TURNED 30 AT THE WORLD!!Our 10 night/11 day trip w/ lots of Pics!*COMPLETE 8/11**

[Tanya90210]

Just FYI before I get started... the beginning of thes part is sort of repeating the previous part of the report to add some more detail.

First of all let me apologize to anyone who was hoping I would be fast at getting this done. I have been hoping to get it done for a long time and just let it fall by the wayside with all of the family stuff we have been doing… man the older the baby gets the less time I had… then he got to 1 and my time freed up a little bit again as he’s very independent and doesn’t want me hovering all the time. I do … but he doesn’t like it. LOL. I am hoping I will be able to do at least one installment a week until I have completed this trip report. Remember... that’s I am hoping… you never know what will happen with 3 children running around the house. Plus I am in planning mode for our next trip so I will be trying to do a pretrip for that too… sheesh I will be doing a lot of typing. I would however like to be done with this one before we embark on our 2007 trip in the middle of August.

So here goes….

After a pretty uneventful evening and a 3 hour nap at a rest stop about 2 hours from the “world” I get out of our minivan and go in to the restroom and change in what I will be wearing 1st day at WDW. No idea at this point what that was but I had it planned out for months in advance… because yes... I am on obsessive planner… can’t help it, I just am. I manage to use the sink to wash my hair as I don’t want to go in to my favorite place dirty and stinky. I go thru my typical getting ready routine … shower, sort of, change clothes, teeth, hair, deodorant... a must, no make-up... it’s august… what’s the point. It’s nearing 630 so I decide it’s time to get DD up and do the same w/ her, I wake her and tell her we need to change to go see Mickey and Cinderella so she wastes no time waking up. I unbuckle her from her car seat and we go to the back of the van for her wardrobe... yes... I planned hers too. I take her into the bathroom and we get her all dressed up in her Disney finest… thin spaghetti Cinderella dress… it is august remember… too hot for my princess to get too fancy. I fix her hair in cute little piggy tails and get her shoes on and make sure she is perfect and we go back to the van to wake the boys. DS 11 1st and he goes off to the bathroom and in true boy fashion is back in the van within 5 minutes changed and ready to go. I wake DS 6mo to do the diaper/clothing changes and tell DH we are heading out. He says ok and continues to sleep… he feels no need to change at this point… nor will he till we get into the hotel room.

The drive from that rest station to WDW was uneventful however it was the longest 2 hours of the whole drive and it seemed like every mile took FOREVER. I am sure anyone who drives, or for that matter flies, knows exactly what I mean when it comes to arriving at Disney. We finally get about 10 minutes away and I get my DS to wake up his father so we can all be awake to go under the arch… no such luck… he said I’m looking… then fell asleep less than a minute later… oh well

so I navigated myself to Pop Century and managed to get that sleepy head up so we could see it together since it is our first time at Pop. The pictures were so perfect that we had seen before our trip. We got to the parking lot and DH got out of the back of the van and did his “getting ready” routine rather quickly. We then changed the babies again and headed in to do early check in so we can go to the parks while we wait for our room.

We get to the check in desk and there are a few people in line so my DH and the children go over to the waiting area and watch some TV while I go thru the check in. I get up there and have the choice of 90’s bottom floor that is ready or “fireworks” view that isn’t ready yet. Because of what I had read here on DIS I decided to wait for the “view” since we were going straight to the parks anyways…. I will tell you now what a bad mistake that was… not only was the room not ready till after 3pm (computers went down) but we were put on the side of the building where you couldn’t even see any fireworks and not only that but we would not once be at the hotel when the fireworks were going off anyways. We get our keys to the world and the typical packet and scpeal about how the dining plan and KTTW work and head out to the bus stop so we can take our first bus ride over to the Magic Kingdom for our official return “home”.

The bus arrives at Magic Kingdom, WE ARE HERE!!!! Unfortunately the bus stop for pop is the LAST stop and the furthest from the entrance. We take our time and make our way over to the “security check” I send DH w/ all the children thru the “no bags” area and I go thru the other entrance with the 2 bags we had. Once thru he takes DS while I push the 2 little ones thru the “stroller gate” which I must say was barely big enough to push a double stroller through. I feel really sorry for anyone who has one larger than the one we had as I thought it was pretty small… Once through the turnstiles we did like most families do and got our “entrance photo there in front of the train station” and made our way through the locker area and onto main street. I don’t know if I could stand it daily but when I am there only once a year I just love the trolley song you hear on Main Street as you are walking and they are doing their song and dance. This day… I wanted to sing with them heck if I knew the dance I would have wanted to dance with them to … but hey… we had to get our hineys to Fantasyland and ride Dumbo as promised. We took some more pictures in front of castle and had our Photopass pictures done too and headed though the castle and into Fantasyland….

Ahhh… we are now thru the castle and there it is... my favorite sight… The Cinderella fountain, I don’t know about most people but I would love to have one just like it in my home if I ever win the lotto or strike it rich. I take my usual picture of it and we move on out. It’s Dumbo time. DS 6mo is sleeping so he and I stay behind to take pictures while DH, DD and Dopey head on over to the line and manage to get on the 2nd time around. DD just loved her “first” ride at Disney… at least for this year. I took a few pictures but couldn’t get a great shot as my little princess wasn’t quite big enough at the time to be seen by a camera while in the air.

