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| Krista Fulkerson -- December 2004 -- Walt Disney World (PCR, BWV, AKL)Characters
How this trip came about: This trip is really an extension of our December 2003 trip, every one had such a great time on that vacation that we decided to plan another vacation. The December 2003 trip was wonderful, but it was overwhelming for my family, there is just so much to do and see (after 10 trips, I still haven’t seen it all) that it wasn’t very relaxing for us. Now that we had one trip under our belt, we wanted to do another trip that wasn’t as quite as fast paced. The theme of this vacation is relaxation. We decided to go December 11-19, the crowds will still be low and we can take advantage of all the Christmas decorations and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party (MVMCP). Passes: Stephen and I have annual passes that we purchased for our trip in May, so we were covered. Mom, Dad, and Jessica had 4 days left on a 5-day hopper that they purchased for a day trip in June. Method of Transportation: We definitely knew we would be flying on this trip, so it was just a matter of finding decent airfare. We live in Cincinnati, so we have many options: we can fly out of Cincinnati (which is normally astronomical, but their prices are getting much better), Dayton, Indianapolis, Columbus, Lexington, and Louisville. The best airfare we found was flying out of Indy on Southwest for $130. We have never flown Southwest before, but the price was right, and I have only heard good things about them. Last year, we drove to Indianapolis on a Saturday night, stayed at Holiday Inn and flew in to Orlando on a Sunday morning. Stephen started thinking about it and came up with the conclusion that it would be better to fly out on a Saturday morning, stay at a value resort Saturday night and get a little bit of sleep for Sunday. This didn’t change the price at all, airfare doesn’t change from day to day and we were going to have pay $60 to stay at Holiday Inn anyway. Might as well spend the $60 at Disney, right? Plus, traveling is so exhausting, we figured we would get in late afternoon, eat dinner, relax at the resort, get to bed early and wake-up refreshed for Sunday and the week. The name of the game is relax (which is VERY hard for my parents to do, especially my Mom). Resort Accommodations: We are staying at 3 resorts over the length of the week; I hope we don’t forget where we are! On Saturday, we will have 2 connecting rooms at the Pop Century (booked with an AP rate); Sunday through Friday we have a 2-bedroom villa at the Board Walk Villas (with rented points from a DVC member) and Saturday and Sunday 2 connecting rooms at the Animal Kingdom Lodge (booked with an AP rate). General Plans:
Day 1—Saturday 12/11The Plan: Leave Mom & Dad’s for Indy @ 6:30 am, flight 11:00 am out of Indy. Layover in Baltimore, arrive at MCO 4:00. Pick-up car from National, check-in at Pop Century. Dinner at Everything Pop! Food Court or Downtown Disney, maybe shop at Downtown Disney, ride Monorail loop, or explore Pop Century. Reality: Stephen and I spent the night at Mom and Dad’s house so we could pack the car up Friday night and get up on Saturday morning and go. Stephen being the wonderful man that he is, decided to get up at 5:00 and drive to work (about 25 minutes away from my parents house) to check us in on Southwest’s website and print out the boarding passes. He decided to print them out at work instead of using ours or Mom and Dad’s computer because we both have the basic ink jet home printer and he was concerned that the printer might have trouble printing the boarding passes out. What a guy!! I got up at 5:45 and got ready, I could hear every one else up as well. I am not a morning person at all, however I never have any problems getting up on the day we leave for Walt Disney World. I finished packing our carry-on bag and took it downstairs to be packed in the van. Stephen got back to the house a few minutes after 6:00 and we scrounged the cabinets for breakfast. There wasn’t much there, since my Mom didn’t go to the grocery before we left on vacation. I had 2 rice cakes and a Diet Coke, Stephen had a granola bar, Dad had a bowl of cereal, I don’t think my Mom had anything, but Jessica’s breakfast took the cake—left over La Rosa’s pizza from the night before. Can you tell which one of us is still in college?? After a quick prayer for safety, we were out the door and in the van on the way to Indianapolis. But wait, when Stephen was getting in the van, he stepped in a huge puddle and drenched his shoe, sock, and pant leg. I dug through our suitcase to find a clean pair of socks so he could change, we stuffed newspaper in his shoe and he rolled up his pant leg. Luckily it was his left foot, as he was driving that morning. Okay, so now we’re on our way, we back out of the driveway and get halfway through the neighborhood, when Stephen says; did anyone grab the Disney folder? No one had, so Stephen pulled a U-turn and back to the house we went. How important was the Disney folder? Pretty important, it had all of our confirmation numbers for the resorts and rental car, all of our priority seating times, and most importantly—our Southwest boarding passes!! Definitely worth the 30 second detour. Okay, so NOW we’re on our way. We didn’t have any problems driving to Indianapolis Airport (unlike last year when we got about 3 inches of snow) and we made there around 8:30. Since we were already checked in, we just had to go to the Southwest counters to check our luggage. We checked out the line for security, saw it wasn’t backed up, so we headed to McDonald’s for a real breakfast, the rice cakes and granola bar’s didn’t fill us up. After a nice breakfast (I had a cinnamon roll and a hot chocolate and Stephen had a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel), we stopped at Starbucks for Stephen’s caffeine fix and headed off to security. Security was a breeze, that’s one reason why I love flying out of smaller airports. Stephen was stopped for a “special” check, but luckily he made it out in one piece. Our gate was right next to the security checkpoint, so it was easy to find. We all took turns watching the luggage while everyone else went to the restroom and to buy magazines and newspapers. After waiting a few minutes, we noticed people lining up at the gate, so we decided to get in line; we were checked in under the “A” category. We only had to wait maybe 10 minutes before we could begin boarding. I had never flown Southwest, but I was extremely impressed. We were able to take off a few minutes early because everyone on the flight was checked in. The flight wasn’t full and we were able to spread out a little bit. Our flight attendants were wonderful, they would bend over backwards to do anything for you, and they even brought the drink cart around a second time to see if anyone wanted a refill—shocking!! This happened on the flight to Baltimore, and from Baltimore to Orlando. Even the snacks were better, we got Planters Honey Roasted Peanuts (I was impressed, a name brand) and Ritz crackers on the flight to Baltimore and from Baltimore to Orlando, we got more Planters peanuts and Rold Gold Pretzels. The flight attendants even played trivia games on the flight to Orlando, giving away extra snacks as prizes. I would definitely fly Southwest again; my only thing with them is that they don’t fly out of Cincinnati or Dayton, our airports of choice. The flight to Baltimore was painless and we arrived right on time, the gate we flew out of was 2 down from our departing gate, so that was great, no running through the airport. We camped out in chairs and waited to begin boarding. The boarding procedure wasn’t as efficient in Baltimore as it was in Indy, the lines were made to go down between the waiting area, so people were standing in line for their group and then the people still seated where trying to get up and then the “B” group was trying to get in the “A” line, it was a mess. We got in a line and asked the people around us what line they were in, they were all “A’s” as well, but no one knew where the “A” line was. We eventually got to the ticket agent and boarded the plane, finding 5 seats together. Like I said earlier, the flight attendants are wonderful, I wish I could say the same for my fellow passengers. We had the kids from you know where sitting behind Stephen and I. They were 2 little boys about 2 and 5 and I’m guessing they had never flown before; they were all over that plane. The Mom fell asleep as soon as we started to take off and the Dad didn’t pay much attention to them. They were standing up in their seats, bouncing up and down, the flight attendant came over and told the Dad that they had to stop doing that and they sat down for a little while. An announcement came over the speaker that we were flying over thunderstorms and would hit some turbulence, so to stay seated. These 2 little boys got out of their seats and started running up and down the aisle! The whole time Mom is sleeping and Dad is reading. I thought the flight attendant was going to blow a gasket. He firmly, but nicely told the Dad that the boys must stay seated and buckled in for their safety. The flight attendant sat back down and the boys started standing up and bouncing on their seats again. It got to the point where it was getting funny, watching them run wild. One of them had a little wooden die they were playing with, they dropped and it rolled because down the aisle because the turbulence was so bad, the little boy gets up and starts crawling down the aisle, under people’s seats looking for his die. Luckily he found it, came back to seat, Mom woke up and buckled them in because we were starting to descend. The boys weren’t mean or badly behaved, they were just kids being kids unsupervised on their first plane ride to see Mickey Mouse (they told my Mom that they were going to see Mickey). We finally landed and quickly got off the plane. I know I say this in every trip report, but I love the Orlando International Airport. It has such a tropical feel to it, as soon as you walk off the plane, you feel like you’re on vacation. We always say that the tram ride between terminals is our first ride on vacation. We found our baggage carousel and for once our luggage was near the beginning of the stack and all together in a line. Usually our luggage is the last ones left on the carousel. We drug everything out to the National rental area, which is on the 2nd floor of the car rental agencies and for the record, I was right.Stephen belongs to the Emerald Aisle, so we went in search of a car with a trunk big enough to hold 4 large suitcases and 6 carry-ons, not an easy task. Stephen made me stand next to one car and put my hand on it, because the trunk might work for our luggage. While he was on the prowl for a car, and racing against every other family there, Stephen spotted an Impala, which have huge trunks, and took off after it. He beat out a man and his 2 sons, thanks to the little boy who distracted his Dad long enough to give Stephen a head start. Stephen got in the car and drove over to where we were guarding the other car. Can you believe that every single piece of luggage fit in that trunk?? I think we could have fit several dead bodies in there it was so big. As we drove up to the checkout we saw the same family Stephen beat out circling the parking lot, still looking for a big enough car. I sure hope they found one. The first thing I did when we got out of the parking garage was to take my sweatshirt off and roll down the window. It was a little chilly out, but much warmer than the weather we just left in Cincinnati. We are officially on vacation!!! Pop Century was easy to find, right off the main road (is that World Drive? Stephen does all the driving on vacation, not that we drive that much). We parked the car in the main lot while we went to check in. Stephen and I had never been to any of the value resorts before, so this was a first for us. We walked into the lobby and a huge line at check-in greeted us. Stephen got in line because the rooms were reserved in his name and the rest of us checked out the lobby. It was so much fun looking at all the shadow boxes and reminiscing, it was like walking down memory lane. Mom and Dad liked looking at the 50’s and 60’s when they grew up, I liked the 80’s and Jessica liked the 90’s. The only generation we were missing was the 70’s. The check-in line moved pretty quickly and soon enough Stephen came walking toward us with a stack of keys in his hands. I took a picture of the tree in the Classic Hall and we were off to the car to move it to our building. It was fun driving to our building and seeing all the slang words on the different buildings. Some of the words I had forgotten. Jessica, Stephen, and I had fun saying “totally”, “sike”, “gnarly” and “grotty to the max”—actually grotty to the max wasn’t written on the building, but we started brainstorming on slang phrases and words we used to use. Then we saw the 90’s building and saw “phat”, of course Stephen had to enlighten us on all of his “yo’ Mama’s so fat” jokes from high school. How do you roll your eyes on a trip report? We were in the 80’s building and I thought it was a good location, it was a short walk to the Classic Years, all we had to do was cut across the 70’s courtyard and we were there. The parking lot proximity was wonderful too, our car was parked right outside our building, much nicer than being at the deluxes or home-away-from resorts where sometimes your car is parked a mile away. Our rooms were on the first floor, right in the middle of the row, it really was a great location. The rooms themselves were very nice. They were a little small and I couldn’t imagine staying there all week, especially with kids, but for just the 2 of us (and 3 in the other room) and for only one night, it was fine. I really liked the furniture in here, the wood was a mixture of dark oak and light cherry and accented with blue handles. The television cabinet was oak with one drawer cherry, one drawer oak, the head board was cherry with oak squares, the night side was like the television cabinet with the drawers being 2 different colors, and the table and chairs were my favorite, they were both oak, but the chairs had circles cut out of the backs. The bedspread was a patch work of sorts, it had squares on it and in the squares were pictures of novelty items and slang from the different generations, I’m sure all of buildings have the same furniture and bedspread. The posters on wall, were from the 80’s though, there was a different poster in our room and in Mom and Dad’s room. The poster in our room had cartoon series from the 80’s, like the Wuzzles, Duck Tails, Tale Spin, etc. It was fun for Jessica and I to see all of the different characters; these were the cartoons we were raised on. The poster in Mom and Dad’s room had pictures of Epcot when it first opened, and Figment. It was cute. We were all hungry, other than the snacks on the plane, we hadn’t eaten since McDonald’s at 9:00, and it was now getting close to 6:00. We decided to take a few minutes to freshen up and then off to Everything Pop for something to eat. We were all ready to go in about 10 minutes and headed over there. I was really impressed by all of the choices at Everything Pop; there were burgers, sandwiches, pizza, pasta, fried chicken, and snack foods—everything looked so good. Stephen and I decided to try the Mom’s Night Out station and get the fried chicken. Luck wasn’t with us tonight, when we told the first CM that we wanted the fried chicken dinner, he told us to go down to another CM that was making the platters up, so we walked down to the lady in charge of the fried chicken. The lady never looked at us, never asked us what we wanted, never acknowledged our existence, we over heard her telling another CM that the chicken was under temperature and she couldn’t serve it. Why couldn’t she tell us that? Instead we just stood there and she pretended she couldn’t see us. I understand she couldn’t serve us the chicken, but she could have at least looked up and said “I’m sorry, the chicken isn’t quite ready yet, is there something else I can get you?” By this time, there was a line at the Mom’s Night Out station and since we were already at the other end of the counter, we would have to get out of line and get back in line to order something else since she ignored us. We decided to forget it and just go somewhere else. I wanted a panini, but I didn’t see any CM at that station, so I just went over to get a burger with Stephen. We ended up getting cheeseburgers and fries and a cup chili and Stephen got some sort of piece of pie, I can’t remember what it was, I think it may have been cheesecake. As soon as I got my cheeseburger, I saw a CM at the panini station. Just my luck. Mom, Dad, and Jessica already had a table, so we went to find them and sat down to eat. The burger was okay, nothing spectacular, but I didn’t expect anything great, it was a food court after all. The cheesecake however was mighty tasty and I “helped” Stephen finish it. After dinner, we decided to take a bus to the Magic Kingdom and then take the monorail to the TTC and then take the monorail into Epcot. There was a method to our madness, the monorail loop from the TTC to Epcot is absolutely beautiful, especially with all of the Christmas decorations up, and it was going to give us a taste of what’s to come. There was a huge line waiting to get on the bus to the Magic Kingdom, but we managed to make it on the bus. How great is it pulling up to the Magic Kingdom? The only downside to it was that we couldn’t go in the park, well Stephen and I could have since we have annual passes, but we didn’t think it would be very nice to leave Mom, Dad, and Jessica on the first night of vacation. Although, honestly, they wouldn’t have minded. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, the Magic Kingdom was packed and there were people everywhere. The line for the monorail going to the TTC was all the way down the ramp and spilling in front of the security lines. We got in line for the resort monorail; it was a little better, but not much. It was getting very chilly out and we only had on long sleeve shirts and jeans, since it was warmer when we left Pop Century. We tried huddling together for warmth, but the breeze blowing up from Bay Lake was definitely not warm! My Dad did have a jacket one and he gave it to me, since I was so cold that I was shaking, it doesn’t matter how old you are, Daddy’s going to take of you.We finally made it onto the monorail, after seeing at least 3 trains go by that we didn’t make it on to, and the train that we did make it on, we had to fight for a place, people were cutting up the sides to get on the train or using strollers as blockades. You gotta love the Magic Kingdom on a Saturday night! We got off at the TTC and finally got away from the crowds when we walked towards the Epcot monorail. You’ll never guess what we saw when we walked up the ramp…the “secret” purple bench was empty! I couldn’t believe our luck! We asked the CM if we could ride up in the front of the monorail and he said, yes but only 4 guests can fit up there, we already knew that and Stephen volunteered to sit else in the monorail. Isn’t he the best? The monorail ride into Epcot was breathtaking with all the lights twinkling in the night sky. It was so cool to look down and see the lighted archway blinking in time to the music and the huge Christmas tree at the end. It made me want to go into Epcot right then. Epcot is my favorite park, especially at night. We pulled into the station, got our co-pilot’s license from the CM and met back up with Stephen. Walking down the ramp we decided that we were pretty tired from traveling all day and we weren’t really dressed to be outside, so we decided to bag the trip to Downtown Disney and head back to Pop Century to call it a night. This was the first night of an 8-night vacation; there was no need to exhaust ourselves now. We made it out to the bus stop before Epcot officially closed, so we didn’t have to wait long for a bus, we did get separated once we were on the bus, but that was no big deal. Once we got back to the resort, we decided walk through Classic Hall and look around the gift shop, to see if there was anything interesting in there. What a mistake! We were in there at least 45 minutes (and I thought we were tired) and I think everyone bought something that night. I guess the souvenir money was burning a hole in our pockets.I bought a new Mickey Mouse Club sling backpack to carry in the parks; I have a small backpack that I carry as a purse. Now, nothing was wrong with the backpack that I have, but for the past 3 or 4 trips, I have been looking for a small Disney backpack, now that I found one, I had to buy it. We finally made it back to the rooms, got ready for bed and decided that we would get up whenever we woke up tomorrow, we had until 11:00 to check-out and we didn’t have to be anywhere until the MVMCP tomorrow evening. We shut our doors and Stephen and I were asleep in minutes, I’m sure the same was true for Mom, Dad, and Jessica. Day 2—Sunday 12/12The Plan: Check out of Pop Century by 11:00 am, check-in Board Walk Villas. Lunch at Beaches and Cream, pick-up MVMCP tickets at International Gateway in Epcot. Resort hop around Epcot resorts until villa is ready, move into villa, and go to grocery store. Leave for MVMCP party at the Magic Kingdom around 4:00. Reality: We were planning on sleeping in until 10:00 at the earliest so we would be well rested for the Christmas party that night. But you know how it is when you’re on vacation, your eyes pop open and you jump out of bed. I woke up at 8:00, but I refused to get up quite that early, I closed my eyes until 8:30, but I couldn’t lie there anymore. I rolled over and Stephen has staring at me, he couldn’t go back to sleep either. I opened our door to see if I could hear anyone moving around in the other room, their door was closed, but not latched, so I pushed it open, they were all wide awake too. I told my Mom I felt like the Disney commercial where the kids are in one room and the parents are in the other and the kids are debating on whether or not the parents were awake yet, they opened the connecting door and the parents were completely dressed and sitting on the bed waiting for the parks to open. I jumped in bed with Jessica and Stephen went to take a shower. While Stephen was getting ready, Mom, Jessica, and I talked about what we wanted to do