Spending Our Inheritance with Our Parents

[Amy]

We have found all sorts of desert options. Peco Bill's do yoghurt, Columbia Harbour House had an apple cobbler. Sunshine seasons let you have anything from their pastry counter. Yak and yeti do a banana mousse (yummy) and Flame tree do that suberb chocolate mousse. The Japenese place does a cracking ginger and cream cake. We also discovered that most of the resorts let you sub ice cream for dessert.

We could not have handled the crowds that you had at DHS and would have probably just escaped to somewhere a little quieter.

I forgot about the ice cream options. The resort did tell us that one evening ~ plus you can save your receipt and go back to get your ice cream after you have finished eating your dinner so your ice cream doesn't melt!
Sunshine Seasons has the best dessert selection by a mile!! I got the yogurt once, but it was light so it tasted like artificial sweetener ~ yuck!

[cy1229]

Good Trip Report, Day Three: Yes, We CAN Do It All!

Guess where we went the morning of our second full day at WDW?



Correctumundo, we went to Epcot! We had a great time, too, and stuck to Futureworld. Boy, was this hard for me, being a World Showcase lover!!! First, we took a spin on Spaceship Earth, which in spite of the simplified narration, is still one of my favorite attractions. I'm a big fan of Dame Judi Densch so I enjoy this ride because she's the narrator. From there, we hustled over to the Land to get fast passes for Soarin', another of my favorites! While there, we rode Listen to the Land, and I must say, I do NOT like the canned narration. Also, I didn't see the Mickey-shaped pumpkins this year! I had been telling my niece about them, and when we were done she asked me about them. We were both a little bummed. Waiting for LttL though, we got to look at that great mural with all the sayings on it, and I snapped two of my favorites:





After that, a little bit of a, um, misunderstanding between my sister and me resulted in us spending a considerable amount of time at the Seas. We did not ride the Nemo ride there, because the line was hideously long. Rather, we just spent a lot of time watching the fish, dolphins, sharks, rays, and manatees doing their swimming thing.









This guy is my favorite to watch:



After that we headed back to Land for lunch. I love the selection here, probably one of the best QS locations in all of the World, but some of the food we got wasn't that great. Kids took massive M&M cookies for dessert (yum!) and I forget what I had but I know I only liked half of it. I got food from the Asian-inspired area. Oh, the escalators in Land were broken, so it was up and down steps the four (!!!) times we went into this building. Oh, joy... I'm usually not such a stairs wimp but I am not in good physical shape, I didn't get any chance at all to walk much before our trip, and I was still feeling the tired effects of the previous two days. I soldiered on, along with Jeff...

Next we visited our favorite purple dragon:

Jeff and Meghan like these pictures, especially the second one, where they're giving me their "creepy" smiles. I think they're technically horrible but they like the combination of the blurry background and sharp faces. Whatever. Here they are:





Im-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-gi-naaaaaaaaa-tion!



Outside, a photo of our four kiddos. Meghan is in the middle of the big kids, and she's 17 (18 in December). Ellie is 14 and taller than her sister. Christian is 12 (he's my nephew) and he's almost as tall as Meghan. This does not make Meghan happy!!! And then there's Kate, who will be 7 in November. She's like her big cousin and short for her age.



Here's my cutie-pitootie niece, Kate:



From there, the kids and my sister decided to go on the orange side of Mission Space. I wasn't interested in that owing to my motion sickness and getting-old-ness, and the green side isn't that exciting to me. So Jeff, Mom, and I all sat and hung around outside. It was VERY hot in Epcot this morning (and pretty much every day) so we looked for some shade. After that, we headed to Club Cool to try Beverly and other beverages. Here are our Beverly faces:

Meghan:



My mom:



Jeff :



Me:



I actually didn't think it was that bad - it wasn't like Robitussin or anything - but I don't think I would ask for some with my meal.

