DisneyWonders07
New Member
Hey Everyone! I'm finally back from my vacation at Walt Disney World. We went from Saturday, April 12th 2003 to Sunday, April 20th 2003, and it was one of our most magical vacations there ever! Actually, we drove this year so our first official day at Disney was Sunday, April 13th 2003. We (me, my cousin Tim, and my parents) mostly were with our good friends the Steen family (Adam, my best friend David, and their parents) and Nick, a friend that Adam brought along. From the first day we got there, everything was so much fun! It really couldn't have been any better.
Day 1 (Sunday, April 13th): Today we didn't do so much at the parks, on account that we arrived at the Caribbean Beach resort around 2 in the afternoon, and they put us in the Barbados section. We got our annual passes because we'll be going back in August of this year and April of next year. We had dinner reservations with the Steens at Cape May (Yacht and Beach Club) at 5pm. After dinner, the five of us (Tim, David, Adam, Nick, and I) went to Fantasia Gardens and had a game of mini golf. I really do not like that first hole on the more "fun" course with all the themed stuff, I can never get my ball up the darn thing! It was around 10pm when we finished, and we had a lot more night to do, so we decided to hop on on over to DisneyQuest at Downtown Disney. Only thing is, it was closing at 11pm, so we sprinted to the Swan Resort and while we were running, a bus to Downtown Disney was going right for the Swan so we had to race that. It was funny because when we arrived at the Swan bus stop, Nick was running so fast that it looked like he was going to run right into the bus! We had a bit of fun at DisneyQuest that night until it closed.
Day 2 (Monday, April 14th): Today we all went to the Magic Kingdom and had a lot of fun there. We got quite a few fastpasses for rides for all of the Magic Kingdom mountains. On Space Mountain, it was only about a minute wait in the fastpass line, and that minute was how long it took to walk through to the ride part. We ate lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern and I going to charge my meal on the room card, but I accidentally forgot to put it in the bill book thingy and I had to go running around the restaurant trying to find the waiter and give it to him. Afterwards, we saw the Share a Dream Come True parade. We had dinner at the Crystal Palace that evening in the Magic Kingdom. There, we all had a good hearty meal at the buffet. David and I made our traditional PB&J sandwiches. We fit in mostly all of the attractions and saw SpectroMagic (my favorite parade) and watched Fantasy in the Sky that night. Nick was very excited and wanted to see Tinker Bell float from the top of the castle when the fireworks started so we saw the show from right near the castle.
Day 3 (Tuesday, April 15th): Today we all went to EPCOT. I had to of course get my traditional shot of the massive Epcot geosphere and Tim and I went on Spaceship Earth (It's one of my favorite rides at Epcot). We continued to World Showcase where we met up with the Steens and Nick at the International Gateway between France and Great Britain. Our first objective was to get fastpasses for Test Track, those fastpasses are all gone by at least 2 or 3 in the afternoon every day! My good friend who's a CM at Disney, Kenan, told me a lot of statistics about Test Track the day before we left for Disney. After that, we walked by Mission Space and longed to ride it. We then had lunch at The Land and then walked through some of the countries. We stopped at China for a while, because Nick is studying the Chinese culture and language. I of course had to make my routine stop at Japan, because I'm really interested in that particular culture and language. I went to buy a couple of language books and the Japanese CM lady got all excited that I was learning the Japanese language and started to gabber away in Japanese to me. I knew some Japanese already, but not enough to know what she was saying so I just kept nodding my head and smiling. Last year David, Adam, and I rented out the mini-speed boats at the Yacht and Beach Club and we did the same this year. We were riding each other's waves and it was really fun, because you can go all the way to the Disney Studios. Speaking of the Studios, we walked over there using the walkway from the Boardwalk. We saw this big duck like bird standing on a rock and it's wings were spread out, it looked like it was worshipping something. Then David told us the story of how the first day he was throwing food down to the ducks below his window and a crowd of them came and he said "Come my followers!", the ducks came to his window every morning to get fed every day. We had dinner at the Prime Time Cafe that night. For the past 3 years we've had the same waitress, Sister Sarah, but this time we unfortunately did not see her. I asked one of the waitresses if she was working that night, but she told me that she was working the previous night. So I took a napkin and wrote a nice long letter to Sister Sarah, telling her how she's one of the best, sweetest, and funniest waitresses ever. I just wish I could've seen her. Oh well, there's always August. We then saw Fantasmic!
