The Kansas/Texas 2005 Rendezvous at Disney World -UPDATE 11/20/05 About This Page:

[KandJluvdisney]

you are hilarious at this tr thing
keep it coming

[PrincessSharon]

You continue to crack me up, Melanie! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img] It sounds like y'all had fun at Epcot, and I'm with you on Alfredo's! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/yuma.gif[/img] Hurry back with more, please!

[mestitch]

Hey! I'll stand there and watch that fountain with you!! It's my favorite thing, especially at night!

Another great update!! I'm a little sad there was no picture of the cutie 23 year old wife beater wearing Off Kilter newbie!!

[simbarel]

Tra la la la laaa, la la la li la la laaaa, la li la le la leee laaaa...[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/whistling2.gif[/img]

Oh, hello there. I was just traveling the River of Time, a magical fiesta, in my mind. Look! They all want to sell something to MEEEEE! :special:

Too funny installment. At least the Stave Church index card rumor was true. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/082502yes_prv.gif[/img] I'm glad you still like M-AARP-k and that OK continues to thrill the generations. And I take it you're about to ride the RnR. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/dizzy.gif[/img] Can't wait!

[Leah's Dad]

I have to say, Alfredo's is on my "where-to-eat" list for our next trip. Great TR!!! Love the pictures.

Leah's Dad

[BabieeMelly]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm a little sad there was no picture of the cutie 23 year old wife beater wearing Off Kilter newbie!!

[/ QUOTE ]

Me, too! Where's that pic?! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img] You're TR is great, I can't wait for another update!

[joyjoy]

Trip Date: 9/3/05 - 9/10/05
Resort: Port Orleans Riverside
Disney Freaks Involved: Me (Melanie/joyjoy), My BF (Alex), my 19 y.o. daugter (Jordie), Alex's 15 y.o. daughter (Kira)
Reason for trip: It is time.
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Yo! Disney Dudes!

I figured out what my problem is. I get on this board with every intention to update my trip report, then I start reading other trip reports[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/zread.gif[/img] and bam. 2 hours gone. There are some very talented and entertaining writers on this board, so BLAME THEM for my lack of progress. But thanks, guys, I've enjoyed reading about all your adventures.

Now back to ours -

12 hours at Epcot will really take it out on ya. We were whipped already and it was only Monday! We originally had planned on going to Magic Kingdom this day, but the girls were feeling the need for speed (What? Spaceship Earth didn't do it for ya?) so we changed plans and decided on MGM.

Our morning routine was pretty much the same everyday. I'd get up and take a shower and wake somebody else (okay, everybody else) up. That curtain between the sink area and the rest of the room is quite nice, but Alex will be the first to tell you that it is not soundproof. So after approximately 300,000 BTUs of blowdrying energy later, he'd get up. Hey, that's what you get when you hang around a bunch of girls. Jordie and I would go to the food court -Riverside Mill... right? Is that right? Did I get it right for once???? - and refill all the mugs and pick up fruit and croissants and the like to eat in the room. We're not huge breakfast eaters. Besides, meals take sooooooooooo loooooooonnnnnggggg at Disney World. Ever notice that? It's insane. I can pretty much order a drink, drink it, order a meal, eat it, pay and be out the door in about 30 minutes at home. At WDW you're committed to at least an hour at Counter Service and roughly 8 - 10 hours at most Table Service Meals. Did I tell you we didn't get back from Alfredo's until 5 a.m.? No? That's because I am lying like a dog. So I exaggerate, but it does eat up (Get it? Eat up?) a lot of time. However, with the FREEEEEEEEEE Dining Plan, we found ways to make time, I assure you.

Heading toward the bus, the valet parking guy stopped us and gave us Mickey stickers! He asked us where we were from, to which we had to give our gigantic, boring response that we repeated 10,000 times during the week. "Well, we're from Texas and they're from Kansas, but we're dating and blah, blah, blah." It really was way TMI, and by the end of the week we were just making up states, or when we wanted to be really funny we'd speak in a funny accent and say, "Oh! Vee arrrre frrrrom zee cold cold nord land of SVEDEN!". Anyway, he asks us if we want him to take a picture of us, so we posed.

Nice shot, pops. Love the parking lot. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif[/img] Oh, well, that's why he's not a Photopass Photographer, I guess.

The first thing we did at MGM was run to the back to get fastpasses for the new auto stunt show, Trains, Planes and .... wait. Fast Cars, Hookers and ...no. Let me go look. Sorry, it's called Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show. I really had to go look at the map.[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/blushing.gif[/img] Anyway, fastpasses in hand, we took a look around. Dead. Nobody was here! Where is everyone? Then we remembered - the beginning of the week after Labor Day has begun! Actually, it WAS Labor Day, but I guess everyone was laboring to get back home because they certainly weren't at The Disney-MGM Studios. Yay! I mean, sorry guys.[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/zcry.gif[/img] Sorry your vacations are over.[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/zcry.gif[/img] Sorry you're going home.[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/zcry.gif[/img] Sorry you're on the plane.[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/zcry.gif[/img] But THANKS for leaving me a seat on the bus and NO line at Rock n Roller Coaster! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/woot.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/woot.gif[/img]


See? Nobody.

