"Feel the Magic" Trip - 11/30-12/7, 2002: Complete About This Page:

[maggieworkman]

Cast: DH (34), me (33), DD#1 (10) and DD#2 (7). We have all been to MK twice for one day each.
Dates: Nov. 26 - 29 = driving days and time with in-laws for Thanksgiving. Nov. 30 - Dec. 7 at WDW!
Resort: Port Orleans - Riverside
Reason: We were going to be in Florida for Thanksgiving to visit the in-laws, so I convinced my husband to add a trip to WDW.

Pre-WDW

In the 11 years that we have been married, we have never really taken a family vacation. At first we were poor graduate students and couldn’t afford the time or money for a trip. After we got “real” jobs, we were far away from all family and spent our vacation time visiting relatives. This year I insisted that we take a family trip. Our girls are getting older and I convinced my husband that our days of fun family trips are numbered. Soon it will be too “uncool” for the girls to be seen with their parents. Or they will want to bring friends along and that defeats the purpose of a family trip.

Since we were going to be in Florida for Thanksgiving, I talked my DH into spending a week of our vacation in WDW. This wasn’t an easy thing to do because the in-laws gave me all sorts of trouble (you know, unappreciative daughter-in-law, etc.). They weren’t happy about us spending only 2 days with them.

Anyway, off to the Disney stuff …

Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2002 - Friday, Nov. 29, 2002
After months of planning (with much help from you all) the day was finally here. I had just given my last final exam, my husband was off, and the girls had a half day of school. So we picked the girls up from their schools around 2 pm and headed out of Chicago directly. Just as we were leaving, it began to snow pretty heavy. Yay! We were heading to the sun! We drove until approximately midnight and stayed in a Fairfield Inn in Smyrna, TN (a suburb of Nashville). We got up the next morning and left around 9 am - after eating from their continental breakfast bar. We arrived in Tampa, FL that night around 10 pm at my MIL’s house. We visited a little and went to bed. The next day was Thanksgiving and we did all the usual Thanksgiving stuff - ate, visited, fished, boated. I didn’t fish or boat, but spent the day looking through all the ads for the Day-After-Thanksgiving sales. On Friday I woke up at 5 am so I could be at Kay-B-Toys as soon as possible to get one of those Fur-Real-Cats. But I didn’t get one. They were gone by 4:30 am!!!! The women and girls spent the day shopping. The boys went out on a fishing boat. We then packed up our stuff, put the girls to bed and got ready for Disney!

Next installment, "Do you fell the magic, honey??"

[ 07-15-2003, 09:26 AM: Message edited by: maggieworkman ]

[maggieworkman]

Day 1: MK. “Feel the Magic”

The plan was to wake up early enough for the 2 hour drive to Orlando and make our 10:30 am PS for Chef Mickey. Well, this didn’t quite happen. We did wake up early, but it took us longer than we expected. There was some traffic along the way. Apparently there was an accident along side the road and everyone had to slow down to look. So, we pulled onto WDW property at 10:30 am exactly. We decided to not try to make our PS and just check in at the hotel - Port Orleans/Riverside. I was a little bummed, but I didn’t let it get me down. I was going to have a positive outlook on the trip. Maybe we could fit in Chef Mickey’s later in the week??

We found Port Orleans Riverside with no problem using the map in the back of the Passporter. We checked in. There was no wait. Although we had a CM who was “Earning her Ears” and so she went very slow and followed all the rules (“May I see your AP for the AP rate on your rooms?” etc.) She often had to ask the helper CM who stood 4 steps away questions. Although she wasn’t too bad or too slow. We had requested Magnolia Bend. My girls wanted to stay in the “Mansions”. We got Parterre Place. This is the building that I liked the looks of best so I was happy. Our room was right on the other side of the bridge from the Main Building. I personally think we were closer to the main building than the Magnolia Terrace. But we weren’t closer to the pool. But that didn’t matter because it was really too cold to swim much. She found us a room that was ready, so we drove over to the building and unloaded our stuff. We ate lunch in the food court: pepperoni pizza, philly cheesesteak, chicken strips and garlic bread sticks. We also bought 2 of the refillable mugs. This totalled $44.56. It seems expensive, but that includes the $20 for the mugs. So lunch was more like $24.

