Who here is not in the "clique" like me? Part 4

[luvdzne]

I am trying to download pictures. I think between Michele and I we have about 2000 pictures. This is going to take forever!!!

 

[Tinkerbell_Girl]

Here is the link for the disney story. http://www.wesh.com/news/810951/detail.html

That's crazy!

Lesa- Sorry about the contractors. The wishes cruise sounds like fun! I can't wait to here how you got to be on the cruise and see pics!

Pozey- That is a sweet pics of father and daughter!

 

[lyzziesmom]

Lesa: That Wishes cruise sounds great! I would really love to do something special like that, sometimes I get a little bit of that "been there done that" feeling until I find something new, then all of WDW becomes extra exciting all over again. Not that it's ever boring, mind you. Sorry about your continuing contractor woes. I rarely hire people to do anything, I just have my dad do it. At least if (when) he screws up, I know where to find him!!

I'm off to read that story now.

pozey: What a sweet picture!

 

[lindakmonty]

pozey, what a great pix!


Ok...I've been going through over and over.. how does this look? Of coarse we'll break daily for naps!!

Dec 16 :head to MGM, catch Fantasmic and ride some thrills open til 11pm

Dec 17 AK all day. No meals planned, just grab something... Jingle Jungle Parade @ 3:45.

Dec 18 Breakfast at CP 1st for us enjoy MK...then later...MVMCP 7-12

Dec. 19 check out of SOG and head to the "other" hotel lunch at Kona Cafe and back to MGM for fun today...

Dec. 20 Breakfast at Kona Cafe... then back to AK and then Ohana for dinner

Dec 21 Epcot!!!9am-12:30am lots of play time! dinner at Le Cellier tree lighting at 6! Happy Birthday YM

Dec 22 more MGM...Hollywood Holly-day parade @3pm Osborne Family Spectacle of dancing lights…

Dec 23 Epcot again...lunch at Nine Dragons

Dec 24 MK 1/2 day then Epcot for dinner at Coral Reef @ 4 then CP at 6:45

Dec 25 MK then dinner at WCC

are we missing anything??? should we change days around?? definitely some DTD shopping time and resort hopping to check out the displays...and DVC

 

[lindakmonty]

and of coarse since we'll have the monorail right there ...we'll hop on and go to the MK here and there too this is going to be so awesome!! I just hope it isn't as crowded as Dznyfan's pix were we'll avoid that as much as possible...

 

[lyzziesmom]

Sounds like fun Linda. You plan like I do, as much park time as humanly possible, and then add a few more hours here & there! Hey we can always rest on the plane on the way home, right?

 

[DznyFan]

Linda, your tentative schedule looks fantastic!! I would only suggest, to avoid those crowds, stay OUT of the parks from about 1:00 p.m. until dinner time, but I see you plan on breaking for naps. I imagine you'll run into huge crowds at MK on Christmas day. So have you ever been down there during the Christmas season? I seem to think you've said you hadn't - it's just SO beautiful there, and all the ambient music is changed to Christmas music.. it's just my favorite time of year there (just earlier in December)!

Pozey - what a great picture of you two! (thumb)

 

[lindakmonty]

Sounds like fun Linda. You plan like I do, as much park time as humanly possible, and then add a few more hours here & there! Hey we can always rest on the plane on the way home, right?

exactly I figure if we take a nap mid day when the crowds are worse...we can be rested for later nights when there are less crowds and we'll get to do more and w/the monorail right there.... we can hop on and go play play play til we can't play anymore I was trying to hit the non monorail parks earlier until we jump over to the Poly this is going to be awesome. Now the guys are telling me not to wish our summer away that's easier said than done!

 

[lindakmonty]

Linda, your tentative schedule looks fantastic!! I would only suggest, to avoid those crowds, stay OUT of the parks from about 1:00 p.m. until dinner time, but I see you plan on breaking for naps. I imagine you'll run into huge crowds at MK on Christmas day. So have you ever been down there during the Christmas season? I seem to think you've said you hadn't - it's just SO beautiful there, and all the ambient music is changed to Christmas music.. it's just my favorite time of year there (just earlier in December)!

