September TR... UPDATED on July 11th, 2009--FINAL DAY POSTED.

[Raecheal]

O.T. Here are some BJ Pictures:

DAY 5-

Where were we?? Ahhh... Yes we left off at MK. It was a great day, from what I can remember…. It was just REALLY hot. Hotter than expected… which kind of made me not want to participate in as many activities as planned or should have done. I should mention that we were starting to see the famous love bugs… just one here and there.

I read on dis that they were harmless.. so we didn’t think anything of it.

Once we returned back to POP—we got dinner at the caf., browsed the gift shop and went back to the room. We settled into our usual
nightly routine. I showered, Dbf watches the Family channel
or news, we review the following day’s activities, pack and enjoy some ice cream!

I truly feel at home in Disney and with each visit I feel less
rushed to get on every attraction—more willing to pick and chose our favourites.

I was excited for Day 5... The Aqua Seas Tour was something
that I was most excited to try. Definetely something new for both
of us… we’ve never done anything like it. To be completely honest
I was stressed—by reading my pre-TR.. you’d know I was
concerned about what to do after our Aqua Seas Tour regarding my appearance.. yes probably super ficial…. but my hair is sooooo
curly.. but FRIZZY CURLY.. it truly is awful. Obviously our tour
involded getting wet—so this needed to be addressed. I didn’t
want to be walking around or even in a ton of photos having
soaking wet hair gone to frizzy poodle hair.

My plan was to pack the purchased travel blow dryer, hair straigtener, straightening mouse, hairspray and light make up into Dbf backpack. After our Tour— I would use my time to quickly blow out my bangs and let the rest of my hair be loose waves with help of the hairspray and half blow out hair. It was a good plan, a look I could tolerate for the rest of day without going back to the Hotel. I wasn’t sure how dbf would appreciate or tolerate carrying around that backpack.

Dbf was NOT appreciative of the back pack on this particular day.. he was angry that he had to carry around so much ‘junk’.. we kinda got into a little early morning cranky disagreement.. in the end. He wore the back pack -there was no other way. Any guy out there I’m sure can understand my point of view. There are places and times to worry about primping and preening and other times where you just go with the flow. Our bag was already filled with the usual things – refillable cups, 1st aid stuff, etc and now I was being forced to carry what basically amounted to a makeup bag as well. Not cool.

We got up on Day 5—Dressed in our Bathing suits and clothes over top, we had our breakfast and headed for a bus. I love the bus systems and can positively say we only had bus issues (taking forever to come) maybe 3-4times on this visit. Considering it’s free—it’s worth it.

We arrived at Epcot at exactly just before 8:44am—it was packed. There were A LOT of people waiting to get in. We were eventually let into the park. We went straight to get a locker.. Dbf refused to carry a back pack full my products all day.. plus his back was starting to hurt. Getting a locker, finding the locker and loading the locker took all of 5 minutes, which left us waiting again at another rope drop. Here a bunch of Disney characters were out in good fashion welcoming and warming up the crowd.

Excuse the photos… some people automatically assume because you don’t have any children your not interested and feel the need to push you out of the way. I tried to get the best photos possible while not getting angry with the pushy people around me… they were not going to ruin my morning.

 

[CanadianWDWfan]

Sorry to hear about your Gramma, I will keep you in my prayers.

Wow! You are so brave/crazy to jump from that high...

Your BF is a good guy to carry your stuff, he should know a girl must look good especially at WDW.

 

[Raecheal]

Sorry to hear about your Gramma, I will keep you in my prayers.

Wow! You are so brave/crazy to jump from that high...

Your BF is a good guy to carry your stuff, he should know a girl must look good especially at WDW.

Thank you....

I think it's the highest BJ in North America.. actually!! He really is a good guy!! He's a keeper!

Gonna post the rest of Day 5 this weekend.