Then we headed to the MK. We took the Disney bus. It came in just a couple minutes, so we were happy. The girls had their lanyards on with 10 pins each that I bought at the Disney store for $2. I should have bought more, because they quickly traded most of their pins. But I wasn’t sure if they would get into trading. They can be shy sometimes, so I didn’t know if they would actually want to trade. Boy! What did I know. They would have traded with every CM they saw. I had a few pins on our backpack, but these were pins I wouldn’t trade. I had a goofy “Teachers” pin, a Mickey “Illinois” pin, a Disney club Tinkerbell pin, and a Mickey with the USA flag star pin.

We went to guest services to activate our AP vouchers we bought at the Disney store. We also bought DD#2 an AP. We hadn’t purchased hers at the Disney store because I had an old ticket that had the value for one day on it and I wanted to apply this to the AP. They could only do this at the Parks and not at the Disney Store. All of this only took about 5 minutes. There was no line and the CM was very efficient.

We walked into MK and the first thing we did was some character signing. There weren’t too many people in the lines (2 or 3 in each line). Then the girls wanted to trade some pins with the CM. DD#1 had decided to collect tinkerbell pins (or Peter Pan) and DD#2 was collecting Cinderella. I made them pick a theme so they weren’t just randomly trading pins with the CMs. It was getting close to parade time so we found a spot along main street. It was pretty bright, so I went into the Emporium and bought everyone hats. DD#1 got a tinkerbell hat, DD#2 got a “Princess” hat, and DH got a “grumpy” hat. ($54 [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] ) I had purchased a grumpy sweatshirt for him at the Disney Store before we left, so this matched. We watched the Share a Dream Come true parade. The girls wouldn’t get up and dance with the characters, but it was still fun. Then we went off to do the Carousel of Progress and Tommorowland Transit rides. I wanted to do these today because I had read somewhere that they were only going to be open for the Thanksgiving weekend and would be closed the rest of our trip. But, as far as I could tell, the TTA was open our whole trip. I bought a Magical moments pin ($15) at one of the carts outside Carousel of Progress. My DH didn’t see the need, but didn’t protest. When I put it on, he said, “I sure hope you feel the magic.” So that became sort of our theme for the vacation. Whenever I bought something he felt was unnecessary or kind of expensive, or when he paid for some of those character meals, he just kept repeating to himself, “Feel the magic. Feel the magic.” Although, as the trip progressed, he became as absorbed in the Magic as I was. For instance, he thought it was a waste of money for me to buy those $2 pins at the Disney Store. But only one day later I caught him looking at the pins on the pin carts and checking out CM’s lanyards. He would often say, “Hey girls, that CM has a lanyard. Go see if they have a Cinderella or Tinkerbell pin.”

We got FPs for Buzz and went back to the hotel for jackets and dinner. We were planning on staying for Spectromagic and I thought it was getting a little chilly. We ate a Burger, Philly Cheesesteak (me this time), garlic breadstics, mac and cheese, a fruit cup and dirt ‘n worms cup. This came to $24.64. The girls didn’t like the mac and cheese. But the fruit cup was popular and they ate this several times.

Back to MK. We used our fast passes for Buzz. I don’t know how she did it, but our 7 year old got 999,999 points and was a Galactic Hero!! The rest of us didn’t do so well. DH got 462,000, I got 118,000 and DD#1 got 28,000. DD#1 and I claimed to be “Galactic Zeros”. Then on to the Raceway. I rode with DD#1. After the ride I told her she wouldn’t be getting her liscense any time soon. For the whole time we oscillated between bumping into the rail on the left to bumping into the rail on the right. I had such a head ache. We then rode Cinderellas carrousell and it’s a small world with no waits. Someone had given us 6 FPs for Peter Pan when we were reentering the park this afternoon. They were leaving and couldn’t use them. So we rode Peter Pan next when the FP window opened. We only used 4 of them and no one wanted to ride again, so we handed them off to a mom and her little 4 year old who were just entering the standby line. Love those Regifts! Then I shuffled them off to the Tomorrowland bridge to watch Tinkerbell’s flight and the fireworks. They had no idea about Tink’s flight, so they were really surprised! DD#1 loved it. I was a little surprised too because I had thought that tinkerbell would be a laser light or some sort of projection. I never expected it would be a real person (at least I think she was real.) But we couldn’t see the fireworks from there, so we ran into tomorrowland close to Fantasy land (by the tea cups) and watched from there. Then we rode space mountain. It was getting to be time for Spectromagic, so we found a spot and camped out. The girls instantly began asking for those neon sticks. But I was prepared. I had purchased some neon necklaces on clearance at the craft store before our trip. They were satisfied with that. In fact, they liked the idea that theirs was a little different.

