"I think I'm in love, and her name is Polynesia..." an Aug/Sept '15 TR (NEW TR link @ end!)

[skier_pete]

Thanks for the great recap of the YES program. I honestly never really knew much about the programs as I had never looked into it!
All things considering- it looked pretty good.

Yeah - wouldn't be a bad thing for your family. Kids are the right age, and you could save some $$$ on park tickets - you just would have to be going at a time they were doing it - which we found wasn't always easy. Seems to run January-February and then June-October.

 

[skier_pete]

OK – I have to say that like much of Disney the Character Spot does not give you as much as it used to. You USED to see the entire Fab 5 in one swing – and that was the coolest thing about this spot. Well, now all you get is Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy. I realize they also put in a second set of characters (shh don’t tell the kids), and the combination of the two really seems to have shortened up the line. What was interesting is the Disney Visa meet, which we swung by shortly after this, had probably a 20 minute wait, whereas here was less than 5.

DD is very much NOT into characters (she hasn’t been for a while, she says “I don’t know what to say to them.” She gets very shy). But she still was the good trooper.

The Big Cheese





Goofster




Minnie – she is so petite. DD is actually taller than Minnie. We told her that she was so small when we first met her.







Possibly my favorite picture of the trip. DDs expression just screams “Can we go now?”

It was around 2 PM and it had been a long morning, so we headed back to the resort.
After a bit of a rest – we decided to go down to the pool. Some big confusion occurred here. WE were leaving the room, and DD and I headed for the elevator. I thought DW was right behind us, but when we got to the elevator and got on it, I turned around and realized she wasn’t there. Once we got down to the first floor, we waited a minute and then I realized I forgot my hat, so I went back up to the room looking for both DW and my hat. I told DD to wait in the lobby for mom. When I got to the room, DW wasn’t there. Went back down to the lobby, DD was there but no DW. So where was she?

We decided maybe she had somehow decided to go down another way, so we went to the pool. We grabbed a spot right by the entrance, hoping she would see our stuff. We went in the pool and watched for her, but never saw her. Swam around for about 45 minutes, and then we were floating in the lazy river portion, and I saw her WAAYYY on the other side of the pool. Of course Stormalong Bay there’s no way to get from one side or the other quickly, so as I’m trying to get to her, she’s moving in the other direction, and by the time I get near where she was, she’s left the pool area. I can tell she is pissed off.
Well, at this point while I’m deciding what to do, we run into @twinsouviners and her family. DD ends up having a good time playing with their little ones (One of them really got attached to DD!) and we went to go over the kiddie slide behind the big slide. They went down it twice (including DD) but at this point, there started to be thunder and lightning in the area – and they closed the pool. So we went back inside and finally caught up with DW. Apparently, she came down the elevator right behind us, but DD had wandered off away from the lobby while I was going upstairs, so she never saw her. She was PO’d, but once I explained what happened things calmed down quite a bit.
Our original plans for the evening were to go into Epcot World Showcase and see some stuff, have dinner at Via Napoli, and watch Illuminations. Well, after last night in the kids club, DD asked if she could go BACK to the kids club again. She was specifically wanting to see another kid, who turned out not to go that night – but she said she wanted to go anyways. Since this is our last trip she will qualify for the kids club, we figured what the heck.
So – we dropped DD at the kids club around 6:30 PM, as we had an ADR for Via Napoli at 8 PM. It didn’t really give us a lot of time to wander World Showcase, but we figured anytime is better than never. (And I have to tell you, while we love our daughter very much she is entering that awful age where she is about 80% annoying – all sass and attitude - so having a break from her for a few more hours was not something we were upset about. That said, she was pretty good for most of the trip.)

DD had somewhere saw that they have a wine flight that allows you to do tastings in France, Italy and Germany. We thought it sounded like a mini-food and wine, so decided to give it a try. But first, a couple snap in Epcot:





Why is Chip showing up everywhere in France!!


First stop for Wine #1 and #2.

