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!
Love the parade pics! This is one parade we have yet to see. We watched pretty much all the shows there and walk down all the paths. AK is a full park day for us and since it usually closes at 5, we always just have lots to do at AK and never seem to make it to watch the parade. next week though it's closing at 7! So I'm going to convince my travel companions to watch it. What time did you need to sit beforehand? I know the parades at MK you have to sit like 2 hours early!!
Love the parade pics! This is one parade we have yet to see. We watched pretty much all the shows there and walk down all the paths. AK is a full park day for us and since it usually closes at 5, we always just have lots to do at AK and never seem to make it to watch the parade. next week though it's closing at 7! So I'm going to convince my travel companions to watch it. What time did you need to sit beforehand? I know the parades at MK you have to sit like 2 hours early!!
Typically we only get a spot about 15-20 minutes before the parade. I am not sure how early the family got this spot on this day though and it was busier than I have ever seen it. We typically don't have issues getting a spot for any of the parades 20-30 minutes prior. Of course it depends on the crowd levels. our favorite spot for the AK parade is right near Tusker House.
After the parade the girls wanted to go on Everest again. It was a new favorite for both of them. Rob, Claire, Alexis and I headed that way once again. As we walked, we ran into Geoff, Mary, Pete and Vicki. We said hellos and I asked Geoff and Pete if they wanted to join us and neither really knew what we were talking about, so I point towards Everest and they said yes and followed along. The girls were all excited to have fresh meat ride with us and were talking a mile a minute about the ride, explaining just how “scary” it is. This time we had a little bit of a wait, so I took pictures as we walked through the queue.
It wasn’t too bad of a wait and soon we were ready to roll. This picture is REALLY bad, but so funny. Pete was acting all scared and both he and Geoff were asking me what I had gotten them in to.
We laughed and screamed and had a great time. It was really funny listening to Geoff and Pete behind us scream like girls!
We survived though!
It was now time for Claire and I to leave. She was disappointed and really wanted to ride Everest again. I believe Rob and Alexis got back in line and that was a touchy subject for a bit, but I reminded her that we would be back again this trip, but this was Alexis’s only day to be at AK. We had an ADR to get to and another meet later in the evening. I had not heard a word from the Beach Club yet, but we were hoping our room was ready so we could change before dinner.
We headed to the bus stop and arrived there just a few minutes before 5.
While we headed off for our next adventure, the rest of the family stayed at AK.
I believe that Pete and Vicki headed off to find Katie and family and the rest hit up Dinoland USA. Here are a few pictures from Geoff’s camera to document what they did.
I believe Rob and Alexis were still on Everest at this point, but Gail and Abby went for the triceratops spin.
I have to say I am disappointed in the photopass pictures. They didn’t take any pictures of the interaction at all.
Now I am not sure what they all did after that. I am thinking that Gail’s family might have stayed a little longer, but Mom, Dad, Geoff and Mary might have left around this time.
Gail has these photopass pictures, which appear to be dusk and I assume she had them taken when they were exciting the park.
Here are a few of Geoff’s pictures of them exiting the park. Being that it looks a little lighter in his pics, I am thinking they left before Gail’s family.
I have no idea what my Dad is doing here. Always the life of the party.
Claire and I left you off where Claire and I had made it to the bus stop. The bus came fairly quickly and within 15-20 minutes we were back at the Beach Club and were given our room number. YAY! But I did once again mention that I never received a text. I got the deer in the headlights stare. Almost like they never knew they were supposed to. Well then why tell me that you are going to then? By the way, Gail was staying at Art of Animation and received her text very early in the day that her room was ready. For some reason, the resorts just don’t like me I guess.
We made our way over to the villas and started grabbing luggage to take to our room.
Once again we had a very far back room. I honestly could never figure out exactly where we were in the building. I will have to look at a room map (and remember my room number) to find exactly where we were. There were a lot of twists and turns to get to it.
Once we got all the luggage I called Mom to let her know the room number. I just got her voicemail though. I then took a few quick pictures.
I think we were looking at the road that goes around the Beach and Yacht Club, or a service road that led out to it, but I never did find out for sure.
We got ourselves changed. It was really cooling down and I did the one thing I NEVER do at Disney. I put jeans on. I am always of the thought that it has to be warmer here than home, but today, it wasn’t and I knew once the sun was gone, it was going to get darn chilly. I think only on one other trip have I actually worn jeans at the parks and that when the temps dipped into the 40’s. I am usually ok with shorts and a sweatshirt.
Once we were changed and freshened up we headed towards Epcot.
It had gotten dark out pretty fast. Claire was very impressed that we could actually walk to Epcot. I explained that we were special and had a back door entrance. LOL. Ok it sounds good to a 7 year old.
We didn’t get too far in and I was in for a major shock. I have NEVER seen crowds like this in my life at Disney. It was wall to wall people. It was almost scary. We merged in with the people and soon spotted a photopass photographer and I asked for a picture. She rudely informed me she was done for the night. Ok then. I guess she had a long busy day herself. She did tell me there was another one just a bit down, so Claire and I went to her. She told me she was also done for the night, but she did take a couple of real quick pictures for us.
