Old, New & Long Lost Friends, with a Side of Frump! FINISHED! DL TR started 1.20.14!

[arbolita]

Joining in great report so far!
I love the look of Saratoga springs, considering staying there the next time I go, definitely with a DTD view, it looks amazing!
I've never ate at Raglan road either and now I feel like I'm missing out haha
I don't like leaving disney once we get there either, next time we go I don't think I'll leave there at all If I can help it x

Saratoga Springs really surprised me with how much I enjoyed it! It had never been much on my radar before, so I'm really happy that it worked out to be where we ended up staying on this trip!

I'm joining in! I follow a lot of DIS friends on twitter and I think I might've recently started following you because you were in the list of people to follow!

OMG, you make Stacey GIFs? When I saw that I had to click on your link. Those are pretty awesome.

Subscribing to catch up!

ETA: OK, I totally love that picture of the princess parade at DTD! My sister works at DTD and I also had no idea they did this until she told me about it. SO CUTE!

Is your Twitter name the same as your Dis name?

I am so happy you like the Stacey gifs!! They were seriously so much fun to make, and I can't wait until I have a higher quality version of the new video so I can make some more!

One of the things I liked most about the Princess parade was the fact that it was something about Disney that was completely new to me! I feel like I spend so much time reading about it through blogs and trip reports that it's always such a great treat when I discover something new while in the Parks.

 

[arbolita]

Quick apologies to those of you who have just found my Trip Report and aren't seeing any photos. I seem to have exceeded my bandwidth on Photobucket. I'm going to work on figuring out a better solution for my pictures, so any suggestions you have will be great!

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

I'm in the process of transitioning my pictures to Flickr and am planning on ditching Photobucket. Their new website has been very slow and frustrating to use with a lot of glitches. And in the process of implementing their new website it appears that they decided to suddenly and without any warning apply a much smaller space limitation and start charging for access to larger memory space.

 

[khertz]

Oh my gosh I'm so OVER that atrocity that is called new photobucket. I ran out of space now on my account anyway, so I'm moving elsewhere.

 

[RachelNinja]

Yeah, Photobucket is ridiculous! Suddenly I have like, NO space! I had to start a new acct. But even then, I'm already at 7% capacity for just a few updates! Plus, I can't resize them automatically from the upload or even at all. Frustrating. I was thinking about Flickr.

 

[danimaroo]

This happened to me last year with my Trip Report - Photobucket has only so much bandwidth and because the DIS means a LOT of people are viewing your photos, it eats up your bandwidth like you wouldn't believe!

So, I just ended up upgrading to their Pro account and paid the money so I wouldn't have to deal with losing photos or people not being able to view mine. It's relatively inexpensive for the year. I know Flickr is another good choice!

 

[wdwgirl03]

Is your Twitter name the same as your Dis name?

I am so happy you like the Stacey gifs!! They were seriously so much fun to make, and I can't wait until I have a higher quality version of the new video so I can make some more!

My twitter name is actually mugirl0307.

That would be awesome if you made more Stacey gifs! Gotta love Stacey.

Good luck with fixing the photobucket issue! I was able to see some of your pictures but not all of them.

 

[arbolita]

My twitter name is actually mugirl0307.

That would be awesome if you made more Stacey gifs! Gotta love Stacey.

Good luck with fixing the photobucket issue! I was able to see some of your pictures but not all of them.

I think over the weekend I'm going to try and upload the ones I used somewhere else and replace them, so hopefully this won't be an issue again later!

 

[arbolita]

I'm in the process of transitioning my pictures to Flickr and am planning on ditching Photobucket. Their new website has been very slow and frustrating to use with a lot of glitches. And in the process of implementing their new website it appears that they decided to suddenly and without any warning apply a much smaller space limitation and start charging for access to larger memory space.

Oh my gosh I'm so OVER that atrocity that is called new photobucket. I ran out of space now on my account anyway, so I'm moving elsewhere.

Yeah, Photobucket is ridiculous! Suddenly I have like, NO space! I had to start a new acct. But even then, I'm already at 7% capacity for just a few updates! Plus, I can't resize them automatically from the upload or even at all. Frustrating. I was thinking about Flickr.

This happened to me last year with my Trip Report - Photobucket has only so much bandwidth and because the DIS means a LOT of people are viewing your photos, it eats up your bandwidth like you wouldn't believe!

So, I just ended up upgrading to their Pro account and paid the money so I wouldn't have to deal with losing photos or people not being able to view mine. It's relatively inexpensive for the year. I know Flickr is another good choice!

My twitter name is actually mugirl0307.

That would be awesome if you made more Stacey gifs! Gotta love Stacey.

Good luck with fixing the photobucket issue! I was able to see some of your pictures but not all of them.

