The Rebel Forces Were Strong But The Smith's Are Stronger TR-7/20 FINAL THOUGHTS

[LuccaDrake]

Love the Ash vs. Darth Vader pics!

~Beka~

 

[Dugette]

Very cute little Jedi you have there! You got some nice character meets in too. Looking forward to more!

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

Love the Ash vs. Darth Vader pics!

~Beka~

Very cute little Jedi you have there! You got some nice character meets in too. Looking forward to more!

Thank you both

 

[tksbaskets]

I loved the Jedi Training Academy installment. Your daughter looked like she was taking Vader down!

We've stopped to watched that several times even though our little Jedis are 19 The jedi who runds the show is great!

Looking forward to more!

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

I loved the Jedi Training Academy installment. Your daughter looked like she was taking Vader down!

We've stopped to watched that several times even though our little Jedis are 19 The jedi who runds the show is great!

Looking forward to more!

Thanks...she loved battling Vader. I'm so glad that she got to do it. I forgot to post about this but when she was 3 her Star Wars obsession was just getting underway and they had Jedi Training when we went to Disneyland. She was HEARTBROKEN that she didn't get picked. So we never told her about the one @ WDW. I'm so happy that they gave out tickets and we didn't have a repeat of DL!

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

When I left you hanging...we were heading to cool off on a ride! And it was a good one!!!

I forget who I battled on this ride but I lost miserably! Stacy won for our group

I suggested The Voyage of the Little Mermaid next but the kids wanted to go to the Animation Building. I don't really know what happened but Randy took a bathroom break and couldn't get in after we did So we hung out there without him.

SMALL SPOILER ALERT FOR TS3....Skip the next paragraph if you haven't seen it.

The line for Sorcerer Mickey was insane but the one for Lotso was short so we hopped in that one. I don't think a lot of people knew who he was. I particularly liked how the CMs tried to play off that he wasn't a bad guy. The have revamped the line area to look like the Butterfly Room @ Sunnyside. It was super cute.

I have more PP pics of this too. Again, I'll post them later.

While waiting for Lotso, the kids had some kind of pow wow. They were discussing our upcoming ADR at O'Hana and how they planned to beat Randy at coconut races

We got done with Lotso and I checked my Blackberry for an update for Randy and noticed I had a VM...and that's when the Rebel Forces tried ruining our vacation AGAIN!!!!!!

I checked the message and it was an alert stating that my debit card had been stolen. I checked my wallet...yup, debit card was in there. Now I had heard about these scams before so i didn't call back the number that it was directing me to call...instead I called BOA directly. And i was immediately transferred to the Fraud Dept!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The person on the phone asked if I was driving around the South buying a lot of gas NOPE!!! To make a long story even longer...it turns out that they believe some jerk at the airport skimmed my number during my ultralong delay and made a fake card. The irony is it took over a week for them to make and send me a new card but the thieves made one within 24 hours! Kudos to BOA for catching it and thankfully we had cash, Randy's debit card, and CCs with us so we were fine but still ANNOYING to deal with on vaca

Luckily while I was dealing with this Stacy was watching the kiddos- who were very entertained by all the machines

We finally reached Randy who stated that he had decided to hop in Chewbacca and the Ewoks line so we decided to head over there.

On the way, we passed the line that had Darth Goofy, Leia Minnie, R2MK, Jedi Mickey, and Stormtrooper Donald (ya...they ALL rotated ) It wasn't too terrible so we hopped in that.

Minnie was THRILLED to see herself on Aisling's skirt!

You can't really tell but Goofy is pulling Aisling's hair in this one)

We finally caught up with Randy who sadly hadn't gotten that far in line. We ended up still waiting about 45 minutes! Turns out that Chewie and Ewoks had to take a LOT of breaks given their furry costumes. Basically they would come out for 5-10 minutes and then take a 15 minute break. So when we joined the line there was only about 10 families in front of us but it took a long time! Luckily there were a couple of groups of adults in front of us when they took their final break before our turn. They were fine with letting the kids climb around while the characters were gone

The furry guys came back and we quickly got our pics and autographs and got out of there! We even got some bonus fur stuck in our autograph books

The kids were ready for another ride at this point but the mommies...not so much. Thank God for Randy who took all 3 on Star Tours by himself while Stacy and I relaxed. It was starting to sprinkle a little bit but it felt so nice that we sat outside! When they came out, Stacy's boys did some souvie shopping in the shop and us Smiths sat on the ground outside absolutely exhausted. All of us were DONE for the day.

Our dinner ADR was still a good 35-40 minutes away but Stacy brought up the brigh idea that we might get seated early. Did it work???????

 

[Lady Lallie]

Thanks for the spoiler alert, totally skipped that part. LOL.

I don't know how you all lasted with so little sleep, the heat and the crowds. Kudos!

Debit card theft is crazy scary that it can happen so quickly. Thank goodness for backups.

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

Thanks for the spoiler alert, totally skipped that part. LOL.

I don't know how you all lasted with so little sleep, the heat and the crowds. Kudos!

Debit card theft is crazy scary that it can happen so quickly. Thank goodness for backups.

It's it nuts???? I have a friend who's a NH State Trooper and he was assigned to the airport in May. And he's debit number got stolen that week too! Note...don't use your debit card at airports. I'm so glad we decided to get our Disney Visas. I'm not a fan of the temptation of credit cards but bottom line- it's a lot less scary if that number gets stolen than the number of the account that your MORTGAGE comes out of!

 

[Lady Lallie]

It's it nuts???? I have a friend who's a NH State Trooper and he was assigned to the airport in May. And he's debit number got stolen that week too! Note...don't use your debit card at airports. I'm so glad we decided to get our Disney Visas. I'm not a fan of the temptation of credit cards but bottom line- it's a lot less scary if that number gets stolen than the number of the account that your MORTGAGE comes out of!

