Allie's Fabulous, In-Your-Face, Surprise Graduation/Anniversary Trip of Awesomeness

Full credit for those go to my sisters!

Thursday, September 4th Part One

You guessed it, another bright and early morning to try and catch EMH rope drop at Magic Kingdom. I still have yet to see the rope drop show here after all of the years I've gone, I always seem to just miss it. We ran out of sunscreen this morning so Jon and Gillie were the first ones ready so they walked over to the main building to see if the gift shop was open yet. Our building was on the second to the last bus stop, the last one being the main building, so Megan and I told them that we'd call when we were going to the bus stop so that they would know when the next Magic Kingdom bus came that they should get on it. As Megan and I finished getting ready, we started the trip to the bus stop only to see a Magic Kingdom bus just pulling away. We called Gillie and told her that we had just missed the bus that was on its way so to wait until the next one. About 20 min went by and a Hollywood Studios bus rolled through...another 10 min and another Magic Kingdom bus. We called and told them we were hopping on the bus and to make sure they were up waiting for it because the bus we were getting on was really full. Our bus pulled up to the lobby bus stop with I kid you not, at least 30 or 40 people lined up trying to get on the Magic Kingdom bus. Luckily our warning had helped Jon and Gill get to the front of the line because they were two of maybe six people that were able to squeeze onto the bus. We pulled away from a CM with a clipboard and a huge group of pretty angry looking people. We found out from Jon and Gillie later that apparently that bus that we had called and told them not to get on because we had missed it never had even stopped at the lobby so the bus stop there was now backed up with at least two missed buses worth of people trying to get to EMH. Some of the people there had likely been waiting close to an hour. Yikes.

We of course didn't make it to rope drop again this morning so that one is still on my bucket list to check off. Gillie insisted on stopping at Starbucks for a coffee right away so while we waited for her to finish her giant drink that is the snack credit size, we walked over to Mickey's Star Traders in Tomorrowland to buy a bottle of sunscreen since the gift shop at Coronado hadn't been open yet anyways. After we were lotioned up and protected from the sun and Gillie had about a gallon of coffee running through her veins, we headed to Space Mountain that had absolutely no wait. I got a front row seat which made the ride even scarier! I vowed not to ride it anymore this trip though because I was definitely achier this time when we got off.

Last trip when we were at Magic Kingdom for morning EMH we had gotten in line for the princess meet and greet about 5 min before the park opened to the general public so that we were one in the first in line. With this plan in mind, we walked back to Princess Fairytale Hall to meet with Rapunzel and Cinderella. Apparently now they start their greeting at EMH so our plan had not worked out exactly, but there was still only a 5 min wait so we got in line. We skipped Anna and Elsa since they already had an outrageous wait and I knew we had a FP+ for them later.

After meeting the ladies, we split up so that Jon and I could go get a Nutella and fruit waffle sandwich and Megan and Gillie could ride It's a Small World. Jon hates the ride and I definitely don't have to do it every trip so I was fine skipping it for a waffle sandwich! We had planned to meet them back at It's a Small World so that we could use our Peter Pan's Flight FP+ immediately afterward, but unfortunately our waffle sandwich took a looooong time to make so Megan and Gillie ended up having to wait for us for a while. Oops!

Peter Pan listed a 30 min wait but we didn't see much, if any, of a line when we went through the FP+ queue. This is another one that is just a nostalgic favorite to me that I absolutely cannot wait to take my daughter on (I thought about that a lot this trip, can you tell?). Our FP+ for Big Thunder was almost open at this point so we headed to Frontierland to find a really short wait there. We skipped the FP+ line and I quickly changed our FP+ reservation to an Ariel meet and greet later in the day. Splash had a short line too so of course we had to ride that one again. The middle two rows were ours this time and we got just the right amount of wet to cool down.

