The Good, The Awesome, & the Painful ~~COMPLETED~~

[autoracepr989]

I'm sure some of those who read this will wonder about the Painful part of the title, but I'll explain all of it as this trip report goes on. I'm going to say this right now, if things don't get posted very fast to this report please forgive me. I'm waiting for photopass pics to come as well as I am going into one of the busiest time frames for the race team I work with. Going to close this now since I'm posting during my lunch, which I still need to eat.

 

[autoracepr989]

OK so since I got the time right now I’ll get going on typing my trip report. I have a slower type day today since I’ve been at the race shop til 1am or later the last few nights and am looking at being at the shop from the start of my day on Friday, about 830am until we leave for Dells Raceway Park in the Wisconsin Dells on Saturday morning. We then have races Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Please understand if I don’t get on here between now and next week Wednesday or Thursday at the earliest with another post. Also if I put times down in here it’ll be using the 24-hour clock/military time. It’s what we use for the race notes.

I probably should start out with introducing the main characters in this report.

First is my mom. This is going to be her 8th trip in 4 years. She decided to join me on the trip after figuring out that I was going to be driving home on my own as well as she wanted to spend time close to her birthday at the world.

Then you have my sister, Kristin. She’ll be in and out of the trip report for the most part. She was just finished with working for 6 weeks when we got down to WDW. She was only along for the days at Disney; we sent her home before we went onto the non-Disney portion of the trip.

Finally you have me. I planned to go down for two main reasons. First it was going to be my 25th birthday and I wanted to do something I hadn’t done in many years. Secondly I wanted to make a return trip to where I had met the man I loved and had for shy of 3 years before he was killed. I needed to make new memories since him & I had fun for the day we were down there together as friends. The last time I was down to WDW was spring break of 2004.

Now…onto the trip

Friday May 11, 2012

We had a 0830 flight and so we were up and getting ready by 0600. My alarm never went off that morning for some reason, but DM & I were ready to leave the house by 0630, but our ride wasn’t ready. We ended up getting to the airport about 0715. We used our nice friendly sky caps to check our luggage in to bypass the long line of a college baseball team, or at least I think that’s what they were, checking in inside. After getting the bags checked we proceeded directly up to the security line. As we waited in line, which wasn’t bad until just after we got in it, when the baseball team made it up to the line as well, we talked with a couple on their way to Vegas. The woman hadn’t flown since before 9/11 and the husband wasn’t giving her helpful information in her mind of what all she needed to put into the bins at the airport. We are only using the full body scans at our airport now. Needless to say I had my lower back as an area that needed to be patted down since I had a pain patch on which triggered it.
After getting through security, we stopped at Alterra Coffee to get breakfast. I got a blueberry muffin and DM got two cookies. We both had water bottles we filled once we were through security. Got to the gate and waited until our flight started boarding, while having a good laugh at one of the baseball players who lost the rest of his team before getting on their flight to Boston.
We boarded and I was seated on the aisle in coach while DM had a 1st class seat. I had a family spread out around me that was on their way to Disney as well for all of the grandkids first trips. It was fun talking to them during the descent of the trip.

Once off the flight we went directly towards the Magical Express area. Dsis had told us what to look for to get the Fast passes that were being trailed at that time. DM & I did the divide & conquer theory for this and checking in for Magical Express. She went to check in with ME & I stayed to get the fast passes set up. I’ll let you in on what all we ended up getting for the fast passes later on in the report.

We got on the bus but while we were waiting we got a call from Dsis saying to get off at ASMovies instead of ASSp since she was at that food court and would wait for us there with our room keys. We got there and ate. I forget what we had to eat, but do know that both DM & I had kids meals since neither of us were overly hungry but knew we needed to eat as we would be heading to the parks for a surprise park day for us after we took our carry-ons to the room.

I’ll pick it up from here in the next post.

 

[autoracepr989]

Ok, really quick appology for not having posted in here in what feels like forever, but in reality it's only been 12 days. I got busy with the race teams as we did a marathon race weekend with our two cars between three different race tracks. I also worked two more days with a race league as an official, leading to me having a lot of work in the office when I've been there. That's six days of racing and then you can add a seventh as we raced a local track on Sunday evening.