today. It was a beautiful day, the sun was so bright, when I opened the door to see how cool it was outside, I was greeted with a warm breeze, not quite warm enough to wear shorts, but we definitely didn’t need jackets. I went into our room so that everyone could get ready and when Stephen was out of the bathroom, I jumped in the shower. While I was getting ready, Stephen packed our carry-on back up (that’s all we brought in, since it was only for one night) and he doubled check to make sure we didn’t forget anything. I had my Mom French braid pigtails in my hair for me, it’s been years since I’ve had my hair in braids, but vacation makes you do crazy things sometimes. Some people get drunk, others sleep around—me, I have my Mom put my hair in braids, that’s just the kind of crazy person that I am. J It was about 10:30 and we were completely ready to go, so we decided to head over to the Boardwalk and get checked in. Once we were checked in, we would decide what to do from there. We walked outside in the wonderful sunshine and it was even warmer than it was an hour ago when I stuck my hand outside to do a temperature check. Stephen walked out and decided that he was burning up, it is so hot outside, and he must put on a pair of shorts. So he took our carry-on back to the room to change into shorts and we walked over to the car and loaded up Mom and Dad and Jessica’s carry-on. Stephen came out of the room and we were on the way to the Boardwalk! Pop Century was okay, but we couldn’t contain our excitement on the drive over to the Boardwalk Villas. It was so great pulling up to the security booth and hearing “welcome home” ahhh. We decided to park the car since we knew there was no way the villa would be ready and after checking in, we would most likely be walking in the Epcot resort area and eating lunch. Stephen went on ahead of us, to get in line to check in, while Mom and I played shutterbug and snapped pictures. I’m not sure how many pictures we need of the front of the Boardwalk resort, but I just can’t stop taking them. We caught back up with Stephen and I made him get in a picture before checking in, I love that giant couch in the little room before you get to the lobby, and I don’t have a picture there, so I really needed one. Mom took a picture of Dad, Jessica, Stephen, and I; it’s a really good picture and kind of funny, Jessica and I are so short that our legs didn’t reach the ground and we looked like 2 little kids. My hair being in braids and Jessica’s being in pigtails didn’t really help the matter any. J Stephen went to check in, the line was kind of long, since Sunday is the busiest check-in day at the DVC resorts. I took Mom and Jessica over to the Inn part of the Boardwalk, since they haven’t been over there. I’m not sure where Dad went, probably outside to enjoy the beautiful day. After about 10 minutes, we walked back to the lobby to check on Stephen’s progress, he was up to the counter and was checking in. We saw Dad wondering toward us and we all stayed together because we knew Stephen would be over shortly. Stephen walked over with our resort packet, of course the villa wasn’t ready, so I put the folder in my backpack and we walked outside to decide what to do. It was a little before noon and we decided to get something for lunch, we were planning on eating at Beaches and Cream, but someone (ahem, Stephen) suggested the ESPN Club instead. Stephen and I are huge football fans and we love the Pittsburgh Steelers, so we didn’t mind at all eating lunch here. The Steelers weren’t playing until 4:00, so it wasn’t a ploy to get in there for the game, but just being there on a Sunday afternoon watching football is so much fun. My Dad is a huge football fan too, so we knew that he would enjoy eating there. Mom and Jessica aren’t really big sports fans, but they would tolerate it because the food is good, and besides we would only be there the hour or so it takes to eat. We knew from experience in October that the ESPN Club fills up fast (we waited over 3 hours for a table), so we decided to walk by and see how crowded it was. If there was a wait, we just go on to Beaches ‘n Cream. We walked up to the door and since it wasn’t kick-off yet and since we weren’t waiting to see any particular game, there was no wait. We had an awesome table on the right side of the main room, in the upper section; we had a perfect view of the pre-game show that was just starting and the main television. It was really cool to watch them do the pre-game show, because it is actually being recorded at the restaurant and it’s played live over the Internet. 3 or 4 different sports analysts with ESPN called in and talked to the host about the match-ups that day and then answered questions from people in the audience. Being a football fan, it was really neat to see this; I wish the Steelers were playing at 1:00 and that we could have stayed for the game! The waiter was right out as soon as we were seated to take our drink order. Since we were on 2 separate checks, I’ll just report on what Stephen and I got. I ordered a Diet Coke (that goes without saying) and Stephen got an iced tea (again, that goes without saying). Our drinks were out soon and we were ready to place our order, I didn’t have to look at the menu, I knew exactly what I was getting: the upper deck hot roast beef and cheese sandwich with a side of barbeque sauce. This is an awesome sandwich and it did not disappoint this time. It’s served with a side of fries, their fries are pretty good, nothing really special, but in my opinion better than park fries. Stephen ordered the red wings with barbeque sauce and an order of fries, which he didn’t need to order, we had so many French fries on the table. Stephen really like the wings, I don’t think he had ever ordered them before, he usually gets the tailgate bbq pork sandwich, but he decided to switch it up a little bit. I don’t think he was disappointed with his decision. Everyone really liked what they ordered, Jessica got the roast beef sandwich too, Mom ordered the club wrap with fruit, and I think Dad ordered a club wrap too, but with fries. This meal got 2 big thumbs up from everybody, and the atmosphere got an A+ too. One thing that was really nice was that our waiter didn’t rush us at all, Sunday is their busiest day here and you would think they would push people through to get more people in to get more tips. But this didn’t happen at all. We weren’t staying for a game, we weren’t ordering more food to last the length of a game, and he still told us to take our time when he brought out the check and seemed surprised that we were leaving so early. I don’t know how much Mom and Dad’s bill was, but ours was $26.95 before the tip, I must be brainwashed by Disney because that seems like a reasonable amount to me! After lunch, we decided to walk down to the International Gateway to pick up our MVMCP tickets. Our tickets were bought in my name and Mom, Dad, and Jessica’s tickets were bought in Mom’s name, so Mom and I got in line. Yes, I said in line, there was actually a line here and we waited quite a few minutes. It wasn’t a case of the CM’s being slow, it was the people in front of us taking forever, all of them were the “problem” customers, you know the ones who ask a gazillion questions, most of which aren’t valid questions to begin with, or the people who get all the way up there and they’re not ready, they have to study the sign to decide what type of ticket to buy or they have to go digging through their wallet looking for a particular credit card or enough cash. While we were in line, Dad and Jessica sat down on a bench in the sun, down on the water and listened to the sounds coming from the World Showcase. Stephen went into Epcot to look for the Stitch Santa ears, he got it into his head that he HAD to have those for the Christmas party and he couldn’t wait to buy them in the Magic Kingdom that night. It didn’t really matter, we spent all week looking for that dumb hat, we finally found it in the Magic Kingdom on Wednesday, but by then the moment was over and he didn’t want the hat anymore. Stephen and I both turned our cell phones on and decided to meet in the Beach Club; I wanted to take Mom and Dad there, since Stephen and I had such a great time there in October. Mom and I finally got our tickets and we were ready to move on. Mom, Dad, Jessica, and I walked back towards the Beach Club; we went over to the beach, by the slide for Storm-A-Long Bay and took some pictures across the lagoon and of the lighthouse. Stephen called to say he was leaving Epcot, and that we would all meet up in the lobby of the Beach Club. I love the Beach Club lobby, it is so relaxing in there, I love all the peach and green together and the wicker furniture, it feels so elegant, yet unpretentious at the same time. I especially love the gingerbread carousel, and since we watched the Samantha Brown Walt Disney World Holidays special on the Travel Channel Friday night, I appreciated the carousel (and all of the different resort gingerbread displays) even more. I knew there was a lot of time, work, and talent invested in the displays, I just never realized how much. The pastry chefs at Disney are truly talented and gifted. By that time Stephen walked into the lobby swinging a bag—presents for me!! I am cold all of the time, so Stephen bought me a navy blue WDW knit toboggan hat and a pair of gloves. He tried to act like he was just being nice, but I think he didn’t want to hear me complain all week long that I was cold (wink, wink). I pulled the hat out to try it on (I have a really little head) and saw that the CM at Mouse Gears didn’t take the security tag off. We walked down to Atlantic Wear and Wardrobe Emporium and they took off the tag for us. Of course, while we there, we had to shop. J Actually, I think Mom was the only one to buy something, she bought a charm bracelet and some charms here, and she was planning on adding the resort charms of all the different resorts we’ve stayed. Hmmm, that’s a good idea. We were going to walk out to the villas, but we took the exit out of Atlantic Wear that takes you to the lobby (which I did not know you could do that) and we forgot walk back down to the villas. We decided to continue on around the Epcot resort loop and hopefully by the time we got to the Boardwalk, our villa would be ready, if not, we’d just sit on the porch and enjoy being on vacation. We walked past the Yacht Club and up around the Swan and Dolphin, we walked into the Character Caravan/Screen Door General Store and looked around for a while. I found a snowman wearing Mickey ears antenna topper that I bought for my car. Stephen found a Walt Disney World jacket that he liked, but decided not to buy it. I kept telling him to just get the jacket, but he said he’d think about it. Jessica got a really cute white “fur” hat that said Walt Disney World on it, the rest of the week we called her J-Lo because looked like something Jennifer Lopez would wear. It was a cute hat and looked cute on her because her hair is so long (it’s down to her shoulder blades). We decided to try our luck and see if our villa was ready, it was about 2:00 and villas aren’t guaranteed until after 4:00. While Mom, Jessica, and I were still shopping, Stephen took the cell phone outside to call the front desk. Yea, our villa was ready!! We walked up the staircase by the brick wall that brings you to the front of the Boardwalk resort. Stephen went to get the car, because our suitcases were still in the trunk and we didn’t want to walk all the way back to the parking lot and then drag 10 suitcases all the way back to our room. The plan was for Stephen to park at the far end of the sidewalk, so we wouldn’t get in bell services way and then the rest of us would take everything up to the villa while Stephen parked the car again. While Mom, Dad, Jessica, and I were waiting for Stephen, I moved the wrong way and one of the disks in my back slipped out of place. I have a herniated disk in my back (just one of the many things I inherited from my Mother, I have her body build, her sassy attitude, and her bad back, thanks Mom) and what happens is the disk in my lower back, near my hip will slip out of place and it bulges. It’s not noticeable if you don’t know about it, but if you are aware, you can see it, it just looks like I’m standing crooked and it is more noticeable when I’m wearing a bathing suit. When the disk slips out of place, the muscles become swollen and the disk can’t slip back in until the swelling goes down. There isn’t much you can do for it, just some exercises where you push the hip bones together to try to push the disk back in place, and keep taking Tylenol for the pain (it’s pretty painful, I can’t even stand up straight when this happens) and for the swelling. So here comes Stephen with a trunk full of suitcases that need to taken upstairs and I can’t even stand up straight. Somehow Mom, Dad, Jessica, and I got most of the suitcases (Stephen had a couple to bring back with him after parking the car) and we made that long trek through the lobby trying to dodge other guests and their suitcases. We finally made it to the elevators and pushed “4” to get up to our villa. We had another great villa, we were close to the elevators (very important, I’ve heard horror stories about the BWV’s long hallways, although we’ve always had rooms close to the elevators) and we were over looking the courtyard and port cochre, we were close to the room we had last year, except we were on the 3rd floor and a couple of rooms further down. While we were standing on the balcony, we saw Stephen walking up the sidewalk, dragging the suitcase behind. Since we have all been to the BWV before, checking out the room wasn’t nearly as exciting, but we love the Boardwalk and we weren’t too upset by this. J Stephen and I took the studio part of the villa so Mom and Dad could have the bedroom. Jessica was planning on sleeping on the pullout sofa in the living room. My back was killing me, so I laid down on Mom and Dad’s nice and big king sized bed, we had opened the balcony door and there was a nice breeze blowing in. I looked so comfortable that Mom and Jessica laid down too, not that we were especially tired, but it felt good to just lie down. Stephen and I were planning on going to the grocery store now, but since I wasn’t feeling that great and we had a big evening planned, Dad and Stephen went to the store. They called guest services to get directions to Publix and they were on their way. Us girls just stayed in bed, it was so great feeling the cool breeze and hearing people in the courtyard who were just as excited as we were to be there. I’m pretty sure we all three dozed off. About 45 minutes later the phone rang, it was Stephen saying that they were pulling into the Boardwalk and to please come downstairs to help carry groceries. Dad and Stephen are never going grocery shopping together again. They were supposed to get some breakfast stuff (like cereal, milk, pop tarts), a couple 2 liters of pop and maybe a bag of chips to snack on in the evenings. When Stephen popped the trunk, I could not believe how many grocery bags were in there! They bought cereal, pop tarts, waffles, granola bars, potato chips, corn chips, cookies, bananas, popcorn, a ton of pop, and water. There was no way we would eat all that food this week! Oh, well, at least we have a variety of snacks to choose from. Dad, Jessica, and I carried the grocery bags up while Stephen went to park the car again; he’s getting a lot of exercise today! After we got all the groceries put away, we decided to leave for MVMCP party in about an hour and we all stretched out to relax again. I kept taking Tylenol to help my back (you can’t overdose on Tylenol, right? J), I didn’t want to be miserable all night long. Dad and Stephen both went to lie down since they weren’t here to take an afternoon nap. They did sleep in separate beds, not in one, like us girls. J Mom and Jessica watched the old Disney characters on T.V. and I read my magazine. We all relaxed for about 40 minutes before getting up and getting ready for the Christmas party. It was much warmer than last year, but still not that warm. We all wore jeans and layers of clothes; I wore 2 long sleeved shirts, a hooded zip-up sweatshirt, and a windbreaker. I was not going to freeze like last year!! Of course I had my knit hat and gloves in my backpack, they were ready to be called up for action at any time. We got down to the bus stop a little before 6:00, there were other families waiting to go to the Christmas party too. I always like seeing people at the bus stop waiting to go to the same park as we are, it’s reassuring to know that you didn’t just miss the bus by a couple of minutes. We waited about 7-10 minutes and finally a bus heading to the Magic Kingdom pulled up. The bus was full and we had to stand, but it was fine, the 5 of us are all young, (well, relatively wink, wink) and in good physical shape and health, there is no reason why we HAD to sit down for a 10-minute drive. We got to the Magic Kingdom, looked past the huge Christmas tree and down Main Street to Cinderella Castle; I think a collective sigh went up. Ahh, we’re finally truly “home”. The first glance down Main Street to catch a glimpse of Cinderella Castle is my favorite part of every trip. Since it was after 6:00, the Magic Kingdom was officially closed and the CM’s were trying to get the guests there for the Christmas party back to Tomorrowland and get everyone else out of the park. Stephen wanted to check the Emporium to see if he might get lucky and find the elusive Stitch Santa hat. No dice. We joined the hordes of people walking back to Tomorrowland, I couldn’t wait to get out in the park, but for the next hour we were stuck there in Tomorrowland. We decided to try out Stitch’s Great Escape since we were right there, I’ve read some reviews on different websites and I really wasn’t expecting too much. Stephen and I have talked about the attraction before, so we were both expecting not to be wowed, but I didn’t say anything about what I’d heard to Mom, Dad, or Jessica; I didn’t want them going in with any preconceived notions. We got in line outside and after waiting a few minutes, the doors opened and we went into the pre show. The pre show for Stitch was very similar to the pre show for Alien Encounter, even Skippy makes an appearance! The idea is that we are new recruits to the Alien army and we are on our first day of training. A call comes in that one of the criminals (Experiment 626) has been captured and all of the commanders are under the impression that he is a level-one offender, when really he is the highest level. After the pre-show, everyone is divided into 3 rows and you continue on to the big round room where all the chairs are, just like Alien Encounter. At this point, everyone joins up together (Stephen and I were separated from Mom, Dad, and Jess, but we all got back together at this point) and takes a seat in one of the 3 rows of chairs. A restraint comes down over your head and you are buckled in, this is not because you move around, but because some of the special effects are created in your restraint. Once everyone is buckled in, the lights are lowered and Experiment 626 is transported into a tube in the center of the room. The voices of the commanders come in and they are going through some training spiels. Of course the lights go out and Experiment 626 escapes from the tube and that’s when we find out that he is not a level-one offender. I won’t say what happened because I don’t want to spoil it for everyone else and because I don’t want what I say to influence other people’s opinion. All I’m going to say about Stitch’s Great Escape is that I wasn’t impressed (and I’m pretty easy to please) and neither was anyone else in our group. It still wasn’t 7:00 yet, so we couldn’t go into the rest of the Magic Kingdom. We looked through a couple of stores for the Stitch hat, no luck, so Stephen decided to just buy a Mickey Santa hat. By that time it was 7:00 and the Mickey’s Very Christmas Party had officially started. We decided to hit Fantasyland first and on the way we passed the Mad Tea Party, this is one of Jessica’s favorite rides and I have never ridden before, so we decided to jump on while there wasn’t a line. We got a pink teacup and I swear it was like being a kid again; we spun the wheel as fast as it would go. I can tell that I’m starting to get old, I definitely felt the effects of that one when the ride was over and I stood up to get off. I didn’t get sick, I was just really dizzy and I felt little tipsy (well, I don’t drink, so I haven’t been tipsy before, but I think I felt tipsy J). After the teacups, we continued on to Fantasyland. There wasn’t a line for Dumbo, so we went ahead and got in line (this is why we headed to Fantasyland first, to beat the crowds), Stephen thinks he’s too cool for Dumbo, so Mom and Dad were in one elephant and Jessica and I were in another elephant. Stephen stood on the ground and took pictures of everyone having fun without him. After Dumbo, we headed for the Golden Carousel, Stephen does ride the carousel, so the 5 of us found horses all in a row. My favorite part about the Golden Carousel is that every horse goes up and down. There was still plenty for us to do in Fantasyland, but we decided to save the rest of the attractions for Wednesday, the day we had scheduled for the Magic Kingdom. By this time it was a little before 8:00, we decided to hit Main Street and head down to Casey’s for a light dinner. Last year, we never did really eat anything the night of the Christmas party, well I guess I should say we never ate anything substantial, we made dinner out of all the hot chocolate and cookies. We walked out onto Main Street and it was snowing!!! Well, not real snow, it looked like soap bubbles, but it really made the atmosphere very festive. We walked down to Casey’s, it was packed, Mom, Jessica, and I grabbed a table outside while Dad and Stephen braved the lines. Dad and Stephen were in line forever; I bet we waited at least 20 minutes for them to come back out. This was the only major line we encountered the entire evening, so I guess we can’t complain too much. Dad and Stephen finally came out of Casey’s, with their trays laden with hotdogs and fries. Mom and I shared a hotdog, since we were still pretty full from lunch and everyone else had their own hotdogs. We had a very nice dinner and we could catch glimpses of the Christmas parade going down Main Street. By the time everyone finished eating, it was getting