There's an App for That! iDisney, July-Aug 2009. New 12/3: DONE!

[lovealldisney]

Oh, poor Leo (and Mommy)! I got a little misty-eyed.

Those nachos at TRex were huge!

If you like (virtual) people watching, check out www.peopleofwalmart.com

Denise

I checked out that website! everyone in my office was just rolling with laughter!

 

[PrincessV]

Awwwww poor Leo, we all know how much he loves Michael so he must have been so exhausted!

I know! I felt so badly for both boys.

I can't wait to try Kim Possible, it looks so much fun

You guys will love it!

Whoa! Sounds like it’s been a massive bummer of a 2 weeks. Hope things get better soon!

Thanks GB... I've continued to have home issues, but it seems to be getting better!

Good call. Even if you didn’t get all of them in, you can continue the montage the next time around.

Here's hoping - stay tuned...

We’ve noticed with our oldest that when she gets overly exhausted, she first gets hyper, then has a meltdown. Feeling your pain!

Yes! That's exactly what Leo goes through, too. I'm trying to be more observant.

No, not at all, I can tell.

I'm so annoyed I booked Thanksgiving OFF-SITE!

Great morning! Japan at the Transformers area is exactly where Jimmy would want to go too

It's like little boy Nirvana in there!

Those pictures from the Japan pavilion are awesome and I'm not just saying that because of my heritage.

Aw, thanks Jordan!

OMG, I think I saw that girl. Or someone just as stupid.

You should have heard LL and I - "Oh, T will be soo proud of us!"

Ok, somehow I missed my quotes on the first installment, but let me just say Tangeriene Cafe is the BEST! Meet me there in say 70ish days?

You're on! Is that before or after the Tequila bar? And sake?

Who's sleeping in???!!!

The World Showcase is my favorite place I could spend DAYS there!

Me too, which is why I'm soooo glad Leo now likes to be there!

Is there an app to help you keep track of your apps?

LOL!

Kim Possible is a must do for us in January. In fact, right now that's the only thing that is part of the plan.

Is it on the spread sheet?!

What day are you on anyway? Thursday?

I think that was Wednesday.

What do you mean that there's no "Disney Fuzzy Math" app???? How can that be????????

I know, right?!

We never eaten at T-Rex. Looks good! Is is a LOUD place????

VERY. I think maybe even louder than Rainforest. That's the one negative.

Ok, V... You are going to listen to me and do exactly what I say.

Click on this link:

PICTURE OF THE DAY THREAD

Now post some of your pictures.

Got it? Do it... NOW!! That thread would LOVE your stuff... and I mean LOVE it!

Thanks Sooze!

Isn't it great when, every once in a while, you can find a souvenir that actually gets USED?! Great purchase!

And I have to give him credit - Leo plays with every item he's ever bought on our vacations. He's a good shopper!

Those nachos at TRex were huge!

Aren't they ridiculous?!

I found your TR from the recommendation of Great Biscuit. I have to say he gave a great tip when he gave this recommendation! I have enjoy the writing and format of your updates very much

That GB, he's a good guy! Thanks so much - I really love writing, so I'm always happy to hear when it's well-received! Welcome aboard!

 

[PrincessV]

Please pardon the interruption...

We're headed back to WDW this weekend!

Actually, we've already been back since the trip about which I'm writing, but just for a day at AK. This one's a long weekend - arriving tomorrow morning and departing Sunday afternoon. If you haven't already guessed, we're spending Halloween at Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party! This will be our second year doing the party on Halloween and we're really looking forward to it.

So, while this TR is technically drawing near to its end, I'll have a special MNSSHP report coming soon with which to drag it out.

Meanwhile, I'll once again be Tweeting from The World: www.twitter.com/Disney_VLo.

See ya real soon

 

[jcc0621]

It's like little boy Nirvana in there!

One of the few places that isn't all princess all the time

VERY. I think maybe even louder than Rainforest. That's the one negative.

ANd surprisingly Jimmy loved it and did really well with the noise

And I have to give him credit - Leo plays with every item he's ever bought on our vacations. He's a good shopper!

Jimmy too! ALthough when he takes FOREVER to choose something, it is sometimes frustrating

Please pardon the interruption...

We're headed back to WDW this weekend!

Actually, we've already been back since the trip about which I'm writing, but just for a day at AK. This one's a long weekend - arriving tomorrow morning and departing Sunday afternoon. If you haven't already guessed, we're spending Halloween at Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party! This will be our second year doing the party on Halloween and we're really looking forward to it.

So, while this TR is technically drawing near to its end, I'll have a special MNSSHP report coming soon with which to drag it out.

