She's a Princess, a Superhero, and a Rock Star -a Sept 2013 TR (Completed 2/24)

[Valgoof]

So many good things in this update! Mickey waffles, pressed pennies, meeting Mickey, shiny gold passes, ice cream bars...a great morning and you haven't been on a ride yet!! Love Melissa's toes!
I am going to guess you are taking the monorail to Epcot!

 

[kmedina]

Great toe polish. Allie's dress is awesome. I usually need a lot of caffeine to get going too. Diet soda grosses me out, so I drink regular. Four weeks ago, I stopped drinking it to cut back on calories. It has been a struggle, but I only had a glass on day 23. Here I am on day 28, and I still miss my caffeine. On our trip, I am likely going to drink it often (so I hope my addiction does not resume).

I contemplated upgrading to premier passes, but I am certain we will not go back to DisneyWorld until next December after our upcoming trip. Sounds like it was a hassle, but I am glad you got it worked out. It was nice of the CM to give you free ice cream.

 

[RGirl]

The walk to Fort Wilderness looks beautiful! And I really liked seeing some of the room at WL too - looks really nice.

Sounds like the day is off to a great start what with those Premier APs!

 

[dismom9761]

I love Allie's dress and that last picture is priceless!

 

[rachel09985]

Do I spy some Sanuk yoga mat sandals?? I am contemplating getting those.

I love Allie's belle picture.

I hate when there is something wrong with fountain pop!! I am the biggest fountain pop critic and can taste if something is off always.

Nice call on the gift cards- that does save a lot of money!! Those hat pictures are so cute!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

So many good things in this update! Mickey waffles, pressed pennies, meeting Mickey, shiny gold passes, ice cream bars...a great morning and you haven't been on a ride yet!! Love Melissa's toes!
I am going to guess you are taking the monorail to Epcot!

Yes, it was a fun morning, and it was great to get stuff done to be set up for the rest of the trip. Good call on our next stop, we just had to hit our favorite park on our first day, and what better way to get there.

Great toe polish. Allie's dress is awesome. I usually need a lot of caffeine to get going too. Diet soda grosses me out, so I drink regular. Four weeks ago, I stopped drinking it to cut back on calories. It has been a struggle, but I only had a glass on day 23. Here I am on day 28, and I still miss my caffeine. On our trip, I am likely going to drink it often (so I hope my addiction does not resume).

I contemplated upgrading to premier passes, but I am certain we will not go back to DisneyWorld until next December after our upcoming trip. Sounds like it was a hassle, but I am glad you got it worked out. It was nice of the CM to give you free ice cream.

For us the Premier passes work neat even with only one WDW trip a year because of how much we get to use them at DL, and the extra cost over DL premium passes is covered by nine days in Florida.
We both love our Diet Coke, and can't stand regular. I guess it is just what you get used to.

The walk to Fort Wilderness looks beautiful! And I really liked seeing some of the room at WL too - looks really nice.

Sounds like the day is off to a great start what with those Premier APs!

We'll be sure to share more WL pics. We love that secluded walk to FW and how it feels like you are so far from the rest of the world. Thanks for following along.

I love Allie's dress and that last picture is priceless!

Thanks so much. That dress was Paul's favorite of the ones for this year's trip. Alie started not wanting her picture taken this year, so we had to be a little more sneaky about it. She can't turn down a chance to check out a mirror though.

Do I spy some Sanuk yoga mat sandals?? I am contemplating getting those.

I love Allie's belle picture.

I hate when there is something wrong with fountain pop!! I am the biggest fountain pop critic and can taste if something is off always.

Nice call on the gift cards- that does save a lot of money!! Those hat pictures are so cute!

Yes! Those are yoga mat flip flops. I have probably had 10 pairs over the last 3 years and I wore them a lot at WDW. I wear flip flops 99% of the time and Sanuks are my favorite. You should get some, and Amazon has deals on them.

Thanks for commenting and we are glad you are enjoying the pics.

 

[Wood Nymph]

I just noticed the link in your signature. I've been looking forward to your trip report.

It was so exciting to be in Florida! Allie wasn't nearly as excited but she was still asleep.

