Tut, Tut, It Looks Like Rain, A Very Merry Thanksgiving TR Updated 4/28!!

Joining! We were also there last Thanksgiving, 11/20-11/28 so I'm interested to hear about your trip :) We had a GREAT time despite a very UN-magical issue at our resort :sad2:

Love CSR! We stayed there in 2014 and actually just booked there again for this Thanksgiving.
 
Wow! That sure is a late arrival. Your kids were troopers to get through that long wait at the airport. We plan on going before Thanksgiving this year so I'n interested to see how the crowds were.
 
This is the third time I have started responses, so hopefully this time I can make it through without being distracted and pulled away!

Following! We are going around this time this year, so I am interested in your trip!

:welcome: It is a wonderful time to visit!!

OMG i would have been out of my mind forgetting all that stuff!!!

I'd like to say that it is the excitement of the trip, but it is a horrible habit in my family! LOL Last night I left my purse in class, when down two flights of stairs, trudged through the stupid snowy mush, made it all the way to my car and had to turn around.

Isn't it always? Not a O'Hare fan AT ALL

I think we prefer Midway but O'Hare is so much closer to us.

I spy JACK!!!!

A family fav! It was at that moment when I realized that Lorelai had packed a combination of her play figurines and Disney Infinity Characters! :scared:Over the course of the trip I think one got lost. :headache:

Isn't it a wonderful thing?

I love it when it is that fast and I am there to see it. :thumbsup2

Holy cow i would have been going berserk waiting that long! you my friend have patience of a saint.

Disney was keeping me going... notice there aren't many photos of Erik. He had been up since 3am and was NOT happy about the delay, and the fact that we were now standing. Not even Disney was helping him at that moment!

THEY SO LOOK ALIKE!!!

And get in trouble about the same amount as well!:rotfl:

Woo! I'm here and loving it so far! And Lorelai is the cutest... love Gilmore Girls!

Thanks! She is a ham for cameras, or has a weird wide open mouth pose!

Wow - for such a late arrival, the kiddos look READY TO GO! Disney has such a great / glowing effect on everyone :)

Following along! Stinks about the delays, but I would have had the same attitude, at least we're headed to Disney!!

:welcome: Disney always makes it better!

Joining! We were also there last Thanksgiving, 11/20-11/28 so I'm interested to hear about your trip :) We had a GREAT time despite a very UN-magical issue at our resort :sad2:

Love CSR! We stayed there in 2014 and actually just booked there again for this Thanksgiving.

:welcome: I started reading your report as well, I love comparing experiences!

We were there over Thanksgiving too! Looking forward to following along :)

:welcome: It seems to be a popular time!

Wow! That sure is a late arrival. Your kids were troopers to get through that long wait at the airport. We plan on going before Thanksgiving this year so I'n interested to see how the crowds were.

I am surprised they were still so awake at that point. On our 2014 trip we got in at about the same time and they were GRUMPY!
 


While I am getting the photos ready for the next installment, let me share our magic band decals that I had designed and ordered. I designed them on Photoshop and ordered them through Magic Your Band. The Give Kid's the World one obviously wasn't designed by me, I picked it up at the Indy DisMeet.

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More of Erik's

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My other one, using one of last year's magic bands:

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I have to say that the decals held up really well. The kid's started to come off around day 8 and we just removed them. They send you two of each, but I didn't want to spend the time to reapply them during the vacation.

We received so many compliments during the week and they were so much cheaper than designing a magic band in the MK!
 
Joining in! :wave2:

We're going this year during the same November time frame. Our trip is 11/12/16 - 11/24/16...YUP, coming back ON Thanksgiving evening in order to save $$$$ on the flight back. Looking forward to reading more about your trip!
 
Oof rough travel days are no fun! Glad you guys made it safely.

I love the picture of the kids before school. If we have a second child, I sure hope my kids love each other like yours seem to.

CS looks like a cool resort. And yay for getting all your requests granted!

Hope you guys got some good rest that first night.
 


Our next trip your going to have to remind me about this MAKE YOUR OWN stickers!!! Great Idea!
 
