[cinderbella]

That cake is still making me drool!

I was glad to hear about the changes to Prime Evil Hurl I hate that ride because I am always slamming into Dave. I'll have to give it one more chance. Picnic in the Park sounds great..everyone has such good things to say about it except that stupid drink. I'd have to save the waters and buy a coke!

[cowanfamily]

Okay, I left out a magical moment, darn it! Let's go back to the morning of our arrival....Tuesday. We eat a long brunch at 1900 Park Fare, which was very yummy, the characters were great and the cake....well, you got that part.

After PF, we had the cake sent to POP by the bell service and we went to the MK. It was my DS's ACTUAL Birthday, and we had told him that Mickey had a present for him. His dad took him to the Will Call window, showed his birth certificate and in a kinda magical way told him Happy Birthday, that he had three options: a free ticket for one park for today (we had tickets, so he knew this one was not for him), a $78 gift card, or fastpasses for all of us for one day. this was a no-brainer for him: show me the $$!

In the end, he made good purcases: a String thing from POP, a set of 31 lego people for $50 at the Lego store (okay, we traded him money, because we could not use his Birthday Gift Card at the Lego Store), and a small marionette puppet from China in Epcot. Billy - a goat, of course. This made him Extremely happy, though he had a little spending money that he brought with him, of course. All good choices - he had a blast with the Lego People, making them, then recording voices for them, and catchphrases on his birthday voice recorder. funny.

Okay, now we can proceed.....

[timkelmom]

Great TR so far. I love the pics and all of the stories. Keep it coming.

[cowanfamily]

I had a ADR for Ohana's for Friday, but we were going to the Halloween party that night and needed to go to HS for the morning, and our breakfast was right in the middle. So a week before we left, I tried to change our ADR for Ohana's to Thursday, and was lucky enough to get it!

Thursday, then, we got up and dilly dallied around, then took the bus to the MK and walked from the TTC to the Poly. This was a mistake. We should have just driven, we would have gotten there faster and been less sweaty and tired. But walk we did.

Actually, we did see quite a bit of the Poly, and it is lovely. but it was hot and humid, so I could have skipped that part.

We got to Ohana's and man, was it packed. People staying there with no ADRs came up to the podium and were told (at 10am) that the wait was over 1 1/2 hours! Yikes! We had our pictures taken and were seated relatively quickly. We got a GREAT table, just on the edge of the main room, across from the firepit. Well, the view was great, the food was great, the kids had a blast parading around (funny how something so simple makes them so happy!) We saw Mickey and waited for Stitch for 1 1/2 hours until finally we had to complain...we had been done eating for 20 minutes and still Lilo and Stitch and was it Donald? we never saw him! had not come. Unfortunately, my pictures are horrible, so we will have to wait for K's pics. Hopefully they turned out nice.

This was our first time at Ohana's ever, and while we liked the atmosphere, we were a bit disappointed by the character interaction.

[cowanfamily]

I had a ADR for Ohana's for Friday, but we were going to the Halloween party that night and needed to go to HS for the morning, and our breakfast was right in the middle. So a week before we left, I tried to change our ADR for Ohana's to Thursday, and was lucky enough to get it!

Thursday, then, we got up and dilly dallied around, then took the bus to the MK and walked from the TTC to the Poly. This was a mistake. We should have just driven, we would have gotten there faster and been less sweaty and tired. But walk we did.

Actually, we did see quite a bit of the Poly, and it is lovely. but it was hot and humid, so I could have skipped that part.

We got to Ohana's and man, was it packed. People staying there with no ADRs came up to the podium and were told (at 10am) that the wait was over 1 1/2 hours! Yikes! We had our pictures taken and were seated relatively quickly. We got a GREAT table, just on the edge of the main room, across from the firepit. Well, the view was great, the food was great, the kids had a blast parading around (funny how something so simple makes them so happy!) We saw Mickey and waited for Stitch for 1 1/2 hours until finally we had to complain...we had been done eating for 20 minutes and still Lilo and Stitch and was it Donald? we never saw him! had not come. Unfortunately, my pictures are horrible, so we will have to wait for K's pics. Hopefully they turned out nice.

This was our first time at Ohana's ever, and while we liked the atmosphere, we were a bit disappointed by the character interaction.

[lovemysons]

Heehee, I guess you were so disappointed, you had to post it twice!

