Trip Report Oh, the Places We go, The People We See

Welcome to my newest Trip Report. For those who don’t know me, I am Jen.

That’s my Daughter Claire with me.



We just got back from an amazing vacation with several family members.

We traveled Nov. 1st thru the 15th, 2012. We rested our headed at 6 different places on this trip, and though it wasn’t always easy to keep moving from place to place, I am happy to have tried some new resorts out and stayed at some familiar ones as well.



This trip came about over a year ago. My Mom’s cousin Vicki wanted to take a trip with her and my Aunt Mary. Her Daughter Katie also wanted to come along.

After some talking and planning it became a group of 16 traveling. I was elected ring leader since I have quite a bit of Disney experience.

Plans were made, some were changed, and some were a little slower at making decisions than others.

My husband Skip is what is known in the Disney groups as a resistor and he decided NOT to come along. He was not so happy about the amount of time I was going to be gone.



The dates for the cruise were set first, Nov 4 through the 8th on the Disney Dream. We all planned to arrive a day early and stay at the Residence Inn near the port. Soon I decided that I must add a few Disney days, and so did everyone else eventually. I thin decide…heck lets add some more, and Claire and I ended up staying 3 more days after the rest left.

Then after doing some research and with a heads up from my good Dis-friend Carey, I was alerted to the fact that the last Halloween party was on Nov. 2nd. How could I pass that chance up? So Claire and I decided to fly in a day earlier than everyone else to hit that party. Claire and I also decided to fly out of Columbus. My family lives near the Toledo, OH area, and the best direct flights are out of Detroit. My youngest sister, who was not going on the cruise, lives in Columbus, and I was able to get a decent priced direct flight from there, so Claire and I drove down Nov. 1 and spent the night before our early flight.



Plans were finally all set in stone and we just had to wait for our time to arrive. Not an easy task, but we all managed.



Let me introduce you to the crew. This is a picture of a picture. My sister has the CD with the actual digital copy, but hasn’t yet loaded it to the computer, so I had to go with this for now till I can get a copy.

In the back row, left to right, we have my parents, Joe and Paula, next to them is my Uncle Geoff. Next to Geoff is cousin Vicki and her son in law Thad. Next to Thad is Pete, Vicki’s husband and then me. Aunt Mary is on the end, she is married to Uncle Geoff and my Mother’s sister.

Down towards the front, left to right, is my nieces Alexis and Abby with their parents Rob and Gail. Gail is my sister. Front and center is Claire. Behind Claire are Jude, and Katie. Katie is married to Thad and is Pete and Vicki’s Daughter. And then we have baby Luke in the stroller. He is only about 9 months old and what a cutie he is.



This trip had the usual ups and downs that most every family will have, but I have to admit things went much smoother than I planned. We never felt the need to kill each other for the most part. LOL

We had several cruise newbies and several Disney World newbies as well.



Please join me in reliving a very magical trip with all the places we traveled and all the people we met along the way!

 

[jenseib]

Because with the no flash rule…..I wasn’t getting all that great of shots!








This little girl was the Beast.








And Chip!




Then we all paraded around the room!





And a quick hello with Belle.

 

[jenseib]

Belle is so surprised to see me! She is probably wondering why I have a major eye squint going.








Beast says goodbye to Belle.





And then we got to pose with Belle for a picture, but from where I was standing I couldn’t get a good one of Claire.





Good thing photopass did.








Belle gave everyone a bookmark after the picture.

 

[jenseib]

My turn ….squinty eye and all








Time for Belle to leave.








One last picture of the light fixture and then we headed out and they were passing photopass cards to everyone as we walked out.





This was a fun experience. I don’t think it will hold our interest for too long in the future though. As long as Claire wants to meet Belle, we’ll probably do it, but after another time or 2, I really don’t see this as being something that we can’t miss. Especially if lines are long.

 

[jenseib]

We exited Enchanted Tales with Belle and we noticed that they were taking walk ups for Be Our Guest. Well we did just eat not too long ago, but we really wanted to experience this as well, so we decided to go in for some dessert. I believe they said the wait was around 30 minutes and we got a beeper. This thing is pretty useless as you have to stay in the immediate area for it to work. I asked about going out to see Scrooge while we waited and she said it wouldn’t reach that far. So I asked about walking through the rest of New Fantasyland ….nope, it won’t reach that far either.

