The Trip we thought would never end! 9/4/17 - 9/12/17

[disneydarling07]

Just a few things that I wanted to add...

We are staying at the Poly on a friend's DVC points...which is awesome! But, I was a little surprised to find out that Mousekeeping does not come in every day. I only found this out after the first day of no mousekeeping. I was kinda straightening things up myself and found the information sheet tacked to the inside of a cabinet in the kitchen area. It states that mousekeeping only comes in on the 4th day. If we wanted it more often, it would be $15 a day. I was just a little blindsided by that. I had all my mousekeeping envelopes ready! And I was looking forward to hopefully getting towel animals...lol. But...It didn't hurt us to clean up after ourselves. I took the trash out to the bigger cans down the hall. We kinda made our beds everyday. And we re-used the towels and got new ones from the pool area if necessary. When they did come in on the 4th day, they took out the trash and left 2 rolls of toilet paper on the kitchen sink. Really disappointing. I was at least hoping for clean sheets or the beds made properly. Oh well,...you can't have it all. I guess we are just spoiled! But we did survive and the CM's throughout the whole resort really were great.
We did not book any ADR's other than Sci Fi Diner. I thought this worked out great for our budget. We were not on the dining plan so we had freedom to eat when and what we wanted. We did all counter service and had so many options and we were very happy. My only request would be for a few more food options at the resort. I have picky eaters and after a while, we started losing interest in everything. We did end up eating at O'hana's when we were stuck at our resort. But the Polynesian menu wasn't all that great. But that's just us and being picky. We still ate what we could and went back to the room happy.

The monorail....I swear this used to go to Epcot!! I didn't realize that it only went to one park! The selling point was always that it went to 2 parks! Did I imagine this???

 

[disneydarling07]

Time for a quick bite to eat! I had heard so many good things about Columbia Harbour House, so it was on my bucket list of places to check out for a quick lunch. We had the fish, shrimp and chicken combo. I can't believe we all decided on the same thing! But we were all very happy with the choices. There was enough food to fill us up and thanks to my stash of ziplock bags, we were able to pack up a bit to snack on later. Great food and great value!! On the list of lunch places from now on!




After lunch, we were going to walk over to the Haunted Mansion for our FP and almost missed the show by the Muppets. They were putting on a little skit from the windows. I sure wish they actually came out to meet and greet. I love the Muppets!!

 

[disneydarling07]

Since DD is always on my radar, I thought this was appropriate for her....she is such a good sport!



On our way over to the Haunted Mansion, I looked up and there was Princess Tiana! I had never seen her before in the parks, so I was pretty excited! Unfortunately, wherever she came from, she was just going on her break with no estimated time of when she would be back. But a few quick snaps of the camera and I was happy.

 

[disneydarling07]

Finally made it to the Haunted Mansion!



I can't wait to ride this one at night. I know it's an indoor ride, but it's still eerily better at night.
This is probably my favorite picture...



Now...as the week has been moving along, we have been well aware that Hurricane Irma was probably heading our way. We tried our best to ignore it, but the talk was everywhere. It seemed like everyone was abuzz with Irma chatter. During a restroom break, I was waiting for the kids and decided to check into Facebook and my email. Low and behold, there was an email from Southwest that our Sunday evening flight had been cancelled. Not wanting to worry about rebooking while we were in the park, I figured I would wait till I could focus on what to do once we were back in our room.

Things like this were being posted on Facebook which kinda cracked me up...lol

 

[disneydarling07]

On to Fantasyland! This is fun but more for nostalgia than thrills. At this point, we were ready to just relax a bit due to the extreme heat and humidity. It was really taking it's toll on us.
So the best ride to relax on, was It's a Small World. Mostly because the wait for this was only 5 minutes. Everything else in Fantasyland had a posted wait time of at least 40 minutes or more.





Now at the back of the castle, it feels like a whole new place. It always seems so quiet here.




And the kids always try to remove the sword from the stone...and never succeed. On our last trip, the other kid we were with was able to "remove" it. It just comes up from the stone, but does not come out. He was an older boy and I told him he broke it! lol! He freaked out and I had to let him off the hook right away.

 

[disneydarling07]

Since we were going to be at the parks late for the Halloween Party, we chose to head to the resort to regroup, relax, maybe shower (oh the heat!!) and then head back to MK.

We HAD to ride the Magic Kingdom train at least once this trip, so we hopped on to take it all the way back to the front of the park.




As we got off the train, we were just in time to catch most of the afternoon parade. Surprisingly, not many people were sitting watching, so we were able to just walk right up to the curb and get front row seats and some great pictures.








Next stop was the monorail back to the resort...whew...I swear it was up to 115 degrees!!!