We took the short stroll over to ride Snow White but the line was too long so we decided to put it off till later. Much to our luck Peter Pan seemed pretty slow so we decided since the baby had woken up we’d all ride it together. The boys and I rode together and DH rode in the next “ship” with his little princess. Both of the little ones just loved it on there and Dopey seemed to be having a blast too. Next up would be Pooh which if we hadn’t have been holding DD’s had she would have run onto as she just loves Tigger and couldn’t wait to see him on the ride. This time we switched and I had the the baby and DH with me and in the front of the car Dopey rode w/ DD.

We all had a blast singing along and watching all the scenes. I tried to point out to DH and Dopey the few hidden Mickey’s I remembered from my DIS education. I swear every time we ride Pooh it seems as if it is different. We know it’s not… but it seems like it.

Hunger sets in

We head off to Pecos Bills as I hear they give you a ton of food and we are all starving. We walk in and there is nobody besides workers in there. We must have walked in just as they opened, Lucky for us ;-) I’ll go into detail on my restaurant review and post them once they are done as a link in my signature. The service was fast and it sure was fun using our DDP for the first time and boy oh boy was it a great lead in to what was to come. The food there was wonderful and filling. We used 2 credits and shared as I was afraid we would have 2 much w/ 3 and we barely were able to finish what we had so good thing we didn’t waste a credit on food that might get thrown away. The areas at Pecos bills are kind of dark but very relaxing and the air conditioning was a nice relief from being outside.

Time for the Frontierland Big 2… We FP SM and the boys head off to ride BTMRR which takes only about 20 minutes from the time they walk away from us till they return. We have about 20 more minutes till our Fastpass time for SM so we decide it’s time to go see JACK SPARROW!!! We had all been anticipating this for a while now and were so excited it was finally time. As we entered we were shocked we only had to wait about 10 minutes to ride POTC which we figured due to the additions it would be longer but hey… works for us!! We had a great time on POTC and captured some great “non flash” pictures. That Jack Sparrow is so realistic looking it’s scary!! (That’s scary good not scary bad)

Backtracking my thoughts for you for just a sec…….. After lunch we were starting to get tired so I started calling Pop Century to see if our room was ready yet. Call after call and they say no it isn’t…

So there we are, no hotel room yet and starting to get tired…. DH and Dopey head off to use their fastpasses for Splash, while advising them to remember to get me a child swap ticket, which they failed to do… While they were on Splash I hung out with the little ones in the shops between POTC and Splash. We saw some really cool stuff to buy but I was able to resist buying anything just yet because as a person, who likes to love by the budget as best as possible I knew not to impulse buy, narrowly escaping buying DD a really cute Mickey I decided to wait outside for the boys. When they came back and I found out I’d have to go alone I decided to spread some pixie dust and handed my FP to someone I saw walking by heading towards Splash. We decided enough’s enough and we were getting tired… room still wasn’t ready so we’d make our way to the Highway 192 Wal-Mart and pick up supplies (water, diapers, formula) and then go back to hotel and hopefully everything would be ready. We made our rounds since … thankfully… all Super Wal-Mart stores have the exact same floor plan… got what we needed and looked for some misting fans (with no luck) and headed back to Pop so we could get to our room and rest for a bit.

I kept calling while we were doing all of this and still not ready… so when we get to the hotel I go in and am now told “Our computers are down” so they have no way of telling me where my room is… it should be ready we just don’t know which one. We wait till about 3:15 in the lobby TV area until they finally tell me that it is ready and we go straight to the room.

As we arrive to the room we notice a few good things and one bad thing… We were in 50’s non poolside which was great as it would be quieter. We got the side building we hoped for… but we didn’t get the “fireworks view” I was told by the CM that morning we would get. Oh well… it wouldn’t end up mattering anyways… So we go into the room and sit down to relax… DH decided to lay down but the rest of us were “too excited to sleep” so we decided to watch TV I turn on the TV and pop… pop… pop… snap… pop… Silly thing was about to explode I thought so I called maintenance to let them know what was going on since we’d be there for a few hours anyways. DH decided after about an hour to go unpack the car and maintenance wasn’t really quiet so he couldn’t sleep anyways. While all of this is going on we notice that the air hasn’t come on and the room isn’t cooling down . Since we had maintenance there already they looked at it and said they’d have it fixed before we got back from dinner. Ok… whatever it’s almost time to leave anyways…

Up Next…. Chef Mickey’s here we come!!! (link will be inserted once)

I will also be adding pictures this afternoon to this post so if you see this and there's no pics check back. I may also be editing names as it's a pain to do DD, DH, DS6mo and DS 11...

 

[Tanya90210]

pictures added... sort of... dno't know how much longer until I can have more than just link of them

 

[Tanya90210]

Day 1.... Part 2


We leave the hotel and take Disney transportation to get to Chef Mickey’s…. We left w/ about 45 minutes to get there and ended up being about 25 minutes late…

The trip itself on the bus and monorail was pretty uneventful… except for the fact that the bus stop for Pop is the LAST one so we had quite a trek to get to the monorail platform which DH didn’t really like too much, more to come on that one..