 

[Disneylove1228]

hey girl!!!!

loved your new post!!!

omg i know what you mean about ppl's children pushing... ugh!! we waited at THAT exact spot when we were waiting to get into EPCOT! That is sooo funny!!

How is your grandma doing ? how is Victoria!? lol! My hubby wouldn't do the backpack thing either, he'd tell me to deal with it...so i know how you feel but i am a hair stylist and i am so vain when it comes to my hair, too! LOL i just have to do it!!!

can't wait to read more!!!

 

[ArelysAdriana]

The bungee jumping pictures are great! It looks like so much fun (scary fun mostly, but fun none the less )

The whole backpack thing is hilarious because it sounds exactly like something I would do. I have long, thick, curly/frizzy hair that needs to be styled after going into any type of water. My boyfriend would probably pout and whine a hundred times worse then yours did about carrying a backpack full of my vanity. Your boy was a champ about it.

I can't wait to hear about the rest of the tour! I have been dying to do that ever since I saw that Boy Meets World episode where they went to EPCOT.

 

[Raecheal]

While everyone raced around to get Fast passes and hit all the major attractions—Dbf and I casually walked over to… err… Sunshine…
I don’t recall “casually walking” anywhere that morning. We were
standing three people back from the cordon in front of Innoventions
and then (thanks to slow moving and overweight families) were
about the 8th to 10th in line for Soarin’ first thing. I always enjoy
this ride and would recommend to all to NOT be in the front row.
When the seats raise up for the hang-gliding experience the people
in the front row end up at the bottom and get a GREAT view of
the speakers down below, which takes away from the feeling
of sand and surf as you fly up the US west coast.
Next we hit up Living with the Land – it’s basically a riverboat/train
ride through the Disney Giant Food Grow-Op. Ok, that may not
sound really nice, but seriously, giant green onions and
carrots. Two recommendations: firstly, catching this right
after Soarin’ was ingenious because everyone else was still
scrambling in line for their first ride. We ended up in our own
car for this attraction which meant complete silence; secondly,
a large part of the ride takes you through a giant greenhouse
and I’m not a science major, but that’s not where I’d want
to be around noon when the sun’s at its highest.

We still had loads of time and had beat out most of the rush, so we caught The Seas with Nemo next.

You’re cruising in a “shell” and basically going past 3D screens
interspersed with props taking you through the key parts of the
movie. We’d seen it a few years prior as well. It’s amusing… for
kids it’s probably a Must See ride, but for couples our age… I’d
skip it if there were a line. There are MUCH better 3D effect shows throughout the parks and it feels like it’s trying too hard.
Lastly before we left Future World we caught Journey into Imagination. I hate this ride, it's cheezy, boring and we always get a stinky one.

I enjoy this ride for multiple reasons:
1.it’s old school – the effects are cheesy (with a little new 3D thrown in), the songs are catchy without trying to be cool and regarding the jokes, it’s all good cheese.
2.and speaking of comedy – ERIC IDLE! Need I say more? When
you can get Disney cartoons and the genius of Monty Python all
in one. You sit down and enjoy.
3.and lastly, the building is air conditioned – I’m Canadian and I’m
not a big fan of sweating through my clothes all day. It may sound
like a poor excuse to catch a ride. But you wait and see; you’ll
get there and it will be sweltering hot and you’ll think, “hey! What’s
that ride that has no line-up, includes Monty Python actors AND is air-conditioned?” Thank me later.

