Finally a trip without the band!...but we still have a schedule... Sept 2018 TR (Updated 2/9)

Riss

Mouseketeer
Joined
Mar 31, 2018
Hello and welcome to my very first trip report! I've done a Pre-Trip Report for this trip's portion to Disney World and this trip report is actually split in to 2 different parts due to half of it being on the Disney Dream and the other half being done in Walt Disney World. The Disney Dream Trip Report will be updated first since that was the first half of the trip with this one being updated afterwards.

I'm not a large picture taker, but I do have some pictures from the trip that I'll include. Some others might be just general pictures from the Internet if I don't have a suitable enough picture.

As far as the introductions go, I've already done them in the Pre-Trip Report, so you can read it there. I'll link both the Pre-Trip Report and the Disney Cruise Trip Report below and also add a Table of Contents to allow for easier navigation through this report. Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Disney World Pre-Trip Report
Disney Cruise Trip Report (from 9/17/18 - 9/21/18)

Table of Contents
Disney Dream
Day 1 Part 1 (Monday, September 17, 2018): Embarkation (we'll make it, right?)
Day 1 Part 2 (Monday, September 17, 2018): Our First Experience on the Dream
Day 2 Part 1 (Tuesday, September 18, 2018): Spending Some Time in Nassau
Day 2 Part 2 (Tuesday, September 18, 2018): Happy Halloween!
Day 3 Part 1 (Wednesday, September 19, 2018): Castaway Cay!
Day 3 Part 2 (Wednesday, September 19, 2018): Pirate's Night!
Day 4 Part 1 (Thursday, September 20, 2018): Morning at Sea
Day 4 Part 2 (Thursday, September 20, 2018): Last Day!
Day 5 (Friday, September 21, 2018): Disembarkation to Disney World!


Disney World
Day 5 Part 1 (Friday, September 21, 2018): Finally to Disney World for Part 2, Checking In and Epcot!
Day 5 Part 2 (Friday, September 21, 2018): World Showcase
Day 5 Part 3 (Friday, September 21, 2018): Spirit of Aloha, Back to Epcot, First Impressions of the Art of Animation

Day 6 Part 1 (Saturday, September 22, 2018): I Guess Not Everything Can Always Go According To Plan!
Day 6 Part 2 (Saturday, September 22, 2018): A Pretty Spectacular Night!
 
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Quick Intros

Hello to all and welcome to my Disney World Trip Report! This is the first time that I'm writing one of these about a trip I took. I previously wrote a first part to this and you can find the links to it above because before my family and I spent 4 nights at the Art of Animation Finding Nemo Suites, we spent 4 nights on the Disney Dream for Halloween on the High Seas which was incredible!

This is part 2 of our week long trip back in September.

I know I made this thread a long time ago but there's been a lot of things happening in life and have just gotten around to posting about this now, so even though some specifics may be a little rusty, I still have a lot of detail about our trip!

First off, though, let's get into a little bit of detail about who is on this trip. You can find a one a little more in-depth on the Pre-Trip Report.

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Isn't that just a wonderful picture? Haha. My brother is actually the designated selfie taker of our family so if I post any of them from this trip, he's probably going to be the one that's always in the front.

But since I'm the one writing this report, let's start with me! Lol.

I'm in blue with the short hair, I had just gotten it cut before this trip. As of right now I'm 24 and I was the main planner for this trip. I handled most of the details regarding scheduling FPs and ADRs, things that my family, believe it or not, has never done before on our previous trips to Disney!

Next, we'll move on to my parents. My dad all the way in the back and my mom in front of me in her Disney Cruise Line jacket, she's always cold so she'll probably be in a jacket or something for a lot of pictures, unless she took it off. My mom was pretty much the brains behind this trip. It was her idea to go to Disney World and actually to go on a Disney cruise as well. My dad just tends to go along with whatever we want, he's pretty easygoing.

The second oldest is the girl in black right behind my brother. I tend to just refer to her as my sister in these things while my other sister I classify as my youngest sister, so it may get confusing. She's 23 and is currently working a corporate job. She's the listmaker of the family always making sure that we have everything we need for the trip and don't leave anything behind.

My brother is number three and he's the one taking the picture. He's 22, he turned 22 like 2 weeks before the trip, and is going to graduate from college this year with a degree in computer science and will be going on to pursue his Master's, all while working at his very fancy corporate job.

Finally, the youngest of our family is the blonde girl holding up the child, my youngest sister. At the time of this trip she was just 2 months shy of her 20th birthday and upon coming home from the trip she has learned that she is pregnant. She's due at the end of May and with a new baby that means that my family will definitely have to plan some more Disney trips in our future.

And last but not least there is the baby boy that my youngest sister is holding, who I tend to call the baby. He's not that much of a baby, just shy of his 3rd birthday when we went, but he's the whole reason we did go. My mom wanted him to experience Disney and since we pretty much go every other year anyway, it was a perfect time. If not for him, we may have not gone for quite a while.