We then made our way to Norway. I had originally planned to take it leisurely and take pictures, etc., but that wasn’t going to happen. It was just too darn crowded. I grabbed Claire’s hand and we went on our way. It took forever to get there. I couldn’t walk fast because people would just walk right in front of you, or stop suddenly. I think we ran into quite a few people on our trek over there. And then we got a group of scooters who were NOT allowing people to pass them. It was so frustrating. We did eventually make it over to Norway and had a seat. We had a little bit of time before our ADR time and we just rested and chilled out.
I think we may have called Skip and I texted a few people, including my Mom to let her know our room number since she hadn’t called back. I think Claire was a little bored there, but we just couldn’t really do anything else with so many people there. I guess they were all trying to get in the last little bit of the Food and Wine festival.
After chilling out near Norway for about 20 minutes or so, we decided to go and check into Akershus for our dinner. The line was darn long there too, but it did move fairly fast.
After checking in we waited probably less than 5 minutes for our name to be called.
We then got in line for Belle.
I decided this time I was going to be in the picture as well. I usually just have Claire do the photo ops, but I decided I needed to be in some here and there too.
I look pretty decent in the first one, but unfortunately Claire is looking away. This is the one they gave us in print form.
The 2nd one is much better of Claire, but I blinked ….darn it.
I walked away while Claire got her book signed and I was happy they took this one as well.
I tried to get one more pic, but it was pretty awful.
Belle really liked Claire’s outfit, which of course made her happy. This was another borrowed outfit from my friend Janet. I am so grateful for all the things she loaned us.
We were then seated and we made our way up to the cold bar and got a few items.
As we sat there I noticed that Cinderella had different hair. I quickly texted my friend Janet and tried to take pictures on my phone from afar. They weren’t great, but I gave her the idea at least. I know people are mixed about the hair and dress, but I really like the new hair. I also found out that the wifi worked much better inside Akershus than anywhere else in the park that night.
It wasn’t long and Cinderella had made her way to our table. I eyed her hair quite a bit, and I really like it.
Aurora was on her heals and we had a meet with her next.
The music started and Aurora grabbed Claire’s hand. They were going to do a parade around the restaurant. I was happy that Claire actually joined in. She did kind of hem haw around about it at first.
When she came back, our food was served. She went wild again tonight and got a hotdog.
I had the Traditional Kjottkake. I had this last time too and I enjoyed it. It kind of has a kielbasa taste to it. However this time around it wasn’t quite as tasty as the first time. I enjoyed it still, but it seemed to be a little lacking this time. It didn’t lack later on though, where I continued to re-taste it for the rest of the night.
And then Snow White, who really liked Claire’s red bow.
After our character visits we enjoyed our dinner.
Claire’s birthday is in Dec and this was the closest we have ever been to Disney to that date, so I had noted her birthday on many of our reservations. They brought her out a cupcake.
And the dessert.
The chocolate mousse was delicious; the rice stuff just isn’t our thing. I don’t remember what the 3rd thing was. All ears lists it as something apple, but I don’t remember if that is what it was or not. Nor do I remember if we liked it or not.
After we ate and paid we made a bathroom stop and then Claire wanted to head towards Spaceship Earth. While walking I think I texted our friend that we would be meeting up with for Illuminations. We spotted the Cranberry Bog on our way.
We had just enough time to ride Spaceship Earth so we got in line.
I took pictures while on the ride, but they are basically the same ones I always take and these didn’t come out as good as some of my past ones, so I’ll skip posting those. We did however have fun taking pictures of our silly pictures. I made a dumb face, but Claire went for the smile.
After we got off we went and looked for our pictures.
I emailed myself the video, which I don’t think I ever watched, but I might have. It’s been so long ago. I know I saved this picture off the email though.
We were running short on time now so we made another bathroom stop and worked our way towards world showcase. We saw a photopass photographer and made a quick stop.
Then we headed to find our friends. Tonight we were meeting up with my Dis/facebook friend Tim and family. (That’s nice is his Dis name) He has a daughter named Juliana who is a year younger than Claire and Claire has been dying to meet her as well over the years. They also have a son Christopher who was on his very first trip to Disney. Tim’s wife, Mel and his mother were also on this trip. We texted back and forth and he told me where he was standing. I can’t remember for sure, but I think it was near the Greece food booth. We arrived in the area and I kept looking and just didn’t see him. Finally I saw him. He’s pretty tall and I had seen a guy that looked similar to him but he didn’t have the “right” family with him, so I was pretty sure he wasn’t him. LOL. We walked over and said hellos and he introduced us to his Mom and Juliana. Mel and Christopher were tired and had gone back to the resort.
Claire had taken off her Mickey ears, but Juliana had a pair on, so I noticed Claire going through the bag quickly to put hers back on. Soon Illuminations had started, so we stopped talking and enjoyed the show.
