Lost Luggage? Flat Tire? No Worries,We're at WDW Trip Report! (6/23 - FINAL UPDATE!!)

[TigerLaw]

Sunday, May 16th (cont.)

I went over to take pictures at Epcot, but given the fact it was the last day of the F&G festival, it was way crowded. As I made my way around the park, I tried to find a place for lunch, but everything was just CROWDED! By the time I got over to the American Adventure, I just hit a wall - I was hungry, tired and hot and just didn’t care about trying to take artistic pictures anymore, so I eventually left the park. (BTW, for what its worth, I honestly can’t remember if I ate lunch that day at all!)

Unfortunately, it took forever to get back to BLT. When I got on the monorail, we had like a 10-15 minute wait at the Epcot station while a monorail was moving on or off the transfer track. Then, when we made it back to the TTC, there was a problem w. the MK express monorail, which for some reason caused the resort monorail to take FOREVER to get on.

Anyway, here are some of my Flower & Garden Festival pictures:







Gotta say, wasn’t in love with the front topiaries this year - I couldn’t even make out that daisy was one of them until someone told me later!



My first Tron monorail sighting!





This is the host of Yard Crashers giving a talk during the festival





One of the problem w. having a new camera is learning it! For some reason, I have trouble getting it to always do the blurry background type pictures, but these were a couple I liked.

Coming up - more of my F&G pictures

 

[TigerLaw]

Continuing our Epcot photo tour....







The lady and the tramp may just be my favorite topiary - its too cute!





I liked these Fab Five ones better than the M&M american gothic topiaries by far!









Me and my main man (or duck as it were!)



I saw this Pooh window in one of the shops in Englasd and just liked it for some reason!



Finally, I never knew you could see the balloon all the way in Epcot until this shot!

COMING UP - YOU WANT MORE DRAMA - I’LL GIVE YOU MORE DRAMA!

 

[Queenofallthings]

We got soaked by the cannon too...caught me totally off guard!!

Your pictures are beautiful, I particularly love the one of Belle and Beast...absolutely beautiful!

We've been for F & W but never flower and garden....your pics make me want to see it more than ever....great job!!

 

[TigerLaw]

Sunday, May 16th (cont.)

So after I got back to BLT, I took a nap (and if I recall right, Melissa was already back from the pool and napping). From there, our plan was to go to MGM, maybe get a couple fastpasses, but mostly just have dinner and bum around a bit (my thought was b/c MK was closing early and MGM was having an EMH night, it would be way crowded).

Before we left, we got a call from disney food services asking to stay in the room, as they were making a delivery to us - turns out, we got chocolate-covered strawberries and a bottle of wine, supposedly for our anniversary from the hotel, but we both thought it was b/c of the problems we had experienced the day before. Melissa figured out that the room service bill for this would have been over 70 dollars! Regardless, it was a nice gesture.

Anyway, when we got in our rental to drive over to MGM around 5pm or so, we noticed right away the tire air pressure warning light was on! I drove us over to the gas station by the Petty speedway and after looking at all the other tires and trying to put more air in them, I looked at the front drivers-side tire and IT WAS FLAT in bad shape - the rim was only a few inches off the ground and there was no air pressure cap on the tire! I called Dollar (who I had the rental through) and they sent someone out to put on the spare w/in an hour or so after we got back to BLT from the gas station. The problem was that the old tire took up a large portion of the trunk so we wouldn’t be able to use it for luggage storage on our way back to the airport, so at some point, we would need to get a new rental. Unfortunately, it being Sunday night, there was no dollar locations open, so that would have to wait until Monday.

