Overdue and Overpacked: POR 9/23-10/1 THE EPILOGUE IS NOW UP ON PAGE 25

[weluvdisney]

I am SO loving this report, it sounds just like our family!!!! Keep 'em coming!!!

 

[horsegirl]

Lala de my lalalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Horsegirl like. Horsegirl like report very much. Horsegirl also terrorized dks at Fantasmic not once, but twice. Selfish horsegirl mommy, not nearly as sensitive to her kids needs as good lala mommy!

 

[javamom]

Apparently he moonlights as a meteorologist.

[/B]

I nearly spit pop all over my monitor on that one... because I was thinking the same thing just before I read that line!!

 

[jlieblaw]

Thanks for posting your report. I love it. We always go in Sept. and we ended up evacuating there after Ivan hit our area a couple of years ago. We felt somewhat guilty for enjoying a nice resort while we left the men up here to deal with the hurricane. But we still had fun. We're going again this year during the last week of Sept. I'm worried about the crowds now, after reading your reports. We're used to earlier in Sept., with no crowds or lines at all. Is it going to be bad going the last week?

 

[luvpooh]

Lala, love the TR!
I've gotta ask, I know what PB&J is, but what's MRE's? It's been bothering me since the 1st post you said it!

 

[LaLa]

Lala, love the TR!
I've gotta ask, I know what PB&J is, but what's MRE's? It's been bothering me since the 1st post you said it!

Meals Ready to Eat.

They're military meals boxed in watertight plastic that have a shelf life of like 100 years or something. They have little heaters in each packet. You just add water to the heating packet to activate, then stick your entree packet in there and wa la, you got a hot meal.

Actually, they are pretty darn good if you want to know the truth. The military started giving out cases of them along with ice and water at different distribution points about a week after Katrina. Believe me when I say the first time I ate one, it was like heaven. It was hot and that was all that mattered. They also come with snacks in them like M&Ms or Skittles and the kids thought that was Soooo cool. If I gave them a choice now to eat a regular meal or an MRE, they'd pick the MRE just so they could have some Skittles for desert. Because who wouldn't love that, right?

 

[LaLa]

Thanks for posting your report. I love it. We always go in Sept. and we ended up evacuating there after Ivan hit our area a couple of years ago. We felt somewhat guilty for enjoying a nice resort while we left the men up here to deal with the hurricane. But we still had fun. We're going again this year during the last week of Sept. I'm worried about the crowds now, after reading your reports. We're used to earlier in Sept., with no crowds or lines at all. Is it going to be bad going the last week?

It could be fine next year during that particular week. I think what made the crowds so heavy during our week was a combination of it being during the free dining plan promotion, the first week of the F&W Fest and the first week of MNSSHP. You might be okay unless Disney offers the free dining plan thing again for that time period, which is highly unlikely.

Thanks for reading and posting and hope ya have a great time at DW!

 

[luvpooh]

Meals Ready to Eat.

They're military meals boxed in watertight plastic that have a shelf life of like 100 years or something. They have little heaters in each packet. You just add water to the heating packet to activate, then stick your entree packet in there and wa la, you got a hot meal.

Actually, they are pretty darn good if you want to know the truth. The military started giving out cases of them along with ice and water at different distribution points about a week after Katrina. Believe me when I say the first time I ate one, it was like heaven. It was hot and that was all that mattered. They also come with snacks in them like M&Ms or Skittles and the kids thought that was Soooo cool. If I gave them a choice now to eat a regular meal or an MRE, they'd pick the MRE just so they could have some Skittles for desert. Because who wouldn't love that, right?

Aha! That's what I thought, but I just couldn't place what the acronym
stood for!!! Thanks

 

[MOMOFMNM]

meteorologist....too funny...if I knew how to quote a particular part of your report, I would but I can't and I don't even think I spelled that right...it's 10:20am and one of my kids is still sleeping,(I need to go make sure the kid is breathing) so forgive my errors today!

