Unexpected News! Discovering you’re Expecting while at Disney World-- A June 2014 trip report

[kadrachb]

Joining in (a little late)! Congratulations on the little one!

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Joining in (a little late)! Congratulations on the little one!

Thanks! Glad to have you aboard!

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 7 - June 20, 2014
HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

Back to the Studios for the second time, where we hoped to ride a few rides and again watch Fantasmic (since I’m obsessed with it and we have to see it at least twice per trip). Following the Fantasmic Nightmare from our first day at the Studios, I’m happy to report that we had the ultimate Fantasmic Fastpass in our disposal for our second viewing: the Fantasmic Dinner Package. Back in the day, the Fantasmic Dinner Package guaranteed you seating in one of the corner sections. But now, your reserved seat is in the middle, at the top: prime location. All you have to do is spend a bunch of money on food you really don’t need; but we were planning on eating at Mama Melrose anyway on this trip since it’s one of our favorite restaurants, so hey why not?

Feeling pretty good about how things are going to go today!

We parked in Goofy Film, and a bunch of people were eating McDonalds on the tram. That was exciting to watch.

Our first priority was to get our picture taken in front of the turnstiles, where they had a Sorcerer Mickey topiary set up:

Once we were through the gates, we also got our pictures taken up and down Hollywood Blvd:

They had this Summer postcard set up. The Photopass photographer made us pose and sing like Olaf from his song in Frozen, "In Summer".

We had time to kill before our first two FP+s of the day, as we made our way to Art of Animation to draw characters again. Ashley really enjoys drawing the characters. She was pretty disappointed we never got to draw anyone from Frozen, however.

This time we had Brian Fitchner as our artist. He’s our favorite artist: he really takes time to explain interesting things about the characters as he’s drawing them. This time we drew Mickey Mouse, and then Dale.

Off to Sunset Blvd for two of our Fastpasses. First up: the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. This is my favorite ride at Hollywood Studios. I really like the theming of the hotel, the boiler room, and the general creepiness of the whole queue. What I like most about the ride itself is the randomness of the drops.

Afterwards, we went right next door for the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. I think it’s fun, but it’s not one of Ashley’s favorites, mostly since it practically ruins her hair every time. It’s worth going on at least once per trip, though.

It started to rain a little bit while we were on the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. We went to Anaheim Produce for a frozen lemonade, and we’d gotten a seat at a table that was covered by an umbrella. That’s when it began to pour. I’m talking, torrential downpour, for about 30 minutes. Luckily we were covered up okay, so we just relaxed and let mother nature do her thing.

It was mid-afternoon, and we had our lunch/dinner reservation at Mama Melrose. So once it had calmed down a little bit, we made our way to the opposite side of the park. Mama Melrose is tucked away in the Muppets area of the park, past Pizza Planet and the Christmas store. Since we were on the Fantasmic Dining Package, our meal included an appetizer and a dessert in addition to our pasta. It was Ashley’s favorite meal of the trip. (For the record, mine is still coming up.)

Our ticket to awesomeness:

We still had hours to go before our FP+ for Toy Story Midway Mania, so we went back to the Animation pavilion--not to draw guys, but to get our picture with Wreck-It Ralph. But he was already done for the day, so instead, we just darn well met Mickey again. Fifth Mickey of the trip, for the record; but my favorite Mickey of the bunch because it was Sorcerer Mickey!

I always like to ask him if we’ll see him at the top of the mountain later during Fantasmic. With all the lightning that day, it didn’t seem likely, unfortunately…

Then we went to One Man’s Dream to pay our respects to Walt. I really wish he could still be alive so he could do something about the Fantasmic FastPass+, though…. grrrr.

Here are some pictures from One Man's Dream:

Small castle:

Big castle:

Alice in Wonderland!

Ashley posing with Abraham Lincoln. He's the only president from our state of Kentucky; a bit of legend at home.

AHH!... Robo-Lincoln!

