[Scottish.Mickey]

This is one fantastic TR, I it, to tell you a secret with other TRs I would just look at the pictures and read the odd paragraph but you've sucked me into reading it all!

[packerbeth]

Originally Posted by disney&byudad

Beth, I just listened to the podcast. You did an awesome job. Watch out Samantha Brown !

As you know, my DD, Leslie, was a DLR CM for 10 years (her DH still works at DLR). I don't believe either one got any training in working with disabled guests at DLR, but each have said that their most favorite part of working at the park was interacting with these folks. I think it's just their love for people and desire to make the Disney experience a magical one for everyone that sets these CMs apart. Kudos to Alice, the IASW CM and all others who took a special interest in Christian. Of course, his being such a good kid probably had a lot to do with it as well .

BTW, I am just enjoying the heck out of this TR and I am head over heels for little Kate. What a cutie!

Thanks so much for sharing your DD's experience. It really does make our family's experience that much better when we have lovely CMs like your DD/DSIL who care enough to spread the Disney magic to everyone, no matter who they are.

Glad you liked the podcast! Man, I'd love to have Samantha Brown's job! (Of course, I never heard if she has a husband and four kids; that might make it a little easier for her to do the traveling that she does! )

I'll have some more of my report later on tonight...thanks for reading! Glad to see you back on the boards, too, BTW!

[packerbeth]

Originally Posted by Scottish.Mickey

This is one fantastic TR, I it, to tell you a secret with other TRs I would just look at the pictures and read the odd paragraph but you've sucked me into reading it all!

I won't tell anyone if you won't! Glad you're enjoying it!

[packerbeth]

After my family's morning off following the late night at the Pirate & Princess Party, it was time for me to get them to Epcot for Coral Reef:take two. As you may recall, we were supposed to go on Thursday, but after our full day at the Studios (and the fact that we were an hour late!) we rescheduled our ADR for Saturday lunch.

We walked from our room in Tokelau house to the TTC, and I decided to stop at Lost and Found one more time to see if anyone had turned in my lost camera case (from Tuesday!) Well, wouldn't you know, when I was given not one but two plastic bins of black camera cases to paw through, I could see mine down at the bottom of one of them! Woohoo! I was glad not only to have my case back, but especially glad to peek inside and see that my memory stick was in there, too. I thanked the kindly CM and told him he had made my week! Did I remember to give him an appreciation card? Of course not, but I think he got the message! (He was from Michigan, too, surprisingly. What are the odds?)

Next, we were so happy to see Kate's favorite purple monorail waiting for us. She'd been wanting to ride the purple one all week, and was so excited to finally get her chance, so we had to take a picture!


It looks like the black monorail, but trust me when I tell you that it was, indeed, purple!

We were running late - again - so we rushed through Future World, stopping only long enough to grab a FP for Soarin' before heading toward the Seas area to check in at Coral Reef. While we waited, the girls and I discussed our evening plans: our Soarin' FP return time was 6:50, which was the exact time as our ADR at Ohana. I gave them the choice, and they picked Soarin'. We can eat at Ohana next trip; in fact, we can eat anywhere, but where else can we soar over California?

I had the CMs at Coral Reef cancel our Ohana ADR, and try to schedule another table service meal for later that evening. We were going to have credits left over, and we can't have that, can we? The entire World seemed to be booked up, but they were able to get us into the restaurant in the Chinese pavilion. (I don't remember the name of it because we didn't end up keeping the ADR! )

Once our name was called, we were led to the top level of the restaurant. There are three tiers, two of which are not h/c accessible, so our only choice was the top level. When Tony, our server, saw that there wasn't much room for Christian's chair, he got right to work! He took out a table, he put in another, moved some chairs, and basically went all out so Christian could sit where he could see the tank. He was awesome! We handed him a CM appreciation card, but I don't think he really understood what it was at the time. Hopefully later he understood how much we appreciated his efforts!

Tony was also very helpful when it came to the menu. He asked if we wanted to order a meal for Kate, which we did, but we only had two child TS credits left. He suggested we use one adult TS for Rose, which worked out great, we though. Rose took a look at the adult menu, however, and didn't see anything she liked, so she started to cry. (Can you say up too late the night before???? ) Tony was so nice; he called her "princess" and asked what it was she didn't like about the choices. She thought the pork chops sounded good, but didn't think she'd like the sauce and wanted her mashed potatoes plain instead of "fancy." He told her it would not be a problem. He was incredibly good at his job and made everything all right again.

