Trip report - "Dreams do come true" (video complete - pg 45)

[2BWEDDNDIS]

Thanks for the report update. I hope we're able to find a paintbrush also!!! Tryed before, but never found one!

 

[jackdis]

I forgot to mention this in my other post....I watched the Disney weddings special on tv yesterday.....I was thinking of you, Mary! (And all the other Disney brides out there!)

 

[ItGirl753]

Mary,
First of all, congratulations! I LOVE your trip report. It is actually the first one I've read and it has kept me coming back for more. I especially love that Jim writes for it too! I do have a few pages to catch up on my reading....

Waaaaaaay back I saw that your friends are Jim and Jo, and are engaged. I wanted to tell you that my grandparents names were also Jim and Jo. So cute! It tugged at my heartstrings when I read it! (BTW they celebrated 50 years together.)

My first time in Epcot was in November. My BF had to show me around. We love Spaceship Earth...and got stuck too.

However, the next time Disney has a ride that asks me about motion sickness 4-5 times I will get off, even if it is Gary Sinise! My BF was in the Navy and compared Mission Space to his training. I believe he called it the "spin and puke." BUT I made it through and he was quite impressed by that.

 

[JJClemson]

Hi Mary! As if I even need to tell you, your TR is still wonderful

My mom and I were casually talking yesterday about how we would love to go to WDW just the two of us before the wedding (she is an artist and needs to "envision" everything before she can properly make the centerpieces, invitations, etc). We realized we both had a few days we could go in August, and it just happens to be the free dining time She asked where I thought we should stay, and I said, you have to read Mary's TR and see her pictures of POFQ! Well, wouldn't you know we are now staying at POFQ! I just hope your loud neighbor still is not there! That must have been so irritating.

Oh, and my mom saw your pictures of the Crystal Palace breakfast, so we now have ADR's. Thanks for all your help Mary I cannot wait for the nest installment!

 

[Marty Moose]

Okay...this is totally how I'm picturing "loud guy" now!

"HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHHHHEEEHHEEEH...Pooh-Ride or Splash Mountain..."

Love the new installment!

 

[hookedondizney]

Mary, I have enjoyed your wedding thread so much! One day I spent 4 hours just catching up on the few days of posts that I had missed! OMG! I watched the disney weddings on the food network channel this past weekend and I thought about you! I loved the video that was put together for you. That is such a priceless memory that you will be able to share with your grandchildren! He did a great job! Thanks again for sharing! I have had so much fun reading your thread.
Hookedondizney

 

[Philadisney]

Okay...this is totally how I'm picturing "loud guy" now!

MartyMoose, Peter Griffin is EXACTLY who I was picturing as well! too funny!

congrats on the paintbrush find - and I too would take a delicious main street bakery ice cream sandwich over a dole whip any day

 

[ZPT1022]

he was kind of like “ehh”, I could relate. I told him how I was a part of the college program and that I would come home exhausted every day from working and how I really didn’t like my roommates, but how my favorite thing by far was working with the guests at WDW, everyone was always in a cheerful mood because they were on vacation. It didn’t seem like fun at the time, my feet always hurt and my face always hurt from smiling all day, but I look back at it and think about how much fun it was. Weird.

OMG! That was *MY* college program experience too! When were you down there? I was there in 1999. Knowing what I know now about the "real world" I'd go back in a second but I really didn't appreciate it then. My roommates stunk though so that didn't help. I'm beginning to think how much you like your roommates really affects how much you like it while you're there. Live and learn I suppose

 

[Mary626]

Thanks again, everyone!! Sorry I haven't responded in a while, life got kind of busy for a while again!

itgirl753 - that is cool! I will have to let Jo & Jim know about the good omen


JJClemson - awesome!! I hope you have a fabulous time at the POFQ and at the crystal palace! I'll feel really bad if you don't and then it will be all my fault!

OMG! That was *MY* college program experience too! When were you down there? I was there in 1999. Knowing what I know now about the "real world" I'd go back in a second but I really didn't appreciate it then. My roommates stunk though so that didn't help. I'm beginning to think how much you like your roommates really affects how much you like it while you're there. Live and learn I suppose

Yep, those are my exact feelings too!! I was there in the fall of '99 at Mousegears, how about yourself?


Thanks again to everyone who posted and everyone reading! I have a little bit to post for the next day's installment. I haven't finished it yet, but since it's been a while since I posted I thought I would post whwat I have so far...

 

[Mary626]

wow I sure used the word "post" a lot in the last sentence of that last post didnt I.. I almost did it again.. anyway...


