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

[VandVsmama]

Wednesday, June 13:

Wednesday was yet another convention day for DH. When he got up that morning, he said that he was pretty tired and it was kind of exhausting having to be in "on" mode all day. You know..."on" in terms of social, meeting new people, making small talk, plus attending classes and then attending a vendor event in the evening on top of it. DH did his normal routine that morning with the exception of having breakfast with us because the kids were still fast asleep! I was grateful for the bathroom curtain to keep the bedroom dark while DH got ready.

DH departed for the convention and I went back to sleep. ODD woke up at about 9:30 am and played games and watched YouTube videos on her tablet. Looking back on that day, I didn't realize at the time that you could get food at the food court and bring it back to your room. Duh! I should have gone to get breakfast for the kids and left ODD w/YDD in the room since ODD is now 12 and old enough to handle that.

YDD was WIPED OUT! Such a tired little bunny. So much activity & excitement over the past 3 days. There's no way we could have managed another theme park on this day. I'm glad that I had planned a break for Wednesday! She didn't wake up until 11:00 am! This is a kid who rarely sleeps in at home. Even on weekends, she often gets up at 6:30 am. Even during the summer.

What was the first thing YDD said after she woke up?

"Can I have bacon and Mickey waffles for breakfast?" Bacon is the 5th food group, after all. And ASMusic's food court has pretty decent bacon, in my opinion. It's not the super thin floppy paper-y bacon that a lot of quick service restaurants at Disneyland always seem to have.

So I had to tell her, "Sorry, honey, but you've slept through breakfast and there's no bacon and waffles in the food court right now. But we can go have lunch if you like." She was...MAD! ODD & I got a kick out of how frustrated she was that she missed breakfast. Don't mess with that kid and her bacon!

We all finally got dressed and toddled over to the food court for lunch. The kids were quite grumpy at this point...they'd both reached the hangry stage. That sure is fun! HAHAHA! Walked past the piano pool, which also has a laundry room in the same building that has the bathrooms. I inquired with a couple of CMs who we passed...1 of whom was there on the College Program and she was from Univ of Arizona! Go Wildcats! Woot! Woot! Both kids had an adult-sized piece of pizza (which was like 1/4 of the whole pizza, it was enormous) and they devoured the whole slice! I got the kids milkshakes as well, but they didn't taste very good, so that was a bit of a waste $$-wise (they were expensive). Meh, oh well, that's water under the bridge. We tried it and you win some, you lose some. We weren't going to let it ruin our day!

I forgot to bring ibuprofen and YDD was complaining of her feet being sore, so we stopped in the ASMusic gift shop to get some ($6.99). The gift shop actually had a pretty decent selection of various drug store sort of items. While we were eating lunch, ODD spotted Goofy and she told YDD, "YDD! Look! Goofy's over there! He's right there!" YDD got so excited..."Mama! Goofy is here! Can we go see him?" Sure! Go and say hi. "But you have to go with us." No honey, it's fine. I can see you and Goofy won't let you get lost. I'll be right here. They insisted that I go to take a picture of them, so I went along and snapped this pic.



Goofy thought that YDD's shirt was pretty magical because she showed him how it would change the picture on the shirt if you ran your hand over it. He was pretty impressed with that. And he noticed ODD's Groot shirt, so he started looking for Groot in the bushes and asked the kids to help him look for Groot. He was pointing to the trees and everything. It was hilarious. Goofy gave the girls kisses after we said our goodbyes. ODD & YDD were the first kids to spot him so they got a few minutes with him before some other families started to walk up. This was a pretty nice perk and I truly did not expect us to run into any characters at an All Star resort.

On our way back from lunch, we saw Donald Duck walking with purpose to some sort of destination. He didn't have time to stop and socialize a lot, but we were able to take a quick pic with him and we told him how it was so great to meet him the day before at MK. I complimented him on his snake charming abilities. YDD thought this was a pretty awesome day so far.


After lunch, we hit up the piano pool and I did some laundry. Just for anybody's info in case they're interested, it was $3.00 per washer and $3.00 per dryer. The dryer gets you 60 minutes, so we only needed it for not even half of that. Laundry soap is $2.00 each, I think. No coins or cash. Debit or credit card only. Doesn't work off of Magic Bands. The pool felt wonderful...like bath water! It was great. We had fun at the pool, but after an hour, the kids said, "We're done. Can we go back and watch TV now?" Of course! So we went back to the room and I put it on Disney channel. I took a nap while the kids watched TV. I think that ODD might have napped a little bit, too.

A few minutes before 4:00 pm, we headed to the guitar pool to do Mickey tie-dye t-shirts. They're $17.99 plus tax and you pay at the gift shop before you can do the tie-dye. We got there right at 4:00 and finished about 4:20 pm, just as they shut down the pool because of weather. Thunderstorms were starting to roll in. The skies were starting to look pretty dark! So they had to move the tie-dye t-shirt activity indoors. We had just finished, though, when this happened so we didn't have to wait for them to relocate the tshirt activity.

The kids' tshirts turned out really well. I'm glad that I heard about this on 1 of the DIS Unplugged podcasts. AKL does it, too, but not every day like they do at the All Star resorts. Disney wraps up your dye-soaked tshirt in plastic wrap and they include instructions on what to do next. You basically leave it as is for 24-48 hours, then you rinse it out in cold water and let it dry. Or you wash it after 24-48 hours in cold water by itself so the dye doesn't get in other clothes.

The kids had been eye'ing the big, wonderful arcade since we arrived at ASMusic, so as promised, we went to blow some $$ in the arcade. I put $20 on 1 game card and the kids took turns playing. They did the massive Space Invaders together, played air hockey, Pac Man, etc. I showed them how to play pin ball. It was fun.


