Faith, Trust, and Pizzo-Dust: Marriage by Land, Honeymoon by Sea

Introductions

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Hey there everyone.

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My name is Mike. I’m 27 years old from Connecticut. I’ve always loved Disney but around 2013 was when I became absolutely obsessed. I’m terrible at remembering to take pictures because I try to live in the moment. And then, when I do remember to take pictures, they are usually blurry. So I’ll apologize in advance, as I know pictures are pretty important for a trip report.

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This is my (now) wife, Michelle (Shelly). She just turned 25 and she is equally obsessed with Disney. She had been dreaming of a Disney wedding since she was 13 years old. She’s my best friend.

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But wait...before we get into the report, a little more information. I've worked in customer service for a long time so I never act or expect to be treated special. I feel this information is important in helping you all get to know my mentality as a guest. While I can be critical and nitpicky at times, I always enter an experience hoping it will be a pleasant one. I don’t expect anyone to bend over backwards for me, but I do expect to be their focus while they are assisting me. I also never lose my cool about things. If I do complain about something, my tone is very even keel, like a friend telling you that you have something stuck in your teeth. Now that we got that out of the way, here’s the start of our incredible adventure!

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Pre-Trip/Travel

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Like a kid on Christmas Eve, I was barely able to fall asleep the night before our flight. Not only were we about to experience two whole weeks in the Disney bubble, but I was getting ready to marry my best friend. Shelly, on the other hand, was lights out by 8PM (she can fall asleep standing up). I had a difficult time as I was extremely excited. I went to bed at 11PM, woke up at 3AM, and boarded our flight for Orlando at 545 AM.

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Probably not the best way to carry a wedding dress, but I also had a duffle bag around my neck and a backpack on my back. I have this think about carrying all the bags :p

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We landed in Orlando by 835AM, wedding dress in hand and made our way to Disney’s Magical Express. We were now officially on vacation.​
 


Joining in! I'm in the process of planning my own Disney wedding early next year, so I love reading trip reports of other people's weddings!
 
Day 1 - 6/24 - The Couple Has Landed

We got in line for the Boardwalk Resort around 845AM. Our bus was waiting for us so we walked right onto the bus.

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After waiting for a couple more guests to board we were on our way to the Boardwalk no later than 9AM. Not much to say in regards to Disney’s Magical Express. Standard bus ride with a little bit more traffic than usual.

We arrived at the Boardwalk around 945AM. Knowing our room wasn’t going to be ready, we made our way over to Bell Services to drop our carry-on’s off and make our way to the parks. Neither of us had ever stayed in a deluxe resort. We are Pop Century people. It should be noted that we’ve never had a bad experience at Pop Century. The Cast Members that we have interacted with there have always been great. With our past experience at the value, we had a pretty high expectation staying at a deluxe. As we entered we took a look at the Cast Members in the lobby and noticed that few, if any, were smiling. It also seemed like most of the Cast Members were just standing around, talking to other Cast Members, with few focused on the guests. I’m not expecting someone to run up to me to ask me if I need help, but if a Cast Member notices that I’m approaching them, I feel common practice should be for them to stop talking about who was supposed to be covering their shift and greet me.

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The amount of times I stood in front of the desk waiting for a Cast Member to stop talking about personal things was kind of off-putting. Regardless, we dropped our bags off at Bell Services like this…

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(just kidding :p) and headed to the bus stop to catch a bus to Magic Kingdom (to meet up with Shelly’s family).As we were talking to the bus stop, we saw the Magic Kingdom bus just pull away, said, “aww shucks” to ourselves, and took a seat on the bench.

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While waiting for the bus we noticed the Cast Member stationed there was from (literally) the next town over from our home town. We got to talking and come to find out Shelly knows of his mother. His mother works at a transitional school within the same district Shelly teaches. It was really great talking to him!

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We met up with Shelly’s family in Tomorrowland and had a really nice time. It was pretty crowded, but nothing too bad. Jumped on Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin, with Shelly's brother in law, which had a posted wait time for 40 minutes. From entering the queue to exiting the ride it was only 30 minutes. I got a respectable score of 580,000 (it had been 4 months so I was a little rusty). By the time we were done with Buzz we got a text saying our room was ready.

