[chastmastr]

LOL!! Ah, but with the money and badly-needed de-stressing later it will make for bigger and better TRs, as one thing we will do is stay on property again, even if it is at a value resort.

[mairinmaureen]

Congratulations on the sale of the house! I am so happy for you. I can't wait to see your adventures at AK!

[chastmastr]

And I think the pics will be most pleasing...

[Daisee]

Congrats on the sale!! Now, get to work on that TR!

[chastmastr]

Yes'm!!

[dixie]

Congratulations David on the house! so pleased for you both xx

[chastmastr]

Quick update, the buyer pulled out before signing the prelim contract but the other one is going for it at the same price BUT 2 weeks later. So biting nails for 3 weeks instead of one.

Um, trip report, right!

[TinksFriend]

Thanks for the update! Cannot wait for those pics. Congrats on the house

[faerie dust]

congrats on the house BUT where are th e pictures??? UMMMMMM

[yankeevttch]

Where's the TR. I thought you were going to start it.

[chastmastr]

At last, here we go!

We booked the cheapest possible nearby motel via Priceline because we knew there was NO chance of being there early otherwise, and left the day before. We shopped at Downtown Disney and got a couple of new t-shirts, plus a long-sleeved one for me for sleeping in in winter. (Since styles come and go seasonally, there is no guarantee that it would be there later.) There are also new colors of Disney kitchen tea-towels (yellow, pale green) but we decided that basic black and white works better for us (see the Our House thread in Chit Chat -- the bathroom might work with pale green but the kitchen is mostly black, white, grey, stainless steel etc.). We got a couple more because they were only $5 each and genuinely useful. We didn't buy much though, just given the money situation.

No pics of this, alas -- we wanted to save that for AK's 20th anniversary the next day!

[chastmastr]

(We also ate dinner at a ghastly, horrible, made-us-not-feel-good cheap Chinese buffet in the area because parking was so awful at DTD at that hour. Well, live and learn... next time, we wait till the parking at DTD opens up and eat at Wolfgang Puck Express or something, or even McDonald's.)

We drove around a bit looking for breakfast options for the next day, as the continental breakfast and free coffee at our motel would start at 7, which would have been too late. We found that, at least in that part of Kissimmee, close to Disney though it is, things are... er... kind of creepy in places. At 1 AM (on a Monday night!) a bunch of teens were standing around in front of a 7-11 I went into in a way which made us kind of nervous (bad "let's get out of here" vibes), a girl was almost staggering in the parking lot holding a bottle --- eeeeeee! The area surrounding Disney can be kind of like Las Vegas in terms of tourist traps and a sort of seediness, at times... has anyone else experienced this?

We went back to the motel room and slept, getting up at 6 AM for the 9 AM opening. (It, um, takes me a while to get up in the mornings, so I have to plan ahead. Won't go into the reasons here... ) We ate at a Waffle House (I love Waffle House), back to the motel, got ready, and off to Animal Kingdom we went!

[chastmastr]

At AK, it was more crowded than we expected. I rented my scooter -- I wasn't going to try to manage with just a cane this time (someday, I tell you, I will lose enough weight to need neither, and Cubby hopes to as well, but till then he needs the scooter we keep in the trunk, and I will either use the handy-cane/chair or a scooter at walking-intensive places like WDW) for all day at WDW's largest park. We got in just about 9 AM and rode the wave of the huge crowd making its way in. We'd heard it would be special, and we'd never been to any park's rope drop before...

... and weren't going to this time, either. It was at 8:45!! We finally made it to the Tree of Life area and a CM told us that it had already happened. Drat!! And apparently both Joe Rohde -- the Imagineer who designed not only Expedition Everest but Animal Kingdom itself, and the Adventurers' Club at Pleasure Island, and all sorts of things -- and Jane Goodall (!) -- were there for it, and we missed it!!

But all was not lost! Joe Rohde was giving a talk in the Finding Nemo: The Musical Theatre in the Wild in just a few minutes!! We could make it to that!! So off we went...

[chastmastr]

Yes, Virginia, there are photos in this TR. (About 130, in fact.)

In the theatre, there was an AK logo on the screen as we waited for about half an hour for Joe to appear.

[chastmastr]

I think this is the lady introducing him. I don't remember who she was, someone high up though.