A Veritable Explosion of Pixie Dust:Our Land and Sea Extravaganza--Update(6/12)

[njgrl622]

I am loving your trip report!! We have a preferred room in POR booked for a week in October and we can't wait!!

I was glad to see your review of Raglan Road too - we have an ADR there during our stay.

Thank you!!

 

[fnrsgrl]

I am loving your trip report!! We have a preferred room in POR booked for a week in October and we can't wait!!

I was glad to see your review of Raglan Road too - we have an ADR there during our stay.

Thank you!!

Thank you! I'm sure you will love both POR and Raglan Road! I have done each of them twice, and really enjoyed them both times.

 

[fnrsgrl]

Winnie the Pooh and Tomorrowland, Too!
Sunday, May 13art Six​

As the last couple of floats were passing, we were deciding what to do next. We figured we would have plenty of opportunities to see Wishes on this trip, and the best places to view it would be hard to get to, so we would catch it another night. We decided that it would be a good idea to do Fantasyland while everyone else was watching the fireworks. On the way over, I got one Wishes picture over the tops of the buildings:

Peter Pan's Flight had a short wait, which kind of felt like a Disney miracle in and of itself, so we rode that first. All of my pics came out really blurry, so you'll just have to use your imagination! Then we headed over to do a family favorite, Mickey's Philharmagic.

Things got a little crazy in there. Donald lost Mickey's hat and for a while it looked like he was never gonna get it back, but everything worked out in the end. Phew--disaster averted!

Next, we decided to ride Winnie the Pooh. This was our first time seeing the new queue, and we loved it! There are so many adorable details and so much to do, you hardly even realize you're waiting in line!

In just about twenty minutes, we were boarding our honey pot into the Hundred Acre Wood.

When were done, we had a look around the little exit shop. I loved this fluffy Piglet:

And this goofy guy:

Feeling pretty content with our Fantasyland accomplishments for the night, we headed over to Tomorrowland for something a little more exciting--Space Mountain! It was pretty much a walk-on.

Mom and Dad sat this one out , but Josh, Beth and I had a great ride and headed back out to meet them.

We enjoyed Tomorrowland while discussing what to do next.

We decided to go back to Pirates and see if it had been reopened. We walked past the castle, which looked so beautiful all lit up.

Continued in next post.

 

[fnrsgrl]

We took plenty of pics of the gorgeous castle.

And the surrounding area:

And even stopped for a photographer:

Before continuing on to Adventureland, where we got distracted by. . .

DOLE WHIP!!!

We sat in the little seating area. . .

Where Josh and Mom ejoyed pineapple floats,

Beth had vanilla,

And I had orange.

And I'm pretty sure Dad just took a little of everyone's!

After our snack, we finally headed to Pirates, which was open and had no line!

It was basically closing time, so Mom, Dad and Beth headed back to their room, but Josh and I decided to take our time heading back. We meandered up Main Street, checking out some of the stores on our way back.

We even stopped for a little snack!

These corndog nuggets from Casey's are one of my Disney faves!

I loved these shirts:

Then we reached the end of Main Street, and it was time to leave.

We caught a bus pretty quickly and headed back to our room for some much needed sleep!!

Up next:Our first full day at Disney

 

[fnrsgrl]

Topiaries, Dragons and The Holy Grail(Grail,Grail,Grail!)
Monday, May 14art One​

We rose bright and early on this beautiful Monday morning after a very good night's sleep(seriously, the beds at POR are super-comfy). We had a lunch ADR in Epcot, so it was the obvious choice for the morning. Josh and I started moving at around seven and were at the bus stop at eight. Mom, Dad and Beth decided to sleep in and meet us at lunch. We waited about ten or fifteen minutes for a bus to Epcot.

We arrived quickly, got through the turnstiles, and stopped to take some pictures.

And to have some taken:

Epcot was having the Flower and Garden Festival, so there were beautiful topiaries everywhere! We headed further into the park in search of breakfast.