Joining in! :wave2:

We're going this year during the same November time frame. Our trip is 11/12/16 - 11/24/16...YUP, coming back ON Thanksgiving evening in order to save $$$$ on the flight back. Looking forward to reading more about your trip!

:welcome: I was so close to booking our flight home on Thanksgiving, but I just couldn't give up another Disney Day! LOL

Oof rough travel days are no fun! Glad you guys made it safely.

I love the picture of the kids before school. If we have a second child, I sure hope my kids love each other like yours seem to.

CS looks like a cool resort. And yay for getting all your requests granted!

Hope you guys got some good rest that first night.

I can honestly say that my kids really do love AND like each other 95% of the time. The other 5% is like world war 3!

Our next trip your going to have to remind me about this MAKE YOUR OWN stickers!!! Great Idea!

Will do! Hey, your mentioned in my next post, if I can get Photobucket to behave!
 
Day 2, Nov. 18: Good Morning Disney!!!

As usual, even though we were in bed well after 1am, there was no way I could sleep in on my first day at Disney! I woke up around 6:30 and I was ready to go!! Unfortunately, as usual, the rest of my clan were still snoozing, and showed no signs of waking up any time soon.

That’s perfect in my book honestly, because I really love my early mornings at Disney, alone, enjoying the peace and quiet. So I got up quickly and got decent before heading out armed with my phone, camera and Magic Band!

Hello Disney!!

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I took a quick look around the outside of our room and found that right next to our room was the hallway to get to the bus stop. This is how close we were:

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I was stoked about that!

I had studied the CSR map before the trip with the hopes of getting the exact location that we did. I was curious as to which route to the El Centro was the fastest, on the walkways in the middle of the buildings, or around the lake. I decided right then was the time to test it out… my results were way skewed though because I was so busy taking photos, my walk to El Centro was very slow. Even taking my time it took me less than 10 minutes.

I give you Coronado Springs Resort at 7am:

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Not a soul around!

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Finally I made it to El Centro and discovered I wasn’t alone in the world!

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I walked to the front desk to request to turn off the automatic check-out, but I was informed that she couldn’t, I would just have to come by every few days with the gift card to pay off our balance. I wasn’t too upset at that news, since I knew I would doing this walk most mornings anyway.

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Then I headed down into the Pepper Market to pick up our refillable mugs. Unfortunately they only had 3 of the 4 colors, so I headed back down to Rix Café, where they had all 4.

YUM!

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I filled up my mug with coffee, and headed outside to sit and relax for a little while. I’m finally HOME!

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I sat and people watched, the few that were around at that time, and relaxed. The view was very pretty and relaxing.

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Even though I was enjoying my time sitting and relaxing, I couldn’t stand to do it for long… I was itching to get our day started. I headed inside and rinsed my cup out and filled it with cold caffeine and got Erik some coffee in his and headed back to the room along the water.

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As I walked I took the time to look over the railing, trying to find the gator that is well known on Facebook. No luck. The kids looked for him the entire week and we never saw him. My guess is that he stays to the other side of the lake, because we never went that way.

I made it back to the room by 7:30am, which means my whole journey took about a half hour. That is shocking to me! I did remember to take a photo of the clings that the kids had put up the night before.

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I walked into the room, and surprisingly everyone was awake! This was great news since I didn’t want to wake them up and have a grumpy crew. Our first fast pass window opened at 9:15am, but I had made it with the knowledge that we most likely wouldn’t make it. I was now optimistic!

We took our time getting up and getting ready and ate breakfast in the room. I had ordered cereal cups, fruit, milk and a few other items from Garden Grocer, plus I had packed muffins and other portable snacks.
 
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We were on our way to the bus stop at 8:44am, even if some of us were still yawning.

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I know that traditionally most people head to the Magic Kingdom as their first park, but since our first trip in 2009 we have started our parks with Epcot, and today was no different. Epcot is by and far tied with the Magic Kingdom as our favorite park.

It was a bit warm already, and luckily we had remembered to pack our fan that we picked up in Disneyland in August.