Note the price here isn’t really great. You get six 2 oz pours for $20, which is 12 ounces of wine, or about the equivalent of two glasses. However, what we did is we just split each taste, so really we only spent $20 for the two of us. It wasn’t going to get you drunk, but offered a nice taste of some different wines.


And here are the wines.



The French wines were the least favorite of ours, but this isn’t surprising. Neither of us are big fans of dry wines, and of course the French wines are very dry. I liked the white better than the red, the read was very heavy – again not surprising.
We sipped our wines outside the Palais du Cinema.


While we were there, a photopass photographer was standing around, we asked about getting our pictures. I’ve never seen a photopass person here, so it was neat to get a little different picture:



DW next headed to her favorite spot in France:


There’s a CM there named Lulu that she always goes to visit. (You know you go to Disney a lot when you have certain CM that you go to see!) She loves getting the newest Givenchy perfume. She tries to get me to buy something, but I can’t see paying $100 to smell nice.

While she was chatting with Lulu, I had a very strange thing happen. I wear a fanny pack that I carry my camera, money, sometimes phone, and spare batteries. Suddenly, I felt my fanny pack getting very hot against my side. I opened it up and reach inside and one of the AA rechargeable batteries was white-hot. I actually burned my finger! I flicked it out onto the ground. I was actually smelling burning acid. I am not sure how the battery arced like that, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I got a paper towel, picked it up, and threw it in the garbage. Just weird!

Continued in next post!!

 

[skier_pete]

We spent quite a bit of time in France, so we realized we needed to head right over to Italy for dinner.


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We had just enough time to have our glasses of wine before heading to dinner. The Italian wines were better. The Red was a Rose and was a bit on the sweet side. I didn’t mind it, but didn’t think it was great. The Pino Grigio on the other hand had a nice taste to it. Not too sweet, but very light none-the-less. (We like Pino Grigios and Reislings mostly.)

Now with a couple of wines under our belt (in our bellies) it was time for some Pizza! We usually avoid Italian food in WDW. I grew up with really good Italian food locally – the town I grew up in was a big mafia town – and also where we live now there is some fantastic pizza. So I usually consider the stuff at Disney is well below standard. However, we had heard good things about Via Napoli. Between the relatively inexpensive prices and 10% off for DVC members, we thought we’d give it a try.







We were seated within minutes. Our server was very attentive, and we were able to quickly place our order. While waiting for our appetizer, I wander around the restaurant to take some pictures.





They had a large table set up in the middle of the restaurant. As the evening went on it started filling in with well-dressed folks. We asked and found out it was a meeting of the managers of the various restaurants of the Patina group. (The folks that run Via Napoli, as well as Tutto Italia, Morimito, and Catal in DLR.)





Via Napoli is a real brick oven pizzeria. They have a open kitchen with three large ovens that are used to cook the pizza.








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We started with an appetizer of Arancini - fried risotto balls filled with mozzarella & meat ragù – these were pretty tasty. Kind of a small portion for $11, though.




We got a pizza with an Italian ham (I can’t recall the name) sweet peppers and mozzarella. DW was very excited when it arrived;





The pizza was quite delicious! It was definitely wood-fired, as the bottom was slightly charred, which I didn’t quite love – awful close to burnt pizza, but overall the consistency of the dough and the flavor of the sauce and the pizza was very, very good. We would definitely come back here for an inexpensive table service meal. We would skip the risotto balls though, because we were too full with them, and they weren’t that great.


We wrapped up dinner around 8:50 PM, realizing that it was almost time for Illuminations. At first we were thinking of going back towards France to watch the show, but when we walked out towards the American pavilion we realized that there were hardly any people back here. I’d actually never seen WS so empty for Illuminations. There were places you could literally walk up to the rail. We were so used to watching from the Future World end, we thought we would just watch from Japan, that way we could see the big ball move out into the lake. (DW somehow never realized that was where the big ball was parked before the show started.)


A couple pictures from the show – I think my phone takes better night pictures than my camera.

















