Lesson learned. Need more days in Disney!!! Aug 2010 (NEW 1/20-COMPLETE)

[MarieTheCat24]

WAIT WAIT WAIT. YOU DON'T HAVE FANTA ORANGE POP IN CANADA? SERIOUSLY? WHAT IS UP WITH THAT? WHY ARE YOU GUYS BEING DEPRIVED OF THE JOYS OF LIFE? WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO WRITE THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SOME STRONGLY WORDED LETTERS? BECAUSE I WILL. I AM VERY OUTRAGED ON YOUR BEHALF.

Ok. Rant over.

Yay for checking in!! I don't know much about Pop, but your room sounds like it was in a great location. And I love the Canada backpack! I'm always jealous during the Olympics because the Canadian athletes get awesome Roots apparel. The US apparel is iffy...sometimes it's cute, sometimes it's...not.

 

[englishrose47]

I'm finally here. I followed your post from another TR. On our first "kid free" WDW trip we stayed at pop. I really enjoy that resort. I'm enjoying your trip so far. I remember going through the same feelings when we first arrived there.

Looking forward to more from your trip.

Hi D Jay!!!!

 

[englishrose47]

Hi Yuki !!Did you find Tops !!!???I soo wish I wasn;t working all week end or I could have been your Tourguide !!!!

 

[dizneeat]

Hi Yuki!!

We definitely missed you at yesterday's EMH at the MK!!!

I haven't had time to read it all yet , but I will once we are back home! Can't wait to hear all about your trip!

Greetings from Mickey's place - and yes, it is still VERY sunny and HOT!

 

[Fantasyland Mom]

I just read through your PTR for this trip (because I am writing a new PTR and needed inspiration--yours was great!), so OF COURSE I now have to read the TR! I can't wait to hear all about your trip!

And we LOVE Pop, too! It is probably the only place we'll ever stay!

 

[Cat0727]

LOVEEE Pop! I'm with Lia, how I wish I could be there right now!

Haha the lady looks thrrrrilled that you're taking her picture. Your caption made the pic even funnier!

 

[wishuponastar2430]

So far it looks like you guys had a BLAST! I am so worried about not having enough pictures of the two of us together when I go with my DBF! But it looks like you didn't have a problem doing that so I am not too worried anymore lol.

 

[vamassey1]

Love the POP pictures! Our first stay there was in the 70s section. I'm slowly making my way around.

Yeah for heading to your first park.

 

[YukiPhnx]

I love how you can see Andrew in your Minnie sunglasses. And, americans are SO spoiled, we have everything :rolls eyes: it kind of takes the fun out of finding unique things when we travel, actually.

Yeah, I noticed that too! He actually purposely took a pic of himself in my sunglasses on our MK day.

You are so cute and entertaining!! I'm loving your review. My DD can relate to wearing a black Tshirt in August. Not happening again!

You have photos of Pop that I haven't seen before - so much cool theming!

Aww, thanks so much! And yeah, not the best idea is it? At least we learned something from it.

I just adore the theming of Pop. I knew I would like it, but actually being there amoungst the giant icons....it's even better

I think those are the best pics of Pop I've ever seen

And thanks so much! I'll tell Andrew that.

I'm finally here. I followed your post from another TR. On our first "kid free" WDW trip we stayed at pop. I really enjoy that resort. I'm enjoying your trip so far. I remember going through the same feelings when we first arrived there.

Looking forward to more from your trip.

Hey DJay! Ahh, a trip without the antics of the 2 amigos. I loved the 70's building cause it wasn't as kid-filled as the other buildings, but yet still close to the buses. It's great to have you along!

 

[YukiPhnx]

I just read through your PTR for this trip (because I am writing a new PTR and needed inspiration--yours was great!), so OF COURSE I now have to read the TR! I can't wait to hear all about your trip!

And we LOVE Pop, too! It is probably the only place we'll ever stay!

I'm honoured my PTR could be your inspiration

It's not hard to love the Pop. It already feels like home to me! Oh, I can't wait to return "home".

LOVEEE Pop! I'm with Lia, how I wish I could be there right now!

Haha the lady looks thrrrrilled that you're taking her picture. Your caption made the pic even funnier!

Maybe if we wish really hard, we will be!

When we were taking the shot, she turned her head LAST minute. Oops! We quickly turned around and that's when I told Andrew what I think she must've thought of us. Good thing she wasn't getting on our bus. AWKwaaaard....

So far it looks like you guys had a BLAST! I am so worried about not having enough pictures of the two of us together when I go with my DBF! But it looks like you didn't have a problem doing that so I am not too worried anymore lol.

I still think we don't have enough pictures of us together. That was one of my worries too. We had some problems with our camera, which I will learn of soon in the TR. If it weren't for that, we would've asked people to take pictures of us more often.

