Not so much a savings, more like reallocating where the money goes (Part 20 pg14) NEW

[mom2fivecs]

I am thoroughly enjoying your trip report...keep it coming.

 

[Jenn]

I'm reading too! Keep them coming.

 

[kathymc]

cute report - ready for more?

 

[5boyz]

mom2fivecs......I am assuming you have 3 DD and 2 DS? So where do you stay when in Disney? How do you do it? How old are the kids? I have 6 but only 4 go to Disney now....the other 2 too old for family trips!!! LOL!!! 5 boys 1 girl!!!!

 

[mom2fivecs]

mom2fivecs......I am assuming you have 3 DD and 2 DS? So where do you stay when in Disney? How do you do it? How old are the kids? I have 6 but only 4 go to Disney now....the other 2 too old for family trips!!! LOL!!! 5 boys 1 girl!!!!

Yep that's right...the girls are 17 (18 next month), 16, and 8 (turning 9 in disney) and the boys are 11 and 5. We have only gone to disney one other time and have stayed in 2 rooms at AS Sports. This June we will be staying in 2 rooms at Pop This will probably be our last trip with all 5 kids since the oldest is off to college next fall. How old are your bunch?

 

[5boyz]

Hey Mom2five!!! My kids are boy 23 boy 20 boy 16 boy 15 boy 9 and FINALLY girl 6. Yes my 23 year old does not come...he lives on his own now and 20 year old is in his second year of University so he has to work all summer.....no pain.....no gain!!!!!! He wants to be a chartered accountant!! I am looking into the Pop Century too and the family suites. We stayed at the cabins last year they were nice but not for me!!!

 

[HaleyB]

Hey, WOW- lots of readers

Thanks everyone! I agree that a wandering mind is a sign of genius, lol.

I took a break, Spring Break. We are back home after a very event filled four day trip to San Antonio (Sea World, The Zoo, Methodist Hospital's ER- not in that order). I will have to tell you all about it. I am sure I would not be able to not tell everyone about it, it will work it's way inbetween memories of the WDW trip as I write. I am not sure if I can use the word 'not' more than two times in one sentance, not that I wouldn't try.

Sea World is not Disney. There is that negative word again. It is still fun, but not Disney and I am a Disney snob, according to Steven. My daughter noticed too, or picked up the thought when I mentioned that if this were a Disney park I would not have to walk back and forth so much (bad layout). Also the price of food at Sea World will make you long for WDW. But I got one-on-one time with a dolphin, so I feel like I got my $50's worth, well $54 I guess, the dolphin food was extra.

The Zoo was fun too, but had very limited food options.

The Methodist Hospital actually had a huge variety of food choices, but we didn't make use of anything but the vending machines. Wanna know more? I bet you do. But I need to sleep, so more latter.

Thanks for reading. It feels kinda like talking to myself outloud when I write these up. I know how that feels because I do it all the time, the kids think it is funny (well the younger two, the older one pretends he is not with me).

 

[HaleyB]

Oh no! I was on page two. That will not do. Working on the next part, please stay tuned.

 

[bigsis1970]

Hi HaleyB & Mr Silly -- can't wait to read more from you !!! Michelle
Counting down my trip by reading trip reports each day !!!

 

[OhMari]

HaileyB,
Bumping up to the 1st page, so you will hopefully finish your report. I'm here and waiting.

 

[HaleyB]

Ok guys so here is the thing. I have writers block. Also that little ER trip last week is still haunting us and I can't focus so well. Neithr can Mr Silly. I will finish this... here or over on the CB. I retract my former statement that I will not post here anymore. That was said in haste. If I think of someone as a friend I can get really defensive.

I am going to write up the Sea World trip on the CB. I don't think there is a SW TR board, is there? I'll link it to this for the continuity.

 

[HaleyB]

Oh man, I had this part written up awhile ago. I thought I had posted it. That is what happens when you get old. I am pushing 40, but I think my brain is more like 82 (no offense to anyone who is 82).

I like to say “Of all the things I have lost in my life I miss my mind the most” Actually I stole that from a good friend.

Maybe I did post it already... if it is a repeat then make the lost my mind part bold. Sound like a plan?