 

[mcjaco]

Sounds like our trip last year as Hurricane Matthew started heading our way. We had to do a lot of flip flopping of parks and days to get stuff we really wanted to get done.....done! We skipped AK completely.

 

[thumper*]

I'm loving your report.

Great picture of you all.

This is such a cute pose.

After a while she was okay to get up. We took her back to the resort and let her rest for about an hour. After that, she was as good as new.

Ouch....so glad she felt better.

I couldnt get a good picture on my phone, but the moon was aligned right behind EE and it was eerily awesome!

Cool picture even if not best quality.

while they handed out Mickey ice cream bars!

The Pixie Dust just continues

This magical day at the MK was off to a wonderful start!!

I'd say so.

The monorail....I swear this used to go to Epcot!! I didn't realize that it only went to one park! The selling point was always that it went to 2 parks! Did I imagine this???

There are 2 monorails. The one you were on is the MK monorail loop. The Epcot monorail run just from TTC to Epcot and back.

 

[disneydarling07]

So of course, as we are trying to leave the parks, DS freaks out because we haven't gone on the Tomorrowland Speedway yet. He knows we are coming back to the parks, but he is worried that it will be too crowded because of the party. So off we go to the cars...


After the cars, we see that there is no line at all for Buzz's Space Ranger Spin. So we just HAD to do that really quick too!




At this point, we are slowly realizing that our time is slipping away and our next Fastpasses are coming up soon. So we "reluctantly" made the decision NOT to go back to the resort. We would just take it slow, stay in the parks, enjoy the short lines and wait for the party to start.

Taking another break from the heat and to talk about our plans for the night, we hopped onto the People Mover.




We were able to ride this 3 times! There was literally no line at all. And as boring as the kids think it is, they enjoyed the long, slow ride. Great place to escape the heat and get off your feet for a bit.

 

[disneydarling07]

Time for our Fast Pass on Space Mountain! This is DH's least favorite ride. He hates that it is all in the dark and he can't brace himself for the next turn or dip. I told him this was payback for making me ride Tower of Terror! lol!

As we looked over towards Space Mountain, this was an UGLY sight to see..



Now this was just a few hours after our flight home was cancelled due to Hurricane Irma. So we kinda looked at each other like, Holy Crap! What did we get ourselves into! But the CM's didn't seem worried at all. After talking to them for a little bit, we realized that Irma was not schedule to impact until Sunday. This was a typical afternoon rainstorm for Florida. Many people had the same thought about Irma, and they were running out of the parks. The skies opened up and it showered a bit. It felt like it was going to start coming down in buckets, but it never really did.



I would say it lasted about 15 minutes or less. The kids went on the race cars again while we waited out the rain.



As the rain stopped, some of the characters starting coming out. It was almost party time!!

First we saw the Queen of Hearts and Tweedledee and Tweedledum.



Alice in Wonderland is my all time favorite Disney movie!! I was pretty happy to see these 2 again!



It was still trying to rain a little bit and they were trying to catch raindrops on their tongues!

As we were on our way back to Main Street, we stopped to make a wish in Cinderella's wishing well. (I think we all wished that the rain would go away)

 

[disneydarling07]

We changed our minds and started to head back to Fantasy Land where we knew more characters would be. We got our party wristbands and our trick or treat bags and walked over to see Goofy!!



The Wicked Stepsisters were running about teasing everyone about the costumes. These two crack me up!



Jack and Sally had a HUGE line for their meet and greet!



Even Winnie the Pooh and Friends had an incredibly long line!



We made it to the other side of Fantasyland where again, the back of the castle was completely empty. This is the perfect spot to sit and relax and watch the characters walk by.

 

[ellynsoh]

Following.Great report.

 

[Txshadow]

The monorail....I swear this used to go to Epcot!! I didn't realize that it only went to one park! The selling point was always that it went to 2 parks! Did I imagine this???

There is a monorail that goes to Epcot from the ticket and transportation center. It is across the platform from the resort loop monorail.

We are staying at the Poly on a friend's DVC points...which is awesome! But, I was a little surprised to find out that Mousekeeping does not come in every day.

Sorry you were uninformed about DVC Mousekeeping. 1 and 2 bedroom units have washers and dryers in room so it is easy to run a load of towels. Studios are less convenient for laundry, but there are free machines for DVC use.

 

[disneydarling07]

I had heard chatter about the lines to see the 7 Dwarfs being ridiculously long. As much as I wanted this picture, I was not willing to stand in line for an hour or two to get it. We had to ask where they were going to be and walked over to check out the line. Luckily, there was only a 25 minute wait. This was around 9pm, btw. We waited for about 10 minutes and one of the dwarfs needed a break, so they all left. CM's said they would be back out in around 5 minutes, but many people were angered and left the line. It was literally 4 minutes before they all came back. So now we only had 3 families in front of us. Our original 25 minute wait dropped down to 12! They were really moving the line along...no extended interaction with the dwarfs, just to make sure everyone got a chance to see them.