Ashley demolished me once again on Toy Story Midway Mania:

It was cool, around 70 degrees outside, and as we were making our way down Sunset Blvd, we happily discovered that Fantasmic had been cancelled due to lightning.

*Sigh*

So I asked the cast member what we were supposed to do, since we had Dinner vouchers for preferred seating. They told me that we could come back any time to see it, but this was our last day at DHS so we were pretty much going to have to wait and pray that the second showing wasn’t cancelled.

One thing we hadn’t had much time to do on the trip, mostly due to the heat, was walk up and down Sunset and Hollywood Blvds and trade pins with cast members. So this is what we decided to do for an hour, waiting to see if they’d make an announcement on whether or not the second show would be cancelled.

Eventually it was announced that they would be showing the second showing of Fantasmic. As soon as they started letting people in, we went for it and got a good seat near the top in the Mickey section of the Dining Package seating.

Despite having to wait for the second showing, *again,* I was feeling pretty good about it.

Now I don’t mean to complain too much about how they run Fantasmic. I’ve already pointed out the flaw of the Fantasmic FP+, and how it just disappointed me based on principle. But, there was another flaw which we discovered; this time with the Dining Package. My wife and I spent good money to get the ‘bonus’ seating for a showing, that ended up being cancelled. Yes, we did end up in those good seats during the second showing; but my point here is this: we could have gotten good seats for the second showing regardless. It was a rainy day at the Studios: hardly anyone was there. Which then really annoyed us when about 15 minutes before the show, they went and released all the remaining seats in the Dining Package area to standbys.

So you can waddle in 15 minutes before Fantasmic and get to sit where me and my wife spent $$$ to sit… how is that fair?

Anyway, none of that matters because…

IT'S FANTASMIC!!!
And to top it off, Mickey was at the top of the mountain!

We returned to the hotel and had another late supper right before the food court closed at midnight. We started packing our stuff… sadly. Two more days left!... NO! NOT ALREADY!

To be continued...

 

[DisneyMandC]

Loving your TR and definitely following along!

 

[DisneyKates]

This TR is amazing! Thank you for sharing. I hope you are enjoying parenthood. We found the first year to be pretty exhausting, but now we are planning our 2nd WDW trip with the small fry (he is 2.5 and we visited the world with my extended family in Oct just before his 2nd birthday). Disney is such fun with littles. It just keeps getting better!

 

[mjmstd1]

Just got caught up! I agree with you about the poor setup of both the Fantasmic Dining Plan as well as the FP. When you pay good money for the Dining voucher, they shouldn't open it up to everyone else

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Loving your TR and definitely following along!

Thank you!

This TR is amazing! Thank you for sharing. I hope you are enjoying parenthood. We found the first year to be pretty exhausting, but now we are planning our 2nd WDW trip with the small fry (he is 2.5 and we visited the world with my extended family in Oct just before his 2nd birthday). Disney is such fun with littles. It just keeps getting better!

We can't wait to take our little one to Walt Disney World! We are probably going to wait a few years though.

Just got caught up! I agree with you about the poor setup of both the Fantasmic Dining Plan as well as the FP. When you pay good money for the Dining voucher, they shouldn't open it up to everyone else

We definitely learned our lesson on this trip about Fantasmic. Really the thing to do is just wait for the later showing.

 

[bbak30]

So glad I found this TR! You and your wife are adorable, congratulations on the new addition!
Can you believe we just saw Fantasmic for the first time during our last trip?!?! We walked away wondering what took so long.

Can't wait to hear about the last 2 days!

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 8 - June 21, 2014
PART ONE - EPCOT & DOWNTOWN DISNEY

I’ve complained about the heat a lot during this trip report. But this was the hottest day of my entire life… near 100s… and we’re going to…

Epcot…

We were planning on Disney bounding as Kiki and Tombo from the Studio Ghibli Miyazaki movie Kiki's Delivery Service. If you haven't seen this movie, it's really quite good. They sell a ton of Miyazaki stuff at the Mitsukoshi Department Store at the Japan pavilion. We figured the cast members there would have a total fit since they really seem to enjoy it when people show an interest in Japanese stuff. Ashley's got a cute Jiji pin lanyard to match. The bow ended up wrecking havoc on her hair, so she left it in the car.

