Hang In There Joan-May '14 TR-video links 2/2

[STLMickeyMom]

Sounds like so much fun! I'm so happy your CRT experience was better this time! We didn't go on our last trip.... I do miss eating in a castle! And the picture of the mice are so cute! I never noticed them when we were there.

No Mickey pretzels? That's not right.....I have faith that you find one eventually!

 

[annie170]

Congrats to Maddie on reaching her reading goals! Good job getting the matching backpack and lunchbox.

It appears you had pretty good seats at Wrigley! I was kind of surprised they traded Samardzija. We're White Sox fans, here. Southside Irish!

I'm glad you had a better experience at CRT. The presentation of the desserts was remarkable. We generally go to Akershus because of the one dining credit.

Nice Vera! Will you use it for everyday or save it for Disney?

 

[Magic2000]

Loving your trip report!!! Your daughter is too cute!!!

My name is JOAN - and my granddaughter, Cady, and I were in Disney May 7-14!
I'm hanging in there! lol

 

[I_Luv_Stitch]

Well Done to Maddie for completing all her reading challenges!
How amazing are all your quilt patches, can't wait to see the final piece!
How cute is Maddie as Princess Anna, she loves being a princess and the whole BBB experience!
I'm so glad that your CRT experience seemed to have redeemed itself! Your server seemed amazing compared to last year, and Maddies wish is just so precious!

 

[FancyNancy]

Great job Maddie for completing your reading challenge! That's wonderful

We ate at Cinderella's Royal Table back in January for dinner and it was easily our favorite meal of the trip. I had the same desert as your MIL and really enjoyed it!

 

[TheMaxRebo]

wow - sounds like you have had a busy summer! We still haven't even started thinking about back-to-school (haven't gotten a school supply list yet). Great job out of Maddie doing all that reading!

Oh I am so holding out on Olivia never hearing about American Girl - or at least my wallet is

your quilt squares are coming along great - the Chip & Dale one looks super cute

***************

Bummer about the pretzel quest ending in defeat.

oh, glad to see CRT started off better - your last experience was just so sad and poor

"and ate about as much as you’d expect her to in a room teeming with princesses" - ok, that made me chuckle

“My wishes all came true, I’m at Disney World with my family” - and that made me a little misty eyes

glad you felt the magic returned to CRT

 

[jash08]

Shannon, I didn't know you had started a new TR! I am all caught up and subbing!

 

[pkondz]

I am terribly sorry for my DIS absence of late. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of swimming lessons, art classes, trips to the water park and zoo, 2 major league baseball games (though I’m not sure it’s fair to call the baseball being played on either side of town “major league”), back-to-school shopping, hair cuts, dentist and doctor appointments, and cashing in the last of Maddie’s prizes from her summer reading challenge.

<sigh> Here I go to the trouble of giving you a cut and paste excuse...
and you type in the truth instead.

And posing with her AG

In matching outfits no less!

If I may… back on June 1 we challenged Maddie to read 1100 pages of mom-approved chapter books. It was slow going in the beginning, but she not only completed the challenge-she did it with 3 weeks to spare! Since finishing she’s continued to carry a book with her everywhere she goes and the princess chapter books that took her a week or two to finish last spring now take her only a few days to read! We’re super proud of her, and she’s quite pleased with herself.

A great accomplishment. Well done, Maddie!

so I ordered myself one of the Disney Vera’s, you know for reasearch.

Of course. <cough><cough>

Gaston-any idea how hard it is to come up with something sewable for Gaston? Eggs, spitting, antlers, and beer-none seemed quite right for a child's quilt. I settled for his shirt.

And that works quite well, I think.

This isn’t our first Pretzel rodeo.

Oh, I know.
I wonder if I can get you to make a map for me.
For research purposes, of course.

We poked around Tomorrowland for a few minutes hoping that a pretzel cart would magically appear

Not an unreasonable thought, given where you were.

before heading back to Storybook Circus to admit defeat.

Maybe I should ask someone else for that map. :

The rain was beginning to kick up a notch, so MiL opted out “so that she wasn’t taking a kid’s place if they shut the ride down soon”.