Meanwhile, I'll once again be Tweeting from The World: www.twitter.com/Disney_VLo.

See ya real soon

Have a great time!

 

[PrincessAlways]

We're headed back to WDW this weekend!

If you haven't already guessed, we're spending Halloween at Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party! This will be our second year doing the party on Halloween and we're really looking forward to it.

So, while this TR is technically drawing near to its end, I'll have a special MNSSHP report coming soon with which to drag it out.

See ya real soon

Have a great time!!! Will you be dressing up???? I'd love to see that picture!

 

[tiggerwannabe]

Please pardon the interruption...

We're headed back to WDW this weekend!

Actually, we've already been back since the trip about which I'm writing, but just for a day at AK. This one's a long weekend - arriving tomorrow morning and departing Sunday afternoon. If you haven't already guessed, we're spending Halloween at Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party! This will be our second year doing the party on Halloween and we're really looking forward to it.

So, while this TR is technically drawing near to its end, I'll have a special MNSSHP report coming soon with which to drag it out.

Meanwhile, I'll once again be Tweeting from The World: www.twitter.com/Disney_VLo.

See ya real soon

Are you linking your tweets to your Facebook?!

Enjoy your weekend V!!!!

 

[Millie12591]

I'm a day late and dollar short, but I'm here!!!
Hope I can still join the fun, I've had a good time reading!
Your doing a great job and little man is so cute!

Having now read that your going back this weekend, I wanted to say have a great time and don't forget to take lots of pics, especially if you dress up!! ;O) Can't wait to hear about it!

 

[shebaxric]

Have a fantastic time!

 

[lovealldisney]

How was your weekend? Did you have fun???

 

[PrincessV]

ANd surprisingly Jimmy loved it and did really well with the noise

Isn't that funny? Leo too!

Jimmy too! ALthough when he takes FOREVER to choose something, it is sometimes frustrating

OMG yes!

Have a great time!!! Will you be dressing up???? I'd love to see that picture!

Nope. It's all I can do to get Leo dressed up, lol!

Are you linking your tweets to your Facebook?!

No. My Twitter feed is totally public, so I avoid anything too personal there. FB is the total opposite - I restrict everything and have a lot of personal information there so I can keep in touch with family.

I'm a day late and dollar short, but I'm here!!!
Hope I can still join the fun, I've had a good time reading!

Thank you so much and welcome! There's more to come.

Have a fantastic time!

Thanks!

How was your weekend? Did you have fun???

Wait and see!

 

[PrincessV]

As promised, I’m inserting a little trippy within the trippy here. Leo and I headed back to WDW for Halloween weekend, a vacation headlined by the one and only Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party… on Halloween!

We both took Friday off. Not so much to get more Disney time in, but to ensure that we’d have a hotel room all day Saturday. I’ve had the bad luck of not getting into a room on check-in day until after 5pm in the past – I wasn’t about to take that chance on party day.

So we arrived at WDW around 10:30am on Friday and headed over to EP. I made the grown-up decision to skip my annual adults-only Food & Wine Fest trip this year. But I sure as heck wasn’t going to avoid the Fest altogether! Leo and I took a ride on M:S first, and then headed over to the food booths.

We enjoyed:
A trio of cheese from the Mouse Catch, pizza from Italy, and a crab cake from the Hops & Barley booth. I added a Sam Adams Octoberfest to my crab cake…

…which I promptly spilled down my legs moments after Leo snapped this photo. Niiiice.


After a stop in Japan for a little Transformer purchase, we headed back out to check in at CBR.


Yep, we were back at our favorite moderate resort again. I’d booked CBR originally for this weekend – then changed it to AKL – then changed it back when finances got tight. WDW loves me.

We got settled in our room, which was as immaculate as always, and then slipped out for a little Pool-Thirty before dinner. It was hot, hot, hot. Much hotter than normal for this time of year. That pool water felt divine! Especially because I’d been fighting a headache all day. It definitely helped to cool off.

Dinner helped, too. We once again passed by all the counter service options and asked for a table at Shutters, where I once again ordered a salad and black bean soup with an Agave Nectar Margarita chaser.

It’s beginning to feel like Groundhog Day, no?

I’m sorry to say the soup wasn’t as good this time. It wasn’t bad, but the chorizo sausage was missing some flavor, which brought the whole thing down to almost-bland. Our service, however was top-notch, so I still recommend the place!


Okay, let’s get to the good stuff already…

HALLOWEEN!!!

I want to share my plan of attack for the day, because it worked really, really well for us.

We wanted to do MK rides.
We wanted to do the MNSSHP parade.
We wanted to see the MNSSHP fireworks.
We wanted to trick or treat.

