UPDATED: My Spring Break Disney Adventure in Pictures! And Lots of em....

[the_princess]

Love your TP.. your pics are really good... so cool that you have worked in WDW. What was it like to be a character? Did you do like a casting? If you have time, i would love to know more about what it's like to work in WDW... Yes im very curious...

 

[FutureCinderella88]

Loving your trip report!!! I'd love to hear how you like the College program!

 

[alabamagirl]

wow, we were there at the same time too! I actually LOOKED for myself in allllllll your great pix, nope, none of us,,,,,,,,,thankfully those werent my/our shoes/feet!lol
We waited in line for new Nemo show once from the huge yellow dinosaur statue in dinoland, and we got in...so dont despair,,,,,(got in line 30 min before show the 1st time, and 40 min b4 show the 2nd time) both seats were great cuz the show is fab!!!!!!!! Music rocks!!
My major question for u is .......why if u worked there did u not do Jungle trek before, and Fantasmic too? Why didnt u do EVERYTHING alot? I hope this isnt a rude question, I am just amazed but I do not want to be rude at all.

Hi! Don't worry, that's not a rude question! I was on the CP for 5 months and I worked 40+ hours a week, plus took two classes while I was down there. Really, I didn't have a lot of free time and when I did I slept a lot because I was so exhausted! Now, that's not to say that I didn't waste time while I was down there. I was very young (20) and at the time I didn't have the Disney fever like I do now. I loved it, but I wasn't obsessed with it. I think I went to EPCOT 2 times the whole time I was down there, besides when I actually worked there. I know...it's awful.

Anyway, it was a great experience and one that I wouldn't trade anything for. I would encourage any college age person to go for it. It was my first time living away from home, and just that part of it taught me enormous lessons. I loved having the oportunity to be a character. I was actually supposed to be in food service in AK and my first day on the CP they chose me to audition for "entertainment performer". So I did and I got it. Truthfully, I was "very good friends" with Chip and Dale most of the time. Toward the end I trained and was "very good friends" with Wendy quite a bit. I got to work in all four parks and met some awesome people along the way.

Thank you guys so much for reading. I will post another installment sometime today!

 

[alabamagirl]

just starting reading and i love the TR so far! i'm a doggie lover and i had to comment on your sweet little beagle. we have 2 beagles and they're the best dogs i've ever had! yours is sooooo cute! as is your other baby! i'd have 20 of them if i had the room!

Thank you! Grady is such a fun little guy, we enjoy him so much! He has such personality in everything he does. He get bossed around by Emmie quite a bit though. I just told my husband last night that I would have 100 dogs if I could, they make me happy.

 

[alabamagirl]

Day 3: March 15, 2007

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

I am going to start this day with a disclaimor:
I did not really want to go to Universal on this day. I had tickets for Disney and that is really where I would have like to have been, however Becky (former roomate) and Joe ( Becky's fiance) are AP holders at Universal and not at Disney. They had already planned to go there for the day and asked me along. Since I had limited time in Orlando and I wanted to spend time with Becky I went with the flow and went. I enjoyed spending time with Becky, however I did not particularly enjoy my time at Universal Studios.

I started of the day be driving over to Becky's, picking her and Joe up and driving to Universal. We arrived about 9:45 am or so, parked, and walked through CityWalk to Islands of Adventure. There was a looooooooong line to buy tickets, but since I hadn't planned on going to Universal I had to get one. The ticket price wasn't bad, I got a discounted ticket using their AP so it was about $40 for the two parks for one day. Cheaper than Disney.

Joe is all about roller coasters and I like them too, so we headed first to the Dueling Dragons. Some sights along the way:

I don't know who this guy is in the picture, he just kind of came out of nowhere when I snapped the picture.

We rode both Fire and Ice, and this coaster is pretty cool. I felt kinda light headed when I got off though. We had about a 10 minute wait for each side which was nice.

