Stitch and Crystal do WDW - FINALLY finished~!

[WDW Poly Princess]

My sides hurt from laughing - your report is great!!

Would love to bring you along on vacation - you'd fit right in with our "crazy" family - my daughter is our "photographer" and am showing her pics of your report, she has an eye for detail like you do. Can't wait for more reports!!

Hey, I'll gladly go along! I'm easy to care for, don't eat much, and totally potty trained!

 

[WDW Poly Princess]

Yeesh, we’re still on Day 2? This is becoming a novel!

When we last left our heros, they were now back on track to Pirates of the Caribbean.

“This is a ride?” Katie asked, in honor of every stupid Disney visitor who came before us.

“Nah, Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom are in that building in person to reenact the movie for us.”

We both stopped for a minute to gaze dreamy-eyed at the building, thinking just how beautiful that would be. Sorry for the thirty-seven stroller-pedestrian collisions I’m sure were caused by two people stopping suddenly in the middle of an Adventureland walkway. Depp and Bloom just have that kind of power.

Anyway, while zooming through the line to Pirates (because it was empty, not because we’re notorious line cutters), we came upon this little table and chairs. It was just sitting there in the line, with no apparent purpose that we could figure out. Maybe for when the line was hours long, people could have pizza delivered to their spot in line, and sit here to eat? Or so that random games of Texas Hold Em poker could be played in line? Or for very public baby diaper changings? Whatever it was for, we had to have a picture of it:

Pirates was the first ride of the trip to remind us that “no bad dancing is allowed”.

I had actually had the foresight to e-mail Katie the lyrics to the song before the trip, so that we could study up and be fully prepared to sing along. I’m sure that the other people in the boat appreciated the effort we put into it.

At the end of the ride is, of course, a gift shop. In that gift shop, we did exactly what you are supposed to do in gift shops- play with the toys!

Our next stop was the Haunted Mansion to pick up some hitchhiking ghosts, and mourn the loss of the bat they replaced in the queue area.

I actually stopped to feel of the wall near the exit hallway- the rocks there are in fact fake! (See the “stupid overheard stuff at WDW” thread for an amusing story of a man who whacked his head into the wall after discovering this.)

As we were walking through the hallway that leads out, I think I scared a few people by yelling “Lizard!” and stopping suddenly. Hey, at least I didn’t yell anything about flaming elephants, okay? There was a little lizard crawling on the outside of the window, so that all that was visible from here was his little lizard shadow. He looked like a little lizard ghost! Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture, so you’ll just have to trust me on the whole lizard ghost thing. (I saw about eight million lizards on this trip, and yes, I stopped and yelled “LIZARD!” with various amounts of pointing every time. You would think I’d never seen a reptile before.)

We wandered through Fantasyland and somehow ended up on It’s A Small World.

Now with fresh glitter!

In the last room, we were both a little confused as to what country it was supposed to be (it’s the one with dolls from every country, where they’ve all come together). When we finally figured that out, I admitted that at first I thought it was the “We are from cold countries!” room, because of the color scheme.

So did Katie.

We are from cold countries!

I wanted to point out the “Sa Wat De Krap” sign to Katie, but we couldn’t find it. Instead, we found something much better!

Ma’assalama! This became our new favorite word. I can’t break it up into separate words, or the moderators might kick me, but feel free to use it like this:

“I just bought these jeans, but they don’t fit anymore! Ma’assalama!”

In nice terms, we translate it as “My posterior region resembles a creature not unlike an alpaca.” Ma’assalama!

(I should point out that Katie took the Ma’assalama picture- that’s why you can see my camera in it. My pictures turned out all fuzzy. This is making me seriously doubt my skillz as a photographer.)

If you’ve ever noticed the little bridge that goes over the ride at the entrance, you’ll know that there’s a CM sitting up there that controls things (or maybe just sits up there?). Either way, ours was the spitting image of Britney Spears (except I’m pretty sure she was wearing shoes). I tried to take a sly picture of her as I got out of the boat, but this is how that turned out:

I guess you’ll just have to trust me on the whole Britney thing, too.

