Our Fantastic November Adults-Only Trip w/Pics & Food Reports *7/2/11 BB & CBR**

Great Jedi Training event pics! It's a shame you did not get to volunteer...oh well there's always next time.

I can't wait to try the updated star tours ride. Look forward to reading about Beauty and the Beast.
 
Yeah! An adult only trip report. As my kids are all college age, and DH and I quite often go by ourselves, I love reading what adults do at the world. I am really enjoying your trip report and love all the details. Since we are not going back until December it is great trips reports like this that are helping me get through the loooong wait.

Can't wait until the next update. I also enjoy the way your brother jumps in with the corrections. Too funny!
 
Hey, great trip report so far. I love all the pictures that you took. The food you all ate looked so delicious :-p. I can't wait to hear more about your trip.

**HAVE A MAGICAL DAY**
 
Day Four: Hollywood Studios Part 4

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So with the line to Rock 'n' Roller Coaster so long, we went ahead and headed over to the Beauty and the Beast amphitheater. At this point, we were still quite a bit early, so we were able to go ahead and get a nice seat for the show.

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The theater was pretty nice, and we had seats that were close enough for pictures, even though it was starting to get pretty dark. That along with the fact that almost everyone in the show had fuzzy suits on made it a little difficult to get great pictures. But we had several that turned out pretty well.

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I have tons of other pictures, but I would need three of four posts just for them if I were to post them all. If you want to see more, check out my page of Hollywood Studios pictures on my Flickr page: here.

The show was really nice. I'm a sucker for this era of Disney movies anyway. My favorite being Lion King, but Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast are very close. Little Mermaid is right there, too. The show was a musical, which meant a good portion of the famed music was present. And while parts of the story obviously had to be adapted for the stage, I don't think the show really suffered at all for it. I'm pretty sure that we all came away from the show pleased.

Following the show, we hopped over into the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster line, where I found awesome shot after awesome shot of Tower of Terror. Every time the line would move, I would find a better view of the tower and it's lighting. So every time, I had to take a shot of it. Which one is the best?

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After walking through the slightly annoying line with the kids playing loudly with the marble covered doors, we got to the front of the line. All told, it was slightly less than an hour that we spent in line. An hour that was well worth it. We are all huge coaster fans. In this area, we have two great coaster parks in Kings Island and Cedar Point. But I think that this coaster probably comes close to being one of my favorites. But that could also be my dark ride bias speaking, there. The entire atmosphere and theme of the ride really helps make it special. It makes me wonder how awesome a more serious ride could be with the Disney touch. I think it's time for a villain coaster. Perhaps something Scar themed. Or Jafar, perhaps. They could both make for some good coaster themes, it seems to me.



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We knew that Monday night was another Main Street Electrical Parade night, so we left for Magic Kingdom after we had rode Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. We got all the way over to Magic Kingdom before we realized that we should have brought my handy printed-schedule where I had charted out the times of all the parks, and the festivities at each. We had just assumed that the MSE would be at 9pm like before. Instead, it ended up being at 7pm, an hour before we got there. So once again, we were foiled in our attempt to relive one of our fondest memories of the Disney parades. So instead, we decided to head to Downtown Disney.

I believe the DTD buses don't actually run to the parks, because we had decided the best way to get there was to head to the Contemporary, and ride from there instead. So we made the hike over to the hotel, which was an experience in and of itself. We were just in time to have Wishes at our backs. We often turned around and watched, and we also got to experience the sound ricocheting off the building as we neared the Contemporary. It gave it a sound that reminded me canon fire. It was really neat. When we got to the bus stop, we got the piped in wishes audio to compliment the remainder of the fireworks show.

After we took the bus to Downtown Disney, we had one destination in mind. We were going to head back to Wolfgang Puck Express. It's been awhile since I talked about this restaurant, so let me make it clear. This is easily the best "Quick Service" restaurant on Disney property, in our opinion. Everything about it is Table Service quality, all for a Quick Service credit. It even rivaled several of our Table Service experiences. It's just that good. Not to be missed. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that we had to make another trip to eat.

So we headed that way, but we made sure to get some pictures with our new hats first. Pooh and friends gave us that opportunity.

