Um, Villains Unleashed Party? Yes, Please!! (Trip Report)

Hey all! Thanks for checking in. We did make it to the party (though we certainly didn't do it the easy way!) and reports of overcrowding were quite accurate. We toured in such a way as to minimize dealing with the crowds, but there were some definite disappointments and missed opportunities. I have much information and many new experiences to share with you and as soon as I'm home, I'll be back with all of the gory details. Let's just say that it's going to be an INTERESTING trip report!

Okie doke, artichoke! Here we go!! The official Trip Report begins now:

Saturday, August 23

Friday was a good day, but a very busy day. I spent the morning taking care of last minute travel items, getting in a good run before a weekend of not-so-healthy choices, and doing a market analysis for a new client. In the afternoon, I did a settlement on a real estate transaction that I've been working on and left immediately to go to a friend's wedding, where I enjoyed the company of some dear friends until nearly midnight. Needless to say, when we woke up on Saturday morning, I was not at my sun-shiniest best. Of course, it was a Disney day, so I was excited to be awake. I was just already dragging and we had a long way to go on the day's adventure.

We finished packing and left the house around 7:30am. We needed to stop for breakfast and we needed to make a stop to try to find a small enough deodorant that Benn deemed acceptable so that we could pack it in the carry on bag--because he didn't check the size of his regular brand until the night before. argh. Luckily it turned out not to be a big deal. We found what we needed relatively quickly and proceeded to my brother-in-law's (Allan) house in Leesburg, VA. Allan had graciously offered to drop us off and pick up at Dulles International. We arrived at the airport at approximately 10:30. Security was super quick and efficient, though I was upset with one of the TSA agents. The two gentlemen in front of use were Asian--I would guess Chinese maybe--and their English was not plentiful. Instead of trying to help them understand, the agent was very rude and impatient with them. Ok, sometimes you're having a bad day. But then he turned around and was super nice and chatty with us right after. It made me feel really bad for those two men because I feel like they were treated poorly because of their national origin and there is no reason or excuse for that.

We were through security quickly even though I made a stupid mistake--I have a pouch that I keep the nail clippers, tweezers, etc. in and the pouch was getting kind of tattered, so I chucked all of the metal nail equipment into the first aid kit. Apparently this alarmed the gentleman running the bag check--LOL and oops--so they searched our bag. Of course once they figured out that we were not trying to sneak weapons onto the plane and we went on our way. We had about 2 hours to kill until our flight took off, so we located our terminal. If you're familiar with Dulles, Frontier flies out of terminal Z and there is NOTHING in terminal Z. Oh there's like a Dunkin Donuts and a Subway. Blech. No thank you. So, we located the A/B terminals and victory! Foodstuffs! We grabbed sandwiches at Potbelly (one of the very few things I miss about working in DC!!) and continued to watch our flight because as you may recall, I was very nervous about being on time. So far so good!

After lunch, we proceeded back to our terminal--flight still listed as "on time". Our boarding passes indicated that we would begin boarding at 12:20. At 12:15, the plane had not yet arrived and Frontier made an announcement that we would be delayed (obviously--unless they had some trick up their sleeve for unloading and cleaning a plane in less than 5 minutes), but they failed to give us any additional information. The plane arrived around 12:35 and bless their hearts, they did manage to get that plane unloaded and cleaned lickety-split. We started boarding right around 12:55, when we should have been taking off. Of course there were about 10 million kids on board and they take extra effort to get situated, so boarding seemed like it took FOREVER. We were finally ready to go. The safety demonstration was prepped and ready and we had started backing away from the gate. We had moved about 50 feet when one of the little cherubs popped out of his seat and ran up to the flight attendant. I don't know what the heck his problem was, but it took 20 minutes to get him back in his seat and buckled in. There was a plane full of people ready to toss that kid overboard. So, we FINALLY actually took off around 2:45. The pilot informed us that the flight time was 1:45 to Tampa, so that put us landing only about 15 minutes later than anticipated even with all of the delays. So we sat back and continued to stress out about the flight.