Walking down New York Street, we noticed a BUNCH of lights already up for The Osborne Family Lights show they have at Christmas time. Already! In September! We immediately started looking around for the switch that would turn them on. Not really, but wouldn't THAT be Thee Best Tip 'n' Trick EVER??

At the large gift shop on NY Street, find the ice cream cart to the left on the corner. Turn in there. Behind the phone booth is a large red handle that says DON'T TOUCH. Pull it. It turns on the Osborne Family Lights. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

We now made the biggest mistake o' the day and did the Backlot Tour. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/snore.gif[/img] People. Now that The Golden Girls' house is gone, what's the point? The worst thing was that, boring as this is.... it BROKE DOWN. Ugh. We were stuck in that train for like 15 minutes while the poor cast member was actually MAKING UP trivia. "Yes, folks, that plane there on your left actually crashed right there in 1975 so the Disney Imagineers built this entire park around it." Not really, I made that up, but he really was struggling to entertain us. I think we all napped a little on this. We spent a little time and a lot of money in the villains gift shop/exhibit. That's pretty cool in there. They have costumes of a lot of Disney villains, and Star Wars. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] Whatever. Stupid me took a bunch of pictures of costumes behind glass, so you can imagine how they turned out. Imagine no more! Look.


That's Darth Vader's get-up, in case you can't tell. And I am too freakin' lazy to rotate the picture since it sucks anyway.

After we came out of there and were still aimlessly wandering around, suddenly ALL these sirens and horns started honking and all of this LOUD music started blaring! Sweet Louise! What was happening? It was the Power Rangers, acting all crazy. I tried to get some pictures but they were jumping around and making wild poses and frankly, it scared me. Do little kids really like that? If your kids watch that and you seem to be having some problems at home with out of control screaming, violence toward siblings or arson, I think I know why. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img] That stuff's insane, man. Power Rangers. Yikes.

We were getting pretty hungry by this time, but we wanted to do Rock 'n' Roller Coaster first. Yes! My FAVORITE!! Love love love love love it. I love it. There was a 10 minute wait posted for stand-by. They were only kidding, though, because we waited not. at. all. Awesome. This was a blast. I didn't realize until this trip that the song goes.. "Love in a roll-er coast-er..." at the end. Did y'all know that? Me = the last to know. I think we rode it again, actually. Yes, we did. Wow, was that great. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/waytogo.gif[/img]

Now we were really starving so we set off to have a leisurely 4 hour counter service meal. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/hungry.gif[/img] Kira had in her mind that she wanted Fish 'n' Chips, which were over at the ABC Commissary and we were now at the food places by RnRC and ToT. That's fine, Alex and I got veggie burgers to go and took them over there. MGM is so small and there were so few people there that it only took about 6 minutes to get back over there. Jordie got some kind of sandwich, amd we had the things I just told you about. Aren't you paying attention???? [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] Just kidding. Lunch was .. eh. One good thing about this dining plan is you get dessert with every meal. I NEVER get dessert, especially at a counter service restaurant. But this was great because if you weren't crazy about your food, there was always the pie!

After lunch we did Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. We all love this. Last trip, it took Alex about 4 games to figure out that YOU HAVE TO HURRY. He was thinking it was like the real Millionaire game on TV and you just have to get the answer right. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif[/img] This time he was the star of our group though. (btw, he's making me put this in the TR). He did very well and at one point was number 3 on the board. Do YOU know what spumoni is? I didn't, but hey, I'm from Sweden. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] Alex knew that. He also knew that a 180° angle is called a STRAIGHT LINE (that one's embarassing) and that Logophobia is in fact, NOT a fear of logos, but a fear of words. What? What kind of freak is afraid of words. Certainly not blabbermouth me. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/082502no_prv.gif[/img] Anyhoo, he kicked all our butts and gloated for a good two hours.

The Stunt Show was a lot better than I expected. Lots of fast cars and wacky stunts and fire. Here are some photos.


The quaint French village where the story takes place, plus somebody's fat head in front of us.


A car thing. Well? I can't remember everything, people.


No caption required.

Alex really, really, really loved the stunt show. I think it was his favorite thing all week, except for maybe the next thing we did, Voyage of The Little Mermaid. Haha! Just kidding. Too bad for him though, cuz Jordie, Kira and I love this. Sooooo sweet. It makes me cry. Apparently it makes other people cry, too, but for other reasons. About 6 minutes into the show the side door opens and this man walks out. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/ukid.gif[/img] I guess he didn't like it. Alex says to me, "Is that an option?". [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/082502no_prv.gif[/img]

Next we did a condensed version of One Man's Dream. I say condensed because you can (and we have before) stay in here for hours. Very well done exhibit. If you haven't done this attraction, you really should be spanked. It's a must-do. So do it. After that we tried out the new Animation Tour. I really used to love this. Seeing the animators working was cool and the Robin Williams movie was a laugh. Now... it's kind of sad. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/pout.gif[/img] Nobody working, lots of blocked off windows. The movie is cute. They have a live CM interacting with Mushu from Mulan. There is still a lot of information about how animation is done, but it's just not the same imo. At the end of the halls, there is a photo area and Chicken Little was there! Omg, how CUTE is he?

