Wait, weren't you just at Disney World? An August '14 Pre-Trip Report *updated 8/24*

[lovedonaldduck]

We did a "leash" backpack and we also found a "leash bracelet" that we got for our youngest. We didn't get much use out of either, but it was nice to have the option to use them. She never had a problem wearing either of them for us, but she's been mostly content in her stroller. We'll see on our upcoming trips - now that she is almost 3, she rarely rides in the stroller and told me she doesn't need it at Disney We'll be taking it anyway.

 

[marymac123]

Hi Neighbor! From Carmel! I just saw your pre trip report, haven't made it all the way through yet...your family is so cute! Congrats on the baby!

 

[MarbleBob]

A little late is better than never, but I have to go on record as saying that the bacon on a stick looks delicious!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

We did a "leash" backpack and we also found a "leash bracelet" that we got for our youngest. We didn't get much use out of either, but it was nice to have the option to use them. She never had a problem wearing either of them for us, but she's been mostly content in her stroller. We'll see on our upcoming trips - now that she is almost 3, she rarely rides in the stroller and told me she doesn't need it at Disney We'll be taking it anyway.

Thanks for the input Jennifer - I think we will look into bracelet as well ... though Peter is really good at undoing straps, etc. so he might not keep it on (the other day he unbuckled he car seat while we were on the highway - pretty sure a 2 year old is not supposed to be able to do that). I am sure Peter will spend some time in the stroller but he likes to go in and out a lot so we definitely can't rely on him staying in the stroller

Hi Neighbor! From Carmel! I just saw your pre trip report, haven't made it all the way through yet...your family is so cute! Congrats on the baby!

Hi Mary, thanks for joining

Hope you enjoy reading - there are a few posts actually about the trip

A little late is better than never, but I have to go on record as saying that the bacon on a stick looks delicious!

Oh, it was delicious! I did have to eat it a bit faster than I would have liked though ... still have to work on developing that third "bacon" arm

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Pre Trip Report: Part 31 - Family Trip to Zoo ... and Judi and I realize we have a lot to do before we leave!​

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Hello All,

So it is just over 2 weeks until our Disney vacation - but just under two weeks before we leave for Florida as we are spending time with relatives before Disney .... and I think it hit Judi and I yesterday that we have a lot of stuff to do before then!

Nothing major, just a lot of little things - ensuring things are settled with someone watching our dogs, finishing decorating magic bands and making Thank You cards, arranging for Parking while we are gone. Stuff like that. Oh, and a packing list, probably need to get started on that.

Good news is I finally decided how I am going to decorate our magic bads and I think it will work out well. Hopefully will have them done in the next day or two and can post an update.

Also settled on a design for CM Thank Your cards and can get those done soon - still need to work on the Mousekeeping envelopes, but hey, getting there.

But can't keep an update totally picture free, so below is about a trip we took a few days ago to a local zoo - enjoy!

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On Wednesday I actually didn't have any work calls tying me to the house so we decided to have a family outing and decided to go to a zoo near us ... though we got a later start than I wanted as I got caught up doing work anyway

So the zoo we were going to is called the Trailside Museums & Zoo and is part of Bear Mountain State Park. It zoo actually is part of the Appalachian trail - so I am also going to say that we have all officially walked the Appalachian trail!

The parking area for the zoo is by the Bear Mountain Inn which is much bigger and nicer than I was expecting and has a nice restaurant and a tapas bar on the roof ... so Judi and I definitely want to check that out in the future.

We then located a map to find out where we were currently and where the animals were:

We then followed the path around for a bit before getting to the actual zoo part - even passing a public pool that looked pretty cool given the setting that we might want to check out in the future ... but eventually we got to what we came to see - that being animals.

The animals in this zoo are all native to New York State and are only in the zoo because they were injured or orphaned. So no elephants or girafes - but still a nice variety of animals and the kids really enjoyed it.

We were also provided with this warning at each exhibit which I thought was humorous:

The trail/zoo runs right along the Hudson River right by the Bear Mountain Bridge so it also provides quite a few scenic views (and I am not talking about Olivia's "posing"):

They also have some buildings with exhibits about prehistoric animals that lived in the areal long ago as well as ones covering mining and other industries that were in the area. Overall we had a really fun time and wouldn't hesitate to go back.

And since we were already on the other side of the river it would have been foolish to not hit up the outlet mall where were picked up a number of things, but one of the main stops was the Disney Outlet:

(See, I'd tie Disney in here somewhere)

Unfortunately they didn't have that much stuff on much of a sale, but we did pick up a few onsies/shirts for Emma:

and new water bottles for Peter and Olivia:

After that we went to dinner where the kids were rewarded / bribed with Dirt for dessert:

All-in-all it was another fun and tiring day

TTFN

 

[Marsheliz]

Love the pics of the zoo! Especially that bear! He is just chillin'!