And if any of you are wondering, his mother did not come along with us. It was just my family taking him for our 8-night/9-day vacation. His mother was in Florida for a little bit visiting her brother and was bringing up the possibility of visiting him while she was down there as well, but the distance it would take her to drive was too much, around 2 hours each way, so she didn't come and we understood her reasons.

But up next, our first day in the parks! And our first stop? Epcot!
 
Day 5 Part 1 (Friday, September 21, 2018): Finally to Disney World for Part 2, Checking In and Epcot!

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Typically when it comes to Disney World vacations, my family will wake up moderately early, head to the airport, arrive at the Orlando Airport, board the Magical Express to our resort, and pretty much spend a relaxing day. It's a perfect way to start our vacation, that is if we aren't late leaving our house or anything (we were totally late leaving our house for the cruise and were totally worried we'd miss our flight time). But this time, things were a little different as we were coming off of 4 wonderful nights aboard the Disney Dream. That's why this is technically Day 5 of vacation haha.

Since I didn't know exactly what time we would be able to leave the ship and arrive at our resort, I took extra time in planning FPs for the day. In fact, I wasn't even sure if we were actually going to go to the parks! It was wishful thinking on my part during the planning stage, but thankfully we were able to get off of the ship faster than we expected!

In our stateroom on our final night on the ship, we received a paper that informed us that we should be by the Disney buses, we bought the Disney transfers, by 8:15am since the bus departs at 9am. Well...the letter doesn't tell you that there are busses that leave before 9am, unless that was because of a number of factors like the amount of people actually heading to Disney World afterwards. But either way, my family did the walk off, without eating breakfast, and disembarked the ship at around 7:30am. We headed to customs, which took no longer than 10 minutes, and out to the Disney buses. After boarding the buses, we probably waited about 10 more minutes before the doors closed, the driver took his seat, and we were on our way...it was probably only like 8:00am. Whoa.

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There were other stops on our bus to places like Caribbean Beach and Boardwalk and whatever else is around that area. Our resort was actually last. We were staying at the Art of Animation hoping to be placed in a Finding Nemo suite. It would be the first time for all of us to stay at a resort that wasn't one of the All Stars. The reason? Well we were coming without the band after all! (Hence the title)

Every single one of our Disney trips revolved around our high school band. It started when I went on my first trip when I was a freshman and continued until our youngest took her last trip her junior year. During that time, my family would come to Disney World every other year, whether it was for a longer period of time like 4 days or just for a short weekend, just because the band was coming to Disney. There was even a year that they came without me! I couldn't come because I had a college final. Our last trip, my sister's junior year and final trip, we literally just spent 2 days in the parks, flying in the day before and flying out the day after, due to everyone's college schedule since the rest of us 3 were attending college at that time.

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But every time we came, my family always stayed where the band was staying due to convenience for whoever was in the band. That way it was easier for my parents to be nearby in case we needed anything and they also got us, unbeknownst to the school, a room key to charge to their room but it would also obviously work for their room.

This time, though, my parents wanted to do something different, all of us did, but there were a couple of requirements that needed to be met. First off, my mom wanted us all in the same room, there needed to be more than 1 bathroom, and it needed to have that Disney feel since we were bringing along a 2-year-old after all. At the end of all of our searching, only one place really fit the bill for us and that was the Art of Animation.

Our original plan was to book a Finding Nemo Family Suite, which we did, but when Free Dining dropped and when we managed to get the deal, after adding a Park Hopper day, our travel agent informed us that we could only book a General Family Suite with the theming to be determined later but she'd note that we wanted a Finding Nemo Suite. Okay, cool. I was fine with that since our family ended up saving over $600 with the Free Dining promotion but was also a little apprehensive since I was totally set on getting a Finding Nemo Suite.

So fast forward to the day that we get off of the Disney Dream and arrive at the Art of Animation to check in. It's a fabulous resort and we loved it. My family didn't get much time to check it out, but I made sure to walk the entire property and loved every bit of it. Not only was it perfect for the 2-year-old, but it was also perfect for me, the 24-year-old who just loved seeing all of the larger than life Disney characters from The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Cars, and Finding Nemo. Some of the minor details and the way that the scenes were brought to life just took my breath away and I made sure to get a picture of everything.

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We walked into the Art of Animation at probably around 9am, or a little after, and my dad went to complete the check-in process. Just by looking at the lobby I was already itching to look around but was a little tired from waking up at 6:30am that morning. Still, we were finally in Disney World! There was no way I was going to sleep! The rest of the family sat with the luggage and looked around at the lobby, what we could see of it from where we were sitting, as my mom went to help my dad at check-in.

Now we did know that check-in was at 3pm and that they may or may not have a room ready for us but during the process my parents called me over to them where the woman helping them informed us that if we wanted to get into our room as soon as possible there was a Lion King Family Suite ready; however, if we were willing to wait, a Finding Nemo Family Suite would be ready for us later. I was so happy and quickly said that we should wait since the Finding Nemo Suites are close to everything, they're the ones immediately right after you exit the doors and right by the Big Blue Pool, so it was really only like a 5 minute walk, if that, to everything. My parents agreed and we went with that. That just meant that we'd have to leave our bags with bell services while we went to the parks and they would deliver our bags to our room, then. So while we were still in the lobby, we organized our bags, taking with us the things we wanted to and leaving behind everything else.

