The one with the dusty, wrinkly, moldy-oldy 4 day park hopper ticket from 1992! (August 2025)

Your mother looks so young-especially for having a knee replacement already! But I have "children" close to her age, so I'm looking thru old, cataract-corrected eyes.
Haha!! She is 55 and had me when she was young (21) - plus she jokes that 'a perk of being fat is that you have less wrinkles' :rotfl2: I don't know if there's any truth to that but that's what she says! I look a lot more like my dad than I do my mom and it seems I inherited all of his less-than-ideal traits so I doubt I will follow her "looks good at 55" footsteps and will more likely look like a wrinkly old female version of him, but oh well :laughing:

What do they do now, especially if you've purchased LL? DS used one day from a passport he bought in 1989 (actually it was a child's passport, so we bought it) back in 2003, when he definitely wasn't a child anymore. Except for the fact that he couldn't use it at Animal Kingdom (because it hadn't existed in 1989)
Goodness now you've got me worried - we only used the 2 tickets at DHS & MK so didn't even try DAK yet - I will definitely research this before her next trip! DAK didn't exist back in 1992 either so that would make me think that she couldn't use it there if they didn't let your DS use his!! Eek, thanks for sharing!

The CM at Disney Springs converted them to the digital version of tickets we use now, so they're in the app and everything.

It says this:

"04-Day Magic Your Way Ticket with Park Hopper & No Expiration Options (Ages 10+) and then at the bottom it says "Theme Parks: 2 Days Remaining" and "Valid Through: 12/31/2030" (which sort of negates the whole 'with no expiration options' haha!)

My eyes couldn't tell-how many days of the 5 did she have available?
So it was initially a 5 day Passport and she used one single day back in Jan 92 (I would have been a month old, crazy!) so had 4 remaining.
 
What do they do now, especially if you've purchased LL
I didn't notice any hiccups with LLs - we weren't able to purchase it before she got the tickets converted over obviously because the system won't let you buy LL without a valid ticket but when I purchased them on the bus ride home from MK that day it went without a hitch! And then using them on the following Monday at DHS was no issue either.
 
Goodness now you've got me worried - we only used the 2 tickets at DHS & MK so didn't even try DAK yet - I will definitely research this before her next trip! DAK didn't exist back in 1992 either so that would make me think that she couldn't use it there if they didn't let your DS use his!! Eek, thanks for sharing!

The CM at Disney Springs converted them to the digital version of tickets we use now, so they're in the app and everything.
It sounds like the tickets don't include any reference to 1992 now, so she should be fine. When DS used his in 2003, he just took it to the front gate. Luckily the CM still had a date stamp, so he's got the ticket with all the dates stamped, 5 in the fall of 1989, then the last one in June, 2003. But hers doesn't have a date, so Animal Kingdom is certainly an option.
 
It sounds like the tickets don't include any reference to 1992 now, so she should be fine. When DS used his in 2003, he just took it to the front gate. Luckily the CM still had a date stamp, so he's got the ticket with all the dates stamped, 5 in the fall of 1989, then the last one in June, 2003. But hers doesn't have a date, so Animal Kingdom is certainly an option.
OH! I misunderstood! I had called when we found this old ticket and asked if they would accept them and they said not without stopping at Guest Services (whether in Disney Springs or at the actual theme park) so that process must have changed in the last 22 years (I guess not too terribly surprising!)
 

I love your dresses they look so comfy. Are they the Halara dresses?
I was literally thinking only a few hours ago that if they ever go out of style, I am absolutely at the age where I will just continue to wear them and not care because they’re that great 🤣 they are not Halara but are Amazon knockoffs!! They go on super sale every so often so I just stock up on the various colors throughout the year. Here’s the link for the navy blue (I wore on travel day) & black (I wore for our CYM photo session): Heathyoga Tennis Dress With... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BWTG6MPZ?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
But the rest are these: Womens Tennis Dress, 2-in-1 Golf... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVHP1B4D?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
 
Really enjoying your TR! You really make the most of every day at Disney! Even though you're up early and very much on the go, your kids look very happy to be there :-) And you do work in some down time which is nice. So many great family photos - how do you decide which ones to display at home? Your DS's party decorations were so creative and fun! Thanks for sharing your trips!
 