close to 9:00, so we decided to stick around the Hub and wait for Wishes, which started at 9:15. While we were waiting for Wishes to begin, we played with the digital cameras and took some great pictures of the Castle and Main Street all lit up in their holiday best. Right at 9:15 the lights were dimmed and Wishes began. I love Wishes, the music is just beautiful and the fireworks are spectacular, in my opinion, Wishes is a hundred times better than Fantasy in the Sky. It was really cool seeing the perimeter fireworks; it felt being inside a snow globe with them going off all around Main Street. Very, very cool. After Wishes, we headed over to Adventureland, since we haven’t been there yet. We walked across the bridge and past the Dole Whip stand (too bad it was too chilly to have one) and we saw Snow White, Prince Charming, and Dopey walking up to do a character meet and greet. We HAD to stop and get our picture made, we did 2 pictures; one with us girls and one with everyone, the picture is really good, even with Stephen’s big Mouse ears. J The complimentary picture place was right next door to where Snow White was, so we decided to stop and get our picture taken while were there. There was a line here, but it moved quickly, all of the CM’s were very efficient. The picture turned out pretty good; the only thing was Mom’s hair, which is dark brown, turned out orange in the picture. I don’t know if the coloring was off when it was developed, but everyone else’s hair was the right color, so who knows. We had a little bit of time before the parade, so we walked over to everyone’s favorite Pirates of the Caribbean. What a Disney classic, I hope no one changes a single thing about this ride. I love riding it and checking out all of the background scenery, I’ve been on this attraction countless times and the attention to detail still amazes me. The imagineers would worked on Pirates deserve a triple A plus, and in my mind they are truly talented engineers and artists. This ride was designed what 40 years ago? And it’s still an amazing ride. By this time it was a little before 10:00, so we decided to start working on finding a place to watch the Christmas parade. It was scheduled to start on Main Street at 10:00; we were planning on watching it from Liberty Square, so we knew it would be about 10:15-10:20 before it reached us. Stephen stopped and bought some Bavarian pecans from the frosted nut stand by Pirates of the Caribbean. The company that I work for, Gold Medal Products Co. manufactures concession equipment and supplies and one of our customers just happens to be Walt Disney World. By working there, I have become something of a concession food connoisseur and I can tell you from my experience, WDW has pretty good concession food, especially the popcorn! We walked over to where Liberty Square and Frontierland meet and saw that there were plenty of spaces available, I think everyone must have seen the earlier parade. There was a hot chocolate and cookie counter right by our spot, so we walked over to get a little snack. The cookies were MUCH better this year; last year they were hard, store bought cookies that are in Christmas shapes with green and red sprinkles on them. I can’t remember what company makes these cookies, but they are ones I’m sure we all had growing up. This year, however the cookies were more like homemade, they were big and soft and they had 3 different cookies to choose from: sugar, snicker doodle, and oatmeal raisin. They were SO good, definitely a big improvement. When we got up to the counter, the CM’s asked what kind of cookie you wanted and how many cookies, I was so sure they were only giving one or two cookies per guest. We saw people walking away from the counter with 6 or 7 cookies in their hands. Everyone got their cookies and hot chocolate and we went back out to claim a spot. While we were waiting for the parade to get to us, we a nice snack of cookies, hot chocolate, and Bavarian pecans, of course my back started aching again, I guess the Tylenol wore off. I stood and waited for the parade, because sitting hurts so bad, and then my legs started hurting from standing. You can’t win! J Thankfully, Mom had some Tylenol in her bag and I was able to take some. The Christmas parade was wonderful, the same parade as last year, but still great. My favorite are the toy soldiers, I love them! And the green Army men too, I can’t believe they are really playing real instruments—that takes some talent! There was a little surprise on Santa’s float, Stitch was standing on the bottom wearing a Hawaiian lei. As a huge Stitch fan, I loved it. The parade lasted about 30 minutes and it could have lasted all night as far as I’m concerned. It really set the mood and doing the MVMCP on the first night set the tone for the rest of week. By the time the parade was over, it was about 11:00, but no one was really tired, traveling the day before and getting plenty of sleep really made a huge difference this year. Since we were right by the Haunted Mansion, we decided to head over there. There wasn’t a line at all and we just walked right up to the front door. Is it just me, or does the Haunted Mansion seem a lot creepier at night than in the morning? We only stood in line for a few minutes when the doors opened and we were ushered inside. Mom and Dad were in one doom buggy and Stephen, Jessica, and I were in another doom buggy, they really are pretty roomy. Stephen and I showed Jessica some of the hidden Mickey’s and the hidden Donald that we knew about (I just bought the Hidden Mickey book, so I’m going to be really prepared for our vacation in May). We didn’t have any stops on this trip and it was nice to ride without any interruptions, although I understand completely why the ride must be stopped sometimes. We were all a little chilly after we got off the Haunted Mansion, so we stopped to get some more hot chocolate. We walked through Fantasyland to see if there were lines that were short, we were especially looking at Peter Pan’s Flight wait time. There was a 30-minute for Peter Pan, so we decided to just let it wait until Wednesday. We were finally getting a little sleepy and since the Magic Kingdom was going to close in about 45 minutes anyway, we decided to go ahead and leave. We took our time strolling up Main Street, stopping to snap some pictures and enjoying the ambience. We waited a few minutes for the bus and made back to the villa pretty quickly. By this time it was after midnight and we were all pretty beat. We decided to just hit the sack when we got back and made plans to leave for Epcot at 8:45—that seems SO early. We set our wake-up call for 8:00 and I think I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow. Day 3 Monday, 12/13The Plan: Epcot, PS Le Cellier 12:50pm Reality: Our alarm went off at right at 8:00, even though I’m not much of a morning person, I jumped right out of bed, after all it’s vacation. I got in the shower first; since it takes me a little longer to get ready in the morning than it does Stephen, imagine that. When I got out of the shower (and after I dressed, of course), I peeked out the connecting door to see if everyone was up and getting ready. Jessica was in the shower, Mom was doing her hair and Dad was drinking coffee, this is a good sign. It takes Jessica forever to get ready (what can I say, she’s 20), so I was a little nervous that it was 8:30 and she’s still in the shower. The water in Florida is so soft that it takes my hair forever to dry, I’m used to the hard water we have in Cincinnati. I ended up just pulling it up in a ponytail still wet and I finished getting ready. I could hear the hair dryer chugging away in the other bathroom, so at least Jessica was making some progress. We all ate breakfast and I think we were all ready to go right at 9:00, a little later than the time we planned, but it wasn’t a big deal. The walk over to the International Gateway was very nice, it was promising to be a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the sky was so blue that it looked fake. This was also the warmest day of the trip, I was wearing capris, but by 10:00 I was wishing that I had worn shorts. There wasn’t any one at the entrance at the International Gateway and we had all of the World Showcase to ourselves. We stopped to make some pictures on the statue in the United Kingdom, we were bad mousekeeters, Jessica, Mom, and I climbed up on it. But it was okay because there were no little kids that we influenced with our bad behavior. J We got into Future World and headed straight to Test Track to get fastpasses. Stephen took all of our tickets so that we wouldn’t all be crowded up there, getting in other people’s way. Stephen, Dad, Jess, and I headed off to Mission: Space while Mom found a sunny spot to sit and wait in. Our flight to Mars was as great as always, and no one got sick, which is always plus. When we came out of the exit, we saw Space Mickey and Space Goofy standing over to the side, pretty much by themselves because no one had discovered they were there yet. Stephen, Dad, and Jessica got in line while I went to get Mom, by that time, a line was starting to form, but it wasn’t really that big. So here’s the tip: look for the characters in obscure places, especially in Epcot, you just may get a surprise. We got up to Mickey and Goofy and they started clowning around with us, hugging on us and Goofy kept putting his hand? paw? over Mom’s eyes the CM taking the picture had to say, “Okay Mickey, we’re going to take a picture”. I guess they were feeling a little frisky that morning?? After the character meet and greet (and by that time, the line was long, glad we found them when we did!), our fastpass time was up for Test Track, or as my Dad calls it: Fast Track. We had a great ride and I think Mom and Jessica liked it even better because they knew what to expect this time. We of course spent a few minutes (or hours it seemed like) in the General Motors display room, as I’ve mentioned in other trip reports, Dad and Stephen are huge car buffs and it was even worse because they had each other to feed off of. Mom, Jess, and I looked at the cars for a few minutes, I drive a Saturn Ion, so I looked at the Ion Coupe and the Saturn Vue Redline—which I love, but we finally gave up and went to look in the gift shop. Stephen and Dad finally took the hint and they came out of display area, but then they had to look at the shop. For once us girls were ready to leave a store before they were. It was still pretty early, a little after 10:00 and Epcot was still pretty much a ghost town. We took the required pictures in front of Space Ship Earth with every combination of people you could think of. But you can’t just let an empty park icon go to waste, you must take pictures! We walked over to Space Ship Earth to see what the line looked like. The line for this attraction is usually so long in the mornings, but it wasn’t bad at all, so we went ahead and got in line. Space Ship Earth is another favorite of mine, and while a rehab of the ride would be nice, I would be heart broken if the ride was ever drastically changed. I love using Space Ship Earth as a time to recharge; I lean my head against the head rest (trying not to think about who sat there before me), and listen to Jeremy Irons hypnotic voice. I’m always half asleep by the time that we start making the final descent back to Earth and then walking outside to the bright Florida sun is a killer to the eyes! We weren’t sure what we wanted to do after Space Ship Earth, we already had the 2 biggies out of the way and no one wanted to do Ellen’s Energy Adventure because the attraction is 45 minutes long. We did the Living Seas last year and while it’s nice in there, it’s not something that has to be done on every vacation, the same can be said for Honey, I Shrunk the Audience and the Land. I love Epcot, but my love is really World Showcase, which doesn’t open until 11:00. Stephen wanted to go to the House of the Future at Innoventions East or maybe West, I get those two confused all the time, I pretty much hate doing this attraction, so we suckered Dad into going with Stephen and us girls hit Mouse Gear. C’mon, are you really surprised? Mom, Jess, and I spent a leisurely 45 minutes looking around at Mouse Gear, that store is so huge; I really think you can be in here for hours. We didn’t buy anything; we just window-shopped and planned on what we were going to buy on our shopping day tomorrow. Mom looked at potential Christmas presents for the kids (I have 4 sisters and 5 nieces and nephews) and Jessica and I looked at the scrap booking stuff and the Italian charms. The boys were finished with Innoventions, which by the way, Dad loved, and we finished browsing around Mouse Gear for a few more minutes. Mom found some post cards to mail to the kids, so she bought them and we were on our way again. It was pretty close to our PS time, so we decided to head into World Showcase and hang out in Canada for the next few minutes. Maybe if the CM’s saw our drool and heard our stomachs rumbling, they would let us in early. J I absolutely love World Showcase, I think I could happily spend a week here, just sitting in the different countries and soaking up the atmosphere. I don’t know if I have a favorite pavilion, I love them all for different reasons, but I think Canada is just beautiful. When you are up by the water falls and you can’t see the rest of the World Showcase, you can almost imagine being in Canada and standing in front of the Canadian Rockies. And the upper level is so peaceful, there is hardly anyone up there—it definitely makes for a nice resting place. But then again, I think each pavilion in the World Showcase has it’s own nice resting place, where you can get away from the crowds and the parks. I love the Victoria Gardens on the lower level too; I’m starting to get into gardening, so I definitely notice a huge bed of beautiful, thriving flowers. I would love to work for Disney’s horticulture team, how awesome would it be to in the parks in the early morning when no one is there, planting and rearranging flowers and shrubs. Other than the early morning part, I think it sounds wonderful. By the time we wondered around the pavilion and took pictures, it was getting close to 1:00, Stephen decided to go ahead and check us in at Le Cellier. We were a little early, but I don’t think it was a problem at all. We waited for a few minutes in the lobby before our pager started blinking and we were lead to our table. Since this was Mom, Dad, and Jessica’s first time at Le Cellier, the CM did the whole spiel about how the beef is flown in every 48 hours from Canada and what a high quality the beef is. This is our (Stephen and I) 4th time eating at Le Cellier and I can definitely tell you how delicious the beef and all the food is here. This is one of my favorite places to eat (it’s a 3-way between Le Cellier, ‘Ohana, and San Angel Inn) and I’m so glad we talked Mom and Dad into eating here. I know Le Cellier is divided into 7 sections that represent the 7 provences of Canada, but I can’t remember what section is what. But we were seated on the left-hand side of the restaurant in one of the long booths on the back wall. And we were very close to the bathroom, which is one of my favorite features in a table. J Stephen and I decided to order 2 bowls of the cheddar cheese soup for everyone to use as dipping sauce for the breadsticks. I love the cheddar cheese soup, it is one of my favorite things about Le Cellier, I have the recipe, but I’m too nervous to make it at home; I’m scared I’ll screw it up! Our waitress, who was wonderful, came right out with our breadsticks, our drinks, and the cheddar cheese soup. There is nothing better than the pretzel breadsticks dipped in the cheddar cheese soup, the sour dough and the multigrain pretzels are okay, but those pretzel breadsticks are out of this world!! I normally order the herb crusted prime rib at Le Cellier because Stephen and I always eat here for dinner. I knew I couldn’t eat a huge steak for lunch, plus truth be told, I would be a little embarrassed to order it. I know many people treat lunch as dinner, in fact this was our big meal of the day, but I just couldn’t order it. I ended up getting the sliced prime rib French dip sandwich; it was okay, but not as good as the herb crusted prime rib. The cheese on the sandwich (I think it was gruyere) was really strong and I didn’t care much for it, I scraped it off my sandwich, but I could still taste something kind of spicy. The sandwich does come with horseradish sauce, but I got it on the side, since I don’t like horseradish, I don’t know what else could have made the sandwich so tangy. I only ate half of my sandwich and gave the rest of it to my Dad. Mom and Jessica both got the grilled steak burger with cheddar cheese, they said their cheese was really pungent too and they scraped theirs off as well. Does Canada have a reputation for having strong cheese? I like cheese, but I guess I must like pretty mild cheeses. Overall Mom and Jessica liked their burgers, but they couldn’t finish them either, so Dad got their leftovers too. Other than his sampler platter of everyone else’s lunch, Dad ordered the open face sirloin steak sandwich, which he liked. Stephen went with the old stand-by of the 10-ounce New York strip steak, which he said was wonderful as always. For Stephen and I, it was approximately $45.00 before tip. Lunch was okay at Le Cellier, the service was great and of course the atmosphere was wonderful, but I prefer dinner to lunch. I really missed the herb crusted prime rib with the Yukon mashed potatoes with the cloves of grilled garlic throughout the potatoes—yum, yum!! While Mom, Dad, and Jessica liked Le Cellier, I don’t think they were wowed, which is a shame, because it really is a great restaurant. Maybe we’ll try it for dinner next time and we’ll make converts out of them. We waddled out of Le Cellier and saw the Canadian Santa Claus standing up at the entrance to the pavilion. One of my goals this trip was to see as many different Santa’s and to hear each countries Christmas traditions and beliefs. I’m sorry if I offend anyone who is Canadian, but the Santa Claus there (I’m not sure if that’s what he is called in Canada) was kind of scary. He just kept laughing a real deep, hearty laugh and talking about drinking wassail and eating at everyone’s house. We stayed for a few minutes and listened to his story (and I took my picture) and then we moved on. We stopped in France next, another beautiful pavilion, I wish I was hungry enough to get a piece of cheesecake at the Boulangerie Patisserie, but I was still extremely full from lunch. I wanted to show Mom and Jessica the library in France that I finally found in October, I’m not sure why it took me so long to find it; it’s not like it’s really hidden. And we saw that Belle and the Beast were getting ready to come out. We decided to wait in line (when I say “we”, I mean Mom, Jessica, and I) since we haven’t met Belle and the Beast before. We got in line behind a little girl and then Belle and the Beast came out, it was our turn and we went into the library. I really wasn’t that impressed with Belle, she said “hi”, we smiled for a picture and then we left. That was it. I know we didn’t have kids with us, which may have helped with interaction and I don’t really know what I was expecting, but it was more than “hi” and a smile. When we left the library, Mom and Jess said the same thing, so it just wasn’t me who wasn’t impressed. Sleeping Beauty was in the garden for a meet and greet, but we decided to move on, maybe we’d catch Princess Aurora later. We moved on to Morocco next, we didn’t stay long; we just browsed through the pavilion to check out the holiday decorations. Our goal was to make it to the American Adventure for Voices of Liberty and The American Adventure show. Listening to Voices of Liberty and American Vybe, (although I don’t think they don’t perform during the holiday season, we didn’t see them on the schedule this year or last year) is one of my favorite parts of Epcot. I love to hear them sing, their harmony is incredible! I also love that they sing different songs every set, so you can see them perform more than once and not have to hear the same songs over and over again. We walked into the American Adventure right before Voices of Liberty came out, so we were able to get a seat on the floor right in front. Since it was December, they sang a variety of holiday songs; they sang some traditional Christmas songs, some religious Christmas songs, a couple of Hanukkah songs (you know we had the dreidel song in our heads all day long!), and one Kwanzaa song. It was neat to hear songs from the different cultures that are all in America, it was also interesting hearing about Kwanzaa, at least for me because I don’t know much about that holiday. The set was about 15, maybe 20 minutes long and then it was time for the American Adventure. It’s no secret that I love the American Adventure and that I cry every time I watch the closing montage when “Golden Dreams” is played. In fact I bought the CD “Where Magic Lives” in August 2003 just for that song because I love it so much. I also love the version they play at the Epcot gates, with the crashing cymbals, but I can’t find that version anywhere on CD. It was probably about 3:00 and we decided that maybe a little break might not be a bad idea; I can definitely tell that Stephen and I are rubbing off on Mom, our little commando girl. We walked back to the villa and hung around our room for about an hour and a half before getting ready to go back to Epcot for the evening. I’m not sure what we all did, I’m sure some of us took a little nap and I’m almost positive that I read my book. We started getting ready about 5:00 and we were planning to get back into Epcot between 5:30 and 6:00. We weren’t really in a huge hurry, the park was open until 9:30 and we have seen everything in Epcot at least once. On the way out of the Boardwalk, Stephen decided that he wanted to buy the jacket we saw yesterday at the Screen Door. So, he walked over there to buy the jacket, we sat down on benches, well as soon as we sat down, Jessica saw that the corn dog kiosk was open. Jessica is the corn dog queen and she claims the corn dogs on the Boardwalk are the best corn dogs ever. The stand was closed last December and she didn’t get one then, so when she saw that it was open today, she took off running. So while Stephen went to get his jacket and Jessica and Mom got a corn dog; Dad and I sat on the bench across from