Who Knew Choking Each Other Would Earn Us Fastpasses? We were just kidding!

Hello there and welcome to my trip report.

I guess I'll start out with the introductions of the cast and crew.

My name is Lisa (a/k/aTinkerbell as my boss likes to call me) and I am a 44 year old paralegal, wife to John and mother to Hunter and Lacey (who didn't join us on this trip 'cause she's attending missionary college). My husband, John, also 44, owns and operates a cabinet shop which is good because I can always talk his boss into letting him off work to go to Disney.

John acts all nonchalant about going to Disney but when somebody asks him a question, he immediately starts chattering away.

Since I am still uploading pictures and can't seem to find a picture of John and I from this year's trip, I guess I'll just use a picture from last year's trip.

Hunter is our son and he turned 13 just 3 days before we arrived in Disney. We couldn't think of a better way to celebrate becoming a teenager than by partying hard with Mickey and the gang. Hunter is a multi-talented little dude. He can play the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboard and viola. Magical illusions and cup stacking are his newest tricks and he's pretty darn good at both. When he's not playing an instrument or trying to trick you, he's playing football or singing in the honor choir. See....I told you he was multi-talented.

Also along for the ride this year was my Mama, Edna. She's 76 years old and dotes on John and Hunter like they were her little babies. Mama has been to Disney with us once at Thanksgiving, 2000. That was back in the day when we stayed offsite 'cause we didn't know any better.

We were anxious to see how Mama would do with all the walking, heat, humidity, conveyor belts, etc.

Again, I don't have all of my pictures uploaded so I'll just use a picture of Hunter and Mama riding the clamshells into The Seas with Nemo and Friends. Not the best of pictures but a picture nevertheless:

We are a pretty silly fun loving family that always seems to attract.......hum.......let's just say,we always seem to have an "incident" happen during each of our trips. Over the years:

1) We got stuck on Test Track in the cold section and I almost tinkled myself;

2) My tooth (temporary crown) fell out while eating lunch at the Electric Umbrella and I had to super glue it in;

3) John got his toe broken after being run over in a drive-by scooter incident;

4) Hunter boogied with every character we ran into;

5) My wonderful, beautiful, loving family pedaled off on the surrey bike without me when my shoe hit the pedal and flew over my shoulder;

6) Lacey and Hunter jumped for joy in front of the Epcot ball;

7) We laughed so much during the trips that I caught myself saying "stop making me laugh or......" every 30 minutes.

And so forth and so on. We love spending time together and there's no better place than Walt Disney World to act silly and have a good time. Our goofiness paid off during the trip and that same goofiness inspired the title of this report.

This was our 15th trip to Disney in 13 years and our 5th stay at the Caribbean Beach Resort. We spent 9 1/2 glorious days at Walt Disney World and I could have stayed longer had my boss not insisted that I return to "the real world".

I have people ask me all the time why we go to Disney World year after year after year. I've tried to explain it to them but, unless you are a Disney fan like myself, you just can't understand. Remember those old Lay's potato chips commercials? You know, the ones that said something like "Lay's potato chips...so good you can't eat just one!" I liken Disney to a Lay's potato chip....."Walt Disney World is so fun you can't go just once!"

Now that the introductions have been made, I guess I'll get busy working on the next installment.

Oh....I hope that everybody feels free to post replies/comments 'cause I really like chatting.

 

[Steve-B]

Sorry to take so long to reply, but work really does interfere with important stuff . . .

Welcome! It really is a small world! So, the turnpike really does save time? I can't stand all those little "stop-start, stop-start towns"....you know the ones that you get a little speed up and then you have to stop. Takes up so much of your time.

That's why we like the turnpike so much. And I like the Western Beltway/Western Way route because we avoid so much of the traffic.

When you take the turnpike do you come into Disney from the backside? We've only gone in from World Drive off 192.

Looking at bing, Western Way hits West Buena Vista Drive right beside Coronado Springs and WBV hits World Drive between Hollywood Studios and the Swan & Dolphin. From there, we headed north (World Drive turns into North World Drive just past the entrance to the MK parking lot) and then turned onto Timberline Drive, which goes straight to Wilderness Lodge. If you come up from 192, you'll hit the same stretch of road.

