Will the Rain EVER Go Away in May?? (final update 7/29)

[KeepSwimmingDory]

My 2 favorite pictures from your MK post are the first and the weird sky one. Beautiful!

DH & I were at Boma in AKL during that heavy rain while you were at the Poly. Then we went to MK for EMH night too and made it just past midnight only because our sons were hanging out with friends from home that they met up with. The boys thought they were going to stay until 2 am but they are not used to commando park touring anymore and were ready to head back to the room by then. I enjoyed Spectro that night too. We sat on the curb right outside of the Emporium on the corner during the later parade.

Enjoyed your Sci Fi photos too.

We have never eaten at O'hana and would like to try that sometime. We tried to do a luau once but it got rained out. That's what I thought of when I read you were at the Poly in the pouring rain.

Thanks for sharing about your trip!

 

[TigerLaw]

My 2 favorite pictures from your MK post are the first and the weird sky one. Beautiful!

DH & I were at Boma in AKL during that heavy rain while you were at the Poly. Then we went to MK for EMH night too and made it just past midnight only because our sons were hanging out with friends from home that they met up with. The boys thought they were going to stay until 2 am but they are not used to commando park touring anymore and were ready to head back to the room by then. I enjoyed Spectro that night too. We sat on the curb right outside of the Emporium on the corner during the later parade.

Enjoyed your Sci Fi photos too.

We have never eaten at O'hana and would like to try that sometime. We tried to do a luau once but it got rained out. That's what I thought of when I read you were at the Poly in the pouring rain.

Thanks for sharing about your trip!

I keep saying I will do a late night at MK but I just can't seem to stay awake that late!

On O'hana's, its probably must biggest "must do" dining at WDW. Love the food, love the dessert even more!

 

[KeepSwimmingDory]

I keep saying I will do a late night at MK but I just can't seem to stay awake that late!

On O'hana's, its probably must biggest "must do" dining at WDW. Love the food, love the dessert even more!

You've convinced me! I think that will be our next date night on a trip. May even leave the kids at home!

 

[TigerLaw]

You've convinced me! I think that will be our next date night on a trip. May even leave the kids at home!

For what's its worth, while I love it, my wife would never let me call this on of our "date night" restaurants -its can be noisy. Also, young kids seem to like it b/c they have games such as limbo and "coconut races" (pushing a ball w. a broom) during the meal.

 

[TigerLaw]

Monday, May 25th (cont.)

That night we went to EMH night at Animal Kingdom. The extended hours were from 6-9 pm. We got there around 5pm, so we tried to do Safari first, as there were signs up that do the early sunset, it would close at 6pm. When we finally arrived in Africa, the line was out the queue and spilling out towards tusker house. There was no way it was only a 20 minute wait and I was right, as the stand by time switched to 45 minutes. We decided to do it anyway, and as we inched closed to the queue, it started to drizzle a bit, but we made it into the line pretty much dry. . . or so I thought! What ended up happening was that there was a part of the line that they opened up (because of the size of the line I guess) that is not covered and right before we got to it, it started to rain HARD, so once again, out come the ponchos! Eventually, we made it back under cover and got on the ride w. maybe a half hour wait. Here are some pics:

From the Safari ride, we went back to the front of the park for our dinner ressies at Rainforest. Simply put, not a good experience! Because of the rain and the park closing, it was REALLY crowded. Then, there was no separate line for people already w. ressies, so I had to stand in line for like 10 minutes w. everyone else trying to get a ressie just to check in. Eventually, maybe lie 10 minutes after that, we got seated. Apparently, we had both forgotten just how noisy the place was. The worst part was the meal though. Since our last time at Rainforest, they had substantially paired down their menu, and much of what I used to like on the menu was gone. We ended up splitting nachos appetizer and then I got a half slab of ribs (nothing special) and Melissa got a four cheese pizza that looked like it came out of a kids pizza bake box! Melissa took like two bits and was done with it! I might have complained but for some stupid reason I was rushing us to get back into the park so we could see the EMH showing of the Lion King show, so I let it pass. Needless to say, we wont be going back there anytime soon!

