One Mom and Three Kids Tackle the World in a Week - Dec '09 Trip Report - Complete :)

[Mndisneygirl]

Hi Kelli!!
I think I found you from Shelly (Momof2Disneyboys) or CP's TRs. I'm from MN too! Where do you live? Up north? I'm in the cities - Oakdale specifically.

I love your pictures - your family is so cute! And kudos to you for helping with adopting Michael. I work in the court system and see those child protection/termination cases a lot. Thank God for people like you!

We were also at WDW the same time as you! We arrived on the 4th. I will be reading to see if we ever were at the same places!! Please come over and check out my TR!

 

[DisneyJo]

Great photos of CP and I adore the frog PP photo, it's the first time I've seen that

 

[Mndisneygirl]

Oh yeah - I forgot the frog pictures!! SO CUTE!! I can't believe we didn't get to do that! I didn't know about it and now wish I had! Oh well!

 

[Lovemy3babes]

Hi!

Hi Kelli!!
I think I found you from Shelly (Momof2Disneyboys) or CP's TRs. I'm from MN too! Where do you live? Up north? I'm in the cities - Oakdale specifically.

I love your pictures - your family is so cute! And kudos to you for helping with adopting Michael. I work in the court system and see those child protection/termination cases a lot. Thank God for people like you!

We were also at WDW the same time as you! We arrived on the 4th. I will be reading to see if we ever were at the same places!! Please come over and check out my TR!

Welcome!! We are actually in the SW corner of Minnesota. It's neat seeing other people from MN on the boards.

Thank you for the kind words regarding our adoption. It was a big change in our lives but it was definitely the right thing to do.

And how cool that we were there at the same times. Very neat! I will hop over and check out your report this afternoon for sure!

Great photos of CP and I adore the frog PP photo, it's the first time I've seen that

I didn't know that the frog pictures were so new. I should have figured that with the new movie, which we still haven't had a chance to see. Thanks for reading along with me. It's fun to re-live a trip, especially when it will be a little while before you get to go again.

 

[Lovemy3babes]

Oh yeah - I forgot the frog pictures!! SO CUTE!! I can't believe we didn't get to do that! I didn't know about it and now wish I had! Oh well!

Thanks Sheree!!

 

[Panotchr]

I love your trip report! I don't find you a poor writer at all! I am loving it.

Loved the frog pictures, too. We had some family go recently and get those shots.

We are CP people. I love the Arnold Palmer iced tea they serve there! I have to say, I have never been for anything but dinner, and I have my ADR already for this summer. Come on July.

Ready for more!

 

[Lovemy3babes]

I love your trip report! I don't find you a poor writer at all! I am loving it.

Loved the frog pictures, too. We had some family go recently and get those shots.

We are CP people. I love the Arnold Palmer iced tea they serve there! I have to say, I have never been for anything but dinner, and I have my ADR already for this summer. Come on July.

Ready for more!

Hi there! Thank you for the compliment. I wasn't aware they even had iced tea. Sounds good! I'll wish that July comes soon for you!

 

[aidansmommy]

Count me in! I can't wait to read what the rest of the week has in store for you!

 

[RinkyTinkyTinky]

I LOVE those Princess and the Frog pictures! That alone was worth the price of the PP! So darn cute!

Your pictures of SM are great. I love the one from across the water and the one your sister took was really good too. I thought the first drop was it too when I rode it. Boy was that a rude awakening for me! Glad you like it though.

It really does stink that MK closes so early this time of year! That's the only thing I didn't like about going in Nov.

 

[KathyRN137]

... thank you for the kind words about Michael. It was a process and now that we have an Autism diagnosis, we're going through some more stuff as you know much about. But, it's all completely worth it.

Kathy

 

[Lovemy3babes]

Count me in! I can't wait to read what the rest of the week has in store for you!

Hi there! Welcome.

I LOVE those Princess and the Frog pictures! That alone was worth the price of the PP! So darn cute!

Your pictures of SM are great. I love the one from across the water and the one your sister took was really good too. I thought the first drop was it too when I rode it. Boy was that a rude awakening for me! Glad you like it though.

It really does stink that MK closes so early this time of year! That's the only thing I didn't like about going in Nov.

Thanks!! I thought I was pretty brave after that first drop. Haha, was I naive or what?! The early closings were hard to plan around, weren't they?

Kathy

Back at you Kathy!

 

[Lovemy3babes]

Sorry in advance, I know this is going to be a short and kind of boring chapter!

When I last left you, we all fell asleep for a much needed nap. I wish we would have just slept the night through! Our evening wasn’t the best evening of our trip. Ugh.