By now we were starving so we went back to Fantasyland to hang out in Gaston's tavern until our BOG FP time at 11am. We headed over a couple of minutes early and got right in. I loved the ordering system! I got the tuna nicoise salad and a bowl of the French onion soup, Jon got the braised pork, and Megan and Gillie each got the roast beef sandwhich. We also had the Master's Cupcake with the grey stuff center, a lemon meringue cupcake, a strawberry cream cheese cupcake, and a tropical fruit cream puff. Everything was out of this world, especially my salad which was my favorite quick service meal of the entire trip. Soooooo gooooood! The master's cupcake was a little bit of a disappointment since the grey stuff really was just whipped cream and I was expecting more of a mousse, but lesson learned and everything else more than made up for it! We had ended up in the Rose Gallery area because it was the only room with empty seats, so after eating we explored the beautiful restaurant while we let our food digest.

After our delicious meal we knew our Anna and Elsa FP+ window was open so we headed straight there. Yay! Our Elsa was great but our Anna was a little drab. I wish they still had them meet together because I think having them interact with each other would have been more fun.

We did a little shopping afterward and I got Penny a pair of the pink Mickey Mouse club Mickey ears to bring home for her. To finish of Fantasyland we went over and rode Under the Sea (love!) and met up with Ariel with our FP+

Probably is, JoAnn. Don't fight it!

Thursday, September 4th Part Two

Since it was our last scheduled day in Magic Kingdom we went through the list of attractions to see if there was anything we had missed that we were dying to do or wanted to do again. Megan and Gill wanted to do Space Mountain again so I scheduled them a FP+ at a kiosk and we went over to hit Haunted Mansion one more time. We cut through the hub over to Tomorrowland where we did Monsters Inc Laugh Floor again and then took a last ride on the People Mover. Jon and I went and grabbed me a coffee at Starbucks while we waited for Megan and Gillie to ride Space Mountain and then we all met with Tinkerbell on the way out. You can't tell from the picture because she had a ton of makeup on, but this was a pretty old Tinkerbell. Kind of odd.

With a few hours to kill until our O'hana reservation at 5:20pm, we climbed aboard the monorail and shot over to Epcot for a while. Our first stop once in the gates was Innoventions West where we got our picture taken with Mickey and Goofy at the Disney Visa Card Meet and Greet Area.

I really had my heart set on catching the World Showcase Players at some point since I have never seen them and I knew they'd be making their final debut at Epcot in a few weeks. Megan really wanted to do Captain EO though because she had never done it so we decided to skip the World Showcase for now and do that instead. She walked out afterward with a "What did I just watch?" expression on her face but I still think that movie is hilarious. I wouldn't be too sad to see it go, though.

We stopped by in the Land pavilion next and saw that Soarin' only had a 15 min wait so we hopped in line. After 10 min of our short line not moving at all, we realized that this was stupid and we'd be really cutting it close on our dinner reservation so we got back out of line to head over to the monorail to the TTC to catch a monorail to the Poly. It started sprinkling while we were walking and none of us wanted to be wet at dinner so we sprinted like idiots through the front of the park. We missed the downpour by a good 10 min though so in reality we could have taken our time.

Once at the Poly we had about a 10 min wait before we were called back to be seated at O'hana. I enjoyed a Lapu Lapu and the lettuce wraps, potstickers, and chicken wings were all a big hit at our table. We wimped out pretty early on the meat because we were so stuffed and tired. We thought about going back to the Magic Kingdom to ride Jungle Cruise at night, but it wasn't dark yet when we were done eating and we were all too tired to wait so we called it an early night and went back to Coronado to sleep off the day.

Yay, JoAnn! If your experience is anything like ours, you won't regret it!

JMed, to be honest I'm not a great judge of that because I like sweet drinks, but I honestly didn't think the Lapu Lapu was overly sweet at all. Mine was actually pretty strong, though very delicious!

