mamaprincess
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2005
- Messages
- 2,909
I started this in the SSR Lovers and/or Owners thread but decided to move it out here since it did become a full blown trip report and I was high jacking the thread with it.
This trip had been in the making since November 2007 when we took a detour to Ghana, West Africa. Having canceled a Disney Christmas trip to do so, our first instinct was to do a Christmas trip in 08. After coming back from Ghana, our bank account wasn't as healthy as it was prior so we were then looking into doing a just adults anniversary trip in June. We had SW airline credits that would cover our airfare and we wouldn't need park tickets...
Several Guilt trips later, we figured out how we would do a family trip at the end of the school year.
We would be super cheap we'd just do P and P on our dvc discount and just go easy.
Welllll, that was not to be. We saw a thread on here about the travel channel looking for DVC members blah blah blah. There dates were the same as ours!!! I fired off an email to the contact person and wouldn't you know it, after a bit of back and forth and video making and sending etc etc, they picked us as one of the families!!!
We got down on the 27th of May. The weather was beautiful. We were in a 2 bedroom on the top floor in the Grandstand in the 8800 building beach club and back with our little one ringing the bell at every passer by. . We had some struggles making it up the hill but we will definitely be doing the surrey bikes again. We had a lot of fun.
After that, it was time to head over to the beach club for dinner at Cape May. We took the boat over (love the boats). Dinner at Cape May is more relaxing than most buffets. The food was fresh and hot. We ate a ton of mussels and clams. The girls drew lots of pictures on our table cloth. After dinner, we took the boat back to boardwalk and drove back home to SSR.
May 29th:
We slept in again (love it). The girls wanted to pool hop again so we decided on Coranado Springs since we wanted to have lunch at the Pepper market. This is yet another awesome counter service option. I had a fish taco. That thing is ridiculously huge and delicious! Hubby had bourbon chicken, the twins had wet burritos which were huge and they said "the best burritos ever". Needless to say, we had left overs to bring back to SSR. It was a little crowded to say the least because there was a huge convention there and they were going to lunch!
After lunch we walked over to the pool. First let me say that CSR is so beautiful. The surroundings and landscape are gorgeous. It's very scenic. We enjoyed the walk immensely.
The girls looooovvvvved the slide. They went on that thing about 50 times a piece. Needless to say, we will be visiting that pool again.
That night we had dinner at 1900 Parkfare. The Grand Floridian is my favorite WDW hotel. Maybe it's the old Victorian grandma in me trying to get out, but I just absolutely love everything about it. It is magical. Anyway this was the first time we had a chance to whip out our autograph books that I had labored over for months (thanks creative DISigns board)! They came out just gorgeous. The twins had on Cindy crowns and youngest dd had on a jasmine dress (which she would wear later on in the week). Anyway, the step mom and step sisters are uproarious, when I handed them the big fat ginormous Cinderella autograph pin to sign our books, they were none to pleased. Prince Charming was charming. Cinderella was lovely. Dinner was ok. Not a ton of choices but everything I had was fresh. I do prefer the buffet before the change but it wasn't awful as some say.
After dinner we headed over to Fort Wilderness for the Chip n Dale camp fire sing along. We picked up some over priced s'mores fixins and had so much fun roasting our marshmallows and making our smores. We met a really cute family from Tennessee. They saved our lives with mosquito repellent! Their accents were contagious! We tried to stay for the movie but we got tired so we left a little while into finding Nemo.
May 30th
On to Epcot and my very favorite ride Soarin!!!!
We did get a couple of lovely things for being picked to be on the special. One was park hopper passes for our family and the second was a Disney gift card. We had no idea we had them until the 30th when we got a message from our travel channel contact saying we could pick them up at Guest Services. We had initially planned on just visiting MK for P and P party and doing a relaxing pool and other activities trip. As you can tell, we were doing just that until we got that call and after that it was back to the usual grind.
We went straight to Soarin and measured our youngest. She was just at 40 inches!!! We got our fp's and went on the Land. Hubby and I were doing a little kissing (just cheeks) and hugging in the dark parts. My oldest twin happenned to look back and got really mad at us. She was really bitter and clinging to guns and religion for about an hour, so I left her with hubby and took the youngest and other twin to get autographs.
I met a really adorable fam in line. We yakked the time away but right as it was our turn, I remembered our ressies at aukershus! My phone was out of battery, so cute fam let us use theirs to call hubby so he could high tail it over there to hold our ressie. We had to get out of the line and run, me carrying the youngest all the way from Character Connection to Norway because hubby took the stroller with him for some unknown reason. Sweaty but victorious, we arrived at Aukershus and had a most awesome lunch with the princesses the youngest was of course rocking her Jasmine dress the twins had on Belle crowns and princess tshirts. The place completely emptied out and we literally had it all to our selves before everyone came in for the first dinner ressies. Our server was gorgeous btw. Are all Norwegians gorgeous? Everytime we eat there, we have a gorgeous server.
