Trip Report COMPLETED Allll the fun...and other musings - an August trip report

kimberlymautz · Sep 5, 2016

Everyone keeps saying the same thing about the fries at D-Luxe! Ugh. I just want some good fries.

sheriffwoody · Sep 5, 2016

Your unplanned day sounds so fun! Definitely busy, but fun to just do whatever you feel like doing.

Also, the anniversary present from your kids....omg my heart :inlove:

.

gwhb75 · Sep 5, 2016

kimberlymautz said:
Everyone keeps saying the same thing about the fries at D-Luxe! Ugh. I just want some good fries.

They were definitely disappointing. I had such high hopes, especially since thy had dipping sauces that came with them, but even they couldn't salvage them.

gwhb75 · Sep 5, 2016

sheriffwoody said:
Your unplanned day sounds so fun! Definitely busy, but fun to just do whatever you feel like doing.

Also, the anniversary present from your kids....omg my heart .

It was a really fun day. We should plan more of those in the future.

We were really surprised by the kid's gift for us. We love the mugs and use them all the time..

Thanks for reading

Tiggerish · Sep 6, 2016

This continues to be a great trip report.

Love the aerial shots from the balloon!

LeighM · Sep 6, 2016

gwhb75 said:
Around noon everyone was ready for lunch. The plan was to go to D-Luxe Burger again, but then Steph decided she wanted to go to Blaze Pizza instead. I went in to D-Luxe and ordered, and then walked Steph over to Blaze.

Blaze is really good. View attachment 159398 Think of it like a pizza version of Subway. You pick a crust, a sauce, a cheese and then any toppings you want (the price is $7.99 for a basic cheese pizza, or $9.99 for a design-your-own pizza).
View attachment 159400
Steph just wanted a cheese one (a bit boring, but that’s what she likes). The pizza is then placed in an oven and is ready in about 3 minutes.
View attachment 159401

I made the mistake of telling my pizza loving husband about Blaze Pizza and we've been there at least 3 times in the past 2 months LOL. Luckily (or unluckily depending on your point of view), we have a Blaze in our town of Williamsburg, VA.

trampdog · Sep 6, 2016

gwhb75 said:
August 21 continued

During lunch we noticed a bit of activity in the table next to us. There were a couple of a servers and a manager who kept visiting the table. The table was really close to us, so as much as I tried not to listen in, it was pretty much impossible. It sounded like someone at the table hadn’t enjoyed their meal (which is a legit complaint), but then it got ridiculous (our table was too small, I didn’t like the cheese on the burger, etc). Then the Mom broke out “We just wanted lunch to be as magical as possible, and I don’t feel it was”. I really hate it when people talk like that just because they’re at Disney. Would you pull a line like that anywhere else? I believe they were given some fastpasses for their trouble.

more coming

Ah, the old Fastpass meltdown! I've become an expert on spotting these. The best place to catch the drama is in the Guest Relations buildings. You can easily watch 10 - 12 an hour. I've seen some pretty good acts there too. Academy award winners. Best one yet was the woman who stormed into GR at DHS, cut right in front of everyone (including me just one away from a CM after standing there for 15 minutes), gained her poise, looked at the CM, and began to blubber and actually cry real tears. I;m watching all this as I finally get to a CM to fix my issues. She's really loud. Big fakes wales. And she utters the five words that will forever be eblazed upon my brain and that of my youngest son, "Disney ruined my magical experience".

My son and I walk out ahead of her. She then comes out, goes to her family, and says, "I told you I'd get them".

I have seen this play out many times and always with the same line. My son and I joke about it all the time.

gwhb75 · Sep 6, 2016

fractal said:
Loving the TR and hoping the SW fireworks show is still there for me next trip!

Glad you're enjoying it so far. I definitely hope they keep the fireworks for a long time (given that they built two new projection structures for it, I'm guessing either it will stay or be replaced by something else)

gwhb75 · Sep 6, 2016

Matty30 said:
Oops my mistake just realized I called it flights of wonder and not characters in flight!!!