Friday, September 5th Part One

We actually got to sleep in a teeny, tiny bit this morning! The first thing on our schedule for the day was a 9:00am reservation at 1900 Park Fare over at the Grand Floridian. We got ready, waited (for a LONG time!) for the bus to the Magic Kingdom, and then hoped on a boat over to GF. We hung out in the lobby for about 5 min before we were called back to be seated. GF is a beautiful resort but it still feels a little stuffy for my taste. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't turn down a chance to stay there, but it would be one of my last picks on the list of Deluxe resorts.

Breakfast was delicious. I especially enjoyed the smoked salmon and the cheese blintzes. I was a little underwhelmed by the lobster eggs benedict since my egg was extremely overcooked from sitting under the heat lamps and there was no visible lobster, I'm assuming it was just a lobster flavored hollandaise. Everyone else in my group liked it, though. The strawberry soup was yummy but a little odd to eat out of a bowl so we ended up taking our coffee mugs up to the buffet, filling up, and then drinking it like a smoothie. Mmmmm! The character interactions were pretty great, also. Gillie absolutely hates everything Winnie the Pooh so we had a great time telling the characters that Gillie loved Pooh so that they would come over and give her a bunch of attention. Ha!

Once we had met all of the characters, we ventured out to the bus stop with very full bellies. The bus stop actually had a little TV that listed expected arrival times for the next buses! How awesome! Does every Deluxe have this or just GF? I really wish every bus stop had this, or maybe they could incorporate it into the MDE app? How nice would that be? Anyway, a Hollywood Studios bus had just pulled up and it just so happened that DHS is exactly where we were headed so we climbed aboard and were off!

Inside the gates we headed back to TSM to use up our FP+. This was Megan and Gillie's first time on this ride and they both loved it, of course! How can you not love that ride? Jon got the highest score on our entire ride vehicle which he pretty much always does, but I at least got second out of the four of us. Great Movie ride only had a 10 min wait once we were off TSM so we got in line. We ended up with the Cowboy scene which I haven't had in forever. I almost always get the Gangster so that was pretty cool to get something different. Turns out that I much prefer the Gangster version, though. The Cowboy didn't really do a whole lot. It still is a fun ride though!

Our Little Mermaid FP+ was about to open up so we headed over to the theater and walked right in. Everyone in there seemed to be trying to form lines in front of the door and we got a couple dirty looks when we walked right up by the doors and stood in the empty space between the two lines. Pretty soon the whole room was filled up, so hopefully they eventually understood that we were just supposed to fill in all available space in the room. When we got in we chose a center row about half way back from the stage and we went all the way down to the end of the row like the good listeners that we are. The little girl behind us was adorable throughout the show, shouting things like "Oooooh, Eric!" and "Watch out, Ariel!" Super cute!

After VotLM, our FP+ for Tower of Terror was open so we ran over to that side of the park to grab a quick ride before lunch. By the time we were done it was a little after 1pm and the Lights, Motor, Action 1:20pm show was about to start so Megan and I took Jon and Gillie's orders for lunch from Fairfaxe Faire, and I rushed them off to go catch the show since they are the ones that wanted to see it. Don't ask me why, that is definitely a "I've seen it once, don't need to see it again" show for me but they both had it on their list of must dos so I wanted to make sure they got it in. Megan and I ordered two mac and cheese hot dogs, a pulled pork hot dog, three sodas, a vanilla cake with chocolate custard, and two Olaf cupcakes (Gill wasn't hungry), and trudged back to the back left corner of the park to find a spot to sit with the food and wait for Jon and Gillie. It was a HOT day so we were both extremely worn out and sweaty after carrying all that food all the way across the park and the poor Olaf cupcakes were pretty much puddles on the plate. As we grabbed a seat at Studio Catering Co. to wait for the show to get done, I realized that Jon and Gillie had all four cell phones with them so we had no way to let them know where we were sitting. I tried walking over to the LMA entrance to sneak in the back and let them know where to find us, but apparently you can't go in once the show has started which I thought was a little odd since it was an open air auditorium.

