Thursday, May 20, 2010

The final installment...of Disney Recapping

Final Disney recap--I'm cramming all the rest into this post, making it concise, picture heavy, and fabulous.
Wednesday we headed off to Hollywood Studios. This is my 2nd favorite of the four theme parks. Brooke loves the street performers (they can be sooo funny), they have wonderful attractions there for both the kiddos and the parents. And my all time favorite ride is there- Aerosmith Rockin Roller Coaster.
We got there pretty soon after the gates opened, and right away had a chance to see Goofy and Pluto. We love characters!

We then proceeded directly to Pixar Place to use a magical fastpass for Toy Story Midway Mania...one of the newest rides at WDW that is a) 3d and b) wildly popular. The wait times have been known to exceed 2 hours for this one even when the rest of the park has normal wait times. For the record, I would never wait 2 hours for a ride. The queue for the ride was awesomely decorated, and the ride itself was like cruising thru the Toy Story Wii game actually, if you have it. Fun for everyone!!!
If you think I won't use this picture to embarass Brooke someday, you don't me very well. Isn't it sooo cute though?! Such a ham! I mean, monkey!
After Toy Story, I took off to get fastpasses for Aerosmith and Tower of Terror while the rest of the gang rode the Great Movie ride. Seems like we did another thing or two before lunch, but I can't remember :0)
Lunch was at the Sci Fi Drive-In. Food was okay, but I didn't enjoy the experience. Very cool concept, where you are seated in replicas of old cars just like at a drive in with sci-fi clips playing on the big screen. Car hops bring your food to the car, etc. It just wasn't fun with Hannah trying to jockey between the "front seat" (ME) and the "back seat" (Matt, which was actually the middle. Gma and Gpa were in the back). But good burgers at least!
After lunch we sent Grandma and Grandpa to ride Rockin Roller Coaster. I don't think Grandma plans to ride it again. We missed getting into that showing of Playhouse Disney Live on Stage by about 5 minutes.... and then decided not to wait for Ariel either.... so the four of us strolled over to meet Gma and Gpa after they were done with the Roller Coaster. We watched some street performers, had a bunch of pictures taken by one of the photopass photographers, and tracked them down.
A great thing about HS is the layout.... the two "big rides" (that many kids are either too scared or too short to go on), are right next to each other. Situated adjacent to them is the Beauty and the Beast stage show. So we sent Grandma and the girls off to watch the stage show while Matt, Gary, and I hit the Tower of Terror with our fastpasses. After that, we did Rockin Roller Coaster. I had also gotten rider swap passes for that, so as soon as we got off, Gary went to meet the girls and Matt and I rode it again. I was bound and determined to get to ride it twice, I'm so glad I did :)
In Tower of Terror --someone has a dustier desk than me!
We had a great day at HS....Hannah was doing great, the temps or the humidity had dropped a little bit...we didn't make it back to the hotel till 330 or so for nap time! On our way out of the park we caught the parade.
A quick rest time, then Matt and I took off with the girls to Downtown Disney. Anne has a cousin that lives down there that she hadn't seen for like 40 years, so they met them at the hotel and had dinner in our suite with them. I had some shopping to do, and we just love hanging out down there. They have a fantabulous Christmas store and we always pick up a few ornaments down there. They also have a lego store which is super neat. Amazing what some people can do with legos!:
We had a wonderful dinner at Wolfgang Puck Express, I drooled over the $200 Dooney and Burke special edition Walt Disney World purse, we went in the largest Disney Store in the world, and had a good evening. Then it was back to the hotel. Whew.
Next morning-Chef Mickey's for breakfast!!! it's a fun time!
Minnie was the orneriest of them all if you can believe that:
Look at her smooching on papa!
After breakfast we headed over to Magic Kingdom to hit a few things we hadn't hit before. We got to ride Splash Mountain, here are Brooke and the gparents afterwards:
We hit a few other rides in Fantasyland, got a Dole Whip for a refreshing snack, and went back to the hotel. During rest time there was some rain, and this:
During swim time, Brooke finally went down the big slide and LOVED it. I did too-- it was so fun!! You could hear brooke "whoo-hoo-ing" all the way down the spiral of the slide, it was so funny. I think she went down it about 20 times in an hour.
After we got the girls in bed that evening, Matt and I had our turn to go up to the Top of the World Lounge...an exclusive lounge area on top of Bay Lake Tower reserved for Disney Vacation Club members staying at BLT. It is a pretty awesome place. There is a fireworks observation deck, so we had a great view of the Wishes fireworks. They even have the music and Jiminy Cricket narration playing up there to go along with the show.
The last morning we were going to go over to Magic Kingdom, but decided to go swimming instead. The slide wasn't open yet, so Brooke was bummed, and Hannah was in some kind of mood! We swam for awhile, packed up our stuff, and caught the bus to the airport around noon. We decided to eat (at Chic-Fil-A which i hear we're finally getting one!) before going through security. That almost was a mistake. The security at Orlando was massively slow. Crazy.
Hannah was so tired but wouldn't go to sleep, so she was pretty upset and vocal the last 30 minutes of that first leg. Then we were delayed by 2 hours in Atlanta, making us stuck at that airport for a total of 4 hours. Thank God, Matt sat with Hannah on that leg and got her to fall asleep. (She was strapped into her carseat. I was just burnt out though, she had gotten progressively more clingy to mommy as the trip went on).
We had a wonderful time. It was fabulous. We learned things we're going to try next time, we took it at a good pace, we loved everything we got to do, and were okay with the things we couldn't work in. We felt so blessed and thankful to get to go, to be DVC owners, knowing that we'll be back!
So that's the Disney recap..... Whew, right? There will be a quiz tomorrow! And now you can be Disney-recap-free until next May, when we set sail on the new Disney Cruise Line ship- the Dream!!!
Pixie dust wishes to you today!
PS--and you know that Dooney and Burke bag I mentioned? Matt bought one when I was napping with Hannah and smuggled it home in his carryon for my Birthday/Mothers day gift. Good job honey!

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