After checking in we were ushered , as everyone is, to do the picture (in front of the plate) and then given our buzzer and told we could wait “over there”. No sooner than we get “there” and sit down does the buzzer go off… YIPEE!!!

Our first venture in to the world of table service dining at Disney. Ya see this is our aside from Pecos bills that morning which we shared this would be our “first” ever full meal at Disney… we haven’t done more than get fries or a snack before … even when I was a kid the closest I got was my parents getting 3 meals at a burger type place (can’t remember which one but I seem to believe we were in epcot) and having all of us … Them, myself and my other 4 siblings… so we all got ½ a sandwich and ½ a fry.

So this is it… is it really as good as my new DIS friends have been saying it is???

We are seated in the area over by the windows, the part that’s a little higher than the buffet area. In the center section near a wall that separates ½ of that area from the other and right on the aisle which was great for see who was coming and when so we could be sure we didn’t miss anyone.

Our server came over and let us know we had about 5 minutes before they came by so either we could wait or go get food… Being afraid that we would miss them we decided to wait… exactly 5 minutes and here they were!!! We have the suprimo luck of getting the mouse himself first. I could have sworn DD was going to jump out of her high chair when she saw him…. The smile on her face says it all

We then had time to go get some food before anyone else came around… DH sent me first since I had to get the babies food done too… I got a bit of everything for myself… just a tad so I could try it all out… Then I put what I knew DD would eat … if she decided to in all the excitement… and headed back to the table. Made a bottle for the baby using the water I had asked our server for and the boys headed off to get their bounty.

DH came back with a heaping plate… and I mean heaping… of food and DS came back with ½ a plate of snacks and a few items of real food…

Next we got to see his old pal Goofy… who was just hilarious! Then came the woman of the hour and my DD favorite … they share a name ya know… DD nickname is Minnie and again she was just smitten.. DS even cracked a smile at it..

We then got our visit from Dale … who was followed just a bit by Chip.. both who cracked the kids up completely…

We then went back for the “snack” round of our meal and when we returned we were joined again by the mouse again and DD was just as excited as the first meeting… somehow we managed to see them all twice before dessert was over … all in all it turned out to be a great first meal and became a family favorite…not that we had a basis of comparison but still… it was awesome!

Favorites were:
DH- Loved the mini cheesecakes and the Jamaican pork
Me- Jamaican pork was awesome… liked the mashed taters ok
DS – Loved the desserts
DD- Loved all of it… but refused to eat the Mickey dome dessert because it looked like Mickey and she didn’t want to be eating his likeness
Baby- loved his baba and when the characters played with him

After dinner we lugged our stuffed selves on the monorail back to the MK and went on in for some fun…

We headed over to Tomorrowland and realized the Space Mountain line was just too long so we went over to the smoking section for a break and to watch DD follow the ducks and to decide what to do next…

After the break we walked over towards fantasyland and DD saw her favorite “teacups” so the boys took her on it while the baby and I hung out, watched them and I made a phone call home to check on the pets… all ok on that front.

After they got off the ride we decided we were exhausted so we walked back to the entrance and got in the line for the bus … I think we waited about 15 minutes.. when it did arrive we enjoyed a quiet trip back to Pop which seemed way quicker than the trip there earlier that evening.

After we got back to the room DH took the older 2 down to the pool for a bit… but since it was already 9pm I put the baby to bed and watched … shudder… Stacy… for a little bit… then turned on the news because I just couldn’t stand it anymore…

I set the wake up call and the alarm….

Next thing I knew it was morning….


UP NEXT DAY 2…. Off to Epcot!!

 

[kaysmommie]

Enjoyed your first installment, better late than never. I didn't even bother doing a trip report on our Spetember 2006 stay because DS2 takes up so much time. Your DD is so cute! Are you staying at Pop again this year or trying something new?

 

[Tanya90210]

Enjoyed your first installment, better late than never. I didn't even bother doing a trip report on our Spetember 2006 stay because DS2 takes up so much time. Your DD is so cute! Are you staying at Pop again this year or trying something new?

We are doing Pop again.... thanks... DD sure is a cute... if I do say so myself I am going to work diligently this weekend to do as much of the trip report as I can so that I can start posting an installment every few days... since I don't want to start my pretrip for the upcoming trip until this one is done.... at least i only have 9 trip days to go lol...

Tanya

 

[Tanya90210]

Day 2 Part 1

*side note before I get started… I have decided as of this chapter just to start using the children’s nicknames (or in DS case his real name since I don’t like the nicknames most of my family give him and there isn’t a good way to shorten his name) as it’s a pain to call my lil ones DD, DS, and baby… I will still call my husband DH since he and our son share the same name it might get confusing. … so from here I will refer to DS as Forest… DD as Mini… and baby as Ry(short for Riley)*



Before I had gone to bed I set the wake up call AND the alarm… yet neither one woke me fully until I lay there for about 5 minutes and remembered where the heck I was… HELLO!! You are at Disney!!! Get your hiney out of bed and get busy!!