She actually slept through the arrival process, and we transferred her to her stroller (after remembering to pick it up) and she stayed asleep the whole time. She doesn't like waking up at 3:30 in the morning.
Our Magical Express trip went well, even though it was raining. Our hotel was the third stop, but by this point we were so excited it didn't matter. We were officially there and watching cartoons, how cool was that! Allie on the other hand was still asleep.

We were the third stop on the ME, too. Allie must have been really tired. That was a very long day for all of you. I see that it was dark out when you arrived.

By the time we got to the WL the rain had really let up and was almost cleared. We made our way excitedly into the lobby and got our KTW cards. Paul FINALLY got to know what our room number was. He had memorized the entire floor plan of the WL so that when they told us our room number he'd know exactly where it was.

Yeah, I kind of got really into figuring out what rooms were where. At least I shared the obsession by posting a color coded room map on the WL thread. Wait, that doesn't help my case does it, oh well. Back to the important stuff, we got room 6096, which was two rooms down from where we were last trip in a location that we just loved. It is above the registration desk and opens to the lobby with a view of the bus stop and the road leading to the lodge.



Who's he kidding, as soon as they told us the room number he knew exactly where it was.

I am sure that he had it memorized. I think I have it memorized, too.

Once Allie and Melissa got up, our plan was to do something we loved on our honeymoon but never got to do last trip. We were going to walk to Fort Wilderness, and since Trail's End sounded good for breakfast. We headed past the bus stops to the path, and soon truly felt like we were in the middle of nowhere.

We arrived at FW in about 20 minutes and headed to Trail's End.

We are planning to walk to FW, too, and maybe have breakfast there.

Over to Magic Kingdom by boat. This would be our first boat ride of he trip, and I love the boats. While on the boat, Melissa caught me uploading our breakfast photos.
We wanted to use our park tickets at least once before upgrading them to an annual pass so that we would be credited with the current gate price, rather than the amount we paid in our trip package for them. We had read about this process on the DIS and it wound up saving us over $200.

You were right about how nice it is to take the boats. We never took the bus to MK.

Thanks to the Dis, we decided to upgrade to Annual Passes, too. We have two trips planned within the next six months, and annual passes will save us $227 approx. But I didn't want to spend all the money at once, so I bought six day park hoppers for our upcoming trip so I could make the fp+ selections now. Then I'll upgrade when we get there. I never would have known about this trick before I found this site.

We went back in to MK and found the nearest ice cream cart. Melissa and Allie got Mickey bars, and I tried the Mickey cookies and cream sandwich. It was a hot day, so we had to pick a spot and start eating right away. We found a bench and got to it, but the rapidly liquefying pieces of chocolate were still pretty messy.
.

Allie did a good job keeping her pretty dress clean. That dress is so cute. She looks adorable trying on all those hats, too.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

I just noticed the link in your signature. I've been looking forward to your trip report. We were the third stop on the ME, too. Allie must have been really tired. That was a very long day for all of you. I see that it was dark out when you arrived. I am sure that he had it memorized. I think I have it memorized, too. We are planning to walk to FW, too, and maybe have breakfast there. You were right about how nice it is to take the boats. We never took the bus to MK. Thanks to the Dis, we decided to upgrade to Annual Passes, too. We have two trips planned within the next six months, and annual passes will save us $227 approx. But I didn't want to spend all the money at once, so I bought six day park hoppers for our upcoming trip so I could make the fp+ selections now. Then I'll upgrade when we get there. I never would have known about this trick before I found this site. Allie did a good job keeping her pretty dress clean. That dress is so cute. She looks adorable trying on all those hats, too.

We're glad you found the TR. We should have time to post some more soon.

The arrival day was long, but since Allie slept from somewhere over Georgia until we were sitting at Roaring Fork it worked out really well. We still had enough energy to walk all around the resort while jumping up and down since we were so excited to be there.

You have to love the DIS boards for all the great information you can learn.

Thanks for the compliments and we are glad to have you following along.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

So, with the business of getting our passes out of the way and MK filling up with people, we decided to head over to Epcot. At 2:15 we hopped on an express monorail for the TTC. This was our first time riding one of these, because usually we want to stop at one of the resorts.