 

[mickeystoontown]

Sorry to take so long to reply, but work really does interfere with important stuff . . .

That's why we like the turnpike so much. And I like the Western Beltway/Western Way route because we avoid so much of the traffic.

Looking at bing, Western Way hits West Buena Vista Drive right beside Coronado Springs and WBV hits World Drive between Hollywood Studios and the Swan & Dolphin. From there, we headed north (World Drive turns into North World Drive just past the entrance to the MK parking lot) and then turned onto Timberline Drive, which goes straight to Wilderness Lodge. If you come up from 192, you'll hit the same stretch of road.

I totally understand how work gets in the way from our time on these forums. I mean, for some reason, my boss thinks that I actually have to work since he's writing the paycheck.:lol:

I appreciate the driving info. I definitely need to look into it. Those last 100 miles to Disney seem to take forever on the route we take.

 

[mickeystoontown]

Well, I gave you all a little longer to dry your eyes and stop laughing than I originally intended. Still busy at the office and at home. Let's get back to this thing we affectionately call a Disney trip report. Sounds funny to say "affectionally call" when the name of the trip report is "Who knew choking each other would earn us fastpasses?"

Moving on.........

We were just about finished with our burgers and desserts when I had a thought. I do have a thought every once in a while but not too often because it makes my head hurt.

Anywhooooo, I thought why don't I run over to Test Track and get Fastpasses to use later on. Yeah! Why not?

I left everybody sitting in the nice cool air conditioned restaurant and stepped out into the stiffling heat. Have I mentioned that it was starting to get a little hot and humid out? Well, it was. I walked on over to Test Track and got everybody a Fastpass and then walked back. By the time I made it back to the restaurant, I was getting sticky sweaty. I don't normally sweat but today I was sweatin' like a call girl in church! It was hot!

Oh, and here's what the Electric Umbrella looked like when I met back up with the family:

Yikes! Looks like we got there before it got really busy.

Since we had a little time to kill before the 2:30 meet with some folks I met over on another discussion board, we figured we'd backtrack once again and go to The Seas With Nemo and Friends. Anybody else have trouble calling it that? I always want to call it The Living Seas. I took a few pictures as we approached the pavilion:

And one just as we were walking in:

 

[mickeystoontown]

As we entered the building, we could see that there were quite a few people in line for the clam mobiles but it wasn't too terribly bad. I know it moved fairly fast because I was only able to stop long enough to take one picture:

Ooops, make that two pictures. I think I caught Hunter talking. Imagine that?

I don't remember how long it took us to reach the clam mobiles but it wasn't too long. Here's a picture of Hunter and Mama:

Again, Mama did really good with stepping onto the moving belt thingie and getting into the clam mobile. She did well getting off too. It was looking like all of our worries were for naught. Oooh, that sounded all smart-like huh.....naught.

Some pictures of the fishies. These eels are so very very ugly. They had little yellow things sticking out of their nostrils that looked like mini-straws. Weirdo-b-deirdo!

We stayed in that same room and continued looking at other fish:

And then it happened.......................................... ...dun, dun, dun........................................


















































.................................................:

The second phone call of the trip.

As you can see, John went to an out of the way spot to talk so he wouldn't interrupt the other guests.

 

[mickeystoontown]

We continued looking:

We saw the seahorse and this other really cool fish. I think it was called grass fish or maybe blade fish. Anyway, they looked like blades of brown grass and they swam straight up and down. It was the neatest thing. Maybe you can see them in this video:

 

[mickeystoontown]

By this time, John was off the phone and we had to make another round through to show him all of the stuff we had seen and he had missed because HE WAS ON THE PHONE!

 

[mickeystoontown]

Here's Mama's pointing out something to Hunter. I love how the two of them are always together:

It started getting pretty crowded in the room so we moved on to the other parts of the building. We saw all sorts of sharks, sting rays and other fish. John spotted a hidden Mickey and he was so proud of himself.

