Some pixie dust, some magic, and our dreams came true! Sept 20-27 W/Pics *COMPLETED*

[mkluvsmickey]

Another great update. The girls look like they are having lots of fun!

 

[GraceLuvsWDW]

Thanks for the BOO ProudMommyof2!!

 

[GraceLuvsWDW]

I wanted to take a moment in this trip report to discuss shoes. Now all of you Dissers out there know that a WDW trip can be made or broken by the shoes you choose to wear. I chose to take a pair of Croc Capris:

And a pair of Merrell Gardena Thongs:

Now I know some of you will say any type of flip flops are a no-no for a trip of this magnitude. But everyone on the boards swore by Crocs, saying they never had blisters. Well, Day 1-on our marathon to the Cape May Cafe and back I was wearing the Croc Capris. That night I had blisters on the bottom of every one of my toes!

So the next day I wore the Merrells and my feet felt GREAT! The only problem I ran into with the Merrells was on the Disney MGM Day where it rained and the Merrells were not water shoes-they are suede uppers and footbed. So the suede began to stink and din't dry out very quickly.

So, in conclusion, neither one of these shoes are the perfect WDW shoe in my opinion. Some days I wished I had brought my tennis shoes. Other days it's good to have water shoes (think Splash Mountain).

Anyway, Just my 2 cents...Mayb Traci will log on and tell about her shoes because I never heard her complain about her feet at all.

I'll post more trip report tonight.

Thanks to everyone for the comments and for all of you out there reading the report.

 

[Tatum@disney]

I wore the Crocs Athens (brand new). They were fine. After the rainy day and slippin' around in them, they did become a bit uncomfortable. But, no blisters! I highly reccomend tennis shoes!

 

[princessreilly]

CHAPTER TWO-Friday September 21st
I had brought large canvas bags that I ordered from Disney Shopping.com with their names embroidered on them, stuffed with 2 tshirts, Ariel pajamas, misters, wallets with Disney dollars in them, glow sticks, lanyards with pins, Cinderella pens, Princess beach towels, princess fanny packs, and large stuffed Minnie dolls. I set the bags up with cards from Tinkerbell and sprinkled “pixie dust” (aka glitter) around.

I love these! They are so cute. I'm working on DDs(5) and DSs(1) tinkerbell gifts right now. (I'm stealing your idea)! Hope you don't mind!!

 

[Silly Girl]

I'm really enjoying your trip report. The girls are adorable!! I am curious though, where did you get the girls lanyards? My girls have decided they would like to get into the pin trading thing and I would like to get them lanyards before our trip and thought yours were very cute!!!

 

[GraceLuvsWDW]

I love these! They are so cute. I'm working on DDs(5) and DSs(1) tinkerbell gifts right now. (I'm stealing your idea)! Hope you don't mind!!

princessreily I don't mind at all. I'm flattered actually. I thought that doing the bags would satisfy a lot of their need for souveniers and it did. I bought all of it at disneyshopping.com at clearance prices. The bags were $8.00 each including monogramming and everything else like the tshirts, pj's and towels were $5.00 each! You can't find prices like that at WDW. The cheapest shirt at WDW was $19

 

[byoung]

Great report and pictures.

 

[GraceLuvsWDW]

I am curious though, where did you get the girls lanyards? My girls have decided they would like to get into the pin trading thing and I would like to get them lanyards before our trip and thought yours were very cute!!!

I bought the lanyards and pins on ebay. After I bought them I was worried they were fakes and couldn't be traded at the parks but all the castmembers traded for them graciously. I only paid about $2.00 per pin and the lanyards came with them.

You can get the lanyards at the parks for a reasonable amount-around $6.00.

Traci and I thought the girls were very cute trading pins and it actually enhanced our interaction with castmembers becasue we would actually speak to them as the girls were trading. We would lock the pins we liked at night. Pin locks are expensive-$8.00 for 10 but it was worth it not to lose the valuable pins we colleted. The ones we didn't like we would keep the regular black Mickey head backs on so they could trade. That was our little way of participating in the pin trading.

It was funny, one of the last nights we were there Tatum had traded and received a Castaway Cay pin that I loved and Grace had a baby Jasmine or something like that so we traded the girls pins. The next morning they noticed what we had done and demanded we reverse the trade! They were really into it.

Good luck finding some pins!

 

[GraceLuvsWDW]

After 50’s PT we didn’t really have a plan so we wandered down to the Streets of America and it was deserted. The rain really drove everyone out of the park. We tried to get into Honey I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set Playground but it was closed due to rain.
Here’s a picture from near the play area:

We played with the umbrella from Singing In the Rain:

and then decided to head over to Animation courtyard to see if any characters were out. On the way we met Kim Possible (we don’t really know who she is but Tatum is excited to get anyone’s autograph)-I felt sorry for Kim Possible-there was no one anywhere near her and our kids weren’t exactly fans. She was very nice to us.

We also stopped to admire the foot, hand and other prints outside The Great Movie Ride:

The characters were all inside the Animation building due to the rain so we decided to go inside and see who’s there. We first come across JoJo and Goliath! They were fun and we got their autographs.