Ellie refused to try the Beverly. So I just got obnoxious and took her picture drinking something else:



The kids really liked the lemon-lime drink from Israel. They drank quite a bit of it. A lot of people loved that you could come into Club Cool and just try the beverages for no charge - one lady was obviously very surprised by it! Nice that Coke lets people do this. We had fun trying all the drinks.

Now it was time to use our fast passes at Soarin' so we did that. I could ride that thing 100 times and not get tired of it!!! The fragrance misters didn't have the orange scent this time, though, so that was a bummer. Jeff is fearful of heights, so he didn't really enjoy it like the rest of us. Even though he knew it was just a picture, the images make him nervous anyway.

Next we headed to Edy's for some ice cream. Jeff and Meghan bypassed this because we were going to 'Ohana for dinner and they didn't want to spoil their dinner. My stepdad made our ADR's for around 5:30 pm and so we didn't really want to eat a big snack in the afternoon since we'd be eating dinner within a couple hours. So Jeff and Meghan headed over to Mouseworks to do some shopping.

At this point, we left Epcot to go to 'Ohana for dinner - the meal we were most looking forward to!

Now there are some of you who have yet to try 'Ohana and you really need to! The food is served "family style" with some salad, wings and fried pot-stickers for appetizers, broccoli and noodles along with skewers and skewers and skewers of open-grilled beef, pork, chicken, and shell-on shrimp, and bread pudding with ice cream and caramel sauce for dessert. I will say this, though. In Jan 2010, we ate here, and had an AMAZING meal. Everything was DELICIOUS. This time we didn't think it was as spectacular. The food was still quite good, but the service this trip was really bad. The table beside ours had a little boy who asked for a grilled cheese instead of the usual fare and waited at least a half-hour for the sandwich. Ellie was surprised and said she could have made a sandwich for him in 1/10 of the time! And the chicken was pretty dry. I don't know if I would shell out the $$ for this restaurant without being on the dining plan. Here are a few photos:

My sister and her kiddos in front of the waterfall in the Poly



Christian took the camera from my sister and was trying to figure out how it worked. He would periodically take a surprise photo, look at it, and then look at all the buttons on the camera to try to do a better job. He made a funny face while doing this:



Battle of the cameras!!!



My mom and stepdad:



Sister and Jeff:



Kate, chewing her straw and wrestling the camera from Christian:



Meghan, with a special "message" from Papa:



Ellie, being affectionately "tagged" by Christian (they share the same birthday, just two years apart, and are usually inseparable):



I don't know what was so funny. Every time my sister and I get together, we laugh our fool heads off over stupid stuff:



Ellie doesn't believe me that she's pretty. I think she doesn't know anything.



Mom's looking at the bread pudding and wondering how she's going to have room to eat anything else. The beef and shrimp were DELICIOUS.



They do a program and call people up who are celebrating birthdays or anniversaries. Jeff and I were there just a few days before our third anniversary and were the only couple celebrating. So we got a Hawaiian serenade.



Here's a shot of the grill:





At this point, Mom, Paul, Stephanie, and Kate headed back to the condo, while Jeff and I took the big kids on a whirlwind tour of the MK. Stay tuned for that!

[cy1229]

Good Trip Report, Day Three, Part Two, Wherein Jeff and I Kill Ourselves in the Name of Having a Good Time

We boarded the boat from Poly to MK. I must tell you, this is my FAVORITE way to travel on Disney Transportation. So relaxing. That's probably because I grew up in Michigan, went fishing with my dad, and spent a lot of my childhood on the water. It's one thing about living in Indiana that I really, really miss. Anyway, I snapped a few pics at Seven Seas Lagoon:








Of all of the resorts on SSL, I would probably choose the Poly. It could be because I stayed here with my parents and sister back in 1980 (see my post in the old stuff in WDW). But, I think it's more the relaxed, airy feeling it gives me. They were preparing for a campfire on the beach and it just seemed like a place I'd like to spend some time.

We got to the MK and they were getting ready for the MSEP. Hubby smartly suggested we board the train to Frontierland to bypass all the madness on Main Street. Smart guy! The Mickey pumpkin decorations flicker:



We went to the Haunted Mansion, and this time we took the cemetery route. Had a GREAT time! Hubby took these:



I started playing with the instrument wall. Kids played along too, then we all used hand sanitizer.