Tram selfie:

Once we arrived, we looked in Mouse Gear for a while and then decided to eat lunch, even though we were both so hot already that we didn’t feel very hungry. We hadn’t eaten at the Electric Umbrella yet, which is the place where they have free refills. We got a table up on the second level and mostly just relaxed for a while. The heat, the pregnancy, and the fact that the vacation was coming to an end were all sapping us.

Our first FP of the day was at 1:00 for Spaceship Earth. We didn’t really need one, of course, but there did happen to be a bit of a standby line; one which we were glad not to have to stand in.

We headed for the Land, where our next FP+ was for Soarin’. Since there was a lot of time to kill, we rode Living with the Land again. Ashley said that she wished every ride could be a boat ride: just peaceful and relaxing like Living with the Land, or It’s a Small World, or Maelstrom. Then we burst into laughter.

By then it was time for our Soarin’ FP, so we got on that with not much of a wait. Even with a FP+, there have been times that the wait is still 30 minutes or so. Nothing like the standby line, however, which goes on for miles through the tunnels underneath the Land.

From the Land, Ashley wanted to go on Figment again, so we headed in that direction.

Journey Into Imagination is such an amazing-looking building. I just wish they had more to offer in there.

For surviving Figment a second time, I pretty much made her go on Captain Eo as payback:

Mikey, what were you thinking??

By then it was time for our Norway FP, so we wandered through the heat all the way to World Showcase. This was a long, punishing walk.

We stopped at Mexico for Donald’s boat ride, just to get us out of the heat for a minute. How come Mexico is the only indoor World Showcase pavilion? Because the Mexicans know the value of air conditioning, that’s why. Other countries: learn from the Mexicans!

Then we got on the Maelstrom, which would be our final time ever riding it. I'm gonna miss this mural:

Goodbye Maelstrom, forever...

I wish Frozen hadn't been so popular (not) so that they weren't gutting your culturally-accurate ride and replacing it with a fictionalized version of your country.
"Disappear! Disappear!" (he got his wish...)

We were so wiped out by this point that we even decided to sit down and watch the informative movie following the boat ride; that's how desperate we were. Our plan had been to do all the countries; but it was just too damn hot. We really wanted to go to Japan and see if the cast members recognized our lame attempts at Disney bounding as Miyazaki characters. But it wasn't meant to be. So we made our way back to Future World towards the park exit.

On the way out, we stopped at the Odyssey complex; mostly to get some air conditioning. But I was curious about the World Cup viewing area they’d set up. We didn’t stick around, but managed to trade a few pins there. I think some of the cast members weren’t used to getting a lot of pin traders off the beaten path like that, and we got a few good pins if I recall correctly.

Ashley, about to melt, in front of the tournament bracket:

Although it was so hot, and we were definitely ready to take a break, we still had to go to Downtown Disney to trade out that defective Sleeping Beauty pin. We’d been putting it off for days, but we couldn’t find the pink fairy anywhere else in the parks. We just hoped that they still had the pink one at the DTD pin hut; which they did.

Here's what the car told us when we left DTD:

Yeah I'm not making it up. It was friggin' hot.

We returned to the hotel around 5:30 for some quiet time, out of the sun. It would be our final evening, and we wanted to enjoy it the way Walt intended.

To be continued….

 

[cindianne320]

Yikes was that a hot day! I think that's the day we flew home, so we thankfully missed it! Can't wait to read how you spent your last night!

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

So glad I found this TR! You and your wife are adorable, congratulations on the new addition!
Can you believe we just saw Fantasmic for the first time during our last trip?!?! We walked away wondering what took so long.

