Where are we, Jersey? Bye, Phoenicians! An August 2017 TR * NEW DINING/TR LINKS*

[kittylady1972]

Yay I'm so happy you have started your TR and I found it...less than 24 hours before I am about to leave on my trip so I may have some catching up to do soon.

Love the teen boys at the airport...looks like mine for sure all the time!

Sadly (or not I guess) just have never had that pizza because it sounds horrible!

Sucks about the delay from landing to resort. We ALWAYS just rent a car because I love that we hit the ground at MCO and can walk right out and into a rental car and be on the road to WDW so fast. We also like having the option to drive to the parks as well and set our own schedule to get back to the airport. I stalk rental car sites constantly to get the best deal.

Can't wait to read more!

 

[amberpi]

I always enjoy your food reports, so I'm looking forward to the full deal here! Hope it was a lovely trip @ariane37!

 

[ariane37]

and I was thinking, man how did our parents manage without these things...but now the kids have zero attention span, and zero initiative to think of creative ways to ward off boredom...not sure which is worse lol

Ha! I'm sure we annoyed them more but I'm also sure they could engage us easily if they wanted to! I was a reader so I remember reading in the car until it started making me sick. I can't remember what my sister did because back then if we talked we'd usually start fighting lol. But in restaurants we must have just......TALKED to each other (gasp!)

Yay I'm so happy you have started your TR and I found it...less than 24 hours before I am about to leave on my trip so I may have some catching up to do soon.

I'm happy you found it too Now that you're here and leaving lol, let me say safe travels And have a magical time!

Love the teen boys at the airport...looks like mine for sure all the time!

The worst is in a restaurant when the server asks them a question and they don't look up from their phones

Sucks about the delay from landing to resort. We ALWAYS just rent a car because I love that we hit the ground at MCO and can walk right out and into a rental car and be on the road to WDW so fast. We also like having the option to drive to the parks as well and set our own schedule to get back to the airport. I stalk rental car sites constantly to get the best deal.

I'm 99% sure we're going to take an Uber or taxi from MCO to our resort in November. We arrive at the airport at 6pm (fingers crossed for no delays!) and we'd like to be able to have a nice dinner. I don't believe Steve will be in the mood for another long rest on DME!

Can't wait to read more!

I'll be here when you get back

Sorry about the bad pizza upon late arrival...too bad no one listened to you lol

Well, it's not like I'm not used to it lol

Signing up! Your first night made me smile... we always arrive late in the evening after a 9 hour flight from the UK - its horrific when you're forced to go hunting for food!

and I now feel your pain unfortunately! This was seriously our first time noticing the lack of available decent food options other than snacks after 10pm. I know food courts would be better but since we never stay at values and rarely stay at mods, we aren't used to food courts.

 

[thumper*]

Sorry for the crappy first nt. Hope rope drop works well but am thinking that might be a little too early for teen boys. I'm expecting more complaining. Via Napoli is the only good za I've ever had at WDW. Had room service za once never again.

 

[Whit64130]

I'm Here! I'm Here!!! A little late but you know me.....

Speaking of you, if you're an old friend joining me here again, as always I'm glad you like me enough to come back.

I consider myself an "old friend" even though we only met last year lol!

Chris isn't enthusiastic about much in general! He's my "difficult" child, and I'm sure those of you with children can sympathize.

Oh Chris!

Where: 2 nights Yacht Club, 5 nights Wilderness Lodge CLUB LEVEL!!!!

Wahoo!! Can't wait to hear all about this in detail!!

We did this on arrival night in Nov. 2015 not knowing any better. I'm sorry if I offend anyone (not really) but, this has got to be the worst pizza in the world. I really, truly hope it is because if anyone serves pizza that tastes worse than this they should be shut down immediately. When we ordered in 2015 we all ate it because 1. the kids didn't think it was that bad and 2. Steve and I ordered the supreme and the toppings kind of masked the nastiness. This time Steve and I just couldn't stomach it after 2 bites so we ended up getting pretzels. Chris saw nothing wrong with the pizza; Ricky didn't like it but wanted more than pretzels and so he ate it. Yuck. Between our later arrival time, wait on ME, room that was far, far away, and not good late night meal, arrival night was kinda crappy. The one saving grace for me at least besides being in my happy place was sitting on the Boardwalk, which is always peaceful late at night.