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It was probably just a little after 10am when we got everything settled and went into the bus line for our first park, Epcot!

There were a variety of reasons why I wanted Epcot to be our first park. Originally we were only going to do 3 park days, but since we got the Free Dining, a condition of that was to have a minimum of at least 4 Park Hopper tickets. My parents weren't upset with that, though, since we still saved money by getting them. My mom even said that it would be alright if we didn't use them just for that reason. So that day I thought we would go to Disney Springs or something and have a semi-relaxing day, since we woke up early to disembark from the ship, before heading to our first ADR ever at Spirit of Aloha, a show that my mom wanted to experience. Since we got the 4th park day ticket, though, I went ahead and scheduled FPs for Epcot since I knew that there was monorail transportation available there and we could get to the Polynesian Resort that way. The downside? My mom and two sisters had outfit plans for the luau that would kind of be impossible with all of that traveling. It would also be a waste of time to go back and forth just for an outfit change. Therefore they toned it down a little. My mom didn't wear her skirt and my sister wore something more casual. My youngest sister still wore her dress.

Upon arriving in Epcot we first got our picture taken by one of the Photopass Photographers. This trip was the first time that we bought something like Memory Maker and we wanted to use it to the fullest extent. Part of our motivation for buying it stemmed from the fact that we did have the baby with us and figured that we'd probably be attending a lot of character meet and greets and it would just be a fun way of making sure everyone is in the picture.

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We still had a little bit of time before our first FP, which was for Spaceship Earth, but not that long so my siblings and I decided to wait around the entrance until we could enter the line. My parents and the baby, meanwhile, saw a line for a character meet with Pluto and took him over there. The ride was just as I remembered it and although it's not thrilling, we still do it just because.

Once we were off of the ride, we discovered my parents had taken the baby to get something for lunch since he was hungry and we decided to sit in there for a little bit until our next FP, which was to see Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy at that character location building.

Before actually going on this trip we were totally apprehensive about whether the baby would take to the characters or not. In the past he's been afraid of things like Santa and the Easter Bunny whenever we went to see them for a picture. It wasn't that he wouldn't go up to them at all, he just wouldn't sit there alone for a picture. He'd take one if someone were holding him but definitely did not want to be placed down alone. For this trip, though, he surprisingly did very, extremely well with all of the characters. He willingly went up to them and gave them a hug and kiss all on his own without anyone there. We were so proud and so thankful that he would actually be the one to wave to them first or run up to them in excitement. It was incredible to watch because we've never gone to Disney with a child that was younger than 10 before. My youngest sister was in 5th grade the first time we went.

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Also, this was probably the first of many times that my family was impressed with FPs. We'd never scheduled any for our previous trips because someone was always with the band and we'd always separate to do things with our friends who were on the trip, so it was just never something convenient to do. This trip we used them to our fullest extent and was impressed every time we got in a line and was able to get on a ride within 5-10 minutes.

After we successfully met Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy, my sister and I wanted to see Baymax, as we're huge fans of the movie. I have a ton of Baymax stuffed animals, actually even making my sister find me the stuffed one a couple of years back in Hollywood Studios during one of our trips when the movie had just come out. The baby had expressed interest in that, too, so we took him to wait in the line with us while the rest of our family headed to the World Showcase to look around at the Food and Wine Festival.

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The wait for Baymax wasn't that long, probably around 20 minutes. We also saw the meet and greet for Joy and Sadness that was happening on the other side. All three of us took pictures with him, my sister and I got individual pictures and the baby wouldn't take one by himself, I guess Baymax freaked him out a little, but he did fist pump and get in the group one. Once we were done, we made our way over to the World Showcase to meet up with everyone else and apparently missed some rain!

Next: Looking around the World Showcase for F&W, our ADR at Spirit of Aloha, heading back to Epcot at night

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Day 5 Part 2 (Friday, September 21, 2018): World Showcase

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My family has been to F&W before and absolutely loved it. We loved the booths with all of the various foods and honestly, I think we're just fans of the World Showcase in general. I always love walking through the various countries and gift shops and it's always a tradition of mine to get those solar powered animal, or people, things. One thing that I actually discovered about those things a couple of years ago was that they tend to be cheaper in the China gift shop compared to the Japan one. Now the price ranges vary, but the ones in the Japan store tend to run at around the high teens - $20, whereas I could get a similar one in the China gift shop for the $10 - the lower teens. But I guess it just all depends on style.

My family had gone ahead without my sister, the baby, and I because we wanted to get our picture taken with Baymax so we had to catch up to them in China. Only...they weren't there yet. They actually took a detour and went to the one bakery type shop in Norway because my mom wanted to check it out and get something. I don't know the name of what she got but it was some cinnamon thing and she ended up loving it.

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Out of all of the World Showcase countries, I have a soft spot for China and Japan and always love just checking everything out there even though I did the same thing the time before. I guess part of the reason is because I was born in China, I was adopted and don't remember anything about being there, and I studied Japanese in college. All of the countries are great, though, but I would always find time to stop at those spots.