As soon as I realized that I got out of bed and prepared my stuff for after I got out of shower and Mini stuff too since I planned on waking her and getting her ready while I got ready. I also got clothes out for Ry to make it easier on myself when I did wake him. I would have gotten DH and Forests’ stuff ready too but they don’t like me picking out their clothes for them… they are too grown up for that ya know!

We went thru our getting ready routine and when Mini and I were almost done I woke Forest up so he could take a quick shower and get ready. Then last but not least… and wisely so since he is cranky if you wake him up and aren’t ready before he’s done… DH so that he could get ready for the day and do his routine of getting ready which would give me just enough time to get Ry ready and finish up mine and Mini’s stuff.

We took a quit ride on the bus over to Epcot and notice once again that the stop is .. as I had been warned… the very last one. DH takes the children thru the “no bags” spot as I wait in line for the bag to be checked. We then proceed though the turnstiles without any problems. Do the must do… picture of the Epcot ball … and then head on over to FW.

We notice it’s approx 9:30 so we have enough time for the guys to do 1 ride and grab a set of FP before our ADR at the Akerhaus so that DD could see her “friends”. You see my little Mini honestly believes that all of the princesses are her honest to goodness BFF’s. Which they don’t mind letting her keep that feeling when she is in their presence.

Anyways, back to the riding… the guys decide it will be Mission Space that they will do for their first Epcot ride while I take the babies over to the land and score us some FP for soarin' for after breakfast….

One problem… and those of you who have been know what it is…. No strollers in the land!!! I had 2 babies…. 1 who I should be able to get to walk along side me and the other I would have to carry … that I had do lug all the way downstairs where Soarin’ is and grab the FP.

Now I had never done Soarin’ before and had never even gone inside “the land” so had no idea where in The Land it was going to be. I asked the first CM I saw and they kindly showed me where to go. For those who are just going on their first trip … it’s on the bottom floor….opposite corner as the one that you came in on when you went into the land… The down escalator was “off” at that time so I had to slowly guide Mini down with me so it caused some people to decide on the stairs instead. After we made it down I surveyed the food court in there as we may want to try it later….. got our FP and got the heck out of dodge.

Once outside I got the lil ones loaded back up in the stroller and we made our way back across FW to meet the boys at the Mission Space dump shop. The still weren’t out… which I would have figured they would have been so Mini and I started her kidcot necklace. For those who don’t know FW does necklaces rather than masks.

Once the boys finally appeared … which to be honest was only about 5 minutes later…. She showed her daddy what she had and he oogled it… like any good daddy does… and we put it away so we could get on over to breakfast…

Up next.... Princess time!!!

 

[Tanya90210]

Day 2 Part 2

We arrive at the Akerhaus… pronounced ockerhoos (in case you didn’t already know… I didn’t until doing trip planning for this trip)… for our princess breakfast… Mini was getting really excited as she was about to see all her “friends”.

We waited outside as directed until our name was called… which was all of about 10 minutes at most and were called in to see belle… by this time I had been sweating up a storm… so the picture turned out bad with me all sweaty… Mini with her hair about as she gets hot quick like me… We were then taken to our table..

Much to our luck we were seated in the back in that area that is round… for the life of me I can’t remember what it’s called in a castle… We are the only ones currently sitting in the area so we are happy to have a few minutes just the 5 of us. Forest sits by DH and I sit between the babies… as usual.

Our server… who was really wonderful but I can’t remember her name.. comes over and gets our drink order and tells us how it all works… being a pre-plated meal and all… good thing she did… we may have gotten up to look for the food lol. After just a few short minutes she brings our OJ’s and DH’s coffee over and within moments after our large platter of food is brought in…

Wouldn’t ya know once we get the plate of food our first princess comes by…. Mulan…. She is so pretty .. after we have a few moments to get our plate together and have a few bites we are joined by the ever beautiful Aurora…. Mini takes an instant liking to her

Next up we get to see Snow White… I don’t know how she talks like that all the time… but it’s sooo cute!!!

Then its time for Forest to get some attention… Jasmine joins us… We do the picture with Mini and she then insists on taking a picture with Forest too… a 11 year old boy who is not into princesses and their hotness yet mind you…. He agrees because he’s a nice boy and she has him pose with her and stand the way Aladdin would….

After that we finish our plates and were lucky enough to see all Aurora and Snow White 1 more time before we left… apparently Mulan got called off to fight the hun and the other princesses went on without her..

After breakfast we headed out and made our way back to Future World so we could go ride Test Track!!! DH had done it last year when he was supposed to be just doing Mission Space … so Forest and I were quite eager to try it for the first time…

The boys went up and did the single rider line so it would be quicker while the babies and I headed into the dump shop… did our Kidcot stop and checked out all the cool cars they have in there… we were excited because there was a really cool HHR in there and my mom is obscessed with them ever since she bought hers.

After about a 15 minute wait we are rejoined by the boys so DH takes the reigns with the babies so Forest and I can go… he on his 2nd trip and me on my 1st.