We stopped in Tinkerbell’s Treasures, where I tried to show Katie the Tink in the dresser. Guess what? It was just dark in there. I tried to take a photo, but…. Well, you can probably guess by now:

You people who have posted the pictures of Tink in the keyhole—How did you DO that? I am in awe of you. Know that.

How great is it that this CM gets to work with Peter Pan?

It was now after 3:30, which meant two things: 1) we were getting cranky and needed a nap, and 2) It was now late enough to go check in at OKW!

We hopped on the bus from MK to OKW, and little did we know we were in for a long ride! We had no idea which bus stop we needed, and the trip around the resort seemed to take forever! At each stop we would crane our necks around looking for something that resembled a place where we would check in. When we finally found the stop we needed, the line to check in was huge! It took about an hour total between when we pulled into the resort and when I finally had my keys.

Voila, the long check-in line. Given that I work front desk (and am in fact typing this up at work because we have, I kid you not, four rooms rented tonight), that line freaked me out. “Those poor front desk people!” I kept saying, now feeling really guilty for forgetting to buy candy for them.

After getting checked in, we checked to see if Goods had cheesecake (they didn’t. I was seriously craving cheesecake today!) and then went to the bus stop to wait for a bus that would take us to the other side of the resort (My reservation had listed a bunch of different building numbers within walking distance of the hospitality house. The girl at check-in squinted for a while and then asked if being on 3rd floor was important. Nope! I’ll take whatever floor as long as I can be near here, since I have no car. She squinted at the computer some more, did some scrolling, and then asked if a smoking room would be okay. Nope, Katie and I both have asthma, so a smoking room was out. She didn’t ask any more questions, so I assumed that she found something close, but I when she showed me the building location on the map, it was almost as far away as you could get!)

As we walked out to the bus stop, I spotted my bags sitting in a pile near Bell Services, under a sign that said “C”. Um, shouldn’t those be filed under my *last* name, not my first? And hey, isn’t it kind of weird that they have all of these bags just sitting out? They didn’t really appear to be watched at all (although knowing Disney they had eighty secret cast members guarding them silently). I waved to my bags, just in case I never saw them again, and then stopped by the bell services desk to ask if they could drop them off in my room.

After waiting a few minutes for the internal resort bus, I asked Katie if she wanted to just go straight to Epcot. We figured that by the time we got an internal bus, found the room, got settled in, and then got back to the bus stop, it would be at least seventy three hours later, so if we wanted to get to Epcot sometime today, we should probably just go now. The bus gods must have smiled upon this decision, because an Epcot bus appeared shortly after. However, in the short time we were waiting, we were lucky enough to bear witness to some great wisdom. A little girl was playing at the bus stop, and started trying to take her dress off. Her mom came over and said “Okay, remember rule #1? We don’t take our clothes off!” We decided that sounded like a good rule, and adopted it as our rule #1 for the day as well.

On the bus to Epcot, we were treated to the entertainment of a little girl around the age of 5 who was singing every Disney song she knew. Very cute!

We started our Epcot night by hopping on SSE, and then heading over to Innoventions East to send some internet postcards. Somehow the part where it takes your picture came before we were ready, so the photo ended up being of Katie not in it (she jumped out of the way), and me looking over at her and laughing, totally confused by her behavior.

I won’t point out what it looks like I am doing to the manatee in this photo.

The next one turned out slightly better

Our next stop was the Land, where I was still in search of cheesecake, and Katie was in search of real food. Nothing sounded good at the time, so we checked the Soarin wait (60 min) The fastpasses were already gone for the day (It was 6pm), so we put it on our “to do later” list.

I was glad to see that the balloons were back, even though they’d been through a bit of a makeover. (On my last trip, they had been in the midst of building Soarin, and the balloons were gone! The ceiling had looked so empty without them!)

