hkellick: (Timulty)
[personal profile] hkellick
I know that at least my friends on CC were asking me to tell them about how my trip to Disney actually went. So, now that I have some time, I thought I'd give an answer...

We arrived at Disney late Monday afternoon (6/2), and had plans to go eat at Raglan Road in Downtown Disney. So we got there, got lost (there are parts where the signs along the road telling us where to go are very clear. There are other parts where they are anything but. It definitely took us some getting used to, but.. meh. This worked in our benefit as it made us question whether we REALLY wanted to drive to the parks every day...), unpacked quickly and grabbed a boat to Raglan Road. The weather started looking ugly, so they actually dropped us on the West Side instead of Marketplace (closer to the hotel, but the wrong stop.), which gave us time to explore Downtown before dinner. This worked out for us, because we found where La Nouba was located, as well as the House of Blues (dinner for the day we were doing La Nouba).
Dinner was good at Raglan Road, and then we wandered all around Downtown Disney, getting lost in the huge Disney Store (but giving us ideas for things to go buy later, like a Disney tie) and then dropped .. way too much at the Pin Store buying pins for both of us. :D It did start to rain while we were in Raglan Road, but ended mostly before dinner was over giving us a quiet evening.

The next day was our first day in the parks, Disney Studios. We decided we'd drive there in the morning, take a mid-day break, and try Disney Transportation that evening so we could decide which we preferred. In short, in most cases, we definitely preferred the Disney Transportation. We drove, when we felt we needed to, or it just made more sense, but in general, we just took the bus.
I decided I really liked the Rock and Roller Coaster, while K really liked the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. We got to the new Toy Story Mania ride, were in line for 25-30 minutes, before the ride went offline :p Did other stuff instead, went home for a mid-day break (an idea strongly suggested by the unofficial guide to stop us from hitting the wall), came back, did the Sci-Fi Drive through (Sit in a car-shaped table and watch a very amusing 45 minute loop filled with B-movie clips, "Tomorrow's News" and old drive-through intermission jingles. Tres Amusing. After that, we tried to catch whatever shows and rides we could, but we were having trouble catching shows in time. We finally sat down to watch the Beauty and the Beast musical when the sky opened up.
The unofficial guide says that a "Typical" Florida Rain Storm is brief, but intense. This was intense.. intense enough to kill the show right after "Be our Guest", but kept going and going and going.. after an hour and a half, we headed home, prepared to shift our plans to come back to actually see the Fantasmic Lasershow another night.

The next day started early at the Magic Kingdom, with breakfast with the Pooh Character at the Crystal Palace, which I'd recommend to anyone. The food was good, the characters amusing. They went a little over the top for us. We got to the table and there was a heart made of multi-colored mickey-ear sequins. Very Adorkable. At the end of the day, we were presented with a signed certificate, signed by Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Tigger. This totally made our morning :D After that, we started touring.. started at Space Mountain, which I loved. :D Buzz Lightyear too. :D I just <3 Tomorrowland, I think ;D Was less impressed with Fantasyland, though. I came in hoping to love the Pooh ride, but I didn't. I liked 'Small World' better.
But what blew me away was Philharmagic. We'd done the Muppets 3D show the day before in the Studios and were a little disappointed. It lacked the charm and amusing numbers that made the Muppets the Muppets. It was just.. sort of all over. But Phiharmagic was.. a great way to do the 3D show, with music we knew and liked.
Lunch was the Liberty Tree Tavern, which wasn't bad at all! After that, we headed home for a mid-day break.
Got home, rested, and realized... I/We had a BIG problem.. my glasses were broken. The frame around my left lens had broken off. It was still wearable, but it was at a funny angle and K knew (though I hoped not), it was only a matter of time until that was totally gone and I had no glasses.
That night, we did the Pirate and Princess party at the Magic Kingdom. The Pirate and Princess party is a hard ticket item, I think, meaning you pay (even more) to get into the parks. The good news is that there's fewer people there, alot fewer. And a new parade and fireworks show. The "gimmick" was that scattered around each land were "treasure spots" light up balls with X on them where you could pass through and get "Treasure" (Beads). We did a couple, decided it was.. OK.. but stuck to the big rides... Haunted Mansion, Pirates, the mountain, etc... we watched the parade and the fireworks.. hung back out in tomorrowland, gave our beads to a couple of random girls we saw and headed home, happy but exhausted.

The next day, we headed to Epcot, K's once-favorite park. We got there late (on purpose. We'd been up til 11:30 the night before!), followed our touring plan and, in general, had a pretty good time. We did Spaceship Earth and Future World.. West, I think. And headed over towards World Showcase starting at Canada. We watched an Off Kilter show (I liked them. K thought there were OK too.), and did dinner at the Rose and Crown, where we got to sit and watch Illuminations from. Illuminations was very cool BUT.. because of the wind.. all the crap from the fireworks blew in our direction. We were OK, except for trying to get the stuff out of our hair and stuff but the girl next to us got burned. We walked World Showcase after dark, which was neat, but I hit my exhaustion point halfway there, and that was it.