As soon as the World Showcase was open,We headed over for
the very first day of The International Food and Wine Festival.
Snap this on our way:

 

[Raecheal]

We headed over for the very first day of The International Food and Wine Festival. There wasn’t a lot of people there… but enough. I noticed that even tho they were technically ‘open’ a lot of the booths were still not set up or even actually had all the food items that were written on the menus. Which was disappointed. We walked around a bit.. finally deciding on a couple of booths to test out. I’ll take this one step further – this was a Disney tragedy. This isn’t my first Disney trip – normally the staff members are on the ball and seem intelligent, everything is on time and if you’re waiting it is because it’s something popular. I don’t know who hired the individuals operating half the booths and I don’t know who set up the cash terminals at these booths but they should both be sent off to work at Six Flags or something. At one booth I waited between 10-20mins with only one person in front of me, at another they could not figure out how to use their POS machines and had to call over a supervisor and at yet another, the manager finally gave five of us our orders for free because we were waiting so long for them to figure out how to ring up orders correctly. I thought this was an annual event? The day we showed up there appeared like the soft open for a brand new theme park where kinks had yet to be worked out. However, if I was ONLY judging the food – amazing

First up was Austria, where we sampled Beef Goulash with a Bacon Dumpling. This was delicious. While Dbf was ordering our food—I had enough time to snap a lot of photos of our surroundings.

Next up was Chile, where we sampled Dulce de leche and some chardonnay. The Dulce was o.k., not a fan of the chardonnay. I’m not much of a drinker.

I recommend one of each (if they can get it to you). My favourites are: the beef brisket, dulce de leche, kefta, the kiwi meringue and did I mention the dulce de leche? Oh and don’t forget to taste the champagne and whichever chardonnay you can find. After Chile, it was already 11:49pm. We need to head over for our Aqua Seas Tour.

Finally—It was time for our Aqua Seas Tour. We were scheduled to meet in front of Guest relations outside of the park between 12:00pm-12:30pm. Which makes sense because park admission is not required. We got there a bit early and sat on the scalding hot bench for what seemed like forever. Finally, a young guy came out from the entrance beside guest relations and he called out our names. Our group seemed nice — everyone pretty much stuck with the people they came with. There was one couple on their honeymoon, another our age and a father/son duo.

In order to preserve the magic, I’ll keep the exact tour details a secret. What I will say…. Is that the experience was incredible. I remember at one point just holding dbf hands as we were swimming and a sea turtle swam directly under us.. then it would casually come up for water right beside us... it was an amazing experience.. one in which dbf LOVED. That’s right—what he thought would be a waste of time… he truly enjoyed. Nothing made me happier on this trip then seeing the look of pure happiness on his face. Ok, yeah yeah, you win this round – EXCELLENT choice on this activity. I was impressed. At one point I was off on my own just below the waters surface and a sea turtle was gliding directly towards me. Rule #1 of the event – under no circumstances are you to touch the sea turtles. So I’m floating there pondering how to proceed with this game of chicken, since I lose either way and it comes within a foot of my face and then calmly glides directly beneath me and on past. That’s hard to beat at an amusement park! One recommendation if you have the opportunity though, hit up your local diving school/club and sign up for an intro scuba course. You get limited time in the tank at Disney and if you’ve never used a regulator before to breathe, it takes some getting used to. I spent the first five minutes at least just regulating my breathing and slowing my heart rate it was such an alien feeling to breath that way.LOL… oh Dbf.. I had no problem actually breathing or using the regulator.. I had a really hard time suiting up. First, I felt the actually size of my wetsuit was too tight—not breathing tight… had to request another one. Then I needed help putting on my flippers and every other equipment necessary before getting in the water. I guess I was having a ditzy day… in my defence tho. I’ve never had to put any of those sorts of equipment on in my life.



Up Next : The end of our Tour, Photos from the Aqua Seas Tour, Did Disney finally get they booths running in time for the first ‘night’ of The International Food and Wine Festival? “My to do list: Pick a Pearl). Did we snub Illuminations?

 

[Raecheal]

I'm sorry everyone for all the crazy sizing we have going on. I just don't know how to size everything properly. Please accept my apology.. I"m gonna look into.:

hey girl!!!!

loved your new post!!! omg i know what you mean about ppl's children pushing... ugh!! we waited at THAT exact spot when we were waiting to get into EPCOT! That is sooo funny!! How is your grandma doing ? how is Victoria!? lol! My hubby wouldn't do the backpack thing either, he'd tell me to deal with it...so i know how you feel but i am a hair stylist and i am so vain when it comes to my hair, too! LOL i just have to do it!!! can't wait to read more!!!