We headed back to Bell Services to to get our bags. As I said, we usually stay at Pop Century so we are used to picking up our stored bags in the same place we dropped them off. As we got to Bell Services and asked for our bags, they told us we had to go to Valet to get our bags out of storage. So we walk outside to Valet and ask for our bags and they told us we had to go to Bell Services.

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“Oh boy”. I restated that we were just looking to get our bags ourselves, and we didn’t need Bell Services to bring them up for us. “Oh, ok, we can gram them then”. None of the Cast Members were rude, but they weren’t particularly friendly either. They didn’t have that customer service voice I was kind of expecting. It just seemed like no one really cared.

We got to our room which was a lot nicer than what we are used to. Since it was for our wedding/honeymoon we decided to splurge a bit and stay at all deluxe resorts. Truth be told, as long as our room has a place to do the 3 S’s (sleep, shower and sh-uhhh, sit on the toilet) I'm happy. It was extremely convenient to have the option of walking directly to EPCOT...which brings us to our afternoon at EPCOT.

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The crowd levels and EPCOT seemed pretty normal. Not extremely crowded, or abnormally light. We headed to our FastPass for TestTrack which went smoothly. The wait for TestTrack was about 70 minutes, so it was a FastPass well used. Once we got off the ride, her family had made their way from Caribbean Beach to EPCOT so we met up with them again.

Let me take this time to mention Caribbean Beach. We had contracted this resort as the moderate for our wedding guests prior to the announcement of any construction. When the construction was announced, they were offering a credit to each room. $75 dollars per day of stay. I had mentioned this to the wedding guests that were staying at Caribbean Beach (which was the vast majority of them). They all thought the $75 dollars a night was great. So we decided to keep everyone at Caribbean Beach.

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When my sister arrived on the 23rd she sent a group message to my family with pictures of the room they were given. Disney had set up our room block in the Pirate Rooms at Caribbean Beach (we had no idea). Immediately most of my side of the family started to make fun of the rooms and tell my sister that she should ask for another room. It seemed like they couldn’t get over the fact that we were contracted for a set of rooms and it was dependent on where Disney put us.

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This stressed Shelly and me out as we had tried so hard to please 40 people and it seemed like people were complaining before even getting there. We chose Caribbean Beach because it was the most affordable moderate at the time of contracting. We didn’t step foot at Caribbean Beach, so I can’t speak from experience, but my family said it was like a warzone with all the construction. They were far enough away that they didn’t really hear any of the construction going on. They also weren’t fans of the lack of food options there. But oh well, back to what we experienced.

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When Shelly’s family met up with us at EPCOT, it was time for their TestTrack FastPasses. We watched Shellys’ nephew as the rest of her family rode. Shelly’s nephew is 2 and a half and absolutely loves cars. He had a great time climbing into the cars in the showroom and hitting all the buttons on the dash. When her family got off of TestTrack, we all made our way over to The Land. Shelly’s nephew had been to Disney a year prior, but that was before he was diagnosed with autism. So this trip was a little different. A year ago he wasn’t a fan of the dark. We really didn’t know how he would react to certain things but we wanted to try to have him experience some things. We tried to take Shelly’s nephew on Living with the Land, but he didn’t like the beginning of the ride due to the dark and the simulated storm. Once we entered the greenhouse he definitely calmed down. We made our way to The Living Seas and he had a great time looking at the fish, manatees, and dolphins. It was pretty empty so he was able to run around and release some of his energy. We decided that The Seas with Nemo and Friends was definitely going to be a no go. It would have been too dark for him.

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Little man was absolutely exhausted after his fun and exciting time in The Living Seas.