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big fan of the new look here. Before it was so peaceful, with the fountain and the prettiness! Now, it looks like this:

 

[WDW Poly Princess]

Since Soarin was out of the question for now, we decided to start our tour of the World Showcase.

“Oh! Wow! They have McNuggets!” Katie exclaimed as we passed the McDonalds stand at the Showcase entrance.

“You’re a big McNugget fan?” It was an awful lot of excitement for chicken.

“Actually, I don’t like them much. I have no idea why I got that excited.”

Ten minutes later, Katie decided she wanted some McNuggets, so we went back to buy them. My main theory right now is that McDonalds uses some kind of subliminal message to convince perfectly normal people that they want McNuggets, even when they are standing in a showcase of really good food from around the world.

We wandered through Canada, saying “eeh?” a lot, and then went into the toy store in the UK. It was in this store that we saw two very good looking men. We did what any normal girl would do and… tried to take pictures of them without them noticing.

“I think we just crossed some kind of line,” I said to Katie with shame after clicking the camera button.

“Hey, it’s only wrong if you get caught.” Words to live by- this became rule #2. (We added a rule #3 later that day, but we both managed to forget what it was by the end of the day, and we never did remember it.) We gave up man watching and instead amused ourselves with the books.

Our next stop was to go visit our beloved “botany garden”. If you read my last trip report, you hopefully already get the joke, but if you didn’t, you can either go here and read the report, or go here and read just the botany day, or just smile and nod and pretend you understand. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

(insert jeopardy music here.)

Oh, fine, I’ll summarize for the truly lazy amongst you. We were sitting in the little garden in the UK trying to figure out what the different herbs were. After a series of questions like “Do you think this is dill? Hey, is that parsley?” I asked Katie if she thought we could get back into the tea shop through that door. Her response? “I don’t know, I’m not a botanist!”

Katie’s “I don’t know, I’m not a botanist!” face.

I am blinded by the beauty of botany!

Katie ponders the botany

And so do I. Hummm, botany.

I have absolutely no explanation for this photo other than that botany sometimes makes you giddy.

“And here we have a lovely example of botany!”

Again, I have no explanation.

The famous door we could in fact get back to the tea shop through.

After getting our fill of botany, we walked over to France. Is it just me, or aren’t there supposed to be more lights here?

This is what happens when you try to take a picture of the scenery, and Katie thinks she should be in it. (In fact, Katie became so well trained that whenever I would stop and say “I’m going to stop and take a pictures!” she would pose. It became Pavlovian, really.)

We went to the Boulangerie Patissirie, where I got chocolate mousse, and Katie got hot chocolate. It was here that I discovered that the rumors were true- the silverware at WDW *IS* now all black! The horror!

But it still helps you eat mousse, so I guess all black silverware is acceptable.


We followed the signs to “additional seating” which led to the France shop. How weird! I’ve been in this shop a million times before, and never noticed there was seating.

There is also this sculpture!

Just after we sat down, Katie took a big sip of her hot chocolate, and then made a face. I didn’t know at the time, but this was the “Oh my gosh this is REALLY hot, should I spit it out and look like a freak, or swallow it and burn my mouth?” face. It’s possible that her tongue still hurts. Be warned- the hot chocolate is HOT!

“Hey,” I asked, after pondering the sculpture for a while, “What’s that big hunk of goop next to the sculpture?”

“Um, clay?” Katie guessed.

“But why would you have clay if you are making that kind of sculpture?”

We never did figure it out.

 

[WDW Poly Princess]

The mousse was too rich for me to eat much of, but instead of waste it, I got a bag to stick it in. Katie said that I was going to be one of those old ladies who carries ziplock bags to buffets. If all of the food stashing I did on this trip is any indication, I should start stocking up on plastic bags and roomy purses now.

