June 2018 TR - It took me 40 yr, but I'm finally back home to WDW!

[VandVsmama]

It's only taking me 40 years, but I'm finally headed back home to WDW! Departure day is tomorrow: Saturday, June 9, 2018! As of right now, it's ~ 7:00 pm local time and aside from 1 load of laundry left to do and cleaning the cats' litter box, we are almost packed and almost ready to go.

Ok, we still need to get a bit of cash out of the ATM, but we're almost there, people! Here's who's on this excursion:

• me (mom) - 45. Discovered my love of Disney parks when we took our kids to Disneyland for the first time 6 years ago when the kids were just turning 4 and 6.
• DH (dad) - 45, soon to be 46. He puts up with my love of all things Disney, but thanks to my uber trip planning, he is starting to come around. Yeah, that's because I now know to steer him away from Theme Park Fatigue!
• ODD - 11, turning 12 a few days after we get home. She's entering 7th grade this fall. Well, the new school year starts August 2! Not exactly "fall." She likes all sorts of characters.
• YDD - just turned 10! She loves Rapunzel and Stitch.

We live in the Phoenix area. Normally, our Disney trips are to Disneyland. In fact, we just did a brief Disneyland trip in March with my sister for 2 days (4 days including driving time there and back). It was my sister's first time back at Disneyland in probably 20 years. That trip was so much fun! My sister normally HATES theme parks, but she said that she had a really nice time and wasn't bothered by the crowds.

Sssshhhh....don't tell anybody, but she wasn't bothered by the crowds because I followed everybody's advice here on DIS Boards on the Disneyland forum!

I will, of course, post tons of pictures throughout this TR, including departure day pics!

So why are we going?
DH is attending a big Cisco conference in Orlando next week, so his employer is paying for most of his travel expenses (well, except for our rental car because of the employer's funky rental car policy...they want everybody to share 1 rental car even though everyone is at different hotels). So when DH proposed the idea that the rest of us go with him, of course we said yes!

Here's what's in store for us tomorrow:

• 8:30 am - get an Uber or Lyft to the airport. Should take ~30 min to get there.
• 9:00 am - check in our luggage. Go through security. Find our gate. Get something to eat since we're on Southwest Airlines and they don't serve meals.
• 11:10 am - the plane takes off! Hooray!
• somewhere in between - plane has 1 stop in Raleigh.
• 9:00 pm - land in Orlando. Get our luggage, get our rental car, head to ASMusic!

 

[VandVsmama]

The first and last time that I was at WDW was 40 years ago when I was like 5 or 6 years old. This was back in the day when it was JUST Magic Kingdom. There wasn't even an Epcot yet, people! We (me, my sister, my parents) stopped in Orlando for 2 amazing days on a big long road trip. It was so much fun!

 

[VandVsmama]

DAY 1 - TRAVEL DAY - Saturday, June 9

We left on time at about 8:30 am. DH got a Lyft ride for all of us to the Phoenix airport. We got there at about 9:00 am. Checked in our luggage with Southwest airlines no problem. Our carry on bags had plenty of snacks in them since the most food we had from Southwest were 2 small snacks. But I learned something from packing snacks...apparently food shows up in the TSA scanner machines as possible explosive material, so they have to then hand-search your bag. Didn't know that!

My sister got us this cool Star Wars luggage for Christmas a couple of years ago. It definitely makes the bags easier to spot when you're in baggage claim!


We all lucked out and ended up in the same row...me, ODD, & YDD on 1 side and DH just across the aisle. While waiting for the plane, I got this text message from Disney:


No worries because we weren't going to land in Orlando until 9:00 pm anyway! The flight had 1 stop in Raleigh...



Then after Raleigh passengers got off and Orlando-bound passengers got on board & seated, we were off!


We don't travel as a family by air too often, so it's been awhile since I've been on a Southwest flight. Anyway, I learned that you now can watch TV on board the plane using a smart phone, tablet, or PC, connected to their on-board wifi. If you want to surf the Internet, I believe there's a fee for that. And there's a fee to watch movies. But the free on board entertainment was kind of nice and kept the kids busy the entire time. As for me, I read a book and listened to some Connecting with Walt podcasts!