We went back to the room. Mousekeeping had made a little girl doll out of washcloths that she decorated with a couple of stickers. The girls thought that was so cute. Everyone fell quickly to sleep. Everyone but me, that is. I set out all our clothes for the next day, set out the Mousekeeping envelope, replenished the unused rolls of films, etc.

Memories of our first day: The weather was: T-shirts during day, sweatshirts at night. The best thing that happened today: Someone gave us 6 FP for Peter Pan as we were reentering the park in the afternoon. The worst thing that happened today: missing PS for Chef Mickey. The funniest thing that happened today: DD#1’s driving on the Raceway. Today we tried: Space Mountain … and the result was … 4 thumbs up. The most magical moment today was: Tinkerbell’s flight and the fireworks.

Next Installment, "Happy to be Grumpy"

[ 12-09-2002, 07:16 PM: Message edited by: maggieworkman ]

[tikibird]

Sounds like a great start to your family vacation! Hope you were able to make it to Chef Mickey's at some point along the way.

Next installment please! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Ursunique2001]

Sounds like a great time had by all so far.

[Diz]

Originally posted by maggieworkman:
Whenever I bought something he felt was unnecessary or kind of expensive, or when he paid for some of those character meals, he just kept repeating to himself, “Feel the magic. Feel the magic.”

<font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS, Arial">LOL! Husbands!

Originally posted by maggieworkman:
I was a little surprised too because I had thought that tinkerbell would be a laser light or some sort of projection. I never expected it would be a real person (at least I think she was real.)

<font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS, Arial">Yup, Tink is real...but she is a he! Tinkerbell is played by a guy...atleast that's what I've been told. Does anyone know if this is true or not?

Your trip sounds so wonderful...I'm sure you could "feel the magic", I can by just reading your TR. Can't wait to hear more!

[ 12-11-2002, 10:47 AM: Message edited by: Diz9 ]

[TINKN]

Great TR! Looking forward to more.

I thought that Tink was played by a woman and she has worked in that position for many years. I read that somewhere. Maybe I'm wrong.

[maggieworkman]

Day 2: “Happy to be Grumpy”: MK EE, Cinderella Breakfast, AK
The phone rang at 6:30 am with the famous Mickey call. I knew to hit the speaker button and let it play on speaker phone. But at 6:30 am I couldn’t find the $%^&*# speaker button. So I picked it up and handed it to the only person within arms reach - my husband. He enjoyed it, but I would have rather it been one of the girls. Oh well, there are 6 more chances. I made him get up and shower first so that I could rest a little longer. But not too much more because we had PS for Cinderella at 8:20. There was NO WAY we were going to miss these. My DD#2 was Cinderella for Halloween so we brought her costume along. But she didn’t want to wear it this morning. OK, I said, trying not to be disappointed. But she wore her Cinderella Tshirt. We were running a little later than I would have liked. We had to wait for a bus to MK. It was EE, so lots of people were waiting too. We pulled into the MK bus unloading area about 8:10. WE didn’t want to miss it, so the girls and I ran ahead andleft my husband with the backpack to get searched. But when we went to the gate, the wanted to see our room key for EE. I panicked remembering the room keys were in the backpack with my DH. I pleaded with the lady to let us in because we had PS for Cinderella. She was like, “Oh, OK. Go right in.” Duhhh. I forgot they had to let you in if you have breakfast PS. So we race down mainstreet, bobbing and weaving through the crowd. We finally get there right about 8:20. And who do we see standing at the doorway - Prince Charming … oh no, that’s my husband. We all exclaim, “How did you get here before us?” I check in at the podium and we are seated right away. The castle was gorgeous. The windows and the decorations were so great. We got our picture taken in front of the suit of armor. The princesses came around and it was really fun. They all have such great things to say. Aurora point out my daughter’s Cinderella’s shirt and Cinderella Barbie doll. She asks if she has met “her friend” Cinderella yet? If you see her, tell her she said hi. I thnk Snow White was my personal favorite. Her squeaky voice and hehehe laugh is so cute. She also holds her hands in such a way that she really seems like Snow White. As I mentioned in my Day 1 report, I had bought my husband a Happy to Be Grumpy sweatshirt at the Disney store. It has those words with a big picture of grumpy standing with his arms crossed. When Snow White saw this, she said, “Now Grumpy, shouldn’t you be at work today??? Tsk Tsk.” My girls LOVED it and laughed about that all day. Several times throughout the day (like maybe a dozen) people would come up to my husband and comment on his sweatshirt. “Oh that is such a great shirt.” “Oh, I need to get that for my husband.” “Where’d you get that shirt? It’s so great!” etc. Here I wanted my daughters to feel special and DH is stealing the show. Oh well. It helped him feel a little magic. Plus I think it made him realize that all the time I spent on the boards learning about stuff made the trip so much better. The princesses were beautiful and we got signatures of them all. But the food wasn’t very good. For $75.56, you think you would get decent food. After the breakfast we decided to do some Fantasy land rides that we didn’t do yesterday. There was no wait for these since it was EE. We rode on Snow White, which the girls didn’t find all that scary. Then the girls rode on Dumbo and the Tea Cups. I wasn’t going anywhere near the tea cups. We got FP for Space Mountain. They loved this ride and by the end of our vacation I think we rode it 8 times or more. But, we got the FP at 10:10 and it had a 10:30 return time. I guess we really didn’t need FP, but we rode Buzz again in the mean time waiting for the FP window to open. I didn’t write down these scores, but they were nothing spectacular. My favorite thing to do was spin the car round and around when you go through that psychodelic section. Then, DH took DD#2 to Alien Encounter while I took DD#1 on Astro Orbiter. DD#1 had a bad experience with Alien Encounter a few years ago. I didn’t know at that time that it was so scary and took her on it. Now she won’t go near it. Astro Orbiter was fun. I put my arms out beside me and screamed, “To Infinity and Beyond”. My DD#1 was like, “Mom! Stop! You’re embarassing me.” Hey, this is Disney World. I can have fun too. We met up with the others after that, thanks to the trusty Walkabouts. It was time for Space Mountain. DD#1 sat in the front, then DD#2, then DH. I instructed him to hold on to her so she doesn’t fall out. They think I’m crazy. Then I’m in the front of the second car. I am screaming my head off. The girls have their arms up in the air. Where do they come from? They can’t be my kids. I can already tell these girls are rollercoaster queens. Good thing we live 2 minutes from Six Flags Great America.