Day 4 (Wednesday, April 16th): The previous night, we all decided that we'd go back to the Disney Studios to get in some of the attractions. The first thing we rode was the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, it was a real blast. That evening we took the monorail over to the Contemporary Resort and ate at Chef Mickey's. I love hearing the monorail audio, "Please stand clear of the doors, Por favor manténganse alejado de las puertas." After dinner we traveled back to the Magic Kingdom and went on some of the attractions that we had previously missed out on during Monday (probably due to the extremely large crowds). That night, instead of seeing the parade again, we did some shopping in Downtown Disney. The World of Disney is huge, isn't it?! You could really get lost in there. I bought some souvenirs for my family and myself. I really only bought a few things for myself, because most of stuff is old with a new logo slapped on it. For instance, the official Walt Disney World CD has all the exact same songs, just a different cover. The Walt Disney World DVD is probably the same crappy and cheap video as before. That was the only time during the entire vacation that it rained (actually it poured) but that was around 11 o'clock at night and we were stuck in the World of Disney.
Day 5 (Thursday, April 17th): Today we all went to Disney's Typhoon Lagoon water park where we had a wet 'n' wild fun time. The water slides and giant wave pool were excellent, especially in the scorching 90 degree weather. That was another nice thing as well. You don't really mind the hot weather, full trees, green grass and flowers when where you live it's still freezing cold and everything is dull and bare (talking about New York State). It's funny how at the wave pool, you hear a big WHOOSH of the great big wave coming, then everybody screams, and start to swim away form the gigantic monster of a wave. We only stayed there until around 3pm and Tim and I went back to Caribbean Beach to take showers. We were going to meet up with the Steens that night and eat at the Rainforest Cafe, but when we got there, only Nick and Adam were there because David and his parents missed the bus. We ended up eating at the House of Blues anyways because it was an hour wait at the Rainforest Cafe. After dinner we went to the Comedy Club in Pleasure Island, it was really funny.
Day 6 (Friday, April 18th): While the Steens decided to go to the other water park, Disney's Blizzard Beach, Tim and I decided to go to Disney's Animal Kingdom. All we did there was the 3D show "It's Tough to Be a Bug" and rode the Primeval Whirl in Chester and Hester's Dinorama. It was just too crowded and hot to do too much, besides it's our least favorite park. What was really funny happened at lunch time. We ate at the Pizzafari restaurant and Tim got a large orange soda. He was halfway done with it when he spilled it down his front. It took at least 10 minutes to dry in the bathroom, and after we got outside he started to embarress me by shouting "Billy I peed my pants!" and I was like "Shut up!". Later on, we met David, Nick, and Adam over at World Showcase in Epcot and watched the child acrobats at the China pavilion, they were really good. We rode El Rio del Tiempo in Mexico and then went into Future World and did some stuff there. We didn't have any reservations anywhere that day, so we just ate some burgers at a fast-food type place that evening. We stayed at Epcot the rest of the night to see the best fireworks spectacular ever, Illuminations: Reflections of Earth. After the fireworks, we went over to the Yacht and Beach club and had something called the Kitchen Sink at the Beaches and Cream ice cream shop. It was a massive dessert. It was a great big silver basin with a spout and handles and in the sink part there were at least 9 scoops of ice cream, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and mint. There were brownies and cake in it, and every topping and syrup you can think of like snicker bars, fudge topping, you name it. Even with the 5 of us eating 1 it was still hard to finish it. When the parents went back to their rooms, we went into the arcade and played air hockey. David's pretty much a pro at it, and I can't stand him beating me so much. He beat me twice in a row and he said "Ok now it's Nick's turn..." but I cut him off really quickly and shouted "We're playing again...NOW!!!!!" and I said it so angrily and loudly that he started laughing hysterically. I think he beat us 6 times each, and we never beat him once.