Since the movie hadn't been released yet, I didn't have anything interesting to discuss with Mr. Little. I usually try to engage the characters in some intelligent conversation.

Me: "So, Jessie. Do you really like Woody?, because ummm.. you seem a little.... masculine to me."
Jessie: Hands on hips. Hands over mouth. Looks at CM handler for help.
Me: "Ha. Ha. Just kidding."

With Chicken Little, though, I had nothin'. Besides, isn't he like a baby or something? I haven't seen the movie yet. Also in this area are some computer monitors where you answer questions about yourself and it takes a picture of you and then tells you which princess you are. Cute, right? Jordie, turns out, is Tinkerbell. Surprise, surprise. Kira was Ariel and I was................................. wait for it................... Ursula. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] Thanks a lot, magic mirror. I'm hoping it made me Ursula because of my answers to the questions and not my picture.

It was getting pretty late and Kira wanted to ride Tower of Terror. Ugh. I don't do Falling to Your Death rides. I kind of wanted to catch the Disney Stars and Motor Cars Parade, since I just had not seen enough cars today. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img] I thought the parade was at 5, so at 4:45 Jordie and I went that way and K & A (being the sport that he is) went to ToT. Turns out, the parade was at 5:30, so what are girls to do? I think you know the answer to this. Shop. I did some serious damage here. A lady I work with collects those commemorative plates from Disney (She's old. Give her a break.), so I got her one of those. Jordie and I bought a bunch of earrings to wear tonight......... is the tension mounting? More on this coming up!.... and I don't know what else but I spent a big pile of Disney Dollars. We were in that jewelry store across from the 5 and Dime (shoulda shopped there) and the parade was about to start so we snagged a spot on the sidewalk. Holy Mother of Goose! NOW everybody shows up! We were on the sunny side of the street, so it was really hot. About that time, Alex calls on the cell phone and they were on the OTHER side of the street. Great. You can see him in this picture.

Look under the tan awning at the freak with the giant dork smile and sunglasses. That's my man!

I took a few more bad pictures.


Omg. What is WITH me and pictures of Darth Vader? I don't even LIKE Star Wars!


Our new lil' buddy. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/love.gif[/img] Awwwww, he's so cute.

We needed to get going so I had them head toward the exit on their side of the road and we went that direction also. Unfortunately, when we got to the corner there was still a big parade going on, so we had to get special permission from the Parade Police to cross! How exciting. We met up with them and started to leave the park.

I bet you want to know why we were leaving so early. Good question.

We had 7:30 ADRs at.................. California Grill. Yes! It's true! I'd planned this one months ago. I was pretty sure this was going to be the point at which we'd be tossed out of a restaurant for cheating the system with this crazy dining plan thing, but by golly we were throwing all caution to the wind and going anyway. California Grill! Us! Remember how, a few months ago, there was a big brou-ha-ha because CG started publishing a required dress code? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that came out the day after I made our reservations. They know us and weren't taking any chances, which is not a bad idea.

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Up next: California Grill and Wishes from up high. Do they let us in? [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/questionicon.gif[/img]

Thanks for reading! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/zwavin.gif[/img]

[DopeyGirl]

Great update!!! Lookin' forward to hearing all about CG!!!

[simbarel]

[ QUOTE ]
Jordie got some kind of sandwich, amd we had the things I just told you about. Aren't you paying attention???? [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] Just kidding

[/ QUOTE ]

[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img]
Even if you were just kidding, I got quite the kick out of being scolded from reading someone's trip report. That's too bad the Power Rangers were so frightening. I agree Chicken Little is cute, but I'm not sure he's a baby his voice is done by a guy. But I haven't seen the movie, maybe he is a baby with a man's voice. Have you noticed he looks like Gary? He does! Thanks for this week's update!

[katspjs]

Another great TR!

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for this week's update!

[/ QUOTE ] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/roflmao.gif[/img] Hurry back!

[jakenjess]

OMG, I need a new installment from you every morning so I can start my day off with a good laugh!! Thanks! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/rofl2.gif[/img]

[DawnDenise]

[ QUOTE ]
If you haven't done this attraction, you really should be spanked. It's a must-do. So do it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes Ma'am!!! Even though I have seen it, I feel guilty. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/roflmao.gif[/img]

Another hilarious update!! More please!!

[Jennifer2003]

I used to dig the Power Rangers, now I think they're so darn cheesy.

My dad eats spumoni. I don't know what's in it exactly, but I know he eats it. He's Italian.

Your report, once again, is freaking hilarious. Keep it coming!

Jennifer

[goofy4goofy]

Great installment!!!!

Kelly

[DrDolphin]

You are too dang funny [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/roflmao.gif[/img]!!! Thanks for the great installment -- now get back here and tell us all about GC!!! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]