5dwarves
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2007
- Messages
- 692
I am glad to read your son did not get sick when he got home...I know I am more paranoid than I need to be, but I can't help it.
I am sure we will make our walmart trip shortly after getting settled in that afternoon. We were told our orientation will be about 7:45.
But I keep telling everyone that we will be getting up about 6:30 every morning to get breakfeast and be out the door and at the parks by 9am...my husband had the look on his face like.......
If you can get to rope drop while you are there, you are a better woman than me! You go girl! We never made it. GKTW has two types of breakfast. One is the Gingerbread house (although I have read online that they now have a new restaurant sponspored by Boston Market...not sure if it is open yet though). The other breakfast is the "cart". When we were there, a retired couple manned this golf cart like thing that had cereal, breads, pasteries, yogurt, juice, coffee. You will have a toaster in the villa. We got a quick breakfast there one morning when we wanted to make sure we were at the parks early. Your bunny book will have info on who to call to make an early breakfast cart reservation. The Gingerbread house breakfasts are wonderful though and my crew loved them, thus one of the reasons we never made it to rope drop
. I had a hard time getting used to having someone else carry my tray for me. Your little ones will love hearing that there is always ice cream at ever meal. We bent the rules and let ours have some soft serve on top of a waffle. There is one morning during your stay that you won't want to dash out early. Disney Characters come to GKTW, and Mickey and Minnie pose for free family pictures with wish families in the movie theater. I believe they do this on two different days. Your orientation will have an appointment card/sheet for this. Your family will be given a day (I think it was Tues. or Thurs.) and a time (all before 9:00 am) to get your picture taken. We had breakfast dining reservations with Spiderman at Universal Studios for my son on the day that we were assigned our photo session. I spoke with the staff and they said it would be fine to alter our day and go to the other photo opportunity. Dora and Barney and Blue from Blues Clues come as well, as does Shamu. My boys were a little too old for Dora and Barney and Blue, so we missed that one. The pictures are nice. People ooo and aah that we have a photo with Mickey and Minnie together. Other Disney characters are on campus at the same time, walking around. We saw Mary Poppins, Belle in her blue "every day" dress, Pluto and Goofy over the course of the two days. There is no guarantee who is coming, and the characters have to get to the parks "to work." It is nice place to see them though, because there is far less chaos around them at GKTW then at the parks.Another nice thing about GTKW is Merry's Pizza. The mascot of GKTW is Clayton Mouse. His wife (they were engaged for a while and married before we got there.) is Merry. She has a pizza place on the GKTW campus at the big pool.... AND THEY DELIVER!!!! We had an exhausting day one day and it was nice to call the pizza mouse/lady and not have to walk down to the Gingerbread house.
I know that there are two orientation times. We went to the earlier one. I think it was at 2:00 or 3:00. There was a later one that was around 7:00, but I don't remember the exact times. If you spend much time on the Disboards, you will already know most of what they are going to tell you. Truthfully, after a couple of months on the Dis, I felt like I could teach the orientation class
. BTW, the icecream palace is open all the time (actually I think it is from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm). Many of the parents (mainly the dads for some reason) brought banana splits with them to the orientation meeting. It was a fun casual atmosphere and most people were very friendly. Remember though that the other guests have all gone through just as many trying times with their wish child, and some people (me included) handle their child's illness by cocooning themselves from the world. There will be many many people there who are very friendly, and there will be others who are kind of shell shocked by the battle they are in and very withdrawn. As I am sure you know, not all the children are recovered from their illness. My son had a transplant and he was already a year post surgery by then. Things were looking up for us. Many others are still in the midst of the battle; some of them with terminal illness. Because everyone on the Dis is so cordial and there is such a community atmopshere here, I kind of expected the same thing at GKTW. No one was rude by any stretch of the imagination...but many are hurting and withdrawn. It was something that I was not expecting, so I wanted to give you a heads up. One fun fact is the flag poles right outside the orientation room. GKTW runs up a country flag for every country represented by the guests currently there. As far as being paranoid goes...it is your God given right to be so. You are your child's strongest ally. Do what you have to do to keep him healthy and safe. One more thing I wanted to tell you, because of your avatar pic, is about embroidery on Mickey ears. We didn't get to do it ourselves, but I wanted to. There are a couple of places, one is in downtown disney and I think the other is in Hollywood Studios, where they do "fancier" fonts on the ear embroidery. Someone on the dis took a great photo pass picture of themselves (a non wish trip couple) looking at the castle at MK and the photopass pic was of their ears and name. Anyway, the font was thicker and was very nice looking. Since your Jake (I have a Jake too - non wish kid...and a Hannah
How funny is that) is fond of ears, he may get a kick out of the customization.
You ladies are truly amazing!!!
