NateNLogansDad + party of 25 + AKL + MNSSHP = a few thousand pictures (Bonus Video!!)

[wdwnomad]

Great update...I was wondering where you went...

 

[Susan121302]

Now, I don’t have anymore pictures of what happened when they went on but I have a funny little story for you. When we all went on together, we were all in the LEFT queue to get on. When Tina, Brian, and Sean all got on for the 2nd time, they went into the RIGHT side of the queue. When they got off they all agreed that the RIGHT side was more intense. When they went to go check out their picture, apparently Sean thought the camera would be on the opposite side since they were on the opposite queue. Picture this. Tina and Brian laughing, smiling, and having fun. Sean, trying to ham it up for the camera, puts his hands up in an excited thrill ride kind of pose but in the opposite direction. Yep, his back was to the camera! Sean is a great guy and so much fun to be around…but sometimes I just shake my head and laugh. We all have our moments, but we try not to let Sean live his down!

Hands down, one of my favorite DIS stories yet.... OMG, I literally LOLd reading that. Love it! Such as shame you didn't capture that.

 

[DerangedChipmunk]

Read your other report and loved it; So glad to see another (even if I'm late).

 

[TinkerbellinNY6]

Loved the update! I really love that parade too! And that story about Sean is great! That is something that someone in my family would do...

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Great update...I was wondering where you went...

Thanks. Been a little busy but I always finish my Trip reports...sometimes it just takes a little longer than I had hopped

Hands down, one of my favorite DIS stories yet.... OMG, I literally LOLd reading that. Love it! Such as shame you didn't capture that.

Thanks. Sean is at work right now, I'm thinking I might just send him a link to my trip report He has no idea that this is up on the web

Read your other report and loved it; So glad to see another (even if I'm late).

Thank you so much for coming over! No such thing as being late here We're all free to come and go as we please but you must be present if your name is called during the raffle in order to claim your prize.

One of these days we should do a raffle

Loved the update! I really love that parade too! And that story about Sean is great! That is something that someone in my family would do...

Thank you very much! The music is great for the parade isn't it???? Ever try lisening to it by itself without watching the parade? It actually gets annoying I think Play it with the parade and it's a match made in heaven

 

[Soopafly]

Hey!

My first day back at work this year and there is nothing going on, so I thought I would finally read your TR!

Great great shots buddy, i'm envious again! You had a great view for the parade, like you we always seem to miss the beginning or end up seeing the end of it which sucks, we must make time to see it from start to finish.

Glad you enjoyed AKL, we only had one night there but loved it. How did you find the buses to the other parks? We are weighing up the pros and cons of staying there for more than 1 night on our next trip and the Poly just keeps screaming at us because of the monorail, let me know what you think?

Did you like the bathroom? I so want those lion king tiles in our house some day for sure lol.

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Hey!

My first day back at work this year and there is nothing going on, so I thought I would finally read your TR!

Great great shots buddy, i'm envious again! You had a great view for the parade, like you we always seem to miss the beginning or end up seeing the end of it which sucks, we must make time to see it from start to finish.

Glad you enjoyed AKL, we only had one night there but loved it. How did you find the buses to the other parks? We are weighing up the pros and cons of staying there for more than 1 night on our next trip and the Poly just keeps screaming at us because of the monorail, let me know what you think?

Did you like the bathroom? I so want those lion king tiles in our house some day for sure lol.

See, I was going to say welcome back or something nice but than you had to go and tell me how you haven't been to work yet this year! How am I supposed to respond to that?

You know I'm just playen with ya Missed you guys! Haven't seen yas on facebook either...hope everything is going good for the newly married couple! Funny you should hop on today, I was just about to post a new update. Give me a few and it'll be up.

Yea, those Lion King tiles were so cool! Wishing now that I got some close ups Oh well, another time maybe.

As for the buses, that's the #1 reason I wouldn't recommend this hotel to anybody. The hotel is beautiful, our room was beautiful, the pool was ok but nothing spectacular, but the buses for us were worse than the value hotels. I really did like the hotel, but I really did despise the buses. It could have just been a run of bad luck but we weren't the only ones complaining about it

Dude, if you can swing it go try out the Beach Club or Boardwalk! You can WALK over to Epcot or WALK over to Hollywood! And there's always the ferries if you accidentally have 1 pint too many

 

[NateNLogansDad]

15 minutes till the next update.....

 

[NateNLogansDad]

So, Day 3

I’ll call this one D Day. This was when the rest of the group was due to come down. I’m going to try to incorporate some of the pictures taken by the other families but please excuse me if I need to make corrections later to what all they did that day since I wasn’t actually with them. We, however slept in till about 10 or so and took our time getting our wits together. I made coffee of coarse and we hung out for a little bit.

Side note, bring your own coffee if you want the real stuff! That Nescafe stuff they dish out needs to be reclassified. To what I'm not sure, but definitely NOT coffee!

While we were sitting around, the “others” were back in Philly getting ready for the big flight down to Orlando. Some have been on planes numerous times, and a few had never before reached 30,000 feet so I’m sure this was an adventure for all on that flight!