I guess we were about 150 miles out of Tampa and getting ready to start our descent when the pilot announced that we had to wait for a thunderstorm to clear before we could land and we would be doing a holding pattern for about 20 minutes. 45 minutes later, he announced that we would need to divert to Orlando to refuel. Ok, YAY because it's a heck of a lot easier to get to WDW from MCO than it is to get there from Tampa, but BOO because our rental car was reserved (fortunately not prepaid) in Tampa. As soon as we touched down, I was on the phone. Ideally I wanted to get Magical Express to take us to WDW and then either do a one-way rental to Tampa on Monday or try to get friends to drive us to Tampa. However, because our first night's stay was at the Dolphin, we were not eligible for Magical Express and because Mears, not Disney, calls the shots on ME, we were out of luck. So, we ended up doing a one-way rental from MCO to Tampa for only triple the cost of my $44 round trip reservation from Tampa. However, when we returned to Tampa on Monday and found out that our flight never landed at TPA until 7pm, I was happy to have gotten off the plane at MCO at 5pm and paid the additional money.

Our goal had been DHS by 6:00, but that was unrealistic at this point as it was nearly 5:30 by the time we had procured the rental car. We drove directly to the Dolphin, hitting some minor traffic merging onto I-4, but nothing unmanageable. We arrive at the Dolphin around 6pm, where we were informed that we were expected to pay $16/day to park. If that was disclosed in the fine print, I missed it, but by this point, I definitely had a George Banks moment from Father of the Bride (if you haven't seen this movie, Steve Martin refuses to pay for a pack of 12 hotdog buns because there are only 8 hotdogs in a package, so he removes the superfluous buns from the package) because I informed the nice chap at the reservation desk that I was not interested in paying his silly $16 parking fee on top of the resort rip-off fee of $23 that I had already paid on top of the promotional rate that was quoted. So dear, sweet Joe did help us out and waived the parking fee. We took the bags up to the room where Benn noted that it smelled musty and we had a lovely view of the rooftop air conditioner. The room did have one thing going for it besides the king bed--I told Benn that I picked the Dolphin because the Swans are prettier and if we were inside the Dolphin, our view would be of the Swan. And wouldn't you know it? There behind that air conditioner, we could see one of those pretty swans! We were in such a rush that I didn't even take pictures of the room.

So, we ran down to the boat dock and hopped a friendship boat to Hollywood Studios. We had arrived at last! It was 7pm, but at least we had made it. It would have been at least 9:30 if we had stayed on the plane all the way to Tampa. Ok...the party is coming next. Hang tight for a minute...

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Oh I forgot to mention that in our rush to pick ANY rental car, we ended up with a total loser with no power windows (fun on the toll roads and when you have to show your AP card for parking at the parks). We named it Cyclops because it had on giant windshield wiper instead of two. Picture below.

THE EVENT!

Obviously we were way far behind at this point. Our intention had been to meet Maleficent, but the wait was 2 hours when we arrived at 7:00, so we decided that Maleficent just wasn't that darned important! We skipped the welcome show because we wanted the advantage of getting in a meet & greet line early, so we staked out our next candidate. Streets of America greetings weren't starting until 8:30 or 9:00 depending on the character, so we didn't want to "waste" the line advantage there. I did manage to grab a cream cheese pretzel while we were scoping it out, though! We settled in on Darth Vader since we had rejected his 2-hour wait at Star Wars Weekend and we were maybe 20 families back in line. We was about 10 minutes late, but we were still done by 8:30. He did absolutely no interaction with anyone. No one was signing and instead they handed out bags with autograph cards as we exited the park. We went back to Streets of America, but by now of course those lines were monstrous. I wanted to get Cruella deVil or the evil queen, but they were doing the same thing they do at MNSSHP and MVMCP where instead of swapping out the characters, the character leaves the meet & greet to take a break. There was really no one else that I was willing to wait any amount of time for, so we opted for walking around and trying to catch pictures of the characters in between guests. One cool thing about the character interaction was that they did have characters roaming the park. We saw Greedo and Claude Frollo that way. We didn't get picture WITH them, but we at least saw them pretty closely. Also, I got a picture with Prospector Pete, but he was just another guest dressed up. I thought his costume was really good though!

