Trip Report COMPLETED (finally!)....Did we move to WDW? Nope just a two week trip!

Hello WDW Magic friends and welcome to my trip report. I have done a few trip reports in the past of both WDW and Disneyland. My most recent report was a Spring Break trip to WDW. So if you've read one of my reports before....welcome back friends! If you haven't read one before....welcome new friend!

A little background information

People going: Me (Amy) and my husband (Brad), you'll see enough of our pictures later.

"People" we are leaving behind to go on our trip: Our miniature schnauzer Kapono, she keeps trying to come with us though. She stays with my sister and her family and Kapono has some fur cousins to play with there and is well taken care of which is a relief for me and Brad too I guess.
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Our travel days July 4 -July 19. The days actually spent in WDW would be the 5th-19th. We live in Wisconsin but very close to Minneapolis/St. Paul so we fly from there. It wouldn't be a bad drive to the airport in the morning, but I like to stay near the airport the night before departure.

Since we were going to be in WDW for so long we got a lot of comments from friends joking with us that we must be moving in, hence the title of the report here.

Our Resort: All Star Movies. We don't spend much time in the room so all we need is a clean place to sleep, shower, and store our stuff. We really aren't pool people, although we do use the pool, but if we built in a lot of pool time we would stay at the Beach Club again! Side note: The first time we ever tried to stay at the Movies we were upgraded upon check in to the Beach Club! We didn't ask for it, the magic just happened, it was the best deluxe accommodations for All Star prices! So now whenever we stay at the Movies we keep our fingers crossed on check in day!

Okay so let's start shall we....

On July 4th we spent most of the day with my sister and her family and left Kapono at her "vacation home" for the next two weeks. We drove up to the Minneapolis airport area by the Mall of America, and made a quick stop at Sam's Club for one more discount Disney gift card. The Sam's Club was closing, actually it was 10 minutes before their posted close time and the lady at the door didn't want to let us in. We literally had to go over to a stand near the register and get a gift card, she even called her manager who said it was okay to let us in. We departed the store 3 minutes before for the posted close time! Take that lady! Anyway, it was dinner time but neither of us wanted to sit in a restaurant we just wanted to relax in the hotel room for the night. So there was a sub place and a Lee Ann Chin (Minnesota based Chinese take out chain), and Chinese won out. So we got our take out and checked into the hotel for the night and ate our take out, and watched a Capital Fourth on PBS. Which was fantastic this year with John Stamos as the host. :inlove:

Us with our Chinese take out!
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Our flight left early, but we are early birds so despite being 5 minutes away from the terminal we got there early. Plus we were too excited to sleep! Funny thing, we flipped on the tv while we were getting ready and the Steve Harvey show was on and it was one of the Epcot episodes from earlier in the year that he was recording when we were there in March. We don't normally watch that show and we didn't go to the recording but we saw it being on as a good sign that the Disney gods were with us!
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We arrived in Orlando after an uneventful flight. We enjoyed some movies and tried to nap but again we were just too excited to sleep!
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Magical Express load went quick and soon we were HOME!
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And despite doing online check in and requesting early arrival our room wasn't ready. But that was fine, we had to stop at the front desk any way. I had lots of gift cards in my purse that we wanted to put on our account, we wanted to decline Mousekeeping, and make sure our room had a good position for the 2 weeks. Now we did decline Mousekeeping but we did have our room serviced twice while we were there. We are fairly neat, and I'm always tidying up the room anyway even with Mousekeeping so we figured we could survive without having it every day. Plus with the extra money we would be able to enjoy a good meal or some good drinks at Trader Sam's. So with all that squared away we put our carry ons with bell services and headed to the bus stop with a quick gander at the gift shop.

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Next up: Disney Springs!
 

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
thanks for all the TSL photos -The babybel cheese table is cool!

Sorry about your run-in during HEA. People who think they are entitled drive me crazy.

Thanks! When we did finally eat at Woody's Lunchbox all the cheese chairs were full and I was sad I wanted to eat sitting in a cheese chair.

As for HEA in a way I was as amused as I was annoyed. I expected something like that to happen. I wasn't planning to give up an inch. I'm just amazed that the family that had been waiting next to us gave in to her so quickly.
 

