I would have stopped functioning days ago!
PTL
Happy that the parade went on despite the rain.
Slower day and you still got up at 7 AM?
Sounds lovely. You should have taken one, too!
Happy to hear that! The food looks yummy and the characters…
Ouch! We will be paying in cash for this meal, too. For $59/person, you are getting food and entertainment. That’s how I’m justifying it. Good food will help that justification even more 
So sorry to hear that! That just means you will have to return during Christmas season again.
I wonder if my iPhone will take pictures as lovely as yours.
Thank you for following @ladyortramp, @deerenan, @bethro23
How fun that we were there the same time @suemarie19!! Did you also have a great day?
I used to get razzed all the time for taking so many photos @ryan1. Now that no one sees me loading my camera with film I don’t hear it so much.
Once upon a time I would have been too embarrassed to post blurry shots, but I’ve had loads of issues with taking photos these last few years. I use it as a point-and-shoot, which disturbs my Digital Media degreed son, who normally has possession of the camera and uses the umpteen settings it has. I never seem to get it back to automatic properly… He brought it home from college for me and it was doing better in bright light than low light.
Hi @tmoyer17! How’s the baby? Last year they did an April trip, but next year it will just be November. It is smack dab in hunting season!!
2 Likes
We had a wonderful day. We had a wonderful trip. It was my favorite time going since I was a kid.
Edit: maybe that is because since I had no kids along and my parents were there for some of it, it was easier to feel like a kid.
2 Likes
same for me for my trip with DH end of October.
I am reading all the trip reports I can and doing 1 just for me…the one I posted here was pretty lame.
2 Likes
It was open our first morning and down our second (getting to that).
I tried to make it different with croissants and rolls and pitas, and different meats and cheeses.
We both got yellow pants for the trip (TJMaxx or Marshalls). Wait til you see my red ones… LOL
We had a lot of special little moments, really. The special attention from Pluto and then that morning with the “Hello” to the crowd were two early ones.
It did take a little longer than I liked at the moment, but then we really did fit everything in - so it was fine. It’s hard that TP really doesn’t/can’t account for Meet and Greets.
On two trips now, Olaf has been outstanding!
At Backlot I had the Southwest Salad with Chicken and both DD15 had the Cuban - even after sandwiches for lunch! And the next day we ate there both girls had Cubans again.
I was concerned more than once that the rain would interfere with fireworks or parades and they did not.
Thank you for being one of the people praying for me!
Storybook Dining really was great. I have zero regrets. We could have bought lunches and even more snacks if we skipped it - and I did consider cancelling - but I am so so so glad my sister was up for it and kept me willing!
LOL - I am so Disneyed out right now. I keep dreaming about it - and not the nice way. The stressed way - are we late? - are we in the right line? - where is DD? etc., etc.
My iPhone behaved badly multiple times during the trip.
I hope to post the next few days here soon. I told my kids we could get out some Christmas decorations here! I feel like it’s already been Christmas and it’s over! LOL
3 Likes
I feel like you took us along when you went!!
1 Like
more so on cava. Plus I promised myself I would limit phone time for DHs sake
1 Like
funny. I had a dream 2 nights ago that DS who did musical theater was in a Star Wars musical and he was in the lead role…which ended up being remy from ratatouille 
4 Likes
Can’t wait to read through this! We’re hoping to do the traveling homeschoolers group with the grandparents next year!
2 Likes
It gets even better. I hope to post soon.
1 Like
I’ve been following- it’s hard because i’m up in the mountains right now and the internet is slooooooow (I actually have wait for my typed text to load- we’re talking worse than dial-up) but i want to see ALL the pictures!
What a lovely family, really. Sorry you had such a rough time with the sleeping, as you know I totally get that! But just looking at your kids faces, they look so happy. It’s worth it. Not just the physical stress but your whole year of work in getting there.
Your comment about packing lunches to save time is SO true, I swear it can take us longer to even agree on a place than it takes to eat!
The last shot of the castle is gorgeous. Perfect end to a perfect evening- well, except for 7DMT! Can’t wait to see the rest.
3 Likes
Super Saturday!
When I was planning our days out and trying to make them fit I found the “best” day to visit each of the parks during our time there. I still had one more park day and figured we would like multiple visits to MK and HS to do everything.
When it came to my FPP day in September, I was not able to get Slinky Dog Dash on our first HS day, so that left me looking for it for Saturday.
