Terra Nova Guy and the Raiders of the Lost Park - an August 2018 TR *COMPLETE* 4/28

ah yes. DC. I spent a year on the beltway one day.
Someone told you to get on it and take it until it ends? :laughing:

Someone did that to one of the Brave's players (I think it was Eddie Perez)...told him to get on 285 and take it to the end. I think it was about the third time around he realized it looked familiar. True story. What makes it even funnier(to me), the stadium wasn't (at that time) near 285. :lmao:
 
Someone told you to get on it and take it until it ends? :laughing:

:laughing:

I did have to do about half of it, if memory serves. I was on the west side and had to travel to the east side.

However, I also drove on the George Washington Parkway (?) and it was beautiful.

Someone did that to one of the Brave's players (I think it was Eddie Perez)...told him to get on 285 and take it to the end. I think it was about the third time around he realized it looked familiar. True story. What makes it even funnier(to me), the stadium wasn't (at that time) near 285. :lmao:

:lmao:
 
:laughing:

However, I also drove on the George Washington Parkway (?) and it was beautiful.
::yes::
When I was stationed at the Pentagon, I rode the GW pkwy almost every day. Except for downtown Alexandria, wonderful ride.
 


Finally catching up! Sorry it took me so long.

Travel Day (a.k.a. the boring post before we get to the good stuff)

Oh. Never mind, I'll come back later.

Well, our trip starts as many do, trying to force yourself up out of bed when your body is saying “Why, why are you attempting to move vertically at such an inappropriate hour?”

No, that's what I say on work days. I have no problem when I'm leaving for a vacation.

There’s the age old question – do we pack enough clothes for the entire 11 days, or do we do laundry part way through?

Laundry? On vacation? Perish the thought!

(Side note: I know a lot of Canadians who despise Air Canada. I have never personally had any major issue with them, so I’m kind of indifferent; I just choose the flights that work best for me)

I think in general people hate all airlines.

Everything went smoothly with US customs pre-clearance in Toronto. When I did this years ago, you used to have to collect your bags for customs. They have improved the process since and now you don’t see your bags again until Orlando, a much better set up.

That sounds so much better. Who would have thought--a process that makes sense?

We got down to the baggage belt and waited. Then waited some more. And some more. Finally about three bags came out, then stopped. Then nothing. Everyone was getting annoyed at this point, and there was no information coming from the Air Canada baggage services – supposedly they didn’t know either. After nearly an hour (!!) they finally said they were moving us to another belt – this one had broken down.

:faint:

We were really looking forward to our planned restaurant – Olive Garden.

Um...what?

Now, some of you may be thinking, what?

Hey, how did you know?

I get it. We try to use vacation as an opportunity to eat at places we wouldn't normally get to try at home.

I found it a bit disappointing that they only had four colours available (what do families of more than 4 do?)

Listen to incessant whining from the aggrieved parties.

1. Do we make rope drop at Magic Kingdom?

I hope so! It's like a DIS rule, isn't it? So I'll say yes.

2. I had not been to Magic Kingdom in four years. What ride did we absolutely have to do first?

Big Thunder Mountain.

3. We hop to Hollywood Studios in the evening. I see something pink that had me running up Hollywood Boulevard. Any idea what or who that could be?

Pretty sure it's Captain Phasma's new duds.
 
Joining in. I am just getting back from our trip to Disney so I will be back to read.
 


Joining in!! I'm excited for all the princess pics :) I love the princesses, but my fiance would NEVER wait to meet one with me. All I want is to meet Punzie!! Hopefully we'll get to see more of her!
 
Just adding input here where nobody asked my opinion: I highly recommend trying the drive someday down the road! We can usually do it in 3 days from Halifax, but sometimes still stretch it out to 4. It's a major undertaking, but also a lot of fun to see the whole coast of a country pass you by. Nathan usually does most of the driving (bless him!) but other than a few tricky areas (NY, DC, etc) it's not a bad drive at all. :)
I would like to do the drive one day, just to say I did it. I envision myself as an old(er) man behind the wheel of an RV. My wife may not share this vision...
The worst thing about driving for me is that it takes a full day just to get off this silly island and arrive in Cape Breton. And I really don't like too much driving (I get very sleepy).

