Trip Report "Someone please get me one of those tour group flags, please!" - Our Halloween/Anniversary Trip Report!

It's been just a few days since we returned home from our favorite place and I'm a bit sad about it. To help me get over the post-Disney depression (with a sizeable dose of "oh my god lake effect snow already" sadness), I thought I would start this trip report.

Quick recap! This trip was originally booked the day we got home from our honeymoon in January (trip report here) as a way to celebrate our first anniversary. My parents had to delay their March trip so they decided to come with us. Then my youngest sister moved home from school and was able to get the time off work, so she decided to tag along as well. It was also supposed to be just a two or three day trip but we ultimately stretched it to five full days! It also grew to include our first Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party and runDisney event!

For all of that in much more detail, visit the pre-trip report!

Here's the family (at our wedding last year plus my other sister who didn't come). I'm Amanda, my husband is Daniel, my sister is Sarah, and we'll just stick with Mom and Dad for my parents.

Credit to the talented Mary Boike Photography as always! She's in Michigan and she's AMAZING!

I am so thankful for this trip. It was such a good time! My sister and I hadn't been to Disney together since 2009 and we had an absolute blast! It was too short, as always, but we really had such a good time! I'm really looking forward to sharing it all with you once again. I also did a bit better of a job documenting this one as I was sending lots of pictures to some family friends of ours who are going for the first time in April. Their boys are the closest thing I have to nephews and I am SO excited for them to see it!

 

[Mander]

Friday, November 2nd 2018:

Getting up at 3:30am physically pained me. We had been smart enough to have everything ready laid out the night before so we pretty much just stumbled from bed to clothes to the line for the bus.

I have no pictures from the earliest parts of this day, so here’s Daniel after he borrowed my Mom’s tutu and debated wearing it for the race.



I remember getting in line outside the main building at Pop and having it take quite a while- people who seemed like regular runDisney people seemed to think the same thing. Eventually a bus showed up and got us over to the Animal Kingdom parking lot.

We watched some of the pre-race entertainment before making our way to our corral. Daniel is not great at waking up early, so he was a tad grumpy while we waited (and waited) for the race to actually start. Our plan was to split up two and two as Daniel can’t actually run long distances. His knees are in rough shape already, so a fast walk is all we planned to do.



We ended up very near the back of the last corral but we made it through! I will say that cruising through Animal Kingdom was very, very cool! We really enjoyed the parts inside the park!

Now for whatever reason I can’t find my Photopass pictures. I’m hoping I actually remembered to download them but I’ll have to check on my laptop later. So for now we skip ahead to the finish!



And...we’re done! I enjoyed the 5k, my Mom loved it, Dad thought it was okay, and Daniel is glad he experienced it but will never do another one (he hated all the waiting and the early wake up). I’ll try and come back to update this if I can figure out what I did with the rest of the pictures.

We made our way back to Pop after the race. Myself, Daniel, and my Dad immediately went for naps. Sarah was just waking up at that point and my Mom can’t ever nap, so they headed out for some breakfast and maybe Disney Springs?

Several hours later we were awake and ready for an evening in Magic Kingdom!





In all honesty, I have no idea what order we did things in. I know we got caught in a torrential downpour and I know our fastpass times, so that’s what I’m going to use to try and put these in order.







Our first fastpass of the day had originally been Splash Mountain at 2pm but we realized quickly that wasn’t going to happen. We ended up sliding that one to later in the evening. This made Space Mountain our first ride of the day!







We were impressed with the quality of Sarah’s on ride photo!

Next we decided we had enough time to check out the Jingle Cruise before the next fastpass, so we headed in that direction.

I should mention that in the 48 hours we didn’t go to MK, they had done the flip over to Christmas decorations. That was really cool to see happen so quickly!



It started rain while we were in line and I was the first to opt for a poncho in a futile attempt to keep my hair dry.



Is this Jingle Cruise? Is this Potc? I have no idea. I am pretty sure it is one of those two things but I could be getting my trips mixed up so who knows.

We all loved the holiday twist on Jungle Cruise- a nice bit of variety on an attraction we’ve ridden a lot!

We had dinner at Pinocchio's Village Haus (again, gotten get that mac n’ cheese). I’m quite certain the sky completely opened up before then because I remember all of us laughing a whole lot because we were very wet.

After dinner it was time for Mine Train again. This one is a family favorite- especially for my Mom and Daniel who can’t always do the bigger coasters. This ride also produced one of my favorite on ride pictures.