Hi! Just wanted to say I enjoy your trip reports so much! You remind me a lot of myself 🤪 and we have a very similar touring style! (I have a DD8 and DS4) You’re doing a great job at this Mom thing and trip reporting thing so please come back so I can live vicariously until we go in December 😬❤️
 
Really enjoying your TR! You really make the most of every day at Disney! Even though you're up early and very much on the go, your kids look very happy to be there :-) And you do work in some down time which is nice. So many great family photos - how do you decide which ones to display at home? Your DS's party decorations were so creative and fun! Thanks for sharing your trips!
You're so sweet!! Re: the family photos I have a Skylight photo album so I don't have to choose :laughing:
 
Hi! Just wanted to say I enjoy your trip reports so much! You remind me a lot of myself 🤪 and we have a very similar touring style! (I have a DD8 and DS4) You’re doing a great job at this Mom thing and trip reporting thing so please come back so I can live vicariously until we go in December 😬❤️
Awww I love this!!! Thank you! And I will live vicariously through YOU when you go in December!!! Matt is trying so hard to convince me to book a last minute trip for next week while the kids are out of school for MEA break but it is INSANELY expensive - $3k for flights and $4k for hotel/park tickets at All Star Music for 5 days... wild!!!!!!
 
Sunday, August 17th (Day 5)

We all were slow to rise, nearing the half-way point of our trip. I had warned Matt that just because of the timing of MNSSHP dates etc. that this trip wouldn't have as many sleep in mornings, but would have more rest afternoon/evenings and it seems we were all feeling it. DD6 was tearful and tired, which thankfully reminded me to finally bring the bubble wands since each day prior we had forgotten them back at the hotel- so that cheered her up a bit as we left the room at 5:45am. We were at the bus stop by 5:50 and were driving away to Magic Kingdom by 6:15am and in line for security by 6:30am.

With Matt & the stroller holding the line, I didn't feel super guilty as I pulled the kids away for a quick photo op at the nearby pumpkins outside the tapstiles --

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There was a nice couple in their early 60s behind us in line who we spoke with for the 30ish minute wait to be let in, they told us about their daughter who had passed away some years ago from cancer but had loved Disney and this was her 'happy place' so they come here semi-often to feel close with her (I'm tearing up as I type this!). We asked her name and thought of her (& her parents) throughout the day, Matt and I feeling strongly that if (god forbid) anything were to happen to one of us or either of our kids that we would likely do the same, since Disney is so much a part of all 4 of us at this point and is very much all of our 'happy place'. We talked about our two families game plan for rope drop, them joking that they planned to rope drop Starbucks and Matt and I commenting our jealousy as we planned to fight the crowds for a 7DMT (take two, since our last attempt was a bust) rope drop.

When they started letting us in, we said our goodbyes to the nice couple and made our way to Fantasyland.

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We eventually find our place in line, almost identical to where we were two days before, and waited.

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We had maybe 25-30 people in front of us, so not bad at all!

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At some point in the 20ish minute wait, I noticed the teensiest tiny perfectly round circle/bead in a dark red color on Matt's shoulder. When I pointed it out, we both looked up at the tree overhead, wondering what on earth it could be. It was like a drop of the candy apple goo that is on the outside of a candy apple, we were baffled for about 15 seconds wondering what on earth it could be when DS5 said "I think I have a nosebleed", ha!

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It must have started at some point when Matt was holding DS5 and just the smallest drop of blood (literally it was the size of the head of a pin!) landed on Matt's shoulder :laughing:

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Unfortunately DS5 is no stranger to nosebleeds as he gets them frequently (we've seen ENT to discuss cauterizing the blood vessel that is prominent inside one of his nostrils but ultimately decided against it after being told that it's basically a band-aid and doesn't solve the issue for good) but because of this frequency I always always always am prepared so I took a kleenex out of my crossbody and Matt started the pinch & hold process.