Marc & I have no credit cards right now and we need to get a back up one to our debit cards when we travel.

And I meant to say good job on not calling that number back...we have so many call into my bank about people who leave messages and they call them back and then give them their debit card number! Yikes.

 

[Dugette]

Wow, that's no fun about your debit card! I'm glad they caught it, but yuck!

You met a lot of characters! Very cool! We didn't brave those lines! I love the pic of the kids with Chewie and the Ewok. We met Lotso too. (I've whited out the following sentences for anyone who hasn't seen the TS3 movie yet. Anyone who has, feel free to highlight it so you can read it...hopefully this works!)We literally just came back from watching the movie this afternoon and I feel a little bad now about hugging Lotso at Disney. Oh, well. We had no clue what his role in the movie would be.

Great update!

 

[Queenofallthings]

What a great update! Lotso is too cute!!!

I love the characters Star Wars costumes....one year we have to make it for that weekend, it looks so cute!!!

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

Marc & I have no credit cards right now and we need to get a back up one to our debit cards when we travel.

And I meant to say good job on not calling that number back...we have so many call into my bank about people who leave messages and they call them back and then give them their debit card number! Yikes.

Definitely get a cc for travel. What we do it use it and then we send a payment online the day we get the bill.

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

Wow, that's no fun about your debit card! I'm glad they caught it, but yuck!

You met a lot of characters! Very cool! We didn't brave those lines! I love the pic of the kids with Chewie and the Ewok. We met Lotso too. (I've whited out the following sentences for anyone who hasn't seen the TS3 movie yet. Anyone who has, feel free to highlight it so you can read it...hopefully this works!)We literally just came back from watching the movie this afternoon and I feel a little bad now about hugging Lotso at Disney. Oh, well. We had no clue what his role in the movie would be.

Great update!

WHAT A GREAT IDEA to white out your post! I think I'll have to steal it! We knew when we were there that Lotso was a bad guy but I was really hoping that he would make a turnaround in the movie. Now I'm shocked that Disney put him out as a meet and greet!

What a great update! Lotso is too cute!!!

I love the characters Star Wars costumes....one year we have to make it for that weekend, it looks so cute!!!

There are 4 Star Wars weekends every year so you do have other options than Memorial Day

 

[cherylsmike]

Those kids are cute, cute, cute. I'm in.

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

Those kids are cute, cute, cute. I'm in.

and thank you

 

[sohappy]

I think that Randy went to get FP for Star Tours while we were in the animation building. The line for Chewbacca was waaayyyy longer than that. I stopped and got us some water way over on the streets of America- all the way down near the LMA show at one point. It was so worth it though. Cooper just loves ewoks. he still sleeps with that teeeeny one he got in the souvie shop.

Oh, I didn't really watch the kids, I was just sitting on a wall relaxing while our kids ran from game to game pressing random buttons to see the results. I didn't realize what they were doing until I heard Cooper say "castle, castle, crown, castle crown". The buttons for the 2 options were, you guessed it, a castle and a crown. They stopped reading the questions all together!


I got some great shots of goofy putting his cape over the boys and just having Ash in the pic. Your flash drive with my pics and the photopass pics should be early this week. Yoda clippy included- though do not laugh about the "wrapping", ok?

We really lucked out on the weather. The afternoon showers usually happened while we were doing something indoors and really brought the temp down to a somewhat bearable temp.

ETA- you forgot to say that the kids got action figures for participating in Jedi Training. I noticed it in the huddle picture. And I will add that the boys took off their shirts during the parade. It was just too hot for a fully lined button up. Luckily, I knew it was coming and packed white tanks. They were supposed to have the same emblem as the boys' pants, but I ran out of time. So plain white tank is all we had. Anyway, they wanted to put their shirts back on to show Goofy. It lasted all of 10 minutes and they took them off again. DORKS!

 

[SOUTHERNtinkerBELLE]

Ugh, I hate that less-than-magical things keep happening to you! That's terrible that your debit card number was stolen! I had my actual card stolen once and it was just a miserable feeling! Thankfully, I figured out who did it and and she spent an evening in jail Ahh, revenge!

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Wow, you handled your fraud situation well. Glad it all worked out. Imagine how long it would have taken to figure it all out in the pre-cellphone ages.

Actually that reminds me I should phone my credit card company and tell them I'm heading to WDW soon. Two trips ago the bank froze my card because they suspected theft. Being from Canada my debit card doesn't always work in the states. And don't tell my DH but I'm planning on doing some shopping on this trip.

The kids castle/crown answering question strategy reminds me of a saying we had at university. "When in doubt, choose C."

How's your daughter's reading coming along? I remember you had some questions about different approaches to teaching literacy a couple months back.

 

[jessica52877]

YIKES on the debit card! Glad you (or BOA) caught it quickly. I am a CC person. Charge it all and pay it all off. Get my free disney $$.

I still think Lotso is cute! I am surprised at how many Lotso shirts I sold before the movie was released, but I don't think people realized. I am bummed that we forgot to go in and see him.

Love the character pictures! I just love characters! Wicket is my all time favorite!! I did not care for the line at all!

So nice of Randy to take the kids on the ride! We walked the kids through the line and then waited on the other side. I just was not in the mood for that so early in the day when it was so hot!!

The picture of the kids plotting is the cutest! I can't wait to see some of the photopass too!

 

[jenjolt]

What a pain to have to deal with on your vacation that is no fun at all!! But YAY for BOA for checking it out and getting on it so quickly!!!


Awww what a cute picture of the kids in the powwow and the picture of them with Chewy and the Ewok!! Love those characters!!!!

Can't wait for more!