Be careful about the captain, he doesn't necessarily like being pickled in brine!






From there we went to Philharmagic, then Small World, then to Peter Pan. All of these were a 5 minute or less wait (!!!!) so it was essentially walking from one to the next to the next. We were feeling pretty thirsty, so we went to New Fantasyland for some LeFou's Brew from Gaston's Tavern - until I saw the price!!!



No one wanted to use a snack credit for a little cup of frozen apple juice so we left, poked around a little, then went to Ariel's Undersea Adventure. HOORAY! It was open and essentially a walk-on. However, if you do this attraction as a walk-on, realize that the walking on is more like S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S. We were just walking through all these little switchbacks and you turn so quickly this way that I started to get dizzy. Anyway we got some photos inside of it:



You ride in clam shells that are suspiciously similar to the Nemo clam shells at Epcot:





Under the Sea!!









Ursula and the whole story behind her is almost completely left out, except for one short part of the ride. I imagine this is to not frighten the little ones. Most of the time is spent on the very well-done Under the Sea musical scene, and that's a lot of fun to look at. The attraction is DEFINITELY geared to younger princesses. My nephew said it was stupid and too girlish. He and Jeff wondered when the shootin' would start.

They were doing some welding on the Dwarf coaster ride:



When it opens it's going to be a lot of fun!

From there we walked around the barriers to Storybook Circus and rode Goofy's barnstormer. The ride is the same as before, with different scenery. Jeff and I also discovered that the Goofy ride is NOT made for two larger adults to ride together. Yikes. Funny, but maybe a little embarrassing.

From here, we went to Tomorrowland so the kids could ride Space Mountain again. Jeff and I decided to ride TTA, and we arranged to meet the kids outside of SpMtn. Well, the wait time for SpMtn was 55 minutes and the kids tried to call us. We were kicking back and enjoying the Peoplemover at night (very nice) and when we got done the kids were all "We tried to call you TWICE, why didn't you answer??" So it was a bit of a role reversal.

They decided to run a second MSEP at 10:00 and we had to wait for the last of it to go over to Adventureland. We just sat down and waited and relaxed a little. From there, we headed to Jungle Cruise, where we had a captain who was not that great in delivering the jokes. I don't know if everyone was just too tired or what, almost no one laughed. But it was a walk-on so... you know... We headed to Pirates of the Caribbean which was, yup, a short 5-10 minute wait, and then collapsed in the Tiki Room:



At this point, we were VERY tired. It was about 11:30 pm. We headed to the monorail, and HORROR OF HORRORS IT WAS CLOSED!!!! So we walked allll the way back to BLT, and completely collapsed for the night. This was when Jeff discovered his blisters-on-blisters from his new shoes. I felt so bad for him. He bought the shoes because I discovered a hole in his old ones and I insisted he go buy new ones, and he didn't bring the old ones. Talk about feeling guilty. He didn't do anything to make me feel that way, but being raised Baptist I know all about guilt.

So if you count them, this day we did 11 attractions after dinner!!!! This was the last day we took it so hard.

[Amy]

Day Three ~ EPCOT rules! I love that park and Spaceship Earth has to be my most favorite attraction in the park
Love all the photos. I like the ones of Jeff and Meghan in Imagination too ~ neat effect (to quote the Muppets!)
I see some Mickey Mouse tye-dye t-shirts. You made those right? Very nice!
Ellie is very pretty ~ she is just at that age. Does she have naturally curly ringlet hair? It's really beautiful! And you captured a great photo of your sister laughing ~ I love it!
Ok, now on to the next part of day three. I had to write these things down in between or I would forget

[Amy]

Day Three ~ part deux
I like the boat transports too, but they are a pain with an ECV. Too many pushy people and difficult to maneuver for F1gment. We don't end up on them very often for that reason
All those big attractions almost walk-ons? Awesome!! Big Thunder Mountain always was switchbacky when the queue was short too. I imagine that be better now after the refurb?
Ariel's new attraction looks pretty nice
Peoplemover is fun at night ~ so pretty with all the lights! That is sort of funny that the kids were trying to reach you instead of the other way around.
You got a lot of things in after your dinner ~ my kind of touring! Too bad about the monorail not running later at night, and Jeff getting blisters
More? More? More??

