Enjoying your trip so much. Can’t wait to read more.
Looking forward to the dramatic conclusion!!
This is a great trip report! I too had a similar experience at CR so I am glad I am not the only one. Not that I am glad you had that experience, I think it sucks. You were a party of 5 or more correct? So were we. I wonder if the automatic gratuity has anything to do with the slow service. Our service was not only slow but we got the wrong food, it came out cold (which is a server issue), undercooked, and the waiter was just rude. That was two years ago. I will never go there again which is sad because I remember it being so much better when it was just me and my wife.
Cant wait for the end of your report.
That was my experience at The Wave; the food was probably pretty good, but the service was SO horrible the whole experience was ruined and it is a TS that I have NO plans on ever going back to. And it came so highly recommended by Liners and friends…
Loving the trip reports!! last year DS4–one month short of turning 5 didn’t like the dark rides either. We kept bribing him with a snack for BTMR and it became his favorite ride. Dinosaur at AK was especially bad, Winnie not as much.
I have to know, what is the camel joke?! We may want to add that to our repertoire 
The auto gratuity is for 6 or more, not 5. If you don’t think the service warrants it though, you can talk to a manager to have it removed.
What do you call a 3-humped camel? Pregnant.
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Good one! Thanks 
My almost-5 year-old nephew had the same issue with the dark rides. He didn’t complain or anything, but just had no expression on his face whatsoever. And his fingers in his ears - he does not like loud or unexpected noise. After the rides were over, though, he’d bounce out, exclaiming how awesome it was. Really, kid? You wouldn’t know it from the look on your face the whole time!
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It is from Zootopia. All the characters acted like they hadn’t heard it before except for tink (last character on Friday). I don’t know if they really hadn’t heard it or were just really good at playing along
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Yeah that sounds very familiar.
By the way…is VT Virginia Tech or Vermont? I am a Hokie
Our experience was not nearly that bad. We all liked the food just fine, in fact every loved the dessert, just pretty slow
Hokies! Me too…class of '95. Sister was '97, brother was '02, dad was '66. Are you in the DC area? I noticed the Orioles hat. 
Looks like you had a great trip with your family. I’m almost at my 180-day mark and I’m starting to flip out, but I love it!
I am class of '06 , DW is '02. We live in between Baltimore and DC, closer to Baltimore.
Just waving to a Hokie from another Hokie! And yes, I did go to UVA as well. 
Waving to another Hokie! Class of 96 here.
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Another Baltimore Liner here! Go O’s!
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Right on! Excited for Tuesday night’s Wild Card game!
Coming out of our awesome lunch at BOG, DD was complaining of a sore throat. Thanks to this site I knew right where the first aid station near Casey’s Corner was so I marched our group over there to get some medicine. Again family was impressed, they thought the day might be lost and we would be sent to scour all over the park/resort to find some Tylenol. For the record, I don’t think she was really sick, but she seemed to perk up immediately after she got some medicine. We took it a little easy from there, walked down Main Street, looked in some shops and made it down to the Fire House to pick up SotMK cards. After we went through the whole spiel, DD said she wasn’t interested in SotMK, so I just took the cards and shelved it.
Everyone a little more invigorated, we headed back to Fantasyland to use our FPP to Meet Cinderella and Arora. Of course DD loved the M&G and we were back on our way to an awesome day. After the M&G we walked over to see Mickey’s PhilharMagic. DD was ok with it, but I think it was a little loud for her taste, she said she had fun though.
From there we waved to the in-laws and they found a place to rest for a little while and get a drink. We also got a snack and found an awesome spot in the hub to watch the Festival of Fantasy parade. Thanks in part to the low crowds, just about 10 minutes before the parade started there were lots of great viewing locations available. We sat in the middle of the hub and looked right down the road towards Adventureland. It was cool, we could see the floats as they approached the hub, and follow them all the way around. We couldn’t see all the people walking the parade, but it was a great view of the floats. DD loved the parade! It was probably the highlight of the day for her. She sat comfortably in the stroller and waved pretty much constantly for about 15 minutes as each float passed us.
