The DDA Trouble Free Zone Part 29

[Tinkaroo]

Lindsay sorry this trip has not been such a good one. I hope today you can get out & enjoy the parks before returning home. Bummer about Captain Jack, I will have to read reports from the next party & see if he was out.

Next months trip will be a whole different story for you, we are all going to have so much fun! We won't want it to end

Yes, it's too bad we have to wait another week to see what all was supposed to be available to us on Friday. Oh well, I'm just glad I get to go back for another go-round! I do really think that Capt. Jack's meet & greet would have been open though, since at least for the P&P, it was all indoors.

So DVC memberservices would allow my family of 5 to rent a 1 bedroom while CRO would not?

The receptionist at my eye doctor said she had extra points that I was thinking of using for my trip with Emma but I really think Emma would be better off at Pop. I don't know if she'd have points for August 08. I guess I should look into that.

Yes, DVC Member Services (the last I heard) will allow booking 5 into a 1BR; the only catch - you won't get towels or a room key for that 5th person. The room key could factor in if you're planning on utilizing evening EMH, since they have to scan all the cards. The new AKV units (at least the ones in the new building) will be able to sleep 5 in a 1BR officially, as there will be a pullout sleeper chair in the living room with the sleeper sofa.

I see you've already scooped up ASMu - sounds like a great deal!

Why do two Deluxe resorts share buses?

The age-old question, Debbie - and one of the reasons we usually prefer to rent a car! (I was so proud of myself - I got a car on National's EA for $47 for our 3-day weekend, and then we split that amount with my parents - great deal!)

I've enjoyed your TR and all your pics.

Saturday afternoon we took the kids shopping to try to get some long sleeved shirts and pants. I got so frustrated things fit perfectly, which means they won't fit in February, or they were huge. Nicholas is at a really hard stage because he needs a size 8 in pants for the length but he is so darn skinny that he swims in them. He looks like he should be in a rap video. So I don't know what I'm going to do.

I have an idea - I'm willing to make a fat donation to Nicholas.

I'm gonna have to call it a night, I was hoping that I would be feeling much better by now, but I'm not. The most I've done today is clean the kitchen and work on this report but I'm worn out. Missing work tomorrow is really not an option, for more reasons that one.

Feel better soon, Debbie!

Still can't book the sleigh ride The cm said they have not been given any info yet & to keep calling back. Guess I will have to keep an eye out on the boards. Lindsay let me know if/when you are able to book this. I really want to do this Christmas night!

I haven't tried in about a week, although I noticed the DIS has posted that they're confirmed for 2007, but bookings haven't begun yet (nor do they have information on when they will start ). Frustrating! Plus, it looks like they won't start until 12/1, and I really wanted to do this on 11/29. I may just leave it for another year. I don't know why they don't start them immediately after Thanksgiving - I know the one I had booked (and then got rained out) in 2005 was for the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving, so we were still definitely in the month of November.

 

[my3princes]

I guess my family has definitely decided to hit WDW during our stay this coming summer. I need to nail down dates with my DB. My Dad would like their stay to be on either one end of our vacation or the other then he would drive with Chris and the camper and I could fly with the rest of the family. That would probably mean shuffling our dates again, but I'm not sure that I want to do that and risk messing something up. They want to hit the Nascar Race in Daytona which is July 5th, but they also want to hit the race in Loudon, NH the previous Sunday so when they would fly down would be the big question. Once we get things set I think that I'll make each family member a Disney goodie bag as their Christmas gift. I was thinking a couple of T-shirts, definitely the tie dye Mickey ones and probably the hidden character design as those got the most compliments on our trip this year. I may try to find coordinating shorts for everyone, but if I'm going to do that I need to start looking now while there are some still available. I did add a day onto our golf cart rental as I will keep the 5 kids at the campground while the others go to the race. I may even take them to one of the DVC resorts to use one of the water slide pools.

 

[lovespoohbear]

today has been a year since my grandmother past. my grandmother's favorite flowers were yellow roses. while i was out i got my mom some since we are to far away to visit her grave today. I went and saw my friends daughter saturday. she is adorable and a wiggle worm. ill post a picture later. im gonna get my friend to email me some pictures. i dont like the one we took. its so cute she has dark hair and already has some highlights on the back of her head.

 

[tinknme]

Lindsay are you feeling better & did you get to the parks on your last day?

Deb sounds like you have a lot of planning ahead!

Karen

Debbie I hate to see your TR end, I have enjoyed it so much!