So we took some time to look around, my brother decided to stop at the booth for China and get some dumplings while the rest of us went into the gift shop. I bought my solar people, getting two of them, but not getting anything else. Once we exited, my mom and sister were eating at the quick service there because they were hungry. It was already probably around 1pm by this point, maybe a little bit before, and we had been up since 6am, so everyone was getting a bit hungry and tired.

While they sat there and ate, my sister and I took the baby into the pavilion to take a look around. While we were in there, though, we saw a line forming and wondered what it was for and after asking the Photopass Photographer, discovered that it was the line to meet with Mulan and she'd be coming out shortly. The baby knew about Mulan, seeing as it's one of my favorite movies, so we asked if he wanted to stay to visit with her and he readily agreed. The line wasn't that long but the baby was beginning to get a little restless and wanted to go back to my youngest sister, who was outside. However, once he saw Mulan actually come in, he was really excited to see her. He couldn't stop hugging her when he saw her and we all got a group picture together. We did have him get his own individual picture of him hugging her and the people in line behind us commented that he was so cute hugging her like that haha.

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After the meet and greet we continued on our way through the countries. It was unfortunate but we didn't really seem to want anything at the booths, despite really liking all of the options last time but that didn't derail our like for the whole experience.

We did stop in Italy for a little while because I wanted to get a cannoli from the booth and we also saw another Photopass Photographer there on a bridge. My brother had gone first to get a picture by himself and my sister and the baby also went to get one by themselves. The rest of us then went over and got a family picture which turned out pretty nice. He also had a Mickey sign there with the colors of the Italian flag on it for us to hold during the picture. We didn't really spend too much time with the countries because we were starting to get concerned with how time much we would have in relation to looking at the rest of the World Showcase and getting over to the Poly for our ADR.

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Next we went over to Japan for a little and the baby and I went first because I heard the taiko drummers and we managed to catch the end of the show. My family finally caught up with us and we looked around in the large gift shop. My brother was looking for a specific character for his friends, a character from Spirited Away that they reference, despite them never seeing the movie, and I was just looking around for nothing very specific. The baby did end up getting some food erasers, which was surprisingly the only thing he wanted in the entire place even though we told him he could've had anything.

We started to pass through France but saw an open table and decided to sit down for a little bit where the baby subsequently fell asleep. That was alright by us since we knew it was a long day and that we wanted him to see the show at dinner. Typically if he doesn't take a nap during the day he fell asleep earlier that night, as what we discovered while we were on the cruise when he wouldn't go down for frequent naps. We ended up sitting there a little bit longer than what we probably would have liked but as long as the baby was peacefully sleeping that was fine by us.

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We eventually began moving again and before we realized it we were almost at the end. We did spend some time in England since my brother wanted to find Joffa cakes and there was also a band playing near the back so my dad wanted to listen to them while they finished up their set. They were absolutely amazing and even some of the cast members that were working in the stores had come out to just have a good time while listening to them.

Canada was the last country that we visited and we made sure to find a door that my mom likes for us to take a picture in front of. Now it may seem weird that she likes for us to take a picture in front of a door, but that's because she likes the decorations on it when it's Christmas. Since we didn't go at Christmas, it was just a plain door. That didn't stop us from taking a picture, though.

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And as if by a miracle, we were actually done with the world showcase by 3pm, the time that we estimated we should leave around to head to the Poly. We stopped for a quick bathroom break and made our way to the front of the park so we could leave via the monorail. We were going to be going to the Spirit of Aloha at the Poly, a dinner that my mom wanted to try.

Next: Spirit of Aloha, Epcot at night

I also know that that's not the door in Canada pictured below haha, but that's another one of our favorite spots to get a picture at during the holidays.

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Day 5 Part 3 (Friday, September 21, 2018): Spirit of Aloha, Back to Epcot, First Impressions of the Art of Animation

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We headed to the Poly with a sleeping baby for our 5:15pm ADR for the Spirit of Aloha. Since I was always planning for us to take the monorail from Epcot to the Polly, I estimated a 45 minute travel time. I don't think I actually noted the time that it took us to get there.

In the end we decided not to use our last FP that we had for the Nemo ride in Epcot. We were having too much fun in the World Showcase and just ultimately decided to skip it and make our way to the Poly so we wouldn't be late.

The monorail was really fun, I've only ever been on it a couple of times. We were sure that the baby would've loved it but he was unfortunately still sleeping throughout the entire duration of the ride. The monorail itself wasn't that crowded and once we got to the ticket and transportation center, we transferred to the resort monorail where the first stop was actually the Poly.

We arrived relatively early and weren't entirely sure about what time we should check in. I had done some previous research on the internet, around the time that I was making our ADRs, and saw that it typically does take a little time before they start letting people in but we decided to use the extra time we had to enjoy some things around the Poly. One of the things we did was check out the gift shop and look around the lobby area. We might decide to stay there one day in the future, it is a beautiful resort, but I'm not sure. I think that as long as we have some children in our family we'll keep gearing towards the larger than life character Disney resorts.