We passed through Mexico,

On our way to Norway and a special breakfast treat.

School bread from the Kringla Bakerie(with milk)! If you haven't had this before, you need to try it. It's absolutely delicious. It basically is like a huge donut filled with a wonderful custard. We shared one, and it made a perfect breakfast.

Continued in next post.

 

[fnrsgrl]

While we were in Norway, we decided that since there was no wait, we would battle the trolls and do some waterfall surfing before moving on.

There must have been some kind of ride malfunction because we were stuck right at the "sticking out over the giant waterfall backward" portion for two or three minutes. It was weird, but really kind of cool.

After the ride, we stopped to say "hi" to an old friend in the gift shop:

Before heading back to Future World to hit a couple of rides before lunch.

This sculpture was made of sand and was in honor of the new Chimpanzee movie, which had just come out at the time. (It's adorable, by the way)

We decided to do Journey into Imagination because I just love Figment, and there's never a line.

And here is my husband's lovely video of the ride.

Next, we saw Captain EO, and let me just say, don't bother. It was weird and outdated and Michael Jackson was not a good actor. We really just didn't enjoy it at all, and the 3D movies are usually favorites of mine. I really hope that when they take EO back out, they put a Figment movie there. Wouldn't that be awesome?

I still hadn't found a lanyard I liked, so we went over to Mousegears to look around.

I bought a lanyard and several pins that I liked, and then we decided we had better head toward lunch or we might be late. On the way, we walked thorugh this adorable fairy garden.

Eventually, we arrived in Canada for our ADR.

Continued in next post

 

[fnrsgrl]

We were a bit early and our times guide said that one of Josh's favorite Epcot shows, the World Showcase Players, was starting up in just a few minutes in the United Kingdom. We figured we could watch for a while and leave a bit early for our reservation, so we headed over there.

The show was King Arthur and the Holy Grail, and the players were just arriving when we got there.

This guy was chosen to be King Arthur.

He really seemed to be having fun and getting into his character.

Then they needed a Sir Galahad. They started scanning the crowd for a willing participant, and who should they choose but Josh! He's kind of a ham, so he was really excited.

This young lady got to be the sorceress(I don't know the character's name):

In the end the grail was given to King Arthur, and the good guys won.

We, on the other hand, had had to stay for the whole performance and thus were running late for lunch.

Meanwhile Mom, Dad and Beth had arrived at Epcot, where they were joined by Uncle Brad, who lives fairly close to Orlando and had decided to join us for a few days. Here are some of their Photopass shots for the morning:

We gave them a call to let them know we were on our way and then went running for Canada.(or, speedwalking, anyway)

Up next:Our yummy lunch

 

[debfen]

Loved Raglan Road!! and the Pie in the Sky does have a lot of garlic, but I love it like that!! And the bread pudding, all I can say is mmmmmmmm.

Loving your report! Brings back many great memories and makes me want to start planning the next trip!

 

[debfen]

Under the railroad trestle...Mainstreet ahhhhh. I love the sights and sounds and smells of Main Street. And then the castle. It's never real until I'm walking down Main Street with the castle in view!

 

[Marsheliz]

Loovve Loovvvee so far!!

I love the pics of the Topiaries! Sorry that POC was broke down, that is one of my absolute favs!!

I LOVE that dress you have on and that shirt you wore to Epcot, Where did you get those from? They are beautiful on you!

 

[fnrsgrl]

Loved Raglan Road!! and the Pie in the Sky does have a lot of garlic, but I love it like that!! And the bread pudding, all I can say is mmmmmmmm.

Loving your report! Brings back many great memories and makes me want to start planning the next trip!

Under the railroad trestle...Mainstreet ahhhhh. I love the sights and sounds and smells of Main Street. And then the castle. It's never real until I'm walking down Main Street with the castle in view!

I did, too! I'm pretty sure it's my favorite one-credit table service restaurant. The castle is, to me, what makes it feel like Disney!

Loovve Loovvvee so far!!

