UPDATE 1/20!! Bickering, Barfing, and Bug Bites

[Simba22]

They serve something called Jungle Juice at Tusker House too. I wonder if it's the same thing. I know there was definitely orange and pineapple juice in it but I can't remember about the guava!

Yup, it's all the same!

 

[KatMark]

I love Lumar's face in that picture. It is priceless. Funny how you can see all these people but you walk into attractions. I sometimes wonder where these people go and why they are at the parks?

 

[norybell]

I can't believe you almost fell asleep at HM! That's too funny!

 

[disbugsmomma]

Great TR so far! I've never been to AK at night, but looking at your photos, now I want to. It looks awesome.

Reading your report makes me want to go back even more, but I still have 5 1/2 months.


BTW, just to let you know, your last link doesn't work.

 

[PrincessInOz]

That picture of Lumar would make a fantastic Christmas card! It is just hilarious.

 

[onescgirl]

I love Lumar's happy face

 

[2princesses2princes]

I am so sorry I haven't been around. Life's been C-R-A-Z-Y. I am all caught up, and just wanted to say WOW. Your Animal Kingdom day was just amazing, dream come true type of day for sure. Only in Disney right?

I am getting so anxious for our trip. One step at a time, by the time the holidays are over we'll only have 6 weeks left.

That pic of Lumar exhausted is classic. reminds me of what happens when you go go go in Disney like it is so tempting to do.

 

[Simba22]

I love Lumar's face in that picture. It is priceless. Funny how you can see all these people but you walk into attractions. I sometimes wonder where these people go and why they are at the parks?

I love that pic too...I always manage to get pics like that on our trips. I have one of my brother from our trip in 2007 after we ate dinner at LTT. He was exhausted and stuffed from all the food and I got photographic proof

I certainly wasn't complaining about being able to walk-on to everything...just weird that there was this mad rush for the entrance but they seemed to disappear once inside. That's Disney magic for ya!

I can't believe you almost fell asleep at HM! That's too funny!

I was definitely out for a few seconds....at least while we went through the attic. I could NOT keep my eyes open!

Great TR so far! I've never been to AK at night, but looking at your photos, now I want to. It looks awesome.

Reading your report makes me want to go back even more, but I still have 5 1/2 months.

BTW, just to let you know, your last link doesn't work.

Thanks for joining in! AK at night was definitely a great experience. I can't wait to do it again!

It makes me want to go back too! We won't be going back until at least next October so you are a step ahead of us!

Thanks for letting me know about the link! I fixed it!

That picture of Lumar would make a fantastic Christmas card! It is just hilarious.

OMG that would be so mean if I put that on our cards! Imagine, that pic and the banana pic from our first day!

I love Lumar's happy face

I have impeccable timing when it comes to cameras. Although Lumar got one of me right as I was starting to eat an ice cream cone. It's horrific. I can't even describe it. I should post it just for laughs but it's so horrible!

I am so sorry I haven't been around. Life's been C-R-A-Z-Y. I am all caught up, and just wanted to say WOW. Your Animal Kingdom day was just amazing, dream come true type of day for sure. Only in Disney right?

I am getting so anxious for our trip. One step at a time, by the time the holidays are over we'll only have 6 weeks left.

That pic of Lumar exhausted is classic. reminds me of what happens when you go go go in Disney like it is so tempting to do.

I totally understand! You have 4 kids, you're excused!

Yay for only 6 weeks! The holidays will go by fast so let's not even count them!

It's so true! We usually get up and spend 10-12 hours out in the parks and yes, we've been tired but we've been able to press on. Like I said...I think that if we never had a plan to go back to CSR for a nap, we would have been OK. But since the idea was in our minds, it was making us feel even MORE tired.

 

[sjs314]

Too funny about you drifting off in HM and poor Lumar it is a wonder he had the strength to eat that big breakfast he looked so very tired. I love the juice at Boma, did not know they had it at Kona too, now I really can not wait to go to Kona for the first time.