Wow! What a wonderful woman to make such an amazing sacrifice!!!

the CM working the cart offered Maddie her own “princess sized cup” of popcorn free of charge.

That's Disney for ya. Doesn't surprise me one bit.

As we passed I noted that the A&E standby was at 270 minutes at that time.

Ouch.
No way. No how. Nope. Not gonna happen.

Neither Maddie nor I remember much about this M&G. From photos it appears that the princesses chatted with Mads about a few things, posed for photos, and offered a goodbye hug. Pretty standard.

Heh.
Met two princesses.
Chatted with them.
Had pictures done.
"Pretty standard."

Next thing you know, people are going to say the same thing about them new-fangled horseless carriages!

Maddie bought herself an Aurora/Ariel flip doll,

A what? What the heck is that?

and after much debate I got myself a set of Ursula themed ears.

So... you see yourself as the villain, do you?

Having killed plenty of time, we moseyed over to the castle to check in for lunch….

moseying is good.
sashaying is better.


just sayin'

Some of you may remember the experience we had at Cindy’s last year was less than stellar

We approached the check in desk and were told to go right in to wait.

That sounds funny.
"go right in to wait."

"Quick! If you run and really hurry, you can stand in line for even longer!!"

A lovely hostess, that Cinderella.

Well, it is her house, so...

As our server approached I steeled myself for any sign of attitude, but I needn’t have. Our server Tina was simply lovely.

<phew!> You must've been a tad relieved?

Maddie took one look at it and said “no thank you”. Bry just isn’t a fan of hummus, and being a bigger Midwestern guy, arugula salad just isn’t his jam.

I'm with Maddie and Bry on this one.

She reminded me a lot of the actress who plays Hailey on Modern Family.

I see it.

Jasmine was next, and judging by the amount of photos I have of her, she didn’t stay long.

Oh? Too bad. She and Ariel (in her fish attire) are my faves. :

At some point during the meal the Wishing Ceremony occurred.

I think I might have even asked this before... but don't remember.
What's that?

(no photos, Bry had the camera and does not feel the need to document everything--spoilsport)

What????
No more camera for him!

“My wishes all came true, I’m at Disney World with my family”. Bless her little heart. This is why we return year after year.

Awwww.....

I chose the Seasonal Cheesecake –strawberry I think

You think?
That big horking strawberry on top isn't a clue, for you?

Bryan selected Seasonal No Sugar Added Sorbet - with Berries-lemon was the flavor of the day.

It certainly tasted “no sugar added”! It was somehow more sour than straight lemon juice. Wow. He didn’t eat much of it.

Too bad. I usually pick lemon when choosing gelato or sorbet.
Then again, the "no sugar added" probably would've warned me off it.

Thanks for the updates, Shanzipop!

 

[HarkiQuinn]

I'm sorry your previous experience at Cindy's wasn't "great." It does sound like "Joe" was having a bad day (or maybe he was on his way out...) but it sounds like this trip made up for it!

The desserts look amazing, especially the Signature plate.

Did Jasmine like her bracelet anyway? That's too bad that she didn't stay long to chat. And you're right about Snow White! She definitely favors Hailey!

 

[Jackiemarie21]

I love your quilt so much! So cute! I love seeing the boarders you come up with for each character!

I am so glad huge CRT magic has been restored for you! And Maddies comment about being there with her family, wow what a sweet moment! So many people always ask, don't you ever get sick of WDW, and moments like that are exactly why it's worth it to go time and time again!

 

[Clarf]

Yay for the reading challenge! Isn't it great to see reading just click with them? So glad to hear she always has a book with her now!

I love the Wrigley pics. I don't know if we'll get there this season. It's always fun to go, though. And LOL about your comment about no Major League ball being played in Chicago.

Still love the quilt. Can't wait to see the finished product.

I'm so glad to hear you CRT meal was much better this trip. It's hard to return someplace when you've had less than stellar service, especially at Disney, but glad to see Tina redeemed the faith!

And I totally see Hailey in Snow White! Crazy.