Ahh Should've stayed with Pop, at least AOA is across the bridge and I was pleasantly surprised with how awesome their Pizza was.

Can't wait to read more!!

 

[docsoliday1]

The worst is in a restaurant when the server asks them a question and they don't look up from their phones

Our rule is no phones at the table (home or eating out). It includes the adults too. There is NOTHING so important it can't wait a few minutes. When we had a home phone, we didn't answer that during dinner either. Since they're already entrenched in their electronic leashes, might be too late to implement that though.

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Does this look familiar to those of you with kids?? What the heck did we do in airports before all the electronics???

You mean they didn't jump up and down by the windows watching airplanes come in, like they had ants in there pants and keep asking over and over and over again, if that was our plane? What about that one? Or that one? ..... No..... Cause that is what Gwen usually does... While Morgan looks like your boys...

Between our later arrival time, wait on ME, room that was far, far away, and not good late night meal, arrival night was kinda crappy.

I am sorry that your travel day was sucky. I think it is always such a long day, someone has to breakdown. I am kind of worried about our late arrival for our September trip. But I looked at earlier time to switch it and it is way too early. So, we will have to go with it...

And that pizza might have been good if you'd just downed a couple margaritas first

Totally what I was thinking as well!

Well, I hope your first day is better and with more food! And drinks!

 

[ariane37]

We're Not Gonna Make It!

Happy Wednesday everyone! Hey, is anyone watching "The Mist"? It's a series on Spike based on the short story by Stephen King. He's my all-time favorite author, I had seen the previews before the series started and then totally forgot about it. There have been like, 10 episodes of the first season so far so Steve and I are watching them every chance we get to catch up! It is AWESOME. I read the story when I was in high school and now I need to go back and read it again. I also need to go see "The Dark Tower" which came out the night before we left for Disney. Has anyone seen it?
​

Back to what you came here for! My plan was to do rope drop at MK. My boys don't particularly like getting up early, although between school and sports Ricky is used to it. However being that we were planning to take mid-day breaks, I told them we were going to be doing some early mornings. I also wanted to try and see the new opening show which I did not catch in March or May. Not that I thought I'd like it, but mainly for research purposes.
However. Since we got to bed later than I thought the night before, when I got up at 6:30 I decided I'd let the kids sleep a bit and instead of trying to get to MK by 8:00, we'd try for 8:45ish. Still probably see the welcome show but not from close up. Yeah, well since we were down in the Marketplace for breakfast at 8:15 you realize we didn't make it to MK at 8:45............but everyone was happy to have slept in so it was worth it. I didn't take any breakfast pics to share here or in my soon-to-be-started dining report because we all got bagels and danish (DISNEY DANISH, AAAAHHHHH) however, I did take a picture of the new Minnie Van that was parked out front when we left:



Adorable! At that point the service was only available at the Epcot resorts, but 2 days after we left it was expanding to WL. Not sure where it's at now but we did use one during the trip and it was pretty cool.

We made it to the bus stop by 8:40 and were on a bus at 8:56. Stopped at BC before the park and finally walked under this at about 9:25:



We didn't have a FP for Jungle Cruise and Steve wanted to ride. Even though we often see availability for 4th FP's for this, the lines do get long and we did have FP's for what we wanted so we went here first. The posted wait was already 25 minutes!!! Ugh. Luckily the wait ended up being 8 minutes. I had a feeling it couldn't be 25 after only 30 minutes of being open! We had a great skipper, Bonnie, and as most of you know your skipper makes or breaks the ride really.
Next we visited some Pirates with a 10 minute wait:



Here's a blurry picture of my Redhead! Had to capture her before she's gone:



Sidenote: I know this can be "controversial" but I'm not happy they're removing her. Or redoing her or whatever. I think the reasons people are upset about the scene are ridiculous; people are reading too much into it and getting way to picky and whiny. I normally don't get upset about these things but this is pissing me off. I also realize the "official" reason for redoing the scene has nothing to do with guest complaints.