It took me forever to figure out how to turn off the flash on my camera and the pictures kept turning out blurry. So, I took a video. If you keep watching it, you'll see a shark swim by.



Hunter took the camera from me and figured out how to turn off the flash. Should have just handed it to him in the first place.

We stayed in The Seas for a while longer. I had already checked to see how long the wait for Turtle Talk With Crush was and it was ridiculously long. We decided to skip it thinking we'd see it on our second day in Epcot.

***Up next: Do we make the 2:30 Meet?

 

[Steve-B]

Here's Mama's pointing out something to Hunter. I love how the two of them are always together:

My grandparents were always my favorite relatives when I was growing up. Both of my girls have always enjoyed all of theirs, too.

Oh yeah - it's a good thing I wasn't there when your tooth went flying, I'd have laughed, too. :shrug:

 

[sweetpee_1993]

Very cool update! Y'all definitely spend more time in Seas than we do. I wonder did you make your 2:30 meet... :wave:

 

[BookwormxBelle]

This trip report is great so far! I love looking at all the pictures, it's definitely getting me excited for my trip. I can't wait to read more. :]

 

[mickeystoontown]

I found a couple more pictures that I took while in The Seas:

Before leaving The Seas, I had to make a potty stop, of course. Once that was done, we walked through the gift shop and I saw a cute little onesie that had the seagulls on it and it said "Mine Mine Mine". Lacey's Mission leaders were expecting a baby and I thought about getting it for them. I finally decided against it because even though I know the seagulls from the movie Nemo, they may not, meaning they wouldn't get the joke.

We started wondering what we were going to do next. There really wasn't a whole lot of time before we had to be at the Meet. I was having some trepidation about Mama walking all the way around World Showcase to where the Meet was to take place. Now, I must confess that I even said "I can miss the Meet if I need to." I really didn't want to miss the Meet but I also didn't want Mama having to walk really fast in order to get there.

I guess since my feeble brain didn't get a headache from my first thought (you know the one about going and getting the Test Track Fastpasses), it thought why not give Mrs. Lisa another idea.

Mama and Hunter would go to Ellen's Universe of Energy and ride that and John and I would hotfoot it over to France to the Dis Meet. Taaaa-daaaa! That would fix the problem. I really really wanted to show off Mama and Hunter to my friends but I knew it wasn't happening. So, we went with my taaaa-daaaa plan.

I think I remember taking this picture when we were walking towards Ellen:

We walked between the two buildings and I pointed Mama and Hunter in the direction of Ellen's Universe of Energy and John and I set off for France. We started the walk from the Canada side but we didn't stop in either Canada or United Kingdom. I wanted to make sure were at the Meet in time.

I looked at my watch and we had a little bit of time before we had to be in France so we stopped in the International Gateway store to have a look around. John bought a pair of socks because he had on his Crocs and he thought he felt a blister starting to form on his foot. I also bought Hunter a bag of gummies. I sure didn't want to leave the blissful cool air in the store but it was time for us to head to France.

Just as we got to the bridge, we saw a Photopass photographer and there were only two couples in line. We waited and had our picture made. I'll insert the photopass picture here when the cd comes in. We thanked the photographer and continued on our way.

I knew that we were supposed to meet somewhere near the fountain but I couldn't find anybody. We waited a few minutes and still didn't see anybody. I told John that maybe I had the wrong meeting place so we walked on a little further.

There was a large group of people gathered around watching this guy:

I kept my eyes peeled for anybody that I recognized. John and I knew we weren't going to be able to see anybody through the crowds so we went in search for him a nice cool beer. We found one several pavilions down. We came back to a table to wait for the crowd to clear.

I told John that I was going to give it another five minutes and then text Dana to see where everybody was. In the meantime, I took pictures:

 

[mickeystoontown]

Just as I started texting Dana, John's phone rang. It was Dana! She told John where everybody was standing and we made our way over.

I'm going to confess right now that I was a little nervous about the meeting. I was so scared that I wouldn't recognize anybody and I would embarass myself. I seriously had a nightmare a few days before the meet that I walked up to everybody and I didn't know who anybody was except for Dana. I was holding onto her arm and the background was spinning like when Alice falls into the rabbit hole.