Boy oh boy is that ride fun!! We were in and out and on our way to the Character Connection in less than 10 minutes… and with an Adrenaline rush ta boot… 60MPH sure does seem faster when you are banking at that angle…

DH and Forest head off to use their soarin FP and get a child swap so I can go with Forest when they get back. The babies and I go on in to the Character connection for our one on one time with Mickey and the gang…

First up.. The man himself… he played with Mini a bit and oogled Ry for a short moment and we got a few really good pics and went on to the next stop…

His best buddy Pluto… Pluto is sooo silly… we always have a good time with him!

Then on to Minnie… She had a great time flirting with little Ry. Mini was just in heaven with her pal of the same name but different spelling…

Then we got to our family favorites…. Chip n Dale…. It was wonderful how they did it too… each one of them went to one of the babies so I had to quick snap back and forth…

Here are 2 of my favorites
Mini

Ry

When we were done with the guys DH and Forest were waiting right there waiting for us…. With bad news…

Soarin was closed they tell me…. Gosh darn it… I have been wanting to do it forever!!! Oh well… maybe tonight…

We then go as a family to see Goofy and then head back to the hotel…


UP NEXT… Will the snap crackle popping ever end???

 

[Tanya90210]

Day 2 Part 3

We head back to the hotel from Epcot … on the bus… which DH hates.. and he decides NO MORE! He will be driving us everywhere from now on… he’s sick of the busses… whatever dear…

We get back to the hotel and make our way back to the room… after our normal walk thru of the Pop shop and a quick refill in our reusable mug.

Once we got back to the room DH said he would be taking the older 2 children to the pool while I hung out in the room with the baby so he could take a nap and I could wait for the maintenance folks to get here so they could do something about the SNAP! … crackle… POP! TV we had…

After much waiting for the TV folks and a few hour nap for Ry and a refreshing swim for the rest of the family everyone was ready and we headed back to Epcot for our evening fun.

We arrived at approx 5pm and we went straight off to The Land so DS and I could ride Soarin! Since we had FP we had no wait at all to get onto the ride… we did get stuck in the back row so I had feet in front of me…. Other than that the ride was FANTASTIC!!! Boy oh boy I can’t wait till Mini is big enough to ride.. which I think she is now so she will be able to go this year… Ry will love it too… but we have quite a while before he’ll be big enough.

Once our perfect ride was over we went back to meet up w/ DH and the babies… they were over in the smoking area outside of the land… a really cute little nook that became our favorite area to relax…

Mini had came up with a little game she decided to call “leaf water” where she would take a leaf off the bench and put it in the water… over and over again... she was having a blast and it was keeping her and Ry entertained so who was I to argue… and the CM nearby wasn’t telling me to make them stop which I would have as I would never want to be banished from the best place in the world … I left her alone to make her brother giggle while we waited for Daddy and "boy" (as she calls Forest) to come back.

Picture from another day in the trip as this was her favorite thing to do while waiting for smoke breaks to end if we happened to be in FW at epcot..
See her in the background collecting her leaves..

DH and DS were off to do their ride… which DH said was really cool… didn’t report much other than that he wanted to do it again.

Of to find dinner… DH wanted to try the CS in Morocco… now considering we aren’t adventurous eaters I had tried to dissuade him but to no avail…

We rode the boat over …. Which is one of my favorite things to do… I love seeing the countries from the water where you are surrounded by them all… it’s really beautiful.

We took some pictures on day 9 that I will share when I get to that day in this report...

We stepped off the boat and made a short walk over to the Tangerine Café in Morocco and as soon as DH took 1 look at the menu … which I had tried to show him online previous… he said… I don’t want to eat here … let’s go somewhere else.. We then worked our way counterclockwise from there…

Finally deciding china would be the way to go… hey … we love Chinese food… we couldn’t lose there… and Nine Dragons turned out to be really good… I would defiantly try it again if there wasn’t somewhere else we wanted to try… Food was great.. service fast… We sat outside the restaurant at one of the tables and relaxed…

That was… until we heard the announcement that Illuminations was about to start…

We packed up the little ones and headed off to find a good spot… which seemed to take forever…

After finding a pretty good spot near the Outpost we settled the children in and waited about 15 minutes or so to see Illuminations… I love that show.. It’s not wishes… but it is still really awesome!!

After we made our way thru the exits… which as most know it can take a while after Illuminations… even if you slowly go and check out shops on your way… we go to the car and drove back over to Pop… no staying up late tonight… we have an early ADR tomorrow!!!


UP NEXT…. We have a date with an alien and his Hawaiian best friend…

 

[Tanya90210]

Day 3 Part 1

Ring… ring… ring…. I answer on speakerphone so the whole family can her Mickey and Stitch… unfortunately… waste of time… the boys slept thru it.

As I have done the other days and will be doing every day I wake up Mini and we get ready while we let the boys get a few more moments of sleep. As soon as we are out of the shower and decent we wake up Forest so that he can take a quick shower. Get Ry ready… wake up a cranky DH and we are out of the room by 6:45 for our 7:50 ADR at Ohana’s. Cutting it close but we should be fine…

We take a quiet bus over to Magic Kingdom (somehow talked DH into the bus) and then took the Monorail over to the Polynesian along with quite a few others.