We decide its time to move to Animal Kingdom. We head down mainstreet. We got ice cream at the ice cream shop by the bakery on Main Street for DD#2, the ice cream fanatic. It was cute with 2 chocolate disks as Mickey ears. As we near the photo place where you pick up the pictures the CM takes of you in front of the castle, we see Peter Pan and Wendy with a short wait. So my DH lines up with the girls and I check out our picture. I decide we should try another picture and leave empty handed. But the girls liked meeting Wendy and Peter Pan. He pointed out DD#1’s Peter Pan pin and stood with his chest sticking out in pride.

We finally make it out of MK and take the monorail to the TTC and then the bus to AK. The front of the monorail was full, so we didn’t get to do this. We’d try again later in the week. My DD#1 traded pins with another little girl on the monorail. It was her first non CM pin trade. When we arrived at AK, we got our picture taken in front of the tree. A little later down the rode, some CMs were “advertising” that they would take our picture with our own camera in front of the tree. We tried this because I want to get a good picture for our Christmas cards. We never did look at our pictures at AK. The line was very long and we never made it back there. So I hope the picture the CM took with our camera is a good one. We went and got FP for the Safari. Then we had PS for the Rainforest Café at 1 pm. WE are members of the Safari club and I had received a $5 gift cert. for my birthday from them. Plus I got a $25 gift certificate for there from MyPoints Reward program. So we were hoping to eat cheaply today. I really like Rainforest. We have 2 near us and go there often. We have always been impressed with the food and this one was no exception. I thought the bill might be complicated, because we got 10% with the Safari Club, plus the 2 gift certificates. But it was no problem ($54.85, or $24.85 w/certificates). The only problem came when we tried to charge it to the room and their computers went down. We sat for nearly 30 minutes waiting to sign the bill. By this time our fast pass window had closed. But finally when the bill came, we ran to the Safari and they still let us in. It was fun and we saw a lot of animals. Then we went to Its Tough to be a Bug. Everyone enjoyed this. We especially liked the stink bug and the "exiting" bugs. Then we saw a little area called “Character Corner” or something outside the gates to dinoland. Pooh and friends were there, so we went in. First checking the CM’s lanyard for pins, of course. No luck there. Just as we were getting there the CMs lead the characters off “for a break”. But they came back within 5 minutes. We got Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet’s signature. When Eeyore saw DD#1 had an Eeyore pin, he even looked happy for a minute. Well, as happy as Eeyore can be. But then Piglet searched DD#1’s lanyard and didn’t find a piglet pin. She was very sad. We told her we would trade for one the first chance we got. That cheered her up. On the way out, the CM asked if we enjoyed the signing and we told him about Piglet. He said he gets in trouble too for not having a Piglet pin. It was near time for the parade. We nearly forgot but saw people lining up. So we found a spot - conveniently by a pretzel cart. So we enjoyed a pretzel and a coke. The pretzel had too much salt for my liking. I scraped off most of it. The parade was very good. One of my favorites. The interaction with the audience is so great. I love it when those people in the animal contraptions (what can you call those?? big puppets?) would come by and stick out their tongue or whatever. A little boy next to us had a fake rubber snake and several times someone in the parade would come and get the snake and scare one of the other CM with it. Or they would go up to the boy and act real scared. It was very cute. I got a little scared when one of the guys on those big stilts got one and scared the other guy on stilts. I thought he was going to fall over. How do they walk with those?? Then the funniest thing happened. I saw someone in the parade that I knew!!! He was one of the CMs who danced around in safari gear. My best friend in grade school’s mom dated this guys dad. I know that sounds like a stretch, but in 6th grade my friend and I were inseperable. So this guy was nearly a brother to me. He didn’t see me. He was too busy dancing around. I didn’t know how to find him later, so I didn’t see him again. After the parade, we went on Dinosaur. We enjoyed this. Our picture wasn’t that great. But we did decide if we rode it again that we were all going to look at the camera and stick out our tongues.