Boy, I am really wanting a new camera right now. The battery door in our little P&S camera broke, and between the pictures on this trip and the lunar eclipse last month I am really missing back when I had a good camera. I am debating about what to do, because I don’t really want to carry around some big SLR camera, but I want something better than what I have now. I am actually looking at a mirrorless camera from Sony – an A5100. It’s a very compact camera that still uses a standard lens, and from what I can tell I may be able to use my old lenses from my Minolta with it. (I also discovered there’s a roll of film in my Minolta – I wonder what’s on there?) It’s a little more than I really want to spend, but think it would be a good hybrid between a small point-and-shoot and a camera that you could make some decent shots with. (Sorry – this is mostly for the camera geeks out there – you know who you are.)
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Back to the TR – once Illuminations was done, we were ready to head back to the room. We went back and got DD out of the kids club, and then everyone was off to bed!!

Tomorrow – heading to Animal Kingdom!!

 

[franandaj]

Sounds like you had a great night to yourselves! I love Arancini but wasn't as thrilled with the ones at Via Napoli either. I would like to go back as we had some nice entrées including a very tasty pizza. The wine flights sound good too!

 

[Vernie822]

Wow, I never knew about the wine flights. How neat! What a good date night idea.

I absolutely love Via Napoli. We can't get pizza like that where we live so it's a must for us. I agree on the risotto balls - delicious, but not enough!

 

[Tinker326]

I really liked Via Napoli as well when I tried it for the first time last year. It's on my 'go back' list for sure! We got to sit at that big table in the middle when we went! Not with fancy executives, but we were a bigger group....... so we got that table. Thinking maybe I should add it on for March... bring the Cap't of all Killjoys to it and see what he thinks..........

 

[DisneyJo]

Sounds like you had a lovely evening and I'm glad you liked your pizza

 

[rteetz]

Looks like a great day despite your wife being PO'd.

Great photos especially the magic shot with chip. I love via Napoli and am having dinner there again in January during marathon weekend.

I got a DSLR for Christmas last year and took it to Disney last January. I loved it because it took great photos. They do make some great smaller cameras these days I hope you find one that suits you well.

 

[NJlauren]

All caught up!

I am a little sad that you didn't love the YES program more, i know my DD is a long way away from every qualifying for these classes but i was hoping to here some really great things!

I think its a total bummer they no longer have the FAB 5 at the character spot, but I get why, shorter lines please more people then longer lines!

It great that DD wanted to check out the kids club again, a little extra adult time is always nice!

Patina group the fact that they own Via Napoli is one of the only reasons we haven't eaten there. We frequent one of there restaurants about 15 minutes from our house! We get those rice balls all the time! The menu has some of the same items, but everyone raves about the pizza, which we can get at home so we haven't gone in WDW yet.

So far this trip seems great!

 

[skier_pete]

Sounds like you had a great night to yourselves! I love Arancini but wasn't as thrilled with the ones at Via Napoli either. I would like to go back as we had some nice entrées including a very tasty pizza. The wine flights sound good too!

Yeah - we got to pretend we were at Food and Wine for a few minutes. Yay!

We liked Via Napoli a lot. I wouldn't quite call it a "must do" but I would definitely go back again.

Wow, I never knew about the wine flights. How neat! What a good date night idea.

I absolutely love Via Napoli. We can't get pizza like that where we live so it's a must for us. I agree on the risotto balls - delicious, but not enough!

We have some excellent pizza in Buffalo, both thin and thicker crust. (Though no Chicago style.) Via Napoli's isn't the best I've had, but it is tasty.

I really liked Via Napoli as well when I tried it for the first time last year. It's on my 'go back' list for sure! We got to sit at that big table in the middle when we went! Not with fancy executives, but we were a bigger group....... so we got that table. Thinking maybe I should add it on for March... bring the Cap't of all Killjoys to it and see what he thinks..........

Do you Chicago-ians go "This AIN"T PIZZA!!!" Don't know if you still appreciate a thin-crust pizza with all that chunky stuff around.

Sounds like you had a lovely evening and I'm glad you liked your pizza

Actually - we really enjoyed having the time to ourselves. We love our daughter but she has become very difficult to be around at times - very early teen things like being really sassy and purposefully doing things to make mad. Having more breaks from her was nice. We actually did something similar another evening, just leaving her alone in the room for a bit.