 

[KatMark]

Great job on the reading challenge, Maddie.

I have to agree Shannon. Although I would NEVER cheer for the south side team, neither team is worth watching this year. We are going August 22 to Wrigley and I wish I could get out of it.

Sorry you didn't find the pretzel, but nice of the CM to give Maddie her own Princess sized popcorn so she didn't have to share with Dad.

Love Dumbo; Mark and I always sit in separate elephants...much more comfortable.

I'm glad lunch at CRT was an improvement over your previous meal there.

 

[MEK]

More lovely pictures of Maddie in the beautiful dress! Love all the PP shots.

Your dinner at CRT sounds lovely. But dare I say that the cheddar cheese actually LOOKS hard in the picture. I mean - hard like it wasn't wrapped right. Boo!

What a beautiful sentiment from Maddie during her wish. So cute and so sincere.

Overall, a lovely meal.

 

[Cinderella909]

Can't wait to see the quilt all finished! And, wished I heard about your reading challenge pre summer, as Angie has spent most of her summer here and getting her to read was difficult. She needs the reading, and if I heard about your challenge I would have done the same. She returned home tonight and will only be back for a quick weekend in a couple of weeks. But, I'll do this challenge next summer.... may even try to do this over the fall.

Glad to hear that CRT was so much better this time around. You deserved it! And, I just love that dress on Maddie! I love the picture of Maddie walking up the steps in CRT... I have a couple of Angie, and I always have her stop and pose by the stain glass window on the way up!

Love the American Girl dress alike... did you make that too? Obviously, I've not kept up with the latest AG clothes.

Can't wait to read more! Sounds like things with MIL is going well... hope it continues!

Karen

 

[TanzUnited99]

Sounds like you had fun at MK! I'm glad you enjoyed your dining experience at CRT more this time around Looking forward to reading more!

 

[afwdwfan]

Ok... it has been a couple of weeks, so I probably should get through this update in case you have one planned for tonight/tomorrow morning.

2 major league baseball games (though I’m not sure it’s fair to call the baseball being played on either side of town “major league”)

Wow. I didn't even have to point that out this time.

Definitely a busy summer though. A lot of good memories made, I'm sure.

If I may… back on June 1 we challenged Maddie to read 1100 pages of mom-approved chapter books. It was slow going in the beginning, but she not only completed the challenge-she did it with 3 weeks to spare! Since finishing she’s continued to carry a book with her everywhere she goes and the princess chapter books that took her a week or two to finish last spring now take her only a few days to read! We’re super proud of her, and she’s quite pleased with herself. Along the way her “prizes” were the trips to the zoo, museum, and water park as well as more tangible items. Her 2 ultimate prizes were the Disney Infinity video game and a new outfit for her American Girl.

I think that is a great idea! I'm glad that it has been a useful tool to get her to enjoy reading and do some fun things together along the way.

(I always get the backpack from the Disney Store. I like that they won’t fall apart midway through the school year, and she likes that they’re sparkly). Her reply? “I want a Frozen one, mom”. “Excellent”, I said.

Luckily I’ve had a light few weeks in terms of Etsy orders, so yesterday I parked myself at the machine and cranked out some more quilt squares. Only 5 more to go!

What? No Lilo dresses?

We poked around Tomorrowland for a few minutes hoping that a pretzel cart would magically appear before heading back to Storybook Circus to admit defeat.

Clearly, Disney doesn't want your money.

After Dumbo, Bry convinced Maddie that popcorn sounded good, and when they got into mock argument about sharing, the CM working the cart offered Maddie her own “princess sized cup” of popcorn free of charge. What a sweetie! She loved that.

Well, that should certainly go a long way towards making up for the missed pretzel.

On this day she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, made her wish, and then opened them to say “My wishes all came true, I’m at Disney World with my family”. Bless her little heart. This is why we return year after year.

Words can't even begin to touch how awesome that is.

We’d taken care of the removal of dining credits when we checked in, so we thanked our server profusely (yay! She returned the magic! Maddie did not ask for wands and swords for us, but I have no doubt that if she had we’d have been given the no questions asked), and headed back out into the drizzle.

