October 7-14 2011 WDW with DD6, my Mom, and my Hubby (his first visit finally!)

[cherylsmike]

Hi Rebecca,

Just found easywdw and the forums, which seems like home with all the familiar names from TGM. Looking forward to hearing about your trip. I hope to get back to Disneyland in the next few years. I am sorry to hear about your FIL.

[RebeccaMcK]

Hi Rebecca,

Just found easywdw and the forums, which seems like home with all the familiar names from TGM. Looking forward to hearing about your trip. I hope to get back to Disneyland in the next few years. I am sorry to hear about your FIL.

Thank you, Cheryl - and welcome! Good to see you here. You're right - there are a LOT of familiar people here from TGM. Some are on both this site and TGM, but I'm only here now. I'm less than 6 weeks away now from arriving at WDW. Stocked up on shorts on sale at Walmart, and we all have all the Disney shirts we're going to have (Mom didn't want any - she says she'll buy something there for my dad, but she'll wear her usual summer/spring stuff). Ours are all shown here earlier in the report. They changed some of the Free Dining dates recently and now our arrival date doesn't fall in the new Free Dining promo dates, but I'm relying on the reports that they'll honor the Free Dining for us since we booked it already....we booked it the day it was announced, earlier this month, so Disney will have record of that (and I think I wrote it down, too, at the time). And I kept all my Disney trip related emails in a special folder in my inbox, so I've got the reservation update with Free Dining added. I had an email from CheapTickets.com yesterday that said our itinerary had been changed by the airline, but it's just on our departure day (headed home) and the flight numbers stay the same so I don't have to inform Disney of the changes.

That's all the trip related news I have at the moment. As of yesterday morning, Kimberly is now a Daisy Girl Scout (and I'm an adult volunteer with her troop) and tomorrow she starts her Landsharks running team practice after school (something else I volunteer with, for parent required hours at the school).

[RebeccaMcK]

Five weeks from today we leave for Orlando, early in the morning. And today is my mom's 65th birthday, so after we got home from school we phoned her to wish her a happy birthday and make sure she had opened the envelope I left her there in July. She has some Disney gift cards now, and she's looking forward to shopping. She even asked me if there are lots of shops, lol. Yep, in all four parks plus Downtown Disney and in our hotel. I told her she can look in the shops while we're on rides she doesn't want to ride AND on our way out of parks. And I reminded her the gift cards can be used anywhere "Disney," including the Disney Store and its website, Disneyland, etc. I did a couple other things today. I phoned Chase to request my rewards card be mailed to me (apparently I still had two that were still active until this December but I cut them up when the points were used up. Well, you're only allowed two, which I didn't know before - so then I phoned Chase since their website couldn't order me a new card. The lady joked, "Oh no, don't cut them up!" and said she'd send me one). When I get it in the mail I then call to activate it and they'll transfer my 122 points onto it....by then maybe there will be one or two more points, too, lol.

And the other thing I did today was get yet another Disney shirt but this time it's for Kimberly and it was $5 marked down to $3 at Walmart. Mickey's face! I don't care that it looks like it's more for a boy - they don't have enough non-princess shirts for girls. I mean, my kiddo likes Phineas & Ferb and Toy Story, etc. Those shows/movies aren't just for boys. Anyway, here is a pic of the shirt, laid out on my formal dining table:

IMAG0821.jpg

I also tried AGAIN to get 'Ohanas for a dinner reservation on the Friday, Saturday (if I get it I'd give up Kona Cafe), or Wednesday but no luck. I might try again later.

Have a great holiday weekend, for those of you who get Labor Day off (in the States).

[Bernie2003]

Hey...I know you. I went to Disney in May 2010 and I ended up in the background of a few of your pics...remember? HeeHee. Can't wait to see how this trip goes for you!

Brandi

[RebeccaMcK]

Hey...I know you. I went to Disney in May 2010 and I ended up in the background of a few of your pics...remember? HeeHee. Can't wait to see how this trip goes for you!

