Our Exciting Vacation in the World

[Amy]

I figured the pro-tip on laundry soap would have been, put some in your luggage from home
That is nice that you got up so early to get the family clean clothes ~ your wife is lucky! Even luckier that she didn't have to watch Stacy Ugh!
Looking forward to the rest....great teaser photos of Hoop-Dee-Doo...

She was already starting to protest about watching Stacy on TV in the room constantly, and it was having a negative effect on the kids...Even they were starting to dislike Stacy! Why does everyone hate Stacy? Is there no end to the conspiracy of irrational prejudice against Stacy and her helpful top 7 must sees?

I've never actually seen Stacy, I just know that it is sort of boring and irritating when she is on Subsonic. Perhaps I will try to give her a chance the next time we go and watch her on resort tv. Maybe then I will like Stacy...

[Mousekedude]

Stacy is cute, energetic, and endearing, and I like her. But seeing the "top 7" over and over gets old after a while...

Nice pics of Hoop de doo. We really had a blast there in '07 with our group of friends, and one of us even got pulled up onto the stage to "act" in one of the skits. It was a riot (figuratively speaking...)! I posted the pics in our trip report from that year, but unfortunately I can't remember the name of the thread.
Well, anyway... this is your report... sorry...

[Brian845]

Ok, so the laundry was done, the kids were awake, we had breakfast at the Old Faithful Club, and we were out the door and at the bus stop by 8:30. We made it to Epcot by 9:15 or so (I think this was one of the days that we saw like 7 Animal Kingdom/Blizzard Beach buses, before the Epcot bus showed up...this happened on a couple of different days). Our first attraction at Epcot was Test Track, which we hadn't done since our honeymoon 10 years prior. It was still fun, but our youngest son had difficulty seeing out of this ride too.

After Test Track we made our way to Mission Space. I had never done this one, but I was pretty sure we could handle the Orange version. "We" being my older son and myself. It was decided that T and my wife would spend some time in the playground inside (and of course the gift shop!). K and I have been on the Gravitron at the fair many times before with no problems, and that reportedly pulls more Gs than Mission Space:Orange. It was fun, but I can't say that my job as Engineer was very exicting (I got to put the crew into hypersleep and something else...I can't remember what it was). It's a pretty amazing ride, I can only imagine the technology behind it. After our trip into space, K decided that he would like to go again and take his mother on the Green version of the ride. Unfortunately, he was distracted by the playground for about 30 minutes. T and I busied ourselves in the advanced flight lab, and of course spent some more time in the gift shop!

Soarin' was our next stop, and is yet another ride I'd never experienced. T balked at getting his height checked again (like at Kali River Rapids), but I promised to get him some magnets he had espied at the Mission Space gift shop after lunch, which helped things. Soarin' was pretty neat, although the movie screen had a couple of spots on it which were slightly distracting. The orange grove scent was my favorite part of the ride, since it is reminiscent of the old Horizons ride. I tried very hard not to lose my shoes (slip on Merrells), since I did not want to take them off and stow them underneath the seat, and was successful in this venture.

We considered eating at the Land quick service for lunch, but the menu was a little too eclectic for my children's tastes, so we opted for the Electric Umbrella instead (I nipped over to Mission Space to get the magnets I mentioned for the kids). After lunch we entertained ourselves at Innoventions for a bit, and then headed back to the resort at around 1PM. We could have stayed longer (we should have done The Seas at this point, in hindsight), but everyone was keen on going for a swim. The pool was great fun, and K and I especially enjoyed the slide (I went down first so I could catch K at the bottom, since he's still learning to swim). I look forward to the day when we can go to one of the water parks.

At around 4PM we headed over to Fort Wilderness for the Hoop Dee Doo Revue. I hadn't seen this show for about 25 years, and I didn't remember it much, but it was really funny! The kids had a great time and were laughing and giggling at all of the bad jokes. Definitely worth the price of admission (which was actually free, thanks to Disney Dream Reward Dollars). After dinner we relaxed in the room for a bit (I probably made the family watch Stacy for a few minutes), and then went down to the arcade for a little bit, where we learned that we should never *ever* play the Golden Tee miniature golf game again. Both kids are kind of competitive about this sort of thing (especially the older one), and some hurt feelings ensued. The game is also *really* long for an arcade game, and the younger one doesn't have that kind of attention span (neither does Daddy for that matter).

After our fun filled arcade experience, we headed down to the beach for the Electrical Water Pageant. My wife doesn't understand why I love the EWP so much, but it's kind of like a rite of passage. I remember seeing it as a kid back in the 70s, and I hope some day my kids will remember it too. They definitely need to upgrade to LED technology tho, since several of the lights were out. Speaking of which, there were several of those small "party" pontoon boats moored off the beach for the show, which was kind of annoying...They have this color changing strip of LED lights (roughly at the gunwhale), which was kind of distracting! Afterwards, we retired to the room to rest up for our big day at Hollywood Studios on Thursday.

