A Little Tropical Storm Can't Hurt, Right? A WDW Trip Report Aug.21-26!

I loved reading all of your trip reports when planning our trip, so I thought I would do one of my own.

A little background.....
My husband Josh and I had both been to WDW quite a few times when we were younger with our families, then we went for a quick day trip to MK last April when in Orlando visiting family. I fell in love with the place all over again. This year, for my 30th birthday, Josh gave me a trip as my birthday gift!! Yay! Of course, we got busy planning right away. We decided that we would stay for five nights and also get the dining plan. I was really pushing for staying at the Beach CLub, it was my favorite growing up, but we really couldn't justify the extra expense of staying there when we spend so little time in the room. So, we decided to stay at Port Orleans French Quarter. I was all gung-ho about our trip, spending tons of time online researching and planning. Then Tropical Storm Fay came on the radar. UUUGHHH! So I spent every waking moment checking the Weather Channel, The National Hurricane Center and Orlando TV station websites for about a week before we left. Did I really think it would make a difference in what mother nature had planned? I was sure that our trip would end up delayed or cancelled, but to my surprise, we took off on time and landed in Orlando early! Whoo Hoo!!

The line for Magical Express was enormous, but it moved sort of quickly. We finally got to our resort and decided to hit Animal Kingdom since our room wasn't ready. This is the first time either of us had been to AK. We loved it! Here's a picture of us in front of the Tree of Life.

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After a quick lunch at Flame Tree BBQ we went on Dinosaur, Safari, A Bug's Life, the Pagani Trail and even had time to see the parade! And we didn't even get there till after 1pm! The park was so empty! It rained on and off all day, but we stayed dry with ponchos. That night we had an AMAZING dinner at Boma. Wow! I can't wait to go back there! I loved just about everything I tried. My husband on the other hand wasn't as big of a fan. After dinner we were exhausted. Having had been up since 2:30am, we decided to head back to our room. We got back to POFQ and checked out our room. It was okay, about what I expected from a moderate resort. It definitely was not very clean though. That really bugged me. I'm slightly germaphobic, so I went around the room and cleaned everything with Lysol wipes. Josh thought I was crazy, but I slept much better after that!:snore:

Up next... Day 2 Epcot and DHS
 
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stace1214

stace1214

New Member
Original Poster
Day 2 Epcot and DHS

Rain, Rain Go Away!!
We woke up to a very wet day, but a rainy day at Disney is better than a sunny day at work! So we put on those fabulous ponchos and ran to the food court. We grabbed a croissant and headed to the bus stop for Epcot. We were so lucky our whole trip, most waits were right around 5 minutes for the buses. We arrived at Epcot about 25 minutes before opening and were one of the first in line. There ended up being probably around 100 people at rope drop. It was pouring SOOOOO hard while we waited! We finally got to go and were walked to Soarin'. This is the coolest ride ever!
Here's a pic from the queue...

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After Soarin' we went on The Land boat ride. I hated this ride as a kid/teen but really liked it this time around. This was my favorite part...

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We went on The Seas with Nemo and Friends next. It was cute. We stopped at Club cool next. Josh tried all of the Coke products and when he got ready to try Beverly, I had my camera ready. Ha ha ha! :ROFLOL:

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Then we went over the Imagination area. Figment was a favorite of mine growing up and Journey Into Imagination was always my favorite ride. But, I hadn't been on it since my last family trip in 1996. It was awful this time around. Nothing like it used to be. :( Then we went on Honey I Shrunk the Audience...talk about outdated! Definitely need an update there! After that we started to walk around World Showcase. By this time the rain had stopped and it was just sprinkling a little. Yay! Here are a few pictures from WS...

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We had early reservations for the Fantasmic Package at Mama Melrose at DHS so we headed out and got to the restaurant just in time. The service here was fantastic, but the food was only okay. Josh liked his alot, he had a chicken/pasta dish. I had pork tenderloin and wasn't very impressed. The desserts were amazing though! THe park was so so crowded, much more than I thought it would be. We managed to get on Star Tours, The Great Movie Ride and the Muppet 3-D show before 8pm. At 8, we headed towards the area for Fantasmic and it started raining cats and dogs. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a downpour! But being the troopers that we are, we headed into the theater being optomistic that it would taper off. It didn't. It only got worse. We were just soaked, we had to leave. After a drenching walk to the buses, we only had a short wait for a bus and we were back at the hotel in no time.

Next...Day 3 DHS and MK
 
stace1214

stace1214

New Member
Original Poster
Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom

We woke up extra early to get to EMH at Hollywood Studios. The plan was to ride Toy Story Mania together, then split up so that Josh could ride Tower of Terror and Rockin' Rollercoaster. We got there at least a half hour before the park opened and all ready there were hundreds of people waiting in line! So eventually we go through to the the roped off area and when the CM's dropped the rope, we were walked to TSM. People were crazy! They were pushing and shoving and racing to get there first. It was awful. We kind of hung back a little and still had very little wait when we got there. Here's a pic from the queue....

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It was such a great ride! If it wasn't so crowded, I would have loved to ride it again. Then we went over to RNRC. I waited while Josh rode- he loved it. Next up was ToT. The wait time listed was 10 minutes, but Josh was easily in there for 45.

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We were both hungry by this point so we went to Starring Rolls for breakfast. The cinnamon roll was out of this world!!

I can't remember the order we did everything else, so here's few pictures...

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Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular


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A really funny streetsmophere person

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Backlot Tour

We had a great lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine In!
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We had pretty much done everything we wanted to do at this point. It was so hot out so we headed back to the hotel for a swim.

Later on we went to Magic Kingdom in time for our reservations at Liberty Tree Tavern. Neither of us had done a character meal since we wer kids, so we didn't know what to expect. It was a lot of fun and the food was pretty good.

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The wait times for rides when we finished dinner (around 7:30pm) were nothing. We walked on PoTC, Haunted Mansion and used a fastpass for Buzz Lightyear. Around 9ish we stalked out a spot to watch Wishes from. I really thought we would need to find a spot early, but really we could have waited till 15 minutes before show and we still would have had a great spot. So we snacked on popcorn while we waited. I just love WDW popcorn! Wishes was amazing! I wish our camera took good night time pictures!

After Wishes, we hung out while the crowed thinned and headed to the bus. We didn't even wait 5 minutes until the bus got there! Talk about lucky!

Next time.... More Epcot, Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom
 

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