I also had noted that if we skipped the parade on our MK day on 11/12, that would free up touring time while other guests were busy watching the parade.
In the end I planned to visit MK during the day until the end of the 2PM parade, and then hop to DHS.
I was able to get FPP for Slinky Dog Dash at 7PM. I also had FPP for Indiana Jones and Voyage of the Little Mermaid show.
I was up by 5AM and woke my family around 6:15AM.
It was our smoothest transit to the MK as everyone was now well acquainted with the process.
7:45AM
We had our security system down pat with all the people and bags.
7:58AM
This time we meandered down Main Street having lots of Photo Pass pictures done. We also paused to watch some of the morning entertainment.
We positioned our crew at the Adventureland spoke on the Hub and then DSis and I backtracked to Main Street Bakery.
For someone who never visits a Starbucks at home, I was developing quite a habit.
The rope dropped happened at 8:50PM and our plan was to head to Big Thunder Mountain. Pirates of the Caribbean was down, however, and everyone who was headed there also headed to Big Thunder Mountain.
DD15 made a split second decision (at the head of the pack) to head to Splash Mountain. I had no desire to be wet and cold again, so DD6, DD13 and DD15 went to Splash, while Dsis, DD9 and I went to Big Thunder. After the Splash crowd got off they rode on Big Thunder.
Fun Fact – squirrels and ducks don’t eat mini M & M’s.
While Dmom and I waited for the second group to get off Big Thunder, we watched squirrels investigate the contents of stroller after stroller.
From there we headed over to meet Aladdin and Jasmine.
The queue moved quickly, and dare I say Aladdin was dangerously close to falling out of character. He might not be ready for Prime Time.
Everyone but I went into Philharmagic. I just stood around Fantasyland!
We’d really done everything once that we cared to do in MK, but it was hours until the parade.
We decided to go see how the line was for Merida.
She was outstanding. Totally engaging and had us laughing.
We consulted my Kenny the Pirate app and saw the Jack Sparrow should be meeting back by the exit from Splash. There was no one there, though a queue was forming. We were just about to ask another guest when Chip and Dale started walking out. These two were a hoot! They were so playful and Chip went and posed the girls in the places he wanted them, then he stood just in front of them! Not sure what happened to Jack, but we weren’t disappointed.
We decided to do a little shopping and look for desserts. We went back to the Big Top where we’d seen beautiful treats days earlier.
We wanted to watch the parade from Main Street to be closer to the exit and we found a spot we liked at 1:13PM. The four girls sat side by side on the curb while Dmom and Dsis did some shopping and I stood behind them. We kind of all talked and zoned out and I deleted some photos, etc.
At 1:50PM a man loudly asked me to move my stroller. I looked back. My stroller was next to me and I was a long way from stroller parking of any kind. I also noticed he had a stroller with him. I wasn’t sure what he wanted so I said, “Pardon me?” He brusquely said, “Can you move the stroller; you’re taking up a lot of room.”
I clumsily turned my stroller 90 degrees, from a parallel position to a perpendicular position. I didn’t move my body, nor did Dmom or Dsis who had long since returned.
From this point on I hear the guy and the woman he was with occasionally say things loudly about how we weren’t making room for his kid, etc. Thousands of people on Main Street and he’s commenting on my family? Dmom is known for defending her parade spots like a boss and I was hoping this guy wasn’t going to push her too far.
At 2:00PM the crowd starts standing up in places and by 2:05PM my girls were also standing. This is when the guy starts really talking trash about me and my girls and how rude we are to make it so his kid can’t see. He went on and on for almost 10 minutes. The parade was just coming into sight. I calmly turned to him and asked him what he was talking about. He suddenly became very deferential and mumbled that it was fine, everything was fine. I didn’t stop. I was now Mama Bear. I politely pointed out that for the last ten minutes he was speaking harshly about my girls and saying how rude they were. I explained that we’d been here for an hour to secure our positions and we weren’t going to move. He guffawed, “Oh what? You think I should wait here for an hour with my five year old?! That’s not gonna happen.” I pointed out I was traveling with a six year old and that my kids have often waited an hour to enjoy the parade.
“Well, good for you. You’re still rude.”
With every calm fiber I could muster I sweetly replied, “We are not rude, sir; we are wise.”
Meanwhile my sister was giving his female travel companion her perspective.
And then we enjoyed the same exact parade - MINUS a fire-breathing Maleficent - that we watched 3½ years ago.
