The Great Character Escapade - An AKV Adults Only Trip Report

Won't those portraits of you/ghosts really freak out your little guy? I laughed out loud when I read that by the way. Great idea!
 
Won't those portraits of you/ghosts really freak out your little guy? I laughed out loud when I read that by the way. Great idea!
Actually I'm more worried they might freak me out! Maybe they'll go in our designated Disney room, or maybe only come out around Halloween. I'm not sure, I just know I need them.
 
Actually I'm more worried they might freak me out! Maybe they'll go in our designated Disney room, or maybe only come out around Halloween. I'm not sure, I just know I need them.
Sounds good. You need those the way I need those attractions posters. As for plates, we have a whole set with Mickey on them. They sell them on the disney store website. I think I saw them at World of disney and at Disney co-op. I love them. We paid a fortune to have them shipped to Canada.
 
Sounds good. You need those the way I need those attractions posters. As for plates, we have a whole set with Mickey on them. They sell them on the disney store website. I think I saw them at World of disney and at Disney co-op. I love them. We paid a fortune to have them shipped to Canada.

Are they the white ones with the black single Mickey in the middle? How have they held up?
 


Yes. I've had them about seven years now. Daily use for a family of five. They are a bit scratched from knives, but Mickey is going strong. I think they have Bern really good value. Love them and will replace them when they wear out. We got a set of twelve--dinner plates, bowls and salad plates. Now I want the cutlery!
 
Yes. I've had them about seven years now. Daily use for a family of five. They are a bit scratched from knives, but Mickey is going strong. I think they have Bern really good value. Love them and will replace them when they wear out. We got a set of twelve--dinner plates, bowls and salad plates. Now I want the cutlery!

Oooh great to hear!
 
I can't even tell you how many sets of Disney Dishes that I own. I only use them for special occasions, and use Corelle for daily use.

You really pushed it again on this day too! We would have to sleep for a week after a trip like you guys are having! Looking forward to hearing about the parking garage.
 


So glad I read this report! I immediately started searching online for those posters since I can't wait until I go in December. Disney website is sold out of the World but not the Land. However, I found them elsewhere online for a comparable price and can't wait to frame them!

PS-I wish I could do this escapade, looks like so much fun! The most we walked in a day was around 9 miles, so you slightly beat our group :thumbsup2
 
I forgot how incredibly swamped I feel once classes start. What on earth am I going to do next year when I have to teach two of them! Lucky for you guys I have come down with pink eye, so I've had to avoid my family this weekend which has given me some time to finally sit down and finish up this trip report.

I was looking through my phone for notes and pictures from our last day, and all I found were pictures of the parking garage. Gosh I'm such a geeky nerd. I'm probably the only person who could spend an entire day at Disney and only end up with pictures of a parking garage.

So we woke up late on our last day and enjoyed a leisurely morning packing and heading out of the resort. (Actually, I have no idea if this is true, chances are we frantically tried to get out of the room by 11:00, but who knows at this point, the only thing I know is that the parking garage was amazing.) We headed to Downtown Disney to do some window shopping and Earl of Sandwich eating. The new parking garage apparently really got my attention! They have sensors over each and every parking spot. As you enter the garage, there is a digital sign that tells you how many spaces are available on each floor, but it gets better! As you drive down each floor, there is a digital sign that tells you how many spots are available in each aisle, but it gets better yet! As soon as a car enters an aisle, even though it has not parked, the sign counting spaces goes down by 1!! It's amazing!!!! Finally, there is a little LED light above each parking spot, if the spot is available, the light turns green, so you know exactly where the empty spot is. It truly is a fantastic parking garage.

So after we parked our car and I took pictures of the garage we walked over towards Earl of Sandwich through all the new shops on Pleasure Island. There are a lot of fancy shops that I will most likely never buy anything in, but they were fun to look around. Of note was a shop that sold cheap plastic flip flops in a bazillion colors, but had the audicity to charge like $20 for them. Another shop sold only hipster hats, but got me to enter because they had a super furry hat in the window. Several sunglass places that specialized in Oakleys and Raybans and glasses generally way outside my price range. Finally, the tea shop. I did stop in here. I liked this place. They have all these amazing sounding teas, and samples out so you can smell them. It was fancy but I didn't feel out of place. My tea, I think something involving coconut and vanilla was delicious.

We Earled it up, looked all over for satisfactory Disney dishes, and then headed back to our car before the rain came down. It was still too early for our Escapology reservations, so we headed out to find the Disney Outlet store. We found it, but managed to not buy anything. This seems to be a trend with us lately. Even when we give ourselves permission to buy whatever we want, we often come away with nothing. Perhaps we are actually getting older and wiser.