 

[VandVsmama]

We landed in Orlando and thankfully, our bags arrived in Orlando, too! The last time I was in that airport was back when I was a kid. I'd forgotten about the Hyatt Regency hotel that's right there and the hotel atrium! OMG, talk about a flash back to my childhood. That was pretty neat. I rented a car with Budget rental car for the week. The original reason why we were going was DH was attending the Cisco Live conference at the Orange County convention center in downtown Orlando and we thought that DH would need transportation. As it turns out, he ended up getting rides from his coworkers and used Uber or Lyft the rest of the time, so I used the car almost exclusively while DH was in conference mode all day.

Check in at All Star Music was just sort of....meh. I'd received a text message later in the day with our room number, so technically we didn't have to go to the front desk to check in. But since this was our family's 1st ever visit to WDW, I wanted to do the normal check in thing. The kids did, too, so while DH waited in the car, the kids & I went inside. This was at about 10:30 pm on Saturday night. We were greeted by a CM who walked us over to the check in desk. He started out pleasant enough. But the rest of the interaction with him left me thinking....is that it? Let me explain....

I've read tons of trip reports here on the DIS over the years and SO many people rave about their check in experiences with WDW resort CMs. I made sure beforehand to call WDW and have them note on our reservation that it was our first visit. So I was expecting to be offered First Visit buttons. They do this at other WDW hotels. They do it at DL hotels, too. I even TOLD the check in CM that this was our first visit to WDW and how excited and happy we were to be there. The CM said, "Oh, that's nice" in this dead pan voice. Maybe it had been a long day for him or something. I don't know. It was like checking us in was the last thing he wanted to do right then and there. Totally disappointing.

He didn't even offer me a map of the ASMusic resort until I asked. I also had to ask for a calendar of activities & events for ASMusic for the week. Thanks to the DIS, I knew about this ahead of time. I wanted to know when they were going to be offering Mickey tie-dyeing of t-shirts since Pete on the DIS Unplugged podcasts had talked about it in a fairly recent podcast.

So check in was a total dud. TOTALLY disappointing. NO Disney vibe. I've had warmer receptions checking into Motel 6.

Well, we found our building, parked the car, got to the room and settled in. Touring Plans had faxed in a room request the prior Sunday and my room request was honored, so I appreciated that. It made up a little bit for the lackluster CM. Off quickly to bed because the next day would be a Magic Kingdom day!

 

[VandVsmama]

Sunday, June 10 - MAGIC KINGDOM & HOOP DEE DOO

We woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed on Sunday, rearing to go. Except for DH. He had to check in at the convention. And he was pretty nervous about a certification test that he was going to take on Tuesday. He needed extra time to study. So he bowed out of Magic Kingdom Sunday morning. At first, I had my version of a little hissy fit about it. I was like, "WHAT?!" But then I pulled my head out of my rear end and checked back into reality and realized that DH was right. Passing the test trumped the morning at Magic Kingdom. *sigh* Oh well. DH made plans to meet up with his coworkers and go together to convention check in and to study together. And our plan was to meet up back at the room by 4-4:30 pm so we could head over to Fort Wilderness for our 6:15 pm Hoop Dee Doo reservation.

So it was a girls-only morning at Magic Kingdom. I drove instead of us taking the bus since DH got a ride w/coworkers. ODD took this pic of the Magic Kingdom main gate!


Getting into parking was no problem. I only had to scan my Magic Band since we'd already paid for parking at ASMusic and that parking was good for anywhere w/in WDW. It's been a pretty looooong time since I was ever on a Disneyland or Disney World parking tram, so I had to take this pic from the tram...while being scolded by ODD with "Mama! He said to keep your arms inside at all times!" You see that sunny weather? Hoo boy, was it already warm. At least to this Arizona resident, it was warm. Thank goodness for our fans. The Frogg Toggs towels we brought were useless in all of that humidity.


I let the kids decide whether they wanted to do monorail or ferry to get to MK that morning. Of course, being siblings, they did not agree! Shades of when my sister and I were that age! So we agreed to monorail in the morning and ferry later on. We only had to wait for 1 monorail train and then got on the 2nd one.


