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

[Mary626]

Oooo confetti in a heart shape, awww!!!! That always made me feel so special. It was interesting to see which restaurants did something special and which ones didn’t. I think the restaurants inside of the Magic Kingdom made more of an effort to help us celebrate our honeymoon then the expensive restaurants that we ate at in the hotels. I thanked the waitress and told her “that is so sweet, thank you!”. She was really nice and asked us about our wedding and was very happy for us. She mentioned something about her daughter getting married, so I was asking her questions about that. I asked a few more questions, I always enjoy hearing about people’s weddings, and she seemed to enjoy talking about it, but then she seemed to get embarrassed that she was talking about herself so much and apologized and went to get our drinks. She had also explained to us how it worked, she said to have our cameras ready and the characters would come to us for our picture, and we could help ourselves to the buffet.

Jim ordered a diet coke and I ordered a water. Jim said something about how he could never drink water in the morning, and I was like, “you’re drinking diet coke at 8 am, now THAT’S disgusting!!” I guess we’re both weird.

This restaurant is beautiful. It’s bright and airy and very Victorian looking. You’re right smack dab in the middle of the magic kingdom but it feels like you’re miles away! I’ve read complaints on the DIS restaurant forum about it being too crowded or too loud, but it was completely opposite of that when I was there. Maybe the trick was getting there right at 8, but it was pretty quiet and not at all crowded!

We saw Winnie the Pooh making the rounds at a different section from us, so we thought we’d go get our food just then so we wouldn’t miss him.

We got up to head to the buffet. Jim said he wanted to look around before getting in line, but I told him the left side was exactly the same as the right side (according to the sign that was there), so he got in line with me. It was funny, the things I was most excited about trying (from DIS food review threads), were at the children’s section… breakfast pizza and breakfast lasagna!!! How healthy did that sound I grabbed myself a slice of breakfast pizza, one scoopful of breakfast lasagna, a turkey sausage, some hashbrowns, a bagel with cream cheese, a chocolate muffin, and a piece of puffed French toast. Everything looked so good, I knew I’d be making seconds!!

Our drinks were on our table when we returned from the buffet, and she had brought orange juice for us as well, which was included in the price. I used to love orange juice, but I really liked that I had developed the healthy habit of drinking nothing but water and didn’t want to mess that up, so I didn’t drink any.

Review of this plate of food: What can I say other then delicious!!! The breakfast pizza was soooo yummy, I don’t know why they consider that “children’s food”. The breakfast lasagna was so yummy too, filled with fruit and other sweet things, it was very unique and so tastey!! I could have eaten a lot more, but it was the kind of thing that would fill you up with just a little, so I only ate the one serving. Definitely worth a try!! The hashrbowns were good for hashbrowns, and the puffed French toast was really good too. I ate it without syrup and it was really good, but I think it would have been elevated to delicious with syrup on it. The bagel was just your typical bagel, I just happened to be in the mood for a bagel, and the turkey sausage was pretty yummy, though one was enough. The chocolate muffin was good too, but was just your typical muffin. The winners of the day were the breakfast pizza and the breakfast lasagna, hands down!!

While we were eating, Eeyore came around. Yay, Eeyore!! I adore the pooh characters! He acted bashful and adorable while he was with us. Our waitress took our picture for us. You can see a little bit how sunburned I had gotten from the day before! With each character we tried not to keep them for too long, so we just took our picture and thanked them. There was a little girl at the table across from us who we could tell was waiting for us to finish so she could interact with the characters. That was another fun thing about the character meals.. we may not have our own children, but we think it is just as adorable to watch other people’s children interacting with the characters and see the expressions of wonder on their faces.. Of course I don’t stare at them, but just catching glimpses of them is too cute!

Piglet came by next and Jim got his picture with me and piglet, yay piglet!! I think he’s hard one to catch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him here at Disneyland, I always see Pooh, eeyore, and tigger, but never piglet. Jim was excited that he got piglet and me, he couldn’t wait to show his mother, who loves piglet and loves all things pink and collects figures of pigs. Too cute!

Jim was having a great time with his meal too. He had less on his plate then I did so he finished and went up for seconds before me. I asked him to grab me another slice of breakfast pizza. Speaking of pigs

Jim came back with a character waffle and had syrup all over his plate that was touching the other food. I told him “I think they have bowls for the syrup so you don’t get all your food all sticky” but he said he liked it that way.

After that, I went up for seconds myself. I hadn’t finished everything on my plate, just the stuff I was really enjoying!! I wanted to try a character waffle, they were too cute! They had waffles with the faces of Winnie, Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet on them, how precious! I chose Tigger since Jim has dressed up on Halloween many times as Tigger.. I will have to find a picture, he is so cute!


I made sure to put my syrup in the bowl provided for it, I don’t like my food all syrupy I got another slice of breakfast pizza (couldn’t resist), and got a strawberry and whipped cream for the waffle.

 

[Mary626]

I got back to the table and heard everyone in the restaurant and heard everyone start to cheer, and then jim was like “yes!” so I looked behind me and saw Tigger had arrived!! He was completely grandstanding and trying to get everyone to cheer for him, it was so cute! Jim was so excited, he loves Tigger!

We were pretty much completely stuffed to the capacity and couldn’t eat anymore! The waitress came by and cleared the plates. But we couldn’t and wouldn’t leave until Tigger came by!! We were waiting for the bill anyway, so we weren’t hogging the table.

We pretended to be “lalalala nothing going on here..” when we saw Tigger coming by, and then we were like … oh, hi tigger, we didn’t see you there, what a complete surprise! you know, we didn’t want him to know how excited we were to see him!!