Brandi

Hi Brandi! Yes, I remember....you're right in the middle of one of my "general Fantasyland look-around" photos from that May's trip, hehe. And we never spotted each other there but you saw the pic in my report later. As I recall from your saying later on the TGM forums, you got pregnant on your trip - so how is the baby doing? It has been over a year so I know he/she had to be born by now.

[Bernie2003]

You are correct...Our beautiful baby Sydney was born in February and is 6 months old now! Our very own Disney Princess souvenier.

[RebeccaMcK]

You are correct...Our beautiful baby Sydney was born in February and is 6 months old now! Our very own Disney Princess souvenier.

Congrats! So now you have a boy and a girl, right? I bet you look forward to taking Sydney to Disney some day - any trip plans yet?

[Bernie2003]

We have two boys, and now our little girl. We're going in May 2012 and renting points to stay in BWV, but that's as far as I've gotten.

We made the difficult decision to leave Sydney behind with grandma this upcoming trip, but I think it's the best decision. That way we can focus on the boys and do everything they want to do, especially since Sydney will only be 15mos old and not really able to do anything. Then, when we go again in two more years we'll be on Princess overload. HeeHee.

Getting close to your trip! Can't wait to see how it goes!

[RebeccaMcK]

We have two boys, and now our little girl. We're going in May 2012 and renting points to stay in BWV, but that's as far as I've gotten.

We made the difficult decision to leave Sydney behind with grandma this upcoming trip, but I think it's the best decision. That way we can focus on the boys and do everything they want to do, especially since Sydney will only be 15mos old and not really able to do anything. Then, when we go again in two more years we'll be on Princess overload. HeeHee.

Getting close to your trip! Can't wait to see how it goes!

Thanks, Brandi. I can't wait either! lol I forgot you had two boys - I just remember one from your old profile pic. That's a good decision, in my opinion, to wait and take Sydney when she's older. I know people take babies and toddlers to Disney - I just don't know how they manage, especially if they have other kids on the trip as well. My cousin and his wife are going to WDW a couple days after we get home, with their boy who I think is almost 3 (but he's the size of a 5 year old) and the wife's parents. Kimberly was 4-1/2 when we introduced her to Disney (first the cruise and a month later Disneyland, back in 2009). Potty-trained and into all the characters. And now she's hooked (as am I, of course). And with this being Hubby's first trip to WDW it'll be fun to see it from his perspective....Kimberly looks forward to getting him on the rides she enjoyed that are unique (thus far) to Disney World. And I wonder if he'll get picked on during the Monsters Inc Laughfloor show, haha (since they seem to pick on dads in the audience). It'll be Mom's first trip, too, and she'll do the quiet/mild stuff but not the thrill rides. I'm hoping she'll join us for rope drop at DHS....we'll all be together for Animal Kingdom since we'll head there after the 'Ohana breakfast, so we'll miss DAK's rope drop but it's not a big deal. As long as we see FotLK, Nemo musical, and get to ride Everest and the safari we'll have a great day. But I bet she'll sleep in a bit on our MK and Epcot mornings....at least she's just a monorail ride away (and I'll still encourage her to meet us as early as she can). We'll probably all sleep in a bit on the Wednesday and Thursday, since Wednesday is our free day (no parks, at least not yet - we'd have to add a day to our park tickets if we decide to go anywhere) and Thursday is our second go at Epcot (so hopefully Future World will already be done - maybe we'll squeak in a Test Track or Soarin' ride but otherwise our focus is on World Showcase).