I love the pics of the Topiaries! Sorry that POC was broke down, that is one of my absolute favs!!

I LOVE that dress you have on and that shirt you wore to Epcot, Where did you get those from? They are beautiful on you!

Thank you! They're both just from Walmart. We love POC, too--it's not too wild or too mild, so I think it makes a great first ride of the day.

 

[fnrsgrl]

Luch at a DIS Favorite
Monday, May 14art Two​

Although Josh and I joined our party slightly late for lunch, it turned out that we had needed to wait a few minutes anyway, so everything was fine. We were eating at a DISBoards favorite--Le Cellier! We have eaten there many times before and always enjoyed it, but we didn't love the idea of giving up two credits for it, so we decided to go with a late lunch ADR. We said "Hi" to Uncle Brad, and then sat down to wait for about ten minutes. We were seated at a big table right near the entrance(and consequently, the dessert table), and our waitress came quickly to take our drink order. A couple of us decided to have the raspberry smoothie, which was quite tasty!

After we ordered our entrees, the wonderful bread basket came.

I could take or leave the others, but that pretzel bread is fantastic. It's like a soft pretzel, only softer, thicker and less salty.

Our entrees came fairly quickly. I had the Mushroom Filet, only with cream cheese mashed potatoes instead of the risotto. I always order it like that, not because I don't want the risotto, but because I really, really want those potatoes! They are amazing--Best. Potatoes. Ever. If you haven't had them, you really need to try them. They have just enough cream cheese flavor for you to taste it, without it being overwhelming.

I actually love the steak, too. The only word I can think of to describe it is buttery, by which I mean the texture rather than the flavor. It's great!

Mom, Dad and Josh all got the Filet the way it comes, and they all loved it, too.

Beth got the Roasted Chicken Cordon Bleu, which was supposed to come with a panzanella salad, but she really likes those potatoes, too! She was really happy with her meal as well.

Uncle Brad had the House Burger, which certainly looked delicious! He liked his meal a lot, also!

Josh also ordered a side of poutine.

This was not really that good. I grew up about an hour from the Canadian border, and have had real poutine many times. This tasted nothing like it. Real poutine uses cheese curd, which is delicious and brown gravy over fries. These fries were too thick, the cheese was just regular orange melted cheese and there was too much of it. We wouldn't order it again.

We walked over one at a time to check out the dessert table, and then placed our orders. We waited a rather ridiculous amount of time, before our waitress came over and said there had been a malfunction with the machines that send the orders to the kitchen, and our dessert would be right out. It arrived pretty quickly after that. I got this chocolate thingy that isn't on the AllEars menu.

It was kind of weird. It had a chewy layer in the middle that made me feel like I was eating paper. I didn't like it.

Beth had the cheesecake, which she absolutely loved!

Josh had the creme brulee. He also really liked it.

Dad had a lemon poppy seed cake that also had fruit. It was pretty good.

I don't recall what Mom had, but it was the same as someone else's, and Uncle Brad chose to forego dessert.

All in all, our meal was really good, and we enjoyed it,but it wasn't quite as good as it used to be.

Up next: A character I have always wanted to meet.

 

[fnrsgrl]

I'm Just a Little Black Rain Cloud
Monday, May 14art 3​

At some point during our meal, Josh realized that he had lost his new pin(it had Chip and Dale on it), possibly during the Holy Grail show, so we decided that while the rest of the family took care of the check, I would go back to look for it, and after Josh caught up with me, we would continue on to meet the rest of the family for a ride on Soarin'. I quickly headed out of Canada,

and back into the UK in search of the pin.

As you can see, the sky was starting to look a bit ominous in that one direction, although it was still sunny and clear if you looked the other way. We didn't find the pin(we knew it was kind of a long shot), so we turned around and headed for Future World by going back out through Canada.

