I Wonder if Disney Will Get Mad if We Disassemble the Furniture. Sept/Oct 2024 TR! (Updated 2/1!)

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I wish we would get a little snow here in the Chicago area. We've had about 1-1/2 inches so far this year. We usually measure our snow in feet, not inches, but global warming is changing the weather.

Your snow does look lovely.

Aw, well the winter is still young! I do love getting snow, but only for the first day. After that it gets all icy on the sidewalks and makes getting around here super annoying. No one here seems to know how to clear it, so it becomes a bit of a hazard walking my dog!

 

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Aww...sad I will just miss you. But 3 extra days WOULD require a lottery win. Oh well. One of these days, our trips will overlap. Hope you are surviving this weather. I was supposed to go up to NOVA tomorrow through Sunday for a recruiting trip but the chair strongly advised against going so I cancelled everything this morning.

Well we do have four trips this year, so we may overlap on one of them!

Probably a good idea to avoid this area, we still don't know what to do with snow around here. Even today a ton of the main roads in town are totally covered in ice. It's funny coming from New England where the roads were cleared super fast after storms down to this area where I swear we only have a single plow for the entire city!

 

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Did you see they released food menus?!
https://disneyparksblog.com/wdw/dis...ional-festival-of-the-arts-foodie-guide-2025/

They pretended to release the artist schedules but when you click on the link it just says "check back!" Boo. LOL but at least we have the food booths!

I saw!!!! I'm so excited, there are so many new items this year. Starting to put together a list of our must try items.

Hopefully the artist schedules will be out by tomorrow, the festival starts is about a week, it's time for that info to come out!

 

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I feel like I just won the Disney lottery (ok, a tiny lottery)! I randomly decided to check just now if any discounts had opened up for our June trip since ever since they came out I couldn't find one for the hotel we wanted. Well, apparently it is my lucky day since discounted club level rooms were finally available at the hotel! It's not a huge savings, only 15%, but I had pretty much assumed we had missed getting them since I was late checking on the day the discounts were released (stupid in-office days). I'm so excited!

Although in a not so lucky event of the day, turns out I have a sinus infection! Yuck. Good thing is I went to the doctor today and got medicine so hopefully I'll feel better soon. The wild thing is, this is the third trip in a row I've been sick the week before the trip. What are the chances?!? Hopefully this medicine works quickly and I'm feeling better in a few short days!

 

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Day 6, Part 1: Back to Breaking Everything​

We got to sleep in a bit this morning, got up around 7 (yes, still early, but sleeping in compared to normal life!)

We had a slow morning getting ready and enjoying coffee and breakfast in the room, we had the chocolate croissants we had picked up at Les Halles the day prior.

It was a beautiful morning!



Around 8:20 we headed out and over to Epcot!



It was a quick walk over and we were through security, scanned into the park, and scanning into early entry by 8:29. There was no one there this morning, it was wonderful!

We had to stop on the way in to get our yearly picture of mom in front of the tea shop!



This morning, we opted to head to the front of the park and get some pictures!


Mom getting an action shot of a selfie!





We had a Guardians LL this morning at 9, so slowly made our way over that way. We wanted to book a FEA DAS, but it was down, and as we were walking over to Guardians I saw that it too had gone down. So we decided to head over to SE instead!

It was unsurprisingly a walk on at that point, and we couldn’t see anyone in any car near us on the ride. We did end up with some rather interesting photos though…apparently there are now two of me and I rode the ride with myself!



Like how does this happen!?!?!

After SE we made our way over to Guardians only to find it was still down, so we pulled over to a bench off to the side to regroup and figure out what to do next. We ended up booking a DAS to meet Mickey and friends, which had a return time in like 5 minutes.

So we made our way over to the new meet and greet area. On the way we saw a photopass with no line so stopped to get pictures!!





Next up: A Bunch of Characters!​

 

[Wood Nymph]

How in the world did you get an empty park! There is always a line for SE first thing in the morning. What day of the week was this?

It was unsurprisingly a walk on at that point, and we couldn’t see anyone in any car near us on the ride. We did end up with some rather interesting photos though…apparently there are now two of me and I rode the ride with myself!

That's crazy!

 

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How in the world did you get an empty park! There is always a line for SE first thing in the morning. What day of the week was this?

