Return to the Scene of the Crime: The Lurkyloos’ First Anniversary at WDW! New VIDEO!

[jennifaerie]

July '09 seems to be a long time to have to rehab the HoP just to add Obama. They've been working on it since November '08! You would think they would have had a head start on his mannequin even before that, since the election wasn't exactly a close race.

They're actually modifying the attraction as well. Or should I say upgrading? So it's not just adding Obama in.

Lurkyloo, I forgot that I haven't posted my trip pictures yet (I've written that day's captions already, though so I thought I had), but we took pictures of the LTT glasses too! We were in the Paul Revere room, and I got the celebration dessert as well... except we're pretty sure they didn't give us that dessert exactly.

Did yours seem more like a cookie than cake? Ours was a chocolate chip cookie pie thing instead of the vanilla cake. But the rest of it was just as described... it had toffee bits on the top, and all the Mickey "confetti". I didn't get the Celebrate Today white chocolate "chip" either. Wonder what they were doing.

 

[Disneygrl36]

Loved the empty MK rainy day phenomenon & Patrick got some great photos.
I did not know the Liberty Tree was going away from being a character meal. Interesting!!!!!!!
Loved the glassblower---I have never seen that in all my times at WDW.

Hi aharbin88 I think we must be neighbors.

 

[aharbin88]

They're actually modifying the attraction as well. Or should I say upgrading? So it's not just adding Obama in.

Gotcha. I didn't know that. I've actually never been because my FIL, who is the biggest Disney fan I know, says it a great opportunity for a nap. If HE can't stay awake, there's no way I can!

Hi aharbin88 I think we must be neighbors.

Howdy, neighbor!

 

[29apr00]

we've never done Swiss Family Treehouse! It looks pretty cool! We may have to check that out in December.

on the cheesy dessert from LTT! Blah! it even looks icky!

 

[Kimberly815]

I want to live in the Swiss Family Tree House! The view (and the easy access to all my favorite rides) would make up for any lack of modern day amenities!

 

[Villainess]

Great update!

As for the LTT - they used to announce your family and the state you were from. Something like, "Now seating the Lurkyloo Family from the Great State/Colony/Land of Lurkyloodom!"

 

[DisneyBrideToni]

another fabulous installment! I remember it did rain that day because I was happy we weren't flying in until that Saturday lol.

I agree. We should warn all of the upcoming 2009 brides and tell them to postpone their events because there are no free desserts!!! I hope they don't extend the year of celebrations to 2010 because I plan on sporting an anniversary pin in January!! Gotta use up those annual passes!

I am dying to hear about your dessert party because I want to book one for our almost anniversary/Bobby's birthday.

 

[inkedupmomma]

Patrick is a funny dude! love the pic of him and...him makin it out! Kayla is going to be soooo thrilled about the hall of presidents. she has recently become obsessed with presidents! Ltt never really made me excited except for that dessert, glad I didn't go since your review says it is not as delish as it sounds!

 

[kathymc]

WOW - I cant believe its been a year already. Congratulations, cant wait to read more

And your links to those ROOTS photos make me want to have another wedding!

 

[lurkyloo]

Anyway, $4000+ in vet billls later, no trip to WDW for me. So, in an attempt to get the DISease out of my system, I started writing myself an imaginary trip report.

Oh no! I’m so sorry to hear about your doggie! She looks like she was a sweetie.

Maybe I'll get around to posting it someday, but I don't know if I can handle the pressure for constant updates.....

There must be something seriously wrong with me, that I worry about a non-existent audience for an imaginary Trip Report!

It think that’s cool! I mean, when you do get a chance to go, you are gonna be so prepared – heck, you’ll already have the trip report done! And I think an Imaginary Trip Report would be a first for the DIS. You might start a trend!

When I was a kid, I wanted to live in the Swiss Family Treehouse.
My nephew (who is 6) loves it, and we always pick out our rooms.

Well, just make sure you tell him which one is mine...

Fun update. I also loved the generic Celebrate Today theme. We have noticed a HUGE drop off in the freebies. Every anniversary we seem to get less and less of them.There is a extra spray feature on splash mountain that they turn on and off. Thank goodness during my trip last week (when it was 38 degrees when I arrived), they had it shut off. No major soaking on SM

A-ha – you’ve cleared up two mysteries in one post! So, I know I’m gonna be sorry I asked, but what kinds of freebies did they used to give out?

Hey Lurkyloo! I am a long time lurker from way back...I LOVE your trip reports!! Anyway, about the asking what your state thing is at Liberty Tree Tavern: Before you would be seated the hostess would ring a bell and shout out to the entire restaurant your family's name and what state you were from, basically announcing your arrival...as if anybody there really cared lol. It was all actually quite awkward as everybody would turn around and stare at you as walked through the reaturant to your seat.

