11/1/09 continued
I left GCH to find my way to the parks and pick up our FDP tickets while Ralphie took off in the rental car to drop it at the Downtown Disney Alamo.
I set off and realized that I had no map and really no idea where I was going and frankly, a really poor sense of direction - but, I just followed others and made my way to the plaza between DL and DCA. I really liked how it was such a short little jaunt and there I was - no need to wait for bus/monorail/etc.
We knew that that evening was the last showing of HalloWishes which was another reason we opted for FDP that night. F! was not showing for the rest of our visit and coupled with the possibility of seeing HalloWishes, we decided to hit the park on that day (we originally were just going to check in and have a relaxing dinner somewhere to hit the parks on Monday) but we couldn't change our tickets by the time we decided this so we were told that we would have to stop at the DTD Disney Travel Co. office to add another park day.
My first look at DL!!!
I made my way to guest services just inside the entrance to DL and had to wait in a line a bit longer than I expected. I have to applaud the CMs here - some of the things that people were in there complaining about???
One lady was going on and on about a wheelchair rental and I don't think the CM had any clue what her point was (neither did I), but the CM was patient and trying to help her out.
Finally I got to the CM to get our tickets. She gave them to me and proceeded to explain what we needed to do. We had tickets for the late show (HalloWishes would be right afterwards) but we had to get in a line with the early show folks before the early show - this line was to pick your seats for the FDP. I will just say here that this was totally ridiculous. I am not sure why they cannot just assign seats first come first serve (into the "better" seats) when you call and make the reservation. This method led to this huge line in the middle of the park well before the early show - just clogging up the works (people could not get to one of the food carts without "excuse me, excuse me" etc.).
All the seats in the special FDP seem like they would be excellent viewing, so this process was ludicrous to us.
Ok - so I got the tickets, was told the procedure, and went outside to wait for Ralphie. I sat on a nearby bench and was able to see the tail end of the parade. A mother with 2 young boys sat next to me. Made me miss my little buggers! One of her boys was sort of screwing around walking on the bench and fell, scraped his knee, and was bawling. I asked him if a band-aid would make him feel better as I always have kid band-aids in my purse. His mom acted as if I was on fire - pulled him immediately away from me and turned away. Hmmm...I felt like "Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore!" I was just trying to be nice and help!
Oh well!
It took forever for Ralphie to show up - I knew that this probably meant there were some major issues with the car return and I was right. He said that the drop off was within the parking for DTD which was crazy busy and he had to wait in this long line of cars and then the person at the shop had "stepped out" and so he was told to just go ahead and leave the car. He was a bit worried about doing that and not actually seeing the bill closed out, but did as he was told and met me at the bench. We wandered a bit to get our bearings and decided to ride a few rides...
We started with Indiana Jones
Ralphie in Indiana Jones queue
Loved this ride! I love Dinosaur and this was similar but much better. We especially liked the poison dart part.
We rode BTMRR which is my favorite ride at WDW. I just love how the line is mostly outside.
We did POTC - again, liked this better than WDW version. Liked the dual drops and liked how the boats go back up and circle around so that you can see them when you enter the line.
We then decided to head over to DCA to see the Aladdin show with our special Disney Travel Co. priority seating. We had a little time before the show and rode Monsters Inc. Cute ride. We then waited for the Aladdin show and were able to sit in the center about the 15th row back. This was a GREAT show. The genie was absolutely hilarious with a number of very recent funny references - about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, about Kanye taking the mike from Taylor Swift. So funny!
We tried to ignore my brother calling me throughout the show to ask some stupid question about his crazy, lazy wife and her morning sickness - I mean he must have called like 8 times during the show (which we ignored). You would think someone was dying or something. But no, he just wanted to ask me a question about her nausea medication which they certainly could have asked of her actual physician! Plus, this is her 3rd pregnancy, its not like she's new to this. But that is how they are - the whole world revolves around them
Ralphie was P.O.'d because he gets so sick of them. So a brief downer, but we quickly recouped.
We did the FDP line thing mentioned above and decided to go to HM. We erroneously thought that since this was the last day of HalloWishes, that the Halloween theming of HM and SM would be removed and we wanted to see that. (We were right about SM, but the Nightmare Before Christmas decoration of HM stays until Christmas we learned)
HM
This was one of the longest waits of the entire trip, but we enjoyed the ride. I have to admit that we do not know the Nightmare story. We tried to get the DVD before the trip from DH's brother, but were not successful.
Because of that long wait, I don't think we really did much else until our check in time for the FDP. We were seated in our previously selected seats and given our dessert boxes. We had a waiter who was quite energetic - was trying to rile up the whole crowd and who announced any birthdays and anniversaries within the FDP group. He brought drinks throughout the show. It got fairly chilly when the sun went down and so we had hot chocolate.
F! at DL is awesome. I like the show at WDW but my kids say that its too scary and so we haven't done it in our past few visits. The fire breathing dragon is really cool and I fell in love with the Columbia - what a beautiful ship!
I love this shot with the smoke coming out of its nostrils!
Happy ending
The dessert boxes are huge - neither of us finished ours so we combined what we had left to take back to the room and snacked on these leftovers throughout the rest of the trip.
FDP leftovers: top right is cheese and crackers. On bottom, left to right: lemon square with chocolate tulip, coconut macaroon, cheesecake circle with chocolate Mickey head, dense brownie, soft cookie with raspberry jam center and white chocolate decorations. There were also 3 chocolate truffles.
We headed to the Main Street hub to watch HalloWishes. Wow, this was packed! What a great fireworks show! When it was over, we took a leisurely stroll back to GCH and our room to rest up for our first full day in the parks.
BTW - everywhere we went with those Anniversary buttons on, the CMs said something to us. It was nice
and I happened to wrangle a week off of work immediately after the conference. So DH (Ralphie) and I decided to take an anniversary trip tacked onto the end of the trip out to San Fran sans kids!
. We made arrangements for my parents and then my mother-in-law and sister-in-law to split the time watching this crew.
I don't think I used anything of yours this trip!
We eventually got stuck in traffic and were at a crawl when Ralph asked if I was still looking for the sign. I said that I had given up - had even put my camera away. Just as I said this, I turned around and what was right behind us???