Eventually I went to check us in and got the leis that they hand out and we then woke the baby up at around 4:45pm when we decided to take pictures in front of the statue with the Photopass Photographer. They graciously took a ton of pictures for us, family pictures and single pictures.

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Once we were done with that we decided to make our way towards the venue and down the path. We continued to wait outside of the venue for about 10 minutes before they began to let people in. It was a little hot and humid, it is September in Disney World after all, but it wasn't completely unbearable. The line to get into the venue was long but they worked through it pretty quickly. One guy in line actually saw that I wasn't wearing the lei that they handed us and gave us some more since he said his kids took a bunch. But they had two separate lines where once you get to the front, the hostess takes your receipt (that you get when you check-in) and takes you directly to the table you're sitting at. I thought it was kind of funny that we had gotten assigned to Table 50, which just so happened to be our table number while we were on the cruise.

Our table was on the second floor in the middle section so we had a perfect view of the stage. There was no one behind us and no one in front of us so it was like we were the only people in that section. I think there was a table besides us, but we didn't share a table and we barely even realized they were there. We were at the table right near the kitchen but we never heard any noise from them. I was concerned about getting bad seats, though. I thought we might get something like unfavorable tablemates or there might be a pole in front or someone's head that would result in the baby not being able to see, if we were placed on the first floor. Our seats were perfect for us.

I know that I tried to research about reserving an ADR for this place beforehand and didn't really find much information on it so I'm not exactly sure about the time that warranted what kind of table we got. I read reports about how they assign a table when you reserve, but I'm not sure in what order. I picked Category 2 when reserving because we were on the dining plan therefore only Category 2 and 3 are covered on it, not Category 1. I put a picture of the floor plan to give a better idea.

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This was actually the first ADR that I booked when our window opened. I wasn't concerned with any of our 3 ADRs because we weren't going for the high profile places like Chef Mickey's or Cinderella's Royal Table. We weren't that interested in meeting princesses this trip and my family doesn't really do breakfast, so we had no desire to do anything pre-park opening or princess related. I also wanted to try not to go to like a place with repeat characters, like go to two character meals that had the same characters in attendance, even though they may be wearing something different. In the end, I think the choices we made were perfect for us.

I had looked at what the menu would be beforehand and told everyone in my family about what kinds of things they would have. I don't think any of us had any real complaints about the food. Everything was delicious and our server brought out more as we wanted it, even just bringing out certain menu items or even just something plain. At one point my mom said something about not really wanting a piece of chicken with the pesto sauce on it, to my dad and brother. Our server just so happened to overhear her and brought out an entire plate of just plain chicken for her.

The appetizers were already on the table when we sat down. There was some watermelon, pineapple, cold noodle salad, and a wedge salad. The baby loved the fruit there and began devouring that almost immediately. To be honest, some of the reviews online scared me a bit about this place but it was something that my mom wanted to try. It was actually like the only thing she said she wanted to check out while we were on this trip. I did tell my family about the potential bad reviews beforehand, about how some people weren't happy with the food or the show itself, but my mom commented that we were going for the experience, not just for one of those sections mentioned above. She said that it was all of it together that created the atmosphere and experience that we were looking forward to.

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The main course was brought out during a break in the first half. In order for the servers to be able to bring out the food as well as to allow everyone some time to eat, there were breaks placed throughout the first half and also a kind of like intermission. The second half, the half that everyone reportedly goes for, isn't until after the dessert is served. I didn't have any issues with any of the breaks as it allowed people to have time to eat and go to the bathroom without having a continuous show where they'd have to get up and interrupt. The meal itself consisted of BBQ pork, ribs, chicken, some broccoli looking type thing that was the vegetable, and coconut rice.

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There were no complaints about the food in my family and we all enjoyed it. I, personally, was surprised in myself that I loved the coconut rice as much as I did. I don't particularly like coconut but was just absolutely in love with the rice.

Additionally, the dessert itself was a pineapple cake that was cut into a large square for everyone at the table to share. Our table had gotten two of them. We had two of everything, even two of the appetizer and main course dishes. It was more like a family meal type setting.

The show itself wasn't that bad as some reviews make it seem or maybe it's just that my family likes that type of thing. The first half had a lot of singing and dancing but I think that the cast had amazing voices and everyone in the show seemed to really be enjoying themselves. There were instances when they wanted the kids to come up and dance or if people were celebrating certain things and we even got the baby to go up with my brother.

The second half is the one that people probably wait for since it's when all of the traditional dances happen and they were beyond amazing. Everyone was completely captivated by them. The fire dancer at the end was absolutely stellar. In my opinion, it was beyond what I thought it would've been after reading everything on the internet. My entire family enjoyed the show and probably wouldn't mind coming back again.