Given how fast (relatively speaking) we got the spare on the rental, we decided to head over to MGM anyway and salvage our night. When we got to MGM, I headed over to Toy Story Mania to see if I could use my DVC fastpasses, and sure enough, a machine was open just for that, so I got two sets of TSM fastpasses. Then, we headed over to Star Tours and I got a FP for that using my annual pass, as I wanted to ride it one more time before they made the changes to it this fall. Once we were armed with some fastpasses, we headed over for our Mama Melrose’s ressie. We had to wait 15 minutes or so (they were refusing all walk ups). Dinner was nothing special - we both got caesar salads, Melissa got one of their flatbread pizzas (roasted chicken pizza I believe) and I got the chicken parm. which was nothing special at all - oh well!

After dinner, I went and did Star Tours - totally didn’t need the fastpass - ride was a walk on - I asked to sit up front b/c in the past I got motion sickness on the ride, but for some reason, it didn’t bother me much at all this time. I hadn’t gone on Star Tours for years, and it did feel a bit dated to me, but I guess it will be brand new next time I ride it! From there, I met up with Melissa and we headed over to Muppetvision 3D. It supposedly had just reopened from a rehab with a new digital print and new show and flat screen in the queue room, but I didn’t notice any changes. Next, used our Toy Story Mania fastpass sets - I scored 130,000+ the first time and 160,000+ the second time, so didn’t beat my personal best of 170,000+. Once we used up our two sets of TSM fastpasses, Melissa did some shopping and I took some night pictures around the park - take a look:



I love this picture of the Great Movie Ride!









Note this is the line for the SECOND SHOWING of fantasmic that night (so was taken around 10pm I would guess) I would say the line was nearly to the tip board - that’s how far it went! NO THANK YOU!

Once we met back up, we left the park for the night. For some reason, we ran into a huge traffic jam trying to leave, but otherwise, that was it for the night.

COMING UP - ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DRAMA!

 

[TigerLaw]

Monday, May 17th

Parks: AK & MK
Dining: Ohana's (dinner)

Monday morning we headed out for extra magic hours at Animal Kingdom. I got us up too early as I overestimated the time it would take to get there, so even driving slowly b/c we were on a spare tire, we got to the park around 7:30am. In fact, they hadnt even opened up the parking lot when we got there! While we waited to get let in, it started to rain hard for like 5 minutes. (As a brief aside, when we watched the weather channel either Saturday or Sunday, it forecasted either isolated or scattered thunderstorms for every day of the trip - Monday morning was the only rain we experienced the whole week!) Anyway, they finally let us into the parking lot, and we saw that we were behind all the masses getting off disney resort busses. Once we got into the park, they stopped us pretty close to the ticket machines and did their version of an opening ceremony there (I liked the old place better). It started to drizzle a bit, so we got out the ponchos and put them on.

Eventually, the rope dropped and they walked us back to Everest. (One quick note here was that I think they opened the park like 5-10 minutes early!) I got as close to the front as I could and got fastpasses, but it was a minute or two before we could walk onto the ride, as Melissa somehow took a wrong turn and fell behind. No worries - we rode twice in a row with no wait. The rain had even let up before we rode! (this was important to us as last may, during the EMH night, we rode in a monsoon!). One good point here was that usually, the backwards part of Everest bothers me in terms of motion sickness, but this time, it didn’t really seem to do much of anything to me.

From Everest, we headed over to Kilo Safaris and rode that with (at most)a five minute wait. Here are some pictures from our safari:













As you can probably tell, I was fighting the camera a bit (it was my first time using it in a fast shoot situation). One helpful bit was that I had read to sit in the back row, and that did help (but the con of that was we felt like we were riding dinosaur - you really get thrown around in the last row!) . Anyway, after we came back from our two week safari, we headed back over to Everest and rode that a couple more times, so no real waits. It was still awhile from our 10:30 ressie w. Donald for breakfast, so Melissa offered to ride Dinosaur w. me to get it out of the way (she’s not a big fan of it). Again, the ride was a walk on.

