Mom and teenage son take on Pop and Free dining Aug 24-30. NEW Summary!

[ortholablady]

Enjoying your TR so far. It's nice to see another teenage boy who doesn't mind taking a trip with his Mom. I was actually there with my DS16 (almost 17) some of the same days as you. We were there Aug. 28 - Sept 1.

 

[AmandaSparks730]

Just stopping in to say that the CD you mentioned on Day 3 DOES exist!

It's called "4 Parks, 1 World" (Not sure if you found it, as your TR isn't over yet). I found it in the giftshop at Mickey's Philharmagic.

 

[ILuvJimny]

I am enjoying your TR! DS15 and I are headed to WDW in October, so it's good to hear that someone else is brave enough to go with a teenager. We are actually taking his best friend along so I will likely get ditched or should I say - have a chance to do a little touring on my own. We are able to get in on free dining, but are trying the express one with just the 2 CS and 2 snack credits each day.

One question - is there a reason you chose to use a car instead of the Buses? We are doing a day at Busch and a short Bahama Cruise, so will likely use a car for those but planned on the Magical Express and the buses for the rest of our getting around.

I love your idea with the pins for kids that need a little joy. I think we will have to try that!

I hope we can have as much fun as you guys did!

 

[marciemi]

Thanks everyone! We were gone camping for the weekend so hopefully tomorrow I can get back to the next update!

AmandaSparks - yes, we did find it if in the previous installment - at the Grand Floridian while we were there for dinner at 1900 Park Fare. Actually listened to many of the songs while driving to and from camping this weekend. One funny story - we were up in the upper peninsula of Michigan driving along a remote area and I was picking songs from the CD (okay, actually on the ipod now) to see how long it took my son to figure them out (he was driving). We were listening to the song from Imagination and suddenly there was a very STRONG skunk smell - for real! We're like - "Wow, we're back in the Scent Lab on the ride!" Just great timing!

ILuvJimny - the reason we finally decided to use the car was just that we're so paranoid about being early in the mornings (if you haven't found that out yet in the report! ). We were just really afraid we'd be up and ready and waiting for a bus at 7:45 and then one wouldn't come until 8:30 or something. Also I liked the option if we spent the day of being able to run back to our car to change shoes. And of course the one day we went to Downtown Disney, I think it would have taken a LOT longer to go from AK to Pop to DD to Pop to GF back to Pop on a bus than it did in a car. I just didn't like the lack of independence not having a car would result in. Just me - YMMV!

 

[MEK]

Bummer about the characters at 1900 Park Fare. What's up with that? I had that same experience several years ago at Donald's breakfast when it used to be at Restaurantsaurus (or however you spell it). The characters completely snubbed me. They were only interested in the kids. I had quite the opposite experience at CP.

Glad you guys decided to give yourself a bit of a rest. Great TR.

 

[marciemi]

Day 5

Well, hopefully the next few days are going to get a bit shorter. We’re past the “must do everything” part of the trip, and trying to step back and just enjoy stuff now. Of course that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be at rope drop or anything! We debate sleeping in since there’s not that much we want to do at MK, and so much of it can be done with FP’s, but after getting a good night sleep last night (finally!), we’re ready to face the world (pun intended!) again and think going early and taking a mid-afternoon break would be better for us. We deliberate where we want to start the day, and decide that – darn it – we haven’t done Dumbo since 2000 when Stephen was 7. Yes, we’re not the target audience, but Space isn’t open so why not? Who cares if all the parents of young kids glare at us! Yep, we’re heading there first.

Well, we get to the TTC, park right up front again, but this time, although we’re not any earlier than Monday, we have to take the resort monorail. Takes quite a bit longer, but we still have no trouble being first at a turnstile. We recognize Jennifer over on the turnstiles at the other side, but before we even have a chance to go say hi, they’re letting us through the first gate. Not even enough time to grab a picture! We get through and it’s probably only 8:10. So we work over to the other side where Jennifer and her daughter (also named Mackenzie!) are waiting. We find a shady area to wait and make ourselves comfortable:

We hang out together and socialize. Watch person after person come up and explain to the CM why THEY have to go in (“but I’m a resort guest, I get to go in early” or “I have a breakfast reservation”). She sends the ADR folks over to the correct line, where many of them obviously DON’T have a reservation and end up coming back to join our waiting group. I feel bad for the CM having to explain the same thing so many times. Finally, it’s time for the preshow and we’re let in. On our way into the castle, I stop and grab a quick picture of Stephen:

We get up to the rope at the front of the castle, and the Fairy Godmother is out signing autograph books and taking pics. Glance over, and HEY – those autograph books look familiar! Yep, it’s Kerry and her crew, also waiting to head to Dumbo:

Well, now we have an excuse to go to Dumbo. Rope drops and we head over with them. They grab a quick picture of us on Dumbo together (because I’m sure Stephen wants to post it on his facebook page!):

And we do our best to get one of them behind us:

Well, that’s about it for pictures from the MK morning. From here we’re replicating a lot of what we did on Monday, so I didn’t even bother taking any more pictures. We say goodbye to Kerry, Nicole, Mackenzie and Logan and wish Mackenzie a happy birthday – today is her real birthday and she’s off to get a birthday card and do some shopping.

Stephen and I head over to Winnie the Pooh, and then Peter Pan again. Same routine as Monday from here. He grabs the Splash FP and I meet him at Thunder Mountain. We ride and although we weren’t planning on doing Pirates, we walk right by there, and again it’s hot, so why not? From here we go right to Jungle Cruise, where we’re again not lucky in our choice of tour guides. This time through I have to wonder if I’m actually on JC, or if we somehow ended up over at AK on the safari! Our older male guide sits down the entire ride, never looking back at the passengers, and gives a basic play by play. “On your right you will see hippos, hippos can grow to this size, yada, yada”. “Rainforests and jungles are endangered these days”. Occasionally a droll question “should we go into the cave?” but not funny at all. Very disappointing since we love this ride and now we’re 0 for 2 on it. Oh well, guess there’s always next trip!

We next head back up to use our Splash FP and decide to grab one for Thunder Mountain for later in the evening when we return. Well, we rode Splash twice on Monday and got misted/sprayed each time, and even were in the front row once. This time, we’re in the middle of the boat (supposedly safer) and just get completely drenched. As in Kali, wring out your shirt and socks, shake out your shoes wet. Somewhat frustrating because although it was hot, it was also very uncomfortable. By now it’s getting near 11am, so we decide to head to Main Street Bakery for lunch. Not all that comfortable since it’s air conditioned and we’re squishy, so we grab a spot near the door which isn’t quite as cold. Since we have two big meal events (‘Ohana dinner and Wishes Dessert Buffet) coming up this evening, we decide to just split one CS meal here. As we’re waiting in line, another DIS’er (aksunshine) sees our lime green Mickey heads on our fanny packs and introduces herself. We chat quickly in line but the tables are too small to even possibly find a space together. Luckily, she gives me her card (I’d never remember a name otherwise!). Okay, wait, I do have another picture – our meal here:

If you look closely at Stephen’s shirt you can see how wet it is. We’re partway through the meal, and suddenly a parade passes! Yes, I’m not sure of the name of this one, but we do have an awesome view of it out the door so we watch as we eat our meal. Finish the small amount of food quickly, and head to Tomorrowland to grab Buzz FP’s. Realize that we really wanted to see Monsters, Inc. again, so we pop in and watch that show. Still really funny – we really like this show. This time Stephen had a couple of his jokes used - he submitted about 10 of them in the waiting area - after he ran out of names for him, me, and his brothers, he started using "fake" names like Ilene Dover, from Steep Cliff, California, and Joe King. One in his name was used, as was "Joe's", but they just read it as J. King. By the time we get out, we can grab yet another set of FP’s for Buzz so we go ahead and get them. It’s not much after noon, but we’ve accomplished our agenda and are ready to go take a break (yes, we’re being intelligent today).

Stop and get some photo pass pics on the way out and Mackenzie and Kerry walk by. We quickly get them to stop and join our pics as well. Unfortunately I don’t have my photopass CD yet, so none of those pics here. We head out and Stephen decides he wants to take the monorail over to Epcot. Sure – why not? Sounds cool and relaxing, so we ride over there and enjoy looking around at the park from above. We sit a very long time at the station (guess they’re waiting for the train to fill up a bit before heading back to the TTC) and eventually we’re on our way. But wait, now we’re stopping. They tell us they’re adding in a train at the TTC and we have to wait. So we sit out on the track for about 10 minutes. We can see our car, but unfortunately can’t get to it! Finally we’re off the train and back to Pop!

