"Everyone! Come see how handsome I am!" **FINISHED** 2/17

[dawnmichele]

Well done so far! This is an AWESOME trip report.

I will seeya in WDW in just a couple of weeks!

Thanks!
We leave on Friday! After all the planning, I can not even believe it's so close!

See ya on the 7th!

 

[sue_88]

I loved your updates. Especially the Tusker meal and photos.
I have been sick now for going on 5 days! Boo!!!! I am trying to just be glad that at least I was healthy while on vacation. But I am ready to kick this stuff to the curb.
If I don't talk to you before then, Have a fantastic time on your nice long vacation!!!!!

 

[texasmomoftwo]

Oh my! I just read every entry in one setting. Just found this board as I am planning our trip. We leave in 8 days!!! When are you going? I hope to run across you!

 

[dawnmichele]

I loved your updates. Especially the Tusker meal and photos.
I have been sick now for going on 5 days! Boo!!!! I am trying to just be glad that at least I was healthy while on vacation. But I am ready to kick this stuff to the curb.
If I don't talk to you before then, Have a fantastic time on your nice long vacation!!!!!

Yikes! Sorry you're sick, but I agree at least it's back at home an not on your vacation. I know getting sick after a trip happens a lot. Too many germs from too many places.

Thank you! I was worried for a bit, but at this point I am confident it will be a fantastic couple of weeks!

 

[dawnmichele]

Oh my! I just read every entry in one setting. Just found this board as I am planning our trip. We leave in 8 days!!! When are you going? I hope to run across you!

Wow - Thank you!!
I'll be there from Friday the 29th until December 14th, which I'm hoping will feel like forever . I'll be in the parks almost every day - feel free to private message me here or on Twitter (my name is dawnmichele there) if you'd like to try to meet up! Or of course if you think you see us - say Hi!

 

[dawnmichele]

Alright guys - today and tomorrow to finish this thing up!
Here comes the next part!

I didnt know how Dannys scooter would do on the Pangani trail, so we decided to venture through the Maharajah Jungle Trek, braving the warnings about tigers!

The Tree of Life some more, this time from my favorite view point. We sat down tried to point things out to Danny.

This thing is just gorgeous.

I took a picture of the Signs of Wonder sign to remind us of the times. Were not big on shows, but were really hoping to catch this one.

g

Well, that's what we're hoping for. Tigers are one of my favorite animals (although to be honest, there are not many animals I don't find fascinating).

I even like the bats!

The sign was right! I took too many pictures of this tiger because he was Gorgeous.

This turned out to just be a picture of the theming, but it was meant to be a picture of two giant birds that were chasing each other all around. It was awesome watching them, and obviously so distracting I forgot to take a picture until it was too late.

Up next: A lot more pictures of birds.

 

[dawnmichele]

I love this bird garden. I dont know what its really called or if it even has a name, but thats what I call it. It is so full of gorgeous photos waiting to happen!

fountain

The colors on this bird are amazing.

Dig this momma sheltering her babies! I almost didnt notice until I was taking a picture and saw al the extra little feet!

Up next: More birds, but this time they're professionals.

 

[dawnmichele]

By the time we finished with our trek through the wilds of the jungle, it was about time for a Flights of Wonder show.

I noticed a drink stand while we were waiting for the show to start. I got a frozen boozey drink that layered 3 flavors in one cup. D sat in the wheelchair section, but H and I moved down a little closer.

These two were quite funny.

This bird has a dollar in its beak. He took it from a guy in the audience.

I loved the jokes about rat problems at the AK while these guys ran amok.

This thing is gorgeous, and it flew over the crowd to this guy in the back.

The bird grazed Dannys head as it flew over. The show lady said Dont try to bend down, hell just fly lower.

Dig this giant Eagle. Majestic.

After that show, we decided to go binge on Dinosaur and then since it was the warmest day so far, go back to our hotation and check out the Nemo pool!

