Trip Report - 12/26 - 12/31/02

[Nansafan]

Hello fellow Disneyphiles! We just got back, and I mean just, the plane touched down at 1:43 PM today. I am not going to give a day by day account of the trip, just a highlights type thing, and there were many of them.

The Magic Kingdom was open until midnight every day we were there (reminds me of the old days). We went to EPCOT on the 26th. We did Ellen's Energy, Body Wars, Cranium Command and Spaceship Earth. Took our usual run through the countries. (It was cooler than we expected so we shopped in America and Germany.) We found this great kiosk that we had never stopped at before in Italy that had Chocolate Mousse and Tiramisu, delicious. We visited Mexico and took the boat ride and decided we should leave before we got caught in the rush leaving after the fireworks. Jumped a monorail and headed to the Magic Kingdom.

Dashed through the stores to avoid Spectromagic and headed to Tomorrowland for the TTA, Buzz and Space. Next stop was Adventureland and the Jungle Cruise. At JC we had Leonora as our skipper. We were the only ones on our boat. When she realized we had done the cruise a couple dozen times, she asked if we wanted to drive the boat. Leonora was great! She posed for pictures and let us do the cruise spiel. She then pointed out some hidden Mickey's for us. We stayed on and road again. She was given our "Cast Member of the Day" Award.

Enough for now, will follow with some more tomorrow. I need to unpack.

 

[wolf359]

boy, talk about not waiting! thanks for posting!

it sounds like it wasn't *too* busy, but i'm curious if it it seemed like there were still a lot of people there.

mostly 'cause i'm leaving day after tomorrow for WDW and i'm hoping it's not going to be mobbed.

 

[wannabeBelle]

Hey Nan!! How's things?? I havent seen you in a while!!! Glad to hear you were able to go to Disney. Did your brother go also? We are planning a meet and greet kind of thing for May probably the third or fourth week. Would you or your brother be interested? We are probably going to be staying at the PO Riverside, with the PO French Quarter as a backup in case Riverside is sold out. If you want to follow along on the thread it is called All Star Resorts in this catagory!!! Id love to hear more about the trip too!!! Thanks, Belle

 

[Nansafan]

Friday, 12/27 - We had a PS for Character Breakfast at 1900 Park Faire at GF. We had never eaten there before and decided to give it a try. Also, we called kind of late and most of the other Character Breakfasts were "sold out". Great buffet! With teenagers, all you can eat is a must. Alice, Pooh, Eeyore and Minnie came to the table. Mary Poppins and Bert were in the lobby as host and hostess for pictures. Since we were staying at PO-FQ, we decided to take a cab to the breakfast. It was easier than taking a bus to MK and then monorail to the GF. It worked like a charm. Interesting side note, my husband called us to say there was a message about a Disney reservation on the machine at home. While walking through GF before being seated for breakfast I called the 800 number he gave me. Turns out it was a "free trip" to WDW, Las Vegas and Ft. Lauderdale (time share nonsense). Hung up on them after telling them where I was.

After breakfast, we headed to the Disney Studios. We went to get a Fast Pass for Millionaire but a Cast Member handed us them for the show that was starting in just a couple minutes. The first person in the hot seat missed his 16,000 point question and got bumped back to 1,000. The next person on the hot seat was my brother. He had been in 6th place when they showed an update during the first guy and then when it was time to go on the show, bam it was him. He is a computer programmer and the first question was a computer question. This was great for him. His other questions included a Lion King question (one of his fav movies) and a question on Camelot (another thing he knows a great deal about). He made it too 64,000 and was on the 125,000 question when he answered incorrectly. It was so exciting. He won a 1,000 point hat, 32,000 point polo shirt and all the pins to 32,000. This event won our Magical Moment Award for the day.

We got lucky for dinner by walking up to Sci-Fi Dine In restaurant and were immediately seated at a table. We did some shopping, RnR, the Backstage Tour and the Animation show. We then saw the Osborne family light spectacle. I had never been to WDW at Christmas time before and had only seen the lights from video my brother had taken. WOW!! A must see. We decided to call it an early evening and we went back to the hotel.

 

[Nansafan]

Sorry wolf359, I didn't answer your question. It was VERY crowded. Alien Encounter had a line everytime we walked by (still don't understand why). Small World was jammed. Everytime we went into Fantasyland, there were scads of people. Heard people on the bus talking about the MK being closed one of the days we were there. Just be on top of the Fast Pass thing and you should be ok.

 

[wolf359]

cool! thanks for the heads up.

 

[CAPTAIN HOOK]

Thanks for the report - if you had a lap-top you could have written the report on the plane home !!!!

 

[Nansafan]

Saturday - 12/28. We went to Animal Kingdom. Got a Fast Pass for Primeval Whirl and then went Stand-By on it. After that, stood in line for Dinosaur (about 1/2 hour). Headed back to use our Fast Pass then off to lunch. Went to check out Kilimanjaro Safari but they were done handing out FP's and the line was too long. While on the bridge to Harambe, we saw some tigers off in the distance - beautiful animals. It was too cold to do Kali so we decided to head to Downtown Disney for some shopping.

As it was Saturday, the place was packed. Everyone in the group found something to buy so it was a productive day. We took the boat back to PO and had a great boat captain. Unfortunately, we didn't get his name. He talked all about the Tree House Villas of the former Disney Institute and talked about the new hotel being built. I believe it is being called Saratoga Springs. It is being patterned after resorts in upstate New York (don't remember what period of time he mentioned). He was a wealth of information. He told us he used to work with the horticulture department of Disney and he gave us a plant tour as well.