I knew what you meant.

gwhb75 · Sep 6, 2016

Tuvalu said:
I think there could have been air quotes around Tammy and I "got ready."

Thumbs down on D-Luxe Burger fries for sure!

Great pics from Characters in Flight! And from Star Wars fireworks (I have not seen the new show.)

Way to go on your "day off."

I just got to the part of your trip report where you left HS before the fireworks.I'm surprised they didn't have the cupcake at the Backlot Cafe. They always have had it there when we were there.

I agree that the fries are sub-par at De-Luxe burger. Can't put my finger on what they do wrong with them, but they just aren't very good

Glad you liked the pictures from the Characters in Flight.

Thanks for following along.

gwhb75 · Sep 6, 2016

trampdog said:
Ah, the old Fastpass meltdown! I've become an expert on spotting these. The best place to catch the drama is in the Guest Relations buildings. You can easily watch 10 - 12 an hour. I've seen some pretty good acts there too. Academy award winners. Best one yet was the woman who stormed into GR at DHS, cut right in front of everyone (including me just one away from a CM after standing there for 15 minutes), gained her poise, looked at the CM, and began to blubber and actually cry real tears. I;m watching all this as I finally get to a CM to fix my issues. She's really loud. Big fakes wales. And she utters the five words that will forever be eblazed upon my brain and that of my youngest son, "Disney ruined my magical experience".

My son and I walk out ahead of her. She then comes out, goes to her family, and says, "I told you I'd get them".

I have seen this play out many times and always with the same line. My son and I joke about it all the time.

I've seen similar things a few times myself. If you have a legit complaint I have no problem with people voicing their concerns, but it annoys me when they start angling for free stuff.

kimberlymautz · Sep 7, 2016

I can't understand how some people can think it's okay to behave poorly so they get fast passes (or anything else for that matter) out of it. One of my friends used to do this when we'd go out, like one time she didn't like the breading of her chicken strips and complained until she was given them for free. I told her if she was going to act like a spoiled child I wasnt going anywhere with her because it's embarrassing. I understand legitimate problems, but petty issues or making things up is embarrassing and is a bad influence on other people. I just don't understand it. Luggage being hours late, having something legitimately wrong with your food, or someone being rude are all real things to be upset over. I feel like the people calling wolf for no reason are going to ruin it for the people with actual issues because they aren't going to be taken as seriously. Ugh.

trampdog · Sep 7, 2016

kimberlymautz said:
I can't understand how some people can think it's okay to behave poorly so they get fast passes (or anything else for that matter) out of it. One of my friends used to do this when we'd go out, like one time she didn't like the breading of her chicken strips and complained until she was given them for free. I told her if she was going to act like a spoiled child I wasnt going anywhere with her because it's embarrassing. I understand legitimate problems, but petty issues or making things up is embarrassing and is a bad influence on other people. I just don't understand it. Luggage being hours late, having something legitimately wrong with your food, or someone being rude are all real things to be upset over. I feel like the people calling wolf for no reason are going to ruin it for the people with actual issues because they aren't going to be taken as seriously. Ugh.

The problem is Disney is very liberal on this. They need to change, because you can't change stupid people.

I saw another instance again at a GR counter where a mom and her two small kids wanted Disney to "do something about the rain making it harder for them to meet their fastpass schedule", Boom! The CM says, "I just added two extra all access fastpasses to your account".

It happens way more than it should. I have even gotten them for issues I did not think required them. I would even tell the CM, no it's ok. Sorry, take them anyway. I find it kind of embarrassing when other people see and hear it.

One time my family was eating dinner at Prime Time. My Father has a habit of ordering the least popular dish on menus. He ordered the pork chops (I think). They were very fatty. Probably just a bad bunch in the batch. So he didn't eat much of them, but was happy with cleaning everyone else's plates. Waitress comes over and gives the normal spiel of how he didn't clean his plate, blah, blah, blah. She takes the plates away and the manager comes over two minutes later asking if everything was ok and why he didn't eat much of the pork chops. My dad says, "it was ok. a little fatty, but I had enough. I'm good". Waitress comes back with our deserts. We finish and the check arrives fully comped for five people. I call the manager over and say, "no, you don't need to do this". Manager says, "sir, I insist". Again, I plead with him to put the charges back on to no avail. I ended up leaving the original charge as the tip. It just feels awkward to accept things like that when you don't think its all that bad. I guess other people (a lot of other people) feel quite different.

