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Date: MLK Weekend - January 18 - 20, 2008
Cast: 2 North Carolina families that are good friends. Each family has 2
boys, and the kids are ages 10, 7, 7, and 2. I'm not telling you how old I am!
Let’s just say I’ve enjoyed my 36th birthday several times.
Lodging: Wilderness Lodge - yeah, baby!
Day 3 Saturday Hollywood Studios/night at MK
Pixie dust moments:
- One of the adults in our group had trouble with kidney stones right before we left. We were all worried about him being in pain while on vacation. Before we
began dinner, he started to feel badly…and then it disappeared. If that’s not
pixie dust, I don’t know what is! The older I get, the more I realize that your
health and well-being is vital to life enjoyment.
A Few Sticky Points:
- Because of the drizzle, Jedi Academy was canceled. Our Star Wars fans were so disappointed! My son even wore his Jedi robe to Hollywood Studios, hoping to get picked to participate. The show doesn’t run if the stage is slippery for
safety reasons. Oh, well. Maybe next trip!
- Hollywood Studios was crazy busy. We went against TourGuide Mike’s advice and went anyway…big mistake! We all left by 11:00 and went our separate ways…some of us went back to the resort to rest, and the others went to DisneyQuest.
(Hey, that rhymes!) And once again, poor tour guide that I am, I gave them bad
advice about getting there. I thought that you could get to Downtown Disney
from the TTC. Not true. They should have bused over to a close resort such as
Caribbean Beach, and then connected to Downtown Disney. Live and learn.
- The Indiana Jones Show was closed because of dance team competition, much to the chagrin of my 7 year old. He wanted to know what all these 'cheerleaders' were doing here. He has a major he-man woman-haters club thing going right now. I'm willing to bet that in trips to come during his teenage years, he would LOVE to be there with all of those pretty girls! :-) (And yes, I realize that there
were probably plenty of boys there for the competition, too---but the girls
caught his attention!) Thou doth protest too much, methinks!
A Sticky Point that led to a Pixie Dust Moment:
Our group was seated and ready to enjoy Fantasmic…and then came the rain. I now know what people mean when they say that rain comes down in sheets. I wish my shower had that kind of water pressure. Because we had nowhere to go, we just stayed put, laughed about how drenched we were and hoped that the weather system would pass---but then came thunder and lightening. Fantasmic was canceled, and we had really looking forward to finally seeing it after a couple of failed attempts on previous trips. Hollywood Studios had closed at 7:00, so there was no point staying at the park. Even with ponchos and coats we were completely soaked, and so was everyone else who was trying to get onto the resort buses. The resort bus area was crazy! The most frustrating thing was that folks wanted to stay under the shelters at the bus stops and were refusing to move forward in line. That caused a lot of confusion because the line was forced all the way out to mix with the other resort bus queues. Everyone was already sopping wet! What did it matter about a little more water? It was no longer thundering and
lightening, and it wasn’t even raining hard at this point. Grrrrrr Fortunately, several WL buses came quickly, and we didn’t have to wait more than 40 minutes in that mess. On the bus ride home, we decided to go to the MK since we were already wet. We went back to the Lodge, changed clothes, and then hopped over to the MK in our rain gear. I bought a pair of Disney crocs at the Emporium for my son since he was floating in his shoes. The Emporium was packed, but we had the entire park to ourselves!!! Everyone had been scared away by the terrible weather, and it was now just raining lightly. We were able to walk onto every attraction in Adventureland, did BTMRR, got a dole whip, rode Space Mountain, experienced Monsters, Inc, rode Buzz Lightyear multiple times, and got a soggy picture made in front of the castle. It really is funny to see—a group of very wet happy people. A crummy night turned into a great night!
Really good stuff:
- finding the Power Rangers with very few folks around them--the 7 year olds just about lost their minds over this, the picture with my 2 year old doing his best Power Ranger move with the white and green rangers--priceless
- shopping at Tatooine Traders with my little Star Wars freaks and being able to say--yes, you can have that!
- Star Tours, Muppetvision, friendly CM’s at the Muppet store
- taking pictures around the resort
- unlimited diet coke in the refillable resort mug
- RNRC
- seeing WL in the sunshine (we had a brief respite from the rain in the afternoon,)
- the kids having a great time sliding on the fake snow outside of the Christmas shop near Mama Melrose's
- a wonderful dinner
- a cute Yoda t-shirt for my 2 year old that says: “Judge me by my size, do you?” (Yoda is wearing Mickey ears and is eating a Mickey bar while being measured for ride height requirement,)
- a great late evening at MK.
Grubbin’ and Shoppin’ around MK:
- ABC Commissary---it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either. Definitely a
take-it or leave-it kind of place. It was the worst meal of the trip.
- Mama Melrose’s---I was prepared to hate the place. I had seen several bad
reviews of it that mentioned the poor service and worse than the average Olive
Garden food. I chose it anyway because it offered the Fantasmic dinner package
and we didn’t want to spend 2 dining credits (Brown Derby) and we didn’t want to
do another buffet (Hollywood and Vine.) My low expectations were blown out of
the water. WOW! Best food of the trip! Best service of the trip (Richard is
WONDERFUL---we made a point to speak to the manager and complete a comment card about him. Ask for his section!) Best desserts of the trip! Casual, relaxed
family atmosphere. It was a very nice place, but we felt our kids were welcome.
- I will post full dining reviews of the restaurants later. I cannot say enough
positive things about Mama Melrose’s here.
- Dole Whip—Yummy…but a little bit of a let-down. Maybe it is because I went to
wikipedia.com and saw the list of ingredients first. Be warned--That is truly
frightening! They may wave a fresh pineapple over it or something before they
serve it, and that is the closest thing to nutrients you get! :-)
Things I’d do differently:
- I’ll never go to Disney again without a pair of crocs for each person in my
family. They were great when it was raining! Buying them at Disney was very
$$$, but worth every penny.
- I wouldn’t hesitate to book ADR’s for Mama Melrose’s.
- Follow TGMike’s advice! I thought: Hey-this is value season! It can’t be that
bad! Well...the man was right on the money. Shoulda listened.
- Leave the glow sticks at home. What a pain they were to keep up with and keep out of the kids’ mouths---not my 2 year old. The 7 year old was the problem! I ended up having to take them from him.
Coming up...Day 4, Animal Kingdom and 'Ohana
Page: 1, 2, 3, 4
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