Day 7 (Saturday, April 19th): Today was our last day with the Steens, so we all went to the Magic Kingdom first, but we didn't really have time for any attractions because we had lunch reservations at Cinderella's Royal Table at 11:45am. 3 of us including me had the Major Domo's Favorite Pie, and it was delicious. It was meat, vegetables, and mashed potatoes all on a flaky pastry. After we had gotten done eating, we went down to the lobby while the mom's were in the bathroom and Dave (David's father) took the stick and rang the bells that the hostess uses to announce the next family to be seated. She started to laugh and said that he was a natural. We then departed from the Steens, and Tim and I spent the rest of the day doing bit by bit at the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Tim wanted to do some more shopping so we went back to Downtown Disney that night and he wanted to go into a store entirely devoted to sunglasses called Celebrity Eyewear in the West Side. Seriously, those sunglasses were expensive and I wouldn't pay that much for sunglasses. I got a cheap $20 pair at the Magic Kingdom earlier that day because I don't wear sunglasses that much. Tim really wanted a pair of Oakley's and we spent at least a half hour in there trying on sunglasses. We even had to take a walk because he wanted to think about if he really wanted them or not and after another grueling half hour we went back into the store and he got a pair with something called an "M-Frame". We didn't get back to the hotel until later that night.
Day 8 (Sunday, April 20th): Because it was Easter Sunday, we had to go to the 10:15am mass at the Contemporary resort, and wow there were a lot of people. The priest was Irish. After mass was over, we walked over to the Magic Kingdom and ate at Tony's Town Square Italian restaurant. Our waitress was Korean I think, and she sounded really nervous when she talked and I thought she was about to cry because her voice was really shaky, but she told us to excuse her voice, her allergies were acting up and all of the flowers in the middle of the restaurant weren't helping. I felt bad for the poor lady. Anyways, after that we did a few things in the Magic Kingdom, and decided to spend the rest of our last day at Epcot where we went on attractions that we had missed before like Maelstrom, the Norway ride.
Our vacation at Disney seemed to go by very quickly. Once we returned home it didn't even seem like we went, the next morning I woke up and it felt like the vacation never took place. Well I'm going again in August, so once I find out the dates, I'm going to start the countdown again...hehehe
Day 1 (Sunday, April 13th): Today we didn't do so much at the parks, on account that we arrived at the Caribbean Beach resort around 2 in the afternoon, and they put us in the Barbados section. We got our annual passes because we'll be going back in August of this year and April of next year. We had dinner reservations with the Steens at Cape May (Yacht and Beach Club) at 5pm. After dinner, the five of us (Tim, David, Adam, Nick, and I) went to Fantasia Gardens and had a game of mini golf. I really do not like that first hole on the more "fun" course with all the themed stuff, I can never get my ball up the darn thing! It was around 10pm when we finished, and we had a lot more night to do, so we decided to hop on on over to DisneyQuest at Downtown Disney. Only thing is, it was closing at 11pm, so we sprinted to the Swan Resort and while we were running, a bus to Downtown Disney was going right for the Swan so we had to race that. It was funny because when we arrived at the Swan bus stop, Nick was running so fast that it looked like he was going to run right into the bus! We had a bit of fun at DisneyQuest that night until it closed.
Day 2 (Monday, April 14th): Today we all went to the Magic Kingdom and had a lot of fun there. We got quite a few fastpasses for rides for all of the Magic Kingdom mountains. On Space Mountain, it was only about a minute wait in the fastpass line, and that minute was how long it took to walk through to the ride part. We ate lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern and I going to charge my meal on the room card, but I accidentally forgot to put it in the bill book thingy and I had to go running around the restaurant trying to find the waiter and give it to him. Afterwards, we saw the Share a Dream Come True parade. We had dinner at the Crystal Palace that evening in the Magic Kingdom. There, we all had a good hearty meal at the buffet. David and I made our traditional PB&J sandwiches. We fit in mostly all of the attractions and saw SpectroMagic (my favorite parade) and watched Fantasy in the Sky that night. Nick was very excited and wanted to see Tinker Bell float from the top of the castle when the fireworks started so we saw the show from right near the castle.