After lunch, we saw there was no wait for Maelstrom so we went on. It is awesomely corny and dated which translates to, LOVE IT!!! We then went to the updated but still fabulously corny fiesta del something or other, you know, the Mexico boat ride.
Youngest dd still didn't get her Princess fix fully so we hunted down Mulan in China which was really like tracking a rare exotic animal in a dense jungle because noooooooooooo oooooooooooooone would tell us where she would be and what time she would be there. Those CM's were clueless. We finally saw a little group of families sitting around with autograph books and expectant looks. We knew we had her in our sites. Snow White wasn't as hard. She was like a sitting duck.
We took the boat back across to WS. We hit Nemo which had very little wait but got stuck at that song at the end where that pink star fish does his monolouge. That monologue was driving me crazy after about the seventh time around and the song could give small world a run for it's money if you heard it as much as we did!!! After that, we went to TT with Crush. That is one flirtatious turtle ladies so watch out. My hubby almost had to get in that tank with him!
After that, the twins and dad headed over to MS and TT and the little one and I headed off to finish our unfinished business at the Character Connection. This time we got all of our autographs.
Our last ride was Spaceship Earth, a family fave due to it's corny nature. Any hoo because I might have had a little bit of an attitude as I was sleepy and may have been behaving less that magically, The good Lord saw fit to punish me with a spanish speaking narrator. Words (at least english ones) cannot explain the aggravation of that ride. I'll give it 3 headache smilies: Next time, I'll check my little stank attitude at the gate.
This trip had been in the making since November 2007 when we took a detour to Ghana, West Africa. Having canceled a Disney Christmas trip to do so, our first instinct was to do a Christmas trip in 08. After coming back from Ghana, our bank account wasn't as healthy as it was prior so we were then looking into doing a just adults anniversary trip in June. We had SW airline credits that would cover our airfare and we wouldn't need park tickets...
Several Guilt trips later, we figured out how we would do a family trip at the end of the school year.
We would be super cheap we'd just do P and P on our dvc discount and just go easy.
Welllll, that was not to be. We saw a thread on here about the travel channel looking for DVC members blah blah blah. There dates were the same as ours!!! I fired off an email to the contact person and wouldn't you know it, after a bit of back and forth and video making and sending etc etc, they picked us as one of the families!!!
We got down on the 27th of May. The weather was beautiful. We were in a 2 bedroom on the top floor in the Grandstand in the 8800 building beach club and back with our little one ringing the bell at every passer by. . We had some struggles making it up the hill but we will definitely be doing the surrey bikes again. We had a lot of fun.
After that, it was time to head over to the beach club for dinner at Cape May. We took the boat over (love the boats). Dinner at Cape May is more relaxing than most buffets. The food was fresh and hot. We ate a ton of mussels and clams. The girls drew lots of pictures on our table cloth. After dinner, we took the boat back to boardwalk and drove back home to SSR.
May 29th:
We slept in again (love it). The girls wanted to pool hop again so we decided on Coranado Springs since we wanted to have lunch at the Pepper market. This is yet another awesome counter service option. I had a fish taco. That thing is ridiculously huge and delicious! Hubby had bourbon chicken, the twins had wet burritos which were huge and they said "the best burritos ever". Needless to say, we had left overs to bring back to SSR. It was a little crowded to say the least because there was a huge convention there and they were going to lunch!
After lunch we walked over to the pool. First let me say that CSR is so beautiful. The surroundings and landscape are gorgeous. It's very scenic. We enjoyed the walk immensely.
The girls looooovvvvved the slide. They went on that thing about 50 times a piece. Needless to say, we will be visiting that pool again.
That night we had dinner at 1900 Parkfare. The Grand Floridian is my favorite WDW hotel. Maybe it's the old Victorian grandma in me trying to get out, but I just absolutely love everything about it. It is magical. Anyway this was the first time we had a chance to whip out our autograph books that I had labored over for months (thanks creative DISigns board)! They came out just gorgeous. The twins had on Cindy crowns and youngest dd had on a jasmine dress (which she would wear later on in the week). Anyway, the step mom and step sisters are uproarious, when I handed them the big fat ginormous Cinderella autograph pin to sign our books, they were none to pleased. Prince Charming was charming. Cinderella was lovely. Dinner was ok. Not a ton of choices but everything I had was fresh. I do prefer the buffet before the change but it wasn't awful as some say.