If you ever took geography, you know that if you have just walked through France, you will inevitably run into Morocco. Thus, that’s where we now were.

“Look! You can tell by my hat that we are in Morocco!”

I heard drumming, so we followed it to see where it was coming from, and found that the people working at the kidcot station were amusing themselves by playing the drums and talking guests into dancing- fun!

We kept wandering around Morocco, but the sounds of live drumming kept drawing me back. Apparently I’ve been conditioned! Of course when the guys working there would ask if I wanted to dance, I couldn’t- For some reason I’m great at doing choreographed stuff, but when it comes to improvising, somehow everything I know flies out the window!

Since we were spending so much time in the pavilion, we ended up talking to one of the CMs who worked there, and another who was off work and waiting for the first to finish up. (We’ll call the guy Joe to protect the innocent.) They told us that Joe would be getting off work in about 20 minutes, and invited us to go hang out in the Showcase with them. How often do you get to hang out with people from Morocco? Not too often if you’re us! We decided to walk around for a while, and told them we’d be back by the time he was finished.

After some wandering, Katie decided that she was going to die of thirst, so we went over to the Tangerine Café to grab a coke. As we were walking out that way (it’s outside the “gates” of Morocco, back towards the lagoon), we saw Joe and his friend wave at us, and considered running back to tell them that we weren’t leaving, just getting a drink, but figured they’d see us go in the restaurant. Of course, as luck goes, when we went back to where they had been, they were gone! We asked the guy who was now working if he was gone.

“Gone? Yeah, he’s gone. Joe is dead.” Um, I think something was lost in the translation. You? Anyway, we figured out after a little more conversation with the guy that Joe had already left. We felt really bad, since we were sure he thought we had abandoned them! We waited around for a few minutes, just in case he was just off changing clothes, but we never saw him. We decided to just head off around the world, and keep an eye out for them as we went.

We were mostly just walking along around the lagoon, occasionally stopping in a shop, but mostly just making a quick loop, since we were getting tired, and ready to call it a day. As we were walking through America, all of the Candlelight Processional singers were walking into the theater. They come from one side of the walkway, and cross over, which means that if you get there at the wrong time, as we had, you have to wait while 300 people walk in front of you- it looked like a never-ending line coming from backstage!

Over in China, we had to stop for pictures with “Party Buddha”. That made me miss Nate (Aerobics on the DIS and Passporter boards), since we haven’t vacationed at the same time in years, and it was with him that I originally developed my friendship with Party Buddha. I couldn’t miss him too long, though, because it’s impossible to be unhappy when you’re hanging out with Party Buddha. You have to throw your arms in the air and way “woohoo!” It’s the law.

We have a rule that even if you’re just breezing through the showcase on your way out, you have to stop in Norway. There are very pretty men in Norway. It is not allowed to just walk past. Also, when walking around in Norway, you can’t help but recite “You are not the first to pass this way…nor will you be the last.” The only problem was that when Katie said it, she sounded like the Maelstrom narrator, but when I said it, I sounded like the Swedish Chef.

I’m pretty sure that this was supposed to be a photo of a good looking Norway CM. Why are none of my “cute boy” pictures turning out?

I had no idea where we took this next picture until I looked at the info for the files (My camera is nice enough to tell you what time and date each picture was taken! So handy!) With a little detective work, I figured out that we took them while we were being held captive…err… while we were waiting to get out of the holding area in Norway! (I’m pretty sure they broadcast subliminal “You want to stay for the movie!” messages while they’re keeping you in there.)

Let’s throw in some pictures of strangers enjoying Norway while we’re at it!

As soon as the doors to the movie theater opened, we scurried through and back out into the free world, where we then made a right and set off for Mexico.

I have been obsessing over those cool wood sculptures in Mexico for a whole year now. I gaze at my pictures from last year and kick myself for not buying one. This year I actually set aside a $40 budget to buy one with. So, Katie waited patiently as I spent fourteen hours examining them:

I was particularly fond of this horse-unicorn-pegasus type one

The zebra was cute, too.