So, we woke up on time thankfully but all were very groggy. Jetlag set in and it was hard to get moving. I called my sister and we arranged to meet at the South Point bus stop. We got there and did not have to wait long for a glorious Magic Kingdom bus. We were back to our favorite park! Poor Dimitri did not get enough sleep unfortunately as you can see here….

The poor kid fell right back asleep on the bus!

If I remember correctly, we got back to the park around 5pm. And it was a packed. A complete zoo, a definite contrast to our “walk-on rides” morning. Thankfully, we only had two goals in mind, just two.

1. See Mickey’s Philharmagic – This had been down in the afternoon. It’s our favorite 4-D show so we could NOT skip it. No way, no how sir.
2. Eat something. Anything. Preferably something edible and without a long wait.

So, we set down a busy Main Street to accomplish those two things. We happened upon this Native and posed for a picture.

A funny little side story here… My husband is ½ Native American; therefore my children are ¼ Native American. Morghan was very interested in culture and her background awhile back, when she was around 5 or so. Being part Native American made her think that she also must be related to every Native American person here on Earth. Each one. Everywhere we would see someone with brown skin, she would ask, “Am I related to him” or “Who is that mom”? (As if I would know all of these people.) It was a cute little phase in her life and much embarrasses her now if I mention it. So, we had to take a picture. This must be Morghan’s older cousin I suppose. LOL!

Pretty sign at night-

So, off we went and were able to wait a pretty short 15 minutes to see Mickey and his magical Philharmagic. I just adore this cute show. And was able to snag a cute picture of cute children wearing cute little glasses. Cute stuff, huh?

One more, the daughter who is always posing some which way-

The kids wanted to check out a few of the little light-up toys they have outside the exit.

Well, that was about it. That’s all we were going to get accomplished, besides eating, in the Magic Kingdom that night. People were streaming in for MVMCP and wait times were creeping way up there. I do not like crowds. Coming at rope drop worked very well for us. We got so much done in the morning that I did not feel bad about skipping rides that evening. Took this along the way out-

We needed something in our tummies and soon. I thought of some little goodies that might cure that! Guess what they were? Corn dog nuggets! As a shout out to Brook, I learned of these crispy little yummies from her TRs. So, to Casey’s we went! Again, a completely madhouse. People were lining out the door and it really hard to keep a good eye on my three kiddos, who were hungry and trying to stay next to me in the crowd. Ugh! But, I finally got myself a hotdog, three orders of corn dog nuggets for them, along with two fries and two drinks to share. Now, my little downer about Casey’s. Why is there like no where to sit inside? I had a big tray of food, two sodas to carry, all while making sure my kiddos were right next to me as I was getting ketchup and napkins for all of us. The bottom row of the bleachers had cleared so we all squished together and ate our dinner there. I really did like the corndog nuggets. They were hot and really tasty. The hotdog? Eh, wasn’t a fan. I guess I prefer mine grilled, over a hot BBQ. But it was food and we were hungry so we ate! At that time, it was already about 6:30pm. The park was crowded and we were not party guests so we got the heck out of dodge! On the way out we got a couple buckets of the best popcorn ever to share.

Waiting for the OKW bus…

We got back to the resort and settled back in our rooms. But it was still early and the kids were asking to do something since they had gotten their second wind. Hmmm, what could we do? I looked over the Times Guide that was in our room and it looked like they were having a Campfire Sing-along with S’mores! Hello?!! Yum. Let’s go! I called my sister, she agreed and we met at the Southpoint bus stop once again. We waited and waited and waited. And waited. Finally, a DTD bus rolls up. And on it, was the rudest WDW bus driver I have encountered in my entire life. Ugh.

We jumped on and sat in a few rows back from the front. On the bus with us, was a family of about 6 people. They had just arrived on ME and were not at all sure how the buses worked and where they could go to get something to eat as they hadn’t eaten since breakfast. One of the women asked the bus driver, “Does this bus to go Downtown Disney?” He replied “Hello? That’s what the sign said when you got on, didn’t it!” Lovely I was thinking. What a good representation of Disney, you meanie. Another in their party asked him a minute later, “Where could we get something to eat?” He then replied, “I drive a bus. I don’t handle your food.” What an ***! Then end all of be all, he stopped at what was a crosswalk. One of them stood up to get off as they thought it was an actual bus stop. He threw his arm back at all of us and yelled “See! That’s a crosswalk there!” And pointed at it really exaggerated. This jerk was over the top rude. Thankfully Hospitality House was our stop and we very quickly got off. Before though, I had told one of the ladies in their party that there was plenty of good eating in Downtown Disney and how to find it. Why do people like that even work there? People pay very good money for an enjoyable vacation and then you get someone like that to upset you. Grrr.