Spoodles and patiently waited. Stephen came around the bend sporting his new jacket (he’s such a kid sometimes, he has to put on new clothes when he buys them J) and then Jessica and Mom came sauntering back over, Jessica in all of her glory. I tried a bite of the corn dog, it was good, but I didn’t think it was amazing, I guess there was so much hype around the corn dog, there was no way the poor thing could stand up to it. We walked down to the Epcot gates and entered the International Gateway. We decided to go around the top of World Showcase, by Future World and start our touring in Mexico. We started walking through the United Kingdom and Canada on our way to Mexico. While we were walking, Stephen decided that something just wasn’t quite right with his shorts. Something was rubbing his thigh and making it uncomfortable to walk around Epcot all night. We still don’t what it was, maybe the linings on his shorts or a bug bite being rubbed—who knows. But it was making him very grumpy, so he decided to go all the way back to our villa and change his shorts, then meet us in China at 8:00, which gave him about 40 minutes to get to the Boardwalk and then back to World Showcase. Looking back it was ridiculous to expect him to go all the way to the Boardwalk from Mexico, get back to our villa, change and then walk all the way back to China all in forty minutes. So when we got to Mexico, Stephen headed back to the Boardwalk and Mom, Dad, Jess, and I went inside the pavilion. The Mexico pavilion is another favorite of mine, it’s themed as a Mexican village at twilight (incidentally, that’s my favorite time of day), the “sky” is a blueish-purpley color and there’s one lone star twinkling in the night sky above the smoldering volcano. The first thing you notice when you walk in the doors in the smell of peppers and spice and it doesn’t matter if you just ate, you smell the heavenly smell of San Angel Inn and your stomach starts growling (at least mine does!). In addition to the large market place in the center of pavilion, there are smaller stores on each side of the pavilion that sell specific items. My favorite is La Familia Fashions, it’s a jewelry store and they have the prettiest little bracelets and necklaces, I like buying souvenirs that say “Disney” to me, but not necessarily a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. There are quite a few very affordable souvenirs in this little shop and when I wear my bracelets from La Familia Fashions, it’s a definite reminder of Walt Disney World. The first thing we decided to do was to jump on El Rio del Tiempo. I know, most people hate this ride and avoid it all costs, but I have to ride this ride at least once every single trip. I love the song (“Welcome, mi amigos to lovely Mexico. Pretty senoritas are everywhere you go.”) they play on the attraction and I would give anything to down load this as my cell phone ring! My favorite part is the last room, where there are fireworks on the ceiling and the people are riding the carousel, but I also really like the room with all the kids in it, it reminds me of “it’s a small world” (another wonderful attraction, in my opinion). I do agree that the scenes of Mexico itself is a bit outdated and that needs to be updated, but PLEASE don’t touch the song! After El Rio del Tiempo, we decided to do some damage and go shopping. Mom, Jess, and I headed over to the La Familia Fashions and Dad decided to look around at the Plaza de los Amigos (the main shopping area). I found a bracelet that I loved, I started to go up to pay for it, but Mom took it out of my hands and told me to consider it a Christmas present, the only bad part was, I had to wait until Christmas before I could get my bracelet. Mom bought some jewelry for my other sisters as well and we went out to find Dad in the plaza. Dad saw the Casa Mexicana area, right across the pavilion from La Familia Fashions, and he wanted to go check it out. I had never been up in this area before, Stephen and I have always rushed past it on our way to San Angel Inn. I’m glad we walked over here, there were some neat stuff on display, there was a video playing of “Modern Mexico”, why can’t they use that footage on El Rio del Tiempo? There was also a table set up with plastic food on it, representing the food of Mexico and what common foods we eat that have ties to ancient Mexico. It was really interesting and informative. I think this would a great place to take some pictures, there was no one up there when we there and the colors used were so vibrant—bright oranges, magentas, golds, and greens. I know they would show up beautifully in a picture. We browsed around the Casa Mexicana for a few minutes before moving on. I definitely will have to show Stephen this little area next time, I think this would be a great place to kick back and relax for a few minutes. We walked over to Norway next; I only had about 10 minutes before I needed to walk over to China to meet Stephen. We went into the Stave Church to kill time; I had never been in here before (I’m having a lot of firsts tonight), although I did know that there was a display inside. It was cool inside, a small exhibit of the history of the stave churches in Norway, I have admit my ignorance here, I always thought the Stave Church was a specific church in Norway, like Notre Dame in France, I did not realize that it is only an architectural style. Who says Disney isn’t educational? A few minutes before 8:00, I walked out of the Stave Church and over to China to meet Stephen. The acrobatic act was going on when I first walked up, so there was a huge spot light lighting up the whole pavilion and I could see really well. I was only standing there maybe 2 minutes when the act was over and the lights went and all of a sudden there were huge crowds of people walking on every side of me that were exiting China. I was trying to get of everyone’s way (I didn’t want to be “that” person who stands in the middle of the aisle in the way) and still watch for Stephen; of course we chose the darkest pavilion to meet up. This was not good planning! I was so sure that Stephen was going to walk right by and we’d miss each other and then we’d spend the rest of the night looking for each other. Thankfully, Stephen walked right up to me, out of breath because he practically sprinted the whole way back from the Boardwalk. He was much more comfortable now and we were ready to have a good time in Epcot. Stephen and I walked back over to Norway and found the gang (can 3 people be considered a gang?) sitting by the Viking ship. We decided to ride Maelstrom; I remember when I wanted to ride this on our first Disney vacation in 1989 when I was 11. My Mom wouldn’t let me ride this because she thought it would be too scary for me. That makes me laugh now. After Maelstrom, we looked around the Puffin’s Roost, I took some pictures in the store, you know, the infamous picture in front of the giant troll and of one of us girls wearing the Viking braids. I took a sniff of Laila on my way out the door, this is my favorite perfume ever and since Stephen surprised me in May a bottle of the perfume and the lotion, I feel like I’m in Norway all the time. Now it was time to finally get my kringle from the Kringla og Bakeri in Norway. This is by far my favorite snack in Disney World; I have been craving one since our last trip in October. A kringle (with almonds) or a sweet pretzel (without almonds) is a pretzel shaped pastry, but it tastes like a cinnamon roll. It is my newest addiction. Stephen and I ordered one to share (I know, what were we thinking??), plus a cappuccino for Stephen and a Diet Coke for me. Stephen and I took our snack over to China and sat on benches and waited while Mom, Dad, and Jessica went back to explore the China pavilion. We did share our kringle with everyone and now they are as hooked as we are. I see many, many kringles in our future. J It was getting close to 9:00 and time for Illuminations: Reflections of Earth to start. We decided to watch it from landing between the Future World and World Showcase Lagoon. We found a spot up by the Disney Traders and sat down to wait for Illuminations. The lights went down and everyone stood up to get a better view of the show. I’m sure everyone in the back was thrilled that we were standing, but what can you do when everyone in front of you stands up? Illuminations was wonderful as always and just when we thought it was over, we had a special surprise of an extra fireworks show timed to an incredible arrangement of “Let There Be Peace On Earth”. I knew there was an extra holiday tag on Illuminations, but I didn’t know it would be so spectacular. I wish we had brought the video camera! Standing there and watching and listening, I had cold chills going up and down my arms, and it wasn’t from the light breeze that was blowing. I would love it if they made this part of the regular show, but I’m sure the “Let There Be Peace on Earth” segment is not cheap, I know that Illuminations is roughly $40,000 a night to put on, I couldn’t imagine how much the holiday version was setting them back. After Illuminations was over, we decided to find a bench to hang out on while the crowds rushed past us. We wanted to take some pictures of some of the holiday decorations and we wanted the crowds to thin out a little, we were in no hurry to get back to the villa. We found an empty bench across from the cookie and coffee cart and sat down and let the masses of people scurry past us. Why is everyone in such a big rush? Sure you may get out of the park in record time, but you’ll still be waiting at the bus stop or in the parking lot forever. I’d much rather stay in Epcot for an extra thirty minutes where you can sit down and listen to the music, watch the fountains dance and enjoy a snack than to stand in the parking lot and smell exhaust fumes. It’s not really that difficult of a decision for me to make. After sitting on the bench for maybe 20 minutes, we realized that the crowds had thinned out considerably. We decided to leave our post and see what the situation in Future World was like. It was almost completely empty, just a few people milling around like us and snapping pictures. And speaking of pictures, we took quite a few of our own—quite a few dozen! But they all turned out so great, that I’m really glad we took the time to take them. Epcot had been closed for about 45 minutes and we decided to head back to the Boardwalk. We didn’t quite close down the park like we did last year, but we came awfully close. Once we got back to the villa, we got into some comfortable clothes (i.e. pajama bottoms and t-shirts), found some snacks for “dinner” and just relaxed before heading off to bed. Day 4—December 14The Plan: Downtown Disney, resort hopping to Saratoga Springs, Old Key West, Port Orleans, PS ‘Ohana 6:50. Watch Wishes from Polynesian beach. Reality: Since today was our “off” day, we decided to sleep in and get up whenever we got up. Once we were all up and functioning, we would go to Downtown Disney for some shopping and some lunch. We got up between 8:00 and 9:00; it felt good to sleep in and take our time getting ready for the day. It wasn’t nearly as warm as yesterday, but it still wasn’t that chilly. We left the villa around 11:00, we decided to drive the car since taking to bus to Downtown Disney can sometimes be a pain and we wanted to do some resort hopping after we were finished shopping. We made it to Downtown Disney all in one piece and found a parking space, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Downtown Disney was packed today, there were a lot school kids here on field trips. I don’t know about you, but when I was in school we went on field trips to the Museum of Natural History and the Art Museum, not to a shopping center. My only guess is that it was the week before Christmas break and the teachers were trying to find ways to fill the days. I wish I had more teachers like that! We headed to the World of Disney first; we decided to look around here for maybe 45 minutes before finding something for lunch. We had a PS for ‘Ohana at 6:50, so we wanted to eat something early and light. I would be furious with myself if I couldn’t eat everything I wanted at ‘Ohana because I was still full from lunch. I think we stayed in the World of Disney for closer to an hour, but we didn’t really have much of a schedule today, so it was no big deal. It was funny to watch Mom, Dad, and Jessica trying to buy Christmas presents for each other, but trying to hide what they were doing so they wouldn’t get caught. Stephen and I were exhausted from keeping everyone away from everyone else; this is why I do all of my shopping before we leave on vacation. J I did by an onesie for my niece to be and a tracksuit for myself, but that’s all the shopping I did, well at least at this store. Everyone was finally ready to go and we headed out to find something to eat. We were planning on trying out the Earl of Sandwich, but the line was out the front door. I’ve heard that the line moves quickly, but it was still too long of a line for us. We didn’t want to eat at the Rainforest Café because we had a PS at the one in Animal Kingdom on Friday, plus there was no way we could eat both Rainforest Café and ‘Ohana in the same day. Jessica was voting for McDonald’s, but we shot her down. We finally decided on Wolf Gang Puck Express because we were running out of options. Stephen and I ate here on the last day of our honeymoon in 2000, but I haven’t eaten here since then. Wolf Gang Puck Express was okay, it was fine for someplace to eat while you’re there, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat here. The way the restaurant is set up, you order your food and you are given a pager, once the pager lights up then you go to another counter to pick your food up. There weren’t many tables in the dining room and the temperature was starting to drop, so we couldn’t eat outside. There was a CM there wiping down tables, but I think each table is supposed to be responsible for throwing their trash away and stacking up dirty dishes by the garbage can. Well, most people were just leaving their dirty dishes on the tables when they got up to leave. The CM cleaning the tables had to bus the dirty tables and wipe them off, there were quite a few people waiting for her to clean the tables so they could sit down. I felt really bad for her, she was rushing around and trying to clean off the tables when she dropped an entire tray full of food and drinks, so not only did she have to clean off the tables, but she also had to clean up the mess she made. When we were looking for a table, we just cleaned off the dirty dishes and the CM came over and wiped the table down for us. It took forever to get our food, we just sat at the table and watched other customers that ordered after us, go up and get their food. None of us got anything difficult, so I’m not really sure what the problem was. Our pagers finally lit up and lunch was on. I ordered the tortilla soup and I just wasn’t feeling it today. I’ve had a couple bites of the soup when Stephen ordered it before, and I liked it, but a whole bowl just wasn’t doing it for me. Stephen ordered the pesto chicken sandwich, so he gave me half of his sandwich and some chips and I gave him my bowl of tortilla soup. Mom and Jessica ordered the crispy chicken and fries off the kid’s menu and my Dad ordered a sandwich, they all liked what they ordered. I think if I had ordered something different, I would have had a much better experience; I did really like the pesto chicken sandwich by the way. After lunch, we decided to split up, us girls were heading to Disney Days of Christmas and the Wonderful World of Memories, I’m not sure where the boys went, but we decided to meet in an hour. We browsed around the Disney Days of Christmas for a few minutes, I found a couple of ornaments to buy, which turned out to be a huge deal because the CM almost didn’t give them to me because she didn’t think my signature on the credit card said “Krista Fulkerson”. I kind of looked at her and gave her my license, and she finally said, “Well, I guess you can have them”. My total was a whopping $15.00. I’m all for credit card safety and precautions, but that was a bit extreme I thought. After my ordeal, we headed off to the Wonderful World of Memories to see if there were any new scrapbooking items. We didn’t find anything and for once we were finished shopping before the hour was up. We decided to go to the Team Mickey Athletic Club and browse around there until it was time to meet Dad and Stephen in the Once Upon A Toy. I called Stephen to see where they were and they were in Summer Sands, which is connected to Team Mickey Athletic Club, so they walked over to where we were. Stephen and I were looking for some Disney Steelers stuff, but we didn’t find any. I have seen a figurine of Mickey Mouse in a Pittsburgh Steelers uniform getting ready to pass the ball, I guess I’m going to have to break down and buy that. No one found anything to buy in the store, so we all headed off the Once Upon A Toy together. We didn’t say there for too long, which was a miracle; Mom had most of her Christmas shopping finished, except for a few odds and ends. We decided to leave Downtown Disney and start our resort hopping; I love checking other resorts out, just to see what they look like and if we would ever like to stay there someday. Although we have our favorites, and it’s hard to leave them, but there’s always room for more favorites, right? We drove over to Old Key West since we were pretty close to that resort, we were originally booked at Old Key West, but we were waitlisted for the Boardwalk. Obviously, the waitlist came through for us, but I still wanted Mom, Dad, and Jessica to see where we almost stayed. We just drove through Old Key West to give everyone a taste of the resort, it was really starting to get chilly and no one wanted to get out and walk around. After Old Key West, we drove over to the Grand Floridian, taking a minor detour through Epcot’s parking lot because someone made a wrong turn. We finally made it to the Grand Floridian, pulled into the guest parking lot and couldn’t find a place to park. What happens when a guest staying at that resort can’t find a place to park? We gave up looking for a parking space and headed over to the Wilderness Lodge. The Wilderness Lodge is another favorite resort of mine, I love being in the lobby, and just sitting on the couch and watching everyone come in and out. I always miss it when we don’t stay here, which is why Stephen and I usually stay at 2 (sometimes 3) different resorts on each vacation—so we can stay at all the resorts we love more often. We find an empty cluster of chairs, so we all sat down and vegged out, which is very easy to do in the lobby of the Wilderness Lodge. We were sitting right in front of Whispering Canyon Café, the food smelled so good, it was making my stomach growl. Stephen and I ate breakfast here on our May trip, but I haven’t eaten here for lunch or dinner yet. If their other meals are as good as their breakfast is, Whispering Canyon Café just might have to join the favorites list. We hung out there for a while, no one really wanted to get up, but we knew we had to be at ‘Ohana in a couple of hours. We got back in the car and I suggested we go check out Saratoga Springs, the new DVC resort that opened in May. I know we were just there when we were at Downtown Disney and Old Key West, but I’m pretty sure I made the comment that I would like to see Saratoga Springs, but when someone made the wrong turn, we missed the road for the resort. We had plenty of time before our PS so it was either go back and sit in the villa, or check out more resorts. We decided to check out more resorts. We got over to Saratoga Springs pretty quickly, and pulled up to an empty resort (we learned later that parking is by the buildings, so there isn’t one central guest parking lot), we got out of the car and we were greeted with a blast of cold air. It was so windy and cold; it felt like we were back in Ohio and not in Florida. We ran across the parking lot into the Carriage House, where the lobby is, just to get inside. I was very impressed with Saratoga Springs, it’s a very pretty resort and I think it’s going to be awesome when it’s finished. All of the buildings are painted a nice, calming color and they are all different colors. The lobby is decorated in comfortable elegance, every chair is comfy and I could definitely curl up with a good book for hours, but everything still looks very elegant. The lobby reminds me a little bit of the Boardwalk, but not as big and not as bright. The theme of the resort is upstate New York and horse racing, so there is horse and racing memorabilia everywhere. In the kid’s room, where kids can wait for their parents to check in, there are pictures of different Disney horses hanging on the wall. We walked down the hall to Artist’s Palette, the counter service restaurant and the gift shop, everything was decorated so beautifully with lots of dark woods accented by lighter wood and the colors of walls were so relaxing. The gift shop was okay, your basic resort gift shop and the counter service was nice for quick meals, lunch if you were at the pool for example, but I wouldn’t count on the Artist’s Palette for a real meal, which is the one thing Saratoga Springs is missing: a sit down restaurant. I think the idea behind not putting in a sit down restaurant is that this is vacation club villas, there are kitchens in every villa, plus Downtown Disney is a 5-minute walk away and there are plenty of places to eat there, not to mention all of the other wonderful restaurants all around the Walt Disney World resort area. I really don’t think not having a sit down restaurant would be that big of a deal to us; there are too many options for it to ruin your vacation. It was cold outside, but I wanted to run out and take a look at the pool and the spa, it was more like a glimpse, I’ll have to come back on a warmer day to check it all out, but from what I could tell, the pool was very nice. I especially loved the Donald Duck fountain for the kids; it looked like lots of fun and something I’d love to try. I could only stand to be outside for a few minutes before I had to go back in the Carriage House. We decided to head on back to the Boardwalk, we had about an hour and a half before our PS, so we had just enough time to kick off our shoes and relax for a few minutes. Our PS was for 6:50, so we left the villa at 6:20, we drove our car since going from resort