Pozey - what a great picture of you two! (thumb)

I've done the 1st week of Dec. before...but that's it. MK opens at 7am Christmas day...so I figured we could go first thing for a few pix and just see how crowded and how quickly it gets...just enjoy a little and we can scram if/when it gets too be too much. Plus I'm sure Kenny will want to check out his new stuff some...and we can just go w/the flow. I'm going to try to get the major riding done early in the trip so when it gets heavier we can just kick it down a gear and just enjoy ourselves in the moment.

 

[DisneyGirl4188]

Linda, looks great! You are going to have the BEST time!!!

Have you eaten at Nine Dragons before? I really want to try that and San Angel, but have heard mixed reviews about them.

 

[lindakmonty]

Linda, looks great! You are going to have the BEST time!!!

Have you eaten at Nine Dragons before? I really want to try that and San Angel, but have heard mixed reviews about them.

No, I haven't. Actually Jeremiah is the one that wanted to go, so I booked it for the 5 of us I'll have to go look at the menu...

 

[lindakmonty]

OK, what was that code for TGM... maybe I'll go ahead and purchase that too again just to see if he has anything useful in there for this trip.

the menu at Nine Dragons looked ok. I love chinese, so I'm sure we'll find something good. Shrimp yum!

 

[Tinkerbell_Girl]

I love your itinerary Linda! It looks like a lot of fun!

 

[lindakmonty]

I love your itinerary Linda! It looks like a lot of fun!

I'm sure we'll do some editing...but it will be a blast regardless

Ok, I found the code ... we'll see what he suggests. Last time it seemed like it was mostly common sense, but anything that helps makes it worth it!

 

[DisneyGirl4188]

I'm sure we'll do some editing...but it will be a blast regardless

Ok, I found the code ... we'll see what he suggests. Last time it seemed like it was mostly common sense, but anything that helps makes it worth it!

He did help with MVMCP info.

 

[lindakmonty]

He did help with MVMCP info.

cool I'll have to check it out! anything that makes your trip better is worth it!

 

[lyzziesmom]

Now the guys are telling me not to wish our summer away that's easier said than done!

Oh I know, I cannot wait until August 31st!! We have a bunch of things going on this month so it will fly by, but we've got nothin' in August and it's going to draaaag. I can't stop thinking about our trip, it seems so silly since I've been so many times recently, but it's like a drug - the more WDW you get, the more you need.

My mom told me she called my brother the other day and he said he couldn't talk because they were studying. She said ok and hung up, then remembered wait a minute, he just graduated. She called back to ask what they were studying. WDW maps! It's a start. She is throwing him a graduation party - just a little dinner get-together for family & neighbors - on Sunday, maybe I'll have a chance to talk to him then about WDW. I still don't think he quite "gets it" on how to make the most of it, but I'm going to try to knock some sense into him. He just wants to party at PI and sleep all day, and I am really worried about them missing all the ADRs. Also they like to sneak smokes, and I need to stress to him that you CANNOT in a WDW hotel room or you will get fined. My mom is afraid to talk to him about this stuff but I'm not! (Plus she gets it all wrong in translation anyway.)

cool I'll have to check it out! anything that makes your trip better is worth it!

Thanks for the reminder... I am going to try to cancel TGM and get a refund. I just was really disappointed on how out of date everything was. All the information I was hoping to find - stuff about SSR, the P&PP, little ones extra magic hours - all that was outdated and incorrect.

 

[pozey]

While we are all anxiously awaiting Lese's pictures.......I'll bore everyone with another installment of my Grand Canyon trip.

Day 6 – Thursday, June 21st
Again, we wake up to very cool temperatures. Low 40’s. But it feels great.

We are all up fairly early – 7:30ish – and we pretty much had most everything still in suitcases, so packing up is a breeze.

We have breakfast one last time at the Main Lodge of Kaibab Lodge.

We hit the road for the 3.5 hour drive back to the North Rim. We are staying our last 3 nights at The Grand Hotel, which is located just outside the Grand Canyon National Park entrance gate in a town called Tusayan.

Once again, the scenery for the drive is beautiful. We again stop at the Navajo Bridge to sightsee and buy some jewelry.

To get to Tusayan, we have to enter the Grand Canyon at the East Rim and basically drive around the rim to the South Entrance. We stop along several of the points to get out and look and take pictures. It is here, that we just happen upon another fascinating thing we otherwise might have missed. It is called The Watchtower. We check it out a little.

Finally, we arrive at our hotel sometime around 3:00 pm. They tell me that I cannot even check in until after 4:00. I can’t even just check in??