As I said, after dinner, we went over to catch the 7pm lion king show, which was good as usual. Here’s a couple pics from the show:

After the show, we went over to Dinosaur, which actually had a bit of a wait - maybe like 10 minutes. One ride on that, and we were good. As we walked through Dinorama to get to Everest, you could see the storm clouds coming in. The stand by line for Everest was out the door (so much for shorter EMH lines! ) so we did the single rider line, and even that was still like 15minutes. While we waited, it got darker and darker, and just before we got under cover, it started to rain AGAIN! While a drizzle at first, it got stronger and stronger. Here’s what the sky looked line just before the downpour:

Somewhat surprisingly, they kept the coaster going, so Melissa got on first and rode w/o her poncho. She came back absolutely drenched and said she had to keep her eyes closed the whole time b/c of the rain slapping against her face! . I rode maybe like 3 trains after her, did it with a poncho, and still got pretty wet! After that Melissa wanted to go home, and while I thought about ride Kali, I didn’t push the matter, and we made it back to the Poly around 9pm.

COMING UP - IS ANYTHING ACTUALLY WORKING AT THE MAGIC KINGDOM?!?

 

[KeepSwimmingDory]

For what's its worth, while I love it, my wife would never let me call this on of our "date night" restaurants -its can be noisy. Also, young kids seem to like it b/c they have games such as limbo and "coconut races" (pushing a ball w. a broom) during the meal.

Thanks for the warning. I guess "date night" is the wrong word. Our real "date night" is usually Artist Point. And I do see that it is not like that. Thanks for the heads up because it would be a disappointment if we expected it to be quiet. We enjoy lots of things at WDW without the kids just because we are big kids ourselves and it's fun to go do what we want when the trip is mostly about what they want.

Now off to read your next installment.

 

[TigerLaw]

Thanks for the warning. I guess "date night" is the wrong word. Our real "date night" is usually Artist Point. And I do see that it is not like that. Thanks for the heads up because it would be a disappointment if we expected it to be quiet. We enjoy lots of things at WDW without the kids just because we are big kids ourselves and it's fun to go do what we want when the trip is mostly about what they want.

Now off to read your next installment.

Dory, can you tell me about Artist Point? We have often discussed going there but my wife is nervous a bit about the menu - thanks

 

[KeepSwimmingDory]

Dory, can you tell me about Artist Point? We have often discussed going there but my wife is nervous a bit about the menu - thanks

We have never had anything there we didn't like and I'm pretty picky. Now when I look at the menu I never understand half of it. They are nice to explain what it is and I have always enjoyed what I have tried. Their menu changes all the time based on what they can get fresh. My DH had buffalo before and I had a free range chicken neither of which appears on the current menu. The Portobello Mushroom Soup is heavenly and I didn't think I like mushrooms. I finally tried it because my friend raved about it so much. It is very creamy and delicious! The Cedar Plank Roasted Salmon is delicious and they bring it out to you on the cedar plank that it was cooked on. That is their signature dish I believe, so I think they always have it.

We love the theming of Wilderness Lodge. Artist Point is a large restaurant with high ceilings, full length windows, dark woods, and very relaxing to us. It is expensive but in our opinion it is worth it. The service has always been excellent--they are very attentive. I have read that the wine selection is wonderful but I don't drink so I can speak for that. I have also heard many people rant about the cobbler (blackberry I think), but we are always too full to try it. We usually get an appetizer though.

Hope that helps.

 

[TigerLaw]

We have never had anything there we didn't like and I'm pretty picky. Now when I look at the menu I never understand half of it. They are nice to explain what it is and I have always enjoyed what I have tried. Their menu changes all the time based on what they can get fresh. My DH had buffalo before and I had a free range chicken neither of which appears on the current menu. The Portobello Mushroom Soup is heavenly and I didn't think I like mushrooms. I finally tried it because my friend raved about it so much. It is very creamy and delicious! The Cedar Plank Roasted Salmon is delicious and they bring it out to you on the cedar plank that it was cooked on. That is their signature dish I believe, so I think they always have it.

We love the theming of Wilderness Lodge. Artist Point is a large restaurant with high ceilings, full length windows, dark woods, and very relaxing to us. It is expensive but in our opinion it is worth it. The service has always been excellent--they are very attentive. I have read that the wine selection is wonderful but I don't drink so I can speak for that. I have also heard many people rant about the cobbler (blackberry I think), but we are always too full to try it. We usually get an appetizer though.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the scoop! It's sad to say this, but we're running out of places at WDW we haven't tried yet, so maybe we'll do this sometime in the future

 

[TigerLaw]

Tuesday, May 26th

Park Visited: Magic Kingdom & Epcot
Dining: O’hanas (brunch), ESPN zone (dinner)

Tuesday morning was the first of two EMH mornings at the Magic Kingdom. The weather was hot and sunny (for a change - actually I don’t recall us ever having a rain issue during any of our mornings, it as always in later in the day). Anyway, when we went, it was about a few weeks since they switched the EMH attractions to include Splash, Big Thunder and Haunted Mansion instead of the Tomorrowland rides due to Space Mountain’s rehab. We were really looking forward to this, as we aren’t big Space fans so the tradeoff of rides worked in our favor (or so we thought). We got to the park at about 20 minutes before opening and then dashed along with everyone else when the park opened.