It was a quick trip to the TTC then over to the Epcot Monorail. We got monorail Orange for our way to Epcot, I liked that because orange is my favorite.


Soon we were off of the monorail and quickly into Epcot. This seemed to be a great time to park hop, as the crowds to get in at Epcot were very light. We were back at our favorite park. Allie decided it would be great fun to have us chase her through the entrance plaza, since she was full of ice cream and ready to go.



It is super easy to loose a kid in those granite things! After we found our kid we convinced her to head on over to the Seas with Nemo. We rode our little clamshell and guess what, we found Nemo!


We spent alot of time checking out all of the fish and other ocean critters. Allie really loved watching the manatees and they were super active today. It looked like they were wrestling or something.



All the water gave Allie an idea for a quick potty break (I remember this because we were on the second floor when Allie said she had to go, and there is a sign that says restrooms and leads just to an elevator). I wonder how many kids have accidents in that elevator? We made it though, and then finished up in the Seas before heading over to The Land.


You can see it was still sunny and hot outside, but the clouds were building, so we made sure to cover the stroller before going inside. We learned this last year, that you always cover the stroller because a rolled up rain cover does little good when you are inside on a ride.

We were hungry but didn't need a huge lunch so we stopped at Sunshine Seasons and had Mongolian Beef and a Carrotcake Cupcake. I missed the Pineapple Coconut cupcake from last year but the carrot cake one was ok.




When we went to pay at Sunshine Seasons they had some problem with our RFID card, and had to enter it manually. We thought it was some fluke, but it turned out to just be the start...
I most enjoyed the Diet Coke, since we had not had a good one yet today, and it was after 3PM. I wasn't too fond of the carrot cake, but it just isn't my thing. I was sure there would be other delicious cupcakes during the trip, and I was right.

We just hung out for a while and enjoyed the AC and super fast wifi. Paul got some pictures uploaded then we headed out to ride The Land. Being an Ag major I love this ride. All of the high tech stuff they show is really going on and it's awesome. We also found out on the ride that it had started pouring buckets outside. It was raining so hard that the greenhouse roof was leaking in places.



After The Land I had one more place I wanted to check out.


We headed for TestTrack, not the ride so much as the dump shop. This has been one of my favorite places in WDW since we first visited when I was five. I remember climbing in a Suburban and getting a brochure to take home with me. I probably still have it somewhere. Anyway, this shop, which is now most appropriately named "After Market", was closed during our trip last year during the Test Track refurbishment.


We had fun shopping and checking out all of the cars. We didn't buy anything this time though.

I tried to buy a Test Track shirt with a gift card I had been saving since my birthday in January, but they were sold out of my size. I even asked somebody who checked in the back, but no luck. I would have to hold on to the gift card for a while longer.

We had a dinner ADR to get to at the Poly (or so we thought) so we headed out of Epcot to take the monorail to the TTC.

Yes, we walked right out of the park and up the ramp to the monorail. We realized this was something new for us, as last trip we always left Epcot by bus. We soon realized that we probably should have done that this time as well, because while sitting on the monorail I looked at my e-mail and saw our dinner ADR confirmation...for Boma!

Since we were already on the monorail headed for the TTC we had to formulate a new plan to get all the way over to AKL. We figured we'd catch a bus from Magic Kingdom to AKL once we got that far. Once we got to the TTC we decided to take the ferry boat over to the MK because we'd never done that before. Plus the sunset was just beautiful and the view of the Grand Floridian was breathtaking.


We figured out our mixup (we had switched our first two nights ADRs in order to catch the ribs at Boma) with over an hour to go until the ADR, so we figured we would still be ok. Riding the ferry boat was nice, although I don't think it saved any time over the express monorail, it was cool to throw a boat into the mix. Allie decided on the boat that her picture quota had been reached, so we got a great shot of her hand.


When we got to the MK we walked right over to the bus depot and were able to walk right onto a bus. We really lucked out there.