LALA WOW...first let me say OOHH LALA~~is that you in that picture or is that Heather Locklear??? You are a good lookin' mama I must say...and I am not ashamed to tell another mom she is beautiful!!! I am comfortable with it!! I assume it's you because I think that is the little boy in your siggy line but like I said "sans coffee" today so it could be your friends I suppose...anyway

I AM SO JEALOUS!!! How the hell do you get your hair to look so GOOD in September in Florida? I hate you. My hair and make up suck in all our pictures. Truely...I had to wear a hat all week OR ELSE. You look so great!!

Your kiddies are adorable and your dh looks very handsome too!! (good thing not like Richie Sambora I guess huh???)

Your pictures are really really good too!!!

I love your reports they are so clear and easy to read and have paragraphs!!
thank you for sharing!

 

[denise5374]

Lala,

Thank you so much for your trip report. It is fabulous, awesome and aeverything else good.

I took pictures at Fantasmic and mine look just like yours. I just kept taking them!

Can't wait fo rhte next installment!!

 

[LaLa]

Thanks for the comments on the trip report, everybody!

And specifically, Momofmnm; Thanks you very much! You ain't so bad yourself, Mama. I have no secret. Well, maybe just one. Here it is. Just take a picture when you first step OFF the bus from the hotel room where you have primped for a half hour and use THAT photo in your trip report. There. That's all I got. Oh, and thanks from DH too. Last night he goes "Did you see where that girl thought I was handsome? Did ya?" I think you made his day.

Denise5374: Thanks for reading! Glad you are enjoying it. Yeah, some of my pics from Fantasmic turned out okay, and then others turned out really bad. New digital camera and I couldn't figure out the night settings.

 

[MOMOFMNM]

Thanks for the comments on the trip report, everybody!

And specifically, Momofmnm; Thanks you vedy much! You ain't so bad yourself, Mama. I have no secret. Well, maybe just one. Here it is. Just take a picture when you first step OFF the bus from the hotel room where you have primped for a half hour and use THAT photo in your trip report. There. That's all I got. Oh, and thanks from DH too. Last night he goes " Did you see where that girl thought I was handsome? Did ya?" I think you made his day.

Denise5374: Thanks for reading! Glad you are enjoying it. Yeah, some of my pics from Fantasmic turned out okay, and then others turned out really bad. New digital camera and I couldn't figure out the night settings.

thanks...I will remember to take pics early in the mornings before the heat, humidity and thunderstorms "melt" me!!

are we getting a part 13 today??
I'm leaving for a trip today and was just wondering!!

 

[SoNotAPrincess]

New digital camera and I couldn't figure out the night settings.

Don't feel bad...some of the pictures included over in my trip report have January 2003 as the date on them.

The problem?

I was there in March, 2006!

 

[wagonwheel2]

Your trip report ROCKS ! I have caught myself laughing out loud soo many times, the doctor in the office next door, asked me what I was doing !

Meanwhile my own clients are being put on hold while I read this report !

Parenting is a universal experience I'm realizing as I read your report. You could be talking about my son, or husband, and your thoughts and expressions sound soo familiar.

Can't wait to read more, but gotta sneak some clients in now before I get reported !

 

[LaLa]

Allright, here ya go MOMOFMNM...Chapter 13...

Really, I double posted by mistake and had to correct this one.

 

[LaLa]

The next morning, we hop up refreshed and ready to hit MGM. We head out to the bus stop and hop on a Disney special. We get to the park not too long after opening and notice that it’s pretty crowded already.

We make a beeline for the Big Hitters.

The guys hop on RNRC while the girls wait outside with the kids.

I mentioned earlier that on our last trip, I wanted to ride RNRC so much that I rode it by myself while DH stayed with the kiddies. It was awesome. It really was. I did my Laugh Scream the whole way while a family of three in my car closed their eyes and did not utter one single solitary sound either on the ride or once we got off.