Unfortunately, we got all the way to liberty square before learning that both Splash AND Big Thunder weren’t up and running yet. Once we figured this out, we headed into fantasyland and did Dumbo as the second group to ride. By the time we got off Dumbo though, EVERYONE was in fantasyland due to the liberty square section being closed off, so it was a complete ZOO! (For example, at 8:15 am, Peter Pan’s line was already out of the queue and into the main walkway. We decided to head over to HM, which surprisingly was still a walk on. After that, we went over to the mountains to see what was going on, but both Splash and Big Thunder were still down. The bigger problem though was that everyone had started to grab fastpasses, so that the return times for both rides were now past our breakfast ressie time at O’hanas. Eventually , the rides opened up, Big Thunder first, so we did that w. a 10-15 minute wait, then a similar wait time for Splash. We next tried to do jungle cruise, but it already had a 30 minute line, so we saved that for later and did pirates instead with maybe a couple minute wait. We then took some time to look around the Emporium shop and then took the monorail back over to the Polynesian so we can have our character breakfast at O’hanas. Here's a couple more MK shots I took leaving the park:

We set the breakfast up for one of the last sittings, and we really came to like doing breakfasts this way, as the crowds were lesser, so easier for food purposes and for seeing the characters. The breakfast itself was really good and we saw Mickey, Pluto, Lilo & Stitch. Here’s a couple pics:

After breakfast, I went to the front desk to deal with a bill dispute while Melissa waited in the lobby. That took about 10-15 minutes, and then we checked out and drove over the Beach Club Villas, where we were able to get into a studio without a wait. Our room was on the first floor, looking out into the woods (so not much of a view) but a decent location b/c it was right next to the door exiting out to the dunes cove pool.

Once we got unpacked, we headed over to DTD and walked around there for a bit before heading over the grocery store to pick up a few things (including funoodles) for the room. Once we got back home, we took a nap and heard it raining outside.

COMING UP - OUR ESPN ZONE “EXPERIENCE”

 

[mickeystoontown]

I just read the last two updates and I have to say that I really like the picture of Expedition Everest. It's not the typical EE shot that everybody takes. Cool!

 

[TigerLaw]

I just read the last two updates and I have to say that I really like the picture of Expedition Everest. It's not the typical EE shot that everybody takes. Cool!

thanks - I TRY to get all artistic w. the picture taking (and drive my wife nuts in the process), but you can only do so much w. a P&S camera (no matter how good it is), and I simply will never be allowed to carry around a DSLR!

Hope you come back and check out the rest of my report and pics!

 

[mickeystoontown]

thanks - I TRY to get all artistic w. the picture taking (and drive my wife nuts in the process), but you can only do so much w. a P&S camera (no matter how good it is), and I simply will never be allowed to carry around a DSLR!

Hope you come back and check out the rest of my report and pics!

Yeah, sometimes, I get all "artsy fartsy" with my picture taking too. But, they usually don't turn out as well as your's. Now that we have a digital camera, my husband can actually take pictures of us with our heads! Before, you would have thought we were the headless family

 

[TigerLaw]

don't you hate it when you are decapitated like that ?!?

 

[TigerLaw]

Tuesday, May 26th (cont.)

The following is going to sound like one of Dennis Miller’s old rants, so please bear with me. For dinner Tuesday night we headed to the ESPN Zone. I like their BBQ wings (which are actually a leg and a wing), so Melissa humors me, as its not her favorite place. We got there at a normal or so time, only to find that the door to the restaurant is roped off and we have to wait. Fine. So we wait like 10 minutes or so until we are let in and then we see just how crowded the place was - take a look!