We were on our way to AKL with just under half an hour to go, and we wound up needing every bit of it. The bus arrived at AKL at 7PM, but then stopped at Kidani first. We were a few minutes late by the time we got off the bus at Jambo House (which made me a tad bit more cranky than it should have, since DIsney is very accomodating) but we rushed downstairs to check in at Boma.

I can attest to the fact he got cranky...

Sorry, at least that was probably the worst of the trip... I got mine out of the way early

Did I get cranky? I have selective memory.

Lol, I don't recal

It's probably better that way ;-) ok back to our regularly scheduled TR...
So we made it to Boma! Yay! They didnt mind that we were late and we were seated very quickly.


I was taking pictures of the Boma sign when one of the CM's at the check in desk photobombed my picture. It was pretty hilarious.



I really loved the atmosphere of this restaurant and the food was delicious.

I enjoyed it too, especially the ancho BBQ ribs. The buffet had a huge variety of food, from very common items to more authentic African dishes.

We stuffed ourselves silly on all of the yummy food including the desserts. Zebra domes were a hit as well as the apple cobbler they were serving that night

We again had trouble when it came time to pay, but our server assured us it was fine and he had entered it manually. Later, looking at the receipt it said we had only 6 TS meals remaining. We decided we'd look into that back at the hotel, and were hoping nothing had happened with the APs to mess up our dining plan.

We waddled out of Boma and headed over to Mara. I was on a mission to get our mugs. I asked the CM if we could buy our mugs there even though we were staying at a different resort and he said, sure no problem! He even activated them and everything. Once again the tap didn't work on our card so he had to manually take them off of our dining plan.

After getting our mugs we spent some time checking out the gift shop upstairs. It really is one of the more impressive resort gift shops. Then we finally headed to the buses right at 9PM. I know that was the time because that was park close for Epcot and HS that night.

I figured they'd still let us get on one of those busses so we could transfer to our resort... nope, we'd have to transfer through Downtown Disney. Ok no biggie it would just be a longer bus ride...

Once a Downtown Disney bus arrived it was almost 9:30, and a lot of people wanted to go on it. It then stopped at Kidani and picked up more people before heading to Downtown Disney.

We got to Downtown Disney about 9:50, and only had to walk one bus stop to get the WL bus. Unfortunately that was the stop with a huge crowd of people around it. That stop is shared between all of the MK area resorts, with separate buses for WL+GF and CR+Poly. I guess they had been waiting for a while, since many people in the crowd had decided to get on the next bus no matter which resort it was going to since they could then connect via the monorail. At 10 the bus arrived, and it was a WL one. That didn't matter much, as almost everyone at the stop got on it. It was very full:

They had to leave some people at the stop and by the time we got on it there was standing room only.

We were huddled next to an ECV and Allie decided she wanted to not be held. She stood on her own for a while, but then we got to the ther side of Downtown Disney where we stopped for more people to get on. Yep, they suggested we squeeze close because they had to fit more people on the bus.

30 more people, which really was ridiculous. Allie was being a monkey, she wanted up, she wanted down, she jumped up and down, she hung from the bars.


Once loading the bus as full as they could get it, it was time for a driver change. They went through their checklist while we got close with our neighbors. On the trip to WL we had stop and go traffic, but fortunately we had enough people packed around us that we couldn't really fall over. Allie insisted on holding on to / hanging from the bar, so it was at this point that she explained that she was being a superhero, and bending the bar with her strength.

By the time we got back to our resort my left arm burned from hanging on to Allie.

We arrived back at WL at 10:30 from our 7:10 dinner ADR. It had been a long trip, and we were ready to be in our room,. The question would be were our keys ready to let us in?

Continued in next update...

 

[MrsTeddy]

I'm really enjoying your TR!

We are trying BOMA for the first time-what do you mean about switching nights to catch the ribs? Are they only available certain nights?

Sounds like a bit of hassle with the cards and credits! Oh no! I trust Disney straightens it all out in the end!

 

[Wood Nymph]

That is an adorable picture of Allie in front of the Living Seas sign. Did you get a chance to see Turtle Talk with Crush? We like to watch it even if we don't have any kids with us.