I just love it so much.

 

[Mander]

The wait for Winnie the Pooh was very short after we got off, so we hopped in line.









Really bad line photos! We were seriously having the best time though. The rain kept the crowds down and I think the four of us were still a bit delirious from our early morning. I haven’t laughed my way through a Disney park like that in a long time!

Next up was the HIGHLY anticipated Splash Mountain. Given that I tend to go in the early winter, I tend to go when Splash is down. I hadn’t ridden it in years. My Mom is also terrified of drops and we somehow convinced her to ride it. It was truly the perfect time we were already soaked.



Poor Mom. She was so nervous the whole time. Then we ended up stopped for almost five minutes on the final climb to the big drop! But she did so well and we all had a great time! On the way out we made her stop and buy a Splash Mountain pin since she conquered her fear.

I’m pretty sure we rode something else but I’m not sure what it was- maybe Big Thunder? That seems likely. I know after Splash we stopped for a snack. The fam split some nachos and Daniel and I had a pretzel from the cart outside.



From there we decided it would be a good time to find a spot for Happily Ever After. Our group split up at that point- I wanted to wander the Emporium and Daniel and I figured we’d watch HEA from the end of Main Street. The others wanted to find a spot in the Hub.





Florida did my hair in. She was toast.

We also discovered this trip that Daniel’s new phone, a Pixel 2, took excellent firework pictures.





This was a great location for getting out the park quickly. We beat my parents and Sarah back the hotel by quite a bit (and were some of the first people on the bus). After showers and some tv, we quickly fell asleep.

Up next: Animal Kingdom & Epcot!

 

[Mander]

I was totally going to add to this today but I confirmed that a pretty decent portion of our photopass pictures are gone. It's super unlike me to not download them but I can't find them on any computer. I do know that they were linked to my Mom's account for a long time via her AP (and she originally purchased our Memory Maker for the trip prior to upgrading to an AP). It looks like it's most of the stuff scanned with my MB, unfortunately.

I've reached out to Disney, so fingers crossed there is a way (though it has been so long, I'm not counting on it)!

 

[Mander]

Huge shout out to Ashley on the PhotoPass Support Team! It took us almost 45 minutes but she recovered every single picture! Downloading and saving now!

 

[Mander]

Saturday, November 3rd 2018:

First up for the day was Animal Kingdom!







Our first fastpass of the day was Kilimanjaro Safari. Morning safaris are one of my Mom’s favorite things, so she was quite excited! I don’t remember taking any pictures of this safari but we certainly enjoyed it, per usual.

We were all a bit hungry afterward so we stopped by Kusafiri Coffee Shop & Bakery for some food and drinks. I had some sort of cinnamon role that I split with Sarah. Everyone else got the breakfast wrap they had at the time. We found a table behind Tamu Tamu and enjoyed breakfast. The area there was completely empty, so we soaked up the peace and quiet!

After we ate we began to slowly make our way to Expedition Everest, stopping for some pictures along the way.









Everest is a favorite of everyone but my Mom. Daniel especially was excited as he had been unable to ride this when we were here for our honeymoon (neck injury from Primeval Whirl).







She treated us well like always!



We walked around by the theater for the Finding Nemo musical on our way to Dinoland.



Despite the fact that he hurt his neck last time, Daniel decided to head to Primeval Whirl again with my Dad and Sarah. My Mom and I were going to wait for them but then we saw a certain meet and greet nearby that we decided to do instead…





I’m not the biggest fan of character meets but this one was really cute! Chip and Dale both attempted to eat my Mom’s ice cream ears and were disappointed that mine were not food.

It took us a while to connect back with the rest of our group and by the time we started heading for Pandora, we were close on time for our next fastpass! We hustled because we absolutely did not want to miss Flight of Passage! We tried to convince my Mom to give it a go but she decided to pass (though I currently have her willing to try it this fall when we go back- we’ll see!).

I love FOP so much. It’s such a fun experience and really gorgeous. I did have a bit more trouble with motion sickness this time but it didn’t last long.

Next up we wanted some lunch and decided to hit up Satuli Canteen.







This is when we discovered that they had taken the Veggie Curry Pods off the menu. Sarah and I were SO sad! I’d loved them on our honeymoon and had hyped them up a bit. We disappointedly ordered bowls instead (which was still good- though they’ve since gotten rid of the base we got!).





With that we made our way to the gift shop and then decided to hop over to our next park of the day- Epcot!