Sorry to hijack the OP's TR. I owe you a beer.

ScarletBegonias · Sep 7, 2016

Following along! I always enjoy your TR's!
It was so sweet that the kids got you those mugs!

and this TR is making me miss AKL so much!!!

gwhb75 · Sep 7, 2016

ScarletBegonias said:
Following along! I always enjoy your TR's!
It was so sweet that the kids got you those mugs!

and this TR is making me miss AKL so much!!!

I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. Thanks for following along.

gwhb75 · Sep 7, 2016

Aug 24 – “Tour Day”

You would think that after the busy day we had on our un-planned day that we’d sleep in a bit, but that wouldn’t be possible. Today is tour day. Back when we were planning the trip, we thought it would be fun to do a tour. The problem is, most of the tours have age limits of 16+ and we’re not quite there yet. However, there was one tour that only had a 12+ age limit so we booked the Marceline to the Magic Kingdom Tour. We were pretty excited about doing the tour.

The one thing about the tour is that it required us to be at the Magic Kingdom for an 8:00 check in, which means that we were up at 5:45 to get ready (I am glad I had checked this the night before because I had originally thought we had to be at the MK by 8:45 which means we would have missed the tour). Everyone got up OK, and we were out the door by 7.

We had a private bus ride

We made it to the MK just as the welcome show was starting.

We do have a problem though. Steph’s foot is really not doing well. As I mentioned in the intro, Steph has been at chiro, physio and acupuncture to try and fix whatever is wrong (the original thought was that it was tendonitis, but we’re not sure about that now). Anyways, she woke up today with her foot being really sore and swollen. Given that the tour was 3 hours of walking, we decided to pull the trigger on getting her a wheelchair. Fortunately we had a few minutes before we could get into the park, so we went over to the wheelchair and EVC rental desk. The wheelchair was $12 a day or, if you wanted to book it for more than one day, it changed to $10/day. We have 5 days left, so I decided to just get it for the 5 days.

If we don’t use it every day that’s OK, but at least we’ll have the option.

"They see me rollin', They hate'n"

With personalized plates no less

Not long after we got the wheelchair they opened the gates and we headed into the park. The check-in for the tour is in the building where they do the meet-and-greets with Tinkerbell and Mickey Mouse. We went to the check-in desk, retrieved our name badges and our ear pieces and then waited in the lounge.

At around 8:30 our tour leader, Darlene, approached the group and introduced herself. She then lead us outside where we all tested our ear pieces and then the tour began.

It looks like I'm still upset about getting wet on Kali the night before

If you are going to be doing the tour and don’t want to know about it, then skip this section (I'll put it under the spoiler button so you won't accidentally see it)

Darlene starts by telling us a bit about herself. She was a long-time Disney employee who started working at Disneyland, and has held various roles in the company. She became a tour guide at Disney World about 4 years ago. Darlene’s dad used to be an Imagineer.

So now the tour starts. I’ll do this in bullet points. Also, there aren’t a lot of pictures during the tour.

• The tour starts on Main Street, recapping Walt’s early life.

There was a story about Walt painting animal pictures on a barn with tar that his dad had bought to re-tar the roof of his barn. There was also a story about Walt’s first job as a paperboy, and how his Dad made him put each paper between the door as opposed to just throwing it on the porch, which is where Walt learned the importance of customer service
• While Walt calls Marceline home, he only lived there for about 4 years. Main St USA is not actually based on Marceline as there is no street in Marceline like it. Main St USA is more what Walt viewed as the picture of the perfect Main St.
• Tomorrowland was meant to take us up to the year 1986 when Haley’s comet was going to pass by earth.
• We had a quick stop in Liberty Square where we talked about Walt’s service in the Army, and how he had to lie about his age to enlist.
• Next we rode Haunted Mansion. We learned that two Imagineers (Marc Davis and Claude Coats) designed the Haunted Mansion with one being in charge of the first half of the ride (up to the ballroom scene) and the other for the second half once the ghosts appear. In the first half of the ride you don’t see any ghosts, you just see signs of them, and after the ballroom there are ghosts that are seen. We also heard about the plans for a Museum of the Weird that was going to be part of the ride, but was eventually cancelled.
• After the ride we went backstage and underneath the Haunted Mansion to see how they do the ballroom scene. It was really neat to see. We were told to lower our expectations of what backstage looked like, and they weren’t kidding. It’s like an industrial area back there.
A quick bathroom break followed.