Hi! I'm joining in and looking forward to reading more.
:welcome: so nice to have you here. The "good" stuff is coming, I promise :P

Joining in. I am just getting back from our trip to Disney so I will be back to read.
:welcome: I hope you enjoyed your trip!

Joining in!! I'm excited for all the princess pics :) I love the princesses, but my fiance would NEVER wait to meet one with me. All I want is to meet Punzie!! Hopefully we'll get to see more of her!
:welcome: Great to have you along. Sorry you aren't able to meet up with the princesses. I understand it though. If it wasn't for my girls, I wouldn't be meeting nearly as many characters. I hope you get to meet Punzie one day! And I will give you a little spoiler -- we do meet Rapunzel and she will be in my next update! But do we meet all the princesses?.....:-)
 
Finally catching up! Sorry it took me so long.
No worries. I've been trying to find time to get all caught up myself. Plus I need to actually start writing my next update. This trip report writing is hard. You guys all made it look so easy! :P

Oh. Never mind, I'll come back later.
Yeah, nothing to see here.

Laundry? On vacation? Perish the thought!
The only time we've done laundry is when we've done more than 2 weeks and had our first week in a rented house off site. Then it makes some sense. I'm not using my park time to wash unmentionables. Just turn them inside out and I'm good to go.

I get it. We try to use vacation as an opportunity to eat at places we wouldn't normally get to try at home.
I am sure there are better places to eat in Orlando. but we know that area of highway 192 (we rented houses in Indian Ridge Oaks on previous trips) and we knew the Olive Garden was there. Like I said, Italian is one of the few things everybody can agree on.

Pretty sure it's Captain Phasma's new duds.
I wonder how girly she gets underneath all that chrome? I bet there is some interesting fan fiction out there somewhere....
 
I'm back and catching up :surfweb:

After nearly an hour (!!) they finally said they were moving us to another belt – this one had broken down. It took another half hour before our bags came out. This was definitely not something I expected, and by now we were starving.
Ugh this is horrible!! I thought it was bad when we had to sit on ME for 30 minutes before leaving, but this would drive Steve crazy. Although it would be worse if you never got our bags lol, ,and if it's the "worst" thing that happened on your trip, in the end it's not bad at all :goodvibes

After four years of waiting, I did not want to miss a minute of park time at Magic Kingdom!
I feel this way after 4 months pixiedust:

I'm going to say you DO make RD even not having an early night. That's my one guess for this round :thumbsup2
 
Although it would be worse if you never got our bags lol, ,and if it's the "worst" thing that happened on your trip, in the end it's not bad at all :goodvibes
Yes, at least we eventually did get our bags, and the only real sacrifice was not seeing Hallowishes at the poly, which was a very loose plan as it was anyway. It pretty much was the worst thing that happened this trip, so I can't complain too much.
 
Hello folks. Well, I was reminded of a trip report failure in my last update, after reading about a similar failure in another trip report, but I'm too polite to mention names (but Mark knows who he is).
I completely forgot to share pictures of our room at All-Star Music. So now, I give you our room, in it's pure and unspoiled glory right after we checked in (and hey, I was right about checking in after 10pm since the clock says 10:21).
Shame on me for breaking a cardinal rule of trip reporting. I'm sure it's in the trip reporting guidelines somewhere. If somebody has the manual lying around can you help a newbie out and send it along?
:P

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In case anyone is wondering, I thought the room was fine. The beds were comfortable, although I'm not a fan of the pure white bedding they have now. A colourful runner at the bottom would spruce it up a bit. I appreciated the large TV cabinet which was big enough to fit all our clothes and accoutrements. The single sink was the hardest thing to adjust to after getting used to moderates, but that's what you get in a value resort, so we made do.
 