I went back to our stake out spot and Megan and I ate our hotdogs and chips (I just picked off the mac and cheese and ate it since I wasn't a big fan of the hot dog) and our desserts, watching and waiting for the show to be released so that I could run over and find Jon and Gill as they came out. About 15 min later they came out and I ran over and grabbed them. Jon ate his pretty cold hot dog (yeah, this probably was not our best plan ever in hindsight) and I took Gillie over to Wandering Oaken's to get her a slushie as she was pretty dehydrated. Jon and Megan eventually came in to meet us and we waited for a bit to see if the professional ice skaters would come out but no such luck, they just kept cleaning the ice. We gave up after a bit and decided to ride the Backlot Tour instead. After that we were feeling pretty burnt out, so we headed back to Coronado for a quick break and some skyping with Penny before heading over to Epcot for the night.

Well it depends on what resort you are staying at because obviously you will be closer to some parks then others then. DHS and Epcot were pretty nearby at Coronado (even though we were technically considered an DAK resort) so I usually allowed around 1/2 hour to 45 min for them. DAK and MK were a bit further so I'd allow more like 45 min to an hour.

It was odd because you could tell she recognized us because she'd get a big smile on, but I don't think she got the concept that we were interacting with her. It was kind of like she thought she was just watching us on tv and she'd get really bored with it really quickly. She got much more excited when we talked to her on the phone, probably because we do that at home a lot too and this was our first time skyping her.

Friday, September 5th Part Two

Back to Epcot we headed! The mission tonight was to hit up some of the World Showcase shows, particularly World Showcase Players and Mo'Rockin since I had never seen either of these acts and I knew they would be leaving Epcot in the coming weeks. As we grabbed a Times Guide and headed back to the World Showcase, Jon said that there was a World Showcase Players performance coming up in the next 15 min. We hightailed it back over to the UK pavilion and sat down on the curb to wait. The allotted time came and went and nothing happened. I looked at the Times Guide only to find out that in italicized print it listed that the World Showcase Players would perform only Sunday through Thursday. So the day before when we had thought about coming over to see them and instead watched Captain EO, we had missed our final shot at seeing this group. Big bummer.

Serveur Amusant had a show coming up in a bit so we ventured off to France instead to grab a brioche ice cream sandwich and watch the show. The ice cream sandwich was a bit disappointing though the ice cream was absolutely delicious. We all agreed we would have just preferred a scoop plain, though. We sat down and waited for the performers, and good thing we were so early because the street show started about 5 min early. It was really cute, though very short, but we enjoyed it. We headed over to Morocco next to try and catch a bit of Mo'Rockin before moving on to America, however after about 10 min past their scheduled performance time and the curtain was still drawn around their stage, we gave up. Not sure what the deal was, maybe they had called the show since it looked like it might rain? There was a pretty drunk group next to us that kept yelling and trying to sneak cigarette breaks around the corner of the stage rather than going to the smoking area, so we were pretty anxious to get out of there anyways. Another miss and another bummer, though. Guess I'll just have to Youtube all of these acts!

Voices of Liberty were up next so Gillie and I grabbed us seats out in front of the American pavilion since they would be performing outside today instead of inside the American Adventure building. Megan ran to the bathroom and Jon grabbed me an Angry Orchard from a booth nearby. The singing started up before they got back so we had to work hard to save them seats as the crowd quickly grew around us. Such amazing performers, though. I absolutely loved this!

It was starting to sprinkle at this point so we decided it was a great time for some Ellen's Energy Adventure. I know this one gets a bad rap but I really like it! It is a bit long, I'll admit but it has a soft spot in my heart because I remember it from when we came when I was a kid. I was glad we got to do it too since we had missed it on our last trip. When Ellen's Energy Adventure was done it was raining pretty hard so we beelined over to Spaceship Earth for another ride. Megan had wanted to play more of the games at the end but our dinner reservation was coming up so we promised to come back later.