[RebeccaMcK]

Got our Magical Express tickets and luggage stickers in today's mail! So I scanned copies of the airport map and the first couple info pages' portions and put them on one page to send to my mom with her luggage sticker. And earlier today I took Kimberly to our local roller skating rink because of a special Mickey and Minnie Mouse Skate. I wanted to see how authentic the costumes looked. Well, here are some photos - in my opinion, these costumes look like how Mickey and Minnie appeared at old movie premieres or in parades back in the 70s, lol. Or they're just what regular people like us can rent at various costume stores. See for yourself (sorry if some look blurry....skating photos are "motion pictures," which my cell phone camera doesn't handle very well):


(the sign I saw a couple weeks ago that told me this event would be happening)
MickeyMinnieSkateSign.jpg

MickeyKimberlySkate.jpg

MickeySkates.jpg

MinnieSkates.jpg

And I thought this was kind of funny, because the characters took their gloves off so they could more easily hand out flyers to people as they left the place. Exposed human hands! They might have also done it to cool off a bit, because it gets hot in there.
MickeyMinnieNoHands.jpg

You haven't lived until you've seen Mickey and Minnie lead everyone in the Chicken Dance and the Hokey Pokey. Minnie also started something called the Cupid Shuffle (simple dance moves, based on a current hit song I've never heard of, I guess). I didn't take photos. Well, I might have put one on Facebook but I'm not keeping it (too blurry, and the characters aren't facing the camera). This was a two hour skate session but they came out starting in the second hour and then were out there for photo ops and skating pretty much the whole time remaining. It was fun. Kimberly looks forward to seeing the REAL MICE next month.

[offtoseemickey]

Hi!

ARGH!!! Fur characters with human hands FREAK ME OUT!!!! Can you be a bit more considerate in future please, Rebecca?!

Kimberly's Mickey tee shirt is very cute!

Can you believe it's getting so close!!! I'm so, so, so excited and I'm sure you're just the same too

Keep it coming!

[RebeccaMcK]

Michala, it IS getting so close now! For me it's technically one month from tomorrow! When I got the Magical Express tickets on Friday/Saturday I was quietly screaming and dancing in the kitchen (while Hubby and Kimberly went on watching a dvd). When do you leave again? I know you'll be there longer than we will be. Have you nailed down your park plans or has anything changed for you now that DHS has Fantasmic all but one night in October? I sent you a msg on Facebook but haven't heard back from you. Anyway, I hope to see you and Martin at Animal Kingdom like we discussed (3:30 FOTLK and then the trail up to the Safari ride - and hopefully the show times don't change but I'll check before we leave for Orlando), and I still hope to find you at DHS before we go in for Fantasmic. We will be going in the special dining pkg ticket holders' entrance, but I can look around the bigger queue outside first. We plan to get a light dinner and take it into the show with us or else get the hot dogs/pretzels they sell in the stadium. We do still plan to ride RnRC last, before going in for Fantasmic. It's just that this way, with the dining package, Mom won't have to stand very long. I went ahead and kept our DHS day to the Sunday as originally planned. We might even have a real breakfast at Captain Cook's before heading over there in the morning, since lunch isn't until 2:25 (I might take us over there earlier and see if we can be seated sooner. It worked in May 2010 when we were dying from the heat and wanted to get inside sooner than our ADR time. They only had a few people inside at the time, so it was no problem. And it was right after the parade.).
*******************
I have put forth a Plan B to my mom in case we need to change our break day. While MK is not as recommended on the Wednesday as it is on the Tuesday (it's still "green" but it's the least of the "green" - whereas on the Tuesday it's the most recommended park), I could easily switch our days around so that we have a break day on the Tuesday (while still making it to 1900 PF for our dinner ADR) and instead go to MK on the Wednesday, when they're open later and will have the MSEP. Now, I don't care if I ever really see that parade again - I grew up with it and I like it a lot but I saw it in November and that was good enough for me. If Mom wants to see it, maybe I'll stay and see it with her while Hubby takes Kimberly back to the room (or they wait out the parade and then leave). We're going to sleep in a bit on the Thursday (if I still know HOW by then....these early school mornings have me conditioned to waking up very early every morning without any alarm, even weekends - same with Kimberly) so it won't matter if we're out late on the Wednesday night. We do have our Tea at the GF late Wednesday afternoon, but we could monorail or boat over to it, taking a break from MK. Hubby says he could ride over with us and go to the pool bar or something, since he's not going to the Tea (nothing on the menu appeals to him except a cup of tea itself).

