Trip Report COMPLETED: "What is Mickey hiding from anyway?" ACE GANG REUNION

abzoo · May 10, 2015

And back to the trip report...

We were sort of heading out of the park when we came across Chip and Dale in Frontierland. The line was short so we figured we might as well get pics.

We were still on a quest to get a Pascal Magic Shot and kept one of the CMs told us that we could maybe get one over by Tiana. No luck there but Tiana's set was just about to start so we stayed for a picture. Tiana came out dancing so we joined in. We talked to her about the beignets in New Orleans Square at Disneyland.

We were next told to check over by the bridge to Tomorrowland for our elusive Magic Shot. When we got there, we were again told to go elsewhere. The photographer (Jerry?) suggested the Tangled rest area. We looked dejected and said that we hadn't seen PhotoPass over there at any point this week. So Jerry took pity on us! He had us stand in front of the neutral background of the construction gates though. SUCCESS.

With that crossed off our list, it was time to say goodbye to Magic Kingdom and head out.

Next stop: Hollywood Studios-- had to get back to TTC to get the car and then drive over.

Stitch again...

Our first FP+ was for Tower of Terror. Stopped again for photos because why not?

FlaggNL · May 11, 2015

Still a very great TR!! Love the two daytime 7DMT pics!!! Agian thanks for sharing!

abzoo · May 11, 2015

Tower of Terror ride pic:

We explored Hollywood Studios a little more...

Including the Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area

We also went to Wandering Oaken's for a quick look around.

RIP Backlot Tour.

Woo Magic Shot.

We also saw Voyage of the Little Mermaid. It's been a while since I've seen this and I forgot how underwhelming it is.

Also we had a FP+ for Toy Story. Val won, I think.

mrdrift · May 12, 2015

It's really sad that this report is coming to an end. This has been truly a special report with tons of humor and laughter. All of you have made this report what it is, fun. Following along to the end.

abzoo · May 12, 2015

Next, we got in the standby line for Great Movie RIde...

We went to One Man's Dream and watched the movie this time. Then we started thinking about heading out of HS. We were getting hungry so we decided to pop on over to Epcot.

We made a couple stops at the F&W kiosks. I wanted the lettuce wrap again from South Korea and it was not quite as great as when I got it earlier in the week. The first time, I got almost too much lettuce, this time, it wasn't enough. and the pork wasn't even on the lettuce? Still tasty but c'mon.

Also got the beef tenderloin tips berbere style with okra, jalapeños, tomato and pap. It was spicy but really good. I think that Val and I stopped in the Chase Cardholders lounge in America and that I finished eating up there. I guess we took no pictures there at all the 3 days we went to Epcot. Oh well.

Miles303 · May 12, 2015

abzoo, do you have an ETSY shop?? I would totally buy those Tangled TOMS! You are very talented! Thanks for the great Trip Report! I am so excited for MNSSH now!

FlaggNL · May 13, 2015

Wow... already to the end.....

a more that great TR to follow!! Thanks again for sharing this wonderful trip!!

abzoo · May 13, 2015

The last thing we did in Epcot was eat a little more food. Val and I both got the crispy pork belly again from Brazil and tried the Brazilian cheese bread (pao de queijo) since Val's sister had loved the stuff when she visited actual Brazil. It was a strange consistency. The pork belly and the beans that came along with it were great.

Also, Val got the beef empanada from Patagonia. I think this was actually the first thing we got that day. Photos out of order. oops.

So then it was time to say goodbye to Epcot. We wanted to see Fantasmic and we decided to walk through the boardwalk to get back to Hollywood Studios... since walking an extra 1+ mile is no big deal after all the walking we did all week.

California girl by a California sign.

I really wanted to do the drawing class so we headed over that way. The class instructor was a little annoying and new to the job but we drew Pluto. @ValVal insists that hers is Goofy, NOT Pluto.

Then we went to the little Mushu show (which they got rid of in Disneyland but does exist in Disneyland Paris with the option of selecting which language you want Mushu to speak). There's a hiding TARDIS in the room.

We also played the little games too. Val did not approve with getting Tinker Bell.

We truly were reaching the end of it all when we decided to get over to Rock n Rollercoaster for one last ride standby. I was in an awful mood while we waited. I checked my work email and there was a somewhat snarky email in there about Abby still being in "mouse land." Most of my coworkers really don't get the WDW obsession. So with that combined with being tired how absolutely bummed I was about the end of vacation and Val's departure the next day, I was not a happy camper. RnRC was fun though.

We took pictures in front of Tower of Terror for the second time that day.