That does stink though. It was Pluto and Mickey, Lilo and Stitch last time we were there. I am sorry that it didn't work out for you, they are usually really good about getting the characters around to every table there. :(

[cowanfamily]

Yep, gotta take a break and edit more photos......

Okay, well, then we headed to Epcot, got photopass pics taken in front of the Food and Wine Festival signs in front of the dome, (even though this was the day before F&W opened), did Spaceship Earth, then walked over to Ellen. I had never done this before, and it was VERY different from what I expected, but I really enjoyed it. Think you people are CRAZY who could sleep during that, but okay! (I did fall asleep during Nemo, however, one day!)

It was STEAMY outside, very sunny, very hot and I had a big blister almost the size of my pinky toe on the bottom of my pinky toe.....so I bailed and went back to the room for about 3 hours and napped (this helps blisters, I am told!)

The gang did their thing in Futureworld....including the Cool Spot.

As reported by my son: "we all went to the Cool Spot. I didnt want to make Lexis and her parents mad, so as we were getting soda, I saw a lady trying to choose which soda to get and I said to her: "Might I suggest the Beverly? with a big smile on my face....then I went around the corner, stood behind Dad and watched She took some of the Beverly, made a terrible face and then looked around for me!!! It was hysterical! "

Nice, people, very nice. I apologize to the poor, unsuspecting guest....and wish I had been there to see!

[cowanfamily]

So when I met back up with the group, they had gotten our table at Marakesh, and what a great table it was! We have eaten here three times before and had always been up away from the dancers. It has always been just the four of us eating here, though. With a party of 7, our table was right next to the musicians and the dance floor.

And this is when I begin to realize that MB has had a profound influence on myself and my family:

My daughter decided this day to bring her stuffed pony. Did I mention she is 12 1/2? It's name is "Ponay" = and she proceeded to take pictures of Ponay looking like it was dancing with the belly dancer....did anyone read the TR with that silly cat MARTI's adventures in the world, (not to mention the Terrible Towel!)? Obviously we did, too and loved it. Oh my! She continued this trend throughout and we have photos of Ponay at the fireworks, on the monorail, etc.

[cowanfamily]

Here goes: Pony at Ohana's (btw, my son drank 7 glasses of the punch, it is a surprise he had room left for anything else. He kept talking about it for days!)

[cowanfamily]

We really enjoyed our meals at Marakesh, the dessert, not so much. But the meat was very tender in the shish kabob. Oz ordered the feast, and was very pleased. As a first time WDW guest, he was most excited about the Free Dining aspect of this trip. He loved knowing where he was going to eat every night and more loved not having to pay for it! The feast is quite a bargain on the dining plan, it includes an appetizer platter, an entree which is a sampler platter, I think, and dessert. Think he may have gotten a salad, too. It was alot of food, but he enjoyed it.

After Marakesh, we walked to the bridge between England and France (a MB recommendation, and thoroughly enjoyed the view. We leisurely strolled out of Epcot and went back to POP for a kids night swim.

[cowanfamily]

Day 4 - HS and MNSSHP

Last year when we went to the MNSSHP, we had gone to Epcot, eaten an early sit down dinner, and then gone to MK to change and do the party. We got to the MK around 6:30-7 last year. And by the time we got there, we were already tired. So we were determined to get more out of the party this year.

This morning we were up and ready to go, caught a bus to HS by 8:45 or so and were at the Studios around 9:30. This was early for us! I had a plan, but kinda compromised with the kids - we walked right down Sunset and did ToT and RNR right away. We rode standby on the RNR and my DH got us all fastpasses for later, as clearly it was getting crowded. We loved this, as always, as did our first timer friends. Then we walked over to ToT and was surprised to find a shorter line. This is our absolute favorite, we never get tired of this! Oz did NOT like this ride - he did not ride again the whole trip, but the rest of us loved it!

After this, I had wanted to do the studio animation, but was outvoted. So down the street we went to ride RNR and ToT. Then we worked our way down Sunset, and my DD bought a little Zero stuffed toy that looked a bit like a towel (we teased her and called it a towel buddy the whole trip. Our little towel animal in the room upon checkin, we called Mini towel buddy. She did not like that at all! $18, really??


