To ATL and back:Disney Kids survive Snowpocalypse '11~4 month update

[AprilRenee]

Joining in late!! I just love that you took your teenage brothers!! I was so worried about our oldest last year. He makes a point of not liking anything, just to annoy us, but he's already talking about wanting to go back! Ok, now I'm off to catch up. I'm on page 2, I think!

Oh, and pm me if you have questions about transferring to blogspot!

ETA: I also have a question about the meds for nervous stomach? Can you tell me what it is? OTC or scrip, etc. My 10 year old daughter has the same problem & we're trying anything we can do to help her! It sometimes gets so bad that she can't sleep.

Hey! So sorry! I never saw that you posted!
It was so much fun to take my brothers!! We had a blast and we still talk about it all the time. We really bonded (especially during our disastrous trip home...coming up soon). I hope you enjoy the rest!

I also just saw your comment back about the blogspot stuff on the PTR. I'll try it out and PM you if I have trouble! Thanks!!

I use Pepcid Complete. Somehow it works better than tums. I haven't had to use it in a while but I used to get horrible pain in my stomach (almost heartburn but it's not...and it hurts so bad it makes me want to be sick from the pain) It only went away if I laid down for 30-45 min and let it work it's way out. But who has time to deal with that at Disney (or really any other time of life!)? My mom and I were in NYC once when it came on and we stopped in a corner shop and all they had was the Pepcid complete and it worked really well and pretty quickly. So I've used that since that trip. Hope that helps your DD!

ETA: I just finished moving my whole TR over to blogspot!! Thanks for the idea! I had to use a code converter cause blogger uses different code than Disboards...but it was easy! And I just discovered a website that will take my blog, convert it into a book and print it out. It's called blog2print.com! I'm excited! Once the TR is done I might print it out (or get a digital PDF download)!!

 

[LoriH91]

Hey! So sorry! I never saw that you posted!
It was so much fun to take my brothers!! We had a blast and we still talk about it all the time. We really bonded (especially during our disastrous trip home...coming up soon). I hope you enjoy the rest!

I also just saw your comment back about the blogspot stuff on the PTR. I'll try it out and PM you if I have trouble! Thanks!!

I use Pepcid Complete. Somehow it works better than tums. I haven't had to use it in a while but I used to get horrible pain in my stomach (almost heartburn but it's not...and it hurts so bad it makes me want to be sick from the pain) It only went away if I laid down for 30-45 min and let it work it's way out. But who has time to deal with that at Disney (or really any other time of life!)? My mom and I were in NYC once when it came on and we stopped in a corner shop and all they had was the Pepcid complete and it worked really well and pretty quickly. So I've used that since that trip. Hope that helps your DD!

ETA: I just finished moving my whole TR over to blogspot!! Thanks for the idea! I had to use a code converter cause blogger uses different code than Disboards...but it was easy! And I just discovered a website that will take my blog, convert it into a book and print it out. It's called blog2print.com! I'm excited! Once the TR is done I might print it out (or get a digital PDF download)!!

Thanks for the info!! We'll have to try the Pepcid. I am going to check out blog2print, too!! That is soooo cool!!

 

[MomofMy2Princesses]

ETA: I just finished moving my whole TR over to blogspot!! Thanks for the idea! I had to use a code converter cause blogger uses different code than Disboards...but it was easy! And I just discovered a website that will take my blog, convert it into a book and print it out. It's called blog2print.com! I'm excited! Once the TR is done I might print it out (or get a digital PDF download)!!

Are you going to finish your TR here? Or just put it on the blogspot? And if so, will you let us know the link to it?
Thanks!

 

[AprilRenee]

Are you going to finish your TR here? Or just put it on the blogspot? And if so, will you let us know the link to it?
Thanks!

Oh yeah! I'll finish it here! No worries! You guys are really the only ones reading it. I think I only have 1 FB friend reading it (thanks Nick!) I'll finish it here...I'm just going to copy each post over to blogger. I just want it on blogger so that I know I can always access it even years from now. It makes me nervous to only have it here on Disboards, don't know why.
I'm gonna try and do at least a small update tonight! Thanks for sticking around!

 

[LilAnn]

Oh, I just saw your posts about transferring your TR to blogspot. That's an awesome idea. I have been meaning to do a scrapbook of my trips and have never gotten around to it. I should try that.