It was so cute! Somewhere along the line, the confetti shaped like a heart had gotten a little messed up (I think Jim had been throwing some confetti down my shirt again), so Tigger saw it and tried to fix it with his big paws. It was too cute! He couldn’t quite do it, Jim pointed to me and said “She broke my heart” and Tigger pretended to be sad. I got a picture of Jim with Tigger and Jim got a picture of me with Tigger, and then we thanked him and said “bye tigger!” and let the little girl next to us get a chance with him. He was being really cute with the little kids!

Me & tigger

We had gotten a chance to see everyone but Winnie the Pooh, not too bad! I never expect to see EVERY character during a character meal, it never seems to work out that way, which is fine by me.. but I know that is a lot of people’s complaints about meals like this, so I just thought I would mention that to people who are thinking of doing a character meal. If you happen to get to see every character while there, you are very lucky!

While we waited for the waitress to come back with our bill, I decided to make a new message with the confetti

The waitress came back and "awwed" at the cheesey confetti message I had left. We paid for our meal and then left. We stopped for some pictures by the adorable pooh topiaries they have near the entrance. Too cute! Those are there all the time btw, it wasn’t just for the spring and garden festival, which was an epcot thing.

I don’t know if you’ll notice that I’m missing something in these pictures…

 

[Mary626]

We were done right at 9 am, and since the magic kingdom didn’t officially open until 9 am, it was perfect timing!! I couldn’t believe our luck, we would be able to ride anything we wanted to without a wait!! We leave the restaurant, walk quite a distance away towards fantasyland, determined to ride a few things before it gets crowded, and then I realize the sun is shining quite brightly on my head, and crap I forgot my hat! I double-timed it back to the restaurant, thinking It’ll just take a second, I’ll run in get it, and run out before people start getting in line..

I walk inside and the characters are doing a parade around the restaurant with a bunch of little children following them around while the characters are holding up signs about it being a “birthday parade”. It was adorable but it was blocking me from getting my hat!! I patiently waited for the parade to finish, and then walked towards the table, but Eeyore had stopped there to take some photos with a child, and I of course didn’t want to get into their picture. I was silently laughing to myself at how funny it was that I couldn’t get to the table to grab my hat. It was like watching one of those old cartoons where someone is trying to get somewhere and a marching band walks by or something. I finally got to grab my hat, which was right where I left it thankfully, and headed out. Jim was wondering what happened, so I told him the story about how I had to stop for the parade, I was pretty amused by it.

We walked to the tip board first this time. We had thought about going to the Winnie the Pooh ride in Fantasy-land since we had just met the characters and all, and we love this ride. I noticed that space mountain had no wait though, and I knew that if we wanted to go on that ride we should take advantage of the no-wait and come back for Winnie-the-pooh. Jim said he didn’t care so much about space mountain, since we had just done it recently in Disneyland. I did want to do splash mountain though! The one in Disneyland just pales in comparison to the one in WDW and wanted to show jim.

So I say to Jim “what would you rather do, the Pooh-ride or Splash Mountain?” and Jim starts to laugh. I was like, what? Let's just say that Jim thought that would be a funny euphamism for going to the bathroom.. something like that.. anyway… I was like “very funny” and rolled my eyes, (though I was actually kind of amused by it, but I couldn’t have let on to that, now could I!)

Well anyway, we decide to do the pooh-ride, though I couldn’t call it that again without Jim kind of giggling to himself, and we headed to Fantasyland.

Jim went on this ride in Disneyland for the first time this last January. It was so cute how much he loved this ride! He kept smiling and said “you want to go on it again?” and I was like “sure! You really want to?” but then he got embarrassed and tried to be like “no, I was only kidding…” but I was like “you do too want to go on it again!” and he was like “shhh!”.. Anyway I thought it was cute so I wanted to go on it again while in WDW. It’s almost exactly the same, but just a little bit cuter at WDW! In Disneyland they don’t have the “subtext” of it being a ride through a book like the one in WDW, and that was always my favorite thing about the ride for some reason. Just taking a trip through the book!

The line was 10 minutes by the time we got there. Not bad but it went to show us how quickly it gets crowded at the magic kingdom. The first two hours after opening are definitely the “golden hours” in which to do as much as you can do! You can do as much in the first two hours after opening as you would spread out over the rest of the day. It definitely pays to get to the parks early! We waited in line and noticed that we were the only ones in line without any children. Oh well We then take our trip through the book and into the 100 acre wood! Jim noticed the car bounced along with Tigger and we both got a kick out of that! We couldn’t’ remember if it did that in Disneyland or not, but either way we enjoyed it! The ride was short but cute! Glad we went on it!


We decided to leave fantasyland and head to tomorrowland again. There was no wait for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, so we got in line and got on board.

They have this ride in Disneyland as well, but it’s fun no matter how many times you go on it because you’re always trying to get the highest score you can so you can “beat” your significant other! Me and Jim are about evenly matched, though I think I may have actually won more times then he has. This has nothing to do with the trip report, but my sister Jenny truly sucks at this game. Last time I went on it with her, she had a ‘zero” and I said “oh no, your thing says zero, it must be broke!” and she said “no it’s working, I just suck”, so I took the gun from her, shot a target a few times and it said “300”, so sure enough, she really sucked at this game. She said she went on it this trip and got a 300, so she’s improving

Anyway, Jim and I went through and tried to shoot as many targets as possible. I got 190,300 and jim got 155,300, I won woohoo!

I tried taking a picture of the picture at the end of the ride but my camera sucks and it blurred. Disneyland lets you email the picture for free, so here are some awful ones of us in previous Disneyland trips instead!


Caution: I look like a complete moron in each of the following photos!

This was from like 2003 or so. I lost. Jenny saw the picture once and said “did you think the aliens were real?”

I won!

taken in December 2005. Did I mention how I get really into this game? Jenny’s proud score of 300.

I have a picture from way back in 1999 where I look almost exactly the same as the ones above. Not much changes over time!