Eventually, we headed over to tusker house and I called Dollar to try to get switching out the rental car set up. The drama here was that they essentially said if we didn’t come right now (to one of the downtown disney hotels where they had an office) they couldn’t GUARANTEE that a car would be available to us and moreover, we had to fill up our current one first! In the interest of keeping this from being an R-rated trip report, I will save everyone from my responses to this, let’s just say I RESPONDED!

We ended up deciding to go have breakfast and take our chances, figuring at most it would be like an hour from their “right now or else” posture. Unfortunately, I was in a bad mood and Melissa was as well, and then we got seated and got even more ticked off as we got a table in a corner that would best be described as where a child’s “time out” mat would likely be placed. (as an aside, we frequently feel that we get the crappiest table locations b/c we are a two-person reservations, to the point where we have even discussed making 4 person ressies just to trick the system!). Basically, I will admit it wasn’t “that” big a deal, but given our moods, it was just the tipping point, so we both kinda looked at each other and said screw it, let’s just leave the park and get the car issue over with, so that’s what we did (even though I had planned on riding Kali and had brought a change of clothes and flip flops in case I got soaked). UNFORTUNATELY, in so doing, I left my old P&S camera (not my new one) which I had been using for character pics at Tusker House! (SEE I TOLD YOU THERE WOULD BE LOTS MORE DRAMA THIS DAY!)

COMING UP - WILL WE GET A NEW RENTAL? WILL THERE BE EXTRA MAGIC AT THE MAGIC KINGDOM?

 

[TigerLaw]

Monday, May 17th (cont.)

Anyway, with respect to the rental car issue, the Dollar location was at the Regal Sun - directly across the street from Once Upon a Toy at DTD. It took like 15 minutes, but we got a new rental car - a Sonata. When got back to our room, I figured out that I had lost my second camera and starting calling around with no luck. I figured I left it out at our crappy table at Donald’s, but no luck as of then. We ended up going down to the BLT pool for like 90 minutes or so. While it was nice and all, we both thought the pool itself was too small in terms of area and depth (there was hardly anywhere that was more than 4 feet deep - maybe we’re just spoiled w. stormalong, but I just don’t think BLT’s pool will be able to handle summer crowds all that well. I did like their simple slide though!

After our pool time together, we came back to the room to nap before our big MK EMH night. Melissa slept w. no problem (she never has a problem sleeping!) but I was too worked up over the camera, so around 3pm or so, I stopped trying to sleep. Eventually, I called over to Donald’s directly and someone had turned the camera in! This of course meant I had to drive back out to AK to pick it up, but that was a small price to pay!

Dinner that night was at Ohana’s. Even w. ressies, it took almost a full hour to get seated and then we had a crabby waitress to boot - so not the best experience at one of our favorite disney dining experiences. Perhaps even worse, for some reason, I wasn’t all that hungry, which is a cardinal sin if you're at Ohana’s! We both attacked the best dessert ever though!

After dinner we headed over to MK. I had planned to get there by about 8pm, but due to our dining issues, we ended up coming in like maybe around 8:45pm. Luckily, I found a decent “second row” spot to watch the first spectromagic parade (I know, it was my third time seeing it in three nights, but Melissa hadn’t seen it yet). Here are some MORE spectro pictures:









For some reason, I can't remember the name of this bad guy, but he never "opened up" in the sat. night showings of spectro I saw, so seeing him work properly this time was a first for me







Once the parade was over, we fought the crowds up main street and I went over to tomorrowland to get a FP for space mtn. Originally, I had thought about coming into the park for a couple hours that afternoon to get a bunch of FPs using my DVC cards, but didn’t b/c I figured MK would have their FP machines set up like MGM did, with one open for the DVC cards. Unfortunately, the MK fastpass machines were NOT done like this. Thankfully, a space mtn. CM gave me a set of FPs. We first though rode the peoplemover and we both agreed we missed the old voice-overs. Next, we headed back over to the tomorrowland bridge to watch the Wishes fireworks, which were great as always. From there we rode space mtn. for the first time since its 2009 rehab. We have never been big space fans (too jerky) and never ride it more than once or twice a park visit, but I did think the ride was a bit smoother this time around. Next on the grand MK tour, we did philharmagic with like a 5 minute wait. By that point it was 11pm, so the EMH hours were in effect, but we were both pretty tired, so we decided to head out and call it a night.