I have off Tuesday, so today by the time I'm posting this, and Wednesday so I'm planning to at the very least get the rest of the arrival day posted and I might even get into part of the first full day in the parks as well.

 

[autoracepr989]

Okay so I'm back and picking up where I left off. Mom & I were just getting lunch at ASMu food court. We both got kid's meals as it worked out a lot better for us. whenever we got the kid's meals we would always get the bottles of water as DSis had gotten refillable mugs for the three of us. The water came in handy on the drive home from FL though. After we were done eating we walked across the parking lot to ASSp and our room. After dumping our bags in the room & DSis giving DM & I our b-day/mother's day presents we headed off to the first park of the trip. It was......Magic Kingdom. We drove over in the car since DSis didn't want to walk to the bus stop & wait for a bus.

We got on the tram from parking to the TTC no problem, then we also got on the resort monorail without any problems. Getting from the monorail to bag check ended up being an interesting time as DM can't go down inclines very fast as she has knee problems & metal in her ankle. Once we all got through bag check we went to the wonderful employee entrance where there was no line. DSis got us in on her maingate pass for the afternoon. The first order of business that we had for the day in the parks was to get DM & I set up for SOTMK. This was where we got the key to the kingdom & our set of starter cards. DM & I would check in each day, but we never played. I think we just weren't that interested in it. We ran into the end of the parade as we were leaving the firehouse, DSis got hugged by a performer she knew. That's when she revealed that a roommate of hers gave us some pixie dust, a stack of fast passes that could be used on any attraction. Needless to say we went & did a lot of rides with fast passes that day. We did POC, Jungle Cruise, Barnstormer, Mickey's Philharmagic, Winnie the pooh, Stitch's Great Escape, TTA, People Mover, & Carosal of Progress along with some window shopping before calling it a night in the parks & heading back to the resort.

here's a picture I took of the castle while on the people mover I believe

At the resort I got the Salmon for dinner, DM got the kid's turkey, & Dsis got the chicken pasta. DM & I were both ready to call it a night, but I needed to get something out of my suitcase before I could even think about relaxing for bed. I needed to look for my pain relievers as I was having shoulder pain, nothing new for me after a MVA in 2008. We discovered that I would need to make a Walmart run at a point in the trip sooner than later as I only had a couple of packets left. During the relaxing in the room Dsis was texting with a friend who was going to be at BLT who invited us to join him & his mom for Wishes the next night. Now keep in mind the next day was my birthday and I had plans that I had made since all the other days I was just trying to go with the flow of everything down there. I said it was fine I could change my plans around somewhat and was just dealing with it. Little did I know what was to come the next day.

 

[autoracepr989]

So I missed putting some pics in yesterday's post so I'm posting them seperately today.

First up our Jungle Cruise Director...

He was corny but had the three of us shaking our heads & laughing. Something he could see since we were sitting right in the front of the boat.

Next was the towel mickey head that was on our bed when we got to the room... This little guy made the trip home with us.

I thought that I had a pic of the towel animal friend that was sitting in the window of our room, but I guess not. That little friend made his way back to my house fully intact so I'll take & post a pic of him when I get the chance to.

 

[autoracepr989]

Ok, Day 2.... May 12 (My birthday)

I was woken up by my phone going off numerous times from people posting on facebook as well as just sending me messages wishing me a happy birthday. The first ones I got were at about 0100 so midnight back home. I hadn't told people that I wasn't going to be home over my birthday, just left that to them to figure out. The nicest message was the one from a friend who's deployed and still took the time to say Happy Birthday. I had an alarm set for 0700 as we were getting picked up from the hotel by Dsis's friend's mom at 0900. I wanted to shower w/o listening to my DSis complain & such. So after the shower I headed out of the room to do some reflection & just enjoy some peace... Any guesses as to where I went? I'll post a pic or two at the end of this post to let you know.