[cy1229]

Unfortunately you're going to have to wait until Sunday at the earliest for more because my photos are on my laptop computer that I left at home. I only brought my work computer on this trip, and I haven't edited all my photos yet, nor have I uploaded them to Photobucket yet. Can ya stand it?

Both my girls have naturally curly hair. Mine is curly, too, as is their father's, but theirs is CURLY. We go through a lot of hair products. A LOT. As in "You need MORE mousse? Didn't I just buy some last week? Are you eating it?" That kind of volume.

Yes, we made our Mickey tie-dye shirts. And, Christian forgot to pack his, which is why he's not wearing his. He was pretty bummed about it, too. My sister actually had two shirts, because the one I made for myself originally ended up being way too small and so was hers. So she got mine and I did a new one for myself. Seems that Old Navy changed their sizing without telling us... Anyway, the funny story about that is that she brought both her shirts, and she had Christian try her old one on. Well it was a v-neck shirt, and much too big, so it looked really... stupid... and we were laughing so hard! Even Christian!

I can tell ya this, when my sister and I do things together, we argue, yes, but we have a GREAT time and we laugh a LOT.

[cy1229]

You guys have been pretty quiet. Hmm, maybe my TR doesn't measure up...

Good Trip Report, Day Four: Finally Learning to Take It Easy

Well as you can well imagine, those first 2 or 3 days completely wore my family and me out. The next day we were scheduled to go to AK and my sister wanted to be up early for extra magic hours. The four of us were NOT keen about getting up to get out the door before 8. So, we let my parents, sister, and her kids all go on ahead of us, and I let the girls and Jeff sleep in. When Jeff had gone to sleep the night before, his feet were really swollen so he decided to just sit this day out. It KILLED him to miss a day but it was the best decision. He hung around, put his feet up a lot, and read his book.



By the time the girls and I got to AK it was about 10:30, and our family was back at EE, so that's where we headed. They had gotten fast passes for EE but didn't need them, so we used them to get on quickly. Christian went with us, and then when we got done Ellie and Christian immediately got back on again. That's the two of them in the back row of this photo:



At this point we were pretty hungry so we went to Yak & Yeti QS for lunch. I had a really good salad with chicken on it, and all three of us had frozen lemonade for dessert. That tasted so good on this hot day!! At this point we had limited time left and wanted to do different things. Stephanie decided to take her two and my parents to FOTLK but I was DETERMINED to see Finding Nemo, so we split our group up.

The girls and I did a little shopping, then popped in to ITTBAB. Still love that show!



Next it was on to FNTM! I completely ADORED this program. The colors, the performers, the puppets, all were amazing. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We got in line kind of early, and they let us in about 25 minutes before scheduled showtime. We got FANTASTIC seats!!!















The performers even come up into the audience.



I've seen FOTLK several times, and I love it, but I'm really glad we went to FNTM. Meghan and Ellie weren't so sure they loved it. They said it was confusing to know if they should watch the performers or the puppets. I just enjoyed taking in the whole experience and the talents of the performers.

From there, we did some more shopping, and Ellie found her shoes! We had seen these great canvas sneakers with a black and white Mickey pattern on them at the Contemporary, but they didn't have her size in stock. Fortunately we found them in AK. Unfortunately we were held up by the parade but a little extra time to browse is always welcome!

We left AK and hopped a bus over to AKL. We had 5:30 pm ADR's for dinner at Boma, and Jeff was on his way over there to meet us. One of the most beautiful resort lobbies is at AKL Jambo House. The structure looked amazingly like WL on the inside, with the exception of curved rooftops instead of straight ones, and the interior details of course.



