You can take the girl out of Disney, BUT

[photographymom517]

You can add me to the list of people frustrated with DIS! I tried every browser too the other day & nothing was working. I actually didn't even bother trying to get on DIS for a couple weeks -- it was just driving me nuts!!!

I love those pics from the show!!! I love the Lorax!!! I have a cute story too -- since the new movie is coming out, the previews have been all over tv for a few weeks, maybe a month. Well every time it's on, I tell Luke "we have to go see the Lorax!!!" He hasn't gone to his first movie yet so I was hoping he'd go see it with me. Well, my dad took him and my nephew to Toys r Us and let them buy whatever they wanted. Guess what he bought?! He bought the Lorax DVD (the older version) for me! He kept telling my dad "This isn't for me, it's for my mommy. She wants to see this DVD."

Anyway, had to share! I thought of the story again when I saw your pics of the Lorax!

I really want that Thing 1 mug! I'll have to remember that for the future! The tank tops were cute too, did you end up buying one? Every time I say I'll go back for something, I never end up going back.

I love when the characters make a big fuss out of the kids outfits! Too cute!!! The pics of Thing 1 and Thing 2 with Claire are all great!!! Never apologize for posting too many pictures!

It seems like light years since I've been to Universal. Nothing you're posting about looks familiar at all! My memory must not be what it used to be!

Can't wait to read more!

 

[jenseib]

Universal is really fun and by the looks of it y'all had a great trip too! I'm going back in May and I can't wait...

We did. It was very different than our normal Disney trips, but we had a blast.

Love the character pics with Thing 1 and Thing 2! Claire looks really cute in her matching outfit!

I love that outfit of Claires. I am so happy I found it and ordered it and she was able to make it in time. It's comfy and cute.

You can add me to the list of people frustrated with DIS! I tried every browser too the other day & nothing was working. I actually didn't even bother trying to get on DIS for a couple weeks -- it was just driving me nuts!!!

I love those pics from the show!!! I love the Lorax!!! I have a cute story too -- since the new movie is coming out, the previews have been all over tv for a few weeks, maybe a month. Well every time it's on, I tell Luke "we have to go see the Lorax!!!" He hasn't gone to his first movie yet so I was hoping he'd go see it with me. Well, my dad took him and my nephew to Toys r Us and let them buy whatever they wanted. Guess what he bought?! He bought the Lorax DVD (the older version) for me! He kept telling my dad "This isn't for me, it's for my mommy. She wants to see this DVD."

Anyway, had to share! I thought of the story again when I saw your pics of the Lorax!

I really want that Thing 1 mug! I'll have to remember that for the future! The tank tops were cute too, did you end up buying one? Every time I say I'll go back for something, I never end up going back.

I love when the characters make a big fuss out of the kids outfits! Too cute!!! The pics of Thing 1 and Thing 2 with Claire are all great!!! Never apologize for posting too many pictures!

It seems like light years since I've been to Universal. Nothing you're posting about looks familiar at all! My memory must not be what it used to be!

Can't wait to read more!

I've never seen the old Lorax, but i did see it was on DVD...for an outragious price of course, because the new movie is out.
Now if I remember right, you've never been to Islands of Adventre, right? Or am I thinking of someone else? So far, all my pictures are from there.

We'll be moving on later in the afternoon.

 

[jenseib]

After a roam around the gift shop I ventured outside.

I roamed a bit and took a few pictures.

And I had read about this spot. A spot where you could get a good shot of the Discovery center at Jurassic park across the River. So I took a picture, of course!

And this one too.

Then a couple started talking to me for a bit. We were talking cameras. They had recently bought an SLR and were asking questions. After a bit of talking, I found they had just gotten married on Sat. (this is now Tuesday) and they were on their honeymoon. Everyone say AWWWWW!

I realized I better get back and see if my crew was waiting for me. I took a few more pictures on the way.

No sign of them yet. I went and looked at the wait time and it had change to 30 minutes. I wasn’t sure how long they had been gone, but I figured I wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

More pictures.