With our shopping done we head out to find Escapology. I'm not sure what happened, maybe the plaza was just too new, but the fun started before we even got there. Before you could escape from the escape room, you had to find the place! My iPhone got us close and then literally said "park on the side of the road and walk to your destination." Now mind you there are plazas on either side of the 4 lane road, and you clearly shouldn't be parking on the side of road. Since our GPS completely gave up on us we had a mini-panic, but were able to find the place using a combination of google maps and blind guessing.

So Escapology. This was our first venture to an attraction outside of the Disney Bubble since our trip to Arabian Nights about 10 years ago which I think could be considered a complete disaster. Have you been there? Don't do it!!!! Even the unlimited beer doesn't make up for the awful! So needless to say, we were a bit skeptical. Escapology is an escape room. For those unfamiliar with escape rooms, essentially you pay a ridiculous amount of money for someone to "lock" you in a room. You then have to solve a series of puzzles in order to get out of the room in 60 minutes or less. There is usually a host, and the host will give you clues to help you if you get stuck. They are great fun, and if there are any British folks reading this, it's exactly like being a participant of the Crystal Maze gameshow.

Escapology offers several themed rooms to choose from. Grizzly and I did two rooms back to back, the Antidote Room and the Shanghai'd room. They were both excellently themed. We had a great time trying to escape from both rooms, but there were things that could have been better, in particular with the way clues were given. But overall, if you are looking for a new family adventure outside of the Disney bubble, this would be a great option. I think a family with kids as young as 8 would have a good time. My full review, along with hundreds of others can be found over on TripAdvisor. If anyone is particularly interested, I would be happy to post it here.

I guess that's all for now. We headed home and arrived back to a very happy Nana and Pepere who had a blast with Tigger. Up next, I finally will get to start our resort hopping extravaganza trip report. Hope everyone is enjoying their fall. Thanks for reading! Sorry it took me so long to finish.
 
Alright! Last park of the day. We were headed into this park feeling slightly refreshed from our snacks at Epcot, but as our clothes were drying Grizzly was starting to feel slightly chaffed. Poor guy. He toughed it out though. With my obsessive time keeping I noted that it took a mere 18 minutes to travel from Epcot to the Magic Kingdom via monorail. We left Epcot at 5:29 pm, and were in line for Merida at 5:53. The Merida line was surprisingly short, and although we needed to wait for the next showing, we were second in line for that. Overall just 23 minutes for Merida which I didn't think was bad given what her lines used to be like. I guess we have the Anna and Elsa line to thank for other short princess lines. Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Tinker Belle all had ridiculously short lines as well. It's almost like all the parents said "Ok sweet princess loving lady, you can choose only one princess," and then every kid jumped immediately in line for Anna and Elsa.

cvvICJs.jpg


At 6:30pm we used our very first Fast Pass of the day, Tinker Belle. She was quite enthused by my huge pixie dust bag and wondered where I had gotten it.

nTBfMes.jpg


Okay, now we had some real decisions to make. We weren't sure what we had time for, and we also couldn't for the life of us figure out if Pete's Silly Sideshow was open for Extra Magic Hours or not. Three different sources each said something different! So we did what seemed best and headed for Buzz. His line looked long but moved fast:

SyNINRC.jpg


Then we bit the bullet and waited for Tigger and Pooh. And waited. And waited. And then we waited a bit more. 45 minutes after entering the line we finally got to meet them. I can't imagine waiting that long if you weren't doing some ridiculous challenge where you were trying to see as many characters as possible in a single day. What were these people thinking? Probably something along the lines of "I must get as many characters as possible to sign my picture frame and hat and autograph book." Yes, I'm still bitter.

gA81Qz7.jpg


We finally emerged from Tigger and Pooh with just enough time to run over to see if Princess Tiana was out. She was not out, which proved to be excellent because in her place we found Prince Naveen with absolutely no line. We both let out an unexpected whoop when we saw Prince Naveen standing all alone. He was genuinely surprised that we were so excited to see him.

Vgdalxt.jpg


With our first and only prince under our belts we headed off to our Anna and Elsa Fast Pass. I had heard horror stories of even the Anna and Elsa FP line taking a very long time, but the cast member assured us it would only take a few minutes, 15 at most, and she was right. They have really nailed down the FP+ system since it began. I'm liking it more and more with each trip. So we met Anna and Elsa for the first time. The most impressive thing about Elsa was how incredibly flowy her dress was. It was magnificent how it flowed and ruffled through the air. Grizzly even commented on it, and he's a guy who cares nothing about princess dresses. He reminded me he was a guy a few moments later when he stepped on it! Other than her dress though Elsa was pretty dull. She said since she likes cold she would like NY, but Olaf likes summer, so to be in Orlando she has to make him a really really big flurry. Anna, however, was AMAZING! I could have sat and listened to her talk all day long. They should make a little eavesdropping booth! We asked Anna if her boots were from Olkin's Trading Post, and then she told us this great story about how Olkin is trying to get into summer products now, and that he sells sun block, but he doesn't really understand sunblock, so he makes it in rainbow colors, and Sven has been running around bright blue.