• We rode Winnie the Pooh after that. We had a brief discussion about Mister Toad’s wild ride.
• We heard a story about Walt’s daughter not knowing who he was. She found out when they had to do a presentation at school about who her parent’s were and she told stories about her dad taking her to the park and doing things with her. Someone then told her that her dad was Walt Disney, as in THE Walt Disney. She waited by the door for him that night and when he came in she asked him if that was true. When she found out it was she asked him for his autograph
• Next was a quick stop at the castle where they discussed the mosaic. The interesting thing about the mosaic is that it is the only thing in any of the parks that is signed by the Imagineers who created it (the signatures are near the back by the entrance to Cinderella’s Royal Table.
• We finished the tour off with a ride on Carousel of Progress. We heard about the history of the ride and how it ended up at the MK. In the ride there were a few neat things:
o The little girl in the first scene is only in the first scene and is never seen again
o There is a cat in each of the scenes somewhere
o The show used to be sponsored by GE, but once they stopped sponsoring their logos were removed, except for on two appliances since they were authentic to the time period
o The Dad saying he was going for a sarsaparilla with “the boys” is a nod to the Sherman brothers (who Walt referred to as “the boys”).
• The tour ended outside CoP with Darlene telling us a bit more about her past. It turns out she knew Walt (she was around 6 years old when she met him), and she told him she wanted to be a guide at Disneyland one day. Her eyes welled up when she told us about the day her dad came home from work to tell her that Walt had passed away.

The tour was really enjoyable, and I fully recommend it.

more to come

gwhb75 · Sep 7, 2016

August 24th continued

After the tour we headed over to the Starlight Café. I should note there were some dark clouds rolling in. Liam was really the only one who wanted to eat here, so he got chicken nuggets and fries. The place was packed, so we ended up standing at a table up by Sonny Eclipse.

While Liam was eating the skies opened up, and it started pouring. We tried waiting it out, but it just wasn’t stopping so I decided to bite the bullet and purchase some new ponchos (we bought four a few years ago and they lasted about 3 trips, so they are good for more than one trip at least)

someone isn't impressed with the rain.

The rain just wasn’t letting up, so we decided to call it a day for the park. On the way out we stopped by one of the pretzel carts and Tammy got a pretzel with cheese sauce.

I had a small piece and it was really good. The last stop on the way out was the Ice Cream Parlor on Main St, where Steph got an ice cream cookie sandwich.

After that we headed out.

The rain kept up for a while, so we decided to hang out at the hotel a bit. The kids borrowed the movie Bolt from the Community Hall and then headed back to the room to watch it (but not before a plethora of pictures were taken)

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photobomb

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Tammy and I made a brief stop at the room to pick up some dirty clothes and the headed downstairs to do “laundry” (I love how throwing quotes around things makes you wonder what really happened. We legit did laundry).

We did run into a bit of a moral issue in the laundry room. We get into the laundry room at Kidani (which is a bit smaller than the other laundry rooms I’ve seen on property), and there are only 3 washing machines, and all have clothes in them. The issue is that all three of them are done washing and are just sitting there. We waited about 15 minutes and hoped that someone would come and retrieve their clothes. About 10 minutes into our wait another couple came in, but they were in the same predicament as us. We had a quick discussion with them and decided to take the clothes out and fold them neatly on top of the washing machine, so that’s what we did. It was definitely an uncomfortable feeling as we rushed to get the machines empty while now hoping that the people don’t come in now. We quickly got the clothes out, put our’s in, and then headed out to the Community Hall. I set a timer on my phone to when the washing machine would be done so we wouldn’t be “those people”.