Looks like a great day despite your wife being PO'd.

Great photos especially the magic shot with chip. I love via Napoli and am having dinner there again in January during marathon weekend.

I got a DSLR for Christmas last year and took it to Disney last January. I loved it because it took great photos. They do make some great smaller cameras these days I hope you find one that suits you well.

Yeah, what drove me crazy is I was trying to do things NOT to make her mad, and in doing so, I made her mad. That's married life for you!!!!

My thing with a DSLR is I am past wanting to lug around a big camera everywhere i go. I did that until I was about 30, but for the past 15 years have enjoyed just having small cameras. For whatever reason the last few months I have been missing being able to take interesting shots, so trying to find a good compromise. The camera I was looking at would be good - because it's very small with the standard lens. (In fact the little camera with the big lens looks funny.) If I can still use my old lens on the occasion that I would want to carry them around, that would be great. I think most of the time I would just want the camera with the standard lens.

 

[skier_pete]

All caught up!

I am a little sad that you didn't love the YES program more, i know my DD is a long way away from every qualifying for these classes but i was hoping to here some really great things!

I think its a total bummer they no longer have the FAB 5 at the character spot, but I get why, shorter lines please more people then longer lines!

It great that DD wanted to check out the kids club again, a little extra adult time is always nice!

Patina group the fact that they own Via Napoli is one of the only reasons we haven't eaten there. We frequent one of there restaurants about 15 minutes from our house! We get those rice balls all the time! The menu has some of the same items, but everyone raves about the pizza, which we can get at home so we haven't gone in WDW yet.

So far this trip seems great!

Yeah, I was really disappointed in the YES program. (I think it gets worse with the next one - stay tuned.)

The shorter lines for characters are great - my whole feeling on characters is I love meeting them - but I loathe waiting in long lines for them. To me it's a wait/experience ratio that isn't acceptable. To wait 30 minutes for Soarin or Test Track, you get a 5-10 minute total experience out of that. Waiting half an hour for a 90 second character interaction just seems awful. Fortunately - DD has reached an age where the characters aren't a big deal to her at all. I read recently that out at DLR the character lines aren't nearly as long because of all the regulars in the parks its just not as big a priority with guests. Maybe with shorter lines we'll do a few character things out there.

It really has been a great trip - except the weather. August just sucks.

 

[Tinker326]

Do you Chicago-ians go "This AIN"T PIZZA!!!" Don't know if you still appreciate a thin-crust pizza with all that chunky stuff around.

I love a good deep dish- don't get me wrong! But I also love a good wood-fire pizza as well.

Now Kurt- he probably will have issues with this pizza. But not me... I loved it!

 

[NJlauren]

Yeah, I was really disappointed in the YES program. (I think it gets worse with the next one - stay tuned.)

The shorter lines for characters are great - my whole feeling on characters is I love meeting them - but I loathe waiting in long lines for them. To me it's a wait/experience ratio that isn't acceptable. To wait 30 minutes for Soarin or Test Track, you get a 5-10 minute total experience out of that. Waiting half an hour for a 90 second character interaction just seems awful. Fortunately - DD has reached an age where the characters aren't a big deal to her at all. I read recently that out at DLR the character lines aren't nearly as long because of all the regulars in the parks its just not as big a priority with guests. Maybe with shorter lines we'll do a few character things out there.

It really has been a great trip - except the weather. August just sucks.

EKK! on the weather, Its hard when kids get to the age where its hard to take them out of school, then you either have to do summer or school breaks! BLAH!

I agree on 90 min for 90 seconds! BLAH! But i have heard that about DLR too! I love characters so hopefully i will get a few interactions in when we head to DLR soon too!

 

[PrincessInOz]

CAtching up!
I think I would have been as PO'd as DW. These things do happen but it's not fun when it happens to you. Glad it got sorted in the end.

Your rechargeable battery just broke and leaked....like that? Did you call customer service for the battery manufacturer?