I'm hoping that upgrading to the Annual Pass wasn't the cause of your RFID problems. When is the latest you can upgrade to an Annual Pass and still have the cost of the tickets credited to the price?

 

[GrandCalifornian]

I'm really enjoying your TR!

We are trying BOMA for the first time-what do you mean about switching nights to catch the ribs? Are they only available certain nights?

Sounds like a bit of hassle with the cards and credits! Oh no! I trust Disney straightens it all out in the end!

We had read on the dining board about rib night at Boma on Saturday. I don't know what other nights had but there was so much variety that I am sure any night would be good.

Stay tuned for the card stories, but yes, Disney always makes it right in the end.

That is an adorable picture of Allie in front of the Living Seas sign. Did you get a chance to see Turtle Talk with Crush? We like to watch it even if we don't have any kids with us.

I'm hoping that upgrading to the Annual Pass wasn't the cause of your RFID problems. When is the latest you can upgrade to an Annual Pass and still have the cost of the tickets credited to the price?

We didn't get to do Turtle Talk this time, but we did it last year and we have it at CA Adventure, so it wasn't a top priority. We do enjoy it though.

We think the pass upgrade was when the card problem started, but we still recommend upgrading as soon as you have used the tickets once so that you can take advantage of the merchandise discounts the whole time. You could wait to upgrade until the last day your tickets are valid, but either way your pass expiration date will be the first day the tickets being upgraded were used.

We have a picture of Allie in that same spot last year, and it is fun to see how much she has grown.

 

[kmedina]

I hope they are working out the issues with the bands. It is such a bummer that you had a rough night transportation wise. That was the epitome of our last trip. We stayed at GF for a week and only rode the monorail twice, because it was down every other time we tried. Busses took forever too, so I decided not to pay the extra fees for a monorail resort this upcoming trip.

I feel for Allie wanting to get up and down in the crowded bus. It is hard enough for an adult to hold on during some of the turns. When Xander was about her age, he was falling over (from the turns and being overly tired). I had to hold him through the ride while trying to prevent myself from falling. It was not pretty. We went through that twice on that trip. Luckily, a nice teenaged boy offered us his seat one of the times.

 

[CuteAsMinnie]

Grand Californian,

I've had a much needed quiet day at home today and I noticed your PTR and TR in your signature on the WL thread. Oh my, what an absolutely wonderful way to spend my quiet afternoon reading your PTR and TR!!!!!

Thank you for sharing your planning and trip experiences with those of us who love to remember our own trips while reading about others.

Allie (and all those dresses!) are adorable!!! Our first trip with our kids was when DD(20) was 2 1/2 and we had a blast following her around everywhere!

Looking forward to reading more! See you on the WL thread!

 

[dismom9761]

Great update
We all get cranky at times

 

[GrandCalifornian]

I hope they are working out the issues with the bands. It is such a bummer that you had a rough night transportation wise. That was the epitome of our last trip. We stayed at GF for a week and only rode the monorail twice, because it was down every other time we tried. Busses took forever too, so I decided not to pay the extra fees for a monorail resort this upcoming trip.

I feel for Allie wanting to get up and down in the crowded bus. It is hard enough for an adult to hold on during some of the turns. When Xander was about her age, he was falling over (from the turns and being overly tired). I had to hold him through the ride while trying to prevent myself from falling. It was not pretty. We went through that twice on that trip. Luckily, a nice teenaged boy offered us his seat one of the times.

Yeah transportation can be tough anywhere. We have generally had good luck though, and that was our worst of this trip.

We had one of those parenting dillemas on the bus where we considered letting her fall, but we realized that picking her up would have been difficult. She was just certain she could hold herself up though, without holding on to anything else, and nobody on that bus could do that.

Grand Californian,

I've had a much needed quiet day at home today and I noticed your PTR and TR in your signature on the WL thread. Oh my, what an absolutely wonderful way to spend my quiet afternoon reading your PTR and TR!!!!!

Thank you for sharing your planning and trip experiences with those of us who love to remember our own trips while reading about others.

Allie (and all those dresses!) are adorable!!! Our first trip with our kids was when DD(20) was 2 1/2 and we had a blast following her around everywhere!