I got back to the room & DM was up & had placed my birthday card & cake (actually Oreos that were cake flavored for the creme in them) I also opened a present I was given to take with me from a couple of friends. they gave me a minnie backpack with a t-shirt, a couple of word books for the drive home, pens, magnets, & a card that sang to me. By the time I was done with getting things switched around we were all ready to head over to the Food Court for breakfast. I had the kids french toast, DM had the kids breakfast platter, & Dsis had a chocolate crossiant. We got done and had only a couple of minutes to wait in the lobby before our ride got there.

I don't want to ride in a car with that person driving again if I can avoid it. Now what I had origionally scheduled for my birthday was to go to Animal Kingdom for the safari & FOTLK as well as any pics with characters I could get. Then the plan had been to head to Studios for Beauty & the Beast, LMA, & Fant as well as dinner at Mama Melrose. Needless to say the dinner was cancelled, something that I won't like later in the day, as well as all the rest of my nice thought plans getting changed. We were headed to Studios first since that's where DSis's friend's mom wanted to go. I was at least heading to a park that I had wanted to go to. We were in again through the Maingate pass of a CM. Then we split ways with me, DM & Dsis heading toward TSM to use another Fast pass that was valid for any attraction in Studios. I had fun on this ride and then we headed over toward the Great Movie ride since I hadn't done that & we figured we might as well. We ended up with the gangster ride on it. During this time DSis was really starting to get an attitude, but I was doing my best to not let it affect me. Following that we headed toward something I hadn't done since I was 5, The Backlot tour. Now i am sad that the houses were torn down, but was looking foward to seeing LMA later in the day.

I always wanted to ride on that plane. Now we didn't do the preshow for this (the pearl harbor portion) as I do like to even with knowing how many movie things happen, try to keep it so I keep some things as "magic". After going through the canyon & me getting wet, I was ready to go enjoy a show. Beauty & the Beast anyone?

I liked the show, but after seeing the full broadway show was disappointed by some of the different effects that were used. After this DM & I headed off for some free water from a CS location while Dsis went back to the hotel (finally happy people).I don't remember which CS it was but this fountain was right outside of it.

Following getting the water DM got some chips while I got a Mickey Bar before heading into

.

I had fun at LMA as I knew what many of the stunt drivers were before that. I'm keeping that part of the secrets of Disney though at this point...After LMA DM & I headed back to the hotel for a little bit.

I'm going to leave off there for now so here are two pics as for where I went to reflect in the early morning

 

[autoracepr989]

I'm sorry for the lack of updates. I'm getting ready for Nationals on Sunday as well as having a full plate at work. I'm also digesting the news that one of my friends was suddenly transfered from Milwaukee to Houston without much notice to him. I'm promising that I'll get an update done by July 5th as I have off on the 4th

 

[OnSpaceshipEarth]

Haha...very undertstanable. We'll be here when you get back. I like the way you fill your report with all of the details that make me feel like we're there. We stayed at All Star Music waaaaay back in '96. Interested in seeing how it is all these years later, tbh.

 

[autoracepr989]

Ok when we left off DM & I were heading to the resort for a bit of down time after LMA. Keep in mind Dsis had gone back a while before. Once we got back to the room we found that Dsis must’ve gotten back before mousekeeping was able to get in to change out garbage & such. Not a big deal at all. I had a surprise waiting on my bed from WDW as well. Any guesses???


Well I found this….

A card with a picture from the mouse himself as well as a photopass card allowing me 20% off any purchase of a photopass item. DM & I decided that since Dsis was asleep we would leave her in the room & head off to EPCOT for a bit as Dsis had cancelled the ADR I had made a couple months before for Mama Melrose. Well there were no ADRs left for a time that we were going to be able to eat and make the plans we had for later that night a table service that I would be able to eat at. Now some of you may find this interesting, but while the only thing I deal with that’s diagnosed is lactose intolerance, I also do not eat red meat. This has helped relieve some symptoms that were bad for me in my job. I was always tired and on top of that I was lacking energy to get up some days. I was lucky when all of that was happening to have a job that I could work from home with.