August 18, 2018 – Day 1, Part 1 – Main Street is dusty today

Excitement woke me early on our first morning. The same didn’t quite hold true for the girls. Not that they weren’t excited, but they tend to enjoy sleeping in. They had been informed the night before that Magic Kingdom opened at 8:00am and I would like to be there for rope drop. Soon, alarms went off, showers were had, things were buffed, polished, pruned, primped, primed, crimped, and curled, most of which was done using numerous bottles and utensils that I frankly do not understand. Ladies, I’m not trying to be mean, because you all look fabulous doing your thing, but wow, y’all go through a big production to look the way you do. Me on the other hand, I showered, ran my fingers through my hair (comb, who needs a comb?), possibly shaved, was dressed and ready to go…or at least wait.

Katie and I popped over to the Intermission food court during the beatification process to fill our mugs for breakfast. On the way, we took our first official Disney selfie by the pool.

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We had a light breakfast of muffins bought at Target the night before, which I figured was the quickest way to get moving for rope drop. As much as I like Mickey waffles, I didn’t want to spend the time in the food court. Since we had the (free) QS dining plan, I also knew breakfast was the least “valuable” meal you could get with your credits. I figured most of our breakfasts would be muffins and granola bars to satisfy us until lunch time.

Finally, we were ready for our Vogue magazine cover shoot…err, I mean our morning at Magic Kingdom. We left the room, looked at our rental car…and walked the other way. So, we had rented a car this trip, actually the first time I had a car when staying on site. Most of the trip would be on site, but we wanted the freedom to go off site for shopping (yes, I know taxis and Uber exist). We also wanted to see if the convenience was worth the price of the rental, since our experience with Disney buses has been hit or miss. My intention was to drive to the parks…except you don’t drive to Magic kingdom, right? At least that’s what I decided made sense, so off to the bus stop we went. I didn’t note the exact wait time for the bus, but it wasn’t too terrible. And the time? Would we make rope drop? Nope. We arrived at Magic Kingdom at 8:30am, a half hour after rope drop. But, I still considered that a bit of a win and it was early enough that it wasn’t too crowded. Before too long, we had gone through bag check, given Mickey our fingerprints, and done the requisite first Photopass picture of the trip in front of the train station.


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Then, after a long four year wait, we finally left today and entered a world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy. It had been so long, it honestly felt like a bit of a dream to me. As we started walking up Main Street, I couldn’t help putting my arm around Katie (because she’s my baby and will still put up with that) and taking in that moment. I have to confess that…well…let’s just say Main Street got a little dusty that morning (it’s a DISDads thing, you’ll figure it out).

After our stroll up Main Street, it was time to get to the rides! There was so much I wanted to do, so of course our first ride had to be…(drum roll please)…it’s a small world. I bet you didn’t see that one coming! I should probably explain.

Let’s pause for Days of Disney Past…..

Let me take you back to 2010, it was Katie’s first trip so we wanted her grand entrance to the world of Disney to be special and perfect (like everything, right?). I mean, see the cute look on her face when she saw the castle for the first time?

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(Yes, I really did capture the moment when she first saw the castle) After that we were determined to make up for Brianna’s first ride. Shoot, OK, we have to rewind a bit more…to 2008 (this is the problem when you have no previous trip reports). During Brianna’s first trip in 2008 (Katie was only a few months old, so being mean parents, we left her home with Grandma & Grandad), we thought Akershus breakfast was a great way to start our first ever morning at Disney. And it was. Except I also thought – oh man, I want to do Test Track after! Well, Brianna being 8 years old and having no idea what a ride was, got a little bit freaked out by it and spent most of the ride with her head buried in her hands.

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(Wow…I miss the old Test Track. I also miss not having grey hair, but time does that to you)
So yeah, we didn’t give Brianna quite the magical introduction we hoped for. OK, fast forward again to 2010, we thought “what ride would be good to start with, what ‘feels’ like Disney” for Katie's first ride. Of course the answer was IASW.

OK, interlude over...engage flux capacitor…get up to 88…back to 2018.

So now it’s our tradition to ride ISAW as our very first ride, and usually at some point on our last day. I actually don’t mind it and on this morning it felt right. I was back at Disney and we have a great 10 days ahead of us. Plus, I think the drunk hippo is funny and I kind of like to groove to the South Pacific drum beat section.