Rick ordered the 8 0z Grilled New York Strip - served with potatoes au gratin and broccolini, I got the Blackened Catfish - served over pepper jack cheese grits, topped with smoked tomato compote, and drizzled with a balsamic glaze. One of the girls got the kids' pizza and the other got chicken strips. We had one of them order the Creamy Lobster Soup - with chervil and brandy so I could eat it. Rick wanted to try some, but he let me have the rest...man, was it good! My catfish was absolutely delicious! I'd read that it was a bit spicy, and I would agree with that, but the cheese grits were fantastic! I'd never had anything like it and I'm going to have the exact same thing when we go back over Labor Day (at Rick's request!)

Kate started getting antsy toward the end of the meal, so she sat with Daddy for a while. This may have been before dessert came; once she got her ice cream sundae, she was good to go!



Tony assumed both of us would have the Bailey's and Jack Daniel Mousse - topped with a ganache and chocolate cigar , but I wanted only one thing:


The Chocolate Wave

He said this was his favorite before the mousse was added to the menu. Rick got the mousse, so I did get to try some, but the chocolate wave was the right choice for me. It was awesome, although I did leave the cherries behind because I had read that they were a bit...um...potent? This meal was wonderful, and, as I said, it was Rick's request that we head back there together over Labor Day. I just hope we get Tony as our waiter again!

Since we were right there at the Seas, we headed over to talk with Crush. The girls and I had loved this show last trip, but Rick and Christian hadn't seen it. When we checked in with the CM at the door, she led us straight in through another door, with another family who had a special needs child. The girls sat right down front, but no one was called on this time. (Last trip, Crush asked Rose if she could swim really really really really really really really really fast...it was funny.)


After TTwC, we were saying good-bye to Future World for a trip around World Showcase!

[Goofy3230]

I'm glad you enjoyed Coral Reef and that Tony was so helpful! I love this report!!

[packerbeth]

We had just finished a fabulous meal at Coral Reef with top-notch waiter Tony, and it was time to walk the World Showcase. You may remember the passports that the girls and I made as a school project. My goal was to visit every pavilion so we could fill the passports up. We had visited the UK and Canada on our first day, so we headed to France for our first stamp of the day. It was one of the hottest days of our trip so far, so we decided to relax in the air-conditioning of the France movie. The kids didn't love it, but it was cool in there. Afterwards, we visited the CM in the kidcot station:



Not a great photo, but you recognize this window, right?

We were on our way out of France when we saw Belle and the Beast! Of course, when we rushed over, we learned that the line was closed. However, when the CM saw Christian, he said, "Tell you what, if you wait over there, they'll come see you when they're done!"


Here he comes!


Christian and Rose think this is pretty cool!


See how Belle is speaking directly to Christian?


A giant beast has its claws on the girls, and they don't mind! Only at Disney World!

At one point, the Beast noticed Christian's birthday button and started jumping up and down and clapping his hands.

Now, you may have noticed that Kate was nowhere to be found in any of these pictures. She was intimidated by a character for the very first time in her life, and do you blame her? All of a sudden, though, she said something about how she wanted to go see him, so I told her to go ahead. You can barely see her in this next photo! It's one of my favorites!


What a brave girl!




It was a real pleasure meeting them! Thanks, Christian!


Up next: more World Showcase!

[packerbeth]

Originally Posted by Goofy3230

I'm glad you enjoyed Coral Reef and that Tony was so helpful! I love this report!!

Thanks for sticking around! I hope to have it finished within the next week or so. More later...

[JustaT]

Originally Posted by packerbeth

After the Enchanted Adventures parade ended, we hightailed it over to Toon Town so we could meet some very special princesses. No, not those princesses...we had already met most of them at CRT! We were after Princess Minnie and Princess Daisy, and guess what? We found them! We had never met Daisy, and Kate was especially excited about meeting Minnie, because, of course, she was being Minnie, too!













It was getting pretty late by this time, and I had told Rick that I would take Christian and Kate back to the Poly so he could spend time with the big girls, but he really wanted us all to stay together. Kate and Christian seemed to be doing fine (neither of them like to miss anything!) so we kept on partying! The Dream Along with Mickey show was getting ready to start, and although I did tell the girls that we could also catch this show on a regular MK day, they really wanted to see it tonight. I caught the beginning on video, but then decided that I needed to zoom in a bit more. The second part of the video is too big for photobucket to handle. Here's the first minute of the show!
MOV03818.flv - Video - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

We headed to Fantasyland after the show. It was still packed with partygoers, even at almost 11:00! The girls wanted to ride Peter Pan again, so Rick took them on it. We decided on a meeting place (still no cell phones!) and I took Christian on it's a small world! I have lots of pictures from that attraction...