While we were at the arcade, DH started texting, asking where were we, what were we up to, etc. I told him that we were in the arcade up near the front. Apparently, he'd arrived back at the room a few min prior from his tiring day at the convention. He met up with us in the arcade and was in his element since he's quite the gamer guy. It was a lot of fun and a much needed rest from 3 days in a row of theme parks.

I'm a planner when it comes to Disney vacations because my DH gets Theme Park Fatigue and hates standing in long lines for rides. But I am really glad that I had planned on us not having ANY plans for this day. Earlier in my trip planning a couple of months ago, I was all gung ho on spending the day at Cape Canaveral or going to Gatorland or going on a swamp boat tour. I am now glad that I did NOT sign us up for ANY of that! Wednesday was a pretty nice day.

DH was hungry, so we had an early dinner snack at the ASMusic food court with DH. Then we all headed back to the room. DH went w/his coworkers to the Universal Studios event that evening for the Cisco conference. (more on that later). The kids and I watched some more sit coms on the Disney channel and then when they said that they were hungry again, I dragged them to the car and we drove to the Polynesian to have dinner at Captain Cook's. There was a BBQ pork sandwich there that I wanted to try and I thought that picky YDD might like it (she didn't. ODD did, though!).

We were able to park pretty close to the entrance at the Polynesian. It was nuts seeing a parking lot tram for the Polynesian. Holy cow! We were close enough to walk, though.


The lobby of this hotel is nicer than it looks in photos I've seen online. I wish that the hotel gift shop had more tiki stuff for sale. I did some shopping for DH's birthday and eye'd the Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirts with Mickey on them, but I wasn't going to plunk down $115 for one shirt. So I settled for a wicking Mickey golf polo shirt instead. When he opened it a few days later, he really liked it. On the way to Captain Cook's, I took this pic of this cool movie poster. I've never heard of this movie...I'm going to have to go find it so we can watch it!


Captain Cook's was ok. We sat inside because we were tired of sweating. The Polynesian pool looks pretty fabulous. But holy cow, that hotel was SO BUSY! LOTS of people. It was lovely, but the mobs of people going through it felt a bit like MK from the day before. I can see now why so many people rave about staying at the Polynesian resort. Disney has done a good job with the theming of that hotel. I don't think I'd prefer to stay there, though. I don't like how the rooms are decorated.

In terms of the food at Captain Cook's, the bbq pork sandwich was good. The coleslaw it came with had, like, no flavor, so that was a bit of a fail. It was supposed to be an island sort of coleslaw, but it ended up tasting like....nothing. Like eating air. YDD had chicken nuggets, which she was finally OD'ing on. After eating WDW chicken nuggets all week, by Friday she was officially tired of WDW chicken nuggets.

YDD spent some more birthday money. She got a few Stitch postcards ($5 each - pricey!), which we are going to put into frames with picture mats around them, so they will be decorative items on the wall at home in her bedroom. YDD asked me to take a pic of this surfboard, but she refused to be IN the surfboard picture...


We ended up getting back to ASMusic at around 7:45 - 8:00 pm, I think. We got some dessert (cookies, candy) at the ASMusic food court & gift shop to bring back to the room. And pretty much spent the rest of the evening watching more sit coms on Disney channel. It was lights out for the kids by 9:30 pm. They didn't complain too much. The kids said that they really enjoyed Wednesday, that it was nice to have time to just hang out and do nothing, to have it OK to just lay around and watch TV for a couple of hours if they wanted to. I'm really glad that we did this. Next time, I think that the max we will go without a rest day is 2 park days in a row. And if we ever go back to WDW in the summer again, it will be 1 park day followed by 1 rest day, then repeat.

Up next...DH's description of the Cisco event at Universal Studios...

 

[VandVsmama]

Cisco event at Universal Studios Wednesday night:

I have ZERO photos of this because DH didn't take any. But DH told me all about it. Here are some interesting highlights that he shared...

1. there were food & drink stations ALL over the park! And the food was good, not lousy theme park food standard fare.
2. free wine & beer everywhere. As much as you wanted. DH said that his coworkers drank, but he didn't because he was hot & sweaty, didn't want to get dehydrated, & was already pretty tired anyway.
3. DH got dragged on the Mummy ride, the King Kong ride, and he went on 1 of the Harry Potter rides.
4. He said that after spending the evening at Universal, he now appreciates Disney theme parks a lot more. AND he appreciates all of the planning I do on these trips so that we all have a good time together.
5. He did NOT like the spinning on the Mummy ride.
6. He did NOT like the combination of spinning & roller coaster stuff on so many rides.
7. 1 of his coworkers bought the ride photo for 1 of the attractions they all rode together and apparently in the pic, DH is giving his coworker next to him some serious stink eye.
8. There were something like 16,000-20,000 convention attendees. And each attendee could bring 1 adult guest w/them to this event. So the park was kind of full.
9. DH said that children weren't permitted, but a lot of people had their whole family there despite the rules. He was a little frustrated by this and said that if he'd known that he could get the rest of us in then we ALL would have gone.
10. It POURED rain when he was in Harry Potter world. Cisco gave everybody ponchos for free...not Dollar Store ones, but good theme park ones (the ones that cost $25 or so). He brought his back w/him and we used it in MK the next day.
11. DH wanted to get the kids Harry Potter tshirts, but they were $40 each. He said, "Disney prices now don't seem quite so bad compared to Universal Studios."
12. He got ODD some Griffindor earrings and a Griffindor pin for YDD.

I think that he got back "home" about 11 pm? He was...BEAT!

Up next...Thursday...last MK day! Last convention day! And dessert party & fireworks day!

 

[VandVsmama]

THURSDAY, JUNE 14:
Our last day at Magic Kingdom! Being MUCH more well rested thanks to the Wed rest & resort day, we all awoke much earlier on Thursday than the day before. I noticed that DH was sleeping in a bit, so I woke him up to remind him about making it to the convention on time for the last convention day. The original plan was DH was going to attend a class in the morning and the convention was to wrap up by early-ish afternoon and he'd go with us to MK in the late afternoon.