We dropped off our purchases and headed to Fantasia Gardens for some mini golf. We decided to cab it since the bus trip would have been quite long. It got very cold that night, in the 30's. We could see our breath as we golfed. We then headed to the Swan to catch a bus to the MK.

Our bus driver was named Ron and he won the Cast Member of the Day Award. Talk about trivia! Ron spouted off numbers such as how many restrooms in each park, how many bus routes, how many pounds of laundry done in WDW in a day and the one we found to be odd, how many pounds of dryer lint generated each day in WDW, 120 pounds. We asked him all kinds of questions. Fun guy to ride with.

We ran through the stores to avoid the parade waiters and headed to Adventureland to do Pirates. Then off to Liberty Square for the Haunted Mansion. We decided to get something to eat and headed to Cosmic Rays Starlight Cafe for soup and burgers. After another ride on the TTA, we did Buzz. By now, it was time to head back to the hotel for some sleep.

 

[Nansafan]

Sunday, 12/29 - Today was a very special day. My cousin, who had graduated from Univ. of Illinois, Champaign on 12/22/02 was going to receive her DDM degree. I had heard through this and another website about Gifts of a Lifetime (GOAL). I decided to check it out. I called my brother and suggested we surprise our cousin with some type of event for her graduation. After tossing around ideas, we came up with a final exam type thing and an awarding of a degree, Bachelor of Disney Magic. My son said "no, Carol's knows too much for Bachelors degree, it should be a Doctorate." We contacted Jane at Goal, completed their questionaire and waited. I checked the website and saw that they had posted that they were completely scheduled through the new year so we thought we were out of luck. Then my brother received a phone call from Jane. We had made a mistake while completing the questionaire and never gave them an email address. Lucky for us, they had reserved a time for us.

The morning started out as usual, me up first. My brother and I headed to the food court for coffee and a quick powwow. We returned to our rooms and woke the troops. We were supposed to meet Jane at Snow White's Wishing Well at 10:00. Since we were a little early, about an hour and a half, we rode a trolley down main street and were serenaded by the Dapper Dans. We headed to Tomorrowland and saw CoP. While there, my neice got a call from her mom asking if we had started our event yet. After CoP, it was time to head to the wishing well.

My son was sent ahead with the video camera to take a shot of us going up the walkway to the well. We stopped at the well and were met by Jane. She explained she was from Univ. of Ill. and that Carol had not completed her final exam. After a little more explanation, we were off on Carol's exam. There were trivia questions to be answered, she was given 3 pictures she had to duplicate and another 3 pictures she had to have taken by a stranger with the whole group of us in them. She was given a Poloroid camera to take the pictures with. She had 2 hours to complete the exam and report back to Jane behind the Christmas store in Liberty Square.

We raced all over the park after Carol. At one point my brother commented that the popcorn smelled good and was told by Carol, "there's no eating on my time!" Carol completed her exam in with about 40 minutes to spare. We were given permission to eat, drink and visit the restroom. Then we headed off to Jane. This was no easy task as we were on the wrong side of the parade and had to wait to be allowed to cross.

We met Jane with 10 minutes to spare. She graded her exam, which Carol had received 100 on plus the extra credit picture, and declared her a DDM. She was presented with ears, a Pooh graduation bear and a Class of 2002 pin. All in all a great time.

We said good-bye to Jane and headed for our Peter Pan Fast Pass. We had an early dinner at the Castle to celebrate the graduation and then wondered around the Magic Kingdom, shopping and hitting some other attractions. We caught the fireworks, wondered some more and headed back to the hotel.

I recommend Jane and GOAL to anyone who is looking for a new way to visit the parks.

 

[MinnieFan]

WOW! What a fun way to celebrate something special. Sounds like Carol had a lot of fun.

 

[WDWFREAK53]

Sounds like you had a blast Nice report (even I'm out of breath :lol: )

 

[orangefan15]

What an awesome gift!! That is such a cool idea you had. Sounds like a ton of fun.

 

[Nansafan]

Monday - 12/30 - Great planning on our part. This was the warmest day we were in Florida and we spent a big chunk of it at Disney Quest. We had a great time on Pirates, Virtual Jungle Cruise, the Alien thing, Virtual Space Mountain and the hockey pinball game. We took the animation class and had lunch. Finallly decided to enjoy the weather so we headed back to the hotel. Son, brother and 1 niece went swimming, 2nd niece got a hair wrap and Carol and I enjoyed a Pina Colada by the pool. As soon as the sun shifted from poolside, the swimmers came charging out and we headed back so the swimmers could put on clothes.

We headed to the Magic Kingdom to see if we could catch another ride with Lenora our favorite Jungle Cruise captain. We asked if she was working and found out she had called in sick. We did the ride anyway and also did a few more favs. We had something to eat at Pinocchio Village Haus and played some more. We finally left the park at 11:00ish and headed back to the hotel to pack.

My family kept telling me that December trips are the most magical and I finally found out for myself. The "Magical Moment of the Trip" award went to our Jungle Cruise with Lenora on our first night there.

Lastly, I posted on the site back in October a question regarding airport transportation. We decided to use yourride. Our driver was Mike. He picked us up in a van that was decorated with a mini Christmas tree and lights strung around the top on the 26th. We thought this a nice touch. When it was time to return to the airport, Mike was right on time. He was funny, chatty and very professional. We heartily recommend yourride and will be using them for all future trips to WDW.