Trip Report Tales From the Two Goofs Vault

Greetings again my friends. During my large amount of available free time, I have been working to digitally backup some of our old photos, as well as track down and backup any digital files as well. So far I have come across 3 Disney trips that I haven’t shared on these boards before. One from March 2019, one from September 2016, and another from June 2015. I will be doing these TRs from newest to oldest. Please note that I have no notes on our activities, so the pictures will likely not be in perfect order. I will try and provide commentary on things I do remember. So let’s get started!

Trip 1.

When: March 8-11, 2019

Who: Myself and A as always, plus our closest friends C and M.
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Where: POFQ for just one night, and Coronado Springs(more on why we did a split stay on such a short trip later).

Why: A top secret mission to photograph and celebrate C and M’s engagement.

A little background on how this trip happened.

C is one of A’s oldest and closest friends, he is the closest thing she has to a brother, and she does refer to him as her brother. He had been dating M for about a year at this point, and we all knew she was perfect for him. He’d decided to pop the question on their spring break trip to Disney. For months he had been asking A and I to come down with them to take pictures of the big event, and to celebrate with them(or console him if she said no!). It didn’t look like we would both be able to make the trip though. I finally agreed to at least get A a plane ticket and she was going to go alone for just the weekend and return.

Well as fate would have it, right at the 60 day mark I was finally able to secure the 4 days off needed to take the trip. Unfortunately there was extremely limited availability at the resorts. The only resort with full availability for the weekend was grand Floridian, which was at a non discount rate. We finally found 2 nights at Coronado, and one night at French quarter. We also purchased APs because we had already planned on being at WDW for several day’s in the summer, so it ended up being less to get the AP rather than buying separate tickets for each trip. I was also able to get the AP spring discount applied to our reservations.

With all of that business out of the way, we were able to make FP reservations right at 60 days! C wanted it to be a surprise for M that we were going to be there. We went along with this plan, but boy was it hard not to spill the beans at our super bowl party that year!

Day 0/Night1:

While I was able to get Friday-Monday off, A had no such luck, and had to work a half day Friday. This meant taking a later flight than normal. We had a 7:15 flight out of Dallas Love Field. Our plan was to be at the airport around 5:30. 5:30 on a Friday driving through downtown Dallas, what could possibly go wrong?! Fortunately while traffic was pretty heavy, and my phone told me to take the wrong exit one time, we still made it to the airport on time.

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Already a little tired before takeoff!

Our flight down went smoothly and a few hours later we landed in Orlando. Because of the time change, by the time we got down to DME it was approaching 11 pm. We were both more than ready to get to our room and get a few hours of sleep. Our bus only had a few parties on it. We stopped at riverside first, then French Quarter. Our room had been ready since lunch time of that day, so we went straight to our room. It was well after midnight when we made it to our room.

Apparently we knew that @Nunu would like some room photos at the time!😜
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Another boring redesigned room.

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The beads were a nice touch!

We finally got showered and in bed just before 1 am.
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Just noticed the dates of your June 2015 trip, we missed each other by a few days. Hubs and I got married on the 25th and left on the 27th for our WDW honeymoon.
Well happy early anniversary to you!

I just missed you both!! I was there the 22nd-28th!!
Did you stay at riverside? POR was actually the first Disney resort I ever stayed at, which is probably why it was one of the first places we visited on our first trip together.
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Monday June 15, 2015.

We were up bright and early for our one day at universal. A is a big time Harry Potter fan, although she was a little late getting into it. She was pretty exited to be visiting the wizarding world. I hadn’t visited universal since summer of 2000, when islands of adventure was still the new kid in town. So it was a lot like going for the first time for me as well. We managed to cram a ton into one day. What we didn’t do was take a ton of pictures, since we were so busy trying to do everything at two theme parks in one day.

We were among the first guests through the gate that day. We had express pass, so basically we did each ride as we came to them, as there was no need to plan for shorter lines with the exception of the two major potter attractions, which we saved for later in the day. This one was first. After that its a bit of a blur.
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I remember starting out at USO because A wanted to ride hogwarts express in the “proper” order of kings cross station to hogsmeade.
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Arriving at Hogsmeade village. We had lunch here, and spent some time in the shops.
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Beautiful hoggy hoggy Hogwarts! Also super crowded hogwarts! We would return later in the day and would get in plenty of rides with no wait.
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No visit to the wizarding world is complete without butterbeer!
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We made the rounds doing all of the attraction at IoA. I think the fact that they don’t allow phones or cameras on any rides, and make you get a locker before most rides limits the number of pictures we take. We usually end up leaving our things in one of the ride lockers for as long as possible instead of constantly retrieving them every time. Anyways here’s a few character photos from the studios side.
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Coming up: A few more things from Universal.
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Monday June 13, 2015 continued.

More from Universal. My Doc Brown photo didn’t turn out so great. Really a shame as he was fantastic!
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A’s knight bus driver pic turned out much better!
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I do remember walking back to IoA via city walk. We spent some time in Seuss landing too. We didn’t dine at this restaurant, but it was a nice place to cool off for a bit.
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We headed over to an empty hogwarts next.
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I was blown away by this attraction! Everything from the queue to the ride experience is top notch!
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We took the hogwarts express over to Diagon alley to finish our day.
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We queued up for gringotts about an hour before park closing. This would be our longest wait of the day at around 45 minutes. I think the ride may have gone down once while we were waiting. It’s a good attraction, but nowhere near the level of forbidden journey.
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We managed to catch the end of the little night time show on the lagoon before making our way out of the park. We ended up picking up a pizza and eating at the hotel for dinner.