 

[Mary626]

It was around 9:40 when we got out of the Buzz Lightyear ride. When we left we happened to see Buzz Lightyear ahead of us signing photographs, so we thought we would go get a picture, but then we saw Stitch close by and so we got in his line instead. Sorry Buzz, maybe next time!

We hadn’t gotten our photo with Stitch since 2002, on the trip that Jim and I had gotten engaged on. We got our photo and Stitch noticed our magical wishes button and pointed to them and “congratulated” us. Yay Stitch knew it was our wedding! It made me feel bad for not inviting him! I was going to have mickey & Minnie at the reception, and was trying to find a way to fit Stitch in too. But I just couldn’t figure out a way to schedule him in without it detracting from mickey and Minnie, so I had to give him the axe. Poor Stitch!

I was showing some pics to someone in my family who couldn’t make it to the wedding, and my uncle saw this picture and was like “oh I didn’t know they had smurfs at Disney” in all seriousness I guess he hasn’t seen Lilo & Stitch, such a travesty!



After our photo with Stitch we went up to the Carousel of Progress and got in line for that. Of course there was no line for that, we were the only ones in line! They opened the doors and a few other people did come in the theatre, but it was really only about 8 people in there altogether, including me and Jim. Such a shame, because I love this ride! They got rid of it in Disneyland, so I try to ride it whenever I am at WDW because you never know how long it may or may not be here. Too bad, it was one of Walt Disney’s favorites and one he had a lot of input in developing. As it is, the ride is only opened seasonally. I hope they don’t get rid of it!!

We get inside and watch the family as they move from generation to generation, or as we move around actually. I remember the first time going on this ride I was so surprised that the audience moves around and not the stage. It makes it seem like a lot more fun! Jim hasn’t seen this ride since he was a little kid, so we were both having a good time watching it and were singing along to the song as we left the ride.

We decided to hop on the TTA again since the last time I was kind of too bummed out to enjoy it. I was in a much better mood this time! We went around Tomorowland, and Jim and I were in a car all by ourselves, so we were happily singing along to “There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow…. Shining at the end of every day!!! There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, and tomorrow is just a dream away! Man has a dream.. and that’s the start! He follows his dream, with mind and heart, and when it becomes a reality,, it’s a dream come true for you and me!” and then we would repeat, and repeat again. Noone was around who could hear us, so it was okay I always get a kick out of the part of TTA that says “paging Mr. Morrow… Mr. Tom Morrow!” It was a fun little ride.

the light at the end of the tunnel

you can see some parts of the other rides as you zip around tomorrowland – here is some overlooking buzz lightyear

exiting the ride

 

[Mary626]

When we got off from TTA it was about 10:20 and we decided to head to Frontierland since we hadn’t been there at all yet. We stopped for a few pictures along the way and explored Liberty Square for a while again.

Chip and dale

gawrsh

We got to frontierland and most of the rides I wanted to go on Jim didn’t want to. He didn’t want to go on Splash Mountain because he didn’t want to get wet, and he didn’t feel like waiting in line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. He doesn’t like to admit it, but basically he doesn’t like roller coasters and really has to be talked in to getting on one. I personally love roller coasters so this is one area of our relationship where we are not the most compatible

haunted mansion front and center, aunt polly’s landing on tom sawyer’s island

a big bird

We walked by the boat dock for Tom Sawyer’s Island and the sign said it opened up at 11 am. Jim said he was starting to get a head ache and didn’t think he had the energy for exploring tom sawyer’s island. Where’s that smilie with the rolling eyes. Anyway, I have not been to Tom Sawyer’s island in ages, even though each time we go to Disneyland Jim promises we’ll go the next trip, so I laid a sufficient enough guilt trip on him that he finally said he’d go. While Jim loves WDW and Disneyland, he doesn’t quite have the same exuberance for things that I do. I could explore the parks from opening till closing, but Jim believes in taking things slowly and doesn’t see the need for trying to do as many rides as possible all the time.

We had about 25 minutes until it opened, so we headed over to the Country Bear Jamboree show and saw that it was only 3 minutes until the next show. I have never ever ever done this ride, even though each time I go to Disney I always mean to check it out. Jim said he used to love the show when he was a kid, so we went in and found our seat. Even though I’ve never seen this show, I have listened to the song from the show many times, so I was kind of getting into it. It was a cute show. I liked the bear that sang “all the guys that turn me on turn me down”. The guy sitting next to us was REALLY into the show, it was cute. It looked like he might cry while watching it. During the finale, they told everyone they could turn the flash on their camera for a picture. Jim was disappointed, he said the show used to be a lot longer and they kind of cut it into segments and completely got rid of the story. I had no idea there was a story. It did kind of seem like Major Magics or Chucky Cheese quality, but it was pretty cute and worth checking out if you’ve done pretty much everything else there is to do in Frontierland.

 

[Mary626]

When we got out it was five minutes until Tom Sawyer’s Island opened so we headed to the boat dock. The boat came by five minutes later and we all crowded aboard. Since we were going to be among the first people on the island, I thought we might have a good chance to find the paintbrush!!

I told Jim about Tom Sawyer’s Scavenger Hunt, I spoke a little loudly thinking that if anyone overheard me they would have the chance to participate in it as well, as it’s not the kind of thing many people know about it. I didn’t know about it until reading it on the DIS boards either. I told jim “If you find a paintbrush lying around on the island, you can turn it in to a castmember and he might give you a fastpass to a ride or something similar.” I didn’t think I’d find the paintbrush because I’m the most oblivious person in the world. I never notice the things going on around me. Jim is kind of a “trained observer” with all the jobs he’s had where he needed to focus on the details. Or maybe I’m just a ditz



We landed on the island and Jim went to use the bathroom. I looked around the area at the landing, and saw the checker board they had out and thought that was pretty cute. I took a seat in one of the rocking chairs and relaxed for a few minutes waiting for Jim. While rocking, I felt the rocking chair kind of “take over” and it started to rock without me moving it. I was stupidly like “oh cool it must be an electronic rocking chair”. And then the rocking chair stopped completely, so finally I’m thinking to myself “wait a second…” and I look behind me and sure enough there was Jim controlling the rocking chair. He had quietly snuck up behind me to do that and was doing it for like a minute, wondering how long it would be before I noticed. Hey I’m not always the sharpest crayon in the box.