There was no way we’d get all of that in within the party time.

So we chose to hit the MK for rope drop that morning, getting all of our rides in early and without long waits. Ridemax was up to the task again, getting us through Pooh, Pan, the Jungle Cruise, POTC, Buzz, the People Mover, and Tom Sawyer Island before lunch at 11:45am!

Leo’s Buzz score!

The People Mover… is actually called “The People Mover” again in the spiel!

Our traditional Barnstormer shot.


Note the abundance of orange and blue in our outfits. Yep, it was a Gators game day. And not just any game day – it was the infamous Georgia-Florida game day. In case you don’t know, that’s one heckuva rivalry. It’s so bad they can’t play at either team’s stadium; they play on neutral ground in Jacksonville. So it was imperative that we show our support. I’m happy to report that we were far from alone; I counted upwards of 20 Gators shirts to only 1 Bulldogs shirt that morning. GO GATORS!!!

After a delicious lunch at CHH, we headed back to the hotel, where Leo was very excited to… nap. Yes, nap. For the first time ever, he understood that a good afternoon nap meant staying out late that night. I’m sooo glad we had that room to go back to, because we slept a solid 2 hours and awoke refreshed and ready to get our party on!

About MNSSHP…

It was HOT. Like, August-hot. It really was brutal, and I’ll admit it changed things for me. It’s hard to feel appropriately creepy and Halloween-y when it feels like a sauna outside. And I spent a lot of time worrying about Leo getting overheated. He was a good cowboy, but those jeans had to have felt awful!

Since we’d done most of our riding earlier, the Party Plan began with dinner at Pecos Bill’s. While there, I noticed that very, very few people in that crowded dining room were wearing MNSSHP wristbands and I really wondered how WDW was planning to get them out at 7pm. (Later on, after the party had officially started, there were CMs EVERYwhere directing the non-wristbanded out of the park. Well done WDW! )

I also took the opportunity to check on the Gators game. Yes, there’s an app for that!

Since we were in the West, and I had a cowboy along with me, we took a ride on BTMRR after dinner. Leo wanted a ride in the light and another later, in the dark. He also wanted to pose in his natural environment.

And we got some shootin’ in…

We had a little time for trick-or-treating and we headed over to the Mac Daddy candy trail for that. You know that path that connects Toontown and Tomorrowland along the train tracks? It has a bunch of ToT stops during MNSSHP. On par with all things WDW, there was a loooong line to get through it, and the candy given was miserly at best. I believe we each received 1-3 pieces of candy at each stop.

On Halloween.

The second-to-last night of this year’s parties.

What, are they saving the candy for next year?!

The candy lane took longer than I’d planned for, so we were late getting into position for the Boo to You parade. It seemed like every inch was taken all through Frontierland, where we wanted to be. But then I spied a youngish couple sitting by the rope with no one behind them. We headed over and I asked if they planned to stay sitting for the parade, because if so, we’d stand behind them to watch. They were very nice; they were still debating whether to watch the first parade or do rides and catch the later one. I recommended seeing both because it’s so good, but they elected to wait for the later one and passed their front row seats to us. Thank you!!!

I didn’t bring the Good Camera, so I have no parade pics. But there are plenty out there on the Internet to view. It’s an amazing parade… and I don’t even like parades! My favorite part is the grave diggers’ shovel dance. Leo said his favorite was the Haunted Mansion ghosts. Which is pretty funny considering that he won’t set foot in the Haunted Mansion.


We’d stationed ourselves in Frontierland so as to partake of BTMRR after the parade. But so had about 5,000 of our fellow guests: the wait time went from 5 to 45 minutes in seconds. I promised Leo we’d go back later and dragged him away to scope out a spot for Hallowishes. We took a ride on It’s A Lame Ride After All on our way. Heh heh.

We arrived at our uber-secret fireworks viewing spot early enough to grab a seat in front and dug into our candy for some much-needed energy replenishment. And I got the camera ready. The Less-Good Camera did an admirable job!

Wow! I just adore fireworks and WDW does an absolutely amazing job. Awesome!

After that, Leo and I finally got our BTMRR in the dark fix… 3 times in a row! He’s so not scared of it anymore.


After a little more trick-or-treating and a run-in with the Pirates, we decided to head toward Main St. and see if we could catch the 2nd parade before heading out. Even at 10pm, there appeared to be no seating left for a vertically-challenged mom and son. Just as I’d given up hope, I spied a family sitting one-deep by the curb. We settled in behind them and had a great view for a second dose of Boo to You.


