DD9 and I just got back from a great trip. Her school had a couple of days off, so I decided to surprise her with a WDW trip. I managed to snag what seemed like the last open room on property, lol. We'd never stayed at ASMovies before, but have stayed at Values, so I knew that'd be fine.
Checked in early and, wonder of wonders, our room was already available. When we got to the room, it was nice and clean and a Mickey head made of towels was sitting on one bed. Very cute.
Since we won't be back at Christmas time and may never go at that time of year, I was thrilled to find that many characters were doing Meet and Greets in their holiday finest, even if it felt a bit odd before Thanksgiving...... I got a great shot of DD (first in line that morning) holding hands with Goofy in his Santa suit, walking up the greeting trail.
We also found Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Pluto in their "Dreams" stage show clothes at the EPCOT Character Connection. Boy, those are gorgeous outfits!
With all of that, we got a lot of pictures of DD with characters we hadn't met before, including Figment, Mulan, Chester and Hester, Clarabelle, and Horace Horsecollar. Very nice! I thought we were finally going to meet Beast, but it wasn't to be. We got to France and were told Belle and Beast would be there in about 5 minutes. Another mom and I got to chatting with the Photopass photographer. He kept checking in and kept getting told "5 more minutes"..... One thing he did tell us is that when you ask a CM where the characters will be out, MK is the only park where they can really answer you and be sure of the answer - when a CM at another park can't answer your character-time question, they aren't being mean, they really can't find out. Anywho, Belle finally came...... with Aurora. <sigh> Beautiful ladies, but we have their picture and autograph already. Ah well, it was a nice rest.
We also found that we had stumbled into the tail end of the Food and Wine Festival at EPCOT. We made the whole circuit, stopping to taste anything that looked appealing. We discovered a few things we didn't like, but many more that we did, so all was good. I enjoyed the Kiwi cream roll and quite a few of the veggie dishes. Loved sitting on a bench in France, eating a goat cheese tart and sipping champagne with pomegranate......mmmm..... DD loved trying everything, but I think the ribs were her favorite. Our Rewards dollars from the Dis Visa covered the food plus a pick-a-pearl for each of us. We actually did the pearls twice - I got nice average pearls, DD got a dark blue one and a well-above-average size white one. She sure had the mojo on this trip. lol
Super Soap days meant light crowds at the other parks, which was nice. The parking lots were apparently jammed, but MK on Saturday was reasonable, with waits of 20 minutes or less on some rides and Fastpasses on the others. The Osborne Lights were stunning, though. We'd never seen them before, so we made a point of going and I'm glad we did. I do wish we'd found time to get over to the Festival of the Masters, but it wasn't to be.
The only new restaurant we tried was the Kona Cafe for dinner and it was really quite good. My stir-fried vegetables were cooked and seasoned well. DDs mac and cheese was just the ubiquitous Stouffers - she likes it, but it kills me that otherwise decent restaurants serve that instead of whipping up their own version. (Jiko has a nice mac and cheese, for example.) Our waiter was obviously busy, but never failed to be very gracious and friendly.
Wait, I lie. We also tried the Electric Umbrella for the first time. We got up and decided to skip breakfast at the hotel and just grab something at the Fountainview. Well, they've got that one closed, but the sign says that food can be gotten at the Umbrella. great, except that the Umbrella didn't open unitl lunchtime. And the snack stands didn't even start setting up until something like 11. Sooo, we took our minds off the hunger by hitting a couple of rides, then headed to the Umbrella. Nice veggie chili there.
So that's it. I've rambled enough anyway.
Checked in early and, wonder of wonders, our room was already available. When we got to the room, it was nice and clean and a Mickey head made of towels was sitting on one bed. Very cute.
Since we won't be back at Christmas time and may never go at that time of year, I was thrilled to find that many characters were doing Meet and Greets in their holiday finest, even if it felt a bit odd before Thanksgiving...... I got a great shot of DD (first in line that morning) holding hands with Goofy in his Santa suit, walking up the greeting trail.
We also found Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Pluto in their "Dreams" stage show clothes at the EPCOT Character Connection. Boy, those are gorgeous outfits!With all of that, we got a lot of pictures of DD with characters we hadn't met before, including Figment, Mulan, Chester and Hester, Clarabelle, and Horace Horsecollar. Very nice! I thought we were finally going to meet Beast, but it wasn't to be. We got to France and were told Belle and Beast would be there in about 5 minutes. Another mom and I got to chatting with the Photopass photographer. He kept checking in and kept getting told "5 more minutes"..... One thing he did tell us is that when you ask a CM where the characters will be out, MK is the only park where they can really answer you and be sure of the answer - when a CM at another park can't answer your character-time question, they aren't being mean, they really can't find out. Anywho, Belle finally came...... with Aurora. <sigh> Beautiful ladies, but we have their picture and autograph already. Ah well, it was a nice rest.
We also found that we had stumbled into the tail end of the Food and Wine Festival at EPCOT. We made the whole circuit, stopping to taste anything that looked appealing. We discovered a few things we didn't like, but many more that we did, so all was good. I enjoyed the Kiwi cream roll and quite a few of the veggie dishes. Loved sitting on a bench in France, eating a goat cheese tart and sipping champagne with pomegranate......mmmm..... DD loved trying everything, but I think the ribs were her favorite. Our Rewards dollars from the Dis Visa covered the food plus a pick-a-pearl for each of us. We actually did the pearls twice - I got nice average pearls, DD got a dark blue one and a well-above-average size white one. She sure had the mojo on this trip. lol
Super Soap days meant light crowds at the other parks, which was nice. The parking lots were apparently jammed, but MK on Saturday was reasonable, with waits of 20 minutes or less on some rides and Fastpasses on the others. The Osborne Lights were stunning, though. We'd never seen them before, so we made a point of going and I'm glad we did. I do wish we'd found time to get over to the Festival of the Masters, but it wasn't to be.
The only new restaurant we tried was the Kona Cafe for dinner and it was really quite good. My stir-fried vegetables were cooked and seasoned well. DDs mac and cheese was just the ubiquitous Stouffers - she likes it, but it kills me that otherwise decent restaurants serve that instead of whipping up their own version. (Jiko has a nice mac and cheese, for example.) Our waiter was obviously busy, but never failed to be very gracious and friendly.
Wait, I lie. We also tried the Electric Umbrella for the first time. We got up and decided to skip breakfast at the hotel and just grab something at the Fountainview. Well, they've got that one closed, but the sign says that food can be gotten at the Umbrella. great, except that the Umbrella didn't open unitl lunchtime. And the snack stands didn't even start setting up until something like 11. Sooo, we took our minds off the hunger by hitting a couple of rides, then headed to the Umbrella. Nice veggie chili there.
So that's it. I've rambled enough anyway.