 

[Simba22]

Too funny about you drifting off in HM and poor Lumar it is a wonder he had the strength to eat that big breakfast he looked so very tired. I love the juice at Boma, did not know they had it at Kona too, now I really can not wait to go to Kona for the first time.

Don't worry, he gets LOTS of sleep later on in the trip! LOL

I love Kona! I'm seriously considering cutting out breakfast ADRs for furture trips, but I think Kona will have to stay!

 

[Simba22]

Sorry it's been a few days since my last update! My great-aunt passed away last Saturday and the funeral is tomorrow and since I'm the resident scrapbooker in the family I'm the one with all the pictures! So I had to go through some boxes to find pictures to display at the service...then driving back and forth from my house to my mother's house...it's been crazy.

I'm going to try to post an update tonight when I get home but I have so much laundry to do (it's literally blocking my closet) that I won't make any guarantees!

 

[PrincessInOz]

My condolences to you and your family. Keep well and we'll be here....minding your TR.

 

[sjs314]

Don't worry, he gets LOTS of sleep later on in the trip! LOL

I love Kona! I'm seriously considering cutting out breakfast ADRs for furture trips, but I think Kona will have to stay!

I have to tell you we love going to breakfast while on vacation, it is one of the best treats of all but I have found it is a "must" then to split your day into two parts and plan to return to your hotel early afternoon for a nap or else you just can not keep up the pace of go go going for too long.

Sorry it's been a few days since my last update! My great-aunt passed away last Saturday and the funeral is tomorrow and since I'm the resident scrapbooker in the family I'm the one with all the pictures! So I had to go through some boxes to find pictures to display at the service...then driving back and forth from my house to my mother's house...it's been crazy.

I'm going to try to post an update tonight when I get home but I have so much laundry to do (it's literally blocking my closet) that I won't make any guarantees!

So sorry to hear about your Great Aunts passing, do the laundry , take care of life and yourself we will all be here when you return.

 

[onescgirl]

Sorry about your great-aunt

 

[KatMark]

Ali, I'm sorry to hear about your great-aunt.

 

[HeatherBelle614]

 

[Simba22]

My condolences to you and your family. Keep well and we'll be here....minding your TR.

So sorry to hear about your Great Aunts passing, do the laundry , take care of life and yourself we will all be here when you return.

Sorry about your great-aunt

Ali, I'm sorry to hear about your great-aunt.

Thanks everyone! The service was fairly uneventful yesterday. The hardest part was watching my 89 year old grandfather (the brother of the deceased) try to hold it together. It was pretty sad. And of course, it wouldn't be an Italian Family Gathering without a family feud....But at least there was no fist-fighting at this one

Update coming up next!

 

[Simba22]

When I last left you, I was unconscious on the bed back at Coronado Springs.

Lumar and I got back to CSR and fell asleep almost immediately around 1:15.
I know that at some point, Lumar was woken up by someone from maintenance who needed to change the battery in the door lock. He couldn’t fall back to sleep after that so he stayed awake playing a video game and woke me up at 3:30pm. I was so groggy and had such a headache that I had trouble getting up at first. But then I realized that we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and I was starving. So we got ready and headed out the door to DTD around 4:30pm.

We arrived at Planet Hollywood right on time for our 5pm dinner ADR and they seated us right away. We were at the smallest table ever created, on the first floor buried behind another row of tables.

Lumar ordered the Texas Tostadas for an appetizer (basically they’re just nachos) which were OK…he really liked them.

And I had two of these (Used to be the Banana-Rama..now it’s the Spiderman-something-or-other):

For dinner, Lumar ordered the Tuscan Chicken Sandwich:

And I ordered (what else?) the LA Lasagna:

So while we’re eating, I got a text message from Heather asking where we were. The second I finished reading that, I got another text message from Dana asking me the exact same thing (verbatim). I thought it was a funny coincidence. So I replied and said we were at dinner. They both texted me back “OK” with a smiley face. I figured at this point that they were together so I texted them back and said it was creepy that they were both texting me the exact same thing. We decided to meet up at MK later that night when we went back to MK for EMH after Cirque du Soleil.