DH said that he was SO tired from the night before at Universal Studios that he was totally skipping that morning's class and he was skipping the entire last day of the convention.

GREAT! So do you want to go with the kids & I to MK this morning? No. He wanted to sleep in. Fair enough, since he'd been working all week since Sunday essentially and it had been a long and tiring week.

Well, the kids & I had FP for Space Mtn that morning and we weren't going to pass THAT up (I convinced them the night before to do it and I was able to snag FP for it, which was a nice surprise). The 4 of us had breakfast in the food court. DH got his normal Denver omelet and grumbled about the insane price of the WDW quick service food. Kids & I were happy with our Mickey waffles & bacon. We gave DH big hugs before departing off to MK.

I don't remember if we took the bus that morning or if we drove. I **THINK** we bussed it to MK that morning because I know that one a.m. we DID bus it to MK and we only waited like 5 min and the buses were all coming pretty frequently at that hour (8 am-ish).

We didn't actually get INTO the park until just after regular park opening at 9:00 am. Man...45 min from getting on the bus to actually getting through security and all that. That's almost as bad as my morning commute to work! Haha!

We headed straight to Space Mountain. LOVE Tomorrowland at WDW. It looks SO GREAT! I stopped to take this quick pic along the way to Space Mtn...


We scanned our Magic Bands and walked through like an empty queue in Space Mtn...


I looked to our right and it was just as empty back there, too!


OK, so general thoughts about WDW Space Mtn vs DL Space Mtn:

1. WDW version has, like, NO music! Well, there is music, but you can't hear it as well as you can at DL because there are no speakers in the ride vehicle right by your head.
2. WDW SM felt more...out of control...jarring, bumpy, etc.
3. I actually got kind of nauseous on this ride. That's never happened to me at DL.
4. DL's version has better music because you can hear the music.
5. DL's version feels more secure & it feels more like you're actually in a space jet of some sort.
6. WDW's version felt like the Matterhorn in the dark.

We all hated it. HATED it. NEVER going on this one again. YDD almost threw up afterwards. Heck, I almost barfed, too! The ride photo was terrible.

 

[VandVsmama]

The kids were upset about how things went at Space Mtn, especially since they had worked up the courage all week to actually go on it. But on the bright side, they said that when we go back to Disneyland again, they want to try THAT Space Mtn one more time to compare. I'm hoping that we can go at a time of year when they have the Hyperspace Mountain version up because that is SO AWESOME AND AMAZING! It's like you're in the midst of a Star Wars battle complete with laser blasters and tie fighters coming at you.

YDD was on the verge of tears, so I said, "Let's go on Carousel of Progress." Both kids were at this point very apprehensive because they didn't want to be surprised again like that. YDD said, "Can we go on a smooth and boring ride next please?" Yes, honey, we can. Off we go!




The Carousel of Progress hit the spot. YDD thought it was boring. ODD liked it. I loved it. It's everything I remembered it to be from 40 years ago. And it got the bad vibes from Space Mtn off of us, so success! YDD did NOT want to do it again later w/DH, but I told her that Daddy, like me, hasn't seen Carousel of Progress since he was a kid and he can't come all this way and not see this attraction, so since it's thanks to Daddy that we even got to come here, we are going to do what he wants to go on this evening. "*sigh* Ok, fiiiinnnneeee!" LOL!

After we left Carousel of Progress, I took this photo. We didn't make it on the Astrorbiter. I really wish that DL had kept their version of this on the upper level. I think that's where this attraction belongs instead of creating a bottleneck into Tomorrowland at DL.


I almost forgot....here's some pics from inside Carousel of Progress. ODD was singing that song the whole rest of the day.






Up next...YDD gets to meet her favorite character!

 

[cinderaimee]

Carousel of Progress is the best for a break. Low-thrills, out of the sun and air conditioned. I haven't been on SM since I went in college in 2001 or 2002 and I remember it being kind of rough back then!

 

[Tasscrapper]

Wow, interesting take on Space Mountain. You can't hear the music well? No hidden Mickey speakers? Maybe we'll skip this. Hubby won't want to ride it anyhow. . . he doesn't like coasters a lot and if it is jerk like Matterhorn and made you guys feel nauseous I am all for skipping on to something else that would be fun. Your poor dh sounds so tired!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Following along! I was there around the same time as you and yes IT WAS HOT!!! LOL

"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?!"

Thank you! I had these exact thoughts so many times during my trip.

I made the mistake of ordering a large pizza for the 3 of us to share instead of an individual pizza for us to share

My mom and I made this mistake as well. It was so big!

While we were eating lunch, ODD spotted Goofy and she told YDD, "YDD! Look! Goofy's over there! He's right there!" YDD got so excited..."Mama! Goofy is here!

we saw Donald Duck walking with purpose to some sort of destination

Wow! That is so lucky! I have only ever heard of characters at the resorts during special events or during hurricanes etc. Maybe this is something they are starting to roll out? I hope so as it would be a nice perk of staying at a Disney resort.

 

[VandVsmama]

Wow, interesting take on Space Mountain. You can't hear the music well? No hidden Mickey speakers? Maybe we'll skip this. Hubby won't want to ride it anyhow. . . he doesn't like coasters a lot and if it is jerk like Matterhorn and made you guys feel nauseous I am all for skipping on to something else that would be fun. Your poor dh sounds so tired!

Yeah, the difference in ride vehicles for SM made it a very different experience. SM @ WDW was kind of scary in a not fun sort of way and I felt like I was going to fly out of the ride vehicle. On SM @ Disneyland, I always end up doing a combination of yelling/screaming & stupid laughter but at WDW, I was trying not to lose my breakfast.