We looked at the Explorer’s Map to see where things were around the island, and went off exploring. We went into Injun Joe’s Cave and saw the treasure. Those caves are pretty spooky, but not as scary as I remember them being. They are fun though!

not jim’s most flattering picture

before using the flash

after using the flash

We left the cave and I asked Jim if he wanted to head to Fort Langerhorn. He didn’t really want to. I was getting a little annoyed at him for being such a stick in the mud, so I said I was going to go anyways so he said he would go too. We went over there and walked up to where the rifles were. Jim didn’t feel like shooting the rifles at the train or anything, and well, it’s just not that fun if you’re the only one into it, so we left Fort Langerhorn. I guess the day before was my mood to be in a crabby mood, today was Jim’s turn to be like that. He wasn’t crabby, he just didn’t feel like doing anything. I think he had gotten too sunburned the day before.


Baby duckies!

There was another cave close to Fort Langerhorn

 

[Mary626]

As we were walking back, we saw one of the barrel bridges and walked on them. I was having a hard time balancing myself so was going really slowly. Jim was getting a kick out of how much trouble I was having and started to walk on the bridge making it as shakey as possible while I was on it, thanks a lot, Jim!

We saw the second barrel bridge and Jim told me to go ahead of him, I was like “heck no, you’re just going to shake it again” and sure enough I was right. Well at least he was having fun now!

jim was enjoying the barrel bridges

stop making fun of me darnit this is hard!

We had been exploring the island for about 45 minutes, so we decided to head back to the boat dock. We walked around to the white-washed fences and I stopped for a picture. I have a picture in the exact same location from when I was younger, so I wanted another one right there. Jim took my picture by the fence that had “Tom loves Becky” in white washed graffiti and then he said “look up, Mary”, I look up but didn’t see anything. Jim was like “look right there…” I still didn’t see anything.. finally Jim goes over to the fence and shows me the paintbrush… Oooo we found the paintbrush, YAY!!!!

I was excited, I had been keeping my eye out for it but didn’t think we’d find it, and there it was right by the white washed fence. We were pretty excited and looked for a cast member to show it to. We found one lady and she told us to give it to the guy on the boat. We went back to the boat docking and eagerly awaited the boat so we might see what surprise we would get. It felt kind of silly standing there holding what looked like a wet paintbrush, since I knew probably not a lot of people knew about the scavenger hunt. But then we saw another family holding another wet paintbrush and I didn’t feel as silly.

The boat came and we saw a few other paintbrushes by the controls for the boat. I wonder if someone else had already found some or how many they had out? I thought they only had three out at a time but wasn’t sure. The guy tells us to hang on to the paintbrushes until we landed. We landed and he went and got a piece of paper for Jim and for the other family. He asked how many people were in our party, the other family said four and we said two. He filled out the back, took the paintbrushes from us, and gave us our surprise!

It was a fastpass to either Big Thunder Mountain Railroad or Splash Mountain, woohoo!! Since it was around noon and getting pretty crowded and sunny, we didn’t feel like waiting in anymore long lines, but a free fast pass would work nicely! I wanted to do Splash Mountain but since Jim was the one who spooted the paintbrush I told him he could decide, and since he didn’t feel like getting wet we went on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which was right across from the boat landing pretty much anyways.

We went to the fastpass line and showed the lady our special fastpass and she let us in. I overheard another guest who was behind us ask “I’ve never seen one of those before, what was that?”. I’m not sure what the castmember told him, but I was feeling pretty good about our fast pass and was being quite smug about it! We noticed when going in the line had been about a 50 minute wait. We walked past the long, long line on our way up to the landing platform and got right on. Doing your research really pays off sometimes, yay for the DIS boards!

The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is a fun zippy little ride, I have a good time on it. It’s definitely not the biggest thrill ride and is quite tame compared to other rollercoasters, but it’s still a lot of fun. (especially when you don’t have to wait in line for it!) I try to take in all the details of the ride while going around. The “story” behind the ride is something like, this was a mining town that was flooding quickly, so the local residents decided to have a party or something as there town quickly sank. Something like that, it’s been a while. But there are a bunch of cute details to take in along the way. I always think it’s funny to watch people with their hands up most of the way quickly put there hands down while in the caves with the stalagtites.

The ride finished up and we got off and as we were walking out, there was an area with these splashing fountain things that some kids were running around into getting soaked. Jim walked right into the area, and along came a spout of water which got his t-shirt soaking wet. At first I was thinking “what the heck did he do that for, I thought he didn’t want to get wet?” but he said he wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice where he was headed Well, we could have gone on splash mountain after all!

It was after noon and the sun was bearing down on us again. We decided not to repeat yesterday’s mistakes so we thought we would head back to the hotel, take a nap, and maybe go out later that night if we felt like it.

 

[Mary626]

We were both happy with what we had done at the Magic Kingdom and we didn’t think it was likely we would return again on this trip. Jim decided he wanted another dole whip before leaving, so we took the shortcut through Adventureland. I saw the entrance to the Swiss Family Treehouse. I hadn’t done that in ages! They converted the one in Disneyland to Tarzan’s Treehouse, so you never know if they might do the same at WDW. Me and my family loved this movie when we were younger, and I wanted to see the treehouse in case they got rid of it here too. I told Jim I was going on it but told him to go get his dole whip (I knew he didn’t want to climb those treacherous spiral staircases you have to climb to explore the treehouse).

