We're hooked! 2/17 - 2/24

[RuneSpyder]

Hey all, 1st post and I thought I would create a quick trip report. This was our 2nd time travelling from Seattle to Disney within a year! Our 1st trip was last July and since our son's school district took an entire week off for winter vacation we couldn't resist heading down again.

We stayed for a full week. The weather was great with only the occasional afternoon shower.

Highlights:

• Typhoon Lagoon. We had never been before. What an awesome wave pool. It was pretty crowded but we still managed to have fun. My side still hurts from the wave pool!
• Tower of Terror. Way cool but it scared the heck out of our son. At least he tried it.
• Test Track. Much more fun than I thought it would be. It started raining buckets while we were on the ride and we came back to the station completely soaking wet. It was great.
• Splash Mountain. As usual, we had to ride Splash Mountain at least 10 times. It's my son's favorite ride.
• Nighttime crowds. As soon as it gets dark, the Magic Kingdom seems to empty out pretty quickly. We did the alternate park strategy where we would go to Epcot or Hollywood Studios during the day, take a nap, and do Magic Kingdom at night. It worked well all week. After 9:30 or so you can pretty much walk right onto any ride you want.
• Wishes. We watched if from the Dumbo ride area right in between the action and it was pretty cool to have the fireworks all around you.

Lowlights:

• French Quarter Port Orleans. The hotel was fine but the pool was closed for refrubishement. That was a downer because we didn't know that when we booked the trip.
• Disneyquest. What a bummer this place is. A bunch of tired VR machines and 1/2 of the arcade machines we tried didn't even work correctly. Oh yeah, and why would a CHEESECAKE FACTORY EXPRESS not serve CHEESECAKE? Extremely lame.
• Daytime Crowds. The crowds during the day at Magic Kingdom were pretty intense. All of the fast passes for the day for Space Mountain seemed to sell out every day and we never got a chance to ride.
• Fantasmic. Eh?

Here are some pics (Everything shot with a Nikon D200 18-200mm VR with color saturation cranked to the max. It's Disney. Everything should be colorful....)

Beauty and the Beast show - It's hard to get decent pics without a flash, but I did manage to get a few shots. BTW, whoever this castmember is, she's most excellent.

The agony of defeat

Nemo Musical (No photography allowed...yeah right..)

Yet another lizard

Strike a pose

Jedi Training

The rest of the pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/runespyder/sets/72157603987808112/

 

[stan]

We just came back and had a great time. Still missed a few things - so more to see next time!