However, all of those fears were put to rest 'cause I recognized everybody! We all stood around and chatted a while. We talked about our travels to Disney, the things we had done and wanted to do.

It was hotter than hecka decka outside and we were in the sun too!
After a little while, I told everybody that we needed to hit the pavement and get back to Mama and Hunter. First, I wanted a group picture:

Now, if you look really close, you'll see that I am not even in the picture! What in the world was I thinking? I should have asked somebody...anybody to take a picture with me in the group. Oh well, we'll just have to meet up again and have another Meet so I can be in the picture.

It was really nice to meet people that I talk to on a near daily basis. Again, Walt would be proud.

Dana asked us which way we were headed and we told her back to Ellen's Universe of Energy to get Hunter and Mama. We had Fastpasses for Test Track that we needed to use. Dana did too! So, she decided to make the walk to Future World with us.

But, not before we stopped to get a Grand Marnier slushie. This was the first time I had ever tried one. I had John take a picture of Dana and I wish our slushies:

***Up next: A ride on Test Track with my Meet buddy!

 

[mickeystoontown]

My grandparents were always my favorite relatives when I was growing up. Both of my girls have always enjoyed all of theirs, too.

Oh yeah - it's a good thing I wasn't there when your tooth went flying, I'd have laughed, too. :shrug:

My two kids have the best relationship with my mother and I'm so glad they are close.

I wouldn't have blamed you for laughing about the tooth had you been there. Now that I look back on it, it was hilarious!

 

[mickeystoontown]

Very cool update! Y'all definitely spend more time in Seas than we do. I wonder did you make your 2:30 meet... :wave:

I guess because we spend two days in Epcot, we know we have time to really look around and "stop and smell the roses". But, John does get a little antsy and ready to get out of The Seas after too terribly long.

I just posted about the Meet!

This trip report is great so far! I love looking at all the pictures, it's definitely getting me excited for my trip. I can't wait to read more. :]

I'm glad that you are enjoying the report. There's plenty more to come!

 

[SpoonOfSugar]

THIS IS MY DH TOO. as soon as the phone rings we all just stare at him LoL.

Loving your TR so far:sohappy:

 

[the1nonlysinger]

Will we ever get to hear about the choking and fast passes? :lol:

 

[mickeystoontown]

Will we ever get to hear about the choking and fast passes? :lol:

Oh yeah, you'll hear about the choking in the trip report. It'll come up on our Hollywood Studios day.

THIS IS MY DH TOO. as soon as the phone rings we all just stare at him LoL.

Loving your TR so far:sohappy:

It's a running joke in our family that John will either be on the phone or asleep somewhere every day.

 

[mickeystoontown]

I always seem to start off an installment with "Let's See" or "Let's do a recap" or "When I last left off" so I've been trying to think of something different to say but, like I said before, when I think too hard, my head starts to hurt.

So, let's do a recap

of what we had seen and what had been done in my last installment. John drank this:

and a Disney castmember did this:

As planned, a lot of us had a meet that looked something like this:

Once the meet was over, Dana and I got this:

Oooohhh, I could have started off with "my last installment went something like this". That sounds better so just forget that I even typed :let's do a recap".

Now that I've gotten that over with, let's move on. Dana had decided to walk around World Showcase with us because she had a Fastpass for Test Track too. If I am remembering correctly, Dale and Dallas had ditched her and headed back to the resort to cool off.

As I said before, it was hotter than heck outside and we were sweating by the time we got back to the front of the park. I called Mama and Hunter and Hunter tried to describe to me where they were. I couldn't understand what he was saying and Mama didn't know where they were so she couldn't help describe it to me either. Finally, we spotted them. We decided before we'd go on Test Track that we needed to take a tinkle break. You know me and tinkle breaks. Well, Dana is a tinkler too so we all stopped. I knew there was a reason that we got along so well.