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Soon an Epcot bus pulled up and we were on our way.

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My favorite walk, the first one of a trip into the first park… everyone is so filled with excitement!!

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I especially love Epcot, because it always seems as if there is a Security Guard who is guarding the closed gate before security, and they are always in a jolly mood and telling jokes. Nearly every time we headed into Epcot we stopped and quickly talked to them.

The entrance we have been waiting so long for!!!

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The parks weren’t that busy yet, that will surely change later in the trip, so we took our time and took some photos.

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Surprisingly, we had made it in time for our first FP+, although if I remember correctly it wasn’t really needed.

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My goal was to actually spend time looking at the living seas, since we have really only ever rode Nemo, gabbed with Crush, got eaten by Bruce, and went on our way. We actually spent a little over 45 minutes in the seas looking at the sea life.

The ride:

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Dude!

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Lorelai is a HUGE fan of sharks, one of her favorite movies is Jaws, and she thinks he get’s a bad wrap. So she was really excited to talk to the CM about them. She ask why it was safe to have the sharks in the tank with the other fish. I was curious too. Turns out the sharks they keep in the tank are pretty tame, and VERY well fed. Why would you want to work for your food, when it is already given to you? Interesting!

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The CM told us to wait around a few more minutes and they would be feeding the stingrays. So we did. It was really cool to watch!

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Look at this happy guy!

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The kids weren’t interested in Crush, so waited to take our photos with Bruce and headed out.

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It was at that moment when I realized that I didn’t have my Brita water bottle, I was certain it fell out in my clam shell during Nemo. Erik ran back in, and luckily it hadn’t been moved to a larger Lost & Found yet, and was still there. This became a trend on the trip, I lost sooo many things. This wasn’t even the last time that day!

We had a fast pass that we could use for Spaceship Earth, but none of us were feeling it yet, we figured that we would either ride it standby or get another FP later. Instead we headed to the Land, because we were getting a bit hungry and Sunshine Seasons was our destination.

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Lorelai always takes the stairs, up or down, if there is an option.

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Well Soarin’ didn’t have a horrendous wait, I think it was 40 minutes surprisningly, and Erik really wanted to wait…

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Let me just state that I was against this from the start, but I gave in. We got in line…. and waited and waited… an hour later we finally got on! The queue was very warm, so we kept circulating the fan.

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Michelle, just so you know while I was taking these photos, you posted a very similar photo at the same time on Facebook… from the other side, over on “cool people” fast pass side…. We were sooo close, yet so far away from meeting!

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At the VERY end of the queue they had the interactive screens working, and that killed about 2 minutes. They really need more entertainment in that queue!

But it was all worth it to hear Kronk welcome us into Soarin’…. Well I don’t think it was worth an hour wait, but we will pretend it was.

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After riding DL’s version, I now see why people say that WDW’s is really showing age. I am very happy that it is under rehab right now, it desperately needed it.

After Soarin’ and some much needed bio breaks, we were ready to eat. The kids were being very picky and both ended up with PB&J.

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I had the Mongolian Beef with fried rice, and it was YUMMY! And it looks like the chocolate cake… I believe it was pretty rich and I didn’t eat a ton of it.

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Erik had the Sweet and Sour Chicken with fried rice, and he said it was good, but not great. No clue on his dessert, probably a cheese cake.

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Before we left the Land we had to ride Living With the Land, which is always a family favorite. Very relaxing, educational, has wonderful AC, and never has a wait. The perfect ride!

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I won’t bombard you with photos, but here are a few:

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Our next stop was Club Cool!

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Where Ethan tried every trick in the book to get met to taste Beverly. He mixed it with different flavors trying to trick me, but I am too smart for him. *cue evil laugh*

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We tease Lorelai all the time because in 2014 she “fake” tasted it, so she wanted to prove that she drank it this time. I think the video is hilarious because she works her way up to a real taste, with several trys. LOL



Lorelai really liked a couple of the fruity options, I think Thailand was her favorite.