Well, it’s just unbearably hot outside, so we decide this would be a great time to walk all over the resort and take pictures! No, not really, but it’s actually sunny out so that’s why we decide this. And we figure we can swim in the pools on the way. The first thing we want to do is go find all of our birth years and get the pics of those signs. So we get our bathing suits on, and a quick pic before leaving the room:

Then the view from the room:

And the end of our hallway – all the pictures of the Legendary years area. I know that a lot of people find this depressing, but I find it just fascinating to see these buildings, left like this for so long:

Well, we make it down to the trail by the lake and (obviously) Generation Gap bridge. We are in the 50’s so work our way up to my birth year. We have no trouble finding 1964 for my husband, and then 1965, and...no 1966. We couldn’t find 1966 to 1969 no matter how hard we looked. We’re getting near the bridge at this point, so we look on the bridge, near the bridge, heading up toward the pool, no luck. We’re really getting hot at this point, so we decide just to go in the Hippy Dippy Pool and at least cool off a bit. Well, again the pool is just too warm, so we swim for about 5 minutes and figure at least walking around wet will help some. On for more pics:

We walk a bit further and manage to find Stephen’s birth year (and both his brothers’ signs as well):

We go over to the 80’s and 90’s section and snap a pic of one of the Rubik’s cubes, for his brother who is a huge Rubik’s fan:

And decide that once again we’re getting too hot, so stop at the computer pool:

Another quick swim in warm water and we’re ready for more pics:

Hm, about this point I realize that I have my camera on the wrong setting and the above 5 pics (which we took already) didn’t come out. We quickly go back and recreate all these pictures, much to Stephen’s excitement (or lack thereof!). We are still hot, so this time work our way back to our room area and go in the 50’s pool. Nope, no cooler than the rest. I ask Stephen if he wants to stay longer and he does so I tell him he can while I go up and get showered and ready for dinner. I do and he times it and gets back at the right time (so he’s not banging on the door while I’m in the shower, since I didn’t have a second key with me!). He gets showered as well, and now we actually have some down time to relax.

Well, if we’re relaxing, why not book our bounceback right now? Honestly, the odds of us coming back are fairly low, but it seems like we have nothing to lose by booking so I call the number and speak to a very knowledgeable CM who helps me make all our decisions, confirms that Pop is still the regular dining plan for next year and I book for all 4 of us (planning/hoping that my oldest will be at college by then). He confirms that I can change/cancel, etc. everything up until 45 days prior, so why not? We can always hope it might happen! We call over and Jennifer and Mackenzie are also taking a break (Stephen saw them in the 50’s pool) and getting ready for dinner so we chat a bit with them.

Again continued due to too many pics!

 

[marciemi]

We decide we don’t want to be late for ‘Ohana, and get all our stuff and head out for the Poly! We get there a bit early and try to call the family from NY that we’re meeting. Get their voicemail so check in at the desk and make sure we’re on the list – yep, so we decide to explore the hotel a little bit and get some pics.

We get a call from MaryAnn and they’re on their way. They join us and we check in and are seated almost immediately. Now, I spent months looking forward to this meal and in a lot of ways it was very, very frustrating because the meal was completely rushed. I didn’t get any pics of the food because there simply wasn’t time. We hardly had a chance to eat, let alone chat, and by the time I got to much of the food it was already cold. They brought the salad, and the bread, and the wings, and the noodles and the pork dumplings and we hadn’t even served it all yet before they were bringing the dipping sauces and all the meats. Honestly, they were on seconds of the meats before I’d even tried a first of anything. And we had NO room on the table for everything. And the waiters were kind of just throwing things down. They came over with a bowl of something and kind of glared at me to make room for it and when I tried to move the salad, it hit Lou’s (MaryAnn’s husband) water glass, which dumped all over him. Again, the waiters weren’t particularly interested in helping, so it was kind of frustrating (I’m sure even moreso for him).

As far as I can tell, the food all seemed to be good. I’m not sure what the alternative would have been or what we should do the next time? Maybe just say no the first few times they came with meat? I didn’t get a chance to enjoy anything and a lot of the time didn’t even know for sure what I was eating at that point! I will warn that the shrimp was very spicy – we like spicy, but even so, a few of them went a long way. And I’d read so much good about the dessert, but I literally wasn’t half done with my meal before they brought it and I barely got a chance to sample any of it. Before we knew it, the meal was over – honestly, our ADR was for 5:15, we checked in shortly before 5, were seated immediately and were probably done by not much after 5:30. More than a bit rushed!