Lumar wanted to get dessert but since I had two Spiderman-Whatever-It’s-Called, I could have passed. But we order the Brownie Sundae (probably the biggest dessert on the menu…at least it felt that way!)

It was good but I was so full I think I had maybe 4 bites.

After dinner, we ventured over to the Marketplace since we still had a couple of hours left before Cirque started. Either Heather or Dana texted me a pic of Heather’s DH wearing Minnie ears, so we sent this pic back to them:

Finally, it was time to head back to the Cirque tent and find our seats. We had a really good view of the stage and we were on the end next to the aisle so that was good. But there was there was this girl sitting next to me (in her teens, I would guess…maybe 16 or 17?) who would NOT shut up! She talked during the ENTIRE show to her mother! “Was that supposed to happen?” “I don’t understand what’s going on,” I don’t get it,” “What’s he doing?” OMG she just didn’t stop!

So when the show was over, we figured the quickest way back to MK was to take a bus back to one of the MK resorts and use the monorail. The Grand Floridian bus was the first one to arrive, but it was sharing with Wilderness Lodge. I had no idea that the Wilderness Lodge is actually out in the wilderness. You’re just on this dark road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

We finally made it to the Grand Floridian at 11:15 and found that there was no way to get up to the monorail waiting area from the bus stop. So we went in and asked a CM how to get up to the monorail. He said to me (and I quote) “take the stairs to the 2nd floor.”

WOW! REALLY?? Is that ALL??

Ummmm….obviously I don’t know where I’m going so how about if you tell me WHERE THE STAIRS ARE!

Thankfully, the stairs at the GF is this enormous staircase so after we walked past the front desk, it was right there.

We finally made it to MK at 11:30 and it was interesting because we were the only people heading up main street towards the castle….thousands of people were filing OUT. I texted Dana and Heather to let them know we had finally made it and we decided to meet up in front of HM.

The first thing we did was head to Aloha Isle for Dole Whips! (Except me…I got a vanilla soft serve):

I happened to bring some glow sticks with me, so I started handing them out. These things were kind of old though…I got them about 2 years ago I think and the tube that I had with me had been opened before so we were missing some connectors. It was kind of funny, watching Brad and Lumar get creative with how to wear their glow sticks. Brad ended up with a choker around his neck and Lumar had little circles hanging off of his ears. I know Dana has a picture of it somewhere in her TR!

After glow sticks were handed out, we headed to the Jungle Cruise, then Splash, then BTMRR…all of which were walk-ons. As we were getting into the car on BTMRR, my flip flop actually fell off my foot and I panicked momentarily because I thought there was a gap between the train and the loading platform and I thought my flip flop fell through it. Of course, it was just sitting right there next to the train.

We headed back to ride HM and then IASW, Buzz, and we were going to do Space but that one actually had a line and the wait was 40 minutes.

We headed for the TTA instead and while riding, Lumar decided he was hungry and he wanted to stop at Casey’s. He started talking about the cheese sauce that they serve, but when he said “cheese sauce” he actually acted out the process of pumping it into a little cup. So for the rest of the trip, whenever we talked about cheese sauce, we had to mime it out. I wish I had pictures or a video or something because it was hilarious (or maybe it’s because it was like 2:30 in the morning).

It was even funnier when we got to Casey’s and they were closed.

We decided we go to Main Street Bakery, since it was still open, but first we had to stop for some PP Pics in front of the castle:

We took these pictures….

And after that, we thought we were done. But the guy kept clicking away so we made an “Are We Done?” picture:

So then, Heather and Dana bust out their trip mascots, Piglet and Eeyore:

And the Photopass guy gets this great idea to recreate The Lion King…and we went along with it:

We got some strange looks from the CMs at Exposition Hall later in the week when they saw this one.