I have a feeling there were some nervous people on that plane ride….and I’m not talking about the ones in our group either! LOL I’m not saying that they would in anyway make people panic during the takeoff, landing, or any turbulence in between….I’m just saying that I’m glad we were on a nice quiet plane 2 days ago! Draw your own conclusion )

2 hrs later they all touched down safely and in one piece at Orlando Airport and made their way over to the Magical Express area.

Can’t you see the magic happening already???

So with smiles abound (again just guessing, I wasn’t really there) they all boarded the bus and headed off to their new home away from home!

My group was, at this very moment, getting a little hungry so we headed off for an extremely quick meal over at The Mara (remember the only quick serve restaurant at the lodge.) This walking to another building for grub was already starting to get annoying. Sorry, we were in a rush and I left the camera back in the room.

For whatever reason, even on the quick serve meal plan, you always leave your table full.
Like full, full.
After wolfing down our meals we waddled as fast as we could back to our building and settled down in the lobby to let our bellies take in what was just thrown their way. Unfortunately, my camera was still up in our room at the moment so I didn’t even get to capture everybody coming in, but all their faces light up as they walked through the main doors and the kids were loving the animals out in the Savanna right away. I grabbed my in-laws and told them that they were already checked in (since they were sharing the room with us) and that their room key cards were all upstairs. Everyone else went over to the front desk and did their first day ritual while we headed up.

Real quick...before we left the room that morning we had straitened up so the room was almost like when had walked in on our first day. (See pictures from day 1)

Chuck, Fran, and Chuck Jr (Father, Mother, and Brother In-Law) seemed quite pleased and made themselves at home right away. I was happy that they were happy with the room since Tina and I had come up with the whole idea.

After a short time later, we got the call that everyone was ready to go so off to the bus stop we went!

One of my favorite pictures….
Pop Pop and Logan.

Chuck Jr and Brian….

And the here’s one with just about everybody….minus myself ( had to take the picture!) The lady in black on the right was just walking by so if you use your imagination, replace her with me and that’s our group. Everybody there.

Yep, we took up the whole bus practically.

So, where were we heading?

Yeppers, HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS!

Hollywood had extra magic hours tonight so the crowd levels were a little high. Manageable, but high.

Of coarse everybody wanted to do everything as soon as we walked in, but I had been waiting to try out one ride in particular since the day I hear it was going out for refurb….

Star Tours!!!

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Originally I figured I’d grab a bunch of fastpasses for later for everybody so I grabbed their room key cards and headed over. Tina stayed with her parents and that whole group went to go grab a bite to eat first. Sean and Brian walked over with Me, Nate, and Logan to grab the fastpasses but when we got there, it was only a 10 minute wait! I can’t just pass up a 10 minute wait now can I?

I did grab the fastpasses for everybody….

But then we did hop in line!

We must have had a nice smell going on because a bunch of people appeared right behind us out of nowhere.

No, that’s not really Buzz Lightyear, that’s just a guy in a Buzz shirt.

Moving right along, our bags were already packed for our space journey….

And our space goggles were handed out…

Nope, that’s not the Blue Man Group, it’s just Brian and Sean hamming it up again!

 

[NateNLogansDad]

We boarded our flight and came across these guys…

And in just a few seconds we had traveled several light years.

Our mission was a success but also classified top secret. All I can say is that it was AWESOME!!! You MUST MUST MUST ride Star Tours! If you’ve already ridden the 2.0 version, RIDE IT AGAIN! I think I heard that there is over 40 different scenarios that are randomly selected for your enjoyment so just about every time you get on will be a new experience. We weren’t able to get on during our last trip because of the rehab, but this was certainly worth the wait!

When we got out, I called over to Tina to see if they were all done eating. Unfortunately for us, I didn’t think ahead when I had seen the short wait time for Star Tours. That was the wait to get ON the ride, not how long it takes to DO the ride. Basically, everybody else ate and had gotten on Tower Of Terror apparently.

So we headed over there to meet up. By the time we got there, they had already gotten off and went into Rock’n Rollercoaster

The line said 50 minutes for the wait time and I really didn’t feel like doing that. Brian and Sean went in and I found my MIL and her sister hanging outside the queue. They weren’t feeling up for it since they had just eaten. I still had Nate and Logan so I figured we’d head over to see the Little Mermaid. Fran and Maureen (My MIL and her sis) decided to follow us over. Well, apparently so did 200 other people! The line was so long that we were told it would be 45 minutes before we got in the door.

Pass.

Looking around for another ride everybody could handle we headed over towards The Great Movie Ride! On our last trip, we rode this for the very first time and I loved it. The kids were anxious to see their Mom Mom’s expression when…..well, actually I’m not going to tell you what happens. It’s pretty cool how they keep your attention though! And for anyone who has never tried it, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Here’s some pics to walk you through it though!

Here’s Alicia our hostess…

Calm down guys…

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Fran and Mo…

And if you look close, you’ll see Fran taking a blast from the past.

Great ride! Very well done imagineers!