Love the POP pictures! Our first stay there was in the 70s section. I'm slowly making my way around.

Yeah for heading to your first park.

I think I'll be staying in the 70's for a while. I just LOOVED where my room is. Every night, walking back there all tired, I REALLY appreciated the location of it. And every time, I told Andrew how much I loved where our room was, haha

 

[YukiPhnx]

YAY!! Checking into Pop!!!! WHY AM I NOT THERE RIGHT NOW?? I love it there so much. It's so awesome that you got to be right behind the big Mickey phone. I stayed in the 70's once too. Our first stay was in the 60's and I think that may be the best. On our last trip there we were in the 50's, and it was really quiet and nice over there... so maybe that's the best?! All I know is wherever we are at the POP I am happier than I am anywhere else!!

Ok, does Andrew have a brother? I need a boyfriend who buys me Stitch things!! Preferably in Taiwan because they seem to have the coolest Stitch items, but you know, anywhere is fine.

I can't wait to read about what you did at Epcot =)

I had no idea Taiwan would have so much Stitch stuff! Maybe I should take a pic of all the Stitch things he got me there. Yes, it's great to have a boyfriend that knows what to buy you

60's is the closest to Classic Hall. I think I may try for the 80's next time maybe? Andrew expressed some interest in swimming in the computer pool. When he found out they had one (after we came home), he was like, "WHAT??? I COULD'VE SWAM IN A COMPUTER???" I'm pretty sure I've hooked him into returning to WDW

WAIT WAIT WAIT. YOU DON'T HAVE FANTA ORANGE POP IN CANADA? SERIOUSLY? WHAT IS UP WITH THAT? WHY ARE YOU GUYS BEING DEPRIVED OF THE JOYS OF LIFE? WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO WRITE THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SOME STRONGLY WORDED LETTERS? BECAUSE I WILL. I AM VERY OUTRAGED ON YOUR BEHALF.

Ok. Rant over.

Yay for checking in!! I don't know much about Pop, but your room sounds like it was in a great location. And I love the Canada backpack! I'm always jealous during the Olympics because the Canadian athletes get awesome Roots apparel. The US apparel is iffy...sometimes it's cute, sometimes it's...not.

I KNOW???? WHY DON'T WE HAVE ALL THE AWESOME COOL STUFF YOU GUYS GET???? YES PLEASE WRITE A LETTER TO THE GOVERNMENT.

I love Fanta Orange. I'm not into orange juice, but Fanta orange I could drink GALLONS of.

Yeah, I really liked the Canada olympics gear. There's this one light jacket I really want to get, but most places are sold out of the adult sizes

 

[YukiPhnx]

I can't wait to see it!!!


that's EXACTLY what I said!!!



I love crazy straws!!!! I want a mickey one!!!


Yuki you've said many funny things since I've met you but that has got to be by far one of the funniest! I COULD NOT stop laughing!!!


Agreed!

-as soon as I return to Waterloo, I will try my best to remember to take a pic of it.

-it just blows my mind

-you didn't see them in AK?

-haha, so glad I could amuse you. Yes, I'm a very funny person aren't I?

 

[YukiPhnx]

Hi Yuki !!Did you find Tops !!!???I soo wish I wasn;t working all week end or I could have been your Tourguide !!!!

I actually found Tops without much trouble! I'll be writing a mini-TR about it soon. It would've been awesome to have you as a guide. The speed signs and the traffic lights were throwing me off!

Hi Yuki!!

We definitely missed you at yesterday's EMH at the MK!!!

I haven't had time to read it all yet , but I will once we are back home! Can't wait to hear all about your trip!

Greetings from Mickey's place - and yes, it is still VERY sunny and HOT!

Karin! We need to meet up again in the future. For another MK EMH perhaps? We took your advice on Jungle Cruise at night. GREAT IDEA!!

Awww, nice and hot. Toronto is getting REALLY cold. I want to be there with you!!!

 

[MAGICFOR2]

Great start! I love how you got to be just where you wanted and saved $$ too! I would love to be near that Mickey phone too - too cool!
I'm looking forward to more!

 

[RachelNinja]

I'm here! I always get excited when I find another Chinese person on DIS. Plus, I have cousins in Canada and DFi has family in Canada too! Can't wait to see the fun you have in the parks!

 

[YukiPhnx]

Great start! I love how you got to be just where you wanted and saved $$ too! I would love to be near that Mickey phone too - too cool!
I'm looking forward to more!

Yeah, I'm so glad everything worked out that well. It's such a great location, you should request it next time. It's building 6.

I'm here! I always get excited when I find another Chinese person on DIS. Plus, I have cousins in Canada and DFi has family in Canada too! Can't wait to see the fun you have in the parks!