I decided to just sit in front of the gift shop and wait….and wait…and wait. Still no sign, but there was a churro stand right there, so I decided it was time for a snack and purchased one. The carts don’t take the AAA card…I asked though, just to be sure.

It was good, but it wasn’t fresh. But it did its job. I ate about half and then tucked it in my bag to save for Claire. And then I waited some more. I had to go potty, and I debated on leaving. I knew as soon as I did, they would come out, but finally I gave in and left my post and headed towards the bathroom.
I kid you not, as soon as I was in there I got the beep from Skip. (We have Nextel phones and use the two way talk feature, like a walkie talkie.)

I told him I was on my way and headed off towards Cat in the Hat. But they weren’t there! I beeped him back and asked where he was. He said he found a smoking section and was sitting there. His directions were terrible. He said he was under the trolley tracks behind a place with balls on top. Seriously? The tracks run all over, and as for a building with balls on top…no such thing. He elaborated by telling me he was sitting near tables with umbrellas…..no help at all. Finally I broke down and asked a TM where the nearest smoking section was and she pointed the way. It was actually very close to the bathrooms and not anywhere near Cat in the Hat. We had to of passed each other at some point.

Oh well, they were found (and not behind a building with balls on it either) and I pulled out the churro and gave it to Claire. It was a big hit with her.

I took a couple of pictures of the area.

And we pulled out Perry and took a picture of him too.

We now were going to make our way over to Jurassic Park. As we walked we noticed that the Poseidon’s Fury Show line wasn’t too long. It said 30 minutes, but hardly anyone was standing outside, so it couldn’t be too long of a wait, right? We followed a few people towards the line entrance and they asked what this was. The TM told them it was a walk through special effects show. That sounded OK and we decided to give it a shot, but evidently not fast enough, because the guy behind us asked me if we were going in. I said “ I think so” and kept moving. It kind of irked me , as we couldn’t move any faster than the people in front of us, but evidently this guy was special and needed to get in line a bit faster.
We stood in line outside and waited till they let us in. I took a couple of pictures while waiting.

It soon became apparent that this line was going anywhere fast. And being outside was HOT! We got in line at 11:40 and the sun was doing its magic! The line was getting very long behind us too. And then the express people…I think I cursed them a few times this trip. They just kept pouring in, which meant we would be waiting longer. Go away express pass people!!!

You can tell Claire was getting a bit impatient.

Speaking of impatient….”Mr. Impatient” behind us was going nuts. He kept checking his watch and wiggling around. It was just he and his son, and I am not sure if they had to meet up with others or not, but he surely did not want to wait….Now he would be a perfect candidate for Express pass.

Finally we were let into the building, only to find that this is another line as well. At least it was cool in there. And dark! I took this picture and then put my camera away.

This line barely moved at all. Finally we got to move up a bit and the railing split away from the wall a bit. Mr. Impatient took this as there were now 2 lines and dashed past me to go in the other line. It clearly wasn’t another line as the railing only was about a foot away from the wall and got narrower as it went on….and Mr. Impatient quickly found that out. Plus he was the only guy going that way. So he came back and clawed his way back through to get back in the same spot he was in before. Luckily the people behind him were nice enough to let him back in.

At about 12:15 a TM was walking up and down the express pass line and Mr. Impatient asked her how long it would be. She was foreign and very hard to understand, but from what I could gather they were running behind and it would be about 30 minutes from this point, also depending on how many express pass people came into line between now and then. She did tell us that the line would get much longer after the Sinbad show let out, which would be shortly. Oh Man! I was becoming Mrs. Impatient then. Mr. Impatient talked to his son and they got out of line. I guess they had more important things to do.

We stuck it out though. We could see the next door and we had already wasted 30 minutes here, why not another 30. Luckily the wait wasn’t quite that long and soon we made it to through the next door.
We let out a sigh of relief as they were counting people going through and we made it. We are famous for being stopped right before we can enter.
We had to wait a little longer in this next room, but it wasn’t too bad and where we standing at, we could actually sit on a ledge and take a load off our feet.