Oh no, they were all cute!

I decided to think about it for a while, and come back to buy one another day. So, we hopped on the Mexico boat ride, something we would do a countless number of times on this trip.

We got a weird boat made to accommodate a wheelchair, though, so Katie and I were separated by a big wide aisle, which meant we had to yell our snarky comments back and forth. Snarky comments just aren’t as funny when you can’t use your inside voice and make them under your breath!

We momentarily considered staying for Illuminations, but then decided we were much too tired, so we called it a night. Katie drove home, and I took the bus over to OKW to finally see my room.

Now I am a smart girl, but OKW confused the heck outta me. I got off at the right bus stop, and kept following the signs that pointed towards my building number. Just finding the right building took about ten minutes, but to my credit it was dark, and I had never been there before! Now you would think that once I found the right building, finding my room would be easy, right? Hah! Now if you are at PO-R or All Stars, for example, once you find your building, you can then take the elevator or stairs to your floor, and find your room from there. Each building at OKW is broken up, however, an each staircase leads up to only two rooms! So I would climb a staircase, get up to the second floor, and find that I couldn’t get to my room that way! After about two staircases, I discovered the signs that told you which rooms were upstairs. Ohhhh! I located the 4225/4226 staircase, and from there finding my room was much easier!

(pssst! It’s this one!)

It was awfully dark out, so I couldn’t really tell what I had a view of, but it looked like it might be cool:

I noticed that my bags were not in my room, so I called bell services, who said they would bring them right up. Oh yay, they hadn’t been stolen! While I was waiting for them to arrive, I took a few pictures of the room:

the little kitchenette

and the closet

The man who delivered my bags told me that the strap on the laptop bag was broken when it got there, and I assured him that it had broken days before, which made him look relieved that I wasn’t about to yell at him. (Given that I work in a hotel, I know that he must have been expecting me to be mad, since I’ve been yelled at by hotel guests for every circumstance you can imagine!) I gave the relieved kid a few dollars, turned the TV on to watch Grey’s Anatomy, and pulled my leftover chocolate mousse out of my bag. (For the record, chocolate mousse travels well! It just sticks to the inside of the cup where it belongs. Good to know for the future!)

I was amazed when I took off my shoes and saw my little toe- there was a blister so big that my toe had doubled in size! You mean I wore ugly shoes all day and still got a blister? Unfair!

Day 2 Summary:
Number of Photos Taken: 325
Number of videos taken: 15
Number of new international friends made, and possibly offended: 2

 

[declansdad]

your reports are killing me!


Keep'um coming.

 

[Cinerama]

M'assaslama since I've eaten about 300 Christmas cookies in the last 3 days.
Keep the reports coming.....

 

[MichelleVW]

Girl you are too funny!!! I am seriously cracking up over your trip report...probably because you and your friend sound so much like me and my best friend. We come up with rules and laugh over silly stuff too...I love all the pictures in your reports too.

keep the reports coming!!!

 

[Velsignet]

I won’t point out what it looks like I am doing to the manatee in this photo.


...and I won't point out that it's NOT a manatee! Heheh. I know, I know, you're not a botanist.

(Guess who joined the DISboards so I can make snarky comments about the trip report! Hooray!)


Katie

 

[WDW Poly Princess]

(Guess who joined the DISboards so I can make snarky comments about the trip report! Hooray!)

Hooray! It's always good to have a partner in crime!

Day 3 is coming along slowly! Soon work will be closed for the winter, and I'll have tons of time to write (and contemplate the wonders of unemployment!)

 

[fizz13]

I have an asthma attack from laughing so hard at your report (don't worry, my medication is with me at all times). Just when WDW thought they had politically corrected IASW you found a flaw .

Fantastic trip report, will be looking out for more, especially now there are two of you to write it. Welcome to the DIS Katie!!