We did the Great Movie Ride, which I love, but there was a bit of a wait for this....about 20-30 minutes. Ponay had been left behind today, so Sabrina decided to sub in Zero! We also had a female driver and a female robber, they were very good.

We were doing well for time, we were going to stay until about 1, then go back to POP for showers/naps and to get dressed for the party. We made our way over to the other side of the park to what I call the "Backlot Express" but I found out that that is somewhere else entirely! Apparently the CS place I like is called Studio Catering (I lost the receipt, something like that). It is the one next to the Honey, I shrunk the Kids playground. We traditionally eat here and let the kids play while we are ordering and after lunch. We got the chicken, which is delicious and comes with mashed potatos and green beans. The kids got the wrap, and the bbq, which was okay, but not great. Our friends got the Cesar Chicken salad, which they thought was pretty good.

After lunch, I brought them to One Man's Dream, as there were no more Fastpasses available and a 90 minute line for TSM. We would only ride it once this whole trip, and still waited around 40 minutes! I cry in One Man's DReam, cry like a baby. It embarrasses my family. OH, well!

We used our Fastpasses for RNR, and now the line was like 60 minutes - wow! we were glad we had them! I think at this point we headed back to POP. A really good choice!

[cowanfamily]

Guess we rode Star Tours at some point, too, huh?

[cowanfamily]

So we caught the bus back to POP, I recall this took a long time coming. POP seemed the only resort not getting buses, and yet other resorts had no lines waiting and had bus after bus. It was odd. Anyway, it was very nice to go back to the room and rest, watch a little tv, and leisurely get dressed for the party. Just like last year, we all went as pirates, but we had opted for the kids to do the Pirate's League that day to jazz them up a bit. and we were glad we did.

We went to Liberty Tree Tavern dressed as Pirates as soon as we arrived in MK, around 4:30-5pm. The taco salads are great, a wonderful change from burger, but my DH still enjoyed his burger with the fixin's bar. It was not too crowded, and there were plenty of clean tables. We ordered using the automated teller order takers and it was easy and fast. The drinks here are huge, and I know we ended up throwing much of the kids' drinks away.

After dinner we caught the end of the Move It, Shake It parade which was great, what we saw of it! we took advantage of the light crowds, many people leaving the park for dinner, it seemed, as the park closed at 7 for the party, and by 6, the lines for Splash and BTMRR were low and we took advantage.

By now it was close to 7, and we walked toward POTC to register for our Pirate's League. We went on Pirates, then checked in, or vice versa. After the ride, our friends took off to try to catch the Villains and the first parade, while we had a short wait for our Pirate's appointment. The kids REALLY enjoyed this experience. I have fabulous photopass pics that I will have in a few weeks to share, but we have not ordered our cd yet. My daughter had a much better time than she thought she would. Being a prude, I dont let her wear makeup in 7th grade, but most of her friends do. So she loved the fuss the gentleman made over her, putting on makeup and a face jewel; she got to choose what color of eyeshadow and blush, and he painted her nails. She got to keep the makeup she used in a cool little pirate purse, and got a bandana that had an earring attached. They went into the secret room after saying the oath and had such cute pictures taken! The pirate makeup artists really did a great job with the kids and adults, and were very much happy and in character, though we were the last ones in there on a very busy night. Hurray for their spirit, it really could have been a dud, if you know what I mean?

[cowanfamily]

After meeting up with our friends in front of the castle, we made our way around to ToonTown. We had stopped at a few of the Frontierland Trick or Treat Stations, but as it was early in the night, they were giving out very little candy at each, like one or two pieces. By the end of the night, they were giving out handfuls!

[cowanfamily]

Okay, see, I told you it would get old - 12 days,.....yada yada....okay, I am sticking to highlights, here:

MNSSHP - we saw the fireworks for the first time from IN FRONT of the castle = they were twice as good! We are usually over behind the castle near Space Mountain - we have made it a habit of riding SM over and over again during the party, as the lines are completely missing! But, alas, no SM this year. so we actually thought to meet our friends In front of the castle and it was great. Of course, I have absolutely no pictures from this night; hoping K does - I should get copies of her pics soon.

We actually missed the parade completely. The first happened while we were in Pirate's League, the second we missed some other way. We did more rides and lots of trick or treating: we netted approximately 10 lbs. of candy between the four of us. But, sad to say, much of the chocolate and yummy specialty candies were gone, in fact, even the Smarties were fake