Well then I guess we dodged a bullet there... Thanks for coming out of lurkdom – hee hee!

Here's a question: I have never gone to a restaurant and ordered things to share (other than dessert). I've noticed that you two do this pretty often. I've never done it b/c I'm afraid the waiter will look annoyed or askance at us. Do you ever experience any attitude when you do this? Do they really sometimes put the food items on two different plates? Just wondering....

Don’t worry about it at all. First of all, any waiter who gives you attitude for splitting is a class-A jerk and to be ignored. Some people just can’t eat that much! We split a lot on this trip in order to save money, but it wasn’t like we were going hungry. Most restaurants give you way too much food – why waste it if you’d two would be happy eating the same thing? I mean, I can really put it away, but I was still plenty full even after we split meals.

At Disneyland some restaurants charge you a split-plate fee. However, you each get a full portion of all the side dishes, so maybe it’s worth the four bucks. WDW is cool because there is no split-plate fee but, at the Signature Restaurants, they plate your entree separately in the kitchen. So any pictures you see of something we split are pix of half the entree. The regular sit-down restaurants just bring you a plate, but at least they don’t make you go all Lady & The Tramp (unless you dig that kind of thing...)

Anyway, I highly recommend splitting!

Is it just me, or does it look like Thunder Mtn. is giving us the finger here?

OMG – I shoulda put a censor bar on that sucker!

July '09 seems to be a long time to have to rehab the HoP just to add Obama. They've been working on it since November '08! You would think they would have had a head start on his mannequin even before that, since the election wasn't exactly a close race.

I wondered about that too... maybe they’re going to use the time to electrify the seats so fewer patrons will doze off during the show...

They're actually modifying the attraction as well. Or should I say upgrading? So it's not just adding Obama in.

A-ha! So I was right about the electrified seats!

Lurkyloo, I forgot that I haven't posted my trip pictures yet (I've written that day's captions already, though so I thought I had), but we took pictures of the LTT glasses too!

So... why did we do this?

We were in the Paul Revere room, and I got the celebration dessert as well... except we're pretty sure they didn't give us that dessert exactly. Did yours seem more like a cookie than cake? Ours was a chocolate chip cookie pie thing instead of the vanilla cake. But the rest of it was just as described... it had toffee bits on the top, and all the Mickey "confetti". I didn't get the Celebrate Today white chocolate "chip" either. Wonder what they were doing.

I think you’ve been had! Ours was definitely a cake, although the cookie sounds like it might actually have been good...

Loved the glassblower---I have never seen that in all my times at WDW.

Yeah, I think it’s a neat touch, considering how many of the other incidental experiences have fallen to budget cuts.

we've never done Swiss Family Treehouse! It looks pretty cool! We may have to check that out in December.

It’s a good way to work off the extra Dole Whips...

I want to live in the Swiss Family Tree House! The view (and the easy access to all my favorite rides) would make up for any lack of modern day amenities!

I forgot to consider the lack of modern-day amenities....

Great update!As for the LTT - they used to announce your family and the state you were from. Something like, "Now seating the Lurkyloo Family from the Great State/Colony/Land of Lurkyloodom!"

I like it! I like it! Shucks, now I’ve gone back to being sorry we missed out.

I am dying to hear about your dessert party because I want to book one for our almost anniversary/Bobby's birthday.

I am dying to tell you about it, but the Roots haven’t had a chance to do our pix yet, so I guess we’ll all have to wait. However, it isn’t til Day 8 anyway.... and here I am dawdling on Day 3... :

Patrick is a funny dude! love the pic of him and...him makin it out! Kayla is going to be soooo thrilled about the hall of presidents. she has recently become obsessed with presidents! Ltt never really made me excited except for that dessert, glad I didn't go since your review says it is not as delish as it sounds!

I’ll bet Kayla knows WAY more about presidents than any of us!

WOW - I cant believe its been a year already. Congratulations, cant wait to read more. And your links to those ROOTS photos make me want to have another wedding!

Me too!

 

[lurkyloo]

After narrowly escaping entanglement in the parade, we hopped a boat back to Wilderness Lodge so we could try out the pool. Ever since our ill-fated day at Typhoon Lagoon in 60-degree weather, we’ve had a running joke about 60 degrees being “water park weather.” Well, considering how cold it got later in our trip, this day we really did have water park weather!

So we changed into our suits and went running down to the pool, the sound of our chattering teeth echoing through the halls.

How about some more shots of Wilderness Lodge’s exterior?

Real-camera photo

iPhone photo

When you see a shot like this, imagine me hollering at DH, “Get a shot with the pretty flowers!!”