Okay, here is something I really dislike about Universal. They make you get a locker to store your things in before you go on the rides. This is just ridculous..and honestly I didn't remember having to do that the last time I was there, which was in 2000. I didn't come here at all during my CP and now I remember why. Anyhow, I really didn't like this because it took time to get the finger scan thing, get your locker number, put your things up, etc. Frustrating if you ask me and a lot of the machines weren't working.

Joe getting a locker.

In fact, all day we had problems with the rides breaking down.

Joe and Becky didn't want to do any water rides, although there were some pretty cool looking ones. Here are some pictures I took just walking around.

Does this remind you of somewhere in Disney?

We walked around for awhile and decided to go on the Spiderman 3-D ride.

The wait was 45 minutes. And as you know, there is no fastpass except for the express line things you have to pay for. I was going with the flow, so I waited in line for this. We were getting close to the front when the ride broke down. They fixed it 5 minutes later, only for it to break down again 10 minutes later. This went on for about 30 minutes. We waited at least an hour for that ride. We finally got to ride it and it was fun, but geez. Not worth the wait in my opinion.

By the way, I think this park is more enjoyable for guys than girls, IMHO. I know I sound like I hated every part of US but I really didn't there were parts I enjoyed. The rides themselves were very good, if they could keep them from breaking down.

We were getting hungry so we were off to Bubba Gump's at City Walk!

 

[alabamagirl]

Becky and Joe kept talking about eating at Bubba's for lunch. I didn't notice the restaurant when we walked in, but it is on the left if you are coming into CityWalk. After riding Spiderman we left Islands and walked back over to Bubba Gump's for some shrimp!

I loved this place! If you are a fan of the movie Forrest Gump, you will really love the decor. There is memorabilia everywhere and all theTVs are playing the movie.

These signs on the table cracked me up.
These were for the waiters. If you flipped it over to say Stop Forrest then any waiter in the restaurant that walked by was supposed to stop to see what you needed, not just your waiter. I liked that. We had a cute waitress who asked us some Forrest Gump trivia and funnily enough had never seen the movie.

Me and Becky waiting on our food.

The food was good. I ate the fried shrimp and fries. The shrimp were very fresh. Yum!

After eating too much we headed back to Islands to ride the Hulk.

Standby line was 45 minutes. I was thinking, yeah right, but we headed in. We made good time and probably had only waited 30 minutes and we were literally 2 people away from boarding when the ride broke down. We waited it out even though they kept telling everyone they didn't know how long it would take to fix it. We were in such a good spot in line we didn't want to leave. So we waited, and waited, and waited. Everyone had left the line except for us and some teenagers. Finally, they came and said look we don't know if we can fix it, and gave us an express pass good for any ride in the park. Yay! Although, I was pretty ticked off cause I wanted to ride, I was happy that they gave us the passes.

We left Islands and went to Universal Studios next. We saw the Shrek 4-D show, which was pretty cute.

Next we decided to ride the Mummy. This was my favorite ride of the day. I've never even saw the movie, but this ride was really well done and didn't break down!

It will probably be awhile before I go back to US. I just enjoy Disney so much more, and without the fastpasses, I felt like I wasted half of the day in line.

We left the parks after that. We were due to pick up our friend Nancy at 5:00 at the airport and didn't want to be late. After picking Nancy up we met Heather at her workplace and ate dinner then went back to Heather's apartment to watch Grey's Anatomy (I LOVE that show).

The next day of the trip was my birthday! We planned to go to EPCOT and have dinner at Whispering Canyon Cafe. Stay tuned!

 

[princessjv]

Thanks for the US pictures. I have never been to the one in FL, so it was fun to see. I do agree...WDW is much better!

 

[alabamagirl]

Day 4 March 16, 2007- EPC0T

I have lots of great pictures from this day so hang on to your hats!

Heather was working again on this day (I promise you will meet her later) so Nancy and I headed to EPCOT. Becky was sick and opted out of going to EPCOT but was going to meet up with us later for my birthday dinner at WCC.

Yay! I was so excited to spend my 25th birthday in Disney since the year before I had really not done anything special for my birthday. I was sad that my husband was not there with me, but my great friends made up for it.

