Trip Report *Completed* We Got No Troubles, Life Is The Bubbles, Down at Disney

Hi Everyone! Welcome to my first ever trip report. I discovered this site about a year ago and have been reading trip reports ever since. I hope you enjoy following along with mine.

The Cast:

DH Paul and me, Lisa


DS Adam and DSGF Kara
They graduated from high school in May and will be attending the University of Kentucky this fall.
"What Team?"
"Wildcats!"
Sorry, couldn't resist the High School Musical reference!

DD Allie and DDF (DD friend) Sarah
Allie takes awesome photos and I plan to use lots of her pictures in my report.

When? July 13-21, 2014
Where? Disney's Wilderness Lodge
Why? Our 25th Anniversary and Family Vacation

Day 1
July 13, 2014
We usually take 2 days to drive to WDW. Since we had extra people with us on this trip and would need 2 hotel rooms, we decided to save the hotel money and do the drive in one day.
We planned to leave our home in Cincinnati at midnight, but Paul and I had last minute packing to finish and Kara and Sarah both forgot things that had to be picked up from their homes.




Allie decorated the van for the trip!



We took a quick selfie and we finally hit the road about 1 am. Sorry for the crappy photo quality, but I had to include it!

I thought it would be fun to pass out little treats themed to each state we would drive through on the way to Florida. One thing came to mind when I thought about items produced in Kentucky, unfortunately I didn't think bourbon was appropriate for all members of our group.



Luckily I found an alternative at the UK campus bookstore!



The next state was Tennessee. Moon Pies are made in Chattanooga!

Next up was Georgia. I debated between peaches and peanuts and finally decided on


Peanut M&Ms!!


PALM TREES!!! We finally made it to Florida! We stopped at the Florida Welcome Center for free orange juice.

The next several hours dragged by. Disney should invent some form of magical transportation that whisks you to WDW as soon as you cross the Florida state line!

Finally, we saw this beautiful sight!


We couldn't believe we were finally here!

Minutes later the excitement reached a new level as we saw this…..



One last turn and we had reached our home for the week…..

Disney's Wilderness Lodge

Up next, exploring the Wilderness Lodge!

 

[blackthidot]

Glad that at least someone listens to me! Haha glad you got to enjoy it. Gonna have to check our your whole report as well...like when it's not 1:30am lol

 

[SharonD]

Great time in Epcot - you got a lot of nice family pics as well.

 

[PineapplePrincess]

We also went to Disney on our honeymoon. We just celebrated our 20th a couple weeks ago, but unfortunately we were not at Disney for it! On our last trip, I had the strawberry shortcake for breakfast thanks to blackthidot.....it was soooo yummy!

 

[Tuvalu]

Add us to the Disney Honeymoon Club Stayed at the Contemporary. We also celebrated anniversaries ~ 5th (Fairway Villas); 10th (POR); 15th (Marriott World Center); 20th (All Star Movies); 25th (Grand Floridian); 30th (Polynesian).

DS and DDIL also honeymooned at Disney. We will be celebrating their 6th anniversary with them in a few weeks at the WL

 

[LisaBelle]

Glad that at least someone listens to me! Haha glad you got to enjoy it. Gonna have to check our your whole report as well...like when it's not 1:30am lol

Of course I listened to you. You don't ignore strawberry shortcake! BTW I really enjoyed reading your trip reports. Great commentary! I will definitely be following your next report.

Great time in Epcot - you got a lot of nice family pics as well.

Thanks! I love being able to look back at the photos and remember our trip. Writing this TR has been great at helping me remember stories I might have forgotten.

We also went to Disney on our honeymoon. We just celebrated our 20th a couple weeks ago, but unfortunately we were not at Disney for it! On our last trip, I had the strawberry shortcake for breakfast thanks to blackthidot.....it was soooo yummy!

Congratulations on your 20th anniversary! It's fun to hear from other people who honeymooned or celebrated anniversaries at WDW. Strawberry shortcake for breakfast is an awesome idea!!! If only I could have some right now!