Ok here weeee goooo! MNSSHP

So off we went to the Magic Kingdom. We took the Monorail but struck out on getting the front car. To be honest I walked up to the wrong end of it, so we really had no chance. I am pretty sure some CMs got a big laugh out of that once we were out of ear shot. I am cool with that. When you do stupid things on a regular basis you get used to it. I think it was around 4:45pm when we got t the MK. Loads of people were leaving the park and we felt very special to be going in. We were able to get our bracelets at the gate, we were glad we did when we saw the lines for them at 6pm. Wow am I glad I read the DIS boards, those people are so smart. We had been without internet since the 29th of September so we didn’t get to hear about the changes for this years party in advance. So we headed straight for Tomorrowland thinking that is where we would be from 6 to 7. Oh I almost forgot, we rented a locker when we came in and they only charged us $2, when we turned our key in at the end of the night they gave us $2 back, so it was another freebie! Yes that is right. Never mind the $38 I paid to get in, the locker and candy were free. I am such a sucker.

The Stitch ride had no line and I checked the flashing red clock overhead, it was less than 10 minutes for the next show. Tip of the day. On timed attractions you can often find the count down clock that tells you when the next show will start by looking up. If there is a podium where a CM often stands look up while standing near it. You should be able to find the countdown clock, it is large flashing red numbers. Stitch: Max and Sophia really wanted to ride this. Steve was interested even though we had seen lots of bad reports. From our point of view it was a terrible waste of valuable Disney time. It was a wussie ride. The best part by far was the preshow. However, the kids loved it. They are huge Stitch fans. After that I think we rode Buzz twice with no waiting. That would obviously be because Steve(n) beat me the first time through. He beat me the second time too, but the kids were down on the idea of riding it until Mom had the high score. Smart kids really, I can only beat Steve at games like this if his gun is not working right. After Buzz Sophia said she wanted to ride the Tomorrowland Transit Authority ride... so we did. it was a good thing we got right on it. As we got off they were closing it down for the night and directing people out of Tomorrowland. Hello, what is this? My extensive research failed me. We were not going to be waiting for the party to start in Tomorrowland. It was only the second MNSSHP of the year and we left home before there were any reports on the first night. Still my family was in shock. Something that escaped my extensive research and planning. How could this have happened?

We were bummed about not getting on Space Mountain, but we knew we would have a chance later. BTMRR and Pirates were open so we were happy campers. From 6-7:30 we rode Pirates, the Aladdin carpets, Splash Mountain, and BTMRR at least four times. We also hit the candy trail right by BTMRR’s exit repeatedly. We love BTMRR, it is a great ride. We are ride people. We didn’t even watch the parade because the kids voted for more rides instead. Mom was actually pulling for the parade before she saw the people lining Main Street. Then she came to her senses and remembered why we are not parade people. We rode everything we wanted too (many things multiple times) except the Fantasyland rides (I think we rode some but not all of them) but we missed some of the special events I had wanted to see. We did see the fireworks and the Villains dance number. We missed the magician (I had no idea there was a magician, we never got anything but the party map which was not very good for anything). My daughter had her face painted and they did a great job. We loved MNSSHP. We would love to go again... but we also love Star Wars weekends and I have always wanted to do the Christmas Party... and we live too far away to go more than once in a while (like every 12 months or so). Choices.

I sort of glossed over the fireworks. We sat on the benches in the garden between the castle and tomorrow land. Not the best view but also not crowded. The lighting of the castle was cool. The fireworks were neat and we liked them. Only they didn’t really hold a candle to the new display in Disneyland. Same sort of idea only done better and longer. I really think we may be spoiled forever, after seeing the fireworks at Disneyland from the hub. I will not gush anymore about this. Just go and see them for yourself. They were incredible. But we were talking about MNSSHP, let’s get back to that. Wow, check me out, staying on topic (sort of).

At some point we ate a large CS meal at Cosmic Rays. Yummy fixin’s bar. We used 2 CS credits here because the kids split a meal and all I wanted was some dessert. We still threw food away, too. I got to feel that little thrill, zzub knows what I mean. That smug satisfied feeling free food gives you. Disney marketing is really genius. We also had our photos done. They mail you one free as part of the ticket price. We waited till late so we had no line, yippee, but we look a little bit beat, not so yippee. They only took one shot of all of us. I should have made them take more. We now have four copies of us looking a bit beat. But hey. it was free.