Hey Rachel! Yes, I get excited to see another Chinese person here too! Why aren't there more of us???? I mean, there isn't even enough of us at WDW for Disney to have signs in Chinese. I'm surprised at how much Japanese are there though.

 

[YukiPhnx]

Chapter 5a. Day 1 pt.4- When I look the animatronics in the eyes, it's as if they're saying "Help me!" or "You're next!"

Yes, Andrew actually said that. Let me back up and tell you the story of how that came to be.

So, our bus ride to Epcot was uneventful. If it wasn't, then I probably just forgot to write about it. By this point though, I was whipping out my trip notebook every time I sat down to jot things down. I was getting the hang of this TR note-taking thing!

Ahh, Spaceship Earth on our walk from the bus stop.

See how excited I am???

After our first bag check, we were finally in!!! OMG OMG OMG! We got to Epcot by 5:30pm. Not so bad. My plans for the rest of the day were to eat at Sunshine Seasons, look around Innoventions East and West for a bit, go to DTD for dinner during Illuminations, then return for evening EMH.

Let's see how closely THAT was followed. Let me give you a hint. It wasn't But let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? (grammatically, the syntax is off there, isn't it?)

Andrew is overwhelmed by his first glimpse of a park in 16 years!

He's also really intrigued by these.

I think they're really cool too.

So, even though my plan was to get food first, we weren't starving or anything, so we decided to head onto..

I knew the line for this ride is never long. And I was right! We walked right into our ride vehicle.

Andrew REALLY enjoyed this ride! I think it was at this point that he was starting to "get" Disney He loves how smoothly the animatronics were moving. He said, "They're moving as if they're real people, but when I look them in the eyes, I can see they're not real. But even then, it's as if they're saying "Help me!" or "You're next!" He's a keeper, amirite?

Oh yes, let's not forget those pictures of the "future" we chose.

I crack myself up, I really do. This also becomes a theme in our ride photos. A SILLY theme!!

We were starting to get a bit hungry, so headed over to

(so many strollers!)

for

While deciding what to get, Andrew took this photo of the drinks.

He wanted to show a bottle was a whopping $6!! Might as well pay that price for better drinks in World Showcase

We got one order of the Quarter Chicken with mashed tators and rice to share.

The chicken was a bit dry, so we grabbed some bbq sauce to go with it. HOLD UP. You guys have BBQ sauce dispensers??? Our McDonalds got rid of it YEARS ago, and it was the only fast food place that had it to begin with. I'm really amazed at all the condiments Disney had. Just made their food so much better.

We mixed the bbq sauce with a hot sauce, and it was YUMM-O! The rice was a good choice, and the mashed tators are the best I've ever had outside of a sit down restaurant.

Cont'd in next post.

 

[englishrose47]

I love SE !! Tried it May 2009 and then told the family to try it in September and they LOVED it too!!It has become a must do everytime !!!

 

[vamassey1]

Love Spaceship Earth! Your pictures are too funny. Love Andrew's take on the animantronics. You guys really look like your having a blast.

Food looks great and smart move to share. They really give you too much. What about desert? They have the best deserts there.

Looking forward to more.

 

[YukiPhnx]

Chapter 5b. Day 1 pt.4- Those alligators are SOOOO cute.

I had initially planned to explore Innoventions East and West, but decided to go on

since it was practically a walk-on.

We got to sit in the front row of the 2nd boat, so got some pretty nice pictures. This is 1 of 2 rides were Andrew asks me if we'll get wet and I say no. But sitting at the front, we got wet in the rainforest scene.
My bad, Andrew.

Here are some of the photos he took.

I love reptiles! They were moving around a lot here. I thought they were SOOO CUUUTE!!

When we got the fish farm section, I said, "Oooh, they look so yummy." Andrew laughed and said, "Only a Chinese person would say that." That's so true. But they DID look yummy! I love fish.

So what's next? On to Mousegears to buy a folder for all the pressed pennies I'll be getting! For some reason, I forgot to take a picture of it, but it's purple with Tink on the cover. I was surprised at how many pennies it can hold! Definitely worth the purchase.

Even though these are MY pennies, Andrew was the one who actually made them and got them for me. He somehow became the Pennies man.

So then we come across this wall.

Ok folks, if you've read my PTR, you'll know that I planned to get Andrew a Mickey pirate hat as a birthday surprise, but knew he wasn't a "hat person" and probably wouldn't appreciate the gift. WELL.......He wanted a hat. After seeing that wall.

WHAT?????? Where is my DBF and what did you do to him? He shrugged and said, "Well, when in Rome." Soooo, we proceeded to try on a bunch of ear hats and he found one he liked. I chose a Minnie Mouse "ear"band I really liked too. At first, I wasn't going to get it, but he wanted to match. Again, WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE REAL ANDREW??? Is it ok if I keep this one? K thanks.

