Trip Report The "we took a trip to Disney World just so we could write a trip report" trip report

Hello fellow Disney-folk! Early this year me (Scott) and my CDP (co-Disney-Phile) Lyn started hatching a spring trip to WDW. We've never done a real trip report before so we thought it would be fun. Lots of pictures too. Enjoy!

Our "incredible" vacation (er...long weekend, anyway) ended up during St Patrick's Day weekend. Planned in advance with reservations at Pop Century, snagging pretty decent rates too. Magic Bands customized, ordered, and received! Not really into planning things out very much but since FP+ was available, we used it (more on that later).

One day I got two(!) boxes in my mailbox from Davenport Florida. Magic Bands!

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Are we Disney-nerds? Yup. Hadn't done this before though: Mousekeeping tipping envelopes (available from WDW Prep School). This was kind of an experiment. Tipping at hotels has been a contentious point recently. Even though I travel quite a bit I'd never heard of leaving tips at hotels before reading about tipping "mousekeeping". I won't start a debate about the practice, but this was something we wanted to try in our (my?) own odd way.

More exciting news about that later on. Stay tuned!

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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Stitch's Great Escape. We skipped this...again. Same old thing: Stitch escapes and all he11 breaks loose.

Yup.

Been there.

Ok, but, see the dude on the right? He just got out of the SGE and he's still looking for Stitch. Pretty sure he is. Yup - got to be what he's doing.

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Well...we found him! Stitch to me looks like they crossed Mickey Mouse, a Gecko, and a Smurf - all rolled into one.

Here's Stitch in all his smurfy-goodness. Bet they don't have these monsters up there in Cabot Cove, eh CDP-Lyn? Oops - I mean Storybrooke...

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C.M.O

C.M.O

Active Member
Loving your report! Thanks for sharing the information about online check in, I was trying to decide if it was worth it, seems to be. Also FP+ for Beauty and the Beast. Can't wait to see more! Like everyone said your pictures are amazing!
 
photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Tiggerish said:
I just returned from WDW on the 11th, and looking at your pictures is like being right back there. Also loving your humorous commentary. :)
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Humorous? Never! ;)

C.M.O said:
Loving your report! Thanks for sharing the information about online check in, I was trying to decide if it was worth it, seems to be. Also FP+ for Beauty and the Beast. Can't wait to see more! Like everyone said your pictures are amazing!
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ShookieJones said:
Still reading along, Still loving it. As mentioned by Mizz @Tiggerish the commentary is almost as good as the pics.

Good stuff!
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Thanks all - more to come :)
 
photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day Two Continues... The Parade:

One of our "must do" items was to see the new Festival of Fantasy parade. We got there in time to get a halfway decent spot in the hub. We were also in time for the pre-parade high school marching bands.

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photoflight

photoflight

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Original Poster
This is Christa. She was a CM managing the pathway around the crowd that was to be left open. That smile never changed the entire time she was there and she was totally enthusiastic about everything. We noticed that, so I took a picture :)

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Festival of Fantasy Parade

What fun! We really enjoyed it. Parades are not on our "must do" list. They're on our "if it's convenient, the crowd isn't obnoxiously large, we're in the right-time and right-place, and we're not rushing to do something else" list. Exceptions made for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party and Not-So-Scary-Halloween-Party...sort of. This is new though and we wanted to see it. It's worth scoping out a decent spot for.

With all that's written and on youtube there's no great need to go into great detail about it, but here are some highlights of what we saw:

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Er... no, not that guy...slides must be out of order

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Ugh. Sorry folks, CDP-Lyn must be running the projector. Minions these days...here we go...

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photoflight

photoflight

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Original Poster
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Mickey and Minnie took one look at us and this is what happened. See? This is reaction we get from these guys, so there's a good reason we have a no-selfie policy ;) Yeah yeah, very funny guys - and you have big ears!

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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
More Disney-wizardry: All these people with their new-fangled electronic gizmotron thingies end up running out of magical phone and pad juice after a while. Now they have a place where the techno-addicts can recharge without hunting down outlets. Right there in Fantasyland too.

Who knew you could charge a phone with a stump? Disney is amazing.

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Jim, the legendary piano player at Casey's Corner. This is Jim's 31st year doing this, and he's good. Real good. You can read and see more about Jim at the Disney Parks Blog.

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Coming soon... the night's festivities. Stay tuned!
 