 

[Pooh's-Honey-Pot]

Signing up!

 

[VandVsmama]

After we left Carousel of Progress, the kids were in a much better mood and nobody had any lingering bad juju left over from SM. YDD studied the map again while ODD looked at the WDW ride times on my phone. I had a Touring Plan itinerary, but we were only very loosely following that at this point. YDD saw the sign for Stitch Character Experience, so we looked on the WDW app and hoo boy, YDD, you are in luck because Stitch IS doing a meet & greet right now and the line isn't too bad!

So we went over and got in line. I don't remember what the posted wait was, but it felt like we waited about 15 minutes and none of the line was outside. I'm glad that I had paid the $169 for Memory Maker because the kids' facial expressions during the meet & greets were really great. In this photo, ODD has demonstrated her Stitch voice to Stitch, who was totally amazed.


Here he is giving ODD a round of applause for it...


I told the PP photographer that Stitch was YDD's favorite character. As you can see here, she is totally star struck. She didn't say a word, was just in awe.


And my favorite one of all....


My eyes might have gotten a little misty from all that because by the next time we go to a Disney park, I'm certain that YDD will have figured out the deal with the characters. Our FP window had then opened to meet Rapunzel & Tiana. We hadn't seen the castle up close, so we went to go explore that first...


The WDW MK castle really IS quite impressive, isn't it? I wanted to look at all of the gorgeous mosaics but a lot of them were blocked off for some sort of show that was about to start. We never made it back to that area the rest of the day.




Then we strolled over to the Rapunzel & Tiana meet & greet. I think that our FP also probably would have worked for the Cinderella & Elena meet & greet also, but the kids know nothing about Elena, aren't interested in Elena, and didn't want to pretend like they cared about Elena, so we passed on Cinderella.

Up next...meeting Rapunzel & Tiana, going to Tom Sawyer's Island, and what were the wait times when we left the park?

 

[VandVsmama]

We have been to Disneyland several times now...almost on a yearly basis since the kids were 4 and 6. There was 1 year that we skipped a DL visit. And every time we're at DL, we always miss meeting Tiana. My kids really love The Princess & The Frog. I really love the music in that movie. At Disneyland, Dr Facilier is often just wandering around New Orleans Square. We've run into him a few times. But we always manage to miss Tiana! So the kids were really pleased when they learned that Mama here had snagged FP to meet her.

We didn't do autograph books on this trip. The plus side of that is that it was 1 less thing to carry. 2nd plus is that we ended up with more photos and the kids had more time to talk with the character. I told Miss Tiana how we'd had her famous gumbo a few years ago when she was working in the kitchen at the Blue Bayou (that was on our first ever trip to Disneyland...the kids still talk about that trip). I asked her if she could twirl in her big fancy dress and she was happy to oblige...





The kids LOVED Tiana. YDD & ODD were VERY animated with her, VERY excited. YDD said, " We really liked your gumbo!" I then told her that our server had given us the recipe when we were at the Blue Bayou. In this next picture, she asked me if I'd made it yet (no, I haven't!) and she gave me a good talking to about that. LOL!


Tiana was just wonderful. Really spectacular. Her dress was fabulous. Next up was Rapunzel, who YDD just loves to death because Rapunzel wears YDD's favorite color. They talked about all things purple, how they like to draw in purple, etc., etc.


Then Rapunzel & ODD chatted about favorite rides so far...Rapunzel agreed that 7DMT was pretty amazing.


YDD was once again speechless and star struck all of a sudden!


The kids loved these 2 meet & greets. Disneyland has something very similar to this... Princess Fantasy Faire. But it doesn't have FP. Which princesses it has varies throughout the day. But usually there's 1 princess outside and then 3 more princesses inside the building. I'd consider a "long" line for PFF @ DL to be 30 min, but we've gotten in line for it when it was 20 min.

 

[VandVsmama]

The girls knew how much I wanted to go check out Tom Sawyer's Island at WDW. I remember going to DL when I was a kid back when you could still go and explore the fort and I saw that there was something like that at WDW's Tom Sawyer's Island. It was pretty darn hot at this point in the day. The kids were troopers, though. YDD pretty much nailed it when she said to ODD, "We HAVE to go to Tom Sawyer's Island or Mama will never let us hear the end of it." We all had a good laugh over that!

I think that we might have had to wait for 1 boat before we went over. We looked through Harper's Mill and the kids had never seen an old fashioned mill before, so I explained to them how it worked and what people used to use mills for.


There were some neat views of Frontierland from here...


But as you can see from this pic, we were starting to melt...


We walked through 1 of the caves and it looked like an old mine. That was neat. Much different than DL's Tom Sawyer's Island, which has pirate stuff throughout the caves. I took this pic of BTMRR...


This was definitely 1 of those things where the mind was willing, but the body was not able. The heat was really starting to wear down YDD, to the point where I was starting to get a little concerned about her. And we hadn't even explored half of the entire island yet. So we decided to leave. I'll have to explore the rest of the island another time! I took this panoramic shot before we left though!



1 more picture....



Overall thoughts about WDW vs DL Tom Sawyer's Island....

1. 
   
   
   • it seemed bigger
   • wish that the cave we went through had some interactive stuff in it like the caves in DL's does.
   • wish that we had run across a water fountain (but it's more likely that we passed it and I just wasn't paying attention)
   • it seemed like you could explore way more of the island at WDW than you can at DL
   • the waterfront area feels more closed in, more constrained than it does at DL. However, at DL, a big part of the water front area is used for Fantasmic! viewing.
   • I forgot that WDW doesn't have Davey Crockett Explorer Canoes, so I wasn't used to NOT seeing people rowing in boats on the river.
   • I wish that the riverboat had been operating during our trip, but from the looks of that riverboat, it's probably good that it's being refurbished because it looked like it needed a new paint job in a bad way.