When I went online to check Memory Maker after the trip. I found yet another gem of an edit courtesy of Val. It makes absolutely no sense and it's an insane picture of me but it's hilarious. Enjoy:

Alright. I'll post the actual end of this TR later tonight. :cry:

mrdrift · May 13, 2015

Love all the food pictures, things to try when I return to WDW. All of the different faces in the pictures makes for some great memories. Following to the end.

abzoo · May 13, 2015

mrdrift said:
It's really sad that this report is coming to an end. This has been truly a special report with tons of humor and laughter. All of you have made this report what it is, fun. Following along to the end.

Such kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the TR-- thanks for sticking around for the 6 months it took me to finish it!

Miles303 said:
abzoo, do you have an ETSY shop?? I would totally buy those Tangled TOMS! You are very talented! Thanks for the great Trip Report! I am so excited for MNSSH now!

Thank you!! I've considered making an Etsy shop before but I'm never sure how I would price things. I'll send you a message if I ever end up making a shop!

And regarding MNSSHP, I'm excited for you! It's tons of fun!

FlaggNL said:
Wow... already to the end..... a more that great TR to follow!! Thanks again for sharing this wonderful trip!!

Thanks again for following, new trip report will be coming soon since I'll be in Disney starting tomorrow night!

Courtney6682 · May 13, 2015

Awesome TR! It took me about 5 hours to read at work today lol...but it was lots of fun!! Glad you and the girls had such a wonderful time!!!

abzoo · May 13, 2015

So we headed to the Fanstasmic amphitheater and ran into one of my sorority sisters who was working there and said hello. Found some seats and then the waiting began. The last time I saw Fantasmic, it was in Disneyland a couple years ago. It's been a loong time since I've seen it here and I think I'd only seen it once before.

Show time. The Fantasmic score is stuck in my head as I'm writing this.

And then it was really the end. We took some pictures of the hat since a few days before, the official announcement had been made that it was finally going away... haven't seen HS without it yet though. And I basically have much have no memories of the park without the Sorcerer Mickey hat.

I'm sure it's not surprising in the least bit that the last thing we did was get more photos for Memory Maker.

AND THEN WE LEFT. TRIP OVER. SADNESS HAPPENED. We had a hard time finding the car in the DHS parking lot. Then we drove to our lame hotel and packed. Val's flight was crazy early the next morning so we woke up before dawn to go to the airport and then I drove back home and crashed for an hour or so before going into work. It was a horrible Monday.

THE END.

abzoo · May 13, 2015

What's next?

Well, TOMORROW, I'm driving to Orlando to meet up with my parents (my dad is currently attending a conference there and my mom tagged along). I was able to convince them that they needed to spend a day in the parks with me so we're staying on-site tomorrow night and park-hopping on Friday. Then they leave and on Wednesday night, my sister is coming to FL and we're spending 5 days down there-- we'll be going to Universal and the 24 Hour event for sure and celebrating her 21st birthday!

I'll put a link to the new TR here once I start it

HERE IT IS!!

Then, at the end of July, I'm going to visit @ValVal . We're obviously gonna hit up Disneyland so I can experience some of the Diamond Anniversary festivities.

And now for some final thoughts on THE AMAZING ACE GANG REUNION TRIP:

This trip will be incredibly difficult to top. I know that there will be no future visit to WDW where I won't be thinking about our inside jokes and sharing stories about that one time I was able to round up my besties for some awesome adventures. (See above if you want to see more of my sentimental ramblings) But seriously, for someone who's used to traveling with my family, there was so much to enjoy about going with my friends instead. When I go with my sister, there's always a lot of complaining and fighting-- there was none of that vacationing with friends. There were some difficulties trying to plan the whole thing (and bugging people to just buy their plane tickets already) but when we were in the Disney bubble, we just had a blast.

The hotel was great... Our Finding Nemo Suite was so perfect for our group. We had room to spread out, the beds (including the murphy bed and pull-out couch) were very comfy. The theming was so fun-- everything was colorful and so cute. Disney transportation from AoA was also very reliable this week-- we never had to wait that long to catch a bus, although there were a few times when the line for AoA seemed like the longest to catch the bus at the end of the night.

October is fun!... Crowd levels were not quite as low as we had hoped but that wasn’t too much of an issue. The weather was great-- a little warm but no rain at all. Standby wait times were longer than expected. Our favorite part of October was obviously...

Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party: Really, we almost talked ourselves out of this at the very early stages of planning for this trip since we didn’t want to pay extra to go to MK. But I’m so glad everyone else ended up agreeing to take part since it was absolutely a highlight of the trip. I feel like I've said it so many times in this TR but we had so. much. fun. Dressing up was awesome and we were obsessed with our costumes. Trick-or-treating was fun. Standby ride lines were pretty short. I loved the lighting and general ambiance. There were a few things I'd do differently if I go again (and if I can find someone to go with this year, I'd love to go again).

Food and Wine Fest... very fun! This was the first time that I've ever visited during the festival and I think it definitely brought an extra level of fun to Epcot for our group. The food was tasty but it's dangerous when you want to try all the things and spend all the money! I definitely miss some of the F&W offerings now that they're gone.

The rest of the food was also pretty good... I'm glad we got to have some other fun meals like Chef Mickey's and Be Our Guest (the first time, not so much the second time). Le Cellier was a first and it was delicious. Hoop Dee Doo was a blast and I'm still tempted to make another ADR there for when my sister is here. Other than that, I ate a few kids meals which were nothing spectacular.

Did I say enough about Memory Maker?... Although the price has been raised $20 since we bought it, you can absolutely get your money's worth from Memory Maker. It's gonna be a bummer for my next trips to WDW not having this. We had more than 800 pictures on our account when we were done. I even was back at Disney a couple weeks after this trip and I was able to continue using the MM package since you have 30 days to take more photos once you redeem Memory Maker and download your first pic online. With 5 people to spit the cost, it was definitely worth it. Ride photos (and videos) go directly to your online account, you can go in and add fun ridiculous frames online, you can accumulate 10 We're-holding-Tinkerbell and 10 OMG-Stitch-is-popping-out-of-the-ground-and-we're-so-surprised Magic Shots (and more Magic Shots that are actually more exciting). We only have about 3 photos from college with all 5 of us in the shot and now we have hundreds!! Heading over to the PhotoPass CMs was something we were glad to take the time to do.

Universal was also great... I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and this was my first time seeing the Diagon Alley expansion. It was so great and immersive and I can't wait to bring my sister there next week. I didn't have a roller coaster buddy with my like my sister which was a bummer since the wait times were so low for Rock It, Hulk, etc. Also going on a HHN day was annoying since we got kicked out of the park so early.

I think that's it!

Thanks to all of you who followed along with me... Thank you for your kind words! It took me much longer than it should have to finish this thing but you guys kept me motivated to do so. Like I said, I'll be back soon with another TR.

popcenturylover · May 13, 2015

abzoo said:
What's next?

Well, TOMORROW, I'm driving to Orlando to meet up with my parents (my dad is currently attending a conference there and my mom tagged along). I was able to convince them that they needed to spend a day in the parks with me so we're staying on-site tomorrow night and park-hopping on Friday. Then they leave and on Wednesday night, my sister is coming to FL and we're spending 5 days down there-- we'll be going to Universal and the 24 Hour event for sure and celebrating her 21st birthday!

I'll put a link to the new TR here once I start it

Then, at the end of July, I'm going to visit @ValVal . We're obviously gonna hit up Disneyland so I can experience some of the Diamond Anniversary festivities.

And now for some final thoughts on THE AMAZING ACE GANG REUNION TRIP:

View attachment 92914

This trip will be incredibly difficult to top. I know that there will be no future visit to WDW where I won't be thinking about our inside jokes and sharing stories about that one time I was able to round up my besties for some awesome adventures. (See above if you want to see more of my sentimental ramblings) But seriously, for someone who's used to traveling with my family, there was so much to enjoy about going with my friends instead. When I go with my sister, there's always a lot of complaining and fighting-- there was none of that vacationing with friends. There were some difficulties trying to plan the whole thing (and bugging people to just buy their plane tickets already) but when we were in the Disney bubble, we just had a blast.

The hotel was great... Our Finding Nemo Suite was so perfect for our group. We had room to spread out, the beds (including the murphy bed and pull-out couch) were very comfy. The theming was so fun-- everything was colorful and so cute. Disney transportation from AoA was also very reliable this week-- we never had to wait that long to catch a bus, although there were a few times when the line for AoA seemed like the longest to catch the bus at the end of the night.

October is fun!... Crowd levels were not quite as low as we had hoped but that wasn’t too much of an issue. The weather was great-- a little warm but no rain at all. Standby wait times were longer than expected. Our favorite part of October was obviously...

Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party: Really, we almost talked ourselves out of this at the very early stages of planning for this trip since we didn’t want to pay extra to go to MK. But I’m so glad everyone else ended up agreeing to take part since it was absolutely a highlight of the trip. I feel like I've said it so many times in this TR but we had so. much. fun. Dressing up was awesome and we were obsessed with our costumes. Trick-or-treating was fun. Standby ride lines were pretty short. I loved the lighting and general ambiance. There were a few things I'd do differently if I go again (and if I can find someone to go with this year, I'd love to go again).