Let me tell you – it was getting cold. Not necessarily Rochester cold, but cold to spend the entire day outside not dressed for the weather.
Somewhere over the last few weeks, I’d come to realize I had not scheduled a time to watch the regular night time fireworks, “Happily Ever After.” Given that we’d accomplished so much at HS the other day, I reasoned that we could head to HS until after we rode Slinky Dog Dash and then come back to MK for the fireworks.
Because it is such a hassle to get from the TTC parking lot and over to MK our best option seemed to be to catch the bus from MK to HS and then back again later. TP friends helped me figure out the logistics.
Waiting for the bus was cold. Then folding and loading the stroller was a headache. But we got over to HS and through security in about an hour. The only FPP we intended to use was the Slinky Dog one.
It was getting colder and colder so I suggested we head over to the Star Wars Launch Bay which was indoors. As I went to park the stroller I realized something was happening. Sure enough, I look over and Storm Troopers are marching over toward the entrance where I’d just left my family. I started to grab my phone as I got closer and –boy- was I glad I did! DD9 was protecting the Launch Bay!
As Rey arrived she thanked DD9 for helping!
3:45PM
She was then presented with a certificate.
She was carrying it and we were congratulating her on what she’d done on our way in. A CM saw her carrying it and informed us that we could show it to the CMs at the queue for Chewbacca and they’d let us right in. They also said the CMs at Darth Vadar might also let us in there at the head of the line, too.
They did.
We met both in minutes.
It was great for time… but we did end up back out in the cold!
We headed for a place to meet some surprise characters.
We hung around to see if anyone else came, but it was Jasmine again, so we decided to see about shopping. I was thinking about buying something warmer for DD6 to wear. Nothing jumped out at me, so we moved on to dinner.
We chose Backlot again, because it has refills on pop and it is indoor seating.
We ate until almost 6PM.
We unanimously decided to take another run on the Millennium Falcon.
From there we went to our ride on Slinky Dog Dash.
So fun. Over so fast.
Then – our night fell apart.
We should have had time.
We would have had time.
But we had some who wanted to hunt for desserts for DD13.
And we waited way too long for them.
Then our group got terribly separated. This was about the third time that now super-confidant DD15 took off on her own. I actually couldn’t find her. One moment she was with us in Starbucks and then she offered to take the stroller and younger girls out of the shop. Mom and Sis were shopping.
We exited Starbucks expecting her to be right there. She wasn’t. We probably spent 12-15 minutes looking. I wasn’t panicked, but she doesn’t have a cell phone and it was eating time. I left my mom, sis, and DD13 standing on the corner of the street and I ventured almost to the exit. That’s when I saw DD9 outside the tapstiles! I commanded her NOT to move. She said the other two were out there too. I found Dmom, Dsis, and DD13 and we all left.
I didn’t have to reprimand DD15 much. I simply said something like, “This has cost us a lot of time, and you can’t go ahead of us like this anymore. This has become a problem.” I honestly think it hadn’t occurred to her that she can’t get others to hurry up just because she is leading. She learned a lesson.
And we had to wait in such a long line for the bus that we didn’t make it onto the first one and had to wait for another one.
And everyone was very cold and shivering.
And we arrived at MK and cleared security JUST as the fireworks started and I knew that some members of my group would revolt if I pushed us into the park into a crowd and then had to fight a crowd to get back out to the monorail. I looked at DD15, who had REALLY wanted to see them, and just gently shook my head.
Instead we just proceeded to the monorail and back to our van and back to our rental.
I never had to say, “If we hadn’t lost you, we’d have made it…” We were both sad to miss it.
C’est la vie.
Neither of us focused on it.
11 Likes
Loving your report!
1 Like
I don’t ski anymore but DH went up today. We’ve had 100 inches on the hill already so they opened a week earlier than usual.
1 Like
“We are not rude, we are wise.” Haha, and you said your MOM was a boss! She passed those genes down, didn’t she!
5 Likes
Epcot Day.
Our worst day.
But it wasn’t totally terrible.
It was cold.
Up at 5:00AM.
Kids up at 6:15AM.
And it was cold.
High for the day was projected to be 56F. That means for like 11 minutes at 3:30PM it is a whopping 56F. All the time leading up to that moment, and all the time after that moment would be LESS than 56F.
As soon as we decided to go, we talked about Disneybounding. We planned to bound as the Fab Five this day because in 2016 we managed this photo at the Visa Character Spot.