Ok, moving on to our evening now. We had about 20 minutes before the campfire ended so we better hurry!! We found out where we were supposed to go and booked it down there. Hmmm, why am I not seeing a campfire? Uh, why are those Cast Members just hanging around? Well, it seems that nobody else showed up. They decided to just shut it down early and head out. Bummer! The super nice girl handed me a bunch of “make your own S’More kits” so we could take them back to the room with us. They apologized many times and we assured them it was no big deal.

Since we were down by HH, we decided to check out the play area and the pool. We bummed around for awhile and took a few pictures-

This is a fun little area for the kids. It was way too chilly to swim but they had fun playing in the sand area for awhile. It was now getting later so we decided to head back to the rooms. This was taken on the walk back.

Yep, I said WALK. We walked all the way back from HH to our buildings, in the very back of the resort. Why? Well, we very foolishly didn’t do any research on the OKW bus system. I had no idea you could hop on a bus stop before ours and it would make its way to our stop. Um, duh. Yep, sure could so that. So, we trudged our very tired bodies the very long way back to our rooms. I believe it was close to 9:45pm at that point and it was time to call it a night. I made each of them a microwave S'More and then the kiddos took a quick turn in the shower and I had them sleeping by 10:15pm as I see by reading my notes. I called home to check in with my husband and I was out like a light by 10:30pm myself.

It was a great first day, though it had its share of ups and downs. The morning was wonderful at MK after we got away from the parade crowds. The evening was far busier due to MVMCP.

Up next…TSM rush, Tour of Terror how many times?! and my new favorite ride ever!

 

[Panotchr]

Thank goodness you were on that bus to share some Disney Magic! Did you report his unfriendliness??? I think I would have had to. Of course, mh DH would have said don't! LOL

I am glad you got some microwave s'mores

 

[KathyRN137]

Morghan was very interested in culture and her background awhile back, when she was around 5 or so. Being part Native American made her think that she also must be related to every Native American person here on Earth. Each one.



Corn dog nuggets! As a shout out to Brook, I learned of these crispy little yummies from her TRs..... The hotdog? Eh, wasn’t a fan.




Finally, a DTD bus rolls up. And on it, was the rudest WDW bus driver I have encountered in my entire life. Ugh.

That is cute about Morghan and her "very extended" family!

I should have listened to Brook and tried the CD nuggets... the whole grain bun they serve with the hot dogs now are gross.....

What a rude driver! Luckily he's the exception to the rule...

Sorry you guys missed the campfire program, but exploring the resort is always fun!


Kathy

 

[BrooklynnsMommy]

Great update! The no wait lines is why we are firm believers in rope drop!

I can't believe that driver. I probably would have said something to him and I definitely would have gotten his name and spoken to the proper people about such dreadful behavior.

 

[brookelizabeth]

So glad you liked the corn dog nuggets!!!! The first time I had them I was watching Spectro. It was a lovely combo.

That stinks about the crowds being so high that night! When we hit MK on a MNSSHP night everything was VERY low crowd-wise, even up until the party started. We must have just hit a good night or something.

What a horrible bus driver. I'm glad you were there to help that family. I agree with you - what are those type of people doing working there?! I hope that family found some magic later in their trip!

Love the pic of the kids with the Native American. I laughed out loud at the story about Morghan. So cute and innocent!!

 

[SoonerGirl]

Very cool picture - I love it!

I can't believe how rude that bus driver was I mean, geez everyone has a bad day every now & then, but when it's your job to 'spread the magic' you can't let it consume you. I worked with the public all through high school and college and believe me there were days when I wanted to scream at people, but you can't do that, you have to smile and put on a happy face - comes with the job. If you can't do that, find another profession!

That stinks that the sing-a-long was cancelled, but at least you got some 'smores

 

[Megablocks]

A funny little side story here… My husband is ½ Native American; therefore my children are ¼ Native American. Morghan was very interested in culture and her background awhile back, when she was around 5 or so. Being part Native American made her think that she also must be related to every Native American person here on Earth. Each one. Everywhere we would see someone with brown skin, she would ask, “Am I related to him” or “Who is that mom”? (As if I would know all of these people.) It was a cute little phase in her life and much embarrasses her now if I mention it. So, we had to take a picture. This must be Morghan’s older cousin I suppose. LOL!

That is so cute! This was not a boring chapter at all.

Sorry you had such a rude bus driver. I work with the public and it is hard, but like someone else said, you just need to put on a happy face even when people are being rude. I don't understand why someone like that is working at the happiest place on earth.

Corn dog nuggets! I need to try those.

 

[lisalisalisa]

Great trip report

 

[Charleston Princess]

What an adorable story about Morgan and her "family."

I have never eaten at Casey's, but it sounds good!

That stinks about the crowds, the campfire, and the bus driver -- glad you were able to see Philharmagic though.