Wookies and Hippogriffs and RAIN Oh MY!!

[fallen_angel727]

Alrighty so here is my TR, hopefully it will do better than my PTR with myself as its only reader

Anywho...we've just returned from 7 nights/8 days at WDW and it was wonderful. There were Wookies, and Wizards and more rain than I've ever experienced in a week and I wouldn't have changed anything...well except maybe the rain. All in all it was a great time with myself and my best friend who is a first timer!!

Now for the introductions...

First we have Lisa, clearly a child a heart judging by her reaction to EVERYTHING at Disney lol. Here she is with Stitch (more on this surprising meet and greet later)

And then there's me (Ashley). This is my 5th trip with hopefully 2 more in the next year. Anyway, here's me during my favourite moment of the trip (more about that later too)

So on with our adventure...

I will be splitting this into chapters (and if anyone oculd PM me instructions on how to link these to the pages it would be greatly appreciated) and adding dinning reviews when necessary

1.Departure/Arrival
2. Epcot, Lisa's first Disney experience
3. Animal Kingdom/DTD, an unexpected DHS trip and the first of many torrential downpours
4. Magic Kingdom and more rain
5. Star Wars Weekend
6. Wizards, Hippogriffs, dragons and butterbeer...oh and more rain
7. Water parks and thunderstorms
8. A return to DHS
9. Worst part of the trip...leaving
10. Notes

Thanks for reading!!

...hmm if anyone can tell me how to rotate the pics that would be great. I did in photobucket but it apparently didn't work

 

[fallen_angel727]

Now a quick background, we live in Canada, Windsor Ontario to be exact which boarders Detroit MI, so that's where we would fly from (side note: I was amazed all week at the number of people amazed that we were from canada and only a 2 hour flight away, MANY people whoi we talked to said they figured 5 hours minimum? ). Anyway our plane was to leave at 10:35am, but my DH had to drop us off at the airport before work, meaning we had to leave to get Lisa by 6:00am. No problem I was wide awake by 3:30am. Afer tossing and turning until 5:00 I finally got up showered and packed some last minute things. DH was up at 5:50 and tossed on some pants, and we were off.

Well almost, we had to stop for gas and red bull, and we made it to Lisa's by 6:07 sharp lol. After loading her stuff up we were off. We had a smooth boarder crossing and were at the airport, checked in, through security and at our gate by 7:30. Now to sit and wait...or so we though.

At 8:00 a delta worker came over and asked the small group at our terminal (15 or so people) if anyone would be interested in taking the 8:20 flight to Orlando instead of waiting. Well the crowd consisting of children, their parents, mickey ears, Disney toys and t-shirts galore, therefore it was safe to assume we were all heading to the same place and there would be a fight to get these spots. WRONG! Apparently none of these people had DME transportation, because we head a lot of discussion regarding how to pick up checked bags when they got there. Well fine with me, we volunteered, had our boarding passes changed and were in the air by 8:30! Oh and the plane was empty...you heard it, empty..20-25 people tops! Great start with some pixie dust if you ask me

Lisa and I ready for take off...

We landed right on time 2 hours and 4 minutes later at 10:34 (1 minute before our original flight was to take off). We raced to DME, boarded the empty bus that was waiting there already (more good luck ) waited about 10 minutes and left with a bus consisting of about 20 people. We had a wonderful driver (Bill Murphy I believe his name was), we Made a quick stop at CBR to drop off 2 travellers and the rest of us were on our way to POP. We arrived by about 12:30...12:20 maybe even.

Lisa and I went to check in, and to my surprise our room was ready!!! MOre luck, I couldn't believe it. Not only that by my request for a room on an upper floor of the 50's section over looking Hourglass Lake was granted and we had a wonderful view of the water and the mermaid building of Disney's Art of Animation...

Little Mermaid Building from our door...

Finding Nemo Building...

After dropping of our bags we were on our way to Epcot and it wasn't even 1:00 yet (technically we shouldn't even have landed yet )

 

[natebenma]

I'll join in!!!

Good start.

Looking forward to reading about your Disney/Star Wars/Dark Side trip!!!

Dee

 

[fallen_angel727]

I'll join in!!!

Good start. I have a few things to do here, but later tonight I can post the linking instructions. I wrote them up for the Beach Club FAQ thread.