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
Day 6: July 10

Another early morning today, but not to the Studios.
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We had to take the bus to the Magic Kingdom....
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But we weren't going to the Magic Kingdom yet.....Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary was our destination.
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We were seated quickly and we were the last table in the room to get the characters. The characters had just entered the room so we had time to get a plate of food.
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I just grabbed a plate and later Brad made fun of me for grabbing a kid's plate with the separate sections. I actually am glad I grabbed the sectioned plate. I don't care really if my food touches but it was nice to have the individual sections, especially when I got waffles later and I didn't have to worry about the syrup going into my savory hash browns. The hash browns and the ham were my favorites of the meal. Brad was happy to have unlimited bacon!
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And then we renewed our friendships with the gang!
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Goofy is B's favorite! Which is fitting!!
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Pluto was fun to watch when he was dancing and goofing around.
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ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
Continuing Day 6
We got to the Magic Kingdom right around opening and headed to Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder and Pirates before heading into Tomorrowland for some Incredibles photo ops and some air conditioning in the Carousel of Progress. I was proud of my husband because he stayed awake for the entire show this time. It isn't that he doesn't like it we just usually watch it later in the day and closer to his nap time!
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Since we had such a terrible ride on the Jungle Cruise the day before we were wanting a good experience. As the boat approached I zoomed in on the name tag of the skipper we would be getting as he was off loading his group. Luckily it was not Jermaine, but Nick. Nick was a good skipper and we had a great cruise.
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Funny sign at the exit area.
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ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
Day 6:

Enjoying the Jungle Cruise (I should have put this picture before the exit board, but....oh well.)
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We left a little earlier than we had planned. I don't know if it was the breakfast buffet or the heat or both, but I wasn't feeling very good. I suspect it was a little dehydration, because after a long afternoon of pool and a good long nap I felt much better.
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So off to the resort via the Music bus.
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We had fun at the Mighty Ducks pool. Since we are hockey fans (GO WILD!) the hockey theme was extra fun for us.
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You can't really see it too well, but there are snowflakes imprinted in the concrete.
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For dinner that night we ordered a Minnie van, our last one of the trip. Hubs wanted to take them other times but I was being frugal and couldn't justify the $25 cost when the regular Uber or Lyft was always half the price. Although if we had been using them to go to the MK the Minnie van drop off point might justify the price.

Anyway....we were having dinner at the Yachtsman Steakhouse at the Yacht Club but we left a little earlier to enjoy a beverage in the Crew's Cup Lounge.
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I don't remember what B got, you can see though it isn't a rum and coke. It was some mango type thing I think, it was tasty though. I thought the Mr. Tractor label of my beer was funny so I got that. I think it was brewed somewhere in Florida. It was good, but nothing super unusual.
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The Crew's Cup connects to the Yachtsman Steakhouse so Brad was enjoying the view (the Yachtsman has an in house butcher)....he couldn't wait to get his steak.
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ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
I love the cootie pic at TSL, and the bunny from the Contemporary mural. I'm going to have to take the time to look at that mural more closely the next time I'm there.

The mural is gorgeous, I always discover something new in it. If I ever stayed in that section of the Contemporary, instead of sitting out on the balcony enjoying the view I'd probably plop myself in front of the mural.
 

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
More of Day 6:

I forgot to include these, before we left for the Yachtsman we took these photos in the lobby of the All Star Music. If was fun seeing Donald in the lobby, we had seen him another day down by the Mighty Ducks pool too. In all the days we were there we often saw Donald and Goofy roaming around the resort. I thought that was really fun and an excellent inclusion for a Value resort.
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We are always seated under this awesome ceiling at the Yachtsman Steakhouse. I love it. At first when we were being seated I thought the guy was walking away from this area and I was sad, but happily he turned and we got the area we like.
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It also looks out over the pool area and we like people watching. There are some interesting characters that walk by, and I'm not talking about Donald or Goofy this time.
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The incredible bread and roasted garlic. The onion pull aparts are awesome!
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My rib eye with carbernet sauce, it came with truffle fries. Awesome...all of it.
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We shared a side of the truffle mac and cheese, and asked for it without the peppers and spinach they have added to it recently. I usually love this dish but it didn't have much truffle flavor or cheese.
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Brad's ribeye and the truffle fries. He normally gets a Kansas City steak but that wasn't on the menu anymore so he copied me. He got a blue cheese butter on his steak though. He enjoyed his and a couple bites of mine too.
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He was a member of the clean plate club!
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We didn't have dessert there, in fact we didn't have room for dessert yet. So we hung out in the lobby for awhile until we did have room for dessert. This lamp was next to me. It was cool and creepy all at the same time.
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worldfanatic

Well-Known Member
I was confused because you said you were staying at All-Star Movies, but I kept seeing bus/bus stop pictures of All-Star Music.
You probably said it earlier, but I can now surmise your staying in the Mighty Ducks section of AS Movies, which is very close to the AS Music bus stop.