DH waits with the children while I check everyone in, which I must say all week was pretty easy and painless… They hand me the buzzer and we wait for only about 5 minutes and our “cousin” takes us to our table… which happened to be just around the corner from the entrance, I could have done without and would have loved something a little further in but it was still wonderful and allowed us to people watch while we ate.

The breakfast food was WONDERFUL!!! We loved it sooo much that we decided it’d be a must for us from now on. **side note: we plan on giving dinner a try this year too**

Once we had started eating we got our first visit… the lovely Lilo, she was really fun with the kids and signed the autograph book for Forest, our designated autograph book holder… his choice.

Then came our old pal… and many peoples not so favorite… Stitch. He was wonderful!! He had a blast with Ry, stealing his bottle and pretending to drink it… which made the other 2 crack up.

Just after Stitch left the children were called up to do the parade around the restaurant. Forest took Mini and they had fun following Lilo around Ohana’s

Next up was cute little Pluto who had just as much fun with Ry… the characters sure do like baby bottles!!

Oh look Mini!! Here comes Mickey Mouse!! She got sooo excited to see him... Then when he gets there she keeps telling him “your dog!” “he’s over there” and pointing to where Pluto is… as if to order Mickey to get his dog… it was really cute…. Mickey just shook his head and pointed to Pluto.

Coming up… Be creative... or else!!

 

[Tanya90210]

Just wondering if anyone reading this...

Not that it matters really... since I am mostly doing this for the kids so they can read it when they are old enough to... and sharing it with Forest so he can read it now...

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Hey there, just found your report tonight while at work. Great so far. You are lucky that you got to take such a long trip. Can't wait to hear more about your trip!

 

[Tanya90210]

Hey there, just found your report tonight while at work. Great so far. You are lucky that you got to take such a long trip. Can't wait to hear more about your trip!

It's the 1 main thing I budget for all year to be able to do w/ the lil ones... More to come today.... trying to get this done by the time I hit the 60 day mark for our upcoming trip... have about 40-50 days till then so must get busy lol


Tanya

 

[AGPrincess]

Great report so far! I love all your pics -- your kids are cuties! And the journal you made for your DS sounds so fun.

Can't wait for more!

 

[jll45]

Love your report! Pretty funny that you mention your 60 day mark because that is where I'm at today! I saw that you said you were going in August. We had stayed at Pop for our last 3 trips and loved it. Now that my DS is 3 I can't stay there anymore unless I get 2 rooms Can't wait to read more!

 

[Tanya90210]

Day 3 Part 2

***sidenote: editing the title on this and previous post realized not my first ToT experience… will explain when I get to that part***
WARNING!! This one quite a bit longer than my others....


Ok... where was I … ahh yes… we just got done eating with our old pal Stitch…

After leaving the Ohana’s we boarded the monorail and took it over to the TTC to catch a bus for MGM… having never done this before it was kind of weird but wasn’t a problem… one of the quietest busses we had so far…

We arrived at MGM at about 10am.. or so my notes say… and immediately went in and got our FP for Rock n’ Rollercoaster… my all time favorite rollercoaster.. DH likes Screamin’ at California Adventure better.. but still loves RnR. Tower of Terror said 30 minute wait so we decided to pass on that for now…. Plus we had promised Mini we’d go see her “Ariel”.

We were able to see the very next show.. 10:30 which was as wonderful as always… I have seen it every time I have ever been to Disney… It’s the only thing I remember of MGM, other than the main street of MGM, from our trip when I was 16… the trip where we did all 3 parks (AK not around yet) in 1 day…

After we exited and made our way thru the dump shop we ran across to catch the next show of Playhouse Disney… which just so happened to be just letting people in… SCORE!!! We were all seated about ¾ of the way back when Ry decided he was hungry and a little cranky… I found an open bench and took him back there to feed him… thank goodness we brought a bottle in with us.. since they don’t allow strollers.

DD was just adorable dancing to her favorites… She just loved seeing them she even had her daddy grooving along with her… she does that.. he’s putty in her hands most of the time… Forest was even having fun with her… and he was dreading having to sit through this.

We say goodbye to the PHD show and head off for Millionaire… we had never been and I had learned on the boards and Tour Guide Mike that it would be closing forever the very next day so this was our last chance… Luckily enough we got into the 11:30 showing and had a blast watching it… our host Billy (pretty sure that was his name) said this would be the last show he got to host. Much to our sadness we weren’t able to get into the hot seat but DH did get up onto the top 10 which was really cool.


When we left Millionaire we walked out and low and behold who was out there but Mini’s favorite PHD characters… JoJo & Golliath… Lucky for us the Einsteins weren’t around or we would have been there a bit longer…. While the rest of us waited for her to meet her pals DH ran over to the “smoking section” and made it back to us just after pictures were taken and book signed.. thank you Forest for being in charge of that ;-)

Just then … much to our dismay it started raining… light at first but by the time we were going past Voyage of the Little Mermaid it was a total downpour… never fun, yet always expected this time of year…

We went back to use our FP for RnR but the line looked way too long and not much choices for shelter in the area so we decided to go back to the hotel and use our FP that evening.