Finally it was our turn. The show is neat, not great, and not worth a long wait, but if you can do it with a short wait, I recommend it. You go from room to room with different scenes of special effects and a story about Poseidon. We have a guide that takes you through each scene and interacts with the show.
The last room there is a fight with Poseidon and his rival. Whose name totally escapes me? But I had to laugh, because he looked like a Power Ranger. I didn’t know there were Power Rangers back in the time of the Gods, but maybe I’m wrong? LOL! As we exited Skip told Claire that Poseidon was Ariel’s father. I quickly said no, King Triton is. So we figure he must be her grandfather then. No clue if any of this being true, but Claire accepted it and said if she saw Ariel she would ask.

 

[jenseib]

It had been 1 hour and 10 minutes from the time we got in line till we walked out of the show. Like I said, it was neat, but I would never wait that long for it.

I shot one picture as we headed out.

We were still on a mission to get to Jurassic Park. That means you have to go through the WWoHP to get there. And once again, I was clicking away with my camera.

I tried to get some pictures of the windows….not a very easy task with the glare.

Nope, not so good, let’s get closer and see if that works.

No, not at all, but it’s a nice picture of the reflection of the buildings behind me.

And because you can never have enough castle pictures, I took a few more of those as well….except it was crowded and I got Mr. Baseball Caps head in it.

Let’s try this again.

Somewhere along the way we lost Skip. It was very crowded and really hard to stay together. I kept looking back for his green shirt, but I couldn’t see him.

A side not on his green shirt… Skip doesn’t have a lot of nice clothes. He’s a dairy farmer and he wears cruddy clothes everyday pretty much. And then when he does dress up, he tends to wear the same few things over and over. I actually will rotate clothes on his closet rack so he can’t find some things that he wears over and over so we can have some variety. But he still seems to find them. LOL!
Last year when we were planning our cruise, and at that point, Skip was planning to come with us; I had been out shopping and scored 3 T-shirts for $1 each on clearance at JC Pennys. I got him a green, a yellow, and a turquoise blue one. I then put them into hiding. T-shirts suffer a not so nice fate at our house. He will put a nice one on for tractor pulling and by the end of the night it has grease and crud all over it. I didn’t want these shirts to suffer the same fate. When he pulled this shirt out that morning to wear, he was clueless. “Hey, where did these t-shirts come from?” LOL! “Oh, I got them last year on clearance and have had them packed away for our next vacation”. LOL!

So back to our Trip Report…..We lost Skip, but we kept going. I beeped him and I think he said he stopped off in the bathroom. So we told him to make his way out of Hogsmeade and we would be waiting there.
I decided to take a picture of Claire while we waited. It’s a hard thing to do because EVERYONE there had the same thought and it was crowded.

I even took a picture of another couple while we waited.

And then I took some more pictures.

We spotted this boat. It appears that someone must’ve been cleaning the river, though we never spotted the human doing so.

We walked across the bridge because it was just too busy waiting there and spotted the arch!

And the Jurassic Park music was playing….just to get you in the right mood.

No Claire, don’t go in there, there are dinosaurs that will eat you as a snack! Evidently she didn’t care!

We waited a little longer and soon we spotted a speck of green coming our way.

Daddy’s here!

On to Jurassic Park! Well…..kind of sort of…..

When you enter Jurassic park, you can see Hogwarts from a different angle….and you can never have enough castle shots, right?

 

[Caretames1]

Finally! I haven't been here too often and even then I couldn't post! I agree the DIS has been awful! Slow, not loading, showing errors! UGH!

Ok, let me go back...



Kadence is making me go to you tube after this to "go" on all those rides in Seuss land. You do have me thinking that maybe US, may be a nice day trip next year.

All your photos are so colorful! I really like the shot of the Castle and Poseidon's face.


LOL on being told to put your camera away! John got yelled at at the Laugh floor in 2009.