COMING UP - WILL WE EVER ACTUALLY GET A ROOM AT BCV?!?

 

[GaRain]

Chernabog

 

[heaven2dc]

What a series of misfortunate events you have had!! Great pics btw I am highly impressed - I love catching the pic of Chip & Dale on the Spectro Parade playing the piano (the shot you got of their faces in the mirror on the piano was superb!)

 

[TigerLaw]

[B]Tuesday, May 18th

Parks Visited: Epcot
Dining: T-Rex (lunch) Le Cellar (dinner)[/B]

Tuesday was our check out day at BLT and we were both excited to get back home at the Beach Club Villas. We packed up our suitcases and drove over to BCV. I checked us in hoping there would be an open room, but no such luck. No worries - we just left our stuff in the car and headed over to Epcot for its EMH morning.

Now one of my BIGGEST disney world pet peeves is how they handle Epcot openings in the international gateway area - in my view, Epcot resort guests should be treated EQUALLY to those entering at the front of the park - no more, no less. To me, that means that we should be allowed in early so that we can walk (not run) into future world to meet the front people at a rope line so everyone has an equal chance for that first FP, first character picture, etc. Now many of you know that how this works IN REALITY is often far from fair. I had read leading up to our trip that things were being handled better, so I was interested to see what would happen. Turns out, on the first day, they let us in like at 7:50 or so, so race walking, we got up to the back side of innoventions (by the wait times board) before the front rope drop occurred. There we had to wait until the masses joined us and we were then free to go. While I would have liked more time so I didn’t feel like we have to run to make sure we get there in time, it wasn’t a bad result (wait till you hear about Wednesday’s park open experience however!)

Anyway, at open we headed over for Soarin and got a couple rides in with little to no wait and a FP. Next we did Living w. the Land with no wait (got another FP as well). From there we did Spaceship Earth w. like a five minute wait before we rode Test Track together using one of our DVC fastpasses. Right before we were to get in a car, there was like a 5-10 minute “technical difficulty” delay, but no big deal. I rode a second time using the single rider line while Melissa shopped for a bit. We next headed back over to Soarin again and left with two sets of soarin’ FPs for later that night.

Here’s a couple pics from our Epcot morning:





We left the park and checked if our room was available and still wasn’t, so we headed over to Downtown Disney and had lunch at T-Rex for the first time.



It was pretty dead, so we walked right in and got sat next to a huge fish tank (and even saw Dory!) :



I had a phily cheesesteak sandwich which I couldn’t even finish and Melissa had a hamburger - we both like our meal better than our recent visits to rainforest, that was for sure!





Next we bummed around DTD, went into World of Disney and didn’t see anything we really wanted, so we headed up to my favorite store at DTD - the christmas ornament store!



We have a disney xmas tree and so every trip we try to find some new ornaments for the tree. We did see a couple things we liked, but overall, felt like there was less to choose from then in years pass (of course, we may just have a lot of it already too!). I went over to check out the art of disney store and then we headed over to winn-dixie to pick up some pool funnoodles and groceries for the room before heading back to BCV.

COMING UP - WE REALLY DO A HAVE A ROOM HERE CORRECT?!?

 

[TigerLaw]

Tuesday, May 18th (cont.)

We got back at around 2:30 or so, and our room didn’t open up until like 3:40, so we just vegged in the lobby and waited. This was the first time we weren’t able to get our room we wanted to - I know check in is at 4pm, just got lucky in the past I guess! Our room ended up all the way down towards the member parking lot, but it was fine (ITS OUR HOME AFTER ALL!). Here are some pics:



This is literally one of my favorite shots at WDW - I take it EVERY TIME we come down - it just screams to me “I’m a DVC owner at the Beach Club Villas”!