After the bathroom break, we started over to Test Track. I think we had about a ten minute wait until we could use our Fastpasses. Hunter had been doing the cup stacking thing like crazy before we went to Disney and was getting pretty good at it. You'll remember that he got a few of the mini-Coke cups from Club Cool. He also got some of the condiment cups from the Electric Umbrella. Hey whatever floats your boat and keeps you happy in Disney. And, the cups were free as they came with the price of admission to Epcot.

Here's a video of Hunter trying to show Dana his cup stacking skills. The wind was blowing and the cups were so light that he wasn't doing such a good job. Still, it passed the time:



We stood around a few more minutes waiting until we could use the Fastpasses. Dana pointed out that the track above us was moving every time a car zipped by. What? I had never noticed that before. The track actually moved back and forth a little. Kinda freaky!

Finally, it was time and we could enter the building. Here's a picture of Mama and John waiting.

See how John is holding something in his hand? No? Well, he was holding coins in his hand. He had picked up this habit of stacking the coins up and letting them fall in his hands. It wasn't so bad at first but after a while, it drove us nuts. And we told him so! That was a big no-no because once he realized it drove us crazy, he made sure he did it even more.

Anyway, we were let into the screening room and I think I remember that Dana got a phone call from her men asking where she was. I think that's right. I looked down on the floor and found somebody's camera card. I picked it up so that I could turn it in to Lost and Found later. I know if I had lost my camera memory card, I'd want somebody to turn it in. Think about those precious family memories being lost forever.

We watched the film of the vehicle testing and then were let into the next waiting area. This would be Mama's first time riding and I was anxious to see how she did. You all know that you have to step down quite a ways into the vehicle and then sit down. This would be another test. We got to the front of the line and they asked how many. When we told them five, they called for a single rider to sit with us.

Mama and Hunter would be in the back and John, Dana and I would be in the front. In hindsight, I should have sat in the back so I could have seen Mama's reaction. The little gate opened and Mama stepped into the car as easy as pie. Check getting into the Test Track car off our list of worries. Okay, so that little smiley isn't actually checking anything off but it was the closest smiley I could find that looked like they were checking something off a list.

The single rider looked like he was about Hunter's age and he talked to Mama and Hunter the entire time we were on the ride. He would tell Mama when we were going to stop, when we were going to go through brake testing, etc. He even told her when we were about to go outside.

We reached a speed of 64. something miles per hour and Mama loved it! I was so happy she liked it. We got off the ride and walked over to see the picture. I know good and darn well that I took a picture of the picture but I can't seem to locate it right now. I do know that it is on Photopass though and I'll be getting that soon. When I do, I'll post it.

 

[mickeystoontown]

Dana said she was going to head back to the resort and to Dale and Dallas. She had Dale and Dallas' Fastpasses and asked John and Hunter if they wanted them. Of course they did! We told Dana goodbye and Mama and I did a bit of shopping in the Test Track store. I'm glad that we got to spend some extra time with my Dis friend. After meandering around in the store, we saw John and Hunter. They looked around but didn't see anything they needed so we headed over to Mouse Gears to do some serious shopping. I love Mouse Gears!

Mama doing a bit of shopping:

I found a silver Mickey and heart necklace that was on clearance for just $3.99. It was really cute and I declared right there on the spot that I had to have it. I mean, hey, who can pass up a deal like that?

Mama wanted a t-shirt. She found several that she liked but they were all too long. So, we kept looking. John and I knew that we wanted to get the Mickey kitchen utensils for Lacey. For those of you who don't know, she and Jesse are planning on getting married either late 2011 or early 2012. We have already started buying her things and putting them away for her. The utensils were something that we really wanted to get to go in her "hope chest" (that's what we used to call them when I was a teenager).

We found a spoon rest, a pizza cutter, measuring cups, measuring spoons and a spatula and I put those in our basket. John also buys a coffee mug every trip so we went in search of a new one. You'd think that it would be easy-peasy to find a coffee cup in Disney. Well, for the average Joe, it would be. John, however, isn't the average Joe. There was a whole dadgum wall of cups but he didn't really see one that he liked.

We did find his Dad and Mom cups though.

