Trip Report We're going to Disney and this old lady is gonna party!

Hi all, I have the unexpected joy of being able to write (my second ever), (pre)trip report because I'm getting old!

I wrote my first report from our August trip when we got to preview GE as AP before it opened to the public. I thought it would be the only report I got to write till November of 2020 when my husband wants to go back and have a big family trip with all in attendance.

Well I woke up this morning and realized 🤔 I will be 60 in 2 weeks and had no plans for the big day!
So after only about 5 minutes of badgering, my husband agreed a quick, down and dirty trip to celebrate my birthday was in order!

Who will be going?
Just the 3 of us from August-(yes it was Halloween in August). :rolleyes:
Youngest kid Seth, myself Cindy and husband Gary.
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Not attending my birthday blowout is my daughter Aleisha and new son-in-law Julio, as they just got back from honeymooning in France 3 days ago!
Sorry blurry pic of them in their wedding finery, and what I call my (grandthing) Queen Hera!
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When-we will be there Nov 20-Nov 22 (quick blitz for sure)! But, still very excited!

What I have so far is our room, we will be staying at the Boulder Ridge Villas, as that was the only thing available at late notice for us to use our DVC points. But, I was super excited today when initially I looked, I could only find a room for each night at 2 different resorts, and then an hour later, 2 consecutive nights opened up. We love Wilderness Lodge so that worked out great!

More details to come, hopefully, with some dining and FP bookings, wish me luck!
 
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MickeyCB

MickeyCB

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Darstarr said:
Yes, Gary for the win. (Sorry)
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Aww come on now!
And I was giving you credit for the "artsy" term. (It was you who coined that, correct)?
But, actually you are right, I thought the fuzziness of the lights, and the branches coming over the castle top were really cool.
And I don't know squit about photography, but I think the picture looks really good, smaller on my phone.
 
MickeyCB

MickeyCB

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Thursday November 21-Day 2
Yep indeed, it's my Birthday Day!!

You might not believe it after all of this silliness, but I'm not usually an attention seeker, but again, it is my birthday!!! 🤣
Ok, enough of that. First photo of the day was the beautiful morning off the deck photo. Absolutely positively gorgeous morning!
If you look carefully you can see a boat to the left of the cabin chimney, already out making it's morning run.
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Let me say it again. It's a beautiful morning on the lake!
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Not the back side of water, but the back side of the Contemporary and Bay Lake! The boat leaves WL, goes to the Contemporary dock,
and then goes on to the Fort Wilderness dock.
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How many places can you take a boat ride to breakfast?! We were headed here, to the Trail's End restaurant. We have never eaten here before and I thought Gary would enjoy both the buffet and the whole rustic thing.
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This was a pretty good breakfast buffet, I had quite the plate full. Eggs, fruit, tots, bacon but most importantly a MICKEY WAFFLE!!! I like these so much that I have a magnet of one in my kitchen. (Just my opinion but you can never eat too many Mickey Waffles)!
Our waiter was Ken and we really liked him. We were ordering our juices and he asked if we wanted moonshine. Huh?! Turns out it tastes suspiciously like the wonderful POG juice at 'Ohana. It was delicious.
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I had to visit the ladies room, which oddly was out of the restaurant, and down past another building. It took a few minutes for the walk. When I got back, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention but noticed when I sat down my plate had been removed. All of a sudden Ken, loudly starts singing happy birthday, bringing out a birthday breakfast treat. Then the other table starts singing, it was sweet, but Gary started laughing and said my face turned a slightly red shade. (I did choose to wear a big ole birthday button)! 😊
Anyway, I got a delightful treat out of it!
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After that we paid our bill and headed out of the restaurant.

The next thing that happened was my fault for not researching our next step well enough. The plan was for us to take an Uber from the restaurant over to HS. But, as we left they told us it was a 1 1/2 mile walk to the front of the campgrounds to pick up an Uber. They weren't permitted back to the restaurant! 😮

Again my poor planning. Anyway, the manager overheard our conversation and said, I can take you to the front in a golf cart. Seriously?! How awesome is that. So off we went and as we rode around got to see the cool Christmas decorations the different campers had set up. I was hanging onto the cart rail and didn't take photos, sorry.

We got to the front and Seth and Gary noticed the park bus stop right there, and suggested just riding a HS bus instead. So we waited maybe 15 minutes and rode the bus to HS. When we got there the plan was to ride SDD if the line wasn't too long, and maybe wander around GE a little.
But again, change of plans!
 
krisri18

krisri18

Well-Known Member
MickeyCB said:
Back to 2019!
We got our table ready txt and were seated promptly.
Our waitress was Leah and she was excellent.
I got one of the vanilla milkshakes that was so-so. But, since it came out way before our food and I was starving it became excellent!
Sorry drank some before I remembered to take a pic. And PS, a milkshake with a paper straw, blah!!
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Based on a lot of reviews on the board I ordered the fried green tomato sandwich and thought it was very good.
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Gary had the honey-barbecued beef brisket burger and changed his fries to "loaded" fries for a small up charge. As earlier in the report, loaded fries was his one request for food this trip.
For anyone interested I just looked at the receipt out of curiosity, the added cheese was 49 cents, and the bacon 79 cents.
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@krisri18 you were correct on the fries, pretty good but not super special.

Seth had the baked honey-barbecued brisket, I didn't get a picture but he said it was ok.
All in all, an ok meal, but not sure would wrestle trying to obtain a reservation in the future.