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Oh dear…over 1100 words and I’ve only told you about one ride…is anyone still there? Oh, that’s what I thought.

OK, I’ll get this thing moving, I promise.

All right, sappy magical stuff was over with. We needed a roller coaster. It was still fairly early, so we checked the wait time for 7DMT. It was posted at 45 minutes, although my Touring Plans app was saying 35. We thought it was reasonable enough so tried it and 40 minutes later we were inside the vault and enjoying our mine tour.

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You can see from the picture that Katie had not quite got her roller coaster legs yet...or maybe roller coaster stomach? She hated roller coasters when she was younger and only started going on 7DMT on our last trip. But she’s getting better at them.

We were feeling a bit hungry after this but it was too early for lunch, so we headed to Sleepy Hollow. We shared two fresh fruit and Nutella waffles. We enjoyed them, and FYI a really good use of a snack credit.

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CONTINUED NEXT POST...
 
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August 18, 2018 – Day 1, Part 1 – continued...

Next, it was time to get the princess party started! Off to Princess Fairy tale Hall where we found wait times posted at only 15 and 20 minutes – in reality it was more like 5 minutes for each side. Up first was Cinderella, who (if I’m being honest) was a little boring, but nice enough. I should mention that Tish and I didn’t get in many pictures, since it was really the girls’ “quest”, but we did get in a few here and there.

Official Princess Countdown: Cinderella – 1 of 11 ✔


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Elena of Avalor was also there. I actually find this a bit strange. Katie was really out of watching Disney Jr. by the time Elena came out. We had an idea who she was, but not enough that we had any great desire to meet her. I really think it would be better for her to meet at DHS in the Disney Jr. area. It feels a bit forced in PFH and wouldn’t Snow White be better (since it used to be her ride and all)? Anyway, we met Elena, got the picture and autograph. (note: she is not an official Disney Princess)

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Then it was off to the other side of PFH. We had a nice chat with Rapunzel, who was also fascinated with Brianna’s nails. Side note: Brianna got her nails done just before the trip, with a special Disney theme (you'll see she has Mickeys, the castle, Princess slipper, "hidden Mickey" jewels). She got a bunch of compliments on them, including from a few characters, so she was quite happy with that.

Official Princess Countdown: Rapunzel – 2 of 11 ✔

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We moved on to Tiana. Nothing special to report, but she was pleasant and the girls had a nice chat with her.

Official Princess Countdown: Tiana – 3 of 11 ✔

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That’s three Princesses down and it’s only the first morning. I don’t know people...looks like this quest may be doable. We’ll see…

We left PFH and headed back towards the castle. On our way up from Sleepy Hollow, we had noticed the Step-Sisters, Anastasia and Drizella (A&D) were meeting, so of course the girls wanted to see them. The line was a little long. I think we waited around 25 minutes. But it was so worth it. These two are awesome. A&D chatted with the girls for a bit, then A&D found out we had a cat and were so excited. They started making plans for our Shelby and their Lucifer to have a play date. A&D also noticed Brianna’s nails and made a fuss. They were all laughing the whole time. Drizella made Anastasia honestly laugh in one of the pictures, so Anastasia came over to me after and insisted on seeing the picture. This was probably the best character interaction we had the whole trip.

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After all the Princess merriment, we thought a spot of tea was in order. So off to the Tea Cups we went. Katie loves this ride. I am not a fan, but I put up with it, as long as the cup isn’t spun too fast, or else it becomes the Puke Cups (© @Steppesister :)).

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CONTINUED NEXT POST...
 
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August 18, 2018 – Day 1, Part 1 – continued...

We felt like another classic Disney ride was in order for our first day, so we took flight with Dumbo. It’s not the most exciting ride, but you just have to do it, and I enjoy it well enough.

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By this time, it was getting near midday a.k.a. the part of the day when us northerners really start to melt. Katie and Brianna wanted to go on Barnstormer so we sent them off while Tish and I cooled down and shared a slush (technically Goofy’s Glaciers) in Big Top Souvenirs. I really like this place, since it has nearly the same treat selection as Main Street Confectionery, but less crowded.

