No cats to herd this time! It's just the two of us!UPDATED 11/24-DIS Meet & Departure

[lovebuzzandwoody]

Awww...sorry Nicole! They wouldn't even eat the chicken? It's so good. All those veggies scare them away?

My sons do not eat chicken (willingly and peacefully that is) unless it is a nugget.

And let's see, one of them will eat carrots and mashed potatoes. The other will eat corn... but only on the cob. That is the extent of veggies with them.

Yeah, dinnertime at our house is a really good time.



Anyway, sorry, rant over.

Looking forward to the Great Slushie Update of 09!

 

[mom2mek]

My sons do not eat chicken (willingly and peacefully that is) unless it is a nugget.

And let's see, one of them will eat carrots and mashed potatoes. The other will eat corn... but only on the cob. That is the extent of veggies with them.

Yeah, dinnertime at our house is a really good time.



Anyway, sorry, rant over.

Looking forward to the Great Slushie Update of 09!

Yeah, well that's not too different from our house either! At Hibachi restaurants, they tend to forget about the chicken not being in nugget-form for some reason! Michael loves steak, so it's never an issue with him....the girls usually have to be coaxed into it. Most of the places we have here locally offer a salad, so that pleases Katie (the girl loves her some salad...). Emily will eat the rice. With lots of soy sauce! LOL! So between the 3 of them, they sort of eat a full, balanced meal! We probably won't do Teppan Edo on a family trip until they are a little older though. It was great for an adults-only trip though!

Sara

 

[mom2mek]

I have something in my signature....all shiny and new.....


Sara

 

[lovebuzzandwoody]

I have something in my signature....all shiny and new.....


Sara

Can't wait for details!

 

[faerieprincess]

I have something in my signature....all shiny and new.....


Sara

Oooooooooooo Sara love the shiny!!! Is there gonna be a bright shiny new PTR to go with it?

 

[jillyb]

Woohoo!! No pressure but now you're gonna have to get this TR completed so you can start on a PTR for your upcoming trip! LOL

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Woohoo!! No pressure but now you're gonna have to get this TR completed so you can start on a PTR for your upcoming trip! LOL

That's what I was just thinking too!

Oh that and congrats. I always like knowing when my next trip will be.

 

[mrsksomeday]

YAY!! I can't wait to hear details!

 

[mom2mek]

Can't wait for details!

Woohoo!! No pressure but now you're gonna have to get this TR completed so you can start on a PTR for your upcoming trip! LOL

Oooooooooooo Sara love the shiny!!! Is there gonna be a bright shiny new PTR to go with it?

That's what I was just thinking too!

Oh that and congrats. I always like knowing when my next trip will be.

YAY!! I can't wait to hear details!

Thanks everyone! I will have more details up soon, but right now it looks like we might be doing a split stay with some days in an offsite townhouse in Windsor Hills, followed by 3 nights at the Poly! After being at the Poly this past May with Shawn, I really wanted to get the kids there. However, a full week at the Poly just isn't in the budget, so we will end our trip with a bang with a fun-filled 3 days there!

That's the plan anyway....we'll see what kind of deals happen next week....(supposedly maybe 4/3 deal coming out again, which could change these plans).

We are looking at Feb 6th - Feb 14th. The only portion booked is the Poly portion since I got a good rate from the same agent we used in May. I didn't want to lose that. I have not booked a WH townhouse yet since I want to see what Disney comes out with first. Fingers crossed it's something that will work for us!

Sara

 

[ladybugmom]

Thanks everyone! I will have more details up soon, but right now it looks like we might be doing a split stay with some days in an offsite townhouse in Windsor Hills, followed by 3 nights at the Poly! After being at the Poly this past May with Shawn, I really wanted to get the kids there. However, a full week at the Poly just isn't in the budget, so we will end our trip with a bang with a fun-filled 3 days there!

That's the plan anyway....we'll see what kind of deals happen next week....(supposedly maybe 4/3 deal coming out again, which could change these plans).

We are looking at Feb 6th - Feb 14th. The only portion booked is the Poly portion since I got a good rate from the same agent we used in May. I didn't want to lose that. I have not booked a WH townhouse yet since I want to see what Disney comes out with first. Fingers crossed it's something that will work for us!

Sara

Whoo hoo!! How exciting!! Let me know if you hear anything next week about any deals! We're planning on going back May 22-29 and another deal would make it even better!! Sooo excited for you!!

