The Magic and the Misery ~ Updated 6/13: June Trip Report Started!

[Dugette]

Oh I know all about making ADRs to make up for past failed attempts. It seems neither of us got to really enjoy the food at Biergarten during our last trips (remember, Lauren had multiple protein spills at Biergarten?). Here's hoping that both of our trips our sickness free!

Oh, that's right, I remember that! I think my outing at Biergarten was more successful than hers! I hope we all can get our fill without a spill this time!

 

[Dugette]

If you recall, this day was originally intended to be our Typhoon Lagoon and Downtown Disney day. It was modified to replace Typhoon Lagoon with DHS and to shorten the time spent at Downtown Disney, as we’d already made two unplanned visits there. It would have been a nice day for a waterpark (77 and very sunny), but we had some DHS to do!

We got up early and munched on the remaining Le Cellier bread for “First Breakfast.” Then took the bus to DHS. I think we must have arrived in time for rope drop, as I remember doing the Toy Story Mania race against the crowd:

We used the same strategy that worked for us in September (but reversed roles). We both cruised with the crowd to TSM, then split up. Dug got in the standby line while I took our APs to the FP line. I got in line for the FP machine with the shortest line. A few people before I got to the FP machine, they shut it down. No explanation and nothing for those of us that were almost to the front of the line. Just had to switch over and get in another line and wait again! Luckily, the wait wasn’t too bad and Dug was able to wait by the chain right before you go into the TSM building. He let some people pass by so that he could open the chain and let me in. Then we waited together in the rest of the standby line:

I don’t remember our scores, but judging by our norm, probably in the low-to-mid hundred-thousands.

After TSM, we had a little bit of time to kill before we could obtain any other FP and before we needed to head to our Kouzzina ADR. So, why not try out Starring Rolls for “Second Breakfast”? We split a chocolate croissant (snack credit). Yummy! Guess we forgot to take a picture of it.

Next, we swung over to RnRC and grabbed FP for later. I was feeling pretty good this morning and knew I wanted to get another ride in on this while we could. And there was no way we were chancing the Single Rider Line again, after last time.

We headed from there to the resort boat launch. Took the boat to the Swan/Dolphin stop, as it was first and we could easily walk over to the Boardwalk from there. Here are the pics from our walk:

We arrived:

As we were waiting to be seated, I found a (semi) Hidden Mickey:

We were seated. Dug snapped a few photos of the restaurant and the cool light fixtures:

Since we were splitting our excess TS credit, we ordered the Stacked Kouzzina Breakfast to share. AllEars.net describes it as this: “Two Poached Eggs, Kalamata Olive Toast, Artichoke Spread, and Sweet Potato Hash with choice of Bacon or Chicken Sausage”. Sounds about right. Judging by our picture, we chose the bacon. Breakfast on the dining plan gets you two drinks, so I got orange juice and Dug got the Frappe. I know the breakfast contained more food than this picture indicates—we must have forgotten to take the pic until late in the meal:

I don’t know if it was because it was truly that amazing or if it was because potatoes really agreed with me during my flu recovery, but I LOVED that sweet potato hash. It was the first thing that I had gobbled up and wanted more of since I’d been sick. In fact, I didn’t realize it was also offered as a side until I got home and looked at the menu on AllEars, but if I’d known, I’d probably have ordered the side too. It was just so yummy. I still daydream about it regularly. Perhaps on a future trip, we’ll have to stop in for more and see if it really is as good as it tasted to me that particular day.

After that “Third Breakfast”, we wandered around and explored the Boardwalk Resort for a bit:

Is the Cowardly Lion riding the carousel?:

Once we were finished with our explorations, we took the boat back to DHS. We'd had a brief, but productive (in Fast Pass procurement) morning there already, but had a lot left to do.

Up next: more DHS!

 

[unsinkable]

I wanted to say hello and tell you what a great trip report this is!

I am sorry you got sick at Disney. It happened to me, too. In hindsight, my DH and I realized I got heat exhaustion. But at the time, we had no idea what was going on! It hit me so fast that I nearly spilled protein in the lobby of AS Movies.