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Now it was time for dinner. We headed to the Coral Reef which I know, I know, is not a very popular choice, but we had never had a bad experience there. Also we thought it would be good for Shelly’s nephew as he loves looking at the aquarium. Everyone ordered their food. I ordered my steak medium rare and Shelly’s father ordered his steak well done. Shelly’s father got his steak first, cut through it and I could see pink. I thought to myself, “If that’s what well done looks like, I’m afraid to see medium rare.” My steak came out and I'm pretty sure it was still mooing. I didn’t take a picture of it, but it pretty much looked like this:

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I don't mind it on the rare side, but I like the center of my steak to at least be warm. This steak was cold. As if the chef put it down just to put the grill marks on it and took it off. I don't complain at restaurants because I’m a pretty easy guy to please. I was actually going to just suck it up and eat it, but I was thinking the last thing I want to do is get food poisoning. Our server was great. She was actually the one that saw how rare both of our steaks were and took them away from us. She brought out the new steaks really quick. A little too quick. She had me cut the steak and show her. She didn't even ask my opinion. She said, “that steak isn't red, it's, like, purple”. She wasn't wrong. The manager brought out a third steak. He was also nice but a little awkward. He said, “alright let's see if third time's a charm. Do you have sharp knife to cut this”. Well, no, we never got steak knives. But I just cut it with my regular knife. This steak was a nice medium rare. The manager said, “ah, good, a nice medium well”. At first I thought he misspoke, but at that point I was starving so I didn't pursue it. The steak was cooked how I liked it so I ate. Shelly’s father’s steak came out correctly the third time as well. Everyone else’s meal was enjoyable and correct the first time. We walked back to our room, changed, and got ready for bed.

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We had been up since 3AM, and it was now approaching 11PM. It blew my mind that I woke up in Connecticut and was in the Magic Kingdom by 10AM. All in all, it was a pretty decent first day.
 
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Interested to read more, my husband and I were married at Disney almost 10 years ago, it's always exciting to see how the weddings have changed!
 
Congrats!! Following along.......

We weren't married at Disney (we eloped), but hubby popped the question at CRT, and we honeymooned at Disneyland.
 
Awesome report so far, can't wait to see all about the wedding and rest of the trip! My Fiance just proposed in October in front of the castle, it was a truly magical experience. I would have loved to have gotten married in Disney, but sadly not in our budget. I will live vicariously thru your report lol!
 
Enjoying your trip report. You and your new wife look so happy together. I am looking forward to hearing more of your amazing trip. I also am enjoying the gifs that you added.
 
Enjoying your trip report. You and your new wife look so happy together. I am looking forward to hearing more of your amazing trip. I also am enjoying the gifs that you added.

The gifs are to try to make up for the lack of pictures I took. Especially the day of the wedding, I didn't take many pictures as the photographers and videographers recommended that I didn't have my phone on me, as they would be able to see the rectangle shape in my pants/jacket pocket...and it would take a long time to touch that up.

I'll be pulling pictures from Facebook when I get to the actual wedding day! And hopefully we have some of the professional photos by the time I get to the wedding day hahah.
 
Awesome start to your trip! I can't wait to read about your wedding day! I have always dreamed of a Disney wedding, but getting our family down there wasn't an option. So we had a Disney-themed wedding instead! I am excited to follow along!
 
Day 2 - 6/25 -
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For The First Time in Pandora
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We woke up around 615AM to get ready for our breakfast reservation at Garden Grill in EPCOT. Shelly loved the mirror on one of the stairways in the Boardwalk, so we had to stop for a picture.

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We stopped by the Boardwalk Bakery for a chocolate croissant (because I needed pre-breakfast :)) and walked over to International Gateway.

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As we were approaching, I noticed the gate was chain locked. “Are you sure we can enter this way?” I asked Shelly. “Yes, I read all over the place that you can go in this way if you have a breakfast reservation." said Shelly. There was no Cast Member in sight, so we kind of were at a loss.

I decided to call the front desk at the Boardwalk to see if I could get any extra information. The first Cast Member I spoke with said there should be an individual all the way to the left with a sign for breakfast reservations. I restated that we were not at the North entrance of EPCOT, but we were at International Gateway. The Cast Member was nice, but seemed to not really know what to do. “There should be a Cast Member there” she kept repeating.

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I politely asked if there was perhaps another area I can speak to. Maybe someone on call that kind of oversees International Gateway. I was really stretching at that point. The Cast Member did connect to someone else and I was informed that someone would get called to open the gate, because it should be open by now. All in all I was on the phone for about 15 minutes.

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No more than 2 minutes later a Disney Security Cast Member walked up and unlocked the gates. “Wow” I thought. I asked the Cast Member if she had gotten a call to unlock the gate, thinking it was that Disney magic at work. “Nope, just time to unlock it”. Huh, ok.