 

[GraceLuvsWDW]

Tatum goes to meet the Impossibles(?)

while Grace decides to meet the Little Einsteins.
I met Emile:

And the girls had a lot of fun coloring the characters on the computers. We had trouble getting them away from these things:

Then Tatum met Emile:

We finally made our way out and over to the Playhouse Disney Theatre to see that show, but before we did we bought the girls some charm bracelets that were the best souvenier we bought (they were $6.00 for the bracelet and $3.50 for each charm and we bought charms each day for the rest of our stay):

After Playhouse Disney we thought we’d go make Fantasmic and made the long trek into the theatre. Once inside, the girls seemed tired and cranky and it was PACKED so we decided to leave before it began. We found our rental car and made it back to Old Key West around 8:15pm. Traci fed the girls some Lunchables we ordered with the Garden Grocer order and I went to Goods To Go to get 2 cheeseburgers for us. I ordered the cheeseburgers and key lime pies and they gave me a pager to let me know when the food would be done so I went into the Conch Flats General Store to look around. I bought the girls some cotton candy because, hey we were on vacation (and I had 2 snack credits I needed to use before midnight to use all the free dining credits on our original Coronado Springs stay)!

We gave the girls a bath in the HUGE Jacuzzi bathtub and they loved it. We then put them to bed and we stayed up and played cards and drank some wine.
Another great Day! And up tomorrow is Epcot! Will the girls ride Test Track? Our BEST character day is up next!

 

[Tatum@disney]

Okay, apparently I need to post more replies before they let me post some pics. So stay with me..some of my post will be uninteresting. But, my favorite days a coming up!

 

[Tatum@disney]

Oh yeah, Jen thanks for sharing that cheesy "singing in the rain" pic!

 

[princessreilly]

Cute pictures!

 

[GraceLuvsWDW]

Monday September 24th

I set my alarm for 7:30, woke up, threw my hair up in a ponytail, washed my face, brushed my teeth and brewed some coffee in our full kitchen! We had originally planned to be in WDW from 9/23-27/07 on rented points but added the 9/20-23/07 when they announced free dining. It was just too good to pass up! So I had originally planned these next four days commando style. For those of you who don’t know what commando style is-it is planning every minute of your trip to optimize your touring plan. The theory is, if you take advantage of hitting the rides at the exact right time you’ll be able to hit more and wait in less lines. This is a la Tour Guide Mike and/or Unofficial Guide. Our plan for today was to be at Epcot at rope drop.
Traci woke up and got ready and we waited until the last minute to wake the girls up, change their clothes and herd them out the door. Grace is always cranky in the morning so the less time we have to listen to her crankiness the better. We had ordered Pop Tarts in the grocery order and that’s what the girls had for breakfast.
We drove to Epcot and arrived right at 9am. Everyone was heading to Soarin’ or Test Track so we decided to go directly to The Seas with Nemo since we had already ridden Soarin and the girls proclaimed there would be no more soarin’ on this vacation.

We walked through the l-o-n-g queue and hopped right into our clamshells.

The ride was okay. Nothing spectacular. The spectacular sights are after Nemo when you explore the Seas. There is a room on the second floor you walk into that is totally surrounded by fish, above you and all around you. Traci took the girls on Nemo a second time while I sat and took a moment to be amazed at the beautiful habitat, give thanks for the trip we were having, and just generally take a moment of reflection and solitude. I highly recommend spending some quiet time here if you get the chance.
I then explored the marine laboratory which was very interesting.

I went downstairs to meet up with the girls again and we explored downstairs for a while.

We lined up for the first showing for Turtle Talk with Crush and waited about 10 minutes. The girls were not that impressed with this show, it is more geared towards elementary and middle schoolers (and the parents had a few laughs).
After Crush, Traci wanted to do Figment so we walked over there and rode that ride with no wait. After Figment, Traci and the girls explored the Kodak What If Labs and sent emails to various people. I just remebered that no one mentioned getting the emails and the ones I sent myself never showed up.?! While they were in the What If Lab I walked over to Test Track and retreived 4 fastpasses. The standby time at Test Track at that time was only 20 minutes and it was 10:30am. Our fastpass come back time was 11:30am and we had lunch ADR’s for 11:50.
I walked back to the What If Lab and noticed on the way how empty the park seemed at that time.
Our plan was to head over to Universe of Energy but it had a line and as we were waiting Tatum decided to get a little cranky. She was hungry. We walked over to the misters and water play area that is in front of Mission:Space and Grace had a great time playing in the water. She was completely drenched! Tatum was trying to hold it together until lunch.

At 11:30 we walked over to Test Track and they measured the girls to make sure they were tall enough ride, we flashed our fastpasss at the entrance and made our way to the loading area right before the preshow. There was some confusion and no one was manning the Fastpass section so we (and others) walked in without redeeming the fastpasses. We watched the preshow, made it through the short queue after the preshow and loaded into the car, Traci and the girls in the backseat, and I rode in the front.

I won’t spoil the fun for those of you who haven’t ridden it but let me tell you-the ride is GREAT! All of us LOVED it, it was so much fun. And so exhilarating!

Now we were all really hungry so we made our way to Norway for the Akershus Princess Storybook Lunch.

 

[Tatum@disney]

I was able to get both emails that I sent at epcot. Test Track ya-hoo!!!

 

[Tatum@disney]

 

[Tatum@disney]

For those who have not been to Epcot in 15 years....Figment and Journey into imagination was kinda a let down! I remembered it quite differently.

 

[Tatum@disney]

 

[GraceLuvsWDW]

oh come on! Yours was no where NEAR as bad as mine!