to resort takes a long time and it’s a huge pain in the neck. We pulled into the Polynesian parking lot (aloha) and found a place to park pretty easily. We walked into the Great Ceremonial House and I took a nice, deep breath. I love the smell of the Great Ceremonial House, to me that smell says vacation. I was so looking forward to this meal, as I said earlier, ‘Ohana is my favorite place to eat in Walt Disney World. I have been looking forward to this meal for 3 months, since our last trip in September/October. We walked up the stairs to where ‘Ohana is located on the second floor. It was a mad house up there, because it was so cold out, the Spirit of Aloha Polynesian Luau had been cancelled for the evening. Everyone who had reservations at the luau were trying to get into ‘Ohana, which was already pretty much booked solid for the night. The luau performers were in the Tambu Lounge doing a very abbreviated show. You can imagine the chaos. Stephen walked over to the podium to check us in, and the rest of us tried to find a corner to stand in and wait. The wait wasn’t that long, maybe 10-15 minutes and soon enough (well, it’s never soon enough J) our pager started blinking. It was time for the feasting to begin. We met our “cousin” at the podium and she walked us in, explaining that “’ohana” means family and we are one big, happy family. She stopped to grab a loaf of the Hawaiian bread, walked us past the huge fire pit where the meat was grilling and took us to our table. We had a terrific table, right between 2 of the huge, picture windows and a view of Main Street, USA and Cinderella Castle. You can’t really ask for a better table. Our waiter came around to take our drink orders, he was back very quickly and his assistant was 2 steps behind him carrying the appetizer tray. The appetizers at ‘Ohana consist of: honey-coriander wings (my absolute favorite), green salad with a honey lime dressing, shrimp and vegetable wontons, stir fried rice, and stir fried green beans. The only thing I don’t like on the appetizer tray is the shrimp wontons, because I don’t eat shrimp, but I load up on everything else. I was a little worried about there being enough food for the 5 of us, ‘Ohana is all you can eat, and the servers just keep bringing you more of whatever item you want. So, I knew that wasn’t going to be a problem, but I was worried about the servers being busy with other tables and not realize right away that we were low on something. I just wanted everyone to eat what they wanted and as much as they wanted. My worries were for nothing, our servers were wonderful; they paid close attention to what we were eating and were quick with the refills. Mom and Jessica are pretty picky eaters, I was a little concerned that they wouldn’t like the appetizers, but they liked them okay. I think they tried everything once and then just ate a bunch of what they liked the best. About 20 minutes into our meal, our servers started bringing around the grilled meats, which are: turkey (my favorite), pork, steak, and tiger shrimp. I absolutely stuffed myself this meal; it was so good. I think I could eat this every day of our vacation, of course I’d weigh 500 pounds by the end of the week, but it would be so worth it. When the servers could tell we were slowing down, they brought around the warm wash cloths so we could wipe off our hands, is anyone else tempted to lay the warm wash cloth on your face?? I think it’s always so chilly in ‘Ohana, that I need some warming up! And then dessert came: pineapple and caramel sauce. I’m not a huge pineapple eater, I am learning to eat it, but put it with caramel sauce and I could eat the whole thing! Another fantastic meal at ‘Ohana, not a big surprise, we’ve only had wonderful meals here. Since tonight was Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party in the Magic Kingdom, Wishes was not scheduled until 9:00. By the time we finished eating, it was a little after 8:00. We decided to walk over to the Grand Floridian using the path that starts at the Polynesian, goes past the Wedding Chapel and Spa, and comes out by the Grand Floridian pool. We walked at a very brisk pace since it wasn’t exactly 80 degrees out. Once we made it to the Grand Floridian, Mom, Dad, and Jessica decided to check out the shops on the second level; Stephen and I stayed in the lobby and admired the gigantic tree and the life sized gingerbread house that was doubling as a candy store. I was still completely full from dinner, but smelling the gingerbread house did me in, I had to buy a piece of gingerbread, but for later certainly not now. The gingerbread piece that I got was a shingle on the roof and it was covered with chocolate. I couldn’t wait to try a bite, but the thought of food right now made me sick to my stomach. Stephen and I took our purchase over to the couch while we waited for everyone else to come downstairs. We saw some fellow Steelers fans, their kids had on Ward and Burress jerseys, and so we talked to them for a few minutes. It was getting close to 9:00 and they finally came downstairs, I’m not sure what was so interesting up there, but it gave Stephen and I chance to sit and talk and listen to the orchestra play, so I wasn’t really complaining. We didn’t think we would get all the way back to the Poly beach before Wishes started, so we decided to see how far we’d have to go down the walkway to be able to see the Magic Kingdom. We got down to the Wedding Pavilion before we could see Wishes; a CM who stopped to watch the show and 2 raccoons soon joined us. The CM was fine, the raccoons made us a little nervous; they don’t have the reputation of being the friendliest animals. I can see the headlines now: “Family Attacked in Walt Disney World By Killer Raccoons”, but the raccoons were so tame, they just kind of looked at us and went back into the bushes. I’m guessing all of the animals that live at Walt Disney World are for the most part pretty tame, except for maybe the alligators. It was really cool watching Wishes from outside the park; it was easier to see of the fireworks that make shapes, like the hearts and the frowning face. It was especially neat to see the perimeter fireworks, from inside the park it was hard to be able to tell where they were being shot off from, but standing outside of the Magic Kingdom, it was pretty clear to see where they were being released. By the time Wishes was over, we were almost frozen solid, so we decided to go back into the Great Ceremonial House to warm up, plus Mom was looking for the Polynesian model for the monorail set. I bought Stephen the monorail last year for Christmas, he got Space Ship Earth and the Contemporary for his birthday and Mom was looking for the Polynesian for Christmas. We walked in the doors and I told Stephen that Mom and I needed to look in the shops really fast, he just rolled his eyes and went up stairs with Dad because he could hear the performers from the luau doing another show. You’d think after 7 years of being together and 4 years of marriage that he’d be used to me shopping all the time. No luck on finding the Polynesian model, but we still had plenty of time to look for it. We went upstairs to find Dad and Stephen watching the performance and Jessica drooling over the “hula boys” in loin clothes. Just wait until she sees Tarzan!! We took a couple of pictures by the orange Christmas trees by the door to the monorail and the gingerbread model of the Polynesian Resort. We were ready to head back to the Boardwalk, I think we looked at everything we wanted to and it was too cold to tour the grounds of the Polynesian. When we got back to the villa, we all got ready for bed and then passed out in a food coma. Day 4—December 15The Plan: Magic Kingdom, PS Tony’s Town Square 1:05 Reality: We woke up bright and early for our day in the Magic Kingdom. We went to bed a little earlier last night, so we were well rested. It was still chilly today, so we had to dress pretty warm, but the sun was so bright, that I didn’t really mind the cooler temperatures. We got ready quickly, had a quick bite for breakfast and then we were out the door. We only had to wait a few minutes for a bus to the Magic Kingdom and then we were on our way. There’s nothing better in the entire world than walking down Main Street, USA and heading toward Cinderella Castle. There’s just something so magical about the Magic Kingdom, you walk through the gates underneath the train station and it’s like you’re a kid again and you believe in make believe and pixie dust and everything that might have been a concern seems to vanish. And that’s why Stephen and I love Walt Disney World so much and come down every chance we get, it’s an escape from the real world and a chance to go back to simpler times where the hardest decision you need to make is what flavor ice cream to get. We started walking down Main Street, USA and heading for Fantasyland when the Trolley Song Show (you know the one, “clang, clang clang goes the trolley; ding, ding, ding goes the bell”) started. This is probably my single favorite show in Walt Disney World, we all stopped to watch and it was a great start to the morning. There were people rushing by us trying to get to the attractions, I just wanted to grab them by the shoulders and say “Stop and watch the show. This is Disney magic at it’s finest!” But I just let them rush by and we enjoyed the show. Once it was over, we continued on to Fantasyland, hoping to do everything we wanted to do before the crowds hit. Our first stop was everyone’s favorite: Peter Pan’s Flight, in keeping with tradition, my Mom and Dad rode by themselves (when we were younger, they used to tell us they kissed in all the dark parts) and Stephen, Jessica, and I got in our pirate ship. There was no one in the pirate ship in front of us and behind us were just Mom and Dad and several empty ships, so we took advantage of the situation and took a couple pictures in the attraction. I won’t spoil any secrets, but when a flash goes off, lots of things you are not supposed to see light up, looking at picture, I can say I had no idea Peter Pan’s Flight was really like that. After getting off of Peter Pan’s Flight, we walked over to Mickey’s PhilharMagic, which is a wonderful 3-D attraction. We were expecting to have to get a fastpass, but Fantasyland was completely empty and we were able to get right in line. After waiting for a few minutes, the doors to the auditorium opened and we were ushered in, we got behind a group of people and were able to get seats in the middle of the row. Since we didn’t have to climb over anyone, I didn’t notice if people were stopping in the middle of the row instead of going all the way to the end. Mickey’s PhilharMagic was wonderful, like always and a definite improvement to the Magic Kingdom. My favorite part is when Aladdin and Jasmine are flying on the magic carpet through the streets of Agrabah. I love how it feels like you’re flying along side of them; the technology used to produce the film is outstanding. We rode Snow White’s Scary Adventure after Mickey’s PhilharMagic and then headed out of Fantasyland. I was really surprised as to how empty the Magic Kingdom was this morning; it was like we had the park to ourselves. I love vacationing in the off-season! We decided to check out Frontierland next, we walked past the now defunct Diamond Horseshoe Saloon and saw Jessie and Bullseye doing a meet and greet. Of course we had to stop to snap a picture, the CM inside told us that Woody would be out in just a few minutes if we wanted to stick around. There was a separate line for Woody only; we waited maybe 5 minutes for the cowboy to make his big appearance. I was completely surprised as to how tall Woody was! I think I only came up to his waist, granted I’m only 5’1”, but Woody’s middle name must be Goliath! While Mom, Jessica, and I were meeting the gang from Toy Story 2, Dad became the designated photographer and Stephen went to buy an ice cream bar. I don’t know why those boys don’t want to meet the characters, it’s not like they’re gonna bite. J After the photo session was over, we decided to head over to Bid Thunder Mountain Railroad—the ONLY roller coaster in the world my Mom will ride. I wanted to ride Splash Mountain, that’s my favorite ride in Walt Disney World, but it was way too cold, I’ll have to catch it next time. We were all walking along, minding our own business when all of the sudden a cart full of the elusive Stitch Santa hats were spotted. Of course Stephen didn’t really want one now that the Christmas party was over, but we walked over so he could try one on just for kicks. It’s probably a good thing we didn’t find one until now, the hats are made very small (we had to double check to make sure these were adults hats and not juniors) and it fit very snugly on Stephen’s head. If he would have found the hat on Sunday, he would have bought it and worn it, even though it was too small and then Stephen would have had a killer headache the entire night. But it was nice that we found it and now Stephen could have closure. J After many detours, we finally made it over to the “wildest ride in the wilderness”—Big Thunder Mountain Rail Road. There was hardly any line and we were able to walk through the queue and right up to the train. Mom and Dad rode in the front of our little line, Stephen was in the middle and Jessica and I were bringing up the rear. Everyone really enjoyed the ride and I’m always surprised as to how long the roller coaster is, I always forget it and I think it’s over when we’re really only half way. And have you noticed how hard it is to keep your hands up in the air on that ride? I never hold on to the bars on any roller coaster, but I always have to hang on for dear life on Big Thunder or else I get thrown around like a rag doll. My shoulders are always a little sore when I get off. Since we were right next to one of the stops for the Walt Disney World Rail Road, we decided to ride it over to Mickey’s Toon Town to see the Big Mouse at his house (hey, that rhymes J), The rest of the Magic Kingdom was dead, but of course Mickey’s Toon Town was hopping and there was a line to meet Mickey Mouse. Granted the line to meet him was nowhere as long as it would be in the summer time, but for the off-season and based on what we’ve seen so far this week, the line was pretty long. I think we ended waiting maybe 20 minutes, but it was worth it. It doesn’t seem right to go to Walt Disney World and not get to see the star of the show. We spent a few minutes taking pictures with Mickey and then we took some pictures of his house and Minnie’s house before taking the walkway to Tomorrowland. We only had 45 minutes until our PS, so we wanted to check out the wait times for some rides. Of course we got sidetracked, imagine that, when we saw Stitch doing a meet and greet. Everyone loves Stitch, so we went ahead and got in line. I know Stitch has the reputation for being kind of rotten or even a troublemaker, but he was being very sweet for once and kept hugging on us and he kept trying to get the CM’s attention to take a group picture of all of us. Wasn’t that nice? After meeting Stitch, we saw Buzz Lightyear over by the Plaza Pavilion, so we headed over there next. We all did the “To Infinity and Beyond” salute and Buzz was very impressed that we loved him so much. Meeting Buzz and Stitch took about 20 minutes, so we decided to just take our time walking down Main Street before going to lunch at Tony’s Town Square restaurant. We walked into Tony’s, expecting a little bit of a wait, but we were shown to our table immediately. The CM took us to our table out in the sunroom, I would have loved to be seated by the window, but we were shown a table over in the corner. I was a little apprehensive about eating at Tony’s; the menu looked wonderful, but I had heard some questionable reviews about the restaurant. All in all, I was extremely pleased and I would definitely eat here again, but based on the prices for dinner, I would only eat here for lunch. The restaurant was very pretty, the main part of the restaurant was very reminiscent of Tony’s Restaurant in “Lady and the Tramp”, all the woodwork was very dark and all of the tables were covered with classic red and white-checkered tablecloths. The sunroom was the exact opposite of the main room, it had the same red and white checkered tablecloths, but the décor was very bright, the furniture and the walls were white. It was very lovely and I’m really glad we got a table out there. Our server was good too, not as personable as other servers that we’ve had, but friendly and efficient. We started our meal with breadsticks and marinara sauce, they were pretty much your basic Italian breadsticks, they were good, but nothing spectacular. But really what can you do with breadsticks and marinara sauce? Lunch was very good; Dad and Stephen both ordered the spaghetti and meatballs, or should I say meatball. The meatball was in the middle of the spaghetti and I’m not kidding or exaggerating, the meatball was as big as softball. It was easiest the biggest meatball I have ever seen in my life. They both really liked the spaghetti and meatball, and no, they didn’t finish it. Mom got the meatball sub and a salad, while Jessica ordered the Pizza Bianca. Mom liked her meatball sub, but Jessica wasn’t crazy about her pizza. It was a cheese pizza with a garlic sauce instead of traditional pizza sauce and was topped with mozzarella and ricotta cheese. I tried a small piece of the pizza and I really liked it, but the cheese was very strong and rich and Jessica is kind of a picky eater, so I’m not surprised that she didn’t really care for it. For lunch I had the soup and half of sandwich combo, I chose the minestrone soup and a chicken panini. It was the perfect lunch. The soup was very good and very warm—nice on a chilly day. The chicken panini was good as well, but not great, I would order it again, but I don’t crave the sandwich or miss it when I’m at home. Overall I was pleased with Tony’s Town Square Restaurant, it wasn’t as wonderful as ‘Ohana or Le Cellier, but it was good and we had a nice lunch and I would eat here again. Oh, and it goes without saying, Stephen and I did recreate the infamous Lady and the Tramp spaghetti kissing scene. J After lunch we walked over to the Le Chapeau store to get Mickey Mouse ears, I was getting them for a co-workers baby and my nephew Jacob (Stephen’s sister’s baby) and my Mom was getting some for my niece Shelby who somehow never got a pair of ears and for friends of hers that are now Disney converts. I can’t believe how quick the CM’s are about embroidering the mouse ears. It took her literally 10 seconds and wah-la personalized Mickey Mouse ears. I really think everyone should have a pair. It was now Dad’s favorite time of the day: Adventureland and the Jungle Cruise. Yes, I know the Jungle Cruise is extremely cheesy and dated, but I can’t help but love it. I always think the CM’s who work here have the best jobs in the Magic Kingdom, they always seem like they’re having loads of fun. We heard a couple of new jokes, I’m not sure if the CM’s are ad libbing more or if they have some new material, but it was nice not to hear the same exact spiel. Since we were in the neighborhood, we walked over to The Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management. We walked up right when the show was starting, so we didn’t get to see the pre show, which is my favorite part. I know a lot people don’t care much for The Enchanted Tiki Room, but we like it just fine. I don’t remember the old version and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I have ever seen it, so I can’t compare the two. I think the new version is funny and I think Disney has to update some of the attractions to incorporate some of the newer characters that kids know and people want to see. And if you aren’t a big fan of Iago and Zazu, at least it’s a break from the heat, or in our case, a break from the cold. I wanted to get a dole whip, I love those things, which is weird because I’m not a huge pineapple eater, but they are so refreshing. Of course, the weather wasn’t exactly ideal for eating ice cream, so I decided to skip having one this trip. We’re going to have to talk Mom and Dad into a spring or fall trip where we can enjoy the little things like ice cream and Splash Mountain without being miserable for the rest of the day. Everyone voted on one more ride on The Pirates of the Caribbean, such a classic, is there anyone who doesn’t like this ride? On second thought, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know anyone who doesn’t love this attraction. We had done everything we wanted to do in Adventureland, so we crossed the Hub and walked to Tomorrowland to finish up what we skipped to go to lunch. Up first was one of my favorite’s: Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin, I used to be really good at this attraction, I have maxed out my score and made galactic hero 3 or 4 times, but in the past year I have seemed to have lost my touch. Now, I’m lucky if I make it to space ranger. But I certainly have fun trying to make galactic hero. The cars on this ride only have 2 guns, so Stephen graciously volunteered to ride by himself, what a guy. I can’t really remember what anyone’s score was, so they must not have been that great. The Carousel of Progress was running, so that’s where we went to next. The Carousel of Progress is tied with Splash Mountain as my favorite attraction in Walt Disney World. I know it isn’t the most thrilling ride or a technological masterpiece, but I still love it. I think it’s the simplicity of the attraction that I love it so much, the concept is to follow a family through each era and watch how their lives change because of technology. It’s a glimpse back in time to when electric lights or horseless carriages where considered huge accomplishments to the world. We kept the theme of simplicity and jumped on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority after the Carousel of Progress. Jess, Stephen, and I got in one car, letting Mom and Dad have their own car. How good did to feel to sit down and stretch our legs out and take a nice, leisurely spin around Tomorrowland? It felt wonderful. When we passed through Space Mountain, we noticed there wasn’t a line. Jess, Stephen, and I made plans to head there next. Dad does ride roller coasters, but Mom does not, especially Space Mountain. I think she was mad at us for days last year when we talked her into riding it. After the TTA, us “kids” went to Space Mountain and planned to meet