I am playing catch up on your TR. I love, love, love these pictures. Everyone looks so darned cute!

[tiggerlover1971]

OH I absoulutely love Belle and beast ... One year ... I told beast he was my favorite prince and he started Waltzing with me Richard kept snapping and snapping pics ( there wasnt a big line and well he kept me for a while ) Belle was reading in the libary so she couldnt get jealous lol ....

[Prezcatz]

Beth-
Still waiting for more updates.....keep them coming!!!
Prezcatz Paul

[JustaT]

Finally I am caught up and thirsty for more I absolutely loved the Belle and Beast interaction that you all had. My DD was SOOOOO disappointed to have missed them on our last trip.

[packerbeth]

After our adventures with Belle and her Beast, it was time to head off to Morocco. We wandered around a bit, and found the Kidcot stop. The two female CMs there were more interested in chatting with each other than talking with my girls, so they got their books stamped and got out of there pretty quickly. It was still very hot and sticky, so the girls splashed a bit in this beautiful fountain.



Up next: Japan! There was a storyteller out, so Rick and the kids sat for a bit listening to the story while I took a couple of photos.





Rick has been to Japan a number of times, so we made our way inside, where they had a tin toy exhibit. He and the kids spent quite a bit of time looking at everything, while I sat in an exhausted heap on the floor. It was nice and cool in there, and I was so tired!

There were lots of little origami animals on the kidcot table, which interested both Rose and Grace. They asked the male CM how he learned to make all of them, and they were amused when he said he had to look in a book!

We eventually dragged ourselves out of the air-conditioning! There was a concert going on in the American Gardens Theatre (Arlo Guthrie, I believe) and Rick was interested in hearing a bit of the show, so he took the kids in to find a seat. We were all getting really worn out, and needed a pick-me-up, so I stopped at the Fife and Drum snack stand, right in front of the American Adventure pavilion. I wasn't sure how many snack credits we had left, and was so happy to find out we had enough for two frozen lemonades and two strawberry smoothies and still have one left over!

I brought Rick and the kids their refreshments and took Kate to the restroom. She had said she didn't want anything when we got our snack, but after our restroom break, she said she was hungry. This time, we went into the Liberty Inn, where she got her usual PB&J, with apple juice and grapes. She wasn't feeling too well at this point, although I didn't know it at the time. I should have known something was up when she didn't eat much of her dinner. Most of the meal end ended up going to waste, but we would see it again later...

There is a big fountain in front of the AA pavilion, so the girls played around near there while their dad listened to the concert. We had really wanted to hear Voices of Liberty and the Fife and Drum corps this trip, but we had arrived at WS too late. We're definitely making it a priority on our adults-only trip!

Next, the girls and I headed to Italy. The lovely Italian CMs were very impressed with the girls' books and took some time to write a personalized message in Italian. They commented that it was so nice to see something different for a change!


We waited what seemed like a long time in front of this fountain so that we could get a photo with almost no one else in it!


I ran off without my family for a few minutes so I could get a photo I had seen in another trip report. First, I took this one:



On the way to get my perfect shot, I found something the girls would be really interested in. But I needed to take this photograph before I went to get them:


Love this!

I ran back to get the girls in order to show them this:


We love Lady and the Tramp!

There was a Photopass photographer nearby, so we put him to work!





Of course, being my girls, they had to ham it up a bit!






The whole dog routine was Grace's idea. I joked with the PP photographer that a six year old was telling him how to do his job, but he said it was a really good idea! I bet this photographer took photos of other little girls acting like puppies in front of these topiaries after this!

One more photo from this area, and then we were off to Germany!


We found another PP photographer here who was wonderful with the girls.




You can tell that the rain was coming. The skies had gotten considerably darker since we started our day at Coral Reef! I took the time to photograph each of the dwarves separately, but I'll only show you a couple:



Grace noticed a little visitor on Dopey's shoe:


Go back up and see if you can find him...

Of course, we had to take a photo in front of St. George:


I lived in Germany for four year, so I really like this pavilion. The girls had a lovely conversation with the CMs here, but it was too dark inside to get a proper photo. Last trip, I stopped in and got Cola gummis in the candy shop, but I've since found them in my local grocery store, so I didn't need to get them here this time.

We were hurrying through the pavilions now; the sky was darker and we were really getting to the point that we'd had enough. We'd purposefully missed our dinner in China because we couldn't have gotten there in time AND visited all the kidcot stations, so we were getting hungry, too. I'm afraid we didn't enjoy the left half of the World Showcase as much as the right half. Oh, well, maybe next time we'll start in Mexico instead.