As far as the cost of the dinner was, my family was on the Standard Dining Plan for the Free Dining promotion. We upgraded to the standard since value resorts, which Art of Animation is one, only get the Quick Service Dining Plan. We upgraded for a variety of reasons, one of them being that we knew that since we were going with the baby, we wanted to perhaps try some character meals. But anyway, on the receipt that they give you when you check-in for the dinner, it tells you what the total was and for the 6 of us plus gratuity, I don't think the baby counts since he was 2 on this trip, it would have been $444. Now since gratuity is included on the bill, and since we used the dining plan, we didn't have to pay out of pocket for it in this particular instance.

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Now after dinner our original plan was to head back to Epcot to shop a bit and maybe see the fireworks before returning to the resort. Since we were sure we weren't going to have another day in Epcot I wanted to check out the main gift shops and see if there was anything Epcot related that I particularly wanted. However our plans got derailed a little bit.

I won't go into a lot of detail about what derailed it, but pretty much while at the Spirit of Aloha, alcohol is included in the price and is available on refills throughout the course of dinner. Well let's just say that my brother needed to go back to the hotel since he wasn't really feeling well. So we made one last stop at the gift shop, and I ended up getting a Stitch Polynesian shirt before trying to figure out a new course of plan. We finally agreed that my youngest sister, Dad, and I would go to Epcot while everyone else would head back to the resort. That plan got a little further derailed on the monorail and in the end it was just my youngest sister and I that headed to Epcot.

While we were there I actually wanted to check out the Light Lab, a Food and Wine booth I heard about before our trip. The two of us went there first and it was really cool inside. There were neon or like black light things and it had a really cool atmosphere. At first we got the two drinks that were made with a combination of Sprite and different colored cotton candy. Then we saw people with some of the neon cups and wanted to get some for ourselves so we went back in line to get it. The three they gave you were different flavors of slushie. They were handing out like a paper to see what flavors they were but we didn't get one and didn't feel like going back and getting one. Watching them make the first drinks were really interesting, though. They poured out a red liquid from test tubes and then put the cups, with cotton candy in it, underneath of a drip that they put the Sprite into and you were able to watch the entire process.

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After that we walked around to the main shops, not the ones in the World Showcase, and I drank the rest of the neon drinks so it'd be easier for us to carry the cups, since we wanted those light up ice cubs haha. We did hear a couple of people comment as we walked by wondering what kind of drinks we had since they light up in the dark park. The two of us also ended up hitting that Coke place with different flavors from around the world. That was our first time ever going there.

Mouse Gears was our last stop and after looking around there we discussed about whether we should stay for the fireworks or not. It was almost time for them but I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay and my youngest sister said that she didn't mind either way. In the end, we decided not to stay because I was starting to get tired and hoped that maybe we'd be able to leave before the start of the crowds. It was just at that time, when we finally decided on that, that my dad called to see where we were since he was in line to come to Epcot. Thankfully we caught him before he was actually on his way as we told him we were coming back to the resort and he said he would wait in the lobby for us since we hadn't actually seen the room yet.

The line for the bus back was pretty long, it wrapped around a couple of times, but the wait wasn't actually that long because as soon as we got there we saw that there were two buses coming that were headed to the Art of Animation We probably waited for around 15 minutes in total? Also, the duration of the bus ride didn't seem that long. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the placement of the resort? But the duration of any of the rides to any of the parks never seemed to be long.

After arriving we caught up with my dad and he led us to our room. We were in Building 5, the one with Crush outside of it, and were on the second floor I believe in room 5602, but that could be wrong. I do know we were near the elevators and there was a little bit of noise from that but nothing that was completely unbearable.

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I was impressed with the size of the room upon entering, it was actually bigger than I thought. I was going to be sleeping on the pull out bed with my other sister while my mom, youngest sister, and the baby were going to be in the separate bedroom, since they like the TV on while they sleep, and my dad and my brother were going to share the pull out couch. There were two bathrooms in the suite, one of the important factors we were looking at, and there just seemed to be a lot of space to put all of our stuff.

By the time we entered my mom and the baby were already asleep and it actually turned out that my mom didn't feel so well. We thought it was a build up of the actual events of the day as well as the first half of the trip finally catching up to her. She also previously expressed saying that she didn't feel well when we were in Epcot. That wasn't the first of the sickness on this trip, though. But that was waiting for us another day. Magic Kingdom was going to be our next park and we were all excited!

Next: Magic Kingdom!

My friend actually sent that picture to me while I was there! I thought it was really cool that at some points we had the Mickey ears on or had Mickey balloons. My family all turned on our locations on Snapchat, even my parents have one, and took a screenshot of all of us on the map haha.

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Day 6 Part 1 (Saturday, September 22, 2018): I Guess Not Everything Can Always Go According To Plan!

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Before I begin, I just have a minor complaint and apology about Photobucket. They keep changing the way they display pictures, first with or without the watermark. But I just saw that now I can upload my pictures directly, so that's a plus! Also let me apologize, once again, for updating so late. Life has been happening and we're also in very, extremely early talks about taking another trip which I'll probably start a proper PTR for. But now that that's out of the way, back to the regular programming.

So after spending our first night at the hotel we awoke to find that not everything was so peachy. My mom didn't feel so well that morning and instead of heading to Magic Kingdom with us, opted to stay in the hotel room for a little bit. My brother was also going to be joining us later after the previous night's happenings but that was all fine and dandy.