I know that they say that the monorails are air conditioned, but with all of those bodies in those cars, it doesn't do much. Here's ODD already using her battery-operated fan (which I bought back home from Bed Bath & Beyond for $10).


This is now where I learned a valuable lesson. Something that all of you DISers have talked about for ages. It really does take awhile to get places at WDW! Really....people, they are not lying when they talk about this. Don't blow them off. They're telling the truth! It was like 20 min from ASMusic by car to the parking lot. Then 5 min in the tram to the TTC. Then screened at security. That took a few minutes. Then the monorail. Then walk. THEN you finally reach the actual entrance....

And there's no turnstiles like at Disneyland!


This is minor but I found the difference interesting....at the Disneyland main gate, the CM scanning your ticket gives you a park map and a daily entertainment schedule/times guide. At WDW, they don't do this...the park maps are off to the side and you get them yourself. Scanning the Magic Band and then our fingerprint thing was really easy. Later in the week, DH commented that he really enjoyed the whole Magic Band thing. He hopes that they implement them at DL (Disneyland), but I'm pretty certain that there are no plans anytime soon to implement Magic Bands out in Anaheim.

Later on....what was our first ride of the day?

 

[bjscheel]

Sounds great! I need to figure out how to do that flight tracking.

 

[paradesintherain]

Joining in! Sounds great so far, and I love seeing how Disneyland pros experience Disney World!

 

[VandVsmama]

We walked down Main Street and wow, Town Square is so much larger than at DL! Here's the first of several trip pics of that enormous castle!


We hung a left and headed over to Adventureland. Adventureland is so much WIDER than at DL! It doesn't matter WHAT time of day you're in Adventureland in DL, it's always a traffic jam of people. I really love the theming in both versions of Adventureland - the WDW version AND the DL version. Our first stop was the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. I loved this as a kid! It's just as great as it was back then.




When I was a kid, I dreamt of living in a treehouse like this!



The view from the top of the treehouse was pretty great!


After walking through the treehouse, we walked on to Aladdin's magic carpets. YDD didn't like this very much, but ODD & I enjoyed it. We all got a kick out of the camel spitting water.


Look at how empty Adventureland is at 9:15 in the morning!

 

[VandVsmama]

We then left Adventureland and went through Frontierland on our way to Splash Mountain. I LOVE the WDW version of Frontierland!



And as you can see, Frontierland was pretty empty then, too!


Originally we were going to use our BTMRR FP and then go on Splash Mtn in the standby line, but the standby line right then was only 10-15 min, so we did Splash Mtn first. The ride vehicles for Splash Mtn are set up such that it's only 1 person in each "row." So this was a nice change...the kids sat next to each other and I sat in a row by myself. It's too bad that MK doesn't have a Single Rider line for this ride!



ODD was insistent on wearing a poncho even though it was hot & sweaty as heck outside. LOL! We really enjoyed Splash Mtn. We love Splash Mtn @ DL and it's 1 of the kids' favorite rides there. We also love the WDW version. I think that the WDW version tells the Brer Rabbit story a little better than the DL version does. This ride was a big hit. Next, we walked next door to BTMRR. The mountain for this ride definitely looks larger than the DL one! And it was nice to be able to walk literally right next door in order to go on it. At DL, Splash Mtn is in Critter Country while BTMRR is in Frontierland. It's not too far of a walk, though. But at WDW, they're next door neighbors. That's pretty nice!

 

[Stasieki]

Looks like a fun start!

 

[VandVsmama]

The kids and I LOVED this version of BTMRR! DH didn't miss much because he doesn't care for BTMRR much at DL. He's not a roller coaster fan because he hates drops. WDW BTMRR is definitely a longer ride. The mountain is taller. And the back side of BTMRR, where the train goes by, is SO TOTALLY NEAT!! OMG, I love it!


After BTMRR, we went to Pirates and got in the standby line. Wait time was posted at ~ 10 min, but it felt more like 5. The line moved pretty quickly.