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When we walked out the fountain was doing a show, so I made the kids take a photo…

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I also have a 10 second video of Ethan alone in front of the fountain, yelling “COME ON!” I am not sure if that was aimed toward me to take the photo, or Lorelai to get into the photo. But they both were pretty wet after the photo... break out the evil laugh again.

We headed out to our next FP+, which was nearing the end of the window… and it was one we could not miss.
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Ethan’s absolute favorite ride in the world:

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We (or rather the kids) designed our cars and we were flying at 64.9mph in just a few minutes.

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I obviously reached up at the absolute worst minute to hold my hair back. LOL

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Of course we had to stop here and play:

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While we were waiting for the kids, I figured out that because we didn’t use our earlier FP+ for Spaceship Earth, I could change it on the app. So I changed it for right then! I believe on our way over we walked by Mission: Space, but the wait was too long so we passed.

I just love SE, it is so classic Disney. I want good photos, but because I refuse to break the rules and use flash my photos always turn out awful. A story on that later on…

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For some reason Lorelai put her hand right in front of her face right when the photo was taken, so we had a good laugh at our future.

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We spent a few minutes letting the kids play around inside the Spaceship Earth drop area, but we were all in need of a bio break. We headed to the closest one, which is really right outside the exit. I was out first, so I sat down on the bench and uploaded a few photos to Facebook and looked at our Memory Maker photos from that morning with the kids.

When we were all ready we headed toward the exit. I made out from under SE when I realized I was missing our camera… which I had laid on the bench and left. I’m telling you, I was horrible this trip. I sent Ethan back running, and I followed. I saw him stop at the bathrooms and talk to a lady, who pointed to the guest services, he ran that way. I was right behind him, but by the time I got there he had texted me where he was. LOL

The line wasn’t that long, but it took FOREVER to get to a CM, then it took forever for her to find the camera, which had literally been turned in less than 10 minutes ago. I am sure they get a ton of cameras turned in every day, so I cut her some slack.

Finally we were headed back to Erik and Lorelai, who were waiting at the fountain in front of SE.

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Notice the CM on the leftish top holding an IPad? He stopped me on my first pass under SE and I spent about 5 minutes with him answering his survey questions, right before I realized my camera was missing. When I turned around to go a back to get it, not even kidding 1 minute later. He stopped me again to ask if I would take a survey. I told him I had JUST did one with him, and ran on behind E. I couldn’t stop myself from cracking up when on the way back under he stopped me a third time. Lol

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Erik thinks this report should be called, The One Where I Learn Where All the Lost & Founds Are.

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The flag was at still at half-mast for the Paris attacks from a few days before, I am assuming.

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We made it to our bus stop at 2:39pm, after walking half-way the wrong way, because we of course assumed that they pick up where they drop off. And everyone knows, READ THE SIGNS! LOL It wasn’t long before our bus pulled up, and it is a very short ride back to CSR. We had stayed longer at Epcot than we had planned for the morning, but it is hard not to get caught up in the fun and magic…. Plus we would have probably made better time if I didn’t keep losing stuff… just saying. LOL

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Up next, Dinner at our favorite WDW restaurant and a Magic Kingdom night!
 
My DS (6) is a major shark-fan too and just loves the movie Jaws! The movie keeps transcending generations :thumbsup2
 
Your daughter's shark fascination is adorable! I'm enjoying this trip report so far-- excited to find out what your favorite restaurant is!
 
I left our camera on HM once, in the Doombuggy. We'd walked down by Peter Pan when I realized it - DH wasn't hapy lol! He ran back and luckily a CM had it. He carried it for the rest of the day!
I couldn’t stop myself from cracking up when on the way back under he stopped me a third time. Lol
Reminds me of the food courts in malls, when employees stand out front and offer you samples of food. No thanks, I didn't want a piece of sweet n sour chicken when I passed you 7 minutes ago and I don't want one now!
 