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photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Crystal J said:
Really fun trip report with great pictures and excellent taste in cameras (I have D600 & D700). I am looking forward to the rest!
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Thanks :)

Good choices too. I think the D700 probably has quite an edge on the 800 in low-light. I knew that when I pre-ordered mine, but I wanted it for bright-light aerial photography. Eh, it's a trade-off. :)
 
photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day Two Continues... our amazing dinner!

After watching Jim we poked around the Emporium again. Did you know you can buy Mickey Mouse (and friends) themed boxer shorts there? You can. Honest!

But, anyway... part of our relaxing approach was to let the post-parade crowd thin then catch a bus back to the hotel for dinner and to freshen up. I also wanted to swap camera lenses for something more appropriate for our return to MK later that evening.

Back at the hotel we went to the Pop Century food court, where it looked like a few other people were doing the same thing.

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CDP-Lyn's amazing dinner was the Parmesan-crusted Chicken. No, it doesn't come pre-nibbled-on (pre-nibbling is extra) - that was a "oh crud, we forgot to take a picture" situation. It was around $9 and met with her approval.

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My amazing dinner? This is me basking in luxury: half a turkey sub from the cooler. It was pretty good, really. I had half now and put the rest in the fridge for later. I generally don't eat much when we're going around the parks anyway so this was just fine for me :)

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Now something in the name of science. Hope I don't lose and/or otherwise irritate too many people with this one; we'd read threads with people babbling about "Mousekeeping". Lots of info about tipping "Mousekeepers" and how, when you tip them, you get rewarded with extra decorations/towel-animals in your room. Etc.

Long before I'd ever heard of tipping in hotel rooms (never mind "Mousekeeping") there were towel-animals in my WDW-property rooms so I thought it was really kind of an exaggeration. Seriously I did.

Side note: yeah, up until a few years ago I hadn't heard about tipping in hotel rooms. Yes, I live under a rock (it's nice and cool down here) and although I've traveled quite a bit all my life, it's something I'd never heard of until joining the WDW-related forums. Don't be shocked, I've discovered a lot of people haven't heard of it. Some of us aren't real "hip" I guess ;)

Back to the story: so, remember these guys?
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Yup. Mousekeeping tip-envelopes. We had two rooms. Both very neat. One we left the recommended tip in, the other we didn't. The result? One both were made-up normally but one had a little extra:

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Lesson learned from this experiment? Leave the recommended tip and you get a facecloth made up with a couple of eyes and a tiara that resembles...resembles...well, not sure. Cute I guess.

Part 2 of this grand experiment will come later so reserve your comments of disgust over not tipping, or your cheers of joy over getting the cute towely hockey-puck. There are exciting and surprising twists to this experiment to come later, I assure you :)
 
photoflight

photoflight

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Let's see now...

dinner? Check.
A little rest? Check.
Freshen up? Check.
Swap lenses for me? Check.
Ditch the sunglasses? Check.

Golly. What next... oh yeah - go back over to The Magic Kingdom for our night visit! Again, took the bus. Not crowded at all. Coming back wasn't too bad either. Bus service to MK seemed to be pretty trouble free without massive lines. Our timing was pretty good.

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Early evening at the hub and not too crowded, especially considering it's a Saturday during the Spring Break season.

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Obligatory castle-shot before the sun goes down

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We made all our FP+ reservations at MK for the evening and night. It worked out great. We're still not sold on the "preplan your vacation itinerary" idea. I'm more of a "show up and do whatever you feel up for" visitor... but I also can't stand lines, so this really worked out pretty well for us.

First up was the Haunted Mansion. There was enough of a line that the fastpasses made a difference.

Trying to sneak another "candid" picture of CMs but didn't get away with it. They were happy and smiley before I got the camera out, then POOF! Here they are having gone all "haunted-mansioney" on us!

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Haunted Mansion time at last... first in line. Don't let the door hit ya in the face! Soooo used to people telling me that the other way around.

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Then inside...it got all spooky. Shiver, shiver, shiver.

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Stretching room magic. Used to go to DL a lot when I was a kid. This always amazed me.

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Hello Madame Leota!

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Great Caesar's Ghost, and others! I've read so much about how people think this scene is accomplished. Really though, these are members of a senior-citizen's acting club brought in from The Villages. Maybe.

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Chilling... Constance Hatchaway

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