DM & I headed off to Epcot as we knew that Sunshine seasons had a wide assortment of food & that I would definitely have a couple of different choices for food options. I got the salmon for the second time in the trip and DM had the pork chop. (Sorry no food pics, by the time we ate usually we were starving). After that we took and headed out of the land, yes we skipped over Soarin, to Figment. They were calling for the last ride as we walked up so that was kinda nice to see that we would be one of the last people on the ride. While we were walking to Figment though we were debating about going through the character spot but then we got a phone call from Dsis saying we needed to meet up about 1945 with her, friend, & friend’s mom at MK. Before we headed out to MK though we went on Spaceship Earth. DM let me control the future for us. LOL that was interesting.

Next up….MK & what do we end my b-day with???

 

[autoracepr989]

Ok time for a break & to do a little bit of a real life update on me & what’s been going on to keep me busy & not updating very fast.

First of all I’ve had a mole removed from my leg that is just now about filled in with new cells. It was precancer so I’m glad I got it taken care of. Next I’ve been not only working on auto racing public relations with two of our biggest races of the year, but I’ve also gone to a couple of baseball games for friends that play in the major and minor leagues. I didn’t get to see a friend play in the major league game, but still had a lot of fun seeing him. For the friends in the minor leagues, I’ve gone to two different games since the trip. I’m including some pics of both the auto racing & the baseball friends.

Gary (minor league) during the 1st game I went to

Andy (minor league) during the 2nd game I attended

Pat (major leaguer) before the game

from left Justin(crew chief), Jordan(crew chief), random fan, Ryan(driver), Thomas(crew member) Yes we have two cars so two crew chiefs.

view from on top the hauler at a race

Finally I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that a friend of mine was traded from the Milwaukee Bucks to the Houston Rockets. Now this is probably one of the hardest trades any of our group of friends has dealt with as he got really close to me and we were talking about dating now that he was done with his rookie year in the NBA. I’ll post a pic of him & another friend on the golf course.

[/

 

[autoracepr989]

On the way out of EPCOT to catch the monorail over to MK to meet up with Dsis, friend, & friend’s mom, DM & I stopped for some photopass pictures by Spaceship Earth. Here is one of the pictures with a border on it…

After this we were up the ramp to catch a ride on the monorail to the TTC. Now Dsis has it figured out as to what car to be in on each of the monorails to be at the top of the exit ramps. We went down the ramp from EPCOT then back up the ramp to the resort monorail. I don’t think we ever took the MK express monorail this trip because of either our plans or the resort one was waiting at the TTC.

Once through bag check and the turnstiles with our tickets, we headed off to the firehouse once again to get new keys to the kingdom as well as another pack of the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom cards. Then we headed up mainstreet to meet up with the rest of our group who were waiting for us in a small alleyway off mainstreet. After meeting up we headed over to Fantasyland as friend & friend’s mom hadn’t been there yet to see the new theme. On the way, DM & I broke off from the rest of them so I could get some photopass pictures with the castle lit up at night.

Then we went off to Fantasyland as well to meet up with the rest of our group that was in line to ride….I’ll let you guess. And to add space some pictures from different attractions and parks.

If you guessed barnstormer you’re right. Dsis & friend went on it, while friend’s mom was waiting by the exit for them. That’s where we all met back up. Then we spent some time looking at Dumbo as it was lit up since it was dark out by now.

Off we went to Tomorrowland when we were done, or I should say when friend was done admiring Dumbo. We used some of our wonderful fast passes for Buzz Lightyear again. The car pairings were DM & I, friend & friend’s mom, then Dsis by herself as she wanted to try and max out both guns on a car herself. Dsis & friend wanted to ride Space Mountain with the fast passes as well, but decided not to when both moms and myself were refusing to go on it. We then started towards the exit while dodging the MSEP. I think friend was a little disappointed that none of the rest of us wanted to stop & get a specialty treat or ice cream on the way to our next destination.

Now as I’m at a page mark in MS Word I’ll stop here & pick it up from where we were headed to in the next post.

 

[autoracepr989]

I forgot to post this next picture on the last update so it's getting included on this one.