My youngest son wants to use one of the smilies, so here it is for him: He also wants to use this one:

I have uploaded our Photopass pics to a new album (including the one of me holding on for dear life on Space Mountain), PM me if you would like the link.

[Amy]

Sounds like a nice, uneventful day ~ other than making your family watch Stacy
Hopefully your kids will remember the Electrical Water Pageant, but they will definitely remember being able to go and use the pool...that's what I remember most about vacations
Is the Golden Tee miniature golf game an electronic version of miniature golf?
Here are some smilies for T ~

Hello up there on the upper East coast from Michigan

[Len90]

Wow I definitely have missed a lot, but I am all caught up. I still wish we would have been able to meet up at a park, even if it could have been for 5 minutes. Im really enjoying your report so far. It seems like you were pretty efficient in managing all of your time.

As for Stacy, I have the same problem with my family. By day two they have had enough of her!

[Brian845]

Thursday August 25th - Today was the big day at Hollywood Studios. Our youngest son T, had been looking forward to this day the whole trip, since we had both a character breakfast with Handy Manny, and plans for the Phineas and Ferb Meet & Greet. The promise of Handy Manny made it slightly easier for me to get the kids out of bed, but only a little bit. Still, we were at the bus stop by 7:30AM. This was another day where there were countless Animal Kingdom/Blizzard Beach buses before the Hollywood Studio bus arrived, and it made me think about how they really need to improve their system. In the days of GPS tracking and touch screens, surely they could have some sort of interactive system where you scan your park ticket in, and press the location of the park where you want to go, and they could dispatch extra buses as needed. Disney really needs to hire me as imagineer!

We were at the park and at breakfast at Hollywood and Vine roughly at our reservation time of 8:15AM. We met Leo, Special Agent Oso, Handy Manny, and June for breakfast, and this time T was eager to take pictures with them. K really got along well with the breakfast hostess, and went up to dance with her at every chance he got. It's a wonder he got to eat any breakfast at all.



This was another day that I had a plan for, and my plan called for breakfast to be over by 9AM (when the park officially opened) so we could rush off and get Fast Passes for Toy Story Midway Mania, ride it once on the stand by line, and then take in the Disney Junior Live on Stage Show at 9:40AM. My plan was perfect! Except we didn't get done with breakfast 'til about 9:20 or so. We had the Guess Access Card anyway, so I didn't let it bother me too much (and boy would I have been bothered if we didn't!). We got to TSMM at around 9:30, by which the Fast Pass return time was already 3:25...Crazy! It was a really fun ride, but they need to build a duplicate of it or something.

We took a detour from the plan again, since we had decided that Phineas and Ferb was our number one priority for the day after TSMM, so we made our way to their meet and greet area. I haven't spent much time in this park, so it is still a little confusing for me as to how to get around. We stopped by to see Lightning McQueen and Mater on the way, where my unruly children ran around like crazy with delight (the cast members were not very amused with their antics, since they tried to go "behind" the cars).

When we got to the newly created Phineas and Ferb meet and greet area, they were nowhere to be found, despite it being a little after the supposed 10AM start time. Fortunately, a cast member kindly informed us that due to rain showers in the forecast, they were taking shelter in the neearby theater. The greeting area was nowhere near as elaborate as the one outside, which is kind of too bad, but they had a picture of the backyard scene hanging up behind the characters at least. We waited about 30 minutes (through 2 character breaks), and then our Phineas & Ferb Mission was accomplished!

Ducky Momo getting rained on:



We hit Star Tours next, and both the kids enjoyed it, despite only being somewhat familiar with the characters (I have forced them to sit through the original 3 movies (and I mean original...I've got them on VHS), and the 1st and 2nd prequels). I think they know the characters mostly from the lego sets we have. I don't recall the ride much from our honeymoon, but the redesign was very cool! The children especially enjoyed some time in the gift shop, where K picked out a lego book we would come back for later.

Muppet Vision 3-D was our next stop, and this was a much better show for the kids than the Bug's Life movie (T still sat on my lap, since had some trepidation after Bug's Life). I'd seen the movie before, but didn't remember a lot of it (other than listening to it on Subsonic). It was a really cute movie, and the whole pavilion was really well done. It made me wonder what Jim Henson would have come up with next, and how different Disneyworld might have been had he still been alive. Anyway, the movie made a good impression on T, since he has been talking about "Muppet Version 3-D" since we got home. A visit to the gift shop ensued after the movie, where we found some Phineas and Ferb action figures (including Normbot from the 2nd Dimension movie).