Animal Kingdom closes early tonight, so we decide to go to Downtown Disney. We head out of AK. We don’t stop to look at the picture because that was what everyone else in the whole park is doing. We go back to the hotel and get our jackets for DTD. Mousekeeping had made a little boy doll out of washcloths to match the girl she made yesterday. Our beanie babies were sitting on the table together propped up on a towel. We took the boat from Port Orleans to DTD. The boat ride is long and it was a little chilly out. But we had fun. It was very exciting as we neared DTD to see the lights flashing in the sky. You also pass by some cabins in the woods. What were those?? Disney Institute? On the ride over we decide to eat at Wolfgang Puck Express since we can get the Disney Club discount. WE got 2 pizzas (they are a little bigger than individual size) and 4 drinks. It came to around $20 with the discount. The place wasn’t very clean and there wasn’t much seating inside (it was too cold to eat outside). But we enjoyed it. The pizza was good. DH liked it a lot better than the pizza at Port Orleans which he says tasted like grade school cafeteria pizza. But then, we live in Chicago, the king of pizzas.

I buy the girls each an ornament in the Christmas store. This kind of ruined my plan to buy the ornaments and wrap them to give them at the Candlelight Processional. But my husband said, “just go ahead and buy them now to make them happy.” OK. But I had such visions of a moving CP capped off with a present of the ornaments so they could remember year after year our trip. Now in hind sight, I can say that it didn’t matter that much. I also bought the girls a Guest of Honor pin at the Christmas store. We had to have them specially engraved since their names are spelled “incorrectly”. WE bought a couple of pins in the Pin Store. I tried to find the Limited Edition Beauty and the Beast pin (the stained glass window one), but they didn’t have any. We decide to head home. But this time we take the bus because it was too cold for that long boat ride again. Again everyone falls quickly to sleep, except me doing the night routine of setting out the next day clothes, replacing film, checking batteries, etc.

The weather today was: cool in the morning which required jackets, warming up in the afternoon, then getting quite chilly in the evening. The best thing today was: Space Mountain. The worst thing today: Nothing! We couldn’t think of a single thing. The funniest thing today was: DH’s Happy to Be Grumpy Shirt and Snow White’s comments. Today we tried: Cinderella’s breakfast and the result was: awesome (despite the bad food).

Next installment, “I’ve gots cramps!”

[ 12-11-2002, 02:41 PM: Message edited by: maggieworkman ]

[TINKN]

Another great installment. The cabins in the woods are the treehouse villas at The Disney Institute. Did you know that they were originally planned to be permanent residences? Somehow, the plans all changed though. I wonder what will become of them now as the Institute has closed and is to be the site of the new DVC property.

[tikibird]

Sounds like you had some great character interaction at Cindy's!

It's good to know you can use a gift certificate and your discount at RC - thanks for sharing that!