So happy to have this rare picture to put up on our wall.

We walked around the circus area a bit to see who else we could find...






No one in my group wanted to wait to see these characters, so again, I had to stand on the sidelines to sneak pics.

Now it was only 9:30pm and we were TIRED!!!

 

[disneydarling07]

The kids decided to sneak in one last ride...on Goofy's Barnstormer. This is such a fun little ride and it's almost becoming a "must do" on every trip. It always brings back memories of the old ToonTown. I still can't believe they took down Mickey and Minnie's houses. My oldest has the best memories of those houses. I just wish they would have moved them somewhere instead of just getting rid of them completely.



Guess who was hanging out outside of the Barnstormer??



It always seems to happen, whenever we decide to leave the park, we always get caught up in something else. It's like that family party when you want to leave and by the time you say your goodbyes to everyone, it's an hour or so later than when you started out.

Here we came across Sully and Mike and their Halloween dance party.



Mike ran away before we were able to get a pic with him.

Still heading towards the exit....

The lights on Main Street were so pretty. I think I took about 30 pictures of the castle alone. Of course, it didn't help that they kept changing the color of the lighting. Each light made it prettier and prettier.



Main Street is still my favorite area of the whole park. And at night, it's still beautiful....



YAY! We finally made it to the exit!!



It was now almost 11pm. TIRED!!! Weighing our options, the boat was the first mode of transportation in sight. It took us right to the Ticket and Transportation Center, which was a 5 minute walk to our building at the Poly.



I don't remember getting to our room, but I think we all passed out right away...tomorrow was yet another long, busy day to enjoy!

 

[BellaBaby]

What a tiring and fun day!!

We miss the houses too!

 

[NancyLuvsMickey]

What a L-O-N-G day!!! But oh what fun you had!!! And love the 7 dwarfs picture!!!

 

[thumper*]

Wow what a busy day. Short lines are a big bonus.

 

[disneydarling07]

While we were focusing on our trip and our plans, Hurricane Irma was never far from our minds. There was talk everywhere, weather reports constantly, and wonder about what could happen. We took for granted that the locals knew how to prepare for whatever may happen and continued our journey through Disney. Also, taking note that more people were coming INTO the resorts to avoid the storm..hmm...

It's Friday and it's the tail end of our vacation...booo!!!!! We already know our flight was cancelled and rescheduled for Monday night instead of Sunday. So having an extra day to rest was a good thing. OR...maybe plan something else...lol.

The hurricane was coming....lots of people were checking into the resort while many were checking out. The airports were closing down on Friday night to let their employees prepare for the storm. It was really weird seeing what was going on around you ...and then seeing this in the morning..



Bright blue sunny skies!!



The plan was to head over to Epcot to finish up the world showcase and give the kids a chance to complete their passports, complete the Remi scavenger hunt and I could finish collecting my pennies from all of the countries. So off to Epcot we go!!! What a beautiful sight!!!



Our first order of business was to say Hello to Pluto!



Then off we go to ...Paris! This was fun! DD is taking French in school and was so excited to use what she has already learned. It was so funny after she greeted a few people and they were impressed with her greetings, they started talking to her in French and she got really embarrassed when she couldn't follow along...lol! She giggled and turned bright red and explained to them that she was just starting in French and couldn't follow along. They were so nice and coached her through a few more phrases. Then she was happy that she could go back to school and let her teacher know that she attempted it and learned a little more.







Halfway around the World Showcase...just a bit more to go!!

 

[disneydarling07]

Moving along to the United Kingdom...one of our favorites!

Still searching for Remi. Honestly, as much as searching for Remi was, it was taking up a LOT of time...more on that later....



Too bad there weren't any bands playing. We love this place! Having been to the real UK on a family trip to see family, it was pretty cool to step into that scene again.



And call Grandma and Grandpa of course! Well....if the phones were still working...lol



Time to grab some lunch. DD and I chose to have some fish and chips from a stand next to the Rose and Crown.



DS and DH chose to hop over the Ireland booth for some bangers and mash.





We grabbed a table down by the water for a better view. We watched the boats float by.




And a few other characters joined us for a bit...or a bite!

We found out that these guys really love french fries! After 1 or 2 we stopped before they got carried away and got sick. They hung around the whole time and made a lot of noise, but it was kinda fun to have the company. So cool how all of the wildlife around Disney is always present and always courteous and very friendly.




At this point, we were off to Canada.