The rest of us, my dad, two sisters, the baby, and myself, headed to the food court to get a light breakfast before making our way to the Magic Kingdom for our first FP of the day, Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin. It's honestly a ride that I haven't been on in 20 years, the last time I was on it was with my grandparents and my cousin I'm pretty sure. I actually completely forgot about the ride and forgot it even existed. The only thing I remembered was that there was a giant talking Buzz Lightyear and we shot some things. So after 20 years I was finally on it again with the rest of my family and we all enjoyed it and kept saying that it was the original Toy Story Mania haha. By the time we got there the stand-by line was about an hour but since we had a FP we were on in no more than 10 mins.

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Once we got off, though, we had some time before our next FP, for Space Mountain, so after confirming with my brother that he was going to come with us for that one, my sisters decided to head to the cars and take the baby on it. My dad and I didn't want to ride so we waited nearby. It surprisingly didn't take them too long for the ride, even though the stand-by line was at least 30-45 minutes and we found out the reason afterwards. My sisters said that they were standing in line when a cast member came by and actually let them cut through the FP line, I'm not sure if it was just them or if they let other people as well, so they were able to get on the ride much faster.

However, it was around that time that we started noticing something was wrong with the baby because he looked really sleepy and was super hot. My dad didn't want to go on Space Mountain so we figured that he could sit inside with the baby somewhere while we went. They went and sat in the restaurant that's near there that I currently forget the name of. But the three of us left the baby and met up with my brother to ride and we managed to get on the ride with like 10 more minutes left of our FP window.

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By the time we were off of the ride it was already around 11:30am and we decided that we should take a rest and get some food, especially for the baby. We didn't really have an idea about where we wanted to eat and so we went to that Pinocchio place. We'd been there once before and knew that we liked things there. It was super crowded, obviously we're going at prime lunch time, but my family has a system where we tell our orders, or text them, to a couple of people while a couple of people split up in opposite directions to look for a table and then we either call or text, whoever finds a table big enough first, and we all meet there. It's a system that works pretty much all of the time. So my dad and youngest sister waited in line to get the food while my other sister and I looked for a table. My brother went to go get a turkey leg and finally was able to get one after like 15 mins. He asked a cast member and they told him the wrong spot so he had to keep walking back and forth but he did mention that a ton of people kept commenting on how they wanted one when he was walking back to the place.

But anyway, we managed to find a table so my youngest sister could sit with the baby while my other sister and I went back to help my dad with the food. We also got the baby some ice water to cool him down but he just wouldn't get any cooler and was very sleepy. With no other choice, my youngest sister called my mom and the baby's mom. My mom agreed to come to the park with the baby's medicine and the baby's mom was just no help at all. But either way, my mom came with the medicine and thermometer, which read pretty high. My dad had suggested that my mom take the baby back to the resort and then come back later but I made mention about the baby stations that I read about in preparation for this trip and suggested they take him there. She agreed that that'd probably be better distance and time wise. So once we were finished eating, she and my youngest sister headed there.

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The rest of us saw the parade for a little bit and actually saw it right in front of the castle, a place we'd never seen it from before. It felt weird not staking out a spot or waiting for the marching band to come. We also let other people in front of us for the parade since we'd seen it multiple times already and it wasn't that high of a priority but we liked to watch it. The parade was very short, though, with the dragon not in the parade, so that also added to the extra weirdness.

So in the original plan for the day, we had dinner reservations at 5pm at Crystal Palace. However, we were now faced with a situation where the baby was possibly not feeling well and probably wouldn't be up to doing dinner and my mom didn't feel well either. So we were nearing a point, it was after 2pm, where we had to figure out what we were going to do about dinner. My dad suggested that we cancel the reservation or see if we could reschedule it. My youngest sister was definitely against canceling it but if we rescheduled, then it would interfere with our other plans for other days and we had to somehow work it in.

In the end, I guess we had a little problem there, didn't we?

So I guess the question is...what to do?

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Also, sidenote, but I find it fascinating, although I know how they do it, but when we later went on It's A Small World, the names of myself, my middle sister, and brother were on the screen at the same time. It's blurry but at least we know what it is haha.
 
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Day 6 Part 2 (Saturday, September 22, 2018): A Pretty Spectacular Night

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I am really bad about this whole updating thing but hopefully I'll be able to finish this soon since I'm already in the midst of preparing my next trip with my best friend since high school, and her parents haha. But we have about three months before that trip and before that, I have to finish this trip report, so let's continue with our eventful day at Magic Kingdom! Also, as a side note, I did notice that the pictures earlier are totally blurry and aren't able to be seen, Photobucket changing their setting again, but I hope to be able to go back and change them to the proper pictures once I have the time!

So going back to the original story, before my family could talk about what we wanted to do about our dinner reservation, we had our last FP to get to, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I had actually never ridden it before and was really excited to since the last time we went it was under refurbishment when my brother wanted to ride it. Other than that, we just never really thought about it. However, since my brother wanted to do it last time, I knew that I wanted to hopefully get a FP for it for this trip.

