Trip Report Hurricanes, Foot Pains and “What The Crocs Just Happened?” Anniversary Tale – A Sept/Irma 2017 TR (COMPLETED)

So here we are again… Another amazing trip is over.

My original title for the is report was:

The Best-Laid Plans Of The Mouse & Men… because so many of our carefully thought out schedules & plans were completely turned upside down by Irma and other “forces” along the way.

However, Ross and Julia who do not share my love for Robert Burns or John Steinbeck vetoed that and came up with their own title.

Before I begin our tale, I want to express and offer our thoughts and prayers to all who suffered in Hurricane Irma as well as Harvey & Maria. There are times when I joke about the fact that we were in Florida during the hurricane, but in no way do I not realize the devastation that was caused to so many.

That being said... Let the Trip Report begin! Who’s in?

 

[disneypearl]

Well, after 4 years of our household being free of the flu - Miss Hope broke our streak. My little energizer bunny is feeling so yucky! The rest of our house is "quarantined" so we don't get our friends sick - although none of the rest of us seem to have it...yet. The good news is since I have extra time at home, I'm hoping to get another day posted tonight.

So sorry to hear that Hope got the flu! Hopefully it won’t keep her down too long & she’ll recover quickly.

 

[Figment Forever]

So sorry to hear that Hope got the flu! Hopefully it won’t keep her down too long & she’ll recover quickly.

Thanks @disneypearl ! Her fever finally broke and she is starting to get some energy back which is nice to see. She has been in bed since Tuesday!

 

[Figment Forever]

Day 10: Sunday, September 17th

Today would be our “pool” day, but this year, we were changing things up. Since we had to purchase the Water Park and More option to get the Bounce Back offer, we were going to head to our first Disney Waterpark as a family.

Ross and I visited Typhoon Lagoon and I think River Country during our honeymoon in 92. But BB wasn’t opened yet and our girls had never been to any Disney Water Park. Everyone was very excited. We had hoped to visit TL today and BB on our last day. However, we were nervous since TL hadn’t yet reopened after Irma so we were thrilled to tune in to channel 3 in the morning and see the operating hours for TL resumed.

I let everyone take their time while I did our laundry.

Ross picked up everyone’s breakfast and brought it all back to our room so we could eat and relax. Julia caught up with some more work and Hope enjoyed her crazy cartoons.

Today was also one of our WDW Magic Board friend's birthdays @dizfan917 - and I promised we would celebrate with a Mickey Pop! Hope decided a song would be nice...



Around 10:00am, we headed to DS to catch a bus to TL. We were all very excited!

 

[Figment Forever]

We started out with the lazy river. I’m sure it has a “real” name but to me it’s the lazy river. As we floated around, we could still see damage and debris from Irma.

Ross and Hope went ahead of Julia and me and soon we were separated. I should have made a designated meeting spot & time – but I didn’t.

 

[Figment Forever]

We ended up finding them a short time later in the wave pool.

I didn’t remember too much about TL from my visit 25 years ago. I only remember that the waves in the wave pool knocked me over – so I cautioned Ross to be careful with Hope. His memory was not as intact as mine and said he didn’t think the waves to be anything more than 6 Flags. Ummmm, no.

Sure enough, Ross soon believed my memory of the wicked waves that TL produced.

We walked around a bit looking for Miss Adventure Falls, but no one seemed able to correctly direct us. Of course, we were no better trying to find it using the map. Lol We did find some slides that Hopes enjoyed. At last we thought we found it… but alas we were wrong. It ended up being Gangplank Falls.

 

[Figment Forever]

Finally, we got the right directions and found Miss Adventure Falls and ended up going on twice. It was a lot of fun!

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

Is that Baymax on Julia's shirt? Super cute!

 

[Figment Forever]

Is that Baymax on Julia's shirt? Super cute!

Yes! - Baymax is a favorite in our house! I was able to find a couple of really cute ones from Hot Topic.

 

[Figment Forever]

We were hungry but didn’t want to have too much food since we had an ADR for dinner, so we settled on a snack. We all got frozen lemonade, Julia got Artic Dots aka Dippin Dots and Ross got some mini doughnuts that Hope ended up loving.

She is not a cake person so I was surprised when she gobbled them up and asked for more.

Since Julia wanted to have some too, Ross ended up buying 3 more orders using our snack credits. He thought he could get one free dipping sauce with each order, but later on, we would find a huge charge to our room. The CM didn’t understand him and ended up charging us for about 5 snacks.

After we ate, we ended up going back on Miss Adventure Falls. We decided to check out Crush n Gusher – not being sure we would ride it. I guess we were adventurous because we found ourselves walking up to the top. Ross was kind enough to carry both rafts.

I went with Julia and Ross went with Hope. I really didn’t think Hope would like it – but sure enough she was and yes, she loved it! We wanted to leave after that, but somehow Hope talked us into doing all 3 Crush n Gusher slides.

 

[Figment Forever]

Again, I figured we should go… we had a 6:30 ADR for Ohanna and we had to travel from TL – DS – POR and then to the Poly. But somehow we ended up floating in the lazy river – Castaway Creek and then back in the waves until we heard the announcement that the park was closing!