The next day, back in Epcot early.. getting some of the other major Future World stuff done.. Ellen's Energy Adventure, Test Track, Mission: Space. We started going around the world again, with lunch planned at Le Cellier in Canada, which was good. Headed home.. slept (we needed more, trust me), and went back to the Studios to do Fantasmic, which was very cool! And the weather worked with us this time, woo!

On the next morning, I was up and ready to hit Animal Kingdom. K wasn't planning to, though. She'd hit exhausted and needed sleep, badly. We discussed meeting up around lunch time. I showered, all excited to go to the Animal Kingdom, cleaned my glasses.. and they broke. CRAP! Saturday was.. hard. Not being able to see, and really being all wound up that we wouldn't get it fixed in time for La Nouba that night. We found a Lenscrafter nearby.. K drove there (thank god we had the rental car). They checked my vision for the right prescription (since I didn't know) and informed me that they couldn't help me there, BUT they could help me at the nearby Florida Mall. At this point, I hadn't been able to see all morning. I was frustrated, overtired and very unhappy. We did find the Mall, and they did have the right lenses, but the guy who was helping us (apparently the Manager of the Store) was SO NOT HELPFUL and rushed us around. We DID get the glasses and that's fixed, for now, but he rushed us so much that he never noticed they were crooked. *grumble*
La Nouba.. La Nouba was FANTASTIC! We had seats in the front and center, which apparently made us ripe for being picked on, which is specifically what happened. The first part started with two clowns.. they were carrying two boxes. One stopped to blow his nose, went to "shake it out" and "shook it out" ("it" is all imaginary boogers) over Kristen's head. Then his partner, shocked and aghast, went to yell at the first clown.. and then went to pick "them" off K's head (K is turning beet red and is laughing like crazy.), and apparently a couple that got in my hair and the girl next to K's hair.
But it didn't stop there.. then Nose-Blower, who apparently is a bit dull, starts restacking the boxes.. in Kristen's lap. The stack starts getting higher and higher (high enough I put a hand on one side so it doesn't fall over onto me!) until the second clown stops him, they put the boxes back, "apologize to K" then turns her head forward towards the front, grabs my hand, puts it around her shoulder and moves my head to the front.. and picked on the girl next to K.
And the show started.
The show was FANTASTIC! As I said to K.. if we're going to Vegas for [livejournal.com profile] xb95's and [livejournal.com profile] janinedog's marriage, we need to stop by a La Nouba show while we're there!
... and the Star Trek Experience, of course ;D

By now, we're definitely beginning to hit that brick wall. We're coming home late and waking up early. We're getting tired and a bit cranky.
The next day, we hit the Studios one last time, and, lo and behold, actually get into Toy Story Mania, which.. was awesome. I mean.. seriously awesome! Awesome enough that we grabbed fastpasses when we got out to do it again. We hoped to get the rest of the stuff we hadn't done done.. see Beauty and the Beast, Indy, Little Mermaid, Lights! Motors! Action! Etc..
... and found this impossible. There was still no way to see it all. We had to pick and choose. Stupid shows were spaced out such that it was impossible to get them all done! :p I never did get to see Lights! Motors! Action!
Hopefully when we go back, I will be able to. It looked cooler. But then, so did Indy and it wasn't as cool as I'd hoped...
We hung out there, saw the Block Party Bash parade, which was pretty cool (though we didn't jump and dance much, mostly because it was stiflingly hot and humid there.)
And then off to Spa Day! We'd always planned on having His and Hers massages.. and then a fancy pants dinner! Today was that day.
The full body massage... Oh. My. God. Totally worth it. I was so relaxed. It was so awesome. I'd do that again.
We then did dinner at the California Grill, the second-fanciest place on the resort.. alot of the food was rather froofy, but it was good :D

The next day... well.. we WERE supposed to hit the water park, but we never got to Animal Kingdom, so.. we decided to do that instead. Folks, I didn't spend alot of time there, but Animal Kingdom was my favorite park by far. There was so much coolness there. The zoo walks. The Safari Ride. The Tree of Life. And the Tusker House, where we had lunch, which was the closest to "real" food (food like we cook at home) we'd had all week. The Finding Nemo musical was fantastic too. I wish we'd gotten to see Festival of the Lion King, but I know we picked well when we decided to do Finding Nemo instead.
The only low point was that one of the first things we rode was "Dinosaur!", which was another ride I wanted to love because I love Dinosaurs, but we got into the car in front of a young kid who just clearly didn't want to ride the ride and spend the ENTIRE Ride SHRIEKING so much I just COULD NOT enjoy the ride. Luckily, the cast members took pity on me when I complained about it and let us get into, basically, the Fastpass line without a ticket so I could ride again. The second time was better. :D
K's bad part where was I insisted on seeing the Animal Kingdom parade, despite getting out of Finding Nemo as the parade started. So we ran there.. but all the good spots were taken.. in fact, everything was super-crowded and K never did see much of the parade, which made her unhappy. (I don't blame her here.)
After Animal Kingdom, we headed off to the Magic Kingdom so we could see the late night Spectromagic Parade and Wishes. We stopped at Ohana's and had dinner there, which was good (but ALOT of food!) Unfortunately, between Ohana's and the parade and fireworks (and needing to hang out 30-45 minutes before both to get good spots), we didn't get to ride many other rides. We got to do "Tiki Room" and that was it.