One interesting thing – no flames please. MaryAnn and her family had bought the Deluxe Dining plan and hadn’t made enough ADR’s so knew they were going to have a lot of credits left over. When we came in, they offered to pay for our meal using their credits. I thanked them but told them that I knew that they wouldn’t allow them to use more credits at one meal than there were people in their party (all 4 of their family were there). She insisted it wouldn’t be a problem so I let her ask the waitress, who told her it was fine! I was amazed because I KNEW that they aren’t supposed to do that but they didn’t even blink – just said “Oh, you want us to charge 6 meals instead of 4, okay, sure!”

So we waved goodbye to MaryAnn and family, but got a quick pic first (and it was very challenging to get our waitress to take this for us):

Well, Stephen and I are true DIS’ers, so now what’s the most important thing to do? Well, let’s see, we have 2 extra TS credits and no ADR’s left for them! Time to get on our phones and check online dining! We’re doing this on the monorail over, while we wait for the train at the MK, while walking up to Thunder Mountain only to find out that it’s closed for some unknown reason, while we get back on the train and head to Toontown, while riding Barnstormer. Yep, we’re going to find something!

We already have lunch at Le Cellier tomorrow (Sat) so first start looking for a possible dinner in Epcot as well. Pretty much all we can get is Biergarten or Nine Dragons, neither of which is appealing to either of us. So we decide to try to Sunday before we have to leave for the airport. We’ll be at DHS, and originally booked 50’s Prime Time, but decided we wouldn’t have enough time with catching ME so cancelled it, but now that we have the rental car, we probably would have time for a lunch. Stephen searches on his phone for 50’s for 11 or 11:30 and gets offered only Hollywood and Vine (sorry, but somehow I don’t think we’ll fit in with the preschool character meal crowd!). At the same time, I check Sci-Fi for the same times and get offered 50’s Prime Time at 11:20?! I quickly snatch it up and spend the next 20 minutes trying to get my confirmation on my phone. Finally – yay – we have a lunch!

We go in and use our two sets of Buzz Fastpasses, although both times we are chided by the CM at the entrance for using them so late. Oh well, at least he let us ride. We work our way back over to Main Street and get several photopass pics along the way as it’s getting darker. When we get there, we ask a CM if he can check for us and see if Thunder Mountain is open yet. He calls over and about 5 minutes later we’re told that it is. We quickly hightail it over that as it’s getting near 7:45 and we’re supposed to meet Jennifer for the Dessert Buffet at 8.

We get there and get in the short FP line quickly. She texts us and asks where we are and we tell her and she tells us that she’s waiting for us over by the Plaza restaurant. As soon as we’re off, we run back over there and we all get in line to check in for our wristbands. I’d heard horror stories about how bad this was, but it takes maybe 5 minutes and we’re shown to our table, in the first row, with a beautiful view of the castle. We snap some pics of one another quickly:

You’ll notice Stephen and I are wearing our DIS shirts and TGM pins. We knew a lot of people from both boards were supposed to be at this party, so we had them in to hopefully meet people. We did some of the photopass pics, and then all headed up to get our first plate of desserts and sit down to enjoy:

Sorry I didn’t get more pics. We weren’t starving or anything so certainly didn’t get as much as we could have after dinner at ‘Ohana! Meanwhile, we had brought stuff to share with the kids – both glow stick bracelets and little tiny flashlights (you can see the bag of them in the second pic), so Stephen went off in quest of kids to share them with. Apparently as he walked around, he met many TGM/DIS’ers who asked him where he’d gotten his shirt (of course he had no idea). Some of the folks then came over to chat with us and I got to at least meet a few of you! Stephen pretty much ran out of kids before he ran out of lights so he started giving some out to people outside the party, who were apparently much more willing to take them! But he had fun making people happy and before we knew it, it was time for Wishes! Just a few pictures because my camera isn’t great and neither is my photography!