I like this treehouse, but you wouldn’t think it would be that crowded, but I’m always on it with people behind me who want to go as fast as they can through it, so I never have time to take pictures or really look closely at any of the details. This attraction is definitely not for those with weak knees or a fear of heights. I walked up the attraction and then back down.

My pics blurred because I took them as I walked and my camera sucks

The view from the “jungle lookout”. I don’t remember that in the movie

I think this overlooks the “jungle cruise” ride

I went and found Jim, who was still in line for his dole whip. I didn’t want one, I thought I might stop in the main street bakery on the way out for a small mid-day snack. Jim finished up his dole whip float and we headed to main street.

We walked by the hot dog restaurant on the corner of main street and I pointed out to Jim that it was still called “Casey’s Corner”. The one in Disneyland is called “Coca Cola’s Refreshment Stand”, yep that’s corporate America for ya! We stopped and listened to the piano player for a minute and then headed to the left side of the street for the bakery.

I got in line in the bakery and Jim went to look around at the gift shops. I got a cookie ice-cream sandwich and a bottle of water. I found Jim and we went and got some seats and I shared my cookie sandwich with Jim.

There was a mother and her little girl in the table next to us waiting for the father to come back with there food and the little girl saw my ice cream sandwich and was like “I want one of those!” and the mother was like “your father is getting you a hot dog”, and the little girl raised her voice to a high pitched level and was like “why can’t I have one of those, I want one of those!!” I felt kind of bad, I didn’t mean to cause any problems with my ice-cream sandwich the poor mother looked pretty stressed out.
We finished up eating our lunch-time snack and walked down Main Street. We went in a few of the shops here or there and looked around at the merchandise. I didn’t see anything that I couldn’t live without so I didn’t buy anything. One of the windows had a huge display of toasters. For some reason, for the last 15 years Jim has said he has been afraid of toasters. I think it’s pretty ridiculous and tend to think he convinced himself he was afraid of toasters because people always find it funny, but he still claims to have this fear, so I took a picture of it for him.

Hard to see with the glare

There was one photo frame that I had seen in the giftshop by Tony’s TownSquare that I had wanted, and I hadn’t seen it anywhere else, so we went back in there and found it. It was a frame with some of they lyrics to “A Whole New World” written on it, I thought it was a lovely frame since I walked down the aisle to that song. We also saw a Mickey and Minnie wedding photo frame and thought we would get it. I had avoided buying any mickey and Minnie wedding merchandise before the wedding thinking people might buy us some of them as gifts, since at Jenny’s wedding she got like five of every item or something. But anyway, no-one had gotten that as a gift so me and Jim bought it for ourselves.

the photo frames we bought (pictures taken later, at home, obviously)

I saw this thing called a “Goofey’s Pose-o-matic” or something so I told jim I wanted his picture in front of it. We weren’t really sure what it was supposed to do though. Jim thought you arranged the arms to the height of the person so they had mickey ears on them, but it wasn’t that flexible. We tried it anyway and I got his picture.

 

[Mary626]

It was a little after 1 pm, and we said our goodbyes to the Magic Kingdom and promised we would come back soon and left for the bus stop.

We went to our bus stop and saw about 20 or so ducks all in a row walking around. I’ve never seen so many ducks in the same place before. I said “I wonder what hotel they’re staying at”. If I were a duck, the magic kingdom would certainly be where I set up shop!

We got on our bus and we got back to our hotel around 1:20. As we were getting off the bus, a lady asked Jim where he got his shirt, and jim said “at the giftshop by the Indiana Jones Stunt Show in MGM”. She said she loved those movies and asked us how the stunt show was, Jim said we didn’t actually watch it. The girl gave us a look kind of like we were crazy what’s wrong with buying merchandising for a ride you haven’t been on? Anyway, I told her I had done it like 14 years ago, and it was good, but once was enough. We had gotten up pretty early to get to our character breakfast, so we were both in the mood for a nap.

On the way to our room

time for a nap!

We relaxed for a while and then fell asleep around 2:00 or so. I was sound asleep for about 20 minutes, but then the LOUDEST PERSON ON EARTH got back to the hotel room and kept waking us up. Both Jim and I stayed in bed trying to fall back asleep, but every time I would fall asleep his voice would just pierce through my sleep and into my skull. He sounded like Peter Griffin from the Family Guy, especially his laugh, but with more of a Boston or New York accent. I couldn’t believe how incredibly loud this person was. Neither Jim or I said anything to each other for a while, we were both trying to take a nap. After about a half an hour of unsuccessfully trying to nap, I was getting really crabby that this person kept waking me up. I asked jim if he was awake, and he said yeah and said the guy kept waking him up too. Ugh it was ridiculous. He sounded like he was RIGHT outside of our hotel room. I just could not tell what direction his voice was coming from. I went outside the hotel room again to see if I could listen for his voice. I put my head up to the door in the rooms next to us, but I couldn’t hear anything. We thought maybe it was above us, so I went to the second level and did the same thing, but I couldn’t find him. I wasn’t sure though, so I remembered the room numbers to the hotel rooms on the second floor above us.

I went back to the hotel room, and picked up the phone and dialed the numbers for the room above us. We could still him talking really loudly, so I figured I would know if the phone rang in the right room based on listening to him talk, or by who picked up the phone. If it didn’t sound like them, I was just going to say “sorry wrong number” and hang up. I called three rooms on the second level above us, and noone picked up. I called the rooms next to us to either side, and noone picked up there either. And I couldn’t hear the phone ringing in this guy’s room so I had no idea what room he was in. Oye!!! If I could just ask him to be quiet then we could go back to our nap!! I was so frustrated, he had waken us up like three times each previous day, we kept saying “he’ll probably be checking out tomorrow” or something, but there he was again! And we knew if he was there that day, Saturday, he was most likely going to be there the next day too. We were stuck with this guy!!