After dinner we headed for our next fast pass. The sun was starting to set and it looked beautiful hitting the castle.
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Not sure what this chick was doing, but hey, it's Disney.
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Seth and I tried to do something funny, we failed, then tried to dress it up with spiders (or something), and it looks like it
should be in the Pinterest Fail hall of fame. It's his fault cause as we were getting on the ride I asked what we were going to do, "I'm not doing anything mom", then at the last second he said to pull our hoodies over our head. You can see how that worked out. :banghead:
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Gary said he was not looking angry, he was trying to look scared. Really?
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Anyway, after that great photo shoot, as we were exiting a young lady offered to take our pic and we took her and her friends. The sun was going down and it was great lighting even with an Iphone.
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The reason I put 2 of almost the same pic in here is, do you see the 2 green dots on my face and brick?
Well they didn't go away on the next pic. My theory is one of the Hitchhiking Ghosts came on out with us!
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After this we hobbled (literally) off to BTMR.
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I'm glad he got his loaded fries at least! 😁
 
MickeyCB

MickeyCB

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We got to HS in a reasonable time riding the bus.
And an absolutely hilarious thing occurred while riding.
We got chatting with another family, a mom, her husband and 4 children. (All very well behaved I might add).
We get on with the "where are you from" conversation, and find out they live probably 30 minutes from us near Pittsburgh, and the mom
works part time in a restaurant that is not too far from our home!
I always say you need to behave yourself wherever you go, because you will always run into someone from where you live!

We said our goodbyes and as we headed to the entrance to HS we checked and the listed time for SDD was an hour. The Skyliner was right there with no lines. Easy decision, we bailed on HS and took our first ride on the Skyliner. We absolutely loved it!

And who is on the first car that we see at the station? The character that best represents my husband!! 🤣 Don't worry Gary is down with this, he owns probably 20 Grumpy hats and shirts that he wears proudly!
(And by the way, not sure if these are being called cars, cabs, gondolas or what). If anyone knows please chime in.
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When we got to the loading area there was no one in line so we asked for an unwrapped car to ride in. I had read on line it is easier to see out of ones with no wrap. The CM was great and said no problem.
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The views were fabulous. We found the ride to be nice and quiet and as it was only low 70's an excellent temperature in the cabin with a small breeze. (We did stop above the road into HS for a moment or two, but that was the only time from there to EPCOT). Remembering the story on the 3 hour shutdown, I made sure to hit the ladies room before we got on the Skyliner! 🤣
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That's the new DVC Riveria resort. We took more videos than still shots, and my ability to put those on here ranks right up there with my
ability to put gifs on this TR!

Anyway, we got off at Caribbean Beach and had a very easy transition to the EPCOT line. Again, there were hardly any riders, but I wonder if that area will get a little hectic when there are a lot of visitors unfamiliar with the Skyliner routes and the need to disembark and make their way to another connection.

We arrived at the IG entrance and as we like to travel bagless when possible, had almost no wait at security.

This is where my darling son disagreed (became a pain) when I wanted to do some things. We were a little early for the different booth openings, or at least I didn't see them, so I suggested walking over and use the single rider line for test track. "I don't want to do that", in a 3 year old type voice. :rolleyes: I'm not super good at tolerating whining and my children really should know by now that most resistance is futile! So we started to wander to the left towards Canada (where I was eventually going to get my way, partially anyway).
I thought this was beautiful and so clever!
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He eventually stopped being crabby and we got some PP pics.
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At this point I just insisted we go over to TT and what does the little (can't use the word I want, will be deleted), darling say? "I don't want to do single rider lane, let's do stand by". :banghead: So stand by is listed 45 minutes, we have a LWTL fp in maybe an hour, and then a Soarin fp after that. No problem, should work just fine. You know where this is going, right?
We wait in line a solid hour, hour 15. But, ended up talking to a dad and his son behind us almost the entire time. Theirs was one of those stories that make you remember how lucky we all are getting to enjoy Disney frequently.
They were visiting the dad's mother in Florida, they are from somewhere in California. She apparently as a treat, bought them a 1 day ticket and for some reason she chose EPCOT for the dad and this boy. And bought a ticket for the mom and other son to MK. Not sure I understood any of that, but worse was they had no clue how to get FP's or anything else. So we tried to help them (after all, we had half a lifetime in line), and they got MDE loaded and played with getting some fp's. I don't know how the rest of their day went, the boy was maybe 12 and very polite but I felt bad for him because he wanted to ride more rides. (Understandably).

So eventually we ride and here's the proof.
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Our car woonnnnn! Not even sure what that means, but it was fun!

We got our AP magnets and then having completely missed our Land fp, rode Soarin. I just love that ride.
I would have liked to have the first row given a choice because I find the swinging feet above me a little distracting. And I felt really bad for Gary. He was seated to my left and the man seated next to him talked quite loudly during the bulk of the ride to his female companion. At one point I leaned forward and gave them the hairy eyeball and he stopped for a minute or so. But Gary said he started up again, maybe a little quieter. I get the occasional squeal or laugh on a ride, but you've waited so long to ride it, why not just zip it and enjoy it?!

Anyway, enough of a rant. We worked our way to the front of the park to catch an Uber to AK for our VIP Nights (afternoon) of Adventure Tour!
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Swissmiss

Swissmiss

Premium Member
Your reactions and descriptions of your son’s attitude made me laugh. I’m frequently saying to my DD “after 14 years you still don’t realize that your mamma never changes a no to a yes?” Or to take the possible win with a maybe because if she continues to bug me about it it’ll turn into a definite no...
 

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