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When we got to Wolfgang Puck Express, we all knew what we wanted already. Me and Russell had to have the pizzas again, and Tabitha went for her chicken strips again. But me and Russell decided to go for two of the other pizzas, and to share, so that we had all three of the pizzas we were interested in.

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Once again, it was absolutely delicious. There is no better pizza on property, from what I've seen. We topped the pizza off with Creme Brulee, which I think is easily their best dessert. All three of the pizzas I ended up trying were phenomenal. We had the Barbeque Chicken, the Pepperoni, and the Meatball & Peppers. It's really hard to pick one of them as my favorite, so I won't. Next time I'll probably try and make sure I have one night of each. :)
 

So I just got back from Kings Island in Ohio. Kings Island is one of my favorite theme parks, and it is what I call my "home park" because it is so close to me and I go there so often. I'll tell you, nothing has made me miss WDW as much as going there. I had a blast, don't get me wrong, but since going to WDW, the park just pales in comparison.

Rude staff, bland food, no theming on the rides, etc. I am a roller coaster fanatic, but honestly, I'd rather go to Disney and ride fewer coasters than go to a park like Kings Island with more intense thrills. There were actually points in the day when I would get bored, and that was shocking to me, because I don't think I have ever been bored at a theme park before in my life. I just kept thinking about how Disney could do this better, or how friendlier staff in whatever place would make the day a lot more fun. Not to mention all of the people hassling you to play games and take pictures every 5 seconds.

So yeah, just a little bit of info about how much Disney has spoiled me. :D
 
So I just got back from Kings Island in Ohio. Kings Island is one of my favorite theme parks, and it is what I call my "home park" because it is so close to me and I go there so often. I'll tell you, nothing has made me miss WDW as much as going there. I had a blast, don't get me wrong, but since going to WDW, the park just pales in comparison.

Rude staff, bland food, no theming on the rides, etc. I am a roller coaster fanatic, but honestly, I'd rather go to Disney and ride fewer coasters than go to a park like Kings Island with more intense thrills. There were actually points in the day when I would get bored, and that was shocking to me, because I don't think I have ever been bored at a theme park before in my life. I just kept thinking about how Disney could do this better, or how friendlier staff in whatever place would make the day a lot more fun. Not to mention all of the people hassling you to play games and take pictures every 5 seconds.

So yeah, just a little bit of info about how much Disney has spoiled me. :D

It's pretty amazing how big of a gap there is in the quality of employees and theme between Disney and most other parks. That's especially impressive when you consider the fact that a large portion of the Cast Members at Disney are college students. And when it comes to rides, they rarely get new rides. They are still maintaining and improving a lot of the same rides they either started with, or at the very least, have had for several years. Meanwhile, other parks are ditching their rides after 20 years in many cases.

You would think that others would learn from the success of Disney, but it seems that big business has no interest in that style of park. Sad, really.

I forgot to mention that my next update will actually focus on one of our "make up" days, where we left it open to do whatever we wanted. In this case, we hit Blizzard Beach, rested up a bit, and went back to Magic Kingdom for the night. Good stuff. Not many pictures for BB, but lots of good stuff either way.
 
I totally just caught up on all your posts - looks like a great trip. Your pictures remind me why the F&W festival just plain rocks.

I'm a person with a ton of hobbies. It's one of my weaknesses. It's the whole "Jack of all trades, master of none" flaw. But among all my hobbies, two stand out as true passions. Travel, and food.

You said this several posts back - but it really stuck out to me. I feel this way too - good at many things, but master at nothing. I was doing some reading a few months back and I found this is a really common feeling among gifted adults. :)
 
Just wanted to say how fantastic your pictures are :goodvibes

You can never have enough pics, they can never be too large, so you can see all the detail! And what detail! They are top quality :worship:

My hobby at the moment is reading trip reports in prep for our trip this October :banana:

Hurry back to post your thoughts on BB. We are trying to decided which waterpark to visit.
 
Just wanted to say how fantastic your pictures are :goodvibes

You can never have enough pics, they can never be too large, so you can see all the detail! And what detail! They are top quality :worship:

My hobby at the moment is reading trip reports in prep for our trip this October :banana:

Hurry back to post your thoughts on BB. We are trying to decided which waterpark to visit.