Can't wait to hear about the last 2 days!

Fantasmic, plain and simple, can be overwhelming. No other attraction at Walt Disney World seats so many guests. It's a big event. But it's amazing!

Yikes was that a hot day! I think that's the day we flew home, so we thankfully missed it! Can't wait to read how you spent your last night!

They were all hot days though...

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 8 - June 21, 2014
PART TWO- MAGIC KINGDOM

We ate supper at the hotel, and then decided to go to the Magic Kingdom. It was storming hard in the distance and we hoped it wouldn’t find its way towards us. Luckily it didn’t. Here's a picture from our hotel room:

Here we are pulling in:

We stopped for a quick photo in front of the Mickey flowers:

And then the next thing that we did at Magic Kingdom was ride the train.

It’s not one of my favorite rides, nor is it a ride that we always go on, every trip. However, our destination was Tomorrowland, and we didn’t feel like walking just then. The sun was setting, and Main Street was starting to light up all beautifully like it does at night. I remember sitting on the train, waiting for it to leave the station, thinking that there really is no better place on earth than this one:

I can’t remember where I’d read about this, but we had to try it out: There are some photo booths in the gift shop located at the end of Space Mountain, which apparently take your photopass card. Once we’d found out about this, we were eager to try it out.

Sure enough, you can do different poses, and save the photos right onto your photopass card. This is one of those extra neat things at Disney that most people don’t know about.

Here are a few of the ones we had done:

We didn’t really feel like riding anything in Tomorrowland, so after our trying out the photo booths, we made our way along the 'hidden' path to Fantasyland.

We were presently stuck on Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, trying to level up to get more free cards. We had a few more portals to do in Fantasyland, but lo and behold, as soon as we got there, we found that it was roped off for the fireworks. We couldn’t hardly go anywhere. So we kept on walking and ended up in Liberty Square. At the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom booth behind the Christmas Store, we had them change our destination to Frontierland. The first showing of the Electrical Parade was wrapping up, so we sat down at Sleepy Hollow for a few minutes while it wrapped up, and then we managed to finish all of the portals pretty quickly in Frontierland. Since the fireworks were still about to happen, we noticed that nobody was in line for Splash Mountain. Score!

I love Splash Mountain! Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain are my two favorite rides, and so far on this trip, we had been on either one of them exactly zero times so far! Yeah! It's our last full day and we're just now getting on Splash Mountain!

In line:

When I was a kid, one time me and my mom stood in line for Splash Mountain for two hours (this was long before Fastpasses, or even before wait times were even posted). I had to pee so bad about halfway through the line, but I thought I could hold it. By the time we made it to the loading area, I couldn't hold it any longer. My mom told the cast member that we couldn't ride it, and the cast member just told us to come right back through the wheelchair exit once I'd gone to the restroom and we could get right on it; we wouldn't have to wait in line. I thought that was so nice. Anyway, the real nice ending to this story was that while we were on the ride, the fireworks were happening, and I thought it was the coolest thing to see the fireworks from the ride. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't have had to go to the bathroom.

Fast forward to this particular day, and again we had it timed just perfectly to be able to see the fireworks from the ride:

Of course we also got our photo from the ride with our Memory Maker. Thumbs up! Ashley is wearing her raincoat because she just can't stand getting drenched.

Since we’d hopped to Magic Kingdom and had used up our three FPs, we were able to add some additional ones. Of course Splash and Big Thunder were depleted for the day, and as we'd just seen, there wasn't line for anything at this point. But we went and added a Fastpass for Haunted Mansion anyway. It wasn’t really necessary; Ashley mostly just added it to see if she could.

*Sigh* More Fastpass drama. On our way out of Haunted Mansion, we were walking past the entrance to the line, and a family was trying to get on it three hours after their FP window! Three hours!! The cast member was explaining that their FP window had been for that afternoon, and it was long past the grace period… of course the irony here was that they didn’t *need* a FastPass to ride Haunted Mansion after the fireworks… the line was 5 minutes long!