Looking forward to reading more! See you on the WL thread!

Thanks! That is so neat that you enjoyed reading about our trip as part of your quiet afternoon. We are glad that you found our reports. We know that the time will fly, and we enjoy having the trip reports to look back on in the future.

We are in love with WL, and can't picture staying anywhere else since it just feels like home. We'll see you on the thread and maybe someday at the lodge.

Great update
We all get cranky at times

Lol, yes we do. We are glad you enjoyed the update and we will post another one soon.

 

[WDWKOOK]

Gulp, I really fell behind here. I went from luggage sitting in your house to an endless bus ride "back home." But, in-between you had lots of fun with a pretty dress and toes and snacks and a great meal at TE, SS and Boma... And there's lots more to come and I won't be tardy

 

[BarbP]

I'm in. And I LOVE all the pretty dresses that your little princess is wearing. I am assuming that since you love sewing that you made these? We will be at the Villas of Wilderness Lodge in about a month to celebrate our grandson's First Birthday! Woohoo!! So I am really enjoying your report.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Gulp, I really fell behind here. I went from luggage sitting in your house to an endless bus ride "back home." But, in-between you had lots of fun with a pretty dress and toes and snacks and a great meal at TE, SS and Boma... And there's lots more to come and I won't be tardy

Ahh, don't worry. We are way behind in writing updates, but we have a whole lot of pictures uploaded already and we just ordered our PhotoPass download yesterday, so that will give even more pictures to post.

We have lots more to post, since we're not even done with our first full day. We're glad you're here and following along.

I'm in. And I LOVE all the pretty dresses that your little princess is wearing. I am assuming that since you love sewing that you made these? We will be at the Villas of Wilderness Lodge in about a month to celebrate our grandson's First Birthday! Woohoo!! So I am really enjoying your report.

Welcome, and thank you. Yes, Melissa sewed all of the dresses that Allie wore on this trip, and she detailed that process in our Pre Trip Report. She started Disney sewing last year when she made some special dresses for the trip, and she got really into it this year. There were even some dresses that she didn't get to wear on the trip.

Congratulations on the upcoming WL trip. It is such an amazing peaceful place, and worked great for our three generation trip last year. Your grandson and everybody else should find something to love at WL.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Hi everybody. We finally got another update written! We're sorry for the delay, but life gets busy sometimes. We will keep up on the TR, and love sharing the events and pictures with everybody, so let's get to it.

So let's see when we left off we had just gotten back to WL after an epic trip home from AKL via DTD.We were beat from such a long day so we headed right up to our room. When we got there none of our room keys worked! Paul headed down to the front desk to get things sorted out and Allie planked in the hallway in protest.


I went and talked to a very nice CM at the front desk and mentioned the trouble we had been having with the cards since upgrading to the pass. She apologized and reprogrammed our existing keys for the room, which worked to let us in. I made a trip to Roaring Fork for mug refills, and Allie got a bath then we called home to update our parents on our fun day, since it wasn't that late at home yet. We wound up in bed about 11:30

Allie was zonked from our busy day before and she didnt even notice that the Fairy Godmother had visited her overnight.


She wasn't too hard to motivate out of bed once she realized she had an appointment at the Bippity Boppity Boutique

I woke up first and headed down for a mug refill. I stopped and took a picture of the beautiful WL lobby, as I did many times on the way to or from the room.


Roaring Fork wasn't too busy, and I grabbed a plate of Strawberry Mickey Waffles for us to share for breakfast. I also noticed that they now had the multi-color RFID mugs available for sale. I quickly posted this on the WL thread, and then went to check out. Again the tap to pay would not work on my card, and the CM had to get a manager to approve my breakfast purchase. I wasn't thrilled, but I hoped he could explain why this was happening. He explained that it was just part of the new system, and showed the CM how to swipe the card manually.

We all got ready then headed out to the boat dock to head over to the Magic Kingdom.