From the looks on their faces, I think they all peed their pants. Or pooped. Or maybe a little of both. Now that was a ride photo I could kick myself for not buying.

Or taking a picture of. Forgive me. The Redneck Epiphany had not struck at that point.

Anyway, I love this ride, but standing outside, I always start thinking. I know how many Gforces the ride has. I suddenly remember I had a really bad headache just out of the blue the other day. I start trying to remember how many headaches I have had in the last month and halfway attempt to count them. The longer the wait, the more I think.

I know it sounds crazy but for some reason, I always halfway worry I might, just maybe, possibly, have an aneurysm I don't know about. I really need to stop watching so much Dateline and 20/20. It's silly, I know. I joked around to DH last year while we were waiting and said “What if I have an aneurysm I don’t know about and it bursts from all the Gforces on the ride?” Unphased, his response was, “Well, if ya gotta go, there’s no better place to do it.”

Thanks Babe. Love ya. Mean it.

So anyway, the guys come off pumped. They want to ride again. They are like two little kids. They can’t wait to get back on. Then they hesitate and murmur to each other for a second. They then do the caring husband bit by asking if we would like them to watch the kids while we ride.

DHFW hated Space Mountain and does not even want to attempt inversions and corkscrews. I’ve got the aneurysm thing on the brain for the moment (no pun intended) so we tell them to have fun and meet us later. We have two way radios and we tell them to call us when they finish.

We check the showtimes for Beauty and the Beast. No such luck. We’re way off. Shorty really wanted to do Playhouse Disney so we all make our way to the kiddie section of the park. Specifically, the Playhouse Disney kiddie section.

We park the strollers and carry both backpacks INTO the show with us. We have learnt our lesson and we learnt it well. Okay, well SHE learnt it well.

So help me, I really like this show. Granted, I probably wouldn’t like it had I not spent all that time watching Bear in the Big Blue House videos with DS when he was a toddler. All those darn songs are just so catchy. And every time I hear them, I have to sway just like I did holding him way back then. The songs and that Gigantic Bear take me back to the time when my now 8 yr. old son wasn't so much a big kid as a sweet little diapered toothless toddler sucking his thumb and planting slobbery kisses on his Mommy.

It’s pathetic that in a roomful of kids, the adults were the ones singing along at the top of their lungs and swaying back and forth with dreamy eyes and goofy smiles.

“Welcome Welcome Welcome to the Big Blue House….”

How can you NOT sing along with that?

I had heard a rumor that the CM that does the show, Jamie, had died last year. Happy to report that is not so. At least I think it's not so. Cause he sure looked like the same guy from last year to me. DH says he looked like a different guy to him, just with the same hair and clothes. I think he's wacked.

Anyway, the reason I mention any of this is because he's really good.

He came out and grabbed DHFDD1 by the hand and led the kids up front to do the Bear Cha Cha Cha. Very, very cute.

From there, we were just about to head to Voyage of the Little Mermaid when DH called on the two way and said to meet them at the Sorcerer’s Hat. We head over and decide to check out the Great Movie Ride. We had never ridden this and were looking forward to it. It was pretty cool. The alien scared the crap out of DHFW. Got some pretty cool shots inside. These are a couple of my favorites.

As a little girl, I was Dorothy in a school play so I have always loved the Wizard of Oz. BTW, I received an award for that role. Kinda of an Oscar, if you will. For lead actress in a fourth grade play. Really I did. How pathetic am I that I even still remember and actually bring it up in a trip report?

But back to the Great Movie Ride.

The best part was the end.

Well, what I mean is the best part was the movie montage thingy at the end. Yeah, that’s what I mean.

We hop off and head over to check out Star Tours. As if you hadn’t guessed, DS is a huge fan. I am currently trying to talk DH into going during Star Wars Weekends this year. So far the crowds plus summer has been equalling a great big no from him. Guess I'll have to resort to uttering "Epicot" again.