Our Last Day at WDW – Sunday April 30th, 2006… (Day 11)

Jim and I woke up early the next morning and were out the door by 8:25 am. Epcot (our first stop) was scheduled to open at 9. Since it was our second to last morning in Port Orleans, and I thought the next morning might be too busy, I wanted to stop and try the “beignets” at the hotel food court that I had read about. It wasn’t a bad idea to get breakfast anyway.

We stopped for some photos along the way.

Jim was wearing another shirt from the Indiana Jones gift shop – I had told him to get this shirt, it was my favorite of the ones they had for sale.. snakes.. why did it have to be snakes?

some more pretty scenery

ooo I like this pic

We got to the food court and I ordered 3 beignets while jim looked around for something else. I watched the ladies behind the counter parcel out the dough, fry it up, and powder it with sugar. Jim grabbed a bagel. We sat down to eat it, and I tried out the beignet. It tasted like angel cake with powdered sugar, which I used to have as a kid. The sugar was so powdery though that I had to be careful not to choke on it. It was such a fine powder that you could breathe it in and then start choking on it. What an embarrassing death that would be, choking on powdered sugar. Oh, and they were really really messy too. The sugar got all over me. They were good though, but I probably won't get them again. We quickly finished our breakfast and went to the bus stop.

The lady making me some fresh beignets

my beignets

jim’s boring bagel

 

[Mary626]

We got on the bus and it took us to epcot. By the time we got into the park it was around 9:25 am.

You can see Cinderella dancing with the swamp monster to the right of this pic

Jim and I both really wanted to try Mission Space again, it had been so much fun the first time. We head right there and it was only a five minute wait. This time I was navigator and Jim was demoted to pilot. No more Commander Jim. The ride was as much fun as it was the first time and I kept giggling again during the take-off.

As we exited the ride, I told Jim I wanted to explore the area around the exit a bit. I had noticed last time that they had a mission control game and a few other kiosks and I wanted to check them out. We saw a game that was about to start called the “Space Race” game or something so we went and found a computer terminal to participate. It was a fun game!

There were two teams, Team Orion and another team (can’t remember the other team name.. we were team orion). They got one family for each team to be the space shuttle crew, and everyone else was mission control. We each had a individual computer terminal to help the space shuttle crew along. Our job was to identify a problem and fix it. When we fixed the problem, it would appear on the screen for the space shuttle crew as one of four colors. When they spotted a problem, the problem would be a specific color, and they would need to find one of the colored solutions and drag it over to the problem area on their computer screen. So you definitely needed to work together as a team. We had to look up on their screen to see what colors they needed and then fix them on our terminals.

Jim and I did our best to pretend to get really into it, and wouldn’t you know it, our team won, go Team Orion!

Jim at his mission control terminal

the brave heroes of the space shuttle crew

After that, we left the mission control game and went over to another computer screen where you could send an email postcard. I figured it would be another photo e-postcard and I love sending those, but they were actually video e-postcards, very cool! There were 10 different space or sci-fi scenes to choose from, then it recorded you for a few seconds and you could email it to a friend (but only one email address at a time, sadly).

We picked the “Houston, we have a problem” scenario since it gave us the most time on video, like ten seconds or so. Jim and I decided to be silly and pretend like we were going crazy like we were going to die or something. We had so much fun doing these!


We did one and sent it to one of our friends, but since you could only email one person at a time, we did about three more of the same. Each time we did it we kept getting sillier and sillier, perfecting our skit. By the time we did the last time, we were pretending to scream for help, I slapped Jim, we were tearing our hair out, and crying in my hands. We felt good about our sketch and sent it off to someone.

Here’s the postcards in the order we did them. We look like complete morons. They will be up until around the end of July or early august probably, not sure. It should work just by clicking on the links and waiting a few seconds for it to load.
http://bsc.cards.go.com/cards/dynamic/missionspace/retrieve?card_id=5E2F1031941CA20840D61071BE0D4054

http://bsc.cards.go.com/cards/dynamic/missionspace/retrieve?card_id=87025C5C3078941A100D6400E60B11F0

http://bsc.cards.go.com/cards/dynamic/missionspace/retrieve?card_id=C05D0E6851B4C8990407153D024AF114

Jim decided to do one more to send to his friend, scott. His was the scariest thing ever.

http://bsc.cards.go.com/cards/dynamic/missionspace/retrieve?card_id=191C4344A3FB16054062D0940E4D8075

We could have stayed there all day just sending postcards to people, but decided not to hog the terminal and to move on.

 

[Mary626]

I had been saving exploring “The Land” pavilion for until we were going to eat at the Garden Grill. We had reservations for around noon, so we headed over there, it was around 10:30 now.