We hoped to meet these three together again
Well – the forecast didn’t lend itself to the clothes we planned to bound in. We made the decision to wear our clothes until we met them, then change into something warmer.
Our plan was to Rope Drop Baymax, so I reasoned we didn’t need to be amongst the first people there.
We ended up getting there earlier than we ever needed to.
The Crowd Level was predicted to be a 3/10.
At 7:58AM we were on our way to security.
We were pretty close to the tapstiles where they kept us until 8:30ish.
8:38AM. We were so cold. There was a lot of wind there, too, with very little to break it up.
Rope drop saw people RUNNING – full on RUNNING to Soarin’! I was shocked. It wasn’t supposed to be that busy today….
We accidentally overshot the door to Baymax… because it was closed and I thought to look behind Innoventions West.
This door looked attractive, but was also shut. Just as I was calling her back, they opened it.
We were the second family through the queue, because another group got in as I was parking the stroller, etc.
The went wild for our costumes. But we were sad they didn’t pose together anymore.
We got directions to Baymax and made dreams come true.
And we delighted in meeting Joy. (Sadness wasn’t there.)
We headed into the Land Pavilion and most of us changed clothes.
Somewhere in there we got a notice that our Test Track Fast Pass had converted into an any time/any attraction (except Frozen Ever After) Fast Pass.
We were on Soarin’ by 9:50AM and only had a 10 minute wait.
We rode Living with the Land, then Finding Nemo, then went to Turtle Talk with Crush. That had a longer wait than I wanted.
We started that at 11:15AM.
Crush signaled out DD6 to speak with, “That little dude with a tie dye shell and hair going in both directions.”
He asked if she had a question and she asked, “What do turtles eat?”
“Food,” he answered. Then he cheerfully added that they eat sea grass and that is why they are green. Then he asked her what her favorite food is.
“Mac and cheese,” she replied. Yes. Yes it is. 
11:38AM
We considered Journey into Imagination at this point, but it said a 20 minute wait and there was no way…
By 11:45AM we were sitting in the upstairs of the mostly empty Electric Umbrella to eat our lunches out of the wind.
We went to Mission Space, some on Orange and some on Green.
12:21PM
Those of us on Green really enjoyed it. Some of the Orange crowd were a little ~ um ~ green… (irony!)
We then used our Fast Pass for Test Track. We waxed poetic over the trips where John’s GM pass got us into the employee lounge and unlimited FP access.
12:47PM
It was SO COLD as we rushed through the chilly air.
We went on Spaceship Earth and I was poised to grab some same day dropped FPP.
But I couldn’t get any for Frozen Ever After and that was all I wanted. I tried small groups and overlapping times and kept modifying, and, and, and, I couldn’t get them.
One thing I had been noticing was that the wait times were longer than I had thought they would be AND that the walkways were super crowded. It was both Dapper Days weekend AND the end of the Food and Wine Festival.
We went and met Elsa and Anna without too much of a wait.
2:24PM
2:37PM
Anna was pretty good.
Elsa was fabulous.
My kids really enjoyed asking the questions suggested by Kenny the Pirate. They enjoyed their conversations, and I think the characters did as well, to be honest.
I’d heard good things about Kringla Bakery.
The treats were divine. The coffee, not at all.
This picture of the family was 3:06PM.
The picture of Elsa below was 4:57PM.
Shoot me now.
We’d waited for Millennium Falcon twice, so we reasoned we could suck it up and wait for Frozen. It said 60 minutes, so I figured it would be slightly less than that.
It wasn’t. It was close to two hours. I’ll say one hour and 40 minutes to be safe.
It was a beautiful ride. And it was an indoor queue. But our day fell apart right there on the streets of Arendelle.
Some rode the ride in the Mexico Pavilion while I tried to come up with a game plan. That dumb ride is normally walk on and they waited 20 minutes for it.
We were cold and hungry – that sounds so funny!
But we WERE cold and we WERE hungry and I had no dinner plan, so we at in China. It was yummy-ish.
6:07PM
We miserably walked around the countries not really doing anything but dodging crowds and popping in places to warm ourselves temporarily. We had no energy to wait for Snow White, whom we had already met, and as we approached Aurora they were closing her queue.
We got back to Future World and the Imagination Pavilion at 7:01PM. Just that much too late to ride Figment ride.
We were cold.
So we left.
We read the next day it was a 6/10.
8 Likes