We love how the river starts in the lobby, then appears to turn into a waterfall outside...

...and then appears to turn into a river that goes straight into the pool!

This was our reason for braving the cold today:

At some point, I wanna try all the themed pool slides at WDW. Unfortunately they have these stoopid rules for stoopid safety that you can’t go in them til the lifeguard’s there, and they are only open between 10am and 5pm (6pm? Wait – maybe it’s 8pm. At any rate, it’s right when we’re usually out in the parks and never when we’re at the hotel!).

The cold wasn’t so bad when we were in the water. But they need to install water-filled tubes that shoot you up to the top of the slide, cuz sprinting up there in a wet bathing suit and bare feet when it’s cold out is no fun!

But the best part of the swim was seeing these guys:

Apparently the pool is like Ducky Day Care, where mom and dad ducks dump their kids so they can get a break. While these three cuties paddled around the quiet section of the pool, the grown-up ducks were on the patio, hovering over piles of doots on one leg as they napped.

DH was fascinated by them, and we slowly swam up as close as we dared to see if we could get some pictures.

DH even got them to “walk” on his hand by sticking it just under the surface of the water as they swam by. They were so cute – and so close! When they started to feel threatened by kids in the pool they’d go “PEEP! PEEP! PEEEEEP!” and eventually a mom came over to watch them.

These two had it in for each other – they were as nippy as the ponies that pull Cinderella’s Glass Coach!

This guy was not part of the “cool” group of nippy duckies...

The other cool thing we did was get to see the geyser go off, FINALLY! (Now all that’s left is seeing the complete Electrical Water Pageant!). It went off a few minutes early – bad show, if you ask me. What if some poor family had scheduled their entire day around it? But there was a rainbow through the spray toward the end – that was cool!

After our swim and a shower, we had a little time to sit at the table in our room and write postcards to people. It always seems weird to write them so soon in our trip, but if we wait til we’ve actually done something, we’ll get back home before they do! Anyway, it was nice to spend a little downtime enjoying the comforts of our room. DH even remarked that I seemed a lot more relaxed on this trip – whoops! Guess I really am a Disney Commando... but I think this trip was different because, for one thing, we’d already pretty much done everything once, so we didn’t have a lengthy To Do list. (Also, being finished writing my book may have had something to do with it! )

And then we got a little dressed up for dinner and drove over to the Contemporary. Our primetime ADR at California Grill was another one I’d scored in the confusion of the ever-shifting ADR window last fall. Usually by the time I call, the only times left are way before or after the Magic Kingdom’s fireworks, but this time I’d scored a 7:35pm reservation with Wishes at 8pm! The plan was to be enjoying our meal in a fabulous window seat as the show started.

I had sense enough to get us there 20 minutes early to check in, but I forgot that CG is notorious for making you wait past your reservation time (something that didn’t happen to us last time, when we ate at 5:30pm). So we ended up standing at the edge of the bar area for 40 frickin’ minutes as I got more and more anxious that we’d miss Wishes. So much for the new, relaxed me!

Smug seat-holders

Say, is that a Disney’s Fairy Tale Wedding (tm) watch you’re compulsively checking?

And then, five minutes before the show started, they ushered us to THE most fabulous window table we’d ever seen, handed us menus and told us our server would arrive after the show to take our order – all while someone deftly slipped a basket of bread and glasses of ice water on the table. Then the lights went down, the music came up, and whoohoo!

The first two photos are from our real camera – the rest are from my iPhone. And yes, I’m bragging...

I covered part of the lens with my finger to blot out the reflection of the bar behind us – real sophisticated photography here!

 

[lurkyloo]

I was really impressed with California Grill this time. On our honeymoon, I felt like it was good, but not the height of sophistication that everyone makes it out to be. And, yeah, I’m a snob who compares everything to L.A. restaurants. But you know what? So what if CA Grill’s menu is California cuisine circa 1999 and they push sushi and flatbread like Uncle Walt himself invented them? The ingredients are fresh and top-quality, and the food tastes dang good!

DH started with the Roasted Baby Beets with Mache, green apple, walnuts, Goat Cheese Crostini, and apple-sherry vinaigrette.

I had the vaunted Sonoma Goat Cheese Ravioli with sun-dried tomatoes, pesto, shiitake mushrooms and basil.

It was good, especially compared to the tough, greasy ravioli I later had at the Brown Derby, but I still don’t get the cult following. (Oh yeah, and, if you’re taking notes, DH likes everything, all the time.)

For our main course we split the Grilled Pork Tenderloin with goat cheese polenta, button mushrooms and zinfandel glaze. Do you think the servers are secretly P.O.ed when you don’t order anything they told you was a specialty?