The next day, the last day, we went off to Epcot. We planned ahead of time what we NEEDED to do, and tried to stick to getting it done. Did the Imagination Pavilion (so K finally hung out with her buddy, Figment), and Innoventions. Having done that, we decided we probably had time to get one more ride in. I wanted to do Soarin' again (what an awesome ride. I didn't discuss it above, but probably my favorite ride in Epcot. It really IS like those dreams you have where you're flying.) and K wanted to do Mission: Space, the spinny version (she doesn't get motion sick like I do). We headed back to World Showcase to do the Mexico Ride and the Norway Ride (I liked Mexico better, but I always loved the Three Caballeros song) as well as the American Adventure, which was cool. We then decided to split a bit. I wanted to catch a few shows (mostly comedy-based shows) and K wanted to do some shopping around the world. I went my way, caught one show.. waited around for the second which I never found when it started to drizzle (the actors probably knew what we found out.). Instead I went over to Club Cool to get a frozen coke (I was hot and thirsty). Got inside, got my frozen coke and found a place to sit under shade and a ceiling, so I could watch the Epcot fountains.
Then the ceiling opened and the rain poured.
From what I hear, a really ugly storm hit the entire east coast, from Boston to Florida. Or maybe there were numerous other storms. But we got notifications from the Weather Channel about severe weather in DC and our plane was delayed due to severe weather in Boston.
We WERE SUPPOSED to meet at the Epcot Fountain at 3. Then I'd do Soarin' and she'd do Spaceship Earth. Around 2:45, K calls to say she's stuck in Japan due to the weather. I finish my Coke and consider things, since I had one umbrella. I finally had an idea. Disney sold Ponchos. So I could run across the way to the Big Disney Store, get two, and go save K in Japan. Called her up, told her the plan and started executing it.
Two things went wront.. 1) The storm was worse than it appeared. It was SCARY how much the lightning hit and the sky really HAD Opened. 2) Epcot doesn't drain storms like this well. There were 2-3 inches of standing water in places, between K and I.
Oh, and 3) [livejournal.com profile] lite got Japan and China confused and went the wrong way, ensuring that by the time he DID finally reach Kristen, he was soaked, feeling stupid and really cranky.
After that storm.. we just left. K stopped in the store to get some crocs and some fresh socks since both our shoes were soaked.

In general, we had alot of fun. We didn't get to do EVERYTHING we wanted, but we got most of it done. Mostly, though, the important thing is that we had alot of fun. :D
And that is the Disney Summary

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-15 05:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hbbtrbbtbcnbt.livejournal.com
You know, I had never been really gung ho about wanting to go to Disney. Even when my kids went with my in-laws, it sounded good, but I still couldn't really summon up excitement about it.

Having read your account, I have some excitement :)

I'm SOOOOO happy that you and K had a good time, even with the couple of snafus...it's a wonderful memory and a fun way to begin married life :) *loves and hugs*

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-16 01:17 am (UTC)
phoenixsong: An orange bird with red, orange and yellow wings outstretched, in front of a red heart. (Default)
From: [personal profile] phoenixsong
Oh yes. It was absolutely worth every penny, including the extra expense of staying on-site so we could use Disney Transportation and not have to worry about which one of us was more awake to drive back to the hotel at night.

I also ended up with about 800 decent-to-good quality pictures. I have to somehow narrow that down to 200 to fit into the Disney photo album we bought.

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-16 12:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hbbtrbbtbcnbt.livejournal.com
You could always have a second Disney album ;)

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-15 05:20 pm (UTC)
ext_5285: (Default)
From: [identity profile] kiwiria.livejournal.com
Sounds brilliant! Now I want to go even more badly :)

Glad you had a good time!

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-16 02:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lawchicky.livejournal.com
Yay! Thanks for sharing :) I agree about Philharmagic. We were expecting it to be good, but it exceeded all of our expectations, and is one of our very favorite rides.

I haven't been on Toy Story Mania yet, but it sounds great!

I'm just STARTING to think about our next Disney trip, but it won't be until next spring.. plenty of time to plan and save money!

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-16 06:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] molyprebe.livejournal.com
*pouts* Why does this story not include pictures?

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-16 12:51 pm (UTC)
phoenixsong: An orange bird with red, orange and yellow wings outstretched, in front of a red heart. (Default)
From: [personal profile] phoenixsong
Because I'm still trying to narrow them down to an acceptable number somewhere below the 900 I originally took s:)

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-17 01:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] molyprebe.livejournal.com
That's always the difficult part. :(

(no subject)

Date: 2008-06-16 01:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dawnstar.livejournal.com
I'm going to be wanting suggestions (mental note: hit up [livejournal.com profile] lawchicky as well as O's friends who lived there for a year) before our trip in January. Will be poking you for those, as we get closer. :)

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