Mom and Dad in the arcade in about 30 minutes. Our ride through the galaxy was so much fun and even though I always promise Stephen that I’ll keep my arms and legs inside the car at all times, I kept my arms up the entire time. I love the feeling of cresting over that first hill, diving into the darkness and having the breeze blow past you; I think that’s how it must feel to be a bird in flight. I have a special bond with Space Mountain; it was the first roller coaster I ever rode when I was 11. Space Mountain made me the coaster-loving thrill junkie that I am today. J All too quickly the ride was over and we were riding up the moving sidewalks hearing that distinctive song that says “Tomorrowland”. We looked around in the arcade, but we didn’t see Mom and Dad yet, it hadn’t been quite 30 minutes. Stephen got some quarters to play a couple of video games (I know, I’m married to a 12-year old) and Jessica and I looked around in the store. Mom and Dad came into the arcade, looked around, but didn’t see us in the back, so they left thinking we weren’t off the ride yet. After about 40 minutes, we went outside to see if maybe they were walking around. Wouldn’t you know they were on the other side of the plants? We finally ran into each other. It was about 3:00 and we decided to head back to the villa for a quick break. Tonight was the only showing of SpectroMagic Light Parade, so we would be definitely be back for that. But we needed to go back for a few minutes to put on warmer clothes and kick our gym shoes off for a minute or two. SpectroMagic was scheduled for 6:00, so we knew we had to be back for 5:00, it’s times like these when I wish the Boardwalk were closer to the Magic Kingdom. The commute would take us longer than our break would be, but it was starting to get chilly and we didn’t want to buy warmer clothes, so we just hoped for buses to come quickly. Luck was on our side and we made it back to the villa shortly, we even had a few minutes to sit and relax before layering the clothes for the evening. I don’t know about anyone else, but I felt like Randy on the classic movie, “A Christmas Story”, I had on 2 pairs of pants (light-weight pajama pants under my jeans), I think 3 or 4 shirts (tank top, short sleeved, long sleeved, sweat shirt) a jacket, my gloves, and a hat. I’m sure I was still not exactly warm; it stinks being cold blooded!! We made it back in the Magic Kingdom right at 5:00, Main Street; USA was filling up, but not completely full. We did find an empty curb right in front of the Main Street Bakery, how in the world did we luck out? Now we can watch SpectroMagic and smell the wonderful aroma flowing out of the bakery. We quickly sat down and claimed our space. Jessica decided that she needed to have a chocolate chip cookie from the bakery (who can blame her? The cookies there are heavenly), so she got up and walked in there. I know she was in there for at least 20 minutes, maybe even 30, Mom got up to check on her, to make sure she was okay. Jess was just then placing her order for a cookie and a Coke, she said the bakery was absolutely horrendous, there were people everywhere trying to order and pick up their order. She made it out alive, but barely. J While we were waiting for the parade to begin and for Jessica to get back from her adventures, a CM came up to Stephen and I and asked if we would mind taking a survey. Yes! Walt Disney World is the only place I will participate in a survey, maybe now we can get those elusive postcard rates. It was a very general survey about the Magic Kingdom, how long had we been there, what rides did we ride, what were our opinions on the attractions, etc. It only took a few minutes and then the CM moved on to more guests. Finally Jiminy Cricket’s announcement that SpectroMagic was going to begin in 5 minutes and a few minutes later, the lights on Main Street were lowered (it was cool, because the CM that controls the lights was standing right in front of us, he said “Lights” into a headset and boom! the lights began to dim, how great it must be to have that power!). SpectroMagic Light Parade is the absolute, best parade in the entire world. I could watch it every night and not get bored or tired of it. I got some great pictures of the parade; we lucked into getting an awesome spot on the parade route. Jessica was calling me the paparazzi because I was yelling out to the characters to have them look at me so I could get their picture. I’m sorry, I just get caught up in things, but I did get a lot of pictures with the characters looking at me, so it worked. Wishes was scheduled to start at 7:00, so we wanted to stay close to the Hub after SpectroMagic passed us. We were freezing, so we ducked into the Emporium to warm up, as did everyone else. The store was packed! Mom was trying to figure out a way to buy Stephen the Polynesian model for the monorail set without being caught. It was a mess! First we got Stephen away from Mom so she could buy it, but when she went to get her wallet, she realized that Dad had all of her credit cards. So, we had to hunt down Dad and send him to her and keep Stephen away from the registers so he couldn’t see anything. He finally decided to go outside and wait for us—thank goodness!! Since we were checking out of the Boardwalk on Friday and the package was supposed to be delivered on Friday, we just let them know that we were checking into the Animal Kingdom Lodge and they were able to deliver it there. It’s a good thing, because there was no way Mom could have kept that huge box hidden from Stephen for the evening. I didn’t want to go back outside, but it was almost time for Wishes. We found Stephen and Dad outside (Dad bailed too) and we found a spot in front of the Emporium. Not our usual spot by the Partners statue, but a good viewing area just the same. I don’t need to say how great Wishes was, it goes without saying that it’s a wonderful show and has a lot of sentimentality in it. That’s why I love it so much. The night was still young, just a little after 7:00, so we decided to do something we rarely do: leave a park right at closing, we were heading back over to Epcot for another showing of Illuminations. We weren’t tired and we were warm enough, so that was the plan. We walked out of the Magic Kingdom, under the train station, we heard giggling from above and behind us, we turned around and there was Mickey Mouse standing on the train station waving good-bye and telling us “see ya real soon!” It was so neat seeing him waving good-bye, I have never seen that before, it was a nice sprinkling of pixie dust. We walked out to the bus stop and since the park just closed, there was a bus waiting at the bus station. No one needed to go back to the villa for anything, so we got off at the bus stop at the Boardwalk and walked to Epcot via the International Gateway. There is absolutely nothing in the world better than the World Showcase at night. Nothing. It is my most favorite time of the day in my most favorite park. Since we hadn’t eaten since lunch at Tony’s Town Square and it was vacation, we decided to head to Kringla Bakeri og Café for dinner. Excellent choice. Mom, Dad, and I got kringles—there would be no sharing this time, Jessica got a cinnamon roll, and Stephen was the only level-headed one and went to Cantina de San Angel for a plato combinacion. Yes, I did share some of my kringle with Stephen, but only a little bit. He offered me some of what he was eating, but I politely declined, I wasn’t going to waste any of my stomach space! I ended up not being able to eat all of my kringle, so I had this brilliant idea that I would save it and eat it later in the evening or tomorrow. I took a plate that someone was finished with and I put it on top of my plate and then I took a hair band that was in my backpack and I wrapped it around both plates. Sounds like a pretty good set-up, right? Well, it wasn’t, my kringle dried out overnight and it was as hard as a brick the next morning. The moral of the story: no matter how full you are, choke down the kringle because they don’t keep very well. We finished “dinner” and went to look for a spot for Illuminations. Even though it was about 8:45 there were tons of great viewing areas available. I think because it was so cold that night, people decided to forgo Illuminations to get back to their resorts to warm up. We found a spot behind the wall in front of Morocco; it was nice having that wall there because it did break some of the wind. Thankfully, the wind wasn’t blowing in our direction during Illuminations, been there, done that and it’s not fun at all. We all huddled together whiling waiting for the show to begin to try to generate some body heat to warm up. Once Illuminations started, we did get a little warming because of giant fireball—that felt so good, like standing in front of a humongous bonfire. After Illuminations, they did the “Let There Be Peace on Earth” ending and again I got cold chills. Speaking of cold, we were freezing so we had to break our normal schedule of hanging out in the parks for a little while and head straight back to the villa to warm up. I thought Florida was supposed to be warm? But I must say, it was warmer this year than last year. We walked back to the resort and headed straight for our room. We all changed into some comfy and warmer pajamas and watched television (I’m sure I read my book) until we all headed off to our respective beds. Day 5—12/16The Plan: MGM, PS Sci-Fi Dine In Theatre 1:05 Reality: MGM was set to open at 9:00 and our goal was to get there as close as opening as we could. I set the alarm for a little before 8:00 the night before, but I had a really hard time getting up this morning. It seems the further into the vacation you are, the harder it is to get up and going in the morning. After listening to Stephen telling me to get up about a gazillion times, I finally got out of bed and started to get ready for the day. MGM is definitely my least favorite park, sure there are attractions there that I love, like Rock ‘n Roller Coaster, Tower of Terror, and Muppets 3-D, but the rest of the park I can pretty much take it or leave it. So on MGM day, I’m never motivated to get out of bed and get moving. When I was all ready, I walked out into the rest of the villa to see everyone else’s status. Dad and Stephen were eating breakfast, Jessica was getting ready, and Mom was MIA—no one had seen her yet this morning. I grabbed a poptart while waiting for Mom to get back and Jessica to get ready. Jessica was finally ready and eating breakfast; Mom still wasn’t back, so I went in search for her. I ran into her down in the lobby by the elevator bank. She got up early this morning and went down to the Boardwalk and then went shopping in the Character Caravan, now you know where I get my love of shopping. Mom and I walked back up to the room and by that time everyone was ready to go. Today was cool, but not as cold as the night before and it was extremely sunny—a beautiful day. We used the path to MGM and it was a very nice walk, not long at all, I think it only took us 10 minutes and we weren’t running or speed walking. We got in the park and headed straight to Sunset Boulevard for Rock ‘n Roller Coaster and the Hollywood Hotel Tower of Terror. Stephen and I have been trying to get Jessica on these rides for at least a year and a half. We finally talked her into the Tower of Terror, but she still wimped out on Rock ‘n Roller Coaster. Dad rode both of them last year, but vowed never again. The three of us walked over to the Tower of Terror to get fastpasses and then Stephen and I walked over to the Rock ‘n Roller Coaster. The ride was a complete walk-on, so Mom, Dad, and Jessica just decided to sit and wait for us since it would only be a few minutes. What a terrific ride! I’m so glad that Disney is slowly putting in thrill rides; I’m excited to take on Expedition Everest in 2006. We found the gang in the Rock ‘n Roller Coaster courtyard; we grabbed a very nervous Jessica and walked over to Tower of Terror. We had fastpasses, but we didn’t need them at all, we walked right up to the door of the hotel and we were the only group waiting to go into the library for a few minutes. While we were waiting, I showed Jessica the “secret” message on the activity board and then the door opened to the library. We watched the Twilight Zone clip (it was so nice not to hear any 12-year old girls screaming in your ears) and the doors opened to the boiler room. We walked right up to an elevator and lucked out by having seats in the front row, well, at least I thought we lucked out, Jessica may have felt differently. As far as themeing goes, I think the Tower of Terror is one of the best themed attractions in Walt Disney World; my favorite part is going through all of the rooms in the dark, getting up to the towers. I still can’t figure out how the ghosts appear, but that is the coolest part. We finally got into the tower and started to rise and rise and rise. All of a sudden, the doors opened and we went flying down and then up and then down again and just when we thought we were safe, down we went again. I love the random drop sequence! Jessica survived the Tower of Terror, but I’m not sure she’s in a rush to experience it again! We met Mom and Dad outside by Rosie’s All American Café and made our way over to the Animation Courtyard. I’ve wanted to see The Magic of Disney Animation for a long time, plus that was the only place they were having a meet and greet with the Incredibles. The entrance was kind of hard to find and once we found it, all we could see was a big crowd and no one really knew what they were waiting for. Some people thought they were waiting for the show and others thought it was to meet the Incredibles. Everyone was right, we were all just confused, you had to sit through the animation show to get to the meet and greet area. The doors opened to the theatre and we all found seats together. The show was cute, but I was disappointed with the whole thing. I always thought it was more than a CM pretending to be an animator and showing us how they created Mushuu from Mulan. After that little show, I thought there would be more, but that was basically it. The theatre opened to an interactive area where you could see what Disney character you are (I’m Belle J) and practice drawing characters, things like that, but it was nothing special. Maybe it was at one time, but as far as I’m concerned, they are just wasting space back there. There was a line to meet Mr. Incredible, Stephen complained, but we got in line anyway. I love meeting new characters; I don’t care if I am 26 years old! The waiting area had cells from the movie hanging on the walls, it was pretty neat to see them in a freeze frame, there is quite a bit of detail in each scene. We must have just missed the Incredibles, because we waited I’d say 20-25 minutes, finally the door opened and out came Mr. Incredible. The meet and greet can be with Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, or Mr. Frozone, all we got was Mr. Incredible. Wow is he big! I guess you have to be pretty big to bench press freight trains and save the world from Syndrome. After meeting Mr. Incredible, we did a couple of the interactive games and then browsed through the store there. I don’t think we’ll be coming back to The Art of Disney Animation until some things change. On the way through the Animation Courtyard, we stopped and got fastpasses for The Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Jessica loves the Little Mermaid. Ever since she first saw the movie in 1989, Ariel has been her favorite princess. We tried to watch the show last December, but we just ran out of time, so it was a high priority this year. We got fastpasses for the 11:30 show and headed down Mickey Avenue to see what we could do to pass the time until the show. We got down to the garage door where Mike Wazowski and Sulley do their meet and greet when Mom saw that they were getting ready to come out. Mom can never turn a character down, so we sat on the wall in front of the sign. The only problem was that the meet and greet was supposed to start like 10 minutes before the Voyage of the Little Mermaid started. We were first in line, but we had to make sure that no one snuck in front of us and that Mike and Sulley came out right on time. It was going to be a tight commute, but we decided to risk it. Mike and Sulley were on time, and we ran up there, handed our camera to the CM and took off like rockets after the picture was snapped. I don’t think they knew what hit them. J We ran back down Mickey Avenue and into the theatre right when the CM’s were letting everyone else in. Whew! That was close! Since everyone is dumped into a big open room, we could maneuver around and not be stuck at the back of the bunch. The doors opened and we followed the crowd in, do you have any idea how hard it is to keep 5 people together when people are pushing and shoving into you? I never realized that Stephen and I had it so easy as a party of 2. We found seats in about the 5th row back and we ended up near the middle of the row. Nice! The Voyage of the Little Mermaid is an okay show, the “Under the Sea” song is really cool with the puppets and the black lights and Ursula is impressive, but other than that, it’s just Ariel sitting on a rock singing and clips of the movie. If you have never seen the movie, the show wouldn’t make any sense at all. There is no comparison between The Voyage of the Little Mermaid and say Festival of the Lion King, or even Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage, but I’m glad that we did it at least once. And for the record, Prince Eric steals the show! We were getting close to our PS for Sci-Fi Dine In Theatre, but we had time to squeeze in one show of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire—Play It. Stephen and I always do really well on this attraction and we always end up in the top 10 (once we were #1 and #2 on the leader board), but we have never made it to the hot seat. Which is fine with me, I have no desire to be sitting there with all of those people staring at me. In fact in 2002 (or was it 2003?), I was #1 on the leader board and missed a question on purpose, the person in the hot seat missed it as well, so I came really close to having to go down there. Stephen thinks I’m crazy, but that’s just the way I am. We both made it on the leader board for this show, but I can’t remember what numbers we were. Everyone sitting around us made a big deal about us being in the top 10, made me feel smart, well almost. J It was finally time for lunch, I was starving!! I was excited for Mom, Dad, and Jessica to try out Sci-Fi. I was pretty sure my parents would like it, getting to relive their youth at a drive-in theatre and all. The only thing I don’t really like about the restaurant is how the cars are set up with 2 people to a row and 6 to a car. It’s not a huge deal and I don’t know how the set-up could be changed, but I felt bad for Stephen having to sit in the middle all alone. He said he didn’t care; it just gave him more room to spread out. We ordered the onion rings as an appetizer and some Cokes all around. I consider myself somewhat of an onion ring connoisseur and I can tell you, the onion rings at Sci-Fi are outstanding! I was very pleased with our lunch here, Stephen and I have eaten here once before and it was okay, but nothing great. We made the PS because everyone loved 50’s Prime Time last year, but wanted to try a new restaurant and I was pretty sure that Mom and Dad would love the theme of Sci-Fi. This experience was much different than last time and different for the better. Our waiter was wonderful, he had been at Sci-Fi since the day it opened and you could tell that he really loved his job. It’s amazing how much influence the wait staff can have on your meal. We were also seated in the middle of the restaurant so we were right in the thick of it, it really kept the theme alive, rather than sitting in the back and having the lights from the kitchen and the hallways. Everyone was really pleased with their lunch too, but we’re not a hard crowd to keep happy. Mom, Dad, and Jessica all got burgers, what a creative bunch! Stephen ordered the barbecue ribs basted in Coca-Cola, he said they were amazing and offered me a bite, but I declined, I had a monster of my own to tackle. I ordered the barbecue chicken sandwich, it was enormous, and I could hardly fit my mouth around the sandwich to take a bite. It was so, so good, the barbecue sauce was sweet (just how I like it!) and the Gouda cheese put an interesting twist on the sandwich. I was sorry that I couldn’t finish it. I tried to pass it off to everyone else, but they were all too full from their lunches. I wish that I would have had room for dessert, but I was just too full. Maybe next time Stephen and I can split something and then we’ll have room for dessert—the big bang sundae looked pretty spectacular. After such a filling lunch, we needed to rest, so we headed over to Muppet Vision 3-D, one of my favorite attractions. I grew up watching Kermit and the gang and Sesame Street, I have a very large portion of my heart dedicated to Jim Henson’s creations. I would be devastated if the Muppets became a forgotten phenomenon of the 70’s generation. I would love if Disney could do a new movie for the attraction, but something a little dated is better than no attraction at all. After the show, we browsed through the Stage 1 Company Store, but I didn’t see anything that I needed. Stephen and I were starting to hit the wall; we rarely stay in a park all day long, commandos we are not. We walked over to the Great Movie Ride and there was 25-minute wait, I didn’t really want to wait that long, but there was nothing else in the Studios that I wanted to see. We did have entertainment while standing in line, there were 2 men dressed in maintenance uniforms and they were standing as still as mannequins, you couldn’t even see them breathing and their eyes were open the entire time. The stood like for probably 5-7 minutes at time, then people would start questioning if they were real or not and they would slightly move and scare everyone. It was pretty neat to see. We finally got through that long line and up to the cars; we had a pretty good ride. The Great Movie ride is neat to see the first time or a couple of times, but I think it gets kind of old seeing it every time we go. I think I’m going to give the attraction a rest over the next couple of trips so that the magic has a chance to come back. After The Great Movie Ride, Stephen