Well, all too soon it was over. We had debated if it was worth lingering and socializing or rushing out to beat the crowd, but it seemed like pretty much everyone just headed right out so we opted not to stay. Obviously with just a mom and a teen, we can move more quickly than a lot of folks, so we made it to the monorail ahead of a lot of the gaggle and went right to the resort monorail. However, it seemed like everyone had the same idea, whether they were actually staying at a resort or not (we had our car still at the Poly). And the Poly was after the TTC, so it was very, very crowded the entire way. We were amazed at the number of people getting ON the monorail at the resorts, since it was so late, and only figured out the next day that it was due to the midnight EMH at Epcot. So eventually we made it back to the Poly, hit a restroom, and headed back to Pop. We were pulling in and saw Jennifer and Mackenzie walking back to their rooms as well (they were parked at GF from their dinner at 1900) so apparently we were on the same timeline!

But now it was really late for us. After 10, and we weren’t even ready for the next day at all yet. Got Everything put away quickly, stuff ready and climbed into bed. Yep, so much for that rest last night. We’re back to exhausted again!

 

[AmandaSparks730]

First post

Stephen is a '93 baby, like me. Ah, Beanie Babies, I collected those.

 

[Sleepingbooty]

Hey, I just noticed that you two have been wearing lime green every day so far - just how many lime green shirts do you have girl! Way to represent the Dis!

 

[Disney4nonah]

Still with you great updates....
I'm more and more nervous about getting ADR's for the many of the "popular" Character Meals, because of so many mixed reactions about them.
I guess, i'll just have to strike out and take a chance
O'hana for dinner is on my list as we had done breakfast there, but oh man how they rushed you....
And Chef Mickey's for dinner, there's only two of us, oh well, we'll take a chance. Thanks!

 

[mpetti]

Hi Marcie:

Just caught up with your trip report. Thanks for all the great details. I just love the picture of you and Stephen on the Dumbo ride.

Maryann

 

[marciemi]

Thanks for reading everyone. I'm hoping to start on the next installment soon here. MaryAnn - do we not look like the typical Dumbo first cycle crowd?

Disney4nonah - I agree that on the character meals, it really comes down to the experience on that exact day. We did Garden Grill on both trips and had a great time, and the previous time it was 3 teen boys and they still spent a lot of time with us. I really think a lot of it was the free dining this time and the focus on turning over the tables as quickly as possible. I'm definitely a person who wants to eat and go (especially on vacation), so if I felt rushed, trust me, it was rushed!

Sleepingbooty - yep, our vacation revolves around wearing lime green shirts! Although we did wear our super wicking, lightweight triathlon shirts (white) on our AK day just because it's so hot there. But I had at least a couple lime green shirts that we didn't get to bring along this trip so we'll never have a shortage of them! First started collecting them on our trip back in 2000! And we bought lime green 2009 shirts this trip too so even more to figure in our trip planning!

 

[marciemi]

Day 6

Well, we’re getting there! Definitely on the downhill slope of the trip! Today we decided since we were going to end up with some extra CS meals now, that we’d go down to the food court and split a CS meal. Since our room was on the fourth floor, it didn’t make sense to go all the way back up, so we just brought everything with us and headed down. We got an adult breakfast platter, which was too much food for both of us combined, let alone one of us! We each got an apple juice, and also got scrambled eggs and sausage (which I ate), bacon, a biscuit, and potatoes (which Stephen ate) and 2 French toast sticks (which neither of us ate). All for one CS credit!

Great – so we headed over to Epcot for our last full day of touring. Coming probably not a surprise to many of you, we’re first in line at a turnstile and sitting comfortably waiting for the park to open. I pull out my little Ziploc from my fanny pack that we used to keep our passes/room key and any FP’s in and only see Stephen’s card. I ask him if by chance he has mine, which of course he doesn’t. I pull everything out of my fanny pack and go through it all and I don’t have my KTTW card! Of course I’m starting to freak out. I give Stephen his card, tell him to stay there while I go over to Guest Services, and if I’m not there when they open the park (it was probably 8:30 at this point), to go ahead in and just keep me updated by text. I know I used the card to pay for our CS breakfast using credits, and all I can imagine is that it was on the tray and under a napkin or something and got thrown away. I’m having visions of having to go back to Pop and dig through the trash cans!

I get to Guest Services and explain my whole situation to the CM who simply asks me for identification (I give him my drivers’ license) and bam – prints me a new card! Yes, it was that simple. He told me that if I found the old one that it would have been deactivated so to just throw it out, but everything is the same as how it was before. I easily make it back to where Stephen is with plenty of time before entering the park. I guess computers are good for some things!