Add us to the Disney Honeymoon Club Stayed at the Contemporary. We also celebrated anniversaries ~ 5th (Fairway Villas); 10th (POR); 15th (Marriott World Center); 20th (All Star Movies); 25th (Grand Floridian); 30th (Polynesian).

DS and DDIL also honeymooned at Disney. We will be celebrating their 6th anniversary with them in a few weeks at the WL

I love knowing that there are other people who enjoy WDW so much that they want to celebrate marriages and anniversaries there, just like I do! Until I found this site I had no idea that there were so many other people who love Disney as much as I do!
We stayed off site for our honeymoon, but after getting a glimpse of the Disney resorts vowed to come back and stay on site in the future. We had a very relaxed, go with the flow type of honeymoon. Very different from the "pack in as much as you possibly can" type of trips we have now! With me being a teacher we usually vacation in July so all of our Disney trips have been right around our anniversary. The first few trips the kids were younger and we celebrated as a family. The last two trips we got to go out and celebrate just the two of us which was nice, too. I think it's great that you will be celebrating with your DS and DDIL. That sounds like a fun trip, especially at the WL! Have a great time. Will you write a TR?

 

[MRGEFF]

So enjoying your TR. My husband is here smacking his lips at all your food pix. We touch down in 111 days and it can't get here soon enough.

 

[LisaBelle]

Thanks for reading! Your 111 days will fly by and you'll be tasting all that food in person!!

 

[Ellen Ripley]

Awesome report!

 

[Tuvalu]

I think it's great that you will be celebrating with your DS and DDIL. That sounds like a fun trip, especially at the WL! Have a great time. Will you write a TR?

Thanks! I hadn't thought of doing a TR. I did a live TR in February when I went with my daughter (who is now a 3rd grade teacher ) Live TR is so hard, I really admire @coachwnh for his diligence! My daughter is a wonderful photographer and has written three TR (in addition to helping me with the live one.) Not sure I can pull one off without her, haha.

Looking forward to reading the rest of yours!

 

[LisaBelle]

Awesome report!

Thanks! I am having lots of fun writing it. Glad others are enjoying reading it.

Thanks! I hadn't thought of doing a TR. I did a live TR in February when I went with my daughter (who is now a 3rd grade teacher ) Live TR is so hard, I really admire @coachwnh for his diligence! My daughter is a wonderful photographer and has written three TR (in addition to helping me with the live one.) Not sure I can pull one off without her, haha.

Looking forward to reading the rest of yours!

Congrats to your daughter. Hope she has a great school year! Don't think I could do a live TR. @coachwnh definitely sets the bar super high! I read the live TR that you and your daughter posted. It was really good. I'm sure you could do one without her, but it would probably be more fun to collaborate!
Thanks for continuing to follow!

 

[Princess Charli]

Ugh!! This trip report is making me want to be there right now!!! But I have a whole two years to wait!! 2016 can't come fast enough

 

[LisaBelle]

Thursday, July 17
Disney's Hollywood Studios

I had really been looking forward to this day. I loved Frozen so I was super excited when they announced all of the Frozen Fun events. Frozen holds a special place in my heart because it reminds me of my daughter's club volleyball season. Allie watched Frozen in our van as we drove to several volleyball tournaments. At one of her tournaments the girls had an impromptu Frozen sing along in between matches. Kara worked at a frozen yogurt shop and they played Frozen on the shop DVD player so much that she has the entire movie memorized. Allie and her teammates even had a Frozen sing along at the yogurt shop one night while Kara was working. You get the picture…
Back to the report. We did not purchase the premium package. We wanted to experience as much of the Frozen Fun as we could, but didn't want to miss out on any of our favorites. I was especially looking forward to getting a cut-out of Olaf to photograph around the park!
We had fastpass+ for TOT, Lights, Motors Action, and Toy Story Mania. We wanted to ride Rock n Roller Coaster, too so we planned to get there at rope drop and make that our first ride of the day. As was typical for us, we left WL later than I would have liked. We arrived at DHS just after opening, so it was packed. We saw this guy and couldn't resist getting a group photo taken with him.