I'm relieved that this experience was much better than the last. You know, now that I have finally booked an ADR here.

If the price tag is weighing on you, I’d do dinner there. The food feels slightly more upscale and more worthy of the hefty fee at dinner than lunch. Having done all 3 meals there I think that I prefer the food at dinner, but both breakfast and lunch offer nice selections. Got to CRT for the experience of dining inside the castle, the chance to visit some friends without huge waits, and the magic of the wishing ceremony.

I hope dinner is worthwhile. We're going for an early dinner on our MVMCP night. And someone in our group might just be dressed as Cinderella.

Spoiler: It isn't me.

 

[pkondz]

We're going for an early dinner on our MVMCP night. And someone in our group might just be dressed as Cinderella.

Spoiler: It isn't me.

Nope. Not buying it.
I think it is you.

 

[afwdwfan]

Nope. Not buying it.
I think it is you.

That would be the ugliest Cinderella ever.

 

[shan23877]

The One With the Quilt Top​

Hey guys! Hope everyone is enjoying their last few weeks of summer! We've been cramming in as much fun as possible

Ready for the twice-monthly roundup of what we've been up to?

About 2 weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon I was a work when I received the following text message from my husband: Everything is okay, but call me immediately. I don't check my phone all that often at work, so by that time the message was about 90 minutes old. I called him back and he said "I'm at the ER. I was trimming the trees and I think I cut my thumb off". After confirming what hospital I told my managers what had happened and flew out the door.

When I talked to him, he was in a lot of pain and as it turned out was being an eensy bit dramatic. He did not lose the thumb, and luckily barely missed the tendon. It was a very, very ugly gash (I have pics, but I'll spare you) and we spent most of the afternoon and evening at the ER having it stitched back up.

Later that week we had reservations at Medieval Times for Maddie's last reading challenge prize. She wore a princess dress of course.

Our Knight won a challenge and threw some flowers to select ladies in the audience. Look who got one!



​

MT was a lot of fun, we'd definitely go back. It was well themed, the actors were great. Bry commented that it made him appreciate Disney more though. While there's a shop every 20 feet at WDW, here there was a glow cart every 2 feet selling all the same stuff, and EVERYTHING cost extra.

And then yesterday it was upon us, the first day of school. Here's my second grader ready to head out.

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She was sort of bummed to find out that she had PE on her first day which meant an emergency wardrobe change since she'd planned a maxi skirt and Frozen shirt for her first day. She rallied though, and wore that outfit today.


And to celebrate having an empty house and the fact that I got 3 Lilos knocked out earlier in the week, I took the opportunity to finish my last 5 quilt squares

Maddie wanted Stitch's to look like he'd ripped it





This was the very last one I did, and frankly I was out of inspiration LOL



Belle




Sophia-someone insisted that the fake pearls get used




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And finally, Anna, this was by far the hardest one that I did for the whole quilt. Maddie adores it though, and I'm pretty happy with it.

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And since I was done with the squares, I figured I may as well start cutting the dividing strips. And once I did that I figured I may as well put a few together and see how it looked. And then, it was 1:30 in the morning and I had this

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It took a while to lay them out in the order that I wanted, keeping the princesses broken up, putting Mickey and Minnie in the center, and making sure that I didn't have a bunch of the same color in one area. In the end I'm actually super happy with it. It's very very rare that I make something that turns out exactly like I've envisioned, and since I'm a perfectionist it's even more rare that something turns out better than I envisioned but this did! I'm beyond happy with it and can't wait to put the layers together and have it finished! I have some etsy orders to do next week, but hopefully I can make some good progress on it later in the week. Maddie is thrilled with it and cannot wait for it to be all done!


Also next week, I'm hoping to start a PTR for next summer's trip. It's going to be an incredibly fun trip, and so much fun to plan. Here's a hint at what's to come: we won't be traveling with Bryan, but we will be vacationing with 2 people you may know! I'll post a link here when it's up and running if anyone would like to join in!