We popped into Wandering Oaken's Trading Post. I wanted to pick up a plush baby Sven, but we didn't find one this weekend. We'll try next time. Benn was hungry, so we stopped at Studio catering. He didn't like the menu there, so we tried to check out Brown Derby for the special wings they were supposed to have, but it was mobbed and there was no getting near the place. So we opted for our old standby, ABC. Benn got the burger with the shrimp on top. I wasn't really hungry, so I had a kid's turkey sandwich. It was really cute--shaped like a goldfish!! I thought that the Mickey applesauce was tasty, too.

After dinner, we checked out the Guardians of the Galaxy mix tape thing. Benn thought it was really cool. I thought it was lame. I haven't seen the movie, but it was supposed to be a dance party and literally no one was dancing. We left there and headed for the Oogie Boogie Freaky Funhouse show. I expected this to either be a Nightmare Before Christmas show or that other villains might join Oogie Boogie, but it was Renaissance Faire combo act of sword swallowing, crossbow shooting, and fire eating. It was very theatrical and entertaining, but it was very much out of place. I thought the performers and their talents were impressive, but this show made absolutely no sense as part of this event.

Instead of Fantasmic with the villains pre-show, we took advantage of the short lines and rode Toy Story and Star Tours. We swung back by the merchandise tent and there was now a 20 minute wait instead of an hour and a half wait , so I jumped in line to buy my pin. They were really low on inventory and we found out the following night that literally every piece of merchandise had been sold during the event. All of the merchandise was behind the counter and that was a really efficient way to handle it, but there were literally only 3 items--a t-shirt, a water bottle, and a pin. After that, we picked up a birthday button for Benn, grabbed a coke, and staked out a spot for Villainy in the Sky.

Not sure how many people watch the DisUnplugged podcast on Tuesdays, but while Benn was getting the coke, I saw Pete, Dustin, Shaun, and Craig from the podast! I could't say hi because they were too far away to hear me and there was no way I was giving up my fireworks spot. I must have watched these fireworks 15 times on YouTube after the Friday the 13th party last year and I couldn't wait to see them!! DJ IgNite played a nice mix of hits and covers of hits from 1960-2014 while we counted down to 12:45.

Villainy in the Sky was AMAZING. It is the best fireworks show I have ever seen. The scope is so massive and the music that they use is just phenomenal. I didn't take any pictures of it because I just wanted to enjoy the experience.

I will say that overall, this event was not worth the $67 that we paid this year, but we did have fun and I do think that the event has potential. The event was absolutely oversold. There is no question about it. The park was very crowded and lines for everything were an hour more (event to get event-specific food). It was as expensive as MVMCP and MNSSHP with no parade and no free event treats. Also, the lines for meet & greets were absolute longer here than they were for our sold out MVMCP last year. If this event continues and the management makes the improvements that will make the event more comfortable and fun, I would consider doing it again in the future. I am going to provide feedback and I'll see what happens. I'm hoping for an offer of a partial refund because I know that many people have already been refunded for the party because they were dissatisfied with the experience. I won't say that I was completely dissatisfied. We'd had kind of a crappy day and we were just happy to be at the park at that point, but if we are being objective and fair, there is no way that we got $67 worth of entertainment out of that event.

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	Shan_Yu.jpg	1.47 MB
	Will_the_real_queen_please_stand_up.jpg	1.43 MB
	Smee.jpg	1.45 MB
	Frollo.jpg	1.86 MB
	Hook.jpg	1.63 MB
	Cyclops.jpg	4.26 MB

DAY 2:

