oil spill.

 

[Mombits]

The next character we met up with was... The Queen of Hearts! "She" was a bit disturbing. So tall and huge hands and all I could think of was "It's a man baby!"

The kids really wanted to jump on the teacups, but the wait was over half an hour, so we decided we'd hit it later. We saw this pretty topiary:

The goal was to see Tink. Tink has been Hannah's favorite for at least two years and she had been super excited to finally meet her face to face! So we headed in that direction.
Along the way, we came to Mickey and Minnie's Country houses and decided to take a quick tour.

I thought it was kind of weird that they had a photopass photographer in there, but I went with it!

It was fun looking at all the little details, but I think it was maybe a too little excitement for kids who had only been at Disney World for two hours

Hannah got a kick out of the popping popcorn in the microwave!

After that, we headed over to the judges tent and found that the wait for the Fairies was 60 minutes. We decided that we'd hit that another time and a ride was in order! So for our very first Walt Disney World ride, we chose...
Goofy's Barnstormer!

While we all liked it, we thought the 20 minute wait was too long for a ride that lasts only a few seconds! Donovan was quite put out by that in fact
So I suggested we hop on the train. My boy is a big fan of trains and swears he is going to be a "train driver" when he grows up, so I thought it'd be a hit. Of course, there was a 20 minute wait. Here are their "I hate to wait" faces:

And here are their "I love Disney World" faces:

Soon we had hopped on the train and were ready for a ride!

When we got off, we grabbed FP's for Splash Mt. The kids were so excited to get our very first Fast Passes! Once we figured out the machine (it didn't like DH's ticket for some reason- the CM just flipped it over and it worked???) and got those we decided to jump in line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The line wasn't too long and we were excited to give it a try.

All four of us loved it! It's fast but not scary and we really thought it was a nice ride.
Donovan and I had watched Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn together and he was really intrigued by both of those movies so I knew we'd have to investigate TSI. Here he is on the raft over to the island.

We found the fort!

At which point, I was hot and tired and ready for a sit down. First of all, I don't do heat all that well and it was HOT. But having not really done much at all during all my chemo months, I knew WDW was going to be a challenge. I had tried to go walking as much as the weather and my aching body would allow, so I told the kids that "Mom is just going to have to rest some of the time" and both of them were just fine with it. So Brian took the kids to investigate while I sat in the shade and snapped some photos. I think we spent about 45 minutes there and it was fine. I have a feeling that Donovan would have been happy to stay another hour.

While we were at TSI, I discovered that terrible trend. Manpri's! UGH!!! And what about the guy with the purse? Is this a new trend too???

Here is Brian surveying the land:

When we finally finished at TSI, I wanted to take them over to Hall of Presidents. I knew that my DH would love it because he is such a history buff, but wasn't sure how the kids would take it. Up next- HoP and wandering around the rain in search of an alien!

 

[longing2Batdisney]

too funny about the manpri's and the man purse

looks like you guys have managed to find your way completely around the park in a few hours! can't wait to hear what you thought of HoP...I skipped that last year and again this year (didn't think Ashton would care for it)...next time we go I plan to take Ashton to TSI I think he will get a big kick out of that one...sounds like Donovan had a great time!
Connie

 

[Mombits]

Here is Donovan and I in front of the liberty bell. Someday, I'd love to take the kids to see the real one!

Since you can't use flash, none of my pics really turned out, so here's a blurry one.

I have to say, when they stand up, it is surreal! Hannah was totally creeped out by the HoP and wanted to never go in there again and in fact decided that she didn't like animatronics at all (this will come in to play again later). After we left there, it was finally time to use our FP's for Splash Mountain!

I am the one with the yellow poncho. It started raining while we were on Splash. If we hadn't gotten wet from the ride, we were about to get wet from the rain! We loved Splash though! What a fun ride. My kids were loving every minute of it! When we got off we wandered toward the castle and saw this:

The next thing we came to was the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor. The wait was pretty short and we all thought it'd be fun, but it was really better than anyone was expecting. My DH really loved it!
He's a fan of Roz

When we came out of the Laugh Floor, it was pouring! I mean buckets were coming down!!! So I whipped out my ponchos (yes, I am a Girl Scout leader, motto: be prepared!) However, even knowing the general vacinity of the restaurant did not help us find it! I asked directions but still, we were wandering around in the rain looking for Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe. Eventually we wandered in the right direction only to find the place packed. People were sitting on the floor eating. UGH! I figured if we had to, we could use one of the ponchos for a table cloth so we got in line.
Brian and I both got the chicken:

I got carrot cake and he got a brownie and so did Hannah. Donovan got the kids chicken nuggets with cookies for dessert

Hannah got a bacon hamburger.

I am thinking it was because they were so busy, but none of really enjoyed our food. The chicken was really bland. Hannah hated the burger. Donovan seemed ok with the nuggets. At least we did find a table. On top of that, we were wet and cold!!!! We had to leave our ponchos on so that we could conserve our body heat.

After we ate, we headed toward the teacups! Finally.

What we realized is that 4 people's knees do NOT fit around the wheel on the teacups, lol! So we decided to go it again but they had shut it down due to the rain. I was seriously bummed about the situation because MK was supposed to be open until 2 am and it was supposed to be Spectro night. None of that looked to be happening, so we started heading to the front of MK. ON the way, I saw Mickey's Philharmagic. I had heard it was awesome and really wanted to go but the kids really didn't . They were bummed too, but I convinced everyone and since it was a walk-in, we headed it. Wow! What an awesome show. Donovan wanted to go back and see it again immediately but Brian and I thought it'd be better to head to the hotel. So that's what we did. We had a wonderful first day at WDW!!! Up next- we get a huge surprise at our hotel!

 

[Mombits]

too funny about the manpri's and the man purse

looks like you guys have managed to find your way completely around the park in a few hours! can't wait to hear what you thought of HoP...I skipped that last year and again this year (didn't think Ashton would care for it)...next time we go I plan to take Ashton to TSI I think he will get a big kick out of that one...sounds like Donovan had a great time!
Connie

It was totally funny and then I kept seeing those two guys Let me say, that one guy REALLY likes his Manpris.

I'll bet Ashton would love TSI. I think the Tom Sawyer movies are a little bit scary but Donovan still really liked them. He was really excited to go to Tom Sawyer Island and had marked it as a "must do" on our map, so I knew we'd probably spend a good amount of time there. He and Hannah loved exploring all the little secret passageways and then coming back and showing them to their dad.

 

[longing2Batdisney]

Nice decision to end your first visit with Mickey's Philharmagic! sorry you guys were caught in the rain! we had made it back to our resort just as it was raining. We must have been passing one another in the park and did not even know it!
can't wait to hear about your surprise...