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When the girls finished Barnstormer and met us, they were hot and wanted slushes too. We were getting lots of use of snack credits today (not so much for the meal credits though…). Our general plan was to leave the park around lunch time, which it now was. The heat was getting to be too much. So we strolled in that general direction. Being so hot, I thought Carousel of Progress would be a nice break, and the fact that the girls still had their slushes was fortunately not an issue, they could keep them during the show. Katie had never done CoP and the rest of us hadn’t done it since 2008. I enjoyed it, and I think Katie did too. I always like the "hidden Mickey" on the mantle. It reminds of my favourite Disney Christmas cartoon "Pluto's Christmas Tree"

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Then I had the idea to do a quick ride on the Peoplemover along the way. Always fun and a bit of a cool down too. After, we made our way out to the bus back to ASMu. Time to get out of the heat!

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Answers to last questions:

1. Do we make rope drop at Magic Kingdom?
No, but we came within a half hour. Like I said, I considered it a win.

2. I had not been to Magic Kingdom in four years. What ride did we absolutely have to do first?
it’s a small world. Nobody guessed that…who would?

3. We hop to Hollywood Studios in the evening. I see something pink that had me running up Hollywood Boulevard. Any idea what or who that could be?
Well, I was so excited about this question that I didn’t think about the fact I would be spitting the next day into separate updates. But since it’s already out there, yes, I saw @MeghanEmily in DHS. But you have to wait for another update to see the picture!


Next Update Questions for fun:

1. We go swimming back at All-Star Music, in the guitar pool. Is this the only pool we swim in that afternoon?

2. We visit Toy Story Land for the first time. We have a fast pass for one ride – which one?

3. We also see Fantasmic! Is it the first show or second show?
 
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I really miss the old Test Track as well!

Looks like a good morning at MK and score on the princess meets!

You hit many of my favorites, I didn’t guess IASW would be your first ride but what a nice tradition with your daughter! Did the song stay in your head all morning?:rotfl:

New questions, yay
1. I don’t know about the pools at ASM so I am going to guess just the 1 pool
2. AS2
3. Second show.
 
My intention was to drive to the parks…except you don’t drive to Magic kingdom, right? At least that’s what I decided made sense, so off to the bus stop we went.

I agree! If we have a car, we like to drive to the parks often enough...but almost never to MK. The TTC just makes it too long and complicated.

Then, after a long four year wait, we finally left today and entered a world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.

:lovestruc How exciting! That first glimpse of Main Street...oh boy! That's a special moment! Especially when you've waited so long for it.

I mean, see the cute look on her face when she saw the castle for the first time?

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Okay, that's precious. :goodvibes

Plus, I think the drunk hippo is funny

I can't argue with you there.

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You can see from the picture that Katie had not quite got her roller coaster legs yet...or maybe roller coaster stomach?

Haha oh no! Poor Katie! I'm with her, for sure! I can handle 7DMT...BTMRR...that's about it. :rotfl: I actually had a nightmare the other night that I accidentally got in line for Space Mountain and didn't realize the mistake I'd made until I got to the front...and then they were going to force me to ride it...*shudders* Scary!

Brianna got her nails done just before the trip, with a special Disney theme (you'll see she has Mickeys, the castle, Princess slipper, "hidden Mickey" jewels). She got a bunch of compliments on them, including from a few characters, so she was quite happy with that.

Oh, love it! Very nice!

it was getting near midday a.k.a. the part of the day when us northerners really start to melt.

::yes::::yes::::yes::

I always like the "hidden Mickey" on the mantle.

We just had that one pointed out to us recently. I think it's great!

3. We hop to Hollywood Studios in the evening. I see something pink that had me running up Hollywood Boulevard. Any idea what or who that could be?
Well, I was so excited about this question that I didn’t think about the fact I would be spitting the next day into separate updates. But since it’s already out there, yes, I saw @MeghanEmily in DHS. But you have to wait for another update to see the picture!

The cat's out of the bag! That's me!
 

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