On the card note, one funny thing we noticed. I always carried the room keys and FP’s. Stephen always carried our Photopass card (after we lost it on the first day). Well, we went to about a zillion photopass photographers during the trip. Every time Stephen would hand them the card after they took the pics and EVERY time they’d hand it back to me, instead of him. After awhile he thought it was kind of funny (although he acted insulted) – guess not one photographer figured a 16 year old could handle carrying the card!

Okay, no pictures at the turnstile since I was busy running back and forth to Guest Services, but I managed to get one of him once we were through and waiting at the next rope:

Okay, and we didn’t take nearly as many pictures today, again since we’d been here already. We went to Soarin’ first together and this time did the standard FP and then ride scenario. When we were done there, we headed over to Test Track, got a FP for later in the day, and rode single rider once. At this point, we headed back to the Land Pavilion. We were scheduled to do the Behind the Seeds Tour at 3pm, but were thinking in terms of our energy level and the heat of the day, maybe it would be better to try to do an earlier tour. We had an ADR at Le Cellier at 12:25 that we had to work around though, so since it was a bit before 10 now, we checked to see when the first tour was.

That tour began at 10:30, and since they still had plenty of room on it, they were happy to switch us to that tour. We still had plenty of time though to go use our Soarin’ FP, so we went in and rode. Back, grabbed yet ANOTHER Soarin’ FP, used the restrooms, and joined our group for the tour.

I’ve read all kinds of wonderful things about this tour – how they gear it to the ages on the tour and it can be fun for younger kids as well. I was happy to see that it was all adults in our tour, but this ended up being a strong negative (for me at least since I’m not knowledgeable about gardening type things). Seems like most of the other people in our group were serious about the subject (one of them kept insisting to our poor guide that Disney was doing some things wrong and telling her she had to tell her bosses to do what he said was better!). I thought the tour was fine, and it was neat going back and seeing everything up close, and especially since the boat ride was closed, it was great to be able to do that. However, I didn’t really learn much from the tour. Our guide was very soft-spoken, so I couldn’t understand much of what she said. Plus, other people in the group were asking questions far beyond my level of expertise (or even interest). I think next time I’d prefer to be with a group of young kids and have more “fun” with the tour, but if the boat ride was open, I don’t think we’d bother with this again. Some pictures from the tour:

The sad picture of the “beached” boats out back through the window:

And the really cute baby alligators! I tried to get Stephen in the picture to get a proportion of how small they were, but none of them came out (either he was blurry or they were!):

Well, the tour was over, and it was almost time for our next Soarin’ window. Not enough time to ride before we had to head back to Canada, but of course time to grab another FP! So again we stood there waiting for our window to come open in a couple minutes. And then headed back to Canada:

We waited a few minutes for Jennifer and Mackenzie to join us, and then we checked in. Again, we were seated within a few minutes (although we noticed that by the time we left an hour later that there were much larger gaggles of people waiting for a table – seems like it’s good to have the earlier reservation times). Unfortunately Jennifer and Mackenzie had eaten a large breakfast at ‘Ohana and weren’t all that hungry (Mackenzie didn’t get anything but ate a bit of the pretzel breadsticks). Stephen and I were hungry at this point though and ordered a bowl of the cheese soup for dipping the breadsticks in. It was awesome as a dip – I think it might have been a bit too “plain” for me as just a soup (kind of just like eating nacho cheese or whatever!), but it was great with the breadsticks, especially the pretzel ones. I ordered the filet, Stephen ordered the strip steak, and Jennifer ordered the Mac & Cheese (which looked very good, but also like WAY too much to finish!). Everything we had was great, although when I asked Stephen about his (which he ate every bite of), he told me it was just okay and he doesn’t like steak. Um, why order it then? I had told him he didn’t want to order the chicken Caesar salad (yes, we can get that at the Pop food court), but thought he liked steak somewhat (which he must if he ate it all!).

So it was on to desserts. Stephen wanted a milkshake (again, I don’t know why he didn’t order this as his drink, since that was presented as an option) so he and Jennifer each got one to go. I ordered the chocolate “Moose”, although it was also appropriated by Stephen. In retrospect, I think I got a bite of it and recall I never even got to try the milkshake. Ah, gotta love teen boys!