We weren’t able to enter EPCOT yet. We still had to wait for clearance. After sitting for a couple minutes, a few more families made their way to International Gateway. One woman was not too happy that she was not able to enter the park. “We have a breakfast reservation and you’re going to make us late!”. The Cast Member assured her that even if she was a couple minutes late for her reservation the restaurant knows that people need to wait for clearance. The woman just couldn’t grasp the fact that her table was going to be waiting for her. To be honest, it was a bit entertaining. I understand people pay a lot of money for a Disney vacation (you’re looking at one) but if someone is telling you not to worry, just relax and enjoy. If you get to the restaurant and there are problems, then you can worry again.

Anyway, we walked over to The Land pavilion. Shelly’s parents met up with us a couple minutes later as they entered from the North entrance. We were also supposed to meet up with my best man (Osiris) and his wife (Katie). Osiris (Sye) is also from Connecticut but Katie is from England. He moved to England to live with her. They were back in Connecticut the week prior to the wedding. They flew from Connecticut to Orlando the night before and were staying at an Air BnB. I usually communicate with Sye through What’s App.

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Panic started to set in as I realized that we neglected to tell them the name the reservation was under, or instruct them on how to get to The Land pavilion from the main entrance. “Just text them, Mike” you may be thinking. Well because they are both from England their cellular data doesn’t work. Wi-Fi is needed to communicate with them and they are both first timers in Disney. Also, I love Sye, but he’s not the most punctual person, so I was really nervous him and Katie would end up lost in Orlando somewhere. I started to walk to the front gate, hoping to spot them in the crowd and make sure they were able to enter ok, when who do I see walking the correct way around Spaceship Earth. They made it! I was so relieved! I let them know there was Wi-Fi in the park. Sye said that Katie lost her phone somehow on the airplane but she remembered the name of the restaurant from looking at it on her My Disney Experience app. I looked at Sye and laughed as I said, “I thought you were going to be lost.” Katie responded, “He’s married to me now, we don’t get lost”. God, I love Katie!

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The food at Garden Grill was, as always, delicious. I probably ate two sticky buns by myself. The eggs were really good too. They tasted like real eggs!

After breakfast we sent Shelly’s family, Sye, and Katie to do Soarin’ before it got too busy while Shelly and I settled the bill and watched her nephew. Shelly’s family has done Soarin’ a bunch, but Sye and Katie have never done it. They got off the ride really impressed. The loved everything about it. I was happy that they were both starting to enjoy the taste of Disney magic.

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I decided to take Sye and Katie onto TestTrack. We went through the single rider line and waited no more than 10 minutes. It was nice that Sye and Katie were able to ride in the same vehicle. They had a lot of fun, even Sye (though you couldn’t tell from his face :))

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After going on TestTrack we decided to take a break and head back to the Boardwalk. That’s when the day went from great to not so great.

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Back at the end of May we shipped Shelly’s silk flowers down to Karis. Karis is the most amazing Cast Member. She assisted in planning the proposal and is just an overall amazing person. We had shipped them in advance because we didn’t want to transport them on the plane and thought this would be safer. With every other aspect of the wedding bouncing around in our brains, we didn’t even think to double check with her to make sure she received it. I had tracked the package back in May and it showed that it was delivered on the expected date. We received a text from Karis we certainly weren’t expecting.

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She had said she never received the flowers and assumed we figured out another way to transport them. Everyone besides Shelly and myself started to freak out. UPS was closed because it was Sunday. I didn’t have the tracking information with me so I couldn’t double check myself. Don’t get me wrong, Shelly and I were stressed, but it wasn’t because she wasn’t going to have flowers. It was because we spent about $350 and now that money is nowhere to be found. When I shipped the package, the gentleman at UPS never asked the value, nor if I wanted insurance. I had a million other things that I was thinking about, so I didn’t put insurance on the package. More to come on this piece of the story in the coming days, but at this point in time there was nothing we could do. So we decided to “not think about” and head to Animal Kingdom for our FastPasses.

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On the bus to Animal Kingdom, Sye was in very, very, deep thought. I don’t think he was prepared for the amount of walking that comes included in a Walt Disney World vacation. Sye and Katie had a FastPass for Expedition Everest, so I walked ahead with them while Shelly and her family took their time.