We really had such a fun time. And I’m so glad we broke the day up into morning rides and evening party; it took a lot of pressure off to just enjoy the party without stressing. We wound up getting to bed around midnight and I was most thankful that we’d arranged to meet our friends at 11am the next day.



What? Friends?!

Yep. DIS friends, too.

More to come.


P.S. Now if I could just get that Boo to You music to stop playing in my head... over, and over, and over...

 

[Sooze]

Yay! I love this little report in a report! Looks like you guys got SO much crammed into the day. Good for you!

So, was Leo's shirt actually FLANNEL!!? I'm hoping not, because those jeans are hot enough, eh?

I'm sure you've described your secret castle fireworks spot, but could you share again? It looks like it's near Crystal Palace...

And, as usual, I'm loving your pictures. It's so fun to see you on the Picture of the Day thread.. isn't it wonderful!? I get new desktop pictures off of there all the time!

Thanks for the fun read today, V!

 

[praisehisname]

Sounds like your plan for the party was a winner! You got a lot done and saw BOTH parades!!!

Denise

 

[jcc0621]

We both took Friday off. Not so much to get more Disney time in, but to ensure that we’d have a hotel room all day Saturday. I’ve had the bad luck of not getting into a room on check-in day until after 5pm in the past – I wasn’t about to take that chance on party day.

Smart mama!

…which I promptly spilled down my legs moments after Leo snapped this photo. Niiiice.

So we chose to hit the MK for rope drop that morning, getting all of our rides in early and without long waits. Ridemax was up to the task again, getting us through Pooh, Pan, the Jungle Cruise, POTC, Buzz, the People Mover, and Tom Sawyer Island before lunch at 11:45am!

Awesome!

[

is actually called “The People Mover” again in the spiel!

(Later on, after the party had officially started, there were CMs EVERYwhere directing the non-wristbanded out of the park. Well done WDW! )

I guess their little test of not giving out wristbands didn't work

P.S. Now if I could just get that Boo to You music to stop playing in my head... over, and over, and over...[/SIZE]

Could be worse..it couls be It's a Sm....no I won't go there

 

[englishrose47]

Great MNSSHP TR V !! Leo makes a great cowboy !!! Check out my kids costumes on my TR !! ( Hint wink Hint ) LOL

 

[cmp1111]

So we chose to hit the MK for rope drop that morning, getting all of our rides in early and without long waits. Ridemax was up to the task again, getting us through Pooh, Pan, the Jungle Cruise, POTC, Buzz, the People Mover, and Tom Sawyer Island before lunch at 11:45am!

That's awesome!

The People Mover… is actually called “The People Mover” again in the spiel!

Really?

What, are they saving the candy for next year?!

I recommended seeing both because it’s so good, but they elected to wait for the later one and passed their front row seats to us. Thank you!!!

Nice!

Which is pretty funny considering that he won’t set foot in the Haunted Mansion.

And yet, so not surprising.

After that, Leo and I finally got our BTMRR in the dark fix… 3 times in a row! He’s so not scared of it anymore.

Woot woot!

Could be worse..it couls be It's a Sm....no I won't go there

You're evil.

 

[jcc0621]

You're evil.

Am not

 

[DisneyJo]

They were mean with the candy when I went too, very weird.

I so need Leo to tel me how he scored big on Buzz, I need to beat his English cousins

 

[PrincessAlways]

Wow!!! It felt as hot as August??? That's pretty hot for late October! Thank goodness for pool thirty!!

Leo made a cute cowboy. So he's lovin' BTMRR.....way to go!!

So they didn't want to give away the candy? I guess times are tough! Maybe the CMs took it home!

Glad you had such a wonderful time at MNSSHP!!

 

[GreatBiscuit]

As promised, I’m inserting a little trippy within the trippy here.

Woo hoo!

But I sure as heck wasn’t going to avoid the Fest altogether!

Perish the though!

We enjoyed:
A trio of cheese from the Mouse Catch, pizza from Italy, and a crab cake from the Hops & Barley booth. I added a Sam Adams Octoberfest to my crab cake…

Mmmmmm cheese and crab. I’m hungry.

It’s beginning to feel like Groundhog Day, no?

If you gotta live the same day over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, I’d sure HOPE it would be a day at WDW!

And we got some shootin’ in…

Awesome!

What, are they saving the candy for next year?!

Maybe they were imitating Ebenezer to promote A Christmas Carol.

I recommended seeing both because it’s so good, but they elected to wait for the later one and passed their front row seats to us. Thank you!!!

How cool is that!

The Less-Good Camera did an admirable job!

That it did. But I suspect some crazy mad skills on the part of the photog were involved as well.