Trip Report My Tower of Terror-ific Birthday Trip

Hi everyone! We have been back from our trip for a week now, and I am definitely ready to relive it by writing this report! Let's get started!

Who: Me (Amy) and my husband Brian


When: Tuesday, Nov. 19 - Saturday, Nov. 23, 2013

Where: Pop Century

Why: To celebrate my 40th birthday and our 15th wedding anniversary

 

[TheMouseFan]

This trip was an adult only trip, so Monday night was spent making sure the kids' laundry was done, the kitchen was stocked, and everything was set for school while we were gone. My mom came over and stayed with the three of them while we were gone. We had to say our goodbyes before the kids went to bed, because we had to leave early the next morning. Owen cried, which made it very difficult to get a good night's sleep!

Tuesday, November 19
The alarm went off at 3:30 am. We left the house at 4:30 am to make the drive from Dayton to Columbus for our 7:20 am flight. We got about halfway there and I realized that I forgot to put on my earrings, watch, and Mother's ring. My watch bothered me the most. I feel naked without my watch! Anyhow, we got there plenty early and took off right on time. Unfortunately, it was very overcast that morning, so no good sunrise while we were waiting to take off, but it was very bright once we were above the clouds.


We made it to MCO with no issues and landed 15 minutes early. We quickly made our way to DME.

Our Magicbands worked flawlessly to get us through both checkpoints. There weren't too many people there and we only waited about 5 minutes to get on the bus. Then we waited what seemed like forever for the bus to leave! I'm sure it was only 15 minutes, but we had places we wanted to be!! The new video was okay. There was really nothing wrong with it, it just wasn't as "magical" as the previous one. As others have said, it was like an infomercial for MM+ and DVC.
Soon we were seeing this

We decided to get off at AoA instead of waiting for Pop because there were so many families with lots of luggage getting off at AoA. We correctly figured we could walk across the bridge to Pop quicker than they could unload and get the bus to Pop. It was just pulling up as we were finishing up our check-in.
First views of Pop as we crossed the bridge:


Finally "home"

We checked in quickly and made our way to our room. I had requested a king bed in the 70's building with a lake view. We got a king bed in the 70's building, but no lake view. I figured that 2 out of 3 wasn't too bad at all! We saw this every day as we exited our room:

This was what we saw as we walked to the staircase each morning:


This brought back some good childhood memories for both of us!
We were at the bus stops by 11:00 am to make our way to our first park.

 

[RMichael21]

Great trip report so far! Can't wait to see more!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Great trip report so far! Can't wait to see more!

Thanks! I'm working on it now.

 

[TheMouseFan]

I forgot to mention in my previous post that we were able to use our Magicbands with no problems to get our mugs on the dining plan and to enter our room.

So, we were on a bus shortly after 11:00am and on our way to:

This lantern caught my attention on the way in:

The AK Christmas tree is my favorite one at WDW.





Finally on our way to the front gate.

Then we had the first issue with our Magicbands. They both came up saying we didn't have tickets associated with our account. The CM asked for our KTTW cards and then looked at me like I was stupid when I told her we didn't have any. She then asked for our room keys. I again told her we didn't have any because we were staying at Pop and they weren't issuing them as the next phase of testing. She still looked like she didn't believe me, but motioned for one of the CMs with a tablet to come help me. After going through the whole thing again with her, she took us to Guest Relations to get it fixed. It once again seemed like forever, but was really under 10 minutes and we were walking out the door with RFID/magnetic strip cards in our hands. That meant we could now get paper FP!!!! (Not that we truly ended up needing them, but it was nice to have the option available!) It was inconvenient, but in the end it worked out well for us!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Once in, we headed toward Africa for our first FP+. I had to stop for several pics on the way. Brian was already getting frustrated with the picture taking! I warned him that it wasn't going to get any better! He just rolled his eyes at me!



We finally made it!


We had a really good driver. We ran into a "giraffic jam" and had to wait for awhile for it to clear out. You can see the truck that they eventually sent out to get them off the road.

The baby:


Can you tell what my favorite animal is? I didn't take too many pics this time on KS, but I had to be sure to get lots of the giraffes.
The lone elephant that we saw:

The lions were out sunning themselves.



We decided to skip the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail because we were hungry!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Then we were on our way to lunch. Had to stop for another pic.

We had debated whether we would eat at Flame Tree BBQ or at Yak and Yeti counter service. Yak and Yeti won out. We had no issues using our bands to use the dining plan for lunch. I went to get us a table while Brian waited for the food.
This guy joined us for lunch.

This is where we sat. It was very peaceful.



We both got the honey chicken. I got banana pudding and Brian got chocolate mousse. All was delicious!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Now it was time to head over to Asia for our next FP+ .

I always have to stop for a different angle of the Tree of Life.

Then we had time to kill before our FP+ and decided to stop at:

Brian's favorite animal, the komodo dragon:

I took more scenery pics this time than animal pics.






The tigers were being lazy.

 

[TheMouseFan]

Then it was finally time to use our FP+. We had a nice leisurely stroll over to EE.





We basically walked on using our FP+.




Then we were done and decided to do the stand-by queue. We only waited a total of 10 minutes before we were on again.

I had forgotten how much I like this queue.




I would have gladly gone again, but I was lucky Brian volunteered to go twice, so I didn't push my luck!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Now we were on our way over to Dinoland to redeem our last FP+. We spotted these guys coming back out for pics.




This picture magically appeared in our PhotoPass account even though we didn't purchase PP+!

Unfortunately, our EE pics didn't show up.
I did get these just to have for when they are "extinct".

