Sun,Fun and Mickey Mouse Our 2 week vacation About This Page:

[rebecca c.]

Thanks for sharing how great your trip was and all the wonderful pictures. Sorry to see it come to a end.

[angelina]

Thank you so much for all the nice replies! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Bert & Sully]

Angelina really loved your trip report and pictures. - We are staying at Port Orleans French Quarter at the end of our trip so they were very timely!!

[Colexis Mom]

Wow, what a great trip report Angelina. Looking forward to your do's and don'ts. Your pictures are fantastic!! Glad to hear you had such a great time!!

[wheatenwalker]

Loved reading your trip report- we love POFQ too! Thnaks for sharing your trip and the great pictures! Sheila

[tikibird]

Love your pics of DD in front of the castle!

Looking forward to your wrap up! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[angelina]

More Day 8: Our last visit to MK
After Cirque du Soleil we headed to MK. We always like to finish up our vacations here and we also had lots of monogrammed Mickey ears to get [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] We arrived at MK just as the fireworks were finishing up. However tonight was an E-Ride night and since we were resort guests they let us in. We decided against buying tickets for the rides, because most of the rides were things DD couldn't go on. So while DH headed to go get some ears, DD and I did some final shopping on Main Street. I'm always so sad to leave The World and return to the reality of the real world. I made sure to take everything in and soak up our last moments in Disney. DH rejoined us (Mickey ears in hand) We headed towards the castle. DD loved watching it change colors, "pretty castle" she would say.

Mickey, Minnie, Pluto and Goofy were greeting people near the castle. Their lines were very short, but since we had seen each of them three times at least we decided to just observe them from a distance. At one point when we were watching Minnie and Goofy, Goofy had no line. He noticed us watching him and waved to DD, who gave him a big smile. So Goofy left his queing area to come over and see DD. It was pretty neat! This is a great time to meet the characters, there's no line and what a great spot to meet them. When DH and I were here on our honeymoon we just happened to be in front of the castle to see Mickey and Minnie run towards eachother and hug [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img] There was no one else around except us, Mickey and Minnie and their chaperone. So we got a great picture with Mickey and Minnie and the two of us. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] But anyway, back to this trip. We decide just to walk around the park. There were very few people still in the park, however we did notice that CM's were checking to make sure everyone in line for rides had wristbands on. E-ride night is so great, I really hope they don't get rid of it like so many other things right now. We just walked around, enjoying the park at night (I think this park is even more magical at night.) We saw characters everywhere, including Buzz Lightyear outside his ride.
We returned to the castle and let DD out of her stroller to run free. She was in her pjs by now, as it was almost 10 pm. She just stared at the castle

And I, of course, started crying like a baby [img]graemlins/cry2.gif[/img] We told DD it was time to leave and she just waved and said, "bye-bye castle" On our way out she said goodbye to everything and finally, as we turned to take on last look at the MK she waved and said, "bye-bye Disney World". Well that really opened the floodgates [img]graemlins/cry2.gif[/img]
We headed back to our car and drove back to our hotel. DD fell asleep on the way there. Our original plan was to go to the Boardwalk and grab something to eat at ESPN Club. We still had one Magical Wish left to use, and we were starving. Plus we really wanted to do the Boardwalk, we always have a lot of fun there. But after DD fell asleep, we decided to just call it a night. When we arrived at the Best Western their restaurants were just closing up, so we just ordered some pizza. I forget where we got it from, but it was awful. But we were so hungry we ate it anyway. DH and I sat out on our balcony and talked about our wonderful trip, and our plans for the drive home. One nice thing about the DD Best Western, we still got the resort TV channels! So we watched it all night, we even kept it on while we slept.
Up Next: Our drive home, including a stay at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. And our do's and don'ts

[joyjoy]

Wow. Your report has been a delight from start to ... almost finished. [img]graemlins/pout.gif[/img] It sounds like your family had a wonderful time. I loved your descriptions of POFQ, I've never stayed there. Looking forward to your season finale!

Oh, by the way, on BRAVO on Monday nights at 9pm EST, you can watch a 30 minute show called "The Fire Within", which is a behind the scenes reality show of the Cirque du Soleil show "Varekai". I watched the whole series and loved it - very interesting. The entire season is starting over this coming Monday (3/31). [img]graemlins/wavin.gif[/img]

[angelina]

Thanks for the info, I'll definitely check that show out [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Sorry for the delay in getting my final post out. We took a little mini vacation to the Wisconsin Dells. But I'm going to write it right now.
Now it feels like our Disney vacation is really over [img]graemlins/cry2.gif[/img]

[angelina]