I keep up (at times) a blog for my family and I used Blurb to convert it to a book format. Loved it as well. Maybe I can do that with my TR too! Was it a pain to do since all the pics are in a different format?

 

[MomofMy2Princesses]

Oh yeah! I'll finish it here! No worries! You guys are really the only ones reading it. I think I only have 1 FB friend reading it (thanks Nick!) I'll finish it here...I'm just going to copy each post over to blogger. I just want it on blogger so that I know I can always access it even years from now. It makes me nervous to only have it here on Disboards, don't know why.
I'm gonna try and do at least a small update tonight! Thanks for sticking around!

Oh good! I'm really enjoying reading about your trip so far. I can't wait to find out about your snowpacalypse. I'm in central IL and remember that well!!

 

[AprilRenee]

Yay! We’re in Disney!

Sad! It’s our last full day!!

This morning we were up and headed to Hollywood Studios to get 1 more ride on TSM and hit the Animation Academy a few more times. Hollywood Studios had morning Extra Magic Hours (that we didn’t go to) so we escaped the TSM stampede. We got there right about 9a and got ourselves some TSM FPs. I think the return time was between 11 and 12. Then we headed over to the Animation Academy only to find out that it doesn’t open until 9:30a. So instead we wandered around the gift shop right outside Animation Courtyard, looked at Tangled stuff, talked to the CMs, played with a string spinner thing… and just wasted some time relaxing!

At 9:30 the Academy opened and we headed in to learn to draw!
Our greatest wish was to draw Pascal from Tangled! We asked the CM running the line if that was even an option and she said that yes, the do draw Tangled characters sometimes. YES!!!! We were excited!!

We got in and started in on the “have you drawn this one? How about this one?” thing until we realized that none of us had ever done Sorcerer Mickey. Boo!!! Not Tangled…but I mean, it is mickey! So we were happy and besides…we were gonna do the next class anyway! We could do Tangled then!

I don’t remember whose Mickey this one is.

So after drawing Mickey, we ran around and jumped back in line and headed in for our next class! This time we asked the guy in the room, “hey, is Pascal on your list?” He said, “yeah, but let’s see what everyone else has already drawn.” So we sat down, excited cause of course, he would probably ask about Pascal first and if no one else had already drawn him then we would get to!!!! So then he started asking people what they’ve drawn and started at the TOP OF THE LIST with Mickey!!!! Gahh!!!! We only made it to Jiminy Cricket before we found one that no one had done. Booo!! So then we were drawing Jiminy. But hey, we were gonna do one more class so it’s cool. Let’s learn about Jiminy.

That one was mine. He was kinda fun to draw.

K…then it was time for our last class. We were all getting kinda tired of the class anyway but we REALLY wanted that Pascal drawing!! They were switching out teachers so our wait between classes was a little longer this time. (it almost seemed like the new guy was late to work!). Anyway, finally we went in…this time we found our spots and all wrote “Tangled????” on the back of our papers and held them up in front of us.
The teacher walked into the room, didn’t even see our papers, and as he walked he said “Ok guys, we’re gonna draw Pooh!.” We all were SO bummed out. Actually, talking about it later we all decided that we should have just left. Really we were tired of the classes anyway and Pooh was NOT what we wanted to draw. But instead we all acted like the grown ups that we were.... and sat there and sulked, moped, and drew some pretty terrible Pooh drawings!! LOL! They turned out HILARIOUS!! We were all so annoyed that we weren't careful at all and the boys made their Poohs silly. We actually took photos of all of them afterwards cause they were so funny (and Oliver was really annoyed and wanted to throw his away). So here are our Pooh drawings:

Clockwise from top left is: Andrew, Elliott, Avery, Mine (I had to edit out a bad word on Elliott’s…that’s why there’s a random white spot on it)

Oliver’s

So…after we photographed our semi-obscene drawings we headed over to TSM to use our FPs. We were 2 minutes early so we were just hanging out outside TSM waiting for our FP time. The CM saw us and asked what time we had, we told her and she just told us to go ahead in. See? Some CMs actually want you to be happy!! Not like CERTAIN drawing CMs who ignore people’s OBVIOUS desires!! Ok…I’m done! It really wasn’t that big of a deal…we knew it was only a slim chance that we would get Tangled characters but we WERE a little disappointed. Now it’s a funny story to remember though.