We made it through bag check and then had to wait to get through the turnstiles. We finally made it in and we all got an Olaf of our very own!! We were running late so we didn't stop to take a group photo in front of the Sorcerer's hat until later. Since we did not have a fastpass+ for Rock n Roller Coaster, we headed over there. The stand by line said 30 minutes, which wasn't too bad, so we jumped in line. I had suggested the single rider line, but no one wanted to do that because they all wanted to ride together. I think it was 9:45 or so by this point and our TOT fastpass+ was for 10:15ish. I wanted to be there for the early part of the fastpass+ window so that we could ride TOT and make it to the Frozen parade at 11:00.
Look who was peeking through the trees!

Here we are waiting in line for Rock n Roller Coaster.

Sadly, this was the last time we would all have happy faces for the next hour or so .
Just after we took this photo, Adam put his Oakley sunglasses up on top of his head. He and Kara were joking around and his sunglasses fell off his head and landed lens side down . He was really mad because he said they were scratched. He didn't let us look so we couldn't really evaluate the situation. Because he and Kara had been goofing around, she felt terrible about the glasses being scratched. She even offered to pay for new lenses. It was getting hot, our moods were not the best, and the line had come to a complete stand still. It was getting close to our TOT fp+ so I discussed our options. We could stay in line, then go to TOT and probably miss the parade. Or we could get out of line, ride TOT and try to get a fp+ for RnRC for later. We opted to get out of line. We got in line for TOT and even though we had a fp+ it took a good 15-20 minutes to get on board.




Kara pointed out that this meter said it was manufactured in Cincinnati! Cool little detail.

Here is our ride photo. You can see that Adam was still pretty upset.
I am not a big fan of rides that drop you, but I love TOT. I think it is because you don't just drop to the bottom. Sarah liked TOT a lot. Kara said that it really made her stomach drop, but she liked the other parts of the ride. She didn't love it, but liked it enough to ask about riding at night in the dark. We took a quick peek in the gift shop. Allie got a shirt and Adam got a glass. Then we headed up the street for the Frozen parade. We got there just as it started and did not have a good view, but they were projecting the parade on big screens, so we could at least get a better look at things on the screen.
By now we were all starving so we headed and back down by TOT and ate at Fairfax Fare. Adam loves the hot dogs topped with macaroni and cheese. He was still a little quiet, but the food was helping to perk him up. While the others ate I hit the fp+ kiosk to see what I could do about getting a RnRC fp+ for later. I'd forgotten about the tiered fp+ stuff and didn't want to give up our Toy Story Mania fp+ so until we used that we couldn't try for RnRC. The CM suggested we cancel our Lights, Motors Actions fp+ (we probably wouldn't need fp+ for it anyway) and switch it to an earlier fp+ time for Muppets. There is a fp+ kiosk right by Muppets, so as soon as we watched the Muppets we could then try for RnRC. So that is what we did. We wandered through a few shops and made our way to TSMM.



We walked right on. I love this ride. I always get a better score on this ride than on Buzz. I like that you get to play several different games. Adam had one of the highest scores of the hour! That improved his mood! I wish the line was shorter so we could have ridden again. When we came out of TSMM we ran into this guy. Paul was excited to get his picture taken with him.


Then I spied this sight!

Oaken's Trading Post from Frozen! The queue was empty so in we went! I have to admit, I kind of lost my mind in this store!

There were Frozen treats. Allie and Adam got Sven shaped cookies dipped in chocolate (they ate them while I was in the check out line).

Oaken's family was in the sauna!
My favorite part about the shop was the check out line. I'll explain. As you might expect, there was quite a long line to check out. As the register opened up, the CM held up a sign with their register number on it and said, " Woo hoo!" just like Oaken did in the movie. Silly I know, but it was another one of those Disney details that made it so much fun! I bought myself a stuffed Olaf! I love him. I also got an Olaf beach towel that says Chillin in the summertime, an Olaf Christmas ornament and a children's book about Olaf for my class and 2 magnetic Anna and Elsa plays sets for my class to use for indoor recess. Kara got a Frozen Fun tshirt. Shopping here was one of my favorite parts of our trip. I felt like a kid!