Thanks for letting me share guys! I probably won't have time to do replies today since PB crashed my browser most of the morning, and I have to pick Maddie up pretty soon and then go to work, but I'll get to them early next week.

 

[shan23877]

The One With (Almost) No Pictures
​

We left the castle and found that it had begun raining heavily again. So, ponchos went on and DSLR went into the backpack. Sorry for the lack of pics in this one.


Our first stop was at Castle Couture to pick up the prints from Maddie’s morning photo shoot (they’re included in the price of the BBB package). The family in front of us spent about 20 minutes selecting just the right poses, but eventually it was our turn. I chose a few (that I’ve already shared, but since I am woefully short on pics for this update you get to see more!) and we moved on.

​

It was about 1:15 by that time, and the lines in Fantasyland had grown considerably. Wwe still had that “bonus” FP, and decided that Peter Pan would be an excellent use for it. The standby line was 60 minutes, but we were on in 10. Excellent!


We always save Philharmagic for rainy or hot afternoons, so that was the next stop. I just love this show.


A quick break was needed, so we visited the Rapunzel bathrooms and shopped for a few minutes at Yankee Trader. We’d told MiL to choose her Mother’s Day gift on the trip, and she found a silver Mickey head bread bowl that she loved while were there. We shipped that back to POR and headed back out. By that point the rain had downgraded from “downpour” to a manageable “intermittent” so we even took our ponchos off for a bit.


On our way into Frontierland we spotted an open Mickey Pretzel cart, and after the morning’s failure we couldn’t not stop. We had a very happy princess on our hands. As she snacked we heard the parade announcement which I found surprising since there was still a fair amount of rain coming down. It turned out to be just the Rainy Day Whatchamacallit though. We watched for a few minutes and then headed to BTMRR since the app was showing a 20 minute wait.


The app was wrong. It was 45, and was Splash was 60. Instead of waiting, we changed course and headed into Adventureland to set sail with some pirates. The line wasn’t too bad and we had fun browsing the dump shop after the ride.


Maddie had never experienced the Jungle Cruise, and it had been since our honeymoon since Bryan and I had. The 20 minute standby wait sealed the deal. Maddie wanted to ride. We had the BEST time on the JC. Our skipper had a great delivery, and since we were the only passengers participating he had some fun with us. Once our cruise was over Maddie declared it to be one of her new favorite rides.


Our FP for Space Mountain was good, so we trekked over to Tomorrowland and once we arrived, were on Space in minutes. FP+ isn’t all bad! Maddie had us do our princess waves for the ride photos, but upon exiting the ride we were disappointed when the CM stationed at the photo screens told us that Stitch had been messing with the pictures again, and ours wasn’t available. Maddie loved that and still talks about it. She doesn’t remember most of the photos that we did get, but remembers that Stitch was being naughty.


The line for Buzz was on the shorter side, so we queued up for that. I am pretty sure that Bryan won despite his accusations that I cheat.

Hey look! Some photos!





All business in this car-a man that doesn't like to lose to his wife



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By that point we were all in need of a little break, and what better place to take a break than the Peoplemover? We were tempted to ride a second time, but it was our first full day at WDW, and Maddie was eager to move on.


Bry has a hard time passing by the Plaza Ice Cream Shop without popping in to say hello, so he did that while we ladies browsed the Emporium for a bit. I found several little things I was interested in owning (of course) but wasn’t ready to commit so I held off for the time being.


Our last FP of the day was good, so we trekked all the way back to Frontierland and BTMRR only to find that the ride was down. We were told by the CM that we could use it any time that night at BTMRR or we could use it at any of the “major” attractions including Splash and Space. I’ve since heard that you can only use the FP for alternative attractions in that area so that’s confusing, but on this day we walked allll the way back to Tomorrowland to use the FP for Space. It was down too. We told the CM there what had just happened and he basically told us we could use it for any major ride any time that day. It was sort of frustrating, but seemed like a reasonable solution.


By then it was almost time for our dinner reservation so we just browsed some shops to pass the time until we checked in for our ADR at BoG-which you’ll hear about next week. And there will be photos!