So fine, if they want to try to create an appearance outside that its hard to get in, whatever. So next, we see a empty dining room so we think we’re going to at least be offered a decent table right? WRONG!! They try to put us in the most far away corner of the room on barstools to boot! I think its worth noting here that if we had wanted to sit at a bar, we could have done so w/o any wait! I nicely ask for a regular table and we get moved to a little better location. When we get our waiter, he advises that they have a new menu. Now for dinner I wanted to get the wings as a meal and just get a side of fries. I asked about this, and was told not a problem. I can’t remember what Melissa got, but I think it was a hamburger and fries. Well, soon after we place our order, out comes this tower of fries1 I ask what it was, as I wanted my side of fries to come with my meal (the wings), and the waiter says the only fries they can order separately is the appitizer which is like almost six bucks. My response (at this point) was still civil, this isn’t what I wanted, I was clear in wanting a SIDE of fries, and could he please send it back, which he did. Now here is where I start to lose it - Our meals come out and instead of getting the wings that I wanted, I get BBQ boneless chicken bites (basically chicken mcnuggets). When I asked the waiter did they no longer have the wings with the drumsticks on them, he goes that wasn’t what I asked for! I am getting madder by the second, but I go ahead and start eating what was brought out when halfway through the meal, he brings out an order of the wings I had wanted in the first place! At this point, I just want to leave. The final insult was the bill, they only charged me for one of the two sets of wings, but it was for the higher priced, second set that I barely touched b/c I was getting full from the first set of wings! Needless to say, we won’t be going back there anytime soon!

As an aside, while we are suffering in the meal from hell, our friends at the ESPN Zone decide they are going to host a live ESPN-like show while we eat, so we get to deal with all of this while nearly going deaf from the loud announcers! (See pic above)

After our fabulous dinner, we headed over into Epcot. We just walked around world showcase for a bit before eventually going into Mexico to do the boat ride - DONDE DONALD?!? (One quick aside, in all our years, we NEVER saw off kilter play, but this night we finally got to see them!) From there, we continued our world showcase stroll until we hit france, where I got in line and got us some grand mariner orange slushies and Melissa went over to the beer garden area in England, where planned to watch Illuminations from. One funny note was as we made our way around world showcase, a marching band came by - that was a new one on me!

By now perhaps you are wondering to yourself, hey, we haven’t heard about any rain on your trip lately?!? Well.... what was at the beginning a great looking night, slowly gets worse and worse and so for like the last hour before the fireworks, we are sitting w. our ponchos on totally getting rained on. Actually, I think it started to rain right when we get done with our alcoholic slushies! Thankfully, they had illuminations despite the weather, but after the fireworks, we came home even though our plan was to do the EMH night.

Here are some other Epcot pics from that night to get a sense of how the skies got worse:

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COMING UP - I GET ON THE TOP THREE SCORES AT TSM (FOR LIKE A MINUTE!)

 

[TigerLaw]

Wednesday, May 27th

Parks: MGM
Dining: Pizza Planet (lunch) Cape May Clambake (dinner)

Wednesday was our first regular 9am opening of the week. We did our usual “get to the rope drop line” and I was worried given the size of the crowd:

Well, by the time the dash to Toy Story Mania ended, I was the very first person to get FPs! (I know, that and a quarter....) Anyway, we did TSM as basically a walk on and I score like 160,000+ which for a brief minute was the second highest score of the day (and before we even got off the ride, the score was off the top 3 list!) We next headed over to RnRC and there was a line already and the park wasn’t even open 20 minutes. We ended up doing it twice using the single rider line w/o any major wait. After that, we got another FP and then I went over and did Tower of Terror once with like a 30 minute wait. While I did ToT, Melissa continued to do RnRc by herself and then rode it one more time with me (maybe a 20 minute wait).

Next, I got a couple character pics in before we headed back over to TSM around 11:30 to get another FP (we knew we were coming back at night so we were trying to stock up on FPs).

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We then headed over to pizza planet for an early lunch and we were both surprised how good it was (Melissa got a cheese pizza and a cookie and I got a pepperoni pizza/salad combo). At last, a cheap (in disney terms) place for lunch at MGM that we actually like! Once we finished lunch, Melissa went back to the Beach Club to hit the pool and I stayed a bit longer at MGM, bascially to goof around and take pictures. I tried to get my pic taken with Mike and Sully, but Sully left right as I got there (and BTW, where’s Roz?!?) I did get my picture with Sorcerer Mickey and took pics of the Up characters.

I also went over and did the American Idol show, which I was impressed with even as a non-Idol fan. The girl in the middle below won singing “natural woman”.

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I wraped up my MGM day at 1:30 by scoring another RnRC fastpass so we had two sets each of RnRC and TSM fastpasses for that evening. Here are some more pics from my shooting spree:

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Finally, what does it say about the state of things at WDW when a star, an icon, like Fozzie Bear is left hanging out in a trash can?!? OH THE HUMANITY!!

COMING UP - WE DO MGM TWICE IN A DAY!

 

[TigerLaw]

really, NO ONE is equally if not more offended at Fozzie Bear's treatment?!? (and yes, this is a shameless bump, but at least I tried to be creative with it!)