We were almost there when we noticed a character line near a bench under a tree. We looked to see who it was, and it was Snow White! I love getting character pics and autographs, and meeting Snow White was one of my big goals for this trip because I had looked for her on my two previous trips and been unable to find her. So, we figured the family woudn't mind if we took a couple of extra minutes, and we hopped in line. It took about five minutes to get to the front, and Snow White was great! She was really sweet--she noticed our anniversary buttons and was commenting on how I had already found my prince.

After our quick pit stop, we headed over to The Land,

and got into the twenty minute or so line for Soarin', which is a huge family favorite. I'm pretty sure all five of us would say it's one of our top two Epcot attractions!

After our little side trip to California(we had one of the awesome center front seats--Yay!), Dad, Mom, Beth and Uncle Brad wanted to do some of the very same attractions that Josh and I had already done, and I wanted to look for characters, so we split up again. Josh and I stopped for a couple of PP pics first.

Then, we headed back into the World Showcase in search of some more characters on my mental wish list. The sky was really starting to get dark now. Unfortunately, the forecast had been saying for several days that it was supposed to rain on literally every day of our trip except for the first one. I was really hoping this would not be true, and so far the weather had been beautiful, but it really looked like our luck was about to run out!

We had another photo shoot in one of my favorite PP spots.

Next, we lined up for Alice. We had to wait a bit for her to come out, but we were the second group in line, so we got to see her pretty quickly.

We noticed another line forming nearby, and asked a cast member who it was for. It turned out to be Mary Poppins! Yay! She was another character I was really hoping to meet. Once again we were second or third in line, and it was going to be a few minutes before she got there. At this point we were getting really worried about rain. We had forgotten our ponchos in the hotel room, and the sky looked like it was going to open up at any moment. The CM said that if it started to rain, Mary would be moving inside. Just as we were beginning to wonder if maybe she had moved inside and they had forgotten to tell us, Mary came walking up the street looking practically perfect in every way. She was an awesome Mary Poppins, very prim and proper. We got a quick picture,

And just then, it started to rain! We ran and hid out in one of the little gift shops there in the UK. It was the tea shop, which is connected to the perfume shop.

I could see these topiaries through the doorway.

Continued in next post

 

[fnrsgrl]

We walked around the connected shops about five times and stood out under an awning to watch the storm. At this point it had been about half an hour and the rain was not showing any sign of slowing down, so we decided to make a mad dash for the next pavilion in hopes of getting some new shops to look around. We had forgotten about the International Gateway, so that was where we ended up, and now it was raining just as hard, the next pavilion looked too far away, and we were stuck in one rather small shop. We looked around for another twenty minutes or so.

It suddenly occurred to us to see if the boats were running. The Epcot area resorts would have a lot of things to look at and were enclosed, so maybe we could hang out there until the rain stopped, and then head to EMH at the Studios. Unfortunately, lightning was expected, so the boats wouldn't be running until the storm was over. What to do? What to do? Not wanting to stay in that little shop for who knew how long, we decided to buy an umbrella and walk to the Epcot Resort area. This turned out to be a great idea! The walk is surprisingly short and very pleasant.

First, we came upon the Boardwalk.

We popped into the ESPN store, which also has an arcade, and looked around for a while. I really loved these Toy Story koosh balls that were avaiable as a prize.

If those had just been for sale, I would have bought them for sure!
Next, we went into the bakery:

And the candy store:

We weren't hungry enough to buy anything, but it sure did all look yummy! We walked past the Flying Fish:

And visited the General Store:

Before moving on past the Swan and Dolphin.

Continued in next post

 

[fnrsgrl]

We weren't really interested in seeing the inside of the Swan and Dolphin, so we just continued on to the Yacht Club.

Although the rain was finally letting up a little, we were still glad the entire walkway through the Yacht and Beach Clubs was covered. We peeked at the amazing pool area.

Then, we continued through to the Beach Club, where we spent quite a lot of time checking out the large gift shop, as well as the beautiful decor.

By the time we had seen everything, the storm was mostly over, and the boats to DHS were running again, so we went over to the little dock to catch a boat.