Okay, so we’ll just go back to the McDonald’s that is about 2 blocks away and grab something to eat. So, we go to McDonald’s and order what we would normally order at McDonald’s – a couple of kids meals, cheeseburgers…..and the grand total…………..$45!!!!!!! For McDonalds!!! It wasn’t until now, that I looked at the prices……… Now, you guys with younger kids probably know the cost of a Happy Meal……..well, here, where they pretty much have you captured, they figure they can take advantage. A 4 piece Happy Meal – which is less than $4 around here, cost a whopping $7.09. And a double cheeseburger mighty kids meal – which is what Chase usually orders was $8.09!!! Wow!!!

Anyway, after our gourmet McDonald’s meal, we can finally go check in to the hotel. The kids were craving some pool time, so I told them that we would just relax and swim for awhile.

We changed and went to the pool – which was an indoor pool with a hot tub. The pool was FREEZING!!! Wow was it cold!! Courtney and I played around while the boys did their thing. DW wanted to stay in the room and relax. We would venture out of the pool over to the hot tub every once in awhile – usually about the time that I would notice that Courtney’s lips would begin turning blue. Seriously.

So, after a little pool time, we went back to the room and decided to drive back to the South Rim to hike a little bit and come back later for dinner at the hotel.

The South Rim was only about a 5 minute drive from our hotel, so it was much easier to get to the Canyon than the other places we had stayed. We hiked a bit and watched the sun set.

We headed back to the hotel for dinner. They had a very nice dining room, and on certain nights, the Navajo Tribe had dancers come in and dance. Very nice. Dinner was nice, but dessert was excellent. DW had a HUGE piece of chocolate cake, I had crème brulee, and Colton had blackberry cobbler. Courtney had some of all 3. Chase is not much of a dessert eater.

Tomorrow, we have mostly a free day, but have a Sunset Jeep Tour scheduled for the afternoon.

 

[Bbgrizzle]

Afternoon, friends!

We just got home from the pool. Good times! I got a lot of reading in!

Linda, your plans for Dec look wonderful!! My family is going in Dec too! The first week. We have not been since May 2003, so we are really excited! We booked our dining last week.

I've never used TGM. Is he pretty helpful then?

 

[pozey]

Day 7 –Friday, June 22nd
We sleep in a little late today, as we have no real plans until this afternoon. We have a “Sunset Jeep Tour” scheduled.

We have breakfast in the hotel restaurant – it is a really nice breakfast buffet.

After breakfast, we decide we want to go to the South Rim and hike. We hike down Bright Angel Trail. DW and the boys go on ahead of Courts and I. We take it nice and slow since this trail is pretty steep and narrow at some points. This is the trail that the Mules take as well, so of course we encounter some Mule droppings. Which of course Courtney had to comment on….



We only hike down about ½ a mile or so, when we decide to turn back. I knew Courtney would have some trouble coming back. DW and the boys went about a mile they said.

Meeting back up top, we walk a little ways down to the El Tovar Resort and look around. We really wanted to stay here, but they did not have any rooms that would accommodate a family of 5.

We decide we need to go back to the hotel to eat prior to the Jeep picking us up for our tour. We eat a late lunch at the restaurant inside the Grand Hotel. It cost almost the same as lunch at McDonald’s the day before.

We meet our Jeep driver and Grand Canyon expert John at 4:30 for our tour. John made the trip awesome. He was so knowledgeable about the Canyon and the entire area. He drove us through the Kaibab Forest explaining in detail a lot about the area.

He took us to an 80 foot lookout tower. There is one guy who is in this tower 8 hours a day looking out for fires. We got to climb to the top. The view was cool!!

Then he drove us out to the Canyon Rim to watch the sun set. What an experience.

After the sun set, he asked if anyone in our party (there was another family with us) minded if we took the “back way” back. He basically wanted to go back through the forest looking for animals. He said there had been a bear and a mountain lion spotted a day earlier. While we didn’t see the bear or mountain lion, we did see Elk, Deer, wild turkeys, and other animals.

We didn’t get back to the room till after 9, so we just showered and settled in for the night. Well…….after DW had me go down to the restaurant and get some desserts to bring back to the room…..

Tomorrow……..our last full day at the Grand Canyon……….and the absolute HIGHLIGHT of the trip.