It was a Wednesday. I think this was the very last minutes of early entry, so that may be why it was so empty. Plus this week was wedged between two hurricanes, so I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of people cancelled their trips during this week due to that.

That's crazy!

It was so weird, I've never seen this happen before even when riding by myself!

 

[Wood Nymph]

Plus this week was wedged between two hurricanes, so I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of people cancelled their trips during this week due to that.

The hurricanes probably played a role. We were at WDW just before a hurricane was due to arrive and the parks were empty.

 

[Noreen411]

Hi. Your travels with your Mom are precious. It looks like our trips overlapped; I’ll have to keep checking your pictures to see if I see us in them LOL

 

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Hi. Your travels with your Mom are precious. It looks like our trips overlapped; I’ll have to keep checking your pictures to see if I see us in them LOL

Thank you! I'm so happy I get to take these trips with my mom, they are such amazing memories!

You'll have to let me know if you see yourself in any of our photos! I always do that too when I see other peoples trips were the same time as ours!

 

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Day 6, Part 2: A Bunch of Characters!​

We last left off heading off to the character meet.

I wasn’t sure how they would handle DAS here now since they got rid of the LL, but the LL queue is still there, so we just went into that and they told us someone would come out of the door at some point to let us in.

It was an odd setup since we were just waiting by a closed door, but a CM did come out in about 5 minutes to bring us in.

Once inside there were a handful of groups ahead of us, but soon it was our turn!

Our meet with Mickey was awesome! We had this great interaction about my mom’s pose, she loves posing with the Mickey toe pop, but Mickey decided to perfect it, so he gave us instructions how to do it correctly!








I LOVE this, it is so cute!

Next we moved onto Goofy. Now, as we were waiting for our turn, we noticed that Goofy’s meets were super short, so much that while there was no line between Mickey and Goofy, there were quite the line forming between Goofy and Minnie.

So I wasn’t surprised when we met him that it was the fastest and most underwhelming meet ever. Seriously he pulled us in for a picture and kicked us out just as fast! No interaction at all!



As Goofy used to be one of my favorite meets this was a bit sad, but it’s not that big of a deal.

Next up was Minnie!

Here my mom decided to show her the perfected foot pop that Mickey had taught us, but Minnie let us know that she does her pose differently and proceeded to show us how to do her pose! It was so fun, but looking at the pictures it looks like my mom stuck with the Mickey pose!



It was a fun meet with (most of) those characters!

After our meet we checked to see if Guardians was up yet, but no luck. So we decided to make our way over to the seas to ride the Nemo ride!

On the way over we saw a photopass photographer, so of course stopped!



We then made our way onto the ride, which was a walk-on.

After the ride we spent some time exploring the Seas.


Love the Mickey ears they give the urchins!

I really love this place. I could spend hours just sitting there watching the fish. We spent a good amount of time there, but around 10:05 we decided to make our way out since we had a tour to get to!

Next up: Behind the Seeds!​

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

Love the toe pop picture~so cute!

 

[Stacybaeasm]

Those pictures with Mickey and Minnie are wonderful! I love a good character interaction. As someone who has had several students be friends with both the Mice and the chipmunks, I know it takes a special someone to do it correctly. Most of my students who are friends are actors. They understand "getting into character."

As for you getting sick again - do you think its because your body knows you are going on vacation?? My body seems to know when we are busy and have no time for illness and can push through just about anything. And then it seems to know - hey we aren't busy now. So get sick and force us to slow down, ok?

 

[Wood Nymph]

Here my mom decided to show her the perfected foot pop that Mickey had taught us, but Minnie let us know that she does her pose differently and proceeded to show us how to do her pose! It was so fun, but looking at the pictures it looks like my mom stuck with the Mickey pose!

Mom likes the Mickey pose.

Who would have known that you could have so much fun with characters who can't talk.

 

[Mary Pops In]

oh gosh right?! We're staying at Beach club for FARTS starting Jan 24th and I am DYING waiting for the info - I want the food booths but also the artist schedules! Come on Disney!!

I'll be at FARTS on the 25 & 27th. Looking forward to seeing the art work!

 

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Love the toe pop picture~so cute!

Thank you! It was such a fun interaction with Mickey, and such a great picture!

 

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Those pictures with Mickey and Minnie are wonderful! I love a good character interaction. As someone who has had several students be friends with both the Mice and the chipmunks, I know it takes a special someone to do it correctly. Most of my students who are friends are actors. They understand "getting into character."