 

[LisaBelle]

Ugh!! This trip report is making me want to be there right now!!! But I have a whole two years to wait!! 2016 can't come fast enough

Thanks for reading. Sorry that you have two years to wait. We last went to Disney in 2012 and did not know when we would get back. I had some serious Disney blues last summer with no trip in sight. I read every trip report I could and started making lists of new things I wanted to try. We got some extra tax refund money so we were able to do this trip this year. I was all ready with my list of new things to do when I got to start planning. Hope the time flies by!

 

[Zipadeelady]

I love that they "whoo hoo'd" at the trading post! That would have made my day.

 

[LisaBelle]

I love that they "whoo hoo'd" at the trading post! That would have made my day.

It made my day for sure. Disney really understands how little details like that make the experiences magical!

 

[LisaBelle]

After our Frozen shopping experience we got a drink and wandered around the Streets of America until our fp+ time for the Muppets.


We got to Muppet vision and they were not allowing anyone in. Apparently they had been having technical difficulties. We were about to leave when they started to let everyone in. We went in to the pre show room for about 10 minutes when a CM came in and said that they were sorry, but due to technical difficulties the attraction was currently shut down. We left the theater and Paul and the kids went over to the Star Wars shop while I hopped in line at the fp+ kiosk to try and score RnRC fp+ for later that evening. When I got to the front of the line I told the CM what I wanted and she said that as of a few minutes prior to that there weren't any times available. I was expecting bad news but when she pulled it up there were fp+ times available!! I went and found the crew and we decided to head back to the WL for a swim and a rest. On our way out of the park Paul and Adam could not resist pulling the rope!


Then we stopped to watch the citizens of Hollywood as Stone Granite was picked up by a "studio casting agent" who turned out to really be a police officer arresting him for something he'd done earlier in the day. We love to stop and watch these performances!


We walked a little further and came upon these guys.


The sign on their car says, "0 days since our last injury?" I asked what happened to cause them to have zero days since their last injury. They told us that zero days was actually the best record they'd had in quite some time because they usually have only hours or minutes between injuries. They were really funny. They said that someone should make a calendar of "Sparky" (the guy covered in soot). They then had Sparky strike a pose to show what each calendar page would look like.

Time for our group photo in front of the hat.


As we approached the entrance we saw a photo pass photographer who was obviously taking some magic shots. I told everyone we had to stop. Our photographer was fun and here are the magic shots he took!



We left the park and headed for the parking lot. Olaf managed to get into some mischief on the tram!



As we were riding the tram we realized that we knew what section we had parked in, but had no idea what row we were in . I may or may not have been rushing everyone when we parked and we decided to walk rather than ride the tram so we had no idea which row we were in. It was really hot and we were all tired. We split up and I kept hitting the panic button to set off the alarm. Allie finally spied the van!! Olaf celebrated with us!


Heading back into the WL

When we got back to WL Allie discovered that Mousekeeping had left a new friend for us.


Olaf had made a new friend, too.


Allie, Sarah and I decided to head to the pool.

 

[Mom@disney]

Thursday, July 17
Disney's Hollywood Studios

I had really been looking forward to this day. I loved Frozen so I was super excited when they announced all of the Frozen Fun events. Frozen holds a special place in my heart because it reminds me of my daughter's club volleyball season. Allie watched Frozen in our van as we drove to several volleyball tournaments. At one of her tournaments the girls had an impromptu Frozen sing along in between matches. Kara worked at a frozen yogurt shop and they played Frozen on the shop DVD player so much that she has the entire movie memorized. Allie and her teammates even had a Frozen sing along at the yogurt shop one night while Kara was working. You get the picture…
Back to the report. We did not purchase the premium package. We wanted to experience as much of the Frozen Fun as we could, but didn't want to miss out on any of our favorites. I was especially looking forward to getting a cut-out of Olaf to photograph around the park!
We had fastpass+ for TOT, Lights, Motors Action, and Toy Story Mania. We wanted to ride Rock n Roller Coaster, too so we planned to get there at rope drop and make that our first ride of the day. As was typical for us, we left WL later than I would have liked. We arrived at DHS just after opening, so it was packed. We saw this guy and couldn't resist getting a group photo taken with him.