The BLT is a picture in this year's DVC planner which I absolutely love for some reason (I think its the reflections that does it)



And here’s some room pictures:





And here was our balcony view (nice sized balcony too!):



COMING UP - ITS DRINK AROUND THE WORLD (SHOWCASE) TIME!

 

[TigerLaw]

Tuesday, May 18th (cont.)

So after we got into our BCV room (room # 474), I brought in the groceries while Melissa got ready for our second “date” night. Our plan was to have a nice dinner at Le Cellar and then drink around the world (showcase) a bit. We had no issues getting over to Canada and didn’t have much of a wait to get seated. Unfortunately, once again, we got assigned the “oh, here’s the crappiest corner of the room, let’s put a two person table there: table, so I asked for to get a new table assignment, which took a couple more minutes. From there we started out w. appetizers - I of course got a bowl of the cheese soup, which I try to like but find it just OK (it is good as a dip for their great bread sticks though!) and Melissa got their huge caesar salad. For our main courses, I got the prime rib and Melissa got a spicy chicken dish along w. a side of their baked mac and cheese. While I liked my steak, I saw their new york strip which looked even better (maybe next time!). Melissa liked her chicken dish and loved the mac and cheese, but it was just too much to eat for her. Also as part of our “drinking” night, Melissa had a couple glasses of wine and I had a couple Labatt beers. Here’s a couple dinner pics:





After dinner, we were both stuffed, so we held off on the drinking portion of the night a bit. I tried to order a Habibi in Moracco, but they weren’t ready mix-wise yet, so I got an Sultan’s Colada instead:



While the "PLAN" was to get a drionk in every world showcase country, we soon realized it was DAMN HOT OUT!! We ultimately decided to take things a bit easy, so we decided to cool off and go watch the American Adventure, which I must admit I had trouble staying awake for (I think I would have had no trouble taking a nap but for the VERY uncomfortable seats in the theater). Next, we decided just to find a spot for illuminations, which we did on the bridge near the international gateway. Melissa volunteered to try to get some eclairs from the bakery in france which she knew I had been craving, but came back empty handed, as the line was to the water fountain. I then headed into France while Melissa saved our spot and got us a grand mariner slushie - now a family tradition for our nights in Epcot. Slushie in hand, we waited for and then watched the fireworks before heading back home for a well-deserved early bed time.

Here are a few pics from our Tuesday night at Epcot:









COMING UP: CAN WE OPEN UP EPCOT AND STILL CLOSE OUT ANIMAL KINGDOM? YOU BECHA!

 

[TigerLaw]

Wednesday, May 19th

Parks Visited: Epcot and Animal Kingdom
Dining: Seasons (lunch) and Flame Tree BBQ (dinner)

One of our traditions is me getting Melissa coffee in the morning. Given that we weren’t doing an EMH morning, I took my camera and got some morning pics of the resort (I blew up a couple of the shots I love):















I loved the reflections in this shot



A CM let me in B&C to take this picture of an empty restaurant




COMING UP - OUR SECOND EPCOT MORNING

 

[wishin' on a star]

Here are a few pics from our Tuesday night at Epcot:









COMING UP: CAN WE OPEN UP EPCOT AND STILL CLOSE OUT ANIMAL KINGDOM? YOU BECHA!

The girls standing with Mary Poppins in your pic are my daughters! We were there on a MAW trip that week! Someone else read both your and my TR and recognized them!! It's a small world here on the DIS!

 

[TigerLaw]

Wed. May 19th (cont.)

Wednesday was originally supposed to be a MGM morning, but we switched things around so we could have more time at MGM later in the week when RnRC was back open, so we ended up going to Epcot for the second morning in a row for a 9am open. The morning got off to a bad start, as they didn’t let us in the world showcase until like a couple minutes before nine, so we were way behind everyone who got in at the front gate. We ended up going over to the character spot first and getting our pictures taken with the fab five (maybe like a 10 minute wait) take a look (and no, I have no idea why my wife wore sunglasses in some of the pictures but not others!)