Our friends take all the kids on the ride while DH and I sit it out. They take some cool shots inside.

Why did we sit it out, you may ask. Yeah, we don’t do motion rides in a little capsule either. Well, DH for sure doesn’t do motion rides in a capsule and I am just there to spend some quality time with my man without the kids for a change. Right. Don’t judge us.

Lemme take ya back again. Way back. Almost exactly ten years before, we were at Disneyworld. For our honeymoon.

Yep, that’s where the obsession all began.

See, I never went to Disneyworld as a child. It was just not much of a priority in our household. Trying to pay the bills on a preacher’s income was more pressing than taking trips to theme parks. Not to say that our family didn’t take vacations. We did. We had lots of wonderful family vacations to the beach and the mountains and other places that I will never forget. We just never did Disneyworld.

DH, on the other hand, had been going since ’75. He was an old pro. He knew what I didn’t. And of all the places we could go on our honeymoon, he desperately wanted to take me to Disneyworld. He wanted to share it with me. He wanted me to see how awesome it was and he wanted me to feel the magic that he felt as a child with his family and as he got older with friends. And the entire trip, he was like a child again, experiencing it all over anew through my eyes. We had an awesome time. I was like a child again. I made up for lost time by tracking down as many characters as I could find. I was a woman on a mission that year, and I got a lot of really good ones too. I actually got a really cool pic with Beauty and the Beast. Together. How often do you see that anymore?

So anyway, there we are on our honeymoon, walking around Epcot hand in hand, making googly eyes at each other and professing our newly married love for each other and (my) newly found love for Disney when all of a sudden we spot Body Wars. We figure what the heck. We’re at Disney, so it’s gotta be good, right? We hop in line and snake our way through the building. DH was sportin’ a fanny pack (yep, he was cool like that) with all of our stuff in it. That was the backpack back then in the good ole days B.K. (before kids)

As we enter the ‘ride capsule’ we smell the faint odor of puke.

Very faint but very unmistakable. Seems we have to wait right on the outskirts of the capsule for maintenance to do a lil’ housekeeping. Great. We are far enough away that we are spared the visual but are treated to the scent.

Very nice.

We get the okay, so we sit down, buckle up and take off.

Here we go, down the esophagus and into the bowels. We are being bucked around like there’s no tomorrow. Everybody’s laughing and screaming. We are having us a good ole time. Somewhere around the circulatory system, we start dodging oncoming red blood cells as we delve deeper into the bloody tissue and it is at this point that I notice it.

My man has suddenly stopped laughing.

I look over at him as I am in mid laugh and watch him turn three shades of green. He is being thrown around like a helpless ragdoll and the poor guy is completely stonefaced. He then says the words no new wife wants to hear from her big, strong husband on a motion ride…

“Sure is hot in here….”

Yep, it’s about to get ugly.

Next thing I know, he grabs the fanny pack off his waist and holds it up to his mouth. I have to give him props for his quick thinking. He was bound and determined that no one was gonna clean up his yack. If ya gotta yack, better to aim it in a 6 ounce fabric fanny pack than on the floor. He’s very considerate that way.

By the way, did you know nausea is contagious? It is. Because at that very moment, I threw up a little in my mouth.

Mercifully, the ride ended right at that point and he was able to hold it in. I was very proud of him. He was very proud of him. We both stumble out and to this day remember the incident with horror. So that was the last motion ride we have ridden and it will continue to be the last motion ride we have ridden.

After Star Tours, it is about time for our ADR at Sci Fi Dine In Theatre. We are psyched about this place and it does not disappoint. How cool is it to actually eat in a car in the dark while you watch black and white trailers nonstop on a drive in screen? I just gotta give props to whoever came up with this one.

I feel pretty sure it wasn't Dinoland guy.