So we finally head over to Main Street Bakery. I really wasn’t super hungry but it was either a giant sandwich or something really sugary, so I opted for the sandwich (and a cheese Danish).

It was a ham & cheese sandwich and it was OK but it was enormous and I really could not eat even half of it. So (courtesy of Dana’s TR) I shared with Piglet because it was ironic to feed a pig some ham.

So we finally headed out of MK just a 3:15am and we actually got to watch the “Kiss Goodnight.”

Lumar and I got back to CSR around 25 after 3 or so, and as we were walking towards our room from the bus stop, thinking back to what a great day we had, when something moves in the bushes next to us. It was LOUD. I legimately thought it was a bear or a fully grown alligator or something. Lumar jumped, I screamed like a little girl, and then we ran back to the room. Although we did pause to see if anything came out of there, but nothing ever emerged so we stuck with our story that it was a bear…Although, we do figure out a more likely source later in the trip.

 

[KatMark]

When I last left you, I was unconscious on the bed back at Coronado Springs.

Lumar and I got back to CSR and fell asleep almost immediately around 1:15.
I know that at some point, Lumar was woken up by someone from maintenance who needed to change the battery in the door lock. He couldn’t fall back to sleep after that so he stayed awake playing a video game and woke me up at 3:30pm. I was so groggy and had such a headache that I had trouble getting up at first. But then I realized that we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and I was starving. So we got ready and headed out the door to DTD around 4:30pm.

We arrived at Planet Hollywood right on time for our 5pm dinner ADR and they seated us right away. We were at the smallest table ever created, on the first floor buried behind another row of tables.

Lumar ordered the Texas Tostadas for an appetizer (basically they’re just nachos) which were OK…he really liked them.

And I had two of these (Used to be the Banana-Rama..now it’s the Spiderman-something-or-other):

For dinner, Lumar ordered the Tuscan Chicken Sandwich:

And I ordered (what else?) the LA Lasagna:

So while we’re eating, I got a text message from Heather asking where we were. The second I finished reading that, I got another text message from Dana asking me the exact same thing (verbatim). I thought it was a funny coincidence. So I replied and said we were at dinner. They both texted me back “OK” with a smiley face. I figured at this point that they were together so I texted them back and said it was creepy that they were both texting me the exact same thing. We decided to meet up at MK later that night when we went back to MK for EMH after Cirque du Soleil.

Lumar wanted to get dessert but since I had two Spiderman-Whatever-It’s-Called, I could have passed. But we order the Brownie Sundae (probably the biggest dessert on the menu…at least it felt that way!)

It was good but I was so full I think I had maybe 4 bites.

After dinner, we ventured over to the Marketplace since we still had a couple of hours left before Cirque started. Either Heather or Dana texted me a pic of Heather’s DH wearing Minnie ears, so we sent this pic back to them:

Finally, it was time to head back to the Cirque tent and find our seats. We had a really good view of the stage and we were on the end next to the aisle so that was good. But there was there was this girl sitting next to me (in her teens, I would guess…maybe 16 or 17?) who would NOT shut up! She talked during the ENTIRE show to her mother! “Was that supposed to happen?” “I don’t understand what’s going on,” I don’t get it,” “What’s he doing?” OMG she just didn’t stop!

So when the show was over, we figured the quickest way back to MK was to take a bus back to one of the MK resorts and use the monorail. The Grand Floridian bus was the first one to arrive, but it was sharing with Wilderness Lodge. I had no idea that the Wilderness Lodge is actually out in the wilderness. You’re just on this dark road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

We finally made it to the Grand Floridian at 11:15 and found that there was no way to get up to the monorail waiting area from the bus stop. So we went in and asked a CM how to get up to the monorail. He said to me (and I quote) “take the stairs to the 2nd floor.”