I LOVE how ya'll just pack the kids up and explore for the day! People think I am crazy bc we love to go, go go and just have never thought twice about it.. Hence, why we our 2 year old has gone to Disney 3x!

Your trip is SO close!

 

[DisMom1981]

Disney outlet! My home town (where I grew up not reside)! Many great memories at Bear Mountain. It's fun in the winter time too- they have a great outdoor rink.

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[Dugette]

Wow, what a really cool outing! That looks like a neat zoo and great scenery. Fun!

Those are some really cute onesies you found too!

 

[MidnightParade]

Oooh! That looks like such a fun place to go! That bear is hilarious!
And really I need that "Do not Feed or Annoy" for my desk at work!

I love the Minnie onesie!

Wow! You guys leave so soon! Good luck with getting all those little things done, must be ten times more crazy with two kids and a new born!! But you guys are pros by now I'm sure!

 

[MarbleBob]

Wow! Two weeks. You are getting close now. Looking forward to seeing what you do with the magic bands.

I've never heard of Bear Mountain before. That place looks awesome! I love the architecture of the Inn. It reminds me of the Wilderness Lodge. Ha!

The photos of the animals are cool. Especially the one of the snakes navigating the mushrooms.

And the views of the Hudson River are incredible!

The dirt for desert looks yummy. I think I could probably be bribed into behaving well if I knew that was on the table.

 

[horse11]

WOW those are GREAT pictures at the zoo!
Unbelieveable only two weeks to go! Wow you guys must be getting excited!
I would love to learn how to decorate Magic Bands! I did not even find out you could until after we returned from our May trip.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Love the pics of the zoo! Especially that bear! He is just chillin'!

I LOVE how ya'll just pack the kids up and explore for the day! People think I am crazy bc we love to go, go go and just have never thought twice about it.. Hence, why we our 2 year old has gone to Disney 3x!

Your trip is SO close!

Yeah, the bear was pretty cool - just kinda hanging out ... and there were all these buzzards in the area, it was a little funny.

Well, if we didn't do something every other/third day we would go a little stir crazy - and we started getting all of our kids out early ... gotta expose them to germs to get them tolerant of them

I know - we fly out a week from this coming Wednesday!

Disney outlet! My home town (where I grew up not reside)! Many great memories at Bear Mountain. It's fun in the winter time too- they have a great outdoor rink.

We noticed an area that I thought might be a rink - kinda near where the carousel was ... so good to know that they do have one. The area was really nice. Lots of people just kinda picnicking there too along the lake.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Wow, what a really cool outing! That looks like a neat zoo and great scenery. Fun!

Those are some really cute onesies you found too!

It was a very pretty setting and the zoo was pretty cool ... and the entrance fee was only a $1 suggested donation

I was glad to find the onsies - the Mouscater one also has the number "55" on the back for the year Disneyland opened.

Oooh! That looks like such a fun place to go! That bear is hilarious!
And really I need that "Do not Feed or Annoy" for my desk at work!

I love the Minnie onesie!

The bear really was cool - that and the beaver were probably the animals "doing" the most

I thought the same thing about that sign - that it could apply in a lot of setting.

Wow! You guys leave so soon! Good luck with getting all those little things done, must be ten times more crazy with two kids and a new born!! But you guys are pros by now I'm sure!

Thanks! I think it was one of those things where we knew we had the major stuff done and were kinda casually working on the other things and then it hit us that we really didn't have that much time left and needed to step it up a bit!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Wow! Two weeks. You are getting close now. Looking forward to seeing what you do with the magic bands.

I've never heard of Bear Mountain before. That place looks awesome! I love the architecture of the Inn. It reminds me of the Wilderness Lodge. Ha!

The photos of the animals are cool. Especially the one of the snakes navigating the mushrooms.

And the views of the Hudson River are incredible!

The dirt for desert looks yummy. I think I could probably be bribed into behaving well if I knew that was on the table.

Magic Band pics coming up right after this!

The inn was definitely cool ... not Wilderness Lodge cool, but very cool

The views really are great and I loved how close were to the bridge and you could really take in the engineering of it, etc.

I totally forgot to mention that the mushrooms shown in the snake picture (they are rattlesnakes) are actually much more deadly than the snakes themselves which I thought was kinda cool.

WOW those are GREAT pictures at the zoo!
Unbelieveable only two weeks to go! Wow you guys must be getting excited!
I would love to learn how to decorate Magic Bands! I did not even find out you could until after we returned from our May trip.

Thanks! I wound up taking a ton of pictures and some were just too dark in the cage to really make out the animal, but I think those that I posted came out ok.

Apparently there are like 100 ways to decorate magic bands - took me a while to figure out what would work best for me and what art skills I have/don't have

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Pre Trip Report: Part 32 - Magic Bands are Go!​

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Happy Saturday everyone!