My DS (6) is a major shark-fan too and just loves the movie Jaws! The movie keeps transcending generations :thumbsup2

I could never figure out why shark week is such a big deal until Lorelai became obsessed with them. Last year she watched Jaws for the first time and she had a nightmare that night. She woke up crying! I thought it was about her being afraid of the shark, turns our her dream was about the fact that it was really the sea gulls who killed the whale, and everyone blamed it on Jaws. She was really upset! She has been in love with sharks ever sense!

Your daughter's shark fascination is adorable! I'm enjoying this trip report so far-- excited to find out what your favorite restaurant is!

Thanks!! There are just so many wonderful restaurants to choose from, but this one is definitely our favorite!

I left our camera on HM once, in the Doombuggy. We'd walked down by Peter Pan when I realized it - DH wasn't hapy lol! He ran back and luckily a CM had it. He carried it for the rest of the day!

Reminds me of the food courts in malls, when employees stand out front and offer you samples of food. No thanks, I didn't want a piece of sweet n sour chicken when I passed you 7 minutes ago and I don't want one now!

Can you imagine how many camera's get turned into lost and found each day! Let alone sunglasses.... *spoiler alert* which is another item I lose later in trip! :rotfl:

I hate food courts for that very reason! I try my best to not make eye contact, because I feel guilty when I say no for some reason! LOL
 
I had a bunch more stuff from the first update quoted, but it is gone. Any who! I LOVE early morning at the resorts, so peaceful.

one of her favorite movies is Jaws
LOL! She is a hoot!

Look at this happy guy!

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CUTE! I love this part of Epcot. I really have to get back to that park.


They are the cutest kiddos.

This became a trend on the trip, I lost sooo many things. This wasn’t even the last time that day!

Ut-oh! It's so easy in wdw to just lose everything! We are just too busy enjoying all the magic!

Lorelai always takes the stairs, up or down, if there is an option.

Alright! Good for her!

Well I don’t think it was worth an hour wait, but we will pretend it was.

Heehee, I don't like waiting in line either, not for any ride.

Before we left the Land we had to ride Living With the Land, which is always a family favorite. Very relaxing, educational, has wonderful AC, and never has a wait. The perfect ride!

No waits and AC? I'm in!

We (or rather the kids) designed our cars and we were flying at 64.9mph in just a few minutes.

This looks like such fun! I haven't been since they made the change over.

I obviously reached up at the absolute worst minute to hold my hair back. LOL

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:rotfl2:

While we were waiting for the kids, I figured out that because we didn’t use our earlier FP+ for Spaceship Earth, I could change it on the app. So I changed it for right then!

You can change them in the app now?!?! My mind is blown.

I realized I was missing our camera… which I had laid on the bench and left. I’m telling you, I was horrible this trip. I sent Ethan back running, and I followed. I saw him stop at the bathrooms and talk to a lady, who pointed to the guest services, he ran that way. I was right behind him, but by the time I got there he had texted me where he was. LOL

OOF! Good thing he's fast! Heehee.

The line wasn’t that long, but it took FOREVER to get to a CM

I feel like this is always the case at Guest Services. They take their time, I guess?

he stopped me a third time

He did not. Come on fella, look at people when you survey them!

The One Where I Learn Where All the Lost & Founds Are

:rotfl2:

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The flag was at still at half-mast for the Paris attacks from a few days before, I am assuming.

So sad.

OO a night at MK! Fun stuff!!
 
Since we had arrived back at the resort much later than we had anticipated, we didn’t have that long to rest before our ADR. The kids really wanted to go swimming, Erik and I wanted to rest. In the end we compromised and Erik and I sat at a table at the quiet pool and had a drink, while the kids swam. No photos since our phones and camera were doing their mid-day charging routine.

Luckily the lack of play companions and the “boring” quiet pool only kept them entertained for about a half hour and they were ready to head inside. This was a bonus for Erik and I since we didn’t have to drag them kicking and screaming out of the pool to get ready for dinner!

We all quickly got cleaned up and changed for our dinner and MK evening and headed out… to rain. Luckily it happened right then, because I was able to go back inside to pick up mine and Erik’s ponchos. It was then that I realized I had forgotten to pick up ponchos for the kids at Epcot that morning, which I had been planning to do! We made do with two ponchos between the four us for the run to the bus, and none of us melted.