 

[NateNLogansDad]

After we got back outside, my phone started blowing up with text messages. Apparently everybody want to know where we all disappeared to. I’d like to think that I was just that popular but in reality they wanted to get Fran (remember…my MIL?) to go on Tower of Terror. I’m still shocked to this day that she got on! Tina’s aunt took the boys for us so Tina and I could both hop on…

And we dropped…

And dropped….

And dropped…

I hate that ride.

 

[NateNLogansDad]

After leaving the worse idea for a ride that anyone can ever come up with (great ride, scares the heck out of me) we went out to go stand in the longest queue you can possibly imagine. No, it’s not a Fab 5 meet-n-greet, it’s longer. It was getting close to the 2nd showing of Fantasmic!!!!

If you don’t know what Fantasmic is, but have been to Disney World before, you need to go back. A trip just isn’t a trip without seeing that show! With an arena that holds almost 10,000 people it still isn’t enough to seat everybody that wants to see it all the time so you need to queue up early!

Or….

Are you taking notes?

Do like I did and have your family queue up while you head over to the 50’s Prime Time Café for one of these magic numbers…..

I think this was called an Electric Lemonade but I may be mistaken. The bar there makes the BEST mixed drinks in any park IMHO. A little pricey? Yep. Worth it? Absolutely!

I had taken Brian and Sean with me over there but Brian was under age so he was stuck with a non-alcoholic beverage. On our way back we realized we were starting to get a little hungry and still had some time to kill so we walked past here…..

…to grab a few of these….

Never had a turkey leg? Like the flavor of ham? OMG you gotta go get one. They are soooo good! Plus, you look like a manly barbarian carrying around a turkey leg with the skin dangling from your chin as you chew! *Insert a Tim Allen Grunt here*

After we wiped the grease from our faces it was time to go fight the masses for our seats in the arena. My FIL Chuck Sr, doesn’t enjoy crowds all that much so we poked fun whenever people didn’t cut in between us. All in all, not bad seats though!

I called over to Danny trying to get his attention…

He’s a great guy and loves getting his picture taken….

Some people may shy around him a little because mentally he’s around age 10 I believe. Me and him get along just fine because I’d say I’m usually around age 12 or so.

A couple more of our “row(s)”

Another one of my favorites…

 

[NateNLogansDad]

And than the show started. Tell me, can you hear the music????

 

[NateNLogansDad]

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Have I mentioned that I absolutely LOVE that show? Well, I do. Even as I type, I can hear the music playing in my head. Why can’t Southwest Airlines just let us hop onto a plane in a seat that’s not being used so we can check out Hollywood Studios for the night and let us fly home when it’s done? I mean c’mon, there has to be at least ONE seat that they aren’t using right? Oh well. Someday when we make the move, we’ll be able to drive over for the night and drive home when the park closes. *sigh* Someday…..

Sorry, I’m back. I need to stop letting my mind drift away from this trip report!

So where were we?

Oh yea, after the show ended about 8,000 people made their way towards the exit at the same time. Controlled insanity as I like to call it. There is a lot of people but it really is handled pretty well.
The park was still open for a little while but most of the group was pretty tired. And some more than others….

As most our party headed off towards the busses, they left behind the fastpasses I had acquired earlier for Brian, Sean, Chuck Jr, Nate, Logan, and I. We went on using the passes but in reality, we really didn’t need them. Tina still feels version 1.0 and decided to stay back and just do some people watching.

At this point it was about 11pm and we knew tomorrow would be a pretty busy day so we all decided to make out way towards the busses and head back to the hotel. With the boys in the stroller they never made it to the bus stop before they both fell fast asleep. The bus ride back was quiet with little ones either in their own little dream world or trying to fight the urge to close their eyes. Seriously, how great is Disney World? Not only will you have such a great time being a kid again, but your kids can have so much fun that they are completely drained at the end of the day. I guess when you think about it, that’s where most of the magic comes from.

Get some sleep, Day 4 is going to be here whether you’re ready for it or not )

 

[mommytominnie]

Subbing!! Love your pictures and I adore how you write about your wife Beautiful Family!!

 

[heaven2dc]

Absolutely love your pics! ToT is my all time fav ride in HS - it took one ride and I was hooked! I agree with you though that it can be scary - my DS24 kept making excuses on his first trip as to why he shouldn't ride it. I kept assuring him that it wouldn't be that bad but I have to say - that was the scariest ride of all of the times I've been on it We had more looonnng drops than ever before and more drops than ever before - I thought I was going to die laughing when we got off the ride and I saw his pic Poor guy - don't think we'll ever get him back on.

Isn't Fantasmic sensational?!! I have only seen it once when I was solo for four days before my DD and DGS arrived back in 2008. I wanted so bad for them to see it (I had gone on several rides and attractions trying new things out so I could recommend what would be most fun for their short stay). Unfortunately she didn't want to battle the crowds and he was only 14 mos old then. I loved all of your family pics from Fantasmic - especially Danny's!!

 

[dvc4life]

Love, love, love the photos of Fantasmic. Never seen such great pictures before. You are doing such an excellent job!

Looks like you all had a fun time. Hope the fun continues for the rest of your trip!