We made it through bag check and then had to wait to get through the turnstiles. We finally made it in and we all got an Olaf of our very own!! We were running late so we didn't stop to take a group photo in front of the Sorcerer's hat until later. Since we did not have a fastpass+ for Rock n Roller Coaster, we headed over there. The stand by line said 30 minutes, which wasn't too bad, so we jumped in line. I had suggested the single rider line, but no one wanted to do that because they all wanted to ride together. I think it was 9:45 or so by this point and our TOT fastpass+ was for 10:15ish. I wanted to be there for the early part of the fastpass+ window so that we could ride TOT and make it to the Frozen parade at 11:00.
Look who was peeking through the trees!

Here we are waiting in line for Rock n Roller Coaster.

Sadly, this was the last time we would all have happy faces for the next hour or so .
Just after we took this photo, Adam put his Oakley sunglasses up on top of his head. He and Kara were joking around and his sunglasses fell off his head and landed lens side down . He was really mad because he said they were scratched. He didn't let us look so we couldn't really evaluate the situation. Because he and Kara had been goofing around, she felt terrible about the glasses being scratched. She even offered to pay for new lenses. It was getting hot, our moods were not the best, and the line had come to a complete stand still. It was getting close to our TOT fp+ so I discussed our options. We could stay in line, then go to TOT and probably miss the parade. Or we could get out of line, ride TOT and try to get a fp+ for RnRC for later. We opted to get out of line. We got in line for TOT and even though we had a fp+ it took a good 15-20 minutes to get on board.




Kara pointed out that this meter said it was manufactured in Cincinnati! Cool little detail.

Here is our ride photo. You can see that Adam was still pretty upset.
I am not a big fan of rides that drop you, but I love TOT. I think it is because you don't just drop to the bottom. Sarah liked TOT a lot. Kara said that it really made her stomach drop, but she liked the other parts of the ride. She didn't love it, but liked it enough to ask about riding at night in the dark. We took a quick peek in the gift shop. Allie got a shirt and Adam got a glass. Then we headed up the street for the Frozen parade. We got there just as it started and did not have a good view, but they were projecting the parade on big screens, so we could at least get a better look at things on the screen.
By now we were all starving so we headed and back down by TOT and ate at Fairfax Fare. Adam loves the hot dogs topped with macaroni and cheese. He was still a little quiet, but the food was helping to perk him up. While the others ate I hit the fp+ kiosk to see what I could do about getting a RnRC fp+ for later. I'd forgotten about the tiered fp+ stuff and didn't want to give up our Toy Story Mania fp+ so until we used that we couldn't try for RnRC. The CM suggested we cancel our Lights, Motors Actions fp+ (we probably wouldn't need fp+ for it anyway) and switch it to an earlier fp+ time for Muppets. There is a fp+ kiosk right by Muppets, so as soon as we watched the Muppets we could then try for RnRC. So that is what we did. We wandered through a few shops and made our way to TSMM.



We walked right on. I love this ride. I always get a better score on this ride than on Buzz. I like that you get to play several different games. Adam had one of the highest scores of the hour! That improved his mood! I wish the line was shorter so we could have ridden again. When we came out of TSMM we ran into this guy. Paul was excited to get his picture taken with him.


Then I spied this sight!

Oaken's Trading Post from Frozen! The queue was empty so in we went! I have to admit, I kind of lost my mind in this store!

There were Frozen treats. Allie and Adam got Sven shaped cookies dipped in chocolate (they ate them while I was in the check out line).