Up next: A’s first Disney day!
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Tuesday June 16, 2015.

I’m not sure why my dates were so wrong before, not that it really matters. We got a good nights rest and were ready to start our time inside the bubble. Our home for the rest of the week!
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There was a sky writer out this morning.
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This was my first visit to Wilderness Lodge, and I instantly fell in love with the place. As someone who loves the outdoors, the place just really speaks to me. I would have the pleasure of staying at the Old Faithful Inn, which served as a major inspiration for WL, a few years later in 2018.
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Our room was ready when we arrived. I made sure to pick this up for A.
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We were upgraded from standard view to courtyard view. During the quiet of the morning it was like being next to a peaceful stream, making the balcony a nice place to have breakfast. During the afternoon it was pretty noisy from the pool, but we didn’t notice much noise with the door closed. This room is now part of Copper Creek Villas
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A few room pictures. I haven’t been inside a room at WL since 2016, anyone know if the rooms still look like this?
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Coming up: Lunch and DHS
 

Nunu

Wanderluster
Premium Member
Tuesday June 16, 2015.

I’m not sure why my dates were so wrong before, not that it really matters. We got a good nights rest and were ready to start our time inside the bubble. Our home for the rest of the week!
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There was a sky writer out this morning.
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This was my first visit to Wilderness Lodge, and I instantly fell in love with the place. As someone who loves the outdoors, the place just really speaks to me. I would have the pleasure of staying at the Old Faithful Inn, which served as a major inspiration for WL, a few years later in 2018.
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Our room was ready when we arrived. I made sure to pick this up for A.
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We were upgraded from standard view to courtyard view. During the quiet of the morning it was like being next to a peaceful stream, making the balcony a nice place to have breakfast. During the afternoon it was pretty noisy from the pool, but we didn’t notice much noise with the door closed. This room is now part of Copper Creek Villas
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A few room pictures. I haven’t been inside a room at WL since 2016, anyone know if the rooms still look like this?
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Coming up: Lunch and DHS
Room pictures, yey! 😀
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Real life update.

Last night the wife and I were talking about how it would be nice to escape somewhere peaceful for a week or so. Nowhere too crowded, just a place we can relax and unwind, do a little hiking, maybe just hang out reading a book. Long story short it looks like we’ll be getting to go west for our July vacation after all! Sort of. We’ve come up with a very low key vacation to the mountains. I’ll share more details when everything is finalized.
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
So I got this email today.
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I was a little confused because while I do have a reservation in September, we let our passes expire in early March just before the closure. At the time the plan was to just get the gold pass before our next trip to save some money over renewing our platinum passes. Well then everything went crazy and they quit selling new tickets and passes. Anyways, I checked in MDE, and wouldn’t you know it, we each have ONE complimentary one day ticket on our account. No idea when or why they got there! So let me ask you all this. If you could choose just one park at WDW to visit, besides MK, which would it be? This may be a legit decision we have to make next week!
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Saturday March 9, 2019.

Despite the late night, we were up early and ready to finally hit the parks! C would not be proposing to M until the next afternoon, so we had this day to ourselves to tour like the crazy people we are. Our only requirement was to not be seen by M, which was easy since they were spending the day poolside at the Poly. I ran down to the food court and got us some beignets for breakfast while A got dressed and packed our bags back up. We quickly scarfed them down.

We dropped our suitcases off with bell services and let them know we’d be switching to CSR that night. They assured us that wouldn’t be an issue, and our bags should arrive sometime in the afternoon. With that knowledge in hand we headed out to the bus stop. The bus stop was packed, and most of us appeared to be going to AK for the morning. Luckily two busses pulled up at the same time, and we were seated on the second bus. We arrived at AK well before opening, and went to the ticket window to get our APs processed. The CM there was excellent, and we had our passes ready in no time! It was an EMH morning that day. We missed most of EMH but were able to get in the park just a bit before the masses that were there for pandora.

Our first stop was at Everest!
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We walked on, then used FP for a second ride.

Next up was dinosaur.
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At some point we must’ve stopped for some sugar and caffeine.
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We would be consuming copious amounts of sugar and caffeine throughout this day.

If my memory serves correctly, our next FP was for FoP. This would be our first time experiencing the attraction, as well as the land. We explored pandora for a bit before our FP window opened.
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The land is very well done thematically. The actual design of the land leaves a lot to be desired. It has felt cramped every time I’ve been.

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Taken just before our first time on FoP. I walked away unimpressed with the attraction. It had received so much hype that I was expecting something truly spectacular. I didn’t think it was truly spectacular. A liked it, but wasn’t blown away. I’ve ridden one other time since, and still feel the same.

We did a little more looking around pandora after our flights.
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There is some spectacular scenery in pandora for sure!

More from AK coming up.
I like your t-shirt! I'm with you on FOP. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't really what I was expecting. Unfortunately, it's a bit too roller coastery for me and it was a one and done. My husband and my daughter loved it though!
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Right now I'm kind of diggin' Animal Kingdom but since they announced a type of Food and Wine starting in July I'd probably go with Epcot.
For me I think I‘d have to say Animal Kingdom.
That's nice about your complimentary tickets! 😀
I'd choose Epcot.
I would personally choose Animal Kingdom.

Lots of love for animal kingdom. Interesting. I think a modified food and wine with a limited attendance is intriguing. It’s hard to make a decision before they reopen because who knows what the parks will really be like?
 

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