While waiting in line (and after the bleeding had stopped), our rope drop buddies passed us as they walked through Fantasyland, saying hi and showing off their coffees- with a "ooooh, you jealous?!" LOL so the 4 of us got a good laugh and they moved on to whichever attraction they were heading to next.

As we got closer to 7:30 (park open for EE), we noticed the characters had already started roaming, and none other than Tigger himself was going up and down our line giving everyone high fives! It was so special and as I said the other day I really hope they continue doing this.

We wove through the queue and were on the ride in no time (I took video of DD6's reaction on the ride and time stamp shows 7:36). I can't remember if we asked to wait for row 1 or if we just happened to get it, but either way you know DD6 was thrilled!

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After getting off, the kids visited with some of the nearby characters, the first of which being Chip & Dale:

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Closer to 7:45am we made our way to Tomorrowland for a ride on Space Mountain since it was posted 10 minute standby.

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^DS5 being a dork :laughing:

We made our way through the dark queue, and it was a walk-on.

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^high quality picture, huh???

We had a great ride! All 4 of us opting for double thumbs up for our ride picture:

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After Space Mountain, we moseyed BACK into Fantasyland and joined the queue for Peter Pan, the estimated wait for standby being 20 minutes at that point (8:04am, so park open to all guests).

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I have ride footage at 8:22am so the wait time was only very slightly inflated.
 
After getting off we decided breakfast was in order, so I mobile ordered Friar's Nook for a breakfast sandwich & tots with a raspberry lemonade slushy (gotta get that $$$ worth by adding a drink!) which was decently tasty.


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While wolfing down this shared breakfast (unsurprisingly it doesn't take long for the 4 of us to devour this meal) Matt got pooped on by an overhead bird which made me simultaneously chuckle (reminding him that it's supposedly good luck!) and thank my lucky stars that it landed on him and not our food! :laughing:

After we ate & Matt wiped up the bird poop ;) we made our way to Liberty Square to go on Haunted Mansion, however as soon as we got nearby we realized it had just gone down. It was at this point that Matt requested we take a coffee break, so he made his way to Main Street while I pushed the stroller back into Fantasyland, just sort of meandering around at this point while we waited for him. We stopped in Sir Mickeys and the 3 of us all got pixie dusted, and then eventually I took the kids for a spin on the carousel since that one is a popular one for them both. The characters were still out at this point, and we overheard Rapunzel telling another kid nearby that there is one horse in particular on the carousel that is her favorite, so of course DD6 made a bee-line for that horse when it was our turn to ride.

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After our short spin, the kids wanted another attempt at the Sword in the Stone (the little girl right before us got it!!!!).

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I can't with these facial expressions :rotfl2:The PhotoPass CM (& the people who review the pics, add in the edits etc.) must get a good laugh!

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Around 8:54 we were reunited with Matt, coffee in hand.

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Apparently the CM goofed up his order, since Matt doesn't care for white mocha (too sweet) and as you can see from that picture, that's what we got. Oh well, I like it!

We made a quick pit stop at the Rapunzel bathrooms, me taking both kids potty while Matt stayed behind with the stroller and drank some of the coffee since we couldn't bring it with us on our next ride.

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I don't remember what the posted standby time was but I'm guessing it wasn't much, and it ended up being a walk on which was problematic in that our coffee wasn't gone and we needed to pause at the bottom of the ramp to chug it- cue the brain freeze!

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While on it's a small world, mine & Matt's MagicBands were going off in this fun rainbow pattern, which was cute and the kids enjoyed watching:

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After IASW we made our way to Pirates, which must have also had a low wait time, since time stamp of the rainbow MagicBand is 9:20am and the one below is 9:39am.

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I tried to snap a pic of my favorite pirate on all of Pirates of the Caribbean, stinky hairy leg guy, but accidentally set off my flash so I immediately had to apologize to everyone in the boat for being one of those people. Whoops!!!! And the picture still didn't even turn out, hmmmmph.

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After Pirates we continued to work our way through Adventureland, spotting Jasmine in the distance but not opting to visit since I think she had a hefty line.