 

[MiaBella05]

joining in

 

[mom2mek]

joining in

Thanks! Might want to make yourself comfortable....I'm a little slow with my updates....hope I can pick up the pace and get this thing rolling again!

Sara

 

[BippityBoo]

WOOHOO! Sooo exciting! My Travel Agent is at WDW right now. If I can remember correctly, she was taking a behind the scenes tour of the calling center over there. She sent me an email saying that rumor is that the deals are coming out tomorrow! (Monday). We are all anxiously awaiting!! Your TR is the first I have seen that says a 4/3 deal..SO excited. Hopefully, I will talk to you tomorrow with good news

 

[mom2mek]

WOOHOO! Sooo exciting! My Travel Agent is at WDW right now. If I can remember correctly, she was taking a behind the scenes tour of the calling center over there. She sent me an email saying that rumor is that the deals are coming out tomorrow! (Monday). We are all anxiously awaiting!! Your TR is the first I have seen that says a 4/3 deal..SO excited. Hopefully, I will talk to you tomorrow with good news

Yes, the 4/3 thing is what I'm hearing about....rumor is for dates 10/1/2009 through 3/31/2010! (Maybe someone will get to extend her January trip to 7 days.....) Hopefully we will know something for sure very, very, soon!

Sara

 

[mommytothreeboys]

Woo-Hoo!!! A shiny new countdown!!

If you go Feb 6-14, you'll be there over my 40th Birthday! I wanted to go then, but I just don't see Jeff pulling that one off. Can't wait to hear more details!

 

[crocko]

Great updates!

I like the tall buildings/small walkways at the back of Morocco.
Also, Japan is gorgeous....definitely a great time to relax and spend some time.

and Teppan Edo....you're making me one to go back there...yummy!

 

[mom2mek]

Day 2 - May 14, 2009 - Epcot

Part 8 - Warning! The pictures you are about to look at are, unfortunately, mostly Sara's.....you have been warned.....

When we left Teppan Edo it was around 7:30 and the rain was not letting up. We hung out on the 2nd floor overlooking the lagoon and lamented about the rain. Then we wandered back downstairs and hung out right outside the store. The park was very empty....but we did have the unfortunate opportunity to see a mom totally lose it with her kids. I've been there, done that, so I try not to judge (I know I'm not aware of all that's transcribed right before the "Mommy meltdown" took place), however, the language involved was just so unkind. I'm not talking foul language here....but just "shut up" and "You are so ungrateful" kind of talk coming from the mother to the kids....always upsets me). Anyways, they moved along and after a while we donned our ponchos again and decided to head towards the exit and use our FP for Soarin before we left.

We felt pretty certain that Illuminations would not happen, and even if it did, did not feel we would be able to see that much of it. During our family trip in October, it rained on our Epcot night and even though Illuminations happened, it was really hard to see most of it. We thought that if we tried to wait it out, we wouldn't get to ride Soarin (which we had not yet ridden) and, knowing that we were coming back the day after the next day, we thought we could try and see Illuminations then.

So we headed out. I was absolutely frigid. The temps had dropped quite a bit by then, plus we were wet. I don't know about you, but when my feet get wet, my whole body feels cold. On top of all that, Shawn's feet were KILLING him. The moleskin had seen better days and the leather on the new flip flops was really rubbing on all of those sore spots since the leather was now wet. I oh-so smugly mentioned that my Croc flip-flops weren't rubbing at all.....they were the BEST flip-flops (ie....only flip flops I can wear). I'm so sympathetic sounding, aren't I? (I did feel bad for him...)

Since the rain was POURING down, Shawn put his camera away, so the rest of the night's shots were from my camera since it is waterproof. Unfortunately, being waterproof does not mean any of my pics turned out half-way decent. Most of them are blurry and all of them are water-spotted.

(the pictures don't do it justice, it was really pouring, but I hate to complain when I know of some people who arrived for their trips a couple of days later and had rain every single day of their trip....)

Approaching France....approaching France....

Unfortunately I was so cold, the thought of actually holding a frozen drink in my hand, much less actually drinking one...didn't appeal to me in the slightest. Even if that frozen drink was a Grey Goose Lemon Citrone Slushie! I knew we would be back, so I tried not to dwell on it for too long. As we passed it, I had to take a picture of the stand though....

A couple of really sad pictures of France....

And one really sad picture of Shawn.....

We carried on past the UK and on to Canada and I stopped to attempt a couple more photos in the rain...