After Muppets, we took a break and let the kids run around the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set Adventure. T did his best to keep up with his big brother, and while I couldn't keep up with either one of them, we didn't lose them for long. They like the giant dog nose in particular.

We had lunch at the Sci-Fi Dine in Theater at 1:50 up next, so this seems like a good place pause for a bit. More to come!

[Amy]

Good thinking using the promise of a character brekkie to get the kids moving in the morning! Good thing your youngest was more into taking photos this time, otherwise it would seem a bit of an expensive food stop
Wow, your kids were cleaning up on the gift shops huh? Did you plan on making a lot of smaller purchases as you went along or did that plan evolve as you went. I remember when we were little we had to sort of shop around and then we could buy something at the end of the day. Which back in the golden ages, was also the end of the vacation since there was only the Magic Kingdom
Muppet Version 3-D ~ that's cute! I really enjoy that show
I'm curious to see what you thought of the Sci-Fi Dine in...

[boilerbabe]

WOW! Excellent trip report and pictures! Sounds like you guys got alot accomplished and going with the flow! Can't wait to hear how you liked Sci-Fi!

I have fond memories of the Electrial Water Pageant, it's a little cheesy but I still love it! I first saw it in 1980 on the beach of the Poly, I was 3. Hope your boys have fond memories of it too!

[Len90]

Now here is where this gets interesting.... We were at DHS on the morning of the 25th too! We got there right after the morning rains cleared up (around 11). It wasn't really that busy that day. We were on the mission of getting the Cars and Monsters meet and greets. Once the showers cleared up it became a hot and sunny day

[Amy]

Now here is where this gets interesting.... We were at DHS on the morning of the 25th too! We got there right after the morning rains cleared up (around 11). It wasn't really that busy that day. We were on the mission of getting the Cars and Monsters meet and greets. Once the showers cleared up it became a hot and sunny day

But you guys never ran into one another?

[Brian845]

Good thinking using the promise of a character brekkie to get the kids moving in the morning! Good thing your youngest was more into taking photos this time, otherwise it would seem a bit of an expensive food stop
Wow, your kids were cleaning up on the gift shops huh? Did you plan on making a lot of smaller purchases as you went along or did that plan evolve as you went. I remember when we were little we had to sort of shop around and then we could buy something at the end of the day. Which back in the golden ages, was also the end of the vacation since there was only the Magic Kingdom
Muppet Version 3-D ~ that's cute! I really enjoy that show
I'm curious to see what you thought of the Sci-Fi Dine in...

We had a fair amount of Disney Dream Reward Dollars saved up for souvenirs, but even so we ran out of those by the end of Thursday! Most souvenirs were small, and there were a few times where we told them that we'd come back later in the day and get it if they didn't see something else they wanted more. And we didn't *always* get souvenirs every time we stopped at a shop, but it was one of Ts favorite things to do, and I was trying to keep him happy and engaged during our Disney days.

[Brian845]

Now here is where this gets interesting.... We were at DHS on the morning of the 25th too! We got there right after the morning rains cleared up (around 11). It wasn't really that busy that day. We were on the mission of getting the Cars and Monsters meet and greets. Once the showers cleared up it became a hot and sunny day

Wow, we really did have similar agendas! I'm very sorry I didn't try to plan to meet up with you at some point, maybe some day in the future! I think we're going to try to go in October 0f 2014, even tho it will take a bit of work to convince my wife...You may recall she exclaimed that she didn't want to come back for 5 years!

She doesn't even know about the plan to buy a retirement home in Celebration some day...

[Len90]

If only I had seen you were going when we were there I would have PMed you.

I know it is tough with little kids but one of the best perks with the Disney visa card is the 10% off your purchase of $50 or more at the gift shops. We worked hard to make sure that we utilized this perk whenever we went shopping. We too had lots of Disney dream rewards dollars and received a $25 gift card at check-in for each member of our travel party... (Thank you Disney). However all of that was spent within the first couple of days. The prices on everything went up A LOT! A shirt is now on average $25-$28 plus tax.

[Amy]

If only I had seen you were going when we were there I would have PMed you.

I know it is tough with little kids but one of the best perks with the Disney visa card is the 10% off your purchase of $50 or more at the gift shops. We worked hard to make sure that we utilized this perk whenever we went shopping. We too had lots of Disney dream rewards dollars and received a $25 gift card at check-in for each member of our travel party... (Thank you Disney). However all of that was spent within the first couple of days. The prices on everything went up A LOT! A shirt is now on average $25-$28 plus tax.

Wow ~ that was nice that you all got a gift card. Was that part of a special package deal? Sounds like you each were able to get a shirt with the card anyhow.

[boilerbabe]

We have the Disney Visa as well Len. How did you guys get the $25 gift card?!