WOW! REALLY?? Is that ALL??

Ummmm….obviously I don’t know where I’m going so how about if you tell me WHERE THE STAIRS ARE!

Thankfully, the stairs at the GF is this enormous staircase so after we walked past the front desk, it was right there.

We finally made it to MK at 11:30 and it was interesting because we were the only people heading up main street towards the castle….thousands of people were filing OUT. I texted Dana and Heather to let them know we had finally made it and we decided to meet up in front of HM.

The first thing we did was head to Aloha Isle for Dole Whips! (Except me…I got a vanilla soft serve):

I happened to bring some glow sticks with me, so I started handing them out. These things were kind of old though…I got them about 2 years ago I think and the tube that I had with me had been opened before so we were missing some connectors. It was kind of funny, watching Brad and Lumar get creative with how to wear their glow sticks. Brad ended up with a choker around his neck and Lumar had little circles hanging off of his ears. I know Dana has a picture of it somewhere in her TR!

After glow sticks were handed out, we headed to the Jungle Cruise, then Splash, then BTMRR…all of which were walk-ons. As we were getting into the car on BTMRR, my flip flop actually fell off my foot and I panicked momentarily because I thought there was a gap between the train and the loading platform and I thought my flip flop fell through it. Of course, it was just sitting right there next to the train.

We headed back to ride HM and then IASW, Buzz, and we were going to do Space but that one actually had a line and the wait was 40 minutes.

We headed for the TTA instead and while riding, Lumar decided he was hungry and he wanted to stop at Casey’s. He started talking about the cheese sauce that they serve, but when he said “cheese sauce” he actually acted out the process of pumping it into a little cup. So for the rest of the trip, whenever we talked about cheese sauce, we had to mime it out. I wish I had pictures or a video or something because it was hilarious (or maybe it’s because it was like 2:30 in the morning).

It was even funnier when we got to Casey’s and they were closed.

We decided we go to Main Street Bakery, since it was still open, but first we had to stop for some PP Pics in front of the castle:

We took these pictures….

And after that, we thought we were done. But the guy kept clicking away so we made an “Are We Done?” picture:

So then, Heather and Dana bust out their trip mascots, Piglet and Eeyore:

And the Photopass guy gets this great idea to recreate The Lion King…and we went along with it:

We got some strange looks from the CMs at Exposition Hall later in the week when they saw this one.

So we finally head over to Main Street Bakery. I really wasn’t super hungry but it was either a giant sandwich or something really sugary, so I opted for the sandwich (and a cheese Danish).

It was a ham & cheese sandwich and it was OK but it was enormous and I really could not eat even half of it. So (courtesy of Dana’s TR) I shared with Piglet because it was ironic to feed a pig some ham.

So we finally headed out of MK just a 3:15am and we actually got to watch the “Kiss Goodnight.”

Lumar and I got back to CSR around 25 after 3 or so, and as we were walking towards our room from the bus stop, thinking back to what a great day we had, when something moves in the bushes next to us. It was LOUD. I legimately thought it was a bear or a fully grown alligator or something. Lumar jumped, I screamed like a little girl, and then we ran back to the room. Although we did pause to see if anything came out of there, but nothing ever emerged so we stuck with our story that it was a bear…Although, we do figure out a more likely source later in the trip.

Great update, Ali. How fun to get on all of those rides with no wait. And I love you feeding Piglet "ham."

But that is mean of you to leave us hanging of what was hiding in the bushes at the CSR.

 

[sjs314]

I love the La Lasagna too, it is so yummy! The pics infront of the castle are GREAT. I have never stayed for the late EMH but I think I might try it our next trip, if I can stay awake that long

Ok now I have to know what was in the bushes??????

Ps............ on a side note I had to giggle when you mentioned about the family feud and no fist fighting at the funeral, I come from a italian family of professional mourners complete with the loudest wailing and falling to the ground you ever heard and we have had our share hair pulling fights too.