I can be a little slow, but the pool pictures finally kicked it in for me.
 

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
I was confused because you said you were staying at All-Star Movies, but I kept seeing bus/bus stop pictures of All-Star Music.
You probably said it earlier, but I can now surmise your staying in the Mighty Ducks section of AS Movies, which is very close to the AS Music bus stop.

I can be a little slow, but the pool pictures finally kicked it in for me.

Yeah, I did mention it at the start, no problem though. We did stay at the Movies (Mighty Duck section) but our room was about 1 1/2-2 minute walk from from the Music bus stop & main building so we used that for transportation and food about 90% of the of the time. The walk to the Movies bus stop was about 4-5 minutes, which isn't too bad.
 

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
Thanks for sharing the photos of HEA! The people you ran into are the exact reason why we normally avoid fireworks at the parks :mad:
However, your photos are making me want to brave the masses our next trip

Thanks! The masses of people in the hub is the downside, but the view is great. We like the spot along the fence by the Partners statue because then no one is standing directly in front of us. It does take time to reserve that spot so we don't always stand there. We did stand towards the end of Main Street and enjoyed the view, not the best for close ups of projections but a good overall view.

We actually found that standing behind a large group of South American tour girls wasn't a bad view when we were on Main Street. Sure they held up phones, but there are so many others that do as well, but the ones we stood behind didn't hold them over their heads. And by standing behind a large group of girls, we didn't have anyone pop their kids up on their shoulders right in front of us at the start of the show!
 

Laurenciaa

Well-Known Member
Day 6: July 10

Another early morning today, but not to the Studios.
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We had to take the bus to the Magic Kingdom....
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But we weren't going to the Magic Kingdom yet.....Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary was our destination.
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Pluto was fun to watch when he was dancing and goofing around.

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Oohh my I'm in the back of your pictures! I saw you that morning getting seated but as stupid as I was, I forgot your "normal" name and only knew your forum name... that would have been a bit too awkward to greet you guys like that! It was a great morning, totally enjoyed the breakfast there!

EDIT : Aaaaaand totally enjoying your pictures ( and story) ! Brings me back a bit to the 2 wonderful weeks I had in July ( WDWlove:inlove::inlove::inlove:)
 
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93boomer

Premium Member

MissingDisney

Well-Known Member
Oohh my I'm in the back of your pictures! I saw you that morning getting seated but as stupid as I was, I forgot your "normal" name and only knew your forum name... that would have been a bit too awkward to greet you guys like that! It was a great morning, totally enjoyed the breakfast there!

EDIT : Aaaaaand totally enjoying your pictures ( and story) ! Brings me back a bit to the 2 wonderful weeks I had in July ( WDWlove:inlove::inlove::inlove:)

You have more restraint than I :joyfull: I would’ve walked up all giddy and excited and been like “hi there, Disney forum internet Friend that I’m envious of because she gets to Disney-it-up so often AND her cooler than cool youth pastor husband!” It would have been like seeing a celebrity for me. :cool: I probably would’ve frightened them. :oops:

Edit: once at CR I could’ve swore I saw @ajrwdwgirl. I kept trying to check the lady out and see if Brad was nearby. When 4 little ones came walking up to her with their dad in tow, I realized it wasn’t her. The lady probably thought I was crazy :facepalm:
 

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
"Decline Mousekeeping"?? You can do that? It saves money?

You can decline Mousekeeping at the All Stars for sure and I think Pop Century as well and maybe some of the moderates. I don't believe it is offered at all at the deluxe resorts. I like the extra money ($10 a night) that I turn around and give Disney (well, duh it's on a gift card), and we are fairly neat people so it isn't like the place is a pig sty. :)
 

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Original Poster
Oohh my I'm in the back of your pictures! I saw you that morning getting seated but as stupid as I was, I forgot your "normal" name and only knew your forum name... that would have been a bit too awkward to greet you guys like that! It was a great morning, totally enjoyed the breakfast there!

EDIT : Aaaaaand totally enjoying your pictures ( and story) ! Brings me back a bit to the 2 wonderful weeks I had in July ( WDWlove:inlove::inlove::inlove:)

Oh man! I'm so bummed now! It would have been so cool to meet you. And it wouldn't have been awkward, you could have just said you were from the wdwmagic boards. My hubs had met another forum member with me previously on the trip so he wouldn't have thought anything of it. Which picture are in the background of?

Anyway, it is cool that I had been recognized. I'm just glad I was behaving myself! I am also glad that you had a fun time at Chef Mickey's and on your trip. Who knows maybe we crossed paths at some other point on our trips. Where did you stay?
 
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