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As we made our way to Jungle Cruise (20 minute standby), I said to the two skippers standing at the front of the attraction "hey, do you need any more skippers?" (referring to DS5). One of them replied "depends, can you tell a funny joke?" which I 1,000% expected DS5 to freeze and look at me.. instead he goes, without missing a beat, "Why did the fish cross the road - I mean the ocean?" The skippers thought for a moment and said "I don't know, why did the fish cross the ocean" and he responded "to get to the other TIDE" which had all of us laughing, me supremely impressed that he was able to pull that out of nowhere!! They immediately took us to the Lightning Lane and let us go through even though we didn't have LLs for the day!! How magical!! All from DS5 telling a joke :laughing: Have I mentioned that CM are the magic?!?!??!?!?!?!?

When we got to the "how many?" CM we were still all smiling ear to ear, and I asked the CM if we could, while we waited for the next boat, go say hi to the tarantula. She said of course, and the kids inched over to her (the CM told me her name and now I can't remember what it was!) and right on cue it jumped which made the kids jump (even when they know it's coming, ha!) and all the surrounding guests busted out laughing, most of them jumping in startlement as well!

We were on our boat by 9:54 and off by 10:04, having a great ride as usual. After debarking, the kids requested a treat so I stopped at Sunshine Tree Terrace for an I Lava You float, asking the CM if I could have two cups so my kids don't squabble. She said yes, and offered to just pour two mini floats so I didn't have to attempt to split it up myself. What a life saver!!!! I'm not sure her version of 'mini' is accurate though, cause to my eyes those just look like two floats.... so a bit more pixie dust was sent our way, in my opinion!!!!!

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The kids were obviously thrilled to get their own floats, DD6 listening intently to the crackle of the Pop Rocks. As we went to leave Adventureland, there was a PhotoPass CM taking a lengthy photo shoot of a couple nearby, so we got in line and waited our turn- the kids opting to eat their yummy treats instead of partaking in the pictures, so it was just mom & dad!

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He took so many photos! Eventually the kids must have been feeling a little left out because they ditched their stroller and joined us for the last couple pictures:

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and then eventually the kids got some solo shots as well:

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He was so thorough and did such a good job I made note of his name (David from Las Vegas) so I could enter a Cast Compliment. In hindsight I wish I would have gotten the skippers name to enter one for her too, darn it!! We eventually crossed over Main Street and made our way into Fantasyland again, this time heading for the Little Mermaid (ride, not the character ;))


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On our way to Little Mermaid we passed another PhotoPass CM, this one looking lonely & bored so we of course had to stop ;)

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At first DD6 didn't want to partake but eventually again caught some FOMO and joined the family --

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After wrapping up Matt noticed he had an American flag Mickey pin and so asked if he was a veteran, he responded that he was so we thanked him for his service and we had a brief talk about us working at the VA, the current climate of things (not great) and he mentioned some struggles he's having at his local VA and it reminded me how much we love ours and how lucky we are to have an amazing facility. After saying goodbye, we joined the queue for Little Mermaid (of course chuckling and shaking our heads as we passed the other queue entrance) and were on our shells in no time.

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Once again with the flash, whoops!!! I suck. Sorry lady behind Matt & DS5!!

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After getting off the ride DS5 asked me to take his picture, so I did:

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So then of course DD6 had to follow suit...

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And then we spotted a hidden Mickey!

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It was a little before 11am by this point, and we back tracked a bit into Storybook Circus to ride Barnstormer two times.

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After Barnstormer we of course had to go next door to Dumbo--

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It was now only 11:13am by that point and I'm not sure how or why (I don't think I had paid for the LLSP..) but apparently DD6 and I rode Tron next... must have been a <45 minute standby cause I don't think we would have done it otherwise!
While we were setting up the rider swap, DS5 had a bit of a crying episode because he was sad he couldn't ride and the sweet CM at the entrance gave him one of those cards "come back when you're tall enough" so that was nice! I think I've mentioned in a previous TR that initially I didn't realize that those were actually skip-the-line cards and were just little trinkets given by CM to sad kids who aren't tall enough and had been throwing them away- ugh!!! Now that I know better I have a handful of them tucked away for future trips.