 

[VandVsmama]

The kids now declared that they were done, they were hungry, and they were tired, and they wanted to leave. I remember considering us having lunch in MK before we left, but YDD wanted one of those gigantic 1/4 of a pizza pepperoni pizza slices back at the ASMusic food court, so we agreed to head back. Plus, DH was texting us asking where we were, what were we doing for lunch, etc., etc....because he was all rested up now, I think, and he was ready for family time.

So we decided to head back to ASMusic. Since we had bussed it to MK earlier that day, we bussed it back. It was SO hot...Oh my Lord, so hot. As I type this, I am literally laughing out loud about how hot we were. HAHAHA!!! We dreamt of 68 degree A/C and the pool. Before we left MK, though, I took some screen shots from the WDW app. Here's what the wait times were that Thursday at 12:10 pm:


And these wait times....




So you see that? Almost everything is 25 minutes or more. Bleh. No thanks. That's when we know that it's time to leave. 1 thing that I found VERY interesting is the VAST difference in wait times for Haunted Mansion between WDW & DL. On our DL trips, we usually ride DL in the morning by 11:45 am or we ride it in the evening between 6-9 pm. If they have FP running for HM, I'm often able to get a FP return window to ride HM in 30-60 min after I get the FP. If we ride standby, it's 15-20 min, but often ends up to be ~ 5 min shorter wait than the time posted. But at WDW? No way. Holy cow, you really do need FP there for HM!

Before we left for the afternoon, I took 1 last photo....


We got back to ASMusic about 20 min after leaving MK because a bus arrived 1 or 2 min after we got to the ASMusic bus stop. DH met us at the food court & he brought the refillable mug with him (smart guy!). He did a repeat of grumbling about the quality & prices of the ASMusic food court. I just laughed. Told him to just chill out because this was our last day at ASMusic, the kids were having a great time, and we were switching to AKL the next day, so just chill out honey. After lunch, everyone's moods were much better. We all laid in bed and watched some more Disney channel and I took the kids to the pool again. After the pool, I started getting us organized and started packing for our check out the following morning.

Up next...DH joins us for a fun evening at MK, fireworks dessert party, & DH gets excited about the parking lot trams.

 

[VandVsmama]

We went out to dinner this evening because it's too hot to cook (109 today!). On the way back home from dinner, ODD for some reason got to talking about Sonic Drive-In (we never go there and we didn't go there this evening). And this is what she said:

"Mama, I can't quite figure out Sonic Drive-In. I know they say it's a restaurant, but it's kind of weird because you don't actually go inside. Like, you order from your car and then they go inside and then they come out and bring you the food to your car. It's like....the human version of Flo's V-8 Cafe."

Then YDD said, "Yeah, and Sonic is a hedge hog, too."

All I've gotta say is....my Disney parenting job is done. My 12 yr old is explaining things in Disney terms.

 

[VandVsmama]

Late afternoon/early evening, we decided that it was time to head back to MK. Welcome to the land of the transportation challenge! Haha!

The kids really wanted to take the bus because they thought that was less hassle and less walking than doing the drive-park-parking lot tram-ferry/monorail-walk-main entrance routine. We had a little debate in our hotel room about it. I wanted to just drive because, frankly, I didn't feel like walking all the way to the front of ASMusic when our room was almost all the way at the back of ASMusic. DH was starting to get annoyed & eventually I just caved so we all trudged up to the front of the resort for the busses.

There were a pretty good number of people in line in front of us for MK. 1 thing I learned which I found to be annoying is 1 person would be holding their family's place in line and then at the last minute, a mob of people come to join that person. Well, great, there goes any hope of getting on the next bus, right? We waited about 5 min and the kids started whining about "When is the bus going to come?" I checked the video monitor and it said it would arrive in 2 min. Then 1 min later, it changed to 2 min after that. Lather, rinse, repeat. This went on and on line that for 10 min. DH, ODD, YDD, and I were all getting really annoyed. And there is no shade or anything in the bus lines for ASMusic. 20 min waiting out there and there's still no bus. Busses arrived for every other park, even for Disney Springs. Nothing for MK.

I got really fed up and I told my family, "Ok, if it doesn't come in 2 min like the monitor says it will, then we're leaving and we're going to drive. That's it. I'm sick of this nonsense." 2 minutes later, the monitor changed the bus arrival to 5 min away. So we all then walked to the very back of the resort where the car was parked and we drove. If we had driven over like I had originally suggested, then we would have been at the TTC by then.

As we were leaving ASMusic, what did I see pulling into the ASMusic bus stops, but a bus for MK. Nuts. When the transportation is "on" and working right & timed right, it's fine. But otherwise, getting around WDW is a royal pain in the neck. As the week went on, I found this to be more and more annoying every time we took a bus to get somewhere. I think that if we go again to WDW, I'm going to rent a car again even though we'll have to pay daily parking fees. It's such a pain in the neck and such a huge hassle. It's worse than my commute to/from work. I don't like having to stress out while I'm on vacation about having to leave my resort 90 minutes ahead of time in order to take what should be a 15-20 min drive to get to my destination. That's insane.

Well, we finally got parked at MK on the Villains side of the lot and DH got very excited about the parking lot trams. He said, "OH! They still have parking lot trams? I haven't been on 1 of these since I was a kid! Like when I'd go to Disneyland just for the day with my grandparents. Our first ride was always on the parking lot tram. This is great!"



DH was seriously a big happy camper on that thing.

Earlier in the day while we were on our break, I started fiddling around with our FPs and got a FP for Haunted Mansion since DH hadn't been on it yet.




DH got a kick out of how you basically get right on the doom buggies right after you get out of the stretching room. And he thought that the staircase room was pretty cool. Otherwise, he said that he thought it was pretty much exactly the same as at Disneyland. We all enjoyed this ride a lot. We were all glad that I had packed 3 ponchos and an umbrella in my park bag before we left ASMusic because as we walked to HM, it started to rain...POUR actually. The heavens opened just as we entered MK. We cut through some of the stores on Main Street in order to avoid the rain. I am glad that I was wearing Teva sandals so I didn't have to care about my feet getting wet.