oI6ZJmD.jpg


yKAdvzD.jpg


I must have gotten tired at this point, because I don't have any notes on the order of things that happened next, but I think we went to see Minnie and Daisy at Pete's Silly Sideshow. For around 8pm at night this line was REALLY long. It took us about 45 minutes for each side. I wasn't expecting these lines to take so long. While in line I got to overhear a glorious conversation between a boy and his dad. It went something like this:
Boy: Dad, my feet hurt Daddy. (Not whining or anything, just stating that his feet hurt)
Dad: No they don't. (I just about died! How could he possibly know if his son's feet hurt or not)
Boy: They do Dad, they're really sore.
Dad: Well are they wet?
Boy: No
Dad: Then they don't hurt. (Really really confused by this logic, but okay.)

I'm all about acknowledging my kid's feelings, so this conversation just struck me and made me feel really bad for this little boy. Eventually we made it through the long line and met Minnie and Daisy. I still think both Daisy and Donald's outfits make them creepy:

aVLXXC9.jpg
gP9fr3h.jpg


We then repeated our line waiting feet to meet Donald and Goofy. Shockingly, Goofy did not have us hold up our ears.

0CA1O56.jpg
XtL8d3q.jpg


Alright! We had gotten 4 of the fab five at all parks, all we needed now was Mickey, and he was our last remaining FP. Our FP window started at 9:00 so we headed down there after finishing with the side show. This was our first experience with talking Mickey, AND HE WAS GREAT!!!!!!! So cool! All I wanted to do was bring my son back to see him. Mickey took the time to tell us a joke about pirates and the type of socks they wear, but my FAVORITE part was when he was talking to the spanish speaking family in front of us. He told them he had been learning a few spanish words, and he told them his words he had learned. I don't remember what they were, but they were somewhat random and funny. At picture time though, well after the whole I've been learning spanish conversation, the photographer said "Say Cheese" and Mickey replied "Queso!". It was great! The whole room was laughing. If you haven't been to see talking Mickey yet, he's definitely worth a visit. He was pretty awesome.

9TONrfD.jpg


Finally we had our fab five in all four parks. The only characters still left out in the Magic Kingdom were Cinderella, Rapunzel, and the Little Mermaid. So we went to visit them.

C9Tpqm5.jpg
ZKq2Cn7.jpg


Rapunzel was by far my favorite of the group. She saw our llamas on our shirts and went nuts! She told us how much she LOVED llamas. As a llama obsessed person myself, I was quite smitten to have found a fellow llama loving princess. I loved Rapunzel!

PTMAqtv.jpg


Finally, we headed up and saw Belle. We knew we had to be in the show in order to get our picture taken with Belle, so we were quite happy when the CM picked both of us to be the suits of armor. Let me tell you. This show is much more enjoyable if you are actually in it. Be in the show! It's way more fun than watching other people in the show. I still have to load in our Belle picture, but rest assured we saw her too.

And that was it! We headed out of the parks completely tuckered out, barely able to walk, and completely exhilarated at the same time. My phone said we had walked over 18 miles. I think we stopped for a Mickey Bar and some popcorn on the way out. Be briefly discussed riding the TTA before leaving, but both of us were just too exhausted to even ride our most favorite ride. But now to find our car and get back to our hotel. The adventure continues next as this night is not nearly through.

We added 16 characters at the Magic Kingdom, bringing our grand total to 53 character meetings in a single day! Total score tally coming up. Anybody want to take on this challenge too?

The current time: 1:00am
Number of Characters Visited: 53
Number of Parks Visited: 6
Up Next: Heading Back to the Hotel, Getting Lost, and ANGRY husbands


Just sitting at work passing time until December so we can go back to WDW and I stumbled across this trip report. That day sounds pretty cool to me but there is no way on earth DW would go for that. I'm still trying to get her to ok a 20th anniversary trip with just the two of us but the odds of that don't look very good! Thanks for a great report and a great writing style!
 
Just sitting at work passing time until December so we can go back to WDW and I stumbled across this trip report. That day sounds pretty cool to me but there is no way on earth DW would go for that. I'm still trying to get her to ok a 20th anniversary trip with just the two of us but the odds of that don't look very good! Thanks for a great report and a great writing style!

Don't give up on the 20th anniversary trip! That would be so much fun, especially since you honeymooned at WDW. Maybe take that angle. Or maybe just hire a kid watching service for an entire day or evening.
 
Glad you hear you enjoyed your last day and I enjoyed your review of the parking garage. We rarely rent a car so I probably won't be experiencing it any time soon. Glad you enjoyed your escape experience. Sounds a little intense for what we would like, but glad you liked it!
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!









Top