) I can give a quick rundown of our trip. Sorry if I'm repeating anything I may have mentioned here. We had an amazing time, crowds were great and I'm excited that we booked the free dining bounceback for 4th of July week next year at Wilderness Lodge. We didn't start boarding due to storms until we were supposed to take off, and then sat on the runway for about another 1 1/2 - 2 hours before finally taking off.
Thank you! Yes, keeping busy (even if unintentionally) does make the time go by faster. The last shift at work went by pretty quickly between my normal work, and the last minute quick equipment repairs so that everything *should* go smoothly while I am away. I had already been paid, and gotten a little something extra from the boss to help us enjoy our trip. Tonight before I left, he gave me a little something more, and said the first tank of gas for the drive down was on him. It is nice working for a family owned business. Even though they are not my family, they treat me as though I am part of theirs.
Thank you.
I know this puts me in a very small if almost nonexistent minority but just wow. The vibe of the ride just hits all the good feels. Pandora at night is pure magic!
There was a super brief storm daily and somehow we missed every single one of them. 
Our bus driver was an angel and found someone to drive us to Epcot. We encountered really kind CMs the entire trip. Our servers were all outstanding!
For reals; it worked a like a charm. We picked up Na'vi that way, twice. It does require having your face in your phone though.
Just packed almost everything today to leave on Friday.
Broke my own rule and peeked at dining availability and now I’m obsessively stalking for one ADR so I can cancel the Ohana breakfast I have for this trip and go during our short September trip instead (DH unexpectedly got selected for a work conference and I’m tagging along). Usually I leave my dining and plans well enough alone unless it’s to add something at the last minute (and we’re not doing much TS for this trip).
I don’t even know how I’m going to work or sleep between now and Friday
An 8am Crystal Palace ADR opened up for our MK day
Still need to make one more costume for MNSSHP
I have been asking DH about a couple different bounce back options but he thinks planning next trip before getting to this one is a bit muchSilly guy.
We arrived home Friday night and I have the Disney blues. Here is my recap I posted in another section:
WDW is incredible and AK is bar far the best park. Our opinion is that in order of parks its goes AK, DHS, MK, and then Epcot. Epcot needs some major updating; there is so much dead space, like so much. But lets start with the positives.
AK just WOW! I had little faith in Pandora and didn't understand how Disney made that leap and I am happy to admit I was dead wrong. Its so esthetically appealing, the entire park is aside from Dinoland (but I understand why it's there). We loved FOP and Na'vi and truth be told, I liked Na'vi more.
The FOP pre-show is a little too long but its truly an incredible journey. As one who can suffer from motion sickness, this ride did not affect me at all.
We dined at Tiffin's for lunch and I have to say it was overall the best meal we had on this trip. The service, ambiance, and food were all outstanding. We also dined at California Grill for brunch, Jiko for dinner, Sanaa for dinner plus some others. I ended up cancelling over half our ADRs as it was just too hot to eat a huge meal everyday. California Grill and Jiko were both fantastic and I would recommend both. Sanaa was much louder than I remember. The bread service was the star of the meal.
BoG for lunch was a minor let down. We ordered the French Dip, French onion soup, and grey stuff cupcake. This was a one and done for us. I didn't find the food any better than Pecos Bills or Columbia Harbor House. Glad we got to see the inside though and worth the $30.
Toy Story Land is adorable and SDD is a fun little coaster; DH liked it better than 7DMT. Once Galaxy's Edge opens, it'll be a tie between DHS and AK for best park. 6 years ago DHS was my least favorite park and now its second in line. ToT and RnR were as fun as I remembered!
MK is a good park but we are local to Disneyland and Disneyland has my heart. Having said that, the wide walkways at MK are soooo nice. Splash is so much better at WDW too. We also rode POTC (superior at DL), 7DMT, Mickey's Philharmagic, and the PeopleMover.
Epcot. Club 33 is incredible! We were treated to a lovely anniversary celebration. If you have the chance GO!
Epcot. The countries need updating..... to me anyway. Almost an entire store for perfume, teas, etc? With Amazon and access to everything, it seems like some of the spaces could use a facelift. We did spend a lot of time at Rose and Crown and met some really fun people! The drinks were really good and we had a wonderful afternoon.