Thoughts on POTC:
I really like the WDW queue for this ride. Wish that DL was able to do something interesting like this with their queue, but they are constrained by a lack of available space. WDW POTC felt much shorter. I don't care much for the new red head. POTC @ DL just reopened like a week ago, I think, with the new red head. Bleh. I could do without that. I miss the "Take a wench for a bride" part. The cannonball scene between the Spanish fort and the pirate ship is much closer together at WDW. That was kind of neat. We even got splashed a bit by 1 of the cannonballs!

Up next...Jungle Cruise!

 

[VandVsmama]

As you can tell, Sunday at MK was a Frontierland and Adventureland-heavy morning. I was following the Touring Plans recommendations to split up MK into "sides" if you have multiple days to spend at MK. So our next ride was Jungle Cruise. This is 1 of YDD's favorite rides. She said, "Mama, I like Jungle Cruise because I like the grown up jokes that I don't understand yet." We had FP for this and for some reason, there was a line (out in the blazing hot sun) of people waiting to scan their Magic Bands to get into JC w/FP.


I've always loved the theming in the queue area of Jungle Cruise at DL. I wish that WDW had more of it. I think that in terms of queue, DL wins. But WDW JC is a tad longer and it goes through that temple thing. That was really neat. We decided that we love Jungle Cruise at both parks!




This was a preview of what we'd be seeing on Friday at Animal Kingdom Lodge!


ODD's favorite joke on this ride? "The backside of the water fall!"





I have a mild CM whine. The greeter CM at Jungle Cruise was just not into it that morning. You could tell that it was THE last place he wanted to be. Only mumbled his greeting. I tried cheering him up by commenting about why this is YDD's favorite ride and said it was our first time riding it at WDW (we had our First Visit buttons on). He just smiled this half-baked smile. Maybe he was having a rough day, but it was like the reception we got from the ASMusic check in person the night before. I was starting to get irritated by it. But I consciously pushed it out of my head and thought, "I'm on vacation. I'm going to enjoy myself regardless of grumpy CMs."

 

[goofygal531]

POTC is shorter in WDW. It was an after-thought. They had to incorporate the drop in order to go under the train tracks. We’re planning our first trip to DL next summer, I love your ride comparisons.

This is the first trip I’m using Touring Plans. I’m interested to hear how you used the App while you were there and updated your plans. I just realized this was possible! I was planning to just print out our plans. I’m so not tech savvy!

I forgot to say I’m enjoying your writing style. It’s fun following along your vacation with you.

 

[VandVsmama]

POTC is shorter in WDW. It was an after-thought. They had to incorporate the drop in order to go under the train tracks. We’re planning our first trip to DL next summer, I love your ride comparisons.

This is the first trip I’m using Touring Plans. I’m interested to hear how you used the App while you were there and updated your plans. I just realized this was possible! I was planning to just print out our plans. I’m so not tech savvy!

I forgot to say I’m enjoying your writing style. It’s fun following along your vacation with you.

Throughout the week, we often found ourselves a little bit "behind schedule" for that day's Touring Plan. When we're at DL, I've used RideMax for park itineraries in order to minimize ride wait times. Now that we've gone a few times to DL, we don't really need RideMax so much. But I'm glad that we spent the $$ on the Touring Plan subscription. I downloaded their Lines app prior to our trip. As you go through your itinerary for the day, you can mark each step as completed. You can also remove steps from the plan. So I'd do that and then I'd click the "Optimize" button to see what it did to the Touring Plan for the day.

This was really helpful because there were many times in which we'd planned to do X, but changed our minds and did Y instead. Or we'd planned to do X but it took us too long to get to X and we didn't want to wait that long, so I'd click "Optimize" and see how that changed things.

 

[VandVsmama]

I haven't seen the Country Bear Jamboree in, literally, decades so we went there next. We only had to wait <5 min and then got right inside.


And we got seats right up close! I really love this attraction. It's just like I remembered it.


This bear was always 1 of my favorites. When I was a kid, I thought she was pretty fabulous. I think that my 2nd favorite one is the bear they call Liver Lips. He's just hilarious.


Originally, my plan for Sunday was for us to do an ADR at 11:35 am at Liberty Tree Tavern. But about a week before our trip, I cancelled that ADR. I wasn't too keen on spending all that $$ on a table service restaurant when we'd spent an arm and a leg on our Hoop Dee Doo Review dinner for later that evening. As it turned out, I'm glad that I went with my gut and had cancelled the reservation because we would have been late to it or missed it entirely. We went to Columbia Harbour House instead.