Day 3 (Tuesday, April 15th): Today we all went to EPCOT. I had to of course get my traditional shot of the massive Epcot geosphere and Tim and I went on Spaceship Earth (It's one of my favorite rides at Epcot). We continued to World Showcase where we met up with the Steens and Nick at the International Gateway between France and Great Britain. Our first objective was to get fastpasses for Test Track, those fastpasses are all gone by at least 2 or 3 in the afternoon every day! My good friend who's a CM at Disney, Kenan, told me a lot of statistics about Test Track the day before we left for Disney. After that, we walked by Mission Space and longed to ride it. We then had lunch at The Land and then walked through some of the countries. We stopped at China for a while, because Nick is studying the Chinese culture and language. I of course had to make my routine stop at Japan, because I'm really interested in that particular culture and language. I went to buy a couple of language books and the Japanese CM lady got all excited that I was learning the Japanese language and started to gabber away in Japanese to me. I knew some Japanese already, but not enough to know what she was saying so I just kept nodding my head and smiling. Last year David, Adam, and I rented out the mini-speed boats at the Yacht and Beach Club and we did the same this year. We were riding each other's waves and it was really fun, because you can go all the way to the Disney Studios. Speaking of the Studios, we walked over there using the walkway from the Boardwalk. We saw this big duck like bird standing on a rock and it's wings were spread out, it looked like it was worshipping something. Then David told us the story of how the first day he was throwing food down to the ducks below his window and a crowd of them came and he said "Come my followers!", the ducks came to his window every morning to get fed every day. We had dinner at the Prime Time Cafe that night. For the past 3 years we've had the same waitress, Sister Sarah, but this time we unfortunately did not see her. I asked one of the waitresses if she was working that night, but she told me that she was working the previous night. So I took a napkin and wrote a nice long letter to Sister Sarah, telling her how she's one of the best, sweetest, and funniest waitresses ever. I just wish I could've seen her. Oh well, there's always August. We then saw Fantasmic!
Day 4 (Wednesday, April 16th): The previous night, we all decided that we'd go back to the Disney Studios to get in some of the attractions. The first thing we rode was the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, it was a real blast. That evening we took the monorail over to the Contemporary Resort and ate at Chef Mickey's. I love hearing the monorail audio, "Please stand clear of the doors, Por favor manténganse alejado de las puertas." After dinner we traveled back to the Magic Kingdom and went on some of the attractions that we had previously missed out on during Monday (probably due to the extremely large crowds). That night, instead of seeing the parade again, we did some shopping in Downtown Disney. The World of Disney is huge, isn't it?! You could really get lost in there. I bought some souvenirs for my family and myself. I really only bought a few things for myself, because most of stuff is old with a new logo slapped on it. For instance, the official Walt Disney World CD has all the exact same songs, just a different cover. The Walt Disney World DVD is probably the same crappy and cheap video as before. That was the only time during the entire vacation that it rained (actually it poured) but that was around 11 o'clock at night and we were stuck in the World of Disney.
Day 5 (Thursday, April 17th): Today we all went to Disney's Typhoon Lagoon water park where we had a wet 'n' wild fun time. The water slides and giant wave pool were excellent, especially in the scorching 90 degree weather. That was another nice thing as well. You don't really mind the hot weather, full trees, green grass and flowers when where you live it's still freezing cold and everything is dull and bare (talking about New York State). It's funny how at the wave pool, you hear a big WHOOSH of the great big wave coming, then everybody screams, and start to swim away form the gigantic monster of a wave. We only stayed there until around 3pm and Tim and I went back to Caribbean Beach to take showers. We were going to meet up with the Steens that night and eat at the Rainforest Cafe, but when we got there, only Nick and Adam were there because David and his parents missed the bus. We ended up eating at the House of Blues anyways because it was an hour wait at the Rainforest Cafe. After dinner we went to the Comedy Club in Pleasure Island, it was really funny.