Don't worry, friends. Despite one minor issue, we were definitely on an upswing today!! After bouncing back and forth about 50 times, we had decided to go to Magic Kingdom this morning. We were a little tired, not so much from being up late at the party the night before, but just from the stress and uncertainty of traveling prior to the event. We are usually rope-droppers, but we were really dragging to get to the park this morning. I got up and got ready first so I could run over to Boardwalk and check-in quick while Benn was getting ready. I actually enjoyed my little morning stroll and Greg, the CM at the counter was very pleasant. We chatted for several minutes and I learned that a busy turnover day for Boardwalk is about 200 guests, as opposed to the All-Stars where the turnover may be 800-1000 on any given day . Greg informed me that we were the second people to check-in, so it was likely that our room would be ready early. I explained to him that when we stayed at Boardwalk in April, we had signed up for the text alert, but we had not received a message. He informed me that their success rate for this notification system is about 70%. Unfortunately, I had walked out of the room without my credit card, so I was not able to establish charging privileges on our bands, so we just grabbed one of the gift cards and paid directly in MK for the day.

I collected Benn and we drove over to TTC. We got to park about 5 rows back form the front and at the end of the row that lines up with the tunnel that the tram drives through. Not only was this easily the best parking spot we have ever lucked into at MK, but this was surely a sign of low crowd level for the day. Score. The monorail maintenance is continuing, so everyone was packed on the ferryboat. The dock was completely full and we were standing on the concrete just past that little snack stand between the monorail and the boat. I thought for sure that we would get stopped and have to wait for the next boat. Not only did we make it one, but so did everyone behind us with room to spare. I forget how many people these amazing boats can accommodate!

We missed the welcome show, but we were definitely walking into the park right behind the people who were at the back of the rope drop crowd. We employed our new strategy and turned left for Adventureland immediately. We walked onto Jungle Cruise and Pirates before popping over to BTMR for our first FP of the day. It didn't have much of a line, but this is just one of those places that I hate waiting. The queue is so hot and the little fans that they run don't provide very much respite from the humidity. After our BTMR ride, we contemplated Splash, but it was down of some reason. Aside from the fact that I would have preferred being wet to being dry, I'm not a Splash fan. I hate that big drop at the end. We headed back to Adventureland and since we still had a few minutes to kill before Aloha Isle opened, we hopped on Aladdin's Magic Carpets. This was Benn's first ride on this attraction and he found it preferable to Dumbo and CERTAINLY to Astro Orbiter, which he hates! (I usually do AO if Benn does Space Mountain.) After that we achieved breakfast dole whips and then proceeded to the Haunted Mansion which was maybe a 10 minute wait.

It was almost lunchtime at Sleepy Hollow, so we put in our order for the spicy chicken and waffle sandwich. Oh. My. God. Why have I not eaten this before? It was the perfect combination of sweet and spicy with a delicious juicy chicken flavor on a beautiful belgian waffle. There was a crazy squirrel running around who thought I should give him a piece of my sandwich. Sorry about your luck, pal. Go get your own! After lunch, our PPF FP was active, so we enjoyed our favorite ride together before I tortured Benn by making him ride Small World. Next was Philharmagic and then the moment we had been waiting a year and a half for had finally arrived...the 7DMT FP window was open!!

I've often said that if Barnstormer was about 3 times longer, it would be my favorite ride. Well, 7DMT fits that bill perfectly! The leg room is a little tight, but it's not unbearable and ride & theming are so fantastic a beautiful. I currently hold three FP for 7DMT for our next trip and I may just try to get two more...

A spin on the teacups and a Dapper Dans performance and we were on our way back to Boardwalk. We reached the desk around 2:00 and inquired about our room, which still wasn't ready--no problem. We were ready for a snack. So we headed down to the Boardwalk and had some mac & cheese bites and then we browsed around the Screen Door shop and chatted with cast members. 3:00, room still not ready. 3:30, still not ready. We finally received a room ready text at 3:50, 10 minutes before guaranteed check-in. Ugh. Now, I get that no one is guaranteed a room prior to 4:00; however, Greg had told me that morning that we were the second people to check-in. When I submitted out room requests, I asked that having the room ready early be prioritized over my other requests. AND, the following morning, mousekeeping was knocking on our door at 8:30am to find out when we were leaving so that they could clean the room.