The return times were all within an hour and stand-by lines were short or I never would have gotten them!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Brian chose to not stay and watch the Jingle Jungle parade. He was the one who had not ever seen the Christmas version, so I left it up to him. We slowly made our way out of the park with lots of stops along the way for pics.

 

[tmc917]

Love your TR! Ans love that kid in the front of the Dinosaur pic, he looks so mad! Hahaha

 

[TheMouseFan]

The original plan from there had been to get a bus to DTD, then return to Pop to get ready for our evening ADR, but they apparently weren't doing the testing of that bus route that day. So we returned to Pop, then caught a bus to DTD from there. A few pics at Pop.



Once we arrived at DTD, I had three things I wanted to accomplish. First, was finding Vincent at the silhouette cart to see if he could do one of my three kids from pictures (since they obviously weren't with us!) I thought he did a fantastic job!!!

I got three copies, so they will make the perfect Christmas presents for the grandparents, and I will have my own copy. If anyone else wants to try this without kids being present, you need good quality 8x10 photos of the right side of their faces. I was just lucky that I had the kids stand that way, as Vincent said he wouldn't have been able to do them if they were facing the other direction!
I then took time for a few pics on the way to try to accomplish goal #2.


Goal #2 was to get a Vera Bradley hipster and/or backpack. Unfortunately, all they had was the large duffels, and I definitely didn't want one of those! Oh well, I guess I will keep checking online or wait until June!
Then a few more pics while on our way to the Christmas store to accomplish goal #3.


I had a difficult time with goal #3 also, which was to get a dated Christmas ornament. Everything was so gaudy looking. I eventually found this ornament without the date on it and was saying to Brian that I would like to get the date on it, but I didn't want to wait in the long line to get it personalized. Then we turned around, and saw it hanging there just like this. It was perfect!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Love your TR! Ans love that kid in the front of the Dinosaur pic, he looks so mad! Hahaha

Thanks for reading!! I laughed too when I saw him!

 

[TheMouseFan]

We then proceeded to catch a bus to the Contemporary where we looked around for a little while before catching the monorail to the Poly.




The view out the window while waiting on the monorail:

At the Poly, we looked around downstairs for a few minutes.

Then we made our way upstairs and checked in at

This was our first time eating dinner here. Loved the bread!!

The salad was okay. I didn't really care for the passion fruit dressing.

However, the noodles were delicious!

I also really enjoyed the potstickers. Brian really liked the wings as well.

No pictures of the meat, as they placed individual pieces on our plates, and I figured no one wanted to see my half eaten food that was also on the plate!
Then, on to "The Main Course" as they kept calling it. The bread pudding was to die for!

We really enjoyed our meal here. In fact, Brian continued to compare every meal that week to this one! I don't know if the kids would enjoy the food here, so we may not be back any time soon.
Unfortunately, the time we were finished coincided with the closing of MK, so we chose to take a bus to DTD and then catch another one to Pop. It worked out well, as a Pop bus was pulling up at the same time we were stepping off the Poly one. We were soon back and in bed to be ready for our 8:05 am ADR the next morning.

 

[journ116]

Yay! Been looking forward to your TR! I am in complete awe of your photos!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Yay! Been looking forward to your TR! I am in complete awe of your photos!

Thank you! I'm looking forward to hearing about your upcoming trip as well!

 

[TheMouseFan]

So, I forgot to mention that we had the second issue with our Magicbands at 'Ohana. We were able to "pay" for dinner, but our waiter informed us that the system wasn't allowing us to charge the gratuity to our account. Not a big deal, I just used my credit card that was on file, but still a little annoying. I stopped at the front desk at Pop Century on the way in that night to try to get it fixed. The CM I spoke with said it was a common problem, but it was too late to fix it that night and I would have to come back in the morning. I told him that we had an early ADR the next morning and I would just use my cc the rest of the week. He looked relieved and thanked me profusely! Apparently, others had not been so nice to him!

Okay, so on to day 2.
Wednesday, November 20
We were up bright and early this day to be at the bus stop by 7:00 am. Had to get some pics on the way!


I got my camera out while we were on the bus (okay, so I never really put it away!), and Brian asked what I could possibly be taking a picture of, I told him I was going to get a pic of the MK entrance. His response was,"good luck with that". Well, I think it came out very nicely!

I didn't have any issues entering with my Magicband, but Brian had an issue with it reading his fingerprint. A CM scanned it with his tablet and told us we were good to go. (I was messing around on MDE the other day and discovered that they didn't take a day off Brian's ticket for this day. Too bad we couldn't take advantage of it!) Then we had to wait in line for a few minutes before they would allow us in the park. I didn't have a very good vantage point to get many pics.

Then we were in and took a leisurely stroll up MSUSA.

 

[TheMouseFan]

Then we decided to wait in the hub for PP pics.







Brian claims he made this face because the sun was so bright! I'm not buying it!

Then we slowly made our way over to Crystal Palace to check in for our ADR.

 

[TheMouseFan]

We were the first ones to be called in, and subsequently, the first ones at the buffet. It was kind of unnerving being the first one to scoop out the pristine looking food. It didn't stop me from filling my plate up!!

Everything was delicious. My favorite was the breakfast lasagna, followed closely by the puffed french toast.
You can't beat this view while you're eating breakfast.

Then the characters starting making the rounds. Each time, the CM would stop by our table ahead of time to be sure we wanted to see whichever character was coming next. Two of them even offered to take our picture.

We had the best interaction with Piglet. He kept pointing at Brian's shirt and using his arms to spell out OHIO. We finally figured out that Piglet was from Dayton also!



Then we were on our way outside to catch rope drop.