Looks like a great night at Epcot by yourselves. Hope that DD enjoyed her time at the kids club as well.

 

[buteraa]

I'm really enjoying your trip report. Looks like everyone is having such a good time and the Pizza.....YUM!

 

[skier_pete]

I love a good deep dish- don't get me wrong! But I also love a good wood-fire pizza as well.

Now Kurt- he probably will have issues with this pizza. But not me... I loved it!

Oh boy, he's even a PIZZA killjoy??

EKK! on the weather, Its hard when kids get to the age where its hard to take them out of school, then you either have to do summer or school breaks! BLAH!

I agree on 90 min for 90 seconds! BLAH! But i have heard that about DLR too! I love characters so hopefully i will get a few interactions in when we head to DLR soon too!

I know - our options from here are basically end of August (HOT) or February (president's week) break (CROWDED). We are still considering a week next fall only beacuse we have a group of friends coming together for it...I'm leary of taking DD out of school, but it's either that or leave her home which I don't want to do. We are also using that trip for motivaton for her grades, and it seems to be working - her grades are MUCH better this year.

CAtching up!
I think I would have been as PO'd as DW. These things do happen but it's not fun when it happens to you. Glad it got sorted in the end.

Your rechargeable battery just broke and leaked....like that? Did you call customer service for the battery manufacturer?

Looks like a great night at Epcot by yourselves. Hope that DD enjoyed her time at the kids club as well.

I don't really blame DW for being PO'd at me. The intial move of walking off without her was all me...but I TRIED to fix it, yet managed through a series of mistakes to not be able to. Hopefully she won't bring it up for the next 20 years. (Remember that time you guys left me for the pool?)

The battery didn't leak or anything - it just started getting really, really hot. There were some coins in my fanny-pack with the battery, so I don't know if that caused some kind of wierd circuit. It was a rechargeable AA battery I've probably had for about 8 years - so there's really nothing to call on it.

DD really liked the kids club. I think she had a better time the first day, because the 2nd night - which was a Monday - didn't have many kids.

I'm really enjoying your trip report. Looks like everyone is having such a good time and the Pizza.....YUM!

Thanks for joining in! It really was a great trip so far!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Hopefully she won't bring it up for the next 20 years. (Remember that time you guys left me for the pool?)

You can tell DW that I will totally understand WHEN she brings it up for the next 20 years.

 

[skier_pete]

Day 5 – Another day dawned hot and muggy – but no rain! Today we were heading to Animal Kingdom. DAK is really my 2nd favorite park behind MK, but NOT usually on these summer trips. It’s just too friggin hot to enjoy in the summer.

That said – I was a little nervous about today. DW and DD were doing the second of our two YES classes, but it was scheduled for 12:30 PM, and I was worried about the heat for them. I tried to plan a morning that was as inside and cool as possible at DAK.

We were a little slow getting going in the morning. (We actually only truly hit I think 3 rope drops this entire trip – in this particular case we ended up missing it by maybe 10 minutes.) We headed into the park and headed for Kilimanjaro Safaris. But first a quick picture of the new Lion King area:



We’re entering Harambe:


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Some early morning dancers with the entertainment in Harambe. Who has time to stop for something like this first thing in the morning?
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Wait time was listed at 10 minutes – but it was actually probably about 15 minutes – oddly enough the queue was backed up at the entrance, but once we got to the stroller parking spot, it dropped off that there was no line, so obviously the stroller parking was clogging everything up.





The ride was good – the earlier morning rides usually get a lot of good viewings. Some animals weren’t out, but many were. I got some OK shots. The folks doing the Wild African Trek above the hippos kind of made me want to do it someday. DD didn’t though.















The back portion of the ride has recently been rerouted – where the above animal was located. They also had some areas under construction in preparation for the wild dogs of the nighttime safari.

As we were heading to our next location – we found the new section where they opened up the back side of Harambe for an expanded eating area and shops. We found Zuri’s sweet shop – where for about 6 weeks you could buy “poop” candy. Very disappointed we missed out on this. “NO POOP FOR YOU!”