Anyway, TSM was fun…

My score…I’m the green one.

After TSM it was time to head out to Epcot for lunch. On our way out we stopped for a photo.

And then, oh man I can’t remember her name!!! Anyway, one of the streetmosphere characters stopped us and was tormenting Andrew. She saw his birthday tag and really was having fun with it.

Here she was asking if he knew who she was….he didn’t.

She decided it was because he was too young. Then she wanted to know how old we all were and didn’t believe us. She insisted that we looked far younger than we were (which we do).

Then she made Andrew take a birthday pic with her. LOL

She was pretty funny and I’m really bummed that I forgot to write down her name. Andrew probably remembers but he’s asleep. I’ll ask him tomorrow and see.


Up Next: Lunch and some World Showcase wandering

 

[Dugette]

Bummer that you never got to draw the Tangled character, especially after three tries! Funny Poohs, though! I must say how impressed I am at all the self-taken all-5-people-in-the-shot pictures you took! We have enough trouble just trying to get the two of us in! The streetmosphere character interaction looks fun!

 

[AprilRenee]

Oh, I just saw your posts about transferring your TR to blogspot. That's an awesome idea. I have been meaning to do a scrapbook of my trips and have never gotten around to it. I should try that.

I keep up (at times) a blog for my family and I used Blurb to convert it to a book format. Loved it as well. Maybe I can do that with my TR too! Was it a pain to do since all the pics are in a different format?

No it actually was super easy!! I used a BBC code to HTML coverter (Dis uses BBC code, Blogger uses HTML) All I had to do was hit "edit" on each post, copy everything in written out code/links, go to: http://www.bbcode-to-html.com/index.php, paste my Disboards stuff, hit "convert", copy the new stuff and paste it into a new post on blogger. It took me about 1-2 min total for each post...maybe less.

 

[AprilRenee]

Oh good! I'm really enjoying reading about your trip so far. I can't wait to find out about your snowpacalypse. I'm in central IL and remember that well!!

Yay!! I'm glad you're enjoying it. You've only got 1.5 days of the trip left before our "wonderful" Snowpocalypse story.

 

[AprilRenee]

Bummer that you never got to draw the Tangled character, especially after three tries! Funny Poohs, though! I must say how impressed I am at all the self-taken all-5-people-in-the-shot pictures you took! We have enough trouble just trying to get the two of us in! The streetmosphere character interaction looks fun!

I'm actually rather impressed with myself for all of our everyone-in-the-shot photos! I think it's a talent I learned in college, I feel like I have a lot of "myspace" style photos with friends. I have found that it's easier to do with a cell phone camera than a point and shoot. My cell camera has a wider lens and we found that we could easily get all 5 of us in it. The point and shoot was a little harder.

 

[natebenma]

Sounds like a fun morning at HS. GREAT character interaction. I don't know who that is, either.

I am so surprised that they didn't take your wishes about drawing a Tangled character into account, especially the second time you went through (was it the same teacher then?) And there were 5 of you!

But cute drawings

Also very impressed with the photos of everyone together. Love the "In Disney/Last Day" shots.

 

[jc040404]

I love that Mickey picture! All the Pooh drawings are too funny. Is this why no one likes him? It's too bad that they wouldn't do Tangled for you all, but my guys have had the same thing happen. I don't remember who anymore, but my Andrew likes to request someone everytime. They've never got to draw it either.

 

[IheartDDuck]

That is too funny that you kept on running back into the Animation Academy to draw Pascal. I think drawing him would be really cool too!

I love that Streetmosphere performer! She cracks me up every time she is out.

 

[mermaid764]

That's too bad that you never got the tangled characters, but I think your pics turned out great, especially Jiminy.

Can't wait to hear where you ended up for lunch

 

[akayek31]

The Animation Academy is one of the new things on the new things we must do list. I am not the best at drawing but it looks like fun. Do the classes take a long time? When I first started planning out September trip my daughter was going with me. Now my son is going since my daughter has honors classes and can't miss them. I am having to bribe my son to ride ToT with me. He has refused the last two trips we have went on. But he is going to the Daytona 500 in February and I told him if he rode every ride including ToT and took any picture with characters that I wanted I would give him $200 for souvenirs. The funny thing is that whenever we go on vacation I give him that much any way but I am not reminding him of that I hate last days at the park. They are so sad

 

[AprilRenee]

Sounds like a fun morning at HS. GREAT character interaction. I don't know who that is, either.