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Katie LOVED Expedition Everest. Sye, not so much. I mean, just look at that face! When he got off the ride he said, “Yep...I think I’m good with never doing that again.”

Shelly, her sister, her brother-in-law, and myself had FastPasses for Expedition Everest just after Sye and Katie’s FastPass window. Shelly and I weren’t feeling particularly thrilling that day, so we asked if Sye and Katie wanted to go on again. Katie instantly said, “YES!”. Sye’s eye’s got a little wider and said, “Well, I guess.”

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Everyone got off the ride and Sye said, “Yep...ok, now I can never do it again.”

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With the thrilling stuff out of the way we headed towards the train station to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. That day was hot, hot, hot! I was holding Shelly’s nephew and tried to find any little bit of breeze that I could. Doc McStuffins was meeting when we arrived, so we got in line for Shelly’s nephew. He’s never watched her but seemed like he wanted to meet her. He didn’t do so hot with the other characters earlier in the trip, so we were quite surprised by this. He gave her a hug and the interaction was really great!

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After petting some goats we made our way to the Safari. Unfortunately we didn’t see too many animals, which I assume was due to the heat.

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The elephants were trying to stay cool too!

We had an hour to kill before our reservations for Tiffins so Sye, Kate, Shelly’s brother-in-law, and me headed to It’s Tough to Be a Bug. I’ve done it countless times, but no one else had experienced it. Everyone really enjoyed it. Especially the part when all the kid’s started to cry when the spiders came down from the ceiling.

We had a really great dinner at Tiffins. Everyone enjoyed the food. Shelly and I had dined there before so we knew how good the food was going to be. We even got the same server as the last time we dined. He was fantastic. Everyone’s food came out perfect! They also gave me the recipe for the chocolate coconut bark they give out after dinner.

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After dinner, Shelly’s family headed out and now it was Katie, Sye, Shelly and myself. Time to speed things up a bit. I love being in the parks with her family, but we can’t go full speed like we usually do because of Shelly’s nephew. But now that it’s just the “big kids”, we had things to do and places to be.

We entered Pandora for the first time. I’m not a fan of the Avatar movie, but as with any new thing with Disney, I was hoping to have my socks blown off. It wasn’t quite night time yet, so the bioluminescence didn’t kick in. The land, as others have been saying, is EXTREMELY detailed. There is so much care that went into the character plaster (rocks, plants, etc). There were also a couple interactive things. Here’s Katie rubbing some purple spot to make water shoot out:

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Also, the mountains look absolutely massive from up close.

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The land is kind of difficult to navigate, which I’m sure is by design. My understanding is that Joe Rhode is big on guest discovery. I’m not such a big fan of that, because I don’t like not knowing where I’m going, but we found ourselves outside of the Na’Vi River Journey.There was only a 60 minute wait for Na’vi River Journey so we jumped in line. We’ve seen 3 hour waits for it on the app, so we figured 60 minutes was alright, especially since our FastPass for Flight of Passage wasn’t ready. The queue wasn’t anything to write home about. After waiting outside you wait inside a hut which had some...questionably shaped fixtures...or it could just be me.

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After waiting in the hut you enter a cave which I thought would be much, much bigger. I’m used to thinking I’m at the front of a line only to realize there are 300 more people in front of me in a crazy set of switchbacks. This was not the case. There was only maybe about 50 feet from the end of the hut to the loading dock.

We boarded the ride vehicle after waiting only 35 minutes. I didn’t take any pictures on the ride because I have this self policy. The first time I experience something, I do not film or photograph it. I want to actually experience it for myself. The ride was very relaxing. Lots of pretty things to look at. There was one part where these creatures were jumping on the leaves above us and the projections were timed with the movement, so it looked extremely realistic. Then came the shaman animatronic. Wow...this thing was pretty intense. Sye was blown away. He asked if that was a real person. I wasn’t fooled that much, even if I didn’t have the prior knowledge about it, it still had that uncanny valley effect.

We got off the ride and were all really impressed with the shaman. We agreed that it wouldn’t have been worth any longer of a wait though. The lack of a story was pretty disappointing as well. I understand that’s not the point of the ride, but still, it was just different.

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We spotted a banshee and then it was time for our Flight of Passage FastPass.