Illuminations!!!! I’m going to let you in on a secret. I like Illuminations, but I don’t LOVE it like many people do. I also don’t love Wishes. Ok stop throwing things at me!!! I like them but they are not must sees. I do enjoy them when I see them though. Here are a few of the pictures I took of the show this evening. We were under a tree, so it made it hard to get some photos and of course, without a tripod you can’t get decent ones anyways.
After the big finale we all talked some more. I had a little gift for Juliana and I gave that to her and she opened the bag and checked out her goods. Claire and she seemed to be kind of at least interacting a bit. That was a nice change.
Tim then told me a bit of big news. Mel was pregnant with their 3rd child. I felt so privileged to have some inside info. I want to congratulate the happy family who recently gave birth to Gabriella! She’s a real cutie! And he is a very busy dad these days too.
We then decided it was time to get a picture. We had his mom take them and it did take her a few minutes to get the hang of my camera, but she did a good job!
Juliana started playing with some things from her bag and she invited Claire to play along. It was so nice to see them getting along so well.
What was also nice is that Claire wasn’t bugging me about leaving. She was having too much fun.
I think we chatted for about 20 minutes or so and then we decided it was time to get heading out. Epcot was thinning out fast. The girls didn’t want to leave, which was a nice change, but they did come along and we all said goodbyes.
I was really happy to meet Tim. I have been following his TR’s for a few years and we have been at Disney at different times, but sometimes only missing each other by a few days. He was one of those people I had on my bucket list to meet. He’s a super nice guy and has a great family.
Claire and I then headed towards our backdoor exit.
We stopped and sat on a bench as I was going to call Skip again. We noticed fireworks in the distance. At first I wondered if they were MK fireworks, but the timing was not right and then I wasn’t sure if that was even the right direction. Then I figured it might be something from Fantasmic. I have never seen it myself, so I wasn’t sure. It was actually today while editing these pictures that I realized Hollywood Studios had closed that day at 4Pm for a private event. I bet these fireworks were something for that event.
I took a few pictures of the window nearby too. So cute!
I was excited to see Christmas décor at Epcot as well.
We both talked to Skip a bit. Claire is a daddy’s girl and she was missing her Dad. Thank goodness we didn’t have any major issues. Over the past 2 years she has come home from a few overnight stays around 11 PM because she can’t sleep without Daddy’s kiss. I’ve kissed the guy a time or 2 and I don’t think it is THAT special. LOL
We then headed back to the Beach Club. I tried calling my parents again. I had not gotten any response from them at all and I wanted to be sure they knew which room we were in. It went to voicemail once again. I then called Geoff and asked if he had seen them. Yes he had and they were dropped off at our hotel quite a while ago after dinner. Ok, then. I am assuming they got my messages and were in the room.
We made the trek back to the room and sure enough they were there. Dad was watching tv and mom was sleeping. Mom wasn’t feeling the greatest either. She was pretty sure she had a sinus infection. I got Claire ready for bed and then myself. Now this is embarrassing. I took my jeans off and noticed a tag. You know the kind that has the size that is kind of sewn on the waist band or pocket. These jeans were new and I guess I missed taking that off. Oops. Hopefully my shirt and jacket had covered that up all night long. Thank goodness I didn’t have the tape thing that runs down the leg with your size on it left on there. That would’ve been way more embarrassing.
I settled in bed and surfed facebook for a bit while Dad watched TV till late in the night. Well actually he falls asleep while watching it. I think I took over the remote to turn it off at some point in time.
It was a very long day, but we had so much fun. We woke up on a ship and now are back to another resort, my 5th pillow of the trip. Oh the Places We Go! We met up with Tim, Juliana, and Tim’s Mom. It was a wonderful meet and it made my day. Oh the People We Meet! We had another busy day coming up and I soon drifted off to sleep.
I woke around 6ish this morning. I just can’t sleep in while at Disney. I took a quick walk outside and took some pictures with my point and shoot, but it was still fairly dark and they all came out really blurry. I then took a shower and got myself started for the day. I left the makeup for later and went out to find the laundry facilities and started a load.
By then it was about 7:30 and I went out for a stroll while the others slept. I am pretty sure Mom had gotten up, but she might’ve went back to bed for a bit.
I then went for another walk to take some pictures.
Awww. Some Duckies.
This is the Villa pool.
I headed back to the room and took care of the laundry and then got Claire up and ready to go. My parents aren’t ones who get up and go early and they kind of slow us down at times. Claire is not an early riser at all, but we only have so much time and we really needed to be on our way.
We got a few texts. Rob was sick. So sick he was staying in the room and Gail was going off on her own with the girls. She had a reservation at Hollywood and Vine that morning and was headed off. Gails phone also stopped charging she had noticed when she got off the ship, so if we needed to contact her, she was carrying Robs phone. Her phone would only work if it was actually plugged into the charger, but would not charge. (Ironically when she got home it worked fine, but Rob bought her a new iPhone for her b-day in Dec.)
By 8:50 we were heading down to get some breakfast.