Right after we got off of HM, YDD had to go to the bathroom, so I took her to the Rapunzel bathroom next door in Fantasyland and DH & ODD took off somewhere else (he never says where he's going) with the agreement that we'd meet back at the HM entrance in a couple of minutes. Well, YDD & I ended up waiting...and waiting...and waiting...all the while I was calling and texting and calling DH asking him where the heck is he. Whenever we're at DL, he often listens to music on his Bluetooth ear buds using his phone and when that happens, he never hears the calls or text messages. It drives me a little bonkers sometimes when I'm trying to get us somewhere in the parks.

Earlier in the day, I had also gotten us FP for Pirates...


Lanterns outside the bathrooms...


It's been AGES since DH saw Country Bear Jamboree, so we took him in there to check it out...


It was wonderfully cool inside. DH loved Country Bear Jamboree, said, "Oh! This hasn't changed at all! It's just like when I was a kid!" It was nice to see him excited about it and enjoying himself since it had been a looooong work week with the convention and everything. Up next was Pirates of the Caribbean since it was soon to be 7:10 pm. We headed through Adventureland...



There were a fair number of people in Adventureland, but it definitely did not feel like wall to wall people.


Then it was time to get on Pirates!




DH's thoughts about POTC:
- shorter than DL
- wished it had 2 drops instead of 1
- wished the ride was longer
- queue was interesting
- still gave it a thumbs up. Our family loves POTC.

 

[VandVsmama]

Now it was time for us to check in for the fireworks dessert party, so we walked from POTC over to Tomorrowland Terrace. We got there right at 7:45 pm and there were already a lot of people who had already checked in and were getting their desserts. Here's some of the stuff that I picked out...



The egg roll things were these yummy taco egg roll thingies. They were really good. I had a few of those. ODD & I really enjoyed the strawberries. I think she had 3 or 4 of them! The fruit was good. The red velvet mini-cupcake (that's the thing with the yellow frosting and the triangle white chocolate thing on top) was ok. The strawberry tart thing was very good. But my favorite was that lemon macaroon. I think I ended up eating 3 of those. SO GOOD!

They had a good selection of 'comfort dessert' options for kids. You could decorate your own cupcake. Here was ODD's first plate...Not pictured here was the ice cream sundae that she made. Her macaroon was either chocolate or coffee flavored. She said it was just ok, but she really liked the cupcake and the brownie.


This was YDD's first plate...She decorated a cupcake, too.


ODD also got some cheese, tried 1 of the taco egg rolls, and had seconds of other stuff. DH thoroughly enjoyed the dessert buffet. It was funny because around 6:30 pm, everyone in my family was grumping about being hungry. "When are we going to have dinner? I'm hungry. I'm starving!" etc., etc. I told them that we could have a snack, but in a smidge over an hour, we were going to the dessert party buffet and wouldn't it be a shame if they were too full from eating dinner in order to enjoy any of the all you can eat buffet?

So we settled on what any healthy eating-conscious set of parents would do in a Disney park and we got the kids Mickey ice cream bars in either Liberty Square or Adventureland. Here's a close up of that amazing lemon macaroon:



CM Noah who showed us to our table was really great. He explained where everything was in the dessert party buffet. We learned that he's from Toronto, working at WDW for 3 months through the ICP program. And he listens to Connecting with Walt! He loves all things Disney and his enthusiasm was just totally infectious. I put in a thank you for him at City Hall later that evening before we left. He was awesome.

Shortly after 8:30 pm, we were done eating. Everybody was full and nobody was complaining anymore about dinner. A CM escorted us over to the garden viewing area and this was our view. We got a nice spot on the fake grass and sat down. It was still raining a bit...sprinkling...and my Accuweather app said that there would be light rain until about 9 pm, so just before the fireworks were to begin. Shortly after we had checked in for the dessert party, the heavens opened up and it just POURED for a good 30 minutes. At that point, there were quite a few park guests starting to camp out for good fireworks viewing spots and once the rain started, they all cleared out.



Just based on proximity alone and the food we tried at the dessert party, I think that the high price tag of this fireworks dessert party was worth it. Yes, there was a light tower in our way, but almost every spot in the garden viewing area had a light tower between you and the castle. It was not a big deal, really (the light tower). The biggest perk of the dessert party, of course, is not having to camp out up to 2 hours before the fireworks. Neither DH or I are into camping out for hours to see fireworks. I LOVE the fireworks, but I'm not waiting for hours and hours for it. DH doesn't have much tolerance for that sort of waiting at a Disney park. So if we were to see the fireworks, it was do it this way or not see them at all. We skipped out on expensive daily ADRs in the rest of the trip (other than Hoop Dee Doo, of course).

Then it was time for fireworks to begin!






I took all of these with my iPhone. I think they turned out pretty well.
Shortl

 

[VandVsmama]

More fireworks pics!





The projections on the castle are really well done. At Disneyland, we usually end up watching fireworks over by It's A Small World and we see the projections on the front of IASW, so this was a treat to see them in front of the castle!




This one came out a little blurry, but you get the idea...


I took some video, too, but it's too large to post here. Throughout the whole video, you can hear me saying, "Oh my gosh!" and "Oh WOW!"


WDW vs DL fireworks:

1. they're both fabulous
2. we love them both
3. it's nice that WDW are nightly vs at DL even if fireworks are scheduled, if the Santa Ana winds have kicked up then the fireworks can be cancelled last minute or even DURING the fireworks.
4. DH said, "That was fun. I wouldn't mind doing that again" (the whole fireworks & dessert party thing). This is DH's version of a rave review. When he likes something, he doesn't gush about it like I do.
5. the kids LOVED the fireworks. Feedback from them included stuff like "Awesome," "That was GREAT!" and "I LOVED THAT!"