It was still a bit of a wait, even with a FastPass. I think this was due to the fact that the pre-show is very, very, long. Between having your bodies scanned, then being explained why they do that, then moving to the next room, then being explained more things...I was ready to just get on the ride. I will have to go back and experience the standby queue though. I was really looking forward to seeing that Na’Vi in the tube, and we didn’t get to see it. Maybe next trip. Anyways, Flight of Passage, yeah, it was pretty killer. The 7 story screen was pretty breathtaking just at the sheer magnitude of it. The ride starts as soon as you are able to see the screen. The movement was kind of, but not too, intense. More intense than Soarin’ for sure, but it wasn’t too intense. I’m not one for roller coaster or thrills, but I was giggling like a schoolgirl the whole time.

We got off the ride and were all extremely impressed with how immersive it was. I was worried what Sye would think of Disney. He’s not one for fairytales, he’s not a huge fan of the movies, and he’s not one for “magic”. But he looked at me and he said, “y’know what Mike. I get it now. I get why you like this place so much”. I was really happy to hear that. Do I think I converted him to a diehard Disney fan? No. But knowing that he was enjoying himself so much and, to a certain extent, understood why we loved it, it was a nice feeling.

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After going on the two rides, we were all pretty hungry. It was getting late though so we decided to get an Ice Cream Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich from Dino-Bite snacks. We grabbed a table in Restaurantosaurs, ate our ice cream, and took a minute to relax. It was nice to reflect with my future wife, my best friend, and his wife. After a hot, tiring, day, sitting for a second to enjoy a guilty treat was the perfect was to almost end the night.

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We saw that Dinosaur was a 5 minute wait so we decided to go on it. Katie and Sye loved getting bounced around, but unfortunately this ride picture isn’t as funny as the other ones.

After Dinosaur we went back to Pandora to check out the bioluminescence. It was extremely nice to look at, but at the same time I was getting stressed. There were so many people, and it was so dark that all the neon was kind of tripping me out. It really was like a completely different land than during the day. It was just too dark with too many people there and it felt really claustrophobic. So after experiencing nighttime Pandora for about 10 minutes, we were good to go.

We made our way back to the Boardwalk, waited in the lobby for an Uber to pick up Sye and Katie, then headed to bed. We had the luxury of sleeping in a bit the next morning and definitely took advantage of it.​
 
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Great update! It sounds like you and your friends had a nice time. I can understand being overwhelmed by the amount of people in Pandora and wanting to leave. Animal Kingdom is my least favorite park for the reason you mentioned in that it is hard to find things there. I agree with you in that the big attractions and things need to be labeled clearly.
 
Great update! It sounds like you and your friends had a nice time. I can understand being overwhelmed by the amount of people in Pandora and wanting to leave. Animal Kingdom is my least favorite park for the reason you mentioned in that it is hard to find things there. I agree with you in that the big attractions and things need to be labeled clearly.

It's my wife and my least favorite park as well. I don't dislike animals, but I'm also not an animal lover. Sitting in a Jeep waiting for a giraffe to get out of the road just doesn't interest me. The themeing is awesome throughout the whole park. The backstory created for Dino-Land is so detailed. However, it is also the hottest place on Earth. I'm surprised there's no Hades meet and greet :p

I usually work on the report at work, but I've been abnormally busy. Can't wait to get to the part about the wedding.
 
Congratulations! party:
Hope everything worked out with your flowers.:daisy:

It's nice to see someone else express similar thoughts about customer service- makes me feel less crazy! I think when you spend so much time doing it it's harder to ignore when there are blatant issues. My guess at this point is the big picture issues are insufficient and inconsistent training/information distribution, short staffing, and low pay- paired with no incentive to work "up" so to speak. Topped by the fact that people will come regardless so accountability is a different kind of beast. Interesting though!

Your nephew is super cute, and I think it's really cool that you managed to involve all your friends and family into your special day at your special place. :)
Your trip title made me laugh, so I knew I had to read! :flower:
 
Following along! Congratulations on your wedding!

We stayed at the Boardwalk in November and I thought the customer service was... fine. Not as friendly as I was expecting at all. There was one girl working in Screen Door who was amazing and lovely but No one else made any impression on me.
 

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