Unfortunately, we didn't get a choice in our waterparks. Typhoon Lagoon is apparently closed for refurbs at that time of year. Had the choice been there, I probably would have done both. If I could have only done one and I could have done either, I probably would have done Typhoon Lagoon. But that's mostly because I want to do a Water Coaster, and they have one. Next year, the plan is to hit up the parks in October, so I'll get to do it at that point.

Anyway, thanks for the comments. I often wonder if all the pictures scares some people away. I'll try to get up the next report in the next day or two. It's past due, anyway. :thumbsup2
 
Day Five: Blizzard Beach & Caribbean Beach Resort Pictures

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The great thing about this trip was that we allowed ourselves more time than we actually needed in order to get everything in. Of course, that didn't mean we actually succeeded at doing everything we wanted. I'm pretty sure that part of a trip is nigh on impossible. But we had planned in days like Day 5 (And Day 7) in order to back track and pick up anything we may have missed in the first few days. Luckily, that meant we were covered in case of changes to weather and such. However, during the entire trip, the weather was pretty fantastic. It only rained at one point, and that was well into the night when we were on our way back to the resort.

The other great thing about the trip is that we really wanted to make it to the one water park that was open. I guess Disney cycles their water parks for renovation. As it happened, Blizzard Beach was the one that was open while we were there this time. Hopefully next time, we will be able to catch Typhoon Lagoon instead. Given our preferences, we probably would have chose the water coasters of Typhoon Lagoon instead. But having never been to the Disney Water Parks, we didn't think you could really go wrong.

Ultimately, Blizzard Beach day was a half day of water fun. The weather was nice enough that it was enjoyable, though still a bit chilly. I also found it a little bizarre that they would put the lazy river right under a ton and a half of falling foliage. It made for more of a messy river than a lazy river. And certainly when you got out, you could feel the brisk chill of the fall. But while we were actually on the rides, I think that we were more than comfortable.

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I would love to show you a ton of pictures of the park. But unfortunately, I didn't feel like trying to lug my new camera around, grabbing pictures of all the non-water proofed rides. So instead, you will have to take my word for it when I say that there was a lot of do, with a ton of walking involved. I'm still waiting for the inevitable water park where most of your ride transportation actually happens IN the water, rather than outside of the water. Blizzard Beach is a vertically built park, and it made for some long hikes. Especially when you were trying to carry rafts and what not from ride to ride. I'm not sure how Typhoon Lagoon compares in that avenue, but I imagine it wouldn't be remarkably different either.

As far as food goes, I don't think I could suggest the mini doughnuts enough. I wasn't expecting much, but they were legitimately good. If you go, be sure to give a dozen or so a try. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of them, because it was a mid-day stop. But I did manage to get some pictures of our after-the-fun meals. Russell grabbed a bacon cheeseburger. Me and Tabitha decided to split a pizza and chicken strips.

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Apparently Russell didn't get the meal itself, but just the burger. I don't recall much about the food in this case, but I don't think it really stood out in one way or the other. The cookie and the cheesecake ended up going back to the resort with us, and we made a snack of them for the last night or two. Along with our rice krispy Mickeys.

By the time we got back to the resort, it was still pretty early. We had dinner reservations that night for 9:30 at 'Ohana. This was the meal we were probably looking forward to the most, so we had to make sure that we were plenty hungry for it. There was probably 6 hours in between our last meal at Blizzard Beach, and the one to come at 'Ohana. When we got back to the resort, we were all feeling pretty wiped. Swimming and eating has a tendency to do that to you. So while Tabitha got showered and primped, we decided to go make use of the remaining daylight to get some shots of the resort itself.

So prepare for the mother load of Caribbean Beach Resort Pictures.

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Having reached my picture limit, the rest of the resort pictures will be in the next post...
 
Day Five: More Caribbean Beach Resort Pictures

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After taking all of these pictures, we had blown a good amount of time, and figured it was likely that Tabitha was probably about done getting ready. So we headed back to the room, and got ready ourselves. Before heading to 'Ohana, the plan was to stop by Magic Kingdom, and pop on a couple favorites to kill some time.

For that, though, I'll need another post. So stay tuned! :wizard:
 












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