Our family's thoughts on the fireworks dessert party w/garden party viewing:

• Yeah, it's expensive.
• But we thought it was a good value for us since we otherwise would not have seen the fireworks at all.
• We enjoyed the dessert party food. Liked the range of dessert, cheeses, fruit, and drinks available.
• It was a really relaxing way to wind down after a busy day.
• It was nice to not have to hunt for and defend your fireworks viewing spot with the horde of humanity.
• We would pay the $$ to do this again.

Up next...a couple more rides before we say goodbye to MK!

 

[VandVsmama]

Once the fireworks were done, the hub seemed to clear out pretty quickly. DH hadn't been on the Peoplemover yet, so we went over to that ride and it was posted at a 5 min wait but we basically walked right on.


DH really liked this Epcot model....



DH agreed with me that WDW's Tomorrowland looks so much better and so much more futuristic than DL's.


DH LOVED the Peoplemover. YAY! It was a huge hit for our family. DH said, "I wish they still had Journey through Inner Space. The Peoplemover used to go through part of that ride and it was so neat." After we got off of the Peoplemover, I took this pic. LOVE all of the neon lighting in Tomorrowland at night!


Then we went on the Carousel of Progress for DH's sake...


DH really liked it. Reminded him of the good old days when he was a kid going to Disneyland with his grandparents and they would escape the hot Anaheim July heat in Carousel of Progress for 20 minutes. After 2 times on it in 1 day, YDD declared it boring. ODD liked it. I'm with DH in the "Love it!" category. Wish they had this still at Disneyland. After the fireworks, we weren't following any sort of touring plan even though I had one set up. This was DH's evening to pick what he wanted to do since he hadn't had hardly any opportunities all week to go into the parks with us (and we got him a 5-day ticket, too. Most of that went to waste. There were 3 days of it that he didn't use). The kids love Mad Tea Party with DH, so we went to that and they only had to wait 1 iteration of it before they got on. I sat this one out.


Kids & DH really enjoyed it. But I still prefer Mad Tea Party @ DL. I don't care much for the circus-themed part of Fantasyland. I enjoy those attractions, but I don't like how they're themed very much. It makes it feel too much like a carnival...and I don't like carnivals.

After Mad Tea Party, we thought about going on some other rides but everyone was tired and the next morning was an Animal Kingdom morning so we wanted to be up early for that. We were all disappointed to leave.


Silly pic in front of the castle...


And then it was time to make the sad walk down Main Street for the last time...


DH's overall impression of MK:

• • everything is a lot more spread out
  • you have to walk farther to get to everything
  • Tomorrowland looks better than DL, but it's also really big and takes awhile to get through
  • "We didn't get to go on as many rides as we would at DL." To put this into context, on a regular day for us at DL, we often end up going on 16-18 attractions with the rope drop until 1:30 pm, then break at room, then back ~ 4:30-5 pm until 10pm routine.
  • "I wish that WDW had DL's FP system. It's too complicated here & it's too hard to get extra FPs."
  • "I wish that DL had Peoplemover and Carousel of Progress."
  • "The Haunted Mansion line is 45 minutes?! At DL, we never have to wait that long for it."
  • "You need a FP to ride Jungle Cruise here?"
  • "People really wait an hour for Jungle Cruise here?"
  • "The CMs don't seem to like working here very much."
  • "I wouldn't mind coming back, but not in the summer."

In terms of getting back to the room, we did the reverse of what we'd done earlier in the day....
- monorail (we tried to use the ferry but it was a mob of people waiting for the ferry)
- parking lot tram
- car
- park car
- walk to room
- get in bed & crash

Up next...Animal Kingdom & resort switch to Animal Kingdom Lodge!

 

[VandVsmama]

Friday, June 15 - time to switch to Animal Kingdom Lodge!

I woke up SUPER early on Friday morning because I needed to get everybody out the door, bags stored with Luggage Services at ASMusic, family fed, and in the car to get to Animal Kingdom for 8:00 am EMH. I wanted to be at the gates at 7:30 am because I was hoping to get us to Flight of Passage first thing. HAHAHA! What a fool I was. There was no way that was happening, as we will soon see.

It's a good thing that I had done a lot of organizing and packing the day before when we had our afternoon break. My alarm went off at 5:30, but I didn't actually get in the shower until like 5:50 or so. I was SO thankful for the bathroom curtain because I was able to get dressed and not wake everybody else up with the bathroom light. At 6:15 am, I woke DH up. He grumbled his way over to the shower. I finished packing my stuff and got out the kids' clothes for the day & put away as much of their remaining stuff as possible. Then woke THEM up. VERY grumpy children that morning! Should have had a rest day between MK day #3 and AK day.

Well, we FINALLY all got out the door...to the tune of:
- I'm hungry!
- Why did we have to get up so early?
- Why can't we sleep in?
- Why did we have to switch rooms? Why can't we just stay here the whole time?
- Why are we going to the car?



Trust me, dear family, just trust me. There's a reason. Do you want to have to wait for hours to go on the Pandora river ride? No? Then just trust me on this.

We loaded up ALL of our bags in the car. YDD's enormous Stitch was too big to fit in the trunk so we rode with the kids in the back seat. We all got in the car and then drove to the front of ASMusic to the tune of...
- I'm hungry!
- Why are we doing this?
- When do we get to eat?
- Why do we have to move?
- Why are we doing this again?