Nancy and I got up and around fairly early but we didn't make it into EPCOT until 9:30. First stop was guest services for my happy birthday pin. The guest services CM was so nice. He was from Japan and wrote Happy Birthday in Japanese on the back of my pin! Disney magic!

Next, we headed to Soarin' of course!

The standby line was 75 minutes! Agh! We got a fastpass and I'm glad we got it when we did. It was about 9:45 and the return time wasn't until 4:55!

That done, we went on the Living with the Land ride. I had never done this before and I found it highly educational.

Nancy did the college program as well, two years before I did and she was a CM in the Land. She worked the Living w/ the land, Circle of Life film, Food Rocks, and a store that is no longer there. She told a lot of behind the scenes stuff that was neat.

After the boat ride we headed to Mission: Space. This was a day of firsts for me because I had never done this either. I was a little apprehensive but the ride was great!

Nancy's mom called to say that she was coming by EPCOT for the day on her way to Clearwater and we made plans to meet up with them later. We tried to get fastpasses for Test Track, but our window hadn't opened back up yet, so we went to the Living Seas.

This is how busy it was.

I really wanted to go on the Nemo and Friends ride but there was a huge line that extended all the way out in front of the pavilion. As you can guess by now, I don't like to stand in lines. So we just headed in to the Seas to see what had changed since the rehab. I must say, they did a good job brightening up in there. It used to be so dark. We saw that the next show of Turtle Talk was in 5 minutes, so went into the queue. I thought this was a really cute show, the kids loved it and all the parents just sat there with these big grins on their faces. Sorry, no pics. No flash photography.

Nancy's mom called and said she was almost there so we went to wait for her by the Innoventions fountain.

After meeting her mom, we were off to find lunch!

 

[Disfan3]

love the pic report!! The pics of epcot gave me happygoosebumps reminding me of our spring break there just a couple weeks ago...only Epcot was dead the day we went

no lines for Nemo at all...and we got FP right away for Soarin

passed TT and MS due to my cousin's pregnancy....


but again

thanks for the pics...US does look cool...too bad everything kept BREAKING! I would have been sooooo irritated to wait THAT long and be turned away!!

 

[almousefan]

I really love your TR especially with all the pics! That just makes it all come together! Thanks for sharing. Can't wait to hear more!

 

[BubblPopElectrc]

Sorry to be semi-offtopic, but our yorkies look exactly alike!

Hope you don't mind that I show you a picture.

http://i11.tinypic.com/34gwxs9.jpg

ETA: It's huge, so I'll just post the link.

 

[alabamagirl]

Sorry to be semi-offtopic, but our yorkies look exactly alike!

Hope you don't mind that I show you a picture.

http://i11.tinypic.com/34gwxs9.jpg

ETA: It's huge, so I'll just post the link.

Awww.....cute! They do look a lot a like! Emmie has always had a lot of the reddish/blond color on her and most yorkies don't have that, but yours does! Adorable! Aren't they the most precious things in the world?

 

[alabamagirl]

I kinda left ya hanging yesterday...

Okay, so we had just met Nancy's mom and were in search of food. And where is the best place to find food in EPCOT? If you said the World Showcase...ding, ding, ding...you get a price (not really)!

We started in Mexico and weren't really sure that we wanted Mexican food due to the fact that we can eat that anywhere, but we did want some fiesta margaritas!

My gosh, those things were good! And pretty strong too. We walked along contemplating eating in Norway, Germany, or China.

It was kind of cloudy out as you can see in this pic. We did get a little rain at some point, but it wasn't enough to break out the ponchos. It has to be raining pretty hard for me to do that.

We bypassed all of those (Nancy's mom stopped off in the American Adventure) and ended up in Morrocco. By this time I had finished my margarita and had a little buzz. I was a little apprehensive of the menu at the Tangerine Cafe, but we gave it a go.

I got the Chicken Shawarma sandwich, which was huge and pretty good. A little dry but I could deal with that.

Nancy got the Chicken Mediterranean wrap and we shared some french fries. Nancy liked hers but said it was also a little dry.

After eating we kind of just wandered our way around the rest of the WS.