Danny wanted me to get this shot of stroller parking along the pathway.

We rode it three times. We rode twice all together, and the third time H loaded with the regular folks and I went with Danny.

We had a car to ourselves!

Up next: Back to the hotation.

 

[texasmomoftwo]

Wow - Thank you!! I'll be there from Friday the 29th until December 14th, which I'm hoping will feel like forever . I'll be in the parks almost every day - feel free to private message me here or on Twitter (my name is dawnmichele there) if you'd like to try to meet up! Or of course if you think you see us - say Hi!

We will be there at the same time, although my trip much shorter! Following you on twitter!

 

[dawnmichele]

After our rides on Dinosaur!, we were headed back to the resort. We stopped up front to pick up our purchases and chatted with a very friendly cast member while someone else gathered them up for us. Just as we were headed through the exit, it started POURING down rain. In buckets.

We were rushing for the cover of the bus stop, and for unknown reasons, Danny took off on his scooter - in the total wrong direction! He was quickly too far away to hear us shout to him, so H braved the rain to chase him down and send him back to the right spot.
It rained all the way back to the resort, so to kill some time and wait for the rain to pass we stopped in the AoA gift shop. There were a lot of adorable things in there. I bought a 2013 photo frame magnet, some post cards and a giant Mickey Mouse pen. Hannah bought a couple tshirts. By the time we were finished, so was the rain. We headed out to our room to change for the pool!

Except I was not paying enough attention to the time. By the time I finally made it to the pool, the sun was setting. Danny wanted to rest in the room, and Hannah said she’d be there in a minute so I was on my own. But I was fine with that. I stopped at the pool bar to get a Mango Margarita and then found a chair by the pool to relax in.

The chairs were all wet from the rain and I had also failed to realize we needed to bring our towels! Don’t forget that people. With the wet chair and the sun setting it was getting cold fast.

This is how dark it was by the time I settled down in a chair.

I texted Hannah to ask her to bring me some pants, and eventually she showed up. We sat around watching the people in the pool and chatting. Danny wanted to come meet us so we could get some dinner in the food court, but once he got there he had an impossible time figuring out where we were. It was almost funny. We could see him scooting all around the pool looking, and when he finally saw us, he couldn’t find the side gate. So we left the pool and met him at the door to the food court.

I wasn’t very hungry, so I made a very bad choice and tried to just have some naan with some chutney. But whichever chutney I choose (I’ve forgotten) was the Wrong Choice! They were out, so the CM had to go to the back - and it’s a giant kitchen. She disappeared somewhere off where I couldn’t see her anymore and I kind of thought maybe she clocked out and went home. Eventually she came back empty handed and found what she was looking for right under the counter. She put a tiny bit in this tiny cup and handed it to me to go with my cold and dried out bread.

By the time I made it to D & H at the table they were half done. D had the burger again and H had the Indian beef thing she had before. Both of theirs looked pretty yummy.

I did get a cupcake that was pretty good though. There wasn’t much choice, so I chose this Oreo cupcake.

I shared some with D and he said it tasted like a Twinkie. I don’t know if you remember but this was right about the time they went bankrupt and stopped making Twinkies for a while. It was kind of a big deal at that moment in history so it was funny to find the exact same taste right there at Disney!

We packed up and were in bed pretty early that night. It was our last sleep at Disney .

Next up: The last morning begins...

 

[wiigirl]

Awesome pics!

 

[sue_88]

I'm thinking about all the fun you are having while I freeze here in Kansas!!
You still have half of your trip left to go! I wonder how sore your feet are at this point. I hope you are living it up!!!

 

[dawnmichele]

Ok, hands up if you thought I would never, ever come back and finish this.
I don’t blame you, but here I am to sum up the last day of our December 2012 Disney trip!



We got up super early and called bell services in the dark. We’ve all learned years ago to double checked the room one more time than you think you need to, and real soon after that the bell services guy showed up.