I paid about $36 total for:
- 2 kids meals
- 1 tuna sandwich (which was good!)
- 1 lemonade for YDD
- 1 lemonade slushee for ODD
- and 3-4 free ice waters

At the recommendation of everyone here on the DIS, we went upstairs first and got a table. There were definitely more tables available on the 2nd floor and it was a little quieter. WDW did a good job with theming this restaurant because it totally reminds me of colonial-era inns I've been in before in New England. My kids were thankful to have a cool place to sit down and relax. We got a table next to a window back in the corner and had a nice view of Liberty Square.


In the picture above, you can see ODD's pink battery-operated fan. And YDD & ODD's hand-held human-powered fans. I brought 3 of those with me and got them at Cost Plus Imports for about $3-4 each. ODD's hand-held fan broke on Friday morning in Animal Kingdom. We definitely got our money's worth out of it! I started bringing the human-powered 'old school' fans a couple of years ago on our DL trips. Usually we don't need the battery-operated ones out there, but I'm glad we had them for Disney World!

 

[VandVsmama]

We definitely took our time with lunch because it was SO hot, SO humid, and we were just wiped out. It sucked all of our energy. After we were sufficiently refreshed and cooled off, it was time to head back out into the crock pot known as central Florida! Our Haunted Mansion FP return window was open, so we headed over there. The standby line was posted at 45 min. Yikes! At Disneyland, the only time of year I see the HM queue that long is at Halloween when they have the first week of the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay up. I last when on WDW's HM when I was 5 years old and that ride back then freaked me out! I was super scared. The kids & I thoroughly enjoyed WDW's HM. I especially liked the staircase room. At DL, once you exit the stretching room, you walk down this hallway that has windows on 1 side with a thunderstorm going on "outside." At WDW, you go onto the doom buggies almost right away. Both attractions are very well done!

This line up of people are other FP'ers like us waiting our turn to scan our Magic Bands. This happened repeatedly throughout our trip. Some people seemed to have a hard time figuring out how to scan their Magic Band. Or they thought that they had a FP for that time and were angry that they didn't...and in turn decided then to argue with the CM. Thankfully, we didn't have to wait too long. But part of me thought, "It's not that hard people. Just tap your bracelet against the light up Mickey thing! CHILDREN ARE ABLE TO FIGURE THIS OUT, WHY NOT YOU?!"



And...here we are in the stretching room! Or should I say "the room where the ceiling moves up?" Hahaha!


Another interesting thing about WDW's HM....they put 3 people in a doom buggy. As in...3 adults! And if there are single riders, they'll put a total stranger in the doom buggy with you. DL doesn't do that. And DL's HM usually only has 2 adults per doom buggy or 1 adult and 2 kids or 2 adults and a small child. But not 3 adults. Interesting!


By now, it was MUCH busier at WDW, as you can see from the picture in Liberty Square!


With every step, the kids & I were melting more and more, so we ducked into Hall of Presidents with a couple hundred of our other park guest friends who had the same idea we did. The roses outside Hall of Presidents were pretty!



ODD, YDD, & I all thoroughly enjoyed the Hall of Presidents. I think that this attraction is very well done. Walt Disney was a very patriotic man and he just loved American history, so it's really nice that WDW has kept this attraction instead of replacing it.


This is basically where my Touring Plan itinerary ended for the day. But YDD had been looking at the map all morning long (the paper map, that is) and she noticed Monsters, Inc Laugh Floor. She asked if this was the same as the Monsters, Inc ride-through attraction at DCA (California Adventure). Nope, not the same thing, kiddo. "Mama, can we go to the Laugh Floor?" This is where the negotiating started. ODD was at the point of "Stick a fork in me, I'm done!" I was drenched in sweat and figured I'd been walking around all day looking like I'd stepped in a shower with my clothes on because of all of the sweating. YDD was desperate to go see this attraction, so we convinced ODD to go along because it was indoors, it was air-conditioned, the wait wasn't very long (like 5-7 min), and we promised to leave right after that.