They suggested that I just stay in the area and explore and take pictures. Um…..there really isn’t much here and it’s PITCH black out.

Well we had a bit of time so we did wander over near Gaston’s.





And we took a couple of pictures of Beast’s Castle lit up.








See how dark it is? Not very good lighting for pictures.





I think this is the Little Mermaid ride from afar?





And we were afraid we would miss the buzzer, so we went back near Be Our Guest.














We decided to chance it and walk back over by the Little Mermaid ride quickly.

 

[jenseib]

But we were too afraid we would miss our calling and went right back.





Right at about the 30 minute mark we did get called in!





We were so excited and I will tell you the pictures are not great. Lighting is horrible in there. Flash pictures don’t come out quite right, nor do non flash pictures. I need to go a few more times to hopefully get it right.


We were seated in the ballroom and they told us we could watch the snow falling out the window. They almost made it sound like it changed from day to day, but from what I have read from others, it is always snow falling.


We had a cute rose napkin on our plates.





Claire was super excited.








We made our orders. I decided on the French onion soup and the chocolate cream puff. Claire insisted she was very hungry and ordered the kids steak meal and the strawberry cream cheese cupcake.


We took a few pictures while we waited.

 

[jenseib]

My pictures are super grainy. I just couldn’t get much of anything with the low lighting.


We took pictures of the West wing from where we sitting.







Rolls arrived.





We had a roll and then we set off to look in the West Wing. The dessert trolley was sitting right there.








I have heard this picture turns to beast, but we never saw it change while we were in there.





It was kind of hard to get a picture of the rose. You cannot get one if you use a flash.

 

[jenseib]

See, this is a flash…no rose in there.











Back to the Ballroom





And the door to what I think is called the Rose room was closed, but we saw others going in, so we went in as well.





I believe this area is for the quick serve meals.





I really liked this room.

 

[jenseib]

As you can see, this room had better lighting, so I got quite a few more pictures.

 

[jenseib]

Then we headed back into the Ballroom again and we walked over by the falling snow window to have a better look.








This was a testing phase and service was VERY slow. I didn’t complain though, as I was happy to be able to have a chance to try it out and I knew they were trying to work the kinks out.

Food finally did arrive.

Claire’s steak.





And her fries.





The steak had good flavor, but it was a bit too thin and a little fatty. She loved it though. The fries were great and sadly I heard they did away with these and are now serving just basic fries.


My soup.





It was very good, but nothing over the top in the way of French Onion soup, but I enjoyed it.


Our waitress brought out the dessert trolley and we chose what we wanted.


Here is Claire’s Strawberry cream cheese cupcake.





And my chocolate cream puff.








Her cupcake was awesome, but she could only eat a little bit as she was so full. I couldn’t finish it off for her either sadly. My cream puff was good, but a bit too much. Very rich and I was good with just a few bites. Not to mention this was our 2nd meal of the evening and we were already making pigs of ourselves.


Our waitress kindly took a picture of us.





It did take a while to get the bill and I did get a little antsy about that. I was missing party time as it was and now that we had tried the place we were ready to leave and try some more new things.


Of course we had to make a bathroom stop on the way out.

 

[jenseib]

And I took a picture of now what is referred to as the Prince with no pants. Seriously, look at it! It looks like he is naked from the waist down.





And back out to New Fantasyland we went. We had a mission of one other thing to do before we headed back to the party.

 

[steamboatjosh]

Welcome to my newest Trip Report. For those who don’t know me, I am Jen.

That’s my Daughter Claire with me.



We just got back from an amazing vacation with several family members.

We traveled Nov. 1st thru the 15th, 2012. We rested our headed at 6 different places on this trip, and though it wasn’t always easy to keep moving from place to place, I am happy to have tried some new resorts out and stayed at some familiar ones as well.



This trip came about over a year ago. My Mom’s cousin Vicki wanted to take a trip with her and my Aunt Mary. Her Daughter Katie also wanted to come along.

After some talking and planning it became a group of 16 traveling. I was elected ring leader since I have quite a bit of Disney experience.