Hey... .. I'm glad you understand where i'm coming from regarding ppl's children pushing... LOL.. You waited in the same spot. awww...

My grandmother went to the doctors today, although not all test are completed or all results are in. They are starting her with Chemo next week...as soon as all the result are in i.e. what stage, what type. We'll hopefully be able to beat this. Were going to visit her this weekend... Thank you for asking, that is very sweet of you.

The bungee jumping pictures are great! It looks like so much fun (scary fun mostly, but fun none the less )

The whole backpack thing is hilarious because it sounds exactly like something I would do. I have long, thick, curly/frizzy hair that needs to be styled after going into any type of water. My boyfriend would probably pout and whine a hundred times worse then yours did about carrying a backpack full of my vanity. Your boy was a champ about it.

I can't wait to hear about the rest of the tour! I have been dying to do that ever since I saw that Boy Meets World episode where they went to EPCOT.

Love, Love... Boy Meets world. Haven't watched it in ages. The tour was sooo worth the money. Next post will be more pictures and info.

Yah... He's def. a champ...

 

[calderli]

I can't belive that I found you on here!!!! Now we can share our trips together. You are my first post, so I will be asking you for some help on all of this. You have been so helpful so far in all of my planning and I want to say thak-you. I don't think that Craig ,Payton and I woudl be going if it wasn't for all of your help. You are wonderful and a great friend.

 

[Raecheal]

I can't belive that I found you on here!!!! Now we can share our trips together. You are my first post, so I will be asking you for some help on all of this. You have been so helpful so far in all of my planning and I want to say thak-you. I don't think that Craig ,Payton and I woudl be going if it wasn't for all of your help. You are wonderful and a great friend.

: Your here...first post... You joined! I can't believe you found me either, I guess my TR must have been bumped from all my updates. I"m soo glad your here... you should considering writing a Pre-Trip. I"d def. be subbing.

Thank you , those words are so sweet. To your family!!

 

[Sarah84]

Cant believe i only just found this PTR & TR, what a great read
Look forward to reading more updates. Love your pics & sorry to hear about your grandmother

 

[ArelysAdriana]

I just realized that the day you are currently writing about was my birthday! I was lurking around the GF and MK that day.

So basically, the Auqa Seas tour sounds amazing. How did you go about booking it? And if you don't mind me asking, how much was it? I told my boyfriend about it and his response was "You can go to that aquarium thing where Corey and Topanga were?!"

 

[Raecheal]

Cant believe i only just found this PTR & TR, what a great read
Look forward to reading more updates. Love your pics & sorry to hear about your grandmother

Glad your hear. Thank you... i'm keeping positive for my grandmother.

I just realized that the day you are currently writing about was my birthday! I was lurking around the GF and MK that day.

So basically, the Auqa Seas tour sounds amazing. How did you go about booking it? And if you don't mind me asking, how much was it? I told my boyfriend about it and his response was "You can go to that aquarium thing where Corey and Topanga were?!"

Ohhh... It was your birthday. I wish we could have met up.. that would have been really nice!!

It's amazing and in my opinion money well spent. From what I can remember it was 140 EACH, US. However, we did use our CAA card to get a discount.. which is AAA in the US. I love, love our CAA card. Tons of Discounts there.

Men... He'd love it tho.

 

[ArelysAdriana]

Ohhh... It was your birthday. I wish we could have met up.. that would have been really nice!!

It's amazing and in my opinion money well spent. From what I can remember it was 140 EACH, US. However, we did use our CAA card to get a discount.. which is AAA in the US. I love, love our CAA card. Tons of Discounts there.

Men... He'd love it tho.