Or, if Kimberly really doesn't want to go in the pool (right now she says she doesn't, but we'll see - I just bought her some Rapunzel water shoes so she doesn't keep scraping up her feet as she climbs around the edges of pools. She took swim lessons over the summer but she will not demonstrate any of what she learned. ) or play on the beach on our break day, I might add a day to some or all of our tickets and go into MK just to do some things that we might not have time for on the other MK day (see Tinkerbell, see Rapunzel....although we still might be able to do both on the one full day we're there. MK closes early on the Tuesday for MNSSHP so we were going to leave anyway for our dinner ADR over at the GF and then call it a night or else watch the fireworks from the Poly beach - I'm sure we'll do that a couple times).

I've got some volunteer hours coming up at Kimberly's school soon. Driving for a field trip on Friday to Cave of the Winds (a city or two over from us)...it's some place I've never been before, and it's because I heard a while back that there are no longer any "winds" in the "cave." But the kids are studying rocks this week so that's where we're going. I can drive Kimberly plus one other kid (I did this last year, too, but so far I've only ever driven just Kimberly). And then next Tuesday I'm helping fetch kids from their classrooms to do vision and hearing tests with the school nurse. That'll be another 4-1/2 hours. We're required to volunteer 24 hours per school year (12 if a single parent). Maybe the field trip and the school nurse time plus all the time I devote to helping with Landsharks (running team) will use up the 24 hours. There will be other field trips, too - I always want to go on those, whether I drive or ride in the bus. Usually there is no bus, unless it's something the entire school is doing. This Friday is first grade only.

And other ways I'm keeping busy/sane (not overloading on trip plans) are watching movies on my Droid (Netflix app - the only way I can stream movies online because they can't yet handle Linux operating system on the computer) and reading "The Help" on my phone's Kindle app. It's a great book, and I saw the movie twice. Once my TV shows come back with new episodes I'll have even more to do (catch up on missed shows online, since I hardly ever get to watch anything as it airs). Hubby watches a few of the shows, but there are plenty that I watch alone.

Bye for now.

[DoctorK]

Michala, it IS getting so close now! For me it's technically one month from tomorrow!

For us it's one month from Thursday!!!

When I got the Magical Express tickets on Friday/Saturday I was quietly screaming and dancing in the kitchen (while Hubby and Kimberly went on watching a dvd).

Our came Friday too, which I thought was strange since I had read that they typically come 2-weeks out now. I was in the middle of sanding a dozen louvered shutters in preparation for a monster weekend painting project, so my exuberance was rather restrained... :)

[RebeccaMcK]

Hi DoctorK!

I think I found last year (I had two trips last year - first trips ever to WDW) that we seem to get the Magical Express envelopes around 32 days before departure, lol. And every time I saw someone mention that they got their envelope, it was pretty much the same time frame. I'm weird, I have time on my hands and I like to figure out patterns like that sometimes, lol. And I guess some time soon actual luggage tags might come in the mail, unless they don't do those any more (I mean the actual, hard plastic tags with the rubbery loops to string them through the bag handles. I have some of my old ones from last year, and I've given some away). If those come I'll have to mail my mom's out to her in CA. I think Hubby is starting to get a little excited about the trip now....I finally starting reading a couple other trip reports last night (I had refrained for too long) and I showed him how Rhonda's family got to be Family of the Day (park openers) at Epcot with their matching tie dye shirts. Hubby knows I would LOVE for us to be FotD some day at Epcot or MK (if even just for all the character interaction and the extra FPs they give you), so he's willing to wear the Disney (and Star Wars) shirts I have for him that match mine. We don't ALL match....Mom doesn't have any Disney shirts (and doesn't want any, she says - she might get herself one shirt in the parks...she might not be at rope drop for MK or Epcot anyway) and Kimberly's shirts don't match ours at all but are cute. We never had any special shirts made for us, but we've sure used our existing shirts from Disney Store a lot since I got them in 2010. One day at Landsharks practice after school I wore the Star Wars shirt (pictured earlier in this report) and it got a lot of attention from the kids. One boy kept touching R2D2 (around my kidney area) and saying, "I have that picture in my room!" Awesome - episode 4, A New Beginning....the one that started it all for my generation. I don't really care for the three newer movies that came out as the prequels. I've seen them but I don't own them on DVD. Interesting, sometimes fun, but JarJar Binks ruined a lot of it for me. Just as I guess the Ewoks ruined some of it for others before then. But I liked the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi...cute, fuzzy teddy bear warriors. All this love for Star Wars, and I probably won't get to ride Star Tours next month because my plan is to sit it out with Kimberly if she refuses to ride (she hates 3D). That's alright. Hubby and Mom can ride it. I rode it at Disneyland two months ago with Kimberly and my dad.