We hung a left right there past Canada to take that little walkway over to The Land and snagged a few more pics of the topiaries along the way....

When we finally arrived at The Land if was about 8:30 - we were walking pretty slow if you didn't notice....what with the rain and with Shawn's feet. When we walked into the building, I about froze to death! Oh my word. We took off our ponchos and used the washcloth I carried in my purse to sort of dry off our arms and legs. The ponchos did their job, keeping our clothes from getting wet, however, all of our exposed skin and hair were left, well...what can I say....a little shy of dry! I didn't know what to do with my poncho. I didn't really want to carry around a wet poncho with me, but I didn't want to ball it up and put it back in my purse, getting everything in there soaking wet. We didn't have a stroller this time to stick all of our "junk" in, but I also didn't want to throw it away since I figured it would still be downpouring when we left. Ugh.

In the end, Shawn managed to shake most of the wetness off and he put it in a front section of his camera bag and we headed towards Soarin!

Apparently, we weren't the only ones with the grand idea of riding Soarin while it was pouring down rain because the FP line was not short. But the standby line was over an hour still....don't know if that was a "real" hour, or one of those times they "stack" the time a bit to discourage people from getting in line so close to closing. We ventured in and it took about 15 minutes before we were standing in our loading area.

Time for me to get my ride on!

Soarin was fabulous as always and I just love that everyone breaks out into applause at the end of that ride! We gathered our belongings and headed outside. As we passed Innoventions, guess what we heard? Yep - Illuminations! I thought about stopping but decided against it knowing we would not have a very good viewing area at this point. We kept with our original plan and headed to the monorail. On our way out of the park we saw a lone photopass photographer and put her to work!

As we approached the monorail, we noticed there were very few people, so we asked the gentleman if we could ride up front. "Sure," he said, "although you're not gonna be able to see much with all this rain." Oh well, we wanted to anyway.

We took our seats up by the pilot and waited while he stood outside and talked to the other CMs.

(I had to make this one black and white because we are kind of scary looking....LOL)

We had a very interesting conversation with the monorail driver on our way back to the TTC. Now, in hindsight of the monorail accident in July, it's all a bit creepy, but he was telling us all about how the monorails could never crash - the system is set up to never allow that to happen...blah blah blah....

He also told us that they test the monorails sometimes at their highest speed - 103 miles per hour or something crazy like that! He said that the Epcot line runs about 40 mph at top speed with passengers, but they do have the capability to go over 100 and he hopes that someday he will be able to be one of the test drivers! Yikes. Seriously, sitting up front was so shaky and with the rain all over the windshield, we couldn't see a thing! I would NEVER want to be in that thing going 100 mph....

As we arrived back at the TTC, we decided to stop at the espresso stand at the base of the ramp and grab a decaf latte and a chocolate muffin for dessert. We walked back to the room and I left Shawn to go up to the Grand Ceremonial House to find Shawn some more moleskin for the next day.

I shopped around for a while and took my time getting back to the longhouse. As I walked out past the pool, I noticed a lot of people gathered at the beach. Weird....Wishes would have happened about an hour ago, I thought. Well, come to find out Wishes wasn't until 10:00 that night and it was about to start! Woo-hoo!!

I decided to plop myself down on the beach and watch the fireworks. Hey, why not? I even remembered that I had my little camera with me and thought I would attempt a few pictures.

Seriously, I had myself in stitches as I was taking these....you will see why....





...when I post them.....(thought I had them loaded but apparently not....)



Sara

 

[Diamondintheruff]

What a bonus to see Wishes from the beach when you got back!

Sorry about your hubby's feet and he's lucky he's married to you because I wouldn't have been able to be quiet about the whole "you should have gotten crocs instead" thing.

I bet he was one of the people who took his shoes off during soarin!

 

[mommytothreeboys]

Good morning Sara!

Sorry that the rain was such a pain!

The PP pics are cute...you can't even tell you're soaked and cold!

How fun to ride in the front of the monorail...our boys did that on our 2007 trip and I'm glad because I doubt they will allow that anymore. Sad. But the monorail at 100 mph????? NO thanks!

Poor Shawn's feet! UGH! I hope he gets that resolved.

Wishes from the beach! SWEET!

 

[jillyb]

Sorry the rain didn't let up but sounds like ya'll made the best of it. Love the PP pics and the black-n-white pic of you and Shawn. How cool you got to see Wishes from the beach!