You can’t tell from the pic, but it was amazing! Actually, maybe just the goat cheese polenta was amazing, but everything else was pretty dang good too. DH raved about the dish maybe more than anything else we ate on the trip. And that polenta put to shame my previous favorite, the pepper-jack cheese grits at Coral Reef.

They sprinkled confetti on our table!

Classy...

Even splitting an entree, we were pretty stuffed when they brought out...

FREE DESSERT #3!!
Raspberry-Chocolate Cake

Once again, our perfectly good free dessert had been ruined by fruit, so I ordered my own dessert, Valrhona Chocolate Cake [minus the Raspberry] - Warm chocolate cake with molten center, housemade vanilla ice cream [instead of raspberry ice cream] and NO raspberry sauce.

I’ve had my fair share of (and gotten pretty tired of) molten chocolate cakes, but that one was pretty dang good. Hmm... I just read back over my review of our meal, and it appears California Grill can be summed up as “pretty dang good!”

At the end of the night the manager (maybe?) came by and said they were trying a new program where they take a picture of you and email it to you after the meal. We got ours a day later, and I was impressed by how not horrible it was!

After dinner, we engaged in one of my favorite pastimes – hotel snooping! First we poked our heads in The Wave and decided to come back for breakfast (didn’t happen).

It’s like dining 20,000 Leagues under the sea!

Then I asked DH to take some pictures of the Contemporary’s halls near the ballrooms - since David Tutera owns all the pictures of Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings’ Couture Collection, this is about all I can show of the receptions in my wedding book. Thanks for nuthin’, David Tutera!!!

They’re kinda cool in a Mid-Century Modern way...

Then we rounded a corner and discovered a whole ‘nother wing that looked like it had been interior decorated by Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice (OK, I’m talking about the old TV show here, kids, not the slick Jaime Foxx movie). I mean, it’s probably pretty new, but everything about it screamed Eighties...

Like the pastel carpet...

And the glass blocks...

The rotunda was kinda cool.

On our way back out to the main entrance we came across an inviting-looking conversational grouping and sat down for a few minutes to try it out. We found it to be fairly conducive to conversation....

DH wouldn’t make out with me behind that dark brown false wall – chicken!

Finally, exhausted by our conversational-grouping testing, we staggered back to the car for our trip back to Wilderness Lodge.


Up Next: Real Orlando with the Roots!

 

[figmentfan814]

I loved the shots behind the Wilderness Lodge; brings back memories when DH and I had our engagement shots there The ducks were so cute, I'm surprised you were able to get so close for pictures.

It was nice to see that you had a good experience at CA Grill. I haven't been able to return after our first failure to be seated (long story- involved John Stamos and his then wife Rebecca Romyn arriving and leaving all of us little people to be ignored and it was like 7 or 8 years ago, so you can see I'm still bitter .) On the plus side, we ended up leaving and discovered Ohanas that night which in our opinion is a yummy addition to our trips.

The shot the restaurant sent you was a great picture of you and DH; was it just the manager who took the shot or did they actual have a Photopass type person there? Loved the shots from around the convention center, I've never snooped around there yet, so it was interesting to see it.

 

[ProudMommyof2]

Great pics- we were at WL in 5/07. Loved the hotel- but completely agree about the EWP. Cute but I wouldn't do more than go out on my balcony to see it!

 

[blabbermouth]

I should have known better than to read your TR on the hungriest day of my life (since yesterday). I just had nachos an hour ago and now cali grill makes me want, well... exactly what you had (but I'll take the raspberry swirlies)... and some wine!

 

[lazydoxy66]

Great updates!
I must say I love your room at the Tree House. I hear tropical is in for bedrooms right now.

I am very happy that you got to see the fireworks at CG and had a good meal. It's ironic that you showed the pictures of the 80's style part of the Contemp while "Sister Christian" is playing on the radio. Like, totally, for sure and gag me! (I loved Miami Vice, BTW.)

They did get a great pic of you 2 at CG!

 

[Aro]

I need to back track to to the previous post you made for a second...please tell me that those black and green things sitting in those seats in the picture below are NOT real people.

What the heck are they?

 

[twiu]

Great TR Carrie! Can't wait to read more.

It was great meeting you at the UK. I apologize for crashing your dinner but it had to be done! Now... start writing more!!!

 

[Sleeping*Beauty]

Ok, so I'm a little late but I love all your safari pictures from all four trips! I would have loved to be charged by the cattle. They're my second favorite animals on the safari after the giraffes.

 

[spethstation]

California Grill looks really amazing! I really enjoy your food reviews. Nothing beats free dessert, too!