 

[babytrees]

Lindsay are you feeling better & did you get to the parks on your last day?

Deb sounds like you have a lot of planning ahead!

Karen

Debbie I hate to see your TR end, I have enjoyed it so much!

I'm going to have to say ditto!!

My first day of vacation and I drove myself bonkers!! I was bored out of my gills...I made myself not do anything (not that I could have worked in the garden it poured!!) and I can't do that anymore. Leaning toward staying at my job and actively pursuing a new job. Dang....this is hard!!

 

[Brendita]

Hi everyone.
I have been here in & out unable to post.
?????????????
Very slow site & get kicked off.

So this goes out to all.
Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary.
Congrats & Good Luck.
Get well soon.

Been busy around here.
I have finally fully recovered fom my bout with shingles.
Wow I never knew how bad shingles could be.

I started at a new property today.
My new Supervisor is my old Engineer.
She took a promotion at a new property.
So when the position opened I transfered.

Ramiro is doing much better with school so far.

Looking foward to meeting a few of you all in October.
We can't wait for Christmas at WDW.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Lindsay are you feeling better & did you get to the parks on your last day?

Deb sounds like you have a lot of planning ahead!

Karen

Debbie I hate to see your TR end, I have enjoyed it so much!

Ditto from me, too!

I am gearing up to have my butt handed to me tomorrow when I lose all the EvilBay auctions I have bids on. Single pins are going for between $2.50-$3.00 before shipping. I need to find a seller who has lots of pins listed who discounts shipping after the first pin. The pins I am bidding on right now are $3 to ship the first one and $1.50 for each one after. That means I don't want to bid more than $1, so I am going to lose all of those. I found another guy today who ships additional pins for $.50, so I could bid more for his pins. I didn't see anything go for less than $2.50 this afternoon when I was watching, so I imagine tomorrow will be the same.

 

[Tammi67]

Good evening!

Deb - sounds like another fun camping weekend for the Brooks clan, aside from the MIL and the rain.

Bernadette - congrats on booking the suites at such a deal!

 

[MrsHeg]

Well here it is, Day 6, our final park day,

Since we had extended our stay one night due to airline flight changes we had to check out and check back in, after doing that we waited for Concierge to open to try and make an ADR for a late lunch, this one would be OOP as we had used all our dining credits. We were able to get on at 3:50 at Tony's. Here's Brandon in the waiting area for kids, it's really a neat place to keep them occupied during check in and check out.

We had 8:40 ADR's at Hollywood and Vine for breakfast, we got to the park before 8:00 am and they let us in, we went ahead and checked in and were given a pager, here's Brandon trying to act like one of the villians that was on his shirt,

Even though we were early, we only had a short wait before we were seated, here's our first visitor,

About every 20 minutes the hosts come out and sing and dance with the kids, the place was loud and busy, but a lot of fun for the kids,

Hugs and kisses from Goliath,

And a pose with Goliath,

Next up June,

Here Brandon and PawPaw are singing the "fish" song,

And last but not least Leo dropped by,

The food here was really good, and we had a lot of fun with the singing and dancing. If you have little ones that like these characters I would definitely give this one a thumbs up. And of course I had to take one more picture,

 

[PNO4TE]

Hi everyone.
I have been here in & out unable to post.
?????????????
Very slow site & get kicked off.

I am very happy to see you post, Jo! YAAY on the new job and a better start to the school year for Ramiro.

 

[tinker1bell]

Hi everyone.
I have been here in & out unable to post.
?????????????
Very slow site & get kicked off.

So this goes out to all.
Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary.
Congrats & Good Luck.
Get well soon.

Been busy around here.
I have finally fully recovered fom my bout with shingles.
Wow I never knew how bad shingles could be.

I started at a new property today.
My new Supervisor is my old Engineer.
She took a promotion at a new property.
So when the position opened I transfered.

Ramiro is doing much better with school so far.

Looking foward to meeting a few of you all in October.
We can't wait for Christmas at WDW.

Hi Jo,

Good to see ya. Congrats on the new position.
Say Hi to Ramiro

Cannot wait to see you in a month

 

[PNO4TE]

Wow! We are not posting a lot (I know... I have just jinxed myself!). I hope everyone has a great night. See you in the morning, friends!