This ended up being such a fun afternoon, despite the rain. I'm really glad we decided to go over there. The Epcot resorts are so peaceful and beautiful! There was plenty to look at while we waited out the storm.

Up next: Disney's Hollywood Studios!

 

[fnrsgrl]

Hooray for Hollywood
Monday, May 14art Four​

When the boat arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was fully enclosed with actual windows instead of just having a canopy. Since it was still sprinkling a bit, this was very nice. The ride to DHS was quick and pleasant. We were really impressed with how nice it was to hop between these two parks via boat rather than bus.

By the time we arrived at DHS, the rain had finally stopped completely. We had our bags checked and moved through the turnstiles.

We decided to head for the Tower of Terror, which I rode for the first time on my 2010 trip, and was shocked to say I loved! I'm not a big drop person, so I thought I would hate it, but this drop is tiny! If you like Everest, the Tower should be fine for you as well.

We also stopped for few Photopass pics along the way.

Okay, so apparently, it was quite a lot of Photopass pics! We arrived at the entrance to the Tower, and there was a line, but it was only about fifteen minutes, so we hopped right in. I love this queue area. There is so much beautiful architecture and creepy detail. I always end up taking a million pictures!

Once we got inside, a lot of the pictures came out blurry, but it's still amazing in there!

The ride was as awesome as always, a great way to kick off our visit to the Studios!

We exited through the gift shop, which is one of my favorite post-ride shops in Disney.

Continued in next post

 

[fnrsgrl]

After Tower of Terror, we were both getting pretty hungry, so we decided to set off in search of something to eat. We passed by the street scenes:

I got Josh to pose on this Star Wars thingy(it was going to be Star Wars Weekends--more on that later):

And we quickly walked past our friends, the Muppets:

It was at about his time that we got a phone call, saying that Dad, Mom and Beth were tired and done for the night, but Uncle Brad would like to meet up and spend the evening with us. So, we decided to continue on to Pizza Planet for dinner, and he could meet us there, as he had already eaten. I have never been to Pizza Planet before, but I love Pizzafari, so I figured it would be good choice for dinner. We arrived, placed our order and headed for a nearby table so we would be easy to find.

I had a cheese pizza meal, which came with a small caesar salad.

And Josh had a pepperoni pizza meal.

For dessert we had chocolate chip cookies.

I love Disney pizza! This meal was delicious. My only complaint is that they need a more varied dessert menu. The cookies were kind of boring. Uncle Brad arrived when we were about halfway through our meal. I was only going to eat half of my pizza, so he decided to have a piece. I didn't finish my cookie either--so. much. food!!

When we were done, we decided that since none of us had ridden the new Star Tours yet, and it wasn't too very far away, we would do that next. Once again, there was a line, but it wasn't bad.

The new queue is really fun.

Here is a short, not particularly good video of the safety announcement. Our flight was great, and ended up being our favorite one of the trip. We got to go through Corusant(sp?) at the end, and we were pointed almost straight down. It was really awesome! Once again, we exited through the gift shop.

I love that they had Star Wars girls' toys!

Up next: Extra Magic Hours!

 

[disnut1149]

Hi
I love your trip report. It's so detailed. I can't wait to hear about your cruise. We're thinking of going on the cruise next year!! Sounds like you had a great trip!! Thanks for sharing!!

 

[jecskc]

I am enjoying your TR !!! Looking forward to reading more and to see if you ever go anywhere without make-up ....LOL. You know you are making the rest of us look bad, right ???

 

[fnrsgrl]

Hi
I love your trip report. It's so detailed. I can't wait to hear about your cruise. We're thinking of going on the cruise next year!! Sounds like you had a great trip!! Thanks for sharing!!

Thank you! I can't wait to write about the cruise--it was my favorite part of our vacation. You should definitely try it!

I am enjoying your TR !!! Looking forward to reading more and to see if you ever go anywhere without make-up ....LOL. You know you are making the rest of us look bad, right ???

Thank you! I am pretty much crazy about makeup, LOL. I never leave my apartment without at least eyeliner and mascara!