View toward the back, looking out onto the savanna:



View from the back, looking toward the front:



Walkways, presumably to the rooms:



I love the huge chandeliers up high:





Kate was a little tired:





We had never eaten at Boma before, but I was really looking forward to it. We descended the large wooden staircase to the restaurant. The ceiling is covered in cloth triangles:



Ellie, being a little more cautious, wasn't too sure about it, but I think she really enjoyed her meal. She's my soup baby, and when she saw so many different varieties of soup available, I thought she was going to giggle with excitement! And I almost leapt with joy when I heard they were serving mulligatawny!!! For those who don't know, it's a somewhat sweet chicken corn chowder. When I was in college at Michigan Tech, the cooks made mulligatawny and I LOVED it. I haven't seen it anywhere since - I waited literally 22 years for a bowl of mulligatawny soup and I am so glad I did - it was THAT good. The butternut squash soup was almost like eating liquid pumpkin pie. We just loved the food and of course the service was excellent. The food tends toward the sweet rather than savory, and they have things that are more "normal" for those who don't like exotic tastes (like Kate ).

Mom and Meghan The Ham:



Ellie and Christian:



The whole place feels somewhat market-like (which I suppose is the intent) and while there weren't many people when we arrived, the place was filling up quickly.



We left, FULL, happy, and ready for some rest - except Jeff and I were going to meet Soarin'08 at Epcot!!!

Waiting for us at our condo when we got back:



Jeff and I cleaned up a little bit, then headed back out for a super-quick meet-up with Soarin'. She had to be up early for work, and we were exhausted. Add to that the fact that the park closed at 9, and it was essentially a walk back to France, a glass of wine, and a walk back to the front. But it was nice to meet! I hope I can meet the rest of you some time.

I loathe photographs of myself. Thanks to Jeff for snapping this one. Thanks to Soarin' for keeping the photo at least somewhat enjoyable.



We collapsed into bed happy and snug as a bug in a rug. Tomorrow: DHS and the chance to (finally!) meet Sulley!

[Amy]

So glad you made it to Finding Nemo. I love that whole show, the performers, the sets, the costumes, the puppets, the songs! Great show
Smart thinking of Jeff to rest for the day. I'm not sure I could do that, but it sounded like it really let him get his feet back to normal ~ well, as normal as feet can be while they are in Disney
The only thing I know of mulligatawny soup is from Seinfeld Doesn't sound like something I would like though. I like my corn on the cob.
Ellie and Christian sort of look like they are scheming something in that photo
That is a lovely photo of both of you in front of Spaceship Earth. I hear you on pictures though ~ when you are behind the camera so much, it is hard to be in front of the lens sometimes!
Please cy, may we have some more??
Um, and your trip report is loaded with photos ~ need I say more on it's quality than that?!

[cy1229]

Found the recipe for the soup!! Guess what I'm making this winter!!

http://allears.net/din/recipes/rec_mul.htm

[Amy]

Found the recipe for the soup!! Guess what I'm making this winter!!

http://allears.net/din/recipes/rec_mul.htm

Fun! That recipe doesn't have any corn in it though

[cy1229]

WEIRD. The soup I had at Boma definitely had corn in it. I'll take artistic license and make it with corn.

[Amy]

WEIRD. The soup I had at Boma definitely had corn in it. I'll take artistic license and make it with corn.

It certainly seems like you could dump any number of veges in it ~ but I read it twice just to be sure since you had described it as a sweet corn chowder. Never had that, but I'm guessing it has corn in it
You'll have to let us know if you like it. F1gment loves soup and she would probably eat that. Minus the curry.

[cy1229]

WEIRD. The soup I had at Boma definitely had corn in it. I'll take artistic license and make it with corn.

It certainly seems like you could dump any number of veges in it ~ but I read it twice just to be sure since you had described it as a sweet corn chowder. Never had that, but I'm guessing it has corn in it
You'll have to let us know if you like it. F1gment loves soup and she would probably eat that. Minus the curry.

The curry powder is an important component of the flavor, though. Is she allergic to curry?