The rain was short lived, and we were rewarded with this:

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A Disney Rainbow! I half expected Disney to find a way to put Mickey Ears on it!

Our destination for dinner was Kona Café, an absolute favorite from our last trip for Erik and I, the kids were so full they didn’t eat last time. Unfortunately, there are no busses that go directly to the Poly and we have had some long adventures trying to get there from other resorts. My plan tonight was to take whatever bus came first between AK, MK, DHS or TTC. Well the first bus of those to show up was the TTC, so that is where we were headed… on a basically empty bus. It did not stay that way!

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Our room was closest to bus stop 2, which is the first bus stop on the CSR rotation to get picked up and dropped off, except for Disney Springs busses, which follow another rotation. We did find that some bus drivers (not many) didn’t follow this pattern, and started at bus stop 1 first. At least we nearly always got a seat since if the bus was full, it would clear out as we made our way around the resort.

The bus ride took forever! Once we got to the TTC I broke it to Erik that we were walking to the Poly, which is much faster than taking the Monorail around. He wasn’t excited… I was. It’s always exciting to do something new at Disney that you have heard about but never tried! The walk was fast, but these three were SLOW!

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Maybe because Ethan was too busy doing this, LOL:

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More walk photos:

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Finally we made it to the Poly, and I was so excited to see the new lobby. When we were here in June 2014 it was awful, with construction walls blocking everything. The lobby was pretty busy with people checking in for the Luau, but our destination was upstairs.

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We checked in and was told it would be a few minutes, so we took some time to walk around:

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That was all I was able to take before our buzzer went off!

We were seated all the way in the back of the restaurant, and surrounded by filled tables, that were very close. It was a bit too close for comfort, I felt like we were on a date with the couple beside us. LOL

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Our waiter was Adil and he was wonderful. I explained that we were on the dining plan, but we wanted to pay for Ethan’s meal/drinks/dessert out of pocket. We did this at TS meals that weren’t buffets or family style, since an adult meal is way too much for him and he prefers the kid menu. This also helped us do a couple more TS meals!

First up was the wonderful bread service! YUM Sweet bread served with macadamia nut butter. I could eat multiple loafs of this by myself, it is soooo good. I couldn’t even get a photo before we started eating it!

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I ordered a pressed pot of Kona Coffee, Erik ordered a Pomogranit Lemonaid, and I am sure the kids both ordered chocolate milk. I was prepared to pay for Erik’s drink since the pressed pot is suppose to serve two, but the dining plan covered it.

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It was delish! Erik drinks black coffee, which I do NOT do, and he really liked it as well.

It was very cold in the restaurant and Lorelai didn’t bring her jacket, so Ethan let her have his. What a gentleman! He said his legs were cold, and he pulled out a pair of track pants from his backpack and put them on over his shorts! LOL We all had a good laugh at how prepared Ethan was, and how unprepared I was!

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Now on to the best part… the food!

Lorelai ordered a hot dog, with carrots and celery. Surprisingly I think she ate it all, which says something because she is very picky about her hot dogs.

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Ethan ordered the Grilled Fish of the Day, and substituted white rice for vegetable rice pilaf. I didn’t get a photo before he “cut” it up. He ate it all, but said it wasn’t his favorite.

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Erik ordered the Grilled New York Strip Steak - served with roasted fingerling potatoes, seasonal vegetables, and molasses-bacon butter. I was surprised by this, since he really enjoyed the pork chops last time and had been planning on ordering them again. He really enjoyed the steak and everything on the plate was devoured!

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I ordered the Pan-Asian Noodles - Yakisoba Noodles, Wok-seared with Vegetables and your choice of Chicken or Tofu in a Ginger-Garlic Sauce; can be made vegetarian upon request. I ordered it with tofu, which I love, and it did not disappoint. It was delisous, but it was so big I couldn’t finish it.

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I was very upset to learn that they no longer had the pineapple upside down cakes for dessert, they were so good! Instead I ordered the Kilauea Torte - An explosion of warm liquid Chocolate inside Chocolate cookie Volcano. I loved it!! You can’t go wrong with a lava cake!