I went to our room and my DH took our kids back to the parks. I was so sick & delirious that there were times I thought Mickey Mouse was in the room with me! It is funny now but at the time, it was awful.

I hope the rest of your trip was uneventful!

 

[disneydreamingdebby]

Dugette, I am so glad you felt better and found amazing food! Love your photo tour of boardwalk!

 

[Dugette]

I wanted to say hello and tell you what a great trip report this is!

and thank you!

I am sorry you got sick at Disney. It happened to me, too. In hindsight, my DH and I realized I got heat exhaustion. But at the time, we had no idea what was going on! It hit me so fast that I nearly spilled protein in the lobby of AS Movies.

I went to our room and my DH took our kids back to the parks. I was so sick & delirious that there were times I thought Mickey Mouse was in the room with me! It is funny now but at the time, it was awful.

Wow, that sounds terrible. At least we went in January, so no real threat of heat exhaustion. I can't believe you were seeing Mickey in your room!

I hope the rest of your trip was uneventful!

Yes, I was finally feeling better!

Dugette, I am so glad you felt better and found amazing food! Love your photo tour of boardwalk!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the photos!

 

[Goofy442]

I'm glad you told us how you liked Kouzzina because we want to try it in August. The BWV is where we are staying in August so I love all the pictures, thanks.

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

I have not heard much about that restaurant since it opened. I'm glad you had a good review. I must head over to All Ears & check out the menu.

 

[Dugette]

I'm glad you told us how you liked Kouzzina because we want to try it in August. The BWV is where we are staying in August so I love all the pictures, thanks.

I bet that will be cool to stay at BWV! All those nice walks along the Boardwalk whenever you want.

I have not heard much about that restaurant since it opened. I'm glad you had a good review. I must head over to All Ears & check out the menu.

We liked Kouzzina. It wasn't very crowded (late breakfast) and the breakfast food was good. The service was just average. I've heard mixed reviews about the non-breakfast food, but we may just end up back there to try it sometime...who can resist the lure of flaming cheese? We really like Greek food.

 

[Dugette]

Once we arrived back at DHS, we went to redeem our FP for RnRC. Clearly, I was feeling a lot better this day to do this shortly after eating! Got on the ride quickly with the FP and enjoyed it! This ride has the distinction of being the only upside-down ride anywhere I’ve ever really liked.

Next, we went to check the show/wait time for Little Mermaid. Decided to come back after we’d redeemed our TSM FP.

Normally, when you use FP during a busy time at TSM, you still end up waiting in line for a bit on the stairway part (where the FP joins the regular line). So, it’s usually not a walk-on. But this time, we had a super-short wait. We used our FP to get up to the point where they collect them and have you join the regular line. Since we were a party of two, instead of sending us into the line, the CM asked us to go to the right. I believe this path is normally reserved for wheelchairs (due to the stairs on the regular path). We walked down the path and ended up right at the off-the-beaten-path loading area (which I’d always seen and wondered about). They loaded us right in. I’m still not sure exactly what was going on, as I didn’t see a wheelchair anywhere. But I’m thinking we might have been filling in the back of a car for some other members of a party with a wheelchair? Not really sure, but we were on the ride!

Enjoyed the ride and used all the “secrets” we had learned about through a podcast. Here are our scores:

I think I was on the left and Dug on the right, but not sure.

Next, it was time to go see Little Mermaid. Saw it on our last trip, but still enjoyed seeing it again.

Now it was time for the Indiana Jones stunt show. Before we went in, I remembered reading in the “Hidden Magic” book that there was something we had to try here. There was a well with a rope and a sign that said, “Do not pull the rope.” With the “not” crossed off. I pulled the rope and heard Marcus (from the Indiana Jones movies) calling up from the bottom of the well. Cool.