We love the Lion King! I took the girls to see the stage show at Christmastime; it is amazing!

On to China! I think this is one of the most beautiful pavilions in World Showcase. Rick has been to China, and I wanted him to be able to see the movie, but as I said, we were ready to be done, and we hadn't visited Norway or Mexico yet! I absolutely loved our first Epcot day, but I wish we'd visited more than just two countries and not left the bulk of them for our last full day! Oh well, live and learn (and then get Luvs...oh no, wait, I don't have any kids who need diapers anymore! Hooray!)


The CM in here was wonderful. She asks the kids how old they are, and stamps their book with the appropriate Chinese year. I think Rose was born in the year of the rat, and Grace was the year of the bunny. The CM also wrote a message in Chinese as well as the girls' names with Chinese characters. She was very personable and seemed to really enjoy interacting with the children, chatting with them as she wrote in their books.







Afterwards, we looked around in the store a bit. Rose chose another stuffed panda for her collection and named him MeiMei.

Onto Norway! We'd had breakfast here on our last trip, but hadn't spent much time otherwise. We skipped Maelstrom, so we're definitely going to have to ride it on our next trip. I think we may even sit through the movie since Rick's father's family is from Norway!

It was very crowded in the kidcot station, which is right in the main shop, so I'm guessing it had started raining by this time. Grace wouldn't go near the troll, but here's what Rose thought of him:


You can that she's holding MeiMei. He was very soft!


We'd never seen grass on the roof before!


Just to show you how incredibly tall this ship is...

It was definitely raining when we headed inside the Mexican pavilion, but we were happy because we were almost done!



The CM here was the opposite of the one in China. She signed the books and that was it. I don't even think she said anything to the girls; and now that I think of it, neither did the one in Norway!

Finally we were able to leave World Showcase. I really enjoy this area of Epcot, but in the future, I definitely want to tour only a few hours at a time and try not to cover so much at once. We had left Future World about 4 p.m. and finished up in Mexico close to 7:30. While this doesn't seem like a lot of time, we had covered 9 countries during this time so we were completely wiped out.

As tired as we were, it was time for Soarin'! We'd given up Ohana for this, so we weren't going to skip it no matter how tired we were! We had FPs for everyone but Kate, who couldn't ride, but we only had time for one go round because we really wanted to get to the Magic Kingdom to see Spectromagic. I took the big kids while Rick waited with Kate. I was very excited about Christian's first ride on Soarin'; I just knew he would enjoy it!

We zipped through the FP line and were soon waiting to board . The girls got themselves strapped in while I took Christian out of his chair. The CM came and took his chair away, I put my arm around Christian, and we were off! The squeal of joy that he let out as we rose up into the air made the whole day worthwhile! It was awesome! He was quiet during the rest of the flight, but I know he really liked it! When we landed, they brought his chair right over, but it took a little while for me to get him buckled in, so the next group of riders showed up before we were ready to go. It wasn't a problem, though; they allowed us to take our time.

When we went off to find Rick and Kate, we came across a manager-type CM who stopped to say happy birthday to Christian. We told him it was Christian's first ride on Soarin', so he gave him a "Born to Soar" card, which they usually give out to kids who aren't quite tall enough to ride yet. We had a lovely conversation with him, but the whole time I was thinking that we really needed to get out of there!

We still hadn't eaten, so we debated about getting something at Sunshine Seasons, since we were right there. There were two Spectros that night - at 9 and 11. We were cutting it close if we wanted to make it to the 9:00 parade, and we were really dragging, so food was probably more important at the moment. We could swing back by the Poly and grab something at Captain Cooks, and then go to the 11:00 parade. OR we could just get something at MKwhen we got there. We went back and forth about it, and finally decided to head back to the Poly. This turned out to be the perfect decision...tune in next time to find out why...

[Goofy3230]

Beth, still loving this TR. I have a feeling I know what's coming, lol. Every trip we take to WDW, one or sometimes both of my kids gets sick. Not just colds or sore throats, but big stuff. Go back to your room to bring the fever down, don't eat anything for the next day, I can't ride anything fast kinda sick, lol. We never learn though, we're going back for 10 days in August!! Keep the rest coming!

[Scottish.Mickey]

I'm sooo upset that I never got the chance to explore world showcase

[packerbeth]

Originally Posted by Scottish.Mickey

I'm sooo upset that I never got the chance to explore world showcase

Guess you'll just have to go back!