Now let’s see if any of you figured out what was going on for us to see Wishes on my birthday. If you guessed that we were going to the Top of the World then you did well.

Before heading to the Top of the World we did a tour around Bay Lake Tower by friend & friend’s mom. We saw the pool, the lake, and the rest of the outside area as well as the lobby. We didn’t go to the room, as we did want to make it to see Wishes. After our quick tour and a pit stop for the rest room, the desk gave us some …. I think that friend didn’t have access for 5 people to go up to the top of the world on his key to the world, but the nice lady said to tell the CM working the elevator that she checked the card and that we were good to go. This was a nice little bit of for my birthday. So off we went to the Top of the World. Now we had a bit of a wait once we got up there so I entertained myself by taking some pictures of the castle up there. So here they are…

Now once Wishes started I started taping them. You can hear friend, Dsis, and others talking in the background, but it was nice that they pipe the music up to us as well.




Wishes part 2

Now after wishes, we all walked down to the lobby. Friend & friend’s mom offered to give us a ride back to our resort, but we declined saying that we were fine walking back to the bus stops at MK. Now on the walk back I overheard two cute guys that appeared around my age talking about me and how they wouldn’t mind trying to get a date with me. Now I didn’t react, but did kind of wish that one of them would’ve stopped me to talk for a bit. Oh well that’s in the past. We hopped on a bus fairly quickly back to ASSp with DM & I planning to head to Wal-mart once we got back.

Now the reason for the Wal-Mart run was for medications. I was after ibuprofen for shoulder pain and DM was after other OTC medication for her stomach. We both were successful in our wants. I also grabbed some juice so I could take the ibuprofen right away in the car. Once we got back to the room we headed to bed. I’ll end it there for now and continue on with our 2nd full day at the world in my next post.

 

[Blissikins]

I am loving your trip report so far! I have never heard of "Top of the World" before, wow! Looks like you had a wonderful view. Your video of Wishes made me tear up (that song! My parents told me the lyrics as a rhyme when I was a little girl, so may memories), Wishes is one of my favourite things about MK!

 

[autoracepr989]

Haha...very undertstanable. We'll be here when you get back. I like the way you fill your report with all of the details that make me feel like we're there. We stayed at All Star Music waaaaay back in '96. Interested in seeing how it is all these years later, tbh.

Sorry I'm just responding now to this. Thanks for understanding and I'm glad I'm making you feel like you're there.

 

[autoracepr989]

I am loving your trip report so far! I have never heard of "Top of the World" before, wow! Looks like you had a wonderful view. Your video of Wishes made me tear up (that song! My parents told me the lyrics as a rhyme when I was a little girl, so may memories), Wishes is one of my favourite things about MK!

Welcome!!! Glad you're here as well. Until this trip I didn't know what people meant by the Top of the World either.

 

[autoracepr989]

Now I'm posting this since I am hoping that I going to be back in school in a little over a month. Also the entire month of August I'm not going to have off on weekends or many days at all.

I am looking forward to two kinda nice things though. I am going to see a good friend on an overnight camping trip next weekend as well as I have a concert I got free tickets to that DM & I are using. We are seeing Rod Stewart & Stevie Nicks. I hope I spelled those names right.

Finally on top of all of that I have to get ready for a move. I'm looking at moving late September. No definite date yet as I'm moving back to my parents as I don't see the point in paying rent when I'm at my parent's house most of the days anyways.

 

[autoracepr989]

DAY 2: SUNDAY MAY 13,2012 mother’s day

Ok, now onto day two at WDW. Once again I’m up first and before either of the others in my room. I got ready and placed DM’s mother’s day present on the bed next to her. If you remember or even read my PTR, you’ll realize I was unsure about what I should give her as I was traveling the days leading to going to Disney and then DM & I weren’t scheduled to return to WI/home until the Saturday after Mother’s day. I decided to do it as a two part present, one for Disney & one for once we got home. She got on mother’s day itself a card, a mother’s book, and a mother’s day pin that Disney was selling on property.