But as for Hubby, I tell him whenever I see Heineken on a drink menu somewhere ("Hey, you can get Heineken in the Fantasmic stadium!" "Oh, cool." ~ "Hey, you can go find a bar at Grand Floridian while we have Tea, or you can wait at Magic Kingdom and walk around or something." "I might go find a bar.") and while a lot of the food on the F&WF kiosk menus might be a bit too exotic/adventurous for him I think he'll find some good stuff. Even if it's just the ribeye tacos in Mexico. If he can get them without lettuce. He says lettuce adds "negative food taste" - meaning, it takes taste away from the flavor of what you're eating. Hates the stuff. He's an engineer (aeronautical)....not that that has to do with any lettuce qualities. I think I found lamb chops on a kiosk menu somewhere - he'll try those. I think we'll wind up having to keep our Le Cellier dinner ADR even if Mom and I are stuffed from eating around the World, because Hubby won't be full enough and will want his steak/filet at Le Cellier.

Geez, it is so quiet here I can hear a neighbor's phone ringing. Bye for now.

[DoctorK]

We have 6 of those luggage tags from non-DVC trips, but DVCers don't get those. I don't really need any more though.

I've also been readnig trip reports, lol. It's about this time that I usually get around to writing up the trip report from our *last* trip. It really gets me excited for the upcoming trip.

[RebeccaMcK]

I think it's the former secretary (executive assistant, semi retired) in me, Doc, but as my previous readers from TGM could attest, I crank out my trip reports pretty quickly once I'm home. I bet I'll be done before Halloween. Often, the pre-trip part takes longer to put together and read than the actual trip report. And so far I've always finished (did two long TRs over on TGM...the November one was long because it also went on to include a Sea World San Diego day trip and a couple Disneyland/DCA days in December). The only thing that slows me down is getting the photos just right (and waiting for Photopass....I only bought maybe four or five pic files from the May 2010 trip, and I didn't use Photopass at all on my solo November trip). And I've noticed we can't put too many photos in each post - that's the only thing that broke up the Disneyland part of this report as much as it did. But I carry my little notepad and pen everywhere around Disney, checking times of when we board something and how long the ride is, etc. It takes a beating sometimes, in wet pockets (from Splash Mtn or just rain in general), and I sometimes almost lose the pen (dropped it in my ride car on Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin at DL's Toontown and then found it as we got out. In November 2010 my one pen ran out of ink and I had to go buy a new one at Epcot...it was tall, pink, Princessy and had a gold crown on top. It has since died at home.) - but I always manage to write up an outline or quick notes of what we're doing and anything fun that happens. And then I flesh it out when writing it up here or beforehand in a text file. Then sometimes I remember stuff later that I forgot to write about, like the crazy empty runaway strollers at Disneyland.

[DoctorK]

We take a ton of pix and use photopass as well, so although I don't take notes, I rely upon the time stamps from my camera and the photopass camera, plus any live tweets that I've sent - I usually tweet a lot while I'm there, usually waiting in line or something like that.