The heat: I am spoiled living in Southern California. That is all.
Bagless entry: the only way to go! We did this twice but the bag check lines were not all that bad on the days we brought bags.
Transportation. We stayed at AKL/V and didn't have any transportation issues. One morning in fact, we made a total newbie mistake. We hopped the MK bus for Epcot.
In addition to the already mentioned we dined at Mara (QS at AKL/V), ordered room service one evening for a late dinner after our Epcot day (read day drinking), we snacked around AK and tried those siracha fries. OMG so good. We had our share of Mickey pretzels, cocktails, and frozen Cokes. We brought our own coffee for the room and bought creamer and donuts from the store at AKL/V. In Disney Springs we went to Jock Lindsey's Hanger Bar, what a fun concept! Disney Springs overall was just okay but probably because I am not a big shopper. We tried the turkey breakfast sandwich at Woody's Lunchbox and it was really nice; much better than I expected for a QS sandwich. It was also big enough to share.
We took tons of Photopass pictures and I love just how many photo ops there are.
Refresh needs its own chapter in the bible.
Great trip report. Love seeing different perspectives on the parks. Don't do anything with the tea shop though, really. I know, Amazon, but still, I buy like a whole years supply of tea every summer when I am in Disney
Never again!
Leave tomorrow morning, flight at 5:59AM.
Going thru all my plans today to cancel ADRs we wont need. (Possibly canceling BOG Aug 17th at 5 and Ohanas either 5:45 or 6:45 Aug 16th) I'll post what I cancel over in the other thread.
Printed my boarding passes to put in my folder, have all our TPs printed and packed everyone but my DS15.
Getting excited, hoping for great weather, atleast while in the parks, it can rain all it wants at night.
Had a dream that we were leaving late to the airport and were going to miss our flight...
I dream we miss our plane a lot the night before our trips to Disney!
Ok so now that we are home (I know,
We arrived Aug. 3. Took about 2 hours longer than anticipated from the Florida Keys due to northbound turnpike traffic but our room was ready when we got there (POP, 50's section, lakeview, building 2). Turning our rental car in at Alamo was so easy and they shuttled us right to Disney Springs. We had a reservation at T-Rex. This was our first time eating there and we really enjoyed it. DS8 is really into dinosaurs right now!
Aug. 4 we headed to Animal Kingdom. Crowds were so nice compared to our Thanksgiving trip where you could hardly move in there! We had fastpasses for FOP and rode stand by for Nav'i, which was our first time getting on that. We spent a lot of time at Rafiki's Planet Watch with hardly anyone there. We walked right up to meet Rafiki at Doc McStuffins.
We stayed at AK until about 3 and headed back to swim and rest. That night was our first DAH. We got to MK about 7:30 and had a small dinner at Peco's before hitting the rides. And of course eating ice cream and popcorn! While we had fun I thought it still seemed busy. Still not too bad to wait 25 minutes for 7DMT but we also didn't get PP because of the line and DS and I had to wait to drive at the speedway. Still it was a great time and worth the cost. We got back to our room about 1:45 a.m.
Aug.5 we went back to MK and arrived about 11:30 a.m. DD10 had her BBB appt. at 1:30, then DS got his hair cut at 3, then dinner at 4:00 at CRT. At BBB, DD was asked if it was her 1st time and when she told them it was her 8th, they all made a big deal about it. She was loving the attention! I thought it would be an early evening due to the late night before but we met up with friends from home and ended up staying until close.
Aug 6 was HS. Arrived in the a.m. and went to TSMM standby (about an hour) and then used our fastpass for Slinky Dog - we really liked this! Stand-by for Aliens was 40 minutes but my kids suprisingly were not interested in riding - said it was too long to wait for something like the teacups as they put it. We left for awhile in the afternoon and came back for the evening. Dinner at 50's Prime Time was so much fun! I was also able to get a 4th fastpass and use it on TSMM so we got to do that a 2nd time. The biggest disappointment was the Star Wars fireworks. Last time we saw them they were amazing with tons of fireworks. DH and I concluded that they probably no longer have the big fireworks because of all the construction and TSL being in the back area. We left watching and went into Launch Bay - best decision ever! No one was in there. We walked in and the 4 of us were surrounded and rounded up by Storm Troopers. The kids weren't too sure about it though! We walked in to see Chewy, then DH and I saw Kylo Ren with no wait while the kids went to see BB8. A very nice CM even walked the kids over and stayed until they were done to make sure they got back to us too. (they were too afraid to meet Kylo Ren - even though they did Jedi Training with him and Darth Vader last trip!)