I left the room & the resort to head over to a Hawaiian paradise for breakfast. I had read about Tonga Toast on the board before I left. Now I had my choice of two different places that I could get this at, Kona Café or Captain Cook’s. Now as I was alone at this point I decided that I would just head to Captain Cook’s. I took the Disney bus to EPCOT, then went through bag check to catch the monorail to the TTC before hopping on the resort monorail to the Polynesian. Now here is one of the few food pics that I did take on this trip.

While at the Poly, I had a series of text messages back and forth with DM about going to AK. I invited her to the Poly for breakfast but she declined so we decided to meet up at AK. So off I went to the bus stop at Poly. Now the AK bus is shared with Blizzard Beach I believe, so we dropped a group off there. The bus driver got them as close as he could before letting them know that it wasn’t the bus stop they needed to come back to at the end of their time at that park for the resort.

Next we were off to AK. Upon arrival at the bus stops the driver once again got us as close as he could, then before allowing any of us to exit the bus, he gave a nice little talk. He covered what the little kids that were on the bus should do if there was a case of a lost parent, as well as what bus stop to return to. I was at AK waiting by Rainforest Café, between bag check & the turnstiles for about an hour before DM got there with my ticket. She had apparently just missed the AK bus when she was leaving ASSp.

You may wonder why she had my ticket … DM had my ticket since I hadn’t asked for it and since I hadn’t needed it since April 2004. This was when they were slightly lenient on the finger scans, but mine was in the system for the ticket. I’ve since then broken my finger, had an allergic reaction with swelling in the hand, and burned my finger pads numerous times with auto racing. Needless to say we had a problem with my finger scan & I didn’t have my ID on me. It was back in the room since I had changed bags around.

I’ll leave you there and let you wonder for a bit if DM & I were able to get into AK right then.

 

[autoracepr989]

Ok I won’t leave you in suspense anymore…. I did get in but it took awhile as we tried the finger scan 3 times then with me not having transferred my ID over to my backpack from my purse, we had to use the method of a date and year of last usage. Now if you think back to my PTR I haven’t been to Disney since I was a junior in high school so 2004. It took DM & I awhile to remember when the last day was as it was the week of Easter break and I did a college visit on the drive home so we were having trouble. Thankfully the CM did let us just give the month and year. This will come into play later on in the day as we park hop as well.

First on the list of things I wanted to do was Festival of the Lion King, but a show had just started so DM & I headed over to the safari for FP. We only had an hour to wait before our fp time started so we headed over to the conservation station to spend time exploring or I should say I explored while DM rested for a bit in the AC. After some time there we hopped the train back and wandered over to the safari. Now we had 2 minutes until we were good to go for the fp return window, but we saw that they needed someone to take the red pass through the line for the wait time. We didn’t take it but were kidding about seeing if they would let us through those 2 minutes early in return for taking the timer through the line. Once we were to the front of the line we were directed to the last row in our truck. Some people would think I’m nuts for saying this but I actually prefer the last row as I can get shots by aiming behind the others in the row and get some clear shots. I also don’t have to worry about getting hit in the head while shooting photos.

I’m including some here.

That’s all the ones from the safari that I’m posting but here are a couple from by the RFC I took during my hour of waiting.

OK I’ll stop here with this post & continue on in the next one with more of Mother’s day

 

[autoracepr989]

Ok I left off with us getting off of the Safari. After this we decided to take and start heading towards Camp Minnie Mickey for the Festival of the Lion King show. On the way over we started looking for a snack as we both were starting to get a little hungry. We did stop at a couple of snack stands to see if there was anything that looked good to us. DM & I thought about ice cream, but then when we looked at the ingredient list, we discovered that it wasn’t the ice cream that DM could have.

DM & I didn’t find any snacks that sounded good at the time, and since there was still time before we wanted to line up for the Festival of the Lion King, we headed towards the character trails. I got into the line for two characters that were out and had a fairly short line. I was going to meet Chip & Dale. It was a good choice since I knew I would be able to meet the rest of the characters in EPCOT. It was a good experience as the first character meeting of the trip. Not only were the characters great, but since I was the first one to meet with them after a break, the handler & photopass photographer were joking around with me. I’m including a couple of the pictures since I had fun with this one.