While we were waiting in the FP line, which was probably our longest wait of the trip at around 15 minutes, the four kids, my parents didn't come for the ride, talked about what we wanted to do about dinner. The following day would be our Animal Kingdom day and there was a ton of stuff my brother wanted to do there, like Pandora, so he was against us rescheduling it. My other sister really wanted to see Eeyore, one of her favorite characters, and definitely wanted to keep the reservation, same with my youngest sister, even if we did have to reschedule it. I had at one point suggested we drop the reservation and change it to an Epcot or Hollywood Studios restaurant on Monday. My brother was on board but my sisters were not.

Actually, before the ride, my dad had called and said that he spoke to the cast member that was stationed at the check-in point who said that they could cancel today's reservation and move it to the following day at around 2:30pm. Since it was in the middle of the day, my brother was adamant about not doing it and just canceling it completely. We went to meet him, before we had gotten in line for BTMR, and there we learned that the only reservation left was at 4:45pm and we decided to take it.

After rescheduling it, the four of us went to the FP line for the roller coaster and my parents stayed behind with the baby. I really loved the ride, though! It was super fun and totally not what I expected it to be. I guess I kind of attribute all the roller coasters in Disney to kind of no thrill, save for like Rockin' Roller Coaster, but I was proved wrong. My only other roller coaster experience in Disney was 7 Dwarfs Mine Train that I was not a fan of just because it was kind of boring for me?

Once we were off the ride, we began to think about what we should do for the rest of the night. The baby was clearly sick and my mom wasn't feeling all too well, but we wanted to get a picture in front of the castle in our matching clothes we wore that day. Thankfully, by the time we reached the baby center, my mom said that the baby was doing better so we decided that we should go for that picture and successfully got a couple, or a lot!

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No one would probably believe that the baby wasn't feeling well because he behaved so well and smiled for every picture. The photographer even complimented him for doing as he was asked and not really putting up a fuss.

Once the pictures were over, I contemplated just staying in the park and looking around a bit. My sisters also thought about that and we were thinking about staying to ride some rides and look around the shops before the fireworks. In the end, after discussing it with everyone, though, we decided that probably going back to the hotel for a little rest was the best bet yet we'd leave by 6pm to come back to see Happily Ever After.

The ride back to the Art of Animation didn't take long and everyone pretty much crashed once we got back to the room. I did get some gelato from the quick service location that I thought was really delicious and counted as a snack and took a look around the resort for a little while taking plenty of pictures. While I was off doing that, my brother and dad got some dinner from the quick service location. I know for sure my brother had gotten the create your own pasta and loved his choice.

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After looking through all of the different "lands" of the resort, it was time to leave by the time I got back to the room; however, we decided that the baby should stay back to catch up on his sleep and my dad offered to stay with him. I guess my only wish would be that it'd be cool if they were able to have some sort of film showing the fireworks playing in the rooms at the resort. Now I don't expect them to be live, because that'd be a lot of work I think, but maybe if one night they'd just record them and kind of play the three fireworks shows they have at night so those unable to go are able to view them. I know that for the cruise it was that way with some of the shows on the ship. It wasn't with the same cast that was currently playing, but they did have certain times when the shows were playing on the stateroom television and you could watch it again. I just think it'd be cool if my dad could see them, even if it wasn't directly in person, or if the baby woke up then he'd be able to see something at least.

But anyway, it was probably around 6:30pm when we arrived at Magic Kingdom and decided to do some shopping on Main Street since we didn't have time to look around earlier that morning. After we each split up and did our own individual shopping, we met up with each other and got a pretty good spot on Main Street for the fireworks. One thing I was very impressed with this entire trip was the crowd level. I had previously heard that September was a month with relatively low crowds or maybe it was because we always went during the Christmas season that we were used to people being all over the place, but the crowds, in my opinion, were low. Even with about an hour before the fireworks even began there were plenty of spots really close to the castle and all along Main Street. It was, obviously, very different from the crowded Christmas season we were used to!

I can't really put into words how impressed I was with Happily Ever After. I had previously watched the show on the internet with the baby to prepare him for what he was going to see, but no one else in my family had ever seen it so they were all surprised and just in awe over the entire thing. We loved the projections on the castle and the music itself. I felt like the projections really gave the fireworks show another dimension. The photo below is some stock picture that comes with the Memory Maker package.

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Once the show was over, my mom and brother went back to the hotel while my sisters and I checked out some of the remaining shops since the park closed at 11pm. We pretty much walked the entire park again that night and it really wasn't too crowded with everyone making their way out after the fireworks. It probably took us a little over an hour to walk the park and look around at the various shops. Additionally, we managed to get a picture taken in front of the castle lit up at night from the Photopass Photographer. It did happen that the picture ended up being lost but we were able to get it back with relative ease with an e-mail to the Photopass people identifying what we wore and the about time that we took the picture.

Once we were done with everything we wanted to, we took the buses back and arrived at the hotel room at around 11:30pm that night. I did text out the plan for the following day in our family group chat so everyone would know and finally got some sleep.

Up next was Animal Kingdom!

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