and I couldn’t take any more, we had to leave the park just for a little bit. We made plans to meet at the Sorcerer Mickey hat at 5:30 and Stephen and I headed out. We walked back to the villa, kicked off our shoes, and I set an alarm for 5:00—just in case, it was a good thing I did because we both dozed off in a short cap nap. The alarm buzzed right at 5:00 and we both woke up refreshed, it’s amazing how much those power naps can do for you. We both tried to shake off the grogginess that you get from sleeping in the middle of the day before we got up and started layering the clothes on. I grabbed some extra jackets for Mom and Jessica before we left the villa. We walked back to MGM and made it through security and into the gates right on time. We found everyone and together we walked to the Hollywood Hills Amphitheatre for Fantasmic. I was a little nervous about the seating arrangements, Stephen and I usually do the Fantasmic Dinner Package, so we always sit in the “special” section. I didn’t know how crowded the theatre would get. My worries were for nothing, there was plenty of seating available, and we found a bench about half way up—didn’t want to get too close to the action, it was a little cool to be getting a free shower. We had an hour wait, but it went by pretty fast, we spent the time talking and people watching (that’s one of my favorite things to do at Walt Disney World, I have seen some strange things!). Finally the announcement came over the sound system that Fantasmic was getting ready to begin and a few minutes later the lights went down the crowd roared. I’ve tried to pick a favorite nighttime attraction and I just can’t. When I see Wishes, I think, “Wishes is my favorite” when I see Illuminations, I think “Illuminations is my favorite” and when I see Fantasmic, I think, “Fantasmic is my favorite”. As you can probably tell, I have a hard time picking favorites! Fantasmic really is spectacular though, with all of the special effects and music. It really says “Disney” to me. Mickey Mouse of course conquered the evil Maleicifient by using the power of his imagination and it was another great show. We were planning on heading to Osbourne Spectacle of Lights after Fantasmic, but we weren’t sure how that was going to work. MGM was set to close at 7:00 and Fantasmic started at 7:00, so it seemed like people had to pick between Fantasmic and Osbourne Lights. We decided to head over to New York Street (I guess it’s the Streets of America now) and see if we could get in. We figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. Normally, we wait in the amphitheatre for some of the crowds to clear out a little bit before exiting. We decided to just take our chances and if we got separated, we just meet at Sorcerer Mickey’s hat. It was challenging to make it through all those people together, put somehow we made it and we followed other people across the park to the Osbourne Spectacle of Lights. Even though MGM was officially closed, the CM’s were still letting people into Osbourne’s. I was amazed as to how many lights were used to decorate the streets, there were so many displays to see, and you can’t possibly see everything. The “snow” and the cooler temperatures definitely made it feel Christmasy. We wandered around the streets, snapping pictures and trying to take everything in, I can’t believe that one person used to put on this display in their neighborhood. Obviously his wasn’t on quite the same scale as Disney’s, but even putting the normal amount of lights up on one house can be a pain, I can’t imagine doing 2 and 3 houses. It was very beautiful, very Clark Griswald-like, but very beautiful just the same. After getting our fill of the Osbourne Lights, we decided to head back to the villa, grab something to eat on the Boardwalk and make it an early night. Tomorrow was going to be an early morning; we have to check out of the Boardwalk Villas and into Animal Kingdom Lodge. Plus tomorrow was early entry into Animal Kingdom and we were shooting for making the 8:00 opening. We were all a little sad on the walk back to the Boardwalk, since it was our last night here. But we still had 2 full days in Disney and a whole new resort to look forward too. We stopped at Spoodles pizza window for dinner, Stephen and I ordered calzones and breadsticks, Dad ordered a calzone and Mom and Jessica ordered pizza. While we were waiting for our orders, Mom walked down to the Screen Door General Store to buy a roll of film ($10 for a 36-exposure roll! I’m so glad we have a digital camera) and Jess and I went into the Boardwalk Bakery. The bakery didn’t have anything we were looking for, so we walked down to Seashore Sweets, I found a gigantic rice krispy treat—I think Disney has the best rice krispy treats; and Jessica got a giant sugar cookie. Stephen and Dad found us drooling in the store and Stephen decided that he needed something sweet too. He didn’t see anything of interest there, so we went back to the bakery and he found a cream puff that was calling his name. I dread getting on the scale back home! We walked outside and sat at the tables in front of the bakery to wait for Mom and our food. While we were waiting, the man with a piano on his bike was riding up and down the Boardwalk serenading us with his music. It was very nice, and it made leaving the Boardwalk even harder! The buzzer went off and we walked over to Spoodles to get our food. It smelled heavenly and I couldn’t wait to get back to the villa and chow down! We made it an early night, ate our dinner while watching CSI and then we packed everything that we could and rolled the suitcases into the living room. Stephen and I put our clothes for Animal Kingdom Lodge and our toiletries all in one suitcase so that we wouldn’t have to drag all of those unnecessary suitcases to the room for just 2 nights. After setting a wake-up call for 7:00, we all went to bed. Day 6—12/17The Plan: Checkout BWV, Animal Kingdom, PS Rainforest Café 2:00. Check-in Animal Kingdom Lodge, Epcot for evening. Reality: The alarm went off way too early that morning and I had a hard time getting out of out bed. We talked about getting up early and checking into Animal Kingdom Lodge and then taking the bus over to Animal Kingdom for the early entry. The night before we decided to bag that idea and drive over to the Animal Kingdom about 8:30, to get in before everyone else and then just check into the Lodge when we were finished with Animal Kingdom. I was kind of worried as to how quickly we would get moving this morning, you know how the later in the vacation you are, the lazier in the mornings you get? I know I’m guilty of this for sure! I was impressed; everyone was dressed and ready to go before 8:00. A big pat on the back for us! Stephen went to get the car and we followed him down with a load, miraculously we got everything in one trip and we were on our way to the Animal Kingdom. I hate driving to the parks, I really don’t see how people do it, and it makes me feel like we’re just going to an amusement park for the day. But no one wanted to take a bus from the Boardwalk to the Animal Kingdom and then another bus back to the Boardwalk to drive our car over to the Animal Kingdom Lodge. That’s a lot of wasted time! We made it to the Animal Kingdom within minutes and we found a parking space in the front of the lot. Thankfully we were close enough to the entrance of the park that we could walk in and not have to mess with the tram. Again, parking lot trams scream amusement park to me, and not Walt Disney World. Since we came right in the middle of extra magic hour, there weren’t many people waiting to get in, although there was a nice crowd of people waiting for the 9:00 opening. We made it through security—has anyone noticed that the security to get into the Animal Kingdom is stricter than the other parks? Is it because of the animals? Once we were in the park, we headed straight for the safari. I think the safari is always the best in the early morning. I would love to stay concierge at Animal Kingdom Lodge for the sole purpose of booking the Sunrise Safari. Since it was still pretty cool out, the animals were very active and we saw a lot of them, even the elusive cheetah. Of course, the lions were sleeping, do they do anything else? This safari ride was especially cool because we were in the front of the jeep and had a great view of everything. I had to sit on my hands so I wouldn’t take any pictures. I have dozens of pictures of the animals on the safari and they’re all basically the pictures over and over again. After the safari, we decided to make our way over to Camp Minnie-Mickey for The Festival of Lion King. Everyone votes that this is best show in Disney property and I could watch this show over and over again. We walked over to the theatre and waited for a few minutes in line before we were ushered in and found seats on the bleachers. This is my one gripe about The Festival of the Lion King: the benches are back breakers!!! But it’s completely worth it, plus once the show starts, I’m so mesmerized by what’s going on, I forget all about my aching back. I’ve tried to pick a favorite part of this show, but you know I just can’t, from start to finish, the show is wonderful. The park was pretty empty today, even though it was an early entry, which is perfectly fine by me! The only thing that was not fine by me was the way I was dressed. When we’re on vacation, we are glued to the weather channel, to figure what the weather will be like and how to dress. The forecast for today was supposed to be sunny with a high in the 70’s, so I wore a pair of capri’s and thankfully a long sleeved t-shirt. Wow, we’re the meteorologists way off, it was cloudy and chilly, I was freezing!!! I spent most of the day with my arms crossed and huddled down so I could get warm. I suggested we got to It’s Tough To Be A Bug, so that I could warm up, plus it’s a pretty neat attraction. While we were waiting to go in, Jessica and I did a big no-no and put on our bugs eyes. We got Mom and Dad to put their eyes on too and Stephen took an awesome picture of us as honorary bugs. It’s one on my favorite pictures from the trip and I used it in a collage frame I made for my Mom for Christmas. After a short wait (which seemed much longer with the bugs buzzing to all of the Broadway songs, Stephen loves it for the themeing, but it just gives me a headache!) the doors opened and we found seats. I do love this attraction, but I’m always surprised as to how many kids are in here because it is very intense. I know what special effects I’m not found of (I won’t spoil any for those who haven’t experienced this attraction), but I know when they’re coming and I prepare myself for them. My favorite effect is the bugs exiting the theatre; I love it! We weren’t sure where to head to next, but since we were so close to Dino Land USA, we just walked over there. I know some people don’t really care so much for the themeing of the Dino Land USA, saying that’s too road-side carnival and local amusement park, etc. But I think it’s great. It is very kitschy, but that’s how it’s supposed to be. Do I want a whole park themed like that? No, but I think one section is okay, plus the themeing is incredible—very realistic. We bypassed Dino Land for the time being and walked back to Dinosaur! Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved dinosaurs and I have been fascinated by them. I started college as a biology major with the intentions of becoming a paleontologist. I didn’t make it that far, but my love for dinosaurs is still strong. It’s very interesting to me to ride this ride and to get to see the dinosaurs in action. I have to admit, the first two, maybe three times I rode on Dinosaur, my eyes were tightly clinched for a good part of it, but now I can ride it with my eyes open so I can experience every little thing. We spent a few minutes in the store at the exit of Dinosaur, my 2 nephews are all boy, and so my Mom spent some time shopping for them. When she was finished shopping, we realized that we were just in time for Tarzan Rocks, it’s not one of my favorite shows, but I thought maybe Mom, Dad, and Jessica would like to see it. If nothing else, I figured Jessica would enjoy seeing Tarzan. Hubba, hubba!! J I had forgotten how loud this show is, my ears were ringing when it was over and it gave me a huge headache. The rollerblading was impressive and Tarzan and Jane are incredibly talented gymnasts, but that’s all I really like about this show. The singers remind me of Vegas lounge singers and Terk is just annoying. Once is definitely enough to watch this show. We had about an hour and a half until our PS at Rain Forest Café, Stephen wanted to check on the progress of Expedition Everest, so after Tarzan Rocks, we made our way into Asia. Expedition Everest looks impressive and I’m excited to ride it. Looks like we’ll be planning a trip to the World in spring of 2006. Like we aren’t going then anyway. J We walked over to the Maharajah Jungle Trek; I finally got to see the komodo dragon. Whenever we walk through the trek, I always look for the komodo dragon, but it’s always too hot and he’s in his little cave. We of course spent quite a few minutes watching the tigers play. Tigers are my favorite animals; I could sit and watch them all day. Stephen had to pull me away because we had to start walking over to Rain Forest Café. I like eating at the Rain Forest Café, it’s not my favorite place to eat, but the food is pretty good and the atmosphere is definitely fun. Not a must-do, but a very enjoyable meal when we eat here. We had a PS for 2:00, but there was still a wait, Stephen signed up for the Safari Club, so we were taken to a table immediately. I have eaten in the Rain Forest Café in Downtown Disney many times, but this was my first time at the one in Animal Kingdom. We were seated right by the bathrooms, which were wonderful; I hate circling a restaurant trying to find the restrooms. Since we just signed up for the Safari Card, we received a free appetizer; we got the Caribe Chicken, which were chicken fingers with a coconut curry dipping sauce. The chicken fingers were okay, they were your basic chicken fingers, but the dipping sauce was very good. For lunch I got the Brave New World pizza, a bbq chicken pizza, it’s what I always get and Stephen got the Bamba’s Barbecue Wrap and we shared both meals. I really like these 2 items, which is why Stephen and I always get these and split them. The pizza is really large, I’m guessing 10-inches and while it is thin crust, there is no way one person could eat this by themselves. I can’t even eat half of the pizza by myself. The barbecue wrap is good too, we always get the chicken, the only thing I don’t like is the sweet mango sauce that comes with it for dipping, but Stephen really loves that sauce. Dad got the Volcanic Cobb Salad and he really liked it. The only disclaimer is that this salad is huge! My Dad, who is a pretty big eater, couldn’t even finish it. In fact he almost made himself sick trying to eat it all. I always want to try their salads, but they are just too much to eat. Mom got the Rainforest burger; she said it was okay, pretty much a basic burger; good, but nothing special about it. Jessica ordered the Rumble in the Jungle Turkey Wrap, but she got it plain, with nothing but turkey and cheese wrapped in a tortilla shell. She said it was okay, but really how tasty can lunchmeat in a tortilla shell be? During lunch, Stephen and I let Mom, Dad, and Jessica in on our secret for Saturday night. Stephen booked a Wishes cruise for all of us, all we told everyone else was that we had a surprised planned, but we never told them what the surprise was. They were very excited when we told them and it made leaving a little easier, since that was our last night of vacation. We were all too full from lunch to get dessert, but one of these days I’m going to try one of their desserts, they make my mouth water just looking at them. Our waitress wasn’t that great, she kept going M.I.A. on us, she dropped the food off and we didn’t see her for a long time, we had to flag her down to get refills on our drinks. When she finally came over to give us the checks, Stephen gave her his annual pass, because we get 10% off at Rainforest Café for lunch. She came back with the checks, no discount, so Stephen again asked about the AP discount. She took our check and came back with a $.25 discount, um, not quite 10%, but at this point we just wanted to go, so Stephen dropped the matter and just paid for our lunch. Stephen really wanted to check into the Animal Kingdom Lodge after lunch, but I wanted to go back into Animal Kingdom and go to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. I really enjoyed this area when Stephen and I went for the first time in October and I wanted to see it again. I know it’s just a petting zoo, but I think it’s fun, plus I love the Conservation Station and The Sounds of the Rainforest attraction. I talked it up enough that Mom and Jessica wanted to check it out and Stephen was out voted, not that he honestly cared. We went back into the park (Rainforest Café is actually outside of the park’s gates, so you have to get a hand stamp and have your pass to come back in) and headed straight back to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. I love riding the train over to the Planet Watch, to me that makes it worth the journey out there. Once we got to there, we went straight to the Conservation Station and the bathrooms—too much pop at lunch!! By the way, I love the poop facts in the stall. Once we all took care of business, we found an empty Rainforest booth, so went there first. The headphones and the sound in this attraction are incredible, it really does sound like you are in the center of the rainforest surrounded by the animals. This makes a nice break in the middle of a busy day, the booths are nice and cool, the lights are turned off and you can close your eyes and just listen. The thunderstorm is definitely my favorite part. Everyone wanted to this again, so we checked to make sure that no one was waiting and we pushed play again. This time, Stephen and I couldn’t control ourselves and we kept grabbing Jessica during crucial parts of the tape and making her jump. We are so bad! What are big sisters for? After two times in the rainforest booths, we decided to move on. We walked around and looked at the different displays, I was hoping to see a surgery or something, but all we saw was a CM checking her e-mail. We did see Pocahontas, so Mom, Jessica, and I went to meet her, she was so pretty and tiny! I couldn’t believe how little her waist was, I’m a pretty thin person, and she made me feel like I weighed 500 pounds!! We walked out to the Affection Section, the goats and sheep were so cute. Mom had like 3 that just kept following her around everywhere she went. And they all kept chewing on our bags, backpacks, and clothes. It was too funny. We saw a baby goat that just kept bleating for his mother who was on the other side of the fence getting checked out by vets. This poor little goat was so pitiful, people would go up to him and try to pet him and he walked away from them and just kept bleating. Once his mother’s exam was over, the CM let the baby in and he went running up to her. It was so sweet. We were ready to leave within 25-30 minutes of being in the Affection Section; we took the train back to Asia and made our way out the park and to the Animal Kingdom Lodge. I was so excited to be staying here. Stephen and I have eaten at Boma’s a few times, so I was already in love with the resort, but I have never stayed here before. I knew that Mom, Dad, and Jessica would love it here too. We like to relax our last couple days of vacation, we weren’t even planning on going in the parks on Saturday, and I knew we’d have plenty to do to keep us busy here. We parked the car at the end of the port cochere, out of the way of bell services and made our way into the impressive lobby. Other than pictures on the Internet, Mom, Dad, and Jessica had never seen Animal Kingdom Lodge before. They were all very impressed. The first thing we saw was the gigantic tree on the African drum decorated in yellows and oranges. It was hard to see things in the lobby because of the huge windows that over look the balconies, beckoning to us to come outside. Stephen and Mom went to check in, while Dad, Jessica, and I went outside to Arusha Rock to the savannah overlook. The check-in line was incredibly long, I’m guessing because it was the Friday before Christmas and everyone coming for Christmas week were coming today. As much as I love Walt Disney World and I hate to leave it, I was so glad that our vacation was winding down so we wouldn’t have to deal with the thousands of people coming in. Dad, Jess, and I hung out in Arusha Rock for a few minutes before coming in and finding an empty couch in the lobby to sit down on. After a couple of minutes, Mom and Stephen finally came back over with keys in their hands because our rooms were ready. Yeah!! The CM had to spend a few minutes looking for connecting rooms because the ones that we were pre-assigned to were next door to each other, but not connecting. We went up the elevators to find our rooms, we were on the 3rd floor and our room was off the lobby. We opened the doors and discovered that we could see the savannah!! A total shock and a huge surprise. I don’t think the CM upgraded us, because there was no mention of an upgrade, maybe it was considered standard because we could see the roof, but who cares, there’s giraffe outside our windows! Everyone went back down to get the suitcases and to park the car, I lucked out because they all went out when I was in the bathroom. After I was finished, I went downstairs to help and I met them coming up, so I didn’t have to do anything. I timed that perfectly! I love, love, love the décor of the Animal Kingdom Lodge. I’ve heard complaints that the rooms are too dark, but I disagree. Maybe because Stephen and I have banned florescent lights in our house and all of our lighting is a soft glow instead of a blinding white light, I’m used to it being dimly lit and cozy. The furniture in the room is all mahogany and carved with I’m assuming African tribal symbols. The bedspread and curtains in our room was orange with red, yellow, and blue symbols on it; but in Mom and Dad’s room, the bedspread and curtains were green. Stephen and I had a huge chair in our room that was so comfy, when you sat in it, you just sank down inside. It would be a wonderful spot to curl up