[RebeccaMcK]

I'm on Facebook a lot in the parks (haven't done that at WDW yet) but I don't do Twitter. I limit my posts, though, since I use the cell phone for a lot of stuff (including photos sometimes) and it wears down the battery too quickly. It's usually dead by mid afternoon. This time we will have the actual camera with us, so perhaps I won't use the Droid as much for photography (it's sometimes easier to use than the Olympus digital camera, though). But the Olympus at least has night portrait, fireworks and cuisine settings, hehe. I'll need the phone more this time to touch base with my mom if we separate in the parks sometimes (and we will). I don't have timestamps on my photos, but this time if I can refrain from titling all the pics before posting them in albums and in this report they will at least remain in chronological order. Once I title everything (photo descriptions) they're in alphabetical order, and then it gets hard to post them in order.

[DoctorK]

Most digital cameras put the time stamp in the file data. If you're using Windows, right-click the picture file and choose Properties. Under the Details tab it should say "Date Taken," and give that information. In Windows Explorer you can add that field to the folder view and it will let you sort by that information, so you can name them anything you like and still be able to easily put them in chronological order.

[RebeccaMcK]

Nope, no Windows here. Only Linux/Ubuntu. I'll just stick with my method. Although, I do see a way to sort the photos list in their folder on the desktop by "modification date" rather than by "name" so that's always possible, even with titles.

[DoctorK]

Wow, that's hardcore. You can still access the exif data on ubuntu, which for most smartphones will also include the GPS coordinates of your picture (helpful if you ever take pictures while lost in a large desert, so you can find the place you buried the treasure, I guess?) and a lot of other photo information.

http://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2010/07/ex...-read-and.html

[RebeccaMcK]

Thanks, Doc. I'll bookmark that site. I noticed that on Ubuntu the photo files can be listed by modification date but not by access date (date taken, most of the time). So, actually, if I re-title photos before sorting them, they'll then have the dates I modified them by changing their titles. Anyway, I will probably just not title them until I'm done posting them in the report (and I share them with family and friends in my usual monthly batch of photos on Shutterfly, which they all seem to find easier to use than Kodak Gallery and Photobucket for seeing and ordering prints). I'll know what the pics are, while doing so. Most of the people who get my online photo albums each month have seen pics I've taken at Disney World before (or have been there themselves) so they'll know what's what, too. When they don't know, they usually ask me, lol.

ONE MONTH FROM TODAY!!

[RebeccaMcK]

There isn't much to report today that's related to the upcoming trip except for this: In either Tuesday or Wednesday's mail (not sure which since we let two days' worth accumulate in there before we went up the street to get it from the community mailbox), we got the envelope from Disney containing the plastic (hard) luggage info tags and the Photopass card (along with the booklet of hotel info and vouchers). I'll register the Photopass card later for in case we use it at all. I think the tags this year are bad. Cheaply made, it seems, and the rubbery strap part that holds the tag onto your baggage handle isn't rubbery at all and seems sharp. I've decided not to use them. I like last year's better. I've kept one of those on my suitcase since last year's first trip. I still have a tag here made up for Mom and I am still thinking about whether or not to send it to her. Except for the hologram/lenticular part on the tag (which seems cool), it seems shabby. Disney cutbacks, I guess.

FOUR WEEKS AND ONE DAY! This time next month we'll be in Animal Kingdom.

[jillyb]

FOUR WEEKS AND ONE DAY! This time next month we'll be in Animal Kingdom.

Hannah's BFF is going next month too. Her BFF doesn't know she's going. They're doing the Land and Cruise package. Yesterday her Mom looked at me and said "38 days!!", to which I responded "Lucky!!!!" I then had to keep telling Hannah it was none of her business what "38 days" meant! LOL

[RebeccaMcK]

lol Jill....the secrets we moms keep. I bet I couldn't keep that secret. And now we're exactly four weeks away. This time next month we'll be somewhere in Hollywood Studios, probably in the Animation building.