My 1st PTR/TR: An unexpected trip, Disney in December 4 *Day 3 6/5 Illuminations!*

[Roxychica7]

Two updates in one day! (Hey, I’m trying here guys!!)
Once we got off the land, we took a loop toward the center of Epcot, right where the dividing line is between WS and FW. We were going to do Figment and a few other things but decided that we haven’t been able to have the chance to see WS much during the daytime and I wanted some nice pictures gosh darn it!
So we swung around the tree and headed toward….Mexico!!

I’ve never seen this before, but we saw the “firework boats” getting set up for Illuminations. I thought it was really neat.

And finally we reached our 1st stop!

We walked inside to look around, especially at the carved animals from one of the Disney specials.

They were SO pretty, but way way WAY too expensive, even for one of the little ones. Oh well, maybe one day when we’re rich!
Last year we had rushed to eat at San Angel Inn that we didn’t get a chance to check out the shops.

The lights are so pretty inside. And since we did the river ride last year, we skipped it this go round. We were looking at some of the less expense carvings when a CM catches us off guard and takes a few photopass pictures of us with these HUGE sombrero’s on! Oh gosh, then he says “lean in and kiss one another!” and I’m like, “Yeah…this is gonna work out really great..” Dbf and I have these huge hats on, mine of which keeps falling into my face (definitely messing up the hair even more) and this dude wants me to kiss Dbf. Ok…needless to say, I must post some of our “attempting” to kiss one another. I’ll be sure to do that in the next post, some are truly amusing!

As we head out of Mexico, we see a friendly face.
Mexican Donald!

Unfortunately we wait to wait while Donald got some “quackers!” haha, and some family totally cut in front of us. Oh well, keep smiling! Then we were off…to….Norway!
I still love Maelstrom and thankfully the wait was only 10 minutes. We took a few self pics while we waited in line

Dbf said I didn’t have an appropriate enough picture showing off my new Vera hipster, so he had to take one. Good man… I couldn't believe how many Vera's I was seeing as we were waiting in line!

Finally, we got one of those waitcards, has anyone else ever got those? We always pose with them in line because it never fails, we always get at least 2 during any of our trips!
Here’s the pose

As we hurried off the ride and past the movie section, I snapped a quick light for LL

And then caught the sun going down before we moved onto our next country

Next up…China and our food around the world!

 

[stacikristine]

Two posts in one day!!! AMAZING! And I love the sunset picture at the end. Absolutely gorgeous.

 

[FauntleroyFAN07]

i want to eat at san angel inn, but with the low lighting i am scared as to what they are hiding not wanting me to see the food.

 

[Roxychica7]

Two posts in one day!!! AMAZING! And I love the sunset picture at the end. Absolutely gorgeous.

Thanks! Although, sometimes I wonder if you can even take a bad picture in WDW

i want to eat at san angel inn, but with the low lighting i am scared as to what they are hiding not wanting me to see the food.

I seem to remember lights around the tables, at least I remember candles on the tables, so it wasn't THAT dark. And we went for lunch, the food was pretty good, although I have had more "authentic" before

 

[Lady Lallie]

for an update!!

Could you post a picture of the necklace you were talking about? I'm having a hard time picturing it but it sounds really neat.

I can't believe you have never ridden Soarin. It's truly amazing and I am not into thrill rides at all.

I have never gotten one of the wait cards or even seen anyone with them. That's neat that you get them all the time.

 

[Roxychica7]

for an update!!

Could you post a picture of the necklace you were talking about? I'm having a hard time picturing it but it sounds really neat.

I can't believe you have never ridden Soarin. It's truly amazing and I am not into thrill rides at all.

I have never gotten one of the wait cards or even seen anyone with them. That's neat that you get them all the time.

I will certainly post a pic for you LL! It'll have to wait until tonight though, I don't have it on me today
Soarin...I will certainly have to try during Gnomefest, I'm still afraid I'm going to get vertigo and freak out and not be able to get off it because we'd be up in the air. Maybe you girls can help talk me into it

 

[Roxychica7]

Just posting because it's my 500th post, and I think that means I'm a DIS Veteran now?

I just checked, I am am!!!
Wooooo hoooo!

 

[Lady Lallie]

I will certainly post a pic for you LL! It'll have to wait until tonight though, I don't have it on me today
Soarin...I will certainly have to try during Gnomefest, I'm still afraid I'm going to get vertigo and freak out and not be able to get off it because we'd be up in the air. Maybe you girls can help talk me into it

Yes, I think we could do that. We will have to do that during Gnomefest!

 

[disneydusted]

Woo hoo, you're a DIS veteran now! That means you've been busy!!
Yes, I am with LL in wanting to see your necklace.
You will have to have your Gnomefest friends get you on Soarin. I hope you can do it, it is so beautiful!

 

[stacikristine]

Soarin' is my favorite ride in all of Disney World. It's not a thrill ride. I get off SO relaxed! It's amazing.

 

[Roxychica7]

Woo hoo, you're a DIS veteran now! That means you've been busy!!
Yes, I am with LL in wanting to see your necklace.
You will have to have your Gnomefest friends get you on Soarin. I hope you can do it, it is so beautiful!