And a quick photopass opportunity:








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We sure are sweaty looking!!

Our next destination was exciting for DD – she was going to FINALLY ride on Everest! I suppose I should tell the whole story – though DD is not a thrill rider, she very much wants to go to Universal and see the Harry Potter and Jurassic Park stuff. It’s not that I have anything against Universal, but the reason we have never gone until now is both DD and DW don’t go on thrill rides – so my opinion was that there wasn’t much point in going to Universal when half the rides we won’t go on anyways. So I told DD that next time we go to Florida (tentatively late 2016) we can go to Universal, but ONLY if she shows me that she’ll try some thrill rides by riding Everest and Dinosaur.

So, she was determined to ride these tides – and for once didn’t complain to us about going to ride them. (She hates riding anything new – another reason I can hardly wait to take her to Universal.) We had a FP+ scheduled for Everest, so we walked through the FP queue with essentially no wait. I barely had time to take some snaps of the queue (I never get to see the queue because I only ride this ride in the single rider lane, believe it or not, I’ve NEVER been in the stand-by queue, even though I’ve probably ridden it 20 times.)










We ended up in the very back car – which is usually the wildest part of the car. Kind of funny with the big “steam” engine back there. The ride was fun as usual. After riding, I asked DD if she saw the yeti. She said “No I had my eyes closed the entire time.” And she wasn’t lying – here’s the proof:







A final shot of Everest (photopass style):




Next we had a Fastpass booked for the Finding Nemo musical at like 10:50 AM. I thought we should spend some time inside. We had a weird moment here though. DD wanted to get a Frozen lemonade. The best place in all of WDW to get Frozen Lemonade is at a cart next to this theater. We had like 30 minutes until the show started, but DD insisted that we go into the theater instead of getting the frozen lemonade – even though she wanted it. So we go in there – sitting almost by ourselves in a completely empty theater. This gets me all annoyed, because AFTER the show we’ll want to move onto something else, and right now we have 30 minutes while we are doing nothing. So finally I insist we go out and get the frozen lemonade…we stand outside the theater and eat most of it. (DD got a strawberry one – Dw and I split an orange one.) We snuck the rest – with lid – back into the theater. We were able to get the same seats we had before – the theater wasn’t even half full when the show started. (Did I mention the parks were really quiet all week??)

This show has grown on me – I still don’t think the songs are that great, but the puppetry combined with the story is pretty effectively done – they tell the story without cutting out huge swaths of it (*cough** Beauty and the Beast at DHS).


Small piece of trivia that I am sure not all of you know: The songs for this show written back in 2006 were the first time Disney worked with the writing duo of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. More recently they wrote the music for a little movie called “Frozen” that had a moderate amount of success for DIsney. (Yes, Trip Reports - like Disney - should be both fun AND educational!!!) Next time you are at Finding Nemo – listen carefully to the music and see if you can hear the similarities in style. I don’t notice it too much, a little bit between “First Time In Forever” and “Big Blue World”. They definitely improved they’re writing/composing in between the two, because while I’m not in love with Frozen, it’s a lot better than this stuff.

Next time - this isn't Jurassic Park!

 

[Tinker326]

I LOVE that Everest picture! Frameable, I think!
Great job to DD for mustering up the courage and riding it! That's awesome!
Maybe it comes with age- my former ride-chicken (Becca) has conquered her fear of them & is riding the wildest of the wild. Kurt even got her to Fright Fest this year at Six Flags!

 

[mlegerto]

Glad DD finally got on Everest! The Harry Potter rides at Universal are great, but they make me motion sick - they have those screens where things are always moving and you are moving at the same time. Make sure she is good with that style of ride before you go over there!

As for your camera....It's a bit outdated now (about 3 years old), but you can probably find something similar. I have the Nikon J1 camera. It is the size of a point and shoot camera, but it has lenses that are interchangeable similar to the DSLR. I love this camera. It isn't too big and bulky to carry around with you all day, but you get quality photos because of the use of lenses. Hope this helps a bit!