 

[MrsHeg]

There really wasn't a whole lot of things that Brandon enjoys doing at MGM, but he did really enjoy Star Tours so we headed over to ride it again before we switched parks. After the ride he wanted his picture taken here, and who am I to argue about a picture,

We headed over to the Cars meet and Greet on the Streets of America, it started at 9:35 and we got there at 9:40, we were told that the line was already closed for pictures with the cars, I was pretty disapponted in this, so I just took a picture from a distance. Kudo's to them for trying to put an end to the chaos that they've had with this, but 5 minutes and you're out of luck? Maybe they'll get this worked out.

Even though we had spent most of our time at the Magic Kingdom, it is the park that has the most for Brandon to do, so that is where we chose to spend out last day there. The park would be closing at 6:00 pm for Night of Joy that evening but that was fine, we had a 3:45 am ME pickup and wanted to get most of our packing done before calling it an early evening. When we arrived there was someone skywriting above the park,

It ended up saying u + God = (smiley face)

We headed straight over to Frontierland and made a bee line for Splash, the wait time was 5 minutes, actually it was a walk on, I wish that I had taken a video of Brandon skipping down the path to the logs singing Zip a dee doo dah. We made it through Splash without getting soaked this time and headed over to BTMRR for a fastpass. From there we took the raft over to Tom Sawyer's Island, we explored the caves, here's Brandon checking out the fort,

The boys on the bridge to the big fort,

And this was Brandon's favorite thing about the island, the Rifle Roost's, how cool is it to be in a real fort, and have a shoot out? He thought it was really cool,

It was almost our return time for BTMRR, so Brandon and I waited close by while DH went to get fastpasses for Peter Pan, I wanted to make sure we got to ride it since we didn't do it the other evening. Well while we were waiting BTMRR went down again, so I got some cold drinks and pocorn for us and waited for DH to return. When he did we headed back towards Peter Pan, and ran into Woody's Cowboy camp,

With all the fun and games going on, this is what my grandson prefered to do,

That's some pretty expensive bird food. Since he had enjoyed the Rifle Roost so much we took Brandon over to the Shootin' gallery, he had a hard time controlling the gun because it was so big for him, but what he didn't notice was the man right next to him who was a good shot, he would actually shoot the targets that Brandon was aiming at, and Brandon thought he was hitting the target. After we left the gallery we ran into this guy and Brandon wanted a picture and autograph,

 

[my3princes]

My DB gave me their dates. They were working on pricing rooms for themselves at rack rate Imagine their surprise when they were pricing the FW cabins for 6 people He was ready to drive his camper down for the week I explained that my parents should camp with us which brings them down to a family of 4 which will fit at any Disney property. My DM had told them that they would stay with them thinking that it would be cheaper to split the reservation cost than for them to book by themselves, but she doesn't understand that WDW is not accomodating to families larger than 4. So I'll add my parents to our DVC point FW reservation at no charge and DB and his family can stay at POP using our AAA discount for $1033 for 9 days. FW would have cost them $670 and a 56 hour round trip drive (they all get car sick). We will just need to be there when they check in which is no big deal as we'll be there anyway. So now they can toss around there options and I'll book it for them. They'll use the Magical Express to get to and from the airport. I told them that we could take a dorm fridge in the truck to place in their room while they are there.

I also had to grocery shop so I hit JcPenney's and Kohl's and bought plain white cotton t-shirts for all of us. Now I have shirts to tie dye. At least it's a start on my Christmas shopping. I also hit Home Depot and got some of the materials to make the Mickey Head Lamps.

 

[my3princes]

Here are the promised photos. DSIL took 126 photos so you will only get a small sampling

The buffet

Trick or Treat costumes

Costume Party

Corn Maze

 

[bear74]

Deb great pictures. Glad you guys had a great weekend. Congrats to the boys on winning prizes for their costumes.

 

[bear74]

Jo glad to see you back posting. Glad your shingles is gone. Congrats on the new job.
Ramiro keep doing good in school.

 

[bear74]

Okay now that I am caught up I am headed to bed.
Morning DDA.

 

[Tinkaroo]

Wow - quiet around here tonight!

Theresa - good luck with your job decisions, and I hope you have a better day off tomorrow!

Jo - good to see you around - I'm glad to hear your shingles are gone! Congrats on the new job, and good for Ramiro for doing better in school this year!

Debbie - still loving the TR - you guys look like such great grandparents. Brandon is very lucky! I had to at your picture of the skywriting - when we walked out to our car from the YC Sunday a.m., I would assume the same skywriter was writing "Believe in Jesus". Pretty cool!