I am so surprised that they didn't take your wishes about drawing a Tangled character into account, especially the second time you went through (was it the same teacher then?) And there were 5 of you!

But cute drawings

Also very impressed with the photos of everyone together. Love the "In Disney/Last Day" shots.

Yeah, it was the same teacher the 2nd time (but we didn't say anything about it the first time). But thanks, we were pretty proud of our drawings...and I mean, the classes were still fun and we did get some good characters!

I love that Mickey picture! All the Pooh drawings are too funny. Is this why no one likes him? It's too bad that they wouldn't do Tangled for you all, but my guys have had the same thing happen. I don't remember who anymore, but my Andrew likes to request someone everytime. They've never got to draw it either.

Haha...yeah that's why we all hate Pooh. He really was the inocent bystander. But the other day I suggested seeing the new Pooh movie and Andrew was like "NO!"...not, "eh, I don't really want to" nope...he just said "NO!" really loud! LOL It was kinda funny.

That is too funny that you kept on running back into the Animation Academy to draw Pascal. I think drawing him would be really cool too!

I love that Streetmosphere performer! She cracks me up every time she is out.

In our defense, LOL...we were planning on doing several Animation Academy classes anyway...not JUST to try and get Pascal! LOL...but yeah, it would have been cool to learn!

And yeah, she was pretty funny! I had another one earlier in the day who walked past "talking" on a fake phone and was saying something like, "Why would people tie their sweaters around their waist...don't they know it looks RIDICULOUS!??" LOL...I was wearing my jacket around my waist and I started busting up laughing. It was pretty funny especially since she didn't even look at me or anything, just walked past talking about me.

That's too bad that you never got the tangled characters, but I think your pics turned out great, especially Jiminy.

Can't wait to hear where you ended up for lunch

Thanks! And this was my favorite lunch of the trip!

The Animation Academy is one of the new things on the new things we must do list. I am not the best at drawing but it looks like fun. Do the classes take a long time? When I first started planning out September trip my daughter was going with me. Now my son is going since my daughter has honors classes and can't miss them. I am having to bribe my son to ride ToT with me. He has refused the last two trips we have went on. But he is going to the Daytona 500 in February and I told him if he rode every ride including ToT and took any picture with characters that I wanted I would give him $200 for souvenirs. The funny thing is that whenever we go on vacation I give him that much any way but I am not reminding him of that I hate last days at the park. They are so sad

Haha! Nice, when in doubt resort to bribery!

The classes take about 25 min or so. It doesn't seem that long though. They go quickly (except when drawing Pooh! LOL)

 

[Merida]

I'm very impressed by the drawings! But I'm very unartistic. And apparently have very loose morals because I would've continued to put up my hand until they came to a character I liked. Pooh isn't my favorite, especially since he seems to be everywhere nowadays!

I did some googling and it looks like your streetmosphere lady was Dorma Nesmond. The history of the streetmosphere characters is actually more interesting than I would've thought! Well, I've never actually thought about it, but still!).

 

[AprilRenee]

I'm very impressed by the drawings! But I'm very unartistic. And apparently have very loose morals because I would've continued to put up my hand until they came to a character I liked. Pooh isn't my favorite, especially since he seems to be everywhere nowadays!

I did some googling and it looks like your streetmosphere lady was Dorma Nesmond. The history of the streetmosphere characters is actually more interesting than I would've thought! Well, I've never actually thought about it, but still!).

Haha!! I was thinking about that when I was writing this update...I even asked Andrew "dude, why didn't we just keep raising our hands until we got Pascal??" We apparently have such "high morals" that we didn't even think of that!! LOL I'm not sure any of us would have had the guts to actually do it though even if we had thought of it. However, I applaud your brilliant idea...I shall save it for next time! LOL

And YES Dorma Nesmond...like Norma Desmond but more talented (pretty sure that was her tag line ) Now I'm gonna have to go google it and find out about this interesting history! Thanks for the tip!

 

[mike the canuck]

Haha. Your Pooh pictures made me laugh out loud at work. ( I hope nobody heard)

Your report has also inspired me to try pin trading on my next trip. I have never done it before and it looks like a lot of fun.