WDW's Tomorrowland is MUCH better themed than Disneyland's! I loved how the Astro Orbiter was on the 2nd story like DL's used to be. LOVED seeing the Peoplemover actually running! And Tomorrowland at night just looks REALLY REALLY GREAT! I really love DL's Tomorrowland, too, but for different reasons. They could do with some more neon lighting and the old Peoplemover track is looking worn & run down these days.


I don't think there are any "bad" seats in the Laugh Floor auditorium. We ended up sitting on the very end of 1 row, but still saw everything very easily. This was a hilarious attraction. YDD talked about it the rest of the trip.


When we left, it was ~ 2:45 pm. So much for my plan of leaving around 1:00 pm! This is what the weather was then according the Accuweather app on my phone. HOT HOT HOT! The app lied. It didn't feel like 100 degrees. It felt like 108-110 back home in Arizona.


Since we monorail'd it from the TTC to MK earlier that morning, we ferry'd it from MK back to the TTC. This was very pleasant. There were hardly any other people on the ferry boat with us. We sat upstairs and there was a nice breeze coming across Bay Lake. We were at the front of the "line" to board and the kids talked to the family of ducks hanging out in the water next to us.

 

[VandVsmama]

Apparently we were almost the only sane ones leaving MK at that time! HAHA! I didn't take a photo of it, but at about 2:00 pm, I noticed that people were starting to stake out spots for the afternoon parade...which is at 3:15 or 3:30 pm, I think? Good gravy, 1.5-2 hours ahead of time? That's insane. We never bothered to even try to see the afternoon MK parade. Not worth it. Not in that weather! During the winter months? Sure! I'd totally be up for that. But 90 degrees in central Florida at 3:30 pm? No thank you!



I took this panoramic pic just after the boat left the MK dock....the clouds were very pretty that afternoon. It made up for my sweaty back. ROFL!


We then got on the parking lot tram at the TTC and then drove 20 min to ASMusic. I think that we finally got back to ASMusic around 3:30 pm. That leads me to our repeat learning experience from this trip....

IT REALLY DOES TAKE A LONG TIME TO GET AROUND! MK is a pain in the neck to get to. We spent 3 days at MK on this vacation. DH loved the parking lot tram method the most. DH also loved the original monorail train cars. He even talked to a monorail CM about it, who confirmed on Thursday to DH that they are the original monorail trains from when WDW was first constructed. The monorail trains in DL...at least the control cars with the train engineers in them...are more updated and newer. And you can ride in the very front or rear of the DL monorail car if you ask. I don't know if that's possible at WDW.

I love the monorail. And I appreciate how the WDW monorail cars are air-conditioned. But with all of the doors opening & shutting combined with all of those sweaty people going in and out of them all day long...and those cars just...SMELL! It's like this weird old air-conditioned body odor funk smell in the WDW monorail.

Anyway, back to our trip report! The kids were desperate to get in the pool. But they were also wiped out. And according to the information I'd been given from WDW about when to check in at Pioneer Hall at Fort Wilderness for our Hoop Dee Doo Review 6:15 pm reservation, that meant that we needed to get leave ASMusic by 4:45 pm. Well after relaxing a bit in the room and after Mama here taking a much needed shower, DH wasn't back yet from his convention check in and studying w/his coworkers thing. So I started to panic a bit. It was going to take about 20 min to drive to Fort Wilderness. 4:30 comes and goes and still no DH. I called and texted him, finally got a hold of him. It turned out that they were about to leave to head back to drop him off at ASMusic, but he was going to get to ASMusic at something like 5:15 pm. ACK! WHAT THE HECK?! DH said, "Oh it'll be fine."

I had a little melt down with him on the phone and barked at him, "NO, it's not fine! You don't realize how long it takes to get around here at WDW! I need you here by 4:45! Not 30 min after that! We have to pick up our tickets and WDW said it could take up to 30 min to get to Pioneer Hall from the Fort Wilderness parking lot!" So DH opted to take an Uber to Fort Wilderness. Ok crisis averted, right? The kids & I hopped in the car and headed over. I parked the car where directed by the Fort Wilderness guard shack CM. We headed over to the bus stop and walked past the Tri Circle D Ranch barn. YDD saw the horses and asked if you can go horseback riding (she's just developed the horseback riding bug over the last month). Yes, you can. "Can we go, Mama?" Probably not this trip, honey.