The Last Days of Our Vacation
Driving back is always harder, because we don't have getting to Disney World to look forward to. But we had planned some fun stops on the way back to MN. We left Disney at about 10 am on Feb 19.
The drive up through FL is really pretty, there are orange groves all along the highway. We enjoyed the last of the palm trees, it would be a while before we saw them again. The drive up 75 into GA is pretty easy, it's three lanes most of the way and the traffic isn't too bad. Once you reach GA the traffic seems to get a lot worse. Our first planned stop was for Athens, GA. We got off the interstate and drove about 50 miles through rural GA. There were some absolutely beautiful towns along the way. Including Madison, a town that survived the Civil War because one of it's politicians knew Sherman and persuaded him not to burn it. The whole town looked like it jumped out of "Gone with the Wind"

The homes were absolutely spectacular. In MN, we don't get to see any architecture that looks like this. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
We had decided on Athens,GA as our stop for the night because DH wanted to see the University of GA campus. We walked around the city and enjoyed what would probably be our last night of good weather (it was in the high 50's) we stayed at the Holiday Inn right on the campus, as it came highly recommended in all the travel guides. It was very nice and the staff showed us that famous Southern hospitality. The next morning we woke up early and walked the campus. My college sure didn't have buildings this beautiful.

Here's one of the soroities on campus.

It was a beautiful campus and a great little town to stop and tour. Incidentally, this is the town where the B-52's and R.E.M. got their start. And where, we were told, the lead singer of R.E.M., Michael Stipe, still lives. His neighbors are apparently, not very fond of him because his gardens are too wild (just a funny little bit of gossip)
We left GA and continued our drive home. President Bush happened to be in Marietta, GA the same time we were driving through. The south-bound section of the highway was completely closed for about one mile for his motorcade. It was pretty odd to see a completely empty highway. Our next state was TN. Here's where the driving gets really hairy. The traffic is bad (lots of semi's which I get scared driving next too) and you drive through the mountains, so all the roads are winding and very steep. Our final destination for the day was Nashville, TN. where we would be staying at the Opryland Hotel. This is a beautiful hotel. It has several restaurants and bars and lots of great shopping. The hotel is very "Southern" in it's theme, lots of collums, grand staircases and chandelliers everywhere. At the center of the hotel is an enormous atrium with a glass ceiling and waterfalls, ponds and flowers everywhere. There's even a river that flows through, and a boat you can take a cruise on.

The rooms have balconies and they overlook the atrium.

They have several beautifully landscaped outdoor pools. But, as it was only in the 40's we didn't get to use them. This is a really beautiful hotel, with something to do for everyone in the family and we had a great time here. I would recommend it to anyone travelling to Nashville.
The next day we spent a little more time enjoying our hotel and then we hit the road again. We were out of TN after about 2 hours, and into KY. The driving here is great, the traffic really lets up. And there are beautiful horse farms all along the highway. It got really foggy so we didn't make it as far as we would have liked. We spent the night in Bloomington, IL at the Courtyard Marriot. We still had seven hours to go before home. So we had one more day of driving, which seemed to take forever, because now we had nothing to look forward too (except seeing our dog [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] ) One nice thing about IL is the driving is really easy, flat roads and light traffic. But Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota pretty much look the same. We're used to driving these three states so it was a little less exciting than driving through the south. DD loved driving by the cows, "moo" was all we heard from the back seat. So we finished up our fourth day of driving and pulled into our driveway at about 2:30. A sense of sadness just crept over me. I had been planning this vacation for so long, and now it was all over. What's worse is our next tentative Disney World vacation is over a year away. The only thing that could cheer me up was lots of Disney photos. So we watched all our video we had taken and dropped off our 33 rolls of film (which they finished in only a few hours because it was a slow day) So I spent the night looking at them. And then after DD and DH had gone to sleep I headed here, to the boards, and read so many wonderful trip reports I almost felt like I was back there again [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Coming Up:One last entry, our Disney do's and don'ts

[tikibird]

The Opryland hotel looks really nice - thanks for including pics of your trip home!

Looking forward to your wrap-up! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[wheatenwalker]

Gee, I'm feeling sad too that your trip is over, it was such a pleasure to read it and to see the pictures! I enjoyed hearing about your daughter too, she sounds and looks so adorable! Sheila

[joyjoy]

I love, love, love your descriptions of your trip, especially the cities in the South you visited. Being from the South, I mostly hear rude comments about the hicks and rednecks, moonshine stills and inbreeding, so it's so refreshing to hear from a visitor that actually appreciated the differences in scenery and personalities of locals. Your pictures are excellent, I'll bet you had a hard time choosing which ones to post. Loved it all, can't wait for the final thoughts. [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img]

[angelina]

We just love the south. It's so different from up here, and that's exactly what we like about it. Not that we don't love the north too, but it's what I've known my whole life. So it's great to experience new things on our trips. One thing is for sure, if I lived in the south I would eat 24/7, the food is soooooo good [img]graemlins/yuma.gif[/img] love those biscuits and gravy. My dad is from the south and DH lived in GA and SC for several years while he was in the army. But I had no memories of being to the south, as I was very young on my previous trips there. So visiting the south was one of the things I was most excited about when we decided to drive. On our two trips to the southern states on our way to Disney we were met with such kindness and of course, lots of southern hospitality. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]