Claire xx

 

[Alysa]

cute report - love it!

 

[swankybeth]

Great report, really looking forward to more. Welcome, Katie, feel free to post many snarky comments!

 

[tazz23]

one of the best trip reports ive read in ages! Love the comments and the silly photos can't wait to read more!

 

[Velsignet]

I have been obsessing over those cool wood sculptures in Mexico for a whole year now. I gaze at my pictures from last year and kick myself for not buying one. This year I actually set aside a $40 budget to buy one with. So, Katie waited patiently as I spent fourteen hours examining them...

Nah, it wasn't fourteen. More like thirteen.

So Crystal, which one did you end up buying this time?


It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

 

[WDW Poly Princess]

Hey guys!

Sorry for any technical difficulties with the pictures the last couple of days- my web site host has this charming habit of shutting me down when I hit 80% of my bandwidth, which happened on the 31st. It should have come back up on the 1st, but it doesn't look like it has yet! Hopefully soon!

And Katie, I am expecting that $250 dragon carving as a late Christmas present! I will call it... "Go-zirra!"

 

[wilma-bride]

What a fantastic report - funny, detailed and your photos are amazing. You pick up on so much detail that the rest of us miss by rushing around, trying to ride as many rides as possible. What a shame none of your 'cute guy' photos turned out though - are you sure you didn't imagine them

Your cats are gorgeous, by the way

 

[WDW Poly Princess]

Sorry for the delay! Let’s get this show back on the road!

Day 3

Today started out with a lazy kind of morning. Mickey called at 9, but then I laid around in bed for about half an hour, before finally getting up and dressed. I considered going up to Goods for breakfast, but I just wasn’t up for a bus ride yet, so I checked the Turtle Shack, since it was right near my building, but it was closed.

Ha ha, no snacks for you, suckers!

There were a few light drops of rain coming down, so I retreated back to my room. Katie called and said she would be out about noon, so I spent the next two hours hanging out, uploading photos, checking my e-mail (I had housekeeping bring up an Ethernet cable), and watching The Price Is Right. I also spent some time amusing myself by calling Mom and sending her pictures through e-mail while we talked. I love having my computer on vacation!

Stitch checks his thread on the theme park board for any new requests.


Hanging out in the room, I discovered that OKW has HUGE peepholes for peering outside! Normal hotel rooms have ones a little smaller than a dime, but these were larger than a quarter! It was so big I was able to take photos through it!

Now that it was daylight, I was able to actually see the view from my balcony- not bad!

Katie arrived a little after 12:30, and we hopped the bus to Animal Kingdom.

I stopped to see the black swan that had been bathing yesterday when I tried to take his picture, and today he was napping.

The rain started pouring as soon as we got past the oasis and into the park, so we ducked into a shop to try to get as close to Pizzafari as we could without going outside. (We were starving, and needed pizza!) We decided to kill some time in there playing with the hats

“This is my serious adventurer hat.”

We made it to Pizzafari without drowning (amazingly!), and really liked the decorations inside.

Katie “swims with the fishes”

The pizza here was different from any other WDW pizza I’ve seen. We split a cheese one, which worked perfectly.

When we finished eating, it was still raining pretty hard, so we scurried over to Tough to Be a Bug, dodging raindrops on our way. “Drowning in the rain and jumping over puddles isn’t bad, it’s just an adventure!” We hummed the Adventurer’s Club theme song as we forded streams and tried not to think about what our hair looked like soaking wet. Instead, we swam..err..walked… through the trails into the tree, which was blissfully dry inside!

(Um, did I mention it was raining today? In fact, here's Katie's take on the day: "I've been dredging my brain for Day 3 memories, and here's all I came up with: IT RAINED. A LOT.")

We posed for the required Bug Glasses Photos, and made Stitch do the same thing.

By the time we got out of the show, the rain had let up, so we made our way over to Asia, stopping to Oooh and Ahh over the distant Everest.