I'd already looked it up ahead of time online and the only time they do trail rides is in the middle of the afternoon. Sorry, but I'm not interested in sweating my butt off on a horse in central Florida at 2:00 pm in the afternoon. Even if it's a nice long trail ride. Next time, kiddo.

While we were waiting for the bus, DH called. He was in the Uber, but the Uber driver only spoke Spanish and didn't understand a lick of English. DH, in turn, doesn't speak Spanish. So the Uber driver wasn't sure where to drop DH off at. I told DH where to go (all the while thinking, "What the heck? We could have avoided all this if you'd only been on time!"), where to find the bus stop at the parking lot, which bus to get on ("YES, DH, it's the one labelled 'PIONEER HALL' in big letters! NO, you get off at the PIONEER HALL stop!"), etc.

Fort Wilderness is quite spread out! Lots of spaces for RVs and campers, but honestly, I don't understand why you would choose to sleep in a non-air-conditioned space in Florida in the summer. I'd rather have a root canal! But I'm a delicate desert flower and I'm not a camping sort of person. For me, personally, camping = a bunch of extra work for me. And this is supposed to be a vacation for Mama, too, not just for everybody else. I'm not going to cook on vacation if I can help it. And I'm definitely not making any beds!

(side note)
When we checked into ASMusic, they did offer me a $50 electronic Disney gift card if I passed on housekeeping for the 6 nights. Meh, no thank you. That's not enough of an incentive. Make it $100 or $150 and then I'd take you up on it. But $50 for 6 nights? Forget it.

Ok, now it's finally picture time! The kids & I were just totally done with the weather by now. We were waiting for DH to arrive. I snapped this quick pic of them in front of Pioneer Hall. Can you tell how thrilled they look to be there? Especially after I went to the ticket booth to check in, only to be told by the very kind CM that there wasn't any need at all to check in early because we had paid in full ahead of time. WHAT?! So you mean that I was stressing out all that time over nothing? I could have taken the kids to the pool? We could have waited for DH to get back from his work thing and we could have all gone over there together? ARG!!!!

Big sigh. Ok, fine, we're on vacation. I suppose it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. After all, there was a lovely view of the water and there was a great playground not too far away from Pioneer Hall. And we could go admire the wagon ride & carriage ride horses (but you can't pet them).


And oh look, kids! There's a trading post over there! Let's go over and check it out! ODD didn't want to. She was having none of it. She was hungry, tired, hot, sweaty, and pretty miserable. YDD was hot & miserable, too, but she's stubborn as heck and refused to let me put her hair up in a pony tail. YDD spent some of her birthday $$ on Stitch pins (she's gotten into a Stitch craze lately). Holy cow, child, $60 for pins? But it was her money, so she could spend it how she wanted! LOL!

DH finally caught up with us and we checked in at 6:15 pm along with everybody else. *sigh* No need to rush around to get there over an hour ahead of time. There was a photopass photographer taking pics of people while we all waited to go inside, but nobody in my family was having it in the picture department. Even DH was grumpy and groaning about "Do we HAVE to do this?" Yes, DH, you do because we already paid a lot of money for this, so you're going to be quiet, suck it up, and enjoy it for pete's sake! Or you can bus it back to ASMusic and have a lousy cheeseburger from the lousy food court!







​

 

[amiskell28]

Following along, great so far, can't wait to read more!

 

[VandVsmama]

Just a quick side note before we venture back to this trip report....

Can I just say how awesome DIS Boards is? Thanks to the June 2018 car rental price watch thread, I was able to get my 8-day long car rental rate from $250 to $142! And that's INCLUDING tax! It was great!! Seriously, This trip and all of our Disneyland trips would not have been as fun & wonderful without all of the knowledge I've gained here.