About 35 minutes later the timer went off, and we headed back and moved the clothes to the dryer. While we were in there, one of the original washing machine owners showed up and moved her clothes over to the dryer too (which means it was at least an hour after her laundry had finished). It didn’t take too long for the clothes to dry, and soon we were back in the room.

I don’t think the Bolt watching went very well, as both kids were sound asleep when we got there.

We woke them up and they started getting ready. The plan was to go to EPCOT for the afternoon and evening.

more to come

gwhb75 · Sep 7, 2016

August 24th continued

We got on the bus and started the drive to EPCOT. Part way there Liam realized his magic band had fallen off in the room (he wouldn’t wake up, so I ended up have a wrestling match with him on the floor to wake him up, and his band must have fallen off during our tussle). Fortunately, I was carrying his AP card, so crisis averted.

We headed to EPCOT, and rented another wheelchair for Steph. After we picked it up we headed over to Soarin’ to check out the new ride.

It was fun. The scene I liked the best was the one at Neuchwanstein Castle in Germany. I was in Germany on business in May, and actually toured that castle.

We all had a good ride (well, maybe not Tammy. As I mentioned, she hates heights, or the illusion of heights, so she had her eyes closed for most of the ride).

After our ride we booked it over to England for our Rose and Crown reservation.

It turns out we were about 40 minutes late (I could have sworn we were on time). Regardless, we were seated quickly, and had a great view.

We hadn’t been here in a few years, so we were looking forward to our meal. Tammy and Liam ordered the fish and chips,

Steph got the vegetarian cottage pie

and I got the surf and turf.

All were amazing. For dessert we got 3 sticky toffee puddings,

and I got a banofee pudding.

Amazing. We had a great experience here and will definitely be back.

more to come

gwhb75 · Sep 7, 2016

August 24th contined

After our dinner the kids wanted to look around the stores in England. Steph has started to like all things England (esecially Dr. Who). She bought a blanket that she was quite thrilled with

After dinner we headed back to Future World. We had hoped to go to the DVC lounge, but it was closed (it closed at 6 and it’s now around 7).

Since we were at the Imagination pavilion anyway, we rode Journey Into Imagination.

It was fun

After that we split up. Liam wanted to go on Mission Space so I took him over there, while Tammy and Steph went on the Seas with Nemo and Friends (they don’t like the intense version of Mission Space which is what Liam wanted to go on).

I checked the app on the way over and it said the standby for the orange side was 25 minutes, but in reality there was 0 wait (and about 6 empty ships).

Liam and I were the only one’s on our team.

We had fun.

After landing safely on Mars, we headed over to Test Track.

The single rider line only had a 15 minute wait so we jumped in line. We had fun.

We got off the ride and met Tammy and Steph waiting outside. We met up with them and started to make our way out of the park. We were almost at the Fountain of Nations, when Steph realized she didn’t have her phone. Tammy checked her bags and she didn’t have it, and that’s when Steph remembered she had put in down on the bench where they were waiting for us. We rushed back, but there was no phone to be seen. Fortunately, there was a French woman sitting there who, although not being able to speak a lot of English, was able to tell us that a CM in blue had stopped by and picked it up. We managed to track that CM down, and sure enough he had the phone. Another crisis averted.

We called it a day after that. We headed back to AKL and went to community hall again. We did some more pictures, and then I played foosball with Liam. He’s much better than he used to be, and gave me a real run for my money (and he’s become really cocky about it – “hey Dad, let me know if you want me start trying soon”). We had fun.

On the way back to the room we saw this salamander on the window. I thought it looked kind of funny.

Well, that’s it for the day.

end of August 24th

fractal · Sep 8, 2016

Sure. Went to do some "laundry".

Trip Report *COMPLETED* Allll the fun...and other musings - an August trip report

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Trip Report COMPLETED Allll the fun...and other musings - an August trip report