The sun wasn't all the way out and all the decorations on the way from the Little Mermaid section to the airline check in looked awesome and sparkly from the dew/sprinklers. The bell services guy was super nice and chatty. He told me about a family that had just spent over 30 days at Disney World, on split stays through all the values. They had just checked out the day before. I was jealous of those people.

We had never used the airline check in at the resort before. There was a tiny room with two stations set up just like we were at the airport. We were checked in. Our bags were tagged. We left the carry ons at luggage services and we were off to squeeze a few more hours of magic into our trip.

We went back into the Landscape of flavors to search for some breakfast.

Landscape of Flavors has some great wall art.

I am going to skip the very long story of how I didn’t have my park tickets this morning, and all the mess we went through to fix that. Or the seriously, unbelievably horrible CM named Debbie at Customer Service outside of the MK who cancelled D & H’s park ticket when she finally fixed mine. Or how I kind of lost my cool once we got inside and I tried to let customer service know about that whole mess. Or how much of our precious last morning was lost dealing with the whole big ugly mess. Just believe me it was bad and not a magical way to spend your last day at the Magic Kingdom.

Here’s Hannah trying to enter the park and finding out her tickets had been cancelled (eventually she and Danny both had to wait outside at CS to get the problem that lady created).

I kind of wanted to watch this show, but no one else did so we walked on by.

We were all so messed up after that we forgot that not all the park is open for XMH and we turned left at the castle. So we didn’t get into Adventureland early, but we did have some fun with Peter Pan.

He wrote a note to Cinderella for another guest to give to her. It said “You’re it. No tag backs.”

We started to pose for a photo and then he drug me over to Danny so we could all get in the photo together.

I love this picture of Peter and Hannah.

Every trip, we get a picture of H in this spot. It used to have a big sign that said Adventureland. I wish it still did.

Danny wanted to get in the picture this time.

We walked over to the bridge to Adventureland. There were some funny wenches out keeping everyone entertained.

These wenches were pretty funny.

Up next: Destination, Frontierland

 

[dawnmichele]

There started to be a crowd of guys who seemed to be in charge standing on the other side of the rope as it got later. They had walky talkies and different costumes, and before too long they dropped the rope and lead us into Adventureland.

We kept straight on through to Frontierland for my favorite ride, Big Thunder Mountain, one last time before we headed home.


Except it was down!! Some very nice cast members told me it would up be after lunch, but I knew I’d be on the way home by then so I thank them and pouted my way through the rest of Frontierland.

Next time.

Let me just warn you people right now - this day was heavy on the eating. Food and Photopass All Day Long. You have been warned.

Danny stopped for some popcorn, which reminded Hannah she hadn’t had any funnel cake. If i had remembered that sleepy hollow was where you get nutella waffles i would have got some of those, but i didn’t. I just watched.

H offered me some of hers but … too goopy.

Watching her try to eat it with all that hair was amusing though. I enjoyed it.

When everyone was done with the eating, we headed for Hannah’s favorite, The Haunted Mansion. I knew it was all coming to an end, so I coped the way I do best - I took too many pictures.

Rapunzel’s tower was still being constructed, but we did get to see this bit of the top. Hannah and I were quite anxious to check the place out when it was finished.

Up Next: Food and Photos

 

[dawnmichele]

We walked along, from Frontierland to Fantasyland. We walked through the Circus and stopped in their very cute bathrooms. We were right next to the train station, and we hadn’t ridden the train for the whole trip. As we were headed in, a train CM told us that scooters couldn’t go on the train so we’d have to leave the scooter and take a round trip.

No thanks. We were bummed by that. We probably should have just taken the train around for some fun in retrospect. But instead we decided to keep walking the circle and maybe we’d finally find Toruga Tavern open.

It was just about to open so we hung around until the place opened and we were the first order of the day. I don’t know if it’s because we were first thing, or because it was the last day or because our expectations had grown large, but none of us were loving it. At all.