Nice Ariane is back After Pirates we used our BTMRR FP, rode again SB since the line was 10 minutes, attempted to use our Splash FP but the ride was down. At this point we just under 30 minutes until our lunch ADR so we kind of moseyed over there slowly - and look who else was moseying through Frontierland!



He wasn't the only one either, 3 of the Country Bears were hangin' 'round, making their way to their stage for the next show, stopping for pictures with fans along the way. Every time I tried getting to one for a picture their handler would move them along. This happened every single day we were in MK and I never had any luck, but at least I got to see them.

By the time we made it to our lunch destination we looked like people who had been stranded in the hot, unforgiving desert for days, it was so blanking hot. And the restaurant doesn't open until exactly 11; our reservation was for 11:05, and we got there at 10:50. Sitting outside in the not cool shade was the hottest 10 minutes of my life lol, but at 11 on the dot we were let in:



I'm going to save my review for the aforementioned soon-to-be-started dining report, but I'll say we had a really good meal here. I'll also share a picture of my meal, since at the end of my last post I mentioned the two women who made me fall in love with fried green tomatoes. May I present to you, The Plaza Fried Green Tomato sandwich:



I debated keeping this ADR or cancelling and man, am I glad we kept it! Eventually we had to leave the A/C and venture back out into the desert; we had more FP's to use!
First up was - some of you can say this with me - "Steve's Favorite Ride!!"



My boys make the weirdest ride faces. At this point I figured we'd go back to the resort, but we had that "anytime" FP to use from Splash being down. Chris decided after this ride on the Mine Train that he LIKED Mine Train when previously he complained whenever we rode it, but unfortunately the anytime FP isn't good there. So over to Splash we went and luckily it was up!
We were definitely ready to chill at Yacht Club by this time, and my super smart husband came up with the wonderful idea of riding the train back to Main St. Perfect! Chris didn't remember ever riding this and the rest of us hadn't ridden in quite awhile, and the breeze we were hoping for sounded good.
Some train photos:
First, the backside of BTMRR which I love since you never see this side of it-





I'm at my picture capacity, so continued in next post.....................

 

[ariane37]

Free to post 10 more pictures! Using the Upload A File button is much easier than using Photobucket, the only thing that sucks is the picture limit.

Continuing with our train ride around MK, leaving Frontierland:





Pulling in to the station at New Fantasyland. I'm pretty sure this is the first we've ridden the train since NF opened:



And finally, pulling up to the Main St. depot:



As the kids walked down to the exit, I took a couple pictures from the top of the train station overlooking Main St.:







With that we went back to the Yacht Club! Before I end this post I forgot about some PP pics we took when we got to the park, before going to Jungle Cruise. Here are two of my faves:



And, my absolute absolute favorite that I can totally blackmail my 15 year old son with:



OMG! Steve and I were dying because we knew how this one was going to turn out. My oldest stepson Jason (29) was over yesterday and I showed him, he was hysterical! After we took the family pictures and pictures of just Steve and I, the CM called Ricky over because Chris was being Chris and was all grumpy in the pics and refused to smile but Ricky was cheery. This one is going on the wall................

UP NEXT: A GRAND NIGHT OUT​

 

[ariane37]

I always enjoy your food reports, so I'm looking forward to the full deal here! Hope it was a lovely trip @ariane37!

Hey! thanks for coming over here! I try to keep the party going in my TR's just like I do in my dining reports lol, so hopefully I can keep you entertained

Sorry for the crappy first nt.

Thanks it happens. Luckily the next day was better!

Hope rope drop works well but am thinking that might be a little too early for teen boys.

Ha, Chris is HORRIBLE as far as getting up early, but Ricky has to get up at 6:30 for school andhas had to get up early a good part of the summer for sports, so he was pretty good about our early Disney mornings.

Via Napoli is the only good za I've ever had at WDW.

Same here Well, except for Chris

I'm Here! I'm Here!!! A little late but you know me.....

I do, and I'm glad about that! So you're excused

I consider myself an "old friend" even though we only met last year lol!

You're my young "old friend"

Ahh Should've stayed with Pop, at least AOA is across the bridge and I was pleasantly surprised with how awesome their Pizza was.