We quickly realized that no one was sitting down for the second showing of the Electrical Parade.

Proof:

We literally got a seat on one of the stone walls across from the Columbia Harbor House and the Hall of Presidents, and nobody was even around us.

It was like a private showing. That was kind of a nice moment. We’d already seen the parade twice already, but this one felt extra special, like they were putting it on just for us.

At this point we decided to call it a night. We had one last evening pic in front of the castle:

Tram selfie:

We got back to the hotel pretty late and still had to pack up (no fun!). Ashley really wanted to take pictures of the hotel, so even though our feet were pretty much done for the trip, we walked around Art of Animation and took pics of the entire place. It was about 1:00 in the morning so there was no one to bother us, except for some teens who were camped out in the Lion King playground. Where dreams come true, apparently...

Here are some pictures of the incredible Art of Animation:

This is me, by the elevators, peering out at the back side of King Triton:

The front side of King Triton:

Under the "C" (we were a little delirious...)

Ashley likes that statue:

Clam shells...

Lion King playground:

Nemo pool:

Posing with the Cars characters:

I really liked the Cars themed area. Nothing like California Adventure, but neat how they have just about all the characters here for you to pose with.

Sadly, tomorrow we’d be on our way home.

To be continued...

 

[mjmstd1]

111 degrees!!! That's insane! I am now worried about my next planned trip...the last part of June 2016. I am seeing a lot of breaks midday for my DD (who will be 7) and I so we don't melt! Lol.

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

111 degrees!!! That's insane! I am now worried about my next planned trip...the last part of June 2016. I am seeing a lot of breaks midday for my DD (who will be 7) and I so we don't melt! Lol.

Midday breaks are a great idea! When I was a kid we'd do rope drop, go back to the hotel around lunchtime, have a swim in the pool in the afternoon, and then go back usually around supper time.

 

[Dumbo In Wonderland]

Day 9 - June 22, 2014
MAGIC KINGDOM

Our last day at the Happiest Place on Earth. This was extra sad for us, because deep down inside, we both knew that no matter what, this would be our last Disney trip as a couple. With a baby on the way, we knew that things would be changing. We had been fortunate enough to enjoy several years with multiple Disney trips per year, and now with our priorities changing, there was a good chance we wouldn’t be returning to our happy spot for quite some time. And even then, the likelihood that we’d be able to afford to visit Disney World more than once a year seemed pretty much over.

Packing… sore legs… Tylenol… Ashley’s legs are falling apart.

We checked out and ate breakfast at the hotel. We packed up our rental car, and then decided to finish off our trip at the Magic Kingdom. It was a toss up between MK and DHS, but MK won out in the end.

Sad tram selfie:

On Main Street, we got our last pack of Sorcerer’s cards, having finished the portals in Frontierland the previous evening, but we knew we couldn’t win the game. There are way too many levels. Oh well.

Also on Main Street, we had our Photopass taken in front of the castle for the final time:

Soon it was time for our It’s a Small World FastPass. It was crazy hot and busy in Fantasyland, and even something like It’s a Small World necessitated a FastPass.

Here we are looking sad on It's a Small World because our trip is coming to an end...

Then to kill time, we did Mickey’s Philharmagic again, mostly to get into the air conditioning.

We almost had a meltdown at that point. It was hot, we were tired and depressed that our trip was ending, and it seemed like this whole trip revolved around when our next FP+ window was. All the spontaneity had been ruined. We were wandering around Fantasyland, hot and hungry, and the next thing we knew, we stumbled onto the bridge to Be Our Guest.

And the wait was only 15-20 minutes.

But we’d already eaten at Be Our Guest.

Who cares! The wait is only 15-20 minutes!

So we ate there again!

And I was happy!