Wouldn’t ya know it… we get back to the hotel and the rain has stopped! Oh well… DH decides to let me take Mini & Forest swimming while he & Ry go up and both take a nap. I decided I might as well kill 2 birds w/ 1 stone and decided to start the wash too… I realize that the quarters I have won’t be enough to dry the clothes so just before the wash is done we go up to the room so I can get the ATM card & go get some more cash…

Forest decides to stay and read while his sis and I go get a refill of sprite and the cash then return to get our drying done…

I won’t bore you with the details of the laundry folding… but I will tell you that time of day it starts getting crowded.. thank goodness I came in when I did…

After we get back to the room Mini lays down and decides to nap too… lucky me… so I watched SoapNet, Forest read, and everyone else slept away…

I wait till about 5 and wake the sleepyheads… the much refreshed sleepyheads… and we head back to MGM…

We have just enough time to use our FP so DS & I head over and ride RnR which was fabulous as ever and I sooooo wanted to do it again!! But alas… it was time for our dinner at Prime Time Café…

When we arrived at PTC we noticed there were hoardes of people everywhere… standing room only waiting for a table. DH waited outside with Ry while Mini, Forest and I checked in and waited for our name to be called. All in all it was a 15 minute wait… not too bad considering the crowd ahead of us… We were seated in Elizabeth’s section (I think she’s the only server whose name I wrote down, and for good reason) she was absolutely wonderful, hilarous, fun…

Once we were seated she immediately scooted right in next to DH and started picking on him… not to be picked on he picked back … was pretty funny… She got our orders for drinks and by the time she came back we had decided what we wanted… DH got the Chicken, Forest & I shared the Steak…

Elizabeth brought the food over and told DH that if he wasn’t gonna eat his greens he had better be creative… or else…. So by the time dinner was done he had shaped his greens into a tree and she let him off the hook…. Lucky for him… the server next to us spoon fed the lady at the next table her greens… For desert he got the Hot Fudge Sundae and we got the Dad’s super Sundae…. Which is sooooooooo good!!!

Now that we had filled our bellies DH and Forest decided to tempt fate and go on RnR… they were in and out pretty fast…

The moment of truth had arrived ToT or bust! DH watch the wee ones while Forest & I went off for me to ride Tower of Terror… as we walk up the pathway I remember that I had infact ridden this ride last year … and our car sat at the doors… lights on… ride had broken down… and waited for at least 20 minutes before all of a sudden it was time… I had sworn I would give it another try… but not that trip… The pathway up is soo cool… the movie before… kinda creepy but so Twilight Zone… We then went in and much to my dismay got a front seat… we dropped a good 5-7 times… it was soo fun… I’m hooked!!

By the time we got out the ride had closed and the park was closing so we decided to head off and get to bed…

DH of course took DS swimming for a bit but the babies and I were exhausted so we went straight to bed…

Up Next… Cinderelly, Cinderelly… breakfast in the castle!!!

 

[Ms. Heimlich]

I am enjoying your TR.

We had a good time at 50's PT, too! I tried to arrange a return visit, but chose Mama Melrose instead!

your babies are too cute! More pictures please!

Glad you rode TOT, everyone (except my DD) loves that ride!

Keep up the good work!

Ms.H

 

[Tanya90210]

Day 4 Part 1

Usual morning routine … won’t bore you with the exact same details as every other day…

We were out the door by 7am …. Got an ADR to be at!!! Cinderella’s Royal Table at 8:15.

By the time we got to Magic Kingdom (after parking…. Tramming….monorailing ..is that even a word?) it is about 8:10 so we have only 5 minutes till our reservation…. Punctuality is not our strong suit but we sure do try to get places on time... On the other hand.. if we try to be late… we are early.. go figure.

We walk up a pretty quiet main street and straight to the castle…. Arriving magically … right at 8:15… whooo hooo!!

We got in the line to get our pictures done with Mini’s favorite… Cinderella… took us about 5 minutes to get to the front, which wasn’t that bad at all… Since there were 5 of us we would be getting 2 photo packages… we decided to get the 1st one with all of us and the 2nd just Mini and Cinderella… it is sooo adorable…. I will try and get it scanned if I can remember where I put it to show it later.

Unfortunately she was a bit shell shocked or something and didn’t say a word nor crack her normal smile with Cindy this morning.

We were then ushered up the elevator and to the dining area and waited less than a minute before we were brought to our table…. Not to far from the windows on the upper platform… we thought it was a really great location. Breakfast here was pre-plated just like we had done at PSB so we knew what to expect. The food was wonderful!! I also loved the little wishing star thing they do… can’t remember exactly how it went... but really cute.

Here’s a shot of Riley in his seat…. Notice the purse behind it… he was still pretty small at the time but could sit up… that was to help him from slumping… poor guy..