I had wanted to stop by China on our way back to Italy to catch some of the acrobats show, but I was pretty confident that it would be called off due to the continuing rain. As we passed the China Pavilion, however, there was a sign out front saying the entertainment had been moved inside to the waiting area for Reflections of China. We grabbed a back row bench to rest our feet for a bit but we knew we'd probably have to duck out early to make our reservation so we didn't want to get too close to the front of the group. I really wish we could have stayed for the whole show though because this was my favorite act all day! They were really amazing! All of the performances we saw throughout the World Showcase were really incredible and it made me really regret having skipped over these in the past. Honestly, wandering around the World Showcase and watching the shows was probably my favorite thing we did the entire trip. It was just so relaxed and fun! I'm vowing next trip to make these a priority!

Tutto Italia was calling our name so we finished the journey back to Italy and checked in. We were handed bags to put our ponchos in and were immediately taken back to our table. We ordered the Grande Antipasto Misto platter to start which was absolutely out of this world amazing! So so so good! For dinner I had the grilled salmon filet, green asparagus, and shaved fennel salad, Jon had the Ravioli di Ricotta, Megan had the Fettuccine Campagnole (arugula and basil pesto), and Gillie had the Pollo al Forno (roasted chicken, rosemary, lemon, faro risotta, and pancetta) which she was not a fan of but luckily Megan was nice enough to switch with her since Gillie hadn't eaten lunch that day either. I passed on an Italian Margarita (shocker, I know!) and went with a yummy Moscato with dinner.

Just as we were about to order dessert, we heard an angry shout/scream and a table clanking near us. It was on the other side of the waiter stand so we couldn't see what was going on but everyone else in eyesight had turned and were staring blatantly at the commotion. Two ladies got up and stormed off, leaving the rest of their party and I, being the nosy person that I am, pretended to get up to go the bathroom to see what was going on. The rest of the group were all sitting there a little embarrassed and dumbfounded but, surprise of all surprises, it was the drunken group from the Morocco Pavilion! I'm still not exactly sure what happened, but the rest of the party stayed and finished their meal like everything was normal. Odd...

Anyways, for dessert Megan had been eying up a dessert that she had kept seeing going by on passing trays that came in a little martini glass. I hadn't seen it, but based on the description I made a guess that it was the Panna Cotta e Amarene (chocolate custard, amarena cherries). Apparently I was wrong because that came out in a completely different glass and tasted like cherry cough syrup. Luckily I was super full so I was willing to share my cannoli with her Jon went with the Torta di Ricotta (lemon ricotta cheesecake with marinated strawberries) and Gillie got the Torta di Nocciole "Coremilia" (polenta cake, hazelnuts, Nutella, mascarpone), both of which were absolutely incredible. They also brought Jon and I out a chocolate cake for our anniversary which was delicious, but I was so stuffed we ended up leaving most of it.

Illuminations was about to start so we told Megan and Gillie to go ahead and run out to watch it while we paid. Jon and I made it out for the last couple minutes of the fireworks and then found the other two and slowly meandered over to Future World for EMH. We still hadn't hit the Living With the Seas Pavilion yet, so we hopped on The Seas with Nemo and Friends with absolutely no wait and no one in any of the clam shells around us. We caught a Turtle Talk With Crush show and then explored the aquarium area.

Since we were right near The Land we thought we'd check the wait time for Soarin...only 10 min! Yes please! We requested a front row seat and since half the theater was empty it wasn't a problem. Gillie wanted to see the Circle of Life movie, but EMH ended at 11pm, it was already 10:50pm, and when we went to check the wait time the employee told us the next show didn't start until 11pm and then rushed off into the theater. I hope he wasn't too excited that we were coming to see the movie because we bailed and instead went over to Spaceship Earth again so that Megan could get her games in. A little after 11pm we called it a night, said goodbye to Epcot, and headed back to the buses for our last night at Coronado. We walked into our room dead tired, only to find a microwave sitting in the middle of the floor. What? We decided to worry about it the morning and went to bed without another thought.