I tried to just shut him out, we turned the tv on, I tried just ignoring him, but his laugh and his voice just kept ringing through the air. He might as well have been in the room with us.

Okay this is where Mary goes crazy!! I was so groggy and just wanted to fall back asleep but this guy was really getting on my nerves, so I started saying, at the TOP of my lungs something like “I CAN HEAR EVERY WORD YOU ARE SAYING PLEASE BE QUIET!!! TO THE PERSON SPEAKING LOUDLY IN THE OTHER ROOM, I CAN HEAR EVERY WORD YOU ARE SAYING, PLEASE BE QUIET!!!!!” After each time, Jim would shout “YEAH!!” . The guy shut up. I couldn’t believe it, finally I might be able to sleep!! I high-five’d Jim and got back in bed.

Two minutes later I hear his annoying machine gun laugh piercing my skull again and he once again started screaming/talking at his wife punctuated occasionally by a swear word here or there, very pleasant.. AHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG it was driving me absolutely insane, I wanted to pull my hair out!! If you could HEAR this guy, you would understand!!

Finally I said to Jim “I can’t take it anymore!” and called the front desk. It was around 3 pm and it was check-in time, but I had to try to get a different room or I was going to go insane. I called the front desk, told them the situation, emphasized the fact that he was cussing a lot, and asked if we could switch rooms, to any room, I didn’t care where I said. They said they would call back in a minute.

I wait a few minutes and finally they call me back. They said they didn’t have any available rooms in our building. I told them I didn’t care what building I was in. They thought I was still with the group of wedding guests, but I explained that everyone had left but us. In that case, they said they had a room. Thank the heavens!!! They said we had to switch right at that moment though since it was check-in time and they’d have to clean our room for the next person. I wasn’t dressed and nothing was packed, but I was determined to make it work!

I threw on my jeans and a t-shirt and ran to the lobby. I went to the front desk and told them I had just called about switching rooms, they looked up my name and printed out the keycards for us. I asked the guy behind the counter, I said “do you have a lot of complaints about the noise level or was I just stuck next to the loudest person on the earth?” The guy told me they rarely had any complaints about the noise and laughed and said I guess I was just stuck next to the loudest person on earth. That was interesting, I thought the walls might have been just really thin or something, but I guess it was the guy. Which is what I figured since I knew he was in there with his family, and I never once heard his family, just him. He did not speak at a conversational level!!! I thanked the guy profusely and ran back to the hotel room.

Since we were packing to move to a different building and it wasn’t like we were going to the airport, I just threw everything in any bag I could find in any order I could do it. The problem was, though, that they had deactivated our key cards for that room, so one of us had to stay behind while the other took a few suitcases over. I said I would do it, since I’m such a sweet person, and walk faster then Jim, and am slightly a control freak, or maybe Jim was being lazy, I don’t remember! Anyway I was the one running over to where the other hotel room was and dropped off a few suitcases and ran back. We were now in the last building in the complex, which I didn’t mind, but it was taking me a while to transfer our luggage.

During one of the trips with my luggage, I was on the elevator (we were now on the second floor), This older gentleman was in the elevator with me and he smiled at me, so I smiled back, and then I see his “magical wishes pin” (I was also wearing mine), so I said “Congratulations!” and he said “you too!” and I ask him about his wedding. He said he and his wife had just gotten married at the Wedding Pavilion, I told him we had gotten married at the Italy isola, and he said “oh yeah, we had our dessert party there!” That was cool that I got a chance to run into someone else who had gotten married there (a “Disney Groom” I guess). I told him to enjoy his honeymoon and he said the same to me, and I went back to finishing up our luggage.

I went back to the room, and Jim took two suitcases while I got the last two, and we closed the door behind us. I hoped I had packed everything. I had done all that in like 10 minutes, I was proud! Jim said that housekeeping had come by and asked if we were done, I asked him if they were snotty about it or anything, and he said no, they were polite. Okay good, I really liked the Port Orleans and didn’t want to have any bad experiences while I was there to taint it.

We walked to our new building. I actually liked the new location, we had to pass by a beautiful fountain on our way there. We had a “view” of the parking lot, but since none of the moderate hotels really have a “view” since they’re on a walkway, it didn’t matter to us in the least. We were closer to the Sassagoula river in the back, which I liked. I wasn’t having the same problem with my feet hurting as I used to on previous trips, so distance to bus stop wasn’t a big deal. The Port Orleans French Quarter was so small that there really was no such thing as a bad location, in my opinion.

We got into our new room (it looked exactly the same), and I said “listen to that jim… listen… can you hear anything?? No? Me neither, isn’t that wonderful!!!!”

We had switched from Building 2 to Building 5, I think. I unpacked a little bit and made sure the important things weren’t being smushed or broken. My bouquet wasn’t doing too well, it was sad. I put it in the sink again, upside down, and hoped I’d be able to do something with it. I kept meaning to take some of the petals off and place them inside of a book to flatten and dry them, but kept forgetting. I had taken the vase of flowers with me again, still wasn’t ready to part with them yet!!

After we had gotten a little situated, we went back to bed and took a wonderful 2 hour nap. We weren’t woken a single time and it was wonderful.

 

[Mary626]

A little later after our nap, Jim had gone to the food court to refill his souvenir mug. He said as he was walking back to our building, he could hear Mr. Loudy Pants shouting somewhere as he passed by building 2. He said “I think he was in one of the rooms at the end of the building, I think he was just really really loud”. I was so thankful we had moved, thank you Port Orleans!! We didn't realize till later, I had forgotten to unplug Jim's cell phone charger from the other room. We tried calling lost and found but they said they couldn't find it, so we were out thirty bucks, but it was still completely worth it!