Didn't actually take any pictures of us AT THAT MOMENT. But we wore it for the rest of the trip so you'll see 'em. We also got sprinkled with major Pixie Dust cause of them. More on that later.

Ahhh, World Showcase at last.

What is our first stop? A strawberry frozen margarita for Andrew.

Looks how happy he is with his alcohol.

Hooray for Mexico!

I on the other hand, had my very first FROZEN BANANA.

YUM I love bananas and chocolate. And freezing them just seems like an even better idea. My very first Bluth banana? I would've gone for a Gob. We don't get this snack in Canada. I didn't even know it existed until Arrested Development.

So, where to know? Innoventions?? Nopes. Nemo ride! I heard it wasn't popular and a sure walk-on, and I was right! We walked right onto it. I love the queue for this ride. Really submerges you. Get it?

The scene with the deep sea fish actually spooked me a bit. That thing is scary!

So after leaving the ride, it was already 8pm! Where did the time go? Innoventions was closed by now, so just decided to explore the tanks in The Seas. Found a couple of Hidden Mickeys in the tanks.

So we go upstairs to the giant tanks and....What the....DOLPHINS???? They have DOLPHINS HERE???? I had no idea! I've never ever heard talk of dolphins here before. Even more exciting was that it was Andrew's first time seeing dolphins in real life! There was a pair of them and they were just swimming around, playing with each other. So very very cute. I sat down on the ledge outside their tank and just watched them. Took this time to write down notes and just relax a bit. It was very nice.

At this point in the trip, Andrew owned up to something he had been keeping from me. The fact that his camera, the only camera we bought (other than our emergency disposal), wasn't working well. He had dropped it when he was in Taiwan, and now it vibrated heavily every time we tried to take a picture. Of course, we were able to temporarily fix it every time we took a shot, but this meant that we wouldn't be able to ask other people to take pictures of us cause it would be too much trouble. We also had to retake a lot of photos cause a lot of the shots would come out blurry.

Fortunately, we were able to take all the pictures we wanted. It just took a little more work. I wish he would've let me know about this sooner so I could've brought my family's digicam and we wouldn't have had to deal with his camera's problem. O wells. Lesson number 3, make sure you have a working camera before you leave for your trip.

After some much needed rest (already???), we headed downstairs to look for.......THE FROGFISH.

This is the only photo I took of it cause I was too busy video taping it BIZARRE-NESS. Ever since Lia(_disneygirl) mentioned it in her TR, I knew I had to take a look for myself. For a better description of it, go read hers!

But WOOOAAAAH!!! This thing is SO WEIRD! It had this tongue thingy that would flick out like a snake's tongue, right under the horn on its head. And it would swim in the WEIRDEST way!!! Everyone must see this thing.

So after marveling at the frogfish, we decide to catch the next showing of Turtle Talk since they were starting to let people into the theatre. It was a pretty empty crowd. Not close to being full. I remember when I was here 4 years ago, I had to stand in the back of the room cause there was no room for me to sit.

It was as awesome and adorable as always. The first kid introduced his name as "Nemo". SO CUTE! Another really funny part was when a kid asked Crush what turtles ate. He asked the room what we though turtles ate and some guy in the back yelled out, "Turtle!" After Crush tells us what turtles actually eat, he turns to the side of the room and says, "And I heard someone back there say turtle. That's not cool man." It was the face that went along with that that was HILARIOUS. Andrew loved the show. He was especially impressed with the programming and the improv that went on behind this show.

As we walked out of the The Seas, it was already dark! I wanted to take advantage of the fact that most people in the park are already in World Showcase, waiting for Illuminations. So I threw my plans of going to DTD out the window and we headed towards Mission:Space.

Here are some not-so-great photos of the queue.

That rotating wall thing in the queue is one of the things I remember most clearly from my trip in 2006. I just think it's SO COOL, don't you???

We sent my sister a video card from M:S and Andrew bought me a very cute Wall-E plush I'm not sure why I didn't take any pictures of it, but you'll see it show up in Day 6. Which will probably be in December, IF you're lucky. =)

Andrew really liked M:S. Not only because he got to be the "engineer" , but also because of the theming around the whole ride. He was telling me how cool it was that the theme is extended even after you leave the ride. I think this is the point where he finally "got" Disney. WOOHOO!

We decided to check out Test Track's line, but it was super long because Illuminations had just ended. We were already pretty tired by then, so decided to head home and call it a night.

One thing I that disappointed me about this trip is the lack of photopass photographers. I remember that every character would be accompanied by a photographer and they were a lot easier to spot on my 2006 trip, but this time, they just weren't around. No photopass on our first night.

Ahhh, I'm finally at Disney!!!! Day 1 is finally at an end. All that planning, all that researching, looking at other people's photos and videos, reading their trip reports, and I'm finally here! It is finally MY VACATION.

Up next: Andrew's birthday at Epcot!