I'm so glad to hear I'm not the only person who was having issues with Photobucket recently! I switched over to ImageShack and went back through my earlier posts to swap out the picture links, so hopefully everything is viewable again (and I can finally get back to posting NEW updates!)

 

[arbolita]

Chapter 8 - Oo-de-lally, Oo-de-lally, Golly What a Day​

OUR FIRST FULL DAY IN DISNEY!!

I absolutely loved the view from the room this early in the morning.

I knew early on that our first park of the trip was going to be the Magic Kingdom. Since it was a Sunday, some local friends of ours were going to be meeting us in the park, and Magic Kingdom definitely had the most options for their young daughter to enjoy. This Sunday also JUST HAPPENED to be the final day of Long Lost Friends Week in the Magic Kingdom, and as I mentioned early on in the TR, Robin Hood was one of my favorite Disney movies as a kid and the only character I had ever met from it was Prince John, back in 1990.

And you know, there was also this thing, you may have heard of it, called NEW FANTASYLAND. So yeah. Magic Kingdom was pretty much a no brainer.

Park opening was at 9AM, so I set the alarm for 7. I wanted to make sure we were able to get into the park right at rope drop, because I heard lines for the Robin Hood characters could get long quickly, and I assumed that was certain to happen with it being the last day of their appearances.

We made it to the Congress Park bus stop around 8 AM, and had a very short wait for our bus. Apparently nobody else at Saratoga Springs was as eager to see the Long Lost Friends as we were.

One thing I noticed on the buses this trip - while they still had Old Bus Voice Guy doing the announcements, you know how when you are arriving to a park, he gives you descriptions of the fun and exciting things to do there? That didn't happen on our MK or DHS buses - just for Epcot and Animal Kingdom. I thought it was a bit weird. Did any of you who were at WDW around then notice the same thing?

Obviously I wasn't that concerned though - I WAS ON MY WAY TO THE MAGIC KINGDOM!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOISGUJAOPITU -W4TIW3[0-IKGT E=0IGT-=-GF. Sorry about that. I don't know what came over me. YES I DO. MAGIC KINGDOM MADNESS HAS TAKEN OVER.

MONORAIL!!!!!

Clearly I wasn't concerned with actually taking a decent photo, I was just excited for my first monorail sighting!

As we approached the gate, the entire middle section of the entrance was blocked off, presumably for them to continue installing the MyMagic+ entrances.

My favorite train station!

By this point, we still had about 35 minutes until park opening. We do not typically make it to the parks prior to opening - we always have good intentions, but most of the time we get stuck waiting for buses and arrive just after it opens. So that being said, I was pretty surprised at how crowded it was this early, during what is considered to be a slow time of year!

I managed to move through the crowd to get a spot just to the side of the rope. Nothing was going to get in the way of me meeting Robin Hood!

We couldn't see the Welcome Show at all from where we were standing, but we could definitely hear it. Scott had never seen or heard anything from this show before, and while it was happening, he made one of the funniest comments of the trip:

@GertieTheDino89 My husband during the Welcome Show. "Magic can't be wrapped up in pixie dust. It should be wrapped in bacon."


As soon as they finished the countdown, I was off! The characters were already standing in Town Square as we entered, so I went straight for the middle where they had the Robin Hood characters stationed and managed to be second in line!

As soon as it was my turn, I ran up to Robin Hood and told him just how excited I was to finally see him back in the park! I gave hugs to him and Friar Tuck, and the Sheriff of Nottingham gave my a kiss on the hand, the sly dog. Prince John refused to acknowledge me, so I told him that his mother would be ashamed if she saw that he was treating me that way. If you've seen the movie (and I hope you have!!!), you know what came next.

The Photopass person got this picture mid-interaction, and I absolutely love it.

I had Scott run in and join me for our picture!

I was really glad I decided to get in line for Robin Hood first, since theirs was already the longest. Of all the other characters appearing this week, there was really only one other one that I knew I HAD to meet - Professor Ludwig von Drake!

I remembered that he was the host of a number of Disney Specials when I was a kid as well as some of the Sing-A-Long videos, and he was another that I had never seen in the parks before! Their line was a little longer, but still had a very short wait. Lugwig was very excited when I told him that he was one of the characters I most wanted to meet.

If you can't see what Scott is holding, he put a $5 in front of Scrooge McDuck's face - I actually cant tell if Scrooge's expression means he's excited about the money, or insulted that Scott would only give him a $5, haha.

While we were waiting in line, one of the Cast Members working that area mentioned that this was the first of three Long Lost Friends weeks that they would be having during part of the Limited Time Magic promotion - I'm guessing the next one will be sometime in the summer, followed by another in the fall. She wouldn't give any hints as to who would be appearing later on though (drat). It sure is fun to speculate in the meantime!