I swear the way Skip gives directions is hilarious! I'm quilty of "Hey, turn left old oak tree and then right by the Johnson place!"


Claire looked very happy with Thing 1&2, and of course the pictures made better by her outfit!


John's t-shirts do get stained, not by grease but food! He has a hole in his lip or something!



Ok, I hope that was all, Great updates!!!

 

[jenseib]

Finally! I haven't been here too often and even then I couldn't post! I agree the DIS has been awful! Slow, not loading, showing errors! UGH!

Ok, let me go back...



Kadence is making me go to you tube after this to "go" on all those rides in Seuss land. You do have me thinking that maybe US, may be a nice day trip next year.

All your photos are so colorful! I really like the shot of the Castle and Poseidon's face.


LOL on being told to put your camera away! John got yelled at at the Laugh floor in 2009.

I swear the way Skip gives directions is hilarious! I'm quilty of "Hey, turn left old oak tree and then right by the Johnson place!"


Claire looked very happy with Thing 1&2, and of course the pictures made better by her outfit!


John's t-shirts do get stained, not by grease but food! He has a hole in his lip or something!



Ok, I hope that was all, Great updates!!!

I'm fighting Dis a lot too. Just to post those and then edit the few spelling mistakes was a chore.

Skip gets food on his shirts too. And he thinks you can wear a shirt more than once...even if it is dirty. He just hangs everything back up. So now I try to go through the closet after I know he's wore something and check it. Sure enough, about 98% of the time he has some food on his shirt or pants. His problem is he uses his clothes for a napkin too...Now I know where Claire gets that.
It is very colorful there. I have to say that the Jurassic Park area we are coming up on in my next installment is probably the most boring for pictures. It was more plain. Not ugly, but no where near as exciting as many of the other areas of IoA.

Youtube was great to prepare Claire. But also it put some unneeded fears in her about some other rides, as you will see later this day.

Well after fighting Dis, I suppose I should go and clean up the house a bit and do some laundry.

 

[annmarieda]

great update! i love the pics that you can never have too many castle pics. so true!

sorry you had such a long wait for Poseidon's adventure. seems like that was the attraction we had the most unbearable wait for too.

 

[dizneeat]

an update!

I agree on the line for Poseidon's fury being long .... and we have only ever done it in the Express pass lane (sorry, I am making myself pretty small not to be cursed on! )

It's funny, as some of the park looks super familiar and then the HP part looks like a totally different park - guess we will need to head back there sooner or later.

Had to when you talked about Skip's new T-shirts. How funny is that.
And men and directions ...... ..... don't get me started!

 

[micandminforever]

You did a great job capturing the mood of Dr. Seuss in your pictures. They are so colorful.

I agree the Poseidon's Fury is ok but not worth waiting in a long line to see.

 

[jenseib]

great update! i love the pics that you can never have too many castle pics. so true!

sorry you had such a long wait for Poseidon's adventure. seems like that was the attraction we had the most unbearable wait for too.

I don't know what the deal was, but they totally had that wait time wrong on the sign. We wouldn't have stopped if we knew it would've been that long.But now we know what is in there, which is good too.

an update!

I agree on the line for Poseidon's fury being long .... and we have only ever done it in the Express pass lane (sorry, I am making myself pretty small not to be cursed on! )

It's funny, as some of the park looks super familiar and then the HP part looks like a totally different park - guess we will need to head back there sooner or later.

Had to when you talked about Skip's new T-shirts. How funny is that.
And men and directions ...... ..... don't get me started!

Skip never complained about the express pass people....I think he knew if he did, I would tell him to go get some...or I told you so.

Was the HP area part of the lost continent before? I know I read about it awhile back, but can't remember what it was.

You did a great job capturing the mood of Dr. Seuss in your pictures. They are so colorful.

I agree the Poseidon's Fury is ok but not worth waiting in a long line to see.

Thanks. It's a fun area. It made me cheery and just smile. Poseidon was ok. If the line was short, I'd do it again, but not much more than 10 minutes.