Thank you! I'm so impressed with the friends of the characters, there is no way I could ever do that, it is such a talent!

As for you getting sick again - do you think its because your body knows you are going on vacation?? My body seems to know when we are busy and have no time for illness and can push through just about anything. And then it seems to know - hey we aren't busy now. So get sick and force us to slow down, ok?

Hmmm, maybe? I wish my body wouldn't do that, I'd like to not worry about being sick while on vacation!

 

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Mom likes the Mickey pose.

She LOVES doing that pose! It's so funny!

Who would have known that you could have so much fun with characters who can't talk.

Haha, right? There are times I can't figure out what the characters are trying to "say", but this time it was a blast getting lessons in how to pose from the masters!

 

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I'll be at FARTS on the 25 & 27th. Looking forward to seeing the art work!

That's awesome, if you see us feel free to say hi! I can't wait to see all the art as well, plus try all the new food!

 

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Oh my goodness, less than a week until FArts!!!! I can't believe it's coming up so fast.

I'm still sick with this stupid sinus infection, which granted hasn't been too bad except for the near constant sinus headache. That I could do without. The good news is I'm starting to feel almost normal besides the headache, so that's good. Hopefully by next week when we head down to Disney that will finally go away!

Things have been busy here this week, not only with work, but with more Disney planning of course! Yesterday was our day to book LLMP and LLSP, and it did not go well. Well, at first.

So last week my mom contacted Disney to find out when her DAS expired, we knew we had 120 days for it, but we weren't sure if it was 120 days from when we first got approved or 120 days from when we first used it on our last trip. If it was from when it was approved it would have expired last week, but fortunately Disney confirmed that it is 120 days from when it is first used, so amazingly it covers this trip perfectly, expiring on the day we leave!

Since we have DAS for this trip, we opted to not do LLMP at all. We considered it for our MK morning, but realized we didn't really need it for our rope drop plans. We're not planning on riding TBA, and the other rides we want to do are typically walk on in the morning except for 7DMT, but for that we got the LLSP. Then we don't bother with LLMP for AK or Epcot, and we're only doing HS for the After Hours event, so no need to spend any extra money on LLMP, wahoo! The only other bookings we had planned was LLSP for Guardians a few days. Not too bad!

Anyways, so you may be wondering what trouble I had with the booking since all I booked was LLSP. Well, Disney IT struck again!

So I had to be up stupid early for work the day of our booking, but this was good since by the time 7am rolled around I was ready to go! I did verify around 6 that morning that there weren't any updates to the app, which there weren't, so when 7am hit, I went to book our rides!

It started off normal, I was able to select the park, ride, people, and time, but then when I went to check-out I kept getting an error message so I couldn't even get to the check-out screen. Ugh. So I tried a few times, but it kept happening. I then tried to force stop the app and restart it, but no luck. At this point I was getting a bit frustrated since I need to leave my house at 7 to get to work on time, and it was already about 7:05, thanks Disney IT for making me late.

I then had the brilliant idea to try to book it on my work cell phone, but I quickly realized I had to download the MDE app on it, and to do that I needed to sign into my Apple account. This shouldn't be an issue for most people, but I can't even tell you what email I used to sign up for that back in the day, so I certainly didn't have time to try to figure that out this morning. At this point I was really getting annoyed that Disney won't let us book these on a computer!

Finally, in a last ditch attempt to book, I decided to uninstall and reinstall the app from my phone, and only after doing that did it finally work!!! By then it was about 7:15, so the times I wanted got pushed back a bit from what I had originally selected, but at least I got them booked. But wow, what an annoying morning, why is it so hard for Disney to have a working app!?!?

Not the smoothest booking experience, but at least I got everything booked!

Now our latest issue is trying to figure out what to pack. It's looking like next week could be rather damp there, so now I'm reconsidering what I want to bring and how much to pack. I definitely think I need to bring extra socks now, wet socks are just not fun, and I'm also thinking of swapping my comfy fleece coat for a rain jacket, and maybe even packing an umbrella. Unfortunately the forecast changes every day, so it's hard to make up our minds!

Well, that's about it for the updates today. I can't wait for the reviews on the new food items to come out this weekend, and I'm so happy they finally released the artists schedules! We're getting so close!