It was around 9:15 after we finished meeting these characters, and I had gotten a text from our friends K & A telling us they were on the ferryboat coming from the TTC and should be there soon! While we waited, I ran around Town Square and Main Street USA taking pictures.

It was such a gorgeous day!

Stupid crane.

When K&A arrived, we greeted each other with hugs and caught up briefly. We all wanted to go check out New Fantasyland, because they hadn't seen it yet either, but I was checking the times on the MyDisneyExperience app and saw that Peter Pan's Flight only had a 10 minute wait! We knew that wouldn't last long, and J, (K&A's daughter), was feeling a bit shy that morning, so we thought that going on her favorite ride would help perk her up!

When we arrived to Peter Pan, the 10 minute wait was really just barely longer than a walk on. I don't know why I even bothered to attempt to take a picture on this ride, but I did.

Disney photography doesn't get much better than that, folks.

Once we got off Peter Pan's Flight...it was time.


For those of you avoiding New Fantasyland pictures, be aware - completed castle wall photo below!

@GertieTheDino89 About to enter New Fantasyland for the first time. Here we go.


Continued in Next Post



​

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

Love your pictures with the Robin Hood crew. Funny that Prince John was the only character from that group you had met before as a kid because that was how it was for me to in the 80s! I had never met any of the other characters beside Prince John. I smell conspiracy!

And is it just me or does Robin Hood look like he's gained a few pounds over the years?

Looks like an absolutely gorgeous day!

 

[wdwgirl03]

What a beautiful morning! Waking up at Saratoga Springs is always nice. Aww I miss it there (SSR is our home resort and we love Congress Park!).

GAH I can't wait to see the New Fantasyland! Only 28 more days to go!

YAY for meeting the Long Lost Friends!

 

[__disneygirl]

YES YES YES YES YES YES NEW FANTASYLAND!!! I can't even describe how special it was for me to walk through that castle wall for the first time! That was honestly one of the most exciting experiences of my life and I can't wait to read about yours

I'm glad you appreciated the Limited Time Magic! I wasn't that thrilled with the characters they chose to bring back so I'm happy someone I know enjoyed it! I'm dying to know what the LTM will be during my trip.

 

[marDgreen88]

Your early morning SSR pictures are so pretty! That resort looks so nice.

AHHHHHHH DID PRINCE JOHN REALLY SUCK HIS THUMB??? That would be amazing! So cool that you got to meet all of them!!! I have the Green with Envy Blues song stuck in my head now!

I personally think the next Long Lost Friends week should be end of May... beginning of June... somewhere around that time!

 

[beachphotog]

Haha, Scott giving Scrooge McDuck the money is such a great picture!! I love all the long lost characters they had out but I didn't know that they were doing more. That's so exciting!!! I wonder who it is and when they will be there!

I

 

[danimaroo]

First day in the parks! YAY!! Your view from your room was gorgeous!

Oh man, there's nothing better than an empty bus to MK!! Seriously, I love those mornings.

But that's so weird that it didn't play the music/fanfare! We didn't experience that.. or well, we DID once but otherwise we always got the music/announcements and all that. I'm wondering if they didn't that morning since you were the only 2 on the bus? Lame, that's my favorite part of the bus ride!

OOOOH MAN! I love your photos with Robin Hood and the gang! Too fabulous! That was good thinking to head there first; the lines got insane for the Long Lost Friends!

YAY FOR NEW FANTASYLAND!! It's so fabulous back there. Can't wait to see you explore!

 

[RachelNinja]

I didn't really think much about the Long Lost Friends because I'm not very into meeting characters. Haha, I get too nervous because as a kid I used to be scared, so even now, I like looking at them from afar. Anyway, reading about your experiences just got me so excited and into it just because of how eager you were to meet those that were there! Curious to know who else will be there during those other 2 times.

 

[Stringbean&Wingnut]

Yay for getting to meet some of your favorite characters!! Hahaha I love that Scott held up the money to Scrooge McDuck!

 

[khertz]

I don't even like bacon, but Scott's commentary on the opening show was hilarious!

How cool that you were there for Long Lost Friends week! I hope the fall one the CM speculated on happens to be the week we will be there in October. I have this little connection with Prince John because I was a thumbsucker until I was just too old to be sucking a thumb, so my family would always joke when that movie was on that I was going to be like Prince John sucking my thumb into adulthood! It would have been SO FUN to get a photo of him & I sucking our thumbs to send to those family members!

Again, I at Scott giving Scrooge money in the picture! Great character interactions!!

 

[Marsheliz]

That is a wonderful view to wake up too... AHHH.....

What a beautiful morning in MK too!