Plans were made, some were changed, and some were a little slower at making decisions than others.

My husband Skip is what is known in the Disney groups as a resistor and he decided NOT to come along. He was not so happy about the amount of time I was going to be gone.



The dates for the cruise were set first, Nov 4 through the 8th on the Disney Dream. We all planned to arrive a day early and stay at the Residence Inn near the port. Soon I decided that I must add a few Disney days, and so did everyone else eventually. I thin decide…heck lets add some more, and Claire and I ended up staying 3 more days after the rest left.

Then after doing some research and with a heads up from my good Dis-friend Carey, I was alerted to the fact that the last Halloween party was on Nov. 2nd. How could I pass that chance up? So Claire and I decided to fly in a day earlier than everyone else to hit that party. Claire and I also decided to fly out of Columbus. My family lives near the Toledo, OH area, and the best direct flights are out of Detroit. My youngest sister, who was not going on the cruise, lives in Columbus, and I was able to get a decent priced direct flight from there, so Claire and I drove down Nov. 1 and spent the night before our early flight.



Plans were finally all set in stone and we just had to wait for our time to arrive. Not an easy task, but we all managed.



Let me introduce you to the crew. This is a picture of a picture. My sister has the CD with the actual digital copy, but hasn’t yet loaded it to the computer, so I had to go with this for now till I can get a copy.

In the back row, left to right, we have my parents, Joe and Paula, next to them is my Uncle Geoff. Next to Geoff is cousin Vicki and her son in law Thad. Next to Thad is Pete, Vicki’s husband and then me. Aunt Mary is on the end, she is married to Uncle Geoff and my Mother’s sister.

Down towards the front, left to right, is my nieces Alexis and Abby with their parents Rob and Gail. Gail is my sister. Front and center is Claire. Behind Claire are Jude, and Katie. Katie is married to Thad and is Pete and Vicki’s Daughter. And then we have baby Luke in the stroller. He is only about 9 months old and what a cutie he is.



This trip had the usual ups and downs that most every family will have, but I have to admit things went much smoother than I planned. We never felt the need to kill each other for the most part. LOL

We had several cruise newbies and several Disney World newbies as well.



Please join me in reliving a very magical trip with all the places we traveled and all the people we met along the way!

We're in Findlay right by Toledo so we'll probably be flying out of Detroit or Columbus as well!

 

[jenseib]

We're in Findlay right by Toledo so we'll probably be flying out of Detroit or Columbus as well!

I was just through Findlay twice this weekend on my way to and from Columbus. I went to visit my sister and do some shopping.

 

[jenseib]

Our next stop was the Little Mermaid ride once again. We had loved it so much a over week ago that we had to give it another try.








I probably got a lot of the same queue pictures, but I couldn’t remember what I took before and this time I tried a few more flash pictures too.








The line was walk through again and soon we were on our way.

 

[jenseib]

 

[jenseib]

Of course we all know they fell in love.














That was another fun and fabulous ride. We really do like this one.


We exited and we had quite and exciting site.





The Holiday Wishes had started and watching them from the New Fantasyland was quite a treat.

 

[jenseib]

We had fireworks virtually going off on all sides of us. We could turn around in a circle and see different things.























This one was a wrapped present….how cute is that?

 

[jenseib]

We were VERY impressed with the fireworks and would love to see them from here again.

 

[jenseib]

We exited the New Fantasyland and went for a ride on Pooh.














I always love this store. Pooh stuff is just so darn cute.





We saw Scrooge was out, but we had to get a spot for the parade and couldn’t stop.





UGH!!!! This parade was super packed too. I had hoped going to the later one would be less crowded but both this one and the Halloween ones were jammed with people.


We were lucky and found a decent spot and some guys let Claire sit on the ground in front of them and I was back and could stand on a ledge. I found out that everyone around…all adults, were there for pictures too. I tried not to get my arms and elbows in the way of others as I shot pictures. I did a pretty poor job. It was so dark and my flash was not recharging correctly (I think it had a low battery). The best way to work it was to turn off the flash and camera and return them both back on to take the next picture. It was slow, but faster than waiting for the recharge. In the end, I am not happy with my pictures, but we LOVED this parade.

 

[jenseib]

 

[jenseib]

I just love Scrooge!