Here I am in Morrocco. Like my hat?

Ran across this guy in France. Amazing! He just kept adding chairs and more chairs. I couldn't see really well, but I got these two pics.

The gardens in the United Kingdom

Up next, look who we found in the UK!

 

[BubblPopElectrc]

Awww.....cute! They do look a lot a like! Emmie has always had a lot of the reddish/blond color on her and most yorkies don't have that, but yours does! Adorable! Aren't they the most precious things in the world?

Yeah, I've noticed a lot aren't those colors too.

I have another one who are the more "traditional" colors.

OK, sorry to interrupt your trip report!

 

[alabamagirl]

I really wanted to see the British Invasian band play, but their next performance wasn't for another couple of hours. We watched a street show in the UK for awhile and ducked into the toy shop. I saw the most adorable Alice dress in there. I wish I would have bought it now, just to have when I finally do have kids. Alice is my favorite character (yes, even more than Wendy, although she's my 2nd favorite).

Anyway, we saw a line and look who it was!

When we walked up they were headed for a honey break, but we waited about 5 minutes and they came back out. Yay!

Random pic, I love this one though.

I wanted to walk back over to Test Track to see if the line was still long or to possibly get a fastpass. I should have known better. The line was still 45 minutes long and all the fastpasses were gone. Oh well...another time. I realized that both Nancy and I could get a free picture with our Disney Visas so we headed over to Innovention East to get our pictures made. I love the Dream outfits that the characters are sporting. Minnie's dress was gorgeous!

Now, this line took forever! We had made plans to meet back up w/ Nancy's mom in China to watch the acrobats. After the pic, we sprinted to China and were five minutes late. We saw her mom coming out of the temple, where she said that it was so crowded in there she couldn't see.

Okay, Plan B: Mariachi band in Mexico!

This was the lead singer guy. He was very good! I have a video of this that I will upload later as well. It was so dark you can't see well, but the audio on it is fantastic.

EDIT: Here is a link to a video of the mariachi band http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3333128032265309521&hl=en

My feet were starting to hurt so after browsing a bit, I went and sat by the fountain. I love fountains and I found this one very pretty.

Ahhh...feet rested, we headed to Maelstrom. A 40 minute wait!!

We fastpassed it (the return time was only 30 minutes later) and decided to find something sweet in the WS. I was craving a funnel cake for some reason (I know not very exotic), and I would have like to have an eclair or crepe from France. FYI, both the American Adventure and France seem very far away from Norway when your feet are beginning to hurt. We made it to Italy where we found the kiosk that sells tiramisu and cannolli. We got one of each to share.

All I can say is....YUM!!! This was so good, and exactly what I needed. I could not have been happier eating my sweets and people watching in Italy. So cool.

Headed back to Norway for Maelstrom!

Goofing off in the shop after the ride.

Our fastpasses for Soarin were almost due so we said goodbye to Nancy's mom (they were going to explore WS a little more) and went back to the Land. We had about 15 minutes to go before we could use of FPs so we watched the Circle of Life film, which I had never seen. I know, I know, I can't believe I worked at Disney and hadn't seen some of this stuff. What can I say?

I loved this film. Very edumacational.

Soarin was next and the ride was great as always. The only bummer was our seats were in the second row so we could see feet, but oh well..

It was almost 5:30 and we had ADRs for WCC at 6:20. Happy Birthday to me!

 

[the_princess]

I was in Epcot on the same day as you... It's a small world

 

[accarson]

Thanks for sharing. This is a great TR and love all the pictures.

 

[TheDisneyGirl02]

Thank you for posting so many pictures! I'm looking at this thread while I'm on lunch at work and it's making me really 'homesick' for WDW! Keep the great pictures coming!!!

 

[lynn71092]

I am loving your report!!
Usually pictures always get blocked here at work which I HATE but with your TR I get pictures AND videos!!!!!
Thanks so much, looking forward to more!!

BTW, what kind of backpack is that??

 

[belle8306]

Another great round of pictures! What a great place to spend your birthday! I would like to do the free Disney Visa photo this year. I will have to add that to my list.