It was just about time to head back to catch the sad bus back to the airport.

I still hadn’t bought my “big” souvenir - I was still looking for *that one* hoodie and was going to give it one last chance inside the Emporium. And the place was INSANE. I mean it can get too crowded in there almost all the time, but it had gotten a little chilly that day and everyone was in the store looking for something warm to put on.

I can seriously not tell you how insane it was.

There was a whole line of varsity type clothes H and I were digging. She had bought a cardigan and I was really wanting this big letter sweater. Just an oversized dark blue sweater with a giant M and a little embroidered Mickey.

I passed it over for a different hoodie that I liked a lot, but I 100% regret getting it instead of the sweater. Not that I don’t like the hoodie, but it turned out I found that first hoodied I searched for for sale online and got it. So I have 2 hoodies, which isn’t bad. But dang I wish I had that big pull over sweater!

Anyway.

This is my attempt to show you how insanely long the line was.

We headed for Main Street Bakery, to get treats for the plane ride home. The line was long and there was a very crabby dad trying to convince his kids there was nothing there too eat except pastries. He was seriously cranky and they all ended up leaving. Which moves us up a little further in a line that was moving really slowly.

Danny decided to get a sandwich, and we all decided on a beverage. Here's a look. So sad none of them exist anymore

We spent the little time we had before we had to leave hunting down Photo Pass opportunities and trying for magic shots.

When the (very awesome) photographer told H to pucker up, she wanted to decline. “I can’t betray Tiana!” she said. And she stuck to her guns no matter how the photographer and I tried to convince her Tiana wouldn’t mind or maybe it’s not even Naveen in the picture anyway.

The photographer instructed H in a different pose, and told her she had something special from years ago that only photographers who worked there at that time could do. Turns out it was these fairy wings. Hannah LOVES them.

 

[dawnmichele]

The sad time had come. We had to leave the park.

We waited for last bus.

Back at AoA.

You know how the rest of it goes. Depressing trip to the airport on the Tragical Depress. Long boring flight home. Welcome back to winter in Kansas.

It didn't take long until we were planning our next trip, which turned out to be our longest yet! It's trip report is going to be called "You Can't Make Disney Your Permanent Residence". I'll link you when I start it!

 

[sue_88]

Glad I checked on this today! And I will look forward to the start of a new report from you.
I like your proposed title of the new report and it reminds me of a sticker someone has up at my place or employment. We reside in cubicles at my work and this particular cubicle has the sticker that says "Not to be used for housing" at the entrance.
I'm not really tempted to reside at work but living for 30 days or longer at Disney sounds like something I could be able to live with! Especially on this horribly cold March day.

I really enjoyed your report and photography! Thanks!!

 

[dawnmichele]

Glad I checked on this today! And I will look forward to the start of a new report from you.
I like your proposed title of the new report and it reminds me of a sticker someone has up at my place or employment. We reside in cubicles at my work and this particular cubicle has the sticker that says "Not to be used for housing" at the entrance.
I'm not really tempted to reside at work but living for 30 days or longer at Disney sounds like something I could be able to live with! Especially on this horribly cold March day.

I really enjoyed your report and photography! Thanks!!

Thank you so much Sue!!
I hear you about staying at Disney. Whenever I think of winning the lottery, I know I'd be spending so much time at Disney they'd think I lived there!

And yeah, I know it gets miserably hot in FL, but struggling through this nasty winter it sure sounds good!

I'll be sure to post here when I start the new trip report. I really need to get busy. It took me over a year to write this report, for a trip that lasted 9 days. Now I'll be writing a report covering 16 days, and there are only 52 til I leave again. I need to get busy.

Thanks for reading along Sue, and especially thank you for all the kind words about my photos! I can't even tell you how special it makes me feel to hear it.

 

[sandyandcalvin]

great pictures

 

[dawnmichele]

great pictures

Thank you so much!
Taking pictures at Disney World is my favorite thing, so I always love to hear that!