Looking forward to reading about your Disney/Star Wars/Dark Side trip!!!

Dee

WELCOME

i'll be starting our Epcot adventure chapter tonight also when I get home from Zumba

 

[natebenma]

How Do I Hyperlink a post?

How do I go from this: Stormalong Bay Pool Complex http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=44296451&postcount=2

To this? Stormalong Bay Pool Complex

People can click on this and it will bring them to the post about SAB.

To hyperlink (that is, show just the words that you want to click on instead of the link address above, you need to add the following symbols. I am going to replace brackets [ with braces { or otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see what I was typing

add {url= before the address
add } after the address
Type the name of the chapter
Highlight the name of the chapter you have just typed, then use the symbols to underline and color (Blue is commonly used)
End the post with {/url}

So your line will look like:
{url=http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=44296451&postcount=2}{U}{COLOR="Blue"}Stormalong Bay Pool Complex{/COLOR}{/U}{/url}


Note, you can get the http address by either copying and pasting from the address line or at the post, you can right mouse click on the post number.

Let me know if you need clarification on any of the steps.

 

[fallen_angel727]

Thanks so much!!

HA! It worked...awesome =)

 

[reyasmommy]

Thanks for posting a picture of the Little Mermaid Building. We'll be staying there in November, and it's nice to see the progress.
A friend of mine was at WDW last week and she said the rain was crazy! Sorry you had to deal with all the wetness! Can't wait to see and hear more.

 

[fallen_angel727]

Thanks for posting a picture of the Little Mermaid Building. We'll be staying there in November, and it's nice to see the progress.
A friend of mine was at WDW last week and she said the rain was crazy! Sorry you had to deal with all the wetness! Can't wait to see and hear more.

Hello and If you stick around I'll have a bunch of pics from Art of Animation, the Little Mermaid section was a bit of a hike for us but I have lots of pics of the Nemo section and 1 or 2 of both Cars and Lion King sections

 

[fallen_angel727]

Hello Everyone...now, where did I leave off???? Ahh yes it was 1:00pm and we were on our way to Epcot.

We went to the Pick up and again...no one was there. So we waited about 10 minutes and we boarded the bus to Epcot -

now let me stop here and say I have hear HORROR stories about the Disney buses and I just want to mention that we never had any problems with people being rude, or buses being over-crowded or anything like that. Anyway back to the trip

- we arrived just a few minutes later. W hadn't even reached the gates yet and who did we spot??? (again with VERY minimal people around him???)

Well after Lisa's first Character encounter (and her favourite character at that) she was excited to get going. So we headed toward the turnstiles and made our way in. The sky was looking pretty gray by this time, but we didn't care, onward to Sorin'. We made it up to The Land pavilion before I remmeber that TT was down and Sorin might not be a great idea at this time of the afternoon, but we had EMH tonight so not to worry we would get on eventually.

We made a small detour from there over to Journey into Imagination. Now I had never ridden this before and obviously, since it was her first visit, neither had Lisa. So on we went after about a 5 minute wait. It was a cute ride, I enjoyed it. I don't think Lisa did though, she's more of a BIG rides kinda person so these type of rides were fairly boring to her.

After Imagination we headed over to Mission Space, at this point it started raining a bit so we detoured to Spaceship Earth to get out of the rain (though it wasn't raining too hard). There was about a 15 minute wait and off we went. Again I loved it, Lisa not so much (I told her she HAD to go on it because she couldn't go to Disney and not go inside the Epcot ball). After it was still raining a bit so we headed over to The Seas with Nemo and Friends. There was a bit of a wait but it wasn't raining hard so we joined the line

After Nemo we decided to finally head over to Mission: Space. But first a stop at Ice Station Cool, I had raved for weeks about how good this one certain drink from Italy was and how Lisa just absolutely had to try it...well...

and she'd kill me if she knew this was up here so *shhh*

So after Lisa tricking a few unsuspecting people, including a woman who spit it back out like in the cartoons , we were off to Mission: Space. We did the Orange side and had about a 15 minute wait. I think Lisa liked this ride MUCH better than the others.

After Mission: Space, I realized it was about 4:00pm and we had 6:20 dinner reservations at Teppan Edo. So off to the World Showcase we went.