Jim and I talked about what we wanted to do that night. It was about 4:30 pm or so. I was really in the mood for Garden Grill all of a sudden. That was one of the few restaurants I really wanted to eat at that we hadn’t gone to. Sunday night (the next day) we had reservations at the California Grill, so I thought dinner at the garden grill sounded like fun. I had made a few reservations for the garden grill, but all on different nights when I thought I would be at epcot, ones that I ended up canceling. The only reservations I had for Saturday on my itinerary was Liberty Tree Tavern or Sci-Fi (in case we hadn’t made it there the day before).

I pressed the “DINE” button on our hotel room phone and asked if they had anything that night for the Garden Grill. The lady said it was completely booked for dinner but there were some openings for lunch the next morning. I took the reservation for lunch on Sunday but I was bummed. I hadn’t even cared that much about eating there until I found out I wouldn’t be able to, then I really wanted to eat there! While I was still on the phone, Jim asked to ask about the Rainforest Café in DownTown Disney. The lady said they don’t make advanced dining reservations over the phone at that location (only for the animal kingdom one), so we would have to go to downtown Disney early and check-in for the restaurant.


That sounded like fun, there was a ferryboat that took you from the Port Orleans hotel straight to DownTown Disney, and we thought we could do some more shopping. We weren’t in the mood to go back to any of the parks, we kind of wanted to take it easy, and the boatride and downtown Disney sounded perfect. Jim and I have a running joke about the Rainforest Café. A few years ago I wanted to go there with him at the one in Anaheim, and he said “I don’t want to eat there, they only have green stuff” or something, completely serious.. I was like “what are you talking about??” and forced him to go there with me, and now it’s one of his favorite restaurants. So every time we talk about going there we’re like “too bad they only have green stuff”

I decided to dress up kind of nice, just because I felt like it, but Jim was just going to wear jeans and a t-shirt. I asked him if he could put a polo-shirt on at least. I wanted to dress up nicely and it felt stupid if I was the only one, so he did without complaining.

We got dressed and meandered towards the boatdock while looking around the resort.

It was about 5:45 pm. We got in line for the boat and I was once again kind of confused about which boat to get on. One boat went to the Port Orleans – Riverside and the other one went to Downtown Disney. I asked jim if he was sure we were getting on the right boat and he kept telling me he was sure. As the boat starts to leave he says to me “crap, we’re on the wrong boat!” …….. “just kidding” he says. I was like “you suck!!”

 

[Mary626]

The boat ride was slow but it was a fun ride! The weather was nice and the view was pretty and there was a nice breeze. It was about a twenty minute ride, and we were there at about 6:20.

The boat dropped us off pretty much right in front of the Rainforest Café, so we went to put our names down. They said the wait was about 80 minutes. They asked for a name, so I gave them Jim’s name, but she put us down as “Kim C.” She said to just come back by the podium about 20 minutes before the time on our receipt thing and to listen for our name.

I said to Jim “why don’t we go on the little water sprites at the marina!” and he was like “I’ll bet there’s a long wait for it”.. well it didn’t hurt to ask to find out so I got in line. Jim said he didn’t really feel like getting wet, I was like “You won’t get that wet, it will be fun!” I really wanted to go on them! Then Jim was like “I don’t know if we’ll make it back to the rainforest café in time..” finally I’m like “Jim if you don’t want to go on them just say you don’t want to go on them instead of dragging your feet about it!” so he said he didn’t want to go on them so I got out of line. Oye! I really wanted to go on the watersprites, they are so much fun! You just zip around the water in them and it’s a lot of fun!


Well since we didn’t do the water sprites, we went shopping. We went into a “pet store” where they sold a bunch of adorable themed merchandise for your cat or dog. Everything was just too precious, but definitely expensive!! We thought about getting my husky, wampa, something, but almost everything was at that price where it was like “do we really want I tthat badly?” We did get him some rubber rings that were Mickey shaped. We looked around for something to buy for the lady who had watched wampa while everyone was gone. Sue had said she walked wampa twice a day, which is more then I do, so we wanted to get her a little something. I saw a shirt that said something like “Disney Tails” with a bunch of Disney cats on it. It was almost perfect, if it had had dogs instead of cats it would have been great! But they didn’t really have anything else that I thought she might like, so we got her that.

wampa at home with his new toy. Sad to say he never really plays with it, he’d much rather chew the furniture or something. My dog can look very effeminate at times.

I forgot to show them my annual pass, at DownTown Disney you can get 10% off merchandising with your annual pass. Oh well, that would have been like 2 dollars, but still, I would have to remember next time!

We looked around Pooh’s Corner and I picked out some post cards. I hadn’t sent any post-cards at all this trip! I was going to buy them but the line was pretty long so I put them back and figured I could get them somewhere else.

They had an adult sized Stitch Costume! Too bad it’s the alien form of stitch and not the smurfy outfit though! I don’t know why my camera blurred in all of these pictures

jim & tigger

We went over to the World of Disney mega-store. We saw Stitch spitting water on passerbys again and stopped to watch the children trying to get soaked by Stitch’s saliva

Jim went over to the pirate. Not sure what they were talking about but it looked like a heated debate. Don’t taunt the pirate, Jim.

they made up and are now the best of friends and correspond with each other weekly

Some of the pirate’s cronies. The store was pirate themed and had pirate music and pirate merchandise, and the skeletons would rattle the cage when you walked by them, like in a haunted house or something.