 

[dizneeat]

Skip never complained about the express pass people....I think he knew if he did, I would tell him to go get some...or I told you so.

Was the HP area part of the lost continent before? I know I read about it awhile back, but can't remember what it was.

For us the Express Pass was one of the main reasons to stay at a UO resort. And we used it whenever we could.

I THINK it was part of the lost continent. We have not been in a while and right now I cannot put my finger on it.
The only thing I remember pretty clearly is that when they built the area they cut off a huge chunk around the dragons and you had to take a d-tour. I was NOT happy, as it meant more walking in the blazing August sun.

 

[jenseib]

Hey everyone, I wanted to remind you that I have a PTR going on as well and invite those who didn't know to come on over and help with the planning.

It is HERE. The trip planning for the cruise starts on page 16, post number 231.

 

[jenseib]

For us the Express Pass was one of the main reasons to stay at a UO resort. And we used it whenever we could.

I THINK it was part of the lost continent. We have not been in a while and right now I cannot put my finger on it.
The only thing I remember pretty clearly is that when they built the area they cut off a huge chunk around the dragons and you had to take a d-tour. I was NOT happy, as it meant more walking in the blazing August sun.

I believe that is what I read too. I remember people complaining about the detour and I know Dueling dragons is now Dragon Challenge, just re themed, I guess.

 

[jenseib]

Wow! Dis is even worse today. I am constantly logged out over and over and I have not gotten one notification today for any posts. I guess I have to do it the old fashion way.

 

[Wicket's Mom]

Skip is the same as Bob when it concerns his clothes. He will wear a shirt several times before it's put in the wash. Usually after I yell at him!Whenever we travel I usually have to wash his clothes because he puts dirty one back on the hangers.

The Dis cut me off Friday as they were working on the site. I did get my color function back.

 

[jenseib]

Skip is the same as Bob when it concerns his clothes. He will wear a shirt several times before it's put in the wash. Usually after I yell at him!Whenever we travel I usually have to wash his clothes because he puts dirty one back on the hangers.

The Dis cut me off Friday as they were working on the site. I did get my color function back.

Yes. Yesterday was awful for Dis. I am now getting emails again, so I hope it's back on track.
We'll see how easy this next update goes.

 

[jenseib]

We are now venturing into Jurassic Park. And the first scary thing we see!


The Coke Watering Hole. LOL

We did actually see some dinosaurs on the dinosaur tour though! (if you’ve seen the movie, you might get that line)

Claire was hesitant about standing near this jeep, after all there was a T-Rex popping out behind it…but basically I forced her to do it.

On towards the Discovery Center.

I told Skip we were going in here……Why? What’s in there? Is there a ride?....

I just want to go in…OK?

I have to say this was a bit disappointing to me. I had read it looked very much like the one in the movie…but to me, it had similarities, but not the same.

I told Skip and Claire to stay at the top and I would run down and take their picture. And now that I think about it, I have no clue what was on the top floor. It must’ve not been too interesting if we didn’t browse it.

I must also mention that at this point I was getting hungry. I tend to get grumpy when I am hungry, but my goal was to eat at City Walk somewhere, so I wanted to get Jurassic Park off my list and then we planned to head out and eat…..but in the meantime, I was a little grouchy.

These dinosaurs would’ve met their match if they approached me when I was hungry.

Notice this guys name is Beasaur….I think that is because you would BE sore if you got bit by him.

This area was cute with a couple of dinosaurs set up.

They had these little devices that you could look through and tilt the heads back and forth or up and down. I think only this guys device actually worked. We tried the other two and saw nothing and could barely get the head to move at all.

There was also an area with interactive things to do. Like picking out an egg and then it would do some sort of ultrasound and you could see what type of dinosaur was in there. Sadly this area was crowded and I didn’t have the patience to wait long. We watched one girl do it and the device didn’t work. We watched another person do it and again it wasn’t working properly, so we gave up.