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Erik ordered the Jasmine Tea-infused Cheesecake - with Orange-Ginger Balsamic Glaze, and didn’t enjoy it.

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The kids both got ice cream sundae’s.

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We paid for Ethan’s meal and our tip and headed out. I know most people like Kona Café for breakfast, but we love it for dinner. The food is always excellent, the service is always amazing, and the atmosphere is great. It has become a must do for us!
 
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We took our time and looked around the lobby a bit. Erik was hoping to find another Mickey Hawaiian shirt that he liked, but didn’t find anything.

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Lorelai got a little inappropriate with the tiki man!

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We also traded some pins with a DVC sales man in the lobby, but no photos, because he was busy trying to sell us DVC.

The monorail was down, so we waivered back and forth on whether to take the boat or the bus (which we were told was running since the monorail was down) to the MK. The bus stop was CRAZY busy (like I don’t know if they could fit any more people in that area busy) and didn’t seem to have any organization. The bus drivers (of the one bus that did show up) and other people waiting were GRUMPY. Just sitting there waiting for the ten minutes we were there put a sour taste in my mouth. We decided to try the boat…

The line was incredibly long as well, but it was near the beach which was beautiful and Aladdin was playing so we decided to stick it out. I ran back up to the main building with E to use the restroom and when I came back the line hadn’t moved. Erik said that one of the small boats had came and like 12 people were able to get on! LOL

Another small boat or two came… we moved forward slowly. Eventually it was our turn… so it took us a little over an hour to get across the lake to the MK. But we weren’t in a hurry so we didn’t mind.

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We could see over to the Grand Floridian, and their dock looked backed up as well.

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Finally we were here:

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And met this crowd:

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Luckily once we got inside it was much more manageable! We arrived at 8pm, which gave us plenty of time at the MK since there were EMH until midnight.

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We made our first stop, of many, at the firehouse to pick up our SotMK cards. Ethan became OBSESSED with this game during this trip. Lorelai was mildly interested, so we had two games going on.

Both of our games started on Main St. and I am not sure whether or not we started them that night. Seeing as I don’t have any photos, I don’t think we did, but with as excited as Ethan was for the game, I don’t know how that was possible! The most likely scenario is that I didn’t take any photos because I was too busy juggling two sets of cards for each of the kids to take photos.

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We did however make it to the end of Main Street to see the last part of the castle lighting ceremony with Elsa and Anna. We stopped so that we wouldn’t have to take time out of our Christmas Party Night to watch it. And while it is beautiful to see the castle getting frosted, our entire family is so over Frozen. Like really over it! Lorelai picked out a Frozen dress at Kohl’s for the trip, but she made it clear she was only in for the dress and cape, not the Frozen emblem. LOL Our viewpoint wasn’t great, but it was good enough for all of us.

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We broke away quickly after the lighting, as we were on a mission to get some rides in! We did pause for a photo…

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Where were we headed? Well, we didn’t have a real plan but we did know we wanted to make it to Frontierland… but we got waylaid by a short wait at a favorite.

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Well just trust me it was a short wait! Even though it looks like a lot of people heading in, it was a walk on, which was disappointing to the kids because they love the queue! I promised them that there would be lines later in the trip, so to be thankful that there wasn’t any yet.

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Everyone in our family loves the Haunted Mansion, and this time the kids had a lot of fun following the storyline and actually understanding what things meant. It was a lot of fun to see how they had evolved!

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Next up was Lorelai’s abosolute favorite ride ever.

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And it was a walk on as well. I love night crowds!

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For some reason our ride photo is time stamped 12:06am, but it was actually 9:30pm, so their timing system was off a bit! Our ride photo is pretty boring in comparison to what is yet to come. We rode Splash Mt. a record number of times on this trip!

After Splash we headed over to the wildest ride in the west, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

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Even though it was posted as 20, there was actually about a 5 minute wait, which is just long enough to see that there is cool things to do in the queue, but not have time to do it. LOL

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