 

[TigerLaw]

Wednesday, May 27th (cont.)

As we last left the trip report, Melissa had came back home to try to use stormalong bay for the first time this trip, well, as Annie Lennox sang, “here’s comes the rain again!” Literally, within minutes of getting her wristband, SAB was closed down on account of thunder and rain in the area, so Melissa came back to the room right around the time I got back. We waited the weather out for a bit and then once it cleared out, headed over to the dunes cove “quiet” pool.

After swimming at the BCV pool, we had dinner at the cape may café clambake. The surprise that night was they had included crab legs as part of the meal! Apparently, this was like a 1 to 2 week test period. We had one of the two person tables next to the where they put the crab legs, and you would have thought this was people’s last meal ever given how that stuff was attacked! I tried them, but to me, they always have been too much work for the end result, so after playing with trying to get the legs open, I gave up. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy this meal however, as it has lots of great stuff for carnivores! I especially liked the carving station (which last trip I TOTALLY forgot about ever hitting up).

Once we were done with dinner, we came back to the room, changed, and drove back to MGM for the extra magic night hours (which were 8-11pm if I recall right). First, we headed over to Toy Story Mania to use up our two sets of FPs (in case they wouldn’t honor them after 8pm). Around 8pm, I got FPs for tower and then we tried to do Great Movie Ride, but it was like a 40 minute wait, so we passed and did Muppet Vision. I love the two old guys and even though I know most of the jokes by now, I still laugh at this every time! We headed back over to GMR, but it STILL had a 40 minute wait , so we went down sunset instead. RnRC wasn’t working, so I did Tower twice using my FPs and then RnRC was working again, so we used our two sets of FPs on that from earlier in the day. From there we head back over to GMR, where the line was finally like 15 minutes, so we did that and then head back to the resort.

Oh, someone had asked for BCV shots, so here are a few:

COMING UP - WILL EVERYTHING ACTUALLY BE OPEN AT THE MAGIC KINGDOM?

 

[TigerLaw]

Thursday, May 28th

Parks: MK & Epcot
Dining: Chef Mickey’s (brunch), San Angel Inn (dinner)

Thursday was another EMH morning at MK. The day started out perfectly sunny and fine (so you know what that means later!) This was supposed to be our big time to “do the mountains” but ONCE AGAIN there was issues! At the rope drop, we dashed over and I got FPs for splash. The idea was to then do Big Thunder, but it was down from like 8 to 8:45,so we just ended up doing splash a couple times in a row. (Also, there was an issue w. the FP machines, as they were spitting out return times of 10am instead of starting at 9am which is usually what they do form EMH). Anyway, after I realized that the splash FP return time wasn’t going to be any use to us b/c of our chef mickey ressie, I talked (OK, I b#llsh*ted) a CM into trading for a Big Thunder FP, so we ended up riding Big Thunder a couple times. We tried to go do jungle cruise again, but the lines were still bad, so we did Haunted Mansion and Pirates again I believe. (BTW, here’s a pic of donald in a costume I had never seen before, and if you have Donald, you need Daisy too right?!?)

We decided to head over a bit early to Chef Mickey’s so Melissa could get back to the pool (I went back to MK after “brunch”). Even with our ressies, we still had a good 15 minute-plus wait before we got seated. The breakfast itself was good, but we got little to no love from the characters (while they spent HOURS at a 20-person table next to us). I was going to blow it off, but I said something to one of the helpers, so got a few good pics in the end:

After brunch, Mel went back to the Beach Club to hit the pool and I went back to MK. I wanted to see the castle show, which I had never seen and got to it just as it was about to start. It was cute, but it was sunny and hot! Here are some pics:

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OK, so the castle shows ends, and I have like maybe 20 minutes until the new Move It! Shake It! Celebrate! Mini-parade, so I just hung around the hub, and it started to quickly look like storms were coming.

By the time the parade came up main street, it was raining to the point that they decided just to “do a lap” and drive the floats right back down main street instead of stopping in the hub for the dance party portion of the parade - here are some pics of that:

After having enough with getting rained on, I head back to Beach Club to meet up with Melissa. Here’s how things looked at the Beach Club (not much better)

Finally, I have to show my favorite picture from the whole trip just about - what you don’t see in this in that there are signs EVERYWHERE saying don’t feed the ducks - guess the ducks didn’t get the message or seem to mind?!?

COMING UP - ITS DRINK AROUND THE WORLD TIME AT EPCOT!

 

[KeepSwimmingDory]

Love the Frontierland Donald!

Wish we had done the character meet with the UP characters. Wonder how long they will be there?