Ashley was happy too, despite this picture of her next to the sad gargoyle:

We pretty much had the same food that we'd ordered on our first day. Turkey sandwiches and the Grey Stuff for dessert. Here's Ashley doing a Ceiling Selfie. The ceiling in the main hall is amazing:

This was my favorite meal of our trip, just because we sooo needed it right then. The first time we ever ate at Be Our Guest was also on the last day of our trip in October 2013. We waited about 30 minutes that time. It's always worth the wait though because let's face it, Be Our Guest is just a very magical place. Beauty and the Beast isn't even one of my favorite movies but it's just so magical in there.

So we took our time with our lunch, and enjoyed ourselves until our next FastPass window opened. It was for Big Thunder Mountain, which was so far hadn't ridden yet on the trip. One of my favorite rides; we couldn't NOT go on it!

They’d cancelled the 3 o’clock parade because of weather, so it was extra crowded in Frontierland right then. But we managed to get on BTMR without having to wait, because of the FastPass. I still love this ride. It’s one of my favorites. Ashley doesn’t like it very much and only wanted to ride it one time. I still wish we’d been able to have gone on it at night, as I enjoy it more when it’s darker out. But with those big clouds hanging around, it was dark enough!

Then we went and saw the Country Bears a second time. Big Al's the man:

As we were standing in the Frontierland Trading Post for the final time, looking at pins, Ashley got a text message from her mom informing us that we’d had a major water leak in our front yard and that Ashley’s dad had spent the better part of the weekend trying to fix it for us. How nice to not have to go home and deal with that major mess… now we just have to figure out how to tell them the news that they are going to become grandparents… we’ll deal with that another time!

There wasn’t much left to do, sadly. We’d hit that point where it’s our last day, and we’re dragging our feet trying to find reasons to stay. Our final FastPass for the day and for the trip was for Ariel, which we’d already ridden the day we had Extra Magic Hours. We made our way back to Fantasyland:

After riding Ariel, the last thing we decided to do was have a frozen lemonade at Cheshire Cafe. It would be the last one we’d have for a long, long time. Everyone around us was watching the baby ducks that live on the walkway between Cheshire Cafe and Cosmic Ray’s. Baby ducks made me think about our baby, and what he or she might be like.

Sad, but it was time to leave.

We had our picture taken in front of the rose garden for the last time:

And then we made more sad-faces on the tram to the parking lot:

And before we knew it, it was off to Orlando International Airport. This ended up being our final ride: (the fake monorail tram between terminals).

Here's the plane. We didn't have a direct flight back to Nashville. We had to switch in Atlanta.

The plane to Atlanta was really neat. They had free internet, games, and TV on board. That flight lasted about an hour or so.

In Atlanta we got on our plane to Nashville. I've been on many planes but this was the shortest flight I've ever been on. Nashville to Atlanta is about four hours driving, so in the air it was like 30-40 minutes.

Here we flew over what I think was Chattanooga or maybe it was just Atlanta's endless suburbs:

We landed around 10:00 or so and then we had a two-hour drive to our home in Kentucky.

Our kitty Anna was so happy to see us:

It was the end of another great trip.


EIGHT MONTHS LATER...

On February 8, 2015, at 12:18 pm, our little bundle of joy was born, two weeks premature. We named him Carter William.

Carter is now four months old. We aren't planning to take him to Disney World until he's much older, like maybe four or five years old. That doesn't mean that Ashley and I won't go without him though, since our 10th wedding anniversary is next year. Who knows. Right now we're just enjoying being parents.

Well, that's it for this trip report! I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading!

 

[22Tink]

Great TR!! And Carter is gorgeous! Congratulations!!

 

[irene_dsc]

Great report! I love all the sad faces in your last day selfies!

And I bet there's no way you will wait 4 to 5 years to take him!

 

[2Monkeys]

Carter is so cute! Congratulations!!

 

[DisneyAllen]

Incredible trip report. Congrats on the bundle of joy!

 

[Born 2B a Princess]

Loved your trip report and congratulations on the new addition to your family -- he's absolutely adorable!