This is not a mountain, but it is still pretty!

 

[WDW Poly Princess]

Over in Asia, we decided to become adventurous jungle explorers, and do the Maharajah Jungle Trek. You can tell we were adventurers by our adventurous photos (and the hidden flasks of Kungaloosh!)

“Look at the adventure I am having with this bamboo!”

“Wow, look what I discovered!”


As we trekked deeper into this adventurous Asian forest, we came upon this thing.

We still don’t really know what he was. We invited him to join us on our adventure, but he was apparently not the adventurous sort.

Who am I? What am I? Such deep questions.

Through the bat room (Love them!) and down to the tigers.

Why do the tigers appear to be grazing?

While we were watching the tigers, Katie suddenly poked me and pointed discreetly, looking all excited. At first I expected that she was pointing to some cool animal she had spotted, but nope, she was pointing to a nun who was walking down the path. “We have a sister!” (Katie and I decided a while back that maybe we should just give up on dating and join a convent. Our plan is to be cool nuns with a convent built in Epcot, where we will study botany. You have your dreams, we have ours!) We kind of wanted to follow the nun around and see what kind of good things she was off doing today, and maybe pick up a few pointers, but we have a really short attention span, so we just went back to watching the animals.

I can’t remember what these guys were called, but the dark brown one is the only male in a herd of 15 females. We named him the Pimp Deer.

“Check out all my honeys, yo.”

Do you think he says Moo, too?

We followed the new path all the way out towards Everest to get a closer look:

Hello, I am a mountain. You can call me Everest.

Hi, I am Katie, and this is a mountain!

Look, us with a mountain!

Look at how the shape of the altar mirrors the shape of Everest! Nifty!

We decided to call it a day at AK and go over to Epcot. That part coming soon!

 

[WDW Poly Princess]

Around 3pm, we decided to hop a bus over to Epcot.

We hurried over to Soarin, hoping for fast passes, but they were already gone for the day. Good thing I still had almost a week left!

We ventured into the Living Seas, hoping to go see Crush, but the line was huge! So, instead we watched the sting ray feeding that was going on. The CM said that the rays had been trained to come up and touch their nose to a red cup that the person in the water was holding in order to get their piece of food. This was supposed to teach them that they were only being fed if they touched a red cup, and therefore keep them from swarming around just anyone who was in the water and expecting food. I never knew sting rays were smart enough to be trained like that!

Next we went back over to Innoventions to send ourselves more internet postcards.

Gotta get stitch in the picture!

We tried to get one with Stitch flying through the air…

…but the camera obviously doesn’t do well with movement! Now that we knew that…

We were both starting to get hungry again, but couldn’t decide what we wanted to eat, so we decided to just start our way around the Showcase, and stop when we found something that looked good.

In Mexico, I stopped to check out the carvings again, still trying to decide which one I wanted. I want them all!

I was in love with this dragon, but he was $250!

I love the little baby opossums hanging from the mom!

With the CM who was painting them. She said it takes about 5 hours to paint an average one.


These next two weren’t for sale, just in a display case. I love them, though!

Grrrrr! I am a big green dragonish thing! Fear me!

“Hola!”

Over in Norway, we went into the bakery to search for food, and found some amazing looking strawberry cheesecake!

Some of the other offerings inside Kringala bakery

We sat outside to eat the cheesecake (YUM!), and then did some more exploring in Norway.

They’ve changed the exhibit inside the stave church to one about Vikings.

Diet coke: the official beverage of Vikings everywhere.

What’s up with this mannequin’s pose?

Up next, China!

We found some really pretty fans on a cart outside the shop

China now has some lucky cats similar to the ones in Japan

 

[MaMa3Princess]

Your trip report is wonderful. I really loved looking at your pictures, makes me wonder if I will ever get to slow down and see so many details once our kids are older. Keep them coming your amazing details have given me my trip fix.