Enjoyed this installment, ready for the next one! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[stinkerbelle]

Ok - I'm a snoop [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] ...I was rooting around in my FI's computer [img]graemlins/puter.gif[/img] and found out that you, Maggie, were my Fairy Godmailer when you were on vacation. You sent me an Eeyore postcard, saying that you were 'getting everything ready for my honeymoon next year'. (Wookie is my FI - and apparently not very good at hiding things from me! heheh)

Maggie - thank you very very very much. That was so sweet of you to take time out of your vacation to do this for me...I LOVED the card and have it on my desk here at work...reminding me that I'm gong to WDW soon!! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

And wookie - I said it before - even though you're not very good at hiding stuff from me...you still surprise me with how sweet you can be sometimes. I love you obie! [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img]

[KimandMark]

Tinkerbell's flight can be any CM who weighs less than 95 pounds. I friend of mine did her culinary institute internship there and asked to be Tinkerbell before she left. She was able to do the flight three times while there and she definately weighs less than 95 pounds!

[maggieworkman]

Stinkerbelle,
You are very welcome. I am so glad you enjoyed it so much. You are very lucky to have such a thoughtful fiance. I would keep him, if I were you. I have a better chance of going to Mars than my husband thinking of sending me a surprise postcard!
Maggie

[maggieworkman]

Day 3: MGM - Dec. 2, 2002

Today was early entry for Animal Kingdom, but we decided to skip it. So Mickey called us at 7:00 am. Today I managed to hit the speaker phone button, but it took a long time for the recording to start, so I panicked and jumped out of bed and picked up the phone and handed it to our 7 year old. She woke right up! Hey, I need this for school days. After that, she kept telling her older sister that Mickey called her to wake her up. The older girl was a little jealous, but is polite enough to hold it in. She let her little sister enjoy the moment.

So we quickly got ready and went out to the bus stop. We had to wait today maybe 15 minutes. There was a pack of people waiting to go to Animal Kingdom. What I don’t understand is why does everyone go to Animal Kingdom just because it is EE. I mean by this time it was AFTER EE and the park had already opened. I can understand everyone going there if they can make it to EE, but afterwards [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] ?????

The first thing we do is Star Tours. We all really liked that. We are big Star Wars fans. I liked the big droid or whatever that is called outside of the building. The gift shop here was probably one of my favorites, but I didn’t buy anything. They had postcards with all the old Star Wars characters. I really wanted to get one of Harrison Ford. But I didn’t. After this, we moved to Muppet Vision 3D. I used to love the Muppets when they were on. The preshow to this is so cute. They have a bank of TV monitors hanging from the ceiling with the preshow movie on it. But every once in awhile one of the characters would “run” from one monitor to the next down the line. It was very cute. The show was good. I like how they mix the 3D movie with the animatronic characters and even a real character! After this, we went on the great movie ride. I like the theater. I had to explain to DD# 2 why people’s handprints were all on the ground. We walked right on to this ride. But we didn’t have very good seats. We were in the very last row. [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] We couldn’t easily hear what the tour guide was saying. Often the music of the previous scene was too loud for us to hear her. Also, we would just be getting up to a scene and she would be already talking about the next one. So, avoid the back seat if you can. I personally thought the scenes were nice, but my family gave it 3 thumbs down. I liked the video montage at the end. We had the cowboy scenario. It seemed the guides were only half-heartedly doing their part. I also thought the part where they burn the cowboy to death and show his skeleton was a little much. Otherwise, the rest of the ride would have been suitable for kids.

We had PS for Hollywood and Vine at 11:10 am. I had made all of our PS for as late of a breakfast as possible, so that it would count as our lunch. The girls would eat a poptart or something in the room before we left, so they could last until 10:30 or 11:00. This worked out well for us. Especially since DD#2 hardly eats any “real” food. But she likes breakfast food, so I thought this set up would work for us. But it worked THE BEST at H&V. We were seated for breakfast (and paid the breakfast price), but while we were there, they put out the lunch stuff. So we had our choice of either. Although the kids and I were full by the time the lunch stuff came out. I really liked the Mickey Waffles. But everything else was great too. DH did get some stuff from the lunch buffet (another whole plate full!) ($63.08) Out of all the character meals we did, this was one of our favorites. The food was top notch. I would even go here if it wasn’t a character meal. Minnie and Goofy did a swing dance in the lobby entrance. It was very cute. Minnie’s dress was beautiful. We also had some of the best character interaction here. Minnie came up behind my husband and gave him a big hug from behind. I got a great picture of him with this huge smile on his face. Chip and Dale wrote cute things in the book - they didn’t just sign it. They wrote “I’m nuts for you.” and “I love you like a nut.”