with a good book. Mom and Dad’s room was a handicap room and did not have the chair, plus their beds were lower to the ground. We did have a refrigerator in the room, but it was hidden in a cabinet that was mahogany to match the furniture. I think didn’t the room was small at all, but then again it was just Stephen and I, so maybe it makes a difference when you throw a couple of kids in the mix. We were planning on heading back to Epcot tonight, for one last time. We didn’t have any PS’s, so the plan was to get there when we get there, eat whatever we want for dinner and hang out until it was time for Illuminations. We were planning on getting in the park around 7:00, so we had some time to relax and watch the animals from our balcony. We didn’t explore the resort yet; we had all day tomorrow to check everything out, so we agreed to just wait until then. A little after 6:00; we started getting ready for the evening. We had to bundle up because it was another chilly night, however not nearly as cold as Wednesday night. The only item on tonight’s agenda was to get a group picture with Santa and Mrs. Claus. We tried to meet them the other night and we missed the last meeting time by minutes. We got down to the bus stop and only waited a few minutes before a bus going to Epcot pulled up. There were only 2 other parties on the bus with us, we pulled out onto the road and the bus started going towards the Animal Kingdom. We were very confused, we pulled into the parking lot and one of the families on the bus with us stood up and got off the bus and started walking to the parking lot. I’m assuming they started the day at Animal Kingdom and park hopped and then begged a bus driver to take them back to their car, since the Animal Kingdom was closed and busses weren’t going there anymore. After that short detour, we were off to Epcot. Once we were in Epcot, we walked over to Test Track, of course all the fast passes were gone and the line was way too long. Dad, Stephen, and Jessica decided that they wanted to ride Mission: Space again. I like Mission: Space, but I just wasn’t in the mood to ride it tonight, I can only handle that attraction about once per vacation. The wait was only 5 minutes, so Mom and I went into the Mission: Space store to wait for everyone else. That was a long 5 minutes!! We browsed the store for a while, but since neither one of us are really into the space décor, there wasn’t too much for us to look at. After wandering around the store for a few minutes, we walked into the arcade and sat on a bench to wait for them to come back from Mars. To pass the time, we watched kids playing on the gym set, teenagers and adults playing the virtual reality games, and one baby eating crumbs off the floor when Daddy wasn’t watching him! Gross!! When his wife came out, we noticed Dad didn’t say anything about Junior’s snack. After about 15-20 minutes, Stephen, Dad, and Jess came out, apparently there were some technical difficulties (I think someone got sick in the one of the pods) and the wait was a little longer than expected. We decided that we were pretty much finished with Future World and headed back to our favorite: World Showcase. We walked straight back to the American Adventure to check the status on Operation: Meet the Clause’s. Once we got into the American Adventure, I realized that the Candle Light Processional was getting ready to start and that Steven Curtis Chapman was narrating. I love, love, LOVE Steven Curtis Chapman, he is one of my all-time favorite singers. While we were waiting for Santa I stood and watched the Processional. The little bit that I saw was very moving, and the cd is excellent. I zoomed my camera way in and got a couple of pictures of Steven Curtis Chapman. While I was stalking Steven Curtis Chapman, my Stephen walked over and got his favorite kaki-gori. My parents were watching these 3 kids take other people’s strollers and race them around the pavilion, they would load kids up in the stroller and give the stroller a running push to see how far it would go. Once their parents realized what was going on, they yelled at them to stop and then right back to talking and the kids went right back to giving stroller rides. It was pretty funny. We realized it was getting close to Santa time, so we all congregated over by Santa’s meet and greet. There were a couple of families in front of us with their kids all dressed up in their Christmas finery, I think they were planning on using this picture for their Christmas card. Another couple got in line behind us, they were in their mid-40’s and they lived in Tampa, so they come to Disney World quite a bit. Lucky!! We spent the rest of the time talking to them; I love meeting people in Disney World. There is no way you could strike up a conversation with a complete stranger in the “real world”. Finally Santa and Mrs. Claus made their grand entrance! What a great looking Santa Claus, I think his beard was real! When it was our turn, all 5 of us went up on stage and stood around Santa, Jessica was lucky enough to score a seat on Santa’s lap. Operation: Meet the Claus’s had been fulfilled and we had about an hour to wander around the World Showcase before Illuminations started. We stopped to watch a little bit of the Candle Light Processional, they were singing the Hallelujah Chorus, and so we had to stop and pay our respects. We all had to have one last kringle before the vacation was over, so we headed towards Norway. Dad had some Christmas shopping to do, so I got Mom in line at the Kringla Bakeri og Café. Dad pretended like he was going to save a table for us, but he really was making his way to the Puffin’s Roost to get Mom Geir Ness’s Laila lotion for Christmas. What a guy! Once we got our kringles, we found a spot to sit outside for a few minutes. We noticed that people were started lining up for Illuminations, so we stood up and walked over to the lagoon. It wasn’t the best viewing space, but we have all seen Illuminations several times before, so a “perfect” spot wasn’t that important to us. Illuminations was perfect as always and bittersweet since we all knew this was going to have to tide us over for a few months. After the show, we took walk back over to the seating area outside of Kringla Bakeri og Café and grabbed a table. We looked at all the pictures on the digital camera and began to loosely planning our next vacation. We were thinking about going in October, Mom wanted to see the parks without Christmas decorations, and Oct. 21 is our 5th anniversary and Oct. 29 is Mom and Dad’s 39th anniversary. We figured a vacation somewhere through there would be perfect. Jessica was not very happy with us since she would be in school in October, but she’ll get over it. It got to point where we had to leave, so we started that long dreadful walk out of Epcot. We took our time walking out, saying good-bye until next time. We apparently didn’t walk out of the park slow enough because there was a HUGE line at the Animal Kingdom Lodge bus stop. We were really missing walking out of the International Gateway. We waited probably 15-20 minutes to get on a bus, we were the last ones on and had to stand up and hold on for dear life, but at least we were headed back. Once we got to the Lodge, we browsed through the Zawadi Marketplace, one of my favorite shops on Disney property. I noticed the lobby was practically empty, so I ran up to the room to grab my camera to get some pictures. Everyone found me in the lobby and we spent some time exploring the Lodge. We found this really cool room upstairs that looked like a library, it would be a perfect place to hang out and play cards. We were all pretty tired, so we decided to head up to bed. Tomorrow was looking to be pretty relaxing and we (well, at least Stephen and I) were looking forward to Boma in the morning. We love Boma for dinner, but breakfast will be a new experience. I’m sure it won’t disappoint. Day 7—12/18The Plan: PS Boma 10:00, check out AKL. Steelers game 1:00 (Stephen and I are HUGE Steelers fan and cannot miss this game, we’re already missing the Steelers-Jets on Sunday 12/2). Dinner at Trails End, surprise for Mom, Dad, and Jessica Saturday night Reality: Stephen and I woke up at 9:00, we were planning on going down to Boma’s a couple of minutes before 10:00. We took showers and got ready for the day. Once we were ready, we knocked on the connecting door to the Mom, Dad, and Jessica’s room to see if they were ready too. We realized that we were planning on being in the room for most of the day, so Stephen called mousekeeping and asked them just to bring extra towels, we didn’t really need the rooms cleaned (but we discovered when we came back from Boma’s that mousekeeping had come in and brought us towels, straightened up the rooms and gave us the elusive towel animals). When he got off the phone, we walked down to Boma’s Boma smelled incredible!! My stomach was growling so loud. Stephen checked us in at the podium and we found a bench to wait on. There were a few groups seated in the lobby, a lot of teenage girls in pajamas. I don’t really understand that. Obviously they were staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge and they had just rolled out of bed before coming down to breakfast, but would it kill them to throw on a pair of jeans and run a brush through their hair? Our pager started blinking a few minutes after we checked in and we followed our hostess to our table. Our waiter came up as soon as we were seated to take our drink order, Dad ordered coffee, Mom and Jessica ordered Coke and Stephen and I decided to try the frunch. Our waiter told us to go ahead and start filling our plates and he would be back shortly with our drinks. The Boma buffet was absolutely incredible, there was so much food, way too much to pick from. I honestly can’t remember what I ate, but I know I had 2 platefuls and everything I tried was absolutely delicious. And speaking of delicious, the frunch was wonderful. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it, but it was so good! I think the next time we come to Boma for dinner, I’m going to try to order the frunch. My stomach was hurting from eating all of that food, but it was good and so worth it! We finished breakfast a little after 11:00; we walked over to the Zawadi Marketplace so that we could really spend some time browsing. Stephen went up to the room at 11:45 to catch some of the pregame and I told him I would be right behind him to watch kick-off, but I wanted to go outside and check out some of the animal viewing areas first. Mom, Dad, Jessica, and I walked out to the pool and the Uzima Savannah. We saw so many animals, I know I took a ton of pictures, we saw a kudo family: a mom, a dad, and a baby; and we saw ankole cattle, Thompson’s gazelle (my favorite) and in the distance giraffe. The animals were very active today and we had a great time watching them play in the savannah. Stephen came down and found us in the savannah, kick-off was at 1:00, not 12:00, and so we had a little bit more time to watch the animals. At 12:30, Stephen and I headed up to the room to watch the pregame, we left everyone else outside. Stephen and I were pumped to be watching the Steelers play, everyone was talking this game up because the Steelers were playing the Giants and it was a battle between the rookie quarterbacks: Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning. Dad came up right at kick-off and we settled in to watch the game. Mom and Jessica were right behind Dad, but Mom was just in to put on her bathing suit and head to the pool; Jessica grabbed a magazine and read in the big comfy chair in our room. Stephen and I were the only ones to watch the whole game, in the middle of the second quarter, Dad went down to the pool with Mom and Jessica fell asleep reading, she’s not really a big football fan. It was a pretty ugly game, but the Steelers won, so that’s all that matters. A win is a win, no matter how you get it! Mom and Dad came in right at the end of the game and got cleaned up while Stephen, Jessica, and I started layering on the clothes. We were on leaving the room at 5:00; we wanted to go to Downtown Disney for one last shopping spree and then head for Fort Wilderness and Trails End around 6:00. Trails End doesn’t accept PS’s, so we planned on getting there sort of early in case there was a long wait or anything weird happened. Everyone was ready a little before 5:00 so we decided to go to Downtown Disney early. We found a place to park and went directly into the World of Disney. Stephen was in search of a picture frame for his desk at work and I was looking for one last present for Mom. I found the perfect one: a huge collage frame that I put in pictures from our Disney trip. Stephen ran our purchases out to the car so little eyes couldn’t peek! Everyone was finished with their shopping and we hopped in the car and started toward Fort Wilderness. How in the world does anyone get around in Fort Wilderness? It is so confusing! We pulled into the main entrance (at least I think it was the main entrance) and parked the car. We got out and walked to the bus stop to figure out what bus to get on to get to Pioneer Hall. We stood and looked at the map for a few minutes trying to decipher it and then we asked the other guests staying at Fort Wilderness what bus to take to get to Pioneer Hall. They were as lost and as confused as we were. We decided to get back in the car and see if we could find another entrance to Fort Wilderness. We drove up and down the road and saw nothing, we finally ended up driving to the Wilderness Lodge and taking a boat over to Fort Wilderness. We followed the path from the boat dock and eventually came to Pioneer Hall and Trails End. There was a Hoop Dee Doo show getting ready to start, so it was a little congested with lines of people everywhere; lines to check-in, lines to get your picture taken, and lines to enter the building. We were just thankful there wasn’t a line for Trails End! Stephen put our name in at the hostess stand and he was told the wait would be about 20 minutes. While we were waiting, we used the facilities and walked around by Pioneer Hall. Finally our pager lit up and we made our way to Trails End. We were all starving and excited to eat at Trails End; I have heard some very good things about this restaurant. We were seated in the main dining room, at a large round table, the décor of Trails End is very country—imagine that! The walls were wood paneling and covered with tons of clutter—pictures colored by previous guests and Western artwork. It was very much like being in someone’s cabin, it felt very homey. Enough about the décor, we were ready to eat! Our waiter came right over to us (I wish I could remember his name as he was wonderful and very helpful with tips on the best route to get to the airport and how to return the car quickly) to take our drink order and directed us to the buffet. The buffet itself is not very large, but there is plenty to eat and plenty of different dishes to choose from. The best part was that all of the plates and were metal, it felt like we were camping! I started with a salad, it was pretty good, but a basic green salad and then I moved on to the good stuff. I can’t remember every thing I ate, but I know I had fried chicken (okay, but all they had out was dark meat and I don’t eat dark meat, so kind of picked at my piece and didn’t really eat it), barbeque ribs (very good), roast beef (my favorite item on the buffet and I’m not a huge roast beef eater), macaroni and cheese (good), vegetables (I can’t remember, I’m guessing they were okay, and chili (awesome! I love chili, but I’m very picky about my chili. I pretty much like beef and beans—I don’t get into chunks of onion, tomato, and peppers, this chili was basically beef and beans, I think there were onions, but they were chopped pretty small. And being a Cincinnatian, I prefer my chili sweet and not too spicy, this chili was sweet first and had a slight bite—perfect!). I was completely stuffed, but I managed to eat dessert, I can’t remember what I ate, but I think I had strawberry shortcake and some type of fruit cobbler. Everyone was very pleased with dinner and it became one of our favorite meals, even Jessica, Miss Picky Eater, found plenty to eat. We still had about a half an hour until we were scheduled to meet our Wishes cruise at the boat dock. We decided the best way to kill time was to find a store and maybe do a little shopping. We found a trading post, I’m not sure which one it was, and moseyed in there to have a look around. It felt like every other camp store I had ever been in—which is like 2, but still, it didn’t feel very “Disney” to me. I did find a Mickey Mouse antenna topper, just a classic black Mickey, so Stephen went over to the register to pay for it. While we were waiting, Jessica and I found a book of princess postcards and they were quite disturbing. It was the “real” princesses posing in front of Cinderella Castle with their prince’s and something about it just looked wrong. I can’t even describe it, I wanted to buy it just for kicks, but I decided against it. By that time Stephen had paid for the antenna topper and we started to make our way to the boat dock. My thoughts on Fort Wilderness: it’s not my cup of tea. It’s a very nice resort if you enjoy camping and the cabins look really cute, but my idea of camping is “camping” at the Wilderness Lodge, so my opinion is a little biased. We walked down to the boat dock and didn’t see our Wishes cruise, but we were about 10 minutes early. We decided to walk along the beach to check out the view, people were starting to come down for Wishes and lay claim to some of the chairs. It was quite cool on the beach; I could only imagine how frigid it would be on the boat out in the open water! As we were walking back to the beach, our Wishes cruise pulled up, a few minutes early. The CM came over to us, introduced himself (for the life of me, I can’t remember his name! Maybe Jason?), and led us to the boat. I don’t know anything about boats at all, so I have no idea what kind of boat it was. It was a pretty good-sized boat with lots of seating; the controls were in the center of boat, off to the right side. We only had 5 in our party, but the boat could have held at least 5 more. Our driver didn’t have any blankets with him (I wish we had known that, we could have brought some), but he gave us some towels and we bundled up with those. Since Wishes wasn’t going to start for another 45 minutes, we drove around on Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon, getting some very nice views of the Polynesian and Grand Floridian. We were all having a wonderful time. The only thing I didn’t like about our guide—and this is very nitpicky—but he talked to us the entire time. That’s not a bad thing at all, but I was looking forward to the 5 of us being able to take this time and reflect on the vacation we had together. If it was just Stephen and I on the cruise, I would definitely not be thrilled if we were trying to have a romantic moment and we couldn’t because we had to talk non-stop to the CM. Like I said, it’s a very nitpicky complaint, and I think it was a combination of the CM being a talker and Stephen being a talker. Regardless of that, he did tell us some very interesting facts and the entire conversation was very “Disney”. As we were approaching the Magic Kingdom, the Electric Light Parade was going by. We stopped to watch and it was beautiful from this viewpoint. When the parade went by, we drove up to the Magic Kingdom about 10 minutes before Wishes began. I tried to take some pictures, but with the boat rocking on the waves, all of shots were out of focus. When the lights went down in the Magic Kingdom, our driver flipped a switch in the boat and we can hear the Wishes soundtrack. I can’t even tell you how beautiful and amazing it was to be watching Wishes from a boat on the Seven Seas Lagoon. We had a perfect spot and the fireworks looked larger than life. Even though we were freezing, we couldn’t feel a thing, not because we were numb, but because we couldn’t concentrate on anything but the show. It was fantastic and I’m so glad we had the opportunity to not only experience the Wishes cruise, but to experience it with Mom, Dad, and Jessica. It was truly magical. When the show was over, we pulled up anchor (I have no idea if boats even have true anchors anymore, I seriously doubt it) and booked it back to the Wilderness Lodge, trying to beat some of the ferry traffic. We pulled up to the dock and hopped out, Stephen and our driver went over to get under a light so Stephen could pay and sign the appropriate paper work and the rest of us started heading back to the Wilderness Lodge. Stephen caught up to us and we walked into the Lodge together to warm up for a few minutes to say goodbye to one of our favorite places on Disney property. We got back in our car and headed “home” to the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Once back at the resort we went straight up to the rooms and started packing our suitcases. We tried to stay up as late as possible so the vacation wouldn’t end, but sleep got the better of us and we soon nodded off. Day 8—12/19The plan: Checkout AKL, flight MCO to Indy 1:45. Drive home. Reality: Since our flight left Orlando at 1:45, we decided to head for the airport at 11:00, to give us time to drive there, return the rental car, and check in at the airport. We all got up around 9:30 and finished the last minute parking. We walked down to the lobby to take a couple more pictures and it was completely mobbed—the Christmas crowds had arrived in full force. We took some pictures at the Arusha Rock savannah, but there was no way we could get any good pictures in the lobby. After trying for a few minutes, we decided to wave the white flag and head back to our room to grab our luggage and leave. No one wanted to say the word, so instead we said “so long for now”, knowing full well that we would all be back. We loaded the car and headed for the airport and home. Final Thoughts Future Trips On deck—Stephen and I are going back Oct 22-30 for our 5th anniversary January 6-14 for the Disney Marathon. Stephen is running the full marathon and Mom and I are doing the half. Dad is going to be our coach (rolling eyes J); we’re all looking forward to that trip. Please feel free to e-mail me, just write “Trip Report” in the subject line. So long for now! Krista Fulkersonkrista_fulkerson@yahoo.com Mail a Comment to Krista Fulkerson |
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