We were visited by Aurora first… she was really cute with Mini and DH couldn’t help but grin (didn’t know he had a thing lol) Then was DH favorite… Belle…. I asked her to take a pic with him… he blushed… so cute…

Our next visitor was the one and only Fairy godmother… which finally had little Mini grinning… she showed godmother her wand that she was given when we had arrived at our tables at CRT…

Our last visitor…

… the ever sweet Snow White… and then we were off… to ride the ride of her name which the kids all loved!! Was the only thing we had wanted to do but missed on our first MK day.

On to Tomorrowland… time for our date with Space Mountain!! DH took Forest first while I hung out with the lil ones… more like followed Mini while she explored the dump shop and the areas just outside of it… for what seemed like forever.

DH and Forest finally arrived and it was my turn…. I hadn’t gotten a chance to ride it last year or when we went to DL (either time) so I was excited to ride it for the 1st time since I was 16… seemed way slow compared to RnR but exciting as always… was messing w/ Forest on the ride and would grab his ears lightly now and again… when we got off he was just cracking up …


UP NEXT… To Infinity…. AND BEYOND!! (Time for me to get off work… next chapter.. Tomorrow..I hope)

 

[Tanya90210]

Day 4 Part 2

And on with the show…. Not really …. But I am feeling a bit silly this afternoon… so whatever..


At last we left off we were on our way to ride Buzz Lightyear Space Spin…. We had been looking forward to this since our trip the year before…. We arrived and got in pretty quick… if I recall we had FP for this… Forest rode with Ry and I while Mini rode with DH. Of all the luck… my gun… broken! The button didn’t press and the few times it did I was rarely aiming because I was annoyed… I think I ended up w/ 400 or so points… Forest did pretty well… I didn’t write his score down…. DH just laughed at the both of us because he got 999999… stinker…

Up next was the lovely and ever so gross Stitch “ride” which even though I like stitch I can’t stand that ride!! The “burp” is disgusting … I won’t go into detail as not to ruin it for anyone that hasn’t ridden it … but for those who have… you know what I mean… Plus it’s just does nothing for me so I volunteered to stay with the wee ones while DH took Forest.

Meanwhile, I took the wee ones and we went into the dump shop to wait… they have a lot of really cool stuff in there and I knew when I saw the stitch remote toy that Forest was going to love it…

Once the got out of the ride I showed it to him and he made the purchase with his Disney dollars without a second thought… He’s a big fan of stitch… and to have a stitch “dog” of his very own was quite entertaining for him… and his sister loved (loves) to watch.

We then set off to Aloha Isle for the ever elusive and often dreamed of “dole whip float” … Considering how easy it was to find I am surprised we didn’t even notice it last year… we sat on the seats just across from it for a bit last year… oh well… live and learn

After ordering 2 pineapple and 1 root bear Dole whip float we sat down to enjoy… I just say the pineapples were extra sweet… DH and I shared ours so we could each taste the difference… he stopped sharing when he realized his pineapple was better than my Root beer.

After we had made a mess of ourselves and Mini had finished off quite a bit of my float we were headed back to the hotel to get some much needed rest.

Wouldn’t ya know it everyone but me was able to get to sleep. Lucky them!

I sat there and watched soaps while they slept. At around 4pm I arose the troops and we were off to puck up some gas and make a run to target.. for what… couldn’t tell ya but we must have needed something important… to have the gall to leave property… not for long… but we did… sorry

Here's a cute pic of Mini in the van

After our shopping trip it was off to Epcot … I had been soo looking forward to trying out The Cantina in the Mexico pavilion and we were starving so we went straight to it… no hesitation not stopping for FP or quick rides…


It didn’t let down at all… I could have done w/o the churro or the other dessert they offered but the meal itself was wonderful. Forest and I shared which we often did w/ CS so we could get more if we needed to at another time. DH always did his own as his appetite is quite a bit larger than ours.

With full bellies we decided a tame boat ride was in order… most hate it.. but for some wacky reason we love it… Rio del Tiempo… It didn’t let down … we had ridden last year so we knew what to expect… just a relaxing air conditioned ride.

We explored the pavilion after the ride and then headed out to into the heat of the evening to explore some more countries before Illuminations began. We made it thru China and Germany before it was time to stake out our spot for Illuminations. We got an ok spot for the show.. somewhere near England… and relaxed …. Camcorder broken so we couldn’t get a taping… which really burned my bubble… I had charged that darn thing the whole day… battery obviously needs replaced… (which up till now I have yet to do… 10 months later)

After the show we decided to hang out and explore the England pavilion… yes it was closed but walking around the quiet streets was very nice… and we got some great night shots of the children… Ry was out so there aren’t any to show of him…

And a kiss for big brother

After about a half hour we decided we had waited long enough and headed off for Pop century and some much needed rest…. At least for me… DH would do the late swim with the older two for a bit before they tuckered in for the night.

UP NEXT…. It’s time to boil at the Animal Kingdom… just so we can ride Expedition Everest…

 

[CA/RA2000]

Love reading the posts. I can close my eyes and pretend that I am actually there! We are leaving this Friday June 29 for WDW trip. Can't wait and after reading the stories of your families trip.....I am even MORE excited!!

 

[dismom9761]

You are doing a great job and I am really enjoying the report. Looking forward to more...