Walking towards ‘the land” pavilion

We went inside the pavilion and looked around. I wanted to do the “living with the land” boatride before we ate at the garden grill, but the wait time was for 40 minutes. We got fast-passes that said “return between 11:15 and 12:15” which was perfect since our reservation for lunch was for about 11:45. Everything else was pretty crowded. Due to the fact that the pavilion now houses two big attractions – Soarin’ and the boatride, and also that it houses a big food-court, “The Land” can get very busy. The line for Soarin’ over California was ridiculously long each time we were in epcot. Soarin’ is one of our favorite rides. It is the most amazing experience ever, really! But when you’ve been on it a dozen times the idea of waiting 80 minutes in line for it isn’t very appealing. Since we had about 45 minutes until we could use our fastpasses, we decided to head over to “The Living Seas”

The inside of “the land”

I hadn’t been in there since 2001 so I was surprised at how much they’ve changed this pavilion. They’re really playing up to the popularity of the “Finding Nemo” movie. Not that I mind, I love that movie!

All drains lead to the ocean, kid!

The line for “Turtle Talk with Crush” was huge! Since we’ve done that attraction before as well (in Disneyland), we decided to skip it and just look around at the non-talking fishies.

They had a Finding Nemo exploration exhibit area. There was a thing that said “shark skin” and you could feel it. I rubbed it and Bruce, from Finding Nemo said “ooooooo that’s gooood!” I laughed and got Jim so I could show him. Jim looked around at the other exhibits, but there were a lot of kids, and I didn’t want to get in their way, since the kids were obviously enjoying it so much. So we moved on.

We went upstairs to the big aquariums and looked around at the cute fish, coral reef, and dolphins. It was pretty cool. It’s enjoyable just to find a place to sit and let the fishes move around and come to you.

I was disappointed to find out that the coral reef is actually fake because real coral is very hard to clean and keep alive

I told jim I’d be downstairs by the manatees and he could keep watching the dolphins. The last time I was at this pavilion, me and my friend Jo just sat for a half an hour and watched the manatees, they were so cool. This time they were sound asleep and at the bottom of the aqarium, not as interesting. Jim came by and we waited a while to see if they would wake up. I saw one fish just kind of staring at us and I said to jim “ I bet the other fish are jealous of the manatees. They’re like ‘you can take a picture of meee!’” so Jim took a picture of the guy to make him feel better.

Darn manatees needing to sleep

sitting and watching the manatees

We looked around Mr. Ray’s lagoon (or whatever that was called) that had some interesting fish, and we left the pavilion around 11:10.

 

[Mary626]

We went back to “the land” and got our fastpasses out and got right on the boat. The ride starts out taking us through different extreme climates, like the dessert, rainforest, etc, and goes on to show how humans have impacted the land through farming and such. It’s just the right amount of “let’s be careful what we do” without making you feel all guilty or anything. It then goes into the greenhouse to show how epcot is working with scientists to find innovative ways to produce crops without destroying the land. They have some really interesting stuff in there, like the tomato plant tree, the hydroponic and aeroponic gardens, and of course, the mickey pumpkin. It’s an interesting ride and jim actually enjoyed it too, I was surprised.

some baby gators

the tomato tree

see the little mickey pumpkin on top?

epcot is “working with nasa to create crops that might one day grow in space” or something

 

[Mary626]

We finished up the boat-ride and went up the stairs to the “Garden Grill” at 11:45, and checked in for our meal. I told jim how the restaurant rotates and how you can see some parts of the ‘living with the land’ boatride beneath the restaurant. It’s a character meal, which was an added plus, but really I just wanted to try the food. Me and my friend Jo had eaten here back in 2001 and it was my favorite meal on that trip!

Our names were quickly called and we were taken to our seats. We got a booth on the bottom tier, which is great because it feels very private and you don’t see anyone except the waiter and the characters the entire time. Our waiter was very nice and quickly got us our drinks and brought out a plate of bread. When we started out we were right between a part of the desert and the rainforest from the “living with the land’ ride. It rotates very slowly, you might not even notice it unless you looked up and all of a sudden you’re looking at something completely different at the end of the meal. I love that you can hear the sounds from the ride though, so it sounds like you are eating by a rain-forest or something.