After a quick bathroom break, DM & I got in line for FOTLK. We decided on a way to split up the media as we wanted both video & still pictures of the show. DM would get mostly video and I would do most of the still pictures. I did get one video that photobucket didn’t want to upload so it’s on youtube instead. Here’s the direct link to the youtube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53P0G1SOgaw

And now for the wonders of the pictures and photobucket videos.

Now it was an amazing show and I really enjoyed it. I was seated in a fourth row of the bleachers I believe on the very end of my row. I was right next to where the characters were entering and exiting around Simba & some of the monkeys had some fun right by me. They were climbing on the railing, making noises, & even getting me to give them a high five. After the show, DM & I elected to take and head back to the resort for a break. So I’ll leave off here for the next segment in this TR

 

[autoracepr989]

Ok we left off with DM & I going back to ASSp for an afternoon break. This was nice as I was starting to have move shoulder pain so I was able to take advantage of the break to ice my shoulder while DM was relaxing by the pool.

After about a half hour or so back at the room, I decided to head out to EPCOT and WS. I went solo for this afternoon and had fun. Now if you think back to my earlier post about problems with my ticket earlier in the day this same issue came up at the gate to EPCOT. I was still not able to get the finger scan to work so the CM at the gate was very wonderful, as I still did not have my ID with me. She just reset the ticket and I was able to later that night I was able to scan my finger and go through the gate without any problems.

My plan was to wander through the World Showcase as DM & I had not gotten to go through there the night before. But first I was going to take and make a stop to see everyone’s favorite mouse at Disney, Mickey. The wait for the character spot was about 25 minutes if I remember right, so I had no problem waiting in the line. The characters were in this order, Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, and then Goofy. The only character without a photopass photographer was Pluto but the handler was more than willing to take a couple of pictures for me with my camera.

After leaving the character spot I called DM to see where & when she wanted to meet up since we had plans to see Fantasmic that night. DM said that she would meet me at the International Gateway once she caught a bus to either EPCOT or a bus to HS and then the boat to EPCOT. This worked well for me as I was able to wander through some of WS on the way back. First up though I came upon Duffy meeting guests, but did not stand in line for him. I headed over to Mexico first. On previous trips I had never had a chance to really explore any of the countries as we had younger children with us that wouldn’t be able to enjoy it at all. I headed inside to ride 3 Caballeros first.

Apparently I only got these two pictures of the loading area and none of the ride itself. :confused

After the ride I wandered around in the square a little bit, just to look and remember the trips I’d had to Mexico when I was little. Next I headed over Norway. I had when I was planning the trip thought about riding Maelstrom, but when it got down to it I had a choice. The choice was to take my time in each country exploring a little bit, or ride Maelstrom but then have to speed walk to the International Gateway. Next I wandered through China and Germany. Taking the time to really just experience Germany was fun since I’m 75% German. I also met a princess while in Germany.

Next up was America, where there was a concert going on in the America Garden Theater. Japan, Morocco, & France were the last countries I would get to. I had fun and found a photopass photographer in France that had no one by the Beauty and the Beast topiary. I did take pictures of the topiaries as I went through the countries as well I’ll post them in a separate post as I’ll be over my photo limit otherwise for this post.

I had a little bit of a wait even once I got to the International Gateway so I took another picture as well as wandered in the gift store that was right there. While I was wandering the world, DM had called and the bus to HS had showed up first, but then she missed the boat to EPCOT and was waiting for the next one. She had also grabbed my jacket so that if we sat where Dsis would’ve wanted us to, we could get out of the show without being drenched. Once DM got to EPCOT we headed over to America so that DM & I could both get some dinner. She had the chicken bacon flatbread plain, aka no lettuce, tomato, cheese, mayo, anything. I had the pulled pork sandwich and each of us had fries and a free water. We sat outside to listen to Herman’s Hermits Starring Peter Noone. Then we headed over to HS to catch the second showing of Fantasmic.