Aug 7 we went to EPCOT, getting there about 11 or so again and staying until 8. Standby for Soarin which was never too long and then used our fastpass for Test Track - only complaint - the fastpass line was so long when we got there, we had to stand in the sun! and it was hot!! but went by pretty quickly.
Aug 8 was Blizzard Beach. From 10 until about 1 the crowds weren't too heavy. We left about 3 when it was getting really crowded and went back to our room. We talked about MK that night since it was open until 1 am but none of us ended up wanting to do anything so we had dinner at POP and just hung out.
Aug 9 was back to Animal Kingdom again until about 3. The highlights here were the character meetings at Donald's Dino Bash. DS loves Pluto and while Pluto doesn't have a set meet, he plays in the boneyard. DS was happy to play along with a group of kids (while wearing his Pluto hat!) but then later Pluto came over and stole his hat! DS had some one of one time playing with him, playing tug of war over the hat and also digging together. DS said it was the best ever and he loved it more than just standing for a pic with him.
After that it was back to relax for the H20 glow party at Typhoon Lagoon. Again, a great time with riding with no waits. Our only wait was at Miss Adventure Falls then one time because it had to be stopped because of people on the ramp not holding on but other than that, we walked on everything we wanted. (Crush N Gusher had a bit of a wait around the beginning when we first went on too but not too bad, only 1 of the 3 was longer) One complaint - we had wristbands that they were passing out but it seemed like anyone could have walked up and gotten a wristband with all of the confusion with day people leaving in the same area. I also saw some people about 8:15 or so with no wristbands on slides.
Aug 10 back to MK by lunch after sleeping in. This day we focused on alot of sit down attractions, such as Monsters, Storytime with Belle (my DD was disappointed as this was the first year she didn't get picked for a part and noticed they take the youngers kids more - she's 10 but looks alot older due to her height) and things we knew we wouldn't do at DAH the next day. Once again stayed until close! (we learned this time of year we really love being out at night!!)
Aug 11 was back to EPCOT and lunch at ESPN on the boardwalk. DH and the kids had never been around the boardwalk and wanted to check it out (I ran through it during the 2016 Wine and Dine 10K but wasn't too familiar either). that night was back to DAH. This was the night they also started using wristbands as we were told there were complaints (and the thread here even talked about people sharing lanyards and such). We noticed a huge difference from the previous Saturday. Both were sold out but 8/11 was so much less crowded. We waited 10 minutes for 7DMT and no wait for PP. We jumped on Splash about 12:55 am to close out the night and took our time walking to the front and saw the kiss goodnight. We got back to our room just after 2.
Aug 12 we were actually up at a decent time to head back to MK for a couple hours and to meet my friend and her DD that live near there. We only stayed about 3 hours but it was nice to get a last little fun in and shopping. We left about 2:00 to head back to POP to catch the Tragical Express (my DS kept going on and on all day about hating the tragical express - it was so funny to hear!) No problems there until at the airport when our flight was delayed
All in all it was a great trip! I was worried about DD because with going into middle school she seems to be going thru such a change and feels like she should be too old for princesses and such - for instance this was the first year she didn't want to wear a princess dress, but still wanted BBB, so we did the shirt and tutu- but as soon as she walked in the parks it was like none of that mattered and she was right back where she always has been with believing. When Snow White came to our table at CRT (always her favorite!) you could just see her face light up and the magic was there.
Until next time... and I hope everyone coming up has just as wonderful of trips as we did!!!! I can't wait to read about all of them.
PS - if anyone on here left the band-aids as a RAK in Pop's laundry room - thank you!!! I was going to throw laundry in and then go hunt some down for DD's blisters (and eventually mine!) so if it was you, Thank you!!
That sounds great! My kiddos get an 11 year old trip with their grandparents, such a fun tradition! I hope both of your trips are magical as well!
I guess you just left since it's 6:03 right now! Hope you have a great flight and a magical time at our happy place!