Ok so now back to our regularly scheduled program, happy campers!
I mentioned earlier that we'd ventured over to the trading post near Pioneer Hall and then when DH caught up with us, he convinced me that we WERE going to buy the Fort Wilderness print that I was eye'ing. He had asked a CM about having it shipped home and it was a bargain $6-7 for shipping (and it arrived via UPS today at home!). Here is what it looks like...isn't is great?! $39.95 before tax and shipping.


Here's a photo of inside Pioneer Hall...


It's now become a running joke between our kids to take what they call "cup face pictures." So this became a running gag on the trip. Here are the Hoop Dee Doo cup face pics. LOL. This first one is YDD. She started the cup face thing because she decided several months ago that she was tired of having her picture taken, so she purposely tries to avoid it. Now we just run with it and embrace it! YDD just turned 10.


And here is ODD's cup face picture. She's going to be 12 soon.


Hoop Dee Doo was SO MUCH FUN! And in the middle of the show, DH discovered on a trip to the bathroom that it was POURING rain. Oh boy...I hadn't brought the ponchos and umbrella with me. Not to worry because by the time the show finished, all the rain was over and done with! Before we were all allowed in to Pioneer Hall, I took this picture of the beautiful horse who was offering carriage rides. This animal was SO BIG! So gorgeous.


ODD declared the Hoop Dee Doo one of the best shows she's ever seen. She really loved it. The looks on the kids' faces made all of that planning nonsense worth it. We all had a great time. The kids hated the dessert because they're not strawberry shortcake sort of people. I think that by the time we got back to the room, it was about 9:00 pm and we were all pretty darn tired. We were all in bed by 9:30 pm and asleep! The kids want to go to Hoop Dee Doo again if we go back to WDW. DH wasn't impressed with how expensive it was, but I told him to quit griping since I had already paid for it 2 months' prior...so it was a sunk cost...money already spent, and nothing is cheap at WDW or Disneyland, so don't expect Walmart prices, buddy! Haha!

The following day (Monday, June 11) was our single day at Epcot. The original plans involved the kids & I going to Epcot for rope drop and leaving about an hour after lunch, then going back in the evening with DH. Stay tuned to tomorrow evening to find out how our Epcot day went!

 

[paradesintherain]

We hung a left and headed over to Adventureland. Adventureland is so much WIDER than at DL! It doesn't matter WHAT time of day you're in Adventureland in DL, it's always a traffic jam of people.

Oh boy Adventureland at Disneyland is such a cluster...

The view from the top of the treehouse was pretty great!

Yes! One of my favorite views!

After walking through the treehouse, we walked on to Aladdin's magic carpets. YDD didn't like this very much, but ODD & I enjoyed it. We all got a kick out of the camel spitting water.

Best spinner at Disney World!

Next, we walked next door to BTMRR. The mountain for this ride definitely looks larger than the DL one! And it was nice to be able to walk literally right next door in order to go on it.

But the Disneyland one is far superior! Love the new effects in the tunnel

The kids and I LOVED this version of BTMRR! DH didn't miss much because he doesn't care for BTMRR much at DL. He's not a roller coaster fan because he hates drops. WDW BTMRR is definitely a longer ride. The mountain is taller. And the back side of BTMRR, where the train goes by, is SO TOTALLY NEAT!! OMG, I love it!

WOW, I did not expect you to like Disney World's better! I'm glad you had a great time on it though!

WDW POTC felt much shorter.

And only one drop! And some of the best scenes are cut.

She said, "Mama, I like Jungle Cruise because I like the grown up jokes that I don't understand yet."

This made me laugh out loud! Kids are the best

I wasn't too keen on spending all that $$ on a table service restaurant when we'd spent an arm and a leg on our Hoop Dee Doo Review dinner for later that evening

And arm and a leg well spent (I hope)!

And if there are single riders, they'll put a total stranger in the doom buggy with you.

Really? I've never had them stick me with a stranger on Haunted Mansion... I don't think I'd enjoy that at all

Beautiful shot!

IT REALLY DOES TAKE A LONG TIME TO GET AROUND! MK is a pain in the neck to get to.

Parking at MK is the woooorst. Even when I had a car at Disney World I never drove there

ODD declared the Hoop Dee Doo one of the best shows she's ever seen.

Hooray! I'm glad it was a success! It's one of my family's favorite meals