In his sadness, he must have somehow convinced dad to go on Teacups (barf) while they waited for the girls.

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Meanwhile, the girls had asked if they could wait for the front row - woohoo!

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And off we went!

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I love reading all of your reports. I still make a yearly trip with my almost 22 year-old daughter. She still talks about our family trips, and I'm glad that we can still enjoy going together.
 
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It was about 12:20pm by the time we did the rider swap, but the 2nd parent gets to go through the Lightning Lane so we knew it was going to be shorter than the hour or so that Matt had to wait (I know he also rode the cars while they waited for us).


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DS5 and I settled on Astro Orbiter since I'd never done it and it was nearby, and almost never has a >15 minute wait.

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When we got to the "how many" CM, I could see it was one CM training in 2 'newbies' and unfortunately right as we were next to go in the elevators we heard them get the notification that lightning was in the area so we had to bail, bummer. I still haven't ridden this one!

After leaving the line, we decided we'd get lunch inside Cosmic Rays and hopefully wait out the rain. Of course I should know better by now, because what seems to ALWAYS happen to me is that the rain holds off until AFTER we've finished eating/left the covered area - and today was no exception. Matt and DD6 had joined us in no time, we ate lunch inside Cosmic Rays and then as soon as we left the heavens opened up- so we quick darted back under the covered awning of the outdoor seating area and donned our ponchos and rain jackets/switched out of our tennis shoes and into our waterproof Birks. One of our 'go to' areas in MK when it rains is Tomorrowland since they have ample (covered) stroller parking and a decent number of close-by indoor attractions, making it easier to dart from attraction to attraction with minimal down-pour. Apparently everyone had that idea though and we struggled a bit to find stroller parking!

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It was 1:30pm by this point, and we decided to pop in to Monsters Inc Laugh Floor. After that show was over, the rain had already slowed down immensely so we felt safe to leave the covered stroller parking and instead made our way back to Fantasyland for what would be our last attraction of the day, Mickey's Philharmagic at the kids request.

We left the park around 2:45pm with the plan being a rest afternoon where we tackled some laundry and went swimming. Thankfully with my mom being there she was able to watch the kids & swim with them while Matt and I tag-teamed the laundry which always makes things like that go faster.

Laundry was a bit of a fiasco in the sense that half the machines weren't working, and on two separate occasions this trip, a machine charged Matt's CC without actually working - so two separate times he had to go to the front desk to get it resolved. One time they gave him his money back in cash/change (??!?!??!) and the second time they told him they would 'refund it to the room' but upon checking our charges when we got home we learned that never happened, so that was a little bit of a bummer but what can you do. At least it was only a couple bucks, but still. Fix those awful machines! The laundry room at AoA by the big pool just looks like trash with leaking machines & pool towels absorbing the water and half of them completely defunct. We did later learn that there is laundry by the Cars suites and those are (according to Matt, I never saw them) much nicer so he did use those later in the trip.

One funny thing that happened while we were doing laundry (and one of the only pictures I have from the afternoon) was that a lone baby sock got left behind and caught up in our laundry so I of course had to "awwwwwww, Matt look", making this face as well:

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I do not want another baby, but I sure do miss when my babies were babies!!!! So had to take a picture of how little & cute it was:

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At one point walking back to our room with a load of freshly laundered clothing, I happened to spot movement out of the corner of my eye at floor level and spotted one of those lizards inside the hallway, racing me!!

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He stopped at some other poor sap's room (note the MASSIVE gap that he most definitely could fit through) so when I got to our room I quickly put a towel down at the bottom of the door to minimize our chances of having a new roommate move in against our will.

Eventually around 6pm we said our goodbyes to DD6 and grandma for mom + dad + DS5's night out! Unlike DD6, DS5 would not survive a night of walking so we brought the stroller, feeling a little silly but knowing he would be whining about his legs being tired in no time if we didn't so it was the right call.

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