Ooh, the monorail DOES smell funny... (almost finished!) [11/30-12/17, 2010]

[Sherry E]

I didn't get any pictures, and I could barely see a thing towards the gingerbread house stuff, b/c of the crowds. I'm not even sure I saw what I was supposed to see; my attention went towards the chef lady talking in her microphone and decorating a little house. And then my attention went towards "are all the kids present and accounted for" and then I saw the Jack Sparrow double photopass guy and I turned away from the gingerbread madness entirely.

I did catch a photo looking up where you could see a sort of spiral of balconies, not unsimilar (dissimilar?) from the style of your sorcerer hat photos. Guess we were thinking along the same lines during our trips!


The thing that's nice about Disney is that they don't just have one resort style. So I can be happier at WL than at the Grand, and you can be the opposite, etc etc. And it's funny that you feel the rooms at the PPH are dim, because I always feel that they are sunny and bright! But I always throw the drapes open until nighttime, so maybe that helps, and maybe I've had sunny weather each time I've stayed.

Oh I agree that the PPH rooms are sunny and bright in the daytime - that's always one of my selling points when people pose the age-old questions of whether or not they should stay onsite and which of the 3 DLR hotels is best! I think the natural light of the PPH rooms is bright and sunny and cheery - it's the GCH rooms that seem dreadfully dark (and small) to me!

But, it's the lights - the actual lamps, not the natural light - of the PPH that I noticed are especially dim. I couldn't figure out why the room was so dim when all the lights were turned on (like if it was pre-dawn or in the evening). It seemed like it should be much brighter, and it had been much brighter in there in the past. But otherwise, yes, during the day it's nice and bright without the lights on!

I can't say for sure that I like the GCH better than the WL. I haven't been to the WL in person to be able to make a fair assessment. I know I like the look of the fireplace at GCH better than the WL, but as for the rest of the hotel, I'm not sure. I know I do not care for the actual rooms at GCH much at all, so I probably would enjoy the WL rooms much more! Yes, there are definitely all sorts of themes to the hotels, so there would have to be something for everyone between DLR and WDW!

Oooh - the spiral of balconies photo sounds cool! Is that one coming up soon? I'd love to see it. I don't think I missed it, did I? I love spiral-y looking things. All I knew was that I wanted to capture a different take on that oh-so-familiar Sorcerer Hat that I hadn't seen before. I took a weird photo under the Golden Gate Bridge at DCA too - not a 'looking up' perspective, but a close-up of part of the underside of it. You know...you have to step outside the box every now and then and get all avant garde about it!

 

[bumbershoot]

I never noticed that about the actual lights at PPH. Hmm.

For some reason it seems I'd culled some hotel-day pix from the photobucket upload. Let me do that now.

So here's a pictures-I-didn't-upload-before post, courtesy of Sherry's questions!



We own, for a period of years, a tiny fraction of this!

Entering the Contemporary.

How do you think they get that wreath up there, and how do you think it's attached?

What I was surprised by is that Chef Mickey's restaurant is down on the ground floor, not up and away from it all. It makes sense, now that I think about it, but I was seriously surprised when I looked down from the monorail and saw the restaurant!


Here's some sort of mural or mosaic...

An outside tree!

This picture is one of the ones that got me yelled at on the GF monorail platform. Well, not yelled AT. But yelled, hmm, to? I just didn't notice that I was supposed to get away...

Not sure why this didn't make my original cut. I love chandelier shots!

Here's the tiny house the chef lady was working on. Just not all that different from what E and I make from kits...

And the really disappointing (it's not even a spiral) picture of something that looked cool in person....

 

[kaoden39]

It really does look Contemporary.

 

[bumbershoot]

So glad they named it that!


Also very glad we got out in the snow, as it's allll gone now. Rain rain rain all melted the pretty snow...

 

[kaoden39]

Boo on the rain.

 

[bumbershoot]

Total boo.

I was looking at the weather, and google had a link to a report for the weather down near the Army base...they used the term "ice mist". Ice mist? That sounds awesome, doesn't it?

Alas, it was just misty rain.

 

[skitt]

Enjoying your TR! I know you from CC, I can't believe Eamon is 6 and so grown up, wow! I remember lurking and waiting to hear how your birth went!

 

[bumbershoot]

Wow, that's amazing! Who were you on CC?

Editing to add...those were pretty dark times for me...I'm doing much better now!

 

[skitt]

It's a small internet after all I'm magrat on CC. Not sure I posted much, but I followed your story closely because I was really inspired by your desire for a natural birth, and I hoped to have a natural birth someday too, possibly a homebirth. And I did! First baby (3 1/2 now) all natural at a very natural friendly hospital, and my second (10 months) at home - he arrived 15 minutes after the midwife! And we're headed to WDW at the end of February!

 

[kaoden39]

Ice mist? Magical wording for cold rain?

 

[ClarabelleCowFan]

Ice mist? Magical wording for cold rain?

Ice mist sounds like some sort of wine cooler.

 

[kaoden39]

Ice mist sounds like some sort of wine cooler.

In a frosted bottle, with a pretty label.

 

[ClarabelleCowFan]

In a frosted bottle, with a pretty label.

And a high chemical content!

 

[kaoden39]

And a high chemical content!

Hmm we could be millionaires.

 

[bumbershoot]

Quick, before anyone else steals your idea of the adult beverage, erase discussion of it! Then go get a patent!


********************

It's a small internet after all I'm magrat on CC. Not sure I posted much, but I followed your story closely because I was really inspired by your desire for a natural birth, and I hoped to have a natural birth someday too, possibly a homebirth. And I did! First baby (3 1/2 now) all natural at a very natural friendly hospital, and my second (10 months) at home - he arrived 15 minutes after the midwife! And we're headed to WDW at the end of February!