[cy1229]

Good Trip Report, Day Five: My First *EVER* Encounter With a Rude CM

The day off from walking around did Jeff a world of good! We slept in again, though, and took our time getting ready. We were on the bus to DHS by 10:30 in the morning. Sister, her kids, and my parents had left early to go to DHS, and they did one attraction, then went to TSMM. By the time they got there, at something like 9:30 or 9:45, the fast passes were for 5 pm which overlapped our ADR for the evening. So, they decided to get in the stand-by line.

Seventy minutes plus.

Yeah, I won't do that for one two-minute ride. No way, Jose'!

But it's my stepdad's favorite, so that's why they waited. Between you and me, I was kind of glad I hadn't left early with them. Jeff, the girls, and I first went to the Great Movie Ride:



We had the ganster scene. It was ok. Jeff is a MAJOR movie fan - almost ANY movie - so he really enjoyed it. I wish I could be there one time when they do the western scene.

From there we went to the other end of the park to ride RNR or ToT and do fastpasses for the other one, depending on wait times and whatnot. We ended up getting RNR fastpasses and going on Tower of Terror:



That's us in the front row, on the left. I had to photoshop the snot out of this so it's really hideously horrible, but you will probably notice that the girls and I are all smiles while Jeff looks less than thrilled. I think he goes on ToT with us to humor us, but if it was all up to him he wouldn't even come close. Actually, wait. He loves the interior theming, just not the actual repeated dropping of the ride itself.

By this time my family had gone to the Backlot area for lunch, so we headed back across the park to eat with them. Stepdad likes this restaurant best because you can refill your drink cup. It was about this time that I was wondering why the park was laid out as it is.

After lunch it was our fast past time for RNR so back down to that end of the park we went. Can I just say, I LOVE THIS COASTER!!! The four of us made a face just for our friend, Julie, who was coming in every couple of days to throw food down for the cat:



We purchased a copy of this photo for our friend. When we were done, we went to the Animation Academy, but the time for that was going to overlap the time that Sulley would be out. So, we went to that area, and Mike Wasowski was out. Hooray! And the CM told us that Sulley would be there from 2:40 until 3:00. We left, rode Star Tours, and then went back to the greeting area for Mike & Sulley. When we got there, the line was closed, the CM (a different one) told us we couldn't get in to see Sulley, and when I objected, saying the other CM told us 2:40 to 3, she responded with a really terse "Obviously she lied to you." I was really, really, really disappointed. Seeing Sulley was one of the very few things I REALLY wanted to do. We tried to get back the next day but didn't make it, so I never did get to see Sulley.

It was getting close to the time we needed to leave for Epcot for our ADR at Teppan Edo, so we boarded the boat and got off at Boardwalk as planned. A quick stop in the candy shop for an oversized bag of caramel corn (Or, bagged yumminess) and then we walked to Epcot.

We strolled through Canada, and stopped to watch Off Kilter:

My little totem pole kids:





We stopped and waited for Off Kilter:



A close-up of Ellie's cool new shoes:





The kids weren't too thrilled about waiting for my mom and sister to walk through the gardens at UK:



Then it was on to dinner! I love this restaurant:





Stepdad took one of the 4 of us. Remember, I loathe photos of me, so feel honored that I'm posting it. LOL



Our chef was Naoki, who hails from Pensacola, Japan. He's very skilled and we really enjoyed watching him cook.



We did some shopping in the big department store for awhile before leaving. The sun was setting over World Showcase Lagoon, and a storm was brewing off in the distance:





We went to Morocco for a bit, did a little shopping, then decided to call it a night around 8:45.



With the exception of the Sulley Incident, it was a really good day!

[Amy]

...F1gment loves soup and she would probably eat that. Minus the curry.

The curry powder is an important component of the flavor, though. Is she allergic to curry?

I don't know if she has had curry, but she has mentioned she doesn't care for it. I know that I don't like the smell of curry when I am teaching at some of my piano students' homes when they are fixing dinner. Too strong of a smell for me