On the way in we stopped for a pre makeover picture on Main Street:


You can tell she isn't a morning person...
The whole BBB thing is interesting. Last year she was too little to do it, and showed no interest. While we were making ADRs in the spring Melissa and I wondered if she would like it this year. I questioned the money, but Melissa said she might really get into it. Melissa ended up making an ADR for BBB in the castle at MK for our second full day at WDW. Allie still showed no real interest in it until we were watching the Disney planning DVD while packing for our trip. She saw the part about BBB and announced to us that she wanted to do that. We said "We'll see" while we both were glad to see her enthusiasm. That enthusiasm grew as she frequently asked on the way to WDW and at least 10 times during the day Saturday if the could do the "Bibidy Boutique" now? We told her that such things are arranged by the fairy godmothers, and that we would ask them if Allie could do it too.
Melissa had sewn her a Cinderella dress, which took quite a bit of effort because she had to work on it when Allie wasn't around, and she never had the opportunity to have Allie try it on, since the dress was delivered as a surprise by the fairy godmothers to our hotel room wile Allie was sleeping.

Needless to say I was so glad that I booked it. I made her Cinderella dress because she is really sensitive to itchy clothing and I was afraid that a dress from Disney might be too itchy for her. We checked into BBB then waited to be called to the dressing room.


Allie was getting super excited but I could also tell she was nervous. Finally they called her back for her makeover.


She was taking the makeover very seriously, and it was hard to catch her smiling in the pictures, but she was having a good time.


We were both taking lots of pictures, and we the PhotoPass photographer took some good ones too, so there are a bunch of pictures of that half hour.


Finally she was all done, and was very excited to be crowned "Princess Allison"


We went and did the photo shoot afterward, and the photopass photographer there had the same birthday as Allie. She did a great job, and Allie had fun with it. Then it was time for a ride, and Allie chose one of her favorites, the carousel:


Then it was finally time to head into New Fantasyland! Our first stop was fastpasses for the Ariel ride, which were only about a half hour from being ready to use.

The line was only about 20 minutes but we ride this ride so much at home that I really didn't want to wait so the fastpasses worked out great. We walked past BOG where people were already lining up for lunch and back to Gaston's Tavern. Gaston was out greeting people but Allie wasn't interested in waiting.


So we headed into Gaston's tavern and decided to share a Le Fou's brew. It was pretty tasty and Allie REALLY liked it. I didn't like it enough to order one on my own but it was nice to share.


Allie took the opportunity to take some pictures with her camera, which we got for her just before the trip. She had a kids camera that died and we were at Toys-R-Us looking for a replacement, and found that for just a little more we were able to get a real camera, a shock and waterproof Nikon. She loves taking pictures with it, and she used it a lot on the trip.

We then went shopping, and in the little gift shop across from Gaston's tavern we got Allie a foam crown and sword. Of course I needed a sword too to defend myself, which Allie thinks is great fun. We also found a Beast stuffed animal here who had to join us as well, since Allie's favorite plush toy is a stuffed Belle.


The queue for Ariel is beautiful, they really did a great job making you feel like you are going into the movie.




The ride itself? Exactly the same as the one in California. I had heard this so I expected it but yup it's the same.

Here is my buddy Ursula, it is hard to get a great shot of her because it seems her eyes are always closed or she's throwing her arms around but she cooperated this day.


Since getting her new camera before the trip, Melissa has been playing with photographing characters on Disney dark rides, and Ursula can be a tough one.

After the ride, it was time to head for another leftover thing that we wanted to do last year but never made it to. We wanted lunch from Pecos Bill's



Once again we had to swipe our tap to pay card manually, and the CM suggested we talk to a manager at our resort if we were staying longer (and we had a week to go!) The burger wasn't bad, but I guess I had it worked up to be more in my head because I was a little disappointed. There was nothing wrong with it, it just wasn't the best Disney park burger I've had. I did enjoy the fries and cake though, and it was nice to have a cool place to sit. That restaurant seating area is huge, but we were able to get a table inside in one of the back corners.

I really enjoyed my sandwich and Allie made friends with the table next to us. She informed them that she was a princess and had been to BBB earlier in the day.

This was the first time of many during the trip where Allie would insist on making friends with total strangers. She has a gift for that.

After lunch we were on to more adventures, but we'll cover those in the next update...