I remember your name! Congrats on the two natural babies. Hopefully my "here's what NOT to do" story helped you. I seem to exist to be a warning to others, LOL, even in our Disney trips.

In case you want to know (don't read if you don't, LOL)...we continue with the more-babies hopes, but at first I was impacted by the voracious little nurser. Oh, and the just-above-transfusion levels of iron that I was released from the hospital with, but no one ever told me, and I only discovered after reading my records AGAIN, when E was around 4. Is it any wonder I was so exhausted?

Meanwhile, Robert was having weird things and intuitive feelings about his health, had 3 doctors REFUSE to test him for various things (2 MDs and an ND, and an acupuncturist blamed everything on Eamon not being weaned even though gazillions of women get pg while nursing), finally got diagnosed with diabetes (which has been very very very easy for hm to deal with with diet, avoiding things with corn syrup products in them, and exercise...his endo pretty much doesn't talk about that anymore).

That led us to an endocrinologist (we had to self-refer, b/c the GP that the urgent care guy sent him to was so useless he was dangerous) who is stern but was open enough to test other things, and found out that Robert had a prolactinoma! Benign pituitary tumor that causes his body to create prolactin, which I'm sure you know is the milk-making hormone. Totally inappropriate for a male to make, and devastates the MALE hormones. We've tracked back with symptoms, and he was dealing with that for AT LEAST 3 YEARS before diagnosis. So, thanks so much doctors! And ya wonder why I despise y'all so very much! (never ever see a GP that we choose; they will have graduated last in their class and will be awful...specialists seem to be fine when we choose them, though)

So he's been taking a drug for that, to shrink the tumor, and then the endo gave him the option of taking HCG to help his body create male hormones even before the tumor is all gone. He's been doing that for months and months. And it's working at last. So now we're just waiting it out, hoping that my time doesn't run out as I get older and older.

How's that for TMI, eh? But since you were on CC, you know that I really ought to join OverSharer's R Us and you probably expected it.



And thanks to you for saying hi; in typing all that, I realized I MUST call a local acupuncturist that I've wanted to see for a few years, and I just did! Yay!

 

[nancy drew]

Hey Molly

Another former CC-er here, though I'm quite sure I've said hello in a previous trip report (I was the one on CC who sent you the Greatful Dead and Phish diaper covers, and had the same name over there). I've been lurking along as well. We've done DLR the last few years but just did a quick overnight WDW trip when visiting my mom in FL this past December. I had hoped you'd be writing your report as you went along so I could learn from you! You always seem to have good tips on shortcuts, food to try (or avoid) etc. Not saying we end up copying or following your advice exactly, I'm not THAT much of a stalker , but your trip reports have definitely helped me file little tidbits of info away in my brain, to be used when needed on trips.

Anyway, I'll continue lurking along.

 

[ClarabelleCowFan]

Hmm we could be millionaires.

Quick, before anyone else steals your idea of the adult beverage, erase discussion of it! Then go get a patent!

We should name it after you - Bumbershoot Ice Melt

 

[bumbershoot]

Hey Molly

Another former CC-er here, though I'm quite sure I've said hello in a previous trip report (I was the one on CC who sent you the Greatful Dead and Phish diaper covers, and had the same name over there). I've been lurking along as well. We've done DLR the last few years but just did a quick overnight WDW trip when visiting my mom in FL this past December. I had hoped you'd be writing your report as you went along so I could learn from you! You always seem to have good tips on shortcuts, food to try (or avoid) etc. Not saying we end up copying or following your advice exactly, I'm not THAT much of a stalker , but your trip reports have definitely helped me file little tidbits of info away in my brain, to be used when needed on trips.

Anyway, I'll continue lurking along.

Awwww, hi again! Loved those diaper covers. Didn't work under clothes, but boy did he look cute in them!




********
I now have an appointment with the acupuncturist. Yay for CC (that's ConstantChatter for those who don't know) people inspiring me!

 

[skitt]

Thanks for the update! It's good to hear how things are going!

 

[bumbershoot]

OK sorry about going missing there.

Right now I'm madly editing the photopass pictures. We didn't get many, and I'm somewhat annoyed at my cousin because she never got her photopass card ID number to me, and those pictures have been expired since Jan 4th or so... Now maybe she did something with the pix, but since I'd prepaid for the CD it wasn't going to cost me anything to put them on, and I'm just bugged.

Anyway, I'm not sure I'll do the CD in the future. And I'm definitely not going to not take pix while the photopass people do...I kept myself from doing it with Mickey and Sleeping Beauty, and it was just kind of a mistake, because they didn't get the pix I might have gotten.

Robert gets home from Peru tomorrow.

I've been taking Vitamin D the last week, hoping that it will boost my immune system. I'm not into vitamins (which is weird, given my world view and background) and the whole "oh we had it wrong for so many years" thing when the D RDA was raised drastically feels highly suspect to me, but hey, I'll give it a shot. I might be getting less coughy and less nose-blowy, but it's not like I'm counting tissues or making a checkmark for each time I wake up to cough in the middle of the night...



OK then I just turned 13 pictures into 97 versions. Got a very handsome shot of Eamon at the tree at Wilderness Lodge, and a cute closeup of him where you can see his front tooth just about hanging out. Not an hour later is when it fell out, so I love that picture. And also got some handsome pictures of boy-cousin on my card, not sure why they are on mine, but there they are! So I'm editing them and I'll send 'em to my couz.

Also got a cute shot of the two together. Aw. I have a feeling one will be going up in E's room.


photopass is working as fast as it can work, but wow can it be glitchy even on good days!