Claire really wanted to play with this stuff and looking back, I really feel bad we didn’t spend much time there. I said we would come back and we never did make it. I rushed us around because of the rumbly in my tumbly.
I took a couple more pictures of the area behind the glass where the “Dr.’s” were working.

And then we headed out the back entrance there.

We took in the views across the lake.

 

[jenseib]

We then made our way up a hill around the building to get back to the front.

Another Jeep………which Claire again refused to stand by.

Hey look! There’s Hogwarts again.

We moved on and I took a few pictures. We were looking for the River Adventure.

And we found it, but to our disappointment the line was about an hour long. At this point Claire said she would NOT be riding that ride at all. I never did find out if they had a single riders line, but if they had, we probably would’ve done it that way later on. Claire had watched the Youtube video before going and remarked about how fake everything was. But NOW she was telling Skip that this ride has dinosaurs that pop out at you and it’s really scary. LOL. With the line being so long, my hungry tummy, the extremely hot weather, and Claire’s desire NOT to ride it, we skipped it.
This is one ride I regret never getting to ride.

And once again, we started walking and taking pictures.

We found the Pteranodon Riders and Camp Jurassic. The Riders had a 50 minute wait…no thanks (and you must have a child with you to be able to ride it as an adult), and I wasn’t about to spend time in a playground…no matter how neat it might be.

Off we go! My mission now is food.

As we entered Toon Lagoon, Skip suggested we just stop and get a quick service something or other.
The dino in me roared! “NO! I want something REAL, like nachos, and I want to sit out of the sun!”

He didn’t ask that question again……

We stopped and watched this for a few minutes. Claire loved it.

I thought this area was very colorful as well and I did keep taking pictures, but the sun was really shining hard, so half the time I just clicked and hoped I got something.

Claire was starting to do a little whining herself. She wanted to get wet. We came upon this…..Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge-Rats Barges.

They decided to take the plunge. I declined and went and sat down. As soon as I did, I realized that Skip still had the backsack and it would probably come back soaking wet, along with his phone. Oh Well, I couldn’t see them and I knew they weren’t about to get back out of line.

I took a quick sit down and took a few pictures of the Olive (a water play area).

That got boring quickly, so I went off to take some pictures elsewhere.

This is not my family, but this is the ride they were on.

I took quite a few pictures of this area, but sadly never went into any of the buildings. I would like to explore here a little more in the future as well.

It was like walking right through the Sunday Papers Comic section.

 

[mickeystoontown]

Darn the Dis! I haven't been getting email notifications and I'm behind on all of my subscribed threads. Let's see........what the heck did I want to comment on? I know I've forgotten a lot of what I wanted to say. I'm glad that you talked Claire into posing with Thing 1 and Thing 2 because the pictures turned out great.

I hate that the special effects building thingie was a long wait and turned out to be something that really wasn't worth the wait. But, like you said, at least now you can check that off your list of things to see and do.

Shoot, I can't remember what else. Oh, wait, I wish Claire hadn't backed out of the Jurassic Park ride. I've heard that it's pretty fun. I am a fan of the Jurassic Park movies so I think we would have enjoyed it.

I guess that's all I can remember. Hopefully the Dis will go back to normal soon.

 

[jenseib]

Darn the Dis! I haven't been getting email notifications and I'm behind on all of my subscribed threads. Let's see........what the heck did I want to comment on? I know I've forgotten a lot of what I wanted to say. I'm glad that you talked Claire into posing with Thing 1 and Thing 2 because the pictures turned out great.

I hate that the special effects building thingie was a long wait and turned out to be something that really wasn't worth the wait. But, like you said, at least now you can check that off your list of things to see and do.

Shoot, I can't remember what else. Oh, wait, I wish Claire hadn't backed out of the Jurassic Park ride. I've heard that it's pretty fun. I am a fan of the Jurassic Park movies so I think we would have enjoyed it.

I guess that's all I can remember. Hopefully the Dis will go back to normal soon.

Glad I wasn't the only one. Are you getting them now? I started getting them last night.
I was bummed we never did Jurassic Park rive adventure....something to look forward to next time.