We finally made it out of H&V stuffed, then decided to go on Tower of Terror and Rock and Rollercoaster. Not the best planning, I guess. We went and got a FP for the Tower of Terror. Then went over to Rock and Rollercoaster. DH went on this with DD#1, because DD#2 was just a little too short - much to her dismay. But we knew this before we left because I had measured her. It was the only ride she couldn’t go on. She SOOO wanted to go on it. Instead, she and I went shopping. I bought her a Tower of Terror Slider Pin and I bought DD#1 a slider R&R pin. We also bought 2 coins/medallions for Grandma back home. She collects these whenever we go somewhere. They were $8 each, but she will really enjoy them. We met back up with DH & DD#1 and went to Tower of Terror. Well, DD#1 didn’t want to ride. She dind't like the idea of falling in an elevator. So, we didn’t make her. So, DH went on with DD#2. We waited awhile. You can go through the gift shop and wait right up by the exit. We passed the time by looking at the pictures of all the other cars as they came up. We only had to wait maybe 10 cars. They both came off smiling, but I could tell by DH’s face that DD#2 was scared to death. But she acted like it was so much fun! But she didn’t want to ride again with me. Their picture was pretty good. DD#1 was looking up at DH. But her head was mostly covered. We didn’t buy it though. Basically, I didn't get to ride either TofT or R&R [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] . Oh well, next time. As we left that area, we noticed that Beauty and the Beast had just started, so we entered. Belle was at the part where she walks through the village and the villagers sing, “Bonjour” and “She really is a funny girl”. This was a beautiful show. They obviously had to skip many parts to make it a 10 minute musical, or whatever, but they did a pretty good job. Belle’s dad wasn’t in it. The narrator just says, “Through a series of unfortunate events, Belle gets trapped in the castle with the Beast.” of something along those lines. I liked the characters - the teapot, the candlestick, etc. They looked so cute. How do they dance around with those big costumes on???? Belle’s dress at the end is so beautiful. It kind of sparkles and shines. The girls enjoyed it, but couldn't get over the fact that they skipped so much from the movie. That's all they would say.

Around this point DD#2 (7 y.o.) starts to fade. She complains, mom I’ve got a cramp in my side and can’t walk anymore. So of course DH puts her on his shoulders. Well, now she found the secret for not walking and tries it out many times for the rest of the day (and vacation)! She would say, “Oh mom, I’ve got a cramp.” and walk all twisted over. We began to call this the “cramp dance”. After awhile, it just became the joke. It’s funny how when there was something SHE wanted to see, she could easily run across the park to it!!!! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Now it was time for the parade, so we found a nice spot across from Sounds Dangerous. It was a pretty good spot. Just a little ways down, a guy was doing a comedy routine to entertain people. He was intereacting with people along the parade route. He had some funny jokes, at least I thought. Most people groaned when they heard it. “What did snow white say when she dropped her film off for developing?” “Someday my prints will come.” Ha Ha. Or “What kind of phone does Ariel use?” “A shell phone.” The parade was nice. The cars were very cute and themed well. My favorite seems to be those little green army men. They are so in character. They really do look like those toy army men. But these guys weren’t in a car, they walked around. This was a fun one. After the parade was over, I rushed everyone over to Sounds Dangerous before the rest of the park had the same idea. We walked right in and got a seat. This was a good one for everyone, even my DH. He has trouble with the 3D attractions because he is blind in one eye and therefore can never see the 3D. (But he goes on every one and never complains.) But this one is all auditory. The room is dark and you just hear the “movie” through the head phones. This one is really good and different. We all liked this one. After this, we made our way to Indiana Jones. We were sitting on the far right of the stadium, and therefore didn’t have great seats. You could see everything, but not that great. I would like to see this again but with better seats. How does fast pass work with this one?? We didn’t have FP, maybe that’s why we had such bad seats. But, we still enjoyed it. Then we went to the Backlot Tour. It was nice, but not great. It takes a LONG time. We didn’t have to wait at all to get on the ride, but the Tour takes like 25 minutes or something. Our tour guide was pretty good. When we got in, we had arranged ourselves by those who don’t mind getting wet and those who don’t want to get wet. I was one of the latter and sat on the right. Well, the tour guide gets on and says, “Warning. Those of you on the right may get a little wet.” Everyone looks around and discusses changing spots. Then the guide says, “But nothing like how wet the guys on the left will get.” Ha Ha. We all laugh. He had everyone going.