We had been hoping to take a nap and go to the pool before dinner. So instead of a nice long rest, we did a 20-minute power nap before we went to the pool. We were in the pool no more than 15 minutes when the sky darkened, the wind picked up, and the raindrops started to fall. If you haven't been to the pool at Boardwalk, the weather comes across one of the DVC wings (happened to be the one we were staying in) and you can't see the whole sky from inside the pool. So thinking that a thunderstorm was imminent, we hopped out of the pool and dried off. Just as we stepped into the lobby, the deluge began! By the time we got upstairs and walked out to the balcony to checkout the massive thunderstorm that was rolling in, the rain had nearly stopped and clear blue sky was approaching. Oh well, at least we finally got to swim in the Boardwalk pool.

Benn took another nap while I noodled around on the iPad and about 5:45, we walked down tot he dock to get a boat to Beach Club for Cape May Cafe! Originally, we had an ADR for San Angel, but I'm so glad that we changed it because Cape May was amazing. I must have eaten 2 lbs. of crab legs. They had the "California Salad" that I love from our local Melting Pot, cold peel and eat shrimp, goat cheese and some sort of tortilla type chip, and pistachio cheesecake. They had some other things, too, but these items made up the bulk of my buffet trips. To full to move, we ambled down to the boat dock to go back to DHS.

We waited for the boat for a long time. I want to say it was nearly 30 minutes because the first bot that came was too full to take us. But we did have a nice conversation with the family ahead of us in line. We got to DHS a little after 8:00 and it was too late to do any of the Frozen Fun activities, but we'll get to see them in September, so no biggie. We popped into Tattooine Traders just to browse and we met up with a CM who was earning his ears. We chatted with him and his trainer for about 20 minutes or so. Benn did not want to ride Star Tours because (I forgot to mention this from the party) we had ridden it the night before and we got what he considers to be the best possible sequence of scenes. Now he never wants to ride it again because we'll probably never get that came combination again!

We staked out a spot for Frozen Fireworks and grabbed a blue raspberry milkshake from Min & Bill's Dockside Diner. The flavor w as little bit diluted because of it being a milkshake, but it was almost as good as the blue ice cream from the Star Wars character meal at Hollywood & Vine in May. The Frozen Fireworks were very cute in person. I was very unimpressed with them on video, but live, they were quite nice and I wouldn't mind seeing them again in September. On the way out of the park, there was magical soap snow on Hollywood Boulevard and as soon as we exited the snow area, it quickly started to rain. We had planned to walk, but wince it was pouring when we hit the front gate, we went to get in line for the boat. However, since we had not been walking expediently out of the park, we were at least 4 boats from the front of the line, so we decided that walking in the rain was no worse than standing in line in the rain! Once again, it was over as quickly as it had started, so we enjoyed out leisurely stroll back to Boardwalk, where we discovered a wonderful coincidence--we could see Wishes from our balcony!

Pictures are on their way. It was another very long day and all of the files I tried to select were too large, so I'll take another crack at it tomorrow!

Lol I can't tell you how many times my typos of "excited" auto correct to "executed". Usually I catch them, but I guess not this time!!

Day 2 pictures....

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	Magic Carpets of Aladdin	3.51 MB
	7DMT	4.38 MB
	View from onboard 7DMT	4.12 MB
	Frozone	2.61 MB
	Mr. Incredible	2.01 MB
	Boardwalk Studio	4.91 MB
	Cape May Cafe Desserts	4.64 MB
	Frozen Fireworks 1	4.71 MB
	Frozen Fireworks 2	2.95 MB
	Snow on Hollywood Boulevard!	3.14 MB
	Wishes from our balcony :)	2.35 MB

Without further ado...

DAY 3

This one is short and sweet. We had originally booked FPs for DHS and then on the first night of our trip, changed them to EPCOT, but the FPs that we had at EPCOT were really bad for us time-wise because of when we needed to leave for the airport vs. the order the we prefer to tour in at EPCOT. So, on Sunday night, we changed our Monday FPs back to DHS...and then decided in the morning to go to DTD instead anyway!

We had a free sandwich coupon because it was really close to Benn's birthday (which is tomorrow, actually) and we wanted to see how the construction was coming along and do some pin trading/purchasing and maybe hit Disney Quest if we had time.