That would have been fantastic! The MK that night for MNSSHP was awesome. There no lines for anything, we honestly rode every ride twice (3 times for some of our favorites) and we saw both parades and the fireworks. Everyone kept wishing me a happy birthday and giving me tons of candy too. I loved it.

That's not bad at all. I expected it to be much more expensive. It sounds completely worth every penny.

 

[Raecheal]

Very sorry to hear about your grandmother. Sending lots of for a good diagnosis.

Can't wait for more TR!

Thank you. I went looking for your TR-- but i can't find one.. just your pre-tr when your DH had a sore bad......am I months behind?

 

[Raecheal]

That would have been fantastic! The MK that night for MNSSHP was awesome. There no lines for anything, we honestly rode every ride twice (3 times for some of our favorites) and we saw both parades and the fireworks. Everyone kept wishing me a happy birthday and giving me tons of candy too. I loved it.

That's not bad at all. I expected it to be much more expensive. It sounds completely worth every penny.

I know i'm not at that part in my TR yet-- soon soon... but the parade was amazing. I love the MNSSHP over MVMCP. I'm so happy you had an amazing bday in MK.

Yeppers.... I highly recommend that tour.

 

[Raecheal]

Well we left off at the Aqua Seas Tour.

We received a photo (which I hate) and we each got a T-shirt, I requested the largest T-shirt they had so I could wear it to bed. (I love to sleep in oversized t-shirts…it did end up coming in handy later during our trip). We also received a pin and some booklets of information.

After our amazing tour, we were escorted back to the locker area to shower and change.. Except we only had 15 MINUTES. WHAT? It takes me 15 minutes alone to blow-dry my hair out and most likely longer because it was travel size. All my stressing and productive planning had to be thrown out the window…there was no time. I basically just got dressed and grab my things and went to meet dbf and the rest of the group. Haha… being a guy is great. The men’s locker room is spacious – everyone had their own shower stall and an adjacent drying off/changing area and with the amount of time we knew our significant others would take we had time to shoot the breeze about the experience and past diving experiences. And every guy STILL made it into the waiting area before the women. Once we finished saying goodbye and receiving all of our items, we were escorted back out to the park….AND after all that planning and packing the backpack, Dbf and I decided we would just head back to the hotel. Neither one of us had time to shower, our skin and hair felt weird from the salt water and truth be told it was HOT and we were exhausted. Well Sunshine, minor addendum to that – I actually showered, which IS required because the salt water would have destroyed my board shorts. However, she’s right, after being in a cool pool for an hour and coming out into the midday sun, I started to sweat immediately. And of course, Dgf wasn’t in the best of spirits having been rushed out of the change rooms like the place was on fire. And I’ll never turn down a nap while on vacation!

We caught the first bus back were we then showered, changed, got some lunch and took a nap.

By the time we got back to Epcot it was already 3:00pm, most of the vendors had figured out their systems, so ordering more food was a breeze. I didn’t actually find any foods that I did not enjoy.

The first kiosk on the list for this afternoon was Morocco. Where we sampled some Kefta. I didn’t like this at all—dbf ate the entire thing.

After enjoying, I mean sampling some Moroccan food we decided to walk through the pavilion.

On the way we caught a glimpse of Aladdin and Jasmine.

Next up was New Zealand, where we sampled Lamb slider in a Brioche Roll and a kiwi meringe tartlet. I’m a fan of lamb: it was delicious… wasn’t really into that Tartlet. DBF as usual loved everything.

While Dbf was ordering, I took the opportunity to take some more photos of our surroundings. I truly enjoy taking photos—just wish I had a better, professional camera. Maybe I’ll put it on my x-mas list for Santa.

By now it was 3:30pm and it was time for my MOST Excited ‘must do’ of the trip. Pick a Pearl. The overall experience was great.

Here they are... all the pearls waiting to be opened.

There's the one I picked out.

Baggin' some drumbs.

There's my pearl... all ready to go in it's setting.