I hope I get the nerves to do it then! But hey, you're super close to being a DIS Veteran too!!

Soarin' is my favorite ride in all of Disney World. It's not a thrill ride. I get off SO relaxed! It's amazing.

I've watched the youtube video of it, that's the bravest I've been about it so far

 

[morgtroy]

Sorry, I've been behind, but all caught up now. Great pics, love your Vera hipster.

 

[Roxychica7]

Sorry, I've been behind, but all caught up now. Great pics, love your Vera hipster.

Thanks! It's quite although, I'm very behind on my own TR! I don't know how I keep missing your comments! I better go sub to your TR now so I don't forget again!

 

[Roxychica7]

2/24?! Was that really my last update! Holy crap..ok, I better get on that. I promise to update this weekend!
I finally got my proposal approved for my thesis, it's been SO much work and I discovered today how many experiments I have to do before I can actually start getting some results. AND Riley (our 1 yr old dog) had to have surgery again to take the plate out of her leg this time. She's resting comfortably right now, but has a huge neon green splint on. So, please bear with me while I get everything together and I will update as soon as I can!

 

[stacikristine]

Take your time--I completely understand. Sometimes LIFE is just too crazy to DIS.

I do want to read your update when you write it though!

 

[Roxychica7]

Take your time--I completely understand. Sometimes LIFE is just too crazy to DIS.

I do want to read your update when you write it though!

Aw, thank you! Yes yes, life...mostly thesis life has been getting crazy. But hey, one step closer to graduating right?

 

[stacikristine]

Aw, thank you! Yes yes, life...mostly thesis life has been getting crazy. But hey, one step closer to graduating right?

Heck yes! We're so close to graduating!!!

 

[Roxychica7]

Man..I swear, I go to update finally and the DIS eats it again!!

Ok..let's see if I can start over here.

So, it's been a long time since I updated, but the good thing is my thesis proposal was signed off this week by my committee members and it headed over to the graduate school to get signed by the dean. Now I can sign up for my last 6 credits and get my $500 worth of grant money to buy my supplies so that I can start my experiments and finally get some results!

On a side note, this is going to be a short update, mostly because I have yet to find my last memory card from our trip. You would think that it would be the one thats in my camera, but of course it isn't. I took 3 with me. The 1st one had all the pics from Dbf's sisters graduation through Animal Kingdom. The 2nd had the rest of AK through almost all of Epcot and the 3rd, which I can't find, had Hollywood Studios and our last day of MK on it. I haven't been able to find it since we got back, so I haven't even LOOKED at the pics yet. So again, this will be a short update, and unfortunately my memory is starting to fail me for details, so bear with me until I can find the last card!

Anyway, so when we left off..the sun had just set over WS Lake. We wanted to take out time to walk around WS, BUT I wanted to find that sugar lady in Japan and didn't want to miss her, so we kind of browsed quickly until we got to Japan and then took our time after that to see the Country's that we normally go through quickly on other trips.

Anyway, so when we left off..the sun had just set over WS Lake. We wanted to take our time to walk around WS, BUT I wanted to find that sugar lady in Japan and didn't want to miss her, so we kind of browsed quickly until we got to Japan and then took our time after that to see the Country's that we normally go through quickly on other trips.

Then we looked for a view minutes at the beautiful pond

We had been contemplating all day about what snacks from what countries we wanted for “dinner.” Dbf knew that he wanted his beloved pretzel and cheese sauce from Germany, I wanted fish and chips and we either wanted egg rolls from China or sushi from Japan. AND I wanted a Grand Marnier slushi! Once we got to China, we decided against the egg rolls and kept pushing forward to our other snacks.

We passed the Outpost

I love the African mask carvings here. I had to think long and hard about this purchase..maybe some other time!

And before we came to Germany, we saw Dopey and Snow White! We didn’t want to wait in line since it was kinda long, so we just snapped a pic (sorry for the blurriness and if these are your kids)

Next stop…Germany!

Last year I really loved all the wreaths that decorated the buildings

And then we came to the big train garden. My grandfather always loved trains. He used to work at the Steel Mill by our house and used to set up a small train garden every year. After we got back from our Dec 2007 trip, I snapped a bunch of pictures for him to show him how big this one was. He absolutely loved it. Unfortunately he died in March of 2008, actually his year anniversary was just a few days ago, and on our Dec 2008 trip, I made sure that I took a few pictures of it to remind me of him.

The train garden really is amazing. There’s a smaller one around the Christmas tree at the American adventure, but this one is large and my favorite.

A beautiful shot of the Epcot ball and another (maybe on purpose!) light for LL

We had seen that the Candlelight Processional was going on and we decided to grab a snack (Dbf needed his pretzel and cheese) and sit at the American Adventure to listen to the choir sing a little bit

Now my fellow DIS’ers, this is the point where I’m going to stop since this was one of the last pictures from memory card #2. I will be searching high and low this weekend to try and find it. Wish me luck!

 

[SwansLoveDisney]

Just wanted to say hi! I'll be back later to catch up!

 

[FauntleroyFAN07]

u need to try the brat and saurkraute in germany it is awesome..there pretzels are also really really good.