 

[Figment Forever]

At that moment, I knew we had no shot of getting to Ohanna on time. I was wishing I had brought our clothes with us so we could just head there from TL. Ross was more optimistic or should I say delusional. He didn’t see a problem and thought we had plenty of time. Sometimes I just don’t have the energy to fight him. Can you guys guess how this is going to end?

We walked onto a bus for DS but had to wait for it to be full aka packed.

Once at DS, I suggested that we just hop a bus to POR but Ross wanted to walk to the boat. By now, it was almost 6PM. I told him there was no way we would make it to Ohanna by 6:30. I lost the argument and off we walked for the boat. We waited for the next boat to arrive and then we were on our way to POR.

So at 6:30 when I should have been watching a coconut race, we were opening the door to our room. I told everyone to change ASAP. Of course, this would be the day that Mousekeeping went about and beyond and I had to snap a few pictures!

 

[Figment Forever]

We were out the door in about 20 minutes. Did I mention I HATE rushing?

We hopped a bus to MK and then walked up to and boarded the monorail to the Poly – which had to pause about 10 minutes for a maintenance check.

So at 8:00pm – an hour and a half past our ADR time, we walked up to the podium and I held my breath. I apologized profusely to the CM and asked if we could still be seated. He told me our ADR was canceled but he would go ahead and change that – but we would have to wait for a table. I thanked him and said no problem!

Hope got another pager, which made her happy.

We were all beyond hungry and that crankiness that goes along with being hungry set in. Luckily, we weren’t even waiting for 10 minutes when our pager went off and a CM took us to our table.

 

[Figment Forever]

As we were taken to our seat, the hostess scooped up a basket of bread for us but when she seated us, she noticed the allergy note on our reservation. She placed the bread on a stand instead of our table and said we couldn’t have food until the waiter came out to talk to me. I quickly said – I was fine with the bread on the table but she would hear nothing of it and walked off quickly – but not until she informed our waiter, who was carrying our salad, not to give it to us! So our salad joined our bread and sat on the small stand about 2 feet away from us. Needless to say Ross was livid and started complying to me. Julia, who was also starving, joined in the campaign to be mad at me.

Please note: They were not upset at the CM’s – they were irate with me because I have the allergy noted on the ADR.

We waited for the chef who wasn’t coming out quickly enough. Ross and Julia watched as 3 tables that were sat after us get all their food. Finally, I called out to the waiter and begged him to put some sort of food on the table and promised him I wouldn’t eat anything until the chef spoke with me.

Once everyone started to eat, the crankiness disappeared.

The chef came out, we spoke and then an abundance of food appeared. All was right with the world.

 

[Figment Forever]

After Hope ate, she announced it was “beddie bye” time. lol So Ross grabbed her stroller and she fell fast asleep before dessert.

The rest of us continued on with dessert.

And of course I realized that I never had a birthday Mickey Pop today! So I substituted for a Rice Krispie Treat....

We wobbled out with our bellies stuffed.

Even though we weren’t in a theme park today, we were completely exhausted. I think TL really tired us out – plus all the rushing at the end. We decided to turn in.

We took the monorail over to MK and from there got a bus back to POR.

Our friends were still waiting for us along with a sweet note from our Mousekeeper that I forgot to photograph earlier.

Up Next: A Return To Pandora

 

[Matt and Kelly]

What a great day! We have yet to do Typhoon lagoon, but it looks amazing. I'm so glad you were able to get into Ohana.

 

[Lyssa]

That note from mousekeeping is so cute

I hope sometime I'll get to visit when it's not too cold to go to a water park, we love water parks so much, and Typhoon Lagoon looks like so much fun

 

[Jamie77]

We had a 12:00PM ADR for lunch at Germany so we started to make our way to WS. On the way, we stopped for a cool drink. It’s so funny how we don’t drink any soda at home, but we can drink it here. I really like the melon flavor one – I forget which country it’s from. Maybe Japan?

View attachment 256541View attachment 256542
The melon drink is from Thailand. If you go to Skipper Canteen, you can order a full cup of it. I did that last summer. I told the CM at the outside front desk that I wanted to order one, and he came back with a full 16 oz. cup and he wouldn't let me pay for it. I got it free of charge!

 

[Figment Forever]

What a great day! We have yet to do Typhoon lagoon, but it looks amazing. I'm so glad you were able to get into Ohana.

I would definitely recommend it - I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. We ended up visiting BB & TL, but TL was my favorite.

 

[Figment Forever]

That note from mousekeeping is so cute

I hope sometime I'll get to visit when it's not too cold to go to a water park, we love water parks so much, and Typhoon Lagoon looks like so much fun

Mousekeeping really impress me. Sometimes they go above and beyond and it's so funny how happy those little gestures make us! lol

 

[Figment Forever]

So nice of that CM!! Thanks for the info! I'll have to remember that - just in case we visit Skipper Canteen again, I may have to order a glass with dinner!