Day 6 (Friday, April 18th): While the Steens decided to go to the other water park, Disney's Blizzard Beach, Tim and I decided to go to Disney's Animal Kingdom. All we did there was the 3D show "It's Tough to Be a Bug" and rode the Primeval Whirl in Chester and Hester's Dinorama. It was just too crowded and hot to do too much, besides it's our least favorite park. What was really funny happened at lunch time. We ate at the Pizzafari restaurant and Tim got a large orange soda. He was halfway done with it when he spilled it down his front. It took at least 10 minutes to dry in the bathroom, and after we got outside he started to embarress me by shouting "Billy I peed my pants!" and I was like "Shut up!". Later on, we met David, Nick, and Adam over at World Showcase in Epcot and watched the child acrobats at the China pavilion, they were really good. We rode El Rio del Tiempo in Mexico and then went into Future World and did some stuff there. We didn't have any reservations anywhere that day, so we just ate some burgers at a fast-food type place that evening. We stayed at Epcot the rest of the night to see the best fireworks spectacular ever, Illuminations: Reflections of Earth. After the fireworks, we went over to the Yacht and Beach club and had something called the Kitchen Sink at the Beaches and Cream ice cream shop. It was a massive dessert. It was a great big silver basin with a spout and handles and in the sink part there were at least 9 scoops of ice cream, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and mint. There were brownies and cake in it, and every topping and syrup you can think of like snicker bars, fudge topping, you name it. Even with the 5 of us eating 1 it was still hard to finish it. When the parents went back to their rooms, we went into the arcade and played air hockey. David's pretty much a pro at it, and I can't stand him beating me so much. He beat me twice in a row and he said "Ok now it's Nick's turn..." but I cut him off really quickly and shouted "We're playing again...NOW!!!!!" and I said it so angrily and loudly that he started laughing hysterically. I think he beat us 6 times each, and we never beat him once.
Day 7 (Saturday, April 19th): Today was our last day with the Steens, so we all went to the Magic Kingdom first, but we didn't really have time for any attractions because we had lunch reservations at Cinderella's Royal Table at 11:45am. 3 of us including me had the Major Domo's Favorite Pie, and it was delicious. It was meat, vegetables, and mashed potatoes all on a flaky pastry. After we had gotten done eating, we went down to the lobby while the mom's were in the bathroom and Dave (David's father) took the stick and rang the bells that the hostess uses to announce the next family to be seated. She started to laugh and said that he was a natural. We then departed from the Steens, and Tim and I spent the rest of the day doing bit by bit at the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Tim wanted to do some more shopping so we went back to Downtown Disney that night and he wanted to go into a store entirely devoted to sunglasses called Celebrity Eyewear in the West Side. Seriously, those sunglasses were expensive and I wouldn't pay that much for sunglasses. I got a cheap $20 pair at the Magic Kingdom earlier that day because I don't wear sunglasses that much. Tim really wanted a pair of Oakley's and we spent at least a half hour in there trying on sunglasses. We even had to take a walk because he wanted to think about if he really wanted them or not and after another grueling half hour we went back into the store and he got a pair with something called an "M-Frame". We didn't get back to the hotel until later that night.
Day 8 (Sunday, April 20th): Because it was Easter Sunday, we had to go to the 10:15am mass at the Contemporary resort, and wow there were a lot of people. The priest was Irish. After mass was over, we walked over to the Magic Kingdom and ate at Tony's Town Square Italian restaurant. Our waitress was Korean I think, and she sounded really nervous when she talked and I thought she was about to cry because her voice was really shaky, but she told us to excuse her voice, her allergies were acting up and all of the flowers in the middle of the restaurant weren't helping. I felt bad for the poor lady. Anyways, after that we did a few things in the Magic Kingdom, and decided to spend the rest of our last day at Epcot where we went on attractions that we had missed before like Maelstrom, the Norway ride.
Our vacation at Disney seemed to go by very quickly. Once we returned home it didn't even seem like we went, the next morning I woke up and it felt like the vacation never took place. Well I'm going again in August, so once I find out the dates, I'm going to start the countdown again...hehehe