We both have hat hair

I look like oliver twist or something in these pictures

the bread was yummy

The waiter brought out our first plate of food – it had flank steak, turkey with cranberry sauce, fried catfish, cheesey potato casserole, and fresh veggies. Everything was delicious! My favorite was the flank steak and the cheesy potato casserole, then the turkey.. the catfish was good but was my least favorite. It was jim’s favorite though,and he asked for a plate of just catfish! The veggies were good but weren’t as fresh as I remembered them being. The last time I ate here, the veggies were so scrumptious I had asked for a plate of just veggies, and I wasn’t at all a veggie person back then. But everything was so good. We finished up 2 plates, plus an extra plate of cheesey potatos fo rme, and an extra plate of catfish for jim.

jim loved his catfish

I was rather fond of the carb-olish cheesey potatoes

The character interaction wasn’t as good as it had been the last time I went either, but I really didn’t care. I got to see Chip, Dale, and Pluto. They stayed just for a picture, but I didn’t want to “hog” them again. Mickey walked by once and I said “mickey!” but I could tell Mickey was about to go on break.. he came by after I said “mickey!” but I just kind of waved and didn’t try to interact with him, I could tell he looked really tired or something. No big deal, he had been nice enough to come to our wedding the week before, afterall

me and chip (I got it right this time!)… there’s that oliver twist hair again

me and dale

By the time we were done eating, the restaurant had rotated so we were by the farmhouse with the barking dog. I was so happy we got to be in this area of the ride. I have very fond memories of eating here with my sisters and mother back when I was a teenager and we were right by the farmhouse with the barking dog. So the barking dog brought back good memories. Towards the end of the meal jim asked me “wait… does this restaurant rotate or something or am I going crazy?” I was like “yeah I told you it rotated” so much for him being the more observant one!

Where we started, about

The farmhouse with the barking dog

 

[Mary626]

The dessert:

There were four different desserts, a lemon bar, brownie, cheesecake,, and pecan pie I think? Everything was good and even though we were stuffed, we found a way to eat them all

underneath

We left around 12:45 and we were completely stuffed. It was so worth it though! This was in our top three favorite meals of the trip. I think it was Boma, Crystal Palace, and the Garden Grill, hands down! I’m not sure if them being “all you can eat” has anything to do with it, but the food is quite tastey!

We left the restaurant and I was waiting on some benches while Jim was in the bathroom. I saw this grandfather ask this girl next to me if she could go into the girls’ bathroom and ask if his grandkids were in there. He said they had been in there for a while and he was worried about them. The girl he asked seemed uncomfortable about it and said she had to be somewhere else or something. I felt bad for the guy so I told him I could do it. He told me there names so I went in and asked if they were in there and said there grandfather was looking for them. They answered me and said they’d be right out. I went out and told the grandfather, and he seemed very appreciative. By the time Jim got out of the bathroom the girls had come out and were with their grandfather.

Jim and I decided we had had our fun in epcot and would head to MGM next. It was around 1 pm.

We mosied on out towards the international gateway so we could catch the ferry to MGM. We stopped along the way for a few more photos. I saw “tinkerbelle’s fairy garden” for the first time, it was cute!

Lumiere and an ostrich from fantasia (I think)

We got on the boat and headed to MGM.

-------
Coming up another day: We tackle MGM, California Grill with Fireworks, and the continuing saga of cab driver 353..

 

[mindystar]

Yea, what a great way to start my vacation--with more of Mary's TR But oh no, I won't get to find out about that taxi cab driver until we get back home from Florida--and that's not until July Well I guess it'll be one good thing about having to come back home
Thanks for another fun entry Mary!!!!

 

[a*lil*bit*goofy]

thanks mary for the update! adn i am very very appreciative of all the details you put into your reports, esp with garden grill. it was always one of our favourites, and mum surprisingly said 'lets not do it' after she saw the menu.

i just emailed her the pics of your food from your report. and we will see what she says NOW. LOL! my mouth is watering. (good thing i made an ADR for it anyway, eh? LOL) also we will stay at POFQ and are going to crystal palace...your report is like a travel guide for me! thanks! and i can't wait to read more. don't make me wait TOOOOOO long, please?!?! ;o)

 

[jackdis]

The Garden Grill sounds like another must do on a future trip!

 

[JJClemson]

JJClemson - awesome!! I hope you have a fabulous time at the POFQ and at the crystal palace! I'll feel really bad if you don't and then it will be all my fault!

Mary, how could I have anything but a fabulous time at WDW! Thanks for posting more pics of POFQ, they have made me even more excited I had no idea The Garden Grill was like that! I just showed that part to DF, and we decided it's a must do for next time.

Thanks so much for keeping up w/ your TR and making it so detailed. I am enjoying it so much

 

[Jesussavedme]

Mary, I am just LOVING this whole report. It is so much fun to read! Your Mission Space postcards cracked me up! I was laughing my head off, you guys are so much fun!

Anyway, even though it's not my wedding, I'm still so excited - It's our 5th Anniversary, and I have planned so many special things! We leave tomorrow for our week at WL. You've inspired me to make many memories and take lots of pictures!!!!!

Dang, when I get back next weekend I am going to have to catch up on your report. And what will we do when you're done? I will have withdrawals!!!!!!!!!!!!