 

[Raecheal]

As you can tell by the amount of photos, I was so excited. After chosing a setting for my pearl, we were told to return in an hour so in the mean time we decided to hit up some more kiosk.

Next up was Ireland, where DBF sampled Boxty with Bacon Chips and Kerrygold Garlic and Fresh Herb butter. I don’t even think I tried this one.

After Ireland, we went to Italy. Where we tried pizza with sausage (mmMMM) and the Cream puffs. I love Italian food.

By this time it was really HOT and I was exhausted, we decided to head back to Japan early and see if my setting was finished. It was 4:15pm when I picked up my pearl- the Final product. Till this day, I wear it on my gold chain with my Diana Warner Studio Obligato charms. Of course dgf made it back to the Oriental pavilion (nope, can’t recall if it was China or Japan) to pick her pearl. I don’t know how they farm all these clams to ensure that they each have a pearl, but it’s a neat experience. Personally, the cheese factor was off the charts when this little Oriental woman is banging on a small skin drum to celebrate Dgf getting a pearl (ahem, she better have gotten a pearl, that’s what we were paying for). I think it would have been cool if they let you break open the clam, but I can imagine there are some safety issues there. Still, I know she loved doing it and for months preceding our trip I was told we were not allowed to leave Epcot till she did it and she still wears it to this day.

Looks like they were setting up for Illuminations.

I remember we had had reservations at the restaurant in the UK for 6:40pm, but cancelled them in favour of a little relaxation. To this day I wish we hadn’t. I’m sorry sweetheart.. if you would have told me at the time.. I would have gathered the energy to make it through dinner. I didn’t know it was that important to you. Awww….The timing of the reservations was such that we would have had excellent front row seats for Illuminations – my favourite fireworks display. It’s hard to describe and all the YouTube-ing you can manage does not do it justice. We arrived back at the hotel for 5:45pm, finally this was waiting for us:

 

[Raecheal]

I believe this was our first BIG towel animal for this trip.

After chill’axin a bit back at the hotel and getting some dinner, we headed back to Epcot-World Showcase for 8:30pm. I really love Disney at nightfall—it’s incredibly beautiful.

We had previously decided to visit any pavilions we may have missed during the course of the day, but because of the time we only had time for one.
We stopped into Mexico, My favourite. It’s so romantic.

After Mexico, there was a bit of a panic. We didn’t have much time to find a spot for illuminations. Every single spot was taken—we were walking around like chickens with no heads. So yah, we were a little late finding somewhere to stand for the show and everywhere we picked was partially blocked by the small centre island, a barge, a lightpost, etc. By the time we found the idea viewing location it was half over.

As you can see by the tress—we had a crummy view. I’m sorry dbf. I”ll make it up to you next time. After Illuminations was over we found ourselves in the back corner of the park (circa Paris or London, I cannot recall). Dbf took some photos, one of my favourite ones from the trip.

I’m not sure how we made it out of the park as smoothly as we did, I can only say that it pays to be a small group, agile and sans children in those situations. If we had a stroller I would have pulled up a bench and waited 30 minutes till the chaos passed me by. Back at the hotel, we snacked which is always, always ice cream from pop’s cafeteria. MMMmmm… this is why I miss Disney. Late night desserts……,crashed and watched Disney cartoons (yes, it’s completely acceptable to watch the Disney channel when you’re a grown man… but only if you’re IN Disney).

Next up: MY fav. DAY… and It was mostly unplanned. We had been debating throughout the whole 5 days what to do on Saturday, it was a nightly conversation before bed. So, what did we end up doing during the day? At night, dinning reservations at the Poly for the Luau, first spotting of our future wedding site and dbf takes me back to….

 

[ArelysAdriana]

The picture from the tour is so cute. You guys are adorable

Thanks for reminding me that I did the pick-a-pearl once. I have no idea where mine is though (for some odd reason I never got a setting? ) Yours is pretty!

Is your future wedding site the Wedding Pavilion? That place is so gorgeous and romantic