We went in and got good seats towards the front, on the right-hand side. Last time, we’d been late to this show and were seated way in the back (and we’d missed the start of it). This time, we got to see the whole intro and such. Believe it or not, we have just shy of 150 pictures of this show. In fact, if we printed them all and bound them together, they’d probably be like a flip book where you can watch the “motion” of the entire show. It’s kind-of ridiculous. So, I’ll spare you and just post a small sampling:

As we exited the show, we passed the Jedi Training in progress:

We wandered around the New York and San Francisco streets before heading to lunch. The detail along the streets is really cool. We enjoyed all the little touches:

Something new?:

We had decided to have lunch at Studio Catering Company. DHS really doesn’t have many good options for CS and this menu sounded the best to us. I can’t resist Greek Salad, so I had that with Sprite to drink and water for “dessert.” I’m not big on cake and I told the CM, “I’m all caked-out, can I just have a bottle of water for dessert?”:

Dug had the pulled pork sub, chips, Sprite, and marble cheesecake:

Food was decent. Nothing to rave about, but good. I gobbled my salad down, really enjoying having a semi-normal appetite again. I think we saved the water for later.

After lunch, Dug stopped into a restroom. I sat outside to wait and noticed something that I found hilarious. These people had their strollers parked directly under a “ton of bricks” for the longest time and never even noticed! Poor kids:

Up next: One Man’s Dream, meeting our namesake, and trying our hand at animation!

 

[Mouse's Shadow]

So glad you were feeling better. I love the ton of bricks observation.

 

[Sunset Cliffs]

I really like your pictures of the New York city area. I feel like we have explored that area a lot, but you have a lot of pictures that I've never noticed before. Now I want to go back and spend some time there.

I also feel like DHS does not have the best CS places.... We usually try to eat at Sci-Fi for a big meal & then we wait to leave the park to eat our other meal. Nothing ever sounds exciting enough.

 

[JLR]

Glad you were feeling better! I feel the same way about RnRC. Awesome scores on TSM. I just wanted to comment and not lurk.

 

[praisehisname]

Yum! That sweet potato has sounds so good!

Great updates!

 

[Dugette]

So glad you were feeling better. I love the ton of bricks observation.

I'm glad someone else appreciates the prop comedy! I felt a little guilty about laughing over toddlers stuck under a "ton of bricks", but it was just so funny!

I really like your pictures of the New York city area. I feel like we have explored that area a lot, but you have a lot of pictures that I've never noticed before. Now I want to go back and spend some time there.

I also feel like DHS does not have the best CS places.... We usually try to eat at Sci-Fi for a big meal & then we wait to leave the park to eat our other meal. Nothing ever sounds exciting enough.

You know, I thought I was looking pretty closely at the details, but Dug captured some things on camera that I hadn't even noticed until I saw the pictures! They do such a great job with details in the parks!

Yeah, we ended up eating most of our DHS-day meals outside the park too!

Glad you were feeling better! I feel the same way about RnRC. Awesome scores on TSM. I just wanted to comment and not lurk.

Thanks! I found a video online the other day that shows someone getting a 500k+ score on TSM, so now I'm inspired to improve!

Yum! That sweet potato has sounds so good!

Great updates!

Thanks, another update coming right up! Mmmmmmmmm.....sweet potato hash! It drives me nuts that there's no smiley for "Yummy!" We'll just go with

 

[Dugette]

Cool set:

Hot set:

After lunch, we must have taken a stroll through Pixar Place. Lots of pics of the scenery:

Next on our agenda was a leisurely viewing of the One Man’s Dream exhibit:

On our last trip, we really enjoyed what we saw of the museum, but got pulled into the movie and missed a lot of the exhibit. This was our chance to see the rest of it. And take lots and lots of pictures!

We’ll be attempting something like this soon:

Walt’s office:

Disneyland castle model:

Jungle Cruise model:

Peter Pan’s Flight model:

One of my favorite Disney movies:

Walt explaining the Florida Project:

Spaceship Earth model:

This picture makes me want to cry. I believe it was in response to Walt’s death:

WDW Castle model:

Me and my pals Roy and Mickey:

The bones of an audio-animatronic:

A retired bird:

I found WALL-E hiding in a corner:

Continued in next post…

 

[Dugette]

Typhoon Lagoon model:

Tree of Life model:

Tiny hat:

Tiny Tower of Terror:

We skipped the movie this time. We saw it last trip and it was very good, but we had other things on our agenda.