We spent the morning at a Baptism class as we switched churches since Peter was baptized so they said we had to go through the class for Emma. There wasn't really anything new for us in there - but we did enjoy the video they showed (which appeared to have been made square in the 80's based on the hair and clothes)

Over the past few days we have gotten a few things done for the trip! We got some more Disney clothes for the kids and I got the long-term parking set up at the airport ($6.95/day which sounded pretty good to me)

But the big things that we got done are the Magic Bands are decorated and I got the "Thank You" Card designed (still need to print and cut them all though).


So I wanted to decorate our magic bands to be fun and tell them apart, etc. and, to be honest, I just liked looking at all the neat things people have done with theirs.

I thought about what would work best for us - maybe buying decals or using patterned duck tape. But then I saw someone who had put temporary tattoos on hers and then went over it with clear nail polish to get it to stay and figured i could do that. I am pretty good at designing things on the computer so I did that and printed out the images on temporary tattoo paper, affixed them to the magic bands and put on a few coats of clear nail polish

Overall I am really happy with them - though the color of the magic bands definitely comes through so if I had to do it again I might have adjusted the colors some.

I did mine first - I love things that have multiple Disney things combined together and love the Haunted Mansion so I used images of the Evil Queen and Snow White put into 2 of the stretching room paintings. This is one that definitely came out a bit dark being dark images on a dark blue magic band, but I still like it:

It was easy to know what to do for Olivia and Peter and they both are so into Frozen and love Elsa and Anna a ton respectively (seriously, Peter refers to Frozen as "watching Anna"). I found some stylized images of each and then a corresponding pattern for the back. Olivia is quite in love with hers.

For Emma's (not that she will really be wearing it) I found this really cute picture of a child-like Snow White looking at an apply hanging from a string, so I broke that up for the front and the back:

The hardest one to come up with a design for was Judi's as she didn't really have specific characters or attractions or anything she really wanted. So I decided to use a pattern from a Disney Vera Bradley bag and in the end I think this one turned out to be my favorite one (I think being on the yellow band worked as a good base):

We shall see how well they hold up (the images do crack a little when bent, but still look pretty good so far). But overall I am happy with them - and it is done


One other thing I wanted to do was make up a "Thank You" card to hand out to cast members who really exhibit that Disney magic and just make it more than a vacation. So thinking that for many working at Disney is living a dream and how big the idea of dreaming was for Walt, I figured it only made sense to use a picture of him and one of his quotes - and, well, this is what I came up with.

I sized them so two fit on a 4x6 photo sheet ... now to just print a ton and cut them apart. ... but still, progress

So that is it for now - we still have a number of things to settle on, but definitely getting there.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

TTFN

 

[annie170]

All caught up!

It looks like you had a nice time at the Mets game. Did the kids make it all nine innings?

Your day at the zoo looked like a lot of fun! I love the bear pic, also!

Your magic bands look awesome! You're a pretty talented guy. Your thank you notes are a very thoughtful gesture and I'm sure a lot of CMs are going to appreciate them.

It's getting close!!!

 

[KatMark]

Phil, sounds like a great day at the zoo. I love all the animal pictures, but the bear is really cool!

I love the magic bands....really, really nice job! And the thank you cards are awesome! You are very creative.

 

[Dugette]

Wow, that is some impressive work on the Magic Bands! They all look great! Nice job! The thank you cards are very cool too. I'm beginning to think I'm the least crafty person on the DIS between this and the others PTR posts I've seen from very talented people like you. I don't believe I've ever done anything like that for a WDW trip, but it's pretty cool to have those custom things!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

All caught up!

It looks like you had a nice time at the Mets game. Did the kids make it all nine innings?

Your day at the zoo looked like a lot of fun! I love the bear pic, also!

Well, Olivia wanted to stay the entire time but Peter was getting a little restless - part of the issue was we saw the trains from Manhattan on the way in and he thought going on a train ride was part of the evening so he kept asking about that. We stayed in our seats for 6 innings and then went to the team store and ultimately left the stadium in the bottom of the 8th inning ... which of course is when the Mets hit a homerun and we missed it, oh well.

Your magic bands look awesome! You're a pretty talented guy. Your thank you notes are a very thoughtful gesture and I'm sure a lot of CMs are going to appreciate them.

It's getting close!!!

Thanks! Pretty happy with how they came out. I know I wouldn't be able to do anything nice freehand so thought this was a good solution.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Phil, sounds like a great day at the zoo. I love all the animal pictures, but the bear is really cool!

I love the magic bands....really, really nice job! And the thank you cards are awesome! You are very creative.

It was a fun day - we actually hadn't known about the zoo until we saw pictures in a friends Facebook feed

Thanks Kathy - glad they looked ok in pictures!