Oaken's family was in the sauna!
My favorite part about the shop was the check out line. I'll explain. As you might expect, there was quite a long line to check out. As the register opened up, the CM held up a sign with their register number on it and said, " Woo hoo!" just like Oaken did in the movie. Silly I know, but it was another one of those Disney details that made it so much fun! I bought myself a stuffed Olaf! I love him. I also got an Olaf beach towel that says Chillin in the summertime, an Olaf Christmas ornament and a children's book about Olaf for my class and 2 magnetic Anna and Elsa plays sets for my class to use for indoor recess. Kara got a Frozen Fun tshirt. Shopping here was one of my favorite parts of our trip. I felt like a kid!

Love the photos of TOT. I have a love/hate relationship with this ride. I LOVE everything about it...the story, the props, the CMs, but I don't like the funny things it does with my tummy lol. The first time the whole family rode TOT, my youngest was 4. She was terrified throughout the whole thing, but we have so many laughs looking back at the photo.

 

[LisaBelle]

The beautiful Wilderness Lodge


Firerock Geyser was erupting!


After our much needed break we were ready to head back to DHS. Kara and I took a selfie on the tram.

Then a selfie with Allie.

And finally a selfie with Adam. He liked that our selfie shows our height difference.


The lights were coming on and I really liked the way the colors looked against the sky.

We were hungry again, so we made another stop at Fairfax Fare. Olaf enjoyed his Coke!




Then we headed over for our ride on Rock n Roller Coaster. On our way there we saw that the stand by time for TOT was listed as 10 minutes. We were torn about what to do. Kara had asked about riding TOT at night and Allie and I love to ride TOT after dark. But we had a tight schedule. We still had to ride Rock n Roller Coaster and we wanted to see the Frozen Fireworks then head for the late showing of Fantasmic. We decided to use our fp+ for RnRC and hopefully the stand by for TOT would still be short when we came out. We had about a 5 minute wait before we were in the pre show room. Things were looking good. Then as we entered the pre-show we had an unpleasant encounter with another guest. Paul alerted a CM to the situation. Her name was Mikayla and she was awesome!! She was upset that our ride experience had been spoiled by the other guest, so she told us that she would call ahead to tell the loading CMs that we could ride twice without waiting! After the first ride they took us through a special entrance and put us right back in the loading area to ride again! Star treatment!




When we got off our second ride on RnRC we headed for TOT. But the stand by time was 40 minutes !! We should have ridden it earlier . We were bummed because we really wanted to see the Frozen fireworks and ride TOT. In the end, we decided to skip TOT and find a spot for the fireworks. I was really hoping that the fireworks would be worth missing TOT at night. Well, the Frozen Fireworks were spectacular! They brought tears to my eyes. I now rank the Frozen Fireworks second on my list of nighttime shows at WDW. One of the things that makes Disney fireworks so special is the way they match the fireworks to the music. Other places say they do that, but Disney does it best.
We waded through the crowds and made our way to

Kara and Adam went to the concession stand and got frozen lemonades for all of us as we waited for the show to begin. Everyone enjoyed Fantasmic. I love this show, but I really don't understand how the whole Pocahontas section ties in. Anyway, Sarah and Kara really loved how all the characters come out on the river boat at the end.
We strolled out of the park and stopped to have a few photos taken along the way.



Coming up next Universal Islands of Adventure

 

[LisaBelle]

Love the photos of TOT. I have a love/hate relationship with this ride. I LOVE everything about it...the story, the props, the CMs, but I don't like the funny things it does with my tummy lol. The first time the whole family rode TOT, my youngest was 4. She was terrified throughout the whole thing, but we have so many laughs looking back at the photo.

I know exactly what you mean about the love/hate relationship with TOT. It took me several years to work up the courage to ride TOT, but now I love it. I look forward to riding it, but get so nervous as soon as the ride starts. The ride photos always manage to bring you right back into the moment!

 

[FlaggNL]

I think the right attitude makes all the difference. I always go with the attitude that even if there are some bumps along the way we will still have a good time and we always do. It must be the faith, trust and pixie dust in action!

I am sure it all depends on the right attitude, but as you say there always is some pixie dust what comes in action