After dinner we headed over to Fort Wilderness for the Chip n Dale camp fire sing along. We picked up some over priced s'mores fixins and had so much fun roasting our marshmallows and making our smores. We met a really cute family from Tennessee. They saved our lives with mosquito repellent! Their accents were contagious! We tried to stay for the movie but we got tired so we left a little while into finding Nemo.
May 30th
On to Epcot and my very favorite ride Soarin!!!!
We did get a couple of lovely things for being picked to be on the special. One was park hopper passes for our family and the second was a Disney gift card. We had no idea we had them until the 30th when we got a message from our travel channel contact saying we could pick them up at Guest Services. We had initially planned on just visiting MK for P and P party and doing a relaxing pool and other activities trip. As you can tell, we were doing just that until we got that call and after that it was back to the usual grind.
We went straight to Soarin and measured our youngest. She was just at 40 inches!!! We got our fp's and went on the Land. Hubby and I were doing a little kissing (just cheeks) and hugging in the dark parts. My oldest twin happenned to look back and got really mad at us. She was really bitter and clinging to guns and religion for about an hour, so I left her with hubby and took the youngest and other twin to get autographs.
I met a really adorable fam in line. We yakked the time away but right as it was our turn, I remembered our ressies at aukershus! My phone was out of battery, so cute fam let us use theirs to call hubby so he could high tail it over there to hold our ressie. We had to get out of the line and run, me carrying the youngest all the way from Character Connection to Norway because hubby took the stroller with him for some unknown reason. Sweaty but victorious, we arrived at Aukershus and had a most awesome lunch with the princesses the youngest was of course rocking her Jasmine dress the twins had on Belle crowns and princess tshirts. The place completely emptied out and we literally had it all to our selves before everyone came in for the first dinner ressies. Our server was gorgeous btw. Are all Norwegians gorgeous? Everytime we eat there, we have a gorgeous server.
After lunch, we saw there was no wait for Maelstrom so we went on. It is awesomely corny and dated which translates to, LOVE IT!!! We then went to the updated but still fabulously corny fiesta del something or other, you know, the Mexico boat ride.
Youngest dd still didn't get her Princess fix fully so we hunted down Mulan in China which was really like tracking a rare exotic animal in a dense jungle because noooooooooooo oooooooooooooone would tell us where she would be and what time she would be there. Those CM's were clueless. We finally saw a little group of families sitting around with autograph books and expectant looks. We knew we had her in our sites. Snow White wasn't as hard. She was like a sitting duck.
We took the boat back across to WS. We hit Nemo which had very little wait but got stuck at that song at the end where that pink star fish does his monolouge. That monologue was driving me crazy after about the seventh time around and the song could give small world a run for it's money if you heard it as much as we did!!! After that, we went to TT with Crush. That is one flirtatious turtle ladies so watch out. My hubby almost had to get in that tank with him!
After that, the twins and dad headed over to MS and TT and the little one and I headed off to finish our unfinished business at the Character Connection. This time we got all of our autographs.
Our last ride was Spaceship Earth, a family fave due to it's corny nature. Any hoo because I might have had a little bit of an attitude as I was sleepy and may have been behaving less that magically, The good Lord saw fit to punish me with a spanish speaking narrator. Words (at least english ones) cannot explain the aggravation of that ride. I'll give it 3 headache smilies: Next time, I'll check my little stank attitude at the gate.
After she had her way, we saw the Little Mermaid. It was cute as always and a little scary during the Ursula part.
This time was no different. I think my fear actually heightens their enjoyment of the ride.
We pretend to be in suspense as our train is robbed, sing along to follow the yellow brick road and in general really enjoy the staleness and corniness of it all.
After this we sit down for a minute so that I can amend our dinner reservations. I completely lucked out and got reservations for Narcoossee's for 8:00pm and cancelled our Boma reservations for 4pm that we weren't going to make. 
We had never been. We didn't know where we were going on GF property but we finally made it. After quite a wait, we were seated at a window table with the most lovely view. You know we ordered the Lobster!!! The twins who usually eat no red meat decided they had to try steak. It's a little burnt piece of shoe leather on the kids menu which has turned them off of steak forever. I must digress to tell you that they wanted to try ribs, so we let them have some over at Cape May. They were disgusted by them as well. 
I might have teared up just a little too.
at 1900 Parkfare for a late breakfast. This is a breakfast we never miss because the girls and I loooooove Mary Poppins and Alice and Wonderland and you might remember that I have a little old Victorian Grandmother living inside me so again, the Grand Floridian is my most favorite and to me the most magical Disney resort.
After breakfast the girls of course wanted to swim. They had their eyes on the clown pool since they first saw it so we headed over to the Boardwalk. 
I've got visitors coming and it's our Anniversary so cleaning up etc etc, I'll try to finish soon.
for his birthday