Following the parade we made our way to Tomorrowland to meet back up with the in-laws. They were recharged as well and we headed into the Laugh Floor. I wasn’t sure what DD would think of this one, she was so-so when we watched Monsters Inc, and I thought she might be a little scared. She loved it! She was a little disappointed she wasn’t picked to be in the knock-knock joke, but other than that she was pumped. I had thought we could do Buzz, but after our morning, I decided to bag it. We did ride the People Mover, she was fine with it, but didn’t like it as much as I thought. I totally get why people like it, it is a good break and kind of a neat way to see a bunch of stuff.
I did get her to ride the Tomorrowland Speedway (via a 4th FPP), DW and in-laws were not interested. DD liked this one; we have ridden similar things in the past. She is that kid you see torturing her parent by constantly slamming into one side and then the other of the track. It is all good, but after about 5 minutes it does get a little jarring, but it makes her giggle, so what can I say?
I had planned to take the train from Fantasyland over to Adventureland, but when we got there they said we probably wouldn’t fit on the train and we would have to wait like 25 minutes for the train to come back around. I don’t think any of us were interested in standing there for half an hour, so we walked over to see the Tiki Room and Country Bears Jamboree.
Those were both favorites of my in-laws, and I can understand for sentimental reasons why that might be. Again it was nice to be able to sit and relax, but I have to say the shows were not very impressive. Tiki room was somewhat entertaining and the music was pretty catchy, but the Country Bears was not my thing. I think it made them happy, so it was all good.
We walked down the way to Columbia Habour House for dinner. It was ok, but I think all 5 of us were a little tired at this point and I know DD was. My original TP was to try to keep DD in the park through Wishes, we were going to go to meet Mickey at Town Square, ride Pirates and a couple other things. DD was done by dinner time and the in-laws were gracious enough to take her back to the hotel and DW and I got a couple hours in the park by ourselves. I was hesitant to say goodnight to DD, but DW was giving pretty strong signals that it was the right thing for all of us to do.
DW was right.
The story as it was relayed to us was DD loved going back to the resort with the grandparents. They hadn’t seen our room so she had fun showing them all the cool Cars stuff. Sounds like they had fun.
DW and I said goodnight to them and headed over to try to catch Pirates. The posted wait time was like 10 minutes so we headed in, after about 15 minutes they said the ride was closed, so I looked on MDE and Buzz had FPP availability, so we headed over for that. The posted wait time was like 30 minutes and we saw all the people standing in line. DW couldn’t understand why people were waiting in line, my only guess is that they didn’t know there were still FPP available, or that they could book another or something like that. After we got off there was still FPP available and we talked about getting on again, but we wanted to try to ride Splash Mountain since we knew we wouldn’t on Friday. The wait was about 30 minutes, and no more FPP available. We waited in line, and enjoyed the ride.
It was getting close to 8:30 so we decided to head over to the hub to catch Celebrate the Magic and Wishes. I had heard the advice to get there early, but I figured with the low crowds and with our experience earlier in the day with the parade it would be no big deal…I was wrong.
We found a spot for Celebrate the Magic and it was ok, but not great. We both remarked how earlier in the day it seemed like there was not much shade in that area, but all we kept seeing when we looked at the castle were views obstructed by trees. I mean we still saw the show, but I wish we had tried to get out there a little earlier.
We headed closer to the side exit behind Main Street and watched Wishes from there. It was fun and a good way to end the day, but there was a lot of noise from people talking, so I felt like we missed a lot of the story. Nonetheless it was impressive and fun. I was grateful that the in-laws took DD back to the resort, she would have been too tired to enjoy it and I think I wouldn’t have enjoyed it near as much. A little bit of time on our own was good for everyone.
The park was open late that night (I think until midnight), but between the long day and wanting to relieve the in-laws so they could get some sleep in their bed, we decided to head back to AoA.
Thursday was Animal Kingdom day!
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