We looked around the store more. The only thing I bought was some chocolate covered pretzels to take home. I wanted Jim to buy a new Mickey polo shirt. He has superman and batman polo shirts, I figure he should have a mickey polo shirt too! I didn’t take a picture of it but he wore it the next day so it will be in those pictures.

chocolate pretzels I bought (pics taken at home)

 

[Mary626]

It was 20 minutes before our return time, so we headed back to the Rainforest Cafe

We sat around and waited to be called. It was hard trying to remember to listen for “Kim C” instead of “Jim C.” and we kept thinking our name was called when it was really someone else. Jim saw some people walk out of the gift shop wearing a “rainforest café” t-shirt and quietly asked me something like “why would someone buy a rainforest café t-shirt?” and I was like “I OWN a rainforest café t-shirt, what’s wrong with that?”. He was like “well I could understand it if you don’t have the restaurant near where you live or something, but there in like every city now”... I was like “So are the hard rock restaurants and you see people wear those t-shirts all the time too.” He saw my point. And then I added “and they only sell green stuff here too. And the guy who wears nothing but shirts with superhero characters on them shouldn’t be judging other people’s fashion”

The alligator behind where we were sitting here was far less scary then the one in the animal kingdom

We finally heard them call our name along with about 10 other names too. We all went up to the elephant podium to check in and they put us in another line near the entrance where we waited another 20 minutes. I don’t know what order they were calling people in, because Jim and I were the last ones seated out of that group called, and we were only 2 people. We were staring at an empty table that sat two and we were like “why don’t they just put us there?” We were patient for the most part, but right as I started to complain to jim about how ridiculous the wait was when there was an empty table right there, the greeter called our name, and sure enough she took us to the empty table we had been staring at for more then 20 minutes.


I decided to order an alcoholic drink, I hadn’t had anything with alcohol in it in over a year either, not that it was that common even before that. I forget the name of it, but it had bananas and chocolate in it and was pretty good

we ordered mozerella sticks as an appetizer – yummy!

Jim ordered the appetizer sampler as his entrée

I ordered the “Brave New World” pizza, I think it had barbeque chicken on it, it was pretty good

We enjoyed the atmosphere of this restaurant as usual. We noticed a bunch of teenagers dressed up for what looked like the prom. Aww how sweet. I asked if they had any discounts for the DDE or for the annual pass, and they said they had a discount for WDW annual passes, it was 10% off the most expensive entrée. Since Jim didn’t order an entrée, our discount on the total bill came to a whopping one dollar! Once during the meal Jim tried to bring up reality and us going back home on Monday (he still thought we were going back on Monday) and I would tell him not to talk about it, “we have one more day in WDW and I don’t want to think about reality until tomorrow night when I have to pack, let’s just enjoy the moment.” I was so thankful we weren’t going home on Monday or I really would have started to get a little bummed out.


We finished up our meal and we were both completely stuffed. Goofy's Candy Shop was right next to the Rainforest cafe, and we had discussed going in to make another candy creation to eat another day or to take home.. We went into the store, got two feet in, smelled the sugar in the air, and we both turned around and left without even a word to each other. There was no way we could even think about food at that moment, we were so stuffed!!

We went to the boatdock. We could see fireworks somewhere while we waited, probably epcot.

We took our enjoyable little boat ride back to the hotel and went to our room. We had forgotten to take off the “don’t disturb” sign on our door, so there was a bag hanging from our door handle with a bunch of clean towels and new soaps and shampoos. That was nice of them!


We went to bed early and we were going to wake up early. Tomorrow was our LAST day in Walt Disney World and we wanted to make it count!

 

[Hedy]

I just wanted to say that I love your trip report, and how frank yet appreciative you are about everything.
Also, I loved your Boma story.

 

[Mary626]

I just wanted to say that I love your trip report, and how frank yet appreciative you are about everything.
Also, I loved your Boma story.

Thank you, Hedy Glad you are enjoying the trip report! Sometimes I worry that I am being TOO honest about everything in this report, it's kind of like writing in an online journal, I guess. Thanks for reading!




Is it just me, or was I completely rambling in Saturday's entry? Wow there were a lot of run-on sentences! That's the last time I write the trip report while on an airplane!

 

[heatherlynn444]

yay! i was so excited just now when i saw there was a "new installment" to the report! I am going to be so sad when it is over! you will have to go back soon so I will have some reading material!

 

[wasabi girl]

Thanks for the pics of Tom Sawyers Island. I've never done that, for some reason I assumed it was for really little kids...in Sept I'm going with DDs (21, 18) and friend (23)...we'll definitely be looking for the paintbrush!

 

[Snoopygirl]

Still loving your TR!!!

I really enjoyed your review of Crystal Palace. We have ADR's for 1900 Park Fare for breakfast and now I am wondering if I should change them. My DH says not to. He says we'll go to Disney again and then we can try the Crystal Palace.....yeah!!!

You looked so good in all your pics! Hope you both are enjoying Marriage. Congratulations!!!!

 

[notnothin]

Loving the trip report! I didn't realize that it was 'sanctioned', so to speak, to wear the bride and groom ears prior to the wedding. I guess we'll have to give that a shot!

 

[RadioFanatic]

another great installment - you made me laugh out loud about what you yelled at the loud guy - I would have done the exact same thing!

 

[jackdis]

Mary,

Another great report! What will we do when it's over??? I totally know what you mean about not wanting to think about your trip being almost over. I always feel that way when we are away...wherever we go! I have to tell you, you are soooo photogenic!!

I also totally know what you mean about the syrup. I'm a "syrup separate" person too! I've got a picture of me looking pretty intense on the Buzz Lightyear ride from last year. To top it off, I'm about 7 months pregnant in the picture. Very scary!!

We're very impressed you found the paintbrush!!!

I'm planning to spend more time at DTD this trip. YOur pictures and report definitely make me want to even more so!!!