After that, we decide to go stake out a spot for Fantasmic. We didn’t get the Fantasmic Package. The only place that interested us with the package was H&V, and we went there for the character breakfast. So we decided to take our chances. (Why am I saying we?? My husband had ZERO involvement in planning. He said, “Whatever you want, my dear.”) So we get there pretty early - maybe an hour or so. We get great seats in the front section about 10 rows back. DH goes to get us some treats. He gets a mickey ice cream sandwich, a hotdog, a pretzel, a coke and a beer. I think that was it. These snacks come to about $15. Plus, they hold us over until we can get back to the food court for dinner. Now, here is where I do something UN-Disney like. I am a teacher at a university and my students had their final paper due the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. This was the day we left. So, I hadn’t graded many of them. I had intended to grade them on the long drive down to Florida, but I always seemed to drive during the day and be the passenger at night, when its impossible to grade. Anyway, my grades were due in a couple of days, so I sat there waiting for Fantasmic grading papers! Oh well, it had to be done. But I digress. The girls passed the time with these little 5x7 activity books that I had bought at the dollar store before we left. But it was well worth the wait because Fantasmic was wonderful! I was very curious to see them play a movie on water, because I had heard so much about it but couldn’t really imagine it in my head. This was really great and a must see. I like the big boat at the end with all the characters. Everyone was just sitting there mesmerized.
After the show we join the crowd making their way to Osbourne Family Lights. Since we had good seats towards the front, it took us awhile to get out. Especially because we followed the rules and waited our turn and didn’t climb up over the seats to the top of the stadium. We made the trek across the park to the Lights. It was worth it. We got our 3D glasses right as we entered and it was beautiful. I love all the angels. I have a few good pictures of this and will try to post it. I enjoyed how they themed the different houses. There were a lot of people here and it was very crowded. Especially on the first street. But as you made your way through, it got better. I wanted to take more pictures, but I didn’t think they would turn out. We walked all the way through and it was wonderful. I can’t imagine all of these lights being on one family’s property!!!! It is just truly amazing. It “snowed” too. The girls liked this. But once they found out it was soap bubbles, they kept talking about that. We made our way out of the park. It seemed like the whole crowd who was at the Osbourne lights was now at the picture counter looking at their picture. So we decide to skip that. Too bad because we didn’t make it back here either. So we don’t have a picture in front of the hat, except the ones we took with our camera.

But wait, I was wrong. The crowd wasn’t at the photo place - they were all in line waiting for the bus to go back to Port Orleans. [img]graemlins/ukid.gif[/img] I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this crowd. It was wayyyyyy beyond the PO queue (#12 I think). It extended clear past the queue next to us. You would see people cruising by us on their way to the PO's queue, thinking we were in queue #11. But then they would get to the PO queue and then realize this was one big line and then have to turn around and find the end of the line. The worse part was we stood there for about 25 minutes and NOT ONE bus came!!! We were at least 10 or 11 busloads back! It was going to be a long night. A bus finally came, but they loaded 2 wheelchairs, which took about 20 minutes to do. In the mean time, no one could enter the bus. I am all for being wheelchair accessible but it seems like there could be a better method for this. Then one bus load left. Well, by this time, we were getting a little impatient. It had been 40 minutes and 1 bus. So, a TTC bus came (I think this was the Queue #11 spot) and we decide to hop on that bus. We go to the TTC. We get a monorail to EPCOT. From EPCOT, we take the Port Orleans bus home. Even though this took us awhile, we still think we got back faster than we would have otherwise. Plus, we were actively doing something instead of standing there waiting.

We make it back to the hotel and eat dinner in the food court. The girls get a hamburger and a hotdog and a fruit cup. DH and I share a cheesesteak. ($20.74) We had sent DH back to the rooms to get the refillable mugs. He finally announces that he realizes he is only there to do our running around and to be a pack mule! We tell him, “why else would we have you here??” [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] You see, he goes every morning to get the coffee and cocoa for our breakfast. Plus he carries around the back pack all day - and that seems to gain a pound or two each day.

And that concludes our day at MGM. Today’s weather was: cool - we needed sweatshirts all day. The best thing today was: Fantasmic (our first time). The worst thing today was: The great movie ride. The funniest thing today was: DD#2’s “cramps” whenever we had to walk through the park. Today we tried: Hollywood and Vine restaurant … and the result was … delicious! The most magical moment today was: Osbourne Lights.

Next installment, “Mom, do we really get to stay up until 1 AM???”

[tikibird]

Glad to hear you enjoyed your day at MGM- other than for the bus incident, that is! You will have to plan another trip, though, so you can ride ToT and RnR! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] Next installment please..

[AKLRULZ]

Great report, bummer about ToT, Rock-n-Rollercoaster and The Great Movie Ride - we've been in the back before and it's really not the best - I think I love the ride more for the nostalgia these days!

Thanks for posting!