We unloaded the car and I left DH with Luggage Services to have him check in all 14 of our bags (Stitch counted as 1 all by himself). Thanks to the conference, DH had 2 extra backpacks now. In the meantime, I took the kids to the food court for more Mickey waffles & bacon while I listened to...
- How long will this take?
- Do they have Mickey pancakes? I want some pancakes today. (no Mickey pancakes, just regular pancakes)
- Can I have some bacon? (Is the sky blue? YES!)
- How come we had to do that with all of the bags?
- Isn't Daddy eating breakfast?
- Is Daddy coming to AK with us?
- How will Daddy get to AK?

Just trust me, kiddos, all will be well in a moment. Just wait.

Ok, so the kids & I got our food and we sat down at a table to eat. DH got his food shortly after and joined us. He said that checking in the luggage was really easy and all we had to do later at AKL was call Bell Services when we were in the room and they'd bring it all up. More grumbling from DH about the quality & cost of ASMusic food court breakfast food (I had plenty of practice tuning him out all week on that! HAHAHA!). Everybody was finally fed & no longer grumpy. ODD filled up the kids' shared water bottle with ice. DH did the same with his. When it comes to water bottles in our family, I am not one of those germ-o-phobes. I figure that we are swapping germs all day long at home because we live under the same roof. So I don't worry about using the same drinking vessel unless 1 of us is sick and then I go to DEFCON 4 ready to break out the hazmat suits.

We were then FINALLY ready to go. FINALLY ready to leave ASMusic. I don't quite remember the time exactly...maybe 7:20-7:25 am-ish? There went my plans of being in line by 7:30 am. Ok, so now we are not going on Flight of Passage first thing. We got in the car and drove to Animal Kingdom. I took a wrong turn so it took 20 min instead of 10 to get there. We parked and then went through security screening. The security guard noticed our First Visit buttons and asked how our first visit was going. I told him that we were having a great time so far and today was our first ever day at Animal Kingdom and how we were going to be staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge that evening.

Maybe this security guard was new because he had no idea that there was an Animal Kingdom Lodge. And he had no idea that there were rooms there which look out on the savannah and how you can see animals from your hotel room balcony. He was like, "Wow, really? They have that here?" I thought, "What planet have you been on? Clearly not Animal Planet!" but instead I said, "Oh, you should go check it out! It's really neat! I bet you could get a pretty sweet CM discount on the room rate there."

We ended up getting into AK at 8:00 am. I totally forgot what attractions were open during EMH @ AK, so I looked it up...


Then we walked to Na'vi River Journey. Waited <5 min to get on that. The basket rope ceiling thing was interesting, but I don't understand what it's for.


And none of us could quite figure out what this was for. Maybe it was supposed to be some sort of altar or something? No idea.


The light fixtures in the queue were interesting...



Then we got on our boat.


We all liked this part....


The hanging jelly fish things were beautiful...


This is a bad picture and it's blurry, but this audio-animatronic is one of the best ones I've ever seen.



And that was it for NRJ. Our first impressions of this ride...
- very pretty
- didn't understand the purpose of it
- YDD thought the audioanimatronic was weird & creepy
- too short. Ride isn't long enough.
- no way we would wait 30 min or more to go on this
- 15 min wait? Sure, we'd go on it again. 20 min or more? No.

We said our temporary goodbyes to Pandora...


Looks like a beautiful day, right? People don't lie when they say that AK feels much hotter than the other parks. There was almost no breeze there. It was so sweaty. I think we got off the ride at about 8:20 am. So we had 40 min left to EMH. What to do? Hm....let's see....

- FOP - line too long right now
- Expedition Everest - heck no for DH. Kids don't want to ride a roller coaster that goes backwards
- It's Tough to be a Bug - did this once at DCA 6 yr ago. NEVER AGAIN!
- Kilimanjaro Safaris - not open yet and we had a FP for it at 9:05 am
- NRJ - just went on that and we don't want to do it again
- Primeval Whirl - No. Kids & DH hate roller coaster that are like Goofy's Sky School at DCA.
- Triceratop Spin - maybe
- Dinosaur....

Yep, ok, let's go to Dinosaur. Where is it, Mama? Good gravy, it's practically like on the other side of the AK universe. Finally made our way over to Dinoland. It was pretty empty...YDD thought the Dinosaur-themed restaurant looked promising. Maybe we'd go there for lunch?

 

[VandVsmama]

Made it to the Dinosaur entrance. The place was deserted.


Walked through the queue...


Almost time to get on board and find our dino!


Our family's impression of Dinosaur:
- it was fun, but just ok
- better than NRJ
- the whole "not our dino!" thing was annoying then just hilarious after awhile
- first impression of the outside of the attraction building? Meh, ugly, like we're going into a museum or an office building
- if there was nothing else to do, we'd go on it again, but we're not going to 'walk with purpose' at rope drop for something like this
- Indiana Jones at DL is much better.

We still had ~ 15 min left of EMH. Walked past Triceratop Spin & Primeval Whirl, which looked like they had no lines. The kids were not interested in going on either of those. We didn't even go into that part of Dinoland to look more...we just walked past it. The main reason? It was sooooo hot. We were melting. We were all pretty miserable and it wasn't even 9:00 am. TOO HOT! And to be honest, I really don't understand the whole dinosaur carnival theme that they were going with in that part of Dinoland. It seemed sort of lame. My kids would have loved it if they were 3 or 4 or if they were dinosaur people.

Ok, well, that was a flop, so what do we do now? Hm...well, I don't know. Everything is so far away from where we currently are. Let's just walk to Kilimanjaro Safaris since our FP starts at 9:05 am for that. So 15 min later (after a bathroom stop), we finally got to the FP entrance for that. Along the way, we saw this....


Don't know what that animal was called.

I thought this area was pretty and it felt like you were in India or in a jungle in Africa. And it felt like it, too, in terms of the weather.


This building looked like it had been there forever. Disney does a great job making things totally fit in.


I liked the front of this building....


At this point, we were all wondering, "Will we EVER get there? Where IS this thing?" Well, we finally made it!