Oh believe me, as we were walking around the BW that night I was TOTALLY wishing we were at Pop! And I knew that would be the case. But I also knew that if Steve didn't like Pop I'd never hear the end of it.

Our rule is no phones at the table (home or eating out). It includes the adults too.

Same here, when we're at home. None of us bring our phones to the table. However when we're away I take mine out to take pictures and notes, and we do let them go on theirs. But I've told them time and again to pay attention when the servers come around.....one is good with paying attention and one is not. I'll let you guess who isn't!

You mean they didn't jump up and down by the windows watching airplanes come in, like they had ants in there pants and keep asking over and over and over again, if that was our plane?

Not anymore! I perk (if you look at it that way) of them getting older. Although the way you describe it is cute and I kind of miss it

Well, I hope your first day is better and with more food! And drinks!

It was

 

[Neverland_Girl]

I'll never get over how creepy these bears are

I'm going to save my review for the aforementioned soon-to-be-started dining report, but I'll say we had a really good meal here. I'll also share a picture of my meal, since at the end of my last post I mentioned the two women who made me fall in love with fried green tomatoes. May I present to you, The Plaza Fried Green Tomato sandwich:

Yay so glad you got to try it!! Can't wait to read about the rest of your lunch!

I'm not sure who's face is better, Steve or Chris?

This is the greatest! I hope you show this to every future girlfriend of his

 

[pepperandchips]

I looooove the magic shot

Looks like a fun and productive day at MK! I hope you got to stormalong bay after to cool off. Gotta love those midday breaks and amazing disney pools!

And yeah, fried green tomatoes

 

[dnllmz]

That magic shot is priceless!

 

[MinnieWebster]

May I present to you, The Plaza Fried Green Tomato sandwich:

Yay!! That looks SOOO GOOD!! I'm glad you tried it! Maybe we'll eat here eventually so I can try it. But for now I'm looking forward to the one at Rosie's

My boys make the weirdest ride faces

My DH loves to do silly poses for the ride pics! He loves to hear other people laugh when we look at the pic after the ride

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

And, my absolute absolute favorite that I can totally blackmail my 15 year old son with:

Ha! It is always good to have blackmail pictures!

Sounded like a good morning! Not sure if you ever made it for the morning show, but you aren't missing anything!

And OMG, that Sandwich, I can't wait to hear the full review!

 

[Sailormoon2]

Great photos!! What a productive day!

Using the Upload A File button

Is this part of the DIS? Or something different on photobucket altogether?

 

[Jenny Sanders]

Hi Ariane! First off, LOVED the fried green tomato sammie at The Plaza. I had it in July, and I hope to have it again in the future, sooooo good!

I finally saw the opening show in July, and thought it was very cute, but wouldn't rush RD just to see it again...

Your pics are awesome! You always look so happy!

Hey, did I tell you we are having lunch at LTT in November due to your glowing review???? That's the reason we picked Citricos too...

 

[Jenny Sanders]

DUH!!! I too am watching The Mist! I read A LOT of Stephen King in HS. My favorite books and "made for tv" movies were IT and The Stand. I CANNOT WAIT to see the remake of IT in a few weeks!!!!

 

[docsoliday1]

Same here, when we're at home. None of us bring our phones to the table. However when we're away I take mine out to take pictures and notes, and we do let them go on theirs. But I've told them time and again to pay attention when the servers come around.....one is good with paying attention and one is not. I'll let you guess who isn't!

I'm gonna go out on a limb here with a wild guess....
Chris?

 

[ALEXandFAB]

I'm here...so late...but here! My kiddo has hand-foot-mouth disease so I've been dealing with that since Sunday. Yeah, my 10 year old somehow contracted a virus usually reserved for infants and toddlers. As you can imagine, he's miserable and I've been running around clorox wiping everything he touches . He's missing his first full week of school (they had a 3-day week last week) ANYHOO...

Here's a blurry picture of my Redhead! Had to capture her before she's gone:

So sad they are getting rid of her! I don't even care about the reason behind removing her. She's iconic and should stay!

Cute pic! Also, if that lady behind you (to the right) wearing a jacket? In Florida? In AUGUST?!