Deb - great pics of the Halloween extravaganza! I'm thinking I might have had a better time with you guys this weekend than at the MNSSHP I attended. The costumes were great - I love your Cruella DeVil! And good for you for helping your family, and that they appreciate it. My mom's best friend never even thanked me for the lengthy e-mail I sent her on how to save $$ on her upcoming trips - needless to say, I'm not offering anything further!

Hey DDA - don't know if you saw this - the Disney Moms contest is closed already: http://www.allearsnet.com/news/hnews.htm#090607

 

[Tinkaroo]

Well, today was nuts (I really paid for taking Friday off), but as you can see, we made it back safely from Orlando.

Sunday was another interesting day at WDW. Everyone got up a little earlier than I had hoped for the night before, but we still weren't ready to go and checked out by park opening. Still, we left for the AK a little after 10 a.m., and as the primary goal was to get FP's for Everest and to see the first Nemo show, I thought we'd be okay.

So, we get to AK, and my AP won't work at the turnstiles. I send Jonathan ahead of us with his and my parents' passes (my mom can't do thrill rides, so we only needed 3 tickets) to get FP's for EE, while I go to Guest Relations to get a new pass - they were claiming mine had been demagnetized, although it hadn't been around anything. The worst part was that I lost my Tink AP that the DTD Guest Relations staff was kind enough to print for me in December. The AK Guest Relations guy was not so nice, and even though he stamped my deactivated AP with "void", he wouldn't let me keep it. I don't know why, but this really disappointed me! I'm such a baby.

With my new Mickey AP, we then head to Dinoland to check out the line for Nemo. It's already back toward the Diorama, which worried me. We got in line and waited there for Jonathan, where he proceeded to come back with FP's....for Kali River Rapids. Despite the blinding heat and humidity that day, there was no way we were all going to run the risk of getting soaked and then have to get on a plane in a few hours. So, we had useless FP's, and couldn't get more for almost 2 hours. I didn't even want to get into it with Jonathan on how he mistook the KRR FP distribution for EE's.

And then...the line in front of us for Nemo just disintegrated. We learned from a CM that the 11:30 showing of Nemo had been canceled. As we had other stuff to do, there was no way we could wait around for the 1 p.m. show - "if" it even went on, as it wasn't guaranteed. So, we're now 4 for 5 of all Disney attractions that the 4 of us are trying to do together!

We move towards Asia and walk by the real EE queue and FP distribution center so I can see if we have any shot of getting FP's for later. I quickly determine that if we don't get something now, we won't be able to stick around for later. I remember that my pass hasn't been run through the FP machine, so I get my dad a FP for EE, as he hadn't ridden it yet. As the standby line was 50 mins, we headed on to Africa to see if we could get onto the safari to kill some time. Along the walkway to Africa and Asia, we saw D'Vine. That, at least, was a highlight, and one of the few things we have pics of. I'll post later.

We get to Africa, and the safari has a 50 min. wait, too. (And this is why you get to the parks early...) So, no one wants to stand in line for that long, so we elect to just get a drink, and cool off. I am telling you - it was HOT. We were all sweating through our clothes. My bad - I should have remembered how much hotter/more humid the AK is, and never taken us there. Oh well, that's one thing I've lived and learned.

After cooling down in the Harambe School area where there was a fan, we shopped around Africa and Discovery Island, and then headed back to EE for my dad's ride. My mom, Jonathan and I waited at the lookout to see if Jonathan could take a picture of my dad coming down, which he did - it's a really fun picture. My dad enjoyed his ride, so at least the morning at the AK wasn't a total bust!

We decided to then head out of the park, and go to DTD, as my mom wanted to go to the Christmas Store to search for more ornaments for her Disney tree. We hit DTD, which thankfully was not that crowded, and made stops in WoD, the pin store, and the Christmas store. (You know you're going to Disney pretty consistently, when you really don't see any souveniers you want!) We then drove over to SSR, so my parents could see the resort and get a feel for what we'd be experiencing in December. We also ate a late lunch at Artist's Palette, which was blissfully not busy and cool. I had a great chicken panini that I could only eat half of - I forgot the one hidden benefit of the heat - I lose most of my appetite!

From SSR, we went back to the YC to pick up our bags from bell services, take a spit bath in the YC lobby restrooms, change clothes, and then head for the airport. Our flight home was pretty uneventful, we picked up our dog (who thankfully learned how to get along with her shih tzu "cousin" while we were away), and came home to look forward to work today.

Can I tell you how ready I am to go back in a month, and have a proper trip?!?! Arent' you jealous of my trip now??