We left the room at around 8:35...5 minutes after mousekeeping tried to kick us out early. Of course nothing except guest relations was opened when we arrived, so we pin traded a bit and chatted up the DVC guy until we realized that not only was Earl of Sandwich open at 9:30am, but that we could get any sandwich on the menu! Holiday Turkey for breakfast? I think yes.

After breakfast, we ambled through the Art of Disney and the Christmas store before making a major haul at the Pin store. We stopped by the marketplace co-op, which I was really excited about after hearing rave reviews on the DISunplugged podcast, but I was kind of underwhelmed. I think part of the reason is that I have been keeping my eyes open for a really good Disney shower curtain for a long time and I was hoping that they would have some selections as part of their home decor, but it was all kitchen and living oriented.

Construction seems to be coming along and the pedestrian access is largely improved over what I remember from May. The waterfront walkway is getting longer and the signage is better so that you don't get dumped out into the parking lot so easily.

After a little bit more browsing, we popped into Disney Quest for about a half hour. Benn did some pod racing and I played about 50 games of Sea Wolf because I'm completely obsessed with that game. Then it was time to head to the airport!

We had to leave early because we had to drive to Tampa instead of MCO. It was mid-day Monday, so we hit absolutely no traffic on I-4. We got off of 275 on exit early, which gave us a chance to fill up the rental car and we avoided what I think is a toll going into the airport. It was a very short walk to the ticket counter (and no line) to print our boarding pass. We went upstairs and blitzed through security in about 10 minutes. Apparently they are running a TSA pre-check test at TPA and we got diverted into the pre-check line even though it was not designated on our boarding passes. So we left our shoes on and didn't have to remove liquids or laptops from our bags. Score. We didn't realize what was going on at first and the guy was telling us not to remove our shoes and we were actually very confused at first. I thought he was messing with us!

We turned the corner out of security and our gate was practically right there. SO with our extra time, we decided on sit-down lunch at a restaurant. I can't remember the name of the place, but it's in the terminal that frontier flies out of. I had the seafood bisque (yum) and Benn had a club sandwich. The food was great and the service was excellent. While we were waiting to board (on an on-time plane this time), two security guards ran onto our plane. Well of course that puts everyone on edge. Turns out that someone temporarily misplaced their 3 1/2 year-old child...and that it was one of the children that we had been watching enjoy the playground for about 20 minutes. So that added a lot a unnecessary excitement to a lot of peoples' day!

The flight home was largely uneventful and without delay (except that once we got to Dulles, the guy who was driving the moving walkway couldn't get it lined up with the plane--it took 3 people and about 15 minutes to finally master the art of driving the walkway up to the door. We were in the 2nd row and we had a great view of the whole thing). The drive home was also uneventful and the brief stop over at my brother-in-law's house to retrieve our car resulted in some rather exciting plans. Now on our long-range Disney forecast is a trip to Star Wars Weekend in 2016 with our nephew to celebrate his 8th grade "graduation"!!! His grandparents live in Florida and he visits them 3-4 times per year, so we naturally assumed that they had been taking him to Disney forever. Turns out, they never go!! So we must amend this tragic situation!

That's all for this trip. Thanks for reading along!! 28 days until we do it all over again

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	Waterfront Walkway	3.03 MB
	Progress...	3.33 MB
	Crazy Potato Heads	2.94 MB
	Aurora's skirt made out of...Auroras	4.75 MB
	looks like a new storefront!	3.65 MB
	Building, building, building!	4.12 MB
	Tsum Tsum now for sale at Once Upon a Toy	1.63 MB

Oops...missed the pics of the new pin acquisitions. 2014 Villains Unleashed event pin (barely got this one--at 10:30 there were only a handful left!), new Tangled pins, Stretching Room style Villains pins (there are also Cruella and Captain Hook, which I will be collecting next month), an Anna and Elsa to add to my Olaf, 2 UP pins--castle with balloons and Ellie & Carl's hinged mailbox, and a Mad Hatter spinner pin!

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