Anyway, from there, we headed over to ride Soarin, first getting a FP before going in the stand by line w. like a ten minute wait or so. From there, we headed over and did Test Track together using one of the DVC fastpasses and then I rode it a second time by myself using the single rider line. Crossing over future world one more time, we had an early lunch at seasons, with Melissa getting a turkey sandwich and yogurt (which Melissa loved for some reason) and I got some mix chinese plate (think panda express) and a cinnamon roll for dessert (yeah, I know, great mix, but I had it the morning before and it was really good!) After lunch, we rode soarin a couple more times, before calling it a morning.

We then came back to the pool for like 90 minutes, doing the lazy river with our funnoodles before taking a nap.

Here are some more pics of our second Epcot morning:



If I recall correctly, I took these two waiting to get past the security checkpoint at the IG. I kinda like the topiary pic.





[URL=http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2095204740101338200uAngvR][/URL]

These last two I believe were taken during our dash to the front at park opening

COMING UP - NIGHTTIME AT THE AK!!

 

[~Fisharefriends~]

loving your report so far Your pictures are so crisp and clear. looking forward to reading more

 

[TigerLaw]

Wednesday, May 19th (cont.)

Got to Animal Kingdom around 5pm Wednesday night. AK was set to close at 6pm and then have a 6-9pm EMH night. Headed over to Everest of course. Our first ride the line was like 5 minutes but the second time we got in line there was some issue so we bailed and headed over to Africa to go on safari. It was weird b/c at the front of the park, it said the last ride went out at 7:30, but when we actually go to the ride, it said it closed at 6pm - so whatever! Ride was a walk on - you could tell the driver was struggling a bit to find animals, but here are some pics:



Never saw one sleeping before!







This isn't a zoom pic - we were really that close!

After the safari, we headed back to the front of the park and killed some time looking at the two main AK shops before heading over to the 7pm EMH showing of the Festival of the Lion King. The show was great as always and even better, I thought at the time I got some really good shots of it, but looking at it now, I didn’t better than my usual, but not as great as I thought - take a look:











COMING UP - MORE AK!

 

[TigerLaw]

For dinner, we went over to flame tree BBQ for the first time ever and were pretty happy finding a place to eat at AK we liked (and not too expensive either)! I had the ribs (which were full of meat) and Melissa had a turkey sandwich. I didn’t take a picture of it, but we had a couple ducks hound us for food (that will teach me to feed donald and daisy!)

Here's a slow shutter pic I took at the back of flame tree



After dinner, headed back over to Everest for two rides (with the second ride straight through the FP line - they closed down the main line). To end our AK night, I headed over and walked onto Kali - feeling a bit brave, I went on w/o any ponchos and only got a bit wet (I did cheat though and took my shoes off to keep them dry).

By then it was 9pm, so we headed out and over to DTD for ice cream at Girardelli’s (sp?), which of course was great! From DTD, we came back home and called it a night.

Here are some misc. AK pictures to wrap things up:











another show shutter pic from my room balcony

COMING UP - MAGIC KINGDOM DAY AND NIGHT!

 

[jeniamt]

Followed you over from Catherine's Wish Trip! What a crazy coincidence???!!!

Love your photos, they are some of the best I've ever seen on a TR.

 

[TigerLaw]

Followed you over from Catherine's Wish Trip! What a crazy coincidence???!!!

Love your photos, they are some of the best I've ever seen on a TR.

THANKS SO MUCH!

 

[TigerLaw]

To change things up a bit, thought we could play a game of which picture everyone likes best (I want to frame one of these and can't decide): Here are your choices:

Photo #1



Photo #2



Photo #3



Photo #4



Survey says....?!?