Our family has grown so much over the years that we draw names for Christmas. I brought along our list of names so that I could try and find my "names" a unique gift while at Disney. Last year, I had my older sister's name and I bought her a Mickey kitchen timer for just $10.00! It was a big ceramic one and was the cutest thing ever. I was excited to see if I could find something for my Christmas names this trip.

Mama also found my brother-in-law a Disney mug and she bought that for him as she has his name this year. She said she would look for something to go in it. I suggested some Disney coffee or cookies but she was afraid she would get the wrong kind of coffee and all of the cookies we saw had expiration dates before Christmas. By the way, we call food expiration dates "rot dates" at our house.

As we were looking around, Hunter and I spotted a Mickey gnome rain gauge that we just had to get for John. If you read my pre-trip report, you'll know that we have a garden and rain has been pretty scarce around our house. But, when it does rain, John likes to see how much we got. He and his daddy have this thing where they ask each other how much it rained at their house. I know....odd thing to try one-up each other with but it's what they do.

Mama spotted some really pretty Christmas ornaments and got a gorgeous silver one for my sister.

I saw that they had a baby section so I texted Lacey and confirmed that her Mission leaders were having a girl. She texted back and said yes. So, I bought them the cutest little pink onesie that had all of the princesses around the neck. It was so sweet. I found all sorts of stuff that I could have bought them but limited myself to just the one thing.

By the time we got through, I had a plethora of stuff in our basket. Mama put her stuff with our's so that she wouldn't have to wait in line. I had everything sent back to the resort and we were good to go.

(I send my sisters a copy of my trip report so I'll have to edit this part out when I send it to them so nobody knows about their Christmas gifts.)

Here are a couple of pictures that I took while we were shopping:

Looks excited to be shopping doesn't he.

And another:

****Okay, so I need to get back to work and this seems like a good place to stop. Up next, a visit with Figment the purple dragon!

 

[mickeystoontown]

Now that our shopping excursion at Mouse Gears was complete, we were ready to move on to other things.

Many years and many Disney trips ago, Lacey started collecting Disney pins. Over those years and over those trips, her collection grew to over 200 pins! Not all of them were bought on Disney property though. I found a fabulous seller on Ebay that had great prices and great pins (and other Disney stuff too).

A month or two before this trip, Hunter was in Lacey's room and saw one of her big corkboards full of Disney pins. He said that pin collecting might be something he'd want to get into. So, I bought three or four pins from my favorite Ebay seller. Problem was, when I started packing our stuff for the trip, I couldn't find where I had put them. Anybody else do that? You know, "I'll put these right here so I'll remember where I put them." Well I had one of those moments and couldn't find them. I did find a couple of pins that I had bought at the Disney Store waaaaaay back when it was still open so I packed those to see if they would be eligible for pin trading.

Since I couldn't find the stashed away pins, that meant that we'd have to buy Hunter some pins.

Gosh.....all that just to lead up to what we did next.

We walked out of Mouse Gears and started heading towards the pin trading station/store/thing-a-ma-bob/place. Once we got there, Hunter found a bunch that he liked but he wasn't really sure which ones he wanted to buy. While he was deciding, he traded the two Disney Store pins with the CMs who were wearing lanyards. There was no hesitation at all by the CMs so I guess it's okay to trade Disney Store pins.

Hunter eventually found two Star Wars pins that he liked. Mama bought one of them for him and we bought the other. Pin trading/buying done, we were good to go.

Go where? Good question, where would we go next? There really wasn't time to explore World Showcase. There was no way that I was putting Mama on Mission Space. They had already ridden Ellen's Universe of Energy. Hum? What to do? What to do? How 'bout the Imagination Pavilion? Sounded good to everybody so that's where we went. A couple of pictures I took while walking:

Here's a picture of John acting like a nut and "putting out the vibe" again:

Notice the Mickey socks he has on? Those are the socks that he bought when he and I shopped in the International Gateway store. He thought his foot felt like it was getting a sore spot on it so he put the socks on. He hated wearing socks with his Crocs but he said he would have hated having a blister more than wearing socks. Thus, he wore socks.