For instance, we had to get in our only “must-do” character meet and greet! The only character meeting regret I’d had from our September trip is that we saw the cast of Up, but didn’t get in line. So, we waited in the 15-minute-or-so line this time. I had to get a good picture for my avatar!

Taking photos of the photos while waiting in line:

Here’s where my writing will get confusing…lets call them DugDH and DugDog to keep everything straight. DugDH didn’t want to be in the pictures, because his lips were clownish and he didn’t want to ruin any photos!

Instead, he decided to take photos, since we wanted good ones and were not going to be purchasing the few PhotoPass pics we’d had taken. So, when it was my turn, I went up and met the cast. Here I am shaking DugDog’s

I had told DugDH that it would be fun to yell “Squirrel!!!”, but I didn’t have the guts to do it. So, DugDH did! When he yelled “Squirrel!!!”, DugDog did a little excited bouncing around thing. I’m sure people do it all the time, but it was still fun.

Me and my pals:

Then, DugDH suggested that I get a hug from DugDog. This is where my avatar is from:

I think the CMs were getting a bit impatient with us by then, so we took off. I only wish that the DugDog character had the little voice box, like in the movie. He could just randomly spit out things like, “I just met you and I love you!” It would be so cute! Oh, well, I guess they’re not on display anymore now anyway, so we were just lucky we got to get those photos.

Now, back to calling DugDH just Dug again! Dug really wanted to do the Animation Academy, so we got into the little holding pen for that. They kept lying to us about when it would start. It was a long “two minutes” before they finally let us in. We grabbed our seats in the studio. Found out that we would be learning to draw Stitch.

This was not easy. Of course, I didn’t expect it to be, as I’m not much of an artist. Dug is more talented than I at that sort of thing. But they do give good direction…just maybe a bit too quickly for us novices.

I love this picture, because I think it looks like I am a real artist (even though we’ve just covered how untrue that is!):

These aren’t the best scans (the paper was too big for our scanner), but here are the results.

Mine:

Dug’s:

Although there’s no mention of it in our notes, we must have done the Great Movie Ride next. Because we have lots of blurry pictures of it. Here are the only non-blurry ones:

Dug also must have picked up some of that wonderful-smelling popcorn on our way out of the park. He said it tasted good, but not nearly as good as it smelled.

Near the exit, we were stopped for a survey. I had forgotten to mention that this happened earlier on our trip also. After getting Dug’s haircut at the Magic Kingdom, we’d been surveyed. And now we were getting asked some questions about DHS. “What rides need to be updated?” for instance. It was fun being able to give feedback directly to Disney, while at Disney. Though, I admit, we were hoping to maybe get some sort of reward for participating, but we haven’t gotten anything (to my knowledge, at least).

Once we finished with the survey-taker, we made our way to the busses and back to POR. All day long, we’d been enjoying the easy identification of fellow Minnesotans (in purple), as there was a big Vikings playoff game that night. We decided that we wanted to relax in the room, watch the game, and take care of some bounce-back decisions we needed to make!

Up next: What do we book to continue the “Year of Disney”? And doesn’t Brett Favre know that Downtown Disney will be closing soon?!?!

 

[praisehisname]

Great pics with the Up crew! Can't wait to hear about your bounceback plans!

 

[Dugette]

Great pics with the Up crew! Can't wait to hear about your bounceback plans!

Thanks! I hope to get the bounceback update done tonight!

 

[disneydreamingdebby]

Thank you for all of the pictures. It was cool to see Walt's office. I am reading The Kingdom Keepers with my daughters, and one of the scenes took place in there! Bounceback - fun!

 

[Dugette]

Thank you for all of the pictures. It was cool to see Walt's office. I am reading The Kingdom Keepers with my daughters, and one of the scenes took place in there! Bounceback - fun!

You're welcome for the pictures! That's neat about the book! Bounceback coming right up...