The last hour of the party was a bummer (should it be one 'm'? Spell check want's to change it to 'bumper'). Do words like ‘wussie’ and ‘bummer (should it be one 'm'? Spell check want's to change it to 'bumper')’ make you think I must have grown up in the 70’s and 80’s? Well I did. Actually I am not sure how widely used ‘wussie’ was or is, but it was very popular in my household. We wanted to ride BTMRR again but after we walked across the park we found out it was broken. Then we remembered we had not been on the Jungle Cruise yet. We love that ride, and I could think of all sorts of cool Halloween things they might do... so we walked over there. Guess what. Monkey butt. Guess why. Monkey thigh. Jungle Cruise is closed during MNSSHP and it is just a meet and greet and candy stop. My kids were not into meet and greets (we got one character picture all night), they wanted to ride... oh well. We did get a ton of rides in and about 10 pounds of candy (no kidding, I told a CM my son was allergic to chocolate and she told us to go ahead and fill his bag with the nonchcolate stuff from the teacup of candy. Then my daughter looked left out so they let her pick whatever she wanted from the teacup). So to recap, lots of rides, free candy, free face painting, free locker, cool fireworks.

All and all it was a great time and we would love to do it again. We got back to the room by 12:20 and everyone was asleep in minutes. Disney sleep is good sleep. Did you do the math? Did you notice we just spent 12 hours in parks with no breaks? Yes, I am a bad girl. We are park commandos and old habits are hard to break. Steve actually mentioned that we sort of took it easy this trip...

We also went on an almost four mile hike on the hottest day of the year (over 110 I would have to look it up, but I think it was 117) during the mid afternoon this year. With our kids. So maybe we did take it easy in WDW. That hike was a mistake, by the way. When we planned it Rita was heading for Austin and was going to cool things down (and get them nice and wet). It didn’t happen that way, but the whole bunch of us (it was a group hike) were so happy not to be hit by a hurricane, we lost our collective minds. We all survived just fine, but it was a stupid risk to hike in that heat and I will not do it again. Of course none of the weather reports predicted that kind of heat, so we went in blind. We should have turned around when we realized it was hot hot hot, but we didn’t want to act like girlie men.

Next up, another ‘sleeping in’ morning and Typhoon Lagoon.

 

[JessetheCowgirl]

Glad to read your next installment.

12 hours in one day---you're my hero

 

[javamom]

Go Halie!

 

[TLinden16]

Little oops there, eh? Walking to the wrong end of the monorail. Oh well. If you ever have the chance, you should try to get in the front from the T&TC to Epcot--it's a longer ride, and you can get some great pictures with Spaceship Earth behind you (the best picture opportunity is from the front to seats or the entire right hand side).

Great trip report! Thanks for posting!

 

[HaleyB]

He he he, so you noticed that bit about the Monorail...

We did get to ride up front later, so mostly I was forgiven for this. Living with the shame is another thing.

 

[fizz13]

Oh hun, it is hard to fall from grace when your family think you are Disney supremo (trust me I've been there and the shade of my face lit up Main St ) trust me, you're still more prepared than thousands of people out there. please keep up the great reports, I'm really enjoying them,

Claire xx

 

[pongoperdigirl]

Great report can't wait to hear the rest.
Maelstrom!!!

 

[pumba]

Fantastic day ....and trip.......thanks so much for posting the rest of it. Our friends said they had more candy at the party then they would buy for passing out themselves.....and that was for one child.....thanks again

 

[HaleyB]

Great report can't wait to hear the rest.
Maelstrom!!!

IS a Fastpass?!??!!!???!!

I so almost brought my laptop with me to "work" today so I could work on this afterwards at Max' doctor appointment. I really should have, cause it was an epic doctors appointment. And I am not just throwing around words here. We got home after 8pm.

I think I should have time this weekend to write up the next bit. Don't hold your breath though, 'cause maybe not.

And Mel, if you are reading, this is for you

LYMI

Haley