And some pictures of us and the Jennifer crew:

After this we decided to stay and see the CircleVision Canada movie, since we’d read it was redone recently and was fairly funny. Well, actually, I don’t think we’ve ever watched a CircleVision movie at Epcot – at least not in the last 20 years since we’ve had the kids with us. This was one of the unexpected surprise hits of the trip. Stephen really enjoyed the movie and still talks about parts of it. Probably somewhat because he grew up 30 minutes from Canada and camped there several times a year. But it had a lot of funny parts and we both had fun here.

We left and worked our way around WS yet again. We ran into Jennifer and Mackenzie again many times and made the mistake of not jumping in line with them when we saw them waiting to see Alice. My mom is a big Alice fan and we never managed to take a pic with her on this trip, but we figured we’d have time on the way back, but then when we came back, she was taking a break. Anyways, we worked over to Japan so that Stephen could have his coveted ginger salad (yes, it’s been at least 30 minutes since we ate lunch!). We asked if he could use a basic salad as a snack credit (we had a lot of those left too) but were told no, so he got the Chicken Salad, cookie, and drink option and we used a CS credit for it. I really, really wanted another Udon soup, but was so stuffed from lunch that I couldn’t even think about it!

Oh, one funny thing. Going WAY back to our meal at WCC that first day, when they packaged up our cheesecakes along with salt and pepper. When we were at Yakitori House on Tuesday, Stephen had asked for salt and pepper for his salad. They offered him pepper. I asked if they had salt and was told “no salt, only pepper”! So today we made sure to have our leftover salt from our cheesecake along for him to have on his salad! (Yes, I realize we probably could have gotten it at a lot of other places, but figured it was meant to be)!

Neither of us really wanted to continue around WS, so we headed back the way we’d come (missing Alice as I’d said). Stopped in the little gift shop near the entrance to FW so he could buy his girlfriend a German Mickey doll (she’s taking German in school). We got back to Future World, and stopped in Mouse Gears again to see if they had any good snacks we could get for a credit. Stephen found a little alcove that he fit nicely into:

And when he came out of it, a kid watching had thought that he was a mannequin! Next, we headed over to Test Track to use our last FP there, and Stephen finally got to get the picture he wanted to of himself next to the 16 Year Old Boy graphic (seems like every other time we were too far front in the line or were in the single rider line and didn’t wait there). Yes, he's a bit taller than your average 16 year old:

We came out and walked over to the Land pavilion and used one set of our FP’s to ride Soarin’ one more time. By this point, we’d ridden it enough that Stephen could do almost the entire preshow from memory (“Hello. My name is Patrick and I’ll be your chief flight attendant.”) He could also tell which scene was showing just from the music. So maybe we rode Soarin’ just a few times too often! We decided we didn’t need to ride it again and gave away our last set of FP’s to a couple coming in, and started to work our way out. Oh, but we have to ride Spaceship Earth one last time, and this time I videotaped the entire end sequence where it shows our “future”. I did also send a video postcard, but can’t figure out how to save that as an image to upload to photobucket, so I guess you don’t get to see it!

We left the park for real, after stopping for a few last photopass pics, and then in the photography studio in order to get our free 5x7 pic from our package. Chose a nice one from Epcot from our earlier day there:

We headed out to the parking lot to our car, only to find evidence of how hot it was on the ground out there:

Yep, someone lost their crayon! We headed back to Pop, and on the way in I took one better pic of the Generation Gap bridge (the last one was quite blurry):

We decided to do some quick swimming and some not-so-quick packing. We got nearly everything packed up and the one full duffle bag taken out to the car. I left the carryons in the room to finish up the packing in the morning, and we hung our swimsuits out to dry some as well. We went down to the food court. Since we had 3 CS meals left, we debated using two tonight and saving one for later tomorrow or the other way around, but decided to go for two tonight. Mistake since we both ended up throwing out much of our meal. I let Stephen get that Chicken Caesar salad he’d been craving at Le Cellier, and it was way too much food for him. Meanwhile, I got the “big bowl” of chicken noodle soup, thinking he’d share it with me. The soup was actually pretty good, but much more of an Asian flavor than regular chicken noodle, so when I had Stephen try it, he didn’t like it at all.