View attachment 92912

Food and Wine Fest... very fun! This was the first time that I've ever visited during the festival and I think it definitely brought an extra level of fun to Epcot for our group. The food was tasty but it's dangerous when you want to try all the things and spend all the money! I definitely miss some of the F&W offerings now that they're gone.

The rest of the food was also pretty good... I'm glad we got to have some other fun meals like Chef Mickey's and Be Our Guest (the first time, not so much the second time). Le Cellier was a first and it was delicious. Hoop Dee Doo was a blast and I'm still tempted to make another ADR there for when my sister is here. Other than that, I ate a few kids meals which were nothing spectacular.

Did I say enough about Memory Maker?... Although the price has been raised $20 since we bought it, you can absolutely get your money's worth from Memory Maker. It's gonna be a bummer for my next trips to WDW not having this. We had more than 800 pictures on our account when we were done. I even was back at Disney a couple weeks after this trip and I was able to continue using the MM package since you have 30 days to take more photos once you redeem Memory Maker and download your first pic online. With 5 people to spit the cost, it was definitely worth it. Ride photos (and videos) go directly to your online account, you can go in and add fun ridiculous frames online, you can accumulate 10 We're-holding-Tinkerbell and 10 OMG-Stitch-is-popping-out-of-the-ground-and-we're-so-surprised Magic Shots (and more Magic Shots that are actually more exciting). We only have about 3 photos from college with all 5 of us in the shot and now we have hundreds!! Heading over to the PhotoPass CMs was something we were glad to take the time to do.

View attachment 92913

Universal was also great... I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and this was my first time seeing the Diagon Alley expansion. It was so great and immersive and I can't wait to bring my sister there next week. I didn't have a roller coaster buddy with my like my sister which was a bummer since the wait times were so low for Rock It, Hulk, etc. Also going on a HHN day was annoying since we got kicked out of the park so early.

I think that's it!

Thanks to all of you who followed along with me... Thank you for your kind words! It took me much longer than it should have to finish this thing but you guys kept me motivated to do so. Like I said, I'll be back soon with another TR.

View attachment 92919

Loved your report! Thanks for sharing!

mrdrift · May 14, 2015

Thank you for sharing this wonderful trip with all of us. All of the pictures and laughter from this trip report was really special. Will be watching for the link to the next report.

blreinsel · May 14, 2015

Loved your TR! I wish I could get my college friends to go with me.

I was shut down by all but 1 of them when I brought it up last Fall.. so she and I are going alone and leaving them behind.

Can't wait for your next report!

abzoo · May 14, 2015

blgauger said:
Loved your TR! I wish I could get my college friends to go with me. I was shut down by all but 1 of them when I brought it up last Fall.. so she and I are going alone and leaving them behind. Can't wait for your next report!

There were a couple points in the planning process where I thought it was just going to be one of my friends going with me and that would have been awesome anyway. But, yes, it was amazing to have all 5 of us. You're going to have a blast and your other friends are just missing out!

Thanks for reading!!

ValVal · May 14, 2015

WOW TAN-VAL really is more noticeable to me towards the end there haha awwww i miss tan-val :bawling:

it's also gunna be sad now that there is no more TR from the ACE GANG :cry:

but I'm sure I'll get more fun TR from 24hr

ZZZZEEEEEEEEE END!!!!

ValVal · May 14, 2015

blgauger said:
Loved your TR! I wish I could get my college friends to go with me. I was shut down by all but 1 of them when I brought it up last Fall.. so she and I are going alone and leaving them behind. Can't wait for your next report!

Good for u guys! I'm still shocked we pulled THIS off haha Even though everyone had originally "agreed" to go along when it was half jokingly brought up our Senior yr of college (i was dead serious tho haha) we really couldn't get everyone in on it (Life Happens) until about 2 MONTHS before it happened. SOOOOO for about 2yrs I pretty much planned a group trip & saved enough money so that worse comes to worse I was going by myself (obviously Abby wouldn't let that happen so really EITHER way we were gunna have an awesome vacation haha )

Plus no grumpy gills r allowed at WDW- u guys will have a GREAT TIME :happy:

Sandurz · May 15, 2015

Finally complete! Fun pictures, good summaries, great report all around. In particular the STAR WARS Memory Maker edit was A+...I laughed for a solid 30 seconds!

Trip Report COMPLETED: "What is Mickey hiding from anyway?" ACE GANG REUNION

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