Anyway, we just love the atmosphere. Our server was really funny. He reminded us of Jack Black. DS wasn’t a fan of the green beans and I can't say I blame him. Might've tasted just a tad better had they actually COOKED them. Anyway, I was not gonna make him eat them but our server apparently had other plans. Now that I think about it, maybe they try to see just how BAD they can make these things taste just so the servers can mess with the little kids' heads. He kept coming by and “encouraging” him to eat them. He’d walk by and just yell “Scooter, green beans”. Then when that didn't work, he did the airplane thing. DS and DHFDD1 would both collapse into giggling fits.

Then DHFDD1 hatched a plan. Apparently, she thought it would be an awesome idea to HIDE the green beans in her napkin.

DHFDD1 aka Eve: Hey, hey, let's HIDE them so you won't have to eat them!
DS aka Adam: What are you talking about? We can't do that.
Eve: Sure we can. It'll be easy.
Adam: But he'll find out and we'll get in trouble, Woman!
Eve: He'll never know. Trust me.
Adam: (looking around over his shoulder) I dooooonnnn't know about this....
Eve: Oh just shut up and live a little.

So she holds the napkin and orders DS to shove 'em in. He is still uncertain and is looking around, scanning the horizon for Jack Black. "Come on, let's go...shovel, Boy" she demands. They both laugh uncontrollably and then try to recover as they spot him headed our way. He spots the scam a mile away. "Allright Princess....where'd ya hide 'em?" She plays innocent but he is not buying it. They are in for it. He tells "Princess" that since she hid them, she needs to eat them now. They all three collapse into giggling fits, the two kids and our server, Jack Black.

I have to say that we really enjoyed this place and will probably make it a DW tradition. Plus the Oreo Milkshakes alone are worth the trip.

After Sci Fi, we make our way around the park. We run into Sully and Mike and DS gets a pic with them.

DD is terrified and will not budge. I thought she was afraid of the fifteen foot tall blue furry monster, but she told me later she thought Randall was hiding up there with them. Invisible and all, you know, like in the movie.

Okay, that’s it. We’re cuttin’ out the Disney movies. They scare the kids.

From there, we head over to New York Street. I check my Times Guide. Why, you say?

Two words. Well, okay, maybe four.

Ranger Storm. Ninja Form.

Or maybe that’s backwards.

But anyway, it’s the Power Rangers. Did I mention that DS is a total Power Rangers nut? Loves them. So when I showed him photos from other DISers who took pics of their kids posing with the ACTUAL REAL and TRUE Power Rangers, the boy worked himself into a Power Rangers frenzy the likes of which few have ever seen.

That is, until today.

Or that day.

Whatever.

Up Next: The Four Corners of Insanity

 

[MOMOFMNM]

I love TGMR too...only I was Alice in 6th grade...and yes...it is a highlight of my life too!!


can't say I'm into the whole Power Ranger thing, but I know you'll make it a worthy read!!!

great pics once again!!

 

[luvpooh]

great update LaLa!
Did you waiter at SciFi just get transferred over from the 50's Prime Time? Sounds like their shtick, but I loved the Adam & Eve commentary!
Admit it, the only reason you want to go back for Star Wars weekend is to see a bouncy Chewbacca guy! Creepy Dee

 

[skent10]

It was Grade 7 and we were doing the musical of the Wizard of Oz. I swear, the drama teacher had no idea if I could act or sing or dance. But I did have freckles and brown hair long enough to put into two braids ... I still have the script in its binder on the bookshelf with my various yearbooks.

Maybe we could become the Maelstromers, Dorothy Division?

 

[annameg]

OK.....about a month ago, I started smelling smoke and no one else around me could smell it. Then DH remarks that he has just seen a movie where a guy always smelled something burning and, as it turns out, he had a brain aneurysm. Thanks honey. Love ya. Mean it. So now I am paranoid. I know what you are singing sista'.