I probably didn’t eat more than a quarter of it. We both got our dessert (muffin for me, tie dye cheesecake for him) to bring back for breakfast the next morning, and used some more snack credits to get an apple juice for breakfast as well and a cupcake to share. A couple more pictures of the Rubik’s Cubes for his brother:

We stopped in the gift shop to use up some more of our snack credits. Oh, on this trip too, Stephen discovered Itzakadoozie popsicles (the long, twirly ones), so we’d gotten several of those during our days for snacks. This time we were trying to find something that we could bring back with us. After several attempts (they’d tell us something was a snack credit, but then it wouldn’t ring up as one), we finally got Mickey and Minnie decorated lollypops to bring back. We headed back to the room, to set our alarm and get ready for our last “sleep” here in the World! This was the second time I laid down with my phone to look up something, and this time Stephen ended up taking my phone out of my hand and plugging it into the charger without me noticing, because the light from it was bothering him. Set our alarms for very early the next day since we had to completely pack up and we were heading for DHS and Toy Story Mania Madness!

 

[Sleepingbooty]

Hey! No lime green shirt today - whats up with that?

Great update - but sad to see the trip winding down.

 

[RunningGirl]

This report is touching to me because DS and I went a couple days before the rest of the family last year and stayed at Pop. We were first in line at every turnstile as well! It is so much fun to just take one kid and go do whatever they want. I'm so glad you did it and know you'll both always treasure the memories from this trip!

 

[keishashadow]

wow, that was quite a readnothing like detailed TRs!

couple things jumped out @ me...

*the onion soup & creme brulee looked delish

*tenacles? im now worried re our ADR @ 1900 Park Fare. The guys are meat & tater types, will they starve? bummer re the interaction there too. Im starting to worry that our time 5:00 pm will get us to the party later than i'd like...what do u think? probably too late to try & change it.

*very cool to be picked for both family of day & receive the candy lady's goodies...melted green crayon a hoot (too bad it wasn't lime green)

*do you think the food offerings/quality has declined since your last trip?

 

[circelli]

I must admit I LOVE the green crayon!!

Great read

 

[marciemi]

Well, we do have matching lime green Wisconsin shirts that we were going to wear together, but then Stephen got a lime green "Por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas" shirt that he wanted to wear too, so we decided to go with a different color combination on this day and be "Wisconsin-y" instead. We did have a lot of people comment on the shirts so it was nice.

*tenacles? im now worried re our ADR @ 1900 Park Fare. The guys are meat & tater types, will they starve? bummer re the interaction there too. Im starting to worry that our time 5:00 pm will get us to the party later than i'd like...what do u think? probably too late to try & change it.

*very cool to be picked for both family of day & receive the candy lady's goodies...melted green crayon a hoot (too bad it wasn't lime green)

*do you think the food offerings/quality has declined since your last trip?

Janet - we thought the food was fine at 1900 Park Fare other than my one weird experience! There was prime rib and several types of potatoes for the meat and potato types and so many desserts that you wouldn't even need that! Most of the stuff was more normal, which was why I guess I wasn't looking too closely at that seafood salad!

Honestly, we've never really done Disney dining before. Every other trip, we ate 1 or maybe two table service meals, nearly always character meals. And we're not very picky eaters at all (well, except for things like tentacles ), so we're probably not the best ones to ask. We thought the service was great everywhere (rushed possibly a few times, but still good) and the food was fine and the quantities were generally too much.

Out of the restaurants we did this time, if I went again, we'd do Le Cellier and Chefs for sure, possibly Garden Grill (just average, but if I wanted to get a pic with Mickey, I prefer the family style meal to a regular buffet), and not 1900, 50's Prime Time (food was Denny's quality, but we went for the fun - I'd use the credits for somewhere "nicer"), or WCC (same thing). I'm not sure on 'Ohana - if I went with just Stephen again, definitely not. If I went with the rest of the family or anyone else, probably just so they could try it and we'd hope for a less rushed time! Some of my problem was that this time I was worried about Stephen being hungry and tried to do more buffet/all you can eat type restaurants. Now that we know we have more than enough food, I think I'd stick with more of the "order an entree" places.

 

[Sue88]

I have been enjoying your report on my breaks at work! It is so nice to take a few minutes to dream about a nice trip to Disney!
Thank you for shareing your trip. I am glad you included so many photos! And I love all the details so don't worry about long entries!
I'm looking forward to more report!

 

[Disney4nonah]

Caught up with Day 6 and jotting down to get a 12:30pm ressie at Le Cellier!
Thanks for the tip

The Crayon was great, man on man that's hot